The leader of the Republican-led special Benghazi committee tried Sunday to discredit a former staffer’s claim that he was fired for not joining in a partisan-driven effort to tarnish Hillary Clinton, saying he never even spoke to the ex-staffer.
South Carolina GOP Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, said he never met with the staffer, investigator and Air Force Reserves officer Bradley F. Podliska, and that Podliska was, in fact, warned about his own efforts to discredit Clinton, who was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.
“Because I do not know him, and cannot recall ever speaking to him, I can say for certain he was never instructed by me to focus on Clinton, nor would he be a credible person to speak on my behalf,” Gowdy said.
He also said Podliska has never mentioned Clinton — from when he was counseled about his “deficient performance” to when he was fired and through the entire legal mediation process.
Furthermore, Gowdy said, Podliska has “run to the press with his new salacious allegations” after failing to get money from the committee.
By JULIANNA GOLDMAN CBS NEWS October 3, 2015, 2:41 PM
Vice President Joe Biden is nearing a decision on whether to run for president, and it could come as early as within the next seven to 10 days, according to three people familiar with his deliberations.
Two of those people said he is leaning toward entering the race. Still, they caution that family considerations remain the overriding concern and would be the reason he doesn’t run. His wife, Dr. Jill Biden, has said that should the vice president launch a bid for the Oval Office, “of course” she would “be on board.”
Even if Biden decides to seek the Democratic nomination before the party’s first debate on Oct. 13, he likely would not participate, sources told CBS News.
They said he’d need time – perhaps a couple of weeks – to put together the foundations of a campaign and raise money looking ahead to several ballot deadlines. States like New Hampshire, Texas and Florida have deadlines beginning in November.
Biden has been weighing a White House bid for the last few months, with several Democratic fundraisers even pledging their support should he launch a presidential campaign.
Some donors who have met with the vice president in recent weeks told CBS News they came away with the impression that he was going to run.
In March, an investigation by ProPublica and Gawker revealed that a “secret spy network” that was not on the State Department payroll, run by longtime Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal, was “funneling intelligence about the crisis in Libya directly to the Secretary of State’s private account starting before the Benghazi attack.” Now the WEEKLY STANDARD has learned that Tyler Drumheller, the former chief of the CIA’s clandestine service in Europe who was working directly with Blumenthal as a member of Clinton’s spy network, was concurrently working as a consultant to CBS News and its venerable news program 60 Minutes.
Too few Americans are working, too many jobs have been shipped overseas, and too many middle class families cannot make ends meet. This tax plan directly meets these challenges with four simple goals:
Tax relief for middle class Americans: In order to achieve the American dream, let people keep more money in their pockets and increase after-tax wages.
Simplify the tax code to reduce the headaches Americans face in preparing their taxes and let everyone keep more of their money.
Grow the American economy by discouraging corporate inversions, adding a huge number of new jobs, and making America globally competitive again.
Doesn’t add to our debt and deficit, which are already too large.
The Trump Tax Plan Achieves These Goals
If you are single and earn less than $25,000, or married and jointly earn less than $50,000, you will not owe any income tax. That removes nearly 75 million households – over 50% – from the income tax rolls. They get a new one page form to send the IRS saying, “I win,” those who would otherwise owe income taxes will save an average of nearly $1,000 each.
All other Americans will get a simpler tax code with four brackets – 0%, 10%, 20% and 25% – instead of the current seven. This new tax code eliminates the marriage penalty and the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) while providing the lowest tax rate since before World War II.
No business of any size, from a Fortune 500 to a mom and pop shop to a freelancer living job to job, will pay more than 15% of their business income in taxes. This lower rate makes corporate inversions unnecessary by making America’s tax rate one of the best in the world.
No family will have to pay the death tax. You earned and saved that money for your family, not the government. You paid taxes on it when you earned it.
