AOC on Trump’s willingness to accept political ‘dirt’ on rivals: ‘The pressure to impeach grows’
Kadia Tubman June 16, 2019
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images); President Donald Trump (Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)
Days after President Trump asserted he would take damaging information on his political rivals from a foreign power, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said “the pressure to impeach grows.”
“I think every day that passes, the pressure to impeach grows,” said Ocasio-Cortez Sunday in an interview on ABC News “This Week.” “I think that it’s justifiable, I think the evidence continues to come in and I believe that with the president now saying that he is willing to break the law to win reelection, that transcends partisanship, it transcends party lines, and this is now about the rule of law in the United States of America.”
The freshman Democrat called for an impeachment inquiry “to look at what’s going on,” pointing to the Mueller report that covered “10 counts of obstruction of justice, four with rock-solid evidence,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
“We have violations of the emoluments clause,” she said. “We need to at least open an inquiry so that we can look at what is going on, and that is what opening an impeachment inquiry means.”
Trump in an interview last week with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos said he would accept “dirt” on his political opponents from foreign governments without necessarily alerting the FBI.
“I think you might want to listen, there isn’t anything wrong with listening,” Trump said. “If somebody called from a country, Norway, [and said] ‘we have information on your opponent’ — oh, I think I’d want to hear it.”
Despite the multiple efforts by Russians to influence the 2016 presidential election as detailed in throughout Mueller probe, the president said he didn’t consider a foreign power handing over information to him to be interference in U.S. election process.
“It’s not an interference, they have information — I think I’d take it,” Trump said. “If I thought there was something wrong, I’d go maybe to the FBI — if I thought there was something wrong. But when somebody comes up with oppo research, right, they come up with oppo research, ‘oh let’s call the FBI.’ The FBI doesn’t have enough agents to take care of it. When you go and talk, honestly, to congressman, they all do it, they always have, and that’s the way it is. It’s called oppo research.”
In a later interview with “Fox & Friends,” Trump attempted to clarify what he meant to be saying was that he would “absolutely” notify federal law enforcement if a foreign power presented his campaign with “incorrect or badly stated” information about an opponent.
Still, he defended his willingness to receive information and doubted a foreign source would try to give him information.
“If you don’t hear what it is, you don’t know what it is,” Trump said and added,
“I don’t think anybody would present me with anything bad because they know how much I love this country.”
“The president gave us once again evidence that he does not know right from wrong,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, responding to Trump’s original statements about accepting foreign information.
But she made clear that Trump’s stunning admission would not be the “trigger” for launching an impeachment inquiry.
“What we want to do is have a methodical approach to the path that we are on, and this will be included in that,” Pelosi said.” But not any one issue is going to trigger, ‘Oh now, we’ll go to this,’ because it’s about investigating, it’s about litigating.”
“As we go down this path to seek the truth for the American people and hold the president accountable, it has nothing to do with politics or any campaigns,” she said. “It has everything to do with patriotism, not partisanship.”
Jim Carrey Says ‘Good Riddance’ to Sarah Huckabee Sanders in Biblical Fashion
Daniel Kohn, The Wrap June 14, 2019
You can count Jim Carrey as the latest person to tell soon-to-be-former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to not let the door hit her on the way out.
A frequent critic of Sanders, Carrey expressed his pleasure with Sanders’ departure and displeasure with her as a person in his latest artistic rendering.
“Good Riddance, Sarah Huckabee Sanders! Now the only one you have to lie to is Jesus,” Carrey captioned the art, which portrays a multi-chinned Sanders in an unflattering pose praying at Jesus’ crucifix with a circle behind her head. Check out Carrey’s latest artwork. pic.twitter.com/qeWYpNxrtF
This isn’t the first time that Sanders has the subject of actor/artist Carrey’s art. Previously, he has depicted her as a Gorgon and has called her “monstrous.”
On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced in a series of tweets that Sanders would be leaving his administration.
