CNN)Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday released a new plan outlining how she would use the revenue generated by her proposed tax on "excessive lobbying" to beef up federal agencies charged with regulating major industries.
"This tax will reduce the incentive for excessive lobbying, and raise money that we can use to fight back against this kind of onslaught when it occurs," Warren wrote in a Medium post explaining the strategy.

First unveiled in broad strokes last month, Warren's plan would impose a 35% tax on lobbying expenditures between $500,000 and $1 million. The cost would escalate from there, with a 60% rate placed on every dollar beyond $1 million that rises to 75% once a company's lobbying costs surpass $5 million.

In this chapter of her wider agenda, Warren stresses that the issue goes beyond Congress, lawmakers and the "revolving door" between Capitol Hill and K Street -- and addresses lobbyist influence on regulatory bodies. Lobbyists "also target our federal departments like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau," the agency she built during the Obama administration, Warren writes. "These agencies exist to oversee giant corporations and implement the laws coming out of Congress -- but lobbyists often do their best to grind public interest work at these agencies to a halt."

The campaign, crunching numbers from the non-profit, nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, estimates that its proposed tax -- had it been in effect over the past decade -- would have raised $10 billion from more than 1,600 corporations. Among them: pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, retailer Walmart, the US Chamber of Commerce and Koch Industries -- all of whom, and dozens more, would have paid at the 75% threshold. As an example, the insurance company Blue Cross/Blue Shield would have paid $163,368,515 on its $233,491,353 in lobbying expenditures between 2009 and 2018, according to Center for Responsive politics data.

In her Wednesday post, Warren said the new revenue would be cycled back into what she is calling the "Lobbying Defense Trust Fund." That cash will, in turn, be doled out to what she describes as underfunded and lobbyist-besieged government agencies.
"Every time a company above the $500,000 threshold spends money lobbying against a rule from a federal agency," Warren writes, "the taxes on that spending will go directly to the agency to help it fight back."

More at https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/02/politics/elizabeth-warren-2020-tax-lobbying/index.html

President Trump and his allies are outspending rivals on impeachment-related advertising on Facebook, demonstrating their dominance on the platform as they wrestle for control of a fast-evolving narrative that could threaten his presidency.

The spending discrepancy appears to be as gaping as 4 to 1, based on recent data from Facebook’s public ad archive, which reports all figures in ranges.

Between Sept. 20 and Tuesday morning, Trump allies funneled as much as $3?million into ads opposing impeachment or assailing House Democrats for beginning a formal inquiry, according to data analyzed by Laura Edelson, a researcher at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering. The cascade of money was answered by no more than $703,000 in spending on ads making the case for impeachment, the figures suggest.

...“Those numbers are pretty shocking,” said Eric Wilson, a Republican digital strategist. “They indicate that the impeachment messaging is a winner for Republicans, and you’re not getting the same traction for Democrats.”

Democrats took a different view. Spending on impeachment showed Trump was playing defense, said Tara McGowan, the founder and CEO of Acronym, a liberal group specializing in digital campaigns. But, “if Democratic groups don’t start competing with that spending, and with that share of voice online, we could lose the narrative advantage that we have right now,” she warned.

“There’s a lot of power in driving a consistent, coordinated message, whether that message is true or not,” McGowan added.

...The top Democratic spenders on impeachment during the 11 days pulled from Facebook’s ad archive were two presidential candidates, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and former hedge fund manager Tom Steyer.

...Most notable, said Edelson, the NYU researcher, is the absence of impeachment ads from former vice president Joe Biden. “On the Democratic side, the natural respondent here would be Joe Biden,” Edelson said.

In the controversial phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump repeatedly urged Zelensky to investigate Biden and son Hunter Biden, according to the rough transcript released by the White House. The call was part of the whistleblower complaint that is part of the impeachment inquiry. But Biden hasn’t fully backed impeachment, saying only that Trump must comply with congressional oversight. And his spending on the platform — a fraction of Trump’s — has advanced ads accusing the president of “trying to cheat his way to reelection” while remaining silent on impeachment.

More at https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/on-impeachment-trump-supporters-on-facebook-are-outspending-rivals-as-much-as-4-to-1-new-data-suggests/2019/10/02/8396215c-e47a-11e9-a6e8-8759c5c7f608_story.html

For months now, a certain sect of Democrats have made their preference for the next presidential candidate abundantly clear.

