Around 1,000 people attended the Monday funeral of 72-year-old Joseph Walker in Killeen, Texas, a man with no surviving family who had served in the Vietnam War, CBS News reported.
Walker was almost buried in a service attended by no one, but a call was put out by a state agency prior to the service that requested somebody, anybody, show up at the funeral service.
That call was heeded by plenty of patriotic Americans — so much so that there was a massive line of cars waiting to get into the cemetery for the service.
Killeen, Texas: A line of cars stretching for miles to attend the funeral of an Air Force Veteran with no family.. after fears he would be buried with no one attending. pic.twitter.com/IC5z7IlDjh
One of the attendees, Marc George of the Christian Motorcyclists Association, told CBS, “Today we are not strangers. Today we are family. I don’t have a whole lot of information but it doesn’t matter because once upon a time like a lot of other vets, he signed a blank check for our nation.”
That group of bikers reportedly rode for over 50 miles to attend the service of a veteran they never met, and there was even a flyover by three planes during the service.
Walker was laid to rest with full military honors, including having an American flag draped over his casket and then carefully folded into a triangle for presentation.
As noted, word had initially been spread among the local community about the impending funeral of Walker, which would likely have been held with nobody in attendance.
However, the story was soon noted and shared online by Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who tweeted, “Air Force Veteran Joseph Walker will be laid to rest Monday, and no one is expected to attend. The cemetery said they do not know where his family is and they do not want him to be laid to rest alone, so they are asking the public to attend.”
Air Force Veteran Joseph Walker will be laid to rest Monday, and no one is expected to attend.
The cemetery said they do not know where his family is and they do not want him to be laid to rest alone, so they are asking the public to attend. https://t.co/ydf39wwrBn
In a subsequent tweet from Cruz, the senator shared the date, time and location of the service, which was also widely shared among his more than 3 million followers on the social media platform.
Those tweets from Cruz prompted a cascade of retweets and separate tweets from others about the funeral, which ultimately led to the large crowd of strangers showing up of their own accord to pay respects to the late veteran.
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
FBI Finally Wraps Up Mandalay Bay Investigation, Finds No Motive
David Becker / Getty ImagesBroken windows are seen on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino after a lone gunman opened fire on the Route 91 Harvest country music festival on Oct. 2, 2017, in Las Vegas, Nevada. (David Becker / Getty Images)
In October of 2017, a man named Stephen Paddock opened fire on a packed country music festival below him from a perch in the high-rise Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, killing 58 individuals and wounding hundreds more.
Nearly 900 people were wounded in the attack, though not all injuries sustained came from gunshots. Almost immediately, a number of questions were raised about the shooter and what could have motivated him to commit such a terrible atrocity.
Now more than 15 months after that horrifically frightening mass shooting event, the FBI has finally wrapped up its investigation, but the final report really doesn’t include any additional information that wasn’t already known and there remain many unanswered questions.
The Associated Press reported that the FBI said in the report that they were incapable of determining any sort of “single or clear motivating factor” behind the deadly shooting, other than the possibilities that the shooter was dealing with failing health issues and had a desire to become criminally infamous, as his bank-robber father — a fugitive who ended up on the FBI’s Most Wanted list — had been.
Aaron Rouse, FBI special agent in charge of the Las Vegas field office, told the AP, “It wasn’t about MGM, Mandalay Bay or a specific casino or venue.”
Instead, Rouse said, “It was all about doing the maximum amount of damage and him obtaining some form of infamy.”
The three-page FBI report noted that, aside from the aforementioned desire for infamy and his declining mental and physical health, there were several other “potential motivating factors” that could have prompted the attack, though none are all that satisfying to understanding why the attack was carried out.
Unfortunately, “This report comes as close to understanding the why as we’re ever going to get,” Rouse told the AP.
The report’s findings dismissed the notion that the shooter had any sort of ideological, political or religious motivations for the shooting. It also found that he had acted alone in his commission of mass murder.
