Jim Zeigler endorsed by BamaCarry
BamaCarry, a Second Amendment gun rights group endorsed Jim Zeigler for State Auditor on Friday. “Jim Zeigler is a man with convictions who cares about protecting our Second Amendment rights in Alabama! He has fought against gun-free zones and no-gun signs on public property and supports Constitutional carry. Jim believes we should have no conditions on Constitutional rights.” BamaCarry prides itself on being “Alabama’s only ‘No Compromise’ gun rights group.” They believe gun rights should be protected and preserved in the way that the founding fathers stated, and that “that Every Citizen has the right to bear arms in defense of self and state.” The goal of the organization is to return to those principles and they are currently working to bring Constitutional carry forward in the State of Alabama. Zeigler is a longtime member of BamaCarry and also believes the second amendment should not be tampered with. “BamaCarry Inc. is proud to endorse Jim Zeigler in the race for State Auditor, and our full support is behind him.” Zeigler is seeking his second term as State Auditor, and faces off against Stan Cooke and Elliott Lipinsky in the June 5 Republican primary. Read the full text of the endorsement below: Jim Zeigler is a man with convictions who cares about protecting our Second Amendment rights in Alabama! He has fought against gun-free zones and no-gun signs on public property and supports Constitutional carry. Jim believes we should have NO conditions on Constitutional rights. Jim has been a member of BamaCarry since we first formed and has participated in every one of our BamaCarry Firearm Freedom Conferences. We believe Jim Ziegler is a fighter who will not end to pressure from liberals in and outside of Alabama. Fighting corruption, He filed the initial ethics complaint against former governor Robert Bentley and has worked to clean up our state government. “BamaCarry Inc. is proud to endorse Jim Zeigler in the race for State Auditor, and our full support is behind him.”
Donald Trump hails border wall start, but it’s not quite true
President Donald Trump hailed the start of his long-sought southern border wall this past week, proudly tweeting photos of the “WALL!” Actually, no new work got underway. The photos showed the continuation of an old project to replace two miles of existing barrier. And on Saturday, he ripped Amazon with a shaky claim that its contract with the post office is a “scam.” Trump and his officials departed from reality on a variety of subjects in recent days: the census, Amazon’s practices and the makeup of the Supreme Court among them. Here’s a look at some statements and their veracity: TRUMP: “Great briefing this afternoon on the start of our Southern Border WALL!” — tweet Wednesday, showing photos of workers building a fence. TRUMP: “We’re going to be starting work, literally, on Monday, on not only some new wall — not enough, but we’re working that very quickly — but also fixing existing walls and existing acceptable fences.” — Trump, speaking the previous week after signing a bill financing the government. THE FACTS: Trump’s wrong. No new work began on Monday or any other time this past week. And the photos Trump tweeted were misleading. They showed work that’s been going on for more than a month on a small border wall replacement project in Calexico, California, that has nothing to do with the federal budget he signed into law last week. The Calexico project that began Feb. 21 to replace a little more than 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) of border wall was financed during the 2017 budget year. A barrier built in the 1990s mainly from recycled metal scraps is being torn down and replaced with bollard-style barriers that are 30 feet (9.1 meters) high. Ronald D. Vitiello, acting deputy commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, defended the president’s statements, saying Friday “there’s construction” underway. TRUMP: “If the P.O. ‘increased its parcel rates, Amazon’s shipping costs would rise by $2.6 Billion.’ This Post Office scam must stop. Amazon must pay real costs (and taxes) now!” — tweet Saturday. TRUMP: “I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election. Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!” — tweet Thursday. THE FACTS: Trump is misrepresenting Amazon’s record on taxes, the U.S. Postal Service’s financial situation and the contract that has the post office deliver some Amazon orders. Federal regulators have found that contract to be profitable for the Postal Service. People who buy products sold by Amazon pay sales tax in all states that have a sales tax. Not all third-party vendors using Amazon collect it, however. As for the post office, package delivery has been a bright spot for a service that’s lost money for 11 straight years. The losses are mostly due to pension and health care costs — not the business deal for the Postal Service to deliver packages for Amazon. Boosted by e-commerce, the Postal Service has enjoyed double-digit increases in revenue from delivering packages, but that hasn’t been enough to offset declines in first-class letters and marketing mail, which together make up more than two-thirds of postal revenue. While the Postal Service’s losses can’t be attributed to its package business, Trump’s claim that it could get more bang for its buck may not be entirely far-fetched. A 2017 analysis by Citigroup concluded that the Postal Service was charging below-market rates as a whole for parcels. The post office does not use taxpayer money for its operations. Trump is upset about Amazon because its owner, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post, one of the targets of his “fake news” tweets. TRUMP: “Because of the $700 & $716 Billion Dollars gotten to rebuild our Military, many jobs are created and our Military is again rich. Building a great Border Wall, with drugs (poison) and enemy combatants pouring into our Country, is all about National Defense. Build WALL through M!” — tweets Sunday and Monday. THE FACTS: Trump is floating the idea of using “M″ — the Pentagon’s military budget — to pay for his wall with Mexico. Such a move would almost certainly require approval from Congress and there’s plenty of reason to be skeptical about the notion of diverting military money for this purpose. Only