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Muda69

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Market Crashes as Trump Threatens More Tariffs After China Trade Deal Flops: https://reason.com/2019/05/06/market-crashes-as-trump-threatens-more-tariffs-after-china-trade-deal-flops/

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With the prospects of a trade deal with China apparently dimming, President Donald Trump lashed out Sunday in the only two ways he seems to know.

He vented on Twitter. And while he was venting, he tweeted a threat to hit Americans with more tariffs.

That's not exactly what the president said, of course. He's still trying to maintain the illusion that China is somehow paying for the tariffs that his administration has imposed. But he threatened to hike the tariffs on some imported Chinese goods from 10 percent to 25 percent, and he simultaneously threatened to hit the remaining untaxed Chinese imports with a new round of 25 percent tariffs.

The impetus for Trump's Twitter tantrum seems to have been a Sunday meeting with some of his top trade aides, who reportedly delivered a disappointing message. Citing unnamed sources, Reuters says that "significant hurdles" remain in reaching a trade deal with China. Late last year, Trump had threatened to hike tariffs on Chinese imports if a trade deal was not struck by March 1. The president backed away from that threat as the deadline approached and passed. At the time, he seemed pleased with the progress being made, but that seems to no longer be the case.

Trump's tweets may have added to the hurdles. A top Chinese official has cancelledplans to visit Washington next weekend to discuss trade issues, and it remains unclearwhether the rest of a planned Chinese trade delegation will make the trip. Meanwhile, the stock market dropped sharply Monday morning as news of a possible escalation of a trade war between the world's two biggest economies seemed to spook investors (again), following a big drop in futures trading on Sunday after Trump's tweet.

It's unclear whether Trump's threats will become reality. It's possible that he's bluffing—though if he is, China doesn't seem to be buying it—or that he's trying to send a political signal to his domestic base. After all, trade negotiations are as much a matter of domestic policy as they are foreign policy.

But if he does follow through on Sunday's threat, that would be the height of folly. The president may love to claim that China is paying for his tariffs, but surely he has realized by now that that's not true. More and higher tariffs will hit the same American consumers and businesses that have already borne the brunt of Trump's ill-conceived trade war.

The tariffs imposed by Trump in 2018 cost the U.S. economy $6.9 billion last year—above and beyond the $12.3 billion paid by American consumers and importers to the federal government.

"We find that the U.S. tariffs were almost completely passed through into U.S. domestic prices, so that the entire incidence of the tariffs fell on domestic consumers and importers," write economists from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Princeton University, and Columbia University in a March paper published by the Centre for Economic Policy Research. By the end of last year, Trump's tariffs were costing American consumers and businesses about $1.4 billion each month, they found.

Trump continues to claim that China is paying for the tariffs, but his administration has not published any data to support that claim. Indeed, the president's own Council of Economic Advisors admitted in its year-end report that the estimated $14.4 billion in tariff revenue sent to the U.S. Treasury during 2018 was due to "costs paid by consumers in the form of higher prices."

Hiking tariffs will only make things worse. A February study published by the Trade Partnership estimated that slapping 25 percent tariffs on all remaining non-tariff Chinese imports—which is exactly what Trump threatened to do on Sunday—would cost more than 2.1 million American jobs, reduce the size of the U.S. economy by more than 1 percent, and cost the average family of four about $2,200.

Even as a negotiating tactic, that would be madness.

As difficult as the trade war has been already, worse could lie ahead. Daniel Drezner, a professor of international politics at Tufts University, warned in a recent Reason story that Trump's protectionist policies could lead to World War III—or, at least, to a bifurcated world trade system in which the U.S. and China carve out separate and competing spheres of influence similar to how the U.S. and Soviet Union once did.

Even if things don't get that bad, it's difficult to understand Trump's strategy in the short term. Blowing up planned trade negotiations, tanking the stock market, undermining the U.S. economy, and foisting more and higher taxes on American consumers and businesses is…well, it's an odd thing for a president facing re-election to do.

....

I'm starting to really believe Mr. Trump doesn't want to be re-elected, and blowing up the U.S. economy is a way that he can be defeated at the pools while still appearing to have "put up a fight".

 

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https://nypost.com/2018/05/27/obamas-spying-scandal-is-starting-to-look-a-lot-like-watergate/?utm_source=facebook_sitebuttons&utm_medium=site buttons&utm_campaign=site buttons&fbclid=IwAR1eu9YlVwYHbk0fYq2uPlIIrNNJdvOVo4Lz8t9c58-qXzRm6DUQb34YcN0

F.B.I. Used Informant to Investigate Russia Ties to Campaign, Not to Spy, as Trump Claims,” read the headline on a lengthy New York Times story May 18. “The Justice Department used a suspected informant to probe whether Trump campaign aides were making improper contacts with Russia in 2016,” read a story in the May 21 edition of the Wall Street Journal.

So much for those who dismissed charges of Obama administration infiltration of Donald Trump’s campaign as paranoid fantasy. Defenders of the Obama intelligence and law enforcement apparat have had to fall back on the argument that this infiltration was for Trump’s — and the nation’s — own good.

It’s an argument that evidently didn’t occur to Richard Nixon’s defenders when it became clear that Nixon operatives had burglarized and wiretapped the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters in June 1972.

Until 2016, just about everyone agreed that it was a bad thing for government intelligence or law enforcement agencies to spy — er, use informants — on a political campaign, especially one of the opposition party. Liberals were especially suspicious of the FBI and the CIA. Nowadays they say that anyone questioning their good faith is unpatriotic.

The crime at the root of Watergate was an attempt at surveillance of the DNC after George McGovern seemed about to win the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, just as the government misconduct in Russiagate was an attempt at surveillance of the Republican Party’s national campaign after Trump clinched its nomination.

