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Payback
Dedicated to the Fools, Racists, and Ignorant
People who vote for the GOP and trump or don't vote because they claim it is not important
april 16, 2019
400 years and they have learned nothing
8 disturbing trends that reveal the South’s battered psyche
From Salon: Across red-state America, especially in the Deep South, the latest statistics show that the cycle of poverty, in its many manifestations, is unchanged and holding firm. Why is this? It’s easy to say this is how Republicans like to run states—cutting budgets, not raising the minimum wage, opposing labor unions. They let the poor and working class stew in their hardscrabble juices. Meanwhile, they distract voters by accusing liberals of waging war on the few sources of personal power in Southerners’ difficult lives: their religious beliefs and owning guns. But go back several decades when segregationist Democrats ruled; for the most part, they weren’t very different from today’s Republicans.
So what is it that perpetuates decades of poverty in the Deep South? What follows are eight bundles of statistics tracking this latest cycle of poverty. Could it be that people who historically have been treated badly, who have little money in their pockets but look to the sky and pray, expect less from others—including the public and private sector? Does that explain why red-staters cling to God, gun ownership and a “leave-me-alone” ferocity?
They expect politicians to defend their values and their pride and little more?
What’s going on here isn’t entirely political, even if it is used by red-state Republicans in their personal drive for power and influence. Look at what the following statistics reveal about red-staters trapped in deep cycles of poverty. What is the thread that connects lousy governance, bad health, evangelical religion and firearms fervor?
1. Southern states have the most poor people.
2. Deep South states have no minimum wage.
3. Deep South has lowest economic mobility.
4. South has lowest per capita spending by state government.
5. Forget about decent preventative healthcare.
6. One result: people self-medicate in response.
7. Forget the lottery, just pray to Jesus.
8. And hold onto that gun!
So what is it that perpetuates decades of poverty in the Deep South? What follows are eight bundles of statistics tracking this latest cycle of poverty. Could it be that people who historically have been treated badly, who have little money in their pockets but look to the sky and pray, expect less from others—including the public and private sector? Does that explain why red-staters cling to God, gun ownership and a “leave-me-alone” ferocity?
They expect politicians to defend their values and their pride and little more?
What’s going on here isn’t entirely political, even if it is used by red-state Republicans in their personal drive for power and influence. Look at what the following statistics reveal about red-staters trapped in deep cycles of poverty. What is the thread that connects lousy governance, bad health, evangelical religion and firearms fervor?
1. Southern states have the most poor people.
2. Deep South states have no minimum wage.
3. Deep South has lowest economic mobility.
4. South has lowest per capita spending by state government.
5. Forget about decent preventative healthcare.
6. One result: people self-medicate in response.
7. Forget the lottery, just pray to Jesus.
8. And hold onto that gun!
payback headlines - how you are screwed!!
*Trump is helping big banks hurt his own voters — after railing against them in 2016: NYT reporter
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Trump’s New Proposal Cheats 8 Million Working People of Overtime Pay
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*THE HOUSE JUST PASSED A BILL THAT COULD BAR THE IRS FROM CREATING A 'FREE' TAX-PREPARATION SOFTWARE LIKE TURBOTAX — HERE'S WHAT IT MEANS FOR YOU(ARTICLE BELOW)
*PAUL KRUGMAN DROPS A BOMB ON TRUMP’S BASE — HE JUST SADDLED YOU WITH $2 TRILLION MORE IN DEBT
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Paul Krugman uses one chart to show how Trump is screwing over his own voters in West Virginia
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Trump's tariffs are costing Americans $1.4 billion each month, study shows
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Trump has sold out the farmers who voted for him — and now they’re racing toward calamity
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*It just became easier for employers to dump retirees’ pensions
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Trump budget proposes subsidy cuts to farmers as they grapple with crisis
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*US farm debt soars to levels seen during 1980s farm crisis: Agriculture secretary
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*US farm exports expected to fall $1.9 billion in 2019 thanks to Trump’s trade war
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*‘That’s it, I’m done’: Trump voter quits supporting president after her tax bill increases five fold
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Midwest farmers going broke at record rates thanks to Trump's trade war
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Reeling from the shutdown and Trump’s tax law, Americans see 8.4% drop in average tax refunds
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Trump’s trade wars put farms on the brink of bankruptcy — and it could be ‘devastating’ for his 2020 campaign: report(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Trump’s tariffs completely wiped out Harley-Davidson profits last quarter
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*U.S. ON TRACK TO ADD $12 TRILLION TO NATIONAL DEBT BY 2029 UNLESS WASHINGTON CHANGES COURSE
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*84 days after residents voted for Medicaid expansion, Utah lawmakers want to repeal or cap it
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*The Trump administration wants to tighten SNAP work requirements, bypassing Congress
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Trump tariffs force tough choices on auto suppliers
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Trump's war on science: how the US is putting politics above evidence
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Trump trade war causes stock to plummet and commodity prices to ‘crater’ for America’s largest meat processor(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Dear Media, Please Cut the Sob Stories About Trump Voters Hurt by Trump Policies
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*"It’s infuriating”: Trump-supporting parents turn on the president over lax EPA rules
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*WHITE HOUSE ADMITS TRUMP CLIMATE POLICIES WILL COST AMERICANS $500 BILLION A YEAR
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*One map shows why Trump's trade war with China could be a disaster for average Americans(ARTICLE BELOW)
PAYBACK FUNNIES(at the end)
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GREEN PARTY FucK YOU! - THIS IS WHAT TRUMP HAS WROUGHT...SAME AS HILLARY
Cattledog - demo. underground
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29 rules have been overturned
Flood building standards Proposed ban on a potentially harmful pesticide Freeze on new coal leases on public lands Methane reporting requirement Anti-dumping rule for coal companies Decision on Keystone XL pipeline Decision on Dakota Access pipeline Third-party settlement funds Offshore drilling ban in the Atlantic and Arctic Ban on seismic air gun testing in the Atlantic Northern Bering Sea climate resilience plan Royalty regulations for oil, gas and coal Inclusion of greenhouse gas emissions in environmental reviews Permit-issuing process for new infrastructure projects Green Climate Fund contributions Mining restrictions in Bristol Bay, Alaska Endangered species listings Hunting ban on wolves and grizzly bears in Alaska Protections for whales and sea turtles Reusable water bottles rule for national parks National parks climate order Environmental mitigation for federal projects Calculation for “social cost” of carbon Planning rule for public lands Copper filter cake listing as hazardous waste Mine cleanup rule Sewage treatment pollution regulations Ban on use of lead ammunition on federal lands Restrictions on fishing |
24 rollbacks are in progress
Clean Power Plan Paris climate agreement Wetland and tributary protections Car and truck fuel-efficiency standards Status of 10 national monuments Status of 12 marine areas Limits on toxic discharge from power plants Coal ash discharge regulations Emissions standards for new, modified and reconstructed power plants Emissions rules for power plant start-up and shutdown Sage grouse habitat protections Fracking regulations on public lands Regulations on oil and gas drilling in some national parks Oil rig safety regulations Regulations for offshore oil and gas exploration by floating vessels Drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge Hunting method regulations in Alaska Requirement for tracking emissions on federal highways Emissions standards for trailers and glider kits Limits on methane emissions on public lands Permitting process for air-polluting plants Offshore oil and gas leasing Use of birds in subsistence handicrafts Coal dust rule |
7 rollbacks are in limbo
Methane emission limits at new oil and gas wells
Limits on landfill emissions
Mercury emission limits for power plants
Hazardous chemical facility regulations
Groundwater protections for uranium mines
Efficiency standards for federal buildings
Rule helping consumers buy fuel-efficient tires
Source:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/05/climate/trump-environment-rules-reversed.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur
Methane emission limits at new oil and gas wells
Limits on landfill emissions
Mercury emission limits for power plants
Hazardous chemical facility regulations
Groundwater protections for uranium mines
Efficiency standards for federal buildings
Rule helping consumers buy fuel-efficient tires
Source:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/05/climate/trump-environment-rules-reversed.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur
The True Cost of Voodoo Economics
The Reagan-Bush Debt is how much of the national debt of the United States is attributable to the presidencies of Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, and
the Republican fiscal policy of Borrow-And-Spend.
As of Monday, April 08, 2019 at 2:05:49PM CT,
The Current ReaganBush Debt is:
$13,779,884,957,218.40
which means that in a total of 20 years,
these three presidents have led to the creation of
91.86%
of the entire national debt
in only 8.2305% of the 243 years of the existence of the United States of America.
@ReaganBushDebt.org
Trump is helping big banks hurt his own voters — after railing against them in 2016: NYT reporter
Brad Reed - raw story
16 APR 2019 AT 11:14 ET
New York Times reporter Nick Confessore has written a lengthy story about the ways that President Donald Trump and his administration have undermined the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was set up in the wake of the Great Recession to curb abuses by financial institutions.
The assault on the CFPB comes despite Trump’s repeated attacks on Wall Street during the 2016 presidential election campaign, and Confessore points out in a Twitter thread that many of the people who are most likely to be hurt by policies such as reduced restrictions on payday lenders are blue-collar white people whose cause Trump has championed.
The leading man who went about dismantling the agency under Trump has been current acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who has been hostile to the agency’s missions since its inception.
“In my story, we focus on payday lending, a smallish financial industry whose customer base in the working poor, concentrated in ‘Trump states,'” he writes. “Mulvaney comes from a big payday state, where payday is widely used as credit, and sometimes some of the only credit available to them. Mulvaney and his political team at the bureau viewed the Obama-era CFPB as unconstitutional and out of control. They also argued that the imbalance of power Warren critiqued was, for the most part, not the job of government to correct.”
Confessore’s report details how some Christian leaders met with Mulvaney earlier this year and argued that the work payday lenders have been doing is actually sinful given the way it takes advantage of the working poor’s desperation and leaves them in debt.
“The ministers had planned carefully for their moment with Mulvaney, and for 20 minutes they took turns detailing the harm that payday lending had inflicted on their neighborhoods and congregations,” Confessore reports.
However, Mulvaney responded by telling them that it wasn’t the federal government’s job to stop people from taking out unwise loans.
“There’s no reason people should be taking these loans — but they do,” he explained in justifying his inaction.
The assault on the CFPB comes despite Trump’s repeated attacks on Wall Street during the 2016 presidential election campaign, and Confessore points out in a Twitter thread that many of the people who are most likely to be hurt by policies such as reduced restrictions on payday lenders are blue-collar white people whose cause Trump has championed.
The leading man who went about dismantling the agency under Trump has been current acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who has been hostile to the agency’s missions since its inception.
“In my story, we focus on payday lending, a smallish financial industry whose customer base in the working poor, concentrated in ‘Trump states,'” he writes. “Mulvaney comes from a big payday state, where payday is widely used as credit, and sometimes some of the only credit available to them. Mulvaney and his political team at the bureau viewed the Obama-era CFPB as unconstitutional and out of control. They also argued that the imbalance of power Warren critiqued was, for the most part, not the job of government to correct.”
Confessore’s report details how some Christian leaders met with Mulvaney earlier this year and argued that the work payday lenders have been doing is actually sinful given the way it takes advantage of the working poor’s desperation and leaves them in debt.
“The ministers had planned carefully for their moment with Mulvaney, and for 20 minutes they took turns detailing the harm that payday lending had inflicted on their neighborhoods and congregations,” Confessore reports.
However, Mulvaney responded by telling them that it wasn’t the federal government’s job to stop people from taking out unwise loans.
“There’s no reason people should be taking these loans — but they do,” he explained in justifying his inaction.
op - ed: Trump’s New Proposal Cheats 8 Million Working People of Overtime Pay
BY Naomi Walker & Paul Sonn, Truthout
PUBLISHED April 13, 2019
Eight million. That’s how many U.S. middle-class workers will be left without strong overtime pay protections under the Trump administration’s weak overtime rule proposed on March 22.
In human terms, that means 8 million working people across the 50 states can be made to work up to 50, 60 or even 70 hours a week, missing time with their families, without receiving any extra pay, even if they make as little as $35,000 a year.
The problem is the salary threshold below which workers are guaranteed time-and-a-half overtime pay when they work more than 40 hours in a week has been frozen for decades, with no adjustment for the rising cost of living. As a result, the share of salaried workers guaranteed overtime pay has plummeted from six in 10 in 1975 to less than one in 10 today.
The Trump administration claimed that the new overtime salary threshold is a win for workers, and many news outlets echoed the administration’s spin, declaring in headlines across the country that the Trump rule is an “expansion,” or at least a “compromise” on overtime pay. In reality, it is a significant rollback that will cheat millions of Americans of fair pay for hard work.
That’s because the Trump overtime regulation replaces a 2016 Obama-era Labor Department rule that would have restored overtime protections for more than 12 million salaried workers earning up to $55,055 by 2023. The Trump rule slashes that salary level to $35,308 — and treats workers earning more than that as if they were highly paid executive who don’t need overtime pay. All told, Trump’s decision to slash the salary threshold means workers will miss out on $1.2 billion in wages each yearthey would have received under the 2016 rule.
The overtime salary threshold is supposed to protect workers with little bargaining power — think of modestly paid front-line supervisors at fast food restaurants or discount stores — from being forced to work long hours for no pay.
Typical of them is Charney, who works as a salaried manager at a dollar store in Michigan. Most weeks she clocks 65 hours, missing dinner with her family and time with her kids, with no overtime pay for her long hours and dedication.
“I did the math, and I make 50 cents more than my assistant, who is eligible for overtime and gets holiday pay,” she told Truthout. “I work on average 30 hours a week more than my assistants. I feel completely taken advantage of.”
The Obama-era rule was a modest first step toward correcting a system that was increasingly leaving workers behind. It would have restored overtime coverage to about one in three salaried workers.
But despite an extensive rule-making process that lasted two years and included a quarter-million public comments driven by worker advocates, the Trump Labor Department abandoned it. U.S. workers have lost more than $1.6 billion in unpaid overtime as a result.
Unsurprisingly, the weak Trump overtime proposal is deeply unpopular with voters. New polling conducted by Hart Research in competitive congressional districts shows that voters in swing districts overwhelmingly support the stronger Obama-era overtime expansion (by a 76 to 16 margin) over the weak Trump substitute. Independents back the Obama proposal over the Trump substitute by a whopping 71 to 15 margin. Republicans prefer it 65-to-27, and Democrats 89-to-7.
Fortunately, states can and are stepping in to protect workers from the Trump overtime rollback. In many states, governors can raise the overtime salary threshold through action by their state labor departments without the need for legislation. Moreover, in every state, the legislature can act to protect overtime pay.
Labor departments in California and New York have already raised their states’ overtime salary thresholds significantly; Washington and Pennsylvania’s labor agencies are in the process of doing the same. Other proposals are pending in Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Maryland and Colorado.
In particular, state-level action can and should go beyond the Obama overtime standard, which was a minimal national benchmark based on salary levels in the Southern U.S., the nation’s lowest-wage region. Higher-wage states can increase their overtime salary thresholds to commensurate levels, as Washington and Massachusetts are currently proposing.
At his inauguration, President Trump pledged that “Every decision … will be made to benefit American workers.” But the administration’s rollback of overtime pay protections and its record of dismantling worker protections at every turn show whose side the administration is really on when it comes to middle-class families struggling for a decent paycheck.
In the 2018 midterms, overtime pay already emerged as a key issue in several races. The overwhelming voter opposition to the latest Trump rollback means it’s likely to be back in 2020 as voters consider which candidates have their interests at heart.
In human terms, that means 8 million working people across the 50 states can be made to work up to 50, 60 or even 70 hours a week, missing time with their families, without receiving any extra pay, even if they make as little as $35,000 a year.
The problem is the salary threshold below which workers are guaranteed time-and-a-half overtime pay when they work more than 40 hours in a week has been frozen for decades, with no adjustment for the rising cost of living. As a result, the share of salaried workers guaranteed overtime pay has plummeted from six in 10 in 1975 to less than one in 10 today.
The Trump administration claimed that the new overtime salary threshold is a win for workers, and many news outlets echoed the administration’s spin, declaring in headlines across the country that the Trump rule is an “expansion,” or at least a “compromise” on overtime pay. In reality, it is a significant rollback that will cheat millions of Americans of fair pay for hard work.
That’s because the Trump overtime regulation replaces a 2016 Obama-era Labor Department rule that would have restored overtime protections for more than 12 million salaried workers earning up to $55,055 by 2023. The Trump rule slashes that salary level to $35,308 — and treats workers earning more than that as if they were highly paid executive who don’t need overtime pay. All told, Trump’s decision to slash the salary threshold means workers will miss out on $1.2 billion in wages each yearthey would have received under the 2016 rule.
The overtime salary threshold is supposed to protect workers with little bargaining power — think of modestly paid front-line supervisors at fast food restaurants or discount stores — from being forced to work long hours for no pay.
Typical of them is Charney, who works as a salaried manager at a dollar store in Michigan. Most weeks she clocks 65 hours, missing dinner with her family and time with her kids, with no overtime pay for her long hours and dedication.
“I did the math, and I make 50 cents more than my assistant, who is eligible for overtime and gets holiday pay,” she told Truthout. “I work on average 30 hours a week more than my assistants. I feel completely taken advantage of.”
The Obama-era rule was a modest first step toward correcting a system that was increasingly leaving workers behind. It would have restored overtime coverage to about one in three salaried workers.
But despite an extensive rule-making process that lasted two years and included a quarter-million public comments driven by worker advocates, the Trump Labor Department abandoned it. U.S. workers have lost more than $1.6 billion in unpaid overtime as a result.
Unsurprisingly, the weak Trump overtime proposal is deeply unpopular with voters. New polling conducted by Hart Research in competitive congressional districts shows that voters in swing districts overwhelmingly support the stronger Obama-era overtime expansion (by a 76 to 16 margin) over the weak Trump substitute. Independents back the Obama proposal over the Trump substitute by a whopping 71 to 15 margin. Republicans prefer it 65-to-27, and Democrats 89-to-7.
Fortunately, states can and are stepping in to protect workers from the Trump overtime rollback. In many states, governors can raise the overtime salary threshold through action by their state labor departments without the need for legislation. Moreover, in every state, the legislature can act to protect overtime pay.
