FAIL 4

3/22

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see trump judge

SEE TARIFF TRADE WAR 4 25

see scotus 14TH DISQUAL, IMMUNITY

see ben stein award econ LAFFER KUDLOW MOORE

see kraken

see benghazi BS weaponization

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EBOLA DRC 800 SICK 6 26

Tim Meisburger, a Trump administration appointee assigned to oversee USAID operations alongside Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team, explicitly called the Ebola outbreak a "scam." [1, 2]

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REF

Column: Stephen Moore's ranking of states’ economies has been wrong for 12 straight years

By Michael Hiltzik

Business Columnist Follow

April 24, 2019

If you happened to check out the latest ranking of states for their “economic outlook” published last week by the right-wing political group ALEC, you would be excused for concluding that California is deep in an economic hole and digging itself deeper.

ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, has updated these rankings every year or so since 2008. They’re prepared by economist Arthur Laffer, Heritage Foundation fellow Stephen Moore and Jonathan Williams, ALEC’s chief economist, under the title “Rich States, Poor States.”

We’ve examined “Rich States, Poor States” in the past and found its ability to actually predict states’ economic growth prospects to be essentially nil. But this year’s edition is especially notable because of Moore’s role, since he’s been nominated by President Trump for a seat on the Federal Reserve Board, one of the nation’s premier economic policy bodies. “Rich States, Poor States” probably shouldn’t be seen as a feather in his policymaking cap.

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The ALEC economic outlook ranking is, in my assessment, a manifestation of faith-based economics.

— Menzie Chinn, University of Wisconsin

The rankings are based on 15 “policy variables” such as tax rates, anti-union policies and the minimum wage. In the latest edition, the 12th, California ranks 47th overall in its economic outlook.

Among the components of this figure are the state’s top marginal income tax rate of 13.30%, tops in the nation (rank: 50th), its steep tax progressivity (rank: 50th) and its high minimum wage of $12 an hour (rank: 48th). California also gets a black mark for not being a right-to-work — that is, anti-union — state. On the plus side, it doesn’t levy an estate tax. But that’s the only silver lining Laffer, Moore and Williams could find in a jungle of negatives.

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Indeed, California has been ALEC’s whipping boy since the rankings first appeared in 2008. In all but one of the 12 editions of “Rich States, Poor States,” California has ranked 43rd or below — including 47th six times, and 46th twice. The state’s high point came in 2012, when it ranked 38th.

Under the circumstances, then, one has to wonder why in recent years California has turned in the most consistently glittering economic performance in the nation. Its growth in real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product since the 2009 recession has handily outstripped that of several states with top-flight ALEC rankings, such as Utah (ALEC’s No. 1), Nevada (4), Indiana (5), North Carolina (6), Tennessee (7), Florida (8) and that veritable laboratory of tea party tax-cutting, Kansas (27).

One might almost think that the ALEC rankings are based not on actual economic potential, but on adherence to right-wing shibboleths such as favoring the wealthy and suppressing the income of rank-and-file workers.

Moore told me by email, “I’m not at all optimistic about the economic future of California, but I hope I’m wrong.” He didn’t address my questions about the mismatch between the ALEC rankings he co-authored and the facts on the ground, but noted that “California has lost almost one million net residents to the rest of the nation over the last decade,” adding, “People don’t leave places that are prosperous.”

Yet that’s just another example of beside-the-point reasoning that permeates the ALEC rankings, since California manifestly is prosperous, even if its wealth is not evenly distributed. Moore’s figures derive from a Census analysis for the period 2007 to 2016, not the last decade. In any event the net loss of 1 million residents over a decade is minuscule, considering that California’s population is 39 million. The bulk of the out-migration is among residents without bachelor’s degrees. California has experienced net gains in population among people with graduate degrees and income of more than $110,000.

Laffer, the rankings’ chief author, says he isn’t discouraged by the empirical figures on growth. “California is so magical,” he told me (he should know—he got his economics doctorate from Stanford and taught at USC for eight years before hanging out his shingle as an economic consultant in Nashville). “It’s got so much going for it that can’t be measured in terms of policy variables. I think California grows in spite of its policies.”

An original promoter of Proposition 13, Laffer asserts that the tax-cutting initiative spurred the state’s growth for years, and that even now it would be growing faster if it didn’t saddle itself with high taxes and tolerance for unions.

Yet there’s still reason to ask why the “pro-growth” policies that are advocated by the ALEC team don’t reliably translate into growth. And the evidence is strong that they don’t. That was the conclusion of economist Menzie Chinn of the University of Wisconsin, who in 2015 went hunting for some correlation between states’ economic growth and their rankings in “Rich States, Poor States,” and found none.

If anything, Chinn wrote, there was a negative correlation. As his home state of Wisconsin rose in the ALEC rankings — from 33rd in 2008 to 17th in 2014 (a period that overlapped the election of tea party favorite Scott Walker as governor) — Chinn noticed that the state’s growth rate fell relative to the rest of the country.

“This is not the direction that ALEC-Laffer-Moore-Williams posit,” Chinn observed. “Hence, the ALEC economic outlook ranking is, in my assessment, a manifestation of faith-based economics.”

That’s true of many, if not most, business climate rankings purveyed by business lobbies. They tend to give states demerits for regulations, for the “cost of doing business” (generally taxes and wages and government generosity) and for their cost of living.

Yet many of these categories aren’t drags on a state’s business climate, but reflections of its appeal. Sure, California is an expensive place to live, but that’s because it’s a desirable place to live. The state with the lowest cost of living is Mississippi, but who wants to live there? Yes, there are lots of regulations in California, but that’s because some of the features that draw people in, such as its natural beauty and its climate, need safeguarding.

Some factors measured by ALEC and other business groups have a narrow allure to executives and the rich, but no relationship with broader measures of the quality of life. Laffer and Moore, in their 2014 book “The Wealth of States,” reported on research findings that “industry is strongly attracted to states with … relatively little union activity.”

No kidding? CEOs naturally gravitate toward states where their employees have no voice in workplace policies or the ability to bargain collectively for higher wages. Is this necessarily an unalloyed blessing for anyone but management? Does it ensure a well-financed public sphere, including good schools, clean air and clean water? Hardly.

The most confounding case is Kansas, which for a time was a beacon of ALEC-friendly policymaking. That was during the tenure of Republican Gov. Sam Brownback, who came into office in 2011 intent on creating a low-tax nirvana that would turbocharge economic growth.

