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The Tap: Tuesday, October 4, 2016

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The Tap covered election news, public policy, and other noteworthy events from February 2016 to February 2022.

Review of the day

The excerpts below were compiled from issue #37 of The Tap, which was published on October 8, 2016. READ THE FULL VERSION HERE.

Federal

  • On Tuesday, October 4, the lone vice presidential debate of 2016 between Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine (D) and Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R) took place. The debate was held in Virginia, Kaine’s home state, and was moderated by Elaine Quijano of CBS News. Kaine and Pence talked job creation, immigration, terrorism, gun control, race relations, Russia, Syria, crime and justice, abortion, and their qualifications to assume the presidency. They also had a lot to say about each other’s running mates. The debate attracted about 37 million viewers on average, considerably less than the 84 million who tuned in to the first presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump on September 26. Viewership of the 2016 VP debate was in fact the lowest for a VP matchup since 2000, when 29 million watched the debate between Joe Lieberman (D) and Dick Cheney (R). Ballotpedia’s coverage of the 2016 vice presidential debate included an Insiders Poll, statistical analysis, and commentary from Karlyn Bowman of the American Enterprise Institute and Ballotpedia Senior Writer Jim Barnes.
    • Insiders Poll: Ballotpedia surveyed more than 100 Democratic and Republican strategists, pollsters, media consultants, activists, lobbyists, and allied interest group operatives after the conclusion of the October 4 face-off, finding that an overwhelming majority of Republican Insiders and almost a quarter of the Democrats felt that the Indiana governor was the debate's “biggest winner.” Among the 59 Republican Insiders who responded to the survey, 90 percent said that Pence had prevailed. The 54 Democratic Insiders who responded were more divided: Nearly half said that Kaine had bested Pence, but a third called the debate a draw and nearly one-fourth said that Pence had done a better job than Kaine, whose biggest drawback in the encounter may have been the number of times he interrupted Pence in his zeal to press his case against Trump.
    • Commentary: Karlyn Bowman, an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote that Pence was “relaxed and in control” throughout the debate, while Kaine was “loaded for bear” and “came off as the smartest kid in class.” Of Pence, Bowman added, “He didn’t defend the GOP standard bearer, Donald Trump, but Pence did what he needed to do carefully by turning the points back to Clinton’s actions with great skill. … If last night’s performance was an indication, and if the Hoosier Republican he decides to reach for the GOP presidential nomination four years from now, he will be a formidable contender.” Barnes noted that, historically, vice presidential debates have had little impact on presidential races. “If you look at the history of presidential debates, you can’t expect that Indiana Republican Gov. Mike Pence's solid performance over Democrat Tim Kaine in the vice presidential debate at Longwood University on October 4 is going to shake up the main contest between his running mate, Donald Trump, and Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee. Success on the understudies’ debate stage, or lack thereof, hasn’t moved the needle in the polls in past presidential elections,” said Barnes.
    • Stats: Pence and Kaine both had about the same amount to say at the debate—roughly 7,800 words each. Kaine’s most frequently used word was “Trump,” which he said 84 times. He said “Donald” 71 times and “Hillary” 45 times. Pence’s most frequently used word was “Clinton,” which he said 62 times. Pence said “Hillary” 51 times and “Trump” 50 times. Russia was one the night’s biggest topics. The country was mentioned 47 times, while its leader, Vladimir Putin, was mentioned 25 times.
  • What Clinton and Trump had to say about the debate:
    • Clinton: At the start of the debate, Clinton tweeted, “Lucky to have a partner like @TimKaine who stood up for our shared vision tonight—instead of trying to deny it.” According to The Washington Post, Clinton spoke with Kaine on the phone on Wednesday morning to congratulate him.
    • Trump: Trump live-tweeted the debate. Near the end of the event, he tweeted, “Mike Pence won big. We should all be proud of Mike!” The day after, at a rally in Nevada, Trump said, “Mike Pence did an incredible job, and I’m getting a lot of credit because that’s really my first so-called choice. That was my first hire, as we would say in Las Vegas. And I’ll tell you, he’s a good one. He was phenomenal. He was cool. He was smart. He was — I mean, you just take a look at him — he was meant to be doing what he’s doing and we are very, very proud of Gov. Mike Pence.”
  • What Bill Weld, the Libertarian Party vice presidential nominee, and Ajamu Baraka, the Green Party nominee, had to say about the debate:
    • Weld took to social media during and after the debate. On Twitter, he critiqued both candidates and their running mates. After the debate, he said in a Facebook post, “It was a good debate. Wish I had been there. Unfortunately, there was a gaping ideological void left between two candidates representing polarizing tickets.”
