The 2016 "Presidential Elections" Show

[Underdog]

With new leadership, let's see if the "swamp politicians" change their behavior. Paul Ryan's tone absolutely changed after the election. Ryan understands that Trump helped propel many conservative and Republican down-ticket candidates into office. Despite what you see and hear on the news, the American people are generally conservative in their thinking. NOBODY in Washington expected Trump to win, but perhaps the will of the people will be respected this time around.

[kscarbel2]

On 11/11/2016 at 7:35 AM, 41chevy said:

Soros?

 

[kscarbel2]

Speaking on Trump, President Obama said:

“Regardless of what experience or assumptions he brought to the office, this office has a way of waking you up. Reality has a way of asserting itself."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

President Obama, alluding to why Hillary Clinton lost the election.

"I believe that we have better ideas, but I also believe that good ideas don't matter if people don't hear them. And one of the issues that Democrats have to be clear on is that given population distribution across the country, we have to compete everywhere, we have to show up everywhere. We have to work at a grassroots level, something that's been a running thread through my career."

"I won Iowa not because the demographics dictated that I would win Iowa, it was because I spent 87 days going to every small town, and fair, and fish fry, and VFW hall. And there were some counties where I might have lost, but maybe I lost by 20 points instead of 50 points. There are some counties that maybe I won that people didn't expect — because people had a chance to see you and listen to you and get a sense of who you stood for and who you were fighting for."

Listen in at 2:00

 

[kscarbel2]

Trump tapped the misery of factory workers, but can he bring back their jobs?

Natalie Kitroeff, Los Angeles Times  /  November 15, 2016

Michael Smith is not used to stretching a paycheck. As recently as March 2015, the 42-year-old was earning nearly $100,000 a year as a district manager on oil fields for company based in Union City, Pa. Then oil prices dropped, and his company laid him off.

Smith, a father of four boys, now makes $12 an hour as an apprentice electrician. He is not a die-hard disciple, but voted for Donald Trump because he’s desperate for something new.

“Do I think Donald Trump is what this country needs and do I think he will make it great again? No,” Smith said. “Do I think he is a step in the right direction? Absolutely.”  

It was not poor Americans who made the difference in this election; it was people like Smith. Trump soared among white voters who earn decent wages, but have seen their pay decline and jobs in their industries disappear over the past 15 years.

Some of those workers say they were responding in part to Trump’s repeated bashing of trade, and at the same time perceived Hillary Clinton as a poster child for the free-trade deals that her husband signed and President Obama tried to push through Congress.

“A lot of our members equated NAFTA to Hillary and Bill Clinton,” said Donnie Blatt, a coordinator with the United Steelworkers union in Ohio. “A lot of our members felt like they hated Hillary Clinton, they believed she caused the loss of all their jobs.”

But it will be almost impossible for Trump to fulfill his promise to bring back most of the assembly line gigs lost to globalization, economists say. The U.S. has moved toward advanced manufacturing, which employs highly educated people, and plants that once required manual labor are now manned by robots that work faster than people and cost less. U.S. factories are producing more than ever, with far fewer employees. 

“The Democrats have no credibility with these people, and the trade issue brings it out more than anything,” said Dean Baker, the co-director of the left-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research. “Trump is making these promises, but they aren’t realistic. It isn’t like he has a plan to bring the jobs back, but he was out there saying it.” 

It’s not surprising that trade issues resonated with some voters in vast swaths of the Midwest and Southeast.

Since 2000, American manufacturers wiped 5 million people off their payrolls, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Millions of those jobs went to China or Mexico, research suggests. 

For context, it took more than three decades for 560,000 mining jobs to disappear, after reaching a peak of 1.2 million the early 1980s.

The shock of losing so many middle-class jobs so quickly hit hardest in the Rust Belt states, which were crucial to Trump’s victory. Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania had among the steepest cuts in assembly line jobs across the country since 2000.

California cut the most manufacturing jobs of any state from 2000 to 2015, partly because its workforce is so huge. More than 576,000 Californians lost their jobs in factories over that period.

But the biggest losers after California were Ohio, Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, which hemorrhaged a combined 1.2 million manufacturing jobs. That means that about a quarter of the total manufacturing job loss in the country since 2000 occurred in those four swing states.

Ohio and Pennsylvania voted for a Republican for the first time since at least 2004. Michigan hasn’t been called for Trump, but he is leading there. 

The counties in those states where Clinton lost the largest number of voters compared with Obama in 2012 were also the counties that lost particularly large numbers of manufacturing jobs over the last 15 years, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. 

How much of the shift took place because of trade is hard to tell: The job losses mostly took place during the first decade of this century, but the states did not flip to vote for a Republican until this year. And many other issues were in play, including tensions over immigration, race and the presence of a woman on the Democratic ticket.

Still, trade and its impact on manufacturing jobs almost certainly played a role in boosting Trump’s prospects in the nation’s industrial belt.

“The real ones who are hurt [by trade] are centered, not coincidentally, in the swing states in this election,” said Peter Navarro, an economist from UC Irvine who has been a powerful voice on Trump’s economic advisory board.

“You go around the rim of the Midwest…those are the key states that have been ground zero of this problem,” Navarro said.

These workers were not necessarily scraping by — the average American with a factory gig made around $64,000 in 2015, BLS data show. But in Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania, pay for manufacturing employees has declined or remained relatively flat since 2000, after adjusting for inflation, even as it inched up in the country overall. 

Ryan Germonto said that when he hears politicians talk dreamily about the economy today, he feels betrayed. 

“Even if the progressives want to say we are progressing, we aren’t really progressing,” Germonto said.

The 32-year-old father of two used to make $55,000 inspecting gear boxes used in wind turbines for Eickhoff Wind Energy, in Pittsburgh. But the company stopped making the gear boxes in the U.S., and Germonto was laid off in November 2015.

Now he’s working at a job that barely pays his bills. He makes $40,000 per year as a site manager, overseeing the housekeeping staff at an upscale mall in Pittsburgh. He now has to pay $800 per month for healthcare coverage that cost him less than $250 at his old job.

“I’m sick of outsourcing jobs. I’m sick of the government taking the easy way out,” Germonto said. He voted for Trump because he believes the real estate mogul is “more for the people” than Clinton.

Economists say that people like Germonto were already in trouble. Automation has been steadily decimating assembly line jobs, and as new plants come back to the U.S. they are increasingly staffed by robots.

