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Over the weekend, reports began to circulate that Vice PresidentMike Pence has been meeting with numerous wealthy donors. Pence and his wife have reportedly met withChicago hedge fund manager Kenneth C. Griffin, brokerage firm founder Charles Schwab, and other Republican fund-raisers from Dow Chemical and the military contractor United Technologies. This follows follows news from last month that Pence had formally established his own political action committee.

Does any of this definitively prove that Mike Pence is going to run for president come 2020? No, not necessarily but the fact that Pence appears to be preparing for even the remote possibility of a potential presidential run should terrify American women nonetheless. If you think what were getting from alleged sexual abuser Donald Trump attacks on Planned Parenthood, sexist remarks to female reporters and politicians, the works is annoying and dangerous, just take a moment to imagine what Pence has in store.

We all know the man is a raging sexist. His refusal to dine alone with women who arent his wife (because, you know, all women are inherently conniving temptresses) should have made that plenty clear.

But when men like Mike Pence are given political power to spew out horrifying anti-woman policies, thats when casual sexism crosses the line from irritating to dangerous.

Not even touching yet on Pences terrifying and draconian take on reproductive rights, theres his awful record on equal pay. In a 1997 op-ed entitled, Day-care kids, Pence blamed working mothers for stunting their childrens emotional development, and opted to shame and blame them rather that suggest real and compassionate solutions like paid family leave. Predictably enough, while in Congress, Pence voted not once but three times against legislation to promote equal pay.

To Pence, women belong at home and in the kitchen, and in addition to his opposition to equal pay, his record on abortion rights and Planned Parenthood also makes this abundantly clear. After all, what other options do women have without affordable access to birth control and abortion?

As Governor of Indiana, Pence led a crusade against abortion rights, widely reported on by Mother Jones last year, signing off on legislation that would require women to pay costly, out-of-pocket fees for the burial or cremation of aborted fetuses, as well as a law that would hold doctors liable for wrongful death if they performed an abortionecause of the race, gender, or disability of the fetus. The very pro-life Pence has also transferred funding meant for low-income families to Christian crisis pregnancy centers that operate solely to lie to and emotionally manipulate vulnerable pregnant women.

And to top it all off, by 2014, under Gov. Pence,state funding for Planned Parenthood in Indiana had been cut nearly in half from 2005 levels, unsurprisingly yielding HIV outbreaks and slashing low-income womens access to crucial health care services. The Pence-led war on Planned Parenthood was likely a response to the fact that some clinics, without federal funding, offer abortion services; ironically, by denying thousands of women access to birth control and sexual education, Pence very well could have contributed to higher abortion rates.

Pences reign of terror over Indian allows voters a glimpse of what he would do as president. And for American women, its less a glimpse than it is an utter nightmare.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

Excerpt from:
A Potential Mike Pence Presidential Run Should Terrify Women - Mediaite

Charlie Gard, who suffers from a rare genetic disorder, is being treated at Londons Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. Charlies parents have raised 1.3 million ($1.7 million) to take their son to the U.S. for potentially life-saving treatment, but hospital administrators have fought Chris Gard and Connie Yates for months through several courts to have Charlies life support removed.

We hope and pray that little Charlie Gard gets every chance, said Mr. Pence on the radio programme, adding he prayedfor the family to be allowed to choose the greatest extent of life-saving treatment thats available to their child.

Otherwise, the vice president feared, the infant will be submitted to a government programme that says, no, were going to remove life support from your precious 11-month-old child.

Mr. Pences comments come following support received by U.S. President Donald Trump, who tweetedlast week: If we can help little#CharlieGard, as per our friends in the U.K. and the Pope, we would be delighted to do so.

Pope Francis also came out in support of Charlie being able to receive further treatment, withRomes Bambino Gesu hospital, a Vatican-run childrens hospital, offering to receive and treat Charlie an offer which was rejected by the British government for legal reasons.

On Monday afternoon, High Court Judge Mr. Justice Francis, who made the initial High Court ruling in April,said the case would be listed for a full day Thursday. The judge explained a final decision may not come until Friday, meaning more delays to Charlie receiving treatment.

Chief Executive of Americans United for Life, Catherine Glenn-Foster,who is close to the Gard family, said on Sunday: [Chris and Connie] are stressed as anyone would be in this situation, where their own parental rights are being stripped away by an institution that was hired to care for their son and instituted to care for the most vulnerable among us.

