Aretha Franklin is in hospice care at her home, a source close to the 76-year-old singer told CNN's Don Lemon.
Word of the "Queen of Soul" being gravely ill was first reported by Showbiz 411.
Showbiz 411's Roger Friedman told CNN: "She has a great family, she's surrounded by love, and the world is sending prayers. All further announcements will be made by her family. We just want to send love and prayers."
The soul singer has been dogged by reports of failing health for years and appeared frail in recent photos, but she has kept her struggles private.
In February of 2017, Franklin announced that she would stop touring, but she continued to book concerts. Earlier this year, she canceled a pair of performances, including at the New Orleans Jazz Fest, on doctor's orders, according to Rolling Stone. In 2010, she was forced to cancel to scheduled performances due to fractured ribs and abdominal pain.
Franklin's career spans six decades. She got her start singing gospel music in a Detroit church where her father was the minister. In 1960, she signed with her first major record label. By 1968, Franklin was an established soul chart-topper with hits like "Respect," "Chain of Fools" and "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman."
That same year she was tapped to sing at the memorial service of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. where she performed a stirring rendition of "Precious Lord, Take My Hand."
Franklin was the first woman to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in 1987 -- a year before the Beatles were inducted. In 1994, at age 52, she became the youngest at that time to receive a Kennedy Center Honor.
Franklin has 44 Grammy nominations and 18 wins. She has performed at the inaugurations of three presidents:
Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. President George W. Bush awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005.
Franklin's last album, "A Brand New Me," released in 2017, remixed her vintage vocals with newly recorded arrangements.
Franklin's last known performance was at a private gala for the Elton John AIDS Foundation last November.
~ Correction: This story has been corrected to clearly identify that Aretha Franklin performed at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s memorial service.
JOHN CONYERS IGNORED CLUES IT WAS TIME TO LEAVE OFFICE GRACEFULLY:
GOOD POLITICIANS KNOW HOW TO GET ELECTED & KNOW WHEN IT'S TIME TO LEAVE.
JOHN CONYERS' CONGRESS SEAT IS NOT A MONARCHY:
HIS SEAT BELONGS TO ALL MICHIGAN VOTERS NOT THE CONYERS' FAMILY.
TERM LIMITS
TERM LIMITS
TERM LIMITS
Sources: Politico, CNN, Fox News, Washington Post, YouTube
***** John Conyers Was An Icon. Then He Lost His Way.
It’s time to reckon with the legacy of a man who saw so much and stayed too long.
When, in that brief pillow of time between the Kennedy assassination and the escalation of the war in Vietnam, a 35-year-old John Conyers first ran for Congress, he had a method of connecting with voters—“a pet theory of personality projection,” Simeon Baker wrote in a 1965 profile in Ebony magazine: “Using his good looks as bait and charm as the sticking power, [Conyers] wooed women to support him.” “Sex appeal,” oozed a photo caption in the accompanying spread, was the bachelor’s “greatest asset in winning women’s votes.”
It’s indicative of the era in which the piece was written that Ebony framed Conyers’ political support among women this way despite the fact that the few women Baker includes in the story don’t seem to agree with the depiction. “Sure, he’s good-looking,” said one female supporter, but “what converted him into a winning candidate was his ability to make people feel important.”
“He became a symbol of the new middle-class Negro,” Baker wrote. “He vowed to represent people who are caught between the VIP class of Negro life and the lower class which is dependent on relief, low-income housing, and welfare.”
That John Conyers burned out a long time ago. And this week, any hope that something of the steady glow of a pilot light remained has been extinguished. On Tuesday morning, on the friendly airwaves of a Detroit radio station, Conyers resigned in disgrace following accusations from half a dozen women alleging various forms of sexual harassment, unwanted touching, assault—and the revelation, first reported by BuzzFeed, that his office used taxpayer money to try and cover it up.
It is an ignoble and overdue end to what has been, by any measure, a momentous public life. Conyers’ service in Congress has spanned 10 presidencies and 52 years—he’s been in the House for more than one-fifth of the entire existence of the U.S. Congress. In 1964, he went to Jim Crow Mississippi during Freedom Summer and offered legal representation to black voting-rights activists; one year later, he supported the Voting Rights Act as a member of House of Representatives. He was the only congressman ever endorsed by Martin Luther King Jr., and was a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus. Rosa Parks worked as an aide to him for 23 years. He introduced single-payer health-care legislation long before Bernie Sanders claimed “Medicare for All” as his own. He served on the Judiciary Committee during the Watergate hearings, and was one of the original 20 names on President Richard Nixon’s “enemies list.” He was the top Democrat on the committee two decades later, when a president was impeached for the first time since Reconstruction. He was still on the committee a decade after that, when the nation elected its first black president—another young black attorney whose appeal was, in no small part, his ability to make people feel like they too were part of something larger than themselves. All of this is why House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi called him an “icon” even as she was trying to nudge him into retirement.
Yet even as many black Detroiters saw Conyers as their champion against the elite and powerful few, Conyers—or, perhaps more accurately, those he surrounded himself with—sought to entrench themselves in the VIP class he once scorned. There can be no doubt that Conyers’ ordeal is of his own making—the accusations against him are serious and profoundly disturbing. But the political fallout from his surprising, bizarre nosedive off the national stage this week throws new light on the actions of those he’s depended on for decades, and whose influence has skyrocketed as old age has ravaged him. And in their slipshod attempts to build a Conyers dynasty, they’ve diminished the man who would be its patriarch.
The highlights of Conyers’ long career are, by now, somewhat familiar. But less known, at least nationally, are the lows.
There are, at age 88, natural questions about his mental state; he sometimes seemed confused in House proceedings, and even when he joined Mildred Gaddis’ morning show to resign on Tuesday, the host essentially had to remind him why he’d called in. For decades, the non compos mentis question has hung over Conyers—there was an incident in the early 1990s when he was supposedly found in the very early morning standing in the middle of Livernois Avenue in Detroit, barefoot and waving at cars. It was reportedly routine for staff members to find him in various states of undress—“his closet is in his office,” his former communications director explained to CNN—and at least one former staffer has alleged he showed up to a meeting clad only in underwear. Knowing this, there’s the inevitable question of why his inner circle wouldn’t step in as stewards. The answer, perhaps, is that they were too invested in his success.
