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A Trumpster? https://m.facebook.com/story.
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Arm The Saudis and Robert Smith arms his race. (See 1 and 1a below)
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Another Rant. (See 2 below.)
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Is America over-lawyered? You decide. (See 3 below.)
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Even illegal immigrants have mother-in-law issues. (See 4 below.)
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Democrat candidates for 2020 are an interesting lot with intriguing ideas. Particularly if you are insane. (See 5 below.)
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Dick
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1) Arms for the Saudis
America’s Middle East allies need weapons to defend against Iran.
President Trump is taking heat for bypassing Congress and selling billions of dollars in arms to Middle Eastern allies. The President often undermines his own agenda by reducing American foreign policy to commercial interests, but in this case he’s on firm legal and strategic ground.
On Friday the White House told Congress that it is declaring an emergency and selling $8 billion in arms to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Jordan will also receive precision-guided missiles. The decision overrides objections in Congress on arms sales to the Saudis after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents. Earlier this year Congress voted to end U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s challenge to Iran-backed rebels in Yemen, a policy begun under Barack Obama. Mr. Trump vetoed the bill, which relied on the unconstitutional War Powers Resolution of 1973.
Senate Foreign Relations Ranking Member Bob Menendez last year put a hold on $2 billion in weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. over their involvement in Yemen. And the Senator called Mr. Trump’s latest move an “attack on our Constitutional responsibilities” that potentially imperils millions of people.
Every decision Mr. Trump makes these days is supposedly a constitutional crisis, but in this case the President is relying on a provision in the Arms Export Control Act that allows for sales in the event of an emergency. Other Presidents have used it, including George W. Bush in 2006 to speed up the delivery of weapons to Israel as it fought Iranian proxies in Lebanon. In 1984 Ronald Reagan invoked the provision to send Stinger missiles to Saudi Arabia when Iran threatened its oil tankers. Jimmy Carter invoked it in 1979 to support North Yemen’s self-defense.
Mr. Trump hurt his standing with Congress on Saudi Arabia by seeming too cavalier about the Khashoggi murder. “I don’t support the arms sales now,” said Senator Lindsey Graham on “Fox News Sunday” due to the Khashoggi murder, adding that “I do support American troops going in to the Mideast in larger numbers to deter Iran.” Mr. Graham is critiquing the President’s strategy in good faith, but a large troop deployment isn’t necessary.
Mr. Trump is working with America’s allies—however problematic they are—to avert a war with Iran through deterrence. The more these allies can defend themselves, the less chance that Americans will have to join the fight.
1a) Who’s Afraid of Robert Smith’s Philanthropy?
The billionaire promises to pay off a graduating class’s student loans—and finds himself under attack.
Jason L. RileyMay 28, 2019 7:09 p.m. ET
Robert Smith was raised in a working-class Denver neighborhood in the 1970s. A high-school science class in his junior year sparked his interest in transistors, the building blocks of computers, cellphones and other electronic devices. Transistors were invented in the 1940s by AT&T ’s Bell Labs, which had a facility not far from the teenager’s home. He applied for a summer internship there but was told it was available only to juniors and seniors in college. Unbowed and impatient, he spent months pestering people in the human-resources department to give him a shot. Eventually, they did.
Mr. Smith went on to earn an engineering degree at Cornell and a business degree from Columbia. He worked as a chemical engineer and then as an investment banker. In 2000, he started a private-equity firm that focuses on investing in computer software companies. His net worth today is $5 billion, which makes him, according to Forbes magazine, the richest black person in America.
Mr. Smith urges others to be generous with their wealth, and he leads by example. He has financed college scholarships for minorities and women and set up a foundation that exposes inner-city kids to nature and the arts. He funds nonprofit groups that support underprivileged children interested in studying math and science. He gave $50 million to his alma mater Cornell and another $20 million to the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington. He has pledged to commit more than half of his wealth to philanthropy.
