Day One: Democrat to Introduce Articles of Impeachment Against Donald Trump
2:41
Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) plans to introduce articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump on Thursday — the first day that Democrats control the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Sherman first filed such articles in 2017, though they had no chance of going anywhere in the Republican-controlled House. Other Democrats joined his effort over the months that followed, without much effect.
Sherman, who was until recently considered a “moderate,” is close to the Bill and Hillary Clinton wing of the Democratic Party. He backed Hillary Clinton over Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in the Democratic presidential primary in 2016, and has adopted hawkish foreign policy positions in the past. But in the two years since Trump won the presidency, Sherman has — like some other “moderates” — become obsessed with removing Trump.
Breitbart TV
The Los Angeles Times reports:
Rep. Brad Sherman plans to introduce articles of impeachment against President Trump on Thursday, the first day of Democratic control of the House.
Sherman (D-Northridge) is reintroducing a measure that he first rolled out in 2017. But this year it carries more political significance: The decision of whether to act on it rests with Democrats — not Trump’s Republican allies.Sherman’s articles of impeachment accuse Trump of obstructing justice by firing former FBI Director James B. Comey, among other wrongdoing.
“There is no reason it shouldn’t be before the Congress,” Sherman said. “Every day, Donald Trump shows that leaving the White House would be good for our country.”
Incoming Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has tried to keep impeachment at bay, knowing that it would provoke public opposition. However, left-wing Democrats like Tom Steyer — who may be running for president in 2020 — have insisted that impeachment should be the top priority of the new Democratic majority in the House.
Any impeachment would have to be confirmed by the Senate in a two-thirds majority to convict and remove Trump — something that is very unlikely to happen, given that Republicans increased their majority in the 2018 elections.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. 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.
TRUMP’S NAFTA SELL OUT… Now he goes back to building
his pretend wall!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/08/under-nafta-28b-us-mexicao-trade.html
TRUMP DECLARES THAT THE ECONOMY IS STRONG FOR THE
RICH, and then cuts pay increases for Federal Employees!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/09/swamp-keeper-declares-to-american.html
Trump’s Gentrification
Scheme to Enrich Real Estate Developers
A tax loophole intended to help the poor is funneling money to wealthy investors.
By BRYCE COVERT
December 28, 2018
Buried within the more
than 500 pages of Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cut was an unobtrusive line item with
potentially damaging consequences. Proposed by Senator Tim Scott of South
Carolina, the provision allows governors to select certain census tracts in their
states, in economically distressed areas, as “opportunity zones.” The Treasury
certified the last of these zones in June, bringing the total number to 8,700.
Now, investors who fund projects in these areas will get sizable tax
breaks—even on unrelated investments. As long as they dump profits into a fund
earmarked for the opportunity zones, they can defer or even eliminate the
capital gains they would otherwise have owed.
Some of the census tracts
that have been identified as opportunity zones may be truly distressed. But
it’s dubious whether others should qualify—this summer, for example, much of
Long Island City in New York was named an opportunity zone. Now that Amazon has
announced it’s moving one of its two HQ2 branches there, the retail behemoth could
nab a $225 million tax break simply because the site happens to fall in one
such zone—this, on top of the $1.7 billion New York has already offered Amazon.
Investors who purchase apartment buildings for the influx of tech employees
will also see tax breaks. So will anyone building office parks, or grocery
stores. That money may well be better spent elsewhere, but during the debate
over the tax bill, such questions received very little attention. Neither,
really, did the zones themselves. Since its passage, though, President Donald
Trump has enthusiastically promoted the plan, issuing press releases boasting
that “new investment will flow into blighted developments, stalled
infrastructure projects, and other desperately needed economic enhancements”
and create fiscal improvements that will “help turn dreams to reality.”
The thinking behind the
zones reflects Republican faith in privatization as a cure-all. If Trump has
departed from conservative orthodoxy on trade and entitlements, he is squarely
with the party when it comes to this issue. On the campaign trail, he promised
to spend $1.5 trillion on the country’s infrastructure, but when the details of
his plan were released a month before the election, it was merely a proposal to
privatize roads, bridges, and waterways. Trump has similar plans for the
nation’s air traffic control system, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and
even the Postal Service. Each one offers huge upsides for a select group of
financiers and business owners, but does little to nothing for the American
people.
