turbinetree
turbinetree's JournalGazillionaire senators push to make it harder for non-rich people to serve in Congress
Source: Think Progress
Well, that's one way to deal with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
IAN MILLHISER
FEB 13, 2019, 10:41 AM
Let’s start this column off with a bold assertion. Paying lawmakers good salaries is one of our country’s most important progressive reforms because it means that they don’t have to be wealthy to serve. High congressional pay is a safeguard against corruption, not a sign of it.
Bear this assertion in mind as you consider this proposal.
Scott’s net worth was $232.6 million at the end of 2017 — not bad for a man who led a company that paid $1.7 billion in fines for widespread Medicare and Medicaid fraud. His co-sponsor, Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN), is worth between $35 million and $96 million, according to his campaign disclosure forms. So Scott and Braun can afford to forego their pensions — or their entire salary, if they choose.
Yet, if elected officials do not receive what Scott dismisses as “generous salaries and pensions,” that will discourage people who do not have Scott or Braun’s vast wealth from running for office. As future President John Adams once warned, if “you make it law that no man should hold an office who had not a private income sufficient for the subsistence and prospects of himself and family,” then “all offices would be monopolized by the rich, the poor and the middling ranks would be excluded, and an aristocratic despotism would immediately follow.”
The question of whether to pay lawmakers was hotly contested by the framers — as historian Gordon Wood writes, the ultimate decision to do so “was radical for the age.” Many prominent early Americans subscribed to what Wood labels the “classical republican” view, which saw public service as a burden that should be carried without remuneration.
Read more: https://thinkprogress.org/rick-scott-seeks-to-make-senate-a-plutocrat-playground-46be0dcd38ed/
A scam artist's telling people that only a select few can can run for office.......................
Shameless Donald Trump Favor For Donor Threatens To Normalize Corruption Rachel Maddow MSNBC
Trump wants to gut housing for military families to pay for his wall
By Oliver Willis - February 12, 2019
The plan would also steal money from disaster relief funds intended for California and Puerto Rico.
The Trump administration is considering taking money that was supposed to be used to build houses for military families, and use it to build Trump’s racist border wall instead.
Politico reports that Trump chief of staff Mick Mulvaney has come up with the idea as a sneaky way to circumvent Congress, which has refused to fund Trump’s wall, and to avoid invoking a national emergency, which Trump has threatened to do if he didn’t get the funds he wanted.
The plan would shift money from Department of Defense funds slated for military construction, including family housing and infrastructure for military bases, to Trump’s useless pet project that most Americans don’t want.
The Trump team’s scheme would also take money away from disaster relief funds for California and Puerto Rico, along with funds allocated to flood control projects the Army Corps of Engineers has in place in Northern California.
https://shareblue.com/trump-steal-military-families-housing-funds-pay-wall/
Since this asshole and others like him have never lived on "base housing" , and a lot of the pollution that is on these bases hasn't been cleaned up, and for that matter being giving extra money to live off base if "all" the base housing is full, this asshole, and other like him need to live in a detention tent..........................it cost me and other taxpayers over 1.3 million dollars for this asshole and his criminal enterprise to fly to Mar a Lago, when the money could be used for, well..........base housing......................
What a fucking asshole..............................
Trump, self-proclaimed 'king of debt,' sets new national debt record
By Lisa Needham - February 13, 2019
Trump just set a new record for the largest national debt ever — but for once, he doesn't seem to want to brag about it.
The national debt just blew through the $22 trillion mark for the very first time. It’s quite an achievement for Trump, who cared deeply about the size of that debt when Obama was president — but now can’t be bothered to address it at all.
Before running for office, Trump repeatedly went after President Obama for the size of the national debt. Back in September 2012, when the national debt stood at $16 trillion, he complained that Obama had “amassed more debt than the first 42 presidents.” A few months later, when the debt stood at $17 trillion, Trump called it “a national security risk of the highest order” and also claimed that concerns over the debt were stopping businesses from hiring or expanding.
During the 2016 campaign, Trump also bragged that he is “the king of debt” and that “nobody knows debt better than me.”
When he first took office, Trump was at least pretending to be a budget hawk, bragging that he’d decreased the debt in his first month in office and whining that “the media” hadn’t reported on it.
https://shareblue.com/trump-king-of-debt-new-national-debt-record/
And now up for grabs is Social Security and Medicare.............................if the republicans gain control......................in 2020
TO "ALL" of my DU partners in being progressive and to all of the hearts that I have received
THANK YOU from my heart.......................you "ALL" are the best.....................
HUD's System for Processing Public Records Requests Died During the Shutdown
The contract for the agency’s electronic system for managing FOIA requests lapsed in early January and hasn’t been renewed. Delays are mounting.
by Molly Parker, The Southern Illinoisan Feb. 13, 5 a.m. EST
This article was produced in partnership with The Southern Illinoisan, a member of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network in 2018.
The partial federal shutdown ended weeks ago, but one lingering effect turns out to be citizens’ ability to get public records from a government agency.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s public records management and tracking system has been offline since early January, when a contract to run it lapsed.
Four Freedom of Information Act officers at HUD said the lack of a system has drastically slowed their ability to process requests and has presented challenges in tracking the dozens of them the agency receives each week.
