"The Kochs want that tax cut. Badly" by Annie Linskey Globe Staff October 14, 2017
NEW YORK — The message from the billionaire-led Koch network of donors to President Trump and the Republican Congress it helped to shape couldn’t be more clear: Pass a tax overhaul, or else.
That looks like more than a message; it looks like a threat.
As the donors mixed and mingled for a policy summit at the St. Regis hotel in midtown Manhattan last week, just a block south from Trump Tower, it came up again. And again. And again.
“It’s the most significant federal effort we’ve ever taken on,” said Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, a Koch-aligned group with offices in 36 states. “The stakes for the Republicans, I’ve never seen them this high.”
Many in the Koch network, a vast group of libertarian-leaning nonprofits and advocacy and political organizations, described the upcoming legislative push for a tax overhaul as an inflection point in modern political history, a do-or-die moment that would define whether their efforts over the years will pay off or not. The network leaders plan to dedicate much of their two-year $400 million politics and policy budget to the effort — though they wouldn’t give an exact number.
And any notion of failure was discussed in dire terms.
“This is the crux issue,” said Chris Wright, a Koch donor and CEO of Liberty Oilfield Services in Denver. He predicted that Republicans would “pay a heavy price” in the 2018 midterm elections if the effort fails, explaining that donors and activists alike would walk away from the party.
“If you give someone the leadership baton, you expect them to get something done,” Wright explained.
This explains Trump's recent move on the insurance company subsidies. He did it to free up money for this.
These are complicated times for the Koch network, which was founded by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, who are the 11th and 12th richest people in the world with $47.6 billion apiece, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Their massive organization, which funded elements of the Tea Party movement back in 2010, rightfully deserves a major share of credit for creating a complete Republican takeover of the federal government, along with the vast majority of state houses and governorships. But the Kochs and aligned groups have an uneasy relationship with GOP standard-bearer Trump, whose nativist instincts and ideological volatility they dislike.
They didn’t back him in the 2016 election, with Charles Koch famously comparing the choice in the presidential campaign to picking between having cancer or a heart attack. And they could find themselves in conflict with a rival network of donors led by Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, who are more willing to further foment a civil war in the Republican Party by taking aim at some of its established leaders and policy priorities. The Mercers are backing an effort by former Trump strategist Stephen Bannon to find primary challengers to most Senate Republicans, including lawmakers the Kochs have long supported, like Arizona’s Jeff Flake.
During the summit, Trump’s name hardly came up in sessions open to the news media. When it did, donors chuckled at a quip about the president’s imprecise threat to revoke NBC’s license to broadcast (the network doesn’t have one, individual stations do). They listened intently as reporters from NBC, The Washington Post, and Time Magazine — all news outlets the president derides regularly — described what it’s like to cover a president who makes news by the bushel, especially when he tweets up a storm early in the morning.
Even some speakers addressed the ambivalence toward the president.
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, as he addressed the Koch group during a lunch at the St. Regis, said, “Scott Pruitt alone is enough.” Walker described Trump’s Cabinet as “one of the best Cabinets we’ve had in my lifetime.” It includes other Koch allies, notably Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, the charter school advocate whose family has given generously to the Koch networks. (Tom Price, who was Trump’s secretary of Health and Human Services until last month when he resigned in disgrace, had accepted tens of thousands from the Kochs as a member of Congress.)
Vice President Mike Pence, who addressed the group on Friday, referenced the tension too — and tried to move on to that issue where he knew there would be agreement: tax reform.
“Whatever differences some in the room may have had in the campaign of 2016, the president sent me here today to say, ‘Thank you for your strong support of our agenda this year in 2017,’ ” Pence said.
He can't take over soon enough.
The Koch event, formally called the Policy and Political Strategy Planning Retreat for The Seminar Network, attracted about 100 donors along with eight state and federal elected officials — all conservatives. David Koch attended events Thursday and Friday. On Thursday night, as he left the St. Regis, he ignored a few questions from reporters before slipping into the back seat of a silver Mercedes Maybach idling curbside on East 55th Street.
I'm sure it is nothing personal; I mean, we are all doing it.
Donors sipped champagne in the evening, and enjoyed white roses in the morning and purple ones at night. The crystal water glasses were so thin they sounded like wind chimes when they knocked against each other as a waiter walked by with a tray full of them.
