Trump -psykoosi

Wanna-be mafiaboss uhkailee...
Mies polttaa siltoja ja tuhoaa diplomaattisia yhteyksiä minkä ehtii ja ensimmäinen kausi ei ole vielä loppu. Ajatelkaa mitä kaikkea hän vielä ehtii tehdä tuhotakseen USA;n maine lopullisesti seuraavalla kaudella.

Norsu porsliinikaupassa, tulee mieleen. Paitsi että norsu on älykkäämpi eliö.
Ilmaisia lounaita ei ole. Et sinäkään saa Verisure järjestelmää veloituksetta kotiisi. Trump on Usan presidentti eikä koko maailman. Hän laittaa oman maan talouden kuntoon.
 
Sitten on vain oltava valmis siihen, että Kiina tekee paremman tarjouksen...

USA:n taloudellekaan ei tee hyvää jos se suosiolla luovuttaa maailman kiinalaisten otettavaksi. Siinä kohdin joku 100 miljardia rinnastuu lähinnä kahvikassaan.

Ainakin Valkoisen talon Erdogan-fani saa näillä tempauksilla nimensä historian kirjoihin. Saattaa se tietysti olla sattumaakin että Trumpin syötöt napsuvat jatkuvasti eri diktaattorien lapaan.
 
Jälleen yksi Trumpin ympärillä pyörineistä venkuloista tuomittiin rikoksista, Roger Stone todettiin syylliseksi kaikkiin seitsemään syytteeseen. Tuomio tuli mm. valehtelusta kongressin tiedustelukomitealle, yrityksestä estää todistajaa todistamasta ja todistusaineiston kätkemisestä. Rikokset liittyivät vuoden 2016 presidentinvaaleihin ja Wikileaks-yhteyksiin, enimmillään Stone voisi saada rikoksista 20 vankilatuomion mutta hänen odotetaan saavan huomattavasti lyhyemmän rangaistuksen.
Roger J. Stone Jr., a former aide and longtime friend of President Trump, was found guilty on Friday of obstructing a congressional investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election in what prosecutors said was an effort to protect Mr. Trump.

Mr. Stone, 67, was charged with lying to the House Intelligence Committee, trying to block the testimony of another potential witness and concealing reams of evidence from investigators. Prosecutors claimed he tried to thwart the committee’s work because the truth would have “looked terrible” for both the president and his campaign. In all, he faced seven felony charges and was found guilty on all counts.

The government built its case over the past week with testimony from a friend of Mr. Stone and two former Trump campaign officials, buttressed by hundreds of exhibits that exposed Mr. Stone’s disdain for congressional and criminal investigators. Confronted with his lies under oath by one associate, prosecutors said, Mr. Stone wrote back: “No one cares.” They asked the jurors to deliver a verdict proving him wrong.

The evidence showed that in the months leading up to the 2016 election, Mr. Stone strove to obtain emails that Russia had stolen from Democratic computers and funneled to WikiLeaks, which released them at strategic moments timed to damage Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump’s Democratic opponent. Mr. Stone briefed the Trump campaign about whatever he had picked up about WikiLeaks’ plans “every chance he got,” Jonathan Kravis, a lead prosecutor, said.

The trial revived the saga of Russia’s efforts to bolster Mr. Trump’s chances of winning the White House at the same time that House impeachment investigators are scrutinizing Mr. Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine, a foreign ally, for help with his 2020 election.

Unfolding in a courtroom just blocks from the impeachment hearing room on Capitol Hill, the case resurrected a narrative that dogged Mr. Trump’s presidency until Mr. Mueller’s two-year investigation ended last spring. Mr. Stone was accused of lying to the same House intelligence panel that is now leading the impeachment inquiry.

The jury of nine women and three men deliberated for seven hours over two days before convicting Mr. Stone, a 40-year friend of Mr. Trump and well-known political provocateur.