Are you unsatisfied by the FBI’s final report on the Las Vegas mass shooting?
The report also noted that, despite there being no “manifesto, video, suicide note or other communication” explaining his reasoning or extensive planning behind the attack, it was determined that the shooter had intended to commit suicide with the one handgun he brought along with the dozens of semi-automatic rifles he used to perform the mass shooting.
All of those rifles, by the way — many of which were equipped with “bump stock” attachments to simulate rapid fire, as well as actual high-capacity magazines, bipods and scopes — were all purchased legally in the year prior to the assault, as was the ammunition used.
The report concluded that the shooter was a private and impersonal man with declining health issues who wanted to go out on his own terms in an infamous blaze of inglorious murder, which in the view of the FBI analysts was “consistent with his personality” and similar to what has been observed in other active shooter situations studied by the FBI.
“He acted alone. He committed a heinous act. He died by his own hand,” Rouse said. “If he wanted to leave a message, he would have left a message. Bottom line is he didn’t want people to know.”
It may very well be true that the shooter committed his murderous atrocity simply because he felt like doing so, but that rather unspecific line of reasoning could be applied to just about every mass shooter who has ever opened fire on a crowd of innocent and vulnerable people.
Nor is that explanation satisfying in light of the fact that the FBI is widely regarded as the premier investigative agency in the world, and has an all but unlimited pool of resources to pull from. Yet, none of that appears to have helped the bureau determine a specific motive for this attack.
The American people have demanded answers in what is believed to be the worst mass shooting attack in American history, but it appears those answers won’t be coming from the FBI or Las Vegas Police Department, ever.
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview on Wednesday that President Donald J. Trump ought to declare a national emergency as well as deploy the military to the southern border to save American lives from the deleterious effects of illegal immigration.
During a Tuesday House Armed Services Committee hearing with Under Secretary of Defense for Policy John Rood, Rood confirmed to Brooks that President Trump could use United States Code 10 (USC) § 284 to build a wall along the border using the military.
Brooks joins a growing number of Republicans, such as Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Mark Meadows (R-NC), and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) in calling for President Trump to use national emergency powers to build the wall, especially if Congress fails to find a way to fund a border wall by February 15.
The Alabama conservative told Breitbart News how this specific code would enable the president to build a barrier along the southern border without declaring a national emergency or obtaining funds through Congress.
Brooks told Breitbart News, “We have a national emergency at the border, the President of the United States ought to declare a national emergency to save roughly 50 American lives per day, or, over 15,000 American lives per year. I encourage the President to use the United States Code 10 Section 284, which empowers the President of the United States to order America’s military to the border, to assist law enforcement agents in the fight against drugs and transnational crime. Interestingly, 10 U.S.C. 284 which has already been approved by Congress, which has already been signed by a president, empowers the Pentagon to deploy both active military and national guard troops to transport personnel, supplies and equipment, establish and operate bases of operation, detect and monitor surface traffic in Mexico. And, within 25 miles of the border in the United States, to construct roads, fences, lighting, to block drugs and smuggling corridors in the aerial and ground reconnaissance.”
Brooks continued, “For emphasis, if you look Webster’s dictionary, Oxford Dictionary, and the like, the word ‘fences,’ it includes barriers, and that is exactly what we need on the southern border, a barrier that will stop illegal aliens and drug traffickers from crossing our southern border.”
Brooks also emphasized to Breitbart News that that, unlike current stipulations in the Continuing Appropriations Act of 2019, 10 USC 284 would allow the president to build any type of barrier on the southern border. Previous appropriations bills such as the Continuing Appropriations Act of 2019 limits the president to building a steel slat or steel bollard-style barriers along the border.
“It can be any type of barrier that is necessary to prevent people that we don’t want coming into our country, intruding into our country,” Brooks said. “Now, keep in mind that the primary function is to stop drug trafficking and to stop transnational organized crime but it has the incidental benefits of stopping illegal aliens.”