But trade has also damaged American factories, something workers noticed long before academics measured it.

“Until a few years ago most economists were convinced that international trade had only very minor implications for labor markets,” said David Dorn, an economist who specializes in U.S.-China trade.

“Academics and policymakers underestimate the negative side effects of globalization by quite a bit,” he said.

China alone could have knocked out up to 2.4 million jobs in the U.S. from 1999 to 2011, according to a recent study that Dorn co-wrote.

That economic shock made people want change.

Areas that were hammered by trade became more likely to vote out incumbents in favor of “politicians that were politically extreme” to Congress between 2002 and 2010, Dorn and three other economists found in a September study.

White-dominated regions opted for unconventional conservatives in the tea party, while places with a majority of Blacks, Hispanics and Asians chose Democrats at the other extreme, Dorn’s study found.

Germonto, the former gear box inspector, said he didn’t vote on race issues, but they were on his mind.

“More people are hating on white Americans than any other race or any other walk of life,” he said. “I think white America is fed up with that.”

In reality, there isn’t a politician in the country who could turn things around for manual laborers in this country, economists say. Manufacturing output in the U.S. — the amount that we produce — reached a record high this year, after tanking during the recession. 

But jobs have only trickled back, and the ones that are appearing aren’t going to women and men who work with their hands — they’re going to highly educated engineers, programmers and MBAs.

“There is a reallocation away from traditional manufacturing, toward parts of manufacturing that are more intensive in tech and in human capital,” said Enrico Moretti, an economist at UC Berkeley. “Automation keeps reducing the need for blue-collar positions."

Lindsay Patterson, 61, doesn’t buy Trump’s guarantee to resuscitate jobs like his.

Patterson lost a $50,000 annual salary with benefits when the tubing plant he worked for in Philadelphia shut down in October 2015.

“They lost market share because Chinese pipes were coming in and it was becoming really difficult for them to compete on the price they were charging,” said Patterson, who is now getting by on an unemployment check and his wife’s salary as a schoolteacher.

Patterson voted for Clinton, because he says Trump can’t change what’s happened to industrial America.

“He is going to start a fight with China and with all these companies to bring jobs back, but it isn’t that easy,” Patterson said.

Still, many of Patterson’s former coworkers sided with Trump, because he said the right things, often and loudly.

“They hear it, it sounds good, and if they don’t have anything to base it on, well, that was what they have been waiting to hear,” Patterson said.

[kscarbel2]

On 11/11/2016 at 7:35 AM, 41chevy said:

Soros?

 

[kscarbel2]

Troubling if not scary.

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Darkness is good: Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That's power. It only helps us when [the media and liberals] get it wrong. When they're blind of who we are and what we're doing.'

"Bill Clinton’s strength was to play to people without a college education. High school people. That's how you win elections."

"I'm not a white nationalist, I'm a nationalist. I'm an economic nationalist. The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia. The issue now is about Americans looking to not get f—ed over. If we deliver, we'll get 60 percent of the white vote, and 40 percent of the black and Hispanic vote and we'll govern for 50 years. That's what the Democrats missed. They were talking to these people with companies with a $9 billion market cap employing nine people. It's not reality. They lost sight of what the world is about."

"Like Andrew Jackson's populism, we're going to build an entirely new political movement. It's everything related to jobs. The conservatives are going to go crazy. I'm the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. With negative interest rates throughout the world, it's the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Shipyards, iron works, get them all jacked up. We're just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks. It will be as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolution — conservatives, plus populists, in an economic nationalist movement."

"The media bubble is the ultimate symbol of what's wrong with this country. It's just a circle of people talking to themselves who have no f—ing idea what's going on. If The New York Times didn't exist, CNN and MSNBC would be a test pattern. The Huffington Post and everything else is predicated on The New York Times. It's a closed circle of information from which Hillary Clinton got all her information — and her confidence. That was our opening."

"They [Murdoch-owned Fox News] got it more wrong than anybody. Rupert is a globalist and never understood Trump. To him, Trump is a radical. Now they'll go centrist and build the network around Megyn Kelly.

"He [Trump] gets it; he gets it intuitively. You have probably the greatest orator since William Jennings Bryan, coupled with an economic populist message and two political parties that are so owned by the donors that they don't speak to their audience. But he speaks in a non-political vernacular, he communicates with these people in a very visceral way. Nobody in the Democratic party listened to his speeches, so they had no idea he was delivering such a compelling and powerful economic message. He shows up 3.5 hours late in Michigan at 1 in the morning and has 35,000 people waiting in the cold. When they got [Clinton] off the donor circuit she went to TempleUniversity and they drew 300 or 400 kids."

"I knew that she [Hillary Clinton] couldn't close. They out-spent us 10 to one, had 10 times more people and had all the media with them, but I kept saying it doesn't matter, they got it all wrong, we've got this locked."

"I am Thomas Cromwell in the court of the Tudors." (Likening himself to Henry VIII’s right hand man and master manipulator)

Steven Bannon, Breitbart News Network Editor and Trump administration chief strategist

[kscarbel2]

Trump meets critic Romney

CNN  /  November 19, 2016

Romney allegedly under consideration for secretary of state.

"We had a far-reaching conversation with regard to the various theaters in the world where there are interests of the United States of real significance. We discussed those areas and exchanged our views on those topics," Romney said

[kscarbel2]

Bannon, Kushner and Priebus: rivals for power at the heart of Trump's team

The Guardian  /  November 19, 2016

One by one they came, walking by the marble walls, the cascading waterfall, the ogling tourists and the eager cameras, into the shiny lifts and up to the 26th floor to kiss the ring of the new king.

This week, TrumpTower was a hive of scurrying courtiers, from a prime minister, media mogul and nonagenarian diplomat to senators, congressmen and businessmen. And as the palace intrigue deepened, it was apparent that three men, in particular, had the ear of President-elect Donald Trump.

“I am Thomas Cromwell in the court of the Tudors,” says Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, likening himself to Henry VIII’s right hand man and master manipulator (who, in a fact he may have overlooked, was ultimately executed for treason).

Bannon did not propose historical roles for Reince Priebus, chief of staff, or Jared Kushner, an intimate adviser married to Trump’s daughter, but they are his rivals for Trump’s attention.

