This is a daily or weekly record of the Trump presidency so hopefully future generations will learn what happens when you elect an narcissistic, thin skinned, racist, xenophobic, misogynistic unqualified buffoon in a position of power where he has access to nuclear codes.
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Friday, September 29, 2017
September 27, 2017 - September 29, 2017. 318-320 days since the Nov 8, 2016, election and 250-252 days since the Jan 20th inauguration.
HomePoliticsthe rich asshole STRUGGLES While Speaking & Giving Excuses For Slow Recovery Efforts In...
President the rich asshole spoke horribly this Friday morning, as he delivered a speech to the National Association of Manufacturers and pushed his new tax plan, a plan that will result in a massive tax cut for the rich. At the open of his speech, the rich asshole started giving excuses for the cumbersome disaster relief effort in Puerto Rico, explaining that it is complicated because the island is, “surrounded by water.”
“This is an island, surrounded by water. Big water. Ocean water,” the rich asshole said. the rich asshole spoke slower than usual and seemed to be grasping for words to offer his pointless description of Puerto Rico being an island, something we are all fully aware of. You can see the rich asshole’s remarks in the clip below.
the rich asshole has been heavily criticized for his administration’s response to Hurricane Maria, but he doesn’t seem to comprehend the valid criticism. During this speech, he again attacked Puerto Rico for its debt, seemingly citing it as an excuse for the island facing a difficult recovery.
“Ultimately the government of Puerto Rico will have to work with us to determine how this massive rebuilding effort … will be funded,” the rich asshole said, “And what we will do with the tremendous amount of existing debt already on the island.
the rich asshole did announce some good news, which is that FEMA is bringing in truck drivers to help disperse supplies around the island. There is a shortage of drivers at the moment, because they are unable to make their way to the ports to load and deliver supplies across the island. “Therefore we’re forced to bring in truck drivers, security and many, many other personnel… We’ve never seen a situation like this.” the rich asshole said.
Lawyers for the the rich asshole administration have served Facebook with three separate search warrants, demanding the private account information of users who could be described in their words as “anti-administration activists who have spoken out at organized events, and who are generally very critical of this administration’s policies.” Read: the rich asshole critics, and this has the potential to affect thousands of Facebook users.
Fortunately, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a motion to quash the warrants on Thursday on behalf of three Facebook users. “What is particularly chilling about these warrants is that anti-administration political activists are going to have their political associations and views scrutinized by the very administration they are protesting,” said ACLU attorney Scott Michelman.
One such user is Emmelia Talarico. Talarico operated the disruptj20 page where other users could discuss and organize protests for the rich asshole’s Inauguration Day. If the search warrants are passed and Facebook is required to hand over the information, the government would have access to the identities of the estimated 6,000 users who visited the page. Talarico says if her account information were given to the government, officials would have access to her “personal passwords, security questions and answers, and credit card information,” plus “the private lists of invitees and attendees to multiple political events sponsored by the page.”
Facebook was first served the warrants back in February and they came with a gag order preventing the social media giant from alerting the three users in question about the government seeking their personal information. Michelman claims that government attorneys dropped the gag order earlier this month, allowing Facebook to expose the existence of the warrants, however, all court filings and any response from Facebook are still deemed confidential.
The warrants also seek the personal information from the accounts of Lacy MacAuley and Legba Carrefour. Carrefour, a self-described political activist, acknowledges that he has “participated in or helped to organize dozens of demonstrations and events of various types in service of political causes,” but is also concerned about the warrants because his Facebook account “contains a significant amount of private material concerning my personal life.”
The Justice Department is demanding that Facebook turn over information from three accounts that could provide access to the personal details of thousands of activists who expressed interest in anti-the rich asshole rallies.
The department obtained search warrants targeting three Facebook accounts that were used to organize Inauguration Day protests against some rich asshole, the ACLU said late Thursday. But accessing those accounts would provide information on thousands of other users who "liked" an anti-the rich asshole Facebook page, the group explained.
The ACLU’s Washington, D.C., office said in a statement it would fight the enforcement of the search warrants.
"Opening up the entire contents of a personal Facebook page for review by the government is a gross invasion of privacy," said Scott Michelman, a senior staff attorney at ACLU. "When law enforcement officers can comb through records concerning political organizing in opposition to the very administration for which those officers work, the result is the chilling of First Amendment-protected political activity."
One search warrant was issued for the DisruptJ20 Facebook page, which has since been renamed Resist This, requiring the group’s moderator, Emmelia Talarico, to hand over "nonpublic lists of people who planned to attend political organizing events and even the names of people who simply liked, followed, reacted to, commented o or otherwise engaged with the content on the Facebook page," the ACLU said in a motion filed Thursday in U.S. Superior Court in Washington.
That could include nearly 6,000 Facebook users who "liked" the page from Nov. 1, 2016, to Feb. 9, 2017.
Two other warrants obtained by the Justice Department would require Facebook to hand over "all information from the personal Facebook profiles of local DisruptJ20 activists' Lacy MacAuley and Legba Carrefour from Nov. 1, 2016, through Feb. 9, 2017.
The warrants demand "all private messages, friend lists, status updates, comments, photos, video and other private information solely intended for the users’ Facebook friends and family, even if they have nothing to do with Inauguration Day," the ACLU said.
Facebook didn’t immediately respond to questions about whether it would comply with the warrants.
The numbers are nearly all in now. What they show about what really happened during the eight years that Barack Obama was president is sometimes different from what politicians claimed.
The economy gained a net 11.5 million jobs. The unemployment rate dropped to below the historical norm.
Average weekly earnings for all workers were up 4.1 percent after inflation. The gain was 3.7 percent for just production and nonsupervisory employees.
After-tax corporate profits also set records, as did stock prices. The S&P 500 index rose 166 percent.
The number of people lacking health insurance dropped by 15 million. Premiums rose, but more slowly than before.
The federal debt owed to the public rose 128 percent. Deficits were rising as Obama departed.
Home prices rose 20 percent. But the home ownership rate hit the lowest point in half a century.
Illegal immigration declined: The Border Patrol caught 35 percent fewer people trying to get into the U.S. from Mexico.
Wind and solar power increased 369 percent. Coal production declined 38 percent. Carbon emissions from burning fossil fuel dropped 11 percent.
Production of handguns rose 192 percent, to a record level.
The murder rate dropped to the lowest on record in 2014, then rose and finished at about the same rate as when Obama took office.
Analysis
Gathering statistics is a painstaking and time-consuming job. Figures on crime, household incomes and poverty in 2016 weren’t released until September 2017, for example.
But now we have a reasonably complete statistical picture of the Obama years, which began in the middle of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, and ended with the highest level of household income ever recorded.
These facts often turn out to be at odds with the impressions created by candidates who, for example, claimed wages and incomes were stagnant when in fact they were rising. The facts also can conflict with impressions created by news media reporting dramatic but untypical events. Despite nonstop coverage of several mass shootings, for example, the murder rate was going down for most of the Obama years, hitting the lowest ever recorded in 2014.
Some of these figures remain subject to tweaks and revisions. Figures on handgun production in 2016 are still “preliminary,” for example, and others will remain subject to slight revisions for years to come, as statisticians routinely refine their methods and assumptions. We will keep this update current as necessary in the months and years to come. For now, it’s as “final” as possible.
Jobs and Unemployment
Jobs — Over Obama’s eight years in office, the economy added a net total of nearly 11.5 million jobs — a gain in total nonfarm employment of 8.6 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
That percentage gain is not as large as for most other administrations since the end of World War II.
In fact, the only other post-war administrations to see smaller gains in employment were those of Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, who eked out a bare 1 percent gain, Dwight D. Eisenhower (7.1 percent in his eight years), and Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush (2.5 percent during his four years).
Jimmy Carter saw a much stronger employment gain — 12.8 percent — despite the fact that his administration lasted only four years, half as long as Obama’s.
Note: For these historical comparisons, we’ve begun with the inauguration of Harry Truman in 1949, when he became the first president elected after the end of World War II. For simplicity, we’ve combined the administrations of Democrats John F. Kennedy and his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson (who took office after Kennedy was assassinated), and of Republicans Richard Nixon and his successor, Gerald Ford (who served out the remainder of Nixon’s second term after Nixon resigned), as though each were single eight-year administrations.
