Presumptuous Politics

Tuesday, April 19, 2016

VA accused of shredding documents needed for veterans' claims

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has been systematically shredding documents related to veterans' claims -- possibly affecting benefits for veterans, according to an investigation by the inspector general.
Investigators with the Department of Veterans Affairs audited 10 vererans benefits offices around the country and found that staff were destroying mail related to claims, according to a report by Military.com, citing an OIG report released on Thursday.
The surprise audit, which was conducted at the offices on July 20, 2015, came after reports of such document shredding in Los Angeles, the website reported.

Investigators reportedly sifted through some 438,000 documents awaiting destruction at the regional offices. Of 155 claims-related documents, 69 were found to have been incorrectly placed in shred bins at six of the regional offices, according to Military.com.
Those offices were in Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, New Orleans, Philadelphia and Reno, Nev. At least two of the 69 documents headed to the shredder directly affected benefits and nine had the potential to, according to the website.
The OIG report concluded that, "The potential effect should not be minimized."
"Considering that there are 56 [VA regional offices], and if weekly shredding is conducted, it is highly likely that claims-related documents at other VAROs are being improperly scheduled for destruction that could result in loss of claims and evidence, incorrect decisions and delays in claims processing," the report s

Biden slams Netanyahu hours after Jerusalem attack

Vice President Joe Biden said Monday night that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government was leading the country "in the wrong direction" hours after a bus bombing in Jerusalem wounded at least 21 people.
In a speech to the Israel advocacy group J Street, Biden did single out Palestinian leaders, including Mahmoud Abbas, for declining to condemn specific acts of terrorism carried out against Israelis. The vice president said he didn't know whether Monday's explosion was a terrorist attack, but added that the U.S. condemns "misguided cowards" who resort to violence.
However, the bulk of the Biden's criticism was reserved for Netanyahu, reflecting diminishing patience within the White House as President Barack Obama's term nears an end, compounded by deep disagreements over Iran and a strained relationship between the two leaders.
Biden suggested that Netanyahu's approach raised "profound questions" about how Israel could remain both Jewish and democratic.
"I firmly believe that the actions that Israel's government has taken over the past several years -- the steady and systematic expansion of settlements, the legalization of outposts, land seizures -- they're moving us and more importantly they're moving Israel in the wrong direction," Biden said.

He said those policies were moving Israel toward a "one-state reality" -- meaning a single state for Palestinians and Israelis in which, eventually, Israeli Jews will no longer be the majority.

"That reality is dangerous," Biden added.
Biden, who met in March with both Netanyahu and Abbas, said he came away from that trip discouraged about prospects for peace anytime soon. Still, he said the U.S. is obliged to guarantee Israel's security and to "push them as hard as we can" toward a two-state solution despite "our sometimes overwhelming frustration with the Israeli government."

"There is at the moment no political will that I observed from either Israelis or Palestinians to go forward with serious negotiations," Biden said.

The vice president's remarks to J Street, a dovish group that frequently criticizes Netanyahu, came at the height of a campaign season in which candidates have been scrutinized over their adherence to traditionally stalwart U.S. support for Israel.
Ahead of Tuesday's primary in New York, Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders has sparked controversy by saying the U.S. should be even-handed and mustn't always say that Netanyahu is right.
In another dig at Netanyahu and his Likud party, Biden singled out for praise Stav Shaffir, a young member of Israel's parliament and a Netanyahu critic from the left wing of Israeli politics.

"May your views begin to once again become the majority opinion in the Knesset," Biden said.

