Week in Review, The People’s Budget, Purple Comic Sans, Larry Kudlow from CNBC, Joseph E. diGenova from Fox News, John Bolton from Fox News are now White House & Trump Org. staffers, 'Marillyn Lockheed' Tells President Trump The F-35 'Absolutely' Is Invisible and he believes it, H.R. McMaster & Trump suggests the Death Penalty for Drug dealers and so lets start with Big Pharma!
UPDATE: Obviously the lawyer (Joseph E. diGenova) and his wife I mentioned that Trump hired from Fox News are not coming onto that admin or gig....It was announced hours after I posted this week in review...I think the law firm is already representing someone involved in the Mueller probe which is yes, a definite conflict and most of all, is what should have been figured out way before any announcement. That is the first thing the law firm does before even taking on a conflict. They check their DBase for conflicts in that regard. The weird thing is that I am glad because that guy is a total kook. But then again, I thought he would have been that gift that kept on giving considering where most of America is with regard to that investigation. He would have made Trump look even more stupid than he looks today which says a lot and besides, the trends are leaning towards letting this investigation go till the outcome is let out in a proper way. END UPDATE...
Nice Week. Jeez Louise what a week!
More Trump staff turnovers, new lawyers added and old ones gone in Trump Organization and Administration, the newest budget in place but Trump says he will never sign another bill like this 'ever again, the March For Lives Events culminating today, some GOP'ers finally step up (including Trey Gowdy for god's sakes) with regard to Trump potentially firing Robert Mueller, another snow storm hits New Jersey on Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday, the Stormy Daniels interview airs Sunday night, another Playboy model spoke out about her relationship with Trump while he was married, a defamation lawsuit is allowed to continue by Judge and is that it? I cannot even remember and actually, we will not have a government shutdown after the new Budget is released and signed.
The budget blueprint Trump proposed is an all out assault on working families. It’s really bad. The vast majority of Americans are going to be worse off under this proposal, but Republican leaders are happy because it decimates social programs like Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and food stamps that so many working Americans rely on. It's appalling, but it's the truth.
Here's the good news: We have the antidote. The Congressional Progressive Caucus is drafting its annual People's Budget that reflects the reality of the 99%.
Sign on to show your support for a progressive budget. You can also tell us what elements we should add for the next year -- and I'll share PCCC member feedback with my colleagues.
By signing on, you add strength to the progressive movement. We know that we can expand Social Security, expand Medicare, make college debt-free, lower prescription drug prices, and reinvest in public infrastructure. And by reversing the Trump tax cuts for the wealthy, we can do all this and still be more fiscally responsible than the Republicans!
We would love to brainstorm together to really get our updated People's Budget right for all Americans.
Sign on to the progressive budget and tell us what elements you would add for the next year.
Let’s think big, be bold, and take action. This is a critical moment and we need to act now.
If we keep the drums beating and show our friends and neighbors that there is a real alternative to what Trump, Mitch McConnell, and Paul Ryan are pushing, they won't be able to ignore us. And voters will have a clear understanding of our vision and theirs in 2018. Please share your thoughts today.
Click here to watch this video. Then, sign on to support a progressive budget that prioritizes working families.
President Donald Trump has offered evidence that he may think Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is literally invisible.
What’s worse, the firm’s top executive, Marillyn Hewson (whom Trump referred to as 'Marillyn Lockheed'), agreed with his remarks and made no attempt to correct him at a time when her company finds itself in increasingly acrimonious negotiations with the U.S. military over the stealth fighter’s costs.
The comments came after Trump signed a presidential memo on March 22, 2018, calling for tariffs and other trade measures against China, which could impact up to $60 billion worth of goods that country exports to the United States each year.
Before, during, and since the 2016 presidential election, Trump has repeatedly criticized Chinese trade practices and theft of private intellectual property, which experts believe includes industrial espionage and scooping up data on sensitive military technology.
Hewson was on hand for the signing and press conference afterwards, which prompted the president to introduce her – as “Marillyn Lockheed,” with particularly heavy stress on Lockheed – and make the comments about the F-35.
