Trump 24: Fiddling, er, Tweeting While Rome Burns

[apple1]

Just now, 47of74 said:

 

 

I can’t either. He’s such a fucking idiot and his voice is so goddamn grating.

 

I can't stand to watch his facial expressions, nor the way he uses his hands (and certainly not look at his hair (or whatever that mess is).

[Destiny]

I ended up changing it to something else. I'll read a transcript later.

[Rachel333]

I saw this image today. Trump supporters are so deluded...

Spoiler

 

[GreyhoundFan]

@Rachel333 -- that was horrifying. Thanks for putting it under a spoiler. What it should really be is him urinating on the Statue of Liberty, since that's what he basically does every day.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump’s new tax plan shows how unserious Republicans are about governing"

Spoiler

“I will give you everything,” Donald Trump promised as a presidential candidate, and as president, not only has he continued to make that promise, but also the entire Republican Party has followed suit. Of course, they can’t actually deliver everything.

But this has become their guiding principle: that governing does not actually require making difficult choices, or when it does, one should just pretend that it doesn’t.

That’s one key message from the nine-page document that the Trump administration released today outlining the tax cuts it wants Congress to pass. The message in the plan itself and in the arguments they are using to justify it is that there are no choices to be made. We can have it all — cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy, which will shower great jobs on the rabble, which will not only not increase the deficit, it will cut it because so much new revenue will pour in.

If all that were actually true, it certainly would be terrific. But it isn’t.

We saw this same scenario play out on health care. The various Republican plans involved brutal cuts to Medicaid and insurance subsidies, the consequence of which would be that tens of millions would lose coverage, not to mention the removal of many of the Affordable Care Act’s vital consumer protections. But when they were questioned about these consequences, they’d say, “No no! Nobody will lose coverage! Everything will be cheaper and better! And we’ll protect people with preexisting conditions!” The supposedly serious people in the party made essentially the same argument that Trump did when he promised, “We’re going to have insurance for everybody.”

But it wasn’t true. And neither is it true that a bunch of tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy will create spectacular economic growth — Trump claimed yesterday that his plan will push growth to 6 percent, which no sane person thinks will happen — and it’ll all pay for itself because revenues will begin pouring in.

To be fair, the GOP plan isn’t solely tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy; there are some provisions in there aimed at the middle class. But the bulk of the goodies go to the high end. Here are some of the highlights of their proposal:

• Cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent.
• Collapse the current seven income tax brackets to three.
• Lower the top income tax rate from 39.6 percent to 35 percent.
• Eliminate the inheritance tax.
• Eliminate the alternative minimum tax, which is meant to ensure that rich people don’t get away with paying no taxes.
• Create a 25 percent tax rate for “pass-through” companies, many of which are things such as law firms, that give their profits directly to individuals. Another notable pass-through company is the Trump Organization.
• Double the standard deduction (although this is done in ways that could mean the benefit to those at the low end would be tiny).
• Eliminate some unspecified deductions, but keep the mortgage interest deduction and charitable giving deduction that are so vital to wealthy taxpayers.

Politically speaking, it’s a formula that has worked before: offer ordinary people a little something to diffuse opposition, while you give spectacular benefits to the wealthy. If you learned that you were going to get a $500 tax cut, you might say, “Hey, sounds great,” even if the CEO of the company you work for is going to get a $1 million tax cut. At the very least, you’d be less inclined to take to the streets to protest the inequity.

When they’re confronted with the fact that this tax cut would exacerbate inequality and balloon the deficit they used to pretend to care about when a Democrat was in the White House, Republicans protest that in fact, it will work out great for everyone. There are no hard choices to be made, because the cuts at the top will trickle down to the masses and pay for themselves with all the increased revenue they’ll generate.

No serious economist believes this to be true; in fact, the truth is just the opposite. Tax cuts don’t pay for themselves, and corporate tax cuts in particular flow overwhelmingly to those at the top. Corporations don’t react to a cut in their taxes by taking all the extra profits and hiring new people or boosting the wages of their lowest-paid employees. The money mostly goes to things such as bonuses for executives, stock buybacks and dividends, which are paid to wealthy shareholders.

The truth is that Republicans are in fact making choices with this tax plan, just as they made choices on health care. Those choices mean that they’ll accept enormous deficits and worsening inequality if that’s the price of giving the wealthy a big, beautiful tax cut. Needless to say, that’s not exactly a winning message. So they simply come up with creative ways of pretending that these trade-offs don’t exist at all. Which once again proves that they just don’t take the task of governing seriously.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Gee, what a surprise (NOT): "Trump Tax Plan Benefits Wealthy, Including Trump"

Spoiler

WASHINGTON — The tax plan that the Trump administration outlined on Wednesday is a potentially huge windfall for the wealthiest Americans. It would not directly benefit the bottom third of the population. As for the middle class, the benefits appear to be modest.

The administration and its congressional allies are proposing to sharply reduce taxation of business income, primarily benefiting the small share of the population that owns the vast majority of corporate equity. President Trump said on Wednesday that the cuts would increase investment and spur growth, creating broader prosperity. But experts say the upside is limited, not least because the economy is already expanding.

The plan also would benefit Mr. Trump and other affluent Americans by eliminating the estate tax, which affects just a few thousand uber-wealthy families each year, and the alternative minimum tax, a safety net designed to prevent tax avoidance.

