- Watch: Bigoted Turtleneck-Wearing Liberal Gets Tossed Off Plane For Harassing Trump Supporter!
File this under Justice Porn…
A miserable seething bitch and her browbeaten husband are the stars of a new video making it’s way around the internet after the woman, a horrible human being, decided to berate a Trump supporter on an airplane. First, here’s what happened from the guy it happened to:
The first flight attendant to deal with his bigot isn’t having any of her shit:
Attendant #1: “Is there going to be a problem?”
Woman: “There will be, I would like for him to change seats with somebody who did not put us all in harm’s way”
Attendant #1: “Well, you don’t have that right!”
[mic drop, goes to get other flight attendant]
When the second flight attendant breaks the news of her impending ejection, this ivory tower liberal starts throwing her dead mother in law out to try and gain some sympathy:
Woman: “I’m going home now. My mother in law, his mother, died. And we had to be here. I’m going home now, there is no way I’m getting off this plane.”
Attendant #2: “I’m terribly sorry for that, but that does not give you the right to treat people the way you’ve been treating them.
[indignancy intensifies]
Husband: “What if we trade seats and she quiets down? How would that be?”
Attendant #2: “Unfortunately the captain has already made the call…”
DENIED
Enjoy the show:
And a potato quality recording of her actually getting tossed:
Note the applause…
- Treasuries Besieged by 'Idiot Money': Record Shorts in Treasuries Paint an Ominous Picture for Bond Bears
As some of you might recall, in December of 2015, I went long treasuries, due to my belief that negative interest rates would wreak havoc across the investment landscape — bringing with it a deflationary vortex that would consume all whole — especially equity holders. For the better part of 2016, this was the single best trade to be in — and I had it before anyone deemed it to be fashionable.
Then the elections came and a gigantic Trump induced squeeze commenced — helping rout bonds and buoy equities in record fashion. Looking back on that rally, it was a fucking month — literally nothing in the big scheme of things. Should bonds rally again, recapturing some of its former glory, no one will remember the faux inflation days of November-January — post Hillary annihilation.
Looking at the bond trade, it’s ripe for a reversion to the mean. After all, the most reprehensible people around, pavement apes and the like, are short bonds. These are the ‘Fast Money’ people — the same lads who bought mortgage bonds in 2007 and dot com hand grenades in the spring of 2000.
Via CFTC:
The amount of speculators’ bearish, or short, positions in
10-year Treasury futures exceeded bullish, or long, positions by
394,689 contracts on Jan. 10, according to the CFTC’s latest
Commitments of Traders data.A week earlier, speculators held 344,931 net short positions
in 10-year T-note futures.Net shorts in five-year T-note futures and Eurodollar
futures among speculators also climbed to record highs in the
latest week, while speculative T-bond net shorts rose to their
highest level since March 2012, according to CFTC data.Net shorts in federal funds futures among speculators rose
to their highest since August 2015.The rise in net shorts among these futures contracts
suggested this group of market participants believes bond prices
will resume their fall despite their rebound since mid-December.Juxtaposing short data with actual yield action, proves, in fact, that the shorts are literally pavement apes — idiots devoid of reason — slaves to the basest instincts that require zero thinking. These are horrible people.
Yields on the 5 year treasury have doubled since our glorious leader, Donald J. Trump, seized power, to 1.94%. Short contracts now outstrip longs by a record 1.1 million — making this Tower of Pisa trade indelibly lopsided.
In the end, “real money always wins,” said Tom di Galoma, the managing director of government trading and strategy at Seaport Global Holdings. “Speculators tend to get taken out. We’ve seen this occur several times in the last 10 to 15 years, where everybody thinks rates are too low.”
A shift back into Treasuries may already be starting. Fixed-income managers who oversee a combined $225 billion held 24.7 percent of their assets in U.S. government debt in the week through Jan. 17, according to Stone & McCarthy Research Associates client survey. That’s higher than the average of 24.2 percent in 2016.
However, signs of even a slightly more aggressive Fed can still make the bearish trades worthwhile. Last week, Fed Chair Janet Yellen said rates could rise “a few times a year” from now through 2019. That caused five-year yields to soar by the most since the central bank raised rates Dec. 14.
In the past, the Fed has been notorious for being too confident about growth and the pace of rate increases. Jason Evans, co-founder of hedge fund NineAlpha Capital LP and the former head of U.S. government bond trading at Deutsche Bank AG, believes this time the central bank will stick to its projections and lift rates three times in 2017.
“It’s understandable that there’s going to be a little ebb and flow,” said Evans, who said his firm put on short positions this month. Even so, “we’ll have higher yields later this year. We at least know the direction we’re heading in.”
The expectations for the Federal Reserve is for 3 hikes in 2017, then more in 2018. However, that hope is predicated on economic growth expansion — which cannot happen without the cooperation from a Congress who has only, at this time, approved 2 of Trump’s 21 cabinet appointees and appear to be ready to fight him, tooth and nail, every step of the way. Couple that with the fact that the dollar is at 14 year highs and the cost to borrow funds has spiked, dramatically, since election day — making Trump’s fiscal dreams increasingly difficult to attain, I think it’s fair to say higher rates isn’t a foregone conclusion.
I am long zeroes, via $ZROZ.
Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com
- How To Predict The Behavior Of Globalists
Submitted by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,
In my last article, 'How Globalists Predict Your Behavior', I outlined the primary method globalists use to measure public consent, or, public dissent. The use of macro-analytics and the hyper-monitoring of web traffic is a powerful tool at the disposal of the establishment for gauging shifts in public consciousness in real time.
