ZERLINA MAXWELL SAYS OBAMA REPRESENTS THE BEST! - HE SURE DID IF YOU WERE A CRONY BANKSTER OR LA RAZA ILLEGAL! - THE REST OF AMERICA GOT FUCKED WITH OBAMAnomics!

Phony outrage over the Roger Stone sentencing non-issue - and some real Obama scandals

By Jack Hellner

Yesterday, there was a big hearing in the House Judiciary committtee, because a former prosecutor named Aaron Zelinsky was so outraged he had to resign over someone associated with President Trump getting sentenced within recommended guidelines.

According to the Washington Post: 

The House Judiciary Committee heard testimony Wednesday from a federal prosecutor and another witness who have accused Attorney General William P. Barr and his top deputies of acting “based on political considerations” and a desire to appease President Trump.

Aaron Zelinsky, an assistant U.S. attorney in Maryland formerly detailed to the Russia investigation by special prosecutor Robert S. Mueller III, told the panel that prosecutors involved in the criminal trial of Trump’s friend Roger Stone experienced “heavy pressure from the highest levels of the Department of Justice” to give Stone “a break” by requesting a lighter sentence.

Here's more: 1,100 former Justice department officials previously demanded Barr resign because of the Roger Stone case.

Another ex-prosecutor who testified with Zelinsky, someone named Donald Ayer, claimed Barr’s interference was "worse than Watergate." 

I’ll give him and the media a clue. Targeting and spying on a political opponent running for president is worse than Watergate. This Stone case he's complaining about was about calling for a sentence that was well within the law.

So far, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and her right and left arms Jerry Nadler, and Adam Schiff, have not held hearings on the fraud before the FISA court, nor have they held one on the railroading of Gen. Michael Flynn, but a 40-month sentence on Stone caused an actual hearing.

The next big hearing will probably be on the Bolton book which appears to be about as verified as the Steele dossier, given the large number of eyewitnesses who say it's a load of self-serving lies.

Roger Stone’s association with Trump was so dangerous that the FBI sent in a huge swat team with CNN’s cameras rolling. Remember this?

FBI’s Roger Stone raid sends chilling message

But ex-agent calls it “ridiculous”

A swarm of agents in tactical gear shouting “FBI! Open the door!” outside Roger Stone’s Florida home just before dawn Friday was over the top but intended to send a chilling message to anyone else being eyed in the Mueller investigation — you’re next, former FBI agents told the Herald.

The SWAT-style raid on a white-collar suspect in pajamas went viral Friday, with CNN cameras rolling.

That's not the only 'worse than Watergate.'

There also was no outrage nor any resignations when the Obama Justice department used an Obama donor to let IRS tax-exempt chief Lois Lerner and other criminals at IRS off scot-free after spying on and harassing dissidents to flip the 2012 election to President Obama.

 Obama donor leading Justice Department’s IRS investigation

No resignations and letters from former officials when then-Attorney General Eric Holder and other Obama administration let perjurers like James Clapper and John Brennan off with no consequences. Or, Remember this?

Eric Holder's Long History Of Lying To Congress

There was also this travesty:

Justice Department: Eric Holder didn't commit perjury

And this was far from the only 'worse than Watergate' that occurred in the last administration.

No resignations or letters when the Obama Justice Department had a slush fund which they used for political purposes and to give kickbacks to liberal groups who supported Obama for President. The EPA and CFPB also had slush funds but no one cared. Remember this?

Obama Justice Department’s $1 Billion ‘Slush Fund’ Boosted Liberal Groups

No resignations or letters of outrage when Obama illegally spied on thousands of Americans nor when the Obama administration committed fraud on the FISA curt to spy on Trump and people who knew him.

Newly declassified memos detail extent of improper Obama-era NSA spying

No outrage or resignations when Obama and Holder illegally withheld documents on their gun-running operation for years.

Subpoena fight over operation Fast and Furious documents finally settled

No outrage or resignations when Obama dictatorially and unilaterally stopped an investigation into drug running by terrorists to appease Iran and get its Iran deal through. 

The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook

An ambitious U.S. task force targeting Hezbollah's billion-dollar criminal enterprise ran headlong into the White House's desire for a nuclear deal with Iran.

In its determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United States, according to a POLITICO investigation.

