Conservative Blogger
Saturday, August 1, 2015
Trashing Trump: Why the pundits are now eating their words
The Washington Post’s “Fix” columnist is a seasoned political observer, MSNBC contributor and certifiably nice guy. And for a journalist who isn’t a bomb-thrower, he has also been unrelentingly hostile to Trump (now known as the Republican front-runner).
Back on May 13, Cillizza wrote: “Donald Trump will say almost anything to get a rise out of people. He is in the entertainment business, a professional provocateur of some renown. The business he is not in, of course, is politics.
That's a big problem for a party desperately working to prove it is ready, willing and able to take the reins of government back from Democrats…
“If Donald Trump takes the debate stage in Ohio come August, it's a big loss for a Republican Party desperately trying to prove itself anew to a skeptical public.”
So he basically dismissed Trump as a nuisance. But by June 17, Cillizza was taking pains to point out The Donald’s high negatives:
“You cannot and do not win anything when your numbers look like Trump's. I can't say it any more clearly than that. There's nothing you can say or do -- not that Trump would ever even consider going on an image rehabilitation tour -- to change how people feel about you. Republicans know Trump. And they really, really don't like him.
“Trump, of course, knows this. His goal is attention, not winning.”
In this formulation, Trump was all about building his brand and still not serious about seeking the White House. Not surprisingly, the billionaire fired back on Twitter:
“One of the dumber and least respected of the political pundits is Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post @TheFix. Moron hates my poll numbers.”
Undeterred, Cillizza made this comparison on June 23:
“Trump is sort of like the political version of the Kardashians -- people say they can't stand him but they also can't seem to take their eyes off him.”
And the columnist seemed genuinely ticked off at the people of New Hampshire after a poll there put Trump in second place. While professing his love for the state, Cillizza said: “But, seriously? Eleven percent of you want this guy?”
Those pesky voters—they’re making a big mistake!
Plus, Cillizza did a drive-by on “Meet the Press,” accusing Trump of a “car-accident candidacy.”
Now, with Trump leading in a plethora of polls, Cillizza, to his credit, is admitting he was wrong, both in print and on the air. Trump “has quite clearly tapped into a populist message that plenty of people…are responding to,” he wrote yesterday. And: “Trump has been right a heck of a lot more than I have about his rise in this race.”
I don’t mean to pick on Chris, because he has plenty of company in the media establishment. They viewed Trump as something of an alien, a sideshow, a clown (which is how he was pictured on the cover of New York’s Daily News). And there was a unified chorus of “now he’s going to implode” after each perceived misstep (the Mexican immigrant remarks, the McCain war record comments), followed by shock and amazement when Trump continued his climb in the polls.
Perhaps because I’ve been interviewing him on and off since 1987, I knew Trump was a media master and not to be underestimated (though even I’ve been surprised by the speed of his ascent).
Now we have the media elite finally trying to grapple with Trump’s appeal. After a Bloomberg focus group (cited by Cillizza), author John Heielmann said it was clear that people don’t think Trump is a summer fling, that they like his success, that he’s a billionaire seen as “one of us.”
As Heilemann’s partner Mark Halperin said on “Morning Joe,” people think Trump is “classy. The establishment has to understand that. Right now they just think of him as a joke.”
Not everyone in the media is convinced. Yahoo’s Matt Bai, who’s still smarting from writing a 1999 piece on Trump’s flirtation with a Reform Party run, says The Donald is amusing us to death:
“Oh yes, I know, Trump is a legitimate obsession because he is the 'Republican front-runner.' Look at the polls. Only an arrogant elitist would avoid covering everything the front-runner says and does just because you think him insufficiently qualified…
“Trump draws crowds because he is a genuine celebrity and a world-class entertainer. Politics is tedium and sameness, like network dramas in the age before cable. Trump is reality TV, live and unscripted.
“And let’s drop all the pretense: That’s why we in the media hyperventilate over his every utterance, too. I’m not saying, as the Huffington Post does, that Trump’s candidacy shouldn’t be covered as an actual candidacy. Only that, if there were any real proportion here, Trump would merit about half the coverage he gets, and we wouldn’t constantly be baiting him to hurl some new, headline-making epithet.”
I get that news outlets are in a symbiotic relationship with Trump, who produces big ratings and traffic. But what many pundits haven’t figured out is that commanding media attention is a skill, one that many candidates just aren’t much good at.
