Mediaboss Marketing

No one wanted him, the Republican, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said.

Yet in the Republican primary, a startling number of Republican voters did. For months, Republicans had been reviewing internal polling that suggested Mastriano was on track to win 20 percent of the vote or less. He ended up with nearly 44 percent, doubling up on his closest competitor, former Rep. Lou Barletta, while carrying even more moderate Philadelphia and two of its collar counties, Bucks and Montgomery.

It just broke his way, said Joshua Novotney, a Republican lobbyist and former adviser to Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. There was the initial 20 percent or so, Novotney said folks that wanted to re-hash 2020 that was his core. And then there was the rest. The extra 20 or 23 percent that he gained later on, I think these are people that are fed up and didnt want to hear the kind of mainstream song and dance. They dont like whats going on.

When I asked Novotney if Mastriano could expand his support from 44 percent of a primary electorate to a majority of the vote in a general election, he paused. In a normal year, maybe not. But many experienced Republican and Democratic strategists assumed in early 2016 that Trump was not electable, either. He carried Pennsylvania, that year. And between inflation and President Joe Bidens dismal public approval ratings, a measure closely tied to a partys performance in the midterms, the electoral climate for Democrats is even worse this year than it was then.

Id say hes not running against Josh Shapiro, Novotney said. Hes running against Joe Biden, and anythings possible.

Id say hes not running against Joe Shapiro. Hes running against Joe Biden, and anythings possible.

Joshua Novotney, Republican lobbyist

Charlie Gerow, a Republican strategist who ran for governor and finished far back in the field, said Mastrianos appeal is pretty clear. Its the people that are really angry with whats going on in our country, our state, our society, our neighborhoods, he said. Theyre pissed off they have to pay five bucks a gallon for gas, that if they can find the groceries they want, they have to pay through the nose for them, and they dont like whats going on in our schools, and they want change.

Now that they have Mastriano, he said, Im reminded of the old adage, Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.

In rural Pennsylvania, where Lets Go Brandon, Fuck Biden and Trump 2024 signs fill the landscape, it seems possible. And on social media, where Mastriano developed much of his following filming himself speaking to his supporters online it seems like providence.

Sitting in front of an American flag, a ring light visible in the reflection of his glasses, Mastriano addresses his supporters as he would his friends: Hello Matt and Karen Hey, Steve, good morning Liz, good to see you. Hello, Rachel.

In return, he gets comments like these:

We WILL take back our state with Gods grace.

God is GREAT.

He was appointed by God.

Doug has Gods [sic] blessing! Good wins over evil!

Glory to God!

Incredible victory in Jesus!!!

Carl Fogliani, a Republican strategist based in Pittsburgh, described Mastrianos campaign as like the tea party plus Trump plus the Grateful Dead all wrapped into one.

Christopher Nicholas, a longtime Republican consultant based in Harrisburg, called it just a different vibe.

One Republican familiar with the campaign, granted anonymity to speak candidly, told me, Hes like Jim Jones in Guyana.

If everything goes right for Mastriano and wrong for Democrats in November, Mastriano by this time next year could be governor, overseeing one of the most pivotal swing states in the country when the next presidential election is held, in 2024.

The rest is here:
'Comes Across as a Cult Guy': The Pennsylvania Candidate Freaking Out Both the Left and the Right - POLITICO

As the midterm elections draw nearer, a central conservative narrative is coming into sharp focus: President Biden and the Democratic-controlled Congress have made a mess of the American economy. Republicans see pure political gold in this years slow-motion stock market crash, which seems to be accelerating at the perfect time for a party seeking to regain control of Congress in the fall.

The National Republican Congressional Committee in a tweet last month quipped that the Democratic House agenda includes a tanking stock market. Conservatives have been highlighting a video clip from 2020 in which President Donald Trump warned about a Biden presidency, If hes elected, the stock market will crash. The right-wing pundit Sean Hannitys blog featured the clip under the headline Trump Was Right.