It’s the kind of gathering that makes Democrats’ blood boil — the Koch brothers have been mentioned by Democrats on the House or Senate floor at least once a month since the election, and usually once a week.
Because it is not them being feted.
Those who’ve mentioned them include Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders, who railed against their influence in a budget plan that included a provision allowing the tax overhaul proposal to pass with a simple majority vote.
“This is not a budget for economic growth,” thundered Sanders from the Senate floor earlier this month. “This is a budget paid for and fought for by the Koch brothers and a handful of billionaires who will gain very handsomely if this budget were to be passed.”
So what else is new, Bern?
But the Kochs occupy only one part of the shifting constellation of Republican groups. The ascendant donor clique now is led by the Mercers, a New York billionaire family. The Mercers were once aligned with the Kochs, giving $2.5 million to their super PAC when it first was established.
No longer.
“We hate them and they hate us,” said Charles Johnson, the founder of the conspiracy-peddling site GotNews, who is allied with Bannon and the Mercers. Bannon declined to comment for this story.
More on Bannon below.
The Koch officials played down any competition and noted that they’re having a banner fund-raising year. “We have the utmost respect for Mr. Mercer,” said James Davis, a spokesman for the Koch-aligned network. “He’s an accomplished business leader and he’s been a good partner on a number of projects.”
Policy-wise, the Kochs clash with the Mercer/Bannon wing in two key areas: trade and immigration. The Kochs have been critical of Trump’s Muslim ban and his bid to build a wall. They also embrace the multinational trade deals that Bannon’s group, with its nationalistic orientation, wants to shatter.
It's all bulloney because at the end of the day Brietbart is Zionist Israel.
They control all ranges, folks, including the extremist outsiders and all the rest. It's the promised land of desired results while funneling fools into believing they are thinking for themselves and "doing good."
It's all the smoke, sound, and fury of illusionary imagery for the purposes of perception management.
In terms of tactics, they’ve traditionally parted ways as well. Bannon wants primary challengers for sitting Republicans, and the Kochs have largely stayed out of directly funding those fights.
If there is a brewing fight between the Mercer group and the Koch group, the Democrats are watching eagerly.
“Will the Kochs’ brand of conservatism clash with the Bannon brand? Will you see that play out in the 2018 midterms?” asked Charles Baker, a Democratic strategist and former adviser to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. “If that’s true, most people on the left will be wondering if they want the cobra or the mongoose to win.”
Be careful what you wish for. That's how they got Reagan and Trump.
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The price for rooms started at $1,095 per night, and the price of failure will be a “bloodbath, a Watergate-like blowout.”
Why go so far back?
There is 1994, 2008, 2010, etc.
Related: Saturday's Hatchet Job
"Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg was the star attraction in the mega-dome on Friday morning — a sort of civic B-12 shot....."
So what were they smoking under there anyway, and why are they so hungry?
"Pro-Trump states most affected by his health care decision" by Christina A. Cassidy Associated Press October 14, 2017
ATLANTA — President Trump’s decision to end a provision of the Affordable Care Act that was benefiting roughly 6 million Americans helps fulfill a campaign promise, but it also risks harming some of the very people who helped him win the presidency.
Nearly 70 percent of those benefiting from the so-called cost-sharing subsidies live in states Trump won last November, according to an analysis by the Associated Press.
The number underscores the political risk for Trump and his party, which could end up owning the blame for increased costs and chaos in the insurance marketplace.
People who benefit will continue receiving the discounts because insurers are obligated by law to provide them. But to make up for the lost federal funding, health insurers will have to raise premiums substantially, potentially putting coverage out of reach for many consumers.
Some insurers may decide to bail out of markets altogether.
‘‘I woke up, really, in horror,’’ said Alice Thompson, an environmental consultant from the Milwaukee area who purchases insurance on Wisconsin’s federally run health insurance exchange.
Thompson, who spoke with reporters on a call organized by a health care advocacy group, said she expects to pay 30 percent to 50 percent more per year for her monthly premium, potentially more than her mortgage payment.
Officials in Wisconsin, a state that went for a Republican presidential candidate for the first time in decades last fall, assumed the federal subsidy would end when they approved premium rate increases averaging 36 percent for the coming year. Of the 10 states with the highest percentage of consumers benefiting from cost-sharing, all but one — Massachusetts — went for Trump.
