Read About The Tarbaby Story under the Category: About the Tarbaby Blog
WATCH and find out why Miami is on the verge of disaster. Investigated by Jack Black.
Read more: ecowatch.com/sea-level-rise-flooding
via Years of Living Dangerously #YEARSproject
WATCH and find out why Miami is on the verge of disaster. Investigated by Jack Black.Read more: ecowatch.com/sea-level-rise-floodingvia Years of Living Dangerously #YEARSproject
Posted by EcoWatch on Sunday, December 24, 2017
December 25, 2017
This solar and water-powered trash cleaner removes trash from rivers before it gets into the ocean. The trash collected is then incinerated and used to power homes http://cnn.it/2zqeL4J
Meet Mr. Trash Wheel — a solar powered trash remover
This solar and water-powered trash cleaner removes trash from rivers before it gets into the ocean. The trash collected is then incinerated and used to power homes http://cnn.it/2zqeL4J
Posted by CNN on Sunday, December 24, 2017
John Hanno December 25, 2017
This Republi-con tax sham is what I call a “Dead skunk in the middle of the road,” one of my all time favorite song titles by Loudon Wainwright III. During my high school and Army days, friends and I would get together, drink beer and sing our favorite drinking songs at the top of our lungs…out in the woods, where no one could hear us…except the night critters.
Crossin the highway late last night
he shouda looked left and he shoulda looked right
He didn’t see the station….wagon…car…
the skunk got squashed….and there you are…
you got yer dead…skunk in the middle of the road
dead…skunk in the middle of the road
dead…skunk in the middle of the road
stinkin to high…..heaven
take a whiff on me…that ain’t no…rose
roll up your window… and hold…your nose
you don’t have to look and you don’t have to see
cus you can feel it in…your ol…factory
you got yer dead…skunk in the middle of the road
dead…skunk in the middle of the road
dead…skunk in the middle of the road
stinkin to high…..heaven
But trump’s congressional apparatchiks were so desperate to pass anything before year end, they were willing to vote for and attach their conservative bona fides and integrity onto what experts claim is the worst tax legislation ever; a bill that adds $1.44 trillion to the national debt or $1 trillion even after any increase in GDP. During the celebratory cabinet meeting and the photo op on the White House lawn yesterday, the fawnification by Mike “Glory Be” Pence and Republi-con congress folks, made for a queasy regurgitation.
Pence stated “trump has been making history since the first day of this administration.” Well, you wouldn’t get any argument from the Democrats!
trump faithfully delivers daily historic and consequential levels of egocentric self dealing, flagrant dishonesty, institutional contempt and depraved indifference for what makes America relevant, its Democratic ethos!
The reason we expect our leaders to be forthcoming with their tax returns and financial disclosures is because our constitution has granted them the absolute power to tax individuals and businesses and control commerce.
But our income tax system relies heavily on voluntary compliance and honesty. If we’re to believe trump, that he’s been audited yearly for decades, its obvious the Internal Revenue Service routinely believes trump is neither compliant nor honest.
trump, championing this Republi-con tax scam and exuding extreme flim-flannery, claims this thing (his tax bill) will cost him a fortune, “believe me – belief…this is not good for me. I have rich friends who are not happy with me.”
I’m amazed; no one but trump could tell four lies in one short sentence.
Since he refuses to provide his tax returns, even those before 2008 and even after he repeatedly promised he would, experts must guess how much trump Inc. and family will benefit from the bill. Tax experts believe trump can expect to reap between $5 and 11 million or even more from this legislation each year. That’s a long way from “losing a fortune.”
trump and the Republi-cons continue to describe this tax cut as the largest in history, one that was designed primarily for the middle-class.
First of all, its only the seventh largest tax cut in history and by the end of the plan, those in the top 20% will receive 107% of the benefits and the bottom 80% of tax payers will actually be paying more. But most of us can see through the smoke; only 26% of America approves of the bill.
Why? Because, unlike the 1986 Reagan tax cuts, this trump-con is a 100% partisan bill with no input from the Democrats; its based on no expert testimony or critical analysis, is not revenue neutral, is clearly not tax reform, they held no public hearings and it doesn’t simplify the tax code, as trump and the Republi-cons still claim.