Members of the public can no longer submit requests via HUD’s website or track their status. Late last week, the agency updated its website to include new instructions for filing a FOIA request via email, fax or mail.
https://www.propublica.org/article/hud-system-for-processing-public-records-requests-died-during-the-shutdown
AND who is in charge of HUD, you got it that fun loving rascal Ben Carson, the same "guy" that bought on the taxpayer doles a $35,000 dollar table, and who also likes to schmooze with known Russian agents............................
https://thinkprogress.org/why-was-ben-carson-hanging-out-with-the-employee-of-this-sanctioned-russian-oligarch-konstantin-malofeev-alexey-komov-bdb4cd383eaa/
Appeals Court Rules Key Anti-Age Discrimination Protections Don't Apply to Job Seekers, Only Employe
A federal appeals court in Chicago, mirroring a decision in Atlanta, decided that job applicants are entitled to less protection under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act.
by Peter Gosselin Feb. 12, 3:11 p.m. EST
In a decision last month, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago has sharply limited a federal law that protects workers who are 40 and older from age bias by ruling that key provisions only apply to those who already have jobs, not those seeking them.
The 8-4 decision, written by Circuit Judge Michael Scudder, a Trump administration appointee, said the “plain language” of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act shows that in enacting the measure, Congress aimed its sweeping prohibition against discrimination at employees but “did not extend that same protection to outside job applicants.”
The ruling prompted a fierce dissent from Circuit Judge David Hamilton, an Obama administration appointee, who accused the majority of taking a “deliberately naïve approach” to the law and “closing its eyes to fifty years of history, context and application.”
The ADEA’s anti-discrimination language originally matched that of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which covers race, gender, religion and other categories. And for much of the last half-century, federal courts have treated provisions of the two laws as largely interchangeable.
The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by an Illinois lawyer, Dale Kleber, who was 58 in 2014 when he applied for a senior attorney position with CareFusion Corp., a unit of medical device maker Becton Dickinson & Co., but was passed over for an interview. The job eventually went to a 29-year-old candidate.
https://www.propublica.org/article/appeals-court-rules-key-anti-age-discrimination-protections-dont-apply-to-job-seekers-only-employees
OH fucking yippie, a trump appointee, and a person that was confirmed by the Moscow Mitch senate, and this is what the country is going to get from these "appointee's.....oh fucking yippie...............this asshole should be annulled , because the "guy" in the white house is criminal...................he is a unindicted co-conspirator in a campaign violation of the law............................along with many other treasonous issues..................
Consumers to pay a hefty price for Trump's rollback of light bulb efficiency standards
Repealing the standards would cost consumers $100 billion and result in half a billion extra tons of air pollution.
JOE ROMM
FEB 12, 2019, 2:39 PM
President Donald Trump wants to roll back efficiency standards for light bulbs, at a cost to consumers of over $100 billion — some $1,000 per household — by 2030.
The Department of Energy (DOE) announced in the Federal Register that it has started a process to undo those standards, despite projections that they will prevent the release of 540 million tons of greenhouse gases and hundreds of thousands of tons of the pollutants that worsen asthma, cardiopulmonary disease, and premature death.
So, in the annals of Trump’s blinkered pursuit of undoing everything President Barack Obama did, no matter how basic or commonsense, this move ranks near the top.
The original DOE lighting standards were part of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. They did not ban incandescent light bulbs, but instead encouraged innovation by requiring manufacturers to increase efficiency by 27 percent through 2014. It was a completely non-controversial bill that had bipartisan support, was strongly supported by light bulb manufacturers, and was signed into law by President George W. Bush.
But after Obama was elected and Republicans regained control of Congress, GOP leadership immediately went to work to undo the standards, continuing their longstanding opposition to federal energy-saving rules.
https://thinkprogress.org/trump-light-bulb-rollback-cost-2b10f0720303/
'Fox & Friends' tells Americans it's their fault their tax returns are smaller this year
Many Americans are actually paying more in federal taxes thanks to the Trump tax "cuts."
JOSH ISRAEL
FEB 13, 2019, 9:14 AM
As Americans begin to prepare their 2018 federal tax returns, many are facing the unpleasant surprise that their tax refunds will be smaller this year or that they may even owe money to the government. This comes despite — or perhaps because of — the tax bill passed by the Republican Congress in late 2017 and signed by President Donald Trump, which Trump falsely promised would give everyone a tax cut, but actually raised taxes on many middle class Americans.
On Wednesday, Fox & Friends attempted to spin the situation, blaming taxpayers who should have somehow known to have adjust their withholding a year ago and should have saved more.
Noting that the average tax refund has dropped 8.4 percent since last year, guest and Fox Business Network host Charles Payne claimed Americans should have used their “fatter paychecks” more wisely.
“Here’s the thing. For the most part, the IRS is telling everyone that they just simply did not make the proper adjustments on the withholding at the beginning of the year. So they have been making all of this money,” he said.
He added that employers and taxpayers should have known better, because the Internal Revenue Service “put a lot more memos out” about how to recalculate payroll deductions.
https://thinkprogress.org/fox-friends-tells-americans-its-their-fault-tax-returns-are-smaller-2e51d2abad11/
If you bozo's think that my blue state should become like Texas, or Mississippi, then guess what FU.
House Dems Mull Subpoenaing Notes, Interpreter From Trump-Putin Meeting
Source: Talking Points Memo
By Nicole Lafond
February 13, 2019 7:51 am
House Democrats are considering actions they could take to learn what was discussed during President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s private meeting in Helsinki last year, Axios reported.
According to a Democratic member of Congress who reportedly spoke to D.C. reporters on Tuesday, House Democrats are considering “subpoenaing the notes or subpoenaing the interpreter or other steps.”
The White House never revealed what the two world leaders discussed during their two-hour, staff-free — except for interpreters — closed door meeting during a summit in Helsinki last summer.
Read more: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/house-dems-mull-subpoena-notes-interpreter-trump-putin-meeting
Hey Burr, did you by some "chance" think about doing this in a open setting for the public ..............................before you sent out your report..............................nope, because you make the call, don't you....................not Warner, but you, all by your lonesome you could have done this when your "guy" had a meeting in Helsinki all by himself with a known murder record from a foreign state actor..............
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