In one of the trial’s most revealing moments, Rick Gates, Mr. Trump’s deputy campaign chairman, recounted a July 31, 2016, phone call between Mr. Stone and Mr. Trump, just days after WikiLeaks had released a trove of emails embarrassing the Clinton campaign. As soon as he hung up with Mr. Stone, Mr. Gates testified, Mr. Trump declared that “more information” was coming, an apparent reference to future releases from WikiLeaks that would rattle his political rival.

Mr. Gates’s testimony called into question Mr. Trump’s answers to queries from the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who conducted a criminal inquiry into Russia’s election interference. Mr. Trump, who agreed to respond to questions only in writing rather than sit for an interview, said he could not recall the specifics of any of 21 conversations he had with Mr. Stone in the six months before the election. Mr. Stone told House investigators that he never discussed his conversations with an intermediary to WikiLeaks with anyone involved in the Trump campaign.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/13/...try=FI&blockId=home-featured&imp_id=526942545
Mr. Stone, 67, joins a notable list of former Trump aides convicted of lying to federal authorities. It includes Mr. Gates; Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser; Michael D. Cohen, the president’s longtime personal lawyer and fixer, and George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign aide. And his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who was also Mr. Stone’s former partner in a political consulting firm, was convicted of a string of financial crimes and is serving a seven-and-a-half-year prison term.

Although the most serious charge against Mr. Stone carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, his sentence will almost certainly be much lighter. Working against him could be his multiple run-ins earlier this year with Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who is overseeing the case and will preside over sentencing, set for Feb. 6. After a series of infractions, including posting a photo of the judge with an image of cross-hairs next to her head on Instagram in February, she banned him from social media.

During the trial, Mr. Stone was noticeably subdued, betraying no reaction to the testimony and rarely engaging even with his own legal team. On Twitter, his daughter Adria complained that the jury pool seemed stacked against her father and President Trump.

His lawyers argued that the prosecution’s case was based on speculation and false assumptions about Mr. Stone’s motives. They pointed out that Mr. Gates had no knowledge about what was said during the phone call between Mr. Stone and Mr. Trump. Bruce S. Rogow, the lead defense lawyer, told jurors that Mr. Stone had no reason to lie in order to protect the president nearly a year after Mr. Trump had won the election and that Mr. Stone had simply confined his answers to the strict parameters of the committee’s inquiry, he said.

Besides Mr. Gates, the trial featured testimony from another well-known former Trump aide, Stephen K. Bannon, who led Mr. Trump’s campaign through its final three months and served as a top White House adviser early in the administration. He and Mr. Gates both testified that Mr. Stone portrayed himself as the campaign’s link to WikiLeaks, even though he and his lawyers now assert that was mere braggadocio.
Much of the trial revolved around interactions between Mr. Stone and Randy Credico, a New York radio host and comedian who Mr. Stone identified to congressional investigators as his intermediary with Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. Prosecutors said that Mr. Stone pressured Mr. Credico not to cooperate with the House committee because his account would have exposed Mr. Stone’s lies.

During their tortuous 17-year friendship, Mr. Credico said, Mr. Stone repeatedly played him as a “patsy,” including publicly blaming him for his own misdeeds. He said he misidentified him to the committee as his go-between with WikiLeaks in the summer of 2016 despite his repeated pleas to Mr. Stone to tell the truth.

In fact, prosecutors said, in late July of that year, Mr. Stone had dispatched another associate, an author and conspiracy theorist named Jerome Corsi, to “get to Assange.” In one of the mysteries of the trial, prosecutors never called Mr. Corsi to testify. Asked why, Mr. Corsi replied in a text message: “Ask them — I don’t know.”

Text messages and other evidence suggested that Mr. Stone alternately flattered and threatened Mr. Credico in an effort to ward off his testimony. At one point, he pretended that he had written a letter to the House committee characterizing Mr. Credico as highly talented and successful.

He repeatedly urged Mr. Credico to “Do a Frank Pentangeli,” referring to a character in the movie “The Godfather: Part II” who gave false testimony during a Senate hearing on organized crime. Borrowing a quote from Richard Nixon to a top aide during the Watergate cover-up, Mr. Stone texted Mr. Credico in late 2017: “Stonewall it. Plead the fifth. Anything to save the plan.”

