Witnesses refuse to testify in hearing on Clinton’s email
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The name plate for witness Bryan Pagliano, former senior adviser, Information Resource Management, State Department, who did not appear, sat on the witness table on Capitol Hill in Washington, today, during a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on ‘Examining Preservation of State Department Records.’
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Witnesses, from left, Paul Combetta, Platte River Networks, Bill Thornton, Platte River Networks, and Justin Cooper were sworn in on Capitol Hill in Washington, today, prior to testifying before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on ‘Examining Preservation of State Department Records.’
WASHINGTON » Three witnesses ordered to testify today before a House committee investigating Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server asserted their constitutional rights against self-incrimination and did not appear or refused to answer questions.
Bryan Pagliano, the former State Department computer specialist tasked with setting up Clinton’s server, did not attend the Republican-led hearing. His attorneys said in a letter to the chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee that Pagliano will continue to assert his constitutional right not to testify.
Pagliano spoke previously to the FBI under immunity, telling the bureau there were no successful security breaches of the server. But he said he was aware of many failed login attempts that he described as “brute force attacks.”
Pagliano also refused to answer questions last year before a House panel investigating the deadly 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya.
“He has never made any statement or taken any action that would constitute a waiver of his constitutional rights and there is no reason for anyone to believe he might suddenly depart from that position,” Pagliano’s lawyers wrote in the Sept. 13 letter to Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, the Oversight committee chairman.
Chaffetz said there will be consequences for Pagliano’s refusal to appear and for “thumbing his nose at Congress.” He didn’t specify what the penalties would be.
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The email issue has shadowed Clinton’s candidacy for president, and Republicans have been steadfast in focusing on her use of a private server for government business, with several high-profile hearings leading up to the election. Congressional Republicans have cast Clinton as reckless with U.S. national security by insisting on using private communications systems at potentially greater risk of being penetrated by Chinese and Russian hackers.
But Democrats insist the sole purpose of the hearings is to undermine Clinton’s presidential bid.
“I believe this committee is abusing taxpayer dollars and the authority of Congress in an astonishing onslaught of political attacks to damage Secretary Clinton’s campaign for president,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the committee’s top Democrat.
FBI Director James Comey last week defended the decision to forgo criminal charges against Clinton after a yearlong probe into whether she mishandled classified information that flowed through the private email system located in her Chappaqua, New York, home. Comey told bureau employees in an internal memo that it wasn’t a close call.
Two officials from Denver-based Platte River Networks appeared before the committee but invoked their constitutional right not to testify. Bill Thornton and Paul Combetta were excused from the session. In June 2013, after Clinton had left office, the server was moved from her home to a data center in northern New Jersey, where it was maintained by the Platte River Networks.
Congressional Republicans last month issued subpoenas to Platte River Networks and two other companies — Datto Inc. and SECNAP Network Security Corp. — after they declined to voluntarily answer questions to determine whether Clinton’s private server met government standards for record-keeping and security.
One witness, Justin Cooper, a former White House aide to President Bill Clinton, was the lone witness and answered the committee’s questions for nearly two hours. His attorney, Howard Shapiro, sat behind him.
Chaffetz described Cooper as a former employee of President Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation. He said Cooper purchased the first server used by Hillary Clinton. Cooper also registered the email domain “clintonemail.com” in 2009, when Clinton’s nomination to be secretary of state was being considered by the Senate.
Cooper also told the FBI that he helped Hillary Clinton set up her mobile devices, according to Chaffetz, and “when she was finished with them he would break them in half or destroy them with a hammer.” Cooper told the committee that he thought that “was good practice at the time.”
Cooper, who now runs his own consulting firm, told the committee that he did not have a security clearance during the period he performed the IT work for Hillary Clinton. He also said he wasn’t an expert in communications security. He told lawmakers that he couldn’t say whether any secret information had been purloined by foreign hackers or that U.S. national security had been compromised.
In response to a question from Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., Cooper said he had not been part of any conversations that involved attorneys discussing the erasing of Clinton’s emails.
133 responses to “Witnesses refuse to testify in hearing on Clinton’s email”
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What is hiLIARy hiding? Her yoga classes? Chelsea’s wedding stuff? Benghazi? So many questions with against the Clinton Cartel’s corruption…cover ups. Evil doings are usually behind the cover ups.
This is just a typical republican witch hunt where republicans are looking for anything to use against Hillary. What a waste of time and money. No wonder nothing gets done. Republicans are too busy on witch hunts.
Where there’s a WITCH there’ll always be a WITCH hunt…Dems have the WITCH…Republicans never had one.
How many more millions of taxpayer dollars are Republicans going to waste on another smear campaign.
