Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally, Wednesday, November 2, 2016, in Miami. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)
With less than one week to go before Election Day, Donald Trump expanded his lead over Hillary Clinton in the key battleground state of Florida. The People’s Pundit Daily (PPD) Sunshine State Battelground Poll finds Mr. Trump leading Mrs. Clinton in a four-way matchup by 3 points, 48% to 45%, with both Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein flat at 4% and 2%, respectively.
The latest results represent a 2-point uptick in support for the Republican and just a 1-point increase for the Democrat compared to last week.
As of the final day of interviews for the poll, roughly 800,000 independents had already cast a ballot via early voting or mail-in absentee ballot. The group overall is now breaking for the New York businessman by 8 points, 48% to 40%. Worth noting, Gov. Romney lost Florida independents by 3 points to President Obama in 2012 and still only lost the state by roughly 70,000 votes.
Mr. Trump held a rally on Wednesday in Miami, where he now leads among Hispanics by 5 points, 49% to 44%. Younger Cuban voters, who are less likely to vote prefer Mrs. Clinton, while older Cuban voters, who are more likely to vote back Mr. Trump. In 2012, President Barack Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney essentially split the Hispanic vote in Miami, home to the state’s more conservative Cuban population.
While both Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton are losing certain percentages of their party base to each other and third-party candidates, their base support continues to be roughly on par with 2012. Mrs. Clinton takes roughly 8% of the Republican vote and Mr. Trump takes 10% of the Democratic vote. PPD has found each candidate losing much larger shares of their base in other battleground states, including Pennsylvania for Mr. Trump and North Carolina for Mrs. Clinton.
Fermin Vazquez cheers before the arrival of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during his campaign rally at the Bayfront Park Amphitheater on November 2, 2016 in Miami, Florida. Trump continues to campaign against his Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton as election day nears. (Photo: Getty Images)
Mrs. Clinton leads among Hispanic voters statewide by 53% to 42%, a smaller margin than the poll found in the previous week. Latinos made up 16% of the electorate in the previous PPD Sunshine State Battleground Poll, but now increased their share of the electorate to 18%.
White voters made up roughly 66% of the electorate and are breaking big for Mr. Trump 58% to 37%, while black voters go 81% to 17% for Mrs. Clinton. Leslie Wimes, the president of the Democratic African-American women’s caucus, recently told MSNBC’s Hallie Jackson that the Clinton campaign was right to be in “panic mode” about low voter enthusiasm in the black community.
“We love President Obama,” she said. “That doesn’t transfer to Hillary Clinton by osmosis. It’s over now as far as the African-American community is concerned. She had time back then to get into the community and get people out to vote. Now, you know, the numbers are the numbers. There’s nothing she can do now.”
Interestingly, the black vote share of the electorate has fallen to 13% and the PPD Sunshine State Battleground Poll found black Trump voters are markedly more enthusiastic about voting on or before Tuesday than their Democratic counterparts, 60% to 49%.
The Republican candidate also continues to enjoy a substantial voter enthusiasm gap, with 62% of Trump voters saying they are “extremely enthusiastic” and 50% of Clinton voters saying the same.
“While this gap has been present the entire cycle, the Clinton campaign appears to be facing a potential crisis of enthusiasm,” said Rich Baris, PPD’s Editor-in-Chief and Senior Political Analyst “Critical voting blocs in the Democratic coalition are either not excited or are not supporting Mrs. Clinton by the same margins they supported Mr. Obama. But the announcement by the FBI director reopening the probe into the former secretary of state’s emails–and now the new reports confirming serious probes into the Clinton Foundation–could translate into a complete collapse in support on or before Election Day.”
The PPD Sunshine State Battleground Poll was conducted from October 29 to November 1 and is based on 751 interviews conducted via Internet panel with Florida residents participating in the PPD Internet Polling Panel (See Methodology). Respondents said they definitely will vote in the 2016 general election for president or already have voted early, by mail or absentee ballot.
