ben carson

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pow 519 evil and mofo pending, tool of stephen miller UNDOC KIDS

MIKE BENZ ~ USAID

PASSANTINO

LINDELL

2025 DANS ROBERTS

renta tom KNS

cornerstone pension plan roe amicus

jul 29 2021

Brief amicus curiae of The American Cornerstone Instituteand its founder Dr. Benjamin S. Carson filed.

LOTTA RENTA TOM

RECYCLED VID OF HIM BADLY READING THEN MISINTERP BIBLE ~ THE BISH BARBER?

RWW 5 26

[Christian Nationalism ## Much-Hyped ‘Rededication’ of U.S. to God Can’t Draw Trump Off the Golf Course

President Trump called for an event "rededicating" America to God, but he couldn't be bothered to show up for it.

https://www.peoplefor.org/rightwingwatch/much-hyped-rededication-us-god-cant-draw-trump-golf-course

05/18/2026

Peter Montgomery

*Commentary

Trump administration officials and Christian nationalist leaders hyped Sunday’s event to “rededicate America as one nation under God” as a historic moment and turning point for the nation, but President Donald Trump skipped it to go golfing.

The same was true for the Saturday evening worship gathering organized by musician and MAGA activist Sean Feucht on the grounds of the Washington Monument; while his followers gathered, Trump went golfing.

The snub was particularly noteworthy because Trump owes his election victories to the overwhelming support he got from conservative Christian voters, thanks in part to religious-right figures telling their audiences over and over again that Trump was anointed by God to lead and save America.

Religious-right figures who helped promote the event made a big deal out of the spiritual importance of Trump as president calling for the nation’s rededication to God. Dominionist anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ activist Lou Engle has organized many prayer events over the years that drew much bigger crowds, but he said that this one was special: “This solemn assembly is different than any other solemn assembly, for the president of the United States has called this day.”

But the president couldn’t even be bothered to make a video greeting for this “historic” moment like Vice President J.D. Vance did. Instead, organizers played a video of Trump reading a scripture passage from a religious-right organized Bible-reading marathon event a few weeks ago. Engle added that when Trump read that passage, “he opened a door for the greatest awakening America has ever seen.” He called it “a hinge of history moment.”

If Trump cared enough to think that a gathering of “prophetic” leaders might call him out the way Old Testament prophets called out unjust political leaders, he needn’t have worried. None of the speakers calling for personal and national repentance suggested that Trump should repent for his cruelty or corruption. As the Religion News Service noted, neither Sen. Tim Scott nor religious-right activist Alevda King, who spoke about the Black church’s central role in the Civil Rights Movement, mentioned the current MAGA assault on the Voting Rights Act.

Even White House Faith Office Director Paula White didn’t attend in person, sending a short video.

:{:{Ben Carson, who was secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the first Trump administration and is now National Advisor for Nutrition, Health, and Housing at the Department of Agriculture, did show up in person. He was one of a few speakers who talked about the need for national unity. There are “forces” that want Americans to think they are one another’s enemies, Carson said. “We are not enemies.” He did not acknowledge Trump’s central role in creating bitter divisions or his ongoing demonization of his political opponents as traitors—or for that matter his religious-right backers’ portrayal of Trump opponents as demonic.}:

And if the organizers of the event were really interested in promoting national unity, or transcending politics as House Speaker Mike Johnson claimed, they would have created an interfaith event that celebrated America’s exceptional religious liberty and religious pluralism. Instead they created an event overwhelmingly dominated by MAGA Christians.}:

MAGA pastor Franklin Graham delivered a video diatribe about the moral state of the country, quoting scriptural warnings about people being lovers of money, arrogant, abusive, heartless, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, and more. While Graham said this list could apply to America today, he ignored the obvious fact that all those traits apply to the president he unwaveringly promotes.

Samuel Rodriguez, a MAGA pastor, New Apostolic Reformation figure, and head of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, gave an opening prayer. He spoke for about four minutes, calling for love and justice but failing to utter a single word about the immigrants and other people in their communities who have been terrorized by the Trump administration’s brutal mass deportation efforts. So much for prophets speaking truth to power.

MAGA pundit Eric Metaxas used his time on the platform at the Sunday rally and the Saturday worship service to promote his new book about the American revolution.

At Feucht’s worship on Saturday, Metaxas claimed that every single one of the founding fathers understood that the national narrative of the revolution was, “We are re-establishing the Sinai covenant.” That kind of claim doesn’t bode well for the credibility of his book, but then, there wasn’t much hope for that anyway.

On Sunday, Metaxas said God’s hand had guided American leaders beginning with George Washington. After talking about the British burning the White House during the War of 1812, he added jokingly, “It’s hard to believe it that it would take two centuries for the Lord to raise up a great man to bring that ballroom finally to stand where it needs to stand. It’s extraordinary. We only had to wait 200 years.”

The actual “prayer of rededication” was delivered by Speaker Johnson, who invoked God’s support for the MAGA war on wokeness and truth-telling history:

In recent years we’ve seen sinister ideologies sow confusion and discord among our people. We’ve witnessed attacks on our history, on our heroes, and the cherished moral and spiritual identity of this nation. These forces insist to the young and impressionable that our story, the American story, is one of oppression and hypocrisy and failure, and that this story can only be understood through the lens of our sins. Father, we reject that. We rebuke it in your name. … We turn to you once again to save us from these afflictions, to deliver us from the forces of evil, oppression, injustice, and tyranny both within our borders and beyond our shores.

In asking for deliverance from oppression and injustice, Johnson was apparently not thinking of the authoritarian abuses of power that mark the Trump administration, because his only mention of Trump was to pray that God would “continue to bless our president with the wisdom, prudence, and strength to govern our nation in accordance with your will.”

Neither the smaller-than-expected attendance nor Trump’s apparent disinterest in the “rededication” ceremony mean that the rest of us should ignore that the increasingly aggressive Christian nationalism of the administration and the MAGA movement threatens Americans’ religious freedom and the rights of people seen as undeserving by right-wing Christian nationalists.

// RWW

05/18/2026

Kyle Mantyla

Alex Nguyen @ Mother Jones: Trump Just Gave Himself a $1.8 Billion Slush Fund to Reward His Friends

And the public may never know who their money was spent on.

Jon Wertheim, Aliza Chasan, Andrew Bast, and Jessica Kegu @ CBS News: Suspected insider accounts net $2.4 million on Polymarket Iran war bets with 98% win rate, firm finds

Nine connected Polymarket accounts have raked in more than $2.4 million betting almost exclusively on U.S. military actions in what digital detectives from the data analytics firm Bubblemaps have identified as a potentially egregious case of insider trading.

Sarah Posner @ Talking Points Memo: Trump’s Evangelical Allies Gather in DC for Prayer Marathon, Push to Further Erode Church-State Divide

Speakers cast America as ‘morally rotten’ and sinful while embracing the ‘Christian nationalist’ label.

María Teresita Armstrong-Matta @ Raw Story: Reports attest Trump's 'Rededicate 250' event drew in small crowds

President Donald Trump's free eight-hour Rededicate 250 prayer event held at the National Mall in D.C. Sunday drew a notably sparse crowd, with Reuters photos capturing numerous empty seats.

Steven Waldman @ Religion News Service: Christian nationalists need to look again at their religious DNA

The ancestors of today’s Christian nationalists weren’t the leaders of Christian America — they were the heretics.

Warren Throckmorton: Donald Trump's Rededicate 250 is Religious Kayfabe

The Christian worship performance scheduled for the National Mall is a religious show.

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RWW 18TH?

Mike Johnson Says ‘Rededicate 250’ Event ‘Transcends Politics’; So Why Are All the Speakers MAGA Christians?

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Speaker of the House Mike Johnson addressing the 2026 National Gathering for Prayer and Repentance (Image from CBN News coverage)

News & Analysis

05/15/2026

Peter Montgomery

A letter from Speaker of the House Mike Johnson promoting this weekend’s Christian nationalist ceremony to “rededicate” America to God was sent out by Freedom 250 Thursday evening.

In the email from Freedom 250, which President Donald Trump set up to wrest control of the national celebrations from the bipartisan and congressionally authorized America 250to promote himself and MAGA ideology, Johnson called Sunday’s day-long event “a unique moment for believers" and “a call for unity, repentance, and hope, and one that truly transcends politics.”

That is classic Trumpian gaslighting.

First of all, an event seeking to unify the actually country might in some way recognize the religious pluralism that is an essential part of what makes America exceptional, along with our Constitution’s protections of religious freedom and prohibitions on government-established religion or religious tests for public office.

Instead, every speaker listed in the schedule sent out by Freedom 250 is a Christian; most are evangelical and Pentecostal Trump boosters, along with a couple of right-wing Catholics and other denominations represented. Earlier speaker lists included a rabbi, perhaps as “Judeo-Christian” window-dressing, but he was not included in Thursday’s Freedom 250 email.

It’s a bad joke for Johnson to claim that Sunday’s event “transcends politics,” given that every speaker listed in the Freedom 250 email is a vocal supporter of President Trump, many of them on record declaring him to be anointed by God and some, like White House Faith Office Director Paula White, claiming that Trump’s opponents are enemies of God or demonic agents of Satan.