Trump: “We buy billions and billions dollars worth of that beautiful F-35. It’s stealth, you cannot see it. Is that correct?”
Hewson: “That’s correct Mr. President.”
Trump: “Better be correct, right?”
Hewson: “Absolutely.”
BTW, Joint Strike Fighters, like this US Marine Corps F-35B, are quite visible to the naked eye.
“They said, ‘Well, it wins every time because the enemy cannot see it, even if it’s right next to it, it can’t see it,’” Trump insisted.
With Bolton, Trump assembles another person to surround himself with as part of his 'war cabinet'.
And, forget about Bolton basically finding out about it while he was on Fox News this week, it is the third consecutive hiring from or off Cable News Channels.
Less than an hour after President Trump named John R. Bolton as his new national security adviser on Thursday, Mr. Bolton made an appearance in the venue where many Americans, including Mr. Trump, have come to know him over the past decade: Fox News.
“I think I still am a Fox News contributor,” Mr. Bolton, laughing, told the host Martha MacCallum at the start of a previously scheduled interview.
“No,” Ms. MacCallum clarified. “You’re not.”
You can’t blame him for being a bit confused.
Mr. Bolton — a featured commentator on Fox News since 2007, after his term as ambassador to the United Nations — is the third TV personality in the past eight days to join Mr. Trump’s it-came-from-the-small-screen White House team.
The POTUS last week tapped Larry Kudlow, the CNBC commentator, to be his chief economic adviser. On Monday, he hired Joseph E. diGenova, a Washington lawyer who drew Mr. Trump’s attention on Fox News, where he described — without evidence — “a brazen plot” by F.B.I. agents to frame the president for a crime.
Nice Week. Jeez Louise what a week!
More Trump staff turnovers, new lawyers added and old ones gone in Trump Organization and Administration, the newest budget in place but Trump says he will never sign another bill like this 'ever again, the March For Lives Events culminating today, some GOP'ers finally step up (including Trey Gowdy for god's sakes) with regard to Trump potentially firing Robert Mueller, another snow storm hits New Jersey on Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday, the Stormy Daniels interview airs Sunday night, another Playboy model spoke out about her relationship with Trump while he was married, a defamation lawsuit is allowed to continue by Judge and is that it? I cannot even remember and actually, we will not have a government shutdown after the new Budget is released and signed.
The budget blueprint Trump proposed is an all out assault on working families. It’s really bad. The vast majority of Americans are going to be worse off under this proposal, but Republican leaders are happy because it decimates social programs like Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and food stamps that so many working Americans rely on. It's appalling, but it's the truth.
Here's the good news: We have the antidote. The Congressional Progressive Caucus is drafting its annual People's Budget that reflects the reality of the 99%.
Sign on to show your support for a progressive budget. You can also tell us what elements we should add for the next year -- and I'll share PCCC member feedback with my colleagues.
By signing on, you add strength to the progressive movement. We know that we can expand Social Security, expand Medicare, make college debt-free, lower prescription drug prices, and reinvest in public infrastructure. And by reversing the Trump tax cuts for the wealthy, we can do all this and still be more fiscally responsible than the Republicans!
We would love to brainstorm together to really get our updated People's Budget right for all Americans.
Sign on to the progressive budget and tell us what elements you would add for the next year.
Let’s think big, be bold, and take action. This is a critical moment and we need to act now.
If we keep the drums beating and show our friends and neighbors that there is a real alternative to what Trump, Mitch McConnell, and Paul Ryan are pushing, they won't be able to ignore us. And voters will have a clear understanding of our vision and theirs in 2018. Please share your thoughts today.
Click here to watch this video. Then, sign on to support a progressive budget that prioritizes working families.
Speaking of Trump's lawyers, one uses uses Purple Comic Sans as his font and not only does he seem to use that font, he also uses it in press releases which is very odd.
What’s worse, the firm’s top executive, Marillyn Hewson (whom Trump referred to as 'Marillyn Lockheed'), agreed with his remarks and made no attempt to correct him at a time when her company finds itself in increasingly acrimonious negotiations with the U.S. military over the stealth fighter’s costs.
