Tag Archives: Race riots instigated by BLM

Apr 2 2017

Judge Jeanine: The left can’t get over their election loss


Published on Apr 1, 2017

President Trump is doing the job we hired him to do

Apr 2 2017

Connecticut Set To Become First State To Allow Deadly Police Drones


Tyler Durden's picture
by Tyler Durden
Re-Posted from ZERO HEDGE Apr 1, 2017 10:10 PM

Connecticut could become the first US state to allow police to use drones equipped with deadly weapons if a bill opposed by civil libertarians becomes law. The bill, which was approved overwhelmingly by the state legislature’s judiciary committee on Wednesday, would ban so-called weaponized drones in the state but exempts police and other agencies involved in law enforcement, the AP reported. The legislation was introduced as a complete ban on weaponized drones but just before the committee vote it was amended to exclude police from the restriction. Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy, a Democrat, was reviewing the proposal, “however in previous years he has not supported this concept,” spokesman Chris Collibee wrote in an email.

“Obviously this is for very limited circumstances,” said Republican state Sen. John Kissel, of Enfield, co-chairman of the Judiciary Committee that approved the measure Wednesday and sent it to the House of Representatives. “We can certainly envision some incident on some campus or someplace where someone is a rogue shooter or someone was kidnapped and you try to blow out a tire.”

The bill now goes to the House of Representatives for consideration. Details on how law enforcement could use drones with weapons would be spelled out in new rules to be developed by the state Police Officer Standards and Training Council. Officers also would have to receive training before being allowed to use drones with weapons.

North Dakota is the only state that allows police to use weaponized drones, but limits the use to “less lethal” weapons, including stun guns, rubber bullets and tear gas.

Currently five states – Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, Vermont and Wisconsin – prohibit anyone from using a weaponized drone, while Maine and Virginia ban police from using armed drones, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Several other states have restricted drone use in general. So far, 36 states have enacted laws restricting drones and an additional four states have adopted drone limits, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Meanwhile, concerns are growing about potential unchecked police brutality and death raining from the robotic skies: civil libertarians and civil rights activists are lobbying to restore the bill to its original language before the full House vote Reuters adds.

“Data shows police force is disproportionately used on minority communities, and we believe that armed drones would be used in urban centers and on minority communities,” said David McGuire, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Connecticut. “We would be setting a dangerous precedent,” McGuire added. “It is really concerning and outrageous that that’s being considered in our state legislature. Lethal force raises this to a level of real heightened concern.”

“That’s not the kind of precedent we want to set here,” McGuire said of the prospect that Connecticut would become the first state to allow police to use lethally armed drones.

Others echoed McGuire’s concerns: “We have huge concerns that they would use this new technology to abuse our communities,” said Scot X. Esdaile, president of state chapter of the NAACP. Esdaile said he has received calls from around the country from NAACP officials and others concerned about the Connecticut legislation.

Three police departments in the state – Hartford, Plainfield and Woodbury – began using drones within the past year, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut.

For now, however, the proposal is unlikely to unleash scenes out of some Robocop spinoff: The bill includes restrictions on drone use and reporting requirements that are supported by the ACLU.

It would require police to get a warrant before using a drone, unless there are emergency circumstances or the person who is the subject of the drone use gives permission. It also would require police to report yearly on how often they use drones and why, and create new crimes and penalties for criminal use of drones, including voyeurism.

Furthermore, final passage is not assured: although the bill overwhelmingly passed the Judiciary Committee, several members said they just wanted to see the proposal get to the House floor for debate. They said they had concerns about police using deadly force with drones. If Connecticut’s Democratic-controlled House passes the bill it will move to the Senate, which is split evenly between Democrats and Republicans.

“I think that police are taught one thing,” said Democratic Bridgeport Sen. Edwin Gomes. “You put a weapon in their hand, they shoot center mass, they shoot to kill. If it’s going to be used, you’re going to use it to kill somebody.”

