January 28, 2020 0 Comment apgov
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Trump unveils Middle East peace plan with two-state solution, tunnel connecting West Bank and Gaza

FoxNews – President Trump on Tuesday called for a two-state solution to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as he unveiled the details of his administration’s much-awaited Middle East peace plan.

Trump announced the proposal alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during remarks in the East Room of the White House.

“My vision presents a win-win situation for both sides,” Trump said. “Today Israel has taken a giant step toward peace.”

He later tweeted a map of the proposed State of Palestine.

While Trump and Netanyahu praised the plan as a way toward ending the decades-long conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians, odds of the peace plan taking shape are long given that the Palestinians have preemptively rejected the plan.

“This is a great deal,” Trump said. “And the Palestinians may not have this opportunity ever again.”

Trump acknowledged he’s setting out toward a goal that has eluded every U.S. president in modern times but claimed those prior efforts were too vague and short on critical details. Trump declared his plan is “the most detailed proposal ever put forward.”

Trump added: “There is nothing tougher than this one, we have an obligation to humanity to get it done.”

Netanyahu, who faces a tough re-election in March amid a corruption scandal, used his time on the dais to praise Trump’s plan and how it benefited Israeli sovereignty and security. The Israeli leader added that past deals had not had the “right balance between Israeli security and Palestinians aspirations.”

“You have charted a brilliant future for Israelis and Palestinians toward a lasting peace,” he said. “For decades that peace has proved elusive.”

He added: “It’s a great plan for Israel, it’s a great plan for peace.”

White House officials described the plan as realistic and said Israel is prepared to act. According to White House officials, the plan calls for a two-state solution including the state of Israel and the “future” state of Palestine. Under the plan, the Palestinians would have to reach certain benchmarks to achieve a state. Those benchmarks include rooting out terrorism, stopping what they call “pay to slay,” implementing steps toward free speech, and other political reforms.

The plan is a basis for negotiations with Israel, Trump officials said, claiming many of the Palestinians’ red lines are met, including their calls for a Palestinian state and a capital in parts of East Jerusalem.

The vision calls for more than doubling the amount of territory the Palestinians control.

“This plan will double Palestinian territory and set the capital of the Palestinian state in eastern Jerusalem where the United States will happily open an embassy,” Trump said. “Our vision will end the cycle of Palestinian dependence on charity and foreign aid.”

The plan also includes a map of a contiguous Palestinian state in the West Bank, with a proposed tunnel to connect the West Bank and Gaza Strip. There would also be land swaps south of Gaza to give the Palestinians more territory.

This is the first time Israel has agreed to a Palestinian state with defined borders.

A small strip of land between the Egyptian border and the proposed land swap areas south of Gaza would remain Israeli territory and be subject to Israeli security control. This was requested by Egypt as a buffer against cross-border terrorism.

As part of the plan, Israel has agreed to halt settlement construction for four years. But in one detail sure to provoke Palestinian objections, the plan recognizes Israeli sovereignty over major settlement blocs in the West Bank.

The plan calls for a demilitarized Palestinian state. Israel would maintain overall security, though it does create programs for the Palestinians to show the capability to secure their areas, including a local police force. The more the Palestinians show they can secure their areas and cooperate with Israel, the less Israel will have to do in terms of maintaining security, officials said.

Israel would maintain sovereignty of the Jordan Valley east of the West Bank, according to the proposal. Israel would also maintain the security of the area.

There is a plan that over time, Palestinians would be able to achieve some civil sovereignty in the Jordan Valley, like farming, officials said.

While the Palestinians have been negative toward the plan, White House officials said Trump believes they will begin to move toward it.

Both Netanyahu and his political challenger, Benny Gantz, have agreed to implement this plan, regardless of the outcome of the upcoming March 2 election.

The officials portrayed the plan as Israel agreeing to massive concessions without jeopardizing its security, amounting to a serious good-faith effort that Israel has agreed to negotiate. The officials said the plan is realistic and Israel is prepared to follow through with it.

They also argue that the Trump administration’s moves to relocate the embassy and recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan were important confidence-building measures that led to this plan.

The Palestinians, though, refuse to even speak to Trump, saying he’s biased in favor of Israel, and they are calling on Arab representatives to reject the Tuesday event at the White House. While Trump and Netanyahu were giving their comments, Palestinian leaders were meeting in the West Bank to discuss the plan.

The Palestinian leadership also has encouraged protests in the West Bank, raising fears that the announcement in Washington could spark a new round of violence. Ahead of the announcement, the Israeli military said it was reinforcing infantry troops along the Jordan Valley.

Hamas, the Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist militant organization that has waged war with Israel for decades, rejected the plan and called it a “theatrical presentation to sell illusions” in a comment to Fox News.

Source: US Government Class

January 28, 2020 0 Comment apgov
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Bolton book roils Washington as onetime allies turn on Trump’s former national security adviser

Washington Post – Just outside the spacious corner office of the White House national security adviser, aides crowded into a windowless anteroom knew to make themselves small when John Bolton got a summons from President Trump. Bolton, his ubiquitous yellow legal pad in hand, would throw open his door and set off at a gallop.

Once in the Oval Office, Bolton would take copious notes on that pad, at times angering a president known to mistrust note-taking by even his closest aides, according to a former senior administration official.