After the third presidential debate, it was unsurprising to see Steve Rattner, American financier who served as lead adviser to the Presidential Task Force on the auto industry in 2009 for the Obama administration and now serves as an economic analyst on television, do what many white male pundits and like-minded centrists on television have done all primary season: grade Joe Biden on a curve. On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Rattner said Biden did “well enough” — presumably not at all concerned with criticism over Biden’s troubling answer to a question about how to rectify systematic racism with a condescending lecture to Black parents that involved record players...

It’s one thing to debate whether or not Warren’s ideas will work, but it’s another to totally disregard them as unrealistic or too extreme. Frankly, only inhumane ghouls find adequate wages and fairer taxation to be political death kneels — which is probably why some of these alleged Democrats would rather vote for the sociopathy who locks babies in cages than the policy wonk who wants to make life in America not solely be best enjoyed by the wealthy and the elite.

But that’s what these rich people on television are trying to do. They do so in order to maintain the status quo.

Elizabeth Warren thinks the rich get off too easily. It’s not exactly breaking news, but it is a message voters have long wanted to hear. GOP pollster Frank Luntz recently said on CNBC’s Squawk Box, “Warren is gaining more than any other candidate because her base support is more intense than any other candidate.” He added, Warren is “new and she is different and she delivers that message much more effectively.”

And how do these people respond to it? By speaking in ways that tend to prove her right.

I know America fetishes its rich. We are sold the dream of meritocracy, thus, this novel idea that if you manage to become ultra-wealthy in this country, you must be smart!

There are enough rich dummies around to dispel that myth yet it lingers, but for further convincing, let the recent rantings of these coddled rich folks on TV and in Democratic fundraising circles serve as an additional counterpoint. Because if these people were smart, they’d stop making an unintended campaign contribution to Warren’s campaign.

They probably won’t, and for that, I am most grateful.

https://www.essence.com/op-ed/elizabeth-warren-rich-people-complaints/

One element of Elizabeth Warren’s surge in the polls is likely to strike fear in her top Democratic rivals — her rising support among African-Americans. After struggling to win over black voters in the early stages of the primary, the Massachusetts senator appears to be gaining ground with a demographic that will play a pivotal role in determining the nomination.

A Quinnipiac University national poll last week showed Warren winning 19% of the African-American vote — a nine-point jump over the poll’s August results. In the latest Morning Consult poll, released Wednesday, she’s up by five percentage points with black voters since August...“It’s certainly a dramatic shift that had to be noticed by the Biden campaign — and also Sanders, Harris and Buttigieg,” said Tim Malloy, Qunnipiac’s polling analyst. “Other [candidates] aren’t moving. And if they are, it’s in the wrong direction.”

...“Elizabeth Warren has been speaking directly to a lot of black women’s issues,” said Avis Jones-DeWeever, a lead researcher on last month’s Essence-Black Women’s Roundtable poll, which has Warren in third place behind Biden and Harris. “I’m seeing those direct specifics that [she’s] looking at and focusing on.”

Her April appearance at the She The People forum — the first-ever presidential candidate forum focused on women of color — marked a significant milestone for her campaign, particularly in regards to black women. Following her remarks to a majority-black female audience, the Warren campaign sharpened its messaging to include issues unique to black Americans like maternal mortality rates and racial justice, an approach that some activists say helped alter the perception that Warren was a detached policy wonk.

“In terms of her building trust and authenticity, I believe that was the moment,” said Aimee Allison, founder and CEO of She The People. “The thing about [black women] is that we have networks of networks. When she impressed a room of 2,000 women of color, I could just see months later that she started getting people’s attention.”

Since then, Warren has continued to hold listening sessions with black women’s groups and community activists. Ahead of July’s Netroots Nation conference, one of the largest gatherings of progressive activists, Warren held a roundtable with a group of black organizers who then took to social media to express support for her platform...

More at https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/02/elizabeth-warren-black-voters-support-2020-016649

Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign has hired a veteran Michigan operative to lead its team in the state.

Mike McCollum, the caucus executive director for the Michigan House Democrats, will serve as the Warren state director, according to three Democrats with knowledge of his hiring.