There’s his bizarre relationship with his decades-younger wife, Monica, a roving tempest prone to Trumpian outbursts. The couple married in 1990—she’d been an intern in his office a year earlier—when the congressman was 61 and his bride was 25. From the beginning, the couple were dogged by rumors that their's was a marriage of convenience, or that one party was simply taking advantage of the other. Initially, at least, nobody seemed sure who was taking advantage of whom.
In 2005, Monica Conyers was elected to Detroit’s city council largely on the strength of her husband’s name. Her tenure in public office was memorable for its volatility. There was the time she threatened to shoot an aide to the mayor of Detroit; the time she had to be restrained during a city council meeting after an argument broke out and she made fun of another council member’s need for a hearing aid; the time she petulantly addressed city council president Ken Cockrel Jr. as “Shrek,” a “Li'l Marco”-esque jab at Cockrel’s gleaming bald pate and prominent ears; and her encore, a televised argument with an eighth-graderover whether this was or was not an appropriate way for a role model to act.
More damning were her crimes. In 2009, she pleaded guilty to federal charges that she’d accepted bribes from a wastewater-treatment contractor—making her the first Conyers forced from office. Though she’d later try, unsuccessfully, to withdraw her guilty plea, she was sentenced to three years in federal prison. After serving two, she was released into a halfway house, and in 2015, filed for divorce from the congressman, which apparently didn’t take; the couple renewed their vowsin 2016.
Last week, amid a glut of reporting on the assault and harassment allegations against her husband, Monica, once a mainstay of metro Detroit’s nighttime news broadcasts, emerged from the couple’s family home in the city’s University District/Palmer Park neighborhood to ask, angrily and rhetorically, whether the reporters outside would “go and stalk white people’s houses,” or whether “you just come to the black neighborhoods and stalk our houses?”
As the public face of her embattled husband over the past few weeks, she was joined by Sam Riddle, a Detroit political consultant and huckster known throughout the metro region for his attention-grabbing stints on local news shows—and of course, for his role as a top aide to Monica Conyers, where he helped facilitate bribes that landed Conyers in prison. For years, Riddle “seemed to play the role of Clyde Barrow to Monica Conyers’ Bonnie Parker,” Pulitzer-winning journalist Charlie Le Duff wrote in his book, “Detroit: An Autopsy.” In Riddle’s own trial on the bribery charges, federal prosecutors offered a wiretapped 2007 call in which Councilwoman Conyers told Riddle, “You’d better get my loot.” Faced with prosecution in 2009, Monica said she regretted working with Riddle: “If I was smart, I would have listened to my husband, and he never would have worked for me.”
To Michigan politicos, there’s another reason why Riddle’s re-emergence amid the sad coda of Conyers’ career is a flummoxing twist of events, especially given the very specific accusations the congressman has faced: In 2010, Riddle was sentenced to two years in prison after being found guilty of felonious assault and a gun crime after pulling a shotgun on his girlfriend during a domestic dispute. The mind strains to imagine a rationale for hiring someone with such a background to act as your “family spokesperson” under any circumstance, let alone when you’re facing allegations that you’ve assaulted women.
Across Detroit, there are still a great many people who see in Conyers a man who fights for them, a lion in winter. At a hastily organized rally on Monday, a cavalcade of black Detroit’s leaders came out to voice their unwavering support for him. The Rev. Wendell Anthony, the longtime head of Detroit’s chapter of the NAACP, spoke for many when he questioned why Conyers was being held to a different standard than other national politicians accused of sex crimes: “[I]f we’re going to raise this unholy and unlawful guillotine, calling for the head of John Conyers, then in fairness we must begin with the president of the United States.” “For those in the U.S. Congress to call for his resignation is shameful,” thundered Wayne County Executive Warren Evans as Riddle stood behind him. “Until we know what happened, I can’t fathom why a [Nancy] Pelosi or a [Michigan Congressman Dan] Kildee would ask for the resignation of a man who has not been given due process.”
It wasn’t all supposed to end this way. For more than a year, it was an open secret that when Conyers left office, he would be replaced by his great-nephew Ian, a sitting state senator from Detroit. In recent weeks, as the elder Conyers first voiced his intent to retire at the end of his current term, Ian’s candidacy became a surer and surer thing, culminating in the younger Conyers telling the New York Times in a Tuesday morning scoop that the congressman was going to announce his retirement and that he, Ian, was launching a congressional campaign.
The news jolted Detroit. And it led an irate Monica Conyers, the self-appointed carrier of the torch, to hatch a sloppily arranged change to the succession plan—one in which she would play a central role instead of being pushed aside.
On Tuesday, as John Conyers resigned, he stunned observers by endorsing his and Monica’s son, John Conyers III, as his successor. Conyers III, a 27-year-old who has never held elected office, is no stranger to controversy and comes pre-loaded with his own political scandal.
In 2010, he reported two laptops and $27,000 in concert tickets were stolen from a Cadillac Escalade he’d apparently been using for personal purposes despite the fact that its lease was registered to his father’s congressional office and was being paid with taxpayer money. Other photos online showed Conyers III, then 20, seated behind the wheel of the Cadillac while holding a bottle of Moët. More recently, NBC News reports that on Feb. 15, 2017, Conyers III was arrested in Los Angeles on suspicion of domestic violence; his girlfriend called law enforcement after he, in the words of the police report, “body slammed her on the bed and then on the floor where he pinned her down and spit on her,” before allegedly swinging a knife at her and cutting her arm.
His mother’s intervention sets up the spectacle of a free-for-all primary in which at least two members of the Conyers family seem intent to run.
In a since-deleted tweet, Ian Conyers suggested that Conyers III’s candidacy wasn’t the former congressman’s true wish, and, by name, pinned the credit/blame for the endorsement as someone else’s preference: “Monica - I spoke to my great uncle Thursday night via phone from hospital. His advice Run!”
The fight over John Conyers’ legacy will not end soon, perhaps not even in our lifetimes. But to some degree, its demise comes from the liberalism Conyers championed over more than a half-century—the belief that we can use our collective power to repair the wrongs of the past.
