Anything goes.
Tennessee lawmaker oversight lax compared to other states
The Tennessee House ethics committee hasn't met in at least six years. The Senate ethics committee has gone more than a decade since its last gathering. In that time, there has been no shortage of legislative troubles in Tennessee.
One lawmaker was forced to resign from his Senate seat as he faced allegations that he had an affair with a 22-year-old intern whose boyfriend tried to extort $10,000 from the legislator. Another is facing federal felony fraud and tax evasion charges. A third is the subject of an ongoing probe by the state's attorney general, who already has determined that the lawmaker potentially poses a "continuing risk to unsuspecting women."
The reason for the lack of ethics meetings, some experts say, is not that Tennessee lawmakers are more ethical than their counterparts in other states. Rather, it's a system the Tennessee General Assembly has established, one that is unlike many other states across the nation.
Tennessee's system faulted
Tennessee has two different approaches to handling ethics complaints against elected officials. First, there's the Tennessee Ethics Commission, which regulates lobbying activity and publishes lawmakers' financial disclosure statements. Although the commission is able to receive complaints from members of the public, they must confine them to lobbying or statements of economic interest.
"For us to handle a complaint it has to be in one of those areas," said Drew Rawlins, the commission's executive director. So that leaves the House and Senate ethics committees.
If a resident wants to complain about a lawmaker violating the state code of ethics or using their office for personal gain, Rawlins said, they need to go to one of those committees. But going there isn't so simple.
The Senate committee allows any Tennessee resident — including senators themselves — to file a complaint, said state Sen. Doug Overbey, R-Maryville, who has served as chairman of the committee since 2013.
The House committee only allows House members to file a complaint. That means a resident would have to convince a lawmaker to file one against a colleague. Any other person who believes the legislature's ethics code has been violated is "encouraged to contact a member of the committee to determine whether a complaint is appropriate," committee attorney Doug Himes said.
That setup is a significant problem, Tennessee Common Cause Chairman Dick Williams said.
"The committee as it's structured is not conducive to bringing forward complaints," he said. "A fellow member of the legislature who wants to get support from other members is not going to file a complaint." - The Tennessean (subscription)
Stalling for time
Haslam Says He Won't Make Up His Mind On Trump Until They've Met Face-To-Face
Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam says he's still making up his mind whether to support Donald Trump in the general election, and he plans to hold out until he can meet face-to-face and see where Trump stands on some key issues.
Haslam is about the only Republican leader in Tennessee who hasn't said yet if he'll back the GOP nominee. He's been able to avoid the question while traveling in Asia. Now back in Tennessee, Haslam says he still isn't going to take a position.
"This is a very winnable race for our party that we need to win," Haslam said. "I have a few questions that I'd love to talk about with Donald Trump. I think there's going to be a group of governors that's going to meet with him in the next couple of weeks, and I look forward to having those conversations."
Those issues include how Trump would approach education and health care if elected president. Haslam wants states to have more control over how those dollars are spent.
Haslam places those concerns ahead of Trump's often heated rhetoric, though the governor says he believes "words matter" and wants to talk to Trump about that too. - WPLN
Next
Tenn. Democrats ready to move on to general election fight
In an essay published last week in Politico, a senior strategist for John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign argued the Vermont senator's attacks against Clinton may hurt Clinton's chances against presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump in the November general election. Other Democrats lament that Clinton, who is almost certain to secure the Democratic nomination, must spend campaign funds to fend off Sanders — money they believe would be better spent going after Trump.
In Tennessee, where Clinton easily won the Democratic primary in March, Clinton supporters aren't exactly screaming for Sanders to get out of the race. But they're ready to move on to the general election.
"I think it would be best if we concentrated on Donald Trump," said U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, a Memphis Democrat and Clinton backer. "I understand where Sen. Sanders is wanting to drive his agenda further and further. He has shown there is a tremendous amount of dissatisfaction with the system. But he has made his points." Regardless, Cohen said, "He wants to campaign to the end, and it's going to cost Democrats more money — and it's going to be more money spent on primaries that should be spent on (defeating) Donald Trump."
Memphis political consultant Matt Kuhn, who headed Sanders' campaign in Tennessee, said he's heard other Volunteer State Democrats say Sanders should drop out and let Clinton concentrate on Trump.