Mr. Smith has kept a relatively low profile over the years, but earlier this month he made a splash with his commencement address at Morehouse College, a historically black institution in Atlanta. Toward the end of his remarks, Mr. Smith announced that he would pay off the student loans of the nearly 400 graduates. The students and administrators were thrilled, of course, but others just saw another opportunity to score political points.
A New York Times story about Mr. Smith’s magnanimous act noted the “growing calls across the country to do something about the mounting burden of student loan debt,” then informed us that “presidential candidates like Elizabeth Warren have made debt cancellation a key plank in their campaign platforms.” The paper even found an expert critic of private charity who said he feared that “a gift like this can make people believe that billionaires are taking care of our problems, and distract us from the ways in which others in finance are working to cause problems like student debt, or the subprime crisis.”
No sane person believes that billionaire philanthropists are “taking care of our problems,” but a Times editorial on Mr. Smith’s gift insisted the wealthy could do just that if only the government would raise their taxes high enough. The paper’s editors likened Mr. Smith to Andrew Carnegie and other villainous plutocrats of yesteryear, and said that a new generation of the superrich had “amassed great fortunes, in part because the federal government has minimized the burden of taxation.” They asserted that Mr. Smith opposed increasing taxes on carried interest—profits from private-equity investments—and that this lost revenue could be used by the federal government to offset the cost of tuition.
The reality is that tuitions have risen mainly because the government is subsidizing them and schools know that most students won’t have to pay for the full ride. More federal funding of higher education will exacerbate this problem, not solve it. And if higher tax receipts from “the rich” is the objective, then history argues that top marginal rates ought to be lowered, not increased. After those rates fell under Presidents Coolidge, Kennedy, Reagan and George W. Bush, both the amount and share of taxes paid by top earners rose.
But the comparison between Mr. Smith and his Gilded Age counterparts is apt in at least one respect. Famous philanthropists like Carnegie, Julius Rosenwald, John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan played key roles in educating black Americans after Reconstruction. Rosenwald, who made his fortune running Sears, Roebuck & Co. when it was the largest retailer in the country, teamed up with the educator and former slave Booker T. Washington to start thousands of quality elementary and secondary schools for blacks in the South. In 1903, Andrew Carnegie gave $600,000 in U.S. Steel bonds to Washington’s Tuskegee Institute, now known as Tuskegee University, a historically black college in Alabama. Morehouse sits on land donated by Rockefeller, who was also a major donor to Spelman College, yet another historically black college in Atlanta, which is named in honor of Rockefeller’s wife, Laura Spelman.
There is a lengthy tradition in this country of our wealthiest residents financing educational opportunities for the less fortunate. Let’s hope Mr. Smith ignores the critics. He’s in very good company.
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2) Good news for India-Modi was reelected, so the economy has a good chance to grow strongly for several more years and to grab production from Chinese factories moving out of China. Removing steel tariffs on Canada and Mexico clears the way for USMCA to be passed if the Dems will pass anything. There are tight restrictions to prevent China from dumping and transporting to the US. Germany has been in economic decline for four straight months and likely that might continue for a while. Japan is being propped up by government spending and the central bank for now. Brexit will fail again and then there will be a new election for prime minister. The pro-Brexit party of Nigel Farage won the recent Europe Parliament vote in the UK by a wide margin which may bring him to the PM post and stability to the Brexit discussions, but nobody yet knows where this goes. It will be a very messy summer in UK politics. China is gearing for a real trade war, likely betting on Trump not being reelected. We are in for a long fight now, but most people realize this fight should have been waged a decade ago. Obama completely failed to deal with the China problem, just as he did with N Korea and Iran. China will try to withhold rare earths and do other things, but in the end they will lose. They will push very hard for Biden to win as they paid a $1 billion bribe to his son Hunter in 2017 while Biden was there in Beijing. It was called a investment in Hunter’s private equity fund which he had zero experience running one. They have done added investments with Hunter and Kerry’s son who is Hunter’s partner. This will all come forward soon, and will destroy Biden for the election. That is on top of the threat of withholding $1 billion Biden made to stop a Ukraine investigation of a company his son was a director for. (it is on video) All in, the next year is not going to be nice for much of the world. The EU remains a mess and the banks are still using negative interest rates to try to get companies to borrow, but it is not working. It is a big message that when you can’t stimulate an economy with negative rates, things are in deep trouble. The EU and China will likely be in further decline for the next several months or longer. Oil prices will sank to $58 as these economies slow further. The political pressure to revolt against Brussels control is growing across the EU. The chance that the EU will exist in its current form in five years is low. In short, the world economy is a mess right now. The US remains the island of growth and economic stability, but that could change now with the Dems going all out to destroy Trump nothing good will get done, and the China tariffs will add to the downward pressures. It is going to be a long unpredictable summer.
