BIDENOMICS

‘Wowza’: Economists thrilled with ‘huge’ jobs report and wages outpacing prices

David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement
October 4, 2024 

U.S. President Joe Biden (Photo by Antonio Masiello/Getty Images)

The September jobs report is a stunning confirmation of just how "strong" and "resilient" the U.S economy is, according to economic experts who are celebrating Friday morning.

"US economy smashes expectations with 254,000 jobs added in September," The Financial Times reports, "far outstripping expectations."

"Wowza: HUGE jobs report," exclaimed Professor of economics Justin Wolfers, a senior fellow at Brookings and a frequent guest on cable news. "This economic expansion that is motoring along."

"This is a great September jobs report," declared The Washington Post's Heather Long. "The 'soft landing' is still on track."

The New York Times' economic reporter, Talmon Joseph Smith, summed up the news

Economists had expected 140,000 to 159,000 new jobs. The unemployment rate fell to 4.1%, continuing the Biden administration's historic record of producing and maintaining unemployment at five-decade lows.

"Average hourly earnings grew 0.4% last month, and are now up 4.0% over the year. There's no question that wages are running ahead of prices, and people are seeing meaningful real wage gains," he added. Wolfers says he's "been relentlessly optimistic about the economy for the past couple of years, and it's felt lonely at times during the drumbeat of 'recession' talk, but it's also been a pretty great place to be. If you were looking for what a soft landing looks like, this is it."

Bloomberg News adds, "Unemployment for major ethnic groups -- Black, White, Hispanic -- fell, while the Asian unemployment rate held steady."

President Biden, who worked with the dockworkers union to bring an extraordinarily fast end to their strike that ended after just three days this week, took a victory lap.

"Today, we received good news for American workers and families with more than 250,000 new jobs in September and unemployment back down at 4.1%," President Biden said in a statement. "With today’s report, we’ve created 16 million jobs, unemployment remains low, and wages are growing faster than prices. Under my Administration, unemployment has been the lowest in 50 years, a record 19 million new businesses have been created, and inflation and interest rates are falling. And we’re seeing the power of collective bargaining to lift up workers’ wages—including the progress made by dockworkers on record wages with carriers, and port operators and the reopening of East Coast and Gulf ports."

Biden also took a swipe at Republicans.

"Congress should pass our plan to build millions of new homes, expand prescription drug price caps, empower workers and protect the right to organize, and cut taxes for hardworking families. Congressional Republicans have a different plan—more giant tax cuts for billionaires and big corporations, ending the Affordable Care Act, undermining workers by cutting overtime and making it harder to organize, and imposing a national sales tax that would raise costs by nearly $4,000 per year. While they put billionaires first, we’ll keep fighting to grow the middle class."

See the social media posts above or at this link.

US hiring soars past expectations in sign of resilient market


By AFP
October 4, 2024

The United States added 254,000 jobs in September, much more than expected, while the jobless rate edged down according to government data 

- Copyright AFP/File Patrick T. FALLON

Beiyi SEOW

Hiring in the United States picked up significantly more than expected in September while the jobless rate crept lower, according to government data released Friday, offering relief to policymakers ahead of November’s election.

The world’s biggest economy added 254,000 jobs last month, the Department of Labor said. This was markedly higher than August’s 159,000 number, which was also revised upwards.

A consensus estimate by Dow Jones had expected growth of 150,000.

The unemployment rate dipped from 4.2 percent to 4.1 percent, the report added.

The health of the job market has come into focus over recent months as high interest rates bite — but the pick-up in hiring should assuage concerns that the Federal Reserve waited too long to slash rates last month, risking a downturn.

Economic issues are also among the most important for voters ahead of November’s presidential election, as households grapple with higher costs of living after high inflation during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Fed had rapidly hiked the benchmark lending rate in 2022 to ease demand and tamp down surging inflation. Price increases have eased in recent times, allowing the central bank to begin rate reductions.

As for wages, average hourly earnings in September were up 0.4 percent from a month ago to $35.36, slightly above expectations.

From a year ago, wages have risen by 4.0 percent, the report noted.

– Strike impact? –

The Fed’s half percentage point rate cut in September was “unusually large” according to Dan North, senior economist for Allianz Trade North America.

“It’s most likely that the Fed cut so much because it felt that it had fallen behind in its mission to balance employment and inflation,” he told AFP.

The stronger than expected report on Friday might mean the Fed can take a more gradual path to rate cuts, given that the economy appears to be holding up.

On Friday, the Labor Department noted that “employment continued to trend up” in areas like food services, health care, government and construction.

But economist Nancy Vanden Houten of Oxford Economics warned that even though a strike by Boeing workers did not affect September’s employment data much, it could weigh on job growth if it persists through mid-October.

About 33,000 workers in the Pacific Northwest region walked off the job on September 13, effectively shutting down assembly plants for the 737 MAX and 777 after overwhelmingly voting down a contract offer.

“Hurricane Helene may also weigh on job growth in October,” she added.

Watch: Fox Business scrambles to put negative spin on blockbuster new jobs report

Brad Reed

RAW STORY
October 4, 2024 

Maria Bartiromo. (Jacqueline Zaccor/Flickr)

A panel on Fox Business scrambled on Friday to put a negative spin on a blockbuster new jobs report that showed more than 250,000 jobs were created in September.

Even though the new report showed not only strong growth in hiring but also growth in wages significantly outpacing inflation, panelist Joanie Bily nonetheless believed it showed a weak economy if you simply disregard a large number of the jobs that were created.

"When you dig into the data in this report, you can see that those jobs are really created and coming from health care and then leisure and hospitality," she said. "Those are the two big sectors, almost 160,000 of those jobs created in September came from those sectors... the leisure and hospitality are low-paying jobs."

