Fighting Back: Rep. Linda Sanchez – “The fight we are in right now is not a fight over politics. It is a fight for the future of our country.”

The weekly Fighting Back post is also an Open News Thread. Feel free to share other news stories in the comments.

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Last week’s Democratic Party address – Rep. Linda Sánchez

Over the past month, millions of Americans are getting involved and taking action in their communities.

We have seen organized demonstrations in cities all across our country. Men and women from every walk of life coming together to stand up and speak out against a hateful and divisive agenda.

They are sending a clear message: We will resist. We will persist. […]

President Lincoln said, ‘Public sentiment is everything.’ Because in this country, it is the people who have the ultimate power.

I beg you, keep flexing your power. The fight we are in right now is not a fight over politics. It is a fight for the future of our country. And we are in this fight together.

Full transcript below.

(CSPAN link to Weekly Democratic Address: here)

(Link to Nancy Pelosi Newsroom here)

Transcript: House Democratic Caucus Vice Chair Linda Sánchez Delivers Weekly Democratic Address

“Hello. I’m California Congresswoman Linda Sánchez, Vice Chair of the House Democratic Caucus.

“I am proud to share my family’s story because it is an American story. I am the daughter of immigrants. My parents came here from Mexico.

“Like so many immigrants, my parents came to this country and worked hard every day to provide for me, my six brothers and sisters.

“My father, Ignacio, was an industrial mechanic. My mother, Maria, became an elementary school teacher after first raising a family.

“They owned their own home. They sent all seven of their children to college. And we give back every day to this country we love.

“In fact – my parents are the only parents in our nation’s 240-year history to send – not one – but TWO daughters to the United States Congress!

“My mother and father saved and sacrificed to achieve the American Dream for our family. They weren’t handed their success – they earned it!

“Immigrants, like my parents, are working and contributing to the success of our country every day. They are starting businesses which create jobs, caring for our children and aging parents, serving in our military, and they harvest and prepare the food we eat.

“Immigrants are woven into the fabric of our country because we are and always will be a nation of immigrants.

“Recently we have seen the President use fear – fear of Muslims and fear of immigrants – as a tool to promote his misguided and poorly developed policies.

“Policies that not only undermine our American values, but also jeopardize our safety and harm our economy.

“Democrats agree that removing violent criminals should be the priority.

“But tearing families apart through mass deportations does not make our country safer and wastes our precious resources. Banning refugees who have already been thoroughly vetted wastes resources. Building useless walls instead of fixing our roads and bridges wastes resources.

“We cannot let the politics of fear and suspicion, distract us from our priorities.

“Democrats want to make this country work for all Americans. We believe in making America greater by fighting for economic growth that benefits everyone.

“Our agenda is simple: Keep America safe, keep America working, and keep America moving forward.

“And I know that so many of you share those same priorities.

“Over the past month, millions of Americans are getting involved and taking action in their communities.

“We have seen organized demonstrations in cities all across our country. Men and women from every walk of life coming together to stand up and speak out against a hateful and divisive agenda.

“They are sending a clear message: We will resist. We will persist.

“It was volunteer lawyers with laptops sitting on cold airport floors that led the fight against the President’s reckless Muslim ban.

“It was a group of entrepreneurial women who organized a march in Washington with crowds surpassing the inauguration.

“President Lincoln said, ‘Public sentiment is everything.’ Because in this country, it is the people who have the ultimate power.

“I beg you, keep flexing your power.

“The fight we are in right now is not a fight over politics. It is a fight for the future of our country. And we are in this fight together.

“If you share our commitment to the success of working men and women all across our nation, stay with us in this fight.

“Do not give up hope. Do not give in to anger and fear. Do not stop fighting for what you think is best for our country. If we keep up the fight – we will win.

“And together we will make our country even greater.

“Thank you. And may God bless the United States of America.”

Bolding added.

~

Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s weekly press conference.

Transcript: Transcript of Pelosi Press Conference 3-2-2017

Leader Pelosi: Good morning. Wow, what a week, huh?

