Study: Trump/GOP Tax Cuts Did Nothing But Give Rich People Money

Some of us never believed that the Trump/GOP tax cuts, a/k/a massive gift to the extremely wealthy, would (i) not cause the federal deficit to balloon, and (ii) result in business investment and higher employee wages.  Now, a study by the Congressional Research Service has confirmed what we naysayers were saying all along: the tax cuts did nothing but give huge amounts of money to the already rich.  Business investment did not increase, employee wages did not surge, and the federal budget deficit exploded. Yet, Trump and Republicans continue to lie and tell their gullible - may we say stupid - base to the contrary.  Meanwhile the rich are enjoying what they always knew was the end goal: lots of money shifted to their pockets.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at the study findings:

The biggest effect of the Trump tax cuts is obvious: People who own businesses and other sources of concentrated wealth will have a lot more money, and the federal budget will have less. But the advocates of the tax cuts insisted it wasn’t about letting the makers keep their hard-earned money rather than handing it over to the takers. It was about incentivizing business to repatriate funds and ramp up its investments, thereby increasing growth and wages.

The Congressional Research Service, a kind of in-house think tank for Congress, has a new paper analyzing the effects of the Trump tax cuts. It finds that none of those secondary effects have materialized. Growth has not increased above the pre-tax-cut trend. Neither have wages. After a brief and much smaller than expected bump, repatriated corporate cash from abroad has leveled off.

If the Trump tax cut had encouraged new business investment, it might take years for the new investment to bear fruit. But the study looks directly at business investment and finds … nothing . . . Supporters of the Trump tax cuts insisted not only that they would promote growth, but that they would promote so much growth the measure would pay for itself. Even moderates like Susan Collins repeated assurances by the party’s pseudo-economists that the plan would not increase the deficit. So far, the growth feedback from the tax cuts has made up about 5 percent of the plan’s revenue loss, a mere 95 percent shy of the predictions. . . . the paper finds no widespread increase in bonuses or worker compensation.

If their true primary goal was to increase business investment, then the complete failure of a highly expensive program to achieve its stated goal would lead them to question their support. Why not cancel the Trump tax cuts and use the couple trillion dollars in lost revenue to fund a more effective growth-promoting policy?

So far, the number of Republicans reassessing their support for the Trump tax cuts is, give or take, zero. What this suggests is that the alleged growth-incentivizing secondary effects of the plan were rationales, and the primary effect — giving business owners more money — was the hidden main goal all along.

Scott Taylor and House Republicans Lie About Their Votes on Health Care

Scott Taylor - lying about his health care votes

McMorris-Rodgers - lying about her health care votes

If one watches television in the Hampton Roads viewing area, it is hard to miss the Elaine Luria campaign ads taking Scott Taylor to task for his votes to make health care insurance less obtainable and less affordable for many residents of the Virginia 2nd Congressional District.  Taylor whines that the ads are lies and that he has voted to protect access to health care for average Americans.  Obviously, Taylor is hoping that voters will not take the time to research his voting record for themselves.  If they do so, they will find that Luria's ads are accurate.  Scott Taylor DID vote to gut the Affordable Health Care Act, a/k/a Obamacare, just like he voted for the massive Trump/GOP tax cuts that gave massive tax breaks to the extremely wealthy and large corporations, threw a few crumbs to average taxpayers, and reduced a number of tax deductions for small businesses (meaning their taxes will go up). But Taylor is not alone on his lies about his votes on health care issues. As a piece in Politico notes as but one example of GOP dishonesty, Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), the No. 4 Republican in the House, is busy lying through her teeth about her votes that have made healthcare less attainable for many.  Here are article excerpts:

Cathy McMorris Rodgers got an earful about health care on a recent Friday afternoon knocking on doors in the suburban Balboa neighborhood of Spokane. McMorris Rodgers, the top-ranking Republican woman in the House facing the toughest reelection contest of her career, heard one resident complain his wife’s monthly insurance premiums have swelled to over $700 per month. Another agonized about affording long-term care for her elderly mother. Yet another worried whether Medicare would go bankrupt.

In past election cycles, the seven-term lawmaker might have had an easy talking point: Repeal and replace Obamacare. But like other Republicans who suddenly find themselves on the defensive on health care, she avoids mentioning her party’s long-standing pledge to eliminate the 2010 law.

The fact that she’s now steering clear of one of the GOP’s core tenets about repealing Obamacare shows just how treacherous the health care issue has become on the campaign trail. . . . she’s also the sole Washington state lawmaker to have voted to repeal Obamacare last year.

Now, she faces attack ads spotlighting that vote, not to mention lawn signs imploring voters to “repeal McMorris Rodgers, not our health care.” And while McMorris Rodgers talks about the importance of insurance protections for people like her son who have pre-existing conditions, she voted for a bill that health experts largely agree would have eroded those [pre-existing conditions] protections.

“She’s still defending that vote,” said her Democratic rival Lisa Brown, a former state Senate majority leader with health care bona fides, including helping to start a medical school in eastern Washington. “She’s still saying, ‘Well, people just didn’t understand our vision.’ It’s so much not in the best interests of this region and the whole state of Washington that I had to conclude she’s either really out of touch with the district … or has just decided to choose the party over the district.”