She then told viewers to focus on a net loss of 7,000 manufacturing jobs over the month and the fact that the construction sector "only" gained 25,000 jobs on the month.

"So if you take out those two sectors, this really isn't a blockbuster report," she explained.

In fact, if you take out the 160,000 of the 250,000 jobs created, it would still lead to a net result of 140,000 jobs created, which would be in line with the consensus expectation of 150,000 created in September.

Nonetheless, this argument was enough to convince host Maria Bartiromo.

"I'm changing my tune on this," she said of the report. "We're looking at low-paying jobs... we're looking at government jobs... these are the jobs where, okay, that's fine, but these aren't the jobs that we want to see growing!"

Watch the video below or at this link.

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Revealed: Anti-Trump Larry Hogan’s ties to Project 2025 and billionaire MAGA donors

Alexandria Jacobson, Investigative Reporter
October 3, 2024

RAW STORY 

Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Larry Hogan, former governor of Maryland (Bastien INZAURRALDE/AFP)

This article was paid for by Raw Story subscribers. 

As wealthy Republican donors funnel millions into Larry Hogan's U.S. Senate campaign, the former governor of Maryland has distanced himself from former President Donald Trump and the controversial conservative “presidential transition” plan, Project 2025.

Yet, according to a Raw Story analysis of federal financial records, Hogan’s campaign has still benefited from donations from billionaire Trump supporters and individuals working at organizations involved with Project 2025.

Hogan is running in a surprisingly competitive race in what’s typically solidly blue Maryland against Democrat Angela Alsobrooks. Last week, a poll from the Washington Post and the University of Maryland shows Alsobrooks, a Prince George’s County executive, with a double-digit lead over Hogan, who was previously heavily favored by voters in a March poll.

The Republican presidential nominee endorsed Hogan in June, but Hogan confirmed in an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday that he would not be voting for Trump, whom he said he didn’t vote for in 2016 or 2020 either.

“I’ve said for years that Trump’s divisive rhetoric is something that we could do without. I think he’s his own worst enemy,” Hogan said in the interview with Robert Costa.

Hogan also has taken to blasting the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, which calls for curtailing abortion access, increasing deportations, eliminating government agencies like the Department of Education and banning transgender athletes from sports as part of a plan for a conservative presidency.

In a Washington Post op-ed, Hogan said Project 2025 “shreds American values” and said calling its ideas “radical” is a “disservice.” In campaign communications, Hogan said codifying Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision protecting the right to abortion, and leading the “fight against Project 2025” were part of his top five commitments.

Trump has disavowed Project 2025, but his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), has close ties with the Heritage Foundation and its founder, Forbes reported. According to CNN, more than 140 former Trump administration officials were involved in its creation.


Blake Kernen, a spokeswoman for Hogan’s campaign, did not answer Raw Story’s questions about donations from individuals whose employers were cited as being involved with Project 2025.

“Governor Hogan’s only ‘role’ in Project 2025 is being the leading Republican in America to oppose it, and he is fully committed to fighting against it in Congress,” Kernen told Raw Story via email.

Kernen did not respond to Raw Story’s questions about Trump megadonors contributing to fundraising committees benefitting Hogan’s campaign.

Trump billionaire donors support Hogan

Maryland’s Future, a super PAC supporting Hogan, has received donations of more than $100,000 – and as much as $10 million — from 12 wealthy Republican donors, some of whom support Trump, according to The Washington Post.

The PAC is spending $18.3 million on TV ads during the last six weeks of the Hogan-Alsobrooks race, according to The Washington Post.

According to a Raw Story review of records from the Federal Election Commission, at least three of the top 26 billionaire donors to Trump (as reported by Forbes) have also contributed to Hogan’s campaign.

Republican megadonor Kenneth Griffin, CEO of the hedge fund Citadel, donated the most to Maryland's Future PAC: $10 million. According to Federal Election Commission filings, he also contributed $6,600 to Hogan for Maryland, Hogan's principal campaign committee.

Fortune reported that Griffin has not donated to Trump’s campaign but reportedly met with him in July about financing his presidential campaign.


Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman and his wife, Christine Schwarzman, donated $2 million to Maryland's Future and $6,600 each to Hogan for Maryland. Schwarzman contributed $419,600 to a joint fundraising committee supporting Trump, according to The Washington Post.

Warren Stephens, CEO of the private investment bank Stephens, Inc., gave $1 million to Maryland's Future and $6,600 to Hogan for Maryland, according to the Federal Election Commission. He also donated $2 million to the Make America Great Again Inc. super PAC and $250,000 to another pro-Trump fundraising committee, according to The Washington Post.

As for other Trump megadonors, Linda McMahon, the wife of Vince McMahon, the World Wrestling Entertainment mogul under investigation for sex trafficking, has donated $16 million to Trump campaign committees, according to Forbes.


According to Federal Election Commission records, she also donated $6,600 to Hogan for Maryland.


McMahon is chair of the board and chair of the Center for the American Worker for the America First Policy Institute, a conservative nonprofit think tank founded in 2021 to promote Trump's public policy agenda.


Carla Sands, former Trump administration ambassador to Denmark, is also involved with the America First Policy Institute as vice chair for the Center for Energy and Environment. Sands is credited with contributing to Project 2025, noting her affiliation with the America First Policy Institute.



Screen grab from Project 2025 document crediting Carla Sands and Justin Schwab (https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLead...)


Marc Lotter, chief communications officer for the America First Policy Institute, told Raw Story via email that the nonprofit “does not endorse any candidates” and is “not in any way affiliated with Project 2025.”


“Ambassador Sands' work occurred in her personal capacity and should have been reflected as such. At no time was AFPI aware of her participation, nor was she authorized to use her AFPI affiliation," Lotter said.

Lotter added, “Ms. McMahon was not aware nor involved in Ambassador Sands's personal work. The use of her AFPI affiliation was not authorized.”

