John Kelly Donald Trump prospective cabinet members at Trump International Golf Club, New Jersey, on Nov. 20, 2016 (Photo: AP)
President-elect Donald J. Trump officially chooses retired U.S. Marine Gen. John Kelly for secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). en. Kelly, 66, who in 2012 succeeded General Douglas M. Fraser as commander of U.S. Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM).
Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is likely to be tapped for deputy secretary, according to a top transition official familiar with the president-elect’s decision-making process. The appointment marks the third big military name to be appointed by President-elect Trump. Last week, he officially announced he will nominate General James Mattis, a retired U.S. Marine Corps four-star general, to serve as Secretary of the United States Department of Defense.
Gen. Kelly also served as the commanding general of the Multi-National Force West in Iraq from February 2008 to February 2009, as well as as the commander of Marine Forces Reserve and Marine Forces North in October 2009.
FILE – In this Friday, March 27, 2015 file photo, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson delivers remarks on the release of a report by the National Petroleum Council on oil drilling in the Arctic, in Washington. On Saturday, Dec. 10, 2016, President-elect Donald Trump moved closer to nominating Tillerson as his secretary of state, meeting privately with the business leader for the second time in a week. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
Multiple sources and reports claim President-elect Donald J. Trump will nominate Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson for secretary of state. The official announcement is expected to come in the next few days.
The announcement comes a few days after former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said he withdrew his name from consideration for state or any other post. The president-elect during an interview on Fox News Sunday praised Mr. Tillerson.
“He’s more than just a businessman,” President-elect Trump said. “He’s a world-class player.”
But the selection of Mr. Tillerson is also a signal that the new president intends to make good on his realist foreign policy promises on the campaign trail, including a more cooperative relationship with Russia. He is very familiar with Russian President Vladimir Putin and managed to increase the company’s market share in Russia at a time competitors faced bureaucratic and regulatory obstacles.
In 2013, Mr. Putin bestowed the Order of Friendship on Mr. Tillerson, a native of Wichita Falls, Texas. Mr. Tillerson began at Exxon Mobil as a production engineer out of the University of Texas at Austin in 1975 and went on to succeed former CEO Lee Raymond. Under his leadership, Exxon Mobil’s profits helped to make it the most valuable publicly traded company in the world.
Mr. Tillerson, who made $27.3 million last year, was going to retire in March at age 65, which was mandatory under the company’s retirement policy. According to the most recent proxy statement on file at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), he has accumulated around $160 million in Exxon stock along with $149 million of unvested stock options.
His activities are certainly not confined to Big Oil. Mr. Tillerson served as director of the United Negro College Fund and the National President of the Boy Scouts of America. The former Eagle Scout also served as chairman of the American Petroleum Institute. He first popped up on President-elect Trump’s radar in November after conversations with former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, both of whom said they would highly recommend Mr. Tillerson for the post.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and his foreign affairs adviser Yury Ushakov listen to Serbian Prime Minister and Progressive Party leader Aleksandar Vucic during their talks in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, May 26, 2016. (Sergei Karpukhin/Pool Photo via AP)
Absolute power, they say, corrupts absolutely. Brussels, the seat of power of the European Union, is learning that lesson the hard way.
With a messianic push for political union, unelected Brussels bureaucrats, drunk on centralized power and the ability to impose a globalist agenda on their subjects, went too far. Unaccountable for their actions and oblivious to the consequences, these elites crossed into a twilight zone of insane, destructive social engineering, even as millions of migrants from another culture invaded Europe. And it was the people these bureaucrats were supposed to be helping who suffered the most.
We are now hearing of murder, rape and mayhem in Germany, France, and Sweden, the very countries that opened their borders and welcomed with open arms the Middle Eastern hordes of so-called refugees. These three countries will never be the same. Villages of only a few hundred people have had thousand of migrants dumped in their midst.
Their culture, security and heritage have been extinguished in the blink of an eye.
Governments in these countries are now feeling the heat of the people’s rage, German Chancellor Angela Merkel in particular. Her quest for a fourth term in power is now seriously in question. French President Francois Hollande has withdrawn his name from consideration for a second term. The Italian government of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has also been embarrassed by the rejection of its overhaul plan in this week’s referendum.