Labor departments in California and New York have already raised their states’ overtime salary thresholds significantly; Washington and Pennsylvania’s labor agencies are in the process of doing the same. Other proposals are pending in Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Maryland and Colorado.
In particular, state-level action can and should go beyond the Obama overtime standard, which was a minimal national benchmark based on salary levels in the Southern U.S., the nation’s lowest-wage region. Higher-wage states can increase their overtime salary thresholds to commensurate levels, as Washington and Massachusetts are currently proposing.
At his inauguration, President Trump pledged that “Every decision … will be made to benefit American workers.” But the administration’s rollback of overtime pay protections and its record of dismantling worker protections at every turn show whose side the administration is really on when it comes to middle-class families struggling for a decent paycheck.
In the 2018 midterms, overtime pay already emerged as a key issue in several races. The overwhelming voter opposition to the latest Trump rollback means it’s likely to be back in 2020 as voters consider which candidates have their interests at heart.
screwed again!!!
The House just passed a bill that could bar the IRS from creating a 'free' tax-preparation software like TurboTax — here's what it means for you
Bob Bryan and Joe Perticone - business insider
4/11/19
The House on Tuesday passed a bill designed to make some major changes to the way the IRS operates, but it also means that American taxpayers could be missing out on a huge opportunity.
The bill, named the Taxpayer First Act, is intended to update many major IRS systems and improve Americans' interactions with the agency.
But the bill also includes a provision that would codify the IRS's "Free File" system, which allows most Americans to file for free but through only private services. Critics of the bill say that it would make it so that the IRS would be unable to create its own free alternative to existing tax-preparation software such as Intuit's TurboTax or H&R Block's software.
The bill was supported by a bipartisan group of lawmakers, many of whom received campaign donations from Intuit and H&R Block. A similar bill exists in the Senate and would need to pass before the changes could take place.
Senate sponsors of the bill disputed the characterization that the provision would prevent the IRS from creating a filing service, but legal experts and advocacy groups say that the language would block the agency from doing it. Additionally, the IRS already has a memorandum of understanding with some tax preparers not to create a free filing system.
But while there is some back and forth on the exact effects of the provision, it can be hard to discern just what it means for the average taxpayer.
So what could the Taxpayer First Act mean for your tax filing? Here's a breakdown of how this would affect you:
But what is more important is what Americans are missing out on
While most of the tax-preparation landscape would not change under the bill, the real issue critics have with the measure is the reforms that the bill forgoes.
For one thing, advocates say that the Taxpayer First Act would prevent the IRS from creating a tax-preparation software to compete with or replace private software. According to ProPublica, those of you hoping that you could get rid of TurboTax or H&R Block sometime soon would be sorely disappointed by the bill because it would codify the existing Free File program, which relies on the private services and prevents the IRS from creating a competitor.
Additionally, the new bill does nothing to simplify the tax-preparation system.
Advocates of simpler tax-filing measures have maintained that the IRS could provide most Americans with simpler prefilled tax forms that would use data the agency already possesses. In theory, this would require most Americans to make, at most, minor adjustments to the forms in order to file.
But companies such as Intuit have said that such a system would result in more overpaying by taxpayers and other tax analysts have warned that it would cause complications and reduce transparency.
Regardless of the possible ease or hazards, the IRS has so far been blocked from implementing the system — which already exists in countries such as Sweden and Spain. The new bill would ensure that the system stays that way.
- The House on Tuesday passed the Taxpayer First Act bill, which includes notable changes to the tax code and the IRS.
- In the bill is a provision that would enshrine the current version of the IRS Free File service and prevent the agency from creating its own tax-preparation service.
- While it shouldn't make a big difference for most taxpayers, the bigger effect is what Americans could be missing out on.
The House on Tuesday passed a bill designed to make some major changes to the way the IRS operates, but it also means that American taxpayers could be missing out on a huge opportunity.
The bill, named the Taxpayer First Act, is intended to update many major IRS systems and improve Americans' interactions with the agency.
But the bill also includes a provision that would codify the IRS's "Free File" system, which allows most Americans to file for free but through only private services. Critics of the bill say that it would make it so that the IRS would be unable to create its own free alternative to existing tax-preparation software such as Intuit's TurboTax or H&R Block's software.
The bill was supported by a bipartisan group of lawmakers, many of whom received campaign donations from Intuit and H&R Block. A similar bill exists in the Senate and would need to pass before the changes could take place.
Senate sponsors of the bill disputed the characterization that the provision would prevent the IRS from creating a filing service, but legal experts and advocacy groups say that the language would block the agency from doing it. Additionally, the IRS already has a memorandum of understanding with some tax preparers not to create a free filing system.
But while there is some back and forth on the exact effects of the provision, it can be hard to discern just what it means for the average taxpayer.
So what could the Taxpayer First Act mean for your tax filing? Here's a breakdown of how this would affect you:
- If you qualify for free filing now, you can still file for free: As the system stands, Americans in the 70th percentile or below are allowed to file for free. That means, this year, people who made $66,000 or less in 2018 can file their taxes for free.
Even if the bill becomes law, people below the threshold can still access a number of services through the IRS's Free File landing page that allows you to file for free. Different services have different thresholds to qualify for free filing. TurboTax offers the service to people making $34,000 or less, TaxAct offers it for people making $55,000 or less, and H&R Block offers it for people making $66,000 or less.
But it is important to note that these are not IRS products, rather the websites listed are privately owned services that allow people below their respective thresholds to file for free. - If you already use a private tax service and are above the free-filing threshold: Tax preparation companies and services already in place will continue to operate as they have. Some companies offer free federal-filing services for simple returns and other deals; those will still be available at the discretion of the respective companies.
But what is more important is what Americans are missing out on
While most of the tax-preparation landscape would not change under the bill, the real issue critics have with the measure is the reforms that the bill forgoes.
For one thing, advocates say that the Taxpayer First Act would prevent the IRS from creating a tax-preparation software to compete with or replace private software. According to ProPublica, those of you hoping that you could get rid of TurboTax or H&R Block sometime soon would be sorely disappointed by the bill because it would codify the existing Free File program, which relies on the private services and prevents the IRS from creating a competitor.
Additionally, the new bill does nothing to simplify the tax-preparation system.
Advocates of simpler tax-filing measures have maintained that the IRS could provide most Americans with simpler prefilled tax forms that would use data the agency already possesses. In theory, this would require most Americans to make, at most, minor adjustments to the forms in order to file.
But companies such as Intuit have said that such a system would result in more overpaying by taxpayers and other tax analysts have warned that it would cause complications and reduce transparency.
Regardless of the possible ease or hazards, the IRS has so far been blocked from implementing the system — which already exists in countries such as Sweden and Spain. The new bill would ensure that the system stays that way.
Paul Krugman drops a bomb on Trump’s base — he just saddled you with $2 trillion more in debt
Noor Al-Sibai - raw story
30 MAR 2019 AT 16:07 ET
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman outlined all the reasons why President Donald Trump’s tax cut failed — and how much it’s going to cost American taxpayers.
Krugman pointed out that although the 2017 tax cut is Trump’s only “significant piece of legislation” to date, it only delivered for the nation’s richest.
What’s more, the columnist argued, is that the theory behind the tax cut “has turned out to be a complete bust” that will leave American taxpayers saddled with an additional $2 trillion in debt.
“The Trumpist theory — which was, I’m sorry to say, endorsed by conservative economists who should have known better — was that there was a huge pile of money sitting outside the U.S. that companies would bring back and invest productively if given the incentive of lower tax rates,” Krugman wrote.
“But that pile of money,” he continued, “was an accounting fiction.”
What’s more: “the tax cut didn’t give corporations an incentive to build new factories and so on; all it did was induce them to shift their tax-avoidance strategies.”
Krugman noted that Brad Setser of the Council on Foreign Relations pointed out the source of that disparity: upon first glance, it appears that American companies make huge profits via overseas subsidiaries, but a deeper inspection reveals that “the bulk of these reported profits are in a handful of small countries with low or zero tax rates, like Bermuda, Luxembourg and Ireland.”
“The companies obviously aren’t earning huge profits in these tiny economies,” he wrote. “they’re just using accounting gimmicks to assign profits earned elsewhere to subsidiaries that may have a few factories, but sometimes consist of little more than a small office, or even just a post-office box.”
It’s unsurprising, Krugman concluded, that “the investment boom Trump economists promised has never materialized.”
“Companies didn’t use their tax breaks to invest more,” he noted. “Mainly they used them to buy back their own stock. This in turn, put more money in the hands of investors, which gave the economy a temporary boost — although for 2018 as a whole, one of the biggest drivers of faster growth was, believe it or not, higher government spending.”
In spite of the large debt figure, Krugman said he’s “not deeply worried” at the looming $2 trillion deficit created by the tax cuts.
“Given low borrowing costs, the costs and risks of federal debt are far less than the usual suspects — again, the same people who cheered on the Trump tax cut — have claimed,” he mused.
“But think of all the other things we could have done with $2 trillion — all the infrastructure we could have built and repaired, all the people who could have been given essential health care,” Krugman wrote. “What a colossal, corrupt waste.”
Krugman pointed out that although the 2017 tax cut is Trump’s only “significant piece of legislation” to date, it only delivered for the nation’s richest.
What’s more, the columnist argued, is that the theory behind the tax cut “has turned out to be a complete bust” that will leave American taxpayers saddled with an additional $2 trillion in debt.
“The Trumpist theory — which was, I’m sorry to say, endorsed by conservative economists who should have known better — was that there was a huge pile of money sitting outside the U.S. that companies would bring back and invest productively if given the incentive of lower tax rates,” Krugman wrote.
“But that pile of money,” he continued, “was an accounting fiction.”
What’s more: “the tax cut didn’t give corporations an incentive to build new factories and so on; all it did was induce them to shift their tax-avoidance strategies.”
Krugman noted that Brad Setser of the Council on Foreign Relations pointed out the source of that disparity: upon first glance, it appears that American companies make huge profits via overseas subsidiaries, but a deeper inspection reveals that “the bulk of these reported profits are in a handful of small countries with low or zero tax rates, like Bermuda, Luxembourg and Ireland.”
“The companies obviously aren’t earning huge profits in these tiny economies,” he wrote. “they’re just using accounting gimmicks to assign profits earned elsewhere to subsidiaries that may have a few factories, but sometimes consist of little more than a small office, or even just a post-office box.”
It’s unsurprising, Krugman concluded, that “the investment boom Trump economists promised has never materialized.”
“Companies didn’t use their tax breaks to invest more,” he noted. “Mainly they used them to buy back their own stock. This in turn, put more money in the hands of investors, which gave the economy a temporary boost — although for 2018 as a whole, one of the biggest drivers of faster growth was, believe it or not, higher government spending.”
In spite of the large debt figure, Krugman said he’s “not deeply worried” at the looming $2 trillion deficit created by the tax cuts.
“Given low borrowing costs, the costs and risks of federal debt are far less than the usual suspects — again, the same people who cheered on the Trump tax cut — have claimed,” he mused.
“But think of all the other things we could have done with $2 trillion — all the infrastructure we could have built and repaired, all the people who could have been given essential health care,” Krugman wrote. “What a colossal, corrupt waste.”
Paul Krugman uses one chart to show how Trump is screwing over his own voters in West Virginia
Brad Reed - raw story
28 MAR 2019 AT 13:55 ET
Pissident Donald Trump repeatedly vowed to Appalachian voters that he would bring back coal jobs that he falsely claimed were being eliminated due to excessive environmental regulations being put in place by the Obama administration.
However, as the Washington Post reported on Thursday, Trump’s administration hasn’t stopped the closure of coal plants across the U.S.
According to the Post, the main culprit behind the closure of these plants isn’t the Environmental Protection Agency, but rather that “coal can’t compete against cheaper, cleaner alternatives, such as natural gas and solar and wind energy.”
In fact, reports the Post, “more coal plant capacity disappeared during Trump’s first two years in office than during President Barack Obama’s entire first term, and the closures are set to continue in 2019 and beyond.”
Reacting to the continued decline of the coal industry, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman is now arguing on Twitter that the damage that will be done to coal-producing states like West Virginia by Trump’s health care policies is vastly greater than anything Trump could ever do to bring back the coal industry.
“With the new Trump effort to destroy the ACA, I’m thinking about West Virginia, where a lot of people gained insurance under the Medicaid expansion, but voted for Trump because he promised to bring back coal,” he wrote. “So I made a little chart.”
The chart shows the minuscule number of coal jobs added so far under Trump’s presidency — fewer than 5,000 in total — and compares it with 140,000 people in West Virginia who are projected to lose access to health care should Trump succeed in overturning the ACA.
However, as the Washington Post reported on Thursday, Trump’s administration hasn’t stopped the closure of coal plants across the U.S.
According to the Post, the main culprit behind the closure of these plants isn’t the Environmental Protection Agency, but rather that “coal can’t compete against cheaper, cleaner alternatives, such as natural gas and solar and wind energy.”
In fact, reports the Post, “more coal plant capacity disappeared during Trump’s first two years in office than during President Barack Obama’s entire first term, and the closures are set to continue in 2019 and beyond.”
Reacting to the continued decline of the coal industry, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman is now arguing on Twitter that the damage that will be done to coal-producing states like West Virginia by Trump’s health care policies is vastly greater than anything Trump could ever do to bring back the coal industry.
“With the new Trump effort to destroy the ACA, I’m thinking about West Virginia, where a lot of people gained insurance under the Medicaid expansion, but voted for Trump because he promised to bring back coal,” he wrote. “So I made a little chart.”
The chart shows the minuscule number of coal jobs added so far under Trump’s presidency — fewer than 5,000 in total — and compares it with 140,000 people in West Virginia who are projected to lose access to health care should Trump succeed in overturning the ACA.
congrats, stupid voters elected a fool who is taking money out of their pocket!!!
Trump's tariffs are costing Americans $1.4 billion each month, study shows
The study concluded that “the entire incidence of the tariffs fell on domestic consumers and importers,” with “no impact” on the prices received by foreign exporters.
BY THOMAS FRANCK, CNBC
March 26, 2019, 4:39 AM PDT / Source: CNBC.com
President Donald Trump’s trade policies and tariffs reduced U.S. income at a rate of $1.4 billion per month by the end of last November, according to new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Princeton University, and Columbia University.
The collaborative study found that businesses and consumers saw “substantial increases” in the price of goods throughout last year, including a “complete passthrough” of U.S.-imposed tariffs onto imported items. The economists — the New York Fed’s Mary Amiti, Princeton professor Stephen Redding, and Columbia professor David Weinstein — also said Americans suffered by a lack of import variety and disruptions to supply chains.
“Economists have long argued that there are real income losses from import protection. Using the evidence to date from the 2018 trade war, we find empirical support for these arguments,” the researchers wrote. “Losses mounted steadily over the year, as each wave of tariffs affected additional countries and products, and increased substantially after the imposition of the wave 6 tariffs on $200 billion dollars of Chinese exports.”
Amiti, Redding, and Weinstein found that while losses were accumulating at a rate of $1.4 billion per month by last November, total losses from January 2018 through November 2018 ballooned to a conservative estimate of $6.9 billion.
That number may be too low, the economists said, because their model assumes that the U.S. government uses tariff tax revenues to offset the welfare burden. If the U.S. government did not offset the cost of the tariffs to the American consumer with the new tax revenues, the full value of the tariff payments would be $12.3 billion.
The White House imposed a variety tariffs on goods imported from economic partners of the U.S. in 2018. The tit-for-tat between the U.S. and China has come as Trump and the U.S. Trade Representative try to protect American intellectual property and curb a steep trade deficit.
Trump has had varying success with the tariff tactic, winning both a revised version of the North American Free Trade Agreement as well as alienating key allies including Canada and the European Union. The White House announced a round of tariffs on $200 billion of products imported from China at a 10 percent rate last year.
The White House also announced last year the introduction of a 20 percent tariff on the first 1.2 million imported residential washing machines from South Korea and a 50 percent tariff on machines above that number. LG Electronics told retailers less than one week after that decision that it would hike prices.
The research team also found that American consumers are also harmed during a trade war in terms of the variety of goods they can purchase. Consumers benefit from open trade and the ability to purchase more unique goods — like French wine and Colombian coffee, for example — that might be foregone if trade barriers are high.
In the three years prior to the imposition of tariffs, all categories of goods experienced increases in the number of varieties offered in the U.S., the researchers said.
“However, the imposition of the tariffs is associated with sharp drops in the number of imported varieties entering the U.S. in all sectors except the wave 1 products (washing machines and solar panels),” they wrote.
“These results suggest that some of the tariffs were prohibitive, reducing imports to zero. This can create a measurement problem that can arise if we try to assess the price impacts of tariffs on goods that are no longer imported.”
The trade war also caused “dramatic” turmoil in supply chains, as about $165 billion of trade ($136 billion of imports and $29 billion of exports) is lost or redirected through company and customer efforts to circumvent tariffs.
“We find that the U.S. tariffs were almost completely passed through into U.S. domestic prices, so that the entire incidence of the tariffs fell on domestic consumers and importers up to now, with no impact so far on the prices received by foreign exporters,” the Fed, Princeton and Columbia economists wrote. “We also find that U.S. producers responded to reduced import competition by raising their prices.”
The collaborative study found that businesses and consumers saw “substantial increases” in the price of goods throughout last year, including a “complete passthrough” of U.S.-imposed tariffs onto imported items. The economists — the New York Fed’s Mary Amiti, Princeton professor Stephen Redding, and Columbia professor David Weinstein — also said Americans suffered by a lack of import variety and disruptions to supply chains.
“Economists have long argued that there are real income losses from import protection. Using the evidence to date from the 2018 trade war, we find empirical support for these arguments,” the researchers wrote. “Losses mounted steadily over the year, as each wave of tariffs affected additional countries and products, and increased substantially after the imposition of the wave 6 tariffs on $200 billion dollars of Chinese exports.”
Amiti, Redding, and Weinstein found that while losses were accumulating at a rate of $1.4 billion per month by last November, total losses from January 2018 through November 2018 ballooned to a conservative estimate of $6.9 billion.
