We need to talk about Donald: cursing and swearing allowed

[Animavore]

[pErvinalia]

I wonder if he realises what a stupid thing it was to talk about "the turnout"? Is he self aware enough?

[Svartalf]

his whole conduct of the past 20 years shows he has no self awareness, love it or be fired is the motto.

[Tero]

Trump tax plan will not bring bluecollar jobs. Wages are too high, not taxes.

“We lost the jobs. We lost the taxes. They closed the buildings. They closed the plants and factories. We got nothing but unemployment. We got nothing.”

As Trump frequently notes, the unemployment rate in July was 4.3 percent — the lowest level in 16 years. So this overwrought language seems misplaced.

“We have gone from a tax rate that is lower than our economic competitors, to one that is more than 60 percent higher. … In other words, foreign companies have more than a 60 percent tax advantage over American companies.”

The United States certainly has one of the highest statutory corporate tax rates in the world, currently pegged as high as 39.1 percent when including state taxes. (The federal rate is 35 percent.) Trump says it is 60 percent higher than “our economic competitors,” comparing 39.1 percent to the average rate for the other members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, which is 25.5 percent when not weighted for GDP. (It is 29.6 percent when weighted for GDP.)

But the official rate does not necessarily tell the whole story. What also matters is the actual tax a company pays, after deductions and tax benefits. That is known as the effective tax rate, which can be calculated differently depending on the survey. According to the Congressional Research Service, the effective rate for the United States is 27.1 percent, compared to an effective GDP-weighted average of 27.7 percent for the OECD. “Although the U.S. statutory tax rate is higher, the average effective rate is about the same, and the marginal rate on new investment is only slightly higher,” the CRS says.

"“Today, we are still taxing our businesses at 35 percent, and it’s way more than that. And think of it, in some cases, way above 40 percent when you include state and local taxes in various states. "
As we noted, the statutory federal corporate tax rate in the United States is 35 percent, making the United States the highest among G-20 countries, including the countries Trump listed. But the effective corporate tax rate in the United States in 2012 was 18.6 percent, making it the fourth highest among G-20 countries, behind Argentina, Japan and Britain, according to the CBO.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fac ... 2c9a55c2c4

[Tero]

Everything terrific. Even the lies are the best lies ever!
Big lies!
Noah:“How can one person lie so big?” “You have no connections with Russia but you signed a deal to build the world’s tallest building there. Like, the gap between the lie and the truth could not be wider.”

[Tero]

Trump empire business crimes and associated partners cannot be pardoned:

Politico reported Wednesday that New York’s attorney general Eric Schneiderman is now working with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III in the probe of financial transactions involving Paul Manafort, a story independently confirmed by The Washington Post by a source familiar with the investigation.

While the involvement of Schneiderman could produce nothing and is in an early stage, the news sends an important message to President Trump: his pardon power does not extend to state crimes.

In the event Manafort or anyone else is charged under New York law, or threatened with indictment, there will be nothing Trump can do about it.

His “power to grant reprieves and pardons” only covers “offenses against the United States,” according to Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution.

But the news that the New York attorney general is teaming up with Mueller attracted a good deal of attention from Trump critics because of the pardon issue. Trump pointedly tweeted in July that he has “complete power to pardon” aides, family members and possibly even himself. His pardon Friday of former Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio was a seen by some as strong message that he is willing to use the pardon power liberally.

“So much for strategic use of pardon power with Manafort,” tweeted Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe.

Manafort has denied any wrongdoing.

There are plenty of points of entry into the Manafort probe for a New York prosecutor.

The Wall Street Journal reported in May that Schneiderman and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr., were examining Manafort real estate transactions across the U.S., including in New York, “for indications of money-laundering and fraud.”

NBC news reported that some of those New York loans were financed in part by a Ukrainian émigré to the U.S.

Manafort told NBC through a spokesman that his transactions were “executed in a transparent fashion …” But NBC reported that Manafort’s name and signature did not appear on loan documents.

Manafort was chairman of Trump’s campaign until he resigned amid growing scrutiny of his decade of work in Ukraine on behalf of a Russia-friendly political party, the Party of Regions.
But Mueller could conceivably use any jeopardy faced by Manafort in New York to gain his cooperation into the broader investigation, without the hindrance of a Trump pardon of Manafort.