Kentucky embraced former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act under its last governor, a Democrat, and despite the gains from Obama’s law, the state went for Trump last fall even as he vowed to repeal it.
Consumers such as Marsha Clark fear what will happen in the years ahead, as insurers raise premiums on everyone to make up for the end of the federal money that helped lower deductibles and co-pays.
‘‘I’m stressed out about the insurance, stressed out about the overall economy, and I’m very stressed out about our president,’’ said Clark, a real estate broker who lives in a small town about an hour’s drive south of Louisville. While she earns too much to benefit from the cost-sharing subsidy, she is worried that monthly premiums will rise so high in the future that it will make insurance unaffordable.
Forget that, what the heck is going on with the college basketball program?
Sherry Riggs has a similar fear. Florida, another state that swung for Trump, has approved rate increases averaging 45 percent. ‘‘Probably for some people it would be a death sentence,’’ she said. ‘‘I think it’s kind of a tragic decision on the president’s part. It scares me.’’
I'm not saying I agree with Trump; however, why is he getting all the blame? The outrageous extortion increases by the insurance companies just sail right by.
Rates already were rising in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s decision. Insurance regulators in Arkansas, another state that went for Trump, approved premium increases on Friday ranging from 14 percent to nearly 25 percent for plans offered through the insurance marketplace. Had federal cost-sharing been retained, the premiums would have risen by no more than 10 percent.
In Mississippi, another state Trump won, an estimated 80 percent of consumers who buy coverage on the insurance exchange benefit from the deductible and co-pay discounts, the highest percentage of any state. Premiums there will increase by 47 percent next year, after regulators assumed Trump would end the cost-sharing payments.
The National Association of Insurance Commissioners has estimated the loss of the subsidies would result in a 12 percent to 15 percent increase in premiums, while the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has put the figure at 20 percent.
Analysts say the political instability over Trump’s effort to undermine Obama’s health care law could prompt more insurers to leave markets, reducing competition and driving up prices.....
So the law is imploding like he said it would.
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At least the cuts will make for a healthy tax cut.
"A president’s promises often outrun his actions in Washington" by Peter Baker New York Times October 14, 2017
WASHINGTON — President Trump leaves little doubt about what he thinks of his predecessor’s top domestic and international legacies, but so far he has not reversed two of President Barack Obama’s most significant policy initiatives.
The health care program enacted by Obama is “outrageous” and “absolutely destroying everything in its wake,” Trump has said. The nuclear deal with Iran is “one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into.”
Yet, after nearly nine months in office, Trump has not actually gotten rid of either. Instead, in the past few days, he took partial steps to undercut both initiatives and then left it to Congress to figure out what to do next.
Brilliant politics.
Whether either Obama policy ultimately survive in some form has become a central suspense of Trump’s first year in office.
Maybe the NYT news analysis author is feeling that way. My lack of activity proves my lack of suspense. I'm bored with this guy and all politics these days. It's all $h!t.
In the case of health care, Trump is making a virtue of necessity. Having failed to push through legislation replacing the Affordable Care Act, he is taking more limited measures on his own authority aimed at chipping away at the law.
On the other hand, when it comes to the Iran deal, he has the authority to walk away without anyone else’s consent but has been talked out of going that far by his national security team. Instead, by refusing to recertify the deal, he rhetorically disavows the pact without directly pulling out.
Then Israel is going to be mad, or is it all a fooley?
These are not the only instances in which Trump’s expansive language has not been matched by his actions during this opening phase of his presidency. On immigration, diplomatic relations with Cuba, and international accords like NAFTA and a separate trade pact with South Korea, he has denounced decisions made by Obama or other previous presidents without fully reversing them.
I guess that's why we have soured on the show.
“Presidential campaigns are won with big, simple, directional promises that rarely align well with the complexity confronted in the Oval Office,” said Michael O. Leavitt, a Republican former governor of Utah and secretary of health and human services who advised Trump’s transition team.
“So presidents do the best they can to stretch the fabric of incomplete outcomes to cover as much bare backside as possible and move on,” Leavitt said.
Trump’s advisers characterize that as the more pragmatic side of a businessman who takes maximalist positions in part to set the stage for negotiations but does not necessarily intend to go as far as he might give the impression.