For example, in early 2016 the elites were entirely aware of the rise of conservative and sovereignty movements in the U.S. and Europe. In fact, the dangers of growing “populism” were all that elitists and their publications talked about for the first six months of the year. At first, this notion seemed a little odd to me. Generally, when globalists are attempting to manage public opinion, they are careful not to reveal the slightest hint that conservative movements exist beyond an “extremist fringe”. They certainly never suggest that there is a massive undercurrent of nationalism ready to topple the globalist structure.
In fact, whenever such movements do arise the establishment is swift to obstruct them or co-opt them. I witnessed this first hand during the Ron Paul campaign in 2008 and 2012 – the mainstream deliberately refused to acknowledge Ron Paul's existence, because attacking him repeatedly would have been a zero sum strategy that would have given him greater public attention and free publicity.
I saw it during the Neo-con co-option of the Tea Party, a movement that I was involved in long before Fox News latched onto it and long before mainstream RINO Republicans not only jumped on the bandwagon but hijacked the horse. In a matter of months the Tea Party became a defunct entity, a shell of its former self. Luckily, most liberty activists simply left it behind and started their own separate groups and projects rather than being absorbed into the Neo-con fold.
I also saw establishment interference on a local and state level during elections in Montana. An associate of mine was running for state office on a liberty platform and was doing rather well in the polls. He was approached by a contingent of political elites running as Republicans who told him in no uncertain terms that he could run on any platform and use any rhetoric he wanted, but if he won, he would be required to follow THEIR direction. They even encouraged him to continue arguing for constitutional government in his speeches and debates, because they felt this was the best way to “sell” his candidacy. But when all was said and done, he was supposed to stab his constituency in the back and take orders from the party leadership.
The point is, the elites dominate the political system. Nothing happens within it without their say. So, for those same elites to suddenly and openly suggest that “populist movements” were threatening to overtake the world and destroy the global economy was suspicious, to say the least.
In order to predict the behavior of globalists and the outcome of future economic and political events, it is important to understand certain dynamics. As just described, the establishment has a stranglehold on the political system. Party politics are a sham built around the false left/right paradigm. However, certain new dynamics are developing, and you must be able to track them.
The best way to do this is to watch what globalists say within their own publications. They often reveal their intentions directly or indirectly. In many cases I think in their arrogance they assume that the masses are too stupid to read these publications and grasp what is being said.
The most important element of predicting globalist actions is to know what they ultimately want; to know their ultimate goals. If you know the specifics of what any group or individual desperately wants, those people become highly predictable, because there are only so many useful paths to get to any goal.
I have used this method to great effect over the years, so I am not merely presenting a theory, I have concrete successes to back my position.
For example, just in the past couple of years I correctly predicted the Federal Reserve taper of QE, I predicted the inclusion of China in the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights years in advance, I predicted the exact timing of the first Fed rate hike, I predicted the success of the Brexit referendum when most of the world and the liberty movement said it was never going to happen, I predicted that the Saudi 9/11 bill would pass, that Barack Obama would veto it and that congress would override his veto, I predicted that Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic candidate and that Donald Trump would be the Republican candidate for president of the U.S. and, I predicted that Donald Trump would win the 2016 election.
Except for the China SDR inclusion, I predicted all of these events many months in advance and received a heavy amount of criticism each time from people in the mainstream and even from people in the liberty movement. Hilariously, as soon as these predictions proved true, some of the same people that were fervently opposed came quickly out of the woodwork to claim they “saw it coming all along”. I suppose this is human nature, but it is a problem because it keeps people from learning how to better gauge globalist behavior and come to correct conclusions.
My goal in this article is to make EVERY liberty activist adept at predicting globalist driven events. So, here is a good place to start:
Learn To Play Chess
The elites are obsessed with chess and chess symbolism. Many of their strategies develop much like a game of chess develops. If you don't know how to play chess, I suggest you learn. You don't have to master the game, but you do need to understand the basic concepts of winning the game.
For example, if you know the target that your opponent is really pursuing, you can easily obstruct his efforts because all his movements will become predictable. If his goal is to take your Queen, and you know this, then he should never be able to take your queen. This is why the elites go to great lengths to distract their opponents (meaning us) from their true target. They want you to think they are going straight for your King, or your Knight; they want you focused elsewhere. They will use feints often.
Another core strategy of chess is the “forced sacrifice”. That is to say, the best chess players are very good at positioning one of their pieces so that it threatens two or more of your pieces. This forces you to sacrifice one piece for the sake of the others. If they do this often enough, before you know it you have sacrificed your way into defeat. The globalists ALWAYS have a primary target and a secondary target. There is always more than one move developing at any given time.
Knowing chess is key to knowing how the globalists think.
Get In Touch With Your Darker Side
Going by their behavior and their rhetoric when they are unguarded, most globalists display highly narcissistic character traits as well as sociopathy and psychopathy. It is not enough to research these traits in a clinical fashion, you have to tap into the darker side of your own psyche, and think as they think. This means being willing to entertain evil and malicious concepts. You must be willing to ask yourself – “If I were them, how would I go about getting what I want?”
Understanding devious and aberrant psychopathic intent goes a long way in making the globalists predictable. Remember, many psychopaths are actually highly intelligent and intuitive. They don't have a moral compass and have lost the voice of conscience, but in order to adapt they have learned how to fake it. They are chameleons.
ALL people are inherently capable of evil actions, just as they are inherently capable of great good. You don't have to become like the elites, but you do have to go to some ugly places in your own mind. An elitist is basically a person who went to those places and discovered that he liked it there.