But Clinton already has begun turning her attention to Trump, Kuhn said, citing a recent Clinton campaign ad released that uses footage of Trump's fellow Republicans trash-talking the GOP nominee. He said it's one of the best anti-Trump ads he's seen. Kuhn doesn't buy the notion that Sanders' barrage of attacks against Clinton — at one point, Sanders said she wasn't qualified to be president — will damage her in the general election. Sure, Trump's campaign probably will use some of Sanders' sound bites in its own campaign ads in the fall, he said.
"(But) there's no way the messaging the Bernie campaign is using will come back and haunt Hillary," Kuhn said. "It can only help her, I think, because it excites a part of the Democratic Party that wants to get out there and support the liberal message." Besides, he said, the squabbling among the two Democrats "pales in comparison to what's already out there on the Republican side."
U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper, a Nashville Democrat and Clinton supporter, puts it another way. "We may have a rivalry in the Democratic Party," he said. "But they have a civil war in the Republican Party." What matters in the end, Cooper said, is that Democrats unite behind their nominee. And he's convinced they will.
"Right now, you could argue that Sanders' voters are energized and enthusiastic and reaching out to the base in a very important way," he said. "The key is whether we come together in the fall. Sen. Sanders has given every indication that his greatest fear is a Trump presidency. So I think you are going to see unity in November."
Kuhn is ready to do his part to restore party harmony. He said he'll "wholeheartedly" support Clinton in November.
"She has the experience," he said. "And there's probably no candidate ever more prepared to be president than Hillary." - Knoxville News Sentinel
It all flows downhill
Accounting for lost state dollars no easy task for county
How much are Shelby County taxpayers spending on responsibilities that should be covered by the state?
As the County Commission grapples with budget requests for fiscal 2017 that include millions in budget increases for entities that the county isn't always legally obligated to fund, it's a question that has been on some commissioners' minds.
"If somebody asked me, 'Commissioner why are our property taxes so high?' I would have to say we are subsidizing what the state is not paying for," said County Commission Chairman Terry Roland. "And they're going to continue to do that as long as we allow it to happen."
County officials say they aren't able to pin the costs down to the dollar. With state mandates interwoven with county responsibilities, unraveling the amount the state could or should be paying requires intricate calculations.
"It's fairly complicated to come down to a real accounting of the right number," said Mike Swift, county finance director. "You have to determine what is mandated by the state and how much of our cost is related to the mandate."
But for county commissioners it is a simple of equation: Fewer state dollars coming in means more county dollars being spent. That's while Tennessee has a projected revenue surplus of about $1 billion for a two-year period and brought in $757 million more than was budgeted for the first nine months of fiscal 2015-16. - Memphis Commercial Appeal
Hornet's nest
Southern conservatives blast Obama transgender order
Conservatives around the South blasted the Obama administration Friday for its decision directing public schools nationwide to allow transgender students to use the bathrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity.
One state lawmaker in Tennessee said the administration was catering to a "mental disorder" in an unhealthy way. A Louisiana congressman called the move extortion. Mississippi's governor said the decision was another example of federal overreach. And a leading figure in the Nashville-based Southern Baptist Convention said children shouldn't be pawns "on behalf of the latest fashionable 'right side of history' cause."
"Transgenderism is a mental disorder called gender identity disorder — no one should be forced to entertain another's mental disorder and it is not healthy for the individual with the disorder," wrote Tennessee state Rep. Susan Lynn, R-Mt. Juliet, on her Facebook page Friday morning.
The new guidance from the U.S. Justice and Education departments marks the latest battle in the ongoing war over legislating which bathrooms students must use. The guidance doesn't have the force of law but outlines how the Department of Education intends to enforce Title IX, the federal law that bar discrimination in education. Title IX is tied to federal funding, so the directive carries the threat of a loss of money.
The administration's letter is addressed to all schools that receive federal funding, including 16,500 school districts and 7,000 colleges, universities and trade schools. It also applies to charter schools, for-profit schools, libraries and museums that receive federal aid.
"This guidance further clarifies what we’ve said repeatedly — that gender identity is protected under Title IX," U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. said in a statement Friday. "Educators want to do the right thing for students, and many have reached out to us for guidance on how to follow the law."
But the decision is proving particularly controversial in the conservative South. North Carolina passed a bill mandating students and others using public restrooms to use the bathroom of the gender on their birth certificate. The U.S. Justice Department and the state sued each other this over the enforcement of the law. - Knoxville News Sentinel (subscription)
But they're out of step with America
Real Americans Don’t Want to ‘Defend’ Toilets
Pretty much everyone is sick of phony culture wars and needless intolerance. Except for Republican elected officials.