His critics said that the partial steps were still destructive, and that the president was effectively leaving initiatives like health care and the Iran deal wounded on the battlefield without allowing ambulances onto the scene.
Speaking of such, Vegas just about forgotten today.
A question for the president is whether partial actions will satisfy supporters demanding a full repudiation of the Obama era.
Frustrated by Congress, he is increasingly turning to executive power and can point to the moves he has made as signs of his commitment to fulfilling his promises.
“The gap between President Trump’s ambitious promises and actual policies is large and growing,” said William C. Inboden, an aide to President George W. Bush and now executive director of the William P. Clements Jr. Center on History, Strategy and Statecraft at the University of Texas.
“This is weakening the institution of the presidency itself, which becomes diminished when presidents over promise and under deliver, or when responsibilities normally handled by the president become habitually shirked to Congress or other nations,” he said.
His whole argument is upside down. If Trump is pushing these issues back towards Congre$$ he's fulfilling the spirit of the Constitution and diminishing dictatorship, 'er, executive power.
Of course, look at who he worked for.
Trump pronounced himself happy with the approach he is taking on health care, which has been the most consuming domestic issue of his presidency so far.
Later in the day, he acknowledged that his new strategy on Iran would not scrap the nuclear deal but would allow Congress to come up with an alternative. Asked why he did not simply terminate the agreement, he said: “I may very well do that. But I like a two-step process much better.”
Not very John Wayne-like, is it?
Clifford Kupchan, chairman of the Eurasia Group, a consulting firm, said the president seemed to be trying to translate business negotiations to the political world.
“Trump’s clearly got a theory of deal-making — demand the world, take the most you can, and then brag about it,” he said. “It’s actually a pretty good tack that’s often underestimated. But the bottom line, so far in his presidency, is that he’s been unable to deliver on overstated goals.”
In the end, he may wind up taking the more sweeping actions — he may yet pull the United States out of NAFTA or the Iran deal. He may yet let the program for younger immigrants expire early next year. He has repeatedly talked about “letting Obamacare fail.”
“He could be entering a new phase involving fuller takedowns of agreements and institutions,’’ Kupchan said. “The Iran deal and NAFTA are bellwether cases. What’s really interesting is that he fired his chief revolutionary, Steve Bannon, but seems on the verge of taking on that role himself.”
PFFFT!
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May, could, if, but, still, sigh.
"Steve Bannon: ‘Nobody’s safe’ in GOP establishment" by Emily Wagster Pettus Associated Press October 14, 2017
JACKSON, Miss. — Steve Bannon, President Trump’s former chief strategist, has declared war on the Republican establishment, and now he’s amassing his troops.
They include a convicted felon, a perennial candidate linked to an environmental conspiracy theory, and a Southern lawmaker known for provocative ethnic and racial comments. It’s an insurgency that could imperil Republican majorities in the House and Senate.
‘‘Nobody’s safe. We’re coming after all of them,’’ Bannon told Fox News last week. ‘‘And we’re going to win.’’
I watched Bannon's speech to the VVS on C-Span last night. At the end he talks about victory begets victory, and the loudest cheer he got was when he said the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv would be moved to Jerusalem. The place erupted in a standing ovation, and I said okay, that's it.
The emerging Bannon class of rabble-rousers shares limited ideological ties but a common intent to upend Washington and knock out Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican considered to be standard-bearer of the establishment.
It’s a crop of candidates that unnerves a GOP that lost seats — and a shot at the Senate majority — in 2010 and 2012 with political novices and controversial nominees and fears a stinging repeat in 2018.
‘‘The main thing that binds them together is a rejection of the Republican Party establishment, a rejection of the political elites, the financial elites, and the media elites,’’ said Andy Surabian, a former Bannon aide and senior adviser to the pro-Trump PAC Great America Alliance.
Bannon helped elevate twice-suspended Judge Roy Moore, who won an Alabama runoff over McConnell’s pick, Senator Luther Strange.
Strange was also Trump's pick, and ‘‘Steve Bannon and God spoke to me, and this morning when I went in I voted for Moore.’’
Steve Bannon is God?!
Let's not get carried away here.
Moore faces Democrat Doug Jones in a December election where polls find just a single-digit lead for the Republican, a remarkable development in Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ heavily GOP state.
‘‘We don’t have leadership. We have followership,’’ Moore said Friday at the Values Voter Summit, where he argued for scrapping the health care law with no replacement.
