Former lawmakers using ‘slush funds’ to lobby members of Congress for foreign nations

Stephan:  The corruption in Washington has become so surreal it would be embarrassing in a novel. Both parties are in this game, as this story about Jim Moran, a Democratic former  representative from Virginia, makes clear. When I was a young man I read 18th century historian Edward Gibbon's three volume, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and I am glad I did so.  One of the things that stood out for me was the role of corruption.

Jim Moran, former Democratic representative from Virginia.

Former members of Congress are using the leftover money in their old campaign committees to funnel campaign donations to lawmakers they lobby on behalf of foreign clients.

At least 17 former members of Congress who are registered as agents of foreign governments have kept their campaign committees active since leaving Capitol Hill. At least nine of them have used those committees to funnel their supporters’ contributions to lawmakers whom they have lobbied on behalf of foreign governments, according to an investigation by the Campaign Legal Center, the Center for Responsive Politics and The Daily Beast.

Jim Moran, a Virginia Democrat who served 12 terms in the House and is now a lobbyist on behalf the government of Qatar (along with other clients), spent much of last summer lobbying members of Congress to pressure Saudi Arabia to ease travel restrictions between Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

Moran convinced Rep. Charlie Crist, D-Fla., to send a letter to the Saudi ambassador about the issue. Crist obliged, including portions of […]

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Trump’s Interior Secretary Picks Opponent Of U.S. Public Lands To Oversee Them

Stephan:  We don't have an administration under Trump, we have a criminal enterprise. I don't know how anyone could dispute that. Here is the latest.

William Perry Pendley

WASHINGTON  — A conservative lawyer and writer who argues for selling off the nation’s public lands is now in charge of a nearly quarter-billion acres in federally held rangeland and other wilderness.

Interior Secretary David Bernhardt on Monday signed an order making Wyoming native acting head of the Bureau of Land Management. The bureau manages nearly 250 million acres of largely wild public lands and their minerals and other resources in vast holdings across the U.S. West.

Pendley, a former midlevel Interior appointee in the Reagan administration, for decades has championed ranchers and others in standoffs with the federal government over grazing and other uses of public lands. He has written books accusing federal authorities and environmental advocates of “tyranny” and “waging war on the West.” He argued in a 2016 National Review article that the “Founding Fathers intended all lands owned by the federal government to be sold.”

Bulk of Trump’s U.S. farm aid goes to biggest and wealthiest farmers: advocacy group

Stephan:  Like everything else Trump does, when you raise the hood on whatever used car he is selling, you see its a scam. Consider the support programs for farmers he set up as a result of the trade crisis he created with the China trade struggle. It is always about making the rich richer, by milking the middle class and poor.  

A field of ripe wheat ready for harvesting is seen in Corn, Oklahoma, U.S., June 12, 2019.
Credit: Reuters/Nick Oxford

WASHINGTON — More than half of the Trump administration’s $8.4 billion in trade aid payments to U.S. farmers through April was received by the top 10% of recipients, the country’s biggest and most successful farmers, a study by an advocacy group showed on Tuesday.

Highlighting an uneven distribution of the bailout, which was designed to help offset effects of the U.S.-China trade war, the Environmental Working Group said the top 1% of aid recipients received an average of more than $180,000 while the bottom 80% were paid less than $5,000 in aid.

The EWG, a Washington-based non-profit, said it obtained data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture through Freedom of Information Act requests for its research, the results of which could not be independently verified by Reuters.

The Trump administration last year began rolling out federal aid for farmers to compensate for lower farm good prices and lost sales after Washington’s trade dispute with China […]

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Top CBP Officer Testifies He’s Unsure if 3-Year-Old Is “a Criminal or a National Security Threat”

Stephan:  Look at the picture of Chief of Law Enforcement Operations for Customs and Border Protection, Brian S. Hastings. Does he look like Mussolini to you, he sure does to me. A true fascist thug in uniform, and dim. This story like so many about this administration would be satire if it weren't true.

Customs and Border Protection official Brian Hastings speaks during a hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on June 26.
Credit: Tasos Katopodis/Getty

One of the country’s top border officers cannot say whether a 3-year-old child might pose a “criminal or national security threat.” This was one of a number of astonishing takeaways from Thursday’s latest hearing into family separation.

The 3-year-old in question was Sofi, a little girl who was separated from her grandmotherafter they arrived at a port of entry in El Paso, Texas, last June seeking asylum. She was separated from her family for 47 days, until the Trump administration was forced to reunite them by court order. Chief of Law Enforcement Operations for Customs and Border Protection Brian S. Hastings still isn’t sure if she posed a threat, he told Rep. Ted Lieu during the Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday.

Ted Lieu: Sofi is not a criminal or a national security threat to the United States as a 3-year-old, […]

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Death rates climbing among young and middle-age US adults

Stephan:  It is becoming clearer and clearer that we are not a happy country, and we are not a happy people. The World Happiness Report ranks 156 of the 195 countries of the world by how happy their citizens perceive themselves to be, as measured by a spectrum of social outcomes. The 2019 Report had this to say about the U.S., as reported by CNN. Except for its 10th place ranking for income, the US doesn't rank in the top 10 on measures that make up a happy country. Where do we rank? 12th place for generosity, 37th place for social support, 61st place for freedom and 42nd place for corruption. But most alarming the death rates of young and middle-aged Americans are rapidly climbing.

Death rates appear to be rising among young and middle-age adults in the United States, according to a new report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics.

Among adults age 25 to 44, “all race and ethnicity groups experienced increases in death rates more recently,” the researchers wrote in their report, published Tuesday, which also found differences in life expectancy between white, black and Hispanic adults.
The researchers found that death rates for Hispanic, white and black adults age 25 to 44 all generally declined from 2000 through 2012 but then increased through 2017.
Between 2012 and 2017, death rates climbed 21% among white and black adults age 25 to 44, and 13% among Hispanic adults in that age group.
The new report did not analyze why the death rate could be rising among this age group, but Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, who was not involved in the report, had some ideas.