Why Donald Trump Never Washed the Windows at Trump Tower

The latest edition of Sunday Morning with Robert Wenzel:



-RW

BREAKING The European Union Explores Bank Account Cash Withdrawal Freezes

The European Union is considering measures which would allow members to temporarily stop people withdrawing money from their accounts to prevent bank runs, an EU document reviewed by Reuters revealed.

The proposal, which has been in the works since the beginning of this year, comes less than two months after a run on deposits at Banco Popular contributed to the collapse of the Spanish lender.

Giving supervisors the power to temporarily block bank accounts at ailing lenders is "a feasible option," a paper prepared by the Estonian presidency of the EU said, acknowledging that member states were divided on the issue.

EU countries which already allow a moratorium on bank payouts in insolvency procedures at national level, like Germany, support the measure, officials told Reuters.

Under the plan discussed by EU states, pay-outs could be suspended for five working days and the block could be extended to a maximum of 20 days in exceptional circumstances, the Estonian document said.

This should be a warning to individuals anywhere on the planet, keep some funds "under your mattress." During such a freeze cash will be king.

-RW

Trump Just Exploded on China; Are Tariffs Coming?

President Trump was supposedly "going easy" on China when it came to trade because China was supposedly helping out with North Korea but Trump just let out a Twitter explosion toward China after the latest missile launch by North Korea:

I am very disappointed in China. Our foolish past leaders have allowed them to make hundreds of billions of dollars a year in trade, yet...

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 29, 2017

...they do NOTHING for us with North Korea, just talk. We will no longer allow this to continue. China could easily solve this problem!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 29, 2017

Can tariffs on Chinese products be far behind?

-RW

The Corrupt Origins of Central Banking in America

This is a great lecture by Tom DiLorenzo on Alexander Hamilton and how national bank corruption got started in the United States.

Trump Intends to Sign Russia Sanctions Bill into Law

 It's official. President Donald Trump intends to sign legislation that places new sanctions on Russia and empowers Congress to block him from scaling back the penalties on Moscow in the future, the White House press secretary's office said Friday, according to Politico.

This is just terrible.

Trade advances peace and goodwill amongst nations, limiting trade increases the potential for hostilities.

"President Donald J. Trump read early drafts of the bill and negotiated regarding critical elements of it," the press secretary office's statement read. "He has now reviewed the final version and, based on its responsiveness to his negotiations, approves the bill and intends to sign."

The measure, which also places additional sanctions on North Korea and Iran, passed the Senate 98-2 and the House 419-3 this week after a series of delays and partisan squabbling on Capitol Hill and resistance from the White House.

Of note, the bill limits the President's ability to scale back sanctions without congressional approval.

For more on this see: Trump Should Tell Congress to Kiss His Ass

10,000 Hours With Claude Shannon: How A Genius Thinks, Works, and Lives

By Rob Goodman and Jimmy Soni

For the last five years, we lived with one of the most brilliant people on the planet.
Sort of.

See, we just published the biography of Dr. Claude Shannon. He’s the most important genius you’ve never heard of, a man whose intellect was on par with Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton.
We spent five years with him. It’s not an exaggeration to say that, during that period, we spent more time with the deceased Claude Shannon than we have with many of our living friends. He became something like the roommate in the spare bedroom of our minds, the guy who was always hanging around and occupying our head space.

Yes, we were the ones telling his story, but in telling it, he affected us, too. Geniuses have a unique way of engaging with the world, and if you spend enough time examining their habits, you discover the behaviors behind their brilliance. Whether or not we intended it to, understanding Claude Shannon’s life gave us lessons on how to better live our own.

That’s what follows in this essay. It’s the good stuff our roommate left behind.
Claude, Who?

His name may not ring a bell. Don’t worry, we didn’t know who he was either when we started.
So who was he?

Within engineering and mathematics circles, Shannon is a revered figure. Claude Shannon’s work in the 1930s and 1940s earned him the title of “father of the information age.” At the age of 21, he published what’s been called the most important master’s thesis of all time, explaining how binary switches could do logic. It laid the foundation for all future digital computers.

He wasn’t done. At the age of 32, he published “A Mathematical Theory of Communication,” which has been called “the Magna Carta of the information age.” Shannon’s masterwork invented the bit, or the objective measurement of information, and explained how digital codes could allow us to compress and send any message with perfect accuracy.

But that’s not all he did.

Vintage Claude. (Credit: The Shannon family)

Claude Shannon wasn’t just a brilliant theoretical mind — he was a remarkably fertile, fun, practical, and inventive one as well. There are plenty of mathematicians and engineers who write great papers. There are fewer of them who, like Shannon, are also jugglers, unicyclists, gadgeteers, first-rate chess players, codebreakers, expert stock-pickers, and amateur poets.