@Rite80…Getting the TRUTH costs MONEY. To lessen the cost all hiLIARy and her cartel have to do is cooperate. What is hiLIARy hiding? Why the resistance? Have they found any emails on hiLIARy’s YOGA lessons yet…chelsea’s wedding stuff yet?
Time to move forward, whatever happens, happens, good or bad life goes on. If any thing is found you can bet your bottom dollar nothing happens. A clue is the clandestine meeting between the Attorney General and former President Clinton proves that nothing substantial is going to go forward. It is pre-decided that whatever, so prosecution. The writing is on the wall. Even the elected senator/representative do not call the shots, the “Insiders” do. congress just goes through the motion and we the voters like sheep go the polls believing in the “tooth fairy”.
Even when Republicans get to look at her medical records, they will still think there’s some kind of conspiracy.
The conspiracy theories about Obama’s birth never stopped even when his birth certificate was published in the papers.
What’s the Kenyan doing today?
IRT Peter (Boots), the Citizens of the United States just want the truth. The Citizens can read and figure out for themselves what is right and wrong. Ms Hillary deleting the 33,000 emails develops a huge question on the trust and truthfulness from her.
Same said for his taxes since 1980…
Clinton Foundation?
Let’s see, Ike. You’re saying that not exposing documents signed and sent to the federal government in compliance with our tax code is the same as destroying evidence under subpoena, ie. obstruction of justice? I think your scales need recalibration.
Where trumps taxes? Like kuroiwag said we the citizens of the United States want to decide what is right and wrong.
IRT Ike, Mr. Trump is having his current tax return audited by the IRS and we must have patience to wait until the audit is completed. The prior years tax returns by Mr. Trump has been audited, approved, and accepted. We must wait for Mr. Trumps current year. Then and only then we will know the Obama Administration IRS has audited, approved and accepted his tax return. I believe its fair.
I agree that this is political. I don’t believe there would be hearings if HRC was a republican. On the other hand I don’t believe people plead the fifth if they have no fear of self incrimination. If what happened with HRC’s emails was totally innocent as she describes no one should have any fear of being prosecuted. I also have absolutely no doubt that if I did what HRC did I’d be in the process of being prosecuted. At a minimum, the destruction of thousands of emails was a crime.
If HRC was a Republican she would already be in prison.
The dude who refused to show probably fears for his life. There are a number of unexplained deaths of individuals with an association with the Clintons. Someone funding his lawyers. An IT tech can hardly afford the expense of those Washington lawyers.
You are just full of conspiracy theories, aren’t you? So it seems like you’re hinting that the Clintons kill people and there’s some conspiracy about legal fees. Hmmm.
Maybe you aluminum foil hat is on too tight?
“You’re hinting that the Clintons kill people” nah, never crossed my mind.>>>http://www.thepoliticalinsider.com/another-clinton-associate-found-dead-bill-hillarys-body-count-increases/
No one has the right to look at my or Clinton’s personal emails.
People generally plead the fifth because their lawyers advise it. Not to take it can open you up to a lot of questions. Most would be irrelevant to anything. And Sarge if Hillary was a republican, there would no problem because Its ok if you are republican.
Hey wait a minute. These guys are refusing to testify. They’re hiding something, no matter how you try to spin it, they are hiding something. It’s too bad that there are so many low IQ voters out there who will probably vote for Clinton anyway, just because they’re too dumb to know better.
Actually, low IQ voters either don’t know we have a Constitution, or don’t know what purposes it serves. Like you, for instance.
Good thing there are high IQ folks like me who can help you exercise your rights.
There goes nasty klastri again. Belittling someone making comments that seem to be the consensus. Klastri, go to Mexico and help the women there. They need your legal expertise to fight for their rights to get legal rights to have abortions so we won’t have to deal with their unwanted crossing the border in the future.
Bumba is a low IQ citizen to NOT understand the 5th. To understand it, you need to be a lawyer. There’s a lot of low IQ voters out there who would vote for a man that stiffed the people 5 times on a Bankruptcy court, with an army of lawyers sitting behind him.
If you have nothing to hide, why take the 5th. I gotta wonder, how much these guy were paid by Hillary and Bill to keep quiet. Otherwise maybe the next report on them would be how they committed suicide.
Suicide happens to run very deeply among those with any questionable gossip against the Clinton dynasty.
Indeed the clintons trail is a very long and…..crooked.
Being techy, these guys know they did something ILLEGAL that is why they are doing the 5th.
You bet! They’re guilty of setting up her email server fully aware that they violated national security policy and regulations. Next they’ll commit suicide rather than face prison sentences in Guantanamo for treason against the US government.
Sentences in Gitmo? You know as much about the Constitution as Mr. Trump does. Which means nothing. Enjoy marinating in your ignorance.
