More Lies and Maniplation by our President to Sway the Midterm Voters

Please, Please, Please consider the implications of the details presented below BEFORE you go to the polls on November 6! You are being lied to and lead down a path that will ultimately turn the USA into a paradise for the wealthy and purgatory for those who can’t seem to realize that lies are lies. There are no “alternate facts” only lies propagated to further the agenda of overt corruption and an egomaniac who wishes to destroy our way of life. Don’t get take in by promises that have yet to be realized and those outright lies now being forwarded at political rallies that are commanding the entire attention span of the President. A man whose only concern is keeping control of Congress by the lackies who do his bidding regardless of the harm showered upon the citizens. We are the ones who pay the toll of an unbelievably authoritarian leader with a cowardly Congress as his minions.

2018 MIDTERM ELECTION (From the LA Times October 25, 2018

Salesman Trump pitches fear, promises and riches

Anything to make the sale to GOP voters — never mind if it’s true

By Eli Stokols and Noah Bierman

WASHINGTON — Literally everyone in Washington’s political world knew President Trump was making a false and implausible promise when he said he’d cut taxes for the middle class before next month’s midterm election — reporters, fact checkers, Congress’ Republican leaders, even his own staff.

Yet there was Trump on the White House lawn Monday, promising away as reporters confronted him. He mistakenly described the legislative process and dismissed the time-consuming realities of passing a complicated tax package in Congress, as well as the simple fact that lawmakers have left town until after the election. Even as his claims fell flat, he stood his ground.

“No, no. We’re putting in a resolution sometime in the next week, or week and a half, two weeks,” he said. He meant “bill,” not a nonbinding resolution, but by any name the measure would be meaningless with no one at the Capitol to vote on it.

Undaunted, that night at a rally in Texas, Trump told supporters the tax cuts would happen next week.

This is Trump at his most Trumpy, two weeks before an election. The salesman is out pitching promises, fear, riches — anything to make the sale, never mind if it’s true, and to get Republicans out to vote.

The caravan of migrants heading north toward the border includes terrorists organized by Democrats handing out money, Trump falsely claims, despite denials by national security officials. Californians, he insists, are rioting over local pro-immigration policies. And he describes Democrats as a “mob” intent on stripping away Americans’ healthcare coverage, tax cuts, 401(k)s, guns and their newfound national greatness.

Trump not only presents himself and his party as the safeguard against the Democratic dystopia he conjures, he also promises to lower drug prices, end opioid addiction and hand out additional tax cuts.

Aides say Trump is trying to shake satisfied Republican voters out of any complacency — as the president himself, aware of the historical pattern of midterm losses for a president’s party, put into his own unique parlance Monday night.

“I don’t know why. I guess you get a little sedate,” Trump told his Texas fans. “I guess you get a little something — who knows? You lose something.”

Marc Short, Trump’s former legislative director, suggested the president isn’t doing anything different, but rather the media are covering him through the prism of an election campaign. As for Trump “throwing everything at the wall,” Short said, “The president wants it that way. He wants us to be doing multiple things at one time.”

The president is also leaning into the nationalism that propelled his 2016 campaign, declaring for the first time in Texas that he’s proud of a controversial label that’s often associated with white supremacists: “You know what I am? I’m a nationalist. OK? I’m a nationalist.”

Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s former campaign strategist and White House advisor, approvingly called the president’s embrace of that label “a seminal moment in American politics.”

Bannon lauded Trump for his preelection campaign arguments: “He closes better than anybody. The reason we beat them in 2016 was that he closed strong. He understands in sports and politics, it’s about momentum and he’s clearly got the momentum.”

Trump associates note the sharp difference between 2016, when many Republican candidates wanted nothing to do with him, and this year, when many depend on him given his hold on party voters. That will give Trump, despite his occasional protests, even more ownership of the election results, for better or worse.

The president and his allies also see the threat in losing majority control of the House or Senate, allowing newly empowered Democrats to open investigations. The allies tend to dismiss the false statements he makes, or argue that his supporters see in them the truths Trump intends.

“The caravan is a great example of that,” Short said. “There’s a lot of questions about the accuracy of who’s embedded in the caravan. What most Americans are seeing in the caravan is the question of who is doing more to secure the border now.”

