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Eric Trump, speaking at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, told voters his “father is running for you.” He ran off a litany of people who are impacted by previous trade and immigration policies, the American worker who feels they can’t get ahead.
Eric Trump, speaking at the Republican National
Weekly jobless claims, or first-time claims for unemployment benefits reported by the Labor Department.
The Labor Department said weekly jobless claims fell by 1,000 to 253,000 the week ending July 16, missing the estimate for 265,000. The prior week was unchanged at 254,000. The four-week moving average was 257,750, a decrease of 1,250 from the previous week’s unrevised average of 259,000.
A Labor Department analyst said there were no special factors impacting this week’s initial claims and state was triggered “on” the Extended Benefits program during the week ending July 2.
While the report marks 72 consecutive weeks of initial claims coming in below 300,000, the longest streak since 1973, the long-term unemployment and labor force participation levels are abysmal. In other words, the pool of eligible applicants has shrunk.
The highest insured unemployment rates in the week ending July 2 were in Puerto Rico (3.1), Alaska (2.6), Connecticut (2.6), New Jersey (2.6), Pennsylvania (2.5), West Virginia (2.3), Wyoming (2.3), Rhode Island (2.1), California (2.0), and Massachusetts (2.0).
The largest increases in initial claims for the week ending July 9 were in New York (+13,098), Michigan (+9,197), Missouri (+6,057), Kansas (+2,448), and Ohio (+2,261), while the largest decreases were in California (-6,778), New Jersey (-5,465), Massachusetts (-2,370), Kentucky (-1,368), and Connecticut (-1,257).
The Labor Department said weekly jobless claims
A man walks past the Department of Veterans Affairs headquarters building in Washington, D.C., on May 23, 2014. (Photo: Larry Downing/Reuters)
We who oppose calls to privatize the work of the Veterans Affairs Department are sorely tested at times. Complaints two years ago of unreasonably long waits for care at VA health facilities led to “reforms” in several VA programs.
In 2013, applications for VA disability benefits were piling up, with some claims languishing for over a year. The remedy — streamlining the process for judging disability claims — was not done carefully.
The new computerized system demanded less evidence to prove disability. Examiners were given less time to spend with the applicants, forcing them to make rushed evaluations. It was inevitable that some veterans would exploit these weaknesses to obtain unwarranted disability payments or pad their checks.
As a result, the plan to unclog the pipeline for disability claims has ended up re-clogging it with fraudulent ones. Veterans with great needs are bumped out of appointments by fakers. And money that could go to those too disabled to work a regular job gets diverted to the well-bodied.
Veterans themselves are complaining about the scams. Here are two stories as reported in The Wall Street Journal:
Brian Jacobson spent more than year on roadside patrol in Iraq’s Diyala province. He justly receives disability compensation for post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury.
But when he was applying for the benefit, a clinic staffer advised him thus: Act “like you have a screw loose in your head. Wear clothes with holes that haven’t been washed in a while. And act like you’ve been homeless.” Jacobson knew he was fully qualified for disability compensation, but the coaching, he said, made him “feel dishonest.”
Another veteran of the Iraq War, Jack Murphy, said he was told to say that he had “horrible nightmares” and was “too shellshocked to do anything.” He was to add that he’s impotent, even as his wife was expecting. As for his pregnant wife, the friends reportedly said, “They don’t know anything.”
Adding to the problem has been an easing of standards for obtaining disability payments. For example, proof of a traumatizing event in war was once required for claiming PTSD. Now it isn’t, which helps explain why PTSD claims nearly doubled from 2011 to 2015.
One wishes these applicants, though a minority of veterans, would refuse to lie their way to benefits that could go to their suffering comrades. But human nature being such, it’s obvious that if you open a path to receiving a monthly check with lies, some people will try to take it. This applies to all government programs.
Veterans’ disability payments have soared from about $15 billion in 2000 to over $60 billion last year. Such discussions must also note the very good reasons for rocketing disability costs, unrelated to fraud.
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have drawn American troops into very dangerous and stressful missions, creating a growing population of injured and sick veterans. Improvements in battlefield medicine are saving the lives of many grievously injured troops who would otherwise not have survived. They return home with broken bodies.
Those wounded in service to their country are entitled to the best of care. If their injuries impede their ability to work, then a monthly disability check is their due. But though all veterans deserve thanks for their service, they are not entitled to commit fraud.
The solution for long waits — whether for decisions on disability claims or receiving medical attention — should be more staff to do the work. Opening opportunities for cheating serves neither taxpayers nor veterans stuck in the resulting gridlock. It creates unfairness all around.
We who oppose calls to privatize the
FBI Director James Comey, left, speaks during a press conference on July 5, 2016, while Hillary Clinton, right, followed by aide Huma Abedin, to her right, at Andrews Air Force Base on July 5, 2016. (Photos: AP)
What if the folks who run the Department of Political Justice recently were told that the republic would suffer if Hillary Clinton were indicted for espionage because Donald Trump might succeed Barack Obama in the presidency? What if espionage is the failure to safeguard state secrets and the evidence that Clinton failed to safeguard them is unambiguous and overwhelming?