But the narrative pinning blame for the economys woes squarely on Democrats shoulders elides the true culprit: the Federal Reserve. The financial earthquakes of 2022 trace their origin to underground pressures the Fed has been steadily creating for over a decade.

It started back in 2010, when the Fed embarked on the unprecedented and experimental path of using its power to create money as a primary engine of American economic growth. To put it simply, the Fed created years of supereasy money, with short-term interest rates held near zero while it pumped trillions of dollars into the banking system. One way to understand the scale of these programs is to measure the size of the Feds balance sheet. The balance sheet was about $900 billion in mid-2008, before the financial market crash. It rose to $4.5 trillion in 2015 and is just short of $9 trillion today.

All of this easy money had a distinct impact on our financial system: It incentivized investors to push their money into ever riskier bets. Wall Street types coined a term for this effect: search for yield. What that means is the Fed pushed a lot of money into a system that was searching for assets to buy that might, in return, provide a decent profit, or yield. So money poured into relatively risky assets like technology stocks, corporate junk debt, commercial real estate bonds and even cryptocurrencies and nonfungible tokens, or NFTs. This drove the prices of those risky assets higher, drawing in yet more investment.

The Fed has steadily inflated stock prices over the past decade by keeping interest rates extremely low and buying up bonds through a program called quantitative easing which has the effect of pushing new cash into asset markets and driving up prices. The Fed then supercharged those stock prices after the pandemic meltdown of 2020 by pumping trillions into the banking system. It was the Fed that primarily dropped the ball on addressing inflation in 2021, missing the opportunity to act quickly and effectively as the Fed chairman, Jerome Powell, reassured the public that inflation was likely to be merely transitory even as it gained steam. And its the Fed that is playing a frantic game of financial catch-up, hiking rates quickly and precipitating a wrenching market correction.

So now the bill is coming due. Unexpectedly high inflation running at the hottest levels in four decades is forcing the Fed to do what it has avoided doing for years: tighten the money supply quickly and forcefully. Last month the Fed raised short-term rates by half a percentage point, the largest single rate hike since 2000. The aggressiveness of the move signaled that the Fed could take similarly dramatic measures again this year.

A sobering realization is now unfolding on Wall Street. The decade of supereasy money is likely over. Because of inflations impact, the Fed likely wont be able to turn on the money spigots at will if asset prices collapse. This is the driving force behind falling stock prices and why the end of the collapse is probably not yet in sight. The reality of a higher-interest-rate world is working its way through the corridors of Wall Street and will likely topple more fragile structures before its all over.

After the stock and bond markets adjust downward, for example, investors must evaluate the true value of other fragile towers of risky assets, like corporate junk debt. The enormous market for corporate debt began to collapse in 2020, but the Fed stopped the carnage by directly bailing out junk debt for the first time. This didnt just save the corporate debt market but also added fuel to it, helping since 2021 to inflate bond prices. Now those bonds will have to be repriced in light of higher interest rates, and history indicates that their prices will not go up.

And while the Fed is a prime driver of this years volatility, the central bank continues to evade public accountability for it.

Just last month, for instance, the Senate confirmed Mr. Powell to serve another four-year term as Fed chairman. The vote more than four to one in favor reflects the amazingly high level of bipartisan support that Mr. Powell enjoys. The president, at a White House meeting in May, presented Mr. Powell as an ally in the fight against inflation rather than the culprit for much of this years financial market volatility. My plan is to address inflation. It starts with a simple proposition: Respect the Fed and respect the Feds independence, the president said.

