US Politics Mega-thread - Page 7174

On March 22 2017 11:37 Plansix wrote:


I have never something to be a misquote more in my entire life. These people are going to get Americans killed.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, secretly worked for a Russian billionaire to advance the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin a decade ago and proposed an ambitious political strategy to undermine anti-Russian opposition across former Soviet republics, The Associated Press has learned. The work appears to contradict assertions by the Trump administration and Manafort himself that he never worked for Russian interests.

Manafort proposed in a confidential strategy plan as early as June 2005 that he would influence politics, business dealings and news coverage inside the United States, Europe and the former Soviet republics to benefit the Putin government, even as U.S.-Russia relations under Republican President George W. Bush grew worse. Manafort pitched the plans to Russian aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska, a close Putin ally with whom Manafort eventually signed a $10 million annual contract beginning in 2006, according to interviews with several people familiar with payments to Manafort and business records obtained by the AP. Manafort and Deripaska maintained a business relationship until at least 2009, according to one person familiar with the work.

On March 22 2017 16:01 KwarK wrote:
It requires no leap of faith, it can be derived a priori from a basic understanding of the facts. Or it can be observed in any of the places it has been tried and has worked if evidence is your thing.

On March 22 2017 19:12 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote:


He's on a holy mission to rattle NATO . Fits well with Bannon's fucked up worldview


Also the noose around Paul Manafort is tightening. AP now has info putting him right in Putins lap

On March 22 2017 20:08 a_flayer wrote:


Manafort has been widely known to work with (pro-Russian) politicians for a long time. IIRC Manafort was involved in Viktor Yanukovych's presidential campaign in Ukraine too before Yanukovych was ousted.

"I worked with Oleg Deripaska almost a decade ago representing him on business and personal matters in countries where he had investments," Manafort said. "My work for Mr. Deripaska did not involve representing Russian political interests."

"We are now of the belief that this model can greatly benefit the Putin Government if employed at the correct levels with the appropriate commitment to success," Manafort wrote in the 2005 memo to Deripaska. The effort, Manafort wrote, "will be offering a great service that can re-focus, both internally and externally, the policies of the Putin government."

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, secretly worked for a Russian billionaire to advance the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin a decade ago and proposed an ambitious political strategy to undermine anti-Russian opposition across former Soviet republics, The Associated Press has learned. The work appears to contradict assertions by the Trump administration and Manafort himself that he never worked for Russian interests.

Manafort proposed in a confidential strategy plan as early as June 2005 that he would influence politics, business dealings and news coverage inside the United States, Europe and the former Soviet republics to benefit the Putin government, even as U.S.-Russia relations under Republican President George W. Bush grew worse. Manafort pitched the plans to Russian aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska, a close Putin ally with whom Manafort eventually signed a $10 million annual contract beginning in 2006, according to interviews with several people familiar with payments to Manafort and business records obtained by the AP. Manafort and Deripaska maintained a business relationship until at least 2009, according to one person familiar with the work.

"We are now of the belief that this model can greatly benefit the Putin Government if employed at the correct levels with the appropriate commitment to success," Manafort wrote in the 2005 memo to Deripaska. The effort, Manafort wrote, "will be offering a great service that can re-focus, both internally and externally, the policies of the Putin government."

Manafort's plans were laid out in documents obtained by the AP that included strategy memoranda and records showing international wire transfers for millions of dollars. How much work Manafort performed under the contract was unclear.

The disclosure comes as Trump campaign advisers are the subject of an FBI probe and two congressional investigations. Investigators are reviewing whether the Trump campaign and its associates coordinated with Moscow to meddle in the 2016 campaign. Manafort has dismissed the investigations as politically motivated and misguided, and said he never worked for Russian interests. The documents obtained by AP show Manafort's ties to Russia were closer than previously revealed.

In a statement to the AP, Manafort confirmed that he worked for Deripaska in various countries but said the work was being unfairly cast as "inappropriate or nefarious" as part of a "smear campaign."

"I worked with Oleg Deripaska almost a decade ago representing him on business and personal matters in countries where he had investments," Manafort said. "My work for Mr. Deripaska did not involve representing Russian political interests."

Deripaska became one of Russia's wealthiest men under Putin, buying assets abroad in ways widely perceived to benefit the Kremlin's interests. U.S. diplomatic cables from 2006 described Deripaska as "among the 2-3 oligarchs Putin turns to on a regular basis" and "a more-or-less permanent fixture on Putin's trips abroad." In response to questions about Manafort's consulting firm, a spokesman for Deripaska in 2008 — at least three years after they began working together — said Deripaska had never hired the firm. Another Deripaska spokesman in Moscow last week declined to answer AP's questions.

Manafort worked as Trump's unpaid campaign chairman last year from March until August. Trump asked Manafort to resign after AP revealed that Manafort had orchestrated a covert Washington lobbying operation until 2014 on behalf of Ukraine's ruling pro-Russian political party .

