Nancy Pelosi has promised that Democrats will work to roll back the tax cuts enacted by president Donald Trump if her party takes over after the midterm elections. Apparently, the American people aren’t having enough of their hard earned money stolen from them already.
Reporter Jake Sherman asked Pelosi to respond to a Republican ad that claims “you would like to institute a single-payer health care program and cancel — [raise] taxes, I think they mean, roll back the tax cuts they passed this year.” Sherman asked Pelosi about her response to this at a breakfast event hosted by Politico. Democrats are no longer mincing words: they think they deserve even more of your money.
“Well, the second part there is accurate,” Pelosi chuckled (because paying taxes aka government theft is so funny when you’re already living paycheck to paycheck) in response, before adding “I do think we should revisit the tax legislation in … a bipartisan transparent way.”
National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Matt Gorman jumped on Pelosi’s comment, tweeting: “I promise you that will be in almost every GOP ad this fall.” Pelosi claims she objects to lowering taxes because it was “in the dark of night.” However, she can’t be bothered to feel the same about the awful Obamacare law that’s flung many Americans into a state of poverty trying to figure out how to pay for or be taxed for the “crime” of not buying government-sanctioned health insurance.
“Now you’ve heard it straight from Nancy Pelosi’s mouth: if Democrats take back the House and she’s reinstalled as Speaker, your taxes will go up,” Gorman said in an emailed statement. According to Fox News, in response, Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill told The Washington Post that “Republicans are desperate to misrepresent any effort to roll back their debt-exploding tax giveaways for big corporations and the wealthiest 1 percent as ‘raising taxes’ on middle-class families.”
To be fair, Pelosi is a millionaire and politician so higher taxes won’t affect her like it will affect the rest of us she wants to steal more from. And her own words speak volumes. In January, Pelosi dismissed bonuses given to workers as a result of the tax reform plan as “crumbs” despite the fact that some workers received bonuses worth up to $2,000.
A train carrying members of Congress to a Republican retreat in West Virginia slammed into a dump truck on Wednesday, throwing lawmakers from their seats and leaving at least one person dead, officials said.
Minor injuries were reported by those on board. The White House confirmed in a statement that there was one “fatality” and one serious injury; lawmakers said this involved those in the truck, which may have been stuck on the tracks when it was hit.
There are mixed reports over whether the train actually derailed. Lawmakers on the train quickly flooded social media with images of the wrecked truck, as well as damage to the crumpled front of the train.
It sure doesn’t seem like Arizona approves of California’s sanctuary cities and one GOP Lawmaker hammered that point home. Marth McSally, in what was likely a tongue in cheek moment, proposed building a wall around California to protect the state of Arizona from their neighbor’s disastrous policies.
McSally announced her bid for Senate to replace Senator Jeff Flake (R) earlier this year. Flake is retiring at the end of this Congress. Other candidates in the primary include former Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio and former state Senator Kelli Ward (R).
When first hearing her quote, one could assume she wanted Arizona protected from those feeling the housing crisis and high taxation in California. But McSally, a congresswoman representing Arizona was referring to the “dangers of the southern border” and the sanctuary cities that California has allowed to infect the Golden State. Sanctuary cities are municipalities that do not cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.
“As we look in Arizona, we often look into the dangers of the southern border,” McSally said during a round-table discussion about “sanctuary cities” Tuesday at the White House. “But if these dangerous policies continue out of California, we might need to build a wall between California and Arizona as well to keep these dangerous criminals out of our state,” she said, smiling, and perhaps a little sarcastically.
She added that California can’t just “provide sanctuary for these criminals and think that it’s only impacting California dangerously.” McSally’s comments come on the heels of the announcement that the federal government is suing the state of California (state government) for failing to enforce their laws.
The Trump administration’s “America First” policy is a thorn in the side of many states that use illegal immigrants as votes to elect far-left Communists.
California’s governor, Jerry Brown (D), was upset that he has to follow others’ rules while making California almost unbearable with the number of rules, laws, and regulations he demands the residents of the Golden State adhere to, Brown became the offended hypocrite everyone knew he was in the wake of the federal lawsuit over sanctuary cities. Try not to choke on California’s hypocrisy. Never forget that the state (and Democrats in general) loves laws, just not the laws of others.
“You called this an act of war from the federal government,” a reporter began asking Brown. Brown immediately looked confused. “An act of war? That’s pretty strong. But I reciprocate that comment,” Brown responded.
A train carrying members of Congress to a Republican retreat in West Virginia slammed into a dump truck on Wednesday, throwing lawmakers from their seats and leaving at least one person dead, officials said.
Minor injuries were reported by those on board. The White House confirmed in a statement that there was one “fatality” and one serious injury; lawmakers said this involved those in the truck, which may have been stuck on the tracks when it was hit.
“It was a very high-speed collision,” Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Calif., who was on board, told Fox News. “There was no braking that was felt. We hit an immediate impact and went from 70 to zero very quickly.”
There were mixed reports over whether the train actually derailed, but sources said the front engine ended up with wheels off the tracks. Lawmakers on the train quickly flooded social media with images of the wrecked truck, as well as damage to the crumpled front of the train.
“There is one confirmed fatality and one serious injury. There are no serious injuries among members of Congress or their staff,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement. “Senior Administration officials are in regular contact with Amtrak and state and local authorities. Our thoughts and prayers are with everyone that has been affected by this incident.”
The extent of injuries on board was unclear but largely described as minor. Amtrak said there were no reported injuries to passengers or crew members, though lawmakers gave a conflicting account.
Rep. Jason Lewis, R-Minn., told Fox News he had a “little bit of a whiplash” and “maybe a tiny bit of a concussion.”
Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, while saying some members needed medical attention, told Fox News the fatality involved an individual in the truck. Denham confirmed this, and said others in the truck were airlifted out.
Amtrak released a brief statement saying the train “came into contact” with the vehicle. “Local law enforcement is investigating the incident and crews are inspecting the equipment for damage,” Amtrak spokeswoman Kimberly Woods said in a statement.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., was on the train but is fine, Fox News is told. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Wis., was not on the train.