In reality, this is another opportunity for Trump to posture as a defender of the faith and bask in the adoration of his most loyal supporters at a time when his public support has hit record lows. And it is an opportunity for Christian nationalists to continue to send the false and exclusionary message that the only “real” Americans are the right kind of Christians, at a time when Christian-right and MAGA officials are trying to claim that Muslims and other non-Christians do not deserve the protection of the First Amendment.

The “moment of rededication” will be led by Johnson, along with former Archbishop of New York City Timothy Dolan, MAGA Pastor Lorenzo Sewell, and dominionist New Apostolic Reformation figure Lou Engle. Engle is a longtime anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ activist who led prayers that God would knock off Supreme Court justices to create vacancies for Trump to fill. In an Engle teaching guide called “The Keys to Dominion,” he preached:

“The church’s vocation is to rule history with God…The same authority that has been given to Christ Jesus for overwhelming conquering and dominion has been given to the saints of the most high….We’re God’s rulers upon the earth…We will govern over kings and judges will have to submit…We’re called to rule! To change history! To be co-regents with God!”

Christians, secularists, and other Americans who reject the MAGA movement’s increasingly aggressive Christian nationalism are speaking up in opposition to the “rededication.” This week, the Interfaith Alliance projected messages supporting religious freedom for all on the walls of the National Gallery of Art.

===

WENDY S

Inspiration

An article in Haaretz describes how Ben Carson personally presented Trump with a plan from Israeli-based company Inspiration, run by former IDF intelligence officers. The plan was for voter manipulation in swing states using information Inspiration collected from a Super PAC, “which it then used to compose strategies and slogans that would elevate Trump and ‘float all kinds of things’ about Hillary Clinton.”

The original report from Walla describes Ronen Cohen, a former Central Command intelligence officer who founded Inspiration in 2012. The article says Inspiration was not directly hired by the Trump campaign but was introduced by Ben Carson and funded by a PAC and hired three months prior to the election. Inspiration received voter data from the PAC and analyzed the data with another unnamed Israeli company. The messaging created by Inspiration was then passed to an American counterpart for review, revision, or distribution.

Russia Entities...

Michael Flynn-related entities

WALLA

According to a source at the company, where other officers who previously served in the Intelligence Directorate worked, the person who connected it with Trump was Ben Carson, one of the candidates in the Republican presidential primaries, who at one point withdrew and transferred his support to Trump. Carson currently serves as the housing secretary in his administration. "He personally put our plan on the table for Trump," said the source, who explained that Carson got to know the company after previously "working with a research organization that also worked with us." Thus, Inspiration began working towards Trump's election as the most powerful man in the world, about three months before the 2016 election.

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an 7 25

You’d be forgiven if among all the scary national and international headlines of the past few weeks you missed the first meeting of the newly formed Religious Liberty Commission.

You may not have even heard of this Trump-appointed commission of almost entirely Christian Nationalists tasked with “safeguard(ing) and promot(ing) America’s founding principle of religious freedom.” If religious freedom is something you value, you need to add this to your list of things to follow, because the first meeting made it clear that we are headed towards the end of religious freedom for all in our country. As an atheist, that really scares me.

President Donald Trump announced the commission during the National Day of Prayer event May 1. It is responsible for creating a report with recommendations for the president, due on July 4, 2026 (the 250th anniversary of our independence, just in case their intent to push the falsehood that the USA was founded as a Christian nation isn’t clear enough). The commission is just one of Trump’s many actions to appease his evangelical base, including his establishment of a “Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias” in February.

Religious extremists have been messaging around “Christian discrimination” for decades. They have fabricated a narrative where they are victimized by anyone who believes, lives, loves, or looks different than they do. This effectively scares the public into putting its trust into officials who say they will protect them against “the other.” Evidence of these anti-Christian offenses that the commission is meant to investigate is twisted to privilege extremist religious beliefs over the safety and wellbeing of others.

As an example of so-called anti-Christian offenses, Attorney General Pam Bondi cited the arrest of 23 anti-abortion activists who were charged in 2020 with conspiring to storm an abortion clinic in Washington, D.C. Kansans are intimately familiar with the violence directed toward abortion clinics and providers after the assassination of physician George Tiller in 2009, and we don’t need to look beyond last month’s assassination of Minnesota Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband to see how religious extremists target Planned Parenthood and their supporters. Instead of understanding this, Trump pardonedall 23 activists this January.

IFrame Content

The commission is made upof almost entirely of known right-wing Christians — including Texas Lt. Gov. and Chair Dan Patrick; former HUD secretary and vice chair Ben Carson; son of Billy Graham, disgraced evangelist Franklin Graham; former Miss California Carrie Prejean Boller; lawyers from Project 2025-affiliated organizations such as First Liberty Institute and Ethics & Public Policy Center; and right-wing TV and radio hosts such as Dr. Phil. A bishop, cardinal, and rabbi round out the members in what they tout as a “diverse” representation of faiths in America.

The commission will hold several more hearings over the next year to investigate the tired list of Christian Nationalist priorities, including so-called parent rights and “school choice,” prayer in schools, vaccine mandates, government displays of religious iconography, and “anti-Christian offenses.” As expected, the other key priority voiced throughout the day was to attack the LGBTQ+ community — especially trans kids.

During this first hearing, the real objectives of the commission became abundantly clear:

Rewrite history to make America a Christian nation. A key tenet of the Christian Nationalist political ideology is that America was founded as a Christian nation, and must return to this status to secure our future success. The commission repeatedly embraced this very narrow interpretation of key historical documents, including writings by the founders and the Free Exercise and Establishment clauses of the First Amendment. Both commissioners and witnesses denied the principle of church-state separation and a secular government.

Remake the courts with “courageous” Christian Nationalists. The courts, specifically the U.S. Supreme Court, will be the subject of many recommendations in the final commission report. The commission discussed which cases should be overturned, how Trump’s administration can assist with that, and how to make sure pesky state and local courts don’t get in the way. The Supreme Court has been chipping away at church-state separation for the past decade with crucial victories this term, but for this commission, this isn’t happening fast enough.

Promote religion in all parts of American culture, politics, and public life (but only if it’s their version of “Christianity”). Expert witnesses referred to a divine truth — the existence of a Judeo-Christian God — as the foundation for a moral, happy, and politically good society. Many devout Americans hold similar beliefs about their faith, but also recognize that our government should not prioritize one religion in a pluralistic society. Not only does this push minority faiths and nonbelievers such as myself outside of the bounds of this “virtuous citizenry,” but it asserts that one religion (Christianity) must be imposed on every person to create and maintain this good society.

In a world where we are facing very real threats to our physical, mental, and financial health, why did I spend five excruciating hours listening to a commission whose only job is to make recommendations? The obvious answer is because these individuals were hand-selected for holding a world view that advances the Christian Nationalist agenda and threatens any religious beliefs that fall outside of this ideology. The uncomfortable truth is that this rhetoric justifies hate crimes and the dissolution of rights for women and minorities has a new platform with the divine weight of presidential approval. As a lifelong atheist, I’m scared that we’re looking at the end of church-state separation and the rise of a theocracy weaponizing religion against people who don’t fall in line.

American Atheists just announced that it will no longer be hosting the 2026 World Humanist Congress in Washington, D.C., because the “Trump Administration’s actions … have created an environment that is not only incompatible with our values but also inhospitable to members of our global secular community.” They feared for the safety of their attendees because we are no longer a country welcoming of visitors, and especially not visitors who fall outside of a specific Christian identity.

But it’s not just the secular community who should be worried right now. Every person who has found within their faith the mission to love their neighbor, feed the hungry, protect the vulnerable, and embrace the stranger should be fighting for the sanctity of their beliefs. The members of the Religious Liberty Commission will not be including these priorities in their final report, and you will not find a place for your faith in their new America.

*Laurel Burchfield is the advocacy director of Mainstream Coalition, where she advocates under the dome and in local communities to protect church-state separation. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com.

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10 24

Trump campaign bus tour across Pennsylvania will feature Project 2025 authors Ben Carson and Peter Navarro 11/01/24 ma

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CPI meadows sinecure w $1mill trump pac $, that he never turns loose of

Since the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, CPI has become a hub for insurrectionists and election deniers. The group made Meadows a senior partner and brought in Mitchell to lead its lead its “Election Integrity Network” network, organizing local GOP activists to engage in the election process based on the lie that the 2020 election was stolen.

So far, Mitchell has led partisan voter suppression and election subversion events in nine states with fellow Big Lie proponents and election fraud conspiracists like Meadows, DeSantis, Mike Gableman, Arizona Senate President and ALEC National Chair Karen Fann (R), and many others with the goal of subverting the electoral system.

CPI has also launched a number of spin-offs to further right-wing causes, including the American Accountability Foundation (AAF), America First Legal, Center for Renewing America, American Cornerstone Institute, American Moment, and the State Freedom Caucus Network.

american Cornerstone Institute: former Trump cabinet member Ben Carson is founder and chair of American Cornerstone Institute (ACI), where Carsonhosts a podcast and creates YouTube videos, and which created the anti-woke "Little Patriots" platform "to teach children about our founding principles."

===

3/20

i don’t want to’: Ben Carson sparks panic by refusing to reveal ‘plan’ for cruise ship patients

A Sunday interview with Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben…

===

april 2021

ben c unfortunate Cornerstone

Dr. Ben Carson has a new gig as the head of something called the American Cornerstone Institute. It seems that the outfit exists primarily as a funding vehicle for the good doctor himself, but that should hardly raise an eyebrow in today’s Washington, D.C. The greater problem is that the operation’s poorly chosen name echoes an historically freighted pro-slavery declaration, issued on the eve of the Civil War.

