We can spin on and on about Emailgate, Watergate, why she didn’t leave Bill when he cheated on her or as some Republicans have already started in Congress this week, we can wheel in the boring gender debate. You thought the 2012 Presidential Election went to an all-time low; well just wait until the 2016 Presidential campaign. Not only will the two billion dollar mark for campaign funds be passed in 2016 and maybe even doubled thanks to our Supreme Court ruling on campaign finance and non-disclosure but what will be so different than the 2008 and 2012 Presidential campaigns is that in 2016 the Republicans really want The White House back.
We saw with the 2000 Presidential campaign with George W. Bush Vs Al Gore, when the Republicans really want something, they will stop at nothing to get it, even using the Supreme Court to vote in a President that didn’t even win the popular vote which George w. Bush didn’t. Historically the Democrats tend to go weak at knees when the Republicans bully their way into office. I for one, always deep down, wish that I could be able to reach out to the Republicans and try and find some common ground on some of the issues, especially the Presidential campaigns. For one, roughly five corporations in the U.S. own ninety-five percent of all our media outlets thanks to President Regan who overturned President Kennedy’s executive order banning such. One backroom deal (backroom so not to upset the far right or the far left) is a gentleman’s agreement (sorry gentleperson’s agreement) with senior figures from the Republican and Democrat parties to agree on not funding attack or negative television and radio adverts against their opponents. We have so much data from Presidential Elections that these adverts turn the voters off and actually are counterproductive as they turn away would be new voters off voting all together. On top of that, all those millions of dollars spent on this type of advertising goes into the fat profit sheet of these same five corporations who at the end of the day have no loyalty to the candidates that are buying all their air time and have time and time proving that all they care about is their bottom line and not what is best for the American election process.
Take a look at Hillary’s 3am in the morning White House adverting in the 2008 campaign. To me, thirty years in Public Relations and Communications, this is one of the most positive campaign adverts I have seeing in decades:
This advert should be the foundation of Hillary’s 2016 Presidential campaign. We now know she is going to run and will more than likely announce in April (2015), we just don’t know the date. When she was at the Irish-American Awards ceremony this week in New York where she was awarded the Irish America magazine lifetime achievement award, sources close to us confirm that enough hints were dropped by Hillary’s people to confirm that she is running in 2016. This is always smart politics; she is what they say, setting the mood and seeing what the reaction of media and public is before she formally announces she is running. President Obama did the same in 2008. It also creates a buzz and a level of excitement amongst the grassroots of the party. Since the leaks of this week at that event, some (not all of course) within the media are starting to write more positively about Hillary Clinton because to be honest, like her or hate her, if she doesn’t run (which she must certainly is) we all would be bitterly disappointed and would bore very easily with the line-up of 2016 Presidential candidates if she wasn’t running and there in the mix.
Hillary Clinton is needed more than ever to take lead of our Country; we are in very strange and dangerous times. I talked to young voters a lot and there is an awaking out there like I have never seeing before. They are so unsure of the world with the so many conflicts happening. Camp fires in a lot of dangerous parts of the world that are not being put out. They are tuned into what is happening in the world, they may not fully grasp the history of how and why it is happening but never the less it is up there on the forefront of their minds with finding a good job after they leave college.
However, it will not be easy as it wasn’t campaign finance wise in the 2008 and 2012 Presidential elections. The Presidential campaign of 2016 will be all about the campaign finance raised as already Sheldon Alderson of Las Vegas and the Koch brothers have raised nearly two billion dollars for 2016 for the Republican Presidential candidate and Hillary looks set to raise one billion dollars but this doesn’t even take into account the finance raised for the Republicans by the Republican’s Super PACs, by Jeb Bush himself and our old favorites Dick Cheney and Karl Rove’s Crossroad’s Super PAC. As we mentioned the ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on campaign financing and non-disclosure is going to ensure the 2016 Presidential campaign hits an all-time campaign financing high and hitting all time historic records It is such a sad reflection on our political process that not necessary the best candidate wins the election but the one who has raised the most campaign finance could, something this current Congress has no interest in readdressing.
I disagree we need a new face in 2016 for the Democratic Presidential candidate, we got that in 2008 with President Obama and even though he might have a break through with talks with Iran, there is so much in his Foreign Policy agenda that seven years on are in tatters. His relationship with President Putin is non-existent; no U.S. President has ever had such a poor relationship with the Prime Minister of Israel , North Korea is very high up the list of having a nuclear missile and yet nothing seems to be happening to stop North Korea yet Iran is treated differently?
There has only being three President’s in our entire history that had the experience of the role of Secretary of State before becoming President of the United States of America and that was James Madison, John Quincy Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Whatever is said about their Presidency, their Foreign Affairs knowledge stood to them and to the benefit of the United States for future generations to come. Hillary Clinton will be the fourth former Secretary of State in history when she is elected President of the United States in 2016.
