Why haven't all the families been reunited? Cruelty, pure and simple

• Op-Ed
• Opinion

Why haven't all the families been reunited? Cruelty, pure and simple

By Brian Schatz

Jul 27, 2018 | 3:00 AM

Shoes and toys left by migrants at the Tornillo Port of Entry in Tornillo, Texas. (Brendan Smialowski/ AFP/Getty Images)

The failure of the U.S. government to reverse the kidnapping of thousands of children from their parents has been chalked up to incompetence. People want to believe that this act of extraordinary cruelty — and the Trump administration’s inability to fix it — stems from our leaders’ lack of experience or common sense.

But this too is a failure — of our collective imagination. The separation of children from their parents at the Southwest border is not simply a policy that has resulted in immeasurable harm, but a policy designed to inflict it. The government blew its Thursday deadline to reunite these families because it never intended to do so.

How else can we explain what has happened to these families? Some 14 million checked bags are managed by the Transportation Security Administration — and that’s just during Thanksgiving weekend. Even high school students can manage a coat check for an evening without losing everyone’s coats. They match each coat and owner with corresponding tickets, and do not store the coats outside the building, or even thousands of miles away from the event.

This administration will harm children in order to force Congress to agree to its absurd immigration policies.

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The administration did not take even these basic measures when it began to separate children — not coats! — from their parents. It did not use corresponding numbers for the files of parents and children, or take photos of families together, or hand out hospital-style bracelets. It did not house families near one another, choosing instead to hold mothers in California and daughters in Chicago, fathers in Texas and sons in New York City.

In fact, the administration seems to have taken a comprehensive inventory of confiscated items — sneakers, toothpaste, rosaries — everything except which child belongs to which parent.

These are the actions of a government that intended to separate families but did not intend to reunite them. It meant to inflict so much suffering that other families wouldn’t make the dangerous trek. No matter how bad the violence might be in Central America, surely these families would choose to stay united rather than come and be separated.

In fact, through all the blather, the Trump administration has admitted as much.

“I would do almost anything to deter the people from Central America,” White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly said in 2017. Even separate children from their parents, asked CNN’s Wolf Blitzer? “Yes.”

“We expect that the new policy will result in a deterrence effect,” Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary Steven Wagner told reporters in June.

“Hopefully people will get the message,” Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions said casually on Fox News in June.

But according to the Department of Homeland Security, no one has been deterred. The number of families stopped at the border actually increased by 64% in the months after the administration began to separate families. So even if you could stomach traumatizing toddlers, this policy did not accomplish Sessions’ objective of sending a warning across the desert.

Still, cruelty has its uses. Across the country, Republicans have made the Trump administration’s immigration stance their rallying cry for reelection, running more than 14,000 campaign ads this year bragging about their efforts to “stop illegals.” And last month, Sessions spelled out the administration’s plan to use all the bad press for good.

“We do not want to separate parents from their children,” he clarified. “If we build the wall, if we pass legislation to end the lawlessness, we won’t face these terrible choices.”

In other words, this administration will harm children in order to force Congress to agree to its absurd immigration policies. But let’s be clear: No lawmaker of any party should ever accede to a legislative demand in response to the intentional infliction of harm.

The American people must also speak up. Our government has kidnapped children from their parents. It forces these lost boys and girls to say the Pledge of Allegiance while they are held captive in building wings named for U.S. presidents. (It is not hard to believe that President Reagan would be aghast.)

This is not who we are, we want to say, but that isn’t quite true. This policy reveals a darker side of America that has dehumanized black and brown people since our nation’s founding. Americans have stolen and enslaved black people, killed indigenous peoples and imprisoned Japanese Americans. The reason why this administration has pumped out racist rhetoric casting people as fish to be caught, infestations to be eradicated, and animals to be caged is because it has worked before.

Will it work again? That’s up to us.

Brian Schatz represents Hawaii in the U.S. Senate.

Above is from:  http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-schatz-family-reunification-20180727-story.html#nws=mcnewsletter

Brian Schatz

United States Senator

<?XML:NAMESPACE PREFIX = "[default] http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" NS = "http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" />schatz.senate.gov

Brian Emanuel Schatz is an American politician serving as the senior United States Senator from Hawaii since 2012. Schatz was appointed by Governor Neil Abercrombie to replace Senator Daniel Inouye after his death. Wikipedia

Born: October 20, 1972 (age 45 years), Ann Arbor, MI

Spouse: Linda Kwok

Office: Senator (D-HI) since 2012

Previous office: Lieutenant Governor of Hawaii (2010–2012)

Education: Pomona College

Current position: United States Senator

How Did the End of the World Become Old News?

July 26, 2018 9:40 am

How Did the End of the World Become Old News?

By David Wallace-Wells

The fire this time (in Sweden). Photo: Mats Andersson/AFP/Getty Images

There has been a lot of burning lately. Last week, wildfires broke out in the Arctic Circle, where temperatures reached almost 90 degrees; they are still roiling northern Sweden, 21 of them. And this week, wildfires swept through the Greek seaside, outside Athens, killing at least 80 and hospitalizing almost 200. At one resort, dozens of guests tried to escape the flames by descending a narrow stone staircase into the Aegean, only to be engulfed along the way, dying literally in each other’s arms.

