Thursday, December 19, 2019

trump calls for schumer to publicly release the books &

records of the teamster local 707 pension fund and compel the testimony of all pendion plan trustees , sufgolk county legislator kevin. mccaffrey et al




LONG ISLANDNASSAU

Schumer, King, Teamsters push for bill to cover pensions

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  1. Schumer and King push to fund Teamster pension shortfall
  2. Wind chills in single digits expected across LI
  3. Watch: 2019 Long Island year in review
  4. Church grows a food garden
  5. Driver Thomas Murphy guilty on all counts in Scout's death
  6. Spota, McPartland guilty on all felony charges
  7. Forecast: Cold and windy, snow showers possible
  8. LI protesters rally for Trump's impeachment
  9. Watch: Joye Brown on Spota jury's findings
  10. Jury deliberations begin in Boy Scout trial
  11. Officials: Nassau ready for new bail law
  12. Annual 'Holiday Bus' debuts at Hempstead Transit Center
  13. Mayor to combat homelessness
  14. Nassau's largest known heroin trafficking ring busted, officials say
  15. Former Suffolk DA Spota, ex-aide McPartland found guilty
  16. Freezing rain could affect morning commute
  17. Body found off Meadowbrook Parkway investigated as homicide
  18. Closing arguments in Andrew McMorris case
  19. Honoring advocates for the 9/11 Compensation Fund
  20. Curran signs bill banning the sale of flavored vaping products
  21. Crowd weighs in against new casino plan
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford) seek to issue treasury bonds tied to federal budget to fund Teamster pension shortfall. (Credit: Newsday / John Asbury)
By John Asburyjohn.asbury@newsday.com   @JohnAsbury 
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Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Peter King joined Long Island Teamsters Tuesday in calling for union pension shortfalls to be funded through Treasury bonds tied to the federal budget.
Schumer (D-N.Y.) and King (R-Seaford) are pushing Congress to pass the Butch Lewis Act, which would create a new office within the Treasury Department to allow pension plans to borrow for any shortfall using Treasury bonds issued by the government to sell to financial institutions. 
Schumer, the Senate minority leader, and King met with Teamsters Local 707 in Hempstead to push for the bill, which could help fund pensions for 4,500 Long Island families, including more than 3,700 retirees, Schumer said. 
“These pensions are on the hook for billions and could collapse,” Schumer said. “We have an obligation to these folks. These people worked hard and never asked for much and should not be abandoned.”
Teamsters and elected officials say the 2008 recession led multi-employer pension plans to become insolvent and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. to be underfunded.
Suffolk Legis. Kevin McCaffrey (R-Lindenhurst), who also is president of Local 707, said the pension payments have been reduced because fewer younger members are paying into the pension plan after the deregulation of the trucking industry.
“All the men and women went to work with quiet dignity and had expectations to retire with that same dignity,” McCaffrey said.
King said the pension plan should have bipartisan support and that he would work to pass the bill with other Republicans, as part of the federal budget negotiations ending Jan. 19.
“The working men and women are the backbone of our country,” King said. “The rich have their advocates, there are advocates for the lower income, but the middle people seem to get forgotten.”
Schumer and King said the bill should be tied to the federal budget to fund the government as a must-pass bill in exchange for other expenditures such as military spending, Veterans Affairs and opioid abuse.
“We can’t blame it on the Democrats because we control the House and have a Republican president,” King said.
John Asbury covers the Town of Hempstead and the City of Long Beach. He has been with Newsday since 2014 and previously covered crime for nine years for The Press-Enterprise in Riverside, Calif.

Schumer's phony push for a full-blown Senate trial

BY LIZ PEEK, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR —  12/18/19 08:00 AM EST 369
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL 