    • Baraka participated in Democracy Now’s “Expanding the Debate” series on Tuesday night, answering the same questions posed to Kaine and Pence.
  • Gary Johnson, addressing some of his past comments on foreign policy, said in an interview on MSNBC, “The fact that somebody can dot the I’s and cross the T’s on a foreign leader or a geographic location then allows them to put our military in harm's way. We elect people who can dot the I’s and cross the T’s on these names and geographic locations, as opposed to the underlying philosophy, which is, let's stop getting involved in these regime changes.” In two different interviews on MSNBC last month, Johnson attracted criticism for his knowledge of foreign policy issues. In one interview, when asked to name a foreign leader whom he respects, Johnson said, “I’m having a brain freeze.” In another interview, when asked how he would deal with the refugee crisis in the Syrian city of Aleppo, Johnson responded, “What is Aleppo?”
  • The Boston Globe reports that former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld, Johnson’s running mate, “plans to focus exclusively on blasting Donald Trump over the next five weeks, a strategic pivot aimed at denying Trump the White House and giving himself a key role in helping to rebuild the GOP.” Regarding Trump, Weld said to the Globe, “I think Mr. Trump’s proposals in the foreign policy area, including nuclear proliferation, tariffs, and free trade, would be so hurtful, domestically and in the world, that he has my full attention. … I have had in mind all along trying to get the Donald into third place, and with some tugging and hauling, we might get there.” Commenting on the future of the Republican Party, Weld said, “Maybe somebody is going to come up with a new playbook, and I don’t know who it’s going to be, but it would be fun to participate.” According to the Globe, “Weld insisted he and Johnson remain ‘happy warriors’ and said Johnson is fully supportive of his anti-Trump campaign.”
    • Weld responded to the Globe’s story in a Facebook post. He said, “The story did not, unfortunately, focus on my assurance that I believe Gary Johnson to be the best candidate for President, and that I would not be on the ticket with him if that were not the case. My Libertarian hat is firmly planted on my head, and will remain there. … Let there be no doubt. I am the Libertarian nominee for Vice-President, proudly running with Gov. Gary Johnson.”
  • Judge Reggie Walton of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia rejected a lawsuit filed by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch for a draft criminal indictment of Hillary Clinton from the Whitewater investigation in the 1990s. Walton wrote that Clinton was a private citizen at the time and had a "substantial privacy interest" that outweighed any public interest in the document. "It's difficult to imagine how a person running for the presidency enjoys a form of ‘privacy’ concerning their near-indictment on criminal charges that somehow supersedes the public's right to know,” said Judicial Watch spokesman Chris Farrell.
  • The U.S. Supreme Court heard argument in two cases.
  • In Bravo-Fernandez v. United States, the court examined the limits of double jeopardy protection. Juan Bravo-Fernandez and an accomplice were convicted of bribery in a trial, but those charges were vacated on appeal. They were also acquitted in the same trial of Travel Act and conspiracy violations. Bravo-Fernandez said that he cannot be retried on bribery charges because a jury acquitted him on related offenses in an earlier trial and, in acquitting him on those charges, the jury "necessarily found that the government failed to prove issues that the government would have to relitigate in ... new prosecutions,” which he argued would violate the Fifth Amendment.
  • In Shaw v. United States, the court reviewed whether a defendant can be guilty of committing bank fraud under U.S. law if financial institutions affected by the fraud are not the defendant’s intended victims. Federal law provides that bank fraud is committed when a party “knowingly executes, or attempts to execute, a scheme or artifice to defraud a financial institution." Shaw argued that because the financial institution was not his primary target for the fraud, he could not have knowingly executed a scheme to defraud the bank.
  • In 2015, Yahoo complied with an order directing the company to search all users’ incoming emails for a digital signature thought to be used by agents of a foreign terrorist organization. The order came from a judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. According to Reuters, “Some surveillance experts said this represents the first case to surface of a U.S. Internet company agreeing to an intelligence agency's request by searching all arriving messages, as opposed to examining stored messages or scanning a small number of accounts in real time.”
  • Army Staff Sgt. Adam S. Thomas, a highly decorated 31-year-old special forces soldier, died after an improvised explosive device blast in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar Province. Thomas was supporting Operation Freedom’s Sentinel, a mission to assist and advise Afghan forces. Since Operation Freedom’s Sentinel commenced on January 1, 2015, there have been 24 military casualties and 124 wounded in action.

