"Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it." - Thomas Sowell

(Just another reason I am, at times, anti-intellectual)

Socialism is the Axe Body Spray of political ideologies: It never does what it claims to do, but people too young to know better keep buying it anyway.

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Fish for flour? Barter is the new currency in collapsing Venezuela

Andreina Aponte - Reuters

RIO CHICO, Venezuela (Reuters) - Under the midday sun, dozens of fishermen wait to sell their day’s catch by a lagoon in the town of Rio Chico on the Caribbean coast of Venezuela. But they aren’t expecting cash in return.

Instead, they’re swapping mullets and snappers for packages of flour, rice and cooking oil.

“There is no cash here, only barter,” said Mileidy Lovera, 30, walking along the shore with a cooler of fish that her husband had caught. She hoped to exchange it for food to feed her four children, or medicine to treat her son’s epilepsy.

In the hyperinflationary South American country, where bank notes are as difficult to find as chronically scarce food and medicine, Venezuelans are increasingly relying on to barter for basic transactions.

Payment for even the cheapest of goods and services would require unwieldy piles of banknotes, and there simply are not enough of those in circulation.

While formal businesses in cities can get by on bank transfers and debit cards, such operations are largely out of the question in rural areas such as Rio Chico, population 20,000.

Even in the capital Caracas, some 130 km (81 miles) to the west, many informal merchants lack access to bank services or point of sale terminals and prefer to be paid in kind.

The rise of barter exchange, amid hyperinflation and a dearth of cash, is a reflection of how the once-prosperous country is reverting to the most rudimentary of mechanisms of commercial exchange.

“It’s a very primitive payment system but it’s also very primitive for a country not to have enough cash available,” said economist Luis Vicente Leon of consultancy Datanalisis.

SKY-HIGH INFLATION

Economists say the central bank has not printed bills fast enough to keep up with inflation, which according to the opposition-run congress, reached an annual rate of almost 25,000 percent in May.

Once one of Latin America’s wealthiest countries, Venezuela’s economic collapse under President Nicolas Maduro’s government drove nearly one million people - 3 percent of the population - to emigrate between 2015 and 2017.

Maduro, reelected to a fresh six-year term in May in elections condemned by the United States, blames spiraling consumer prices and constant shortages of food and medicine on an “economic war” led by the opposition and Washington.

Julio Blanco, a 34-year-old motorcycle driver in Caracas, said he now allows trusted clients to make payments by bank transfer because there is simply not enough cash available.

“I prefer food as payment,” said Blanco, while waiting for customers at the poor west end of Caracas. “I do services for food in order to survive.”

In the hillside Caracas slum of La Vega, home to 124,000 people, Alfredo Silva offers a haircut for 1 million bolivars, about 30 cents at the black market exchange rate.

He accepts transfers or food but sometimes takes clients to a nearby butcher shop and asks them to buy him something worth the same as the haircut.

In Rio Chico, Marvin Guaramato arrives at the lagoon driving a car loaded with boxes of oil, pasta and corn flour, which is used to make a Venezuelan grilled pancake known as arepas.

The fishermen scramble to swap their catch in a brief and confused frenzy. One of them, Reinaldo Armas, was satisfied to have picked up products for family members in his village.

Still, sometimes he doesn’t manage to exchange his catch for anything, he says.

“Some days, I spend five hours without swapping anything and I have to take all that fish home,” he said.

Bipartisan Senate Panel Gives Middle Finger to Devin Nunes

A bipartisan report from the Senate Intelligence Committee says intelligence agencies were right to find the Russians interfered in the election to harm Clinton and elect Trump.

The Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee have said the NSA, CIA, and FBI got it wrong when they assessed that the point of Russia’s 2016 election interference was to harm Hillary Clinton and elect Donald Trump. But now their counterpart in the Senate, in a bipartisan report, said the intelligence agencies got it right.

In April, the House Intelligence Committee Republicans put out an extensive report exonerating Trump from accusations of collusion with Russian President Vladimir Putin, delivering a conclusion that Democrats had come to consider pre-ordained. Democrats quickly distanced themselves from it. Chief panel Democrat Adam Schiff said at the time that the GOP report suffered from a “raft of misleading conclusions, insinuations, attempts to explain away inconvenient facts, and arguments meant to protect the President and his campaign.”