Brooks conceded that using 10 USC 284 gives Trump a limited budget, however, Brooks also suggested that the president to use the National Emergencies Act of 1976, which would allow to the president to unlock more federal spending, such as the Military Construction (MILCON) budget.
Breitbart News Legal Editor Ken Klukowski has illustrated how President Trump has the legal authority under the National Emergencies Act of 1976 to reappropriate funds to build a wall along the southern border.
The Alabama congressman said, “10 USC Sec. 284 empowers to deploy the United States military at our border to do things such as constructing barriers, to prevent drug traffickers and incidentally illegal aliens from entering the United States. The President of the United States doesn’t need any more authority from Congress to dop that, on the downside is its funding limitations. There are smaller dollars available when you use this provision of the United States code versus the dollars that are available should the President of the United States declare a national emergency. I urge President Trump to do both.”
To justify the use of a national emergency power to build the wall, Brooks pointed towards the loss of American live through illegal immigrants as well as illicit drugs pouring through the southern border.
“We lose a minimum of 15,000 American lives every year at the hands of illegal aliens and because our porous southern border allows heroin, fentanyl, cocaine, and other dangerous poisonous drugs into our society that result in overdoses and then result in tens of thousands of dead Americans,” Brooks said. “Now, 2,000 illegal aliens are apprehended each year by federal law enforcement officers, for the commission of homicides, killings of Americans on American soil, that to me justifies the president’s deployment of troops on the southern border and that to me justifies the declaration of a national emergency.”
Further, instead of protecting other countries with foreign deployments, Brooks said that the United States’ military should protect Americans at the southern border.
Brooks asked rhetorically, “What are we doing with our military now? Gosh, we’re defending the people on the border’s of South Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, a dozen or so European nations, wouldn’t it be nice if our military was defending Americans who are being killed on American soil? In that vein, I think it’s very important that we deploy our military as necessary to protect our country. That is a primary function of our military. It’s not just protecting foreigners in foreign lands, it’s also protecting Americans on American soil.”
Congressman Brooks told Breitbart News that he remains skeptical of Congress’s ability to come to a compromise in its conference committee that would fulfill Trump’s request for a substantial down payment on a border wall.
“Just the three weeks that the Democrats have forced us to wait has resulted in a thousand dead Americans,” Brooks said.
Brooks said that Democrats put far greater value their quest for power than their desire to protect the American people.
Rep. Brooks said, “For Democrats, it’s clear that their lust for political power outweighs their desire to save Americans from death at the hands of illegal aliens or the poisonous drugs that so freely cross our southern border.”
Sean Moran is a congressional reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.
A California State University professor who also leads the Los Angeles chapter of Black Lives Matter might be headed to jail after being charged with eight criminal counts related to her anti-police activism, including battery on an LAPD officer.
“This is about so much more than me,” wrote Dr. Melina Abdullah, who could spend more than a year in jail if convicted. “It’s an attempt to criminalize Black protest. We ain’t having that!”
The charges stem from Abdullah’s behavior at LAPD Commission meetings, which have become notorious for being disrupted and shut down by police abolitionists affiliated with Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles (BLM-LA). She has justified her conduct by claiming to advocate on behalf of families who have lost loved ones to police brutality and officer-involved shootings.
Abdullah, 46, is receiving pro bono legal counsel from an assortment of progressive lawyers led by Carl E. Douglas, a protégé of the late Johnnie Cochran, who became nationally known decades ago as a member of O.J. Simpson’s “Dream Team” of defense attorneys. Douglas has referred to Abdullah as “One Badd (sic) Sister!!!”
“He volunteered to represent me,” Abdullah said. “This is the way that he contributes to our movement.”
The National Lawyers Guild and ACLU are also part of Abdullah’s legal squad.
Prosecutors from the L.A. City Attorney’s Office affirm that 17 police officers are prepared to testify that Abdullah’s tactics have gone far beyond free speech and peaceful protest, crossing a boundary to “obstructing and intimidating” LAPD commissioners.
