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Tag: center for public integrity
Trump Campaign Won't Repay $2 Million Owed To Struggling Cities

Trump Campaign Won't Repay $2 Million Owed To Struggling Cities

Cities across the country are reeling from both the public health crisis of the coronavirus pandemic and the cratering economy it has caused. But many hard-hit communities say Donald Trump's campaign has refused to reimburse them for outstanding rally security costs.

The Center for Public Integrity reported last week that 14 cities say Trump's campaign owes them a combined $1.82 million for public safety-related costs from rallies it has held. That is more than double the amount that it owed as of last June.

Trump's campaign has repeatedly denied responsibility for the bills, claiming it is the Secret Service that handles Trump's protection and coordinates with local authorities. But the amount needed to pay the outstanding totals would be only a fraction of what Trump's campaign raises annually.With the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, the cities need the money more than ever — both to respond to the pandemic and to help offset lost revenue.

Minneapolis, for instance, claims the Trump campaign owes about $543,000 for an October rally. "[D]uring this crisis, that loss is even more pronounced," Mayor Jacob Frey told the Center for Public Integrity. "$150,000, for instance, could pay for emergency rental assistance for 100 Minneapolis families."

Minneapolis is the seat of Hennepin County, which has already seen 924 COVID-19 cases and 75 deaths. Facing estimated revenue losses of between $100 million and $200 million in 2020 due to the pandemic, the city has already frozen wages, hiring, and discretionary expenses.

El Paso, Texas, where Trump held a pro-border wall rally in February 2019, says the Trump campaign owes it more than $569,000.

As of Sunday, El Paso County had reported 531 cases of the coronavirus and 88 related deaths. Last week, the El Paso Times reported that the coronavirus would cause an expected $26 million budget shortfall this year and require pay cuts, layoffs, and furloughs for city employees.

Albuquerque, New Mexico, says Trump still owes it $211,000 for a September 2019 rally. Bernalillo County, the city's home, has reported 542 coronavirus cases and 24 deaths so far. Tim Keller, the city's mayor, said Friday that the economic fallout means a serious budget shortfall that will require hiring limits, canceled travel, and cost-cutting.

The campaign also owes $93,338.01 to Battle Creek, Michigan. The city is also facing declining revenue, its city manager, Rebecca Fleury, warned earlier this month: "More people are staying home and with business closed, sales tax revenue will be smaller ... and that impacts how revenue comes back as far as revenue sharing from the state." Calhoun County, the home of Battle Creek, has documented more than 120 cases of the coronavirus and at least 5 deaths.

As the Trump campaign refuses to pay for local security measures at its events, law enforcement officials are being hit especially hard by COVID-19. More than 1,000 New York Police Department personnel have already tested positive for the virus, and 29 have died.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

Republican Legislators Made Millions From Passing Trump Tax Cut

Republican Legislators Made Millions From Passing Trump Tax Cut

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Although the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 did precious little to reduce the tax burden of middle-class Americans, it has been great for millionaires. And according to Peter Cary of the Center for Public Integrity, that includes many of the Republican senators and House members who rammed it through Congress.

Discussing the Center’s analysis of the 2017 law in an article for Vox this week, Cary explains: “Cutting tax rates for companies like Apple and hundreds of other stocks they own was one of many ways Republican lawmakers enriched themselves after they passed the tax law…. Democrats also stood to gain from the tax bill, though not one voted for it. All but 12 Republicans voted for the tax bill.”

After the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was passed, Cary explains, stock shares increased in price. Dividends were raised — and many of the Republicans in Congress who voted for the law just happened to own stock in the companies that paid higher dividends.

“When the price of Apple stock hit a then-record high in October 2018,” Cary observes, “among the shareholders counting their gains were 43 Republicans in Congress, who collectively owned as much as $1.5 million worth of the tech giant’s shares.”

One of the Republicans who has benefited from owning Apple shares is Sen. David Purdue of Georgia.

Cary notes, “Perdue is one of the wealthiest senators, with a net worth of $15.8 million — $14 million of which is in stocks, according to Roll Call. In 2018, with his wife, Perdue owned $100,000 to $250,000 in Apple stock, he reported. The couple sold some of it and received annual dividends and capital gains that year between $15,000 and $50,000.”

Cary goes on to explain that “net corporate dividends reached a new high in 2018 of more than $1.3 trillion, nearly 6 percent more than the previous year…. Bigger dividends put even more money in the pockets of stockholders.”

Liberal economists like Paul Krugman (a long-time New York Times columnist) and Robert Reich (who served as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton) have been highly critical of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, arguing that it ignored the needs of the American middle class. Cary, similarly, stresses that the “benefits” of the law — which reduced the corporate tax rate in the U.S. from 35 percent to 21 percent —  “mainly went to the rich, as the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans own 84 percent of all stocks.

“The ten richest Republicans in Congress in 2017 who voted for the tax bill held more than $731 million in assets — almost two-thirds of which were in stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and other instruments, according to Roll Call’s semiannual assessment of Congress’ wealth,” Cary reports.

Cary wraps up his article with a quote from Craig Holman of the watchdog group Public Citizen. Holman said of millionaires in Congress, “They are passing tax laws and legislation that disproportionately favors the wealthy class, and that means they personally benefit from this type of legislation. And from what we’ve seen — especially from the Tax Cuts And Jobs Act of 2017 — that tax bill clearly favored the very wealthy over the rest of Americans, and that means it favored Congress over the rest of America.”

Ethics Office Rebukes Commerce Secretary For Concealing Bank Stock

Ethics Office Rebukes Commerce Secretary For Concealing Bank Stock

The Office of Government Ethics (OGE) refused to certify Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’ financial disclosure form — because Ross lied about owning certain stocks.