In both cases, the incumbent administration regarded the opposition’s unorthodox nominee as undermining the nation’s long-standing foreign policy and therefore dangerous to the country. McGovern renounced the Democrats’ traditional Cold War policy. Trump expressed skepticism about George W. Bush and Obama administration policies on NATO, Mexico, Iran and (forgetting Barack Obama’s ridicule of Mitt Romney on the subject) Russia.

The incumbents’ qualms had some rational basis. But their attempts at surveillance were misbegotten. Back in 1972, my brief experience in campaigns left me skeptical that you could learn anything useful by wiretapping the opposition. If you were reasonably smart, you should be able to figure out what a reasonably smart opposition would do and respond accordingly. Subsequent experience has confirmed that view. It’s a different story if you face irrational opposition. It’s hard to figure out what stupid people are going to do.

Similarly, it’s hard to figure out what the Obama law enforcement and intelligence folks had to gain by spying. Candidate Trump’s bizarre refusals to criticize Vladimir Putin and Russia were already a political liability, criticized aptly and often by Hillary Clinton and mainstream media.

But neither the Obama informant/spy nor Robert Mueller’s investigation has presented additional evidence of Trump collusion with Russia. None of Mueller’s indictments points in that direction, and Trump’s foreign policy over 16 months has been far less favorable to Russia than Obama’s.

Both the Watergate wiretap and the Obama appointees’ investigator/spy infiltration were initially inspired amid fears that the upstart opposition might win. The Watergate burglary was planned when Nixon’s re-election was far from assured. A May 1972 Harris Poll showed him with only 48 percent against McGovern. It was only after the Haiphong harbor bombing and Moscow summit in early June made clear that US involvement in Vietnam was ending that Nixon’s numbers surged — just before the June 17 burglary.

In March 2016, it was conventional wisdom that Trump couldn’t be elected president. But his surprising and persistent strength in the Republican primaries left some doubtful, including the FBI lovebirds who instant messaged their desire for an “insurance policy” against that dreaded eventuality.

Their unease may have owed something to their knowledge of how the Obama Justice Department and FBI had fixed the Hillary Clinton emails case. Clinton wasn’t indicted but was left with a disastrously low 32 percent of voters confident of her honesty and trustworthiness.

There are two obvious differences between Watergate and the Obama administration’s infiltration. The Watergate burglars were arrested in flagrante delicto, and their wiretaps never functioned. And neither the FBI nor the CIA fully cooperated with the post-election cover-up.

That’s quite a contrast with the Obama law enforcement and intelligence appointees’ promotion of Christopher Steele’s Clinton campaign-financed dodgy dossier and feeding the mainstream media’s insatiable hunger for Russia collusion stories.

Has an outgoing administration ever worked to delegitimize and dislodge its successor like this? We hear many complaints, some justified, about Donald Trump’s departure from standard political norms. But the greater and more dangerous departure from norms may be that of the Obama officials seeking to overturn the results of the 2016 election.

So it was an informant - not a spy.......

 

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Trump invokes ‘privilege,’ aims to block full report release: https://apnews.com/d64338bc6606456d978c33f11d2cf2b4

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The White House is invoking executive privilege, reserving the right to block the full release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the Russia probe, escalating President Donald Trump’s battle with Congress.

The administration’s decision was announced just as the House Judiciary Committee was gaveling in to consider holding Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress over failure to release the report.

Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler of New York declared the action by Trump’s Justice Department was a clear new sign of the president’s “blanket defiance” of Congress’ constitutional rights. “Every day we learn of new efforts by this administration to stonewall Congress,” Nadler said. “This is unprecedented.”

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said the action was rather a response to the “blatant abuse of power” by Democratic Rep. Nadler.

“Neither the White House nor Attorney General Barr will comply with Chairman Nadler’s unlawful and reckless demands,” she said.

Nadler said earlier Wednesday the Trump administration’s refusal to provide special counsel Robert Mueller’s full Russia report to Congress presents a “constitutional crisis,” leaving the panel no choice but to move forward with a contempt vote against Barr.

.....

 

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Decade in the red: Trump tax figures show over $1 billion in business losses: https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/decade-in-the-red-trump-tax-figures-show-more-than-1-billion-in-business-losses/

 

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By the time his master-of-the-universe memoir “Trump: The Art of the Deal” hit bookstores in 1987, Donald Trump was already in deep financial distress, losing tens of millions of dollars on troubled business deals, according to previously unrevealed figures from his federal income tax returns.

Trump was propelled to the presidency, in part, by a self-spun narrative of business success and of setbacks triumphantly overcome. He has attributed his first run of reversals and bankruptcies to the recession that took hold in 1990. But 10 years of tax information obtained by The New York Times paints a different, and far bleaker, picture of his deal-making abilities and financial condition.

The data — printouts from Trump’s official Internal Revenue Service tax transcripts, with the figures from his federal tax form, the 1040, for the years 1985 to 1994 — represents the fullest and most detailed look to date at the president’s taxes, information he has kept from public view. Though the information does not cover the tax years at the center of an escalating battle between the Trump administration and Congress, it traces the most tumultuous chapter in a long business career — an era of fevered acquisition and spectacular collapse.

The numbers show that in 1985, Trump reported losses of $46.1 million from his core businesses — largely casinos, hotels and retail space in apartment buildings. They continued to lose money every year, totaling $1.17 billion in losses for the decade.

In fact, year after year, Trump appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual American taxpayer, The Times found when it compared his results with detailed information the IRS compiles on an annual sampling of high-income earners. His core business losses in 1990 and 1991 — more than $250 million each year — were more than double those of the nearest taxpayers in the IRS information for those years.

Overall, Trump lost so much money that he was able to avoid paying income taxes for eight of the 10 years. It is not known whether the IRS later required changes after audits.