Kelsy Warren, CEO of oil company Energy Transfer Partners, has donated nearly $6 million to Trump’s campaign, according to Forbes. He has also donated $6,600 to Hogan for Maryland, according to the Federal Election Commission.

Steve Wynn, a real estate developer who created notable Las Vegas casinos and hotels but stepped down due to sexual assault allegations he denies, has given Trump campaign groups $1.1 million, according to Forbes. He and his wife, Andrea Wynn, each gave $6,600 to Hogan for Maryland, according to the Federal Election Commission.
Project 2025 questions

While Hogan maintains his condemnation of Project 2025, he previously appointed Robert Moffit, a senior fellow in the Heritage Foundation's Center for Health Policy Studies, as chairman of the Maryland Health Care Commission while serving as governor of Maryland.

Kernen did not respond to Raw Story’s questions about whether Hogan stands by Moffit’s 2017 appointment.

In the 900-page Project 2025 document, two individuals who worked with CGCN, an all-Republican lobbying firm, and its separate law firm, are credited as contributors: Aaron Szabo, now a government and regulatory affairs attorney with Faegre Drinker, and Justin Schwab, founder of CGCN law.

According to his candidate financial disclosure filed with the U.S. Senate in April, Hogan worked with CGCN as a consultant. His campaign manager, David Weinman, was also a former senior vice president with CGCN.


Hogan’s involvement with CGCN was “limited to consulting in support of President Biden’s cancer moonshot initiative,” Kernen told Raw Story. Weinman did not work on Project 2025, according to the campaign.

Hogan did not work with Szabo or Schwab and CGCN Law, according to the Hogan campaign.

Szabo and Schwab did not respond to Raw Story’s request for comment.

Shane Jackson, president of Jackson Healthcare and board member for the Foundation for Government Accountability, gave Hogan for Maryland, $3,300. The Foundation for Government Accountability, a conservative public policy think tank, is credited as being part of the advisory board for Project 2025.

The Foundation for Government Accountability and Jackson did not respond to Raw Story’s request for comment.


Two executive committee members of the Middle East Forum each contributed to the Hogan for Maryland committee. The Middle East Forum, a conservative nonprofit think tank focused on promoting "American interests in the Middle East" and protecting "the West from Middle Eastern threats," is credited as part of the advisory board on the Project 2025 website.

Executive committee member Nordahl Brue contributed $2,000 to Hogan for Maryland, and another committee member, Joshua Katzen, contributed $500.

“As a nonprofit organization, the Middle East Forum does not endorse political candidates or campaigns. Our policies and operations are guided by our mission, not by the personal political activities of individuals associated with our organization,” Gregg Roman, chief operating officer for the Middle East Forum, told Raw Story via email.



Screen grab of Project 2025 advisory board website page showing Middle East Forum credited (https://www.project2025.org/about/advisory-board/)


Roman referred questions about “individual donations or personal involvement in political projects” to the specific individuals. Brue and Katzen could not be reached for comment.

Roman did not respond to Raw Story's questions about the nature of the Middle East Forum's involvement with Project 2025.

Alexandria Jacobson is a Chicago-based investigative reporter at Raw Story, focusing on money in politics, government accountability and electoral politics. Prior to joining Raw Story in 2023, Alex reported extensively on social justice, business and tech issues for several news outlets, including ABC News, the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune. She can be reached at alexandria@rawstory.com. More about Alexandria Jacobson.

Inside the State Department’s weapons pipeline to Israel

Brett Murphy, ProPublica
October 4, 2024 

Smoke rises above buildings at sunrise in the aftermath of Israeli bombardment in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip (AFP)

LONG READ

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

Reporting Highlights

More Bombs: Ambassador Jack Lew urged Washington to give thousands more bombs to the Israelis because they have a “decades-long proven track record” of avoiding killing civilians.

A Thank-You: After State Department officials spent months working through weekends and after hours on arms sales, the Israelis sent cases of wine to them just before Christmas.

A Lobbying Push: Defense contractors and lobbyists have also helped push along valuable sales by leaning on State Department officials and lawmakers whenever there’s a holdup.

These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.

In late January, as the death toll in Gaza climbed to 25,000 and droves of Palestinians fled their razed cities in search of safety, Israel’s military asked for 3,000 more bombs from the American government. U.S. Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew, along with other top diplomats in the Jerusalem embassy, sent a cable to Washington urging State Department leaders to approve the sale, saying there was no potential the Israel Defense Forces would misuse the weapons.

The cable did not mention the Biden administration’s public concerns over the growing civilian casualties, nor did it address well-documented reports that Israel had dropped 2,000-pound bombs on crowded areas of Gaza weeks earlier, collapsing apartment buildings and killing hundreds of Palestinians, many of whom were children. Lew was aware of the issues. Officials say his own staff had repeatedly highlighted attacks where large numbers of civilians died. Homes of the embassy’s own Palestinian employees had been targeted by Israeli airstrikes.
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Still, Lew and his senior leadership argued that Israel could be trusted with this new shipment of bombs, known as GBU-39s, which are smaller and more precise. Israel’s air force, they asserted, had a “decades-long proven track record” of avoiding killing civilians when using the American-made bomb and had “demonstrated an ability and willingness to employ it in [a] manner that minimizes collateral damage.”

While that request was pending, the Israelis proved those assertions wrong. In the months that followed, the Israeli military repeatedly dropped GBU-39s it already possessed on shelters and refugee camps that it said were being occupied by Hamas soldiers, killing scores of Palestinians. Then, in early August, the IDF bombed a school and mosque where civilians were sheltering. At least 93 died. Children’s bodies were so mutilated their parents had trouble identifying them.

Weapons analysts identified shrapnel from GBU-39 bombs among the rubble.


