Tag: vote

Liz Cheney and The Great Task

(WED 8/17/22)

Expected defeat…Trump-endorsed House candidate Harriet Hageman beat incumbent Liz Cheney, 65.8% to 29.5% in Tuesday’s Wyoming GOP primary election. That’s 106,322 votes for Hageman to Cheney’s 47,615 in a state with about 580,000 residents. 

Cheney will continue to fight to keep former President Donald J. Trump from retaking the White House by running for the 2024 nomination for president, Politico, which reported those numbers above, speculates Wednesday. The three-term congresswoman, who now leaves the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection by January whether Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) becomes speaker and gets a chance to dismantle and investigate it or not, has launched The Great Task, a political action committee devoted to keeping Trump out of office, NPR reports. 

“Two years ago, I won this primary with 75% of the vote,” Cheney said in her concession speech Tuesday night (per The Guardian video). “I could easily have done the same again. The path was clear. But it would have required that I go along with President Trump’s lie about the 2020 election. …

“It would have required that I enable his ongoing efforts to unravel our democratic system and attack the foundation of our republic. That is a path I could not and would not take.

“No House seat, no office in this land is more important than the principles we were all sworn to protect and I well understood the political consequences of abiding by my duty. The primary election is over. But now the real work begins.”

Irony alert: Hageman, for her part, also nationalized the Wyoming primary for the House seat (as recorded by NBC News). 

“Wyoming has spoken on behalf of everyone across this great country who believes in the American Dream … who believes in liberty and recognizes that our natural rights; Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, equal protection and due process come from God.” 

They do not come from politicians, she said, “and the government cannot take them away."

“Wyoming has spoken on behalf of everyone who is concerned that the game is becoming more and more rigged against them," she continued. "And what Wyoming has shown today is that while it cannot be easy, we can dislodge entrenched politicians who believe they have risen above the people they are supposed to represent.”

Meanwhile, in Georgia: Former Trump attorney and America’s Mayor Rudy Giuliani is scheduled to testify Wednesday before a Fulton County grand jury investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results there. Giuliani is a target of the investigation.

Meanwhile, in New Hampshire: Attending a “Politics and Eggs” breakfast in the state holding the first presidential primary again in 2024, ex-Vice President Mike Pence said he would testify before the House Select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection, MSNBC’s Morning Joe reports Wednesday. His statement came in the form of an answer to a question posed at the event. 

The count, so far: Of 10 House Republicans who voted for then-President Trump’s second impeachment after the January 6 Capitol attacks, four have lost their primaries this season to pro-Trump candidates and two have won, according to the Associated Press. Three, including Cheney’s only fellow Republican on the House Select Committee, Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, chose not to run for re-election. One primary race is still to be determined; Rep. John Katko’s New York seat.

•••

Alaska’s non-partisan ranked-preference primary … Preternatural MAGA politician and former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s shot at the state’s single, at-large House seat remains alive. Palin came in second with 32.2%, to Democrat Mary Peltola’s 34.5% and ahead of Republican Nicholas Begich’s 27.1%. A third Republican, Tara Sweeney, also advances to the general election, with her 3.2% of the vote.

Because of the ranked-preference vote, a candidate who gets more second-place votes could beat the first-place candidate. 

Alaska will determine the winner among these three for the special election to serve out the remainder of Republican Don Young’s seat, by the end of August, NPR says. (Young died in office earlier this year). Peltola, Palin, Begich and Sweeney face off in the ranked-preference general election November 8.

For U.S. Senate: Moderate Republican incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski edged Trump-endorsed Republican Kelly Tshibaka, 42.% to 41.8%, and Democrat Patricia Chesbro at 6.2%, and Republican Buzz Kelley at 2.3% to advance to the general election. The four beat 15 other candidates for the chance to compete in another ranked-preference race for the Senate seat November 8.

--Todd Lassa

...meanwhile... (TUE 8/16/22)

Tuesday’s primaries… Wyoming’s and Alaska’s primaries are quite probably Donald J. Trump’s most important so far and coincide with a resurgence of support for the former president coming a week after the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago. Politico calls the Wyoming primary “Liz Cheney’s day of reckoning” as she faces Trump-endorsed challenger Harriet Hageman for the state’s at-large House seat. Cheney is about 30 points behind in the polls thanks to her voting for ex-President Trump’s second impeachment and sitting as vice chairwoman of the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection, though there has been some hope that she would make up that deficit with sympathetic Democratic and independent voters in the open primary. There will not be enough.

In Alaska, preternatural Trumpian Republican Sarah Palin faces Democrat Mary Petola and Republican scion of prominent state Democratic family Nicholas Begich in a special election to replace Don Young, who died in office earlier this year. Alaska has a new ranked-preference system, which means that if no candidate gets at least 50% of the vote for the at-large House seat, the second and third rounds are counted. Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski also faces Democratic and Republican challengers in the non-partisan primary for her seat (per Ballotpedia).

Upshot: Cheney could flip Tuesday’s likely loss into a serious challenge to Trump for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.

