Sunday, June 29, 2014
Monday, June 23, 2014
Biden Plans To Live off Taxpayers Forever
Biden Plans to Live off Taxpayers Forever
Admits to lack of savings, desire to subsist on six-figure government pension
Joe Biden / AP
Vice President Joe Biden plans on relying solely on taxpayers to fund his retirement.
Biden declared on Monday that he had neither a savings account, nor any stocks to pay off his golden years.
“I have no savings account, but I have a great pension and a great salary,” Biden told the crowd at the White House Summit on Working Families.
Biden proudly admitted that he was “the poorest member of Congress” over his four-decade career in Washington. The line garnered laughs and applause at the plush Omni Hotel in Georgetown. However, Biden’s poor financial planning means that taxpayers will have to foot the bill for his retirement.
When Biden and Obama vacate the White House, they will have to make due with a $5 million “transition budget” that will cover their move out expenses, as well as Secret Service protection, according to the Congressional Research Service. Biden, however, will benefit from more than just the presidential transition budget.
Biden, 71, will be eligible for a substantial pension come 2017. While former presidents earn about $200,000 per year from their executive pension, vice presidents, who serve as the President of the Senate, draw their pension from congressional pension pools. Former members of congress are paid “no more than 80 percent” of their highest three years salary.
Despite Biden’s failure to save or invest money, his role as vice president will enable him to draw a six-figure pension paid for by taxpayers.
Biden admitted that he was lucky that his career as a senator and vice president allowed him to play fast and loose with his finances, pointing out that even in his poorest days, he was earning twice the median salary.
“I was making $42,000 a year, that was good. The average salary was $19,000,” he said of his early Senate career.
Biden now earns more than $230,000 per year. He is guaranteed an even larger salary over the remaining two years of President Obama’s term, as his salary comes with automatic cost of living adjustments.
When Biden released his tax returns during his 2008 presidential bid, it was revealed that he and his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, earned an average salary of just $245,000 per year over 10 years.
Biden’s fiscal disclosure comes as potential 2016 rival Hillary Clinton has in recent weeks touted the poverty she experienced after leaving the White House. Former Secretary of State Clinton, who says she is not “truly well off,” earns $200,000 for every speech she gives and has a net worth of more than $50 million.
Saturday, June 21, 2014
Hillary's People
Hillary’s People
Column: The tapes they don’t want you to hear
The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images
BY:
The facts are these. In 1975, before she married Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham defended a child rapist in Arkansas court. She was not a public defender. No one ordered her to take the case. An ambitious young lawyer, she was asked by a friend if she would represent the accused, and she agreed. And her defense was successful. Attacking the credibility of the 12-year-old victim on the one hand, and questioning the chain of evidence on another, Clinton got a plea-bargain for her client. He served ten months in prison, and died in 1992. The victim, now 52, has had her life irrevocably altered—for the worse.
Sometime in the mid-1980s, for an Esquire profile of rising political stars, Hillary Clinton and her husband agreed to a series of interviews with the Arkansas journalist Roy Reed. Reed and Hillary Clinton discussed at some length her defense of the child rapist, and in the course of that discussion she bragged and laughed about the case, implied she had known her client was guilty, and said her “faith in polygraphs” was forever destroyed when she saw that her client had taken one and passed. Reed’s article was never published. His tapes of the interviews were later donated to the University of Arkansas. Where they remained, gathering dust.
Contrary to what you may have heard over the past week, Clinton’s successful defense of the rapist Thomas Alfred Taylor is not “old news.” On the contrary: For a CV that has been scrutinized so closely, references to the rape case in the public record have been rather thin. One of those references came from Clinton herself. In 2003, when she was a senator from New York, and published her first memoir, Living History, Clinton included a brief mention of the case, mainly as a way to take credit for Arkansas’ first rape crisis hotline. And in 2008, Glenn Thrush—then at Newsday—wrote a lengthy article on the subject.
Don’t remember it? There’s a reason. “My then-editor appended a meaningless intro to the story, delayed and buried it because, in his words, ‘It might have an impact,’” Thrush said in a June 15 tweet. Well, the editor got his way. It didn’t have an impact.