In the months before and since, an array of State Department officials urged that Israel be completely or partially cut off from weapons sales under laws that prohibit arming countries with a pattern or clear risk of violations. Top State Department political appointees repeatedly rejected those appeals. Government experts have for years unsuccessfully tried to withhold or place conditions on arms sales to Israel because of credible allegations that the country had violated Palestinians’ human rights using American-made weapons.

On Jan. 31, the day after the embassy delivered its assessment, Secretary of State Antony Blinken hosted an agency-wide town hall at an auditorium at the State Department headquarters where he fielded pointed questions from his subordinates about Gaza. He said the suffering of civilians was “absolutely gut wrenching and heartbreaking,” according to a transcript of the meeting.

“But it is a question of making judgments,” Blinken said of his agency’s efforts to minimize harm. “We started with the premise on October 7 that Israel had the right to defend itself, and more than the right to defend itself, the right to try to ensure that October 7 would never happen again.”


The embassy’s endorsement and Blinken’s statements reflect what many at the State Department have understood to be their mission for nearly a year. As one former official who served at the embassy put it, the unwritten policy was to “protect Israel from scrutiny” and facilitate the arms flow no matter how many human rights abuses are reported. “We can’t admit that’s a problem,” this former official said.

The embassy has even historically resisted accepting funds from the State Department’s Middle East bureau earmarked for investigating human rights issues throughout Israel because embassy leaders didn’t want to insinuate that Israel might have such problems, according to Mike Casey, a former U.S. diplomat in Jerusalem. “In most places our goal is to address human rights violations,” Casey added. “We don’t have that in Jerusalem.”

Last week, ProPublica detailed how the government’s two foremost authorities on humanitarian assistance — the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department’s refugees bureau — concluded in the spring that Israel had deliberately blocked deliveries of food and medicine into Gaza and that weapons sales should be halted. But Blinken rejected those findings as well and, weeks later, told Congress that the State Department had concluded that Israel was not blocking aid.


The episodes uncovered by ProPublica, which have not been previously detailed, offer an inside look at how and why the highest ranking policymakers in the U.S. government have continued to approve sales of American weapons to Israel in the face of a mounting civilian death toll and evidence of almost daily human rights abuses. This article draws from a trove of internal cables, email threads, memos, meeting minutes and other State Department records, as well as interviews with current and former officials throughout the agency, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

The records and interviews also show that the pressure to keep the arms pipeline moving also comes from the U.S. military contractors who make the weapons. Lobbyists for those companies have routinely pressed lawmakers and State Department officials behind the scenes to approve shipments both to Israel and other controversial allies in the region, including Saudi Arabia. When one company executive pushed his former subordinate at the department for a valuable sale, the government official reminded him that strategizing over the deal might violate federal lobbying laws, emails show.

The Biden administration’s repeated willingness to give the IDF a pass has only emboldened the Israelis, experts told ProPublica. Today, as Israel and Iran trade blows, the risk of a regional war is as great as it has been in decades and the cost of that American failure has become more apparent, critics charge.


“The reaffirmation of impunity has come swiftly and unequivocally,” said Daniel Levy, who served in the Israeli military before holding various prominent positions as a government official and adviser throughout the ’90s. He later became one of the founders of the advocacy group J Street and president of the U.S./Middle East Project.

Levy said there is virtually no threat of accountability for Israel’s conduct in Gaza, only “a certainty of carte blanche.” Or, as another State Department official said, “If there’s never any consequences for doing it, then why stop doing it?”

The war in Gaza has waged for nearly a year without signs of abating. There are at least 41,000 Palestinians dead, by local estimates. Israel says its actions have been legal and legitimate, unlike those of Hamas, which killed more than 1,100 Israelis, mostly civilians, on Oct. 7 and continues to hold dozens of hostages.


The U.S. has been a stalwart ally of Israel for decades, with presidents of both parties praising the country as a beacon of democracy in a dangerous region filled with threats to American interests.

In response to detailed questions from ProPublica, a State Department spokesperson sent a statement saying that arms transfers to any country, including Israel, “are done so in a deliberative manner with appropriate input” from other agencies, State Department bureaus and embassies. “We expect any country that is a recipient of U.S. security articles,” he added, “use them in full compliance with international humanitarian law, and we have several ongoing processes to examine that compliance.”

The spokesperson also said Lew has been at the forefront of ensuring “that every possible measure is taken to minimize impacts on civilians” while working on a ceasefire deal to secure “the release of hostages, alleviate the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, and bring an end to the conflict.”


Israeli military leaders broadly defend their aerial campaign in Gaza as a “military necessity” to eradicate terrorists hiding among civilians. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also publicly pressured the Biden administration to hasten arms transfers. “Give us the tools and we’ll finish the job a lot faster,” he said in June.

ProPublica sent detailed questions to representatives of the Israeli government as well. A spokesperson said in a statement: “The article is biased and seeks to portray legitimate and routine contacts between Israel and the Embassy in Washington with State Department officials as improper. Its goal appears to be casting doubt on the security cooperation between two friendly nations and close allies.”

Weapons sales are a pillar of American foreign policy in the Middle East. Historically, the U.S. gives more money to Israel for weapons than it does to any other country. Israel spends most of those American tax dollars to buy weapons and equipment made by U.S. arms manufacturers.


While Israel has its own arms industry, the country relies heavily on American jets, bombs and other weapons in Gaza. Since October 2023, the U.S. has shipped more than 50,000 tons of weaponry, which the Israeli military says has been “crucial for sustaining the IDF’s operational capabilities during the ongoing war.” The air defenses that defend Israeli towns and cities — known as the Iron Dome — also depend largely on U.S. support.

There is little sign that either party is prepared to curtail U.S. weapons shipments. Vice President Kamala Harris has called for a ceasefire, lamented the death toll in Gaza and said she supported Palestinians’ right to self-determination as well as President Joe Biden’s decision to pause a shipment of 2,000 bombs in June. She has also echoed a refrain from previous administrations, pledging to “ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself.” Harris also said she had no intention of breaking with Biden’s Israel policy.

