October 11-13, 2017: Trump Threatens to Revoke First Amendment

 

10/11/17: Did the President of the United States just say what we think he said? Did he just casually threaten to undermine the First Amendment? 

He did.  

 

Networks that criticize Trump may have licenses revoked. 

If you missed it Wednesday, he carried his assault on constitutional norms to a new low. And previous lows have been low indeed. Here’s his menacing tweet, aimed at NBC: “Network news has become so partisan, distorted and fake that licenses must be challenged and, if appropriate, revoked. Not fair to public!”

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10/12/17: When the sun rises over the Rose Garden on Thursday, the president is up tweeting again. At 5:04 a.m.: “Clips from tax speech and @seanhannity on @foxandfriends now. Have a great day!” 

The fool loves Fox News. 

Search his Twitter feed. You’ll see. Twice recently he suggested everyone watch Jesse Watters on Fox. Four times he touted a show called The Five. Sixteen times since swearing to uphold the Constitution and 41 times as candidate he advocated for Hannity’s show. Bill O’Reilly was a favorite during the campaign (87 tweets). But O’Reilly has received only six mentions since Trump assumed office. This has nothing to do with Trump being “more presidential.” It has everything to do with the fact a free press brought the serial sex abuser O’Reilly crashing down. 

(Trump’s entire Twitter feed is taken down in the wake of the 2020 election, when he keeps lying and insisting that he won.)

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10/13/17: Remember watching the president tout his great tax plan? Remember how he promised his plan would not benefit the rich? 

It’s Friday the 13^th, and Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin lets slip the dogs of truth. A key element of the plan is elimination of the estate tax. “Obviously,” Mnuchin tells an audience at the Institute for International Finance, this, “I will concede, disproportionately helps rich people.” 

Mnuchin, who $tands to benefit greatly, him$elf, explain$, it’$ only “fair” to end the “death tax.” $ome really rich people pay half their income$ in taxe$ during their live$. Why $hould they have to pay another tax when they die? 

Might we point out again ($ee: 9/26/17) how much Trump him$elf will $ave if the e$tate tax i$ wiped from the book$? 

At minimum: $554 million. 

At be$t: $1.9 billion.

 

Al$o $et to make a killing if the “death tax” i$ repealed: mega-donor$ to the Trump campaign (Rupert Murdoch, Robert Mercer, Charle$ and David Koch, $heldon Adel$on and many more). 

Here’s an idea. If the superrich really hate paying high taxes maybe they could start paying employees more. You know, spread the wealth around to the workers who helped them pile it up. 

 

POSTSCRIPT: Allow me to offer this patriotic suggestion, regarding taxation. Let U.S. multinationals bring back to our shores the $2.6 trillion they’ve hidden overseas. Pay the taxes owed, like regular plumbers, truck drivers and teachers. Pay like the man who owns the local lawn care service pays – like the woman who runs the corner bar pays – like the baker who doesn’t want to bake a cake for gays pays.  

Congress can use the windfall to double the death benefit for families of serviceman and women killed in combat. That includes DACA enlistees (see: 9/5/17), Muslim American soldiers and transgender troops.

November 28, 2017: Big Tax Cuts Coming for Koch Brothers, Walton Siblings, and Trump Family Members

 

11/28/17:  The Trump tax reform plan is being fast-forwarded through Congress. But don’t worry. Everyone will love the final result. The Koch brothers, Charles and David, have donated $200 million to the GOP during the last two presidential elections. Now they’ll be repaid when Congress eliminates the estate tax. 

The three Walton siblings, Jim (worth $38.4 billion) Robson ($38.3 billion) and Alice (the near-do-well, with $38.2 billion) will no longer have to pinch pennies when they head to Olive Garden for the “Senior Special.” 

Secretary of Commerce Ross can finally make up for the losses he suffered selling his New York City apartment for $16.5 million and can move out of the dilapidated building where apartments went for as low as $2 million. Ross might be able to use his tax cut savings and repair the broken light over the front door of his 16,247-square-foot Palm Beach cottage, for which he paid $13.3 million in 2008. 

