At a small US factory, Trump’s trade war forces hard changes
Christopher Rugaber, AP Economics Writer October 29, 2018
In this Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018, photo Workers build refrigerators at the Howard McCray’s commercial refrigeration manufacturing facility in Philadelphia. This year, McCray has slashed its spending on large equipment in half. Christopher Scott, president of Howard McCray, is also leaving four jobs unfilled and instead adding more overtime for his current workers. “That’s what the tariffs are doing to us,” Scott said. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Sitting in his office beside photos of grandchildren decked in Philadelphia Flyers jerseys, Christopher Scott shakes his head. Another email has come in from another supplier. It wants to raise prices to cover the cost of President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
For weeks, emails and letters have been arriving in a steady stream at Howard McCray, the small Philadelphia factory Scott runs with about 85 workers. It’s mostly bad news. One supplier is charging more for shelving brackets, another for electrical switches, a third for wheeled castors. McCray needs those parts for the refrigerated display cases it produces for convenience stores and restaurants.
Since Trump imposed tariffs on imported steel and aluminum and on Chinese products, Scott, like many other American manufacturers, has had to rapidly switch gears.
Warriors coach Steve Kerr on state of America: ‘We’re broken right now’
Vincent Goodwill, Yahoo Sports October 29, 2018
Steve Kerr has had plenty to talk about during the Warriors’ trip to New York. (Getty).
NEW YORK — In the wake of Saturday’s shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh that resulted in the deaths of 11 people, Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr called the United States a “broken” country.
Sunday afternoon, some 90 minutes or so before the Warriors were to take on the Brooklyn Nets at Barclays Center, Kerr was impassioned, yet again saddened, by the tragedy and the climate that purportedly caused it.
“It’s just devastating. I just expect it now and that’s just the sad thing,” Kerr said. “I remember watching an interview with a student after the Santa Fe shooting in Texas [in May]. A 14-year-old girl, she was asked, ‘Did this shock you?’ She said, ‘No, I expected that this would happen to us at our school at some point.’ That’s where we’ve gotten as a country. We’re broken right now.
“So nothing surprises us anymore. Nothing surprises me anymore. There’s shootings at schools, churches, synagogues, malls, movies theaters.”
The suspect was taken alive by the police, and the FBI said he was carrying an AR-15-style rifle and three handguns at the Tree of Life Congregation, where he allegedly shouted anti-Semitic slurs before the mass shooting took place.
“We need our leaders to step up and unite the country with the appropriate words and actions, and we’re not getting that right now,” Kerr said. “It’s frustrating and I don’t know what to say.”
Midterm elections are upon us, and NBA coaches like Doc Rivers have spoken out about the importance of voting and have worn pins with the phrase “I am a voter” on their suits during games.
Kerr has made his position and opinions on political issues public, and he has been a constant retweeter of issues surrounding gun control on his Twitter account.
“We need to vote. I urge everybody to get out and vote on Nov. 6,” Kerr said. “Everybody has their own issues that are important to them. My personal issue is gun safety, gun control. Nobody in this country should have a semiautomatic weapon of war. That’s my personal belief.”
Kerr said he will vote for candidates who plan on banning those types of weapons.
“I’m going to vote for every candidate willing to stand up to the NRA and say, ‘You know what? This is insane,’” Kerr said. “We’re murdering each other every day. We have to get rid of bump stocks, we have to get rid of high-capacity magazines. We have to get rid of semiautomatic weapons, we just do.
“Other countries don’t go through this. And so that’s the issue that’s most important to me and that’s the candidates I will be voting for, the ones who are willing to stand up and say this is wrong, we have to protect our fellow citizens and protect our country.”
Kerr’s father, Malcolm Kerr, president of the American University of Beirut, was assassinated outside his office in Lebanon in 1984, when Steve Kerr was 18 years old.
Kerr hasn’t been the only coach to speak out about weapons or even the political rhetoric that has defined this country since Trump’s rise — San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich is also a constant Trump critic — and Kerr has applauded players such as LeBron James and Dwyane Wade who’ve used their platform to make progressive statements.
Kerr said as long as the statements aren’t divisive and in the name of positive social change, he’s all for it.
“More and more you’re seeing people in the sports world, athletes and coaches speaking out,” Kerr said. “It’s easy to feel broken right now, how our country is. Everybody can have influence, not just our political leaders. People who are well-known figures and have cameras in their face a lot or average citizens, being kind to each other and being nice to one another, not just spewing hatred on social media. Those are things we have to think about to try to accomplish to get our country back on track.”