The precise impact on Mr. Trump cannot be ascertained because the president refuses to release his tax returns, but the few snippets of returns that have become public show one thing clearly: the alternative minimum tax has been unkind to Mr. Trump. In 2005, it forced him to pay $31 million in additional taxes.

Mr. Trump also has pledged repeatedly that the plan would reduce the taxes paid by middle-class families, but he has not provided enough details to evaluate that claim. While some households likely would get tax cuts, others could end up paying more.

The plan would not benefit lower-income households that do not pay federal income taxes. The president is not proposing measures like a reduction in payroll taxes, which are paid by a much larger share of workers, nor an increase in the earned-income tax credit, which would expand wage support for the working poor.

Indeed, to call the plan “tax reform” seems like a stretch — Mr. Trump himself told conservative and evangelical leaders on Monday that it was more apt to refer to his plan as “tax cuts.” Mr. Trump’s proposal echoes the large tax cuts that President Reagan, in 1981, and President George W. Bush, in 2001, passed in the first year of their terms, not the 1986 overhaul of the tax code that he often cites. Like his Republican predecessors, Mr. Trump says cutting taxes will increase economic growth.

“It’s time to take care of our people, to rebuild our nation and to fight for our great American workers,” Mr. Trump told a crowd in Indianapolis, Indiana.

But the moment is very different. Mr. Reagan and Mr. Bush cut taxes during recessions. Mr. Trump is proposing to cut taxes during one of the longest economic expansions in American history. It is not clear that the economy can grow much faster; the Federal Reserve has warned that it will seek to offset any stimulus by raising interest rates.

At the time of the earlier cuts, the federal debt also was considerably smaller. The public portion of the debt equaled 24 percent of the gross domestic product in 1981, and 31 percent in 2001. In June, the debt equaled 75 percent of economic output.

The Trump administration insists that its tax cut will catalyze such an economic boom that money will flow into the federal coffers and the debt will not rise. The Reagan and Bush administrations made similar claims. The debt soared in both instances.

Another issue: Both Mr. Bush and Mr. Reagan proposed to cut taxes when federal revenues had climbed unusually high as a share of the national economy.

Mr. Trump wants to cut taxes while revenues are close to an average level.

Since 1981, federal revenue has averaged 17.1 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, while federal spending has averaged 20.3 percent.

Last year’s numbers were close to the long-term trend: Federal revenue was 17.5 percent of gross domestic product; spending was 20.7 percent.

Martin Feldstein, a Harvard University economics professor and a longtime adviser to Republican presidents, said the moment was not perfect, but that Mr. Trump should nevertheless press ahead because the changes would be valuable.

“The debt is moving in the wrong direction,” Mr. Feldstein said. “But the tax reform is moving in the right direction.”

Proponents of the plan assert that the largest benefits are indirect. In particular, they argue that cutting corporate taxes will unleash economic growth.

Mr. Trump’s plan is more focused on business tax cuts than the Reagan and Bush plans, and economists agree that this makes economic gains more likely.

The key elements are large reductions in the tax rates for business income: To 20 percent for corporations, and to 25 percent for “pass-through” businesses, a broad category that includes everything from mom-and-pop neighborhood shops to giant investment partnerships, law firms — and real estate developers.

The plan also lets businesses immediately deduct the full cost of new investments.

“You’re going to get a boost in investment,” said William Gale, co-director of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. “It’s hard to argue that there won’t be a positive effect.”

But Mr. Gale added that there are reasons to think it would be modest.

The most important is that the economy already is growing at a faster pace than the Fed considers sustainable. “Economy roaring,” Mr. Trump tweeted on Wednesday.

Also, interest rates are low and nonfinancial companies are sitting on $1.84 trillion that they don’t want to spend. “It’s not lack of funds that’s stopping companies from investing,” Mr. Gale said.

And the stimulus would come at the cost of increased federal borrowing. Interest rates might not rise if foreigners provide the necessary money, as happened in the 1980s and the 2000s, but that means some of the benefits also end up abroad.

It’s a venerable principle that lower tax rates encourage corporate investment. But a study of a 2003 cut in the tax rate on corporate dividends found no discernible impact on investment. The finding would not have surprised Bush’s Treasury secretary at the time, Paul O’Neill, who was fired for opposing the plan. “You find somebody who says, ‘I do more R & D because I get a tax credit for it,’ you’ll find a fool,” the former Alcoa chairman said at the time.

Mr. Trump’s plan also continues a long-term march away from progressive taxation. The federal income tax is the centerpiece of a longstanding bipartisan consensus that wealthy Americans should pay an outsized share of the cost of government.

But successive rounds of tax cuts have eroded that premise, according to research by the economists Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics and Emmanuel Saez of the University of California at Berkeley. In 1980, the wealthiest Americans paid 59 percent of their income in taxes while the middle 20 percent of Americans paid 24.5 percent. After the Bush tax cuts, the wealthiest Americans paid 34.7 percent of their income in taxes, while Americans in the middle income brackets paid 16.1 percent.

Under President Barack Obama, Congress increased taxation of upper-income households. Mr. Trump is seeking to resume the long-term trend toward flattening the curve. Upper-income households would get large tax cuts; lower-income households would get none.

The exact impact on the middle class is not yet clear. The outline released Wednesday proposes new tax brackets but does not specify income thresholds. It also proposes to replace the current tax deduction for each dependent with a child tax credit — but the administration did not propose a dollar amount for that new credit.

The administration said Wednesday that it was committed “to ensure that the reformed tax code is at least as progressive as the existing tax code.” That language, however, applies only personal income taxes. The proposed reduction of business taxes and elimination of the estate tax both would disproportionately benefit wealthy Americans.