That doesn’t mean Trump will win the nomination. It doesn’t mean he would be a good president. But it does mean he is running circles around a press corps that made the yuuuge mistake of treating him with disdain.
Border Patrol poster boy's arrest, new report bare agency's corruption issue
Supervisory Customs and Border Protection Agent Lawrence Madrid, 53, was arrested July 24 at his El Paso home by agents of Homeland Security Investigations and charged with alien smuggling. Madrid, a 20-year veteran, is one of 177 agents who have faced corruption charges since 2005, according to CBP spokesman Roger Maier.
“SCBPO Madrid was the ninth CBP employee arrested, indicted, or otherwise prosecuted this fiscal year on corruption related charges,” Maier said.
"Madrid was the ninth CBP employee arrested, indicted, or otherwise prosecuted this fiscal year on corruption related charges.”The allegations against Madrid stem from 2010, when he appeared on the NPR report entitled "Drugs Cross Border by Truck, Free Trade and Chance," and the next year. In the report, Madrid was profiled on-duty interviewing illegal immigrants crossing from Ciudad Juarez into El Paso and discussing the techniques he uses to identify those involved in criminal activity.
- Roger Maier, CBP spokesman
"When they're handing you the documentation, the first thing you look at is their hands, whether they are trembling," Madrid told NPR staffer John Burnett. "Whether they...take time to answer the questions or that they're stuttering when they answer--just stuff like that you pick up."
But Madrid was nabbed years later when an informant told authorities in January, 2014, that the agent had allegedly smuggled illegal immigrants across the Bridge of the Americas in August, 2010. According to an arrest affidavit, the unnamed informant told officers that his wife paid a man to help smuggle him across the bridge and that a CBP officer he identified as Madrid assisted. The informant said he and two other Mexican citizens were allegedly smuggled through the pedestrian lane on the bridge Madrid was manning, according to the affidavit.
Agents also received information in May 2014 that another couple had been smuggled into the U.S. with the help of a CBP officer in 2011, the affidavit states. That informant allegedly identified Madrid in a photo lineup, and investigators corroborated both accounts through phone records, work schedules and interviews with other witnesses, the affidavit states.
Madrid's arrest put a human face on a report Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson ordered last year. That report, which was filed last month, identified an ongoing threat to CBP and the need to beef up the agency’s internal affairs investigative staff.
“The investigations are nearly all reactive and do not use proactive, risk analysis to identify potential corruption,” the report said.
The agency currently has 218 investigators in its Office of Internal Affairs for the agency that has 66,000 employees. The panel that produced the report called for 565 investigators.
In a June 11 interview for the El Paso Times, Stuart Harris, vice president of the National Border Patrol Council Local 1929 in El Paso, called allegations of widespread corruption raised in the CBP Integrity Advisory Panel a “publicity stunt to appease the special interest groups than anything else.”
A congressional aid speaking on background said that while polygraph tests are part of the pre-employment vetting process, union collective bargaining has prohibited testing of incumbent agents such as Madrid. The aide also said in the exponential growth the agency experienced between 2005-2007, where background checks may have been lax, more cases of corruption would not be surprising.
“I won't comment on details of this case but I strongly believe that all CBP officers should be held to the highest standards,” said Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) whose district includes El Paso.
Critics blast loophole that forces taxpayers to fund public sector union work
As president of Austin Firefighters Association/IAFF Local 975, Nicks is office-bound by order of the chief, even though he believes he could handle union business with one weekly shift and spend the rest of his time on the job doing what he loves. He is paid for what is known as "release time," hours public sector union officials spend doing union business that are paid by their employers - taxpayers.
“Union release time is a plague on local, state and the federal governments’ finances," said Trey Kovacs, who authored a recent study of the issue for the Competitive Enterprise Institute. "The practice of allowing public employees to perform union business only benefits the labor union and serves no public purpose.”
"They could save $70,000 a year. It should be about the citizens.”Nicks, who calls himself a "different kind of union president," hates getting paid to ride a desk. His rank earns him more than $100,000, he acknowledged, but he spends none of his 40-hour work week in a firehouse.
- Bob Nicks, President, Austin Firefighters Association
“I’ve been fighting to be put back to work at our fire department,” he told FoxNews.com. “The chief wouldn’t allow it. How much they have fought against me was crazy.”
Austin Fire Department Assistant Chief Doug Fowler said the system Nicks objects to has been in place for years.
