Big Labor defends Planned Parenthood, calls attacks 'extremist,' 'politically motivated'

Two of the country’s biggest and most powerful labor unions have come to the defense of Planned Parenthood, amid a series of recently released videos in which leaders of the group are seen bargaining for the sale price of fetal tissues and organs, according to Watchdog.org.
“We stand united with our allies at Planned Parenthood, champions of quality healthcare and a cornerstone of vital services to millions of Americans for decades,” Mary Kay Henry, Service Employees International Union president, said in a statement this week.
Henry made the statement after the release of at least two videos and after the Republican-controlled Congress began to take action to stop federal funding for the group, which provides abortions and other women’s medical services.
The for-profit sale of aborted body parts by Planned Parenthood for research is illegal. The group has apologies for the statements made in the videos but says the discussions were about the cost of covering expenses and that there has been no wrongdoing.
"Efforts in Congress to de-fund Planned Parenthood by anti-women, anti-choice extremists must be stopped,” Henry also said in the statement.
The union coalition AFL-CIO is also backing Planned Parenthood, which receives about $500,000 annually from the federal government.
Union President Richard Trumka called the stealthy recorded videos “doctored” and said efforts to defund Planned Parenthood are “politically motivated and wrong.”
The membership ranks of the AFL-CIO’s two largest affiliates -- American Federation of Teachers and American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees -- include government workers. And many of AFT’s members are nurses.
None of the union groups contacted by Watchdog.org responded to a request to comment.
AFL-CIO, AFSCME and SEIU helped pass ObamaCare through Congress early in President Obama’s first term and continue to work together.
AFSCME, for example, paid Planned Parenthood’s political action wing $400,000 in 2014, $20,000 in 2013 and $20,000 in 2011. And the payments were reported to the Labor Department as a “political program support” expenses, according to Watchdog.org.

Billionaires bankrolling 2016 campaign to unprecedented degree

Billionaires are bankrolling the early days of the 2016 presidential campaign to an unprecedented degree, with at least 40 of the wealthiest Americans plowing $60 million into super PACs aligned with the top tier of candidates.
The torrent of super PAC money is revolutionizing presidential politics in the wake of a 2010 Supreme Court ruling that opened the door to unlimited contributions from corporations, unions and individuals into these outside groups.
Super PACs backing 17 presidential candidates raised more than $250 million in the first six months of this year, roughly doubling the $125 million raised by the candidates for their campaigns, disclosure reports filed Friday with the Federal Election Commission show
The proliferation of the committees also is transforming how presidential campaigns will be run. Some candidates are exporting to outside groups some core components of their operations, including voter-turnout programs and television advertising. Since federal law prohibits coordination with super PACs, the candidates won’t have direct control over some essential tasks, pushing the 2016 race into uncharted territory.
The broad engagement by wealthy donors also helps explain why the GOP field, in particular, keeps expanding. Almost every one of the primary candidates has a billionaire at his back, which means the life of their candidacies is now divorced from their ability to directly raise money from voters.
Renaissance Technologies executive Robert Mercer is the biggest donor in the presidential race so far: he wrote an $11 million check to a group backing Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Diane Hendricks, the billionaire head of a roofing supply company, gave $5 million to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s super PAC, while auto dealer Norman Braman gave $5 million to a group supporting Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
Two super PACs supporting former Texas Gov. Rick Perry raked in more than $11 million from just two Texas billionaires. The super PAC backing New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie counts about a dozen billionaires among its supporters. And a group aligned with Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton received $7.5 million from at least eight billionaires, including financier Donald Sussman, investor George Soros and Haim Saban and his wife, Cheryl.
The committee backing Jeb Bush was the most aggressive in adapting to the less regulated political environment. Half of the 40 billionaires identified by The Wall Street Journal donated a combined $17.4 million to Right to Rise USA while it was on the way to raising an unprecedented $103 million. That super PAC far surpassed its rivals in a crowded GOP field as well as Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic front-runner.