“I don’t think there’s any way to justify this as a progressive proposal,” said Lily Batchelder, a law professor at New York University who served as deputy director of Mr. Obama’s National Economic Council. “In broad brush strokes, they’re doing nothing for the bottom 35 percent, they’re doing very little and possibly raising taxes on the middle class and they’ve specified tax cuts for the wealthy.”

Of course he wants to get rid of the AMT and estate tax.

[JMarie]

3 hours ago, Rachel333 said:

I saw this image today. Trump supporters are so deluded...

  Hide contents

 

Spoiler

He's not trying to save the Statue of Liberty.  He's trying to push her down.

 

[onekidanddone]

When Trump says "Believe me"...that is what they call a tell.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Alabama defeat leaves Trump weakened, isolated amid mounting challenges"

Spoiler

As he headed to Huntsville, Ala., in a last-ditch effort to lift the floundering campaign of Sen. Luther Strange, President Trump was fuming — feeling dragged along by GOP senators who had pleaded with him to go and increasingly unenthusiastic about Strange, whom he described to aides as loyal but “low energy.”

His agitation only worsened on the flight back last Friday. Trump bemoaned the headlines he expected to see once Strange was defeated — that he had stumbled and lost his grip on “my people,” as he calls his core voters. He also lamented the rally crowd’s tepid response to the 6-foot-9 incumbent he liked to call “Big Luther.”

“Trump was never fully behind Strange to begin with,” former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele said Wednesday after Strange was trounced in Tuesday’s GOP primary in Alabama. “But the party coaxed and cajoled him to get on the Strange train, and he did.”

For Trump, the trip to Alabama marked the dispiriting start to one of the lowest and perhaps most damaging stretches of his already troubled presidency, leaving him further weakened and isolated with few ways out of the thicket of challenges he faces, according to a half dozen people close to him interviewed on Wednesday.

His political vitality within his party — counted upon by Republicans who fear primary challenges in next year’s midterm elections — suddenly stands in question, as neither his vocal campaigning nor millions of dollars from the Republican establishment could save Strange from defeat by insurgent challenger Roy Moore.

Trump’s legislative agenda lies in tatters, as Senate Republicans failed again this week to rally around legislation that would gut former president Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act. He is also increasingly under siege by members of both parties for his administration’s response to Hurricane Maria, which has left Puerto Rico devastated and begging for help from Washington.

By Wednesday, the downtrodden president tried to start anew by unveiling a tax plan at an event in Indiana — a proposal immediately met with withering attacks from the left as a deficit-busting giveaway to the rich and from the right as not aggressive enough in slashing tax rates. The Drudge Report, influential among conservatives, dubbed it “more betrayal.”

Trump also waded back into the health-care debate, falsely stating that the Republican legislation was held up by a hospitalized senator.

“We have the votes for health care. We have one senator that’s in the hospital. He can’t vote because he’s in the hospital,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday — an apparent reference to Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), who turns 80 in December and has dealt with various health problems.

Cochran responded with a corrective tweet: “Thanks for the well-wishes. I’m not hospitalized, but am recuperating at home in Mississippi and look forward to returning to work soon.”

Trump’s loose, confident talk extended elsewhere on Wednesday. In Indiana, the president was full of bravado as he made his tax pitch — and if there was lingering frustration with Strange, he did not show it.

“These tax cuts are significant,” Trump said at the state fairgrounds. “There’s never been tax cuts like what we’re talking about.”

But Trump’s critics did not buy the president’s assurance and said the tax speech could not paper over his problems.

“In Alabama and with so many things, Trump has helped to light a fire he can’t control, and there’s no sign he knows how to get out of this situation,” said Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center who worked in George W. Bush’s White House. “It’s going to cause him to lash out more rather than less as he starts to feel like the walls are closing in.”

Several of Trump’s longtime friends and associates said he is doing what he always does in times of trouble: attempt to overwhelm with liveliness. But they acknowledged that Trump may not be enjoying the experience.

“I’m told he’s unhappy,” said veteran Republican consultant Roger Stone. “He’s surrounded by people who don’t understand politics and don’t understand why he won the presidency. Instead of sending a message in Alabama to get behind his policies, they sadly lost the opportunity.”

Said former Trump campaign aide Sam Nunberg, “The president will think about what happened in Alabama and remember everybody who told him to go all in. If you sent him polls from the [U.S.] Chamber of Commerce or the Senate Leadership Fund, the next polls you send will go in his trash can.”

Together, those groups, along with other mainstream GOP organizations, spent more than $10 million to boost Strange.

Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, stewed over their own fates, anxious that Moore, a former state Supreme Court judge, would become a national burden for the party because of the long list of incendiary comments he has made on race, religion and sexuality.

Hushed talk of retirements dominated conversations on Capitol Hill, one day after Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) announced that he would not seek reelection in 2018, with Republican lawmakers wondering whether they could survive a GOP political storm that only seems to be growing.

Former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who backed Moore and introduced him at his victory party, encouraged conservative outsiders in Mississippi and other states to move closer to launching Senate bids, one person close to him said.

“There’s a big lesson here: Stick to the program,” Bannon said Wednesday on Breitbart News’s Sirius XM radio show. “There’s a lesson, stick to the program, your base will be there, and you’ll grow your base.”

Steele, however, said Strange’s defeat did not mean Trump had lost his political sway with Republican base voters.