Since the 2016 presidential campaign, journalists at The Times and elsewhere have been trying to piece together Trump’s complex and concealed finances. While The Times did not obtain the president’s actual tax returns, it received the information contained in the returns from someone who had legal access to it. The Times was then able to find matching results in the IRS information on top earners — a publicly available database that each year comprises a one-third sampling of those taxpayers, with identifying details removed. It also confirmed significant findings using other public documents, along with confidential Trump family tax and financial records from the newspaper’s 2018 investigation into the origin of the president’s wealth.

....

 

Of course Mr. Trump's initial reply to this story:   https://www.dailywire.com/news/46916/nyt-gets-trumps-tax-docs-decade-red-trump-responds-james-barrett

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The New York Times published Tuesday night a 3,600-word exposé on "previously unrevealed figures" from Donald Trump's federal income tax documents from 1985 to 1994 — a report President Trump dismissed Wednesday morning as a "highly inaccurate Fake News hit job!"

...

Trump responded to the report by saying that "massive write-offs" are what happens all the time with major real estate developers, particularly in that period. The Times' big report, he said, is a "highly inaccurate Fake News hit job" based on "very old information."

"Real estate developers in the 1980’s & 1990’s, more than 30 years ago, were entitled to massive write offs and depreciation which would, if one was actively building, show losses and tax losses in almost all cases," he wrote in a pair of tweets Wednesday morning. "Much was non monetary. Sometimes considered 'tax shelter,' you would get it by building, or even buying. You always wanted to show losses for tax purposes....almost all real estate developers did — and often re-negotiate with banks, it was sport. Additionally, the very old information put out is a highly inaccurate Fake News hit job!"

 

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3 hours ago, Muda69 said:

Trump invokes ‘privilege,’ aims to block full report release: https://apnews.com/d64338bc6606456d978c33f11d2cf2b4

 

Because Congress wants Barr to break the law.  And he won't.  The only stuff redacted in the Mueller report is grand jury testimony.......which is illegal to make public......

https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2019/05/08/youre-watching-the-slow-creep-of-insanity/

We’re on the verge of the House — what is this committee? (interruption) The Judiciary Committee, Jerry Nadler. There’s so many of these damn committees. There’s the investigations committee, there’s the Judiciary Committee, there’s the Intelligence Committee. Regardless, they’re on the verge here of voting to hold the attorney general, William Barr, in contempt of Congress for failing to produce 2% of the Mueller report. That’s what they want to see.

Barr has offered to let them see the least redacted version. The only thing that he will not let them see is that which is covered by grand jury testimony. Federal law requires that grand jury testimony cannot be made public. They are essentially demanding that the attorney general break the law and hand over an unredacted version of the Mueller report to them.

Now, to prove that they don’t really want to see the Mueller report, that’s not what this is about. You’ve heard this term 6(e) material. 6(e) material is the legal identification for grand jury material when talking about law in statutory ways. And the truth of the matter is that it’s this Congress, the United States Congress which passes the laws in this country which declared grand jury testimony may not be made public other than by the people who testify before it.

The prosecutors cannot make it public. Nobody in that room can make it public by an act of Congress. They are asking the attorney general to violate their own law in making it public. The question to ask, in the last two months, in the last two weeks, whatever time frame, has the Democrat majority in Congress attempted to change the law, allowing grand jury material to be made public?

No, they have not! It is still illegal. They have not changed the law, which they can do if they want. They can try. Somebody could have introduced legislation saying, “You know what? Going forward, grand jury material will not be protected, it will not be redacted from any legal reports. We’re gonna make it all public.” They could have done that. They could have gotten that law changed. They didn’t make an effort to change the law.

So what this boils down to is, and just synthesizing this down to its base element, this is not about the Mueller report. This is not about what they think is in it that they don’t know. It’s not about the fact that they think key evidence regarding collusion or obstruction is being withheld from them. It’s not about that at all.

This is about discrediting the attorney general as he begins his investigation into the investigation into how this all happened. The investigation into the Obama DOJ, the investigation into James Comey, the investigation into the FISA court, the FISA warrant process, the investigation into the Steele dossier and its origins, which is Hillary Clinton, the DNC. That investigation, which Barr has already begun and which the current FBI director Christopher Wray has acknowledged he’s taking part in, this is all an attempt to discredit Barr.

And the best way to discredit Barr is to have it reported in your sycophantic Drive-By Media that the attorney general conducting this investigation was held in contempt by Congress. They just want this vote to take place so that the attorney general will have it said about him that he has been held in contempt of Congress. That is supposed to discredit whatever his investigation produces.

We got a random act of journalism on CNN today. Audio sound bite number 1 on the program they call Newsroom. Evan Perez, the Justice Department correspondent for CNN, was asked the following questions: “The Democrats are gonna vote to hold Barr in contempt. How symbolic is that? Is this a negotiation just like Republicans held Eric Holder in contempt and were able to get the White House to negotiate and get those documents on Fast and Furious? Is that the best case outcome for the Democrats here?”

PEREZ: I find it odd that the Democrats decided to use this as the thing to hold the Attorney General in contempt over. I mean, look. They have a lot of things to be mad at him over. They accused him of misleading testimony. Obviously he didn’t show up for a hearing in the past week. So there’s a lot of things that they could be mad about. And this one, this is a report that is 92% public. Only 8% of it was unredacted. (sic) The Attorney General last week in his testimony said only 2% of volume 2, which is the thing that the Democrats say they care most about, the obstruction part, is redacted. So, you know, it’s kind of hard to understand how they went nuclear so quickly on this. It seems rather like they have started a constitutional crisis, not the other way around.

