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Rick Scott Hits Biden's Delaware 'Staycation' -- From A Yacht In Italy

Rick Scott Hits Biden's Delaware 'Staycation' -- From A Yacht In Italy

Rick Scott is once again under fire. The former governor who now serves as a U.S. Senator and the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) is being criticized for taking a swipe at President Joe Biden for his “staycation” at his home in Delaware, which reporters discovered the Florida Republican did while tweeting from a luxury yacht in Italy.

Presidents generally take a few weeks off in August because Congress is on their summer recess.

Scott, the former CEO of a healthcare company who oversaw the largest Medicaid fraud in U.S. history, is considered to be the richest person in the U.S. Senate.

The Florida GOP lawmaker “is spending part of his congressional recess on a luxury yacht in Italy with his family after criticizing President Biden for vacationing in Delaware,” Axios reports. “Vacationing in Europe while Republicans face cash problems and rough headlines about their midterm chances could further hurt his standing with his GOP colleagues.”

Scott is already under fire for lavish spending of the NRSC’s meager finances, including on efforts to improve his standing ahead of a possible presidential run.

Pointing to a Washington Post article about the NRSC’s money troubles, Talking Points memo editor Josh Marshall last week said: “There’s clearly been some shift in momentum over the summer. But fundraising collapses like this don’t happen in a week or a month. Did Rick Scott defraud the NRSC like he did Medicare? How on earth can they be out of money after a year of gop surge?”

The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman Tuesday afternoon, pointing to the Axios report, added: “The figurehead of the NRSC, whose staff posted in giant posterboard a tweet questioning if he’d have fundraising troubles after his J6 vote, is aboard someone’s luxury boat as R candidates are struggling and the NRSC’s $ situation is also troubled.”

“Knives are out for Rick Scott,” notesWashington Post congressional reporter Paul Kane. “Hey, he’s a mega-millionaire who can work from anywhere. But it’s a leak that shows Rs are growing restless.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Tearful Biden Delivers Heartfelt Farewell To Delaware

Tearful Biden Delivers Heartfelt Farewell To Delaware

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

On the day before his inauguration, President-elect Joe Biden spoke at a send-off event in Delaware — and he was overcome with emotion when discussing his connection to his adopted state.

Biden, now 78, was only 29 when he was first elected to the U.S. Senate via Delaware back in 1972. After decades in the Senate, Biden was sworn in as vice president in January 2009 as part of President Barack Obama's administration.

The president-elect, originally from Scranton, Pennsylvania, explained, "My colleagues in the Senate used to always kid me for quoting Irish poets. They thought I did it because I'm Irish. I didn't do it for that reason; I did it because they're the best poets in the world."

Biden added, "James Joyce was said to have told a friend that when it comes his time to pass — when he dies, he says, 'Dublin will be written on my heart.'"

Overcome for a moment, Biden paused and then continued, "Well, excuse the emotion. But when I die, Delaware will be written on my heart and the hearts of all of us — all the Bidens." At one point, he wiped way a tear from his eye.

Your Guide To Super Tuesday IV: Northeastern Edition!

Your Guide To Super Tuesday IV: Northeastern Edition!

Voters in 5 states — Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island —are hitting the polls today in yet another “Super Tuesday” primary. If you’re following along, either to keep abreast of current events or for pure schadenfreude, we’ve compiled each state’s delegate math and most recent polling to help keep track.

Connecticut 

Each of Connecticut’s five districts awards three delegates winner-takes-all, and the remaining 13 delegates are distributed proportionally based on popular vote, unless one candidate manages to win 50 percent or more of the popular vote, in which case that candidate wins all 13 delegates. If Trump lives up to some of the more ambitious expectations of him (some polls have him at 52 percent of the popular vote), he could manage to take home all 28 delegates.

Even without a majority, Trump will likely dominate the Connecticut primary. Real Clear Politics, which averages multiple polls to make its projections, has the Republican frontrunner up 26 points, with Ohio Gov. John Kasich likely stealing second: he holds 28 percent of the vote, and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz trails at a dismal 19 percent (one recent poll suggests Cruz won’t even break 10 percent in Connecticut).

