Open Thread For June 16, 2017
D’s Give Delaware’s Wealthiest Another Break. Yep, those who inherited obscene wealth will now be able to keep all of it in the (DuPont) family. Although not on the Senate Agenda, both the corporate tax increase and repeal of the estate tax passed the Senate and heads to the Governor. The Estate Tax repeal says a lot about both parties: The D’s willing to negotiate it away, and the R’s insisting on eliminating something that only impacted a small number of obscenely wealthy family members who inherited their good fortune. Just awful.
The Evil Empire Comes to the Queen. Dinosaur supergroups and inflated prices. Think Kahunaville times 20. Speaking of dinosaurs, check out the Purzycki/Carney photo in the article.
Sessions: ‘Oops, I Lied Again.’ Allegedly met with Russian lobbyist over dinners. Dinners with an ‘s’. RussiaRussiaRussia.
PM May Puts Kibosh On Russian Assassination Investigations. Interesting Buzzfeed investigative report. Politically-connected Russians being assassinated all over England.
GOP Worries That They’re Losing the Georgia Special Election. I think this is a must-win for the D’s. Close-but-no-cigar is not good enough.
Pence Lawyers Up. With Good Reason. His best defense seems to be ‘I was out of the loop’. As head of the Trump Transition Team? I don’t think so. Take, for example, this article. He may not survive, either.
How Trump Administration Rolls Back Civil Rights Protections. Essential investigative journalism from Pro Publica. Do what I did. Donate.
What do you want to talk about?
Som, what do you make of Maverick McCain selling out to get his wife a job with team Bannon? To me, it says one of the only R’s that MIGHT have held this administration accountable is now one of their closest friends. i.e another notch in the ‘no impeachment” side.
Happy Bloomsday! I plan to celebrate by taking a walk around town.
“Yes, of course,” Mulligan said, as they went on again. “Either you believe or you don’t, isn’t it? Personally I couldn’t stomach that idea of a personal God. You don’t stand for that, I suppose?”
“You behold in me,” Stephen said with grim displeasure, “a horrible example of free thought.”
–James Joyce, Ulysses
Hey, everybody. I’ll be on ‘First’ on WHYY-TV 12 tonight at 5:30. A fast-paced six-minute segment on what’s going on in the General Assembly. I could master the TV medium…if it wasn’t for my radio looks.
Amazon is buying Whole Foods Market.
That Buzzfeed article should point people to what’s really going on with the investigation into all the connections between Trump (and his peeps) and the Russians: Putin and oligarchs, both pro- and anti-Putin, are money-laundering as much of Russia’s oil wealth as they can get out of the country. Trump’s minions benefit by facilitating it.
Whether there was collusion between the campaign and the Russians is a different question entirely, and to my thinking beside the point. If Trump was laundering Russian money, he was a criminal when he ran for president and should be impeached on those grounds alone.
The investigation of the money trail might well lead to the campaign, but my sense based on what we know so far is that any collusion amounted to co-ordinating the disinformation flow — it has been widely noted that DNC email leaks were released on dates that helped turn attention away from Trump’s misdeeds. Perhaps some of the Russian money went into the campaign, because I don’t believe Trump had more than a couple of million of his own money to use (I don’t know how rich he is or isn’t, but his assets aren’t liquid enough to divert millions to a nonproductive cause like a vanity campaign). But if the Russians were going to hack voting machines, they wouldn’t tell the Trumpkins about it. They’re smart enough to not trust Trump.
Whatever the Russians have over him was gathered for financial, not political, reasons, and money, not the presidency, is what really motivates him.
In short, all the Republicans bleating “no collusion, no collusion” might be right, but for all the wrong reasons.
“Cheap Trick” what a fitting name of the type of act highlighted as “better” in that story.
Wow. Check this one out. How truckers are turned into indentured servants:
https://www.usatoday.com/pages/interactives/news/rigged-forced-into-debt-worked-past-exhaustion-left-with-nothing/
What do we do if it turns out that Russia did effect the outcome of our election in a way that is backed by significant evidence?
Impeach him if it turns out he engaged in criminal behavior of the money laundering kind, yes, but the larger question of interference remains unanswered. Going from Trump to Pence if both worked together to collaborate with the Russians means to me that the normal impeachment process is very imperfect. I’d want them both gone. And forget Paul Ryan. In these circumstances he should not get to become president.
Thoughts on impeachment and the meaning of ‘other high crimes and misdemeanors’ from one of the founders of modern conservatism.
“It is by this tribunal that statesmen who abuse their power are accused by statesmen and tried by statesmen, not upon the niceties of a narrow jurisprudence, but upon the enlarged and solid principles of state morality. It is here that those who by the abuse of power have violated the spirit of the law can never hope for protection from any of its forms.”
——The writings & speeches of Edmund Burke, Volume 9
I think this is well said, “In 2016, the Democratic Party lost the presidency to possibly the least popular candidate in American history. In recent years, Democrats have also lost the Senate and House to right-wing Republicans whose extremist agenda is far removed from where most Americans are politically. If these results are not a clear manifestation of a failed political strategy, I don’t know what is.
For the sake of our country and the world, the Democratic Party, in a very fundamental way, must change direction. While Democrats should appeal to moderate Republicans who are disgusted with the Trump presidency, too many in our party cling to an overly cautious, centrist ideology. The party’s main thrust must be to make politics relevant to those who have given up on democracy and bring millions of new voters into the political process.” Bernie Sanders
I saw El Som on the teevee! Thanks for the detailed rundowns and speaking up against the HB 190 shenanigans. Did you see they put an amendment on that instructs DEDO to do an economic study on the changes to the CZA while completely ignoring they want to eliminate DEDO. One hand is completely unaware of the other.
I don’t think that they should get rid of the estate tax, but I feel that there should be a tweaking. I think that an “exception” should be made if the 90% of the value of the estate is in real estate and other non liquid assets like equipment and machinery. With a caveat that if the land is sold or non liquid assets are sold with 15 years of estate settlement, they are hit with both estate and capital gains tax. That way it protects wealth locked in by family farms and businesses.
You raise a good point, Gigi. If not DEDO, what will be the successor agency? That Private/Public Partnership? The legislation creating it expressly says that it is not a public agency, hence presumably not subject to FOIA.