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Clinton Says She’ll "Put a Lot of Coal Companies and Coal Miners Out of Business"

Mother Jones

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Just one day after Hillary Clinton issued a lengthy apology for a controversial comment she made about Nancy Reagan’s contribution to the fight against AIDS, the Democratic front-runner made another unforced error during a CNN town hall event on Sunday night.

Speaking in Ohio about her plans to revitalize coal country, Clinton said, “We’re going to put a lot of coal companies and coal miners out of business.” That comment was immediately preceded by a promise to invest in the clean-energy economy in those places, and immediately followed by a pledge to “make it clear that we don’t want to forget those people.” But it’s not hard to guess which comment will end up as a sound bite in attack ads in coal states during the general election.

Clinton’s statement likely referred to her support for President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan, the cornerstone of his climate policy, which will require states to reduce their coal consumption in favor of natural gas, renewables, and energy efficiency. It garnered a quick rebuttal from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).

Obama’s climate regulations have little to do with the coal industry’s decline over the last decade. For one thing, they are currently held up in court, and they wouldn’t take effect for several years anyway. More important, coal is getting hammered by competition from natural gas made cheap by fracking, as well as the exploding solar and wind industries. In the last town hall, Clinton said that under her administration, “I do not think there will be many places in America where fracking will continue to take place.” Since a widespread decline in gas consumption would most likely lead to an increase in coal consumption, it’s possible that Clinton’s energy policy could be just the opposite of the “war on coal” Paul describes.

Although Bernie Sanders is also a vociferous proponent of clean energy, Clinton is so far the only candidate in the race to produce a specific plan for supporting coal communities affected by the transition to a cleaner energy economy. Still, Sanders appears to be crushing Clinton in coal states that have had primaries so far. So it probably doesn’t serve her campaign well to remind people that for a small number of communities, the fight against climate change could mean the end of a traditionally important field of employment.

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Clinton Says She’ll "Put a Lot of Coal Companies and Coal Miners Out of Business"

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JPMorgan pulls out of coal. Kinda

JPMorgan pulls out of coal. Kinda

By on 8 Mar 2016commentsShare

The death rattle of coal industry grew a little louder when JPMorgan Chase announced last week that the bank will no longer be directly financing new coal operations in the developed world. “We believe the financial services sector has an important role to play as governments implement policies to combat climate change, and that the trends toward more sustainable, low-carbon economies represent growing business opportunities,” said the bank in a statement.

JPMorgan joins a growing list of banks that have pledge to cut ties with coal, including Bank of America, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo. But before you start to think big banks are closet progressives, it’s best to keep in mind that even if they do cut ties that they are still following the money: Coal is a poor investment right now. Demand for coal in the U.S. has dropped 10 percent in the last three years, and it will drop off even more in the next 15, since replacing the power sector’s favorite fuel with renewable energy and natural gas is a key component of  Obama’s Clean Power Plan. Right now, production is at a 30-year low, and coal companies are going bust left and right. At the State of the Union in January, the president called on the elimination federal subsidies for fossil fuels as well as an end to cheap leases on federal lands for oil and coal companies. So while JPMorgan’s plan to pull back from coal is good, it’s also smart.

The coal industry, of course, disagrees. Bloomberg Business reports that the the National Mining Association called JPMorgan’s changes “hardly a heroic gesture” given the market downturn. “The bank hedges its bets on financing projects in developing countries, because, not surprisingly, that’s where the growth is and will be,” said Luke Popovich in an e-mail to Bloomberg.

He’s got a point: JPMorgan isn’t divesting from fuel entirely. The bank will continue to finance coal projects in developing nations using ultra-supercritical technology, which have lower emissions and higher efficiency than conventional plants. So while this is a step in the right direction, it’s just that: A step.

“In order to have a chance at stabilizing the climate, we need financial institutions to follow these commitments on coal mining with further steps to end coal financing altogether,” said Ben Collins, senior campaigner at the Rainforest Action Network, an organization lobbying for coal divestment. “It’s time for the financial sector to step up and lead the just transition we need to a clean, renewable future.”

Clearly, we’re not there yet, but with JPMorgan’s announcement, the death of Big Coal looks even more inevitable.