Last July, I wrote a much-talked-over magazine cover story considering the worst-case scenarios for climate change — much talked over, in part, because it was so terrifying, which made some of the scenarios a bit hard to believe. Those worst-case scenarios are still quite unlikely, since they require both that we do nothing to alter our emissions path, which is still arcing upward, and that those unabated emissions bring us to climate outcomes on the far end of what’s possible by 2100.

But, this July, we already seem much farther along on those paths than even the most alarmist climate observers — e.g., me — would have predicted a year ago. In a single week earlier this month, dozens of places around the world were hit with record temperatures in what was, effectively, an unprecedented, planet-encompassing heat wave: from Denver to Burlington to Ottawa; from Glasgow to Shannon to Belfast; from Tbilisi, in Georgia, and Yerevan, in Armenia, to whole swaths of southern Russia. The temperature of one city in Oman, where the daytime highs had reached 122 degrees Fahrenheit, did not drop below 108 all night; in Montreal, Canada, 50 died from the heat. That same week, 30 major wildfires burned in the American West, including one, in California, that grew at the rate of 10,000 football fields each hour, and another, in Colorado, that produced a volcano-like 300-foot eruption of flames, swallowing an entire subdivision and inventing a new term — “fire tsunami” — along the way. On the other side of the planet, biblical rains flooded Japan, where 1.2 million were evacuated from their homes. The following week, the heat struck there, killing dozens. The following week.

In other words, it has been a month of historic, even unprecedented, climate horrors. But you may not have noticed, if you are anything but the most discriminating consumer of news. The major networks aired 127 segments on the unprecedented July heat wave, Media Matters usefully tabulated, and only one so much as mentioned climate change. The New York Times has done admirable work on global warming over the last year, launching a new climate desk and devoting tremendous resources to high-production-value special climate “features.” But even their original story on the wildfires in Greece made no mention of climate change — after some criticism on Twitter, they added a reference.

Over the last few days, there has been a flurry of chatter among climate writers and climate scientists, and the climate-curious who follow them, about this failure. In perhaps the most widely parsed and debated Twitter exchange, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes — whose show, All In, has distinguished itself with the seriousness of its climate coverage — described the dilemma facing every well-intentioned person in his spot: the transformation of the planet and the degradation may be the biggest and most important story of our time, indeed of all time, but on television, at least, it has nevertheless proven, so far, a “palpable ratings killer.” All of which raises a very dispiriting possibility, considering the scale of the climate crisis: Has the end of the world as we know it become, already, old news?

If so, that would be really, really bad. As I’ve written before, and as Wen Stephenson echoed more recently in The Baffler, climate change is not a matter of “yes” or “no,” not a binary process where we end up either “fucked” or “not fucked.” It is a system that gets worse over time as long as we continue to emit greenhouse gases. We are just beginning to see the horrors that climate change has in store for us —but that does not mean that the story is settled. Things will get worse, almost certainly much, much worse. Indeed, the news about what more to expect, coming out of new research, only darkens our picture of what to expect: Just over the past few weeks, new studies have suggested heat in many major Indian cities would be literally lethal by century’s end, if current warming trends continue, and that, by that time, global economic output could fall, thanks to climate effects, by 30 percent or more. That is an impact twice as deep as the global Great Depression, and it would not be temporary.

These are not the kinds of findings it is easy to ignore, or dismiss, or compartmentalize, even though we have all become exquisitely skilled lately in compartmentalizing the threat. Neither is it easy to forget the stories of the Greek wildfires, or the Japanese heat wave. Which is why it is perhaps important to remember that the media did not ignore these stories, or the month of global climate horrors that gave rise to them. Television networks covered those heat waves 127 times. That is, actually, a very lot! They just utterly failed to “connect the dots,” as Emily Atkin put it incisively at The New Republic —broadcasters told the story of the historic temperatures, but chose not to touch the question of why we were seeing so many of them, all at once, with the atmosphere more full of carbon, and the planet hotter, than it has ever been at any point in human history.

When you think about it, this would be a very strange choice for a producer or an editor concerned about boring or losing his or her audience — it would mean leaving aside the far more dramatic story of the total transformation of the planet’s climate system, and the immediate and all-encompassing threat posed by climate change to the way we live on Earth, to tell the pretty mundane story of some really hot days in the region.

Which is why this all sounds to me a lot more like self-censorship than ratings-chasing — by which I mean self-censorship of two kinds. The first is the intuitive one — the kind done in anticipation of political blowback, an especially acute problem for would-be neutral, would-be centrist platforms like network news. This self-censorship in fear of right-wing backlash is a familiar story, and most of those concerned about global warming know the villains already: oil companies, climate deniers, indifferent (at best) politicians, and constituents who see science as a culture-war front.

But public apathy, and its cousin climate complacency, is as big a problem — perhaps bigger. And this problem, too, is connected to self-censorship on the part of storytellers who feel intimidated from attributing what we used to know as natural disasters to global warming because scientists are so excruciatingly careful about attributing cause. As NPR’s science editor Geoff Brumfiel told Atkin, “You don’t just want to be throwing around, ‘This is due to climate change, that is due to climate change.’”