It didn’t happen. Laffer maintains that the reason was partially a pushback by an anti-Brownback cabal in the state Legislature that obstructed his tax plan. But in reality, Brownback’s policies blew such a hole in the state budget that the courts had to order higher spending on schools and other expenses. The state, moreover, was left without adequate resources to manage a rural recession. By 2017, the state’s growth rate was down to 0.2%; the U.S. average that year was 2.2%.

None of this guarantees that California will continue to outpace the nation in economic growth. The state faces not a few headwinds, including a lack of affordable housing and an excessive reliance on capital gains taxes. But these aren’t factors in the ALEC rankings, which are focused almost exclusively on policies that enable the rich to get richer while the working class struggles. Is that a formula for growth? Judging from California’s record, the answer is no.

Keep up to date with Michael Hiltzik. Follow @hiltzikm on Twitter, see his Facebook page, or email michael.hiltzik@latimes.com.

Return to Michael Hiltzik’s blog.

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Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” Commission report is filled with errors and broken links, reports NOTUS. The paper, released under the administration of President Donald Trump, also cites seven sources that do not appear to exist.

NOTUS spoke to Epidemiologist Katherine Keyes, the MAHA report lists as the first author of a study on adolescent anxiety. Only Keyes claims she didn’t write the paper the report uses.

“The paper cited is not a real paper that I or my colleagues were involved with,” Keyes told NOTUS via email. “We’ve certainly done research on this topic, but did not publish a paper in JAMA Pediatrics on this topic with that co-author group, or with that title.”

NOTUS reports it could not confirm iF? anyone wrote the study “Changes in mental health and substance abuse among US adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic,” complete with a nonfunctional link to the study’s digital object identifier. The citation claims the study appeared in the 12th issue of the 176th edition of the journal JAMA Pediatrics, but that issue doesn’t include a report with that title.

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Similarly, NOTUS reports two other studies pertaining to direct-to-consumer drug advertisements for ADHD medications and antidepressants for kids appears nowhere “to be found.”

NOTUS included these two citations:

*Shah, M. B., et al. (2008). Direct-to-consumer advertising and the rise in ADHD medication use among children. Pediatrics, 122(5), e1055- e1060.

*Findling, R. L., et al. (2009). Direct-to-consumer advertising of psychotropic medications for youth: A growing concern. Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology, 19(5),487-492.

“Those articles don’t appear in the table of contents for the journals listed in their citations,” write NOTUS reporters Emily Kennard and Margaret Manto. “A spokesperson for Virginia Commonwealth University, where psychiatric researcher Robert L. Findling currently teaches, confirmed to NOTUS that he never authored such an article.”

The author of the first study doesn’t appear to be a real ADHD researcher, according to a Google Scholar profile.

In another section titled, “American Children are on Too Much Medicine – A Recent and Emerging Crisis,” the report claims 25% to 40% of mild cases of asthma are overprescribed. But searching Google for the exact title of the paper that section cites to buttress that figure — “Overprescribing of oral corticosteroids for children with asthma” — leads to only one result: the MAHA report itself. The corticosteroids study’s alleged author, pediatric pulmonologist Harold J. Farber, denied writing it to NOTUS, or working with other authors listed in the study. He also described the MAHA report’s conclusions are “clearly an overgeneralization” of findings.

“It is a tremendous leap of faith to generalize from a study in one Medicaid managed care program in Texas using 2011 to 2015 data to national care patterns in 2025,” Farber told NOTUS in an email.

Read the full NOTUS report at this link.

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MMA

The Heritage Foundation's Stephen Moore on Trump's tariff strategy: “This is all kind of going according to plan”

04/23/25

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LIBERATION DAY TRUMP TARIFFS

cruz and foghorn jump ship? 4 gop defect on bill 1 cda, 2? budget cut his pwr

narvarro made up ron anagram, tossed under bus in 48 min recd?

AN 4 25

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is allegedly leaping for a window after dashing his “credibility” against the rocks of Trump’s disastrous tariffs, claimed MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle on Friday.

“Some [sources] have said to me, he’s looking for an exit door to try to get himself to the Fed, because in the last few days he’s really hurting his own credibility and history in the markets,” Ruhle told MSNBC’s Morning Joe,according to Daily Beast.

Bessent, who built a $500 million fortune as a hedge fund manager before working for Trump and entangling his name in Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff, was not a full-throated supporter of earlier tariff proposals. After Trump announced his new trade duties this week and went to play golf, Bessent found himself not to retaliate.

“I would advise none of the countries to panic. I wouldn’t try to retaliate because as long as you don’t retaliate this is the high end of the numbers and I think the market could have certainty that this is the number, barring retaliation,” Bessent told Bloomberg. “We got a ceiling, and we can see if there’s a different floor.”

Many international trading partners refused to let Trump trample them, however. China launched reciprocal tariffs, accelerating a trade war with US goods and sending the Dow Jones down more than 2,200 points by the Friday bell ring. Canada — once a staunch U.S. ally — also will match US tariffs, according to Prime Minister Mark Carney.

Ruhle said her sources claim Trump is “not listening” to his own treasury secretary, dangerously alienating one of the more serious voices familiar with market trends in the administration.

“[Bessent] actually understands how the markets work and, what’s happening right now, is only going to hurt markets," she said.

As president-elect, Trump claimed in November that Bessent “will help me usher in a new Golden Age for the United States.”

“Together we will Make America Rich Again, Prosperous Again, Affordable Again, and, most importantly, Great Again,” Trump said.

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chris hayes 11 20? 24 neo con bush cheney took over stovepipe intel cooked --> gulf war 2

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:{Alternet+ no lnx

Trump’s appointees are the Trojan horse that could lead to America’s strategic collapse

Thom Hartmann November 21, 2024.....

AN 10 24

The U.S. Supreme Court's immunity ruling in Trump v. the United States in early July has inspired so much debate and discussion that it has overshadowed another controversial Trump-related ruling handed down by the justices five months earlier: Trump v. Anderson.

In Anderson, the High Court struck down a Colorado Supreme Court ruling that excluded Trump from the state's ballot based on Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment. Under Section 3, one who has engaged in "insurrection" is ineligible to run for office — and the Colorado justices believed that the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol Building disqualified Trump.

But the Roberts Court disagreed, ruling that Trump couldn't be excluded from the Colorado ballot or any others. And two weeks before the 2024 election, Trump has a good chance of being elected president a second time. Polls are showing a very close, nail-biting race between Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

In a biting article published by MSNBC on October 22, legal journalist Jordan Rubin argues that the High Court failed the U.S. miserably in Anderson — and that Trump shouldn't even be on the ballot.