In our graphics, we show Republican administrations in red, Democratic administrations in blue.
Obama had the unique disadvantage of taking office in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. More than 4 million jobs were lost in his first year in office, on top of the 4 million lost in George W. Bush’s final year.
To be sure, Bush’s eight years were marked by two recessions, including one that began two months after he took office in 2001. That helps explain why job creation on his watch was by far the worst of any post-war administration.
Labor Force Participation — Because of these and other factors, relatively fewer people said they wanted to work. Under Obama, the labor force — those either working or actively looking for a job — slipped from 65.7 percent of those age 16 and older to 62.9 percent.
Job Openings — With relatively fewer people seeking employment, a job shortage changed to a worker shortage under Obama. The Department of Labor reported that the number of unfilled job openings more than doubled during Obama’s time, hitting just under 6 million in July 2016. That was at the time the highest in the more than 16 years that Labor Department statisticians had tracked this number.
Before Obama’s tenure, the only time job openings topped 5 million was January 2001. During Obama’s second term, there were 26 months with over 5 million openings. It has since continued to rise, topping 6 million for the first time in June 2017, under President some rich asshole.
Unemployment — The unemployment rate was high when Obama took office — 7.8 percent — and it continued to get worse in his first year. It peaked at 10 percent in October 2009 and didn’t drop below 9 percent until two years after that.
But slowly, and more or less steadily, the rate improved. By the time Obama left office, the jobless rate had dropped 3 full percentage points, an improvement exceeded only by the slightly bigger declines during the Clinton and Kennedy-Johnson administrations.
By the time Obama left office, the jobless rate was down to 4.8 percent — well below the historical norm of 5.6 percent (the median rate for all the months since Truman’s inauguration in January 1949).
But getting down to that point was a long, slow grind. So slow that over all of Obama’s 96 months in office, the median jobless rate was 7.7 percent — the highest for any administration since the end of World War II.
Obama’s experience is similar to that of Ronald Reagan — who presided over the second highest median jobless rate, 7.2 percent.
In Reagan’s first term, unemployment peaked at 10.8 percent — higher than Obama’s 10 percent peak. And under Reagan, it stayed at or above 10 percent for 10 straight months starting in September 1982 — compared with Obama’s one-month high of 10 percent.
Like Obama, Reagan also saw the rate decline steadily after the worst was over.
By the time Reagan left office in January 1989, the rate was down to 5.4 percent, not far above Obama’s final month at 4.8 percent.
Both Obama and Reagan left office with job approval ratings above 50 percent.
Income and Poverty
The inflation-adjusted incomes of American households reached the highest level ever recorded under Obama. The Census Bureau’s measure of median household income reached $59,039 in 2016. That was $2,963 more in “real” (inflation-adjusted) dollars than in 2008, for an overall gain of 5.3 percent.The median figure represents the midpoint — half of all households earned more, half less. And while real median income hit a record level in Obama’s final year, it was a long, rough road to the top.
In fact, the 5.3 percent gain under Obama barely made up for the 4.2 percent loss under his predecessor. And for his first six years in office, median income was below the level in 2008.
Obama’s 5.3 percent gain was less than the 13.9 percent gain under Bill Clinton, and the 8.1 percent gain under Reagan. It is also pushed up to a degree by a change in the Census Bureau’s survey questions in 2014, designed to correct for under-reporting of certain types of income in previous years.
The trend to higher incomes also shows up in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly report on average weekly earnings for all workers, adjusted for inflation. That figure, which includes salaried managers and supervisors, was 4.1 percent higher in the month Obama left office than it was in the month he first entered the White House. It was 3.7 percent higher for just production and nonsupervisory employees.
As incomes rose, the rate of poverty declined. The percentage of Americans living with income below the official poverty line went down to 12.7 percent of the population in 2016, a half-point drop compared with 2008.
That decline also wasn’t nearly enough to reverse the 1.9 percentage point rise in poverty under George W. Bush, and it was far less than the 3.5 percentage point decline under Clinton.
And even though the rate of poverty went down under Obama, the number of people in poverty rose — just not as fast as the population in general. In 2016, just over 40.6 million Americans were still living below the poverty line, an increase of 787,000 people compared with 2008. Under George W. Bush, the number went up by more than 8 million, after going down by more than 6 million under Clinton.
Home Prices
Home values rebounded under Obama, reaching a new high in his final year.
The 2016 figure was a record, but only in raw dollars, without accounting for inflation. Prices reached their pre-recession high in 2006. In the decade between then and Obama’s final year, home prices rose 6.1 percent, while the Consumer Price Index rose 19 percent.
Home Ownership
The home ownership rate drifted down under Obama, touching the lowest point in more than half a century during his final year.
In the second quarter of 2016, 62.9 percent of households owned their own home, according to Census Bureau figures. That ties the lowest point since the Census Bureau began collecting the figures. The last time the rate was that low was in the third quarter of 1965.
The home ownership rate began its slide after peaking at 69.2 percent in the second quarter of 2004. It already had come down 1.7 percentage points before Obama took office, but it went down by a greater amount in his two terms as president.
In Obama’s last quarter, the rate rebounded to 63.7 percent, as the economy improved and sales of new and existing homes hit their best pace since before Obama entered office. But the ownership rate was still 3.8 percentage points lower than the quarter before he took office.
Food Stamps
The number of people receiving food aid under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly known as “food stamps”) rose by a third under Obama.
In Obama’s last month in office, there were just under 42.7 million Americans receiving SNAP assistance, a gain of 10.7 million or just under 33.5 percent from January 2009.
The number grew as the 2007-2009 recession threw millions out of work, as benefit levels were boosted for several years by the stimulus legislation Obama signed in 2009. The average benefit per person went up from around $113 per person in January 2009 to around $134 in July.
At the peak of food stamp enrollment in December 2012, a total of 47.8 million were receiving aid, an increase of nearly 16 million or 49 percent.
But then millions melted from the rolls as employment and incomes improved, and as Congress cut benefit levels, which dropped to a monthly average of around $124 per person in Obama’s final month.
Measured from his first month to his last, benefit levels and enrollment both grew less under Obama than under his predecessor.
Under George W. Bush, the number of people getting food stamps grew by 14.7 million, or 85 percent (compared with the 10.7 million, 33 percent gain under Obama). The average monthly benefit per person grew from $73.89 in the month Bush took office to $113.60 the month he left. That’s a 54 percent increase, compared with the 9 percent gain at the end of Obama’s time in office.
Corporate Profits
Corporations did much better than workers during Obama’s time. Their profits hit several new yearly highs during his tenure.
Profits had surged under George W. Bush as well, but when Obama took office they had plunged from their previous peak in 2006, due to the financial crisis and ensuing economic downturn. Then they recovered quickly under Obama — far more quickly than jobs or personal incomes — and reached a new record in 2010, his second year in office.
From there they climbed even higher, setting more new annual records in 2012, 2013 and 2014, when they reached $1.74 trillion.
Profits slipped a bit in 2015, but in Obama’s final year profits were still $1.69 trillion — not far below the 2014 record and 57.3 percent higher than in 2008, the year before he took office.
That gain was higher than during all but three other post-war administrations, behind the 122.7 percent gain under George W. Bush, the 124.5 percent gain during the Nixon-Ford years and the 87.5 percent gain during the Kennedy-Johnson years. It was only slightly higher than the 57.0 percent gain during Truman’s final, four-year term.
Technical note: There are several ways to measure corporate profits. We present here the same historical measure followed by Federal Reserve Bank economists, which gauges profits of U.S. corporations from all their global operations, after taxes and without adjustments for inflation, inventory changes or changes in capital (such as depreciation.) Annual figures go back to 1929, and can be found on line 45 of BEA’s “National Income by Types of Income” table (Table 1.12).
Stock Prices
Owners of corporate stocks also did quite well under Obama. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock average more than doubled — rising by 166 percent during his eight years in office.
Among post-war administrations, that’s second only to the 209 percent rise in the S&P index during Clinton’s two terms, and it handily outpaced the 114 percent gain under Reagan.
To some extent, the gain under Obama represents a rebound from an unusually depressed level. The financial crisis of 2007-2009 caused stock prices to plunge. By George W. Bush’s last day in office, the S&P 500 stood 37 percent below where it had been on the last trading day before he first took office in 2001.