Sanders has been with the Trump White House for two and a half years and has served as White House press secretary since May 2017, taking over for Sean Spicer.
“After 3 1/2 years, our wonderful Sarah Huckabee Sanders will be leaving the White House at the end of the month and going home to the Great State of Arkansas…” Trump wrote. “…She is a very special person with extraordinary talents, who has done an incredible job! I hope she decides to run for Governor of Arkansas — she would be fantastic. Sarah, thank you for a job well done!”
Carrey isn’t the only person who isn’t sad to see Sanders go.
The hashtag #ByeFelicia was trending on Twitter after her departure was announced — a dismissive farewell originally uttered by Ice Cube’s character in the comedy “Friday.”
Emails: Trump official consulted global warming rejecters
By Ellen Knickmeyer and Seth Borenstein, June 14, 2019
In this March 29, 2013, file photo, a worker helps monitor water pumping pressure and temperature, at an oil and natural gas extraction site, outside Rifle, on the Western Slope of Colorado. A Trump administration national security official has sought help from advisers to a think tank that disavows climate change to challenge widely accepted scientific findings on global warming, according to his emails. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Trump administration national security official has sought help from advisers to a think tank that disavows climate change to challenge widely accepted scientific findings on global warming, according to his emails.
The request from William Happer, a member of the National Security Council, is included in emails from 2018 and 2019 that were obtained by the Environmental Defense Fund under the federal Freedom of Information Act and provided to The Associated Press. That request was made this past March to policy advisers with the Heartland Institute, one of the most vocal challengers of mainstream scientific findings that emissions from burning coal, oil and gas are damaging the Earth’s atmosphere.
In a March 3 email exchange Happer and Heartland adviser Hal Doiron discuss Happer’s scientific arguments in a paper attempting to knock down climate change as well as ideas to make the work “more useful to a wider readership.” Happer writes he had already discussed the work with another Heartland adviser, Thomas Wysmuller.
Academic experts denounced the administration official’s continued involvement with groups and scientists who reject what numerous federal agencies say is the fact of climate change.
“These people are endangering all of us by promoting anti-science in service of fossil fuel interests over the American interests,” said Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann.
“It’s the equivalent to formulating anti-terrorism policy by consulting with groups that deny terrorism exists,” said Northeastern University’s Matthew Nisbet, a professor of environmental communication and public policy.
The National Security Council declined to make Happer available to discuss the emails.
The AP and others reported earlier this year that Happer was coordinating a proposed White House panel to challenge the findings from scientists in and out of government that carbon emissions are altering the Earth’s atmosphere and climate.
Happer, a physicist who previously taught at Princeton University, has claimed that carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas from the burning of coal, oil and gas, is good for humans and that carbon emissions have been demonized like “the poor Jews under Hitler.” Trump appointed him in late 2018 to the National Security Council, which advises the president on security and foreign policy issues.
The emails show Happer expressing surprise that NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, a former Oklahoma congressman who once questioned mainstream climate science, has come round to accepting that science.
A May 2018 email exchange between Heartland’s Wysmuller and Happer calls the NASA chief’s change of heart on climate science “a puzzle.” The exchange calls scientifically established rises in sea levels and temperatures under climate change “part of the nonsense” and urges the NASA head — copied in — to “systematically sidestep it.”
Happer at the time was not yet a security adviser, although he had advised the Trump Environmental Protection Agency on climate change.
A NASA spokesman on Thursday upheld the space agency’s public statements on climate change.
“We provide the data that informs policy makers around the world,” spokesman Bob Jacobs said. “Our science information continues to be published publicly as it always has.”
But at the Heartland Institute, spokesman Jim Lakely defended the effort, saying in an email that NASA’s public characterization of climate change as manmade and a global threat “is a disservice to taxpayers and science that it is still pushed by NASA.”
After joining the agency, Happer sent a February 2019 email to NASA deputy administrator James Morhard relaying a complaint from an unidentified rejecter of man-made climate change about NASA’s website.
“I’m concerned that many children are being indoctrinated by this bad science,” said the email that Happer relayed.