Leaks from Bolton’s soon-to-be-published memoir, in which he alleges a direct link between Trump’s withholding of aid to Ukraine and his desire that its government investigate his political rivals, validated the president’s suspicions in the eyes of some senior White House officials.

Bolton, who left the White House in September — Trump said he was fired; Bolton said he resigned — did not respond to a question about whether he had used personal notes or official documents in his book.

The manuscript includes more than a dozen pages on Bolton’s interactions over Ukraine with Trump, his personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and others, according to one person familiar with the project. In what this person called an “unflattering” portrait of the president, it also touches on other areas where Bolton is known to have disagreed with Trump policy decisions, including Venezuela and Turkey.

But another former senior official, one of several who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters, said Bolton “didn’t need to have” documents or his own notes from inside the White House, “since he probably went home every night and wrote about it.”

Noting the rapid completion of Bolton’s book, “I’m convinced he was writing all the time” he served as national security adviser, said this former official, who described Bolton as a nose-to-the-grindstone person who rarely socialized.

The weekend revelations landed like a bombshell in the ongoing Senate impeachment trial over the Ukraine matter, where key Republican lawmakers on Monday indicated they may defy the GOP leadership to support calling Bolton and other witnesses.

People close to Bolton said he wanted to testify, and a spokeswoman denied that he was behind the leak of the book, adding that the National Security Council has had a copy of it since Dec. 30.

Bolton was regularly appalled by what he saw from the president, the people close to him said. He wondered at times if Trump was acting in America’s best interest or if he was inspired by nefarious reasons, according to a person familiar with the book.

But among conservative national security experts and media, the focus was less on the accuracy of Bolton’s account, or its possible effect on the trial, and more on why he wrote it.

“If he wants to write a book like this, it should come out after the election,” Fred Fleitz said in an interview. Fleitz was the National Security Council’s chief of staff for part of Bolton’s 17-month White House tenure and a Bolton associate for decades.

“It’s natural occasionally for presidential advisers to have a falling out,” said Fleitz, referring to Bolton’s departure. “It’s appropriate for the adviser to move on.”

In an opinion column on the Fox News website, Fleitz said he failed to see the need for “a former national security adviser to publish a tell-all book critical of a president he served,” especially in the midst of a campaign “that will determine the fate of the country.”

He called on Bolton to withdraw the book — titled “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir” — until after the election.

Others were more direct. “Bolton has sadly reduced himself to nothing more than an unprincipled tool of the Radical Dems and Deep State: And he’s sacrificed his integrity to sell a lousy spiteful book, pathetic,” Fox host Lou Dobbs wrote on Twitter about a man who had long been a regular on Dobbs’s show.

Giuliani, in a message to The Washington Post, called Bolton a “backstabber” and said he regretted recommending him to Trump.

Trump, he said, “never really trusted the Backstabber’s judgment. He was right and I was wrong because ironically I supported him for the job.”

White House officials and Trump advisers cast Bolton as a pugnacious figure disliked by many of his colleagues — contemporaneous accounts supported that — who was simply looking for a payday.

“How convenient that this leaked info happened to be released at the same time as preorders were made available for the book on Amazon,” Steve Guest, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, said on Twitter. “What a joke.”

Bolton’s lawyer, Charles Cooper, denied in an interview that he or his client had anything to do with the leaked portions of the book, first published Sunday by the New York Times. “I can tell you unequivocally that we had nothing to do with the leak of any information concerning John’s manuscript,” Cooper said.

Mark Dubowitz, chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, defended Bolton and bemoaned that “in the demonization campaign” against him, “many forget that at the end of the day he was and remains a deeply experienced policy practitioner, with decades of experience over multiple administrations.”

Calling Bolton a “deeply principled person who . . . has a deep respect for American law and for the Constitution,” Dubowitz said he was certain Bolton was “not doing this to sell books and not doing this to get revenge because he was fired by the president.”

Dubowitz also said he was “super torn.”

“I’m not a big fan of these tell-all books. . . . I wonder how good it is for our country when presidents are always going to be looking over their shoulders and behind their backs,” he said.

Another foreign policy expert on the right, who considers himself a friend of Bolton and an admirer of Trump, said he was surprised Bolton took the White House job in the first place.

“When he was announced, I thought, ‘Oh, my God, this is never going to work.’ The reason is that it’s very clear that Bolton and Trump have very different ideas on how foreign policy should be run.”

“They did work very well on a lot of issues. Then the relationship just kind of broke down. . . . There was clearly a personal animosity there at the end.”

Source: US Government Class

January 25, 2020 0 Comment apgov
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Historic youth turnout expected in Iowa caucuses

The Fulcrum – A historic number of young voters are set to turn out during the pivotal Iowa caucuses next month, a new poll finds. And by participating in record numbers, the youth bloc could tilt the results heavily in favor of the leading progressive candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination.

More than a third of eligible Iowa voters between the ages of 18 and 29 said they were “extremely likely” to participate during the Feb. 3 caucuses, a number that would dwarf previous turnout figures, according to researchers at Tufts University’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement and Suffolk University.

Only an estimated 11 percent of young Iowans turned out for the 2016 caucuses, when both parties had contested primaries. In 2008 and 2012, just 4 percent of young voters participated in the country’s first-in-the-nation nominating contest, the researchers said.

