POLITICS

thelivyjr
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FOX News

"Biden repeats vow to beat Trump 'like a drum' in Washington Post op-ed, says 'you won't destroy my family'"


Morgan Phillips

6 OCTOBER 2019

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden accused President Trump of "pushing flat-out lies, debunked conspiracy theories and smears against me and my family" in a Washington Post op-ed published late Saturday before repeating his vow to beat the incumbent "like a drum" in next year's election.

Biden, the former vice president of the United States, contrasted Trump with George Washington, who Biden said "famously could not tell a lie."

"President Trump seemingly cannot tell the truth — about anything," Biden continued.

"He slanders anyone he sees as a threat …"

"It's the same cynical playbook he returns to again and again."

Biden, whose status as the frontrunner in the Democratic race has been challenged in recent weeks, has been at the center of a political storm since House Democrats launched an impeachment inquiry into Trump last week.

The probe centers around a July 25 phone call between Trump and newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, during which the American president asked his Ukrainian counterpart to look into whether Biden halted an investigation into Ukrainian gas firm Burisma Holdings, where Biden's son Hunter once sat on the board.

"There's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that," Trump told Zelensky, according to a memorandum of the conversation released Sept. 25.


"So whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great."

"Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution, so if you can look into it …"

"It sounds horrible to me."

One of the major issues in the impeachment inquiry is whether Trump withheld $400 million in military aid to Ukraine, making its release conditional on the Kiev government investigating the Bidens.

The former vice president did not mention his son, Burisma Holdings or Ukraine in the op-ed.

He did reference remarks Trump made Thursday on the South Lawn of the White House in which the president said China "should start an investigation into the Bidens because what happened with China is just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine."

"I’m sure that President Xi [Jinping] does not like being under that kind of scrutiny where billions of dollars is taken out of his country by a guy that just got kicked out of the Navy," said Trump, who was making an apparent reference to a 2013 trip by Joe Biden to Beijing on Air Force Two in which Hunter Biden tagged along.

NBC News reported that Hunter Biden was attempting to start a big-money private equity fund, for which Chinese authorities issued a business license 10 days after the trip was over.

Joe Biden described those remarks as a "violation of the rule of law [that] is so outrageous, it's clear he considers the presidency a free pass to do whatever he wants, with no accountability."

"America’s word and our standing in the world are in free fall because of the actions and incompetence of this president,” added Biden, who also used the op-ed to hit Trump on key Democratic campaign issues gun control and climate change.

The piece concluded with a reprise of the "like a drum" refrain, which Biden used when addressing voters in Iowa last month.

“And to Trump and those who facilitate his abuses of power, and all the special interests funding his attacks against me: Please know that I’m not going anywhere," Biden said.

"You won’t destroy me, and you won’t destroy my family."

"And come November 2020, I intend to beat you like a drum."

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ ... P17#page=2
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Re: POLITICS

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WHAT AN IGNORANT FOOL TRUMP IS …

CONGRESS PERSONS CANNOT BE IMPEACHED …

THAT IS GRADE SCHOOL LEVEL KNOWLEDGE …

THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

"Trump accuses Pelosi of 'treason' and calls for her to be 'immediately impeached'"


Carlin Becker

8 OCTOBER 2019

President Trump accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of treason and called for her, along with House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, to be impeached.

"Nancy Pelosi knew of all of the many Shifty Adam Schiff lies and massive frauds perpetrated upon Congress and the American people, in the form of a fraudulent speech knowingly delivered as a ruthless con, and the illegal meetings with a highly partisan 'Whistleblower' & lawyer," he tweeted Sunday night.

The president continued, "This makes Nervous Nancy every bit as guilty as Liddle’ Adam Schiff for High Crimes and Misdemeanors, and even Treason."

"I guess that means that they, along with all of those that evilly 'Colluded' with them, must all be immediately Impeached!"

Trump has repeatedly railed against Schiff ever since the California Democrat read a summarization of the president's July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, during which Trump asked the foreign leader to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, the 2020 Democratic front-runner, and his son Hunter.

In addition to calling on Schiff to resign, the president has accused the congressman of helping to write an intelligence community whistleblower's complaint about the call, which paved the way for House Democrats to launch an impeachment inquiry into Trump, after news broke that the unnamed CIA officer spoke with House Intelligence staff before filing the complaint.

Schiff has defended his rendition of Trump's phone call as "at least in part parody" but faced backlash for his earlier knowledge of the complaint.

Over the weekend, a second whistleblower with more direct information on the president's dealings with Ukraine came forward.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ ... id=HPDHP17
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Re: POLITICS

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THE WASHINGTON POST

"Syrian Kurds see American betrayal and warn fight against ISIS is now in doubt"


Liz Sly, Sarah Dadouch, Asser Khattab

8 OCTOBER 2019

BEIRUT —For the past five years, Syrian Kurds have stood alongside the United States in its effort to vanquish the Islamic State, in the process securing control over a vast area of Syria they hoped would form the nucleus of an autonomous Kurdish region.