The accident took place in Crozet, Va., near Charlottesville. Members were on a special chartered Amtrak train to the Greenbrier resort, where Vice President Pence was set to speak Wednesday night, with a planned appearance from President Trump on Thursday.
The White House said Trump is “aware” of the accident, which comes one day after his State of the Union address. The retreat is where the party traditionally gathers to discuss its agenda and goals for the coming year.
The train will now return to Charlottesville, and members will take a bus to West Virginia.
While injuries on the train were described as minor, Rep. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., a medical doctor, tweeted that he was helping the injured immediately after the crash.
(ZHE)— Shortly before 2am on Saturday, the Senate passed “the most sweeping rewrite of the U.S. tax code in three decades, slashing the corporate tax rate and providing temporary tax-rate cuts for most Americans” handing Republicans a badly needed legislative and political victory. Senators voted across party lines in a 51-49 vote, ending days of debate and “hand wringing” as leadership worked frantically behind the scenes to win over holdouts and get the proposal in line with the chamber’s rules.
Tennessee Senator Bob Corker, who had cited concerns over the bill’s effects on federal deficits, was the only Republican dissenter. Corker, who is retiring after 2018, said in a statement ahead of the vote that he “wanted to get to yes” on the tax plan. “But at the end of the day, I am not able to cast aside my fiscal concerns and vote for legislation that I believe, based on the information I currently have, could deepen the debt burden on future generations,” he said.
Corker’s dissent however was not enough to halt passage, and shortly thereafter Vice President Mike Pence presided over the final passage vote. GOP senators, who stayed on the Senate floor until the vote closed after midnight, broke out into applause after Pence announced the bill had passed.
“This is a great day for the country,” Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said during a 2 a.m. press conference after the vote. “We have an opportunity now to make America more competitive, to keep jobs from being shipped off shore and to provide substantial relief for the middle class.”
The bill would lower tax rates for individuals through 2025 and permanently cut the corporate tax rate from 35% to 20% (more details below). The bill’s tax cuts for individuals are temporary in order to comply with budget rules that the measure can’t add to the deficit after 10 years. The bill would also repeal ObamaCare’s individual mandate, a priority for President Trump and many Republicans.
* * *
The vote brings the GOP close to delivering a much-needed policy win for their party and President Donald Trump. After the vote, Trump said on Twitter that he looks forward to signing a final bill before Christmas. The president expressed gratitude to McConnell and Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch for steering the measure through the Senate. “We are one step closer to delivering MASSIVE tax cuts for working families across America,” Trump wrote on Twitter.
We are one step closer to delivering MASSIVE tax cuts for working families across America. Special thanks to @SenateMajLdr Mitch McConnell and Chairman @SenOrrinHatch for shepherding our bill through the Senate. Look forward to signing a final bill before Christmas! pic.twitter.com/gmWTny3SfS
On Saturday morning, Trump followed up his praise to the Senate GOP, tweeting the “Biggest Tax Bill and Tax Cuts in history just passed in the Senate. Now these great Republicans will be going for final passage. Thank you to House and Senate Republicans for your hard work and commitment!”
Biggest Tax Bill and Tax Cuts in history just passed in the Senate. Now these great Republicans will be going for final passage. Thank you to House and Senate Republicans for your hard work and commitment!
Amid the republican jubilation over the passage of a bill which is heavily weighted to benefit corporations and pass-throughs, and will encourage all self-employed businesses to become LLCs, there was just one problem: nobody actually read the 479-page bill.
As Montana Senator Jon Tester wrote late on Friday:
I was just handed a 479-page tax bill a few hours before the vote. One page literally has hand scribbled policy changes on it that can’t be read. This is Washington, D.C. at its worst. Montanans deserve so much better. pic.twitter.com/q6lTpXoXS0
NY Governor Andrew Cuomo showed what the “handwritten notes on the page” looked like:
Senate Republicans are so desperate for a win they are going to pass a tax increase on New York with handwritten changes to the bill. pic.twitter.com/pT2Xvubiy2
Commenting on this, Senate Democrat Charles Schumer noted that a set of last-minute revisions to the bill changed it in ways that had yet to be analyzed by the Joint Committee on Taxation, Congress’s official scorekeeper for the effects of tax legislation. “Is this really how Republicans are going to rewrite the tax code? Scrawled like something on the back of a napkin?” However, McConnell said the bill, the first text of which was introduced on Nov. 20, went “through the regular order.” He dismissed complaints like Schumer’s. “You complain about process when you’re losing,” McConnell said.
Bottom line: the chaotic process was similar to how Obamacare was passed on Christmas Eve in 2009: in fact maybe a slight improvement: at least this time Congress didn’t have to “pass the bill to find out what is in it.” And it’s not like anyone reads these bills anyway.
So what happens next?
Before it goes to Trump, lawmakers will have to reconcile differences between the Senate bill and one the House passed last month, a process that will begin Monday. Although both versions share common topline elements, negotiations on individual provisions inserted to win votes, particularly in the Senate, may be protracted and difficult. The final product will end up being a central issue in the 2018 elections that will determine control of Congress.
“We’re going to take this message to the American people a year from now,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said after the vote.
* * *
Among the major overhauls, both the House and Senate measures would cut the corporate tax rate to 20% from 35% – though the Senate version would set that lower rate in 2019, a year later than the House bill would. Also, the Senate bill, unlike the House version, would provide only temporary tax relief to individuals, ending tax cuts for them in 2026. Both bills are expected to add more than $1.4 trillion to the federal deficit over 10 years, before accounting for any economic growth. Bloomberg reported that last minute revisions to help shore up GOP support added about $32.5bn to the measure’s 10-year cost, according to a one-page analysis from the Congressional Budget Office.
The House and Senate bills also align on the contentious issue of individual deductions for state and local taxes: They’d eliminate all but a deduction for property taxes, which would be capped at $10,000. They differ on the home mortgage-interest deduction; the House bill would restrict that break to loans of $500,000 or less with regard to new purchases of homes. The Senate legislation would leave the current $1 million cap in place.