The Trump Tax Plan Is Revenue Neutral
The Trump tax cuts are fully paid for by:
Reducing or eliminating most deductions and loopholes available to the very rich.
A one-time deemed repatriation of corporate cash held overseas at a significantly discounted 10% tax rate, followed by an end to the deferral of taxes on corporate income earned abroad.
Reducing or eliminating corporate loopholes that cater to special interests, as well as deductions made unnecessary or redundant by the new lower tax rate on corporations and business income. We will also phase in a reasonable cap on the deductibility of business interest expenses.
DETAILS OF DONALD J. TRUMP’S TAX PLAN
America needs a bold, simple and achievable plan based on conservative economic principles. This plan does that with needed tax relief for all Americans, especially the working poor and middle class, pro-growth tax reform for all sizes of businesses, and fiscally responsible steps to ensure this plan does not add to our enormous debt and deficit.
This plan simplifies the tax code by taking nearly 50% of current filers off the income tax rolls entirely and reducing the number of tax brackets from seven to four for everyone else. This plan also reduces or eliminates loopholes used by the very rich and special interests made unnecessary or redundant by the new lower tax rates on individuals and companies.
The Trump Tax Plan: A Simpler Tax Code For All Americans
When the income tax was first introduced, just one percent of Americans had to pay it. It was never intended as a tax most Americans would pay. The Trump plan eliminates the income tax for over 73 million households. 42 million households that currently file complex forms to determine they don’t owe any income taxes will now file a one page form saving them time, stress, uncertainty and an average of $110 in preparation costs. Over 31 million households get the same simplification and keep on average nearly $1,000 of their hard-earned money.
For those Americans who will still pay the income tax, the tax rates will go from the current seven brackets to four simpler, fairer brackets that eliminate the marriage penalty and the AMT while providing the lowest tax rate since before World War II:
Income Tax RateLong Term Cap Gains/ Dividends RateSingle FilersMarried FilersHeads of Household
0%0%$0 to $25,000$0 to $50,000$0 to $37,500
10%0%$25,001 to $50,000$50,001 to $100,000$37,501 to $75,000
20%15%$50,001 to $150,000$100,001 to $300,000$75,001 to $225,000
25%20%$150,001 and up$300,001 and up$225,001 and up
With this huge reduction in rates, many of the current exemptions and deductions will become unnecessary or redundant. Those within the 10% bracket will keep all or most of their current deductions. Those within the 20% bracket will keep more than half of their current deductions. Those within the 25% bracket will keep fewer deductions. Charitable giving and mortgage interest deductions will remain unchanged for all taxpayers.
Simplifying the tax code and cutting every American’s taxes will boost consumer spending, encourage savings and investment, and maximize economic growth.
Business Tax Reform To Encourage Jobs And Spur Economic Growth
Too many companies – from great American brands to innovative startups – are leaving America, either directly or through corporate inversions. The Democrats want to outlaw inversions, but that will never work. Companies leaving is not the disease, it is the symptom. Politicians in Washington have let America fall from the best corporate tax rate in the industrialized world in the 1980’s (thanks to Ronald Reagan) to the worst rate in the industrialized world. That is unacceptable. Under the Trump plan, America will compete with the world and win by cutting the corporate tax rate to 15%, taking our rate from one of the worst to one of the best.
This lower tax rate cannot be for big business alone; it needs to help the small businesses that are the true engine of our economy. Right now, freelancers, sole proprietors, unincorporated small businesses and pass-through entities are taxed at the high personal income tax rates. This treatment stifles small businesses. It also stifles tax reform because efforts to reduce loopholes and deductions available to the very rich and special interests end up hitting small businesses and job creators as well. The Trump plan addresses this challenge head on with a new business income tax rate within the personal income tax code that matches the 15% corporate tax rate to help these businesses, entrepreneurs and freelancers grow and prosper.
These lower rates will provide a tremendous stimulus for the economy – significant GDP growth, a huge number of new jobs and an increase in after-tax wages for workers.