The occasion for Thrush’s tweet was “The Hillary Tapes” by the Washington Free Beacon’s Alana Goodman, who obtained the Reed interview and made it public for the first time. Goodman is careful to quote a source saying that, once an attorney takes on a client, he is required to provide that client with the strongest possible defense. Yet the same source also noted that Hillary Clinton’s subsequent narrative of the case—specifically, her implication to Reed that her client had been guilty all along—raised serious questions regarding attorney-client privilege. And Goodman also notes the casual and complacent manner in which Clinton treats such a morally fraught episode, as well as the “parallels between the tactics Clinton employed to defend Taylor and the tactics she, her husband, and their allies have used to defend themselves against accusations of wrongdoing over the course of their three decades in public life.” Pretty newsworthy, it seems to me.
And yet, looking over the treatment of Goodman’s scoop over the past week, I can’t help thinking that the reaction to “The Hillary Tapes” is just as newsworthy as the tapes themselves. That reaction has been decidedly mixed. Not long ago, in 2012, the Washington Post ran an extensive investigation into the “troubling incidents” of Mitt Romney’s prep-school days, whereupon the media devoted hour after hour to the all-important discussion of whether Willard M. Romney had been something of a child bully. Here, though, we have a newly unearthed recording of Hillary Clinton laughing out loud over her defense of a child rapist—and plenty of outlets have ignored the story altogether. The difference? As the Newsday editor said: It might have an impact.
No matter your view of Hillary Clinton, no matter your position on legal ethics, the recording of the Reed interview is news. It tells us something we did not already know. It tells us that, when her guard was down, Clinton found the whole disturbing incident a trifling and joking matter. And the fact that so many supposedly sophisticated and au courant journalists and writers have dismissed the story as nothing more than an attorney “doing her job” is, I think, equally disturbing. Dana Bash to the contrary notwithstanding, Hillary Clinton was not forced to take on Taylor as a client. It was her choice—and not, for her, a hard one. Certainly that complicates our understanding of the former first lady as an unrelenting defender and advocate of women and girls.
Let’s even concede that Clinton was just doing her job. What makes that job exempt from inquiry and skepticism and criticism? Yes, Mumia, Bill Ayers, and child rapists have the right to legal representation. But that does not give the lawyers who represent them the right—the entitlement—to public office. If it is fair to attack a candidate because he used to travel with the family dog on the roof of his car, because he may have forcibly subjected a fellow student to a haircut, then it is entirely fair, it is more than fair, to attack a candidate for defending the rapist of a 12-year-old girl, and for laughing about it a decade later.
Lawyers I can handle. Librarians? They’re trouble. I did not expect, when I arrived at the office Wednesday, to find a letter from a dean of the University of Arkansas sitting on my desk, informing me that the Free Beacon’s research privileges had been suspended because we failed to fill out a permission slip, that we were in violation of the University of Arkansas’ “intellectual property rights,” and demanding that we remove the audio of the Hillary tapes from our website. (Both the letter from Dean Allen and the response of the Free Beacon’s lawyers can be read below.)
Now, we obtained these materials without having to fill out any forms and without being provided a copy of any university “policy.” The university has yet to prove that it owns the copyright to the Reed audio. Nor has it explained how, exactly, that audio does not fall under fair use. And remember, too, that the institution protesting our story is a library—which ostensibly exists for the sole purpose of spreading knowledge and literacy and information and print and audio and visual media. That is what libraries are for, isn’t it?
Puzzling. Less puzzling, though, when I discovered that the author of the letter, Dean Carolyn Henderson Allen, was a donor to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign, and that the University of Arkansas Chancellor, David Gearhart, is a former student of the Clintons, and that his brother, Van Gearhart, worked at the same legal aid clinic as Clinton at the time of the Taylor case.
One would expect the media to rally behind potential violations of a publication’s First Amendment rights—but, with the exception of this Politico story, the University of Arkansas’ attempt to suppress the Hillary tapes has yet to be the subject of extensive coverage.
I wonder why.
“Defending even a child rapist as vigorously as possible might be a plus if she were running to lead the American Bar Association,” wrote Melinda Henneberger, in one of the few stories about the Hillary tapes to appear in the mainstream media. “But wouldn’t her apparent willingness to attack a sixth-grader compromise a presidential run?”
Indeed, I think it would. Which is why the reaction to Alana Goodman’s scoop has been so muted and unusual. And why Hillary’s people must be wondering: What’s next?
Read the University of Arkansas letter and the Free Beacon response here:
Escape the partisan cocoons, sort out facts from 'garbage'
The latest Pew Research Center study has shown just how politically divided the country has become.