Matt Schlapp, a Trump loyalist who is chairman of the American Conservative Union and whose wife is a top White House communications aide, said, “I think he is a marketer and I think he is testing ideas all the time. He’s testing phrases and he’s testing policies all the time.”

A former aide, who would not be identified to avoid alienating the president, said Trump just repeats threads of information he sees in conservative media, ignoring advisors who tell him they’re not true. Even in public, Trump laughs off his battles with independent fact checkers.

Pressed by reporters to explain his claim about riots in California, Trump on Monday insisted without specifics that there have been riots “in some cases.” On Tuesday, during a long exchange with reporters in the Oval Office, he again batted away a request for proof that the migrant caravan includes “Middle Easterners,” saying, “There’s no proof of anything.”

In Bannon’s view, fact checkers parsing the president’s words miss the point: “This is a base election. He’s not trying to make arguments to convince anybody about his policies. These are motivational speeches to get his base a sense of urgency.”

Trump’s indifference to facts, however, concerns many. “Most of what Mr. Trump says these days is literally made up,” Peter Wehner, a veteran of both Bush administrations, wrote in a tweet following Trump’s Houston rally. “He’s trying to construct a world of make believe and fairy tales, of myth and fiction, of illusion and hallucination. It’s a world increasingly detached from reality. The rest of us must refuse to live within the lie.”

While current and former Trump aides, like Bannon, egg the president on, other advisors contribute to his political narratives in more subtle ways, and with just enough truth to escape the fact checkers’ censure.

On Tuesday, Kevin Hassett, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, presented a report critical of socialism, using the typically academic White House office to amplify one of Trump’s favorite campaign talking points — that, under Democrats, the U.S. would turn to socialism and go the way of Venezuela.

Hours later, the White House held another conference call for reporters to emphasize statistics related to apprehensions of people crossing the border. One of the senior administration officials on the call, who would not allow their names to be used despite reporters’ objections, accused Democrats of wanting to abandon American sovereignty.

The officials dodged repeated questions asking for evidence of Trump’s assertion that terrorists are embedded in the migrant caravans. “The president has made his comments on it,” one said. “We’re not going to speak for him.”

Trump, one former campaign advisor said, is intent on motivating all Republican factions by his rhetoric: establishment conservatives, moderates and the more populist “Trump wing” of the party.

“Right now, they’re unified in their passion to turn out on election day, but for different reasons that Trump has given them. For some, it’s jobs and tax cuts and the judges. For others, it’s more ‘America first’ and a lot of the immigration rhetoric,” the advisor said.

Even as critics denounce his falsehoods, Trump is unflappable. As he left the White House for Texas, to campaign for Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican rival during the 2016 campaign, reporters asked whether he regretted his false claim during their presidential primary contest that Cruz’s father was involved in the assassination of President Kennedy.

“I don’t regret anything honestly,” Trump said. “It all worked out very nicely.”

eli.stokols@latimes.com

noah.bierman

@latimes.com

Protection of The Freedom of The Press is Everyone's Responsibility

Freedom of expression and a free press are only as strong as the actions of those whose freedoms are being threatened. The current administrations' attitude toward the free press is deplorable and a real threat to the transparency of the actions by those we elect to public office. The idea that the press is the "enemy of the people" is the first step in silencing the critics of compromised government officials in the highest offices of the land. We must speak out against the atrocious actions of the Administration toward those who keep us informed.

OK, NOW IT'S YOUR TURN TO DEFEND PRESS FREEDOM

By Alex Kotlowitz (LA Times Opinion 8-17-18)

President Trump’s constant attacks against the news media have made it dangerous to practice journalism, and not just for the White House press corps.

The opinion editor at the Tennessean in Nashville, David Plazas, recently received an email that read, in part: “Most of us are armed and sworn to protect the President and The Constitution against ALL enemies foreign and DOMESTIC and we will do so.”

At the Chicago Tribune, columnist Rex Huppke has received two direct threats in recent months, including a letter sent to his home that read: “You’re going to look awfully stupid trying to keyboard with two broken arms.” For the first time in his 18-year journalism career, Huppke was concerned enough to call the police.