The Secretary of State historically was more powerful than the Vice-President of the United States, who really just sits in waiting unless the President gives him a more important role in his/hers Presidency but at any time the President should he or she so wish to, can sidetrack their VP anytime. However it is not so easy to sidetrack their Foreign Affairs chief advisor the Secretary of State and the Administration’s Ambassador to the world when it comes to the President’s Foreign Policy. We have seeing from history how a bad Secretary of State can land a President in a lot of trouble. Take Henry Kissinger in case and point for the Nixon Administration. A lot of historians point out that the Vietnam War would have taken a whole different direction if Nixon had appointed someone more suitable for that role as Kissinger was not of like minds with Nixon and his Administration. Nixon’s downfall in that regard was just that, he simply had too much regard for Kissinger’s opinions in cabinet. The Secretary of State is the most senior member of the President’s cabinet and sits next to the President at formal White House events even trumping over former Presidents.
Hillary Clinton even with her health problem scare when she had a brain clot is the most traveled (air miles) of any Secretary of State the U.S. has ever has had. She has an incredible understanding of the Northern Ireland Peace Process and was instrumental in encouraging her husband Bill on making hard decisions to move that process along. Hence, why this week she was awarded the Irish America magazine lifetime achievement award in New York. She has a huge grasp on the complexities of the Middle East and what is required to bring peace to the region. We have no sense of why she was over ruled by the President on a way forward for that region. Hillary was totally against the killing of Bin Laden, she wanted him arrested, brought to the United States to stand trial for the murder of three thousand U.S. citizens on 9/11. In the photograph released by The White House as the President and his National Security team watched the Navy Seals kill Bin Laden from The White House’s situation room, it isn’t rock science that from Hillary Clinton’s face that she wanted no part of this and again that is where she and the President differed. She may have a point for where in the Constitution of the United States does it give the power to our President to order the death of another human being without due process. An act of war is a different debate altogether and when you join any military, you know you are to fight when it is required of you for your country.
Hillary Clinton was the only senior visiting dignitary to China who pointed out to the Chinese President in private that the U.S. and the World’s had huge concerns for their terrible human rights record. What other leader has done this? When the Chinese protested to The White House about this, no doubt Hillary got an earful from the President. We know that when the President of Syria was killing his own citizens in Syria two years ago with chemical weapons, Hillary Clinton wanted the U.S. to launch air strikes against that regime in Syria with a UN mandate but the President Obama refused to attack. Instead today President Obama and the U.S. relies on that same President of Syria who used chemical weapons on thousands of his people to help us attack IS in Syria.
Look at the graceful way Hillary took the loss of the Presidency nomination in 2008 by the Democratic Party super delegates. They knifed her in the back and betrayed the Clintons and handed the nomination to then Senator Obama. Did we ever hear any bitterness in her voice over that? And what about President Obama informing her that she and Bill’s huge 2008 election campaign debt would be wiped off if she took the job as Secretary of State for one term? Which she did. That was a smart move on the President’s part as no one, especially the President, would want Hillary Clinton on the outside taking pot shots at the Administration inside The White House.
All this aside if Hillary Clinton drops her old team of cronies she has had since 2008 as we witnessed with Emailgate how incompetently they really are and the way they handled it, did her more her harm than good. If she courts the media and not hide from them and if she would just be herself, like when we saw her shed a tear in the café during her 2008 campaign then Hillary is setting a sure course to be in one of the highest offices in the land. I for one, believe that she does not deserves to be President because she was treated so badly even by the Democratic Party but that she is in these times of a lot uncertainty in a very dangerous and violate world the only person who has the qualifications, knowledge and experience for the job and that is why the Amazing Democrats endorse Hillary Clinton to be the next President of the United States.
Watch President Kennedy’s speech in 1961 and it is very similar in context of where the world is going today as it was forty-nine years ago:
If you happen to find yourself flipping through the April issue of Playboy, you’ll land on a wide-ranging interview with former Vice President Dick Cheney.
In excerpts published online Tuesday, the greatest takeaway is that Cheney is not fond of President Obama. At all.
(There are 10 hours of tape, or about 80,000 words, from the Cheney interview that reporter James Rosen said could someday exist in book form.)
Cheney’s choice of outlet to vent his frustrations has angered the D.C.-based National Center on Sexual Exploitation, a nonprofit that advocates against pornography and commercialization of sex. (The group also called for a boycott of the “Fifty Shades of Grey” movie.)
Dawn Hawkins, the group’s executive director, in a release Wednesday accused Cheney of supporting “the hyper-sexualized, pornified state of our nation.”
“Is Dick Cheney trying not to be heard?” Hawkins said. “What woman would find his interview in a magazine that profits from the sexual exploitation of women? Cheney’s action says to women, ‘I’m not talking to you and you’re no more than an object to be gawked at’.”
Of course we’re reminded that Jimmy Carter, a self-described born-again Christian, gave an interview to Playboy in 1976 when he was running for president. There, he famously said, that he had“looked on a lot of women with lust” and had “committed adultery in my heart many times.”
Other noteworthy people who gave Playboy interviews? Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates and Ayn Rand.
The National Center on Sexual Exploitation must have forgotten that when it promoted several Martin Luther King quotes on its Facebook page on MLK Day this year.
UPDATE: Hawkins got back to us on this point. She said the group feels the same way about any person who gave an interview to Playboy.