Loading the 2016 PPD Presidential Battleground Polling Map
Supporters of the fair tax and flat tax model hold a Tax Day rally in Washington D.C. (Photo: AP)
While the political world is consumed by the various scandals and baggage of the two main presidential candidates, let’s play a game of make-believe. Let’s pretend that politicians aren’t crooks and clowns and instead actually want to make America’s economy more vibrant and productive so the American people can enjoy higher living standards.
What would they do? What should they do?
Those are very big questions with lots of answers, so let’s focus just on the issue of tax policy. If the goal is more growth and prosperity, there are two obvious choices.
To the maximum extent possible, reduce the tax bias against saving and investment.
And if these two policies are desirable, there are three ways to make them happen.
Pass a stand-alone tax cut.
Finance a tax cut with concomitant reductions in federal spending (i.e., a spending-reducing and deficit-neutral tax cut).
Finance a tax cut by eliminating special tax preferences (i.e., a revenue-neutral, spending-neutral, and deficit-neutral tax reform).
Needless to say, a combination of the three also is possible.
My preference is for a spending-reducing/deficit-neutral tax cut for the simple reason that lower spending and better tax policy is a win-win situation that would make us more like Hong Kong. And I certainly don’t mind going with a pure, stand-alone tax cut since it’s generally a good idea to “starve the beast.”
In the current political environment, however, I suspect the final choice may be the most practical option. That’s because reasonable leftists may be willing to go along with better tax policy so long as they can be convinced that the burden of government spending won’t be reduced. And self-styled deficit hawks may be willing to go along with better tax policy so long as they can be convinced that red ink won’t increase.
But this also can be a win-win situation since there are many distortionary preferences in the tax code that lure people into making economically inefficient decisions solely because of tax considerations. So if those provisions are repealed and all the money is used to finance lower tax rates and less double taxation, we’ll have a tax system that is much less punitive.
Heck, this is the premise of the flat tax. Wipe out the 70,000-plus pages of the tax code and replace it with a simple and fair system that taxes income only one time at one low rate.
Some people say eliminating tax preferences is too politically risky, however, akin to “touching the third rail.”
And it’s certainly true that the interest groups benefiting from a tilted playing field will fight to preserve their special preferences. But I’m not sure they would be able to scare voters into supporting their position.
The first thing to understand is that only 30.1 percent of taxpayers utilize itemized deductions. And those that do itemize on their tax returns tend to have higher-than-average incomes. And remember that these are the same people who will directly benefit from lower tax rates and less double taxation.
Interestingly, the Open Source Policy Center has an interactive site where you can see what happens to people in various income classes if selected itemized deductions are repealed.
Here are the results from repealing the state and local tax deduction. As you can see, rich people are the only ones who take a meaningful hit.
Yet are these upper-income taxpayers going to fight to preserve that deduction if they are offered a trade for lower tax rates and less double taxation?
I suppose it depends on the specific circumstances of each taxpayer, but I’m guessing a majority of them would prefer a friendlier and simpler tax code that didn’t punish wealth creation.
Moreover, if you look at where these people live, you find that they are highly concentrated in just a handful of states along with a few urban areas elsewhere in the country.
This suggests that policy makers from most states shouldn’t even care about itemized deductions. So there shouldn’t be any reason for them to oppose a tax reform plan that produces lower tax rates and less double taxation.
P.S. The hard-core left will not go along with revenue-neutral tax reform. They have such antipathy to success that some of them openly urge punitive taxeseven if the economic damage is so severe that the government doesn’t collect any revenue.
President Obama speaks in Ethiopia, where he scolded African leaders for staying in office too long. Obama said that in the U.S., presidents can’t run for more than two terms, but if they could he’d win. (Photo: Mulugeta Ayene/AP
At the start of the year, I argued that capitalism was the way to get more growth in poor nations. Foreign aid, by contrast, hasn’t worked very well.
But don’t believe me. Professor William Easterly of NYU spent many years at the World Bank working on issues relating to economic development and he’s written entire books on the failure of foreign aid.
And here’s some of what he wrote for Cato back in 2006.