Journalists are fighting back, in large part by keeping their heads down and reporting doggedly and intrepidly. Some are responding to Trump’s rhetorical assault more directly. At a White House meeting a few weeks ago, the publisher of the New York Times, A.G. Sulzberger, implored the president to stop calling the press “the enemy of the people.” And on Thursday, more than 300 newspapers ran editorials denouncing the administration’s war on the press.

Journalists are doing a remarkable job defending their profession. Where is everyone else?

All this has me thinking about Elijah Lovejoy , but not for the obvious reason. Lovejoy was a 19th century newspaper publisher and abolitionist who was killed by a mob while defending his printing press. The Newseum has described him as the “first American martyr for the press.” Former U.S. Sen. Paul Simon, himself a former newspaperman, wrote a book about Lovejoy called “Freedom’s Champion.”

Lovejoy’s story feels deeply relevant today. In the 1830s, he put out a small newspaper in St. Louis called the Observer. He used the paper to report on and decry the institution of slavery, and at one point, a mob of citizens destroyed his printing press. A local judge condoned the attack, saying he could “see no reason why the Press should be a means of widespread mischief.” The judge also asked: “Are we to be the victims of those sanctimonious madmen?”

Lovejoy fled to the other side of the Mississippi River and settled in the town of Alton, Ill. Unlike Missouri, Illinois was a free state. But he met resistance there too. Again citizens destroyed his press, throwing parts of it in the river.

Townspeople in Alton drafted a resolution that, on the one hand, condemned the violence against the Observer, but, on the other, requested that Lovejoy discontinue his anti-slavery editorials, which they called “incendiary doctrines which alone have a tendency to disturb the quiet of our citizens and neighbors.”

In response, Lovejoy took to task not those who opposed his views, but rather those who questioned his right to speak his mind and to publish the truth. At a community gathering, he admonished his neighbors.

“I know that I have the right to freely speak and publish my sentiments,” Lovejoy said. “What I wish to know of you is whether you will protect me in the exercise of this right?”

Few came forward. Four days later, while trying to protect his new printing press from being set on fire, Lovejoy was shot and killed by a mob. In his final days, what so distressed Lovejoy was not his ideological opponents but rather the decent people of Alton who refused to take a stand.

Lovejoy recognized the need for citizens to speak out in defense of a free press. That need has become urgent once again.

There are countless contemporary examples of reporters watching out for ordinary Americans who don’t have access to wealth or power.

Coal miners could celebrate the Center for Public Integrity’s work exposing unsavory ties between doctors and coal companies and their efforts to deny healthcare for workers with black lung disease. Veterans could extol the Colorado Springs Gazette series about the military’s practice of dishonorably discharging injured soldiers. Female athletes could publicly applaud the Indianapolis Star’s reporting on Dr. Lawrence G. Nassar’s serial sexual abuse at Michigan State University and beyond.

The list of examples is endless, because the core mission of a free press is holding people in power accountable and keeping an eye out for the rest of us.

After Lovejoy gave his speech at the town meeting, a young man, Dr. Benjamin K. Hart, wanted to say something that might turn the tide and rally support for Lovejoy. But he didn’t.

“I hesitated,” Hart said in an interview many years later. “And hesitated a moment too long. I have never forgiven myself for my hesitation.”

Journalism is not an easy institution to rally around. But if there were ever a time for citizens to defend the press, this is it.

Earlier this month, at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Trump called reporters “horrible, horrendous people,” and his supporters chanted “CNN sucks.” That same week, the Chicago Tribune held a training session to teach its reporters what they should do in the event of an active shooter. What’s more to be said?

Alex Kotlowitz teaches at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. He is the author of four books, including the forthcoming “An American Summer.”

More Assault on an Independent Judiciary

Everyone really needs to understand the contents and implications of the below article* regarding the latest undermining of the judicial system within the federal government. Trump, by executive order, has eliminated the requirement for competency and merit in consideration for selection of Federal Administrative Law Judges. The executive order relieves the requirements for competency and merit utilized in the current appointment methods. This should be a major concern to everyone of the United States as it is another step in politicizing a fair and unbiased judiciary (before the executive order). Please absorb the impact of this action on the foundations of a democratic system of checks and balances. Why would a sitting President continue to make rules that infect the very foundation of an impartial judiciary?

