Daily Archives: March 17, 2017

Seth Weathers loves The Duke.

In John Waynes movies, the political consultant said he finds a do-whatevers-gotta-be-done attitude thats easy to embrace.

Wayne was always the one going to the town, the little sheriffs given up, cant fight, criminals are gonna overrun the town, and no ones gonna fight. All the other guys are a bunch of [wimps], Weathers says. And Waynes like no, were gonna stand up and fight to the death and kill them all.

To his clients, the brash 32-year-old Republican strategist wears the white hat. Others would rather see him ride out of town.

Weathers, the former director of Donald Trumps Georgia campaign, has been in the national spotlight recently after Gwinnett County Commissioner Tommy Hunter, a longtime client,called civil rights leader and U.S. Rep. John Lewis a racist pig on Facebook. He has stood by Hunter since the day the commissioners Jan. 14 Facebook post went viral, and hes made plenty ofnew enemies along the way.

Weathers has publicly sparred withvarious Democratic officials, the attorneys whofiled an ethics complaint against Hunter, andAtlanta Mayor Kasim Reed. Hes become a second target for those protesting the commissioner, too.

Mr. Weathers is certainly the moral equivalence of Commissioner Hunter, Gwinnett County Democratic Party Chairman Gabe Okoye said. They are birds of the same feather, but [Weathers] may be worse, because he is more calculating.

During a recent interview at an Atlanta-area steakhouse, Weathers dismissed that assessment with a hearty laugh.

I dont give a [expletive] what people think about me, he said. I know people say that. But I really dont [care].

A brass-knuckle fighter

Weathers childhood was spent playing along the train tracks in downtown Norcross. Home-schooled, he jokes that hes had basically no education. He said he read Ronald Reagans autobiography when he was about 14 years old and listened to talk radio.

I dont know, Weathers said. I just always liked politics.

Weathers did not go to college and started a web design business fresh out of high school. With a second job working the night shift at OfficeMax helping make ends meet, he began to make his way into the political world, too.

Id be stocking [stuff] at night, and then go throw my suit on and go to a luncheon at the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce that day, he said.

By 2010, Weathers had served as an e-consultant for several campaigns. He made the leap to full-service consulting less than two years later.

One of his first clients was Tommy Hunter, who reached out before Hunters 2012 county commission run.

Weathers also handled the 2014 campaign of State Sen. Michael Williams (R-Cumming), who in Oct. 2015became the first member of Georgias General Assembly to offer public support for Trump. By then, Weathers wasalready the director of Trumps Georgia campaign.

I read The Art of the Deal at 18, and Ive followed Trump since then, Weathers said. Hes a brass-knuckle fighter. Id wanted him to run for years.

Weathers official time with the Trump campaign lasted only about two months, though. Its unclear why Weathers left the campaign, and he calls rumors hinting at a reason for his departure fake news.

The official line is that Weathers transitioned out of his position to devote his time to pursuing work with outside organizations and down-ballot races through his firm.

Its personal

Weathers now lives in Johns Creek with his wife and two sons, one thats 4 1/2 and another thats less than two weeks old. The latter is named Rearden Wayne Rearden coming from a character in Ayn Rands Atlas Shrugged, Wayne being an homage to the movie cowboy.

On the same day his youngest was born, Weathers did a TV interview on the Hunter situation in the hospital parking lot.

For most consultants that I interviewed and talked to, it was a job, Williams, the state senator, said. To Seth, its personal.

Weathers has plenty of detractors. Reed, Atlantas mayor, recently suggested that he lacks a moral compass. But clients love that hes so willing to go to war for them, either in the press or in person. On Valentines Day, he quicklyushered Hunter out of a tumultuous meeting with the Gwinnett NAACP.

And Weathers likes defending his clients, and the political gamesmanship involved, perhaps more than any other part of his job.

He said he has no regrets about his handling of Hunter who, in his eyes, has been railroaded after saying something dumb that had nothing to do with racism.

I like fighting for the person thats just gonna get run the [expletive] over if someone else doesnt fight for them, he said.

Read the original post:

Meet the brash Atlanta consultant battling 'racist pig' backlash - MyAJC

Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt (Gage Skidmore | Wikimedia Commons)

A YEAR ago, Republican Gov. Rick Snyder was the focus of national outrage when it was revealed that residents of Flint, Michigan, were being poisoned by their own drinking water, thanks in significant part to the actions of Snyder's pro-business, do-nothing-for-the-poor administration.

Today, with Donald Trump's appointment of Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), it's as if Flint never happened.

Bought and paid for by the Oklahoma energy industry, Pruitt sued the EPA 14 times as that state's attorney general. Today, he's in charge of running the agency...into the ground.

