the depression is already here for most of us
below the super-rich!
Trump and the GOP created a fake economic boom on our collective credit card: The equivalent of maxing out your credit cards and saying look how good I'm doing right now.
*
Trump and the GOP created a fake economic boom on our collective credit card: The equivalent of maxing out your credit cards and saying look how good I'm doing right now.
*
Trump criticized Dimon in 2013 for supposedly contributing to the country’s economic downturn. “I’m not Jamie Dimon, who pays $13 billion to settle a case and then pays $11 billion to settle a case and who I think is the worst banker in the United States,” he told reporters.
*
"One of the premier institutions of big business, JP Morgan Chase, issued an internal report on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the 2008 crash, which warned that another “great liquidity crisis” was possible, and that a government bailout on the scale of that effected by Bush and Obama will produce social unrest, “in light of the potential impact of central bank actions in driving inequality between asset owners and labor."
*
"Overall, the reaction to the decision points to the underlying fragility of financial markets, which have become a house of cards as a result of the massive inflows of money from the Fed and other central banks, and are now extremely susceptible to even a small tightening in financial conditions."
*
The GOP said the "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act"
would reduce deficits and supercharge
the economy (and stocks and wages). The
White House says things are working as
planned, but one year on--the numbers
mostly suggest otherwise.
*
"It is significant that what the Financial Times described as a “tsunami of money”—estimated to reach $1 trillion for the year—has failed to prevent what could be the worst year for stock markets since the global financial crisis."
*
"A decade ago, as the financial crisis raged, America’s banks were in ruins. Lehman Brothers, the storied 158-year-old investment house, collapsed into bankruptcy in mid-September 2008. Six months earlier, Bear Stearns, its competitor, had required a government-engineered rescue to avert the same outcome. By October, two of the nation’s largest commercial banks, Citigroup and Bank of America, needed their own government-tailored bailouts to escape failure. Smaller but still-sizable banks, such as Washington Mutual and IndyMac, died."
The GOP said the "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act"
would reduce deficits and supercharge
the economy (and stocks and wages). The
White House says things are working as
planned, but one year on--the numbers
mostly suggest otherwise.
would reduce deficits and supercharge
the economy (and stocks and wages). The
White House says things are working as
planned, but one year on--the numbers
mostly suggest otherwise.
Trump kicks off 2020 presidential campaign with fascistic rally
While Biden pledges to protect billionaires
The campaign rally held by President Trump Tuesday night in Orlando, Florida, marked the semi-official beginning of the 2020 election campaign, an eighteen-month contest between the two right-wing parties that exercise a political monopoly in the United States.
The Trump rally featured the fascistic appeals to nationalism and anti-immigrant chauvinism that have been the hallmark of his political activity since he launched his first campaign for the Republican presidential nomination four years ago.
Trump addresses the rally [Credit: C-Span]
But today, unlike 2015, Trump appeared at the Orlando rally as the unchallenged leader of the Republican Party. Surrounded by the trappings of the presidency, demonizing both the media and his Democratic Party opponents, Trump appeared to be bidding for the role of F ührer rather than seeking to win a majority of votes in a democratic election.
In a typically meandering and incoherent presentation, riddled with lies, exaggerations and vicious slanders, Trump attacked the media (whose reporters at the rally he denounced repeatedly, prompting catcalls and threats from his supporters), and denounced the Democratic Party, which he described as “radical,” “un-American,” “socialist,” “extreme,” “depraved,” and guilty of “the greatest betrayal of the American middle class, and, frankly, American life.”
When he said, at one point, “Our Radical Democrat opponents are driven by hatred, prejudice and rage,” he was clearly engaged in projection. He spent much of the speech re-fighting the 2016 elections, rehashing three-year-old attacks on Hillary Clinton and encouraging chants of “lock her up” from the crowd.
Anyone who takes politics seriously would conclude from this speech that Trump will treat victory in 2020 as a mandate to eliminate opposition, even from the right-wing, conservative and pro-capitalist perspective of the Democratic Party. This is the ominous implication of his closing declaration, “We are one movement, one people, one family and one glorious nation under God.”
The tendency to authoritarianism is expressed most nakedly in Trump’s constant appeals to the police and military, which began as early as his inauguration, when uniformed troops suddenly lined up behind him to form a military backdrop as he was giving his address.
In Orlando, Trump called on his supporters to attend the Fourth of July celebration in Washington, which for the first time in modern history has been commandeered by the White House to serve as a political platform for the president. Trump is set to deliver a televised address before the fireworks, using the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial and the National Mall as props in staging his latest effort at self-glorification.