Finally, for those wondering how a drone could possibly shoot, the following video of a drone shooting a gun – appropriately enough in Connecticut – should answer that question.

Apr 2 2017

Comrades, Dr. Farkas Has Discovered Russian Plot To Her Words in Mouth…


Re-Posted From the Conservative Tree House on April 1, 2017 by

Comrade Treeperski, Dr Farkas has discovered Russian plot making her to speak too much with Comrade Brzezinski:

.

Comrade citizens, we must develop alternative “sources and methods”.  Who is this Comrade Wikipedia and how do we talk him?

“I was urging my former colleagues, and, and frankly speaking the people on the Hill [Democrat politicians], it was more actually aimed at telling the Hill people, get as much information as you can – get as much intelligence as you can – before President Obama leaves the administration.”

“Because I had a fear that somehow that information would disappear with the senior [Obama] people who left; so it would be hidden away in the bureaucracy, um, that the Trump folks – if they found out HOW we knew what we knew about their, the Trump staff, dealing with Russians – that they would try to compromise those sources and methods; meaning we no longer have access to that intelligence.”

“So I became very worried because not enough was coming out into the open and I knew that there was more.  We have very good intelligence on Russia; so then I had talked to some of my former colleagues and I knew that they were also trying to help get information to the hill.  … But that’s why you had the leaking.”

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Apr 2 2017

Trumponomics – Yes, Manufacturing Can and Will Return – And Wages Are Going Up, Bigly…


Re-Posted From The Conservative Tree House on April 1, 2017 by

Yesterday President Trump met with the National Association of Manufacturers group in the White House to discuss the outlook for manufacturing jobs gains and the larger increase in actual manufacturing sector gains.

The results of surveys conducted with current manufacturing companies is stunning with 93% holding an optimistic outlook.

https://www.scribd.com/embeds/343743508/content?start_page=1&view_mode=&access_key=key-uKE045xgATies1A7AIol

However, beyond the optimism there’s additional data which is annoying the media and professional-left who are determined not to focus on successful Trumponomic strategy.

As a direct result of President Trump’s multifaceted economic strategy, manufacturing companies are having to look at TCO which is “Total Cost of Ownership”.  You see, President Trump is not only approaching manufacturing growth policy from the investment side, his policies also approach the larger impacts on raw material, energy and labor.

This multi-pronged policy approach forces companies to look at transportation and location costs of manufacturing.   If domestic costs of material and energy drop, in addition to drops in regulatory and compliance costs of operating the business, the operating cost differences drop dramatically.

This means labor and transportation costs become a larger part of the consideration in “where” to manufacture.   All of these costs contribute to the TCO.   Transportation costs are very expensive on durable goods imported.  If the durable goods are made domestically, the transportation costs per unit shipped drop significantly.  The TCO analysis then further reduces to looking at labor.

U.S. Labor is more expensive, yes.  However, if material costs, energy costs, regulatory costs and transportation costs are part of the TCO equation – then higher labor costs can be offset by the previously mentioned savings.

For two years CTH has repeatedly stated that under Trump’s proposals “total costs” drop so dramatically, that off-shored manufacturing is no longer the best play.   We are seeing that shake out right now.  For the first time in 30 years companies are reviewing the TCO of products and finding less and less financial reasons for off-shore manufacturing.

The first well framed article on that new Trumponomic analysis appeared last week in Market Watch:

For decades, U.S. companies have been chasing cheap labor offshore and then importing products to sell in the U.S. market.

Now, Trumponomics, a broader focus on Total Cost of Ownership (TCO quantifies all relevant costs, risks and strategic factors) and advanced manufacturing together have the potential to end the manufacturing stagnation of the past 30 years and create millions of manufacturing jobs in the U.S.

Over the past 20 years, the boom in offshoring drove our goods trade deficit up by about $640 billion a year, costing us three to four million manufacturing jobs.