Happer’s own message was redacted from the records obtained by the environmental group.
Two major U.S. science organizations took issue with Happer’s emails.
“We have concerns that there appear to be attempts by a member of the National Security Council to influence and interfere with the ability of NASA, a federal science agency, to communicate accurately about research findings on climate science,” said Rush Holt, chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advance of Science, the world’s largest general scientific society.
There have been hundreds of scientific assessments by leading researchers and institutions the last few decades that look at all the evidence and have been “extremely credible and routinely withstand intense scrutiny,” said Keith Seitter, executive director of the American Meteorological Society. “Efforts to dismiss or discredit these rigorous scientific assessments in public venues does an incredible disservice to the public.”
Strengthening them could blunt inequality and wage stagnation.
By Noah Smith Noah Smith is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He was an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University, and he blogs at Noahpinion.On the right side. Photographer: Stephen F. Somerstein/Archive Photos/Getty Images
Politically and economically, unions are sort of an odd duck. They aren’t part of the apparatus of the state, yet they depend crucially on state protections in order to wield their power. They’re stakeholders in corporations, but often have adversarial relationships with management. Historically, unions are a big reason that the working class won many of the protections and rights it now enjoys, but they often leave the working class fragmented and divided — between different companies, between union and non-union workers, and even between different ethnic groups.
Economists, too, have long puzzled about how to think about unions. They don’t fit easily into the standard paradigm of modern economic theory in which atomistic individuals and companies abide by rules overseen by an all-powerful government. Some economists see unions as a cartel, protecting insiders at the expense of outsiders. According to this theory, unions raise wages but also drive up unemployment. This is the interpretation of unions taught in many introductory courses and textbooks.
If this were really what unions did, it might be worth it to simply let them slip into oblivion, as private-sector unions have been doing in the U.S.:
It’s Been a While Since the Union Made Us Strong
But there are many reasons to think that this theory of unions isn’t right — or, at least, is woefully incomplete.
First, even back in the 1970’s, some economists realized that unions do a lot more than just push up wages. In a 1979 paper entitled “The Two Faces of Unionism,” economists Richard Freeman and James Medoff argued that “by providing workers with a voice both at the workplace and in the political arena, unions can and do affect positively the functioning of the economic and social systems.”
Freeman and Medoff cite data showing that unions reduced turnover, which lowers costs associated with constantly finding and training new workers. They also show that unions engaged in political activity that benefited the working class more broadly, rather than just union members. And they showed that contrary to popular belief, unions actually decreased racial wage disparities. Finally, Freeman and Medoff argue that by defining standard wage rates within industries, unions actually reduced wage inequality overall, despite the cartel-like effect emphasized in econ textbooks.
But the world didn’t listen to Freeman and Medoff, and private-sectors unions declined into near-insignificance. Now, four decades later, economists are again starting to suspect that unions were a better deal than the textbooks made them out to be. A recent paper by economists Henry Farber, Daniel Herbst, Ilyana Kuziemko and Suresh Naidu concludes that unions were an important force reducing inequality in the U.S. QuicktakeIncomeInequality
Since past data tends to be patchy, Farber et al. combine a huge number of different data sources to get a detailed picture of unionization rates going all the way back to 1936, the year after Congress passed a law letting private-sector employees form unions. The authors find that as unionization rises, inequality tends to fall, and vice versa. Nor is this effect driven by greater skills and education on the part of union workers; during the era from 1940 through 1970, when unionization rose and inequality fell, union workers tended to be less educated than others. In other words, unions lifted the workers at the bottom of the distribution. Black workers, and other nonwhite workers, tended to benefit the most from the union boost.
Now, however, private-sector unions are mostly a faded memory and their power to raise wages has waned — Farber et al. find that although there’s still a union wage premium, it’s now much more due to the fact that higher-skilled workers tended to be the ones who stayed unionized. A 2004 paper by economists John DiNardo and David Lee found that by 1984-1999, unions had lost much of their ability to force wages higher.