When pressed on health care on the campaign trail, she promises to ensure that vulnerable people, including those with pre-existing conditions, get the care they need, even though the Trump administration is asking the courts to throw out Obamacare’s insurance safeguards.

McMorris Rodgers’ district, which sprawls across the eastern part of the state and borders Canada and Oregon, carries historic symbolism that makes it an irresistible target for Democrats. When the Gingrich revolution led a Republican takeover of the House in 1994, the most prized scalp was that of former House Speaker Tom Foley, who held the seat for three decades and became the first sitting speaker to lose reelection since the Civil War.

Democrats believe Brown is the candidate who could turn the district blue again. She spent two decades in the state Legislature, rising to Senate majority leader before becoming chancellor of Washington State University’s Spokane campus. In both roles, she helped create a new medical school at the college, which enrolled its first class last year, cementing Spokane’s status as a regional health care hub.

On a recent afternoon, Brown touted her work establishing the medical school during a candidate forum on the Colville Indian Reservation, about two hours north of Spokane. “The health care issue is probably the most important issue I hear about as I travel through the district,” she told the audience.

Brown, like other Democratic candidates this cycle, frequently criticizes Republicans for threatening insurance protections for pre-existing conditions, which a recent POLITICO-Harvard poll found is an overwhelming concern for Democrats. The Trump administration’s decision to support a lawsuit from 20 conservative states that would gut Obamacare’s protections has been a political gift for Democrats and a messaging challenge for Republicans.

“By trying to dismantle it and not having anything to put in its place, clearly that’s in jeopardy,” Brown said. “It’s the distance between the rhetoric and the reality.”

Like McMorris Rodgers, Scott Taylor is at best talking out of both sides of his mouth, but to put it bluntly, is just plain lying.  Just as he's lying about protecting Social Security and Medicare, programs that the always despicable Mitch McConnell targeted for cuts just this week.  Don't trust Taylor. Vote him out on November 6, 2018. 

The Lie That Democrats Are an "Angry Mob"

The real "angry mob" - far right militias and white supremacists.

The dishonesty of today's Republican Party and its willingness to employ dog whistle to encourage violence is both breath taking and frightening.  With the likelihood of Democrats retaking control of at least the House of Representatives, Republican fear mongering has risen to new heights as Der Trumpenführer describes Democrats as "an angry mob" and the mainline party now running ads that depict Democrats as the Antifa, an extreme and tiny faction of what some in years past might have called anarchists. In reality, the Antifa hold the Democrats in about the same contempt as Republicans.  Moreover, the Republicans ignore the much, much larger white supremacist groups, open carry gun extremists and right wing militias that rally to the Trump/Pence standard.  But sadly, the truth means nothing to today's Republicans. Indeed, if their lips are moving the best assumption - the same holds for the Christofascists - is to assume they are lying until it is proven otherwise.   What is most disturbing is the fact that Republican tactics mimick those used by past dictators as they rose to power.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at this outright, deliberate lie about Democrats.  Here are excerpts:

In the closing weeks of last year’s special election in Georgia, Republicans used footage of a riot by Antifa — a fringe sect that views the Democratic party with contempt — to characterize the moderate Democratic nominee Jon Ossoff as a dangerous loon. In the closing weeks of the 2018 midterm elections, Republicans have taken this message national. Democrats are an “angry mob,” charges President Trump. “You don’t hand matches to an arsonist, and you don’t give power to an angry, left-wing mob. And that’s what the Democrats have become.”

Conservatives have begun repeating Trump’s message. “Yes, Democrats, It’s a Mob,” writes David Harsanyi. “Sorry, Democrats, Progressive Mob Action Is a Real Problem,” declares an almost–identically headlined David French column. Neither Harsanyi nor French is prepared to fully defend all of President Trump’s behavior in this department. What they argue, instead, is that Trump’s sins have been exaggerated and are minor in comparison with those of his opponents.

The Republican cries about mobs bring together a wide range of behavior, mostly involving screaming crowds confronting elected officials. In general, I find confrontational protest tactics to be a counterproductive tactic. I also think the behavior of such protesters is essentially the same thing we saw from Tea Party demonstrators under Barack Obama. Many of these demonstrators were specifically taught to shout down the proceedings and “rattle” members of Congress. Some of those right-wing protesters spit, screamed, shoved, and used racial epithets. At the time, the conservative line on this was that the movement was being unfairly smeared by the actions of a small fringe. Today, the two sides have basically reversed positions on the angry-protesters question, with conservatives using a handful of the angriest protests to discredit an entire movement, and liberals objecting to being defined by their most vocal minority. What actually is new to American politics is Trump’s assault on democratic norms. French dismisses the “lock her up” chants as empty rally talk. In fact, the chant, which began in the campaign, prefigured Trump’s deadly serious ambition to turn the Department of Justice into a weapon of personal control, that would harass Trump’s enemies while simultaneously quashing any wrongdoing by him and his allies. Trump has articulated this goal consistently, in public as well as in private. To the extent he has yet to succeed, it is only because the senate has prevented him from installing a sufficiently pliant attorney general — a restraint that may well disappear if the elections renew the Republican majority, which will no longer be laden with the most independent figures (John McCain, Jeff Flake, Bob Corker).