Texas Attorney General indicted for felony securities fraud, prosecutor says

A grand jury has indicted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on felony securities fraud charges that accuse the Republican of misleading investors before he became the state’s top law enforcement officer, a special prosecutor said on Saturday.
Kent Schaffer, a Houston defense attorney appointed by a judge to the case, told The New York Times that a Texas grand jury indicted Paxton on two counts of first-degree securities fraud and a lesser charge of not registering.
Paxton also allegedly encouraged investment in McKinney-based tech startup company Severgy Inc., which is now under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Associated Press reported Paxton’s involvement with the company – and that a federal investigation was under way – last month.
Paxton was also fined last year for not disclosing to Texas securities regulators that he was getting commissions for soliciting investors.
Joe Kendall, Paxton’s lawyer, said in a statement on Saturday night saying the judge overseeing the case “has specifically instructed both parties to refrain from public comment on this matter and we are honoring the judge’s instructions.”
That came after Schaffer and his co-special prosecutor in the case, Brian Wice, issued a statement that only hinted at the indictment. The defense attorneys said they were dedicated to ensuring that anyone accused of a crime is guaranteed a presumption of innocence and a fair trial.
"Because our statutory mandate as special prosecutors is not to convict, but to see that justice is done, our commitment to these bedrock principles remains inviolate," they said.
Paxton’s aides have said the investigation in Collin County was politically motivated. That allegation has been rebuffed by Schaffer and Wice, the lead attorney in former Republic U.S. House Majority Leader Tom Delay’s successful appeal of his money laundering conviction.
Schaffer told The Times that the allegations regarding Servergy are first-degree securities fraud. He said Paxton is accused of encouraging investors in 2011 to put more than $600,000 into Servergy, while not telling them he was making a commission on their investment and misrepresenting himself as an investor. He said Paxton is expected to turn himself on Monday, the same day the new indictment is expected to be unsealed.
Conviction of a first-degree felony in Texas carries a punishment ranging from five years to life in prison.
Paxton is also accused to failing to register as a solicitor while taking commissions for referring law clients to a financial investor. That charge, a third-degree felony, could bring two to 10 years in prison if convicted.
Paxton accepted a $1,000 fine from the Texas State Securities board last year. At the time, the state board declined to pursue criminal charges. But the matter was revived after a complaint by the left-leaning watchdog group Texans for Public Justice, and a judge ultimately appointed the two special prosecutors.
"It is time for Paxton to face the consequences. This is yet another example of the corrupt culture that fester with one-party, unchecked Republican power," Texas Democratic Party Executive Director Manny Garcia said.
The cloud of a criminal investigation has shadowed Paxton while he emerged as a national Republican figure during his first six months as Texas' attorney general.
A tea party star in Texas, Paxton recently advised county clerks they could refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples on religious grounds after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized the unions nationwide.