This leaves the field open for the Republican Party to pin the blame for Wall Streets woes on the Democratic Partys inaction. As Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, phrased it on Twitter recently, Your 401k misses President Trump. This almost certainly presages a Republican line of attack over the summer and fall. It wont matter that this rhetoric is the opposite of Mr. Trumps in 2018 and 2019, when the Fed was tightening and causing markets to teeter. Back then he attacked Mr. Powell on Twitter and pressured the Fed chairman to cut interest rates even though the economy was growing. (The Fed complied in the summer of 2019.) But things are different now. Mr. Biden is in office, and the Feds tightening paves a clear pathway for the Republican Party to claim majorities in the House and Senate.

Republicans have also homed in on Mr. Bidens $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, meant to mitigate the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, as a cause for runaway inflation. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen rejected that, noting in testimony before members of Congress: Were seeing high inflation in almost all of the developed countries around the world. And they have very different fiscal policies. So it cant be the case that the bulk of the inflation that were experiencing reflects the impact of the American Rescue Plan.

Democrats would be wise to point to the source of the problem: a decade of easy money policies at the Fed, not from anything done at the White House or in Congress over the past year and a half.

The real tragedy is that this falls elections might reinforce the very dynamics that created the problem in the first place. During the 2010s, Congress fell into a state of dysfunction and paralysis at the very moment its economic policymaking power was needed most. It should be viewed as no coincidence that the Fed announced that it would intensify its experiments in quantitative easing on Nov. 3, 2010, the day after members of the Tea Party movement were swept into power in the House. The Fed was seen as the only federal agency equipped to forcefully drive economic growth as Congress relegated itself to the sidelines.

With prices for gas, food and other goods still on the rise and the stock market in a state of flux, there may still be considerable pain ahead for consumers. But Americans shouldnt fall for simplistic rhetoric that blames this all on Mr. Biden. More than a decade of monetary policy brought us to this moment, not 17 months of Democratic control in Washington. Voters should be cleareyed about the cause of this economic chaos and vote for the party they think can best lead us out of it.

Christopher Leonard (@CLeonardNews) is the author, most recently, of The Lords of Easy Money: How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy and the executive director of the Watchdog Writers Group at the Missouri School of Journalism.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. Wed like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And heres our email: letters@nytimes.com.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.

See the original post:
Opinion | If You Must Point Fingers on Inflation, Heres Where to Point Them - The New York Times

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) U.S. Senate candidate Becky Edwards in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, May 10, 2022.

By Susan Howe | Special to The Tribune

| June 9, 2022, 6:38 p.m.

At the funeral of Sen. Orrin Hatch, we were reminded of what an effective senator he had been, passing over 1,300 bills, more than any other senator in U.S. history. Before this years primary election, then, it seems useful to compare Hatch with Mike Lee and Becky Edwards, both Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate.

Former Oregon Sen. Gordon H. Smith explained what made Hatch such an effective legislator. According to Smith, Hatch began his career by learning how the Senate worked so that he could participate effectively. He grew to understand that legislating required hard, painstaking work and the building of trust. He never held a grudge or considered senators of the other party to be enemies. Rather, he sought to accommodate perspectives different from his own and worked to find the commonsense center that is necessary to the making of law, not just noise, in the United States Senate.

How does Sen. Mike Lee, the incumbent in this years race, compare to Hatch? Lee entered the Senate as part of the Tea Party movement, with the express purpose of disrupting the legislative process by refusing to cooperate not only with the other party but with his own party leaders. Consequently, in 12 years he has passed only four bills, two of which were to rename buildings.

Lee has absolutely refused to compromise in passing legislation for America. He was the only senator to vote against the ALS Disability Insurance Access Act, the Opioid Crisis Response Act and Americas Water Infrastructure Act. He also voted not to pass the Violence Against Women Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act. Furthermore, he led the suicide caucus, which shut down the federal government for 16 days, achieving essentially nothing but costing the American people $24 billion.

Recently released emails between Lee and Mark Meadows, Donald Trumps former chief of staff, prove that Lee has always been part of the Trump machine. Trump regularly insults and belittles even his own colleagues, not to mention Democratic lawmakers. The resultant hostility has led to complete dysfunction in Congress, which is failing to do the work the American people need it to do that is, compromise to pass laws that will provide solutions for the serious problems facing the country.