"With former President Donald Trump on the precipice of possibly becoming president again," Rubin laments, "let's recall that he’s on the 2024 ballot thanks partly to the Supreme Court. I'm not talking about the ruling granting him broad criminal immunity, though the Roberts Court's handling of that appeal helped Trump push off a trial in the federal election interference case — possibly forever, if he wins the election and deploys his reacquired presidential power to crush it."

Rubin continues, "I'm talking about another Jan. 6-related appeal from the last Supreme Court term, one that more directly positioned the Republican to take office again: Trump v. Anderson. It was there that the justices reversed the Colorado Supreme Court's decision to keep the former president from the ballot."

Rubin argues that the Roberts Court did the U.S. a huge disservice in Anderson, allowed Trump to stay on the Colorado ballot despite having "engaged in" insurrection on January 6, 2021.

"Look no further than the Trump-backed violence of Jan. 6," Rubin writes. "So, what about the 'plain consequences,' to use the chief justice's concerned phrase, of an oath-breaking insurrectionist potentially running the country again, this time knowing he'd have broad criminal immunity heading into a second term? That consequence apparently was not 'daunting' enough to move this court."

READ MORE:['I'm out of here': Michael Cohen plans to avoid MAGA reprisal by going abroad if Trump wins

*Jordan Rubin's full MSNBC column is available at this link.

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no lnx?

Breaking

Giuliani Disbarred In D.C.: Here Are All The Other Ex-Trump Lawyers Now Facing Legal Consequences

Alison Durkee

Forbes Staff

Alison is a senior news reporter covering US politics and legal news.

Sep 26, 2024,12:38pm EDT

Updated Sep 27, 2024,

Topline Ex-Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani was formally disbarred in Washington, D.C., on Thursday—months after being disbarred in New York—as a string of lawyers are now facing consequences for their work with former President Donald Trump.

Rudy Giuliani

Key Facts

Rudy Giuliani: Giuliani, who led Trump’s post-election efforts, was formally disbarred in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, with the District of Columbia Court of Appeals ordering the penalty based on New York disbarring the attorney in July. The former New York City mayor has also been criminally charged in Arizona for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election—where he initially tried to evade being served—after already being charged in Georgia, and he’s also been sued for defamation by voting machine companies Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic. He was ordered to pay $148 million to Georgia election workers whom he defamed, which resulted in Giuliani declaring bankruptcy.

Jenna Ellis: Ellis was charged in Arizona after previously being indicted in Georgia and taking a plea deal in that case, and she took another deal in August that requires her to provide “truthful, honest, candid, and complete” testimonies after being suspended from practicing law for three years as a result of her Georgia guilty plea. She was also previously censured for violating rules that bar attorneys from engaging in “dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation,” with the attorney admitting in court she had made “misrepresentations” while representing Trump after the election that had a “selfish motive.”

Kenneth Chesebro: The attorney, who is described as the architect of the Trump campaign’s “fake electors” scheme—in which GOP officials in battleground states submitted false slates of electors to Congress claiming Trump won—was criminally charged in Wisconsin on one count of forgery, after previously being indicted in Georgia, though he took a plea deal right before his case went to trial.

James Troupis: Troupis was also reportedly charged in Wisconsin in June; another Trump attorney who helped organize the false electors scheme, the lawyer had previously avoided criminal charges in other states and settled a civil lawsuit regarding the electors plot in Wisconsin in March.

John Eastman: Eastman was also charged in Arizona, after already being indicted in Georgia and having 11 charges filed against him by counsel for the California State Bar stemming from his efforts to challenge the election results with Trump. A judge recommended in March that Eastman be disbarred and sanctioned $10,000 for his post-election efforts, which the lawyer intends to appeal.

Christina Bobb: Bobb was charged in Arizona, the first charges the attorney and former One America News anchor—who now serves as an attorney for the Republican National Committee—has so far faced. The lawyer joined Trump’s legal team in November 2020, according to the Washington Post, and the indictment cites a text message that ties the lawyer to the “fake elector” scheme in which GOP officials submitted false slates of electors to Congress claiming Trump won their states.

Jeffrey Clark: Former DOJ attorney Clark, who faced charges from the D.C. bar for aiding Trump’s post-election efforts from within the agency, broke at least one rule of professional conduct related to his actions after 2020 election, a D.C. ethics committee found in a preliminary ruling, with a disciplinary panel ruling in August he should be suspended from practicing law for two years—Clark was also criminally charged in Georgia.

Sidney Powell: A judge dismissed an attempt by the Texas State Bar to discipline Powell in February after the bar alleged Powell’s post-election efforts had violated rules for professional conduct, though she now faces a separate disciplinary investigation in Michigan after being sanctioned for her post-election lawsuit in that state. After advising Trump and bringing her own post-election lawsuits in four states, Powell also still faces defamation lawsuits from Dominion and Smartmatic, a reported federal investigation into her organization’s fundraising arm and was criminally charged in Georgia, though she later reached a plea deal.

Michael Cohen: Trump’s longtime attorney served a three-year sentence in prison and home confinement for tax evasion and campaign finance-related crimes, after he orchestrated a series of “hush money” payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal over allegations they had affairs with Trump.

Alina Habba: Habba, who’s representing Trump in many of his post-presidency legal battles, has been sanctioned multiple times in Trump’s failed lawsuit against Hillary Clinton; she was first ordered to pay with her co-counsel $50,000 in sanctions and $16,274 in attorneys’ fees to one defendant in the case, and she and Trump were then sanctioned in January for nearly $1 million payable to Clinton, her campaign and other Democratic operatives.

Cleta Mitchell: Mitchell, who participated in Trump’s phone call in which he urged Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to overturn the state’s election results, resigned from her law firm Foley & Lardner in January 2021, saying she left the firm due to a “massive pressure campaign” against her from the left to oust her over her associations with Trump.

Other Georgia Attorneys: Attorneys Ray Smith and Robert Cheeley were also indicted as part of the Georgia case against Trump and his allies, after Smith worked on behalf of the Trump campaign in Georgia and Cheeley pushed false claims of election fraud at a legislative hearing in the state.

Pending Complaints: Ethics complaints urging state bars and disciplinary boards to investigate attorneys have been filed and remain pending against multiple Trump lawyers who aided his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including Mitchell and Boris Epshteyn, though court records show another complaint against Trump attorneys in New Mexico was dismissed.