A highlight of the study is that the percentage of consistently conservative or consistently liberal voters has doubled since 1994. It is not just Washington politicians who are hyper-partisan, but rank and file members of both parties have moved further right or left.
A major contributor to these increasingly rigid positions has been the political media.
Newspapers, talk radio, cable TV and the Internet have developed highly partisan outlets specifically to cater to a particular political view. Once you have zeroed in on your favorite TV channel, newspaper, website or radio talk show host, your views are constantly reinforced. No need to listen to other opinions. You are now comfortably living in your own political cocoon.
And it feels so good to have your views constantly validated. Well aware of that, the political media pander to our biases to keep us aboard. As more and more readers, watchers and listeners tune in, they sell more advertising and make more money.
Fox News, MSNBC and political talk shows exist to make a profit, pure and simple. An impassioned commentator angrily ranting about a politician from the opposing camp is playing a role to boost the bottom line for his owner, not to objectively inform the public.
Although some may think this is harmless, it is not. The nation pays for these talking heads’ tirades in more ways than advertising dollars.
We have a dysfunctional government because Republican and Democratic members are pulled toward extreme positions by frequently misinformed supporters, making governance nearly impossible.
If the amount of misleading, emotional and outright false information in our political discourse were reduced, citizens would better understand the issues. They would recognize it is possible to pass difficult legislation, including compromises, without betraying their ideology political principles.
The American system of government requires an informed electorate. Meeting that goal necessitates we all do our part by helping stem the flow of another misinformation phenomenon, Internet political lies.
Because the Internet provides anonymity, the spread of political hoaxes by unknown perpetrators has mushroomed. Outrageous lies are forwarded into our inboxes, and political partisans, fervently hoping the story is true, robotically forward it to their acquaintances without checking its truth. They become enablers of the hoax by giving it broader exposure.
The first hint that an email may be a lie is when the author is anonymous. People can use Google to easily determine if an anonymous email statement is true or false. Simply copy the subject heading, paste it into Google search, and hit “enter.” A variety of references will appear. Several of these — factcheck.org, truthorfiction.com, and snopes.com — are proven reliable sites dedicated to separating fact from fiction
If the message turns out to be false, instead of forwarding the email you can return it to the sender with the link revealing the falsehood. Or you could send it to all the recipients on the original email to expose the lie.
Besides reducing the spread of political misinformation, another valuable reason you should not forward these lies is to preserve your own reputation. If your email is determined to be a hoax, your integrity and judgment come into question. You have been conned by the liar and become an agent of his mendacity.
We need more truth and comprehension in our political process. We can all help by getting information outside one of the media’s hyper-partisan political cocoons.
We need to create and apply an information filter based on knowledge that will help us sort out the worthwhile from the garbage. And only we can stifle Internet political lies.
Ed Conant is a retired Navy officer who lives and writes in Savannah.
Friday, June 20, 2014
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
My Kafka-Esque TWC Cancelling Adventure
Below is a summarized transcript of a 30 minute call I had yesterday to (finally) cancel Time Warner Cable. It is a journey fraught with madness and despair.
I enter the maze of the phone tree, waiting about 2 minutes for the 3 operation menus to get to the "cancel service" option on each menu. I then wait on hold for about 10 minutes. There is no hold music, just the empty sound of howling wind in my soul.
I have to enter my name numerically, my PIN number, and my account number. After I provide my personal info, I am connected with a rep who then asks for the exact same information again.
Me: I'd like to cancel cable. Not internet, just cable TV.
TWC: Alright. Sorry to be losing your business. Would you mind letting us know why you've decided to cancel service with us?
Me: It's too expensive.
Which is true. I diplomatically fail to explain TWC's disastrous urge to merge with Comcast and their general monopoly effect on local cable/Internet. Plus cable is a shit service to begin with.
TWC: Is there something we can do to keep your cable service, like choosing a better value package? (Then attempts to breathlessly launch into an explanation of their multi-tier "packages" of shit I don't want to watch anyway.)
Me: No thank you. I'd just like to cancel cable.
TWC: Sure thing, sir. One moment.
(Six FULL MINUTES of silent typing. I Reddit and try to ignore the off-phone cackling and gossip from other agents)
Me: Hello?