He worked on the top-secret transatlantic phone line connecting FDR and Winston Churchill during World War II and co-built what was arguably the world’s first wearable computer. He learned to fly airplanes and played the jazz clarinet. He rigged up a false wall in his house that could rotate with the press of a button, and he once built a gadget whose only purpose when it was turned on was to open up, release a mechanical hand, and turn itself off. Oh, and he once had a photo spread in Vogue magazine.

Think of him as a cross between Albert Einstein and the Dos Equis guy.

Read the rest here.

The Truth Concerning the Scare Headlines Around the "17 Million Who Would Lose Health Insurance Coverage" Under Obamacare Repeal

By Robert Wenzel

Senator John McCain has killed Obamacare "skinny repeal" but it should be made clear that much of the fearmongering by mainstream media about the earlier Obamacare Repeal Reconciliation Act of 2017 was dishonest by leaving out the complete story.

New York Times "economist" Paul Krugman led the dishonesty by omission. with this retweet:

Here's a CNBC headline:

Here's the full story from the Congressional Budget Office Scoring report.

Let's start with the part that MSM tells you about:

Effects on Insurance Coverage. In 2018, by CBO and JCT’s estimates, about 17 million
more people would be uninsured under this legislation than under current law.

But who are these 17 million? This MSM fails to report  (my emphasis):

[I]ncrease in the uninsured population would consist of about 10 million fewer people with coverage obtained in the nongroup market...In the nongroup market, some people would choose not to have insurance partly because they choose to be covered by insurance under current law to avoid paying the penalty. And, under this legislation, without the mandate penalty, some people would forgo insurance in response to the higher premiums that CBO and JCT project would be charged.... 

Insurers would still be required to provide coverage to any applicant, and they would not be able to vary premiums to reflect enrollees’ health status or to limit coverage of preexisting medical conditions. Those features are most attractive to applicants with
relatively high expected costs for health care, so CBO and JCT expect that repealing the
individual mandate penalty would tend to reduce insurance coverage less among older
and less healthy people than among younger and healthier people.

Got that? A full 10 million of the 17 million number tossed around would be the young healthy forced to pay high premiums under Obama's mandate. Those (even the youth) with high medical expenses would still be required to be covered by insurers. It's mostly the damn healthy kids escaping the high premium Obama mandate that is all!

Another portion of the 17 million that would no longer have coverage under repeal is according to the report:  "roughly 4 million fewer people with coverage under Medicaid."

But the report tells us why that would occur (my emphasis):

Under current law, the penalty associated with the individual mandate applies to some Medicaid-eligible adults and children. (For example, it applies to single individuals with income above about 90 percent of the FPL.) In addition, some people apply for coverage in the marketplaces because of the penalty and turn out to be eligible for Medicaid. And some who are not subject to the penalty think they would be if they did not enroll in Medicaid. The agencies do not expect that, with the penalty eliminated under this legislation, people enrolled in Medicaid would disenroll. However, among people who would become eligible for Medicaid under the legislation or who would need to recertify their eligibility, the proportion of people who enrolled in the program would, by CBO and JCT’s expectations, be lower—closer to the proportions observed for those groups prior to the institution of the penalty.

So here, again, no one would have been uninsured except for the fact that the vicious Obama mandate would have been eliminated and some who are eligible for Medicaid would not have applied because  the Obamacare mandate dagger would  no longer hanging over their heads--even though they would be eligible!

So now we are up to 14 million of the so-called "17 million newly uninsured," who really under repeal would have just been escaping the Obama mandate that would have been eliminated.

The final group is those who will not be insured by employees and, again, it is the same story, escape from the Obama mandate if there was repeal (my bold)

Under current law, the prospect of paying the employer mandate penalty tips the scale for
some businesses and causes them to decide to offer health insurance to their employees.
Thus, eliminating that penalty would cause some employers to not offer health insurance.
Similarly, the demand for insurance among employees is greater under current law
because some employees want employment-based coverage so that they can avoid paying the individual mandate penalty. Eliminating that penalty would reduce such demand and would cause some employers to not offer coverage or some employees to not enroll in coverage they were offered, CBO and JCT estimate.

Bottom line: The Obamacare Repeal Reconciliation Act of 2017 would have kept in place coverage for anyone with a "pre-existing condition" or otherwise who wanted coverage. The only new group of uninsured would be those who are healthy, mostly young and of their own choosing do not want insurance.

The MSM coverage leaves the impression that somehow 17 million ill people would have lost coverage.  This is completely dishonest.The MSM coverage is the only thing sick that is not covered by insurance.

