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SunSeeker's JournalHelp Elizabeth Warren get the CG to audit Trump's finances for conflicts
If you want to support Senator Warren's request to audit President-Elect Trump's finances for conflicts of interest, a friend of mine contacted the Comptroller General of the Government Accountability Office. She was told over the phone that the most effective way to be sure her support counted was to email two administrators, Katherine Siggerud and Timothy Minnelli. Their email addresses are:
siggerudk@gao.gov,
minellit@gao.gov.
There is a third email, congrel@gao.gov, through which they are tracking the number of people who were urging support for an audit.
You can send one email addressed to:
siggerudk@gao.gov, minnellit@gao.gov, congrel@gao.gov
Subject line:
Re: Audit for President-Elect Trump's financial concerns
Dear Ms. Siggerud and Mr. Minnelli,
I’m writing in support of Senator Elizabeth Warren's request for an audit of our incoming President-Elect Trump's finances, to prohibit conflicts of interest that would prevent him from carrying out the responsibilities of the office without corrupt influence.
Sincerely,
****
Of course you may reword the letter, but it's easier to start with a template.
Feel free to spread the word!!
Help Elizabeth Warren get the CG to audit Trump's finances for conflicts
If you want to support Senator Warren's request to audit President-Elect Trump's finances for conflicts of interest, a friend of mine contacted the Comptroller General of the Government Accountability Office. She was told over the phone that the most effective way to be sure her support counted was to email two administrators, Katherine Siggerud and Timothy Minnelli. Their email addresses are:
siggerudk@gao.gov,
minellit@gao.gov.
There is a third email, congrel@gao.gov, through which they are tracking the number of people who were urging support for an audit.
You can send one email addressed to:
siggerudk@gao.gov, minnellit@gao.gov, congrel@gao.gov
Subject line:
Re: Audit for President-Elect Trump's financial concerns
Dear Ms. Siggerud and Mr. Minnelli,
I’m writing in support of Senator Elizabeth Warren's request for an audit of our incoming President-Elect Trump's finances, to prohibit conflicts of interest that would prevent him from carrying out the responsibilities of the office without corrupt influence.
Sincerely,
****
Of course you may reword the letter, but it's easier to start with a template.
Feel free to spread the word!!
How to knit a Pussy Hat for the Women's March
This is a step by step guide for folks, even people who don't know how to knit, so you can make your own Pussy Hat for the Women's March on January 21.
It reminds the country of Trump's "grab 'em by the pussy" outrage, while keeping your head warm on a cold day!
How these Los Angeles-born pink hats became a worldwide symbol of the anti-Trump women's march
Krista Suh plans to attend the women’s march in Washington, D.C., this week to protest Donald Trump’s presidency, and she wanted to make a statement. But she also had a more primal goal: staying warm.
“I wanted to do something more than just show up,” said the 29-year-old screenwriter who lives in downtown Los Angeles, recalling how her professors at the all-female Barnard College in New York City urged her to think about problems. “How can I visually show someone what’s going on? And I realized as a California girl, I would be really cold in D.C. — it’s not tank-top weather year-round. So I thought maybe I could knit myself a hat.”
And so the “pussyhat project” was born. Knitters — mostly women — started crafting handmade pink caps with cat ears, a reference to Trump’s vulgar statements about grabbing women’s genitals, which were revealed in a leaked video shortly before the election.
What started as a project among Suh, Jayna Zweiman and other friends at the Little Knittery in Atwater Village has turned into a global movement. Knitting groups at yarn stores, cafes and coffee shops from Seattle to Martha’s Vineyard have been churning out hats, and craft stores have reported a run on pink yarn. As word spread on social media, thousands of hats — knit with skeins of thick magenta or fuchsia yarn — have been made around the world, including in Australia and Austria. They’re all being sent to collections spots around the country and a basement in Virginia ahead of the Saturday march.
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-pink-hats-womens-march-20170115-story.html
Here's step by step instructions on how to knit one yourself:
Trump Meets With Physicist Who Says Benefits Of Climate Change Outweigh Any Harm
Happer, who served as director of energy research at the Department of Energy in the early 1990s under President George H.W. Bush, has championed the notion that we humans should increase rather than curb carbon dioxide emissions.Happer has also argued that today’s warming “seems to be due mostly to natural causes, not to increasing levels of carbon dioxide,” that children are being “force-fed propaganda masquerading as science” and has compared the “demonization of carbon dioxide” to the suffering Jewish people endured during the Holocaust.