Ms. Merkel has apparently undergone a religious conversion and is now calling for a ban on full-length veils in Germany, in response to public anger and safety concerns of radical Islamic terrorism. However, that is just a Band-Aid on a sucking chest wound. It’s amusing how an election — and the possibility of being held accountable to your victims — tends to sharpen a politician’s grip on common sense.
Throughout this whole unfolding disaster, there were a few voices of reason who objected to the cultural suicide pushed on them by the globalist elites of the EU, holdouts who refused to accept Brussels’ dictates in full: the governments of Eastern Europe. Yes, the countries that the smug West helped escape the communist abyss only a few short decades ago, the very countries where Western experts had to teach people the basics of customer service and the principles of free markets — those are the governments now leading the way, showing the governments on the free side of the Iron Curtain how to prevent their culture from being wiped out by an outside cultural invader.
Hungary famously built a big, beautiful wall to keep out unwanted migrants. Countries of the Balkans quickly followed suit, as they bore the brunt of the Muslim invasion of thousands of men of war-fighting age. The new, eastern members of the EU clung to their religion as well, pushing socially conservative policies such as reducing abortion and promoting Christianity.
Incredibly, these Eastern European countries now find themselves more closely aligned, from a cultural standpoint, with the policies of Russian President Vladimir Putin than with the bullies of Brussels. Russia has of course taken advantage of the West’s stupidity by highlighting the fact that adopting the values of the West’s new globalist elites means losing your cultural soul, your heritage, and your personal safety.
The Kremlin is giddy as it watches Europe go the way of the Weimar Republic, triumphing without even having to fire a shot. And make no mistake about it, the Russians’ vision is a valid alternative no matter how skin-deep their commitment to religion may be. We are witnessing the destruction of the EU before our very eyes and the damage is self-inflicted.
Ms. Merkel, with her misguided open immigration policies, will go down in history as a leader who destroyed her own culture and country. President Obama came very close to doing the same thing, and a Hillary Clinton victory might very well have been the final nail in the coffin for our country.
Thankfully, with President-elect Donald Trump, it looks as though America will once again be able to show Europe the true path to freedom and security. The only question is how much blood and treasure we will have to expend to get there.
FILE – In this Nov. 2, 2016 file photo, Senate candidates, left to right, Rep. Charles Boustany, D-La., Louisiana Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell, David Duke, attorney Carolyn Fayard, Rep. John Fleming, R-La., and Louisiana Treasurer John Neely Kennedy take their places before a debate at Dillard University in New Orleans. (Photo: AP)
Republican John Kennedy defeated Democrat Foster Campbell in the runoff election for the U.S. Senate seat in Louisiana. The last contest of the 2016 election cycle resulted in the GOP expanding its majority in the U.S. Senate.
The race between Mr. Kennedy, the state treasurer, and Mr. Campbell, a state Public Service commissioner, was largely defined by the effort to paint the contest as the final battle between the Trump campaign and Clinton campaign. President-elect Donald Trump visited Baton Rouge on Friday to lead a get-out-the-vote rally for Mr. Kennedy.
Even before he toured the Louisiana flood devastation back in August, President-elect Trump was extremely popular in The Pelican State. Clinton didn’t even respond to the crisis outside of a tweet and the president only visited the state after the New York businessman, which sparked negative press.
Mr. Campbell positioned himself a bit too far from the Trump agenda, which again, was and remains deeply popular in the state.
“If he wants to build roads and bridges, I’m all about that,” Campbell said on the “Keepin’ It 1600” podcast. “But if he wants to privatize Social Security and he wants to give a voucher for Medicare, I cannot support that. I’ll fight that tooth and toenail.”
Meanwhile, as the state treasurer, Mr. Kennedy’s message hammered away at the fact that Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards is spending way too much money after his predecessor, Republican Bobby Jindal, left the state in more than stable fiscal shape. A review by CATO economist Dan Mitchell for People’s Pundit Daily, using data from the National Association of State Budget Officers, showed Bobby Jindal was easily the top budget cutter out of those running in the presidential primary
Now, with Saturday in the books, Republicans next year will have a 52-48 majority in the U.S. Senate.
Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta laughs alongside former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton prior to presenting her with the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service during a ceremony at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. on February 14, 2013. (Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
Last month, I explained that America’s fiscal problems are almost entirely the result of domestic spending programs, particularly entitlements.
Some critics immediately decided this meant I favored a blank check for the Pentagon, even though I specifically stated that “I’m very sympathetic to the proposition that trillions of dollars that have been misspent on foreign adventurism this century.”
Moreover, if they bothered to do any research, they would have found numerous columns on Pentagon waste, including here, here, here, here, and here.
Indeed, I get especially upset about military boondoggles precisely because national defense is a legitimate function of government.
I want money being spent in ways that will minimize the threat of an attack on the United States, not on the basis of padding jobs in a particular politician’s hometown or in response to clever lobbying by a defense contractor.
Unfortunately, wasting money is what government does best. And it happens at the Pentagon just as often as elsewhere in the federal behemoth.
Let’s look at a recent exposé about Pentagon profligacy in the Washington Post.
The Pentagon has buried an internal study that exposed $125 billion in administrative waste in its business operations amid fears Congress would use the findings as an excuse to slash the defense budget… Pentagon leaders had requested the study to help make their enormous back-office bureaucracy more efficient and reinvest any savings in combat power. But after the project documented far more wasteful spending than expected, senior defense officials moved swiftly to kill it by discrediting and suppressing the results. …Based on reams of personnel and cost data, their report revealed for the first time that the Pentagon was spending almost a quarter of its $580 billion budget on overhead and core business operations such as accounting, human resources, logistics and property management. …the Defense Department was paying a staggering number of people — 1,014,000 contractors, civilians and uniformed personnel — to fill back-office jobs far from the front lines. That workforce supports 1.3 million troops on active duty, the fewest since 1940.
Here’s a rather sobering chart from the story.
Predictably, bureaucrats in the military tried to cover up evidence of waste and inefficiency.
…some Pentagon leaders said they fretted that by spotlighting so much waste, the study would undermine their repeated public assertions that years of budget austerity had left the armed forces starved of funds. Instead of providing more money, they said, they worried Congress and the White House might decide to cut deeper. So the plan was killed. The Pentagon imposed secrecy restrictions on the data making up the study, which ensured no one could replicate the findings. A 77-page summary report that had been made public was removed from a Pentagon website.
Here’s a final excerpt from the story. The “no one REALLY knows” quote is rather revealing.
“We will never be as efficient as a commercial organization,” Work said. “We’re the largest bureaucracy in the world. There’s going to be some inherent inefficiencies in that.” …while the Defense Department was “the world’s largest corporate enterprise,” it had never “rigorously measured” the “cost-effectiveness, speed, agility or quality” of its business operations. Nor did the Pentagon have even a remotely accurate idea of what it was paying for those operations… McKinsey hazarded a guess: anywhere between $75 billion and $100 billion a year, or between 15 and 20 percent of the Pentagon’s annual expenses. “No one REALLY knows,” the memo added. …the average administrative job at the Pentagon was costing taxpayers more than $200,000, including salary and benefits.
Let’s close with some blurbs from other stories.
Starting with some specific examples of waste from a recent story by U.S. News & World Report.
The Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction has uncovered scandal after scandal involving U.S. aid to that country, including the creation of private villas for a small number of personnel working for a Pentagon economic development initiative and a series of costly facilities that were never or barely used. An analysis by ProPublica puts the price tag for wasteful and misguided expenditures in Afghanistan at $17 billion, a figure that is higher than the GDP of 80 nations. …A Politico report on the Pentagon’s $44 billion Defense Logistics Agency notes that it spent over $7 billion on unneeded equipment. …overspending on routine items – such as the Army’s recent expenditure of $8,000 on a gear worth $500 – continues.
Let’s also not forget that the Pentagon is quite capable of being just as incompetent as other bureaucracies.
The USS Fort Worth, a Navy littoral combat ship, has suffered extensive gear damage while docked at a port in Singapore. …According to reports, the crew failed to use sufficient lube oil, leading to excessively high temperatures on the gears. Debris also found its way into the lubrication system, which also contributed to failure, Defense News reports. The crew did not follow standard operating procedures.