There are $1.6 trillion in tax breaks taken every year; this tax bill only attempted to eliminate $400 billion of those tax breaks. And one of the biggest tax break scams, the carried interest exemption – granted mostly to hedge fund managers, and roundly condemned by both Republicans and Democrats, survived this phony “Tax Reform.” And the goodies thrown into the bill in the dark of night to get the bill passed (like pass through business breaks and the Corkerkickback), added a whole new litany of tax dodges. That loophole alone will cost the treasury $414 billion.
Foreign investors will benefit more than all middle income Americans in the 30 states who voted for Trump combined. Everyone under $100,000 income will get a tax “increase” in the last 2 year of the plan.
But the most consequential element of this plan will cause America’s alarming and burgeoning income inequality to grow even worse.
As has been the record over the last 3 decades, those who benefit most from our rigged crony capitalist economy, are the military and prison industrial complexes, connected millionaires, billionaires and multi-national corporations, and their executives, who will continue to get double digit annual increases, while those at the bottom will fall further and further behind.
Wells Fargo Bank just announced they will reap an 18% wind fall from this tax bill. Yes, that same bank who Trump owes $100’s of millions in real-estate loans to and who seems to be involved in monthly consumer scandals. Their ongoing litigation over the fake accounts scandal, the $100’s of millions in penalties and settlements, and the firing of 5,300 sacrificial low-level employees might have prodded them to raise their minimum wage for employees to $15 but that was supposedly already in the works before the tax bill was passed. The rest of America’s 7 largest banks will benefit on average 14% in additional profits from this tax bill.
trump and his departments of disinformation continue, with straight faces, to claim they are busy draining the swamp of miscreants and lobbyists, but its obvious they’re more entrenched than ever. K-Street wrote and then had to rewrite and then rewrite again this bill. The lobbyist’s fingerprints are all over the 1,000 or so pages.
The Republi-con sycophants in congress whooped and howled when trump admitted he pulled a fast one by not broadcasting to the fake media, that his slick plan to castrate the ACA by including repealing the individual mandate in the tax bill was a primary goal and a huge deal. Yes, taking healthcare away from 13 million hard working low income Americans was really a slick move. State treasuries will be tickled pink when they have to make up the difference. trump’s trumpery was almost as slick as holding hostage, to the self rewarding payments to his own family, his friends and his campaign donors, the 9 million children from low income families who depend on the Children’s Health Insurance Program for often serious health conditions.
trump incorrectly claims he “essentially repealed Obamacare” because more than 9 million Americans signed up for Obamacare this year in spite of the trump administration’s attempts to quell participation. The ACA is more popular than ever. The more trump and his cast of evildoers in congress try to cripple Obamacare, the more voters will turn against them. And if premiums grow by double-digits because of trump’s shenanigans, this administration will surely take the blame.
I wonder how the trump and Republi-con faithful, can continue to vote for toxic un-American representatives, so obviously engaged in self serving and morally and financially corrupt behavior; why are these uncritical voters standards and expectations so low?
Why can’t they see the American Democratic forest for the Republi-con trees?
By James S. Henry, DCReport Senior Editor, Investigative Economics
Before Donald Trump has signed the new tax law, there are already troubling signs that it is the first shot in a global tax war that threatens working people and the public pensions plans that sustain them in old age.
The Trump bill, which reads like a wish list for Goldman Sachs and its clients, has already triggered an aggressive “race to the bottom” in international corporate tax rates, rules and regulations. It is the exact opposite of his campaign promise to help the middle class.
What the mainstream American news has failed to notice are the global responses, including:
South Korea, Mexico and Chile are also actively considering corporate tax cuts, in response to the US measure, my interviews with key global tax analysts around the planet reveal.
The Argentinean corporate tax cuts are especially troubling because they may well turn out to be an ominous precursor for what may happen to Social Security in America.
Macri, channeling how the American tax cuts were drafted in secret and then rammed through without hearings, “Trumped” deep cuts in pensions through Argentina’s Congress this week.
In Washington, Congressional Republicans have tried for years to weaken Social Security and undermine its finances in the hopes they can kill the most popular social support program in the country. They are expected to step up their efforts to weaken Social Security, arguing that with the tax cut legislation there just isn’t enough money to sustain the social safety net.
An indication of this approach emerged with regard to CHIP, the popular Children’s Health Insurance Program. It finances often life-saving medical care for more than nine million children and 300,000 pregnant women.
CHIP was enacted in 1997. One of its cosponsors was Senator Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican. On December 17 Hatch indicated that America cannot afford to continue the program, which will begin cutting children off in January unless funding is restored.
The cost of CHIP is about $15 billion annually, roughly a tenth of what the Trump/Goldman Sachs tax bill will add each year to the federal debt.
The complex and hastily drafted Trump/ Goldman tax bill makes at least 121 key tax changes that will impact more than $8 trillion of federal tax revenues over the next decade.
Trump and his sycophants claim that the corporate tax favors will more than pay for themselves. They assert that the big cuts in corporate tax rates and other favors for business will prompt much more U.S. economic growth, with many new jobs and higher wages. Wishful thinking is the response of numerous economists who are not on the Trump/Goldman Sachs payroll.
Marina Fang, HuffPost December 20, 2017
Donald Trump Falsely Claims Tax Bill Means 'We Have Essentially Repealed Obamacare'
WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump on Wednesday heralded Republicans’ tax bill for its provision repealing the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate by incorrectly asserting that the health care law as a whole had been repealed.
“When the individual mandate is being repealed, that means Obamacare is being repealed,” Trump said at a Cabinet meeting that seemed to double as his airing of grievances before the holidays. “We have essentially repealed Obamacare, and we will come up with something much better.”
This is demonstrably false. The law still remains, after Republicans’ failed efforts to repeal it earlier this year. Republicans have devised ways to fundamentally weaken Obamacare’s provisions because they have not yet figured out how to repeal it outright, as HuffPost’s Jonathan Cohn reported.
GOP lawmakers added the elimination of the individual mandate to the tax bill, partly as a concession to some Republicans who had held out supporting the bill and partly as a way to offset the economic costs of it.
Repealing the individual mandate will worsen insurance markets, but the tax bill does not affect other important structures of the Affordable Care Act, such as protections for people with pre-existing conditions, tax credits for people who buy their own insurance and the expansion of state Medicaid programs. And Obamacare enrollment continued this year, despite the Trump administration’s attempts to undermine the program.
The president said Wednesday that he did not want the media discussing his claim about the health care law.
“Obamacare has been repealed in this bill,” Trump said. “We didn’t want to bring it up. I told people specifically, ‘Be quiet with the fake news media,’ because I don’t want them talking too much about it.”
President Trump’s attacks on Obamacare aren’t just cruel – they’re grounds for impeachment
Posted by NowThis Politics on Friday, December 22, 2017
Kevin Drum December 22, 2017
Richard B. Levine/Levine Roberts/Newscom via ZUMA
Sucking up to Donald Trump is tricky business. On Wednesday Wells Fargo announced that it was raising its minimum wage thanks to the passage of the Republican tax bill:
Wells Fargo to Raise Minimum Hourly Pay Rate to $15, Target $400 Million in 2018 Philanthropic Contributions, Including Expanded Support for Small Businesses and Homeownership
Company announces initial actions to support economic growth with tax reform
“We believe tax reform is good for our U.S. economy and are pleased to take these immediate steps to invest in our team members, communities, small businesses, and homeowners,” said President and CEO Tim Sloan.
That press release is a little vague. Was Wells really doing all this because of the tax bill? A pair of LA Times reporters called the press office to find out:¹
Asked by the Times to clarify the connection Wednesday, Wells Fargo spokesman Peter Gilchrist said there was none….Asked directly to confirm that the pay raises were not a result of the tax bill, Gilchrist said, “That is correct.”
But wait:
On Thursday, Gilchrist backtracked. “We believe tax reform is good for our U.S. economy and are pleased to raise our minimum hourly pay to $15 as a result.” …He would not comment on the reason for the earlier statement.
Needless to say, Wells Fargo is in a heap of trouble these days over a series of scandals that never seems to stop, so flattering the president is just good business. Maybe it won’t help, but it can’t hurt.