With Pruitt's appointment, the Trump administration hopes to repeal any meaningful regulation and enforcement of the energy and farming industries, as well as wage an ideological attack on the environmental movement, which the right views as an existential threat.

"Environmental Protection, what they do is a disgrace," said Trump after the election, claiming that the EPA has an "anti-energy agenda that has destroyed millions of jobs." The irony is that Pruitt's draft budget for the agency calls for 3,000 layoffs and a 25 percent funding cut in order to free up money for the military.

In a recent interview with CNBC, Pruitt said that he doesn't think carbon dioxide is "a primary contributor to the global warming that we see." This is science that not even Shell or ExxonMobil dispute. He has called himself a "leading advocate against the EPA's activist agenda"--but hasn't had anything to say about the $300,000 in donations that the energy companies gave to his Oklahoma campaigns.

Pruitt was also caught letting Devon Energy, one of Oklahoma's largest oil and gas companies, write an official complaint to the EPA using his official attorney general letterhead. And it wasn't until his confirmation hearings this year that some 3,000 e-mails Pruitt wrote to oil and gas companies as attorney general were finally released, after he refused previous requests to release them for several years.

As 350.org Executive Director May Boeve noted, "You couldn't pick a better fossil fuel industry puppet."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

THE OPENING act for Pruitt was Myron Ebell, Trump's pick to head the EPA transition team. This "libertarian gadfly" is the director of global warming and environmental policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and is known for his hostility to the EPA, science and the reality of global warming.

Ebell suggested firing 10,000 of the EPA's 15,000 current employments, half of whom are scientists. James Delingpole of Breitbart "News" relished Ebell's appointment, writing, "The left just lost the war on climate change...Yup, greenies. That climate change gravy train you've been riding these last four decades looks like it's headed for a major, Atlas-Shrugged-style tunnel incident."

In addition to staff and budget cuts, the White House draft plan for cuts at the EPA includes the elimination of 38 programs as well as many grants to clean up contaminated industrial sites, climate change initiatives and aid to Alaskan villages.

Research and development funding would be cut 42 percent, and the overall reduction of funds and staff would make an already weak enforcement division even weaker. As for the Office of Environmental Justice, Trump plans to shut it down.

"The point here will be, more than in any prior administration, to reduce the agency's effectiveness so much that it can't recover even when the political winds change," wrote the Natural Resources Defense Council's David Doniger.

However much the administration would like eliminate any fetter on profits, they won't be able to rip up existing protections without lengthy legal battles. But we shouldn't expect the courts to win these battles without a loud movement countering Trump and Pruitt.

The first victims are the Clean Water Rule and the Clean Power Plan, which the Trump administration is targeting because they're part of Obama's climate legacy, as meager as it is.

The Clean Water Rule involves defining what bodies of water are federally protected. Trump's executive order in February to roll back the rule is more about following through on a campaign promise he used to whip up resentment against the EPA with rural voters.

But the EPA is already too weak and pro-business to enforce regulatory compliance. The lack of enforcement on drinking water partially explains why Flint happened and why we have a national crisis of clean drinking water. The EPA estimates that the nation's failing water infrastructure will take 20 years and anywhere from $384 billion to $1 trillion to repair.

If Trump does address the water crisis in some way, you can bet it will involve privatization and profit.

Obama's Clean Power Plan (CPP) aims to reduce carbon emissions from power plants to 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, which the market, not regulation, will accomplish through the glut of fracked natural gas and cheaper renewables at the expense of coal.

Keith Gaby of the Environmental Defense Fund noted, "The crazy thing is, [Obama's CPP] is a really flexible plan, very business-friendly." Eliminating it won't revive the fortunes of coal if current natural gas production continues. So Trump's attack is largely ideological.

Trump and Pruitt have also opened a review of new rules requiring automakers to meet fleet fuel efficiency target of 54.4 miles per gallon by 2025, which in reality is about 40 miles per gallon.

Not only will this prevent a reduction in carbon emissions, it will save automakers money while costing consumers and average of $8,000 more in gas per new vehicle.

United Auto Workers President Dennis Williams raised concerns about emissions, but was told by Trump that, "We all agree with you 100 percent. One hundred percent. We want you to make great cars, but if it takes an extra thimble of fuel, we want you to do it."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

THE STORY of how Republican President Richard "Tricky Dick" Nixon created the EPA in 1970, shortly after the first Earth Day, can help us to see how we can defend the EPA today.