Well — why not? The stated reason, when a reason is stated, is that scientists can take years to definitively conclude that a particular disaster was impossible without the effects of warming, and often only speak with certainty about specific events a decade or more in the past— the 2003 European heat wave, for instance, which killed tens of thousands. But wildfires are “not caused by climate change” only in the same way that hurricanes are not caused by climate change — which is to say they are (only) made more likely by it, which is to say the distinction is semantic. The same is true, even more so, for heat waves: We know global warming will cause many more deadly temperatures, and should not be confused, at all, when we suddenly encounter an unprecedented number of them. The fact that most climate scientists would say something like, “These disasters are consistent with what we would expect, given global warming,” rather than “these disasters were caused by global warming” is not a reason to elide discussion of climate change. Doing so is an evasion, even if it is made with a scientific alibi.

It is also a dangerous one. Decades of bad-faith debates about whether climate change is “real” and good-faith questions about whether it is “here” have dramatically foreshortened our collective imagination and provided an unfortunately limited picture of what global warming will yield. Treating every climate disaster as a discrete event only compounds the problem, suggesting that impacts will be discrete. They won’t be, and the longer-view story is much more harrowing: not just more months like July, but an unfolding century when a month like this July has become a happy memory of a placid climate. That it is almost hard to believe only makes it a more important story to tell.

Above is from:  http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/amp/2018/07/climate-change-wildfires-heatwave-media-old-news-end-of-the-world.html?__twitter_impression=true

How China's tariffs on soybeans fueled the US GDP bump

Soybeans are a weak spot in President Donald Trump’s trade war with China as the country has imposed retaliatory tariffs to hit his voter base — American farmers. To defend against these tariffs, Trump has offered a short-term assistance of $12 billion to producers of soybeans, sorghum and other crops.

But on Friday, soybean tariffs may have actually given Trump a boost. They contributed to the robust GDP growth that the president touted — “We’ve accomplished an economic turnaround of historic proportions,” he said.

The U.S. economy grew 4.1% in the second quarter, partly due to a burst in soybean and corn exports, according to economists. In May, the latest data available, soybean exports nearly doubled compared to in April. Producers were in a rush to beat tit-for-tat sanctions, soybean exports are up 26% for the year compared to 2017.

The burst in soybean export has sent quarter GDP growth higher. (Screenshot/Capital Economics)

In the second quarter, the U.S. recorded an 80% annualized jump in food, feed and beverage exports, mainly from soybeans and corn. Without that surge, exports would have increased 5.3% instead of 9.3%, which means the GDP growth would have been around 3.6%, according to Paul Ashworth, the chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics.

David Rosenberg, the chief economist of Gluskin Sheff, argues trade disputes may play an even bigger role in inflating GDP. “At least half the growth is coming from two trade-related issues — a soybean-led export burst and inventory accumulation. Net these out and we remain near 2%”, he tweeted on Thursday.

How sustainable could the growth be?

President Trump speaks in White House after the second quarter GDP number is released. (Credit: The Telegraph)

Trump seized the opportunity to boast about the strong economic results. “These numbers are very, very sustainable— this isn’t a one-time shot,” he said during a White House press conference on Friday.

But economists caution that the growth rate is hard to maintain. This is not the first time that soybeans have fueled a short-term bump in GDP. Back in mid-2016, U.S exporters experienced a boom when the Brazilian crop disappointed. The impact on nominal export growth was drastic — it hit 10% annualized growth in August, but fell to near-zero in December. Excluding soybeans and corn, the export growth was steady at around 5% in the second half of 2016.

Ashworth doesn’t expect this time to be different. He projects soybean exports to plummet in July, dragging nominal exports down by 1.8% compared with June, and the GPD number will be back to normal — at about 2.6% in the third quarter.

The trade truce between the U.S. and EU earlier this week doesn’t change his view. “In the global soybean market, the demand and supply are roughly balanced,” Ashworth told Yahoo Finance. He thinks the U.S. will end up exporting to a different country rather than China to mitigate the impact of the tariffs. “If you’re looking at the year as a whole, it doesn’t have any impact at all,” he said. “It just has an impact in one quarter and will be reversed in the next.”

Krystal Hu covers technology and economy for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter.

Above is from:  https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/chinas-tariffs-soybeans-fueled-us-gdp-bump-225326578.html

Why Trump supporters never waver

Rick Newman 7 hours ago

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Different president. But it’s still the economy, stupid.

Critics of President Trump seemed dumbfounded by his steady approval rating, which, while low, also seems impervious to scandal, lying, poor policymaking and outrageous behavior.

Trump’s approval rating stands at 42%, according to Gallup, which tracks Americans’ views of the president weekly. Trump’s high for the year was 45% in mid-June, and the low was 36% in late January. So he has generally drifted upward this year. Here’s the trend:

Source: Gallup

This shouldn’t be happening, some analysts believe. Trump has enraged critics during the last few months by pandering to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, hurting American farmers with protectionist trade policies, breaking up migrant families at the southern border, and lying on a daily basis. His personal scandals seem to be deepening, as former fixer Michael Cohen turns on him and the Mueller investigation widens.

So why do Trump’s supporters stick with him? Three basic reasons: They don’t pay close attention to policy issues the way Washington eggheads and media elites do. Trump continues to deliver on key issues they care about, such as immigration. And perhaps most important: the economy is strong.

“Trump has offended immense numbers of people,” says Emily Ekins, director of polling at the libertarian Cato Institute, who has published a detailed analysis of Trump voters. “But most people aren’t paying as close attention as the people in New York and D.C. whose job is to follow these issues. And the economy is hugely important to understanding voter choice.”