•••

Biden to sign Inflation Reduction Act… President Biden is scheduled to sign the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the sweeping climate change, health care and tax bill at 3:30 p.m. Eastern time Tuesday. While the Congressional Budget Office estimates no effect on inflation – why should it? – for 2022 and ’23, its scoring says the reconciliation bill will reduce the federal deficit by $300 billion, NPR reports.

•••

Giuliani a ‘target’ in Georgia probe… Prosecutors in Georgia have informed former America’s Mayor Rudy Giuliani he is a ‘target’ in its “wide-ranging” criminal investigation into election interference involving his former client as attorney, ex-President Trump, in the 2020 presidential election, The New York Times reports. A federal judge in Atlanta also has rejected Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) efforts to avoid testifying in the investigation being led by Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis. Graham’s attorneys say the senator has been informed he is a witness, not a target.

--Todd Lassa

_____
COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

Coal, Jobs & Cronies

By Stephen Macaulay

In 2016, then-candidate Donald Trump was barnstorming with a message about coal. 

“Clean coal,” he called it. Which, as is sometimes said, “isn’t a thing,” but we will let that go.

Trump would proclaim: “We’re going to get those miners back to work . . . the miners of West Virginia and Pennsylvania . . . Ohio and all over are going to start to work again, believe me.”

“We’re going to have an amazing mining business.”

They believed him. Trump won West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. And how did those miners do? According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in November 2016 there were 50,400 people employed in the U.S. coal industry.

How did he do? How many of those people did he get back to “an amazing mining business?”

In September 2020, the number of people involved in the coal-mining industry is 44,500. 

Note that this is not a COVID-19 phenomenon. Coal jobs have been on a decline throughout the Trump presidency. What’s more, in October 2019, Murray Energy, the “country’s largest privately held coal miner” filed for Chapter 11 in October 2019, according to NS Energy, which covers the coal industry among other energy-related subjects. It became “the eighth U.S. coal producer to file for bankruptcy in the past year.”

NS Energy noted that company owner Bob Murray “has long advocated for government support for his industry and was a strong critic of the country’s former president Barack Obama, whose time in office he described as ‘eight years of pure hell.’”

“The coal tycoon has long been a supporter of President Donald Trump, and is believed to have played a major role in the reshaping of environmental policies over the past three years… .”

One might change the verb in that statement to “dismantling.” 

Still, that did not seem to work out so well. According to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, renewables, which it defines as “utility-scale solar, wind and hydropower,” is increasingly important. “Renewables have now generated more electricity than coal on 131 days in 2020 — more than three times the 2019 results and with some 80 days left in the year.”

IEEFA concludes, “the data show coal power’s economic viability continuing to shrink … .”

Working people need to take his claims about coal into account when he talks about the jobs he has created and will create. Trump undoubtedly created more wealth for his cronies than for the stalwart men and women who once worked the mines can ever imagine. 

—–

The Coal Industry Continues to Falter, but Trump Can Still Rally the Miners

By Todd Lassa

Near rural Salisbury, Pennsylvania, just north of the Maryland border, there is a large building just off the state highway with a sign, “Trump Digs Coal.” 

It’s a standout sign in this rural area filled with pro-Trump signs and campaign banners, the single sign calling out an industry that has helped define this part of the country for more than a century. There are far more “Pro Life, Pro-Trump” signs on lawns on the roads to Meyersdale, where we spoke with a Trump and a Biden supporter earlier this month [“Talking to Trump and Biden Supporters in Small-Town Pennsylvania,” Oct. 5]. 

The Biden supporter we interviewed, Jennifer Clark, said she thought it was time for locals to move beyond the coal industry and train for jobs in a modern industry. Because of natural gas production, spurred in recent years by the fracking process, the coal industry is declining on its own, independent of President Trump’s support for the electrical power source. 

Pennsylvania is the third-biggest state for coal production according to a September 2018 report in Mining Technology [ https://www.mining-technology.com/features/five-largest-coal-producing-states-us/]. Wyoming was first with 297.2 million st/year. Even the next four biggest producers in the U.S.; West Virginia (at 79.8 million st), Pennsylvania (45.7 million st), Illinois (43.4 million st) and Kentucky (42.9 million st) don’t add up to the production from the nation’s least-populous state.

According to The New York Times’ recent deep-dive into the industry [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/05/us/politics/trump-coal-industry.html?searchResultPosition=1] 145 coal-burning units at 75 power plants have been idled since the president’s 2017 inauguration, enough to power about 30 million US homes. “Another 73 power plants have announced plans to close,” the Times reports, including the Navajo Generating Station in northern Arizona, which went offline October 2019, months before the coronavirus pandemic shut down major parts of the country and led to reduction in the burning of fossil fuels. 

A positive effect of these shutdowns is that sulfur dioxide emissions are down nearly 30% for the first three years of the Trump administration, according to the Times. Coal burning accounts for about 20% US electricity production, down from 31% in 2017. Meanwhile, renewable energy, spurred by Obama administration policies, accounts for about 17%, NPR reports [https://www.npr.org/2020/10/19/925278651/what-would-a-2nd-trump-term-mean-for-the-environment]. 