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JPMorgan pulls out of coal. Kinda

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California’s Bullet Train Just Gets Better and Better

Mother Jones

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California’s bullet train gets more appealing with every new business plan:

California will need to double down on support of the bullet train by digging deeper into the state’s wallet and accepting a three-year delay in completing the project’s initial leg, a new business plan for the 220-mph system shows.

….The new plan calls for completion of the entire system by 2029, one year later than under the old business plan. Once the initial system starts showing a profit, the business plan asserts, private investors would jump in with an estimated $21 billion, based on financial calculations.

….The 99-page plan and its backup technical documents again raise questions about service and speed. A sample operating schedule does not show any nonstop trains between Los Angeles and San Francisco. The fastest travel time between the cities would be 3 hours and 14 minutes, not the 2 hours and 40 minutes many people expect.

Yes, I’m sure private investors will be panting to invest, just like they’ve invested so much in iffy high-speed rail construction elsewhere in the world. They’ll be especially eager in another few years, when this project will undoubtedly be forecast to open around 2040 or so, and estimates of LA-SF travel time will be four hours. Who could say no?

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California’s Bullet Train Just Gets Better and Better

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Jeb Bush Drops Out of the Race for the GOP Presidential Nomination

Mother Jones

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Jeb Bush is out. After disappointing finishes in Iowa, New Hampshire, and now South Carolina, the former Florida governor announced Saturday evening that he is ending his run for the GOP presidential nomination.

“Tonight I am suspending my campaign,” said an emotional and tired-looking Bush. “Yeah, I am,” he confirmed, after a few people in the crowd shouted, “No!”

“In this campaign I have stood my ground, refusing to bend to the political winds,” he said. “Ideas matter, policy matters.”

To his fellow GOP contenders, Bush congratulated the candidates still “on the island.” Bush, who has taken an aggressive stance recently against front-runner Donald Trump, did not take this opportunity to attack the business mogul.

Bush’s debate performances steadily improved throughout the campaign, particularly when he began to take on Trump. But that failed to give his sagging campaign the lift it needed. Bush came in sixth place in Iowa, fourth in New Hampshire, and is at the back of the pack in South Carolina, far behind Trump, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio. For weeks, the press has noted the sad tone of Bush’s struggling campaign. Tonight, it’s finally over.

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Jeb Bush Drops Out of the Race for the GOP Presidential Nomination

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Maybe Twitter Isn’t Planning to Ruin Your Life After All

Mother Jones

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On Twitter, the big outrage over the past few days has been the news that the corporate suits are planning to change the way your Twitter feed works. Instead of simply listing every tweet from your followers in real time, they’ll be rolling out an algorithm that reorders tweets “based on what Twitter’s algorithm thinks people most want to see.” This is something Facebook has been doing for years.

Power users are apoplectic, despite the fact that it’s not clear what’s really going on. A developer at Twitter hit back with this: “Seriously people. We aren’t idiots. Quit speculating about how we’re going to ‘ruin Twitter.'” Nor is it clear when this is really going to roll out. And the rumors suggest that it will be an opt-in feature anyway. Chronological timelines will still be around for everyone who wants them.

In any case, I’d suggest everyone give this a chance. Computer users, ironically, are notoriously change averse, which might be blinding a lot of us to the fact that chronological timelines aren’t exactly the greatest invention since the yellow first down line. Maybe we really do need something better. More generally, here are a few arguments in favor of waiting to see how this all plays out:

