March 21, 2013
Four Members of Congress, willing to stand up to China and Wall Street, have proposed legislation to deal with the problem-- again. Sander Levin (D-MI), Tim Murphy (R-PA), Tim Ryan (D-OH), and Mo Brooks (R-AL) have reintroduced the Currency Reform for Fair Trade Act. Levin introduced the bill in February, 2011-- basically to "amend title VII of the Tariff Act of 1930 to clarify that countervailing duties may be imposed to address subsidies relating to a fundamentally undervalued currency of any foreign country." Boehner immediately sent it to an unheralded death by bottling it up in the House Ways and Means Committee, chaired by his crony, sleazy Michigan closet case Dave Camp. This morning, Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing told us that he finds it "hard to imagine why John Boehner stands with Beijing dictators and multinational outsourcers when a strong majority of Republican voters, and his own caucus, support the China currency bill. Here’s a bill that creates jobs, doesn’t cost taxpayers a dime, and strengthens our economy. Whose side is Boehner on: the Beijing dictators or ours?"
Andy Hounshell is an Ohio steel worker from Middletown who is also the vice president of his union local. A desire to join fellow Ohio Democrats Rep. Tim Ryan and Senator Sherrod Brown in fighting back against unfair trade policies helped push him to run against John Boehner. "American workers can compete with anyone as long as they are playing by the same rules," he told us earlier today. "This sounds like a bill that would force foreign currency manipulators to do just that. Hopefully this is something that will finally drive some members of our Congress from their partisanship, and actually help the working people of this country. Treating undervalued currency as an actionable subsidy would be a good start to filling in the gap in the trade deficit. I know Tim Ryan has been working on this with Sander Levin and a number of Republicans, and it is, in effect, a job-creation bill that most Members of Congress - across the aisle - backed last year. John Boehner shouldn't be using his prerogatives as Speaker to prevent a simple up or down vote in the House on something this crucial to so many working families. He's not only out of step with American voters, he's out of step with his own Republican congressional caucus. In 2012, the U.S. trade deficit with China reached a new record - $315 billion and this trade deficit has cost 2.7 million U.S. jobs between 2001 and 2011. If I'm elected, this is literallysomething I can put a stop to just because of who I'll be replacing."
The folks who don't want to see fair trade bills get a straight up vote in Congress have helped raise millions of dollars for Boehner's disgraceful political career. Last year - without having to face an opponent - he spent $21,197,801. And right now he has $952,828 in his campaign chest already. If you'd like to help Hounshell even out the playing field a little, you can do that here and you can read a guest post he did for us Monday here.
So far, here's a list of early supporters of the bill. Each is a first-day co-sponsor; this is the kind of bipartisanship that works - even if Boehner and his team are opposing it:
• Mo Brooks (R-AL)
• Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV)
• Howard Coble (R-NC)
• Morgan Griffith (R-VA)
• Gregg Harper (R-MS)
• Bill Johnson (R-OH)
• Walter Jones (R-NC)
• Patrick McHenry (R-NC)
• David McKinley (R-WV)
• Pat Meehan (R-PA)
• Tim Murphy (R-PA)
• Glenn Thompson (R-PA)
• Michael Turner (R-OH)
• Don Young (R-AK)
• John Conyers Jr. (D-MI)
• Jim Cooper (D-TN)
• Elijah Cummings (D-MD)
• Pete DeFazio (D-OR)
• John Dingell (D-MI)
• William Enyart (D-IL)
• Raul Grijalva (D-AZ)
• Brian Higgins (D-NY)
• Keith Ellison (D-MN)
• Bill Foster (D-IL)
• Marcy Kaptur (D-OH)
• Sander Levin (D-MI)
• Daniel Lipinski (D-IL)
• Stephen Lynch (D-MA)
• Michael Michaud (D-ME)
• George Miller (D-CA)
• Bill Owens (D-NY)
• Mark Pocan (D-WI)
• Charlie Rangel (D-NY)
• Tim Ryan (D-OH)
• Allyson Schwartz (D-PA)
• Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH)
• Louise Slaughter (D-NY)
• Peter Visclosky (D-IN)
• Peter Welch (D-VT)
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Miss McConnell In A Tizzy
February 27, 2013
Neither of these China suck-ups is Chinese (Chairman Boehner)
Miss McConnell, who was booted out of the Army after just one week for fondling a private enlisted man's private parts, has some kind of a Republican "marriage" to former Bush Labor Secretary Elaine Chao. This kind of stuff isn't allowed to be written about in the Village. Outré, outré, outré... so outré. It's like when people used to talk about Florida Republican Congressman Mark Foley having a hankering for teenaged boys or Idaho Republican Senator Larry Craig enjoying himself regularly in public toilets. "How dare you!" the Villagers would bellow. "How dare you!" No, not at Foley or Craig... at anyone who wrote about it. It's just not how we do things... in the Village. No doubt! But we call the old pervert from Kentucky Miss McConnell anyway. Enjoy it...or ignore it.