Following the coverage from North Carolina, you might think that Americans are about evenly split on which restroom transgender people ought to use. You might even think, given the rage on the anti side, that most people support the restrictive bill. After all, let’s face it, for a lot of people out there, the whole idea of transgender people probably comes with a certain ick factor, as was the case for gay people 20 years ago.
You might think all these things, but it turns out that you would be selling your fellow Americans rather short. A heartening poll out from CNN this week shows that a substantial majority of Americans opposes HB2. It’s 57 percent against and just 38 percent in favor. Indeed, “strongly oppose” outpointed the combined “strongly” and “somewhat” favor by 39-38.
More: Fully 75 percent of Americans support laws guaranteeing “equal protection for transgender people in jobs, housing and public accommodations.” And 80 percent support such laws for people based on sexual preference, laws that we don’t yet have on the federal level.
So America’s mind is made up on the question. Even Republicans in the survey were evenly split on the bathroom question, 48-48.
And yet the Republicans who matter, the official ones, the legislators and the governor, are 100 percent for the bill and 0 percent against. I mean literally zero—one ex-Democrat-turned-independent who caucuses with the Republicans voted against HB2, but other than that, every Republican who was present and voting backed the bill.
You might wave this away by saying “Oh, they’re from the South, what do you expect?” But there is very little reason to think that if a similar bill came up for a vote in Madison or Harrisburg or practically anywhere outside of New England, the results would be much different. They sure wouldn’t be much different in Washington, D.C., where maybe two GOP senators and three or four GOP House members would vote against such a bill. It’s more extreme down South, but across the country, the elected Republican Party is basically representing only half of the Republican rank and file. Those 48 percent of Republicans in that survey who oppose HB2 have no representation and might as well not exist.
This is a huge problem in our political discourse, and it’s made worse by certain media assumptions, one in particular. Ever since Reagan’s time, political journalism has collectively kind of assumed that Republicans represent “normal” Americans. The Democrats were granted that assumption, once upon a time. But then the Democratic Party became the party of African Americans and feminists and same-sexers and so on, and the white working classes went Republican.
And ever since, our political-journalistic discourse has operated from the default assumption that Republicans represent the real Americans. Republicans eat steak, drink beer, go to church, while Democrats eat tofu, sip sauvignon blanc, sneer at God—you know the sort of thing.
It’s time to re-examine this, no? I say the 57 percent who declare themselves to be on the side of our transgender friends are the real, normal Americans. They are, after all, the majority. The clear majority. That 57 percent includes 62 percent of Democrats, 58 percent of independents, and the aformentioned half of Republicans. They’re majorities in the Northeast (57 percent), the Midwest (56 percent), and the West (60 percent). They’re majorities of every age group, including 65 and over, who say they oppose HB2 by 51-41 percent! They’re majorities of every income group. They’re majorities of college graduates and non-college graduates. All these cross-tabs, by the way, are here (PDF).
These are today’s real Americans. I’m not saying they’re flaming liberals. Indeed, this is the very point: It’s not “liberal” anymore, one-eighth of the way into the 21st century, to be in favor of decency, a little understanding of difference, and the conviction that intolerance does all of us, even those not affected by it, a little harm. That’s not being liberal. It’s just being American.
And what are the other people? Well, Jon Chait just called people like them idiots. I don’t want to say that. And I don’t want to say they’re bad people. People are complicated; lots of people with enlightened politics are crappy human beings, and vice versa.
But I will say this. The idea of what it means to be American has changed quite a lot in the last 20 or so years. The “typically American” place, so long presented to us as nearly-all white town where everyone went to church on Sunday, is now a much more polyglot congeries of white, black, brown, yellow, straight, gay, in-between, religious, irreligious, religious but in their own idiosyncratic way; and of people who might fill this or that demographic slot but who are in other ways entirely unpredictable—the urban hipster with a soft spot for Carrie Underwood, the white working-class man who took Prince’s death really hard. That’s America today.
And one of our two major political parties will not acknowledge it. In fact Republican leaders fight the new reality tooth and nail, to the point that they have effectively chosen to represent just 12 percent of the population—that is to say, half of the 25 percent who identify as Republican. There isn’t anything that’s normal or real about that.