Conservatism has long had a posture that favors standing athwart history yelling stop, a belief in preserving the old way of doing things, standing up for tradition, living up to the nation’s past glories, working to make America great again. Liberalism isn’t so much about restoring the way things used to be as it is about overcoming history. And it’s because of this—and the forward march of progress—that what is acceptable to one generation of Democrats is no longer acceptable to another.
The present always stands in judgment of the past, and one generation’s liberal heroes become another’s problematic figures. Woodrow Wilson was a visionary idealist who sought to make the world safe for democracy—until he was remembered as a racist reactionary with Lost Cause sympathies.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the man who lifted the nation from the depths of the Great Depression, fought the powerful and moneyed, and expanded the scope of what we believed government could and should do—until the exclusion of black Americans from the New Deal and the internment of Japanese-Americans became stains on his legacy.
We now find ourselves in the middle of such a reckoning, as the sins of the past catch up to the reputations of the present.
Al Franken was the progressive intellectual with a scathing wit, the left’s answer to bloviating talk radio on the right—and he’s also a man accused of forcing himself on at least seven women.
Bill Clinton was The Natural, the man from Hope who charted a course for a new type of Democrat, oversaw an economy that gained 23 million new jobs, balanced the budget and built a bridge to the 21st century—and he’s also preyed on women, with errant sexual behavior ranging from the consensual-but-inappropriate (as with the Lewinsky affair) to charges of harassment (as with Paula Jones) and accusations of rape (as with Juanita Broaddrick).
John Conyers was a civil-rights hero, a voice in the wilderness who advocated far-left positions before they were fashionable, a champion for Detroiters—especially black Detroiters—who felt and still feel locked out of the room where decisions get made.
But whatever else he was, Conyers is also the man Courtney Morse says propositioned her when she was an intern, who after his advances were rebuffed, raised the specter of Chandra Levy; the man Elissa Grubbs says groped her in a church and regularly undressed in front of female staff; the man Marion Brown saysstroked her legs, propositioned her in a hotel room and “violated” her body.
And where once those abuses wouldn’t have been career-ending, today, people are starting to listen to what women are saying.
“He made people … believe in their own strength,” a Conyers campaign aide told Ebony in 1965. “He … showed them the value of sticking together.”
And that’s exactly what his accusers have done.
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****** John Conyers could be replaced by his son — who has his dad's name but not his political resume
The son of Rep. John Conyers Jr. — the embattled congressman who announced his sudden retirement Tuesday — may be headed for his father’s seat, carrying on a decades-long political dynasty in Michigan.
Conyers (D-Mich.) resigned Tuesday amid allegations of sexual harassment.
In doing so, the erstwhile dean of the House endorsed his eldest son, John Conyers III, to take his place representing Michigan’s 13th Congressional District — even though the 27-year-old has never run for political office.
Tuesday evening in a statement posted on Twitter the younger Conyers said that he had not decided whether to enter the race but hoped “to come to a decision by the new year — once I have taken the time to thoroughly listen to our community.”
Conyers was one of his father’s fiercest defenders as the 88-year-old faced increasing pressure from Democratic leaders to step aside when a growing number of female former aides accused him of mistreatment and unwanted advances.
“It’s very unfortunate to see him fight so long for so many people and to automatically have the allegations assumed to be true,” John Conyers III told reporters last week, according to NBC affiliate WDIV. “And of course, with sexual assault, women are to be believed. But in this instance, he has no history of this.
“And I think that if we’re not going to make [Sen.] Al Franken resign when we have evidence of him groping a woman while she was asleep … it’s disconcerting to me to see the way my father is being treated after he’s given so much to this country, not just for black people but for people alike.”
Of his father, he added: “He fights for everyone.”
Here’s what we know about John Conyers III.
He lacks political experience
Steve Hood, a political consultant in Detroit, told the Detroit Free Press that not much is known about Conyers, at least in political circles.
Conyers is from Detroit and attended Morehouse College as well as New York University, according to his contributor bio on HuffPost.
That bio, whose details The Washington Post has not yet confirmed, identifies Conyers as “a partner at Detroit’s first minority run hedge fund” and “a seasoned multi-discipline consultant who has provided fundraising and social media services to both political and business clients.” It also says he served as an intern in the Department of Community Outreach in the Israeli Embassy in Washington. “John is committed to melding community engagement, entertainment and politics,” the bio states.
According to his Facebook page, Conyers is a managing partner at the Detroit hedge fund EIA Alpha Partners Fund Management and an owner/partner at Palette Agency in Los Angeles.
He caused public headaches for his father in 2010
In 2010, MLive.com reported that John Conyers III was cited for speeding in his father’s Cadillac Escalade — or rather, the government-leased vehicle his father used as a member of Congress.
There were also reports that year that the younger Conyers had driven the vehicle to a rap concert and that it was broken into, according to the news site. The then-20-year-old reported to policethat two laptops had been stolen from the Escalade, along with tens of thousands of dollars worth of concert tickets.
After the incident, the elder Conyers apologized.
“I have just learned about the inappropriate use of a congressional vehicle by my son over the Thanksgiving holiday,” he said in a statement at the time, according MLive.com. “I am sorry it happened and will make sure that it does not happen again.”
The Detroit Free Press reported that the congressman said he reimbursed the Treasury Department more than $5,600 for his son’s unofficial use of taxpayer money.
A photo on social media at the time showed his son in a Cadillac with a bottle of French champagne, according to an MLive.com article. The story’s headline: “The fabulous online life of John Conyers III, or why his family needs to do damage control immediately.”
He’s an opinionated writer
In a HuffPost op-ed, under the headline “Orange Watergate: The Inevitable Impeachment of the 45th President,” Conyers wrote that the “reactionary and cavalier nature of the president will ultimately be his down fall.
“As his approval ratings tumble and confidence wanes, expect the weight of possible impeachment to make his already poor decision making worse. Self-preservation is ultimately the downfall of the narcissist.”
In the wake of the mass shooting in Las Vegas, Conyers wrote that the national debate should be about gun control, not mental illness, explaining: “I have dealt with Major Depressive Disorder since I was 15 years-old. I’ve not once thought about murder. I know right from wrong.
“My friends with bi-polar and depression and multiple personality disorder don’t think about hurting others, if anything we think about hurting ourselves.”