Trump moving up in the polls. HiLIARy feeling ill. Lock her up.>>>”You are hereby served” re: FBI files on the Hilary tapes
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/09/13/lawmaker-issues-subpoena-to-fbi-for-clinton-probe-records.html
There appears to be one hard hitting honest American serving in the Congress.
While I’m fully aware that it’s reserved for non-us Citizens I’m all for US Citizens being sent to Guantanamo. They should start with all those that support illegals and the human traffickers that knowingly employ them like yourself.
Do you ever reach a saturation level with your ignorance of the law and the Constitution?
You can’t seem to stop lying. What’s up with that?
Hey, time to stop digging your nose and change your bvds. Get out and get some sunlight, it will dry up your zits.
The Clintons can’t seem to stop lying. What’s up with that? Do the high IQ’ers have an answer.
IRT DragoninWater, Guantanamo? Excellent suggestion. The United States can send all the illegal aliens who break American laws and serve their time in Gitmo. More important, illegal aliens who break our laws, serve their time, and their home Country refuse them, can remain in Gitmo. All illegal aliens in the United States are law breakers, period.
Like kailua000 said you really can’t blame the witnesses for not wanting to testify, they could end up committing suicide like Vince Foster or randomly shot in the back of their heads as thew walked around DC.
My only response to you is…yup.
Must be very difficult for the AP to report this, as indefensible as it is.
Shame the republicans do not realize that this is not Orwell’s Oceania. I know the republicans would prefer a dictatorship with everyone just obeying the government. I suggest people who desire this might consider moving to Russia.
I am pretty sure republicans would prefer a smaller government that left us alone and didn’t tax and regulate us to death.
Did you get beat up by a mob of republicans in your youth? It seems like
you are horribly tormented by dark haunting thoughts. I know some people still suffer from Bush Derangement Syndrome, seek help, it is available.
Is that like Bush’s Great Recession? We still haven’t made a full recovery. Obama has kept it from being another Great Depression.
Yes. Wages have gone up somewhat, but our employment levels are still a little anemia. The Fed had better not raise interest rates.
Always blame the Republicans, even when it is obvious that what Clinton did was illegal and should be prosecuted. Stop playing party politics and accept how deceitful and crooked the Clintons are.
And you certainly have proven that you – you! – are more qualified than Director Comey. Exactly. Right.
Look what I just found….”You are hereby served” re: FBI files on the Hilary tapes
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/09/13/lawmaker-issues-subpoena-to-fbi-for-clinton-probe-records.html
There appears to be one hard hitting honest American serving in the Congress.
The more Boots comments, the more he/she demonstrates his/her fundamental ignorance of American politics.
“I know the republicans would prefer a dictatorship with everyone just obeying the government.”
The Republican Party has historically been in favor of smaller government and less Federal intervention. The Democrat party on the other hand favors strong centralized government and more control over people’s lives.
Based on your comment, sounds like you ought to switch parties Boots.
That’s not true, of course. Republicans have fought to follow every single pregnancy from conception to delivery, and even to control the way people die – RE: Schiavo. You can make up whatever fantasy you choose, but small government is not something that has been a Republican idea for a long time.
Speaking of that topic, why don’t you move to Mexico and empower women there to legalize abortions since they are outright illegal there. Maybe they won’t overpopulate and send their unwanted across the border in future years.
klastri – since you are an attorney or fancy yourself as an attorney, I find your use of logical argumentation to be woefully lacking especially from one who claims to be a lawyer. I hope you don’t practice law in the courtroom as an opposing lawyer would easily shoot holes in your consistently faulty argumentation. One can easily turn your claim upside down and state that rather than “controlling” people, the Republican party seeks to “preserve” life because each human life has inherent dignity and worth.
If you still need schooling as to what party seeks a larger role in people’s lives and making them more dependent on the government, you only need read up on your political history. If you are too lazy or stubborn to even do that, I’ll just quote you one source of many available on the internet:
From wikipedia: “The current “small government” movement in the United States is largely a product of Ronald Reagan’s presidency from 1981–89. Ronald Reagan was a small government conservative. He famously said, “Government is not a solution to our problem; government is the problem.”.[14] This has become the unofficial slogan of the Tea Party movement, and conservative commentators like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.[15] The Tea Party movement claims that the United States used to have a small government and that it has turned away from that ideal.”
Do you know of any Democrats that subscribe to the philosophy of small government klastri?? If any exist, they are surely in the minority aren’t they klastri?
dragoninwater – Mexico?
Maybe you could choose one day next week to write something that makes sense. How does that sound?
d_bullfighter, klastri is no lawyer. She got her pseudo-law degree in Chicano Studies from Trump University.
dragoninwater – Let me guess …. you’re actually eleven years old?
klastri, I know the truth hurts, can’t blame you for your outright racist comments you keep making against any non-Chicano person out there. If I were an illegal like yourself I too would be bitter for not being wanted by your own La Raza people as well as the new country you squatted.
dragoninwater – As impossible as this may be, your comments make less sense every day.