These terrorist drug runners got off scot-free but the media and people who worked at the Justice department were more outraged that someone associated with Trump, who was convicted of a process crime got a forty-month sentence. It appears that these people have been infected with the Trump derangement syndrome.

Image credit: THE CIRCUS on Showtime, via Wikimedia Commons

MSNBC’s Maxwell: Today Obama Represented Our Best — In Stark Contrast to Trump’s ‘Cruelty’

PAM KEY

30 Jul 20201,056

2:31

Thursday on MSNBC’s “The Last Word,” political analyst Zerlina Maxwell said on her network that former President Barack Obama’s eulogy to John Lewis was a look back to a “president that represented the best of America,” while President Donald Trump “represents really the worst of our character.”

O’Donnell said, “I give you this day to reflect on as you will the tale of two presidencies, the chaos of the Trump presidency and then a glimpse back on that pulpit today of that presidency that preceded it.”

Maxwell said, “I think so many Americans today when they heard the sound of President Obama’s voice immediately began to feel more relaxed and more stable. I know I’m not just speaking for myself because it’s been so long since we had a president that represented the best of America. I think what we’re living through right now is a testament to how Donald Trump represents really the worst of our character, the cruelty, the meanness, the mean-spiritedness, the selfishness at the expense of others.”

She added, “I think that what President Obama spoke to in terms of the legacy of John Lewis and why I think it resonated so much today across generations is this idea that the fight is a continual fight. I think the late Congressman Lewis knew that. He knew that he was a part of a continuing struggle. He saw young activists. He mentored so many young movement leaders in this moment to do the work because there is nothing automatic to President Obama’s words today about democracy. It requires action and persistent courage, as Congressman Lewis demonstrated throughout his life.”

“And I think it was very clear today that President Obama is very clear-eyed as we head into the upcoming election as we look forward because what’s so critically important is that ensuring that black and brown people, who for so long they tried to strip away our rights— that is what Congressman Lewis was fighting for —that access to the ballot box,” Maxwell continued. “They’re still doing that now. Demographics are shifting. The Republicans are trying to take away the votes of those communities that can transform this nation. I think President Obama today spoke to the legacy of Congressman Lewis as we go into this election so that we can all sort of be put on notice right now that it is critically important to live out his legacy through participating in this election and beyond this election really, continuing to fight back and push back against the powers that be.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

Biden Echoes Obama’s Broken Promise to ‘Buy American’

AP Photo/Patrick Semansky

BREITBART NEWS

9 Jul 2020169

Joe Biden is taking a page from Barack Obama’s old playbook Thursday by proposing a $700 million ‘Buy American’ plan.

Economic nationalists stung by Obama’s betrayal of his similar promises in 2008 will be skeptical.

Biden is expected to release plans calling for a $400 billion, four-year increase in government purchasing of U.S.-based goods and services plus $300 billion in new research and development in U.S. technology concerns. Among other policies expected to be announced Thursday, he proposes tightening current “Buy American” laws that are intended to benefit U.S. firms but can be easily circumvented by government agencies.

That echoes a message that helped Obama and Biden win during the last recession. In the 2008 campaign, the Obama-Biden campaign ran “Buy American, Vote Obama” ads in states with large numbers of pro-labor voters. But that plan was scrapped just weeks after Obama took office.

“I think that would be a mistake right now,” Obama said in February 2009. “That is a potential source of trade wars that we can’t afford at a time when trade is sinking all across the globe.”

Biden did not provide any reassurance that the same considerations would not once again result in a post-election return to globalist trade policies. In fact, Biden has a far more extensive record of supporting trade liberalization than Obama did. He supported both the North American Free Trade Agreement and Trans-Pacific Partnership.

“We don’t need to guess what a Biden economy would look like since Americans have been forced to live through it once already,” Trump campaign spokesperson Hogan Gidley said in a statement Thursday.

The Biden plan, which mimics the rhetoric of Trump’s “America First” economic nationalism, seeks to take advantage of a weakness created by Trump administration officials who have stymied recent efforts by Peter Navarro to put that philosophy into policy. An executive order requiring federal agencies to buy medical supplies and pharmaceuticals produced in America has been left in draft form for months.

“That executive order has languished for months, however, amid objections by some of Trump’s other senior advisers, including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, who have warned that it could lead China to limit the supply of personal protective equipment, or PPE, that it is sending to the United States,” the Washington Post reported Thursday.