According to Bloomberg, the bills also differ on the tax rates they’d apply to multinational companies’ accumulated offshore earnings. The House bill would tax those profits at 14 percent for earnings held as cash and 7 percent for less-liquid assets. The revised Senate bill contains a lengthy section that has no direct mention of the rates, but a person familiar with the Senate plan said they’d be 14.5 percent for cash and 7.5 percent for less-liquid assets.
The Senate also approved a 23% tax deduction on business income earned from partnerships, limited liabilities and other so-called pass-through businesses. The House version would create a 25% tax rate for such business income, with restrictions on which businesses could qualify. Small businesses would get extra relief under the House legislation as well.
The House bill would also eliminate the estate tax, while the Senate version would limit the tax to fewer multimillion-dollar estates, but leave it in place. And after 2025, the limits would lift. Under current law, the estate tax applies a 40% levy to estates worth more than $5.49 million for individuals and $10.98 million for married couples. The Senate bill would temporarily double the exemption thresholds. The House bill would double the exemption thresholds, and then repeal the tax entirely in 2025.
As discussed previously, the House bill would consolidate the current seven individual tax brackets to four, leaving the top tax rate at 39.6%. The Senate bill would have seven brackets – with lower rates, and a top rate of 38.5 percent. As Bloomberg notes, “studies have shown that many of the tax bill’s benefits would go to the highest earners – and some middle-class taxpayers might actually pay more – a finding that could impact the House-Senate talks.”
Most importantly, perhaps, the Senate bill includes a repeal of Obamacare’s mandate that most Americans have health insurance or pay a penalty. The House bill does not.
Here is a side-by-side comparison of the two plans thanks to the WSJ:
Also while we have yet to get confirmation, below is a list of last minute changes and revisions that made it into the final bill per Reuters:
PASS-THROUGHS: Senators Ron Johnson and Steve Daines announced their support for the tax bill after securing agreement on a bigger tax break for the owners of pass-through enterprises, including small businesses, S-corporations, partnerships and sole-proprietorships. An original 17.4 percent deduction would rise to 23 percent.
FULL EXPENSING: Senator Jeff Flake, who was a holdout over deficit concerns, agreed to vote “yes” after Republican leaders agreed to change a provision allowing the full expensing of business capital investments to sunset after five years. Flake worried that Congress would be unable to eliminate the benefit cold turkey, allowing it to bleed red ink for years to come. But the Arizona Republican says the change would instead phase out full expensing over three years beginning in year six.
RETIREMENT SAVINGS: Senator Susan Collins said she persuaded Republican leaders to retain catch-up contributions to retirement accounts for church, charity, school and public employees.
MEDICAL EXPENSES: Collins also said she was able to include language to reduce the threshold for deducting unreimbursed medical expenses for two years to 7.5 percent of household income from 10 percent.
STATE AND LOCAL PROPERTY TAXES: Collins has proposed an amendment that would retain a federal deduction for up to $10,000 in state and local property taxes.
INDIVIDUAL ALTERNATIVE MINIMUM TAX: Rescinding a proposed repeal of the AMT and instead increase exemption levels and phase-out thresholds is also on the table.
CORPORATE ALTERNATIVE MINIMUM TAX: So is rescinding a proposed repeal of the corporate AMT.
REPATRIATION: Another change could be to increase tax rates on U.S. corporate profits held overseas to 14 percent for liquid assets and 7 percent for illiquid holdings, up from 10 percent and 5 percent, respectively
Attention now shifts to a House-Senate conference committee – a specially appointed, temporary panel that will be charged with hashing out the differences in the bills and preparing a final version for both chambers to consider. Party leaders will select a small group of lawmakers, likely from the House and Senate tax-writing panels in each chamber, who would then be approved by each chamber. That work could start as early as Monday, with many high-stakes issues to be worked through. The deadline of Dec. 31 is an artificial one, though – aimed partly at securing a victory well in advance of the 2018 congressional elections. Republicans would have until the end of 2018 before they lose their ability to clear final passage in the Senate without a filibuster.
This article was chosen for republication based on the interest of our readers. Anti-Media republishes stories from a number of other independent news sources. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect Anti-Media editorial policy.
The bodies are not yet cold, the blood not yet dry, the triage rooms still receiving victims, and already, people are attempting to exploit the Las Vegas tragedy to espouse their political ideology. Revealing the extreme politicizing of the mass shooting, a top legal executive at CBS, Hayley Geftman-Gold, took to social media to proclaim that she “is not even sympathetic” towards the victims of the shooting that left at least 58 dead and over 500 injured at a country music festival at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas Sunday night.
“If they wouldn’t do anything when children were murdered I have no hope that Repugs will ever do the right thing,”
wrote Geftman-Gold on Facebook, likely referring to the Sandy Hook school shooting.
“I’m actually not even sympathetic bc country music fans often are Republican gun toters.”
The shooter, identified as Stephen Paddock of Mesquite, Nev., opened fire on a massive crowd during a country music festival from the 32nd floor of Mandalay Bay Hotel late Sunday night.
Law enforcement sources say they located the shooter on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel, and that he opened fire on the concert-goers from the upper room floor of the hotel, according to the Las Vegas-Journal Review.
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Currently, there are conflicting reports as to whether the shooter took his own life or was killed by police. Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said police had located a number of firearms in the room he occupied in the hotel.
Lombardo attempted to dispel the notion that there were multiple shooters, claiming that reports of multiple shooters and that explosives were used were false.
READ MORE:Hillary Got Paid More for 12 Speeches to Wall Street Banks than Most Americans Make in a Lifetime
Despite claims of responsibility by ISIS, police said that Paddock had no known connection to terrorism, and that law enforcement is not calling this a terrorist attack at this point, according to NBC News.
“The gunfire began during a performance by the singer Jason Aldean, the closing act of the Route 91 Harvest Festival, according to Gail Davis, who was in the audience of more than 22,000,” according to The New York Times.
Additionally, Hillary Clinton, who is never one to let a good tragedy go to waste, took no time to begin politicizing this tragedy.