Other stock market indexes tell similar stories. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 138 percent under Obama after falling 22 percent under his predecessor, for example.
Some of the gain took place in the weeks just after the rich asshole was elected, a “the rich asshole Rally” that many attribute at least partly to investor optimism that the president-elect would, once in office, cut taxes and regulation as promised. But the S&P rise between Election Day and Obama’s last day in office was just under 6 percent — a small fraction of the entire gain during Obama’s tenure. Stock prices already had set record after record before the rich asshole’s election, as we have written before.
Debt and Deficits
The federal debt more than doubled under Obama, and he left the rich asshole a legacy of worsening deficits.
Debt — On the day Obama left office, the U.S. government’s debt owed to the public was more than $14.4 trillion, an increase of more than 128 percent during his eight years.
The debt also has grown dramatically even when measured as a percentage of the growing economy, from 52.3 percent of gross domestic product at the end of fiscal year 2009 to 77.0 percent as of the end of fiscal year 2016 on Sept. 30, 2016, according to historical budget figures from the Office of Management and Budget.
Deficits — Under Obama, annual federal deficits fell, but then turned up again.
The deficit hit $1.4 trillion in fiscal year 2009. As we’ve documented elsewhere, Obama inherited most of that deficit and signed spending measures that contributed as much as $203 billion to FY 2009’s red ink.
After that, the yearly deficits declined markedly for several years. In fiscal year 2015, the deficit was $438 billion, a drop of 69 percent from FY 2009.
But deficits were again on the rise as Obama left office. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated in June 2017 that the deficit for FY 2017 — which ends Sept. 30 and is the last one for which Obama signed spending bills — will increase to $693 billion.
CBO also projects that under current law, annual deficits will again exceed $1 trillion in 2022 and beyond. As things stand, federal debt owed to the public will reach 80 percent of GDP in 2020, and more than 91 percent in 2027, CBO projects.
Health Insurance
Coverage — Millions of Americans gained health insurance coverage as a result of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.
The percentage of all U.S. residents who lack coverage dropped sharply, from 14.7 percent the year before Obama entered the White House to 9.0 percent in his final year — the lowest on record. Nevertheless, those gains fell far short of Obama’s 2007 campaign promise to “cover every American.”
Our data come from the National Health Interview Survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has tracked health insurance coverage on a reasonably consistent basis since 1997.
According to NHIS figures, 43.8 million Americans of all ages lacked health insurance in 2008, but in 2016 that number was down to 28.6 million — a drop of 15.2 million people.
The number of uninsured actually rose during the first two years of Obama’s time, reaching 48.6 million in 2010. That’s because of the Great Recession of 2007-2009, when millions of workers lost their jobs, and any health insurance benefits that went with them.
The number of uninsured drifted down after that, as the economy slowly recovered. But then it dropped sharply beginning in 2014, the first year that the ACA’s main provisions took effect. Those provisions required that individuals obtain coverage or pay a tax penalty, made government-paid Medicaid available more widely to millions of additional low-income people, and provided government subsidies to help those further up the income scale pay for private insurance.
Premiums — Obama also failed to deliver on his campaign promise to “lower your premiums by up to $2,500 per family per year.” For the typical worker, premiums continued to rise faster than wages or inflation, though more slowly than before.
Premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance (which covers nearly 56 percent of the population, according to Census figures) rose 43 percent under Obama for family policies, and 37 percent for policies covering a single person.
That information comes from annual surveys by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Education Trust, which is the nonprofit research arm of the American Hospital Association.
To be sure, premiums rose twice as fast before Obama took office. Family rates rose 97 percent and single-coverage rates rose 90 percent during George W. Bush’s eight years in office.
But the rise under Obama continued to outpace the average weekly earnings of all employees (up 20 percent under Obama) and the rise in consumer prices (up 15 percent).
The effect on take-home pay for workers was made even larger because employers picked up a somewhat smaller share of the total cost of health coverage on average.
Under Obama, the worker portion of annual health insurance premiums rose by $1,923 for a family policy, and $408 for single coverage. Both those figures represented a 57 percent increase during his eight years in office.
Obama promised to lower premiums when he first ran for the White House. “We’re going to work with your employers to lower your premiums by up to $2,500 per family, per year,” he said. At another point, he said, “We will start by reducing premiums by as much as $2,500 per family.” Aides said when Obama spoke of “lowering” or “reducing” premiums he really meant that he would reduce the rate of growth, though he did not make that clear when speaking to voters.
Immigration
The flow of people caught crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally slowed markedly under Obama. In his final year, the U.S. Border Patrol apprehended just under 443,000, down 35 percent from the year before he took office.
Though it’s impossible to know how many illegal crossings went undetected, the number of those apprehended is the best available indicator of the overall trend.
The percentage decline under Obama was far less than the 58 percent decline under George W. Bush, who nearly doubled the number of agents stationed at the Southwest border. Under funding levels established by Bush, the number grew from 9,147 agents in fiscal year 2001 to 17,408 in FY 2009 (which began Oct. 1, 2008).
Under Obama, that number continued to increase, hitting a peak of 18,611 in FY 2013. The number then declined to 17,026 in fiscal year 2016.
Meanwhile, the number of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally actually fell, from an estimated 11.7 million in 2008, to an estimated 11.0 million in 2015, according to the Pew Research Center. That’s a decline of roughly 700,000, or 6 percent.
Similarly, the Center for Migration Studies estimated that the population of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally dropped from 11,460,000 in 2008 to 11,045,000 in 2015, a decline of 415,000, or 3.6 percent. The CMS study attributed the decline to tighter airline security, increased enforcement at the border and improving economic conditions in Mexico.
Such estimates are inexact; those breaking the law by being here can’t be expected to confess that to Census officials. But demographers have applied consistent methodologies from year to year, and agree that the trend has been downward.
Energy
Oil — U.S. crude oil production, mainly due to advances in drilling technology, surged under Obama, helping to drive down fuel prices. In 2016, the U.S. produced 77 percent more crude oil than it did in 2008.
Wind & Solar — Wind and solar power has more than quadrupled under Obama. Electricity generated by large-scale wind and solar power facilities increased by 369 percent during the Obama years.
The increase in solar power in particular has been spectacular. The U.S. generated nearly 43 times more electricity from solar power in 2016 than in 2008.
Wind and solar accounted for 6.5 percent of total large-scale generation in 2016, up from a mere 1.4 percent in 2008. Wind and solar now account for as large a share as hydroelectric power, also at 6.5 percent of the total.
Coal — As wind and solar rose, coal declined. Obama put forth new restrictions that his administration called a “Clean Power Plan,” and his critics dubbed a “war on coal.”
In 2016, U.S. coal production was 728 million metric tons, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That’s a decline of 38 percent since 2008.
During the Obama years, electric utilities shifted away from burning coal, which accounted for 48 percent of their power generation in 2008, but only 30 percent in 2016. The share supplied by burning natural gas went up from 21 percent to 34 percent, and the share supplied by nuclear plants remained steady at just under 20 percent.
Carbon Emissions — Meanwhile, the amount of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere from U.S. energy-related sources has declined during Obama’s time.
Between 2008 and 2016, the amount of carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels went down 11 percent, according to estimates from the EIA.
Emissions have been falling even as the economy has been growing, in part because utilities — driven by lower natural gas prices and government regulations — have been burning more natural gas and less coal. Emissions from electric power plants in 2016 were the lowest since 1988, according to EIA figures.
Trade
Obama promised in his 2010 State of the Union address to “double our exports over the next five years.” That didn’t happen.
Instead, as the economies of major U.S. trading partners struggled, so did U.S. exports.
Instead, annual U.S. handgun production nearly tripled, as millions of Americans flocked to buy firearms.
In 2016, production of pistols and revolvers totaled 5,314,511, according to interim figures released in June by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. That’s an increase of 192 percent over the figure for 2008, and it broke the previous record set in 2013.
The government doesn’t collect figures on sales of guns. But the National Shooting Sports Foundation — the gun industry’s trade group — tracks approximate sales figures by adjusting FBI statistics on background checks to remove those not related to actual sales, such as checks required for concealed-carry permits.