Shaun Bowler, associate dean of political science at the University of California, likened the plot to Hilary Mantel’s historical novel Wolf Hall. “Her account of people tiptoeing around a character like Henry VIII strikes me as providing lots of insight into what life for advisers will be like inside the White House from now on,” he said. “What we probably can say is that – whatever the actual pattern of influence – we can be pretty sure that at least one of them will end up leaving after a blow-up.”

Last Sunday, the president-elect made his first move. He announced that Bannon would be chief strategist, triggering a fierce backlash because of the adviser’s executive role at the website Breitbart, which has run white nationalist and anti-Semitic headlines.

At the same time, Trump appointed the more conventional Priebus to the more conventional role of chief of staff. The chairperson of the Republican National Committee (RNC) had been unswervingly loyal ever since the end of the primaries, even while the candidate ignored pleas to tone down the rhetoric.

But there is also a third centre of power, unofficial but no less important. Kushner, a property developer, investor and newspaper publisher married to Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, is said to have called the shots throughout the campaign and is now doing the same in the transition.

Kushner was present at Thursday’s meeting with Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe and behind a “Stalinesque purge” of the transition team.

There are other major players in the Trump universe. They include Vice-President-elect Mike Pence, a vital bridge to Congress and the conservative movement; Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the first senator to endorse Trump and now the nominee for attorney general; Paul Ryan, the House speaker with whom Trump has made a fragile peace; and Mitch McConnell, the Republican majority leader in the Senate [age 75 next February].

But it is Priebus, Bannon and Kushner, vying for 70-year-old Trump’s infamously short attention span, who could form the most potent triumvirate in the Oval Office since the days when Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Karl Rove counseled George W Bush. Given Trump’s track record of pitting rivals against each other, they probably face an uncertain future.

“Apparently Trump likes to manage with concentric circles of chaos,” said Michael Steele, Priebus’s predecessor as RNC chair. “He doesn’t mind that. He likes the tension between the different sectors of influence. So far you’ve got the Kushner circle, you’ve got the Bannon circle, they all interrelate into Trump’s circle but when they have to work with each other, that’s where the challenge is going to be because their interests are very different interests.”

Priebus, a technocrat and consummate party man, will be the voice of the Republican establishment, and a vital conduit to Congress, including Ryan, a fellow Wisconsinite.

“Reince is not Donald Trump’s guy,” Steele added. “Bannon is. Reince is Paul Ryan’s guy and so Trump is doing what he thinks he needs to do to create some olive branches to the establishment types because he knows he needs them. But, quite honestly, they need him just as much. I suspect, as much as they will try to play it down, there will be some tough times where those interests will conflict.”

During the campaign, Kushner, well-mannered but guarded, emerged as operational guru, helping with recruitment, online fundraising, drafting policy and even selecting a running mate. Over the past week, Kushner orchestrated the removal of transition team leader Chris Christie and his allies; Christie had successfully prosecuted his father for tax evasion 11 years ago.

Kushner, 35, is taking legal advice on whether he can get around anti-nepotism laws to join the new administration, the New York Times reported.

Like Trump, Kushner is steeped in the property world and has no political experience. “I’m sure he’s a very smart young man, a very successful businessman,” Steele said. “But he doesn’t know foreign policy, he doesn’t know national security, that’s not the world in which he has operated.

“Trump has to be very careful how close in he has someone and the advice he’s taking from someone who has no real background or appreciation or understanding of the obvious stuff, let alone the nuances of policy and government.”

Kushner and 62-year-old Bannon are, in many respects, polar opposites. One is clean cut and favors crew-neck sweaters; the other is disheveled and looks in need of a shave. One is the son of a multimillionaire; the other was born into a working-class family. One is an Orthodox Jew (Ivanka converted before their marriage), the other a Catholic who has been accused of anti-Semitism.

“Jared Kushner’s the most interesting to me,” said Rick Tyler, a former member of Ted Cruz’s campaign team. “Billionaires don’t trust everyone who walks through the door but Trump trusts Kushner and Kushner trusts Bannon. They believe in Bannon and the advice he’s given. People can complain about it, then get over it.”

This week, guests to TrumpTower included 93-year-old Henry Kissinger, secretary of state under Richard Nixon; and Rupert Murdoch, 85, the media tycoon and another bete noire of the liberal left.

On Friday, Trump nominated Sessions as attorney general, congressman Mike Pompeo as CIA director and retired lieutenant-general Michael Flynn as national security adviser.

Before departing on his last meeting with European leaders, Obama, said Trump was a “pragmatist”, not an “ideologue”. The same could be said of Kushner and Priebus, both of whom are valued for organisational sense. But Bannon is different.

After careers as an investment banker and naval officer, and before becoming Trump’s campaign chief executive, Bannon ran Breitbart, notorious for rightwing dog-whistles and anti-globalist themes that surfaced in Trump speeches and ads. Its headlines have included “Hoist it high and proud: The Confederate flag proclaims a glorious heritage”, “Birth control makes women unattractive and crazy”, and “Clinton aide Huma Abedin ‘most likely a Saudi spy’.”

Bannon has denied allegations of racism. “I’m not a white nationalist, I’m a nationalist,” he says. “I’m an economic nationalist. The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia. The issue now is about Americans looking to not get f*cked over.”

“If we deliver”, Trump’s team will win most white voters and a near majority of black and Hispanic voters. “We’ll govern for 50 years.” Democrats, he said, had “lost sight of what the world is about”.

Dan Cassino, a political scientist at FairleighDickinsonUniversity, said it was unclear whether business or ideology was Bannon’s priority at Breitbart. “He’s willing to use racist and anti-Semitic content to make money off it, whether or not he’s racist or anti-Semitic himself. He’s willing to tolerate it.”

Cassino argued that whereas Fox News covers familiar issues from a conservative perspective, Breitbart pursues an entirely different agenda. “We should be concerned to the extent Steve Bannon controls what information goes in and goes out of the White House. Traditionally information is controlled by the chief of staff but every administration is different.”

He noted that Breitbart typically gives official figures no credence, and that Trump appeared surprised, in a recent TV interview, to learn about actual hate crime totals. “If he’s getting facts from Breitbart just as Bush got facts from Fox News, we have a problem,” Cassino said. “We want a president to make data-based decisions.”

It may then fall to Priebus, a 44-year-old whom Trump called “a superstar” on election night, to provide a reality check. Henry Barbour, who helped run his 2010 campaign to chair the RNC, said the committee was in so much debt at the time that Priebus had to make payments on his personal credit card.

