Tag: CHUCK SCHUMER

‘CNN doesn’t cover Mueller, they work for him’: Tucker Carlson on Roger Stone’s arrest

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Fox host Tucker Carlson offered his take on CNN filming a surprise FBI raid on Roger Stone’s house, saying the channel has turned into the “PR arm” of Robert Mueller, “the single most powerful” – and unelected – man in the US.

In his latest monologue, the Fox anchor said it’s crucial to raise some questions before the arrest of Roger Stone – an associate of Donald Trump – fades from the headlines. Notably, it was almost entirely devoted to a CNN crew being conveniently present at the early-morning FBI raid on Stone’s Fort Lauderdale house.

“How did CNN know about a raid that was supposed to be a secret? Did they learn from [Robert] Mueller’s team?” Carlson asked. Shortly after the raid, which Carlson likened to “a military assault,” speculation began to spread that the network had an inside track with the FBI or Mueller’s team.

“CNN acted as the public relations arm of the Mueller investigation, as they have before,” Fox’s political commentator suggested. “The network is no longer covering [Mueller]; they’re working with [Mueller]. And you should know that as you watch it.”

Carlson was not the only one to comment on Stone’s arrest, and the way it was executed. The Feds sent more armed men to arrest the 66-year-old unarmed man than it did to kill Bin Laden in 2011, he noted.

Mueller, who is leading the Russiagate probe, “can send armed men to your home to roust you from bed at gunpoint just because he feels like it, and there’s nothing you, or anyone else, can do about it,” said Carlson.

He branded the FBI special counsel “the single most powerful person in America,” and yet “nobody voted for him… Nobody in Washington catches the irony in any of this. Mueller himself is the threat to our democracy. The most powerful man, elected by nobody.”

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During Trump’s campaign, Stone boasted about having connections with WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange, but later said it wasn’t a direct link. Instead, he said that he relied on New York radio host Randy Credico (referred to as “Person 2”in Thursday’s indictment) as a “go-between.”

The indictment says Stone lied to the House Intelligence Committee about his alleged contacts with WikiLeaks, and tried to convince another person to give false testimony.

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DEMS SCRUTINIZE TROOP DEPLOYMENT TO US-MEXICO BORDER

By Phil Stewart, Idrees Ali

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – As the Pentagon weighs new troop deployments to the U.S.-Mexico border, Democrats in Congress are poised to usher in unprecedented scrutiny of a politically charged mission championed by Republican President Donald Trump.

Democratic Representative Adam Smith, the new chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, will hold a hearing on Tuesday with Pentagon officials he hopes will shed light on the costs, scope and goals of a deployment that critics have derided as a political stunt.

U.S. officials told Reuters the border deployment, which has fluctuated in size over the past three months, could grow again by as many as 2,000 or more troops.

Smith is skeptical about sending U.S. troops to deal with a crisis he believes would be better handled by judges. He told Reuters his committee may consider future funding restrictions for such missions.

“It’s undeniable that we have a significant increase in asylum seekers,” Smith said.

“But that’s not so much a job for the military as it is: we need more judges. We need to process them (the asylum seekers) more quickly,” he said.

Smith will receive testimony on Tuesday morning from John Rood, under secretary of defense for policy, and Vice Admiral Michael Gilday, the director of operations at the Joint Staff.

It is the first oversight hearing by the committee since Democrats took over the majority of the House of Representatives this month, a sign of the issue’s importance.

The Pentagon first approved the high-profile deployment of active duty U.S. troops to the Mexico border in October, ahead of U.S. midterm congressional elections. It was embraced by Trump’s supporters, including Republicans in Congress.

However, critics assailed the deployment as a political stunt to drive Republican voters to the polls and scoffed at Trump’s comparisons of caravans of Central American migrants, including women and children, to an “invasion.”

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MORE TROOPS?

There are now about 2,350 active duty U.S. troops involved in the U.S. border mission. Although the figure is down from a peak of about 5,900 in November, it has expanded in scope from basic missions such as stringing concertina wire.

The Pentagon confirmed earlier in January that U.S. forces had provided medical support to 80 migrants.

A new request by the Department of Homeland Security for additional U.S. military support approved by the Pentagon earlier this month could require a fresh increase in troops, officials said. Smith said he had not been briefed by the Pentagon yet on potential new troop deployments.

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He said public scrutiny was one of the best tools available to his committee to influence Trump’s decisions, given that the Senate is still controlled by Republicans and that Trump won’t want to sign legislation unfavorable to his agenda.

