>>22185997 pb

>bakes we need some focus on Sen Joni Ernst and her confirmation of Pete Hegseth

https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/joni-ernst/contributors?cid=N00035483&cycle=2024

Joni Ernst

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Leadership PAC: Jobs, Opportunity & New Ideas PAC

Top 20 contributors to Campaign Committee

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Rank Contributor Total Individuals PACs

1 NorPAC $70,570 $63,570 $7,000

2 Apollo Global Management $64,250 $64,250 $0

3 Blackstone Group $57,600 $57,600 $0

NORPAC is a bipartisan, multi-candidate political action committee (PAC) working to strengthen United States-Israel relations.[1] NORPAC has spent the past 30 years building deep ties with candidates for the US House and Senate whoadvance the alliance between the United States and Israel. Together with a donor network from across the country, NORPAC provides financial, organizational, and educational support for candidates.NORPAC is volunteer-founded and led, with funds going directly to pro-Israel candidates.

Supported issues

Each year, before its annual Mission to Washington, NORPAC selects 5 issues or bills it will discuss that year, including:[2]

Foreign Aid to Israel

IFSA, the Iran Freedom Support Act (H.R.282 Archived 2008-11-04 at the Wayback Machine/S.333 Archived 2016-07-04 at the Wayback Machine), which imposes sanctions on Iran in response to nuclear activity.

USIECA, the US-Israel Energy Cooperation Act (H.R.2730 Archived 2008-11-24 at the Wayback Machine/S.1862[permanent dead link]), which supports joint alternative energy research.

PATA, the Palestinian Anti-Terror Act (H.R.4861 Archived 2008-11-04 at the Wayback Machine/S.2370[permanent dead link]), which restricts aid to the Hamas-dominated Palestinian Authority (while still allowing humanitarian aid) unless certain actions opposing terror are taken.

The Saudi Arabia Accountability Act (H.R.2037 Archived 2016-07-05 at the Wayback Machine/S.1171[permanent dead link]), which imposes sanctions on Saudi Arabia unless it clearly shuts down terrorist organizations within the country and ends support for such organizations outside the country.

Activities

Mission to Washington

Each year, NORPAC sends a group of active members to meet with Senators and Members of Congress to discuss the U.S.-Israel relationship. The mission includes up to 1,000 attendees and meets with the majority of congress.

Political fundraising

NORPAC hosts fundraisers for various political candidates who are supportive of the U.S.-Israel relationship.

>>22186689

>https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/joni-ernst/contributors?cid=N00035483&cycle=2024

>Joni Ernst

>>22186689

>1 NorPAC $70,570 $63,570 $7,000

>2 Apollo Global Management $64,250 $64,250 $0

Apollo Global Management,Inc. is an American asset management firm that primarily invests in alternative assets.[2][3][1] As of 2022, the company had $548 billion of assets under management, including $392 billion invested in credit, including mezzanine capital, hedge funds, non-performing loans, and collateralized loan obligations, $99 billion invested in private equity, and $46.2 billion invested in real assets, which includes real estate and infrastructure. The company invests money on behalf of pension funds, financial endowments, and sovereign wealth funds, as well as other institutional and individual investors.[1]

Apollo was founded in 1990 by Leon Black, Josh Harris, and Marc Rowan, former investment bankers at the defunct Drexel Burnham Lambert. The company is headquartered in the Solow Building in New York City,[1] with offices across North America, Europe, and Asia.[4] Among the most notable companies in which funds managed by the company have invested are ADT Inc., CareerBuilder, Cox Media Group, Intrado, Legendary Entertainment, Rackspace Technology, Redbox, Shutterfly, Sirius Satellite Radio, Qdoba, Smart & Final, The Restaurant Group, University of Phoenix, and Yahoo Inc.