Indeed, The Post reported earlier this month that Manafort’s allies feared that Meuller wants to build a case against Manafort independent of the 2016 campaign “in hopes that he would provide information against others in Trump’s inner circle in exchange for lessening his legal exposure.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/mor ... 5464d1c7e7

[Animavore]

Right, enough of the funnies and the stupid tweets, back to the things that really matter.

How Congress Is Cementing Trump's Anti-Climate Orders into Law.

President Donald Trump marvels at his own velocity when he boasts about dismantling the Obama climate legacy. "I have been moving at record pace to cancel these regulations and to eliminate the barriers to domestic energy production, like never before," he said at a recent White House event.

But while Trump focuses on speed, his allies in Congress appear increasingly concerned about the durability of the president's fossil fuel directives.

In recent weeks, they have advanced a handful of legislative measures that echo and extend various presidential orders meant to boost coal, oil and gas production and set aside consideration of climate change.

These moves may seem redundant, but they could provide bulletproof armor during future challenges to Trump's agenda.

"They are ... covering their bases by trying to legislate the rolling back of these safeguards because the process to repeal, undo or rewrite a regulation is as lengthy as the public process that helped establish the standard in the first place," explained Melinda Pierce, chief lobbyist for the Sierra Club. "And, of course, any attempt to roll back environmental or public health standards can and will be challenged in court."

"The Trump administration is attacking every environmental and health protection we have," said Sara Jordan, legislative representative for the League of Conservation Voters. "If these legislative proposals get passed, it will make it that much harder for the next administration to restore environmental protections."

That's why Congressional Republicans are racing to write his instructions into law.

"We need to put the legislative stamp of approval on what the Trump administration is doing," said Rep. Evan Jenkins (R-W.Va.) during a recent debate on the House floor.

The House already has voted to fast-track Trump's withdrawal of a clean water rule and to streamline future environmental reviews over cross-border pipelines like Keystone XL. Now, GOP members are pushing forward legislation to bolster Trump's revival of federal coal leasing, and to bar government regulatory agencies from considering the future damages caused by greenhouse gas pollution.

cont. https://insideclimatenews.org/news/3107 ... via-budget

This government is morally reprehensible and a threat to our way of life.

[pErvinalia]

When is Mueller going to nail Trump? We're not paying him millions of George Soros's dollars to just do nothing!

[Svartalf]

mmmh, if Mueller is anywhere Republican, he's going to do it when the party gives him the green light

[Animavore]

Speaking of Mueller.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/20 ... -card.html

[pErvinalia]

Yeah, speaking of Mueller..

http://rationalia.com/forum/viewtopic.p ... d#p1725294

[Animavore]

Idiots, the lot of them.

[Tero]

witnessing first hand the devastation, by looking at a map in an office
https://twitter.com/ashleyfeinberg/stat ... 0276731904

[L'Emmerdeur]

The list of grafters that DeVos put in to oversight positions in her department is telling.

'Trump, DeVos, and the Creation of an American Oligarchy'

DeVos has turned her department over to the for-profit college industry, which has used its power to protect its own rackets.

One ruling allowing lenders to recover more money from indebted students was issued by Taylor Hansen, a DeVos aide and former lobbyist for the for-profit industry. DeVos’s special assistant is Robert Eitel, the chief compliance officer at a for-profit institution facing multiple investigations for deceptive practices. She has selected A. Wayne Johnson, the CEO of a student-loan company, to run the department’s student loan program. The Department’s General Counsel, Carlos Muñiz, is a consultant who has worked for a for-profit institution that is also facing multiple state investigations for misconduct.

This week, she appointed Julian Schmoke, Jr. to run the Student Aid Enforcement Unit, which the Obama administration created to expose and halt fraud by colleges and universities. Schmoke comes directly from DeVry University, which last year had to pay $100 million over its misleading practices.

The spectacular and telegenic failures of the Trump administration are obscuring the highly effective policies under way. Trump has transformed the government into an apparatus for protecting and enriching incumbent wealth. His chaos and incompetence are tolerable to his party because Trump is fashioning an American oligarchy.

[Brian Peacock]

Trump invents missile defense system. Terrific system! Best system ever!

....The Standard Missile-6, built by major US defense contracter Raytheon, intercepted the missile target at sea in its final seconds of flight after being fired from the USS John Paul Jones....