“What we can do is try to shine a light on it, to make the case that this is a bad idea, drum up public pressure so the president will stop doing these things,” Smith said.

For example, Smith said he wants to know what Pentagon funds might be used if Trump makes good on his threat to declare a national emergency in order to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

He suggested his committee would also consider ways to introduce restrictions in next year’s budget legislation.

“That will be one of the chief things that my committee tries to do, is to put into the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) strict restrictions on how money can be used,” Smith said.

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IRS Workers Union Threatens Tax Refund Delays…Does That Include For Illegal Immigrants?

By Patrick Howley

The union representing Internal Revenue Service (IRS) employees gave members the option to skip work during the government shutdown if they happened to be one of the 36,000 people who were recalled — some of whom were not paid, but all of whom now get back pay. Now, the IRS workers are wielding their political power the only way they know how: by making themselves even more non-essential.

Now, the union is threatening, courtesy of CNBC: delays are likely for Earned Income Tax Credit refund-receivers, or for any kind of refund that requires “human” and not “computer” labor.

The angry government bureaucrats are not yet resorting to the tactics of the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, who held press conferences in front of trucks full of un-delivered supplies during a hurricane.

Trending: Kelli Ward Wins Arizona GOP Chair Seat in Upset

The IRS must address its official policy of giving tax refunds to illegal immigrants, officially ignoring the massive scam by which illegal aliens use fake Social Security numbers in the United States.

This practice is now coming under scrutiny following the revelation that Gustavo Perez Arriaga was using at least two fake Social Security numbers to live in the United States. Arriaga has been charged with the murder of California police corporal Ronil Singh. It is not known whether the IRS ever ignored Arriaga’s fake Social Security numbers directly.

Arriaga was using two fake Social Security numbers, according to available information provided by a source close to law enforcement: 537-89-0142 and 667-28-2314.

Arriaga lived in the United States long enough to rack up multiple arrests for impaired driving. Arriaga was officially wanted for four years, but ICE officers had no contact with him prior to Corporal Singh’s shooting. Stanislaus County sheriff Adam Christianson blames the lack of contact with ICE on sanctuary laws, saying at a press conference that law enforcement should be able to do its job without legislative interference.

Illegal immigrants are able to pay taxes using ITIN numbers provided by the federal government. The IRS put out an official notice in June: “More than 2 million ITINs to expire this year; Renew soon to avoid refund delays.”

The Treasury Inspector General confirmed that the IRS paid out more than $4 billion in tax refunds to ITIN holders in the year 2010.

How many illegal aliens have been acknowledged by the IRS over the years, even despite warnings from the Social Security Administration that the illegal immigrants are not using actual Social Security numbers? That is a question congressional Republicans and Trump administration agencies might want to seek an answer to.

The IRS practice of excusing illegal aliens was revealed during the IRS scandal, kicked off by documented proof of the IRS improperly targeting tea party groups for politically motivated audits and other penalties.

Look at what current Trump administration director of national intelligence Dan Coats said at a hearing when he was a senator: “What we learned is that … the IRS continues to process tax returns with false W-2 information and issue refunds as if they were routine tax returns, and say that’s not really our job. We also learned the IRS ignores notifications from the Social Security Administration that a name does not match a Social Security number, and you use your own system to determine whether a number is valid,” Coats said.

Then-IRS commissioner John Koskinen excused the practice in the 2016 hearing.

“What happens in these situations is someone is using a Social Security number to get a job, but they’re filing their tax return with their [taxpayer identification number],” Koskinen said.

Koskinen admitted that “they are undocumented aliens.”

Koskinen actually said, “They’re paying taxes. It’s in everybody’s interest to have them pay the taxes they owe.”

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WHEN WILL PEOPLE UNDERSTAND THAT PELOSI DOES NOT CARE. – Mother Of Son Killed By Illegal to Pelosi: Which One Of Your Children Is Expendable For An Illegal Life?

By Ian Schwartz

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At a CNN townhall Tuesday night, Nancy Pelosi was asked by a sobbing mother who lost her son to an illegal immigrant, who she said brutally tortured him before death, which one of her grandchildren she would give up to make room for an illegal.

“If you need to go home tonight and line up your babies as you say, and your grandbabies, which one of them could you look in their eyes today, and tell them that they’re expendable for another foreign person to have an a nicer life? Which one would you look to say, you, my child, are expendable for someone else to come over here and not follow the law and have a nicer life?” Laura Wilkerson, who said her son was “slaughtered” by an illegal immigrant, asked Pelosi.

“I pray for you,” Pelosi responded. “Again, we all pray that none of us has to experience what you have experienced. So thank you for channelling your energy to help prevent something like that from happening.”

