Presumptuous Politics : Jul 2, 2016

Saturday, July 2, 2016

Crooked Hillary Cartoons

Trump: Lynch-Clinton meeting 'opened up a Pandora's box'

Donald Trump tore into a recent meeting between Bill Clinton and Attorney General Loretta Lynch Friday, telling a conservative crowd it had “opened up a Pandora’s box” and was "a very serious thing."
Speaking at the Western Conservative Summit in Denver, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee blasted the recent private meeting between the former president and Lynch aboard her plane at an Arizona airport.
Lynch has sought to temper the controversy over what she says is an impromptu meeting, admitting it “cast a shadow” over the public perception of her neutrality of the FBI-led probe into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state. Legal watchdogs have called the meeting highly improper and called for the Department of Justice’s Inspector General to investigate.
Trump mocked Lynch's claim that it was an impromptu meeting saying sarcastically, “he just happened to be there at that time." He was also skeptical about Lynch's claim that the pair just talked about golf and grandchildren.
"I love my grandchildren so much. But if I talk about ‘em for more than nine or ten seconds, where are we? I love my grandchildren. I love that one, I love that one, I love, love, love that one,” Trump said. “After that, what are you going to say? Right?”
However, he added that the situation was very serious.
Its not a joke, it’s a very serious thing,” Trump said, before calling Hillary “so guilty.”
“I think it really opened up a Pandora’s box, and shows what’s going on and shows what's happening with our laws and our government,” Trump said.
In the speech, Trump rallied his base with a speech that ranged from immigration to the economy. Both he and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin sought to rally the base, with both giving optimistic presentations of the 2016 race.
“We’re doing great everywhere, much better than the press would have you believe,” Trump said.
“There are more of us than the disconnected left can even fathom,” Palin remarked, who also called Trump a “a golden wrecking ball” who broke down the walls of the “old boy’s club."
Outside, scenes turned ugly when a man grabbed pro-Trump bumper stickers from a woman outside the city's convention center, ripped them up and threw them in her face, The Associated Press reported.
A pushing match followed and people spilled into the street.
Police swarmed the crowd and ordered people to get out of the street. They led two men and a woman away, including the man who took the bumper stickers.
Some protesters sang "We Shall Overcome" and others waived the Mexican flag, saying "No justice, no peace."
Palin made reference to the protests in her speech, calling them paid protestors and joking: “Not even president yet and [Trump] is already creating jobs.”

Biggest private coal producer warns of cutting 80 percent of workforce, head blames Obama policies

Murray Energy Corp., the largest privately held coal miner in the U.S., has warned that it may soon undertake one of the biggest layoffs in the sector during this time of low energy prices.
In a notice sent to workers this week, Murray said it could lay off as many as 4,400 employees, or about 80% of its workforce, because of weak coal markets. The company said it anticipates “massive workforce reductions in September.”
The law requires a 60-day waiting period before large layoffs occur.

Layoffs 'due to the ongoing destruction of the United States coal industry by President Barack Obama, and his supporters, and the increased utilization of natural gas to generate electricity'
- company statement

The American coal industry, especially in Appalachia, has languished as cheap natural gas replaces coal as fuel for power plants. World-wide demand for coal has also slumped, and new environmental regulations are making many coal mines unprofitable to operate.
The Central Appalachian coal price benchmark is $40 a ton, or half its level from five years ago. Almost all of the biggest coal producers in the U.S. have declared bankruptcy in the past 18 months, including Peabody Energy Corp., Arch Coal Inc. and Alpha Natural Resources Inc.
Robert Murray, the controlling owner of Murray, is a fierce opponent of President Obama and a supporter of Donald Trump. In a statement, the company said the potential layoffs were “due to the ongoing destruction of the United States coal industry by President Barack Obama, and his supporters, and the increased utilization of natural gas to generate electricity.”
The move came just a day after the United Mine Workers of America said it would reject a proposed new labor deal with Murray. The existing contract expires at the end of this year.
Phil Smith, a spokesman for the union, said the rejected deal is just a first step.
“Hopefully the coal market will come to the point where [the layoffs are] not necessary,” he said. “It’s no secret the coal market is bad right now.”
The UMWA represents about 3,000 Murray workers, half of whom have already been laid off.