One of the key findings of the GOP report, led by critical White House ally Devin Nunes of California, was that the three intelligence agencies erred in their assessment of “Putin’s strategic intentions” behind his election interference. Nunes’ report struck a delicate balance. It conceded that the election interference happened and that most of the intelligence community analysis (ICA) “held up to scrutiny,” but accused the agencies of not meeting their own standards for tradecraft.

“While most of the analysis contained in the ICA held up to scrutiny,” Nunes’ report held, “the committee found that ICA judgments on Putin’s strategic objectives”—that is to say defeating Clinton and electing Trump—“failed to meet most of the analytic standards set forth in the primary guiding document for IC analysis, Intelligence Community Directive (ICD) 203.” Such shortfalls “undermine confidence,” Nunes’ report continued, but they weren’t listed as problems with the underlying circumstances of the Russian campaign. Nunes and company instead faulted the agencies for not “incorporat[ing] analysis of alternatives” or more fulsomely explaining the differences in confidence levels between the NSA, FBI, and CIA.

The Senate Intelligence Committee, however, reached a much firmer conclusion: The January 2017 intelligence community was right to find the Russians meddled in the election to defeat Clinton and aid Trump.

“The Committee found that the ICA provided a range of all-source reporting to support these assessments,” it found. “A body of reporting,” from classified intelligence to Russian media, “showed that Moscow sought to denigrate Secretary Clinton.” The ICA finding on Putin’s objectives used similarly cumulative Russian media, similarities between Trump positions and Putin’s interests “and a body of intelligence reporting to support the assessment that Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for Trump.”

Information “obtained subsequent to the publication of the ICA provides further support” for what the CIA called a Russian aspiration “to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible,” the Senate panel found.

As for the internal analytic disagreement on Putin’s pro-Trump/anti-Clinton objectives—NSA had “moderate confidence” in it; CIA and FBI had “high confidence”—the committee, chaired by North Carolina Republican Richard Burr, found no evidence of analytic malpractice.

“The analytical disagreement was reasonable, transparent and openly debated among the agencies and analysts, with analysts, managers and agency heads on both sides of the confidence level articulately justifying their positions,” the Senate committee wrote.

Nunes’ office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“The committee has spent the last 16 months reviewing the sources, tradecraft and analytic work underpinning the Intelligence Community Assessment and sees no reason to dispute the conclusions,” Burr said in a Tuesday statement. “The committee continues its investigation and I am hopeful that this installment of the committee’s work will soon be followed by additional summaries providing the American people with clarity around Russia’s activities regarding U.S. elections.”

It’s not the first time a high-profile inquiry into the 2016 election has contradicted Nunes’ findings. In February, before Nunes’ report, Mueller indicted the Russian troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency. Among the claims Mueller made in the indictment: “Defendants’ operations included supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump (“Trump Campaign”) and disparaging Hillary Clinton.”

As well, the Senate panel found that the so-called Steele Dossier—a bete noire on the right, to include Nunes’ committee and other Trump allies—“remained separate from the conclusions of the ICA.” Though the Dossier’s financial connections to the Democratic Party have made it a sort of Rosetta Stone on the right for determining the fundamental fraudulence underpinning all aspects of Trump-Russia collusion allegations, “the dossier did not in any way inform the analysis in the ICA—including the key findings—because it was unverified information and had not been disseminated as serialized intelligence reporting.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/bipartisa ... s?ref=home

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Sick Child Couldn’t Walk After U.S. Took Him From His Mom

The case raises concerns about the medical care available to children held in custody of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement.

The boy was already in pain, just 6 years old and suffering from a debilitating bone condition. Then U.S. authorities separated him from his mom as they crossed over the border. Health and Human Services officials placed him with a foster family who denied him medical care for a month and a half. The boy experienced so much pain in his legs that he couldn’t walk, his mother’s attorney, Laura Lunn, told The Daily Beast.

The case raises concerns about the medical care available to children held in custody of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). After President Donald Trump’s Justice Department rolled out a zero tolerance policy for migrants crossing the border without authorization, thousands of parents were separated from their children. The parents went into the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, while the children were handed off to ORR.

