Month: March 2017

Trump is a militaristic, authoritarian white nationalist

by digby

Don’t say I didn’t warn you. He’s not a populist. Huey Long at least really wanted to give the working man a leg up. Trump is a standard issue right wing demagogue and people should have been able to see through it since he was riding around on a gold plated 767, fergawdsakes. 

The Trump administration’s new budget blueprint aims to quantify the president’s nationalistic agenda in dollars and cents. The plan, released Thursday morning, calls for significant increases in military and border-security spending, along with corresponding cuts in many other parts of the government.

The blueprint was designed to “send a message to our allies and our potential adversaries that this is a strong-power administration,” Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney explained on Wednesday as he previewed the document in a briefing with reporters.

It also sends a clear message domestically: This administration is willing to make drastic, controversial cuts to fund that “strong-power” message. That includes slashing spending on foreign aid and the environment, as well as long-standing programs aimed at boosting the arts and humanities, as well as the fortunes of the most vulnerable Americans. The question now is how much the Republican-controlled Congress will go along with that vision.

Like any White House budget, Trump’s blueprint is more of a political document than an accurate predictor of government spending. Congress controls the purse strings and lawmakers may have very different priorities. As a statement of presidential intention, though, the blueprint is crystal clear.

“This is the America First budget,” said Mulvaney. “In fact, we wrote it using the president’s own words. We went through his speeches. We went through articles that have been written about his policies … and we turned those policies into numbers.”

“There’s no question this is a hard-power budget,” Mulvaney also said Wednesday. “It is not a soft-power budget. This is a hard-power budget. And that was done intentionally.”

Trump wants lawmakers to boost military spending in the coming fiscal year by 10 percent, or $54 billion. Rather than raise taxes or increase the deficit, the president is calling for equivalent cuts in other areas. Foreign aid would be especially hard hit, with the State Department’s budget cut by about 28 percent.

Alongside Defense, the agencies for which the White House proposes spending increases are almost entirely military- and national security-related. The Department of Homeland Security would see a hike in funding of 6.8 percent, as would the Department of Veterans Affairs (5.9 percent) and the National Nuclear Security Administration (11.3 percent).

“The president ran [his campaign] saying he would spend less money overseas and more money back home,” Mulvaney said. “When you go to implement that policy, you go to things like foreign aid, and those get reduced.”

Critics argue the administration’s single-minded focus on hard power is short-sighted, and could ultimately be detrimental to national security. They point to past comments from Defense Secretary James Mattis, a retired Marine general, who once told lawmakers, “If you don’t fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition, ultimately.”

The White House blueprint does not address major safety net programs such as Social Security and Medicare, which the president has promised to protect. But Trump is calling for sharp cuts in discretionary spending, including the Environmental Protection Agency.

The administration is proposing cutting the EPA’s budget by 31 percent, from $8.3 billion in fiscal year 2017 to $5.7 billion in fiscal year 2018. That’s the largest cut among all Cabinet departments and major agencies.

The budget says that slash in funding is necessary “to ease the burden of unnecessary Federal regulations that impose significant costs for workers and consumers without justifiable environmental benefits.”

Instead of carrying out many of its current functions, the agency would “primarily support States and Tribes in their important role protecting air, land, and water in the 21st Century,” the document adds.

The EPA’s new administrator, Scott Pruitt, is a longtime critic of what he sees as the agency’s activist agenda. He and the president have both promised to scale back environmental regulation, including efforts to curb carbon pollution and promote alternative energy. Last week, Pruitt reiterated his doubts that carbon emissions are a primary contributor to climate change. That puts him at odds with the overwhelming scientific consensus.

Climate research at NASA could also take a hit under Trump’s budget. The plan would reduce overall spending at NASA by around 1 percent, Mulvaney said, but would increase spending on space exploration, which Trump supports.

In addition, funding for the National Institutes of Health would fall by 18 percent, or $5.8 billion. That cut involves “a major reorganization of NIH’s Institutes and Centers,” including closing some of those centers, “to help focus resources on the highest priority research.”

In a speech to a joint session of Congress last month, Trump promised to bring renewed hope and opportunity to what he called “our neglected inner cities.” The Department of Housing and Urban Development will not be the vehicle for that effort, though.

“We’ve spent a lot of money on housing and urban development over the last decades without a lot to show for it,” Mulvaney said. He added that Trump prefers to invest in cities’ infrastructure and school choice.

