Here’s House Republicans’ Plan To Fight California’s Drought
Can Congress find common ground to help the West this time?
By Jason Plautz
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy has called the years-long drought plaguing his home state of California a matter of life and death. And now he's got a plan that he thinks can fix it.
The California Republican delegation, along with other key Western lawmakers, today introduced a bill that would loosen environmental restrictions on water being pumped to farms and cities in the drought-ridden Central Valley. The bill, officially introduced by David Valadao, also would free up major water storage projects in the west, offering more flexibility for the construction of dams and reservoirs.
Sponsors are touting the bill as the best shot for Congress to address the drought that's forced California to impose mandatory water restrictions. But it remains to be seen whether it can get support from Democrats, environmentalists, and the fishing industry, who have fought back other GOP bills that they say would overstep the Endangered Species Act while only delivering a short-term fix to the water crisis.
Of the 22 original cosponsors of the bill, only one—California Rep. Jim Costa—is a Democrat.
The bill would sidestep a Fish and Wildlife Service order that restricted the amount of water pumped to farms and cities, instead letting it flow to sea in order to protect the Delta smelt, a threatened fish species. The bill would reopen those spigots and allow water to flow from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to the agriculture-rich Central Valley until regulators can prove that the smelt and other species, such as the salmonid (a family of fish including various types of salmon), are being harmed by the pumping. Should they find the fish are being harmed, regulators would then have to undertake a study of viable alternatives before against imposing the limit. It also requires federal regulators to consider different surveys and monitoring techniques in evaluating the fish population.
The Western Water and American Food Security Act also would set deadlines for federal regulators to open up several water storage projects in the west.
Overall, sponsors say, the bill gets water flowing without imposing new restrictions on the already-parched state and without overstepping the Endangered Species Act. California is in the fourth year of a devastating mega-drought, while states such as Washington, Arizona, and Nevada also are plagued by water shortages, which has made politicians lean on a regionwide bill to address the problem.
Republicans have long accused the government of protecting fish over people, saying the environmental restrictions are flushing away water that should be given to farmers and California residents.
But Democrats say that's a shortsighted view, pointing out that record-low rainfall and snowpack has caused the crisis. They've called for more money for emergency drought relief projects, freeing up water movement around the west, increasing water conservation, and, of course, battling back Republican attempts to undo regulations that would fight climate change, which has been tied to more frequent droughts in the region.
Previous Republican-backed drought bills have cleared the House with little or no Democratic support, only to die in the Senate, where Democrats have said the language undoes environmental regulations. California Democrat Barbara Boxer has been accused of killing the House bills, although there has been widespread opposition from the left (even California Gov. Jerry Brown has objected to previous versions of the drought legislation).
In a statement, California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein said the House bill "includes some useful provisions to increase the flexibility of water delivery, as well as some provisions that would violate environmental law, which I've said many times I cannot support."
"I continue to believe we need a comprehensive approach with both short- and long-term solutions to include increased flexibility as well as desalination, water storage, and water recycling," Feinstein said. "This is an incredibly complex issue, and I will continue to work with all sides to come up with workable solutions."
A GOP aide said that the bill had been drafted in concert with Feinstein's office and that Republicans are confident a version of their bill could gain support from at least six Democrats necessary to get 60 votes in the upper chamber. Any differences, the aide said, could be smoothed out in conference.
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee chairman Lisa Murkowski has said she'd like to move a drought bill this summer that covers the entire West.
The state, meanwhile, has imposed a mandatory 25 percent water restriction this spring, although it exempts environmental and agricultural uses.
July 02, 2015
Is the Left bad for you or better???
Turn Left on Main Street
by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
Congressman John K. Delaney, what the hell are you talking about?
In a recent Washington Post op-ed piece, headlined, “The last thing America needs? A left-wing version of the Tea Party,” the Democratic congressman from Maryland scolds progressives and expresses his worry “about where some of the loudest voices in the room could take the Democratic Party.”
The “loudest voices in the room” aren’t populists or progressives; they belong to the auctioneers selling our government to the highest bidders.
He writes, “Rejecting a trade agreement with Asia, expanding entitlement programs that crowd out other priorities and a desire to relitigate the financial crisis are becoming dominant positions among Democrats. Although these subjects may make for good partisan talking points, they do not provide the building blocks for a positive and bold agenda to create jobs and improve the lives of Americans.”
Rep. Delaney even implies that a freewheeling, open discussion of “these subjects” could lead to the election of a Republican president.
Good grief, John. A trade agreement that favors multinational corporations over working people? Cutting “entitlement programs” such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, worker’s compensation? Letting Wall Street off the hook for crashing the economy and costing millions of Americans their jobs and homes? These are Republican policies, bought and paid for by plutocrats. If Democrats simply mimic them, there would be no need to bother with voting for a Republican president; we could cancel the election and put the billions saved in campaign contributions straight into the Clinton Foundation.
The progressive agenda isn’t “left wing.” (Can anyone using the term even define what “left wing” means anymore?) The progressive agenda is America’s story — from ending slavery to ending segregation to establishing a woman’s right to vote to Social Security, the right to organize, and the fight for fair pay and against income inequality. Strip those from our history and you might as well contract America out to the US Chamber of Commerce the National Association of Manufacturers, and Karl Rove, Inc.
At their core, the New Deal, Fair Deal, and Great Society programs were aimed at assuring every child of a decent education, every worker a decent wage, and every senior a decent retirement; if that’s extreme, so are the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution.
But such is the level of what passes for discourse inside the Beltway these days. The cushioned political and media elites who eat, drink, and make merry with each other at the annual White House Correspondents & Celebrity Ball are so cozy up there in the stratosphere that they dismiss as the lunatic fringe any voice from below that challenges the status quo.
And by the way, John, the “loudest voices in the room” aren’t populists or progressives; they belong to the auctioneers selling our government to the highest bidders.
Can you believe this? Rep. Delaney even thinks that progressives are too engaged “in time-consuming rhetoric attacking banks that has little chance of producing more financial reform and distracts from far more consequential areas of economic risk…” Yet his words come on the heels of another round of billions in fines against the big banks for perpetrating fraud, an ongoing attempt by Republican Senator Richard Shelby and his Wall Street-funded colleagues on the Senate Banking Committee to eviscerate the reforms of Dodd-Frank, and an updated report from the University of Notre Dame and law firm Labaton Sucharow that says, “Nearly seven years after the global financial crisis rocked investors’ confidence in the markets and financial services in general, our survey clearly shows that a culture of integrity has failed to take hold. Numerous individuals continue to believe that engaging in illegal or unethical activity is part and parcel of succeeding in this highly competitive field.” (And why not, when the chances of going to prison for your blatant misdeeds are virtually nil?)
But Rep. Delaney seems to think any objection to these behaviors and other misdeeds just jams the works and keeps the grownups from taking care of business. So does former Mitt (“47 percent”) Romney advisor and George W. Bush (slash taxes on the One Percent!) speechwriter Peter Wehner, who recently warned in The New York Times that many Democrats “are placing a very risky bet that there are virtually no limits to how far left they can go.”
How about far enough left to reach Main Street?
Just take a look at the initial press reaction to Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential candidacy. As Steve Hendricks observed in the Columbia Journalism Review, “For not going with the flow, and for challenging Hillary Clinton, the big fish many elites have tagged as their own, Sanders’s entry into the race was greeted with story after story whose message — stated or understated, depending on the decorum of the messenger — was ‘This crank can’t win.’”
Hillary Clinton’s “corporatism,” Hendricks writes, “wed to her social liberalism and her imperial hawkishness appeals to those in the moneyed Second and journalistic Fourth Estates who would embrace Republicanism but for its misogynistic, homophobic, racist, science-denying core.” And so Sanders was tarred at the outset as a doomed crackpot candidate, followed then by article after article that fixated not on ideas and policies but on various idiosyncrasies, Sanders’ age and hippie past, the ideology of democratic socialism, and for heaven’s sake, his flyaway hair.
But if Senator Sanders is a crackpot, so are the majority of Americans. The ideas and policies he espouses have far more public support than the journalist habitués of Capitol Hill and Pennsylvania Avenue would have you believe.
Juan Cole of the blog Informed Comment pulled together some of the figures:
Some 63 percent of Americans agree that the current distribution of wealth is unfair. And in a Gallup poll done earlier this month, a majority, 52 percent, think that government taxation on the rich should be used to reduce the wealth gap… A majority of Americans oppose the Supreme Court Citizens United ruling, one of a number of such rulings that have increased the ability of the super-wealthy to influence politics. A good half of Americans support federally financed political campaigns so as to level the playing field… Some 79 percent of Americans believe that education beyond high school is not affordable for everyone. And some 57 percent of people under 30 believe student debt is a problem for youth… According to a very recent Yale/Gallup poll, some 71 percent of Americans believe global warming is occurring, and 57 percent are sure that human activity (emitting greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide) is causing it…
There you have it: Far from being an outsider, Sanders is paddling his way along the mainstream of American public opinion. Look at the crowds that are gathering to hear him speak: More than 3,000 in Minneapolis, Minnesota on Sunday, standing room only in Ames, Davenport and Iowa City, Iowa. Reporters can’t help but take notice now. “At campaign stops in early states and elsewhere, the firebrand from Vermont is drawing enthusiastic crowds that are several times larger than those that gather for [fellow presidential aspirant Martin] O’Malley,” notes The Washington Post. And The New York Times: “The crowds at Mr. Sanders’s Iowa events appeared to be different from the state’s famously finicky tire-kickers. Many said they had already made up their mind to support Mr. Sanders. They applauded his calls for higher taxes on the rich to pay for 13 million public works jobs, for decisive action on climate change and for free tuition at public colleges.”
