***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[Belgium]

good ole bill

Literally all he had to do was respond with a genuine apology

 

[boris]

Absolute authority huh,King Louis XIV would be proud

Also innocent folks are always pardoning themselves...

Why would it be necessary to bring this up if you'll never need to use it? I'm just amazed everyday that his ******** rhetoric actually works on people.

 

[nawghtyhare]

Literally all he had to do was respond with a genuine apology

But wasn’t it consensual???
At least with lewinsky
Why would he have to apologize
Don’t play the victim

 

[RustyShackleford]

good ole bill

I can picture Hillary offstage acting like Tyrion when he saw Jamie try to run Danny and Drogon.

Just whispering to herself "You ******* idiot, you ******* idiot"

 

[IATT]

 

[Belgium]

Well if anyone has a strong influence on Republicans in Congress it's these folks. Maybe it'll help grow a very tiny backbone in some of them on this issue.
http://thehill.com/policy/finance/3...-multi-million-campaign-against-trump-tariffs
Koch groups launch multi-million campaign against Trump tariffs

Three advocacy groups backed by Charles and David Koch on Monday announced a multi-million dollar campaign to push back against tariffs and the kinds of trade barriers that President Trump supports.

The groups Freedom Partners, Americans for Prosperity, and The LIBRE Initiative will take out ads, hold events and engage in lobbying as part of the effort.

“The Trump administration has taken some incredibly positive steps for the American economy, but tariffs will undercut that progress and needlessly hamstring our full economic potential,” said Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips.



Trump last week imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum from Canada, Mexico and the European Union. He has also threatened to impose $50 billion of tariffs on Chinese imports in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, trade negotiations to renew the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) have faltered, and negotiations to resolve trade disputes with China have so far proved inconclusive.

While conservative groups have been vocal about their opposition to Trump's trade policies, the initiative to push back over the public airwaves marks an escalation in the rift between Trump and the Koch brothers on trade.

“This campaign makes a clear statement: Trade is a major priority for our network. We will work aggressively to educate policymakers and others about the facts,” said Freedom Partners Executive Vice President James Davis

The group may find fertile ground in Congress. Already, five Republican senators have signed onto an effort to rein in executive authority in imposing certain trade barriers.

“I am working with like-minded Republican senators on ways to push back on the president using authorities in ways never intended and that are damaging to our country and our allies. Will Democrats join us?” retiring Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) tweeted over the weekend after linking to articles about Trump’s steel tariffs.

 

[MalcolmNewton]

Well if anyone has a strong influence on Republicans in Congress it's these folks. Maybe it'll help grow a very tiny backbone in some of them on this issue.
http://thehill.com/policy/finance/3...-multi-million-campaign-against-trump-tariffs
Koch groups launch multi-million campaign against Trump tariffs

I'm surprised we haven't heard from 'Gold in my sacks' yet.

 

[Belgium]

aepps20
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...r-bailout-if-coal-tax-falls-gao-idUSKCN1J029I
U.S. black lung fund will need taxpayer bailout if coal tax falls: GAO
A federal fund to help U.S. coal miners disabled by black lung disease will require a multi-billion dollar taxpayer bailout if Congress doesn’t extend or increase the tax on coal production that funds it, according to a government report on Monday.

Coal companies are currently required to pay a $1.10 per ton tax on underground coal production to finance the federal Black Lung Disability Trust Fund, which pays medical and living expenses for eligible miners, but that amount is scheduled to revert back to the 1977 level of 50 cents.

“With the scheduled 2019 tax rate decrease, our moderate case simulation suggests that expected revenue will likely be insufficient to cover combined black lung benefit payments and administrative costs, as well as debt repayment expenditures,” according to the report from the non-partisan Government Accountability Office.

Cases of black lung, an incurable illness caused by inhaling coal dust, are rising to levels not seen in decades as miners plumb the depths of played out coal seams using heavy blasting equipment, according to government health officials.

The fund that helps them is already roughly $6 billion in debt, as revenues since it was created in the 1970s have failed to keep up with outflows. That debt could balloon to $15 billion by 2050 without Congressional action, the GAO report said.


The GAO offered three options to try to improve the solvency of the fund: extend the current excise tax rate to reduce the debt to $4.5 billion debt by 2050, increase the current tax rate by approximately 25 percent to eliminate the debt entirely by 2050, or allow the tax rate to sunset as scheduled, cancel the current debt, and appropriate $7.8 billion to the Fund.