The unexpected announcement by President Trump that he will draw down the U.S. military presence in Syria to make way for Turkish troops was greeted by the Kurds as a betrayal of the trust established during the fight, which has cost the lives of more than 12,000 members of the Syrian Democratic Forces, the joint Kurdish-Arab militia formed to battle the militants.


It remains unclear how extensive the U.S. troop drawdown or a Turkish incursion will be.

A small number of U.S. troops pulled out Tuesday from two observation posts on the Turkish border, in the towns of Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ain, that were established this year in an effort to create a buffer zone along the border in cooperation with Turkey.

From Turkey’s perspective, the U.S. partnership with the Kurds has always represented an affront to its decades-old NATO alliance with the United States.

The People’s Protection Units, the Kurdish group that dominates the SDF, is closely affiliated with the Kurdish PKK, which has been waging a decades-long insurgency in Turkey and is labeled a terrorist organization by both Ankara and Washington.

For the Kurds, the decision to permit Turkey to invade marked the latest in a long history of betrayals of Kurdish aspirations by the international community, which started when they were denied their own state in the Kurdish areas of Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran in the wake of World War I.


“Our brave men and women with the Syrian Democratic ­Forces have just won a historic victory over the ISIS ‘caliphate,’ a victory announced by President Trump and celebrated across the world."

"To abandon us now would be tragic,” the Syrian Democratic Coalition, the political wing of the SDF, said in a statement.

Kurdish officials say they are hoping they can prevent, or at least delay, a full departure of U.S. troops from Syria.

A complete withdrawal would leave the Kurds at the mercy not only of invading Turks to the north but also of Russian- and Iranian-backed Syrian troops to the south, while facing the efforts of the Islamic State to reconstitute its insurgency.

Trump has vowed twice before to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, only to run into stiff resistance from members of his administration.

The last time he said forces would leave, nearly a year ago, the Pentagon halved the number of troops, but administration officials managed to secure an extension for 1,000 to remain, pending the negotiation of a wider settlement to the Syrian war.

“Maybe the situation could still change,” said Badran Jia Kurd, a senior Kurdish official.

“We believe it is not too late for the decision to change.”

U.S. and Kurdish officials say it is their understanding that U.S. troops will remain in Syria south of the area along the border that Turkey is threatening to invade.

Outside this border zone are overwhelmingly Arab areas where the risk of an Islamic State comeback is most grave.

They include the city of Raqqa, formerly the Islamic State’s “capital”; the province of Deir al-Zour; and the al-Hol detention camp, where tens of thousands of women and children who lived under ISIS are held.

It is hard to envision how the United States could sustain a presence in Syria in partnership with the Kurds if the Kurds are embroiled in conflict with Turkey, an American NATO ally, analysts and officials said.

The Kurds left no doubt that the partnership is now in question.

Although the SDF has not withdrawn any fighters from the essential duty of guarding Islamic State captives, it has relocated some of its best fighters to the Turkish border in case of a Turkish incursion, an SDF official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.

The SDF has no choice but to put a higher priority on defending the lands it controls against Turkish troops than on fighting the Islamic State, said SDF spokesman Kino Gabriel.

“The military forces we have in Deir al-Zour and Raqqa — if necessary we are going to mobilize them to counter any Turkish attack,” he said.

“We are not going to accept any Turkish invasion, and we are going to use all our resources.”

“We are very disappointed."

"I don’t think we will be able to concentrate on fighting Daesh,” he added, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State.

In its statement, the Syrian Democratic Coalition warned, “To disregard our partnership would also send a clear signal to all would-be partner forces of the United States that a U.S. alliance may not be trustworthy.”

That signal is likely to resonate in the overwhelmingly Arab areas where it is assumed U.S. troops will remain, said Hassan Hassan, of the Center for Global Policy, who is from Deir al-Zour.

Even if U.S. troops decide to remain in Syria, many Arabs are likely to question how long they will stay and the prudence of aligning with a power that may abruptly leave.

To the west and the south, Syrian government troops, backed by Iran and Russia, are also poised to intervene in areas now controlled by the U.S. military, in accordance with President Bashar al-Assad’s stated goal of bringing all of Syria back under government authority.

Arabs living under U.S. and Kurdish control are now likely to be further deterred from cooperating with the SDF and the Americans, Hassan said.

“It changes the game almost completely,” he said.

“Before, they were hedging their bets with the United States."

"Now, they will see that it is Turkey that is ascendant.”

The Turks are the immediate concern for the Kurds, said Gen. Mazloum Kobane Abdi, the overall SDF commander.

The area the Turkish troops are threatening to enter contains a substantial population of Kurds as well as Arabs.

Erdogan has said he intends to relocate to the area up to 1 million Syrian refugees, most of them Arabs, in what Mazloum said would amount to “ethnic cleansing.”

