Following issues and politics in St. Louis area from the retired "Steelworker" view. Politics will be the main theme, but news of the group and Steelworkers will also be followed.
Network officials outlined their plans here as 400 of their donors prepared to hear from a roster of Republican leaders. House Speaker Paul Ryan is among the politicians who scored invites to one of the nation's most sought-after political retreats at a lavish campus nestled in the Rocky Mountains.
Ryan will be joined here at the summit hosted by the Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce alongside up-and-coming Republicans like Senators Cory Gardner of Colorado, Tim Scott of South Carolina, and Mike Lee of Utah, Koch spokesman James Davis said Saturday. Other speakers will include Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas, Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin, Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah and Rep. Mike Coffman of Colorado.
The Koch network is sitting out of the presidential campaign entirely, a blow to Trump's presidential ambitions. Trump claimed in a tweet Saturday that he declined a meeting request from Charles and David Koch this weekend, though Koch officials say that they were not aware of any contact with him on Friday when both the Kochs and Trump coincidentally were in Colorado Springs at the same time.
Then came Mr. Trump’s interview with The New York Times, in which, among other things, he declared that even if Russia attacked members of NATO he would come to their aid only if those allies — which we are bound by treaty to defend — have “fulfilled their obligations to us.”
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But is there more to the story? Is there some specific channel of influence?
We do know that Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s campaign manager, has worked as a consultant for various dictators, and was for years on the payroll of Viktor Yanukovych, the former Ukrainian president and a Putin ally.
And there are reasons to wonder about Mr. Trump’s own financial interests. Remember, we know nothing about the true state of his business empire, and he has refused to release his taxes, which might tell us more. We do know that he has substantial if murky involvement with wealthy Russians and Russian businesses. You might say that these are private actors, not the government — but in Mr. Putin’s crony-capitalist paradise, this is a meaningless distinction.
At some level, Mr. Trump’s motives shouldn’t matter. We should be horrified at the spectacle of a major-party candidate casually suggesting that he might abandon American allies — just as we should be horrified when that same candidate suggests that he might welsh on American financial obligations. But there’s something very strange and disturbing going on here, and it should not be ignored.
Commission investigation into whether all imports of Chinese steel into the United States should be banned, but U.S. Steel is appealing.
U.S. Steel asked the federal government to ban Chinese steel because of price-fixing, stolen trade secrets and tariff avoidance. It filed a Section 337 case in April, when China produced steel at a record daily rate of 2.3 million tons.
The Pittsburgh-based steelmaker, one of Northwest Indiana's largest employers, alleged a variety of unfair and illegal trade practices, including ducking out of tariffs by misrepresenting where the steel originally came from, receiving heavy subsidies and unloading surplus steel at prices far lower than it would sell for back home.
Judge Dee Lord ruled last week the investigation doesn’t have to be finished until October 2017. She ordered the International Trade Commission to first notify the U.S. Department of Commerce about U.S. Steel's complaints since the company raised concerns about Chinese steel dumping and illegal subsidies. The U.S. Department of Commerce must review the case, which would delay the investigation.
A grand military parade down the Champs Elysées in Paris on Thursday included members of the French army, intelligence services, legionnaires and others for the annual Bastille Day celebrations marking the start of the 1789 French Revolution.
The procession took place under high surveillance this year, with France remaining under an official state of emergency until July 26 in wake of the November 2015 attacks.
“Some 3,000 police officers were mobilised to secure the parade zone,” FRANCE 24's Catherine Norris-Trent reported from the sidelines of the spectacle.
In all, 55 aircraft, 30 helicopters and 212 armoured vehicles made their way down the Champs Elysées to Place de la Concorde, where French President François Hollande surveyed the troops joined by New Zealand's Prime Minister John Key and US Secretary of State John Kerry.
Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, the two African-American men who were shot by police within twenty-four hours of each other.
Racism plays an insidious role in the daily lives of all working people of color. This is a labor issue because it is a workplace issue; it is a community issue, and unions are the community. Philando Castile was a union member, and so his family is our family. Last year the AFL-CIO launched a Commission on Racial and Economic Justice to address the issues faced by our brothers and sisters of color and to take a hard look at ourselves to ensure we practice what we preach. The Commission aimed to educate working people on the way racism weakens the collective power of all working people.