Congress has the power under the Constitution to determine federal appropriations, leaving the Trump administration little authority to shift money without lawmakers’ approval. Pentagon spokesman Chris Sherwood referred all questions on the wall to the White House. Spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders declined to reveal specifics, but said Trump would work with the White House counsel to make sure any action taken was within his executive authority. DAVID SHULKIN, citing reasons Trump fired him as veterans affairs secretary: “I have been falsely accused of things by people who wanted me out of the way. But despite these politically based attacks on me and my family’s character, I am proud of my record and know that I acted with the utmost integrity.” — op-ed Thursday in The New York Times. THE FACTS: His statement that he and his family were subjected to politically based attacks is disingenuous, though politics contributed to his dismissal. White House support for Shulkin eroded after a blistering report in February by VA’s internal watchdog, a non-partisan office. The inspector general’s office concluded that he had violated ethics rules by accepting free Wimbledon tennis tickets. The inspector general also said Shulkin’s chief of staff had doctored emails to justify bringing the secretary’s wife to Europe with him at taxpayer expense. It is true, though, that Shulkin had encountered resistance from about a half-dozen political appointees at the VA and White House who rebelled against him. In an extraordinary telephone call, John Ullyot, a top communications aide, and VA spokesman Curt Cashour asked the Republican staff director of the House Veterans Affairs Committee to push for Shulkin’s
Donald Trump’s talk of a Syria pullout nothing new
President Donald Trump’s unscripted remark this week about pulling out of Syria “very soon,” while at odds with his own policy, was not a one-off: For weeks, top advisers have been fretting about an overly hasty withdrawal as the president has increasingly told them privately he wants out, U.S. officials said. Only two months ago, Trump’s aides thought they’d persuaded him that the U.S. needed to keep its presence in Syria open-ended — not only because the Islamic State group has yet to be entirely defeated, but also because the resulting power vacuum could be filled by other extremist groups or by Iran. Trump signed off on major speech in January in which Secretary of State Rex Tillerson laid out the new strategy and declared “it is vital for the United States to remain engaged in Syria.” But by mid-February, Trump was telling his top aides in meetings that as soon as victory can be declared against IS, he wanted American troops out of Syria, said the officials. Alarm bells went off at the State Department and the Pentagon, where officials have been planning for a gradual, methodical shift from a military-led operation to a diplomatic mission to start rebuilding basic infrastructure like roads and sewers in the war-wracked country. In one sign that Trump is serious about reversing course and withdrawing from Syria, the White House this week put on hold some $200 million in US funding for stabilization projects in Syria, officials said. The money, to have been spent by the State Department for infrastructure projects like power, water and roads, had been announced by outgoing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at an aid conference last month in Kuwait. The officials said the hold, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, is not necessarily permanent and will be discussed at senior-level inter-agency meetings next week. The officials weren’t authorized to comment publicly and demanded anonymity. The State Department said it continually reviews appropriate assistance levels and how best they might be utilized. And the agency said it continues to work with the international community, members of the Coalition, and our partners on the ground to provide much needed stabilization support to vulnerable areas in Syria. “The United States is working everyday on the ground and with the international community to help stabilize those areas liberated from ISIS and identify ways to move forward with reconstruction once there has been a peaceful political transition away from (Syrian President Bashar) Assad,” according to a statement from the State Department. Trump’s first public suggestion he was itching to pull out came in a news conference with visiting Australian Prime Minister Alastair Campbell on Feb. 23, when Trump said the U.S. was in Syria to “get rid of ISIS and go home.” On Thursday, in a domestic policy speech in Ohio, Trump went further. “We’ll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it now. Very soon — very soon, we’re coming out,” Trump said. The public declaration caught U.S. national security agencies off-guard and unsure whether Trump was formally announcing a new, unexpected change in policy. Inundated by inquiries from journalists and foreign officials, the Pentagon and State Department reached out to the White House’s National Security Council for clarification. The White House’s ambiguous response, officials said: Trump’s words speak for themselves. “The mission of the Department of Defense to defeat ISIS has not changed,” said Maj. Adrian Rankine-Galloway, a Pentagon spokesman. Still, without a clear directive from the president, planning has not started for a withdrawal from Syria, officials said, and Trump has not advocated a specific timetable. For Trump, who campaigned on an “America First” mantra, Syria is just the latest foreign arena where his impulse has been to limit the U.S. role. Like with NATO and the United Nations, Trump has called for other governments to step up and share more of the burden so that Washington doesn’t foot the bill. His administration has been crisscrossing the globe seeking financial commitments from other countries to fund reconstruction in both Syria and Iraq, but with only limited success. Yet it’s unclear how Trump’s impulse to pull out could be affected by recent staff shake-ups on his national security team. Tillerson and former national security adviser H.R. McMaster, both advocates for keeping a U.S. presence in Syria, were recently fired, creating questions about the longevity of the plan Tillerson announced in his Stanford University speech in January. But Trump also replaced McMaster with John Bolton, a vocal advocate for U.S. intervention and aggressive use of the military overseas. The abrupt change in the president’s thinking has drawn concern both inside and outside the United States. Other nations that make up the U.S.