There’s good and bad news for Trump in the stability of his support. He does seem to have a core set of voters who will back him even if he shoots somebody on Fifth Avenue. That may provide a floor of 30% or so to his approval rating, meaning he wouldn’t slip below that under any circumstance.

But the additional support—in the range of 12% to 15%—isn’t as solid, and could waver if the economy weakens. It’s also notable that Trump’s approval rating isn’t higher, given strong growth and a very low unemployment rate of 4%. The last time unemployment was that low was in 2000, when Bill Clinton’s approval rating hovered around 60% – and that was after the House of Representatives impeached Clinton for lying about an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

In a study for the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group, a privately funded research outfit, Ekins identified five types of Trump voters and assessed how important each group was to Trump’s victory. The breakdown helps explain why Trump’s supporters stick with him, no matter how controversial he is. It also reveals Trump’s weaknesses, which are considerable. Here’s an overview:

Source: Democracy Fund Voter Study Group

Staunch conservatives and American preservationists are Trump’s true base, representing about half of those who voted for him. They tend to be America-first nativists who are socially conservative and opposed to immigration, and may feel culturally threatened. Trump’s hard-line immigration policy is meant for them, and they’ll probably stick with him no matter what.

The disengaged, a small portion of Trump voters, aren’t very knowledgeable about politics, but they do tend to feel powerless and left behind in the modern economy. Trump’s vilification of immigrants and Muslims may appeal to them and earn their loyalty.

Free marketeers and anti-elites are more moderate. They tend to be traditional Republicans who may have voted for Trump simply out of party loyalty. They support free trade and a light government touch on the economy, which is at odds with Trump’s interventionist trade policy. Some of these people already regret voting for Trump, and he could lose more if his protectionist trade policy backfires or the economy weakens. Since these two groups represent about 45% of Trump voters, his approval rating could fall into the mid or low 30s if the economy begins to struggle, which would weaken Trump’s political power and his leverage over fellow Republicans in Congress. This is his biggest vulnerability.

Bill Clinton’s campaign team realized it’s the economy, stupid, back in 1992, which helped the young governor beat George H. W. Bush in that year’s presidential campaign. Some analysts think that logic doesn’t apply to Trump, as if every Trump supporter today would still be with him if companies were slashing jobs and the stock market were in a free fall. But Trump is just as tied to the economy as any other president, and his relatively weak approval in boom times may make Trump even more vulnerable to a downturn.

“He has underperformed, given the economic fundamentals,” Ekins says. “It shows what being offensive can do to a candidate.” It may show even more if those fundamentals weaken.

Confidential tip line: rickjnewman@yahoo.com. Click here to get Rick’s stories by email.

Above is from:: https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/trump-supporters-never-waver-185256151.html

How representative are Boone County’s various boards?

Above is from:  http://www.rrstar.com/opinion/20180723/letter-boone-county-board-needs-to-be-more-representative

Facebook © 2018

Cathy Ward 

Yesterday (7/26/2018) at 9:41 AM ·

BOONE COUNTY BOARD NOTES - Decisions made by county board members CAN BE reversed. Here is how it can work, for example. Last week, the board voted 7-4 to approve the appointments for the Zoning Board of Appeals recommended by board chair Karl Johnson. Those appointments were former board chair Bob Walberg and former board member Brad Fidder. Those appointments were questioned for many reasons. Now to reverse that, at the next meeting, any of the seven who voted for Walberg and Fidder can ask that those appointments be reconsidered. Then the board can vote again on whether to approve the appointments. Those voting for the appointments were Sherry Giesecke, Denny Ellingson, Marshall Newhouse, Jeff Carlisle, Bernard O'Malley, Carl Larson and Karl Johnson. If you like those appointments, you can call any of those seven and thank them. If you would like those appointments to be reconsidered, you can call any of the seven and ask them to make the motion to reconsider. Those of us opposed were Brad Stark, Sherry Branson, Jessica Muellner and me. You
can also call and thank us for voting no or tell us those appointments were in the best interest of the county. Love to hear from you on either side of any issue.

NO—Yes—NO—YES but benefiting Democrats

President Donald Trump said Tuesday he's "very concerned" that Russia will attempt to meddle in the upcoming midterm elections to the benefit of the Democrats because he says he's been so tough on Russia.

The expression of concern about Russian meddling is a change in tone for the president, who has repeatedly expressed doubts about Russia's role in interfering in the 2016 U.S. election.

As recently as Sunday night, President Trump again referred to the concept of Russian election meddling as a “big hoax.” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders has since sought to argue that the president was only “referring to the claim that his campaign had anything to do with it.”

Standing next to Russian President Vladimir Putin last Monday, President Trump said he had “confidence in both parties,” referring to the U.S. and Russia.

“President Putin, he just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be,” the president said last Monday.

Then on Tuesday, Trump issued a rare clarification and said he misspoke.

"In a key sentence in my remarks I said the word would instead of wouldn't, the sentence should have been, ‘I don't see any reason why it wouldn't,’ or why it wouldn't be Russia,” he said.

The president's expression of concern for future meddling also stands in contrast to previous comments.