Republican nominee for president Donald Trump, who has described himself as the “best friend that Israel has ever had,” reportedly told donors that he supports Israel’s “war on terror” and promised to crush pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses. Trump was also recently a featured speaker at the Israeli-American Council’s summit, where he cast himself as the most pro-Israel choice in the coming election. “You have a big protector in me,” he told the crowd. “You don’t have a protector on the other side.”


The United States first began selling significant amounts of weapons to Israel in the early 1970s. Until then, Israel had relied on an array of home-grown and international purchases, notably from France, while the Soviet Union armed Israel’s adversaries. Over the past half-century, no country in the world has received more American military assistance than Israel.

The U.S. gives the Israeli government about $3.8 billion every year and much more during wartime to help maintain its military edge in the region. Congress and the executive branch have imposed legal guardrails on how Israel and other countries can use the weapons they buy with U.S. money. The State Department must review and approve most of those large foreign military sales and is required to cut off a country if there is a pattern or clear risk of breaking international humanitarian law, like targeting civilians or blocking shipments of food to refugees. The department is also supposed to withhold U.S.-funded equipment and weapons from individual military units credibly accused of committing flagrant human rights violations, like torture.

Initially, a country makes a request and the local embassy, which is under the State Department’s jurisdiction, writes a cable called a “country team assessment” to judge the fitness of the nation asking for the weapons. This is just the beginning of a complex process, but it’s a crucial step because of the embassies’ local expertise.

Then, the bulk of that review is conducted by the State Department’s arms transfers section, known as the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, with input from other bureaus. For Israel and NATO allies, if the sale is worth at least $100 million for weapons or $25 million for equipment, Congress also gets final approval. If lawmakers try to block a sale, which is rare, the president can sidestep with a veto.

For years, Josh Paul, a career official in the State Department’s arms transfers bureau, reviewed arms sales to Israel and other countries in the Middle East. Over time, he became one of the agency’s most well-versed experts in arms sales.

Even before Israel’s retaliation for Oct. 7, he had been concerned with Israel’s conduct. On multiple occasions, he said, he believed the law required the government to withhold weapons transfers. In May 2021, he refused to approve a sale of fighter jets to the Israeli Air Force. “At a time the IAF are blowing up civilian apartment blocks in Gaza,” Paul wrote in an email, “I cannot clear on this case.” The following February, he wouldn’t sign off on another sale after Amnesty International published a report accusing Israeli authorities of apartheid.

In both cases, Paul later told ProPublica, his immediate superiors signed off on the sales over his objections.

“I have no expectation whatsoever of making any policy gains on this topic during this Administration,” he wrote at the time to a deputy assistant secretary.

During that same time period, Paul circulated a memo to some of the agency’s senior diplomats with recommendations to strengthen the arms sales review process, such as including input from human rights groups. Paul warned that the Biden administration’s new arms transfer policy — which prohibits weapons sales if it’s “more likely than not” the recipient will use them to intentionally attack civilian structures or commit other violations — would be “watered down” in practice.

“There is an inarguable significant risk of civilian harm in the sale of precision-guided munitions to Israel and Saudi Arabia,” the December 2021 memo said. The U.S. government has been historically unable to hold itself to its own standards, he wrote, “in the face of pressure from partners, industry, and perceived policy imperatives emerging from within the government itself.”

It does not appear that recommendations in the memo were implemented either. Paul resigned in protest over arms shipments to Israel last October, less than two weeks after the Hamas attack. It was the Biden administration’s first major public departure since the start of the war. By then, local authorities said Israeli military operations had killed at least 3,300 Palestinians in Gaza.

Internally, other experts began to worry the Israelis were violating human rights almost from the onset of the war as well. Middle East officials delivered at least six dissent memos to senior leaders criticizing the administration’s decision to continue arming Israel, according to those who had a role in drafting some of them. The content of several memos leaked to the media earlier this year. The agency says it welcomes input from the dissent channel and incorporates it into policymaking decisions.

In one previously unreported memo from November, a group of experts across multiple bureaus said they had not been consulted before several policy decisions about arms transfers immediately after Oct. 7 and that there was no effective vetting process in place to evaluate the repercussions of those sales.

That memo, too, seemed to have little impact. In the early stages of the war, State Department staff worked overtime, often after hours and through weekends, to process Israeli requests for more arms. Some in the agency have thought the efforts showed an inappropriate amount of attention on Israel.

The Israelis, however, felt different. In late December, just before Christmas, staff in the arms transfers bureau walked into their Washington, D.C., office and found something unusual waiting for them: cases of wine from a winery in the Negev Desert, along with personalized letters on each bottle.

The gifts were courtesy of the Israeli embassy.

The State Department spokesperson said employees are allowed to accept gifts from foreign governments that fall below a certain dollar threshold. “To allege that any of their allegiances to the United States should be questioned is insulting,” he added. “The accusation that the Department of State is placing a disproportionate attention on Israel is inconsistent with the facts.”

The spokesperson for the Israeli government told ProPublica, “The embassy routinely sends individual bottles of wine (not cases) to many of its contacts to cordially mark the end of the year holidays.”

One month later, Lew delivered his endorsement of Israel’s request for the 3,000 precision GBU-39 bombs, which would be paid for with both U.S. and Israeli funds. Lew is a major figure in Democratic circles, having served in various administrations. He was President Barack Obama’s chief of staff and then became his treasury secretary. He has also been a top executive at Citigroup and a major private equity firm.

The U.S. defense attaché to Israel, Rear Adm. Frank Schlereth, signed off on the January cable as well. In addition to its assurances about the IDF, the memo cited the Israeli military’s close ties with the American military: Israeli air crews attend U.S. training schools to learn about collateral damage and use American-made computer systems to plan missions and “predict what effects their munitions will have on intended targets,” the officials wrote.