“If ethnic cleansing happens in our area, or they kill Kurds and bring Arabs in, this will be the U.S.’s responsibility,” Mazloum said.

liz.sly@washpost.com

sarah.dadouch@washpost.com

asser.khattab@washpost.com

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/syr ... P17#page=2
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Re: POLITICS

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MARKETWATCH

"Powell says economic expansion can last, but there are risks"


By Greg Robb

Published: Oct 8, 2019 3:51 p.m. ET

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said the consensus among his colleagues at the U.S. central bank is that the record-long U.S. economic expansion can be sustained, but there are risks to this optimistic view.

“FOMC participants continue to see a sustained expansion of economic activity, strong labor market conditions, and inflation near our symmetric 2 percent objective as most likely."


Many outside forecasters agree,” Powell told the National Association for Business Economics annual meeting in Denver.

He noted that inflation “has been gradually firming over the past few months.”

During the question-and-answer session, Powell said “clearly things are slowing a bit,” but he added this might be another pause that refreshes the expansion.

These slowdowns have occurred a few times in this expansion, he noted.

Powell did not give any concrete guidance to investors about the Fed’s plans regarding short-term interest rates, saying only that the meeting set for the end of October “is several weeks away.”

“We are carefully monitoring incoming information."

"We will be data dependent, assessing the outlook and risks to the outlook on a meeting-by-meeting basis,” he said.

Repeating what the central bank has said in its policy statement since the summer, Powell said the Fed “will act as appropriate to support continued growth.”

There is a split at the Fed about whether more easing or further interest rate cuts are necessary.

Some on the Fed back another rate cut prior to the end of the year, believing that low rates would calm financial markets and give businesses reason to invest.

Economists think that this camp includes Powell.

Others on the central bank want to wait for more clues about the health of the economy before giving it more stimulus.

They’re worried low rates would create what amounts to a short-lived sugar-high for the economy and foster financial imbalances.

Private sector economists are forecasting that the economy will slow over the next 14 months.

Economists at the Peterson Institute for International Economics see growth slipping to a 1.8% rate next year, down from the 2.6% rate seen in the first half of this year.

The Fed has cut interest rates twice this year by a quarter-point at the last two policy meetings.

Officials will meet again on Oct. 29-30.

Investors see an 80% chance the Fed will trim rates by another quarter point to a range of 150%-175%, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch tool.

Turning to short-term funding markets, Powell said “a range of factors” might have caused the turmoil seen last month when the cost of short-term borrowing spiked as firms scrambled to get funding.

Regardless the cause, Powell said it was now time for the Fed to increase the size of its balance sheet.

He said the central bank may purchase short-term Treasury bills.

Some analysts call this a “soft” form of quantitative easing, because the Fed buys these securities from the market, but Powell bristled at this description.

“I want to emphasize that growth of our balance sheet for reserve management purposes should in no way be confused with the large-scale asset purchase program that we deployed after the financial crisis,” he said.


Powell mentioned that the yield curve control, used by the Bank of Japan, might be a tool used to fight the next recession.

He also suggested that the central bank wasn’t interested in pushing short-term rates into negative territory, a tool used in both Europe and Japan.

“Short-term yield curve control is something worth looking at when the time comes,” Powell said.

This is a form of an interest-rate peg, where a central bank commits to buy whatever amount of bonds it needs to in order to keep a particular part of the yield curve at its target.

The BOJ has used yield curve controls to keep yields on 10-year Japanese Government Bonds around zero percent since 2016.

Stocks were volatile during Powell’s remarks.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average recovered from a loss earlier in the day, before losing ground near the close.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/powel ... 2019-10-08
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Re: POLITICS

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BLOOMBERG

"White House Focuses on China Stock Limits in Retirement Fund"


By Jenny Leonard

‎October‎ ‎8‎, ‎2019‎ ‎7‎:‎00‎ ‎AM Updated on ‎October‎ ‎8‎, ‎2019‎ ‎10‎:‎51‎ ‎AM

* Deputy talks last week focused on safeguarding government fund

* Officials seeking to protect against opaque China oversight


The Trump administration is moving ahead with discussions around possible restrictions on portfolio flows into China, with a particular focus on investments made by U.S. government retirement funds, people familiar with the internal deliberations said.

The efforts are advancing even after American officials pushed back strongly against a Bloomberg News report late last month that a range of such limits was under review.

Trump officials last week held meetings on the issue just hours after White House adviser Peter Navarro dismissed the report as “fake news,” and zeroed in on how to prevent U.S. government retirement funds from financing China’s economic rise, the people said.

The office of Larry Kudlow, director of the White House’s National Economic Council, convened a policy-coordination committee meeting last Tuesday, which also included officials from the National Security Council and the Treasury Department, the people added.

An NEC spokesman declined to comment.

The news cast another cloud over trade talks expected to resume later this week between the world’s two largest economies.

The yen strengthened against the dollar, U.S. stocks slumped for a second day and the yield on 10-year Treasuries touched the lowest level in about a month.

According to people familiar with the meeting, the administration’s focus is now on ways to further scrutinize index providers’ decision to add Chinese firms they consider a material risk for American investors.

It’s still unclear what legal authority the White House would rely on to force major indexes to drop certain Chinese companies.