That number may be too low, the economists said, because their model assumes that the U.S. government uses tariff tax revenues to offset the welfare burden. If the U.S. government did not offset the cost of the tariffs to the American consumer with the new tax revenues, the full value of the tariff payments would be $12.3 billion.
The White House imposed a variety tariffs on goods imported from economic partners of the U.S. in 2018. The tit-for-tat between the U.S. and China has come as Trump and the U.S. Trade Representative try to protect American intellectual property and curb a steep trade deficit.
Trump has had varying success with the tariff tactic, winning both a revised version of the North American Free Trade Agreement as well as alienating key allies including Canada and the European Union. The White House announced a round of tariffs on $200 billion of products imported from China at a 10 percent rate last year.
The White House also announced last year the introduction of a 20 percent tariff on the first 1.2 million imported residential washing machines from South Korea and a 50 percent tariff on machines above that number. LG Electronics told retailers less than one week after that decision that it would hike prices.
The research team also found that American consumers are also harmed during a trade war in terms of the variety of goods they can purchase. Consumers benefit from open trade and the ability to purchase more unique goods — like French wine and Colombian coffee, for example — that might be foregone if trade barriers are high.
In the three years prior to the imposition of tariffs, all categories of goods experienced increases in the number of varieties offered in the U.S., the researchers said.
“However, the imposition of the tariffs is associated with sharp drops in the number of imported varieties entering the U.S. in all sectors except the wave 1 products (washing machines and solar panels),” they wrote.
“These results suggest that some of the tariffs were prohibitive, reducing imports to zero. This can create a measurement problem that can arise if we try to assess the price impacts of tariffs on goods that are no longer imported.”
The trade war also caused “dramatic” turmoil in supply chains, as about $165 billion of trade ($136 billion of imports and $29 billion of exports) is lost or redirected through company and customer efforts to circumvent tariffs.
“We find that the U.S. tariffs were almost completely passed through into U.S. domestic prices, so that the entire incidence of the tariffs fell on domestic consumers and importers up to now, with no impact so far on the prices received by foreign exporters,” the Fed, Princeton and Columbia economists wrote. “We also find that U.S. producers responded to reduced import competition by raising their prices.”
Trump has sold out the farmers who voted for him — and now they’re racing toward calamity
JIM HIGHTOWER, ALTERNET - COMMENTARY - raw story
23 MAR 2019 AT 07:09 ET
As a farmer told me, “You can still make a small fortune in agriculture, but the problem is you have to start with a large fortune.”
Farmers tend to be optimistic pessimists. They know the odds are against them — the bankers, bugs, monopolists, violent weather and sorry politicians. Yet, they keep at it as long as they can; working long and hard hours, enduring arduous conditions and tremendous stress to nurture the seeds that bring us an abundance of foods. But sometimes, the odds bunch up. Coping with natural disasters is to be expected. It’s the unnatural disasters of rigged economic policies, Wall Street greed and unrestrained corporate profiteering that slam the door on good, efficient family farmers, making it impossible for them to keep producing.
This is one of those times. Aside from the rise of floods, drought, tornados, etc. (hello, climate change), farmers are now in the sixth year of plummeting prices for their crops and livestock. They’re producing more than ever but getting less. For example, it costs dairy farmers on average $1.92 to produce a gallon of milk, but the giant processors pay them only a-buck-32 per gallon. No surprise then that since 2000, half of America’s dairy farmers have been squeezed out of business by monopoly pricing. And now comes Trump’s trade spat with China, which has collapsed the market and prices for grain farmers. Overall, farmers’ profits have fallen by almost half in the last five years. Farm debt, bankruptcies, sales and suicides are rising towards the calamitous levels of the 1980s farm crisis, and concentrated corporate power is fast tightening its grip on nearly all food production, prices and policies.
Indeed, a central cause of the spreading farm depression is the increasing monopolization of all the things farmers must buy (from seeds to machinery) and of the markets that buy from them. The big four biotech ag giants, for example, control 63 percent of all commercial seeds sold in the world; four meat processors control 84 percent of the U.S. beef market; and four global traders control up to 90 percent of the world’s grain sales. Our farmers and their families are hurting, but so far, our leaders, including the president, aren’t helping them.
Speaking of the president, have you noticed how often Donald Trump prefaces his policy statements with phrases like “frankly,” “honestly,” “to tell the truth,” and “believe me”?
More than a verbal tic, his constant use of these qualifiers subliminally admits that being frank, honest, truthful and believable is not normal for him. So, like a carnival flimflammer selling snake oil, he strains to convince us rubes that he’s not flimflamming: “Really,” he claims with lying lips, “in all candor, this time I’m truly telling you the gospel truth. Trust me.”
Among those who’re learning about the truthiness of The Donald are the farmers who voted for him, having bought his campaign promise to stand up for them and restore farm prosperity. Once in office, though, he quickly sold them out. First, he threw a hissy-fit of a trade war with China that ended up slapping down U.S. farmers by drastically worsening the already-low prices they were getting for their crops. Instead of prosperity, the average farm profit last year was minus $1,500!
Then, trying to smooth over this betrayal of the heartland, Trump tweeted out a message to ag producers in December that probably didn’t warm that many hearts: “Farmers, I LOVE YOU!” he professed in capital letters. (I’m guessing he offered the same sweet insincerity to Stormy Daniels after he … well, you know.)
Actions speak louder than words, of course. On March 11, Trump then took action to express his true love for farmers: He whacked $3.6 billion from the safety-net programs that offer a measure of relief to hard-hit producers when crop prices crash. Revealing his plutocratic core, the cuts specifically targeted programs that benefit small farmers — a deliberate manipulation meant to drive more families off the land and increase corporate monopolization of agriculture.
Not satisfied with intentionally injuring family farmers, Trump added insult by calling the dab of support they get from the government “overly generous.” This from a real estate flimflammer who continues to rake in millions of dollars in government cash and special tax breaks.
Far from stepping up to stop this robbery of farmers, ransacking of rural vitality and rip-off of consumers, Congress and Trump coddle the monopolistic robbers, ransackers, and rip-off artists. To help counter their insanity, join forces with the grassroots power of Farm Aid.
Farmers tend to be optimistic pessimists. They know the odds are against them — the bankers, bugs, monopolists, violent weather and sorry politicians. Yet, they keep at it as long as they can; working long and hard hours, enduring arduous conditions and tremendous stress to nurture the seeds that bring us an abundance of foods. But sometimes, the odds bunch up. Coping with natural disasters is to be expected. It’s the unnatural disasters of rigged economic policies, Wall Street greed and unrestrained corporate profiteering that slam the door on good, efficient family farmers, making it impossible for them to keep producing.
This is one of those times. Aside from the rise of floods, drought, tornados, etc. (hello, climate change), farmers are now in the sixth year of plummeting prices for their crops and livestock. They’re producing more than ever but getting less. For example, it costs dairy farmers on average $1.92 to produce a gallon of milk, but the giant processors pay them only a-buck-32 per gallon. No surprise then that since 2000, half of America’s dairy farmers have been squeezed out of business by monopoly pricing. And now comes Trump’s trade spat with China, which has collapsed the market and prices for grain farmers. Overall, farmers’ profits have fallen by almost half in the last five years. Farm debt, bankruptcies, sales and suicides are rising towards the calamitous levels of the 1980s farm crisis, and concentrated corporate power is fast tightening its grip on nearly all food production, prices and policies.
Indeed, a central cause of the spreading farm depression is the increasing monopolization of all the things farmers must buy (from seeds to machinery) and of the markets that buy from them. The big four biotech ag giants, for example, control 63 percent of all commercial seeds sold in the world; four meat processors control 84 percent of the U.S. beef market; and four global traders control up to 90 percent of the world’s grain sales. Our farmers and their families are hurting, but so far, our leaders, including the president, aren’t helping them.
Speaking of the president, have you noticed how often Donald Trump prefaces his policy statements with phrases like “frankly,” “honestly,” “to tell the truth,” and “believe me”?
More than a verbal tic, his constant use of these qualifiers subliminally admits that being frank, honest, truthful and believable is not normal for him. So, like a carnival flimflammer selling snake oil, he strains to convince us rubes that he’s not flimflamming: “Really,” he claims with lying lips, “in all candor, this time I’m truly telling you the gospel truth. Trust me.”
Among those who’re learning about the truthiness of The Donald are the farmers who voted for him, having bought his campaign promise to stand up for them and restore farm prosperity. Once in office, though, he quickly sold them out. First, he threw a hissy-fit of a trade war with China that ended up slapping down U.S. farmers by drastically worsening the already-low prices they were getting for their crops. Instead of prosperity, the average farm profit last year was minus $1,500!
Then, trying to smooth over this betrayal of the heartland, Trump tweeted out a message to ag producers in December that probably didn’t warm that many hearts: “Farmers, I LOVE YOU!” he professed in capital letters. (I’m guessing he offered the same sweet insincerity to Stormy Daniels after he … well, you know.)
Actions speak louder than words, of course. On March 11, Trump then took action to express his true love for farmers: He whacked $3.6 billion from the safety-net programs that offer a measure of relief to hard-hit producers when crop prices crash. Revealing his plutocratic core, the cuts specifically targeted programs that benefit small farmers — a deliberate manipulation meant to drive more families off the land and increase corporate monopolization of agriculture.
Not satisfied with intentionally injuring family farmers, Trump added insult by calling the dab of support they get from the government “overly generous.” This from a real estate flimflammer who continues to rake in millions of dollars in government cash and special tax breaks.
Far from stepping up to stop this robbery of farmers, ransacking of rural vitality and rip-off of consumers, Congress and Trump coddle the monopolistic robbers, ransackers, and rip-off artists. To help counter their insanity, join forces with the grassroots power of Farm Aid.
hey, working class trump voters, you just got fucked, again!!!
It just became easier for employers to dump retirees’ pensions
cnn
March 20, 2019
(CNN) — Traditional pensions are disappearing in America, and the federal government just made it easier for employers to get rid of them.
With no fanfare in early March, the Treasury Department issued a notice that allows employers to buy out current retirees from their pensions with a one-time lump sum payment. The decision reverses Obama-era guidance, issued in 2015, that had effectively banned the practice after officials determined that lump-sum payments often shortchanged seniors.
Now, advocates for the elderly worry that millions of people receiving monthly pension checks could be at risk.
“Permitting plans — for their own financial benefit — to replace joint and survivor or other annuities with lump-sum payments will reduce the retirement security of both workers and their spouses,” AARP Legislative Council David Certner said.
Since the 1980s, employers have shifted away from offering defined-benefit pensions, which provide a guaranteed monthly income for as long as someone lives in retirement. Instead, employers now favor 401(k) accounts, a finite pot of money that becomes available at age 59.5.
Pensions, which are insured by the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation in case employers go bankrupt, still cover 26.2 million people across 23,400 single-employer plans. But that number has been shrinking faster than it would naturally as companies close their plans to new hires.
Here’s why: Pensions are big liabilities for companies, which Wall Street ratings agencies don’t like. To remain solvent, pension funds depend on their investments in bonds, stocks and other securities, but recent swings in financial markets serve as a reminder that positive returns are not a sure thing. Pensions are also expensive to maintain. The premiums the PBGC charges per covered employee have more than doubled over the past decade as part of a budget gimmick to fill other government revenue holes.
“Healthy companies throw up their hands and say, ‘why do we bother?'” said Annette Guarisco, president of the ERISA Industry Committee, which represents large employers around regulation of employee benefits. “Because companies are now competing with other companies that don’t offer these benefits to their workers, it becomes a cost that they have to question whether they have the ability to maintain.”
The rise of lump-sum buyouts
Federal law gives employers an out. Companies can offload their pension obligations to the private sector by purchasing an annuity plan for each retiree from an insurance company. Or, for an even cheaper option, they can offer their employees a lump sum up front according to a formula that approximates how much a retiree would receive if they lived an average number of years.
In the insurance world, this strategy is known as “de-risking,” because it transfers pension risk from the company’s balance sheet to an insurance company and to retirees. The lump-sum option became particularly popular starting in 2012, when changes enacted in a 2006 law that made them more financially appealing took full effect.
Ford and General Motors pioneered the practice of offering buyouts to their tens of thousands of current retirees, rather than just those on the cusp of retirement. The insurance firm Towers Watson estimated that about 200 businesses, including big companies like Sears and JCPenney, offered lump sum buyouts that year.
For retirees, taking a lump sum is entirely voluntary. However, behavioral economists have found that people tend to value money that’s right in front of them over money they will get in the future, even if the total over time would be greater. Plus, retiree advocates say that most people aren’t well-equipped with the advanced financial knowledge needed to fully evaluate their options, and often, they’re pressured by family members.
A 2017 study by MetLife found that one in five retirees who took lump sums spent them down within five and a half years, and nearly a third regretted using large chunks of the money for short-term needs like home improvements.
“People get blinded by the amount of money,” said Bill Kadereit, president of the National Retiree Legislative Network. “‘We’ll offer you $400,000,’ and they’re age 65. It’s not that much money at all. But they don’t think about it that way.”
A losing deal for retirees
In 2015, the Government Accountability Office issued a report finding that the rules the IRS had set up around mortality tables and interest rates allowed companies to offer lump sums at a significant discount to the actual value of the pension. Retirees who tried to reinvest the lump-sum payments would almost inevitably lose out — especially women, who tend to live longer than men and are more likely to run out of money in retirement.
But there was no requirement that companies disclose the imbalance, and retirees were taken in by promises from financial advisers that they could do a better job with the money.
“You’ll never be able to replicate the annuity you’re getting from the pension plan,” said Karen Friedman, policy director of the Pension Rights Center. “You’re getting 20% to 30% less than what the pension could buy, and you’re going to try to regain that in the stock market, it’s basically impossible.”
In 2015, after experts and advocates raised these concerns, the Treasury Department announced that it planned to write additional rules around lump-sum buyouts that would be retroactive to the date of the notice. That effectively put an end to the practice of offering lump sums to people who have already retired (offering them at the outset of retirement remained kosher). That is, until March 6, when the Trump administration’s Treasury said it didn’t plan to issue the rules after all.
That move could unleash a torrent of new lump-sum offers. As soon as the notice was issued, legal and financial services firms sent out notices to their clients advertising the benefits of the strategy, and there’s been a lot of interest.
“The phones are ringing,” said Wesley Wickenheiser, a principal with the benefits consultant Findley. “Anywhere from smaller clients from around the country to those with many many thousands of retirees.”
Josh Gotbaum served as director of the PBGC from 2010 until 2014, and lobbied for tighter rules around lump-sum buyouts. He’s frustrated by what he calls the “general scandal” of Congress incentivizing companies to get out of their pension obligations — firs by allowing companies to present retirees with an option that isn’t as good as it looks, and then by increasing the incentive to do so by raising PBGC premiums.
“You’re taking a group of people who are retirees who are already living their lives on a pension, and you are saying to them, ‘here, instead of the pension, why don’t you take this big check,’ and they don’t bother to tell them that this big check is worth less than your pension,” Gotbaum said. “And that’s what Treasury said you can go back and do.”
With no fanfare in early March, the Treasury Department issued a notice that allows employers to buy out current retirees from their pensions with a one-time lump sum payment. The decision reverses Obama-era guidance, issued in 2015, that had effectively banned the practice after officials determined that lump-sum payments often shortchanged seniors.
Now, advocates for the elderly worry that millions of people receiving monthly pension checks could be at risk.
“Permitting plans — for their own financial benefit — to replace joint and survivor or other annuities with lump-sum payments will reduce the retirement security of both workers and their spouses,” AARP Legislative Council David Certner said.
Since the 1980s, employers have shifted away from offering defined-benefit pensions, which provide a guaranteed monthly income for as long as someone lives in retirement. Instead, employers now favor 401(k) accounts, a finite pot of money that becomes available at age 59.5.
Pensions, which are insured by the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation in case employers go bankrupt, still cover 26.2 million people across 23,400 single-employer plans. But that number has been shrinking faster than it would naturally as companies close their plans to new hires.
Here’s why: Pensions are big liabilities for companies, which Wall Street ratings agencies don’t like. To remain solvent, pension funds depend on their investments in bonds, stocks and other securities, but recent swings in financial markets serve as a reminder that positive returns are not a sure thing. Pensions are also expensive to maintain. The premiums the PBGC charges per covered employee have more than doubled over the past decade as part of a budget gimmick to fill other government revenue holes.
“Healthy companies throw up their hands and say, ‘why do we bother?'” said Annette Guarisco, president of the ERISA Industry Committee, which represents large employers around regulation of employee benefits. “Because companies are now competing with other companies that don’t offer these benefits to their workers, it becomes a cost that they have to question whether they have the ability to maintain.”
The rise of lump-sum buyouts
Federal law gives employers an out. Companies can offload their pension obligations to the private sector by purchasing an annuity plan for each retiree from an insurance company. Or, for an even cheaper option, they can offer their employees a lump sum up front according to a formula that approximates how much a retiree would receive if they lived an average number of years.
In the insurance world, this strategy is known as “de-risking,” because it transfers pension risk from the company’s balance sheet to an insurance company and to retirees. The lump-sum option became particularly popular starting in 2012, when changes enacted in a 2006 law that made them more financially appealing took full effect.
Ford and General Motors pioneered the practice of offering buyouts to their tens of thousands of current retirees, rather than just those on the cusp of retirement. The insurance firm Towers Watson estimated that about 200 businesses, including big companies like Sears and JCPenney, offered lump sum buyouts that year.
For retirees, taking a lump sum is entirely voluntary. However, behavioral economists have found that people tend to value money that’s right in front of them over money they will get in the future, even if the total over time would be greater. Plus, retiree advocates say that most people aren’t well-equipped with the advanced financial knowledge needed to fully evaluate their options, and often, they’re pressured by family members.
A 2017 study by MetLife found that one in five retirees who took lump sums spent them down within five and a half years, and nearly a third regretted using large chunks of the money for short-term needs like home improvements.
“People get blinded by the amount of money,” said Bill Kadereit, president of the National Retiree Legislative Network. “‘We’ll offer you $400,000,’ and they’re age 65. It’s not that much money at all. But they don’t think about it that way.”