The former presidential candidate, ex-secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and retired neurosurgeon’s not-for-profit think tank promises to “champion conservative solutions to the real problems our nation faces.” After four years of quiescence during the Trump administration, Carson now claims to have realized that values such as “compromise, compassion, and civility” have vanished from our political discourse, and he is determined to restore them.

The Cornerstone Institute is basically a one-man show. The website flogs Carson’s accomplishments, with multiple still photographs, video clips and pull-quotes touting his wisdom, insight, and principles, with no mention of anyone else. And of course, there are pitches for contributions. The Cornerstone Institute was only incorporated in February 2021, so it is too soon to obtain the IRS form with information on its top salaries, but it is a pretty safe bet that Carson is paying himself handsomely for what is essentially just a big exercise in self-promotion.

I don’t have any complaints about ex-Trump officials cashing in however they can. Carson wasn’t close enough to the president to write a tell-all book, he doesn’t seem to have the energetic people skills needed for lobbying, and he isn’t a lawyer. So that leaves think-tanking, with Carson evidently betting that he can do better on his own than he can working for one of the established right-wing outfits.

The actually disturbing thing about Carson’s endeavor is its name. “Cornerstone” seems obviously intended as a New Testament reference – although that is unmentioned on the website – but the word also has a much more poisonous association in American political history. It is odd that nobody appears to have warned Carson about it before he went public.

On March 21, 1861, Georgia’s Alexander Stephens, the Vice President of the recently formed Confederate States of American, delivered what has come to be known as the Cornerstone Address, explaining the reasons for secession from the Union. He minced no words, defending slavery as the guiding principle of the Confederacy:

Our new government is founded . . . its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery – subordination to the superior race – is his natural and normal condition. . . . This, our new government, is the first in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

The Cornerstone Address came just seventeen days after the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln, at a time when only Georgia and six other states had announced their secession from the Union. As a former Whig, previously a staunch Unionist, and a one-time friend of Lincoln, Stephens’s bold pronouncement did much to brace the Confederate cause. The firing on Fort Sumter was only three weeks later, leading to the secession of four more states.

The Civil War would have happened with or without Stephens’s Cornerstone speech, but it was still a defining moment in the struggle over disunion, leaving no doubt that the purpose of the rebellion was the perpetuation of slavery.

The Cornerstone Address continues to play an important role in our understanding of the Civil War. When contemporary apologists for the Confederacy argue that secession was driven by states’ rights, tariffs, or the so-called “Lost Cause,” it takes only one look at the Cornerstone Address to refute their claims. The Confederacy was premised on White supremacy. It armies were assembled and battles were fought in the commission of treason in defense of slavery.

It is likely that Carson was unaware of the Cornerstone Address when he named his foundation. Perhaps he never studied antebellum history during his pre-med and medical school education at Yale and the University of Michigan. Even so, there may be some words that cannot be reclaimed or repurposed. Nobody today would choose “Confederacy” as the name for a respectable political organization, or “Stasi” for a government office (even though that is merely a German abbreviation for “State Security Service”). “Cornerstone” is not quite so notorious, but its historical association with slavery is nonetheless profound.

Ironically, the American Cornerstone Institute has launched its “A More Perfect Union Project,” aimed at “educating our citizens in civics and history.” The project quotes Lincoln’s reverence for the Declaration of Independence as “the immortal emblem of humanity,” without noting that the Great Emancipator gave his life to destroy Alexander Stephens’s vision for the cornerstone of a government founded on racial subordination.

In a recent oped in the Washington Post, Carson bemoaned a “subtle shift” in the national conversation about race “from equality to equity.” This is “un-American,” he said, because it assumes that “all differential outcomes between groups are solely the result of that bigotry and oppression.” From there, Carson predictably inveighed against affirmative action hiring programs, campaigns to support Black-owned businesses, and even local “anti-poverty stipends” that target people of color.

If the McCarthyist condemnation of liberal causes seems at odds with the Cornerstone Institute’s commitment to restoring civility, well, you just have to figure that Carson didn’t really mean it that way. Our goal, he says, is to “heal the divide that has polarized our great nation,” and the nasty bit must have just slipped out by accident. It seems that you can take the man out of the Trump administration, but it is not so easy to take the Trump administration out of the man.

In that light, I have a suggestion for Dr. Carson, assuming that he is truly concerned about the un-American implications of subtle language. Nothing was ever more un-American than the Confederacy, so he ought to consider dropping Alexander Stephens’s “cornerstone” in favor of a quotation from Abraham Lincoln. How about the “New Birth of Freedom Institute”?

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an 10 21

no lnx

Now that former President Donald Trump's reign is over, the members of his administration have been forced to take their careers in different directions. So, where are the members of the Trump administration now? According to The Intelligencer, many are doing an array of different things; some of which are synonymous with the questionable activities that long-haunted the Trump administration.

Here's where the top Trump White House officials are now:

1. Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is still trying to distance himself from the kidnapping of Julian Assange. According to Pompeo, he had nothing to do with it.

Pompeo is adamantly denying any involvement in the plot to kidnap Assange. A report published by Yahoo! News back in September, suggested that Pompeo was livid when he learned Assange divulged U.S. national-security secrets. In fact, the report also claimed that he participated in discussions with members of the Trump administration on how to get retribution.

However, Pompeo is still suggesting the reports are not true. "There's pieces of it that are true," Pompeo said during an appearance on The Megyn Kelly Show. "We tried to protect American information from Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, absolutely, yes … We're not permitted by U.S. law to conduct assassinations. We never acted in a way that was inconsistent with that."

2. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has been milking his access to the Secret Service.

Thanks to Trump's order extending the use of the Secret Service to members of his administration, Mnuchin has used the professional perk to his benefit. The publication reports that in his first six months out of office, Mnuchin has racked up the highest Secret Service tab. The Washington Post detailed how Mnuchin managed to rack up more than $150,000 in Secret Service expenses.

The receipts showed that agents spent $114,000 over the six months to rent rooms at a W Hotel in Los Angeles, where Mnuchin has a home. They also followed Mnuchin on three trips to the Middle East, where Mnuchin is reportedly seeking to raise money from sovereign wealth funds for a new venture called Liberty Strategic Capital…

Mnuchin's travels with the Secret Service weren't all business, however. Over the six months, the records show three separate trips to Cabo San Lucas — the Mexican resort, where Mnuchin had also vacationed during Trump's presidency.

To guard Mnuchin during those three trips, the records show, the Secret Service paid $56,000 for hotel rooms and $2,000 to rent golf carts.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Mnuchin is planning to use the $2.5 billion he has raised traveling so he can invest in technology and cybersecurity investments, along with "new forms of content." It remains unclear what Mnuchin specifically describes as "new forms of content" but "many big tech companies are pushing virtual- and augmented-reality hardware and content products and digital gaming."

3. Wilbur Ross is reportedly fantasizing about putting "Trump condos on the moon."

Back in February after the Trump administration transitioned out of the White House, Ross spoke with Bloomberg and shared his upcoming post-government plans; which involve "Trump condos on the moon."

On this particular afternoon, he's sitting in the living room of his 80-year-old home filled with Magrittes and Picassos, sipping a cappuccino, dressed in cashmere sweater, slacks and velvet slippers embroidered with octopuses.

Ironically, it's while ensconced in this paradise of earthly delights that Ross is gearing up to invest in space, among other possibilities. He sees opportunity in extraterrestrial tourism, manufacturing, research and habitation.

Habitation? When asked whether space would be a gold-plated real estate opportunity for Trump, Ross didn't disagree.

"Why not Trump condos on the moon?" he quipped back.

Ross' remarks came just months after the U.S. Commerce Department's inspector general released a scathing report about the former Trump official's behavior. According to The Washington Post, the IG's report "concluded that Ross had made many inaccurate statements to federal officials about his assets before taking office, though he did not willfully violate conflict-of-interest laws."

4. Ben Carson is launching a venture similar to Boy Scouts of America.

After departing Washington, D.C., Ben Carson —the former Housing and Urban Development Secretary— launched an organization called the American Cornerstone Institute.Carson's new think tank reportedly places an emphasis on discovering "commonsense solutions to some of our nation's biggest problems."

The American Cornerstone Institute

youtu.be

Carson has also created the Little Patriots program, which is described as a partisan organization for children. Speaking to The Washington Post, Carson explained the organization's initiative. "It will be something like the Boy Scouts," Carson told the publication. "But heavily exposed to the real history of America.

"You probably notice when ISIS goes into a place, they destroy the history, they destroy the monuments," Carson explained. "History is what gives you identity."

Elaine Chao contributed to calls for Kroger to be boycotted.

Chao —wife of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and former transportation secretary— worked for several of the country's top corporations prior to her role with the Trump administration. But Intelligencer reports that "she and other Trump Cabinet alums were having a hard time finding cushy landing spots after exiting the administration. 'The feedback was 'It's too soon,' said one of the headhunters involved in an unsuccessful effort to find companies willing to work with Chao."

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Despite her struggles to re-enter the corporate world, Chao was appointed to Kroger's board of directors. But given her history of abusing her power and position with the government, social media users quickly expressed outrage and urged Kroger to drop the former Trump cabinet member from its board.