And he can finally put a fresh coat of paint on his digs in D.C., which cost another $12 million. 

Luckily, the fiscal suffering of the Trump clan will also be ended. Ivanka will enjoy a huge tax cut and be able to spend $3,000 with ease to buy giant clamshells to decorate her Thanksgiving table. The president will get a huge cut and he can buy Melania another $51,500 designer jacket to wear about town. Don Jr. will see his tax bill go down, which will leave him extra cash to spend on lawyers to protect himself from the Robert Mueller probe.

 

(BLOGGER’S NOTE: As we will learn later, these tax cuts let President Trump with more money to pay off porn stars.)

The jacket worth $51,500.

April 8, 2018: EPA Protects the Koch Brothers, Trump Wants to Pull Out of Syria

 

4/8/18: On CNN (Donald J. Trump’s least favorite cable news channel), Republican Senator Susan Collins offers a vote of “no confidence” for embattled Swamp Creature Scott Pruitt. 

“On policy grounds alone, I think Scott Pruitt is the wrong person to head the EPA,” Collins tells Jake Tapper (Trump’s least favorite cable news host). 

Of course, you know who loves what Pruitt is doing? Charles and David Koch! And, what do the Koch brothers like to do – besides donate hundreds of millions to Republican politicians? 

They like to run a company that refines petroleum and manufactures all kinds of wonderful chemicals. 

As Pruitt and the Trump administration see it, you could give a bucket of any chemical the Koch brothers manufacture to children to drink. And it wouldn’t harm them a bit, other than the fact they might start to glow in the dark. And that’s why we now have an E.P.A. To help the Koch brothers.

 

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Fourteen months later: Still Obama’s fault. 

THE CRY-BABY-IN-CHIEF takes a second hit from a Republican senator Sunday morning, this time from John McCain. 

According to the senator, the president’s recent talk of withdrawing U.S. troops from Syria has “emboldened” Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and led him to order a chemical weapons attack Saturday. 

Here’s how McCain put it: 

President Trump last week signaled to the world that the United States would prematurely withdraw from Syria. Bashar Assad and his Russian and Iranian backers have heard him, and emboldened by American inaction, Assad has reportedly launched another chemical attack against innocent men, women and children, this time in Douma.

 

Trump wasn’t about to stand for such criticism and promptly turned to Twitter. Whose fault was this attack? 

Once again, the buck stopped not on his desk but conveniently, more than fourteen months in the past. “If President Obama had crossed his stated Red Line In The Sand,” Trump whined, “the Syrian disaster would have ended long ago! Animal Assad would have been history!”  

Trump has now had fourteen months to get rid of Animal Assad. 

He can’t do it either.

In Trumpistan, if it goes bad, Obama did it.

April 20-21, 2018: Trump Says He Has Tapes - and the Koch Brothers Go Shopping for Lawmakers

 4/20/18: Besides bingeing on Fox News and wondering if Melania will dump his fat ass for lying about porn stars and Playboy Bunnies, and pregnant house cleaners, what is the president up to today? He’s fuming every time he hears the name “James Comey.” He rages every time he thinks about Comey’s memos, which Comey says outline conversations he and Trump had about the Russia investigation. 

For months, Trump insisted those memos didn’t exist. He insists Comey never took notes while they were together! 

Comey just made them up later to cover his F.B.I. butt. 

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Trump hints he has tapes. Comey hopes so.

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In fact, at one point, Trump went for a kind of lying-sack-of-presidential-poop bluff. He could prove Comey was lying: 

 

 

Several weeks passed. Trump laid low. Apparently, he was laying in wait to catch Comey in a “perjury trap” of his own. (See: 1/26/18.) 

Okay. No. Trump finally admitted, if there were tapes….um…he didn’t happen to have them.

 

 

Now the Comey memos have been released. They don’t directly implicate the president in any collusion with Russians. 