Attorneys’ Fees: Trump and his campaign have been ordered to pay attorneys’ fees in a number of failed lawsuits—though it’s unclear if his attorneys have been forced to personally shoulder any part of those costs—including more than $20,000 to two Georgia counties over post-election litigation, $1.3 million to former White House advisor Omarosa Manigault and more than $54,000 to Daniels.

What To Watch For

Giuliani, Eastman and Bobb have all pleaded not guilty in Arizona, and their cases will still continue as Ellis’ charges are dropped. It’s unclear how long it will take for the criminal cases in Arizona and Wisconsin to play out. No trial date has yet been set for the defendants in Georgia who haven’t taken plea deals. (Giuliani, Eastman, Clark, Smith, Cheeley and other defendants have all pleaded not guilty to the charges against them.)

Crucial Quote

“The seriousness of [Giuliani’s] misconduct cannot be overstated,” a panel of New York appeals court judges wrote in their July ruling disbarring Giuliani—which formed the basis of the Washington, D.C. decision—arguing he “flagrantly misused his prominent position” as Trump’s personal attorney and “repeatedly and intentionally made false statements ... in which he baselessly attacked and undermined the integrity of this country’s electoral process.” “In so doing, respondent not only deliberately violated some of the most fundamental tenets of the legal profession, but he also actively contributed to the national strife that has followed the 2020 Presidential election, for which he is entirely unrepentant.”

Tangent

A number of lawyers who aided Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, but did not directly represent him in court or advise him, have also faced punishments. Powell’s co-counsel in the Michigan case—in which Trump was not a plaintiff—were all sanctioned and jointly forced to pay more than $175,000 in attorneys’ fees, as well as ordered to undergo legal education and referred to their respective state bars for potential discipline. Attorney Lin Wood, who was involved with the Michigan litigation along with other post-election lawsuits, has been under investigation by the State Bar of Georgia for his efforts since even before the Michigan order was issued. He ultimately retired before the State Bar could formally discipline him.

Chief Critic

Giuliani spokesperson Ted Goodman has not yet responded to a request for comment, but previously called the former mayor’s disbarment in New York a “politically and ideologically corrupted decision” in a statement, adding they “will be appealing this objectively flawed decision in hopes that the appellate process will restore integrity into our system of justice.” Giuliani has previously opposed his other punishments, with Goodman calling the Arizona case an effort to “eviscerate” the justice system and saying the former New York City mayor is “proud to stand up for the countless Americans who raised legitimate concerns surrounding the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election.”

Trump’s attorneys have largely denied wrongdoing and opposed the efforts to punish them, with the exception of Cohen, who pleaded guilty to his crimes, and the attorneys who have taken plea deals. In a statement after she pleaded guilty in Arizona, Ellis said she had agreed to cooperate with the investigation and was told she wasn’t a target before being indicted, but “neither the AG nor I control the grand jury.” “So both sides are just following through with our original agreements: I’m telling the truth and they’re not prosecuting me.”

Powell still denies the defamation allegations against her, and told Forbes the sanctions against her in Michigan set a “dangerous precedent to stand that puts at risk every lawyer who represents an unpopular cause or client.” In a statement after the ruling on his disbarment, Eastman’s lawyer said the attorney “maintains that his handling of the legal issues” over whether the 2020 election could be overturned was based on reasonable legal precedent and that Eastman was following “the same process taken by lawyers every day and everywhere.” He also opposed Eastman not being able to practice law to pay his legal fees while he faces the charges in Georgia, saying, “That is not justice and serves no legitimate purpose to protect the public.”

Surprising Fact

After the court ordered sanctions in the Clinton case against Trump and Habba, Trump and Habba went on to voluntarily withdraw two cases stemming from New York Attorney General Letitia James’ civil fraud litigation against the Trump Organization, which courts had suggested could be viewed as frivolous and result in sanctions.

Key Background

Trump and his allies filed approximately 60 court cases in the aftermath of the 2020 election seeking to change its outcome, ultimately losing all but one case, which was a minor dispute in Pennsylvania that did not impact the overall results. Since leaving office, Trump has continued to be deeply ensnared in legal issues, as he’s faced numerous lawsuits over his alleged role in the January 6 riot at the Capitol building, four criminal cases, James’ civil fraud case against him and his company and two defamation lawsuits from writer E. Jean Carroll. The fraud and Carroll cases have resulted in Trump being ordered to pay a combined $540 million to James and Carroll, though the former president has maintained the cases against him are “witch hunts” designed to harm his presidential campaign, and has pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges against him.

The right’s inept efforts to paint Joe Biden as compromised by China

The insinuations in Schweizer’s book spawned major lines of attack from Rudy Giuliani, John Solomon, Sean Hannity, and other Trumpists that revolved around the bogus conspiracy theory that Joe Biden had taken corrupt action in Ukraine when he was vice president due to his son’s position with a Ukrainian company. Trump’s obsession with this falsehood led him to try to leverage U.S. military aid to Ukraine to get that country’s president to announce an investigation into the Bidens, yielding Trump’s first impeachment for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress in 2019.

The attacks took on new urgency and refocused on Hunter Biden’s business interests in China in the waning days of the 2020 presidential campaign, when Trump and Fox tried to turn disgruntled former Hunter Biden business partner Tony Bobulinski into a household name. Bobulinski had alleged that Joe Biden had met with him in 2017 as part of a joint business venture involving Bobulinski, Hunter Biden, and Chinese oil company CEFC China Energy Co.

Right-wing outlets desperately trumpeted the Bobulinski story even as less credulous reporting revealed that the venture reportedly “never received proposed funds from the Chinese company or completed any deals” and corporate records “show no role for Joe Biden,” who denied any role in the business and was in any case neither in public office nor running for one at the time. And Bobulinski himself acknowledged that when they met, Joe Biden did not ask about the proposed deal.

The right’s Hunter Biden push failed to lift Trump to victory in 2020. But they responded with more of the same, spending the first years of Joe Biden’s administration trying to damage his political standing with similar attacks. And when Republicans won the House in 2022, they pledged to follow through with investigations into what Trumpists like Hannity termed the “Biden Crime Family.”

The House Republican investigations produced a series of reports detailing tangential issues to smear Joe Biden that soared on right-wing media outlets and crashed everywhere else.

In one particularly farcical case, House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer alleged that a Hunter Biden business entity “made direct monthly payments to Joe Biden” after it “received payments from Chinese-state linked companies & other shady entities,” which purportedly proved that “Joe Biden knew & benefitted from his family's business schemes."