The West’s efforts…have been even less successful at goals such as promoting rapid economic growth, changes in government economic policy to facilitate markets, or promotion of honest and democratic government. The evidence is stark: $568 billion spent on aid to Africa, and yet the typical African country no richer today than 40 years ago. Dozens of “structural adjustment” loans (aid loans conditional on policy reforms) made to Africa, the former Soviet Union, and Latin America, only to see the failure of both policy reform and economic growth. The evidence suggests that aid results in less democratic and honest government, not more. …Economic development happens, not through aid, but through the homegrown efforts of entrepreneurs and social and political reformers. While the West was agonizing over a few tens of billion dollars in aid, the citizens of India and China raised their own incomes by $715 billion by their own efforts in free markets.
…government-to-government aid distorts the international division of labour. It comes in the way of the natural laws of the market which should decide which country should produce what. …Government-to-government loans encourage socialism, communism and Statism, concentration of power, and waste. When a government aids another government, who disburses that aid? The government of that country. Aid thus transfers economic power from the people, the industrialists, the businessmen and the people to the hands of bureaucrats and politicians. The patronage the politician can dispense increases; the politicisation of economic life goes on. So, in a very direct way, every rupee of aid given by America or any other country or the World Bank to any aided country, including India, directly strengthens the forces of Statism, socialism and communism and weakens the forces of people’s free enterprise. It also breeds irresponsibility and waste.
He makes a great point that it is private investment that produces sustainable growth, not government-to-government transfers.
…one of the greatest disadvantages of government-to-government aid is that it discourages the investment of private equity capital in these countries. It does so because when one gets government-to-government aid at cheap rates, the temptation is not to raise equity capital abroad. This is a pity because our countries need foreign equity capital desperately. When foreign capital comes into India from any part of the world, it brings in foreign plant or machinery and engages Indian labour to work on it. It takes its profits out of the country only when it makes a profit. So such investment is in the interests of the Indian people. When a government-to-government loan comes, we have to repay the capital and the interest to the foreign government, however badly the money may have been wasted by our government. This is against the interests of the Indian people. So foreign private equity capital is good for India; government-to-government loans are bad for India. Let us hope we shall be spared them from now on.
Let’s look at some real-world evidence from the modern era.
In her recent Wall Street Journalcolumn, Mary Anastasia O’Grady explains how aid has stifled the private sector in Haiti.
…why are so many Haitians still living in such dire poverty in the 21st century? Paradoxically, the answer may be tied to the way in which humanitarian aid, necessary and welcome in an emergency, easily morphs into permanent charity, which undermines local markets and spawns dependency. …The trouble is their assumption, too often, that poverty is caused by a lack of money or resources. This produces the wrong solution, one that prescribes getting as much free stuff to the target economy as possible. …The country has also been the recipient of billions of dollars in foreign-government bilateral and multilateral aid over the last quarter century. This enormous giving has created harmful distortions in the local economy because when what would otherwise be traded or produced by Haitians is given away, it drives entrepreneurs out of business.
Mary shares a couple of concrete examples.
The country was once self-sufficient in rice thanks to the work of rural peasants. That changed, according to the testimony of one development expert in the film, in the early 1980s. That’s when Haiti opened its rice market and the U.S. began dumping subsidized grain in the country with the goal of ending hunger—and helping Arkansas rice growers with U.S. taxpayer money. Most Haitian farmers could not compete with Uncle Sam’s generosity, and they lost their customers. …Donations of bottled water, clothing, shoes and even solar panels destroy local businesses in the same way. Just ask Jean-Ronel Noel, who co-founded the solar-panel company Enersa in his garage in the mid-2000s and expanded it to more than 60 employees. He is proud of his workforce…comes mainly from Port-au-Prince’s notorious slums. …The company was doing a robust business until the 2010 earthquake. “After the earthquake we were competing mostly against NGOs . . . coming with their solar panels . . . and giving them away for free. So what about local businessmen?” As Alex Georges, Mr. Noel’s partner puts it, “The demand stopped because it’s hard to compete with free.”
And here is the problem from a national and cultural perspective.
Mr. Noel zeroes in on another related problem: “Those NGOs are changing the mentality of the people. Now you have a generation with a dependency mentality.”