State

  • The South Carolina Department of Insurance announced that only one insurance company, BlueCross BlueShield, would be selling plans on the state’s health insurance exchange in 2017. Aetna and UnitedHealthcare decided earlier in 2016 to withdraw from South Carolina’s exchange. The department’s announcement came after BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina decided to pull its subsidiary, BlueChoice, off the exchange “to save money by pursuing a ‘one-company approach.’” A spokeswoman for BlueCross BlueShield declined to speculate whether it would continue to sell exchange plans in 2018. Consumers can also purchase plans off the exchange, where they may have more choices but would not receive federal subsidies to cover the cost of premiums. South Carolina is one of five states that will have a single insurer offering exchange plans statewide in 2017.
  • Georgia Attorney General Samuel Olens (R) interviewed for the position of president at Kennesaw State University. On October 3, 2016, University System of Georgia Chancellor Hank Huckaby confirmed after months of speculation that Olens was being considered for the position. The interview took place in a closed-door meeting, and the hiring committee will vote on Olens' candidacy on October 12, 2016. Georgia is one of 43 states that directly elects its attorney general; however, Olens’ current term does not expire until 2018. If he is selected for the position at Kennesaw State, a replacement attorney general would be appointed by Governor Nathan Deal (R) to serve the remainder of Olens’ term. Randy Evans, a personal lawyer for Deal and co-chair of the governor's judicial selection committee, speculated to the Daily Report that Deal might nominate Department of Economic Development commissioner Chris Carr to replace Olens if the attorney general seat becomes vacant. Deal appointed Carr to his current position in November 2013; he previously served as chief of staff to U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson (R). Georgia is one of 23 Republican trifectas. Across the country, Republicans control 27 of the 50 attorney general seats.

Local

  • Alaska held general elections for six school board seats across two of the state’s largest school districts. Three seats were up for election on both the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District and the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District. One other district, the Anchorage School District, already held elections in April. These three districts had an enrollment of 80,048 K-12 students during the 2013-2014 school year, which was 60.8 percent of all public school students in the state.
  • In Detroit, opponents of a proposed transportation millage launched an organized campaign against the tax increase. Detroit-area voters will decide on a 1.2-mill, 20-year Regional Transit Authority plan (RTA) on November 8, 2016. The anti-tax opposition group No Massive Transit Tax (NMTT) launched the first organized campaign against the proposed millage. The coalition group is supported by the Michigan Taxpayers Alliance and the Wayne County Taxpayers Association. Leon Drolet, treasurer of NMTT, said the RTA plan is outdated and the group argued the millage is a large tax hike on top of what residents already pay through gas taxes, vehicle registration fees, and the Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority. NMTT suggested that it would be cheaper to lease a vehicle for each of the region’s mass-transit users than to fund the RTA plan. The Vote Yes for Regional Transit campaign for the millage increase said the plan was moderate and would cost the average homeowner $95 per year. It would cost $120 per $100,000 of property valuation. The Ford Company, the Lear Corporation, and DTE Energy came out in support of the RTA tax. Detroit is the largest city in Michigan and the 18th-largest city in the U.S. by population.
  • The New York City Police Department (NYPD) announced that Seattle-based Vievu L.L.C. will provide the department with up to 5,000 body cameras over the next five years. In 2013, a federal judge found NYPD’s stop-and-frisk practices to be unconstitutional and ordered that at least five of the city’s precincts had to establish a pilot program using body cameras. An investigation conducted by The New York Times found that none of the approximately 35,000 police officers in the city were wearing a body camera in 2016. One pilot program—involving 54 officers—was created, but it concluded in March 2016 with no further action by the police department. The newspaper also found that the majority of the NYPD’s patrol vehicles do not have dashboard cameras. Several large American cities have implemented large numbers of body cameras and dashboard cameras as standard practice. In Chicago, 2,000 body cameras are in use, and 1,160 are in use in Los Angeles. Other cities, such as Charlotte, Las Vegas, and Houston, also provide officers with body cameras. NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) argued that procuring and using body camera technology for the largest police force in the U.S. takes time. Although the NYPD has chosen a company to provide it with body cameras, no contract has been signed. New York City is the largest city in the U.S. by population.
      • In September, the Kansas City Police Department began a test of a police body camera system. The three-month test will outfit 25 officers with cameras that must be turned on manually. The test is designed to see how footage would be stored and whether the current body camera equipment could be implemented more widely. Police chief Darryl Forté said in a statement that the test would be important because a number of agencies nationwide had promised to roll out body camera programs but had been forced to recall them after seeing the costs associated with video storage. Kansas City is the 37th-largest city in the country by population and the largest in Missouri.
  • The U.S. Department of Education (DOE) ordered the Texas Education Agency (TEA) to abolish an 8.5-percent special education cap. The DOE Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) sent a letter to Texas Commissioner of Education Mike Morath telling the state to discontinue the use of the 8.5-percent cap, to ensure that school districts identify any students in need of special services, and to determine which districts might have refused to act on special education referrals in the past. The state must also inform all school districts that they cannot deny or delay referrals to artificially lower special education enrollment numbers. The TEA must submit a letter to the DOE outlining the steps it will take to meet these requirements within 30 days. During the 2013-2014 school year, Texas had 5,077,659 students enrolled in a total of 8,731 schools in 1,254 school districts.
    • Concerns about Texas’ compliance with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act were raised after an investigation by the Houston Chronicle found the state had a special education enrollment rate that was nearly half of the national average. After the release of the report, the superintendents of two of Texas’ largest school districts called on Morath to abolish special education enrollment targets. Superintendent Michael Hinojosa of the Dallas ISD and Superintendent Pedro Martinez of the San Antonio ISD said that state-imposed penalties were keeping thousands of students out of special education programs once those programs had reached their planned enrollment figures. The TEA officials responded to the concern saying that the target was only in place to ensure school districts were providing services to students who needed them and that some districts had erroneously identified students as having special needs in the past.