-led coalition fighting IS fear that Trump’s impulse to pull out hastily would allow the notoriously resourceful IS militants to regroup, several European diplomats said. That concern has been heightened by the fact that U.S.-backed ground operations against remaining IS militants in Syria were put on hold earlier this month. The ground operations had to be paused because Kurdish fighters who had been spearheading the campaign against IS shifted to a separate fight with Turkish forces, who began combat operations in the town of Afrin against Kurds who are considered by Ankara to be terrorists that threaten Turkey’s security. “This is a serious and growing concern,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said this month. Beyond just defeating IS, there are other strategic U.S. objectives that could be jeopardized by a hasty withdrawal, officials said, chiefly those related to Russia and Iran. Israel, America’s closest Mideast ally, and other regional nations like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are deeply concerned about the influence of Iran and its allies, including the Shiite militant group Hezbollah, inside Syria. The U.S. military presence in Syria has been seen as a buffer against unchecked Iranian activity, and especially against Tehran’s desire to establish a contiguous land route from Iran to the Mediterranean coast in
Alabama women suing for equal pay lack state protection
Amy Heatherly believes she would have been paid at least $50,000 more to do her job over the past five years if she had been a man. As the only female human resources director overseeing compensation at the University of Alabama’s main campus, Heatherly said she knew for years she was getting paid less than three men on a similar management level with fewer years of experience. She filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2014, after receiving a raise that was half of her male colleagues’. In 2016, she sued the university. “It did not have as much to do with the money but me feeling like I’m paid my worth, or at least paid equitably, like you’re being respected and recognized for what you do,” said Heatherly, 52, who has worked at the university for 19 years. The university argues differences in pay are justified because her position is not comparable to her male colleagues. Heatherly says that she is a victim of gender discrimination because she’s not receiving equal pay for equal work. White women in Alabama make 72 cents to a white man’s dollar. Black women make 57 and Latinas 47, the National Women’s Law Center calculated. Federal law prohibits wage discrimination on the basis of sex for equal work, except where there is a difference in experience or productivity. Alabama and Mississippi are the only two states that don’t have equal pay laws. Rep. Adline Clarke, a Democrat from Mobile, unsuccessfully pushed lawmakers to approve equal pay legislation. Clarke’s bill, which failed this legislative session, mirrored federal law but tasked the Alabama Department of Labor with enforcement. She said that would hold employers more accountable. Lilly Ledbetter, the Alabama woman who lost a lawsuit over being paid less than her male counterparts, is the namesake of the law signed by former President Barack Obama to make it easier for women to sue over wage discrimination. She said people wrongly think that pay discrimination does not exist. “It seems like they all have blinders on,” Ledbetter told the Associated Press. “The corporate world in some regards feels that equal pay for equal work is a myth. They think we have it.” The university said in court filings that it explained Heatherly’s low raise was because of how she handled an employee complaint and software problems. Heatherly said they never talked with her about disciplinary problems at the time and gave her no performance evaluation. Heatherly’s complaint said that when she sued, she and her three male colleagues all had the title of director, each with unique responsibilities. “She’s the only person in the job, so then can she never be a victim of sex discrimination because there’s no comparator?” said Heatherly’s attorney Charles Guerrier, who worked for the EEOC for three decades. “If you segregate the jobs and underpay the women, you can’t violate law because there are no men doing the same jobs.” The university counters in court filings that Heatherly’s role was not comparable because it wasn’t systemwide and had different responsibilities. The university uses a pay grade system that tallies salaries based on the differentials. A statistical analysis by Heatherly’s economic expert reported she was paid less than 19 out of 20 men in her pay grade. The expert calculated the university paid female administrators between 5 to 14 percent less. The university’s expert responded that the analysis was “flawed” because jobs can’t be compared within the same pay grade. The university said doing so is “ignoring legitimate factors that drive compensation,” like type of work and job performance. Monica Watts, the university’s associate vice president for communications, said the university could not answer questions or comment on the ongoing case. In response to an open records request for documentation of equal pay complaints, lawsuits and settlements, the university said they have “no responsive public documents that compile the information.” Federal court records show two University of Alabama at Birmingham professors sued over unequal pay in 2006. One settled and one left the university, according to their attorney. Heatherly said the lawsuit has dashed her dreams of a promotion. She is her family’s breadwinner, currently earning more than her husband at $131,000 a year. “There are days when I wonder, why do I keep helping a place that’s done this to me?” she said, wiping at tears. “If I can help to make it better for other females, and I know I can’t change the world, but if I do that I’ll feel like I’ve had an impact.” Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
