America's Chief Grifter Strikes Again
By Thom Hartmann A...
Trump says he is going to boost unemployment payments by $400, stop evictions, cut payroll taxes, and extend student loan relief.In fact, these are all lies. As usual, it's a new con job, a grift from our grifter-in-chief.
On the unemployment payments, he lacks the authority to appropriate money for people from the Treasury Department like Democrats did with the cares act, so he's taking $44 billion still left in the FEMA budget and saying that he will pass that money out to unemployed people - if states match $300 from FEMA with $100 from the state.
If every state took him up on that, the FEMA budget would be exhausted in a few weeks, just as we are entering what may be the worst hurricane and wildfire season in decades. It's a scam. It also was not an executive order: it was merely a directive to the emergency agency.
On student loans, he merely issued a "memorandum" requesting that the Education Department study the feasibility of doing something about the student loan crisis.
On evictions, he actually issued a presidential executive order, but it doesn't require evictions stop. Instead, it asks the department of Health and Human Services to investigate the possibility and feasibility of stopping or slowing evictions at the department level, something that HHS has no authority to do outside of its own low income housing. Another scam.
And on the payroll tax, he does not have the authority to turn on or off Americans owing taxes, so he says you will still owe the payroll tax every paycheck, but the government just won't bother to collect it... until the end of the year, a month after the election. Then you are going to owe all the payroll taxes that were not collected, and you're going to have to pay it by April 15. You know, when the next guy is president.
Donald Trump has pretended to be a billionaire for years by laundering money for foreign oligarchs and living on borrowed cash from Deutsche bank. He looks like a billionaire, lives the lifestyle of a billionaire, but in all probability, according to David Cay Johnston and other reporters and economists, he is broke and deeply in debt and has been since the late 1990s.
This executive order and three memorandums basically continue that scam he's been running ever since he burned through the last of his daddy's money, only now he has the federal government running it, too.
There will not be extra money in your paycheck this month, you can still be evicted, your student loan banker will continue to demand payments and interest, and even if your paycheck, if you're employed, goes up 6% between now and the end of the year, you will owe back every penny of that money on April 15th.
Meanwhile, we have no national testing, our schools are in chaos, our elections are under attack from both foreign governments and the Post Office, a quarter-million Americans will be dead by election time and 5 million are already sick, and Mitch McConnell and the Republicans in the Senate are on vacation.
Trump continues to live the life of a grifter, and is applying that to the federal government. Abraham Lincoln famously said that you can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time.
Trump figures all he has to do is fool "some of the people all the time" and get enough of them to vote while he prevents everybody else from doing so. He calls those people his "base."
The fate and future of America, and democracy around the world, hangs on whether he gets away with this latest grift.
-Thom
Comments
#2
I was astounded to learn that there is no solid evidence that Lincoln actually used this adage. Would you please examine its provenance?
Quote Investigator: Abraham Lincoln died in 1865. Two decades later in September 1885 a version of the adage was used in a speech by a Prohibition Party politician named William J. Groo who provided no attribution for the remark. In March 1886 another Prohibitionist politician employed the saying, and this time the words were credited to Lincoln. These citations constitute the earliest evidence of closely matching statements located by QI. Details are presented further below.
The attribution to Lincoln was wide-spread and oft-repeated, but other names were occasionally mentioned. For example, in 1899 a writer in “The Engineering Times” of London noted that the popular maxim had been credited to the famous promoter P. T. Barnum in an unnamed magazine:
The same well-known magazine credits Barnum, the showman, with the authorship of the truism, “You can fool some of the people all the time, and all the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”
We really would have thought that our contemporary, of all others, would have known that this was a famous utterance of a late President of the United States Republic.
In 2003 and 2005 the history of the quotation was analyzed in articles printed in the Newsletter of the Abraham Lincoln Association of Springfield, Illinois. The 2003 article noted that by 1904 some individuals began to claim that Lincoln had used the expression in a speech in 1858. In 1905 two newspapers, “The Chicago Tribune” and “The Brooklyn Eagle” gathered and reviewed information, but the question remained unsettled. Over time other witnesses came forward; however, no contemporaneous written evidence from the 1850s has ever been discovered. Human memories of events that transpired forty years in the past are notably unreliable.