Those NSSF-adjusted figures also set a record in Obama’s final year, topping 15.7 million. That’s an increase of 75 percent above the 2008 level.
These figures cover rifles and shotguns and previously owned weapons, as well as new handguns. They are only an approximation of actual sales, since some of these checks cover purchases of multiple weapons, and of course some sales still occur without background checks.
Crime
Despite more than a score of mass shootings, crime declined substantially overall during the Obama years.
The FBI’s crime statistics show the number of violent crimes in 2016 was 10.5 percent lower than the number in 2008, and the number of property crimes dropped 19 percent.
Meanwhile the population increased by more than 6 percent, so the rate of crime dropped even more. The number of violent crimes per 100,000 population was nearly 16 percent lower in 2016 than in 2008, and the property crime rate dropped nearly 24 percent.
Among violent crimes the biggest drop was a nearly 30 percent reduction in robberies. But the murder rate dropped hardly at all — declining from 5.4 per 100,000 in 2008 to 5.3 in 2016.
Earlier, in 2014, the murder rate had dropped to the lowest level on record — 4.4 per 100,000 — but it rose in Obama’s final two years in office.
Car Mileage
Obama set a goal of doubling the fuel efficiency of cars and light trucks, but that promise isn’t working out. Although he put in place a regulatory requirement that cars and light trucks average 54.5 miles per gallon by model year 2025, car buyers had other ideas.
For light duty vehicles actually purchased, the average EPA city/highway sticker mileage has been stuck at 25.1 mpg for model years 2014, 2015 and 2016, according to the Transportation Research Institute of the University of Michigan.
Model year 2017 isn’t looking any different. Vehicles sold during Obama’s final month in office also averaged 25.1 mpg — only 20 percent above where it was eight years earlier. Meanwhile, the Obama mileage regulations are under review by the new administration.
Guantanamo
During Obama’s final 20 days in office another 18 prisoners were released from the military detention camp for suspected terrorists in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and shipped to other countries. That brought the total number remaining to 41.
During Obama’s time in office, 2,035 U.S. military personnel died as a result of the Afghan war and the fighting in and around Iraq, according to figures kept by iCasualties.org.
S&P Dow Jones Indices, “500 and DJI Daily Historical,” proprietary data furnished upon request and used with permission under academic license. 29 Aug 2017.
some rich asshole is desperate to sell his tax reform policies to the American people, but they aren’t buying it.
After failing yet again to get a destructive healthcare bill passed, the rich asshole is once again turning his attention to tax reform.
Of course, he’s advertising it as a good thing for the country that will be good for all Americans.
On Thursday morning, the rich asshole attacked Democrats for opposing his tax plan and claimed that his plan has received “great reviews” without citing any of them specifically.
Tax cuts can be a good thing if they are employed the right way. The problem is that the rich asshole’s plan would benefit the wealthy at the expense of the rest of us. It’s a massive gift for corporations and wealthy individuals that is better described as trickle-down economics on steroids. Americans corporations already enjoy a low tax rate compared to those in other developed nations. And the rich asshole’s plan is also selfish as it would cut taxes on his own businesses and lower the individual rate for himself and his wealthy buddies.
Cutting taxes would also significantly hurt revenues that are used to pay down the national debt and pay for the government programs that people in this country need.
In short, these tax cuts are even worse than the Bush tax cuts that contributed to the Great Recession in 2008 and left the country with a $1 trillion deficit that Republicans constantly whined about while President Obama was in office.
Also, proposing tax cuts for the sake of winning elections is not healthy. Taxes have already been cut too much since the 1950s, especially for the wealthy and corporations. If anything, it’s time to raise them.
the rich asshole’s dubious plan got panned on Twitter.
CNBC reports that the rich asshole’s plan would cost $5.8 TRILLION, which the rich asshole’s team plans to pay for partly by eliminating exemptions and deductions that benefit the middle class and poor such as medical expenses and personal exemptions for dependents. The government would also have to significantly slash programs that benefit middle-class Americans. And if the rich asshole and Republicans don’t screw over the American people to pay for the plan, they would have to hurt America in other ways to pay for it.
Or it would be forced to run the national debt up to dangerous levels, likely driving up borrowing rates for consumers and businesses.
In short, the American people will get screwed over regardless. The wealthy and corporations, on the other hand, get to laugh all the way to the bank as the rest of us suffer.
Anyone who is faced with the unfortunate task of defending some rich asshole’s many lies and erratic behavior eventually crumbles. We saw this with former White House press secretary Sean Spicer, and we’re seeing it again with current press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Earlier today, Huckabee Sanders fell apart in front of reporters as she tried to redirect the conversation about the rich asshole’s false claim that the Senate has enough votes to replace the Affordable Care Act. When a reporter grilled her on Graham-Cassidy, the GOP’s latest health care disaster, Huckabee Sanders practically admitted that the rich asshole had been lying the whole time and that the votes were not there. She said:
“The point that we’re making is that we have the votes on the substance, but not necessarily on the process, which is why we are so confident that we can move healthcare forward and get it done in the spring.”
Huckabee Sanders, like all of the rich asshole’s minions, is well-versed in diversion tactics but still couldn’t avoid exposing her boss’ blatant lie. the rich asshole does not have the votes to pass Graham-Cassidy, and he was lying through his teeth about it. No matter how Huckabee Sanders tried to conceal the truth, it was too obvious to be hidden.
Many – including Republicans – already believe that Graham-Cassidy is dead. If the bill can’t get enough votes on the process, the bill cannot pass. the rich asshole lied, and this is just another humiliating failure for his administration and the Republican party.
You can watch Huckabee Sanders struggle to hold it together below:
the rich asshole can’t hide his major failures behind his spokespeople anymore, and his lies are wearing thin. The public is giving him far less leniency now as his approval rating continues to dwindle. the rich asshole’s team is in big trouble if they keep trying to cover up his lies.
President some rich asshole always manages to make it about him and his trouble with the fake news mainstream media, and he didn’t fail to disappoint — yet again — when he took to Twitter to talk about the situation in Puerto Rico.
the rich asshole has faced criticism for his slow response to the devastation from Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico along with his apparent preference to making shipping industries wealthy and happy rather than lowering the prices of basic goods for those in need of water and food in Puerto Rico.
In a two-tweet word salad, he talked about how FEMA and the first responders who have FINALLY made it to Puerto Rico were doing a great job.
‘FEMA & First Responders are doing a GREAT job in Puerto Rico. Massive food & water delivered. Docks & electric grid dead. Locals trying…’
‘…really hard to help but many have lost their homes. Military is now on site and I will be there Tuesday. Wish press would treat fairly!’
‘Puerto Rico is devastated. Phone system, electric grid many roads, gone. FEMA and First Responders are amazing. Governor said “great job!”‘
Seriously? Thanks for the announcement, the rich asshole. I’m sure Puerto Ricans who need food and water are about to pee themselves with excitement over your arrival to the wreckage that was left behind after the Category 4 Hurricane Maria pounded the island. There was no need to mention the press. The devastation in Puerto Rico has nothing to do with you and how the media portrays you. It’s fairly simple. Puerto Rico is left in ruins. They need help. You send help ASAP. There’s no need to talk about the press.
It’s great and all that the rich asshole finally wants to talk about Puerto Rico now, after going bonkers over the NFL. However, it’s too little too late.
Twitter responded to the tweets. You can check out those responses below.
Hurricane Maria ripped through Puerto Rico last week with winds reaching over 100 mph. The island has been left devastated, with dozens killed and thousands being displaced without food or water. As the those on the island suffered and waited for help from the United States, some rich asshole was spending time blasting the National Football League (NFL) and its players for protesting the national anthem.
The president's feud with the NFL became headlines news over the weekend, which dominated coverage on political, sports, and entertainment news programming. Earlier this week, the rich asshole finally addressed the damage in Puerto Rico, but came under fire for how he responded. As part of a three-part tweet earlier in the week, the former host of "The Apprentice" made sure to bring up Puerto Rico's "massive debt" to the United States and Wall Street. Despite the backlash that followed, the rich asshole returned to Twitter on September 28 to brag about the effort he has put in.
Taking to Twitter on Thursday night, some rich asshole took time to pat himself on his back for his response to Hurricane Maria inPuerto Rico.