Oh, how the mighty tremble when they hear such things! The murmuring crowd is their worst nightmare. So plutocratic Republican apologists like Peter Wehner, the corporate Democrats of Clinton, Inc., and killjoys like Congressman Delaney will double down against Bernie Sanders, just as they have against all those in politics before them who champion bottom-up democracy. If that means turning “left,” so be it. For Democrats, it’s the way home. They would do well to remember that apocryphal saying, usually attributed to Gandhi: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
Congressman John K. Delaney, what the hell are you talking about?
In a recent Washington Post op-ed piece, headlined, “The last thing America needs? A left-wing version of the Tea Party,” the Democratic congressman from Maryland scolds progressives and expresses his worry “about where some of the loudest voices in the room could take the Democratic Party.”
The “loudest voices in the room” aren’t populists or progressives; they belong to the auctioneers selling our government to the highest bidders.
He writes, “Rejecting a trade agreement with Asia, expanding entitlement programs that crowd out other priorities and a desire to relitigate the financial crisis are becoming dominant positions among Democrats. Although these subjects may make for good partisan talking points, they do not provide the building blocks for a positive and bold agenda to create jobs and improve the lives of Americans.”
Rep. Delaney even implies that a freewheeling, open discussion of “these subjects” could lead to the election of a Republican president.
Good grief, John. A trade agreement that favors multinational corporations over working people? Cutting “entitlement programs” such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, worker’s compensation? Letting Wall Street off the hook for crashing the economy and costing millions of Americans their jobs and homes? These are Republican policies, bought and paid for by plutocrats. If Democrats simply mimic them, there would be no need to bother with voting for a Republican president; we could cancel the election and put the billions saved in campaign contributions straight into the Clinton Foundation.
The progressive agenda isn’t “left wing.” (Can anyone using the term even define what “left wing” means anymore?) The progressive agenda is America’s story — from ending slavery to ending segregation to establishing a woman’s right to vote to Social Security, the right to organize, and the fight for fair pay and against income inequality. Strip those from our history and you might as well contract America out to the US Chamber of Commerce the National Association of Manufacturers, and Karl Rove, Inc.
At their core, the New Deal, Fair Deal, and Great Society programs were aimed at assuring every child of a decent education, every worker a decent wage, and every senior a decent retirement; if that’s extreme, so are the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution.
But such is the level of what passes for discourse inside the Beltway these days. The cushioned political and media elites who eat, drink, and make merry with each other at the annual White House Correspondents & Celebrity Ball are so cozy up there in the stratosphere that they dismiss as the lunatic fringe any voice from below that challenges the status quo.
And by the way, John, the “loudest voices in the room” aren’t populists or progressives; they belong to the auctioneers selling our government to the highest bidders.
Can you believe this? Rep. Delaney even thinks that progressives are too engaged “in time-consuming rhetoric attacking banks that has little chance of producing more financial reform and distracts from far more consequential areas of economic risk…” Yet his words come on the heels of another round of billions in fines against the big banks for perpetrating fraud, an ongoing attempt by Republican Senator Richard Shelby and his Wall Street-funded colleagues on the Senate Banking Committee to eviscerate the reforms of Dodd-Frank, and an updated report from the University of Notre Dame and law firm Labaton Sucharow that says, “Nearly seven years after the global financial crisis rocked investors’ confidence in the markets and financial services in general, our survey clearly shows that a culture of integrity has failed to take hold. Numerous individuals continue to believe that engaging in illegal or unethical activity is part and parcel of succeeding in this highly competitive field.” (And why not, when the chances of going to prison for your blatant misdeeds are virtually nil?)
But Rep. Delaney seems to think any objection to these behaviors and other misdeeds just jams the works and keeps the grownups from taking care of business. So does former Mitt (“47 percent”) Romney advisor and George W. Bush (slash taxes on the One Percent!) speechwriter Peter Wehner, who recently warned in The New York Times that many Democrats “are placing a very risky bet that there are virtually no limits to how far left they can go.”
How about far enough left to reach Main Street?
Just take a look at the initial press reaction to Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential candidacy. As Steve Hendricks observed in the Columbia Journalism Review, “For not going with the flow, and for challenging Hillary Clinton, the big fish many elites have tagged as their own, Sanders’s entry into the race was greeted with story after story whose message — stated or understated, depending on the decorum of the messenger — was ‘This crank can’t win.’”
Hillary Clinton’s “corporatism,” Hendricks writes, “wed to her social liberalism and her imperial hawkishness appeals to those in the moneyed Second and journalistic Fourth Estates who would embrace Republicanism but for its misogynistic, homophobic, racist, science-denying core.” And so Sanders was tarred at the outset as a doomed crackpot candidate, followed then by article after article that fixated not on ideas and policies but on various idiosyncrasies, Sanders’ age and hippie past, the ideology of democratic socialism, and for heaven’s sake, his flyaway hair.
But if Senator Sanders is a crackpot, so are the majority of Americans. The ideas and policies he espouses have far more public support than the journalist habitués of Capitol Hill and Pennsylvania Avenue would have you believe.
Juan Cole of the blog Informed Comment pulled together some of the figures:
Some 63 percent of Americans agree that the current distribution of wealth is unfair. And in a Gallup poll done earlier this month, a majority, 52 percent, think that government taxation on the rich should be used to reduce the wealth gap… A majority of Americans oppose the Supreme Court Citizens United ruling, one of a number of such rulings that have increased the ability of the super-wealthy to influence politics. A good half of Americans support federally financed political campaigns so as to level the playing field… Some 79 percent of Americans believe that education beyond high school is not affordable for everyone. And some 57 percent of people under 30 believe student debt is a problem for youth… According to a very recent Yale/Gallup poll, some 71 percent of Americans believe global warming is occurring, and 57 percent are sure that human activity (emitting greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide) is causing it…
There you have it: Far from being an outsider, Sanders is paddling his way along the mainstream of American public opinion. Look at the crowds that are gathering to hear him speak: More than 3,000 in Minneapolis, Minnesota on Sunday, standing room only in Ames, Davenport and Iowa City, Iowa. Reporters can’t help but take notice now. “At campaign stops in early states and elsewhere, the firebrand from Vermont is drawing enthusiastic crowds that are several times larger than those that gather for [fellow presidential aspirant Martin] O’Malley,” notes The Washington Post. And The New York Times: “The crowds at Mr. Sanders’s Iowa events appeared to be different from the state’s famously finicky tire-kickers. Many said they had already made up their mind to support Mr. Sanders. They applauded his calls for higher taxes on the rich to pay for 13 million public works jobs, for decisive action on climate change and for free tuition at public colleges.”
Oh, how the mighty tremble when they hear such things! The murmuring crowd is their worst nightmare. So plutocratic Republican apologists like Peter Wehner, the corporate Democrats of Clinton, Inc., and killjoys like Congressman Delaney will double down against Bernie Sanders, just as they have against all those in politics before them who champion bottom-up democracy. If that means turning “left,” so be it. For Democrats, it’s the way home. They would do well to remember that apocryphal saying, usually attributed to Gandhi: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
Stellar Encounter
Astronomers Predict Fireworks from Rare Stellar Encounter in 2018
The pulsar, known as J2032+4127 (J2032 for short), is the crushed core of a massive star that exploded as a supernova. It is a magnetized ball about 12 miles across, or about the size of Washington, weighing almost twice the sun's mass and spinning seven times a second. J2032's rapid spin and strong magnetic field together produce a lighthouse-like beam detectable when it sweeps our way. Astronomers find most pulsars through radio emissions, but Fermi's Large Area Telescope (LAT) finds them through pulses of gamma rays, the most energetic form of light.J2032 was found in 2009 through a so-called blind search of LAT data. Using this technique, astronomers can find pulsars whose radio beams may not be pointed precisely in our direction and are therefore much harder to detect.
"Two dozen pulsars were discovered this way in the first year of LAT data alone, including J2032," said David Thompson, a Fermi deputy project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "Nearly all of them would not have been found without Fermi."
Once they knew exactly where to look, radio astronomers also were able to detect J2032. A team at the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester in the U.K. kept tabs on the object from 2010 through 2014. And they noticed something odd.