In addition to its private funds, Apollo operates Apollo Investment Corporation (AIC), a US-domiciled publicly traded, private-equity, closed-end fund and Business Development Company. AIC provides mezzanine debt, senior secured loans, and equity investments to middle-market companies, including public companies, although it historically has not invested in companies controlled by Apollo's private-equity funds.[5][6]

Leon David Black(born July 31, 1951)[1] is an American private equity investor. He is the former CEO of Apollo Global Management, which he co-founded in 1990 with Marc Rowan and Josh Harris.[2] Black was the chairman of the Museum of Modern Art from 2018 to 2021.[3][4][5]

As per Forbes list of The Richest People In The World, dated 8 MARCH 2024 Leon Black ranked #135 with a net worth of $14 Billion.[6]

Early life and education

Black is a son of Eli M. Black (1921–1975), a Jewish businessman who emigrated from Poland as a child (surname, "Blachowitz") and was the chairman and later majority owner of the United Brands Company. His mother, Shirley Lubell (sister of Tulsa oil executive Benedict I. Lubell) was an artist.[7] In 1975, his father killed himself at age 53.[7][8]

Black received an AB in philosophy and history from Dartmouth College in 1973 and a MBA from Harvard Business School in 1975.[7] He served on the Board of Trustees of Dartmouth College from 2002 to 2011.[9] In 2012, Black gave US$48 million toward a new visual arts center at Dartmouth College

>>22186717

>>2 Apollo Global Management $64,250 $64,250 $0

Marc Jeffrey Rowan (born August 19, 1962) is an American investor and philanthropist.[1] He has served as the chief executive officer (CEO) of Apollo Global Management since 2021. He co-founded the firm in 1990 with Josh Harris and Leon Black. As of November 2024, Forbes estimated his net worth at $8.8 billion.[2]

Early life and education

Rowan was born in 1962 to a Jewish family.[3] He was raised on Long Island, New York.[4] He moved with his family to Hollywood, Florida where he attended high school, traveling between New York.[4] His father worked in auto-leasing.[4] His mother Barbara was a teacher and a trained concert pianist.[5] He has one sister, Andrea.[6] His grandfather, Emanuel Stein, was an economics professor at New York University.[4] Many of his wider family worked as public interest lawyers.[7]

Rowan studied at the University of Pennsylvania. When his father passed away and the family could not afford to pay tuition, the university allowed Rowan to complete his studies and pay whenever he was able.[4] Rowan graduated summa cum laude with a B.S. and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.[8] He was first in his university class, graduating as valedictorian.[7]

>>22186689

>https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/joni-ernst/contributors?cid=N00035483&cycle=2024

>Joni Ernst

>>22186717

>>2 Apollo Global Management $64,250 $64,250 $0

>>22186734

>Marc Jeffrey Rowan

Joshua Jordan Harris(born December 1964) is an American investor, sports team owner, and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of the private equity firm Apollo Global Management and managing partner of the NBA's Philadelphia 76ers, the NHL's New Jersey Devils, and the NFL's Washington Commanders. Harris is also a general partner of the English football club Crystal Palace and holds a minority stake in Joe Gibbs Racing. He has an estimated net worth of around US$9 billion.

Harris was born and raised in Chevy Chase, Maryland. He graduated with a degree in economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1986 before earning an MBA from Harvard Business School (HBS), working two years at the former investment bank Drexel Burnham Lambert in between. He founded Apollo with Leon Black and Marc Rowan in 1990 and later managed its daily operations until leaving in 2022 to focus on sports investments, done frequently in partnership with David Blitzer.

Harris headed investment groups that acquired the 76ers in 2011, the Devils and the Prudential Center in 2013, and the Commanders and Northwest Stadium in 2023. Other companies founded by him include Harris Philanthropies in 2014, Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment with Blitzer in 2017, and the alternative assets firm 26North in 2022. Harris sits on the board of the Mount Sinai Health System, Wharton, and HBS, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and formerly served as treasurer of the Allen-Stevenson School.