I’m a semi-power user. I don’t write a lot on Twitter,1 but I read it a lot. Still, I have a job and a life, and I don’t check it obsessively. And even though I follow a mere 200 people, all it takes is 15 minutes to make it nearly impossible to catch up with what’s going on. Being on the West Coast makes this an especial problem in the morning. A smart robot that helped solve this problem could be pretty handy, even for those of us who are experts and generally prefer a real-time feed.
One of my most common frustrations is coming back to the computer after a break and seeing lots of cryptic references to some new outrage or other. What I’d really like is a “WTF is this all about?” button. An algorithmic feed could be a useful version of this.
As plenty of people have noted, Twitter is a sexist, racist, misogynistic cesspool. There are things Twitter could do about this, but I suspect they’re limited as long as we rely on an unfiltered chronological timeline. Once an algorithm is introduced, it might well be possible to personalize your timeline in ways that clean up Twitter immensely. (Or that allow Twitter to clean it up centrally—though this obviously needs to be done with a lot of care.)
One of the most persuasive complaints about the algorithm is that it’s likely to favor the interests of advertisers more than users. Maybe so. Unfortunately, Twitter famously doesn’t seem able to find a profitable business model. But if we like Twitter, the first order of business is for it to stay in existence—and that means it needs to make money. This is almost certain to be annoying no matter how Twitter manages to do it. A good algorithm might actually be the least annoying way of accomplishing this.
Needless to say, all of this depends on how good the algorithm is. It better be pretty good, and it better improve over time.

So….stay cool, everyone. Maybe this will be an epic, New Coke style disaster that will end up as a case study in business texts for years. It wouldn’t be the first time. Then again, maybe the algorithm will be subtle, useful, and optional. I’ll be curious to try it out, myself.

1Arguments on Twitter are possibly the stupidest waste of time ever invented. Everything that’s bad about arguments in the first place is magnified tenfold by the 140-character limit. It’s hard to imagine that anyone other than a psychopath has ever emerged from a Twitter war thinking “That was great! I really learned something today.”

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Maybe Twitter Isn’t Planning to Ruin Your Life After All

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Hillary Clinton Says the Best Way to Rein in Lobbyists Is to Shame Them

Mother Jones

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Asked at a town hall meeting at New Hampshire’s Henniker College how to handle the increasing role of moneyed interests in Washington, Hillary Clinton told supporters that lobbyists should be exposed and publicly called out.

“Maybe use social media? Maybe make a concerted effort to really call these people out all the time, get some social pressure on them, get people to know their names,” Clinton suggested, pointing, with obvious relish, to how the New York Daily News has taken to calling the National Rifle Association president Wayne LaPierre “Jihadi Wayne” for his refusal to support blocking individuals on the “no fly list” from getting gun permits.

“We’ve got to try new tactics, we’ve got to go after them and we have got to have tougher laws,” Clinton said.

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Hillary Clinton Says the Best Way to Rein in Lobbyists Is to Shame Them

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How America’s Gun Manufacturers Are Quietly Getting Richer Off Taxpayers

Mother Jones

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In January 2013, a month after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the state of New York passed gun control legislation that included a ban on the retail sale of assault weapons. Soon after, Remington Outdoor Company, the maker of the Bushmaster assault rifle used in the massacre, announced it would lay off workers at its 200-year-old factory in Ilion and move production to Huntsville, Alabama. Then CEO George Kollitides explained in a letter to New York officials that the move was brought on by “state policies affecting use of our products.”

The gun lobby crowed about political payback: “We hope that sends a very strong message,” remarked then National Rifle Association’s president, Jim Porter, on an NRA radio show. What Porter didn’t mention was what Alabama had done to sweeten the deal: By relocating to Huntsville, Remington, a $1 billion firearms conglomerate owned by the Manhattan private-equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, would receive state and local grants, tax breaks, and other incentives worth approximately $69 million—the equivalent of getting about $14 from every resident of Alabama.

Since 2003, state and local governments from Alabama to Tennessee have given more than $120 million worth of taxpayer funds to at least seven major firearms companies, according to research by Mother Jones. Most of those subsidies—nearly $100 million—have been pledged just over the past three years by states seeking to lure gun producers from the Northeast, where new firearm regulations have angered industry leaders.

“I’ve had CEOs in New England tell me that the offers from states’ economic development teams are so extraordinary that they could essentially move their factories for free,” Larry Keane, senior vice president of the National Shooting Sports Federation, told Guns & Ammo. “In some cases they’ve received these offers almost daily over extended periods of time.”

After Maryland passed stringent new gun regulations in 2013, Beretta announced it would shutter its factory there and relocate to a state that has shown “consistent, strong support for Second Amendment rights,” as its attorney, Jeff Reh, put it at the time. But politics wasn’t the only factor in Beretta’s move. The city of Gallatin, Tennessee, eventually won the new factory after it offered Beretta $14.4 million in state and local subsidies. “The level of community support was better,” a Beretta spokesman acknowledged in the Charlotte Business Journal, explaining why that city had lost its bid for the plant.