That very institution hired to care for Charlie is trying to strip him of his rights and his parents of their rights to even just take him to get a second opinion.

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Continued here:
VP Mike Pence: 'We Hope and Pray that Little Charlie Gard Gets Every Chance' - Breitbart News

Vice President Pence is spending considerable time cultivating big-money Republican donors at small, private events, including hedge fund managers and executives from brokerage houses, chemical giants and defensecontractors, Kenneth P. Vogel reports at the New York Times. Many of these events, whose participants are kept secret from the media and are omitted from Pences public schedule, have been taking placeat the vice-presidential residence at the Naval Observatory, as well as other nongovernment venues.

While cultivating support from deep-pocketed business interests is nothing new in GOP politics, Pences activities raise the question of whether he is doing this for Trump-Pence 2020 or for himself. As Vogels piecepoints out, Pences intimate confabswith wealthy donors and conservative power brokers have fueled speculation among Republican insiders that he is laying the foundation for his own political future, independent from Mr. Trump.

From the Michael Flynn scandal to James Comey's firing, Vice President Pence has repeatedly had his official statements defending the Trump administration contradicted - sometimes by the president himself. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

All of this suggests something important about President Trump. Despite Pences protestations to the contrary, the vice president looks to be preparing for his own political future.Beyond this clear signal about his ownpolitical ambitions, Pences actions raise the question of whether he has lost confidence in Trumps ability to come out of the Russia investigation unscathed.

This is not the first time that Pence, in his short tenure as Trumps vice president, has sparked chatter about his political ambitions unyoked from Trump. In May, Pence filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission, forming his own political action committee, the Great America Committee, marking the first time a sitting vice president has formed such a separate political arm, NBC Newsreported at the time.

The Great America Committee is apparently not wasting any time. Vogel reports that last Thursday, itheld a reception for prospective donors at the Washington offices of the powerful lobbying firm BGR.

In holding donor events, Great America Committee will do nothing to quell speculation about Pences intentions. When he first launched the PAC in May, Pence aides attempted to play down the move by saying itsresources will be used to support Republican congressional candidates in the 2018 midterms. But that characterization didnt diminishhow unusual this was: Traditionally, vice presidents tap the resources of their party to support congressional candidates, rather than create their own fundraising organization.

Its highly unusual, if not unprecedented, for a first-term vice president to appear to separate hiselection activities, even if aimed at congressional races, from the president he serves. But the timing of Pences formation of the Great America Committee suggests the move may have something to do with judgments about Trumps future, too.

Pence filed the paperwork on May 17, eight days after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, and the same day that Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein appointed Robert S. Mueller III to be special counsel in the Russia investigation. Indeed, the two weeks before Pence filed the Great America papers were rife with some of the most explosive news stories about the Russia scandal to date.

To review: On May 8, former acting attorney general Sally Yates testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee that the White House kept former national security adviser Michael Flynn for 18 days after she told the White House counsel that he was vulnerable to Russian blackmail. (Pence has always sought to distance himself from the Flynn affair: After Trump asked for Flynns resignation in February, Pencemaintainedthat Flynn misled him about the conversations he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, playing the part of the duped, but loyal, soldier.)

Then, after that Yates testimony on May 8, Trump engaged in probably the most self-destructive sequence of actions of his presidency. On May 9, he fired Comey. The next day, he met with Kislyak and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in the Oval Office, telling them that firing the real nut job Comey had eased great pressure on him from the Russia investigation. And the day after that, Trump admitted on national television that he had fired Comey because of the Russia thing. Finally, on May 12, Trump posted his tweethinting that he may have recorded his conversations with Comey. (He hadnt.)

One week later, Pence filed the Great America Committee papers, marking his break with the traditional arrangement for political fundraising between presidents and vice presidents.

The traditional arrangement is based on the expectation that the president and vice president will together run for reelection. But Pences activities seem to signal doubts about whether there will even be a Trump-Pence ticket to run in2020. We are not yet six months into Trumps term, and each new revelation in the burgeoning Russia investigation seems to heighten the possibility that Trump could either no longer be president, or at least no longer be a viable reelection candidate, in 2020.

Pence is perhapspreparing for just that potentiality. If he were confident that the Russia investigation is fake news or a hoax, as Trump has maintained, he would be hewing to the traditional vice-presidential path. Instead, hes making his own plans which may show just how worried he is that the Russia investigation is going to come crashing down on his president.