“Voters in Alabama knew the whole endorsement for Strange was a wink and a nod. They got that Moore was a Trump guy,” Steele said. “So did he endorse the candidate who lost? Yes. But the reality is more nuanced than ‘Trump lost in Alabama.’ He lost, but his voters know why and still love him.”

In the West Wing, there was relative calm as officials plowed forward, hoping to leave behind the dramas of Alabama and Trump’s campaign against NFL players protesting police brutality during the national anthem. They agreed with Steele that while the GOP was fractured, Trump’s coalition remained.

“He knew what was coming in Alabama on Friday,” said one person close to Trump. “He knew how McConnell had become an issue there — and he said as much over dinner on Monday.” That evening, Trump had met with a group of prominent conservative leaders at the White House.

The person added, “What he wants to do is get back to taxes, make sure the Senate gets that done as soon as possible.”

Aides said that Trump knew that those who privately supported his endorsement of Strange, such as White House chief of staff John F. Kelly, were doing so because Trump at first was eager to do so and saw a chance to patch up relationships in Congress.

Trump was defensive in his remarks about the race to reporters on Wednesday, a few hours after he deleted a series of pro-Strange tweets. He also characterized Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) as a drag on Strange.

“I have to say, Luther came a long way from the time I endorsed him, and he ran a good race, but Roy ran a really great race,” Trump said, adding that Moore’s campaign used McConnell as a weapon against Strange.

The atmosphere of uncertainty and recriminations following the Alabama race prompted Republicans, even those close to Trump, to feel urgency to pass something — anything — that could somehow stabilize the party.

“If there was ever a time when Republicans feel pressure to perform, it’s now,” said Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus. “If big things don’t get done by Thanksgiving, there really won’t be enough spin to say Republicans here have done anything but fail.”

I guess he'll be staging another pep rally soon to boost his ego.

[47of74]

I see fuck face has finally waived the Jones Act...

Quote

Washington (CNN)The White House has authorized a waiver to loosen shipping rules regarding Puerto Rico that island officials say would be a significant help for recovery efforts from Hurricane Maria.

"At @ricardorossello request, @POTUS has authorized the Jones Act be waived for Puerto Rico. It will go into effect immediately," White House press secretary Sarah Sanders tweeted Thursday morning.

Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke said the waiver will be in effect for 10 days and will cover all products being shipped to Puerto Rico, according to a release from the department. 

The waiver will guarantee the needed equipment to repair infrastructure damaged by the storm and restore emergency services, Duke said in a news release. 

Sure as fuck took him long enough.

Now you know for a goddamn fact if this had happened during President Obama's time in office and he waited this long the same reich wingers doing all sorts of fucking pearl clutching about the NFL now would have been all bent out of shape about Puerto Rico. 

[candygirl200413]

So while he waived it apparently there's still struggling with transportation due to a lack of infrastructure.

[GrumpyGran]

16 hours ago, JMarie said:

  Reveal hidden contents

He's not trying to save the Statue of Liberty.  He's trying to push her down.

 

He wore one of Melania's outfits so he wouldn't be recognized.

All joking aside, I think it's becoming more evident every day that he is slipping. He's never been presidential but the last month has overwhelmed him. He has lost battles, had to appear to care about people on several occasions and has now reached his 'caring' capacity. And he has gone ballistic on twitter, even for him. He rambles even more than usual, doesn't bother with fact-checking at all, and doesn't seem to care that people are constantly correcting him. And he can't say even a single sentence without praising himself. Sometimes he loses the train of thought before he finishes praising himself. Honestly, if you encountered this man in the mall, after a brief conversation with him, you would call 911 so they could take him to the hospital for evaluation.

[47of74]

1 hour ago, GrumpyGran said:

Honestly, if you encountered this man in the mall, after a brief conversation with him, you would call 911 so they could take him to the hospital for evaluation.

Or if his children were with him flash them a dirty why the fornicate aren't you working to get your father the medical attention he so obviously needs look.

2 hours ago, candygirl200413 said:

So while he waived it apparently there's still struggling with transportation due to a lack of infrastructure.

Most of it's sitting in the port still

Quote

A mountain of food, water and other vital supplies has arrived in Puerto Rico's main Port of San Juan. 

But a shortage of truckers and the island's devastated infrastructure are making it tough to move aid to where it's needed most, officials say.

At least 10,000 containers of supplies -- including food, water and medicine -- were sitting Thursday at the San Juan port, said Jose Ayala, the Crowley shipping company's vice president in Puerto Rico.

 

[Cartmann99]

On 9/27/2017 at 11:40 AM, Howl said:

  Every time TT does something awful (which is multiple times a day every. damn. day) reward yourself with something fun and hopefully low calorie.  Headed off to Trader Joe's to get the cashew carrot dip, some gluten-free bread and root vegetables.  Cheers! 

 Before I'm dead, I want to experience living within an hour's drive of a Trader Joe's and a Costco. *pouts*

 

[GreyhoundFan]

1 hour ago, Cartmann99 said:

 Before I'm dead, I want to experience living within an hour's drive of a Trader Joe's and a Costco. *pouts*

You should move here! There is a Trader Joes about five minutes from my house. Costco is about 20 min.

"Hey, deplorables: Trump and his advisers are laughing in your faces"

Spoiler

The term “deplorables” survives today in our political lexicon as a kind of sarcastic badge of honor that President Trump’s supporters pin on themselves. When self-applied by the likes of Stephen K. Bannon, it serves as a device to feed the narrative that liberal elite criticism of Trump — including the argument that he is scamming his own voters — signifies nothing but cultural contempt for Trump’s America. Trump supporters won’t let supercilious liberal disdain weaken their conviction that Trump is the one who is really on their side, dammit!