Going after a group not yet connected w/ a attack that we know little about as victims r still in the hospital is not putting politics aside pic.twitter.com/5E51xh20EN
It’s important to note that this is not the first time a CBS employee has shown politicized animosity towards the GOP, as the June shooting of Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise was labeled by CBS anchor Scott Pelley as “foreseeable, predictable and to some degree, self-inflicted.” Pelley’s intimation was that due to Rep. Scalise’s support for gun rights, this was the predictable outcome.
Revealing exactly how the immediate politicizing of these tragic events does a disservice to the public, when James Hodgkinson opened fire on Rep. Scalise earlier this year, The New York Times immediately (and falsely) attempted to blame the shooting on a erroneous link between Sarah Palin and the shooter of former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Ariz.).
Often, the transformation of human tragedy into trying to score political points ends up in reporting that is extremely biased and often inaccurate.
READ MORE:Project Veritas Releases Fourth Video Exposing Illegal Contributions and High Level Political Corruption
The original thread was deleted by the person who made the original post that Geftman-Gold’s comments appeared on, but were not deleted by Geftman-Gold, according to the Daily Caller.
Unfortunately, these guilt by association tactics are what often lead to more evil idiots being duped into carrying out murder against innocent people because they are perceived as the enemy for alleged connections with rival groups.
Ever hear of the Us vs. Them tactics of manipulation? Creating a bunch of “Thems” can be dangerous, no matter who the “Us’s” are.
As the right claims Paddock is a liberal extremist and the left claims he’s a right-wing nut, neither group seems to care about the actual victims at all. Even the NY Times said that “what we need most of all isn’t mourning, but action to lower the toll of guns in America.”
Sadly, every time Americans experience a tragic shooting, whether it’s Charleston, Aurora, Sandy Hook, Orlando, or Mainstreet USA, there is an overwhelming response by supposed “objective” media and political groups alike, who use death and destruction to promote their agenda.
Now for the final news flash.
If you have to use murder and violence to get others to accept your ideas, you may need to rethink your ideas.
The murderous villains in all of these cases have already used this death and destruction to make their point. And you’re going to do what? Ride their coat tails? You’re going to use their violence to promote your ideas, in turn immortalizing evil? Through this action, you are doing exactly what these psychopaths wanted. You are perpetuating the turmoil that these savage criminals sought out through the use of violence. For what?
READ MORE:Watch Hillary Clinton Admit on LIVE TV She Voted to Invade Iraq for the Money
It could take decades for psychologists to study these killers in an attempt to find reasons for their heinous crimes. Yet still, we may never know what goes on in someone’s head for them to be able to kill so many innocent people.
However, one thing is certain, and that is that blowhards attempting to demonize their political enemies through guilt by association, cannot and will not ever obtain that reason by jumping on these death bandwagons.
The bottom line is that an evil and obviously sick person killed innocent people and no amount of speculation about putting the blame on rap music, heavy metal, video games, violent tv, or political affiliation will change that fact. Anyone who attempts to garner support for their cause through associating their political opposition with an insane killer is acting within the same skewed reality of evil mass murderers and will be complicit in the horrid society that ensues.
(INTELLIHUB) A news poll was taken between July 25 and July 27 which shows Kid Rock, a.k.a. Robert Ritchie, leading the Michigan GOP Primary by a good margin.
The poll released by Trafalgar Group shows that indeed it will be “game on” if Ritchie runs. The musician leads among potential Republican candidates with 49.62 percent. In second is “undecided” with 28.10 percent.
In a general election match-up, Democratic incumbent Sen. Debbie Stabenow leads with 43.37 percent and Ritchie is at 41.17 percent. However, when including voters who are leaning towards either candidate, Ritchie leads with 48.6 percent and Stabenow is at 46.09 percent.
The famed rock star and Michigan local plans to call a press conference within the next six weeks to announce if he is going to run for U.S. Senate. As of yet, it’s looking good.
The growing political violence in America has come to the nation’s capital in the form of a mass shooting that resulted in five people wounded.
The third-highest-ranking House Republican, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana), was critically injured after a gunman, James T. Hodgkinson, opened fire at a congressional baseball practice Wednesday morning. Four others were injured.
Here are five things you should know:
1. Hodgkinson was a member of anti-Republican and anti-Trump groups, according to the newspaper in his hometown, The Bellevue News-Democrat. He belonged to multiple anti-GOP Facebook groups, including ones called “The Road to Hell is Paved with Republicans,” “Donald Trump is not my President, “Illinois Berners United to Resist Trump,” “Boycott the Republican Party,” “Expose Republican Fraud” and “Terminate the Republican Party
2. Hodgkinson was a supporter of U.S. Sen. and former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), The New York Times reported. Hodgkinson volunteered for Sanders campaign, according to The Quad-City Times. Sanders on Wednesday said he was “sickened” by the shooter’s actions. “Violence of any kind is unacceptable in our society and I condemn this action in the strongest possible terms,” Sanders said. “Real change can only come about through non-violent action, and anything else runs counter to our most deeply held American values
3. The shooting could have been much worse if a security detail of U.S. Capitol Police had not intervened. The Capitol Police shot Hodgkinson, who died later. “He was hunting us,” U.S Rep. Mike Bishop (R-Michigan) said of Hodgkinson. Said U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), “the field was basically a killing field — it’s really sick and very sad.”
4. Scalise underwent surgery and was in critical condition as of Wednesday afternoon, according to the hospital. Scalise serves as the Republican whip, which means he helps pass legislation and tallies how many members of his caucus support important bills.
5. Scalise might have been Hodgkinson’s target. “He shot at Steve Scalise, our second baseman,” U.S. Representative Joe Barton (R-Texas) told reporters.
What do you think? Share your thoughts in the section below:
The left is terrified now that key provisions of Obamacare have been voted against by the House of Representatives. The American Healthcare Act, lovingly dubbed “Trumpcare” has not been signed into law. In fact, it hasn’t even passed the Senate. Yet if you die because of it, one website will make sure they mail your ashes to a GOP congressman.