The president’s plan calls for a 6 percent increase in spending by the Department of Homeland Security, including $2.6 billion to begin work on a planned border wall. The White House is also asking Congress to devote $1.5 billion to the wall in the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

Among all the proposed spending hikes and cuts, some areas would see spending cuts of 100 percent. The administration wants to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Together, the two groups receive about $300 million annually.

Trump also wants to eliminate funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helps to finance public radio and television stations. CPB received $445 million in the current fiscal year.

Several of these eliminated programs aim to help the poorest Americans. The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) helps people pay utility bills and weatherize their homes. And the Community Development Block Grant, a part of HUD, helps support affordable housing and infrastructure (among many other things).

The budget also proposes eliminating the Appalachian Regional Commission, which promotes economic development in the region stretching from northern Mississippi to western New York. Many counties in that swath heavily supported Trump in November.

He is Saddam Hussein.

That bolded part above is important. If you listened to him through the campaign, it was clear that his entire appeal was based on kicking ass and taking names. That’s it. If you wanted to interpret that as kicking “the elites” I guess that’s your prerogative. But the gold plated plane should have been a tip-off.

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Yes, Virginia, we need a sanity clause
by Tom Sullivan

Fiorello: Hey, wait, wait. What does this say here? This thing here.
Driftwood: Oh, that? Oh, that’s the usual clause. That’s in every contract. That just says uh, it says uh, “If any of the parties participating in this contract is shown not to be in their right mind, the entire agreement is automatically nullified.”
Fiorello: Well, I don’t know…
Driftwood: It’s all right, that’s, that’s in every contract. That’s, that’s what they call a ‘sanity clause’.
Fiorello: Ha ha ha ha ha! You can’t fool me! There ain’t no Sanity Clause!

— from The Marx Brothers’ A Night at the Opera (1935)

Just about now we could use a sanity clause in the U.S. Constitution.

During his speech yesterday in Nashville, President Donald Trump announced to the crowd that his second travel ban had been overturned by a U.S. District Court (emphasis mine):

But let me give you the bad news. We don’t like bad news, right? I don’t want to hear it. And I’ll turn it into good. Let me give you the bad, the sad news. Moments ago, I learned that a district judge in Hawaii, part of the much-overturned 9th Circuit Court — and I have to be nice, otherwise I’ll get criticized for speaking poorly about our courts. I’ll be criticized by people who are among the most dishonest people in the world. I will be criticized. I’ll be criticized by them for speaking harshly about our courts, I would never want to do that.

A judge has just blocked our executive order on travel and refugees coming into our country from certain countries. The order he blocked was a watered down version of the first order that was also blocked by another judge, and should have never been blocked to start with. This new order was tailored to the dictates of the 9th circuit’s, in my opinion flawed, ruling. This is in the opinion of many an unprecedented judicial overreach.

How many of those many opinions you heard since “moments ago” weren’t coming from inside your head?

And there was this. Fox News aired an interview Wednesday night in which Tucker Carlson asked Trump about about his tweet alleging that he had been wiretapped by the Obama administration:

Carlson: So on March 4th, 6:35 in the morning, you’re down in Florida, and you tweet, the former administration wiretapped me, surveilled me, at Trump Tower during the last election. How did you find out? You said, I just found out. How did you learn that?

Trump: Well, I’ve been reading about things. I read in, I think it was Jan. 20th, a New York Times article where they were talking about wiretapping. There was an article. I think they used that exact term. I read other things. I watched your friend Bret Baier the day previous where he was talking about certain very complex sets of things happening, and wiretapping. I said, wait a minute, there’s a lot of wiretapping being talked about. I’ve been seeing a lot of things. Now, for the most part, I’m not going to discuss it, because we have it before the committee and we will be submitting things before the committee very soon that hasn’t been submitted as of yet. But it’s potentially a very serious situation.

[…]

Carlson: Why not wait to tweet about it until you can prove it? Don’t you devalue your words when you can’t provide evidence?

Trump: Well, because the New York Times wrote about it. Not that I respect the New York Times. I call it the failing New York Times. But they did write on Jan. 20th using the word wiretap. Other people have come out with…

Carlson: Right, but you’re the president. You have the ability to gather all the evidence you want.