The media need to wake up. The Reagan-era dividing lines are long gone. And America isn’t bitterly divided about transgender people’s bathroom rights, or same-sex marriage rights, or climate change, or the need to do something about guns, or a dozen other things. Real Americans agree on all these things. The Republican Party will of course never reflect this new America. Can journalism ever find a way to? - The Daily Beast
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The presidency is Hillary Clinton’s to lose
But here are 12 ways she could lose it
THE BIG IDEA:
The elites in Washington almost uniformly believe Hillary Clinton will be elected president in November. The conventional wisdom underlying coverage of 2016 is that Donald Trump will go down in flames and probably take the Republican Senate with him.
The presumptive GOP nominee has a well-documented history of misogyny, xenophobia and demagoguery. He has alienated women, Hispanics, Muslims, African Americans, Asian Americans and Native Americans. He has mocked the disabled,prisoners of war and Seventh-day Adventists. The Speaker of the House and both living former Republican presidents are withholding endorsements.
It should be a slam dunk for HRC, right?
But, but, but: Six months is an eternity in politics, and a year ago no one in the chattering class – including me – believed Trump had any real shot at becoming the Republican standard bearer. With Clinton struggling to sew up the Democratic nomination against a socialist septuagenarian – she’s expected to lose tomorrow’s Kentucky primary – we cannot foreclose the possibility that she will botch the fall campaign against the billionaire businessman.
The presidency is hers to lose, but here are a dozen ways Clinton can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory:
1. Complacency
Remember the Michigan primary? Every poll showed Clinton up double digits, but she lost to Bernie Sanders. One reason is that supporters and field staffers believed she had it in the bag.
The campaign has been using last week’s Quinnipiac polls showing tight races in Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania to shake a greater sense of urgency into donors and activists.
Clinton is at her worst when she thinks she’s at her best. She tends to rise to the occasion only when her back is against the wall. Remember 2008? Or recall last summer, when Sanders looked like nothing more than a nuisance and polls showed her ahead by more than 50 points, how she joked about wiping her server clean with a cloth and how her handlers literally used ropes to corral journalists at a parade. Over time, she found herself neck-and-neck with Sanders, who is a weak candidate by most traditional measures. Under heavy pressure in the days before Iowa, when it looked like she could lose the caucuses, she temporarily became a much better campaigner – then backslid after her wins in Nevada and South Carolina.
2. Unforced errors
When Hillary goes off her carefully-scripted message, she has a tendency to gaffe. One reason she is expected to lose Kentucky tomorrow is her declaration at a town hall this spring that, “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”
Don’t forget about her other gaffes, like when she invoked 9/11 to defend her coziness with Wall Street, when she called Republicans the enemy or when she said she and her husband were “dead broke” when they left the White House in 2001.
And there was the time Clinton incensed the gay community by praising the Reagans for starting “a national conversation” about HIV/AIDS, prompting a quick retraction.
3. Not inspiring
Clinton cannot just make this election a referendum on Trumpism. She must outline a compelling vision for where she wants to take the country to fully activate the coalition that powered Barack Obama.
“I am not a natural politician, in case you haven't noticed, like my husband or President Obama," Clinton said at The Post’s debate in March.
The presumptive Democratic nominee campaigns in prose, not poetry. And she does not always try to be uplifting in her speeches.
It’s part of the explanation for why so many millenials, including young women, have spurned her for Bernie. While Sanders promises tuition-free college, she talks about extending an obscure tax credit. As my colleague David Fahrenthold explained in a story about Clinton’s wonkiness last week, this credit can be worth up to $2,500: “But only if students find their Form 1098-T, then fill out the relevant portions of Form 8863, then enter the amount from lines 8 and 19 of Form 8863 in lines 68 and 50 of their Form 1040.” That is not going to send a thrill up Chris Matthews’s leg…
4. Not being “likable enough”
My colleagues Dan Balz and Anne Gearan spoke with more than a dozen Clinton allies about her biggest weaknesses for a piece on today’s front page. “I bring it down to one thing and one thing only, and that is likability,” said Peter Hart, a Democratic pollster who has conducted a series of focus groups for the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Hart said this is “about the lowest bar” for a candidate, and yet Clinton has lower likability numbers today than she did when the campaign began.
Balz and Gearan report that Clinton advisers are working to soften her stiff public image by highlighting her compassion and playing up her problem-solving abilities. “I mean, we can’t give her an injection to make her an energetic candidate,” one longtime Clinton family supporter and donor said on background. (Read the full piece here.)
