Monday, March 23, 2020

TRUMP'S GOLDMAN SACHS INFESTED ADMIN VOWS TO SERVE THE SUPER RICH - $50 BILLION FOR WARREN BUFFETT

Trump Is Surrounded by Criminals

https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2019/11/the-fall-of-donald-trump-final-days.html

“The legal ring surrounding him is collectively producing a historic indictment of his endemic corruption and criminality.” JONATHAN CHAIT


TRUMPERNOMICS FOR THE RICH…. and his parasitic family!

Report: Trump Says He Doesn't Care About the National Debt Because the Crisis Will Hit After He's Gone


 "Trump's alleged comment is maddening and disheartening,
but at least he's being straightforward about his indefensible
and self-serving neglect.  I'll leave you with 
this reminder of the scope of the problem, not that anyone in power is going to do a damn thing about it."

TRUMPERNOMICS:

THE SUPER RICH APPLAUD TWITTER’S TRUMP’S TAX CUTS FOR THE SUPER RICH!

"The tax overhaul would mean an unprecedented windfall for the super-rich, on top

of the fact that virtually all income gains during the period of the supposed

recovery from the financial crash of 2008 have gone to the top 1 percent income

bracket."


 Why do Republicans want to bail out a top 

Democrat funder? BECAUSE 

BILLIONAIRES AND BANKSTERS ARE ALL 

DEMOCRAT BRIBESTERS!


A $50 Billion Airline Bailout for Warren Buffett

Why do Republicans want to bail out a top Democrat funder?
 
Daniel Greenfield

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
In March, as the Wuhan Flu was taking off in America, the Oracle of Omaha began buying airline stocks. Specifically, one of the wealthiest men in the country increased his stake in Delta Airlines to 11%.
Warren Buffett wasn’t oblivious to the coronavirus. The University of Nebraska Medical Center, not far from the black gated mansion of the billionaire, was on the front lines of fighting the outbreak. Passengers from the Diamond Princess cruise ship were being treated 5 minutes from his house.
What was Warren Buffett thinking when he shoved $45 million more in good money after bad?
Berkshire Hathaway now owns 11% of Delta Airlines, and between 8% and 10% of United Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and American Airlines. When you’re squeezed into a 17-inch airline seat, it’s because a major funder of Democrat political causes is extracting maximum value from his investment.
And now Airlines for America, whose major members include American, Delta, United, and Southwest, along with lesser airlines, want a $50 billion bailout. That includes $25 billion in grants and $25 billion in loans and tax relief. While the airlines warn about an economic catastrophe, Buffett isn’t worried.
The airlines made up 4% of Berkshire Hathaway’s portfolio and amounted to $3.7 billion in losses.
Warren Buffett is no stranger to bailouts. In 2010, he penned a fake folksy New York Times op-ed thanking “Uncle Sam” from his nephew “Warren”. Later that year, he became a key propaganda figure in Obama’s push to raise taxes. By the winter of the year, Obama had placed the Presidential Medal of Freedom around the neck of the man who had fundraised for him and acted as his financial adviser.
As Peter Schweitzer noted, “It was only on September 23 that he became a highly visible player in the drama, investing $5 billion in Goldman Sachs, which was overleveraged and short on cash… Berkshire Hathaway received preferred stock with a 10 percent dividend yield and an attractive option to buy another $5 billion in stock at $115 a share… As he admitted on CNBC at the time, ‘If I didn't think the government was going to act, I wouldn't be doing anything this week.’”
Buffett seems to think that the government will act and bail out the airlines. Again. And this time for a lot more than the $15 billion price tag of the airline bailout that passed after September 11.
By 2009, Berkshire Hathaway had invested $26 billion in eight financial companies, including Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America, which benefited from around $100 billion in TARP money.