Read Globalist Publications
As noted above, the globalists have their own media outlets in which they publish their “views”, such as Foreign Policy Magazine, The Economist, Bloomberg, Reuters, etc. Sometimes these views are honest and sometimes they are calculated propaganda. Again, if you know exactly what the elitist targets are, then you can better discern if what they are saying is legitimate or a feint to distract you.
I predicted the success of the Brexit and the Trump win based on the knowledge that:
1) The globalists need a large scale crisis in order to drastically change public perceptions on society and governance. That is to say, they need to create a crisis so terrifying that people will be willing to accept a fully centralized global economic system and global governance as a solution.
2) The globalists have already set in motion an economic crisis that cannot be reversed. It is a crisis that they must avoid blame for at all costs once it accelerates.
3) Conservative and sovereignty principles are the primary threat to the dominance of globalism. As long as ideas of individualism, national sovereignty and decentralization exist, globalism can never truly prevail. Therefore, obstructing movements based on these principles is not enough. The globalists must also destroy any positive perceptions of our principles for generations to come.
4) As stated in the section on chess, the globalists like to use the strategy of forced sacrifice, in which they threaten two targets simultaneously, or kill two birds with one stone. I realized at the beginning of 2016 that all the rhetoric by globalists in their own publications on the “rise of populism” was staging the groundwork for the success of the Brexit and the success of Trump. What better strategy for the establishment than to allow conservative movements to take the helm of the political and economic ship just as that ship is about to sink? In this way, the globalists can have the crisis they need, while at the same time scapegoating conservatives and avoiding blame, and, destroying the image of conservative ideals, perhaps forever.
Have No Sacred Cows
This is a hard one for many people. We all have certain biases and these biases can blind us to reality. The overreaching bias within the liberty movement is a desire for heroic leadership. We have grown up on stories of heroes from George Washington to Thomas Jefferson – grand statesmen and military giants that crushed tyranny. The problem is, while men like Washington and Jefferson were indeed instrumental, they were nothing without the hundreds of thousands of unsung patriots working tirelessly for freedom on their own.
The founding fathers were not considered the founding fathers until long after the American Revolution was over. At the time, they were not thought of necessarily as heroes or even great leaders. They were just men, like many other men, gambling life and liberty on a cause that was uncertain at best.
Activists need to STOP looking around for mighty leaders and start taking leadership themselves in their own way. If we do end up with another Washington or Jefferson or Paine or Madison, etc., we will not know who they are until the fight is over and the history books are written.
The globalists take full advantage of the movement's weakness in seeking out and artificially elevating heroes. Also, when people have this bias, they end up with blinders when examining such heroes with any skepticism. Obviously I am referring to Donald Trump, here.
Sacred cows prevent accurate predictions of major events because a person will refuse to consider them as a potential negative factor.
Moving Beyond Predictions
It is one thing to be able to predict the outcome of social and political events; it is another matter to do something about them. In my next article I will outline solutions liberty activists can pursue on their own and in groups to counter globalist activity. Predicting their tactics is essential, but acting to disrupt those tactics should be the ultimate goal.
The globalists believe that even if some of us do manage to decipher their activities and methods, we will have no means to do anything about them. They see themselves as the “history makers”, as the men who act. They see us as the “history watchers”, or the meaningless masses wafting about with geopolitical tides, helpless and incapable of determining our own destinies. I believe we will become history makers in due course. One weakness of the globalists that will sabotage them is their own hubris. They see people as pawns – but what happens when a piece walks off the chess board completely and acts in an unpredictable way? It is this potential alone that will destroy the globalists in the end.
- Man Who Stole $1.6 Million Bucket Full Of Gold In Midtown Manhattan Has Been Captured
The most brazen, fascinating gold heist of the year, if not the decade, is now closed.
Recall that in late November, we reported that in what may have been one of the most brazen thefts in Manhattan’s jewelry district, a man calculatedly swiped an 86-pound bucket full of gold worth $1.6 million from the back of an unattended Loomis armored truck on West 48th Street in the Diamond District on Sept. 29, in broad daylight, as tourists and locals were walking in and out of the jewelry stores that line the block. The suspect, described as 5 feet 6 inches tall, 150 pounds and in his 50s, managed to get away without a hitch. The police suspected that the unidentified man was lying low in Orlando or Miami until things blow over in the Big Apple. The whole incident was caught on closed-circuit camera.
Then, one month ago, the police said they had not only identified the man, but speculated that the gold thief had moved on from Florida, and may have fled to California. NYPD identified the man as Julio Nivelo, and was believed to be – as of late December – in Los Angeles.
NYPD Det. Martin Pastor said Nivelo, 53, is a convicted felon who’s known to the NYPD as Luis Toledo, among other aliases. He’s a career thief who’s been arrested seven times and deported four times to his native Ecuador, according to Pastor.
Nivelo, a native of Ecuador, fled to Orlando, before heading to California, WNBC reported. Nivelo, who was living in West New York, N.J., at the time of the theft, had previously been arrested seven times and deported four times, the station reported.
In the end, it turns out that Nivello was not in Los Angeles, but had fled all the way back to his native Ecuador, where, as NBC 4 New York reported, he was finally arrested according to law enforcement sources.
Authorities had been looking for Nivelo for months, with the manhunt leading police to Nivelo’s residence in West New York, New Jersey, to Orlando, to Los Angeles before detectives from the major case squad headed to Ecuador. Nivelo was arrested there Thursday morning by federal agents with Homeland Security Investigations and The National Police of Ecuador.
He was arrested without incident after he sent the NYPD on a months-long search across the globe. It wasn’t clear when he would be extradited to New York to face charges. Police say they have recovered some of the money.