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2) Good news for India-Modi was reelected, so the economy has a good chance to grow strongly for several more years and to grab production from Chinese factories moving out of China. Removing steel tariffs on Canada and Mexico clears the way for USMCA to be passed if the Dems will pass anything. There are tight restrictions to prevent China from dumping and transporting to the US. Germany has been in economic decline for four straight months and likely that might continue for a while. Japan is being propped up by government spending and the central bank for now. Brexit will fail again and then there will be a new election for prime minister. The pro-Brexit party of Nigel Farage won the recent Europe Parliament vote in the UK by a wide margin which may bring him to the PM post and stability to the Brexit discussions, but nobody yet knows where this goes. It will be a very messy summer in UK politics. China is gearing for a real trade war, likely betting on Trump not being reelected. We are in for a long fight now, but most people realize this fight should have been waged a decade ago. Obama completely failed to deal with the China problem, just as he did with N Korea and Iran. China will try to withhold rare earths and do other things, but in the end they will lose. They will push very hard for Biden to win as they paid a $1 billion bribe to his son Hunter in 2017 while Biden was there in Beijing. It was called a investment in Hunter’s private equity fund which he had zero experience running one. They have done added investments with Hunter and Kerry’s son who is Hunter’s partner. This will all come forward soon, and will destroy Biden for the election. That is on top of the threat of withholding $1 billion Biden made to stop a Ukraine investigation of a company his son was a director for. (it is on video) All in, the next year is not going to be nice for much of the world. The EU remains a mess and the banks are still using negative interest rates to try to get companies to borrow, but it is not working. It is a big message that when you can’t stimulate an economy with negative rates, things are in deep trouble. The EU and China will likely be in further decline for the next several months or longer. Oil prices will sank to $58 as these economies slow further. The political pressure to revolt against Brussels control is growing across the EU. The chance that the EU will exist in its current form in five years is low. In short, the world economy is a mess right now. The US remains the island of growth and economic stability, but that could change now with the Dems going all out to destroy Trump nothing good will get done, and the China tariffs will add to the downward pressures. It is going to be a long unpredictable summer.
So what does this mean for the US. Not helpful, but not terrible. The US economy seems to be feeding itself with low inflation, nicely rising wages, and minimal unemployment, and very high consumer confidence. Tariffs will be an issue, but not nearly as bad as retailers and some others predict. Farmers are getting partially bailed out, and will continue to be until the election if needed. Wal Mart and Target, and others are already planning alternate sources. The retailers will eat some of the cost, they will minimally raise prices across the board to eat some more, the Yuan will decline further eating some of the cost, Chinese producers will eat some, and in the end the impact will not be so bad as many fear. $300 billion is the base amount, but tariffs are only 25% of that or $75 billion. Let’s assume a 7% currency differential-that is a $21 billion reduction in impact, and let’s assume producers in China eat 5% or $15 billion. Now $75 is $39 billion impact. Now let’s assume retailers like Wal Mart eat 2% or another $6 billion. Now we are down to a $33 billion impact spread over hundreds of products, some of which are components with the US assembler will maybe eat part. In the end, there will be an impact, but over time with producers going elsewhere and Wal Mart and Target and others finding non-Chinese sources, the real impact spread over a full year will not be terribly damaging- maybe .2% or .3% of GDP at most. Companies that depend on Chinese imports will scream, and being election time, they will scream loudly, but Trump has to hold strong. We must win this war -especially the theft of IP. History depends on this. We stop Chinese theft and their military growth, and Silk Road now, or really bad things will happen 5-10 years from now. The long term threat cannot be over stated. The more the Dems attack Trump and call for impeachment, the more dangerous the Chinese become as they misunderstand what is happening, and refuse to deal.