"Puerto Rico is devastated. Phone system, electric grid many roads, gone," the rich asshole tweeted out, before adding, "FEMA and First Responders are amazing. Governor said 'great job!'"
Just an hour before his last tweet, some rich asshole attacked the media for allegedly not covering his hurricane response in a fair manner. "Military is now on site and I will be there Tuesday. Wish press would treat fairly!" the rich asshole posted.
Not long after some rich asshole attacked the media and bragged about his actions on Hurricane Maria, critics of the president wasted no time lashing out on Twitter. "You can't even sympathize with Puerto Rico without bragging about yourself.
You are truly insane," one tweet read, before adding, "Maria is your Katrina X 100."
"Stop bragging while telling us about mass devastation!!!! God! Why can't you just be a decent human being?" Steven Boyer wrote, while stating, "you are a worldwide embarrassment." "Why is the rich asshole always patting himself on the back for a job so poorly done?" Eugene Gu posted.
"You know what would be amazing? If you focus on the issues and not yourself. You know... like a real leader," an additional tweet noted. As the negative reaction continued, it was clear that millions of Americans are not pleased with some rich asshole.
The State Department is not requiring anyone evacuated from hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico to sign promissory notes reimbursing the government for travel costs.
Marketwatch reported that the evacuees from Puerto Rico were being required to put up promissory notes under a longstanding policy. The Hill also posted a story based on the Marketwatch report.
The State Department did evacuate 225 people from the Caribbean island of Dominica; most of those evacuees signed promissory notes agreeing to reimburse the State Department for travel costs, according to a source in the department.
The costs are based on “the price of the last commercial one-way, full-fare (not discounted) economy ticket prior to the crisis,” according to the State Department's website. This policy applies to “anyone evacuated on U.S.-government coordinated transport, including charter and military flights.”
But the State policy does not apply to the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, a spokeswoman for the department said.
The Defense Department would be in charge of any evacuated people from Puerto Rico. The Pentagon did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
In the case of Dominica, some promissory notes were waived due to medical emergencies, the State Department spokesman said.
People who sign the promissory notes are effectively taking out a loan from the U.S. government. The loans, according to the State Department's website, are managed "by the Comptroller and Global Financial Services office in Charleston, South Carolina."
A note on the State Department's website says that due to "ongoing emergencies," it is not accepting repayments on the loans right now.
"Currently, loan repayments cannot be completed due to ongoing emergencies in the region. We will update travel.state.gov/evacuate as soon as repayments can be made," the State Department says.
Limits are placed on the passports of evacuees who sign the notes, the State Department's website says.
“Upon evacuation, a Department of State official must limit an evacuee’s passport. In order to obtain a new passport, an evacuee must arrange payment as agreed upon via the promissory note," the website reads.
The the rich asshole administration has faced criticism from Democrats about the pace of relief efforts after Hurricane Maria. Puerto Rico is without power, and many of the territory's 3.4 million inhabitants are without clean drinking water.
the rich asshole has vowed that his administration would receive high marks for Hurricane Maria relief efforts.
“We’ve gotten A-pluses on Texas and in Florida, and we will also on Puerto Rico,” the rich asshole said Tuesday. “But the difference is this is an island sitting in the middle of an ocean. It’s a big ocean, it’s a very big ocean. And we’re doing a really good job.”
the rich asshole on Thursday lifted shipping restrictions on relief efforts to Puerto Rico, allowing non-U.S. owned and crewed ships to deliver aid to the island.
Why does President Donald Trump care about what gay people do in the bedroom?
The question came up this week, when a lawyer for Trump's Department of Justice argued that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not protect LGBTQ Americans from being fired because of their sexual orientation — a complete reversal of the government's position on such matters under previous presidents.
The Justice Department argument Tuesday before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals came in the case of Donald Zarda who claims he was fired by his company, Altitude Express, for being gay. Related: Here's How Donald Trump Could Actually Be Impeached
The agency inserted itself, even though the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had already sided with Zarda, arguing that LGBTQ employees are protected by Title VII of the landmark Civil Rights law.
That made the hearing odd, to say the least.
"It’s a little bit awkward for us to have the federal government on both sides of the case," observed Judge Rosemary Pooler at one point in the oral arguments.
But Justice Department lawyer Hashim Mooppan pressed on anyway, opposing the EEOC, which was still run by an Obama administration holdover when the case first reached the court.
"Employers under Title VII are permitted to consider employees' out-of-work sexual conduct," Mooppan told the judges. "There is a common sense, intuitive difference between sex and sexual orientation."
The lawyer for Zarda's side disagreed in the most basic terms.
"(It's) as conservative as it could possibly get: if having sex with a man is okay for a woman, it has to be okay for a man as well," Greg Nevins of Lambda Legal, told Newsweek. "You cannot apply a different rule based on gender, according to the law. Apparently, that wasn’t conservative enough for the DOJ."
The Justice Department argument reflects a "significant undermining of the Supreme Court’s decision on marriage equality," Nevins added.
The arguments came as the full 13-judge Second Circuit reviews an earlier ruling by a three-judge panel in favor of Zarda's former employer. They also come after the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in April that people can't be fired because they partake of gay sex.
But the law has been interpreted to include protections for sexual orientation for decades, after multiple lower level district courts concluded beginning in 2002 that employees could not be fired simply for being gay. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed in April that Title VII does in fact cover sexual orientation, noting that any other interpretation of the law would be “confusing and contradictory.”
It’s not the first time the Donald Trump administration has moved to shred protections for gays.
Under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the department has filed multiple amicus briefs arguing against LGBTQ protections, including one for the upcoming high-profileSupreme Court case, Masterpiece Cake Shop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. Earlier this month, Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall defended Colorado baker Jack Philips, who was found guilty of violating the state's Anti-Discrimination Act when he refused to make a wedding cake for two men who were getting married even though he routinely makes such cakes for straight couples.
Philips argued his case on First Amendment grounds: as an artist and a Christian, he should not be forced to create a work of art that violates his beliefs. Defying lower courts, the Trump administration agreed.
"Forcing Phillips to create expression for and participate in a ceremony that violates his sincerely held religious beliefs invades his First Amendment rights," Wall wrote in a brief earlier this month.
Taken together, the Zarda and Masterpiece cases suggest to legal experts that the Trump administration is willfully targeting the gay community.
"It's nothing short of shocking," said Louise Melling, deputy legal of the American Civil Liberties Union. The administration she said "has already made its hostility" toward the LGBTQ community abundantly clear.
Nevins thinks he knows why — it's good politics for Trump.
"Trump touted his pro-LGBTQ credentials last year (but) one thing that’s preserved what’s left of his approval rating is that there are people who are happy with his administration fighting the good fight for them," he said. "It’s going to play well for them, even if the DOJ is weighing in on losing sides and their arguments are contrary to even conservative notions."
According to two sources who work closely with the young real estate tycoon, Kushner suggested the endorsement, in part, because he believed that a Strange victory would enrage Steve Bannon, the newly reinstalled executive chairman of Breitbart News and a nemesis of Kushner’s from their time together in the the rich asshole White House. Bannon backed the primary winner, Roy Moore, who thinks that homosexuality should be criminalized and suggested this week that parts of the United States are operating under Sharia.
Kushner also thought that getting the rich asshole to support Strange would improve his own tenuous standing with Republican leaders in the Senate, according to several allies of Bannon. “He’s going to need them if things go south in the Russia investigation,” one explained.
The senatorial primary between Strange and Moore was widely viewed as a proxy war between the Republican Party’s establishment forces and its white nationalist fringe. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the Senate majority leader, strongly supported Strange. Bannon, on the other hand, suggested at a rally for Moore on Monday that a “reckoning is coming” not just for McConnell, but for all the “donors” and “corporatists” he believes run the party.
That the rich asshole ultimately supported Strange, tweeting on his behalf and attending a campaign event for him last week, was puzzling to many of the president’s supporters, given his strained relationship with McConnell and his sympathies for Bannon’s populist worldview. Presidents rarely endorse one candidate over another in a primary election. But Kushner was a critical early voice in convincing the president to take a side. McConnell and Rick Dearborn, the White House deputy chief of staff, also were instrumental at various points in the process. Sources close to Bannon noted that the rich asshole first tweeted about Strange on Aug. 8, when Kushner was with the president at his country club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
“No senior adviser to the president in their right mind would ever lead the president to get involved in a primary, let alone a highly contested one that pitted his own base against him,” said Sam Nunberg, a former adviser to the rich asshole ― and a close friend of Bannon’s. “Anyone with a pulse knew that Luther was going to lose the runoff. Luther barely survived the primary.”