Getting Trumpcare to pass the senate is going to be an uphill battle. But regardless of whether it’s a law or not, lovers of the horrible Obamacare law are going crazy. Democrats seem fearful that some people may lose health insurance coverage. No one wants others to lose healthcare, despite the talking points of the left’s main players. But not wanting to pay for your healthcare isn’t the same as taking it away from you. Nonetheless, democrats are losing it over a bill that isn’t even a law yet and is unlikely to become one. Out of fear, one liberal decided to take things to the next level.
Is #AHCA going to kill you? Me too. That’s why I make a way to be sure your ashes get sent to a GOP Congressperson: https://t.co/XegGboc3sL
— Zoey Jordan Salsbury (@zoeyjsalsbury) May 4, 2017
Zoey Jordan Slasbury claims that the AHCA (which again, is not a law yet) is going to be the cause of her death. The point of her website is pretty straightforward. A user can select a GOP representative and have their ashes mailed directly to them in the event they die because of their illness after no longer being covered by Trumpcare. The website calls this a “donation.” The site’s landing page says this:
Millions of Americans rely on protections and coverage from the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. The Republicans new bill will gut these protections and many will die.
They deserve to know it. Fill out our form and we’ll help you get papers in order to send your ashes to a GOP member of Congress if you pass. –Mail Me to the GOP.com.
This macabre idea of mailing human remains to politicians is nothing short of insanely disturbing. Democrats act like others should be forced to pay for their healthcare as if it’s a right. Newsflash: no one has the right to the fruits of another’s labor. And doctors are laborers. But many still get scared when thinking about living their lives without the government dictating every minute detail of the healthcare industry.
When a person fills out the necessary form on Mail Me To The GOP, they’re given the option of disclosing the reason why the AHCA could kill them. Some of those responses are available for viewing on the site, too. One says, “My combat tour in Iraq resulted in enough disability to make me uninsurable, but not enough to get all my healthcare through the VA. You killed me, you prick.” And another says simply, “because you took away my f-ing insurance.” Interesting, since there have literally been no changes to Obamacare because the AHCA still hasn’t passed.
*You can read more “reasons” why Trumpcare is going to kill people on the website here.
It almost feels like democrats should watch a little Schoolhouse Rock so that they can understand why this whole overdramatized fear of the AHCA is absurd.
The Mail Me To The GOP website crashed yesterday because of an influx of visitors. Mediaite says that they have reached out to Salsbury for her thoughts on the site’s crash and will update if they hear back from the website’s founder.
The level in which the left has gone off the deep end over this bill is beyond insane. It’s also crazy that the right is dubbing this a “repeal and replacement” of Obamacare. It’s neither. It’s a slight tweaking that much like Obamacare, still won’t work because the government is still up to their elbows in your healthcare. The one most positive effect of Trumpcare would be the removal of the individual mandate. If it passes, and you cannot afford health insurance, you wouldn’t be charged a fine (or a tax) you can’t afford for the crime of being unable to afford insurance.
Dawn Luger is a staff writer and reporter for The Daily Sheeple. Wake the flock up – follow Dawn’s work at our Facebook or Twitter.
I think the U.S. citizenry is being afflicted by a sort of mass insanity at the moment. There are no good outcomes if this continues. As a result, I feel compelled to provide a voice for those of us lost in the political wilderness. We must persevere and not be manipulated into the obvious and nefarious divide and conquer tactics being aggressively unleashed across the societal spectrum. If we lose our grounding and our fortitude, who will be left to speak for those of us who simply don’t fit into any of the currently ascendant political ideologies?
Rather than focus its journalistic energy on chronicling the economic insecurity plaguing so many of our fellow Americans, the billionaire-owned corporate media appears entirely obsessed with chattering endlessly about Russia conspiracy theories and domestic coup plots. Instead of looking in the mirror and admitting how its countless errors and propaganda pushing led to multiple humanitarian disasters over the last couple of decades, the oligarch-owned mainstream media insist upon a narrative that Trump the individual is at the root of our problems, as opposed to an entrenched executive branch with excessive power. This is because the mainstream media isn’t actually concerned about our cancerous, systemic metastasizing statism, it merely doesn’t want Trump in charge of it. I, on the other hand, want to dismantle that unconstitutional state entirely and transfer power to the American people where it belongs — self-government. Does anyone actually think for a second the media would be this adversarial if Hillary won?
This weekend’s article by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times represents a sort of coming out party for the billionaire-owned, corporate media. More than anything else I’ve seen, it perfectly demonstrates how completely disconnected and worthless billionaire-owned media truly is. It’s the height of absurdity that these media organizations, owned by billionaires or giant corporate conglomerates, are playing the victim in all this when they’ve been the world’s primary abuser for the entire 21st century.
You can be a staunch defender of the free press and the 1st Amendment, and at the same time point out that the billionaire-owned media has failed us. This is my position, and Trump’s election hasn’t changed that. The handful of corporations and billionaires who control the mainstream press does not = “the press.” They (and the deep state) are currently trying to convince the public that they’re the only ones standing between you and fascism. This is complete stupidity, and if we fall for it, we will get what we deserve.
The billionaire-owned media is far more complicit in creating the imperial Presidency than Donald Trump, he merely figured out a way to get control of it. Now these same charlatans are pretending to put out a fire they themselves started, and want to be celebrated for being so courageous. This is eerily similar to the scam pulled off by the Federal Reserve during and after the financial crisis.
With that introduction out of the way, let’s take a look at a few excerpts from the mind-bogglingly explicit piece in this past weekend’s New York Times, titled brazenly enough, How Can We Get Rid of Trump?
Maybe things will settle down. But what is striking about Trump is not just the dysfunction of his administration but also the — vigorously denied — allegations that Trump’s team may have cooperated with Vladimir Putin to steal the election. What’s also different is the broad concern that Trump is both: A) unfit for office, and B) dangerously unstable. One pro-American leader in a foreign country called me up the other day and skipped the preliminaries, starting with: “What the [expletive] is wrong with your country?”
So let’s investigate: Is there any way out?