Significantly, Trump said nothing at all about the 2018 elections, which saw record turnout for a midterm election and resulted in a resounding defeat for the Republican Party, which lost control of the House of Representatives for the first time in eight years. Trump has effectively refused to acknowledge the outcome of the 2018 vote, defying congressional authority now that it is in the hands of the Democrats, and ordering his aides to ignore subpoenas, refuse to testify and withhold documents from the House of Representatives.
Trump has flatly denied that he is trailing in opinion polls projecting the vote in 2020, and last week fired three of his own Republican polling firms when they produced results that confirmed the deep unpopularity of this administration. His Orlando speech was one more demonstration that he could well refuse to acknowledge the outcome of the 2020 vote if it goes against him. Only two days before the rally, he said in a tweet that his supporters might well demand that he stay in the White House after 2024—in defiance of the two-term limit set by the 22nd Amendment to the US Constitution.
Unlike 2016, when he made at least a limited appeal to the social anger arising from deindustrialization, economic decline and widespread social misery—particularly in industrial states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia—Trump goes into the 2020 election campaign proclaiming that conditions of life for masses of working people have never been so good.
In Orlando, his rapture over the economy had a delusional character. “Our country is now thriving, prospering and booming,” he said. “And frankly, it’s soaring to incredible new heights. Our economy is the envy of the world, perhaps the greatest economy we’ve had in the history of our country… Our future has never ever looked brighter or sharper.”
This is under conditions where the actual conditions of life for tens of millions of working people remain little changed from four years ago, and in many cases have deteriorated further, particularly for youth and young workers, the first generation in American history to live under far worse conditions than their parents.
Most dangerously for Trump, the past year has seen the beginning of a movement from below, initially among teachers and other public service workers, but now threatening to spread to masses of industrial workers with the expiration of contracts for 155,000 autoworkers in September. Any significant offensive by workers against corporate America will rapidly destroy Trump’s populist pretenses and expose him as a billionaire thug and enemy of the working class.
Trump has one political advantage: that his nominal opposition is the Democratic Party, just as committed to the defense of big business as the Republicans. Congressional Democrats have sought to divert all popular opposition to Trump in a right-wing direction through their campaign over alleged “Russian meddling” in the 2016 elections.
The one genuine note that sounded in Trump’s speech is when he accused the Democrats of spending the last two-and-a-half years seeking to overturn the results of the 2016 vote.
The Democrats have done so in alliance with a section of the military-intelligence apparatus which opposes Trump on foreign policy questions, particularly his shift away from the hard-line policy towards Russia adopted in the second term of the Obama administration.
The name-calling and mudslinging between the Republicans and Democrats, frequently conducted at mind-numbing volume, serve to disguise their agreement on fundamentals: support for big business and the capitalist system; defending the worldwide interests of American imperialism; subservience to the military-police apparatus that is the ultimate guarantor of the wealth and property of the US ruling class.
The campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination has been underway for many months, but the first official event, a televised debate over two nights, takes place June 26–27 in Miami, Florida.
The Democratic frontrunner, former Vice President Joe Biden, set the stage for the debate with a series of flagrantly right-wing comments: declaring that the only alternative to collaborating with Republicans was “physical revolution”; reminiscing fondly about his days in the Senate rubbing shoulders with segregationists like James Eastland and Herman Talmadge, who treated him with respect (while they supported lynching and other brutalities); and telling an audience of financial backers in Manhattan that a Biden administration would protect the wealthy from popular anger fueled by widening economic inequality.
Biden’s remarks in Manhattan, where he held three fundraisers in a single evening, deserve attention because they demonstrate the class basis of the Democratic Party and show how Trump is able to use the prostration of the Democrats before Wall Street as part of his phony populist appeals.
“You know what I’ve found is rich people are just as patriotic as poor people,” Biden said. “Not a joke. I mean, we may not want to demonize anybody who has made money.” He went on to warn, however, “when we have income inequality as large as we have in the United States today, it brews and ferments political discord and basic revolution.”
Twice in as many days, the Democratic frontrunner has publicly raised the possibility of revolution in America. And every day, the Republican president declares that he is the bulwark against the spread of socialism in America.
Clearly what both parties fear most is that the emerging mass movement among working people will take on a clear socialist political direction and challenge the profit system, and the wealth and power of the ruling elite that both the Democrats and Republicans serve.
President Donald Trump at his 2020 re-election event in Orlando, Fla., on June 18, 2019. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
Trump Warns of Threat of ‘Radical Socialism’ at Reelection Rally
President says progress made since his election could be reversed by socialist policies embraced by Democratic 2020 candidates
June 19, 2019 Updated: June 19, 2019
President Donald Trump officially launched his 2020 reelection bid on June 18, telling a crowd of passionate supporters in Florida that the choice in the upcoming election is between the radical socialism embraced by the Democratic field and his agenda of freedom and the American dream.