Southern states have long relied on financial and regulatory incentives to attract manufacturers from more industrialized parts of the country. “I think Remington is doing what Mercedes did for us in the automobile business—it opens the door to opportunity,” Porter told the Birmingham Business Journal. Yet Porter suggested gun companies would enjoy an exceptional welcome: “You will have the support of the administration, you will have the support of the population—everybody in the state is going to be lining up to work for Remington.”

Major politicians have gone the extra mile to attract gun companies. In wooing the Beretta factory, Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam flew to Italy and met with the Beretta family in a posh wine country villa. Haslam later invited Franco Gussalli Beretta, the head of the company’s American subsidiary, to the governor’s mansion for dinner. Nobody in Tennessee seemed to object to the deal’s $14.4 million price tag. “We believe that our brand as the state of Tennessee has taken on new luster because Beretta has chosen to locate here,” Haslan said at the groundbreaking ceremony, “and we are forever grateful.”

Another incentive for gun companies to relocate south has been lax labor laws. In an interview with the New Hampshire Union Leader, a Sturm Ruger spokesman admitted the company built a new plant in North Carolina instead of expanding an existing one in Newport, New Hampshire, because it wanted to set up shop in a right-to-work state. Similarly, Remington’s move from New York to Alabama, another right-to-work state, decimated the New York plant’s trade union.

Some Northeastern states have also funneled tax dollars to the firearms industry. Between 2009 and 2014, New York-based Kimber Manufacturing received nearly $1 million in tax abatements and state and local grants—money meant to ensure the company would keep cranking out upwards of 150,000 handguns a year with its factory in Yonkers. Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts have also offered incentives to attract or retain gun manufacturers. But most such enticements are now in the South.

Here are the seven gun companies that have received state and local subsidies in recent years:

Remington Arms, Madison, North Carolina
Move: Owned by a New York private equity fund, Remington in 2014 laid off more than 100 workers at its 200-year-old unionized factory in Ilion, New York (the site of its original headquarters) and opened a new nonunion factory in Huntsville, Alabama.
Subsidy: $68.9 million in cash, worker training, tax abatements, real estate, and construction work from state and local governments. The company also received nearly $12 million in grants, tax credits, and other benefits from New York, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Oklahoma in exchange for training workers and expanding or retaining factories.

Sturm Ruger, Southport, Connecticut
Move: In 2014, the nation’s largest gun company opened a new factory in Mayodan, North Carolina, instead of expanding an existing factory in New Hampshire.
Subsidy: $15.5 million in state tax breaks, employee training, infrastructure construction, and other incentives. The company has also received $150,288 in training subsidies from New Hampshire.

Berretta USA, Accokeek, Maryland
Move: The Italian gun maker last year closed its Maryland plant and moved all US production to a massive factory in Gallatin, Tennessee.
Subsidy: The company will receive $10.41 million in state-funded building improvements and job training grants. The town of Gallatin also kicked in land and tax abatements worth nearly $4 million.

Smith & Wesson, Springfield, Massachusetts.
Move: Publicly traded Smith & Wesson announced in 2010 that it would move its hunting rifle division from New Hampshire to Springfield, Massachusetts.
Subsidy: $6.6 million in state and local tax breaks. The company has also received $158,791 in worker-training subsidies from Massachusetts.

Colt’s Manufacturing, Hartford, Connecticut
Move: In 2011 Florida Gov. Rick Scott announced a deal in which the 180-year-old gun company would open a factory in Kissimmee, saying it showed the state was “a defender of our right to bear arms.” But then Colt walked away from the project for unknown reasons. The company declared bankruptcy last year.
Subsidy: $1.66 million in state and local incentives. Government officials are now trying to claw back the money.

O.F. Mossberg & Sons, North Haven, Connecticut.
Move: The world’s largest manufacturer of pump-action shotguns has gradually shifted manufacturing from Connecticut to a factory in Eagle Pass, Texas. In 2014, it added 116,000 square feet to the factory, which now accounts for 90 percent of its production.
Subsidy: A $300,000 grant in 2014 from the taxpayer-funded Texas Enterprise Fund.