[Trump] has repeatedly attacked the news media as “the enemy of the people,” an epithet used by communist dictators, and has at least gestured at using his power to punish them. (Trump has mused about challenging licenses for television stations that report independently, and instructed the post office to raise rates on Amazon as retribution for critical coverage in the Washington Post.)

Republican member of Congress Greg Gianforte physically assaulted a reporter for asking about his health care plan; his party stood behind him, and Trump recently praised Gianforte for doing it. . . . Gianforte has come away from the incident with his reputation enhanced.

Susan Glasser, a seasoned and politically centrist reporter, observed six recent Trump rallies. She notes the cult of personality theme at the events, which feature “the kinds of tributes I have heard in places like Uzbekistan, but never before in America.” . . . “Where Trump differs starkly is in his insistence — made at an increasingly high pitch as the week went on — that Democrats not only want to legislate their way to socialism but that they are an actual clear and present danger to Americans.”

The method on display is familiar if you study any historical episode of democratic backsliding. One party, either from the far left or the far right, sets out to attack and weaken democratic norms. The small-d democrats resist, trying to maintain democratic norms. But they’re fighting at a disadvantage against a ruthless foe that does not observe their limits, and at least some of the opposition undertakes a more drastic action. Any offense becomes a pretext for the authoritarians, who exaggerate the threat of violence and chaos by their enemies to justify the antidemocratic measures they were planning all along.

Trump’s illiberalism only works because respectable conservatives cooperate with his fiction that he is more victim than aggressor. French writes, “It’s time to stop excusing, rationalizing, and minimizing [Trump/GOP] behavior that is dangerous, menacing, and threatening.” Indeed it is. 

Corey Stewart Met By Laughter Over Lie About Trump "Standing UP to Putin"

Corey Stewart with GOP supporters.

Corey Stewart is an embarrassment to the Commonwealth of Virginia.  I'd say he's an embarrassment as well to the Republican Party except for the fact that he is now the face of the Republican Party in Virginia.  In addition to running his campaign for the U.S. Senate as a Neo-Confederate (seemingly in favor of restore the Jim Crow laws), Stewart is pandering to the knuckle dragging base of the Virginia GOP through his unflinching support of Der Trumpenführer, including his willingness to state baldfaced lies in Trump's support.  During the debate between Stewart and incumbent Democrat, Tim Kaine, over the weekend Stewart came up with a real howler: he told the debate audience that Trump had stood up to Vladimir Putin.  The audience response? Loud laughter.  A piece in Yahoo News looks at Stewart's buffoonery.  Here are excerpts:

Corey Stewart, Virginia’s Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, wasn’t joking ― but the audience was laughing.

During a weekend debate against incumbent Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Stewart declared: “We have a president who is standing up to the Russians.”

That got a loud chuckle from Kaine ― and from people in the audience.

The Confederate flag-defending challenger tossed out the praise for President Donald Trump as he criticized Kaine for his response to Russian hostilities, including its takeover of Crimea, during the Obama administration.

Trump has been assailed by Democratic and GOP lawmakers for a disastrous press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, in which he gave credence to Putin’s denials that Russia intervened in the 2016 election.

“President Trump is caving to the Russians,” Kaine ― Hillary Clinton’s running mate in the 2016 presidential election ― said at the debate, according to Richmond.com. “He believed Vladimir Putin even over the hardworking and patriotic Americans who have concluded that Russia is attacking our election.”

The Republican Myth That it Represents "Real Americans"

It is hard to tell when the myth began, but it certainly gained traction among Republicans with John McCain's disastrous selection of Sarah Palin - the idiot of Wasilla.  What myth?  The myth that the Republican party speaks for "real Americans" while the Democrat Part speaks for effete liberals and  those who are "other."   Never mind accurate facts and history.  Take Donald Trump, the supposed champion of these "real Americans."   All of his grandparents and his mother were born in Europe.  Meanwhile, most American blacks can traces their ancestry in America back a century or more longer.  In my own case, some of my ancestors were in America close to a century longer than Trump's.  Why am I not a "real American" while Trump with a short term family history in America claims he is?  Sadly, it is all a lie and when stripped of all of the smoke and hypocrisy, the myth is a coded message driven my race and in some cases religious extremism.  Despite their protestations to the contrary, many of my Republican "friends" ultimately bought into this race based myth.  A  column in the Washington Post  looks at the disingenuousness of the myth peddled by the GOP.  Here are column excerpts:

The most offensive and corrosive idea in our politics today is that some Americans are more “real” than others. Don’t you dare buy it.

Republicans are cynically peddling this un-American conceit. “Real Americans” elected and continue to support President Trump, they claim, in defiance of snooty “coastal elites” who are hopelessly out of touch with the country. It’s a total crock, and shame on those using it for political gain.

The whole point of democracy is that every citizen’s voice is supposed to have equal weight — even voices in favor of fair and compassionate immigration policy, universal health care, fighting racism, promoting gender equality, enshrining LGBT rights and other progressive causes. There is no need to be tentative about these views for fear they somehow make you, I suppose, “unreal.” They do not.