"We detected strange variations in the rotation and the rate at which the rotation slows down, behavior we have not seen in any other isolated pulsar," said Andrew Lyne, professor of physics at the University of Manchester. "Ultimately, we realized these peculiarities were caused by motion around another star, making this the longest-period binary system containing a radio pulsar."
The massive star tugging on the pulsar is named MT91 213. Classified as a Be star, the companion is 15 times the mass of the sun and shines 10,000 times brighter. Be stars drive strong outflows, called stellar winds, and are embedded in large disks of gas and dust.
"When we discovered this pulsar in 2009, we noticed that it was in the same direction as this massive star in the constellation Cygnus, but our initial measurements did not give any evidence that either star was a member of a binary system," explained Paul Ray, an astrophysicist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington. "The only way to escape that conclusion was if the binary system had a very long orbital period, much longer than the longest known pulsar-massive star binary at the time, which seemed unlikely."
Following an elongated orbit lasting about 25 years, the pulsar passes closest to its partner once each circuit. Whipping around its companion in early 2018, the pulsar will plunge through the surrounding disk and trigger astrophysical fireworks. It will serve as a probe to help astronomers measure the massive star's gravity, magnetic field, stellar wind and disk properties.
Several features combine to make this an exceptional binary. Out of six similar systems where the massive star uses hydrogen as its central energy source, J2032's has the greatest combined mass, the longest orbital period, and is closest to Earth.
"This forewarning of the energetic fireworks expected at closest approach in three years' time allows us to prepare to study the system across the entire electromagnetic spectrum with the largest telescopes," added Ben Stappers, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Manchester.
Astronomers think the supernova explosion that created the pulsar also kicked it into its eccentric orbit, nearly tearing the binary apart in the process. A study of the system led by Lyne and including Ray and Stappers was published June 16 in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Love Bill Maher, hate Mittens...
Mittens 10.0
By Bill Maher
Mitt Romney recently held his fourth annual summit, and there are a lot of issues here – the first being, why does Mitt Romney get a summit? Why is he acting more like a former president, rather than what he is – a huge loser?
Okay, he’s the Match.com for Republican sugar daddies and today’s candidates. I get that. He calls together the heads of all the pizza companies and is like, “I’m your old whore – meet your new whore.” In back rooms with Mitt Romney talking about how 47% of people are deadbeat losers is where the action is in the GOP race these days – not Iowa or New Hampshire. But shouldn’t they be less public about it? If Republicans want to be seen as serious champions of working Americans, and fighting wealth inequality, shouldn’t they bury the bones of Mitt Romney?
I love the latest version of Romney, Mitt 10.0: Foreign Policy Elder Statesman. He’s Mitt Romney, not Jim Baker. He has no foreign policy experience. When he ran, he went to England – low hanging fruit – and embarrassed himself. But now he’s giving long PowerPoint presentations about world affairs where the kicker is, “I think… President Obama is the worst foreign policy president in history.”
That’s a reasonable statement for somebody who was born in 2009. The world has a lot of troubled hotspots, as it always has. But Obama didn’t cause these problems. Unlike the guy in charge just before him, who did.
Remember the third and final debate in 2012 – the one just about foreign policy? Even a lot of Republicans agreed Obama destroyed Romney. For one thing, Romney just kept on saying, “I agree with you, Mr. President.” He was leading from behind. Spent all his time agreeing with the guy who’s the worst ever.
By Bill Maher
Mitt Romney recently held his fourth annual summit, and there are a lot of issues here – the first being, why does Mitt Romney get a summit? Why is he acting more like a former president, rather than what he is – a huge loser?
Okay, he’s the Match.com for Republican sugar daddies and today’s candidates. I get that. He calls together the heads of all the pizza companies and is like, “I’m your old whore – meet your new whore.” In back rooms with Mitt Romney talking about how 47% of people are deadbeat losers is where the action is in the GOP race these days – not Iowa or New Hampshire. But shouldn’t they be less public about it? If Republicans want to be seen as serious champions of working Americans, and fighting wealth inequality, shouldn’t they bury the bones of Mitt Romney?
I love the latest version of Romney, Mitt 10.0: Foreign Policy Elder Statesman. He’s Mitt Romney, not Jim Baker. He has no foreign policy experience. When he ran, he went to England – low hanging fruit – and embarrassed himself. But now he’s giving long PowerPoint presentations about world affairs where the kicker is, “I think… President Obama is the worst foreign policy president in history.”
That’s a reasonable statement for somebody who was born in 2009. The world has a lot of troubled hotspots, as it always has. But Obama didn’t cause these problems. Unlike the guy in charge just before him, who did.
Remember the third and final debate in 2012 – the one just about foreign policy? Even a lot of Republicans agreed Obama destroyed Romney. For one thing, Romney just kept on saying, “I agree with you, Mr. President.” He was leading from behind. Spent all his time agreeing with the guy who’s the worst ever.
PAC and support
Rick Santorum gets super PAC and early donor support
By Fredreka Schouten
A new super PAC is launching Wednesday to support Republican Rick Santorum’s second presidential bid, and one of his biggest financial backers said he’s planning write checks again.
Wyoming-based investor Foster Friess told USA TODAY in an email that he plans to back “Rick’s campaign financially” in 2016. Friess contributed $2.1 million to a pro-Santorum super PAC in the 2012 cycle. There’s no word yet on his financial commitment ahead of next year’s contest.
Friess suggested that he will give to other fundraising vehicles, rather than the new super PAC, in his push to help Santorum. Donations to super PACs must be publicly disclosed, unlike those to nonprofit groups that are active in politics.
Friess said the “the visibility created” by his donations to the pro-Santorum super PAC in 2012, “wound up generating calls from all over the planet to donate to not only political campaigns but various charities.”
“I will find ways to support Rick financially that will be less visible,” he said.
The new super PAC, Working Again PAC, is filing its paperwork Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission, its organizers said in a news release. Santorum previously established Patriot Voices, a nonprofit group that can take unlimited, anonymous donations.
Nadine Maenza, the new super PAC’s executive director, also oversees Patriot Voices. Santorum resigned as Patriot Voices’ chairman when he announced his presidential bid in May.
The new PAC’s title reflects a major theme of Santorum’s campaign: highlighting the gap between the rich and poor and positioning himself as the “blue-collar conservative” in the GOP nomination battle. In a statement, Maenza called Santorum the “only candidate who is committed to finding solutions to improve the manufacturing sector in this country and restoring the American dream for those who have lost faith that they can achieve it.”
Maenza and the other super PAC staffers are veteran Santorum aides. Maenza, for instance, served as finance director of Santorum’s 2012 campaign.
Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, won 11 caucuses and primaries before withdrawing from the 2012 nomination contest eventually won by Mitt Romney.
By Fredreka Schouten
A new super PAC is launching Wednesday to support Republican Rick Santorum’s second presidential bid, and one of his biggest financial backers said he’s planning write checks again.
Wyoming-based investor Foster Friess told USA TODAY in an email that he plans to back “Rick’s campaign financially” in 2016. Friess contributed $2.1 million to a pro-Santorum super PAC in the 2012 cycle. There’s no word yet on his financial commitment ahead of next year’s contest.
Friess suggested that he will give to other fundraising vehicles, rather than the new super PAC, in his push to help Santorum. Donations to super PACs must be publicly disclosed, unlike those to nonprofit groups that are active in politics.
Friess said the “the visibility created” by his donations to the pro-Santorum super PAC in 2012, “wound up generating calls from all over the planet to donate to not only political campaigns but various charities.”
“I will find ways to support Rick financially that will be less visible,” he said.
The new super PAC, Working Again PAC, is filing its paperwork Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission, its organizers said in a news release. Santorum previously established Patriot Voices, a nonprofit group that can take unlimited, anonymous donations.
Nadine Maenza, the new super PAC’s executive director, also oversees Patriot Voices. Santorum resigned as Patriot Voices’ chairman when he announced his presidential bid in May.
The new PAC’s title reflects a major theme of Santorum’s campaign: highlighting the gap between the rich and poor and positioning himself as the “blue-collar conservative” in the GOP nomination battle. In a statement, Maenza called Santorum the “only candidate who is committed to finding solutions to improve the manufacturing sector in this country and restoring the American dream for those who have lost faith that they can achieve it.”
Maenza and the other super PAC staffers are veteran Santorum aides. Maenza, for instance, served as finance director of Santorum’s 2012 campaign.
Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, won 11 caucuses and primaries before withdrawing from the 2012 nomination contest eventually won by Mitt Romney.
Can you say 'Conflict of interest'????
Jeb’s South Korean sugar daddy
Bush gave 10 speeches for firm that reaped more than $1 billion from his brother’s administration.
By Kenneth P. Vogel
As he amassed wealth after leaving the Florida governor’s office, Jeb Bush delivered 10 separate paid speeches to a South Korean metal company that won more than $1 billion in contracts from his brother’s presidential administration, according to disclosures released Tuesday.
The company, Poongsan Corp., and its CEO Jin Roy Ryu, have been generous patrons of the Bush family over the years, raising about $1 million for the presidential library of Bush’s father, former President George H.W. Bush, while also helping to organize trips to South Korea for Jeb Bush and his presidential relatives.