The president celebrated the booming economy and cautioned that a vote for any Democrat would erase the progress made since 2017. Echoing some of the campaign promises of the most of the Democratic contenders, he took aim at “Medicare for All,” the socialist health care proposal openly backed by every top Democratic candidate except Joe Biden.
“More than 120 Democrats in Congress have also signed up to support crazy Bernie Sanders’s socialist government takeover of health care,” Trump said. “They want to end Medicare as we know it and terminate the private health insurance of 180 million Americans who love their health insurance.”
BLOG: THE GOP SURE IN HELL
BELIEVES IN SOCIALISM FOR
WALL STREET CRONIES! THE
BANKS ARE ALREADY
PLANNING THEIR NEXT
PLUNDER AND BOTTOMLESS
BAILOUT!
“America will never be a socialist country, ever,” the president added. “Republicans do not believe in socialism, we believe in freedom, and so do you.”
Vice President Mike Pence and senior members of the Trump campaign previously described the 2020 election as a choice between socialism and freedom. With the exception of Sanders (I-Vt.) and Beto O’Rourke, the leading Democratic contenders have distanced themselves from the socialist label. They nevertheless continue to back socialist policies such as Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. A pair of Democratic candidates—both polling below 1 percent—were booed after denouncing socialism at a recent Democratic conference.
Every Democratic candidate for president polling at above 1 percent has endorsed Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. The two socialist, controlled-economy policies would cost U.S. taxpayers an estimated $125 trillion over the next decade; the entire projected spending for the U.S. government over the next 10 years is $60 trillion. Beyond the cost, each proposal would virtually cede control of the health care and energy sectors to the government.
“No matter what label they use, a vote for any Democrat in 2020 is a vote for the rise of radical socialism and the destruction of the American dream,” Trump said.
“They would shut down your free speech, use the power of the law to punish their opponents, which they’re trying to do now anyway; they’ll always be trying to shield themselves. They would strip Americans of their constitutional rights while flooding the country with illegal immigrants in the hopes it will expand their political base, and they’ll get votes someplace down the future.”
Well before firing off a long list of accomplishments, the president devoted a significant portion of the speech to underline how his administration worked under the intense pressure of the special counsel investigation of Robert Mueller. He suggested that the investigation was the result of his administration taking on the political establishment in Washington, which he calls “the swamp.”
“And that’s why the swamp is fighting back so viciously and violently. For the last two and a half years, we have been under siege, and with the Muller report, we won, and, now, they want a do-over.”
“Our patriotic movement has been under assault from the very first day. We accomplish more than any other president has in the first two and a half years of a presidency and under circumstances that no president has had to deal with before, because we did in the middle of the great and illegal ‘witch hunt,’ things that nobody has been able to accomplish, not even close.”
Mueller concluded his investigation in March, finding insufficient evidence to establish that Trump colluded with Russia. After Mueller’s report was made public, Democrats in Congress ramped up their investigation into Trump, as well as his family, past business dealings, associates, and current and former White House staff.
“We went through the greatest ‘witch hunt’ in political history. The only collusion was committed by the Democrats, the fake news media and their operatives, and the people who funded the phony dossier: crooked Hillary Clinton and the DNC [Democratic National Committee]. It was all an illegal attempt to overturn the results of the election, spy on our campaign, which is what they did, and subvert our democracy.”
While Mueller investigated Trump, parallel investigations led by Republicans in Congress uncovered that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the DNC funded an opposition research dossier, which the FBI used as evidence to obtain a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign. A former British spy compiled the dossier by paying sources with ties to the Kremlin. None of the dossier’s claims that were damaging to Trump and his associates have ever been verified.
“They went after my family, my business, my finances, my employees, almost everyone that I’ve ever known or worked with, but they are really going after you. That’s what it’s all about, not about us, it’s about you,” Trump said.
“They tried to erase your vote, erase your legacy of the greatest campaign and the greatest election, probably in the history of our country, and they wanted to deny you the future that you demanded and the future that America deserves, and that now America is getting,” he added.
The administration emerged from the investigation with a formidable list of accomplishments. Trump pointed to the thriving jobs market. The United States has added six million jobs since Trump took office. Nearly 160 million Americans are currently working, he said, the largest number in U.S. history, while wages are growing at the fastest pace in decades, especially for low-wage workers.
The president also celebrated the revival of the manufacturing sector, taking a jab at Biden, who served as vice president under Barack Obama. In remarks about manufacturing jobs, Obama once said one would need a “magic wand” to make the jobs come back.