RUSH: Well, it’s exactly right. Two percent of what they want — two volumes in the Mueller report. Volume 1 is on Russian collusion. A, there wasn’t any. Volume 2 is on obstruction in which Mueller said, “Hell, I can’t exonerate Trump on this, so I’m gonna turn it over to Congress.” He’s not supposed to exonerate anybody. It’s not what prosecutors do.

Anyway, volume 2 of the Mueller report dealing with obstruction, only 2% of it is redacted! Only 2%! There’s nothing in this report that’s gonna shed any new light on anything, and they know it, and even their buddies in the Drive-By Media, “Of all things you want to hold Barr in contempt over, why not go get him for not showing up before you last week instead of this?” Even the Drive-Bys are confused.

The Democrats are in a hurry, as you will hear. Pelosi is losing her mind. We’ve got more evidence of this. It goes above and beyond that which we had yesterday. The House Democrats, folks, are irresponsible, they are hysterical, and it’s fear, it is fear that can do this. We’ve got this Horowitz inspector general report looming out there. We have Barr’s investigation that has begun, the investigation of the investigation. It’s driving the Democrats insane. Mueller’s report, and again, try to think of it the way they do.

For 2-1/2 years, however absurd this may sound to you and however unrealistic it may sound to you, these people — the Democrats on this committee, the Democrats in the House, the Democrats in the media, the Democrats everywhere — believed that Trump had colluded with Russia because their media told them. I think even those who didn’t believe it at first, got swept up, and they ended up believing it.

And even if they didn’t believe it, they believed that Robert Mueller was going to deliver the silver bullet, was gonna show Trump the sign of the cross that would make Trump go hide in the darkness like Dracula. They really believed! They got up every day and they believed it in their hearts. They believed it in every fiber of their existence that Mueller was going to lower the boom — and then here comes Mueller, “Sorry. Ehhhh, no collusion. Ehhhh, not enough evidence to find any obstruction.”

They have lost their minds. The Mueller report destroyed the “Trump is a traitor” narrative, destroyed the “Trump stole the election” narrative. But Mueller wanted to give the Democrats something to keep the country reeling, just like Vladimir Putin wanted. Mueller gave them “Trump must prove his innocence.” This, on the obstruction side. Mueller said, “Yeah, I can’t really… I don’t know. I can’t exonerate Trump on any of this.”

Well, it’s not his job to exonerate anybody. The prosecutor’s job is never to exonerate anybody. The accused does not have to prove his or her innocence. Look, you know the drill on this. Mueller wasn’t fired. Mueller wasn’t obstructed. There wasn’t anything done to stop Mueller. His investigation was not impeded. It was not impaired. The only thing obstructed, the only thing impeded, the only thing that was blown up was the Democrats’ attempted coup.

So here we are. Democrats are losing their collective minds because they have nothing more than threats, abuses of power, smears and abject panic over what is headed their way, and that is the sum total explaining everything they are doing here. The media’s gonna repackage Democrat panic and abuses of power as patriotism. It’s like Comey said. Comey said, “No, no, no. We don’t spy on people at the FBI. We investigate.”

(chuckling) So they are reeling. They have fear of Barr. They have fear of Trump. They have fear of truth. They have fear of a great, roaring economy. They are afraid of their own lunatic base. They are afraid of having no ideas to counter that which is producing great results in the country at the moment — and they have an institutional fear of success, independence, and freedom, because all of those things enjoyed by people mean that people don’t need Democrats.

None of this is playing out the way they dreamed for the last 2-1/2 years. It has blown up in their faces in every way imaginable. Now, you may have trouble looking at it this way because you’re watching tainted media report this. You’re seeing the media report that Trump is afraid. (impression) “Trump is scared to death! Trump is trying to hide the truth. Trump…” No. Trump is declaring and has asserted executive privilege over the full Mueller report, and let me explain to you what this means.

Even if the Democrats in this committee and then in the whole House vote to hold Barr in contempt, all they have done is stymie themselves for perhaps months as this winds its way through the courts to be resolved. So they hold Barr in contempt with their vote today. The White House then declares and asserts executive privilege over everything in this investigation. What does that mean? It means the Democrats do not have the Mueller report; the White House does.

The White House has everything associated with the Mueller report and Congress will get none of it until the courts have had a chance to deal with this. That means there’s gonna be lawsuits left and right. All of that means, it’s going to take a lot of time, and don’t think that… Nadler is out there saying that Trump is doing this because he wants to behave like a king, he wants to behave like a monarch, he wants to make like there is no coequal branch.

That is not what is happening here.

Trump is simply asserting the fact that the executive branch is independent, has its own area of government that it is in charge of and holds purview over, and they are asserting that. They are answerable to voters. They don’t operate at the whim of Jerry Nadler. The executive branch is not under permanent oversight like the Mueller report made it look like the executive branch is and like Trump is. They’re asserting executive privilege, and they’re telling Nadler and all these Democrats, “You do not get permanent oversight over everything.

“We have cooperated with you. We’ve cooperated all the way down the line. But you are attempting to use this material for something totally unrelated to what your stated purpose is, and we’re not gonna let you get away with it. We’re simply not gonna hold ourselves up and put ourselves in the firing line so you can start shooting at us.” Again, the Democrats are not doing this because they want to know what’s in the Mueller report. They’re not doing this because they think there’s a silver bullet in there that’s gonna get Trump.

 

JORDAN: I don’t think last week’s hearing was actually about having staff questioning the attorney general. I think it’s like my colleague said earlier. I think it’s all about trying to destroy Bill Barr, because Democrats are nervous he’s gonna get to the bottom of everything. He’s gonna find out how and why this investigation started in the first place. The attorney general said 3-1/2 weeks ago in front of the Senate Finance Committee, “spying did occur.” He said it twice: “Yes, spying did occur.” Third, he said, “There’s a basis for my concern about the spying that took place,” and maybe the most interesting thing: Two terms he used that, frankly, I find frightening. He said there was — in his judgment, he thinks there may have been — “unauthorized surveillance and political surveillance.” Scary terms.

