Health and Human Service Secretary Tom Price appears on very fake news CNN with Jake Tapper to discuss ongoing ObamaCare legislative reform and replacement efforts.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appears to be cowering to the demands of British Columbia Provincial Premier Christy Clark who asked for retaliatory trade action against Oregon and the Pacific Northwest after Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced a tariff on Canadian soft-wood imports.
Yesterday (Friday) Prime Weasel Trudeau threatened to ban shipments of U.S. thermal coal from Pacific ports and suggesting sanctions against additional trade products from Oregon due to the support for the soft-wood tariff by Democrat Senator Ron Wyden.
ENERGY ECON […] Trudeau said Ottawa would study whether to stop U.S. firms from shipping thermal coal via the Pacific province of British Columbia. Provincial Premier Christy Clark asked for the ban in response to the U.S. tariffs.
Canada is also considering duties on exports from Oregon such as wine, flooring and plywood, said a source close to the matter, citing Oregon Democratic Senator Ron Wyden’s prominent role in pressing for the lumber tariffs.
In the run-up to the June 8th national election called for by British Prime Minister Theresa May, the local elections are providing strong indicators for a historic level of support.
This outcome is exactly what Prime Minister May wanted as she heads into tough negotiations with the European Union on terms of exit.
Having won the historic Brexit vote and gained victory for the UK to pull out of the Union, most of UKip party supporters are melding back into the traditional Conservative party ranks.
REUTERS – British Prime Minster Theresa May’s Conservative Party is still a strong 16 points ahead of the main opposition Labour Party ahead of a national election on June 8, according to a poll by Opinium on Saturday.
Earlier today President Donald Trump signed HR244 into law. The provisional spending bill that funds government through September 30th, the end of fiscal year 2017.
There has been a great deal of anxiety amid punditry about the spending outline itself, and the spending priorities as determined by both houses of congress. Some of the criticism is warranted, most is not.
The basic principle the entire professional political class seem to overlook is the reasoning for the CR itself. Congress has been unable to fulfill its budgetary obligation since 2007.
In fact, the last federal budget (fiscal year ’08) was signed into law in September of 2007. By the conclusion of this CR it will have been an entire decade without a federal budget.
Perspective: ♦ Over half of all elected federal politicians have never held elected office in any year with a federal budget in place. ♦ Almost two-thirds of Republicans in congress have never known a federal budget for a single day in office.
THAT FACT should be the target of the ire from all Americans, particularly conservatives. However, hypocritically, it is not.
For some reason ankle-biters, antagonists, and crony constitutional punditry amid the various CONservative outlets, choose instead to focus their criticism toward the first president in our lifetime to actually deliver on conservative policy, conservative values and expressed policy objectives/outcomes that benefit all common sense Americans.
Posted in Budget, Election 2016, Legislation, media bias, Military, Patriotism, President Trump, Terrorist Attacks, Uncategorized
The federal April jobs report shows a gain of 211,000 new jobs amid a 2.5% year-over-year growth in wages, bringing the latest national unemployment rate to 4.4% or what the federal economists call the ‘cusp’ of full employment. They are, well, ‘positioning’ an advanced narrative.
DATA – •Construction payrolls rose by 5,000; •manufacturing payrolls increased by 6,000; •leisure and hospitality payrolls jumped by 55,000; •professional and business services payrolls rose by 39,000; •healthcare and social assistance employment increased by 36,800; •retail payrolls gained 6,300.
That’s the official interpretation of what the jobs gains mean. However, to reconcile the “slacking” the quantifying economists are now halving the customary growth figure used for inbound newly economically matriculated workers.
Historically it takes 150k new monthly jobs to retain employment rates as static; therefore any job growth beyond 150k must lower the unemployment rate. The fed is now using 70-100k as the new labor market number to retain stasis.
Bloomberg – […] Removed from the weather-related distortions of the previous three months, the April figures indicate solid trends in employment, while measures of those left behind in the recovery — favored by Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen and President Donald Trump alike — are at or near pre-recession levels.