“Well, we’ll tell ‘Sleepy Joe’ that we found the magic wand,” Trump joked, using his nickname for Biden.
“Our economy is the envy of the world, perhaps the greatest economy we’ve had in the history of our country,” Trump said. “And as long as you keep this team in place, we have a tremendous way to go. Our future has never ever looked brighter or sharper.”
On the world stage, the United States became the biggest producer of oil and natural gas. Trump also delivered on campaign promises to quit the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Paris climate accord, and the Iran nuclear deal. Circling back to his challenge to socialism, Trump pointed to the administration’s fight against communist regimes in South America.
“In Latin America, our country once again stands against corrupt communist and socialist regimes, and we support the people of Cuba and Venezuela in their righteous struggle for freedom,” he said.
Throughout the speech, the president often shifted the focus onto the Americans who he represents and those who elected him in 2016. He described his stunning election win in 2016 as a political campaign that transformed into a political movement.
“It’s a movement made up of hard-working patriots who love their country, love their flag, love their children, and who believe that a nation must care for its own citizens first. Together, we stared down a corrupt and broken political establishment and we restored the government of, by, and for the people.”
The president delivered the harshest criticism of the Democrats, when addressing their unwillingness to solve the border crisis. Trump described the Democrats’ border agenda as “morally reprehensible” and said it is “the greatest betrayal of the American middle class.”
“As we fight to make life better for all Americans, the Democrat Party has become more radical, more dangerous, and more unhinged than at any point in the modern history of our country. On no issue are Democrats more extreme and more depraved than when it comes to border security,” Trump said.
Among the promises for what his administration will accomplish if re-elected, Trump said he would fix the health care system, give parents the option of school choice, and rescue inner cities crippled by decades of Democratic control.
“We will come up with the cures to many, many problems, too many, many diseases, including cancer and others, and we’re getting closer all the time. We will eradicate AIDS in America once and for all, and we’re very close,” Trump said. “We will lay the foundation for landing American astronauts on the surface of Mars and, above all, we will never stop fighting for the values that hold us together.”
In one of the most raucous moments, the crowd of supporters cheered their approval for the new campaign slogan, “Keep America Great.” The audience was also riled up with a chant of “lock her up” when Trump revisited the topic of Clinton’s use of an unauthorized email server.
“But let’s see what happens, we now have a great attorney general. Let’s see what happens.”
The president wrapped up the 70-minute speech by again shifting attention back on the voters.
“So don’t ever forget, this election is about you. It’s about your family, your future, and the fate of your country. We begin our campaign with the best record, the best results, the best agenda, and the only positive vision for our country’s future,” Trump said.
“We are one movement, one people, one family, and one glorious nation under God. And together, we will make America wealthy again, we will make America strong again, we will make America safe again, and we will make America great again.”
Paul Manafort arrives at a hearing at District Court in Washington on Jan. 16, 2018. (Reuters/Yuri Gripas/File Photo)
Barr’s DOJ Intervenes to Keep Manafort Out of Notorious NYC Jail, Report Says
June 19, 2019
Paul Manafort, former campaign manager of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, will not wait for his state trial in the scandal-ridden Rikers Island jail in New York City due to intervention from the Department of Justice, a media report said.
Manafort is already serving 7 1/2 years in a federal prison in Pennsylvania for money laundering, tax evasion, bank fraud, unregistered lobbying, and attempted witness tampering.
In March, the Manhattan district attorney unveiled a separate indictment of Manafort charging him with 17 state crimes, including residential mortgage fraud, conspiracy to commit said crime, falsifying records, and a “scheme to defraud.”
Manafort and others stand accused of falsifying business records to fraudulently obtain millions of dollars in mortgages. The allegations mirror some of the federal charges.
Manafort was expected to await his state trial at the Rikers Island complex, which has struggled through reports of violence and poor conditions. Federal prison authorities, however, informed the Manhattan district attorney on June 17 that Manafort will await his trial at the Pennsylvania prison or a federal detention facility in Manhattan, unidentified sources told The New York Times.
The report said Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen previously sent a letter to the Manhattan district attorney that “indicated that he was monitoring where Mr. Manafort would be held in New York.”
Several unnamed “former and current prosecutors” told the paper that the decision to keep Manafort out of a state facility was unusual. But Manafort’s lawyer, Todd Blanche, said his client’s case was unusual to begin with.
“You’ll find no example of someone like Mr. Manafort being prosecuted by the feds and then by the district attorney for exactly the same conduct,” he said.