It is haunting that only two years ago I delivered a speech in St. Louis in the aftermath of Mike Brown’s death denouncing systemic racism in the United States. Since then, hundreds of people have lost their lives in incidents involving police officers, and African-Americans continue to be disproportionately impacted. Labor cannot and will not sit on the sidelines when it comes to racial justice. It is not enough to simply say “Black Lives Matter.” We must and will continue to fight for reforms in policing and to address issues of racial and economic inequality.
JULY 5--The Democratic Party’s plan to crash this month’s Republican National Convention is heavy on gimmicks and stunts meant to highlight a possible “Trumpocalypse,” as well as to ridicule the presumptive GOP candidate’spurported spray tan, tiny fingers, and dog whistle proclivities.
The Democratic National Committee’s “Counter Convention Plan Sketch”covers 22 pages and outlines the party’s activities in Cleveland, where the Republican convention begins July 18. Democratic operatives will launch their operation a week earlier, on July 11, to coincide with the opening of the RNC’s summer meeting.
A copy of the plan was obtained by the hacker “Guccifer 2.0,” who breached party servers and made off with DNC financial records, e-mails, research reports, and other documents. In e-mails to TSG, “Guccifer 2.0” has claimed to be a Romanian “hacktivist,” though security researchers who have examined the DNC breach have said that the infiltration appears to be the work of a Russian espionage unit.
click link note: this article was mentioned in meet the press
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The Republicans’ noisy breakdown has been echoed eerily, albeit less loudly, on the Democratic side, where, after the early primaries, one of the two remaining contestants for the nomination was not, in any meaningful sense, a Democrat. Senator Bernie Sanders was an independent who switched to nominal Democratic affiliation on the day he filed for the New Hampshire primary, only three months before that election. He surged into second place by winning independents while losing Democrats. If it had been up to Democrats to choose their party’s nominee, Sanders’s bid would have collapsed after Super Tuesday. In their various ways, Trump, Cruz, and Sanders are demonstrating a new principle: The political parties no longer have either intelligible boundaries or enforceable norms, and, as a result, renegade political behavior pays.
Political disintegration plagues Congress, too. House Republicans barely managed to elect a speaker last year. Congress did agree in the fall on a budget framework intended to keep the government open through the election—a signal accomplishment, by today’s low standards—but by April, hard-line conservatives had revoked the deal, thereby humiliating the new speaker and potentially causing another shutdown crisis this fall. As of this writing, it’s not clear whether the hard-liners will push to the brink, but the bigger point is this: If they do, there is not much that party leaders can do about it.
St. Louis – Retired coal miners, many of them battling work-related health issues, have got to be wondering if anybody is on their side anymore.
A federal bankruptcy judge in St. Louis has ruled that Peabody Energy could spend up to $3.24 million on bonuses averaging $65,000 a person to salaried office employees in an effort to keep them on the job. Attorneys for retired miners had opposed the bonuses, saying they would come out of the money available for pensions and health care.
Meanwhile in Washington, the Senate was dawdling on advancing a simple plan that would go a long way toward keeping the miners’ pension plan solvent and heading off a much more expensive public bailout.
“What do they want these people to do? Get out of their wheelchairs and go back to the mines?” railed United Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts at a June 14 rally of 3,500 members in Lexington, KY.
Welcome to my blog. As a member of the St. Louis chapter of the Retired Steelworkers and a member of the Alliance for Retired Americans, I can say without a doubt groups are busy in the St. Louis area. This blog is a modest effort to inform members and the general public of some of our activities and concerns. I will also "soapbox" areas and issues.
We see the solution to many of the woes of the St. Louis area as economic and political. St. Louis has a myrid of problems, but a strong economy with responsible leaders would help greatly in the solution to these woes. Alas, such is lacking on several levels with many of the "civil leaders" squabbling like children or worse, taking care of special interests instead of the public. Business leaders? get real, many of these so called leaders shame the term "Captains of Industry".
Once the St. Louis area was a leader in many areas. Now, some of the area can be compared to Third world areas with no problems what so ever.
That is unacceptable.
I take full responsibily for contents of this blog
purported spray tan, tiny fingers, and dog whistle proclivities.
By CARL GREEN
By CARL GREEN