“Carbon dioxide is actually a benefit to the world, and so were the Jews,” he told Andrew Ross Sorkin on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” in 2014.
E&E News was among the first to report on Friday’s meeting at Trump Tower. Although it remains unclear whether Trump is considering Happer for an administration position, the climate skeptic would be a fitting pick given the Republican’s previous choices.
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_587957e7e4b09281d0eafc70
Comparing carbon dioxide to Jews really shows what a nut this guy is.
Happer has a scientific background but is not a climate scientist. He just wrote an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal. If he wants to dispute mainstream science, he should do so in a peer-reviewed science journal, not The Wall Street Journal. He has never published any peer-reviewed articles on climate science. He disputes that global warming is a problem by mentioning that CO2 levels were much higher in the distant past... when alligators roamed the Arctic, and most of Florida was underwater.
How Putin Played the Far Left
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Perhaps the starkest case in point is Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and her constituency. In December 2015, the Kremlin feted Stein by inviting her to the gala celebrating the 10-year anniversary of Kremlin-funded propaganda network RT. Over a year later, it remains unclear who paid for Stein’s trip to Moscow and her accommodations there. Her campaign ignored multiple questions on this score. We do know, however, that Stein sat at the same table as both Putin and Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, Trump’s soon-to-be national security adviser. She further spoke at an RT-sponsored panel, using her presence to criticize the U.S.’s “disastrous militarism.” Afterward, straddling Moscow’s Red Square, Stein described the panel as “inspiring,” going on to claim that Putin, whom she painted as a political novice, told her he “agree[d]” with her “on many issues.”
Stein presents herself as a champion of the underclass and the environment, and an opponent of the surveillance state and corporate media, and yet she seemed to take pleasure in her marriage of true minds with a kleptocratic intelligence officer who levels forests and arrests or kills critical journalists and invades foreign countries. Their true commonality, of course, is that both Putin and Stein are dogged opponents of U.S. foreign policy.
Indeed, her pro-Kremlin stance wasn’t limited to merely praising Putin’s amicability. Stein joined the Russian president and Kazakhstani dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev in describing Ukraine’s 2014 EuroMaidan revolution as a “coup,” and claimed, bizarrely, that NATO is currently “fighting… enemies we invent to give the weapons industry a reason to sell more stuff.”
For good measure, she also asserted in September that “Russia used to own Ukraine,” by way of defending its colonization. She even selected a vice-presidential candidate who, when asked whether the downing of Flight MH17—a massacre almost certainly caused by Russian-supplied separatists in eastern Ukraine—was a false flag, responded, “[T]hat’s exactly what has happened.”
Green Party officials across Europe slammed a “delusional” Stein for her views, with leading Russian environmental activists saying they were “deeply shocked” by her comments during her Moscow trip.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/01/13/how-putin-played-the-far-left.html
Kellyanne Conway's husband on short list for top US lawyer job
Source: CNN
George Conway declined to comment, but one of the sources said he would accept the position should Trump tap him to be the government's top litigator. The other source said he has been interviewed by Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, Trump's attorney general-designate.
...
George Conway is a partner at the corporate law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, where he has worked for 28 years. He is currently a partner in the firm's litigation department, where he has honed his talents in securities, contract and antitrust litigation, according to his firm's website.
...
Throughout his career, he has represented high-profile clients, including the National Football League and cigarette giant Philip Morris, whom he represented in a successful defamation lawsuit against ABC News.
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He was part of the team of lawyers in the 1990s who represented Paula Jones in her sexual harassment lawsuit against then-President Bill Clinton. He helped write the Supreme Court brief in the case that would establish a legal precedent for a sitting president to be sued in civil court.
Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/30/politics/kellyanne-conways-husband-on-short-list-for-top-us-lawyer-job/index.html
Figures. He's part of that Mercer/Bannon cabal that have spent decades trying to destroy the Clintons. But oh the irony that Kelleyanne's hubby established the precedent that sitting presidents can be sued, since Trump will be getting sued...a lot.
Obama's Overtime Law Was Overturned, But Still Helped Thousands
Although a federal judge in late November blocked an update to the Fair Labor Standards Act that would have greatly increased the number of workers eligible for overtime pay beginning at the start of this month, there are indications that the rule still has benefitted some of the workers it was intended to help — and could continue to do so even if Donald Trump squashes it after taking office.