Large turnout by young voters next month would underscore their growing influence in federal elections, highlighted by their role in the 2018 midterms, when youth turnout increased in all 34 states studied in a previous CIRCLE analysis.

The new poll of young Iowa voters suggests that the 2018 turnout wasn’t a fluke and “may well continue in 2020 and beyond,” CIRCLE Director Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg said in a statement.

“This poll comes at a pivotal time for young people’s electoral participation, following on the heels of the 2018 election when young people’s activism and peer-to-peer outreach propelled a doubling of youth turnout that was decisive in some races,” Kawashima-Ginsberg said.

Of the 150 Democratic caucus-goers surveyed across 99 Iowa counties, 39 percent said they planned to caucus for Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. The second most popular candidate among younger voters was Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who had 19 percent support.

The survey’s margin of error was plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.

Source: US Government Class

January 25, 2020 0 Comment apgov
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Schiff at Center of Impeachment Trial

(Reuters) – The lawmaker walking U.S. senators methodically through the case for removing President Donald Trump from office is also becoming Exhibit A in efforts by the president’s allies to defend him.

Over the first three days of Trump’s impeachment trial, the head of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee,  Adam Schiff, has led a team of Democratic lawmakers serving as prosecutors as they lay out their evidence that Trump abused his power by pressuring Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading 2020 Democratic presidential contender.

Even a few of Trump’s fellow Republicans have said Schiff has made an effective case.

At the same time, Trump’s lawyers and political allies have made Schiff a central focus of their efforts to defend the president during his trial. When they laid out their written case for why Trump should be acquitted, the president’s lawyers mentioned Schiff’s name almost 100 times.

They accused the congressman of running an “unheard of procedure that denied the president any semblance of fair process,” accused him of lying and of personally orchestrating the whistleblower complaint that led to the impeachment probe.

Congressional Republicans have intensified those critiques since the start of Trump’s trial this week, accusing him of misstating the evidence against the president and running a hasty and unfair investigation.

Trump, who denies wrongdoing and denounces the impeachment process as a sham, joined that criticism on Thursday, calling the congressman “Shifty Schiff” and saying his presentation to the Senate was “loaded with lies and misrepresentations.” Then he retweeted a series of attacks from other Republicans.

A spokesman for Schiff had no immediate comment on the Republican attacks. Schiff has said in response to past salvos from Trump that the president “would much rather attack others than answer for his own conduct.”

Democrats contend that senators should convict Trump on two charges brought by the Democratic-led House – abuse of power for pressuring Ukraine to investigate Biden, and obstruction of Congress for his actions to impede a House inquiry into the matter.

But the Senate, which is controlled by Trump’s fellow Republicans, remains unlikely to convict him. A two-thirds majority is needed to remove him from office.

House of Representatives managers Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) speak to reporters on the fourth day of the Senate impeachment trial of U.S. President Donald Trump at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., January 24, 2020. REUTERS/Erin Scott

 

“It is not common you would personally attack a prosecutor,” said Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. “But we are not in a courtroom. We are in a political theater – emphasis on theater.”

Standing at a lectern in the well of the Senate, Schiff told the 100 senators acting as jurors in the trial that Trump had tried to “cheat” his way to victory in November’s election, and that he had shown he “believes that he’s above the law and scornful of constraint.”

Schiff, 59, and his fellow Democrats will have one final chance on Friday to make their case before Trump’s legal team takes the floor on Saturday to rebut the evidence.Trump’s team is expected to continue to focus its attacks on Schiff.

LEADING ROLE IN INVESTIGATION

Trump and his allies have targeted Schiff with particular intensity since the autumn, when he took leadership of the impeachment investigation.

Trump has branded the California lawmaker a “lowlife,” a “liar” and a “pencil-neck,” and once suggested that Schiff should perhaps be arrested for treason.

Schiff, who represents a Los Angeles district, is a former federal prosecutor and a political ally of House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Over the past two years, he became a prolific defender of the government’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. In March, all the Republicans on the intelligence panel he heads asked that he resign.

Schiff has had a leading role in making the Democrats’ case before the Senate, delivering their opening argument and weaving together detailed accounts of testimony from Trump aides and others about the administration’s efforts to secure investigations in Ukraine.

Republican Senator John Kennedy said Schiff’s presentation was eloquent. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, one of Trump’s closest allies in the chamber, told reporters before the trial resumed on Thursday that Schiff and the other Democrats “did a good job of taking bits and pieces of the evidence and creating a quilt out of it.”

For his part, Schiff thanked senators at the end of Thursday’s eight-hour session for “keeping an open mind about all of the issues that we are presenting.”

Still, there has been no sign he has moved any Republicans to vote for a conviction. But Schiff has another audience for his eloquence – American voters who will decide on Nov. 3 whether to re-elect Trump.

Source: US Government Class

January 21, 2020 0 Comment apgov
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Governor, staff gear up for State of the State address

Santa Fe New Mexican – On the roughly eight-hour flight from Chicago to Dublin, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s speechwriter and top communications staffer started a draft of what will be her second annual address to the Legislature.

Six hours and 6,000 words later, Tripp Stelnicki closed his laptop and braced himself to meet his sister’s fiancé in Ireland.