“He was an easy guy to work with even when we didn’t agree on everything,” he recalled. “His ability to work with people and cut through the crap will serve him well. He does not have a big ego. He’s not interested in self-promotion and will be interested in giving good, candid advice to the president. He’s not a yes-man but he will be loyal.”

Barbour, now a lobbyist with Capitol Resources, insisted: “Reince has told me directly he has developed a good working relationship with Bannon and gets on well with him. I have no doubts Reince will work well with Jared Kushner.”

Terry Sullivan, a Republican strategist, said Priebus was “Wisconsin nice” but also “a smart hire”.

“He can bring multiple factions together,” he said. “He might be the only figure who is still liked by the establishment of the party who spent so much time defending Trump.”

[Underdog]

Bannon, Kushner and Priebus: rivals for power at the heart of Trump's team

The Guardian  /  November 19, 2016

One by one they came, walking by the marble walls, the cascading waterfall, the ogling tourists and the eager cameras, into the shiny lifts and up to the 26th floor to kiss the ring of the new king.

This week, TrumpTower was a hive of scurrying courtiers, from a prime minister, media mogul and nonagenarian diplomat to senators, congressmen and businessmen. And as the palace intrigue deepened, it was apparent that three men, in particular, had the ear of President-elect Donald Trump.

“I am Thomas Cromwell in the court of the Tudors,” says Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, likening himself to Henry VIII’s right hand man and master manipulator (who, in a fact he may have overlooked, was ultimately executed for treason).

Bannon did not propose historical roles for Reince Priebus, chief of staff, or Jared Kushner, an intimate adviser married to Trump’s daughter, but they are his rivals for Trump’s attention.

Shaun Bowler, associate dean of political science at the University of California, likened the plot to Hilary Mantel’s historical novel Wolf Hall. “Her account of people tiptoeing around a character like Henry VIII strikes me as providing lots of insight into what life for advisers will be like inside the White House from now on,” he said. “What we probably can say is that – whatever the actual pattern of influence – we can be pretty sure that at least one of them will end up leaving after a blow-up.”

Last Sunday, the president-elect made his first move. He announced that Bannon would be chief strategist, triggering a fierce backlash because of the adviser’s executive role at the website Breitbart, which has run white nationalist and anti-Semitic headlines.

At the same time, Trump appointed the more conventional Priebus to the more conventional role of chief of staff. The chairperson of the Republican National Committee (RNC) had been unswervingly loyal ever since the end of the primaries, even while the candidate ignored pleas to tone down the rhetoric.

But there is also a third centre of power, unofficial but no less important. Kushner, a property developer, investor and newspaper publisher married to Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, is said to have called the shots throughout the campaign and is now doing the same in the transition.

Kushner was present at Thursday’s meeting with Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe and behind a “Stalinesque purge” of the transition team.

There are other major players in the Trump universe. They include Vice-President-elect Mike Pence, a vital bridge to Congress and the conservative movement; Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the first senator to endorse Trump and now the nominee for attorney general; Paul Ryan, the House speaker with whom Trump has made a fragile peace; and Mitch McConnell, the Republican majority leader in the Senate [age 75 next February].

But it is Priebus, Bannon and Kushner, vying for 70-year-old Trump’s infamously short attention span, who could form the most potent triumvirate in the Oval Office since the days when Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Karl Rove counseled George W Bush. Given Trump’s track record of pitting rivals against each other, they probably face an uncertain future.

“Apparently Trump likes to manage with concentric circles of chaos,” said Michael Steele, Priebus’s predecessor as RNC chair. “He doesn’t mind that. He likes the tension between the different sectors of influence. So far you’ve got the Kushner circle, you’ve got the Bannon circle, they all interrelate into Trump’s circle but when they have to work with each other, that’s where the challenge is going to be because their interests are very different interests.”

Priebus, a technocrat and consummate party man, will be the voice of the Republican establishment, and a vital conduit to Congress, including Ryan, a fellow Wisconsinite.

“Reince is not Donald Trump’s guy,” Steele added. “Bannon is. Reince is Paul Ryan’s guy and so Trump is doing what he thinks he needs to do to create some olive branches to the establishment types because he knows he needs them. But, quite honestly, they need him just as much. I suspect, as much as they will try to play it down, there will be some tough times where those interests will conflict.”

During the campaign, Kushner, well-mannered but guarded, emerged as operational guru, helping with recruitment, online fundraising, drafting policy and even selecting a running mate. Over the past week, Kushner orchestrated the removal of transition team leader Chris Christie and his allies; Christie had successfully prosecuted his father for tax evasion 11 years ago.

Kushner, 35, is taking legal advice on whether he can get around anti-nepotism laws to join the new administration, the New York Times reported.

Like Trump, Kushner is steeped in the property world and has no political experience. “I’m sure he’s a very smart young man, a very successful businessman,” Steele said. “But he doesn’t know foreign policy, he doesn’t know national security, that’s not the world in which he has operated.

“Trump has to be very careful how close in he has someone and the advice he’s taking from someone who has no real background or appreciation or understanding of the obvious stuff, let alone the nuances of policy and government.”

Kushner and 62-year-old Bannon are, in many respects, polar opposites. One is clean cut and favors crew-neck sweaters; the other is disheveled and looks in need of a shave. One is the son of a multimillionaire; the other was born into a working-class family. One is an Orthodox Jew (Ivanka converted before their marriage), the other a Catholic who has been accused of anti-Semitism.

“Jared Kushner’s the most interesting to me,” said Rick Tyler, a former member of Ted Cruz’s campaign team. “Billionaires don’t trust everyone who walks through the door but Trump trusts Kushner and Kushner trusts Bannon. They believe in Bannon and the advice he’s given. People can complain about it, then get over it.”

This week, guests to TrumpTower included 93-year-old Henry Kissinger, secretary of state under Richard Nixon; and Rupert Murdoch, 85, the media tycoon and another bete noire of the liberal left.

On Friday, Trump nominated Sessions as attorney general, congressman Mike Pompeo as CIA director and retired lieutenant-general Michael Flynn as national security adviser.

Before departing on his last meeting with European leaders, Obama, said Trump was a “pragmatist”, not an “ideologue”. The same could be said of Kushner and Priebus, both of whom are valued for organisational sense. But Bannon is different.