Pension Fund

At least one of the issues under consideration is time-sensitive.

The Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board in 2017 made a decision that by mid-2020 the international fund offered to workers in the government’s retirement savings plan would mirror the MSCI All Country World Index, which captures emerging markets, including China.

The board is scheduled to meet Oct. 21.

Some U.S. lawmakers and China hawks outside the government have pushed the board to reverse that decision and, if necessary, have the administration use executive power to protect U.S. government workers.

They argue that Americans are harmed by channeling money into Chinese firms that are allegedly involved in human-rights violations and at the center of U.S. national security concerns.

The change would expose almost $50 billion in retirement assets of federal government employees, including members of the U.S. Armed Forces, to severe and undisclosed material risks associated with many of the Chinese companies listed on the index, opponents argue.

Blacklist

The Commerce Department on Monday put a number of Chinese entities -- including surveillance technology company Hikvision -- on an export blacklist that prohibits American firms from doing business with them unless they have a U.S. government license to do so.

Hikvision, which is listed on the MSCI All Country World index, has been cited by Trump’s advisers as one of several Chinese companies that presents a threat to American investors.

In response on Tuesday, a Chinese official warned it would retaliate.

As with most policy discussions in the Trump administration, the president’s advisers have a range of opinions on the matter and haven’t agreed on a path forward yet, people close to the deliberations said.

The officials do seem to agree, however, that there’s a political upside to engaging on the issue, the people added.

The White House is citing investor protection as the main reason for taking action and is carefully working to keep the matter separate from the ongoing trade negotiations that are set to resume in Washington this week.

“What we’re looking at is U.S. investor protections, transparency and compliance with a number of laws," Kudlow told reporters Monday.

“There’s been complaints by the stock exchanges about this, the SEC has heard complaints, so we’ve opened up a study group to take a look at it, but we’re very early in our deliberations.”

Trade Talks

Any action on capital flows could undoubtedly be seen as a negotiating chip by President Donald Trump, who has in the past put other issues on the table in the talks with Beijing.

The Office of U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer isn’t playing a key role in the discussions around capital flows because they are separate from the trade talks, two of the people said.

A spokesman for Lighthizer didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Lighthizer, however, is Trump’s point person in talks for a trade deal and any Chinese reaction to the investment limit plans would likely be taken to him in the context of the negotiations.

The options for investment limits that were initially discussed included forcing a delisting of Chinese companies from U.S. exchanges, imposing limits on investments in Chinese markets by U.S. government pension funds and putting caps on the value of Chinese companies included in indexes managed by U.S. firms, according to people familiar with and involved in the discussions.

Capital Controls

Since the deliberations first became public, administration efforts around delisting Chinese companies have been put on hold for now, the people said.

A Treasury Department spokeswoman said Sept. 28 that option was not being contemplated “at this time.’’

She didn’t address any of the other possibilities being examined and declined to offer any further details.

Kudlow on Monday also told reporters delisting plans were “not on the table.”

While the value of the pension fund and the money it would funnel into China’s market next year is relatively small compared with the overall market and the value of Chinese companies listed on U.S. exchanges, the action has symbolic importance and could be interpreted as the first step in the U.S. government moving toward capital controls.

It’s also a domestic winner for the White House, which would be able to claim that it stopped American armed forces and government workers’ dollars from funding the rise of Chinese companies that Washington alleges have stolen intellectual property from U.S. firms to advance their technological lead over America.

That fight is at the heart of Trump’s trade war with Beijing.

Some Trump officials are still pushing for limits on the Chinese companies included in stock indexes managed by U.S. firms, though it’s still an open question how that goal could be achieved.

The hard-line advisers are concerned about indexes loading up on Chinese shares of companies that are subject to U.S. sanctions and therefore prohibited from doing business with the government.

Those advisers consider it troubling that Americans aren’t made aware of that material risk, people briefed on the talks said.

— With assistance by Shawn Donnan, Zoe Schneeweiss, Liz McCormick, and Lucy Meakin

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... aign=trade
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Re: POLITICS

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SHE IS ESTABLISHING HER VICTIMHOOD HERE WHICH IS NOW A PREREQUISITE OF HOLDING HIGH OFFICE IN AMERICA …

IF YOU ARE NOT A VICTIM OF SOMETHING, YOU LACK THE NECESSARY CACHET TO BE AN AMERICAN PRESIDENT ...

CBS News

"Warren stands by account of being pushed out of her first teaching job"


Zak Hudak

8 OCTOBER 2019

On the campaign trail, Elizabeth Warren often tells the story of how she was fired from her first teaching job in 1971 because she was pregnant, a pivotal moment that ultimately put her on a path to Harvard, the United States Senate, and quite possibly the presidency.

But recently, several media outlets have questioned the veracity of these claims.


In an exclusive interview with CBS News on Monday evening, Warren said she stands by her characterizations of why she left the job.

"All I know is I was 22 years old, I was 6 months pregnant, and the job that I had been promised for the next year was going to someone else."