*LA Times Editorial 7-20-2018

"Trump politicizes justice

In what looks like a political power play, President Trump has decided that administrative law judges — officials within federal agencies who resolve complaints about regulations, compliance or benefits — will no longer be chosen on the basis of merit. Unless the administration reconsiders this unnecessary and potentially harmful action, Congress should consider mandating a return to the old system.

There are nearly 1,900 administrative law judges in the federal government, the vast majority at the Social Security Administration ruling on disability and other claims. In the past, the so-called ALJs were chosen from a list compiled by a civil service agency that evaluates applicants on such neutral criteria as their performance on a competitive examination.

That will change under an executive order issued by Trump this month. ALJs hired in the future will no longer have “competitive service” status. That means agency officials can appoint whom they like, based on a subjective assessment of the applicant’s “temperament, legal acumen, impartiality and judgment.”

Administrative-law experts fear this could lead to a politicization of the adjudication process or even a return to old-fashioned patronage, elevating loyalty over competence. The new policy also introduces the possibility of ideological litmus tests by this and future presidents. While Trump might choose ALJs who would be expected to take a restrictive view of eligibility for disability benefits, for example, a Democratic president might seek the opposite quality.

The administration hasn’t offered a persuasive justification for the change. In his executive order, Trump cited a decision by the Supreme Court last month holding that ALJs in the Securities and Exchange Commission had been improperly appointed because they were chosen by the agency’s staff rather than by the commission itself, as the Constitution requires for “officers of the United States.”

But the court didn’t say that it was unconstitutional for ALJs to be appointed through a competitive examination process, so long as the actual appointment was made by the head of the agency.

Rather than a prudent response to the court’s decision, the president’s order looks like an opportunistic attempt to disguise a politicizing policy change as compliance with a court decree. If he persists in this course, Congress should move to restore the previous system with its emphasis on merit and professionalism."

Real time look at the beginning of Hitler's reign of terror

If this doesn't shake you up, you better get your head out of the sand before you are buried in it!

Trump's Sense of Omnipotance

For all of you who elected Trump to the presidency because things “needed to be shaken up”, how does this suit your need for chaos. I am profoundly “shaken up” by the fact that we have a sitting President who pronounces himself the law and his definition of the law is immutable. It also “shakes things up” to consider what acts Trump envisions being prosecuted for that would plant the seed of such an egregious act as forgiving himself in the name of the American people.

Educate yourself and consider bringing the people’s voice back to our government.

The below op-ed piece appeared in the Los Angeles Times on June 5, 2018

TRUMP’S UNPARDONABLE HUBRIS

He thinks he’s like a king or an emperor: He can’t violate the law because, after all, he is the law.

Donald Trump once said during the 2016 presidential campaign that he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone, and still not lose any voters. And who knows? He may have been right.

Now that he’s president, could he also be protected from prosecution for pulling the trigger? Trump seems to believe so. That’s the essence of his assertion Monday morning that he has the absolute right to pardon himself.

Of course the context of his tweet was not a New York shooting but the ongoing special investigation into alleged Russian interference in the election. But the claim would seem to be no more or less valid for one presidential action than any other.

If federal prosecutions are merely extensions of the president’s executive power, and if he could pardon himself as readily as he could pardon Joe Arpaio or Dinesh D'Souza , then it’s hard to see how he could be held to answer for breaking any federal law. Prosecute me, Trump seems to be saying, and I will just pardon myself and we’ll move on. So why bother prosecuting me in the first place?

In this view the president is like kings and emperors of ages past. By definition, he cannot violate the law. It’s not that he is above the law. As president, the argument goes, he is the law.

That notion is foreign and unpardonable — a structurally monarchical presidency constrained by nothing but the president himself. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ later statement that “no one is above the law” offers little comfort, given that the president apparently believes that he is.