Read the original here:
Is Mike Pence betting it will all come crashing down on Trump? - Washington Post (blog)

Hoosier Action is on a mission to counteract the Pence legacy in Indiana by creating political power and economic justice for those the now-vice president's policies left behind.

Then-Gov. Mike Pence holds a press conference on March 31, 2015 . (Photo by Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images)

This Q&A is part of Sarah Jaffes series Interviews for Resistance, in which she speaks with organizers, troublemakers and thinkers who are doing the hard work of fighting back against Americas corporate and political powers.

Jaffe speaks with organizer Jesse Alexander Myers, a former Occupy leader who recently moved from New York City to Bloomington, Indiana, to work for Hoosier Action, a new community organization focusing on economic-justice, formed in the wake of Donald Trumps election. Back in 2008 Barack Obama narrowly won Indiana, the state that gave us Mike Pence. But in 2016, the state continued its shift to the right, with 57 percent voting for Trump.

Myers talks about how political gerrymandering impacted Indianas election results, the legacy of Pences actions as governor and how his organization hopes to bring about change. Myers hosts From The Heartland, a podcast about organizing for social and economic transformation in the Rust Belt, the Great Plains and the South.

Sarah Jaffe: Indiana has been at the center of a lot of things over the last year. You are in (what was formerly) Mike Pence country. You are not that far from where the Carrier plant and the Rexnord plant and all of the things that Trump paid attention to for a minute were. Give people the lay of the land of what is going on in Indiana specifically.

Jesse Myerson: Indiana is thought of differently from the other states in this area, like Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania, because it is almost never included when people talk about swing states. It is often thought that it is just too far gone and too reactionary here. But it wasnt very long ago, in 2008, that Barack Obama won the state. Of the nine people that we sent to the US House back then, five of them were Democrats. We have one Democratic senator and one Republican senator. It was very much a swing state at that point.

People who used to have good union jobs in manufacturing are now working 30 hours a week at Walmart.

In the interim, because of the tea party insurgency in 2010 and the super-ruthless gerrymandering that that subjected the state to, things have changed dramatically in the last 10 years also because of Gov. Pence and his predecessor, Mitch Daniels. For instance, Indiana is now a right-to-work state. As I said, the gerrymandering is really terrible and then theres the voter-ID law. Of course, this is a state that is still reeling from NAFTA and a lot of terrible poverty that began [after it was implemented.] People who used to have good union jobs in manufacturing are now working 30 hours a week at Walmart.

The state of Democratic peoples power in Indiana is really, really weakened by all of these reforms. If you look at electoral maps, you have places in 2008 that were blue are now salmon and places that were salmon are now red and places that were red are scarlet. Donald Trump won the state, the governor is Republican and both state legislature houses are supermajority Republicans.

Seven out of the nine members of the congressional delegation are Republicans. We still have a split between the senators Democrat and Republican but the Democrat, Joe Donnelly, is up for a very, very tough re-election next year. The Koch brothers are already running ads against him. He is definitely the most vulnerable Democrat coming up. He voted for Gorsuch and has not done very much to endear himself to Democratic voters.

SJ: And Donnelly endorsed anti-abortion bills when he was in the House.

JM: If only there was some better person who would replace him, but as far as it looks, the person likeliest to replace him is a far right-winger named Luke Messer, who will probably run against him in 2018. The state of politics here is very difficult, but I think that underneath, the state is still very much a swing state the way that it was in 2008. With some diligent organizing of the working class, that can be reflected much more in the coming two election cycles. Perhaps we can pull out of supermajority in time to get a much more fair at least bipartisan agreement around redistricting next time, and then open up possibilities for a more dramatic transformation in future years.

SJ: Organizing that working class around working-class interests was the reason that you moved to Indiana. Tell us about Hoosier Action.

JM: Hoosier Action was founded by a remarkable woman named Kate Hess Pace, who is from Bloomington, Indiana. Her family stretches back five generations in New Albany, Indiana, which is a small town just across the Ohio River from Louisville, in the same congressional district. For the last seven or eight years, SHE has been up in Minneapolis-St. Paul doing faith-based organizing with a group called Isaiah, which is part of the PICO Network, organizing congregations around economic justice issues. She was instrumental in some really big campaigns including winning the toughest foreclosure protections.