Trump: I do. I do. But I think that frankly we have a lot right now. And I think if you watch—if you watched the Bret Baier and what he was saying and what he was talking about and how he mentioned the word “wiretap,” you would feel very confident that you could mention the name. He mentioned it.
And other people have mentioned it. But if you take a look at some of the things written about wiretapping and eavesdropping… and don’t forget I say wiretapping, those words were in quotes. That really covers—because wiretapping is pretty old-fashioned stuff—but that really covers surveillance and many other things. And nobody ever talks about the fact that it was in quotes, but that’s a very important thing. But wire tape covers a lot of different things. I think you’re going to find some very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next two weeks.

As they say down south, “He ain’t right.”

When Trump is actually doing the job of president and not fluffing his own ego or tweeting about Snoop Dogg, he and his team are drafting a budget like this:

Trump federal budget 2018: Massive cuts to the arts, science and the poor

The Washington Post reports:

Trump’s first budget proposal, which he named “America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again,” would increase defense spending by $54 billion and then offset that by stripping money from more than 18 other agencies. Some would be hit particularly hard, with reductions of more than 20 percent at the Agriculture, Labor and State departments and of more than 30 percent at the Environmental Protection Agency.

The comprehensive guide to Trump’s federal budget cuts https://t.co/xBXVoravLn pic.twitter.com/XFSNXmjhna— Washington Post (@washingtonpost) March 16, 2017

Trump and Bannon are going to drown the government in the bathtub all right, but not before their base takes a bath first. MSNBC’s Chris Hayes asked, “They’re gonna cut USDA 29%? Good luck! How many times are they going to punch rural America in the mouth?”

Who do these judges think they are? Don’t they know who I am?

by digby

The trail of tears

So this happened:

In a historical visit- @POTUS @realDonaldTrump honors #POTUS7 #AndrewJackson on his 250th birthday – lays wreath at tomb in Hermitage, TN. pic.twitter.com/iLsLubD48G

— Dan Scavino Jr. (@DanScavino) March 15, 2017

Steve Bannon told Trumpie that he’s a lot like the guy on the 20 dollar bill and he’s all excited about it which is kind of adorable.

Then after he laid the wreath but before his big Nashville rally tonight, a judge in Hawaii stayed his travel ban again citing his own words speaking to his obvious intentions that it should be a religious test and including loose lipped pals like Rudy Giuliani and his nasty little aide Stephen Miller. He doesn’t understand why this is wrong because he’s a moron. So he went on stage tonight and said this:

“I think we ought to go back to the first [ban], and go all the way. That’s what I wanted to do in the first place.”

Did I mention that he’s a moron?

At least we’d better hope that’s the issue because if not, and this whole Andrew Jackson thing is serious, this is what he may be about:

[Chief Justice John] Marshall had initially opposed Jackson’s election to the presidency, and in the Cherokee Indians case, Worcester v. Georgia (1832), Marshall infuriated Jackson by insisting that Georgia laws that purported to seize Cherokee lands on which gold had been found violated federal treaties. Jackson is famous for having responded: “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.” Although the comment is probably apocryphal, both Georgia and Jackson simply ignored the decision.

It ended in genocide so a bunch of greedheads could steal gold from the Indians but who’s counting?

Jackson eventually issued a proclamation of the Supreme Court’s ultimate power to decide constitutional questions and said its decision had to be obeyed but Trump hasn’t gotten that far in the 6th grade textbook.

By the way, here’s another would-be president who knows a little bit more history than Trump weighing in:

Hoping @POTUS tells Hawaii judge what Andrew Jackson told overreaching court-“I’ll ignore it and let the court enforce their order.”

— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) March 15, 2017

We’re going to make America great again — like it was in the 1830s. Good times.

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About that tax return

by digby

Why was Trump hawking steaks in 2007 if he was so damned rich?

I’m of the opinion that it’s an unalloyed good thing to focus on Trump’s finances no matter what it shows. And that’s because it leads to stories like this from Michael Daly at the Daily Beast:

Were he to release just one personal tax form, President Trump would no doubt have chosen the 2-page summary from 2005, the very one that journalist David Cay Johnston revealed on the Rachel Maddow Show Tuesday night.

The 1995 return The New York Times revealed last year showed Trump reporting a $916 million loss enabling him to pay no federal income taxes at all that year and perhaps for years to come.

The 2005 return shows him actually earning $150 million and paying $38 million in taxes. Those numbers make Trump look like he really is a great businessman, with big bucks to back up the bluster.
If all his returns showed such numbers, Trump might have just gone ahead and released them during the campaign instead of inventing a series of excuses for why we could not do so.