Trump still has significant political support, so the obstacles are gargantuan. But the cleanest and quickest way to remove a president involves Section 4 of the 25th Amendment and has never been attempted. It provides that the cabinet can, by a simple majority vote, strip the president of his powers and immediately hand power to the vice president. The catch is that the ousted president can object, and in that case Congress must approve the ouster by a two-thirds vote in each chamber, or the president regains office.
It’s never been attempted in the history of the country, but let’s promote it anyway!
The 25th Amendment route is to be used when a president is “unable” to carry out his duties. I asked Laurence Tribe, the Harvard professor of constitutional law, whether that could mean not just physical incapacity, but also mental instability. Or, say, the taint of having secretly colluded with Russia to steal an election?
Tribe said that he believed Section 4 could be used in such a situation.
“In the unlikely event that Pence and a majority of Trump’s bizarre cabinet were to grow the spine needed to do the right thing with the process set up by that provision, we would surely be in a situation where a very large majority of the public, including a very substantial percentage of Trump’s supporters, would back if not insist upon such a move,” Tribe said. “In that circumstance, I can’t imagine Trump and his lawyers succeeding in getting the federal courts to interfere.”
As a reminder, here’s an example of the intellectual and ethical wasteland known as Laurene Tribe’s mind as of late:
Now back to Kristof.
The better known route is impeachment. But for now it’s hard to imagine a majority of the House voting to impeach, and even less conceivable that two-thirds of the Senate would vote to convict so that Trump would be removed. Moreover, impeachment and trial in the Senate would drag on for months, paralyzing America and leaving Trump in office with his finger on the nuclear trigger.
In Kristof’s mind, a major downside to pursuing impeachment is that it won’t get rid of Trump fast enough. Is this really a paper the public can remotely trust to report on the country’s problems in a fair manner?
Now here’s where it starts to get simply comical. Kristoff writes:
Some people believe that the 2018 midterm elections will be so catastrophic for the G.O.P. that everyone will be ready to get rid of him. I’m skeptical. In the Senate, the map is disastrous for Democrats in 2018: The Republicans will be defending only eight Senate seats, while Democrats will in effect be defending 25.
So while Democrats can gnash their teeth, it’ll be up to Republicans to decide whether to force Trump out. And that won’t happen unless they see him as ruining their party as well as the nation.
Perhaps instead of “gnashing their teeth,” Democrats could come up with a coherent platform that doesn’t revolve around worshiping Wall Street.
Finally, here’s how Kristoff ends his pathetic plea for overthrowing Trump.
And what does it say about a presidency that, just one month into it, we’re already discussing whether it can be ended early?
No Nicholas, “we” aren’t already discussing it. You are. You and your media peers. Whichbrings me to the most infuriating aspect of what is happening in American discourse today. What is someone like me, who dislikes Trump, but dislikes the corporate media even more, supposed to do?
This is the uncomfortable position I find myself in today, and if I’m there, millions of others are there as well. Trump understands this, which is why he continues his unrelenting attacks on elements of the corporate press. Personally, my dislike of Trump would be far more acute if not for my total disdain for the billionaire-owned media. Journalists are supposed to be adversarial toward power generally, not pick and choose which powerful figures to challenge based on political ideology. The corporate media has clearly failed the country, thus Trump is being politically savvy by picking a fight with it. As I noted last week on Twitter:
I"ve said this forever. If Trump targets elitist institutions, he will win. If he targets average people, he will lose. Not complicated.
Once again, the corporate media is proving its worthlessness by making everything about a man, as opposed to the systemic disaster that is the oligarch-controlled society we live in. The current President isn’t charismatic enough, and doesn’t espouse the right platitudes when he bombs Muslim women and children. That’s the media’s red line apparently. If it sounds like I’m against everything, there’s a reason. Our culture is deranged and corporate media deserves a lot of the blame.
Trump still has significant political support, so the obstacles are gargantuan. But the cleanest and quickest way to remove a president involves Section 4 of the 25th Amendment and has never been attempted. It provides that the cabinet can, by a simple majority vote, strip the president of his powers and immediately hand power to the vice president. The catch is that the ousted president can object, and in that case Congress must approve the ouster by a two-thirds vote in each chamber, or the president regains office.
The 25th Amendment route is to be used when a president is “unable” to carry out his duties. I asked Laurence Tribe, the Harvard professor of constitutional law, whether that could mean not just physical incapacity, but also mental instability. Or, say, the taint of having secretly colluded with Russia to steal an election?
Tribe said that he believed Section 4 could be used in such a situation.
“In the unlikely event that Pence and a majority of Trump’s bizarre cabinet were to grow the spine needed to do the right thing with the process set up by that provision, we would surely be in a situation where a very large majority of the public, including a very substantial percentage of Trump’s supporters, would back if not insist upon such a move,” Tribe said.
“In that circumstance, I can’t imagine Trump and his lawyers succeeding in getting the federal courts to interfere.”The better known route is impeachment. But for now it’s hard to imagine a majority of the House voting to impeach, and even less conceivable that two-thirds of the Senate would vote to convict so that Trump would be removed. Moreover, impeachment and trial in the Senate would drag on for months, paralyzing America and leaving Trump in office with his finger on the nuclear trigger.
My take is that unless things get much worse, removal may be a liberal fantasy. Progressives thought that Trump would never win the nomination or the election. He survived the “Access Hollywood” tape and countless crises that pundits thought would doom him, so it’s not clear why Republicans would desert him now that he’s president.
Some people believe that the 2018 midterm elections will be so catastrophic for the G.O.P. that everyone will be ready to get rid of him. I’m skeptical. In the Senate, the map is disastrous for Democrats in 2018: The Republicans will be defending only eight Senate seats, while Democrats will in effect be defending 25.
So while Democrats can gnash their teeth, it’ll be up to Republicans to decide whether to force Trump out. And that won’t happen unless they see him as ruining their party as well as the nation.
“The only incentive for Republicans to act — with or without the cabinet — is the same incentive Republicans had in 1974 to insist on Nixon’s resignation,” Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia told me. “The incentive is survival.”