The radicalization of the 1960s included rising demands that government must protect land, air and water from industrial pollution. Nixon, a paranoid, power-hungry conservative, felt compelled to create a unified regulatory agency to improve water and air quality, lower vehicle emissions, stop dumping the Great Lakes and guard against oil spills.

Multiple protest movements and a stronger left put the Nixon administration on the defensive. The key to beating back Trump lies in deepening the current radicalization, building the left and eventually making business as usual impossible.

The March for Science and the People's Climate March, both in late April, will be excellent opportunities for progressives and radicals to unite in a show of force against Trump.

Scientists fed up with the Trump administration's mischaracterization of science as a partisan issue and the threats to defund or silence research and scientific advocacy spurred a group of them to organize the march on Earth Day. The main science rally will be in Washington, D.C., but over 295 satellite marches are registered on the event's website, with 395 events taking place globally.

The following weekend will see a similar mobilization in D.C. for the People's Climate March, backed by many of the coalition members who organized the massive 2014 People's Climate March in New York City.

We know that Trump, like Nixon, hates these mobilizations--and this is just one of many reasons to organize and resist.

See original here:

Running the EPA...into the ground - Socialist Worker Online

All our liberties are due to men who, when their conscience has compelled them, have broken the laws of the land.

So said William Kingdon Clifford, a 19th-century English mathematician and philosopher. Inspiring words, but did you catch the one glaring error? He forgot the women!

If Clifford had known Vivien Kellems, he wouldnt have made that mistake.

Born in 1896 in Des Moines, Iowa, Kellems was a locomotive that never quit. Indeed, to continue the train analogy, she was a real-life Dagny Taggart, the railroad vice president protagonist of Atlas Shrugged. Before Kellems died in 1975, she could proudly look back on a life of service to her country as a successful entrepreneur, an accomplished public speaker, a political candidate more interested in educating than in winning, and, most famously, as a tireless opponent of the IRS and its tax code. Outspoken to the end, nobody ever accused her of hiding her light under a bushel.

While earning her bachelors degree in economics from the University of Oregon in 1918, Kellems gave her classmates a dose of the spunk that would mark the next half-century of her life. She became the first and only female on the college debate team, humbling many men in a competition widely thought at the time to be for males only. She went on to earn a masters in economics in 1921. Decades later, while in her 70s, she started work on a PhD at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. The focus of her dissertation was the issue that made her a virtual household name in America: the income tax.

The Roaring Twenties were well under way when Kellems and her brother Edgar invented the Kellems cable grip, used for lifting and supporting electrical cables. With a thousand dollars she had saved and another thousand borrowed, she founded the Kellems Company in Stonington, Connecticut, in 1927 to manufacture and market the device. By the time World War II broke out, she was a wealthy woman with an intensely loyal following among her hundreds of employees.

When the war demanded grips to lift 2,700-pound artillery shells, Kellems innovated and ended up selling two million of the resulting product to the armed services. Doing business with the military also introduced her to the seamy side of government the endless and often needless or duplicative paperwork, the meddlesome bureaucracy, the increasingly complicated and dubious tax code, and even a dangerous naivet about foreign regimes.

Most Americans were reluctant to criticize Washington in the early years of the war. Other more pressing matters occupied us, as the Axis powers scored one victory after another. But when Kellems saw waste, bungling, and stupidity in government, she didnt hesitate to speak out and make headlines. She was incensed by the US governments shipping thousands of tons of vital materials to Stalins Soviet Union at a time when our own war effort demanded them. To a Chicago audience, she prophetically warned, Mark my words. This temporary ally will soon pose a mortal threat to the United States and the entire free world.

Roosevelts minions were not amused by Kellemss very public disapproval. Her private correspondence was intercepted by the Office of Censorship (yes, we had one of those), then leaked to two newspaper columnists and a congressman friendly to the administration. Nothing in her letters was in any way incriminating, and no action was ever taken against her, but it was plain that the government wanted to embarrass and intimidate her into silence. It underestimated Kellems, big time.

As the tax burden soared, so did Kellemss resentment of the confiscatory marginal rates (as high as 90 percent on personal and corporate income) and the bullying tactics of the revenuers. In speeches around the country, she ripped into FDR for promising lower taxes during his first presidential campaign in 1932, only to deliver relentlessly higher rates ever after. Treasury Secretary and FDR crony Henry Morgenthau hinted at treason charges and proceeded toward legal penalties against Kellems. Fortunately, those threats were sidelined by both the wars end and a scandal that enveloped the Bureau of Internal Revenue (predecessor to the IRS). Thanks in part to Kellems and the women around the country that she personally stirred up, congressional investigations led to the indictment or voluntary retirements of hundreds of BIR employees for violating the very tax laws they were supposed to enforce.