“We are not anti-Cheney; we’re anti-exploitation,” she said in an e-mail to the Loop. “Whatever political, artistic, or educational message one desires to communicate, it will have more impact and reach a larger audience if it is communicated in a context that is not sexually exploitative.”
It’s been a rough few weeks for Hillary Clinton. E-mails, private servers and poor press conference performances led to a slew of stories about whether the former Secretary of State was really ready for the presidential race to come. But, a ray of light broke through those clouds — bad metaphor alert! — this morning whenCNN released new poll numbers on Clinton and the 2016 presidential race.
Those numbers contained nothing but good news for Clinton.
Let’s start with the primary matchup. Yes, Clinton led Vice President Joe Biden by 47 points and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren by 52 points. But, as important as those massive leads was the fact that Clinton’s edge over Biden, Warren and, well, everyone else in the party hasn’t taken much of a hit despite her run of bad press. Here’s the trend line:
Yes, you math majors will note that Clinton’s lead has shrunk since, say November 2014 when she led Warren by 55 points. But the rate of that shrinkage is very small. Biden has grown in support, marginally, while Warren has stayed between 9 and ten percent. The steadiness of the numbers, particularly in light of just how much negative attention Clinton has drawn during the time when this poll was in the field (March 13-15) suggests that Democratic voters are resolved that she is going to be the nominee — no matter what. Clinton is their choice and external developments don’t seem — at least not yet — to be leading people to jump off her bandwagon.
The general election numbers are equally rosy for Clinton. Her slimmest lead over a Republican is 11 points over Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul. She leads former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, the two men considered the party’s most likely nominees, by 15 points. She has a 13 point edge over Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
And, horserace aside, there’s considerable agreement among partisans that Clinton is, by far, the Democrats’ best hope of holding the White House in 2016. Nearly seven in 10 (68 percent) said Democrats were better off with Clinton as their 2016 nominee while just 30 percent said they’d be better with someone else.
Now, Clinton’s numbers are not what they once were. And, as the Republican primary and the subsequent general election engage, the general election match-ups between Clinton and the GOP candidates will narrow. It’s simply not possible for a presidential nominee in this polarized climate to win by double digits — much less 15 points.
Still, for a Clinton team that has taken a load of incoming over the past fortnight, the CNN numbers have to buoy them. The CNN data point suggests that minds — especially on the Democratic side — are made up for Clinton and that nothing will change that fact. That’s something that any of the two dozen (or so) Republicans running or thinking about running for president in 2016 would kill for right about now.
For seventh minutes today we got the whole run down of LA’s Mayor Garcetti’s new and proactive plan to tattle LA’s chronic homeless issue which has reached critical levels. It was very educational to get it first hand from the Mayor’s personnel who are on the front lines dealing with this massive issue that they have on their plate.
The Hollywood entertainment industry and the people of LA need to get involved with the Mayor’s office to raise private funding. What would be most helpful is a well-known Spokesperson from the Hollywood entertainment industry to step up to the task and act as an Ambassador for the campaign to raise private funding which would be coupled with Federal, State and city funding. We were lucky to have had Elizabeth Taylor as an amazing advocate for AIDS and Brad Pitt for the regeneration of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Now that the task of really tackling LA’s homelessness is really picking up stream, it is so necessary for Hollywood entertainment industry and the people of LA to get involved in fund raising without delay.
Firstly to correct the main stream media when they throw out figures like 58,000 homeless in LA, this figure they pull from various agencies that are not monitoring the accurate figure of the 31,000 homeless like the Mayor’s office is currently doing. What the Mayor’s staff does; is take a head count and the homeless person’s name, going from street to street in LA from 9pm until 6am each night. Those are the times the homeless find their “spot” to bed down for the night. The Mayor’s office also has data available to him regarding the homeless numbers from all the various Federal, State and local agencies.
Breaking the figures down, 6,000 of those are veterans and President Obama has kept his promise to all of us that he made during his 2012 re-election campaign and the Federal funding to take all our veterans off the streets in the United States is finally making its way into the local coffers. 3,000 of those 6,000 veterans have now gotten housing thanks to President Obama honoring his pledge.
What most of don’t know, is the city’s hands are tied by two Federal Appeal Court rulings, one in 2007 and one as recent as 2011 which forbids the city and local law enforcement from moving any person sleeping rough in the city of Los Angeles. However, the court refused to rule that both Federal and State governments must provide housing for these people, so the city of LA is stuck with this huge problem of homelessness on our streets, with little funding from the Federal and State agencies. Not that we would advocate heavy handed tactics if there were no Federal Appeal Courts rulings with law enforcement using such means of water cannons to spray the homeless off the streets of LA if they refused to move.
The issue here and we see the difficulties the Mayor and his staff has, is that cleaning the streets of the homeless is necessary when there is a well thought out plan to housing these individuals in its place. Yes, we all do forget that sometimes that’s what each and every person living on our streets in LA is: an individual, with feelings and needs and not just another “homeless person”.