The comments came after Trump signed a presidential memo on March 22, 2018, calling for tariffs and other trade measures against China, which could impact up to $60 billion worth of goods that country exports to the United States each year.
Before, during, and since the 2016 presidential election, Trump has repeatedly criticized Chinese trade practices and theft of private intellectual property, which experts believe includes industrial espionage and scooping up data on sensitive military technology.
Hewson was on hand for the signing and press conference afterwards, which prompted the president to introduce her – as “Marillyn Lockheed,” with particularly heavy stress on Lockheed – and make the comments about the F-35.
Trump: “We buy billions and billions dollars worth of that beautiful F-35. It’s stealth, you cannot see it. Is that correct?”
Hewson: “That’s correct Mr. President.”
Trump: “Better be correct, right?”
Hewson: “Absolutely.”
BTW, Joint Strike Fighters, like this US Marine Corps F-35B, are quite visible to the naked eye.
And, this is not the first or second time Trump has made statements along these lines.
At a military briefing in Puerto Rico in October, Trump said that "you literally can't see" the F-35, then quipped that "it's hard to fight a plane you can't see."
He repeated this claim on Thanksgiving, telling the Coast Guard that he spoke to "some Air Force guys" about an "invisible" plane that the military possesses.
At a military briefing in Puerto Rico in October, Trump said that "you literally can't see" the F-35, then quipped that "it's hard to fight a plane you can't see."
He repeated this claim on Thanksgiving, telling the Coast Guard that he spoke to "some Air Force guys" about an "invisible" plane that the military possesses.
“They said, ‘Well, it wins every time because the enemy cannot see it, even if it’s right next to it, it can’t see it,’” Trump insisted.
We will no doubt be putting these invisible planes to use considering Trump just hired another Fox News host, John Bolton to replace H.R. McMaster whom out as national security adviser. John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and undersecretary of state for international security, will replace Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster as national security adviser.
And, forget about Bolton basically finding out about it while he was on Fox News this week, it is the third consecutive hiring from or off Cable News Channels.
Less than an hour after President Trump named John R. Bolton as his new national security adviser on Thursday, Mr. Bolton made an appearance in the venue where many Americans, including Mr. Trump, have come to know him over the past decade: Fox News.
“I think I still am a Fox News contributor,” Mr. Bolton, laughing, told the host Martha MacCallum at the start of a previously scheduled interview.
“No,” Ms. MacCallum clarified. “You’re not.”
You can’t blame him for being a bit confused.
Mr. Bolton — a featured commentator on Fox News since 2007, after his term as ambassador to the United Nations — is the third TV personality in the past eight days to join Mr. Trump’s it-came-from-the-small-screen White House team.
The POTUS last week tapped Larry Kudlow, the CNBC commentator, to be his chief economic adviser. On Monday, he hired Joseph E. diGenova, a Washington lawyer who drew Mr. Trump’s attention on Fox News, where he described — without evidence — “a brazen plot” by F.B.I. agents to frame the president for a crime.
President Donald Trump officially proposed imposing the death penalty for some drug dealers on Monday.
Speaking at an event focused on the opioid epidemic in New Hampshire, Trump said it was critical to “get tough” on combating the epidemic.
“If we don’t get tough on the drug dealers, we are wasting our time,” Trump said. “And that toughness includes the death penalty.”
Trump went on to say that dealers “will kill thousands of people during their lifetime” but won’t be punished for the carnage they cause.
“This is about winning a very, very tough problem and if we don’t get very tough on these dealers, it is not going to happen, folks,” he said.
Monday’s event marks Trump’s first trip back to the first-in-the-nation primary state — and the state that that introduced the businessman-turned-politician to the opioid scourge — since he won the presidency.
The President, joined by first lady Melania Trump, laid out a plan that looks to balance increasing punitive measures to stop drug traffickers and broadening the federal government’s involvement in combating the epidemic with a sweeping ad campaign about addiction and more funding for drug treatment programs, according to Trump administration officials briefed on the plans.
