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How the Planned Parenthood Attack Could Reverse the Politics of Abortion

November 30, 2015 by www.thecut.com Leave a Comment

After decades of treating abortion as a third rail to be gingerly sidestepped, with downcast eyes and sighing exhortations about tragic rarity, at least some on the long-ambivalent left have decided that fighting for better access to abortion is an issue on which they can actually win.
After decades of treating abortion as a third rail to be gingerly sidestepped, with downcast eyes and sighing exhortations about tragic rarity, at least some on the long-ambivalent left have decided that fighting for better access to abortion is an issue on which they can actually win. Photo: @JEANGR/Instagram

On November 13, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole , a challenge to Texas’s 2013 omnibus abortion bill enforcing an array of abortion-clinic regulations. The portions of the bill that have already been implemented have reduced the number of clinics in Texas from 41 to 18; if it is upheld by SCOTUS, the state will be left with only ten clinics to serve the more than 60,000 Texan women who require abortions annually — making the procedure so inaccessible in the state as to be essentially illegal. Just last week, it was reported that between 100,000 and 240,000 women in Texas, the majority of them Latina, have attempted to self-induce abortions .

SCOTUS’s ruling will come this summer, months before Americans vote to elect a new president, who could have up to three Supreme Court seats to fill in a first term, a circumstance that would determine the shape of the highest court for at least a generation. Republican presidential candidates have been working to out-nut each other over which of them would permit fewer exceptions (rape, incest, life of the mother) to the sweeping abortion bans they envision. Marco Rubio has suggested that perhaps there are no instances in which a woman’s life is imperiled by the forced continuation of pregnancy, while Jeb Bush has complained that $500 million — referring to Planned Parenthood’s funding — seems too much to spend on women’s health. These dismissive politics are playing out against a background of chilling violence: The day after Thanksgiving, a gunman killed three people and wounded nine in a five-hour shooting rampage in a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood.

It all seems pretty grim, until you notice a crowd of besuited Democrats charging into this dystopian future, swords waving. After decades of treating abortion as a third rail to be gingerly sidestepped, with downcast eyes and sighing exhortations about tragic rarity, at least some on the long-ambivalent left have decided that fighting for better access to abortion is an issue on which they can actually win.

While the topic was not raised by moderators in the Democratic debates, Hillary Clinton went out of her way to bring it up, bellowing with vigor about how Republicans “don’t mind having big government interfere with a woman’s right to choose!” She also regularly includes references to reproductive rights — often using the word abortion and not just the soft-lit language of choice — in her stump speech. Clinton said via a spokesperson that the closing of clinics in Texas is “bad for women in that state and a preview of what every Republican candidate wants to do to women across America.”

Bernie Sanders may bring up reproductive rights less frequently than Clinton, but when he does, he comes out swinging, promising the South Carolina Democratic Women’s Council in November, “We are not going back to the days when women had to risk their lives to end an unwanted pregnancy.” A Sanders ­campaign aide also told me that the senator supports the EACH Woman Act , which would mandate insurance coverage for abortion services for any woman who requires them, since “abortion care is a part of women’s health care.”

The EACH Woman Act, which stands for Equal Access to Abortion Coverage in Health Insurance, was introduced by Representative Barbara Lee of California as a radical, if long overdue, challenge to the Hyde Amendment, which prevents women who rely on government health insurance from using public funds for abortion. The act surely won’t make it through the Republican-led House anytime soon, but it has 108 co-sponsors and represents a major step in acknowledging the relationship between restricting abortion access and economic inequality. “The Hyde Amendment denied a full range of access to reproductive-health services and care to low-income women, primarily women of color,” says Lee. “It’s about time we fight back.”