Kimber Manufacturing, Elmsford, New York
Move: America’s largest manufacturer of 1911 pistols hasn’t moved out of New York—at least not yet. In 2012 the company warned that the state’s NY SAFE gun control law might “cause it to reconsider its current expansion.”
Subsidy: In 2009, Kimber received a $700,000 state grant to expand its manufacturing capacity in Yonkers. In 2012 and 2013, it received nearly $300,000 in local tax credits.

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How America’s Gun Manufacturers Are Quietly Getting Richer Off Taxpayers

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Quote of the Day: The Simple, Ever-So-Simple World of Donald Trump

Mother Jones

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Behold the business acumen of Donald Trump:

Donald Trump says he’s unfazed by the prospect of running against Michael Bloomberg….At one point, Trump cast doubt on Bloomberg’s business success, suggesting that the head of the Bloomberg media empire wasn’t actually worth the $36.5 billion estimated by Forbes. “I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it,” Trump said.

“I mean if somebody came in…and comes up with a better machine than him, people stop using it,” Trump said. “I don’t even know why other companies haven’t come up with a better machine. I mean why? It’s so simple.

This comes from a man who managed to run into the ground an airline, a hotel, a casino empire, and an endless series of late-night shills. But he apparently has no idea why Bloomberg terminals are popular, nor any idea that Bloomberg has a number of large competitors. Compare to this:

“I mean if somebody came in…and builds a better car than Toyota, people stop buying them. I don’t even know why other companies haven’t come up with a better car. I mean why? It’s so simple.”

This is the same man who says it’s “so simple” to get Mexico to pay for a wall and force China to stop devaluing its currency; that he would “totally succeed” in creating jobs, reducing the budget deficit, stopping nuclear weapons in Iran, and saving Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; that it’s “easy” to get OPEC to produce more oil; and that it’s “very simple” to get ISIS to surrender.

Now you understand why Trump thinks everything is easy. It’s because he has no idea what goes into any of this stuff. Every time he tries to do something that’s even slightly out of his wheelhouse (namely property development and bluster) he fails miserably, but he still thinks everything is easy. And his fans believe him.

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Quote of the Day: The Simple, Ever-So-Simple World of Donald Trump

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Fox Should Ask the GOP Candidates These Questions at Tonight’s Debate

Mother Jones

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On Thursday night, the Republican 2016 wannabes will once again gather for a debate, with the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary just weeks away. Though each of these candidates has been on the debate stage multiple times this campaign—and has occasionally granted interviews to reporters—there are still many questions that they have not had to address. So editors and reporters at Mother Jones have compiled a short list of queries that we’d put to the GOP candidates. Kudos to Fox Business Network if any of these get asked.

Donald Trump

* When you appeared on the talk show of conspiracy theory promoter Alex Jones, you told him that his “reputation is amazing” and added, “I will not let you down.” Jones has championed many conspiratorial notions, including that the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School never happened and that the attacks on the World Trade Center were an inside job. So what’s “amazing” about him?

* Why did you cut a deal with Amar Mammadov—an Azerbajani businessman accused of cronyism and profiting off his family’s ties to the government—to open a new Trump hotel in Baku?

* How many new government employee will be needed to implement your plan to bar Muslims from entering the nation? Given that any would-be terrorist who happens to be Muslim would likely lie about his or her religion to reach the United States, you couldn’t rely on the statements provided by foreigners trying to get into the United States. So then wouldn’t you need an army of federal workers to investigate each person coming into the United States? And how much would this anti-Muslim program cost?

* Can you now explain what the nuclear triad is?

Ted Cruz

* Your father, Rafael Cruz, who is an evangelical pastor, has often resorted to fiery, if not extremist, rhetoric. He has called the United States a “Christian nation,” and he has said that President Barack Obama is an “outright Marxist” who “seeks to destroy all concept of God” and should be sent “back to Kenya.” Most of us would not want to be judged on the basis of what a relative says. But you have extensively used your father as a campaign surrogate and to recruit religious leaders as supporters of your campaign. Would you disavow these comments?