Before he was captured, Jalopnik reported that Nivelo was a truck cargo-stealing veteran and mastermind. He had allegedly ripped off many other trucks before he finally hit the golden jackpot in September.
And so, as NBC 4 puts it, ends the saga of one of the luckiest, most brazen thefts to capture our collective imagination in some time. However, now that he has shown how easily it can be done, we expect the next such brazen “truck theft” to take place in the not too distant future.
- Fakewood EXPOSED: Where Fake News began
With the internet rife with “Fake News” – Fake Profiles, fake comments, and fake just about everything; let’s do what an intelligence analyst should do (that is, analyze and not just do whatever his client pays him to do). And, the first step before collecting current information is to understand the history. In our case, the history of “Fake News” in USA at least, goes back to the days of WW1 (that’s World War 1) and became mainstream, during WW2. Fake News as they are calling it, has since then been part of an information arsenal in any ground based propaganda campaign, even before the days of Edward Bernays. Taking the most basic first step, let’s look at Wikipedia under the entry “Propaganda”:
The first large-scale use of propaganda by the U.S. government came during World War I. The government enlisted the help of citizens and children to help promote war bonds and stamps to help stimulate the economy. To keep the prices of war supplies down (guns, gunpowder, cannons, steel, etc.), the U.S. government produced posters that encouraged people to reduce waste and grow their own vegetables in “victory gardens”. The public skepticism that was generated by the heavy-handed tactics of the Committee on Public Information would lead the postwar government to officially abandon the use of propaganda.[1]
While they ‘abandoned’ the use of ‘Propaganda’ this later became ‘marketing’ – geniuses like Edward Bernays would then come into play, with their understanding of psychological nuances that can split hairs on fleas. Use of the English language in particular, combined with hidden images in photography, and other dirty tricks, can lull any average IQ citizen into believing whatever the campaign says. Take a look at what “Propaganada” used to look like:
OK, it was WW1 but still, they’ve come a long way, baby!
Today’s Propaganda is 3d in real time. The CIA has video technology by the way, rumored to be used to make Bin Laden videos when they knew he was dead, that could create a lifelike “Bin Laden” or whatever character to speak and say what they type in real time in 3d (but actually it’s broadcast on 2d, making it look all that more realistic).
This article is about Propaganda you say? What are some “Fake News” events of the day, back in the day?
Orsen Wells War of the Worlds Alien Invasion
Fake News started World War 1 – “Zimmerman Telegram”
Fake News “Weapons of Mass Destruction Found in Iraq” remember that one?
The real “Fake News” industry however, began in Hollywood, California.. around the time of WW2 and continues to this day. It was the epic creation of creative producers, filmed at the big studios. One secret agreement it’s rumored:
“If you can help us fake the moon landing, we’ll put one of yours in the White House [Ronald Reagan]” – unknown CIA agent.
The amount of Propaganda and Fake News created by Hollywood in that time is so large, there’s an entire topic on the subject here, with many films listed on a list “Allied Propaganda Films”. You see, during that time, Propaganda was considered a good thing, because it was ‘good for the country’ to ‘help people realize’ how important it was to go to war! It wasn’t until the 60’s when the youth started to ‘tune in, drop out’ that the dark side of Propaganda was exposed for what it was. And with all the Nazi scientists now living and working in the USA, there wasn’t any ‘evil empire’ anymore, so it was soon realized that ‘our good propaganda’ was not much different than Hitler’s ‘evil’ propaganda except that of course, it was in English.
Hollywood’s connection to Washington is explained well in films like “Wag the Dog” and we elaborated on that in this article here on Zero Hedge. But it goes MUCH DEEPER than that. Where to begin?
In every major newsroom in America, major meaning like the biggies like CNN not your local weather channel – there’s a paid CIA/NSA employee sitting near the editor keeping an eye on the content. They send out daily ‘talking points’ to journalists to include certain ‘keywords’ in their speech. This was used during the election in full force.
In films, especially those about business, war, the government, or rights issues – there’s always a ‘military consultant’ who is again, part of the same department, at CIA/NSA.
Have you noted recently, in Hollywood films, and TV series – over the last few years there’s been a large amount of “Russian/Ukrainian” villians and they’re always bad people? As 10 years ago it was always Mussamad Bin Galafi Turban? That’s because the Terrorist script has run it’s course, now that Bin Laden was ‘killed’ in spirit anyway, new enemies needed to foment, and the new enemies are Russians. Hollywood contributed more to the anti-Russian sentiment in America now than the current ‘Fake News’ about the Russian hacking.
How it works. 90% of Americans have a TV and watch it, even if they don’t (it’s on in the house). Maybe the kids watch a show, or movie – there’s a Russian character who is evil, horrible, person. He speaks with a deep, rough, raspy voice as if he just finished his third pack of smokes for the day, hasn’t shaven, and uses foul language. It’s a character anyone would hate! And truely, the character is portrayed as a terrible person, people should hate him. That’s how Television “Programming” works. So then weeks later, on CNN they broadcast “Russia Hacks the DNC” and the unsuspecting parent, not consciously knowing what is going on in their subconscious mind, thinks “Oh, I know the type, like in this film. Dirty Scoundrels!”
Don’t take our word for it, listen to Larry Johnson, retired CIA:
US animosity directed at Russia is misdirected anger, said Larry Johnson, retired CIA and State Department official. The propaganda plays upon the ignorance of US people, who know little of Russia and the history of its relations with the US, he added.
Even the MSM picked up on this, asking in 2014 “Why are RUSSIANS always the bad guys?”