There have been 47,220 gun incidents in the U.S. in 2018 — and here they all are on one map
In 2018 alone, guns killed 11,984 people
By Sue Chang, Market’s Reporter October 28, 2018
Getty Images. A police rapid-response team responded to the mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood in Pittsburgh on Saturday. The shooter surrendered to authorities and was taken into custody.
As rich, advanced and accomplished as the country might be, the U.S. has somehow not been up to the task of coping with the plague of gun violence.
But as the nation comes to grips with yet another mass murder carried out by an angry man with a deadly weapon, it is perhaps time to review how often Americans turn to guns to express discontent, hate and prejudice against their compatriots.
That breaks down to 157 incidents and 40 deaths a day and does not include 22,000 suicides. Of the total fatalities, 548 were children, while 2,321 were teenagers.
There are, of course, arguments from staunch gun-rights supporters that an armed citizenry is a safer citizenry. Nothing stops a bad guy with a gun like a good guy with a gun, is a popular National Rifle Association talking point. And President Trump pondered aloud on Saturday whether guns inside the synagogue might have led to a less tragic outcome.
Justin Fenton: President Trump, asked about gun laws, says the Pittsburgh synagogue should have had armed security at the bris and the gunman wouldn’t be able to do what he did
But among the 2018 shooting incidents, only 1,478 cases, or 3.1% of the total, involved the defensive use of weapons.
Check that: he now appears to be suggesting the rolling assassination attempts against his political opponents are a false-flag election stunt by…someone.
trump: Republicans are doing so well in early voting, and at the polls, and now this “Bomb” stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows – news not talking politics. Very unfortunate, what is going on. Republicans, go out and vote!
This is obviously some sick, Alex Jones-style evidence-free conspiracy-mongering. The President of the United States is suggesting…what? That the bombs aren’t real? That the Democrats bombed themselves? But there’s also something else truly sinister in the background here. When the president says “news not talking politics,” he’s very likely lamenting that Fox News and CNN are no longer giving the wall-to-wall treatment to his number one propaganda piece for this election cycle: The Caravan.
The president and his allies have worked very hard to turn a group of people marching 1,000 miles away, many of whom will not make it to the U.S.-Mexico border and even fewer of whom will gain entrance to the United States, into a faceless horde of brown people dead-set on invading this country. Never mind that they intend to present themselves to immigration authorities legally when they arrive, hoping to get a hearing for their asylum claims—as is their right under international law. Trump has signaled an intent to bar their claims, possibly in violation of international law, and got his supposedly Adult-in-the-Room Secretary of Defense, James “Mad Dog” Mattis, to send 800 federal troops to the border.
For a while, it wasn’t just Fox ginning up the hysteria, which was very much intended to demonize Democrats—whom Trump cast as wanting to throw open the borders and allow the hordes in—and get The Base of scared old white people out to vote. CNN and The New York Times also bit on this sequel to The Ebola Panic (2014) and The Email Protocol (2016). But Republicans’ best-laid plans have been disrupted by the very inconvenient development that someone is trying to murder their colleagues across the aisle. Trump’s response has been to say the quiet parts out loud: These Bombs Are Crowding Out My Propaganda! You’d think the “very unfortunate” part would be the attempted murder.
Beto O’Rourke hits early polling place in Houston, holds mini-rally ahead of Trump’s huge rally.
Texas Democratic Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke landed another major endorsement Thursday, this one from The Dallas Morning News, whose editorial board hailed the El Paso congressman’s “inclusive and hopeful tone” over that of opponent Sen. Ted Cruz (R), calling the incumbent “a cutting figure in today’s politics.”
In explaining its endorsement, the paper’s editorial board said O’Rourke had run “a campaign that’s based on unifying communities,” arguing that “the pivotal issue before our country is public leadership, and here we believe O’Rourke’s tone aligns with what is required now.”
“In the divisive times in which we live, we believe that tone and leadership are the top issues with which to judge these candidates’ tenures in office. So we’re placing a bet on Beto,” the paper wrote.
The board made it clear that it does not agree with some of his more progressive policy positions but celebrated O’Rourke’s “demeanor that offers respect for each person and a humbleness that will allow him to open the door to working with those who hold political views different from his” ― noting, for example, his bipartisan friendship with Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas).
