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RandySF's JournalWWE Faces Insider Trading Suit Against McMahons, Triple H
On April 24, World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. (WWE) shareholders Ryan Merholz and Melvyn Klein filed a lawsuit against Vince McMahon, Stephane McMahon, Paul Michael "Triple H" Levesque and other high ranking WWE executives alleging that the executives took actions that were not in the best interest of the company's shareholders.
It appears that one of the key aspects of the lawsuit is allegations that there are major concerns regarding the financial relationship between WWE and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and that Vince McMahon and the others might have been taking advantage of their personal knowledge of those private concerns that led to suspicious stock sales meant to enrich McMahon and the others at the cost of the company's shareholders.
The lawsuit specified multiple grounds for the legal action, including a beach of fiduciary duties, a waste of corporate assets, violations of the Security Exchange Act of 1934, making false statements, misleading the public about WWE's business prospects, artificially inflating the stock price of WWE and, of course, permitting the sale of nearly $300 million worth of personal stock personally held by some of the company's senior executives.
The stock sell-off was clearly the most troubling accusation, as the suit acknowledged: “The Company’s most senior executives and directors took advantage of WWE’s inflated stock price to sell millions of dollars’ worth of their own WWE shares during this time period. In a single stock sale on March 27, 2019, WWE’s Chief Executive Officer (“CEO”) and Chairman of the Board, Defendant V. McMahon, sold more than 3.2 million WWE shares for over $261 million in proceeds. This sale occurred when there were only a few days left in the Company’s 2019 first quarter which insiders knew was experiencing poor financial performance and despite growing behind-the-scenes problems with the Saudis.”
https://www.cbr.com/wwe-faces-insider-trading-suit-against-mcmahons-triple-h/
Arizona Democrats Ask Republicans To Denounce A Threat Of Violence By Rally Goer
Arizona Democrats want Republicans to denounce the threat of violence made against Democratic lawmakers at a rally at the state capitol in Phoenix this week.
The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee says a participant at Monday’s “Patriot's Day Rally” announced in a speech to the crowd people should vote Democrats out of office and he added ”I don’t want to have to shoot them again.”
The campaign committee has released a written statement. It said “Arizona has already seen acts of violence against our elected officials. Threats made to directly harm members of office should never be tolerated and must be taken with the utmost gravity." The news release said "silence of legislative Republicans is chilling and should not be seen as a simple matter of disagreement between political ideologies.”
Former Maricopa County Democratic Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox was shot and wounded by a disgruntled constituent in 1997 and Arizona Democratic Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was seriously wounded during a shooting at a Tucson area supermarket during a "meet and greet" event in 2011.
https://www.knau.org/post/arizona-democrats-ask-republicans-denounce-threat-violence-rally-goer
For Your Consideration: Ann Ashford for NE-02
Ann Ferlic Ashford is a lifelong Omahan, and she is running for Congress because she believes elected representatives need to put Nebraska ahead of Washington politics. She is a pragmatic problem solver who knows what it takes to achieve real results.
She is an attorney, human resources professional, and healthcare leader, who will use her experience to stand up for all families, defend the Affordable Care Act, expand Medicaid, and ensure hardworking families can continue to thrive and raise their children in Nebraska. Just like Ann did.
The daughter of a Vietnam era Navy Veteran and a nurse, Ann understands the importance of supporting our troops abroad and making sure they have the care and resources they need when they return home. She also understands the needs of their family members and the priority that must be placed on meeting those needs. After the Navy, Ann’s father moved the family back to Omaha to begin his surgical practice and later performed the first heart transplant in Nebraska. It was her entire family’s deep commitment to helping others that inspired Ann to find her own path in a life of public service.
In addition to her work, Ann has served on a number of boards, including Planned Parenthood, Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, Inclusive Communities, and the Institute for Career Advancement Needs. She worked with Joining Forces during 2015 and 2016 to bring educational initiatives to training programs for health professionals at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, and she worked with healthcare providers in the Omaha region to expand Veterans Choice provider panels.
Ann graduated from Omaha’s Westside High School, and graduated from both the University of Notre Dame and Creighton University School of Law. She and her husband, former Congressman Brad Ashford, are proud to have raised three children in Omaha.
https://annashford2020.com
Trump hopes for "massive" rallies of "25,000" this year
President Trump on Wednesday said he's hoping to hold more of his "massive" "25,000-person rallies" in the not-so-distant future. The president didn't offer a target date but said he hopes that this happens before the November presidential election, which is likely to take place before a widespread vaccine is available.
"Hopefully in the not too distant future we'll have some massive rallies and people will be sitting next to each other. I can't imagine a rally where you have every fourth seat full, every six seats are empty for every one that you have full, that wouldn't look too good. No, I hope that we're going to be able to do some good old fashioned 25,000-person rallies where everyone's going wild because they love our country," the president told reporters during a business roundtable discussion.
The president also said he plans to travel to Arizona and Ohio soon, apparently for official events. Mr. Trump said he's eager to get out of the White House, despite how beautiful it is.
Public health experts don't expect a vaccine to be ready for 12-18 months, but the administration and researchers are trying to speed up that timetable. The president's current social distancing guidelines, which technically expire Thursday, recommend that gatherings be limited to no more than 10 people.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-hopes-for-massive-25000-person-rallies-this-year/
'You could smell the death': Bodies found stored in U-Haul trucks outside Brooklyn funeral home
A Brooklyn funeral home stacked at least 15 dead bodies in U-Haul trucks and other vehicles parked on the street, police sources said Wednesday — a grisly scene that has horrified neighbors.
The NYPD, along with several city and state agencies, descended on the morbid scene outside the Andrew T. Cleckley Funeral Home on Utica Ave. and Ave. M in Flatlands.
