If you leave a senior US government position, Elizabeth Warren wants you to wait at least four years before taking a job at a "market dominant" company -- any company with a $150b (or larger) market cap, or that controls "the product or labor supply in their industry." Read the rest
As Joe Biden cruises towards his latest (and final?) humiliating defeat in a Democratic primary, The Senator from MNBA is talking a big game about how he will reverse his decades-long dependence on massive cash infusions from America's richest, worst people to sustain his political career. Read the rest
49% of Bernie Sanders supporters are white; compare with Biden (56%) and Warren (71%). Sanders also leads in support from women under 45. Last quarter, Sanders outraised every other candidate, and he did it with small money donations averaging $18.07. Read the rest
Justin Trudeau is not your woke bae, he's just Joe Biden with abs: there's no policy so progressive that JT won't endorse it, provided that he never has to do anything to make good on that endorsement, which is how JT ended up being complicit in the #MuslimBan, making Canada's Patriot Act much worse, bailing out the Transcanada pipeline so in service to Alberta's filthy, planet-destroying tar sands, abandoning his promises for indigenous reconciliation, rescuing the giant Saudi arms deal, caving to Trump on NAFTA 2.0, and putting partisanship ahead of justice to get a corrupt, giant engineering company off the hook, throwing his indigenous Attorney General under the bus in order to preserve his relationship with a giant party donor. Read the rest
In an important reminder that Republicans are entirely capable of stopping Trump when they actually disagree with him, next year's G7 summit of world leaders will no longer be held at one of his own hotels.
President Trump says the White House has abandoned plans to host next year’s G7 summit at his Doral Miami Resort because of “crazed and irrational hostility” by Democrats and the media. “I thought I was doing something very good for our Country by using Trump National Doral, in Miami, for hosting the G-7 Leaders,” the president tweeted late Saturday.
Why? The New York Times puts it succinctly: "He knew Democrats would criticize him. When Republicans started doing so, he changed his mind."
The House of Representatives had been expected to vote next week on a resolution condemning the decision. Democrats also planned to require the White House to present information to justify why the administration decided on Doral.
Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, was among those who suggested the decision violated the constitution. Last month, the US Air Force (USAF) ordered a review of its accommodation after it emerged some personnel had been staying at one of President Trump's Scottish golf resorts.
The Consumer Entertainment Show used to be held alongside the Adult Entertainment Show in Vegas, an amusing juxtaposition of the world's stiffest business nerds and its most relaxed performers. Likewise, having G7 overlap Miss World 2020 or Golf Boobs Florida or whatever else Trump hosts at Doral would have made for great coverage. Read the rest
The Doral is a Miami resort one would expect to be sparsely occupied in June, an hour's drive from the beaches in the sticky Florida summer. Moreover, it's failing to meet its financial expectations. Fortunately, it's just been picked by U.S. President Donald Trump to host next year's G7 summit of the world's most powerful leaders, guaranteeing a full house. Its owner, U.S. President Donald Trump, must be delighted!
Trump leans into corruption, writes Bess Levin:
Pressed about the obvious conflicts of interest inherent in hosting a massive government event that attracts worldwide attention at one of Trump’s for-profit clubs, Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney initially tried to claim that the administration had looked at other locations and none of them worked because some places have higher altitudes and because June is apparently a notoriously difficult month to plan an event. “There’s plenty of other good places in this country to hold a large event, there’s no question about it,” Mulvaney told reporters, pretending like the White House wasn’t always going to pick the president’s own resort.
Doral's income droped 69% in two years. Why do you think he's using his position to put funnel business and attention to Doral?https://t.co/ph7CJQhgbr
— Citizens for Ethics (@CREWcrew) October 18, 2019
Virtually every rich country on Earth provides pre-completed tax-returns that you can either ignore (and pay an accountant or do your own taxes), or just sign and return: after all, the government already knows what you're earning and how much tax you paid, so they can do all the heavy lifting for your annual return. Read the rest
In 2013, Propublica published an incredible story revealing how pharma giants laundered bribes to doctors in exchange for commitments to prescribe their expensive, proprietary and often dangerous products. Read the rest
Trump Town is a Propublica/Columbia Journalism Investigations interactive database of everyone working in the Trump administration; the latest revision reveals that Trump has hired 281 former lobbyists to regulate the industries that used to sign their paychecks. Read the rest
• Trump lawyer’s bank records examined • Witnesses questioned on work for Ukraine mayor • Feds probing efforts to oust U.S. ambassador
Donald Trump's longtime personal attorney Rudy Giuliani is the subject of a federal criminal investigation. Read the rest
Google and the other big tech companies are some of the most lavish funders of climate denial "think tanks" and lobbying groups, something they've been at continuously for more than six years, without interruption. Read the rest
Institutions like the IMF like to encourage poor countries to set up "free trade zones" (AKA "freeports," "special economic zones," etc): effectively unregulated import/export zones where environmental, labor, tax, customs, financial and other rules are either nonexistent or much looser than in the rest of the country. These are billed as a means to stimulate the local economy by bringing in international corporations. Read the rest
Hunter Biden was getting $50,000/month to sit on the board of Burisma, an oligarch-controlled Ukrainian energy company, a job for which he had no qualifications, apart from his surname, which was part of a concerted effort to launder the company's reputation after the collapse of the regime of the oligarch-friendly, Russia-facing Viktor Yanukovych. Read the rest
Propublica's latest longread is ostensibly a profile of two kids who attended Orange County's Sage Hill School, where tuition runs $40,000/year and where an estimated 25% of students get into elite colleges thanks to their parents shelling out for "independent counsellors" who run the gamut from people who help with admissions essays and strategic donations to the schools of their choice all the way up to William "Rick" Singer, who pleaded guilty to collecting millions to grease the path for mediocre rich kids to attend elite colleges by bribing coaches. Read the rest
In 2017, Brazil's "anti-corruption task force" secured a conviction against the incredibly popular former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who had enacted a series of reforms that addressed the country's longstanding issues of corruption, racial discrimination and inequality. Read the rest
Ben Watson is a reporter for Defenseone, a news site that covers "US defense and National Security" who formerly served in the US Army as a public affairs officer; last week, Watson returned to the USA after an assignment in Denmark, entering the country at Dulles Airport. Read the rest
Elizabeth Warren has already proposed strict limits on lobbyists' activities, but in her latest policy proposal, she offers a way of hitting the most aggressive lobbyists in their pocketbooks, and using the revenue to strengthen Congress and the administrative agencies' independence from corporate influence while empowering members of the public to be heard by their government and its agencies. Read the rest