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“But I do want to say to you, that in our sanctuary cities, our people are not disobeying the law,” Pelosi said. “These are law-abiding citizens, it enables them to, to be there without being reported to ICE in case of another crime that they might bear witness to.”

Wilkerson’s question:

LAURA WILKERSON, SON KILLED BY ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT: Please excuse my voice tonight. There are over 300 cities in this country that are sanctuary cities. Like San Francisco. And you’re not only choosing to disavow a law, but you are adding sanctuary to people who come there and disavow the law. 

In 2010, one of the illegals slaughtered my son. He tortured him, he beat him, he tied him up like an animal, and he set him on fire. And I am not a one-story mother. This happens every day. Because there are no laws enforcing the border. We have to start giving American families first. 

This is not — bad to not put Americans first. We have family that fought and died for this country. 

How do you reconcile in your head about allowing people to disavow the law? 

And the second part of my question is this — if you need to go home tonight and line up your babies as you say, and your grandbabies, which one of them could you look in their eyes today, and tell them that they’re expendable for another foreign person to have an a nicer life? Which one would you look to say, you, my child, are expendable for someone else to come over here and not follow the law and have a nicer life?

Pelosi’s response:

REP. NANCY PELOSI, HOUSE MINORITY LEADER: Well, again, I commend you for sharing your story. I can’t even imagine — 

WILKERSON: You can’t.

PELOSI: — the pain. I can’t even imagine. There is, there is nothing, I’m sure that can compare to the grief that you have. And so I pray for you. I pray for you. Again, we all pray that none of us has to experience what you have experienced. So thank you for channelling your energy to help prevent something like that from happening. But I do want to say to you, that in our sanctuary cities, our people are not disobeying the law.

These are law-abiding citizens, it enables them to, to be there without being reported to ICE in case of another crime that they might bear witness to.

The person who followed Wilkerson was a man born in Mexico and brought to the U.S. as a one-year-old who garnered applause after he told his story.

“The DREAMers are so spectacular and so inspirational to all of us. And that is why when we had the majority in the Congress, the House of Representatives, led by our Congressional Hispanic Caucus, passed the DREAMers act,” Pelosi said.

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Elizabeth Warren’s Wealth Confiscation Tax Would “Redistribute” 2.75 Trillion Dollars Over 10 Years

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

Elizabeth Warren is making it exceedingly clear that she is a socialist, and that is quite frightening considering the fact that she could potentially become our next president. 

Unless some really big name unexpectedly enters the race, there is a decent chance that Elizabeth Warren could win the Democratic nomination in 2020.  And if she ultimately won the general election, the Democrats would likely have control of both the House and the Senate during her first two years in the White House as well.  So that means that the proposal that you are about to read about could actually become law in the not too distant future.

After AOC’s proposal to raise the top marginal tax rate to 70 percent received so much favorable attention, it was just a matter of time before Democratic presidential candidates started jumping on the “soak the rich” bandwagon, and the first one to strike was Elizabeth Warren.

When she announced her new proposal on Twitter, she dubbed it the “Ultra-Millionaire Tax”…

We need structural change. That’s why I’m proposing something brand new – an annual tax on the wealth of the richest Americans. I’m calling it the “Ultra-Millionaire Tax” & it applies to that tippy top 0.1% – those with a net worth of over $50M.

It would be bad enough if this was just a one-time tax on wealth.

But it isn’t.

Please note the use of the word “annual” in Warren’s tweet.  That means that the rich would keep getting hit with this tax year after year after year.

Those with more than 50 million dollars in assets would pay a 2 percent tax each year, and those with more than a billion dollars in assets would pay 3 percent each year…

The Post reported that Warren has been advised by Saez and Gabriel Zucman, left-leaning economists affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley, on a deal that would levy a 2 percent wealth tax on Americans with $50 million-plus in assets. For Americans with assets above $1 billion, that tax rate would increase to 3 percent.

The newspaper, citing a person familiar with the plan, reported that Warren’s plan would try to counter tax evasion by boosting funding for the IRS, and by levying a one-time tax penalty on people with more than $50 million who try to renounce their U.S. citizenship. It would also require that a certain number of people who pay the wealth tax be subject to annual audits, the Post reported.

3 percent may not sound like a lot to many of you.  But over the course of a couple of decades many families could have their fortunes almost completely wiped out by this wealth confiscation tax.

According to economist Emmanuel Saez, this new tax would be imposed upon approximately 75,000 families and would raise 2.75 trillion dollars over 10 years.