If he refused to go along, Mr. Credico testified, Mr. Stone threatened to retaliate against him and Margaret Ratner Kunstler, a lawyer for Mr. Assange and one of Mr. Credico’s dearest friends. Prosecutors described Ms. Kunstler as a particularly effective “pressure point” with Mr. Credico, an unmarried man with no children and a 34-year history of alcohol abuse.

Mr. Stone “knew that when the time came he would be able to bend Randy Credico until he broke,” Mr. Kravis, the prosecutor, told the jurors in his closing arguments. Mr. Credico ultimately asserted his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination and refused to testify to the House committee.

Prosecutors argued that jurors had black-and-white proof that Mr. Stone had lied to the House committee when he said he had no electronic communications with Mr. Credico, describing him as “not an email guy.” In fact, they exchanged more than 1,500 emails and text messages between June 2016 and September 2017, including 72 text messages on the day of Mr. Stone’s testimony.

Because Mr. Stone misled them, prosecutors said, lawmakers failed to pursue promising leads and arrived at inaccurate conclusions in their final report on Russia’s election interference. For instance, they said, the committee never discerned the full scope of contacts between Mr. Stone and the Trump campaign about WikiLeaks.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/15/...tion=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage
 
USA:n taloudellekaan ei tee hyvää jos se suosiolla luovuttaa maailman kiinalaisten otettavaksi. Siinä kohdin joku 100 miljardia rinnastuu lähinnä kahvikassaan.

Ainakin Valkoisen talon Erdogan-fani saa näillä tempauksilla nimensä historian kirjoihin. Saattaa se tietysti olla sattumaakin että Trumpin syötöt napsuvat jatkuvasti eri diktaattorien lapaan.
Tämä näin. Trumpin toimet pitkällä aikavälillä luovat Kiinalle hyvät olosuhteet ottaa yhä isompi osa maailmasta vaikutusvaltansa alle. Miten sitten Amerikka laittaa suunsa, kun Trumpin populistitohlailujen jäljiltä vuosisadan puolivälissä liittolaiset ovat hypänneet Kiinan kelkkaan. Sillä esim. Euroopan turvallisuuden takaaminen, vaikka ilman että kaikki käyttäisivät sen 2% BKTstä puolustukseen, tuo USA:lle selvää vaikutusvaltaa Euroopassa, ja näin helpottaa esim. amerikkalaisten yritysten pääsyä Euroopan markkinoille ja toimintaedellytyksiä Euroopassa kun USA:lla on tätä kautta pehmeää diplomaattista valtaa Euroopassa. Joten se on investointi USA:lle pitää joukkoja Euroopassa tätä kautta.

Sama pätee Etelä-Koreaan, joka tosin reilusti ylitse täyttää 2% BKT:stä puolustukseensa (2,5%) olematta NATO:n jäsen ja samalla vielä paljonkin enemmän jos lasketaan heidän kahden vuoden pituisen asevelvollisuuden piilokulut mukaan.
 
Yhdysvaltain Ukrainan suurlähetystön työntekijä David Holmes jolle EU-suurlähettiläs Gordon Sondland kertoi ettei Trumpia kiinnosta Ukraina vaan Bidenien tutkiminen kävi kongressin kuultavana. Sondland aiemmin väitti ettei edes ollut tietoinen Trumpin halusta tutkia Bideneitä, luultavasti hän joutuu jälleen korjailemaan lausuntojaan muistin palaillessa pätkittäin. Keskustelun kuuli myös toinen suurlähetystön työntekijä.
An official from the United States Embassy in Kiev confirmed to House impeachment investigators on Friday that he had overheard a call between President Trump and a top American diplomat in July in which the president asked whether Ukraine was going to move forward with an investigation he wanted.

The official, David Holmes, testified privately that he was at a restaurant in Kiev, Ukraine’s capital, when he overheard Mr. Trump on a cellphone call loudly asking Gordon D. Sondland, the American ambassador to the European Union, if Ukraine’s president had agreed to conduct an investigation into one of his leading political rivals. Mr. Sondland, who had just come from a meeting with top Ukrainian officials and the country’s president, replied in the affirmative.

