Month: March 2017

Is It Wise, Or Even Possible, To Believe Anything Trump Says?…

Contradicting repeated denials from Donald Trump and his team, Newsmax reported on May 14, 2016 that Trump met Russian Ambassador Kislyak at a VIP reception in Washington on April 27.

And while meeting the Russian ambassador is fine, why lie about it?

UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal of May 13, 2016 confirms Trump met with Kislyak. The Journal goes even farther and says Trump “warmly” greeted the Russian ambassador:

Skip

Trump and his aides have repeatedly denied that anyone on Trump’s team, including Trump himself, had any contacts with Russian officials during the presidential campaign. Yet we continue to find out, drip by drip, that those denials were wrong.

But according to Newsmax, in an article titled “Putin ‘Pleased’ With Trump,” Kislyak didn’t simply attend Trump’s big foreign policy speech, the Russian ambassador also attended a VIP reception that day at which he met Trump.

And then there’s this:

On Tuesday, Exxon announced that it will spend $20 billion over the course of a decade at 11 proposed and existing refining and chemical manufacturing sites. In the process, the company anticipates adding more than 45,000 jobs.

President Trump wasted no time in taking credit, even releasing a statement the same hour that copied many of Exxon’s own sentences and an entire paragraph word for word.

“President Trump made a promise to bring back jobs to America,” the White House statement said. “The spirit of optimism sweeping the country is already boosting job growth, and it is only the beginning.”

In a Facebook video, Trump went further to take credit for the announcement. “This is something that was done to a large extent because of our policies and the policies of this new administration,” he said. “I said we’re bringing back jobs, this is one big example of that.”

But Exxon itself said in its release that this isn’t really new. The investments it announced on Tuesday were begun in 2013 and will continue through at least 2022, beginning before and extending past Trump’s current term in office. Many of them were announced and even in process before the election: one in 2012, two in 2014, and one last year; the most recent one in Corpus Christi, TX, was announced in July.

At least one of them, a lubricant plant in Baton Rouge, LA, is already completed.

It is becoming increasingly clear that Donald J. Trump is a pathological liar. A liar that 43% of our country believe in. What kind of disaster will it take before these people realize the truth?

Read the full stories HERE and HERE.

Health Insurance Company CEO’s Would Gain Big Time With Republican Health Care Plan…

It should come as no surprise the Republican Health Care Plan give insurance company CEO’s a sweet tax break. While at the same time imposing hardship on many less fortunate members of society.

WASHINGTON — The Republican plan to replace Obamacare includes a tax break for insurance company executives making over $500,000 per year.

Companies can generally deduct employee salaries as a business expense but in 2013 the Affordable Care Act capped the deductions on health insurance executive salaries at $500,000.

The average compensation for top health insurance executives is in the millions. In 2014 the left-leaning Institute for Policy Studies found that this cap generated $72 million in additional tax revenue.

But that cap is being eliminated in the new American Health Care Act unveiled Monday by Republicans. That means the more health insurance companies pay their executives the less they will pay in taxes.

“Unlike Obamacare, our legislation doesn’t include policies that discriminate against specific industries,” said a Republican aide.

The policy is a win for the health insurance industry and arguably a surprising move for Republicans after they frequently condemned the industry in the Obamacare debates.

“The insurance industry got us into this mess and I think they’re going to have to pay the price for it,” Rep. Raul Labrador said recently.

Sen. John McCain said he didn’t even want to hear the industry’s proposals after they supported the Affordable Care Act. “They have no relevance to me. I don’t want to hear from them,” he said.

In cases like Cigna CEO David Cordani or Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini, both of whom have hit annual remuneration of over $17 million, the new tax savings on their salaries would be substantial.

We anxiously wait to see all the details of the republicans plan.

Be sure to pay close attention because the republicans want to railroad the plan through in three short weeks.

Timothy Jost – In considering the Affordable Care Act in 2009 and 2010, the House held 79 hearings over the course of a year, heard from 181 witnesses and accepted 121 amendments. The current House leadership hopes to get the repeal and replacement legislation through the House in three weeks. The Senate adopted the Affordable Care Act only after approximately 100 hearings, roundtables, walkthroughs and other meetings, and after 25 consecutive days in continuous session debating the bill. It is expected that the current House bill will go directly to the floor of the Senate for a vote. Whatever passes the Senate will return for a conference with the House, if it varies from the House bill, and then go to the President for his signature.

Of course, there is no assurance that this process will go smoothly. Little or no help can be expected from the Democrats and there are signs of serious dissension within the Republicans. The Republicans hold only 52 votes in the Senate and cannot afford to lose more than two (assuming Vice President Pence casts a deciding vote), which is quite possible given the traditional independence of the Senate. But the legislation introduced in the committees give the clearest indication yet where the Republican Congress is headed.

President Trump Spending Close To 25% Of His Time Away From Washington…

Remember all the noise from the right about President Obama’s golfing activities and vacations? The outrage by some on the right over his time away from Pennsylvania Avenue?

Well now after almost six weeks in the office President Trump has spent almost 25% (four out of seven weekends) of his presidency at Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach. Golfing and presumably relaxing with his wife and First Lady Melania.  Who as we know will not spend her time living in the White House. All this at great expense to American tax payers.

Where’s the outrage from conservatives and republicans? As we wait to hear even a peep. The hypocrisy of the right again on display.

Donald Trump is believed to have spent almost a quarter of his time as President in the sunshine state of Florida.

The President, who enjoys referring to his Palm Beach estate as the “Winter White House”, has spent four out of seven weekends of his presidency at his 126-room Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach.

As of Sunday, when the billionaire property developer flew out of the resort, he had spent almost 242 hours out of his 1,060 total hours as president in Florida, according to the Palm Beach Post.

While he has spent the majority of his time inside or near his opulent Palm Beach estate, which he purchased for $5 million in 1985, he has also made fleeting visits to Tampa, Melbourne and Orlando.

Mr Trump expressed his fondness for Florida, a state he has been visiting for decades, over the weekend. He referred to it as his “second home” and Mar-a-Lago as the “Southern White House”.

Skip

While Mr Trump and his family enjoy private quarters in a closed-off area of the grounds, the resort is also home to a members club. The Mar-a-Lago Club’s members include real estate developers, energy executives and Wall Street financiers.

On Monday, Democratic senators urged the Trump administration to publicly release logs of visitors to both Mar-a-Lago and the White House.

Mr Trump’s frequent visits to the resort have allowed members extraordinary access to powerful figures in the US government. Visitors have taken photos with Ivanka Trump, the President’s eldest daughter, reading by the pool, and taken selfies with Steve Bannon, Mr Trump’s chief strategist and the former executive chairman of far-right publication Breitbart News.

But the financial burden of his Florida trips could be hitting the taxpayer. An estimate by the Government Accounting Office found trips to Mar-a-Lago could be costing the US taxpayer more than $3 million (£2.4m) per visit.

Full story BELOW THE FOLD.