After careers as an investment banker and naval officer, and before becoming Trump’s campaign chief executive, Bannon ran Breitbart, notorious for rightwing dog-whistles and anti-globalist themes that surfaced in Trump speeches and ads. Its headlines have included “Hoist it high and proud: The Confederate flag proclaims a glorious heritage”, “Birth control makes women unattractive and crazy”, and “Clinton aide Huma Abedin ‘most likely a Saudi spy’.”

Bannon has denied allegations of racism. “I’m not a white nationalist, I’m a nationalist,” he says. “I’m an economic nationalist. The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia. The issue now is about Americans looking to not get f*cked over.”

“If we deliver”, Trump’s team will win most white voters and a near majority of black and Hispanic voters. “We’ll govern for 50 years.” Democrats, he said, had “lost sight of what the world is about”.

Dan Cassino, a political scientist at FairleighDickinsonUniversity, said it was unclear whether business or ideology was Bannon’s priority at Breitbart. “He’s willing to use racist and anti-Semitic content to make money off it, whether or not he’s racist or anti-Semitic himself. He’s willing to tolerate it.”

Cassino argued that whereas Fox News covers familiar issues from a conservative perspective, Breitbart pursues an entirely different agenda. “We should be concerned to the extent Steve Bannon controls what information goes in and goes out of the White House. Traditionally information is controlled by the chief of staff but every administration is different.”

He noted that Breitbart typically gives official figures no credence, and that Trump appeared surprised, in a recent TV interview, to learn about actual hate crime totals. “If he’s getting facts from Breitbart just as Bush got facts from Fox News, we have a problem,” Cassino said. “We want a president to make data-based decisions.”

It may then fall to Priebus, a 44-year-old whom Trump called “a superstar” on election night, to provide a reality check. Henry Barbour, who helped run his 2010 campaign to chair the RNC, said the committee was in so much debt at the time that Priebus had to make payments on his personal credit card.

“He was an easy guy to work with even when we didn’t agree on everything,” he recalled. “His ability to work with people and cut through the crap will serve him well. He does not have a big ego. He’s not interested in self-promotion and will be interested in giving good, candid advice to the president. He’s not a yes-man but he will be loyal.”

Barbour, now a lobbyist with Capitol Resources, insisted: “Reince has told me directly he has developed a good working relationship with Bannon and gets on well with him. I have no doubts Reince will work well with Jared Kushner.”

Terry Sullivan, a Republican strategist, said Priebus was “Wisconsin nice” but also “a smart hire”.

“He can bring multiple factions together,” he said. “He might be the only figure who is still liked by the establishment of the party who spent so much time defending Trump.”

Whether you agree with Trump's politics or not, it is refreshing to see appointments being made according to the agenda, rather than paybacks. Trump owes no favors or apologies. Conservatives have won a mandate over the last 3 election cycles, so there is no need to capitulate to the left.

[kscarbel2]

1 hour ago, Underdog said:

Whether you agree with Trump's politics or not, it is refreshing to see appointments being made according to the agenda, rather than paybacks. Trump owes no favors or apologies. Conservatives have won a mandate over the last 3 election cycles, so there is no need to capitulate to the left.

I agree. But I would say that businessmen, alike politicians, are all owing  of favors.

[kscarbel2]

On 2/14/2016 at 8:48 AM, kscarbel2 said:

In the same vein, United Technologies subsidiary UTC Climate, Controls & Security announced on Wednesday to thrilled employees that it will relocate its Carrier brand heating and air conditioning plants in Indianapolis and Huntington, Indiana to Mexico.

Altogether, 2,100 American workers will lose their jobs.

Can you hear that "giant sucking sound", of big business-lobbied NAFTA draining millions of American jobs to lawless Mexico?

 

Carrier Corp. Agrees to Keep About 1,000 Jobs at Indiana Plant

The Wall Street Journal  /  November 29, 2016

Carrier Corp. has agreed to keep in Indiana roughly 1,000 jobs it had planned to shift to Mexico, after a lobbying effort from the incoming Trump administration.

In exchange for keeping the jobs in Indiana, the company will receive new government incentives [free taxpayer money].

Carrier, a division of United Technologies Corp., that makes heating and air conditioning equipment, had announced plans earlier this year to shift some production to Monterrey, Mexico, as part of a broader corporate cost-cutting. The decision became a target during the presidential campaign of Donald Trump, who pledged to prevent such outsourcing or punish U.S. firms that shifted jobs abroad.

In a statement on Tuesday, Carrier said the company was “pleased to have reached a deal with President-elect Trump & VP-elect Pence to keep close to 1,000 jobs in Indy. More details soon.”

Mr. Trump and Vice President elect Mike Pence are expected to travel to Indiana on Thursday to announce the details of the agreement with Carrier.

Trump transition officials have been in close contact with Carrier and United Technologies executives for weeks trying to iron out specifics of the package.

“If they’re saving us some jobs, anything’s positive,” said Chuck Jones, president of United Steelworkers Local 1999 in Indianapolis.

Union leaders had complained this year about Carrier’s lack of cooperation with workers on the plans for closing the plant.

Mr. Pence, who is governor of Indiana, had taken the lead in negotiating with United Technologies officials.

Mr. Pence has held wide-ranging talks with the company in the weeks since the presidential election, which focused not just on Mr. Trump’s objections to NAFTA and free trade, but also on key priorities for the company in the coming Republican Congress, including an expected tax reform package that could hold windfalls for big manufacturers like United Technologies.

Mr. Pence has also in the past held the company to account for its plans to close the two affected plants—a Carrier Corp. factory in Indianapolis employing 1,400 workers and another factory in Huntington, Ind. for its electronic controls unit employing 700.

The governor negotiated a deal earlier this year under which he clawed back state and municipal incentives previously granted to Carrier, after the company’s February announcement that it would leave for Mexico.

Mr. Trump lambasted the move on the campaign trail this year, at one point suggesting he would impose a 35% tariff on Carrier products made in Mexico that it shipped to the U.S.

[kscarbel2]

If "close to 1,000 jobs" will remain in Indianapolis, then close to 400 Indy workers are still seeing their jobs relocated to Mexico, and all of the 700 workers in Huntington are still having their jobs sucked away (Ross Perot speak) to Mexico.

It's not a success story to brag about unless all the jobs remain in the US. 

In fairness, I would like to know the wages of these union workers relative to the tasks they perform.