An inert U.S. Hellfire missile sent to Europe for training purposes was wrongly shipped from there to Cuba in 2014, said people familiar with the matter, a loss of sensitive military technology that ranks among the worst-known incidents of its kind. …officials worry that Cuba could share the sensors and targeting technology inside it with nations like China, North Korea or Russia. …“Did someone take a bribe to send it somewhere else? Was it an intelligence operation, or just a series of mistakes? That’s what we’ve been trying to figure out,” said one U.S. official. …At some point, officials loading the first flight realized the missile it expected to be loading onto the aircraft wasn’t among the cargo, the government official said. After tracing the cargo, officials realized that the missile had been loaded onto a truck operated by Air France, which took the missile to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. There, it was loaded onto a “mixed pallet” of cargo and placed on an Air France flight. By the time the freight-forwarding firm in Madrid tracked down the missile, it was on the Air France flight, headed to Havana.
And let’s not forget about the jaw-dropping absurdity of an intelligence chief who isn’t allowed to…um…see intelligence.
For more than two years, the Navy’s intelligence chief has been stuck with a major handicap: He’s not allowed to know any secrets. Vice Adm. Ted “Twig” Branch has been barred from reading, seeing or hearing classified information since November 2013, when the Navy learned from the Justice Department that his name had surfaced in a giant corruption investigation involving a foreign defense contractor and scores of Navy personnel. …More than 800 days later, neither Branch nor Loveless has been charged. But neither has been cleared, either. Their access to classified information remains blocked. Although the Navy transferred Loveless to a slightly less sensitive post, it kept Branch in charge of its intelligence division. That has resulted in an awkward arrangement, akin to sending a warship into battle with its skipper stuck onshore. …Some critics have questioned how smart it is for the Navy to retain an intelligence chief with such limitations, for so long, especially at a time when the Pentagon is confronted by crises in the Middle East, the South China Sea, the Korean Peninsula and other hotspots.
The bottom line is that any bureaucracy is going to waste money. And the bureaucrats in any department will always be tempted to care first and foremost about their salaries and benefits rather than the underlying mission.
So I’m not expecting or demanding perfection, regardless of whether the department has a worthwhile mission or (in most cases) shouldn’t even exist. But I do want constant vigilance, criticism, and budgetary pressure so that there’s at least a slightly greater chance that money won’t be squandered.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, speaks with U.S. President Barack Obama in Hangzhou in eastern China’s Zhejiang province, Monday, Sept. 5, 2016. (Photo: Alexei Druzhinin/Sputnik, Kremlin Pool via AP)
My wife tears up every time she hears the American national anthem and sees the Old Glory waving in the background. Colin Kaepernick looks like he’s getting a colonoscopy. This makes my wife American and Kaepernick un-American. As a thought experiment, we conduct a poll testing the veracity of this statement among folks who voted for Trump and those who voted for Hillary. Among Trump voters, the vast majority rate this statement as true. Among Hillary’s, the reverse is correct.
Now replace the American anthem and flag with the Russian symbols of sovereignty and test this proposition among all Russians. The results will mirror those we got from the Trump voters. In other words, a vast majority of all Russians believe that being Russian means feeling a deep emotional connection to the Russian symbols of national sovereignty such as the Flag, the Seal of State (bald eagle for the US, two headed eagle for Russia), and the National Anthem. Feeling disdain for these symbols, even if strongly disagreeing with Russian government policies and actions, past and present, is disqualifying in terms of being a Russian, no matter what one’s passport says.
The amazing thing is that the same poll conducted in the US sixty years ago in 1956 would have yielded results much more similar to current day Russia than current day America. Now ask yourself: which country “won” the Cold War?
Russia is the last European, nuclear armed, major power in which the majority of the population hold on to the patriotic definition of national identity. This definition is at the base of all human existence and it is shared by Putin, Trump, Farrage, Le Pen, etc. It is also reviled by Soros, Hillary, Blair, Holland, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and the like.
Trump’s tweet on the criminalization of the burning of the American flag and the proposed unprecedented penalty of the loss of American citizenship was not a trick designed to change the news cycle away from his alleged conflicts of interests, as most “pundits” have put forth; it is a distillation of his patriotic worldview. If the American flag means nothing to you or worse, it is the symbol of oppression, regardless of any historical or current events, you are simply not an American and the American passport that you possess is in the truest meaning of the word fraudulent.