La Raza? You’re still fixated on that? Have you been in a coma?
To get at the truth, Congress needs to the grant the witnesses immunity from prosecution for anything they did that was unlawful. That will force them to testify, and if they still refuse they should be charged with contempt and prosecuted accordingly.
After the 10 th hearing by a republican led committee, these guys had enough. They can’t spend their lives not earning a living! Oh, like sort of what the republican are doing, not working, and wasting my tax paying money. Let’s have these hearings after Nov.4, okay
That way “We the People” would have a new President and a shake up of the congress.
Lock her up
NanakuliBoss: You’re forgetting a few details. Information has not been provided to Congress for obvious reasons. Take one item alone, destroying evidence after it was requested (referring to her emails). It appears that happened, despite all the stonewalling. That’s a serious crime. If convicted, Hillary could not run for President. You are aware of that, right? Delaying the conviction of a crime until after the election is meaningless.
A smurf commenting on a story like this one only reveals their detachment from reality.
Stop calling cajay a smurf. He has his opinion and onions.
Your comments validate my point..
Mrs. Clinton, are you feeling better now?
A entirely sham charitable donation, consistent with most parts of his life, it is a series of embellishments, hyperbole and self-aggrandizement.
The Donald J. Trump Foundation is a different beast, as he highlighted when explaining why he doesn’t fund it. “If I give money through the foundation, then every charity looks at me and says, Could you do that? Could you give me this?” he said, explaining that he doesn’t “consider the foundation to be a major part of my giving.”
That answer raises a few obvious questions:
Does loudly proclaiming that you gave away $100 million over five years, but not through a foundation, somehow stop people from seeking your money?
If you’re averse to using your charitable foundation for charitable giving, why maintain it?
Who were the recipients of the $100 million you claim to have given?
Trump was asked that last question and remained cagey:
Donald Trump: I give mostly to a lot of different groups.
Drew Harwell: Can you give us any names? One name, two names.
Trump: No, I don’t want to. No, I don’t want to because––
Harwell: Dollar amounts at times? What— ?
Trump: No. I’d like to keep it private. But the foundation is not my primary form of giving. It’s a form, but it’s––
Harwell: What became of that $3 million you said you raised for vets but you haven’t given away yet?
Trump: The money for the vets? I have given a lot of money to the vets. I gave a lot.
At the time, the whole interview made me suspicious.
Some make a spectacle of their charitable giving. Others give without ever letting on. There are even people who eagerly talked about a particular charitable organization they support, in hopes of raising awareness or because they’re so involved in the work, but prefer to donate quietly, in keeping with the counsel of scripture.
What I have never encountered is someone positively eager to brag loudly about the sums that they donate, but totally unwilling to name any organization they support or people who they have helped. Trump strikes me as an especially unlikely man to possess that attribute. If a hypothetical charity wrote him to say his donation of mosquito nets saved 100 lives, he seems like the type who would inflate the number tenfold and talk about his huge win over malaria, which many people say is terrible, not the type to never tell anyone about the people his generosity helped.
Still, I didn’t write that months ago when the interview was published because, for all my suspicions, I couldn’t prove Trump is the sort who wants to be seen as more generous than he is (an impression that was bolstered when he failed to make good on pledges to donate to veterans’ charities until he was hounded by the media to do so); or that he was hiding a discrediting secret associated with his charity.
Now, thanks to reporters who shared skepticism of Trump’s rhetoric and spent months uncovering what he has been trying to hide, both suspicions can be substantiated:
Donald Trump used his foundation to appear more generous than his giving warranted.
And Trump used his charitable foundation to funnel money to a suspicious cause, breaking tax laws and appearing to engage in serious political corruption.
It remains theoretically possible, if highly improbable, that the GOP nominee has also hidden massive amounts of charitable giving that months of investigation by reporters has failed to turn up. Regardless, what they have found in their search is damning. And the national press has failed to adequately press the candidate on his behavior.
A Notepad of Gifts Not Given
No one has been trying harder to substantiate Donald Trump’s claims about his own generosity than David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post. Fahrenthold began by identifying charities with close ties to the billionaire. “Some got money from the Trump Foundation. In other cases, Trump had a personal connection to the charity or its leaders . Some were charities that DonorSearch database records indicated he might have given to. A variety of other reasons included media mentions, gala attendance, or involvement with Trump’s TV show ‘Celebrity Apprentice,’” the article explained. “So far, The Post’s search has turned up little. Between 2008 and this May — when Trump made good on a pledge to give $1 million to a veterans’ group — its search has identified just one personal gift from Trump’s own pocket.”