From a sadistic former KGB operative in The Avengers to the Russian evildoers in A Good Day to Die Hard, there’s certainly been no shortage of Russian villains on screen recently. Russian politicians and filmmakers have now made clear their displeasure with the US movie industry’s ongoing depictions of Russian characters as villains. There has even been the threat of a Russian boycott of Hollywood movies, highlighting the risk studios take when they demonise a nationality.
Since 2010 alone, Russian bad guys have appeared in such action flicks as John Wick, The Equalizer, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, The November Man, A Good Day to Die Hard, Jack Reacher, Limitless, Salt, The Drop, and The Tourist. Hell, even The Muppets piled on with Tina Fey’s gulag guard in Muppets Most Wanted. And this month we have two more: the Casey Affleck vehicle Triple 9, featuring the Russian mob, and Zoolander 2, featuring what appears to be a Russian Kristen Wiig.
It’s one year before the official ‘capture’ Fake News event regarding Bin Laden. You see, Bin Laden was like the Villian of a big comic book story, so the Hollywood script writers knew that there would be no replacing Bin Laden. He was just bigger than life. So they needed to plant the seeds while they planned operation capture & kill Bin Laden.
Connect the dots – it’s not so hard! Hollywood, or should we call it FakeWood, has been the Prime Mover of the “Fake News” movement.
- Ethics Group Will Sue Trump On Monday Over Foreign Government Payments
Trump is barely two days in office, and already a lawsuit is set to be filed against the newly inaugurated president. According to press reports, a group of lawyers, including former White House ethics attorneys will file a lawsuit on Monday accusing the President of allowing his businesses to accept payments from foreign governments in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) announced Sunday night it is bringing a suit “to stop President Trump from violating the Constitution by illegally receiving payments from foreign governments.” The group said the suit will be filed in the Southern District of New York at 9 a.m. on Monday.
Piggybacking on popular displeasure with the Clinton Foundation likewise accepting hundreds of millions in foreign payments, Deepak Gupta, a Supreme Court litigator working on the case, said the lawsuit will allege that the Constitution’s emoluments clause forbids payments to Trump’s businesses and will seek a court order forbidding Trump from accepting such payments. The case is part of a wave of litigation expected to be filed against Trump by liberal advocacy groups. It will be filed in a Manhattan federal court, Gupta said, and plaintiffs will include Richard Painter, a former ethics lawyer in Republican President George W. Bush’s White House.
“We did not want to get to this point. It was our hope that President Trump would take the necessary steps to avoid violating the Constitution before he took office,” CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder said. “He did not. His constitutional violations are immediate and serious, so we were forced to take legal action.”
“President Trump has made his slogan ‘America First,’” Bookbinder added. “So you would think he would want to strictly follow the Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause, since it was written to ensure our government officials are thinking of Americans first, and not foreign governments.”
The litigation will focus on Trump’s refusal to divest from his business or place his assets into a blind trust, which would separate him entirely from his business empire. He has said his adult sons will run his business while he is in office, that they will not conduct any foreign deals and will subject any domestic deals to an ethics review.
The group says that because Trump has not divested from his businesses, he is “now getting cash and favors from foreign governments, through guests and events at his hotels, leases in his buildings, and valuable real estate deals abroad.”
Meanwhile, Trump lawyer Sheri Dillon recently said that under the business plan, Trump will not be in violation of the Constitution’s “Emoluments Clause.” “Paying for a hotel room is not a gift or a present, and has nothing to do with an office,” she said. “It is not an emolument. The Constitution does not require President-elect Trump to do anything here.”
But, as The Hill notes, CREW charges that because Trump does business with such countries as China, India, Indonesia, and the Philippines, “now that he is President, his company’s acceptance of any benefits from the governments of those countries violates the Constitution.” It also warns that, “When Trump the president sits down to negotiate trade deals with these countries, the American people will have no way of knowing whether he will also be thinking about the profits of Trump the businessman.”
The lawyers behind action include constitutional law professors Laurence Tribe and Erwin Chemerinsky, as well as former White House ethics lawyers and CREW board members Norm Eisen and Richard Painter, as well as Bookbinder, Zephyr Teachout and Deepak Gupta.
Trump’s son Eric responded, telling the Times on Sunday that the company had taken more steps than required by law to avoid any possible legal exposure, such as agreeing to donate any profits collected at Trump-owned hotels that come from foreign government guests to the U.S. Treasury. “This is purely harassment for political gain,” Trump told the newspaper.
It may be, but it will also be yet another major distraction for Trump as he prepares to unveil his various stimulus packages. Furthermore, should a adversarial judge be appointedon the case, it is possible that the case will drag out extensively, leading to even more damage for the administration, and even more confusion and chaos for markets, which may be why
- "10 Things Learned From 3 Days In Washington D.C."
Submitted by John Mauldin via MauldinEconomics.com,
I have been in Washington DC for the last three days. The ostensible reason was to participate in a board meeting of a public company, Ashford Inc. (AINC). We manage hotel REITs that own three hotels here in DC, and the group decided to move our board meeting up a few weeks and hold it in DC during the inauguration. That gave me the opportunity to set up a few meetings to try to gain some insight into what the first 100 days, the first six months, and the first year of the Trump administration might look like.
This is going to be a short letter summarizing my impressions from the last few days. I think it might be easiest to present them in the form of a list.
1. If you listen to the media you might have the impression that the Trump transition team is in complete disarray. Talking with leaders of the transition team certainly didn’t leave me with that impression. They have broken the transition process down into over 30 departments and have created a “landing document” for each department. The analogy they are using is that this process is like planning an invasion, and they are going to hand the landing document off to the “beachhead teams” who will then execute the plans.