 

Nor does living within some arbitrary distance of an ocean, having a college education or preferring big-city life deprive anyone of standing as an American.

 

The notion has taken hold that because the miner is a “real American,” his views must therefore be more authentic — and the barista, if he does not share or accede to those views, is “out of touch.”

 

With world-class hypocrisy, Republican officeholders and activists are selling this load of bull while themselves, by and large, being “coastal elites.”  One recent illustration: No group is supposedly more elitist and clueless than the so-called mainstream media. At the media’s biggest social event of the year, last month’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, comedian Michelle Wolf made some biting jokes about the Trump administration. Matt Schlapp, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, and his wife, Mercedes, the White House director of strategic communications, conspicuously stood up and walked out.

 

“It’s why America hates the out of touch leftist media elite,” Mercedes Schlapp harrumphed on Twitter. She sent the tweet while she and her husband were in a limousine, on their way to a glittering after-party thrown each year by NBC.

 

I know the Schlapps. . . . they recently purchased a $3 million home, as I certainly did not. Both have advanced college degrees. Matt Schlapp was a top lobbyist for Koch Industries before taking over at the ACU. The couple also founded their own public relations and lobbying firm. How are they anything but “elite,” according to the false dichotomy they espouse?

 

To put icing on the cake, Mercedes Schlapp reportedly said at a recent White House meeting that “I stand with Kelly Sadler” — referring to the White House aide who said of Sen. John McCain’s opposition to CIA nominee Gina Haspel that “it doesn’t matter, he’s dying anyway.” Schlapp is awfully selective about what she finds offensive.

 

Think for a moment about how ridiculous this whole thing is. Trump is a billionaire who started life as a millionaire, his father having been a wealthy developer. His Cabinet is a coven of plutocrats. His administration’s most consequential achievement thus far is a tax cut that showers corporations and wealthy citizens with lavish benefits, leaving just peanuts for the middle and working classes. The administration is also waging a relentless campaign to punish immigrants and the poor, apparently for existing.

But Trump cleverly uses cultural, racial and geographic markers to define who is “real” and who is not. And the Republican Party, to its eternal shame, has decided to go along.

Yes, it matters a great deal what people think in small-town Pennsylvania or rural Texas. But it matters just as much what people think in the rebuilding inner cores and thriving suburbs of our major cities, even if those cities happen to be on or near a coast.

Progressives have to speak to those left behind by wrenching economic and social change. But our voices are as authentic, and as worthy, as anyone else’s. I am a real American, too. Deal with it.

Voters Are Starting to See the GOP Tax Bill Was a Scam

If one listened to the sales pitch given by dishonest Republicans - think Donald Trump, Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell for starters - middle class Americans were supposed to see noticeable increases in their take home pay.  But something is happening: those promised take home pay increases are being realized.  While my own net pay has increased very slightly, two things are relevant: (i) my income is above the average, so any increase I see is likely higher than what many are experiencing, and (ii) the net increase I have received might at best cover the cost of gassing up my above average fuel efficient car once or twice per month.  The result?  Voters who were played for fools by congressional Republicans are beginning to realize that the Trump tax bill was what many of us saw it to be from the outset: a massive scam.   A piece in Salon and a column in the Washington Post look at this welcomed development.  First this from Salon:

Donald Trump and the Republicans sold their slapdash effort at tax reform as a boon to the middle class. As the law goes into effect, however, new polling suggests that most Americans are struggling to see any benefit at all in their paychecks.

A survey from Politico and Morning Consult found that only 37 percent of employed people have seen an increase in their paychecks since the law went into effect, while 53 percent of people have not noticed a change.

One big difference between the people who are seeing a pay increase and those who aren't? Income.  “Our polling shows high-income earners are more likely to have noticed an increase in their paychecks as a result of the tax bill," said Kyle Dropp, Morning Consult’s co-founder and chief research officer.

Only 16 percent of people with an income under $50,000 a year said they noticed a pay increase. That number rises to 33 percent of people with income between $50,000 and $100,000, and 40 percent for people who make more than $100,000.

These findings emphasize the fact that the bill was never designed to be a tax cut for working Americans. It was designed, first and foremost, to be a massive giveaway for corporations.  Once again, the GOP sold a policy to the American people that was a total bait-and-switch.

The column in the Washington Post continues the exposure of the GOP scam.  Here are excerpts:

When Republicans put together their tax bill last year, it was not much of a surprise to see that its centerpiece was a gigantic corporate tax cut, lowering the statutory corporate rate from 35 percent down to 21 percent. This cut accounted for about $1 trillion of the bill’s total $1.5 trillion cost, but Republicans said it really wasn’t about helping corporations at all.

No, the real target was the workers: Corporations would take the money and use it to create new jobs and raise the wages of those working for them, as trickle-down economics did its magical work.