But a host of new developments underscore with fresh clarity that if anyone views Trump supporters with profound contempt, it’s Trump and his advisers — and that liberals are right to point out that he is actively trying to fleece them. Consider:

Trump’s new tax plan eliminates the estate tax, which he has justified by claiming that it would help “millions of small businesses and the American farmer.” That’s a paean to his small-business and rural base. But as the Post fact-checking team points out, this is absurd: Because only the very top estates get targeted, a mere 80 such estates that would get hit by the tax in 2017 count as small businesses and farms. However, Trump’s family would benefit bigly, because his estimated net worth is in the billions. As Roberton Williams of the Tax Policy Center puts it, Trump might not personally gain from estate tax repeal, because “he’ll be dead. But his heirs will.”

• Trump’s new tax plan eliminates the alternative minimum tax. As Linda Qiu explains, this “largely impacts people making between $200,000 and $1 million. Without this tax, Mr. Trump would have paid $31 million less in taxes in 2005, according to his tax return that year, which was disclosed on the ‘Rachel Maddow Show’ in March.”
• The mere fact that Trump would benefit from his tax plan does not itself mean he is scamming his supporters. Rather, the key here is that Trump is lying to them about this point. Trump says this about his plan: “It’s not good for me, believe me.” But not only would he benefit, Trump also still won’t release his tax returns, which would actually allow us to evaluate how his plan would affect him and his family. Trump doesn’t want his voters (or any voters) to be able to do this. Trump is simply assuming that his voters will believe him (or he doesn’t care whether they do or not), even though he’s lying to them.
• Trump claims his tax plan will not benefit “the wealthy and well-connected” and will protect “low-income and middle-income households.” But a new analysis by the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities undercuts both claims. Trump’s plan would also lower the top marginal income tax rate from 39.6 to 35 percent, lower the rate on “pass-through” businesses to 25 percent and cut the corporate rate from 35 to 20 percent. The CBPP analysis concludes that 50 percent of the net tax cuts in his plan’s framework would go to the top 1 percent of earners and that the impact on middle-class families would negligible at best. It’s possible that if the plan ends a bunch of deductions, top earners might not fare so well. But the CBPP analysis makes a key point: Trump’s plan is very specific about how it would benefit top earners and corporations and very vague and nonspecific about how it would help lower-income earners. Trump’s empty promise to his working- and middle-class supporters is being used to sell tax cuts that will likely shower large benefits on the wealthy — himself included.
• Trump is sabotaging Obamacare in new ways that will likely hurt untold numbers of his voters. BuzzFeed reports that the Department of Health and Human Services is pulling out of events in states that are designed to encourage enrollment on the exchanges. This comes after HHS slashed its budget for advertising for open enrollment, and even as Trump continues to refuse to say whether “cost-sharing reductions” will continue, which is fomenting uncertainty that is helping spike premiums and destabilizing the marketplace. Larry Levitt of the Kaiser Family Foundation tells me this could harm Trump voters in indeterminate numbers. “We know that many elements of the Trump constituency are low-income people who rely on the marketplace for insurance,” Levitt emailed.
• The Trump administration’s sabotage of the Affordable Care Act shows contempt for his supporters in another way. In its statement justifying the latest pullout from enrollment events, HHS did not even attempt to offer an actual policy rationale for the move — there is none — and instead lied robotically about how Obamacare “continues to collapse.” But the Trump administration’s actions are encouraging chaos in that direction. Trump supporters don’t want this, however. A recent Kaiser poll found that 51 percent of Trump supporters want the administration to do what it can to make the law work. But Team Trump is not just doing the opposite without any rationale for it, they are also actively misleading his supporters about their own actions by falsely blaming the chaos they cause on the law itself.

The point here is not that this should reflect badly on Trump supporters. They of course may disagree that all these things operate against their interests, or they may have plenty of other reasons to continue backing him anyway. Rather, the point is that the arguments that Trump and his administration are making to them on all these fronts are not being made in good faith, as if Trump believes his own supporters can be lied to or betrayed with great ease. Never mind whether they’re “deplorables” — Trump himself is treating them like a bunch of suckers.

 

[onekidanddone]

37 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

You should move here! There is a Trader Joes about five minutes from my house. Costco is about 20 min.

Trader Joe's about 5-10 minutes depending on traffic and Wegmans oh oh oh Wegmans about 15-20 depending on the route. I could live in a Wegmans and take my vacation in a TJs

[GreyhoundFan]

@onekidanddone -- I love me some Wegman's too! Their peanut butter chocolate chunk cookies are my Achilles heel. I have two of their stores within 15-20 minutes of my house.

"It was candidate Trump’s best trick. Now it’s stalling President Trump’s agenda."

Spoiler

After eight months of negotiations, White House officials and Republican leaders last week arrived at a secret, hard-fought compromise: They would push to lower the corporate tax rate to 20 percent.

On Sunday, President Trump walked alone to a group of reporters on a runway in New Jersey and told them his preference for the corporate tax: 15 percent.

It’s indicative of an approach Trump has employed throughout his presidency: He has taken a hands-off approach to working out policy details, keeping clear of granular discussions and declining to take a stand on the thorniest questions. When plans are almost ready, he has — again and again — demanded that they be, in vague terms, better.