What we need to debate with our Republican colleagues, who I firmly advocate we must educate and bring them on board with us on this issue, that the cost of one homeless person on the street of LA costs the city eight thousand dollars a month to the tax prayer. The cost to house one of them for one month to the tax prayer? Three thousand dollars. That means the tax prayer is losing five thousand dollars per month per homeless person. It makes no business sense and also makes our city look like it cares nothing for the human suffering that homelessness brings. When the tourists pour in and they witness all our homeless on our streets, they view us as being a heartless, cruel, selfish and uncaring society. It is easy to explain why a homeless person on the street costs the tax payer eight thousand dollars a month. When a person lives on the street, they are going to meet all sorts of dangers, catch all sorts of diseases and will end up receiving a great deal of medical attention in our hospital’s ER departments. Then there is the emergency medical aftercare that may be needed and the follow up care not to mention the huge array of medications that might be required when this homeless individual is released back on our streets, only to end up going through all this cycle again, possibly a week or two later. That is the average and is eating away at the cities’ finances while at same time the world’s media is portraying LA as being a selfish and uncaring city when it comes to our homeless citizens.
So a lot of plans are underway and very exiting ones too at the Mayor’s office, like using old abandoned buildings owned by the city and knock them into units for the homeless. Here is where the city needs private financial donors to come forward and combine resources in the form of a partnership which would also be set off against their tax bill each year. Makes for a lot of common sense?
On top of that, after the shooting dead of a homeless individual in Skid Row recently by an LAPD Officer, there is a plan to hire only well-trained Police Officers (who have proved skill and experience records with the homeless). These Officers will be the only first responders allowed in these homeless areas; they will not be in uniform and also will work hand and hand with a social worker. I have never heard of this before and it could be the model for the future for every US city to adopt. Then when a 911 call comes in about a homeless person, the usual LAPD units will not be allowed to respond, instead a very specialized Police Officer will respond as most LAPD Officers on the force only get forty-eighty hours training on how to deal with homeless individuals. The Mayor’s office is also looking at its Mobile Emergency Homeless Response Unit and streamlining it to operate twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week with specialized staff working with those units.
We all can be forgiven for not caring that much during the economical melt down in the US for the homeless but now things are improving slightly, there is a sense that most of us are beginning to become more vocal and proactive with this very serious issue in our city. It is also encouraging to see the media outlets like the LA Times finally taking interest to highlight homelessness and the affects it has the people who homeless and the city’s general health as well with this massive issue that must be addressed urgently.
A lot of credit must also be given to the new man on the job at the Mayor’s office, Greg Spiegel, the Mayor’s new Homelessness Policy Director. This is someone whose resume is very impressive and if anyone is the right person for the job, Greg is.
The hardest issue facing all of us is that inner fear in ourselves that be it through ill health, being laid off from our employment or simply a run of bad luck, ending up homeless ourselves. This is why most of us pass a homeless person on the street and refuse to that any interest in the issue because as Shakespeare explained it so well in Hamlet: “the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure”.
Homelessness on our streets is the mirror of our soul, the heart of our financial unfairness and the root of an ever silent present cancer eating away at our community and society’s heart and soul. If left unchecked, as we have done now for so many years in LA, it will destroy the very fabric of our existence, the standing we have with the rest of the world, where we could lose the hearts and minds of those in the world that support Los Angeles and what it has stood for.
So step up to the plate Hollywood entertainment industry and citizens of LA, take the plunge and do your duty as the dutiful citizens and proud members of LA’s community that you are and start partnering with the city to raise funds to get LA’s 31,000 homeless individuals off the streets and into proper housing. That way we give them hope, a safe place to live, give them back their dignity, the chance to rebuild their lives and finally a much safer and cleaner LA for us all.
On a mid-November Monday, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) signed into law the largest corporate tax break in any state’s history, with an estimated lifetime value of $8.7 billion. The package was the result of a special three-day session Inslee called in order to entice Boeing to build its 777X plane in the state.
Boeing didn’t just score big that day. The aerospace giant has received more state and local subsidy dollars than any other corporation in America, according to newly released data compiled by Good Jobs First, a policy resource center on subsidy data. The state subsidy data was released Tuesday in conjunction with similar federal data and a matching report — “Uncle Sam’s Favorite Corporations” — which reviews the grants, loans and other subsidies distributed by the federal government since 2000.
Over the course of those 15 years, the federal government has distributed $68 billion in grants and special tax credits to businesses, with two-thirds of that transferred to large corporations. Six companies have received $1 billion or more, while 21 have received $500 million or more.
“We now see that big business dominates federal subsidy spending the way it does state and local programs,” Philip Mattera, a co-author of the study, said in a news release. The largest recipient of federal grants and tax credits was a Spanish energy company, Iberdrola, which received the federal subsidies by “investing heavily in U.S. power generation facilities,” Good Jobs First reported.
The database, which the group touts as the first comprehensive accounting of federal subsidy awards, contains new records on more than 164,000 awards from 137 federal programs and expands on data collected by the group since 2010.
The time period covered by the state and local data is less consistent. Because open-records laws differ by state, the amount and extent of information obtained by Good Jobs First varies. Most is from the last 15 years, but some extends even further back, Mattera said.