The new legislation would have significantly raised the salary cap under which employees workers were eligible to earn overtime pay. In response, some large companies, such as Walmart, gave raises to workers whose pay fell just under the new threshold, making them ineligible for overtime pay. Other companies reclassified salaried overtime-exempt workers as hourly employees, which would make them eligible to earn overtime for workweeks longer than 40 hours.
...
"There's a whole set of companies that had already communicated to their employees that they were going to change their employment status or give them raises," said Brian Kropp, HR practice leader at CEB. Because the rule was halted only about a week before it was set to take effect, many companies had already made the switch.
...
Those raises could have more staying power than the legislation itself. Ross Eisenbrey, vice president at the Economic Policy Institute, said it isn't clear yet whether or not the rule and the higher overtime threshold will survive after the inauguration. Donald Trump's stated opposition to corporate regulations makes him unlikely to support defending it in court, although Eisenbray said at least one organized labor group is positioning itself to continue defending it even if a Jeff Sessions-led Department of Justice declines to do so.
This ambiguity around the legislation's fate could prompt companies to take a better-safe-than-sorry approach, Eisenbray said, since it would be hugely expensive to have to pay months of overtime retroactively.
http://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/obama-s-overtime-law-failed-still-helped-thousands-n700121
Trump Will Be Violating the Emoluments Clause of Our Constitution on Day One.
As explained in a ProPublica piece:
...
The Emoluments Clause appears in Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution. It bars any “person holding any office of profit or trust under” the United States from accepting any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign state” “without the consent of the Congress.” The word “emolument” comes from the Latin emolumentum, meaning profit or gain. The language of the clause was lifted in its entirety from the Articles of Confederation which established the structure of the government of the United States from 1781 until the ratification of the Constitution in 1788-89. The clause was derived from a Dutch rule dating to 1751.
The clause was added to the draft Constitution at the Constitutional Convention on Aug. 23, 1787 on a motion by Charles Pinckney of South Carolina. As Gov. Edmund Randolph of Virginia explained to his state’s ratification convention in 1788, Pinckney’s motion was occasioned by Benjamin Franklin, who had been given a snuffbox, adorned with the royal portrait and encrusted with small diamonds, by Louis XVI while serving as the Continental Congress’s ambassador to France. As Randolph said,
“An accident which actually happened, operated in producing the restriction. A box was presented to our ambassador by the king of our allies. It was thought proper, in order to exclude corruption and foreign influence, to prohibit any one in office from receiving emoluments from foreign states.”
The Continental Congress in 1786 had consented, after a debate, to Franklin keeping the snuffbox, as it had earlier with a similar gift to envoy Arthur Lee. At the same time, consent also was given to diplomat John Jay receiving a horse from the King of Spain.
The clause was part of the basis for Alexander Hamilton’s defense of the Constitution, in Federalist 22, as addressing “one of the weak sides of republics”: “that they afford too easy an inlet to foreign corruption.”
https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-would-be-violating-constitution-if-he-continues-to-own-his-businesses
Two Malibu property owners fined $5.1 million for blocking access to public beach
A beachgoer walks along Carbon Beach in Malibu, also known as "Billionaires' Beach." The Malibu Beach Inn is seen in the left background. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
A gate on the Lent property blocks public access to the beach in Malibu. (californiacoastline.org)
Commissioners described the Lent case as “very egregious” and a “flagrant violation” of state law because the couple had long refused a commission request to remove an unauthorized gate, fence, stairway and deck that blocked an easement required by a coastal development permit issued to a previous owner. The fine was far more than the $950,000 recommended by the agency’s staff.In one of those decisions, the commission had battled for nine years with Dr. Warren M. Lent and his wife, Henny, before unanimously approving Thursday’s cease-and-desist order for the couple and fining them about $4.2 million for diverting a public easement to private use at an expensive oceanfront rental they own at Las Flores Beach.
Commissioners described the Lent case as “very egregious” and a “flagrant violation” of state law because the couple had long refused a commission request to remove an unauthorized gate, fence, stairway and deck that blocked an easement required by a coastal development permit issued to a previous owner. The fine was far more than the $950,000 recommended by the agency’s staff.
Commission officials said the couple made money at the public’s expense by, in effect, converting the easement to private use. For years, the couple rented the house out to vacationers for about $1,000 a night and advertised on real estate websites that the “romantic, gorgeous” property has access to a private beach.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-headlines-coastal-fines-20161208-story.html
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