Meanwhile, Senate candidates Tammy Duckworth and Donna Edwards have spoken publicly about their youthful reliance on Planned Parenthood, and House candidate Nanette Barragan has described how her sister turned to the organization for an abortion when she was a teen. “Having more women ­candidates talking about their personal experiences with abortion, or with Planned Parenthood, or even family ­planning in general, has done a tremendous amount to center reproductive rights as an economic issue,” says Jess McIntosh of EMILY’s List. “The decision of when and whether to become a mother is the most important economic decision most Americans will ever make.”

Positioning reproductive rights as an economic issue — rather than as a sex-soaked battleground in a so-called culture war — is a smart gambit. But just a few years ago, women opening up about their own reproductive histories, their health-care choices, or their reliance on Planned Parenthood would have been deemed too risky, the kind of thing that could court career-ending scandal. The fact that there are now politicians who have described on the House floor their own abortions suggests some confidence that either the country has shifted on abortion or that we’ve never been as anti-abortion as was largely assumed.

“We are trying to undo bad conventional wisdom, historically propagated by white male pollsters, about the idea that the country is split in half,” says NARAL president Ilyse Hogue, referring to the assumption that on questions of abortion, America is violently, irrevocably divided.

After all, Planned Parenthood actually gained in popularity in the wake of its recent defunding battle and the release of videos purporting to show the organization selling baby parts. And NARAL’s recent polling, Hogue says, shows that the personal identification litmus test (Are you pro-life or pro-choice?) doesn’t tell the whole story. Many voters may identify as pro-life but still trust women to make their own decisions when it comes to abortion. “When you ask the questions the right way, you always, always, get to an overwhelming majority of Americans who believe that this is a decision a woman should make with her family,” says Hogue. Pointing to polls conducted in red and purple states, including Kansas, Ohio, Florida, and Nevada, Hogue says that a more nuanced approach turns up seven of ten voters, including some independents, who believe abortion should be safe and accessible and are willing to vote based on that belief. “There are ways to go on the offense that actually move voters,” says Hogue.

The Democratic machinery has yet to creak toward this conclusion. The DNC website , for example, doesn’t list reproductive rights under its list of “Issues,” nor does it mention them under its “Women” tab. But Hogue is working on selling the strategy. She has taken a PowerPoint presentation to individual campaigns and to the DNC, reminding them that three in ten American women will have an abortion and that six in ten abortion-seekers are already mothers. She ­encourages pro-choice Democrats to talk about abortion alongside ­contraception, pregnancy discrimination, and paid family leave — as one of several ­factors that permit women to plan when to have, and how to support, families.

But Hogue is fighting a strong historical tide that suggests focusing aggressively on abortion rights is a terrible gamble. As recently as 2014, the defeat of Mark Udall, a Colorado Democrat who shaped his campaign around his commitment to reproductive rights, was read in some quarters as a lesson in the risks of over­emphasizing this issue — despite the fact that the electoral map was terrible for Democrats and that midterm-election cycles draw a whiter, older, and more conservative electorate. In other words, Udall might well have lost even if he had never uttered the word abortion .

This year, the Republican candidates’ full-throated extremism, alongside the reality of what’s already happened in Texas and the tragedy of the attack on Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs, provides reason enough for Democrats to go all-in on the issue. “This is not just about what’s morally right,” says Hogue. “It’s also about strategy. The best defense is a good offense.”

Early response from Democrats to Friday’s shooting suggests that they intend to continue to prosecute their case with vigor. Clinton was the first candidate to acknowledge the attacks, tweeting on Friday that she stood with Planned Parenthood “today and every day.” And in her Sunday night Jefferson Jackson dinner speech in Manchester, New Hampshire, she noted pointedly that “we should be supporting Planned Parenthood, not attacking it.” The same day, Sanders went on offense, tweeting that “bitter rhetoric can have unintended consequences.” Even DNC chief Debbie Wasserman Schultz took the bold step of calling the shooting “an act of terrorism.” And Senator Barbara Boxer this weekend called for the dissolution of the House committee currently meant to be investigating Planned Parenthood. “It is time to stop the demonizing and witch hunts against Planned Parenthood, its staff and patients, and the lifesaving health care it provides,” Boxer said.