RUSH: There was political surveillance, and now… It’s amazing how things that have been hidden for a while are now being produced. John Solomon has found records of a meeting that took place in the Department of Justice that pretty much establish that Christopher Steele knew he was producing the dossier for political usage, that pressure was being applied to Steele to produce this thing, the dossier, before Election Day.Steele was putting pressure on his people that were sourcing this thing to get it done by Election Day because it had political purposes. It was not intelligence related. It was not related to any allegation that Trump or his team were colluding with Russia. It was a political hit piece. It had to be readied by Election Day. There was pressure. It’s been discovered. So political surveillance in addition to unauthorized surveillance. All of this is taking place. The Democrats have been put on notice that we’re going to get to the bottom of it.

Do not doubt me when I tell you they are in fits of rage over this (because that’s consistent and constant), but they are afraid of this. The last thing in the world they ever expected was for this to do a 180. This was what was going to get rid of Trump. This was what was going to reverse the election results of 2016. Their entire existence, their lifeblood believed this. They were devoted to it for 2-1/2 years. They thought they had the game fixed. They thought they had everything rigged. They control all the people involved in making this happen, and it didn’t turn out their way — and now, there’s abject fear and panic.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT.

RUSH: Folks, this contempt citation if they end up voting for it, and they will, holding Barr in contempt, it’s going to backfire on them. The next thing you do after you hold him in contempt is you have to impeach him. What good is holding him in contempt if you don’t do anything about it? And they’re not gonna impeach Barr. They’re not gonna get anybody thrown out of office because The Turtle, Mitch McConnell, just proclaimed all of this is dead on arrival over in the Senate.

So this is gonna be it for Nadler and Pelosi. This is it. They’re not gonna be able to get rid of Barr. Barr is not going to be dissuaded from his duties by however this taints him, because it’s gonna end up backfiring on the Democrats like all of this has. All of this has backfired on them in ways they never imagined, and so is this. Because the backfire procedure is underway and is not changed at all.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, there could be another reason why the Democrats do want to see the 2% of volume 2 that has been redacted. But to hold the attorney general in contempt for not producing the full unredacted version. They did, by the way. You’ve heard the old saw, “Well, the Republicans held Eric Holder in contempt, and it’s common, it’s nothing.”

Yeah, but it took the Republicans 10 months of negotiating with the Department of Justice. Back then it was about documents proving Fast and Furious. You remember what that was. That was the Obama administration attempt to create public outrage about guns to facilitate action on chipping away at the Second Amendment.

What Fast and Furious was, was an Obama administration program that took guns, high-powered rifles and so forth, from American gun shops in Phoenix and saw to it that they ended up in the hands of drug cartels. And the drug cartels, of course, they kill people. They murder and they maim people. They do it with guns.

And they wanted the news to be that guns from an American gun shop ended up in the hands of drug cartel murderers and thugs and people are now dead. That’s why we need to have controls and more controls over guns. This was the attempt. It was discovered. It was found out. The guns would not have ended up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels were it not for policies of the Obama administration.

Okay. So there were documents proving this. Republican Congress wanted them. The attorney general was Eric Holder, and he refused for 10 months to turn them over, and after 10 months of negotiations is when they finally declared him in contempt of Congress. Now ask yourself this. How has being held in contempt of Congress changed Eric Holder’s life? Answer: Zip, zero, nada. It didn’t matter, and in fact most people don’t even remember it.

So I’m just telling you that William Barr is not quaking in his boots. This was predictable. The Democrats are nothing if not predictable, particularly when they’re insane and losing their minds. Now, there could be a reason why they want to see the 2% of the Mueller report, volume 2, on obstruction that has been redacted. And I think over on the collusion side it’s 8% that has been redacted.

All of this is one of two things: It’s either grand jury testimony, or it is material that gives away techniques and sources used by investigators that we wouldn’t want our supposed enemies to learn. So those are the two primary reasons things would be redacted.

Also, there’s a third reason, and that is not to harm people who are peripherally or on the fringe involved in this. They had nothing to do with it, they were interviewed, they were investigated, found they had nothing to do with it, they’re redacted so as no harm comes to their reputation or any of that.

So those are the three primary reasons. And all of these reasons are resulting from acts of law passed by Congress that they now want the attorney general to ignore. They want him to essentially break the law and unredact everything and give them full view and knowledge of the Mueller report. And it could well be that one of the things — don’t doubt me — they know that there’s nothing in this Mueller report that’s gonna convict Trump of anything. That’s a dead end, and they know it.

They’re just servicing their base. They’re just keeping their lunatic base happy when they act like, “Yeah, there’s something in there. We know there’s something in there that could get Trump in trouble, but Barr’s protecting Trump and that’s why we need to see it.” It’s all a caca, folks. They want their base to think that, but they know that no such evidence exists. They know it’s exact opposite.

But maybe they think that there is stuff in there, stuff in the Mueller report that would be really helpful for them to know so that they can protect themselves and the Obama administration from any future investigations of their own criminal activity during Spygate.

It could well be that they are afraid of what Barr — well, we know they’re afraid of what Barr’s gonna find. Maybe they want to get a heads-up on the kind of things that were done that Barr is going to discover that they don’t yet know that the Mueller report may have found out and reported. And it may be in grand jury material. It may be in grand jury testimony that it was discovered that the investigation was corrupt or flawed in various ways. They have no way of knowing until they see it.

I think the one thing you can be confident in, they don’t want to see the full Mueller report because they honestly think there’s evidence in there to get Trump thrown out of office. They want their voters to believe that, but they know that’s not the case. This is about discrediting Barr going into his investigation and perhaps learning things that Barr is going to find out about them and their buddies.