The fundamental question is one of boundaries; sitting around our tribal hearth, telling and retelling stories about the wondrous deeds of our ancestors we draw a boundary around us. The boundary includes the king and his retinue, but also the poorest peasant and the wretch who steals from everyone’s plate. It doesn’t include the Other. We have become very good at telling ourselves apart from the Other; we have different audiovisual symbols, we cling to the slightest of linguistic differences. In the Hebrew Bible the name for the Other is “ger”. He is to be protected, but never accepted; not in the first generation.
The globalists wish to efface this boundary and replace it with a new one. On the inside are the educated and the affluent. On the outside are what the Soviets used to call “byvshiye liudi”, the “former people”. These are the blue collar workers, the non-unionized employees, the small business owners. Who can plausibly argue that Obama doesn’t feel much more affinity with Angela Merkel and Francois Holland than with the coal miners of Kentucky?
The two boundary systems, the tribal and the globalist cannot coexist. This is simply because educated elites are an essential part of any tribe; the tribe cannot exist without them and in fact they are the guardians of tribal lore and symbols. Their loyalty to the tribe is essential to the tribe’s survival and no tribe can survive the betrayal of its own elites.
When Trump kissed the American flag on stage before one of his rallies, when Putin walked side by side with Patriarch Cyril in full regalia to dedicate the newly erected statue of Prince Vladimir, the founder of Christian Russia, they were asserting their positions at the head of their respective tribes. Tribal leaders are expected to be rich, famous, and powerful; the members of the tribe never begrudge them that as long as they care and love the lowest member of their own tribe more than the highest member of the tribe next door.
Can one even imagine Obama, or for that matter Romney, Hillary or Merkel, kissing their respective flags? Wearing on their persons the slightest and the smallest symbols of tribal belonging? How “gauche” do you think they are? Of course it wasn’t by omission that Hillary did not wear an American flag lapel pin in any of the three presidential debates. Trump would have wrapped himself in the flag like in a prayer shawl if rules allowed. And with zero cynicism.
If there’s one thing that the lower caste tribal members know, it’s cynicism. When Trump kisses the American flag, they know it’s for real. When he wears his truck driver style cap with USA emblazoned across it, he does it without a trace of self-consciousness. And they know just as well that Obama wouldn’t be caught dead wearing his American flag lapel pin anywhere or anytime that his advisers didn’t force him to.
The betrayal by the elites of their own tribes and the creation of a new supra-tribal structure of and by these elites is the true nature of globalism and it is a radical departure from thousands of years of human history and tradition. In the past, both modern and pre-modern, tribal elites were the most patriotic members of the tribe. American elites in fact defined and created their tribe in the waning years of the 18th century. Their descendants a quarter of a millennium later are only too keen to betray that tribe and join with people like the Saudis whom the Founding Fathers must have surely abhorred in the new Globalist tribe. The Russian elites in the beginning of the 20th century knew full well that trouble was coming. Many of them had Swiss bank accounts and villas on the shores of Lake Geneva. But neither they nor Tsar Nicholas II exercised their privileged status to abandon their tribe, even as it was abandoning them, and escape certain death at the hands of the Bolsheviks. Such an abandonment, such a betrayal was a fate worse than death for these imperfect people.
The Globalists, like any tribe, need allies, lackeys, and most importantly enemies. As to allies, they have a really big one: China. While certainly a traditional tribe with traditional tribal elites, China prefers the Globalist tribe over the nationalist one (at least for now) because it allows China to manipulate its currency and transfer vast amounts of wealth from Western working classes to its own. As for lackeys, no shortage exists in people who feed on the crumbs from the Globalist table. Unfortunately in America this group consists mostly of African and Hispanic Americans, mostly in the inner cities, whose votes are essential for any globalist victories at the ballot box.
As to the enemies, well, count among them all of the Trump voters in America, the Brexit voters in the UK, the Hofer voters in Austria, the Le Pen voters in France, and pretty much everyone in Russia and the Jewish population of Israel. When it comes to the Jews, now evenly split between Israel and the North American diaspora, the situation is of particular interest. Israel, which defines itself as the Jewish State (is the UK an English State?) is the most nationalist of all Western countries. The North American Jews, who are over-represented by at least a factor of ten in the media elites, are among the leaders of the globalist movement. Though notable exceptions like Marc Steyn, Mark Levin, and Ezra Levant provide strong anti-globalist viewpoints to the mix.