A losing deal for retirees
In 2015, the Government Accountability Office issued a report finding that the rules the IRS had set up around mortality tables and interest rates allowed companies to offer lump sums at a significant discount to the actual value of the pension. Retirees who tried to reinvest the lump-sum payments would almost inevitably lose out — especially women, who tend to live longer than men and are more likely to run out of money in retirement.
But there was no requirement that companies disclose the imbalance, and retirees were taken in by promises from financial advisers that they could do a better job with the money.
“You’ll never be able to replicate the annuity you’re getting from the pension plan,” said Karen Friedman, policy director of the Pension Rights Center. “You’re getting 20% to 30% less than what the pension could buy, and you’re going to try to regain that in the stock market, it’s basically impossible.”
In 2015, after experts and advocates raised these concerns, the Treasury Department announced that it planned to write additional rules around lump-sum buyouts that would be retroactive to the date of the notice. That effectively put an end to the practice of offering lump sums to people who have already retired (offering them at the outset of retirement remained kosher). That is, until March 6, when the Trump administration’s Treasury said it didn’t plan to issue the rules after all.
That move could unleash a torrent of new lump-sum offers. As soon as the notice was issued, legal and financial services firms sent out notices to their clients advertising the benefits of the strategy, and there’s been a lot of interest.
“The phones are ringing,” said Wesley Wickenheiser, a principal with the benefits consultant Findley. “Anywhere from smaller clients from around the country to those with many many thousands of retirees.”
Josh Gotbaum served as director of the PBGC from 2010 until 2014, and lobbied for tighter rules around lump-sum buyouts. He’s frustrated by what he calls the “general scandal” of Congress incentivizing companies to get out of their pension obligations — firs by allowing companies to present retirees with an option that isn’t as good as it looks, and then by increasing the incentive to do so by raising PBGC premiums.
“You’re taking a group of people who are retirees who are already living their lives on a pension, and you are saying to them, ‘here, instead of the pension, why don’t you take this big check,’ and they don’t bother to tell them that this big check is worth less than your pension,” Gotbaum said. “And that’s what Treasury said you can go back and do.”
congrats farmers!!!
Trump budget proposes subsidy cuts to farmers as they grapple with crisis
by Humeyra Pamuk - Reuters - raw story
11 MAR 2019 AT 14:28 ET
Pissident Donald Trump’s 2020 budget on Monday proposed a 15 percent cut for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, calling its subsidies to farmers “overly generous” at a time when they are going through the worst crisis in decades due to depressed commodity prices and Trump’s trade tariffs.
The Republican president’s budget requested $20.8 billion for the USDA, a cut of $3.6 billion, or 15 percent, from the 2019 estimate, according to the proposed budget text. It proposes reducing premium subsidies for crop insurance, limiting the number of producers who would be eligible and tightening commodity payment limits.
“The budget also proposes that USDA responsibly and efficiently use taxpayer resources by making targeted reforms to duplicative programs and overly generous subsidy programs,” the document said.
The U.S. agriculture industry is going through its worst crisis since the 1980s, triggered by depressed prices and deepened by Trump’s trade dispute with key trading partners such as China.
The American rural heartland had helped carry Trump to victory in 2016 and remains largely supportive of his hard line on trade, but is urgently calling for a deal with China to end the trade dispute.
“The steep cuts to the USDA would jeopardize the department’s ability to implement the farm bill at a time when farmers are struggling with economic instability and trade uncertainty,” Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow said in a statement.
The farm bill, crop insurance and commodity programs serve as a safety net for farmers, shielding them from the financial damage of unforeseen natural disasters and helping them manage their risk. A new farm bill was passed at the end of 2018.
The budget proposes to reduce the average premium subsidy for crop insurance from 62 percent to 48 percent and limit subsidies to producers that posted an adjusted gross income of half-a-million dollars or less.
It also requests tightening commodity payment limits, including eliminating an “unnecessary and separate” payment limit for peanut producers and limiting eligibility for commodity subsidies to one manager per farm.
The budget also proposes tightening around the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which feeds roughly 40 million Americans and is administered by the Agriculture Department. The budget text said it includes proposals to help able-bodied adults to enter the job market.
Food stamps were at the heart of a bitter partisan debate last year. The administration unveiled plans to curb them through a proposed rule after Republican efforts to do so failed in the Congress.
Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue described Trump’s budget as “fiscally conservative” and said the department will do its part in reducing federal spending. He also vowed it will continue to provide a safety net for farmers.
Trump’s budget is expected to be rejected by Congress, where Democratic leaders on Sunday warned him against what they called a “repeat performance” of last year’s funding war, which led to a five-week partial shutdown of the federal government.
The Republican president’s budget requested $20.8 billion for the USDA, a cut of $3.6 billion, or 15 percent, from the 2019 estimate, according to the proposed budget text. It proposes reducing premium subsidies for crop insurance, limiting the number of producers who would be eligible and tightening commodity payment limits.
“The budget also proposes that USDA responsibly and efficiently use taxpayer resources by making targeted reforms to duplicative programs and overly generous subsidy programs,” the document said.
The U.S. agriculture industry is going through its worst crisis since the 1980s, triggered by depressed prices and deepened by Trump’s trade dispute with key trading partners such as China.
The American rural heartland had helped carry Trump to victory in 2016 and remains largely supportive of his hard line on trade, but is urgently calling for a deal with China to end the trade dispute.
“The steep cuts to the USDA would jeopardize the department’s ability to implement the farm bill at a time when farmers are struggling with economic instability and trade uncertainty,” Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow said in a statement.
The farm bill, crop insurance and commodity programs serve as a safety net for farmers, shielding them from the financial damage of unforeseen natural disasters and helping them manage their risk. A new farm bill was passed at the end of 2018.
The budget proposes to reduce the average premium subsidy for crop insurance from 62 percent to 48 percent and limit subsidies to producers that posted an adjusted gross income of half-a-million dollars or less.
It also requests tightening commodity payment limits, including eliminating an “unnecessary and separate” payment limit for peanut producers and limiting eligibility for commodity subsidies to one manager per farm.
The budget also proposes tightening around the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which feeds roughly 40 million Americans and is administered by the Agriculture Department. The budget text said it includes proposals to help able-bodied adults to enter the job market.
Food stamps were at the heart of a bitter partisan debate last year. The administration unveiled plans to curb them through a proposed rule after Republican efforts to do so failed in the Congress.
Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue described Trump’s budget as “fiscally conservative” and said the department will do its part in reducing federal spending. He also vowed it will continue to provide a safety net for farmers.
Trump’s budget is expected to be rejected by Congress, where Democratic leaders on Sunday warned him against what they called a “repeat performance” of last year’s funding war, which led to a five-week partial shutdown of the federal government.
US farm debt soars to levels seen during 1980s farm crisis: Agriculture secretary
Reuters - raw story
27 FEB 2019 AT 12:42 ET
The amount of debt held by America’s farmers has risen rapidly to 1980s-levels at $409 billion from $385 billion last year, with loan demand remaining “historically high,” U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said on Wednesday.
The figures reflect a level of strain on the U.S. farm belt that is comparable to the agricultural crisis of three decades ago, this time driven by lingering weakness in commodity prices, storms damaging crops and loss of key export markets such as China due to President Donald Trump’s trade disputes.
“Farm debt has been rising more rapidly over the last five years, increasing by 30 percent since 2013 – up from $315 billion to $409 billion, according to USDA data, and up from $385 billion in just the last year – to levels seen in the 1980s,” Perdue said in his testimony to the House Agriculture Committee.
But he added: “Relatively firm land values have kept farmer debt-to-asset levels low by historical standards at 13.5 percent, and continued low interest rates have kept the cost of borrowing relatively affordable.”
“But those average values mask areas of greater vulnerability,” he said.
In the 1980s, thousands of farm operations financially collapsed after producers dealing with low crop prices fell behind on high-interest land and equipment loans.
USDA chief economist Robert Johansson said late last week that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is concerned about a potential future decline in farmland real estate prices, a key pillar of equity for the U.S. agricultural heartland, but has seen no sign of that happening so far.
Farm incomes and agrarian credit conditions continued to erode in the second half of 2018 and for bankers one key concern has been the amount of farmland that could come up for sale in the coming months and whether that could trigger an across-the-board drop in land prices.
“I get more phone calls from bankers these days than farmers,” Austin Scott, Congressman from Georgia, said at the hearing.
The Trump administration has pledged up to $12 billion in aid for farmers to offset their losses from the trade fights. Perdue said more than $8 billion has been paid as part of those programs to date. USDA has said there will not be an aid package for 2019.
The figures reflect a level of strain on the U.S. farm belt that is comparable to the agricultural crisis of three decades ago, this time driven by lingering weakness in commodity prices, storms damaging crops and loss of key export markets such as China due to President Donald Trump’s trade disputes.
“Farm debt has been rising more rapidly over the last five years, increasing by 30 percent since 2013 – up from $315 billion to $409 billion, according to USDA data, and up from $385 billion in just the last year – to levels seen in the 1980s,” Perdue said in his testimony to the House Agriculture Committee.
But he added: “Relatively firm land values have kept farmer debt-to-asset levels low by historical standards at 13.5 percent, and continued low interest rates have kept the cost of borrowing relatively affordable.”
“But those average values mask areas of greater vulnerability,” he said.
In the 1980s, thousands of farm operations financially collapsed after producers dealing with low crop prices fell behind on high-interest land and equipment loans.
USDA chief economist Robert Johansson said late last week that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is concerned about a potential future decline in farmland real estate prices, a key pillar of equity for the U.S. agricultural heartland, but has seen no sign of that happening so far.
Farm incomes and agrarian credit conditions continued to erode in the second half of 2018 and for bankers one key concern has been the amount of farmland that could come up for sale in the coming months and whether that could trigger an across-the-board drop in land prices.
“I get more phone calls from bankers these days than farmers,” Austin Scott, Congressman from Georgia, said at the hearing.
The Trump administration has pledged up to $12 billion in aid for farmers to offset their losses from the trade fights. Perdue said more than $8 billion has been paid as part of those programs to date. USDA has said there will not be an aid package for 2019.
US farm exports expected to fall $1.9 billion in 2019 thanks to Trump’s trade war
Reuters - raw story
21 FEB 2019 AT 09:59 ET
The U.S. Department of Agriculture expects the value of U.S. farm exports to drop by $1.9 billion to $141.5 billion in fiscal 2019 from a year earlier, led by a steep decline in shipments to China due to an ongoing trade dispute, a department official said on Thursday.
The forecast was issued even as trade negotiators from the world’s two largest economies were working ahead of a March 1 deadline to resolve their trade spat, something that could vastly change the USDA’s outlook, if successful.
“The share of total U.S. agricultural exports to China in value terms is projected to be 6 percent, down sharply, with China falling from the top market in 2017 to fifth place,” USDA Chief Economist Robert Johansson told the USDA annual forum in Washington.
He said the United States had exported 24 million metric tonnes of soybeans in the 2019 crop year, down 13.5 million metric tonnes from this time last year.
“Under the trade dispute, exports to China alone have plummeted by 22 million tonnes, or over 90 percent,” he said.
Johansson said sales of U.S. soybeans to the European Union, Egypt, Argentina, and others had risen, but that has “not been enough to make up for the lost exports to China.”
The South American soy harvest would make exports more competitive in the rest of the marketing year, dimming the prospects for an export recovery, he said.
Johansson did not provide an update on the U.S.-China trade negotiations.
Reuters reported on Wednesday that China and the United States were looking at a list of 10 ways China could reduce its trade surplus with the United States, which included buying agricultural produce, energy and other goods.
Bloomberg reported on Thursday that China is expected to propose buying an additional $30 billion of U.S. agricultural imports a year.
The forecast was issued even as trade negotiators from the world’s two largest economies were working ahead of a March 1 deadline to resolve their trade spat, something that could vastly change the USDA’s outlook, if successful.
“The share of total U.S. agricultural exports to China in value terms is projected to be 6 percent, down sharply, with China falling from the top market in 2017 to fifth place,” USDA Chief Economist Robert Johansson told the USDA annual forum in Washington.
He said the United States had exported 24 million metric tonnes of soybeans in the 2019 crop year, down 13.5 million metric tonnes from this time last year.
“Under the trade dispute, exports to China alone have plummeted by 22 million tonnes, or over 90 percent,” he said.
Johansson said sales of U.S. soybeans to the European Union, Egypt, Argentina, and others had risen, but that has “not been enough to make up for the lost exports to China.”
The South American soy harvest would make exports more competitive in the rest of the marketing year, dimming the prospects for an export recovery, he said.
Johansson did not provide an update on the U.S.-China trade negotiations.
Reuters reported on Wednesday that China and the United States were looking at a list of 10 ways China could reduce its trade surplus with the United States, which included buying agricultural produce, energy and other goods.
Bloomberg reported on Thursday that China is expected to propose buying an additional $30 billion of U.S. agricultural imports a year.
‘That’s it, I’m done’: Trump voter quits supporting president after her tax bill increases five fold
David Edwards - raw story
18 FEB 2019 AT 11:53 ET
A Long Island woman who was a supporter of Donald Trump’s campaign says she no longer supports the president after her tax bill increased by 500 percent.
Beth Callori told The Huffington Post that she welcomed the extra $90 in each paycheck after Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act into law.
“I thought, ‘Wow, Trump is great, I love him,’” Callori explained.
But Callori changed her tune after her tax preparer informed her that she owed $5,000 in federal taxes — five times the amount she has paid in previous years.
“I almost fell out of my chair. I could not believe it,” she remarked. “I voted for Trump. I thought he was going to be good for this country, but when I got that phone call, that’s it, I’m done.”
According to The Huffington Post, there are two reasons Callori is seeing an increase.
Callori’s tax bill went up for two reasons. One is that the law directly disadvantaged her by limiting deductions for state and local taxes, which increased the amount of Callori’s income subject to tax and added an extra grand to her bill.
The bigger reason is that her employer withheld too little from her paycheck. The extra $90 she received should have been added to the amount that gets automatically socked away to cover the federal income tax. Like most people, however, Callori did not fill out a worksheet and submit a new Form W-4 to her employer at the beginning of last year.
After all, at that time Republicans kept bragging about the bigger paychecks they had given the American people.
“I thought because I was getting that, I’m entitled to it,” Callori lamented.
Read the entire report here.
Beth Callori told The Huffington Post that she welcomed the extra $90 in each paycheck after Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act into law.
“I thought, ‘Wow, Trump is great, I love him,’” Callori explained.
But Callori changed her tune after her tax preparer informed her that she owed $5,000 in federal taxes — five times the amount she has paid in previous years.
“I almost fell out of my chair. I could not believe it,” she remarked. “I voted for Trump. I thought he was going to be good for this country, but when I got that phone call, that’s it, I’m done.”
According to The Huffington Post, there are two reasons Callori is seeing an increase.
Callori’s tax bill went up for two reasons. One is that the law directly disadvantaged her by limiting deductions for state and local taxes, which increased the amount of Callori’s income subject to tax and added an extra grand to her bill.
The bigger reason is that her employer withheld too little from her paycheck. The extra $90 she received should have been added to the amount that gets automatically socked away to cover the federal income tax. Like most people, however, Callori did not fill out a worksheet and submit a new Form W-4 to her employer at the beginning of last year.
After all, at that time Republicans kept bragging about the bigger paychecks they had given the American people.
“I thought because I was getting that, I’m entitled to it,” Callori lamented.
Read the entire report here.
Midwest farmers going broke at record rates thanks to Trump's trade war
Bankruptcies have doubled in the biggest farm states, with falling prices and the trade war largely to blame
IGOR DERYSH - salon
FEBRUARY 13, 2019 10:00AM (UTC)
Farmers in the Midwest are filing for bankruptcy at record rates as a result of President Trump’s trade war.
Bankruptcies in courts that cover the largest farm states in the country were nearly double in 2018 what they were in 2008, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers a region that includes Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin, received twice as many bankruptcy filings in 2018 as it did in 2008, during the height of the Great Recession.
The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Arkansas, Nebraska and both Dakotas, saw a 96 percent increase in bankruptcy filings last year compared to 2008.
The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah and Wyoming, saw 59 percent more farm bankruptcies last year than it did during the financial crisis a decade earlier.
Those states produce nearly half of all American farm sales and had already been hit hard by the sinking prices of corn and soybeans as well as increased competition from overseas.
The Wall Street Journal points to Trump’s trade war with countries like China and Mexico as a key driver in the rising rate of farm bankruptcies.
Soybean and hog prices fell after those countries imposed retaliatory tariffs on the United States in response to Trump’s steel and import tariffs, Bloomberg reported.
Dairy farmers have also been hit hard by the retaliatory tariffs China and Mexico imposed on U.S. cheese and tariffs on pork have led to a record buildup of meat and caused prices of beef and chicken to plummet.
Farmers say that after years of lowered profits, the trade war was more than many farmers could afford.
“I’ve been through several dips in 40 years,” Nebraska corn and soybean farmer Kirk Duensing told the Wall Street Journal after filing for bankruptcy with more than $1 million in debt. “This one here is gonna kick my butt.”
According to the Department of Agriculture, the median farm income was negative by $1,548 in 2018 while farm debt climbed to more than $400 billion, a rate not seen in the last four decades.
The spike in bankruptcies and plummeting farm profits could well put a damper on President Trump’s re-election hopes. Trump repeatedly vowed to help farmers on the 2016 campaign trail, and a Farm Journal Research survey reported that 70 percent of farmers voted for him over Hillary Clinton.
The group reports that just over half of farmers would vote for him again. Even Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican who has generally been a strong Trump ally, has railed against the trade war as “catastrophic.”
Trump appears undeterred and has repeatedly bragged that “billions of dollars are pouring into the coffers of the USA because of the tariffs being charged to China.”
This is not true. Those tariffs aren’t being "charged to China" at all. They are being charged to American importers who then pass on the costs to consumers.
Beyond that , an analysis by the Council on Foreign Relations found that the Trump administration will pay 115 percent of the money tariffs are estimated to generated in order to bail out farmers hit hard by the trade war.
“All of it and more is being paid out to American farmers as partial compensation for their losses from Chinese tariff retaliation,” according to CFR. “The U.S. government has already committed to paying out $1.2 billion more to angry American farmers than it will take in this year from angry American firms.”