Personal life

Harris' paternal and maternal grandparents immigrated to the U.S. from Russian territories in the early 20th century.[78] His father Jacob was an orthodontist and his mother Sylvia was a schoolteacher; he has a younger brother named Gabe.[7][79] Harris is Jewish and follows the Reform Judaism denomination. He held his bar mitzvah at the Washington Hebrew Congregation in 1977 and spent three weeks working in Yahel, a Reform kibbutz in Israel, on a NFTY-sponsored trip in high school.[78] He married Marjorie Harris (née Rubin) in 1995.[9][80] The couple met at Harvard and have three sons and two daughters together; Hannah, Stuart, Thomas, Pierce, and Bridget.[81][82] Harris and fellow Chevy Chase native and businessman Mark Ein have been close friends since elementary school; they later attended Wharton and Harvard together and shared beach houses on Long Island during their time working on Wall Street.[2][31]

>>22186689

>https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/joni-ernst/contributors?cid=N00035483&cycle=2024

>Joni Ernst

>>22186689

>3 Blackstone Group $57,600 $57,600 $0

==The most powerful man on Wall Street: Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman

No. 18 on The Jerusalem Post's Top 50 Most Influential Jews of 2022: Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman.==

By HALEY COHEN

SEPTEMBER 25, 2022 07:45

Updated: SEPTEMBER 25, 2022 15:29

> https://www.jpost.com/50-most-influential-jews/article-717735

>>22186689

>https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/joni-ernst/contributors?cid=N00035483&cycle=2024

>Joni Ernst

>>22186689

>3 Blackstone Group $57,600 $57,600 $0

>>22186777

The most powerful man on Wall Street: Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman

No. 18 on The Jerusalem Post's Top 50 Most Influential Jews of 2022: Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman.

By HALEY COHEN

SEPTEMBER 25, 2022 07:45

Updated: SEPTEMBER 25, 2022 15:29

Perhaps the most powerful man on Wall Street, Stephen Schwarzman, credits a trip to Israel as a teenager for inspiring his entrepreneurial grit. The son of a dry-goods store owner growing up in Philadelphia, Schwarzman recalled his first trip to the Start-up Nation as a 14-year-old.

“Israel has an incredible entrepreneurial community,” Schwarzman, 75, said. “Of course, it had to because when it started, there was almost nothing there. Everything had to be invented by somebody.”

That same year, back in the US, he started his first business – a lawn-mowing operation, employing his younger twin brothers to mow while he brought in the clients.

See No. 17: AIPAC's leader

See No. 19: Nobel physiologist

See full list

See 2021's list

Today, with an estimated net worth of $35 billion, Schwarzman is CEO of Blackstone, one of the world’s leading investment firms. His first major donation to Israel was in 2018, when he gave the National Library $10 million. Last year, Blackstone opened its first office in the Jewish state.

>>22186689

>>22186717

>>22186734

>>22186777

>>22186807

>4RTX Corp $53,391 $44,891 $8,500

RTX Corporation, formerly Raytheon Technologies Corporation,[3][4] is an American multinational aerospace and defense conglomerate headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. It is one of the largest aerospace and defense manufacturers in the world by revenue and market capitalization, as well as one of the largest providers of intelligence services.[note 1][7] In 2023, the company's seat in Forbes Global 2000 was 79.[8] RTX manufactures aircraft engines, avionics, aerostructures, cybersecurity solutions, guided missiles, air defense systems, satellites, and drones. The company is a large military contractor, getting much of its revenue from the U.S. government.[9][10]

The company was formed in 2020 by a merger of equals between the aerospace subsidiaries ofUnited Technologies Corporation (UTC) and the Raytheon Company. Before the merger, UTC spun off its non-aerospace subsidiaries Otis Elevator Company and Carrier Corporation. UTC is the nominal survivor of the merger but it changed its name to Raytheon Technologies and moved its headquarters to Waltham, Massachusetts.[2][11] Former UTC CEO and chairman Gregory J. Hayes is chairman and CEO of the combined company,[12] which changed its name to RTX in July 2023.