Since then, Stelnicki said, the document has run the gantlet, viewed and honed by the governor’s chief of staff, John Bingaman, senior adviser Dominic Gabello and the governor herself. She made some suggestions — a joke here, a little more emphasis here, a cut there. Over time, 2,000 words were shaved off and Lujan Grisham has gone through a dry run of the address, with microphones on, in the House chamber. Closed captions have been sent to PBS for the telecast of the address.

And now, it’s go time.

Lujan Grisham will deliver her second State of the State address Tuesday at about 12:30 p.m. in the House chamber, with lawmakers, lobbyists, journalists and the general public tuning in to hear her recount accomplishments during her first year in office and describe her political vision for the next year.

Unlike her first State of the State address, a speech about what was to come, Tuesday will be an opportunity for the Democratic governor to add detail and texture to a vision she wants to forge for New Mexico with the help of lawmakers in the Legislature during the 30-day budget session.

“I write it, but that is kind of the last step,” said Stelnicki, the governor’s communications director and a former news reporter for The New Mexican.

The speech, he added, is a summation of what has been done and where the state is headed under Lujan Grisham’s leadership.

Stelnicki said staff members do not meet, brainstorm and decide collectively what goes into the State of the State. Instead, the governor entrusts him to accentuate the priorities she wants highlighted: More education funding, economic priorities, health, the environment, public safety.

A crucial part of Stelnicki’s job is being part of routine conversations with the governor and her top staff, including Cabinet secretaries, on what her administration is doing. Those interactions are eventually wrapped into the address.

“I sit down at my computer and bang it out,” Stelnicki said. “But with a significant one like this, the things that go into that are basically the entire course of the year has been preparation and input into … my ultimately sitting down at the computer and writing a first draft.”

On Tuesday, Lujan Grisham will make the case for the litany of legislative priorities that have made the call — the list of nonbudget policy items the governor has deemed relevant to the 30-day session this year. That includes legalizing recreational cannabis; a bill to allow law enforcement to obtain a court order to remove guns from people who are considered dangerous; a proposal to offer a scholarship that would cover college tuition; a solar tax credit renewal and a host of other proposals.

Lujan Grisham also will likely touch on her proposal to boost K-12 education funding by $200.3 million and create an additional $320 million one-time appropriation to an Early Childhood Trust Fund. Taken together, it is more than the $500 million in additional education funding she called for during her first State of the State address in January 2019.

Though State of the State speeches sometimes escape the notice of many, they remain a big deal to politicians and those who work for them.

“I think that governors work really hard on the State of the State speech,” said Brian Sanderoff, president of Albuquerque-based Research and Polling Inc. “I think it’s their one opportunity to hold the Legislature captive to hear her short- and midterm agenda [and] set a tone.”

This year’s address likely will feature a heavy emphasis on the budget — not surprising given the 30-day session is dedicated to the subject. Lujan Grisham is calling for an 8.4 percent increase to $7.68 billion for fiscal year 2021, while the Legislative Finance Committee recommends a 6.5 percent increase to $7.54 billion. Either plan would give New Mexico its second straight year of major budget increases fueled by unprecedented oil production in the southeast corner of the state.

Stelnicki said the address is aimed for a wide audience, not merely those who will be in the House chamber Tuesday afternoon.

“It’s definitely a speech for New Mexicans first and foremost, legislators included, and everybody who works here at the Capitol,” he said. “That’s all one group that it’s aimed it. It doesn’t matter, there’s no distinction really if you’re a House representative from one part of the state or another or just someone who’s tuning in to see it. We would want the message to be the same. The goal is to be an all-encompassing speech.”

Source: US Government Class

January 14, 2020 0 Comment apgov
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New Mexico lawmakers hold out on review of nuke plan

Santa Fe New Mexican – Members of New Mexico’s congressional delegation find themselves in an awkward position as watchdogs claim the U.S. government is skirting key environmental laws by refusing to closely examine the consequences of increasing production of key plutonium components for the nation’s nuclear arsenal.

As supporters of bringing more defense-related spending to New Mexico, the Democratic lawmakers have been reticent to speak about whether there should be a more in-depth review of the plutonium core project despite their recent criticism of the Trump administration’s plans to roll back environmental oversight of other federal projects.

Federal officials have set a deadline of 2030 for increased core production, with work being split between Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. At stake are jobs and billions of dollars to revamp existing buildings or construct new factories.

The National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the nuclear arsenal, announced last week it doesn’t need to do any broad environmental reviews of the proposal. Watchdog groups say that’s a violation of law; some are calling for a nationwide review and others want a more in-depth analysis of the impact on the Los Alamos lab.

The offices of U.S. Sens. Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich told the Associated Press they would not be able to say whether they would support an expanded review without first being briefed by the U.S. Energy Department. A meeting is planned this week.

The senators said they support Los Alamos’ mission and believe the review process under the National Environmental Policy Act is important to ensuring worker, community and environmental safety.

“The burden is on DOE and Los Alamos to explain their NEPA analysis and decisions to the public, and we will continue to prioritize worker safety and independent oversight of the lab,” the senators said.

U.S. Rep. Ben Ray Luján, a Democratic Senate candidate whose district includes the lab, declined to comment. His office said he was gathering more information.

The mission of producing the cores has been based at Los Alamos for years but none have been made since 2011 as the lab has been dogged by a string of safety lapses and concerns about a lack of accountability.