Mining coal long has had a reputation as a dirty, dangerous, and life-shortening job. Former Murray Energy CEO Robert Murray has filed an application with the US Labor department for black lung benefits, according to West Virginia Public Broadcasting and Ohio Valley ReSource [https://ohiovalleyresource.org/2020/09/30/bob-murray-who-fought-black-lung-regulations-as-a-coal-operator-has-filed-for-black-lung-benefits/].

Despite the potential dangers, coal miners have prospered over the years, and the biggest threat to small towns and rural communities might be the wages lost. According to the Times report, miners at the Navajo station that closed late in 2019 earned an average of about $117,000/year.

Please address your comments to editors@thehustings.news

—–

Coal Miners are the Blue Collar Superdelegates that Still Support Trump

By Bryan Williams

How many years have we been hearing about “green jobs” that will employ blue-collar workers in obsolete smokestack industries, and how they will transform the American economy while curing the climate “emergency”? 

Every election cycle, politicians say they will help foster more green jobs, which usually involves spending billions. This time, it’s $2 trillion if Democratic candidate Joe Biden gets to implement his plan. Four years ago, Hillary Clinton even went so far as to promise she would “destroy” the coal industry and then help the miners find training or new employment.

How did she expect this to play out in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and other blue-collar job states, such as Michigan and Wisconsin? She practically handed that to Donald J. Trump, who shrewdly swooped in to rescue the coal miners.

There were about 90,000 coal miners in the US, according to The Guardian (U.K.), and about half that – about 45,000 – currently. 

Why all the hubbub over so few workers? I think it comes down to this – coal miners are superdelegates for all blue-collar workers. 

Since I started paying attention to politics in the early 2000s, I have heard politicians of all stripes make claims that we must transition our economy and provide training for workers in obsolete blue-collar jobs. Twenty years later, what have we got? 

I’m sure there are success stories of coal miners who have transitioned to green jobs. But for nearly a generation, politicians have told these workers, “I have a plan for you. It will take away your job. There might be some money to retrain you and then you might get a new job after.” That rings pretty hollow and is disingenuous.

Along comes populist Trump in the 2016 presidential race, promising to save blue-collar jobs and revitalize American manufacturing. Since his inauguration he has done quite a few things that many other presidents and elected officials have not. 

Has he been successful? Not in the case of the coal industry. The market has helped kill coal, but so have government policies. I have a cousin who used to work at a coal plant here in California. The company had invested millions in clean coal technology to burn the fuel with minimal pollutants. The plant’s officials tried for years to get Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and then Gov. Jerry Brown to take a tour and see how their stringent environmental policies weren’t necessary. Neither governor would even send a representative, and my cousin finally moved to Texas to find work. How many coal miner families can relocate? The political abandonment was felt – my cousin felt it deeply as well, I’m sure, by coal miners and their families in Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

Trump may not have been successful in bringing back those obsolete jobs, but what’s more important, I think, to those coal miners is they finally feel like someone powerful has their back.

They will vote for him again.

—–

Pundits on the Left Are Split on the Need for Another Debate

Liberal pundits’ comments …

Record numbers of early voters have already placed ballots. Minds are not being changed. Heels are dug. Further debate evenings are fodder for more reality TV: people have had enough of supporting the networks in the last four years. Advertising stands to lose the most by canceling all debates going forward. Late-to-work election teams are all focused on ballot education, and bracing voters for a probable drawn out result season -- an entirely new version of reality TV. 

--Michelle Naranjo

If the Commission on Presidential Debates cancelled the remaining two presidential debates, the majority of Americans would not be phased out and it would do nothing to change the Nov. 3 result. America is a country in crisis right now and most voters are focused on one thing: surviving the crisis. Not just the public health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, but also the crisis surrounding racial justice that is facing the millions of members of the Black community, the climate change crisis that’s facing the planet and is currently causing disaster-level weather events around the nation, and the economic crisis facing the millions of unemployed Americans that are struggling to pay rent and are facing eviction. Donald J. Trump and Mike Pence showed us everything we needed to see in the first two debates. They offered no substantive or meaningful answers to any of the questions, no specific plans or proposals for addressing these crises, constant lies and misinformation, a refusal to condemn white supremacy, and a refusal to show any serious remorse, or take any personal accountability or ownership, for the administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Unless Donald Trump intends to correct these blunders and outright failures in a future debate, they aren’t worth being had.

--Chase Wheaton

Do we need another debate? That very question presupposes that we had one. We didn’t. What we did was have an embarrassing spectacle of the President of the United States behaving like a petulant, churlish, loud individual and his opponent, a former Vice President of the United States trying to talk over the President and calling him a “clown.” Neither individual would make it out of a high school debate without being removed. Biden was ready to do it again, virtually. Trump wanted no part of it. A claim is that Biden would be “fed” the answers. If you look at the transcripts of the last “debate” you’d see that Trump needed an answer. Or many. His answers were logorrheic covfefe. Trump said he believes that the moderator would cut him off. And that would be bad, why? Forget the side show. It can do nothing but further make people—the world over—shake their head in sad disbelief that this is what the presidency has come to.

--Stephen Macaulay

Please address comments to editors@thehustings.news

——