In the early stages of the war, Israel used American-made unguided “dumb” bombs, some likely weighing as much as 2,000 pounds, which many experts criticized as indiscriminate. But at the time of the embassy’s assessment, Amnesty International had documented evidence that the Israelis had also been dropping the GBU-39s, manufactured by Boeing to have a smaller blast radius, on civilians. Months before Oct. 7, a May 2023 attack left 10 civilians dead. Then, in a strike in early January this year, 18 civilians, including 10 children, were killed. Amnesty International investigators found GBU-39 fragments at both sites. (Boeing declined to comment and referred ProPublica to the government.)

At the time, State Department experts were also cataloging the effect the war has had on American credibility throughout the region. Hala Rharrit, a career diplomat based in the Middle East, was required to send daily reports analyzing Arab media coverage to the agency’s senior leaders. Her emails described the collateral damage from airstrikes in Gaza, often including graphic images of dead and wounded Palestinians alongside U.S. bomb fragments in the rubble.

“Arab media continues to share countless images and videos documenting mass killings and hunger, while affirming that Israel is committing war crimes and genocide and needs to be held accountable,” she reported in one early January email alongside a photograph of a dead toddler. “These images and videos of carnage, particularly of children getting repeatedly injured and killed, are traumatizing and angering the Arab world in unprecedented ways.”

Rharitt, who later resigned in protest, told ProPublica those images alone should have prompted U.S. government investigations and factored into arms requests from the Israelis. She said the State Department has “willfully violated the laws” by failing to act on the information she and others had documented. “They can’t say they didn’t know,” Rharitt added.

Rharitt said her superiors eventually told her to stop sending the daily reports. (The State Department spokesperson said the agency is still incorporating perspectives from Arab media in regular internal analyses.)

Lew’s January cable makes no mention of the death toll in Gaza or the incidents of the Israelis dropping GBU-39s on civilians. Eight current and former State Department officials with expertise in human rights, the Middle East or arms transfers said the embassy’s assessment was an inadequate but not a surprising distillation of the administration’s position. “It’s an exercise in checking the boxes,” said Charles Blaha, a former human rights director at the agency.

The State Department declined to comment on the status of that request other than to say the U.S. has provided large amounts of GBU-39s to Israel multiple times in past years.

While the U.S. hoped that the smaller bombs would prevent unnecessary deaths, experts in the laws of war say the size of the bomb doesn't matter if it kills more civilians than the military target justifies. Lt. Col. Rachel E. VanLandingham, a retired officer with the Air Force’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps, said the IDF is legally responsible for doing all it can to know the risk to civilians ahead of any given strike and to avoid indiscriminately bombing densely populated areas like refugee camps and shelters. “It seems extremely plausible that they just disregarded the risk,” VanLandingham added. “It raises serious concerns and indicators of violating the law of war.”

Officials at the embassy in Jerusalem and in Washington said that similar concerns have been repeatedly brought to Lew, but his instincts were to defend Israel. In a separate cable obtained by ProPublica, he told Blinken and other leaders in Washington that “Israel is a trustworthy defense articles recipient” and his country team assessments ahead of past weapons sales have found that Israel’s “human rights record justifies the sale.”

Lew went even further and said the IDF’s system for choosing targets is so “sophisticated and comprehensive” that, by defense attaché Schlereth’s estimation, it “meets and often exceeds our own standard,” according to the cable. Two State Department officials told ProPublica that Lew and Schlereth have made similar statements during internal meetings. (The Navy did not make Schlereth available for an interview or respond to a list of questions.)

Early in the war, diplomats at the embassy also reported that Israel had dropped bombs on the homes of some of the embassy’s own staff, in addition to numerous other incidents involving civilians.

As to why Lew’s cables failed to reflect that kind of information, one official said, “My most charitable explanation is that they may not have had the time or inclination to critically assess the Israelis’ answers.”

In Israel’s New York consulate, weapons procurement officers occupy two floors, processing hundreds of sales each year. One former Israeli officer who worked there said he tried to purchase as many weapons as possible while his American counterparts tried just as hard to sell them. "It’s a business,” he said.

Behind the scenes, if government officials take too long to process a sale, lobbyists for powerful corporations have stepped in to apply pressure and move the deal along, ProPublica found.

Some of those lobbyists formerly held powerful positions as regulators in the State Department. In recent years, at least six high-ranking officials in the agency’s arms transfers bureau left their posts and joined lobbying firms and military contractors. Jessica Lewis, the assistant secretary of the bureau, resigned in July and took a job at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck. The company is the largest lobbying firm in Washington, by lobbying revenue, and has represented the defense industry and countries including Saudi Arabia. (Lewis and the firm did not respond to requests for comment.)

Paul Kelly, who was the top congressional affairs official at the State Department between 2001 and 2005, during the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, said he regularly “got leaned on” by the private sector to push sales to lawmakers for final approval. “They wouldn’t bribe or threaten me, but they would say … ‘When are you going to sign off on it and get it up to the Hill?’” he told ProPublica.

Three other State Department officials who currently or recently worked on military assistance said little has changed since then and companies that profit from the wars in Gaza and Ukraine frequently call or email. (The agency spokesperson told ProPublica that arms transfers are “not influenced by a particular company.”) The pressure also reaches lawmakers’ offices once they are notified of impending sales. Those measures include frequent phone calls and regular daytime meetings, according to an official familiar with the communications.

In some cases, the efforts appear to have drifted into questionable legal territory. In 2017, the Trump administration signed a $350 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia, an extension of Obama’s former policy before he suspended some sales because of humanitarian concerns. For years, the Saudis and their allies used American-made jets and bombs to attack Houthi militant targets in Yemen, killing thousands of civilians in the process.

