turbinetree
turbinetree's JournalAfter Obamacare Repeal Collapse, GOP Weighs Whether To Help State Markets
CAMERON JOSEPH Published JULY 31, 2017 6:00 AM
Tierney Sneed contributed reporting.
Still dazed from the spectacular collapse of their efforts to repeal Obamacare, Republicans are now confronted with the question of whether they’ll seek to help Americans in states where insurers are pulling out of the individual marketplaces and premiums are rising without trying to gut the program.
Until now, most Republicans have been happy to watch some state-level individual health insurance exchanges sputter along, using those struggles as their main talking point for how Obamacare is failing under its own weight as the Trump administration exacerbated some of the exchanges’ problems.
They assumed they’d be able to execute a broader policy change rather than worry about shoring up the markets. But after admitting defeat (at least for now) on a broad overhaul of the law, Republicans are beginning to come to grips with what to do going forward.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/after-obamacare-repeal-collapse-gop-weighs-whether-to-help-state-health-exchange-markets
They still want to block grant the measure, this could be fixed by removing the "Marco Rubio" and his Risk Corridors Rider and then bring on Medicare for all, or single payer, for competition, but it's still about tax breaks for not only the millionaires in both the house and Senate, but the Koch's and Devos, and Sinclair group
Eddie Munster speaks "DYNAMIC SCORING"
"What that means is that we can have a big tax cut, but also make sure we are in compliance with our deficit targets," he opined, noting that additional revenue could come from cutting programs like welfare.
"I don't think we can get to 3 percent growth without tax reform," the Wisconsin Republican insisted. "I really believe the secret to getting to 3 percent growth -- clearly a goal we can achieve in this country -- regulatory relief, working on labor supply, welfare to work. But tax reform, you can't get to 3 percent growth in my opinion without tax reform. That's why this is so important. That's why we all agree."
In other words blame the poor some more....................
And has Jared Bernstein said back in April:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/04/24/dsa-dynamic-scoring-abuse/?utm_term=.ecc13e6f6a5f
Perino Trump will move Sessions to DHL
He is doing or attempting to do this "stuff" and what is the republican controlled Congress doing.............sitting on there hands
Trump dines at his DC hotel with new White House chief of staff
Source: The Hill
President Trump spent his Saturday night at the Trump International Hotel in Washington dining with his newly minted Chief of Staff Ret. Gen. John Kelly.
Treasury Secretary Wilbur Ross and his new wife, actress Louis Linton joined Trump and Kelly, along with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and his wife Hilary Geary.
Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/344509-trump-dines-at-his-dc-hotel-with-new-white-house-chief-of-staff
Why the fuck and you and I spending my / our tax dollars for this assbag"s to dine in this leased hotel, while this assbag has a green room or other place in the white house to feed there fucking faces, besides for this propaganda show..........
of just saying to to the taxpayers basically to eat me attitude, while we have a fucking Congress wanting mind you to take our tax dollars to give tax breaks to assholes
The thing about Trump's infrastructure plan is: it doesn't really exist
Visitors to these American shores – if they squint and look real close – may be forgiven for thinking that they’ve stumbled back into socialism. We still have a federal post office. We have a national railroad – ok, it’s not much. And here in Texas, I pay my water, sewer, and electric bills to the local government, send my kids to the public schools (free, with orchestras) and teach at a state university. At 65, I have reached the age of social security and Medicare without working a day in the private sector.
Public infrastructure is the backbone of the private economy, as any developer knows. Public infrastructure isn’t only, or even mainly, ports, airports or pipelines (which are often enough private in this country), so it doesn’t have all that much to do with productivity or competitiveness.
Instead, commuter roads make possible exurban sprawl – large houses on cheap land, the foundation of America. And all that commuting sells cars, so that between selling cars and building houses we have what we call “economic growth”. It can be no surprise that our Developer-in-Chief has been a big-spending Democrat on this issue, however rightwing on all other questions.
But Donald Trump’s infrastructure plan, the darling of his campaign, the cynosure of his inaugural address and and the sparkling gem of his first speech to Congress, doesn’t actually exist. The Republican leaders of Congress killed off that plan months before Trump ever reached the Oval Office. Why? Because under the laws of accounting, federal spending requires either debt or taxes. And also, most of the infrastructure is in cities, which is where Democrats tend to live.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/09/trumps-infrastructure-plan-doesnt-really-exist
And now Foxxconn is going tom go to WisCONsin, and get a tax break from the citizens thinking that jobs are going to be created, just like what happened in Indiana under Pence and Carrier Corporation ................
