Trump asserts executive privilege over the Mueller Report while William Barr gets held in contempt. Some of Trump’s tax returns get released and, for some reason, the media is surprised. And the most important story of the week that has been virtually ignore.
William Barr in Contempt
The stupid continues. I guess there must not be anything else happening in the world or in this country.
Oh, yeah. There is. But we are still going to focus on the non-crime.
Last week, Attorney General William Barr refused to testify in front of the House Judiciary committee last week over the format of the interview. Rep. Nadler (D.-NY), the chair, then requested the Mueller Report fully un-redacted. That includes Grand Jury testimony, information hidden for national security and information to protect witnesses. In all, less than 10% of the report was redacted.
Of course Barr is not going to do that. He can’t. What was redacted is required to be redacted by law. But that did not stop Nadler for threatening Barr with a Contempt of Congress charge. Barr went to Trump and requested he assert Executive Privilege to block Congress’ attempt to find Barr in contempt. And that’s what Trump did this morning.
But that didn’t stop Congress. The Judiciary Committee voted to find Barr in contempt. It will now go to the rest of Congress where the Democrats have a majority.
So what does this mean? Executive Privilege is actually a very vague term. That’s why it is not used very often. Basically, it protects the President in a few ways. Attorney client privilege and state secrets fall under the act. Also, conversations between advisers and foreign countries is protected. But we really don’t know if this is protected because we don’t know what is in the redacted portions of the report.
It is also unclear what will happen with the contempt charge. Barr never lied and the redactions were not done on his own or with the President. Mueller and Rosenstein, no fans of the President, had input on what was to be redacted. So did the FBI, CIA and other agencies. The redactions are legitimate.
This whole thing is going to end up in court. And it is a waste of time and money. There’s nothing going to be in the hidden material that is going to change the overall findings in the report. Dems are just wasting time because they have no other leads to impeachment.
But they are doing exactly what everyone thought they would do: Finding any way to keep the narrative alive. Listen, Trump wasn’t perfect. There’s a lot of embarrassing stuff in that report. But Barr didn’t hide anything except what was mandated by the law.
Absolutely nothing is going to come of this.
The Leaks Continue
I’m not sure what’s worse: the fact that Donald Trump lost a lot of money in the 1980s or that the media is so contemptible that they violate the privacy of another American citizen.
The New York Times released an article, declaring that they had the 1040 tax returns of Donald Trump from the year 1985 to 1994. In those tax returns, Trumps businesses had lost $1.7 billion in that decade. The media is absolutely amazed by this. And they are really being vicious about it.
This reaction from the media is probably half the reason Trump doesn’t want to and shouldn’t release his tax records. No matter what is in them, he is going to get blasted. If he makes money, he is part of the 1% and a bad man and shouldn’t be President. If he loses money, which is what we have here, he is incompetent and shouldn’t be President. If he is not worth as much as people thing, the media will just make fun of him. It’s a no win situation.
The media and the democrats keep saying they want to see his tax records because they want to make sure he has not done anything illegal, mind you, without any evidence. Of course, that is a stupid reason to want to see them. It is not the job of Congress to see if Trump broke any laws. That’s the job of the IRS. And Trump has been in business since the 1970s and has never been in trouble with the IRS. So all this is is a way for Democrats to look for more dirt so they can dig up another reason for impeachment.
I’m also a little surprised by everyone being shocked that Trump lost money in the 1980s and 90s. I knew that he lost a lot of money throughout his career. He went bankrupt four times. Everyone knew this. Trump, himself, said he had lost a lot of money. This was all public record. But he media and the Democrats act like this is some big huge surprise. His financial distresses were the reason I did not vote for him in 2016. I was sure his cowboy-style business sense would translate well when running our economy.
I really don’t care if Trump releases his taxes. I don’t think it would be a bad thing because it would be nice to know as much as possible about the country’s President. But I would vote for him in 2020 anyway. I think the reason that Trump is not releasing his tax records is, not because he is doing anything shady, but because of ego. I have a feeling he is not as rich as he makes himself to be. That’s important to Trump. It’s part of the image he has tried to establish for decades.