Robert Wenzel is Editor & Publisher of  EconomicPolicyJournal.com and Target Liberty. He also writes EPJ Daily Alert and is author of The Fed Flunks: My Speech at the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Follow him on twitter:@wenzeleconomics and on LinkedIn. His youtube series is here: Sunday Morning with Robert Wenzel.

TRUMP "TAX REFORM": Higher Taxes For Many

Imagine my surprise.

If President Donald Trump sticks to what he has said, Americans earning between $149,400 and $307,900 are most likely to see an increase in their taxes as a result of tax reform, reports The Wall Street Journal.

According to WSJ, those figures come from a recent study by the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan group in Washington, and are based on Trump’s statements and proposals. The study concludes that nearly one-third of about 19 million households in that income range could see tax increases averaging from $3,000 to $4,000 a year.

"Tax reform" is a dangerous scam. It will do little more than shift taxes around.

What we need is serious tax cuts from the current structure.

From WSJ:

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal this week, Mr. Trump affirmed that a major overhaul could bring “upward revisions” that raise taxes for some people. He also struck a new tone, stating that he doesn’t like it that a “rich guy who made…$25 million last year is going to pay less” after tax reform than before.

But based on his proposals and statements, that is exactly what would happen.

The crony rich close to power will always get breaks.

-RW

Rand Paul: The Failure to Repeal Obamacare Means Premiums Will Continue to Skyrocket

In an op-ed at Rare.us, Senator Rand Paul writes:

What will happen now that the Obamacare repeal has failed?  The same thing that was already happening: Premiums will skyrocket. Insurers will exit, leaving monopolies or vacuums, and Americans will have less choice...

The clean repeal, which I supported, wasn’t perfect, but it would have forced all parties to legislatively resolve the wreckage of Obamacare.

The clean repeal, as every permutation of repeal, could not repeal the fundamental regulatory flaw of Obamacare by a simple majority vote because of arcane budget rules. And, in the end, we couldn’t convince GOP senators to fulfill their promise to voters to repeal Obamacare.

So, what will happen?

Again, premiums will continue to skyrocket. Insurers will continue to exit. The death spiral of Obamacare will continue.

Democrats will accelerate calls for an insurance bailout, and compliant, big government Republicans will join with Democrats to foist upon America more federal intervention into what should be a very private and personal matter. Sad.

Libertarian enthusiasts and optimists will hope that technology and disruptive Uber-like forces will surmount the grip of pols who lack sufficient confidence in what made America great: freedom,  freedom of choice unfettered and unchained.

We can only hope so.

Rand gets it. Happy to see him speaking truth,


-RW

The Latest in Central Power Flexing in Silicon Valley (Cracking Down on Churches Edition)

The city of Palo Alto is cracking down on churches that are trying to cut costs by subletting some of their space.

CBS Bay Area reports that the clock is ticking for one church, which has been told all its tenants have to get out in a few weeks, or face severe fines:

The First Baptist Church has been on the same street corner in Palo Alto, serving the poor and needy, for 125 years.

But after a brief, informal meeting with city code enforcement officers earlier this year, Pastor Rick Mixon suddenly got a sternly worded letter from the city, telling him he must cease all non-religious activities, and that his tenants, which include a music school, a psychologist, and the Peninsula Peace and Justice Center, to get out by August 17 or face severe fines.

Mixon said, “In order to operate here, to keep it looking good, looking nice in a nice neighborhood, we need to rent the space. It represents about a third of our budget right now.”

For years, the church has rented the space on the second floor to music classes, choirs, dance clubs, and hosted dinners and weddings.

The area is government zoned residential. The church will lose about $120,000 from its budget and will likely have to shut down.

The businesses that are now facing notices to vacate are finding it difficult to locate space at a comparable rent in the hot Silicon Valley market.

The church property looks positively beautiful to me. Somebody got to the central power authority in Palo Alto and is using "traffic problems" as cover to harass the church.




    -RW

McCain Kills Obamacare 'Skinny' Repeal

The evil bastard did it. Three Republicans joined all Democrats to vote "no" on the Obamacare repeal measure. Senator John McCain was the surprise "no" vote.

He voted against "skinny" Obamacare repeal and thus killed the bill. A vote in favor by McCain would have tied the Senate and Vice-President Pence would have cast the tie-breaker in favor of the bill.

The Washington Post has the play-by-play:

It was the most dramatic night in the United States Senate in recent history. Just ask the senators who witnessed it.

A seven-year quest to undo the Affordable Care Act collapsed — at least for now — as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) kept his colleagues and the press corps in suspense over a little more than two hours late Thursday into early Friday.

Not since September 2008, when the House of Representatives rejected the Troubled Asset Relief Program — causing the Dow Jones industrial average to plunge nearly 800 points in a single afternoon — had such an unexpected vote caused such a striking twist.