In any case, I think we can take this as a case study in what’s really going on with all those companies announcing new initiatives thanks to the tax bill: they have nothing to do with the tax bill at all. It’s just business as usual. But they’re certainly eager to say it’s because of the tax bill. I suppose I would be too if I had a lot of business with the Justice Department or the SEC or the Pentagon.
It’s what you expect from MoJo, and this past year has made clear that the dangers for independent, critical reporting are at a record level because of a perfect storm of economic and political assaults.
That’s why we’re setting a stretch goal to raise $350,000 from readers like you by December 31. Please join us with a tax-deductible donation—or read why this moment, December 2017, feels so critical for the survival of investigative journalism.
Kevin is a political blogger for Mother Jones. Email Kevin calpundit@cox.net. For more of his stories, click here
David Knowles December 22, 2017
In the waning days of the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump repurposed a well-worn catchphrase at a Wisconsin rally that not only resonated with his base of supporters but seemed to sum up his outsider White House bid: “Drain the swamp.”
One year into his first term, however, Trump’s pledge to root out Washington corruption has not exactly yielded the quick and easy results his slogan promised. Perhaps as a result, a new poll finds a sharp jump over the past 12 months in the number (44 percent) of Americans who think that most or all of the officials in the current administration are corrupt.
Trump’s swamp-draining project involved a five-point plan for scaling back the influence of lobbyists. So far, the president has made good on just one of those proposals: an executive order in January imposing a five-year ban on lobbying for outgoing administration officials. Questions have been raised about the legality of the ban, and it remains to be seen how it will be enforced.
Trump’s promise to push for a similar five-year ban on lobbying for members of Congress has yet to materialize. Meanwhile, the traffic has been mostly in the other direction, with more than 100 lobbyists named to positions in his administration, the majority serving at the very agencies they once tried to influence. The January executive order was meant to curb that practice as well, but within months the administration began granting waivers to allow lobbyists to take jobs regulating the industries they previously worked for.
Outside of government, a flood of lobbyists — many linked to the administration, including former Trump campaign manager Cory Lewandowski — have set up shop in Washington with the promise of selling White House influence. Through the first six months of the year, companies and interest groups spent a whopping $1.67 billion on lobbying, according to figures from the Center for Responsive Politics.
“I don’t think that anything’s really changed,” Republican lobbyist Brian Wild told Politico. “If anything, the lobbying business is booming right now.”
As a candidate, Trump assured voters he would appoint “only the best and most serious people” to his administration. Accurately filling out financial disclosure forms, however, has proved elusive for many of his appointees.
Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, has amended his financial disclosure forms 39 times, according to the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics. In his July revisions, for instance, Kushner revealed that he had “inadvertently omitted” over 70 assets worth $10.6 million, and he added the names of more than 100 foreign contacts not previously disclosed.
Michael Flynn, who Trump says he fired for lying to the FBI and the vice president, amended his disclosure forms in August to include business contacts with an Iranian-American as well as consulting payments for a project to build nuclear power plants in the Middle East. This month, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about conversations he had with the Russian ambassador to the U.S.
Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and longtime Trump business associate Rick Gates have been charged with money laundering, for allegedly moving millions of dollars through foreign shell companies. Three days after Gates surrendered and the terms of his bail agreement were being set, his lawyers admitted that their client had failed to disclose that he was in possession of a second passport.
Despite the establishment of a revocable trust meant to insulate the Trump Organization’s business dealings from the presidency, a change to the document added in February allows Trump to tap profits “at his request,” ProPublica reported. Essentially, this means that Trump can still directly benefit from such holdings as his golf courses, his Washington, D.C., hotel, and foreign real estate transactions, despite conflict of interest claims.
“A president is not permitted to receive cash and other benefits from foreign governments,” Norm Eisen, who advised President Obama on ethics and government reform, told NPR’s Terry Gross. “And yet, Donald Trump is getting a steady flow of them around the world and right here in the United States.”
For a president who has spent nearly a third of his time in office at a Trump-owned property, where taxpayers also foot the bill for Secret Service lodging, the advantages of such an arrangement are apparent.
Meanwhile, Trump’s family has worked hard to expand the Trump Organization’s deals around the globe, the profits from which could put the president in violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution.
Despite assurances that the president would be kept in the dark about his business empire while in the White House, Eric Trump told Forbes that he briefed his father on a quarterly basis “on the organization’s bottom line, profitability reports and stuff like that.”
While running for president, Trump refused to make his tax returns public — as candidates and presidents have done for the last 40 years — on the grounds that he was under audit by the Internal Revenue Service. In fact, there is no legal prohibition on sharing audited returns, leading to widespread speculation about what Trump didn’t want the public to see.
As the Republican tax plan took shape in Congress, Trump attempted to sell it to the public on the grounds that it would increase taxes for the wealthy, including himself. “I’m doing the right thing,” Trump said, “and it’s not good for me. Believe me.”
There is no way to verify that assertion, but tax experts doubt it.
“Trump will make out like a bandit on all the big items,” Steven M. Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, told the New York Times.
Still, without Trump’s actual tax returns, it’s hard to know exactly how much the bill will personally benefit the president and his family. As White House press secretary Sarah Sanders made clear this month, the chances that Trump will ever release them rates somewhere between slim to none.
“My understanding — and I will double-check — but the president’s taxes, no matter who the president is, actually immediately go under audit after being filed,” Sanders told reporters.
There is little denying that the president has stacked his administration with family members and close friends. As Abraham Lincoln recognized in assembling a Cabinet that would function as a “team of rivals,” such an arrangement rewards loyalty above actual government experience, let alone expertise.
While past administrations adhered to a 1967 anti-nepotism law that forbade the appointment of family members, the Trump administration procured a Justice Department ruling that paved the way for unpaid White House roles for first daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner.
“In choosing his personal staff, the President enjoys an unusual degree of freedom, which Congress found suitable to the demands of his office,” Daniel Koffsky, deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel, wrote in a legal opinion.
Almost overnight, Kushner, a real estate developer with no discernable diplomatic experience, was tasked with jump-starting an intractable Middle East peace process.
Ivanka Trump, meanwhile, has attended high-level meetings with foreign leaders and continues to advise her father.
“I have heard the concerns some have with my advising the President in my personal capacity while voluntarily complying with all ethics rules, and I will instead serve as an unpaid employee in the White House Office, subject to all of the same rules as other federal employees,” the president’s daughter said in a statement. “Throughout this process I have been working closely and in good faith with the White House counsel and my personal counsel to address the unprecedented nature of my role.”
Also unprecedented was the promotion of Ivanka’s clothing brand by counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway.
“Go buy Ivanka’s stuff is what I would tell you,” Conway said during a Feb. 9 appearance on “Fox & Friends.” “I’m going to give a free commercial here. Go buy it today, everybody.”
By Grace Guarnieri December 24, 2017
President Donald Trump joined his family at their “Winter White House” for the holidays Friday night after signing the GOP Tax Bill into Law, and reportedly told wealthy friends dining at Mar-a-Lago “you all just got a lot richer.”
Days before heading away for the holidays, Trump told White House reporters that the tax bill would be “one of the great Christmas gifts to middle-income people.” However, Mar-a-lago’s exclusive dinner guests would have paid a $200,000 initiation fee and $14,000 in annual dues to Trump’s golf club and resort.
Trump made the comment to friends eating dinner at a nearby table, two of whom spoke of the encounter with CBS News.
“It’s going to be a tremendous thing for the American people. It’s going to be fantastic for the economy,” Trump told reporters at the Oval Office signing on Friday. “It’s going to keep companies from leaving our shores and opening up in other countries.”
When Trump signed $1.5 trillion tax overhaul into law, ultra-wealthy earners in the 95th to 99th percentile received the biggest tax cuts, even though the top 1 percent already holds about 40 percent of American wealth. Instead of the 35 percent tax cut that he promised middle class voters, their taxes decreased by just 10 percent.
According to a report by the non-partisan Tax Policy Center, every income group received a tax cut from the Republican tax reform, but most individual tax cuts will sunset by 2025. A whopping 53 percent of Americans will be paying more in taxes by 2027.
During his presidential campaign in 2016 Trump told his millions of Twitter followers, “We’re going to cut taxes BIG LEAGUE for the middle class,” and added that Democratic candidate for president, Hillary Clinton wanted to raise taxes for the middles class.