During the same period in which Lee was obstructing the work of the U.S. Senate, Becky Edwards was hard at work in the Utah House of Representatives, implementing solutions to Utah problems. In the mold of Hatch, she built a coalition among both Republicans and Democrats to pass HCR007, the first legislation in a red state acknowledging climate change. This resolution then led to a state-funded initiative to create the Utah Roadmap for clean air and climate solutions, as well as the Utah Climate and Clean Air Compact.

Edwards was equally effective in working for more affordable housing, less expensive health care, safe and affordable childcare, and economic development in Utah.

Which of these two Republican Lawmakers Lee or Edwards is more like Hatch? Which will be the better senator for the state of Utah in the next six years? As the old saying goes, we cant keep doing the same thing over and over and expect different results. We know what we will get if we reelect Mike Lee the same obstructionist efforts weve seen in the past 12 years. To the contrary, Becky Edwards has shown, through her record, that she will identify problems, form coalitions with other colleagues, and achieve solutions.

It is time to change directions by electing Becky Edwards to the U.S. Senate. She is much more like Senator Hatch, who, as Oregon Sen. Smith said, served as a model for what politics must again become if our system is to function well and our democracy is to prosper.

Susan Howe is the associate editor of BYU Studies and one of the editors responsible for the current issue, The Restored Gospel and Good Government. This article does not represent the views of BYU Studies; its ideas are entirely those of the author.

View original post here:
Utah's Sen. Hatch set an example for effective government that Becky Edwards can follow. - Salt Lake Tribune

As the Jan. 6 committee hearings begin in prime time, the American people will finally have the chance to learn the truth behind one of the darkest days in our nations history. Theyll hear the select committee make its case that former President Donald Trump and his alliesthrough election fraud lies and outright encouragement of violence sought to overturn not just the results of the 2020 election, but American democracy itself.

What they likely wont hear is that this assault on our democracy has been going on for years. Trump and his followers may have taken things to a violent extreme on Jan. 6, but their goals are consistent with over a decade of work by far-right billionaires and legislators seeking to shift America from a democracy to an outright oligarchy.

Through the immense influence their wealth has afforded them in a political system that treats money as speech, a small number of ultra-wealthy Americans have reshaped our society and government to reflect their own personal preferences, rather than the will of the people. We saw this on Jan. 6, when a few ultra-rich donors were the ones that indirectly enabled Trump and his allies.

The Save America rally at the White House Ellipse was for all intents and purposes the staging ground for the attack on the Capitol. There are reports that as much as$3 millionwas raised to stage the rally, with most of the funding coming from a handful of dark money groups the Rule of Law Defense Fund, the Tea Party Express, Turning Point, andWomen for America First which themselves were financed by a few ultra-wealthy donors. One of the most notable donors was Publix supermarket heiressJulie Jenkins Fancelli, who gave a whopping $650,000 to these groups just eight days before the event.

The Ellipse rally would not have happened were it not for the $3 million in funding that organizers received. The funding was necessary to pay for therobocallsthat invited the thousands of patriots that attended the event. It was necessary to pay for the events elaborate staging, video and sound equipment. It was necessary to pay for VIP tents, refreshments andhotel rooms. And yes, it was even necessary to pay forport-a-potties.

The rally gave President Trump and his far-right friends an incredible platform with which to spew their election lies and hate speech. In all likelihood, the riot that erupted two miles away at the Capitol would not have happened without it. Taking things a step further, we can say that the riot would not have happened were it not for the dark money groups and ultra-wealthy donors that bankrolled the rally, almost all of whom were able to do so anonymously thanks to weak campaign finance and disclosure laws.