Sanders camp touts growing Latino support; crucial in NY, Calif. races

Bernie Sanders, even as he struggles to win over black voters from Hillary Clinton’s side, appears to be making gains among Hispanics -- including in key primary states like New York and California, where a total of 722 delegates are at stake.
The Sanders campaign points to several recent polls, including those showing the Vermont senator essentially tied with Clinton nationally for the Hispanic vote and having largely closed a double-digit gap with Clinton among Hispanic voters in California.
Sanders pollster Ben Tulchin told FoxNews.com on Monday the campaign thinks it finally has caught up with Clinton in terms of message and name recognition, especially among Latinos who have supported Clinton as far back as 2008, when she ran for president against Barack Obama.
“Look at the national polls. The campaign is now doing better than ever, and Latinos are part of it,” said Tulchin, who touted Sanders’ popularity among young, working-class Hispanics. “Bernie has a very powerful message that includes health care for all and free college tuition. … New York has a huge Latino population, and California is the prize of the elections.”
Nationally among all voters, polls show Sanders has now pulled roughly even with the front-running Clinton at about 48 percent. He has won seven of the last eight contests.
After the New York Democratic presidential primary on Tuesday, in which 247 delegates are at stake, Sanders and Clinton will eventually compete in California on June 7, for 475 delegates, the most of any state.
The Clinton campaign did not return a request Monday for comment.
An April 11 poll for the NY 1 news station showed Sanders leading Clinton in New York 55-38 percent among Hispanic voters.
A national poll released four days earlier, by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute, found Democratic-leaning Hispanic voters preferred Sanders over the front-running Clinton 48-47 percent.
The California poll was released April 8 by the nonpartisan Field Research Corp. It found Sanders now trails Clinton 42-49 percent among Hispanic likely Democratic primary voters, after trailing 35-53 percent in January.
Sanders’ gains with Hispanic voters stand in stark contrast to his ability to win over black supporters, something he failed to do in primary races across the South.
Despite big outreach efforts ahead of the Feb. 27 South Carolina Democratic primary, Clinton won roughly 80 percent of the black vote. Sanders was never able to break through the so-called “firewall” that black voters had created for Clinton across the region.
“Secretary Clinton cleaned our clock in the Deep South,” Sanders said in last week’s CNN debate. “We got murdered there.”
Still, Sanders nearly beat Clinton in the Feb. 20 Nevada Democratic caucuses with the help of the Latino vote.
The Clinton campaign continues to dispute entrance poll numbers, touted by the Sanders camp, showing Sanders won the Latino vote by 8 percentage points. However, the larger point, Tulchin argued Monday, is the Latino vote helped Sanders close on Clinton’s early, double-digit lead.
Sanders still faces a daunting task of catching Clinton in the race to get 2,383 delegates before the July convention. Clinton leads in the delegate count, 1,758-1,076, with New York, California and just 15 other contests remaining.
As the country’s fasting-growing minority, Hispanics have become an increasingly important voting bloc for Democrats and Republicans.
In the 2012 presidential race, President Obama won at least 70 percent of the Hispanic vote, out of an estimated 23.3 million eligible Hispanic voters. Hispanics account for roughly 9 percent of the total eligible vote, essentially unchanged from 2012.
However, a recent Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data shows an additional 4 million more Hispanics are eligible to vote this cycle, with those 35 or younger accounting for nearly half of the increase, good news for Sanders who is widely popular among millennials.
Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola University Law School in Los Angeles, on Monday acknowledged the value of the Hispanic vote in the state’s Democratic primary.
But she argued Sanders will need a strong voter turnout, as he does in other states, to do well, considering Hispanic residents are under-represented in terms of registered voters.
“Hispanics could be a big voting bloc, extremely powerful,” said Levinson, who specializes in election law. “But they have to do two things -- register and show up.”
Levinson says Clinton still appears to have the overall advantage considering “she has a better ground game and support from party elders.”
And the contest could in large part be determined by who has the money to compete in California’s expensive TV market.
“It’s about commercial advertising, not retail politics,” Levinson said.

Monday, April 18, 2016

Russian Jet Cartoon

Top Obama doc Fauci to Congress on Zika funding: 'Act now'

Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top Obama administration doctor, urged Congress on Sunday to promptly agree to appropriate an additional roughly $2 billion to fight against Zika -- the latest in the back and forth between the White House and GOP-led House about funding against the deadly virus.
“We have to act now,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told “Fox News Sunday.”
House Republican leaders have argued that the federal government has enough money now to fight the virus and that additional funding should come through the regular appropriations process this fall.
However, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers suggested last week that he would support immediate supplemental funding, with a White House request that includes a detailed spending plan.
“We can’t do it without the numbers,” the Kentucky Republican said Wednesday on Capitol Hill.
While Rogers also has tried to assure the public that Congress will not allow a public health crisis, he has suggested that the administration might not get all of the roughly $2 billion, which he has referred to as a “slush fund.”
“I disagree with that,” Fauci said, arguing the administration has presented Congress with a “project-by-project approach” and that it will also use money left from fighting the Ebola virus.
There has so far been no documented Zika infections in the United States from mosquitoes that carry the virus. But nearly 350 illnesses have been reported across all 50 states, each linked to travel to Zika outbreak regions, largely the Caribbean and Latin America. Thirty-two of the infected women were pregnant. The virus can also be spread through sex.
“The regular appropriations process takes too long,” Fauci said Sunday. “I don’t want to wait to have to develop a vaccine.”
The House agreed late last week on a bipartisan measure to speed up development of a treatment.
However, on Friday, Democratic Reps. Nita Lowey, N.Y.; Rosa DeLauro, Conn.; and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Fla., urged Rogers to hold a special meeting on the administration’s request for emergency supplemental funding.
Under the rules of the Appropriations Committee, three members may request the chairman convene a special meeting. If the chairman fails to schedule such a meeting within seven calendar days, a majority of the committee members may convene a special meeting on their own.
A Zika infection causes only a mild and brief illness in most people. But in the last year, infections in pregnant women have been strongly linked to fetal deaths and devastating birth defects, mostly in Brazil, where 1,113 cases of related microcephaly have been confirmed since October.

Lewandowski says campaign understands delegate rules, calls Trump 'presumptive nominee'

Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski on Sunday dismissed criticism about his team failing to understand GOP delegate rules and declared his candidate the party’s “presumptive nominee."
Lewandowski told “Fox News Sunday” that the Trump campaign indeed comprehends the rules -- which vary among states and sometimes apply to conventions, not primaries or caucuses.
Nevertheless, he thinks the rules are not always fair.
“We understand what happens,” said Lewandowski, arguing primary challenger Texas Sen. Ted Cruz does better in state contests in which “party bosses pick the delegates,” not the voters.
He added: “There are people out there who don’t have the ability to write a check,” to become a convention-picked delegate.
Trump, Cruz or Ohio Gov. John Kasich will need 1,237 delegates to win the Republican Party nomination.
Trump leads with 744, followed by Cruz with 559 and Kasich with 144.
While Trump also has won roughly 20 state contests with larger delegate pools, Cruz has been able to win a dozen or so delegates by essentially campaigning at the smaller-scale state and county conventions -- like those in Colorado and Wyoming on Saturday in which Cruz won all 14 delegates.
Ken Cuccinelli, Cruz’s delegate operations director, said on ABC’s “This Week” that the Trump campaign must stop accusing Cruz of not following the rules and using “hyperbolic rhetoric” about the issue that it cannot support.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said last week on Twitter that the nomination process has been known to all for more than a year and that the campaigns have a responsibility to understand the process.
“Complaints now?” he tweeted. “Give us all a break."
Trump, during a campaign event Saturday in Syracuse, N.Y., suggested the Republican establishment and others are going to have a “rough week” at the party’s nominating convention in July if he arrives with a large delegate lead and officials try to take it from him.
“That’s not what we’re about,” Lewandowski said Sunday, attempting to clarify Trump's remarks. “We’re supposed to be bringing this party together. If the party wants a nominee (who can win the White House), it needs to pick Donald Trump.”
Lewandowski also said Trump, a billionaire businessman, will do “very well” in the New York primary Tuesday in which 95 delegates are at stake, but declined to predict a sweep amid strong polling numbers.
However, he predicted Trump also will do well in upcoming mid-Atlantic state contests, including those in Connecticut, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.
“He’s going to be the presumptive nominee going forward,” Lewandowski said.
Paul Manafort, Trump's newly hired convention manager, told The Washington Post in a story Sunday the campaign’s goal is for Trump to be the presumptive nominee by mid-May.
Lewandowski also on Sunday said that he was happy that Palm Beach County (Fla.) officials decided last week not to proceed with charges that he allegedly assaulted a reporter by grabbing her arm.
He declined to apologize for the incident and for calling her “delusional” for saying he grabbed her. However, Lewandowski said he would speak privately with the reporter in an attempt to put the issue behind them.
Lewandowski has said he tried to call the reporter, Michelle Fields. She says he did not. Lewandowski told “Fox News Sunday” that police have phone records showing he did.

