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Category Archives: My Opinion

Why Now?


With TOTUS and his miscreants continuing a losing battle to overturn the election, exhorting his base to do harm to anyone who defies him, the GOP and many Heavy weights in the party have said and done nothing until it appears that there’s a chance they may lose the Senate majority. When those voices should have been loud was all through these 4 years of mishandling of Governance. This is a stance that “patriots” would have put forth on a non partisan basis. Each Party has their own general ideals and that is fine but as loud and influential voices there should have been as loud a hew and cry as there was during President Obama’s administration and he did a much better job than the current (for the next40 or so days) White House occupant. It should be noted that these are folks who influence your vote but do nothing to improve the country and it’s residents. They do well in the “lining of their own pockets” while extolling the virtues of the party which is devoted to it’s own preservation at any cost. This includes both major parties. While TOTUS wrote executive orders the GOP installed judges that lean to their side instead of judges who neutrally administer the law. The question of “why now” is relevant especially when it is time to re elect members of the House and the Senate. As voters we have a simple obligation and that is to “vet” anyone seeking elective office for the first time or as an incumbent. Remember some have been in office too long to be effective and some should not be there at all!

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Over $3.65 Million in PPP Loans Given to Businesses With Ties to Trump Organization, Kushner Properties


Natalie Colarossi  46 mins ago, Newsweek

So it appears that we (voters and Citizens) are being “Madoffed” by the trump Organization

tOver $3.65 Million in PPP Loans Given to Businesses With Ties to Trump Organization, Kushner Properties

An analysis of data released by the Small Business Administration (SBA) shows that properties owned by the Trump Organization and Kushner Companies were given over $3.65 million worth in Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans – raising questions about the fairness and distribution of loans intended to aid small businesses during the pandemic.Donald Trump wearing a suit and tie: Donald Trump boards an elevator at Trump Tower in New York City on January 16, 2017. According to data released by the SBA, properties owned by Trump's family and the family of Jared Kushner were major beneficiaries from COVID relief loans.© DOMINICK REUTER/AFP/Getty Donald Trump boards an elevator at Trump Tower in New York City on January 16, 2017. According to data released by the SBA, properties owned by Trump’s family and the family of Jared Kushner were major beneficiaries from COVID relief loans.PauseCurrent Time 0:28/Duration 1:00Loaded: 50.95%Unmute0Fullscreen500 Delta staff have tested positive for COVID-19 and 10 have diedClick to expand

Following months of litigation, including lawsuits from 11 news organizations, the SBA released a dataset on Tuesday of every small business that received a PPP or Economic Injury Disaster (EIDL) loan.https://products.gobankingrates.com/r/d9360ea31bf06ea8b9d0ef49288e28fb

An initial review of the data by NBC News found that a number of businesses with ties to President Donald Trump‘s family and the family of Jared Kushner – Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser – were major beneficiaries of the program.

PPP loans were originally meant to support small businesses and allow them access to funds that could help with payroll, rent, utilities and mortgage interest payments. Over $700 billion worth of the forgivable loans were approved by Congress and the Trump administration under the CARES Act, and rolled out in the Spring.

But the SBA data shows that businesses tied to the president received millions of dollars in aid, and many reported that the money did not go to retaining any jobs.

According to NBC News, over 25 PPP loans were given to Trump and Kushner real estate properties, paying rent to those owners. Among those, only fifteen properties self-reported that they only retained one or zero jobs with the money.

One of those loans included a $2,164,543 loan to the Triomphe Restaurant Corp., at the Trump International Hotel & Tower in New York City. The company reported the loan did not go to keeping any jobs, and later it closed altogether.

A Kushner property in New Jersey called LB City Inc, received a loan for $505,552.50 that it used to keep 155 jobs, while four tenants at a Kushner-owned New York City property received more than $204,000 combined, and retained only six jobs.

Furthermore, two tenants at Trump Tower received more than $100,000 and kept only three jobs.