The company has three subsidiaries: Collins Aerospace, Pratt & Whitney, and Raytheon (formerly Raytheon Intelligence & Space and Raytheon Missiles & Defense).[3

RTX

Protesters in Goleta, California, gathered outside the RTX office on November 9, 2023, to protest arms shipments to Israel.

In July 2023, Raytheon Technologies Corporation changed its name to RTX Corporation.[4]

RTX's supply of weapons to Israel led to protests against the company during the 2023 Israel–Hamas war.[66] On December 14, 2023, for example, protestors blocked the entrance to an RTX facility in Arizona.[67] In early 2024, 15 people were arrested after blocking access to RTX and BAE Systems facilities in Louisville, Kentucky in protest against supplying weapons to Israel.[68]

In December 2023, RTX announced that CEO Greg Hayes would step down the following May and be replaced by company president Christopher Calio.[69]

In August 2024,RTX was fined US$200 million for International Traffic in Arms Regulations violations, including exchanging data and products with prohibited countries such as China.[70]

>>22186822

> RTX Corporation, formerly Raytheon Technologies Corporation

>>22186822

>RTX's supply of weapons to Israel led to protests against the company during the 2023 Israel–Hamas war

Joni Ernst, Iowa GOP Senate Candidate, Failed To Disclose Rental Property

Iowa GOP Senate Candidate Failed To Disclose Rental Property

Christina Wilkie

By

Christina Wilkie

Oct 21, 2014, 08:07 PM EDT

|Updated Dec 6, 2017

WASHINGTON – Joni Ernst, the Iowa Republican candidate for U.S. Senate,failed to disclose her ownership of an income-generating rental property on financial disclosure reports filed with the Senate.

Ernst campaign spokeswoman Gretchen Hamel told The Huffington Post Tuesday that the campaign would "immediately" amend the disclosure reports.

The reports fail to list Ernst's industrial property in Red Oak, Iowa, which had an assessed value last year of $54,830. The property generated at least $1,200 in income for Ernst in 2013, according to Ernst's campaign.

Ernst is locked in a tight Senate race against Democratic U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley to replace retiring Sen. Tom Harkin (D). The outcome may determine which party controls the Senate.

"The campaign inadvertently left off $100 of monthly rental income from a property used for storage and parking," Hamel said in a statement to HuffPost. "She reported this income and paid taxes on it. We are filing an amended report to correct it immediately."

U.S. Senate ethics rules require candidates, and senators, to disclose assets that generate income. Since announcing her candidacy for the Senate in July 2013, Ernst has filed two formal disclosure reports, neither mentioning the property or the income from it.

Located at 111 West Grimes St., in Ernst's hometown, the two-parcel corner lot contains an industrial-sized garage and a second, smaller garage. According to Montgomery County real estate deeds, Ernst and her husband, Gail Ernst, purchased the property one parcel at a time, the first in 2008 and the second in 2009, from Creston, Iowa, resident Eloise Larson. County records show that Ernst paid property taxes on the property on Sept. 2.

As a candidate, Ernst has trumpeted her role in helping to cut property taxes for Iowa landowners during her two terms in the state Senate.

>>22187004

>Oct 21, 2014, 08:07 PM EDT

Squeal - March 24, 2014

Joni Ernst

March 24, 2014

Print friendly

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Campaign status: Won

categories: Political Ads, TV

ERNST: I'm Joni Ernst. I grew up castrating hogs on an Iowa farm, so when I get to Washington I'll know how to cut pork.

ANNOUNCER: Joni Ernst—mother, soldier, conservative.

ERNST: My parents taught us to live within our means. It’s time to force Washington to do the same—to cut wasteful spending, repeal Obamacare and balance the budget. I'm Joni Ernst and I approve this message because Washington's full of big spenders. Let's make ‘em squeal.