The most direct way to reduce the trade deficit, as President Trump has said he wants to do, is to substitute domestic production for imports, i.e. via reshoring and foreign direct investment (FDI) in the U.S. The result of eliminating the trade deficit would be a rapidly growing manufacturing workforce for the first time in 40 years, a rise in average wages and a 25% to 30% increase in manufacturing output and jobs.

Many companies that offshored manufacturing didn’t really do the math. An Archstone study revealed that 60% of offshoring decisions used only rudimentary cost calculations, typically just price or labor costs and ignored other costs such as freight, duty, carrying cost of inventory, delivery and impact on innovation. Most of the true risks and cost of offshoring were being ignored.

Now is a good time to re-evaluate the cost of domestic vs. offshore production, and not just because of the risk of an angry tweet from the president.

Chinese wages have been rising by about 15% a year since 2000. As a result, the Chinese labor cost in dollars per unit of output is now about four times what it was in 2000. We estimate that about 25% of what is now offshored would come back if companies quantified the total cost. These products would generally have characteristics such as high freight cost vs. labor cost, frequent design changes, volatility in demand, intellectual property risk, and regulatory and compliance requirements.

For these most-reshorable products, such as large appliances with high freight costs, medical devices requiring high technology and quality standards, and plastic products that are getting cheaper thanks to declining natural gas and oil prices, the offshore manufacturing cost gap vs. the U.S. is now smaller than the offshoring “hidden costs” mentioned earlier. (read more)

I am beyond excited to see economic and manufacturing analytics’ focusing on the Total Cost of goods.   Donald Trump, now President Trump, has been making this economic policy argument for over three decades; and there are a bunch of us who have held similar views but frustratingly only found them falling on deaf ears.

We already have the raw materials: iron ore, steel, mineral deposits, and we have abundant energy resources, these are immediate cost advantages.  The area of disagreement I have with forecasts is in the area of wage growth.

The fed, and as a consequence most economists, are projecting 2% wage growth year-over-year.  However, they (all of them) are not factoring in the speed with which Main Street economy can/is restarting when uncoupled from Wall Street policy.  The demand for labor is already increasing dramatically.   I would not be surprised to see micro-level (regional) 6-8% wage growth by the end of Trumponomics year #1.

Apr 2 2017

Why Less than 10% Make Change Happen


Armstrong Economics Blog/Education

Re-Posted Apr 2, 2017 by Martin Armstrong

INVESTMENT GROUP

COMMENT: Good day Martin I thoroughly enjoyed your video on the solution and took you up on creating a debate. Thank you for your work. I live in Canada. I have a small investment group; only five of us ….however, I invited collectively through the members another 10 people for a Friday night get together which I provided all the goodies. I’ll be frank and short we have a long way to go for any solution. Three of the people invited were lawyers and another 2 were CAs, an oil financier, architect, welder, health care worker and so forth. It did not matter. “Brain-dead ” is a pandemic that filters through every occupation and perhaps every person in society. Ignorance is a virus and worse. Yet it prevents the opening of any part of the brain to new ideas and possibilities. Yes of course until S@$& hits the fan.

It was shocking to hear how many people believe that government is necessary and that government only works for the benefit of the people. That your explanation on payroll taxes was unrealistic. Absolutely shocking.

I wasted my time and my money and even original members of my small group were persuaded to the left. In fact, several [all the lawyers] incited that the riots from the youth should continue if any real change were to occur in this world. I’m done trying.

Ignorance is the disease here Martin and a larger platform to educate is what is really needed.

JB

RESPONSE: Canada is especially hard because the general population have really been indoctrinated with socialism. Your government even calls it a new “sharing economy” and overall Canadians have tolerated higher taxation than Americans without complaint. The confidence in government use to be even higher in Japan going into the 1990s.

Genius-A StudentsCritical thinking that leads a person to question his immediate surroundings takes place in less than 10% of the population. It has long been recognized that education today seems more about indoctrination. Schools do not teach people how to create mega companies. This is why the popular saying is why “A” Students work for “C” students and “B” students work for government. To be an A student you need to just memorize what the correct answer will be – not understand it. “C” students are the dreamers like Albert Einstein, whose elementary school teachers thought that he was a foolish dreamer, and one teacher had even asked him to drop out of his class. “C” students put up with the teachers but reject indoctrination retaining their own objectivity, which teachers reject.