But I don’t blame him for not releasing them. Look at the mockery he received with the little information.
The Real Story of the Week
It looks like the trade war with China is picking up steam.
The President raised existing tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese goods to 25% percent across the board, up from 10% in most cases, and began the process of placing 25% tariffs on a further $325 billion worth of goods. The idea is to even the playing field with China, which has taken advantage of our current trade deals.
For the last couple of days, the Chinese and United States have been negotiating a way to end the trade war. Some assume that the new round of tariffs are to force the Chinese to work harder during the negotiating. But, if that’s the case, it backfired. Chine responded by saying they “deeply regret” the U.S. move and would respond.
President Trump went to Twitter to give his two cents:
So, apparently, Trump is not afraid of going to the mattresses with China. And I can see why. China’s economy is not as strong as ours by any stretch of the imagination. When the United States struggled during the Great Recession at the end of the George Bush term in 2009, China economy fell into a depression. See, the United States is the biggest importer from China. When we are in recession, their economy suffers exponentially. Trump’s thought is, if we use tariffs, we will raise prices on Chinese products, forcing U.S. business and citizens to buy American. This could work but there are still some risks.
First off, tariffs are not as great as President Trump makes them sound. In fact, one could say they are just a tax on all except the industry that it benefits. Let me give you an example. I own a business that builds widgets. Each widget needs a pound of steel. The United States sells steel for $10 a pound but China sells it for $5 a pound. Trump puts a tariff, raising Chinese steel to $15 a pound. Now I have a choice. Do I pay $10 a pound and pass the extra cost onto those who buy my widgets or do I move my factory to Mexico where there are no tariffs and I can get my steel for $5 a pound? Harley Davidson was faced with the same issue. When Trump put a tariff on steel from Canada, Mexico and the EU, Harley Davidson moved their factory to Europe. And Trump was pissed.
The other problem is that China owns 28% of our nation debt, which is never a good thing. We owe China $4.01 trillion of our $22 trillion. That’s a mighty chunk of change. I’d be a little wary to tick off the country that we owe so much money to.
I would rather see Trump fix us instead of attacking China. We need to make our industry stronger and more competitive. First, kill unions. Unions are driving wages way above the value of the work being done and the additional costs are being passed on to the customer. Unions had their place when kids were losing their hand in machines but they have lost their value and have become too powerful.
Next, lower taxes on manufacturers. The less that manufacturers have to pay in taxes, the less it costs to make the product. That leads to reinvestment into the company which leads to jobs. It also lowers the cost of the product. With that, ease unnecessary regulations. Regulations cost businesses money to maintain compliance and some of the things they have to do are really unnecessary.
Along the lines of regulation, let the business control the cost of their labor. Raising minimum wage is a terrible idea. One philosophy of economics I learned in college is that, in a free market system, the worker cannot work for what they’re worth. I can’t remember who said that. But the idea is business will pay a worker a fair wage, which is based on the market. If a business tries to underpay their workers, they will either get a lower quality worker or no workers at all. It’s in the business’ best interest to pay an employee a fair wage. Government shouldn’t be making this determination.
Finally, the United States need to control the debt. And, by that, I mean our real debt. I mentioned this before, but our debt is actually in the vicinity of between $70 and $80 trillion. That’s due to college debt, social security medicare and other expenses. How do we control our debt? Stop spending, especially on programs that just hand money to people. It’s stupid and we will pay for it in the future. I’d hate to see us end up like Greece one day.
Well that was far more on the trade war with China than I thought I would actually right. But it is an important issue.
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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7006385/House-Judiciary-Committee-votes-hold-Bill-Barr-CONTEMPT-Congress.html
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/decade-in-the-red-trump-tax-figures-show-more-than-1-billion-in-business-losses/