“I consider this very much a bill for the middle class and a bill for jobs. And jobs are produced through companies and corporations, and you see that happening. Corporations are literally going wild over this,” Trump told White House reporters on Friday.
By Ruth May, Contributor December 15, 2017
As Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team probes deeper into potential collusion between Trump officials and representatives of the Russian government, investigators are taking a closer look at political contributions made by U.S. citizens with close ties to Russia.
Buried in the campaign finance reports available to the public are some troubling connections between a group of wealthy donors with ties to Russia and their political contributions to President Donald Trump and a number of top Republican leaders. And thanks to changes in campaign finance laws, the political contributions are legal. We have allowed our campaign finance laws to become a strategic threat to our country.
An example is Len Blavatnik, a dual U.S.-U.K. citizen and one of the largest donors to GOP political action committees in the 2015-16 election cycle. Blavatnik’s family emigrated to the U.S. in the late ’70s from the U.S.S.R. and he returned to Russia when the Soviet Union began to collapse in the late ’80s.
Data from the Federal Election Commission show that Blavatnik’s campaign contributions dating back to 2009-10 were fairly balanced across party lines and relatively modest for a billionaire. During that season he contributed $53,400. His contributions increased to $135,552 in 2011-12 and to $273,600 in 2013-14, still bipartisan.
In 2015-16, everything changed. Blavatnik’s political contributions soared and made a hard right turn as he pumped $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Sens. Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham.
In 2017, donations continued, with $41,000 going to both Republican and Democrat candidates, along with $1 million to McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund.
Touch chart to see info:
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the ranking Democratic leader on the House Intelligence Committee, told ABC News in September: “Unless the contributions were directed by a foreigner, they would be legal, but could still be of interest to investigators examining allegations of Russian influence on the 2016 campaign. Obviously, if there were those that had associations with the Kremlin that were contributing, that would be of keen concern.”
Under federal law, foreigner nationals are barred from contributing directly or indirectly to political campaigns in local, state and federal elections.
Should Blavatnik’s contributions concern Mueller’s team of investigators? Take a look at his long-time business associates in Russia.
Oleg Deripaska is said to be one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s favorite oligarchs, and he is founder and majority shareholder of Russia’s Rusal, the second-largest aluminum company in the world. Blavatnik holds a stake in Rusal with a business partner.
Further, nearly 4 percent of Deripaska’s stake in Rusal is owned by Putin’s state-controlled bank, VTB, which is currently under U.S. sanctions. VTB was exposed in the Panama Papers in 2016 for facilitating the flow of billions of dollars to offshore companies linked to Putin.
Earlier this year, The Associated Press reported that Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, began collecting $10 million a year in 2006 from Deripaska to advance Putin’s interests with Western governments. Deripaska’s name turned up again in an email handed over to Mueller’s team by Manafort’s attorneys. According to The Washington Post, in the email dated July 7, 2016, just two weeks before Trump accepted the Republican nomination for president, Manafort asked an overseas intermediary to pass a message on to Deripaska: “If he [Deripaska] needs private briefings, tell him we can accommodate.”
Viktor Vekselberg is one of the 10 richest men in Russia. He and long-time business partner Blavatnik hold a 20.5 percent stake in Rusal. (They met while attending university in Russia.)
In 1990, Blavatnik and Vekselberg co-founded the Renova Group for large-scale investments in energy, infrastructure, aluminum and other metals. One of their earliest investments was in Tyumen Oil Co. (TNK), founded in 1995. TNK is best known for its contentious partnership with British Petroleum after the two entities formed a joint venture in 2003. That rocky relationship ended 10 years later when they sold out to the state-controlled energy giant, Rosneft, under pressure from the Russian government.
As for BP, that pressure took the form of growing harassment and intimidation from Russian authorities who at one point, according to Forbes, refused to renew visas for BP employees, forcing BP’s joint venture chief Robert Dudley (who is now chief executive of BP) to flee Russia and manage TNK-BP from a foreign outpost in a secret location.
Vekselberg has connections to at least two Americans who made significant GOP campaign contributions during the last cycle. They are among several Americans who also merit Mueller’s scrutiny.