Despite the angry attacks, Hillary and Bernie aren't far apart on the issues

The way that Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were savaging each other in Brooklyn, you’d think they were miles apart politically.
But that’s kind of an illusion. They’re really not all that different on the issues.
It’s in the nature of party primaries that the contenders have to exaggerate their differences. They need to portray their rivals as hopelessly wrong and misguided on a laundry list of subjects, or else the contest seems purely personal—and indeed, it’s gotten bitterly personal between these two Democrats.
But when you drill down, the distinctions that raised Bernie’s decibel level to 11 at the CNN debate turn more on nuance than matters of mighty principle.
Sanders wants to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Clinton also wants to raise the minimum wage, but to $12. So there’s a grand total of three bucks between them—and Hillary, who quickly said she sorta likes $15, has a more complicated plan (naturally) depending on local cost-of-living.
Both the Vermont senator and the former first lady say they want to rein in Wall Street. Sanders goes further rhetorically when it comes to breaking up the big banks, but (as Clinton pointed out) couldn’t tell New York’s Daily News what laws he would use. His main argument is that Clinton is too close to Wall Street big shots, with the infamous six-figure speeches to Goldman Sachs, to have credibility on the subject. But when challenged by CNN, Sanders couldn’t name anything Clinton had done that was influenced by those ties.
Gun control is Clinton’s pivotal issue against Sanders, but he has supported, for instance, an assault-weapons ban, despite being from a rural state with no gun control laws. He does differ from her on shielding gun manufacturers from liability suits. But by and large, they are both in favor of tighter gun controls.
Fossil fuels? Clinton doesn’t accept money from the industry, as Sanders once charged, because that would be illegal. Her campaign has taken money from people who work in the industry, and the Sanders camp has taken a much lesser amount. Neither is exactly sympathetic to the oil and gas crowd.
One of the greatest debate clashes was over Israel. Sanders, taking an unusual step in a New York Democratic primary, spoke sympathetically about respecting the Palestinians (and criticized the Jewish state for a disproportionate response to provocations in Gaza). But as secretary of State, Clinton also pursued an administration policy that would ultimately lead to a two-state solution—just as her husband did, and as Sanders favors. And despite her pro-Israel rhetoric, no administration could orchestrate a peace deal without treating the Palestinian side with respect. Indeed, Clinton said at the debate she would try to “get an agreement that will be fair both to the Israelis and the Palestinians,” while protecting Israel’s security.
The list goes on. On issue after issue, Hillary and Bernie are, yes, liberal Democrats. They are light-years away from the Republicans on banking, minimum wage, gun control and other issues. There was a similar dynamic between Clinton and Barack Obama eight years ago. Sure, Sanders goes much further in promising, say, free college tuition, but even there Clinton decided to pitch a program of grants to the states that would allow students to avoid taking out loans.
And that is telling. While it looks virtually impossible for Sanders to win the nomination, he has basically won the argument, with Clinton sliding left on a whole host of issues, including the Pacific trade deal she once backed.
In the end, it shouldn’t be hard for Bernie supporters to back Hillary—except that many of them, who adore the 74-year-old lawmaker, are mad at her. And the two candidates are really fed up with each other. But that has far more to do with personality than ideology.
Howard Kurtz is a Fox News analyst and the host of "MediaBuzz" (Sundays 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET). He is the author of five books and is based in Washington. Follow him at @HowardKurtz. Click here for more information on Howard Kurtz.