Clinton sought secret info on EU bailout plans as son-in-law's doomed hedge fund gambled on Greece

Hedge fund manager Marc Mezvinsky had friends in high places when he bet big on a Greek economic recovery, but even the keen interest of his mother-in-law, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, wasn't enough to spare him and his investors from financial tragedy.
In 2012, Mezvinski, the husband of Chelsea Clinton, created a $325 million basket of offshore funds under the Eaglevale Partners banner through a special arrangement with investment bank Goldman Sachs. The funds have lost tens of millions of dollars predicting that bailouts of the Greek banking system would pump up the value of the country’s distressed bonds. One fund, exclusively dedicated to Greek debt, suffered near-total losses.
Clinton stepped down as secretary of state in 2013 to run for president. But newly released emails from 2012 show that she and Clinton Foundation consultant, Sidney Blumenthal, shared classified information about how German leadership viewed the prospects for a Greek bailout. Clinton also shared “protected” State Department information about Greek bonds with her husband at the same time that her son-in-law aimed his hedge fund at Greece.
That America’s top diplomat kept a sharp eye on intelligence assessing the chances of a bailout of the Greek central bank is not a problem. However, sharing such sensitive information with friends and family would have been highly improper. Federal regulations prohibit the use of nonpublic information to further private interests or the interests of others. The mere perception of a conflict of interest is unacceptable.
Through its press representative, Eaglevale declined to comment for this story. Clinton’s campaign press office did not respond to a request for comment.
A former Goldman Sachs broker himself, Mezvinsky formed Eaglevale Management with two ex-Goldman Sachs partners in October 2011. As a “global macro” firm, Eaglevale’s strategy is to seek profit opportunities in politically volatile situations. Mezvinsky set up several funds in the Cayman Islands, a secretive tax haven, with Goldman Sachs serving as Eaglevale’s prime broker and banker. The giant brokerage firm has a checkered history of manipulating the value of Greek debt to the detriment of Greece.
The same month that Eaglevale incorporated its offshore arm, Gary Gensler, the head of the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which polices hedge funds, emailed Clinton that a bailout by the European Central Bank could “turn market sentiment” in favor of Greek bonds.
Gensler had previously worked as co-head of finance at Goldman Sachs; he is now the financial director of Clinton’s election campaign. Goldman Sachs has donated up to $5 million to the Clinton Foundation and $860,000 to Hillary Clinton’s political campaigns. Shortly after Clinton resigned, Goldman Sachs paid her $675,000 in speaking fees.
Clinton’s deputy in charge of economic policy was Robert Hormats, a former vice chairman of Goldman Sachs. Hormats and Clinton shared an extensive email trail about the possibility of bailing out Greece, including classified materials, and internal state department memos about the debt from the U.S. ambassador to Greece.
Again, monitoring Greece was part of Clinton’s job description, but, ethically, that does not mean that a family member should make bets that depend upon the actions of another family member—leaving aside the question of whether “insider” information was divulged to Mezvinsky by Blumenthal or his parents-in-law.
During 2011, Secretary of State Clinton lobbied the leaders of European governments to bail out the Greek financial system. She advocated imposing austerity measures on Greece—raising taxes, cutting public employee salaries and eliminating social welfare programs—to make the investors holding the debt happy.
Driven by investor’s belief that Greece would be bailed out, the speculative value of its debt climbed into the stratosphere in late 2011 and early 2012. The bonds gradually sank to 2008 levels by the end of the year, with temporary spikes, as investors alternately gained and loss confidence in the prospect of a bailout. In other words, there were multiple opportunities for Greek-bond hedge funds to buy cheap and sell dear.
At a February 2012 summit meeting about the Eurozone debt crisis in Munich, Clinton urged leaders of the European Union to commit to a Greek bailout.
In April, Eaglevale booked $19 million from a dozen investors. California’s public employee pension fund, CalPERS, reportedly invested $13 million. Goldman Sach’s CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, jumped in with his own money, as did Chelsea Clinton’s former boss, Marc Lasry, who specializes in buying distressed debt.
In May, Blumenthal, emailed two “confidential” memos about the Greek debt situation to Clinton. Hormats was included in the email loop.
The first memo, Blumenthal told Clinton, is “based on conversations with German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble and those close to him … the information comes from an extremely sensitive source and should be handled with care. This information must not be shared with anyone associated with the German government.”
The unnamed spy reported that in secret meetings with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Schauble had searched for a politically acceptable way to bail out the Greek debt in order to avoid collapsing the economies of Greece, Italy, Spain and Ireland.
The second memo was classified and blacked out by State Department censors when Clinton’s emails were released. No doubt, it was informative.
In June, Clinton’s deputy, Jake Sullivan emailed her “a depressing snapshot” of reports that Greek banks were failing and that Merkel was against a Greek bailout. The next day, he reported “re: Greece” that Ambassador Dan Smith “just spoke to the Central Bank Governor and assessed that the economic situation was “ok for now” provided that “small depositors put money back into the banks.”
A few days later, Clinton asked Sullivan for a confidential state department report, “Solidarity Bonds Greece Revised.” He sent it to her adding, “If you like, send it on [to] WJC," presumably a reference to William Jefferson Clinton.
Clinton ordered an aide, “Pls print two copies” of the Greek bond report. The report was blacked out as a “protected” document when the emails were made public.
Did Mezvinsky benefit from his family connection?
The emails show that Clinton did at least one official favor for her son-in-law. In August 2012, she forwarded Deputy Secretary Thomas Nides an email from Mezvinsky lobbying on behalf of his former Goldman Sachs colleague, Harry Siklas.
Siklas and Goldman Sachs were invested in a deep sea mining venture called Neptune Minerals. Siklas asked Mezvinsky to broker a talk with Clinton about “current legal issues and regulations” on deep sea mining. Clinton ordered Nides to “follow up on this request.”
Nides replied, “I’ll get on it.”