“So, he’s going to do the investigation?” Mr. Trump asked, according to a copy of Mr. Holmes’s opening statement posted by CNN and confirmed by The New York Times.
Mr. Sondland, a wealthy hotelier and political donor turned ambassador, told Mr. Trump that President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine “loves your ass,” and would conduct the investigation and do “anything you ask him to,” according to Mr. Holmes’s statement.

After the call ended, Mr. Holmes asked if it was true that the president did not care about Ukraine. Mr. Sondland, he testified, agreed. According to Mr. Holmes’s account, the ambassador said Mr. Trump cared only about the “big stuff.” Mr. Holmes noted Ukraine had “big stuff” going on, like a war with Russia.

But Mr. Sondland had something else in mind. He told Mr. Holmes he meant “‘big stuff’ that benefits the president,” like the “Biden investigation” that his lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani was pushing for, because it affected him personally.

The account could prove significant as Democrats continue to build an impeachment case against Mr. Trump. It illustrates how preoccupied he was with persuading Ukraine’s president to go along with his demand that the country commit publicly to investigating former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a leading political rival, and how he actively used his power and the instruments of American foreign policy to see that it happened.

It adds significant new detail to a conversation that was first revealed on Wednesday during public testimony by Mr. Holmes’s boss, William B. Taylor Jr., the top American envoy in Ukraine. Mr. Taylor said then that he had only recently learned of the episode from Mr. Holmes. And it raised the possibility that Mr. Holmes could be called to testify publicly in the impeachment inquiry and presented Democrats with new leads to track down even as they conduct a string of high-profile public hearings with other witnesses.

Mr. Holmes, a career Foreign Service officer who is the political counselor in the American Embassy in Kiev, said he had been following the impeachment inquiry from afar in recent weeks and came to understand only belatedly that he had pertinent information to share. He testified under subpoena by the House Intelligence Committee after the State Department directed him not to appear, according to an official working on the inquiry.

“I came to realize I had firsthand knowledge regarding certain events on July 26 that had not otherwise been reported, and that those events potentially bore on the question of whether the president did, in fact, have knowledge that those officials were using the levers of our diplomatic power to induce the new Ukrainian president to announce the opening of a particular criminal investigation,” he testified.

Mr. Holmes’s account of the relationship between the two countries in his opening statement was broader, though, and closely resembles that offered by other top officials who have offered public and private testimony to the House.

He described how Mr. Sondland and two other American officials — Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Kurt D. Volker, the United States special envoy to Ukraine — styled themselves as the “Three Amigos” and took charge of Ukraine policy within the administration. On the outside, Mr. Giuliani exercised significant influence over what they did.

“Beginning in March 2019, the situation in the embassy and in Ukraine changed dramatically,” Mr. Holmes said, according to his statement. “Specifically, our diplomatic policy that had been focused on supporting Ukrainian democratic reform and resistance to Russian aggression became overshadowed by a political agenda being promoted by Rudy Giuliani and a cadre of officials operating with a direct channel to the White House.”

The conversation between Mr. Trump and Mr. Sondland took place on July 26, one day after Mr. Trump personally pressed Mr. Zelensky in a now-famous phone call to investigate Mr. Biden and his son Hunter Biden, as well as unproven allegations that Ukraine conspired with Democrats to interfere in the 2016 election. Mr. Trump specifically wanted an investigation into unsubstantiated corruption allegations related to Hunter Biden’s work for a Ukrainian energy firm, Burisma Holdings.

Mr. Sondland did not mention the episode to investigators last month when he answered their questions in private. He will almost certainly be asked about it next week when he appears for public testimony before the House Intelligence Committee.

He has already revised his initial testimony once, admitting to the panel last week that he told a top Ukrainian official that the country would probably not receive a package of nearly $400 million in security assistance Mr. Trump froze in July unless it committed publicly to the investigations Mr. Trump sought. And Republicans have argued that he may be overstating his access to and influence with the president.

