U.S. Politics

[Rick Plant]

Right-wing group injects millions into Utah race amid sudden fear independent could oust GOP senator



On Friday, the Washington Examiner reported that a key right-wing political group is committing $2.5 million in TV ads to defending Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), amid sudden fears that he could be vulnerable in a race against an independent candidate.

"Utah is a red state, and Republicans are favored to make gains in Congress amid President Joe Biden’s languishing job approval ratings," reported David M. Drucker. "But the Club for Growth, a conservative advocacy group in Washington, is worried enough about Lee’s prospects that it is now airing a television spot statewide, on broadcast and cable, attacking McMullin as a closet liberal."

"'What does Evan McMullin believe, and who’s paying him?' the voice-over in the Club for Growth ad says as the spot opens, before going on to accuse him of using donations to political groups he controls to 'push a left-wing agenda,'" said the report. "The ad was written by Republican consultant Andy Sere. Republican strategist Jeff Roe, who advises Lee’s close friend, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), placed the media buy."

According to the report, the Club for Growth believes the campaign is necessary because the "Senate Leadership Fund can’t be trusted to protect conservatives."

McMullin, a former CIA officer who previously ran for president in 2016, is a conservative former Republican who left the party over his opposition to Donald Trump. He has pledged not to caucus with either Democrats or Republicans if he wins the 2022 Senate race. Democrats declined to nominate a candidate of their own and endorsed McMullin's campaign, because a theoretical McMullin victory would further complicate GOP efforts to win the chamber.

Lee, a far-right senator, drew controversy in 2020 when he claimed that the United States is "not a democracy."

All of this comes as Senate Republicans face a massive cash crunch, with strategists angered at the rapid burn rate of funds from the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) on chairman Rick Scott's personal projects, even as Republicans are badly outspent by Democrats on air in key Senate races around the country.

Read more here:

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/campaigns/top-conservative-group-spends-big-utah-protect-mike-lee-evan-mcmullin-challenge

[Rick Plant]

'A rip-off': Republicans demand answers as Rick Scott burns up cash needed for Senate fights



On Friday, The Washington Post reported that Republicans are alarmed by the rate at which the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) has been burning cash — even as Republicans are already being outspent by Democrats in key Senate races — and demanding answers from chairman Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL).

"Republican Senate hopefuls are getting crushed on airwaves across the country while their national campaign fund is pulling ads and running low on cash — leading some campaign advisers to ask where all the money went and to demand an audit of the committee’s finances, according to Republican strategists involved in the discussions," reported Isaac Arnsdorf. "In a highly unusual move, the National Republican Senatorial Committee this week canceled bookings worth about $10 million, including in the critical states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona. A spokesman said the NRSC is not abandoning those races but prioritizing ad spots that are shared with campaigns and benefit from discounted rates. Still, the cancellations forfeit cheaper prices that came from booking early, and better budgeting could have covered both."

"The NRSC’s retreat came after months of touting record fundraising, topping $173 million so far this election cycle, according to Federal Election Commission disclosures. But the committee has burned through nearly all of it, with the NRSC’s cash on hand dwindling to $28.4 million by the end of June," said the report. "As of that month, the committee disclosed spending just $23 million on ads, with more than $21 million going into text messages and more than $12 million to American Express credit card payments, whose ultimate purpose isn’t clear from the filings. The committee also spent at least $13 million on consultants, $9 million on debt payments and more than $7.9 million renting mailing lists, campaign finance data show."

All of this comes as Scott has been accused of going rogue, using NRSC resources to tout himself and his controversial "11-point plan" for GOP policy that includes sunsetting Social Security and Medicare and raising taxes on the poor — which Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) himself has condemned. It also comes as former McConnell has bemoaned the poor "candidate quality" of GOP nominees for Senate, like Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania and Herschel Walker in Georgia, most of whom were elected on former President Donald Trump's endorsement.

According to the report, GOP strategists are enraged about the mismanagement of money. “The fact that they canceled these reservations was a huge problem — you can’t get them back. You can’t win elections if you don’t have money to run ads,” said one GOP Senate strategist. Another said, “If they were a corporation, the CEO would be fired and investigated. The way this money has been burned, there needs to be an audit or investigation because we’re not gonna take the Senate now and this money has been squandered. It’s a rip-off.”