Fox host Jesse Watters, over onscreen text that read “China Paid Hunter’s Company, Who Then Paid Joe,” said this showed that “China, after being threatened by Hunter, wired millions of dollars to him, and then Hunter started sending his dad payments.” For Hannity, Comer had revealed that “not only did Joe Biden discuss his son's business ventures, but he also received direct payments from one of Hunter's corporations.”

In reality, Joe Biden took over many of his son’s expenses during a period when Hunter was in the depths of drug addiction and Joe Biden was out of office. That included buying his son a truck to use. Hunter Biden made three payments, each for $1,380, to repay his father for the initial payments on the truck before taking over future payments directly.

This was happening at the same time the Chinese government was trying to curry favor with Trump — the sitting president — by making payments directly to the companies he owned and that his sons oversaw. And those revelations from the House Democratic report are the tip of the iceberg as far as corruption during Trump’s presidency is concerned.

While Fox shills like Watters have been contorting the facts to declare Joe Biden “a money laundering operation for foreign nationals,” they’ve curiously missed the massive influence peddling that happened right before their eyes. I wouldn’t hold my breath for that to change — as of posting, Fox had not mentioned the Democratic report.

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Sean Hannity: People would be furious if Trump and the Trump organization were making millions from China | Media Matters for America

SEAN HANNITY (HOST): To be very honest, I think we're making a big mistake if we don't get to the bottom of this. I cannot, for the life of me, you know, imagine what the media and how the country and the left in this country would be reacting if Donald Trump and the Trump Organization or the Trump family were making tens of millions of dollars from our top geopolitical foes like China and Russia. I can't imagine the left in this country not going insane, but lo and behold, here we are.

Meanwhile:

Donald J. Trump’s businesses received at least $7.8 million from 20 foreign governments during his presidency, according to new documents released by House Democrats on Thursday that show how much he received from overseas transactions while he was in the White House, most of it from China.

...

Using documents produced through a court fight, the report describes how foreign governments and their controlled entities, including a top U.S. adversary, interacted with Trump businesses while he was president. They paid millions to the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.; Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas; Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York; and Trump World Tower at 845 United Nations Plaza in New York.

...

“By elevating his personal financial interests and the policy priorities of corrupt foreign powers over the American public interest, former President Trump violated both the clear commands of the Constitution and the careful precedent set and observed by every previous commander in chief,” Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, wrote in a foreword to the report.

Among the countries patronizing Mr. Trump’s properties, China made the largest total payment — $5.5 million — to his business interests, the report found. Those payments included millions of dollars from China’s Embassy in the United States, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and the Hainan Airlines Holding Company.

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https://www.alternet.org/the-right-wing/gal-luft/

no lnx

Comer’s missing FBI 'whistleblower' and 'very credible witness on Biden family corruption' was just indicted

David Badash andThe New Civil Rights Movement July 11, 2023

House GOP Oversight Committee Chairman Jim Comer‘s alleged FBI “whistleblower,” who he claimed just days ago was a “very credible witness on Biden family corruption,” despite having been missing for months, was just indicted on charges including “arms trafficking,” “Iranian sanctions violations,” and “conspir[ing] with others in an effort to act within the United States to advance the interests of the People’s Republic of China (China),” according to the U.S. Dept of Justice.

He is currently on the run, DOJ says.

“According to court documents, Gal Luft, 57, is charged in an eight-count indictment with offenses related to willfully failing to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), arms trafficking, Iranian sanctions violations and making false statements to federal agents,” a DOJ press release states. “Luft was arrested on Feb. 17 in the Republic of Cyprus based on the charges in the indictment. Luft subsequently fled after being released on bail while extradition proceedings were pending and remains a fugitive.”

Some, including NBC News senior reporter Ben Collins are characterizing Luft with being charged as a “Chinese spy.”

“The ‘missing’ Hunter Biden witness the GOP was promising for a while there was just charged by the DOJ with being a Chinese spy,” Collins tweeted.

On Friday, Chairman Comer (photo) tweeted out a clip of his appearance on Newsmax, and wrote: “Gal Luft, a very credible witness on Biden family corruption, provided incriminating evidence to six officials from the FBI and the DOJ in a meeting in Brussels in March 2019. We have no reason to believe the FBI & DOJ acted on this info. Americans deserve answers.”

Comer told Newsmax Gal Luft is “very credible, and the people on MSNBC who made fun of me when I said that we had an informant that was missing, they should feel like fools right now.”

“This is their worst nightmare, again, because this is a credible witness,” he continued.

Chairman Comer’s allegations attacking President Joe Biden and his family repeatedly have been baseless.

“Comer has so far failed to show how Biden may have benefited from the payments or how any alleged business dealings by relatives may have impacted Biden’s policy decisions,” TIME reported back in May. “He has repeatedly blamed stonewalling by the Biden Administration for why his investigation hasn’t gotten more traction.”

“We are hopeful that we can find the informant,” Comer told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo. “Now remember, these informants are kind of in the spy business, so they don’t make a habit of being seen a lot or being high profile or anything like that.”

Also Friday, Rupert Murdoch’s NY Post Editorial Board ran a piece titled, “Media silence on key would-be witness Gal Luft’s Biden revelations speaks volumes.”

“The drip-drip-drip of evidence detailing the Biden family criminal enterprise has turned into a torrent,” it claimed.

Watch below or at this link.

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/10/qanon-ken-paxton

an 3 23

the Houston Chronicle's editorial board is offering a brief history lesson for QAnon supporters who believe in pushing conspiracy theories about Democratic leaders and lawmakers being at the center of child sex trafficking rings.

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According to the board, an actual child sex ring was reportedly discovered in Texas but when it came to making sure criminals suffered consequences for their actions, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) is said to have dropped the ball.

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"So where’s QAnon when you need them? We’re talking about the secretive cult of conspiracy-mongering crazies who believe that Democrats are pedophiles prone to making meals of their victims at the behest of evil Hillary Clinton and who worship Donald Trump," the editorial board wrote.

READ MORE: Venue nixes Trump-inspired event following warning of possible influx of white supremacists

The board went on to raise questions about the irony of former President Donald Trump's support of the movement while Paxton and QAnon supporters ignore a problem in their own backyard.

"We’ve noticed that the former president has taken to wearing a Q pin on his lapel, but in the interest of truth, justice, and the American way, we ask, how can these folks stay anon when an actual elected official in the great state of Texas has, by his rank incompetence, abetted what would appear to be actual cases of child sex-trafficking?"