“So if you grapple with mental illness do not let the medias stigmatization of our ailments make you self-conscious,” he wrote in his October op-ed. “As much as they love to make us their scapegoats, It’s not our fault. You, as well as I, know we know right from wrong. When they need someone to blame they look to us first, when it’s time to lend their hand to help us they’re nowhere to be found.”
He’s a rapper
In a 2013 song, “Rich Glorious,” Conyers talked about his battles with the media amid his mother’s 2012 bribery conviction, as well as the Cadillac mishap, according to Roll Call.
“Hey f— making a living, boy, I’m trying to make history. So picture me letting the news nitpick at me,” Conyers said in the rap video, which showed an image from a news story about the incident.
He’s not the only Conyers vying for the congressional seat
State Sen. Ian Conyers, John Conyers Jr.’s great-nephew, has declared his intention to run in the special election.
Ian Conyers, who represents the 4th district in the state senate, graduated from Georgetown University with a bachelor’s degree in government and a master’s in urban and regional planning, according to his biography.
He worked for then-District Mayor Adrian Fenty, who appointed Conyers as a community outreach and service specialist in Ward 6, according to his LinkedIn profile.
In 2012, Conyers served as a regional field director for President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign, according to his online resume.
Four years later, the political operative became a politician, winning a special election to replace former state Sen. Virgil Smith. He later told Georgetown’s alumni newsletter: “We dispelled the myth that seniors and middle-aged voters don’t believe in young people.”
After John Conyers Jr. endorsed his own son for his seat, Ian Conyers told the Free Press he was surprised, saying: “I didn’t expect him to make an endorsement.”
Hood, the political consultant, described it as “a family in disarray.”
“You have the potential for two Conyers to go for the seat,” he told the newspaper.
He isn’t guaranteed the seat
Political insiders say the seat does not belong to anyone — a Conyers or not.
“There’s no guarantee that anyone named Conyers is going to be the next congressman representing Detroit,” said Sam Riddle, political director for the Michigan branch of the National Action Network. “We are on the verge of the biggest free-for-all politically you’ve ever seen in Detroit. There should not be an automatic ascension to that congressional seat because your last name is Conyers. The people in Detroit deserve the best candidate possible be elected to that seat represents poorest and blackest city.”
Sources: Courier-Journal, The Federalist, Alex Jones, NY Mag, Youtube
The web is afloat with political rumors that U.S. Senator & 2016 GOP Presidential candidate MARCO RUBIO is considering dropping out of the race.
This news comes on the heels of a crushing defeat after Super Tuesday which seven more states and more delegates.
Even with GOP Establishment donors pouring Millions into Rubio's campaign, he has still only netted ONE state - Minnesota.
Could it be that nice-guy Rubio's decision to go postal on Trump has backfired, literally pushing him out the race versus being considered as a VP running mate?
Rubio will still appear at Thursday's debate in DETROIT, however it's no longer a question of if Rubio is conceding, instead it's a question of when?
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has abruptly cancelled rallies scheduled in Kentucky and Louisiana fueling speculation that he may be bowing out of the race for the GOP presidential nomination.
Rubio fared poorly in the Super Tuesday state races, only pulling out a victory in Minnesota. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who fared better, has been calling on Rubio to drop out so there is a single candidate who can compete against Donald Trump, who so far has seemed unstoppable.
The Courier-Journal in Kentucky reported about Rubio’s cancellation of the Friday rally in Lexington.
Tyler Glick, a spokesman for Anne Northrup, Rubio’s campaign chairwoman in Kentucky, said the campaign hasn’t provided any more information about the cancellation.
been scheduled to hold a 10:15 a.m. rally at the Lexington Center on Friday, one day before the Kentucky Republican presidential caucus in which more than 40 delegates are up for grabs.
Quietly last night Rubio also cancelled a rally in Boca Raton, WBRZ is reporting.
Individuals who signed up for tickets to see Rubio received an email Wednesday that the event was canceled.
“In order to use Marco’s time as efficiently as possible before Saturday’s contests, Marco will not be making a stop in Louisiana Friday night,” the email read.
Cancelling one rally isn’t anything to write home about, but cancelling two back-to-back rallies is fueling speculation that Rubio may be willing to bow out of the race.
A scheduled rally Saturday in Jacksonville, Florida, is still scheduled with Republican New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez.
Both the Rubio and the Cruz camp have been desperately trying to convince the other side to drop out to challenge Trump. So far, nobody has blinked.
It's Thursday, March 3rd and tonight in the historic city of DETROIT, 4 remaining GOP presidential candidates (Trump, Rubio, Cruz & Kasich) will face-off at the Fox Theatre.
This debate is sponsored by Fox News.
Super Tuesday winner and 2016 GOP Presidential Frontrunner Donald Trump is now being targeted by 2012 GOP Presidential nominee Mitt Romney.
Romney a Respected member of the GOP Establishment and a Michigan native, is demonstrating a great deal of Disrespect towards Trump by hurling insults.
Romney has even called Trump a "Fraud" among other very derogatory, negative demagogue.
Could it be that perhaps Romney is JEALOUS of Trump's glory and favorability with 2016 voters?
Regardless of Romney's JEALOUSY,
does it make sense to help sabotage your own party's success which appears to be within close reach?
When will Romney and other GOP Establishment leaders line up behind Trump as the Koch Brothers have recently done, to help the Republican regain control of the White House?
Tune in tonight to the Detroit GOP debate at 9:00pm ET.
Donald Trump answered Mitt Romney’s public indictment Thursday of his front-running Republican bid by skewering the 2012 GOP presidential nominee as a “failed candidate” who “let us down” with his loss to President Obama.
“Mitt is a choke artist,” Trump told supporters at a pre-debate rally in Portland, Maine.
Trump went on to call Romney disloyal, claiming he begged Trump for his endorsement the last time around.
“You can see how loyal he is. … I could have said Mitt, drop to your knees, he would have dropped to his knees,” Trump said.
He spoke after Romney delivered a scathing speech at the University of Utah about the prospect of a Trump presidency, in what amounted to perhaps the most full-throated effort yet by a member of the so-called Republican establishment to thwart Trump’s march to the nomination.
The party’s 2012 presidential nominee issued a stark warning that Trump’s policies would lead to recession and “make America and the world less safe” -- and said the “only serious policy proposals” are coming from the other Republican candidates on the field.