I was briefly allowed to look at (without actually being able to read) the plan for one cabinet-level department. It appeared to be about 100 pages plus of serious detail as to exactly what executive orders would need to be removed and added, what personnel would have to be replaced (both appointees and regular staff), what policies would need to be changed, and so forth.
I was told that this level of planning was being done for every department. My impression is that there are a lot of people from various think tanks and others with experience in the presidential transition process who are involved in directing the plan for each department. That level of detailed planning doesn’t happen in less than two months. My guess is that some of that thinking has been going on for years, and now it can be implemented.
That being said, we know that no battle plan survives contact with the enemy; and it was instructive to sit with Bill Bennett, who talked about his experience in trying to reform the Department of Education under Reagan. They were still dealing with personnel and policy issues a year later, and this was when the department was much smaller than it is today. And that is just one department.
When I asked a key person how much of the overall plan would likely come to fruition, I got a rueful smile and a shrug. “If we even get half of this done in the first few years, that will be major reform.”
2. There seem to be two general types of agency plans.
First, there are those where the culture of the department has to be changed, and then are those where the current staff seems to be doing its job but the culture surrounding the department has to be dealt with.
Those are entirely different issues. The first can be handled to some degree by the executive branch, but the latter needs to be dealt with by congressional action.
3. Trump’s management style is going to drive the media (and admittedly, much of the country and the world) nuts.
One person who has worked closely with Trump during the transition says it is a lot like the HBO show Entourage and not at all like the British sitcom Yes, Minister. Trump will have people in his entourage competing to give him the pieces of information he needs. In his business organization, he sets the vision and then hires people to execute that vision; and then he goes back to doing what we have seen him do so well, which is to create the brand and image.
He is bringing in people to execute his vision, and he’s going to expect them to get it done. He will jump in when he thinks he’s needed or when he can add something to the process, but he will mostly be paying attention to his team’s performance.
One assessment suggests that there is going to be more than the usual amount of personnel turnover in the first six months. The media will be writing about how Trump can’t keep people and about all the chaos in the White House and other parts of government. But from Trump’s perspective, and given his management style, that’s not necessarily bad in terms of his longer-term goal of changing things.
We have not had a president with this type of management style in my lifetime. Since it’s not something that any of us are going to be familiar with, it is going to make some of us uncomfortable until we get used to it (and some people never will).
4. Everyone in the new administration and Congress agrees there is going to be significant tax reform. That is where the agreement ends. There is absolutely no consensus on what that tax reform should actually look like. Among members of the US Congress and others you would think should know, the universal answer is “I have no idea.”
I will candidly admit that some of the tax ideas I’ve been reading about make me nervous. The wrong type of tax reform can do serious damage to the economy. One of the few things that nearly all economists can agree on is that getting the incentive structure correct is critical. I am not sure that some of the people who seem to be in a position to influence the proposals really understand the importance of incentives and the impact they could have on trade and business.
Part of the reason the market is up and that optimism levels are up in all the polls is that people have high expectations about the nature and depth of the tax reform we’ll get. Failure to deliver something that at least comes close to meeting those expectations is going to have a significant negative impact, not just on the economy but also on the markets. I don’t know how long the new administration will have to “stand and deliver.”
5. Everyone seems absolutely convinced that Obamacare will be repealed; but there are considerable differences in the plans that would replace it.
My guess is that we are going to get substantial relief for small businesses and move towards more significant health savings accounts. There will not be a single mandate for an insurance company to cover all sorts of things. A 55-year-old woman is not going to have to purchase insurance that has prenatal care in it. People will have much more ability to tailor insurance to their own personal needs. This should help a great deal on costs to individuals and businesses, but it doesn’t deal with the overall cost of the system.
6. Dodd–Frank is going to be restructured.
It is also very likely that the new DOL rule on fiduciaries and ERISA plans will at least be postponed if not significantly changed. On a personal note, there are parts of the DOL fiduciary rules that make sense, and I support them. But it appears to me that DOL was trying to make a one-size-fits-all rule that was just a bridge too far.
7. Steve Moore passed on a story to me.
He and my friend Larry Kudlow were meeting with Trump, and Trump asked them if they would like to be part of his economic advisory team during the campaign. They looked at each other and back at Mr. Trump and said something to the effect of, “You can’t use us. We believe in free trade.” And Trump then said, “But we agree on nearly everything else. Let’s agree to disagree on trade and figure out where we can work together.”
Not many presidents are willing to have that level of disagreement from the outset. That is somewhat comforting to me. I will admit that, having asked a few questions of people who have interacted with Peter Navarro, he still makes me very nervous.
8. There is a general understanding on the part of nearly everyone I talked to that the biggest problems are going to be in dealing with the entrenched bureaucracy.
It is highly likely that Congress will pass legislation that requires any department making a ruling that could cost over $100 million to get congressional approval for that rule.
Given the recent ruling by the Second Court of Appeals that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau does not meet the constitutional requirement for government oversight and that the law concerning it has to be changed, it is highly likely that the CFPB will be overhauled and reformed.
9. There are literally thousands of presidential appointees that don’t have to be approved by the Senate…
but the proper procedure is to wait until the cabinet-level officers and senior management are in place so that they can have input on those appointments. If you expect appointees to run a department or agency, you need to give them the people they want.
10. Congress has been passing literally hundreds of pieces of legislation, knowing full well they would be vetoed and never see the light of day.