So forget about the old Iron Curtain, the new frontiers are between the red and blue counties in America, between London and the rest of England, between Russia and Bilderberg.
Customers at Walmart’s Black Friday shopping event on Thursday, Nov. 26, 2015 in Rogers, Ark. (Photo by Gunnar Rathbun/Invision for Walmart/AP Images)
The Survey of Consumers, a closely-watched gauge of consumer sentiment from the University of Michigan, came in at 98 in December, up from 93.8. The initial reading immediately after President-elect Donald J. Trump won the presidential election was a surge in confidence, a sentiment that continues several weeks after.
“Consumer confidence surged in early December to just one-tenth of an Index point below the 2015 peak—which was the highest level since the start of 2004,” Surveys of Consumers chief economist, Richard Curtin said. “The surge was largely due to consumers’ initial reactions to Trump’s surprise victory.”
When asked what news they had heard of recent economic developments, more consumers spontaneously mentioned the expected positive impact of new economic policies than ever before recorded in the long history of the surveys.
“To be sure, an equal number volunteered negative judgments about prospective economic policies, but the frequency of those negative references was less than half its prior peak levels whereas positive references were about twice its prior peak,” Mr. Curtain added. The most important implication of the increase in optimism is that it has raised expectations for the performance of the economy.”
The results easily beat the median economic forecast, as economists were anticipating the reading to rise to only 94.5.
Preliminary Consumer Sentiment Results for December 2016
Dec
Nov
Dec
M-M
Y-Y
2016
2016
2015
Change
Change
Index of Consumer Sentiment
98.0
93.8
92.6
+4.5%
+5.8%
Current Economic Conditions
112.1
107.3
108.1
+4.5%
+3.7%
Index of Consumer Expectations
88.9
85.2
82.7
+4.3%
+7.5%
Next data release: December 23, 2016 for Final December data at 10am ET
FILE – In this Nov. 2, 2016 file photo, Senate candidates, left to right, Rep. Charles Boustany, D-La., Louisiana Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell, David Duke, attorney Carolyn Fayard, Rep. John Fleming, R-La., and Louisiana Treasurer John Neely Kennedy take their places before a debate at Dillard University in New Orleans. (Photo: AP)
Even before he toured the Louisiana flood devastation in August, President-elect Donald J. Trump was extremely popular in The Pelican State. Now, the Republican majority in the U.S. Senate is set to benefit from that popularity and the ongoing trend in shifting party preference by netting another seat.
With Mr. Trump’s landslide elector college win over Democrat Hillary Clinton on November 8, Republicans retook full control of Washington, D.C. On Saturday, Republicans will look to net another seat and expand their party’s majority in the U.S. Senate to 52-48 next year.
Following the Jungle Primary on Election Day, the two finalists are competing in a runoff for the open seat left vacant by retiring Republican Sen. David Vitter. The state rules mandate a candidate must get more than 50% of the vote to avoid a runoff in which all parties and all candidates can participate.
The race will be between Republican candidate John Kennedy, the state treasurer, and Democrat Foster Campbell, a state Public Service commissioner. But Republicans have largely succeeded in their effort to paint the contest as the final battle between the Trump campaign and Clinton campaign.
State Republicans announced Wednesday that Trump, now the president-elect, will visit Baton Rouge on Friday to lead a get-out-the-vote rally for Kennedy. Mr. Kennedy leads Campbell by a 14-point margin in the runoff race, according to the most recent polling by Southern Media Opinion and Research. The race is rated LIKELY REPUBLICAN on the PPD 2016 Senate Election Projection Model.
This past weekend, Vice President-elect Mike Pence was in Louisiana campaigning for Mr. Kennedy.
“I just hung up the phone from President-elect Trump,” Vice President-elect Pence told the crowd. “He said to … say how grateful he was for the support from Louisiana. He said that he has one more thing to ask, to send John Kennedy to the United States Senate.”
He went on to invoke the emotional visit last summer, during which crowds showed love for the New York businessman. “We knew you would be here for us!” one woman yelled. Another referenced President Barack Obama’s absence by shouting how they knew Mr. Trump wouldn’t put his golf game above their needs.