6. Alex Azar is reportedly conspiring against his former colleagues.

Former Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar is at odds with many of his former colleagues. In fact, several of them including —former FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn, former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Robert Redfield, former Medicare chief Seema Verma, and former White House COVID coordinator Deborah Birx— have reportedly joined forces to prepare their statements regarding the Trump administration's handling of COVID-19.

According to Politico, they've done so out of caution and concern about Azar possibly using them as "scapegoats" to clear themselves.

"I know the way this goes — everyone has a different perspective," Hahn said in an interview. "I wanted to tell what it was that happened and why it happened and the perspective that we had."

In calls and text messages, members of the group have swapped notes, compared recollections, and sent updates on media requests and interview opportunities, four people with knowledge of the matter said …

And in a nod to their individual battles with Azar, some have jokingly referred to the group in private as "AAA," or Alex Azar Anonymous, according to a person in direct contact with multiple members.

From the looks of it, many Trump administration officials are still conducting shady business as they did while in office.

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9/21

Salon.com

How MyPillow guy Mike Lindell came to Jesus — and to ...

The year before Baldwin met Lindell, the Christian actor and movie producer started his own religious endeavor: Friends of Stephen Baldwin ...

https://www.salon.com/2021/09/03/how-mypillow-guy-mike-lindell-came-to-jesus--and-to-donald-trump_partner/

no lnx many

How MyPillow guy Mike Lindell came to Jesus — and to Donald Trump

Mike Lindell was just a guy who sold pillows on TV — until he met Dr. Ben Carson at the National Prayer Breakfast

By JONATHAN LARSEN

PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 3, 2021

Michael Lindell, with My Pillow, laughs with President Donald Trump during a "Made in America," roundtable event in the East Room at the White House in Washington, DC on Wednesday, July 19, 2017. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)]

This article originally appeared at The Young Turks. Used by permission.

One of a series about the Fellowship Foundation, the secretive religious group that runs the National Prayer Breakfast and is popularly known as The Family. This series is based on Family documents obtained by TYT, including lists of breakfast guests and who invited them.

Perhaps as much as former President Trump himself, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has become the public face of the Big Lie. Like the Jan. 6 Capitol attackers, Lindell is brandishing openly theocratic, Christian beliefs to secure a Biblically based autocracy led by a man he sees as divinely anointed.

Lindell wasn't always this way. But over the past several years, people with ties to The Family have played key roles behind the scenes in Lindell's radicalization, religiously and politically.

Family insiders and allies, for instance, have dominated the boards of Lindell's nonprofits. One man associated with The Family was part of Lindell's "legal offense fund" to challenge election results.

Lindell's faith journey often features in his speeches. As he tells it, God orchestrated a series of events that changed him from a casual Christian into the hardcore, autocratic evangelical who called for the U.S. military to install Trump in a second term.

"What gave [Lindell] the certainty he was looking for was evangelical Christianity," one Republican operative told Politico. "He was born again."

That religious certitude has proved infectious. A MyPillow employee told Politico, "There's a lot of people calling and saying Mike is a disciple of God."

Lindell's certainty rests on his conviction that God had a hand in key moments in his life. That conviction, he explains, arose from his inability to see any other explanation for those events. He called his memoir, "What Are the Odds?"

What Lindell appears not to know, however, is the full extent of Family involvement in the events that so profoundly changed him.

Publicly, Lindell has only addressed his Family ties in relation to one incident: The 2016 National Prayer Breakfast. And even there, he elides important details that we can now fill in. He has never said, for instance, who invited him or why.

Cue Stephen Baldwin

Lindell met actor Stephen Baldwin at a New York radio station. "I'd felt led to visit the station in early 2014, though at the time I wasn't sure why," Lindell wrote in his book. "Now I know it was to meet Stephen, who became like a brother to me."

In a brief call this week, Lindell told TYT how he came to attend the 2016 prayer breakfast: "I was invited at the last minute by my friend Stephen Baldwin." The Christian actor also attended that year's breakfast.

Baldwin, a Trump supporter, would be at Lindell's side for a number of important events. But, according to an internal Family document, it was not Baldwin who invited Lindell to the breakfast; at least, not directly. (Baldwin and others with ties to The Family did not respond to requests for comment, unless noted otherwise.)

The year before Baldwin met Lindell, the Christian actor and movie producer started his own religious endeavor: Friends of Stephen Baldwin Ministry. All three principals of Baldwin's nonprofit have had ties to The Family.

One of the three principals was Margie Frank, connected by court records to a Texas oil inheritance. A six-figure donor to conservative causes, including reducing reproductive rights, Frank more recently has backed Republicans pushing the Big Lie.

Frank's husband, Jonathan, was quoted in Philippine media as a spokesperson for the National Prayer Breakfast, in relation to boxer Manny Pacquiao's attendance in 2015. The religious, right-wing fighter ostensibly was invited by Congress, but the invitation reportedly was delivered by a Texas pastor named Wilfred Job.

Job, whose church had a significant Filipino population, was the second Family affiliate running Baldwin's ministry. The third principal at Baldwin's ministry was a Pennsylvania real-estate developer named Todd Hendricks. Both Job and Hendricks are connected to The Family.

A source close to The Family told TYT that Job did virtually nothing without Hendricks. Internal Family documents support this: The two men are listed as collaborating to invite 29 people in 2016. Job invited no one on his own.

(Job's nine other invitations were submitted in conjunction with two then-leaders of The Family: Doug Coe, now deceased, and former South Carolina governor David Beasley, now head of the UN World Food Programme.)

By contrast, Hendricks appears to have had more autonomy. Hendricks submitted names on his own for both 2016 and 2018. Aside from Coe, no individual submitted more guest names for the 2016 event than Hendricks did: 109. He had at least 59 people attend in 2018.

Three years after joining Baldwin's ministry, it was Job, with Coe's sign-off, who invited Baldwin's new friend, Lindell — best known back then as TV's pillow pitchman — to the 2016 National Prayer Breakfast, along with his girlfriend. According to the same internal Family document, Hendricks invited Baldwin and Pacquiao.

Asked about Job, Lindell said, "I don't know who you're talking about." Asked whether he was aware that the Lindell Foundation listed Job as its president on its 2017 tax filing, Lindell said, "No." Pressed for details, Lindell said, "Go to jail. Go somewhere and find yourself a nice jail cell because that's where you're going to end up. Goodbye."

Whether or not Lindell knows Job and Hendricks, that's how TV's pillow guy — not yet very religious, let alone political — ended up at the National Prayer Breakfast. It was at the breakfast where he would meet Dr. Ben Carson, and hear a prophecy that would change everything.

The prophecy

Although the president's Thursday morning speech is the public highlight, the National Prayer Breakfast is actually a four-day event. It's in breakout rooms and prayer sessions where the real work gets done.

The night before the breakfast, Lindell metretired Army Maj. Gen. Bob Dees.Dees told TYT he has attended a number of breakfasts over the last decade and "various other events with Fellowship members," but has "no direct association with the Fellowship Foundation."

A source close to The Family agreed with that characterization, saying Dees had ties to The Family, but was nowhere near the inner circle. Dees had, however, just started working very closely with someone who was in the inner circle.

Carson, a future Trump cabinet member, was already a Family star — having ripped into then-President Obama during a speech at the 2013 breakfast. Now, Carson himself was running for president. Dees was running Carson's campaign. And the campaign had just brought on a Family board member to head up communications.

Dees declined to reveal some specifics about his discussions with Lindell, but did share a few. "I can offer that we had a far-ranging discussion in a breakout room the day prior to the prayer breakfast," Dees said.

Lindell is only slightly more expansive in his book. "I talked with [Dees] for over an hour," Lindell writes, "in a discussion about the direction of the country."

Now the president of Resilience Consulting, Dees has worked with a wide range of conservative Christian organizations, including Liberty University and Military Ministry, which strives to convert members of the armed forces. He has also drawn scrutiny for his LGBTQ positions and views on Islam.

After the breakfast, Lindell says, he and Baldwin were "randomly" invited to a breakout room where a dozen would gather for prayer, including Ben Carson. Lindell doesn't say who picked him.

And it's not clear how random it was. Dees told TYT, "After the prayer breakfast, the NPB leadership asked me to bring Dr. Ben Carson to a small room for follow-up prayer with a small group of perhaps 15 individuals, including Mike Lindell."

Dees wouldn't say who asked him to bring Carson to meet Lindell and the others. "From my perspective," Dees said, "it was simply a courtesy to put a man of Dr. Carson's prominence together with a seemingly randomly selected group of NPB attendees."

Baldwin, however, apparently already knew Carson, because Lindell says it was Baldwin who introduced him to Carson in the breakout room. And Carson's communications director, A. Larry Ross, was also at the breakfast.

Whether Lindell knew it or not, Ross is also The Family's spokesperson and a key leader. A Texas public relations man who long worked for Billy Graham, Ross has been on the board of the Fellowship Foundation, The Family's legal entity, since 2011. If Job and Hendricks brought Lindell to the starting gate, it would be Ross who eventually got Lindell to the finish line.

It's in the breakout room after the breakfast that Lindell hears the prophecy. He loves the story enough to have told it many times since, but not enough to tell it consistently.

In June, Lindell told it this way:

[I]n that room we were praying, the, a guy in there prophesied in there. He said, "Two of you in this room are gonna become great friends and change the course of history." And Ben and I are great friends! And he said, and I'm sitting there, though, as they're praying and he's saying that, I go, I go, "If one of them's me, who would the other one be?" and this, things started happening to me.