Not all of these will be brought back up, as the Republicans were counting on Obama vetoing them. But I think we will see a great deal of legislation passed in the first six months to one year. These are bills that have already been through committee and have enough support to get action.
I have met three types of people here in Washington DC. There are the Trump supporters, who seem to be wildly optimistic. On the other hand, as I look out my window here at the Capital Hilton, I see hundreds if not thousands of protesters walking by wearing little pink hats, and they are decidedly not happy. The third group is much smaller and consists of those who are actually aware of the amount of work that is going to have to be done and who recognize what a daunting task it will be.
On Monday some 538 people who are the initial members of the transition beachhead teams will show up in offices all over the country, but mostly in DC. It is going to be quite some time before we begin to see much change and can begin to figure out what that change will actually look like.
I’m not going to offer my thoughts on the inaugural speeches and events, as my political leanings are really not the focus of this letter. Next week we’ll return to the arena of economics and let the political commentators do all the talking they want to do in the arena of politics. But in the areas where politics and economics intersect – an intersection that seems to be expanding – we may have to revisit the political arena again.
- Pope Francis Warns Against "Saviours" Like Hitler, But Says "We Must Wait And See" On Trump
In an extended interview with Spanish newspaper El Pais granted as Donald Trump was being sworn in as US president, Pope Francis warned against populism, saying it could lead to the election of “saviors” like Hitler, while condemning the idea of using walls and barbed wire to keep out foreigners.
Joining the long ranks of pundits who have compared Trump to Hitler – if indirectly – and Trump’s regime, only in its second day to fascism, the pontiff said that “of course crises provoke fears and worries,” but added that for him “the example of populism in the European sense of the word is Germany in 1933 “Germany… was looking for a leader, someone who would give her back her identity and there was a little man named Adolf Hitler who said ‘I can do it’.”
“Hitler didn’t steal the power,” the pope said “his people voted for him, and then he destroyed his people.” The Germans at that time also wanted to protect themselves with “walls and barbed wire so that others cannot take away their identity,” he said.
“The case of Germany is classic,” he said, adding that Hitler gave them a “deformed identity and we know what it produced.”
Then, having made it clear how he feels about Trump, the Pope tried to back down, saying that it was too early to pass judgement on Trump. “I think that we must wait and see. “I don’t like to aniticpate events. Let us see what he does, we can’t be prophets of disasters.” Well, actually, if the Pope is right, Trump can, which is why he won.
Some highlights from the interview:
Q. Your Holiness, about the world’s problems that you have just mentioned, Donald Trump has just become the president of the US, and the whole world is tense because of it. What do you think about that?
A. I think that we must wait and see. I don’t like to get ahead of myself nor judge people prematurely. We will see how he acts, what he does, and then I will have an opinion. But being afraid or rejoicing beforehand because of something that might happen is, in my view, quite unwise. It would be like prophets predicting calamities or windfalls that will not be either. We will see. We will see what he does and will judge. Always on the specific. Christianity, either is specific or it is not Christianity.
It is interesting that the first heresy in the Church took place just after the death of Jesus Christ. The gnostic heresy, condemned by the apostle John. Which was what I call a spray religiousness, a non-specific religiousness. Yes, me, spirituality, the law… but nothing concrete. No, no way. We need specifics. And from the specific we can draw consequences. We lose sense of the concrete. The other day, a thinker was telling me that this world is so upside down that it needs a fixed point. And those fixed points stem from the concrete. What did you do, what did you decide, how do you move. That is what I prefer to wait and see.
* * *
Q. Both in Europe and in America, the repercussions of the crisis that never ends, the growing inequalities, the absence of strong leadership are giving way to political groups that reflect on the citizens’ malaise. Some of them —the so-called anti-system or populists— capitalize on the fears in face of an uncertain future in order to form a message full of xenophobia and hatred towards the foreigner. Trump’s case is the most noteworthy, but there are others such as Austria or Switzerland. Are you worried about this phenomenon?
A. That is what they call populism. Which is an equivocal term, because, in Latin America, populism has another meaning. In Latin America, it means that the people —for instance, people’s movements— are the protagonists. They are self-organized, it is something else. When I started to hear about populism in Europe I didn’t know what to make of it, I got lost, until I realized that it had different meanings. Crises provoke fear, alarm. In my opinion, the most obvious example of European populism is Germany in 1933. After [Paul von] Hindenburg, after the crisis of 1930, Germany is broken, it needs to get up, to find its identity, a leader, someone capable of restoring its character, and there is a young man named Adolf Hitler who says: “I can, I can”. And all Germans vote for Hitler. Hitler didn’t steal the power, his people voted for him, and then he destroyed his people. That is the risk. In times of crisis, we lack judgment, and that is a constant reference for me. Let’s look for a savior who gives us back our identity and lets defend ourselves with walls, barbed-wire, whatever, from other peoples that may rob us of our identity. And that is a very serious thing. That is why I always try to say: talk among yourselves, talk to one another. But the case of Germany in 1933 is typical, a people that was immersed in a crisis, that looked for its identity until this charismatic leader came and promised to give their identity back, and he gave them a distorted identity, and we all know what happened. Where there is no conversation… Can borders be controlled? Yes, each country has the right to control its borders, who comes and who goes, and those countries at risk —from terrorism or such things— have even more the right to control them more, but no country has the right to deprive its citizens of the possibility to talk with their neighbors.
* * *
Q. Both in Europe and in America, the repercussions of the crisis that never ends, the growing inequalities, the absence of strong leadership are giving way to political groups that reflect on the citizens’ malaise. Some of them —the so-called anti-system or populists— capitalize on the fears in face of an uncertain future in order to form a message full of xenophobia and hatred towards the foreigner. Trump’s case is the most noteworthy, but there are others such as Austria or Switzerland. Are you worried about this phenomenon?