Of all the state and local subsidy dollars tracked, half went to the top 30 companies, led by Boeing. The aerospace giant alone has received $13 billion in subsidies. Chip-maker Intel and metal giant Alcoa each received nearly $6 billion. General Motors scored $3.7 billion, and Ford secured $2.5 billion. All told, 19 large corporations have received at least $1 billion.
Some big corporations are also big double- and triple-dippers in federal and state funds.
Five corporations have achieved a trifecta, ranking among the 50 largest recipients of three kinds of funds: state subsidies; federal grants and tax credits; and federal loans, loan guarantees and bailout assistance. Those businesses, which Good Jobs First defines as the “most successful at obtain in subsidies from all levels of government” are Boeing, Ford Motor, General Electric, General Motors and JPMorgan Chase.
Another six — Dow Chemical, Lockheed Martin, NRG Energy, Sempra Energy, SolarCity and United Technologies — are among the top 50 recipients of state subsidies and federal grants. Goldman Sachs is among the largest recipients of state subsidies and federal loan assistance.
Some businesses double-dipped in other ways, too. Of the hundred most profitable federal contractors in the 2014 fiscal year, nearly half have received federal grants or tax credits since 2000.
NEW YORK — Hillary Rodham Clinton made no mention of her forthcoming presidential campaign, or her recent e-mail controversy, as she accepted an award here Monday for her work helping to ease the decades-long sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland.
Wearing green in honor of St. Patrick’s Day on Tuesday, Clinton said she accepted the Irish America magazine lifetime achievement award “on behalf of all the remarkable women that I met and admired in Northern Ireland” as first lady.
Magazine editor Patricia Harty said Clinton was honored “for her role in helping to broker the Good Friday agreement” during the administration of her husband, Bill Clinton.
The event underscored Hillary Clinton’s long history with Northern Ireland, which figured prominently in her time as first lady in the 1990s and was part of her last overseas visit as secretary of state. She faced attacks during the 2008 campaign after saying she “helped bring peace to Northern Ireland,” a claim she avoided making Monday.
Amid the Guinness toasts at lunchtime and jokes about the number of potential U.S. ambassadors to Ireland in the crowd, Clinton took a serious tone as she recalled a trip to Belfast in 1995, when she stood with her husband to light Christmas lights. The episode was part of a process that would eventually lead to a peace accord in 1998.
“They simply would not take no for answer,” Clinton said of women who pushed male leaders to make and keep the Good Friday accord that Bill Clinton counts as a signature achievement of his presidency.
Hillary Clinton returned often to Northern Ireland, including her final overseas trip as secretary of state, in December 2012. She had planned further trips but canceled them after falling and hitting her head after returning from Dublin and Belfast.
Clinton played no direct role in fostering the 1998 peace deal but is credited with helping solidify support for the reconciliation effort. Her work bringing together women from both sides of the conflict served as a foundation for Clinton’s later work as secretary of state to include women in political and peace discussions.
Clinton did not go into the particulars of her involvement Monday, while praising the roles played by others.
Bill Clinton bucked domestic political opposition to extend an invitation, and a U.S. visa, to Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, Hillary Clinton said. Adams sat across from Clinton at the head table Monday in a glittering ballroom along Central Park West.
Bill Clinton received the same award in 2011. The publisher of Irish America, Niall O’Dowd, is a longtime Democratic donor and served on Hillary Clinton’s 2008 finance committee.
Clinton is expected to launch her second run for the White House next month. Her appearance Monday marked her first public remarks since a tense news conference last week in which she sought to put to rest questions about her use of a private e-mail system while serving as secretary of state.
Later Monday, Clinton took to Twitter to criticize the GOP-controlled Congress, including for not yet confirming Loretta Lynch to head the Justice Department.
“Congressional trifecta against women today: 1) Blocking great nominee, 1st African American woman AG, for longer than any AG in 30 years,” Clinton wrote. “. . . 2) Playing politics with trafficking victims . . . 3) Threatening women’s health & rights.”
Jeb Bush used his private e-mail account as Florida governor to discuss security and military issues such as troop deployments to the Middle East and the protection of nuclear plants, according to a review of publicly released records.
The e-mails include two series of exchanges involving details of Florida National Guard troop deployments in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the review by The Washington Post found.
Aides to Bush said Saturday that none of the e-mails contained sensitive or classified information, and that many of the events mentioned in them were documented in press accounts, either contemporaneously or later. But security experts say private e-mail systems such as the one used by Bush are more vulnerable to hackers, and that details such as troop movements could be exploited by enemies.
An unknown number of the e-mails housed on Bush’s server were redacted or withheld from public release because they contained sensitive security issues, Bush representatives have said. Communications director Tim Miller said general policy was for Bush to discuss sensitive National Guard issues in person with only occasional briefings by e-mail that “wouldn’t contain information that should not be in the public domain. “This Democrat opposition research dump of a few innocuous e-mails that Gov. Bush voluntarily posted on a Web site only highlights how large the gap is between him and [former secretary of state] Clinton in the area of transparency,” Miller said in a statement.