Bankruptcies in courts that cover the largest farm states in the country were nearly double in 2018 what they were in 2008, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers a region that includes Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin, received twice as many bankruptcy filings in 2018 as it did in 2008, during the height of the Great Recession.
The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Arkansas, Nebraska and both Dakotas, saw a 96 percent increase in bankruptcy filings last year compared to 2008.
The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah and Wyoming, saw 59 percent more farm bankruptcies last year than it did during the financial crisis a decade earlier.
Those states produce nearly half of all American farm sales and had already been hit hard by the sinking prices of corn and soybeans as well as increased competition from overseas.
The Wall Street Journal points to Trump’s trade war with countries like China and Mexico as a key driver in the rising rate of farm bankruptcies.
Soybean and hog prices fell after those countries imposed retaliatory tariffs on the United States in response to Trump’s steel and import tariffs, Bloomberg reported.
Dairy farmers have also been hit hard by the retaliatory tariffs China and Mexico imposed on U.S. cheese and tariffs on pork have led to a record buildup of meat and caused prices of beef and chicken to plummet.
Farmers say that after years of lowered profits, the trade war was more than many farmers could afford.
“I’ve been through several dips in 40 years,” Nebraska corn and soybean farmer Kirk Duensing told the Wall Street Journal after filing for bankruptcy with more than $1 million in debt. “This one here is gonna kick my butt.”
According to the Department of Agriculture, the median farm income was negative by $1,548 in 2018 while farm debt climbed to more than $400 billion, a rate not seen in the last four decades.
The spike in bankruptcies and plummeting farm profits could well put a damper on President Trump’s re-election hopes. Trump repeatedly vowed to help farmers on the 2016 campaign trail, and a Farm Journal Research survey reported that 70 percent of farmers voted for him over Hillary Clinton.
The group reports that just over half of farmers would vote for him again. Even Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican who has generally been a strong Trump ally, has railed against the trade war as “catastrophic.”
Trump appears undeterred and has repeatedly bragged that “billions of dollars are pouring into the coffers of the USA because of the tariffs being charged to China.”
This is not true. Those tariffs aren’t being "charged to China" at all. They are being charged to American importers who then pass on the costs to consumers.
Beyond that , an analysis by the Council on Foreign Relations found that the Trump administration will pay 115 percent of the money tariffs are estimated to generated in order to bail out farmers hit hard by the trade war.
“All of it and more is being paid out to American farmers as partial compensation for their losses from Chinese tariff retaliation,” according to CFR. “The U.S. government has already committed to paying out $1.2 billion more to angry American farmers than it will take in this year from angry American firms.”
Reeling from the shutdown and Trump’s tax law, Americans see 8.4% drop in average tax refunds
And you can't exactly file them on "one card," either.
JESSICA M. GOLDSTEIN - thinkprogress
FEB 9, 2019, 11:54 AM
Last April, President Trump bragged that, under his new tax code, not only would “you save a lot of money,” but that the filing process would be so simple, you’d be able to file on “one page, one card.”
“You’ll have a nice, simple form next year,” Trump said last April. “This will be the last year. So take pictures of it and enjoy it. This is the last time you’ll have to file a very complex and big tax form. It will be much easier starting next April.”
In fact, Americans who were counting on hundreds of dollars in tax refunds last week found themselves coming up short.
Some 30 million Americans are going to end up owing the IRS money this year, which is three million more people than owed the IRS money before the Trump administration’s tax law went into effect.
The Internal Revenue Service reports that the average refunds last week were down 8.4 percent for the first week of the tax season. The average tax refund check paid out this year has been $1,865, down almost $200 from this same time last year. Changes to the tax code also complicated payroll withholding, meaning many employers did not withhold enough and their employees now owe more taxes.
In short, filing your taxes is as convoluted as ever, arguably moreso, in this first full year under the new tax law.
As HuffPost notes, “Low-income taxpayers often file early to pocket the money as soon as possible. Many taxpayers count on the refunds to make important payments, or spend the money on things like home repairs, a vacation or a car.”
This data is only from the first week of filing, though, in a process that will continue until April 15. The IRS has urged taxpayers to keep in mind how early the season is and to file online “as the quickest way to receive their refunds.”
Edward Karl, vice president of taxation for the American Institute of CPAs, told Politico, “There are going to be a lot of unhappy people over the next month. Taxpayers want a large refund.”
Karl also told Politico that “some 71 percent of taxpayers received refunds last year worth about $3,000 on average, which represents the single largest financial transaction for the bulk of those people in a given year.”
Meanwhile, the effects of the shutdown — the longest in U.S. history — are still lingering weeks after the government was finally reopened. The number of refunds sent out by the IRS was down approximately 24 percent; the IRS was still “struggl[ing] to get up to speed after the government shutdown,” HuffPost writes. The shutdown ended only three days before filing season began.
“You’ll have a nice, simple form next year,” Trump said last April. “This will be the last year. So take pictures of it and enjoy it. This is the last time you’ll have to file a very complex and big tax form. It will be much easier starting next April.”
In fact, Americans who were counting on hundreds of dollars in tax refunds last week found themselves coming up short.
Some 30 million Americans are going to end up owing the IRS money this year, which is three million more people than owed the IRS money before the Trump administration’s tax law went into effect.
The Internal Revenue Service reports that the average refunds last week were down 8.4 percent for the first week of the tax season. The average tax refund check paid out this year has been $1,865, down almost $200 from this same time last year. Changes to the tax code also complicated payroll withholding, meaning many employers did not withhold enough and their employees now owe more taxes.
In short, filing your taxes is as convoluted as ever, arguably moreso, in this first full year under the new tax law.
As HuffPost notes, “Low-income taxpayers often file early to pocket the money as soon as possible. Many taxpayers count on the refunds to make important payments, or spend the money on things like home repairs, a vacation or a car.”
This data is only from the first week of filing, though, in a process that will continue until April 15. The IRS has urged taxpayers to keep in mind how early the season is and to file online “as the quickest way to receive their refunds.”
Edward Karl, vice president of taxation for the American Institute of CPAs, told Politico, “There are going to be a lot of unhappy people over the next month. Taxpayers want a large refund.”
Karl also told Politico that “some 71 percent of taxpayers received refunds last year worth about $3,000 on average, which represents the single largest financial transaction for the bulk of those people in a given year.”
Meanwhile, the effects of the shutdown — the longest in U.S. history — are still lingering weeks after the government was finally reopened. The number of refunds sent out by the IRS was down approximately 24 percent; the IRS was still “struggl[ing] to get up to speed after the government shutdown,” HuffPost writes. The shutdown ended only three days before filing season began.
Trump’s trade wars put farms on the brink of bankruptcy — and it could be ‘devastating’ for his 2020 campaign: report
Brad Reed - raw story
06 FEB 2019 AT 14:12 ET
A new report from Politico shows that President Donald Trump’s trade war with China is still hammering farmers in the Midwest, and one political scientist predicts that it will cost him the 2020 election if he doesn’t fix it fast.
“The president’s trade policies have sent U.S. agricultural exports plunging, exacerbating already difficult economic conditions facing farmers,” Politico reports. “Average farm income has fallen to near 15-year lows under Trump, and in some areas of the country, farm bankruptcies are soaring.”
Farming lobbying groups are hitting Capitol Hill this week to lobby the president to wind down his trade war, and they’re describing the plight American farmers are facing thanks to Trump’s tariffs.
“You’ve had farms that have gone out of business, that have gone bankrupt because of this trade war,” Brian Kuehl, the executive director of Farmers for Free Trade, tells Politico. “There’s a lot of farmers going through tough conversations right now with their lenders.”
And Gregory Wawro, political science professor at Columbia University, tells Politico that Trump is shooting his own reelection campaign in the foot as his trade war drags on.
“If the farm economy continues to get worse in the run-up to 2020, my sense is that this will be devastating to Trump,” he said. “Although it is difficult to defeat a sitting president, it is hard to see how Trump wins a second term if things play out that way.”
“The president’s trade policies have sent U.S. agricultural exports plunging, exacerbating already difficult economic conditions facing farmers,” Politico reports. “Average farm income has fallen to near 15-year lows under Trump, and in some areas of the country, farm bankruptcies are soaring.”
Farming lobbying groups are hitting Capitol Hill this week to lobby the president to wind down his trade war, and they’re describing the plight American farmers are facing thanks to Trump’s tariffs.
“You’ve had farms that have gone out of business, that have gone bankrupt because of this trade war,” Brian Kuehl, the executive director of Farmers for Free Trade, tells Politico. “There’s a lot of farmers going through tough conversations right now with their lenders.”
And Gregory Wawro, political science professor at Columbia University, tells Politico that Trump is shooting his own reelection campaign in the foot as his trade war drags on.
“If the farm economy continues to get worse in the run-up to 2020, my sense is that this will be devastating to Trump,” he said. “Although it is difficult to defeat a sitting president, it is hard to see how Trump wins a second term if things play out that way.”
Trump’s tariffs completely wiped out Harley-Davidson profits last quarter
Brad Reed - raw story
29 JAN 2019 AT 11:18 ET
President Donald Trump’s tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum have taken a hammer to the financial bottom line of iconic American motorcycle manufacturer Harley-Davidson.
Bloomberg reports that Harley-Davidson “barely broke even” in its fourth-quarter 2018 earnings report, as the president’s trade wars with China and other nations continued to take their toll.
Without the costs of the tariffs, the company would have posted earnings of $0.17 per share, which was a big miss compared to the consensus estimate of $0.29 per share. This was Harley-Davidson’s biggest miss of the consensus estimate since early 2009, when the entire country was reeling from the impact of the 2008 global financial crisis.
The bad financial report caused Harley-Davidson’s stock to plummet and share prices dropped by as much as 9 percent in the wake of the news.
Harley-Davidson last year announced it was laying off hundreds of workers while company CEO Matthew Levatich blamed Trump’s trade policies in part for its decision to give employees the ax.
The president has also gotten into Twitter feuds with the company after it announced over the summer that it would be moving some of its manufacturing operations overseas.
Bloomberg reports that Harley-Davidson “barely broke even” in its fourth-quarter 2018 earnings report, as the president’s trade wars with China and other nations continued to take their toll.
Without the costs of the tariffs, the company would have posted earnings of $0.17 per share, which was a big miss compared to the consensus estimate of $0.29 per share. This was Harley-Davidson’s biggest miss of the consensus estimate since early 2009, when the entire country was reeling from the impact of the 2008 global financial crisis.
The bad financial report caused Harley-Davidson’s stock to plummet and share prices dropped by as much as 9 percent in the wake of the news.
Harley-Davidson last year announced it was laying off hundreds of workers while company CEO Matthew Levatich blamed Trump’s trade policies in part for its decision to give employees the ax.
The president has also gotten into Twitter feuds with the company after it announced over the summer that it would be moving some of its manufacturing operations overseas.
prediction by the people who caused the problems!!!
U.S. on track to add $12 trillion to national debt by 2029 unless Washington changes course
marketwatch
Published: Jan 28, 2019 1:59 p.m. ET
Washington has been drowning in red ink for years and it’s only going to get a lot worse over the next decade, a fresh government estimate shows.
The U.S. is likely to add $12 trillion in public debt from 2020 to 2029 through a combination of higher government spending and slower economic growth, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That’s on top of the $16.6 trillion the government is expected to owe to the public at the end of 2019.
Unless the red fiscal tide is reversed, the percentage of the U.S. public debt relative to the size of the economy would climb to 93% by 2029 from 78% right now.
That’s a bit lower than the CBO’s prior forecast, but it would still be historic in a time of peace. The last time the U.S. debt was that big was shortly after the end of World War Two, a period when the government spent enormous sums to defeat the Nazi menace and Japanese militarism.
Expressed another way, the public debt would average 4.4% of gross domestic product from 2020 to 2029.
“Such deficits would be significantly larger than the 2.9% of GDP that deficits averaged over the past 50 years,” the CBO said.
What’s the problem? The CBO predicts a steady increase in federal spending based on current law, particularly to pay for health care and other expenses for the elderly.
Although tax receipts are likely to increase despite large tax cuts by the Trump White House, they won’t rise as fast as spending, the agency said.
At the same time, the U.S. economy is likely to decelerate from a projected 3.1% growth rate in 2018 to an annual average of 1.7% over the next decade, the CBO projects. Previously the agency had predicted the economy would grow slightly faster in the next 10 years.
The agency believes slow population growth is one of the chief reasons — along with higher interest rates by the Federal Reserve.
The CBO, of course, could be wrong. The economy could grow much faster than it expects, taxes could rise or spending could fall. Yet if the agency is right, the fiscal health of the U.S. will continue to deteriorate.
In 2019, the annual U.S. deficit is forecast to rise to $900 billion from $779 billion in 2018. The deficit is projected to top $1 trillion annually beginning in 2022 — two years later than the CBO originally forecast.
The U.S. is likely to add $12 trillion in public debt from 2020 to 2029 through a combination of higher government spending and slower economic growth, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That’s on top of the $16.6 trillion the government is expected to owe to the public at the end of 2019.
Unless the red fiscal tide is reversed, the percentage of the U.S. public debt relative to the size of the economy would climb to 93% by 2029 from 78% right now.
That’s a bit lower than the CBO’s prior forecast, but it would still be historic in a time of peace. The last time the U.S. debt was that big was shortly after the end of World War Two, a period when the government spent enormous sums to defeat the Nazi menace and Japanese militarism.
Expressed another way, the public debt would average 4.4% of gross domestic product from 2020 to 2029.
“Such deficits would be significantly larger than the 2.9% of GDP that deficits averaged over the past 50 years,” the CBO said.
What’s the problem? The CBO predicts a steady increase in federal spending based on current law, particularly to pay for health care and other expenses for the elderly.
Although tax receipts are likely to increase despite large tax cuts by the Trump White House, they won’t rise as fast as spending, the agency said.
At the same time, the U.S. economy is likely to decelerate from a projected 3.1% growth rate in 2018 to an annual average of 1.7% over the next decade, the CBO projects. Previously the agency had predicted the economy would grow slightly faster in the next 10 years.
The agency believes slow population growth is one of the chief reasons — along with higher interest rates by the Federal Reserve.
The CBO, of course, could be wrong. The economy could grow much faster than it expects, taxes could rise or spending could fall. Yet if the agency is right, the fiscal health of the U.S. will continue to deteriorate.
In 2019, the annual U.S. deficit is forecast to rise to $900 billion from $779 billion in 2018. The deficit is projected to top $1 trillion annually beginning in 2022 — two years later than the CBO originally forecast.
congratulations gop voters!!!
84 days after residents voted for Medicaid expansion, Utah lawmakers want to repeal or cap it
Utah state legislature returns Monday, and GOP lawmakers are considering expansion repeal, Medicaid caps, and work requirements.
AMANDA MICHELLE GOMEZ - thinkprogress
JAN 28, 2019, 9:03 AM
The Utah state legislature returns to work on Monday and GOP lawmakers are already proposing multiple bills that hobble a successful ballot measure to expand health care to more low-income residents.
Utah State Sen. Allen Christensen’s (R) bill would prevent the ballot initiative — “Proposition 3,” which was approved in November and allowed for a clean Medicaid expansion — from going into effect. It would do so if the federal government approves a waiver submitted by the state in July to impose a per capita cap on federal reimbursement for more enrollment restrictions.
---
Politico reported early this month that the Trump administration is currently exploring whether it can allow states to implement Medicaid block grants, a policy sought by conservatives to attempt to limit spending. When ThinkProgress asked Utah Gov. Gary Herbert (R) if he’s interested in the idea, his office replied, “Governor Herbert supports meaningful changes to Medicaid that bring the program into alignment with state demographics and budget constraints.”
Christensen’s bill would also condition eligibility on reported work. He said it would mirror the state’s work requirement for food assistance, calling it “a pretty weak requirement” and beneficiaries would just need to “think about going to work and you’ve accomplished it.”
“We are going to implement the expansion and we are going to do it in a financially responsible way,” said Christensen, by phone.
Meanwhile, State Sen. Jacob Anderegg’s (R) bill overtly repeals the ballot measure. This legislation also repeals a partial Medicaid expansion measure that was approved by lawmakers last year but was later discarded when voters demanded full expansion.
“I’ve done a fairly extensive head count and think that there are enough votes in the House and the Senate to pass it,” Anderegg told the Salt Lake Tribune.
“The first few pages of this new bill show that Senator Christensen’s plan strikes out huge swaths of Prop 3,” said Utah Health Policy Project Executive Director Matt Slonaker, in a statement. “This plan adds provisions that would indefinitely delay enrollment and risk legal challenge.”
“Utah voters are smart, they are informed, and they chose to support full Medicaid expansion without caps, red tape, or delays. These bills that would repeal Proposition 3 are harmful to Utahans and run contrary to the will of the people,” Slonaker added.
In November, Utah residents approved Prop 3 to implement the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion by April, extending health insurance to over 150,000 people who earn no more than 138 percent of the federal poverty level or just under $35,000 for a family of four. Medicaid expansion received bipartisan support, with the ballot winning in 59 percent of House and Senate districts, including Christensen’s, but not Anderegg’s.
Medicaid expansion funding primarily comes from the federal government, which pays the bulk share, at 93 percent of the associated costs in 2019 and 90 percent in 2020 thereafter. States pay for their portion in various ways, but Utah voted to cover more residents by increasing the state’s sales tax on non-food items by 0.15 percentage points (from 4.7 percent to 4.85 percent).
Earlier analysis from the governor’s office and the state legislature found that the revenue from the increase to the state sales tax rate would cover the state’s share. But a January 2019 memo circulating from Governor’s Office of Management and Budget said there’s a shortfall.
---
“It’s been one excuse after another for those who do not want to expand the Medicaid program,” said Joan Alker, the executive director of Georgetown’s Center for Children and Families.
“It still remains the best investment a state can make. What other program can a state put up one dollar and get nine dollars back from the federal government? If you can make that kind of investment in your personal life, would you take it? I think you would,” she added.
Furthermore, various studies show increased state savings, as more people gain insurance and utilize preventative care services instead of the emergency room.
Opponents of Medicaid expansion by ballot tried to block the policy in various ways. In Montana, Big Tobacco invested an unprecedented amount of money into defeating the referendum and, in Nebraska, lawmakers tried to block the ballot by suing. It took a new governor in Maine to finally expand Medicaid a year after voters approved it by ballot.