Last night, we learned that Jeff Sessions, the Attorney General of the United States, lied under oath to his colleagues in the Senate and to the American people about his communications with the Russians.

There are standards of professional conduct for attorneys, especially the top law enforcement officer in our country. What is the message that that sends to the country, to the lawyers in the State Department, to the American Bar Association, which has standards of professional conduct, to the State of Alabama, which has standards for professional conduct for its attorneys?

The fact that the attorney general, the top cop in our country, lied under oath to the American people is grounds for him to resign. Is grounds for him to resign. He has proved that he is unqualified and unfit to serve in that position of trust.

Almost every week we discover new evidence of secret communications between senior Trump officials and the Russian agents. There are two issues here. We have been calling for weeks for him to recuse himself from the investigation into the personal, political, and financial connections between the Trump operation and the Russians, recusing himself because of his connection to the Donald Trump campaign. And now we see that he, himself, needs an investigation for lying. It’s against the law, and the top law enforcement officer should know that.

The administration clearly cannot be trusted to investigate itself. There must be an independent, bipartisan outside commission to investigate the Trump political, personal, and financial connection to the Russians. Our colleagues, Eric Swalwell and Elijah Cummings, have had this legislation for a while. One hundred percent of the House Democrats have signed onto it, and now they have Republican co-sponsorship as well.

At the same time, we have a situation where I am told – you may know better – that the Republicans are hiding their draft of an ACA repeal bill in a basement room and planning to hold a committee markup before the Congressional Budget Office score is available to the public. This is unheard of. Even the Republicans, Senator Rand Paul, is criticizing this, that he can’t even see what their plan is.

The Republicans know how the American people will react when the Congressional Budget Office reveals that the Republican bill will raise health cost on the middle class, eviscerate families’ coverage, and put millions of people out of health coverage. Remember, we had three standards: Does it lower cost? Does it expand benefits? And does it increase access? This bill takes it all in the reverse direction.

I remind you that this bill is a big transfer of wealth to the wealthiest people in our country. The top 400 families in America, 400 wealthiest families in America, get a tax break of $7 million each every year while costs are increased for low and middle income families in our country.

Anyway, in stark contrast to what the Republicans are doing, when we did the Affordable Care Act and they criticized this, that, and the other thing, there were scores of hearings, hundreds of amendments, some Democratic, some Republican, some accepted of each, some modified of each, and some rejected of both Democratic and Republican amendments. The Senate Finance Committee spent 8 days publicly marking up the bill, the longest markup in 22 years.

And here they are – “Read the bill. Read the bill.” Yeah, we read the bill. We wrote the bill and we read the bill. Here they are hiding their bill in the basement. Don’t take my word for it, just ask Senator Rand Paul. He said he can’t even have access to it.

If Republicans are too terrified of their constituents to make their plan to destroy affordable health care public, they shouldn’t try to make it law. If they don’t want to make it public now, they shouldn’t try to make it law on Tuesday.

As you know, this past Tuesday the President made his address to the joint session of Congress. In my view, it was a hollow sales pitch. He’s a good salesman; you have to give him points for that. Radical rhetoric, empty promises. There was no “there” there. There were no jobs plan, no infrastructure plan, no plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, no plan except a scary outline on immigration reform. The list goes on and on.

And so here we are 42 days into the Trump Administration. Republicans have succeeded in putting Wall Street First, rushing to help Wall Street prey on Main Street and working families’ retirement savings, move to Make America Sick Again, have sown fear in America’s vulnerable communities with dangerous, immoral, incompetent, and unconstitutional executive actions, and, getting back to where we began this conference, allowed Russia’s grip on the administration to endanger our security and our democracy.

Any questions? Let me see, Chad. Okay. Go ahead.

Q: So obviously, you think that Attorney General Sessions should step aside.

Leader Pelosi. Yes, I said that last night.

Q: Right. Is there, though, is there consistency on the Democratic side of this, when there were issues with Attorney General Lynch and Bill Clinton and her contacts and whether or not she should have stepped aside? Is there consistency or not?