>>22187004

>Joni Ernst, Iowa GOP Senate Candidate, Failed To Disclose Rental Property

>>22187017

>Squeal - March 24, 2014

==The Honor of Senator Joni Ernst

Senator Ernst calls herself a combat veteran at every turn== on her Senate web page, in campaign debates, and in her stump speeches. She can say this because she served in a combat zone. But the unit was never in a firefight, or for that matter attacked at all.

By

Andrew Reinbach, Contributor

Journalist

Feb 6, 2015, 08:15 AM EST

|Updated Apr 8, 2015

When most people hear "combat veteran," they think firefights with the enemy. But the military defines combat veteran differently - as soldiers who served in a combat area.

Which brings us to Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), one of the GOP's most recent stars. It was Sen. Ernst who was selected to give the Republican response to President Obama's recent State of the Union message this year.

Senator Ernstcalls herself a combat veteran at every turn- on her Senate web page, in campaign debates, and in her stump speeches. She can say this because she served in a combat zone.

And it's technically true. She was company commander of the Iowa National Guard's 1168th Transportation Company during its tour of active duty in Kuwait and southern Iraq, from February 2003 to April 2004. Butthe unit was never in a firefight, or for that matter attacked at all; it delivered supplies,and later, guarded the front gate and ran perimeter patrol at their home base outside Kuwait City, Camp Arifjan.

Real combat veterans I spoke to don't think much of how the Senator talks up her combat duty. Larry Hanft, for instance, who earned the Combat Infantryman's Badge fighting in Vietnam, says, "By her definition, everybody who stepped off the plan in Kuwait is a combat veteran. Joni Ernst is using her military experience to gain a political edge and pull the wool over the eyes of the American people. She's a fraud…"Mr. Hanft is one of Sen. Ernst's constituents.

This isn't to say Sen. Ernst's soldiers spent the Iraq War lounging by a pool. According to the official history of the unit's deployment written by the Senator the 183 soldiers of the 1168th worked hard. Between May and August 2003, they drove 230,278 miles on 402 missions around Kuwait and southern Iraq, hauling everything from Patriot missiles and body armor to mattresses. Then the unit was re-assigned to Force Protection security at their home base, manning the front gate and patrolling the camp's perimeter.

Convoy duty in Iraq was dangerous work. Armies can't fight without supplies, convoys deliver them, and convoys were prime targets of both Iraqi infantry and, later, roadside bombs. In fact on its way back from its first mission, the 1168th was forced to a crawl in one town: Iraqi men threw themselves in front of the trucks, and stayed there until they were almost run over (the trucks only slowed). Sen. Ernst's soldiers would have been sitting ducks if they'd taken fire.

But they didn't, and that's the point. In the 1168th's 14 months in theater, the unit was never under fire, or hit by a roadside bomb. The deployment's only injury occurred on its last day in Kuwait, when a sergeant dislocated his shoulder.

>>22187075

>The Honor of Senator Joni Ernst

>Senator Ernst calls herself a combat veteran at every turnon her Senate web page, in campaign debates, and in her stump speeches. She can say this because she served in a combat zone. But the unit was never in a firefight, or for that matter attacked at all.

>By

>Andrew Reinbach, Contributor

>Journalist

>Feb 6, 2015,

That was Senator Ernst's war.

The reason she can call herself a combat veteran is because President GHW Bush issued Executive Order 12744 on January 21, 1991 and made the entire Arabian Peninsula a combat zone. That Executive Order is still in force. To put that order in perspective, a soldier could be stationed today in Bahrain and call him or herself a combat veteran.

In the military, personal honor is real. Soldiers are expected to tell the truth, honor their commitments, and not split hairs. And for good reason: If you're in combat and don't do what you say you will, people go home in body bags.

Technically, of course, the Senator is just relating the legal facts and letting people reach their own conclusions, like any other politician. She commanded the 1168th'in a war zone, there's no doubt driving trucks in convoy or guarding bases can be dangerous, and soldiers die that way.