“Politicians are trampling on the most fundamental values of representative democracy,” said Jonathan Schleifer, executive director of The Fairness Project, a group that supported states that expanded Medicaid by ballot. “For months, Utahans discussed, debated, and learned about what Medicaid expansion would do for the state.”
“Then, a clear majority of Utahans voted to expand health care to people struggling to make ends meet and bring tax dollars home from Washington,” he said. “The voters have spoken. In any other job, if you disobeyed a direct order from your bosses you’d be fired the next day.”
Utah State Sen. Allen Christensen’s (R) bill would prevent the ballot initiative — “Proposition 3,” which was approved in November and allowed for a clean Medicaid expansion — from going into effect. It would do so if the federal government approves a waiver submitted by the state in July to impose a per capita cap on federal reimbursement for more enrollment restrictions.
---
Politico reported early this month that the Trump administration is currently exploring whether it can allow states to implement Medicaid block grants, a policy sought by conservatives to attempt to limit spending. When ThinkProgress asked Utah Gov. Gary Herbert (R) if he’s interested in the idea, his office replied, “Governor Herbert supports meaningful changes to Medicaid that bring the program into alignment with state demographics and budget constraints.”
Christensen’s bill would also condition eligibility on reported work. He said it would mirror the state’s work requirement for food assistance, calling it “a pretty weak requirement” and beneficiaries would just need to “think about going to work and you’ve accomplished it.”
“We are going to implement the expansion and we are going to do it in a financially responsible way,” said Christensen, by phone.
Meanwhile, State Sen. Jacob Anderegg’s (R) bill overtly repeals the ballot measure. This legislation also repeals a partial Medicaid expansion measure that was approved by lawmakers last year but was later discarded when voters demanded full expansion.
“I’ve done a fairly extensive head count and think that there are enough votes in the House and the Senate to pass it,” Anderegg told the Salt Lake Tribune.
“The first few pages of this new bill show that Senator Christensen’s plan strikes out huge swaths of Prop 3,” said Utah Health Policy Project Executive Director Matt Slonaker, in a statement. “This plan adds provisions that would indefinitely delay enrollment and risk legal challenge.”
“Utah voters are smart, they are informed, and they chose to support full Medicaid expansion without caps, red tape, or delays. These bills that would repeal Proposition 3 are harmful to Utahans and run contrary to the will of the people,” Slonaker added.
In November, Utah residents approved Prop 3 to implement the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion by April, extending health insurance to over 150,000 people who earn no more than 138 percent of the federal poverty level or just under $35,000 for a family of four. Medicaid expansion received bipartisan support, with the ballot winning in 59 percent of House and Senate districts, including Christensen’s, but not Anderegg’s.
Medicaid expansion funding primarily comes from the federal government, which pays the bulk share, at 93 percent of the associated costs in 2019 and 90 percent in 2020 thereafter. States pay for their portion in various ways, but Utah voted to cover more residents by increasing the state’s sales tax on non-food items by 0.15 percentage points (from 4.7 percent to 4.85 percent).
Earlier analysis from the governor’s office and the state legislature found that the revenue from the increase to the state sales tax rate would cover the state’s share. But a January 2019 memo circulating from Governor’s Office of Management and Budget said there’s a shortfall.
---
“It’s been one excuse after another for those who do not want to expand the Medicaid program,” said Joan Alker, the executive director of Georgetown’s Center for Children and Families.
“It still remains the best investment a state can make. What other program can a state put up one dollar and get nine dollars back from the federal government? If you can make that kind of investment in your personal life, would you take it? I think you would,” she added.
Furthermore, various studies show increased state savings, as more people gain insurance and utilize preventative care services instead of the emergency room.
Opponents of Medicaid expansion by ballot tried to block the policy in various ways. In Montana, Big Tobacco invested an unprecedented amount of money into defeating the referendum and, in Nebraska, lawmakers tried to block the ballot by suing. It took a new governor in Maine to finally expand Medicaid a year after voters approved it by ballot.
“Politicians are trampling on the most fundamental values of representative democracy,” said Jonathan Schleifer, executive director of The Fairness Project, a group that supported states that expanded Medicaid by ballot. “For months, Utahans discussed, debated, and learned about what Medicaid expansion would do for the state.”
“Then, a clear majority of Utahans voted to expand health care to people struggling to make ends meet and bring tax dollars home from Washington,” he said. “The voters have spoken. In any other job, if you disobeyed a direct order from your bosses you’d be fired the next day.”
The Trump administration wants to tighten SNAP work requirements, bypassing Congress
The Conversation - raw story
22 JAN 2019 AT 07:11 ET
The Trump administration wants to tighten even further longstanding restrictions on who is eligible for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
The farm bill, which gets updated every five years or so, spells out who can participate in SNAP, the assistance program previously known as food stamps. The most recent version of this legislation, which President Donald Trump signed into law on Dec. 20, 2018, left out new limits on the eligibility of adults without children. Those limits were part of the House version, but Congress dropped them prior to the bill’s passage.
But that same day, the U.S. Department of Agriculture proposed a rule that would restrict access anyway.
Having researched food assistance programs, I’ve seen that the consequences of having too little to eat are daunting. When people can’t afford food, they may skip meals, which leads to increased stress and poor nutrition. For people with chronic diseases like diabetes, meal-skipping can even make them more prone to hospitalization when their blood sugar gets too low.
Trying for decades
When President Bill Clinton and the Republican-led Congress overhauled the welfare system in 1996, they imposed some work requirements for SNAP participants.
To get these benefits, non-disabled adults between the ages of 18 and 49 without children are required to do paid work or be enrolled in a job training program for at least 20 hours a week. If they fail to find work or enroll in training, they can only participate in the program once every three years for up to three months.
Despite these rules, which block access to millions of adults, nearly 40 million poor Americans in roughly 20 million households rely on SNAP. Even though the average SNAP recipient just gets about US$1.40 per meal, research indicates that this program reduces food insecurity by nearly 30 percent.
Policymakers argue that these restrictions improve economic security by encouraging people to join the labor force. And most do join the labor force. A report the White House Council of Economic Advisers released during the Obama administration found that work rates among SNAP recipients had risen steadily since the 1990s.
However, does joining the labor force really improve economic security? The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a think tank, found that requiring safety net program recipients to work did not make them better off. In some cases, work requirements have plunged people deeper into poverty.
Additionally, researchers at Stanford and Johns Hopkins universities have observed that the jobs poor people take have remained largely low-paying. This means they still need SNAP because they don’t earn enough to keep food on the table.
Bypassing Congress
Although SNAP is federally funded, the states administer the program. Currently, state governments can request waivers for SNAP time limits on benefits for people with work requirements for multiple reasons, including if their local jobless rate is at least 20 percent above the national average for a recent 24-month period. Based on the current national unemployment rate, the proposed new rule would bar states from applying for this waiver unless their unemployment rate is at least 7 percent.
Among other changes, the federal government would limit the flexibility states now have to exercise a degree of discretion in exempting non-disabled adults without kids from the three-month time limit.
The public will get two months to comment on these new rules. If this rule were to go into effect as is, more than 750,000 people could lose SNAP benefits, according to the draft language. For now, people who rely on SNAP can still use their benefits – as long as the government shutdown doesn’t go past February. After then, unless Congress passes legislation specifically funding SNAP, the program’s fate is unknown.
This administrative route to bypassing congressional consensus is not how American democracy is supposed to work – nor is it the norm, as Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, explained when the USDA proposed this rule.
“Congress writes laws and the Administration is required to write rules based on the law,” she said, “not the other way around.”
This democracy works because of the checks and balances between the three branches of government. When one branch chooses to override this separation of powers, I believe democracy – just like SNAP participants’ benefits – is jeopardized.
The farm bill, which gets updated every five years or so, spells out who can participate in SNAP, the assistance program previously known as food stamps. The most recent version of this legislation, which President Donald Trump signed into law on Dec. 20, 2018, left out new limits on the eligibility of adults without children. Those limits were part of the House version, but Congress dropped them prior to the bill’s passage.
But that same day, the U.S. Department of Agriculture proposed a rule that would restrict access anyway.
Having researched food assistance programs, I’ve seen that the consequences of having too little to eat are daunting. When people can’t afford food, they may skip meals, which leads to increased stress and poor nutrition. For people with chronic diseases like diabetes, meal-skipping can even make them more prone to hospitalization when their blood sugar gets too low.
Trying for decades
When President Bill Clinton and the Republican-led Congress overhauled the welfare system in 1996, they imposed some work requirements for SNAP participants.
To get these benefits, non-disabled adults between the ages of 18 and 49 without children are required to do paid work or be enrolled in a job training program for at least 20 hours a week. If they fail to find work or enroll in training, they can only participate in the program once every three years for up to three months.
Despite these rules, which block access to millions of adults, nearly 40 million poor Americans in roughly 20 million households rely on SNAP. Even though the average SNAP recipient just gets about US$1.40 per meal, research indicates that this program reduces food insecurity by nearly 30 percent.
Policymakers argue that these restrictions improve economic security by encouraging people to join the labor force. And most do join the labor force. A report the White House Council of Economic Advisers released during the Obama administration found that work rates among SNAP recipients had risen steadily since the 1990s.
However, does joining the labor force really improve economic security? The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a think tank, found that requiring safety net program recipients to work did not make them better off. In some cases, work requirements have plunged people deeper into poverty.
Additionally, researchers at Stanford and Johns Hopkins universities have observed that the jobs poor people take have remained largely low-paying. This means they still need SNAP because they don’t earn enough to keep food on the table.
Bypassing Congress
Although SNAP is federally funded, the states administer the program. Currently, state governments can request waivers for SNAP time limits on benefits for people with work requirements for multiple reasons, including if their local jobless rate is at least 20 percent above the national average for a recent 24-month period. Based on the current national unemployment rate, the proposed new rule would bar states from applying for this waiver unless their unemployment rate is at least 7 percent.
Among other changes, the federal government would limit the flexibility states now have to exercise a degree of discretion in exempting non-disabled adults without kids from the three-month time limit.
The public will get two months to comment on these new rules. If this rule were to go into effect as is, more than 750,000 people could lose SNAP benefits, according to the draft language. For now, people who rely on SNAP can still use their benefits – as long as the government shutdown doesn’t go past February. After then, unless Congress passes legislation specifically funding SNAP, the program’s fate is unknown.
This administrative route to bypassing congressional consensus is not how American democracy is supposed to work – nor is it the norm, as Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, explained when the USDA proposed this rule.
“Congress writes laws and the Administration is required to write rules based on the law,” she said, “not the other way around.”
This democracy works because of the checks and balances between the three branches of government. When one branch chooses to override this separation of powers, I believe democracy – just like SNAP participants’ benefits – is jeopardized.
Trump tariffs force tough choices on auto suppliers
Reuters - raw story
17 JAN 2019 AT 06:24 ET
Bob Roth makes no bones about his feelings towards U.S. manufacturing.
The co-owner and chief executive of RoMan Manufacturing Inc, which makes transformers and glass-molding equipment for automakers and other industries, asks callers on his voicemail: “What have you done today to support U.S. manufacturing?”
His procurement team has been under long-standing orders to source all parts and materials as near as possible to his western Michigan factory, even with President Donald Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum.
But with those tariffs dragging into a new year and steel comprising a quarter of RoMan’s fixed costs, Roth says his company has now begun the lengthy process of switching from its U.S. suppliers to an Israeli company for a key component for its products.
It is a strategic decision that RoMan and other auto suppliers have put off since the tariffs kicked in last spring. With tariffs firmly part of the landscape, some are now starting to shift their own supply chain to keep costs in check, according to more than a dozen interviews with U.S. auto suppliers and industry consultants.
The choice is stark for most suppliers: absorb the extra cost, pass them on to customers or find ways to slash material costs.
The transformers Roth’s 150 workers at RoMan produce require a magnetized steel core that is now more expensive as tariffs have allowed U.S. steel producers to raise prices. The Israeli supplier has access to cheaper steel and its cores qualify as finished products, so they are not subject to tariffs – making them a cheaper alternative.
“We don’t have the money to buy our way out problems like this,” Roth said of RoMan, which has annual revenue of around $35 million. “In the long run we can’t afford to absorb the extra cost of tariffs.”
Roth says he appreciates the sentiment behind Trump’s push to bring back American manufacturers jobs, but adds tariffs are “the wrong tool” because they hurt U.S. firms.
Trade consulting firm Trade Partnership Worldwide LLC estimated last summer metals tariffs could cost 5,000 jobs in the U.S. auto industry and 400,000 jobs overall – 16 jobs lost for every steel or aluminum worker hired. But so far there is little data available on how tariffs affect businesses such as RoMan because the process of switching suppliers is a long one and many manufacturers have muddled through so far.
Steven Wybo, a managing director at consultancy Conway MacKenzie, said “every single auto supplier we are working with has concerns around tariffs,” and he worries they come at an already challenging time for the sector.
Suppliers are gearing up for a large number of vehicle launches over the next three years, an expensive business, while also bracing for an expected decline in U.S. new vehicle sales. And some in the sector will bear the brunt of restructuring at Ford Motor Co General Motors Co, which are dropping less-popular sedan models.
Adding tariffs to the mix can require a creative approach.
RoMan, for instance, splits half of a 10 percent tariff with a Chinese customer on transformers subject to retaliatory measures against U.S. manufacturers. RoMan will raise some prices 2 percent this month to partially offset rising copper prices.
Warren, Michigan-based Eckhart Inc – which books about $100 million in annual sales by building robots and automated tools for GM, Volvo and Tesla Inc and other automakers – must absorb the tariffs or run the risk of losing out in competitive bids.
So Eckhart has focused on cutting costs, including rolling out a new U.S. purchasing system for raw materials, CEO Andrew Storm said.
“We have to fight for every single dollar of revenue that comes in the door,” Storm said. “So we find ways to eat the extra cost.”
That is why RoMan is seeking alternative suppliers to cut costs – and it takes a long time to ensure a new supplier is financially sound and can consistently hit industry standards. Months into that process, RoMan is only now validating test parts produced by its potential new Israeli supplier.
“You can’t turn your supply chain on a dime,” said Kristin Dziczek, vice president of industry, labor and economics at the Center for Automotive Research (CAR).
Dziczek said she gets calls “all the time” from suppliers wondering whether to overhaul their supply chain, and yet worrying that if they do, Trump may reverse policy overnight.
LOSING BUSINESS
The issue stretches up and down the supply chain for cars. Ford and GM have already warned metals tariffs will cost them $1 billion each in profits, setting in motion a complex dance over who foots the bill.
If automakers have to cover the cost, they typically raise vehicle prices to pass it onto consumers. Just this week, a Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) executive said industry wide tariffs have increased the average U.S. vehicle price by around $600.
Peter Bible, chief risk officer at tax advisory firm EisnerAmper and former chief accounting officer at GM, said suppliers making parts for less-popular vehicles will have trouble passing on higher costs. Automakers will resist price increases, but will be also be wary of pushing suppliers too hard, Bible said.
Problems at a single supplier can be disastrous, as Ford discovered last May when a fire at a supplier halted production of some highly-profitable pickup trucks.
Some suppliers have adapted quickly to cut costs.
They have cost Gentherm Inc, which makes climate control systems for vehicles and had revenue of close to $1 billion in 2017, a “few million” dollars, according to CEO Phil Eyler.
“We’ve worked really fast to change supplier locations in a couple cases,” he said.
Mark Wakefield, a managing director at consultancy AlixPartners, said suppliers providing more commoditized parts will find adjusting harder.
That’s the case for Grand Rapids, Michigan-based Pridgeon & Clay, which supplies stamped steel and stainless steel parts to automakers, with annual revenue of more than $350 million.
Third-generation owner Kevin Clay has lost business to low-cost overseas competitors in India who use cheaper tariff-free steel, and whose finished products are not subject to Trump’s U.S. tariffs.
Metal tariffs have shaved 25 percent off Clay’s pre-tax profit. Banks still wary of his sector following the Great Recession are growing reluctant to issue loans, and his company has mothballed some spending plans and cut staff more than usual for this time of year, according to Clay.
“These tariffs have cost me business,” said Clay, who describes himself as a moderate conservative who fervently believes in free trade. “If the aim is to get to a tariff-free world, this is a crappy way to get there.”
The co-owner and chief executive of RoMan Manufacturing Inc, which makes transformers and glass-molding equipment for automakers and other industries, asks callers on his voicemail: “What have you done today to support U.S. manufacturing?”
His procurement team has been under long-standing orders to source all parts and materials as near as possible to his western Michigan factory, even with President Donald Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum.
But with those tariffs dragging into a new year and steel comprising a quarter of RoMan’s fixed costs, Roth says his company has now begun the lengthy process of switching from its U.S. suppliers to an Israeli company for a key component for its products.
It is a strategic decision that RoMan and other auto suppliers have put off since the tariffs kicked in last spring. With tariffs firmly part of the landscape, some are now starting to shift their own supply chain to keep costs in check, according to more than a dozen interviews with U.S. auto suppliers and industry consultants.
The choice is stark for most suppliers: absorb the extra cost, pass them on to customers or find ways to slash material costs.
The transformers Roth’s 150 workers at RoMan produce require a magnetized steel core that is now more expensive as tariffs have allowed U.S. steel producers to raise prices. The Israeli supplier has access to cheaper steel and its cores qualify as finished products, so they are not subject to tariffs – making them a cheaper alternative.
“We don’t have the money to buy our way out problems like this,” Roth said of RoMan, which has annual revenue of around $35 million. “In the long run we can’t afford to absorb the extra cost of tariffs.”
Roth says he appreciates the sentiment behind Trump’s push to bring back American manufacturers jobs, but adds tariffs are “the wrong tool” because they hurt U.S. firms.
Trade consulting firm Trade Partnership Worldwide LLC estimated last summer metals tariffs could cost 5,000 jobs in the U.S. auto industry and 400,000 jobs overall – 16 jobs lost for every steel or aluminum worker hired. But so far there is little data available on how tariffs affect businesses such as RoMan because the process of switching suppliers is a long one and many manufacturers have muddled through so far.