Recounting the disturbing situation that unfolded in Waco, Texas, the board wrote: "Last year, the AG’s office proudly announced that the Human Trafficking Unit of the Criminal Investigations Division had arrested a group of people involved in a scheme in Coryell County, a rural county west of Waco, to ship teenage girls to Dallas and other Texas cities, where they were forced to 'exchange sexual contact for crystal methamphetamine.'

"Paxton’s office dubbed its sex-trafficking investigation 'Operation Fallen Angel,'” the board added.

READ MORE: Maryland’s GOP AG nominee called 9/11 an 'inside job': report

Now, unfortunately, the board is reporting that the investigation fell flat. "Now, thanks to a blockbuster investigative report by the Associated Press, we learn that Operation Fallen Angel has quietly fallen apart because of the AG’s bungling.

"Six of the people indicted are now free. One is being held in the Coryell County jail on other charges, while an eighth died in jail. The AP reports that Paxton’s attorneys were recently forced to drop four of the human trafficking and sexual assault cases — because they misplaced one of the victims."

The issue in Texas appears to underscore a bigger issue that was uncovered by the Associated Press.

Per the Houston Chronicle: "The AP investigation found that, as of August, the number of assistant attorneys general in the division that handles human trafficking cases was down by 40 percent. The number of assistant attorneys general in the criminal prosecutions division was down more than 25 percent from two years ago. The group that deals with financial and white-collar cases had been cut by more than half and has merged with another division."

The board concluded with a blistering assessment of Paxton's leadership and posed a compelling question to voters. "Paxton’s buffoonish adventures may read like a comic strip, but the harm he’s doing to this state is real," the board wrote. "How long will his supporters stand by and let it happen?"

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klip

SVB

AFTER SUCCESSFULLY LOBBYING for the rollback of new rules applied to Wall Street in the wake of the financial crisis, lobbyists for Silicon Valley Bank immediately began pressing their case further to the federal authority that insures bank deposits in the event of another crisis, according to lobbying disclosures reviewed by The Intercept. The lobbying effort managed to exempt banks the size of Silicon Valley Bank from more stringent regulations, including stress tests aimed at uncovering the type of weaknesses that led to the bank’s implosion Friday. Two of the bank’s top lobbyists previously served as senior staffers for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who himself pushed for the repeal of significant pieces of the landmark Wall Street reform legislation known as Dodd-Frank.

The meltdown of Silicon Valley Bank represents the second-largest bank collapse in American history and the first since the 2008 financial crisis. Over 90 percent of the bank’s deposits exceed the amount federally guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, meaning that those people may either never see their money again or lose substantial amounts.

Silicon Valley Bank President Greg Becker himself pushed for weaker banking regulations, telling Congress to lift “enhanced prudential standards … given the low risk profile of our activities,” as The Lever reported.

A chief culprit, economists say, is legislation President Donald Trump signed into law in 2018, which rolled back key parts of the Dodd-Frank banking regulations passed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. That 2018 legislation, called the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, passed with strong support from the Republican Party and critical support from some Democrats. Among those leading the charge was McCarthy, then House majority leader.

“We’re going to move this Senate bill directly to the president’s desk to ensure these reforms help the economy to grow further by making community banks stronger,” McCarthy said of the legislation in 2018. “This is going to free up a great deal of capital and this will help a lot.” two former staffers for McCarthy are registered lobbyists for Silicon Valley Bank, according to the disclosures, one of whom lobbied on the Dodd-Frank repeal law that experts say made the current crisis more likely.

Other Silicon Valley Bank lobbyists worked for political figures across both parties, including former President Bill Clinton; former Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wy.; former Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla.; Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Conn.; former Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa.; and former Rep. Jay Inslee, now governor of Washington state.

Brian Worth served as coalitions director for McCarthy from January 2011 to May 2014, when McCarthy was House Republican whip. Since March 2017 Worth has been a partner at the Franklin Square Group, where he’s worked as a lobbyist for Silicon Valley Bank. Wes McClelland served as a policy adviser and senior policy adviser for McCarthy from April 2011 to September 2015 and joined Franklin Square last January, where he has also lobbied on the bank’s behalf.

Franklin Square is the only lobby group that Silicon Valley Bank has used in over a decade and has lobbied on the bank’s behalf every year from 2009 to 2023. The only other lobby shops the bank has employed are DLA Piper from 2009 to 2010 and McGuireWoods from 2010 to 2011.

A spokesperson for McCarthy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Worth lobbied on the repeal law beginning on October 1, 2017, right up to its passage on May 24, 2018. Then, starting on July 1, 2018, Silicon Valley Bank began lobbying the FDIC — the very same federal agency responsible for insuring bank deposits and was tasked with implementing critical portions of Dodd-Frank.

Though Franklin Square has lobbied on behalf of Silicon Valley Bank since 2009, the 2018 filing represents the first time it had ever lobbied the FDIC.

Beginning on April 20, 2022, McClelland also began lobbying the FDIC for Silicon Valley Bank, which both he and Worth continued right up until the bank’s last lobbying filing this year.

The lobbying disclosures do not provide any more detail about the work. Neither Worth nor McClelland immediately responded to requests for comment.

“This was a 100 percent avoidable problem,” economist Dean Baker told The Intercept in an email, pointing to the Dodd-Frank repeal bill. “That bill raised the asset threshold above which banks have to undergo stress tests from $50 billion to $250 billion. SVB would have been required to undergo regular stress tests before the revision; among the stresses you look at are sharp rises in interest rates, which is apparently what did in SVB. Presumably, if its books had been subject to this test, the risk would have been detected and they would have been required to raise more capital and/or shed deposits.”

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also FTX

https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/tucker-carlson-guest-praises-el-salvadors-authoritarian-president-failing-bitcoin

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an ah 3 23

when conservative ex-Rep. John Boehner was serving as House speaker during the Barack Obama years, one of the far-right congressmen who really got on his nerves was a fellow Ohio Republican: Rep. Jim Jordan, a Tea Party and House Freedom Caucus favorite who is now a Donald Trump loyalist and a prominent figure in the MAGA movement. As Boehner saw it, Jordan's very performative antics were harmful to the conservative cause. And Boehner's contempt for Jordan was obvious when he described him as a "legislative terrorist."

But in 2023, Boehner is long gone from Congress. And Jordan's prominence in the U.S. House of Representatives has increased to the point where, under House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California), he now chairs the House Judiciary Committee as well as the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.