"The principal said they were going to hire someone else for my job," she said.

Warren has repeatedly said that her principal "showed [her] the door" after discovering she was pregnant at the end of the 1971 school year.

The episode is pivotal to her life story, in that it dashed her dreams of remaining a public school teacher and launched her reluctantly down the path to public service.

Fresh out of the University of Houston, Warren was hired by the Riverdale Board of Education in New Jersey as a speech pathologist for the 1970-1971 school year.

Since she began her campaign for the presidency, she has repeatedly said that she was "shown the door" after just a year as a result of her pregnancy.

"By the end of the first year I was visibly pregnant, and the principal did what principals did in those days: wished me luck, showed me the door, and hired someone else for the job," she said at a town hall in Oakland in June.

The "showed me the door" anecdote came up often on the campaign trail until recently.

And now some outlets have found a 2007 interview Warren gave in which she presents the story in a different light.

In an interview that year at the University of California, Berkeley, Warren gave the first known public account of her time at Riverdale.

"I worked in a public school system with the children with disabilities."

"I did that for a year, and then that summer I didn't have the education courses, so I was on an 'emergency certificate,' it was called," Warren said in 2007.

"I went back to graduate school and took a couple of courses in education and said, 'I don't think this is going to work out for me.'"


"I was pregnant with my first baby, so I had a baby and stayed home for a couple of years."

Asked by CBS News why she told the story differently at Berkeley a decade ago, Warren said her life since her election to the Senate in 2012 caused her to "open up" about her past.

"After becoming a public figure I opened up more about different pieces in my life and this was one of them."

"I wrote about it in my book when I became a U.S. Senator," she said in a statement from her campaign.

Warren's changes in phrasing when discussing her dismissal have sparked questions about her story's veracity.

Fox News has cited the 2007 interview as a contradiction with her more recent statements.

The Washington Free Beacon reported on a transcript from contemporaneous local school board meetings, also obtained by CBS News, which said Warren was rehired that spring and that the board "accepted with regret" her "resignation" the following summer.

In fact, the school board minutes show that the board voted by unanimous roll call to extend Warren a "provisional certificate" in speech pathology.


Local newspaper reports from 1971 also present reasons for her leaving the school alternative to what she describes on the trail.

The Paterson News, a local paper, reported that summer that Warren was "leaving to raise a family."

The next month, a story about the school board hiring a replacement said Warren had "resigned for personal reasons," even though the board had voted to "appoint" Warren to the same speech pathology job that April, according to an earlier report.

Warren told CBS News she stands by her characterization of getting "shown the door" because of her pregnancy and called it an "accurate description."

"When someone calls you in and says the job that you've been hired for for the next year is no longer yours, 'We're giving it to someone else,' I think that's being shown the door," Warren told CBS News.

In her 2014 memoir, published after she became a Massachusetts senator, Warren gave a similar account of her departure from Riverdale Elementary.

Warren also told CBS News that she was, in fact, officially offered the job for the following year as the school board minutes indicate.

"In April of that year, my contract was renewed to teach again for the next year," Warren said.

She also said she had been hiding her pregnancy from the school.

"I was pregnant, but nobody knew it."

"And then a couple of months later when I was six months pregnant and it was pretty obvious, the principal called me in, wished me luck, and said he was going to hire someone else for the job," Warren said.

Asked repeatedly whether she meant she was fired when she said the principal showed her the door, Warren said, "When someone calls you in and says, the job that you've been hired for for next year, is no longer yours, we're giving it to someone else."

"I think that's being 'shown the door.'"

Recent profiles of Warren have referenced her departure from Riverdale Elementary and that stated she was fired from her job.

"Warren was laid off when she became pregnant, and after her daughter was born," The New York Times Magazine reported in June.

"She called the role a dream job, and one that she still might have today had she not been terminated for being visibly pregnant," The Huffington Post reported a month before.

Later in the summer, however, Warren was telling the same story about the principal without the part about him showing her the door.

"I was visibly pregnant."

"And back in the day, that meant that the principal said to me," Warren said, pausing, "wished me luck and hired someone else for the job.

Asked about this change in stump speech, Warren told CBS News she "actually hadn't noticed" she does not reference her firing like this anymore.

Interviews with retired teachers who worked for the Riverdale Board of Education at the same time as Warren suggest that while they do not remember Warren or the circumstances of her leaving the school, the workplace culture at the time may have left Warren with no option but to move on when her pregnancy became apparent.

Two retired teachers who worked at Riverdale Elementary for over 30 years, including the year Warren was there, told CBS News that they don't remember anyone being explicitly fired due to pregnancy during their time at the school.

But Trudy Randall and Sharon Ercalano each said that a non-tenured, pregnant employee like Warren would have had little job security at Riverdale in 1971, seven years before the Pregnancy Discrimination Act was passed.

"The rule was at five months you had to leave when you were pregnant."

"Now, if you didn't tell anybody you were pregnant, and they didn't know, you could fudge it and try to stay on a little bit longer," Randall said.

"But they kind of wanted you out if you were pregnant."