For example: Trump once approached a New Jersey charity called the Charles Evans Foundation and asked them to donate to the Donald J. Trump Foundation, citing efforts to raise funds for the Palm Beach Police Foundation. “The Evans Foundation said yes,” Fahrenthold reported. “In 2009 and 2010, it gave a total of $150,000 to the Donald J. Trump Foundation, a small charity that the Republican presidential nominee founded in 1987. Then, Trump’s foundation turned around and made donations to the police group in South Florida. In those years, the Trump Foundation’s gifts totaled $150,000. Trump had effectively turned the Evans Foundation’s gifts into his own gifts, without adding any money of his own.”
How could Trump have made money on the deal? The Florida police group gave Trump an award for his giving (which was actually Trump giving them money he got from someone else). Trump dressed up in a tuxedo to accept the honor that he didn’t deserve. And “on the night that he won the Palm Tree Award for his philanthropy, Trump may have actually made money,” Fahrenthold reports. “The gala was held at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, and the police foundation paid to rent the room. It’s unclear how much was paid in 2010, but the police foundation reported in its tax filings that it rented Mar-a-Lago in 2014 for $276,463.”
For Trump, that wasn’t a one-time transgression. There were other occasions when he courted public esteem for charitable giving, but actually used foundation money:
The Trump Foundation … even gives in situations in which Trump publicly put himself on the hook for a donation—as when he promised a gift ‘out of my wallet’ on NBC’s ‘The Celebrity Apprentice,’” The Post investigation concluded. “The Trump Foundation paid off most of those on-air promises. A TV production company paid others. The Post could find no instance in which a celebrity’s charity got a gift from Trump’s own wallet. Another time, Trump went on TV’s “Extra” for a contest called ‘Trump pays your bills!’ A professional spray-tanner won.
The Trump Foundation paid her bills.
Remember, the Trump Foundation doesn’t use Trump’s money. In other words, the masses watching on television were egregiously misled about Trump’s generosity.
The Atlantic
What did they do for Hillary that will incriminate them? What are they hiding????
Remember all this. If you ever get into trouble, just have everyone “plead the fifth”, and it will go away. Clinton’s have this down. Also, delay, delay, delay, then say, “Why are you still talking about this; it’s old news”. For this to work the public must be gullible or have self interests that exceed their concern for wrongdoing on the Clinton’s part.
Poverty fell greatly, and wage grew in a sustainable way to all groups. What else you got trumpeted??????
The Great Recession officially ended in 2009. But 2015 may go down as the year the recovery finally began for most Americans.
The Census Bureau reported Tuesday that the median U.S. household made $56,516 in 2015, up 5.2 percent from 2014 after adjusting for inflation. That’s the first increase since 2007, and the largest one-year increase on record. The number of Americans living in poverty fell by 3.5 million, and the poverty rate fell 1.2 percentage points, to 13.5 percent, the biggest drop since 1968.
The income gains were remarkably widespread. Incomes rose for people in every age group, of every race and in every part of the country. And in a reversal of recent trends, incomes rose fastest for the lowest earners. By most measures, in fact, the U.S. became slightly more equal in 2015.
One year of strong gains wasn’t enough to erase the scars of the recession, though, or the years of weak income growth that preceded it. Incomes remain lower, and poverty higher, than they were when the recession began in late 2007. Worse, incomes have been stagnant, at best, since 2000, even accounting for trends such as the aging of the U.S. population.
The Census Bureau reported Tuesday that the median U.S. household made $56,516 in 2015, up 5.2 percent from 2014 after adjusting for inflation. That’s the first increase since 2007, and the largest one-year increase on record. The number of Americans living in poverty fell by 3.5 million, and the poverty rate fell 1.2 percentage points, to 13.5 percent, the biggest drop since 1968.
The income gains were remarkably widespread. Incomes rose for people in every age group, of every race and in every part of the country. And in a reversal of recent trends, incomes rose fastest for the lowest earners. By most measures, in fact, the U.S. became slightly more equal in 2015.
One year of strong gains wasn’t enough to erase the scars of the recession, though, or the years of weak income growth that preceded it. Incomes remain lower, and poverty higher, than they were when the recession began in late 2007. Worse, incomes have been stagnant, at best, since 2000, even accounting for trends such as the aging of the U.S. population.
Still, Tuesday’s report is the best evidence yet that years of steady job growth and falling unemployment are at last translating into income gains for American households. When the Census Bureau released its 2014 income data a year ago, I wrote that “more jobs haven’t meant less poverty.” That’s no longer true. Nearly 12 million more Americans worked full-time and year-round in 2015 than in 2009, and their earnings have nearly returned to pre-recession levels; in fact, women with full-time jobs earned slightly more in 2015 than they did in 2007. And with job growth holding steady in 2016, it is likely that income gains have continued as well.1
It is hard not to view Tuesday’s report through the lens of the 2016 campaign. Donald Trump has often referred to stagnant incomes as a sign that President Obama’s economic policies have failed; the new data may not lead Trump to shift his rhetoric, but it does suggest that the recovery has become significantly stronger in the final years of Obama’s term. The White House wasted no time in publishing a blog post boasting about the strong numbers.