Despite the appearance of economic nationalism, Biden’s proposals appear to be incoherent and lack substance. Biden talks tough on China but also criticizes the tariffs the Trump administration has imposed, failing to indicate what policy tools a Biden administration would use to back up the rhetoric. Instead of the “speak softly but carry a big stick,” Biden’s plan appears to be to loudly implore China while carrying no stick at all.

The former vice president will discuss the proposals Thursday at a metal works concern in Dunmore, Pennsylvania. It’s the first of a series of addresses Biden plans as he shifts his line of attack against President Donald Trump to the economy. It’s political turf the Republican incumbent once considered a clear advantage before the coronavirus pandemic curbed consumer activity and drove unemployment to near-Depression levels.

An opening emphasis on manufacturing and labor policy is no coincidence: Biden wants to capitalize on his union ties and deliver on oft-made claims he can win back working-class voters who fueled Trump’s upset win four years ago.

Biden will continue in coming weeks with an energy plan to combat the climate crisis and a third package on what the campaign has dubbed the “caring economy,” with a focus on making child care and elder care more affordable and less of an impediment to working-age Americans. Campaign aides told reporters that all of Biden’s policies would target immediate recovery from the pandemic recession and address systemic inequalities Biden says are “laid bare” by the nation’s ongoing reckoning with racism.

“What’s going on here, we need to build back, not just to where we were but build back better than we’ve ever been,” Biden told the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers on Wednesday. “We’re going to take a monumental step forward for the prosperity, power, safety and dignity of all American workers.”

Republicans nonetheless have made clear they will attack Biden on trade and the economy, framing the Democratic establishment figure as a tool of the far left on taxes and a willing participant in decades of trade policy that gutted American workers. Trump also has lampooned Biden as “weak on China.”

On trade, at least, it’s a similar line of attack that Trump used effectively against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Biden voted for the North American Free Trade Agreement in the Senate in 1994, an anchor of Trump’s criticism and Sanders’ attacks before that. One of Trump’s signature achievements is an overhaul of NAFTA, which he accomplished with backing from many Democrats on Capitol Hill. In more recent years, Biden has promised the include environmentalism and human rights in trade deals, something economic nationalists warn could shift the focus away from protecting American jobs and the U.S. manufacturing sector.

“Biden’s NAFTA destroyed 850,000 American jobs and his inexplicable support for China killed millions more and forced 60,000 American factories to close,” Gidley said.

The campaign’s outline ahead of Thursday emphasizes that Biden wants a resurgence in U.S. markets before engaging in new trade deals abroad. That includes joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership that Biden advocated when he served as President Barack Obama’s vice president. Trump opposed TPP as a 2016 candidate and fulfilled his promise to withdraw the U.S. from the deal. China is not a TPP member but could become one in the future.

Trump and Biden have called out China for unfair trade practices, but only Trump has a record of implementing policies to combat those practices.

Biden’s team insisted his approach falls within World Trade Organization rules, but aides also acknowledged that a Biden administration would try to modify an existing WTO deal, the Government Procurement Agreement, which effectively creates a shared open international market for participating governments to secure goods and services.

For now, Biden has not identified how he’d pay for the proposed new spending. Aides said he has identified revenue sources for all ongoing spending proposals but not for the one-time or short-term investments like the $700 billion in procurement and research. That raises the possibility that Biden could declare that spending to be deliberate deficit spending to stimulate the struggling economy.

The 2009 stimulus plan eventually included some Buy American provisions, over the objections of the Obama administration and largely at the insistence of Congressional Democrats, but these were so watered down that they were mostly symbolic. Even so, John McCain and other Republicans claimed they were too ‘protectionist’ and attempted to strip them from the bill.

Study: Elite Zip Codes Thrived in Obama Recovery, Rural America Left Behind

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2018/12/10/study-elite-zip-codes-thrived-in-obama-recovery-rural-america-left-behind/

4:49

Wealthy cities and elite zip codes thrived under the slow-moving economic recovery of President Obama while rural American communities were left behind, a study reveals.

The Economic Innovation Group research, highlighted by Axios, details the massive economic inequality between the country’s coastal city elites and middle America’s working class between the Great Recession in 2007 and Obama’s economic recovery in 2016.

Between 2007 and 2016, the number of residents living in elite zip codes grew by more than ten million, with an overwhelming faction of that population growth being driven by mass immigration where the U.S. imports more than 1.5 million illegal and legal immigrants annually.