Democrats, on the other hand, said it was a scam. They charged that workers would see only a fraction of the benefits, and instead corporations would use most of their windfall for things like stock buybacks, which increase share prices and benefit the wealthy people who own the vast majority of stocks. [I]t has been only two months since President Trump signed the bill into law, and we’re already learning what anyone with any sense knew at the time: Everything Democrats predicted is turning out to be right. Let’s look at this report in the New York Times, which describes how stock buybacks are reaching record levels: Almost 100 American corporations have trumpeted such plans in the past month. American companies have announced more than $178 billion in planned buybacks . . . .
 Those so-called buybacks are good for shareholders, including the senior executives who tend to be big owners of their companies’ stock. A company purchasing its own shares is a time-tested way to bolster its stock price.

But the purchases can come at the expense of investments in things like hiring, research and development and building new plants — the sort of investments that directly help the overall economy. 

This is exactly what Democrats warned would happen. How could Democrats have been so clairvoyant? Do they own a time machine?

Well, no. They applied logic, looked at data and understood history. Republicans, on the other hand, were spinning out a ludicrous fantasy with no basis whatsoever.

Among the things Democrats pointed out was that even before the tax cut, corporations were making near-record profits and sitting on mountains of cash; if they wanted to invest, create jobs and raise wages, they already had the means to do it. They also observed that even before the tax cut passed, corporations were saying publicly that they intended to use the money for stock buybacks.

How many times do we have to play this game? When a new policy debate emerges, Democrats try to make an argument that has some connection to reality, while Republicans make absurd claims in the knowledge that even if they get debunked in the occasional “news analysis” piece, on the whole they’ll be treated with complete seriousness, no matter how ridiculous they are.

Much of this con job was made possible by the main stream media which still continues to present GOP talking points as truthful statements even when all the facts and circumstances show them to be intentional lies.  This false equivalency of the parties needs to end.  Republicans nowadays are simply liars and need to be exposed as such.

Florida School Shooting Survivors Will Lead Nationwide Protest

Growing up I had negative experiences with gun owners in the form of hunters trespassing on my family's property in Central New York notwithstanding numerous "No Trespass" and "Posted" signs on the parameter of the roughly 50 acres.  Then as now, gun owners put their own desires over the rights of others in terms of property rights and even physical safety on one's own property, not to mention the safety of one's horses in the face of trigger happy "sportsmen.". In the intervening decades, the situation has grown far worse as anyone seemingly can buy a AR-15 assault rifle far easier than someone under age 21 can buy an alcoholic beverage. The result has been carnage that one would expect to find in a war zone rather than in a suburban high school or a laid back country music festival.   The only ones happy with current circumstances are (i) right wing gun fanatics, (ii) gun manufacturers focused on revenues rather than lives needlessly lost, and (iii) Republican elected officials prostituting themselves to the NRA for large campaign contributions.  Everyone else loses.  Now, students of last week's latest school mass shooting are seeking to organize a nationwide protest against America's insane gun laws.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at what will hopefully be a successful effort.  Here are highlights:

A group of teenagers who survived Wednesday’s school mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, have a message for America about the lack of gun control: “Follow us.”

On Sunday morning, student organizers from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School announced that they will lead a nationwide demonstration on March 24 called the “March for Our Lives,” explaining to ABC News and other news organizations that they were now determined to make the Stoneman Douglas shooting the turning point in the U.S. gun control debate. They expect the student-led demonstration to take place in Washington, D.C., and every other city in the country.

Explained 11th-grader Cameron Kasky to ABC, “People keep asking us, what about the Stoneman Douglas shooting is going to be different, because this has happened before and change hasn’t come? — This is it.”

“We are going to be marching together as students, begging for our lives,” Kasky continued, insisting that the message to America’s adults was that the young people whose lives are on the line feel neglected, and that, “at this point, you are either with us or against us.”

The students say they will be targeting any politicians who receive support from the National Rifle Association, with the aim of creating “a new normal where there’s a badge of shame on any politician who’s accepting money from the NRA.”

Kasky was joined by David Hogg, Alex Wind, Jaclyn Corin, and Emma Gonzalez. All five survived Wednesday’s shooting at Stoneman Douglas, in which a 19-year-old gunman, armed with a legally purchased AR-15-style assault rifle, killed 17 people, including 14 students. Gonzalez, a senior, delivered an impassioned, widely shared speech at a gun-control rally in Fort Lauderdale on Saturday. That speech concluded with an excoriation of America’s politicians:

The people in the government who were voted into power are lying to us. And us kids seem to be the only ones who notice and our parents to call BS. Companies trying to make caricatures of the teenagers these days, saying that all we are self-involved and trend-obsessed and they hush us into submission when our message doesn’t reach the ears of the nation, we are prepared to call BS. Politicians who sit in their gilded House and Senate seats funded by the NRA telling us nothing could have been done to prevent this, we call BS. They say tougher guns laws do not decrease gun violence. We call BS. They say a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun. We call BS.

She also promised that Stoneman Douglas students “are going to be the kids you read about in textbooks — not because we’re going to be another statistic about mass shooting in America, but because … we are going to be the last mass shooting.”
  

