ObamaCare Update: Trump policy induces IRS to say leave form 1040 line 61 blank if you want

From the story here:

The IRS was set to require filers to indicate whether they had maintained coverage in 2016 or paid the penalty by filling out line 61 on their form 1040s. Alternatively, they could claim exemption from the mandate by filing a form 8965.

For most filers, filling out line 61 would be mandatory. The IRS would not accept 1040s unless the coverage box was checked, or the shared responsibility payment noted, or the exemption form included. Otherwise they would be labeled "silent returns" and rejected.

Instead, however, filling out that line will be optional.

Earlier this month, the IRS quietly altered its rules to allow the submission of 1040s with nothing on line 61. The IRS says it still maintains the option to follow up with those who elect not to indicate their coverage status, although it's not clear what circumstances might trigger a follow up.

But what would have been a mandatory disclosure will instead be voluntary. Silent returns will no longer be automatically rejected. The change is a direct result of the executive order President Donald Trump issued in January directing the government to provide relief from Obamacare to individuals and insurers, within the boundaries of the law.

Forget "Where's Waldo?" Where's Obama's GDP?

Obama's GDP came to $133.66 trillion through calendar 2016, Obama's spending to $28.72 trillion through fiscal 2016, 21.48% of the total.

Bush's GDP came to $102.87 trillion through calendar 2008, Bush's spending to $19.16 trillion through fiscal 2008, 18.62% of the total.

Together they averaged federal spending of 20% of GDP in response to  9/11 and the Panic of 2008, but it has gotten us nowhere except in deep kimchi.

Contrast their record with the 16 years before the Income Tax was passed, 1898-1913. It's a good comparison because the Panic of 1907 was a real crisis, in response to which the Congress foolishly introduced the Corporate Tax in 1909, and both the Income Tax and the Federal Reserve in 1913.

Federal spending over the whole prior period through 1913 was just 2.5% of GDP, 8 times less than now, yet GDP increased 142% despite a whopping 11% hit to GDP in 1908. GDP didn't recover from the Panic of 1907 until 1911, but it did so without any increased federal spending.

Fast forward to America's GDP hiccup from 2008 to 2009, which amounted to a measly 2.0% hit to GDP. GDP promptly recovered by 2010, yet all these yokels could deliver us was a total GDP increase of just 80% since the year 2000, 44% less robust than that period 100 years ago, before the advent of the bureaucratic state.

Put more sharply, Obama spent nearly $10 trillion more than Bush to solve a comparatively tiny $300 billion shortfall in GDP, but got nothing for it. Where, pray tell, did all the money go? Where is the GDP?

The spending excess has left us with a pile of debt which is now costing us $411 billion a year to service, 70% of the current Defense budget, despite the lowest interest rates in history.

At some point those rates will rise, and when they do, you'd better pray we still have a strong enough military to defend ourselves when the people we can no longer pay come a callin'.

There will be blood.

Obama's GDP, $4.31 trillion, Obama's spending in excess of Bush's last year, $4.86 trillion

I don't know how to show a negative $550 billion Nothing Burger, so the regular Nothing Burger will have to do.

You want cheese with that?

Interest payments on the debt averaged $411 billion under Obama, highest ever despite interest rates manipulated to the lowest ever

Call Senator Lindsey Graham, tell him to investigate his campaign contributions from Soros

ph: (202) 224-5972

Obama's Organizing for Action is behind the anti-Trump riots (used to be Organizing for America and Obama for America)

Paul Sperry, here:

Far from sulking, OFA activists helped organize anti-Trump marches across US cities, some of which turned into riots. After Trump issued a temporary ban on immigration from seven terror-prone Muslim nations, the demonstrators jammed airports, chanting: “No ban, no wall, sanctuary for all!”

Run by old Obama aides and campaign workers, federal tax records show “nonpartisan” OFA marshals 32,525 volunteers nationwide. Registered as a 501(c)(4), it doesn’t have to disclose its donors, but they’ve been generous. OFA has raised more than $40 million in contributions and grants since evolving from Obama’s campaign organization Obama for America in 2013.

Mnuchin confirmed to Treasury 53-47

Puzder to Labor is next.

24 days in and Democrats still won't let Trump form his government.

Hillary would have turned the entire federal judiciary into the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals

Michael Goodwin, here:

The activist judges who based their ruling on their liberal politics instead of the Constitution are the same kind she would appoint to the Supreme Court and all other federal courts if she were in the Oval Office.

Newsmax' Chris Ruddy "over drinks" with the president, really?

You decide which drink is talkin'. WaPo, here:

One of President Trump’s longtime friends made a striking move on Sunday: After talking privately with the president over drinks late Friday, Christopher Ruddy publicly argued that Trump should replace his White House chief of staff [Reince Priebus]. 

Honestly, Trump is his own chief of staff. Priebus is his liason to the Speaker of the House.

Revulsion Election Update: Kansas City Star survey discovers revulsion for Hillary top reason people voted for Trump

Told ya.

Here:

Last week, I asked those who cast their vote for President Donald Trump to explain their choice in their own words. And respondents weren’t shy in the least. I was inundated with thoughtful replies — almost too many to read. It was Wednesday before I could come up for air.

It would be a serious understatement to say readers offered a wide variety of reasoning, but three general schools of thought stood out:

It’s the Clintons, stupid

Ron Gullickson put readers’ No. 1 reason most succinctly: “Let’s be clear. My vote was not a vote for Trump, but it was a vote against (Hillary) Clinton. Shame on both parties.”