The move comes after the OGE warned Ross in the summer of 2018 about the consequences of his repeated problems with inaccurate disclosures.

In a letter dated Feb. 15, 2019, OGE Director Emory A. Rounds declared that the office would not certify Ross’ disclosure because the “report was not accurate and he was not in compliance with his ethics agreement at the time of the report.”

Ross lied about owning BankUnited stock, the Center for Public Integrity reported in December 2018. According to the ethics agreement Ross signed in early 2017, Ross was supposed to divest this stock no later than the end of May 2017.

But he didn’t. In fact, he continued to own some stock in the company all the way until the end of October 2018, despite signing several financial disclosure forms saying he sold them all in the intervening months.

“Wilbur Ross clearly is not taking his ethics obligations seriously,” Austin Evers, executive director of American Oversight, told the Center for Public Integrity in December. “He’s been warned and at this point he needs a full audit by OGE and probably Congress to make sure he’s not operating with blatant conflict of interest.”

Democrats on Capitol Hill took notice as well. In December, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) told the Center for Public Integrity that this “administration’s contempt for the most basic checks on corruption is bottomless.”

Lying on an ethics form isn’t the only way Ross makes headlines. During the Trump shutdown, Ross was baffled that some federal workers were struggling after not being paid for 35 days. When a reporter asked Ross about federal workers who were visiting homeless shelters to get food, Ross replied that he knew about it, but, he said, “I don’t really quite understand why.”

Like many in Trump’s Cabinet, Ross may see himself as above the rule of law. Unfortunately, his attitude, according to Delaney Marsco, ethics counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, “shows a lack of reverence towards the ethics program and a disregard for the rules.”

In Trump’s Cabinet, the culture of corruption is just par for the course.

Published with permission of The American Independent.

IMAGE: Donald Trump looks on as Wilbur Ross departs after their meeting at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, November 20, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Segar

Gas Drilling Boom Accelerates With Little Study Of Public Health Effects

Gas Drilling Boom Accelerates With Little Study Of Public Health Effects

By Lisa Song and Jim Morris, InsideClimate News

A new study has underscored just how little is known about the health consequences of the natural gas boom that began a decade ago, when advances in high-volume hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and directional drilling allowed companies to tap shale deposits across the United States.

“Despite broad public concern, no comprehensive population-based studies of the public health effects of (unconventional natural gas) operations exist,” concluded the report published Monday in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Last week, InsideClimate News, the Center for Public Integrity and The Weather Channel reported on the health data gap in the Eagle Ford Shale, where a lack of air monitoring and research is aggravated by a Texas regulatory system that often protects the gas and oil industry over the public.

Scientists interviewed for the series said the uncertainties persist across the country. In the words of one expert, scientists “really haven’t the foggiest idea” how shale development impacts public health.

Gas and oil production releases many toxic chemicals into the air and water, including carcinogens like benzene and respiratory hazards like hydrogen sulfide. While residents near drilling areas in Texas reported symptoms that are known to be caused by these chemicals, including migraines and breathing problems, it was impossible to link them to the drilling boom because no studies could be found that prove cause and effect.

The new study, led by John Adgate at the Colorado School of Public Health, examined available research on the environmental, social and psychological impacts of shale gas drilling. It was the first time anyone had tried to tackle the question in a systematic way, Adgate said.

The researchers found that much of the existing work “isn’t explicitly tied to health.” Many studies analyzed the level of pollutants in the air or water, but didn’t track how the exposures are connected to local health trends. Other studies used health surveys, but didn’t compare the respondents’ results with the health of the larger surrounding community.

What’s needed, Adgate said, are comprehensive studies that examine possible connections between chemical exposures and community health trends. But these types of studies require substantial funding and good baseline data, both of which are hard to obtain.

“You’re not going to find anything if you don’t look, and some people think we shouldn’t be looking, or that it’s not worth looking,” he said. “We do know a lot of these things are hazardous, and we just need to develop a system … (that) provides people with a reasonable level of certainty (on the) effects, or lack thereof.”

Health impacts will vary based on local geology, weather patterns, operator practices and other factors, Adgate said, so it would make sense to set up a study that tracks people from different parts of the country.

Regulators are well aware of the knowledge gap. In 2012, the Government Accountability Office — the investigative arm of Congress — reviewed more than 90 studies from government agencies, the industry and academic researchers and concluded that oil and gas development “pose inherent environmental and public health risks, but the extent of these risks … is unknown, in part, because the studies GAO reviewed do not generally take into account the potential long-term, cumulative effects.”

On the issue of air pollution, the GAO said the studies “are generally anecdotal, short-term, and focused on a particular site or geographic location. … (They) do not provide the information needed to determine the overall cumulative effect that shale oil and gas activities have on air quality.”

Bernard Goldstein, a professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh and a co-author of the paper, pointed to a need for well-designed studies in large populations. Scientists could analyze a community before, during and after drilling begins, or compare the health of residents in communities close to and far from a shale play, he said.

Both Adgate and Goldstein cited major barriers in funding. “There hasn’t been a lot of money thrown at this problem,” Adgate said. “It’s a contentious issue as everybody knows, and nobody’s stepped up to say we’re going to fund independent research.”

Goldstein said the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences — part of the National Institutes of Health — has started to fund some studies, but the results won’t emerge for years. Adgate suggested more public-private partnerships like the Health Effects Institute, an independent research organization that studies vehicular air pollution. It is jointly funded by the Environmental Protection Agency and the auto industry.

Photo: Greensefa via Flickr