The Fraudulence of the GOP "Fiscal Conservatives"

One of the excuses that some "friends" and neighbors give for voting Republican is that they believe in "fiscal conservatism."  Apparently, it's more palatable to them than admitting that they are racists, right wing Christian extremists, and/or homophobes or some combination of the foregoing.  How these folks will try to cling to that disingenuous excuse will be interesting now that Republicans have greatly increased America's budget deficit through a combination of the Trump/GOP tax cuts and the budget passed in the early hours of Friday morning.  Of course, that doesn't even include the fact that since Reagan forward, budget deficits balloon under Republicans and shrink in relative terms under Democrats. A column in the New York Times looks at the utter lie that the GOP is the party of fiscal conservatism.  Here are highlights:

In 2011, House Republicans, led by Paul Ryan, issued a report full of dire warnings about the dangers of budget deficits. “The United States is facing a crushing burden of debt,” it declared, warning of a looming fiscal crisis that might soon “capsize” the economy. Citing the horrors of big deficits, Republicans refused to raise the federal debt ceiling, threatening to create financial turmoil and effectively blackmailing President Barack Obama into cutting spending on domestic programs.

How big were these horrifying deficits? In the 2012 fiscal year the federal deficit was $1.09 trillion. Much of this deficit, however, was a direct result of a depressed economy, which held down revenues and increased outlays on unemployment benefits and other safety-net programs. The deficit fell rapidly over the next few years as the economy recovered.

This week Republicans, having just enacted a huge tax cut, cheerfully agreed to a budget deal that, according to independent experts, will push next year’s deficit up to around $1.15 trillion — bigger than in 2012. Wait, it gets worse. In 2012 there were strong economic reasons to run budget deficits. The economy was still suffering the aftereffects of the 2008 financial crisis. Unemployment was around 8 percent. And the Federal Reserve, which normally takes the lead in fighting slumps, had very limited ammunition . . . . The state of the economy in 2012 was exactly the kind of situation in which running budget deficits is actually a good thing, because they help sustain overall spending. By contrast, there is no comparable case for deficits now, with the economy near full employment and the Fed raising interest rates to head off potential inflation. If anything, we should be using this time of relatively full employment to pay down debt, or at least reduce it relative to G.D.P. “The boom, not the slump, is the time for austerity at the Treasury,” wrote John Maynard Keynes. But Republicans have turned that sage advice on its head. [L]et’s be serious: Their [the GOP's] views haven’t changed at all. They never really cared about debt and deficits; it was a fraud all along. All that has changed is the fact that a Republican now sits in the White House. How do we know Republicans were never sincere about the deficit? It was obvious, even at the time, to anyone who looked at their fiscal proposals. These proposals always involved giant tax cuts for the wealthy — funny how that worked — offset by savage cuts in social benefits. Even so, assertions that deficits would go down depended entirely on assuming lots of revenue from closing unspecified loopholes and huge savings from cutting unspecified government programs. In other words, even at the peak of their deficit-hawk posturing, all Republicans really had to offer was redistribution from the poor to the rich. However, pretending to care about the deficit served several useful political purposes. It was a way to push for cuts in social programs. It was also a way to hobble Obama’s presidency.

And I don’t think it’s unfair to suggest that there was an element of deliberate economic sabotage. . . . . Now Obama is gone, and suddenly deficits don’t matter.

But let me not just bash Republicans. Let me also bash their enablers — all those who were duped into believing their claims to be deficit hawks, or pretended to believe them in order to appear balanced and bipartisan. Such people did America a great disservice.

And they will continue to do a great disservice if they obscure what’s happening now. . . . this is all about Republican bad faith. Everything they said about budgets, every step of the way, was fraudulent. And nobody should believe anything they say now.

Carter Page Touted Kremlin Contacts in 2013 Letter

As I write this post, Trey Gowdy is on Face the Nation lying through his teeth and making huge lapses in telling the full story about his "concerns" over a FISA warrant issued in the fall of 2016.  Utterly lacking is from Gowdy attempts to mislead viewers is any reference to Carter Page's activities starting in 2013 and intelligence agency concerns that Page was being recruited as a Russian asset.  Indeed, in 2013, Page boasted that he was an adviser to the Kremlin.  All of this is separate and apart from the Steele dossier that the Nunes memo obsesses over. It goes without saying that Fox News, a/k/a Faux News , a/k/a Trump TV, conveniently ignores these pre-existing actions of and concerns over Carter Page.  A piece in Time looks at Page's own past boast of his ties to the Kremlin - and his admission that Russian operatives were seeking to recruit him as a Russian agent.  (A piece in New York Magazine also looks at Page's letter and his boasts of Kremlin ties).  Note that the letter by page predates the FISA application in dispute by THREE YEARS.  The take away is that Mr. Nunes and his co-conspirators in the White House are full of crap.  Here are article excerpts:

Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page bragged that he was an adviser to the Kremlin in a letter obtained by TIME that raises new questions about the extent of Page’s contacts with the Russian government over the years.

The letter, dated Aug. 25, 2013, was sent by Page to an academic press during a dispute over edits to an unpublished manuscript he had submitted for publication, according to an editor who worked with Page.

“Over the past half year, I have had the privilege to serve as an informal advisor to the staff of the Kremlin in preparation for their Presidency of the G-20 Summit next month, where energy issues will be a prominent point on the agenda,” the letter reads.