5. Moving too far to the right
The Sanders campaign has circulated stories about Clinton forces reaching out to top Jeb Bush donors to convince them that “that she represents their values better” than Trump.
Clinton, who used to brag about being a Goldwater Girl in 1964, will be very tempted to appeal aggressively to moderate Republicans who are turned off by Trump. On paper, the Democrat will actually be more of a hawk and more willing to use military force than the Republican. The Donald is all over the place on policy, but Clinton is presently to his right on trade and campaign finance.
She needs Sanders supporters to unite behind her. If it looks like she’s shifting rightward to win votes, she will look inauthentic and many Bernie people will stay on the sidelines.
Sanders supporters dance for him at a rally in Salem, Oregon. (Rob Kerr/AFP/Getty Images)
6. Moving too far to the left
Clinton has treated Sanders with kid gloves recently. She wants him and his people to fall in line after the July convention in Philadelphia, and she calculates that antagonizing him is not worth sewing up the nomination earlier.
The Vermont senator has made clear he wants significant concessions, including very liberal policy planks in the party platform. The Clinton people will be inclined to give on a lot because the platform is not binding. Just last week, for instance, she embraced several reforms to the Federal Reserve that are sought by the progressive wing of the party.
But, if Hillary continues to lurch leftward to satisfy the Bernie people, it will be harder to win those in the middle and woo disaffected Republicans.
You might think it’s unfair to say Clinton cannot go too far left or too far right. But everyone running for president has this problem. It is a difficult needle to thread, yet the Clintons have proven deft at triangulation. Now, Hillary needs to be Goldilocks.
Bernie speaks at the L&N Train Depot in Bowling Green, Ky., on Saturday. (Austin Anthony/Daily News via AP)
7. Bungling her VP selection
There’s no perfect pick, and candidates who look great on paper might turn out to fall flat – or have skeletons in their closet.
Citing four people close to the campaign, USA Today reports this morning that “Clinton is considering a running mate who could make a direct appeal to supporters of Sanders, bridging a generational and political divide” and that “Clinton’s chief requirements include a candidate’s resume and a fighter capable of hand-to-hand combat with Trump. The campaign’s vetting also prioritizes demographics over someone from a key swing state as she seeks to unify the Democratic voting base.”
There are parts of every would-be number two’s record that will upset at least some portion of the Democratic Party. Take this story that just posted on Politico: “Targeted by progressive activists hoping to kill his chances of being picked as Clinton’s running mate, Julián Castro is set this week to announce changes to what’s become a hot-button Housing and Urban Development program for selling bad mortgages on its books.”
8. Allowing herself to get defined as an insider
Clinton lost to Obama in 2008 by underestimating the electorate’s hunger for change. Once again, Hillary risks coming to represent the status quo in the eyes of voters who want a renegade.
“Right now, about 6 in 10 Americans have an unfavorable view of Trump … But the country is faring even worse. … 64.9 percent think we are heading down the wrong track,” The Post’s Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt noted last week in a column warning Democrats not to celebrate Trump. “So what if even voters who respect Clinton’s competence reject her as the embodiment of business as usual? And what if even voters who do not like Trump’s bigotry or bluster care more that he will, in their view, shake things up? … I do have faith in the American voter, I really do. But when two-thirds of the country is unhappy, a rational outcome can’t be taken for granted.”
Donald Trump watches his daughter Tiffany graduate from Penn yesterday. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
9. Not directly engaging with Trump’s attacks
In trying to stay above the fray, Clinton could find herself defined by Trump. Remember the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth? John Kerry didn’t push back forcefully enough early on, and he paid a price.
Last week, Trump called Clinton an “enabler” of her husband’s behavior. While objectively offensive, the Democratic front-runner steadfastly refused to respond. “I’m going to let him run his campaign however he chooses,” she told reporters. “I have nothing to say about him.”
Trump gives a whole new meaning to term “bully pulpit.” And there is very conventional logic in not responding to every insult and attack: it leads to more repetition of the original charge and keeps it in the news.
Hillary dislikes the media. Her impulse is to keep the press away, to only give theappearance of access and to focus her attention on friendly outlets that will engage in puffery.
Trump, to his credit, talks to basically everyone. It gets him in trouble, like when he told Chris Matthews that women who get abortions should be punished. But the tradeoff is that he has often gotten to set the terms of the debate. If he repeats something enough times, however preposterous, some may come to believe it.