TWC: One moment, sir. Just typing in some information. You know, looking at your account, I'm seeing that we can offer you the same service for about 20% less.
Me: No thank you.
TWC: Is there a particular reason this super deal doesn't strike your fancy?
Me: It is still too expensive.
(Several more minutes of silent typing, TWC interjecting to let me know it will just be 1 more minute)
TWC: One more minute, sir. Alright, looks like based upon your account history, that your Internet bill may or may no go up or go down in September, as this was part of a package.
Me: Fine. How much will my bill go up?
TWC: The good news is that it should stay the same, a super deal at $59.99 a month for Turbo Internet "up to" a blistering 4.5 MBPs, until September.
Me: What will it go up to after Sept?
TWC: It should stay at $59.99 until then. That's a great deal if you ask me.
Me: I'm sorry, that's not what I asked. What will it GO UP TO after Sept?
TWC: Uh, it should stay your current low, low rate until Sept.
Me: Once again, that's not what I asked.
TWC: Okay, looks like you're all set.
Without warning, I am placed on hold and then cold transferred to another agent. I am down the rabbit hole.
Me: Hello. Do you know why I was transferred?
TWC 2: I'm not sure. Who do I have the pleasure of speaking with today?
Me: I already gave all my information to the other agent.
TWC 2: I'm sorry, there's nothing in the notes. The previous agent didn't enter any. What can I help you with today?
Me: (screams internally)
I have to explain the situation again, and am then subjected to three MORE attempts to sell me on keeping my shit cable box. I assume this is an account retention policy rule. Harangue them with "offers and deals" at least 3 times. Cold transfer until madness.
TWC 2: To better serve you in completing your request, what shows do you and your household like to enjoy?
Me: If it's all the same, I prefer not to answer.
TWC 2: I understand that sir, but to better serve you in completing your request, what shows do you and your household like to enjoy?
Me: I prefer not to answer.
TWC 2: Uh...
I have apparently broken the Hive mind. Geordi LeForge was right, the Borg do have a key weakness. I have introduced an impossible logic puzzle into the Collective. I am politely refusing to answer a marketing question unrelated to my request.
TWC 2: Um, uh... to better serve you in completing your request, what shows do you and your household like to enjoy?
Me: Are you serious? I said I prefer not to answer.
TWC 2: I know that, but we can't proceed unless you answer. To better serve you in completing your request, what shows do you and your household like to enjoy?
My cable cancellation is being held hostage. We have a situation here, people. Red Team go. THE FOX IS IN THE HENHOUSE. REPEAT. THE FOX IS IN THE HENHOUSE.
Me: The Food Network and NASCAR.
TWC 2: Food Network and NASCAR?
Me: That's correct.
TWC 2: Thank you, sir. You have until 6/29 to drop off the cable box.
ME: Where do I do that?
TWC 2: The closest location is 45 Minutes Away St.
Me: (cold silence of the merciless grave)
TWC 2: Have a good day. Thanks for "choosing" Time Warner Cable!
TL:DR; Forced into the labyrinth of phones menus, cold transferred to another agent with no clue, and then cable held hostage until I profess my sworn, undying fealty for Mad Men, Tim and Eric, and the Soup.
Hillary Bragging About Freeing Child Rapist
BREAKING: Audio Clip Reveals Hillary Bragging About Freeing Child Rapist [WATCH]
Just when it seemed that Hillary Clinton couldn’t be a more atrocious human being, new recordings detailing her defense of a child rapist surface and prove otherwise.
Clinton has seen a drastic drop in her popularity lately due to her propensity for lying, her involvement in the Benghazi scandal, and her mind-numbing statements about Bowe Bergdahl’s status as a traitor.
As if this wasn’t enough to kill any chances of her election as president in 2016, surely these newly leaked tapes should do the trick.
The tapes were made in the early 1980s, and detail a 1975 case where the former Secretary of State was the court appointed attorney for a man who was being accused of raping a 12-year-old girl.
The recordings should make anyone who thinks of Clinton as a die-hard advocate for women and children reconsider supporting her in a presidential bid.
via Free Beacon:
Clinton is later heard on the tapes talking about how she believed the man in the case was guilty, laughing about the fact the suspect was able to pass a polygraph.
The former First Lady also laughed about evidence being destroyed, and violated attorney-client privilege by disclosing the results of a polygraph.