None of these promises
has fully gone into law—apart from opportunity zones, the first of which the
Treasury implemented this spring. Since then, a number of funds have cropped up
to cash in on the boom. Anthony Scaramucci, who served as Trump’s director of
communications for all of ten days, plans to launch a $3 billion “opportunity
fund” at his hedge fund Skybridge Capital. Cadre, the real estate crowdfunding
platform partially owned by Jared Kushner and his brother, Joshua, is also
focused on exploiting the zones. As Charles Clinton, the CEO of EquityMultiple,
a real estate investment startup, said in September, they are “one of the
biggest real estate investment opportunities in decades.”
Similar efforts have been
undertaken in the past. In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher created eleven
“enterprise zones” in the United Kingdom, which produced fewer jobs than
promised. Each cost the government between $35,000 and $45,000, indexed for
inflation. The areas are still home to some of the poorest people in the
country. During the 1990s, Bill Clinton set up 104 “empowerment zones” in six
urban areas around the United States, including Atlanta, Baltimore, and New
York, as well as three rural areas, in Kentucky, Mississippi, and Texas. Clinton’s
plan (unlike Trump’s) tried to encourage not just capital investment, but also
hiring and upfront investments in equipment. But research on empowerment zones
has found that they had little to no effect on economic growth or poverty. They
were expensive, too, costing $850 per resident.
One of the reasons why
these zones often fail to deliver an economic boost is that governors and
investors tend to pick areas that are already on an upswing. (Long Island City
is a good example; it had been gentrifying for years before Andrew Cuomo
nominated it as an opportunity zone.) In May, the Urban Institute found that 28
percent of the census tracts governors had designated as opportunity zones
already benefit from some of the highest levels of private investment. They’d
be attractive areas in which to invest with or without a big tax giveaway. In
other words, opportunity zones are a massive handout for investors, and there
is scant evidence that they bring investment to the places that need it most.
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Of course, Trump himself
has experience bilking tax breaks and subsidies to make massive profits. He
accumulated at least $885 million in tax breaks, grants, and other subsidies
from New York to build his empire of hotels and high rises, according to The
New York Times, including the longest tax abatement the city ever handed out,
40 years, to rehabilitate the Grand Hyatt Hotel in the ’70s. He even pocketed
$150,000 from a fund meant to help small businesses damaged in the September 11
attacks. (He owned a Wall Street skyscraper not far from Ground Zero, but it
wasn’t damaged when the planes hit the Twin Towers.) Trump may be the country’s
preeminent expert in spotting a government handout to developers and squeezing
it for all it’s worth. It’s no surprise that he’d be as excited to stamp his
name on these opportunity zones as he would one of his hotels.
Trump may be the
country’s preeminent expert in spotting a government handout and squeezing it
for all it’s worth.
But these misguided
policies have lasting consequences. For one, there is no way to ensure that
investors who were already planning to put money into housing or infrastructure
don’t just decide to do it in opportunity zones to reap the tax benefits. Second,
the zones typically allow investors to retain complete control over their
projects. After state governments designate the areas, local communities get no
say over what is invested in and by whom. Don’t like the new toll road in your
town financed by a hedge fund? You may have no way to vote it down or give
input into how it’s implemented.
There’s a better way.
Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society directly financed construction across the
country. Dwight Eisenhower built the country’s network of highways. The
bipartisan Community Development Block Grant program, enacted in 1974 by
Republican President Gerald Ford, gives local communities money for projects
they decide are most important for their economies—a program that Trump wants
to eliminate.
The Joint Committee on
Taxation has estimated that the tax incentives in opportunity zones will cost
$1.5 billion a year for the first eight years. Just think what that money could
do if directed to build new water lines in Flint, affordable housing in Fresno,
decent school buildings in Baltimore, or better roads in Akron. Bankers on Wall
Street might not get a payday. But do we care more about their dreams, or those
of poor residents in neglected communities?
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."
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."
“The undermining of the I.R.S.’s enforcement capability
coincides nicely with the Republican playbook: Enrich wealthy individuals and
corporations with tax giveaways that balloon the deficit, justifying spending
cuts for health care, education and infrastructure, then amplify the process by
not holding high-end taxpayers accountable for the amounts they owe.”
A Gutted I.R.S. Makes the Rich Richer
With
enforcement enfeebled, as much as 20 percent of potential tax revenues go
uncollected.
By The
Editorial Board
The editorial board represents the opinions of the board, its
editor and the publisher. It is separate from the newsroom and the Op-Ed
section.
Let’s take a moment to pity the Internal Revenue Service.
Yes, to many Americans, it’s a money-grabbing ogre siphoning hard-earned cash
to the faceless federal bureaucracy.