Now, with Trump asserting executive privilege, what’s gonna happen as far as the media is concerned, Pelosi and Nadler, they’re gonna get their little win here, the media’s gonna be breathlessly reporting, “The attorney general has just been found in contempt of Congress by a vote of the Judiciary Committee,” blah, blah. But then that’s all they’ve got, and they’re not getting any more because Trump’s asserted executive privilege, and that means the Mueller report and everything about it and everything to do with the people who were interviewed all stays out of their reach and for months.

This is this is a tactical mistake they are making. They’re making a huge tactical mistake for the thrill and excitement of a one or two day news story they’ll look like heroes by holding Barr in contempt. But as to the substance with executive privilege now claimed over all this, and, by the way, most of this that Trump is asserting executive privilege over is probably not gonna be overturned. They’re not gonna get to see the 6(e) grand jury material. It’s still against the law. There’s no judge in the world that’s gonna make the attorney general break the law and release that, the very people who wrote the law claiming it must remain secret or private.

So by virtue of asserting executive privilege, the administration is going to deny the Democrat run Congress, the opportunity to see anything more than what they already have, which, in the long game, defeats the exact objective the Democrats went into this trying to achieve. They’ve been frozen out. And even if Trump loses on the executive privilege claims, it’s gonna be months before that is known because it’s gonna have to wind its way through the courts with all the appeals and everything involved. You know how slow that process is.

And by the time this gets anywhere near payoff, we’re gonna smack-dab in the middle of the presidential campaign, and all of the oxygen is gonna be taken up by the Democrat primary race. So whatever result of this court case involving executive privilege, yeah, it would end up being a factor in the campaign, but it’s gonna come so long after the emotional attachment to this issue, the emotional reservoir of this is gonna have run dry and they’re gonna have to try gin it all back up again, and they’re not gonna be able to do that.

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SF -- 

Totally unrelated to the content: 

Dear God, man! We already have Muda cut-n-pasting entire dissertations into "his" posts, don't tell me you are going to start copying him in in doing that?! 

I'm quite willing to read a few paragraphs of your or someone else on the forum's original "take" on an issue. But if all you are doing is repeating some other person's "take", can't you just give us the link and say something like "ditto"?  

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3 hours ago, Wabash82 said:

SF -- 

Totally unrelated to the content: 

Dear God, man! We already have Muda cut-n-pasting entire dissertations into "his" posts, don't tell me you are going to start copying him in in doing that?! 

I'm quite willing to read a few paragraphs of your or someone else on the forum's original "take" on an issue. But if all you are doing is repeating some other person's "take", can't you just give us the link and say something like "ditto"?  

I have never claimed such "dissertations" were "my" posts.  I always provide a link first, then put the content into a quote box, then frequently highlight what I believe are the relevant and important points.  If you do not approve of this method then please voice your concerns with the GID management.  Thank you .

 

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39 minutes ago, BARRYOSAMA said:

You don't get to claim or not claim your posts.   They are by definition, your posts.

Please explain how the words I quote in a quote box from a linked article are somehow "my words", aka "mine".

 

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15 hours ago, Wabash82 said:

SF -- 

Totally unrelated to the content: 

Dear God, man! We already have Muda cut-n-pasting entire dissertations into "his" posts, don't tell me you are going to start copying him in in doing that?! 

I'm quite willing to read a few paragraphs of your or someone else on the forum's original "take" on an issue. But if all you are doing is repeating some other person's "take", can't you just give us the link and say something like "ditto"?  

Sorry - If you don't want to read the entire article - then read the BOLD and UNDERLINED sections I provided for your convenience. 

The point is that congress is asking the attorney general to break the law, and trying to punish him for refusing.  

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1 hour ago, BARRYOSAMA said:

Because you posted them.  

I don't understand how words that I never actually wrote in the first place are now "mine" because I copy/pasted them into quote box on an internet message board.

 

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2 hours ago, swordfish said:

Is Rush right?  I am not a "legal beagle", but I think that Rule 6 E https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/rule6e.htm applies to this situation.

FYI, the Washington Post link in your post to the Federal Rule is out-of-date. Here is a link to the current version of Rule 6:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcrmp/rule_6

 

Like Rush, I'm not an expert on the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, so I'll leave it to the courts to decide this. However, for edification purposes, I've described below the two main  legal arguments I've seen in news articles in opposition to Barr's contention that Rule 6e completely prevents him from disclosing the info to Congress under any circumstances. -- e.g., that he cannot disclose it to Congress even if the district court that oversaw the Mueller grand jury entered an order giving approval.

Again, I don't have sufficient knowledge of this area of the law to express a truly informed opinion whether the below arguments are "correct", or if Rush's view is "correct." I am just presenting them in response to your question, and in the interest of being "fair and balanced", as they say):

1. There are two exceptions under 6e that would allow Barr to disclose the grand jury matters to Congress, either on his own authority or upon petitioning and obtaining an order from the D.C. District Court that oversaw the Mueller grand jury. One exception allows disclosure of grand jury info to other governmental authorities when the info concerns counterintelligence matters (one of Mueller's mandates was to investigate Russian interference with the 2016 election). The other exception applies to disclosures made "preliminary to" another judicial action. (The theory being that disclosure is needed to make preliminary determinations re whether to impeach or indict of  Trump.) 

2. There's already a 1974 case decision from the D.C. District Court (court that oversaw Mueller grand jury), which held that a federal district court has the inherent authority outside of Rule 6e to order or permit the disclosure of info from a grand jury under the court's supervision, if the grand jury's investigation is completed and the public's interest in having access to the info in that particular case outweighs the reasons normally cited for keeping grand jury info secret. That 1974 ruling resulted in turn over to Congress of the report from the grand jury that investigated the Watergate incident. 