What if President Obama never really liked his former rival whom he appointed as his secretary of state? What if he had no real interest in seeing her succeed him because he and his wife simply could never trust her?
What if, when Clinton suggested to the president that the U.S. wage a secret undeclared war against Libya, the president went along with it as a no-lose proposition? What if he assumed that if her secret war succeeded he’d get the credit and if her secret war failed she would get the blame?
What if the means of fighting the secret war consisted of employing intelligence assets rather than the U.S. military? What if Clinton concocted that idea because the use of the military requires a public reporting to the entire Congress but the use of intelligence assets requires only a secret reporting to a dozen members of Congress?
What if Clinton expanded her war by permitting American and foreign arms dealers to bypass the NATO arms embargo on Libya by selling heavy-duty, military-grade arms directly to militias in Libya? What if this was Clinton’s dream scenario — an apparent civil war in Libya in which the victorious side was secretly armed by the U.S., with democracy brought to the country and Clinton the architect of it all?
What if the CIA warned Clinton that this would backfire? What if the CIA told her that she was arming not pro-Western militias but anti-American terrorist groups?
What if she rejected all that advice? What if providing material assistance to terrorist groups is a felony? What if the Department of Political Justice actually obtained an indictment of an American arms dealer for going along with Clinton’s schemes?
What if Clinton’s secret war in Libya was a disaster? What if she succeeded in toppling the Libyan leader, Col. Moammar Gadhafi, only to have him replaced by feuding warlords who control anti-Western terrorist groups that not only failed to produce democracy but instead produced destruction, chaos, terror, torture and death?
What if Clinton managed her Libyan disaster using a non-secure email system even though she regularly sent and received state secrets? What if she sent many emails containing state secrets about her Libyan war to her friend Sid Blumenthal? What if Blumenthal had been turned down for a State Department job by the president himself?
What if Blumenthal did not have a government security clearance to receive lawfully any state secrets? What if Clinton knew that? What if the FBI found that Blumenthal’s emails had been hacked by intelligence services of foreign governments that are hostile to America?
What if there were terrible secrets that Clinton wanted to keep from the public and for that reason she used private servers and non-government-issued mobile devices? What if those terrible secrets involved her enabling the unlawful behavior of her husband and his shoddy, unlawful foundation? What if Mrs. Clinton made decisions as secretary of state that were intended to enrich her husband and herself and she needed to keep emails about those decisions away from the public?
What if the president recognized all this and authorized the FBI to conduct criminal investigations of Mrs. Clinton?
What if, after the ascendancy of Donald Trump in the Republican presidential primary, the president warmed up to his former rival? What if Trump so got under the president’s skin that it drove him to embrace Clinton as his chosen successor and as the one Democrat who could prevent a Trump presidency?
What if the president sent word to the Department of Political Justice to exonerate Clinton no matter what evidence was found against her? What if, in response to that political interference, the FBI investigation of her failure to safeguard state secrets and her corruption took irregular turns?
What if FBI management began to intimidate FBI agents who had the goods on her? What if FBI management forced agents to sign highly irregular agreements governing what the agents can tell anyone when it comes to what they learned about Clinton?
What if the Department of Political Justice never subpoenaed anything from Clinton? What if it never convened a grand jury to seek and hear evidence against her?
What if the FBI requires a grand jury to subpoena documents and tangible things? What if it is highly irregular for a major FBI criminal investigation to be undertaken without a grand jury?
What if the attorney general was involved in a publicity stunt with Clinton’s husband and then used that stunt as an excuse to remove herself and her top aides from making decisions in the case? What if this was a sham, done so as to make it appear that FBI professionals — rather than someone politically motivated, such as the president or the attorney general — were calling the shots in the case?
What if Hillary Clinton has engaged in espionage and public corruption and FBI agents know that she has? What if they have evidence to prove it but they could not present anything to a grand jury because President Obama wants Clinton, and not Donald Trump, to succeed him in office? What if this blatant political interference with a criminal investigation is itself a crime? What if, midstream in this criminal investigation, the fix was put in?
Napolitano: What if the fix was in
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence addresses the 2016 Republican National Convention at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio.
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence accepted the vice presidential nomination to cheers from the crowd at the Republican Nomination in Cleveland, Ohio. With the crowd chanting “We like Mike!” he characterized the election as a choice between radical change and keeping the status quo of a corrupt America in decline.
“I accept your nomination to run and serve as Vice President of the United States of America,” Gov. Pence said at the Quicken Loans Arena. “For those of you who don’t me–and that may be most of you–I’m a Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order.”
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Gov. Pence cited his record in Indiana, one of the main reasons Donald Trump picked him as his vice presidential nominee.
“Today we have fewer state employees than when I took office and businesses, large and small, have created nearly 150,000 net new jobs, and we have more Hoosiers going to work than ever before,” he said. “And that’s what you can do with commonsense Republican leadership, and that’s exactly what the no-nonsense leadership of Donald Trump will bring to the White House.”