The booming 44.5 million immigrant populations are concentrated mostly in the country’s major cities like Los Angeles, California, Miami Florida, and New York City, New York. The rapidly growing U.S. population — driven by immigration — is set to hit 404 millionby 2060, a boon for real estate developers, wealthy investors, and corporations, all of which benefit greatly from dense populations and a flooded labor market.

The economic study found that while the population grew in wealthy cities, America’s rural population fell by nearly 3.5 million residents.

Likewise, by 2016, elite zip codes had a surplus of 3.6 million jobs, which is more than the combined bottom 80 percent of American zip codes. While it only took about five years for wealthy cities to replace the jobs lost by the recession, it took “at risk” regions of the country a decade to recover, and “distressed” U.S. communities are “unlikely ever to recover on current trendlines,” the report predicts.

A map included in the research shows how rich, coastal metropolises have boomed economically while entire portions of middle America have been left behind as job and business gains remain concentrated at the top of the income ladder.

(Economic Innovation Group) 

(Economic Innovation Group)

Economic growth among the country’s middle-class counties and middle-class zip codes has considerably trailed national economic growth, the study found.

For example, between 2012 and 2016, there were 4.4 percent more business establishments in the country as a whole. That growth was less than two percent in the median zip code and there was close to no growth in the median county.

The same can be said of employment growth, where U.S. employment grew by about 9.3 percent from 2012 to 2016. In the median zip code, though, employment grew by only 5.5 percent and in the median county, employment grew by less than four percent.

“Nearly three in every five large counties added businesses on net over the period, compared to only one in every five small one,” the report concluded.

Elite zip codes added more business establishments during Obama’s economic recovery, between 2012 and 2016, than the entire bottom 80 percent of zip codes combined. For instance, while more than 180,000 businesses have been added to rich zip codes, the country’s bottom tier has lost more than 13,000 businesses even after the economic recovery.

(Economic Innovation Group) 

(Economic Innovation Group)

The gutting of the American manufacturing base, through free trade, has been a driving catalyst for the collapse of the white working class and black Americans. Simultaneously, the outsourcing of the economy has brought major wealth to corporations, tech conglomerates, and Wall Street.

The dramatic decline of U.S. manufacturing at the hands of free trade—where more than 3.4 million American jobs have been lost solely due to free trade with China, not including the American jobs lost due to agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the United States-Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS)—has coincided with growing wage inequality for white and black Americans, a growing number of single mother households,  a drop in U.S. marriage rates, a general stagnation of working and middle class wages, and specifically, increased black American unemployment.

“So, the loss of manufacturing work since 1960 represents a steady decline in relatively high-paying jobs for less-educated workers,” recent research from economist Eric D. Gould has noted.

Fast-forward to the modern economy and the wage trend has been the opposite of what it was during the peak of manufacturing in the U.S. An Economic Policy Institute studyfound this year that been 2009 and 2015, the top one percent of American families earned about 26 times as much income as the bottom 99 percent of Americans.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. 

 

 

 

Record high income in 2017 for top one percent of wage earners in US

In 2017, the top one percent of US wage earners received their highest paychecks ever, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

Based on newly released data from the Social Security Administration, the EPI shows that the top one percent of the population saw their paychecks increase by 3.7 percent in 2017—a rate nearly quadruple the bottom 90 percent of the population. The growth was driven by the top 0.1 percent, which includes many CEOs and corporate executives, whose pay increased eight percent and averaged $2,757,000 last year.

The EPI report is only the latest exposure of the gaping inequality between the vast majority of the population and the modern-day aristocracy that rules over them.

The EPI shows that the bottom 90 percent of wage earners have increased their pay by 22.2 percent between 1979 and 2017. Today, this bottom 90 percent makes an average of just $36,182 a year, which is eaten up by the cost of housing and the growing burden of education, health care, and retirement.

Meanwhile, the top one percent has increased its wages by 157 percent during this same period, a rate seven times faster than the other group. This top segment makes an average of $718,766 a year. Those in-between, the 90th to 99th percentile, have increased their wages by 57.4 percent. They now make an average of $152,476 a year—more than four times the bottom 90 percent.