Schumer's phony push for a full-blown Senate trial
© Greg Nash
House Democrats have flunked impeachment, but now Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is going for extra credit. The Senate minority leader hopes to undo the damage done by his colleagues’ bungling of the House impeachment drive by painting Republican senators into a corner.
Schumer knows Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has a critical decision to make. In response to what appears an inevitable House vote to impeach, the Senate Majority Leader has three options. McConnell could introduce a motion in the Senate to dismiss the case, which would likely pass with a simple majority; he could push through a speedy bare-bones trial; or he could allow President Trump to seek vindication, or even vengeance.   
Schumer has come out in favor of a full-blown impeachment trialin the Senate, demanding the appearance of at least four witnesses, none of whom testified before the House, and copious documents. In a letter to McConnell, he claims his recommendations will allow the trial to “pass the fairness test with the American people.”
Do not be deceived. Schumer no more wants a long, messy, drawn-out proceeding in the Senate than Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) wants a cozy dinner for two with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). Schumer simply wants McConnell to take the heat for expediting the necessary trial, and for putting this whole distasteful episode behind us.
Schumer is no dummy. He knows that Republicans were wildly successful in branding Rep. Adam Schiff’s (D-Calif.) impeachment push in the House as “unfair.” For more than a month, the GOP rightly accused the House intelligence chair of holding “hidden” hearings away from the public and the media, orchestrating selected leaks damaging to the president and not allowing Republicans in the House equal time and consideration.
That Schiff apparently lied about his contacts with the whistleblower, that he pressed for that individual’s appearance and then deemed him inconsequential to the proceedings as word spread of the latter’s Democratic affiliations, undermined his committee’s claims of impartiality.
A recent CNN survey shows a slim majority thinks that Trump abused his office by asking Ukraine to investigate a political rival. But that offense evidently does not, for many, constitute “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Of the 51 percent who oppose impeaching the president, some two-thirds think he has been "the victim of an unfair investigation."
Schiff’s hearings were a study in partisan malpractice, and Americans were not pleased. Much as Speaker Pelosi and her colleagues donned sack cloth and frowny faces to express how very, very sad they were to execute a hatchet job on President Trump, voters saw through their phony piety and moved solidly against deposing a duly elected president.
Americans are fair-minded, and they do not approve of impeaching a president just because the opposition party does not like his personality or his politics. Voters know that Pelosi has propped open a door that may never close; every future president will now face the threat of being impeached for minor offenses. This is indefensible.
Schumer doesn’t want a lengthy Senate trial, mainly because it would hurt many of the leading Democratic candidates hoping to replace Trump. Five senators are running for president, and they would be penned up in the Senate during a trial, unable to campaign leading up to the February 3 Iowa caucuses. You can imagine their message to Schumer.
Or imagine the wrath of black Democrats, solidly in former Vice President Joe Biden’s camp, if he is pressed to testify. Does anyone think that Joe Biden under oath would be any more controllable or cogent than Joe Biden on the campaign trail? His response to legitimate questions about son Hunter Biden’s lucrative Ukraine gig has been bluster and outrage, not reasonable answers.
At the moment, Republicans have the high ground. Fundraising and polling show voters’ growing disenchantment with the impeachment push.    
A recent USA Today/Suffolk University poll suggests declining support for impeachment, with 51 percent of registered voters opposed and 45 percent in favor, down from a 47-46 split a month ago. Worrisome for Democrats, 52 percent of independents oppose impeachment while only 41 percent approve.
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Meanwhile, donations are flooding into the GOP. Axios reports that the Republican National Committee has received donations from more than 600,000 new donors since the impeachment push began. Last week alone, the Trump campaign raked in more than $10 million in small contributions.  
McConnell needs to keep the high ground by moving the impeachment trial through the Senate as quickly as possible. Yes, Democrats will howl, but the sooner it is over, the less they get to set the narrative.
Republicans can remind voters, as McConnell recently did in response to Schumer’s demands, that if the process really required the testimony of former national security adviser John Bolton, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney or others, Adam Schiff should have pursued their testimony through the courts. Instead, he rushed the process through, realizing his hearings were a political dud.
McConnell may have to stand tough against Trump as well as Schumer.
The White House is itching to make Hunter Biden squirm on the stand, to force Adam Schiff to come clean about his interactions with the whistleblower and to make Joe Biden explain why he allowed his son to team up with Burisma, an allegedly corrupt company in a definitely corrupt country.
Those inquisitions would be most enjoyable. Many Trump supporters, and the president himself, want their time at bat. After three years of deeply partisan investigations and bogus accusations, Republicans are angry. But a trial could further test Americans’ patience, and could go off the rails in unpredictable ways. Most of the country is ready to move on.
Trump would be well advised to focus on the good news of the economy, the booming jobs market and his recent successes on trade. Winning never grows old; it will see him reelected in 2020.
Liz Peek is a former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim & Company. Follow her on Twitter @lizpeek.
TAGS BURISMA CNN UKRAINE IMPEACHMENT CHUCK SCHUMER MITCH MCCONNELL JOE BIDEN ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ NANCY PELOSI ADAM SCHIFF ELIZABETH WARREN BERNIE SANDERS MICK MULVANEY DONALD TRUMP CORY BOOKER JOHN BOLTON IMPEACHMENT IN THE UNITED STATES



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