Contrary to this indoctrination belief that you must have a degree, you will discover that those who have created some of the biggest companies are all dropouts with no degrees so they did not even make “C” students which include;  Amadeo Peter Giannini, who was the multimillionaire founder of Bank of America who did not even graduate high school, Thomas Edison, inventor of the light bulb, phonograph who was homeschooled until the age of 12, Andrew Carnegie who dropped out of elementary school and became an industrialist, philanthropist, and one of the first mega-billionaires in the US history, and Henry Ford, billionaire founder of Ford Motors, to Bill Gates founder of Microsoft, Michael Dell of Dell Computer, Barry Diller the billionaire, Hollywood mogul, Internet maven, and founder of Fox Broadcasting Company to yes, even John D. Rockefeller, Sr. the real billionaire founder of Standard Oil. Politicians include Ben Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, and Andrew Jackson who also did not graduate school.

Stone Age GraveWe are a species who will never change because human nature remains the same since the dawn of time. There are Stone Age graves with people buried with dignity. The most amazing find so far of a Stone Age grave was a grave with a female and two children hugging each other. They were carefully arranged in this position. This strongly indicated they had spiritual beliefs and cared for their dead.

Human Nature endures. We travel through time and technology progresses with our knowledge. However, emotionally we remain very much the same. Society MUST move through these crash and burn periods. It is how we progress through history. The majority will NOT believe until they reach the precipice. Only then will change ever come.

Therefore, the one person out of 10 who sees, is all you need. They are the few who are truly the movers and shakers throughout history. They may be the ones others laughed at or ignored and may have even been the unpopular kid in school who just did not fit into the crowd. They are the dreamers who see the future when the time comes and make dreams come true.

Apr 1 2017

Bill Maher: “Hillary, Stay In The Woods. You Had Your Shot. You F**ked It Up”


Tyler Durden's picture
by Tyler Durden
Re-posted from ZERO HEDGE Apr 1, 2017 12:10 PM

Bill Maher, host of HBO’s “Real Time,” finally said something on his late night talk show that seems to make some level of sense.  Just as Hillary has started to take a more active role in organizing the Donald Trump “Resistance” movement, a move that has sparked rumors of yet another presidential run in 2020, Maher took to the airwaves to implore Clinton to go back to the woods where she ‘found’ herself just a few weeks ago.

 “Hillary, stay in the woods. Okay. You had your shot. You f*cked it up. You’re Bill Buckner. We had the World Series, and you let the grounder go through your legs. Let someone else have the chance.”

“This to me — the fact that she’s come back, it just verifies every bad thing anyone’s ever thought about the Clintons, that it’s all about them. Let some of the other shorter trees get a little sunlight.”

Of course the comments reference a speech that Hillary gave to “The Society of Irish Women” at a St. Patrick’s Day speech in Scranton, Pennsylvania a few weeks back saying that she’s finally ready to “come out of the woods.”  And while that comment could be interpreted in a whole bunch of different ways, we assume that it was simply a hint that she’s ready to return to public life in some capacity.

“Our country seems so divided right now. I do not believe that we can let political divides harden into personal divides.  And we can’t just ignore or turn a cold shoulder toward someone because they disagree with us politically.”

“We’ve gotta keep trying to listen to each other, to reason together and try to work to help people have better lives.”

“I’m like a lot of my friends right now. I have a hard time watching the news, I’ll confess.  I am ready to come out of the woods and to help shine a light on what is already happening around kitchen tables, at dinners like this.