The Democratic Party regulates primary and caucus rules in all 50 states and is significantly more straightforward, logistically: a majority of the delegates are awarded proportionately, assuming runners up win at least 15 percent of the vote, and the remaining delegates are unbound “superdelegates” and can vote for whomever they choose.

Of the 71 delegates up for grabs in Connecticut, 55 will be awarded proportionately based on today’s vote — both Sanders and Clinton are projected to hit the 15 percent threshold. Still, the race will be a close one. RCP has Clinton leading Sanders by only 5.6 points, and one Public Policy Polling survey published yesterday suggests an even tighter race, with Clinton at 48 percent and Sanders at 46 percent of likely Democratic voters.

Delaware

Sixteen delegates are at stake in the Republican primary, awarded on a winner-take all basis. One of the few polls available in Delaware has Trump leading Kasich by 37 points, with Cruz falling to third place.

With little polling data available, the fate of Delaware’s 21 Democratic delegates is anyone’s guess. Clinton leads Sanders in the only available poll, 45 to 38 percent, but as Huffington Post points out, 17 percent of those polled were still undecided.

Maryland

Maryland will award 38 total delegates in today’s Republican primary: three in each of the state’s eight districts, 11 to the candidate who wins a plurality of the popular vote, and three remaining pledged to support the winner. This winner-take-most set-up will likely favor Trump, who has a substantial lead in the state. RCP has Trump up 14 points, and other polls suggest Trump could lead by as much as 20 points. While there’s not a lot of polling data from Maryland, election watchers suggest Kasich will likely come in second, with Cruz falling, yet again, to third place.

There are 95 pledged delegates up for grabs in the Democratic primary, and early data don’t fare well for Sanders, who trails Clinton by 24 points in the latest RCP poll. The analysts over at FiveThirtyEight put Sanders’s chance of winning Maryland at only 2 percent.

Pennsylvania 

Despite sending 71 delegates to the Republican National Convention in July, the winner of the GOP primary will only gain 17 delegates as the result of today’s vote. Yes, that’s two fewer delegates than Rhode Island, the smallest state in the country. Still, Trump will likely win big in the Keystone State, at least in terms of the popular vote. RCP has the frontrunner up 26 points in the polls and a new NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll echoes that sentiment, with 45 percent of likely Republican voters supporting Trump. Cruz trails behind at 27 percent of likely voters, and Kasich is just behind him at 24 percent.

Clinton will likely win a majority of Pennsylvania’s 189 pledged delegates. Polls show her leading Sanders by 14 points (54 percent for Clinton, 40 percent for Sanders), thanks largely to the state’s African American voters. Despite receiving an endorsement from the country’s oldest African American newspaper, The Philadelphia Tribune, Sanders is still down among likely black voters; in Pennsylvania, only 29 percent of African Americans support the Vermont Senator, compared with 67 percent who support the former Secretary of State.

Rhode Island

Trump will also dominate Rhode Island, where he holds a 25-point lead. One poll has the business mogul at 61 percent, Trumping Kasich’s 23 percent. Cruz is at a measly 13 percent. Still, Rhode Island is another state with incredibly complicated Republican primary rules: six delegates are awarded proportionately by district, provided a candidate wins at least 10 percent of the vote any given district (there are only two congressional districts in Rhode Island). If a candidate wins over 67 percent of the vote, they receive at least two more delegates. Ten of the remaining 13 are awarded proportionately based on popular vote, and the final three are bound to support the winner of the primary.

On the Democratic side, Rhode Island is shaping up to be an intense fight between Clinton and Sanders. There are 24 delegates at stake, and the polls are at a statistical coin-toss. RCP has Clinton up 2.5 points in the polls, however Public Policy Polling puts Sanders at a four-point lead over Clinton’s 45 percent.