In other words, handouts from rich nations are destroying the social capital of Haiti.
Let’s go back to 2009 and see what Dambisa Moyo wrote about foreign aid to her home continent.
Kibera, the largest slum in Africa…is…just a few yards from…the headquarters of the United Nations’ agency for human settlements… Kibera festers in Kenya, a country that has one of the highest ratios of development workers per capita. …Giving alms to Africa remains one of the biggest ideas of our time — millions march for it, governments are judged by it, celebrities proselytize the need for it. Calls for more aid to Africa are growing louder, with advocates pushing for doubling the roughly $50 billion of international assistance that already goes to Africa each year. Yet evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that aid to Africa has made the poor poorer, and the growth slower. The insidious aid culture has left African countries more debt-laden, more inflation-prone, more vulnerable to the vagaries of the currency markets and more unattractive to higher-quality investment. It’s increased the risk of civil conflict and unrest… Aid is an unmitigated political, economic and humanitarian disaster.
She has some very grim numbers.
…aid can provide band-aid solutions to alleviate immediate suffering, but by its very nature cannot be the platform for long-term sustainable growth. …Over the past 60 years at least $1 trillion of development-related aid has been transferred from rich countries to Africa. Yet real per-capita income today is lower than it was in the 1970s, and more than 50% of the population — over 350 million people — live on less than a dollar a day, a figure that has nearly doubled in two decades. …The most obvious criticism of aid is its links to rampant corruption. Aid flows destined to help the average African end up supporting bloated bureaucracies in the form of the poor-country governments and donor-funded non-governmental organizations. …A constant stream of “free” money is a perfect way to keep an inefficient or simply bad government in power.
If foreign aid money was “merely” wasted, that would be a bad outcome.
But that’s the optimistic version of the story.
In reality, the evidence suggests that these handouts actually subsidize bad policy in the developing world.
None of this would surprise the late Peter Bauer.
Lord Bauer was famous for observing that “government-to-government transfers . . . are an excellent method for transferring money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.”
That’s good, if you happen to be a third world kleptocrat and you have a nice bank account filled with stolen funds in New York.
But if you’re a poor person in a poor country, you’re the one victimized by a bigger government that’s riddled with more corruption.
Amazingly, many western politicians accept corruption as the price of giving away money.
But this brings me back to where we started. If foreign aid achieved good results, then there would be a utilitarian case for accepting a degree of waste and corruption.
But since the evidence shows that these programs lead to slower growth and less prosperity, it’s a lose-lose-lose situation.
Here’s a video trailer for a great documentary on how foreign aid is helpful, but only for the people in charge of the programs.
Let’s close with something that probably should be called Bauer’s Paradox since I’m almost sure he said something making this point.
But until I find proof (maybe it was Easterly or some other scholar), we won’t attribute this sentiment to anyone in particular. We’ll simply go with a rather anodyne title.
But even if the title is boring, this Paradox makes a critical point. The poor nations that have become rich nations in recent decades did not rely on handouts and redistribution.
[brid video=”72250″ player=”2077″ title=”Kellyanne Conway Explains How Trump Can Win The Election on 'The View'″]
Kellyanne Conway, the campaign manager for Donald Trump, told the ladies on “The View” they “should get ready for a chyron that says ‘President-Elect Donald J. Trump.'” Ms. Conway appeared on the show to discuss Donald Trump leading in the ABC News/Washington Post Tracking Poll, in which he trailed 8 days ago by 12 points.
Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks to the reporters at United Nations headquarters, Tuesday, March 10, 2015. Clinton conceded that she should have used a government email to conduct business as secretary of state, saying her decision was simply a matter of “convenience.” (Photo: AP/Seth Wenig)
Justice Department Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik tipped off Clinton campaign chair John Podesta in an email reading “Subject: Fwd: Heads up” on May 19, 2015. The email released by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks is the latest of several revelations that put Mr. Kadzik in the headlines regarding the Clinton email investigation.