Jeb did not reveal how much he was paid by Poongsan, but foreign speeches of this sort typically reap paychecks in the six figures for prominent American politicians. The first speech was in 2007, just months before George W. Bush’s administration awarded Poongsan a coin-production contract with the U.S. Mint worth as much as $1 billion. Jeb Bush delivered nine more speeches between then and 2013, when he delivered two more speeches to Poongsan.
Bush’s association with Poongsan dates back to the mid-1990s, when he was the president of his father’s presidential library foundation, on whose board of trustees Ryu sits.
“This was a personal friendship with the Bushes. He really admired H.W.,” Don Wilson, the former director of the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library, said of Ryu. “I wasn’t aware of any close friendship [between Jeb Bush and Ryu]. It was more with Barbara and George H.W., when I was associated with them.”
Jeb Bush served as Florida governor from 1999 to 2007, after which he began giving paid speeches to Poongsan and other companies and nonprofits during a period of rapid wealth accumulation.
His net worth mushroomed from $1.3 million to $19 million, according to tax returns and other documents released by Bush’s presidential campaign on Tuesday. The document release — which included a list of 277 speeches that paid a total of nearly $10 million — seemed intended partly to highlight Bush’s commitment to transparency and also to head off a damaging trickle of stories about his ties to controversial businesses.
But the documents also contain fodder for Bush’s critics, who have sought to cast him as a privileged scion of a political dynasty with little in common with middle-class voters. Democrats highlighted affiliations Bush’s allies would rather avoid — such as his work as an adviser for the investment bank Lehman Brothers, which paid him $1.3 million a year before it went bankrupt and helped spur the financial crisis.
And, while the list of speeches does not contain precise dates or amounts for each speech, it does in some ways shed light on how Bush traded on the political clout that comes with being a former governor who is the son of one former president and the brother of another.
Among the entities that paid Bush to speak were dozens of non-profits — from schools like Cornell University to charities like the Salvation Army to trade groups like the Mortgage Bankers Association — for whom a big-name political speaker can bring excitement and possibly donations.
For the companies on the list — such as pharmaceutical giant Pfizer or a handful of financial firms — landing a Bush speech offers the prospect of access to a powerful political family and the prestige that comes with it. That’s especially true for foreign companies, like the Indian newspaper publisher HT Media Limited. It paid for Bush to speak in 2007, at the tail end of his brother’s presidency, at a leadership summit in New Delhi, where Bush was asked multiple times about U.S. foreign policy.
“This is the life of being the brother of the president,” he said, according to an account by an Indian news agency. Though he did not divulge how much he was paid, a year earlier the same summit paid former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani a $200,000 honorarium.
Bush’s first speech to Poongsan came only four months after he left the governor’s mansion.
Soon after that speech, a Poongsan subsidiary called PMX that has its headquarters in Iowa — where then-first lady Barbara Bush had cut the ribbon in 1992 — won a $1 billion contract to supply coin metal to the U.S. Mint, over objections from advocates for U.S. manufacturers. Though George W. Bush was president at the time, the contract didn’t come up during the South Korea trip, Jeb Bush told the St. Petersburg Times in 2008.
Bush’s spokeswoman Kristy Campbell told POLITICO Wednesday “Gov. Bush has had the opportunity to visit South Korea to address the company. It was not related in any way to any government contracting issues.”
Poongsan arranged a 2008 trip for Jeb Bush to South Korea, where he played golf with the South Korean foreign minister. A South Korean news agency reported that the former governor was assessing the mood in the country prior to a summit between President George W. Bush and South Korean then-President Lee Myung-bak.
PMX representatives did not respond to questions about the speeches or the Bushes’ relationship with Poongsan or Ryu.
Overall, the company has received $1.6 billion in federal contracts, primarily from the U.S. Mint, but also from the U.S. Army.
In addition to coins, Poongsan manufactures ammunition, including land mines and cluster bombs that have run afoul of international human rights standards.
Ryu and his wife, Helen Lho, who is the daughter of a former top Korean government official, had a home in Los Angeles and are active in American public life beyond the Bush clan. They attended the 2011 state dinner at the Obama White House honoring the South Korean president.
“They were among the Korean elite,” said Wilson, though he added that both Ryu, who goes by the name Roy, and his wife were educated in the U.S. and are “very Americanized.”
Ryu serves in leadership positions for various international trade groups, Korean business and defense associations, and U.S. nonprofits, including the secretive Trilateral Commission and a childhood-focused nonprofit started by Colin Powell, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under George H. W. Bush and secretary of state under his son.
Bush gave 10 speeches for firm that reaped more than $1 billion from his brother’s administration.
By Kenneth P. Vogel
As he amassed wealth after leaving the Florida governor’s office, Jeb Bush delivered 10 separate paid speeches to a South Korean metal company that won more than $1 billion in contracts from his brother’s presidential administration, according to disclosures released Tuesday.
The company, Poongsan Corp., and its CEO Jin Roy Ryu, have been generous patrons of the Bush family over the years, raising about $1 million for the presidential library of Bush’s father, former President George H.W. Bush, while also helping to organize trips to South Korea for Jeb Bush and his presidential relatives.
Jeb did not reveal how much he was paid by Poongsan, but foreign speeches of this sort typically reap paychecks in the six figures for prominent American politicians. The first speech was in 2007, just months before George W. Bush’s administration awarded Poongsan a coin-production contract with the U.S. Mint worth as much as $1 billion. Jeb Bush delivered nine more speeches between then and 2013, when he delivered two more speeches to Poongsan.
Bush’s association with Poongsan dates back to the mid-1990s, when he was the president of his father’s presidential library foundation, on whose board of trustees Ryu sits.
“This was a personal friendship with the Bushes. He really admired H.W.,” Don Wilson, the former director of the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library, said of Ryu. “I wasn’t aware of any close friendship [between Jeb Bush and Ryu]. It was more with Barbara and George H.W., when I was associated with them.”
Jeb Bush served as Florida governor from 1999 to 2007, after which he began giving paid speeches to Poongsan and other companies and nonprofits during a period of rapid wealth accumulation.
His net worth mushroomed from $1.3 million to $19 million, according to tax returns and other documents released by Bush’s presidential campaign on Tuesday. The document release — which included a list of 277 speeches that paid a total of nearly $10 million — seemed intended partly to highlight Bush’s commitment to transparency and also to head off a damaging trickle of stories about his ties to controversial businesses.
But the documents also contain fodder for Bush’s critics, who have sought to cast him as a privileged scion of a political dynasty with little in common with middle-class voters. Democrats highlighted affiliations Bush’s allies would rather avoid — such as his work as an adviser for the investment bank Lehman Brothers, which paid him $1.3 million a year before it went bankrupt and helped spur the financial crisis.
And, while the list of speeches does not contain precise dates or amounts for each speech, it does in some ways shed light on how Bush traded on the political clout that comes with being a former governor who is the son of one former president and the brother of another.
Among the entities that paid Bush to speak were dozens of non-profits — from schools like Cornell University to charities like the Salvation Army to trade groups like the Mortgage Bankers Association — for whom a big-name political speaker can bring excitement and possibly donations.
For the companies on the list — such as pharmaceutical giant Pfizer or a handful of financial firms — landing a Bush speech offers the prospect of access to a powerful political family and the prestige that comes with it. That’s especially true for foreign companies, like the Indian newspaper publisher HT Media Limited. It paid for Bush to speak in 2007, at the tail end of his brother’s presidency, at a leadership summit in New Delhi, where Bush was asked multiple times about U.S. foreign policy.
“This is the life of being the brother of the president,” he said, according to an account by an Indian news agency. Though he did not divulge how much he was paid, a year earlier the same summit paid former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani a $200,000 honorarium.
Bush’s first speech to Poongsan came only four months after he left the governor’s mansion.
Soon after that speech, a Poongsan subsidiary called PMX that has its headquarters in Iowa — where then-first lady Barbara Bush had cut the ribbon in 1992 — won a $1 billion contract to supply coin metal to the U.S. Mint, over objections from advocates for U.S. manufacturers. Though George W. Bush was president at the time, the contract didn’t come up during the South Korea trip, Jeb Bush told the St. Petersburg Times in 2008.
Bush’s spokeswoman Kristy Campbell told POLITICO Wednesday “Gov. Bush has had the opportunity to visit South Korea to address the company. It was not related in any way to any government contracting issues.”
Poongsan arranged a 2008 trip for Jeb Bush to South Korea, where he played golf with the South Korean foreign minister. A South Korean news agency reported that the former governor was assessing the mood in the country prior to a summit between President George W. Bush and South Korean then-President Lee Myung-bak.
PMX representatives did not respond to questions about the speeches or the Bushes’ relationship with Poongsan or Ryu.
Overall, the company has received $1.6 billion in federal contracts, primarily from the U.S. Mint, but also from the U.S. Army.
