Tuesday, December 29, 2020
Saturday, December 26, 2020
Wednesday, December 9, 2020
Monday, December 7, 2020
Sen. Kelly Loeffler gets a kiss from her husband Jeffrey Sprecher, after Vice President Mike Pence presided in a re-enactment of Loeffler’s swearing-in, January 6, 2020.
https://prospect.org/politics/ultra-rich-sen-kelly-loeffler-family-has-taken-in-3-million/?fbclid=IwAR1ZBwlp9FrbdIDfuGrIygX3gw_5eAmN3CQdhrhbtIEWqF_VbHQNeKRjqUI
Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA), the richest person in Congress, likes to talk about her hardscrabble origins. She grew up on a farm in Stanford, Illinois; her campaign bio page features her parading around with livestock. The corn and soybean farm has been in her family for three generations. In her first news conference in January after replacing retiring Sen. Johnny Isakson, she talked about “a rhythm to our lives … We planted in the spring, I showed cattle at the county fair in the summer, and in the fall we harvested.”
Today, Loeffler is worth roughly $500 million. Her husband founded a stock exchange (Intercontinental Exchange, or ICE) and remains its chairman and CEO; she has a majority stake in a WNBA franchise. They live in a 15,000-square-foot estate in Atlanta.
She’s being challenged from the left and the right in a special election in Georgia, and her family fortune often is a topic of discussion. Just last week, Trump ally Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) accused Loeffler of dangling $50 million for the president’s re-election, but only if he helped get Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA) out of the primary race for her seat.
The nature of the farm subsidy program itself hardly aligns with Loeffler’s election campaign promotion of herself as “more conservative than Attila the Hun.”
Meanwhile, the Loeffler family farm continues to operate, and several of Loeffler’s family members continue to pull in significant sums of money from government agriculture subsidies. Despite allies of Loeffler slamming her conservative opponent Collins for supporting the farm bill that provides such subsidies to farmers, five of her family members have received more than $3.2 million in federal benefits since 1995. A significant share of that, $770,242, has come since 2018, as a result of farm bailout funds that President Trump has offered to compensate for the trade war with China and the pandemic.
The information is listed publicly in a farm subsidy database maintained by the Environmental Working Group. The nonprofit collects records from the U.S. Department of Agriculture through Freedom of Information Act requests and posts them to the database—because the government won’t.
Given that Loeffler’s parents ran their farm until a few years ago, and her brother’s family runs one now, there’s nothing necessarily illegal about them receiving millions in subsidies. But the nature of the farm subsidy program itself hardly aligns with Loeffler’s election campaign promotion of herself as “more conservative than Attila the Hun.”
Extended family members can take an on-paper share of the ownership in a farm and become eligible themselves for annual payments, as has apparently happened in the Loeffler family case. And money from farm subsidies typically flows to the biggest farms. An EWG analysis of the recent bailout program finds that the top 10 percent of farms received more than half of all the payments. This is generally in line with farm subsidies overall. “They are designed to send most money to those with most acres and most crops,” says Anne Schechinger, a senior economic analyst with the EWG.
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Moreover, the $770,000 in farm subsidy payments to the Loeffler family over the past two years represents .15 percent of Kelly Loeffler’s total net worth. While she’s not obligated to personally bail out her family, her public policy posture of calling for reducing $600 a week payments to unemployed workers, so they can “get back to work and limit government dependency,” is a tough fit with the millions in government welfare flowing to her family members.
The Loeffler campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Don and Lynda Loeffler, Kelly’s parents, were lifelong corn and soybean farmers. Don also ran a trucking business that moved farm equipment. Since 1995, Don has received $1,284,673 in federal government funds for crop subsidies, and Lynda has received $214,746.
The couple retired in 2015, according to this local newspaper announcement of their 50th wedding anniversary. Despite that, Don continued to receive subsidies through federal conservation programs in subsequent years, totaling close to $6,000.
Brian and Mary Angela (Molly) Loeffler, Kelly’s brother and sister-in-law, have also received farm subsidies, as part of the family business. Brian, 48, has received subsidies dating back as far as the EWG database goes, including in 1995, when he was 23 years old. With $1,316,998 in benefits, Brian has received more in subsidies than anyone in the Stanford, Illinois zip code. (Don Loeffler is in second place.)