Trump does have one weakness, and it’s parallel to Nixon’s. Republicans in Congress were willing to oust Nixon partly because they vastly preferred his vice president, Gerald Ford — just as congressional Republicans prefer Mike Pence today.
If I were betting, I’d say we’re stuck with Trump for four years. But as Sabato says: “Lots of things about Donald Trump’s election and early presidency have been shocking. Why should it stop now?”
And what does it say about a presidency that, just one month into it, we’re already discussing whether it can be ended early?
(ANTIMEDIA)Washington, D.C. — As protests continue to break out all around the nation over President Donald Trump’s desire to scrap Obamacare, Politicoreported Tuesday that many politicians are beginning to worry about their own personal safety — to the point where some are having private sessions to discuss the matter.
Citing sources who were in the room, Politicowrites:
“House Republicans during a closed-door meeting Tuesday discussed how to protect themselves and their staffs from protesters storming town halls and offices in opposition to repealing Obamacare.”
Some of the suggestions, the news outlet reports, include “having a physical exit strategy at town halls, or a backdoor at congressional offices to slip out of, in case demonstrations turn violent; having local police monitor town halls; replacing any glass office-door entrances with heavy doors and deadbolts; and setting up intercoms to ensure those entering congressional offices are there for appointments, not to cause chaos.”
While protests are popping up all over, the Republicans’ private session was no doubt prompted by events that happened over the weekend. While speaking before a raucous crowd in Roseville, California, Representative Tom McClintock had to be escorted from the stage and away from the event by local police officers.
McClintock, who held town hall meetings during the politically volatile days of both the Tea Party and Occupy movements, toldThe Hill he’s never seen anything like it:
“This was something very different. After an hour, the incident commander for the Roseville Police Department advised us the situation was deteriorating and felt it necessary to get me out of the venue. That’s never happened before.”
This sentiment appeared to be echoed at Tuesday’s closed-door session. Commenting on the meeting, Republican Study Committee Chairman Mark Walker of North Carolina stated:
“The message was: One, be careful for security purposes. Watch your back. And two, be receptive. Honor the First Amendment, engage, be friendly, be nice. Because it is toxic out there right now. Even some of the guys who have been around here a lot longer than I have, have never seen it to this level.”
Sources toldPolitico that the potential for violence is serious enough, in fact, that the House sergeant-at-arms has asked congressional offices to report any threat. That office is also passing out manuals on best practices to keep staffers safe.
Ironically, the backlash over the possible repeal of Obamacare that Republicans are facing now is similar to the backlash faced by Democrats years back as they were trying to force Obamacare into law.
“It’s not that you run from protesters,” Representative David Reichert of Washington said during an interview after the meeting, “but if someone presents some sort of physical threat or are espousing a verbal threat that could lead to a physical threat, if you feel that you’re in danger and your staff is in danger, call 911 and leave and go out the back door.”
House Bill Number 1203 (pdf) states that, “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a driver of a motor vehicle who unintentionally causes injury or death to an individual obstructing vehicular traffic on a public road, street, or highway, is not guilty of an offense.”
The bill is slated to be heard by the North Dakota’s House Transportation Committee on Friday.
Rep. Keith Kempenich (R-Bowman), one of the bill’s co-sponsors, told theBismarck Tribune on Wednesday, “[The roads are] not there for the protesters. They’re intentionally putting themselves in danger.”
“It’s shifting the burden of proof from the motor vehicle driver to the pedestrian,” Kempenich said.
Tara Houska, an Indigenous water protector and attorney who has resided at the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) resistance camps since August, toldNBC News that the bill was “a direct violation of our First Amendment rights.”
“It’s shocking to see legislation that allows for people to literally be killed for exercising their right to protest in a public space,” said Houska, who also serves as the national campaigns director for Honor the Earth, an Indigenous-focused environmental nonprofit.
Water protectors at times blocked roads leading to DAPL construction sites as part of the resistance to the pipeline. Blocking traffic is also an occasional tactic of various environmental and human rights movements.
Houska also criticized another bill in the legislative lineup that would require North Dakota’s attorney general to sue the federal government to recoup some of the cost of policing the months-long DAPL protests.
“These [bills] are meant to criminalize the protests with no real concern for constitutional law,” she said.
Standing Rock Sioux Chairman Dave Archambault II added, “The state claims they want to work closely with the tribe on repairing our relationship with them. Clearly that is not happening when legislation that impacts us is being drafted without consultation, consent, or even basic communication.”
Allison Renville, an activist from the Lakota nation, saw the bills as an insult to sovereign Native American communities, and expressed concern about the recent naming of Republican Sen. John Hoeven, a supporter of the DAPL pipeline and fossil fuel industry, as chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs.
“This is a really scary time for Indian Country,” Renville told NBC News. “To have such an avid supporter of the oil industry who has consistently stated his support for extractive industry projects on Native lands named to the position as chairman is akin to stepping on our sovereignty.”
(COMMONDREAMS) Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives didn’t even wait for the new congressional session to begin before betraying President-elect Donald Trump’s key promise “to drain the swamp” of political corruption.
On Monday evening, in a closed-door party meeting, GOP lawmakers in the House voted overwhelmingly (119 to 74) to neutralize and reconfigure the Office of Congressional Ethics by stripping its independent authority and making it subservient to the very members of congress it was designed to oversee.
Though Trump himself has already showed (repeatedly) how the “drain the swamp” mantra was nothing more than empty campaign rhetoric, the Republican Party’s decision to ditch independent oversight of themselves looked to many like an ominous way to kick off the New Year or the 115th Congress, whose members will be sworn in Tuesday.
Regular reminder: Same House GOP that is now gutting ethics office is also doing squat about Trump conflicts:https://t.co/rq3MfV2E9R
The vote was an approval of an amendment put forth by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), who chairs the House Judiciary Committee. If finalized, as the Huffington Postexplains, the change would:
place the OCE under the “oversight” of the lenient Ethics Committee and rename it the Office of Congressional Complaint Review. The new group would no longer be able to release information to the public, employ anyone “for a position involving communications with the public,” or directly contact law enforcement without approval. It would also be prohibited from investigating anonymous complaints.