Steven Wybo, a managing director at consultancy Conway MacKenzie, said “every single auto supplier we are working with has concerns around tariffs,” and he worries they come at an already challenging time for the sector.
Suppliers are gearing up for a large number of vehicle launches over the next three years, an expensive business, while also bracing for an expected decline in U.S. new vehicle sales. And some in the sector will bear the brunt of restructuring at Ford Motor Co General Motors Co, which are dropping less-popular sedan models.
Adding tariffs to the mix can require a creative approach.
RoMan, for instance, splits half of a 10 percent tariff with a Chinese customer on transformers subject to retaliatory measures against U.S. manufacturers. RoMan will raise some prices 2 percent this month to partially offset rising copper prices.
Warren, Michigan-based Eckhart Inc – which books about $100 million in annual sales by building robots and automated tools for GM, Volvo and Tesla Inc and other automakers – must absorb the tariffs or run the risk of losing out in competitive bids.
So Eckhart has focused on cutting costs, including rolling out a new U.S. purchasing system for raw materials, CEO Andrew Storm said.
“We have to fight for every single dollar of revenue that comes in the door,” Storm said. “So we find ways to eat the extra cost.”
That is why RoMan is seeking alternative suppliers to cut costs – and it takes a long time to ensure a new supplier is financially sound and can consistently hit industry standards. Months into that process, RoMan is only now validating test parts produced by its potential new Israeli supplier.
“You can’t turn your supply chain on a dime,” said Kristin Dziczek, vice president of industry, labor and economics at the Center for Automotive Research (CAR).
Dziczek said she gets calls “all the time” from suppliers wondering whether to overhaul their supply chain, and yet worrying that if they do, Trump may reverse policy overnight.
LOSING BUSINESS
The issue stretches up and down the supply chain for cars. Ford and GM have already warned metals tariffs will cost them $1 billion each in profits, setting in motion a complex dance over who foots the bill.
If automakers have to cover the cost, they typically raise vehicle prices to pass it onto consumers. Just this week, a Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) executive said industry wide tariffs have increased the average U.S. vehicle price by around $600.
Peter Bible, chief risk officer at tax advisory firm EisnerAmper and former chief accounting officer at GM, said suppliers making parts for less-popular vehicles will have trouble passing on higher costs. Automakers will resist price increases, but will be also be wary of pushing suppliers too hard, Bible said.
Problems at a single supplier can be disastrous, as Ford discovered last May when a fire at a supplier halted production of some highly-profitable pickup trucks.
Some suppliers have adapted quickly to cut costs.
They have cost Gentherm Inc, which makes climate control systems for vehicles and had revenue of close to $1 billion in 2017, a “few million” dollars, according to CEO Phil Eyler.
“We’ve worked really fast to change supplier locations in a couple cases,” he said.
Mark Wakefield, a managing director at consultancy AlixPartners, said suppliers providing more commoditized parts will find adjusting harder.
That’s the case for Grand Rapids, Michigan-based Pridgeon & Clay, which supplies stamped steel and stainless steel parts to automakers, with annual revenue of more than $350 million.
Third-generation owner Kevin Clay has lost business to low-cost overseas competitors in India who use cheaper tariff-free steel, and whose finished products are not subject to Trump’s U.S. tariffs.
Metal tariffs have shaved 25 percent off Clay’s pre-tax profit. Banks still wary of his sector following the Great Recession are growing reluctant to issue loans, and his company has mothballed some spending plans and cut staff more than usual for this time of year, according to Clay.
“These tariffs have cost me business,” said Clay, who describes himself as a moderate conservative who fervently believes in free trade. “If the aim is to get to a tariff-free world, this is a crappy way to get there.”
Trump's war on science: how the US is putting politics above evidence
Experts say the administration is blatantly dismantling proven programs, and the consequences could be dire
Emily Holden in Washington
the guardian
Wed 16 Jan 2019 01.00 EST
Donald Trump’s administration is cutting programs scientists say are proven to protect Americans, from pollution safeguards to teen pregnancy prevention and healthier school lunches, with effects that could last for years.
Experts who have worked in the federal government under Republicans and Democrats say both have sometimes put politics ahead of science but none have done so as blatantly as Trump. And they warn the consequences could continue long into the future.
“It’s as egregious as I’ve ever seen it, starting from the very top with the president just denying the existence of science, manipulating the system on behalf of special interests,” said the former surgeon general Richard Carmona, who testified to Congress that the George W Bush administration pushed him to weaken or suppress public health findings.
Trump’s high-profile denial of manmade climate change has occasionally overshadowed the many other ways his agencies are contradicting established research.
The agriculture department last month rolled back standards for schools to serve more whole grains, less salt and non-fat flavored milk. Department officials claimed schools struggled with the programs because students wouldn’t eat healthier foods.
But research found the food changes didn’t deter students from getting lunch and didn’t cause more plate waste. And the healthier food requirements were projected to be effective: one study estimated they could prevent 1.8 million cases of childhood obesity over a decade.
“I do think it’s pretty clear that these standards are working and that given more time, they will work better,” said Karen Perry Stillerman, a food policy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The Trump administration is also cutting short evidence-based grants for teen pregnancy prevention programs, favoring curriculum focused on abstinence instead, despite a large body of research that shows abstinence-only programs don’t work. A 2007 evaluation of four federal abstinence programs found that they had no impact on sexual activity or rates of unprotected sex among teens.
Sara Flowers, the vice-president of education for Planned Parenthood, said the majority of the programs previously funded demonstrated young people changed their behavior in at least one of five categories: delaying sex, reducing sexual partners, increasing contraceptive use, reducing rates of sexually transmitted infections or reducing rates of pregnancy.
“The administration is really not using science. The administration is really using ideology, and those are very different,” Flowers said.
"This [program] has been rigorously tested by experts and vetted and analyzed.”
The Trump administration has also erroneously questioned the effectiveness of contraceptives in rules expanding exemptions for employers that don’t want to cover them under insurance plans.
Climate change and environmental science have also been at the forefront of the battle between science and the Trump administration. Power plant and car standards are being rolled back, as are pesticide restrictions and wildlife protections.
The Trump administration has ignored climate scientists’ warnings that rising temperatures and more extreme weather will hurt the US economy and risk lives. The interior department initially sought to remove references to manmade climate change in a report about how sea-level rise might flood national parks.
“The notion of there being political appointees who try to impose their political agenda in a way that is contrary to scientific evidence is not a new thing, but it has reached an entirely new level in the Trump administration,” said the Obama science adviser John Holdren.
One of the first major decisions by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was to forego a ban on the pesticide chlorpyrifos, which is associated with developmental delays and health problems in children and has sickened farm workers. Judges ordered the EPA to bar the substance, citing the science that shows it is dangerous. The agency is appealing the case.
Agency officials have also made fundamental changes to how the federal government weighs environmental and health research.
The former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt barred scientists working with EPA grants from serving on the science advisory panels that help shape policies. Instead, industries and states now have more sway over those boards.
The agency also plans to limit what science it will consider, requiring any studies used in the regulatory process to publish confidential participant data.
A Democratic staffer for the House science committee, which plans to investigate the administration’s science cuts, said it’s been hard to even track all the agency changes.
John Bachmann, who advised the controversial Reagan-era EPA appointee Anne Gorsuch Burford on air pollution science, said she would listen to briefings on peer-reviewed data, even as she slashed budgets and eased enforcement.
“That was the most comparable period,” Bachmann said. “That was nothing compared to what we’re seeing now.”
Experts who have worked in the federal government under Republicans and Democrats say both have sometimes put politics ahead of science but none have done so as blatantly as Trump. And they warn the consequences could continue long into the future.
“It’s as egregious as I’ve ever seen it, starting from the very top with the president just denying the existence of science, manipulating the system on behalf of special interests,” said the former surgeon general Richard Carmona, who testified to Congress that the George W Bush administration pushed him to weaken or suppress public health findings.
Trump’s high-profile denial of manmade climate change has occasionally overshadowed the many other ways his agencies are contradicting established research.
The agriculture department last month rolled back standards for schools to serve more whole grains, less salt and non-fat flavored milk. Department officials claimed schools struggled with the programs because students wouldn’t eat healthier foods.
But research found the food changes didn’t deter students from getting lunch and didn’t cause more plate waste. And the healthier food requirements were projected to be effective: one study estimated they could prevent 1.8 million cases of childhood obesity over a decade.
“I do think it’s pretty clear that these standards are working and that given more time, they will work better,” said Karen Perry Stillerman, a food policy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The Trump administration is also cutting short evidence-based grants for teen pregnancy prevention programs, favoring curriculum focused on abstinence instead, despite a large body of research that shows abstinence-only programs don’t work. A 2007 evaluation of four federal abstinence programs found that they had no impact on sexual activity or rates of unprotected sex among teens.
Sara Flowers, the vice-president of education for Planned Parenthood, said the majority of the programs previously funded demonstrated young people changed their behavior in at least one of five categories: delaying sex, reducing sexual partners, increasing contraceptive use, reducing rates of sexually transmitted infections or reducing rates of pregnancy.
“The administration is really not using science. The administration is really using ideology, and those are very different,” Flowers said.
"This [program] has been rigorously tested by experts and vetted and analyzed.”
The Trump administration has also erroneously questioned the effectiveness of contraceptives in rules expanding exemptions for employers that don’t want to cover them under insurance plans.
Climate change and environmental science have also been at the forefront of the battle between science and the Trump administration. Power plant and car standards are being rolled back, as are pesticide restrictions and wildlife protections.
The Trump administration has ignored climate scientists’ warnings that rising temperatures and more extreme weather will hurt the US economy and risk lives. The interior department initially sought to remove references to manmade climate change in a report about how sea-level rise might flood national parks.
“The notion of there being political appointees who try to impose their political agenda in a way that is contrary to scientific evidence is not a new thing, but it has reached an entirely new level in the Trump administration,” said the Obama science adviser John Holdren.
One of the first major decisions by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was to forego a ban on the pesticide chlorpyrifos, which is associated with developmental delays and health problems in children and has sickened farm workers. Judges ordered the EPA to bar the substance, citing the science that shows it is dangerous. The agency is appealing the case.
Agency officials have also made fundamental changes to how the federal government weighs environmental and health research.
The former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt barred scientists working with EPA grants from serving on the science advisory panels that help shape policies. Instead, industries and states now have more sway over those boards.
The agency also plans to limit what science it will consider, requiring any studies used in the regulatory process to publish confidential participant data.
A Democratic staffer for the House science committee, which plans to investigate the administration’s science cuts, said it’s been hard to even track all the agency changes.
John Bachmann, who advised the controversial Reagan-era EPA appointee Anne Gorsuch Burford on air pollution science, said she would listen to briefings on peer-reviewed data, even as she slashed budgets and eased enforcement.
“That was the most comparable period,” Bachmann said. “That was nothing compared to what we’re seeing now.”
Trump trade war causes stock to plummet and commodity prices to ‘crater’ for America’s largest meat processor
Martin Cizmar - raw story
15 JAN 2019 AT 09:32 ET
Pissident Donald Trump’s trade war has caused some pain at Tyson Foods, the largest meat processor in the world which is based in Arkansas.
China and Mexico both put retaliatory tariffs on beef, chicken and pork imports after Trump pulled out of the old trade agreements and began hardline negotiations with the world’s second-largest economy and our neighbors to the north and south.
Axios writes that Trump’s trade policies have caused meat prices to “crater” as the “uncertainty” of tariffs and its reliance on both Mexico and Canada in its operations has hit its brands, which include Hillshire Farms, Jimmy Dean and Ball Park.
Tyson’s stock has plummeted 25% in the past year and 18% since Election Day 2016.
Tyson’s CFO, Stewart Glendinning, is not expecting things to change soon.
“There will be more pressure on chicken and pork,” he said.
Read the report here.
China and Mexico both put retaliatory tariffs on beef, chicken and pork imports after Trump pulled out of the old trade agreements and began hardline negotiations with the world’s second-largest economy and our neighbors to the north and south.
Axios writes that Trump’s trade policies have caused meat prices to “crater” as the “uncertainty” of tariffs and its reliance on both Mexico and Canada in its operations has hit its brands, which include Hillshire Farms, Jimmy Dean and Ball Park.
Tyson’s stock has plummeted 25% in the past year and 18% since Election Day 2016.
Tyson’s CFO, Stewart Glendinning, is not expecting things to change soon.
“There will be more pressure on chicken and pork,” he said.
Read the report here.
Dear Media, Please Cut the Sob Stories About Trump Voters Hurt by Trump Policies
It’s time to focus on the people who’ve been fighting to stop him all along.
By Elie Mystal - the nation
JANUARY 8, 2019
Your favorite media outlets—you know, the ones that insist that there are “good people on both sides”—have spent the better part of two years trying to understand the Trump voter. We’ve all been subjected to the results: dozens, even hundreds, of articles detailing the lives and thoughts of the poor, aggrieved white people who’ve allegedly been “left behind” by forces such as “globalization” and “Democrats.”
Now that Donald Trump’s policies are starting to ravage the very core of his base, we’re starting to see the follow-up to these experiments in aggrievement normalization. From The New York Times to CNN, we’re being treated to deep dives on the white people who voted for Trump, found it hasn’t paid off, and are now questioning their choices.
I am here for none of it. If it took missing a check due to the government shutdown for you to realize that voting for a bigoted conman was unwise, I have no sympathy. If your business is being hurt by the tariffs ordered by the know-nothing “Tariff Man” you happily voted for, my deepest wish is that your business fails, thereby creating a market opportunity for a hardworking immigrant your president disparages.
The shutdown is going to accelerate the number of Trumper’s-remorse articles we see. Last night, The New York Times unleashed a doozy: the sob story of a Florida town that got battered by Hurricane Michael and is struggling to keep its economy, based on government prison jobs and farm subsidies, afloat. It’s the kind of town Mitt Romney would say was full of “takers” if the town was predominately black. But it’s predominantly white, so, of course, most of the town votes Republican.
The Times wants us to know that Trump’s shutdown is hurting these people and they’re confused as to how their dear leader could be doing this to them:
The shutdown on top of the hurricane has caused [Crystal] Minton to rethink a lot of things.
“I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this,” she said of Mr. Trump. “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”
That’s what Trump voters sound like when they say the quiet part out loud.
All of the “economically aggrieved” Trump voters made the same immoral bargain. They calculated that allowing Trump to harass and terrorize “other” people—nonwhites, women, gays, children, whatever—would result in more money in their pocket. Now they want me to be sad when the racist offset-check they were counting on doesn’t clear? You must not know about me.
Where’s the story about all the people living in Florida who also got battered by hurricanes, and are missing paychecks because of the shutdown, who didn’t vote for Trump? Where are the stories about the innocent victims of Trump’s policies, instead of stories about his enablers? I’ve read a lot of stories about how much Donald Trump and Ann Coulter want the Wall. I’ve heard a lot of commentary about how the “American people” want “compromise.” I think the media is willfully missing the strength and dedication of the opposition to Trump’s policies. Where’s the story about the people who are missing checks and remain uncompromising in their resistance to Trump’s bigoted vanity slats?
Once again, we’re being told that a small minority of white people who voted for Trump hold all the power in deciding what gets done or built in this country. It’s not just about the shutdown. The media are obsessed with telling the stories of these selfish, antisocial people who caused this monstrosity, instead of the stories about the people who are rising to stop him. Here’s The New York Times again, explaining why we all should care about this “betrayed” Trump voter:
“It’s killing us,” said the chairman of the company, Pat LeBlanc, 63, a Republican who voted for Mr. Trump. He now expects the president’s tariffs will chop his 2019 profits in half. “I just feel so betrayed. If we fail because the company is being harmed by the government, that just makes me sick.”
Across the industrial United States, including in the crucial political battleground state of Michigan, such complaints are intensifying as the trade war disrupts factory operations that depend on imported parts.
And remember “butterfly man,”the guy who voted for Trump and his wall until the wall threatened his butterfly sanctuary?
I’m a lifelong Republican who voted for Donald Trump for president in 2016. I want our immigration laws to be enforced, and I don’t want open borders. But Mission is not a dangerous place. I’ve lived here all my life. Here at the National Butterfly Center, 6,000 schoolchildren visit each year. Girl Scouts come here when they camp overnight just a mile or so from the Rio Grande. When the president says there’s a crisis at the border that requires an action as drastic as building a massive concrete wall, he either knows that it’s not true or he’s living in an alternate reality.
Before this controversy, I voted, and sometimes I expressed my political views on Facebook, but this issue got me involved in activism for the first time…. If Donald Trump runs for a second term, he will not get my vote.
Trump is out there authorizing the use of tear gas against toddlers, but this man didn’t get “involved” until Trump threatened … insects of color? He doesn’t even care about “butterflies,” he only cares about his butterflies, and you know that because no butterfly conservationist would vote for an avowed climate denier who doesn’t believe in science. This man needs to flap his way out of my face before I find a swatter.
Part of the obsession with these people comes from the grand media mea culpa over 2016. They “missed” the Trump voter in the run-up to the last election, so now we all must suffer their woebegone tales until the media feels they’ve set things right.
But in their journalistic rush of self-flagellation, they’ve created a faux balance. The Trump voter is a minority faction in this country, predominately white and insular. A relentless focus on their concerns shifts the conversation towards people who—explicitly now—just want the government to hurt the “right” people. And that’s not where the national conversation is.
The Wall is broadly unpopular. Immigration is broadly popular. The tariffs are broadly unpopular. Appointing a Supreme Court justice that had been accused of drunken attempted rape made him the most unpopular Supreme Court nominee in recent history. “Balanced” coverage would reflect that most people dislike what Trump is doing, and the people who do support him are part of a cultural minority with extreme viewpoints.
I’m sick of being told that I have to ask Crystal Minton if I can have nice things. There is no possibility for compromise between me and the white lady who voted for Trump so he could hurt the people he is supposed to be hurting. There is no compromise between me and the guy who only cares about the right kind of butterflies.
These people had their chance to set the national agenda. They’ve had their chance to be the de facto assignment editors of legacy-media publications.
Twenty twenty is going to be about the people who are stepping up to stop them.
