Is Donald Trump one of Russia's 'Useful Idiots?'
September 24, 2016, 11:26 PM ET
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President Joe Biden delivered his first televised address from the Oval Office on Friday night to applaud the final result of legislative negotiations between his administration and Republicans in Congress who took the U.S. economy hostage over the debt ceiling, but progressive critics found the victory lap hard to take given the details of the deal and the devastating impacts they will have.
"It was critical to reach an agreement and it's very good news for the American people," Biden said during his remarks from the White House. "No one got everything they wanted but the American people got what they needed. We averted an economic crisis and an economic collapse."
But what Biden called a "big win for our economy and the American people," progressives—who argue the entire debt ceiling law is unconstitutional because it violates the 14th amendment and warned since last year that Republicans would orchestrate a crisis to protect wealthy tax dodgers and corporations while imposing fresh cuts on key social programs—should be seen for what it is: a kick in the face to the planet, democracy, and the material needs of poor and working-class Americans.
"Wall Street and corporate interests may be enthusiastic about this bill, but I believe it moves us in exactly the wrong direction." —Sen. Bernie Sanders
Warren Gunnels, majority staff director for the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee chaired by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), said on social media Friday, the final legislation—which Biden is expected to sign into law Saturday—should be seen as "a big win for the donor class and a big loss for the 99%."
"It's nothing to brag about," Gunnels added.
"Not everyone got what they wanted?" Nina Turner, former Ohio State Senator and congressional candidate, asked rhetorically. "The 1% and the military-industrial complex got exactly what they wanted."
As Common Dreamsreported, Lockheed Martin CEO James Taiclet this week said Biden signing the agreement into law would be "as good an outcome as our industry or our company could ask for at this point," noting that it calls for "3% growth for two years in defense where other areas of the budget are being reduced."
Journalist and author Mark Jacobs suggested that much of the coverage in the corporate press has been friendly to Biden's framing of the legislative result, but that this should be challenged.
"Here's the news media's takeaway on the debt ceiling deal: Yay! Bipartisanship works!" said Jacobs. "Here's the reality: GOP radicals held the economy hostage, Democrats paid the ransom, and bipartisanship is badly broken."
In addition to across-the-board spending caps for non-defense discretionary spending—which economists note is a real-world cut, given inflation, to key programs that serve tens of millions working class individuals and families—the deal greenlit permitting reforms for oil and gas projects desired by the fossil fuel industry and will force fast-track approval of the controversial Mountain Valley Pipeline that frontline communities in West Virginia, Virginia, and elsewhere have opposed for years.
Katie Bergh and Dottie Rosebaum, policy analysts with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, detailed this week how changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) contained in the deal championed by Biden and Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy "would put almost 750,000 older adults aged 50-54 at risk of losing food assistance through an expansion of the existing, failed SNAP work-reporting requirement."
"The older adults who lose access to SNAP would lose about $8 per person per day in benefits," explained Bergh and Rosenbaum. "These individuals often have very low incomes, and the loss of SNAP will push most of those affected into or deeper into poverty."
At the same time, the deal championed as a "big win" included large cuts to the IRS budget that a CBO analysis this week showed will actually cost the federal government over $40 billion in lost revenue and increase the deficit—the opposite result of what the GOP claims regarding the budget but very much in line with helping wealthy tax dodgers and corporations pay less each year.
In a Friday op-ed explaining his opposition to the legislation, Sen. Sanders said the only thing good to say about the bill was that it was not worse—which it certainly could have been.
"At a time when this country is rapidly moving toward Oligarchy, with more wealth and income inequality than we've ever experienced, I could not in good conscience vote for a bill that cuts programs for the most vulnerable while refusing to ask billionaires to pay a penny more in taxes," Sanders wrote. "Wall Street and corporate interests may be enthusiastic about this bill, but I believe it moves us in exactly the wrong direction."
"The fact of the matter is that this bill was totally unnecessary," Sanders concluded in his op-ed. "The President has the authority and the ability to eliminate the debt ceiling today by invoking the 14th Amendment. I look forward to the day when he exercises this authority and puts an end, once and for all, to the outrageous actions of the extreme right-wing to hold our entire economy hostage in order to protect their corporate sponsors."
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'He really wants to hurt people': Anthony Scaramucci calls Trump a grifter worse than most
June 03, 2023
Donald Trump is a "grifter," and a worse one than disgraced former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, according to former White House communications chief Anthony Scaramucci.
Scaramucci was on NBC to discuss his connections with Bankman-Fried, who was friends with Scaramucci before Bankman-Fried was arrested and accused of fraud. The former Trump official told the story of how he escorted Bankman-Fried to meet various wealthy individuals around the world in an effort to secure certain funding.
After discussing Bankman-Fried in the context of being a grifter, the host, Chuck Todd, asked Scaramucci a simple question: is Donald Trump considered a "grifter"?
Scaramucci thought for a moment before answering.
"Yeah, he's a different type of grifter than Sam Bankman-Fried," Scaramucci replies. "They have the same chemistry, these type of people. They objectify human beings. They don't look at you or me as flesh and blood and develop empathy for us. They see us as either means to get them to a place they need to get to... or they'll run over you with indiscrimination."
Scaramucci added that Trump is "meaner" than Bankman-Fried.
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"There's something a little meaner about Donald Trump... because Donald Trump, he really wants to hurt people," he added. "He excites the racism, he excites the division. Sam was really playing a video game and seeing if he could score more points than the rest of us. Donald Trump is more in that political sociopathic behavior where he wants power more than other things that are probably more important than power."
Watch the video below or follow the link:
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Texas has become the largest U.S state to enact legislation prohibiting healthcare professionals from providing gender-affirming care to transgender minors. This legislation, signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott, classifies such treatments as a form of child abuse.
The law pertains to various medical procedures and treatments, including hormone therapy and puberty blockers, which are commonly used in the medical care of transgender minors. Critics of the legislation argue it infringes upon the rights of transgender youth and their families to make informed healthcare decisions, potentially exacerbating mental and physical health risks for this already vulnerable group.
Proponents of the law claim it protects minors from making irreversible decisions about their bodies before they reach adulthood.
“The Children’s Gender Protection (CGPA) Act, Senate Bill 14 by Rep. Tom Oliverson, is a compassionate solution that recognizes the continuing evolution of a child in adolescence," wrote the Texas House Republican Caucus in a May press release. "This legislation provides a common-sense prohibition on medically unnecessary, irreversible gender modification therapies and medical procedures to alter a child’s gender before they are of legal adult age.”
Texas joins 18 other U.S. states that have banned medication and surgical care for transgender youth.
Medical professionals, including leading health organizations, strongly oppose the legislation. They insist that gender-affirming care is often essential for the mental and physical wellbeing of transgender youth, and decisions regarding such care should be made on an individual basis by patients, families, and healthcare providers.
The American Civil Liberties Union and other human rights organizations are preparing to challenge the law, which they consider an assault on the rights of transgender individuals. Legal experts expect a flurry of lawsuits, likely resulting in a protracted legal battle over the contentious law.
Texas lawmakers "are hellbent on joining the growing roster of states determined to jeopardize the health and lives of transgender youth, in direct opposition to the overwhelming body of scientific and medical evidence," the ACLU said in a statement when the bill passed the legislature.
The enactment of the law represents a significant development in the ongoing national debate about transgender rights and the extent of government intervention in personal healthcare decisions.
With Chat GPT-4.
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