Outrage among Democrats and outside ethics advocates was immediate.
“Republicans claim they want to ‘drain the swamp,’ but the night before the new Congress gets sworn in, the House GOP has eliminated the only independent ethics oversight of their actions,” Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California said in a statement after word of the vote broke Monday night. “Evidently, ethics are the first casualty of the new Republican Congress.”
The new rule she said would essential “destroy” critical oversight over potential conflicts of interest or abuse by lawmakers.
Norman Eisen and Richard Painter, chair and vice chair of the non-partisan Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), agreed.
“Undermining the independence of the House’s Office of Congressional Ethics would create a serious risk to members of Congress, who rely on OCE for fair, nonpartisan investigations, and to the American people, who expect their representatives to meet their legal and ethical obligations,” Eisen and Painter said in a joint statement.
Created in the aftermath of high-profile corruption scandals and ethics question during the George W. Bush era, the OCE was specifically established as an independent panel that could conduct discrete investigations of congressional members without the shadow of political influence.
But Daniel Schuman, policy director of the activist organization Demand Progress, said Monday night’s move by the House GOP was a clear step backward.
“With [this] action — taken behind closed doors and with no opportunity for public debate ,” Schuman told the HuffPo, “ the House now rolls back the clock to an era of corruption and decay. We will all be the worse for it.”
Eisen and Painter said the OCE was “one of the outstanding ethics accomplishments” of the House because it prevented ethical questions or possible infraction from being swept under the rug. “If the 115th Congress begins with rules amendments undermining OCE,” they warned, “it is setting itself up to be dogged by scandals and ethics issues for years and is returning the House to dark days when ethics violations were rampant and far too often tolerated.”
Scott Alexander has just penned what is perhaps the most brilliant, and important, post-election article I have read. It’s titled, You Are Still Crying Wolf, and here are the first few paragraphs:
[Content warning: hate crimes, Trump, racism. I have turned off comments to keep out bad people who might be attracted by this sort of thing. Avoid sharing in places where this will attract the wrong kind of attention, as per your best judgment. Please don’t interpret anything in this article to mean that Trump is not super terrible]
[Epistemic status: A reduction of a complicated issue to only 8000 words, because nobody would read it if it were longer. I think this is true but incomplete. I will try to discuss missing parts at more length later.]
I. A New York Times article from last September that went viral only recently: Crying Wolf, Then Confronting Trump. It asks whether Democrats have “cried wolf” so many times that nobody believes them anymore. And so:
When “honorable and decent men” like McCain and Romney “are reflexively dubbed racists simply for opposing Democratic policies, the result is a G.O.P. electorate that doesn’t listen to admonitions when the genuine article is in their midst”.
I have a different perspective. Back in October 2015, I wrote that the picture of Trump as “the white power candidate” and “the first openly white supremacist candidate to have a shot at the Presidency in the modern era” was overblown. I said that “the media narrative that Trump is doing some kind of special appeal-to-white-voters voodoo is unsupported by any polling data”, and predicted that:
If Trump were the Republican nominee, he could probably count on equal or greater support from minorities as Romney or McCain before him.
Trump made gains among blacks. He made big among Latinos. He made gains among Asians. The only major racial group where he didn’t get a gain of greater than 5% was white people. I want to repeat that: the group where Trump’s message resonated least over what we would predict from a generic Republican was the white population.
Nor was there some surge in white turnout. I don’t think we have official numbers yet, but by eyeballing what data we have it looks very much like whites turned out in equal or lesser numbers this year than in 2012, 2008, and so on.
[EDIT: though see here for an alternate perspective]
I stick to my thesis from October 2015. There is no evidence that Donald Trump is more racist than any past Republican candidate (or any other 70 year old white guy, for that matter). All this stuff about how he’s “the candidate of the KKK” and “the vanguard of a new white supremacist movement” is made up. It’s a catastrophic distraction from the dozens of other undeniable problems with Trump that could have convinced voters to abandon him. That it came to dominate the election cycle should be considered a horrifying indictment of our political discourse, in the same way that it would be a horrifying indictment of our political discourse if the entire Republican campaign had been based around the theory that Hillary Clinton was a secret Satanist. Yes, calling Romney a racist was crying wolf. But you are still crying wolf.
I avoided pushing this point any more since last October because I didn’t want to look like I was supporting Trump, or accidentally convince anyone else to support Trump. But since we’re past the point where that matters anymore, I want to present my case.
I realize that all of this is going to make me sound like a crazy person and put me completely at odds with every respectable thinker in the media, but luckily, being a crazy person at odds with every respectable thinker in the media has been a pretty good ticket to predictive accuracy lately, so whatever.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg from a spectacular piece of writing. It’s lengthy, but don’t let that scare you away. If you don’t have the time, make the time. Then share it with all your friends who are obsessed about how Trump signifies that white nationalism is ascendant, while at the same time failing to consider many of the more acute and realistic risks that a man like Trump represents. Here is the link, once again: You Are Still Crying Wolf.
Observing Trump primarily through the largely media/Democratic Party lens of extreme bigotry is not only wrong, it is very dangerous. Not because I’m a Trump supporter (I didn’t support Trump or Clinton), but because the public resistance to him will then focus its energy around this one-dimensional notion that the main battle is to fight back against the white supremacist who has taken over the White House. This “crying wolf” takes everybody’s eye off the ball, divides the citizenry based on what is largely a false narrative, and it subdues and confuses the needed resistance to Trump on other, but less emotionally powerful, matters of public importance. It’s sort of like how the media and politicians successfully fear-mongered the public into sacrificing their civil liberties after 9/11, despite the fact that being killed by a terrorist is extraordinarily unlikely.
As I’ve been saying for years, if we really want to make progress, we need to find those issues that unite us as Americans, and fight together to achieve them. If we allow ourselves to be divided and conquered on the basis of identity politics, or anything else, we are truly doomed.
Finally, let’s take a break from saying “Trump is literally Hitler” and recognize the following.
But I thought Trump"s win proved Americans are closet white nationalists. https://t.co/8mshUmBjaP
Shepard Ambellas