But if he had released the 2005 return, he would have been expected to release the 2006 return, in which he likely listed the charitable donation of 436 acres from a failed golf course venture to New York State as a park. He proclaimed at the time of the donation that the land was worth $100 million. That is around $85 million more than what Westchester County officials peg as its actual value at the time.

And who knows what the other returns show?

Even in 2005, the full return would have details beyond the immediate income and tax numbers that Trump would no doubt just as soon keep private.

The rest of the filing would show that the 2005 windfall was the result of a deal made not by him, but by Chinese partners who had rescued him from a financial implosion a decade before and then parlayed the investment into a huge score.

Not only did Trump play no part in the best deal of his career, he actually fought it. He took his partners to court even as they proceeded to shelter the huge profit by making him an unwilling 30 per cent stakeholder in the purchase of two office buildings – one in Manhattan, the other in San Francisco — that remain his most profitable properties.

The subsequent returns would show that the two biggest moneymakers in the Trump empire are towers that he tried not to buy and do not bear his name. He gets only licensing and management fees from most of the towers emblazoned with TRUMP.

The big loss on the 1995 return testifies to Trump’s financial condition in 1994, when he was saved from ruin by a consortium of Chinese billionaires. They included Vincent Lo, who had become known as the Chinese Donald Trump due to his extravagant lifestyle and such tabloid adventures as dumping his first wife to take up with a beauty-pageant queen.

One difference was that Lo actually raked in big money. Trump was so eager to make a deal with Lo and his pals that he dispensed with his usual practice of negotiating on his home turf and flew to Hong Kong, where he made a fumbling attempt at using chopsticks at a banquet and insisted somebody else get the honor of starting on a HUGE fish that still had the head attached.

The Chinese agreed to assume the crushing debt on a big parcel of land that Trump had acquired on Manhattan’s West Side with the avowed aim of building Television City, home of NBC and the world’s tallest building. Trump was allowed to retain 30 per cent of the parcel and plans downsized to a row of luxury apartment buildings known as Trump Place. That was 30 per cent more than he otherwise would have kept, but not so much that his partners felt they had to include him when they moved to sell the tract.
Trump went litigiously ballistic upon learning that a property bearing his name had been sold without so much as consulting him. He called it a “very bad and destructive” deal, and filed a lawsuit insisting he could have made a much better one, charging his partners with everything from fraud to tax evasion to taking kickbacks.

The suit was tossed, which proved to be an unlikely Trump victory. He retained his 30 per cent share of the two buildings — 1290 Sixth Avenue in Manhattan and 555 California Street in San Francisco – and came to understand what a good deal the Chinese had made. He declined to sell his share when the Chinese peddled their 70 per cent interest to Vornado Realty Trust for $2.6 billion in 2007.  Trump has continued to earn millions a year from the two properties, at least $340 million so far, without counting some $450 million in equity.
His senior partner in the properties, Vornado, is run by Steve Roth, who was in attendance at Trump headquarters on victory night. Trump gave Roth a shout-out from the stage and has since appointed him and another billionaire real estate developer, Richard LeFrak, to head a White House council tasked with monitoring $1 trillion in spending on infrastructure.

In that role, Roth attended a “strategic affairs lunch” at the White House last week. Roth’s other business in Washington, D.C. reportedly includes a bid on a $2 billion FBI headquarters outside the city, a project that is stalled appropriations-wise, perhaps in part because  it has been pushed by FBI Director James Comey. The chosen developer will get the rights to the site of the present headquarters, which is just up Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House and across from Trump’s newest hotel. The Washington Post has called the property “a once in a generation development opportunity.” Vornado is already said to be one of the U.S. government’s biggest landlords.

Vornado has also had business dealings with the real estate company owned by the family of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Vornado bought a 49.5% of a Kushner building in 2011. The Kushners had purchased the building at 666 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan for $1.8 billion on Jared’s birthday in 2007. The Kushners had until then been known as New Jersey real estate guys, just as the Trumps had been known as outer-borough real estate guys before the construction of Trump Tower.

Vornado now stands to make a huge profit when it is bought out as part of a partnership deal that the Kushners are reportedly making with Anbang, a Chinese insurance company with extensive links to that county’s leadership. Anbang recently purchased the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, where its chairman, Wu Xiaohui, met with Jared Kushner in November. The champagne that was served is said to go for $2,100 a bottle.

As reported in various news outlets, further financing for the deal between the Kushners and Anbang would be provided by the EB5 visa program, where foreign investors who put up $500,000 or more are granted residency with no vetting. The Kushners used the EB5 program to finance Trump Plaza Residence in Jersey City, a Trump project in licensed name only.

