TASK DEFINITION: Given a document and an entity the task is to select the author's sentiment towards the entity. Sentiments can be Positive, Neutral and Negative. Select Positive if the article expresses a positive view towards the given entity or praises its quality or skills. Select Neutral if the document expresses no clear view towards the entity or has equal amounts of positive and negative statements or expressing some fact/quote by someone else. Select Negative if the article expresses a negative view towards like harsh remarks, criticizing entities action/decision etc. Note that URLs in the text have been replaced with [Link].
PROBLEM: What is the sentiment of the following document towards the entity Dana Baiocco ? Dana Baiocco  President Donald Trumpâs pick to sit on the Consumer Product Safety Commission  made her name helping companies avoid responsibility for harmful products. A partner at law firm Jones Day   Baiocco  has represented big tobacco and fought in court against asbestos workers who developed mesothelioma.
But the cases  she âs litigated that may conflict most directly with the CPSCâs mission of protecting the public from dangerous products involve all-terrain vehicles. While the CPSC was leading a campaign over ATV safety   Baiocco  was representing Yamaha in several suits over  its  two-person Rhino ATV.
 Baiocco âs appointment would put Republican appointments in the majority of the five-person commission  which could halt or reverse progress on a number of issues  including restrictions on off-highway vehicles  a category that includes ATVs. âIndustry very much wants the agency to abandon that rule-making â said Rachel Weintraub  legislative director and general counsel for the Consumer Federation of America. âAnd once there is a Republican majority  that may happen.â
In a letter  Baiocco  sent to the CPSC special counsel last month  she said she would recuse herself from âany particular matter in which I know that I have a financial interest directlyâ and issues that are of direct interest to her husbandâs firm  White and Williams. The letter didnât specifically address ATVs or Ikea dressers.
Remington A. Gregg  counsel for civil justice and consumer rights at Public Citizen  said  Baiocco  should âabsolutely recuse herselfâ from those and âany products sheâs worked on.â
Itâs unclear how many of those products she might encounter as a CPSC commissioner. In addition to Yamaha   Baiocco  who has worked at Jones Day since 1998   has defended R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company in a class-action suit filed on behalf of smokers in Florida. According to a financial disclosure form she submitted to the Senate   Baiocco  received at least $5 000 âin a yearâ from 13 clients  including R.J. Reynolds  Volkswagen AG  and the chemical manufacturer Daikin Industries  in addition to  her  more than $1.2 million salary from Jones Day.  She  also represented Honeywell Safety Products in a suit filed by the survivors of a worker who developed mesothelioma after being exposed to asbestos at the World Trade Center site.  Her  client list also includes airplane parts manufacturer Parker Hannifin  which  she âs represented in wrongful death cases involving 13 people  including the late Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan.
 Baiocco  and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.
Consumer advocates will be closely watching Baioccoâs confirmation hearing in the Senate Commerce Committee  which is scheduled for Wednesday. âWe want to hear that  she âs actually concerned about health and safety and that  she  would work to protect our families â said Gregg. â Her  career shows the opposite.â

SOLUTION: Neutral

PROBLEM: What is the sentiment of the following document towards the entity Nancy Pelosi ? Before Ryan spoke   Nancy Pelosi  again called on him to commit to a vote on immigration  saying he acts more as a Speaker of the White House than a Speaker of the House. The early vote took place because of Sen. Rand Paul who blocked action in the Senate for must of Thursday with a demand on an amendment leaving previous ceilings on federal spending in place.
âI ran for office because I was very critical of President Obamaâs trillion-dollar deficits â said  the Kentucky senator . âNow we have Republicans hand in hand with Democrats offering us trillion-dollar deficits. I canât in all honesty look the other way.â
âI have been offering all day to vote. I would like nothing more than to vote. But itâs the other side. Itâs the leadership that has refused to allow any amendments â  he  said.
 Nancy Pelosi  even shared a strange anecdote during an eight hour Wednesday floor speech about a Guatamalan boy with âbeautiful tan skinâ and âbeautiful brown eyesâ that  her  grandson wished he looked like.
Listen to  Nancy Pelosi  talk about  her  grandson wanting to have âbeautiful tan skinâ and âbeautiful brown eyesâ. like  his  friend Antonio â a Guatemalan. White guilt is disgusting. Itâs even worse when you brainwash a child to hate his own skin and eye color. pic.twitter.com/nLXp5OIfDD â Based Monitored ðºð¸ð®ðª (@BasedMonitored) February 8  2018
Representative Nancy Pelosi of California  the Democratic leader  told a closed-door meeting of House Democrats that she would oppose the deal  and said that Democrats would have leverage if they held together to demand a debate on immigration legislation. But she suggested that she would not stand in the way of lawmakers who wanted to vote their conscience. Pressing the issue further  Ms. Pelosi and the next two highest-ranking House Democrats sent a letter to Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin noting their desire for the government to remain open and imploring him to make a public statement about the scheduling of a vote on legislation to protect young immigrants brought illegally to the country as children who are now shielded by the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program  or DACA. âNYT

SOLUTION: Positive

PROBLEM: What is the sentiment of the following document towards the entity Donna Brazile ? Donna Brazile . (Joe Raedle/Associated Press)
On Thursday  former Democratic National Committee interim chair  Donna Brazile  made a surprising revelation: An August 2015 agreement gave Hillary Clintonâs campaign partial control of the DNC months prior to Clinton winning the nomination. The âagreement was not illegal â  Brazile  writes  âbut it sure looked unethical.â The news reignited a debate among politicos and activists over whether the DNC influenced the Democratic primary. Whether the primary was âriggedâ or just business as usual though  Brazileâs allegations are only the latest evidence of the Democratic Partyâs troubles  and why the party establishment is ill-equipped to solve them.
Start with something that  Brazile âs article doesnât touch on: the electoral record. At the federal level  Republicans control the White House and both houses of Congress. The GOP House majority is at its largest in 70 years. Though two-thirds of the Senate seats contested in 2016 were held by Republicans  Democrats only gained two seats  losing races against very vulnerable GOP incumbents. At the state level  Republicans are at their strongest since the 1930s. Republicans control both the state legislatures and governorships in 24 states  compared with Democratsâ five. The GOPâs ruthless exploitation of gerrymandering â aided by its control of so many states â has helped increase GOP control  but much blame still lies with Democratic leaders.
Here is what you need to know about the political storm sparked by  Donna Brazile 's allegations against the Clinton campaign. (Amber Ferguson Melissa Macaya/The Washington Post)
Then thereâs the financial mismanagement. Money troubles for the DNC are hardly unprecedented  but the struggles appear to have worsened considerably in the past few years.  Brazile  says that the partyâs monthly expenditures had doubled in the previous five years  in large part because of former DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and President Barack Obama keeping expensive consultants on the payroll. (Given Democratsâ electoral failures  what these consultants were doing is anyoneâs guess.) Of course  itâs in  Brazile âs interest to blame things on  her  predecessor. But a former senior party official independently confirmed the troubles to the Interceptâs Ryan Grim  adding that the DNC was unable to make payroll in August 2015 and was âapproaching the equivalent of bankruptcy.â

SOLUTION:
Neutral