Molly Loeffler began to receive farm subsidies in 2008, after her marriage to Brian. Her lifetime total is $671,142. A son, Collin Loeffler, also has received $16,454 in subsidies, starting in 2013. His age is undisclosed.
Brian is by all accounts a successful farmer; last year he won a McLean County (Illinois) Chamber of Commerce Agriculture Award for “farmer of the year.” But the trade war with China, and later the pandemic, created difficulties, particularly for corn and soybean farmers. The White House employed a New Deal-era program called the Commodity Credit Corporation to essentially fund a bailout for the wound its trade policy had inflicted on farmers.
Roughly $23 billion has been distributed to farmers under the Market Facilitation Program (MFP), and another $5 billion under the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP). Authorizing another $30 billion to fund these programs was a key sticking point of the government funding legislation that passed Congress this week; eventually Democrats allowed the $30 billion in exchange for $8 billion in nutrition assistance for needy families.
Brian Loeffler and his wife applied for and received $744,968 in MFP payments in 2018 and 2019, according to EWG records. Collin Loeffler also received $11,089. In addition, the Loefflers received $17,560 in CFAP payments through June 30 of this year. Molly Loeffler’s receipt of $375,000 under MFP represents the maximum amount allowable in 2018 and 2019 for that program. Traditional commodity subsidy programs max out at $125,000 annually per farmer.
Schechinger, of the EWG, questions the utility of CFAP payments at this point, with exports back to near normal levels. “There’s a lot of question if farmers even need this money,” she says. “Corn prices are at their highest level since February. It’s a question of whether Trump just wants to do another round [of payments] two months before the election.” The newest batch of CFAP money, Schechinger adds, disproportionately benefits corn farmers like Brian and Molly Loeffler, of which there are many in important swing states for President Trump, such as Iowa.
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As a senator, Kelly Loeffler has been calling for a “fair playing field” for farmers in Georgia. But the Club for Growth, a 501(c)(3) dark-money organization that is backing Loeffler in her special election, attacked her opponent Doug Collins in an ad for voting to “waste billions in welfare boondoggles.” The legislation it was referring to was the farm bill that passed in 2018. And the welfare boondoggles in question included the very farm subsidy payments that Loeffler’s family has enjoyed for decades.
Loeffler campaign spokesperson Stephen Lawson told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that “it’s unclear how much her family’s farm received in subsidies, since some of the land has been sold over the last decade and a half.” But Don Loeffler is still receiving conservation program money, despite having retired a half-decade ago. And Brian and Molly Loeffler are maxing out on farm bailout funds. For a senator who routinely decries “taxpayer dollars” going out in the form of subsidies and transfers, it’s not the best look.
All candidates will be on the ballot in the Georgia Senate special election in November, and the top two will proceed to a runoff on January 5, 2021. Polling has been tight, with Loeffler, Collins, and Democratic candidate Rev. Raphael Warnock all bunched at the top. Matt Lieberman, a businessman and son of former Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, is also on the ballot, and his presence could lock Democrats out of the runoff.
Just this week, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) introduced a bill that would force members of Congress and other high-ranking executive and judicial branch officials to disclose when they apply for financial benefits from the government. The bill would not affect the families of members of Congress, like the Loefflers.
Sunday, December 6, 2020
Gabriel Sterling of Sec of State’s Office Blasts Those Threatening Elec...
"I fully anticipate that we're going to see some events in the coming weeks that are going to be troubling and unfortunate. And they're not all going to be committed by individuals that are neo-Nazi skinheads that have dedicated their lives to this," said Michael Jensen, a researcher at the University of Maryland who led a new study on hate crime offenders. "They're going to be committed by seemingly regular folks that have gotten kind of caught up in the madness of the moment around the
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLi-Yo6IucQ&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR3bNm-0QT68S23eHboGVXnePKJUgVVpSmmhRGys-NAWymoYCgyq2GYkA_c
SILENT REPUBLICANS NEED TO STEP UP AND CONDEMN TRUMPS CALL TO VIOLENCE 
THREATS FROM TRUMP;S ATTORNEY 
TRUMP'S ATTORNEY CALLS FOR VIOLENCE
THREATS FROM TRUMP;S ATTORNEY 
President Donald Trump’s niece says her uncle is “criminal, cruel and traitorous” and belongs in prison after he leaves the White House.
Mary Trump, a psychologist, author and outspoken critic of her estranged relative, rejects the notion that putting a former president on trial would deepen the nation’s political divisions.