Clearly this is a move by Warren to appeal to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.  I really like how Zero Hedge made this point…

Elizabeth Warren has never been a friend to the wealthy. But in the age of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, merely advocating for “holding the rich accountable” simply doesn’t penetrate like it did back in 2008. And that’s because, on the left flank of the Democratic Party, you’re not really a progressive unless you believe that the existence of billionaires is a policy error.

And surprisingly, there is actually a lot of public support for such a proposal.  In fact, a recent Fox News poll found that Americans overwhelmingly support soaking the rich…

Voters support tax increases on families making over $10 million annually by a 46-point margin (70 percent favor-24 percent oppose), and support a hike on those making over $1 million by 36 points (65-29 percent).

There is less support for a broader tax increase: 44 percent favor raising rates on those with income over $250,000, and a small minority, 13 percent, approves of an increase on all Americans.

Of course so much depends on how a survey is worded.  For example, I would be willing to bet that a survey would show that well over 50 percent of all Americans would back my proposal to abolish the income tax completely.

Over the coming months, Democratic presidential contenders are going to be continuously trying to one up each other with their promises to tax the rich and give out free stuff.  By the end, someone out there may even be promising to give free rides to the Moon to everyone.

But if Elizabeth Warren really wants to be considered a serious contender, she needs to eliminate the ridiculous gaffes that have plagued her in the past.  For instance, she recently claimed that we have “two co-equal branches of government”…

Freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., already has declared that the government has “three chambers of Congress,” the House, the Senate and the presidency.

Now, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has claimed on Twitter that the government has “two co-equal branches of government, the president of the United States and Congress.”

“The Notorious RBG (Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsburg) is gonna be ticked off that she’s been forgotten again,” said a post on the Twitter news-aggregating site Twitchy.

And there is certainly no excuse for such a gaffe, because she used to be a law professor.

In the end, it is difficult to understand why so many Americans seem to want to march down the road toward socialism.  Because as President Trump has noted, Venezuela has shown us where that road leads…

“We’re looking at Venezuela, it’s a very sad situation,” Trump told reporters. “That was the richest state in all of that area, that’s a big beautiful area, and by far the richest — and now it’s one of the poorest places in the world. That’s what socialism gets you, when they want to raise your taxes to 70 percent.”

He added: “You know, it’s interesting, I’ve been watching our opponents — our future opponents talk about 70 percent. No. 1, they can’t do it for 70 percent, it’s got to be probably twice that number. But, maybe more importantly what happens is you really have to study what’s happened to Venezuela. It’s a very, very sad situation.”

Unfortunately, political proposals don’t have to actually make sense, and right now Elizabeth Warren is doing all that she can to win the progressive vote.

 

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WATCH: Schumer Mocks Trump Immediately After Trump Opens Gov To Negotiate

By Ryan Saavedra

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer mocked President Donald Trump on Friday immediately after the president ended the government shutdown so non-essential federal employees could get paid and so both of the nation’s major parties could work on a deal to fund border security.

Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi held a press conference following Trump’s announcement that he would sign a short-term continuing resolution to fund the federal government through mid-February.

“The American people do not like it when you throw a wrench into the lives of government workers over an unrelated political dispute,” Schumer said. “Working people throughout America empathized with the federal workers and were aghast at what the president was doing to them. Hopefully, now the president has learned his lesson”

“Now, once the president signs the continuing resolution, we in Congress will roll up our sleeves and try to find some agreement on border security,” Schumer continued. “Today the president will sign the bill to reopen the government along the outlines of what we have proposed and hopefully it means a lesson learned for the White House and for many of our Republican colleagues: Shutting down the government over a policy difference is self-defeating.”

“It accomplishes nothing but pain and suffering for the country and incurs an enormous political cost to the party shutting it down,” Schumer continued.

WATCH:

During the press conference, Pelosi refused to answer whether she would accept “any sort of physical barrier in a border security plan.”

After 36 days of spirited debate and dialogue, I have seen and heard from enough Democrats and Republicans that they are willing to put partisanship aside — I think — and put the security of the American people first,” Trump said at a press conference on Friday. “I do believe they’re going to do that. They have said they are for complete border security, and they have finally and fully acknowledged that having barriers, fencing, or walls — or whatever you want to call it — will be an important part of the solution.”

“So let me be very clear: We really have no choice but to build a powerful wall or steel barrier,” Trump concluded. “If we don’t get a fair deal from Congress, the government will either shut down on February 15th, again, or I will use the powers afforded to me under the laws and the Constitution of the United States to address this emergency. We will have great security.”

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