The LuLac Edition #4,359, July 23rd, 2020

LULAC INTERVIEWED AGAIN BY FOREIGN NEWS PUBLICATION

Andreas Mink and your blog editor.

I chatted Tuesday afternoon at the always fabulous Istanbul Grille in downtown Wilkes-Barre with Andreas Mink and his photographer Tobias.
Mr. Mink was in town representing Neue Zurcher Zeitung am sonntag in Switzerland. It is the oldest German read publication in German speaking European counties. Our interview will be published on August 9th.
Subject matter: The 2020 election. I understand Andreas interviewed my Republican friends too.
Our interview will appear in the August 9th edition.

200 DAYS!

If you hear Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Republican Senators telling you how great they think the late Representative John Lewis was, watch what they DO and forget what they say.
There is a Voting Rights Bill passed by the House that is sitting over in the Senate and has been there for over 200 days. The party of Lincoln is now the party of voter suppression.
For you history buffs out there, the GOP is on a fast track to be the Whig Party of this century.
200 days and NOTHING!

WHAT HAPPENS TO THE U.S. ECONOMY IF THE $600 FEDERAL UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFIT ENDS?

NOTHING GOOD!!!!!

When the COVID-19 pandemic first drove the country into lockdown and tens of millions of workers lost their jobs, Congress voted to add $600 a week to whatever individual states paid in unemployment insurance.
That extra money was a desperately needed lifeline for many because state unemployment benefits typically replace less than half a worker’s paycheck. Adding the federal payment on top gave many low-income workers more than they earned before.
Now with the $600 boost about to end, Congress must decide whether to let it die, continue it or cut back the payment levels. Recent negotiations suggest lawmakers on both sides are open to extending only reduced or a more restrictive version of the payment.
Most Republicans argue that the present system encourages workers to remain on unemployment rather than go back to work. Ending or slashing the federal payments would help employers and investors by pressuring many of those employees to go back to work.
But maintaining the extra unemployment payments at or near present levels would help millions of workers keep paying their rent, writing mortgage checks, making car payments and caring for families.
That’s especially true right now, when the pandemic is getting worse in many parts of the country and local officials are moving to restore lockdown rules they had begun to relax when the danger seemed to be fading.
In addition to helping the jobless, keeping the extra payments at or relatively near the current level would provide a substantial boost to an economy still reeling from the impact of COVID-19. Conversely, abolishing or slashing the federal payments would undercut the economy.
Basic unemployment insurance payments are determined by each state. During the first quarter of this year, they averaged $373 a week. The additional $600 a week was part of Congress’s $2.2-trillion relief package known as the CARES Act and passed in March.
Beyond anecdotal reports of employers struggling to recall workers, one of the few attempts to measure the extent of the problem was a May 18 survey by the National Federation of Independent Business, a small-employer lobbying group. It reported that 18% of 685 respondents said an employee had declined a job offer in order to stay on unemployment benefits.
Predictably the GOP Senate is going to try and stall this and then in turn blame the Democrats. (LuLac, L.A. Times)

TRUMP UK AMBASSADOR AND JETS TEAM OWNER WOODY JOHNSON NOW UNDER FIRE FOR ALLEGED RACIST AND SEXIST REMARKS-ANOTHER ONE OF HIS BEST PEOPLE

Woody Johnson (Photo: NY Post)

New York Jets team co-owner Robert “Woody” Johnson got the chance to branch out from his NFL world in 2017 when he was picked by President Donald Trump to be his ambassador to the United Kingdom.
That official position is also why Johnson finds himself under scrutiny beyond what he’s probably used to as an NFL owner.
On Tuesday, a New York Times story said Trump asked Johnson to “see if the British government could help steer” the British Open to his Trump Turnberry resort in Scotland.
On Wednesday, CNN reported that a State Department watchdog investigation over Johnson included allegations of racist and sexist comments.
CNN reported Johnson “made racist generalizations about Black men and questioned why the Black community celebrates Black History Month.” CNN said that information came from three sources and a diplomat familiar with the complaints to the State Department inspector general. Ahead of an event for Black History Month, CNN reported that Johnson “appeared agitated” and asked if the audience would be "a whole bunch of Black people.” Three of CNN’s sources said Johnson questioned why there was a separate month to celebrate Black history, and he said Black fathers that didn't remain with their families was the “real challenge.”
CNN also reported Johnson made “cringeworthy” comments about women’s looks and “it was a struggle to get him on board for an event for International Women's Day,” according to the network’s sources.

