And Justice for One

From Yahoo! Finance:

When West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, R, announced his decision last month to cut federal unemployment benefits for his state’s jobless residents, he pointed to what he said was a plethora of openings for those who needed work.

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Justice didn’t need to look far for examples of companies struggling to hire workers. The storied West Virginia resort he owns, the Greenbrier, has been looking for dozens of new employees in recent weeks and until recently had received far fewer applications than normal. But after Justice announced his decision, that started to change, said Kathy Miller, vice president of human resources at the luxury hotel.

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Justice’s sprawling business empire, which in addition to the Greenbrier includes agricultural companies and coal enterprises, has made him a lightning rod for criticism from ethics watchdogs. A 2019 investigation by the Charleston Gazette-Mail and ProPublica found a thicket of conflicts of interest inherent in his dual roles as business magnate and public servant. Justice’s most recent financial disclosure lists over 100 corporate entities.

The Blingriches

Concord, New Hampshire (CNN) – Newt Gingrich’s campaign vehemently denied any wrongdoing following an ABC News report Tuesday that questions business practices between two of his organizations, one a for-profit business and the other a charity.

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The ABC News report said Gingrich’s charity, Renewing American Leadership (ReAL) paid $220,000 over two years to Gingrich Communications, one of the candidate’s for-profit businesses.

The story also said that the charity “also served as another avenue to promote Gingrich’s political views, and came dangerously close, some experts say, to crossing a bright line that is supposed to separate tax-exempt charitable work from both the political process and such profit-making enterprises as books and DVDs.”

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Blue Dogs Barking

From Robert Reich:

Republicans figure that if they can’t sell the pig, they’ll just put lipstick on it and find some suckers who will think it’s something else.

That’s the proposal emerging in the Senate from Republican Bob Corker of Tennessee and also Democrat Claire McCaskill of Missouri.

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James Inhofe Has Crystal Balls!

From THINK PROGRESS:

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), right-wing conspiracy theorist and oil-industry apologist, has promised that Republicans are “certainties” to win at least the ten seats necessary to regain control of the U.S. Senate on November 2. In an interview while stumping for Colorado U.S. Senate candidate Ken Buck on Thursday, Inhofe told the National Review Online that extremist candidates such as Buck, John Raese (WV), Dino Rossi (WA), Pat Toomey (PA), and Carly Fiorina (CA) are guaranteed to win. Inhofe even said that Tea Party favorite Christine O’Donnell (DE) has a shot:

Little Chrissie may be a witch, but I bet she can’t see the future!

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Kenny Dodgers

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve undoubtedly heard that Chimpy’s 2004 campaign manager and former Republican National Committee chairman, Ken Mehlman, finally admitted what everyone already knew–he’s gay. The media was all abuzz. Here are some of what the luminaries at Fox News had to say:

Gretchen Carlson, Steve Doocy, and Brian I’m-the-one-who’s-not-Doocy Kilmeade:

“xxxxxxxxxxxxx”

Sean Hannity:

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Bill O’Reilly:

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Glenn Beck:

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From The Wonk Room at THINK PROGRESS:

When Judge Vaughn Walker struck down Proposition 8, Fox News barely mentioned the story and its most prominent conservative commentators ignored it entirely.  Yesterday, after the Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder reported that former RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman — who had orchestrated President Bush’s gay-bating 2004 re-election campaign — was coming out as gay, Fox News Channel remained similarly mum and as of this posting has yet to run a single segment on the story.

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The Oil Is Slick, But These Guys Aren’t

From Joel Connelly at seattlepi:

As slick attacks on President Obama’s oil spill leadership spread across conservative media — and mainstream Washington, D.C. pundits display their disconnect with America — a defining question gets overlooked.

Do our elected officials’ sympathies lie with what BP’s chairman called the “small people,” those with livelihoods put at jeopardy, or with Big Oil?

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RP ♥ BP

From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON — Rand Paul, the newly nominated Republican candidate for Senate from Kentucky, touched off more controversy on Friday by calling the Obama administration “un-American” for taking a tough stance with BP over the company’s handling of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

A day after he was forced to explain remarks he had made suggesting he was not fully supportive of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, Mr. Paul set off yet another round of Twitter, cable television and e-mail chatter by lambasting President Obama and his aides for insisting that BP be held accountable — and pay — for the oil spill cleanup and damage.

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(In the frame, r to l:  Lamar McKay, President and Chairman of BP American, Steven Newman, President and Chief Executive Officer Transocean Limited and Tim Probert, President Global Business Lines and Chief Health, Safety and Enviromental Officer Halliburton)

The Barbour of Incivility

From the Memphis Commercial Appeal:

JACKSON, Miss. — Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is drawing criticism for proclaiming April as Confederate Heritage Month without mentioning slavery, the second governor this month to come under fire for the omission.

Rep. Robert Johnson, D-Natchez, who is black, said Monday that people need to learn about the “abhorrent, violent, depraved actions of slavery.”

Bob McDonnell, Virginia’s Republican governor, also named April as Confederate History Month, but his original proclamation didn’t mention slavery. After coming under national criticism, McDonnell last week revised it to denounce slavery as “evil and inhumane.”

Barbour, a Republican who helped campaign for McDonnell last year, said Sunday on CNN that slavery was bad but a fuss over McDonnell’s original proclamation “doesn’t amount to diddly.”

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