You know what that proves! According to the White House, suddenly the Comey memos are real and prove Trump is innocent.  

You can’t make this up.

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4/21/18: Speaker Paul Ryan decides to do his part in draining the swamp by firing House chaplain Father Patrick Conroy. This is the first time in history a chaplain has been fired before completing his term.

 

How much does it cost to buy the Speaker of the House?

 

A billion-dollar tax cut. Annually. 

You are probably thinking: Another sex abuse scandal! Or: Conroy must have been flying all over Kingdom Come, like Scott Pruitt! (See: 4/15/18.) Not at all. Ryan took umbrage when Father Conroy offered up this prayer during House debate on the huge Republican tax cut bill: 

As legislation on taxes continues to be debated this week and next, may all members be mindful that the institutions and structures of our great nation guarantee the opportunities that have allowed some to achieve great success, while others continue to struggle. May their efforts these days guarantee that there are not winners and losers under new tax laws, but benefits balanced and shared by all Americans.

 

At this point you realize Ryan doesn’t care enough to pretend he cares about the typical American. He passed a giant tax cut with hundreds of billions going to the wealthy few. He’s going to retire before he can slash Social Security, which was always his blue-eyed dream. But you wonder if he wouldn’t have fired Jesus, had he been House chaplain, for saying: “When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” 

Americans for Tax Fairness estimates that under the Ryan/Trump tax plan each of the Koch brothers, Charles and David, will see their income taxes slashed – annually – by at least $1 billion. This explains why they donated $500,000 to “Team Ryan” in January. The Koch brothers don’t buy the message of Jesus. 

They buy lawmakers.

Scott Pruitt, a Political Parrot, Now Heads the E.P.A.

Sometimes you just know you can’t trust a person. O. J. Simpson and Bernie Madoff come quickly to mind. For three decades major cigarette manufacturers insisted, “Hey, don’t worry. Smoke our products! You’ll never get cancer, not in a million years! And your heart will be fine!”

They were lying, of course, and millions died (and still do) from smoking every year.

More recently, Volkswagen rigged computer software in diesel engines to fake out emissions testing equipment. So what if increased pollution meant more kids developed asthma! Takata marketed airbags they knew tended to explode and spray deadly shrapnel. At least eleven Americans were killed and dozens injured. Major pharmaceutical companies have been sued and defeated in court for all kinds of sleazy practices and in the ten biggest cases forced to pay $13 billion in fines. And don’t forget Donald J. Trump. Our President once claimed he handpicked every instructor who taught at Trump University. When students complained about lousy courses and the high tuition fees, Trump was deposed as and couldn’t name a single instructor at the school. Shown a mix of pictures of instructors and non-instructors, he couldn’t pick anyone out of the “lineup,” except maybe Oscar the Grouch. As a candidate, he promised he’d fight the charges to the death once the election was over. Then he settled for $25 million in damages. Sometimes, you just know in your heart, “These people are lying.”

If you wonder what this has to do with Scott Pruitt and the EPA, keep this in mind. Pruitt has long been a useful stooge of the Big Energy companies. As Attorney General of Oklahoma he insisted for years that fracking had nothing to do with a rise in earthquakes in that state. (See the perfectly titled story in The Hill: “Scott Pruitt Heading the EPA like Putting Custer in Charge of Indian Affairs.”) The Big Energy companies—which “invested” hundreds of thousands in his campaigns—loved Pruitt. They loved him so much they sent draft letters to his office. Pruitt loved those hundreds of thousands in campaign donations so much he took those draft letters, did a little “cut and paste,” and sent those same letters on State of Oklahoma letterhead to EPA officials in Washington, D.C., to members of Congress and President Obama. Excessive federal regulation was harming the good citizens of Oklahoma, Pruitt said—or rather, Big Energy said, and Pruitt repeated, word for word, not unlike a political parrot.

Only this parrot was lying.