In right-wing media, MAGA pundits have been insisting that Jordan's work with the Weaponization Subcommittee will seriously wound Joe Biden's presidency and the Democratic Party in general. But in an article published by the conservative websiteThe Bulwark on March 10, two legal voices — former Associate U.S. Attorney General Frederick Baron and former federal prosecutor Dennis Aftergut — argue that the Weaponization Subcommittee's bark has so far been a lot worse than its bite.

"Jim Jordan's premise as chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government is apparent: If at first you don't succeed with political stunts dressed up as 'investigations,' change the subject and try again," Baron and Aftergut argue. "After an initial February 9 hearing airing old grievances…. Jordan, (on March 9), tried what had already backfired for his fellow MAGA committee chair James Comer: a disproven claim that the FBI had censored a Twitter story about Hunter Biden. But, once again, Jordan's investigative weapon was loaded with blanks. And he was hunting dead game anyway."

The legal experts continue, "You might remember the backstory: On October 14, 2020, just a couple of weeks before the 2020 election, Twitter prevented its users from linking to a New York Post article about Hunter Biden's laptop, because the article relied on stolen e-mails and contained private information. But by October 16, 2020, Twitter had corrected, once again permitting users to post links to the story. This tired old story was what Jordan chose as the focus of (March 9's) hearing."

Baron and Aftergut stress that so far, the Weaponization Subcommittee has been painfully short on substance.

"If Jordan's next hearing does not produce weightier and more relevant evidence of government misconduct," they write, "Jordan's weapon may look like a popgun firing a small cork on a thin string."

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https://www.mediamatters.org/climate-deniers**/hurricane-ian-**pummeled-florida-facebook-allowed-anti-science-content-thrive

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/how-fox-news-weaponized-hurricane-ian-push-its-agenda-discredit-climate-science-trash

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/economy-tanks-thank-ronald-reagan/

yesterday the Fed started something it hasn't done for quite a while. It started dumping bonds.

The Fed has been goosing the economy steadily since the Bush Crash of 2008, buying US and corporate bonds with money it creates out of thin air (only the Fed can "print money" like this by simply willing the dollars into existence).

By purchasing and holding those bonds over the past 14 years, the Fed has created and then flushed into our economy $8 trillion in liquid cash. This is how the Fed stimulates an economy in crisis: pouring newly-created money into the system.

As a result, our economy has been running on high-octane sugar-high stimulus (free money from the Fed, as you can see above) ever since 2008.

Several trillion of that came in the last year of the Trump presidency. While Republicans scream about spending for social needs that might also stimulate the economy, they and Trump were quite happy to see that money from the Fed.

But now the Fed and it's Trump-appointed Republican Chairman, Jerome Powell, are backing off.

Yesterday the Fed started selling those bonds, reversing the process after 14 years and now sucking money out. Instead of stimulating the economy, they're trying to slow it down in the hope that will cool off inflation.

When they receive the money back from those sales they'll simply drop it into the same Schrödinger's Cat-box from which it came: it'll vanish into the icy, dark depths of fiscal interstellar space, never to be seen again. What the Fed creates, the Fed can dissolve.

This month the Fed expects to "retire" $47.5 billion from its balance sheet — retire that amount from our economy — rising to $90 billion a month by the end of the summer.

While these aren't huge sums in the grand scheme of things, the very fact that the Fed has gone from pumping created-from-nothing money into the economy to pulling that money back out is a Very Big Deal.

Add that to its plan to continue increasing interest rates, which also slows the economy, and we're looking at a potential Category 5 event.

Thus, the Financial Times was the bearer of the predictable bad tidings yesterday. Just from that day's FT's (digital) front page's "Live News Updates" column, these were some of the headlines:

Ford forecasts car industry consolidation as capital becomes constrained
Treasuries and US stocks slip as investors gird for monetary policy tightening
Bank of Canada prepared to 'act more forcefully' after latest rate rise
European stocks enter June on a muted note after turbulent month
German retail sales fell 5.4% in April
UK house price growth slows in May
China's manufacturing sector activity shrinks for third consecutive month
Government bonds sell off as eurozone inflation hits record high
JPMorgan chief says 'hurricane' is bearing down on economy

In that last article, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, who a week ago had predicted "storm clouds" on the economic horizon, became far more blunt yesterday.

'I said they're storm clouds, they're big storm clouds here,' Dimon said, adding, 'It's a hurricane.'

Elaborating that the war in Ukraine and Europe's disconnection from Russian fossil fuel markets could drive oil as high as $175 a barrel, Dimon worried out loud:

That hurricane is right out there down the road coming our way. We just don't know if it's a minor one or Superstorm Sandy . . . And you better brace yourself.

So, how did we get here?

Between the Republican Great Depression of 1929-1937 and Reagan's inauguration in 1981, the United States experienced a few recessions, but nothing as severe as Republican President Herbert Hoover oversaw back on Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929.

Hoover's crash was set up by the election of 1920, when Republican Warren Harding convinced Americans to abandon the trust-busting, high tax, progressive policies of Presidents Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson in favor of that generation's version of neoliberalism or what we today call Reaganomics.

Harding referred to it as "Horse and Sparrow Economics" — it was the early 20th century version of what Reagan later reinvented as "trickle-down economics."

If the horses (rich people and big business) were fed more oats (through deregulation and tax cuts), more of those oats would pass undigested into the horse manure that then littered the streets of American. The sparrows (working class Americans) could then pick the extra oats out of the manure.

In 1920, Warren Harding won the presidency on a campaign of "more industry in government, less government in industry" — privatize and deregulate — and "a return to normality," his promise to drop the top tax bracket from its then-91 percent rate down to 25 percent.

Harding kept both promises, putting the nation into a sugar-high spin called the Roaring '20s, where the rich got fabulously rich and working-class people were being beaten and murdered by industrialists when they tried to unionize. Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover (the three Republican presidents from 1920 to 1932) all cheered on the assaults, using phrases like "the right to work" to describe a union-free nation.

In the end, the result of the "horses and sparrows" economics advocated by Harding was the Republican Great Depression (yes, they called it that until after World War II).

FDR's response to Hoover's Depression was to raise the top income tax bracket back up to 91% and impose stiff regulations on banks and Wall Street, creating the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and putting Joe Kennedy in charge of it.

Gloria Swanson, who knew Kennedy well and intensely disliked him (he'd robbed and exploited her), told me over one of our many dinners in her New York apartment that FDR knew, "It takes a crook to catch a crook." And FDR was going after the crooks.