Who pays for tariffs? While the importer pays the tariff, the Chinese bear some of the cost in a lower Yuan which raises their cost for what they import. Their producers are leaving to produce elsewhere, or are eating some of the tariff cost in their margins, so indirectly the Chinese are paying some of the tariff. You need to look at who is bearing the true costs, not who pays the tariff. So if I pay the tariff, but my cost is reduced because of currency and the seller in China reducing his price, then in real cost, the Chinese are eating some of the tariff, and my true net cost is not the full tariff.
Good news as predicted- oil is now $58.00. Great for low wage consumers and the economy. The ten year is at 2.3% which will help lower mortgage rates and borrowing costs generally, which is good news for housing, and the corporate sector which is borrowing heavily. It is also good news for the government as it materially lowers rates on Treasuries-a major piece of the deficit.
If you are a climate change advocate -consider this. None of the big signatories to the Paris accord is complying. The US is far out performing all of them. The EU is building 28 new coal plants, (Germany gets 40% of its power from 84 coal plants), Tukey is building 93 new coal plants, India 446, S Korea 26, Japan 45, and China which already has 2363 coal plants, is building 1174 new ones. The US has 15 and is building ZERO, and will be closing some of the 15. These are the facts. You like windmills. They require power plants run on gas for backup. To build one windmill requires 1100 tons of concrete and rebar, 370 tons of steel , 1000 pounds of mined minerals like rare earths, iron and copper. Plus very long transmission lines (lots of copper and rubber covering for those, plus many transmission towers.) Rare earths come from Uighur areas of China with slave labor, cobalt comes from places where they use child labor, and they use lots of oil to run rock crushers. This is all to build one windmill. So you think wind is great to save the planet. You forget what it takes to make one windmill, and they have a backup, inefficient, partially running, gas powered generating plant to keep the grid functioning. To generate enough power to really matter, you need millions of acres of land and water, filled with windmills which consume habitats, and which generate light distortions and certain noise, which can create health issues for humans and animals living near a windmill. Nobody wants to talk about the real cost. And this all leaves out thousands of dead eagles and other birds. There is no free lunch when it comes to power. Fossil fuel is not going away for decades.
My guess- the Dems are going nuts over their investigations and calling Trump unstable because they know Barr is about to reveal the worst political scandal in US history, and they want to change the subject, and deflect the scandal by new revelations about Trump, or impeaching him, releasing his personal financial records, and his taxes. They hope to create so much noise with the help of the press, about Trump, that it will drown out the real conspiracy to overthrow the duly elected president. This is insanity when they talk about arresting the AG and Secy of Treasury. How do they have any right to have private bank records of a private company from long before Trump was president. Unless they have a specific evidence or a charge, they have no right. It sets a terrible fishing expedition precedent. If they get the tax returns from NY State it will also set a terrible precedent. They are out of control now. If they do get those records they will be leaked and misinterpreted and misstated. They will be published in pieces to misstate things as the press did for 2 years with Mueller. It will be a horrid mess. They have lost their minds. Pelosi calling for an intervention is disgraceful and clearly driven by the far left members to get the press to hammer home the concept that Trump is mentally ill now that collusion is off the table. They are doing irreparable damage to the country with this sh-t show, and the country will be much worse for it. Other countries will have no idea what to make of this disgrace. The Chinese will never do a deal under these conditions since they will think Trump may be gone. In the end, I believe Barr will indict some top people from the Obama administration, and people will be horrified by what really happened with the dossier, and FISA, and the conspiracy to get Trump out of office. The Dems will lose in 2020 when this all unfolds, and they are shown to have hatched an attempted coup. Nadler is a disgusting little pig who is just a hack. Schiff is a proven liar who is more interested in running for governor of CA than helping the country. By late June this will begin to unfold and then cascade. Pelosi clearly intended to blow up the infrastructure meeting by coming out one hour before and claiming Trump essentially broke the law with new obstruction by declaring executive privilege, and claiming that is impeachable. His claim of privilege and immunity for McGahn and others is normal and perfectly legal. What did they think Trump was going to do after that- just sit there and act like nothing happened. It was a set up. Washington now has become a stinking swamp of snakes and slime worse than it has ever been as the Dems become even more desperate to stop what is coming from Barr.