“I just hung up the phone from President-elect Trump,” Pence told the crowd. “He said to … say how grateful he was for the support from Louisiana. He said that he has one more thing to ask, to send John Kennedy to the United States Senate.”
Despite having a Democratic governor, due largely to Mr. Vitter’s scandal-plagued campaign, Louisiana is now a deep red state and has voted for the GOP presidential nominee in eight of the past 10 contests, including in 2016 when Mr. Trump clobbered Clinton by 20 points. But Trump aside, if that’s possible, Louisiana’s $300 million budget deficit is the biggest issue in the campaign.
As the state treasurer, Kennedy’s message hammers away at the fact that Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards is spending way too much money after his predcessor, Republican Bobby Jindal, left the state in more than decent shape. A review by CATO economist Dan Mitchell for People’s Pundit Daily, using data from the National Association of State Budget Officers, showed Bobby Jindal was easily the top budget cutter out of those running in the presidential primary.
Further, Mr. Campbell has perhaps positioned himself a bit too far from the Trump agenda, which again, is deeply popular in the state.
“If he wants to build roads and bridges, I’m all about that,” Campbell said on the “Keepin’ It 1600” podcast. “But if he wants to privatize Social Security and he wants to give a voucher for Medicare, I cannot support that. I’ll fight that tooth and toenail.”
President Barack Obama meets with South Korean President Park Geun-hye, Friday, Oct. 16, 2015, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo)
Lawmakers in South Korea voted to impeach President Park Geun-hye on Friday over an ongoing corruption scandal, marking the end for the nation’s first female leader. Park, who was once dubbed the “Queen of Elections” for pulling off wins for her party, will soon be stripped of her post and Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn will assume her role officially when documents are delivered to the presidential Blue House later Friday.
Hwang will remain in the leadership post until the country’s Constitutional Court rules on whether Park must permanently step down. National Assembly speaker Chung Sye-kyun said the impeachment bill passed by a vote of 236 for and 56 opposed, far more than the two-thirds needed to oust a president in the country. Nine (9) invalid votes and abstentions were also tallied, but the opposition succeeded in recruiting help from members of Park’s party to get the votes.
Prosecutors argued that Park was colluding with a longtime friend to extort money from companies in exchange for influence over government decisions. Amid the controversy, the once popular leader saw her approval ratings tank to 4%, the lowest among South Korean leaders since it began as a democracy in the late 1980s.
Even her political base, which was made up primary of older conservatives, began to abandon her. An recent poll released Thursday showed about 78% supported Park’s impeachment, which hadn’t been done since 2004 when they accused late liberal President Roh Moo-hyun of incompetence and election law violations. The court restored Roh’s powers about two months later, ruling that his wrongdoings weren’t serious enough to justify his unseating.
Park’s single, five-year term was originally set to end Feb. 24, 2018.
U.S. Steel CEO Mario Longhi during an interview on “Power Lunch” on December 7, 2016. (Photo: Video Screenshot via CNBC)
U.S. Steel CEO Mario Longhi said Wednesday he’s “more than happy to bring back the employees we’ve been forced to lay off” now that Donald Trump will be the President of the United States.
“I’d be more than happy to bring back the employees we’ve been forced to lay off during that depressive period,” Mr. Longhi told CNBC during an interview on “Power Lunch.” That means United States Steel Corp (NYSE:X) would bring back roughly 10,000 jobs.
Shares of the Pittsburgh-based company have appreciated by roughly 80% since President-elect Trump’s landslide victory against Democrat Hillary Clinton on November 8. One of the states that would benefit from the reinvestment would be one that played a major role in his election–Pennsylvania. Mr. Trump promised further restrictions on China-produced steel, which would be a great boon to the company and The Keystone State.
“When you get into some situations where we’re being asked to control some substances in water that are far lower than what nature naturally offers, that’s irrational,” he added. “There was a point in time in the past couple years that I was having to hire more lawyers to try to interpret these new regulations than I was hiring … engineers. That doesn’t make any sense.”
[brid video=”83620″ player=”2077″ title=”US Steel CEO Regulation Has To Be Done Smartly Power Lunch CNBC”]
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