[carlotpilot]

1 hour ago, kscarbel2 said:

In fairness, I would like to know the wages of these union workers relative to the tasks they perform.

Interesting thought

[kscarbel2]

Trump’s Carrier win comes with an asterisk

The Washington Post  /  November 9, 2016

As news broke that President-elect Donald Trump reached a deal to save nearly 1,000 jobs at an Indianapolis plant on Tuesday evening, factory worker Brian Reed prepared to lose his job of 24 years just a mile away.

Reed assembles roller bearings at Rexnord, an industrial supplier that plans to send his job and 294 others from the Midwest to Mexico. The 45-year-old father worries about the mortgage, college tuition for his daughter and health insurance for his son, a football player. He hopes Trump will try to save his family's livelihood, too.

"We are counting on him," Reed said. "The working class elected him. Now take a stance."

This week, Trump steered national attention to Carrier, the air conditioning manufacturer that had intended to move roughly 1,400 jobs from Indiana to Monterrey, Mexico. Carrier now says it will keep nearly 1,000 of those jobs in the state's capital after coming to an agreement with Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who is governor of Indiana.

Carrier and Trump's transition team refused to share details of the agreement.

The deal followed Trump’s pledge at an April rally in Indianapolis to rescue the jobs.

"That’s what is going to happen," he said at the time. "It’s not like we have an 80 percent chance of keeping them or a 95 percent. 100 percent."

Yet, the situation in Indianapolis highlights just how intractable the outflow of manufacturing jobs is in much of the nation. For every factory Trump publicly targets, there’s another downsizing somewhere else, sometimes just around the corner.

Since 1969, Indiana has lost more than 235,000 manufacturing jobs, shedding nearly a third of such positions, data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis shows. Rexnord is at least the third manufacturer in Indiana this year to reveal Mexico relocation plans. Carrier announced its decision nine months ago, along with United Technologies Electronic Controls, its parent company, which said it will lay off 700 workers by 2018.

Local and state officials had pleaded with the companies to keep their operations running, but the appeals proved fruitless. Mayor Joe Hogsett turned his focus to containing the economic fallout from the manufacturing exodus, creating a task force to, among other acts of aid, help laid-off employees with job training.

He urged Rexnord last week to pay back more than $300,000 in tax incentives because of the looming closure, set for June. The city plans to hire an “economic recovery coordinator,” said city spokeswoman Taylor Schaffer, and before annoucement of the deal with Trump, she said it planned to use the $1.2 million in tax incentives that Carrier returned to help displaced workers.

A letter to Rexnord that the mayor publicly released this month noted his own futile effort to keep the company in town.

“Despite every offer I have made and the good-faith efforts of your employees, Rexnord has decided to cast aside the quality and experience of your longtime, dedicated Indianapolis employees to chase cheap labor in Mexico,” Hogsett wrote in a publicly posted letter to the company.

Rexnord, headquartered in Milwaukee, is packing up its Indianapolis operations to resettle in the same Mexican city that Carrier had picked for its new domicile. It expects to save $15.5 million during its first year south of the border, said Chuck Jones, president of United Steelworkers Local 1999, which represents both Carrier and Rexnord. That cushion is estimated to grow by $200,000 a year, according to figures the manufacturer shared with the union.

To reverse course, Jones said, Indianapolis employees would have had to slash their hourly pay from an average of $25 to $5.

Trump has pledged to bring back American jobs that were offshored, promising to generate 25 million as president. He spoke to workers who have lost their paychecks to the forces of trade and technology, and they responded enthusiastically. Men in economically shabbier counties, particularly older white men, overwhelmingly voted him into the White House.

“Our politicians have aggressively pursued a policy of globalization — moving our jobs, our wealth and our factories to Mexico and overseas,” Trump said in his June jobs speech. “It doesn’t have to be this way. We can turn it all around — and we can turn it around fast.”

Economists have pushed back on that point. Since North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect in 1994, quashing tariffs and tripling the product exchange between the United States, Canada and Mexico, about 4.5 million American manufacturing jobs have disappeared — a consequence they ascribe to both globalization and automation.

Though Trump argues that NAFTA shoved jobs south of the border, wiping out some of the best-paying jobs Americans can find without a college degree, proponents of the move say it brought prices down for American families, stretching their dollars while boosting the economy.

Derek Scissors, who studies global economies at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank, said Trump’s promises to resurrect manufacturing jobs thus far appear impossible to keep. Renegotiating NAFTA or imposing new double-digit tariffs, two of Trump’s trade proposals, wouldn’t restore the American manufacturing landscape of the past, he said.

“You can’t make the world go backward 20 or 30 years,” Scissors said. “You could bring some jobs back, but it’s going to cost a lot. It would drive up prices.”

[kscarbel2]

Associated Press  /  December 3, 2016

Donald Trump is taking on another Indiana manufacturer that has plans to let go of workers and move operations to Mexico.

Late Friday, Trump tweeted: "Rexnord of Indiana is moving to Mexico and rather viciously firing all of its 300 workers. This is happening all over our country. No more!"

Rexnord operates a bearings factory near the Carrier plant in Indianapolis, where Trump on Thursday touted a deal to save hundreds of jobs in exchange for about $7 million in state tax breaks and grants.

Trump told workers at the Carrier plant, "Companies are not going to leave the United States anymore without consequences."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Wall Street Journal  /  December 5, 2016

Donald Trump criticized a second U.S. manufacturer for its plans to move a factory from Indianapolis to Mexico, as the president-elect took to Twitter over the weekend to press his attacks against American companies shifting production abroad.

“Rexnord of Indiana is moving to Mexico and rather viciously firing all of its 300 workers,” Mr. Trump wrote late Friday. “This is happening all over our country. No more!”

Rexnord, which is based in Milwaukee, intends to move production of the industrial bearings it makes in Indianapolis to Monterrey, Mexico, according to its employee union. The move, expected by the middle of next year, would eliminate about 300 jobs.

Rexnord refused to comment. Shares of Rexnord have tumbled about 8% from Wednesday’s close.

Early Sunday morning, Mr. Trump sent out a series of tweets reaffirming his position that companies that move production abroad and fire workers in the U.S. will face consequences, such as a 35% import tariff. “Please be forewarned prior to making a very expensive mistake!” he wrote.

He encouraged business leaders to explore relocating factories between states and negotiating for tax breaks, a strategy that some state officials fear will escalate an arms race of incentives.