The president hadn’t paid attention to the race until recently. According to three sources with direct knowledge, when Moore emerged victorious in the three-candidate first round of voting last month, winning 39 percent, the rich asshole asked confidants: “Who’s he?”
Kushner started advocating for the rich asshole to back Strange after speaking with veteran Republican strategist Jeff Roe. Roe, who is friendly with Kushner, ran Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) presidential campaign in 2016 and was hired by Strange earlier this year. Roe sent Kushner emails loaded with polling data that suggested Strange would win easily over Moore and the third candidate in August’s primary election, Rep. Mo Brooks. Kushner forwarded those emails “to appropriate parties,” a White House official said.
Kushner was also alerted to the fact that Brooks had called the rich asshole a “serial adulterer” during the 2016 primary, when Brooks was supporting Cruz. the rich asshole, several sources say, had no idea that Brooks disparaged him until Kushner passed along the news, and it sunk any chances of the rich asshole endorsing him. (The White House official denied this, saying Kushner never spoke about Brooks or the Alabama race to the president.)
Backing Strange, then, seemed like an obvious choice to Kushner. Several sources close to both Moore and Bannon said they believe Kushner wanted to show McConnell that he had real influence with the president ― and that he wanted to show the rich asshole he knew how to win.
“All Jared thinks about is beating Bannon,” said a well-connected friend of the Breitbart chief. “It consumed him before Bannon left the White House, and it consumes him now.” That sentiment was confirmed to me by a source who knows Kushner well and has a more positive view of him. (The White House official dismissed the anti-Bannon notion as “totally untrue.”)
But Kushner misread the mood of Alabama Republicans. Moore won this week’s race by 10 percentage points. And shortly thereafter, ProPublica discovered that the rich asshole had deleted his previous tweets supporting Strange. According to CNN, the rich asshole went to bed on Tuesday night “embarrassed and pissed.”
Breitbart wasted little time in highlighting Kushner’s “awful advice.” An article Wednesday noted that Kushner has a “disturbing pattern” of getting the president in trouble, referencing Kushner’s suggestion that the rich asshole fire former FBI director James Comey. This time, according to Breitbart, Kushner stands accused of dividing the rich asshole from his base. “He has succeeded in doing the only thing that could be fatal to the rich asshole’s presidency and re-election prospects — driven a wedge between the president and his supporters.”
What’s clear, explained someone who has good relations with both Bannon and Kushner, is that the feud between the two of them shows no signs of dying down ― and that Bannon’s side will offer little grace in victory. “Kushner wants to show the rich asshole he is the smarter of the two, but it is not working,” said a friend of Bannon’s.
Two sources confirmed that the rich asshole told confidants Tuesday night that while he is not pleased that Bannon’s candidate won, he is not upset at his former strategic adviser. What he feels about Kushner and his role in the Alabama fiasco is not known.
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Before he was president, some rich asshole told radio host Howard Stern that he turned away in disgust as an elderly man nearly bled to death in front of him.
The future president recounted the story July 16, 2008, during one of his 35 appearances on Stern’s show, which have all recently been posted online, reported The Daily Beast.
the rich asshole said the story took place at his Mar-A-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, during a Red Cross charity ball, when a man of about 80 who “a lot of people didn’t like” was badly injured in a fall.
“So what happens is, this guy falls off right on his face, hits his head and I thought he died,” the rich asshole said. “And you know what I did? I said, ‘Oh my god, that’s disgusting, and I turned away. I couldn’t, you know — he was right in front of me. I turned away, I didn’t want to touch him.”
“He’s bleeding all over the place, I felt terrible, you know,” the rich asshole continued. “Beautiful marble floor, it didn’t look so good. It changed color, it became very red, and you have this poor guy, 80 years old, laying on the floor, conscious, and all of the rich people are turning away, ‘Oh my god, this is terrible, this is disgusting,’ and, you know, they’re turning away, nobody wants to help the guy, and his wife is screaming, she sitting right next to him and she’s screaming.”
He told Stern that some U.S. Marines, whom he said had been given the worst table in the ballroom despite being guests of honor, rushed to the man’s aide as he and the wealthy donors in attendance watched in horror.
“So from the back of the room they come running forward, they grabbed him, they put the blood all over the place, it’s all over their uniforms, they’re taking it, they swipe — they ran him out, they created a stretcher — they call it a human stretcher, their arms out, like five guys on each side,” the rich asshole said. “They ran him out, I never saw it, they ran him out. I was saying, ‘Get that blood cleaned up, it’s disgusting.'”
the rich asshole eventually learned the man had survived, but he admitted that he neglected to check on him.
“I forgot to call, the next day I forgot to call to say, is he OK,” the rich asshole said. “He was OK, it’s just not my thing. I just don’t like looking at blood.”
He told Stern he respected nurses and others in the medical field, but he was disgusted by their work.
“I’m not good for medical,” he said. “In other words, if you, like, cut your finger and there’s blood pouring out, I’m gone.” No45 on Stern show
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Even without delivering on his biggest campaign promises, President some rich asshole has begun to reshape American life in ways big and small.
Over his first nine months, the rich asshole has used an aggressive series of regulatory rollbacks, executive orders and changes in enforcement guidelines to rewrite the rules for industries from energy to airlines, and on issues from campus sexual assault to anti-discrimination protections for transgender students.
While his administration has been chaotic, and his decision-making impulsive and sometimes whimsical, the rich asshole has made changes that could have far-reaching and lingering consequences for society and the economy. Some have grabbed headlines but many, no less consequential, have gone largely unnoticed amid the daily controversies and Twitter insults that have marked the rich asshole's early months in office.
Under the rich asshole, oil is flowing through the Dakota Access Pipeline. Arrests of immigrants living illegally in the United States are up. More federal lands are open for coal mining.
The administration has left its mark in smaller ways, as well. the rich asshole has rolled back or delayed Obama-era rules and regulations that protected retirement savings from unscrupulous financial advisers, made it harder for companies that violated labor laws to land federal contracts and restricted what internet service providers could do with their customers’ personal data.
Those kinds of low-profile policy shifts are far from the dramatic change promised by the headline-loving the rich asshole, who won the White House with a vow to fundamentally reshape Washington. But the effects can be just as real.
“the rich asshole is doing an awful lot to shape policy and blow up policy,” said Norm Ornstein, a political analyst at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
Stymied by his failure to win congressional approval for his big-ticket promises like a repeal of President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare reform, known as Obamacare, and a border wall with Mexico, the rich asshole has turned to administrative action.
He has rolled back hundreds of rules and regulations, signed 47 executive orders and used a previously obscure legislative tool, the Congressional Review Act, 14 times to undo regulations passed in the final months of Obama’s presidency. The law had only been used once before, 16 years ago.
‘REGULATORY ROLLBACK’
The rich asshole administration has withdrawn or delayed more than 800 Obama-era regulatory actions in its first six months. Proposals for new rules, including those to delay or rescind existing rules, dropped 32 percent from the same period in 2016 under Obama, and are down from similar six-month periods under presidents George W. Bush, a Republican, and Bill Clinton, a Democrat, according to the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute.
At the same time, the rich asshole has limited new federal regulations by requiring agencies to cut two rules for every new one they create. He has asked each agency to name a regulatory reform officer to take aim at unneeded rules.
“By far, this is the most significant regulatory rollback since Ronald Reagan,” said Wayne Crews, vice president for policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. “The the rich asshole mode so far is to regulate bureaucrats rather than the public.”
Many business leaders have applauded the moves, aimed at fulfilling the rich asshole’s campaign promise to end policies he says are strangling the economy. But critics say his reductions in environmental and worker protections put corporate profits before public health and safety - in direct contradiction to the populist campaign rhetoric that helped the rich asshole win blue-collar votes.
“Where the rich asshole has had success in changing the rules of the road it has been used against the very people who helped elect him,” said Ben Olinsky, vice president for policy and strategy at the liberal Center for American Progress.