On the right, that demonizing rhetoric had grown more and more visceral and violent with regard to Planned Parenthood and abortion in general. South Carolina representative Trey Gowdy has called the videos purporting to show Planned Parenthood employees arranging for the sale of body parts “barbaric” and “right on the precipice of discussing homicide.” Now that a man who actually committed homicide has been reported to have been speaking of the same “body parts” language propagated by anti-choice politicians, the question of which side the violence is on becomes much less clear. Ted Cruz became the first Republican presidential candidate to publicly condemn the Colorado Springs shooting this weekend, but days before he had celebrated the endorsement of an anti-choice activist, Troy Newman, who has called for “executing convicted murderers, including abortionists, for their crimes in order to expunge bloodguilt from the land and people.”

That Democratic politicians are daring to draw connective lines between Republican language — Sanders’s “bitter rhetoric” — and the violence enacted this weekend represents a bold strategic shift. It could be the beginning of a reversal that has been a long time coming: the association of “life” — as in Boxer’s evocation of the “life-saving health care” provided by Planned Parenthood — with reproductive-rights activism, and violence as the domain of those who stand between women and access to legal, high-quality health services, including abortion.

*This article has been updated and expanded since its original publication. A version of it appears in the November 30, 2015, issue of New York Magazine .

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Former Trump rival Jeb Bush calls Manhattan grand jury indictment ‘very political’

April 1, 2023 by www.foxnews.com Leave a Comment

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Trump’s indictment ‘energizes the base, is roiling the donor class’: Charlie Gasparino Video

Trump’s indictment ‘energizes the base, is roiling the donor class’: Charlie Gasparino

FOX Business’ Charlie Gasparino weighs what impact the indictment of former President Donald Trump will have on 2024 finances.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said Saturday that a Manhattan grand jury’s decision to indict former President Donald Trump during his third bid for the White House is “very political” and “not a matter of justice.”

Bush, who challenged Trump for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016, noted in a tweet that Trump was indicted on case that other prosecutors refused to move forward with before Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office revived it recently.

“Bragg’s predecessor didn’t take up the case. The Justice Department didn’t take up the case. Bragg first said he would not take up the case. This is very political, not a matter of justice,” Bush, the second son of former President George H.W. Bush wrote in a tweet.

“In this case, let the jury be the voters,” he added.

DEMS WHO ACCUSED TRUMP OF TRYING TO JAIL OPPONENTS VOICE SUPPORT FOR TRUMP GRAND JURY INDICTMENT

The exact charges of the indictment are still under seal, but Trump attorney Joe Tacopina said Thursday evening Trump could face more than 30 counts next week when he’s arraigned.

Bragg has been investigating Trump for hush money payments made leading up to the 2016 presidential election. These include the $130,000 payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, and the $150,000 payment made to former Playboy model Karen McDougal .

From left to right: Former Florrida Gov. Jeb Bush, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and former President Donald Trump.

From left to right: Former Florrida Gov. Jeb Bush, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and former President Donald Trump. (Bryan Bedder, Christopher Goodney/Bloomberg, : Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Fox News reported and revealed in 2018 a series of hush money payments made to both McDougal and Daniels, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York and the Federal Election Commission both investigated those payments.

Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York opted out of charging Trump related to the Daniels payment in 2019, even as Michael Cohen, a former Trump attorney, implicated him as part of a plea deal. The Federal Election Commission also tossed its investigation into the matter in 2021.

TOP HOUSE, SENATE REPUBLICANS OUTRAGED ABOUT TRUMP INDICTMENT: ‘A DARK DAY IN AMERICAN HISTORY’

Trump reacted to the indictment by slamming Bragg for his “obsession” with trying to “get Trump,” while warning the move to charge a former president of the United States will “backfire” on President Biden.