The plan will include stiffer penalties for high-intensity drug traffickers, including the death penalty for some, Trump said.
Though Trump has long advocated for sentencing certain drug traffickers to death, public policy experts have condemned the proposal even before Trump rolled it out, arguing that it misses the cause of the opioid epidemic.
White House officials told CNN that Trump’s broader plan will focus on key areas: law enforcement and interdiction, prevention and education through a sizable advertising campaign, improving the ability to fund treatment through the federal government, and helping those impacted by the epidemic find jobs while fighting addiction.
Congress recently appropriated $6 billion to combat the opioid epidemic, and a senior administration official told CNN that Trump’s plan will lay out how the White House believes that money should be spent. At the time, treatment advocates and drug policy experts were concerned the uptick in funding wouldn’t be spent wisely and wasn’t nearly enough.
Trump has credited voters in New Hampshire with introducing him to the opioid crisis during his 2016 campaign. He frequently referenced the scourge when campaigning in the state, which has been epicenter in the fight against opioids. But in a call with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto shortly after his inauguration, Trump referred to the state as a “a drug-infested den,” drawing fierce criticism from the state’s leaders.
Days before Election Day in 2016 — when time is a campaign’s most precious commodity — Trump even traveled to New Hampshire to discuss opioid addiction and pledge to make fighting the epidemic a focus.
His response as President, however, has been mixed, according to epidemic experts. The President has been accused of sidelining the Office of National Drug Policy Control, failing to heed the recommendations of his opioid council and focusing too much on the punitive measure to respond to the epidemic.
Trump in October declared the opioid epidemic a public health emergency, telling an audience of experts and people in recovery that “we can be the generation that ends the opioid epidemic.”
Recently released numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that around 64,000 people died from drug overdoses in 2016. And since 1999, the number of American overdose deaths involving opioids has quadrupled.
Drug firms shipped 20.8M pain pills to WV town with 2,900 people.
Over the past decade, out-of-state drug companies shipped 20.8 million prescription painkillers to two pharmacies four blocks apart in a Southern West Virginia town with 2,900 people, according to a congressional committee investigating the opioid crisis.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee cited the massive shipments of hydrocodone and oxycodone — two powerful painkillers — to the town of Williamson, in Mingo County, amid the panel’s inquiry into the role of drug distributors in the opioid epidemic.
“These numbers are outrageous, and we will get to the bottom of how this destruction was able to be unleashed across West Virginia,” said committee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., and ranking member Frank Pallone Jr., D-N.J., in a joint statement.
The panel recently sent letters to regional drug wholesalers Miami-Luken and H.D. Smith, asking why the companies increased painkiller shipments and didn’t flag suspicious drug orders from pharmacies while overdose deaths were surging across West Virginia.
The letters outline high-volume shipments to pharmacies over consecutive days and huge spikes in pain pill numbers from year to year.
Between 2006 and 2016, drug wholesalers shipped 10.2 million hydrocodone pills and 10.6 million oxycodone pills to Tug Valley Pharmacy and Hurley Drug in Williamson, according to Drug Enforcement Administration data obtained by the House Committee.
Springboro, Ohio-based Miami-Luken sold 6.4 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills to Tug Valley Pharmacy from 2008 to 2015, the company disclosed to the panel. That’s more than half of all painkillers shipped to the pharmacy those years. In a single year (2008 to 2009), Miami-Luken’s shipments increased three-fold to the Mingo County town.
Miami-Luken also was a major supplier to the now-closed Save-Rite Pharmacy in the Mingo County town of Kermit, population 400.
The drug wholesaler shipped 5.7 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills to Save-Rite and a branch pharmacy called Sav-Rite #2 between 2005 and 2011, according records Miami-Luken gave the committee. In 2008, the company provided 5,624 prescription pain pills for every man, woman and child in Kermit.