Leader Pelosi. Thank you for your question, because there couldn’t be a starker difference.

Attorney General Lynch had a social encounter – serendipitous, some might say – the former President of the United States came by to say hello and they discussed their grandchildren. She did not have a major role in the Hillary Clinton campaign. This is a completely different thing.

The reason we have been saying that Attorney General Sessions should step aside and maybe should never have been confirmed is because he was a surrogate. He was a very important part, one of the first people in the Congress to endorse President Trump.

And now we see that he, although he has not told the truth about it, had conversations with Russian officials, which why didn’t he, if they were innocuous, why didn’t he admit it instead of lying about it?

So it couldn’t be more stark in terms of relationship to the campaign and who the Attorney General was speaking to. No, they’re completely different, day and night.

Yes, ma’am?

Q: Madam Leader, one of your Members, Congressman Keith Ellison, has released a statement that mentions that perjury is a felony punishable by jail time. Do you think that’s an appropriate piece of this conversation?

Leader Pelosi. Well, an investigation would show that. But the law has been broken. And what he was stating was fact, that perjury is a crime and there are consequences to it. It remains to be seen what else the investigation will lead to. But perjury by an ordinary citizen is punishable in the courts. How much enhanced is that accountability for the top law enforcement person in our country? So let’s see an investigation.

I don’t know what problem the Republicans have with the truth. They don’t want to know the truth about the Russian connection. They don’t want to tell the truth about their affordable care bill that they have hidden in a basement someplace. They reject the idea that remove this from Congress, we’ll have an independent commission outside the Congress look into the Russian connections, which are about hacking and undermining our democratic system. We should have that even if Hillary Clinton had won the White House.

So from what you have said – I didn’t see the statement – he was stating fact, and an investigation will take us to the next place. But an investigation of those actions is definitely warranted. Definitely warranted.

I remind you that this Congress impeached a President for something so far less, having nothing to do with his duties as President of the United States.

Yes, ma’am?

Q: Madam Leader, why is it important that you see the CBO scores, and have you gotten any understanding why they’re not ready yet?

Leader Pelosi. Well, I don’t know if they’re not ready or if they’re just keeping them secret. We just don’t know. But we’ve never been able to proceed with legislation of this magnitude without the Congressional Budget Office score, and the Republicans have been very much a part of – we both have insisted on that.

We have to know what we’re doing, what is the impact on the budget, especially if they intend to do this under reconciliation. The impact on the budget is essential to go forward. And in terms of if they did it outside reconciliation, it’s still essential that we know what we’re doing.

Q: What kind of score do you want to see, and what do you expect?

Leader Pelosi. Well, I want to see – well, I don’t even want to see what they’re doing, because what they’re doing is reducing benefits, reducing access, and costing more, from what we have seen. Again, what it is is in a basement someplace. It’s like a Houdini act or something. Maybe it will free itself somehow, I don’t know. But you know that they have conflict within their caucus about it.

So what you’re asking is the regular order. We have to know what it will cost.

So we have always said, our goals, as I said earlier, our goals have been to lower cost, improve benefits, and expand access. If they have a bill that does that, we’re happy with talk to them about it. I doubt it, from what we have seen so far. But they have tremendous unease in their own caucus about it.

Yes, sir?

Q: Thank you. What can the American public expect of the House Intelligence Committee looking into the connections with Russia during the campaign, and is it adequate?

Leader Pelosi. Well, yesterday – I don’t know, has it been released to the press? Anyway, it was released to the press that there was a proposal of scope for the look into the Russian involvement in our election. That’s a step forward. It’s not a giant step forward, but it’s a step forward that in a bipartisan way the Chairman and the Ranking Member have signed this letter.

Is that whole thing in the public domain now? Oh, that there is an agreement. Okay.

But the agreement goes into different categories, who they would call in. So that’s something.

I would hope, though, that in the scope document that they have, that that means that they would follow any trail, that they don’t shut it down because it wasn’t listed in that primary document.