* You have described Trump’s efforts to raise questions about you eligibility to be president—due to your birth in Canada—as a “silly” sideshow. But some of your own supporters, such as Rep. Steve King of Iowa, have questioned whether Obama was born in the United States and whether he is eligible to be president—even though, like you, his mother was indisputably a US citizen. Have King and other conservative birthers engaged in a silly sideshow?

* As a candidate, you have advocated tort reform—that is, imposing a cap of $750,000 on punitive damages that can be awarded in cases of malpractice or corporate malfeasance. Yet when you were a lawyer in private practice, you twice worked on cases to secure $50 million-plus jury awards in tort cases. Why the double standard?

Marco Rubio

* You’ve supported background checks for gun purchases in the past. Now you’re attacking the president for a similar proposal. Why have you flip-flopped?

* In a recent campaign ad, you attacked Obama for spying on Israel. Do you believe the US government should never mount any intelligence-gathering operations regarding Israel and that the United States should not spy on Israel to detect possible Israeli intelligence actions aimed at the US government or American corporations?

Ben Carson

* More than half of every dollar your campaign has raised has gone into the bank accounts of the consultants you’ve hired to raise that money. Why should conservatives continue opening up their checkbooks for a cause that’s mainly enriching political professionals?

* In a 2013 book, you wrote that people who commit health care fraud should suffer “some very stiff penalties…such as loss of one’s medical license for life, no less than ten years in prison, and loss of all of one’s personal possessions.” Yet you are in business with a former dentist who pleaded guilty to health care fraud. How does a candidate who campaigns on honesty and integrity explain this?

* You are a Seventh-day Adventist, and in a talk you gave in 2014 you indicated that you accept the church’s belief that a time will come when Seventh-day Adventists will be imprisoned by the government and even put to death merely for observing the Sabbath on Saturday, not Sunday. Do you truly think the US government will one day round up, jail, and possibly execute Seventh-day Adventists?

* Please name your favorite surgeon general and explain your choice.

Jeb Bush

* Paul Wolfowitz, a deputy secretary of defense in your brother’s administration, was one of the architects of the Iraq War, and prior to the invasion he made a series of predictions about the war that were wildly inaccurate. Why did you sign him up as a foreign policy adviser for your campaign?

Chris Christie

* Your administration in New Jersey has vigorously fought open-records requests for a wide variety of government documents: your schedule, your travel records, and contracts you handed out following Superstorm Sandy. Do you have a problem with transparency?

John Kasich

* You’ve said, “When you die and get to the meeting with Saint Peter, he’s probably not going to ask you much about what you did about keeping government small. But he is going to ask you what you did for the poor. You better have a good answer.” But as governor you have decreased food aid for the poor in Ohio in a manner that disproportionately affects minority communities. What do you think Saint Peter will say to that?

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Fox Should Ask the GOP Candidates These Questions at Tonight’s Debate

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How the Leader of the Oregon Armed Protest Benefited From a Federal Loan Program

Mother Jones

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As one of the leaders of a band of armed, anti-government activists who have taken over a National Park Service building in Oregon, Ammon Bundy has denounced the “tyranny” of the federal government. And he has brought a new round of attention to the anti-government militia movement that in 2014 rallied behind his father, Cliven Bundy, when the elder Bundy and armed supporters confronted federal agents in Nevada. But not long ago, Ammon Bundy sought out help from the government he now decries and received a federal small-business loan guarantee.

Ammon Bundy runs a Phoenix-based company called Valet Fleet Services LLC, which specializes in repairing and maintaining fleets of semitrucks throughout Arizona. On April 15, 2010—Tax Day, as it happens—Bundy’s business borrowed $530,000 through a Small Business Administration loan guarantee program. The available public record does not indicate what the loan was used for or whether it was repaid. The SBA website notes that this loan guarantee was issued under a program “to aid small businesses which are unable to obtain financing in the private credit marketplace.” The government estimated that this subsidy could cost taxpayers $22,419. Bundy did not respond to an email request for comment about the SBA loan.

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How the Leader of the Oregon Armed Protest Benefited From a Federal Loan Program

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