The approach was successful as a presidential candidate: It allowed Trump to promise his presidency would yield big benefits for his supporters. But by not laying out details of how he planned to deliver, Trump left his opponents with little to latch onto.

As president, however, it has yet to yield a major legislative victory — despite Republicans controlling both the House and Senate.

“It’s the chickens coming home to roost,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former Congressional Budget Office director who advised Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) during his 2008 presidential run. “This operating style I don’t think serves the process very well, and I think he got trapped into it by not being specific enough on the campaign.”

Now, Trump and congressional Republicans are getting another chance to claim a big victory — an opportunity to rewrite the U.S. tax code for the first time in three decades. So far, Trump has shown no signs of modifying his approach.

After dozens of closed-door meetings and public hearings, the White House and GOP leaders have still not sorted through many of the most vital details of Trump’s promise to deliver the largest tax cut in U.S. history.

There is, in short, no hammered-out tax plan, only a nine-page framework of GOP goals that have yet to be filled in or agreed to. Lawmakers now plan to clash over the details, with the White House staying in touch but giving them room to negotiate.

They stuck with the 20 percent tax-rate target in the “unified framework” released Wednesday, but some people close to Trump fear he might waver again.

Speaking Wednesday in Indiana, Trump said the tax rate would end up being “no higher than 20 percent,” leaving the door open for him to keep trying to push it lower.

“These tax cuts are significant,” he said. “There’s never been tax cuts like we’re talking about.”

The nine-page document released Wednesday pales in scope to the 461-page tax plan the Reagan administration offered in 1985 that helped shepherd the last tax overhaul into law.

On health care, infrastructure, the deficit and a range of other issues, the Trump administration has stopped short of specifying its platform.

On Tuesday, Trump told a handful of Republicans and Democrats in a White House meeting that he was now opposed to public-private partnerships for infrastructure programs. He cited the example of a toll road in northern Indiana that fell into bankruptcy.

“He dismissed it categorically and said it doesn’t work,” said Rep. Brian Higgins (D-N.Y.), who brought up the issue with Trump at the White House. “And in fact, pointed to [Vice President Pence] and said they tried in their state and it didn’t work.”

Senior administration officials were flabbergasted. They had spent months designing a $1 trillion infrastructure plan that centered on the idea of privatizing roads, air traffic control systems and other networks. On Wednesday, they were still trying to sort through whether Trump had misspoken or changed policy.

Trump’s team had planned to issue his infrastructure plan in May, but they have been beset by delays, in part because they cannot agree on how to finance the entire operation.

The indecision has been most evident on health-care policy.

Trump vowed to roll back the Affordable Care Act on his first day in office, but the White House never advanced a single substantive health-care proposal, relying instead on Congress, which failed multiple times to enact changes into law. When the House passed a bill in June, Trump said he supported it and hosted a Rose Garden celebration with dozens of lawmakers.

He later complained to Senate Republicans that the bill was “mean” and said they needed to change it. He didn’t specify how.

Similarly, he has cast about for ways to construct a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, but the Trump administration has not settled on any approach, and key decisions keep getting postponed.

His budget proposal was so sparse on details that the Congressional Budget Office said they could not adequately review it, adding that “the proposals . . . are in many cases not sufficiently specified,” and in some cases found the White House’s economic claims would “not be achievable.” There is not a complete White House plan to eliminate the deficit or expand access to health care, things that Trump has promised voters.

This is markedly different from past White House operations, which have often buried Capitol Hill in paperwork and policy proposals hoping to have a lead role in how bills are written.

President Barack Obama’s top aides in 2009 helped write a 1,000-page draft health-care bill that would serve as an initial iteration of the Affordable Care Act, drawing support and opposition to a debate that would last for months.

To be sure, that approach does not always work. The Clinton administration tried to play a lead role in the drafting of health-care changes, but Congress balked and it ended up a chief unfinished goal of Bill Clinton’s presidency.

Trump administration officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to comment on sensitive discussions, said they took a cautious approach with the tax plan, in part to avoid looking as if they cut a secret deal without input from lawmakers. They also wanted to defer, at times, to lawmakers who had spent years working on tax cuts. National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn has said the plan was for the White House to serve as a “guiding light.”

But lawmakers and senior Capitol Hill aides were also skeptical that Cohn and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, their main interlocutors, could negotiate on behalf of Trump, who is famous for changing his mind on some occasions and refusing to budge on others.

White House officials say they learned a hard lesson from the failed effort to roll back the Affordable Care Act, which featured numerous competing GOP plans the party never coalesced around. By moving more slowly on tax cuts, White House officials hope, they have a greater chance to bring people aboard.

Those decisions will now be tested.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that the new GOP framework would cut taxes by $5.8 trillion and recoup $3.6 trillion by eliminating mostly unspecified tax deductions that many companies will fight to preserve. Even if all those battles are won, it will lead to a $2.2 trillion gap in revenue over 10 years, the committee forecast, a level that could prove difficult to push through Congress.

Trump has shown an element of urgency on the tax push, though, and he has told aides he wants it completed by the end of the year. Still, Republican leaders struggled for months to reach agreements on specifics, at times leaving final decisions for later. For example, the tax framework does not mention raising taxes on hedge fund managers, even though Trump has promised to do that for months.

And negotiators haggled for weeks about a way to ensure the wealthy did not benefit disproportionately from the tax overhaul, but they never agreed on how to prevent it.

