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Monthly Archives: February 2019

TOTUS OWNS IT!


The past 24 months have been less than stellar for TOTUS. His failures began when he won the Presidency. At that time while riding a wave of approval for his talk show method of governing (seeking approval by using “buzz words” instead of meaningful statements). His Tweets have become legendary in his own mind. The downhill slide of his executive orders, the much touted “Tax Reform” and attempts at repealing the ACA to name a few all will appear on his list accomplishments(?). The current and ongoing trade wars, the humanitarian crisis created by him at the Southern border as a cover for and distraction from his other failures will all be remembered by all in the next election cycle. It is small wonder that his business successes have been fewer than touted.He easily tosses out huge dollar numbers about some project with no details on how the funds are spent and takes exception when questioned about details. It has been said that he is a counter puncher when attacked. There would be no attack if there were some reasonable proposals issued  with some explanations of how they would work instead we get hyperbole and outright lies. Currently most if not all of the events occurring here at home and abroad are of his making and manufacture as this is his “style”. His aim is adoration at any price. He has total ownership of these manufactured crises  and history will show it.

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How It is Supposed To Work


 

These past 10 years have shown us the worst and best of our Federal legislature. The way it should work is: we have liberal, conservative and several stages between them. If these groups were in office in any reasonable proportion we would not have had the nasty unproductive governance that eventually brought us TOTUS. The radicals on all sides have pushed us to a “them or us” situation that serves the electorate and their backers NOT the oft cited “American People”! These so-called conservatives, liberals, progressives have done no more than confuse most of us to the point that we no longer can distinguish which idiots to support. Personally I like to know which idiot can do the least amount of harm to me. To that end I usually vote independent or Scamocrat but I would vote Dupublican if there were no Bitch McConnell’s or Flip flop Graham’s. These two are examples of legislators who have the public eye and lie each time they speak. It apparently is normal for politicians to keep the truth from their constituents while mouthing what their constituents will accept or want to hear. The real problem became apparent to me when I happened on C-span during a hearing on the “wall”. A Dupublican member of the panel stated obvious untruths and was called on it by a member of the gallery, that gentleman demanded that the questioner (a voter) be removed and not allowed to essentially question his veracity. It seemed odd to me that an “elected” official would want a voting member of the public be ousted from a hearing that affects them. It looks to be the accepted way of doing business with no public input, the same public that put these folks in office and the folks who in their races for election stated many times that they will work for the “people”. How it is supposed to work is that the people who supported these people have a right to question the actions of those they have elected.

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Sarah Sanders: God wanted Trump to become president


By Rebecca Morin 16 hrs ago
“If you don’t understand the difference between a prescriptive and a descriptive definition, confusion is inevitable. That linguistic distinction helps bring some clarity: there are two questions at issue, 1) what people who call themselves “evangelicals” or “fundamentalists” actually say they are and 2) what those two groups ought to be.”
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders claimed Wednesday that President Donald Trump’s presidency was part of a higher calling.
“I think God calls all of us to fill different roles at different times and I think that he wanted Donald Trump to become president,” Sanders said during an interview with Christian Broadcast Network News. “And that’s why he’s there, and I think he has done a tremendous job in supporting a lot of the things that people of faith really care about.”
The president has long touted his Christian faith, and his presidency was overwhelmingly supported by white evangelical voters.
Throughout his tenure, Trump and his administration have pursued a number of key issues backed by evangelicals, such as restricting abortion rights, eliminating a birth control mandate and expanding school choice and voucher programs that would likely benefit private religious schools.
Most recently, Trump in a tweet endorsed a controversial campaign to introduce Bible literacy classes to public schools.
His support with those voters hasn’t faltered despite several gaffes, such as when he mispronounced “Second Corinthians” during the 2016 campaign. The president was also criticized for not saying the Apostle’s Creed or singing some of the hymns during George H.W. Bush’s funeral in December.
Trump’s multiple divorces and alleged affairs have also not significantly affected the president’s popularity with white evangelical voters.