Following a pretrial hearing last week, Abdullah and Douglas addressed activists and other supporters who had packed the courtroom as a sign of solidarity.
“They are killing our people, and then they are criminalizing us for having the audacity to push back,” Abdullah told allies over a megaphone. “What kind of backward world do they think we live in? We’re not the criminals. They are.”
Abdullah then called on the crowd to march to LAPD headquarters nearby, where a police commission meeting was underway.
Activists went on to disrupt the meeting, which was ultimately adjourned and moved into a closed session after an attendee appeared to threaten LAPD Commission President Steve Soboroff. Soboroff’s son, Jacob, is a reporter with NBC News.
My News LA reports that Abdullah is charged with eight misdemeanor counts involving crimes that allegedly occurred during three separate meetings that date back to 2017. The charges include one count each of battery on a public officer, resisting arrest, refusing to disperse and interfering or obstructing a public business establishment; three counts of unlawfully disturbing and breaking up an assembly and meeting; and two counts of unlawfully and intentionally interfering with the lawful business of the LAPD Commission.
The battery charge originated from a meeting last May when Abdullah was arrested along with Sheila Hines-Brim, a fellow BLM-LA comrade whose niece, Wakiesha Wilson, died in police custody in 2016. At that meeting, Hines-Brim threw what she claimed were Wilson’s cremated remains at then-LAPD Chief Charlie Beck.
WATCH – “That’s Wakiesha! She’s gonna stay with you!” Sheila Hines-Brim, the aunt of #WakeishaWilson, was arrested after she dumped a powdery substance on #LAPD Chief Charlie Beck that may have been human ashes. Wilson died in police custody in 2016. pic.twitter.com/eargpyBEpa
Detective Jason Curtis…had placed Hines-Brim’s hands behind her back and was escorting her through a crowd to the hallway. Near the rear exit of the room, Curtis told investigators, he felt a tug at his arm, turned around and saw Abdullah standing there. “Get Melina,” witnesses remember hearing an officer say shortly before Abdullah was arrested.
Abdullah told detectives that she did not remember grabbing Curtis’ arm.
Most of the charges against Abdullah focus around confrontations that occurred during two police commission meetings in the summer of 2017. In July of that year, Abdullah refused to leave the podium during public comment after her allotted time to speak had elapsed.
“I don’t give a fuck about getting arrested,” she told police commissioners at the time.
Although Abdullah was not detained, the meeting was moved to a closed session away from the public.
Three weeks later Abdullah had disrupted another meeting. She attempted to restructure its agenda, dared officials to have her arrested, then refused to vacate the room after being ordered to leave.
Abdullah’s next court date is next Thursday, February 7, at the Criminal Courts Building in downtown L.A.
“I give you my word that there will be no plea to an assault on a police officer,” Douglas told supporters. “If we cannot reach a resolution that satisfies my client, there will be a trial. And at that trial, we will expose the corruption of the LAPD.”
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D.) commented Wednesday about a controversial 40-week abortion bill and in so doing said the law allows an abortion to take place after the infant’s birth.
"If a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother," Northam said, alluding to the physician and mother discussing whether the born infant should live or die.
A Democratic lawmaker in the Virginia House of Delegates proposed a bill Tuesday that would allow abortions through the end of the third trimester of pregnancy. The video of Delegate Kathy Tran presenting her bill led to an exchange where she admitted that her bill would allow for a mother to abort her child minutes before giving birth.
"How late in the third trimester could a physician perform an abortion if he indicated that it would impair the mental health of the woman?" Majority Leader Todd Gilbert (R.) asked.
"Or physical health," Tran said.
"Okay," Gilbert replied. "I’m talking about the mental health."
"I mean, through the third trimester," Tran said. "The third trimester goes up to 40 weeks."
"Okay, but to the end of the third trimester?" Gilbert asked.
"Yup, I don’t think we have a limit in the bill," Tran said.
"Where it’s obvious that a woman is about to give birth, she has physical signs that she’s about to give birth, would that still be a point at which she could request an abortion if she was so certified?" Gilbert asked. "She’s dilating."