Bill Clinton speaks in Paterson, New Jersey, on Friday. (Chris Pedota/The Record of Bergen County via AP)
10. Bill going “off the reservation”
“I have a lot of experience dealing with men who sometimes get off the reservation in the way they behave and how they speak,” Hillary recently said on CNN. A few days later, she clarified on MSNBC that she was not referring to her husband – but Rick Lazio and Vladimir Putin.
The former president has caused fewer headaches for his wife’s campaign than he did in 2008, when he called Obama’s bid “the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen,” said the other side was playing the “race card,” and downplayed a loss in South Carolina by noting Jesse Jackson Jr. had won there too.
That does not mean he has not ruined news cycles for his wife in 2016 – or has the ability to.
Remember his outburst on the eve of the New Hampshire primary when he accused Sanders of being dishonest and his supporters of being sexist?
Or when he got into an on-stage argument with Black Lives Matter protestors in Philadelphia last month, defending his crime bill and his wife’s 1996 comment about brining “super-predators … to heel”? The next day, he said: “I almost want to apologize.” But then didn’t.
The campaign must manage WJC appropriately. It’s hard to control any spouse; a former president – especially “The Big Dog” – is even harder.
Trump will try to make Hillary own all the unpopular elements of the Clinton era. Expect to hear a lot about Marc Rich’s pardon and the Lincoln Bedroom.
Hillary will take credit for the popular elements of her husband’s tenure and take umbrage when Trump tries to pin the unpopular parts on her, as she already has with the crime bill and Wall Street deregulation.
11. Being overly secretive
Clinton is not widely seen as trustworthy. Her refusal to release the transcripts of her speeches at Goldman Sachs will continue to dog her. Asked during a debate why she received $675,000 for three short appearances, she replied: “Well, I don't know. That’s what they offered.”
But Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns – along with his evolving answers and lame excuses – neutralizes this potential problem for the Clinton campaign.
FBI Director James Comey testifies on Capitol Hill. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)
12. Getting indicted
It is unlikely, but the FBI investigation into Clinton’s possible mishandling of classified information hangs like a cloud over her campaign.
“Investigators have found scant evidence tying Clinton to criminal wrongdoing, although they are still working on the case and charges have not been ruled out,” my colleague Ellen Nakashima reported last week. “They have also been interviewing former aides to Clinton, including Cheryl Mills, who served as chief of staff while Clinton was secretary of state. Prosecutors and FBI agents hope to be able to interview Clinton as they try to wrap up the investigation.”
Among other potential problems identified by supporters in Balz and Gearan’s story today: “Clinton’s unpopularity with white men, questions about whether her family philanthropic foundation helped donors and friends, and lingering clouds from her tenure at the State Department, including … the Benghazi attacks in which four Americans were killed and her support for military intervention in Libya.”
-- Don’t forget, history is not on Hillary’s side. Since World War II, only once has a party controlled the White House for three consecutive terms. (George H.W. Bush succeeded Ronald Reagan by beating Mike Dukakis in 1988.)
-- Bottom line: Clinton is more likely than not to be president at this time next year, but the election will probably be closer than you think and Trump could actually win if she doesn’t play her cards right. -The Daily 202, Washington Post
Listen for yourself
Donald Trump masqueraded as publicist to brag about himself
The voice is instantly familiar; the tone, confident, even cocky; the cadence, distinctly Trumpian. The man on the phone vigorously defending Donald Trump says he’s a media spokesman named John Miller, but then he says, “I’m sort of new here,” and “I’m somebody that he knows and I think somebody that he trusts and likes” and even “I’m going to do this a little, part time, and then, yeah, go on with my life.”
A recording obtained by The Washington Post captures what New York reporters and editors who covered Trump’s early career experienced in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s: calls from Trump’s Manhattan office that resulted in conversations with “John Miller” or “John Barron” — public-relations men who sound precisely like Trump himself — who indeed are Trump, masquerading as an unusually helpful and boastful advocate for himself, according to the journalists and several of Trump’s top aides.
In 1990, Trump testified in a court case that “I believe on occasion I used that name.”
In a phone call to NBC’s “Today” program Friday morning after this article appeared online, Trump denied that he was John Miller. “No, I don’t think it — I don’t know anything about it. You’re telling me about it for the first time and it doesn’t sound like my voice at all,” he said. “I have many, many people that are trying to imitate my voice and then you can imagine that, and this sounds like one of the scams, one of the many scams — doesn’t sound like me.” Later, he was more definitive: “It was not me on the phone. And it doesn’t sound like me on the phone, I will tell you that, and it was not me on the phone. And when was this? Twenty-five years ago?”