Bush is actively considering a run for president and has sharply criticized likely Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton for her use of a private e-mail account when she served as secretary of state. He called it “baffling” that Clinton didn’t consider the potential security risks of discussing diplomatic and national security issues by using an e-mail account not tied to a government server.
As governor, Bush used his account, jeb@jeb.org, to conduct official, political and personal business, ranging from plans to woo new businesses to the state, judicial appointments and military matters, the e-mail records show. His e-mail server was housed at the governor’s office in Tallahassee during his two terms; he took it with him when he left office in 2007.
He later turned over about 280,000 e-mails for state archives under the requirements of Florida records laws, or about half of the total e-mails on the server.
In one e-mail sent four days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the top general for the Florida Air National Guard told Bush that “we are actively planning sequences in preparation for mobilization orders should they come.”
“They have not come at this time,” wrote Ronald O. Harrison, who was adjutant general of Florida. “We are pretty good at anticipating the type of forces potentially needed and are prepared to respond to the Presidents [sic] call.”
“Keep me informed of the mobilization,” Bush wrote in reply.
Bush officials noted that many of the deployment orders issued after 9/11 were included in news reports at the time, including some of those mentioned in the Bush e-mails.
In November 2001, Bush and an aide to then-Lt. Gov. Frank Brogan exchanged messages about the deployment of National Guard troops to a nuclear power plant in Crystal River, Fla. The aide wrote Bush that a state lawmaker had called to say she thought “it is imperative that the Crystal River nuclear facility have National Guard security.”
Bush wrote back: “Florida power does not want it. We are reducing or getting rid of guard protection in the other plants.”
Aides to Bush argue that the nuclear plant discussions were innocuous and mostly public anyway. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the International Atomic Energy Agency had warned that terrorists might try to attack nuclear power plants.
Bush dispatched Guard troops to protect two South Florida nuclear power plants but not the Crystal River facility. The plant’s operator, Florida Power Corp., declined the governor’s offer of security, according to local news reports at the time.
Aides also say Bush’s server was secure because it was kept at the governor’s office.
But Johannes Ullrich, a cybersecurity expert who is dean of research at the SANS Technology Institute, said private accounts in general are more susceptible to attacks than government e-mail addresses, particularly attacks in which a hacker establishes a look-alike account that allows them to impersonate as the account holder.
Encryption technology was also far less sophisticated in 2001, he said, which could have made Bush’s e-mails particularly insecure while traveling. If hackers gained access to Bush’s account, he said, there’s a chance they could break into the account of the National Guard commander or other officials who Bush exchanged e-mails with.
“The bigger issue here is, what else can an attacker do?” Ullrich said. “Now I may be able to penetrate a National Guard commander’s laptop by infecting it or by impersonating Jeb Bush’s account. . . . Now you may even be able to give the order to remove troops or change deployments.”
In recent days, Democrats — reeling from the criticism of Clinton’s e-mail practices — have stepped up their critique of Bush on the same topic, arguing that he used his personal e-mail to avoid public scrutiny of his actions as governor.
“The GOP presidential hopefuls’ attacks on this issue are completely disingenuous, and there are still a litany of questions Republicans need to answer, like what e-mails has Jeb Bush not turned over?” said Holly Shulman, a spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee.
Bush rebuffed such criticism during an event in New Hampshire on Friday. “I’m not surprised that the Clinton operatives would suggest this. It’s kind of standard operating procedure,” Bush told reporters, referring to Democratic charges that his e-mail situation was no different than Clinton’s.
He added later that he was “totally transparent. I have a BlackBerry as part of my official portrait, for crying out loud. There was nothing to hide.”
Under Florida law, Bush was required to hand over e-mails related to his time in office. Bush aides say there were about 550,000 e-mails on Bush’s server when he left office in 2007, although a portion of those came from before he began his tenure. About half that number were eventually turned over to state archives.
As noted Saturday by the New York Times, the archive process continued until last May, when attorneys for Bush delivered 25,000 additional messages. Aides have defended the pace of Bush’s compliance, saying that it took seven years because of his volume of correspondence.
In February, Bush launched a Web site, JebBushEmails.com, telling visitors that “they’re all here so you can read them and make up your own mind.”
Bush’s aides have strongly defended the process used to release his messages, noting that other potential GOP presidential candidates haven’t released any e-mails or are having e-mails released only as part of ongoing government investigations. The list includes former Texas govenor Rick Perry; Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal; Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker; and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie .
Perry and Jindal have used private e-mail for government business, according to the Associated Press. Former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley (D) — who is also weighing a presidential bid — said last week that he used a private Gmail account as governor to communicate with aides and Cabinet officials.
When Bush published his e-mails in February, aides said many messages would be withheld or redacted to comply with state law barring the release of messages including Social Security numbers, confidential business issues or law enforcement and other security matters. Some of the published e-mails initially included Social Security numbers, forcing Bush’s team to quickly redact them — an early stumble for the governor’s fledgling presidential efforts.
A spokeswoman for the Florida secretary of state’s office did not return a request for comment Saturday to explain why some e-mails were released and others withheld, saying any answer would require a fuller legal interpretation that wouldn’t be available until next week.