These figures add to a slew of criticisms from government watchdogs and small business owners who feel the loans were not distributed in a fair and equitable way.

“Many months and broken promises later, the court-ordered release of this crucial data while the Trump administration is one foot out the door is a shameful dereliction of duty and flagrant mismanagement of a program that millions of workers and small businesses needed to get through this pandemic,” said Kyle Herrig, president of the government watchdog group, Accountable.US, according to NBC News.

In response, Christopher W Smith, General Counsel for Kushner Companies said that the notion that Kushner Properties improperly benefitted from the loans is “completely untrue and amounts to nothing more than politically motivated nonsense.”

“Exactly two Kushner Companies’ hotel operations affiliates received PPP loans. Every provision of the PPP program has been comprehensively abided with respect to each of the two loans – and every penny of the funds received from the program was utilized to fund employee payroll and benefits costs to maintain jobs imperiled by the COVID pandemic and associated lockdown measures,” Smith said in a statement given to Newsweek.

The SBA data also suggests that over half of the intended PPP funds went to just 5 percent of recipients, with larger businesses benefitting more than their small business counterparts.

Watchdogs have also warned that several billion dollars may have gone to fraudsters and ineligible businesses, while small businesses owned by people without strong banking relationships faced limited access to funds.

Accountability groups have since set up publicly searchable databases like SearchPPP.com so people can see how the loans were used themselves.

But the SBA defended its handling of the pandemic assistance on Tuesday.

“SBA’s historically successful COVID relief loan programs have helped millions of small businesses and tens of millions of American workers when they needed it most,” an SBA spokesman said in a statement.

Newsweek attempted to reach out to the Trump administration and Trump Organization for additional comment, but did not hear back in time for publication.

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Lie, Deny, Lie, Deny!


What is it in a lie that attracts the attention of people? This ongoing diatribe and tweetstorm by TOTUS has become more than a distraction. It has been joined by several members of Congress who have a track record of misleading their constituents. I am wondering if those constituents are really paying attention and understand that their representatives are working for TOTUS and not them (the people who elected them). The ongoing and failing lawsuits over “phantom” election fraud are expensive and time consuming. All of this takes time and funds from the proper operation of the Government. It should be clear that the current and temporary White House occupant has failed for years to deliver on his boasts of better governance and “winning”. We need a stable Federal government and we will not get it by retaining loyalists to a party rather than the voters. There will never be a perfect government but we can get better government by limiting the ability of elected officials to stay in office longer than their usefulness to the public. There comes a time when elected officials who get re elected time after time become comfortable and act against the good of the country and the voters while espousing their devotion to us (the voters), much like a 2 timing lover.

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Adding Insult To Injury


TOTUS’ unwillingness to concede the election has left the country in a vulnerable position at home and aboard. The transition is not taking place and the administration is blind to existential threats. The pandemic is still uncontrolled and the government is in free fall. This blatant and not unexpected resistance to making this transition is indicative of TOTUS’s lack of ability to govern. In my opinion TOTUS (Trump) is directly responsible for each and every death due to the Corona virus which he denied existed and continued to downplay on twitter and at rallies with no masking or distancing. In the same vein of his administration he has denied the virus’s scope and danger. He has stated the progress on a vaccine multiple times with no facts to back his claims. His ” bout” with the virus could very well have been yet another falsehood abet his re election bid. Now that it is proven that he has lost his reelection bid, he is stalling the transition of the President elect and at the same time condemning more voter’s (including his followers) to exposure and possibly death. This should be a time when voters unite no matter their beliefs to get a handle on this disease. The GOP in general has failed to do the job they were elected to do for fear of the TOTUS who is on the way out and leaving a wake of failed governance causing harm to the country and the voters whom they are supposed to represent. Reject the proven stream of lies from TOTUS and we may all just survive his Miscreancy and Covid19 .