After a years-long investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, a Manhattan grand jury voted Thursday to indict former President Donald Trump.

After a years-long investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, a Manhattan grand jury voted Thursday to indict former President Donald Trump. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

“This is Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history,” Trump said in a statement. “From the time I came down the golden escalator at Trump Tower, and even before I was sworn in as your President of the United States, the Radical Left Democrats – the enemy of the hard-working men and women of this Country – have been engaged in a Witch-Hunt to destroy the Make America Great Again movement.”

Bush’s comments align with those made by other Republicans who currently serve in Congress.

“As he routinely frees violent criminals to terrorize the public, he weaponized our sacred system of justice against President Donald Trump. The American people will not tolerate this injustice, and the House of Representatives will hold Alvin Bragg and his unprecedented abuse of power to account,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy , R-Calif., said in a tweet Thursday.

Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said the Manhattan grand jury's indictment of Trump is an "injustice" and that Americans "will not tolerate" it.

Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said the Manhattan grand jury’s indictment of Trump is an “injustice” and that Americans “will not tolerate” it. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

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House Majority Leader Steve Scalise , R-La., also stated in a tweet Thursday that the “sham New York indictment of President Donald Trump is one of the clearest examples of extremist Democrats weaponizing government to attack their political opponents. Outrageous.”

The charges against Trump come amid a separate, special counsel investigation into his alleged improper retention of classified records from his presidency at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.

Fox News’ Brooke Singman and Brianna Herlihy contributed to this article.

Kyle Morris covers politics for Fox News. Story tips can be sent to [email protected] and on Twitter: @RealKyleMorris .

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Anatomy of a Biden Family Business Deal: Get Son Hunter or Sister Valerie to Sign ‘on Behalf of the VP’

April 1, 2023 by www.breitbart.com Leave a Comment

Email exchanges between Joe Biden’s family and business associates show the Bidens planning to cash in on the family name in an academic venture with the University of Delaware while discussing ways to carefully distance Joe himself from financial documents outlining the deal.

Team Biden was to receive $12.5 million for the establishment of the Biden Institute at the University of Delaware (UD), which launched shortly after Joe Biden left the vice presidency in 2017. The arrangement meant a nice payday for the Bidens and their associates. And, as it turned out, the launch of the Biden Institute coincided with a bonanza in foreign money donations for the university. Correspondences show that UD wanted Joe Biden to raise funds for the university after his institute opened.

In the weeks and months following the opening of the Institute, UD received foreign cash donations totaling more than $33 million , including $6.7 million from China. Of that sum, three gifts came directly from the Chinese Communist government.

In a series of email exchanges that included Hunter Biden, Valerie Biden Owens (Joe’s sister who called Hunter Biden the “central person” in the UD plans), two of Owens’s daughters (Joe’s nieces), and various Biden business associates, they discussed ways that they could benefit from Biden’s academic ventures and having “the Biden Foundation” or a “family member” sign a Memorandum of Understanding (“MOU”) “on behalf of the VP.” Emails from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop show that UD and Team Biden negotiated ways to compensate Biden family members, including Joe Biden’s sister Valerie Biden Owens.

President Joe Biden delivers the commencement address at the University of Delaware graduation ceremony in Newark, Delaware, on May 28, 2022. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)

Valerie Biden Owens, sister of President Joe Biden, at the University of Delaware graduation ceremony where her brother gave the commencement address on May 28, 2022. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)

Former U.S. Senator Ted Kaufman (D-DE)—a longtime Biden associate—was central to the Bidens’ academic negotiations. In an August 30, 2016, email, Kaufman advised Team Biden: “When it comes to the [UD Memorandum of Understanding] MOU, probably less detail about what we are doing the better.”

Click on the image of the email to enlarge.

Since Joe Biden would be publicly associated with the UD institute that bore his name, it is unclear why it was important to keep Joe’s name off the MOU. But it was not the first nor last time that the elder Biden—the “big guy” or Hunter’s “chairman” —was referred to opaquely in business correspondence or that Biden business associates were instructed to “don’t mention Joe.”