Meanwhile, Vornado computes each year the net profits from the two high profit buildings that do not bear the Trump name. The 30 per cent share is then paid to Trump and no doubt entered on his tax return as further proof that his best deal was one that he sought to scuttle after it was made by the Chinese Donald Trump and his fellow big time Chinese investors.

That was the deal in 2005, the year his tax return made it look like he was a great businessman and Trump was more than just a name. The takeaway numbers could almost make you think there was some reality to the reality TV show The Apprentice.

It’s nice to see that instead of pooh-poohing Maddow’s get last night some reporters are using it as a way to yank the thread on Trump’s finances some more. That’s how this works. Alexander Butterfield’s bombshell wouldn’t have meant much if there hadn’t been a solid years worth of slow rolling revelations. These things unfold.

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Just bring the cash in a suitcase right to the oval office

by digby

Remember Chinagate? Old timers will recall it. If you don’t remember, this Wikipedia entry gives a good overview. In  a nutshell, it was one of the many Clinton scandals in the 1990s. There were suspicions that the Chinese government had illegally funneled money into the 1996 election and the Clinton defense fund through some Democratic Party and Clinton campaign Chinese American donors. The money was returned quickly but it was nonetheless investigated to death. They never found a smoking gun but the money was returned although some of the alleged Chinese intermediaries involved were found guilty of various crimes. They didn’t assign this one to a special prosecutor but both houses of congress investigated the allegations for years. This was just one of the many endless investigations during the period.

 Anyway, it came to mind when I read this at Mother Jones today:

When a Chinese American businesswoman who sells access to powerful people recently purchased a $15.8 million penthouse in a building owned by President Donald Trump, the deal raised a key question. Was this a straightforward real estate transaction, or was this an effort to win favor with the new administration? The woman, Angela Chen, refused to discuss the purchase with the media. The White House and the Trump Organization would not comment on it. 

Further investigation by Mother Jones has unearthed a new element to the story: Chen has ties to important members of the Chinese ruling elite and to an organization considered a front group for Chinese military intelligence.
Chen, who also goes by the names Xiao Yan Chen and Chen Yu, purchased the four-bedroom condo in the Trump Park Avenue building in New York City on February 21. As Mother Jones first reported, Chen runs a business consulting firm, Global Alliance Associates, which specializes in linking US businesses seeking deals in China with the country’s top power brokers. “As counselors in consummating the right relationships—quite simply—we provide access,” Chen’s firm boasts on its website. But Chen has another job: She chairs the US arm of a nonprofit called the China Arts Foundation, which was founded in 2006 and has links with Chinese elites and the country’s military intelligence service.

Guthrie and Lauer skewer Tom Price

by digby

Walter Einenkel at Daily Kos broke down the HHS SecretaryTom Price interview on the Today Show this morning. They kept it simple and it was effective:

Host Savannah Guthrie began the interview by quoting unpopular President Trump’s assertion that everybody would be “beautifully covered” by whatever the Republican replacement plan for the Affordable Care Act ended up being. Guthrie proceeded to politely say that this promise has clearly not panned out and maybe Trump and Republicans should admit that “some people”* are going to lose their coverage.

Price: No. The fact of the matter is that if you look at the whole plan, what the President said was absolutely right.
He proceeds to walk down Republican talking points lane telling everybody that Obamacare has failed. He talks about how Trump met with people who had bad healthcare experiences. At this point Mrs. Guthrie decides to put Mr. Price back on track.

Guthrie: Sir, can I just stop you right there. I just want to zero in on that point. Are you saying no one is going to lose coverage under this plan? Because that’s what the President promised. 

Price: What we’re saying is that Obamacare has failed… 

More blah blah blah about premiums going up and deductibles going up.

Price: And the CBO doesn’t account for that.

Price explains that this secret plan of theirs has only been slightly revealed and so the CBO can’t possibly know all the answers. Lauer pops in to quote a Republican.

Lauer: You heard what Lindsey Graham said, even if the CBO is off by 50 percent, that would still mean some seven million people without insurance in a year and some 12 million more people without insurance down the road. So that doesn’t sound good either, does it? 

Price reiterates that this isn’t the whole plan. He continues by saying they are trying to kill the elderly and the poor fix the situation. It is here that Matt Lauer blows up Tom Price’s spot completely.

Lauer: Are you trying to fix it though, with a game of semantics? Because having “access” to health insurance is a very different thing than being able to actually “get” health insurance? 