“I understand the anger Americans feel today,” Romney said, but added: “Here's what I know. Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University. He's playing ... the American public for suckers: He gets a free ride to the White House and all we get is a lousy hat.”
Romney also claimed Trump, if nominated, would enable Hillary Clinton to be elected president.
The speech comes ahead of the Fox News Republican primary debate Thursday night at 9 p.m. ET in Detroit, the candidates' first showdown since Super Tuesday.
Trump swiftly responded to the ex-GOP nominee, taking to Twitter to claim he’s the “only one who can beat Hillary Clinton” and recalling Romney’s record in the presidential elections so far.
Later at his rally in Maine, despite claiming he wouldn’t spend much time responding to Romney’s “irrelevant” remarks, Trump delivered a point-by-point rebuttal to many of Romney’s charges.
To Romney’s criticism of his business record, Trump said, “I made so much more money than Mitt,” and pointed to his successful ventures across New York City.
He also said Romney begged him for his endorsement in 2012 – but Romney later tweeted that if Trump had said the things he’s saying today, he would not have accepted that endorsement.
The address earlier Thursday amounted to an astonishing full-court press by Romney to stop Trump from winning the party’s nomination. Until now, Romney has mostly criticized Trump via Twitter and media interviews, but this is his most robust effort yet to rally the party and primary voters against the GOP front-runner.
Romney cast his alarm-bell warnings Thursday in dire terms, suggesting nothing less than the character of the nation is at stake, and saying Trump’s “brand of anger” has led “other nations into the abyss.” He said Trump “lacks the temperament to be president,” rebuking him for “bullying” and “greed” and “misogyny.” He borrowed a phrase from Marco Rubio, calling Trump a “con man” to boot.
On the sidelines, the party’s 2008 nominee also seemed to join with Romney in expressing concerns.
“I share the concerns about Donald Trump that my friend and former Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, described in his speech today,” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said in a statement, urging voters to “think long and hard about who they want to be our next Commander-in-Chief and leader of the free world.”
2016 candidate Ohio Gov. John Kasich also gave Romney a Twitter thumbs-up, tweeting “well said” after the speech.
Romney has not yet endorsed a candidate in the race, or moved any closer publicly to reconsidering a run himself. Romney weighed another White House run at the beginning of 2015 before deciding against the move, reportedly after being out-raised by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush -- who has since suspended his campaign.
The whole world now wants America to Pardon/ Forgive NSA Whistleblower EDWARD SNOWDEN for alerting American Citizens that Our Civil Liberties & PRIVACY were being severely Violated by our Elected Officials (Pres OBAMA & CONGRESS).
However as I researched the FACTS of his case, I learned this Young Man is indeed more of a PATRIOT than a TRAITOR.
Why??
Here are four reasons:
**1) Mr SNOWDEN did NOT Hire himself as a NSA employee, the Federal Gov't did.
**2) Mr SNOWDEN did NOT conduct his Background Check, the Federal Gov't did.
**3) Mr SNOWDEN did NOT grant himself a Security Clearance, the Federal Gov't did.
**4) Mr SNOWDEN did NOT Violate our Civil Liberties & PRIVACY, the Federal Gov't did.
Thus how can EDWARD SNOWDEN be a Criminal??
Mr SNOWDEN knew he was being Hired to be a HACKER for the Federal Gov't but he thought he was just being Hired to HACK into the Personal Info of Real Suspected TERRORISTS.
Not SPY on Innocent American Citizens WITHOUT PROBABLE CAUSE!
Not SPY on Innocent American Citizens WITHOUT PROBABLE CAUSE for POLITICAL Reasons, or just to keep entire Communities of Human Beings in BONDAGE!
The Federal Gov't Hired Mr SNOWDEN.....offered him a Great Salary....and in exchange for keeping that Great Salary, they expected him to Betray the American People by HACKING into their Personal Lives WITHOUT PROBABLE CAUSE!
Please understand I am Not Opposed to the U.S. Federal Gov't using Broad Surveillance Powers Legally for authentic NATIONAL SECURITY purposes because I too want to be SAFE from TERRORISM.
I am Only Opposed to the U.S. Federal Gov't ABUSING its Broad Surveillance Powers to Violate the same U.S. Constitution its ELECTED Officials have vowed to uphold, for POLITICS & other Personal reasons!
So in essence the Federal Gov't is using the NSA NOT to track down Real Suspected TERRORISTS as Congressman MIKE ROGERS proclaims.
And why is the Federal Gov't COLLECTING DATA & INFO on Each American Citizen??
It's being stored at a huge Compound in UTAH but Why??
Federal Gov't Officials are using the NSA to SPY on ALL American Citizens WITHOUT PROBABLE CAUSE just because they Can, NOT because they need to!
i.e., "Big Brother" Is Here!
This is beyond WRONG & ILLEGAL!
Another example of Federal Gov't ABUSE is the IRS targeting Innocent American Citizens for their RELIGIOUS Beliefs & POLITICAL Affiliations.
Or......
Using the IRS to RETALIATE against Innocent American Citizens.
Both actions are also WRONG & ILLEGAL!!
So do I strongly believe EDWARD SNOWDEN is a necessary, Courageous Young Whistleblower who deserves some level of Clemency??
YES!!
FYI:
I WILL NEVER TRUST CONGRESSMAN MIKE ROGERS (R-MI) AGAIN.
Seven months ago, the world began to learn the vast scope of the National Security Agency’s reach into the lives of hundreds of millions of people in the United States and around the globe, as it collects information about their phone calls, their email messages, their friends and contacts, how they spend their days and where they spend their nights.
The public learned in great detail how the agency has exceeded its mandate and abused its authority, prompting outrage at kitchen tables and at the desks of Congress, which may finally begin to limit these practices.
The revelations have already prompted two federal judges to accuse the N.S.A. of violating the Constitution (although a third, unfortunately, found the dragnet surveillance to be legal).
A panel appointed by President Obama issued a powerful indictment of the agency’s invasions of privacy and called for a major overhaul of its operations.
All of this is entirely because of information provided to journalists by Edward Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor who stole a trove of highly classified documents after he became disillusioned with the agency’s voraciousness. Mr. Snowden is now living in Russia, on the run from American charges of espionage and theft, and he faces the prospect of spending the rest of his life looking over his shoulder.