Given a choice to believe a letter written by Big Energy companies and transferred to State of Oklahoma letterhead to disguise its provenance, or to listen to reasonable voices and scientists, call me a “sucker.” I’m willing to believe a report in National Geographic, based on a few actual facts: “In parts of Oklahoma, this wastewater injection [from fracking] has increased five to tenfold. At the same time, earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 and greater spiked from fewer than 100 between 1970 and 2009 to almost 600 in 2014, and a whopping 907 in 2015.”

I had to read that twice to catch the import. From 1970 to 2009 roughly 15 minor quakes occurred per year, but still strong enough to crack buildings and worse. After fracking there were 907 quakes in one year.

But, hey, don’t worry! Have a cigarette! It will calm your nerves.

Meanwhile, a recent story in The New York Times, citing scientists doing actual science, makes clear how dangerous Pruitt is. President Trump may be vowing to keep us safe from terrorists, and Mexican rapists, and reporters who want to ferret out the truth. But where climate change is involved—and all of us are going to pay a price, and our children a larger price—and our grandchildren are going to rue the day we did so little—Pruitt is a disaster.

In a stunning pronouncement during a recent interview with CNBC, Pruitt denied CO2 was a major cause of global warming/climate change, basically standing accepted science on its noggin’.  “I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there’s tremendous disagreement about the impact, so, no, I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see.”

He’s right about one aspect. There is disagreement. Scientists agree CO2 is the main problem. The Big Energy companies, and people like the Koch brothers, who stand to make more money, want to bamboozle the public with false claims,. at least that part of the public too lazy to study actual science.

Just for fun, consider the idea that scientists might be interested in establishing, um, well, scientific facts.

The EPA has long insisted (although this may change once Pruitt and the deniers take charge): “Carbon dioxide is the primary greenhouse gas that is contributing to recent climate change.”

The International Panel on Climate Change, representing 2,000 scientists from round the globe, reports that it is “extremely likely” that more than half of human-caused climate change since 1951 is a result of CO2 buildup in the atmosphere.

Who agrees?

Those “lying” scientists at NASA! You can check out their explanation yourself—how the earth is a giant greenhouse—how increased CO2 in the atmosphere traps heat and warms the planet. NASA’s assessment is blunt: “Humans have increased atmospheric CO2 concentration by more than a third since the Industrial Revolution began. This is the most important long-lived ‘forcing’ of climate change.”

And yet, Pruitt doesn’t get it. Big Energy tells him what to say and he repeats it: “Squawk! Nothing to worry about! Squawk!”

What does the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration think? More “lying” scientists!! The two degree increase in the earth’s temperature since the end of 19th century represents “a change driven largely by increased carbon dioxide and other human-made emissions into the atmosphere.”

Who else thinks our children and grandchildren will be screwed? The “lying” scientists at the World Meteorological Organisation! The WMO reports that 2016 was the hottest year on record—breaking the record set in 2015—which broke a record set way back in 2014. The damage being done is also clear. According to WMO executive director Petteri Taalas, “We have also broken sea ice minimum records in the Arctic and Antarctic. Greenland glacier melt—one of the contributors to sea level rise—started early and fast. Arctic sea ice was the lowest on record both at the start of the melt season in March and at the height of the normal refreezing period in October and November.”

In the end, it’s not at all hard to grasp this concept. Those who stand to make money by following a given path, however illegal or unethical, will often do their best to follow that path. Big Energy wants to keep piling up the cash. Charles Koch is worth an estimated $48.1 billion, according to Forbes magazine. Clearly, he’s been frittering away his money because brother David is worth $48.6 billion.

Together, they are happy to bankroll as many climate deniers as they can find under various pseudo-scientific rocks.

Unfortunately, future generations are going to pay in a far different way for inaction today.

Scott Pruitt, President Trump’s choice to head the EPA will be remembered, along with his delusional Commander-in-Chief, by future scientists and historians for the role they played in making the climate change situation far worse.

“Squawk.”

Our children and grandchildren are going to pay in the future for inaction today.