Price begins to stammer and decides to walk it back, saying they believe “moms and dads ought to be able to select” blah blah blah. Once again, the harsh reality that this is not about getting anyone health insurance is laid bare here. Guthrie comes in to ask the last question and she really digs a nice grave for Price to lie down in.

Guthrie: So sir, we gotta run, but to go back to the original point, you’re saying—this morning—that you agree with President Trump that under this plan everyone will be covered. No one is losing their insurance. 

Price: Everyone will have access to the coverage that they want— 

Lauer and Guthrie: Yes, but that’s “access” again— 

Lauer: That’s access as opposed to being covered. 

It’s here that Guthrie repeats, seemingly unknowingly, the statement that by Price and Trump’s standard she could make $25,000 a year and have “access to a BMW” but not be able to afford it. Price says she’s stealing a Bernie Sanders line. (Sanders said you can have access to a $10 million home.) But, Price is still unable to answer the question.

They can’t answer the question because they know they’re taking away the subsidies and medicaid that make it possible for people to afford insurance. And they know they are doing it in order to provide tax cuts for millionaires and give tax credits to people who don’t need them.

Here’s the video:

HHS Secretary Tom Price is really torn apart on #TrumpCare during this interview pic.twitter.com/ONoLxd87yy

— CAP Action (@CAPAction) March 14, 2017

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Real Americans believe the pussy tape demonstrated Trump is his own man

by digby

Stan Greenberg went to talk to the only people in America who matter — those white people in Macomb Country he’s been tracking for decades. Here’s what the Washington Post distilled it down to:

There was no buyer’s remorse. Despite the drama of the opening weeks, not one of the participants regretted voting for the president. They described Trump as sincere, complained about unfair media coverage and criticized protesters for not giving him a chance to do good things. They love that he remains politically incorrect. They remain confident that he is a strong leader who will shake up Washington, secure the border and bring back manufacturing jobs. Their faith is strong. Their doubts are sparse.

At the same time, no one in the focus groups trusted congressional Republicans to do the right thing, particularly on the economy and health care. The Trump/Obama voters were asked to react to pictures of Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell. Among the responses: “shifty,” “they only look out for themselves,” and “like the CEOs.” They want these guys to support Trump and his agenda, not the other way around. Asked for impressions of Republicans generally, several volunteered that the party cares primarily about the rich.

Many of these voters could get behind Trump partly because they saw him as so distinct from the GOP. The defections by Republican leaders last fall, especially after the 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape came out, cemented the perception that he was his own man and not beholden to party bosses. “Nothing has happened that has broken their trust in him and their belief that they cast the right kind of vote,” Greenberg explained in an interview yesterday afternoon. “That doesn’t mean it won’t break at some point, but it gives him a lot of space for now. They also know regular Republicans were not with him. They’re very conscious of this.”

Greenberg was also struck by how much health care dominated the conversation in his focus groups, which was not by design. Nearly everyone told a story about how the Affordable Care Act is not affordable enough for them. They almost all have struggled to afford their insurance plans, co-pays and medications. Some expressed frustration about having to subsidize coverage for the poor and minorities. One man lamented that he cannot retire because he needs to pay for health care. A woman complained about her son having to pay a penalty because of the individual mandate.

Asked to write down what they like most about Trump, one of the most dominant answers was his promise to fix the health system. Yet not one person during any of the four sessions, which were conducted before the House GOP plans were released last week, uttered the word “repeal.” People said they weren’t sure what exactly the alternative should be, Greenberg notes, but they were hopeful Trump can figure it out.

“Repairing health care is what they expect him to do,” Greenberg said. “If it doesn’t happen, though, I believe they will think it’s because of the Republicans in Congress first and foremost, rather than Trump.” (Greenberg and Nancy Zdunkewicz, of Democracy Corps, wrote a 17-page memo summarizing their findings. It’s worth reading in full.)

I’m sure the Democrats will spent the next decade bending over backwards to get these people back in the fold. Because they are Real America and their thoughts and dreams are all that matter. The fact that the represent less than 45% of the country is irrelevant. The rest of us need to just STFU and keep our petty concerns to ourselves. They like Trump because he’s “different.” That Access Hollywood tape was an awesome display of his … manly independence, if you know what I mean. And if he messes everything up, as he surely will, they’ll blame the Republicans in congress, the Democrats and the “bitches”, “blacks” and “illegals”. They love the guy.