But the nation’s tax collector today is an enfeebled
enforcer. Its budget has been bled dry by a Republican Congress in service to
wealthy donors and businesses aggressively pursuing tax avoidance, leaving
uncollected 18 percent to 20 percent of potential tax revenues annually. That’s
the conclusion in articles by the journalism site ProPublica, co-published by
The Atlantic and The Times.
Loopholes are beyond the means of most Americans who earn
salaries or are paid hourly wages, and are exploited by those who derive
significant income from investments or business revenue. Although we’d all like
to pay less, relative to most developed nations our tax burden is a pretty good
deal.
It’s an even better deal for the richest Americans, who have
benefited the most from President Trump’s tax cuts. The rich are different:
They’re more likely to cheat, according to one study of I.R.S. data. And the
I.R.S. has about as many auditors now as it did 60 years ago, when there were
half as many Americans. The undermining of the I.R.S.’s enforcement capability
coincides nicely with the Republican playbook: Enrich wealthy individuals and
corporations with tax giveaways that balloon the deficit, justifying spending
cuts for health care, education and infrastructure, then amplify the process by
not holding high-end taxpayers accountable for the amounts they owe.
Dodging taxes is as old as taxes themselves. Just ask Mr.
Trump, who has employed systematic dodging for decades, according to a Times
investigation.
We got a good look at one of the bigger problems, the
proclivity of the wealthy to hide cash from the I.R.S., in 2008, when the
Justice Department was able to pierce the Swiss bank secrecy veil during an
investigation of UBS. The department uncovered thousands of rich Americans who
were hiding about $18 billion in offshore accounts arranged by that Swiss bank.
Many were compelled to fess up and pay up. But eight years later, the Panama
Papers, millions of files hacked from a Panamanian law firm that specialized in
caching money for the rich and powerful, disclosed that there were still plenty
of rich people willing to play hide-and-seek with the I.R.S.
The odds are in their favor, and growing. ProPublica reported
that I.R.S. audits dropped 42 percent from 2010 to 2017, a period in which the
I.R.S. budget was lopped by $2.5 billion, adjusted for inflation. New
investigations of people who don’t file dropped to 362,000 last year, from 2.4
million in 2011. That costs the Treasury $3 billion annually in uncollected
taxes. More than $8 billion in back taxes did not get collected in 2017 because
the agency couldn’t get to them before the 10-year statute of limitations ran
out, another worsening problem. Tax delinquents can simply wait the agency out.
ProPublica estimated the total shortfall of uncollected funds since 2011 at $95
billion.
These uncollected billions could pay for any number of
things: better care of wounded veterans, infrastructure improvements such as a
desperately needed new tunnel between New York and New Jersey. You could even
build an expensive wall.
One area where the I.R.S. still bares its teeth is in
auditing people in the lowest tax bracket. If you are claiming the
earned-income tax credit, which provides cash for people who typically earn
less than $20,000 annually, you are as likely to be audited as someone earning
between $500,000 and $1 million. ProPublica reported that 36 percent of all
I.R.S. audits focused on this group. It may not be a crime to be poor in the
G.O.P.’s America, but you can expect to be treated like a criminal for
accepting the government’s cash to make ends meet. At best, that’s an
inefficient use of I.R.S. agents: Compliance should apply to all, but the I.R.S.
should do most of its fishing where the big fish are.
The Trump/G.O.P. tax policy is now operating at peak failure.
The tax cuts have failed to increase gross domestic product beyond the “sugar
high” stimulus they gave to an economy already heading toward record low
unemployment. The economy seems to be slowing, making a mockery of the promise
of strong growth that was used to peddle the tax cuts.
The stock market is shuddering at the idea of a slowdown,
which corporations contributed to by using their tax windfall to buy back more
than $1 trillion of their own stock. They have, to this point, immolated
capital instead of using it for additional hiring, increased wages or further
business investments.
A CNBC poll found that millionaires are still sanguine about
the economy. They can well afford to be. If their stocks lose value, they can
take a write-off. If stocks rise, their maximum long-term capital gains tax is
only 20 percent. Most American households don’t own stocks — or no longer own
them, having been forced to liquidate stock holdings in the Great Recession,
which was precipitated by a collapse in the housing market. Thus the wealth gap
grows, reaching levels not seen since the Roaring Twenties.