Unbelievable. Anyone with a drop of doubt about whether or not Hillary Clinton should run for office, can now officially put that doubt to rest. This woman is the very definition of political corruption. She’s built her whole career on unethical decisions, proving she is not morally fit for the highest office in the land.
Truth be told, for all of her legal infractions, she should be prosecuted, and should certainly not be hailed as any kind of role model or hero.
Read more at http://conservativetribune.com/hillary-brags-freeing-child-rapist/#oXBYQ8t7fsLW6xUM.99
Monday, June 16, 2014
Sunday, June 15, 2014
IRAQ IS FALING APART
Iraq Is Falling Apart
President Barack Obama said Friday that the United States is not planning to put boots on the ground in Iraq, where Islamic extremists backed by Sunni tribal leaders are violently seizing territory from the country’s fledgling government. Obama said the U.S. “will do our part” to help but won’t “allow ourselves to be dragged back into” war.
“Ultimately it’s up to the Iraqis, as a sovereign nation, to solve their problems,” the President said during a brief press conference on the White House’s South Lawn.
Obama said that the White House is currently considering what options the U.S. has in aiding Iraq beat back the threat of brutal terrorists fighting under flag of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
Iraq is currently splitting apart in a way that will make it nearly impossible for the country’s government to regain control without help.
The terrorists already control significant swaths of territory throughout Iraq and parts of Syria. ISIS captured the city of Mosul on Monday with little response from the Iraqi army. And what was once a 900,000 strong army of Iraqi soldiers working maintain government control of the Sunni Arab regions in northern and central Iraq is quickly vanishing.
Meanwhile, the northern Iraqi oil city of Kirkuk is currently under Kurdish control. A spokesman for the Kurdish forces said, “No Iraqi army remains in Kirkuk.”
On Friday, ISIS forces began marching toward Baghdad, which they have vowed to capture along with Shia holy cities to the south.
The ISIS advances threaten 9-years of Shia dominance in the region that was spurred by the overthrow of Saddam Hussein during the Iraq War. Even if the Shia leaders in Baghdad are able to protect the capitol city and other Shia provinces to the left, regaining control of the Sunni provinces that Iraqi forces have abandoned will not likely be an easy task.
Iraq’s most influential Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has urged Iraqis to fight the Sunni insurgents.
“People who are capable of carrying arms and fighting the terrorists in defense of their country … should volunteer to join the security forces to achieve this sacred goal,” he said in a statement.
While Iran’s Foreign Ministry has denied any involvement in Iraq, a top security official in Baghdad told CNN that the nation has sent at least 500 Revolutionary Guard units to aid Iraqi forces in the Diyala province. The Guardian also reported Friday that Iran was scrambling to help the Iraqi government to protect its own interests in the region by sending a top general to Bagdad to help organize Iraqi militia leaders and tribal chiefs to fight off ISIS.
According to reports, U.S. action against the ISIS threat will likely involve airstrikes on militant-controlled regions in Iraq and Syria, creating the possibility that the U.S. will be providing cover fire for its longtime Iranian adversaries. But, lingering tensions aside, leaders from both nations realize the terrifying threat of a fragmented Iraq heavily under ISIS control.
Thursday, June 12, 2014
Reid and the Mining Rights
Reid’s Sale of Mining Rights Revives Allegations of Cronyism
Democratic Leader blocked regulations on mining companies represented by Reid’s family
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) / AP
Decades of legislative work by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) on behalf of Nevada’s gold mining industry culminated this week when he sold the rights to a number of mines and moved to Las Vegas.
Reid pulled down $1.7 million on the sale, which included the mineral rights to 10 mines and 110 acres of land in Searchlight, Nev.
Reid has worked for decades to preserve the carve-outs for mining companies in the General Mining Law of 1872, allowing those companies to forego an estimated $100 million to $200 million in annual royalty payments to the federal government.
Debate over the laws governing the mining industry was heated in the mid-1990s, when Reid squared off with Sen. Dale Bumpers (D., Ark.). Bumpers decried the lack of royalty payments from the industry and its influence in Congress.
“They own enough people in the United States Congress; they know they don’t have to pay a royalty and never will,” Bumpers said at the time.
It was in the midst of this debate that Reid introduced the Mining Reform Act of 1997, which would have increased payments to the federal government for the sale of federal mining land from $2.50 per acre to a “fair market value.”