Just last week,the president twice said "no" when ABC News' Cecilia Vega asked if he believed Russia was still targeting the U.S. Such as response would seem to contradict the president's Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats who had recently warned that "the warning lights are blinking red again" when it came to the threat of Russian cyber attacks.

The White House later said the president was saying "no" to taking reporters' questions and was not answering Vega's question.

There is currently no publicly available evidence to support the president's claim that the Kremlin is interested in helping Democrats in the fall election.

In Helsinki last week, Putin said he did want Trump to win the election because Trump had "talked about bringing the U.S.-Russia relationship back to normal."

Democratic Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer seized on Putin's past comment as a counter-point to the president's tweet, blasting out the video clip with the caption "let's go to the videotape (again)."

Above is from:  https://www.yahoo.com/gma/president-trump-says-hes-very-concerned-russia-meddle-190803034--abc-news-topstories.html

Teamster’s Pension Bankrupt in seven years?

Who will save Central States?

By MARIANNE LEVINE

06/15/2016 10:06 AM EDT

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The fate of the financially troubled Central States Pension Fund is once again in Congress' hands.

Last month the Treasury Department rejected a rescue strategy for the Teamsters’ multiemployer pension plan under a 2014 law passed largely to make it possible. Suspicions ran high that election-year politics came into play. Treasury had changed its procedures 10 days before the rejection — and seven months after Central States’ trustees submitted their application.

Was the Obama administration simply disinclined in an election year to approve, however necessary, pension cuts for about 270,000 Teamsters?

Former Rep. George Miller thinks so. The California Democrat, who sponsored the 2014 legislation with House Education and the Workforce Chairman John Kline (R.-Minn.), said Treasury’s decision “was a calculated response to sort of stop the discussion in this political year. ... I just don’t understand how you can arrive at another conclusion.”

Central States will not submit another application to Treasury, according to Thomas Nyhan, the pension’s executive director. “Our options are rather limited at this point,” Nyhan said. “Absent some form of legislative change, we’re going to become insolvent probably around the latter part of 2025.”

That leaves Congress to sort matters out. But if Treasury has little enthusiasm for resolving this crisis, Congress has even less.

Legislators thought they fixed this problem late in 2014 when they attached bipartisan legislation to the so-called “cromnibus” spending bill. The pensions amendment allowed trustees for financially troubled multiemployer pension plans to cut vested benefits, provided they could demonstrate to Treasury that doing so would prevent the plan from going bust. The idea was that the cuts would prevent a far worse fate — a Central States bailout by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, which would pay only pennies on the dollar (and which had solvency problems of its own). According to a recent PBGC report, “it is more likely than not that PBGC’s multiemployer fund will be exhausted by 2025.”

Joshua Gotbaum, former director of the PBGC, called the Treasury Department’s decision an “act of political cowardice” that will result in “more and deeper benefit cuts” to Central States beneficiaries.

But opponents to the 2014 law said the deal violated benefits guarantees under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, and that it was arrived at without sufficient input from the public. Through 2015 Congress became ever more reluctant to defend its pension fix, even though many other multiemployer plans faced potential insolvency as well. (Multiemployer pensions are pensions set up by multiple companies through collective bargaining agreements.)

After Central States filed its application to Treasury, congressional lawmakers on both sides of the aisle urged Treasury to reject it. In April, 46 senators — including Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Patty Murray (D.-Wash.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) — wrote Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, urging the agency “to conduct a thorough analysis and carefully check every aspect of [Central States’] application and their assumptions.” Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) also urged Treasury to reject the application and said it was time for the Senate “to come up with a fair solution.”

Treasury’s subsequent rejection of the Central States rescue plan drew praise even from Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who called on Congress to “come together around an alternative solution that maintains the financial health of ... our pension system and ensures workers and retirees can enjoy the secure retirement they’ve earned.”

But critics of Treasury’s decision say it was arrived at in bad faith. Final regulations implemented little more than a week before the department’s Central States decision changed the requirements for applicants’ actuarial assumptions. That made rejection of the Central States rescue plan all but a foregone conclusion.

“They did have the opportunity to sit down with Central States,” said Randy DeFrehn, executive director of the National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans. “Instead, they dropped this on them at the last minute. … I think that’s unconscionable.”

Opponents of the 2014 law say Treasury should be taken at its word. In rejecting the Central States plan, Treasury said the application failed to comply with the 2014 law’s requirement that benefit cuts be “reasonably estimated” to ensure future solvency. If the plan was going bust anyway, what point was there in making cuts that wouldn’t save it?

Some opponents to the 2014 law support a bailout bill from Bernie Sanders and Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio). Central States’ Nyhan also supports this bill. Indeed, Nyhan says it’s only right that Congress should bail out the Teamsters pension, given that it was Congress’ decision to deregulate the trucking industry and Wall Street that led to Central States’ insolvency in the first place.

Over the four decades since trucking was deregulated, Nyhan said, "nearly 700 contributing employers formally declared bankruptcy and thousands went out of business without a formal bankruptcy filing." Many of these companies, he said, did not pay their liability to Central States. As for Wall Street deregulation, Nyhan said that the 2008 financial crash — which many attribute to inadequate banking regulation — had "a devastating effect on the Fund's financial status."

But congressional Republicans view a bailout as a slippery slope. A spokesperson for the House Education and the Workforce Committee said bailout supporters “have to explain why it would be limited to just those in multiemployer pensions and not extended to other pension plans — including public pension plans — that also face severe financial hardship.”