Recent Supreme Court decisions have only made it easier for the ultra-rich to wage successful battles against our democracy. Since the infamous 2010Citizens Unitedruling, billionaire donors have pourednearly 40 times moremoney into federal elections upping their spending from $31 million in 2010 to a dizzying $1.2 billion in 2020 andthe number of Super PACs and dark money groupshas exploded. In fact, in 2020 nearlyone in every 10 dollars spent on the election was spent by a billionaire, despite that group consisting of less than 0.01 percent of donors. More recent rulings, most notablyFEC vs. Ted Cruz for Senatewhich made it drastically easier for wealthy individuals to (legally) bribe candidates, have only made things worse.

Contrary to what the conservative justices on the Supreme Court would have you believe, money isnotspeech. Instead, money is power. All of us have the opportunity to contribute to our favored political causes and campaigns and make our voices heard, but only the rich have the financial power to really make use of that opportunity. This drowns out the speech of everyone else in America and is unfair and undemocratic. And as we saw on Jan. 6, the consequences of this unbridled power can be dire.

The Capitol assault made clear the urgent need to combat election misinformation and hate speech in America. But it also underscored the equally urgent need to reform our political system to dilute the power and influence of big money. Only then will we be able to turn the volume down on the massive megaphones that allow rich and powerful political actors like Trump to spew their venom in the first place.

Ron Guillot is the vice president of sales at HeartBeam and an investor in equities, options and direct start-ups. He is a member of the Patriotic Millionaires.

View original post here:
What Jan. 6 and far-right billionaires have in common - The Hill