The fact that the Trump administration elected to assert executive privilege over the unredacted Mueller report implies that they don't see Rule 6e as a clearcut or ironclad block.  The assertion of executive privilege is a second level "protection" that only matters if Barr has leeway (or could be compelled) under 6e to turn it over to Congress.  

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1 hour ago, Wabash82 said:

FYI, the Washington Post link in your post to the Federal Rule is out-of-date. Here is a link to the current version of Rule 6:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcrmp/rule_6

 

Like Rush, I'm not an expert on the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, so I'll leave it to the courts to decide this. However, for edification purposes, I've described below the two main  legal arguments I've seen in news articles in opposition to Barr's contention that Rule 6e completely prevents him from disclosing the info to Congress under any circumstances. -- e.g., that he cannot disclose it to Congress even if the district court that oversaw the Mueller grand jury entered an order giving approval.

Again, I don't have sufficient knowledge of this area of the law to express a truly informed opinion whether the below arguments are "correct", or if Rush's view is "correct." I am just presenting them in response to your question, and in the interest of being "fair and balanced", as they say):

1. There are two exceptions under 6e that would allow Barr to disclose the grand jury matters to Congress, either on his own authority or upon petitioning and obtaining an order from the D.C. District Court that oversaw the Mueller grand jury. One exception allows disclosure of grand jury info to other governmental authorities when the info concerns counterintelligence matters (one of Mueller's mandates was to investigate Russian interference with the 2016 election). The other exception applies to disclosures made "preliminary to" another judicial action. (The theory being that disclosure is needed to make preliminary determinations re whether to impeach or indict of  Trump.) 

2. There's already a 1974 case decision from the D.C. District Court (court that oversaw Mueller grand jury), which held that a federal district court has the inherent authority outside of Rule 6e to order or permit the disclosure of info from a grand jury under the court's supervision, if the grand jury's investigation is completed and the public's interest in having access to the info in that particular case outweighs the reasons normally cited for keeping grand jury info secret. That 1974 ruling resulted in turn over to Congress of the report from the grand jury that investigated the Watergate incident. 

The fact that the Trump administration elected to assert executive privilege over the unredacted Mueller report implies that they don't see Rule 6e as a clearcut or ironclad block.  The assertion of executive privilege is a second level "protection" that only matters if Barr has leeway (or could be compelled) under 6e to turn it over to Congress.  

Thanks W.  It just seems like political theater to me that Nadler's committee would find Barr in contempt over this versus him not coming to a hearing they called the day after he was in the Senate.  There was a fuller copy of the report (including the classified sections, but not the Grand Jury sections) made available to the Senate Judiciary Committee that only 2 Senators took the time to look at it. 

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/442329-do-democrats-really-want-to-see-the-unredacted-special-counsel-report

Despite their demands that Attorney General William Barr release the full unredacted report by special counsel Robert Mueller, Democrats have shown little actual interest in viewing it themselves. In a solid gesture of transparency, Barr allowed a dozen members of Congress, six Democrats and six Republicans, to access the report with most of the redactions removed. While grand jury material had to be redacted to comply with federal requirements, this version of the report does include classified information, materials related to ongoing investigations, and information that could damage reputations of individuals not charged with crimes.

But prior to the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing with Barr last week, only two lawmakers had taken advantage of the opportunity, and both were Republicans. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham and Representative Doug Collins, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, reviewed the unredacted information, and both said the new details did not change their assessment of the report in any way.Moreover, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler were also granted access to the document. Despite being some of the most vocal critics of the way Barr handled the release of the report, none of them bothered to review the information that they claim is so critical. Not even the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Dianne Feinstein, deigned to read the less redacted version of the report prior to the attorney general testifying in front of her own panel.

Since the Democrats are so determined for the public to have access to the unredacted report, along with all the underlying evidence no less, their unanimous refusal to inspect the redacted information themselves raises some serious questions about their true motives in making such a fuss about the release of the full report. The Democrats had evidently “boycotted en masse” the opportunity to review the unredacted report because they wanted Barr to also remove legally required redactions of grand jury material and grant access to a broader array of lawmakers.

The theory that makes the most sense to me is their fear that Barr's warning of investigating the investigators has them attempting to make anything Barr finds questionable.  Even Mr. Nadler argued against what he is asking for now back in 1998. https://www.westernjournal.com/flashback-nadler-argued-releasing-independent-counsel-report-clinton/

In a 1998 interview on PBS’ Charlie Rose show, Nadler, then a member of the Judiciary Committee, cited rule 6(e) as a reason much of the Starr report could not be released publicly.

“It’s grand jury material,” he said. “It represents statements, which may or may not be true by various witnesses, salacious material, all kinds of material that it would be unfair to release.”

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With New Tariffs, Trump Hikes Taxes on American Small Business Owners — Again: https://mises.org/wire/new-tariffs-trump-hikes-taxes-american-small-business-owners-—-again

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Since I don't exactly live in the world's most crime-free neighborhood, I recently had to replace my house's 30-year old steel doors. They weren't cheap, but as I spoke with the salesman, he noted I had lucked out because their prices would be going up significantly in the near future due to new steel tariffs.

The company was unsure how just much this would impact sales and staff, but higher prices would naturally have a negative impact on revenue and hiring.

This, of course, is the expected result of a tax increase on American businesses — which is all the Trump tariffs are.

Now, thanks to the President — and the Congress which ceded its taxing authority to the White House — the tax burden on all Americans is going up even more.

Due to Trump's insistence that taxes go up as part of his so-called "art of the deal," consumers and businesses will now pay more for steel, bicycles, toys, luggage, and more.

Companies that use any of these products in producing a good or service will naturally be hurt — as will retailers whose main business is delivering retail items directly to consumers.

