James Comey's Lawyer Says They'll Resist GOP's Subpoena and His Statement is A Doozy.

Artist - Jim Morin (Jim Morin Syndicate)

durrati  

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Thursday November 22, 2018 · 9:30 AM MST

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So, House Republicans subpoenaed James Comey and Loretta Lynch in a last ditch effort to smear feces on the wall before the Dems take over…
Comey’s lawyer has issued a statement that says it all:

Trump Administration Has Spent $80 Million So Far on Family Separations

Children at the border. (photo: AP)

By Nathaniel Weixel, The Hill

22 November 18

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he Trump administration has spent more than $80 million in the past year to house, care for and reunite thousands of migrant children separated from their parents at the southern border as a result of the “zero tolerance” policy.

The figures were revealed in a report to Congress from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) last week and obtained by The Hill.

The numbers are expected to grow, as 140 children have yet to be reunited with their parents and remain in HHS custody. Among them are 117 children whose parents have already been deported.

The parents of 30 of the children have been declared ineligible for reunification based on their criminal histories, HHS said.

The report was required to be submitted as part of a recently passed government funding bill and is the first time the Trump administration has officially disclosed to lawmakers how much money its “zero tolerance” policy has cost taxpayers.

According to HHS, a total of 2,667 children were separated from their parents and placed into agency custody for an average of 83 days per child.

Shelter costs for those children, including food and education, cost a total of nearly $59 million, the agency said. The rest of the cost included medical care, legal fees and program support.

HHS said 92 percent of all children who had been separated have already been reunified or discharged to sponsors — relatives or family friends who applied to sponsor them.

One year later, an analysis of the U.S. economy shows just how destructive the GOP tax scam was

And I'm like, "Adults in the room? I'm a fucking sociopath!"

Walter Einenkel  

Daily Kos Staff

Tuesday November 21, 2018 · 11:47 AM MST

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The reason that Ronald Reagan’s support of trickle-down economics was so frustrating to most Americans was that it was so obviously a money-grab ploy by the wealthiest entities and individuals in our country. George Bush Sr. gave it the name “voodoo economics,” in part because George Bush Sr. is basically a racist, but he’s not stupid. Reagan’s popularity with the unpopular Republican Party (sound familiar?) led to everyone—Bush Sr. included—adopting full-throated support for the circling-the-drain economic policy of big tax cuts for the wealthy and big business, supported by massive cuts to social programs and education. When Donald Trump and the Republican Party attempted to sell this same failure of an idea last fall, the American people said No, thank you.

The Republicans proceeded with it anyway, promising that big corporations would do what they had never done: put those tax savings back into infrastructure and expansion and jobs! In fact, corporate executives promised Trump’s administration that they would definitely NOT do it. 

Guess what? The corporations didn’t do it!

JPMorgan Chase analysts estimate that in the first half of 2018, about $270 billion in corporate profits previously held overseas were repatriated to the United States and spent as a result of changes to the tax code. Some 46 percent of that, JPMorgan Chase analysts said, was spent on $124 billion in stock buybacks.

The flow of repatriated corporate cash is just one tributary in what has become a flood of payouts to shareholders, both as buybacks and dividends. Such payouts are expected to hit almost $1.3 trillion this year, up 28 percent from 2017, according to estimates from Goldman Sachs analysts.

What Republicans banked on was that corporations would make initial big splashes, including corporate statements that attempted to mislead the public by conflating deals already in place, negotiated between unions and executives, with the tax breaks. In many cases, those businesses are slashing jobs, continuing forward with the plans they had in place before Trump and the Republican Party robbed the nation’s coffers. Report after report has come out showing that big business is indeed making economic “history”… with record-setting corporate buybacks. 

This says nothing about the now infamous “revenue-neutral” assertions made by Republican leadership, which have turned out to be the opposite of true. Tax revenue is at an all-time low, and our deficit is going to run through one trillion dollars in the next few minutes. If the Republican Party had been able to hold on to the House this November, you can be assured they would have moved to cut down restructure Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. But just to highlight how our country’s debt growth is bothersome, the New York Times gave this explanation.

It’s highly unusual for deficits and borrowing needs to grow this much during periods of prosperity. A broad variety of analysts attribute the widening deficit to the tax cuts (along with increased military and other domestic spending ushered in through a bill Mr. Trump signed earlier this year).

But of course, it’s not “highly unusual” at all. This is what happens when a bunch of “fiscally conservative” swamp creatures inherit an economy that was stewarded out of the abyss by a Democratic-run Congress and executive branch. They plunder it.

How Blue States Help Red(neck) States

Former Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich. (photo: Steve Russell/Toronto Star)

By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Website

20 November 18
readersupportednews.org

 
onald Trump and Republicans in Congress love to demonize government handouts, which, in fact, their own supporters depend on and are increasingly financed by taxpayers in blue states.

The federal program Temporary Assistance for Needy Families – what we used to call “welfare” – provides cash assistance to fewer than 1 percent of Americans.

But the Trump administration is proposing to lump many social programs under a new agency with the word “welfare” in its title.