“It’s quite frankly insulting to be told time after time that the American people can't handle it and that we just need to move on,” Mary Trump told The Associated Press in an interview this week.
“If anybody deserves to be prosecuted and tried, it’s Donald,” she added. ”(Otherwise) we just leave ourselves open to somebody who, believe it or not, is even worse than he is.”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLi-Yo6IucQ&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR3bNm-0QT68S23eHboGVXnePKJUgVVpSmmhRGys-NAWymoYCgyq2GYkA_c
Friday, November 27, 2020
Monday, November 16, 2020
Governor Cuomo Delivers Remarks on Trump Administration's Vaccination Di...
AMERICA MUST ACKNOWLEDGE THE INJURY COMMITTED TOWARDS THE DESCENDANTS OF SLAVES AND HOW #REPARATION AND BLACK EMPOWERMENT 
HEALING THE INJURY OF CRACK COCAINE ON THE BLACK AND BROWN COMMUNITIES
POWER OF ACTIVISM AND GRASSROOT ORGS THAT SHOULD BE FUNDED ,ASSISTED AND GOVERNED BY BUDGETS ,HOUSING ,STIPHENDS,APPRENTICESHIP PROGRAMS
PREPARING POLICES AND PROGRAMS THAT LIFT UP THE POOR THROUGH THE BLACK REPARATION PROGRAM
THE PROHET THAT CAME TO REVIVES AMERICA'S PROMISE WITHOUT WORDS
LEADERSHIPS FOR JUSTICE 'BY ANY MEANS NESSESSARY '
PEACE
NON -VIOLENCE
THE BEGINNINGS OF FREEDOM,JUSTICE AND EQUALITY
THEIR WHITE SUPREMIST POLICES HAVE DISCRIMINATED AGAINST BLACK PURSUITS OF EQUALITY AND HAPPINESS AND HOW PERCEPTIONS WERE CREATED THAT THE BLACK MAN WAS CREATED INFERIOR BASED ON SKIN COLOR AND WOULD BE KEPT UNEQUAL THROUGH POLICIES AND LAWS SUCH AS BLACK CODES ,SEGREGATION ,IT FAR PASS TIME THAT THE ANTEBELLUM RACIST POLICES AND IDEAS ABOUT BLACKS BE RECTIFIED BY #REPARATIONS IN THE SIM OF $1`7 TRILLION DOLLARS THROUGH MONETARY COMPENSATIONS,PROGRAMS THAT WILL BENIFIT ALL AMERICANS 'NOW IS THE TIME TO HONOR YOUR PROMISE ' PONTIFF STATED IN USA VIST TO CONGRESS
THEIR WHITE SUPREMIST POLICES HAVE DISCRIMINATED AGAINST BLACK PURSUITS OF EQUALITY AND HAPPINESS AND HOW PERCEPTIONS WERE CREATED THAT THE BLACK MAN WAS CREATED INFERIOR BASED ON SKIN COLOR AND WOULD BE KEPT UNEQUAL THROUGH POLICIES AND LAWS SUCH AS BLACK CODES ,SEGREGATION ,IT FAR PASS TIME THAT THE ANTEBELLUM RACIST POLICES AND IDEAS ABOUT BLACKS BE RECTIFIED BY #REPARATIONS IN THE SIM OF $1`7 TRILLION DOLLARS THROUGH MONETARY COMPENSATIONS,PROGRAMS THAT WILL BENIFIT ALL AMERICANS 'NOW IS THE TIME TO HONOR YOUR PROMISE ' PONTIFF STATED IN USA VIST TO CONGRESS
Sunday, November 15, 2020
George Carlin speaks trump and 2016 ( way before )
GOVERNOR'S AND MAYOR ARE THE ONES TO SHUT DOWN FOLLOWING THE SCIENCE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvF1Q3UidWM&list=RDAvF1Q3UidWM&start_radio=1&t=57
Politics In the Pulpit: Addressing Racial Divisions And Being Pro-Life B...
https://www.c-span.org/video/?409581-1/african-americans-congress-19th-century
THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Jan. 6, 1874: Robert B. Elliott Spoke of Need for Civil Rights Act
Time Periods: Reconstruction Period: 1865 - 1876
Themes: African American, Reconstruction, Democracy & Citizenship, Laws & Citizen Rights
Hon. Robert B. Elliott
What you give to one class you must give to all. What you deny to one class, you deny to all.