In explaining its endorsement of Beto O’Rourke for Senate in Texas, The Dallas Morning News editorial board said he had run “a campaign that’s based on unifying communities.”
But the paper also called out what it sees as “blemishes on his campaign,” citing O’Rourke’s support for impeaching President Donald Trump and his adoption of Trump’s name-calling against Cruz as departures from the unifying tone of his campaign.
“A ‘Beto’ victory would be good for Texas, not only because of his skills, both personal and political, but also because of the manifest inadequacies of the man he would replace,” the Chronicle’s editorial board wrote.
The Senate race between O’Rourke and Cruz is one of the most highly watched matchups in this year’s midterm elections, with the result expected to be closer than usual for the traditionally Republican state. O’Rourke’s candidacy has sparked grassroots enthusiasm among Democrats and drawn heavy fundraising.
Walmart exec in Atlanta: We want to redevelop our parking lots into bustling town centers
Amy Wenk, Staff Writer, Atlanta Business Chronicle October 24, 2018
The sprawling parking lot of a Walmart Supercenter. AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHY 19545680484
The nation’s largest retailer wants to redevelop its sprawling parking lots into bustling town centers.
Walmart is evaluating whether to transform underused land at its stores across the U.S. (including metro Atlanta) into new offerings, such as restaurants, shops, food halls, parks, entertainment venues and more, said a top executive with Walmart during an Oct. 23 retail conference in Atlanta.
It’s a new concept called the “Walmart Town Center,” said LB Johnson, vice president of U.S. Realty Operations for Walmart, the keynote speaker at the 2018 International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) Southeast Conference & Deal Making.
“We want to provide community space, areas for the community to dwell – a farmer’s market, an Easter egg hunt, trick or treating,” Johnson said. “We want to provide pedestrian connectivity from our box to the experiential zones that are planned on our footprint. We want to augment these experiences and activities with more food and beverage, with health and fitness, essential services and entertainment.”
Walmart plans to break ground next spring on a Town Center project, transforming a Supercenter in Loveland, Colo. There, the retailer owns 12 acres of vacant land next to the store and 6 to 8 acres of parking field (typical for a Supercenter), Johnson said.
“A transformation is underway,” Johnson said. “We are working with the local community to really master plan a vision, not only for Walmart, but shared with the municipality. We are using terms like collaboration space. We are thinking through dwelling space … We are going to hold ourselves accountable to the community to improving well being.”
According to a fly-through video about the Town Center concept shown at the Atlanta retail conference, Walmart could possibly add restaurants such as Bartaco, Shake Shack and Chipotle, and retailers such as Orangetheory Fitness and bowling alley Pinstripes. It also suggested other uses such as fuel pumps, pet stores and urgent care.
When asked if Walmart would consider Town Center projects in metro Atlanta, Johnson said yes, especially since there are large parking fields at its stores here. He also said Walmart could look to add other uses to its sites, such as apartments, to create a live, work, play environment.
“So as we begin to look across the country and evaluate the Walmart Town Center opportunities, we will be tapping the talent, expertise and partnership from members of this community to support our efforts,” Johnson told the ICSC conference attendees on Oct. 23.
Consider the amount of real estate.
Across the U.S., Walmart has 5,358 stores, including 3,561 Supercenters and 597 Sam’s Clubs, according to a March 30 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Georgia has the fifth-largest number of Walmart-owned stores in the U.S., with 215 stores, including 154 Supercenters and 24 Sam’s Clubs.
Only Texas (601), Florida (380), California (320) and North Carolina (217) have more stores.
“They certainly own an incredible amount of real estate,” said Atlanta retail veteran Penelope Cheroff, president of The Cheroff Group Ltd. “They would be in a catbird seat to develop those sites.”
Especially, she said, if Walmart targets markets where land prices have soared since they opened their stores. Prime sites could include Walmart stores at Cumberland, Perimeter and Mall of Georgia.
“It makes a lot of sense especially if they are looking at those markets that have densified and grown up around them,” Cheroff said.
Midterms 2018: Republican politician worried about what will happen ‘if everyone exercises their right to vote’
Shehab Khan, The Independent October 24, 2018
A Republican politician has admitted he is concerned about the consequences for his party if “everybody uses and exercises their right to vote”.