Considering the enormous value of the information he has revealed, and the abuses he has exposed, Mr. Snowden deserves better than a life of permanent exile, fear and flight. He may have committed a crime to do so, but he has done his country a great service. It is time for the United States to offer Mr. Snowden a plea bargain or some form of clemency that would allow him to return home, face at least substantially reduced punishment in light of his role as a whistle-blower, and have the hope of a life advocating for greater privacy and far stronger oversight of the runaway intelligence community.
Mr. Snowden is currently charged in a criminal complaint with two violations of the Espionage Act involving unauthorized communication of classified information, and a charge of theft of government property. Those three charges carry prison sentences of 10 years each, and when the case is presented to a grand jury for indictment, the government is virtually certain to add more charges, probably adding up to a life sentence that Mr. Snowden is understandably trying to avoid.
The president said in August that Mr. Snowden should come home to face those charges in court and suggested that if Mr. Snowden had wanted to avoid criminal charges he could have simply told his superiors about the abuses, acting, in other words, as a whistle-blower.
“If the concern was that somehow this was the only way to get this information out to the public, I signed an executive order well before Mr. Snowden leaked this information that provided whistle-blower protection to the intelligence community for the first time,” Mr. Obama said at a news conference. “So there were other avenues available for somebody whose conscience was stirred and thought that they needed to question government actions.”
In fact, that executive order did not apply to contractors, only to intelligence employees, rendering its protections useless to Mr. Snowden. More important, Mr. Snowden told The Washington Post earlier this month that he did report his misgivings to two superiors at the agency, showing them the volume of data collected by the N.S.A., and that they took no action. (The N.S.A. says there is no evidence of this.) That’s almost certainly because the agency and its leaders don’t consider these collection programs to be an abuse and would never have acted on Mr. Snowden’s concerns.
In retrospect, Mr. Snowden was clearly justified in believing that the only way to blow the whistle on this kind of intelligence-gathering was to expose it to the public and let the resulting furor do the work his superiors would not. Beyond the mass collection of phone and Internet data, consider just a few of the violations he revealed or the legal actions he provoked:
■ The N.S.A. broke federal privacy laws, or exceeded its authority, thousands of times per year, according to the agency’s own internal auditor.
■ The agency broke into the communications links of major data centers around the world, allowing it to spy on hundreds of millions of user accounts and infuriating the Internet companies that own the centers. Many of those companies are now scrambling to install systems that the N.S.A. cannot yet penetrate.
■ The N.S.A. systematically undermined the basic encryption systems of the Internet, making it impossible to know if sensitive banking or medical data is truly private, damaging businesses that depended on this trust.
■ His leaks revealed that James Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, lied to Congress when testifying in March that the N.S.A. was not collecting data on millions of Americans. (There has been no discussion of punishment for that lie.)
■ The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court rebuked the N.S.A. for repeatedly providing misleading information about its surveillance practices, according to a ruling made public because of the Snowden documents. One of the practices violated the Constitution, according to the chief judge of the court.
■ A federal district judge ruled earlier this month that the phone-records-collection program probably violates the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. He called the program “almost Orwellian” and said there was no evidence that it stopped any imminent act of terror.
The shrill brigade of his critics say Mr. Snowden has done profound damage to intelligence operations of the United States, but none has presented the slightest proof that his disclosures really hurt the nation’s security. Many of the mass-collection programs Mr. Snowden exposed would work just as well if they were reduced in scope and brought under strict outside oversight, as the presidential panel recommended.
When someone reveals that government officials have routinely and deliberately broken the law, that person should not face life in prison at the hands of the same government. That’s why Rick Ledgett, who leads the N.S.A.’s task force on the Snowden leaks, recently told CBS News that he would consider amnesty if Mr. Snowden would stop any additional leaks.
And it’s why President Obama should tell his aides to begin finding a way to end Mr. Snowden’s vilification and give him an incentive to return home.
Sources: AP, CBS News, CNN, NY Times, Russia Today, The Guardian, Youtube
One very clear reason why Mitt Romney is far from a lock to win the Michigan primary, despite his ties to the state, is that he's not really tied to the state.
He was born here, he lived here. But he's not family. Not anymore.
That's why the characterization of Rick Santorum polling well in Romney's backyard is a bit misguided. The truth is, many of us disowned that two-faced liar years ago.
We remember how, back in 2008, Romney came home promising to do all he could to save the auto industry. And we believed him and voted for him and he won the primary here.
Then, after he dropped out of the race, he wrote a New York Times op-ed that carried the headline "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt."
The opening sentence: "If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye."
What the hell?
I thought he said he was one of us.
Later in the piece, Romney talks about why we should let the auto industry go bankrupt. Although he lays out some very sound reasons for this -- including an anecdotal story of when his father, George, took over American Motors -- at the end of the day he fails to mention the most important thing. Us.
He forgot about the people back home who depended on the auto industry to put food on the table, pay mortgages, send the kids to college. He greeted us like family when he needed our votes, but when he left town he treated us like strangers.
If Romney didn't think a bailout was the best way to help the state, he should have said that when he came here looking for delegates and let the people at his rallies decide if they agreed with him. Instead he pandered, then kicked dirt in our faces on his way out the door -- an all too familiar pattern with Romney.
The reason Santorum is gaining votes in Michigan isn't because he's so liked here, though his social conservative rhetoric plays well in the western side of the state.
But it's because we've been burned by Romney before. He tells the people in front of him what they want to hear. But when he sets his sights on a new shiny object, he changes the script to fit his new needs.
We've seen him do it with abortion and health care reform.
We've seen him do it with taxes.
When Romney was running for the Senate in 1994, he sent the Log Cabin Republicans of Massachusetts, a gay rights organization, a letter saying "don't ask, don't tell" was the first of "a number of steps that will ultimately lead to gays and lesbians being able to serve openly and honestly in our nation's military."
Then in 2007, when he was running for president, he said he would not change the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, and that changing it would amount to a "social experiment."
I might not like a lot of Santorum's views, but at least I know what they are. Saying Romney flip-flops is an insult to flip-flops. That's why, according to a poll by the American Research Group, 33% of Michigan GOP voters say they support Santorum and only 27% support Romney.
In response to his unstable footing in his "home" state, Romney penned a new op-ed in Tuesday's Detroit News to defend his New York Times piece.