To pay for the millionaire tax cuts, sacrifices had to be
made. So Congress limited deductions for state and local taxes to $10,000
annually. While that generally applies to well-to-do people who can itemize
their tax returns, it was also a clear shot against blue states such as
California and New York that have relatively high state and local taxes. But
reducing these deductions, along with higher interest rates, punished the
housing market, which is stagnant nationally and in a free fall in the
Northeast.
Our ability to keep the $1 trillion deficit created by the
Trump tax cuts from deepening depends in part on collecting taxes to which the
government is legally entitled.
Think of it this way: To protect our nation, we have the most
powerful army in the world. To protect our tax base, we have an army on the order
of Liechtenstein’s.
The lack of
deterrence will only encourage more cheating. The I.R.S. needs to be capable of
doing the job for which it was created — from answering taxpayers’ questions to
chasing down the richest cheats, even if they occupy the Oval Office
SWAMP KEEPER TRUMP’S BIGGEST DEAL EVER:
Saving the 9-11 invading Saudis’ arses!
"I doubt that
Trump understands -- or cares about -- what message he's sending. Wealthy
Saudis, including members of the extended royal family, have been his patrons
for years, buying his distressed properties when he needed money.
“The Wahhabis finance thousands of
madrassahs throughout the world where young boys are brainwashed into becoming
fanatical foot-soldiers for the petrodollar-flush Saudis and other emirs of the
Persian Gulf.” AMIL
IMANI
I
recommend that Ignatius read Raymond Ibrahim's outstanding book Sword
and Scimitar, which
contains accounts of dynastic succession in the Muslim monarchies of the Middle
East, where standard operating procedure for a new monarch on the death of his
father was to strangle all his brothers. Yes, it's
awful. But it has been happening for a very long
time. And it's not going to change quickly, no matter how outraged
we pretend to be. MONICA SHOWALTER
“You saved my a rse again and again… So, I’ll save yours like
Bush and Obama did!
WHO IS FINANCING ALL THE TRUMP AND
SON-IN-LAW’S REFINANCING SCAMS???
FOLLOW THE MONEY!
"I doubt that
Trump understands -- or cares about -- what message he's sending. Wealthy
Saudis, including members of the extended royal family, have been his patrons
for years, buying his distressed properties when he needed money. In the early
1990s, a Saudi prince purchased Trump's flashy yacht so that the
then-struggling businessman could come up with cash to stave off personal
bankruptcy, and later, the prince bought a share of the Plaza Hotel, one of
Trump's many business deals gone bad. Trump also sold an entire floor of his
landmark Trump Tower condominium to the Saudi government in 2001."
“The Wahhabis finance thousands of
madrassahs throughout the world where young boys are brainwashed into becoming
fanatical foot-soldiers for the petrodollar-flush Saudis and other emirs of the
Persian Gulf.” AMIL
IMANI
I recommend that Ignatius read Raymond
Ibrahim's outstanding book Sword
and Scimitar, which
contains accounts of dynastic succession in the Muslim monarchies of the Middle
East, where standard operating procedure for a new monarch on the death of his
father was to strangle all his brothers. Yes, it's
awful. But it has been happening for a very long
time. And it's not going to change quickly, no matter how outraged
we pretend to be. MONICA SHOWALTER
Swamp Keeper Trump prepares
for the inevitable move to impeach him and ask for asylum in Scotland.
Fox News host Tucker
Carlson said in an interview Thursday that President Donald Trump has succeeded
as a conversation starter but has failed to keep his most important campaign
promises.
“His chief promises were
that he would build the wall, de-fund Planned Parenthood, and repeal Obamacare,
and he hasn’t done any of those things,” Carlson told Urs Gehriger of the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche.
One year since Trump’s tax cuts: a balance sheet
Stock buybacks reach $1 trillion
December marked one year since the passage of
Trump’s corporate tax windfall legislation, cutting the corporate tax rate from
35 percent down to just 21 percent. Officially known as the “Tax Cuts and Jobs
Act of 2017,” the legislation handed some $1.5 trillion to the major
corporations and the super-rich while leaving the working class to shoulder the
burden.
As we predicted in its December 21,
2017 perspective, the
bill “marks a new stage in the decades-long social counterrevolution in the
United States. It will make America, already the most unequal advanced economy
in the world, far more unequal, entrenching the rule of an unaccountable
financial oligarchy.” One year later, a balance sheet of the legislation’s
effects on American society confirms this analysis.