Having a private family member sign on his behalf would be one way to avoid having to disclose the precise amounts of money, if any, that Joe Biden would be paid. Indeed, Joe Biden disclosed zero income from UD while disclosing nearly $1 million in personal income from the University of Pennsylvania (Penn), which houses the Biden Center. (As it happens, Penn has also seen an influx of foreign donations from China since the launch of the Biden Center in 2017.)

For whatever reason, UD either did not pay Joe Biden any money or they paid it to someone else on his behalf, thereby bypassing the need for disclosure. UD has not responded to requests from my organization, the Government Accountability Institute, for clarification on the arrangement.

President Joe Biden, with son Hunter Biden, arrives at Hancock Field Air National Guard Base in Syracuse, New York, on February 4, 2023. (ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)

This news comes as House hearings have brought new focus to the tactics used to obscure the Biden family’s sources of income. Last month, Breitbart News reported that China’s military-linked CEFC energy company funneled approximately $3 million to a Biden associate who, in turn, distributed the money to multiple Biden family members in a series of smaller payments.

Hunter Biden, James Biden (Joe’s brother), Hallie Biden (Hunter’s paramour and the widow of Joe’s son, Beau Biden), and a mystery individual who was only identified as “BIDEN,” were among the Biden family members who received tranches of China-linked cash.

The email exchanges regarding the University of Delaware may suggest a possible answer to the mystery of how the Biden family made money: by brokering access to then-Vice President Joe Biden.

In an email on August 9, 2016, longtime Biden business associate Eric Schwerin related to the Bidens his conversation with “Alan,” who appears to be UD’s Executive Vice President of Finance and Facilities, Alan Brangman:

I just got off the phone with Alan at UD. I was doing some follow up with him per our last call. Few things we discussed.

1) To confirm, the budget for the Biden Center is $2.5m a year for five years. For a total of $12.5m over the five years . I know there was some question about that. [Emphasis added]

2) They are happy on their end to have consulting contracts for the employees of the Center. They have cleared that on their end. The consulting contracts can begin once we finalize the MOU and then the clock will begin ticking on the $2.5m budget for year one. So, it is up to us how much the consulting contract is for as long as it is within budget and can be justified vis a vis other consulting contracts.

3) That $2.5m budget include salaries, benefits and operational expenses. So, if the Biden Center wants to put together a series of seminars, the funding for those seminars would come out of the $2.5m. The Biden Center can get sponsors to defray some costs, but we should keep in mind that the whole $2.5m can’t be spent on salaries. We need to start thinking programmatically what the Biden Center would do in year one and how much it might cost. Then we’ll know what we are left with for salaries/consulting contracts. [Emphasis added)

4) The counter-party to the MOU in UD’s mind would not be the VP personally but could be the Biden Foundation or potentially a family member signing on behalf of the VP (Hunter or Val?). We should discuss who we want it to be.” [Emphasis added]

This email from Eric Schwerin, who is now cooperating with the congressional committee that is investigating the Biden family’s foreign business dealings, confirms that the Biden academic venture at the University of Delaware would provide up to $12.5 million in cash to directly fund the Bidens’ plans there.

Click on the image of the email to enlarge.

According to a follow-up correspondence from Schwerin on the same day, UD’s incoming president Dr. Dennis Assanis apparently agreed to spend staggering sums—up to $100 million over five years—building out the Biden Institute, including either by constructing a new building or by renovating an old building to house the Biden Institute on UD’s campus.

On June 11, 2016, Hunter received an email from his aunt Valerie Biden Owens concerning the issue of “salaries.” As they were working out how the academic ventures should be structured, Valerie Biden Owens wrote to Hunter:

Hunter – Hopefully UD will get back to us soon so that we can make our plans. We need to confirm space and funds available for salaries … and those new drapes that JRB [Joseph Robinette Biden] will want in his office. xoxo avbo

Click on the image of the email to enlarge.