On Thursday, two people familiar with the matter said that a second embassy official, Suriya Jayanti, also overheard the call and could corroborate Mr. Holmes’s account. It is unclear if investigators will also call her to testify. On Friday, Mr. Holmes indicated there was a third person present who would have overheard it, as well.

Mr. Holmes told investigators that he did not take notes during the conversation, but said he immediately told other embassy officials about it.

The conversation took place not long after Mr. Sondland had met directly with Mr. Zelensky and other officials. Mr. Holmes’s account gave hints that Mr. Trump’s request may have been on Mr. Zelensky’s mind, but it does not indicate what, if anything, he or his aides may have communicated to Mr. Sondland. In the meeting, Mr. Holmes recalled, Mr. Zelensky said that Mr. Trump had raised “some very sensitive issues” “three times” on the call — issues the Ukrainian leader noted they would have to follow up on in person.

Mr. Holmes described sitting on the terrace of a Kiev restaurant a little while later during lunch with Mr. Sondland, sharing a bottle of wine, when Mr. Sondland called Mr. Trump. The president was speaking so loudly, he said, that Mr. Sondland held the phone away from his ear and Mr. Holmes and others could hear Mr. Trump’s voice.

In addition to discussing the investigations, Mr. Trump and Mr. Sondland discussed ASAP Rocky, an American rapper imprisoned in Sweden at the time on charges of assault. Mr. Sondland told the president the rapper “should have pled guilty,” according to Mr. Holmes’s written statement.

Mr. Sondland then advised Mr. Trump that he should “let him get sentenced, play the racism card, give him a ticker-tape when he comes home,” Mr. Holmes testified. The ambassador added that Sweden “should have released him on your word,” and added, referring to an American reality show celebrity family pressing for Mr. Trump’s help in the case, “you can tell the Kardashians you tried.”

Mr. Sondland noted after the call that the president was in a “bad mood.”

Mr. Holmes’s account included other potentially significant details new to investigators about Trump administration officials using a White House meeting and the frozen military assistance as leverage for what Mr. Trump wanted. He testified that Mr. Taylor told him at the time about a June 28 call with him, the “Three Amigos” and Mr. Zelensky in which “it was made clear that some action on a Burisma/Biden investigation was a precondition for an Oval Office meeting.”

Mr. Taylor described the same call in his testimony, saying that Mr. Sondland had said he “wanted to make sure no one was transcribing or monitoring” the call. But Mr. Taylor did not say that investigations or preconditions had been discussed.

“It is important to understand that a White House visit was critical to President Zelensky,” Mr. Holmes said. “He needed to demonstrate U.S. support at the highest levels both to advance his ambitious anti-corruption agenda at home and to encourage Russian President Putin to take seriously President Zelensky’s peace efforts.”

By late summer, Mr. Holmes testified, he had a “clear impression” that a hold on the military aid was also “likely intended by the president either to express dissatisfaction that the Ukrainians had not yet agreed to the Burisma/Biden investigations or as an effort to increase the pressure on them to do so.”

Mr. Holmes also described frustrations among American officials.

At one point, he said, Mr. Sondland vented: “Dammit, Rudy. Every time Rudy gets involved he goes and f—s everything up.”

He said that John R. Bolton, the president’s former national security adviser, openly discussed strategies for marginalizing Mr. Giuliani on a trip to Kiev during the summer. Mr. Holmes testified that he also complained about Mr. Sondland’s “expansive interpretation of his mandate.” And he recalled Mr. Bolton saying that a hold on the security assistance would be lifted only if Mr. Zelensky could “favorably impress” during a face-to-face meeting scheduled for early September. The meeting never happened.

Other witnesses have described similar concerns by Mr. Bolton, and investigators would like to speak with him, but he has declined to appear given White House orders not to.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/15/...tion=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage
 
USA hoitanut Etelä-Korean puolustusta jo 70 vuotta. Olisiko EU:n astua esiin ja hoitaa seuraavat 70?

Korean sodassa oli mukana parisen kymmentä Euroopan maata joten ei jenkit sitäkään ihan yksin hoitaneet. Vahvuuksien osalta jenkit olivat tietysti omaa luokkaansa.
 