Asked Sunday if Trump was going to intervene at Rexnord and other companies, Vice President-elect Mike Pence said Trump “will make those decisions on a day-by-day basis.”

Carrier, a unit of United Technologies Corp., still plans to shift 1,300 jobs from Indiana to Mexico.

On Friday, Ford CEO Mark Fields said he still going to relocate small car production to Mexico despite repeated criticism from Trump.

Chuck Jones, president of a United Steelworkers local that represents Indianapolis workers at Carrier and Rexnord, said Friday he was grateful for Mr. Trump’s intervention at Carrier but added that he wasn’t optimistic other companies will shelve plans to move manufacturing abroad, even if they are offered state or federal incentives.

“There’s not enough taxpayer money to reward companies not to leave the country when we’re competing with $3-an-hour wages in Mexico,” Jones said.

The steelworkers union said the hourly wages at the Rexnord plant, which currently range from $18.82 to $30.81, would have to drop below the U.S. minimum to match the company’s estimated cost savings in Mexico.

Trump’s representatives were in touch with Rexnord as recently as mid-November.

The closing of the Indianapolis plant is part of Rexnord’s plan to counter slow sales by cutting $30 million in costs and as much as one-quarter of its factory space globally before the end of March. North America is expected to bear the brunt of the cuts. In its fiscal year ended March 31, Rexnord’s sales fell 6.3% to $1.92 billion. Its profit sank 19% to $67.9 million.

Rexnord is far smaller than United Technologies, a group with nearly 200,000 workers and big defense projects. Rexnord, which produces ball bearings, gears, plumbing valves and other industrial products, had 7,700 employees, including 4,200 in the U.S., as of March 31.

[kscarbel2]

First Republican 'faithless elector' announces intent to vote against Trump

The Guardian  /  December 5, 2016

A Republican presidential elector has become the first to announce that he intends to defect from Donald Trump when he casts his vote as part of the electoral college, vowing to try and block the president-elect from reaching the White House.

Writing in the New York Times, Christopher Suprun has declared that he will break ranks with his fellow Republican electors in Texas and cast his vote for a GOP candidate whom he deems to be more fit for highest office.

Suprun argues that under the electoral college system he has the constitutional duty to vote according to his conscience, not just according to party loyalty – and his conscience tells him that Trump is unfit for the presidency.

Citing the Federalist Papers, the historic documents that laid out the principles behind the electoral college system, Surprun, who as a firefighter was one of the first responders to the Pentagon on 9/11, says that each elector must decide whether “candidates are qualified, not engaged in demagogy, and independent from foreign influence … Mr Trump urged violence against protesters at his rallies during the campaign. He speaks of retribution against his critics.”

He adds: “I owe no debt to a party. I owe a debt to my children to leave them a nation they can trust.”

Suprun’s declared defection from Trump marks the first time that a Republican has broken ranks in this election cycle to become what is known as a “faithless elector”.

Up to now only Democratic electors within states won by Hillary Clinton have expressed the intention to vote against party affiliation as a form of protest against Trump’s imminent ascendancy to the White House.

Until Suprun’s defection, seven of the 538 electors across the country had indicated that they intended to become faithless electors by breaking ranks with party affiliation. However, they were all Democrats within states won by Clinton.

Under the electoral system laid down by the founding fathers, US presidents are not chosen directly by the popular vote of the American people. Instead, they are elected indirectly by 538 electors who selected by the political parties within each state.

In contemporary America, it is widely assumed that the electors will simply vote according to their party affiliation in tune with which candidate won their state. Thus in Texas, which has been assigned 38 of the 538 electoral college votes, it was assumed that all 38 electors would vote for Trump who beat Clinton in the state by 52% to 43%.

However, one of the Texan electors, Art Sisneros, has already resigned from the state’s electoral college delegation on grounds that Trump does not satisfy his religious and moral principles. Now Suprun says that he will go further – he will show up on 19 December when the electoral college assembles in each state and actually cast his ballot against Trump, by writing in an alternative Republican candidate of the likes of John Kasich, the governor of Ohio.

“I believe electors should unify behind a Republican alternative, an honorable and qualified man or woman such as Gov John Kasich of Ohio,” he writes.

The idea that several of the 538 electors might take it into their own hands to attempt to sway the outcome of an election that involved more than 127 million voters has proven to be quite contentious. Some have taken the view that it is in itself a deeply retrograde and undemocratic step; others have lauded it as exposing the implicit undemocratic nature of the electoral college itself that imposes an indirect barrier between presidential candidate and people.

Either way, few expect that this year’s rebellion of electors will have any definitive impact on the outcome of the race. Though it looks like being historically large in number, it is most unlikely to tip the balance of electors from Trump to Clinton, who currently hold 306 to 232 electoral votes respectively.

[kscarbel2]

US election: broken machines could throw Michigan recount into chaos

The Guardian  /  November 5, 2016

Broken polling machines may have put vote counts in question in more than half of Detroit’s precincts and nearly one-third of surrounding Wayne County, possibly throwing the Michigan recount into chaos.

If the discrepancies can’t be solved by recounting every paper ballot in question by hand, a recount in those precincts simply won’t happen.

Donald Trump’s slim margin over Hillary Clinton means any chance that the state might flip on a recount likely hinges on Wayne County, where she won by a landslide. Clinton lost by 10,704 votes in Michigan; Wayne’s population of 1,759,335 makes it the likeliest candidate to contain errors bigger than that margin.

Eighty-seven of Wayne County’s decade-old voting machines broke on election day, according to Detroit’s elections director, Daniel Baxter.

Baxter told the Detroit News, which first reported the story, that ballot scanners often jammed when polling place workers were trying to operate them. Every time a jammed ballot was removed and reinserted, he suspects the machine may have re-counted it.

Preliminary investigation by election officials in Wayne County found that 610 of the area’s 1,680 precincts could not reconcile the number of votes cast according to the machines with the number of ballots issued according to the electoral rolls.

Detroit contains 662 of Wayne’s precincts; in 392 of those, the number of votes didn’t match up.

Baxter said he was confident a recount would match the ballots issued to the paper records, which are sealed and stored under guard. “I don’t think it’s going to be 100%,” he said, “but it never is with a recount.”

If hand-tallied ballots can’t resolve all the mismatches, the votes will stand in the counties where the errors remain.