The Trump Tax Plan Ends The Unfair Death Tax
The death tax punishes families for achieving the American dream. Therefore, the Trump plan eliminates the death tax.
The Trump Tax Plan Is Fiscally Responsible
The Trump tax cuts are fully paid for by:
Reducing or eliminating deductions and loopholes available to the very rich, starting by steepening the curve of the Personal Exemption Phaseout and the Pease Limitation on itemized deductions. The Trump plan also phases out the tax exemption on life insurance interest for high-income earners, ends the current tax treatment of carried interest for speculative partnerships that do not grow businesses or create jobs and are not risking their own capital, and reduces or eliminates other loopholes for the very rich and special interests. These reductions and eliminations will not harm the economy or hurt the middle class. Because the Trump plan introduces a new business income rate within the personal income tax code, they will not harm small businesses either.
A one-time deemed repatriation of corporate cash held overseas at a significantly discounted 10% tax rate. Since we are making America’s corporate tax rate globally competitive, it is only fair that corporations help make that move fiscally responsible. U.S.-owned corporations have as much as $2.5 trillion in cash sitting overseas. Some companies have been leaving cash overseas as a tax maneuver. Under this plan, they can bring their cash home and put it to work in America while benefitting from the newly-lowered corporate tax rate that is globally competitive and no longer requires parking cash overseas. Other companies have cash overseas for specific business units or activities. They can leave that cash overseas, but they will still have to pay the one-time repatriation fee.
An end to the deferral of taxes on corporate income earned abroad. Corporations will no longer be allowed to defer taxes on income earned abroad, but the foreign tax credit will remain in place because no company should face double taxation.
Reducing or eliminating some corporate loopholes that cater to special interests, as well as deductions made unnecessary or redundant by the new lower tax rate on corporations and business income. We will also phase in a reasonable cap on the deductibility of business interest expenses.
Rumors of Donald Trump’s demise may have been greatly exaggerated.
Ever since rival Carly Fiorina was widely perceived to have bested Trump at the second GOP debate in California on Sept. 16, media outlets have been lining up to suggest that the front-runner is waning.
Trump has hit back with characteristic vigor. But he has a point, independent observers say.
“The reality is that he does have a hold on some people and he doesn’t appear to be surrendering it,” said Mark Mellman, a veteran Democratic pollster who is also a columnist for The Hill.
Much of the negative media attention has been built around a single poll in the immediate aftermath of the debate, by CNN/ORC.
The survey showed the businessman’s support among Republican voters nationwide had declined by 8 percentage points since the last survey from the same source, less than two weeks before.
That was a sizable decline, to be sure — even though Trump still led his closest rival by 9 percentage points. But no other reputable poll since the debate has shown Trump falling by anything like that margin.
A survey from Fox News released earlier this week showed the businessman at 26 percent support nationally, an increase of 1 point since Fox’s last survey in mid-August. A Bloomberg poll gave him 21 percent — good enough for a 5-point lead over the field and an unchanged rating since the last poll from the financial news outlet at the beginning of August.
The picture is not substantially different in the crucial early states — and, in some cases, it is even better for Trump.
The Democratic-leaning firm Public Policy Polling (PPP) released a new survey from Iowa this week in which Trump polled at 24 percent — a 5-point rise over his showing in PPP’s previous poll of the Hawkeye State in the immediate aftermath of the first GOP debate on Aug. 6.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Republican Party’s conservative wing, pumped up by House Speaker John Boehner’s stepping down, is warning the 2016 presidential candidates that defying its wishes will come at their peril.
Religious activists forcefully conveyed this message Saturday: embrace our uncompromising stance against abortion rights and gay marriage, among other priorities, even if doing so risks a federal government shutdown.