In addition to coins, Poongsan manufactures ammunition, including land mines and cluster bombs that have run afoul of international human rights standards.
Ryu and his wife, Helen Lho, who is the daughter of a former top Korean government official, had a home in Los Angeles and are active in American public life beyond the Bush clan. They attended the 2011 state dinner at the Obama White House honoring the South Korean president.
“They were among the Korean elite,” said Wilson, though he added that both Ryu, who goes by the name Roy, and his wife were educated in the U.S. and are “very Americanized.”
Ryu serves in leadership positions for various international trade groups, Korean business and defense associations, and U.S. nonprofits, including the secretive Trilateral Commission and a childhood-focused nonprofit started by Colin Powell, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under George H. W. Bush and secretary of state under his son.
Crowd of 10,000
Bernie Sanders Draws Crowd of 10,000 in Wisconsin
by Alex Seitz-Wald
"In case you haven't noticed, there are a lot of people here," Bernie Sanders said a bit awed as he took the stage in front of nearly 10,000 in a coliseum here.
Sanders has been attracting outsize crowds wherever he takes his unlikely presidential campaign. Five thousand came out for his kickoff rally in his hometown of Burlington, Vermont. Another 5,000 turned out in Denver, Colorado. In Minneapolis, a thousand listened from outside when the basketball arena where Sanders was speaking filled to capacity.
But Madison was different.
"Tonight we have made history," Sanders declared to thunderous applause. "Tonight we have more people at a meeting for a candidate for president of the United States than any other candidates have."
Indeed, Sanders - the self-declared Democratic-socialist from Vermont; the former perennial protest candidate; the man who until a few weeks ago belonged to neither party - turned out more people Wednesday night than has any candidate of either party so far this year.
Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton attracted 5,500 people, according to her campaign, to her kickoff rally in New York City, and 1,800 in Virginia last week but has otherwise not focused on large rallies. While Republican Sen. Ted Cruz had 11,000 for his launch at Liberty University, attendance was mandatory for the school's 13,000-strong student body, so it's unclear how many came of their own volition.
In coming to Wisconsin, Sanders tapped into a restless progressive movement, mobilized and frustrated by the failed recall attempt in 2011 against Gov. Scot Walker, who is preparing for his own presidential run.
"Bernie Sanders didn't build anything. He's the product of a movement," said Madison Capitol Times editor John Nicholas as he introduced Sanders on stage. "What you have done is demand that the 2016 presidential race have a true progressive in it."
Clinton is arguably the strongest front-runner of any non-incumbent presidential candidate in modern history and remains the overwhelming favorite to win the nomination.
Sanders has seen his numbers rise in New Hampshire, but so far he lags well behind Clinton in Iowa. Just 2% of Democrats said he's the best positioned to win against a Republican in 2016, according to a new CNN poll. And his diehard support may be confined to liberal enclaves like Madison.
But by attracting massive crowds, Sanders can build a movement around him and present the impression of momentum as he campaigns for wins in Iowa, New Hampshire, and beyond.
The giant rallies also offer a fundraising opportunity for Sanders, whose staffers collected names of attendees as they entered the arena. His campaign says he's attracted 200,000 donors so far, most of them small, and will need a to keep firing up a national donor base to fuel his campaign.
"I've been frustrated for the last several years and he's like a lone wolf out there for people with no voice," said Todd Osborne of Madison.
Erika Hanson said too many Democrats, including Clinton, too often to do the bidding of corporations. "As far as I'm concerned he's the only person who cares about the middle class," she said.
Supporters here are hopeful he can beat Clinton, but most said they would vote for Clinton if she were the Democratic Party's nominee next year.
The sea of faces skewed heavily white. Sanders, who hails from a state with a population that is 95% white, has acknowledged that most Democrats of color are unfamiliar with his message and vowed to address it.
The senator seemed to add a section on race and civil rights to his stump speech Wednesday, which is otherwise almost entirely focused on economics and climate change.
The crowd included a mix of older and younger fans, even though the University of Madison is out for the summer.
"I know we are going to get outspent," Sanders said concluding his speech. Earlier in the day, Clinton announced a record-setting $45 million fundraising hall. "But we are going to win this election," he said, having to pause for applause.
"At the end of the day, they may have the money, but we have the people," he continued. "And when the people stand together, we can do anything."
by Alex Seitz-Wald
"In case you haven't noticed, there are a lot of people here," Bernie Sanders said a bit awed as he took the stage in front of nearly 10,000 in a coliseum here.
Sanders has been attracting outsize crowds wherever he takes his unlikely presidential campaign. Five thousand came out for his kickoff rally in his hometown of Burlington, Vermont. Another 5,000 turned out in Denver, Colorado. In Minneapolis, a thousand listened from outside when the basketball arena where Sanders was speaking filled to capacity.
But Madison was different.
"Tonight we have made history," Sanders declared to thunderous applause. "Tonight we have more people at a meeting for a candidate for president of the United States than any other candidates have."
Indeed, Sanders - the self-declared Democratic-socialist from Vermont; the former perennial protest candidate; the man who until a few weeks ago belonged to neither party - turned out more people Wednesday night than has any candidate of either party so far this year.
Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton attracted 5,500 people, according to her campaign, to her kickoff rally in New York City, and 1,800 in Virginia last week but has otherwise not focused on large rallies. While Republican Sen. Ted Cruz had 11,000 for his launch at Liberty University, attendance was mandatory for the school's 13,000-strong student body, so it's unclear how many came of their own volition.
In coming to Wisconsin, Sanders tapped into a restless progressive movement, mobilized and frustrated by the failed recall attempt in 2011 against Gov. Scot Walker, who is preparing for his own presidential run.
"Bernie Sanders didn't build anything. He's the product of a movement," said Madison Capitol Times editor John Nicholas as he introduced Sanders on stage. "What you have done is demand that the 2016 presidential race have a true progressive in it."
Clinton is arguably the strongest front-runner of any non-incumbent presidential candidate in modern history and remains the overwhelming favorite to win the nomination.
Sanders has seen his numbers rise in New Hampshire, but so far he lags well behind Clinton in Iowa. Just 2% of Democrats said he's the best positioned to win against a Republican in 2016, according to a new CNN poll. And his diehard support may be confined to liberal enclaves like Madison.
But by attracting massive crowds, Sanders can build a movement around him and present the impression of momentum as he campaigns for wins in Iowa, New Hampshire, and beyond.
The giant rallies also offer a fundraising opportunity for Sanders, whose staffers collected names of attendees as they entered the arena. His campaign says he's attracted 200,000 donors so far, most of them small, and will need a to keep firing up a national donor base to fuel his campaign.
"I've been frustrated for the last several years and he's like a lone wolf out there for people with no voice," said Todd Osborne of Madison.
Erika Hanson said too many Democrats, including Clinton, too often to do the bidding of corporations. "As far as I'm concerned he's the only person who cares about the middle class," she said.
Supporters here are hopeful he can beat Clinton, but most said they would vote for Clinton if she were the Democratic Party's nominee next year.
The sea of faces skewed heavily white. Sanders, who hails from a state with a population that is 95% white, has acknowledged that most Democrats of color are unfamiliar with his message and vowed to address it.
The senator seemed to add a section on race and civil rights to his stump speech Wednesday, which is otherwise almost entirely focused on economics and climate change.
The crowd included a mix of older and younger fans, even though the University of Madison is out for the summer.
"I know we are going to get outspent," Sanders said concluding his speech. Earlier in the day, Clinton announced a record-setting $45 million fundraising hall. "But we are going to win this election," he said, having to pause for applause.
"At the end of the day, they may have the money, but we have the people," he continued. "And when the people stand together, we can do anything."
Kock Block
What Did Tom Steyer Say When He Met David Kock for the First Time?
Kock chatted amiably with Steyer and the two posed for pictures at the Aspen Ideas Festival.
By Ronald Brownstein
Tom Steyer and David Kock, the billionaires who waged bitter battles across the airwaves over climate and the environment during the 2014 election, struck conciliatory notes when they met for the first time today during a session of the Aspen Ideas Festival here.
Kock sat in the first row for an interview I conducted with Steyer, the environmental activist and former investment manager whose NextGen Climate Action Committee spent about $75 million in the 2014 election to support candidates committed to action against climate change. Kock, the executive vice president of Kock Industries, is a key figure in the constellation of family-connected political organizations, including Americans for Prosperity, which spent about $100 million over the cycle to support conservative candidates—frequently opposing those Steyer supported.
The competition became unusually personal, with the conservative group American Commitment—which had received funding from organizations in the Kock network—running ads attacking Steyer and his brother Jim, also an activist on issues relating to children. Meanwhile, a wide array of Democrats, led by then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, condemned Kock's role in the election.
In an April Huffington Post article, Steyer sharply criticized the Kock brothers' political activities. "As we stand at this energy crossroads, the Kock brothers appear to have a strong self-interest in maintaining the status quo—they seem to have no qualms about peddling falsehoods and obscuring the facts," Steyer wrote. "Do they really intend to keep profiting from pollution that endangers our families?"