But nothing in the 1168th's tour of duty stands up to the average citizen's idea of combat duty. And when the Senator calls herself the first female combat veteran to serve in the Senate, or when she allows her own husband to say twice that she led her troops into combat she's betraying the code of honor she lets people think she stands for. Sen. Ernst's husband is a retired Command Sergeant-Major in the Army Rangers.

Even worse, to the military mind, the Senator doesn't correct people when they've said she's led troops into combat.

This gets scant respect from serving soldiers. Asked what a soldier should do in a case like that, Lt. Col. Alayne Conway says, "You'd clarify, and say 'Sure, I had friends who were in firefights every day, and those are the guys you should roll out the red carpet for.'" Lt. Col. Conway serves in the Army's Press Office in Washington.

And the Senator has never been shy about playing the military honor card. When she took the floor of the Iowa Senate in 2014 in support of a bill called the Stolen Valor Act, she said, "Sgt. Milledge paid for his posthumously awarded Purple Heart with his blood, and the blood of a comrade in arms. Let us not allow his Purple Heart to be cheapened by some Joe Schmoe on the street that tries to pass himself off as a hero to others to gain some personal advantage."

Asked for comment, the Senator's office said, "… the threshold for a combat veteran is having served in a combat zone or provided direct support to a combat zone. Senator Ernst's service meets the VA and DoD's definition." You can read her office's full response here.

>>22187075

>>22187081

muh WMDs

Iraqi WMD Turn Up in Iowa Senate Race

GOP candidate Joni Ernst thinks she has secret intelligence. It seems pretty unlikely.

By Susan Milligan

|

May 13, 2014, at 11:51 a.m.

Foolish or delusional?

Truth, it is said, is the first casualty of war. And facts, in turn, are often the first casualty of campaigns.

Joni Ernst, an Iowa state senator running for the GOP nomination for U.S. senator, delivered a remarkable line in an interview with the Des Moines Register. Said Ernst: “I do have reason to believe there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”

It’s a rewriting of history that demands a new definition of the word “audacious.” Here is one of the most famous misstatements – decide on your own if you believe it was misinformation or an out-and-out lie – made in recent presidential history. In the eerie glow of fear in the years after 9/11, the George W. Bush administration was able to convince Congress and the American people, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was ready to use them against the United States. No proof was produced – nothing solid, anyway. It was the sort of innocuous “evidence,” shown privately to members of Congress, that was very much in the eye of the beholder. If you really wanted to believe the photos showed WMD, well, then, they did.

[SEE: Cartoons about the Republican Party]

Many millions, billions of dollars later, many deaths – American and Iraqi – later, there were still no weapons of mass destruction. Nothing was found, and it wasn’t because no one was looking. The Bush administration, prosecuting a war that was beginning to be pretty unpopular, was desperate to prove it had done the right thing by invading a sovereign, if deeply troubled and repressive, nation. Nada.

Ernst, however, talked to the editorial board as if she was one of the few who new the real story. Ernst is a lieutenant colonel in the Iowa Army National Guard and served in Operation Iraqi Freedom. According to her bio, her unit ran convoys from Kuwait into southern Iraq. That's an important mission, during any kind of war, but it’s not like she was on the search-and-recover team for WMD. She won’t say how she knows, or exactly what she knows – just that the intelligence under which they were operating was based on the idea Saddam Hussein had WMD. Well, of course it was. That was the entire basis for the debacle of a war. What else would officers in country be told?

[MORE: Cartoons on Defense Spending]

Is there a chance they are there somewhere, hidden away? Not really. Someone would have found them by now. And while Ernst refers cryptically to things her husband, also a military officer, might know, I have a vivid, and somewhat unsettling, memory of an interview I did with a military man when I was in Iraq during the war. He had been a general in the Iraqi military before Saddam Hussein fell, and he was an affable sort, very even-toned and measured in the way he spoke. I asked about the WMD, and he looked up coolly. “If we had weapons of mass destruction,” he said, “we would have used them against you.”