Correspondences show that Valerie Biden Owens was the only Biden family member for whom a firm compensation was negotiated (though UD suggested that Joe Biden would be on the payroll). In an August 24, 2016, email laying out the timeline of UD negotiations, Schwerin suggested that October 15 or November 1, 2016 would be the date that “UD signs Consulting Contract with Valerie Owens or her LLC for $12,500 a month for one year.”

Click on the image of the email to enlarge.

The Biden Foundation was apparently tied up in the UD negotiations and, according to Schwerin, planned to sign a “Consulting Contract with Valerie Owens or her LLC for $12,500 a month for one year.” If executed, these agreements would bring Valerie Biden Owens’ first-year compensation to $300,000.

Valerie Biden Owens ultimately landed the position of “Vice Chair” of the institute when it opened in early 2017. She was promoted to Chair of the Biden Institute in February 2020— a position she holds today —though her current compensation is unknown.

Schwerin’s August 2016 email provides another example of how the Biden family discussed ways to shield Joe from disclosure. Ex-Biden business associate Tony Bobulinski provided messages to the FBI and Congress that revealed that the Bidens were nervous any time Joe’s name was mentioned in relation to their Chinese dealings. For example, in a May 2017 exchange between Bobulinski and another Biden business associate involved in the CEFC negotiations named James Gilliar, Bobulinski was warned not to mention Joe Biden’s name in writing. “Don’t mention Joe being involved, it’s only when u are face to face, I know u know that but they are paranoid,” Gilliar wrote. “OK they should be paranoid about things,” Bobulinski replied.

This also raises questions about the so-called “ Mystery Biden ” who received a chunk of the $3 million passed through from CEFC.

Perhaps the most mysterious aspect of Biden’s academic ventures at Penn and UD was how they were conceived. The initial plans for both the Penn Biden Center and the Biden Institute at UD were apparently hatched by Joe’s son Hunter Biden, Joe’s sister Valerie Biden Owens, Valerie’s daughters (Joe’s nieces), and Hunter’s business associates.

These plans were set in motion while Joe Biden was still the vice president and at the same time that Biden family members were making deals with foreign oligarchs.

In March 2016, Hunter Biden met with UD’s incoming president Dr. Assanis. Emails from Hunter’s abandoned laptop show that he, the Biden family members, and his business associates wanted to use the Penn Biden Center and UD Biden Institute as a “ stage ” to promote the “ Biden brand .”

Emails show that the Biden academic ventures could operate like the “Clinton Global Initiative without the money raise.” When Joe Biden announced the opening of his institute, UD said that the Biden Institute would operate “similar to the World Economic Forum or the Aspen Institute.”

We previously reported that at the same time Joe Biden was setting up his institute at UD, multiple members of the Biden family were making deals— worth millions of dollars —linked to the highest levels of Chinese intelligence.

For a full analysis of these findings, watch the following episode of The Drill Down podcast with this author and Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer here :

Seamus Bruner is the Director of Research at the Government Accountability Institute and the author of Compromised: How Money & Politics Drive FBI Corruption and Fallout: Nuclear Bribes, Russia Spies, and D.C. Lies . Follow @seamusbruner .

Filed Under: Uncategorized Biden Institute, Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, University of Delaware, Valerie Biden Owens, Politics, University of..., al saud family business, eso the family business, eso the family business choice, obama biden family, family business europe, nebraska family who lost son to alligator, family ek deal movie, lucrative business deals, brokering a business deal, hadith on business dealings

The Stuart Nash saga and Labour’s fight for political oxygen

March 31, 2023 by i.stuff.co.nz Leave a Comment

RICKY WILSON/STUFF
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says it was a “cock up”, but not “a conspiracy”, to overlook Stuart Nash’s donor emails.

Luke Malpass is Stuff’s political editor.