Preview of the day

The excerpts below were compiled from issue #36 of The Tap, which was published on October 1, 2016. READ THE FULL VERSION HERE.

Federal

  • The one and only vice presidential debate of the 2016 general election season will take place Tuesday night. Ballotpedia’s coverage will include an Insiders Poll and statistical analysis. Here is everything you need to know before the action starts:
    • Start time is 9 pm Eastern Time. Like the first presidential debate on September 26, it will run 90 minutes, commercial-free.
    • The participants will be Tim Kaine (D) and Mike Pence (R). The Commission on Presidential Debates, which oversees the general election debates, announced on September 16, 2016, that Bill Weld, the 2016 Libertarian Party nominee for vice president, and Ajamu Baraka, the 2016 Green Party nominee for vice president, were not invited to attend the debate because they did not satisfy the CPD's criteria for inclusion.
    • The debate will take place at Longwood University in Virginia, Tim Kaine’s home state and a crucial battleground state in the 2016 presidential election.
    • Elaine Quijano of CBS News will be moderating. She is the first Asian American to moderate a general election debate.
    • According to the CPD website, "The debate will be divided into nine time segments of approximately 10 minutes each. The moderator will ask an opening question, after which each candidate will have two minutes to respond. The moderator will use the balance of the time in the segment for a deeper discussion of the topic."
    • Vice presidential debates have been a part of the general election cycle since 1976, but it was not until 1984 that they became regular features. They have tended to garner fewer viewers than the presidential debates. One significant exception is the 2008 vice presidential debate between Joe Biden (D) and Sarah Palin (R), which brought in 69.9 million viewers. The first presidential debate that year had 52.4 million viewers. Learn more here.
    • To help Kaine prepare for the debate, D.C. attorney Robert Barnett is playing the role of Pence in mock debate sessions. Barnett also assisted Hillary Clinton with debate prep in the Democratic primaries by playing the role of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. In past debates, Barnett has also played George H.W. Bush and Dick Cheney. On the Republican side, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is helping Pence prepare for the vice presidential debate by playing the role of Kaine. Walker himself sought the 2016 Republican nomination, but he suspended his campaign in September 2015 and later endorsed Donald Trump. Prior to Trump’s selection of Pence as his running mate, Walker was rumored to have been a potential candidate.
    • See also: Vice presidential debate at Longwood University (October 4, 2016) and Presidential debates (2015-2016)
  • The U.S. Supreme Court will hear argument in two cases.
    • In Bravo-Fernandez v. United States, the court examines the limits of double jeopardy protection. Juan Bravo-Fernandez and an accomplice were convicted of bribery in a trial, but those charges were vacated on appeal. They were also acquitted in the same trial of Travel Act and conspiracy violations. Bravo-Fernandez says that he cannot be retried on bribery charges because a jury acquitted him on related offenses in an earlier trial and, in acquitting him on those charges, the jury "necessarily found that the government failed to prove issues that the government would have to relitigate in ... new prosecutions,” which he believes violates the Fifth Amendment.
    • In Shaw v. United States, the court will review whether a defendant can be guilty of committing bank fraud under U.S. law if financial institutions affected by the fraud are not the defendant’s intended victims. Federal law provides that bank fraud is committed when a party “knowingly executes, or attempts to execute, a scheme or artifice to defraud a financial institution." Shaw argues that because the financial institution was not his primary target for the fraud, he could not have knowingly executed a scheme to defraud the bank.

Local



The Tap covered election news, public policy, and other noteworthy events from February 2016 to February 2022.
March: 21 • 22 • 23 • 24 • 25 • 26 • 27 • 28 • 29 • 30 • 31
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