Unfortunately, while Hillary is all too willing to encourage the rest of us to “listen to each other”, she’s apparently not yet ready to listen to the advice of the 60+ million people around the country, plus Bill Maher, who have decided they would prefer she not be an active participant in public life any longer

Apr 1 2017

Life Lessons From A 30-Year Wall Street Veteran


Tyler Durden's picture
by Tyler Durden
Re-Posted From ZERO HEDGE Apr 1, 2017 12:45 PM

Authored by Nicholas Colas via ConvergEx,

Talking to a journalist a few days ago I realized that I can now add “30-year Wall Street veteran” to my list of epithets.  It’s not as catchy as “wily Odysseus” or “wine dark sea”, but then again my life on the Street doesn’t really qualify as Homeric either.  Rather, it’s been more like watching an old school Broadway musical, complete with lots of big personalities whose stories are often best told with small anecdotes.

Along the way those people have taught me everything I know about a career in New York finance.  They all bubble up to what sound like clichés, but only because they are true.  But below the surface… Well, how you learn those clichés is never boring.

Lesson #1: Set expectations and then beat them.  Everything on Wall Street carries with it the weight of expectations, from careers to asset prices.  In both cases, their values only change when outcomes differ from what was expected.

The best example I ever saw: Years ago I worked with a wily investment banker who played the expectations game better than anyone else I ever saw.  He knew that the success of an Initial Public Offering or secondary share issuance often came down to perception.  Did the institutional buyside think he was marketing a hot deal, or a cold one?

Since his deals invariably had roadshow lunches in major cities like New York and Boston, he always did the following:

  • If 100 investors had RSVPed for a lunch, he would have the room set for 70 people but order food for 100.
  • As the crowd started to file for lunch, he would have the wait staff very ostentatiously reorganize the dining room and roll in those big pieces of plywood that serve as table tops past the waiting investors.
  • This always worked to set up a buzz in the room. “This must be a hot deal if this many people showed up unexpected.”

Lesson #2: Know your client.  Another Street cliché, but most people underestimate what the word “Know” really means.

Walking around town many years ago with the CFO of a US auto company as we visited investors, he told me that he knew even before the meeting started if it would be productive.  I found this hard to believe.  The meetings were with all different kinds of Wall Street players, set up by my firm’s salespeople weeks ahead of time.

“You watch…  If your salesperson knows the receptionist by name and talks to them about their kids, that’s going to be a good meeting.”  He was right.  At the next meeting, we saw a chatty salesperson from my company looking at new baby pictures at the receptionist desk.  Next two meetings – no rapport at the front desk, and listless inattentive investors.

Another example: know when your client gets hungry.  Sitting at a conference table working on a large M&A transaction (the largest one in the auto space in the 1990s), the group needed to call the client’s Treasurer.  I reached for the phone.

The senior banker told me to stop; “It’s 11:30am.  Bob (not his real name) is on a diet – he needs to lose a lot of weight.  Let’s let him get lunch.  We’ll wait until 1:30pm.”  And we did.  The call went fine.

Lesson #3: Don’t worry too much about what you don’t know, but rather what you’re sure of that’s actually wrong.  That’s an old Mark Twain saying, but it is a lesson you learn quickly on Wall Street as well.

Take, for example, the most basic assumption that corporate managements who own a lot of stock will try to do what’s best for the company.  I have covered two companies (both investment banking clients of my firm) as a brokerage analyst where the CEOs eventually either went to jail for fraud or narrowly avoided that fate.  A third company went bust in a fairly spectacular fashion, just a year or two after raising equity.

All three CEOs owned a lot of stock – maybe too much, which is combination with a lack of moral compass led them to unwise actions.  Yes, management teams should always own some piece of the business they manage.  But that’s no reason to assume that this will magically guide them to better performance.  Sometimes it just leads to desperati

Apr 1 2017

Russia’s New Voicemail: “Press 2 For Services Of Russian Hackers, Press 3 For Election Interference”


Tyler Durden's picture
by Tyler Durden
RE-Posted from ZERO HEDGE Apr 1, 2017 10:13 AM

With the Russian election hacking scandal having gone from the merely strange, to the bizarre, to the ironic, to the McCarthyist, and most recently, jumping the patently absurd shark – as of last night, anyone who is against Hillary is “influenced by Russia” according to a former Clinton advisor – Russia decided to have some fun at the expense of US paranoia.