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Lindsey Graham Denies Pressuring Georgia Official To Toss Legal Ballots


It should be noted that Republican “fixer” Marc Lotter has stated that the Trump campaign is still collecting funds to help the President but only a small portion is going to that debt. Most will go to the President and the GOP. It appears that the Campaign and the TOTUS are fleecing their supporters. MA.
Lydia O’Connor·Reporter, HuffPostMon, November 16, 2020, 6:34 PM

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) denied claims that he pressured Georgia’s secretary of state to find ways to throw out legal ballots, telling reporters Monday that it’s “ridiculous” to interpret their conversation that way.

Graham, one of the Republicans pushing outgoing President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud in the Nov. 3 election, commented on the matter after Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger gave an interview to The Washington Post saying Graham asked him Friday if Raffensperger could toss out all the mail-in ballots in counties with higher rates of signature-matching issues.

Graham, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, denied that’s what he said.

“I think that’s just ridiculous. If he feels threatened by that conversation, he’s got a problem. I actually thought it was a good conversation,” he said, adding he was only suggesting Georgia enforce a stricter signature verification process.

“I never said that,” he said of Raffensperger’s statement. “I said, ‘Do you have power as secretary of state to require bipartisan verification of the signature,’ because right now they don’t. What I want to see happen all over the country, if we’re going to use mail-in voting … is that when it comes to verifying signatures, that you have a process that’s bipartisan, where both sides can look at the signature. If there’s a dispute about whether or not you think it’s valid, you put it in some kind of appeal system.”

Raffensperger, a Republican, told the Post that it was clear to him that Graham was suggesting he find a way to throw out ballots.

“It sure looked like he was wanting to go down that road,” he said. After Graham’s response came out, he stood by his assertion on CNN.

“The implication is ‘Look hard and see how many ballots you can throw,’” he said.

Since Trump lost his bid for reelection, Graham has been part of the GOP chorus questioning the integrity of the electoral process and expressing outrage at the media for calling the winner based on results released by the states, despite that being the case in all modern elections. In 2016, for example, Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton conceded to Trump the day after the election, based on vote projections, even though final tallies were days or even weeks away in several states.

“This is a contested election,” Graham said on Fox News last week. “The media doesn’t decide who becomes president. If they did, you would never have a Republican president forever. So we’re discounting them.”

He added: “If I were President Trump, I’d take all of this to court. I’d fight back. …. If we don’t fight back in 2020, we’re never going to win again presidentially. A lot’s at stake here.”

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Election


TOTUS has not survived this election. In the face of defeat he has yet to concede the election. beginning at the first of the year TOTUS has pushed the idea that if he loses to the Democrats it would due to fraud and cheating (he knows a lot about those two things). He pounded the United States Postal Service and appointed one of his political cronies as Post Master who then proceeded to stop overtime (post employees are in short supply) and removed mail sorting machines I believe TOTUS knew he could not win this election honestly so he reverted to his standby: lie, lie and lie. With the Senate on the line Georgia has become crucial and Bitch McConnell who has held up numerous bills using the chance of TOTUS rejecting it as a reason to hold these bills back. First let us look at TOTUS, he has no idea of how government works and does not want to know since it is boring and he can’t dictate what happens. Mr. McConnell wants a legacy of a mover with an excellent record of getting things done. McConnell has sacrificed the good of America’s voters when he held up most if not all of President Obamas initiatives and Judicial appointments. He had no qualms in pushing the selection of a Conservative Judge to fill the High Court vacancy along with the installation of a hundred or more Federal judgeships along party lines. All of these actions are not for the good of the country but for the good of McConnell and the GOP. Meanwhile we as voters work against our own interests by following the party line and ignoring the character of the person or persons we vote for time and time again. Labels are no more than dog whistles in disguise. The primary requirement to making good voting decisions is the character of the person running coupled with what their “label” really stands for. If we blindly follow the flow seemingly “factual” utterings from media “talking Heads” we are destined to have poor representation on going. There are no perfect solutions to politics as it is moving target directed by the badness or goodness of the candidate and the party with its subsets. Doing the homework of reading up on the parties, the current office holders (and aspiring ) is the best start. History is the best teacher in politics. Always remember two letters in the center of the word Politician is “LI”!