Tran responded that is a decision between the woman and her doctor would have to make. Gilbert asked if her bill would allow an abortion right before the infant was born.
"My bill would allow that, yes," Tran said.
NBC4 reporter Julie Carey asked Northam about the measure.
"Do you support her measure and explain her answer?" Carey asked.
"I wasn’t there, Julie. And I certainly can’t speak for delegate Tran. But I would tell you one, the first think I would say, this is why decisions such as this should be made by providers, physicians, and the mothers and fathers that are involved," Northam said. "When we talk about third trimester abortions, these are done with the consent of obviously the mother, with the consent of the physicians, more than one physician by the way. And it is done in cases where there may be severe deformities, there may be a fetus that is non-viable."
Northam continued by saying government shouldn’t be involved in these types of decisions and that legislators, especially male legislators, shouldn’t be telling women what to do.
"I think this was really blown out of proportion. But again we want the government not to be involved in these types of decisions. We want the decision to be made by the mothers and their providers. And this is why Julie, that legislators, most of whom are men by the way, shouldn’t be telling a woman what she should or shouldn’t be doing with her body," Northam said.
Carey asked if the law should still require women to have multiple physicians approve an abortion.
"Well, I think it is always good to get a second opinion and for at least two providers to be involved in that decision," Northam said. "These decisions shouldn’t be taken lightly.
Northam’s office released a statement about his comments.
"No woman seeks a third trimester abortion except in the case of tragic or difficult circumstances, such as a nonviable pregnancy or in the event of severe fetal abnormalities, and the governor’s comments were limited to the actions physicians would take in the event that a woman in those circumstances went into labor," Ofirah Yheskel, a spokeswoman for Northam, said. "Attempts to extrapolate these comments otherwise is in bad faith and underscores exactly why the governor believes physicians and women, not legislators, should make these difficult and deeply personal medical decisions,"
Update 4:24 p.m.: Article was updated to include Northam’s statement.
The president of the Santa Barbara City College Board of Trustees has stopped reciting the Pledge of Allegiance at board meeting over its ties to “white nationalism.”
According to a report from Campus Reform, President Robert Miller of the Santa Barbara City College Board of Trustees says that the board will no longer cite the Pledge of Allegiance because it is racist.
“I decided to discontinue use of the Pledge of Allegiance for reasons related to its history and symbolism,” Miller said in an email correspondence with a professor at the college. “I have discovered that the Pledge of Allegiance has a history steeped in expressions of nativism and white nationalism.”
But that’s not all. Miller said that the Pledge of Allegiance violates the separation of church and state principle upon which America was founded.
“I also object to the phrase ‘one nation under God,’” Miller added in the email. “The First Amendment not only protects freedom of speech and religion [but] it also expressly prohibits laws that establish a religion. The U.S. Supreme Court has expressly extended those rights to those who express no belief in God. Thus, I disagree with the 1955 act of Congress to add this phrase to the Pledge of Allegiance.”
Professor Celeste Barber is not a fan of Miller’s decision to ban the pledge at board meetings. When she appeared before the board to criticize Miller’s ban, a group of student protesters began shouting at her, attempting to drown her voice out.
“You are an elected body at a public institution at a public institution serving a community college,” Barber said during the board meeting. “When you recite the Pledge of Allegiance, you are recommitting your oath to uphold and defend this country’s constitution.”
A former student at Santa Barbara City College told Campus Reform that Miller’s decision is proof that the college does not care about American values.
“All it really was is proof in print that they officially disregard America,” the student said. “[Miller] says in his email that he would rather pledge allegiance to the Constitution and that’s great and all that but if that really was the case, why [does] he and the rest of Santa Barbara City College embrace removing different aspects of the First Amendment? Why do they not openly embrace the Second Amendment if they’re so enamored by the Constitution?”
Tuesday on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends First,” rancher and Breitbart contributor Chris Burgard took his plea for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to visit his and others ranches on the U.S.-Mexico in Arizona to get a firsthand account of the threats coming from the south and the effectiveness of a wall versus a fence.