“There is a HJC oversight hearing today where the head of our Civil Division will testify. Likely to get questions on State Department emails,” Kadzik wrote. “Another filing in the FOIA case went in last night or will go in this am that indicates it will be awhile (2016) before the State Department posts the emails.”
Last week, after FBI Director James Comey informed Congress the FBI was reopening its inquiry after discovering new “pertinent” evidence linked to Clinton aide Huma Abedin, congressional leaders wrote to the Department of Justice seeking more information.
Kadzik replied.
“We assure you that the Department will continue to work closely with the FBI and together, dedicate all necessary resources and take appropriate steps as expeditiously as possible,” Kadzik wrote on October 31.
But this isn’t even the first time Kadzik, who was confirmed as assistant attorney general for legislative affairs in June 2014, appeared in WikiLeaks. He represented Podesta in 1998 when independent counsel Kenneth Starr was investigating Podesta for his possible role in helping ex-Bill Clinton intern and mistress Monica Lewinsky land a job at the United Nations.
“Fantastic lawyer. Kept me out of jail,” Podesta wrote on September 8, 2008 to Obama aide Cassandra Butts, according to emails hacked from Podesta’s Gmail account and posted by WikiLeaks.
He also lobbied for a tax cheat later pardoned by then-President Bill Clinton and led the effort to confirm Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who tried to stop the FBI from investigating the Clinton Foundation for public corruption. The DoJ is not only responsible for approving the Bureau’s warrant applications but also for convening a grand jury.
Mr. Podesta and Mr. Kadzik kept up their relationship after he was appointed to the DoJ. In a May 5, 2015 email, Kadzik’s son, PJ, wrote to Podesta seeking a job on Hillary Clinton’s newly launched presidential campaign.
“I have always aspired to work on a presidential campaign, and have been waiting for some time now for Hilary [sic] to announce so that I can finally make this aspiration a reality,” PJ Kadzik wrote.
Interestingly, Mr. Kadzik was Mr. Podesta’s a dinner guest on October 23, 2015, the day after Mrs. Clinton testified before the House Benghazi committee, another email shows.
UPDATE: Legal experts tell PPD that Mr. Kadzik “probably” violated his NDA (non-disclosure agreement) and “perhaps” the law. Previously, the article stated “certainly” and “likely.”
File photo of a California polling place sign. (Credit: Ho John Lee/flickr via Creative Commons)
The presidency isn’t the only choice next week. There are more issues than “Who’s worse, Trump or Clinton?”
Other important things are on the ballot.
Congressional elections may determine whether Obamacare lives or dies.
Electionbettingodds.com currently says Republicans will hold the House but lose the Senate. But it’s close.
And politicians aren’t the whole story.
In Kansas and Indiana, voters will decide whether the “right to hunt and fish” should be protected by their state constitutions. Advocates say such a right is needed because zealots will keep inventing “endangered” species and new gun restrictions until most hunting and fishing is impossible.
For similar reasons, Oklahoma voters will vote on a ballot measure guaranteeing a “right to farm.”
Several states will allow voters to punish their neighbors on Tuesday by imposing “sin” taxes. Politicians like taxing “sin” because it gives them money while letting them claim that they discourage bad behavior.
So, four states offer ballot measures that would raise tobacco taxes.
Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Jersey vote on whether to expand legal gambling, but only state-run gambling. In Rhode Island, 61 percent of the revenue will be kept by the state. State-run gambling is always a bad bet, but government will really screw you in Rhode Island.
I’m surprised politicians stop at gambling and don’t tax all the Bible’s deadly sins: pride, envy, lust, etc. Probably because politicians don’t want to tax themselves.
Californians will vote on expansion of a counterproductive rule: a ban on plastic bags. Its supporters say it reduces litter and protects oceans and wildlife. As usual, the zealots ignore science, convenience and health.
A canvas reusable bag must be used 131 times before it will compensate for the minor environmental impact of plastic bags.
Most reusable bags get contaminated by bacteria. The government tells us to carefully wash reusable bags, but almost no one does.
So California voters are likely to vote themselves increased health risk, bad smells and higher costs — for no real environmental benefit.