Not that Democrats have much enthusiasm for a Central States bailout, either. Miller said that even in 2010, when Democrats still controlled both houses of Congress and the White House, “there was radio silence” on the prospect of a bailout. “Everybody in Washington has a plan to close somebody else’s loophole to do something else,” Miller said, “and I just don’t think that’s going to happen.”

John Murphy, international vice president for the Teamsters, said the union has been working on an alternative to the 2014 law that wouldn’t require a bailout, but he declined to disclose details because it’s “still a work in progress.” Treasury's decision, he said, “has brought members of Congress to understand the depth of the problem.” Murphy said the Teamsters’ proposal would likely be out before the end of this year.

In all likelihood Murphy means "after Nov. 7." Treasury’s rejection “buys time to enable all the stakeholders to come around the table ... to find a solution,” said Karen Friedman, executive vice president and policy director at the Pension Rights Center.

She added that Central States could also benefit from a bipartisan push to pass legislation that would shore up the United Mine Workers’ multiemployer pension fund by using excess funds from the Abandoned Mine Reclamation Fund. Senate Democrats last month urged Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to move the legislation before the start of the summer recess. “Perhaps that will open up a door to also address this issue,” Friedman said.

Meanwhile, Central States is willing to work on smaller proposals, Nyhan said, such as increasing PBGC premiums or providing some form of relief to future retirees now contributing to the pension fund who are at risk of not getting much back.

Gotbaum said Central States might use another provision of the 2014 law to ask the PBGC to take over its so-called “orphan obligations,” or obligations to employees whose employers withdrew from the pension plan. That, he said, would improve Central States’ chances of remaining solvent.

But Miller warned that time was running out. The 2014 law, he said, was supposed to give employers certainty that they could work with employees and retirees to prevent Central States from ending up at the PBGC. Without certainty, Miller said, more employers may pull out of Central States and weaken the plan further.

“The problem with stopping this process is that the clock continues to run,” Miller said. “The deficits continue to get bigger, the losses in pension benefits continue to compile every day.”

Above is from:  https://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/who-will-save-teamsters-central-states-pension-fund-224363

Fiat Chrysler chooses Jeep exec Manley to replace ailing CEO

Photo Credit: AP Photo/Carlos Osorio

FILE - In this file photo dated Monday, Jan. 15, 2018, Mike Manley, head of Jeep brand, addresses the media during the North American International Auto Show, in Detroit, USA. The Fiat Chrysler's board on Saturday July 20, 2018, has recommended Jeep executive Mike Manley to replace seriously ill CEO Sergio Marchionne. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

Fiat Chrysler chooses Jeep exec Manley to replace ailing CEO

July 21, 2018 7:13 AM

Updated: July 21, 2018 7:13 AM

Photo Credit: AP Photo/Carlos Osorio

ROME -  Jeep executive Mike Manley will be the new CEO of Fiat Chrysler Automobile after longtime leader Sergio Marchionne's health suddenly deteriorated following surgery, the company announced Saturday.

Marchionne, a 66-year-old Italian-Canadian, joined Fiat in 2004 and led the Turin-based company's merger with bankrupt U.S. carmaker Chrysler. Manley, 54, had been heading the Jeep brand since June 2009 and the Ram brand from October 2015 and has been with the company since 2000.

The announcement, at the end of an emergency board meeting Saturday, marked the end of the Marchionne era, which included the turnaround of failing Fiat, the takeover of bankrupt U.S. automaker Chrysler and the spinoffs of the heavy machinery and truck maker CNH and supercar maker Ferrari.

Marchionne, who is also a lawyer, was holding multiple leadership roles in the companies, notably as CEO of FCA — Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, as well as CEO and chairman of Ferrari.

Fiat Chrysler said in a statement that due to his health Marchionne "will be unable to return to work."

Marchionne had already announced he would step down from FCA in early 2019, so the board's decision, to be confirmed at an upcoming shareholders' meeting, will "accelerate" the CEO transition process, the statement said.

Ferrari announced that Louis Camilleri, an Egypt-born Maltese and longtime executive at tobacco company Philip Morris International, would replace Marchionne as CEO of the sports car maker.

The England-born Manley had been one of Marchionne's closest collaborators at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, and in a previous role had been responsible for product planning and all sales activities outside of North America.

Manley took over management of the Jeep brand in 2009, just after Chrysler emerged from bankruptcy protection. At the time, the all-SUV Jeep mainly was a U.S. brand, where annual sales languished at around 232,000. By 2017, though, sales had nearly quadrupled to more than 828,000 as Americans snapped up all-wheel-drive SUVs.

The brand also grew internationally, especially in China, under Manley.

Marchionne put Manley in charge of the Ram brand as well as Jeep in 2015. Much of Fiat Chrysler's profits come from the Ram pickup, especially in the U.S.

FCA didn't give details about Marchionne's medical condition, which was reported to be surgery for a shoulder problem three weeks ago. But questions arose after it appeared his recovery was taking longer than expected.

Fiat is considered a close-knit family, and FCA chairman John Elkann said he was "profoundly saddened to learn of Sergio's state of health. It was a situation that was unthinkable until a few hours ago, and one that leaves us all with a sense of injustice."