In true partisan fashion, he blasts President Obama for orchestrating the auto bailout while neglecting to mention in 2008 President Bush had moved to give Chrysler and GM billions of taxpayer's dollars at the beginning of 2009.
This is one of the reasons why Obama has to remind the public about the Bush years. If he doesn't, Republicans like Romney and Santorum will try to whitewash history and limit the economic conversation to the past three years as if we're in a vacuum.
Oh, and by the way, he was wrong.
The auto industry did not collapse.
In fact, reports show the bailouts saved an estimated 1.5 million jobs.
The auto industry is expected to grow by 28% by 2015, with the Big Three set to hire about 33,000 people in Michigan alone. And while Ford did not participate in the bailout, G.M. did, and was able to regain its place as the top automaker in the world.
Chrysler also took part and recorded its first annual net profit since 1997, and announced plans to invest $500 million in an assembly plant in nearby Toledo, Ohio, adding an entire second shift of jobs over the course of the year.
Couple all that with 23 consecutive months of job growth across the nation and what you have is good news for Michigan and choppy political waters for Romney.
He's scheduled to appear in Grand Rapids on Wednesday, presumably with a big ol' plate of crow. He knows as the auto industry goes, so goes the state. He also knows we remember he said the country should let the auto industry hit rock bottom. Had Romney said that to our faces when he was campaigning here four years ago, we could at least respect what he has to say about the auto industry and the state of the economy today.
But it's going to be tough to sit and listen to Romney, knowing he will try to say whatever he thinks we want to hear. And besides, our backs are still sore from that knife he stuck in them in 2008.
Former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm As U.S. Labor Secretary During Pres. Obama's 2nd Term?
Yes! Excellent Choice!
While I Do Think That Hilda Solis (Obama's Current Labor Secretary) Is Doing A Good Job In Her Role As U.S. Labor Secretary, I Believe Gov. Granholm Will In Fact Do An EXCELLENT Job! (Sorry. No Offense Hilda)
Listen I Know On A Political Level Pres. Obama Needs Hilda Solis To Help Please The Hispanic Population However....
I'm Looking At Things Long Term!
At This Time In U.S. History American Jobs Are Badly Needed For Many People: White, Black, Hispanic, Indian, Asians.
Gov. Granholm Not Only Possesses Great Executive Leadership Experience But She's Also An Expert In Economic Recovery & Will Most Likely Be Able To Communicate More Effectively With Organized Labor Union Leaders.
Organized Labor Unions Are Crucial To Our Nation's Recovery Too Because Who Wants To Work Hard For $5.00 Per Hour & NO Benefits??
Its Time For Pres. Obama To Begin Hiring People With REAL Civilian Work Experience Like Gov. Granholm To Help Govern Our Country, Versus Just Hiring People With Academic Experience.
I Really Hope Pres. Obama Considers Nominating Gov. Granholm As Labor Secretary For His 2nd Term.
Once Again I Thank Hilda Solis For Her Service To Our Country But Sometimes New Blood Is Needed To Help Right The Ship!
African-Americans or blacks made up 12 percent of the United States labor force in 2010.1 Overall, 18 million blacks were employed or looking for work, representing 62.2 percent of all black people.
In 2010, about half of blacks aged 16 and older had a job and 17.5 percent of those employed worked part-time.2 Blacks are the only racial or ethnic group where women represent a larger share of the employed than do men — more than half (54.3 percent) of employed blacks in 2010 were women, compared to 46.3 percent among employed whites. Employed black women still earn less than employed black men.
More than a quarter of employed black workers aged 25 or older have earned a college degree, a share that exceeds that for Hispanics3, but continues to trail whites. While the share that are college graduates has risen 20 percent in the past decade, the gap in the share of employed blacks and whites who are college graduates has not narrowed and a 10 percentage point gap remains.
Black workers are more likely to be employed in the public sector than are either their white or Hispanic counterparts. In 2010, nearly 1 in 5 employed blacks worked for the government compared to 14.6 percent of whites and 11.0 percent of Hispanics. Conversely, blacks are less likely than Hispanics and nearly as likely as whites to work in the private sector, not including the self-employed.4 Few blacks are self-employed — only 3.8 percent reported being self-employed in 2010 — making them about half as likely to be self-employed as whites (7.4 percent).
Half of black workers employed full time earned $611 or more per week in 2010, 80 percent of that earned by whites. The gap in earnings has been similar throughout the recession and recovery period.
The average unemployment rate for blacks in 2010 was 16.0 percent, compared to 8.7 percent for whites, and 12.5 percent for Hispanics. Historically, blacks have persistently higher unemployment rates than the other major racial and ethnic groups and the recent recession and recovery period has largely reflected this pattern.
Nearly half (48.4 percent) of all unemployed blacks were unemployed 27 weeks or longer in 2010, compared to 41.9 percent of unemployed whites and 39.3 percent of unemployed Hispanics. Moreover, blacks remained unemployed longer than whites or Hispanics in 2010, with a median duration of unemployment approaching 26 weeks.
The unemployment rate for blacks has remained high. In May 2011, the unemployment rate for blacks was 16.2 percent; down only 0.3 percentage points from the peak of 16.5 percent in March and April 2010.
The past few months have seen private sector job growth in areas such as transportation and warehousing as well as continuing employment gains in health care; both industries have a large share of black workers. However, blacks are more vulnerable to continuing local government job losses because they make up a disproportionate share of public sector workers.
Republican heavyweight Mitt Romney, in a second bid for the White House, is promoting his private-sector business experience to show he could do better than President Barack Obama in creating jobs.
But opponents will find fault in his record as a corporate raider in the 1980s and as Massachusetts governor when his performance on employment was mixed at best.
Romney stressed his experience as head of private equity firm Bain Capital when he announced on Monday he was forming an exploratory committee on seeking the Republican 2012 nomination to challenge Obama, a Democrat.
He made a fortune wheeling and dealing in companies, some of which endured big job cuts as part of restructuring. Some ultimately went bankrupt.
"He was a corporate raider who often made companies profitable, not by helping them perform better -- but by simply laying off employees and killing jobs," said Ray Buckley, Democratic Party chairman of New Hampshire.