If you want some sense of the impact of SALT, and the high end housing market, the Hamptons is a prime example. It is the place of the most number of very expensive second homes in the country. An average house is $1.5-$3 million for a weekend house, and many homes are valued at over $5 million, or even $10 million, or much more-for weekend houses. The market is down double digits. People who have no pressures to sell are taking their house off the market, or are just waiting for a good offer. Almost nobody in the Hamptons is under any financial pressure these days, so there are no discount buys. Even locals who are contractors are making such a good living that they are under no pressure. There is simply no major demand to buy at the over $1.5 million level, so little is selling. The property tax deduction issue, and the limits on mortgage interest deductions is having a major impact. When you consider a house is $3 million, or $5 million, the mortgage is big and property taxes are very high, so those loss of deducts is huge. Cuomo is having a real problem finding a way to cover his excessive budget as a result of rich guys moving out for tax purposes.
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3) A LAWYER WITH A BRIEFCASE CAN STEAL MORE THAN A THOUSAND MEN WITH GUNS.
The Republican Party is different.
5) Democrat platform for 2020
3) A LAWYER WITH A BRIEFCASE CAN STEAL MORE THAN A THOUSAND MEN WITH GUNS.
Barack Obama is a lawyer. Michelle Obama is a lawyer.
Hillary Clinton is a lawyer. Bill Clinton is a lawyer.
John Edwards is a lawyer. Elizabeth Edwards was a lawyer.
Every Democrat nominee since 1984 went to law school (although Gore did not graduate).
Every Democrat vice presidential nominee since 1976, except for Lloyd Bentsen, went to law school.
Look at leaders of the Democrat Party in Congress:
Harry Reid was a lawyer. Nancy Pelosi is a lawyer.
The Republican Party is different.
President Trump is a business man
President Bush was a businessman.
Vice President Cheney was a businessman.
The leaders of the Republican Revolution:
Newt Gingrich was a history professor.
Tom Delay was an exterminator. Dick Armey was an economist.
House Minority Leader Boehner was a plastic manufacturer.
The former Senate Majority Leader Bill First was a heart surgeon.
Who was the last Republican president who was a lawyer? Gerald Ford, who left office 31 years ago and who barely won the Republican nomination as a sitting president, running against Ronald Reagan in 1976.
The Republican Party is made up of real people doing real work, who are often the targets of lawyers.
This is very interesting. I never thought about it this way.
The Democrat Party is made up of lawyers. Democrats mock and scorn men who create wealth, like Bush and Cheney, or who heal the sick, like First, or who immerse themselves in history, like Gingrich. The Lawyers Party sees these sorts of people, who provide goods and services that people want, as the enemies of America .. And, so we have seen the procession of official enemies, in the eyes of the Lawyers Party, grow.
Against whom did Hillary and Obama rail?....Pharmaceutical companies, oil companies, hospitals, manufacturers, fast food restaurant chains, large retail businesses, bankers, and anyone producing anything of value in our nation. This is the natural consequence of viewing everything through the eyes of lawyers. Lawyers solve problems by successfully representing their clients, in this case the American people Lawyers seek to have new laws passed, they seek to win lawsuits, they press appellate courts to overturn precedent, and lawyers always parse language to favor their side.