Adding that his "first thoughts go to Sergio and his family," Elkann asked everyone to respect Marchionne's "privacy and that of all those who are dear to him."

Elkann is a grandson of the late Gianni Agnelli, the longtime Fiat dynasty chieftain.

Analysts praised the choice of Manley even as they noted the challenges he will face.

"It's an end of an era with the iconic, highly quotable, sweater-wearing Sergio Marchionne stepping down, with significant very concerns about his ailing health," said Rebecca Lindland, executive analyst at Kelley Blue Book.

She called Manley a "worthy replacement at FCA, but it's a huge job to not only fill Sergio's shoes, but to run many brands that are facing capricious fortunes in a variety of markets."

Lindland added that Manley's "masterful management of Jeep and RAM will serve him well as he moves into this huge, global role."

The boards of Ferrari and CNH Industrial, which makes heavy machinery and trucks, were also called to emergency meetings Saturday in Turin, Fiat's headquarters.

CNH Industrial said its interim CEO, Derek Neilson, will continue on pending the selection of a permanent replacement for Marchionne. The board of CNH also named Suzanne Heywood as chairwoman, tapping a managing director of the Fiat-founding Agnelli family's Exor investment holding company.

Marchionne made his last major presentation as CEO of Fiat Chrysler in June, unveiling the company's plans through 2022. He announced a major investment thrust to make more electrified cars even though he said traditional engines will continue to dominate production.

Brands that have been driving the company's revenues include Jeep SUVs, Ram trucks and the premium brands, Maserati and Alfa Romeo. Those brands were expected to account for 80 percent of revenues by 2022, compared to 65 percent currently.

The passenger-car brands of Fiat and Chrysler have been less profitable.

At the time, Marchionne said Fiat was poised to eliminate its debt. The next corporate results are to be released on July 25.

"Marchionne did an extraordinary job," tweeted former Italian Premier Paolo Gentiloni.

Then in apparent reference to Italian autoworkers unions' protests over layoffs and restructuring, Gentiloni added: "Many criticized him, but those who remember the Fiat crisis of 20 years ago realize what courage and vision can do."

Marchionne is passionate about the Ferrari racing team, and even after his planned retirement from Fiat Chrysler he had said he wanted to stay at the helm of the sports car company with the iconic horse symbol for a few more years.

The Ferrari racing team now leads the drivers' and constructors' championship this year and could end four years of Mercedes dominance.

On the eve of the running of the F1 Grand Prix in Germany on Sunday, Mercedes head of motorsport Toto Wolff expressed concern about his rival Marchionne.

"He's a character and an important personality for Formula One, and I've always appreciated sparring with him," Wolff said.

___

Milan-based AP business writer Colleen Barry, AP Auto Writer Tom Krisher and AP sports writer Jerome Pugmire in Hockenheim, Germany contributed

Above is from:  .https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/technology/article/Fiat-Chrysler-board-meets-in-light-of-CEO-s-13093758.php

Increase in general sales tax in Belvidere?

Above is from:  http://www.rrstar.com/news/20180720/not-all-sold-on-proposed-belvidere-sales-tax-hike

GOP tax cuts aren't boosting wages

Michael Rainey

2 days ago

Inflation-adjusted wages have fallen for three straight quarters on a year-over-year basis, according to data released by the Labor Department Tuesday. MarketWatch’s Steve Goldstein provided a chart that shows a dismal picture for real wages this year:

© Provided by The Fiscal Times

Bloomberg’s Noah Smith said that while it’s too soon to reach a definitive conclusion, it does appear that the Republican tax cuts are failing to provide much of a boost for American workers. The only thing that’s booming is stock buybacks, while business investment is only moderately higher and wages are falling. “Huge, immediate gains for wealthy shareholders combined with tepid increases in business investment and decreases in real wages don’t paint a flattering picture of the tax cut’s impact so far,” Smith wrote.

While it’s still possible that the corporate tax cuts will boost long-term growth in a way that significantly benefits American workers, the lackluster results so far suggest another possibility: “Corporate taxes were really the last hope for the tax-cutting strategy,” Smith said. “But if even that doesn’t provide more than a small momentary fiscal stimulus, then we’ve reached the end of that approach’s usefulness.”

Above is from:  https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/gop-tax-cuts-arent-boosting-wages/ar-AAAgLtL?ocid=sf

Boone County approves solar farm project in Flora Township

Boone County approves solar farm project0

Posted: Jul 18, 2018 11:02 PM CDT

BELVIDERE (WREX) -

The Boone County Board has approved a new solar farm project.

The board voted 8-3 in favor of the solar farm on Wednesday. The company in charge of the project is Syncarpha Solar LLC and it's looking at 12 acres of land in Flora Township. This is the second solar farm coming to the area.  The county board already approved a solar farm built by Borrego Solar.

With the proposal passing, the project will bring in money for Boone County as soon as 2020.

Above is from:  http://www.wrex.com/story/38679644/2018/07/19/boone-county-approves-of-solar-farm-project

Scott Walker says his talk with accused Russian spy Maria Butina was brief

Scott Walker says his talk with accused Russian spy Maria Butina was brief

Patrick Marley and Trent Tetzlaff, Milwaukee Journal SentinelPublished 10:01 a.m. CT July 18, 2018 | Updated 4:13 p.m. CT July 18, 2018

(Photo: Our American Revival)

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APPLETON - Gov. Scott Walker said Wednesday he talked only briefly with a woman now accused of being a Russian spy, saying he had his photo taken with her just as he does with others who say they are supporters.