High taxes on the morbidly rich and aggressive government enforcement of banking and securities rules prevented another large-scale crash for a half century until Reagan came along and repeated Harding's mistakes in the 1980s.

After Reagan finally dropped the top tax rate from the 74% he inherited when he came into office to 28% there was a one-day 22% stock market crash — Black Monday on October 27, 1987 — that rivaled 1929's Black Tuesday for the first time.

When Reagan deregulated the Savings & Loan industry the banksters stole so much money they crashed S&Ls across America, the first serious bank panic since the Republican Great Depression.

We're still living in Reagan's neoliberal deregulated economy. It brought us two financial crises while he was President, the dot-com bubble-bust of 1999/2000, the Bush Crash of 2008, and arguably the trillion-dollar-heist of 2020 when Trump passed out money to his fat-cat buddies without controls (we're still trying to figure out where all that money went).

Now, if Dimon is right, hang onto your hat for another "event."

The core tenet of both Harding's and Reagan's versions of neoliberalism is that the economy is essentially a force of nature. It's why Harding did away with regulations on stock speculation and why Reagan deregulated everything he could as fast as he could.

The economy "operates according to its own rules," they'd tell you, and anything government does to interfere with it will simply produce a bad outcome.

In actual fact, the opposite is true.

Players in the top reaches of finance, banking, and speculation are much like players in boxing or football: they're engaged in a competitive high-stakes game defined by very specific rules, and when they know they can get away with breaking those rules, they'll often do it.

The difference is that instead of winning or throwing a football game or boxing match, when bankers and speculators violate the rules they can take down the entire economy.

The financial speculators, of course are rarely injured in the process. We bailed out the banksters and speculators in the 1980s, 1999/2000, 2008, and 2020 to the tune of trillions of dollars. Senior executives and shareholders took home hundreds of billions of those dollars, looting the system they themselves had crashed.

Since 2008, most of that money was created out of thin air by the Fed. Now the Fed wants it back, but the banksters and speculators have already stashed it in their offshore tax havens. As a result, working class Americans and small- and medium-sized businesses will largely foot the bill.

Dimon and the purveyors of doom may be wrong about a crisis at this particular moment, but the system is still shaky and fraud is rife across banking, brokerage and finance, as Elizabeth Warren and Katie Porter continually remind us.

As I lay out in The Hidden History of Neoliberalism: How Reaganism Gutted America, it's probably going to take another 1929-type event to shake Americans up enough to reject Reagan's vision of a deregulated economy and put the nation back on the course of the stable and steady Keynesian growth that FDR gave us from 1933 to 1981.

Now, in addition to an economy held together with the baling-wire of Fed stimulus (that's coming to an end), both the US and the world are facing a wild spectrum of assaults that could have huge economic impacts.

And Republicans are committed to doing everything they can to cripple our economy, refusing to pass much of Biden's economic agenda, in their belief that a Crash will help them in the 2022 and 2024 elections.

Between the worldwide food and oil crises the Russian invasion of Ukraine are provoking, billions in climate change damage and millions of climate change refugees, Republican intransigence, and the Fed's claiming back that $8 trillion they gave our banksters and speculators, a real crisis may be at our doorstep sooner than any of us would like.

Brace yourself.

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an 5 22

sixteen months into Joe Biden’s presidency, Republican strategists are doing something they did during Barack Obama’s eight years in the White House: promoting the GOP as the party of fiscal responsibility. But those Republican deficit hawks didn’t do a lot of complaining when Donald Trump was president and the United States’ federal deficit was rapidly increasing. And according to a new report by conservative economist Brian Riedl, Trump did more to increase the deficit than either Obama or the U.S. president who preceded him, George W. Bush.

Riedl’s report, titled “Trump’s Fiscal Legacy: A Comprehensive Overview of Spending, Taxes, and Deficits,” was released on May 12. And he discusses his findings in an op-ed published by the Daily Beast over Memorial Day Weekend on Sunday, May 29.

“Donald Trump’s final tab is in,” explains Riedl, who served as lead research fellow on federal budget and spending policy for the Heritage Foundation from 2001-2011. “Legislation and executive actions signed by former President Trump added $7.8 trillion in ten-year budget deficits. When accounting for non-legislative budget savings, the total projected budget deficits expanded by $3.9 trillion over the decade. These figures appear in my new report, ‘Trump’s Fiscal Legacy: A Comprehensive Overview of Spending, Taxes, and Deficits,’ which analyzes Congressional Budget Office data.”

Riedl notes that his report “begins with the ten-year, 2017-2027, budget baseline that Trump inherited in January 2017” and “then measures all subsequent changes to those ten-year estimates that occurred during his presidency.”

“When President Trump was inaugurated, the CBO projected $10 trillion in deficits over the 2017-2027 decade,” Riedl explains. “By the time Trump left office, CBO’s estimate had grown to $13.9 trillion. Reducing deficits from the $10 trillion projection should have been easy. During Trump’s presidency, faster-than-expected economic growth raised the ten-year revenue projections by $1.3 trillion, and lower-than-expected interest rates shaved the ten-year interest cost projections by $2.6 trillion.”

Riedl continues, “That’s $3.9 trillion in automatic budget savings without lifting a finger. Instead of building on those savings, the president helped enact $7.8 trillion in new initiatives, flipping his total fiscal imprint to a $3.9 trillion net cost.”

Riedl also criticizes Democratic lawmakers in his op-ed, writing that although they “understandably decried the Trump deficits,” they “share much of the responsibility.” But when Riedl makes a Trump/Obama/Bush comparison, he emphasizes that Trump did the most to increase the United States’ federal deficit.

“From a fiscal responsibility point of view, President Trump’s record compares poorly to his predecessors,” the former Heritage Foundation researcher writes.“Using the same methodology, former President Barack Obama added $5 trillion in legislative costs over a decade, while former President George W. Bush added $6.9 trillion.”

Riedl continues, “Not only did Trump sign more ten-year debt into law than his immediate predecessors, he also did it in just a single four-year presidential term, compared to his predecessors’ eight years in the Oval Office…. There is no dispute that President Trump left the federal budget outlook in poor shape. He departed the White House with the largest peacetime budget deficit in American history, and a national debt exceeding 100% of the economy for the first time since World War II.”

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post ukraine invasion

https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/trump-s-new-right-wing-social-media-app-tanks-with-93-decline-report/

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