The Nunes memo claims that in Oct. 2016 the FBI improperly received court permission to spy on Page, whom Trump had named as an adviser to his campaign in March 2016. The Nunes memo says the FBI based its request for eavesdropping permission on information provided by former British spy Christopher Steele while Steele was working for Democrats.

House Democrats, the FBI and the Justice Department have all raised questions about what they say are omissions and misleading analysis in the Nunes memo. They argue the FBI presented multiple pieces of evidence, beyond the Steele dossier, in their request for a warrant against Page from the secretive FISA court.

At the heart of the debate is the question of who, exactly, is Carter Page. Trump’s defenders argue that he was simply a low-level consultant to the campaign who has overstated his role as an adviser as well as his Russian contacts. The Steele dossier claims that during a trip to Moscow in July 2016, Page held secret meetings with a senior Kremlin official and a senior Putin ally that included conversations about helping Trump and hurting Hillary Clinton in the presidential campaign. Page has given inconsistent accounts about his contacts with the Russians.

In January 2013, Page met a Russian diplomat named Victor Podobnyy at an energy conference in New York City, according to court documents. The two exchanged contact information, sent each other documents on energy policy and met several more times to discuss the topic, the documents allege. Two years later, in January of 2015, Podobnyy was charged in absentia — along with two other Russians — with working as a Russian intelligence agent under diplomatic cover.

Court records include a transcript of a conversation where Podobnyy talks about recruiting someone named “Male-1” by making “empty promises” about “connections in the [Russian] Trade Representation.” Page now acknowledges that he was “Male-1.”

In June 2013, the FBI interviewed Page regarding his contacts with the Russians, Page says. The FBI believed that Russian intelligence services had attempted to recruit Page as an agent with promises of business opportunities in Russia, according to the 2015 court documents. Page says that thereafter the FBI began a retaliatory campaign against him. According to published reports, the FBI obtained a first FISA warrant to eavesdrop on Page’s electronic communications during 2013. And they have been paying attention to him, on and off, ever since.

Democrats Dominate in 2017 Virginia Elections

Ralph Northan (at rear center right) in our home with campaign volunteers

It has been an exciting and emotional night watching the election results come in for the Virginia 2017 elections.  The husband and I have labored long and hard and given money for the Democrat statewide ticket and have provided housing for a Ralph Northam staffer in out home since July 4th. To say that we are very invested is to put it mildly, especially with me as a one time GOP activist, City Committee chair, and precinct captain.  It would seem that many Virginians have come to the realization that I came to years ago: the GOP of my parents' generation and my youth is dead and gone .  With a sweep by the Democrat statewide ticket and the possibility of flipping the House of Delegates still in play, this election is of major impact.  The results also show a growing division between Virginia's progressive urban areas - which foot the financial bill so to speak for the state as a whole - and rural areas where racism, religious extremism and bigotry remain strong.  What is of interest in the election results available is that even cities in Virginia's rural southside and southwest are moving to the Democrat column.  Perhaps they have realized that embracing the GOP message of division, racism and homophobia will do nothing to revitalize their economic base.  Here's a sample of some of the unofficial results in the gubernatorial race:

Albemarle County*          63.75% Northam

Alexandria City              78% Northanm

Arlintgton County          80% Northam

Chesapeake*                    53% Northam

Charlottesville                 85% Northam

Danville*                        57% Northam

Fairfax City                     64% Northam

Fairfax County                67.85% Northam

Falls Church                    78% Notham

Fredericksburg                69.9% Northam

Hampton                        71.6% Northam

Harrisonburg*                 63.5% Northam

Henrico County *             60% Northam

Lexington*                     66% Northam

Loudoun County*           59.45% Northam

Martinsville*                  58.5% Northam

Newport News                65% Northam

Norfolk                            68.6% Northam

Petersburg                      87.7% Northam

Portsmouth                     70% Northam

Prince William County*   64% Northam

Richmond                       81.5% Northam

Roanoke*                       62% Northam

Staunton*                      53% Northam

Suffolk                            58% Northam

Virginia Beach*             52% Northam

Williamsburg                70% Northam

* designates localities in southside/southwest Virginia or that historically vote Republican

Perhaps I am overly optimistic, but part of me wants to think that some of the urban areas that flipped to Northam or went much more Democrat recognized that all of the Republican statewide candidates ran campaigns that were based on shameless lies, not to mention overt calls to white supremacists and religious fanatics.  Virginia had a glorious history in the early days of the nation when intellect, democracy and knowledge were ascendant.  Then came the Civil War, Jim Crow and Massive Resistance.  Hopefully, the majority of Virginians want to recapture the Virginia of  the Founding Fathers.

The irony is that the rural areas that embraced Ed Gillespie are embracing the very forces that are holding them back economically and making them anathema to modern, progressive business. Will they ever wake up?