As the school board minutes show, no member of the Riverdale school board at the time was a woman.

A full year after Warren's dismissal, the Associated Press wrote that a recent New Jersey State Division of Civil Rights decision meant that "pregnant teachers can no longer be automatically forced out of New Jersey classrooms."

After leaving her position at Riverdale Elementary, Warren took education and accounting courses at local New Jersey colleges before applying to Rutgers Law School in 1973, according to her law school application.

She graduated in 1976, again "visibly pregnant," and became a lecturer in law at Rutgers in 1977.

By the early 2000s, she had become a leading public intellectual and an expert on bankruptcy law.

She later was the architect of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and was elected to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts in 2012.

But according to Warren, had she not been pushed out of that teaching job at Riverdale Elementary, she would likely still be teaching special needs students.

"I would probably still be doing it today, but life has a way of putting another kink in it."

"By the end of the first year, I was visibly pregnant," Warren said at the Manchester Democratic City Committee's Flag Day dinner in June.

"And, back in the day, the principal did what principals did."

"Wished me good luck, showed me the door and hired someone else for the job."

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ ... id=HPDHP17
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Re: POLITICS

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THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR October 7, 2019 at 9:26 pm

Paul Plante says :

Ah, yes, totalitarianism and the sensationalist and alarmist media reporting required to make it happen as we can see from this article in the Guardian entitled “US to stage its largest ever climate strike: ‘Somebody must sound the alarm'” by Oliver Milman in New York on 20 September 2019, as follows:

The US is set to stage its largest ever day of protest over the climate crisis, with tens of thousands of students joined by adults in abandoning schools and workplaces for a wave of strikes across the country.

end quotes

Now, here we have a real good example of the “doom-and-gloom” hysteria-mongering by the media to make people scared, and therefore, off-balance, which makes them all the more readily manipulated, and especially the children who are unable to think for themselves when confronted with the term “CLIMATE CRISIS,” which has the children thinking that life on earth is about to end and unless we cede power to the Democrats, we are all doomed.

But what is the “CLIMATE CRISIS?”

And the answer is – nobody, starting with the consensus, really knows.

Getting back to the hysteria-mongering of the Guardian, we have:

The young strikers’ totemic figure, the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, will take part in the New York walkout and will speak to massed protesters in Manhattan.

Authorities in New York City have announced that its student population of 1.1 million is able to skip school in order to attend the strikes.

end quotes

New York City, of course, is PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRAT territory, so it should not come as a surprise to anyone that the authorities in New York City would be purposefully and shamefully exploiting these children for partisan political gain.

Getting back to the Guardian:

Hundreds of doctors have written medical notes to excuse students from their classes due to the threat posed by the climate crisis.

end quotes

What can anyone say to that other than incredible, which takes us back to the Guardian, as follows:

“This is going to be the largest mobilization for climate action in history,” said Alexandria Villaseñor, a 14-year-old who has been protesting outside the UN headquarters over climate every Friday since December.

“World leaders can either listen now or listen later because our voice is only going to get louder as the climate crisis gets more urgent.”

“Adults need to step up and support us.”

“Civil disobedience breaks the system and once it’s broken it’s an amazing opportunity to make things better.”

end quotes

That is what those doctors and the New York City authorities are promoting – civil disobedience which plays right into the hands of the Democrats.

“BREAK THE SYSTEM, AND WE DEMOCRATS WILL LEAD YOU INTO THE BRAVE NEW WORLD,” as we can see from the following in that Guardian article, to wit:

“We are excited to disrupt business as usual, to demand a Green New Deal,” Audrey Maurine Xin Lin, an 18-year-old organizer in Boston, in reference to the resolution put forward by progressive Democrats to enact a second world war-style economic mobilization to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions.

end quotes

Yes, we need to go on a war footing in this “WAR AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE” as we did in WWII, with our war economy being overseen by war councils comprised of Democrats as a supreme body to subsume military and civilian organizations and to direct the vast war economy.

To actually be able to win this war to make the climate stop changing, we need to re-create a number of preparedness agencies including an Office for Emergency Management headed up by either AOC, or more properly, since she is the most prepared, Greta Thunberg, who can come in and hit the ground running as we shift over to a full war-time economy as we do battle with the earth’s climate, itself.

And of course, we would also then need a National Defense Advisory Commission; an Office of Production Management; and a Supply Priorities Allocation Board.

We would also need a War Production Board, placed under the direction of the Democrats and Greta Thunberg,

And finally, we need an Office of War Mobilization if we are going to make a serious effort as a nation and as a people to actually lick climate change for once and for all, so Greta doesn’t have to feel fear each day, and we don’t have to panic.