"It was designed that way so that the union president wouldn’t have a chain of command, per se, and could focus and function unbiased in dealing with members’ issues with the department," Fowler said. "Additionally, Chief Nicks is eligible to work overtime on the weekends but has not done so according to our timekeeping system."
Release time costs local, state and federal governments hundreds of millions of dollars. Figures for states, counties and municipalities are not known, but at the federal level, release time costs taxpayers an estimated $122 million annually, according to the Michigan-based Mackinac Center for Public Policy. While no one disputes there is union business to be conducted, and release time is part of collective bargaining agreements, critics say the practice allows for waste and should be funded by union dues, not taxpayers.
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recent study found that thousands of hours in release time has been
doled out at public agencies in Texas, in possible violation of the
state constitution's “gift clause,” which bans the grant of public funds
to a private entity. (Austin Fire Department)
The CEI study found that Texas cities pay thousands of hours in release time to teachers, cops and firefighters, and raised the possibility that such payments violate the Lone Star State’s constitution, which "prohibits the transfer of public funds to private entities that do not serve a public purpose,” Kovacs said.
After complaints that Phoenix, Ariz., spent nearly $4 million annually on release time, state lawmakers in 2013 introduced a bill that would make ban the practice of allowing taxpayers to pay union officials for work associated with their labor organizations. The bill never made it out of the state Legislature, but a legal battle over the same issue is working its way through state courts, after a Maricopa County Superior Court judge ruled last year that release time was a violation of the state’s gift laws. Unions are appealing.
Pending legislation in Michigan would curb release time and also end a practice known as “pension spiking.” A pair of Michigan Senate bills was proposed in April after Michigan Education Association bargained for the Lansing school district to contribute $50,000 annually to the state pension system on behalf of state union President Steve Cook. The deal allowed him to collect a much larger pension despite not working for the school system.
Mourad, as well as F. Vincent Vernuccio, director of labor policy for Mackinac, said cash-strapped states are starting to look closely at deals that critics say allow public sector unions and their officials to collect taxpayer funds despite not always serving the public.
“It’s extremely troubling to see, when you have examples like union officials say there is not enough money going to public works yet they have teachers collect salaries from districts they don't even work for," Vernuccio said. "This does not help the taxpayer at all.”
Mourad said many of the practices, including release time, are hard to defend once taxpayers understand them.
“I think that is why we are starting to see a push back in general,” he said. “The free hand of the unions being held out has been a recipe for budgetary disaster and state lawmakers are starting to see that and looking for ways to reverse it.”
Baltimore killings soar to a level unseen in 43 years
Well! What did they expect when they undermined their police??
Police reported three deaths — two men shot Thursday and one on Friday. The men died at local hospitals.
With their deaths, this year's homicides reached 189, far outpacing the 119 killings by July's end in 2014. Nonfatal shootings have soared to 366, compared to 200 by the same date last year. July's total was the worst since the city recorded 45 killings in August 1972, according to The Baltimore Sun.
The seemingly Sisyphean task of containing the city's violence prompted Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to fire her police commissioner, Anthony Batts, on July 8.
"Too many continue to die on our streets," Rawlings-Blake said then. "Families are tired of dealing with this pain, and so am I. Recent events have placed an intense focus on our police leadership, distracting many from what needs to be our main focus: the fight against crime."
But the killings have not abated under Interim Commissioner Kevin Davis since then.
Baltimore is not unique in its suffering; crimes are spiking in big cities around the country.
But while the city's police are closing cases— Davis announced arrests in three recent murders several days ago — the violence is outpacing their efforts. Davis said Tuesday the "clearance rate" is at 36.6 percent, far lower than the department's mid-40s average.
Crime experts and residents of Baltimore's most dangerous neighborhoods cite a confluence of factors: mistrust of the police; generalized anger and hopelessness over a lack of opportunities for young black men; and competition among dealers of illegal drugs, bolstered by the looting of prescription pills from pharmacies during the riot.
Federal drug enforcement agents said gangs targeted 32 pharmacies in the city, taking roughly 300,000 doses of opiates, as the riots caused $9 million in property damage in the city.
Perched on a friend's stoop, Sherry Moore, 55, said she knew "mostly all" of the young men killed recently in West Baltimore, including an 18-year-old fatally shot a half-block away. Moore said many more pills are on the street since the riot, making people wilder than usual.
"The ones doing the violence, the shootings, they're eating Percocet like candy and they're not thinking about consequences. They have no discipline, they have no respect — they think this is a game. How many can I put down on the East side? How many can I put down on the West side?"