Neomi Rao, who is helping to lead the rich asshole’s deregulatory drive as administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, said the reforms would promote economic growth and job creation.
“Regulatory reform benefits all Americans,” she said in a statement, adding that it can have “particular benefits for low- and middle-income workers.”
The “the rich asshole effect” also goes far beyond policy. After a precedent-shattering campaign, the rich asshole has redefined presidential behavior with his freewheeling and sometimes confrontational use of Twitter, his refusal to step away from his businesses and his reliance on family members as top advisers.
He has rattled longtime foreign allies with his sometimes bellicose statements and stoked social and political divisions at home, most recently with his attacks on mostly black professional football players who kneel in protest against racial injustice during the national anthem.
Many of the rich asshole’s biggest policy proposals, including a ban on transgender people serving in the military, withdrawal from the Paris climate change accord and an end to the Obama-era program protecting from deportation young adults brought to the United States illegally as children, remain in limbo or under review in an administration where policymaking is often messy.
But the rich asshole has found ways to make headway on some other stalled initiatives. While a repeal of Obamacare has faltered in Congress, his threats to cut the subsidy payments that help cover expenses for low-income consumers have created enough uncertainty that major insurers have pulled out of some state markets or asked much higher monthly premiums for 2018.
TOUGH RHETORIC HAS IMPACT
The administration has slashed advertising and cut grants to community groups that help people sign up, raising fears that many people will forgo coverage or forget to re-enroll in health plans for next year.
While plans for a border wall are stalled in Congress, the rich asshole’s tough rhetoric had an apparent effect on illegal border crossings, with the number of apprehensions on the southwest border falling 63 percent from 42,000 in January to nearly 16,000 in April. Since then, they have begun creeping up again, but are still below levels seen last year.
A crackdown on immigrants living in the country illegally also led to a sharp increase in arrests in the interior of the country. In the rich asshole’s first 100 days, the number of arrests by immigration agents increased by nearly 40 percent over the same period a year earlier. The number of immigrants without criminal histories arrested by immigration agents and booked into detention has jumped by more than 200 percent from January to July of this year, according to data reviewed by Reuters.
A flood of lawsuits has been filed against the new Republican administration, with Democratic state officials often leading the charge. The lower federal courts, stocked with judges appointed by Obama, have at least temporarily blocked several the rich asshole initiatives.
the rich asshole has been forced to rewrite a travel ban the administration says is aimed at protecting federal borders after the first two versions faced legal challenges from critics who said it discriminated against Muslims. The latest version imposes travel restrictions on eight countries.
One of the rich asshole’s most lasting accomplishments is likely to be the confirmation of Justice Neil Gorsuch, who restored the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority and at age 50 is likely to serve for decades.
“I think the rich asshole actually has accomplished a lot. There are a lot of things for conservatives to be happy about,” said Tommy Binion, director of congressional and executive relations at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “And I‘m optimistic there will be more.”
Follow the rich asshole’s impact on energy, environment, healthcare, immigration and the economy at The the rich asshole Effect [www.reuters.com/trump-effect]
Additional reporting by Lawrence Hurley, Timothy Gardner, Robert Iafolla, Mica Rosenberg, Julia Harte; Editing by Jason Szep and Ross Colvin
Rapper 50 Cent said Tuesday that he turned down a $500,000 offer from President the rich asshole to stump for him on the campaign trail.
The musician and TV producer, whose real name is Curtis Jackson, said during an interview on radio station Hot 97 that the president tried to recruit him to make an appearance and appeal to black voters.
"Before he got elected, they were having issues with the African-American vote," Jackson said. "They wanted to pay me $500,000 as part of the campaign just to make an appearance. I was like, 'Nah, that's not good money.’ ”
In the 2016 presidential election, the rich asshole won only 8 percent of black voters, the lowest in decades. A new poll released Wednesday showed that 94 percent of African-Americans disapprove of the rich asshole’s handling of race relations as president.
Jackson discussed the rich asshole’s behavior with the show’s co-hosts, saying it will be difficult not to take shots at the president on his new Comedy Central show, “50 Central.”
“His presidency is an accident,” Jackson said. “If you were a president by accident, you might do some of the things some rich asshole is doing.”
“Based on what we know, what little we know about [the rich asshole’s] finances, he’d get a big cut on the AMT [Alternative Minimum Tax], I think he’d save something like $31 million. On pass-through income, he’d save $16.5 million, he’d obviously save a lot not paying the estate tax, his heirs would — so how can you say that this is not a plan that would help him?” a reporter asked.
Cohn began his reply by asserting that “what the American people are concerned about is their financial position.” He went on to talk about the things an American family could purportedly do if they saved $1,000 on their tax bill — things that cost much more than $1,000, like renovating homes and buying new cars.
“If we allow a family to keep another $1,000 of their income, what does that mean?” Cohn said. “They can renovate their kitchen, they can buy a new car, they can take a family vacation, they can increase their lifestyle. That’s what our tax plan is to do — our tax plan is aimed to return more income back to hard-working Americans.”
Earlier during the briefing, Cohn said that the $1,000 cut he was referring to would apply to “a typical family earning $100,000 with two children.” The median household income in America last year was about $59,000.
Cohn’s response illustrates the problem the White House will have in trying to sell the Republican tax cut plan, which the New York Times describes as “a potentially huge windfall for the wealthiest Americans.” It benefits the wealthy by slashing taxes on business income, eliminating the estate tax — a tax that impacts only roughly 500 American households, but will cost the the rich asshole family $4 billion if the rich asshole is actually worth as much as he claims to be — and eliminating the alternative minimum tax (AMT), which, according to the rich asshole’s leaked 2005 tax return, resulted in him paying $31 million in income taxes that year.
While the rich asshole and other rich people stand to save millions, it’s unclear whether middle-class Americans will receive a tax cut at all, let alone save enough to buy new cars and take family vacations. During an appearance on ABC’s Good Morning America earlier Thursday, Cohn admitted he “can’t guarantee” middle-income families won’t actually pay more in taxes under the rich asshole’s plan.
“I can’t guarantee anything. You can always find a unique family somewhere,” Cohn said, before going on to assert that the tax proposal is “purely aimed at middle-class families.”
During a speech in Indiana on Wednesday, the rich asshole falsely claimed his tax plan “is not good for me, believe me.” If Cohn’s comments on Thursday are any indication, the White House’s plan when confronted with that lie will be to try and change the topic as quickly as possible.
A few days ago, while in the middle of his meltdown over the NFL, some rich asshole retweeted a photo of Marine Staff Sgt. John Jones. The military veteran lost both of his legs in battle and the rich asshole decided to use him as a political tool to divide the country. The tweet was accompanied with the message,”I wonder what this BRAVE American would give to stand on his OWN two just ONCE MORE for our #Anthem? #MAGA #NFL.”
The picture is obviously supposed to make people believe that Staff Sgt. Jones is onboard with the rich asshole’s condemnations of NFL players, but that isn’t the case. In fact, Jones is really annoyed that the president used his photo for something like this. According to TalkingPointsMemo:
[Jones] told TPM on Tuesday that he takes no issue with NFL players’ protests—but he’s not enthused about being dragged into the politics of whether someone should stand or not stand for the national anthem. As he drove to his job as director of development at Workshops for Warriors, a California-based non-profit that trains veterans to be certified machinists, the two-tour veteran of the Iraq War explained that while he would not personally choose to protest the anthem in that way, he disagreed with the idea that doing so was ‘not acceptable,’ as the rich asshole has insisted.
“I went over there and I fought for the rights and freedoms of everybody to do whatever they wanted to do in a lawful manner,” Jones said. “So if the NFL as a whole wants to protest the flag and protest America, then so be it, that’s your right. Keep it peaceful, keep it respectful and I don’t care what you do.
Jones told TPM that people often use his photo to promote their political agendas, much like they do Pat Tillman’s (Tillman left the NFL to join the military and died in a friendly fire incident in 2004). The veteran went on to explain that he doesn’t care if the president tweets an existing meme of him, it’s the fact that he used his image to further his argument over something having to do with football without his blessing.
I don’t like being utilized in the whole political debate of whether you should stand or whether you should not stand.
Hopefully, the president thinks twice next time he decides to use a veteran’s photo without their permission to further his own partisan agenda.