But toward the end of our interview Wednesday, Steyer struck a more conciliatory tone when I noted that Kock was in the audience and asked Steyer whether he thought the two could ever find common ground on the issues of climate, energy, and the environment.
"I'm not sure he's skeptical of my views and I'm not sure I'm skeptical of his views," Steyer said. "My point would be that I think what I'm saying is basically common sense and asking the market to solve a problem that we have. I don't view this as an ideological issue, actually. I would bet that Mr. Kock thinks that the market is something that is very efficient in allocating capital and getting positive outcomes for the people who work and for the people they're trying to serve by producing products and services cheaply and efficiently. And that's what I want."
After the session, Kock chatted amiably with Steyer for several minutes at the foot of the stage. The two then posed for pictures, some with leading venture capitalist John Doerr, another prominent supporter of action against climate change. Later, Steyer and Kock met privately for coffee.
Kock is a trustee of the Aspen Institute, which cosponsors the ideas festival with Atlantic Media, the parent company of National Journal and Next America.
During the session, Steyer said that he believed the key to breaking the ideological stalemate over climate is "not that … we have to agree on the policy; you have to agree on the problem. Once we agree on the problem, then the fact that someone wants a bigger government and someone wants a smaller government ... no, that's normal American politics. We've been doing that for 250 years together; that doesn't remotely bother me."
Steyer closed with a pitch for American business to take a lead role in driving the transition to a low-carbon economy. "I'm surprised it hasn't happened [yet] but… I believe we will end up pulling on the same oar to solve this and it will be good for American businesses, it will be good for American workers, and it will do something that we're proud of," he said. "If we think we're doing this without the people who are sophisticated in energy, that's dumb. We're going to do this with the people who are sophisticated in energy."
In a meeting with donors earlier this year, the Kock brothers signaled that they hope to donate and raise about $900 million for a network of conservative advocacy groups in the 2016 election cycle. Steyer said in the interview that he also intended to remain active in the 2016 election, but said he had not finalized specific plans on how to do so. But asked if he was in a spending "arms race" with conservatives, Steyer demurred, saying: "If we're in an arms race, we're in a lot of trouble."
Kock chatted amiably with Steyer and the two posed for pictures at the Aspen Ideas Festival.
By Ronald Brownstein
Tom Steyer and David Kock, the billionaires who waged bitter battles across the airwaves over climate and the environment during the 2014 election, struck conciliatory notes when they met for the first time today during a session of the Aspen Ideas Festival here.
Kock sat in the first row for an interview I conducted with Steyer, the environmental activist and former investment manager whose NextGen Climate Action Committee spent about $75 million in the 2014 election to support candidates committed to action against climate change. Kock, the executive vice president of Kock Industries, is a key figure in the constellation of family-connected political organizations, including Americans for Prosperity, which spent about $100 million over the cycle to support conservative candidates—frequently opposing those Steyer supported.
The competition became unusually personal, with the conservative group American Commitment—which had received funding from organizations in the Kock network—running ads attacking Steyer and his brother Jim, also an activist on issues relating to children. Meanwhile, a wide array of Democrats, led by then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, condemned Kock's role in the election.
In an April Huffington Post article, Steyer sharply criticized the Kock brothers' political activities. "As we stand at this energy crossroads, the Kock brothers appear to have a strong self-interest in maintaining the status quo—they seem to have no qualms about peddling falsehoods and obscuring the facts," Steyer wrote. "Do they really intend to keep profiting from pollution that endangers our families?"
But toward the end of our interview Wednesday, Steyer struck a more conciliatory tone when I noted that Kock was in the audience and asked Steyer whether he thought the two could ever find common ground on the issues of climate, energy, and the environment.
"I'm not sure he's skeptical of my views and I'm not sure I'm skeptical of his views," Steyer said. "My point would be that I think what I'm saying is basically common sense and asking the market to solve a problem that we have. I don't view this as an ideological issue, actually. I would bet that Mr. Kock thinks that the market is something that is very efficient in allocating capital and getting positive outcomes for the people who work and for the people they're trying to serve by producing products and services cheaply and efficiently. And that's what I want."
After the session, Kock chatted amiably with Steyer for several minutes at the foot of the stage. The two then posed for pictures, some with leading venture capitalist John Doerr, another prominent supporter of action against climate change. Later, Steyer and Kock met privately for coffee.
Kock is a trustee of the Aspen Institute, which cosponsors the ideas festival with Atlantic Media, the parent company of National Journal and Next America.
During the session, Steyer said that he believed the key to breaking the ideological stalemate over climate is "not that … we have to agree on the policy; you have to agree on the problem. Once we agree on the problem, then the fact that someone wants a bigger government and someone wants a smaller government ... no, that's normal American politics. We've been doing that for 250 years together; that doesn't remotely bother me."
Steyer closed with a pitch for American business to take a lead role in driving the transition to a low-carbon economy. "I'm surprised it hasn't happened [yet] but… I believe we will end up pulling on the same oar to solve this and it will be good for American businesses, it will be good for American workers, and it will do something that we're proud of," he said. "If we think we're doing this without the people who are sophisticated in energy, that's dumb. We're going to do this with the people who are sophisticated in energy."
In a meeting with donors earlier this year, the Kock brothers signaled that they hope to donate and raise about $900 million for a network of conservative advocacy groups in the 2016 election cycle. Steyer said in the interview that he also intended to remain active in the 2016 election, but said he had not finalized specific plans on how to do so. But asked if he was in a spending "arms race" with conservatives, Steyer demurred, saying: "If we're in an arms race, we're in a lot of trouble."
Money Money Money.....
Fundraising at second-quarter pole: All eyes on Bush
Candidates vie to show strength, viability — but one already has everyone beat.
By Eli Stokols
Hillary Clinton came first.
Then Ben Carson.
Over the next few weeks almost every White House candidate will be brandishing a dollar amount either to show off as a sign of strength, or hide for fear of weakness, as the first concrete measure of viability for most of the 2016 candidates.
For many longshots, either the number (a solid $10.5 million for Carson) or a rough estimate (a not-bad $8 million for Bernie Sanders) are already being bandied about. For more highly touted candidates such as Marco Rubio and Rand Paul, their standing in the fundraising race at second-quarter pole will be a signal to party leaders about who belongs in the first tier of candidates.
But there’s one candidate whose number matters more than the rest: Jeb Bush.
The combined total from his campaign and two supporting PACs that Bush posts before the end of July will be the number by which other GOP rivals will be measured against — and the number their major donors and even Clinton’s financiers will be reacting to over the next several months.
No one is better positioned to take advantage of the shifting terrain of campaign finance laws in the super PAC era than Bush. Drawing on a family network that goes back 50 years, his six months of fundraising for the super PAC that will undergird his official campaign has likely brought in at least $100 million in contributions.
“Historically, the person who raises the most has won,” said Charlie Black, a long-time GOP operative who has advised several presidential campaigns. “The important thing is not just raising more money than everyone else but knowing what to do with it. Most of his money is in the super PAC and [strategist] Mike Murphy and those guys know what to do with it, which should allow him to run effectively in a whole bunch of states.”
It’s not just the dollars that matter. Equally important is that Bush’s Right to Rise super PAC is set to reveal a list of several hundred high-dollar contributors, certain to be far longer than any of his rivals.
“If you have 200 people on your super PAC list, most of them can become million-dollar donors,” said a GOP operative who has run presidential super PACs. “It’s not just the big, shiny number, the total haul, that matters. The biggest tell will be the depth and breadth of your contributor list. That’s what shows you’re going to be successful over the long run.”
The other GOP candidates fighting for second place in fundraising — Rubio and Ted Cruz — are expected to bring in $30-50 million overall between their campaigns, both launched in April, and their super PACs; but they are almost certain to do with smaller numbers of mega-donors, although Cruz is expected to have raised a significant sum from small donors online.
Cruz has Robert Mercer, a Wall Street hedge fund magnate, underwriting much of his candidacy; Rubio has Norman Braman, the Miami auto dealer and former owner of the Philadelphia Eagles doing the same. Bush has big names, too — New York Jets owner Woody Johnson recently flew him across Europe on his private jet; but Bush is expected to have far more names overall, hundreds of donors capable of writing checks with one comma and dozens who can write them with two.
Carson, who reported contributions Wednesday from 210,000 individual donors mostly in small amounts, appears to have a powerful grassroots army; but his super PAC appears to have spent big on direct mail firms in order to access the lists needed to raise the cash online.
“There might have been a time in history where you’d prefer to have thousands of these small donors you can keep going back to, but now that we’re in a world without caps, you’d prefer to have those donors who can continue to write you $10,000 checks,” one Bush bundler said.
More than a single mega-donor, breadth among high-dollar contributors is what will likely set Bush — and perhaps others — apart.
“He won’t have any one person you can characterize as a co-investor,” Black said. “Norm Braman’s not going to ask Marco for anything; he just believes in Marco, not that it looks great. It’s better perception-wise for Jeb that he doesn’t have one big sugar daddy.”