#3
Perhaps, even more than Putin’s sock puppet, Trump is William Barr’s sock puppet. After all, Barr, likely has more on Trump than even Putin. It’s very possible that Barr inserted himself into the Attorney General’s job, rather than Trump making him the Attorney General.
Of course Putin wants Trump to be the President of the United States. Not because he thinks he will necessarily get a better deal from Trump, though he no doubt he will. Even more importantly, he knows a Trump presidency is the perfect vehicle to bring ruin to the United States as Trump has done to every business he has owned. Much easier for Putin to destroy the enemy from within by abetting the most incompetent, mentally unstable, bigoted and divisive person to ever inhabit the Whitehouse. The Trump time-bomb is ticking and for Putin its just a matter of waiting for the “Make America Great Again” implosion to cripple the US.
He knows it is proven that a large segment of the US is susceptible to being ruled by an authoritarian. A perfect example of this was on display at Trump’s golf course this week when a crowd of Trump’s wealthy supporters cheered him on as he issued unconstitutional, so called Executive orders and engaged in a stream of lies that were exceptionally overtly transparent, even by his standards.
#4
Just like any abuser, the most dangerous time for the victim is during the separation process. Who knows what else America will suffer by January 2021.
I just read "Dark Towers", and from that and other books, I agree Trump and his family are in deep doodoo. Actually Putin has a problem as well. With all he has stolen from the Russian people, he's afraid to leave office too. Looks like Israelis aren't waiting for Netanyahu to leave.
Rumor had it, the only reason Barr returned to DC was FOR A PAYCHECK. That could be why he doesn't want to get fired. He may be property rich and cash poor.
#5
If Russians are going after this little site, imagine what they have infiltrated.
#6
Thom, it's Biden's VP pick week.
Surely you must agree that most intelligent people pick their pets based on gender, color, and the smell of their hair, not a VP of the United States.
#7
"our elections are under attack from both foreign governments and the Post Office. . ."
? ? Shouldn't that be re-worded?
#8
How would a Trumpee know what "intelligent people" think?
#9
Gee whataboob, how despicably sexist and racist of you!
#10
"I have a case for the American people. It is to deliver the ultimate verdict on the high crimes and misdemeanors of Donald. J. Trump. You are the witnesses, the victims and — most important — the judges and jury. Only you can stop him — or allow the high crime spree to continue." -- Norman Eisen
#11
Mark Meadows may think Trump will lose so is trying to steal the fixtures and burn down the house before getting evicted.
#12
The D-party did well to decide Biden's VP as senator Kamala Harris. But if they ("deep" D's) really want the young people to come out and vote and support them, they still have a lot of talking (bargaining?) to do with their expert on the issue, namely senator Bernard Sanders. And they better hurry up. Last minute announcements risk of being seen as fake and intended only for a quick and "dirty" political gain.
Unless, D-party wants to ignore for the second time (second warning) its "left" (whatever that is supposed to mean) wing. There may be no third warning. Things (thanks to technology) are moving rapidly, and so does the train, which maybe ahead of its estimated time of arrival.
#13
I can't speak for Thom, but I find Quote Investigator to be the most thorough of the quote fact check sites that I have seen, though sometimes a president's official archive site is more likely to have addressed the quote in question.
#14
From Europe, we understand how he has been elected, but we don't understand how the impeachment hasn't been a success.
I've read more and more republicans are against him. Let's hope he goes away and can't face Biden during the november election.
#15
We'll see if our two nominees can dish out needed doses of reality to the liar-in-chief, and call him out in no uncertain terms. He'll be doing that to them.
Our favorite COVID-45 booster should know ALL about pets. old saying;"takes one, to know one."
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Nothing new here folks. He has betrayed everyone who ever trusted him. His wives, his backers, his contractors, those who naively voted for him and those in his Cabinet who showed any brains. The man is incapable of telling the truth and probably believes whatever magical thinking comes out of his mouth. Hopefully in January he'll have a nice short trip from the White House to the mad house, the resort where he can live out his days rewriting history in his own mind. Sadly, there will be people who still long for him.