Clinton looks beyond New York as Sanders attacks, Trump works for big Tuesday

Hillary Clinton appeared increasingly confident this weekend about her position as the Democratic presidential front-runner -- downplaying the sharp exchanges with rival Sen. Bernie Sanders as typical, late-campaign rhetoric; focusing her attacks on GOP front-runner Donald Trump and even campaigning in California ahead of Tuesday’s big New York primary.
“At the end of a campaign that is certainly hard fought, there are going to be a lot of charges and all kinds of misrepresentations,” Clinton told ABC’s “This Week,” avoiding a question about high-dollar campaign support and instead talking about the rival campaigns’ positions on increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
“Let's look at what's really at stake here,” she continued. “We're having a vigorous back and forth about raising the minimum wage, which we both support. And the Republicans don't want to do that at all. In fact, Donald Trump has said that American workers are paid too much.”
Clinton has a double-digit lead over Sanders in New York, while Trump has a nearly 20-point lead over challenger Ohio Gov. John Kasich and a more-than-30-point lead over Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz, second to Trump in the delegate count, according to the RealClearPolitics poll average.
Clinton talked to ABC after a big weekend of campaigning in California, which does not hold its primary until June 7, the last day of the primary season but with 475 delegates at stake.
She attended two fundraisers hosted by Hollywood star George Clooney -- one in San Francisco and the other in Los Angeles. And she held a rally at Southwest College, in the Los Angeles area.
Sanders supporters were among those picketing and throwing cash at the Clinton motorcade outside of the San Francisco fundraiser Friday night.
A $353,400 contribution, which will go to a variety of Clinton and Democratic Party-related efforts, was requested for some tickets, an amount Clooney called “obscene.”
Clinton was back in New York on Sunday, as was Sanders, who had just returned from Rome where he attended a Vatican conference at which he briefly met with Pope Francis.
“I have become a little bit tired of being beaten up by the negativity of the Clinton campaign. And we're responding in kind,” Sanders said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” about his TV debate last week with the former secretary of state and the increasing negativity in the Democratic primary.
The Vermont senator and self-described democratic socialist then launched into his criticism about Clinton’s Wall Street ties, support for the war in Iraq and the minimum wage issue.
Clinton leads Sanders 1758-to-1076 in the delegate count with 247 at stake in New York. Sanders faces long odds in surpassing Clinton and getting 2,383 delegates to secure the nomination before the party’s July convention.
However, he has beaten Clinton in seven of the last eight contests, and his campaign remains optimistic about at least perhaps challenging Clinton for so-called super-delegates at the convention in Philadelphia.
“I think we have real shot to win on Tuesday if there is a large voter turnout,” Sander said Sunday. “I think a lot of these super-delegates are going to conclude that Bernie Sanders is the candidate to prevent what must not be allowed to happen, and that is Donald Trump becoming president.”
Trump has now taken to calling Clinton “crooked Hillary,” in an apparent effort to damage her like he did by referring to Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio as “Little Marco.”
Clinton told ABC: "What I’m concerned about is how he goes after everybody else. … He can say whatever he wants to say about me, I really could care less.”
On Sunday, Trump and his campaign also continued to criticize the Republican Party’s delegate-awarding process, which they say relies too much on party “bosses.”
“I think we’re going to make it without (relying) on the bosses,” Trump said at a rally in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. “I spent practically less money than anybody else, and I’m in first place by a lot. Don’t you want that for your president?”
Cruz has been able to out maneuver the Trump campaign for super-delegates and has taken the roughly dozen or so delegates in such states as Colorado and more recently Wyoming, which hold nomination conventions instead of caucuses or voter primaries.
Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski told “Fox News Sunday” that Cruz does better in state contests in which “party bosses pick the delegates,” not the voters.
He added: “There are people out there who don’t have the ability to write a check,” to become a convention-picked delegate.
Trump, Cruz or Kasich will need 1,237 delegates to win the Republican Party nomination. Trump leads with 744, followed by Cruz with 559 and Kasich with 144.
Ken Cuccinelli, Cruz’s delegate operations director, told ABC that the Trump campaign must stop accusing Cruz of not following the delegate rules and using “hyperbolic rhetoric” about the issue that it cannot support.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said last week on Twitter that the nomination process has been known to all for more than a year and that the campaigns have a responsibility to understand the process.
“Complaints now?” he tweeted. “Give us all a break."