“Our military will have what they need and our veterans will have what they deserve.”
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In what was perhaps his most important job of the night, Gov. Pence praised his running mate and drew a clear and direct contrast with Hillary Clinton.
“This is the outsider, my running mate, who turned a long-shot campaign into a movement,” he said. “And over in the other party, if the idea was to present the exact opposite of a political outsider, the exact opposite of an uncalculating truth-teller, then on that score you’ve really got to hand it to the Democrat establishment,” he says. “They outdid themselves this time.”
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence accepted the vice
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Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, speaking as the vice presidential nominee to the Republican Nomination, said under President Donald Trump “the nation will start winning again.”
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, speaking to the
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Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, during his speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio at the Quicken Loans Arena, said “if you anything about Hoosiers, we’re competitive, we play to win.”
He added that Donald Trump up until now made history all by himself, but now he’s got someone who will have his back.
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, during his speech
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz speaks to the Republican National Convention before being booed off the stage at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was giving a rousing speech at the Republican National Convention, but was booed for not endorsing Donald Trump. Instead, he encouraged voters to “vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution.”
When the crowd began to “boo” and chant “Trump! Trump! Trump!” he tried to scoff it off by saying he “appreciates the passion of the New York delegation” with a smile. It didn’t work.
It was said Sen. Cruz wanted to make the speech his 1976, the year Ronald Reagan lost to Gerald Ford but paved the way for a run in 1980. But Reagan didn’t even need a pledge to break, he believed in the bigger picture.
“Cruz will pay a huge price for this,” PPD’s senior political analyst Richard D. Baris said in response. “He was already crashing in the polls, he’s shot himself in the foot. He’s not Ronald Reagan.”
Polls show Sen. Cruz’s image was suffering badly during the primary cozying up to Trump before using the party establishment to attempt to block his path to the nomination. Republican National Committee officials were calling him classless as he left the stage.
The crowd listens as Texas Sen. Ted Cruz speaks to the Republican National Convention at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio.
Here are a few of his lines that were well-received before, well, it all came down.
Speaking about what makes America unique and exceptional, he said “America is more than just a land mass between two oceans. America is an idea, a simple yet powerful idea: freedom matters.”
“For much of human history, government power has been the unavoidable constant in life – government decrees, and the people obey. Not here. We have no king or queen. No dictator. We the People constrain government.”
“Our nation is exceptional because it was built on the five most powerful words in the English language: I want to be free,” Cruz says.
Cruz now moving into a criticism of President Obama, Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.
“On education, your freedom to choose your child’s education, even if you aren’t as rich as Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.
“On healthcare, your freedom to choose your own doctor, without Obamacare.
“On taxes, your freedom to provide for your family without the IRS beating down your door,” he says.
“We deserve an immigration system that puts America first. And yes, builds a wall to keep America safe. We deserve trade policies that put the interests of American farmers and manufacturers over the interests of lobbyists and globalists.”
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was giving a
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Conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham called on former Republican presidential candidates to honor their pledge and endorse Donald Trump. Ingraham asked them to put aside their personal feelings, egos and get behind the party’s presidential nominee.
Giving a red-meat speech at the GOP convention, where Trump was formerly nominated, Ingraham said that those who competed against him in the primary need to rally in support of him immediately.
“I want to say this very plainly,” said Ingraham. “We should all, even all you boys with wounded feelings and bruised egos — and we love you — but you must honor your pledge to support Donald Trump now, tonight.”
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio have all went back on their pledges. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is speaking Wednesday night, though it’s unclear whether he will give a full-throated endorsement.
Conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham called
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Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum had a message for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz on Wednesday: It’s not about him and it’s time to keep his word. The former senator urges Sen. Cruz to give Donald Trump, his former rival and now Republican nominee for president, his “enthusiastic support” during his speech to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland Wednesday night.
“I think Ted Cruz should do what he pledged to do and stand up and say, ‘I’m going to support the nominee of the Republican Party,'” Sen. Santorum said. “This is not about Ted Cruz, this is not about any one of us, this is about –I’ve said this repeatedly– it is about the salvation of our Republic.”
RICK SANTORUM: I think Ted Cruz should do what he pledged to do and stand up and say, ‘I’m going to support the nominee of the Republican Party.’
And Donald Trump is the nominee of the Republican Party. It is time for Ted Cruz to step up and support him. I’m hopeful he’ll do that. He’s been given a big stage to do it.
This is not about Ted Cruz, this is not about any one of us, this is about –I’ve said this repeatedly– it is about the salvation of our Republic. Hillary Clinton is going to be able appoint five Supreme Court justices under 50 who do not beleive the Constitution is worth the paper it is printed on.
They will rewrite the Constitution and we will lose our Republic. I know that sounds really extreme, but it is really true. And the fact of the matter is that Donald Trump is the only thing that can stop that from happening.
Ted Cruz gets that, I know he knows how important this is. He is a Supreme Court lawyer. If he gives anything short of enthusiastic support I will be disappointed.
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum had a