I am not impressed, quite frankly. I mean, I think this is progress. It shouldn’t have taken this long. Both the House and Senate committees should. But it takes time. You want to see documents. I respect that. I am an intelligence person myself. You want to see the documents. You want to take the time. But we want to know that there’s a path and not just an avoidance of it by killing time instead of using time.

So we’ll see. But as I have said, I think, while it’s important for the House and Senate Intelligence Committees to investigate this, what we also have to do is have an outside, independent, bipartisan commission to look into – broader than what I just said – the impact of the Russians on our election, but the personal, financial, and political connection between the Trump Organization and the Russians.

Yes, ma’am?

Q: What does it say to you that many Republicans, some are calling for Senator Sessions to recuse himself, but are stopping short of calling for a special prosecutor?

Leader Pelosi. Well, in all of this all roads lead to the Republicans in the Congress. What are they afraid of? They have been afraid of the truth every step of the way. They don’t want to see the President’s tax returns, when every President since Gerald Ford, every President in modern times has released his tax returns, and candidates release their tax returns.

So what is it? That would be a key indicator of their interest in the truth. So the question is to them, what are they afraid of in the tax returns? What are they afraid of in the investigation of the Russian involvement to undermine our democracy, to repeat that in other countries, to come back here and do that again?

What does it say about them that their chief law enforcement officer, the top cop in the country, lied to his colleagues in the Senate and to the American people, a person who himself knows about prosecution and knows about the law and knows about perjury and its penalties?

So what is it about the Republicans that they want to hide the truth from the American people? I call it stonewalling. I call it stonewalling. You’ll have to ask them, though, why they’re stonewalling, and what they’re afraid of.

Yes, sir?

Q: The Trump Administration this week called for some pretty big budget cuts, including up to almost 25 percent for the EPA. What if anything can Democrats, particularly in the House, do to push back against those cuts?

Leader Pelosi. Everything is about the public. How many times have you all heard me say, “Public sentiment is everything”? Abraham Lincoln. The public has to know what they are doing to our future.

We all agree that we want to have the military that we need to protect the American people. We take an oath to protect and defend our Constitution and the American people. But our strength is not only measured in our military might, it is measured in the health, education, and well-being of the American people, because the people are not only our inventors and our family, people who grow family and community and build our country; they’re also our soldiers.

Again, a budget is supposed to be a statement of values. What the President is doing is quite outrageous. He is throwing out the window years of compromise in terms of parity, similar amount for defense as for domestic.

At the same time, it’s important to note that defense is defense, but domestic is also veterans, homeland security, the State Department, and all that is involved in our security and soft power, as well as weapon sales and the rest of that, are in the domestic side of the budget. So honoring our Camp David commitments and the rest of that, all in the domestic side of the budget.

So in saying he’s going to make these cuts, if he, in fact, increases defense this way, what is his mission? What is the mission? Tell us your security mission that would justify this. What is this? Is this more contracts for contractors? What is it? What is this money for? A.

B, how can you possibly take that much money out of the domestic side? And so then they say, “We’re going to hold veterans and homeland security, we’re not going to cut that.” Well, if you hold them harmless, then you even have less to invest in education, research, and development.

A hundred thousand kids kicked off of Head Start, probably $3.5 billion cut from the National Institutes of Health. That’s probably a thousand grants to scientific research that we wouldn’t be able to do, for example, if they did a 10 percent cut across the board. The list goes on. It’s tragic, really.

Again, the budget is supposed to be a statement of our values, how we honor our responsibilities to the people to protect them, to be number one in the world in terms of our economic growth.

The President also said when he was saying this that he was promising clean air and clean water. He’s going to cut the EPA. Does he not know the connection between protections that are in the Environmental Protection Agency and the air our children breathe, the water they drink, the safety of the food that they eat?

And the protection of their neighborhoods. What is he going to do to the justice function and the law enforcement function in the budget? Because all of it will be subjected to cuts according to what he is putting forth.

We haven’t seen a budget. We have seen, what do they call it, an outline, blueprint, Minnie Mouse budget? I don’t know. Mini Me budget? Whatever it is. Again, there’s no “there” there. There’s no “there” there yet.