The consequences of building up production capabilities at Los Alamos are immense and a thorough review should be done, said Greg Mello of the Albuquerque-based Los Alamos Study Group.

He said the government isn’t going to “become conscious of the contradictions and interactions” of the numerous programs that would be involved unless it’s forced to prepare an environmental impact statement.

“Here at Los Alamos, the pit production is the catalyst and main component of a huge expansion that now threatens to set up a satellite campus in Santa Fe, there’s talk of a satellite campus in Española and bridges over the Rio Grande and they’re struggling with housing and transportation,” he said. “There’s $13 billion in construction proposed and no one knows how it all fits together.”

The state’s congressional delegation and other elected leaders have been fighting for years to consolidate plutonium core production at Los Alamos given the lucrative nature of the work. Even Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham was among the supporters while she was in Congress.

Her office said Friday that in general, it would want the most up-to-date information.

“That would certainly seem to be in New Mexicans’ best interest when we’re talking about everything involved in pit production,” said spokesman Tripp Stelnicki.

He said the state Environment Department is doing what it can to make sure New Mexico will be protected.

Stelnicki said the state agency has talked with the Department of Energy broadly about the plutonium project, but officials with the Environment Department did not provide details about any regulatory concerns related to ramping up production or the added waste that will be generated by manufacturing more plutonium cores.

Watchdogs said the state needs to consider that the waste will need to be sent somewhere.

New Mexico already is home to the federal government’s only underground nuclear waste repository but questions have been raised about its capacity.

It will be up to Lujan Grisham’s administration this year to consider a permit renewal for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Southern New Mexico. The Department of Energy’s draft application calls for extending the time that waste can be placed there from 2024 to 2052. However, the National Nuclear Security Administration’s documentation regarding plutonium core production suggests the repository be open long enough to take the tens of thousands of metric tons of waste generated from the project over 50 years.

Source: US Government Class

January 13, 2020 0 Comment apgov
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Something Is Missing In Iowa As Democrats Once Again Debate: A Clear Favorite

NPR – Viewers tuning in for the latest Democratic presidential candidates’ debate Tuesday night may sense something missing in Des Moines.

For starters, the well-lit stage on the Drake University campus may seem half-empty. There will be only six candidates raising their hands and vying for airtime. That’s less than a third as many as qualified for the first round back in June. At that point, the debate was held over two nights with 10 different candidates onstage each night.

Most of the original crew have dropped out, including all the governors, Sen. Kamala Harris of California and former Cabinet Secretary Julián Castro of Texas. Others have been excluded as the qualifying criteria — poll standing and fundraising — have grown tougher.

Among the missing on Tuesday are some of the more memorable presenters from earlier debate stages, such as Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and businessman Andrew Yang. Both are still running but missed the cut on polling performance. Without them, the debate will not have even one person of color.

Those who remain will, as always, strive to differentiate themselves from each other while proving they have what it takes to defeat President Trump in November. Iowans will have their chance to weigh in on that question in three weeks during the party’s precinct-level caucuses on Feb. 3.

And that suggests something else that may seem missing Tuesday night: a clear favorite. The well-respected Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom poll now has Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont leading in Iowa, but the average of polls nationwide and in other early voting states still shows a modest preference for former Vice President Joe Biden.

At this point, it is possible to imagine either emerging from the early voting states as a bona fide front-runner in time for Super Tuesday on March 3, when 14 states will vote, including delegate-rich California and Texas.

But it is also possible to imagine neither of them doing so, and thus to imagine Super Tuesday as a hodgepodge of conflicting results.

Testing the candidates is, of course, the first order of business in Tuesday’s debate. But also at issue is the trajectory of the Democratic Party in the state and the region and the importance of Iowa itself in the nation’s politics.

While we’re at it, let’s add that the entire system of defining the party’s field of candidates through televised debates and early voting in selected, albeit less populous, states is on trial as well.

Perhaps the one finding in the latest Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom poll that no one would dispute is this: The two most prominent progressives in the race — Sanders and Elizabeth Warren — were the first choice among 37% of those surveyed. The three leading contenders in the more moderate space — Biden, former South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar of neighboring Minnesota— also totaled 37%. The longstanding division within the party’s ranks seems alive and well and remarkably even.

Iowa surely reflects that division, but it differs from the national Democratic Party in important ways. Nationally, the Democrats are increasingly the party of younger voters and people of color. Iowa is statistically older than most states and more than 90% white. (The same can be said of New Hampshire, the state that always holds the nation’s first primary, where the population is 93% white and older than any state’s but Maine.)

For TV viewers, Tuesday’s confab among candidates will be a CNN show, heavily promoted by that cable news operation. But in Iowa, it is widely known as the Des Moines Register debate, closely identified with that traditional newspaper and its longtime, outsize influence in the Hawkeye State. The paper has long sponsored a debate that was a significant factor in the caucuses’ outcome.

The Register has been a strong advocate for the caucus format over the years, noting among other things that it has “picked the nominee” on the Democratic side in nine of the 11 cycles beginning in 1976 — Jimmy Carter twice, Walter Mondale, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, Barack Obama twice and Hillary Clinton.

The only exceptions came when a native son, Sen. Tom Harkin, dominated the caucus tally in 1992 and when Richard Gephardt of neighboring Missouri won in 1988. Second-place finishers have also gained significantly on their way to winning New Hampshire’s primary, including Sanders in 2016 and Gary Hart in 1984.