Given the contrast between the golden age of 1940-1970 and the current age of spiraling inequality, wouldn’t it make sense to bring unions back? Perhaps. The key question is why private-sector unions mostly died out. Policy changes — right-to-work laws, and the appointment of anti-union regulators, probably played a key role in reducing unionization. But globalization may have also played a big part. Competition from companies in countries like Germany — where unions often bargain to hold down wages in order to increase their companies’ competitiveness — might have made the old American model of unionization unsustainable. Now, with even stiffer competition from China, the challenge of re-unionizing the U.S. might be an insurmountable one.
But it might be worth it to try. Other than massive government redistribution of income and wealth, there’s really no other obvious way to address the country’s rising inequality. Also, there’s the chance that unions might be an effective remedy for the problem of increasing corporate market power — evidence suggests that when unionization rates are high, industry concentration is less effective at suppressing wages. Repealing right-to-work laws and appointing more pro-union regulators could be just the medicine the economy needs.
So supporters of free markets should rethink their antipathy to unions. As socialism gains support among the young, both economists and free-market thinkers should consider the possibility that unions — that odd hybrid of free-market bargaining and government intervention — were the vaccine that allowed the U.S. and other rich nations to largely escape the disasters of communism in the 20th century.
It looks like it’s time for a booster shot.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Why some CEOs figure ‘Medicare for All’ is good for business
Phil Galewitz, Kaiser Health News June 11, 2019
EASTON, Pa. – Walk into a big-box retailer such as Walmart or Michaels and you’re likely to see MCS Industries’ picture frames, decorative mirrors or kitschy wall décor.
Adjacent to a dairy farm a few miles west of downtown Easton, MCS is the nation’s largest maker of such household products. But MCS doesn’t actually make anything here anymore.
It has moved its manufacturing operations to Mexico and China, with the last manufacturing jobs departing this city along the Delaware River in 2005. MCS now has about 175 U.S. employees and 600 people overseas.
“We were going to lose the business because we were no longer competitive,” CEO Richard Master explained. And one of the biggest impediments to keeping labor costs in line, he said, has been the increasing expense of health coverage in the United States.
Today, he’s at the vanguard of a small but growing group of business executives who are lining up to support a “Medicare for All” national health program. He argues not that health care is a human right, but that covering everyone with a government plan and decoupling health care coverage from the workplace would benefit entrepreneurship.
In February, Master stood with Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) outside the Capitol after she introduced her Medicare for All bill.
“This bill removes an albatross from the neck of American business, puts more money in consumer products and will boost our economy,” he said.
As health costs continue to grow, straining employer budgets and slowing wage growth, others in the business community are beginning to take the option more seriously.
While the influential U.S Chamber of Commerce and other large business lobbying groups strongly oppose increased government involvement in health care, the resolve of many in the business community – especially among smaller firms – may be shifting.
“There is growing momentum among employers supporting single-payer,” said Dan Geiger, co-director of the Business Alliance for a Healthy California, which has sought to generate business support for a universal health care program in California. About 300 mostly small employers have signed on.
“Businesses are really angry about the system, and there is a lot of frustration with its rising costs and dysfunction,” he said.
Geiger acknowledged the effort still lacks support from any Fortune 500 company CEOs. He said large businesses are hesitant to get involved in this political debate and many don’t want to lose the ability to attract workers with generous health benefits. “There is also a lingering distrust of the government, and they think they can offer coverage better than the government,” he said.
In addition, some in the business community are hesitant to sign on to Medicare for All with many details missing, such as how much it would increase taxes, said Ellen Kelsay, chief strategy officer for the National Business Group on Health, a leading business group focused on health benefits.
Democrats propel the debate
For decades, a government-run health plan was considered too radical an idea for serious consideration. But Medicare for All has been garnering more political support in recent months, especially after a progressive wave helped Democrats take control of the House this year.
Several 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, strongly back it.