The newly obtained business records link Manafort more directly to Putin's interests in the region. According to those records and people with direct knowledge of Manafort's work for Deripaska, Manafort made plans to open an office in Moscow, and at least some of Manafort's work in Ukraine was directed by Deripaska, not local political interests there. The Moscow office never opened.

Manafort has been a leading focus of the U.S. intelligence investigation of Trump's associates and Russia, according to a U.S. official. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the investigation were confidential. Meanwhile, federal criminal prosecutors became interested in Manafort's activities years ago as part of a broad investigation to recover stolen Ukraine assets after the ouster of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych there in early 2014. No U.S. criminal charges have ever been filed in the case.

FBI Director James Comey, in confirming to Congress the federal intelligence investigation this week, declined to say whether Manafort was a target. Manafort's name was mentioned 28 times during the hearing of the House Intelligence Committee, mostly about his work in Ukraine. No one mentioned Deripaska.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Monday that Manafort "played a very limited role for a very limited amount of time" in the campaign, even though as Trump's presidential campaign chairman he led it during the crucial run-up to the Republican National Convention.

Manafort and his associates remain in Trump's orbit. Manafort told a colleague this year that he continues to speak with Trump by telephone. Manafort's former business partner in eastern Europe, Rick Gates, has been seen inside the White House on a number of occasions. Gates has since helped plan Trump's inauguration and now runs a nonprofit organization, America First Policies, to back the White House agenda.

Gates, whose name does not appear in the documents, told the AP that he joined Manafort's firm in 2006 and was aware Manafort had a relationship with Deripaska, but he was not aware of the work described in the memos. Gates said his work was focused on domestic U.S. lobbying and political consulting in Ukraine at the time. He said he stopped working for Manafort's firm in March 2016 when he joined Trump's presidential campaign.

On March 22 2017 16:43 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Who wants to bet he just learned this?

On March 22 2017 18:13 opisska wrote:
To be fair, universal healthcare has its issues as well. In Czech Republic, we have the real and true universal healthcare where essentially everything is free and everyone is mandated to pay "insurance", which is actually a tax (is in percents of income). This really means that all people have access to healthcare, but the system is tragically underfunded and it kinda seems to be on a course to a terrible crash, because the underpaid doctors are getting increasingly pissed, a lot of them leave for the West and we are quite short on manpower nowadays. It's still better in my eyes than the US "die if you're poor and sick" system, but the problem is that it just requires even more money than we are already putting in and it's hard to convince the healthier part of the electorate to vouch for that. I would have no problems personally with increasing taxation just to fund healthcare, but this is a view that might be skewed by the fact that I have a serious condition myself.

Speaking of which, there is another problem with universal healthcare: the case of expensive diseases. There are 17 thousand people with MS in the country and only like a half of them are getting the disease-modifying drugs, because those are quite expensive. Now there is talk about a next generation of drugs that might be much more efficient, but I am wondering how many people are gonna get those at 100k Euro per year ... definitely not everyone, by pure math seeing how much money is there now for the disease. And I am talking about MS, a rather common thing, where public opinion has pushed hard so that at least someone gets the treatment (I luckily do) - the fact that a vice-premier has it might have helped - but for much more rare diseases, the situation is even worse, people are just not getting treatments because they are too costly.

Gov. Matt Bevin of Kentucky was unrestrained in his praise for President Trump: Opening for him at a rally on Monday, Mr. Bevin, a conservative Republican, echoed Mr. Trump’s “America First” slogan and only gently noted the nagging divisions in their party.

“We now have a president and a Congress that are united in party, and yet we still have disagreements among us,” Mr. Bevin said, insisting, “This is healthy and good.”

In private, Mr. Bevin has been blunter about the party’s disagreements. Just days before appearing with Mr. Trump in Louisville, he joined a conference call with the president’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney, to protest a White House proposal to defund the Appalachian Regional Commission, an economic development agency that spans 13 states and steers millions of dollars in federal money to Kentucky.

Mr. Bevin was not alone in his dismay.

As Mr. Trump and his advisers press for bone-deep cuts to the federal budget, Republican governors have rapidly emerged as an influential bloc of opposition. They have complained to the White House about reductions they see as harmful or arbitrary, and they plan to pressure members of Congress from their states to oppose them.

Of acute concern to Republicans are a handful of low-profile programs aimed at job training and economic revitalization, including regional development agencies like the Appalachian commission and the Delta Regional Authority, which serves eight Southern and Midwestern states, seven of them with Republican governors. They are also protective of grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development and a $3.4 billion job-training program funded through the Labor Department.

Mr. Trump’s budget office has proposed to eliminate or deeply slash funding for all of those programs, along with dozens of others.

Kim S. Rueben, a budget expert at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, said the retrenchment in Mr. Trump’s spending plan appeared to be significantly out of step with his campaign promises to use the federal government as a machine for creating jobs, especially in distressed Midwestern and rural areas.

