Tag: pete buttigieg

Pete Buttigieg accepted $250,000 and gifts from mayoral campaign donors who were later awarded $33million in city contracts, raising concerns of ‘pay to play’ as Transportation Secretary doles out $210billion in infrastructure plan

Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg’s top political donors received millions of dollars in city contracts after giving thousands to his campaigns while he was mayor of South Bend, Indiana.

Buttigieg’s political action committees took money from 23 companies who then got jobs from South Bend’s Board of Public Works whose members he appointed, documents obtained by DailyMail.com reveal.

On two occasions, the former presidential candidate received donations the same day the companies were awarded contracts.

Other city contractors gifted the mayor cigars, alcohol and golf trips worth hundreds of dollars.

The companies, their executives and spouses donated a total $253,750 to Buttigieg’s campaigns, and received a total of at least $33,310,426 in city contracts between 2011 and 2019. 

After Buttigieg appointed one former company executive to city’s Public Works department, the firm was then handed multiple infrastructure jobs, and became one of Mayor Pete’s largest donors.

Buttigieg served as the mayor of South Bend from 2012 to 2020. He was appointed transportation secretary by President Joe Biden early last year.

Government watchdogs say the pattern of donations and contracts could present the appearance of a ‘pay to play’ scandal – and raises concerns over the $210billion earmarked in the bipartisan infrastructure bill for Buttigieg to dish out in discretionary grants as transport secretary, part of a $1.2trillion budget.

‘The pattern of contracts and donations appears to be a huge conflict of interest,’ Taxpayers Protection Alliance president David Williams told DailyMail.com.

‘This really doesn’t bode well for the secretary of transportation when he has access to almost $1.2trillion in infrastructure money.

‘This is alarming, and very concerning, because this is the swamp personified. You don’t have to be a Rhodes Scholar to look at this and think that something’s wrong here. 

‘Was there a quid pro quo? Was there some sort of backroom deal for these projects? taxpayers deserve answers.’ 

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Buttigieg Says Infrastructure Bill will Address Racist Highway Design That Prevents Black and Brown Kids From Being Bussed to the Beach

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Monday said the infrastructure bill will address the racist highway design meant to block black and brown kids from being bussed to the beach.

The program, dubbed “Reconnecting Communities,” will address racial inequities in the nation’s highway design.

“If an underpass was constructed such that a bus carrying mostly Black and Puerto Rican kids to a beach, […] in New York was designed too low for it to pass by, that that obviously reflects racism that went into those design choices,” Buttigieg said on Monday.

“I don’t think we have anything to lose by confronting that simple reality and I think we have everything to gain by acknowledging it and then dealing with it…” he added.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Paid Leave Since Mid-August amid Supply Crisis

A spokesperson for the Department of Transportation confirmed that Buttigieg was “mostly offline” throughout this tumultuous time period.

“For the first four weeks, he was mostly offline except for major agency decisions and matters that could not be delegated,” said the spokesperson. “He has been ramping up activities since then.”

The spokesperson added that Buttigieg will “continue to take some time over the coming weeks to support his husband and take care of his new children.”

The White House did not confirm if President Biden approved the leave himself.

“Pete’s been a key member of the team since Day One, and has been critical as we shepherd the President’s agenda across the finish line,” an official told Politico. “We’re overjoyed for him and Chasten, and believe every American should have access to paid family leave.”

This past Wednesday, Buttigieg reportedly attended a “high-profile meeting” with President Joe Biden to discuss the ongoing supply chain crisis that will likely result in empty shelves at major and small retail outlets this holiday season  – a prospect resulting in the hashtag #EmptyShelvesJoe trending on Twitter Thursday.

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American Infrastructure Has ‘Racism Physically Built’ Into It, According to Buttigieg

It’s hard to be surprised anymore over what the left sees racism in. From traffic lights to evergreen trees, there’s really no end. Now, thanks to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, that list is growing to include infrastructure (according to its true definition, not Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s). 

During an interview with theGrio’s White House correspondent April Ryan, Buttigieg explained how roads and bridges divide communities along racial lines and said there’s “racism physically built” into American infrastructure. 

“If you’re in Washington, I’m told that the history of that highway is one that was built at the expense of communities of color in the D.C. area,” he said. “There are stories and I think Philadelphia and Pittsburgh [and] in New York, Robert Moses famously saw through the construction of a lot of highways.”

This “wasn’t just an act of neglect,” he said, but was a “conscious choice.”

Buttigieg is currently working with the Biden administration on the $2.25 trillion “infrastructure” plan; less than 6 percent actually goes toward roads and bridges, however. 

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Wow! Such BS Caught on Video: Pete Buttigieg Has Gas-Guzzling Suburban Drop Him Off a Couple Blocks from Work So He Can Ride His Bike in for the Cameras

More liberal BS caught on video.

The media went gaga after news broke that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was riding his bike to work.
What a guy!
What a great example!

Now we know it was all a dog and pony show like everything the Democrats do and say.

Pete Buttigieg used an armored gas-guzzling Suburban to bring a bike within a short distance of the destination. Then he was caught on video unloading the bike and riding in with a security detail in tow, pretending to save energy.

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Buttigieg Pushes For ‘Mileage Tax’ On American Drivers To Fund Biden Policies

Biden regime Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has indicated that he may push for a mileage tax on Americans that will require them to pay the government for traveling too much. The move would help pay for Biden’s $3 trillion infrastructure bill, and “shows a lot of promise” according to Buttigieg.

When asked by an NBC reporter is he supported a mileage tax, Buttigieg said, “I think that shows a lot of promise. If we believe in that so-called user-pays principle, the idea that part of how we pay for roads is you pay based on how much you drive.”

“The gas tax used to be the obvious way to do it; it’s not anymore,” Buttigieg added. “So, a so-called vehicle miles traveled tax or a mileage tax, whatever you want to call it, could be the way to do it.”

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Pete Buttigieg Is Bootleg Obama in the Worst Ways Possible

There’s a famous aphorism often attributed to Miles Davis which says that the notes you don’t play in jazz are more important than the ones you do. Much the same can be said of political memoirs and, indeed, most books written by politicians or professional apparatchiks, particularly if published during an election year: being a genre largely concerned with PR and brand-building, they tend to be heavy on pablum and featherlight when it comes to substance; glorified press releases masquerading as earnest reflections or honest tales of personal triumph in the face of adversity. To any but the most credulous reviewer, they therefore present something of a dilemma. How exactly, after all, are you supposed to write about what isn’t there?

Apocryphal though they may be, this is where the words ascribed to America’s great jazz innovator really come in handy. In my experience as a regular (and almost always reluctant) appraiser of books and speeches by liberal and centrist politicians, identifying the blank space — the things left unsaid, the issues unaddressed, the possibilities elided, the questions unanswered, the past events ignored, the facts omitted, etc. — can often get you quite a long way.

David Plouffe’s A Citizen’s Guide to Beating Donald Trump, for example, spends just over 250 pages telling readers to canvass, phone bank, and write approving social media posts about a generic and entirely hypothetical Democratic nominee. Tasked with reviewing it, I was initially stumped about what, if anything, to say — an ostensible handbook for fighting the Right with scant reference to ideology, program, or social vision not exactly offering up a lot of raw material with which to work. My writer’s block persisted until I realized that Plouffe’s omissions were precisely the point, his vision of liberalism being one that either treats most real political questions as settled or considers them none of the average person’s business (the permissible kind of rank-and-file activism in the modern Democratic Party being about deference to party elites and not much else).

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