Trump is correct when he says that there are some legal scholars who back his assertion that the president can pardon himself. It is a claim not yet vetted in the courts because there has never before been a president willing to push the question very far. Richard Nixon fired his prosecutor but ultimately resigned because he knew he faced impeachment, not because of impending criminal prosecution. President Gerald Ford did pardon Nixon and shielded him from criminal accountability for his actions, but by then Nixon was out of the White House, no longer a danger to the nation or a threat to the rule of law or the checks and balances of government.

So perhaps impeachment, replete with the trappings of legal procedure but at heart a political action, is the proper check on the otherwise unfettered power of a president over how, or even whether, the law is enforced? But then there is no check at all on any president who is sufficiently popular that he can, say, shoot someone on Fifth Avenue without fear from Congress, because it’s not in the political interests of the GOP majority to stand up to him. That would make us a nation of men (and women) and not of laws. And that’s not what we are.

After Florida Mass Shooting, Trump Suggests He will Act On Gun Control Unlike Other Presidents

Mr. President,
The terrible tragedy at Douglas Stoneman High School in Florida happened two weeks before your discussion (click on the below link) at the White House regarding what you will do regarding gun control and protecting our schools that other Presidents, both Democrat and Republicans failed to do.
It took two weeks for you to assemble stakeholders who you think can affect the change you have purported to make an immediate priority.
This blog entry will keep a record of how long it takes you to address this vital issue.


CALENDAR (June 28, 2018)

DAYS SINCE STONEMAN DOUGLAS HIGH SCHOOL ATTACK........................................114

DAYS SINCE YOU PROMISED TO INITIATE REASONABLE GUN LAWS...........................100


Trump Stating that he will act on Gun Control Where Other Presidents Have Not

Erasing rules that aid public A push to deregulate at any cost

“Last Friday night (February 23, 2018), when the White House figured no one was looking, it quietly released a congressionally mandated report from the Office of Management and Budget spelling out both the costs of government regulations on the private sector and the estimated monetary benefits to the public.”

“In former President Obama’s final year in office — the period covered by the report — 16 “major rules” were fully quantifiable, meaning their total costs and benefits were capable of being measured.

What Trump’s budget office found was that these rules cost up to $4.9 billion to impose on businesses and resulted in up to $27.3 billion in benefits to the American people.

That means taxpayers got nearly six times as much in benefits as was spent regulating businesses.

And that, by any yardstick, is a hell of a good investment.”

Below is the complete article from the LA Times by David Lazarus regarding an analysis and report required of the Administration regarding the cost of some current regulations that show a different picture than the Administration has painted of too much regulation needing to be eliminated. The excerpted section below is the crux of the facts derived from the review.

Please read the document and decide for yourself just how far our Administration is willing to accommodate Wall Street, Big Business and financial interests of the wealthy at the expense of our health and welfare.

PRESIDENT TRUMP at an event on federal regulations in December vowed to “cut the red tape.” (Evan Vucci Associated Press)  (Photo not included)

DAVID LAZARUS, Los Angeles Times

President Trump recently patted himself on the back for the “most far-reaching regulatory reform” in U.S. history, which wasn’t true but that wasn’t the point. The point was that Trump has made eliminating government regulations one of his top priorities.

“We have decades of excess regulation to remove,” he said, calling on his Cabinet members “to find and remove every single outdated, unlawful and excessive regulation currently on the books.”

Trump and his Cabinet may want to rethink that proposition.

Last Friday night, when the White House figured no one was looking, it quietly released a congressionally mandated report from the Office of Management and Budget spelling out both the costs of government regulations on the private sector and the estimated monetary benefits to the public.

For example, the cost of imposing clean-air and clean-water rules on factories versus the benefit to ordinary people of not getting cancer and running up huge hospital bills.

In former President Obama’s final year in office — the period covered by the report — 16 “major rules” were fully quantifiable, meaning their total costs and benefits were capable of being measured.

What Trump’s budget office found was that these rules cost up to $4.9 billion to impose on businesses and resulted in up to $27.3 billion in benefits to the American people.

That means taxpayers got nearly six times as much in benefits as was spent regulating businesses.

And that, by any yardstick, is a hell of a good investment.

Amit Narang, a regulatory policy advocate with Public Citizen, told me the report was released by the White House with no fanfare around 7 p.m. Friday. He noted that the Trump administration missed its Dec. 31 deadline for the report by two months.