In his 2019 book, he tells the story differently. It's not just two of them, and the prophecy isn't directed specifically at him. "Two or three of you in this room are going to become great friends," the unnamed prophet says. "And you will be part of a great change in our nation."

Either way, the prophecy hit Lindell like a thunderbolt with his name on it. What he may not have known was that The Family throws the exact same thunderbolt at pretty much everyone, even printing it on breakfast literature.

It's based on Matthew 18:20: Where two or three of you gather in my name, there am I with them. As Coe put it to journalist Jeff Sharlet, "Two, or three, agree? They can do anything."

What they would do was also a topic of discussion at the breakfast breakout room. And it wasn't just faith.

"I suddenly found myself surrounded by people talking about God and politics," Lindell says in his book.

The dozen people in the room gathered in a circle and began talking about the critical importance of the 2016 election. We agreed it was going to be a real spiritual turning point for the country. One path could lead us toward national renewal. The other could lead us down a dark path from which there might be no return, a path that had begun with the removal of God from the public square.

Lindell's discussion in the breakout room — with Carson, Dees, Baldwin and others — he writes, "opened my eyes to the impact of politics on ordinary people."

After dropping out of the Republican presidential race in March 2016, Carson tells Trump about Lindell, who then gets invited to meet with Trump on Aug. 15. The day before their meeting, Lindell donates $2,700 to Trump's campaign, $17,300 to the Republican National Committee, and $20,000 to Trump Victory. (Trump Victory was later accused along with state party committees of circumventing donation limits. The first federal donation of Lindell's life had been $527.27 to the Republican Party of Virginia on May 25, the day Trump Victory was formed.)

The Family had helped to open Lindell's eyes to Trump, but his soul still needed work. Within a year, though, Lindell would be on his knees.

The operation

In the months after bringing Baldwin and Lindell to the prayer breakfast, Family insiders expanded their sphere beyond Baldwin and his nonprofits to Lindell's.

Why the interest in Lindell — who wasn't yet an evangelical?

The source close to The Family said they weren't aware of the relationships with Baldwin and Lindell, but had heard of tensions between Hendricks and Job and the internal team, including Beasley, that oversaw much of the breakfast logistics.

Referring to Hendricks and Job specifically, the source told TYT, "Those guys were always hunting a big fish like a Mike Lindell that would support their stuff."

The source said, "If you can convince him, 'Oh, we're doing this amazing work,' he might just be the kind of guy that gives you $10 million. Or he might be the kind of guy that puts you on his charitable foundation board and gives you a salary."

Baldwin's ministry never filed any federal tax forms, so it's not clear whether anyone got paid. The Lindell Foundation, however, is another story.

Tax filings for the Lindell Foundation don't list any board members for 2016, but Lindell writes that Ross joined the board that year. The following year, the Lindell Foundation lists six people as officers or directors — half of them tied to The Family.

In addition to Lindell's niece and a lawyer from Texas (where Ross and Job are based), the four other people named are three board members — Lindell, Ross and Dees — and a new president: Wilfred Job, who takes home $55,385 that year.

Asked about Job by TYT, Lindell said, "I don't know who you're talking about."

In 2018, Lindell brings on a right-wing Republican from his home state, Doug Wardlow — a former intern of Family friend Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa — who soon becomes MyPillow's general counsel and is now enmeshed in the company's Big Lie legal battles. Job doesn't appear on the filings anymore.

Ross, however, the Family board member and former Carson spokesperson, expands his role in the Lindell-verse.

How much Ross's communications company makes from his work we don't know, but Ross ends up serving as a spokesperson for Baldwin, Lindell, the Lindell Foundation and MyPillow. And helping Lindell get Trump elected.

Three days before the Trump/Clinton matchup, Manny Pacquiao stepped into the ring with Jessie Vargas for the WBO welterweight championship. Lindell was ringside, along with The Family.

Lindell and Baldwin had flown to Las Vegas for the fight at the invitation of a "group of [Baldwin's] friends," Lindell writes. He doesn't name these friends, but says, "One of the men in our party was a prominent Democrat I'd met at the National Prayer Breakfast."

Wilfred Job — who had delivered Pacquiao's 2015 breakfast invite — reportedly traveled with Baldwin on at least two occasions. Ross was also in town and joined Lindell for a big group dinner.

During the meal, the Trump campaign called: They wanted Lindell back in Minnesota the next day to join Trump for a rally two days before the vote. The only problem: No flights.

The group — apparently all Trump supporters — start hunting online for tickets. "Suddenly," Lindell writes, "Larry called out, 'Got it!' ... Larry hustled me out of the restaurant, and we jumped in a car for McCarran."

At a meeting of the Lindell Foundation board that same month, Ross comes to Lindell's aid again. He encourages Lindell to attend a program for military veterans. The program, Lindell writes, had helped hundreds of veterans "come to a place of freedom by locating primary points of pain in their pasts, and inviting God in to heal them."

Operation Restored Warrior (ORW) has multiple connections to The Family. Ross had participated in the program, as had retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin, now a vice president at the Family Research Council.

The man who ran Operation Restored Warrior was Paul Lavelle, who had met Lindell at the 2016 breakfast. Like Dees, the source described Lavelle as well outside the inner circle, but having ties to The Family.

One of ORW's funders had invited Lavelle to the breakfast (along with six people from Compassion International, a Ross client that has been accused of trying to proselytize the vulnerable children it serves). At the breakfast, Lindell later wrote in his book, Lavelle "felt led" to invite Lindell to ORW.

Pressed by both Ross and Kendra, his girlfriend, Lindell agrees to go to ORW, but he's still reluctant about it. That changes at his second National Prayer Breakfast.

There, he writes, he was inspired by the "powerful, jaw-dropping message" of Senate Chaplain Barry Black. Lindell doesn't give specifics, but in his speech, Black argued for the existence of an interventionist God, still active in the matters of humanity, who takes action in response to prayers.

Three months after Ross's suggestion and just weeks after Black's speech, Lindell flies to Colorado and delivers himself up first to Lavelle, and then to Jesus.

"I went in there with hope," Lindell later told the Christian Broadcasting Network. "I said, 'God please, show me you're real, show me, you know? I want that personal relationship,' And on the second day, on Feb. 18, 2017, I did a full surrender on my knees."

"I can now," Lindell says later, "talk about Jesus Christ in the same way I used to talk about a pillow."

Today

As TYT reported earlier this year, a number of known Family leaders and backers have donated to Trump and other Republicans after they began telling Americans the election was stolen. Future reports will identify others, in addition to those named here.

Much as many Family leaders reject separation of church and state, Lindell observes few distinctions between his personal, commercial, philanthropic, religious and political pursuits. Ross has continued to represent not just the Lindell Foundation but Lindell himself and MyPillow, which has been an active participant in Lindell's Big Lie crusade..

On March 17 of this year, Lindell created a new nonprofit: The Lindell Legal Offense Fund. Its purpose: "Advancing legal efforts regarding election integrity issues …"

The three-man board includes Lindell and lawyer Kurt Olsen, a lawyer and special ops veteran whose assistance to Lindell included last month's disastrous election-security summit. The third man is Paul Lavelle.

Despite the summit's outcome — which Lindell blamed on outside forces — his faith remains steady, his political convictions unshaken.

A report this summer by the conservative outlet The Dispatch says that Lindell starts most of his days on the phone with his prayer group. But it doesn't say who they are.

With additional research and reporting by TYT Investigates News Assistant Zoltan Lucas and Intern Jamia Zarzuella.

JONATHAN LARSEN

Jonathan Larsen is the managing editor and executive producer of TYT Investigates.

MORE FROM JONATHAN LARSEN • FOLLOW @JTLARSEN

Carson belittles George Floyd protests: ‘I grew up at a time when there was real systemic racism’kos an 620 Lauren Floyd

===

idon’t want to’: Ben Carson sparks panic by refusing to reveal ‘plan’ for cruise ship patients

A Sunday interview with Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben…

sunday interview with Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson may have done more harm than good when it comes to assuring Americans that the Trump administration has the coronavirus under control.

In an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Carson — who is a former neurosurgeon but not an infectious disease expert — compared COVID-19 to the common flu. >===

https://www.democracynow.org/2019/11/4/san_francisco_homelessness_crackdown_special_report

mayor says tents down 30% but they are targeted, taken as evidence fro break camp law?

street medic: injury b/c stress and scamble to grab stuff 430 am

RR threw ll off SS and made ppl reapply, mental ill fialed to navigate; carson walks away fron HUD role

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/trump-threatens-to-punish-california-over-homelessness-after-denying-funds-to-fight-homelessness/

no lnx

Trump threatens to punish California over homelessness — after denying funds to house people

Written by Igor Derysh / Salon September 19, 2019

President Trump threatened to use the Environmental Protection Agency to punish San Francisco over its homelessness crisis — on the same day that his administration denied California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s request for housing vouchers to help fight homelessness.

“There’s tremendous pollution being put into the ocean … there are needles, there are other things,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One Wednesday while returning from a two-day fundraising trip in California. “We’re going to be giving San Francisco — they’re in total violation — we’re going to be giving them the notice very soon. The EPA is going to be putting out a notice and you know they’re in serious violation and this is environmental, very environmental.

[THE JUNGLE!]

“And they have to clean it up,” he added. “We can’t have our cities going to hell.”