Graph from the Economic Policy Institute

Decades of decaying capitalism have led to this accelerating divide. While the rich accumulate wealth with no restriction, workers’ wages and benefits have been under increasing attack. In 1979, 90 percent of the population took in 70 percent of the nation’s income. But, by 2017, that fell to only 61 percent.

Even more, while the bottom 90 percent of the population may take in 61 percent of the wages, large sections of the workforce today barely pull in any income at all. For example, Social Security Administration data found that the bottom 54 percent of wage earners in the United States, 89.5 million people, make an average of just $15,100 a year. This 54 percent of the population earns only 17 percent of all wages paid in America.

However unequal, these wage inequalities still do not fully present the divide between rich and poor. The ultra-wealthy derive their wealth not primarily from wages, but from assets and equities—principally from the stock market. While the bottom 90 percent of the population made 61 percent of the wages in 2017, they owned even less, just 27 percent of the wealth (according to the World Inequality Report 2018 by Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman).

The massive increase in the value of the stock market, which only a small segment of the population participates in, means that the top 10 percent of the population controls 73 percent of all wealth in the United States. Just three men—Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates—had more wealth than the bottom half of America combined last year.

Wages are so low in the United States that roughly half of the population falls deeper into debt every year. A Reuters report from July found that the pretax net income (that is, income minus expense) of the bottom 40 percent of the population was an average of negative $11,660. Even the middle quintile of the population, the 40th to 60th percentile, breaks even with an average of only $2,836 a year.

As the Social Security Administration numbers show, 67.4 percent of the population made less than the average wage, $48,250 a year in 2017, a sum that is inadequate to support a family in many cities—especially, with high housing costs, health care, education, and retirement factored in.

For the ruling class, though, workers’ wages are already too much. The volatility of the stock market and the deep fear that the current bull market will collapse has made politicians and businessmen anxious of any sign of wage increases.

In August, wages in the US rose just 0.2 percent above the inflation rate, the highest in nine years. Though the increase was tiny, it was enough to encourage the Federal Reserve to increase the interest rate past two percent for the first time since 2008. Raising interest rates helps to depress workers’ wages by lowering borrowing and spending. As the Financial Times noted, stopping wage growth was “central” to the Federal Reserve’s move.

Further analysis of the Social Security Administration data shows that in 2017, 147,754 people reported wages of 1 million dollars or more—roughly, the top 0.05 percent. Their combined total income of $372 billion could pay for the US federal education budget five times over.

These wages, however large, still pale in comparison to the money the ultra-rich acquire from the stock market. For example, share buybacks and dividend payments, a way of funneling money to shareholders, will eclipse $1 trillion this year.

Whatever the immediate source, the wealth of the rich derives from the great mass of people who do the actual work. Across the United States and around the world, workers, young people, and students have entered into struggle this year over pay, education, health care, immigration, war and democratic rights. This growing movement of the working class must set as its aim confiscating the wealth and power of this tiny parasitic oligarchy. Society’s wealth must be democratically controlled by those who produce it.

THE STAGGERING ECONOMIC INEQUALITY UNDER OBAMA'S ADMINISTRATION SERVING THE BILLIONAIRE CLASS.

THE ENTIRE REASON BEHIND AMNESTY IS TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED AND PASS ALONG THE REAL COST OF "CHEAP" MEXICAN LABOR TO THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS.

AND IT'S WORKING!

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS

“Calling income and wealth inequality the "great moral issue of our time," Sanders laid out a sweeping, almost unimaginably expensive program to transfer wealth from the richest Americans to the poor and middle class. A $1 trillion public works program to create "13 million good-paying jobs." A $15-an-hour federal minimum wage. "Pay equity" for women. Paid sick leave and vacation for everyone. Higher taxes on the wealthy. Free tuition at all public colleges and universities. A Medicare-for-all single-payer health care system. Expanded Social Security benefits. Universal pre-K.” WASHINGTON EXAMINER

YOU THOUGHT OBAMA INVITED OBAMANOMICS and started the assault on the American middle-class?

NOPE!

“By the time of Bill Clinton’s election in 1992, the Democratic Party had completely repudiated its association with the reforms of the New Deal and Great Society periods. Clinton gutted welfare programs to provide an ample supply of cheap labor for the rich (WHICH NOW MEANS OPEN BORDERS AND NO E-VERIFY!), including a growing layer of black capitalists, and passed the 1994 Federal Crime Bill, with its notorious “three strikes” provision that has helped create the largest prison population in the world.”