ONCE AGAIN, NO, 
PA. CONGRESSMAN MATT CARTWRIGHT DID NOT CALL FOR DEFUNDING THE POLICE

Congressman Matt Cartwright (Photo: LuLac archives)

The Republican, Jim Bognet was caught in a lie. He is seeking to unseat Rep. Matt Cartwright, a Democrat who represents northeastern Pennsylvania’s 8th Congressional District, blasted him in a news release for calling to “defund the police.”
“Cartwright proposes to defund the Wilkes-Barre police,” the June 12 email from the Jim Bognet for Congress campaign said. Bognet is a consultant and former Trump administration official from Hazleton who previously worked for the Export-Import Bank of the United States.
That came from Jim Bognet, 8th Congressional District candidate
The Philly Inquirer wondered whether Cartwright, whose reelection bid in a district Trump carried in 2016 and is expected to be one of the state’s most competitive, really backs a movement that the president and his allies have seized on as an example of Democratic overreach.
He does not.
During a virtual listening session he hosted last month with the Black Scranton Project and the Wilkes-Barre and Monroe County chapters of the NAACP, Cartwright was asked whether he supports calls to defund the police, a movement that has gained steam in some progressive circles in the weeks since the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
His response was clear.
“There have been voices calling for defunding and disbanding police forces. I personally do not agree with that,” Cartwright said, advocating instead for new investment in law enforcement officer training and an expansion of community policing.
An audio clip of the exchange is available on Cartwright’s Facebook page.
“I think that’s the answer,” he continued. “The idea of defunding, I don’t agree with that.”
The Bognet campaign news release accusing Cartwright of supporting defunding the police linked to another audio clip of the congressman speaking during that same virtual listening session. The clip appears on the YouTube channel of the Congressional Leadership Fund, which works to elect Republicans to Congress. (Philadelphia Inquirer, Jessica Calefati)

MEDIA MATTERS

WALN TV

BOLD GOLD COMMUNITY FORUM

Tune in Sunday morning at 6 on 94.3 The Talker; 6:30 on The Mothership 1340/1400 am, 100.7 and 106.7 fm; and at 7:30 on The River 105 and 103.5.

BUDDY RUMCHEK

Want to hear some great parodies on the news? Tune in to WILK Radio at 6:20 and 8:20 AM on Mondays. As Ralph Cramden used to say, “It’s a laugh riot!”

BOBBY V’S DOO WOP SOCK HOP

SUNDAY NIGHTS!

1980

Our 1980 logo.

Former Governor of California Ronald Reagan accepted his party's nomination for president at the 1980 Republican National Convention in Detroit, and told viewers in his acceptance speech, "For those who have abandoned home, we'll restore hope and we'll welcome them into a great national crusade to make America great again."

Reverend Marjorie Matthews was selected as the first woman bishop in the United Methodist Church after 29 ballots. Reverend Matthews, whose jurisdiction was for nine states from Ohio to North Dakota, was selected in Dayton, Ohio after 29 ballots…..The 1980 Summer Olympics began in Moscow, Soviet Union and ran until Soviet basketball star Sergei Belov lit the Olympic torch to signal the start of the Olympics. Although 81 nations sent teams to Moscow, 82 boycotted the Games in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Athletes from 16 Olympic committees participated under a neutral flag, including three American citizens representing Puerto Rico, which had been sending a separate Olympic team since 1948….The Soviet Union expelled the three founders of the USSR's feminist movement and flew them and their families to Austria. Since September, Tatiana Mamonova, Tatiana Goritscheva and Natalia Nalachoskaya had covertly published the unauthorized monthly magazine Women and Russia…Pharmaceutical manufacturer Eli Lilly & Co. announced in Indianapolis that it would begin human testing of biosynthetic insulin and, if testing was successful, would commence commercial production. The synthesis had been made with the use of recombinant DNA to direct bacteria to produce the hormone used to control diabetes…The New York Post, which had operated for 179 years as the world's largest-circulation an afternoon daily newspaper, published its first morning edition, after publisher Rupert Murdoch announced that it would print two more morning editions along with the three published in the evening. The move came after the morning Daily News' announced that it would soon publish an afternoon edition... The U.S. Federal Communications Commission voted, 4 to 3, to eliminate rules that had limited the number of cable television channels that a local cable provider could provide its customers. The FCC also revoked its rules of syndication exclusivity which prohibited a cable provider from showing a syndicated program if a local TV station was carrying the same program…Two volunteers, William Behrle III and Michael Benson, became the first people in almost 16 months to set foot inside the radioactively contaminated Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station. Wearing radiation suits, the two nuclear technicians made the first onsite review of the TMI-2 reactor containment building (located in Londonderry Township, Pennsylvania, near Harrisburg for the first time since the March 28, 1979 meltdown of a nuclear reactor and stayed for 20 minutes, measuring radiation levels, conducting a visual inspection and removing some contaminated equipment for testing. A follow-up inspection was made on August 15 as Behrle and Benson were accompanied by two other volunteer technicians…and the number one song in America and LuLac land was “Magic” by Olivia Newton John. The New York Mets used that same tune as a reminder to their fans that the “magic was back” but sadly it was not.