The tally of 42 homicides in May included Gray, who died in April after his neck was broken in police custody. The July tally likewise includes a previous death — a baby whose death in June was ruled a homicide in July.
Shawn Ellerman, Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Baltimore division of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said May's homicide spike was probably related to the stolen prescription drugs, a supply that is likely exhausted by now. But the drug trade is inherently violent, and turf wars tend to prompt retaliatory killings.
"You can't attribute every murder to narcotics, but I would think a good number" of them are, he said. "You could say it's retaliation from drug trafficking, it's retaliation from gangs moving in from other territories. But there have been drug markets in Baltimore for years."
Across West Baltimore, residents complain that drug addiction and crime are part of a cycle that begins with despair among children who lack educational and recreational opportunities, and extends when people can't find work.
"We need jobs! We need jobs!" a man riding around on a bicycle shouted to anyone who'd listen after four people were shot, three of them fatally, on a street corner in July.
More community engagement, progressive policing policies and opportunities for young people in poverty could help, community activist Munir Bahar said.
"People are focusing on enforcement, not preventing violence. Police enforce a code, a law. Our job as the community is to prevent the violence, and we've failed," said Bahar, who leads the annual 300 Men March against violence in West Baltimore.
"We need anti-violence organizations, we need mentorship programs, we need a long-term solution. But we also need immediate relief," Bahar added. "When we're in something so deep, we have to stop it before you can analyze what the root is."
Strained relationships between police and the public also play a role, according to Eugene O'Donnell, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Arrests plummeted and violence soared after six officers were indicted in Gray's death. Residents accused police of abandoning their posts for fear of facing criminal charges for making arrests, and said emboldened criminals were settling scores with little risk of being caught.
The department denied these claims, and police cars have been evident patrolling West Baltimore's central thoroughfares recently.
But O'Donnell said the perception of lawlessness is just as powerful than the reality.
"We have a national issue where the police feel they are the Public Enemy No. 1," he said, making some officers stand down and criminals become more brazen.
"There's a rhythm to the streets," he added. "And when people get away with gun violence, it has a long-term emboldening effect. And the good people in the neighborhood think, 'Who has the upper hand?'"
Top Clinton aide reportedly received overpayments at State Department
The Washington Post reports the finding emerged on Friday after Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley sent letters to Secretary of State John Kerry, among others, about an investigation into possible “criminal” conduct by Huma Abedin over her pay.
The letters also sought the status of an investigation into whether Abedin violated conflict-of-interest laws related to her work for the State Department, the Clinton Foundation and another private firm founded by a Clinton ally, according to The Post.
The finding that Abedin, who now serves as vice chairwoman of her presidential campaign, had improperly collected taxpayer money could damage Clinton’s candidacy, a GOP lawmakers insist that government rules were bent to benefit Clinton and her aides and at the same time could bolster Democratic claims that Republicans are using their oversight role to purposely damage Clinton politically.
The Post reports that Grassley indicated in the letters he was describing an inquiry by the State Department’s Inspector General. Grassley wrote, in letters to Abedin, Kerry and the Inspector General, that staff of the inspector general had found “at least a reasonable suspicion of a violation” of law concerning the “theft of public money through time and attendance fraud” and possible conflicts to Abedin’s “overlapping employment,” according to the newspaper.
Grassley also noted the possibility that efforts to investigate the allegations were nixed because Abedin’s exchanges were sent through Clinton’s private email server.
Attorneys for Abedin told the newspaper she learned in May that the State Department’s inspector general concluded she improperly collected $9,857 for the time she was on vacation or leave. Abedin responded to the allegations with a 12-page letter contesting the findings and a request for administrative review of the investigation’s conclusions.
In the letters, Grassley also contends Clinton’s private email server interfered with the investigation.
“The OIG had reason to believe that email evidence relevant to that inquiry was contained in emails Ms. Abedin sent and received from her account on Secretary Clinton’s non-government server, making them unavailable to the OIG through its normal statutory right of access records,” he wrote.
Grassley has been questioning Abedin’s “special government employee” status, which allowed her to take a job at the Clinton Foundation and Teneo, a firm led by former aide for Bill Clinton, Douglas Band. Abedin worked there for her final six months at the State Department.
Grassley’s letter to Kerry alleges that Abedin had exchanged at least 7,300 emails that “involved” Band, but didn’t expand on how many of those were between Abedin and Band.
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