In West Virginia, the grassroots conservative group Tea Party Express endorsed Patrick Morrissey, also a Great America Alliance choice, over the establishment favorite, US Representative Evan Jenkins, in a competitive race to unseat Democratic Senator Joe Manchin.
Senate Republicans had been upbeat about adding to their 52-48 majority, especially with Democrats defending more seats in 2018, 10 in states Trump won in last year’s presidential election. But the Bannon challenge could cost them, leaving incumbents on the losing end in primaries or GOP candidates roughed up for the general election. Consider Mississippi.
Let's not, and 25 Democrats are up for reelection against only 8 Democrats. Republicans were hoping for a Senate supermajority, but that looks unlikely now. What looks likely in the rigged narrative process called elections is another change election with Democrats winning the House and picking off a few key Republicans as they minimize losses on their side. Then the pre$$ will proclaim a Democratic victory and articles of impeachment can be drawn up as an additional lever against Trump should he think of straying.
Read it here first, folks.
In Arizona, former state senator Kelli Ward, who is challenging a Trump antagonist, Senator Jeff Flake, remains known for entertaining the debunked theory that jet aircraft are used to affect the weather or poison people intentionally.
Actually an open secret at this point, and all you need to do is look up at the whisps you thought were clouds.
In 2015, she gave conflicting answers about her beliefs after holding a public hearing she said was to answer constituents’ questions. But Senator John McCain used it to marginalize her in his winning GOP Senate primary against her, and McConnell reprised it in August in a web ad which referred to her as ‘‘chemtrail Kelli.’’
AH!
In Nevada, Bannon is encouraging Republican Danny Tarkanian in his challenge to GOP Senator Dean Heller. Tarkanian, son of famed basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian, is zero-for-five in state and federal elections.
These outsiders share strong opposition to increasing the nation’s debt, even if it means an economy-rattling default. They also share unsparing criticism of congressional Republicans, especially McConnell, for failing to dismantle the Obama-era health care law, an unfulfilled seven-year-old promise.
In Wyoming, Erik Prince, founder of security contractor Blackwater, is considering a Republican primary challenge to Senator John Barrasso, a senior member of the Senate GOP leadership team. Bannon has urged Prince, brother of US Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, to run.
Bannon has given at least one Senate incumbent — Texas Senator Ted Cruz — a pass, but not others.....
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Looks like its all Democrats next year.
You look to the left, right, up, down, there are no saviors in politics. They are all controlled by different variants of the same forces.
Maybe it is time to break up these United States because the greatest danger is Washington D.C. I know that means California will have to deal with the fires itself, but they already are going their own way with sanctuary cities and vaccinations, and, yes, the gas pipelines will be a problem but.... what other choice is there? Puerto Rico would be on its own as well, finally granted independence by the AmeriKan Empire. Can be like Dominica now.
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"Latest to deem Harvey Weinstein persona non grata: Motion Picture Academy" by Brooks Barnes New York Times October 14, 2017
Hmmm. My print was AP.
LOS ANGELES — Hollywood’s de facto governing body, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, voted overwhelmingly Saturday to “immediately expel” Harvey Weinstein, breaking with 90 years of precedent and turning one of the biggest Oscar players in history into a hall-of-fame pariah.
The academy’s 54-member board of governors made the decision at an emergency session after investigations by The New York Times and The New Yorker that revealed sexual harassment and rape allegations against him going back decades.
In a statement, the academy said the vote was “well in excess of the required two-thirds majority.”
In a statement, the Academy said it sends a message that "sexually predatory behavior" in the film industry is over.
Right.
It added, “We do so not simply to separate ourselves from someone who does not merit the respect of his colleagues but also to send a message that the era of willful ignorance and shameful complicity in sexually predatory behavior and workplace harassment in our industry is over. What’s at issue here is a deeply troubling problem that has no place in our society.”
The academy’s swift and severe ruling against Weinstein may raise questions about other academy members who remain in good standing. These include Roman Polanski, an Oscar-winner who in the 1970s pleaded guilty to drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl, and entertainer Bill Cosby, who has faced dozens of allegations of sexual assault.
Then again, it may not.
Btw, I went and looked at all the movies Harvey has made last night and they all suck!
The academy said it would “work to establish ethical standards of conduct that all academy members will be expected to exemplify.”