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My Opinion


It is unfortunate that so many of us are single issue voters, this failing allows for the rise of poor performing legislators and leaders. The reduction of CIVICS instruction in schools is a possible factor but mass media is a greater mover of public opinion using “sound bites, dog whistles and tropes’ to explain or purvey ideas. Our job as voters is to gather information for ourselves and not leave it all up to other people or just the media. We are at the mercy of “old Wives tales” and under informed opinions that have survived from the time of the founding fathers. Our destiny is in our hands alone, educate yourselves from multiple sources.

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Lawmakers perplexed by billions in unspent Covid-19 testing money


It is unfortunate that so many of us are single issue voters, this failing allows for the rise of poor performing legislators and leaders. The reduction of CIVICS instruction in schools is a possible factor but mass media is a greater mover of public opinion using “sound bites, dog whistles and tropes’ to explain or purvey ideas. Our job as voters is to gather information for ourselves and not leave it to other people or the media. MA

By Lauren Fox, CNN

Updated 8:15 PM ET, Tue July 21, 2020

(CNN)Despite severe shortages in coronavirus testing supplies and lags in results, the Trump administration is still sitting on billions of dollars in unused funding that Congress allocated months ago. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have questions about why the money has not been used as testing continues to fall well short of the national need.

“It’s probably a logistical problem as much as anything else, but yeah, it’s a concern,” said Republican. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas.

As negotiations have ramped up between the White House and Senate Republicans in recent days on whether to include more funding for testing in the next round of stimulus, the White House pushed against more money over the weekend, arguing that billions remain unspent. But lawmakers and aides — who estimate the remaining amount at about $7 billion to $8 billion — say they’ve been unable to get a clear answer to why that money hasn’t been touched in the first place.

In April, Congress passed legislation that included $25 billion in additional funds for testing and contact tracing. The money — which included $11 billion that went to states — was put into the Public Health and Social Services Emergency Fund at the Department of Health and Human Services. Months later, aides and lawmakers say they aren’t sure why so much still hasn’t been spent.

“They’ve never believed we should test,” Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, told CNN. “We’ve got to keep pushing.”

One Democratic aide familiar with discussions around the money said there was some speculation that it had been tied up at the Office of Management and Budget level, but there was no clear evidence whether the holdup had happened for any particular reason or was just a symptom of pushing billions out the door quickly.

Behind the scenes, lawmakers of both parties have asked the administration to explain why the money remains unused.FourDemocrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee sent a letter directly to President Donald Trump this week asking for answers.

“In April, Congress appropriated $25 billion through the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act specifically to expand testing capacity and conduct surveillance and contact tracing to ensure we were prepared for another spike in cases. Yet based on the latest information from the Department of Health and Human Services, three months later less than half of the money provided has been obligated by the federal government and gaps in testing capacity and contact tracing are pervasive,” said the Democrats’ letter, signed by Murray along with Sens. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Richard Durbin of Illinois and Jon Tester of Montana.

The letter also demanded that the administration explain why billions in funding to build up the Strategic National Stockpile hadn’t been used as reports show that states are once again struggling to find adequate personal protective equipment to weather the pandemic.

“Yet nearly four months later, the Administration has obligated only half of the funds Congress provided for the SNS (and only a portion of this was spent on PPE) and the Department of Defensehas informed us that it intendsto use nearly 70 percent of the DPA funding for shipbuilding, aircraft development, and other defense programs,” the letter reads, referring to the Defense Production Act.

Republicans have urged the administration in recent weeks to ramp up its response to the coronavirus as polls have shown the President lagging in key swing states and dragging rank-and-file Republicans up for reelection down with him.

“We have to up our game in testing. This is a worldwide problem,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who’s a close ally of Trump’s, told reporters Tuesday.