On Jan. 6, 1874, Congressperson Robert B. Elliott of South Carolina gave a speech to advocate for the Civil Rights Act.
Elliott was a lawyer and commanded the South Carolina National Guard to protect Black citizens from the KKK. Below are a few excerpts from his speech which was so powerful that it was memorialized in an 1874 lithograph.
. . . In this discussion I cannot and I will not forget that the welfare and rights of my whole race in this country are involved. When, therefore, the honorable gentleman from Georgia [Democrat Alexander Stephens] lends his voice and influence to defeat this measure, I do not shrink from saying that it is not from him that the American House of Representatives should take lessons in matters touching human rights or the joint relations of the State and national governments.
While the honorable gentleman contented himself with harmless speculations in his study, or in the columns of a newspaper, we might well smile at the impotence of his efforts to turn back the advancing tide of opinion and progress; but, when he comes again upon this national arena, and throws himself with all his power and influence across the path which leads to the full enfranchisement of my race, I meet him only as an adversary; nor shall age or any other consideration restrain me from saying that he now offers this Government, which he has done his utmost to destroy, a very poor return for its magnanimous treatment, to come here and seek to continue, by the assertion of doctrines obnoxious to the true principles of our Government, the burdens and oppressions which rest upon five millions of his countrymen who never failed to lift their earnest prayers for the success of this Government when the gentleman was seeking to break up the Union of these States and to blot the American Republic from the galaxy of nations.
Sir, it is scarcely twelve years since that gentleman shocked the civilized world by announcing the birth of a government which rested on human slavery as its corner-stone. The progress of events has swept away that pseudo-government which rested on greed, pride, and tyranny; and the race whom he then ruthlessly spurned and trampled on are here to meet him in debate, and to demand that the rights which are enjoyed by their former oppressors—who vainly sought to overthrow a Government which they could not prostitute to the base uses of slavery—shall be accorded to those who even in the darkness of slavery kept their allegiance true to freedom and the Union
Technically, this bill is to decide upon the civil status of the colored American citizen: a point disputed at the very formation of our present Government, when by a short-sighted policy, a policy repugnant to true republican government, one negro counted as three-fifths of a man. The logical result of this mistake of the framers of the Constitution strengthened the cancer of slavery, which finally spread its poisonous tentacles over the southern portion of the body-politic.
To arrest its growth and save the nation we have passed through the harrowing operation of intestine war, dreaded at all times, resorted to at the last extremity, like the surgeon’s knife, but absolutely necessary to extirpate the disease which threatened with the life of the nation the overthrow of civil and political liberty on this continent. In that dire extremity the members of the race which I have the honor in part to represent—the race which pleads for justice at your hands today, forgetful of their inhuman and brutalizing servitude at the South, their degradation and ostracism at the North—flew willingly and gallantly to the support of the national Government. Their sufferings, assistance, privations, and trials in the swamps and in the rice-fields, their valor on the land and on the sea, is a part of the ever-glorious record which makes up the history of a nation preserved, and might, should I urge the claim, incline you to respect and guarantee their rights and privileges as citizens of our common Republic.
But I remember that valor, devotion, and loyalty are not always rewarded according to their just deserts, and that after the battle some who have borne the brunt of the fray may, through neglect or contempt, be assigned to a subordinate place, while the enemies in war may be preferred to the sufferers. The results of the war, as seen in reconstruction, have settled forever the political status of my race.
The passage of this bill will determine the civil status, not only of the negro, but of any other class of citizens who may feel themselves discriminated against. It will form the cap-stone of that temple of liberty, begun on this continent under discouraging circumstances, carried on in spite of the sneers of monarchists and the cavils of pretended friends of freedom, until at last it stands in all its beautiful symmetry and proportions, a building the grandest which the world has ever seen, realizing the most sanguine expectations and the highest hopes of those who, in the name of equal, impartial, and universal liberty, laid the foundation stones. [Read in full at “Speeches of African-American Representatives Addressing the Civil Rights Bill of 1875,” starting on page 7 of the PDF.]
The Civil Rights Act was passed a little over a year after this speech, on March 1, 1875.
When the federal troops were withdrawn from South Carolina in 1877, Elliott was forced from office. He died in poverty on August 9, 1884 at the age of 41.
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