Could it be that the “white Evangelicals” are not as “holy” and righteous as they purport to be? Religious beliefs have no place in the national politics and should be privately held. The diversity of America cannot allow for personal convictions to bend or alter the legal processes of the nation.MA

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Partisan battle erupts over Democrats’ legislation to make Election Day a federal holiday and bolster ethics rules


Partisan politics arise again, why wouldn’t all of our representatives want to have laws that assure fair and honest elections, and certainly a Holiday where citizens can vote without stressing about getting to the polls to vote is not a bad thing. Again “Bitch” is going against the oft cited “American People”. MA
Alexander Nazaryan 14 hours ago

WASHINGTON — At a Wednesday hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, a sharply partisan tone marked debate over the Democrats’ first new bill of the 116th Congress, a proposal that would make Election Day a federal holiday and institute new ethics rules.
Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., poignantly invoked the history of racist voting laws. Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., loudly argued with the former White House ethics chief, Walter Shaub. There were references to “illegals” committing voter fraud, as well as to “gobs of cash” flowing from Saudi Arabia to the Trump International Hotel. If the rancor over the proposed legislation is any indication, it could be a long and not especially productive two years in Congress, where Democrats now control the House of Representatives and Republicans have even firmer control of the Senate than they did before the 2018 midterm elections.
Named HR 1 because of its legislative pole position, the For the People Act of 2019 was introduced by Rep. John Sarbanes, D-Md. The bill would expand access to voting, in part by instituting automatic voter registration and making Election Day a federal holiday. It would also put stronger ethical constraints on the executive branch, in part by making it more difficult for people to move through the “revolving door” between public and private sector work, and by strengthening the Office of Government Ethics. The bill also contains a section on campaign finance disclosure.
Cummings, the committee’s new chair, called the bill “one of the boldest reform packages to be considered in the history of this body,” adding that it would “clean up in government, fight secret money in politics and make it easier for American citizens across this great country to vote.” Like other Democrats on the committee, Cummings portrayed the bill as an effort to broadly restore power to the American people by diminishing the influence of corporate interests — lobbying firms, government contractors, “dark money” political action groups — and to encourage participation in the democratic process.
It would have been difficult to craft a bill more likely to annoy Republicans. And Republicans were annoyed. In this, they were merely taking a cue from their upper-chamber counterpart, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who on the Senate floor called it “a package of urgent measures to rewrite the rules of American politics for the exclusive benefit of the Democratic Party,” as well as a “power grab.”
That language was echoed by many Republicans on the committee, for whom more muscular ethics rules are little more than a means to punish President Trump for being an unrepentant billionaire. And they view any expansion of voting rights as a way of increasing the rolls of the Democratic Party, since many communities disenfranchised today — minorities, immigrants, the working poor — tend to lean left politically.
For his part, ranking member Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, blasted the bill as “For the People Who Want Democrats to Win Elections From Now On” and characterized it as rife with “tired” and “radical” proposals. This elicited laughter from the audience, which packed the hearing room in the Rayburn House Office Building (an even more popular hearing, on climate change, was being held on the same hallway).
“You laugh, but it’s true,” Jordan said. Seated at the podium some feet away were three stars of the new House class: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. They offered their own commentary to Republicans’ statements, often with head shakes or small sounds of disapproval.
Republicans saved most of their ire for the voting-rights section of the bill. In order to make their case, the committee’s GOP members sometimes seemed to willfully misrepresent the facts. For example, Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga., referenced “tens of thousands of illegal aliens voting” in Texas. He appeared to be repeating a false claim recently made by Trump. Voter fraud has been a longstanding concern of the president, though it is believed to be virtually nonexistent.
Republicans on the committee were also not exactly thrilled with the other portion of the bill, and scoffed when Shaub, the former ethics head, testified that “we now find ourselves in an ethics crisis.” Shaub first served in that role under President Barack Obama and stayed on under Trump for several months months before finally growing exasperated with what he saw as the president’s lack of commitment to the rule of law. Upon his departure, he said that the United States was on the cusp of becoming a “laughingstock.”
Shaub subsequently joined CNN, where he was an outspoken Trump critic (he also enthusiastically assails the current administration on Twitter). Republicans were thus not bound to take seriously his recommendations, including his call to bolster the investigative reach of the Office of Government Ethics and to allow the agency’s head greater power in ethics-related decision. Meadows, leader of the Freedom Caucus, noted that during the Obama administration, Shaub had averred that the office did not need expanded powers.
“How do you have this evolution in such a short period of time?” Meadows asked, growing animated and doing little to hold back the sarcasm in his voice.
“Frankly, I was naive,” Shaub said during the tense back-and-forth.
But no moment could rival Cummings’s evocation of the legacy of disenfranchising African-American voters. His voice rose as he read from and summarized a 2016 federal appeals court ruling that struck down a North Carolina voter identification law, which it said targeted African-Americans with “surgical precision.”
Cummings said that a year ago, as his mother was dying, her last words were: “Do not let them take our votes away from us.”
It was powerful oratory, but it is not likely to boost the bill’s seemingly dim legislative prospects. Cummings and his Democratic colleagues may well pass HR 1, but the bill will meet with staunch opposition from McConnell and Senate Republicans, who appear to be uniformly opposed to the measure. In addition to his comments on the Senate floor, McConnell recently offered his thoughts on For the People Act in a Washington Post op-ed, where he said of the bill, “this outlandish Democrat proposal is not a promising start.”