San Francisco Mayor London Breed called Trump’s comments “ridiculous assertions” and explained that the city’s sewer system “ensures that all debris that flow into storm drains are filtered out at the city’s wastewater treatment plants.”

“If the president wants to talk about homelessness, we are committed to working with our state and federal partners on actual solutions,” she said in a statement to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Trump’s newfound concern for the environment came just days after his administration stripped California of the power to set auto emissions standards in a bid to reduce air pollution and overturned clean water regulations nationwide.

Trump’s threat to sic the EPA on San Francisco came on the same day that Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson denied a request from Newsom for help fighting homelessness.

Newsom and the mayors of California’s 13 largest cities asked the Trump administration to expand programs like housing vouchers to help get people off the street.

“In California, state and local governments have ramped up action to lift families out of poverty by investing in behavioral health, affordable housing, and other homeless programs,” the lawmakers wrote. “In contrast, your Administration has proposed significant cuts to public housing and programs like the Community Development Block Grant.”

Carson rejected the request in a letter, which he said he wrote at Trump’s request.

“Your letter seeks federal dollars for California from hardworking American taxpayers but fails to admit that your State and local policies have played a major role in the current crisis,” Carson wrote, blaming lawmakers for creating an “over-regulated housing market” and “policies that have weakened law enforcement.”[sanct cities?]

Carson also accused California lawmakers of undercutting the ability of police to tear down homeless camps and creating sanctuary policies, arguing that undocumented immigrants have caused housing prices to spike while “draining resources.”

Courts have limited California’s ability to remove homeless people from the streets. On Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to support a motion to challenge a federal court decision barring police from arresting people for sleeping on sidewalks when there are not enough shelter beds, NBC News reported.

Trump has increasingly focused on homelessness in California ever since he assured Fox News host Tucker Carlson in July that he may “do something to get that whole thing cleaned up.”

During his California fundraising trip, Trump assured foreign real estate investors that he would protect them from California’s homeless population.

“We have people living in our … best highways, our best streets, our best entrances to buildings … where people in those buildings pay tremendous taxes, where they went to those locations because of the prestige,” he complained, according to CNN.

Trump administration officials have considered using federal resources to tear down homeless camps in the state and relocate homeless people en masse to abandoned federal facilities, The Washington Post reported last week.

Trump’s California trip came after his Council of Economic Advisers released a report alleging that the homelessness problem was caused by overregulation of housing. The administration report offered a deregulation fix, calling for changing zoning restrictions and slashing environmental regulations that restrict where homes can be built.

Democratic state Assemblyman Miguel Santiago, who represents the Skid Row section of downtown Los Angeles, and has already authored a bill to limit environmental laws that block the building of housing and shelters, told The Los Angeles Times that it was difficult to take Trump seriously when the administration has called for cutting housing funding and proposed a ban on housing aid to any household where even one resident is living in the country illegally.

“I think it’s politics at its worst where he is going to pick on a vulnerable community — no different than when he picked on immigrants,” he told the Times. “I think it’s a little cynical for someone who has done everything in their right mind to make it worse on the working poor.”

Tom Phillipson, the acting head of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers, told reporters on Monday that “policing may be an important tool to help them get off the street” as well.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said that criminalizing homelessness was the exact wrong approach to the issue.

“The White House report on homelessness treats this crisis like fodder for a cable news debate,” Garcetti told The Los Angeles Times. “We don’t have time for that. If the president really cares about solving this crisis, he wouldn’t be talking about criminalization over housing. He’d be making dramatic increases in funding for this country’s housing safety net.”

rntatom:

HUD Secretary Ben Carson echoes Trump’s racist attacks on his ‘infested’ hometown of Baltimore

David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement

===

oreos

https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/here-are-5-of-the-most-ridiculous-and-humiliating-moments-from-ben-carsons-political-career/

https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/a-new-trump-administration-rule-could-force-tens-of-thousands-of-kids-into-homelessness-report/

Trump Administration has proposed a rule designed to purge undocumented immigrants from public housing. But according to analysis from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the rule could have the effect of displacing more than 55,000 children who are all legal citizens or residents of the United States.

HUD Secretary Ben Carson has described the proposed rule, which is beingaggressively pushed by White House Senior Policy Adviser Stephen Miller,as a way to “make certain our scarce public resources help those who are legally entitled to it.” However, HUD’s analysis indicates that about half of the people in households that are facing possible eviction or homelessness are children who are legally qualified for help.

In the U.S., current rules forbid undocumented immigrants from directly receiving federal housing assistance. But families that have mixed immigration status are eligible.

An undocumented single man or single woman is not eligible for housing assistance under current rules, but a family is eligible if at least one person in that household is eligible. For example, a man who is undocumented would not be eligible by himself, but his family could apply if his wife is a U.S. citizen or if he has a child who was born in the U.S. (that U.S.-born child enjoys birthright citizenship). And the benefits the family is entitled to receive are prorated accordingly.

But the new rule would require everyone in that household to have “eligible immigration status,” the Washington Post reports. According to HUD, roughly 25,000 households in the U.S. representing about 108,000 people presently living in subsidized housing have at least one ineligible member—and about 70% of these households with mixed immigration status (around 76,000 people) legally qualify for benefits. About 55,000 are children.

According to its analysis, “HUD expects that fear of the family being separated would lead to prompt evacuation by most mixed households. Temporary homelessness could arise for a household if they are unable to find alternative housing."

Diane Yentel, president and chief executive of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, is highly critical of the proposed rule, and the Washington Post quotes her as saying, “Tens of thousands of deeply poor kids, mostly U.S. citizens, could be evicted and made homeless because of this rule. And by HUD’s own admission, there would be no benefit to families on the waiting list.”

sinclair 1st pick

Trump’s HUD wants to expand flawed program that is ‘privatizing public housing’

It leaves vulnerable residents at the mercy of developers.

DANIELLE MCLEAN

FEB 27, 2019

https://thinkprogress.org/a-flawed-public-housing-program-leaves-vulnerable-residents-at-the-mercy-of-developers-66a0ee5b2321/

i have not gone to renta-tom before, but at least useful tool cover if not intentional sellout:

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson attempted to roll back an Obama-era rule aimed at curbing housing segregation. This was covered for an absurd 23 seconds in total: 8 seconds on CNN, 15 seconds on MSNBC, and none at all on Fox News.

3 stories 11/18

"Pretty Much a Failure”: HUD Inspections Pass Dangerous Apartments Filled With Rats, Roaches and Toxic Mold

by Molly Parker , The Southern Illinoisan

The system for inspecting federally subsidized properties is failing low-income families, seniors and people with disabilities and undermining the agency’s oversight, The Southern Illinoisan and ProPublica have found.

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/09/26/alec-flaunts-trump-ties-while-celebrateing-its-45th-anniversary-potuss-dc-hotel

dave a

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) will celebrate its 45th anniversary at Trump International Hotel tonight, fitting as the Trump administration maintains close ties to the corporate bill mill.

Tickets for the event are a whopping $500 a piece, about the same rate for one night at the hotel. Alternatively, state delegations can get a lobbyist to sponsor a table for $10,000.

The Wall Street Journal‘s Kimberley Strassel will serve as the “Mistress of Ceremonies,” but the rest of the program has not been announced. With the Trump International Hotel being just over a mile away from the White House, it is likely one of the many with ALEC ties in the administration will be there.

Lisa Nelson, CEO of ALEC, was giddy after Trump was elected, telling members and funders that the Trump administration, “does have the potential to be an ALEC administration. It is full of the people and ideas we’ve advanced since 1973… Now is our time. And ALEC is ready.”

And ALEC has been helpful to Trump. ALEC member legislators led the fight on eliminating the state and local tax deduction (SALT), a key component of Trump’s massive tax break for the wealthy and corporations. More recently, 308 state legislators, in partnership with ALEC, sent a letter of support for Judge Brett Kavanaugh to Senators, calling him “the single most qualified person in the country to serve on the Supreme Court.”

While some ALEC alumni — most prominently former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt — have been dropped from Team Trump, many others have hung on.

The ALEC Vice President

“I can say I was for ALEC before it was cool,” Vice President Mike Pence once at an ALEC meeting. And just after Trump nominated him to be his VP, Pence made another speech at an ALEC meeting.

As Governor of Indiana, Pence lobbied for ALEC to state legislators:

As a governor, I cannot say enough how important ALEC is in my state and across the nation. Indiana is fortunate to have many of our legislators as members of ALEC.

I am writing today to ask you to consider membership in one of the nation’s leading policy organizations, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

The ALEC Administration

Many who have remained with Trump since he was elected have ties to ALEC.

Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley is an ALEC alumna. She pushed many ALEC model bills as Governor of South Carolina and state representative, including voter ID laws and school vouchers.

Secretary of Energy Rick Perry made passing ALEC model bills a priority when Governor of Texas, marking some as “emergency” legislation, and has at ALEC meetings. ALEC has a profile of Perry up on its website. This morning, Perry welcomed ALEC to the White House and spoke to the ALEC delegation about “American energy dominance.”

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is a long time funder of ALEC and shares its goal of privatizing education. DeVos headlined the 2017 ALEC Annual Meeting and stated in a speech that, “The President has said that this administration will reduce the federal footprint in education, and he signed an executive order this past April instructing our Department to review every regulation that might obstruct parents, teachers, communities and states from best-serving their students.”

Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue has long been a friend of ALEC. As Governor of Georgia, he passed the nation’s second voter ID law based on an ALEC model bill. Perdue also rolled out one of the most expansive school privatization programs at the time in 2008. ALEC also praised Perdue for challenging the Affordable Care Act.

Others in the Trump administration have spoken at ALEC meetings as well, including Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Counselor to the President, Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta in 2017, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar in 2018, and Department of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao in 2018.

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trump-administration-now-has-fair-housing-its-crosshairs

Thursday, Politico reported that Brock Long, President Donald Trump's administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), is under investigation by the Department of Homeland Security Office of the Inspector General for potential improper use of government property.

Specifically, Long is accused of using government cars for personal weekend travel to his hometown of Hickory, North Carolina — which has drawn scrutiny from DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen as well as the inspector general. Some sources say Nielsen even suggested Long resign, although others dispute this account.

Numerous Trump administration officials have been accused of improperly using taxpayer money and government resources for personal benefit. Former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price resigned in disgrace amid reports he billed the government for personal travel aboard private and military planes, as did former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt after reports he used taxpayer resources to fly first class and chartered jets, hunt for rental properties, go to Disneyland and the Rose Bowl, vacation in Italy, and even try to get his wife a Chick-Fil-A franchise.

Also under scrutiny, but still in office, are Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, who tried to purchase a $31,000 dining room set on a government account and lied about it, and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who spent $139,000 upgrading doors in his office.

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/ben-carsons-war-poor-people-bad-news-republicans

no lnx

Trump's choice for Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Dr. Ben Carson, delivered on the president's command to move people "out of poverty" by proposing to raise the rent on some of America's most vulnerable communities.

On Wednesday Carson released legislative text that would raise rent for tenants in government-subsidized housing to equal 35 percent of gross income (based on the assumption that they work 15 hours a week at the federal minimum wage). This amounts to an increase of 5 percentage points from the current policy, which established a cap on the rate of rent at 30 percent of adjusted income. This means that the cap on rent for America's poorest families would rise to $150 per month instead of $50 per month.

Carson titled his proposed bill the “Making Affordable Housing Work Act,” in one of his most distinctly Trumpian moves since assuming office. And officials at the Department of Housing and Urban Development claimed this would only affect about half of the 4.7 million families currently receiving housing benefits. But not all policy experts agree with that estimate.

"More than 4 million households will see their rents rise," Will Fischer, Senior Policy Analyst at Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told Salon. He also emphasized that the effect of Carson's new policy on poor families would be devastating.

"These proposals will raise rents for working poor families, the elderly and people with disabilities and force them to divert money from other basic needs like clothing or food or medicine," Fischer told Salon. "In some cases it's gonna push them to the brink and put them at risk of eviction or homelessness. The HUD says that these are reforms but they don't pursue any particular policy goal other than squeezing rent out of these families."

Fischer also cast doubt on the idea that Carson's underlying goal is to reform the system and help poor families.

"They say they want to encourage work but they're raising rent on working families. What this is really about is squeezing more money out of these people," Fischer told Salon. "It is particularly inequitable because we just had a really big tax cut for the wealthy and large corporations that will add to the deficit, and now they're turning around and saying they have to raise rent on some of the poorest people in the country."

Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-La., chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, called Carson's proposal "the latest example of the Trump Administration's war on poor people."

It's worth noting that, while Carson may be spearheading these changes, he is hardly working on his own — and even if he was, he doesn't have the power to make these policy alterations unilaterally, since he needs congressional approval.

As The Washington Post pointed out, the Trump administration has pursued a sweeping plan to overhaul America's welfare state:

The ambitious effort to shrink federal assistance has been dubbed “Welfare Reform 2.0’’, after Bill Clinton’s overhaul of the welfare system in 1996. The proposals — affecting housing, food stamps and Medicaid — would require congressional approval.

Trump earlier this month signed an executive order directing federal agencies to expand work requirements for low-income Americans receiving Medicaid, food stamps, public housing benefits and welfare. The agencies are supposed to issue recommendations to the White House within 90 days.

Just last week, House Republicans advanced a plan to strengthen work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps, as part of the 2018 Farm Bill. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson proposed far-reaching changes to federal housing subsidies Wednesday, tripling rent for the poorest households and making it easier for housing authorities to impose work requirements.

The proposal approved by the House Agriculture Committee would expand work initiatives, mandating that most adult recipients under 60 work part-time or enroll in a state-run training program. It would apply to as many as 7 million adults.

The Trump administration has also started allowing states to impose work requirements on residents enrolled in Medicaid.

Carson's tenure at the Department of Housing and Urban Development has been marked by both his perceived insensitivity to the needs of the poor and by a series of scandals. Last month, Carson changed the department's mission statement from this:

HUD's mission is to create strong, sustainable, inclusive communities and quality affordable homes for all. HUD is working to strengthen the housing market to bolster the economy and protect consumers; meet the need for quality affordable rental homes; utilize housing as a platform for improving quality of life; build inclusive and sustainable communities free from discrimination, and transform the way HUD does business.

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https://www.propublica.org/article/cairo-thebes-in-small-town-america-the-public-housing-crisis-nobody-is-talking-about

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/5-states-most-rapid-increases-homelessness

Homelessness increased in the U.S. in 2017 for the first time since 2010, and advocates for homeless people are alarmed. Ten city and county governments have declared states of emergency since 2015 in response; meanwhile, Department of Housing and Urban Development head Ben Carson shows ongoing disinterest in supporting local governments’ efforts. While cities like Los Angeles are facing a well-publicized crisis as they struggle to find long-term solutions, California is surprisingly not even one of the states with the five fastest increases in homelessness, according to a new survey compiled by Credit Loan.....

House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) on Wednesday sent a request to Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson for information related to his purchase of a $31,000 dining set for his office.

Gowdy’s request, which featured three categories of documents related to Carson’s expensive taxpayer-funded redesign, was issued “to help the [Oversight] Committee determine whether HUD adhered to the applicable spending limitations while redecorating your office.”

In addition to the revelation of the dining set, which was purchased last December while HUD cut their homeless assistance budget, The Guardian reported that Carson intends to spend an additional $165,000 on a “lounge set” for his office.

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/even-republican-congressman-trey-gowdy-openly-questioning-ben-carsons-lavish

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/5-states-most-rapid-increases-homelessness

Measuring homelessness in any city is a challenge. For one, most major cities count more homeless people in residing shelters than unsheltered people living on the street or in encampments (Los Angeles is a major exception). This survey includes both sheltered and unsheltered, but notes the frightening rise in unsheltered homeless (nationwide, about a third of the homeless lack shelter).

“Unsheltered homelessness is on the rise, and major cities are feeling it most,” said Nan Roman, president and CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness. “As cities bear the burden of increasing unsheltered counts, it is essential that they address the affordable housing crisis, increase investments in proven housing interventions, and ensure that they have appropriate emergency shelter capacity.”

Beyond the division of sheltered versus unsheltered, experts disagree on the best methods of measuring rates of homelessness. The Credit Loan survey uses a point-in-time (PIT) count from HUD data that communities collect from physical outreach to determine how many individuals are literally homeless on a designated day. This data is pulled from PIT count numbers from 2007-2016. Other groups like the Michigan Coalition Against Homelessness prefer to rely on the numbers generated through statewide data systems to measure homelessness in their states.

According to the Credit Loan survey, these are the states that saw the most significant increases and decreases in homelessness over the past 10 years:

Credit: Credit Loan

The states vary significantly in geography and cost-of-living expenses (South Dakota, for example, is one of the least expensive states to live in, yet the same factors drive that state’s homelessness as in New York), but there is a surprisingly strong common thread explaining why so many people go without homes. In any city or state, the homeless crisis is directly tied to lack of available low-income housing.

A number of diverse factors make the situation in South Dakota unique. The state has seen the largest increase in homelessness in the past 10 years. Native American homeless rates are rising as it becomes more difficult to find affordable housing on reservations, where isolation and lack of abundant infrastructure make construction difficult. Elsewhere in the state, homeless advocates have noticed the homeless population getting younger.

Traci Jensen, homeless liaison for the Sioux Falls School District, told KSFY in December, "We do see the number of youth over the last couple years has increased." Though a different estimate at the end of 2017 claims the homeless rate had dropped 12% in the past year in South Dakota, three shelters say that number doesn’t tell the full story. "The demand that we see for homeless services certainly hasn't decreased," Brett Johnson with the Sioux Empire Homeless Coalition, said. Many of the area's homeless are living in cars or with friends, Johnson added. Local representatives are pushing for more inexpensive housing options. Rep. Kristi Noem recently wrote, “Despite South Dakota’s relatively low cost of living, finding affordable housing can still be a challenge for low- and middle-income families. That makes it no surprise that there are 120 families on the waiting list for Habitat Homes.”

In densely populated metro areas like D.C. and New York, homeless advocates are unanimous in blaming the problem on sky-high rents. “The one single thing that really has changed is the lack of affordable housing,” Michael Ferrell, the executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless, told the New York Times. “The housing that’s being created today in the District is not for working-class people,” he said. Gradually widening inequality is to blame: in D.C., as in many other American cities, the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer. In New York City, the Coalition for the Homeless similarly reports that lack of affordable housing is the main cause for the city with the highest number of homeless people. Homelessness in New York City has reached the highest levels since the Great Depression in the 1930s, according to the Coalition for the Homeless.