Appearing on Fox & Friends this morning, some rich asshole explained that Republicans “have the votes” to pass the Graham-Cassidy health care bill but the legislation nonetheless can’t pass because a crucial senator is in the hospital.
In reality, there is no hospitalized senator. But the rich asshole has constructed for himself an alternative version of reality in which not only is there a hospitalized senator but the budget reconciliation instructions which expire tomorrow somehow return early next year, meaning that when the fake senator’s hospitalization ends they’ll be able to come back and pass the bill.
Fox & Friends host Pete Hegseth, remarkably, did not press the rich asshole on this extraordinary claim.
But the rich asshole keeps saying it. The “hospitalized senator” theory first appeared on his Twitter account Wednesday morning.
Then during his tax reform comments later that day he made a modified version of the claim, saying the issue was that “we have a wonderful senator, great, great senator, who is a yes vote, but he's home recovering from a pretty tough situation.”
However, the rich asshole appears to have cause and effect reversed here. According to Cochran’s staff, he is resting in Mississippi because there are no crucial senate votes rather than the senate not holding votes because Cochran is in Mississippi. No less an authority than Bill Cassidy stated flatly on Tuesday that “we don’t have the votes” with John McCain, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Rand Paul all publicly opposed. Indeed, the real question regarding the whip count seems to be whether or not the bill really has the unanimous support of all the other senators, or if a handful of private opponents are simply laying low and letting those four take the heat.
Either way, the situation poses the obvious question of why the rich asshole is saying this.
Is he trying to mislead his supporters? Is someone on his staff trying to mislead him? Has he become confused and nobody on his staff wants to correct him?
The rich asshole administration is reportedly forcing evacuees from Puerto Rico and Dominica to sign promissory notes ensuring full repayment for transportation costs and is keeping evacuees' passports as collateral.
MarketWatch, citing the State Department's website, reported on Thursday that the administration is using a longstanding but discretionary policy to ensure that evacuees pay transportation costs, which are based on “the price of the last commercial one-way, full-fare (not discounted) economy ticket prior to the crisis.”
According to the State Department's website, the policy applies to all evacuees who boarded U.S. government aircraft or other vehicles to evacuate. Evacuees' passports will restricted until payment is received.
“Upon evacuation, a Department of State official must limit an evacuee’s passport. In order to obtain a new passport, an evacuee must arrange payment as agreed upon via the promissory note," the website reads.
When those repayments can be made is a different story.
According to the State Department's website, the loans are managed "by the Comptroller and Global Financial Services office in Charleston, South Carolina," but cannot currently be repaid.
"Currently, loan repayments cannot be completed due to ongoing emergencies in the region. We will update travel.state.gov/evacuate as soon as repayments can be made," the State Department says.
Promissory notes were waived in some cases due to emergency conditions, according to a State Department spokesman, who noted State if overseeing Dominica's evacuation while the Department of Defense oversees Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory.
The news comes as the rich asshole administration faces criticism for the pace of relief efforts in Puerto Rico. Most of the U.S. territory's 3.4 million inhabitants are without drinking water, and electricity could be down on the island for up to 6 months.
On Tuesday, the rich asshole vowed that his administration would receive high marks for Hurricane Maria relief efforts.
“We’ve gotten A-pluses on Texas and in Florida, and we will also on Puerto Rico,” the rich asshole said Tuesday. “But the difference is this is an island sitting in the middle of an ocean. It’s a big ocean, it’s a very big ocean. And we’re doing a really good job.”
The law would have slapped huge fees on ships transporting aid to the hurricane-ravaged territory.
Reuters/HuffPostXSAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (Reuters) - U.S. President some rich asshole lifted restrictions on foreign shipping on Thursday to help get fuel and supplies to Puerto Rico as the U.S. territory reels from the devastation of Hurricane Maria, the White House said.
the rich asshole, at the request of Puerto Rican Governor Ricardo Rossello, “has authorized the Jones Act be waived for Puerto Rico. It will go into effect immediately,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said in a Twitter post.
The Jones Act limits shipping between U.S. ports to U.S. owned-and-operated vessels.
Puerto Rico’s government had sought a waiver of the law to ensure as many supplies as possible, including badly needed fuel, reach the island of 3.4 million people quickly.
Rossello retweeted Sanders’ announcement with a “Thank you @POTUS” - referring to the rich asshole’s official Twitter handle.
The decision comes the morning after the rich asshole said that he was hesitating granting the waiver because “a lot of people who work in the shipping industry that don’t want the Jones Act lifted.”
Maria struck Puerto Rico on Sept. 20, knocking out power to the entire island, causing widespread flooding and major damage to homes and infrastructure. EvenEven as federal emergency management authorities and the U.S. military have stepped up relief efforts, many residents have voiced exasperation at the prolonged lack of electricity, reliable supplies of drinking water and other essentials.
Rossello has strongly praised the rich asshole’s response, defending the Republican administration against complaints of being slow to act and showing too little concern.
Critics have said Puerto Rico is not getting the same response as it would if it were a U.S. state, even though its residents are U.S. citizens.
The U.S. government has periodically lifted the Jones Act for a temporary period following violent storms, including after hurricanes Harvey and Irma, which hit Texas and Florida in late August and earlier this month.
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu in Washington; Writing by Frances Kerry; Editing by Bill Trott)
U.S. President some rich asshole waived shipping restrictions on Thursday to help get fuel and supplies to storm-ravaged Puerto Rico, the White House said.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said in a Twitter post that the rich asshole, at the request of Puerto Rican Governor Ricardo Rossello, “has authorized the Jones Act be waived for Puerto Rico. It will go into effect immediately.”
The Jones Act limits shipping between coasts to U.S.-flagged vessels.
(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
President some rich asshole is continuing his war on NFL players — one week after he created a firestorm by calling protesting players ” son’s of bitches” — telling a Fox New host that their actions are “disgraceful.”
Speaking with Fox & Friends co-host Peter Hegseth, the rich asshole was not willing to move on.
“You have certainly started a national conversation this week, Mr. President, on the NFL,” Hegseth suggested. “Your critics say it’s been a distraction, but you say it’s critical, you talk about words like ‘patriotism’ and ‘citizenship.’ Why is this such an important issue for you?”
“The NFL cannot disrespect our country, they cannot disrespect our flag or our national anthem.” the rich asshole continued. “And they can’t have people sitting down or kneeling down during our national anthem.”
“I have so many friends that are owners,” the president continued. “They’re in a box. I’ve spoken to a couple of them, they said we are in a situation where we have to do something. I think they’re afraid of their players…and I think it’s disgraceful.”
After claiming that the NFL’s TV ratings are down, the rich asshole continued, “When it comes to the respect of our nation, when it comes to the respect of our anthem and our flag — they have no choice. You have to have people stand with respect.”
During his Indianapolis speech touting tax reform, President some rich asshole claimed the GOP “has the votes” to pass the party’s unpopular Obamacare repeal and replace bill — despite it being pulled from a Senate floor vote and effectively killed the day prior.
His bold claim during his tax reform speech was not the first time the rich asshole claimed the GOP had votes that didn’t exist that day. Earlier, he said they had the votes, but could not pass it because “there’s an ailing senator in the hospital” — another false claim.
Analysis
That percentage gain is not as large as for most other administrations since the end of World War II.
Obama’s experience is similar to that of Ronald Reagan — who presided over the second highest median jobless rate, 7.2 percent.
The median figure represents the midpoint — half of all households earned more, half less. And while real median income hit a record level in Obama’s final year, it was a long, rough road to the top.
The median figure represents the midpoint — half of all households earned more, half less. And while real median income hit a record level in Obama’s final year, it was a long, rough road to the top.
Among post-war administrations, that’s second only to the 209 percent rise in the S&P index during Clinton’s two terms, and it handily outpaced the 114 percent gain under Reagan.
Our data come from the National Health Interview Survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has tracked health insurance coverage on a reasonably consistent basis since 1997.
That information comes from annual surveys by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Education Trust, which is the nonprofit research arm of the American Hospital Association.
In 2016, production of pistols and revolvers totaled 5,314,511, according to interim figures released in June by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. That’s an increase of 192 percent over the figure for 2008, and it broke the previous record set in 2013.
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