In October, the United States Treasury
announced that the federal budget deficit has risen to $779 billion, up 17
percent from the previous fiscal year. The Congressional Budget
Office (CBO) issued a report in April projecting the national debt will now
increase by $1.9 trillion over the next decade. The spike in the deficit will
precipitate a new round off assaults on the few remaining social programs in
the US—above all, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
After-tax profits rose nearly 20 percent in
the third quarter from the previous year as a result of the cuts, while wage
growth remained static. After-tax corporate profits are now growing nearly 10
percent faster than pre-tax profits, a phenomenon which usually only occurs
around recessions. The first three quarters of this year saw enormous tax
savings for some of America’s largest corporations. Walmart saved $1.6 billion,
with Bank of America saving $2.4 billion. AT&T and Verizon saved $2.2
billion and $1.75 billion, respectively. Apple alone has collected a whopping
$4.5 billion.
Corporate spokesmen and media pundits at the
time had made promises of raising wages, handing out bonuses and creating new
jobs. In reality, the handouts in the form of bonuses and raises for workers
amounted to a small fraction of the $200 billion in savings on income tax. A
recent report by the Economic Policy Institute estimated that bonuses gave
workers only 2 cents more per hour over the past year. Wages overall have
increased only 3.1 percent over the course of the year, barely keeping up with
the rate of inflation. By comparison, dividend payouts to corporate
shareholders have set a new annual record of $420 billion. The majority of the
payouts went to the wealthiest 10 percent of the US population, which owns 84
percent of all stock holdings.
Capital investment—intended to fund research
and development and create jobs—rose at the beginning of the year only to fall
sharply in the third quarter. Conversely, stock buybacks—a method by which a
corporation repurchases shares in order to artificially inflate their value
without creating anything or hiring employees—surged to previously unseen
heights.
The total amount of S&P 500 company
buybacks alone neared $200 billion in the third quarter, with a total buybacks
reaching $579 billion for the first nine months of 2018. The total amount of
buybacks is expected to top $1 trillion by the end of the year, according to Goldman
Sachs analysts. This is almost double the amount of the previous annual buyback
record of $589 billion in 2007—the year that began the financial meltdown that
triggered the worst recession since the Great Depression.
It is now clear the vast majority of
corporate spending from the tax cut has gone to the further enrichment of a
tiny parasitic layer of investors and CEOs. Whatever expenditures made on
paltry handouts to workers have been dwarfed by buybacks and dividends, a
financial orgy that once again threatens another and even greater financial
meltdown. The events of the past year once again underscore the deeply
intractable crisis of capitalism, marked by a degree of financialization of the
world economy that has long ago surpassed the point of no return. Profit is now
primarily made not through the growth of the productive forces, but rather,
through their destruction.
In fact, many corporations have instead
carried out layoffs in spite of their surge in profits. General Motors (GM) has
announced plans to lay off 15,000 workers and shut down five plants in the
United States and Canada, along with two unspecified plants internationally.
While GM is planning to cut $6.5 billion in costs, it has squandered over $10
billion in stock buybacks and dividend payouts for its richest investors since
2017, and $25 billion since 2012.
Bank of America has cut 5,000 jobs this year
alone. Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan has cited the growth of automation
and online banking as the impetus for the layoffs. According to Moynihan
himself, the corporation has cut 100,000 jobs since 2010 when he took over the
company. Wells Fargo, another bank that has made billions from the cuts,
followed suit in an announcement that it plans to downsize its work force by up
to 10 percent. This came shortly after an announcement of $40 billion in stock
buybacks since the law passed.
AT&T slashed more than 10,000 union jobs
this year in an acceleration of layoffs from last year. Verizon has laid off
3,100 employees this year, while announcing a buyout offer cutting an
additional 10,000 workers. The company recently made the decision to outsource
2,500 jobs to Infosys, a large Indian technology firm.
The trade unions representing many of the
affected workers, such as the United Auto Workers (UAW) and Communications
Workers of America (CWA), have directly collaborated in imposing the layoffs
and plant closures.
The Democratic Party offered only nominal
opposition to the tax cuts. While voting against the legislation last year in a
party-line vote in both the House and Senate, the Democrats are not proposing
to introduce legislation to repeal the cuts once they regain control of the
House of Representatives January 3—neither partially nor as a whole. The
Republican Party introduced legislation to repeal, deauthorize, defund, or
otherwise do away with Affordable Care Act (ACA) 83 times during Obama’s
presidency. The Democrats are opposed to even a symbolic gesture against the
tax cuts, as doing so would risk alienating the party from its corporate base.
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