Republicans have an excellent chance (though not a guaranteed one) of taking back control of the Senate this fall. The problem they have had in the past is that their candidates seem stuck in some earlier era, mouthing old talking points and directing their speeches at a demographic that just isn’t who and what America is anymore. Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock got the party into trouble by making insulting comments about rape, and others in the party made it worse by giving tepid criticisms of those remarks. Mitt Romney seems to think we’re still in the 1950s, with women who are busily making dinner for their families at 5 pm while their husbands go to work and ponder the dynamics of the Cold War. To defend a misstatement that America was just beginning to get over, with the troop withdrawal from Iraq, is foolish at best and delusional at worst. Iowa is a very gettable seat for the Republicans. Running backwards, however, won’t get anyone to the finish line.

Corrected on May 13, 2014: An earlier version of this post incorrectly spelled Joni Ernst's name.

>>22187017

>>22187075

>>22187081

>>22187090

Shot - May 4, 2014

Joni Ernst

May 04, 2014

Print friendly

Video

Campaign status: Won

categories: Political Ads, TV

ANNOUNCER: She's not your typical candidate. Conservative Joni Ernst—mom, farm girl and a lieutenant colonel who carries more than just lipstick in her purse.Joni Ernst will take aim at wasteful spending and once she sets her sights on Obamacare, Joni’s going to unload. Oh and one more thing—Joni doesn’t miss much.

ERNST: Give me a shot. I'm Joni Ernst and I approve this message.

> https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/2017/03/10/shot-may-4-2014/

>>22187017

>ERNST: I'm Joni Ernst. I grew up castrating hogs on an Iowa farm, so when I get to Washington I'll know how to cut pork.

muh castrated pigs

Family Of New GOP Senate Pork Buster Joni Ernst Pocketed Almost Half A Million In Government Assistance

Rick Ungar

Former Contributor

I write from the left on politics and policy.

Jan 22, 2015,02:25pm EST

Updated Jan 22, 2015, 03:48pm EST

This article is more than 9 years old.

Anyone who tuned in to hear the GOP response to the State of the Union address was treated to an introduction to the GOP’s newest freshman Senate star, Joni Ernst of Iowa.

You may recall Ms. Ernst’s legendary campaign commercial where she informed us all that she had grown up castrating pigs and was, therefore, uniquely qualified to cut the pork from bloated federal spending. You may also recall that, in the castration commercial, she told us about how her family had taught Ernst what she needed to know about the importance of living within one’s means—a lesson, Ernst argued, that has been lost on the federal government.

Turns out, the Senator’s family has a somewhat unusual concept of what "living within one’s means" actually involves as we now know that her father and uncle have been the beneficiaries of some of that good old government pork that the newly minted Senator has sworn to snip from the body of the federal budget.

Apparently, living within their means, inside the Senator's family, involves including some of your tax dollars and mine as a part of the family budget.

While it may be true, as Senator Ernst recounted in her official response to the SOTU, that she had to walk to school in the snow, uphill both ways, when she was a kid—not really as her actual claim to feeling the pain of low income Americans is that she and her friends wore bread bags over their one and only pair of shoes to protect them from the snow—her family may well have paid for those shoes with taxpayer cash.

An examination by the Washington DC based District Sentinel website reveals thatErnst’s father, Richard Culver, pocketed $38,395 in taxpayer money in the guise of corn subsidies.

But then, Ernst’s dad can’t hold a candle to his brother when it comes to receiving government redistribution of wealth asSenator Joni’s Uncle Dallas has pocketed a cool $370,000 in government subsidies.

Somehow, as Senator Ernst castigated the federal government for all this wasteful spending and wealth redistribution, she failed to mention that her own family has benefitted substantially from the same.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2015/01/22/family-of-new-gop-senate-pork-buster-joni-ernst-pocketed-almost-half-a-million-in-government-assistance/

>>22187101

>>22187126