The following February, the State Department was weighing whether to approve a sale of precision-guided missiles produced by Raytheon to Saudi Arabia. A vice president at the company named Tom Kelly — the former principal deputy assistant secretary of the State Department’s arms transfers bureau — emailed a former subordinate, Josh Paul. Kelly asked to set up a meeting with Paul and a colleague at the company to “talk through strategy” on pushing the sale through, according to an email of the exchange.

Paul wrote back that such a meeting could be illegal. “As you’ll recall from your time here, we’re restricted by the Anti-Lobbying Act from coordinating legislative strategies with outside groups,” he said. “However, I think the potential bumps in the road are relatively obvious.” Those bumps were a reference to recent media articles about mass civilian casualty incidents in Yemen.

“No worries,” Kelly responded. “I’m sure I’ll see you around.”

Kelly and Raytheon did not reply to requests for comment.

The State Department ultimately signed off on the sale.


Mariam Elba contributed research.

 Marjorie Taylor Greene's 'they control the weather' comment draws instant mockery online

Brad Reed
October 4, 2024 

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) (Olivier Douliery/AFP/Getty Images)

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) on Thursday night wrote a cryptic tweet about unnamed persons being able to manipulate the weather -- and it drew instant ridicule.

"Yes they can control the weather," Greene posted just after 11 p.m. ET. "It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done."

Greene did not elaborate on the ways that "they" can control the weather, or even explain who "they" are.

But given her history of promoting conspiracy theories, including when she infamously hypothesized that the Rothschild family was using space lasers to start forest fires in California, many of her followers were quick to pounce with mockery.

ALSO READ: Dems fear Mike Johnson has laid the groundwork for a nightmare scenario on Jan. 6, 2025

"This is so offensive and untrue," joked comedian and actor Patton Oswalt. "Mel Brooks, please send a thunderstorm to wreck her house."

"If this were true 'they' would’ve dropped a house on her already," observed author Dan Savage.

"This is a member of the Congress of the United States," marveled Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-PA). "For real. No joke."

Former Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-VA) expressed a similar sentiment.


"This person is in Congress," he wrote. "This ignorance, this lunacy, is why we have a government teetering and lurching. Her stupidity is a disease. She’s not alone either."

Anti-Trump attorney George Conway picked up on anti-Semitic currents in Greene's post.

"Your point is what?" he asked. "That Moses parted the Red Sea? Are you saying he had a space laser?"


And Trump biographer Tim O'Brien mocked Greene by reminding her of former President Donald Trump's mishaps in responding to natural disasters.

"Of course. With a Sharpie or by nuking hurricanes. 'They' should just do that," he joked.

 

 

International symposium for Moonshot Goal 8: Weather Controllability 2024

Can we reduce the loss and damage due to extreme weather with innovative ideas and technologies?

Japan Science and Technology Agency

 

image: 

The Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) will hold the International Symposium focusing on weather controllability from October 6 to 7 on-site and online.

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Credit: Japan Science and Technology Agency

The Moonshot Research and Development Program launched by the Cabinet Office of Japan promotes high-risk, high-impact R&D aiming to achieve ambitious Moonshot Goals and solve issues facing future society such as super-aging populations and global warming. The theme of Moonshot Goal 8 is “Realization of a society safe from the threat of extreme winds and rains by controlling and modifying the weather by 2050.”

This symposium will explore the potential of weather control to reduce disaster risk, which is becoming more severe due to climate change. To advance research and development of weather control technologies, researchers from diverse fields such as meteorology, weather engineering, mathematical sciences, and sociology will discuss the prospects of weather control based on their expertise.

Date & Time: (Japan Standard Time(JST), UTC+9)

October 6, 2024  1:00 p.m.-6:00 p.m.

October 7, 2024  9:30 a.m.-3:00 p.m.

Venue: Hitotsubashi University Hitotsubashi Hall, Tokyo

Online (Zoom Webinar, YouTube Live)

Participation fee: Free

Language: English

Registration: Please click here for registration

https://form2.jst.go.jp/s/ms8-intl-symp2024

Details of the symposium are available on the official website.

Official website: https://www.jst.go.jp/moonshot/sympo/20241006/index.html#ja

Program

October 6

1:00 p.m.  Opening Remarks  JST, CAO           

1:10 p.m.  MS8 Overview MIYOSHI Takemasa (Team Leader, RIKEN)

1:30 p.m.  Keynote Speech 1

                 Seon Ki Park (Professor, Ewha Womans Univ., Korea)

2:30 p.m.  MS8 Core Research Presentation

4:35 p.m.  ELSI (Ethical, Legal and Social Issues) for Weather Control

5:00 p.m.  Keynote Speech 2

                 Sarah Tessendorf (Project Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research, USA)

October 7

9:30 a.m.  Special Talk

                  Thao Linh Tran (Research Fellow, Australian National Univ., Australia)

10:30 a.m.  MS8 Feasibility Study Presentation

12:30 p.m.  Panel Discussion on Science and Technology

1:45 p.m.  Panel Discussion on Social Responsibility

2:55 p.m.  Closing Remarks

 

Disaster relief efforts came 'to a halt' solely because of Trump's inaction: ex-official

Brad Reed

RAW STORY
October 4, 2024




Olivia Troye, a former homeland security adviser in the Trump White House, shed new light this week on former President Donald Trump's highly politicized approach to disaster relief.

In an interview with The New Republic's Greg Sargent, Troye explained how difficult it could be to try to get help out to Americans suffering from the impact of natural disasters because Trump would often sit on emergency declarations for days.

"I have a lot of memories of working in the Trump White House where there are numerous situations where the government apparatus that does the whole disaster relief declaration process would come to a halt because the disaster declaration that needed to be signed by the president was sitting on Donald Trump’s desk," she explained. "It was frustrating, as you can imagine, because we as national security officials serve for the greater good of the country."