Now that Donald Trump’s policies are starting to ravage the very core of his base, we’re starting to see the follow-up to these experiments in aggrievement normalization. From The New York Times to CNN, we’re being treated to deep dives on the white people who voted for Trump, found it hasn’t paid off, and are now questioning their choices.
I am here for none of it. If it took missing a check due to the government shutdown for you to realize that voting for a bigoted conman was unwise, I have no sympathy. If your business is being hurt by the tariffs ordered by the know-nothing “Tariff Man” you happily voted for, my deepest wish is that your business fails, thereby creating a market opportunity for a hardworking immigrant your president disparages.
The shutdown is going to accelerate the number of Trumper’s-remorse articles we see. Last night, The New York Times unleashed a doozy: the sob story of a Florida town that got battered by Hurricane Michael and is struggling to keep its economy, based on government prison jobs and farm subsidies, afloat. It’s the kind of town Mitt Romney would say was full of “takers” if the town was predominately black. But it’s predominantly white, so, of course, most of the town votes Republican.
The Times wants us to know that Trump’s shutdown is hurting these people and they’re confused as to how their dear leader could be doing this to them:
The shutdown on top of the hurricane has caused [Crystal] Minton to rethink a lot of things.
“I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this,” she said of Mr. Trump. “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”
That’s what Trump voters sound like when they say the quiet part out loud.
All of the “economically aggrieved” Trump voters made the same immoral bargain. They calculated that allowing Trump to harass and terrorize “other” people—nonwhites, women, gays, children, whatever—would result in more money in their pocket. Now they want me to be sad when the racist offset-check they were counting on doesn’t clear? You must not know about me.
Where’s the story about all the people living in Florida who also got battered by hurricanes, and are missing paychecks because of the shutdown, who didn’t vote for Trump? Where are the stories about the innocent victims of Trump’s policies, instead of stories about his enablers? I’ve read a lot of stories about how much Donald Trump and Ann Coulter want the Wall. I’ve heard a lot of commentary about how the “American people” want “compromise.” I think the media is willfully missing the strength and dedication of the opposition to Trump’s policies. Where’s the story about the people who are missing checks and remain uncompromising in their resistance to Trump’s bigoted vanity slats?
Once again, we’re being told that a small minority of white people who voted for Trump hold all the power in deciding what gets done or built in this country. It’s not just about the shutdown. The media are obsessed with telling the stories of these selfish, antisocial people who caused this monstrosity, instead of the stories about the people who are rising to stop him. Here’s The New York Times again, explaining why we all should care about this “betrayed” Trump voter:
“It’s killing us,” said the chairman of the company, Pat LeBlanc, 63, a Republican who voted for Mr. Trump. He now expects the president’s tariffs will chop his 2019 profits in half. “I just feel so betrayed. If we fail because the company is being harmed by the government, that just makes me sick.”
Across the industrial United States, including in the crucial political battleground state of Michigan, such complaints are intensifying as the trade war disrupts factory operations that depend on imported parts.
And remember “butterfly man,”the guy who voted for Trump and his wall until the wall threatened his butterfly sanctuary?
I’m a lifelong Republican who voted for Donald Trump for president in 2016. I want our immigration laws to be enforced, and I don’t want open borders. But Mission is not a dangerous place. I’ve lived here all my life. Here at the National Butterfly Center, 6,000 schoolchildren visit each year. Girl Scouts come here when they camp overnight just a mile or so from the Rio Grande. When the president says there’s a crisis at the border that requires an action as drastic as building a massive concrete wall, he either knows that it’s not true or he’s living in an alternate reality.
Before this controversy, I voted, and sometimes I expressed my political views on Facebook, but this issue got me involved in activism for the first time…. If Donald Trump runs for a second term, he will not get my vote.
Trump is out there authorizing the use of tear gas against toddlers, but this man didn’t get “involved” until Trump threatened … insects of color? He doesn’t even care about “butterflies,” he only cares about his butterflies, and you know that because no butterfly conservationist would vote for an avowed climate denier who doesn’t believe in science. This man needs to flap his way out of my face before I find a swatter.
Part of the obsession with these people comes from the grand media mea culpa over 2016. They “missed” the Trump voter in the run-up to the last election, so now we all must suffer their woebegone tales until the media feels they’ve set things right.
But in their journalistic rush of self-flagellation, they’ve created a faux balance. The Trump voter is a minority faction in this country, predominately white and insular. A relentless focus on their concerns shifts the conversation towards people who—explicitly now—just want the government to hurt the “right” people. And that’s not where the national conversation is.
The Wall is broadly unpopular. Immigration is broadly popular. The tariffs are broadly unpopular. Appointing a Supreme Court justice that had been accused of drunken attempted rape made him the most unpopular Supreme Court nominee in recent history. “Balanced” coverage would reflect that most people dislike what Trump is doing, and the people who do support him are part of a cultural minority with extreme viewpoints.
I’m sick of being told that I have to ask Crystal Minton if I can have nice things. There is no possibility for compromise between me and the white lady who voted for Trump so he could hurt the people he is supposed to be hurting. There is no compromise between me and the guy who only cares about the right kind of butterflies.
These people had their chance to set the national agenda. They’ve had their chance to be the de facto assignment editors of legacy-media publications.
Twenty twenty is going to be about the people who are stepping up to stop them.
pence and trump are killing their kids but they voted for them!!!
"It’s infuriating”: Trump-supporting parents turn on the president over lax EPA rules
Trump voters in Indiana fear the administration’s drive to weaken restrictions is hurting children with cancer
MATTHEW ROZSA - salon
JANUARY 8, 2019 11:00AM (UTC)
President Donald Trump may be losing support in at least one county that he won during the 2016 presidential election — and it's all because of his administration's anti-environmental agenda.
Dozens of parents of children in Indiana's Johnson County called for a federal investigation into why a toxic plume of trichloroethylene, or TCE, continues to exist underground due to an old industrial site in the county seat of Franklin and is allowed to contaminate residents' homes, according to The New York Times. This is in spite of the fact that Trump has long emphasized his disdain for the Environmental Protection Agency, a policy that he emphasized when he hired anti-environmentalists Scott Pruitt and Andrew Wheeler to lead the organization. Trump's slashing of environmental regulations has even prompted many career EPA employees to resign in protest, with one former employee claiming that to Trump "kids are disposable," and Trump has suppressed work like his own administration's climate change report when it contradicts his pro-business agenda.
While the TCE problems in Johnson County precede the Trump administration itself, its anti-environmentalist approach to pollution has stood in the way of matters being effectively addressed. The New York Times report offered a harrowing description of the human consequences of that type of anti-environmentalism:
The children fell ill, one by one, with cancers that few families in this suburban Indianapolis community had ever heard of. An avid swimmer struck down by glioblastoma, which grew a tumor in her brain. Four children with Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare bone cancer. Fifteen children with acute lymphocytic leukemia, including three casesdiagnosed in the past year.
The piece also elaborated on the difference between Trump's EPA and the agency's approach to this issue under his predecessor, President Barack Obama.
Declaring TCE “carcinogenic to humans by all routes of exposure,” the Obama administration had sought to restrict two of its riskiest uses, as a stain remover and as a degreaser, and had marked it for further review, potentially to ban the chemical altogether. It had also moved to strengthen cleanup rules for hundreds of sites nationwide believed to be contaminated.
But at the urging of industry groups, the Trump administration has stalled some of those moves. In 2017 it indefinitely postponed the proposed bans on risky uses, leaving as many as 178,000 workers potentially exposed. It also scaled back a broad review of TCE and other chemicals so that it would exclude from its calculations possible exposure from groundwater and other forms of contamination — the problems present in Franklin.
Stacie Davidson, a Trump voter whose stepson is in remission for a rare form of leukemia, became so fed up of Trump's "loosening of E.P.A. regulations" that she joined with someone who did not vote for the president in a county that overwhelming went for Trump in 2016 to form an advocacy group that is now calling for a federal investigation by the EPA’s Office of Inspector General.
“We should not have to fight Republicans or Democrats to save our children. It’s not a political fight for us,” Davidson told the Times.
"It’s infuriating,” she continued. “We’re ruining the environment for money.”
"This Administration would have the public believe that pollution is good and government life-saving regulations are bad. Nothing could be further from the truth," Mike Mikulka, President of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 704, told Salon in October when discussing Trump's decimation of the EPA. "The bulk of the American public supports the mission of the EPA and the life-saving regulations that have been put in place. The current direction seems to have veered off the tracks and seems bent on supporting corporate interests over public interests."
He added, "In spite of opinions to the contrary, corporations are not persons and are beholden to their shareholders for profits, not environmental protection. That is the mission of the EPA: to protect human health and the environment. So, to make EPA more responsible to the environment and the American people, return to the mission that the Agency was established to perform. Get back on that track. If a regulation does not protect human health and the environment, don't propose it under a deceptive name to try and fool the public into believing it is something that is good for Americans. That's not good government."
Dozens of parents of children in Indiana's Johnson County called for a federal investigation into why a toxic plume of trichloroethylene, or TCE, continues to exist underground due to an old industrial site in the county seat of Franklin and is allowed to contaminate residents' homes, according to The New York Times. This is in spite of the fact that Trump has long emphasized his disdain for the Environmental Protection Agency, a policy that he emphasized when he hired anti-environmentalists Scott Pruitt and Andrew Wheeler to lead the organization. Trump's slashing of environmental regulations has even prompted many career EPA employees to resign in protest, with one former employee claiming that to Trump "kids are disposable," and Trump has suppressed work like his own administration's climate change report when it contradicts his pro-business agenda.
While the TCE problems in Johnson County precede the Trump administration itself, its anti-environmentalist approach to pollution has stood in the way of matters being effectively addressed. The New York Times report offered a harrowing description of the human consequences of that type of anti-environmentalism:
The children fell ill, one by one, with cancers that few families in this suburban Indianapolis community had ever heard of. An avid swimmer struck down by glioblastoma, which grew a tumor in her brain. Four children with Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare bone cancer. Fifteen children with acute lymphocytic leukemia, including three casesdiagnosed in the past year.
The piece also elaborated on the difference between Trump's EPA and the agency's approach to this issue under his predecessor, President Barack Obama.
Declaring TCE “carcinogenic to humans by all routes of exposure,” the Obama administration had sought to restrict two of its riskiest uses, as a stain remover and as a degreaser, and had marked it for further review, potentially to ban the chemical altogether. It had also moved to strengthen cleanup rules for hundreds of sites nationwide believed to be contaminated.
But at the urging of industry groups, the Trump administration has stalled some of those moves. In 2017 it indefinitely postponed the proposed bans on risky uses, leaving as many as 178,000 workers potentially exposed. It also scaled back a broad review of TCE and other chemicals so that it would exclude from its calculations possible exposure from groundwater and other forms of contamination — the problems present in Franklin.
Stacie Davidson, a Trump voter whose stepson is in remission for a rare form of leukemia, became so fed up of Trump's "loosening of E.P.A. regulations" that she joined with someone who did not vote for the president in a county that overwhelming went for Trump in 2016 to form an advocacy group that is now calling for a federal investigation by the EPA’s Office of Inspector General.
“We should not have to fight Republicans or Democrats to save our children. It’s not a political fight for us,” Davidson told the Times.
"It’s infuriating,” she continued. “We’re ruining the environment for money.”
"This Administration would have the public believe that pollution is good and government life-saving regulations are bad. Nothing could be further from the truth," Mike Mikulka, President of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 704, told Salon in October when discussing Trump's decimation of the EPA. "The bulk of the American public supports the mission of the EPA and the life-saving regulations that have been put in place. The current direction seems to have veered off the tracks and seems bent on supporting corporate interests over public interests."
He added, "In spite of opinions to the contrary, corporations are not persons and are beholden to their shareholders for profits, not environmental protection. That is the mission of the EPA: to protect human health and the environment. So, to make EPA more responsible to the environment and the American people, return to the mission that the Agency was established to perform. Get back on that track. If a regulation does not protect human health and the environment, don't propose it under a deceptive name to try and fool the public into believing it is something that is good for Americans. That's not good government."
White House admits Trump climate policies will cost Americans $500 billion a year
Trump team approves -- but tries to bury -- report finding inaction on climate policies will devastate the country.
JOE ROMM - thinkprogress
NOV 24, 2018, 12:26 PM
PROJECTED CHANGES IN ANNUAL AVERAGE TEMPERATURES (2071–2100) WITH STRONG CLIMATE POLICIES (LEFT) AND WITH CURRENT POLICIES (RIGHT). CREDIT: NATIONAL CLIMATE ASSESSMENT.
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THE TOTAL AREA OF EACH CIRCLE REPRESENTS THE PROJECTED ANNUAL ECONOMIC DAMAGES (IN 2015 DOLLARS) UNDER A HIGHER SCENARIO (RCP8.5) IN 2090 RELATIVE TO A NO-CHANGE SCENARIO. THE DECREASE IN DAMAGES UNDER A LOWER SCENARIO (RCP4.5) COMPARED TO RCP8.5 IS SHOWN IN THE LIGHTER-SHADED AREA OF EACH CIRCLE. CREDIT:NCA.
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The 1,000-page climate report released by the White House Friday quantifies the staggering cost of President Trump’s climate science denial.
The congressionally-mandated National Climate Assessment (NCA) by hundreds of the country’s top scientists warns that a do-nothing climate policy will end up costing Americans more than a half-trillion dollars per year in increased sickness and death, coastal property damages, loss of worker productivity, and other damages.
Building on a 600-page analysis of climate science from 2017, the NCA details just how dangerous Trump administration’s policy of climate inaction is to Americans.
The White House oversaw the report’s review and clearance process — and tried to bury the findings by releasing it at 2 p.m. on the Friday after Thanksgiving.
But the reality of climate change cannot be buried. Indeed the report concludes that “the evidence of human-caused climate change is overwhelming and continues to strengthen, that the impacts of climate change are intensifying across the country, and that climate-related threats to Americans’ physical, social, and economic well-being are rising.”
The NCA projects a devastated America on our current path of unrestricted carbon pollution—widespread Dust-Bowlification and 7°F to 8°F warming over the entire inland portion of the country, even as coastal America is slammed by sea levels rising a foot per decade, resulting in ever-worsening storm surges.
The report concludes that if governments meet their Paris targets, and then go beyond them, overall damage can be limited (the RCP4.5 scenario, in which temperatures rise some 4°F by century’s end). But the NCA makes clear that with policies that undercut the Paris targets — such as Trump’s pledge to withdraw from Paris and boost domestic carbon pollution from fossil fuels — catastrophic impacts would be inevitable (the RCP8.5 scenario, where temperatures rise by 7°F or more).
One final point: The report warns ominously, “It is very likely that some physical and ecological impacts will be irreversible for thousands of years, while others will be permanent.”
The choices we make today won’t just determine the degree of harm we do to our children and grandchildren, but to the next 50 generations and beyond. The immorality of Trump’s climate policies simply cannot be quantified.
The congressionally-mandated National Climate Assessment (NCA) by hundreds of the country’s top scientists warns that a do-nothing climate policy will end up costing Americans more than a half-trillion dollars per year in increased sickness and death, coastal property damages, loss of worker productivity, and other damages.
Building on a 600-page analysis of climate science from 2017, the NCA details just how dangerous Trump administration’s policy of climate inaction is to Americans.
The White House oversaw the report’s review and clearance process — and tried to bury the findings by releasing it at 2 p.m. on the Friday after Thanksgiving.
But the reality of climate change cannot be buried. Indeed the report concludes that “the evidence of human-caused climate change is overwhelming and continues to strengthen, that the impacts of climate change are intensifying across the country, and that climate-related threats to Americans’ physical, social, and economic well-being are rising.”
The NCA projects a devastated America on our current path of unrestricted carbon pollution—widespread Dust-Bowlification and 7°F to 8°F warming over the entire inland portion of the country, even as coastal America is slammed by sea levels rising a foot per decade, resulting in ever-worsening storm surges.
The report concludes that if governments meet their Paris targets, and then go beyond them, overall damage can be limited (the RCP4.5 scenario, in which temperatures rise some 4°F by century’s end). But the NCA makes clear that with policies that undercut the Paris targets — such as Trump’s pledge to withdraw from Paris and boost domestic carbon pollution from fossil fuels — catastrophic impacts would be inevitable (the RCP8.5 scenario, where temperatures rise by 7°F or more).
One final point: The report warns ominously, “It is very likely that some physical and ecological impacts will be irreversible for thousands of years, while others will be permanent.”
The choices we make today won’t just determine the degree of harm we do to our children and grandchildren, but to the next 50 generations and beyond. The immorality of Trump’s climate policies simply cannot be quantified.
One map shows why Trump's trade war with China could be a disaster for average Americans
Bob Bryan - business insider
Aug 9, 2018, 9:31 AM ET
- President Donald Trump's trade war with China is ongoing, with tariffs flying back and forth.
- While US tariffs currently apply to $34 billion worth of Chinese goods coming into the US, Trump has threatened to apply tariffs to every import from China.
- The trade war could have significant economic consequences, as China is the largest source of imports for 23 states and among the top five sources for 47.
- It could also have political consequences, as 15 of the 23 states that count China as their top import source voted for Trump in 2016.
The Trump administration on Tuesday announced a 25% tariff on $16 billion worth of Chinese exports to the US, adding to the $34 billion worth of Chinese goods already subject to tariffs. Trump has also begun to move forward with tariffs on another $200 billion worth of Chinese goods, and he has effectively threatened that every item from the country could eventually be subject to tariffs.
Tariffs act as a tax on goods coming into the country, meaning goods coming into the US from China would be hit with an additional 25% duty. That makes those goods more expensive, which, in theory, would drive US companies to buy non-Chinese products.
Given that Chinese goods represented just over 21% of all imports coming into the US in 2017, an escalation of the trade war could push up prices for many goods. While the disruptions are likely to be widespread, some states may face more problems than others.
According to data from the US Census Bureau, China is a key source of imports for many states:
- For 23 states, China is the top source of imports.
- For 45 states, China is in the top three.
- China is among the top five import sources for 47 states. (North Dakota, Louisiana, and Delaware are the only exceptions.)
- Of the 23 states that count China as their largest source of imports, Trump won 15 in the 2016 presidential election.
payback funnies
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what you see is what you get!!!
your share, idiot!!!!