Then, Friday afternoon, Washington Post reporters who were 44 minutes into a phone interview with Trump about his finances asked him a question about Miller: “Did you ever employ someone named John Miller as a spokesperson?”
The phone went silent, then dead. When the reporters called back and reached Trump’s secretary, she said, “I heard you got disconnected. He can’t take the call now. I don’t know what happened.”
Trump has never been terribly adamant about denying that he often made calls to reporters posing as someone else. From his earliest years in business, he occasionally called reporters using the name “John Barron.” - The Washington Post
The Donald's Daily Lie
Trump’s claim that ‘young, strong men’ dominate the European migrant crisis
“Look at what’s happening all over Europe. It’s a mess and we don’t need it. … When you look at that migration, you see so many young, strong men. Does anyone notice that? Am I the only one? Young, strong men. And you’re almost like, ‘Why aren’t they fighting?’ You don’t see that many women and children.”
— Donald Trump, campaign rally, April 28, 2016
Trump often points to the ongoing migrant crisis in Europe to make a case for tough immigration policies along the U.S.-Mexico border and, of course, to build a wall. Migrants and refugees from the Middle East and North Africa continue to arrive in droves in European Union nations, fleeing war and poverty in their home countries or seeking economic opportunities.
During a Republican presidential debate earlier this year, Trump said there were “very few women, very few children” among Syrian refugees arriving in Europe. We found that men and women were split evenly among registered Syrian refugees at the time.
At a recent rally, he spoke more generally about the migration flows into Europe. What do the latest data show?
The Pinocchio Test
The overall flow of migrants and refugees into Europe was dominated first by men, including younger men, when the numbers began spiking last year. But since the middle of 2015, the demographics began to shift and more women and children started making trips across the Mediterranean Sea. Of note is the sharp increase in unaccompanied children in 2015.
In particular, the breakdown of men, women and children arriving in the main entry point of Greece has shifted dramatically. This March, there were more women and children (62 percent) than men — a reversal from June, when 73 percent of arrivals were men. But Italy continues to see far more men (73 percent) than women and children. Trump says there are “so many young, strong men.” Among recent arrivals in Greece, there wasn’t a clear massive influx of Syrian or Afghan men ages 15 to 24. For Syrians (the biggest group of arrivals), 17 percent fit in that age range. For Afghans, 26 percent fit in that category.
Trump exclaimed during the speech: “When you look at that migration, you see so many young, strong men. Does anyone notice that? Am I the only one?” We don’t notice that — because, well, the numbers don’t show it.
Three Pinocchios
It's Monday in America, so here's a little Baseball for you.
Why Joe DiMaggio’s 56-Game Hit Streak Is So Enduring
Changes in baseball, particularly the handling of pitchers, diminish chances of matching the Yankee Clipper’s feat
Seventy-five years ago Sunday, Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio bashed the first hit of his record-setting 56-game hitting streak. No one else has come close to his mark, and changes in Major League Baseball make it less likely that anyone ever will.
“If anybody could have done it, it would have been Pete Rose, and he didn’t get there,” said Keith Hernandez, a commentator for the New York Mets television network and a former slick-hitting first baseman. “I don’t think it will ever happen.”
Mr. DiMaggio, who played for the New York Yankees, began his streak on May 15, 1941, and hit safely in each game afterward until July 17,when his sizzle at the plate was doused by the Cleveland Indians.
Mr. Rose, who holds the record for most career hits, went on his own tear in 1978, getting at least one hit in 44 consecutive games. That’s a dozen less than Mr. DiMaggio, but it’s the closest anyone has come to the Yankee Clipper’s total.
Experts disagree on which changes in the game might make it more difficult for a hitter to break Mr. DiMaggio’s record—and baseball historian and statistician Bill James cautions against considering any variable in isolation, noting that some have benefited hitters—but a number of things are different from Mr. DiMaggio’s day.
“The one thing I think is enormous is familiarity with pitchers,” said David W. Smith, founder and president of Retrosheet, a website that archives historical play-by-play data.
When Mr. DiMaggio played, teams carried fewer pitchers, and starters, who weren’t protected by carefully monitored pitch counts, as they are today, played more innings, facing batters four or five times each outing.