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QOTD: Tricky Dick


by digby

Via Charlie Pierce (whose piece you should also read) we have the quote of the day by Richard M Nixon:

During the past year, the wildest accusations have been given banner headlines and ready credence as well. Rumor, gossip, innuendo, accounts from unnamed sources of what a prospective witness might testify to, have filled the morning newspapers and then are repeated on the evening newscasts day after day. Time and again, a familiar pattern repeated itself. A charge would be reported the first day as what it was—just an allegation. But it would then be referred back to the next day and thereafter as if it were true. The distinction between fact and speculation grew blurred. Eventually, all seeped into the public consciousness as a vague general impression of massive wrongdoing, implicating everybody, gaining credibility by its endless repetition.

Yeah well, as it turned out there was massive wrongdoing. It took awhile to unfold. It always does.

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Trump’s fallback to failure plan

by digby

I wrote about Trump’s preferred health care strategy for Salon today:

Predictably, the promised Obamacare “repeal and replace” legislation has thrown Washington into a tizzy. The reason it was predictable is that if the Republicans had been able to put together a serious alternative to Obamacare’s market-friendly, hybrid health care program, they would have done it long ago and run on it. The fact that they didn’t should have been a hint that whatever they did was going to be politically unpopular. Instead, they demagogued the program for years, turning it into an easy symbol of Obama hatred to motivate their base. Now they are like dogs who finally caught the car they’ve been chasing and have no idea what to do with it.

Since Paul Ryan and company dropped their plan and the House speaker took to the airwaves with his sleeves rolled up to give the country a riveting PowerPoint presentation, it’s been obvious that their plan is in big trouble. When the Congressional Budget Office released its analysis on Monday showing that 24 million people stood to lose their insurance and costs would rise insanely high for older people, just to give the wealthy yet another tax cut, the bottom fell out. Headlines like this one, from the Augusta Chronicle in Georgia, were seen all over the country on Tuesday morning:

That certainly didn’t make Ryan’s job any easier but he carried on gamely, appearing on Fox News to say that he was “encouraged” by the news, prompting Bret Baier to ask him, “If you’re encouraged by this CBO report, what’s a CBO report you’re discouraged by?”

The Republicans are all over the place with this at the moment. Nobody knows if there’s a strategy or if they’re just running around in circles trying to figure find a way out and bumping into one another in the process. At this point, the Tea Partyers of the House Freedom Caucus are upset that the plan isn’t harsh enough and are demanding that the cutbacks happen immediately. The rest of the caucus is either backing Ryan or trying desperately to come up with a good reason not to.

They are getting an earful from their districts and feeling unsure why they should walk the plank on an unpopular bill when it’s pretty clear the Senate is having none of it. There, the revolt is mainly among a handful of moderates who see the Ryan bill as going way too far rather than not far enough. At least that was the state of play until Tuesday, when Sen. Ted Cruz stepped forward to criticize the plan for the projected premium increases.

Even Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, whom nobody would call a moderate, came out swinging, saying the House should tear up the Ryan bill and start over. Thegovernor of Arkansas, Asa Hutchinson, is also rebelling as are a number of other Republican governors who will have to deal directly with the havoc this plan will wreak.

Every faction of the Republican Party is at odds with at least one other faction of the party, sometimes with all of them. One would expect when that happens, that a president of the same party would serve as the mediator. In this case, expectations are exceptionally high since the president has sold himself as the greatest negotiator in the world, a man who will single-handedly bring peace to the Middle East and personally renegotiate global trade agreements over lunch at Mar-a-Lago.

Publicly, the White House is backing Ryan’s plan. Press secretary Sean Spicer said on Tuesday that the administration rejects the Congressional Budget Office projections because they don’t account for a “three-pronged” strategy, which he was unable to coherently explain. But Trump had said something different to conservative activists who call Ryan’s plan “Obamacare-lite,” promising to endorse their demands and punish those who disagreed.

Meanwhile, Breitbart has suddenly become an important player in the debate. The site has returned to bashing Ryan on a level that hasn’t been seen since late 2015, when Trump adviser Steve Bannon was the editor and wrote in an email to the site’s Washington editor that his “long game” was for Ryan to be “gone by spring.” This has people wondering if Bannon is trying to send a message to Trump through the media, since that’s rumored to be one of the tactics by which the courtiers seek to influence the king. But that’s assuming that Bannon needs to do that and that he still has great influence at Breitbart. (He went out of his way to distance himself from Breitbart over a different matter recently, but nobody knows whether that was a feint or not.) Bannon’s involvement or not, Breitbart is pro-Trump, and whatever the site’s editors are doing, they believe they’re doing it on his behalf.