And what we have seen so far is scary, very scary, and in every respect, whether it’s protecting our security and not pandering to Vladimir Putin, not flirting with lifting our sanctions on Russia for their aggression in Eastern Europe, and not undermining our treaties on nonproliferation and the rest.

What do the Russians have on him? And then to turn around and say, “Our strategic opponent here is Russia, and I am going to undermine our intelligence collection on Russia,” because of what? We just don’t know. We don’t know a vision. We don’t know a judgment about what works or any knowledge associated with it. We don’t know a strategic plan. All we know is a sales job. And so we have to make sure we make those distinctions.

But we will have that time during the appropriation season. I am an appropriator and an intelligence person, as you know. Appropriators always try to come together in a bipartisan way to get the job done for the American people.

But it remains to be seen what the Republicans will do to those decisions and if the allocations of resources to certain subcommittees that deal with health, education, jobs, our justice system, our transportation, housing, research and development, energy, science, it remains to be seen.

Well, we’ll be making those fights, and we will take them to the public, inspired by Abraham Lincoln. Public sentiment is everything. The public has to be vigilant, very, very vigilant, more vigilant than ever.

Thank you all very much.

~

14 Comments

  1. Nancy Pelosi was interviewed by Politico and shared her thoughts on the future of our party:

    “It’s not about the Democrats. It’s about America. And what we see that gives us so much hope is that people see the urgency, understand elections have consequences. Since the election, we hear all over the country, ‘What can we do?’ I’ve never seen anything like that after an election in the manner in which we are seeing it…And our Members are united by our values that center on America’s working families. That’s why we’re Democrats.”

  2. Congressional Democrats filed an amicus brief on the Gavin Grimm case:

    House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi today released the following statement on a bicameral amicus brief of 156 Members of Congress and 40 Senators in case of Gloucester County School Board v. Gavin Grimm, urging the U.S. Supreme Court to explicitly affirm that discrimination against transgender Americans is prohibited under federal law:

    “Today, nearly 200 Members of Congress and Senators filed an amicus brief to honor our oath to protect all Americans, including transgender youth who deserve the chance to attend school without fear of violence or discrimination. The Supreme Court should affirm civil rights for all by ensuring transgender students deserve to be safe in their community and equal access at school. Following President Trump’s utter failure to stand up for vulnerable students and defend all LGBT Americans, Democrats are leading the charge to uphold equality for transgender youth.

    “LGBT people have the full protection of the law in school, in the workplace – and everyplace. That’s why the Congress must also pass the Equality Act, to finally end discrimination in employment, education, housing, credit, jury service, and public accommodation for LGBT people by asserting the full power of the Civil Rights Act that guards our democracy.

    “No person should suffer discrimination because of who they are or who they love. Standing up for justice and equality means championing the rights of transgender youth. By targeting American communities, including Muslims, immigrants, and LGBT Americans, the Trump Administration continues Republicans’ agenda of discrimination; but the American people deserve better. In the Courts and in the Congress, we must denounce hatred, discrimination, and bigotry in our schools, communities, workplaces and coast to coast across America.”

  3. ICE raid in Oregon “rounds up” father of five:

    On Feb. 14, Zaragoza-Sanchez was supposed to pick up his oldest son after school. Rosalina was planning to cook a special meal to celebrate Valentine’s Day.

    Instead, an hour after he left for work, Roman called Rosalina. He said Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers had pulled him over and arrested him just a few blocks from home.

    It happened so quickly he left his Honda on the shoulder of Highway 26, with the lights on. Rosalina didn’t have the keys and doesn’t know how to drive. In shock, she asked a neighbor to help her hire a tow truck to retrieve it.

    “They are reporting in the news that they are going to get only people who are criminals, but it is not the truth because my husband is not that person,” Rosalina said. “And they took him.” […]

    Zaragoza-Sanchez’s arrest, along with a recent immigration raid in Woodburn, Oregon, illustrates the expanding categories of undocumented immigrants federal officials are targeting for arrest and deportation.