Bush’s archives include a handful of other messages from leaders of Florida’s National Guard. There are copies of the “Florida National Guard Activity Report” from August 2000 and December 2000, with information about troop deployments to the Caribbean, South Korea and Kuwait; the activation of units; and details on training exercises and drug seizures.
In October 2000, Harrison e-mailed Bush to remind him that 170 Florida Air National Guardsmen from Jacksonville would be deploying to Saudi Arabia to enforce the southern Iraq No-Fly Zone. The message said they would “coincidentally travel over with a group of 90 from the Texas Air National Guard” — a unit that was under the command of Bush’s brother, George W. Bush, who was then Texas governor.
The next month, a lieutenant commander with one of the deployed units e-mailed Jeb Bush to thank him for sending a message of support, noting that “our unit has played a key role in missions directly related” to ongoing tensions between Iraq and Israel. The officer added that “you can assure your brother the F-15s from your state could take the F-16s from his state!”
Immediately after news broke March 2 about Clinton’s use of a private server, Bush faulted her for not releasing her e-mails from her time as secretary of state, writing on Twitter that “Transparency matters.” He later raised concerns about Clinton’s decision during an interview with Radio Iowa.
“For security purposes, you need to be behind a firewall that recognizes the world for what it is, and it’s a dangerous world, and security would mean that you couldn’t have a private server,” he said. “It’s a little baffling, to be honest with you, that didn’t come up in Secretary Clinton’s thought process.”
On Friday night, after a meeting with potential supporters, Bush was asked to respond to criticism that he, like Clinton, was allowed to self-select which e-mails should be turned over for archiving.
“I was way too busy to decide,” Bush said, before clarifying that his general counsel was among those involved in selecting which e-mails to turn over.
“It was a process that was based on the law itself, and we complied with the law and all during this time we’ve complied with the law, even in my post-governorship,” he said.
In the last presidential contest, super PACs were an exotic add-on for most candidates. This time, they are the first priority.
Already, operatives with close ties to eight likely White House contenders have launched political committees that can accept unlimited donations — before any of them has even declared their candidacy. The latest, a super PAC called America Leads that plans to support Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, was announced Thursday.
The goal is simple: Potential candidates want to help their super PAC allies raise as much money as possible now, before their official campaigns start. That’s because once they announce their bids, federal rules require them to keep their distance.
Official candidates can still appear at super PAC fundraisers, but they cannot ask donors to give more than $5,000. And they cannot share inside strategic information with those running the group.
“Once someone becomes a candidate, there will be some very important guardrails you have to abide by,” said Michael E. Toner, a Republican campaign finance attorney who served on the Federal Election Commission.
But for now, there are few guardrails for most of the 2016 hopefuls. That’s why former Florida governor Jeb Bush is headlining $100,000-a-head fundraisers for a super PAC already ballooning with tens of millions of dollars in donations. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s political committee is soliciting corporate money and six-figure checks. And on Monday in New York, former New York governor George Pataki was the guest of honor at a fundraiser for his super PAC at a private Manhattan club, where co-chairs were asked to contribute $250,000 each.
[Why Jeb Bush is asking donors to stop at $1 million — for now]
The aggressive and open manner in which many White House hopefuls are embracing super PACs has startled many campaign finance experts, who say they are venturing onto untested legal ground even as undeclared candidates.
“We’re seeing a bending and an abuse and an evasion of federal campaign contribution limits to an extent that we’ve never before seen,” said Paul S. Ryan, senior counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, which seeks tougher campaign finance restrictions.
Candidates took pains to steer clear of their big-money allies in public during the past few election cycles, but there is little such distancing now.
Bush’s leadership committee and super PAC share the same name, Right to Rise, and were set up by the same GOP election law attorney, Charlie Spies. Walker’s Our American Revival political committee — registered under section 527 of the tax code, allowing to collect unlimited donations like a super PAC — is being run by Rick Wiley, the veteran Republican strategist who is expected to helm his official campaign. We the People Not Washington, the super PAC backing Pataki, features his photo and bio prominently on its Web site, along with a form to request a meeting with him. And a new super PAC launched last week to back former Texas governor Rick Perry called the Opportunity and Freedom PAC is being run by Austin Barbour, brother of Perry adviser Henry Barbour.
In meetings with top political contributors, representatives of the presumptive candidates regularly lay out a menu of options that include making donations to a super PAC, according to multiple people familiar with the sessions. And unlike before, that no longer sets off alarm bells.
“It used to be that donors were very concerned that the super PAC was independent of the candidate,” said Robert Kelner, a Washington election law attorney. But now, he said, “candidates appear to be essentially establishing their own super PACs. In the absence of enforcement or even serious media scrutiny, donors will tend to conclude that they don’t have to worry.”
The presumptive Democratic front-runner, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is so far keeping her distance from a network of super PACs and advocacy groups that are gearing up to back her campaign.