A. That is what they call populism. Which is an equivocal term, because, in Latin America, populism has another meaning. In Latin America, it means that the people —for instance, people’s movements— are the protagonists. They are self-organized, it is something else. When I started to hear about populism in Europe I didn’t know what to make of it, I got lost, until I realized that it had different meanings. Crises provoke fear, alarm. In my opinion, the most obvious example of European populism is Germany in 1933. After [Paul von] Hindenburg, after the crisis of 1930, Germany is broken, it needs to get up, to find its identity, a leader, someone capable of restoring its character, and there is a young man named Adolf Hitler who says: “I can, I can”. And all Germans vote for Hitler. Hitler didn’t steal the power, his people voted for him, and then he destroyed his people. That is the risk. In times of crisis, we lack judgment, and that is a constant reference for me. Let’s look for a savior who gives us back our identity and lets defend ourselves with walls, barbed-wire, whatever, from other peoples that may rob us of our identity. And that is a very serious thing. That is why I always try to say: talk among yourselves, talk to one another. But the case of Germany in 1933 is typical, a people that was immersed in a crisis, that looked for its identity until this charismatic leader came and promised to give their identity back, and he gave them a distorted identity, and we all know what happened. Where there is no conversation… Can borders be controlled? Yes, each country has the right to control its borders, who comes and who goes, and those countries at risk —from terrorism or such things— have even more the right to control them more, but no country has the right to deprive its citizens of the possibility to talk with their neighbors.
Full interview in English link
- WikiLeaks Slams Trump, Urges Hackers To Reveal His Tax Returns
Perhaps in an attempt to demonstrate its impartiality, on Sunday WikiLeaks tweeted a request to worldwide hackers to release President Donald Trump’s tax returns after counselor Kellyanne Conway told ABC Trump will not be releasing the controversial files after all. The whistleblower site, which was blasted during the US election campaign for only releasing material damaging to the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, tweeted the request with a link to its submission page.
Trump Counselor Kellyanne Conway stated today that Trump will not release his tax returns. Send them to: https://t.co/cLRcuIiQXz so we can.
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) January 22, 2017
Curiously, in a second tweet, Wikileaks risked further antagonizing the president many have said it was instrumental in helping him get elected in the first place, when it compared the newly inaugurated president’s breach of promise to release his tax returns comparable to Clinton hiding her Goldman Sachs speech transcripts.
Trump’s breach of promise over the release of his tax returns is even more gratuitous than Clinton concealing her Goldman Sachs transcripts.
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) January 22, 2017
During the campaign, Trump repeatedly refused to release his tax information to the public saying they were under audit but pledged to do so after this process was complete. That changed, however, on Sunday when Conway confirmed Sunday in an interview on ABC’s This Week, that he has no plans to do this, stating people don’t care. “The White House response is that he’s not going to release his tax returns,” she said.
While presidents are not required to disclose their tax returns, all US presidents since Nixon have done so voluntarily. A petition was launched the day of Trump’s inauguration calling for the release of his tax returns. It quickly reached the 100,000 signatures required to get a response from the White House.
WikiLeaks’ request has prompted mixed reaction among its followers, with many stating they do not care about Trump’s taxes…
@wikileaks President Trump was a private citizen of the U.S. with rights to privacy! Wikileaks should understand and respect said privacy!
— TJSLATS (@s_hand3485) January 22, 2017
…. while others emphasized the wider public want the files released…
To all those who “don’t care,” you’re in the minority, and the rest of us don’t care how *you* feel. #PersonalResponsibility @wikileaks pic.twitter.com/6jDwVNjdKS
— xerophile (@segmentis) January 22, 2017
…. yet others accused Wikileaks of doing “too little, too late”, circling back to the left with an empty gesture to get on side with liberals again.
@wikileaks Wait what? I thought you were DJTs best friend. What happened?
— Rahul Sood (@rahulsood) January 22, 2017
@wikileaks Nice try, but it’s too late to backpedal. You’ll forever be tied to Trump’s election.
— KoolaidUSA (@KoolaidUSA) January 22, 2017
@wikileaks Wikileaks is trolling the Liberals/Left right now with the recent tweets haha.
— Scr1nRusher (@Scr1nRusher) January 22, 2017
@wikileaks this isn’t going to win back the left. You’re Russian spies now, just accept it.
— Adam Blade (@Red_Mage23) January 22, 2017
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If mass murder as policy isn’t about as bad an idea as ever stalked the land, I don’t know what is. Yet, there is still a large demand among the clamoring masses for T-shirts and posters emblazoned with Che’s beret-bedecked cabeza. You know, because he’s sooo cool.
Comedian Steve Harvey and actress Nicole Kidman are the latest celebrities on a 
In the media’s latest attack on Harvey, sensitive Asian chef and Super Mario turtle faced author Eddie Huang penned a pithy little hit piece in the 
As long as we’re talking race, are all celebrity Asian chefs this sensitive? If Dave Chappelle wanted to work with the Trump administration to help the black community in a similar capacity as Steve Harvey, do you think Korean chef David Chang would write a whiny little article about Chappelle’s stand-up to increase his visibility? I suspect not, because Chang doesn’t strike me as a sensitive, attention seeking, gold-chain wearing, Super Mario turtle faced opportunist – though I’m sure the left would find someone to write it. Granted, Huang’s opportunistic little hit-piece was related to something he posted on Instagram, however the point is that comedians make racial jokes all the time, and there was really no reason to write that article.
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