On Saturday, the ministry posted the following audio file of the “new” automated telephone switchboard message for Russian embassies.

“You have reached the Russian embassy, your call is very important to us. To arrange a call from a Russian diplomat to your political opponent, press 1. To use the services of Russian hackers press 2. To request election interference, press 3 and wait until the next election campaign. Please note that all calls are recorded for quality improvement and training purposes.”

And just to make it clear, it is April 1: as AP observes for the countless spy agencies, and congressional committees still trying to explain how Moscow subliminally influenced millions of Americans to vote for Trump instead of Hillary, a ministry officer confirmed that the post was a joke.

Related image

Apr 1 2017

“Who’s Worth What” – White House Releases Financial Disclosures Of Key Staffers


Tyler Durden's picture
by Tyler Durden
Re-Posted From ZERO HEDGE Apr 1, 2017 9:13 AM

President Trump night released details of the personal finances of his staffers late on Friday, including his son-in-law Jared Kushner and daughter Ivanka, which once again confirmed that most of the people in his immediate circle are very wealthy. The legally required disclosure documents provided a snapshot of assets and positions held by personnel when they first entered their new jobs at the White House, and before they started selling stocks and other assets that could pose conflicts of interest, according to White House ethics officials.

Curiously, the White House did not actually create a public depository of the filings, so AP, Propublica and the NYT created a shared drive for all the disclosures so far.

Here are the key highlights via the NYT and Reuters:

  • Jared Kushner and wife Ivanka Trump released a 54-page report which included “scores of assets worth six- and seven-figures”. According to a NYT breakdown, the president’s daughter and son-in-law are the beneficiaries of a sprawling real estate and investment business worth as much as $740 million, despite their new government responsibilities. Ivanka will maintain a stake in the Trump International Hotel in Washington, and earned from $1 million to $5 million from January 2016 to March 2017, the value of stake was estimated at $5 million to $25 million. Kushner held executive positions with 266 LLCs, corporations, groups and non-profits, which he has resigned from since January.
  •  Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s senior adviser, made between $1.3 and $2.3 million last year according to his 12 page disclosure report, which showed stakes in various advisory companies and movie studios but no stock holdings. Bannon’s pre-White House bank accounts, real estate and other holdings were valued at between $3.3 million and $12.6 million. Bannon disclosed $191,000 in consulting fees he earned from Breitbart News Network, the conservative media organization; $125,333 from Cambridge Analytica, a data firm that worked for the Trump campaign; and $61,539 in salary from the Government Accountability Institute, a conservative nonprofit organization. All three organizations are backed by the major Republican donors Robert Mercer and his daughter, Rebekah profiled recently. According to the NYT, Bannon’s most valuable asset was Bannon Strategic Advisors Inc., a privately held consulting firm from which income from his other investments appeared to flow into. It was valued at $5 million to $25 million. He also listed the value of his Bannon Film Industries at $1 million to $5 million. His bank accounts were valued at as much as $2,250,000, while he listed rental real estate valued at as much as $10.5 million.
  • Gary Cohn, the former Goldman Sachs president and now head of the White House National Economic Council, disclosed assets worth $252 million to $611 million. Little information was given on several of his assets and only indicated they were worth more than $1 million. That makes Cohn, now the director of the National Economic Council and a central adviser to Mr. Trump, one of the wealthier members of the already-affluent Trump administration, which includes more than one billionaire. According to the NYT, in addition to the millions of dollars in cash and stock Cohn received from Goldman that made up the lion’s share of his personal assets, he held a slew of positions in publicly traded stocks — many of which he has already said he plans to sell — and in various private entities. Those entities include a stake valued at more than $1 million in a consumer education and consulting business called Payoff, a position in a cosmetics retailer also valued at more than $1 million, investments in several self-storage concerns in Ohio valued at $100,000 or more each, and an investment in a venture capital fund run by Andreessen Horowitz, the Silicon Valley powerhouse, valued at $100,000 or more.
  • Kellyanne Conway, one of Trump’s top advisers, was not quite in the same wealth category as some of her superrich colleagues. Conway made over $800,000 last year, her filing shows. As head of her own consulting firm, Conway’s clients included an assortment of conservative causes, including the National Rifle Association and the Tea Party Patriots, as well as Cambridge Analytica, the political data firm that advised Mr. Trump’s campaign. She was also paid for a speaking engagement at Point72 Asset Management, the investment firm run by the billionaire stock picker Steven A. Cohen.
  • Reince Priebus, White House Chief of Staff, disclosed assets of between $604,000 and $1.16 million and income of $1.42 million. About $566,000 of his income came from the Republican National Committee and the rest from his partnership in a Milwaukee law firm.
  • Reed Cordish, a Baltimore real estate developer before he become Trump’s technology adviser, disclosed pre-White House assets of between $92 million and $798 million. He had income of between $48 million and $55 million.
  • Julia Hahn, a former Breitbart.com reporter until she went to work in the White House, disclosed a PNC custodial account valued at $500,000 to $1 million. Various stock funds listed on her financial disclosure are worth as much as $1.5 million. As the NYT put, it “her work as a journalist was also nothing to sneeze at.” As a reporter, she made $117,217 last year at Breitbart. On top of that, she earned $74,082 from Laura Ingraham’s radio show.
  • Dina Powell, who serves on the National Security Council, made between $1.08 and $6 million last year. Her assets stand at over $9 million.
  • Donald McGahn, chief White House Counsel, disclosed income of $2.4 million at Jones Day, where his clients included Trump, the NRA, and Aaron Schock (the Illinois lawmaker charged with federal corruption).
  • Omarosa Manigault, a former contestant on Trump’s reality show the Apprentice and now is a White House adviser, had a modest income under $100,000. The disclosures showed she is a beneficiary of a trust established by her late fiance, actor Michael Clarke Duncan, worth between $1 million and $5 million. Manigault is currently engaged to a Florida pastor. Forms show she received a wedding dress, veil and accessories worth $25,000 for an appearance on the reality show “Say Yes to the Dress.”
  • Peter Navarro, Trump’s trade czar and resident China hawk, is not a wealthy man, but his salary as an economics professor at a public university wasn’t bad. According to his disclosure form,Mr. Navarro earned $240,000 in salary and bonuses from the University of California, Irvine. He also earned $10,500 for delivering a speech in November to the Casket & Funeral Supply Association of America.
  • Sean Spicer, the press secretary, reported stakes in the Coca-Cola Company, McDonald’s and several real estate investments. But, despite his much-discussed taste for cinnamon-flavored gum, he reported no investments in chewing gum companies (although he does invest in Walmart, which sells chewing gum).
  • Sebastian Gorka, a deputy assistant to Mr. Trump and a former editor at Breitbart News, reported consulting fees of $38,200 from Breitbart. He also reported royalties of $50,000 to $100,000 for his book “Defeating jihad: The Winnable War” — and also said that he signed a contract for a second book.
  • Boris Epshteyn, who served during the presidential campaign as one of Mr. Trump’s chief attack dogs and television talking heads, stills owes over $50,000 on college loans he took out more than a decade ago, his filing indicates. Recently, Mr. Epshteyn left his White House post under circumstances that were unclear.
  • Jason Greenblatt, the Trump Organization lawyer tasked with helping to bring peace to the Middle East, disclosed $1,025,000 in compensation from Mr. Trump’s company last year.
  • Michael Ellis, who reportedly shared intel on Trump surveillance with House Intel Chairman Devin Nunes, owes more than $30K in student loans.

* * *

The full list of disclosures, which excludes president Trump and vice president Pence

Apr 1 2017

President Trump Weekly Address – March 31st 2017


President Trump delivers the weekly address from the White House: