patrick.net

joeyjojojunior says

PeopleUnited says

So your evidence that Trump and his family continue to run successful businesses while simultaneously serving in the White House means what exactly? What would make you happy? Would you rather he sold his company (for a profit no doubt) to the highest bidder? I don't think even that would satisfy you.

No, my evidence is that Trump is purposely forcing the US Government to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on businesses owned by Trump. That is the definition of using the Presidency to enrich himself. No other President in US history has done anything resembling this level of behavior.

And we haven't even started on the quid pro quo with China to enrich Ivanka. Basing US foreign policy to funnel $$ to his family.

It is truly unprecedented. Or unpresidented, as Trump would write.

So lets examine the situation with a parallel. I work for Acme company. They pay for me to eat lunch. I chose to eat lunch at my favorite restaurant (I happen to own it). Am I therefore guilty of forcing my employer to support my business? I guess so. Big deal. Trump is just choosing to patronize his favorite businesses. The fact that they happen to be owned by him might be unprecedented but it certainly isn't unethical. He has the prerogative to do so, and America has the prerogative to judge him for it. I simply don't think it fair to judge a man for doing exactly what he did before he was president, patronizing his own businesses.

PeopleUnited says

So lets examine the situation with a parallel. I work for Acme company. They pay for me to eat lunch. I chose to eat lunch at my favorite restaurant (I happen to own it). Am I therefore guilty of forcing my employer to support my business? I guess so. Big deal. Trump is just choosing to patronize his favorite businesses. The fact that they happen to be owned by him might be unprecedented but it certainly isn't unethical. He has the prerogative to do so, and America has the prerogative to judge him for it. I simply don't think it fair to judge a man for doing exactly what he did before he was president, patronizing his own businesses.

What company pays you to eat lunch?? And yes, most companies have strict conflicts of interest policies to avoid this type of situation. Very few large companies would allow a purchasing manager to hire a company owned by an employee to do contracting work.

It IS a big deal. We elected a huge snake oil salesman and he is using his position to take money from you and me and put it into his pockets. Obviously it doesn't bother you because you are part of the Trump cult. But that doesn't make it any less of a big deal.

Meh, nothing by Taylor Swift.

tr6 says

Obamacare is a "heritage foundation" disaster passed by Obama.

The only reason why Republican can't repeal it because it's pretty much what they would have passed in the first place.

CBOEtrader says

Go look at wealth disparity, workforce participation %, number of people on food stamps, % of population in poverty, and real wages... then compare that to the price of a home or food or gas or HEALTHCARE OR COLLEGE. The net result of Obama's policies hurt the poor and helped the rich.

More accurate to say that Obama was not single handedly able to reverse these strong trends which continued during his Presidency. These trends can all be placed at the foot of both parties, especially the republicans.

But you're completely right, Obama wasn't able to do much to prevent it from getting worse. I wonder why ?

Dan8267 says

Reagan killed the middle class, exploded the deficit, and sold out America. We'd all be twice as rich if Reagan were never president. The facts are indisputable.

Reagan took economy out of recession, won the cold war, turned everything around. But you liberal pinheads will never give him credit, and he's dead so he doesn't care what you think of him. He was one of the greatest presidents this country had.

Honey, the videos I posted show actual evidence. Your baseless rewriting of history carries no weight. Reagan was a loser who betrayed the American people, and they are still suffering from his inept policies.

CBOEtrader says

No, we put trump in power because of those things.

With the intent to fix any of that? Or just because he was non-establishment?

If Trump was only a middle finger to the establishment, joke's going to be on the Trump supporters, because he is (and will always be) on amazingly weak footing in DC.

Let me tell you how the next 12 to 16 years will go. Temp and Republicans will give tax cut. Deficits will grow liberal and the economy will grow. Tax revenue may grow temporarily as people bring money back (declare deferred income) and people are more likely to declare capital gains to rest their basis while taxes are low. Republicans will do something to spend money explicitly or by going to war. Then their will be a crash. We will turn to a Democrat. After the crash, the deficit will be through the roof, due to reduced gdp. The Democrat will bring the ship back slowly with no new spending and a reduction in wars, but the debt will keep growing due to the shit show that was left to him. Pubs will blame the Democrat.

After all history repeats itself.

PCGyver says

Wait should the Democrats be labeled the conservative?

Democrats have been more fiscally conservative for a long time. The only time that Republicans are more fiscally conservative in action is when it comes to social security or medicare spending. The only time they are more fiscally conservative in their assertions is when a Democrat is president. 'The debt will kill us. The debt will kill us.' was the refrain for the past 8 years. What are they saying today?

Republicans (religious republicans in particular) have been fighting social change throughout my lifetime. The demands of the Christian right and the lunacy of the Bush tax cut / war spending combination are the primary reasons that I'm a Democrat.

we believe ARLP is well positioned to once again consider gradually increasing distributions to our unitholders."

The Democrat stance on the environment is also more conservative than the Republican position. This isn't saying much considering the Republican position is to sell off public lands, pump mercury and CO2 into the oceans, get rid of any effort to conserve fuel, and to cut other emission control policies.

Lefties hate them too

Awe yeah!

Coal prices in the Illinois Basin seem to be trending poorly (all time lows). Isn't this where they sell 80% of their coal?

https://www.quandl.com/data/EIA/COAL-US-Coal-Prices-by-Region?utm_medium=graph&utm_source=quandl

c1561490 says

Coal prices in the Illinois Basin seem to be trending poorly (all time lows). Isn't this where they sell 80% of their coal?

https://www.quandl.com/data/EIA/COAL-US-Coal-Prices-by-Region?utm_medium=graph&utm_source=quandl

look at ARLP's earnings report - you'll have your answers

The dishonest media should have reported this as the major negotiation victory (for the world's best negotiator) that it was. That way, he'd be happy about it and excited to go for his round 2 victory.

Seriously, I thought that Trump losing the election in 2016 would break the Republican party. They seem to be broken badly enough for Trump's victory to ruin things. There is just not enough unity in the party to agree on much of anything. Hopefully, it will stay that way, but I'm not totally confident that will happen.

Yup that's what Tax cuts do.
I would prefer the poor hungry and driven in a healthy economy. Rather than kept underfed in a Socialist zero sum game.

Let the billionaires employ the poor.

Did not read, but the title of your thread is painfully stupid.

jazz music says

TRUMP TAX PLAN TO GIVE TRILLIONS FROM WORKING FAMILIES TO THE RICHEST FAMILIES

How can that be when everyone gets a tax cut?

jazz music says

At the same time, lower- and middle-income families could be in a worse position. The White House proposes to reduce the number of tax brackets from seven to three: 10, 25 and 35 percent. But no one yet knows where the income cutoff lines are being drawn. People who end up being pushed into a lower bracket would be better off, but those kicked into a higher bracket would not be.

Families with after-tax income between roughly $19,000 and $76,000, for example, are now in the 15 percent marginal tax bracket, which is slated for elimination.

“That’s where the middle of America is,” Mr. Kleinbard said. While some may drop into the new 10 percent bracket, others could be nudged up into the 25 percent range.

Translation: nobody knows nothing, but let's pretend our wild-ass guesses is the truth.

jazz music says

Repealing the estate tax, for example, would affect just 5,300 or so fortunes a year. For 2017, couples can shield up to $11 million of their estates from any taxation, leaving only the largest inheritances subject to taxation.

If we were a meritocracy, estate tax would be 90% across the board.
Each person would start from roughly the same square.
Plus rich old people would be actually spending like crazy to finish at 0.

Trump believers are truly a cult.

jazz music says

puts you in the category of being a John Locke LIBERAL

I'm definitively a John Locke liberal. That guy was a genius.

Sounds just terrible - An obvious Sell!!

:) :)

Left is defined by their representatives, BLM, feminists, la raza, and all the rest of the prominent liberals who hate success. Your Bernie boy has conviction and heart, but he's full of shit and hates everyone who makes 6 figures and up, dumbass even criticized Obama because left wing voters worship poverty and failure.

jazz music says

FortWayne says

The left is known for hating successful people.