FBI could interview Hillary Clinton this weekend, report claims

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton could be interviewed by the FBI about her private email system while secretary of state as early as this weekend, according to a published report.
The Daily Caller, citing a source close to the investigation, reported Friday that Clinton was scheduled to meet with the FBI Saturday. The source added that the talk could take place at Clinton's Washington D.C. residence.
Clinton has no campaign events scheduled over the July 4 holiday weekend, which could make such an interview easier to arrange.
Meanwhile, ABC News reported Friday that the Justice Department hopes to complete the investigation before the two major party conventions later this month. The Republican convention begins July 18 in Cleveland while the Democratic convention begins July 25 in Philadelphia. ABC also reported that investigators want ample time to review Clinton's interview and compare her statements to the facts it has gathered in the case.
The FBI has previously interviewed several of Clinton's top aides, including her former Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills and former deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin. as part of their investigation into whether Clinton mishandled classified information that passed through her so-called "homebrew" server.
The reports emerged on the same day Attorney General Loretta Lynch said she regretted meeting former President Bill Clinton at the Phoenix airport this week, sparking criticism from both parties for creating an apparent conflict of interest.
"I certainly won’t do it again," Lynch said, admitting the meeting "has cast a shadow over this."
An FBI source told Fox News Friday that agents were "livid" about the Phoenix meeting. The source said the agents' issues with the meeting went beyond appearances, since Bill Clinton is a potential target and witness in the investigation, which also deals with Hillary Clinton's ties to the Clinton Foundation while Secretary of State.
Lynch said Friday that she would accept the recommendation of investigators about whether to bring charges against Clinton, saying "they are acting independently."