That third option would amount to a multi-billion transfer of liability for black lung victims from coal companies to taxpayers.

The coal industry has been lobbying hard against the tax, arguing its payments have already been too high at a difficult time for mining companies and that the fund has been abused by undeserving applicants, such as smokers.


Ashley Burke, spokeswoman for the National Mining Association, rejected the idea the tax should be increased.

“There is no need for a tax increase on the coal industry. The only reason borrowing has been necessary is for the government to essentially repay itself for accumulated interest payments on legacy debt from the 70s and 80s,” she said.

A bipartisan effort by lawmakers to extend the current coal tax failed earlier this year after the coal industry lobbied Republican House leadership not to take it up.

Democratic Congressmen Bobby Scott of Virginia and Sander Levin of Michigan requested the GAO study in 2016 to clarify the fund’s financial condition.

Scott told Reuters the report should compel Congress to take action to extend or increase the coal excise tax.


“The existing black lung excise tax rate on coal companies is imperative to the long-term solvency of the trust fund,” Scott said in a statement.

The fund currently provides medical coverage and monthly payments for living expenses to more than 25,000 people.

 

[IATT]

 

[elpablo21]

Trump’s Judge Picks Could Boost Racial Bias in the Justice System For Generations

 

[IATT]

 

[mister friendly]

Clinton is probably tried of talking about Monica Lewinsky, he didn’t r**** her or anything and it’s been over 20 years.

 

[AEA18]

Education Dept takes steps to dismiss hundreds of civil rights complaints: report

The Education Department has started dismissing hundreds of civil rights complaints that investigators deem onerous or unnecessary.

The New York Times reported that the Education Department's Civil Rights Office has begun dismissing the cases under a new provision implemented as part of a plan to revise the agency's manual for handling civil rights complaints.

Trump’s Judge Picks Could Boost Racial Bias in the Justice System For Generations

"Both parties are the same."

"Voting doesn't matter."

 

[MalcolmNewton]

Intolerant Whites Prefer Authoritarian Rule If Democratic Rule Means Granting Rights to Minorities

In a working paper entitled “White Outgroup Intolerance and Support for Democracy,” researchers Steven V. Miller of Clemson University and Nicholas T. Davis of Texas A&M University suggest the greatest threat to democracy comes from the political proclivities of intolerant white people. Examining data from the World Values Survey from 1995 to 2011, the research found that racial, cultural or ethnic intolerance diminishes white Americans’ commitment to democracy. Further, the authors conclude, such sentiments of social intolerance on the part of white people make them more receptive to “undemocratic alternatives” such as military rule and the elimination of separation of powers in government.

The authors define social intolerance as an unwillingness to associate or fraternize with those whose culture, race or religion differs from one’s group.

 

[aepps20]

aepps20
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...r-bailout-if-coal-tax-falls-gao-idUSKCN1J029I
U.S. black lung fund will need taxpayer bailout if coal tax falls: GAO
A federal fund to help U.S. coal miners disabled by black lung disease will require a multi-billion dollar taxpayer bailout if Congress doesn’t extend or increase the tax on coal production that funds it, according to a government report on Monday.

Nothing but amazing news in this article Comrade. We say NO to Tax Hikes and YES to BLACK LUNG. NUFF SAID.

 

[boris]

Nothing but amazing news in this article Comrade. We say NO to Tax Hikes and YES to BLACK LUNG. NUFF SAID.

LOL at "YES to BLACK LUNG". I'm chuckling out loud at work.

 

[IATT]

 

[aepps20]

USA, USA, USA, USA. General Patton would be proud of this patriot.

 

[EddieDoyers]

The news no one really wants to hear but is out anyway

 

[blastercombo]

Yikes, at the same time little black boys get shot on sight for holding toys no questions asked.

 

[hand2handking]

Just Say It’s Racist
The American press is caught between describing Trumpism accurately and avoiding the wrath of the president and his supporters.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/06/just-say-its-racist/561962/

It was a framing that might have worked with any other two presidents. On Friday, The New York Times published a comparison of how Donald Trump and his predecessor, Barack Obama, approached controversies over racism. “Obama offered balm. Trump drops verbal bombs. But both were accused, in a polarized country, of making racial tensions worse,” the paper tweeted. That bland equivalence between the first black president and his white successor, who rode to the White House on a racist conspiracy theory denying Obama was born in the United States, provoked a firestorm of criticism on social media.