"Clint Allen Lorance (born December 13, 1984) is a former first lieutenant in the U.S. Army who in August 2013 was found guilty on two counts of second-degree murder for ordering soldiers in his platoon to open fire at three men on a motorcycle in southern Afghanistan in July 2012".

Tyypit olivat Talibanin pomminrakentelijoita, eivät pysähtyneet käskystä, ANA:n joukot aloittivat tulituksen...
Taisi luutnantti olla hyvin epäsuosittu yksikössään kun pääsi istumaan Leavenworthiin.
 
Lokakuun lopussa kongressin kuultavana olleen Valkoisen talon entisen kansallisen turvallisuuden virkamiehen Timothy Morrisin kuulemisen pöytäkirja julkaistiin. Morris kertoi heti Trump-Zelenskyi -puhelun kuultuaan suositelleensa puhelun tietoihin pääsyn rajoittamista sillä ymmärsi keskustelun julkisuuteen vuotamisen seuraukset.
Timothy Morrison, a former White House national security official, told House investigators in sworn testimony that he feared leaks of the contents of the July 25 call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky would be damaging, so he recommended restricting access to the transcript.

Morrison, an expert on Russia and Ukraine who served on the National Security Council before leaving the job at the end of October, said he knew immediately after listening to the call where Trump asks Zelensky to investigate the Bidens that they needed to keep it under wraps.

“I recommended to them that we restrict access to the package,” Morrison said, according to a transcript of his Oct. 31 testimony released by House Democrats on Saturday.

Democrats also made public the transcript of the deposition from Vice President Pence’s special advisor on Europe and Russia, Jennifer Williams.

“The testimony released today shows that President Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky immediately set off alarm bells throughout the White House,” said Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (Calif.), Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot L. Engel (N.Y.) and acting Oversight Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (N.Y.) in a joint statement.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...88d768-08b9-11ea-8ac0-0810ed197c7e_story.html
 
Tämä näin. Trumpin toimet pitkällä aikavälillä luovat Kiinalle hyvät olosuhteet ottaa yhä isompi osa maailmasta vaikutusvaltansa alle. Miten sitten Amerikka laittaa suunsa, kun Trumpin populistitohlailujen jäljiltä vuosisadan puolivälissä liittolaiset ovat hypänneet Kiinan kelkkaan. Sillä esim. Euroopan turvallisuuden takaaminen, vaikka ilman että kaikki käyttäisivät sen 2% BKTstä puolustukseen, tuo USA:lle selvää vaikutusvaltaa Euroopassa, ja näin helpottaa esim. amerikkalaisten yritysten pääsyä Euroopan markkinoille ja toimintaedellytyksiä Euroopassa kun USA:lla on tätä kautta pehmeää diplomaattista valtaa Euroopassa. Joten se on investointi USA:lle pitää joukkoja Euroopassa tätä kautta.

Sama pätee Etelä-Koreaan, joka tosin reilusti ylitse täyttää 2% BKT:stä puolustukseensa (2,5%) olematta NATO:n jäsen ja samalla vielä paljonkin enemmän jos lasketaan heidän kahden vuoden pituisen asevelvollisuuden piilokulut mukaan.

Vähän sama kuin lakkauttaisi firman markkinointibudjetin ja siirtäisi summan suoraan viivan alle. Sitten voikin taputella itseään selkään ja kehua omaa nerouttaan.

Tai sitten on tosiaan niin ettei valta-asema maailmassa ole tuonut tai jatkossakaan tuomassa USA:lle minkäänlaista taloudellista etua. Omaan silmään nämä näyttäytyvät tyypillisinä populistien ratkaisuina joissa ei kyetä näkemään kuin yksi ulottuvuus monimuotoisessa kokonaisuudessa. Samaa osastoa näkee mm. vasemmiston suhtautumisessa verotukseen tai maanpuolustukseen.
 
Itselläni tuntuma, että Trump vahvoilla myös sen takia, että amerikkalaiset on alkanut vähän pelkäämään demareita.

Nyt on Obamakin samaa mieltä, eli demonkraattien hihhulointi alkaa Obsunkin mielestä karkottaa potentiaalisia äänestäjiä.