Republicans on Capitol Hill seemed willing to step in now and try to take the nine-page framework and mold it into a tax bill, which many of them say will give lawmakers a bigger say in the process.

“I’m actually grateful they’re letting us fill in many of the blanks,” said Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.).

Mnuchin had long said the goal for the tax-cut bill was to pass it by August, but Republicans working on the plan didn’t even have the nine-page framework by then. Now, lawmakers have only a couple of months to decide which tax breaks to jettison, what changes should be permanent,and whether to prevent the wealthy from receiving too much as part of the deal. Administration officials want the tax deal to be finished by the end of the year.

As Republicans push forward, advisers to Trump’s predecessor warn that the White House has completely miscalculated the amount of planning and details necessary to convince the public that such a plan has been properly vetted.

“I’ve never seen an administration that so overpromised in terms of specific plans and underdelivered,” said Jason Furman, who served as deputy director of the National Economic Council and chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Obama administration. “They promised detailed plans on everything and have put forward plans on nothing.”

 

[nvmbr02]

7 hours ago, candygirl200413 said:

So while he waived it apparently there's still struggling with transportation due to a lack of infrastructure.

Yes, I think it is well understood that the Jones Act waiver wont even come close to solving all or even most of PR's problems right now. But the hope is the waiver will help with the overall recovery process. I am not sure how long the wavier is for but recovery is going to take a long time and every little bit helps. It is still disgraceful that it took more than a week for the wavier to be approved. 

[Howl]

I'm about 10 minutes from a Whole Foods and a Vitamin Cottage, two or three  minutes more to another Whole Foods, same distance to a Sprouts, Trader Joe's and Costco.  It's about the same to go to a regular HEB grocery, a humongous Texas grocery chain.  You say each letter (H. E. B.) not "heeb".  Within a day or two of Harvey making landfall, HEB semis loaded with food and water and other relief necessities headed to the coast.    There's also a Randalls.  Albertson's cut and ran about 4 years ago.  Most customers in Sprouts look like Whole Foods refugees.   Sadly, most of the east side of our city is a massive food desert, with few good grocery stores. 

Wegmans sounds awesome. 

We were in Utah a few weeks ago, staying in the bitty town (pop. 1,500) of Castle Dale.  The grocery store chain there was Stewarts (I think) and I really liked it.  It was small-ish, but had everything you needed + plus a small but very good produce section.  I remember thinking that if I lived there, I'd have Amazon Prime in a heart beat.  The closest city (Provo) is about an hour and a half drive. 

OK, now back to our regular program of futile head banging and face palming that is life under the TT administration. 

Some Republican woman on an MSNBC talking head panel was reflecting on the reality that Trump may be actually, truly, completely losing it because he can't maintain a coherent thought.  She said something like, Other presidents just haven't done this. 

[apple1]

17 minutes ago, nvmbr02 said:

Yes, I think it is well understood that the Jones Act waiver wont even come close to solving all or even most of PR's problems right now. But the hope is the waiver will help with the overall recovery process. I am not sure how long the wavier is for but recovery is going to take a long time and every little bit helps. It is still disgraceful that it took more than a week for the wavier to be approved. 

Right now - only 10 days.

John McCain has (apparently for quite a while before now) a bill he is trying to get Congress to pass to - I think - permanently end the Jones act. Apparently this has been something he has felt for some time is needed for Puerto Rico's economic situation to improve.

I am clearly not an expert on this -- but it kind of seems like the Jones act is an anachronism. And I am pretty sure that 10 days will hardly be a drop in the bucket. (Supposedly there is some kind of claim that the 10 days might get extended).

[Cartmann99]

10 minutes ago, Howl said:

 It's a little bit further to go to a regular HEB grocery, a humongous Texas grocery chain.  You say each letter (H. E. B.) not "heeb".   Within a day or two of Harvey making landfall, HEB semis loaded with food and water and other relief necessities headed to the coast. 

An HEB store opened up in our area several years ago. I really like their produce department! 

[nvmbr02]

@apple1- thanks! It is still late morning here and I haven't gotten around to any real news reading yet, just skimming headlines while DH and I stream the Vietnam War Ken Burns documentary  since he is off work and we can't stream it when the kids get home from school and bog down our internet. But yes, 10 days will do very little to help the recovery effort for PR. But it is a place to start I guess. Not that I have much faith that Trump will do right by PR. And yes, Sen. McCain has been pushing for a repeal of the Jones Act for awhile now, long before the hurricanes came through. I am not an expert on the Jones Act but I do know it was originally designed to protect the American shipping industry. However, it keeps prices on the US Islands ( PR, Guam, Hawaii, etc...) very high. I imagine PR has a lot of the same grocery issues that we do here in Guam. Hawaii is high also, but not quite as bad as here.  Since most things needs to be shipped in from quite a distance you expect to pay high prices for items but it is at the point where goods are becoming unreachable to the average family without public assistance as jobs are very limited. Just some examples of what we pay for common items - Gas $3.85 a gallon, Milk- $5.79 a half gallon (you can't get it by the gallon) loaf of cheap white bread $2.50, eggs $3.99 for a doz regular eggs, $7 for organic, cereal- $5.79 a small box, jar of mayo- $6, tub of salad greens- $8, strawberries- $10.99 for a small container (and they are probably half moldy) grapes-$5 a pound when they are on sale, etc... Add that in with utilities averaging $800 and rent at $2500 for and average house and it is quite difficult for families to make ends meet when the average income per family is less than $50,000. The tourist industry is big here and it is currently on the decline. So I can't speak for PR as I have only been there once years ago I can imagine they face similar difficulties there. 