"As we go to events, we meet people, they introduce themselves, often they ask for a picture," Walker told reporters during a stop in Appleton. "And that's not a meeting. A meeting is where you sit down in a room and have a discussion."

RELATED: Scott Walker has not been contacted by FBI over interactions with Russian, campaign says

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Walker was referring to his interaction with Maria Butina, who was indicted this week for conspiring to interfere with U.S. politics and advance Russian interests.

On Wednesday, a federal magistrate ordered Butina be held without bond after prosecutors argued she was at "extreme" risk of leaving the country. She faces two felony charges.

Walker posed for a photo with her at a National Rifle Association meeting in Tennessee in 2015. In the photo, Walker stood between Butina and Alexander Torshin, who is not named in court filings but is the "Russian official" who gave Butina orders as part of the conspiracy, according to the New York Times. 

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At the time of the photo at the NRA event, Walker was preparing to launch his presidential bid. Soon afterward, Butina attended Walker's event announcing his campaign launch. 

Walker said he has not been contacted by authorities and knows of no one from his campaign who has been.  

RELATED: Scott Walker met with woman now charged in Russian plot during his presidential bid

Butina said in online posts in 2015 that Walker said "hello" and "thank you" to her in Russian and that she did not detect any hostility toward Russia from him.

Walker said he did not recall whether he spoke Russian to her but did take one semester of the language in college.

Asked if he remembered talking to her, Walker said, "Well, I do now because it's all over the media. But to me, it's just another person we met."

In a court filing Wednesday, prosecutors alleged Butina was in touch with Russian intelligence operatives and once offered sex to someone in exchange for a position with an unnamed special interest group

An affidavit filed earlier by an FBI agent alleged a "Russian official" — Torshin, according to media reports — requested that Butina write a brief report about a political event she was to attend in 2015.

The next day, Butina wrote a report that "included descriptions of her speaking to a political candidate on the night of the announcement, as well as Butina's previous private meeting with the candidate at the 2015 annual gun rights organization members' meeting."

It is not clear if that portion of the affidavit is referring to Walker.

RELATED: As Sheriff Clarke's profile soars, gifts roll in

Butina, the founder of the gun rights group Right to Bear Arms, frequently posted about guns on social media. She promoted the right to carry weapons in frequent interviews in excellent but heavily accented English. 

Saul Anuzis, a former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, told the Washington Post she was "like a novelty" because running a gun rights group in Russia appeared radical.

Photos of Butina and Torshin with Walker were posted on the website of Our American Revival, a political group set up by Walker leading up to his presidential run. At the time, Walker's team frequently loaded photos onto the group's website of the governor posing with people who attended his events.

"I just ask the logical question. If it was something covert, why would we post that picture on a website?" Walker said to reporters. "It just seems ridiculous to think that would be the case.

"The reason we did is because every day we took hundreds of pictures with people who met us at events and then we put them on a website so that people could take them off that website."

The exchange with Butina and Torshin occurred in a VIP area of the NRA event, according to the Washington Post.

Trent Tetzlaff reported from Appleton and Patrick Marley reported from Madison.

Above is from:  https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2018/07/18/scott-walker-says-exchange-accused-russian-spy-butina-brief/795134002/

Controversial Bob Walberg returns to Boone County government

Cathy Ward

11 hrs ·

BOONE COUNTY BOARD NEWS - By a 7-4 vote tonight, the county board approved the recommendations of Chair Karl Johnson to appoint former board chair Bob Walberg and former board member Brad Fidder to the Boone County Zoning Board of Appeals. Board members Denny Ellingson, Sherry Giesecke, Marshall Newhouse, Jeff Carlisle, Bernard O'Malley, Carl Larson and Karl voted to approve the appointments. Those opposed were Jessica Muellner, Sherry Branson, Brad Stark and me. Jessica noted it would have been a good time to bring new people to these positions and I noted that of the 5 members of the ZBA, four reside in District 1, (the northeast part of the county) and there is no representation on this board in District 3. Also, although well more than half of the people who live in the county live in and around Belvidere, we have only one person to represent us. Walberg and Fidder replace Brian Van Lar and Mark Rhode who resigned recently. County Board members did not get the names of the proposed appointees until late Wednesday afternoon or evening to suggest any concerns. Your thoughts?

Cathy Ward In my opinion, not only board members, but those we represent should also be informed of who the chair is recommending in time for them to react. Getting names just minutes before the vote is not time enough to react for anyone, citizens or board members. ZBA is an extremely important board. Wind farms, solar farms, progress or change of many kinds are reviewed here.

Jay Fundy When chairman, Bob Walberg invited the dirty train to come through our county which would have destroyed some 6,700 acres of farm land! Today, any solar farm applications has a hard time getting an approval! Seems like clean industry isn't wanted here. What is the future of any growth?

Jay Fundy Would Boone County ever see a company like Ingersoll Machine Tool make application to build here? Probably not. Word is out, the county is anti-growth. So why apply? There is no employment here that's why our young people leave.

For these two appointments there may have been no need to make an application as required by the legal notice of the opening.

Mr. Fidder made no application

Here is Mr. Walberg, note the date of the email/application.