An emboldened conservative movement signals fresh trouble for White House candidates viewed by the party’s frustrated base as insufficiently committed to their cause. Chief among them is former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
“Conservatives are on fire at the moment,” said Gary Bauer, a former president of the Family Research Council. He was among the featured speakers at the Values Voter annual conference that brought an estimated 2,000 evangelical activists to Washington this weekend.
Boehner’s announcement that he would resign from Congress by the end of October came without warning Friday, nearly four months before voting begins in the presidential primary. His decision revealed a deep divide within the GOP that raises questions about the party’s ability to unite behind one candidate next spring.
Hard-line conservatives were deeply disappointed with the last two Republican presidential nominees – former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Arizona Sen. John McCain. Boehner was unpopular among conservative activists, and his resignation will give them new hope that the party may choose a candidate who energizes the most passionate voters, even if that nominee is seen as less attractive to a general election crowd.
A co-founder of the tea party movement said Boehner was just another of the establishment figures taken down by frustrated conservatives. “Today, the insurgency is more emboldened than ever and looks to even further dominate the presidential elections in 2016,” said Mark Meckler. “Our influence is growing.”
Clinton raises about $350,00 at campaign stop in Cresskill
SEPTEMBER 25, 2015, 6:52 PM LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2015, 7:31 PM
BY DUSTIN RACIOPPI
STATE HOUSE BUREAU |
THE RECORD
Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton stopped in North Jersey on Thursday night and left having raised about $350,000 for her campaign from a crowd that included some of the state’s most powerful Democrats.
Clinton, a former Secretary of State, was hosted by Michael Kempner and his wife, Jacqueline, at their Cresskill home. Michael Kempner heads East Rutherford-based MWW Public Relations, one of the largest marketing and public relations firms in the state, and was a top fundraiser for Clinton’s failed 2008 campaign for the White House. The Kempners also hosted President Obama in 2010 and Vice President Joseph Biden in 2011.
On Thursday night, Clinton mingled with the crowd and posed for photos with about 50 guests. She then spoke for about 20 to 30 minutes, touching on a wide range of issues – education, the environment, drug addiction, transportation and issues affecting women and children. She also took a shot at Republicans, telling donors and guests that the GOP is “going from the party of Lincoln to the party of Trump,” Kempner said, referring to the businessman-cum-Republican frontrunner Donald Trump.
Donald Trump said Friday it was time for Speaker John Boehner to go because he didn’t fight hard enough for conservative principles.
Mobbed by reporters outside the main ballroom at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington ahead of his speech to the Values Voters Summit, the front-runner for the 2016 GOP nomination said Boehner’s announced resignation was “a good thing.”
“I think it’s time, it’s a good thing,” Trump said. “Someone else will come in and maybe they’ll have a tougher attitude.”
Asked by The Hill if Boehner fought sufficiently for conservative principles, Trump responded: “No, he didn’t. Not enough.”
“I don’t think he’s a conservative,” the celebrity real estate tycoon said of Boehner.
“I think it’s time for him [to move on] and the party and everybody,” Trump added
A national survey finds that 72 percent of Americans say their country isn’t as great as it once was —a central theme of front-runner Donald Trump’s campaign.
Americans are “fed up” with politics, suspect the wealthy are getting an unfair edge, and think the country is going in the wrong direction, according to a new Bloomberg Politics poll that lays bare the depth and breadth of the discontents propelling outsider candidates in the Republican presidential field.
The survey shows that 72 percent of Americans think their country isn’t as great as it once was—a central theme of front-runner Donald Trump’s campaign. More than a third prefer a presidential candidate without experience in public office.
Read the questions and methodology here.
Three of the four candidates leading the Republican field fit that description: Trump, the first choice of 21 percent of registered Republicans and voters who say they lean that way, followed by neurosurgeon Ben Carson with 16 percent, former Florida GovernorJeb Bush with 13 percent, and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina with 11 percent.