The Warren campaign did not respond to an inquiry about the hiring of McCollum, who announced his new job to colleagues in the Democratic caucus on Tuesday evening.
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He was a regional field organizer for President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign and a staffer in South Carolina and Florida for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. He has also worked in Democratic politics in West Virginia and Massachusetts.

McCollum is one of the earliest state directors hired in Michigan among the major 2020 Democratic presidential campaigns. It underscores the efforts Warren’s campaign has made from the beginning to build out a robust ground game early on and to staff its operation with veterans familiar with their regions.

Warren recently traveled to Michigan for a 2020 presidential forum hosted by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. In September she met with union members on strike at a General Motors assembly plant in Detroit.

https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/01/elizabeth-warren-hires-michigan-director-016743

WASHINGTON — Elizabeth Warren was a professor at Harvard Law School, preparing barbecue and peach cobbler for a group of students expected at her home. The phone rang. The owner of the faint voice on the other end of the line was well known, but they had never met.

"Who?" Warren asked.

"Harry Reid," he replied. "Majority leader, U.S. Senate."

That was November 2008, when the economy was imploding, and Reid was offering her a spot on a new commission overseeing the Wall Street bailout Congress had just approved. Would she take it? he asked. At the time, Professor Warren was blogging for Talking Points Memo and about as well known as a policy wonk can be — which is to say not very. She had expressed zero political ambition, never run for office and her only real brush with Washington ended years earlier in a demoralizing loss when Congress passed a bankruptcy bill over her objections.

Reid's Congressional Oversight Panel came with a memorable acronym, COP, but had little real power. It essentially had one job: "Submit reports." Still, Warren said yes right away and so began "When Harry met Liz," a political saga that continues to this day.

“Everyplace she's been, she's been extremely good, for lack of a better way to explain it," the understated Reid told NBC News in an interview. Warren said in a statement, "Since then, we've been fighting the good fight — and Harry is someone you always want in your corner.”

...While Warren came to Washington just weeks after the election of Barack Obama, it was Reid who first plucked her from relative obscurity in academia and later championed her Senate bid. "He would always ask about her," said Guy Cecil, who ran the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee at the time and is now chairman of the party's largest super PAC, Priorities USA. "And he was always much more bullish on her than a lot of people in Massachusetts."

...The Mormon ex-cop who started his career as a conservative Democrat may make for an unlikely match with the crusading progressive Ivy League prof. But they shared hardscrabble roots in the American West and the economic populism of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Warren keeps a bust of FDR in her Senate office while Reid has recalled how one of his mother's few prized possessions was a pillowcase embroidered with an FDR quote that hung on the wall of their ramshackle house that lacked indoor plumbing.

"He loves someone with a good story. Someone who's overcome hardship like he has, someone who's worked their ass off like Elizabeth Warren has," said Rebecca Katz, a Democratic strategist who used to work for Reid. "When he believes in you, he will fight for you." And after Reid named her to the oversight panel, he felt invested in her career.

More at https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/cold-call-someone-she-never-met-changed-elizabeth-warren-s-n1057926

Russia on Friday urged the United States not to publish Donald Trump's conversations with Vladimir Putin after a growing scandal led the White House to release a transcript from a call with Ukraine's leader.

"As for transcripts of phone conversations, my mother when bringing me up said that reading other people's letters is inappropriate," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters at the United Nations. "It is indecent," he said. "For two people elected by their nations to be at the helm, there are diplomatic manners that suppose a certain level of confidentiality."

The White House on Wednesday put out a summary of a July 25 call with Ukraine's newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, after controversy over the conversation led rival Democrats to launch an impeachment process. It showed that Trump asked Zelensky to probe Democratic rival Joe Biden, and Democrats are looking into whether Trump used a delayed $400 million aid package as leverage.

Lavrov, who met Friday with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, criticised both US lawmakers and media for the release of the transcript.

"Being so vociferous in saying that if you don't show a certain memo involving a partner, that you're going to bring this administration to its knees, what kind of democracy is that? How can you work in such conditions?" he said.

https://www.news24.com/World/News/russia-tells-us-not-to-release-trump-putin-transcripts-20190928