A newly empowered Chris Wallace takes the big government Fox Media position and begins arguing with OMB Director Mick Mulvaney.   Interested observers will note Wallace defends the U.S. CoC lobbying position around the budget, health care, the border wall, the imminent risk of government shutdown, Trump’s “first 100 days”, necessary tax cuts, cuts to environmental protection etc.

It can be frustrating to watch because Chris Wallace is arguing the exact positions of Tom Donohue, the U.S. CoC and the K-Street swamp’s corporatist lobbyists.

(more…)

In advance of a generically created media 100 day way-point to judge the presidency, ABC/Washington Post deliver a poll today (full pdf below) to begin framing the week long narrative.

The direction taken by political narratives is mostly due to a loose coalition of like-minded ideologues within politics and media.  People who run in the same circles, attend the same cocktail parties and gather at the same conventions and group meetings.  The current ‘anti-Trump administration’ approach is no different from prior 2016 election assemblies.

Tomorrow in Chicago, former President Obama is anticipated to rally the ideological resistance to current President Trump.  Enhancing the weekly set-up is a poll from ABC and the Washington Post constructed to cast a negative light upon Trump.  It’s the same formula used in the 2016 election assemblies.

It becomes exhausting, and really quite futile, to dig through the poll construct.  Yes, the pollsters over sample anti-Trump groups, and yes they under sample those methodological groups who would be more favorable in their opinion of Trump’s efforts.  The transparency of the intention is evident within the data they assemble, and even more so within the way ABC/WaPo specifically highlights the data and focuses the attention of the consuming reader or reviewer. (more…)

Attorney General Jeff Sessions and DHS Secretary John Kelly visited the Southern border today and paused for an interview with Martha MacCallum:

.

Almost simultaneously, OMB Director Mick Mulvaney gave an interview to the Associated Press where he outlines the White House priorities for the upcoming ‘bridge budget’ bill. The short-term budget (May through Sept 30th) is needed because congress never passed a budget from 2008 through 2017, and a continuing resolution spending bill expires on April 30th.

(more…)

Following an earlier expansive press briefing by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, President Trump signs a memorandum in the Oval Office to outline launching an investigative trade memorandum on the steel industry.

[Transcript] 12:13 P.M. EDT -THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you very much.  We appreciate everybody for being here.  It’s a historic day for American steel and, most importantly, for American steelworkers.  Thanks, especially, to Secretary Wilbur Ross for helping to lead this critical effort.  We’ve been working on it since I came to office, and long before I came to office.  We’re going to fight for American workers and American-made steel.  And that’s beginning immediately.

For decades, America has lost our jobs and our factories to unfair foreign trade.  And one steel mill after another has been shut down, abandoned, and closed, and we’re going to reverse that.  Other countries have made a living taking advantage of the United States in so many ways, as you know, and I’ve been talking about that for a long time.

(more…)

There are many people rightly concerned about legislative issues seemingly stuck in the mud.   However, what many of those same people seem to forget is the basic reality of President Trump’s America-First agenda being opposed by professional republicans even more than it is opposed by professional Democrats.  DC is a UniParty.

Republican and Democrat political leadership, the UniParty writ large, have been paid to protect the legislative priorities of the multi-billion lobbying group known as K-Street.

The fallacy of false choice lies behind the concept of controlled opposition.

Prior to Donald Trump there was only one political party in DC, the Uniparty. President Trump represents the alternative; the second party.

For almost five years we have been pointing out the construct.  The UniParty have three unwavering primary objectives as purchased by the lobbying groups: 1) Retention of Obamacare; 2) Budgetary spending to retain growth of government; and 3) comprehensive immigration reform to include amnesty.

These three primary legislative issues are not up for debate, modification or discussion.  The legislative outcomes have been purchased, multi-million-dollar investments made, and the interests behind the legislative constructs will not allow any elimination or concession.

(more…)

The time-frame was 2011 – the Tea Party had just crushed a republican Utah senator named Bob Bennett a year earlier.   Massive push-back against growth of government including TARP, Auto Bailouts and now ObamaCare was fueling the grassroots movement; the Professional Republican Party hierarchy, the GOPe, was furious; the Tea Party represented a risk to the establishment republican authority.

The GOPe were in the midst of formulating a push-back plan against the Tea Party through the use of the SCOTUS decision “Citizens United”.  Establishment Republicans were organizing tens of millions into Super-PAC constructs to crush Tea Party insurgents.