And all it takes to make all that happen, which would give the Democrats total control over every aspect of our lives is for enough people to be made afraid.

http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/t ... ent-184715
thelivyjr
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Re: POLITICS

Post by thelivyjr »

THE SAND LAKE ADVERTISER, p.29

19 SEPTEMBER 2019

On the Silly Season and Eric Wohlleber

Once again, as happens this time every year as election day approaches, we citizens who must decide who should hold the public offices that are intended to keep our various levels of government functioning efficiently and effectively to protect and safeguard our lives, health, liberty, and property, which is what we have governments for in this country, although so many of our office seekers and holders seem to be entirely ignorant of that, making it about them, instead, are entering into what is known colloquially as the “silly season,” so named because this is the time of year when we are treated to all kinds of claims and boasts and promises from those seeking office, which takes me to a piece of election-year political propaganda that ended up in my mailbox, wherein was claimed that Eric Wohlleber of Poestenkill is running for a seat on the Poestenkill Town Council to “ensure that town government is responsive to the residents and that we are providing the proper services to build a bright future.”

As someone who has lived in this town now for seventy (70) years, and who has had contact with this same Eric Wohlleber concerning the Jacangelo Garbage Reception Station in Poestenkill that is operating as a public nuisance according to our code as written, as a resident of this town and a voter, I would step forward and challenge Mr. Wohlleber on that statement about “ensuring that town government is responsive to the residents,” because that is an empty statement and an insult to our intelligence.

Mr. Wohlleber had his opportunity over these last several years as a sitting councilman to ensure that town government is responsive to the residents, and he not only failed to do that, but has gone further to ensure that the town totally ignores the residents of the residentially zoned area of the Town who are subjected to the nuisance of the Jacangelo garbage transfer station on a daily basis.

So, people, in a word, his word is worthless.

Vote for him at your peril.

Paul Plante

"Poestenkill councilman charged in DWI case"

Albany, New York Times Union

Updated 5:24 pm EDT, Monday, October 7, 2019

POESTENKILL – A town councilman running for re-election was ticketed for aggravated DWI in a two-vehicle accident when his blood alcohol content was three times the legal limit, the Rensselaer County Sheriff’s Office said Monday.

Republican Councilman Eric Wohlleber’s DWI charge on Friday evening came less than five weeks before the Nov. 5 election.


The accident occurred at 4:50 p.m. Friday at the intersection of Plank and Blue Factory roads, according to deputies.

The other driver was not seriously injured, deputies said.

Wohlleber’s blood alcohol content was 0.24, Sheriff Patrick Russo confirmed.

The legal limit is 0.08.

Wohlleber, 42, was ticketed for aggravated driving while intoxicated, failure to obey a yield sign and failure to yield at an intersection.

Wohlleber is scheduled to appear on Oct. 21 in Poestenkill Town Court.

Wohlleber and fellow Republican Councilman Harold Van Slyke face Democratic challenger Susan Mullen Kalafut in the general election for a four-year term on the Town Board.

Kalafut is the chief of staff and spokeswoman for District Attorney Mary Pat Donnelly.

The accident occurred at 4:50 p.m. Friday at the intersection of Plank and Blue Factory roads, according to deputies.

“We’ll be seeking a special prosecutor,” Donnelly said, citing Wohlleber’s elective office, his family ties and Kalafut’s campaign.

Wohlleber is a former spokesman for the district attorney’s office, holding the post when former District Attorney Patricia D’Angelis was in office.

Wohlleber is the son-in-law of State Supreme Court Justice Raymond J. Elliott III.

Wohlleber works in public relations and has worked for the State Senate Republicans.


Wohlleber made a brief run for the State Senate last year, but withdrew as Republicans opted to back Senator Daphne Jordan, R-Halfmoon, who was elected in the 43rd District to succeed retiring State Sen. Kathleen Marchione, R-Halfmoon.

It’s anticipated that the Poestenkill town justices will ask to have the case assigned to another court.

Wohlleber is represented by attorney Joseph Ahearn of Troy.

“Eric’s a hard worker, a dedicated public servant,” Ahearn said.

“Hopefully, he will not be defined by this one incident.”

https://www.timesunion.com/news/article ... 498956.php
thelivyjr
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Re: POLITICS

Post by thelivyjr »

THE HILL

"Clinton responds to Trump urging her to run again: 'Don't tempt me'"


Rebecca Klar

8 OCTOBER 2019

Hillary Clinton responded to President Trump's tweet Tuesday suggesting his 2016 Democratic rival should enter the 2020 White House race.

"Don't tempt me.'

"Do your job," Clinton wrote in a tweet.


The former secretary of State, who has run for president twice before, has weighed in on Trump recently while on a tour to promote her new book.

In his tweet earlier Tuesday, Trump mocked Clinton with his typical insult against his former political rival, calling her "the Crooked one."

"I think that Crooked Hillary Clinton should enter the race to try and steal it away from Uber Left Elizabeth Warren," Trump wrote, referring to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who has recently risen in polls of the crowded Democratic presidential field.

"Only one condition."

"The Crooked one must explain all of her high crimes and misdemeanors including how & why she deleted 33,000 Emails AFTER getting 'C' Subpoena!" he added.

Clinton has repeatedly said she is not going to run in the 2020 election, telling New York's News 12 in March "I'm not running, but I'm going to keep on working and speaking and standing up for what I believe."