Weinstein was ousted a week ago from The Weinstein Co., the movie and TV production company he co-founded and which now is struggling to survive this scandal. He has denied the accusations.
Here are some people who have revealed their own experiences with workplace sexual harassment or assault since the allegations against Weinstein became public.
"Anita Hill, [who made accusations of harassment charges against Clarence Thomas 26 years ago], said that the Weinstein [revelations may] be recalled as another watershed moment [in the struggle against sexual abuse].
Weinstein, who was fired by the movie and television studio he cofounded, the Weinstein Co., has denied rape allegations while acknowledging that his behavior “caused a lot of pain.”
"I absolutely think we needed something to push the needle, and this has done it," Hill said in an interview from Brandeis University, where she [is a professor].
Although largely symbolic, the ouster of Weinstein from the roughly 8,400-member academy is stunning because the organization is not known to have taken such action before — not when Roman Polanski, a member, pleaded guilty in a sex crime case involving a 13-year-old girl; not when women came forward to accuse Bill Cosby, a member, of sexual assault; and not when Mel Gibson allegedly went on anti-Semitic tirade during a drunken driving arrest in 2006 or pleaded no contest to a charge of battery against an old girlfriend in 2011.
[Hill detailed to a Senate panel in 1991 the lurid sexual harassment charges that would transfix a nation. Thomas] went on to the Supreme Court, but Hill's testimony was a watershed moment that raised awareness in incalculable ways.
How given the news of today? Had as much of an effect as OJ did on domestic abuse.
Kennedy and Biden were on that panel, remember?
Biden criticizes Harvey Weinstein
Yeah, you go, Joe!!
"Vicki Kennedy, 63, is not running for public office. This story was our idea, not hers. She was clear she’d prefer not to be profiled, though she ultimately participated in two interviews. She was polite and thoughtful, laughed easily, though she seemed to physically cringe at the idea of talking about herself. In Ted Kennedy’s absence, Vicki Kennedy has remained active in civic life. She serves on boards for charities, such as the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Most prominently, she is president of the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate, a kind of classroom in governance and homage to American democracy next to the JFK Presidential Library and Museum in Boston....."
She is one of the “better-kept secrets” and remains the fiercest keeper of his legacy.
Also see: GOP’s Lindstrom kicks off Senate campaign
Rally for her next month.
Now, the academy may be forced to contend with other problem members.
All along, Hill says, there have been bits and pieces that have moved that needle a bit. But the Weinstein story, with its ever-growing cascade of disturbing revelations, reminds her of her own ordeal.
Scott Feinberg, the longtime awards columnist for The Hollywood Reporter, said, “This may well be the beginning of a very tough chapter for the academy. The next thing that is going to happen, rightly or wrongly, is that a wide variety of constituencies are going to demand that the academy similarly address other problematic members.”
Awwwwwwwww.
"I think one of the reasons 1991 was so impactful was how public it was -- people had faces and voices, and it was almost like a long conversation about how these things play out. This Weinstein story feels like a long conversation too, with different parts getting developed and different people being brought into it."
Feinberg added that he was speaking of academy members like Polanski and Stephen Collins, the “7th Heaven” actor who admitted in 2014 that he molested teenage girls in past decades, which resulted in police investigations in New York and Los Angeles but no charges.
Since the story broke more than a week ago, some 30 women, from lesser-known names to megastars like Angelina Jolie and Gwyneth Paltrow, have emerged to recount disturbing experiences with Weinstein.
Before Weinstein — who built two studios on the back of the Academy Awards, securing more than 300 nominations for his movies — only one person was known to have been permanently expelled from the academy. Carmine Caridi, a character actor, had his membership revoked in 2004 for violating an academy rule involving Oscar voting. He got caught lending DVD screeners of contending films; copies ended up online. (In the 1990s, a couple of people were temporarily suspended for selling their allotted tickets to the Oscar ceremony.)
In just the latest accusation, actress Eva Green said Saturday she once had to physically "push off" the powerful producer in a meeting.
The academy’s board, roughly 40 percent female, includes Hollywood titans like Steven Spielberg, Whoopi Goldberg, Lucasfilm chief Kathleen Kennedy, Tom Hanks, documentarian Rory Kennedy and Jim Gianopulos, chairman of Paramount Pictures.