Burgard explained the situation, which initially involved heavy illegal alien and drug trafficking.
“Four-and-a-half years ago, she did not take us up on our invitation, and if she would she would have seen how bad things are,” Burgard said. “My buddy John, conservatively at the time, had 2 million illegal aliens come through his ranch. In two years, 53 truckloads of dope making it through there.”
Burgard credited improvements to the fence on his ranch and coordination with local sheriff’s departments for the decrease in drug trafficking and Pelosi would see the results.
“What these ranchers live with every day is beyond comprehension of most humans,” he said. “I mean, can you imagine 2 million strangers coming across your ranch? Try running a ranch operation when the trucks carrying the dope are breaking fences. Your cows are getting out, how do you run a breeding program when you can’t keep your bulls and heifers separated? And everything that hits him then goes on to the cities.”
The Arizona rancher criticized Pelosi for not taking Department of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen’s information more seriously because if she had, it could make a difference.
“You know, it is so disheartening when the Speaker of the House doesn’t believe DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen,” Burgard said. “She doesn’t believe her DHS facts. Well, right now it is a fact more people are dying in the United States from heroin and opioid overdoses than car accidents. Well, this is where it is coming from. If you stop it at the border, you will save lives in the rest of America, and it is just something that needs to be acknowledged, and you need to do something.”
Burgard insisted the initial offer made to Pelosi is still on the table.
“The offer still stands — and John says he will even feed her, but she has to eat meat because beef is what is for dinner,” he added.
Leave it to the satirical website The Onion to perfectly capture the moment: “Howard Schultz Considering Independent Presidential Run After Finding No Initial Support Among Any Voter Groups.”
That’s right, former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is mulling a run for president in 2020. But here’s the twist: Schultz, who says he’s a lifelong Democrat, would run as an independent, and the fact that he’s a multi-billionaire ($3.4B at last count, Forbes reports) means he could mount a serious effort.
The last multi-billionaire who tried the feat, H. Ross Perot, won more than 19 million votes nationwide, which was 18.9% of the vote. He proved a spoiler for George H.W. Bush, who won 37.4% of the vote but lost to Bill Clinton, who took the White House with just 43%. But that was way back in 1992, in the very early days of a crazy thing called the “world wide web” and long before social media.
Still, you’ve got to go all the way back to 1968 to find a third-party presidential candidate who won any Electoral College votes. That’s when former Alabama governor George Wallace won 46 electoral votes in the South on the American Independent Party ticket.
But if we’ve learned one thing, it’s that every four years, America changes exponentially. Who expected a first-term senator with the middle name of Hussein to win in 2008, or an egomaniacal reality TV show host to pull out a remarkable upset in 2016? And 2020 will be no different.
The most fascinating reaction from Schultz’s musings over a 2020 run came from Democrats — especially limousine liberals, the ones who love their frappuccinos from Starbucks.
“Howard Schultz running as an independent isn’t about bringing people together,” Tina Podlodowski, the Democratic Party chair in Schultz’s adopted home state of Washington, said in a statement on Sunday. “It’s about one person: Howard Schultz.”
Neera Tanden, president of the liberal Center for American Progress, wrote Saturday on Twitter that she’ll boycott Starbucks if Schultz gets in the race. “Vanity projects that help destroy democracy are disgusting. If he enters the race, I will start a Starbucks boycott because I’m not giving a penny that will end up in the election coffers of a guy who will help Trump win,” she said. No more venti lattes for her.
“If Schultz entered the race as an independent, we would consider him a target… We would do everything we can to ensure that his candidacy is unsuccessful,” said Patrick McHugh, executive director of Priorities USA, which shelled out $200 million in the 2016 presidential election to back loser Hillary Clinton.
Schultz, who held a campaign-style event at the Barnes and Noble in New York City was heckled immediately. “Go back to Davos with the other billionaires!” someone shouted. “Don’t re-elect Trump!”
