Arriving at Joint Base Andrews President Trump gives brief remarks on the firing of Reince Priebus and the replacement with John Kelly as Chief-of-Staff.

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President Trump is participating in a major jobs and manufacturing announcement from the White House. It is widely expected that a major investment by Foxconn will be the centerpiece of the event.
President Trump, along with Gov. Scott Walker and other Wisconsin leaders will make the announcement that Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn will announce it will build a new factory in Racine County. Foxconn is a partner with Apple, manufacturing technological products. That factory is expected to create 10,000 jobs. The electronics giant will build liquid-crystal display factory in Wisconsin.
UPDATE: Video Added

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Various business news media are reporting the 5:00pm White House announcement on jobs and manufacturing in the U.S. will center around a $10 billion investment in U.S. manufacturing by Foxconn, most noted as the production company for Apple iPhones.
In the larger picture the anticipated announcement is further evidence in the flow of capital into a U.S. manufacturing economy being resurrected by the America-First economic policy of President Trump.

Additionally, there is a political win for DC professional GOPe politicians like Paul Ryan as the manufacturing hub is anticipated to be located in Ryan’s district and hometown.

(Via Bloomberg) President Donald Trump will announce Wednesday that Foxconn Technology Group plans a new factory in Wisconsin, fulfilling the Taiwanese manufacturing giant’s promise to invest in the U.S.
The factory will open in the home district of House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, who personally lobbied Trump and White House chief of staff Reince Priebus to help secure the plant. It’s expected to employ about 3,000 people at first and, after an initial $10 billion investment, the facility is scheduled to expand over a 2 1/2-year period, according to a person familiar with the plans who requested anonymity to discuss the announcement before it was made.

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Everything is proceeding according to a natural and predictable path.  Mr. Scaramucci is now in charge of White House messaging, the focus can now look toward the Capitol and go on offense; the “Big Ugly” is very clearly on the horizon.

Anxious Trump voters have been understandably frustrated by the lack of speed with which President Trump is able to force the MAGA agenda onto an unwilling DC political apparatus.  However, if you step back and look at the scope of the challenge, the situation is entirely understandable.
Donald Trump was a 100% pure political outsider, a citizen politician.  There was never any underlying organizational apparatus to support victory.  There was Dan, Hope, Michael and Corey; later Paul then Kellyanne and Steve. Everything else needed to be constructed from scratch and even the party apparatus didn’t support candidate Trump.
On November 9th 2016 President-elect Trump did not wake up with a staff of 50 political career employees sitting at Trump desks with Rolodexes filled with a network of affiliate political allies, personnel and associates to call upon to create the Trump administration.  Consequently President Trump needed to import the entire administrative personnel architecture to support the move to the White House. (more…)

If you watch or listen to the interviews today with new White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci, and then overlay them against a backdrop of ongoing events (including last week), there’s a very solid outlook that Reince Priebus is close to being replaced as Chief of Staff.

Scaramucci says today: “If they want to stay on the staff, they’re going to stop leaking.” Where “they” are clearly White House staffers who have been identified as leaking to the media.
When you step back and remind yourself where “they” came from, you recognize this staff is primarily made up of former RNC staff brought into the White House by Reince Priebus the former head of the RNC and now Chief of Staff.
When you step back further you find yourself reminded what ideology those same RNC staffers carried before following Priebus to the White House. Then we quickly realize these are Scott Walker/Ted Cruz type GOPe loyalists who have no affinity for the populist approach of Trump.
There’s the problem that has existed in nuanced form from the outset of the decision to keep Reince Priebus inside the Trump administration as a bridge to the parties legislative and political apparatus in DC.
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It would appear Mitch McConnell, and the larger congress, just lit the fuse on “the big ugly“.  Winter is coming.

• President Trump has requested all Republican Senators to attend a White House luncheon, held entirely in their honor, tomorrow.  • President Trump has also announced a MAGA rally to be held in Youngstown Ohio, next week.   • Not coincidentally this rally announcement comes on the same day Ohio governor John Kasich writes an op-ed in the New York Times gleefully celebrating the defeat of the senate healthcare reform and  ObamaCare repeal. • HHS Secretary Tom Price is NOT HAPPY.
Oh yeah, the Big Ugly is coming.  President Trump is not a politician.

The failure of congress to pass Obamacare reform means the tax reform agenda for the middle class is now far less likely.  The UniParty Congress know this.  The UniParty Congress is doing the bidding of the lobbyists.
The escalating costs of ObamaCare, specifically because of the Medicaid expansion, means increased tax revenues are needed to pay for the program.  John Kasich, and his crew of like-minded governors (there are eleven) demand their state get more federal dollars.  This means more income tax revenues are needed.  This means no middle-class tax relief.
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Various senators deliver remarks following the collapse of their ability to reform and replace ObamaCare with any alternative.  Beginning with the controlled opposition position of Rand Paul and continuing with Mitch McConnell and the Senate GOP leadership (at 15:00 of video).

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What these insufferable politicians well understand is that any substantive tax reform will necessarily also be compromised by the flawed dynamics inside ObamaCare. That will have a negative downstream impact on any hope for economic growth. However, they are not stupid – they know this – that is their unified UniParty goal.
The increasing taxpayer costs to keep big government ObamaCare operational, for non-taxpaying medicaid recipients, means the middle-class is once again sacrificed at the altar of the Big Club.
American workers on the individual market will not only see increased insurance rates, but their income tax rates will also be higher as the need to subsidize the lower-income non-working group (medicaid) remains.
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President Trump is the first political entity in our lifetime that not only comprehends the faces of the false arguments (the fallacies of false choice), but more importantly sees the administrative architects behind the Potemkin villages represented by those faces. When it comes to domestic economic policies, the architects are the BIG CLUB.
So, what is “The Big Club“?

..What “Deep State” is to intelligence, military intervention and foreign policy – The “BIG CLUB” is to matters of domestic economics…

Politicians do not write laws. Paul Ryan, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer do not sit in their offices writing out scripts of laws and legislation; no politician does.  Politicians are faces who sell legislation that unseen hands create. The Big Club are the administrators creating the legislation.
As such, it makes no sense to argue about the salesmanship of Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, Ted Cruz or Elizabeth Warren when none are originating the legislative constructs they are selling and branding in the media.
It simply makes much more sense to focus attention on the unseen hands that are never discussed, the administrative state.   These are the roots of the issues, the politicians are merely the expendable and interchangeable sales force.
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It’s challenging to see the sunlight at the end of this complex tunnel, but it’s there. More visible today than a week ago.

White House Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short appears on Fox News Sunday to discuss the ongoing efforts to reform ObamaCare.  In a very positive shift amid the overall discussion, for the first time the point of the cost on the individual insurance market is brought to the forefront.

CTH readers will note our continuing frustration that 99% of the entire healthcare discussion has centered around medicaid spending, or the state funded subsidy of low-income healthcare coverage.

The vast majority of the most severely impacted people within the discussion, middle-class workers/taxpayers who do not qualify for medicaid, have been essentially locked out of the legislative consideration. It is refreshing to see middle America finally being part of the equation.  Within the Senate bill, Ted Cruz and Mike Lee have finally advanced something of value.

The “Consumer Choice Amendment” would allow insurance companies to sell plans that do not follow regulations created under Obamacare, with the caveat that those insurers have to sell at least one plan that adheres to Obamacare’s mandates. The proposal would allow insurers to sell plans with tailored benefits.

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HHS Secretary Dr. Tom Price appears on CNN State of The Union to discuss the legislative repair efforts for an ObamaCare overhaul, and overall healthcare reform efforts.

Notice how the various “concerns”, amid all of the politically charged discussion, are always centered around medicaid – or the state run, taxpayer-funded, low income, healthcare coverage. Not a single oppositional argument is ever made about negative impacts for those who actually pay for their own healthcare coverage. The opposition arguments are entirely framed around benefits toward those who pay little to nothing.

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There is a parallel, comparative and representative example of what President Trump’s smart policy team is trying to do with healthcare.  the comparison actually lies within another set of economic policy objectives. However, it takes elevation in thinking to understand the approach and see the similarity.

The comparative reform example is within the banking and finance industry.

For those who have read all the statements, watched the hearings, listened intently to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, you might have already noted their approach to working around the ridiculously burdensome Dodd Frank regulations within the banking and finance sector. – OUTLINED HERE –

Essentially, instead of trying to untangle all the complexities of decades long DC constructs enmeshing and enlarging the bureaucracy around banking, Trump’s team is constructing a parallel system. Cliff Noted for Brevity: (more…)