Elaine L. Chao
(Credit The Heritage Foundation)
(Credit The Heritage Foundation)
May 20 is my sister's birthday. I think it was a 2007 post on May 20 when we first started looking seriously into Miss McConnell getting wealthy from his business dealings with Red China. It was the first of many.
Yesterday during a live blog session with Kentucky activists about Tuesday's gubernatorial primary, there was a brief conversation about how the Bush Regime's chief Senate obstructionist Mitch McConnell is a closet queen. Cliff Schecter pointed out, perhaps facetiously, that McConnell sometimes emerges from the closet to do business with his Chinese communist partners. "A review of financial assets held over the past six years by Elaine L. Chao and her husband, Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, reveals that the labor secretary-designate serves as director of an insurance company that jointly owns a Lippo Group subsidiary with the Chinese government... McConnell, has received steady campaign contributions during his years in the Senate from Lippo partner American International Group Inc., and its chairman, Maurice 'Hank' Greenberg."
McConnell "is China's biggest Republican booster in the Senate, fighting to liberalize trade with Beijing."
The Post story claims that "dead pets and melamine-tainted food notwithstanding, change will prove difficult, policy experts say, in large part because U.S. companies have become so dependent on the Chinese economy that tighter rules on imports stand to harm the U.S. economy, too." There is no mention of Mitch McConnell and the agenda he and his "wife," U.S. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, have pushed, quite relentlessly, an agenda that has helped to make them enormously wealthy and powerful... at the expense of some dead dogs and cats and some people getting sick. The Post claims that so many U.S. companies are involved with China now that there is little that can be done about it. That's how McConnell and Chao planned it.
Trading with the largely unregulated Chinese marketplace has its risks, of course, as evidenced by the many lawsuits that U.S. pet food companies now face from angry consumers who say their pets were poisoned by tainted Chinese ingredients. Until recently, however, many companies and even the federal government reckoned that, on average, those risks were worth taking. And for some products they have had little choice, as China has driven competitors out of business with its rock-bottom prices.
China's less-than-stellar behavior as a food exporter is revealed in stomach-turning detail in FDA "refusal reports" filed by U.S. inspectors: Juices and fruits rejected as "filthy." Prunes tinted with chemical dyes not approved for human consumption. Frozen breaded shrimp preserved with nitrofuran, an antibacterial that can cause cancer. Swordfish rejected as "poisonous."
The always cynical and self-serving McConnell was key in rejecting a bill that would have allowed senior citizens to purchase inexpensive Canadian drugs because, he claimed, the U.S. couldn't guarantee their safety. When someone brings up the safety of Chinese products to McConnell he turns into a veritable dragon lady, screaming and hissing and cursing about "Free Trade."
McConnell, Chao and the Bush Regime are literally allowing their partners in Communist China to poison the American public. "So pervasive is the U.S. hunger for cheap imports, experts said, that the executive branch itself has repeatedly rebuffed proposals by agency scientists to impose even modest new safety rules for foreign foods. 'Sometimes guidances can get through, but not regulations,' said Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group. Guidances, which the FDA defines as 'current thinking on a particular subject,' are not binding. Under the Bush administration in particular, DeWaal said, if a proposed regulation does get past agency or department heads, it hits the wall at the White House Office of Management and Budget."
Yesterday the Villagers were all up in arms because someone at ProgressKentucky, a state good government PAC, tweeted something inartfully about Elaine Chao being Chinese (which she is). "Liberal" Villagers like nothingmore than pinning the racism tag on progressives. There was inartfulness but no racism, none. Zero. ProgressKentucky is doing yeoman's work against McConnell's reelection but the Villagers want a pound of flesh now for the outrage, the outré, outré, outré. This was the PAC's first spirited defense yesterday:
Mitch McConnell's campaign manager, Jesse Benton, has accused Progress Kentucky of race-baiting by retweeting a Twitter message that mentioned McConnell’s wife’s nationality.
"Progress Kentucky strongly denies that the organization has engaged in any such thing," said Shawn Reilly, executive director of Progress Kentucky. "Benton's statements are an attempt to divert attention from the fact that Mitch McConnell has engaged in the selling of the American middle class overseas for decades."
Here are the facts:
In 1997, McConnell pushed for trade relations favorable to China resulting in American jobs going overseas. McConnell and his father-in-law James S.C. Chao, who is president of Foremost Maritime Corporation, met "privately with Chinese officials, including Jiang Zemin, then general secretary of the Communist Party of China. (Chao's father and Jiang were schoolmates in China.)," according to the Herald-Leader.