Obama set to announce steeper emissions cuts from US power plants

President Barack Obama will impose steeper cuts on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants across the country than previously expected, senior administration officials said Sunday, in what the president called the most significant step the U.S. has ever taken to fight global warming.
The Obama administration is expected to finalize the rule at a White House event on Monday, a year after proposing unprecedented carbon dioxide limits. Obama, in a video posted on Facebook, said the limits were backed up by decades of data and facts showing that without tough action, the world will face more extreme weather and escalating health problems like asthma.
"Climate change is not a problem for another generation," Obama said. "Not anymore."
Initially, Obama had mandated a 30 percent nationwide cut in carbon dioxide emission by 2030, compared to 2005 levels. The final version, which follows extensive consultations with environmental groups and the energy industry, will require a 32 percent cut instead, according to White House officials.
Opponents said they would sue the government immediately. The also planned to ask the courts to put the rule on hold while legal challenges play out.
The steeper version also gives states an additional two years to comply, officials said, yielding to complaints that the original deadline was too soon. The new deadline is set for 2022. States will also have until 2018 instead of 2017 to submit their plans for how they intend to meet their targets.
The focus on renewables marks a significant shift from the earlier proposal that sought to accelerate the ongoing shift from coal-fired power to natural gas, which emits less carbon dioxide. The final version aims to keep the share of natural gas in the nation’s power mix the same as it is now.
The stricter limits included the final plan were certain to incense energy industry advocates who had already balked at the more lenient limits in the proposed plan. However, the Obama administration said its tweaks would cut energy costs and address concerns about power grid reliability.
The Obama administration previously predicted emissions limits will cost up to $8.8 billion annually by 2030, though it says those costs will be far outweighed by health savings from fewer asthma attacks and other benefits. The actual price is unknown until states decide how they’ll reach their targets, but the administration has projected the rule would raise electricity prices about 4.9 percent by 2020 and prompt coal-fired power plants to close.
In the works for years, the power plant rule forms the cornerstone of Obama's plan to curb U.S. emissions and keep global temperatures from climbing, and its success is pivotal to the legacy Obama hopes to leave on climate change. Never before has the U.S. sought to restrict carbon dioxide from existing power plants.
By clamping down on power plant emissions, Obama is also working to increase his leverage and credibility with other nations whose commitments he's seeking for a global climate treaty to be finalized later this year in Paris. As its contribution to that treaty, the U.S. has pledged to cut overall emissions 26 percent to 28 percent by 2025, compared to 2005. Other major polluting nations have also stepped up including China, which pledged to halt its growth in emissions by 2030 despite an economy that's still growing.
Power plants account for at least one-third of all emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases blamed for global warming in the U.S. Obama’s rule assigns customized targets for each state, then leaves it up to the state to determine how to meet their targets.
More than a dozen states have already made plans to fight the rule, even before it was revealed. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has urged some Republican governors to refuse to comply, setting up a confrontation with the EPA, which by law can force its own plan on states that fail to submit implementation plans.
Yet in those states, power companies and local utilities have started preparing to meet those targets. New, more efficient plants are replacing older ones have already pushed emissions down nearly 13 percent since 2005.
In Congress, lawmakers have sought to use legislation to stop Obama's regulation, and McConnell has tried previously to use an obscure, rarely successful maneuver under the Congressional Review Act to allow Congress to vote it down.
The more serious threat to Obama's rule will likely come in the courts. The Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, which represents energy companies, said 20 to 30 states were poised to join with industry in suing over the rule.
The Obama administration has a mixed track record in fending off legal challenges to its climate rules. Earlier this year, a federal appeals court ruled against 15 states and a coal company that tried to block the power plant rule before it was finalized. The Supreme Court has also affirmed Obama's authority to regulate pollution crossing state lines and to use the decades-old Clean Air Act to reduce greenhouse gases — the legal underpinning for the power plant rule.
But the high court in June ruled against his mercury emissions limits, arguing the EPA failed to properly account for costs. Federal courts have also forced Obama to redo other clean air standards that industry groups complained were too onerous.
With the end of Obama's presidency drawing nearer, his climate efforts have become increasingly entangled in the next presidential election. The power plant rule won't go into effect until long after Obama leaves office, putting its implementation in the hands of his successor. Among other Republican critics, 2016 candidate and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has said he would drastically scale down the EPA if elected and shift most of its duties to state regulators.

Candidate Debate Cartoon

Trashing Trump: Why the pundits are now eating their words

For a deep dive on how the mainstream media have utterly mishandled Donald Trump’s candidacy, there is no better place to start than Chris Cillizza.
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

EL PASO, Texas –  The arrest last week of a onetime Border Patrol poster boy on charges of smuggling illegal immigrants followed a damning report on corruption within the Customs and Border Protection agency.
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.”
- Roger Maier, CBP spokesman

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.
"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

Bob Nicks has firefighting in his blood, but for the last four years, the Texas battalion chief has earned his six-figure salary sitting at a desk doing union work instead of running into burning buildings and saving lives.
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.”
- Bob Nicks, President, Austin Firefighters Association

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.
“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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A 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)

“It’s an egregious waste of taxpayer dollars,” said Greg Mourad, vice president of the National Right to Work Committee. “There’s no reason for it and that is the problem with unionizing the public sector. They [unions] have become the most powerful lobby group in politics."
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.”