For example, as Reuters reported this week :

Sherrill Mosee, owner of Philadelphia-based MinkeeBlue, which sells work and travel tote bags for women on websites like Amazon.com Inc, said her company cannot absorb the new 25 percent tariff on top of the 10 percent tariff hike last year, which itself added to the existing 17.6 percent tariff on synthetic leather used to make her bags.

Mosee, who put in a new order for 1,500 bags from China just days before Trump announced plans to increase the tariff rate to 25 percent, said she plans to raise the price “a little” on the new bags, which are scheduled to arrive by early July.

Taxes are Not Simply "Passed On to Consumers"

It's important to keep in mind that taxes (i.e., tariffs) on goods are not simply something paid by consumers.

There is a common misconception that business owners can just "pass on to consumers" higher costs. In fact, while consumers certainly bear some of the brunt of higher costs imposed by governments (or other factors) it is rare that any business facing competition will simply jack up prices in an amount equal to the rise in the cost of doing business.

.....

Thus, when PBS reports, "U.S. retailers [must] decide between three options: absorb the cost of the tax, pass it along to consumers, or search for an alternative supplier from a country other than China," they're only sort of right. Yes, business could pass the cost along to consumers, but that if usually a prescription for lost revenue.

It's true that businesses can attempt to replace Chinese-made goods with imports "from a country other than China," but if those other places provided goods as economically as China does, merchants would already be buying those other goods.

By imposing new taxes, business owners must completely re-arrange their supply chains to deal with a completely unnecessary tax imposed by the US government.

This, of course, means little to the wage-workers who think tariffs are just a way to stick it to the bad guys (whether they be evil American corporations or the "Red Chinese"). Wage-workers, who make up 90 percent of the population, are usually quite unaware of what it takes to run a business and get goods from producers to consumers.

The "Seen vs. the "Unseen"

Trump supporters apparently continue to imagine that high taxes "create jobs" so long as those taxes are called "tariffs." This is only true so long as we don't consider "net job creation." Naturally, a tax on foreign steel, for example, will create some steel jobs.

That's the "seen." But what is "unseen" are all the jobs that were either lost or not created as a result of declining spending in other sectors. This is the result of every tax, including tariffs.

In fact, as Fox News reported yesterday ,

For each new steel job created, the average U.S. consumer pays a staggering $900,000, said Gary Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute; at best, that could create 8,700 jobs across six to eight steel firms.

In other words, consumers have less money to spend in the non-steel sector, and that means less job creation overall, and a declining standard of living for the overwhelming majority of consumers.

But even this won't convince those who insist on supporting tax hikes in the name of "winning" against allegedly unfair foreign tariffs.

The narrative they employ is one in which the administration's tax increase are only temporary, and the new taxes will be removed just as soon as all other countries buckle under US demands and remove all their own tariffs imposed on US goods. And they're all so sure this will happen so very soon.

But just how far away is "soon"? One year? Five years? From the point of view of a small business, a year is a very long time when it comes to making payroll, paying the rent, and planning for the future. The blasé and arrogant attitude of the administration and its supporters toward business owners in this regard is shocking indeed. It is essentially this: "you business owners should just accept declining income and shrinking sales for years so long as its in the service of Trump's grand plan.

And never mind the stagnant wages and lack of hiring that small business must impose on their workers in order to cope with the tax hikes.

In the real world, though, people can't stop paying their rent for six months or a year while the Trump administration works out its tariff strategy.

The fact that American tariffs are also unpleasant for Chinese firms is, I suppose, swell for nationalists who are more committed to hurting the Chinese than to helping the Americans. But the fact remains the nationalists are cutting off their noses to spite their faces, and the empirical evidence shows it. 

In this recent study from by Mary Amiti, Stephen J. Redding and David Weinstein on the 2018 trade war, the researchers found "the full incidence of the tariff falls on domestic consumers, with a reduction in U.S. real income of $1.4 billion per month by the end of 2018."

And the picture is even more grim when retaliatory tariffs are considered, with this NBER report finding:

Annual consumer and producer losses from higher costs of imports were $68.8 billion (0.37% of GDP). After accounting for higher tariff revenue and gains to domestic producers from higher prices, the aggregate welfare loss was $7.8 billion (0.04% of GDP). U.S. tariffs favored sectors located in politically competitive counties, but retaliatory tariffs offset the benefits to these counties.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has already admitted defeat in rural America where the administration approved new subsidies to make up for the fact far revenues are down as a result of the administration's trade war.

It's unlikely that any of this will hurt Trump politically with his base, though. Terribly economics often make great politics, and the fantasy that high taxes will make "America great again" is apparently very attractive to many.

 

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Dow drops more than 600 points as China trade war escalates: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/13/us-markets-react-to-china-trade-war-news-and-more.html

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Stocks fell sharply on Monday, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite having their worst day of the year, after China decided to raise tariffs on some U.S. goods as the ongoing trade war between the world’s largest economies intensifies.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 643 points, or 2.5%, and was on pace for its biggest one-day loss since Jan. 3. The 30-stock index fell as much as 719 points. The S&P 500 fell 2.7% while the Nasdaq dropped 3.5%

“I think this is a prelude of things to come,” said Phil Blancato, CEO of Ladenburg Thalmann Asset Management. “We should expect more volatility for the foreseeable future.”

To stem the downturn, “you’d have to see China really come back to the table. The rhetoric we saw this morning tells you that’s not where they’re at,” he said.

China will hike tariffs on $60 billion worth of U.S. imports, starting on June 1. The goods targeted include a broad range of agricultural products. This comes after President Donald Trump raised tariffs on Chinese imports last week. China said in a statement that the U.S. decision jeopardized the interests of both countries and does not meet the “general expectations of the international community,” according to a Google translation.

.....

Thanks Trump.

 

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