Though Trump changed the policy that required the separation of parents from their children, his government has yet to reunite all the families that were separated. More than 2,000 families are still separated, according to the most recent numbers from the Department of Health and Human Services.

That includes the mother and son whose story is detailed here. A spokesperson for ORR said the agency does not comment on the cases of individual children in its custody.

The two traveled to the United States from Guatemala, fleeing violence in the tiny Central American country. They are afraid of returning to their home country, Lunn said. When they arrived in the United States in mid-May, the pair were separated—the mother, who remains anonymous because of potential retaliation in immigration proceedings, went to an immigrant detention center in Colorado, and her son went to foster care in Texas.

The boy’s mother told Lunn that her son has osteoporosis, which sometimes causes him significant pain.

“He said he was in so much pain that he couldn’t really walk,” Lunn said.

His first foster family didn’t take him to the doctor, Lunn said, and punished him for crying—and he cried often, because of the pain and because he missed his mother.

“He said that they would grab him by the arms, he said that they would put him in a room alone, and he did say that they hit his hands and his arms,” Lunn continued. “And when I spoke with her today, she mentioned that the foster care parents had an older son who also was harming him. He said he hit him.”

When Lunn started representing the woman, she reached out to Texas child protective services about his situation. On June 26, he was moved to a different foster home, Lunn said. His new foster family took him to see a doctor, who finally gave him pain medication.

Lunn passed on the following statement from the mother to The Daily Beast: “This experience is not something that is just happening to me. It is happening to my friends. It is happening to parents across this country. We haven’t done anything to deserve this mistreatment. We brought our children seeking protection, but what we have received is a profound type of torture. I asked for refuge for my son and myself in this country, but now my son is not with me.

“We are suffering,” the mother continued. “I want to repeat that I wanted another country that would protect me and make me feel safe. But, today I do not feel like I am safe because I am separated from my son. We came due to fear, I have lived in fear for a long time. Now I am afraid that one day I will call my son and he will not answer my call. I fear I will never see my son again. Today, I live in fear.”

The mother told Lunn that other women in her detention center also worry about the safety of their children in ORR custody.

“When I was talking to my client today, she said has spoken to other women in the detention center who have very strong concerns about their children’s treatment,” Lunn said. “She just was saying, ‘It’s because you intervened that he moved. In their cases, nobody stepped in to advocate on behalf of their children and they’re still in precarious situations.’”

Though the son has been to a doctor, Lunn said the mother is still deeply worried about him.

“‘He gets really upset when I talk to him on the phone,’” Lunn said, paraphrasing what the mother told her. “‘He starts crying and asking me where I am and why we’re not together.’”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/sick-chil ... m?ref=home

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Michael Cohen’s ‘Scared’ and Lonely Journey From Pitbull Lawyer to Potential ‘Snitch’

The president and his longtime lawyer no longer talk anymore. But the latter is certainly sending messages to the former.

In the course of two short years, Michael Cohen has gone from one of Donald Trump’s most trusted lieutenants to the potential agent of existential political and legal problems for his former boss.

Those who have spoken to Cohen in recent weeks tell The Daily Beast that President Trump’s longtime fixer is “scared” of possible jail time. He’s also frustrated by the distance that those close to Trump have worked to put between him and the president. He fears being discarded entirely.

President Trump “doesn’t talk about Michael much anymore,” a senior West Wing official also noted. “Not that he did much before.”

Cohen increasingly believes that Trump will not have his back as the feds continue to treat him like a mafia lawyer, and continues to worry about being made a fall-guy in the investigations surrounding the president. These fears underscore a remarkable change in status for one of the few figures who was seen, at least publicly, as a fixture of Trumpland.

It was not so long ago that Cohen would loudly threaten reporters who wrote critically of Trump and dutifully facilitate hush money payments to a porn star who claimed she had an affair with Trump. He also falsely denied that marital rape is illegal, and bragged about how he “destroy[ed]” the life of a young “idiot” beauty queen—all in the name of Trump, for whom Cohen had claimed he would take a “bullet” or jump out of a building.

Now, in just a matter of weeks, Cohen has gone from top pitbull to actively floating the prospect of cooperating with federal investigators—“snitching,” as numerous Trump allies and advisers would dub it. And he’s imploring the media not to paint him as a bad guy.