However, the calculation of “fair market value” excluded any land that actually contained minerals—the most valuable portions of the land. If passed, the law would have been a boon to the mining industry.
But the bill died in the Senate. Two years later, the Bureau of Land Management looked to implement more stringent environmental regulations on mining activity on federal land. Reid fought the proposal tooth-and-nail.
President Bill Clinton also sought rules limiting the amount of federally owned land that could be used for dumping, milling, and other activities associated with mining. Reid introduced legislation exempting existing mines from the regulations. The bill died in committee.
The Clinton regulations that made it through initial bureaucratic hurdles were delayed when Reid pushed for extended public comment periods. The regulations went into effect on Clinton’s last day in office.
When President George W. Bush took office, he rolled back many of those regulations, with Reid cheering on the effort.
That rare turn of bipartisanship continued into the Obama administration, during which Reid has continued to block efforts to more stringently regulate mining on federal lands and to increase royalty payments to the federal government.
Despite decrying efforts by congressional Republicans to block revenue-raising tax provisions in late 2010, Reid was cool to Obama’s proposal to increase royalty payments and tax hard-rock mining operations to pay for the reclamation of abandoned mines.
Reid said he was “willing to consider any proposal for mining reform that protects the mining industry, doesn’t kill jobs, and shares revenues with the state.”
Obama’s proposals petered out in early 2011.
“Congress has talked for years about reforming this law only to have the effort blocked by Western senators,” said a New York Times editorial faulting Reid for the effort’s failure. Reid, the editorial went on, “has long been the leading opponent.”
Reid has seen a dramatic increase in the value of his mining rights since he began working to ensure lax regulatory treatment and favorable royalty rates for the industry.
The mineral rights he sold this week were worth between $200,000 and $415,000 in 1995, the first year for which his personal financial disclosure forms are publicly available. By 2012, those rights were worth between $315,000 and $900,000.
Reid’s allies attribute that increase to the steady rise in the price of gold over the same period.
Additionally, all four of Reid’s sons—Rory, Leif, Josh, and Key—have worked for the Nevada firm Lionel Sawyer & Collins, which represents a number of the state’s mining companies.
Reid’s daughter Lana is married to Washington, D.C., lobbyist Steven Barringer, who has represented the National Mining Association, Barrick Gold, Placer Dome, Newmont Mining, Coeur D’Alene Mines, Hecla Mining, Echo Bay Mines, Independence Mining Company, Battle Mountain Gold, and Homestake Mining.
Barringer had “earned as much as $3.7 million lobbying for mining interests,” Mother Jones reported in 2009.
“In Nevada, the Name to Know is Reid,” a Los Angeles Times headline on the family’s extensive political clout in the state declared.
Recent controversies have revived allegations that Reid has used his official position to his family members’ benefit.
Reid came under fire earlier this year when his campaign bought more than $30,000 in jewelry from Ryan Elisabeth Reid, his granddaughter.
Her father, Reid’s son Rory, has represented a Chinese company that won public plaudits from the majority leader before a county commissioner in Nevada sold the company a large plot of land on which to build a solar farm for a sixth of its appraised value.
Another Chinese company represented by Rory Reid was looking for financiers through a federal program frequently criticized for its susceptibility for fraud that awards U.S. visas to foreign investors. The company was rejected due to security concerns, but Reid the elder intervened, and the Department of Homeland Security agreed to reconsider the rejection.
Critics see existing federal laws and regulations, which exist as they do in large measure of Reid’s consistent advocacy on behalf of Nevada mining companies, as maintaining favorable treatment for that industry.
“Congress has gotten rid of all of the other land giveaways, from eliminating the homestead laws to charging for coal, oil, and gas. But companies still get to mine gold for free,” a spokeswoman for environmentalist group Earthworks told Mother Jones in 2009.
UPDATE 1:03 P.M.: Adam Jentleson, a spokesman for Reid, said in an email, “Senator Reid is proud of his work fighting for the mining industry and Nevada jobs and appreciates the Free Beacon highlighting his work on this issue. However, the argument that the value of Senator Reid’s sale of private land to a gold mining company is somehow tied in any significant way to his work on predominantly public lands—and not, say, to the historic spike in the price of gold, which has more than quadrupled over the period discussed in the story—is rather tortured. Points for effort I suppose, but there’s a word for jerry-rigging reality to fit a preconceived worldview and it’s not ‘journalism.’”
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