"Democrats are outspending Republicans by more than double in the Arizona Senate race; by almost two-to-one in Nevada and by four-to-one in Ohio, according to the media tracking firm AdImpact. Republicans are also being outspent by about $14 million in Georgia," said the report. “'Everything came together at once, and everyone woke up like, ‘Oh my God,’' said one Republican consultant. 'It’s been an absolutely disastrous two weeks for GOP Senate stuff on all fronts.'”

AFP

[Rick Plant]

President Biden @POTUS

A record-high 22 states have unemployment rates at or below 3 percent, and 14 have their lowest on record. And we're seeing progress on fighting inflation and lowering gas prices.

I promised to build an economy from the bottom up and middle out. We’re on the right track.



https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1560675216648437761

[Rick Plant]

Unemployment rates in 22 states dip to 3% or lower

WASHINGTON (TND) — While the national unemployment rate matched a 50-year low of 3.5% in July, state unemployment data out Friday showed dozens of states have even tighter labor markets.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, all 50 states had lower unemployment rates in July compared to a year ago. On a monthly basis, rates declined in 14 states and the District of Columbia and rose in three states. Thirty-three states' unemployment rates were little changed.

Minnesota had the lowest unemployment rate in the country at 1.8%, followed by Nebraska, New Hampshire and Utah each at 2%, according to BLS. The District of Columbia had the highest unemployment rate at 5.2%, followed by Alaska and New Mexico each at 4.5%.

"The fact that all of these job gains have been so pervasive across the country is I think a really important indicator of the strength of the job market and the impact of the president’s agenda to really get this labor market behind working families," member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers Jared Bernstein said. “When you’re generating these kinds of low unemployment rates across the country, that is a strong non-recessionary indicator.”

Another indicator of a robust labor market out this week was the Department of Labor's weekly report of new jobless claims. The second week of August saw 2,000 fewer initial claims than the week prior.

AFP

[Rick Plant]

J.D. Vance has a Big Pharma problem



J.D. Vance, the billionaire-backed U.S. Senate candidate in Ohio, has routinely positioned himself as an anti-opioid China-hawk, promising to rein in Big Pharma and bring jobs back to the U.S. But in recent weeks it has been revealed that Vance, a Trump-backed author, worked for a white shoe law firm that represented multiple Chinese companies and lobbied for Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin. Vance then hired an American Enterprise Institute (AEI) resident who cited Purdue-funded studies to downplay the role overprescribing painkillers plays in the opioid crisis as the addiction specialist to Ohio's Appalachian region for his nonprofit, "Our Ohio Renewal."

The apparent contradiction, first reported by Politico, stems from a "vulnerability analysis" posted online by Protect Ohio Values (POV), the Super PAC through which Vance has raised millions of dollars for his Senate campaign. Because campaign finance law bars any candidates from communicating with their associated Super PACs, POV appears to have posted a trove of polling data, strategic documents, and opposition research on a low-profile Medium account for Vance to reference, detailing potential weak spots in his competitors' campaigns as well as his own.

Vance's vulnerability analysis reveals that the lawyer-turned-author, who founded a non-profit dedicated to curbing the opioid epidemic, had at one point worked for law firm Sidley Austin LLP in Washington, D.C. During Vance's time there, the firm's lobbying arm was working on behalf of Purdue Pharma, which pleaded guilty in 2020 to criminal charges and faced penalties of roughly $8.3 billion. During that same time, Sidley Austin also reportedly represented "a Chinese real estate company" and lobbied Alibaba Group, a massive Chinese e-commerce platform. But as a Senate candidate, Vance has repeatedly called for the U.S. to sever its economic ties with the country, calling globalization a "gravy train" for China.

"On one side you have people who want to go back to the America Last foreign policy, the weak on China trade policies," as Vance said in a recent Fox News interview. "And on the other side you have me, supported by President Trump, trying to bring back our manufacturing jobs from China."

The Associated Press (AP) then reported this week that Vance's charity suffered a major conflict of interest when it recruited an AEI resident who never disclosed Perdue's financial contributions to AEI while favorably citing Perdue-funded studies to argue that prescription painkillers played a significant role in the region's drastic uptick in opioid addiction. According to the AP, Dr. Sally Satel "occasionally shared drafts of the pieces with Purdue officials in advance." And as ProPublica reported in the past, AEI received financial support from Purdue totaling $800,000.