On November 9, 2006, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao formally thanked Chao in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, for his role in developing the Chinese shipbuilding industry "at a rapid pace."
In January 2013, the Courier-Journal reported that eight members of the Chao's family each gave $10,000 to the Kentucky Republican Party in the final weeks of 2012.
"When the Premier of China publicly thanks an industrialist for his role in developing Chinese industry, then that industrialist and his family contribute $80,000 to the Kentucky Republican Party, it is fair to question whether McConnell is selling out the middle class of America," said Reilly.
Personally, James S. C. Chao has contributed $15,500 to Mitch McConnell's campaigns, $30,000 to the Kentucky Republican Party, and $17,500 to the Republican National Committee.
Senator Mitch McConnell has a conflict of interest that many are afraid to talk about, and Progress Kentucky is not.
That isn't what the Villagers define as a pound of flesh. It just pissed them off even more. Pissed, pissed, pissed. Yesterday ended with another press release from Progress Kentucky, the apology the Villagers demanded - but won't ever be satisfied with:
Progress Kentucky is dedicated to ensuring the people of Kentucky have the kind of representation in the US Senate they deserve. In an effort to educate KY voters as to the varied interests of Sen. McConnell we provided information about connections between the senator and business and government interests in China. This information included an inappropriate comment on the ethnicity of the former Secretary of Labor, Elaine Chao, the senator’s wife.
We apologize to the secretary for that unnecessary comment and have deleted the tweets in question. In addition, we have put a review process in place to ensure tweets and other social media communications from Progress KY are reviewed and approved prior to posting.
Senator McConnell's record deserves a thorough and legitimate airing. We believe that after fair examination of it Kentuckians will agree that Senator McConnell has been wrong over and over on the issues that matter. We will continue to inform Kentucky voters the important issues at stake in this election.
Here's a self-aggrandizing clown who hasn't bothered to find out what really happened. I don't follow him but it was retweeted by the NRSC, which is how I did see it:
The Elaine Chao Story
Boehner Brushes Aside Notion He Is 'Blocking' Immigration Overhaul
Source: Zero Hedge
90lbs Of Cocaine Found On Ship Owned By Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's Father-in-Law
Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog
Though Foremost has played a pivotal role in McConnell's life, bestowing the senator with most of his personal wealth and generating thousands in donations to his campaign committees, the drug bust went unnoticed in Kentucky, where every bit of McConnell-related news has generated fodder for the campaign trail. That’s because, like many international shipping companies, Chao's firm is shrouded from public view, concealing its identity and limiting its legal liability through an array of tax shelters and foreign registrations. Registered through a limited liability company in the Marshall Islands, the Ping May flies the Liberian flag.
From the Nation article: Mitch McConnell’s Freighted Ties to a Shadowy Shipping CompanyWell this is interesting. Particularly with the Senate Minority Leader (and major Republican establishment crony) fighting for his life in the Kentucky Senate race.
From the Nation:
Before the Ping May, a rusty cargo vessel, could disembark from the port of Santa Marta en route to the Netherlands in late August, Colombian inspectors boarded the boat and made a discovery. Hidden in the ship's chain locker, amidst its load of coal bound for Europe, were approximately 40 kilograms, or about 90 pounds, of cocaine. A Colombian Coast Guard official told The Nation that there is an ongoing investigation.
The seizure of the narcotics shipment in the Caribbean port occurred far away from Kentucky, the state in which Senator Mitch McConnell is now facing a career-defining election. But the Republican Senate minority leader has the closest of ties to the owner of the Ping May, the vessel containing the illicit materials: the Foremost Maritime Corporation, a firm founded and owned by McConnell's in-laws, the Chao family.
Though Foremost has played a pivotal role in McConnell’s life, bestowing the senator with most of his personal wealth and generating thousands in donations to his campaign committees, the drug bust went unnoticed in Kentucky, where every bit of McConnell-related news has generated fodder for the campaign trail. That’s because, like many international shipping companies, Chao's firm is shrouded from public view, concealing its identity and limiting its legal liability through an array of tax shelters and foreign registrations. Registered through a limited liability company in the Marshall Islands, the Ping May flies the Liberian flag.
McConnell's ties to the Chaos go back to the late 1980s, when James Chao began donating to the senator. In 1993, McConnell married James's daughter, Elaine Chao, a Republican activist and then-former Reagan administration official who would later serve as Secretary of Labor in the George W. Bush cabinet. James Chao emigrated to the United States from Taiwan, and founded the Foremost Maritime Corporation upon settling in New York. The company has grown significantly over the years, from acting as maritime agent during the Vietnam War to controlling a fleet of approximately 16 dry bulk cargo ships in operation today.Nothing like a neo-feudal love story to make the eyes well up.