After the cataclysm of the 2016 elections, she felt very strongly the urge to come home and start something here in southern Indiana, because the state of organizing in Indiana has been greatly debased. This is especially true in southern Indiana, where there was never particularly high union density I was also moved by the cataclysmic election results and felt very strongly that my efforts would be more efficiently deployed in the middle of the country, in places where there wasnt as significant a progressive infrastructure as there is in my hometown of New York City

Basically, I wanted to go to a place that had voted for Obama and then voted for Sanders in the primary and then went to Trump in the general. And there were plenty of places like that. That was the sort of cross-section of people who, in having voted for Obama, showed that the vitriolic racist organized white supremacist faction wasnt so powerful there that it was dictating the course of the state that had this sort of anti-establishment bent that led the Democrats of the state to prefer Sen. Sanders. And then, ultimately the state went to Trump, and thus, needs considerable organizing out of that situation.

A mutual friend connected me to Kate. We have been building this thing now for three months. We have a small but growing base of dues-paying members. We have teams around operations, administration and fundraising. We have been running a test canvass program to gear up for our first big canvass, which we start on July 8. We did a day-long boot camp training for organizers in Indiana. People from all over the southern half of the state came. We did one action at Donnellys office around Medicaid cuts and infrastructure. We have been collecting Medicaid stories, first-person accounts that people, mostly mothers in the region, have written, and are trying to get them placed in national press outlets. As Kate says, Power is organized people plus organized money. So, that is what we are trying to do: collect a lot of people and a lot of money. It is the only way we are going to make an impact in Indiana or nationally.

A lot of this organizing is based on having long one-on-one discussions with people.

SJ: You got one of those stories in The Washington Post, right?

JM: Yes, from a woman named Audi McCullough. I went to a die-in protest at Bloomington Town Hall that was sponsored by a bunch of groups, including the Monroe County chapter of the National Organization for Women. Audi is a member of that. It is a fledgling organization as well, it started after the Womens March.

At the protest, Audi got up with her child, Kaden, and told her story of his extremely complex medical needs [Kaden has a congenital heart condition as well as a bleeding disorder] and the health scares that they had both faced. She talked about the absolute necessity of Medicaid as a basic pillar for them to live free and dignified lives. I said to her, You are a natural leader. She wrote up her story and we got it placed in The Washington Post.

SJ: Telling these stories is an important part of this kind of organizing, but you can also end up with people thinking that just telling a sad story is going to be enough to move their senator and then wondering why that doesnt work. I would love you to talk a little bit more about the way this storytelling does and doesnt fit into your organizing strategy.

JM: It is definitely integral. As you imply, it is not sufficient unto itself, but basically, the essence of the organizing we are doing is relational. Organizing that takes place absent the building and deepening of relationships between people is going to be basically facile. It is one thing if you can get 12 people in a room to talk to us and it is another thing if you get 400 people and 400 really only comes when people have deepened their relationships with one another.

A lot of this organizing is based on having long one-on-one discussions with people: what their lives are like, what they are interested in, what they are concerned about, what they are afraid of, what they are angry about, what they are hopeful for and growing relationships that way. Those stories are important in the actual day-to-day organizing, talking to people and letting them know who you are and finding out who they are. As a kind of public expression, what we hope to do is to mobilize people with that, but ultimately that mobilization should turn into a person becoming a dues-paying member, coming to monthly member meetings, joining a team and taking on work. That can be knocking on doors, doing data entry, helping to promote issues or taking on a shift at the farmers market or at a county fair. Ideally it is not a high-temperature sort of organizing like what we saw at Occupy Wall Street where it is lots of marches, lots of heat and lots of intensity.

Really, that emotional heat is being channelled into really well-functioning systems that allow people to take on discrete amounts of work that makes sense for them in terms of their working and personal lives.

SJ: A lot of people will say, Is this movement dead? or Is this movement gone? and actually, a lot of important work is the work you cant see.

JM: We think of Hoosier Action as a vessel or a basket that we are all collectively weaving so that it can be strong and hold all of the people and money that we are trying to bring together to create power. Weaving that basket or making that vessel water-tight that requires all sorts of maintaining spreadsheets and sending follow-up emails and doing lots and lots of unglamorous behind-the-scenes work. It may not look like it is actually waging class struggle in the way that we want to imagine it cinematically unfolding, but that is actually vital for building the kind of power that we need. If it were a weak basket or a vessel with some holes in it, the power that we would be able to accumulate would be greatly diminished.