Vance's past work may prove a problem with other areas besides Big Pharma. He was with Sidley Austin while the firm filed an amicus brief in support of gay marriage back in 2015, while the Supreme Court was ruling on Obergefell v. Hodges. Since then, Vance has taken countless swipes at the LGBTQ+ community. AIn 2020, Vance excoriated the "conservative legal movement" after Supreme Court ruled that gay and trans workers cannot be fired for their gender identity or sexual orientation.

"The conservative legal movement has accomplished two things: libertarian political economy (enforced by judges) and betrayal of social conservatives and traditionalists," he wrote at the time in a since-deleted tweet.

Since the beginning of his campaign, numerous critics have also called out Vance's funding as problematic. Vance has repeatedly blasted Big Tech, claiming that the industry systematically censors conservative voices. But the Republican's chief benefactor is Peter Thiel, a prominent tech billionaire responsible for co-founding PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, through which he was one of the first investors in Facebook.

https://www.rawstory.com/jd-vance-purdue-pharma/

[Rick Plant]

Trump promised to bring jobs back home. He was all talk.

Joe Biden is actually doing it. Biden is on pace to make 2022 a record setting year for number of jobs brought back to the U.S. from China and overseas.

U.S. Companies on Pace to Bring Home Record Number of Overseas Jobs
After Covid-19 pandemic upended supply chains, American companies are shifting jobs and processes to the U.S.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-companies-on-pace-to-bring-home-record-number-of-overseas-jobs-11660968061

[Rick Plant]

Thanks to President Biden and Democrats millions of people are going to save money on health care costs. 


Biden bill to help millions escape higher health care costs

WASHINGTON — Millions of people in the United States will be spared from big increases in health care costs next year after President Joe Biden signed legislation extending generous subsidies for those who buy plans through federal and state marketplaces.

The sweeping climate, tax and health care bill sets aside $70 billion over the next three years to keep out-of-pocket premium costs low for roughly 13 million people, just before the reduced prices were set to expire in a year beset by record-high inflation.

As the calendar pushed closer to the Nov. 1 open enrollment date, Sara Cariano was growing nervous about her work helping people across Virginia sign up for subsidized, private health insurance on the HealthCare.gov website.

“I expected very difficult conversation with folks to explain why their premiums were spiking,” said Cariano, a policy specialist at the Virginia Poverty Law Center.

But the passage of the “Inflation Reduction Act” erased those worries.

“Things aren’t going to change for the worst for individuals who are purchasing coverage through the market,” she said.

The bill will extend subsidies temporarily offered last year when Congress and Biden signed off on a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill that significantly lowered premiums and out-of-pocket costs for customers purchasing plans through the Affordable Care Act’s marketplace. It also continues reduced costs for more individuals and families who live well above the poverty line.

Those who bought plans on the government marketplace saved on average about $700 in premium payments from the subsidies this year, according to estimates by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

As costs dropped, more people signed up for the coverage over the last year and the number of those without health insurance dropped to an all-time low of 8% in August, the Department of Health and Human Services announced. Roughly 26 million people, 2 percent of them children, remain uninsured in the U.S.

In California, many of the 1.7 million people who purchase health insurance through Covered California, the state-operated insurance marketplace will continue to see savings ranging from $29 and $324 per month, depending on their income level.

State officials predict about 220,000 people will be saved from being priced out of coverage. Between 2 million and 3 million people in California might also turn to the state marketplace if they lose coverage through Medicaid when the federal government’s COVID-19 public health emergency expires. About 15 million people in the U.S. have been extended Medicaid coverage during the pandemic.

Cost is the biggest factor driving whether a person signs up for coverage or not, said Joseph Poindexter, the senior director of health insurance programs at HealthCare Access Maryland.

Some parents, for example, sign their children up for Medicaid but skip buying coverage for themselves, he said.

“It’s really sad to see folks who will say, I’ll forgo treatment, or won’t go visit the doctor,” Poindexter said.

Fewer people have had to make that calculation with the subsidies, Poindexter said, attributing the lowered prices to a 9% increase in new enrollees in the state last year.

AFP