By 2011, Buffett was buying $5.9 billion in Goldman Sachs stock for $5 billion.
There’s no question that the Democrat billionaire is a very sharp investor. But there’s no reason for taxpayers to keep subsidizing his investments. As small businesses are forced to shut down and millions of people are put out of work, should they really be helping Warren Buffett get even richer?
Just as during the bailout, Buffett is betting that the government is going to back his investment.
If the major airlines were really about to go down, Buffett would be trying to get everything out, instead of getting in deeper. The billionaire is betting that Berkshire Hathaway will emerge in a stronger position after the bailouts and the surge of optimism that will follow the lifting of the coronavirus curfews.
He’s almost certainly right.
But if he wants to profit from the turnaround and the potential takeover of an airline, he should do the heavy lifting on his own. Berkshire Hathaway is sitting on $125 billion in cash. But why cash out his treasury bills when the D.C. swamp will be happy enough to do most of the heavy lifting for him.
Where will those taxpayer-funded profits go?
In 2014, the Oracle of Omaha predicted that Hillary Clinton will win. “I will bet money on it, and I don’t do that easily,” he boasted.
And maxed out his contribution to the Ready for Hillary PAC. He also shoveled money into the DNC.
In this election cycle, he poured $245,000 into the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Republicans lobbying for an airline bailout are literally fighting to secure taxpayer money that will then be used to fund their political opponents. It’s an insane act of fiscal political suicide.
Beyond political donations, Buffett has spent millions covertly funding abortion activism. Due to his obsessive secrecy, the full scope of his abortion funding is unknown, but the Buffett Foundation donated almost $4 billion to abortion causes, including $674.5 million to Planned Parenthood.
Arguably, the Oracle of Omaha has done the most to promote abortion of anyone in America.
It’s a revelation that clashes with his folksy image and invocation of small-town values. But behind the Garrison Keillor routine, Buffett is just another version of George Soros with an American accent.
That’s not just rhetoric.
At the heart of Soros' power over American politics is the Democracy Alliance, a club of powerful organizations funneling money into transforming this country. The Democracy Alliance's core partners include the NoVo Foundation, run by Buffett’s son and daughter-in-law, and funded by $150 million from the Oracle of Omaha.
NoVo funds hate groups like Van Jones' Color of Change, which plotted to defund the David Horowitz Freedom Center, along with the Rockefeller Family Fund, the Tides Foundation, and the National People’s Action.
That last donation is especially interesting considering NPA’s role in creating the Community Reinvestment Act  which forced banks to dispense mortgages to insolvent borrowers. This, as the Freedom Center’s Discover the Networks notes, “ranks high among the primary causes of the 2008 financial crisis.” That’s both fascinating and disturbing considering Buffett’s links to that crisis.
Buffett avoided the subprime crisis while profiting massively from the resulting disaster.
Putting money in Buffett’s pocket will mean more cash for Biden, it will mean more Democrats in the House and the Senate, more abortions, and more power for George Soros’ Democracy Alliance.
So why are Republicans ready to make concessions to Democrats in exchange for the privilege of electing more Democrats with a Buffett bailout? Even if one were to argue that a bailout of the airline industry may be necessary, why would Republicans lobby to cut their own throats?
When the wall isn’t funded, how can the GOP justify a second billion-dollar bailout of an industry that will then just turn around and cut another 2 inches from the cramped seats of the taxpayers who bailed them out?