The labor unions and consumer groups that have long endorsed a single-payer health system hope that the embrace of it by employers such as Master marks another turning point for the movement.
Supporters of the concept say the health system overall would see savings from a coordinated effort to bring down prices and the elimination of many administrative costs or insurance company profits.
“It’s critical for our success to engage employers, particularly because our current system is hurting employers almost as much as it is patients,” said Melinda St. Louis, campaign director of Medicare for All at Public Citizen, a consumer-rights group based in Washington.
Master, a former Washington lawyer, worked on Democratic Sen. George McGovern’s presidential campaign before returning to Pennsylvania in 1973 to take over his father’s company, which made rigid paper boxes. In 1980, he founded MCS, which pioneered the popular front-loading picture frame and steamless fog-free mirrors for bathrooms. The company has grown into a $250 million corporation.
Master frequently travels to Washington and around the country to talk to business leaders as he seeks to build political support for a single-payer health system.
In the past four years, he has produced several documentary videos on the topic. In 2018, he formed the Business Initiative for Health Policy, a nonprofit group of business leaders, economists and health policy experts trying to explain the financial benefits of a single-payer system.
Dan Wolf, CEO of Cape Air, a Hyannis, Mass.-based regional airline that employs 800 people calls himself “a free market guy.” But he also supports Medicare for All. He said Master helps turn the political argument over single-payer into a practical one.
“It’s about good business sense and about caring for his employees and their well-being,” he said, adding that employers should no longer be straddled with the cost and complexity of health care.
“It makes no more sense for an airline to understand health policy for the bulk of its workers than for a health facility to have to supply all the air transportation for its employees,” he said.
Employers are also an important voice in the debate because 156 million Americans get employer-paid health care, making it by far the single-largest form of coverage.
Master said his company has tried various methods to control costs with little success, including high deductibles, narrow networks of providers and wellness plans that emphasize preventive medicine.
Insurers who are supposed to negotiate lower rates from hospitals and doctors have failed, he added, and too many premium dollars go to covering administrative costs. Only by having the federal government set rates can the United States control costs of drugs, hospitals and other health services, he said.
“Insurance companies are not watching the store and don’t have incentives to hold down costs in the current system,” he said.
Glad the boss is trying to make a difference
What’s left of MCS in Pennsylvania is a spacious corporate office building housing administrative staff, designers and a giant distribution center piled high with carton boxes from floor to ceiling.
MCS pays an average of $1,260 per month for each employee’s health care, up from $716 in 2009, the company said. In recent years, the company has reduced out-of-pocket costs for employees by covering most of their deductibles.
Medicare for All would require several new taxes to raise money, but Master said such a plan would mean savings for his company and employees.
MCS employees largely support Master’s attempt to fix the health system even if they are not all on board with a Medicare for All approach, according to interviews with several workers in Easton.
“I think it’s a good idea,” said Faith Wildrick, a shipper at MCS who has worked for the company 26 years. “If the other countries are doing it and it is working for them, why can’t it work for us?”
Wildrick said that even with insurance her family struggles with health costs as her husband, Bill, a former MCS employee, deals with liver disease and needs many diagnostic tests and prescription medications. Their annual deductible has swung from $4,000 several years ago to $500 this year as the company has worked to lower employees’ out-of-pocket costs.
“I’m really glad someone is fighting for this and trying to make a difference,” said Wildrick.
Jessica Ehrhardt, the human resources manager at MCS, said the effort to reduce employees’ out-of-pocket health costs means the company must pay higher health costs. That results in less money for salary increases and other benefits, she added.
Asked about Medicare for All, Ehrhardt said, “It’s a drastic solution, but something needs to happen.”
For too long, Master said, the push for a single-payer health system has been about ideology.
“The movement has been about making health care a human right and that we have a right to universal health care,” he said. “What I am saying is this is prudent for our economy and am trying to make the business and economic case.”
Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images); President Donald Trump (Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)
On the right side. Photographer: Stephen F. Somerstein/Archive Photos/Getty Images