The Register’s poll, directed by Ann Selzer, showed Sanders with his first lead in the state on Friday. The Register poll has had the eventual Democratic caucus winner on top in each of the last six presidential cycles.

But the poll also showed Sanders to be the first choice of just 1 Democrat in 5, with three other candidates closely bunched just behind him. Sanders had 20%, Warren 17%, Buttigieg 16% and Biden 15%.

Joining this quartet on Tuesday night will be Klobuchar, who was the first choice among 6% in the poll, and billionaire businessman Tom Steyer, whose late ad blitz in targeted states enabled him to meet the polling and donor thresholds for inclusion in the debate.

Steyer would not have made the stage based on his Iowa standing, however, as the Register poll found him at just 2%, behind Yang at 5% and even Booker at 3%. Late-starting media mogul and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is not taking donations so he is not in the running for the debates. Six more debates are scheduled, three in February alone.

Much of the poll discussion focused on how both Warren and Buttigieg had fallen back since their impressive moves to the front of the Register poll in 2019. Warren still had the highest favorability rating among Democrats — 70% found her either “very” or “mostly” favorable — but had given ground to Sanders in the months since he came back from his October heart attack.

Sanders’ camp was quick to tout the Register poll, and to point to more good showings elsewhere. But given the 3.7-point margin of error, it could be said the race was statistically close to being a four-way tie. That should help keep curiosity and enthusiasm high for the devotees of the leading candidates and encourage turnout — a test of which candidate has the best “ground game” as well as the most fervent supporters. Sanders’ fans have long been known as fiercely loyal, but Warren and Buttigieg are credited with building impressive organizations to manage caucus night.

High motivation is more important here than usual because these are not simple voting events. They are true caucuses, party meetings, that require a time commitment and a degree of engagement with one’s neighbors on a weeknight deep in winter darkness.

Selzer, the poll director, found 45% of Iowans interviewed said they were still open to persuasion and 13% had yet to arrive at a preference. “The caucus process is an invitation to keep an open mind,” she said.

At the Democrats’ caucus events, held in a variety of public and private venues, each candidate needs to muster support from at least 15% of the participants to remain “viable.” Those whose candidate does not meet this threshold are free to support another candidate. Thus the tally taken at the end of the evening represents only the final choices, which may differ from the initial preferences.

That is a system that some find off-putting. But Iowa Democrats have remained attached to it, in part to avoid conflict with New Hampshire and its codified “first in the nation” primary. Both major parties have ceded this first-caucus, first-primary status to Iowa and New Hampshire, respectively, attempting to counter-balance the two states’ demographic tilt by also scheduling Nevada caucuses and South Carolina’s primary in February.

Will this year’s flood of Super Tuesday votes wash away the relatively few actual delegates committed in February? Or will the cue effects of Iowa and New Hampshire drive the next rounds of voting all the more?

Tuesday night may begin to fill in some of the missing information.

Source: US Government Class

January 13, 2020 0 Comment apgov
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Iranian security forces purportedly fire live ammunition to disperse protesters despite Trump’s warning

FoxNews – Videos emerged online Monday that purportedly show Iranian police and security forces firing live ammunition to disperse demonstrators protesting against the Islamic Republic after the country mistakenly downed a Ukrainian airline plane shortly after takeoff from Tehran.

There was no immediate report in Iranian state-run media on the incident near Azadi, or Freedom, Square in Tehran, but, if true, could be seen as an act of defiance against President Trump who warned the regime against the use of deadly force.

Trump late Sunday tweeted in Farsi that a combination of protests and sanctions have “choked off” Iran and said Tehran will be forced to the negotiation table.

Trump insisted that he “couldn’t care less” if the regime negotiates, but he appeared to lay down non-negotiable issues that included the development of nuclear weapons and the use of deadly force against protesters.

“Don’t kill your protesters,” he tweeted.

Videos were sent to the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran and later verified by The Associated Press. They show a crowd of demonstrators fleeing as a tear gas canister landed among them. People cough and sputter while trying to escape the fumes, with one woman calling out in Farsi: “They fired tear gas at people! Azadi Square. Death to the dictator!”

Another video shows a woman being carried away in the aftermath as a blood trail can be seen on the ground. Those around her cry out that she has been shot by live ammunition in the leg.

“Oh my God, she’s bleeding nonstop!” one person shouts. Another shouts: “Bandage it!”

Photos and video after the incident show pools of blood on the sidewalk.

Hossein Rahimi, the head of the Tehran police, said in a statement seen by Reuters that police “absolutely did not shoot” due to orders to show restraint.

The tweet in Farsi appears to be an attempt by Trump to speak directly to the Iranian people. Tehran has experienced upheaval after the missile strike on a Ukrainian airline flight out of the country’s capital that the country called a mistake. Still, the mishap was seen as an international display of military ineptitude.

Many of the country’s protesters chanted “death to the Dictator,” referring to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Another group near a university in Tehran chanted, “They are lying that our enemy is America, our enemy is right here,” Reuters reported

Trump, who says he is not interested in ousting the Iranian regime, reinstated economic sanctions on Iran after withdrawing from the nuke deal. He said it gave Tehran too many economic benefits without doing enough to prevent Iran from eventually developing a nuclear weapon.

Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh,  the head of the Revolutionary Guard’s aerospace division, said his unit accepts “full responsibility.” Iranian officials had earlier denied that it had shot down the jet.

Gen. Hossein Salami, commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, apologized, according to CBS News, citing Iran’s state TV.

“I swear to almighty God that I wished I were in that plane and had crashed with them and had burned, and had not witnessed this tragic incident,” Salami said.

Alam Saleh, an Iran expert, told the Wall Street Journal that the state’s legitimacy has been “severely challenged by the people.”

Trump, hours earlier, again warned Tehran not to kill protesters, saying, “Thousands have already been killed or imprisoned by you, and the World is watching. More importantly, the USA is watching.”

Karen Pierce, British ambassador to the United Nations, echoed Trump’s message to Iran.

“The important thing is that… the Iranian government needs to listen to its people and it needs to de-escalate the current situation… that’s in their hands,” Pierce said Sunday on “America’s News HQ.”

Fox News’ Yael Halon and the Associated Press contributed to this report

Source: US Government Class

January 13, 2020 0 Comment apgov
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New Des Moines Register poll has Bernie Sanders leading in Iowa

CBS News – A new Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom poll has Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders leading the race in Iowa 24 days out from Caucus Day with 20% support among likely Democratic caucus-goers.

Sanders is followed by Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren with 17%, former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg at 16% and former Vice President Joe Biden at 15%.

Sanders’ support is up 5 points compared to the Register’s poll in November. Warren’s support ticked up one point, while Buttigieg’s plummeted 9 points and Biden’s support did not change.

“There’s no denying that this is a good poll for Bernie Sanders. He leads, but it’s not an uncontested lead,” said J. Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co., which conducted the poll told the Des Moines Register. “He’s got a firmer grip on his supporters than the rest of his compatriots.”

The poll, which was released four days before the Democratic debate in Des Moines, does not put any new candidates on the stage. The deadline to qualify for the debate is midnight Friday. Biden, Buttigeg, Klobuchar, businessman Tom Steyer, Sanders and Warren have already qualified.

Outside of the top tier of candidates, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar saw her support remain at 6%. She was followed by entrepreneur Andrew Yang at 5% and New Jersey Senator Cory Booker at 3%. All other candidates were at or below 2%.

The poll shows that many likely caucus-goers still haven’t fully settled on a candidate. Only 40% of likely caucus-goers say they have made up their mind on who they plan to support, which is up 10 points from November. However, 45% of respondents said they could still be persuaded to pick a different candidate to support and 13% said they have yet to pick a favorite.

The most recent CBS News Battleground Tracker Poll similarly found a close race between the top tier of Democratic candidates, with Sanders, Biden and Buttigieg tied for first place with 23% support.

The Iowa caucuses, which will be the first nominating contest of the 2020 Democratic primary, will be held on February 3rd. Seven of the last nine Democratic nominees have won the Iowa caucuses, including Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Barack Obama in 2008.

The survey, which began the day the United States killed top Iranian military general Qassem Soleimani, found that 57% of likely Democratic caucus-goers said foreign policy is an “extremely important issue for them.” Meanwhile, respondents also said healthcare (68%), climate change (68%) and the gap between the rich and poor (59%) were extremely important issues.

The poll, which was conducted from January 2 to January 8, surveyed 701 likely Democratic caucus-goers and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7%.

Source: US Government Class

January 10, 2020 0 Comment apgov
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U.S. Added 145,000 Jobs in December; Unemployment at 3.5%

New York Times – The Labor Department report suggests that the economy ended 2019 on a steady footing.

■ 145,000 jobs were added in December. Analysts had expected a gain of about 160,000.

■ The unemployment rate was unchanged at 3.5 percent.

■ Average hourly earnings rose by 0.1 percent. The year-over-year gain is now 2.9 percent.

Hiring for the final month of 2019 capped a year of steady but slowing gains in employment, the latest evidence that the American labor market has not run out of breath.

Sluggish growth and uncertainty abroad, combined with a maturing labor market at home, contributed to slimmer payroll gains last year, said Gregory Daco, the chief United States economist at Oxford Economics.

But cooling job creation is to be expected in the 11th year of an economic expansion, and as the government’s report, released Friday, showed, the slowdown has been gradual.

There were weak spots. Revisions for the previous two months reduced last year’s total gains by 14,000 jobs. And the struggling manufacturing sector lost 12,000 positions in December.

The average monthly gains for the last three months of the year were 184,000, on par with the rest of the year. For the full year, the economy added 2.1 million jobs, fewer than the 2.7 million created in 2018, but more than enough to handily outpace population growth. It is the smallest annual increase since 2011.

The Labor Department’s preliminary estimate of December’s performance does not alter last year’s overall employment picture.

“I think 2019 was a year of consolidation,” Mr. Daco said. “We had relatively strong and steady job growth over the year despite a number of headwinds including a trade war with China, weaker global activity and heightened policy uncertainty.”

Going forward, Mr. Daco said he expected average monthly job growth to drop to 125,000 this year. “I know it’s hard to get accustomed to,” he said, “but that’s still enough to provide for a stable unemployment rate and provide for people coming back into the labor force.”

The labor force participation rate was steady at 62.3 percent in December — at the top of the post-recession range, even though it’s lower than in the decades before the recession.