[The Koch network plans to spend nearly $1 billion in the run up to 2016]
But on the GOP side, presumptive candidates have been engaged in a frantic hunt for wealthy political patrons for their super PAC allies. During the past two months, their schedules have been packed with visits to the Manhattan offices of billionaire hedge-fund managers and appearances at private donor conferences, such as a January event in Rancho Mirage, Calif., for backers of a political network organized by the industrialists Charles and David Koch.
“It really is a charade that we have any semblance of campaign finance limits,” said Miles Rapoport, president of Common Cause, which seeks to lessen the influence of money on politics. “What we’re seeing is a wealth primary to the tenth degree, where what candidates are doing is chasing a very small number of people who can make or break their candidacies from day one.”
Even some of those writing the big checks are uncomfortable with the new order.
“I do not like the super PACs,” said Chicago private-equity executive Bill Kunkler. “I think it’s the lowest return on investment.”
Nevertheless, Kunkler recently donated $25,000 to Bush’s super PAC. “I want to support the presumptive candidate, and that’s the vehicle,” Kunkler explained, adding: “We have got to reform how our political system is being financed. It’s just crazy.”
Campaign finance lawyers said the close ties between the likely candidates and their super-PAC allies pose serious legal questions, including whether the groups could later be considered affiliated with the eventual campaign or viewed as an entity created by the candidate. That could limit their ability to spend money raised outside candidate contribution limits, which stand at $2,700 per person for the 2016 primaries.
There’s little chance, however, that such issues will be wrestled with at a sharply divided Federal Election Commission, which has deadlocked over whether to even open up enforcement investigations.
The intense super PAC fundraising is also viewed by some critics as evidence that the presumptive candidates are “testing the waters,” a legal term used by the FEC to refer to activities undertaken by a possible candidate, such as polling and traveling to key states to measure support for a bid. Such activities can only be paid for by money raised under the candidate contribution limit, but they do not have to be reported to the FEC unless the person testing the waters decides to become a candidate.
So far, only three contenders — Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), former senator Jim Webb (D-Va.) and retired Maryland neurosurgeon Ben Carson (R) — have announced that they are testing the waters and have set up political committees to raise funds for that purpose.
Bush spokeswoman Kristy Campbell said that his team is “fully complying with the law in all activities that Governor Bush is engaging in on the political front.”
“If Governor Bush engages in any testing-the-waters activities, they will be paid for appropriately under the law and reported at the required time,” she added.
One category of 2016 contenders cannot take part in the early super PAC rush: federal officeholders, who, like official candidates, can’t coordinate with the groups. That’s one reason there are no major super PACs yet for GOP Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas, all of whom are considering presidential bids.
After the campaigns officially kick off, candidate-specific super PACs are poised to be central to the 2016 race. The big-money groups are likely to fuel a protracted fight for the Republican nomination — a more intense version of what happened in 2012, when wealthy backers financed super PACs that helped former House speaker Newt Gingrich and former senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania wound former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.
This time around, GOP strategists believe that at least a half-dozen candidates could be flanked by super PACs sitting on millions as they head into the Iowa caucuses, including Bush, Christie, Cruz, Paul, Rubio and Walker.
“They could change the way we’ve always looked at the process for the nomination,” said Ron Weiser, a former finance chairman of the Republican National Committee, noting that candidates who do well in the early primaries usually enjoy a rush of donations. “But what’s that mean when other candidates’ super PACs have amounts substantially in excess of that?”
It remains to be seen how the White House contenders will handle their big-money allies once they have no direct control over the groups.
Asked by reporters in Iowa on Saturday whether he would call on his aligned super PAC to refrain from running negative ads, Bush said, “My hope is that we’ll have a positive campaign. It’s possible a super PAC could be a positive message, as well.”
He brushed off the question when asked again: “That’s way in the future.”
Ed O’Keefe and Philip Rucker in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, contributed to this report.
A bit of sunlight poking through the darkness on Wall Street (jk there is no darkness on Wall Street): The average bonus for a Wall Street employee ticked up again in 2014, hitting $172,860 according to analysis from the New York state comptroller. That sum isn’t a recent peak; before the recession, Wall Streeters were getting $225,000 in 2014 dollars.
That’s enough to give the maximum 2014 contribution to 66 members of Congress, should the Wall Streer bonusers have wanted to. And seeing as how contributions from the finance, insurance and real estate industries in 2014 hit nearly half a billion dollars, it’s safe to assume that some of this cash will make its way to Washington. (It may also explain why Jeb Bush just hired a Wall Street executive to help guide his campaign policy)
The $172,860 figure may not be a recent peak, but it is still more than three times the median household income in America. And that’s just the bonus — not the salaries these Wall Street workers earn.
Another comparison to regular America: The average Wall Street bonus used to be about one-ninth of the median price of a new home. These days, two Wall Streeters could pool their bonuses and buy a house together, and have some money left over. (Not a house near Wall Street, mind you, but the $172,000 would certainly cover a lot of the rent.)
If Jeb actually did want to hit the much-pooh-poohed $100 million fundraising goal, he’d only need 579 Wall Street workers to turn over their bonuses. Last year alone, Wall Street added 2,300 new employees. So maybe raising $100 million isn’t as hard as it looked.
The Amazing Democrats 