The Takeaway

Trump will walk away from Super Tuesday IV with significant backup for his claim of delegate inevitability. If he sweeps all five states, we’ll surely hear louder calls for Cruz and Kasich to drop out of the race. But don’t expect that to happen anytime soon: both candidates have made it clear they’re in it to undermine the will of the an arbitrarily small plurality of Republican primary voters win it in an eventual open convention.

Despite signs that Sanders may pull off one or two upset victories today, he’s unlikely to put a dent in Clinton’s delegate count. One of Sanders’s biggest weaknesses is his inability to sway black voters in places Pennsylvania and Maryland. While he is also unlikely to leave the race anytime soon, Sanders’s progressive faithful may have to resign themselves to an inevitable Clinton candidacy in the near future.

Photo: Migraine. Pexels/ Gerd Altmann

Panama Papers Reveal Scandalous Hypocrisy

Panama Papers Reveal Scandalous Hypocrisy

It’s always educational to observe the behavior of wildlife in their natural habitat. For example, we learn that there’s nothing more vicious than a wild animal that’s cornered. I would add that there’s nothing more devious than a top political or corporate official caught in a scandalous hypocrisy.

We’re now bearing witness to this latter phenomenon, for a whole menagerie of political critters have recently been screeching and scrambling after being backed into a corner by the “Panama Papers.” This is a trove of thousands of internet documents leaked to global media outlets, revealing that assorted billionaires, rich celebrities, corporate chieftains, and — yes — pious public officials have been hiding their wealth and dodging the taxes they owe by stashing their cash in foreign tax havens. Of course, we’ve known for a while that tax dodging is a common plutocratic scam, but the details from the leaked files of an obscure Panamanian law firm named Mossack Fonseca now gives us names to shame.

One is David Cameron, the ardently conservative prime minister of Britain, who has loudly declaimed tax sneaks in public. But — oops! — Now we learn that his own super-wealthy father was a Mossack Fonseca client, and that David himself has profited from the stealth wealth he inherited from the elder Cameron’s secret stash.

Trapped by the facts, the snarling, privileged prime minister used middle-class commoners as his shield, asserting that critics of his secluded wealth are trying to “tax anyone who [wants] to pass on their home… to their children.” Uh-uh, David – we merely want to tax those who try to pass-off tax frauds on the public.

One of Cameron’s partisans even claimed that critics “hate anybody who has a hint of wealth in them.” No, it’s the gross, self-serving hypocrisy of the elites that people hate. Yet now, doubling down on their hypocrisy, Cameron & Company have announced that they’ll host an anticorruption summit meeting to address the problem of offshore tax evaders!

The global web of corruption involving thousands of superrich tax dodgers and money launderers that the Panama Paper reveal is an explosive scandal — yet, interestingly, very few names of the moneyed elite in our country have surfaced as players in Mossack Fonseca’s Panamanian shell game. Perhaps US billionaires and corporations are just more honest than those elsewhere.

Ha-ha-ha, just kidding! Not more honest, just luckier. You see, America’s conniving richies don’t have to go to Panama to set up an offshore flim flam — they have the convenience of hiding their money and wrongdoings in secret accounts created right here in states like Delaware and Nevada.

The “New York Times” notes that it’s easier in some states to form a dummy money corporation than it is to get a fishing license. Indeed, the ease of doing it, and the state laws that provide strict secrecy for those hiding money, have made the U.S.A. a global magnet for international elites wanting to conceal billions of dollars from their own tax collectors, prosecutors… and general public.

State officials in Delaware even travel to Brazil, Israel, Spain and other nations to tell “the Delaware story,” inviting rich foreign interests to stash their cash in corporate hideaways that the state sets up, no questions asked. Likewise, Nevada flashes a dazzling neon sign inviting the global rich to incorporate their very own shell corporations there, promising — shhhh — “minimal reporting and disclosing requirements.” The money-hiding industry is so hot in Nevada that it attracted none other than Mossack Fonseca to get in the action by opening a branch office there.

The law firm is being branded as a criminal enterprise for the rich. OK, but it shares that shameful brand with our own state governments.

To find out more about Jim Hightower, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.

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Photo: Wikimedia Commons.