    Most significant, ICE has confirmed that in Oregon it has arrested and detained Roman Zaragoza-Sanchez and at least four immigrants in the Woodburn raid who do not have criminal records aside from offenses related to their entering the country illegally.

    A policy this random and this unpredictable is simply cruel.

  4. Florida state judge tells Miami to quit caving to Donald Trump’s hate:

    A Florida judge ruled on Friday that it was unconstitutional to detain a Haitian immigrant in Miami-Dade County, where the mayor has caved to President Donald Trump’s order cracking down on “sanctuary cities.”

    Judge Milton Hirsch, of Florida’s 11th Judicial Circuit, said the president’s January order effectively coerced local officials into doing the federal government’s “bidding” by making them agree to hold the detainee, James Lacroix, so that he could be handed over to immigration authorities to be deported ― even though he had no criminal charges or sentences pending against him.

    Miami-Dade’s decision to hold Lacroix at the behest of Immigration and Customs Enforcement rendered the county the “handmaiden” of the federal government and violated the 10th Amendment, the judge said.

  5. Two things that the destroyers in the Republican Party (is that redundant?) don’t care about – stuff scientists say and extinction of species:

    Aaron Flesch, a biologist at the University of Arizona, said most border animals are already squeezed into small, fragmented patches of habitat.

    “If you just go and you cut movements off,” he said, “you can potentially destabilize these entire networks of population.”

    Still, the impacts of the border fence on wildlife aren’t totally understood. That’s in large part because Congress let the U.S. Department of Homeland Security ignore all the environmental laws that would’ve required the agency to fully study how the barrier would affect wildlife.

    Flesch and other scientists say the federal government also has made almost no research money available to support independent studies. Most of the studies that have been done are limited in scope, but their findings are pretty clear: Impeding animal movements puts them on a faster path to extinction.

  6. Thank you, JanF for this post. Rep. Linda Sánchez and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi are speaking truth to power with every syllable they utter.

    • I keep searching for the magic words that will make the Democratic Party the “Party of Lincoln”. Abraham Lincoln is so far removed from what the Republicans stand for – and so in line with Democratic Party principles, principles that have resulted in our electoral losses – that it is a constant source of irritation.

      This is the hope we hang onto until we can regain Congressional power:

      Public sentiment is everything
      – Abraham Lincoln

    • {{{inkaudlay}}} – we’ve got strong women on our team. Women who persist, resist, and won’t shut up. :)

  7. A run-down of the latest on the ACA Repeal/Replace …

    Vox Today in Obamacare – the latest plan

    The Obamacare replacement plan keeps looking more like Obamacare

    AP: First House health care votes near, GOP dissenters persist

    After seven years of saber-rattling, Republicans seem set to start muscling legislation through Congress reshaping the country’s health care system.

    Don’t confuse that with GOP unity or assume that success is guaranteed. Unresolved disputes over taxes and Medicaid rage and conservatives complaining that Republican proposals don’t go far enough could undermine the effort, or at least make GOP leaders’ lives difficult.

    Two House committees – Energy and Commerce, and Ways and Means – plan to begin voting Wednesday on their portions of the legislation, barring late problems. Leaders want to push the package through the House this month and hope the Senate can consider it by Congress’ early April recess.

    WaPo: Paul Ryan’s feeling confident about repeal-and-replace. McConnell not so much.

    With each passing day, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan gets more confident that his troops are falling in line and that they will soon pass legislation repealing the Affordable Care Act.

    “I am perfectly confident that when it’s all said and done, we are going to unify,” Ryan (R-Wis.) told reporters Thursday. “Because we all — every Republican — ran on repealing and replacing [the ACA]. And we are going to keep our promises.”

    Yet over in the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is much more circumspect. “The goal is for the administration, the House and the Senate to be in the same place,” McConnell told reporters Tuesday. “We’re not there yet.” […]

    For the past six years, however, that dynamic has been turned on its head. Instead, the House Republican Conference has functioned somewhere between a junior high school class with a substitute teacher and a failed nation state.