Brian Kemp, Georgia’s secretary of state and the Republican nominee in the state’s governor’s race, said he was concerned Democrats were actively trying to boost voter turnout in the upcoming midterms.
Mr Kemp faces a difficult challenge from Democratic nominee Stacey Abrams, who he claimed was spending “tens of millions of dollars” to draw voters out.
“They have just an unprecedented number of that,” Mr Kemp told donors at a campaign fundraiser, according to recording obtained by Rolling Stone magazine.
“[This] is something that continues to concern us, especially if everybody uses and exercises their right to vote – which they absolutely can – and mail those ballots in, we have got to have heavy turnout to offset that.”
The contest for Georgia governor look set to be a tight race with the largest polling carried out in the state, by SurveyMonkey in September, putting both candidates on 43 per cent.
Georgia has previously removed thousands of people from the polls because they had not recently voted in an election, while Mr Kemp was secretary of state.
Mr Kemp also faces legal action for putting 53,000 new voter registrations on hold due to errors including missing hyphens.
Of the 53,000, 70 per cent are believed to be African-American, according to an analysis conducted by AP.
President Trump Is Making Baseless Claims About the Migrant Caravan. Here Are the Facts
Katie Reilly, Time October 22, 2018
For more than 15 years, nonprofit groups have helped hundreds of asylum-seeking migrants journey through Central America to the United States, traveling together in a caravan to make the journey safer and their plight more visible. Thousands of Central American migrants currently walking to the U.S. border are doing the same, fleeing deadly violence on a trek that has drawn international focus.
As many as 7,000 migrants, according to one local estimate, have now joined the caravan that started on Oct. 13 in Honduras, many wearing flip flops and carrying their children on a journey that will be at least 1,500 miles long, depending on which part of the U.S. border they reach.
President Donald Trump — who has long critiqued U.S. immigration policies and denigrated immigrants since the start of his presidential campaign — has made numerous baseless claims about the caravan in recent weeks, spreading alarm and touting it as a “Great Midterm issue for Republicans!” Trump has claimed, without evidence, that the group included “criminals and unknown Middle Easterners” and falsely suggested that Democrats funded the caravan. He also blamed Democrats for the current immigration laws, though Republicans currently control both chambers of Congress and the White House.
“I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emerg[enc]y,” Trump tweeted early Monday, threatening to cut off foreign aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador for not “stopping people from leaving their country and coming illegally to the U.S.”
But videos and reporting from journalists traveling with the caravan of migrants show weary families making an arduous journey because of violence or lack of opportunity in their home countries, and no evidence that there are “unknown Middle Easterners” among the group.“The migrants are ordinary people from Central America. They’re joining the caravans because the migration routes through Mexico are perilous for them and highly expensive,” says Elizabeth Oglesby, an associate professor of Latin American studies at the University of Arizona, who has studied Central America and human rights issues. “The more that the border has become militarized between the U.S. and Mexico, the more perilous and the more expensive the journey has become for Central Americans. So that’s why we see people coming together in the caravans.”
She says the caravan, which is larger than many of its annual predecessors, has grown because of how word spread on social media and because of worsening conditions in Honduras, where the murder rate is among the highest in the world and where the government has cracked down on political protesters following last year’s disputed presidential election.
Oglesby says just a fraction of migrants who begin the trek make it to a U.S. point of entry each year, as many turn back or peel off if they can find work or safety in Mexico instead.
While no specific group has said it’s responsible for organizing the current caravan, Pueblo Sin Fronteras, founded in 2010, has led asylum-seeking migrants through Central America for more than 15 years, most recently in April — another caravan that drew ire from Trump. The group aims to “provide shelter and safety to migrants and refugees in transit, accompany them in their journey, and together demand respect for our human rights.” Some Pueblo Sin Fronteras leaders and organizers are involved in the current caravan.
Trump has lashed out at the caravan as an example of illegal immigration, threatening to deploy U.S. military force to “close our Southern border” and stop what he has described as a crisis. But illegal border crossings have been declining overall for more than a decade, though the number of border apprehensions fluctuates month-to-month. And under U.S. law, it is legal to petition for asylum at the border, though the process may be lengthy and ultimately unsuccessful.
“These migrant caravans are not a border crisis,” Oglesby says. “People are doing this openly and visibly, and they plan to show up at the U.S. port of entry and petition for political asylum, and that is exactly how our laws are supposed to function. The crisis comes about when U.S. border officials discourage people from political asylum, leave them on the bridges or threaten them that if they go forward with a political asylum claim, they might lose their children.”
