Trump’s real constituency isn’t the white working class at all – The Washington Post

How is this news to anyone???

Gary [Gensler, the chief financial officer of Hillary’s campaign] said the campaign had to do it or the party would collapse.

“That was the deal that Robby struck with Debbie,” he explained, referring to campaign manager Robby Mook. “It was to sustain the DNC. We sent the party nearly $20 million from September until the convention, and more to prepare for the election.”

…Officials from Hillary’s campaign had taken a look at the DNC’s books. Obama left the party $24 million in debt—$15 million in bank debt and more than $8 million owed to vendors after the 2012 campaign—and had been paying that off very slowly. Obama’s campaign was not scheduled to pay it off until 2016. Hillary for America (the campaign) and the Hillary Victory Fund (its joint fundraising vehicle with the DNC) had taken care of 80 percent of the remaining debt in 2016, about $10 million, and had placed the party on an allowance.

…The party chair usually shrinks the staff between presidential election campaigns, but Debbie had chosen not to do that. She had stuck lots of consultants on the DNC payroll, and Obama’s consultants were being financed by the DNC, too.

…I knew that Debbie had outsourced a lot of the management of the party and had not been the greatest at fundraising.

…When the party chooses the nominee, the custom is that the candidate’s team starts to exercise more control over the party. If the party has an incumbent candidate, as was the case with Clinton in 1996 or Obama in 2012, this kind of arrangement is seamless because the party already is under the control of the president. When you have an open contest without an incumbent and competitive primaries, the party comes under the candidate’s control only after the nominee is certain. When I was manager of Al Gore’s campaign in 2000, we started inserting our people into the DNC in June. This victory fund agreement, however, had been signed in August 2015, just four months after Hillary announced her candidacy and nearly a year before she officially had the nomination.

Inside Hillary Clinton’s Secret Takeover of the DNC – POLITICO Magazine

hmmm

What’s the point of public service if you can’t profit off of it?

Former Mexican ambassador says State Department is telling world leaders to stay at Trump hotels – ThinkProgress

oy….

PREPA’s executive director announced the decision Sunday, hours after the U.S. territory’s governor called for the contract’s termination.

Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority Cancels Whitefish Energy Deal | HuffPost

hmmm

1. Trump’s continued global business ventures, despite vows of “no new foreign deals”

2. Business is booming at Mar-a-Lago

3. Trump’s new hotel in Washington raked in $20 million in its first few months

4. The first family profits from visits to Trump-branded properties and golf courses

5. Trump-branded book royalties are soaring

Five Ways the Trumps Have Gotten Richer Since the Election

Sigh….

A deal reached between the government and a small Montana energy company located in Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s hometown prohibits the government from reviewing labor costs or profits related to the company’s relief efforts in Puerto Rico, according to a leaked copy of the contract.

A copy of the deal highlighted by reporter Ken Klippenstein reveals that the government isn’t allowed to “audit or review the cost and profit elements” under the agreement, allowing the company greater discretion and secrecy for how it spends the $300 million to restore power to the island. Puerto Rico is rebuilding after two major hurricanes wiped out most of the island’s electrical grid.

Whitefish Energy contract bars government from auditing deal | TheHill

sigh….

“If you cut that [corporate] tax rate to 15 percent, it will pay for itself many times over. … This will bring in probably $1.5 trillion net by itself.”

That’s wishful thinking. So is most Republican rhetoric around tax cutting. In reality, there’s no evidence that a tax cut now would spur growth.

…Moreover, GOP tax mythology usually leaves out other factors that also contributed to growth in the 1980s: First was the sharp reduction in interest rates by the Federal Reserve. The fed funds rate fell by more than half, from about 19 percent in July 1981 to about 9 percent in November 1982. Second, Reagan’s defense buildup and highway construction programs greatly increased the federal government’s purchases of goods and services. This is textbook Keynesian economics.

…I’m not sure how many Republicans even know anymore that Reagan raised taxes several times after 1981. His last budget showed that as of 1988, the aggregate, cumulative revenue loss from the 1981 tax cut was $264 billion and legislated tax increases brought about half of that back.

…Despite huge tax cuts almost annually during the George W. Bush administration that cost the Treasury trillions in revenue, according to the Congressional Budget Office, growth collapsed in the first decade of the 2000s. Real GDP rose just 19.5 percent, well below its ’90s rate.

I helped create the GOP tax myth. Trump is wrong: Tax cuts don’t equal growth. – The Washington Post

hmmm

Entrance fees during the busiest months at Shenandoah National Park, and 16 other parks around the country, would more than double.