Simultaneously, a growing chorus of public figures has been denouncing him. One of the latest high-profile figures to weigh in: Gloria Steinem.
In an example of Weinstein’s reach, at least 10 governors have worked on films that he produced or that his studios have released. One board member, Christina Kounelias, now an executive vice president at Participant Media, started her career at Miramax, working in publicity for four years.
But Steinem added that not everyone should be expected to have known of Weinstein's alleged misdeeds.
I guess not everybody in Hollywood watches the Oscars.
The board’s president is Jim Bailey, a cinematographer whose credits include “Ordinary People,” a winner of the 1981 Academy Award for best picture, and “Groundhog Day.” Lois Burwell, who is listed as its first vice president, is a makeup artist who won an Oscar in 1996 for her work on “Braveheart.”
"My one worry is that this case is being made to seem too obvious, with blame for people who didn't know," she said. "In fact, Weinstein also made great movies with and about powerful women he did not sexually harass, because like so many sexual abusers, he exploited powerlessness."
That is where my print ended, and that old hag is so discredited now.
No person has been more closely associated with the Academy Awards in recent decades than Weinstein, who won a best picture Oscar in 1999 for “Shakespeare in Love” and who orchestrated campaigns that resulted in more than 80 statuettes for films released by the studios he ran, including five best picture Oscars for “Shakespeare in Love,” “The English Patient,” “Chicago,” “The King’s Speech” and “The Artist.”
The adulation afforded him power — so much power that many women feared reporting his alleged abuses — and gave him the credibility he was able use as a shield whenever rumors of his behavior started to swirl.
Yeah, poor Harvey.
This NYT piece reads like an apology for finally running a report on him.
In total, Weinstein has overseen campaigns that resulted in five best-picture Oscars, for “Shakespeare in Love,” “The English Patient,” “Chicago,” “The King’s Speech” and “The Artist.”
His fall has come hard and fast. The first article to appear in The New York Times on women’s accusations against Weinstein was published Oct. 5. While authorities in New York and London are investigating Weinstein, no charges have been filed against him.
Pressure had been building on the academy to purge Weinstein. Earlier in the week, as actresses including Ashley Judd, Angelina Jolie and Gwyneth Paltrow came forward with horrifying tales and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts kicked him out, the academy essentially punted, releasing a statement condemning Weinstein’s alleged behavior as “repugnant, abhorrent” and saying it would meet Saturday to discuss “any actions warranted.”
Notice he never went after any black women?
The Producers Guild of America was also scheduled to meet Saturday to discuss revoking Harvey Weinstein’s membership. Late Friday, the group abruptly moved the special meeting to Monday. Under that group’s bylaws, Weinstein will have two weeks to respond to any action. The same guild gave the Weinstein brothers its Milestone award in 2013, citing their “historic contributions to the entertainment industry.”
The same year McFarlane made the joke and everybody laughed.
In a sign of the international nature of the condemnation of Weinstein, the French government on Saturday said it had started a process that could strip him of his Legion of Honor, the country’s highest civilian distinction. (He received it in 2012.) Earlier in the week, a government spokesman had said that France would wait for definitive legal action before considering such action.
Jerry Lewis gets to keep his.
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"Two men fatally shot overnight in Cambridge, Somerville" by Evan Allen, Jeremy C. Fox and Lucas Phillips Globe Staff | Globe Correspondents October 14, 2017
SOMERVILLE — Two men were killed in separate shootings that came just minutes apart in Cambridge and Somerville early Saturday morning, officials said.
Maybe that is the answer: Kill all the men.
Around 3:30 a.m., a 28-year-old Dorchester man was shot in a car on Windsor Street at Everteze Way in Cambridge. Ednilson Dacosta was rushed to the hospital, but he did not survive, according to a statement from the Middlesex District Attorney’s office.
“We are all shocked, because we do not expect something like this to happen,” said Dacosta’s sister, Chrismirian Dacosta. “Especially to someone who doesn’t have enemies.”
Just seven minutes later, on Canal Lane in Somerville, 20-year-old Kevin Raymond, described by those who knew him as a talented and cheerful football player, was shot in a parking lot. He was pronounced dead in the hospital.
No one has been arrested in connection with either shooting, both of which are under investigation.....
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I'm sure Amazon wants to ride right into town after reading that.