Trump and Gillespie Are Both Lying About "Bringing Back Coal"

One of the lies that Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, during his Russian assisted campaign and since is that he would end "the war on cal" and promised those in coal producing regions of the country that he bring back the glory days of the coal industry.  Like so much else that was promised by Trump and his sinister minion, Mike Pence, it was all a lie because there is no war on coal.  The decline of coal is driven not by government regulation but by economic conditions that nothing Trump does can reverse.  Thus, Trump's reversal of Obama administration regulations and moratoriums on leasing on federal lands will change nothing.  With cheaper and cleaner natural gas alternatives, coal fired power plants are on the decline both in America and around the world. Trump, of course, is not the only Republican lying about the ending the war on coal and bringing the coal industry.  Ed Gillespie has crisscrossed Southwest Virginia making the same disingenuous promises that Trump has trumpeted.  Now, Mike Pence is campaigning with Gillespie and telling the same lies.  Sadly, many in rural Virginia are believing the Trump/Gillespie lie that government regulation and the EPA are the problem and will likely be duped into voting against their own long term best interests.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the economic conditions that are really behind the death of the coal industry.   

It was depicted by energy executives and conservatives as a “witch hunt,” “a politically motivated sham” and a move that would “destroy mining in the West .” In January 2016, President Barack Obama imposed a three-year moratorium on federal coal leasing, which halted new projects and delayed pending applications for companies to extract coal from federal land. During that time, the Interior Department was to carry out an overdue review of the program’s social and environmental costs.

A year later, all this was an easy target for President Trump, who had promised to save the coal industry from oppressive regulations and slumping sales . On March 29, his administration lifted the moratorium and deep-sixed the study.
 [T]he president said he was “putting an end to the war on coal.” Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke argued that the leasing program was critical to “energy security” and “job creation.” EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt followed that by moving this past week to repeal Obama’s Clean Power Plan, designed to limit carbon emissions.

But the moves to save this industry have actually exposed its weaknesses — and revealed a trend that coal companies and the Trump administration have not acknowledged publicly: The companies are scaling back, in some cases shedding workers and declining the opportunities the federal government now wants to give them. Despite Trump’s best efforts, the American coal industry remains on life support.

Outwardly, coal companies and their advocates have embraced Trump’s aggressive rollbacks as aids toward boosting production and creating jobs. These are central elements of Trump’s promise to “make America great again.” And the administration frequently boasts that coal is making a comeback. . . . But a recent White House talking point — that some 50,000 new coal-mining jobs had been created since the election — has been debunked. The figure is closer to 1,300. 

In private, coal company executives are deeply skeptical about the administration’s ability to alter market conditions. In numerous letters to Bureau of Land Management state offices that I obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, the coal industry acknowledged the continuing decline in demand, and in several cases, companies withdrew pending lease applications.

In the six months since that announcement at the EPA, companies have withdrawn five of 44 pending lease applications, and at least eight are indefinitely on hold. In a number of cases, companies have explained that their decisions are based on persistently weak market conditions. 

In the letters to state BLM offices obtained through FOIA requests, coal companies admitted that the future is not as rosy as they might have hoped or would like to project. Arch Coal, the second-largest supplier in the United States, referred to the “continued downward pressure on the Powder River Basin and subsequent reduced output over the past seven years” in explaining why it was withdrawing a lease application for a major new mine in Wyoming. Rhino Energy, which has operations in Appalachia and the West , said that “current coal market conditions remain depressed” and that it wouldn’t move forward with a lease for a proposed 14,000-acre mine in Colorado until that outlook changed. 

This is hardly the picture of an industry on the rebound, and it is squarely at odds with one of the central promises of Trump’s presidential campaign: that policy changes would revive the ailing sector and create thousands of new jobs in coal communities. Not that the administration hasn’t tried. . . . But it’s not enough to compensate for weak domestic demand, driven largely by the rise of natural gas as an alternative to coal.

In the end, lifting the much-vilified moratorium will have little, if any, impact on the price of natural gas (made cheap by the discovery of huge new deposits in the past decade and advances in drilling technology), declining domestic demand for coal (thanks to the shuttering of dozens of coal-fired power plants) or a relatively flat export market (because of price volatility and the cost of shipping). Those fundamentals won’t change anytime soon. And some companies seem to think their best bet is an outright bailout.

If there was suddenly a surge in demand for coal, the industry would be poised to ramp up production from existing mines. That is unlikely to happen. “We don’t think [the industry] is going to need new reserves from the federal government for a decade,” said Daniel Rusz, a research director at Wood Mackenzie, a global consultancy with clients in the financial and energy sector.

For coal’s champions, inside the administration and out, that’s the rub: The domestic coal market shows no signs of fundamentally changing, and without renewed demand, there’s no reason to pursue new leases. According to a March study by Headwaters Economics, 142 coal-fired power plants have retired generators or closed entirely since 2009. That trend is expected to continue. Just this month, one of the largest coal-fired power plants in Texas announced that it would be shutting its doors early next year; a spokesman for the company that owns it called the plant a “money loser.” 

“There are no new coal plants being built,” said Rusz. If companies open new mines, who is going buy the coal in 30 or 40 years?

Not a single ton of coal has been leased from the Powder River Basin since June 2012. “We still have a market moratorium,” Anderson points out. “We had it for four years prior to the official moratorium. And it’s still going.”