“It seems like they don’t want people to know that the benefits of government regulations in Obama’s last year far exceeded the costs,” Narang said.

I reached out to the White House for comment. No one got back to me.

Narang crunched the numbers for the last decade and estimated that the net benefit to Americans from regulations was as much as $833 billion, or 12 times what these rules cost industry to impose.

“Much of these benefits are in the form of health and safety,” he said. “So one way to look at this is that if you don’t control emissions from factories, you’re looking at all sorts of added costs to society, such as cancer, children’s asthma and serious respiratory illnesses.”

The Trump administration’s report completely undercuts its argument that regulations are bad for the country because they stifle job growth and innovation. In fact, the U.S. economy logged steady if unspectacular growth throughout the Obama years.

This week, we learned that despite Trump’s deregulatory push, economic growth slowed more than initially thought over the final three months of 2017, down to 2.5% from 3.2% during the previous quarter.

Perhaps that can be traced to Trump’s arbitrary and reckless policy that for every new government regulation, two existing ones have to be thrown out. He’s fond of saying this both limits new rule-making and cleans house of older rules that don’t jibe with his policy agenda.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau? Don’t need that. Environmental Protection Agency? It can get by with 23% less funding. School safety? We can cut spending there by $425 million.

What Trump isn’t saying — but which his own numbers clearly spell out: Take away rules and regulations, and all you end up doing is shortchanging the American people.

Net neutrality

Speaking of regulations, here’s the latest on net neutrality — and AT&T’s acrobatic efforts to simultaneously support and oppose the Trump administration’s doing away with oversight of high-speed internet service.

A federal appeals court ruled this week that the Federal Trade Commission could continue pursuing a lawsuit against AT&T over internet speeds.

This is a big deal because, if AT&T had its way, no one in Washington would be telling it what to do.

The unanimous decision by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco came as the Federal Communications Commission proceeds with plans to chuck net neutrality out the window.

Those are the rules put in place under the Obama administration that prohibit internet service companies such as AT&T from interfering with the content flowing over their networks or charging extra for more reliable access.

Unless Congress or the courts act, net neutrality will officially end April 23.

One of the key arguments made by the FCC for abandoning net neutrality is that the Federal Trade Commission can do a good enough job protecting consumers from unsavory telecom industry practices.

The FTC sued AT&T in 2014, charging the company with deliberately slowing the internet speeds of millions of customers who paid for unlimited data plans — a practice known as “throttling.”

AT&T countered that the FTC had no business telling it what to do because only the Federal Communications Commission has jurisdiction over internet service providers.

Yes, that would be the same FCC that’s trying to get out of the internet regulation business, which AT&T and other telecom companies support.

In effect, AT&T was trying to create a loophole whereby no federal agency would be looking over its shoulder.

The 9th Circuit decided that “common sense” suggests the line between phone and internet companies has become blurry. “A phone company is no longer just a phone company,” the judges ruled. So the FTC’s lawsuit can move forward.

Ajit Pai, President Trump’s appointee as chairman of the FCC and a former Verizon lawyer, said the ruling means the Federal Trade Commission “will once again be able to police internet service providers.”

Well, sort of. The FTC enforces rules on fraud and deception — in this case, accusations that AT&T reduced customers’ data speeds after selling them “unlimited” data plans.

The agency is not empowered to address other issues raised by net neutrality, such as an internet service provider’s treatment of content. That’s why Democrats in the U.S. Senate this week introduced a bill to repeal the FCC’s net neutrality repeal.

“President Trump and FCC Chairman Ajit Pai might want to end the internet as we know it, but we won’t agonize, we will organize,” Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) said in introducing the legislation.

“The internet is for all — the students, teachers, innovators, hardworking families, small businesses and activists — not just Verizon, Charter, AT&T and Comcast and corporate interests,” he said.

That, undoubtedly, will come as a surprise to Verizon, Charter, AT&T and Comcast and corporate interests.

David Lazarus’ column runs Tuesdays and Fridays. He also can be seen daily on KTLA-TV Channel 5 and followed on Twitter @Davidlaz . Send your tips or feedback to david.lazarus@latimes.com .