Which they’ll never be able to prove, especially with Gorsuch on the court. Any rules in campaign finance are toothless and we have nothing we can do about it except get a constitutional amendment. And that will never happen with the GOP.
But the main thing that has barely been reported on is the doubling of the membership fee. Let’s say the membership fee was $100,000. They increase it to $105,000 after he becomes president? That you could argue is maybe okay. Adjust for inflation and maybe they hadn’t changed them in a while.
But increasing your revenue by 100% and $100,000 PER MEMBER is just unconscionable. And not one GOP congressmember cares! GOP controls majority of statewide offices and governorships, the house, the senate, the presidency, and the SCOTUS. Yet polling suggests that a sizable majority of the US support democratic principles. Either there is something very wrong with the democratic messaging, the US people, or both.
Kochs were against Trump’s/Ryan’s healthcare plan b/c it didn’t go far enough (I believe that is correct?).
Ryan wants to try again.
Could this have been part of discussion?
Also the taxes on imports in Trump’s tax reform, which they are against.
If Trump fully gets on board w/ David and Charles, his middle class and poor followers are going to get shafted so I hope the D’s have a plan to scoop up as many of them as is possible. Some are a lost cause, but many are not.
This is not the first time you’ve pointed your finger at the Rust Belt. Given all we know about how this election was stolen by the Russians, through all kinds of means, there really shouldn’t be this ongoing attack on generally Democratic leaning states that clearly got snookered in the process. When you consider the Russian bots, the organized foreign disinformation campaign in people’s newsfeeds targeting Bernie supporters, sometimes posing as Bernie Bros., and other supporters, while also attacking Hillary and her supporters with “fake news” stories…the micro-targeting by Mercer’s Cambridge Analytica, not to mention voter suppression tactics in many areas that generally serve Democratic voters, it starts to make much more sense. Its not that it was just some yayhoos that pissed and moaned about their economic security (which I contend was highly overrated bullshit).
Its time to take in the new information we’ve learned since the election and apply that information going forward. We have to be better next time at fighting propaganda with better tactics in a sustained and organized fashion. Let’s not just assume it was a fair fight from the beginning on the merits, because it never was. Trump never did have any guiding principles or actual policies. For his supporters, it was all about how they were aggrieved over their white privilege…and how dare anyone make them feel guilty about that. The media had a lot to do with the rotten coverage of the election as did the fucking FBI meddlesome approach under Comey to put their thumb on the scales of that election.
Considering you’re from Pennsylvania, whose own state went for a Republican for the first time since 1992, as did Michigan, but with more electoral votes at stake, (Michigan’s 10,000 vote loss for Hillary to Pennsylvania’s 44,000 that swung Trump’s way)…I really don’t think you should be referencing the Rust Belt without including your own state. Its time to quit the blame game however. We were all conned and the election was stolen in more ways than one…just like the Supreme Court, with Gorsuch sitting in Merrick Garland’s seat.
Pennsylvania’s a prominent member of the Rust Belt states and I never said it wasn’t. I’ve also often argued that people shouldn’t characterize or stereotype everyone in an entire state, and I’ve gritted my teeth and occasionally spoken up when people condemn Pennsylvanians along with Ohioans, people in Michigan and so forth. But I’m sticking with my point that Trump was always, always going to disappoint the vast majority of his working-class voters. He has a long history of stiffing people, that history was well known and publicized, and anyone in the Rust Belt who voted for him thinking he would really fight for them made a bad mistake and should damn well have known better. I don’t see any reason to stop thinking that. We know more now about how the election was manipulated but that doesn’t let anyone off the hook IMHO.
Just up the intercoastal from Mar-a-Lago a couple of miles is the Henry Flagler Museum, which was known as Whitehall when it was built back in the Gilded Age. It is that Gilded Age that the Krochs want us all to revisit.
You remember the Gilded Age don’t you. No worker rights. No social safety net. Child labor. No minimum wage. Private education. Regular kids didn’t need to learn to read. Every white man (no blacks or women need try) for himself. Yep. The age when each winter a man like Henry Flagler could have his own railroad take him and his select entourage (complete with physician, chef and professional musician) from New York to his pleasure palace in Palm Beach.
The world would be better off if we built a time machine and sent the Kochs back to that dystopian “golden” age. I for one don’t want to live in a muckraker era.
Skull and Bones meets Game of Thrones? Doesn’t get more corrupt and weird than this. That Florida golf resort is getting a rep worse than Hitler’s Eagles Nest.
I hope the Russian/Syrian/Iranian/North Korean/Chinese red line ends somewhere between the 18th green and the club house. Maybe Trump can bully the Davos crowd to meet there next year right before the bombs start bursting in air?