But beneath the headline-making recent gains revealed in the report, there was still plenty of less-positive news for Trump and his supporters to point to. Despite the strong gains in 2015, incomes for the bottom 60 percent of U.S. households are still lower they were than in 2007. And rural America has been left out of the latest rebound: Households outside of metropolitan areas saw their incomes flatline or even decline in 2015.
In other words, the job isn’t over. If 2015 marked the start of the recovery for household incomes, then it was a strong start — significantly stronger than expected by even optimistic economists. But the economic recovery is now more than seven years old, and economists are increasingly concerned about the possibility of another recession in the coming years. It will take several more years like 2015 to fill the gap left by the recession.
Here are a few more observations from Tuesday’s report:
Less poverty: Officially, 43 million Americans lived in poverty in 2015, including 14.5 million children under 18 and 4.2 million seniors ages 65 and up. But economists across the political spectrum consider those figures misleading because they are based on an outdated definition of poverty that ignores many necessary expenses (such as the cost of transportation and medical care) and fails to account for differences in the cost of living from one part of the country to another. The Census Bureau on Tuesday also released an alternative measure of poverty that does account for such factors; there were about 2 million more poor Americans under this so-called Supplemental Poverty Measure than under the official definition, but about 3 million fewer poor children.
However you define it, poverty fell sharply in 2015. The official poverty rate, at 13.5 percent in 2015, is the lowest since 2008, although it is still a full percentage point higher than it was before the recession began. Government programs lifted millions of Americans out of poverty. Refundable tax credits such as the Earned Income Tax Credit boosted income above the poverty level for more than 9 million Americans, including nearly 5 million children; the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, more commonly known as food stamps, reduced the number of Americans experiencing poverty by another 4.6 million.
Gender wage gap narrows: The median woman with a full-time job earned about $41,000 in 2015, about $10,000 less than the median man. Women earned 80 percent as much as men, a slight (statistically insignificant) narrowing of the gender wage gap from 79 percent in 2014.
This measure of the gender wage gap is crude, ignoring differences in education, occupation, hours worked and other factors. For men and women working in comparable jobs, the gap is significantly smaller. Still, the measure helps reflect the overall status of men and women in the U.S. economy; the gender wage gap shrank significantly in the 1980s and 1990s, but more recently, progress has stalled.
538
“The Census Bureau reported Tuesday that the median U.S. household made $56,516 in 2015, up 5.2 percent from 2014 after adjusting for inflation.” Well, sure, median household increased in 2015, but why is that? We now have three generation households because adult children, even when married, can’t afford to move out and live on their own.
State the actual data and source, and it better be current, in lieu of generic cherry picked anecdotal platitudes…..chirp chirp–crickets.
Ikefromeli, this is from one of hundreds of reports about multi-generational households that you can easily find by doing basic searches on the Internet:
“A record 57 million Americans, or 18.1% of the population of the United States, lived in multi-generational family households in 2012, double the number who lived in such households in 1980.”
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/07/17/in-post-recession-era-young-adults-drive-continuing-rise-in-multi-generational-living/
Did that answer your question?
BOOM! And you did all in one paragraph. “Keep it Simple” as they say.
Obviously,you never delved through all the data, (not that you would able to understand and parse thought it) as ALL groups, including those under 30 with appreciable gains…..
“You are hereby served” re: FBI files on the Hilary tapes
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/09/13/lawmaker-issues-subpoena-to-fbi-for-clinton-probe-records.html
There appears to be one hard hitting honest American serviing in the Congress.
ike..anybody..even boots can copy & paste. You will never be a Josh Ernest though…even Josh doesn’t spin that much.
Glowing report of progress made, yet ask yourself, has your cost of living improved or are you having a harder time eking out a living. The true test is how often could you afford to eat out of enjoy your vacation? Do you really have an easier time getting by. Are things more expensive. You can’t fill your belly with stats.
My networth tripled, most of it just being in common index fund. During the same time, I paid almost the full retail price of college (CAL, Harvey Mudd and Yale) for my three daughters, and our homes increased in equity over 40%. So, yes, I would say yes……
Once again it’s not about YOU. No one cares about you, not even klasless.
sarge22…people like ike & K_____ are so boring….they probably show family pictures at dinner time…to themselves.