“The remarkable thing is how weak wages are, how weak the economy is, given that as a result of the tax bill we have a $1 trillion deficit.”

"This week the Washington Post reported that the US retail giant Walmart is planning to cut jobs as part of a restructuring to develop online sales to compete with Amazon. In the brutal language of the corporate world, it said store managers should follow “standard termination procedures” for any “active associate who has not been selected for another position in the company.” This edict will potentially affect thousands of workers, sometimes with decades of service."

Markets soar as companies announce mass layoffs

19 February 2020
As stock markets around the planet, led by 
Wall Street, climb to record highs, increasing 
the wealth of the ultra-rich by billions of 
dollars every day, growth in the world 
economy is falling to its lowest levels since 
the global financial crisis of 2008. Once again,
the working class is being made to pay, with
announcements of major job cuts.
Economic data from the major capitalist economies point to an accelerating downturn. In the US, the world largest economy, growth is little more than 2 percent. This is the lowest for any “recovery” in the post-war period, despite President Donald Trump’s claims of the greatest boom in history.
The closed Bayou Steel Group factory in LaPlace, October 2019. The Louisiana steel mill unexpectedly laid off 376 employees and says the factory will shut down in November [Credit: AP Photo/Gerald Herbert]
China, the world’s second largest economy, experienced its lowest growth rate for 30 years in 2019. Large areas of the economy are still in lockdown due to the coronavirus outbreak, with estimates for first-quarter growth being slashed, in some cases to zero.
Japan, the world’s third largest economy, has been delivered a shock by the announcement that it contracted at an annual rate of 6.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2019. While this was mainly the result of an increase in sales taxes, the hit was far larger than expected and the downturn is set to continue, due to the effects of the coronavirus.
Growth in Germany, the world’s fourth largest economy, has flat-lined, with predictions that it could enter a recession, dragging down the rest of the Eurozone, which showed growth of just 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter last year.
In South Korea, one of the world’s major manufacturing centres, the government has called for “emergency” measures because of the downturn in China and Japan. Australia, the world’s 12th largest economy, looks set to end its 28-year run without a recession.
The class logic of the process underway 
stands out in stark relief. As the wealth of the 
financial elites is boosted by the rise of the 
stock markets, fueled by the provision of 
trillions of dollars from the world’s central 
banks, and the promise of still more to come, 
the working class is being made to bear the 
burden.
Job cuts are sweeping through manufacturing industry, particularly auto production. Every week brings new announcements. Last week, French car producer Renault unveiled a $2.2 billion cost-cutting program to include job cuts. Last month, Volkswagen pledged to slaughter “sacred cows” as it announced 20,000 job cuts in Germany alone.
By the latest estimates, around 100,000 jobs will be eliminated in the global auto industry in 2020. This is on top of more than 500,000 job cuts in auto-related industries around the world last year. In India, there are warnings that as many as 1 million of the country’s 5 million auto parts industry jobs could be at risk.
This worldwide job massacre is being driven by two processes: the fall in the market for cars, as a result of lower growth and falling demand, due not least to the stagnation of wages around the world and sweeping changes in technology. Companies are preparing for a future of electric cars and self-driving vehicles by slashing costs in order to try to remain competitive in the new conditions.
BLOG: IN THE NEW CAPITALISM PROFITS ARE MADE BY USING "CHEAP" LABOR ILLEGALS. THE TRUE COST OF THEIR WELFARE AND CRIME WAVE IS PASSED ALONG TO MIDDLE AMERICA IN THE FORM OF TAXES. CALIFORNIA HAS THE LARGEST NUMBER OF ILLEGALS, AND HANDS OUT $40 BILLION PER YEAR IN SOCIAL SERVICES. 
Karl Marx laid out the essential logic of this process more than 170 years ago. The industrial war of the capitalists, he wrote, “has the peculiarity that its battles are won less by recruiting than by discharging the army of labour” as the generals “compete with one another as to who can discharge most soldiers of labour.”
This process is not confined to auto production but is sweeping through all sections of the economy.
This week the London-based Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) said it would reduce its workforce by 35,000 in the coming period as part of what its chief executive Noel Quinn called one of the “deepest restructurings” in the global bank’s 155-year history—which his management team was “committed to executing at pace.”
The HSBC announcement followed last year’s decision by Germany’s Deutsche Bank to slash 18,000 jobs as part of a restructuring process.
The retail industry is likewise being devastated. Tens of thousands of so-called brick-and-mortar stores in the US and around the world have been shut down, with more job cuts to come.
This week the Washington Post reported that the US retail giant Walmart is planning to cut jobs as part of a restructuring to develop online sales to compete with Amazon. In the brutal language of the corporate world, it said store managers should follow “standard termination procedures” for any “active associate who has not been selected for another position in the company.” This edict will potentially affect thousands of workers, sometimes with decades of service.
The contrast between the situation confronting the working class and the accumulation of wealth on the heights of society is exemplified by the dizzying enrichment of Elon Musk, the owner of the electric car company Tesla.
Due to a spectacular surge in Tesla’s share 
price this month, Musk’s net worth rose by 
$4.5 billion in just one day, making him the 
fastest-rising global billionaire. Over just six 
weeks his wealth has risen by $13.9 billion—
$316 million every day so far this year. There 
are even predictions that Musk could overtake
Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos as the richest 
man in the world.
The devastation of working-class jobs and conditions is not some unfortunate or accidental outcome of the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a rapacious financial oligarchy. There is a causal connection.
BLOG: IN THE NEW CAPITALISM PROFITS ARE MADE BY USING "CHEAP" LABOR ILLEGALS. THE TRUE COST OF THEIR WELFARE AND CRIME WAVE IS PASSED ALONG TO MIDDLE AMERICA IN THE FORM OF TAXES. CALIFORNIA HAS THE LARGEST NUMBER OF ILLEGALS, AND HANDS OUT $40 BILLION PER YEAR IN SOCIAL SERVICES. 
The stock price of major corporations, from which the elites derive their fortunes, depends on the extent to which the financial markets judge they are successful in reducing costs by gutting their workforces and intensifying the exploitation of the remaining workers. The stock market and the entire financial system function as an institutionalised mechanism for siphoning up wealth.
Vast new developments in technology, associated with the advance of artificial intelligence and its use via the Internet, increase productivity and have the capacity to lift the social and economic conditions of the mass of the population. Instead, through the operations of the capitalist profit system, they are being utilized to concentrate socially produced wealth in the hands of a tiny minority.
There is no cure for this ever-worsening social disease through patchwork reforms or band-aids. It must be tackled at its source and overcome through the unified struggle of the international working class to establish a higher and necessary socioeconomic system. That is international socialism, in which the productive forces, created by the labour of the world’s producers, are publicly owned and used for the benefit of all.