Ajit Pai loses in court—judges overturn gutting of tribal broadband program


Court: FCC failed to provide evidence and ignored harm to broadband access.
Jon Brodkin – 2/4/2019, 10:32 AM

A federal appeals court has overturned Ajit Pai’s attempt to take broadband subsidies away from tribal residents.
The Pai-led Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 in November 2017 to make it much harder for tribal residents to obtain a $25-per-month Lifeline subsidy that reduces the cost of Internet or phone service.
The change didn’t take effect because in August 2018, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit stayed the FCC decision pending appeal. The same court followed that up on Friday last week with a ruling that reversed the FCC decision and remanded the matter back to the commission for a new rule-making proceeding.
Further Reading
FCC stands by decision to raise broadband prices on American Indians

“[S]ince 2000, low-income consumers living on Tribal lands may receive an additional $25 per month for these services through the Tribal Lifeline program in recognition of the additional hurdles to affordable telecommunications service on Tribal lands,” the court’s decision noted.
The Pai FCC’s 2017 decision would have limited the $25 subsidy to “facilities-based” carriers—those that build their own networks—making it impossible for tribal residents to use the $25 subsidy to buy telecom service from resellers. The move would have dramatically limited tribal residents’ options for purchasing subsidized service, but the FCC claimed it was necessary in order to encourage carriers to build their own networks.
The same FCC decision also would have eliminated the $25 subsidy in urban areas, reserving it only for tribal lands in rural areas. The court’s decision Friday, in response to an appeal filed by tribal organizations and small wireless carriers, overturned both of these limitations.
A three-judge panel said the FCC failed to consider that facilities-based providers have been leaving the Lifeline program and provided no evidence that banning resellers would spur new broadband deployment. The FCC also failed to properly consider how eliminating the subsidy in urban areas would affect consumers, judges determined.
The judges wrote:
For the following reasons, we grant the petitions for review. The Commission’s adoption of these two limitations was arbitrary and capricious by not providing a reasoned explanation for its change of policy that is supported by record evidence. In adopting the Tribal Facilities Requirement, the Commission’s decision evinces no consideration of the exodus of facilities-based providers from the Tribal Lifeline program. Neither does it point to evidence that banning resellers from the Tribal Lifeline program would promote network buildout. Nor does it analyze the impact of the facilities requirement on Tribal residents who currently rely on wireless resellers. Further, the Commission ignored that its decision is a fundamental change that adversely affects the access and affordability of service for residents of Tribal lands. Similarly, in adopting the Tribal Rural Limitation, the Commission’s decision evinces no consideration of the impact on service access and affordability. Its decision does not examine wireless deployment data related to services to which most Tribal Lifeline recipients subscribe.
In addition, the FCC “failed to provide an adequate opportunity for comment on the proposed limitations,” judges wrote.
Lifeline is paid for by Americans through fees imposed on phone bills. The $25 subsidy involved in the court case is provided to low-income Tribal residents in addition to the typical Lifeline subsidy of $9.25 per month.
Senator blasts Pai, hails court ruling
The court’s decision was released on the same day of oral arguments in the case against the FCC’s net neutrality repeal.
We contacted the FCC today and will update this story if we get a response. The FCC could appeal the ruling.
“This is another example of Chairman Pai pushing his own agenda over the obligations he has to the American public. We saw it with net neutrality, and we’re seeing it with Lifeline,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said in a statement Friday. “He comes in with his mind already made up, ignoring the process he is supposed to take to revisit rules and programs. This is not what Congress intended, and the court is right to overturn the FCC’s misguided and unsupported order.”