Boring? Maybe, but not underemployed, not undereducated, not under-read and certainly not bamboozled by a man who has spent 70 seventy years running from working class folks (unless you count his ex-wives who are certainly arguable former working girls) and people color.
ike….here’s Bubba’s record…hiLIARy tried to destroy all his conquests…consensual or otherwise:
Juanita Broaddrick | Kathleen Willey | Paula Jones (paid off $850,000 big ones)| Sandra Allen James | Eileen Wellstone | Christy Zercher | Carolyn Moffet | Helen Dowdy | Becky Brown | Regina Blakely Hopper | Monica Lewinsky | Elizabeth Ward Gracen | Gennifer Flowers | Connie Hamzy | Dolly Kyle Browning | Sally Miller (Sally Perdue) | Lencola Sullivan
Keonigohan – Again with your truly bizarre obsession.
Can you not see this suggests mental illness?
oh & ike..I’ll not mention Bubba’s association with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s “Lolita Express” airplane flights without his SS people.
Klastri stop stalking me..told you I’m straight and happily married. You need help.
You wanna see Trumps record…..several filed sexual,assault claims, no shortage of hookers and escorts, see ex wife’s and ex girlfriends……
ike…list please
There are three documented cases filed against him, easily researched, as for his history of womanizing, start with this–http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/us/politics/donald-trump-women.html?_r=0
The median is the mid point in a data distribution. If more households in the upper 10% have increases in household income, the median will skew to the upper 10%, which makes it seem that all households are making more money. Correct interpretation of the data measures the median in relation to the average.
“Officially, 43 million Americans lived in poverty in 2015”
pffft, that number is the EXACT the amount of illegals and anchor babies we have in the USA. If you stop counting them as Americans I’m sure the only poverty stricken population you have left are the homeless.
Platte River Networks maintains they had security protocols in place for the server and they had no security breaches, other than some “brute force” attempts. So, what were those security protocols in place?
Using a laptop and a telephone line like Powell did presents as much of a security risk as the email server, if not more. Simply because a telephone line has absolutely no security protocols.
As demonstrated by the email exchanges between Powell and Clinton regarding using personal devices for government business, they both disregarded established security policies that should have been followed.
If the emails no longer exist, what is the point of having this investigation?
Based on just these facts alone, it seems the committee investigating the emails should be directing their efforts at the practice of using personal devices for government business, and taking steps to ensure this never happens again.
In other words, going forward, there will be no excuse for anyone using personal devices which are compromised with sensitive government information.
This means that the folks are following the advice of their respective attorneys. One of the great things about the Constitution.
People here who don’t know anything will try to make something out of the silence. Go ahead. It means only that the person is following good advice.
Still doesn’t mean they are innocent. If anything, they have much to hide and to buy lots of time to prevent testifying under oath from self incrimination which they might face anyways even if they plead the 5th. Most likely outcome given that the Clinton Dynasty is at stake each one will drink the ethylene glycol (antifreeze) laced kool-aid and all go down as martyrs to save the queen.
As all good attorneys advise: deny everything until cornered by the truth.
That’s a lie, of course. I’m a lawyer, and we counsel clients to exercise their rights. Not to “deny everything.”
If you don’t know anything about the subject matter, why comment?
You said you were appointed to a Federal Judgeship by President GW Bush….correct?
Keonigohan – What are you talking about? A federal judge?
WOW! Yes! You stated President GW Bush appointed you.
Keonigohan – You’re hallucinating. Or lying. Or both. I never said any such thing.
Klastri (aka Kurt on Kauai aka kauai)…you stated that on a local TV station website K___2 under alias KoK…you’re denying it now?
Sure Klastri, I’m sure your Chicano Studies law degree from Trump University will get you far in the legal field. In the meantime, while you wait for more illegals to cross the border and sucker them into paying you a retainer we welcome your humor here on the SA comments section.
dragoninwater – You probably can’t appreciate that you write gibberish, but you do. It’s really sad for an adult. Just sad.
Keonigohan – A TV website? What the heck is wrong with you?
You’re just pathetic. I’m sorry that I responded. Not a mistake I’ll make again
Klastri, you deny you stated that…not surprising as any reasonable person understands to be a Judge you need the basics..aside from knowing the LAW, intelligence, common sense, fairness…traits you lack going by your vitriolic, biased and racist posts.
Keonigohan, klastri is a legal expert, a lawyer and a federal judge according to the posts she made. For all we know Klastri might be HiLIARy herself! LOL
dragoninwater – You are lying. Nothing new about that, of course.
I never wrote anything about being a judge. Never. I was never a judge, and I would never write or say that I was.
I understand Klastri advised several of his clients to exercise their rights and take the 5th in court, but they did not follow his advice and drank it the night before. Guilty, as charged.
Dirty politics at its best — on the part of the Clinton Cartel (that’s a good one) avoiding the truth. Hey, we refuse to testify on the grounds “we will incriminate ourselves.”
People who don’t know much criticize folks who take advantage of their rights.
Thank you, United States Constitution!