Nancy McDowell wrote, “I voted for Donald Trump because I couldn’t stomach the Clintons back in the White House. ..."

Bryan Bauermeister wrote that he voted Trump “because I did not want Hillary Clinton as president of the United States. That’s what it boils down to. …"

Jan Bentley’s reasoning was varied . . . "I did not want to vote for him but the choice was horrid, so I voted against Hillary. Because I want the next Supreme Court justices to be conservatives. Because of Clinton fatigue. The Clintons are far too ethically challenged.”

Mike Henggeler . . . "So why did I want to stop the Clintons so badly? I was born in 1954, raised by staunch Democrat parents and, until a few months ago, was registered as a Democrat (now independent). The Democratic Party of today bears little resemblance to what it used to be. It doesn’t stand for anything except itself and what it thinks it needs to do to win. And right there you have the Clintons, who have shown time and again that they will say anything and steamroll anyone who gets in their way.”

Jean Atwell cited Hillary Clinton’s reaction to her husband’s affairs. “I might have considered Clinton if she hadn’t stayed with a man who publicly humiliated her and her daughter,” she wrote. “She tells women that it is all right to stay with a man if it can possibly get you further in politics.”

Meryl Streep warns of brownshirts while wearing off-white

Ross Douthat might as well write for The New Republic instead of The New York Times

Here, sounding just like Brian Beutler:

[R]ight now [Trump's] presidency is in danger of being very swiftly Carterized — ending up so unpopular, ineffectual and fractious that even with Congress controlled by its own party, it can’t get anything of substance done. ... [T]he more the Trump White House remains mired in its own melodramas, the more plausible it becomes that the Trump-era House and Senate set a record for risk avoidance and legislative inactivity.

Yeah, 23 days in and he's already a failure because there's no . . . wait for it . . . [infrastructure] spending bill and a tax cut bill, the two great incompatibles which Gallup says most people want.

Isn't The New York Times supposed to be wiser than that, admonishing that you can't have your cake and eat it too? Well, its so-called conservatives at least should be so wise.

The fact of the matter is the Gallup poll result, which is the same as the Douthat wish list, reveals the bipartisan nature of Trump's support. The people who support increased spending and the people who want tax cuts populate two different political parties. Perhaps Douthat has heard of them? Getting them to agree on this stuff is going to take a lot more time than 23 days. It took Barack Obama over four years to come up with his tax cut. Unfortunately for Obama it was Bush's tax cut, not delivered by Dingy Harry and San Fran Nan but by John Boehner at the dawn of 2013. What Harry and Nancy did immediately deliver was jacked up "infrastructure" spending within a month of 44's inauguration, adding a $700 billion increase to Bush 2009 fiscal year spending, making the one time stimulus a permanent part of the budget.

It is the biggest untold scandal since the Fed secretly lent trillions and trillions of dollars to the world at rock bottom prices on questionable collateral during the financial crisis from 2008-2010.

Because Republicans took the House in 2010, that additional $700 billion got no higher, but what do we have to show for it after increasing outlays $700 billion in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016?

Where's the infrastructure after eight years and $5.6 trillion in increased spending?

Another trillion dollars will accomplish nothing.

Meanwhile Trump is delivering to his base, which is the first thing he must do, rescinding Obama executive orders, undercutting the ObamaCare mandate as Congress prepares its repeal, actually laying the groundwork to build The Wall (infrastructure!), rounding up criminal aliens (the horror) and trying to reduce terrorism threats which exist because of a chaotic immigration system, except the courts the enemy is trying to stop him.

He's also vilifying the media whom we also hate every chance he gets, and now the judiciary, the tag team which advances liberalism against the will of the people who overwhelmingly support Trump 2600 counties to 500 counties for the enemy.

And most of all, he's not being Hillary.

It's been a great 23 days. 

This is what populism would look like: 3100 counties each with a US Representative in Congress

In Michigan we have geniuses who think the Senate is gerrymandered

Here, in the comments section.

His vote cancels your vote.

The Courts had and have absolutely no business ruling on the president's travel ban, wrote FDR's former attorney general

Noted here:

Writing for the Supreme Court in 1948 (in Chicago & Southern Air Lines v. Waterman), Justice Robert Jackson — FDR’s former attorney general and the chief prosecutor at Nuremburg — explained that decisions involving foreign policy, including alien threats to national security, are “political, not judicial” in nature. Thus, they are

wholly confided by our Constitution to the political departments of the government, Executive and Legislative. They are delicate, complex, and involve large elements of prophecy. They are and should be undertaken only by those directly responsible to the people whose welfare they advance or imperil. They are decisions of a kind for which the Judiciary has neither aptitude, facilities nor responsibility and have long been held to belong in the domain of political power not subject to judicial intrusion or inquiry.

Democrats put their boot on the neck of Republicans, blame them for not getting up

So Brian Beutler, here in "The Republicans Are Off to a Pitiful Start: They control the government, but their Faustian bargain with Trump has been a miserable failure thus far":

"By this time in 2009, Obama . . .."

"By February 17, he had signed . . .."

"Trump has thus far signed one bill . . .."

John Hinderaker takes Gorsuch's reported "demoralization" comment seriously

Here.

So does Pat Buchanan, here, calling Gorsuch "a wimp". You can take the brawler out of the bar . . ..

Trump to issue new immigration order, defend previous one but not before Supremes

Reported one hour ago, here.

A clear majority of Europeans are fed up with Muslim migration: 55% want it stopped

Tom Price confirmed to HHS 52-47

Here.