The practice of charging the same behavior twice—once at the federal level and once on the state level—was recently examined by the Supreme Court. It ruled on June 17 that the practice is permissible and doesn’t violate the Constitution’s double jeopardy ban, which prohibits charging the same crime repeatedly. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Neil Gorsuch dissented.
Manafort’s Story
Manafort had a short-lived job as campaign manager for Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential bid from June to August of that year, after which he stepped down amid reports of his political work in Ukraine.
His convictions stem from indictments by the office of special counsel Robert Mueller, who was appointed in mid-2017 to probe Russian interference in the U.S. elections as well as allegations that the Trump campaign colluded with such interference. Mueller indicted dozens of Russians, Manafort, and several others, but didn’t substantiate the collusion allegations.
Mueller made Manafort’s covert lobbying for pro-Kremlin politicians in Ukraine a centerpiece of his probe, even though the lobbying took place years before Manafort joined the Trump campaign. In fact, the FBI had looked into Manafort’s Ukraine dealings before, but dropped the case in 2014 without charging him.
One of Manafort’s lawyers previously suggested the charges against his client were politically motivated.
Ukraine Interference
Evidence has emerged this year that the government of Ukraine might have colluded with the Democratic Party to help the campaign of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Trump’s 2016 opponent, by providing dirt on Manafort.
Alexandra Chalupa, an operative paid by the Democratic National Committee (DNC), asked the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington for dirt on Manafort in 2016, the embassy confirmed in a statement to The Hill.
The embassy denied having helped the operative. But a former embassy worker told The Hill’s John Solomon that it did help Chalupa, knowing that she was working to help elect Clinton.
In late 2018, a Ukrainian court ruled that two Ukrainian officials broke the law and interfered in the U.S. election by releasing confidential information on Manafort’s financial dealings. One of the two officials, Serhiy Leshchenko, is known to have provided information to Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm behind the Clinton-funded Steele dossier. The FBI used the dossier, a collection of unsubstantiated claims about Trump–Russia ties, as evidence to secure a warrant to spy on another Trump-campaign associate, Carter Page.
Trump can pardon Manafort’s federal criminal convictions, but not the state charges.
The Justice Department, the Manhattan district attorney’s office, and Blanche didn’t respond to requests for comments.
Ivan Pentchoukov and Reuters contributed to this report.
OBAMA’S CRONY BANKSTERS:
STILL SUCKING THE BLOOD OUT OF AMERICA
This manufactured crisis has, in turn, been exploited by the
Obama administration and both big business parties to hand over trillions in
pension funds and other public assets to the financial kleptocracy that rules
America.
“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican
alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world
hell-holes. This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.”
---- Karen McQuillan THEAMERICAN THINKER.com
“This was not because of difficulties in securing indictments or
convictions. On the contrary, Attorney General Eric Holder told a Senate
committee in March of 2013 that the Obama administration chose not to prosecute
the big banks or their CEOs because to do so might “have a negative impact on
the national economy.”
OBAMANOMICS TO SERVE BANKSTERS
AND GLOBAL BILLIONAIRES
"One of the premier institutions of
big business, JP Morgan Chase, issued an internal report on the
eve of the 10th anniversary of the 2008 crash, which warned that
another “great liquidity crisis” was possible, and that a
government bailout on the scale of that effected by Bush and Obama
will produce social unrest, “in light of the potential impact
of central bank actions in driving inequality between asset owners
and labor."
BILLIONAIRES, BANKSTERS AND THE RICH PARTNER WITH TRUMP TO
FIGHT … economic equality.
"JPMorgan
Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who was known as Barack Obama’s
favorite banker and who has been a major donor to
the
Democratic Party, centered his annual letter to shareholders on a
denunciation of socialism."
BANKSTER SOCIALISM
Dimon’s bank received tens of billions of dollars in
government bailouts and many billions more from the
Obama administration’s ultra-low interest rate and “quantitative
easing” money-printing policies. He told his shareholders that
“socialism inevitably produces stagnation, corruption” and
“authoritarian government,” and would be “a disaster for our
country.”… UNLESS IT IS SOCIALISM FOR BANKSTERS AND WALL STREET!
*
"This paved the way for the elevation of
Trump, the personification of the criminality and backwardness of the ruling
oligarchy."
*
"The
very fact that the US government officially acknowledges a growth of
popular support for socialism, particularly among the nation’s youth,
testifies to vast changes taking place in the political consciousness of
the working class and the terror this is striking within the ruling
elite. America is, after all, a country where anti-communism was for
the greater part of a century a state-sponsored secular religion. No
ruling class has so ruthlessly sought to exclude socialist
politics from political discourse as the American ruling class."
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