So what happens if they plead the 5th and the prosecution goes forward with enough evidence to charge them with crimes nonetheless? What part of the Constitution will save them? We’d love to hear your expert legal opinion since you seem to be the legal expert here.
I am a legal expert.
Your question makes no sense. If they have evidence sufficient to build a case, that’s what they will do. This hearing was not crafted to gather evidence. It was crafted to embarrass Mrs. Clinton. No matter the reason, counsel would recommend silence.
And people who know a lot, like these witnesses, but refuse to testify….. well, their silence is deafening. Thank you, common sense.
Like any good lawyer’s advice worth his fee: deny everything until cornered by the truth.
The Clintons are especially good at keeping the people who do their dirty work on the reservation. Those who go off the reservation frequently end up taking a dirt nap.
So if HiLIARy wins the Electoral College and then she gets sent off to Guantanamo later on, will Bill be the president again? haaaaa
Is it possible that you actually think that an American citizen could be sent to Guantanamo?
Did you attend 8th grade?
klastri, glad you came out to “play?” Question: Would these men (or anyone, for that matter) be subject to prosecution if they misspoke, get a quote wrong, timeline etc. In other words, can they be prosecuted if they made an honest mistake in their statement(s)? Could that be a reason why they decline to testify?
Congressional hearings are very stressful – particularly for every day folks just earning a living – and questions are crafted in such a way to cause mistakes. That adds to the TV value – which is the only purpose for these hearings anyway. So it’s all but impossible to prosecute someone for making a mistake – misremembering a date or chronology, for instance – in front of Congress. The US Attorney would need to prove intent – almost never possible.
They decline to testify because they have qualified counsel. No one with a lawyer in these cases would ever say anything. The only way I ever let a client testify is with full immunity. Anything less is malpractice.
Wonder if they would pledge allegiance to our flag or stand at attention when the National anthem is played? Anyhow so much for them, shuck them and forget about them. No need to give them further attention , the issue is closed. Congress is powerless any way. It’s not what it used to be.. Today they beholden to the lobbyist insiders.
I’d like to see Trey Gowdy have a go at all these people.
Like Gowdy did in the Benghazi hearings? Yeah … he did a real bang up job on that one.
A national disgrace.
Congress & Fox News is uncovering ‘stunning’ facts about the Clinton administration.
People of the Admin stating the ‘5th’, Pagliano not showing up at the congressional hearing, Jason Chaffetz; Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform demanding a subpoena to the FBI to redacted FBI files, the list goes on.
Then you have Hillary hiding her medical condition. This is a result of all the stress that she’s created for herself.
Now all we need is for more emails from Julian Assange to surface.
This truly Trumps the ‘whitewater’scandal. No pun intended.
The Clinton’s have finally been caught in their web of lies. Whoo-Hoo ! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN !!!
You are quite the social scientist!
Clintons going down. Another terrible day. Desperation is setting in and they are pulling out all the stops as Trump is getting to them. About time for another Wiki Wiki as HiLIARy trembles in fear. ‘Make America Great Again”
deplorable > deportable
Poor Hellary, what have you done that needs to be kept secret? Combetta, Thornton, and Cooper should have at least testified and refuse to answer select questions only and plead 5th otherwise. Not testifying at all is a total embarrassment for the Clinton gang since it leaves only guilt to the imagination of what has transpired.
It’s only an embarrassment if you don’t know anything. We enjoy a Constitution. It allows us to remain silent.
A wonderful thing.
klastri since you say your a lawyer, answer this lawyer joke. what’s the difference between a lawyer and a prostitute? answer please.
I generally don’t entertain imbeciles.
Is that the right answer?
no, come on klastri answer the question its what lawyer hillary would do. let the commenters know.
Yes. you hit the nail on the head. This plays into the hand of what Hillary detractors have been saying all along. She and the Clinton Machine have a decades long record of hiding things from the public. The Rose Law Firm Records, Travegate, Whitewater, cattle futures, Vince Foster, Bill’s documented mysoginy, e-mail destruction, private servers, money laundering, and most recently the lying about her physical condition, the list goes on ad infinitum. The fact they cannot be honest with the regular folks is catching up with them. I can see why her supporters are demoralized and rudderless. Get your anti-depressants now and avoid the rush.
Now these three are entitled to the assertion of their constitutional rights . Come what may, whether their stance results for the good of the country or not , it does not insult our national anthem nor our flag! Unlike some misguided professional well-paid sports people!
Me thinks them (3) guys are afraid of (3) more “accidental” deaths and body bags.
Dead men can’t testify. 😉 They have done the needful for now, next they must drink the ethylene glycol (antifreeze) laced kool-aid and all go down as martyrs to save the queen.
against self-incrimination…
The operative phrase is “self-incrimination”.
They’re guilty as h+ll