OPINION: Labour’s reset is now under severe pressure. Just as Chris Hipkins was gaining some momentum, tossing unpopular policies overboard or deferring them, Stuart Nash, already in the last-chance saloon, got sacked.

Andrew Kirton, Hipkins’ chief of staff, was in a meeting with the Greens late on Tuesday afternoon when his phone kept buzzing. Kirton thought it was his children requesting more screen time on their electronic devices at home. It was actually chief press secretary Andrew Campbell, trying to get him back to the Beehive.

Once the prime minister’s office received questions about the email from Stuff , the wheels started going into motion. Lots of people need to be consulted about these matters including the Cabinet Secretary, deputy prime minister, party whips and so on.

Nash was sacked for sending an email to two donors detailing confidential Cabinet information and individual ministers’ position on the argument.

In these cases the Cabinet Secretary is sometimes asked to find precedents for previous decisions and breaches on similar matters. Nash’s breach of the Cabinet manual was so stark, in writing, and went against the principles of both Cabinet confidentiality and collective responsibility, that it is understood there actually wasn’t an analogous precedent to be found. Hipkins acted swiftly.

READ MORE: Chris Hipkins says it was ‘a cock up’, not ‘a conspiracy’, to overlook Stuart Nash donor emails New questions emerge as Stuart Nash scandal picks up pace Senior staff in Jacinda Ardern’s office failed to escalate Nash email; Opposition claim a ‘cover up’ PM Chris Hipkins faces pressure to answer questions over Stuart Nash scandal

Nash, by several accounts of people familiar to the matter, was resigned to his fate and understood that he was “toast”. He knew he was going to have to resign – in the event he was sacked – and that his career was over.

The toxic combination of revealing positions around the Cabinet table, his opposition to these positions and the fact that the two men he revealed them to – commercial landlords Greg Loveridge and Troy Bowker – had donated to his campaigns in the past was quite the political cocktail.

There is no evidence that Nash acted for personal gain in any of these matters, and he remains a popular member of the Labour caucus at this stage. His sins were against Cabinet and by extension New Zealand, not against his Labour colleagues.

For Hipkins, who was initially apoplectic, it was clearly a bitter pill to swallow. He had given Nash the benefit of the doubt and sacked him as police minister for clearly inappropriate conversations with the police commissioner, and then issued another warning after probing Nash about whether there was anything else likely to come to light, only for something else to come up.

Now there will be a two-month probe by the Cabinet office into what other communications Nash has made to donors over the years. While a couple of weeks ago Nash’s Cabinet colleagues were supportive of him not being sacked, there was a sense that something else was probably inevitable. And so it proved. The Cabinet Office will be thorough, straightforward and will not try to gild the lily in any way.

However, the issue has now snowballed after it became apparent that some in the prime minister’s offi ce (PMO) knew about the email two years ago. According to the PMO it was never flagged upstairs to then chief of staff Raj Nahna or prime minister Jacinda Ardern.

However, it was seen by Deputy Chief of Staff Holly Donald, who laid it off to another senior staffer, whom so far the PMO has declined to name. Donald is in charge of the PM’s policy advisers and very much exists on the policy side of the office. A very well-regarded operator, she is not some sort of underhanded political operator.

And the idea that the PMO would have done something underhanded in order to somehow save Stuart Nash seems unlikely.

Labour ministers have been at pains to point out that it was Nash who was responsible for not releasing the email. There is also a widespread view within Labour that the email being deemed “out of scope” was clearly not the correct decision. The Ombudsman has now opened a new investigation.

There is also some misunderstanding about how the Official Information Act works and why things get sent to the prime minister’s office.

One clear incentive is for a PM’s advisers to give things a political health check and understand what might be being released is so that they can manage any fish-hooks, embarrassing correspondence or advice that was completely ignored by the government of the day. If something can be ruled ‘’out of scope’’ so much the better.