Sheldon Adelson single-handedly kept Newt Gingrich afloat in 2012; and Foster Friess’s largesse enabled Rick Santorum to fight deep into April after getting hot in a handful of early state contests. But their efforts showed that mega-bucks can prolong a candidate’s time in the arena but don’t guarantee putting game-changing points on the board.
Scott Walker, who polls near the top of the field and is planning to officially launch his campaign in a couple weeks, won’t file his first report until October; and Chris Christie, by launching his campaign on the last day of the quarter, also puts off the pressure of having to post a number for another three months.
John Jordan, a California winemaker and Walker bundler who hosted a high-dollar fundraiser last month, doesn’t believe the Wisconsin governor’s supporters will be intimidated by what his rivals post in July.
“Money can’t buy you Iowa or New Hampshire,” Jordan said. “Where the money really helps you is when you come out of those first few states with momentum; and whatever Bush and Marco have on hand, you may as well subtract $30 million from both because that’s what it’s going to cost them to play in Florida.”
Given his steady polling position and the positive reactions he’s gotten from the donor crowd, Walker has the luxury of looking at fundraising as a longer game. Similarly, Bush only plans to pad his cash advantage over the rest of the year; Murphy, the strategist running his super PAC, has reportedly told donors a number he wants to have in the bank by year’s end and that he doesn’t plan on seriously spending money on advertising until then.
By comparison, Rubio, whose operation is far leaner than Bush’s, has already spent $7 million to lock up TV time in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina for ads that will start running in late November. Murphy’s plan, according to one source close to the effort, is only to spend money “once voters are actually paying attention.”
There’s far greater urgency for the other candidates polling outside the top ten nationally, the benchmark for participation in the first debate next month. For Rick Perry, Carly Fiorina, Lindsey Graham, Bobby Jindal and others on the bubble, a $8-10 million haul in the second quarter isn’t about demonstrating long-term fundraising potential — it’s cash they’ll need to spend in the near term to put TV ads on Fox News, to fly themselves to Iowa and New Hampshire, anything to boost name ID in order to earn them a spot on the debate stage.
A few candidates who don’t make the first debates might not even be around by October, when the third quarter FEC reports come due. By most measures, that’s the quarter that will provide what one veteran Republican presidential fundraiser described as “the first big tactical test.”
By then, the race should be more fully engaged, with two debates in the books and the entrance of Gov. John Kasich likely drying up much of the money in his home state of Ohio. Bundlers and donors who have already written big checks will be asked to double down.
“Jeb is way out in front,” one operative said. “A lot of big donors who are still uncommitted are going to wait and watch those first debates. If we see them break toward Walker or Rubio after the third quarter reports, then you’ll have a better sense who’s going to be there at the end as the alternative to Jeb, which is really what all this is about.”
Candidates vie to show strength, viability — but one already has everyone beat.
By Eli Stokols
Hillary Clinton came first.
Then Ben Carson.
Over the next few weeks almost every White House candidate will be brandishing a dollar amount either to show off as a sign of strength, or hide for fear of weakness, as the first concrete measure of viability for most of the 2016 candidates.
For many longshots, either the number (a solid $10.5 million for Carson) or a rough estimate (a not-bad $8 million for Bernie Sanders) are already being bandied about. For more highly touted candidates such as Marco Rubio and Rand Paul, their standing in the fundraising race at second-quarter pole will be a signal to party leaders about who belongs in the first tier of candidates.
But there’s one candidate whose number matters more than the rest: Jeb Bush.
The combined total from his campaign and two supporting PACs that Bush posts before the end of July will be the number by which other GOP rivals will be measured against — and the number their major donors and even Clinton’s financiers will be reacting to over the next several months.
No one is better positioned to take advantage of the shifting terrain of campaign finance laws in the super PAC era than Bush. Drawing on a family network that goes back 50 years, his six months of fundraising for the super PAC that will undergird his official campaign has likely brought in at least $100 million in contributions.
“Historically, the person who raises the most has won,” said Charlie Black, a long-time GOP operative who has advised several presidential campaigns. “The important thing is not just raising more money than everyone else but knowing what to do with it. Most of his money is in the super PAC and [strategist] Mike Murphy and those guys know what to do with it, which should allow him to run effectively in a whole bunch of states.”
It’s not just the dollars that matter. Equally important is that Bush’s Right to Rise super PAC is set to reveal a list of several hundred high-dollar contributors, certain to be far longer than any of his rivals.
“If you have 200 people on your super PAC list, most of them can become million-dollar donors,” said a GOP operative who has run presidential super PACs. “It’s not just the big, shiny number, the total haul, that matters. The biggest tell will be the depth and breadth of your contributor list. That’s what shows you’re going to be successful over the long run.”
The other GOP candidates fighting for second place in fundraising — Rubio and Ted Cruz — are expected to bring in $30-50 million overall between their campaigns, both launched in April, and their super PACs; but they are almost certain to do with smaller numbers of mega-donors, although Cruz is expected to have raised a significant sum from small donors online.
Cruz has Robert Mercer, a Wall Street hedge fund magnate, underwriting much of his candidacy; Rubio has Norman Braman, the Miami auto dealer and former owner of the Philadelphia Eagles doing the same. Bush has big names, too — New York Jets owner Woody Johnson recently flew him across Europe on his private jet; but Bush is expected to have far more names overall, hundreds of donors capable of writing checks with one comma and dozens who can write them with two.
Carson, who reported contributions Wednesday from 210,000 individual donors mostly in small amounts, appears to have a powerful grassroots army; but his super PAC appears to have spent big on direct mail firms in order to access the lists needed to raise the cash online.
“There might have been a time in history where you’d prefer to have thousands of these small donors you can keep going back to, but now that we’re in a world without caps, you’d prefer to have those donors who can continue to write you $10,000 checks,” one Bush bundler said.
More than a single mega-donor, breadth among high-dollar contributors is what will likely set Bush — and perhaps others — apart.
“He won’t have any one person you can characterize as a co-investor,” Black said. “Norm Braman’s not going to ask Marco for anything; he just believes in Marco, not that it looks great. It’s better perception-wise for Jeb that he doesn’t have one big sugar daddy.”
Sheldon Adelson single-handedly kept Newt Gingrich afloat in 2012; and Foster Friess’s largesse enabled Rick Santorum to fight deep into April after getting hot in a handful of early state contests. But their efforts showed that mega-bucks can prolong a candidate’s time in the arena but don’t guarantee putting game-changing points on the board.
Scott Walker, who polls near the top of the field and is planning to officially launch his campaign in a couple weeks, won’t file his first report until October; and Chris Christie, by launching his campaign on the last day of the quarter, also puts off the pressure of having to post a number for another three months.
John Jordan, a California winemaker and Walker bundler who hosted a high-dollar fundraiser last month, doesn’t believe the Wisconsin governor’s supporters will be intimidated by what his rivals post in July.
“Money can’t buy you Iowa or New Hampshire,” Jordan said. “Where the money really helps you is when you come out of those first few states with momentum; and whatever Bush and Marco have on hand, you may as well subtract $30 million from both because that’s what it’s going to cost them to play in Florida.”
Given his steady polling position and the positive reactions he’s gotten from the donor crowd, Walker has the luxury of looking at fundraising as a longer game. Similarly, Bush only plans to pad his cash advantage over the rest of the year; Murphy, the strategist running his super PAC, has reportedly told donors a number he wants to have in the bank by year’s end and that he doesn’t plan on seriously spending money on advertising until then.
By comparison, Rubio, whose operation is far leaner than Bush’s, has already spent $7 million to lock up TV time in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina for ads that will start running in late November. Murphy’s plan, according to one source close to the effort, is only to spend money “once voters are actually paying attention.”
There’s far greater urgency for the other candidates polling outside the top ten nationally, the benchmark for participation in the first debate next month. For Rick Perry, Carly Fiorina, Lindsey Graham, Bobby Jindal and others on the bubble, a $8-10 million haul in the second quarter isn’t about demonstrating long-term fundraising potential — it’s cash they’ll need to spend in the near term to put TV ads on Fox News, to fly themselves to Iowa and New Hampshire, anything to boost name ID in order to earn them a spot on the debate stage.
A few candidates who don’t make the first debates might not even be around by October, when the third quarter FEC reports come due. By most measures, that’s the quarter that will provide what one veteran Republican presidential fundraiser described as “the first big tactical test.”
By then, the race should be more fully engaged, with two debates in the books and the entrance of Gov. John Kasich likely drying up much of the money in his home state of Ohio. Bundlers and donors who have already written big checks will be asked to double down.
“Jeb is way out in front,” one operative said. “A lot of big donors who are still uncommitted are going to wait and watch those first debates. If we see them break toward Walker or Rubio after the third quarter reports, then you’ll have a better sense who’s going to be there at the end as the alternative to Jeb, which is really what all this is about.”
Members slide
House Ethics Committee let members slide on disclosure rules
By Paul Singer
The House Ethics Committee failed to follow its own rules requiring lawmakers to seek pre-clearance for privately funded travel in 2013, records show, a lapse that now may have the committee in the peculiar position of investigating itself.