In its letters, the panel also raised questions about Miami-Luken’s shipments to Westside Pharmacy in Oceana, Wyoming County. The committee cited documents that show a Miami-Luken employee reported a Virginia doctor, who operated a pain clinic located two hours from Oceana, was sending his patients to Westside Pharmacy, which filled the prescriptions.
In 2015, more than 40 percent of the oxycodone prescriptions filled by Westside Pharmacy in Oceana were coming from the Virginia doctor, according to the committee’s letter. The following year, the Virginia Board of Medicine suspended the doctor’s license, finding his practice posed a “substantial danger to public health and safety.”
The panel’s letter also mentions Miami-Luken’s suspicious shipments to Colony Drug in Beckley. In a five-day span in 2015, the drug wholesaler shipped 16,800 oxycodone pills to the pharmacy.
“In several instances, Colony Drug placed multiple orders for what appears to be excessive amounts of pills on consecutive days,” the committee wrote.
The House committee questioned H.D. Smith’s painkiller shipments to Family Discount Pharmacy in Logan County. The drug shipper distributed 3,000 hydrocodone tablets a day to the pharmacy in 2008, a 10-fold increase in sales from the previous year, according to the committee’s letter. The pharmacy, located in a town of 1,800 people, was shipped 1.1 million hydrocodone pills in 2008.
The House panel also cited Springfield, Illinois-based H.D. Smith for spikes in painkiller shipments to Sav-Rite, Westside Pharmacy, Tug Valley Pharmacy and Hurley Drug.
Oxycodone is sold under brand names like OxyContin, while hydrocodone brands include Vicodin and Lortab.
“The committee’s bipartisan investigation continues to identify systemic issues with the inordinate number of opioids distributed to small town pharmacies,” Walden and Pallone said in the statement. “The volume appears to be far in excess of the number of opioids that a pharmacy in that local area would be expected to receive.”
In a statement, H.D. Smith said it was reviewing the committee’s letter Monday.
“H.D. Smith works with its upstream manufacturing and downstream pharmacy partners to guard the integrity of the supply chain, and to improve patient outcomes,” the company said.
Miami-Luken did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In February 2016, West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey ended a state lawsuit against Miami-Luken after the company agreed to pay $2.5 million to settle allegations that it flooded the state with painkillers. Morrisey, a former lobbyist for a trade group that represents Miami-Luken and other drug distributors, inherited the lawsuit in 2013 after ousting longtime Attorney General Darrell McGraw.
H.D. Smith paid the state $3.5 million to settle the same pill-dumping allegations in January 2017.
The committee gave H.D. Smith and Miami-Luken until Feb. 9 to turn over documents and answer dozens of questions about what steps, if any, the companies took to stop the flood of pain pills into Southern West Virginia.
“We will continue to investigate these distributors’ shipments of large quantities of powerful opioids across West Virginia, including what seems to be a shocking lack of oversight over their distribution practices,” Walden and Pallone said.
The state has the highest drug overdose death rate in the nation. More than 880 people fatally overdosed in West Virginia in 2016.
I honestly have no clue if I covered everything this week. I started to interview people for jobs at my company this week. I dunno except to say that we are in very scary times. It is beyond the laughing point. Trump and his people are reckless and they are dangerous.
But in reality, until the midterms come and go this year and unless the Dem's take over the House and the Senate again, nothing will light that fire so to speak until and if that happens in November.
There are signs that it will happen with PA and Alabama being turned on its head in those latest regional elections, but still, I would NOT expect anyone that is NOT leaving their spot in Congress to step up to do the right thing for the country until that up heave happens in this year's elections.
I honestly have no clue if I covered everything this week. I started to interview people for jobs at my company this week. I dunno except to say that we are in very scary times. It is beyond the laughing point. Trump and his people are reckless and they are dangerous.
But in reality, until the midterms come and go this year and unless the Dem's take over the House and the Senate again, nothing will light that fire so to speak until and if that happens in November.
There are signs that it will happen with PA and Alabama being turned on its head in those latest regional elections, but still, I would NOT expect anyone that is NOT leaving their spot in Congress to step up to do the right thing for the country until that up heave happens in this year's elections.