In Massachusetts, voters are likely to prohibit keeping pigs, calves and hens in spaces where they “can’t lie down or turn around freely.” This may improve animals’ lives. I write “may” because more space also leads to more fighting — even cannibalism — among animals.
But the new law will triple the amount of space farmers need. That raises costs. Egg prices increased 22 percent after California passed such a law.
On Tuesday, Washington may vote to impose a carbon tax on itself. It won’t have a noticeable effect on climate change, but it will make enviro-zealots feel better.
Fortunately, Tuesday also offers voters some good choices. Nevada voters may choose to open their state’s energy market to competition. Competition lowers costs. I was surprised to see that unions oppose that. Do unions now oppose everything that’s good?
Four states will get to vote on legalizing medical marijuana, and five vote on whether to legalize weed for all adults. The betting suggests that most of these measures will pass.
These are issues Americans disagree about — and it’s good we don’t have to wait for Washington, D.C., to reach agreement about them. Innovation often comes from state experiments.
Abortion and gay marriage were first legalized by states. Likewise, women first got the vote in Wyoming. Only after that did other states, and the federal government, follow.
James Madison, chief architect of the Constitution, would have approved. He wanted leeway given to state governments. In the Federalist Papers, in words that would be partly echoed in the Constitution, Madison wrote, “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.”
Since then, arrogant presidents and other federal officials have taken powers from the states. That leaves Americans fewer choices.
But the states will prove again on Tuesday that they still have a say, even if we’re stuck with President Hillary Clinton for the next four (or eight?! please no!) years.
Movements such as Ban the Box are helping ex-convicts find jobs upon their release from prison. (Photo: AP)
The ADP National Employment Report finds 147,000 private sector jobs were created in October, lower than the median estimate calling for 165,000. September payrolls were revised higher by 48,000 to 202,000.
“Job growth appears to be shifting from small to large companies due to the lessening impact the global economic environment had on large companies earlier in the year,” said Ahu Yildirmaz, vice president and head of the ADP Research Institute. “This is also true because large companies often have the resources to attract workers with better pay and benefit packages.”
The lower-paying service sector led the way by adding 165,000 jobs to the private sector payroll. Manufacturing, a higher-wage sector frequently cited during the U.S. presidential election cycle, lost another 1,000 jobs during the month of October. Overall, the higher-paying goods producing sector lost 18,000 jobs, with losses also coming in natural resources/mining (-1,000) and construction (-15,000).
“Job growth remains strong although the pace of growth appears to be slowing. Behind the slowdown is businesses’ difficulty filling open positions,” Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics said. “However, there is some weakness in construction, education and mining.”
Interpretive park ranger Caitlin Kostic, right, gives a tour near the high-water mark of the Confederacy at Gettysburg National Military Park to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Saturday, Oct. 22, 2016, in Gettysburg, Pa. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)
Surging in the national and state polls in the final week, the Trump campaign went on offense and announced a $25 million ad buy in Democratic leaning states. The ad buy includes Pennsylvania, Michigan and New Mexico, where the campaign’s internal polls and PPD Battleground State Polls show the race is tightening.
“We have closed this gap dramatically over the last week,” Deputy campaign manager David Bossie said.
Michigan and Pennsylvania haven’t gone for a Republican since 1988 and New Mexico has only voted Republican once since that same year. But Republicans are encouraged by Mr. Trump leading in the early vote in Michigan and a deep distrust for Hillary Clinton in the Rust Belt. The campaign believes the Republican nominee’s working class message on trade–particularly in light of leaked transcripts showing his Democratic rival holds one position on the issue in public and another in private–will boost his support among traditionally Democratic voters.
The campaign sent out a release saying that the significant ad buy comes as “an open acknowledgment that the campaign is surging in traditionally blue states as well as traditional battleground states.”
“The data clearly shows that Mr. Trump’s message is reaching voters and we are expanding the map. This addition to our already aggressive paid media outreach illustrates Mr. Trump’s commitment to reaching out to all voters in must-win states before Election Day,” said Brad Parscale, Digital Director for the Trump campaign. “By increasing our presence in battleground states and expanding into new markets, Mr. Trump is well-positioned for an impressive victory on Nov. 8th.”