Troye then explained how her former boss, Vice President Mike Pence, had to push to get Trump to show some urgency in signing the declaration.

"I can think of a time when even Mike Pence was flying out. I believe he was flying to California and he called me," she said. "They called me from Air Force Two and said, 'Where is the disaster declaration? We still haven’t seen it.' And I said, 'Well, sir, it’s sitting on the president’s desk, I can follow up on it.' And he said, 'Please do that.' I remember walking over to the West Wing and sitting outside the Oval Office saying the vice president would like to know what the status is on the disaster declaration, he would really like to get this moved along, we’ve been sitting on it for three days."

Troye's revelations follow bombshell claims made earlier this week by Mark Harvey, Trump’s one-time senior director for resilience policy on the National Security Council staff, about the former president being reluctant to help out residents of California because the state had strongly voted against him in the 2016 election.

In one instance, Harvey said he finally convinced Trump to authorize disaster relief to the state one time by pulling up voting results showing a significant concentration of Republican voters in Orange County.

Republican yells at Native American candidate to 'go back to where you came from': report

Matthew Chapman

RAW STORY
October 3, 2024 

Dan Foreman (image via Idaho Republican Party).

Far-right Idaho state Sen. Dan Foreman got into a heated argument with a Native American candidate during a forum this week that culminated with him shouting at her to "go back to where you came from," according to a report.

Trish Carter-Goodheart, a member of the Nez Perce tribe and candidate for House Seat A, said in a statement that the incident occurred at a "meet the candidates" gathering Tuesday in the northern Idaho town of Kendrick, where voters posed questions to Senate and House candidates in the area. The dispute began when Foreman categorically proclaimed discrimination did not exist in Idaho, reported Boise State Public Radio on Thursday.

Carter-Goodheart took issue with this, pointing out that there is an extensive and painful history of white supremacist organizations in northern Idaho. The state GOP has on multiple occasions had to fight off takeovers by those white supremacist groups.


“[J]ust because someone hasn’t personally experienced discrimination, doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Racism and discrimination are real issues here in Idaho, as anyone familiar with our state’s history knows,” she explained in a statement issued after the forum. “I highlighted our weak hate crime laws and mentioned the presence of the Aryan Nations in northern Idaho as undeniable evidence of this reality.”

ALSO READ: VP debate reveals MAGA's true agenda

In response to Carter-Goodheart's words at the forum, according to the report, Foreman "stood up and angrily interjected, using an expletive to criticize what he cast as the liberal bent of the response."

He then told her she should "go back to where you came from," Carter-Goodheart said, before storming away.

Carter-Goodheart's Republican candidate, incumbent Rep. Lori McCann, was among the attendees who corroborated the incident.

Foreman, a retired Air Force veteran and former law enforcement officer, has previously landed in the news for unruly behavior. In a viral video in 2017 taken from police body camera footage at the Latah County Fair, he shouted at a constituent, calling him a "son of a b----" and telling him to "go to hell."

Russia opens ‘extremist’ trial of four independent journalists

By AFP
October 2, 2024

Russia has led a huge crackdown on dissent since sending troops to Ukraine - Copyright AFP Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV

Russia opened Wednesday the trial of four independent journalists accused of helping the banned organisations of late opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

The Moscow trial, that the judge ordered held behind closed doors, comes as a Kremlin crackdown on dissent has forced the vast majority of independent media into exile.

It also comes seven months after Navalny — President Vladimir Putin’s main opponent — died in an Arctic prison in circumstances authorities have not fully explained.

Russia banned Navalny’s organisations as “extremist” weeks before launching its Ukraine offensive. Even since Navalny’s death, publicly sympathising with him could lead to a prison term.

Journalists Antonina Kravtsova, Konstantin Gabov, Sergei Karelin and Artem Kriger face up to six years in prison on charges of “taking part in an extremist group”.

The four — most of whom are video reporters — were held in a glass cage for defendants. They have been in detention since being arrested in March and April.

Judge Natalia Borisenkova ordered the trial be held behind closed doors, a now common practice in Russia.

“Remember, the darkness around us is not forever. There is always hope,” Kravtsova, a 34-year-old photographer who worked for the independent SOTAvision, said ahead of the trial.

She was the first of the group to be arrested, hours after filming people laying flowers on Navalny’s grave in Moscow.

For around two years she covered the opposition leader’s various trials, and filmed his last appearance via video-link in court just two days before his death.

In the footage, Navalny appeared in good spirits and joked with the judge.

– ‘Just cameramen’ –

Thre of Navalny’s former lawyers were put on trial in Septemer, also on “extremism” charges.

Investigators in that case say the men passed messages between Navalny and his associates during his imprisonment, helping the activist continue his political activity from behind bars.

Journalists Gabov and Karelin — both video correspondents who have worked for foreign media outlets — were arrested a month after Kravtsova. Authorities accused them of preparing photos and video material for Navalny’s social media channels.

Karelin, who also has Israeli nationality, was arrested while on a trip in northern Russia.

The arrest shocked his family. “They are just cameramen,” his sister, architect Olga Karelina, told AFP.

She said people are “scared” to come to support the journalists in court.

– ‘Don’t play with fate’ –

Kriger — the youngest of the group — has covered political trials and protests for SOTAvision.

He urged people to leave Russia in an address to reporters before the trial started.

“Don’t play with fate. Leave the Russian Federation,” he said. “Anybody can end up in jail on any charge.”

Kriger’s uncle, Mikhail Krieger, is serving a seven-year sentence for what his supporters say is retribution for opposing the Ukraine offensive.

Kriger also criticised the judge for ordering the trial to be closed to the public.

“That’s what they do in some kind of totalitarian regimes… Why do we have to go back into archaism and the past?”