House rules created in December 2012 require all members who want to go on trips paid for by private groups, not the government, to seek clearance from the Ethics Committee at least 30 days before the trip. But records analyzed by USA TODAY show that when 10 members and their staffers went on a May 2013 trip to Azerbaijan, the committee was not enforcing that standard.
The Ethics Committee approved the travel for these members but is now investigating whether the trip was improperly funded. Public records suggest the committee may not have required all of the travelers to comply with the pre-travel approval rules.
One pre-travel form on file for a staff member on the Azerbaijan trip was signed by his boss, Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., on May 23, 2013, the day before the staff member traveled. A pre-travel form on file with the clerk of the House for Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., for the same Azerbaijan trip was signed June 13, and the pre-travel form for his staff member was signed June 11 — both more than a week after they returned from the trip.
The public files for Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., who was at the time and still is a member of the Ethics Committee, do not include a pre-travel form at all.
In another trip approved at the same time, Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., was given permission to travel to Kosovo on the tab of a faith-based group despite not meeting the 30-day filing deadline.
"Despite your failure to do so in this instance, given the newness of the rule, we are approving your current request," Rep. Michael Conaway, a Texas Republican and then committee chairman, and Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., wrote to Aderholt on May 23, 2013. "However, any future requests should adhere to the 30-day requirement."
The pre-travel forms require members and staff to disclose who is paying for their trip, explain why they were invited and vouch that the trip is for official, not recreational, purposes.
The Azerbaijan trip was first investigated earlier this year by the Office of Congressional Ethics — a separate panel created to refer matters to the Ethics Committee — but the committee asked OCE to shut down its investigation, apparently the first time it has made such a request since OCE was created in 2007.
The Washington Post reported in May that the OCE has concluded the trip, which was described as being sponsored by several Turkish- and Balkan-American non-profits, was in fact improperly paid for by the state-owned oil company of Azerbaijan. The company has said it had no intent to hide its support for the conference, and in the future it will work with other non-profits that are better equipped to arrange congressional travel in compliance with the rules.
Members said the Ethics Committee approved the trip before they traveled, and the committee said June 22 that in each case it "reviewed the materials submitted by the Member and sponsor and approved the Member to accept the travel before the trip began." But the committee also said it is conducting its own investigation of questions that have arisen about the trip since the lawmakers and staff returned.
Lawmakers must deliver travel documents for each trip to the clerk of the House after the trip is over, where the documents become public record. It is possible that Davis and Clarke filed travel forms on time with the Ethics Committee and then failed to deliver the proper copies to the clerk's office after they returned. But neither the committee nor Davis' office would produce documents showing the pre-travel forms had been filed on time, and Clarke's office did not respond to multiple requests for information about the Azerbaijan trip.
On June 12, 2013, Conaway and Sanchez, the panel's ranking Democrat, told House members they needed to meet the deadlines for submitting requests for approval of privately funded travel. "The Committee is issuing this reminder," they wrote, "that absent extraordinary circumstances, travel requests submitted fewer than 30 days before the start of a trip will be denied for that reason alone, even if other individuals have been approved to participate in the trip."
That's when "we got serious about the 30-day rule," said Dan Schwager, who was then the committee's staff director. "There was a six-month learning curve for members to get used to the fact that they really had to do that," he said. Schwager said he could not discuss the specifics of the Azerbaijan trip, but he said that the committee has "a pretty extensive review process for all this paperwork," including checking the itinerary and the sponsors for the trip.
The existence of a six-month grace period was news to ethics watchdogs, said Meredith McGehee of the Campaign Legal Center, who has helped draft previous congressional travel rules. "They just kind of made an executive decision that they weren't going to enforce the rule."
As long as Congress lets private organizations pay for congressional travel, taxpayers "are supposed to take it on faith" that the committee has determined the trips are being paid for by legitimate groups for legitimate purposes, McGehee said. "The paperwork certainly doesn't provide confidence that's happening."
The committee's failure to detect the real source of money for the Azerbaijan trip "did a tremendous disservice to these members of Congress," who went on the trip, she said. "They allowed the members to be embarrassed because the Ethics Committee did not do its due diligence," McGehee said.
"The Committee only approves requests to accept privately sponsored travel after it has received and reviewed completed paperwork for each traveler," said the committee's staff director, Tom Rust, who took over from Schwager in 2014. Eight of the ten current Ethics Committee members were on the committee in 2013 as well.
By Paul Singer
The House Ethics Committee failed to follow its own rules requiring lawmakers to seek pre-clearance for privately funded travel in 2013, records show, a lapse that now may have the committee in the peculiar position of investigating itself.
House rules created in December 2012 require all members who want to go on trips paid for by private groups, not the government, to seek clearance from the Ethics Committee at least 30 days before the trip. But records analyzed by USA TODAY show that when 10 members and their staffers went on a May 2013 trip to Azerbaijan, the committee was not enforcing that standard.
The Ethics Committee approved the travel for these members but is now investigating whether the trip was improperly funded. Public records suggest the committee may not have required all of the travelers to comply with the pre-travel approval rules.
One pre-travel form on file for a staff member on the Azerbaijan trip was signed by his boss, Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., on May 23, 2013, the day before the staff member traveled. A pre-travel form on file with the clerk of the House for Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., for the same Azerbaijan trip was signed June 13, and the pre-travel form for his staff member was signed June 11 — both more than a week after they returned from the trip.
The public files for Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., who was at the time and still is a member of the Ethics Committee, do not include a pre-travel form at all.
In another trip approved at the same time, Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., was given permission to travel to Kosovo on the tab of a faith-based group despite not meeting the 30-day filing deadline.
"Despite your failure to do so in this instance, given the newness of the rule, we are approving your current request," Rep. Michael Conaway, a Texas Republican and then committee chairman, and Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., wrote to Aderholt on May 23, 2013. "However, any future requests should adhere to the 30-day requirement."
The pre-travel forms require members and staff to disclose who is paying for their trip, explain why they were invited and vouch that the trip is for official, not recreational, purposes.
The Azerbaijan trip was first investigated earlier this year by the Office of Congressional Ethics — a separate panel created to refer matters to the Ethics Committee — but the committee asked OCE to shut down its investigation, apparently the first time it has made such a request since OCE was created in 2007.
The Washington Post reported in May that the OCE has concluded the trip, which was described as being sponsored by several Turkish- and Balkan-American non-profits, was in fact improperly paid for by the state-owned oil company of Azerbaijan. The company has said it had no intent to hide its support for the conference, and in the future it will work with other non-profits that are better equipped to arrange congressional travel in compliance with the rules.
Members said the Ethics Committee approved the trip before they traveled, and the committee said June 22 that in each case it "reviewed the materials submitted by the Member and sponsor and approved the Member to accept the travel before the trip began." But the committee also said it is conducting its own investigation of questions that have arisen about the trip since the lawmakers and staff returned.
Lawmakers must deliver travel documents for each trip to the clerk of the House after the trip is over, where the documents become public record. It is possible that Davis and Clarke filed travel forms on time with the Ethics Committee and then failed to deliver the proper copies to the clerk's office after they returned. But neither the committee nor Davis' office would produce documents showing the pre-travel forms had been filed on time, and Clarke's office did not respond to multiple requests for information about the Azerbaijan trip.
On June 12, 2013, Conaway and Sanchez, the panel's ranking Democrat, told House members they needed to meet the deadlines for submitting requests for approval of privately funded travel. "The Committee is issuing this reminder," they wrote, "that absent extraordinary circumstances, travel requests submitted fewer than 30 days before the start of a trip will be denied for that reason alone, even if other individuals have been approved to participate in the trip."
That's when "we got serious about the 30-day rule," said Dan Schwager, who was then the committee's staff director. "There was a six-month learning curve for members to get used to the fact that they really had to do that," he said. Schwager said he could not discuss the specifics of the Azerbaijan trip, but he said that the committee has "a pretty extensive review process for all this paperwork," including checking the itinerary and the sponsors for the trip.
The existence of a six-month grace period was news to ethics watchdogs, said Meredith McGehee of the Campaign Legal Center, who has helped draft previous congressional travel rules. "They just kind of made an executive decision that they weren't going to enforce the rule."
As long as Congress lets private organizations pay for congressional travel, taxpayers "are supposed to take it on faith" that the committee has determined the trips are being paid for by legitimate groups for legitimate purposes, McGehee said. "The paperwork certainly doesn't provide confidence that's happening."
The committee's failure to detect the real source of money for the Azerbaijan trip "did a tremendous disservice to these members of Congress," who went on the trip, she said. "They allowed the members to be embarrassed because the Ethics Committee did not do its due diligence," McGehee said.
"The Committee only approves requests to accept privately sponsored travel after it has received and reviewed completed paperwork for each traveler," said the committee's staff director, Tom Rust, who took over from Schwager in 2014. Eight of the ten current Ethics Committee members were on the committee in 2013 as well.
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