In the course of his 56-game streak, Mr. DiMaggio confronted 54 different pitchers, facing a dozen of them in three or four different games. “Not only did DiMaggio see fewer pitchers, but the ones he saw, he saw later in the game when it’s more and more the batter’s advantage,” Mr. Smith said.
To test his idea, Mr. Smith once analyzed 1.69 million Major League at-bats and found that batting, on-base and slugging averages increased each time a starting batter faced a starting pitcher in a game. For example, in the American and National leagues combined, batting average increased from .259 to .276 between the first time starting batters faced starting pitchers and the fourth time around the order. “The overwhelming data is that when a new batter and a new pitcher come together the first several times, the advantage is so strongly for the pitcher, it’s scary,” Mr. Smith said.
Today, starters often pitch no more than six innings. They almost never see batters four times, and some don’t see batters three times. Instead, fresh arms come in from the bullpen, with some throwing heat for a single inning—or a single batter—before handing the ball over to another specialist.
On the flipside, Mr. James points out that having more pitchers potentially gives individual batters more chances at the plate, and a possible run at a streak, because there are fewer bench players competing for game time. “Teams in 1941 carried eight or nine pitchers on a 25-man roster,” said Mr. James, who coined the term sabermetrics for the application of statistical analysis to baseball records. “Now they carry 12 or 13. You’ve got a four-man bench when you used to have eight.”
Working against them are better field conditions, improved gloves and padded walls in the outfield. Mr. James surmised better gloves contribute to fewer fielding errors, while padded walls and carefully tended turf reduce the risk of injury and encourage more aggressive defensive play.
“If you could see a 1941 game live, you’d be shocked at the condition of the field,” Mr. James said. “Potholes, rocks, clumps of dirt, long grass in the outfield.” On manicured fields, outfielders can run as fast as possible without fear of turning an ankle or missing a ball that takes an odd hop on uneven ground.
Mr. Rose, who doesn’t believe 56 games in a row is untouchable, said four ingredients are required for a batter to conjure a streak: The ability to hit for contact. Enough speed to leg out a weak hit or bunt. A knack for hitting to all three sections of the outfield. And a heavy dose of luck.
Batters who might have a shot today, he said, include José Altuve, a speedy second-baseman for the Houston Astros who has led the American League in batting and hits and had a 14-game streak last year, or Michael Brantley, an outfielder for the Cleveland Indians who previously has hit in 22 consecutive games. “Guys like that are capable of going on a hitting streak,” Mr. Rose said.
But after 75 years of missed opportunities? It’s not likely. “DiMaggio hit in something like 75% of his games,” Mr. James said, “so his chance was toward the top end of the spectrum, which is still a 1-in-10-million-type chance.” - The Wall Street Journal
Billy Moore's Report from Washington
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell washed the bad taste out of the Senate's mouth last week, engineering a face-saving vote on an amendment that would block the U.S. from purchasing heavy water from Iran and endangering the multi-national Iran nuclear deal. After the vote failed, Senators approved the first fiscal 2017 appropriations bill by a vote of 90 to 8. Two more appropriations measures are on the Senate's agenda for next week.
Representatives voted through 18 bills to fight opioid addiction and assembled them into one measure to take to conference with the Senate. The legislative success was overshadowed by a breakdown among House Republicans to secure consensus on a budget resolution. Leaders promised conservative holdouts everything from $140 billion in mandatory spending cuts, a balanced budget amendment and cut backs on spending on programs with lapsed authorizations. But the package was not enough to satisfy the Freedom Caucus and next week's House agenda aims to bring appropriations bills to the floor, signaling failure by the House, for the first time since the Budget Act became law in 1974, to approve or deem a budget.
As both chambers get into spending gear, hope recovers for money to combat the Zika virus. Senators plan votes on amendments that would provide between $1.1 billion and $1.9 billion in emergency funding to address the virus. The House plans to vote on a freestanding Zika supplemental spending bill and the Defense authorization bill.
While poison pill amendments could derail the appropriations process, bipartisan House and Senate coalitions are poised to reassert Congress's power of the purse.
A federal judge on Thursday ruled the Obama administration has been improperly funding an Obamacare subsidy program, a victory for the House of Representatives in a lawsuit against the White House. The program will be allowed to continue pending appeal.
Billy Moore is a partner at ViaNovo, a strategic consulting firm with offices in Washington, DC, Austin, Dallas and Mexico City
Thought for the day:
"You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill
What's on the agenda for today?
