The chutzpah is amazing.
This is the moment when the whole meeting descended into chaos and hurtled toward failure.
Here Zelenskyy explains how Ukraine tried diplomacy with Putin after Putin took Crimea in 2014, but Putin broke the agreements they made.
J. D. Vance then attacked Zelenskyy, as if Zelenskyy had orchestrated this media shit show in the first place to make him look bad.
But J. D. looked bad all by himself. He didn't need any help at all.
What a disgrace.
This after reversing himself this week, Trump saying he didn't call Zelenskyy a dictator and then called him the best president Ukraine has had, which was obviously all a set up for this public attack and humiliation.
The attack was telegraphed by the reporter asking why Zelenskyy didn't wear a suit for the meeting. Everyone knows Zelenskyy hasn't worn a suit to meet with anyone since the war started in 2022, an act of solidarity with his troops whose clothing he wears.
The last 10 months have seen the year over year measure fluctuating between 2.88% and 2.63%.
Honest to God, these people are clowns.
Republicans consider major budget change to obscure deficit impact of extending Trump’s tax cuts
... Extending the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which Trump signed into law in 2017, would cost $4.6 trillion over a decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the official nonpartisan scorekeeper.
That’s under the “current law” metric that has traditionally been used, as the tax cuts are slated to expire at the end of this year. But Senate Republicans want to use a different scoring method called the “current policy” baseline, which would assume that extending tax cuts costs $0 because they’re already law.
The chair of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, endorsed the “current policy” approach, telling reporters that it “recognizes that extending current law does not change the tax policy, does not reduce tax revenue.”
Congressional GOP aides say the idea could have a huge impact on what they’re able to pass in the budget bill. If they use the current accounting process, they have no chance of making the 2017 tax cuts permanent, because that would require paying for it. And this process would also be key to unlocking Trump’s other tax proposals, like slashing taxes on tips and overtime pay. ...
Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., said it would set a “terrible” precedent if Republicans adopt that budgeting approach.
He said it would be a backdoor way to nuke the filibuster and take an anything-goes approach to the reconciliation process, which Congress can use once per fiscal year to evade the 60-vote rule in the Senate for changes to spending and taxes. The process imposes significant constraints, like needing to pay for long-term laws that add to the U.S. debt.
“My advice is: If they adopt that policy, we should advise the American people to forget about their credit card debt,” Neal said. “You wouldn’t have to analyze revenue and expenditure.” ...
The budget framework passed this week by the GOP House is guaranteed to raise the national debt by $19 trillion in 10 years, which means we'll be $60 trillion in the hole by 2035.
All the shenanigans and pretending and make believe used over the years to get us to the current point of $36 trillion in debt, trotted out yet one more time aren't going to stop us from a date with $60 trillion in debt.
WE ARE NOT A SERIOUS COUNTRY.
A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Office of Personnel Management to rescind earlier instructions telling federal agencies to “promptly determine whether these employees should be retained at the agency.”
The directions, communicated in a Jan. 20 memo and Feb. 14 internal email, are “illegal” and “should be stopped, rescinded,” Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California said from the bench. ...
“The Office of Personnel Management does not have any authority whatsoever under any statute in the history of the universe, to hire and fire employees within another agency,” Alsup said Thursday night. “It can hire its own employees, yes. Can fire them. But it cannot order or direct some other agency to do so.”
“OPM has no authority to tell any agency in the United States government, other than itself, who they can hire and who they can fire, period. So on the merits, I think, we start with that important proposition,” he said. ...
More here.
A crucial March meeting of vaccine advisors to the Food and Drug Administration has been canceled without explanation, a member of the advisory panel told CNBC on Wednesday. ... CDC data shows the flu has caused up to an estimated 910,000 hospitalizations since October, which puts the season on track to be the most severe in at least a decade. ...
Reported here.
The barbarians are inside the gates.
. . . Roberts issued an interim order placing on hold Washington-based U.S. District Judge Amir Ali’s action that had imposed a deadline of 11:59 p.m. on Wednesday night.
Roberts provided no rationale for the order, known as an administrative stay, which will give the court additional time to consider the administration’s more formal request to block Ali’s ruling.
Roberts asked for a response from the plaintiffs - organizations that contract with or receive grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department - by noon on Friday.
More here.
The story posted at 10:14pm last night.
Elon Musk’s business empire is built on $38 billion in government funding
... Musk is one of the greatest beneficiaries of the taxpayers’ coffers. ... He has been a big beneficiary of national industrial policy, especially Democrat industrial policy, through government funding. ...
About a third of Tesla’s $35 billion in profits since 2014 has come from selling federal and state regulatory credits to other automakers. The credits are given to automakers that meet certain standards, including selling a certain percentage of zero-emission vehicles. Tesla is the largest seller of these credits to automakers that don’t meet the standards and want to avoid paying a fine.
These credits played a crucial role in the company’s first profitable quarter in 2013 and its first full year of profitability in 2020, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Without the credits, Tesla would have lost more than $700 million in 2020, marking a seventh-consecutive year with no profits, according to an analysis of SEC filings.
With the credits, the company instead reported a $862 million profit.
While Musk has advocated for ending the EV tax credit for consumers, he has said little about these regulatory credits. ...
Nearly a tenth of government money that has benefited Musk’s companies
comes from agencies in eight states, including California. ...
In 2016, SpaceX’s success in securing federal contracts prompted rival Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin (and owner of The Washington Post), to say in a company meeting: “Elon’s real superpower is getting government money,” The Post reported. “From now on, we go after everything that SpaceX bids on.”
More.
Musk's many government subsidized businesses are just the currently most prominent examples of American fascism. For bigger ones simply look into the defense industry, the energy industry, or healthcare, or Amazon's early no-sales-tax arrangement which allowed it to become the retail behemoth that it is. President Eisenhower warned us about this long ago, but we're so used to it now that we just take it all for granted.
Real capitalism is swallowed up by the combine between the taxation authority holding a gun to your head, taking your money, and giving it to the corporations.
That's the racket. That's the American way.
Three months and counting.
The federal government is expected to blow through $7.266 trillion in fiscal 2025.
That's $20 billion EVERY DAY.
The deficit is projected to be $1.781 trillion in fiscal 2025.
That's overspending of nearly $5 billion EVERY DAY.
We need a 25% spending cut, or a 25% tax increase, or some combination of the two.
But Republicans plan to cut taxes by $4.5 trillion and increase spending on the military, on the border, on deportations, and on energy deregulation (ha ha ha, they have to spend money to make money).
This is not a serious country.
 |
| https://taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/federal-receipt-and-outlay-summary |
House Republicans hit the brakes on town halls after blowback over Trump’s cuts
... “Obviously we’re very aware of those headlines,” a Republican National Committee official familiar with the dynamics said.
“I don’t know that a specific edict is going to come down from on high that they need to stop or anything, but a message I believe has been clearly sent that this narrative should end very soon,” the official said. “Probably the best way for that to happen is no more town halls. Elon Musk’s work still has the administration’s support, period.” ... “Pathetic astroturf campaigns organized by out-of-touch, far-left groups are exactly why Democrats will keep losing.”
“Ukraine, I will say they’re very brave, and they’re good soldiers, but without the United States and its money and its military equipment, this war would have been over in a very short time,” Trump added on Tuesday. ... Zelenskyy had also noted that any assistance Ukraine was still receiving was a legacy of the previous U.S. administration under Joe Biden . . ..
Reported here.