Kellems could get fired up about intrusive government at any level. When the state of Connecticut passed a law in 1947 forbidding women to work after 10:00 p.m., she sprung into action. Her friend, the Hollywood movie star Gloria Swanson, describes what happened:

Charging rank discrimination, she brought several hundred women in to work at her factory one night, but no arrests were made. Finally, she got a job in an all-night diner and threatened to work there every night until the legislature acted. Two days later, the law was repealed.

The year 1948 is pivotal in the Kellems timeline. Franklin Roosevelt was three years gone and Harry Truman occupied the Oval Office. What started out as a temporary and voluntary wartime measure tax withholding was made permanent and compulsory. Kellems would have none of it. She was not about to become an unpaid tax collector for the feds without a fight.

In February 1948, she began paying her employees in full, which meant they had to cough up the required taxes and pay them directly to the federal government. Within days, she was on NBCs new show Meet the Press only the second woman to appear as a guest on the program. The withholding law, in her view, was unconstitutional. The very rationale for creating it to make the costs of big government less visible to workers was, in her mind, yet another reason to get rid of it. People needed to know what their government was costing them. Violating the law was the only way the issue could be settled once and for all:

If High Tax Harry wants me to get money for him, then he must appoint me an agent for the Internal Revenue Department. He must pay me a salary for my work, he must reimburse me for my expenses incurred in collecting that tax, and I want a badge!

She wrote to the Treasury secretary to inform him of her decision and added, I respectfully request that you please indict me.

Fearing an unfavorable ruling in the courts, the government dodged and weaved. The indictment never came. Instead, the IRS sent agents to her bank and seized the $6,100 it said was due.

Kellems fired back with a lawsuit against the government, and in 1951, a jury ordered the feds to return the money, with interest. She continued to press for a decision on constitutionality, and finally, in 1973, the United States Tax Court formally rejected her argument. Meanwhile, she had relented to prevent her company from going bankrupt from IRS seizures. With great reluctance, she began withholding taxes from her employees.

In 1952, she authored a book detailing her fight and the case against the income tax. Titled Toil, Taxes and Trouble, its still available. Powerful and entertaining at the same time, its full of insights about taxes and the proper role of government. In the words of Romaine D. Huret, author of the excellent 2014 book, Tax Resisters,

Kellemss book explored the brainwashing of taxpayers. The income tax, she wrote, was a way for the government to deliberately hide from employees the payment of their taxes and thus to prevent them from becoming tax-conscious. Throughout the book, she identified the foes against which she was struggling with a vivid, and at times colloquial, vocabulary: they were the tax grabbers and tax planners yellow cowards, mangy little bureaucrats in Washington.

In the 1960s, with the withholding issue still to be resolved, Kellems took up another tax crusade the built-in penalty against single people. Income tax rates for an unmarried person were as much as 42 percent higher than those for married couples making the same income. Congress finally recognized her point, and in 1969, it gave her a partial victory by cutting the disparity to a maximum of 20 percent. Swanson wrote,

Vivien could quote passages from the Constitution by heart, recite the legislative history of obscure sections of the Internal Revenue Code, and do it all in a grandmotherly, finger-wagging manner that disarmed even the most experienced politicians.

The Bridgeport Post paid tribute to Kellems in an editorial. Lamentably, there may be no newspaper editor in Connecticut with the guts or the wisdom to print something like this today:

When it comes to possessing a spine of pure steel, we wonder if there is any man or woman in Connecticut who can match Miss Kellems. One lone woman against the whole U.S. government! If there are persons and we know there are who think she is simply a pugnacious person making a personal fight over the withholding tax, they are doing her a great injustice. Her interest is one of deep conviction and firm principle based on study of the history of the Constitution of the United States. She understands the circumstances which gave birth to this country, the firm realization of the founders that the power to tax is the power to destroy, and the steps which they took to prevent this power from being misused.

Kellems ran four times for public office in Connecticut, once for governor and three times for US Senate. Though she never won, she did something all too many candidates seldom do: she educated people. After a Kellems campaign, nobody could say she stood for what she thought people would fall for.

She never changed her mind about the income tax. The personal income tax forms that she filed for each of the last 10 years of her life were all blank. Apparently not even the IRS wanted to tangle again with this scrappy patriot.

Whether you agree or disagree with Vivien Kellems on the issues, you have to give her credit. She had principles sound ones, in my estimation and the courage to stand for them come hell or high water.

This piece was originally published at the Foundation for Economic Education on August 12th, 2015.

The rest is here:

Vivien Kellems: Please Indict Me! - Learn Liberty (blog)