I remind you that the left is well defined by John Locke, not by Rush Limbaugh. You might consider that those who want to live a parasitical existence at the expense of all us productive people would want to discredit the very philosophy that should unite us all against them.

If you are against slavery that automatically puts you in the category of being a John Locke LIBERAL Since you are subscribing to his philosophy and I quote:

Locke believed that people had natural rights to “life, liberty, and property”, and that the role of government was to preserve these rights. If a government does not preserve these rights, then the people have a right to change their government.

This is what scholars refer to as the political theory of Liberalism. Liberalism in this sense differs from the way the...

FortWayne says

Left is defined by their representatives, BLM, feminists, la raza, and all the rest of the prominent liberals who hate success

Corrected that for you:

Left is defined by their representatives, BLM, feminists, la raza, and all the rest of the prominent liberals conservatives who hate success.

The conservative left's bullshit is indicative of conservatism in general, not of liberalism. The conservative left is as much the opposite of liberalism as the conservative right is. You don't get to put your cousin's crazy on my family. It's your inbred ideology that is at fault. The conservative left does not agree with a single principle of liberalism. Furthermore, they use the exact same tactics that the conservative right uses including
- book burning
- criminalizing behavior that should not be criminal
- lying about facts
- silencing dissent
- tribalism
- rewriting history

Christ, if I didn't know the specific arbitrary issues of the left and the right, I could not tell the two apart. They are virtually identical.

The interview is hilarious. Trump has been doing this for years, though. He says something, then will not elaborate when asked wtf he means. That's because he is intentionally vague and his whole shtick falls apart when he has to be specific. The genius of this reporter was throwing the fake news bit into the mix.

Dan8267 says

Left is defined by their representatives, BLM, feminists, la raza, and all the rest of the prominent liberals conservatives who hate success.

Oh those are not conservatives Dan, those are the left buddy. That's your team. It's so bad that you are even ashamed of your own team. Your team is fucked up Dan, really fucked up.

Everyone is guilty of inherited ancestral guilt.
Just commit yourself to hell and go find a handbasket..

"I don't stand by anything" has to be one of his greatest word sequences to date.

I don't think that the thread title is accurate. Spicey pants said effectively said:

Trump was asked to consider raising the gas tax, and he said that he would consider it.

Tim Aurora says

Democrats never had the guts to embrace it but that one policy has many advantages

Meanwhile, democrats tried to get this done in 2015, and met resistance from Republicans.

In any case, I'm all for it as stated in other threads. If he decides to try and can get it done, it would be a step in the right direction.

Perfect.
Give the media the attention they deserve.
No one else could have done it better...

Wait, I'm losing track of the narrative.

The NYT and others who ran multiple articles bragging that the Deep State was putting Trump Team in it's place and had (their words) "Wiretapped communications" (which implies a recorded conversation, therefore a wiretap in colloquial usage), criticized Trump's tweet about it, then admitted Rice captured at least Trump Team members and was sure to keep the the individuals' names who had "unintentionally captured conversations" unredacted before distributing to 17 different agencies to maximize leak potential. The non-standard unmasking and leaking happened during Obama's administration, and the buck stops with him. Indeed one of Obama's last EOs was to allow unmasked intel from FISA to be spread more widely. Now they are saying it never happened again?

Make up your minds, Media!

Bernie Sanders told him how to do it right.
I hope he didn't forget to threaten them like good Ole' Bernie.
"You got a good interview there, you got 10 minutes don't edit it to make me look bad!"(as Bernie rips off mic and walks off interview)

The medium is the message.

FAKE NEWS

I'm writing the biography of Trump's Presidency now.

It is titled 'Diary Of A Wimpy POTUS, Or, The Sound Of Fury Signifying Nothing, Or, All Hat And No Cattle."

How about. 'brokepromise mountain'

YesYNot says

Meanwhile, democrats tried to get this done in 2015, and met resistance from Republicans.

Who said it'll go trough this time?