The second reason is far more mundane, however. Political offices have high turnover and are often staffed by young and inexperienced people who perhaps had worked their way up from stuffing envelopes in an electorate office somewhere.

Aside from a political radar, the prime minister’s office – and this was also the case under the Key and Clark administrations – has a person or people thoroughly schooled in the legislation, who understands what might be in or out of the scope, and who can give advice and then work with the Ombudsman if there are subsequent complaints. It’s about institutional knowledge, as many offices would struggle genuinely to know how to deal with requests.

And context matters. Although the email clearly should have been escalated, the fact was that Nash was at that point under no warning. It was also during a period where there was a massive run on Covid-19-related OIA requests.

For Hipkins himself, this won’t be particularly personally damaging. He was not prime minister at the time and there is no reason he would have known about any of this.

His biggest mistake was in giving Nash another go, but he clearly tried to play it by the book, look for other precedents and mete out a punishment that fitted the crime, first accepting Nash’s resignation as police minister and then demoting him to bottom of the Cabinet list but without taking his other jobs.

But it has sucked, and will continue to, oxygen out of all the things that Labour is trying to achieve and to sell to the public. National had this problem for about two months at the start of this year, though it wasn’t of its making.

This week was supposed to be the week of talking about all the new money that those on state payments were going to get. There was also the new Waitematā harbour bridge crossing that Hipkins announced on Thursday was going to be speeded up.

National leader Christopher Luxon, too, will be wanting to talk about his issues, but in the absence of the opportunity it’s better, from his party’s perspective, that Labour is in the news for all the wrong reasons.

This issue will not go away that quickly, and the Cabinet Office probe could turn up all sorts of weird and wonderful correspondence. It’s precisely the sort of thing that a Government fighting for re-election does not need.

Filed Under: Uncategorized opinion

G20 Summit 2023: Let’s keep G20 non-political, India suggests ahead of meet | India Business News – Times of India

March 31, 2023 by timesofindia.indiatimes.com Leave a Comment

Let's keep G20 non-political, India suggests ahead of meet

G20 should remain non-political: Kant (IANS)

KUMARAKOM
Sherpas from G20 nations are meeting in Kumarakom for the second meet of the key representative of world leaders and will discuss ways to deal with challenges. The sherpas will begin discussions on drafting the communique for the leaders’ summit in September.

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G20 should remain non-political: Kant

India on Thursday said that the world was facing several challenges – including dealing with climate change, poverty and development – and sought the support of G20 members to keep the grouping “non-political”.
India’s sherpa Amitabh Kant said New Delhi is working with all members to ensure that challenges around global debt and recession, in several parts of the world, are addressed, and “one issue can’t hold back other things”, in what was seen as a reference to the Russia-Ukraine war.
Sherpas from G20 countries are meeting in the backwaters of Kumarakom for the second meeting of the key representative of world leaders and will discuss ways to deal with the challenges. “Kumarakom will provide peace and serenity to all the delegates. Kumarakom backwaters will enable us in the coming days to take the challenges of the world forward,” Kant told a news conference.
With several meetings out of the way, the sherpas will begin discussions on drafting the communique for the leader’s summit in September. Officials said unlike earlier, in India, all G20 countries are part of the deliberations, indicating a willingness to engage.
The Russia-Ukraine war has emerged as a sticking point for the developed world, led by the G7, while India has maintained that the G20 should remain an economic and development forum. India’s stand found support from the Troika (which includes Indonesia and Brazil with South Africa as a special invitee). Sources said all emerging countries have said that issues such as global debt overhang, slowing global growth, inflation and climate action are key for them and need to be deliberated at the forum extensively for possible resolution.
During the day, Kant also held wide ranging discussion with his Russian counterpart as well as South Africa.
“We discussed everything under the sun with Russia . We are very positive and optimistic,” said Kant. He said there was strong support for the development issues at the bilaterals that he had with sherpas of several countries, including Italy.

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