Further Reading
Ajit Pai’s supporters say he’s gone too far with plan that hurts poor people

Broadband access in tribal areas is worse than the US as a whole, and tribal access is likely even worse than previously thought because FCC data overstates deployment, according to a September 2018 report by the US Government Accountability Office.
Separately from his tribal Lifeline plan, Pai has proposed kicking resellers out of the Lifeline program nationwide, not just in tribal areas. This would greatly limit poor people’s choices, as more than 70 percent of wireless phone users who rely on Lifeline subsidies buy their plans from resellers.
But even Pai’s usual supporters criticized that proposal, and Friday’s court ruling could make it harder for Pai to kick resellers out of Lifeline entirely.

Danrarbc wrote:
How many Ajit decisions are going to end up overturned because in his greed to speed along changes to help ISP balance sheets it turns out he completely ignored FCC processes? With luck, pretty much all of them. Because from what I’ve seen, for the most part, every decision by the FCC since Pai was appointed chair has been anti-consumer, pro ISP, all to the detriment of the consumer. I’m reasonably certain that’s not what the FCC is supposed to be doing

How Much Money Has Congress Taken From Social Security?


This Title line at first glance conjures up a different idea than the actual story below.MA

Sean Williams 3 hrs ago

For better or worse, Social Security is the financial foundation responsible for supporting tens of millions of retirees, as well as millions of long-term disabled workers and the survivors of deceased workers. Of the nearly 63 million people currently receiving a benefit check, more than a third are being kept out of poverty as a result of the added income they’re receiving from the program.
Yet for as important as Social Security is, it’s also about to encounter its biggest speed bump since being signed into law back in 1935.
Social Security’s problems come to a head
Every year, the Social Security Board of Trustees releases a report examining the short-term (10 year) and long-term (75 year) outlook for America’s most important social program. Since 1985, it’s been warning that long-term revenue wouldn’t be sufficient to sustain the existing payout schedule, which includes assumptions for annual cost-of-living adjustments. Ongoing demographic changes that include the retirement of baby boomers, increased longevity, lower fertility rates, and growing income inequality, are adversely impacting Social Security.
According to the June 2018 report, the program is soon expected to begin paying out more money than it collects each year. The last time we saw a net cash outflow from Social Security was back in 1982. While these net cash outflows will be relatively small at first, compared to the $2.9 trillion currently held in asset reserves, they’re expected to grow in size by 2020 and beyond.
Based on the estimates of the Trustees, Social Security’s $2.9 trillion in asset reserves will be completely gone by 2034. Should lawmakers not find a way to raise additional revenue and/or cut expenditures by then, an across-the-board cut in benefits of up to 21% may await. That’s particularly worrisome, given that 62% of retired workers rely on their benefit check to account for at least half of their income.
Is Congress really the problem?
How has Social Security gone from being such a successful program to an outright mess? One postulation is that the federal government is to blame.
You see, the Social Security program has accrued close to $2.9 trillion in net cash surpluses since its inception, with nearly all of this amount being generated over the past 35 years. Put another way, the program has collected more money than it’s expended every year since 1983.
Where is this money? That’s the big point of contention. By law, these net cash surpluses are required to be invested in special-issue government bonds and, to a lesser extent, certificates of indebtedness. In return, the federal government gets access to $2.9 trillion in borrowing capacity that it can use for normal line items in its budget. In other words, Social Security’s Trust has $2.9 trillion in asset reserves, but not a red cent of cash in the vault, so to speak.