 

[apple1]

@nvmbr02 Wow, that's awful. (You mentioned Hawaii; I have read that Hawaii has the highest rate of homelessness out of any US state and it is obvious that prices are one of the reasons why).

Hoping that McCain's bill finally passes. Maybe it will get some attention now.

[47of74]

My most recent letter got published today, and they even left the part in where I called him a pendejo in chief.  I thought for sure they wouldn't leave that part in.  Let the pearl clutching and use of the fainting couches begin! 

Quote

Our pendejo-in-chief spent a great deal of time calling out National Football League players making a peaceful protest against injustices prevalent in our society, and wanting people to be forced to respect things like the anthem and flag.

Meanwhile, he couldn’t care less about the United States citizens facing a humanitarian disaster in Puerto Rico.

Meanwhile, the most he can do when Klansmen and Nazis get violent is to offer half-hearted statements complete with “both sides do it” horse manure, while it’s glaringly obvious he would really want to come out with full-throated support of them.

Meanwhile, he called an NFL player a “son of a bitch.” That is something he did not call the white supremacist terrorist who murdered a young woman in Charlottesville.

 

[NCLunaLovegoodFan]

Trump's Deadly Narcissism

 

Quote

 

According to a new Quinnipiac poll, a majority of Americans believe that Donald Drumpf is unfit to be president. That’s pretty remarkable. But you have to wonder how much higher the number would be if people really knew what’s going on.

For the trouble with Drumpf isn’t just what he’s doing, but what he isn’t. In his mind, it’s all about him — and while he’s stroking his fragile ego, basic functions of government are being neglected or worse.

Let’s talk about two stories that might seem separate: the deadly neglect of Puerto Rico, and the ongoing sabotage of American health care. What these stories have in common is that millions of Americans are going to suffer, and hundreds if not thousands die, because Drumpf and his officials are too self-centered to do their jobs.

Start with the disaster in Puerto Rico and the neighboring U.S. Virgin Islands.

When Hurricane Maria struck, more than a week ago, it knocked out power to the whole of Puerto Rico, and it will be months before the electricity comes back. Lack of power can be deadly in itself, but what’s even worse is that, thanks largely to the blackout, much of the population still lacks access to drinkable water. How many will die because hospitals can’t function, or because of diseases spread by unsafe water? Nobody knows.

But the situation is terrible, and time is not on Puerto Rico’s side: The longer this goes on, the worse the humanitarian crisis will get. Surely, then, you’d expect bringing in and distributing aid to be the U.S. government’s top priority. After all, we’re talking about the lives of three and a half million of our fellow citizens — more than the population of Iowa or metro San Diego.

So have we seen the kind of full-court, all-out relief effort such a catastrophe demands? No.

Admittedly, it’s hard to quantify the federal response. But none of the extraordinary measures you’d expect to see have materialized.

The deployment of military resources seems to have been smaller and slower than it was in Texas after Harvey or Florida after Irma, even though Puerto Rico’s condition is far more dire. Until Thursday the Drumpf administration had refused to lift restrictions on foreign shipping to Puerto Rico, even though it had waived those rules for Texas and Florida.

Why? According to the president, “people who work in the shipping industry” don’t like the idea.

Furthermore, although it’s more than a week since Maria made landfall, the Drumpf administration has yet to submit a request for aid to Congress.

And where’s the leadership? There’s a reason we expect visible focus by the president on major national disasters, including a visit to the affected area as soon as possible (Drumpf doesn’t plan to visit Puerto Rico until next week). It’s not just theater; it’s a signal about urgent priorities to the rest of the government, and to some extent to the nation at large.

But Drumpf spent days after Maria’s strike tweeting about football players. When he finally got around to saying something about Puerto Rico, it was to blame the territory for its own problems.

The impression one gets is of a massively self-centered individual who can’t bring himself to focus on other people’s needs, even when that’s the core of his job.

And then there’s health care.

Obamacare repeal has failed again, for the simple reason that Graham-Cassidy, like all the other G.O.P. proposals, was a piece of meanspirited junk. But while the Affordable Care Act survives, the Drumpf administration is openly trying to sabotage the law’s functioning.

This sabotage is taking place on multiple levels. The administration has refused to confirm whether it will pay crucial subsidies to insurers that cover low-income customers. It has refused to clarify whether the requirement that healthy people buy insurance will be enforced. It has canceled or suspended outreach designed to get more people to sign up.

These actions translate directly into much higher premiums: Insurers don’t know if they’ll be compensated for major costs, and they have every reason to expect a smaller, sicker risk pool than before. And it’s too late to reverse the damage: Insurers are finalizing their 2018 rates as you read this.

Why are the Trumpists doing this? Is it a cynical calculation — make the A.C.A. fail, then claim that it was already doomed? I doubt it. For one thing, we’re not talking about people known for deep strategic calculations. For another, the A.C.A. won’t actually collapse; it will just become a program more focused on sicker, poorer Americans — and the political opposition to repeal won’t go away. Finally, when the bad news comes in, everyone will know whom to blame.

No, A.C.A. sabotage is best seen not as a strategy, but as a tantrum. We can’t repeal Obamacare? Well, then, we’ll screw it up. It’s not about achieving any clear goal, but about salving the president’s damaged self-esteem.

In short, Drumpf truly is unfit for this or any high office. And the damage caused by his unfitness will just keep growing.

7