SJ: There have been very particular public health issues that are worth bringing up, because they are issues that are prominent around the country, perhaps especially in places like Indiana that have been hit really hard by the decline of manufacturing. I am talking about, of course, the HIV outbreak that Mike Pence is basically responsible for and the opioid crisis.

The Pence approach to public health is basically to decimate it.

JM: These two are linked. There is actually a third one which I would cite, which is water contamination. All three of those crises were really, really deepened by the Pence approach to public health, which is basically to decimate it. In Scott County, which is in this part of the state, there is a very high poverty rate and there is a lot of opioid usage. Pence, being the radical ultra-right-wing Christian fundamentalist theocrat that he is, waged war on Planned Parenthood during his tenure as governor and shut down the Planned Parenthood in Scott County, which did not offer abortion services but was the only facility in the county that delivered HIV testing. So, with that gone, this HIV outbreak occurred, which is the biggest in the states history and the first in the United States that we know to be associated with sharing needles from injecting prescription painkillers.

Pence was extremely resistant to the idea of allowing needle exchanges. Eventually, he relented he didnt make them legal statewide, but he did start a program whereby counties could appeal to him for a waiver against the prohibition. Eventually, that got a little better. Then the new governor, who is less of an ideologue but still a Republican operative, Eric Holcomb he has been more lenient on that still.

The other one being the water contamination crisis in East Chicago, Indiana due to industrial byproducts. Pence wouldnt call a state of emergency, which would have freed up some funds to help relocate people who couldnt live there without getting poisoned. Gov. Holcomb has relented on that and called the state of emergency.

Holcomb has proposed a new modification to the Medicaid program here. It is called HIP 2.0: the Healthy Indiana Plan 2.0, which Mike Pence reluctantly expanded under the Affordable CARE ACT. Holcomb is hoping to add a new provision that adds a work requirement so that either you have to be working or you have to be actively searching for work if you are able-bodied under this new plan. That necessitates a big bureaucracy to determine who is able-bodied, who isnt, whether they are sufficiently looking for work, and all these sorts of things that wind up meaning that the program will cost more and cover fewer people. So it is not as though his public health record is shaping up to be any better than his predecessors.

SJ: And that is if Medicaid doesnt get decimated by federal government.

JM: Right. They are talking about cutting the thing in half in a decade. There is significant poverty in this region and people really rely on it as a basic pillar of their lives. If they cut it and people get kicked off it, they are just going to be underwater. There are a lot of people who just cannot work. If they cut Medicaid and these people get kicked off, then they are going to die.

SJ: How can people subscribe to your podcast, support your work, and, if they are in Indiana, join Hoosier Action?

JM: Hoosieraction.org is the website, and you can follow us on Facebook or Twitter Hoosier Action, both cases. I am taking a Twitter hiatus right now, but normally I am @JAMyerson on Twitter and you can follow me there.

Interviews for Resistance is a project of Sarah Jaffe, with assistance from Laura Feuillebois and support from the Nation Institute. It is also available as a podcast on iTunes. Not to be reprinted without permission.

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Organizing in Mike Pence Country - BillMoyers.com

Vice President Mike Pence struck an optimistic tone Monday to say "we are close" to getting a deal on healthcare.

"Every Republican in the House and the Senate as well as this administration promised the American people we would repeal and replace Obamacare," Pence said on conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham's radio show. "The Senate is within weeks of being able to deliver on that promise."

Ingraham brought up Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's comments last week in which he said Republicans would have to work with Democrats to fix Obamacare insurance markets if the Senate health bill doesn't get passed.

Pence said a deal needs to happen soon as he believes the law is collapsing.

"We all know that and we are not getting it done," Ingraham responded.

The vice president aimed to gin up support for repealing the law this week as the Senate returns to work on Monday.

"I would tell your millions of listeners that this week is critical," he said. "You want to see Congress repeal and replace Obamacare now is the time to have your voice heard."

Pence's comment comes as the Republicans conference remains at odds over how to approach repeal. Close to 10 senators are opposed to the bill in its current form, making it a nonstarter for a vote as it exists now. Conservatives angry that it doesn't do enough to repeal Obamacare and centrists worried about erasing Medicaid coverage gains.

See the rest here:
Mike Pence: 'We are close' on healthcare - Washington Examiner