Former President Barack Obama on Friday warned 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls to pay attention to what voters actually think -- warning that most of them don’t want to “tear down the system.”

“There are a lot of persuadable voters and there are a lot of Democrats out there who just want to see things make sense. They just don't want to see crazy stuff," he said. "They want to see things a little more fair, they want to see things a little more just. And how we approach that I think will be important.”

Obama has largely stayed on the sidelines on the 2020 Democratic primary, and has not yet backed a candidate -- even as former Vice President Joe Biden has invoked his name on numerous occasions. But Obama has made remarks indicating he is nervous about the drift to the extreme left on a number of issues by parts of the Democratic Party.

On Friday, he did not mention any candidates by name, but did cite immigration and health care reform as examples of where Democrats may be out of sync with the broader electorate.

“Even as we push the envelope and we are bold in our vision, we also have to be rooted in reality and the fact that voters, including the Democratic voters and certainly persuadable independents or even moderate Republicans, are not driven by the same views that are reflected on certain, you know, left-leaning Twitter feeds,” Obama said.

The comment about Twitter feeds echoes remarks he made last month, when the former president took a swipe at “woke” virtue signalling and cancel culture, telling a Chicago audience to “get over” their obsessions with ideological purity tests.

“This idea of purity and you're never compromised and you're always politically woke, and all that stuff, you should get over that quickly," Obama said. “The world is messy. There are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws. People who you are fighting may love their kids, and share certain things with you.”


 
FedEx onnistui veroleikkausten lobbaamisessa mukavasti sillä vuoden 2017 34%:n vero tippui nollaan seuraavana vuonna. Firma ei kuitenkaan lisännyt investointeja kuten kovasti lupasi vastikkeeksi veroleikkauksesta vaan käytti rahat osakkeiden takaisinostoon ja osinkoihin. Tilastojen mukaan suurimpia veronalennuksia saaneet yritykset lisäsäsivät investointejaan keskimäärin vähemmän kuin pienempiä veronalennuksia saaneet. Tämä tuskin tuli kenellekkään yllätyksenä.
In the 2017 fiscal year, FedEx owed more than $1.5 billion in taxes. The next year, it owed nothing. What changed was the Trump administration’s tax cut — for which the company had lobbied hard.
The public face of its lobbying effort, which included a tax proposal of its own, was FedEx’s founder and chief executive, Frederick Smith, who repeatedly took to the airwaves to champion the power of tax cuts. “If you make the United States a better place to invest, there is no question in my mind that we would see a renaissance of capital investment,” he said on an August 2017 radio show hosted by Larry Kudlow, who is now chairman of the National Economic Council.

Four months later, President Trump signed into law the $1.5 trillion tax cut that became his signature legislative achievement. FedEx reaped big savings, bringing its effective tax rate from 34 percent in fiscal year 2017 to less than zero in fiscal year 2018, meaning that, overall, the government technically owed it money. But it did not increase investment in new equipment and other assets in the fiscal year that followed, as Mr. Smith said businesses like his would.

Nearly two years after the tax law passed, the windfall to corporations like FedEx is becoming clear. A New York Times analysis of data compiled by Capital IQ shows no statistically meaningful relationship between the size of the tax cut that companies and industries received and the investments they made. If anything, the companies that received the biggest tax cuts increased their capital investment by less, on average, than companies that got smaller cuts.

FedEx’s financial filings show that the law has so far saved it at least $1.6 billion. Its financial filings show it owed no taxes in the 2018 fiscal year overall. Company officials said FedEx paid $2 billion in total federal income taxes over the past 10 years.

As for capital investments, the company spent less in the 2018 fiscal year than it had projected in December 2017, before the tax law passed. It spent even less in 2019. Much of its savings have gone to reward shareholders: FedEx spent more than $2 billion on stock buybacks and dividend increases in the 2019 fiscal year, up from $1.6 billion in 2018, and more than double the amount the company spent on buybacks and dividends in fiscal year 2017.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/17/business/how-fedex-cut-its-tax-bill-to-0.html
 
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