A recent White House report on imposing work requirements, for example, put Medicaid, food assistance, and housing aid into a rebranded program called “noncash welfare.”

Defined this broadly, a large chunk of America relies on welfare. Add in disability benefits, unemployment insurance, and medical benefits, such so-called “welfare” amounts to 17 percent of the average American’s income.

Welfare has become especially unpopular in “red” states that vote Republican and support Trump.

But these same states are often the biggest beneficiaries of government assistance.

Include price supports for agriculture, subsidies for land management and forestry, and defense contractors, and you find that a large portion of the economies of red states depend on federal dollars.

Here’s the irony. Residents of “blue” states send more tax money to Washington than they get back in federal help, while residents of “red” states send less money to Washington than they get back in federal help.

In 2015, for example, New Jersey got back only 74 cents in federal spending for  every tax dollar it sent to Washington. New York got back 81 cents, Connecticut: 82 cents, and Massachusetts: 83 cents.

But when you turn to the red states, it’s the opposite. Mississippi received $2.13 for every tax dollar it sent to Washington. West Virginia: $2.07. Kentucky: $1.90. And South Carolina: $1.71.

Taking the Trump administration’s expansive view of the meaning of welfare to its logical conclusion to include all those benefiting from federal spending, blue states are sending welfare to red states – the same red states that say they don’t like welfare.

Under Trump’s new tax law, blue states will be giving even more welfare handouts to red states. That’s because the law set new limits to the amount of state and local taxes people can deduct from their federal taxable incomes. And since people in blue states pay much more state and local taxes than people in red states, blue-staters will be paying that much more in federal taxes.

Which means an even bigger transfer from blue state residents to all those red state Republican voters, whose party despises handouts.

Now, I should add that some of us here in blue states don’t mind giving red states a bigger helping hand. The vast majority of Americans also oppose cuts to programs that aid the poor, elderly and sick. Because most Americans figure we’re all in this together, and those of us who can do so ought to help out those in need.

We don’t regard it as welfare handouts. We call it social insurance. Indeed, social insurance is needed and used by almost all of us, when you include Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance.  And even programs relied upon mostly by the poor end up helping a large portion of us because roughly one-third of all Americans are poor at some point in their lives.

So remember, attacks on so-called welfare are just another means of attacking the things most of us need, and dividing the country into us and them.

In reality, voters in red states are as dependent on the federal government as voters in blue states, and, truth be told, even more dependent.

The photo that set him off...

Just a sampling of some of the incoming freshman for the 116th Congress. Suck it, GOP.

SemDem  

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Saturday November 17, 2018 · 2:40 PM MST

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I belong to several groups on social media that reminisces our time in the military.

They are apolitical, but sometimes stupidity seeps in. Trump, in a political stunt, deployed thousands of troops along the border. Their base of operations is Joint Base San Antonio, which is where I used to serve.

My brothers and sisters out there are miserable.  No mess tent. No electricity. No mission.  They literally have nothing to do.  They are going to miss Thanksgiving with their families.  The Pentagon admitted it has been a waste of time, resources, and money (Est. $200 million). It’s been a major drain on morale, and Trump has essentially forgotten about them now that he lost the election.

One soldier posted a picture of what #MAGAmorons think they are doing---a bunch of fully armed soldiers in a trench with M-16s trained on a target, but he superimposed it with reality: servicemen in mud picking up garbage.  Well, that started it...

Most people jumped in and agreed it was all stupid, but a few—especially one guy--went nuts. He said Trump was trying to protect the real 'merica from the influx of Muslims and Mexicans. In response, I posted the picture above and reminded him that they aren’t coming, but are already here, and oh—they are his leaders now.

(And something to the effect of “suck it”.)

Boy, oh boy. ALL CAPS came at me: SOCIALIST this, INVADERS that… on and on. It inspired me to use this photo in a few more GOP safe spaces, and I always get the same reaction of ranting and raving. I don’t think there's any other photo that I’ve posted that had such a visceral reaction. It encapsulates all their fears at once: women in power, minorities in power, the changing face of America, and the obvious fact that their long-term strategy of appealing to bigotry is starting to fail.

And it’s just going to get worse for my conservative friends.

Thanks to Trump, the GOP-gerrymandering ploy to pack suburbs in their districts backfired: college-educated women denounced Trump and voted Democrat. The GOP has done so much self-inflicted damage that I don’t see how they are going to win them back anytime soon.

Demographics are also not on the GOP’s side. The nation is getting younger and darker, and they are voting.  An entire horrified generation of activists has been created after witnessing inaction with  mass shootings, racist attacks, justifications for sexual assaults, and depraved policies that allow things like children being thrown in cages. Movements were created that made electoral contests all over the nation in play (OK, UT, VA, GA, AL, etc.) I reminded my friend that his home state of Texas will have more Hispanics than whites in a five years—with about a million turning voting age by next presidential election.

My point is—the picture above is not the anomaly that the GOP is hoping it is. It’s the new reality. They are right to be afraid. (Or should I say wrong to be afraid?)