The firm, however, leaves a faint online trace. Foremost's website FMCNY.com is blank. ??Records and court documents obtained by The Nation show that the ownership of the company’s vessels—with names such as Ping May, Soya May, Fu May, and Grain May—is obscured through a byzantine structure of tax entities. Most of Foremost's vessels are flagged in Liberia, which ensures that crew members of Foremost's ships work under Liberia's maritime labor laws, which critics note allow for intimidation in the workplace and few protections for labor unions. In addition, a Liberian "flag of convenience" allows ship owners to pay lower tonnage taxes than ships that fly the U.S. flag. Maritime companies have increasingly used the Marshall Islands to register their vessels. The jurisdiction boasts of "no taxation, lax regulation, and no requirements for disclosure of many corporate details—even to the United States government," according to a report in the World Policy Journal.
The recent seizure of cocaine on a Foremost coal ship came as authorities in Colombia have stepped up anti-drug trafficking enforcement in the region. The Nation spoke to Luis Gonzales, an official with the Colombian Coast Guard in Santa Marta, who told us that the Ping May's crew were questioned as part of an ongoing investigation, but that no charges have yet been filed. His team found the cocaine in forty separate packages.
The Republican Senate minority leader's personal wealth grew seven-fold over the last ten years thanks in large part to a gift given to him and his wife in 2008 from James Chao worth between $5 million and $25 million (Senate ethics forms require personal finance disclosures in ranges of amounts, rather than specific figures). The gift helped the McConnells after their stock portfolio dipped in the wake of the financial crisis that year, and ensured they could pay off more than $100,000 in mortgage debt on their Washington home.
The generous gift made McConnell one of the wealthiest members of the Senate, with a net worth averaging around $22.8 million, according to the Washington Post’s review of his financial disclosures.Just in case you didn't think these sorts of relationships have a direct effect on U.S. foreign policy, think again…
The ties between McConnell and his in-laws have come under scrutiny before. In 2001, they were probed in depth by The New Republic in an article that charged that McConnell led an effort to soften his party’s criticism of China. Through James Chao, who was a classmate of Jiang Zemin, the president of China in the 90s, McConnell and his wife met with Jiang several times, both in Beijing and in Washington.
McConnell subsequently tempered his criticism of Chinese human rights abuses, and broke with hawks like Senator Jesse Helms to support Most Favored Nation trading status with China. ??As Foremost established closer ties with mainland China, McConnell endorsed the position that the United States should remain "ambiguous" about coming to the defense of Taiwan. In 1999, McConnell and his wife appeared at the University of Louisville with Chinese Ambassador Li Zhaoxing. Li used the opportunity to bash congressional leaders for rebuking China over its repression of the Falun Gong religious sect.
"Any responsible government will not foster evil propensities of cults by being over-lenient," Li reportedly said at the event with McConnell and Chao. Rather than distance himself from the remarks, McConnell reportedly spoke about his "good working relationship" with Li.
Requests for comment to the McConnell team about the Ping May cocaine incident have gone unanswered.
McConnell has positioned himself over the years as a tough on drugs politician. In 1996, McConnell was the sole sponsor of the Enhanced Marijuana Penalties Act, a bill to increase the mandatory minimum sentencing for those caught with certain amounts of marijuana. A press release noted that his bill would make "penalties for selling marijuana comparable to those for selling heroin and cocaine."
In recent weeks, McConnell has touted his role in calling for more federal money to be used for drug enforcement.Readers of Liberty Blitzkrieg will know that I do not think there is such a thing as a "victimless crime," and I am completely against the government led "war on drugs," "war on terrorism" and "war on poverty." Whenever the state declares "war" on something, you naturally get more of it.
All that said, the article above gives voters some important information on McConnell, particularly with regard to how the source of his wealth and his family ties actively impact his policy choices in Washington.
Like the Democratic Party leadership, the Republican Party establishment consists of a cadre of cronies merely trying to enrich themselves. McConnell is a huge part of the problem, and the American public should know more about him.
Don't forget this post from 2012: Senate Leader McConnell Fighting AGAINST Campaign Finance Reform.
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Further reading:
Refugees As Weapons - Mobilizing Communists For Foreign Invasion - Idaho Has Been Targeted - Facilitators: Privatized Government Socialists - Buying Off Politicians - Fracturing the Nation
Building Trojan Triangles aka "Logical Island" after Rome - It's the City of London That Are the Communists - British Commonwealth of Nations Inserted Itself Into America Under "Reinvention" - Governments and Corporations Working Together Results In Fascism
Building Trojan Triangles aka "Logical Island" after Rome - It's the City of London That Are the Communists - British Commonwealth of Nations Inserted Itself Into America Under "Reinvention" - Governments and Corporations Working Together Results In Fascism
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