Touch chart to see info:
Andrew Intrater, according to Mother Jones, is Vekselberg’s cousin. He is also chief executive of Columbus Nova, Renova’s U.S. investment arm located in New York. (FEC records list his employer as Renova US Management LLC.)
Intrater had no significant history of political contributions prior to the 2016 elections. But in January 2017 he contributed $250,000 to Trump’s Inaugural Committee. His six-figure gift bought him special access to a dinner billed as “an intimate policy discussion with select cabinet appointees,” according to a brochure obtained by the Center for Public Integrity.
Alexander Shustorovich, chief executive of IMG Artists, attempted to give the Republican Party $250,000 in 2000 to support the George W. Bush presidential campaign, but his money was rejected because of his ties to the Russian government, according to Quartz. So why didn’t the Trump team reject Shustorovich’s $1 million check to Trump’s Inaugural Committee?
Simon Kukes is an oil magnate who has something in common with Intrater. From 1998 to 2003, he worked for Vekselberg and Blavatnik as chief executive of TNK. Redacted CIA documents released in 2003 under the Freedom of Information Act said “TNK president Kukes said that he bribed local officials.” The CIA confirmed the authenticity of the reports to The Guardian newspaper but would not comment further. In 2016, Kukes contributed a total of $283,000, much of it to the Trump Victory Fund. He had no significant donor history before last year’s election.
Touch chart to see info:
Graphics by Michael Hogue/Staff Artist
What’s your view? Got an opinion about this issue? Send a letter to the editor, and you just might get published.
Hilary Hanson, HuffPost December 24, 2017
A Texas community is grappling with the death of a 6-year-old boy who was killed in his home Thursday as sheriff’s deputies shot at a woman they were chasing outside. Deputies also killed the woman.
The boy, Kameron Prescott, was hit in the abdomen by a stray bullet that went through the wall of his mobile home in the city of Schertz. He was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital, The San Antonio Express-News reports. Four Bexar County Sheriff’s deputies were pursuing a female suspect, who was identified by her family as 30-year-old Amanda Lenee Jones. Police said the woman they were chasing was suspected of stealing a car. There is no known connection between Jones and Prescott or his family.
Sheriff Javier Salazar said at a Friday news conference (below) that deputies opened fire on the woman after she forced her way into the home where Prescott lived and threatened people inside. He said she went back outside and threatened deputies with an object that they believed to be a “weapon.”
Investigators have not recovered any firearms from the scene, but they did find a “tubular object” that they now believe was the item deputies mistook for a gun. At the conference, Salazar called what happened a “tragic accident.”
In a statement released by Kameron’s school district, his first-grade teacher described him as a boy who loved to make everyone laugh.
“Kameron was the kindest-hearted little boy that I have ever had the pleasure of teaching,” said Shanda Ince.
School counselor Maria Morales remembered him as an energetic, intelligent “kind soul” who could “strike up a conversation with anyone.”
Kameron’s uncle, Christopher Gonzales, has said that he wants to see the deputies “held accountable” for what happened.
“Y’all just killed a little boy, if it was y’all,” he told KENS5. “There’s no weapon, so it wasn’t that lady.”
Local news outlets have reported that a GoFundMe page has been set up for Kameron’s family to assist with funeral costs.
From buying groceries to keeping the lights on, life is full of battles for those in need. Help them win.
See how the 40 million Americans living in poverty fight to ma…
From buying groceries to keeping the lights on, life is full of battles for those in need. Help them win.
Posted by The Salvation Army Chicago Metropolitan Division on Monday, December 11, 2017
Remember: Regan Raised Taxes after Cuts Didn't Work
Republican leaders love talking about how Reagan enacted a major tax cut in 1981. But when Reagan slashed taxes for the rich in 1981, economic growth went down by 1.9% the following year and the unemployment rate increased. The 1981 tax cut was so "successful" that Reagan had to increase taxes at least 10 times after that.
Posted by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders on Wednesday, December 20, 2017
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders — US Senator for Vermont
Republican leaders love talking about how Reagan enacted a major tax cut in 1981. But when Reagan slashed taxes for the rich in 1981, economic growth went down …