And it keeps getting worse:  it’s not just diversity that the new freshman are bringing, it’s a rejection of the old guard’s appeasement policies. This new group knows a thing or two about fighting, and they are aiming for a bold, new progressive agenda. Some of it may seem far-fetched now, but give it a few years. America is changing, and a progressive revolution is coming.

This is our time, or as I put it so eloquently to my friend…… “suck it”.

Damn I just LOVE her!!!!!!

Just remembered that back in January, the GOP was really looking forward to this election. Lots of stories from rightwing media, like this pathetic piece from RedState, that the GOP will have all these pickups because the Democrats didn’t stand and clap at Trump’s State of the Union address. Yup, they sure called it...that was the big issue this election.

Republicans secretly worried that the nation is onto their plan about tax cuts and Social Security

How did their secret possibly get out?

Joan McCarter  

Daily Kos Staff

Sunday November 18, 2018 · 7:19 AM PDT

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A secret internal Republican poll and memo tells Republicans that they've "lost the messaging battle" on tax cuts, and that people suspect they're going to use the deficit created by the tax cuts to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

The polling done at the beginning of September and just now obtained by Bloomberg finds that voters by a 2 to 1 margin, 61 percent to 30 percent, say that the law passed late last year benefits "large corporations and rich Americans" over "middle class families." But here's the part that's really special from the internal memo accompanying the survey.

The RNC study says Americans worry the tax law will lead to cuts in Social Security and Medicare, concluding that "most voters believe that the GOP wants to cut back on these programs in order to provide tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy." It attributes that finding to "a fairly disciplined Democrat attack against the recent tax cuts."

Gee, how could voters have ever gotten that idea?

It couldn't have come from, oh, say House Speaker Paul Ryan who had pivoted to "entitlement reform, which is how you tackle the debt and the deficit," even before the tax bill passed. Or after the bill had passed and they'd moved onto the spending bill that kept government open when he said  "entitlement reform" is necessary to deal with the debt.

Or maybe it's because Mitch McConnell is out there talking about how "disturbed" he is by the national debt and saying Congress has to "address the real drivers of the debt […] we're talking about Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid."

How could voters possibly think that Republicans are using the tax cuts as an excuse to destroy Social Security and Medicare?

Trump slips up in interview, admits he installed Whitaker to halt Mueller probe

Smug and stupid is a bad combination.

Dartagnan  

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Friday November 16, 2018 · 5:31 AM MST

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In the wave of wordwash and nervous spew contained in his “freewheeling” interview with the right wing sludge generator known as the Daily Caller, Donald Trump reminds us that if he keeps talking, eventually he’ll say something that reveals what he’s actually thinking. In this case, that moment slipped by almost unnoticed.

H/T to Sonam Sheth and Business Insider:

President Donald Trump on Wednesday indicated during an interview that he tapped former US attorney Matthew Whitaker to replace then Attorney General Jeff Sessions in order to rein in the Russia investigation.

Here is the relevant portion of the transcript:

THE DAILY CALLER: Sure. Could you tell us where your thinking is currently on the attorney general position? I know you’re happy with Matthew Whitaker, do you have any names? Chris Christie —

POTUS: Matthew Whitaker is a very respected man. He’s — and he’s, very importantly, he’s respected within DOJ. I heard he got a very good decision, I haven’t seen it. Kellyanne, did I hear that?

WHITE HOUSE ADVISER KELLYANNE CONWAY: 20 pages.
POTUS: A 20-page?

THE DAILY CALLER: It just came out right before this, sir.

POTUS: Well, I heard it was a very strong opinion. Uh, which is good. But [Whitaker] is just somebody that’s very respected.

I knew him only as he pertained, you know, as he was with Jeff Sessions.

And, you know, look, as far as I’m concerned this is an investigation that should have never been brought. It should have never been had.

It’s something that should have never been brought. It’s an illegal investigation. And you know, it’s very interesting because when you talk about not Senate confirmed, well, Mueller’s not Senate confirmed.
THE DAILY CALLER: Right.

But the interviewer didn’t ask him about the Mueller investigation. Never brought it up. Trump was being asked about potential attorney general nominees, then suddenly Whitaker pops into his head, and we immediately go to his rationale for shutting down the Mueller probe into Trump’s collusion with Russia.

As pointed out by Sheth, this has happened before. When Trump gave an interview to Lester Holt of NBC News, he let slip the fact that he had fired James Comey to thwart the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s collusion with Russia. That admission now forms one of the central points of the Mueller investigation into Trump’s obstruction of justice.

"What is so unusual about Trump is that he publicly forecasts his motivation in a way that is self-defeating and self-incriminating," Elie Honig, a former prosecutor from the Southern District of New York who specialized in organized-crime cases, told INSIDER.

Jeffrey Cramer, a longtime former federal prosecutor who spent 12 years at the DOJ, echoed that assessment.

"The president's knee-jerk pivot to talking about the Russia investigation when asked about Whitaker's qualification is what poker players call a 'tell,'" Cramer told INSIDER.

Donald Trump isn’t nearly as smart as he thinks he is.

Just keep talking, buddy!