Country

United States of AmericaUS Virgin IslandsUnited States Minor Outlying IslandsCanadaMexico, United Mexican StatesBahamas, Commonwealth of theCuba, Republic ofDominican RepublicHaiti, Republic ofJamaicaAfghanistanAlbania, People's Socialist Republic ofAlgeria, People's Democratic Republic ofAmerican SamoaAndorra, Principality ofAngola, Republic ofAnguillaAntarctica (the territory South of 60 deg S)Antigua and BarbudaArgentina, Argentine RepublicArmeniaArubaAustralia, Commonwealth ofAustria, Republic ofAzerbaijan, Republic ofBahrain, Kingdom ofBangladesh, People's Republic ofBarbadosBelarusBelgium, Kingdom ofBelizeBenin, People's Republic ofBermudaBhutan, Kingdom ofBolivia, Republic ofBosnia and HerzegovinaBotswana, Republic ofBouvet Island (Bouvetoya)Brazil, Federative Republic ofBritish Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos Archipelago)British Virgin IslandsBrunei DarussalamBulgaria, People's Republic ofBurkina FasoBurundi, Republic ofCambodia, Kingdom ofCameroon, United Republic ofCape Verde, Republic ofCayman IslandsCentral African RepublicChad, Republic ofChile, Republic ofChina, People's Republic ofChristmas IslandCocos (Keeling) IslandsColombia, Republic ofComoros, Union of theCongo, Democratic Republic ofCongo, People's Republic ofCook IslandsCosta Rica, Republic ofCote D'Ivoire, Ivory Coast, Republic of theCyprus, Republic ofCzech RepublicDenmark, Kingdom ofDjibouti, Republic ofDominica, Commonwealth ofEcuador, Republic ofEgypt, Arab Republic ofEl Salvador, Republic ofEquatorial Guinea, Republic ofEritreaEstoniaEthiopiaFaeroe IslandsFalkland Islands (Malvinas)Fiji, Republic of the Fiji IslandsFinland, Republic ofFrance, French RepublicFrench GuianaFrench PolynesiaFrench Southern TerritoriesGabon, Gabonese RepublicGambia, Republic of theGeorgiaGermanyGhana, Republic ofGibraltarGreece, Hellenic RepublicGreenlandGrenadaGuadaloupeGuamGuatemala, Republic ofGuinea, RevolutionaryPeople's Rep'c ofGuinea-Bissau, Republic ofGuyana, Republic ofHeard and McDonald IslandsHoly See (Vatican City State)Honduras, Republic ofHong Kong, Special Administrative Region of ChinaHrvatska (Croatia)Hungary, Hungarian People's RepublicIceland, Republic ofIndia, Republic ofIndonesia, Republic ofIran, Islamic Republic ofIraq, Republic ofIrelandIsrael, State ofItaly, Italian RepublicJapanJordan, Hashemite Kingdom ofKazakhstan, Republic ofKenya, Republic ofKiribati, Republic ofKorea, Democratic People's Republic ofKorea, Republic ofKuwait, State ofKyrgyz RepublicLao People's Democratic RepublicLatviaLebanon, Lebanese RepublicLesotho, Kingdom ofLiberia, Republic ofLibyan Arab JamahiriyaLiechtenstein, Principality ofLithuaniaLuxembourg, Grand Duchy ofMacao, Special Administrative Region of ChinaMacedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic ofMadagascar, Republic ofMalawi, Republic ofMalaysiaMaldives, Republic ofMali, Republic ofMalta, Republic ofMarshall IslandsMartiniqueMauritania, Islamic Republic ofMauritiusMayotteMicronesia, Federated States ofMoldova, Republic ofMonaco, Principality ofMongolia, Mongolian People's RepublicMontserratMorocco, Kingdom ofMozambique, People's Republic ofMyanmarNamibiaNauru, Republic ofNepal, Kingdom ofNetherlands AntillesNetherlands, Kingdom of theNew CaledoniaNew ZealandNicaragua, Republic ofNiger, Republic of theNigeria, Federal Republic ofNiue, Republic ofNorfolk IslandNorthern Mariana IslandsNorway, Kingdom ofOman, Sultanate ofPakistan, Islamic Republic ofPalauPalestinian Territory, OccupiedPanama, Republic ofPapua New GuineaParaguay, Republic ofPeru, Republic ofPhilippines, Republic of thePitcairn IslandPoland, Polish People's RepublicPortugal, Portuguese RepublicPuerto RicoQatar, State ofReunionRomania, Socialist Republic ofRussian FederationRwanda, Rwandese RepublicSamoa, Independent State ofSan Marino, Republic ofSao Tome and Principe, Democratic Republic ofSaudi Arabia, Kingdom ofSenegal, Republic ofSerbia and MontenegroSeychelles, Republic ofSierra Leone, Republic ofSingapore, Republic ofSlovakia (Slovak Republic)SloveniaSolomon IslandsSomalia, Somali RepublicSouth Africa, Republic ofSouth Georgia and the South Sandwich IslandsSpain, Spanish StateSri Lanka, Democratic Socialist Republic ofSt. HelenaSt. Kitts and NevisSt. LuciaSt. Pierre and MiquelonSt. Vincent and the GrenadinesSudan, Democratic Republic of theSuriname, Republic ofSvalbard & Jan Mayen IslandsSwaziland, Kingdom ofSweden, Kingdom ofSwitzerland, Swiss ConfederationSyrian Arab RepublicTaiwan, Province of ChinaTajikistanTanzania, United Republic ofThailand, Kingdom ofTimor-Leste, Democratic Republic ofTogo, Togolese RepublicTokelau (Tokelau Islands)Tonga, Kingdom ofTrinidad and Tobago, Republic ofTunisia, Republic ofTurkey, Republic ofTurkmenistanTurks and Caicos IslandsTuvaluUganda, Republic ofUkraineUnited Arab EmiratesUnited Kingdom of Great Britain & N. IrelandUruguay, Eastern Republic ofUzbekistanVanuatuVenezuela, Bolivarian Republic ofViet Nam, Socialist Republic ofWallis and Futuna IslandsWestern SaharaYemenZambia, Republic ofZimbabwe

Visit link:
Festival president: 'It felt like Tea Party weekend again' - The Star Democrat