The bold move by the nation’s most famous senator stunned his colleagues and possibly put the Senate on the verge of protracted bipartisan talks that McCain is unlikely to witness as he begins treatment for an aggressive form of brain cancer.

“I’ve stated time and time again that one of the major failures of Obamacare was that it was rammed through Congress by Democrats on a strict party-line basis without a single Republican vote,” he said in a statement explaining his vote. “We should not make the mistakes of the past.”

Rumors swirled late Thursday that the Arizona Republican, who had captured the nation’s sympathy this week after delaying his cancer treatment in order to return to Washington, might vote against the GOP’s “skinny repeal” plan — a watered-down version of earlier Republican proposals to repeal the 2010 health-care law....

Reporters spotted him around 11 p.m.

“Have you decided how you’ll vote?” they asked.

“Yes,” McCain replied.

“How?”

 Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), left, and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), far right, joined with McCain to defeat the GOP health care plan. They joined other Republican senators for lunch with President Trump at the White House on June 27, 2017. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
“Wait for the show,” he said.

McCain headed for the stage — the Senate floor — around midnight, emerging from his office in the Russell Senate Office Building for the subway ride to the U.S. Capitol.

When he arrived, he held a brief conversation with Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer ( D-N.Y.), an exchange that left the New Yorker smiling.

“I knew it when he walked on the floor,” Schumer later recounted, explaining that McCain had already called to share his plans.

But few, if any, of his Republican colleagues realized what was about to transpire.

With Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) already planning to vote against the plan, Republicans could not afford to lose McCain. Vice President Pence was already at the Capitol prepared to break a tie. Instead, he launched a last-ditch effort to win McCain’s support.

As the first vote began, McCain took his seat next to Graham, his closest friend in the Senate. The South Carolinian mostly nodded as McCain gesticulated, and signaled — through his body language — that he was likely to vote no. When Murkowski walked over to join the conversation, McCain winked and gave her a thumbs down — signaling his intentions.

Collins joined the group as another clutch of Republican senators formed in the well of the Senate Chamber. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), who operates in McCain’s long shadow, stood next to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), who counts GOP votes, and Pence. Eventually, Flake was dispatched to talk to McCain.

He obliged, walked over to McCain and asked Graham to move over one seat. But McCain did not acknowledge Flake, focusing instead on Murkowski and Collins.

That left Flake, one of the most polite members of the Senate, leaning into the conversation uncomfortably with a pained look on his face, as if he had to tell his father that he had run over the family dog with his car.

Seeing that Flake was not making progress, Pence walked over at 12:44 a.m. McCain smiled, pointed at Collins and Murkowski, said something about “marching orders,” and stood up.

“Mr. Vice President,” he said, greeting Pence. For the next 21 minutes, the vice president cajoled McCain, Collins and Murkowski. Twice during the conversation, a Pence aide came to whisper in the vice president’s ear — other reporters learned it was the White House calling. Pence finally left to take a call, but later returned to speak with McCain.

By then, other senators around the room realized what was happening.

“You could see the body language in the entire chamber change in two hours,” Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) recalled. “One side was kind of ebullient, moving around and talking and the other side was subdued, and all of a sudden it began to change. There was an instinctive reaction that maybe this thing wasn’t going to pass. Nobody knew for sure.”...

At 1:10 a.m., McCain crossed the Senate Chamber to talk to Schumer, Klobuchar and other Democrats, including Sens. Richard J. Durbin (Ill.), Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) and Elizabeth Warren (Mass.). As he approached, McCain told them he worried that reporters watching from the gallery above could read his lips. When he realized that the press was indeed watching, he looked up at the ceiling and shouted, “No!” as senators and reporters laughed. Then, Democrats beamed when McCain shared his news. Feinstein gave him a hug.

Walking back to the Republican side of the room, McCain was stopped by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) who also offered a hug.

“I love John McCain. He’s one of the great heroes of this country,” Hatch explained later. “Whether we agree or not, I still love the guy.”

The vote on “skinny repeal” began at 1:24 a.m., but McCain was out in the lobby once again conferring with Pence. In his absence, Collins and Murkowski cast their “no” votes along with the 48 members of the Democratic caucus.

McCain returned at 1:29 a.m. without Pence, approached the Senate clerk and gave a thumbs down — the third “no” vote.

Several people gasped. Others applauded. Reporters dashed out to report the news....

The vote concluded, and the results were announced — 49 to 51. Just days before, McCain had fired a warning shot with a lengthy floor speech that criticized the rushed, secretive process that led to “skinny repeal.” Early Friday morning, McCain, Collins and Murkowski delivered the fatal blow.

McConnell, humiliated by the results, stood to address his colleagues. The color of his face now matched the pink in his necktie.

“This is clearly a disappointing moment,” he said.

McCain, an evil statist to the end.

  -RW