Trump Administration Proposes Raising Shenandoah Entrance Fee to $70 | Washingtonian

Agggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggh

Internet and cellphone service can’t be fully restored without a steady flow of electricity to individual cell towers. The pumps, filtration systems, and other equipment used to treat sewage and provide clean drinking water also can’t function without power. Right now, those plants aren’t receiving much of it.

…the lack of electricity is a literal life-and-death issue — and one that may wind up killing more Puerto Ricans than the storm itself. The island’s government says 48 people died because of the hurricane, but my colleagues Eliza Barclay and Alexia Fernández Campbell estimate that the real death toll from the storm is probably well into the hundreds.

That number could spike even higher if the blackouts continue because the island needs electricity to operate its water and sewage systems; if the grid remains offline, huge numbers of Puerto Ricans will be at real risk of dying from heatstroke, dehydration, or exposure to contaminated water.

…The reasons have to do with geography and money. Puerto Rico’s biggest power generators are on the south of the island, but most of its inhabitants live on the north side, primarily in San Juan. There are four high-capacity transmission lines that carry power from the south to the north, and they pass through the center part of the island, the region Marin calls home. The problem is that central Puerto Rico is mountainous, full of huge swaths of thick forest, and mainly reachable only by driving on terrifyingly narrow dirt roads.

…For now, the military and civilian officials working to pull Puerto Rico back from the brink are focused on bringing powerful generators to the island. Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan, the three-star Army general leading US military relief efforts in Puerto Rico, says civilian personnel are surveying hospitals, water plants, and sewage treatment facilities to find out which facilities have generators that are already working, which have ones in of need repair, and which don’t have any at all.

“If they don’t have a generator, do they need one, and can we bring one in?” he tells me. “And when we talk generators, I’m not talking your little Honda one. I’m talking about massive generators, like the size of a semi-truck.”

FEMA has already installed 100 generators at individual hospitals, sewage treatment plants, and water pumping facilities. It plans to bring in up to 400 more, according to officials on the ground here.

Generators are a short-term fix, however; a permanent solution will take far longer.

…The [wind] turbines are in perfect working order and could be a vital source of energy for the power-starved island. Except that they can’t actually be turned on without a small amount of electricity from the grid — which, of course, isn’t currently capable of providing it.

When the grid eventually comes back online, the wind farm will be able to provide power to about 35,000 homes. Until then, the blades aren’t turning.

…The medical center, though, is rapidly changing its normal ways of doing business in order to adapt to the new reality on the ground. Rodríguez tells me that many local residents have lost their homes and are living in large communal shelters. They may not know the medical center is open; even if they do, they often have no way of getting here.

In response, Rodríguez is sending doctors and nurses to the shelters, which are already seeing periodic outbreaks of infectious diseases such as conjunctivitis and parasite-borne skin diseases like scabies. That’s a new approach for the medical center, but Rodríguez feels like she’d be letting down her community if she didn’t experiment with alternative methods of delivering care. “This is our new normal,” she says.

Darkness: life in Puerto Rico without electricity – Vox

sigh…

Tesla’s first project to restore electricity in Puerto Rico is a children’s hospital in San Juan.

…The automaker, which previously committed to helping the U.S. territory recover from Hurricane Maria, is combining its commercial batteries and solar panels at the children’s hospital. The company said it is the first of many projects on the island that will use batteries and solar panel to restore power there.

A week after the first Powerwalls were sent to Puerto Rico, [Tesla CEO Elon] Musk said on Twitter that the company could theoretically rebuild the U.S. territory’s electricity system with solar and battery systems. [PR Gov. Ricardo] Rossello quickly jumped in on the Twitter discussion and invited Musk to talk about making the island a flagship project for Tesla.

Tesla Restoring Power to Children’s Hospital Puerto Rico

hmmmm

The Senate voted Tuesday night to kill a controversial pending rule that would have allowed Americans to file class-action suits against banks instead of being forced into private arbitration or small claims court.

…The move by the Senate followed a similar action by the House in July to rescind the rule. …Trump is expected to sign the repeal legislation, providing a major victory for the financial industry.

…Pence cast the deciding vote after the Senate tied 50-50. All but two Republicans — John Kennedy of Louisiana and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina — voted to repeal the rule. No Democrats or independents supported the move.

…For years, Wells Fargo used arbitration clauses to block lawsuits from customers who alleged that unauthorized accounts had been opened in their names. Ultimately, the bank estimated that as many as 3.5 million such accounts were opened.