Confined to the narrow practice of law, that is fine. But it is an awful way to govern a great nation. When politicians as lawyers begin to view some Americans as clients and other Americans as opposing parties, then the role of the legal system in our life becomes all-consuming. Some Americans become adverse parties of our very government. We are not all litigants in some vast social class-action suit. We are citizens of a republic that promises us a great deal of freedom from laws, from courts, and from lawyers.
Today, we are drowning in laws; we are contorted by judicial decisions; we are driven to distraction by omnipresent lawyers in all parts of our once private lives. America has a place for laws and lawyers, but that place is modest and reasonable, not vast and unchecked. When the most important decision for our next president is whom he will appoint to the Supreme Court, the role of lawyers and the law in America is too big.
When House Democrats sue America in order to hamstring our efforts to learn what our enemies are planning to do to us, then the role of litigation in America has become crushing.
Perhaps Americans will understand that change cannot be brought to our nation by those lawyers who already largely dictate American society and business. Perhaps Americans will see that hope does not come from the mouths of lawyers but from personal dreams nourished by hard work. Perhaps Americans will embrace the truth that more lawyers with more power will only make our problems worse.
The United States has 5% of the world’s population and 66% of the world’s lawyers! Tort (Legal) reform legislation has been introduced in congress several times in the last several years to limit punitive damages in ridiculous lawsuits such as spilling hot coffee on yourself and suing the establishment that sold it to you and also to limit punitive damages in huge medical malpractice lawsuits. This legislation has continually been blocked from even being voted on by the Democrat Party. When you see that 97% of the political contributions from the American Trial Lawyers Association go to the Democrat Party, then you realize who is responsible for our medical and product costs being so high!
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4)The Immigration "debate" has created a flurry of coverage in local and national media, and we hear many stories that break your heart. One such story from the Los Angeles Times is quoted below:
Latinos in Southern California say they are worried by the crackdown on immigration and the potential impact on their families. In an attempt to seek some relief from this terrible situation, one local Latino man posted this note on the White House website:
"I'm terrified that President Trump is going to deport my Latino mother-in-law, who is here illegally and lives at - 1801 3rd Street, LosAngeles, CA 90023.
It's the blue house on the corner. She gets home
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5) Democrat platform for 2020
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++1. Fred Stevens, a welder, and Joe Frisco, a bartender, neither of whom went to college, will have to pay off the student loans for Eric, an Art History major, and Emma, a Gender Studies major, because they cannot get jobs.(Elizabeth Warren).2. Yusef Hussein, who killed 23 children by bombing their school, will be allowed to vote from prison. (Bernie Sanders)3. Grace Thompson, who worked hard for 47 years, must give up her employer furnished medical plan and join the National Health plan. (The whole slate)4. La'Darius Washington, who has never had a regular job, will receive a monthly income from the federal government to spend as he pleases. (Amy Klobuchar)5. Billy White, age 16, who has trouble with subject/verb agreement in English class, still has trouble with fractions in math class, and thinks Judge Judy is on the Supreme Court will get to vote. (Kirsten Gillibrand)6. Stan Billings, an avid deer hunter, will have his semi-automatic rifle (fires one shot each time you pull the trigger) taken away, or go to jail, because it looks like an AR 15. (Eric Swalwell)7. Sven Johannson, whose grandfather immigrated to the US in 1953 will have to pay reparations to Sha'lyndia Jefferson because she THINKS her great-great-great grandfather MIGHT HAVE BEEN a slave. (Cory Booker)8. Thomas Finch, who is an ambitious and motivated adult, cannot get a job because he doesn't want to join a labor union. (Kamala Harris)9. Sammy Thomas, a farmer, will no longer be able to haul his crops to market in his 3/4 ton diesel pick-up, but will have to make 43 trips in his Toyota Pruis. (The whole slate)10. The population of the US will become 76.4% Hispanic because all of the existing border wall will be torn down. (Beto O’Rourke)11. NONE OF THIS WILL MATTER BECAUSE THE WORLD IS GOING TO END IN TWELVE YEARS. (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez)
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