Bain Capital, which Romney headed for more than a decade, specialized in leveraged buyouts: buying companies with money borrowed against their assets, grooming them to be sold off, and in the interim collecting huge management fees.
Later, as Massachusetts governor from January 2003 to January 2007, Romney presided over one of the puniest rates of employment growth among the 50 U.S. states, at a time the nation's economy was booming.
Labor Department figures showed Massachusetts ranked 47th among the states in the rate of jobs growth in those four years -- ahead of only Ohio, Michigan and Louisiana.
The Democratic party will attempt to pick holes in Romney's jobs record if he wins the Republican nomination, a party strategist said. Romney is an early front-runner to win the nomination and some polls even show him ahead of Obama in states such as Florida, Georgia and New Hampshire. He has high name recognition and a powerful fund-raising machine.
A SHARP LINE
Romney announced his first formal step for a presidential run on Monday in a short video shot at the University of New Hampshire, in which he drew a line between himself and Obama, criticizing the president for surrounding himself with people who "have never worked in the real economy."
That could be a persuasive argument at a time the world's largest economy is not growing quickly enough to make a sizable dent in the jobless rate, still at 8.8 percent, after a recession that ended in 2009.
To bolster his image as a job creator, Romney, 64, said in his video that Bain Capital started with just 10 employees and grew to hundreds of workers.
While the firm certainly grew, the impact on Bain's targets was often different. "Sometimes I was successful and help create jobs, other times I was not," Romney said in the video.
Romney faces several hurdles to win the Republican nomination and get a shot at Obama: his Mormon faith, his ideological makeover since leaving the Massachusetts governor's post, and the Massachusetts healthcare reform program that became the basis for Obama's national policy.
Still, Romney does have attributes that could appeal to traditional Republicans and independent voters.
The fiscal conservative has the looks and clean-cut image of a 1950s matinee idol. He and wife Ann have been married since 1969, and have five sons and 16 grandchildren.
"Romney would be Obama's toughest challenge. Romney looks presidential -- teeth gleaming white, jaw perfectly sculpted," Robert Reich, labor secretary under President Bill Clinton, said of Romney.
In a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll last week, Romney came out on top, supported by 21 percent in a nine-candidate field.
Many voters also warm up to Romney's unbridled optimism about the United States.
The title of his 2009 book/policy manifesto, "No Apology: The Case for American Greatness" (the subtitle was revised to "Believe in America" for the paperback edition) was in part a dig at Obama's habit of showing humility on the world stage.
If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for on Tuesday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won't go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.
Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course - the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check.
I love cars, American cars. I was born in Detroit, the son of an auto chief executive. In 1954, my dad, George Romney, was tapped to run American Motors when its president suddenly died. The company itself was on life support - banks were threatening to deal it a death blow. The stock collapsed. I watched Dad work to turn the company around - and years later at business school, they were still talking about it. From the lessons of that turnaround, and from my own experiences, I have several prescriptions for Detroit's automakers.
First, their huge disadvantage in costs relative to foreign brands must be eliminated. That means new labor agreements to align pay and benefits to match those of workers at competitors like BMW, Honda, Nissan and Toyota. Furthermore, retiree benefits must be reduced so that the total burden per auto for domestic makers is not higher than that of foreign producers.
That extra burden is estimated to be more than $2,000 per car. Think what that means: Ford, for example, needs to cut $2,000 worth of features and quality out of its Taurus to compete with Toyota's Avalon. Of course the Avalon feels like a better product - it has $2,000 more put into it. Considering this disadvantage, Detroit has done a remarkable job of designing and engineering its cars. But if this cost penalty persists, any bailout will only delay the inevitable.
Second, management as is must go. New faces should be recruited from unrelated industries - from companies widely respected for excellence in marketing, innovation, creativity and labor relations.
The new management must work with labor leaders to see that the enmity between labor and management comes to an end. This division is a holdover from the early years of the last century, when unions brought workers job security and better wages and benefits. But as Walter Reuther, the former head of the United Automobile Workers, said to my father, "Getting more and more pay for less and less work is a dead-end street."
You don't have to look far for industries with unions that went down that road. Companies in the 21st century cannot perpetuate the destructive labor relations of the 20th.
This will mean a new direction for the UAW, profit sharing or stock grants to all employees and a change in Big Three management culture.
The need for collaboration will mean accepting sanity in salaries and perks. At American Motors, my dad cut his pay and that of his executive team, he bought stock in the company, and he went out to factories to talk to workers directly. Get rid of the planes, the executive dining rooms - all the symbols that breed resentment among the hundreds of thousands who will also be sacrificing to keep the companies afloat.
Investments must be made for the future. No more focus on quarterly earnings or the kind of short-term stock appreciation that means quick riches for executives with options.
Manage with an eye on cash flow, balance sheets and long-term appreciation. Invest in truly competitive products and innovative technologies - especially fuel-saving designs - that may not arrive for years. Starving research and development is like eating the seed corn.
Just as important to the future of American carmakers is the sales force. When sales are down, you don't want to lose the only people who can get them to grow. So don't fire the best dealers, and don't crush them with new financial or performance demands they can't meet.
It is not wrong to ask for government help, but the automakers should come up with a win-win proposition. I believe the federal government should invest substantially more in basic research - on new energy sources, fuel-economy technology, materials science and the like - that will ultimately benefit the automotive industry, along with many others.
I believe Washington should raise energy research spending to $20 billion a year, from the $4 billion that is spent today. The research could be done at universities, at research labs and even through public-private collaboration. The federal government should also rectify the imbedded tax penalties that favor foreign carmakers.
But don'task Washington to give shareholders and bondholders a free pass - they bet on management and they lost.
The American auto industry is vital to our national interest as an employer and as a hub for manufacturing. A managed bankruptcy may be the only path to the fundamental restructuring the industry needs. It would permit the companies to shed excess labor, pension and real estate costs.
The federal government should provide guarantees for post-bankruptcy financing and assure car buyers that their warranties are not at risk. In a managed bankruptcy, the federal government would propel newly competitive and viable automakers, rather than seal their fate with a bailout check.
Welcome to the BLACK POLITICAL BUZZ Blog. (Established 2008)
My name is Laurel. (Author & Publisher)
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Currently reside in CHARLOTTE, NC
I’m Nice but don’t get it twisted because my Mind is Sharp!
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