Clinton has been increasingly speaking out against Trump recently after the House launched its formal impeachment inquiry amid a whistleblower complaint alleging he solicited foreign help in the 2020 election from Ukraine by asking the nation to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a Democratic front-runner.

A partial memo of a July 25 call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky released by the White House shows Trump asking Zelensky to "look into" Biden with help from his administration.

Trump has denied anything was inappropriate about the call, though it came just days after he delayed hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid to Ukraine.

The whistleblower complaint also alleges the Trump administration asked White House officials to place a transcript of the July call on a highly classified server.

When Trump asked China and Ukraine to investigate Biden in comments to reporters last week, Clinton chimed in on Twitter.

"Someone should inform the president that impeachable offenses committed on national television still count," she said.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ ... P17#page=2
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Re: POLITICS

Post by thelivyjr »

MARKETWATCH

"Fed’s Powell says planned bond buying isn’t emergency stimulus; investors are skeptical"


By Chris Matthews

Published: Oct 9, 2019 2:35 p.m. ET

During a week dominated by often troubling news on the international trade front, equity investors were provided some relief Tuesday by a figure who has sparked more than one stock-market rally in recent months: Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.

During a speech and question-and-answer session at conference for the National Association of Business Economists in Denver, Powell announced that the central bank would soon start expanding the size of its balance sheet, adding bank reserves to the financial system to avoid a recurrence of the unexpected strains seen in short term money markets last month.

The news helped spark a short-lived rally equity prices on Tuesday as equity investors welcomed the news that the Fed would soon start buying government debt on a regular basis again, before concerns over the U.S. - China trade dispute reversed those gains in the closing hour of trade.

U.S. stocks were higher early Wednesday as optimism rose again about prospects for a U.S. China trade deal.

But Powell’s comments have sparked a debate among market watchers as to whether the move by the Fed is another form of stimulus, or “quantitative easing,” (QE) rather than the quotidian actions of a central bank attempting to keep the plumbing of the financial system operating smoothly.

“I think what the Fed Chairman decides to call it is inconsequential,” Yousef Abbasi, global market strategist for U.S. institutional equities at INTL FCStone told MarketWatch.

“From what’s been discussed, it’s exactly what was once called QE."

"They would be buying securities and increasing liquidity and that is easing."

"However you want to refer to it, ultimately it’s supportive of equities,” he said.


Mike O’Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading said in an interview that balance-sheet expansion may be different because it will involve the purchasing of short-term government debt rather than long-term debt, but that the effect is to enable private banks to maintain larger balance sheets and take on more risk.

“This is very QE-like,” he said.

In August Fed officials stopped allowing their balance sheet to shrink as U.S. Treasury securities on their books matured, but banks have been running down their reserves as they bought new debt being issued by the U.S. Treasury to fund the federal government’s nearly $1 trillion budget deficit.

Reserves dropped to less than $1.4 trillion last month, from $2.8 trillion in 2014, when the Fed stopped buying assets.

As a result the lack of liquidity in short term money markets caused overnight interest rates to spike well above the interbank fed funds rate last month.

The Fed now wants to provide enough bank reserves so the central bank can control its policy federal-funds rate and other short-term lending rates without the regular market intervention it has undertaken over the past three weeks.

Powell emphasized that the Fed is contemplating buying short term debt only as a result, rather than the longer maturity debt bought after the financial crisis.

Part of the debate centers on what “normal” or “organic” management of the Fed’s balance sheet looks like.

Those who see the Fed’s announcement as unremarkable point to the fact that during the five years prior to the financial crisis, the Fed’s balance sheet grew at a steady 4% annual clip, on average.

But after years of large-scale bond buying in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis, reverting to that same level of growth on a percentage basis necessarily means the Fed will be a much more active buyer of government debt, perhaps to the tune of about $10 billion per month.

“The problem the Fed has is convincing markets this isn’t a QE4, designed to drive long rates lower,” wrote Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics, in a research note.

“Powell pleaded [Tuesday] that this balance sheet management should ‘in no way be confused with’ large-scale asset purchases."

"But it’s hard to communicate that effectively when the Fed’s organic balance sheet growth will be half the size of the European Central Bank’s newly unveiled QE.”

In other words, with a Fed balance sheet that has apparently been permanently increased relative to the size of the economy, the central bank’s role in financial markets has also been permanently increased.

Some analysts worry that this new outsized role for central banks have made markets complacent.

Torsten Slok, chief economist at Deutsche Bank Securities warned in a Tuesday note to clients that stock market performance is “no longer being driven by economic fundamentals, but instead by [the Federal Reserve] and [European Central Bank’s] promises of lower rates, more dovish forward guidance.”


Alec Young, managing director of global market research at FTSE Russell, however, argued that economic and corporate fundamentals will always, eventually, matter.

“The Fed is in important backstop for the market, but it’s not a panacea,” he told MarketWatch.

“Fed easing can soften the blow from trade-driven global slowdown, but it can’t completely reverse it.”

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/feds- ... 2019-10-09
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