Some folks have called for the complete repayment of this borrowing, with interest, and have suggested that the Social Security program would be just fine if Congress complied with this request.
But is this correct? Has Congress pilfered $2.9 trillion (or more) from Social Security and put the program between a rock and a hard place? Well… no.
The federal government hasn’t pilfered a dime from Social Security
The fact is that Congress, despite borrowing $2.9 trillion from Social Security, hasn’t pilfered or misappropriated a red cent from the program. Regardless of whether Social Security was presented as a unified budget under Lyndon B. Johnson or as a separate entity (i.e., off budget), none of its funding has been conflated with normal federal spending.
What’s more, Social Security is already generating interest income from the federal government on its borrowing. As of Dec. 31, 2018, the $2.9 trillion in special-issue bonds and certificates of indebtedness were yielding an average of 2.85%. Since these bonds range in maturity from 1 to 15 years, there’s plenty of opportunity to take advantage of rising yields and adjust the program’s bond investments as needed.
Ultimately, Congress’ borrowing allowed Social Security to collect $85.1 billion in interest income for 2017, and it’s expected to provide $804 billion in aggregate interest income between 2018 and 2027. In other words, when opponents of this borrowing complain about the program not receiving interest, they’re simply not doing their homework.
Making matters worse, some folks want to see this borrowing repaid in full. Doing so would require the federal government to find $2.9 trillion in borrowing elsewhere if that happened. But more importantly, it would deprive the program of valuable interest income, pushing Social Security into the red very quickly. Cash sitting around in a vault would do no one any good as it’d be losing purchasing power almost every year to inflation.
Lastly, regardless of whether Social Security owns government-issued bonds or cash, it doesn’t change the asset reserves held by the program. It’s $2.9 trillion either way. To suggest that repaying these bonds would put the program on more solid footing is simply not correct, as it’d have no impact on the program’s total assets, and it would actually hurt its revenue-generating prospects.
Long story short, Congress is in the clear on this one.

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IF


If Al Capone wasn’t a criminal could he have been an elected official? If TOTUS weren’t a consummate liar would he be President? If Congress was as upright as they campaigned to be would we have the Racial and class divide we are now experiencing? If there were no “freedom” of speech and the press would we be as informed (correctly or not) as we can be? The “ifs” could be  guides as to where we should be putting our attention. If as a body our elected officials were people who truly represented the people they are supposed to then why are they exempt from:

1.The ACA (Obamacare) restrictions?

2. loss of pay during a shutdown?

3. Receiving a cost of living adjustment due to a law “they enacted”?

this is just a few things our “representatives” have as perks of the office (paid by us out of the U.S. Treasury) along with funding for office supplies, pay for staffing in Washington and their home states. The bright side: The funding is limited and has to be accounted for.

If we as voters ignore the issues that we consider “close to our hearts” and promoted by others using the advertising tactics of tantalizing us with what’s better and best for us, we could conceivably elect better people to advocate for us in Washington. the old saw “Lest we forget” should always be in our n minds when listening to politicians and information “news” spokespersons. This is just “ifs” we now need “do’s”.

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