Outside, they found two U-Haul box trucks, a U-Haul van, an unmarked 30-foot box truck, and an unmoored tractor trailer.
The two unmarked vehicles were refrigerated, but police sources and witnesses said they saw bodies stacked in the U-Haul trucks as well.
https://www.nydailynews.com/coronavirus/ny-coronavirus-bodies-trucks-brooklyn-funeral-home-20200429-a5hdwbawx5gj7padxbr427vt7i-story.html
Trump May Travel to Arizona
“The White House is weighing a possible trip by President Trump next week to Arizona, as the administration forges ahead with its effort to urge states to re-open their economies,” Bloomberg reports.
“Trump has been confined to the White House for more than a month because of the coronavius pandemic.”
https://politicalwire.com/2020/04/29/trump-may-travel-to-arizona/
GOP Senator Says Georgia Is In Play
(CNN)Sen. David Perdue, a Georgia Republican up for reelection and a close Trump confidant, issued a blunt warning to GOP activists during an off-the-record conference call this week: Democrats are in position to turn his state blue and take the Senate.
"Here's the reality: The state of Georgia is in play," Perdue said Monday, according to an audio recording of a call with "Women for Trump" obtained by CNN. "The Democrats have made it that way."
The stark warning from a GOP senator -- who is not considered among the most vulnerable Republicans this election cycle -- illustrates the fear among Republicans that Democrats' chances of taking back the Senate continue to grow.
Already facing the prospect of defending the Senate with an unpopular Republican president in an election cycle with more seats to defend than to target, Republicans are up against a bevy of well-funded Democratic challengers and are now navigating a public health and economic crisis that has injected deep uncertainty into the national political landscape.
Indeed, the political environment for GOP senators has only become more challenging in the past few months. Republican incumbents in Colorado, Arizona, Maine and North Carolina always knew they would face a tough path to reelection. Now Republicans in more conservative states -- Georgia, Iowa, Montana and even Kansas -- have realized the same.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/29/politics/david-perdue-georgia-senate/index.html
Court hands blow to Dems who sued over Florida ballot order
The state of Florida does not have to come up with a new way to list candidates on the ballot, a federal appellate court ruled Wednesday, dealing a blow to Democrats who argued that Republicans have an unfair advantage because the current system automatically lists their candidates first.
The high-stakes jockeying over name order on Florida’s ballot is hardly inconsequential as Republicans and Democrats grapple for every advantage they can get in elections that are often too close to call on election night.
Tossing out a lower court’s ruling, the appellate court found that the lawsuit filed by three Florida voters and several Democratic groups had wrongly targeted the state’s chief elections officer, who the court said isn’t responsible for printing ballots and setting the order in which names appear.
In a statement, the groups said they would weigh their options. They also took issue with the court’s finding that Democrats were not harmed.
https://floridapolitics.com/archives/330465-court-hands-blow-to-dems-who-sued-over-florida-ballot-order
Texas voters sue over age restrictions for mail-in ballots
Citing the threats of the coronavirus, six Texas voters filed suit in federal court Wednesday challenging restrictions that limit age eligibility for voting-by-mail to those 65 and older.
In a lawsuit filed in San Antonio, the voters — all between the ages of 18 and 28 — claim the Texas election code violates the 26th Amendment’s protections against voting restrictions that discriminate based on age. While all Texas voters 65 and older can request a mail-in ballot, those younger than 65 must meet a narrow set of requirements to qualify.
The voters are backed by the National Redistricting Foundation, an affiliate of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee chaired by former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. The lawsuit cites the urgency brought on by the coronavirus outbreak in asking a federal judge to remedy what they argue are discriminatory and unconstitutional age restrictions.
"Having opted to make mail-in voting an option for voters in Texas, Defendants may not constitutionally choose to restrict access to the franchise to voters for no other reason than the fact that they are 18 years old, 25 years old, or 64-and-a-half years old. Period," the lawsuit argues. "While the Absentee Ballot Age Restriction would be unconstitutional under any event, in the current circumstances its application is unconscionable."
The age discrimination lawsuit is the latest front in an ongoing court battle to open up voting-by-mail in Texas during the coronavirus pandemic that has shut down most of the state and ahead of the July 14 primary runoff elections. Until now, mail-in voting has been fairly limited in Texas, allowing voters to qualify for a ballot they can fill out at home and mail only if they are 65 years or older, have a disability or illness, will be out of the county during the election period, or are confined in jail.
https://www.texastribune.org/2020/04/29/texas-voters-sue-over-age-restrictions-mail-ballots/
Trump Appointees Manipulated Agency's Payday Lending Research, Ex-Staffer Claims
Last summer, on his final day of work at the nation’s consumer finance watchdog agency, a career economist sent colleagues a blunt memo.
He claimed that President Trump’s appointees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau had manipulated the agency’s research process to justify altering a 2017 rule that would have sharply curtailed high-interest payday loans.
The departing staff member, Jonathan Lanning, detailed several maneuvers by his agency’s political overseers that he considered legally risky and scientifically indefensible, including pressuring staff economists to water down their findings on payday loans and use statistical gimmicks to downplay the harm consumers would suffer if the payday restrictions were repealed. A copy of the memo was obtained by The New York Times from a current bureau employee.
Political appointees at the bureau, led by its director, Kathleen Kraninger, have pressed forward with the Trump administration’s deregulatory drive despite the logistical hurdles posed by the coronavirus pandemic. This week, the agency is expected to release the revised payday rule, which will no longer require lenders to assess whether customers can afford their fees before offering a loan.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/29/business/cfpb-payday-loans-rules.html
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