China opens mega-bridge linking Hong Kong to mainland
Dake Kang, Associated Press October 23, 2018
The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge is seen in Hong Kong, Monday, Oct. 22, 2018. The bridge, the world's longest cross-sea project, which has a total length of 55 kilometers (34 miles), will have opening ceremony in Zhuhai on Oct. 23. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)
ZHUHAI, China (AP) — China on Tuesday opened the world’s longest sea-crossing bridge linking Hong Kong to the mainland, a feat of engineering carrying immense economic and political significance.
Chinese President Xi Jinping presided over a ceremony in the city of Zhuhai to open the 55-kilometer (34-mile)-long bridge linking it to the semi-autonomous regions of Hong Kong and Macau. Digital fireworks exploded on a screen behind him as leaders of the three cities watched.
The $20 billion bridge took almost a decade to build while incurring major delays and cost overruns. It includes an undersea tunnel allowing ships to pass through the Pearl River delta, the heart of China’s crucial manufacturing sector.
Its opening will cut travel time across the delta from several hours to just 30 minutes, something China hopes will bind the region together as a major driver of future economic growth. Heavily regulated traffic using permits issued under a quota system will begin flowing on Wednesday.
The bridge forms a physical link between the mainland and Hong Kong, an Asian financial hub that was handed over from British to Chinese control in 1997 with the assurance it would maintain its own legal and economic system for 50 years.
That carries major political significance for Xi’s administration, which has rejected calls for political liberalization in Hong Kong, sparking fears Beijing will clamp down further on civil liberties before the end of the “one country, two systems” arrangement in 2047.
The bridge’s opening also comes a month after the inauguration of a new high-speed rail link from Hong Kong to mainland China that runs along a different, shorter route. That line has vastly decreased travel times but also raised concerns about Beijing’s growing influence because mainland Chinese law applies within part of the line’s Hong Kong terminus.
To Claudia Mo, a Hong Kong democratic politician, the bridge’s political significance outweighs its practical usefulness.
“It’s not exactly necessary, because Hong Kong is connected to mainland China in every way already, by land, by air, by sea,” Mo told The Associated Press.
“But they still need it as a political symbol or icon to remind Hong Kong people … that you are connected to the motherland, with this very grand bridge. It’s almost like an umbilical cord.”
In Zhuhai, however, sentiments revolved around economic growth and national pride.
Airline pilot Liu Gang said he’d been eagerly anticipating the opening of the bridge, calling it a symbol of the mainland’s increasingly close ties with Hong Kong and Macau.
“It’ll bring us even closer together, make us more flexible, economically and in many other ways. We’re now one family,” Liu said Monday afternoon while strolling along a walkway and shooting photos of the structure.
Luo Fengzhi, who works in real estate, cited the bridge as evidence of China’s growing economic and engineering prowess.
“For Chinese people, this makes them feel proud,” she said. “I hope that every patriotic Chinese person can come and see this great feat of engineering, and I welcome foreigners to come and see for themselves as well.”
Shep Smith Methodically Fact-Checks Both Fox News And Trump On Live TV
Ed Mazza, HuffPost October23, 2018
Shep Smith opens his show by shutting down a claim about the migrant caravan
Fox News host Shepard Smith conducted a fact check on Monday after President Donald Trump tweeted that “unknown Middle Easterners” were hiding among the caravan of migrants making its way to the United States’ southern border.
Trump called the situation a “national emergy” (sic) and said he had alerted the military.
Ironically, Trump may have received his information from another show on Fox News. As Mediaite noted, the president’s tweet appeared less than two hours after Pete Hegseth made a similar claim on “Fox & Friends,” a show Trump is known to watch.
“You’ve got the president of Guatemala saying to a local newspaper down there just last week they caught over 100 ISIS fighters in Guatemala trying to use this caravan,” Hegseth said. “He talked to their local newspaper.”
Hegseth admitted the claim “hasn’t been verified,” then added that “even one poison pill is too many in a caravan like that.”
Getty Images. A police rapid-response team responded to the mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood in Pittsburgh on Saturday. The shooter surrendered to authorities and was taken into custody.
Shep Smith opens his show by shutting down a claim about the migrant caravan