State law rejects a recount in places where the two figures don’t match up: a precinct is ineligible to be recounted if the “number of ballots to be recounted and the number of ballots issued on election day as shown on the poll list or the computer printout do not match and the difference is not explained to the satisfaction of the board of canvassers,” the law says.

The recount was triggered by Green party candidate Jill Stein in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. On Monday, Stein asked a federal court to intervene in Pennsylvania after state courts demanded a million-dollar bond before it would proceed.

Computer scientists have been sounding the alarm about shoddily made, insecure and incompatible voting machines for several years. The only way to find out whether technical problems or even malicious hacking have contributed large errors to the electoral tally is to audit the vote, wrote the University of Michigan’s J Alex Halderman in an affidavit supporting Stein’s call for a recount. Now that a recount is under way, Michigan officials are indeed finding major technical problems.

Jeremy J Epstein, a researcher with SRI, successfully campaigned in 2015 to have Virginia’s WinVote machines decertified when he discovered that the factory-set network passwords for WinVote voting machines were often “abcde” and “admin”.

[RowdyRebel]

Funny how the 7 Democrat electors from states won by Hillary who have said they will not vote for her is buried in the article while the main focus is the 1 Trump elector who will vote for somebody who wasn't even on the ballot.

Funny thing is, even if enough electors defect so that Trump does not reach the required 50% + 1, Hillary won't get there, either. Then, the election goes to the newly elected House of Representatives for the President, and to the Senate for the Vice President. The Republicans have a majority in both, so who do you suppose they will choose?

Trump will be our next President. The sooner the left accepts that simple fact and moves on, the better off they'll be.

[kscarbel2]

53 minutes ago, RowdyRebel said:

Funny how the 7 Democrat electors from states won by Hillary who have said they will not vote for her is buried in the article while the main focus is the 1 Trump elector who will vote for somebody who wasn't even on the ballot.

Funny thing is, even if enough electors defect so that Trump does not reach the required 50% + 1, Hillary won't get there, either. Then, the election goes to the newly elected House of Representatives for the President, and to the Senate for the Vice President. The Republicans have a majority in both, so who do you suppose they will choose?

Trump will be our next President. The sooner the left accepts that simple fact and moves on, the better off they'll be.

Buried in the article???  I think not.  The Guardian used the same black and white print in noting the seven Democratic electors as the one Republican elector. They assume you are going to read the entire article.

[RowdyRebel]

Seems to me the SEVEN Hillary defectors is bigger news than the ONE Trump defector...but the only way to know that was to read. A person just skimming headlines would miss it. The article was 14 paragraphs long. 1 mentioned 7 other defectors. Another stated those 7 others were Democrats. The Republican defector was mentioned in 10 paragraphs.

 

Your "news" is more than a little biased.

[41chevy]

The recount effort underway in Wisconsin is turning out to have some disappointing results for former Green Party nominee Jill Stein and former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. By the end of the fifth day, and after more than 1 million votes were recounted, Trump grew his lead by just over two dozen votes.

The Wisconsin Election Commission posts daily recount results. Wisconsin has until December 13 to complete the recount. The Day 5 spreadsheet shows that many counties, including populous ones, are nowhere near completing their recounts. The Electoral College meets on December 19. The Day 5 results contain all of the previous days’ tallies also. Green Party candidate Jill Stein paid $3.5 million for the Wisconsin recount, alleging unproven fraud. Hillary Clinton has joined in the recount, and Donald Trump has labeled it a scam. Stein is also pursuing recounts in Pennsylvania and Michigan. The Michigan recount started December 5, and she is suing to force a Pennsylvania recount in federal court.

The Commission spreadsheet does not tally the recount results but rather simply lists them by municipality, contrasting them with the original returns. Heavy went through the spreadsheet and tabulated the data submitted so far for each municipality by county for both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

The Commission noted that absentee ballots for Milwaukee have not been recounted yet “because the city counts its absentee ballots centrally (not at the polling place) on Election Night.” The numbers will be updated when they are recounted.

Meanwhile in Pennsylvania, Clinton has only gained five votes after the state’s two largest counties completed their recount. 

Wisconsin Tally

[kscarbel2]

5 hours ago, RowdyRebel said:

Seems to me the SEVEN Hillary defectors is bigger news than the ONE Trump defector...but the only way to know that was to read. A person just skimming headlines would miss it. The article was 14 paragraphs long. 1 mentioned 7 other defectors. Another stated those 7 others were Democrats. The Republican defector was mentioned in 10 paragraphs.

Your "news" is more than a little biased.

You're right, you certainly can't learn what's going on by just skimming headlines. You have to actually read the article. That one wasn't too long, just 18 sentences.

"My" news? No. I didn't write it. The folks at the Pulitzer Prize-winning Guardian wrote it.

I didn't notice any bias. Just laying out the facts/situation.

 

[kscarbel2]

3 hours ago, 41chevy said:

The recount effort underway in Wisconsin is turning out to have some disappointing results for former Green Party nominee Jill Stein and former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. By the end of the fifth day, and after more than 1 million votes were recounted, Trump grew his lead by just over two dozen votes.

The way I see it Paul, if the original count was correct, and there's nothing to hide, who could possibly argue with counting one more time to make double sure (reconfirm)?  It never hurts to count twice, especially when it's important and/or expensive.

[41chevy]

13 minutes ago, kscarbel2 said:

The way I see it Paul, if the original count was correct, and there's nothing to hide, who could possibly argue with counting one more time to make double sure (reconfirm)?  It never hurts to count twice, especially when it's important and/or expensive.

I agree, but (always a but) I find it odd that the person who was 4th out of 4 with 1% of the total vote, wanted a recount. I'm curious what the DNC has promised her. Especially after seeing her on BBC News America saying "she (Jill Stein) feels the recount results may be compromised, because no independent party over saw the recount".   

[kscarbel2]

1 hour ago, 41chevy said:

I agree, but (always a but) I find it odd that the person who was 4th out of 4 with 1% of the total vote, wanted a recount. I'm curious what the DNC has promised her. Especially after seeing her on BBC News America saying "she (Jill Stein) feels the recount results may be compromised, because no independent party over saw the recount".   

Oh, I do too. No doubt about it. But if we do a recount, and any decent system should be easily capable of a recount in a short period of time, then there's added validation of the original result.........or, in fact an issue is revealed that should indeed be brought to light.