“It just seems like you’re going after places that are so pivotal to what you are arguing you wanted to do for your base,” Ms. Rueben said of Mr. Trump’s budget. “They’re cutting all sorts of infrastructure projects and economic development projects at the same time that the president is still talking about how much of an investment he’s going to put into infrastructure.”

The White House’s proposed cuts would be felt in matters well beyond economic development: A budget briefing circulated last week by the National Governors Association, a nonpartisan group, identified a long list of Trump-backed cuts to programs that support states. They include the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, a $3 billion project in the Department of Health and Human Services that helps people pay for heating and air conditioning, and the Community Development Block Grant program, a $3 billion initiative of the Department of Housing and Urban Development that funds local projects from affordable housing to Meals on Wheels.

Those cuts could come on top of a potentially huge restructuring of the federal Medicaid program under a Republican-backed health care law. A number of Republican governors, including John Kasich of Ohio and Brian Sandoval of Nevada, have publicly criticized the bill under consideration in the House of Representatives because they say it would impose an impossible fiscal burden on states.

Republicans have long argued for a more limited federal role in matters of economic engineering and social welfare, preferring to collect less tax revenue at the national level and hand over responsibility for a range of programs to state and local governments. But in practice, state leaders in both parties often balk at taking on such burdens.

Some of the governors who have voiced worry about the White House budget are among the country’s most conservative. Far from welcoming additional responsibilities, many of them have focused intently on limiting the size and cost of state government.

Gov. Robert Bentley of Alabama said he intended to push back against planned cuts to the Appalachian and Mississippi Delta economic agencies, as well as to the community development grants.

“The Appalachian Regional Commission, the Delta Regional Authority and the Community Development Block Grants are important resources that provide funding that benefits rural projects such as infrastructure improvement, job creation, technology upgrades and school programs,” Mr. Bentley said in a statement. “Along with my governor colleagues in the A.R.C. and D.R.A., I look forward to sharing with Washington how vital these assets are to our poorest and smallest communities.”

Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas has already told the administration his objections to its plans for the Delta Regional Authority, which gave $10 million in federal grants to states last year, and which the White House budget would eliminate.

On March 22 2017 20:27 Acrofales wrote:

Huh? If he had mentioned one of the lesser known presidents, I would agree, but (1) I knew Lincoln was a Republican, and I'm not particularly invested in US history, and (2) who cares what party Lincoln belonged to?

On March 22 2017 21:05 Biff The Understudy wrote:

You have to take in consideration that Czech Rep is a much, much, much poorer country than the US. Of course the quality of a univesrsal healthcare depends of the ressources of the country, but I bet you that without it, situation for a lot of people in CR would be horrifying.

Kwark put very well a few pages ago why there is simply no satisfying free market alternative to a UH, unless you are willing to simply let a shitload of people without or with dramatically insufficient coverage, which of course Republicans have absolutely no problem with.

On March 22 2017 21:13 opisska wrote:


Yeah, you are quite right. I think that UH is the only feasible option, however I also think that we could afford even better healthcare, but it is difficult to convince people to reroute enough public resources in that direction. It then runs into a similar problem as the US model - that if a lot of people aren't affected by the issues (because they are sufficiently healthy, or also rich in the US version), then there may not be enough will to solve them. Solidarity is just a hard thing to get out of people. We are not really that poor.

But I shouldn't really complain, our healthcare is a pretty good deal, when compared to many possible alternatives. I am now essentially scouting Europe for places I could live and not worsen my treatment and it's not very easy ...

The Wall Street Journal's editorial board is knocking President Trump for standing by his accusations that former President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower, saying the president for damaging his own credibility.

"If President Trump announces that North Korea launched a missile that landed within 100 miles of Hawaii, would most Americans believe him?" they say in an editorial published late Tuesday. "We’re not sure, which speaks to the damage that Mr. Trump is doing to his Presidency with his seemingly endless stream of exaggerations, evidence-free accusations, implausible denials and other falsehoods."

The editorial references President Trump's wiretapping accusations, which FBI Director James Comey said were unsupported during a Monday House Intelligence Committee hearing on Russian election interference.

The Journal hits Trump's administration for refusing to apologize or signal that it acknowledges that there is no evidence of wiretapping by Obama. The publication also knocks Trump for repeating an unsubstantiated assertion by a Fox news commentator that a British intelligence agency had helped Obama with wiretaps.
"Yet the President clings to his assertion like a drunk to an empty gin bottle, rolling out his press spokesman to make more dubious claims," the editors write. "Sean Spicer—who doesn’t deserve this treatment—was dispatched last week to repeat an assertion by a Fox News commentator that perhaps the Obama Administration had subcontracted the wiretap to British intelligence."

They end by warning the President to be truthful or serve as "his own worst political enemy."

"Two months into his Presidency, Gallup has Mr. Trump’s approval rating at 39%. No doubt Mr. Trump considers that fake news, but if he doesn’t show more respect for the truth most Americans may conclude he’s a fake President."