The ads will also run in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, Wisconsin, Virginia, Nevada and New Hampshire as well. The latest SurveyUSA Poll in North Carolina shows Mr. Trump surging to a 7-point lead, while PPD’s Tarheel Battleground State Poll shows a 3-point lead.
Also on Friday, Mr. Trump gave $10 million of his money to his campaign, bringing that his personal spending total to $18.6 million contributed and $47.5 million in loans.
BREAKING NEWS – Authorities in Iowa said that two police officers inDes Moines were killed in ambush attacks early Wednesday. Des Moines police Sgt. Paul Parizek said in a news release to local media outlets that officers responded to a report of shots fired shortly after 1 a.m. and the first officers to arrive on the scene found an Urbandale officer wounded.
Des Moines police officers responded about 25 minutes after a Des Moines officer had been shot at an intersection about two blocks away. Both officers died from their injuries sustained in the shooting. The officers haven’t been identified.
Police said they were still investigating possible suspects.
UPDATE: olice are expected to hold a press conference at around 6 a.m. ET:
Democratic President Barack Obama, left, Hillary Clinton, center, and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, right, each appear on stage during the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in July 2016.
Yet another email released by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks shows contempt for Bernie Sanders on behalf of Clinton campaign officials and supporters. Joel Johnson, a bona fide Clinton insider and D.C. lobbyist, gave Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta some pointers in an email reading, “Subject: Friendly advice. No mercy.”
“Bernie needs to be ground to a pulp. We can’t start believing our own primary bullshit,” Johnson wrote on February 22, 2016. “This is no time to run the general. Crush him as hard as you can. Other than that, hope all is well and congrats on Nevada!”
That’s a far cry from the “when they go low, we go high” mantra, which is frequent Clinton campaign line first used by Michelle Obama against the Clintons. Nevertheless, the email is the latest to show–at the very least–an effort by Clintonites in and out of the Beltway, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and other halls of power to see Sanders derailed. Donna Brazile replaced Debbie Wasserman Schultz as the DNC chair after hacked emails proved an effort to burn Bernie in the media and at the ballot box.
But Brazile, herself, was giving debate questions to the Clinton campaign beforehand in an effort to give her the edge over Sanders.
According to an email released Monday, Brazile sent Clinton Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri an email titled, “One of the questions directed to HRC tomorrow is from a woman with a rash,” the night before the March 6 primary debate in Flint, Michigan.
“Her family has lead poison and she will ask what, if anything, will Hillary do as president to help the ppl of Flint,” Brazile wrote.
On March 7, the following night, Lee-Anne Walters, a mom whose twin boys stopped growing and whose daughter lost her hair during the Flint water crisis, asked the following question to both Mrs. Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders
She wound up ultimately losing the state’s primary to Sanders two days later in an upset polls did not predict. Interestingly, though she was running 10 to 25 points ahead of Sen. Sanders, WikiLeaks emails also show the campaign knew they were likely going to lose.
An earlier email indicated Brazile also gave the Clinton campaign a death penalty question before a CNN-hosted town hall event later that same month. That exchange began with Brazile sending Palmieri the text of the question with the subject line: “From time to time I get the questions in advance.”
After Palmieri responded, Brazile wrote back: “I’ll send a few more.”
TV One host and moderator Roland Martin asked the exact same death penalty question–verbatim–the next night. Meanwhile, on Monday night, CNN issued a statement claiming the network was “completely uncomfortable” with Brazile’s actions and “accepted” her resignation in mid-October, without making it public.
“On October 14th, CNN accepted Donna Brazile’s resignation as a CNN contributor,” CNN spokeswoman Lauren Pratapas said. “[Her deal had previously been suspended in July when she became the interim head of the DNC.] CNN never gave Brazile access to any questions, prep material, attendee list, background information or meetings in advance of a town hall or debate. We are completely uncomfortable with what we have learned about her interactions with the Clinton campaign while she was a CNN contributor.”
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