“I will not be a punching bag as part of anyone’s defense strategy,” Cohen told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, in an interview during which the notorious Trump fixer said he would put his country and family ahead of the president in the ongoing legal saga. “I am not a villain of this story, and I will not allow others to try to depict me that way.”

That it took this long for Trump’s fixer to show signs of inching away from the president, speaks to the extent of his loyalty. The Trump era, after all, hasn’t been too kind to Cohen.

He had left his senior position at the Trump Organization shortly after the election, expecting a coveted appointment in the new administration (he had told friends that he even expected to be named chief of staff), only to see President Trump pass him over for any White House post. Since the presidential campaign, Cohen routinely saw himself on the losing end of bitter feuds between himself and other Trump associates, including former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who received the kind of treatment and favor from Trump that Cohen had craved. And the “shadow lobbying” that Cohen engaged in, in his effort to profit off of the Trump era and his relationship with the president, blew up in his face and is one of the reasons he landed in hot water with the feds.

Cohen rode Trump’s coattails to prominence and recognition in GOP circles, even though he wasn’t actually a Republican until early 2017. His closeness to Trump earned Cohen a spot on the Republican National Committee’s finance leadership team shortly after the inauguration. In late March, Cohen bragged that he’d raised $500,000 for the party in a single day.

In reality, those with knowledge of the RNC’s fundraising apparatus say Cohen’s position was largely ceremonial, and that his actual fundraising hauls were minimal. Essentially, he wasn’t a significant player at the RNC, and was offered the gig merely because of his association with Trump. He has since resigned from the finance post.

But Cohen might be playing a longer game in his not-so-subtle hints of potential cooperation with federal law enforcement authorities. Several observers and legal experts speculated that his media gambit was less an indication of imminent flipping and perhaps more a signal to the president that he could later use a pardon.

“I think that [Michael] is in a jam where his legal bills are mounting up and it’s obvious, if you are a federal or a state investigator, you have an unlimited budget to go down every rabbit hole you want to—a guy like that knows he’s really collateral damage,” former Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA), a prominent Trump surrogate, told The Daily Beast. Kingston counts himself among Cohen’s friends and has stayed in touch with the embattled Trump associate in recent weeks.

“The target… is Trump, [that’s who] they’re after,” he continued. “I think [Michael’s] got a right to be weighing his options.”

Asked how Cohen has been feeling these days, Kingston simply replied, “How would you feel?”

While Kingston offered empathy for Cohen’s situation, others in Trump’s orbit weren’t so kind. Cohen, who did not respond to a request for comment on this story, has been eyed with suspicion by top Trump allies and officials for months. Trump confidants have been actively warning the president about the likelihood of Cohen flipping, and some have openly speculated about the lawyer’s potentially shakeable loyalties.

“Is [Michael Cohen] wilting under the feds’ pressure tactics? Why is he giving [interviews] to news outlets hostile to @realDonaldTrump?” Fox News host Laura Ingraham—a close ally to the Trump family who had even interviewed for the job of Trump’s White House press secretary—tweeted, as early as April 10.

The White House, which would by and large prefer to have absolutely nothing to do with Cohen, has been referring questions about Cohen to outside counsel. Rudy Giuliani, another Trump attorney, did not respond to The Daily Beast’s text or phone calls as of press time.

“Michael Cohen is too concerned right now with his reputation and attempting to repair his reputation, as opposed to simply doing the right thing,” said Michael Avenatti, the Stormy Daniels attorney who has become a chief Cohen antagonist. “If he was a true patriot who had ‘love of country’ at the top of his priority list, then he would disclose what he knows, come clean, and do the right thing… I think that it was a strategic blunder on Mr. Trump’s behalf to not keep this guy in the tent and thus ensure that he remains loyal… He’s only going to [flip] when he has to in order to save himself.”

There are other ways in which Cohen has demonstrated a possible change in heart. Last month, he publicly denounced Trump’s family separation policy, and this week’s ABC interview was littered with Cohen conspicuously underscoring differences between him and the president. “As an American, I repudiate Russia’s or any other foreign government’s attempt to interfere or meddle in our democratic process, and I would call on all Americans to do the same,” Cohen said, breaking from Trump’s refusal to blame the Russian government and hackers for 2016 U.S. election meddling.