And a broader measure of unemployment that includes part-time workers who would prefer full-time jobs and those too discouraged to even bother looking for work fell to 6.7 percent, the lowest level since the mid-1990s, when the Labor Department started publishing that statistic.

Stocks ticked up on Friday after the report, putting the S&P 500 on track for a second straight record close. Yields on Treasury bonds fell, suggesting that the report dampened the outlook for growth and inflation slightly. Shortly before 10 a.m., the yield on the 10-year Treasury note was 1.84 percent.

Perhaps the most discouraging news in the report was the anemic wage growth, amounting to just 2.9 percent over the past 12 months — far below the 3.4 percent peak reached in February, and down from the 3.3 percent year-over-year average in December 2018.

“It’s easier to get a job than a raise in this economy,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton. “Something that the Fed has been humbled by is how little wage acceleration there’s been,” she added, referring to the Federal Reserve.

The report is likely to encourage policymakers at the Fed to stick to their wait-and-see approach on further cuts to the central bank’s benchmark interest rate.

The labor squeeze has helped workers at the lowest end of the pay scale, pushing wage increases above the overall average. Minimum wage increases in 21 states and 26 cities and counties that either went into effect this month or are scheduled for later this year could help to further pull up paychecks at the bottom.

By contrast, wage growth for managers slowed.

Consumer spending is the key pillar of the economy, and it depends on growing incomes.

The slowdown in wage growth is puzzling considering that the jobless rate has been below 4 percent for nearly two years. Employers routinely lament their inability to find workers at the wages they are offering. Finding qualified workers was the top challenge cited by small-business owners in December, according to a monthly survey by the National Federation of Independent Business.

Consumer confidence continues to float at high levels, but businesses have kept wages low because many owners say they fear that higher prices would chase away customers.

The flow of more Americans into the job market may also be damping wages. About three-fourths of new hires were not even looking for work the previous month.

“It’s been slowing over the last several months,” Elise Gould, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research organization in Washington, said of wage growth.

“We haven’t really seen any changes in the labor market that would explain that,” she said. “Lots of businesses are showing profits, but we’re not seeing the kind of capital investments that we’d thought we’d see.”

The job totals can mask wide differences based on location, skills and industry.

Health care, transportation and logistics, and professional and business services flourished last year.

The retail sector, which has struggled for much of 2019, was buoyed by the holiday season and added 41,000 jobs in December. But announced store closings could reverse those gains in the coming months.

Construction, mining and manufacturing, industries that tend to be more affected by the global economy, have also struggled. Construction bounced back a bit in December, adding 20,000 jobs, while mining slumped again.

Even so, there are pockets in these goods-producing sectors that are doing well, like those related to electrical vehicles and charging docks, said Julia Pollak, a labor economist for the employment site ZipRecruiter.

“Manufacturing is not dead, but its location will shift,” she said, noting that new plants do not necessarily replace closed ones.

There has been little sign that this weakness has spread to the much larger service sector.

Ms. Pollak pointed to other patterns: “The highest job growth and wage growth have been in nine states.”

Among the top four, Utah, Nevada, Arizona and Colorado, the expansion has been driven by the technology industry. Those states have benefited in part because they have lower housing costs than Silicon Valley, Ms. Pollak said.

Their less congested roads and airspace are also a draw, especially for companies that are building and testing technologies like drones and driverless cars, she added.

Even companies based in California — still a powerhouse of job creation — are locating their customer service and call centers in these nearby states.

On the West Coast, Washington is also notching strong gains, Ms. Pollak said, while in the South, Florida, Alabama and South Carolina have managed to combine job and wage gains.

“Yes, I do plan on hiring,” said Robert Herman, who owns a mobile pet grooming franchise in Charleston, S.C., where the jobless rate was 1.8 percent in November. “We’re doing great.”

This year, he said he planned to add a fifth van to his fleet of moving dog and cat salons and hire two more employees. Between commission and tips, he said his workers earned an average of $20 to $25 an hour.

The Labor Department this week also reported a dip in the number of new people filing for unemployment, a figure that remains at historically low levels. Nonetheless, “over all, the job cuts that we saw in 2019 were fairly high, higher than you would expect,” said Andy Challenger, a vice president at Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an outplacement firm that tracks layoff announcements.

Industrial goods and automobile manufacturers were the hardest hit, in part because of the trade war. “As rosy as the numbers look from a high level, there’s still pain out there, jobs cuts that are happening, industries that are struggling and people losing their jobs,” Mr. Challenger said.

Because the company’s survey tracks layoff announcements — as opposed to jobs that have been eliminated — he said that it was “a bit more forward-looking” than the Labor Department’s figures. Plans can change, he noted, but the results “point to sentiments, if they think they’re going to cut.”

The persistent uncertainty, which nudges businesses to be more cautious in hiring and investment, is far from clearing.

There has been progress on the trade front — the United States and China have reached the first phase of an agreement that officials are expected to sign next week. But two-thirds of Chinese imports, worth $360 billion, are still subject to tariffs. And President Trump has said he will impose more tariffs on imports from Europe this month.

Adding to the unsettled atmosphere are unexpected global developments, like the threat of a broader clash between the United States and Iran after the president’s decision to kill a top Iranian general. Iran struck American air bases in Iraq in retaliation this week, but the attack is said to have resulted in no casualties, and tensions have eased.

Source: US Government Class