There is some good news in the struggle to house the homeless.Though Michigan is hurting from the nationwide lack of affordable housing, the state managed to decrease its homelessness rate by 67% over the past 10 years, according to the survey. “We saw the incidence of homelessness spike during the recession and it’s been trending downward each year since in Michigan,” Eric C. Hufnagel, executive director of Michigan Coalition Against Homelessness, told AlterNet. “That’s due in part to a short-term funding infusion, an improved economy and policies which have strengthened the homeless service delivery system in Michigan. Additional funding remains a key need, but there are many other barriers to ending homelessness, including the affordable housing crisis.”

These are some of the cities with the most homeless:

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https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/ben-carson-doesnt-know-his-own-budget

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/ben-carson-under-attack

...At one point during the Republican primary campaign, Trump implied his then rival might be a child molester. Then he appointed Carson to his Cabinet, and now the retired surgeon has come under increased criticism from conservative Republicans, who complain he has been too slow to roll back Obama-era policies on housing discrimination. The Conservative Review blasted Carson last week for failing to combat what senior editor Daniel Horowitz described as “Obama’s war on the suburbs.”

The regulation that Republicans want Carson to roll back is known as the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule, finalized by Obama’s former HUD Secretary Julián Castro in 2015. This rule requires 1,200 cities and counties, which get $3 billion of annual community development block grants from the agency, to examine their local housing patterns for racial bias and to design a plan to address any measurable bias.

Carson recently told the Washington Examiner that he plans to “reinterpret” the controversial fair housing rule — enraging conservatives. His explanation to the Examiner has only served to further upset right-wingers who have fought against the promulgation of the rule for years. Carson pointed to a recent 5-4 Supreme Court ruling that upheld the validity of disparate-impact claims under the Fair Housing Act, a notion conservatives have long opposed.

“I probably am not going to mess with something the Supreme Court has weighed in on,” Carson told the Examiner. “In terms of interpreting what it means — that’s where the concentration is going to be.”

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had best position on GW, endorsed trump 3/16

Fake news has morphed into something far more egregious, fake history. Donald Trump routinely lies about himself, his accomplishments, his businesses and his opponents. This is how he wins the political upper hand and dominates the news cycle. The lying is no longer surprising.

It’s his willful ignorance of history, mirrored by members of his cabinet, that is astounding and, in some ways, even more demoralizing.

Lobbing a Saturday morning tweet at former President Obama to accuse him of wiretapping his phones at Trump Tower was outrageous, given there is not a scintilla of evidence that this happened. Revealingly, it also showed that Donald Trump has no sense of the history of the office he holds or its traditions.

President Trump’s ignorance about the fundamentals of US history is compounded by the team surrounding him. In his maiden address to his employees at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Ben Carson equated the experiences of slaves and immigrants.

After calling America “a land of dreams and opportunity”, here were the astonishing words that followed: “There were immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder, for less. But they too had a dream that one day their sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, great-grandsons, great-granddaughters might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land.”

Outrage was immediate. The secretary, who has the most prestigious academic credentials of anyone in the Trump Cabinet, clung to this idiocy in subsequent interviews. On Twitter, he went even further out on a limb, insisting, “You can be an involuntary immigrant.” Later, as the limb was sawed off, Carson finally retreated, this time on Facebook.

“I’m proud of the courage and perseverance of black Americans and their incomprehensible struggle from slavery to freedom,” his post stated. “I’m proud that our ancestors overcame the evil and repression that we know as slavery. The slave narrative and immigrant narrative are entirely different experiences. Slaves were ripped from their families and their homes and forced against their will after being sold into slavery by slave traders.” Despite his prior reference to “involuntary immigrants”, he added, “the immigrants made the choice to come to America.”

The new education secretary, Betsy DeVos, barely eked out her confirmation vote after showing jaw-dropping ignorance of federal education policy. But she managed to top that performance in a display of total ignorance about the history of segregation in higher education.

First, President Trump invited the presidents of historically black colleges and universities to the White House for what they thought was a substantive talk. Instead, they were used for a brief photo op with the president. DeVos then hailed the historically black schools as “real pioneers” of school choice, the issue that is her sole passion. These schools were founded after the civil war because black Americans could not attend segregated schools. Choice had nothing to do with their beginnings.

When her absurd comments caused an uproar on social media akin to the storm that confronted Carson, DeVos, too retreated, releasing a statement saying that the history of black colleges and universities “was born, not out of mere choice, but out of necessity, in the face of racism, and in the aftermath of the Civil War”.

The reaction on the internet to these comments was immediate and intense, showing, thank goodness, that many Americans have absorbed the lessons of the country’s racial history.

Finally, in the biggest irony of the week, CNN broke a story that Trump Svengali Stephen Bannon had defended Senator Joseph McCarthy for crusading against communists. Andrew Kaczynski, a CNN reporter known for digging up previously undiscovered statements by political figures, found a 2013 speech in which Bannon hailed the discredited Wisconsin demagogue for rooting out the Reds in the US government.

“The place was infested with either traitors that were on the direct payroll of Soviet military intelligence or fellow-travelers who were kind of compliant in helping these guys get along,” Bannon said. “I mean, there’s absolutely no question of it.”

The proposed reductions are in line with Trump’s recent claim that he will pay for a $54 billion increase to the war budget in large part by cutting domestic programs.

But long before Trump made this assertion, HUD Secretary Ben Carson—who has no prior experience in housing policy—has been open about his desire to dismantle key public housing initiatives. In 2014, he opposed an agreement between the city of Dubuque and the Department of Housing and Urban Development to address the city’s housing policies that discriminate against black residents, suggesting it was proof America was "becoming communist." In 2015, he vocalized his opposition to a HUD fair housing rule that is aimed, in part, at reducing segregation, calling it a “failed socialist experiment.”

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Carson :{endorsed:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: Trump after he dropped his presidential bid and was then :{tasked:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: with being Trump’s liaison between his campaign and Speaker Paul Ryan. Carson also :{apparently:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: had some role in Trump’s vice presidential selection team.

What You Need To Know

Carson has caused controversy with a series of bizarre and offensive comments as an author, a Fox News contributor, and during his short-lived presidential campaign. During a Fox News appearance, Carson infamously :{compared:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: marriage equality supporters to those who would advocate bestiality and pedophilia, and argued in his 2012 book that marriage equality could destroy America “like the fall of the Roman Empire.” Carson also :{claimed:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: that the Egyptian pyramids were built to store grain, :{said:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: being gay was a “choice,”:{described:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: Obamacare as “the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery,” and :{argued:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:that Jewish people could have prevented the Holocaust if they had guns.

Speaking on stage at the Republican National Convention, Carson compared Hillary Clinton to “Lucifer.”

matrix: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/10/ultimate-climate-candidate-matrix

This story was originally published byMother Jonesand is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

If you watch tonight’s Republican primary debate on CBNC, you can expect to hear opinions on the economy and pot, attacks on newly annointed front-runner Ben Carson, and more. You can also expect to see the ad above, which lays out the economic case for action on climate change.

The 30-second spot is part of a six-figure TV and digital ad buy from NextGen Climate, the advocacy group run by billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer. At the beginning of the primary season, Steyer promised to focus his group’s energy on holding Republican presidential candidates accountable for their lack of climate action, and to pursue a campaign to “disqualify” any candidate who doesn’t accept mainstream climate science.

“America has never been a country of quitters,” the ad states, over bucolic b-roll of farmers, veterans, and small town Main Streets. “We don’t ignore threats like climate change.”

Then the scene changes to wind farms and solar panels, as the narrator promises that American-made clean energy will produce jobs, innovation, and energy independence. At the end, it advocates a specific goal of getting half the country’s power from renewable sources by 2030. (We’re at about 7 percent now.)

Steyer is clearly right that clean energy is a major 21st-century growth industry. Solar is the fastest-growing energy source in the country, and employment in that sector already outnumbers coal miners two-to-one. Nearly $40 billion was invested in clean energy in the United States in 2014, 7 percent higher than the previous year. Earlier this month, California adopted the same ambitious targetthat Steyer is calling for: The state’s power companies will be required to get 50 percent of their electricity from renewables by 2030.

But the message hasn’t yet gotten through to most of the Republican presidential candidates. Marco Rubio’s energy plan is basically the exact opposite of what Steyer wants. Jeb Bush wants to eliminate all energy subsidies, including those for renewables. Other candidates have variously denied the existence of climate change, championed fossil fuels, and taken pot shots at President Barack Obama’s climate agenda.

The one exception, believe it or not, is Ben Carson, who — despite engaging in climate change skepticism— recently said he wants “more than 50 percent”clean energy. Maybe tonight we’ll learn more about how exactly he plans to get us there.

http://grist.org/politics/this-ad-might-be-one-of-the-only-factual-things-youll-hear-during-the-republican-debate/

ben carson

Mike Johnson Says ‘Rededicate 250’ Event ‘Transcends Politics’; So Why Are All the Speakers MAGA Christians?

Inspiration

Russia Entities...

Michael Flynn-related entities

Carson belittles George Floyd protests: ‘I grew up at a time when there was real systemic racism’kos an 620Lauren Floyd

HUD Secretary Ben Carson echoes Trump’s racist attacks on his ‘infested’ hometown of Baltimore

The ALEC Vice President

The ALEC Administration

Carson belittles George Floyd protests: ‘I grew up at a time when there was real systemic racism’kos an 620 Lauren Floyd