    Time and time again, McConnell would draw up a scheme for Republicans to score some small victory against the Obama administration, or even to just avert a complete fiscal disaster. Then House Republicans would fall apart, unable to muster the votes for McConnell’s plan, losing all GOP leverage and ending the impasse on Democratic terms.

    NPR: Americans Conflicted Over GOP Plans To Dump Obamacare

    Multiple polls show rising support for the ACA, including one from the Pew Research Center and one from the Wall Street Journal/NBC News indicating Americans feel more positively about it than ever.

    True, many still dislike the law known as Obamacare, but as the national conversation swells on the fate of a law that affects millions of people in multifaceted ways — and the issue takes center stage at raucous town hall meetings — it’s increasingly clear that many don’t see the ACA as an either-or proposition. […]

    “Now that we have this whole debate on replacing, repealing, repairing — whatever you want to call it — more and more of this information is coming out on what the ACA does and how it’s benefited people,” [Simon Haeder, a political science professor and specialist on health policy at West Virginia University] says.

    ACA beneficiaries and activists flooded town halls held by Republican congressmen last week, urging them not to repeal the law.

  8. The supposed “Trump Stock Market” is a bubble waiting to burst. Reuters discusses the tech stock buying spree and refers to “stretched valuations “. Indeed! Snapchat worth $25 billion? Yikes!

    The “Trump Stock Market” has little bearing on ordinary people’s lives and, like the “Trump Economic Plan” focuses on the have mores having more:

    To Trump, [the 21,000 Dow] is validation of the business-friendly policies he has pushed thus far. But there’s something jarring about Trump’s stock market talk as he promises his commitment to the middle class and laments the poverty level: Those stock market gains will overwhelmingly benefit the richest Americans.[…]

    According to Gallup, 52 percent of U.S. adults owned stock in 2016. Since Gallup started measuring this in 1998, that’s only the second time ownership has been this low. These figures include ownership of an individual stock, a stock mutual fund or a self-directed 401(k) or IRA.

    That means the stock market rally can only directly benefit around half of all Americans — and substantially fewer than it would have a decade ago, when nearly two-thirds of families owned stock.

    Combine the uneven ownership rates and ownership amounts, and the total inequality in the stock market is astounding. As of 2013, the top 1 percent of households by wealth owned nearly 38 percent of all stock shares, according to research by New York University economist Edward Wolff.

    Indeed, nearly all of the stock ownership in the U.S. is concentrated among the richest. According to Wolff’s data, the top 20 percent of Americans owned 92 percent of the stocks in 2013.

    Put another way: Eighty percent of Americans together owned just 8 percent of all stocks [while the top 10% own 80%].

  9. Good morning and thanks for the informative thread Jan…Trump get more bizarre every day and his sanity or lack of is becoming more apparent with ever tweet….

    • The Rude Pundit was worried this morning about the vulgar talking yam in this thread:

      @rudepundit: Final thought for now: As the noose tightens for Trump, he is going to lash out more- to distract, to vent, to blame. He will get bolder 11/

      And Trump will get more unpredictable. At some point, his words won’t be enough. He’ll realize he can react with violence. 12/

      So Republicans need to ask themselves: Is it worth tax cuts to allow a paranoid, probably ill man to inflict that on the nation? 13/and done

      https://twitter.com/rudepundit/status/838054144724324354

    • {{{Batch}}} – well, Hillary warned them. I think the real oligarchs who own the media thought they could control him as they control the rest of the Rs. A bit of hubris, that. Yes, they made him. But they can’t rein him in and breaking a narcissistic ego-maniac is not as easy as they seem to have thought.

  10. The future of our party, our country, our planet – the Rs threaten all for short-term gain. If there are any sane Rs left, they’re afraid to speak up – but they must be appalled. They’ve counted for years on the Dems to protect them from any of their dystopic plans actually being put in place. That protection isn’t gone but it’s very diminished. But we’ll keep working to plug the holes they keep drilling in the ship we’re all on. And maybe we can manage to get the auger away from them sooner rather than later. We’ll work on that, too.

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