Scam alert: Trump's $1tn 'infrastructure plan' is a giveaway to the rich
At a roundtable discussion with state transportation officials on Friday, Donald Trump said America’s ageing roads, bridges, railways, and water systems were being “scoffed at and laughed” at. He pledged that they “will once again be the envy of the world”.
This seems to be a core theme for Trump: America’s greatness depends on others envying us rather than scoffing and laughing at us.
He said much the same thing last week when he announced his decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. “At what point does America get demeaned? At what point do they start laughing at us, as a country? We don’t want other leaders and other countries laughing at us any more. And they won’t be. They won’t be.”
To be sure, America is in dire need of vast investments in infrastructure. The country suffers from overflowing sewage drains, crumbling bridges, rusting railroad tracks, outworn roads, and public transportation systems rivaling those of third-world nations.
The American Society of Civil Engineers, giving America’s overall infrastructure a grade of D-plus, says we would need to spend $3.6tn by 2020 to bring it up to par.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/10/scam-alert-trumps-1tn-infrastructure-plan
And the republicans want to give more money to the military.........................
Activists marking 100th anniversary of NAACP's silent parade see scary parallels
On a July day in 1917, in the face of a presidential administration seen as taking regressive steps on civil rights, nearly 10,000 black Americans walked down Fifth Avenue in New York. Wearing uniform clothing and carrying signs, demanding federal action over the lynchings of black men, they marched in total silence.
A century later, also clad in white, a much smaller group assembled outside Bryant Park on Friday. They were there to commemorate the occasion in a world, attendees said, that did not feel altogether changed.
“It just seems like we’ve gone in a circle,” said Sacha Dent, an educator from the city. “And it’s the same thing with not just things that are like lynchings and close to lynchings but just the hate … everywhere.”
The attendees held portraits of well-known victims of police and vigilante violence – Philando Castile, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice – and of people who lost their lives after traumatic encounters with the criminal justice system, such as Sandra Bland and Kalief Browder.
“I called around and I realized that no one was marking the moment,” said the march organizer, Marsha Reid, “and that seemed astonishing and a little sad to me considering the relevance of the current moment … So I did it.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/29/naacp-silent-parade-100th-anniversary-march-new-york-city
America, has not grown up as of yesterday..............
Why is Google spending record sums on lobbying Washington?
Figures released last week show that Google spent a record amount of almost $6m lobbying in Washington DC in the past three months, putting the Silicon Valley behemoth on track to be the top corporate lobbying spending in the US. Last year it ranked number two, behind Comcast.
Given the increased antitrust scrutiny that is coming from the Democrats’ new “Better Deal” policy platform, Donald Trump’s random tweets attacking fellow tech giant Amazon for its connection to the Washington Post, and his adviser Steve Bannon’s recent comments that Google and Facebook should be regulated as utilities, it is likely Google will only increase its lobbying expenditure in the next few months.
The largest monopoly in America, Google controls five of the top six billion-user, universal web platforms – search, video, mobile, maps and browser – and leads in 13 of the top 14 commercial web functions, according to Scott Cleland at Precursor Consulting.
As the controversial Trump-supporting PayPal billionaire Peter Thiel points out, companies like Google don’t like to advertise this fact. They “lie to protect themselves”, Thiel says. “They know that bragging about their great monopoly invites being audited, scrutinized and attacked. Since they very much want their monopoly profits to continue unmolested, they tend to do whatever they can to conceal their monopoly – usually by exaggerating the power of their (nonexistent) competition.”
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/30/google-silicon-valley-corporate-lobbying-washington-dc-politics
Big Brother is really watching you
Forget Breitbart: the White House has a new favorite rightwing media outlet
Fox News has such an influence on Donald Trump that US journalists now react to the president’s proclamations on Twitter by searching for the Fox and Friends segment that inspired them.
This intimate feedback loop between the Fox morning show and the president has made it “the most powerful TV show in America”, in the words of a New York Times critic. For Rupert Murdoch, a ruthless player in conservative politics across continents, such influence is striking. But it’s not new.
Liberal critics of the administration, however, are now turning the spotlight on what they see as a troubling new pro-Trump outlet. It’s not Fox News, with its angry anchors and aging audience. It’s Circa, a colorful digital media site aimed at viewers in their teens and 20s.
Circa is owned by the Sinclair Media Broadcast Group, which owns or operates more than 170 television stations across the country and calls itself America’s “leading local news provider”. As Sinclair expands, it has faced speculation that it could become a conservative challenger to Fox News.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/jul/30/circa-sinclair-pro-trump-outlet-breitbart-fox-news
We need to get back some form on regulatory control of this monopolization of stations and other outlets being concentrated by just a few.
And this is one of many reasons why
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