“Simply accepting the denial of Mr. Putin is unsustainable,” Cohen continued.

There are subtle signs that Trump may be getting the message. Whether he acts on it is another question entirely.

As The Daily Beast previously reported, the president is, too, weighing his options and assessing the landscape. In private conversations, Trump has repeatedly vented his anger over federal authorities who have probed his business empire and inner circle. In April, multiple people close to President Trump noticed him using a familiar sentence and vocal tic, when talking about whether or not Cohen will crack under pressure and start cooperating with the feds.

“We’ll see,” Trump would say.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/michael-c ... h?ref=home

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Trump's 'favorite prime minister' arrested over theft of billions

Rachel Maddow reports on the arrest of Najib Razak, former prime minister of Malaysia, who is accused of siphoning billions of dollars from the country and millions in lavish spending of ill-gotten gains. Razak is also close with Donald Trump and reportedly sought the assistance of Republican fundraiser and Michael Cohen client Elliott Broidy to make the DoJ part of the investigation go away.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watc ... associated

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Unusual Republican delegation trip to Moscow marked by meekness

Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador to Russia, talks with Rachel Maddow about the unusual nature of the Republican congressional visit to Moscow.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watc ... associated

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Republicans on board with Trump in odd deference to Russian goals

Rachel Maddow reports on a Republican congressional delegation to Moscow behaving awkwardly deferential in a way that dovetails with Donald Trump acceding to Russia's wish list despite the conclusions of American intelligence that Russia is actively attacking the foundation of the US system of government.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watc ... associated

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SDNY corruption prosecutor supervising Michael Cohen case resigns

Rachel Maddow reports that the head of the public corruption unit in the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York, the lead public corruption prosecutor who oversaw the Michael Cohen case, is resigning.

Tatiana Martins, who oversaw the investigation of Michael Cohen as chief of the public corruption unit at the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, has left the office to rejoin Davis Polk & Wardwell as a partner.

Besides the Cohen investigation, Martins oversaw major investigations and tried high-profile cases to verdict, including against former New York Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos and former New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.

Russell Capone, her deputy, has become the new chief of the corruption unit.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watc ... associated

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DoJ loses senior leader who handled 'all the hottest potatoes'

Leon Neyfakh, reporter for Slate.com, talks with Rachel Maddow about the surprise resignation of Scott Schools, an associate deputy attorney general and the senior career official at the Department of Justice.

The Justice Department's senior-most career attorney, Associate Deputy Attorney General Scott Schools, is stepping down for a job in the private sector.

Schools works under Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and has had a significant role helping manage special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.

As the highest-ranking career official, Schools has served as a key adviser on many sensitive matters within the department, including the firing of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and document production issues with Capitol Hill.

Late last month, CNN observed Schools leaving Mueller's office. He, along with Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Ed O'Callaghan, have been meeting with the special counsel team every other week.
Another attorney at the department, Bradley Weinsheimer, will replace Schools in an acting capacity but will not oversee Mueller's work. Weinsheimer has 27 years of experience working at the Justice Department, the department's news release said.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watc ... associated

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Rep. Jim Jordan accused of ignoring sexual abuse claims at Ohio State

Former Ohio State University wrestlers are accusing Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus and the university's assistant wrestling coach from 1986 to 1994, of ignoring or failing to act against accusations of sexual abuse against the team's doctor, NBC News' Corky Siemaszko reports.

The details: Jordan denies having ever heard of, seen, or known about allegations of sexual abuse against Dr. Richard Strauss, who died in 2005. But former wrestler Mike DiSabato, whose allegations prompted OSU to open an investigation earlier this year, told NBC News that Jordan "is absolutely lying if he says he doesn’t know what was going on."

Two wrestlers, DiSabato and Dunyasha Yetts, went on the record with NBC News about their disappointment with Jordan's denials. Three other former wrestlers told NBC it was impossible for Jordan to be unaware — and one claimed he told Jordan directly.

In an email to the law firm representing OSU, DiSabato wrote that "Strauss sexually assaulted male athletes in at least 15 varsity sports during his employment at OSU from 1978 through 1998. ... Based on testimony from victim athletes from each of the aforementioned varsity sports, we estimate that Strauss sexually assaulted and/or raped a minimum of 1,500/2,000 athletes at OSU from 1978 through 1998."