Shortly after taking office Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull began his relationship with President Trump by demanding Trump adhere to President Obama’s commitment to take refugees from Australia. Surprise, that call did not go well.
Tonight, after making Turnbull wait an extra 3 hours due to healthcare bill celebrations, President Donald Trump is scheduled to meet face-to-face with PM Turnbull for the first time. Their meeting is in New York City as part of the commemorations celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Coral Sea in World War II.
After President Trump diplomatically greets the insufferable doofus, President Trump will be giving a speech honoring the military aboard the USS Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum.
Update: Video Added
The various media pundits and news stories are calling H.R. 1180 a “new overtime bill”. However, in reality the ‘take pay or take time off’ concept is more than 50 years old; we used to call it “compensatory time” or “comp time”.
WASHINGTON – […] Voting along party lines, the House of Representatives passed a bill Tuesday that would allow private-sector employers to compensate their overtime-working employees with paid time off instead of paying them time-and-a-half as currently required.
The bill, H.R. 1180, would tweak the Fair Labor Standards Act, which mandates employers that require hourly-paid employees to work more than 40 hours a week to pay time-and-a-half, or 1.5 times their usual hourly rate. The bill also prohibits employers from coercing or intimidating employees to choose time off instead of overtime pay.
House Republicans passed the bill, sponsored by Rep. Martha Roby (R-Ala.), with no Democrats voting in favor. The bill will now go to the Senate, where it will require 60 votes to avoid a filibuster by Democrats. (read more)
The professionally Democrat hate the concept, but most Democrat politicians have zero experience in understanding how incredibly beneficial compensatory time can be.
The House of Representative have passed the ObamaCare Repeal/Replacement bill by a final vote of 217-213.
Over the next few weeks/months the bill will work through the Senate and then return to the House to reconcile any differences. The House bill takes the increasing, costly IRS tax/penalties on ObamaCare down to $0 – effectively crippling the individual mandate and the employer mandate.
President Trump will hold a 3:30pm EDT celebratory news conference at the White House, and GOP lawmakers are expected to take buses from Capitol Hill to attend. Mitch McConnell and 52 republican senators now have the challenge of passage.
Posted in Big Government, Legislation, media bias, Obamacare, Paul Ryan, President Trump, US Treasury
U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross sat down for a comprehensive discussion on trade, education and commerce policies with Bloomberg’s David Gura at the Bloomberg Breakaway Summit in New York.
In his direct and often humorous style Wilburine describes some of the current economic trade challenges and presents an outline of U.S. forward policy. Secretary Ross spends quite a bit of time explaining how the NAFTA trade agreement is obsolescent in the modern era and how many of the products and industries in 2017 are not part of the agreement.
Wilburine also discusses how the business community is interacting with the Trump administration to deliver on specific aspects to the larger economic policy goals. A very good and substantive discussion segment:
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Additionally, COMMERCE – Earlier today, U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin held a phone conversation with Vice Premier Wang Yang of China. Commerce Secretary Ross, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin and Vice Premier Wang discussed bilateral issues related to the U.S.- China Comprehensive Dialogue and the overall economic and trade relationship between the two countries. (link)
Posted in Budget, Economy, Education, energy, Environmentalism, Legislation, Mexico, President Trump, Trade Deal, Uncategorized, US Treasury
The UniParty is sly, I would say professionally and expertly so, and before readers feel the need to point out the obvious – when it comes to legislation, yes, I am professionally cynical.
The reason is simple, having trained ourselves to see when the pea is never under the shell, the legislative conversations that really matter are always behind a Potemkin Village called K-Street.
You have to know the unwritten legislative rules of the UniParty as they have been evidenced for almost 15 years to understand the ruse.
♦ First, the reason a vote, any vote, is “announced”, and just doesn’t take place, is because it provides the controlled opposition time to frame their anti-(fill_in_the-blank) talking points. This is by design. When a legislative vote is “announced” it is a dog-whistle call out to the institutional lobbyists that the legislation will be rail-roaded and ultimately fail.