That fact alone shows how impossible it is to approach the Trump presidency the way the media might approach any other administration—indeed, bafflingly, the article briefly references birtherism without acknowledging Trump’s embrace of the conspiracy theory, and how it affected his political fortunes. The relationship between Trump and Obama is historically unique in that the former was elected by a racial backlash to the latter, another point the piece declines to acknowledge, whether to refute or affirm.

Instead, the piece is constructed around the juxtaposition of the criticism that Obama encountered for acknowledging the racism black Americans still face with the fact that Trump is often accused of racism. The piece notes that after Obama spoke at a funeral for nine black people murdered by a white supremacist, “some people, mostly white, accused him of dividing the country when he spoke empathetically about the racism faced by black Americans.” By contrast, in the Trump era, “People often debate whether what the president did or did not say was a sign that he was racist.”

The president’s overtly prejudiced remarks about religious and ethnic minorities, in a country where the accusation of racism is often regarded as morally equivalent to racial discrimination, poses a challenge for media outlets seeking to accurately represent the views of the president and his supporters without enraging either of them. That task is largely impossible, which is why the media have developed a ludicrous and expanding menu of complex euphemisms for describing racist behavior, and why a piece purporting to contrast two presidents’ approaches to racism dances so elaborately around the obvious.

The framing of the piece illustrates how the American discourse concerning racism remains largely about hurt feelings, rather than discriminatory policy:Some people said Obama acknowledging racism was racist, and also some people don’t like that Trump is called racist. This ostensibly neutral framing is centered around a white audience more concerned with being called racist than facing racial discrimination, and one that experiences racism as naughty words rather than as policies that affect whether and how people live their lives. This is why the cancellation of a sitcom about a Trump supporting white working-class family draws more press coverage than the fact that the aftermath of Hurricane Mariamay have caused almost twice as many American casualties as the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a national trauma so harrowing it continues to shape American politics almost two decades later.

There is no mention in the piece of the Trump administration’s handling of Maria at all, nor the the hundreds of thousands of Americans displaced by it. There’s no discussion of the hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the United States, largely from nonwhite countries, whose legal statuses have been revoked even though they have no criminal records and pose no public-safety threat. The recent controversy over a newly instituted policy of separating parents and children at the border makes no appearance. The president’s travel ban, instituted after a campaign in which he expressed the desire to ban Muslims from the country, goes unmentioned. The decision of Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to forgo all oversight of discriminatory policing by local law enforcement is undiscussed. Instead Trump’s successful attempt to force the NFL to suppress criticism of racist policing by black athletes is described as Trump having “ignored or rejected the racial tensions at the core of some high-profile, combustible public issues.” Describing a situation in which the president deliberately seized (according to theTimes’ own reporting) on a controversy over unequal treatment of black Americans for political advantage as having “ignored” or “rejected” racial tensions is bizarre—but it’s also false.

One might think that in a piece contrasting two presidents’ approaches to racism, their actual policies might come into play. But they don’t—instead the piece only contrasts their rhetorical approaches, as if they could be separated, and as if the way Americans discuss racism is more important than how it affects people. This is a common editorial decision that, in aiming to grant equal moral and factual weight to two sides of an argument, takes a side without realizing it has done so.

An era in which Americans are supposedly exhausted with political correctness is thus defined by the acute political sensitivities and persecution complexes of white voters who object if things they do and say are described as racist, even as the bodies pile up in the background.

Can Trump Pardon Himself? Not If He’s Impeached

https://apnews.com/c21714b6845142a2ba5b7eaeb669f073/Can-Trump-pardon-himself?utm_source=Twitter

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump once joked he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” and not lose voter support. The quip was intended as hyperbole to make a point on the loyalty of his base.

Now, Trump says, he has the power to keep himself out of jail if he wanted, declaring an “absolute right to PARDON myself.” This time, though, it seems he isn’t joking.

But there is a big limit in the world of presidential pardons: impeachment.

A look at what’s true and what’s not when it comes to presidential pardons:

So Presidents Get To Do What Exactly?