Fiorina and Carson have seen the strongest gains among Republicans since the survey was taken a month ago. In the interim, voters have had their first extended looks at the candidates in two nationally televised debates. Fiorina’s numbers, at 1 percent in the August poll, leaped by 10 percentage points while Carson jumped 11 percentage points, up from 5 percent. Trump’s numbers have remained unchanged. Together, the three candidates who have never held political office account for 48 percent of the Republican vote.
Gina Chon in Columbia, South Carolina and Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington
In the 25 years they have known each other, US Senator Bernie Sanders has met with Ben Cohen, one of the founders of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, numerous times to talk about causes they support.
But Mr Cohen cannot recall a time when they had dinner just to hang out, even though he is one of the wealthiest people in the senator’s home state of Vermont, and has endorsed his presidential run.
Socialising with prominent supporters is virtually a requirement for politicians, but Mr Sanders, who has held public office for more than 30 years, has won elections by being the anti-politician politician.
“I sometimes run into him at the airport, but Bernie’s not a schmoozer. It’s an oxymoron for Bernie to have an image consultant,” said Mr Cohen, who laughed heartily at the idea of Mr Sanders changing his unruly white hair to appeal to voters. “What you see is what you get. And he has a history of confounding the pundits for it.”
He is doing just that in his bid to unseat Hillary Clinton as the Democrat’s nominee to be the next US president, leading in primary polls in the key states of Iowa and New Hampshire. The support marks a stunning turn of events for a candidate who was written off a few months ago as a fringe politician.
Editor’s Note: In this third of a five-part series, Middle East and Islam specialist Daniel Pipes continues his documentation of Barack Obama’s close ties to the Islamic religion, focusing here on statements he made as an adult.
Several statements by Barack Obama in recent years point to his Muslim childhood.
(1) Robert Gibbs, campaign communications director for PresidentObama’s first presidential race, asserted in January 2007: “Sen. Obamahas never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian who attends the United Church of Christ in Chicago.” But he backtracked in March 2007, asserting that Mr. Obama “has never been a practicing Muslim.” By focusing on the practice as a child, the campaign is raising a nonissue, for Muslims (like Jews) do not consider practice central to religious identity. Mr. Gibbs added, according to a paraphrase by Paul Watson of the Los Angeles Times, that “as a child, Obama had spent time in the neighborhood’s Islamic center.” Clearly, “the neighborhood’s Islamic center” is a euphemism for a mosque. Spending time there again points to Mr. Obama’s being a Muslim.
(2) He may have made faces and horsed around in Koran class, but Mr. Obama learned how to pray the salat, a form of ritual worship, in religion class. Pak Effendi, his former teacher at Besuki, his school in Jakarta, Indonesia, recalls that he would “join the other pupils for Muslim prayers.” Praying the salat in and of itself made Mr. Obama a Muslim. Furthermore, he still proudly retains knowledge from that long-ago class. In March 2007, Nicholas D. Kristof of the New York Times witnessed asMr. Obama “recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them [to Mr. Kristof] with a first-rate accent.” Mr. Obama recited not the salat itself but the adhan, the call to prayer (typically chanted from minarets). The second and third lines of the adhan constitute the Islamic declaration of faith, the shahada, the very utterance of which makes one a Muslim. The full adhan in its Sunni iteration (skipping the repetitions) goes as follows:
God is the greatest.
I testify that there is no deity but God.
I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of God.
Come to prayer.
Come to success.
God is the greatest.
There is no deity except God.
In the eyes of Muslims, reciting the adhan in class in 1970 made Mr. Obama a Muslim then — and doing so again for a journalist in 2007 once again made Mr. Obama a Muslim.
Ridgewood NJ, Trump sets the record straight on Obama Muslim comments. From Donald Trumps Facebook page :
Am I morally obligated to defend the President every time somebody says something bad or controversial about him? I don’t think so!
This is the first time in my life that I have caused controversy by NOT saying something . If someone made a nasty or controversial statement about me to the President, do you really think he would come to my rescue? No chance!