The university confirmed to NBC that it received "confidential reports of sexual misconduct committed by Strauss" from athletes in 14 sports.

Timing: OSU wrestlers came forward about Strauss after the case against Olympics gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar.

t’s sad for me to hear that he’s denying knowing about Strauss. I don’t know why he would, unless it’s a cover-up. Either you’re in on it, or you’re a liar.

What they're saying:

Ian Fury, Jordan's spokesman, told NBC: "Congressman Jordan never saw any abuse, never heard about any abuse, and never had any abuse reported to him during his time as a coach at Ohio State. ... He has not been contacted by investigators about the matter but will assist them in any way they ask, because if what is alleged is true, the victims deserve a full investigation and justice."

OSU said in a statement on the investigation: "Our efforts will continue to be focused on uncovering what may have happened during this era, what university leaders at the time may have known, and whether any response at the time was appropriate."

Doug Andres, spokesman for House Speaker Paul Ryan, told Axios: "These are serious allegations and issues. The university has rightfully initiated a full investigation into the matter. The speaker will await the findings of that inquiry.”

https://www.axios.com/rep-jim-jordan-oh ... 6f709.html

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There Is Karma As GOP US Rep Jim Jordan Attacks “Rule Of Law,” FBI, DOJ

The GOP US Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, as a member of the US House “Freedom Caucus” and the US House Judiciary Committee, has developed a reputation for his aggressive style in defending his standard bearer President Donald Trump. For example, he didn’t hesitate to act unhinged, disrespectful and abusive in his June 2018 questioning of the FBI Director Christopher Wray and the Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein who is in charge of the FBI’s Trump-Russia probe being led by the Special Counsel Robert Mueller III.

Rep. Jordan along with his fellow republican colleagues on the US House Judiciary Committee have been working overtime in attacking the FBI and the DOJ in an attempt to discredit whatever work product they might produce which would portray President Trump in a negative way, facts and evidence be damned.

“One of Trump’s favorite henchmen in the House Freedom Caucus, Rep. Jim Jordan is now being accused by former wrestlers who he coached at Ohio State for failing to stop a team doctor from sexually abusing them in the 90’s.”

https://grondamorin.com/2018/07/03/ther ... w-fbi-doj/

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The President is coming to my home town this evening. We’re excited. Dems have the protests planned, they’re excited. Should be fun times. Working with kids like I do I can’t get an assault indictment or I lose my job so if you see any carnage on the news know it wasn’t me.

Smack somebody, Trump will pardon you.

Yesterday:

Donald J. Trump Verified account @realDonaldTrump
Jul 9
Pfizer & others should be ashamed that they have raised drug prices for no reason. They are merely taking advantage of the poor & others unable to defend themselves, while at the same time giving bargain basement prices to other countries in Europe & elsewhere. We will respond!

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Today:

Donald J. Trump Verified account @realDonaldTrump
Jul 10
Just talked with Pfizer CEO and @SecAzar on our drug pricing blueprint. Pfizer is rolling back price hikes, so American patients don’t pay more. We applaud Pfizer for this decision and hope other companies do the same. Great news for the American people!

The Laffer Curve, named after economist Arthur Laffer, works. President Donald Trump’s tax cuts are becoming a case in point.

Despite the cut in tax rates — brought forward by the introduction, in February, of revised tax withholding tables — federal income tax revenues for the first half of 2018 are 9 percent higher than in the first half of 2017.

The difference comes to $76 billion of unanticipated revenue.

Because the Congressional Budget Office refuses to score tax cuts “dynamically” — that is to recognize the effect of the Laffer Curve, it had predicted an annual increase in the deficit of $139 billion.

- - - -

Unemployment currently is hovering around 4% after going as low as 3.8% in May after 223,000 jobs were added to the economy, and record-low unemployment levels have been hit in 2018 for the Hispanic and black communities.

Fox News Research

Americans working part time because hours were cut back or they couldn’t find a full-time job:

•June 2016: 5.8M
•June 2017: 5.3M
•June 2018: 4.7M (lowest since Dec 2007)