The bank agreed to settle some class-actions suits, but not until the CFPB, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Los Angeles city attorney’s office fined the bank over those practices last year. Even in cases that the bank settled, it had argued that the plaintiffs could not sue because of arbitration clauses.

Democrats cited the Wells Fargo case and the recent massive data breach at credit reporting company Equifax as proof that the new CFPB rule was needed to protect consumers from abuses.

Equifax has been criticized for initially making consumers give up their right to sue if they wanted to take advantage of the company’s offer of free credit monitoring and identity theft protection after the breach. Equifax later backtracked on that requirement after a public uproar.

…Last year, congressional Republicans tried to repeal a consumer bureau rule for retirement advisors. The measure passed the House and Senate, but Obama vetoed it.

On Monday, the Treasury Department issued a report slamming the arbitration rule as flawed and a giveaway to class-action attorneys.

Senate votes to kill new rule allowing class-action lawsuits against banks after Pence casts deciding vote – LA Times

Just in case you were deluded into thinking the Congressional GOP is looking out for voters.

A $300 million contract to help rebuild Puerto Rico’s electrical infrastructure, which was awarded to a small, two-year-old Montana company that had only two employees when Hurricane Maria struck the U.S. territory, has sparked calls for an investigation from both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill. 

In addition to its size and relative inexperience, the fact that Whitefish Energy Holdings is based in Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s hometown of Whitefish, Mont., is fueling questions about how Whitefish Energy Holdings secured the lucrative contract. The former Montana congressman’s son also had a summer job at a Whitefish construction site.

Congress questions $300M Puerto Rico contract with tiny energy firm

For kerreyest sake….

Here is the full list of Representatives that voted against disaster relief for United States citizens:

Justin Amash (R-Michigan)
Jim Banks (R-Indiana)
Andy Burr (R-Kentucky)
Joe Barton (R-Texas)
Jack Bergman (R-Michigan)
Andy Biggs (R-Arizona)
Mike Bishop (R-Michigan)
Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee)
Rod Blum (R-Iowa)
Dave Brat (R-Virginia)
Mo Brooks (R-Alabama)
Ken Buck (R-Colorado)
Ted Budd (R-North Carolina)
Steve Chabot (R-Ohio)
James Comer (R-Kentucky)
Warren Davidson (R-Ohio)
Scott DesJarlais (R-Tennessee)
Sean Duffy (R-Wisconsin)
Jeff Duncan (R-North Carolina)
John Duncan (R-Tennessee)
Tom Emmer (R-Minnesota)
Virginia Foxx (R-North Carolina)
Trent Franks (R-Arizona)
Mike Gallagher (R-Wisconsin)
Thomas Garret (R-Virginia)
Bob Gibbs (R-Ohio)
Louie Gohmert (R-Texas)
Bob Goodlatte (R-Virginia)
Paul Gosar (R-Arizona)
Morgan Griffith (R-Virginia)
Andy Harris (R-Maryland)
Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas)
Jody Hice (R-Georgia)
French Hill (R-Arkansas)
George Holding (R-North Carolina)
Richard Hudson (R-North Carolina)
Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana)
Walter Jones (R-North Carolina)
Jim Jordan (R-Ohio)
Trent Kelly (R-Mississippi)
David Kustoff (R-Texas)
Doug Lamborn (R-Colorado)
Jason Lewis (R-Minnesota)
Barry Loudermilk (R-Georgia)
Kenny Marchant (R-Texas)
Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky)
Mark Meadows (R-North Carolina)
Luke Messer (R-Indiana)
Alex Mooney (R-West Virginia)
Markwayne Mullin (R-Oklahoma)
Kristi Noem (R-South Dakota)
Ralph Norman (R-South Carolina)
Gary Palmer (R-Alabama)
Steve Pearce (R-New Mexico)
Scott Perry (R-Pennsylvania)
Robert Pittenger (R-North Carolina)
John Ratcliffe (R-Texas)
Todd Rokita (R-Indiana)
Keith Rothfus (R-Pennsylvania)
David Rouzer (R-North Carolina)
Mark Sanford (R-South Carolina)
David Schweikert (R-Arizona)
Jamex Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin)
Jason Smith (R-Missouri)
Chris Stewart (R-Utah)
Mark Walker (R-North Carolina)
Jackie Walorski (R-Indiana)
Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio)
Roger Williams (R-Texas)

Here Are the Names of the 69 House Republicans Who Voted Against Aid for Puerto Rico

Un-American asshats.

Two newly revealed political fundraising appearances by the Interior secretary add to questions about Trump Cabinet members’ taxpayer-funded trips.

: Zinke’s travels: Ski resort and Alaskan steakhouse – POLITICO

hmmm