Under the Constitution, the president has the power to grant “reprieves and pardons” for federal (but not state) crimes, essentially wiping out a person’s convictions. The power is, as Trump says, “absolute” in that pardons can’t be overturned by Congress or the courts.

Almost every president has used his pardon powers, but somewhat narrowly — focusing on overturning cases when they believe a severe injustice has been done or is needed to heal partisan rifts.

President Donald Trump and his lawyers are laying out an extraordinarily expansive vision of executive authority that scholars say is mostly untested in court and could portend a drawn-out fight with the prosecutors now investigating him. (June 4)

President Andrew Johnson, for example, granted blanket pardons to soldiers who fought in the Confederate Army as a practical way of reuniting the nation following the Civil War. And President Gerald Ford in 1974 pardoned his predecessor, Richard Nixon, for all federal crimes Nixon “has committed or may have committed or taken part in” during his presidency, on the grounds that the nation had become too “polarized” and needed to move past the Watergate scandal.

The Big Exception

There is one notable exception to a president’s pardoning powers Trump doesn’t mention: cases of impeachment. Under the U.S. system of checks and balances, Congress can hold presidents accountable by ousting them using impeachment trials.

Only two presidents have been impeached by the House, although both were acquitted by the Senate: Johnson in 1868 after he clashed with Congress over reconstruction of the South and Bill Clinton in 1998 on charges of lying under oath and obstructing justice concerning his sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

(Nixon avoided impeachment by resigning before the House could vote.)

The bottom line is that Trump retains his pardoning powers up until a possible impeachment. And considering that impeachment trials tend to be wildly partisan affairs, it is unlikely Trump would be ousted so long as the GOP still controls the House and Senate.

Pardons As A Political Weapon

A person doesn’t have to be convicted for a pardon to take place. That was the case in the Iran-Contra scandal, which involved the secret sales of weapons overseas by the Reagan administration.

By the time the chief prosecutor in the case was prepared to present evidence of a high-level cover-up in court, President George H.W. Bush blocked the prosecution of several central figures using his pardoning power. The pardons infuriated the prosecutor, Lawrence Walsh, and the $47 million investigation resulted in only one person sent to prison.

Bush defended his pardons by saying “at the heart of this investigation was a political dispute between the executive and legislative branches over foreign policy. We must be careful not to criminalize constitutional disputes of this kind.”

Likewise, Trump could try to undercut the Russia investigation by pardoning anyone charged by special counsel Robert Mueller. Overall, 19 people have been charged in the investigation, including Trump’s former campaign chair and national security adviser.

But such pardons could also trigger impeachment trials in Congress on the claim that Trump was trying to obstruct justice. But again, the outcome would probably fall on party lines.

Could The President Pardon Himself?

So far, Trump has shown he’s not afraid to pardon others he claims were unfair victims of partisanship. Among those include Joe Arpaio, the former Arizona sheriff who clashed with a judge on immigration, and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the Bush administration official convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in the Valerie Plame leak case.

But could Trump pardon himself? Not surprisingly, that particular scenario has never been tested in the courts.

Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, says it wouldn’t happen anyway.

“Pardoning himself would be unthinkable and probably lead to immediate impeachment,” Giuliani told NBC’s “Meet the Press” this weekend.

According to the website HuffPost, Giuliani said the president was completely immune from prosecution, and at one point offered this odd hypothetical:

“If he shot James Comey, he’d be impeached the next day,” he said. “Impeach him, and then you can do whatever you want to do to him.”

Comey is the former FBI director who was leading the Russia investigation when Trump fired him.

 

[kdawg]

I’ve said it before that this is the thing that worries me - this oaf will be out of office in a few years and (hopefully) someone sensible can improve things with positive policies, but the changes to the judiciary are going to cause problems for decades.

 

[gry60]

What kind of free masonry **** is this?

 

[gry60]

Just Say It’s Racist
The American press is caught between describing Trumpism accurately and avoiding the wrath of the president and his supporters.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/06/just-say-its-racist/561962/

Because the owners of the press are torn between maintaining their allegiance to Republicans (who protect their wealth unconditionally) and losing relevance in the eyes of the public by playing the "both sides are the same" BS.

Anybody of influence who downplays the dark path on which this administration is putting this country is either dishonest or in bed with the WS.

 

[MalcolmNewton]