Washington Post Op-ed: ‘Give the Elites a Bigger Say in Choosing the President’

SAJJAD HUSSAIN/AFP via Getty Images
19 Feb 2020627
3:26
The Washington Post is taking criticism for an op-ed published Tuesday by Marquette University political science professor Julia Azari, titled: “It’s time to give the elites a bigger say in choosing the president.”
Citing the “rocky start” to the Democratic Party’s presidential primary, Azari suggests that the process of choosing the nominee be taken from the people and returned to the politicians:
The current process is clearly flawed, but what would be better? … A better primary system would empower elites to bargain and make decisions, instructed by voters.
One lesson from the 2020 and 2016 election cycles is that a lot of candidates, many of whom are highly qualified and attract substantial followings, will inevitably enter the race. The system as it works now — with a long informal primary, lots of attention to early contests and sequential primary season that unfolds over several months — is great at testing candidates to see whether they have the skills to run for president. What it’s not great at is choosing among the many candidates who clear that bar, or bringing their different ideological factions together, or reconciling competing priorities. A process in which intermediate representatives — elected delegates who understand the priorities of their constituents — can bargain without being bound to specific candidates might actually produce nominees that better reflect what voters want.
Azari suggests that the parties should use what she calls “preference primaries,” which would “allow voters to rank their choices among candidates, as well as to register opinions about their issue priorities.”
After a perfunctory voting process, wlites would be able to choose a nominee based on information about what the voters want.
She acknowledges that the idea is “labor-intensive and a little risky.”
The Post is owned by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, who is the world’s richest man. The paper’s slogan, adopted as an intended rebuke to President Donald Trump, is “Democracy dies in darkness.”
That phrase was trending on Twitter on Wednesday morning as readers reacted ironically to the op-ed.


The headline right below “democracy dies in darkness” is some A+ work



>"Democracy dies in darkness"

>"Do people actually want more Democracy in their lives"



Opinion | It’s time to give the elites a bigger say in choosing the president



Azari’s article appears to anticipate the possibility of a “brokered convention” among Democrats this summer. Currently, no candidate is projected to win a majority of delegates before they gather in Milwaukee, Wisconsin — near Professor Azari’s university — at the Democratic National Convention.


Average projected delegates through Super Tuesday:

Sanders 608 (41% of delegates thru March 3)
Bloomberg 273 (18%)
Biden 270 (18%)
Buttigieg 157 (10%)
Warren 127 (8%)
Klobuchar 55 (4%)
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-primary-forecast/ 

Who Will Win The 2020 Democratic Primary?



If no candidate wins on the first ballot, there will be a second — at which point committed delegates will be free to choose other candidates, and the party elites, known as “superdelegates,” will be able to vote.
Also on Tuesday, billionaire oligarch Mike Bloomberg, who once changed the rules to run for a third term as mayor of New York City, qualified for the Democrat debate in Nevada on Wednesday evening.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.


Billionaire Bloomberg Replaces Billionaire Steyer on Democrat Debate Stage

AP Photo/Gerald Herbert
19 Feb 2020138
2:08
The battle of the Democrat money men running for president is playing out in high-roller Las Vegas as billionaire Mike Bloomberg replaces billionaire Tom Steyer on the debate stage Wednesday night.
Steyer did not meet the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) threshold by the Tuesday midnight deadline.
And while voters can cast their ballot for Steyer in Nevada, Bloomberg’s name is not one of the candidates on it.
Steyer, who took part in the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth debates is not happy about the development, Politico reports:
Steyer’s campaign has cried foul at his likely exclusion, arguing that his strength in Nevada and South Carolina is more than sufficient to warrant a spot on stage. Their evidence includes the release of an internal campaign survey on Tuesday showing Steyer at 18 percent in Nevada, trailing only Sanders (24 percent) and Biden (19 percent).
“It just seems pretty frankly disenfranchising to voters in Nevada and South Carolina that their voices aren’t being heard … given there’s been one poll in both states that’s qualifying,” Heather Hargreaves, Steyer’s campaign manager, told Politico. “There’s no opportunity to actually meet the criteria because there’s no polls.”
“Steyer’s team is confident, however, that he will make his return to the debate stage next week, for the South Carolina debate on Feb. 25, given the additional time to qualify and the possibility of winning at least one delegate in Saturday’s Nevada caucuses,” Politico reports, adding that the South Carolina debate has almost identical rules to the Nevada debate.
“I am confident we’ll get a delegate in Nevada, and we’ll be back on the stage in South Carolina,” Hargreaves said.
Aside from Bloomberg, the other Democrats who have qualified for Wednesday’s debate are Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
Follow Penny Starr on Twitter


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