Republicans also strongly rebuked the administration’s argument that more funding wasn’t needed for testing and contact tracing in the next stimulus bill, saying that position not only put the country’s testing capabilities at risk, but also ignored the political realities of the situation.

“You would have to try hard to come up with a more tone-deaf position,” one GOP aide said over the weekend.

On Monday, members flat-out pushed back against the Trump administration’s position that more money for testing wasn’t needed.

“I just think that’s wrong,” said Sen. Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican.

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A Carrier Can’t Be Immune- Just Dangerous


TOTUS stated that he may be immune now since he has had COVID. Since his treatment was shortened -probably Against Medical advice, it is conceivable and (closer to) probable that he is still contagious and looking to do rallies to spread the virus more. This highlights his disdain for anyone but the person he sees in his mirror daily. It is unfortunate that so many voters fail to look beyond the entertainment and follow the pied piper of ignorance and ineptitude as if he really has some intelligence. An informed voter should spend some time listening or viewing multiple sources of news to get a better idea of the issues that affect them. Politricks is the ultimate manipulative tool and since elections occur several years apart, there is the “out of sight, out of mind” syndrome that allows the previous lies to be forgotten while the same lies are recycled allowing for another round of outrage that obscures the truth. TOTUS has mastered this “art” form as he has used it all of his life and in his failed business ventures. From faker to taker, from pauper to thief, TOTUS has failed upward.

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‘Totally unacceptable’: Testing delays force labs to prioritize COVID-19 tests for some, not others


Could this be a political tactic to suppress the vote? It seems that we must suppose that we are dealing with criminals in suits whose sole objective is to “Bernie Madoff” us, so they can stay in power. WE already know TOTUS is not wealthy but billions in debt to someone. The miscreant Congressional leader(just another hooker) is in bed with who knows who. The vote is our power to correct this debauchery. MA

Ken Alltucker

USA TODAY

0:58

David Rohlfing, a Queens resident and high school English teacher, attended outdoor picnics, an outdoor bar and a Black Lives Matter protest earlier this summer. Though he did not feel sick, he wanted to get tested for COVID-19 before visiting his sister in Connecticut.

On July 6, he was tested at a New York City-run site and was told results could take a week. He checked a patient testing portal every day. On July 23 – 17 days after he took the test – he learned he did not have the disease. 

Now Rohlfing wonders whether there will be enough testing when he returns to the classroom in September. He wants a guarantee he can take a test with quick results if he interacts with an infected student or staffer. If there is no such assurance, and testing has not improved, he might not go back to class.

“I’m not going to do it,” he said. “I will join any effort to not open the schools if that part of the piece is not in place.”

The slow turnaround time for patients like Rohlfing could harm efforts to curtail outbreaks. Professional athletes and private businesses that purchase lab testing can get access to quick tests. Teachers, students and others who rely on traditional retail clinics or doctors’ offices, however, might wait days for results.

Federal officials and private labs acknowledge they must prioritize the nation’s limited supply of coronavirus tests for hospitalized patients, health care workers and other high-risk individuals. But many Americans worried about contracting the sometimes deadly virus often must wait in long lines and several days for results. 

Without a national plan on how to best allocate hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 tests each day, there simply is not enough capacity now to screen Americans who might unwittingly pass the virus to others.

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And some warn the problem will be further strained when universities and K-12 schools resume classes, more companies bring employees back to the workplace and influenza testing spikes this winter.

Dr. Howard Koh, a professor at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and former Department of Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary during the Obama administration, said the testing shortage has created a pattern of unequal access.

“Some privileged parts of our country are getting daily access and others have no access at all,” Koh said. “We’re never going to solve this pandemic until we give everybody access, particularly high-risk groups. That’s the public health principle we always try to follow.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said testing delays are “totally unacceptable” and need to be fixed.

Speaking at a forum hosted Wednesday by the Harvard public health school , Fauci said in some communities “the gap between the time you get the test and the time you get the result, in some respects, obviates the reason why you did the test … We’ve got to correct that.”