Literally 30 seconds into Howard Schultz’s appearance in NY, there’s a heckler telling him “don’t re-elect Trump.” The heckler also mentions how Schultz keeps getting ratio-ed. pic.twitter.com/Q6FUnT8YX8
But Schultz isn’t just going after President Trump, he’s targeting the far-left wing of the Democratic Party. 2020 hopefuls like Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and California Sen. Kamala Harris endorse free health care and jobs for all, and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — who Democratic Party chairman Tom Perez calls “the future of the party” — is pushing for a top tax rate of 70%.
“It concerns me that so many voices within the Democratic Party are going so far to the left,” Schultz told CNBC last June. “I ask myself, ‘How are we going to pay for all these things?’ in terms of things like single-payer or people espousing the fact that the government is going to give everyone a job. I don’t think that’s realistic.”
“I respect the Democratic Party,” Schultz told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin on Monday. “I no longer feel affiliated because I don’t know their views represent the majority of Americans. I don’t think we want a 70 percent income tax in America.”
Schultz, a true American success story who grew up in public housing in Brooklyn, N.Y., and was the first in his family to go to college, says he’s well aware of the fact that he may play spoiler if he chooses to run. “I wanna see the American people win,” he said. “I wanna see America win. I don’t care if you’re a Democrat, Independent, Libertarian, Republican. Bring me your ideas. And I will be an independent person, who will embrace those ideas. Because I am not, in any way, in bed with a party.”
And he says Americans are mostly middle of the road, neither far-left nor far-right. “What we know, factually, is that over 40 percent of the electorate is either a registered Independent or currently affiliates themselves as an Independent,” Schultz said, “because the American people are exhausted. Their trust has been broken. And they are looking for a better choice.”
Michael Bloomberg, the New York billionaire who mulled a 2016 before staying out of the race, urged Schultz not to run on Monday. “It’s no secret that I looked at an independent bid in the past. In fact I faced exactly the same decision now facing others who are considering it. The data was very clear and very consistent. Given the strong pull of partisanship and the realities of the electoral college system, there is no way an independent can win. That is truer today than ever before. In 2020, the great likelihood is that an independent would just split the anti-Trump vote and end up re-electing the President. That’s a risk I refused to run in 2016 and we can’t afford to run it now. We must remain united, and we must not allow any candidate to divide or fracture us. The stakes couldn’t be higher.”
All we can say is, 2020 just got a whole lot more interesting.
Back in 2015, the National Labor Relations Board under Barack Obama essentially redefined the word “employer” when talking about franchise agreements by altering definitions in what’s known as the joint employer standard. At the time, I looked over the final changes and simply concluded, “this is going to be bad.”
And it was bad. By allowing labor unions to hold franchisers like McDonald’s responsible for labor practices of their franchisees, despite having no direct control over those policies, they opened the door to all manner of lawsuits, government fines, and other mischiefs. Analysts at the time predicted that it would have a trickle-down effect on the franchisees, creating a harsher business climate and leading to uncertainty in hiring and other policies. The NLRB under Donald Trump finally blocked that change and began to unwind it in 2017, but much of the damage was already done. Just how bad was it? A new study from the International Franchise Association and Chamber of Commerce reveals that it led to job losses numbering in the hundreds of thousands. (Free Beacon)
An industry study found that the Obama administration’s crackdown on franchising has cut hundreds of thousands of job openings and dealt a $33.3 billion blow to the economy each year dating back to 2015.
A report put out by the International Franchise Association and a Chamber of Commerce found that the Obama administration provoked an “existential threat” to the franchise model in which small business owners operate under the umbrella of a national corporate brand. The Obama administration departed from decades of precedent when the National Labor Relations Board held that parent companies could be held liable for labor violations committed by franchisees. The report estimated that the new joint employer standard set curtailed expansion in the industry, leading to between 142,000 and 376,000 lost job opportunities—a 2.55 to 5 percent reduction in the workforce.