If I would have challenged the man, the media would have accused me of interfering with that man’s right of free speech. A no win situation!
Wednesday’s GOP debate appears to be the highest-rated event in CNN’s history, according to preliminary Nielsen ratings.
The prime time debate averaged a 14.7 household rating, indicating that 1 in 7 American homes with TVs tuned in.
These are NFL-level ratings — affirming that the Donald Trump fueled Republican debate slate is one of the most popular television shows of the year.
The overnight ratings estimates are subject to adjustments. But the 14.7 rating is likely to translate to 20-plus million viewers once final viewership figures come out Thursday afternoon.
Fox’s GOP debate last month received a 16.0 preliminary rating the next morning. That number later extrapolated to 24 million live viewers. (Another 1.1 million viewers watched via DVRs.)
Fox’s debate was two hours long while CNN’s was three hours.
From a campaign’s perspective, longer might have been better, because it gave candidates more time to talk and argue. It also gave CNN more time for commercial breaks.
A majority of Republican registered voters want either Donald Trump or Ben Carson to be their party’s 2016 presidential nominee, according to two new national polls from the Washington Post-ABC News and the New York Times-CBS News.
Let that sink in for a minute. Neither Trump, who made his name as a real estate mogul and reality star, nor Carson, a renowned pediatric neurosurgeon, have run for any office prior to their presidential candidacies. Both men have staked the entirety of their campaigns on the idea that they are the furthest thing possible from a traditional politician. And it is working for both of them. Big time.
While the rise of Trump tends to dominate the headlines, polls like these from The Post and the Times provide a reminder of the big picture here for the Republican party. And that big picture is simple: The GOP establishment is on the run, and there are few signs that its members have any sort of coherent strategy to deal with the massive uprising within its ranks.
t’s not only that 53 percent of Republican voters (in the Post poll) or 50 percent of GOP voters (in the Times poll) say they are for either Trump or Carson. It’s also how few Republican respondents in those same surveys say they are for the establishment choices. Jeb Bush, the man everyone assumed would be the race’s front-runner, clocks in at 8 percent in the Post poll and 6 percent (!) in the Times poll. Scott Walker, the guy who was supposed to challenge Bush for the top spot, takes 2 percent in both the Times and Post polls. Two.
With Bush and Clinton taking their lumps, financial executives face populist critics in both parties.
By Ben White
09/14/15, 07:34 PM EDT
NEW YORK — Wall Street is growing increasingly terrified that Donald Trump — once viewed as an amusing summertime distraction — could actually win the Republican nomination for president.
The real estate billionaire, who took another populist shot on Sunday by ripping into lavish executive pay, continues to rise in the polls. Would-be Wall Street saviors like Jeb Bush are languishing in single digits. The belief that Trump’s candidacy would quickly fade is now evaporating in a wave of fear.
“I held four lunches for investors in August and at the first one everyone assumed Trump would implode,” said Byron Wien, vice chairman of Blackstone Advisory Partners and a senior figure on Wall Street. “By the fourth one everyone was taking him very seriously. He taps into frustrations that are very real and he is a master manipulator of the media.”
The CEO of one large Wall Street firm, who declined to be identified by name criticizing the GOP front-runner, said the assumption in the financial industry remains that something will eventually knock Trump off and send voters toward a more establishment candidate. But that assumption is no longer held with strong conviction. And a dozen Wall Street executives interviewed for this article could not say what might dent Trump’s appeal or when it might happen.
“I don’t know anyone who is a Donald Trump supporter. I don’t know anyone who knows anyone who is a Donald Trump supporter. They are like this huge mystery group,” the CEO said. “So it’s a combination of shock and bewilderment. No one really knows why this is happening. But my own belief is that the laws of gravity will apply and those who are prepared to run the marathon will benefit when Trump drops out at mile 22. Right now people think Trump is pretty hilarious but the longer it goes on the more frightening it gets.”