So what does Trump want? He’s been all over the map, promising the moon and having no idea how to deliver it, repeatedly assuring everyone that health care reform would be “easy” and “fast,” until he was informed that it was very complicated. Since then it’s been obvious what his preference really is and he’s been open about it. As I mentioned in a piece earlier in the week, he wants the bill to fail, at which point he will sabotage the existing program and then blame it on the Democrats.

When Trump met with that group of conservative activists and promised to support their even harsher version of the bill, he described this as his fallback position. But he has signaled this numerous times since the election. In his Jan. 11 press conference he tipped his hand:

We don’t wanna own it, we don’t wanna own it politically. They own it right now. So the easiest thing would be to let it implode in ’17 and believe me, we’d get pretty much whatever we wanted, but it would take a long time.

Trump considers “blame” an important aspect of politics and thinks it would be useful for him to have Obamacare to kick around for a while. But Republicans have been promising to repeal Obamacare for years. They know that if they don’t get it done when they control the three branches of the government, their voters will logically blame them for whatever happens to their health care, not the Democrats.

The president probably understands that and just doesn’t care. His motto when it comes to politics is “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for me.” It’s all about him. The Republicans are on their own.

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T is for Trump, taxes and twofer
by Tom Sullivan

Photo by Bin im Garten via Creative Commons.

David Cay Johnston suggested last night on the “Rachel Maddow Show” it was possible that President Donald Trump leaked pages from his own 2005 tax form. If so, Trump got a twofer. (Guys like Trump do almost nothing that isn’t at least a twofer.) He knocked right off the front pages the disastrous headlines about 24 million people losing their health insurance under the Republican healthcare plan. (The story is gone from the front pages of all but one of the local papers Digby highlighted yesterday.)

Plus, Trump got to smack around the media for publicizing the tax form he himself leaked. (If he did, which we don’t know.) But as Johnston observes, Trump “has a long history of leaking things about himself when he thinks it’s in his interests.”

In fact, the White House issued a statement condemning the leak before the show aired:

“You know you are desperate for ratings when you are willing to violate the law to push a story about two pages of tax returns from over a decade ago,” a White House official said in a statement.

Trump paid $38 million in tax on an income of more than $150 million in 2005, the White House official acknowledged, “even after taking into account large scale depreciation for construction.”

“Before being elected president, Mr. Trump was one of the most successful businessmen in the world with a responsibility to his company, his family and his employees to pay no more tax than legally required,” the White House official said.

The New York Times provides details from the two pages:

The forms showed that Mr. Trump made $67 million in real estate royalties, $42 million in business income, $32 million in capital gains, $9 million in taxable interest and $998,599 in salary in 2005, for a total of nearly $153 million. After writing off $103 million, he reported adjusted gross income of nearly $49 million. In the end, he had to write a check for $2,450,597, including penalties and interest for late payment.

Without more details it is not possible to determine whether the $103 million loss is a carryover from the nearly $1 billion loss he claimed in 1995.

After promising in January 2016 to release his “very big returns … all approved and very beautiful,” Trump backpedaled for the remainder of the presidential campaign, claiming he could not release them because he was under audit. (Not true.) He faces increasing pressure to do so now as president as questions mount about his curious protectiveness regarding Russia.

If Trump leaked the pages himself, one could assume he chose 2005 to put his recent tax-paying in the best light. A disclosure from 1981 showed he paid nothing for “at least two years in the late 1970s.”

The release last night overall was more light than heat, except for the heat coming from the Trump family:

Thank you Rachel Maddow for proving to your #Trump hating followers how successful @realDonaldTrump is & that he paid $40mm in taxes! #Taxes— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) March 15, 2017

The disclosure did, however, afford the New York Times’ Peter Baker and Jesse Drucker the opportunity to offer this pithy rejoinder to Donald Trump Jr.’s tweet:

The 1995 deduction was derived from the financial wreckage of some of the companies Mr. Trump drove into bankruptcy years ago, including his Atlantic City casinos, and would have allowed him to cancel out taxable income for an 18-year period. A tax code provision benefiting real estate developers, which took effect in 1993, permitted businesses like Mr. Trump’s to take tax deductions for losing other people’s money.

Thanks to his voters, Trump now has the opportunity to lose millions of other people’s health coverage.