Even going on the conservative side of the report’s estimates, we’re talking about somewhere in the neighborhood of a quarter million job opportunities lost at a time when the nation was still struggling through one of the more anemic recoveries on record. And, as the report’s authors concluded, all of this was both predictable and avoidable. In fact, many industry analysts did predict it when the rule change went into effect. We just failed to avoid it.
The real reason that some of those NRLB changes were put in place under Barack Obama was the fact that he needed to do some favors for the labor unions. They wanted to apply pressure to large franchisers like McDonald’s, seeking to force them to raise wages or bring class action lawsuits against them. Hence the move to make the franchise owner responsible for the policies of the franchisees even though their agreement provided the owner with no ability to dictate those policies beyond brand maintenance instructions.
This made the position of potential employers looking to start up franchise operations untenable in some cases. They responded by either passing on opportunities to expand their chains or simply not starting up operations in the first place. This led to the massive lost opportunities in new jobs. We’re now on course to correct that situation (assuming a Democrat doesn’t take office next year and reverse course again) but the lingering effects of that 2015 decision are still with us.
For days now, journalists on Twitter have been complaining about being harassed by people telling them: “Learn to code.”
The phrase started to be used after Buzzfeed and the Huffington Post announced massive layoffs. Laid off reporters started seeing harassment in the meme, and subsequently whined.
NBC reporter Ben Collins suggested the meme was “an ingenious cover story of highlighting journalistic softness with Learn To Code, then expected cruelty underneath.”
Zoe Beery at Study Hall asked me why “Learn To Code” is such an effective meme for both the far-right and regular conservative media.
It’s a perfect memetic storm: an ingenious cover story of highlighting journalistic softness with Learn To Code, then expected cruelty underneath pic.twitter.com/DNf4XfC6IP
TheWrap media editor Jon Levine tweeted Monday morning that a Twitter spokesperson told him that “tweeting ‘learn to code’ at any recently laid off journalist will be treated as ‘abusive behavior’ and is a violation of Twitter’s Terms of Service.”
Levine followed that tweet up by saying the spokesperson was walking back what they originally told him, and now said: “It’s more nuanced than what you reported. Twitter is responding to a targeted harassment campaign against specific individuals — a policy that’s long been against the Twitter Rules”
UPDATE:
Source was a Twitter spokesperson. Company has issued following clarification.
“It’s more nuanced than what you reported. Twitter is responding to a targeted harassment campaign against specific individuals — a policy that’s long been against the Twitter Rules”
With all the fuss surrounding the meme, the question became: Where did “learn to code” come from? The answer? From journalists themselves, during the Obama administration.
As conservatives decried President Barack Obama’s “war on coal” and coal-plant shutdowns, media outlet rushed to report that laid off coal workers could learn to code in order to get a new job.
NPR, Wired, the New York Times and many other outlets ran with these stories, which seemed to some as elite media outlets mocking blue-collar workers for losing their jobs.
Now people on Twitter are turning this around on journalists who have lost their jobs, because if it’s so easy for a coal worker to start a new career as a coder, surely the elite, educated, smarter-than-the-rest-of-us journalists and opinion writers can learn it as well.
Of course, since “journalists” can’t be expected to do even a modicum of research, they blamed the “harassment” on 4chan, searching for posts celebrating reporters losing their jobs and bragging about telling them to “learn to code.”
The phrase is not some new thing, and Google trends bears this out. The website Know Your Meme searched for the phrase “learn to code” and found the term began to spark interest in 2011. Interest has remained high since 2015, when the news articles about coal miners began to crop up.
This is not some grand conspiracy. While it is used in a mocking way, it is done so to mirror how journalists treated coal miners when they were laid off. As Tim Pool pointed out, at least one person has been suspended for tweeting “learn to code” at a journalist.
Maybe learning to code is too hurtful to journalists’ feelings. Coding wasn’t the only career change option the media suggested to laid-off coal workers. If coding is too hard, maybe beekeeping is more their speed?