The time-frame was 2011 –  Utah Senator Orrin Hatch was up for reelection in ’12 and the Tea Party wave was pushing House Republican Jason Chaffetz to challenge Hatch for the Senate seat. The GOPe knew if Chaffetz challenged Hatch their tenured statesman would be lost (just like Bennett before him).

GOPe corrupt Senate leadership (McConnell, Portman, Cornyn, Corker, Blunt, Burr, Crapo et al) were assembling all resources to kill the Tea Party uprising. They reached out to like-minded colleague John Boehner, Speaker of the House for support. Hatch must be protected from the challenge.

Speaker Boehner, Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy (influence agents) told Jason Chaffetz to back away from the primary challenge and he would be rewarded with a bigger office, cushy career advancement, and the Chairmanship of an important and powerful committee.

The GOPe warned Chaffetz it would be in his long-term best interests to turn away from the Tea Party because the GOPe were going to go nuclear against the rebellion.  There was also a 2012 Presidential race on the horizon and all efforts would be expended to destroy the opposition to their previously selected candidate, Mitt Romney.   (more…)

Oh what a tangled web is weaved…. Apparently, the FBI used the Jeb Bush/DNC Commissioned opposition research dossier on candidate Trump as evidence to the FISA court to gain a warrant for surveillance.   Things just got more interesting.

If this report via CNN is factual in its baseline accuracy, methinks the motive for the stuttering obfuscation of FBI Director James Comey just gained some sunlight.

Washington (CNN) – The FBI last year used a dossier of allegations of Russian ties to Donald Trump’s campaign as part of the justification to win approval to secretly monitor a Trump associate, according to US officials briefed on the investigation.

The dossier has also been cited by FBI Director James Comey in some of his briefings to members of Congress in recent weeks, as one of the sources of information the bureau has used to bolster its investigation, according to US officials briefed on the probe.

(more…)

The issue we historically held with Mick ‘Cantalopes’ Mulvaney, was his direct association with Speaker Ryan when it comes to tax/budget plans. Thankfully, so far, Mulvaney has outperformed expectations and our fears have not been seen in Trump policy. We are cautiously optimistic.

One AP article disingenuously previously reported the White House was moving away from the initial campaign tax reform proposal. That outline was pure gas-lighting. The central issue of tax plan disparity centers around import tax tariffs and various alternative proposals.

House Speaker Paul Ryan is all-in with his “Border Adjustment Tax”, it is part of his larger ‘Better Way’ tax agenda. Apparently, according to The Hill, Mulvaney is not in alignment with Ryan. Good. The bottom line is Ryan’s plan is Tom Donohue’s plan. Ryan’s “Better Way” is the construct of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

President Trump is not in line with the complex Border Adjustment Tax nonsense. We’ll have to wait and see how this shakes out in the weeks ahead.

(more…)

An interesting concept of a border wall developed by an engineer and submitted by construction builder James Flanagan.

.

The Concept sounds really interesting. Although no mention of our killer sharks with lasers proposal, but, oh well, those enhancements can always come later.

(more…)

President Trump has expressed support for the continuation of the Import/Export bank. This has seemingly shocked a few people from conservative circles because the modern conservative doctrine has been to oppose the I/E bank.

However, Trump’s position hopefully does not come as a surprise to CTH readers because we identified a year ago how President Trump’s economic policies would seek to refocus the original intent of the Import Export Bank.

The key aspect is to return the IE to its “original intent“; not the bastardized Wall Street construct that exists today as a result of corrupt DC economic policies driven by the Wall Street’s legislative priorities purchased by multinational banks and corporations.

For more than three decades Wall Street has corrupted the economic policies emanating from DC.  The corrupted economic policy created the two economies previously discussed and the disconnected the engine of Main Street from Wall Street.  Yes, we originally shared this discussion in April of 2016, a year ago:

In 2009 the popular conservative opinion was to declare the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision a win for “our side“. Of course, the decision ultimately opened the floodgates for unlimited corporate spending in elections via the new Super-PAC approach.

In 2016 90% of all American’s polled believe there is too much special interest money in politics, and both political parties no longer need the financial support of the electorate. Corporate lobbyists were always problematic, but now in a post CU world they control almost every aspect of electoral politics – including who wins elections. Citizens United wasn’t a win, its consequence was a major fail.

Within that reality you find one of the synergies between candidate Donald Trump and former candidate Bernie Sanders. The popular insurgencies supporting each candidate rail against the corrupting corporate financial influence. Party leadership? Meh, not-so-much.

(more…)