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The Trump "Dossier" Is Looking More Credible All the Time

by LenaRoof4575566 Posted on March 30, 2017

Mother Jones

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The BBC’s Paul Wood writes today about the infamous “dossier” that claims a substantial connection between Russian officials and the Trump campaign team:

The BBC has learned that US officials “verified” a key claim in a report about Kremlin involvement in Donald Trump’s election — that a Russian diplomat in Washington was in fact a spy.

….At one point the dossier says: “A leading Russian diplomat, Mikhail KULAGIN, had been withdrawn from Washington at short notice because Moscow feared his heavy involvement in the US presidential election operation… would be exposed in the media there.”…Sources I know and trust have told me the US government identified Kalugin as a spy while he was still at the embassy.

….I understand — from former officials — that from 2013-16, Steele gave the US government extensive information on Russia and Ukraine….One former senior official who saw these reports told me: “It was found to be of value by the people whose job it was to look at Russia every day”….Another who dealt with this material in government said: “Sometimes he would get spun by somebody. But it was always 80% there.”…In light of his earlier work, the US intelligence community saw him as “credible” (their highest praise).

….Members of the Obama administration believe, based on analysis they saw from the intelligence community, that the information exchange claimed by Steele continued into the election.

“This is a three-headed operation,” said one former official, setting out the case, based on the intelligence: Firstly, hackers steal damaging emails from senior Democrats. Secondly, the stories based on this hacked information appear on Twitter and Facebook, posted by thousands of automated “bots”, then on Russia’s English-language outlets, RT and Sputnik, then right-wing US “news” sites such as Infowars and Breitbart, then Fox and the mainstream media. Thirdly, Russia downloads the online voter rolls.

The voter rolls are said to fit into this because of “microtargeting”. Using email, Facebook and Twitter, political advertising can be tailored very precisely: individual messaging for individual voters….This would take co-operation with the Trump campaign, it is claimed.

Hmmm. Thousands of bots? Apparently so:

On Wednesday the Washington Post published a story about “Source D” in the dossier:

In June, a Belarusan American businessman who goes by the name Sergei Millian shared some tantalizing claims about Donald Trump….The allegations by Millian — whose role was first reported by the Wall Street Journal and has been confirmed by The Washington Post — were central to the dossier compiled by the former spy, Christopher Steele. While the dossier has not been verified and its claims have been denied by Trump, Steele’s document said that Millian’s assertions had been corroborated by other sources, including in the Russian government and former intelligence sources.

The most explosive allegation that the dossier says originally came from Millian is the claim that Trump had hired prostitutes at the Moscow Ritz-Carlton and that the Kremlin has kept evidence of the encounter.

Nobody knows for sure if Millian is genuinely plugged in at high levels, or if he’s just a fast-talking huckster. But put all this together and it’s easy to see why the Trump-Russia story won’t go away. The FBI believes Steele to be credible. In the cases where it’s been possible to check out the allegations in the dossier, they’ve turned out to be true. Other intelligence corroborates much of the alleged Russian activity. And Millian’s claims are genuinely explosive.

This isn’t going away anytime soon.

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The Trump "Dossier" Is Looking More Credible All the Time

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In Face of Corn Boycott, Trump Decides NAFTA Not So Bad After All

by KristanWynne Posted on March 30, 2017

Mother Jones

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Mexico is threatening to use the power of corn to fight Donald Trump’s tough talk on trade:

As President Trump threatens Mexico with drastic changes on trade, its leaders are wielding corn as a weapon. Mexico’s Senate is considering legislation calling for a boycott of U.S. corn, and the government has begun negotiating with Argentina and Brazil to import corn from those nations tax-free. The threat of a boycott is Mexico’s latest and perhaps cleverest attempt to fight back against Trump, whose threats to pull out of free trade agreements and slap a 20% import tax on Mexican products have shaken confidence in Mexico’s economy.

And apparently it’s working:

The Trump administration is signaling to Congress it would seek mostly modest changes to the North American Free Trade Agreement in upcoming negotiations with Mexico and Canada, a deal President Donald Trump called a “disaster” during the campaign.

….The draft, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, talks of seeking “to improve procedures to resolve disputes,” rather than eliminating the panels. The U.S. also wouldn’t use the Nafta negotiations to deal with disputes over foreign currency policies or to hit numerical targets for bilateral trade deficits, as some trade hawks have been urging.

….Jeffrey Schott, a trade scholar at the Peterson Institute for International Economics…noted that a number of the proposed negotiating objectives echo provisions in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation trade pact among Pacific Rim countries. Mr. Trump campaigned heavily against the TPP.

Do not underestimate the power of corn! Alternatively, maybe corn has nothing to do with it. Maybe Trump was just blathering all along and never really had any intention of getting tough with Mexico. In the end, he’ll build a few more miles of fencing, make a few modest changes to NAFTA, and then call it the greatest boon to the working man since the Wagner Act. I’ve also read a few pieces recently about China, and apparently all those Goldman Sachs folks he hired have talked Trump into backing down on a trade war there too. I guess Goldman Sachs has to be good for something.

Anyway, having given up on Mexico and China, now Trump is going after the ultra-conservatives of the House Freedom Caucus:

I’ll bet they’re scared shitless. Trump is demonstrating that his talk may be big, but he can’t make it stick. In his first two months, he’s failed on his immigration order and his health care plan, has no chance of building his wall, and has backed down on Mexico and China. His bark is unquestionably worse than his bite.

The health care bill would have flamed out in the Senate anyway. The HFC did everyone a favor by getting it off the agenda quickly so Congress could move on to important matters like cutting taxes for the rich.

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In Face of Corn Boycott, Trump Decides NAFTA Not So Bad After All

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Trump just took a sledgehammer to Obama’s climate legacy.

by NUDElverackj Posted on March 28, 2017

When Rebecca Burgess was working in villages across Asia, she saw the impacts of the clothing industry firsthand: waste, pollution, widespread health problems. But in these same communities, from Indonesia to Thailand, Burgess also saw working models of local textile production systems that didn’t harm anyone. She was inspired to build a sustainable clothing system — complete with natural dye farms, renewable energy-powered mills, and compostable clothes — back home in the United States.

The result is Fibershed, a movement to build networks of farmers, ranchers, designers, ecologists, sewers, dyers, and spinners in 54 communities around the world, mostly in North America. They are ex-coal miners growing hemp in Appalachia and workers in California’s first wool mill. In five years, Burgess plans to build complete soil-to-soil fiber systems in north-central California, south-central Colorado, and eastern Kentucky.

People have asked her, “This has already left to go overseas — you’re bringing it back? Are you sure?” She is. Mills provide solid, well-paying jobs for people “who can walk in off the street and be trained in six months,” Burgess says. “This is all about dressing human beings at the end of the day, in the most ethical way that we can, while providing jobs for our home communities and keeping farmers and ranchers on the land.”

Meet all the fixers on this year’s Grist 50.

Link: 

Trump just took a sledgehammer to Obama’s climate legacy.

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Trump Decrees That the Economy Must Grow Twice as Fast

by JesseGeorge Posted on February 18, 2017

Mother Jones

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The Congressional Budget Office forecasts that the labor force will grow 0.5 percent annually over the next ten years and productivity will grow 1.4 percent. That’s total economic growth of 1.9 percent per year. But the Trumpists are forecasting 3.5 percent growth over the next decade. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they supercharge the economy, pulling everyone back into work and achieving labor force growth of 0.8 percent. They still need productivity growth of 2.7 percent. That’s astronomically higher than anyone thinks possible. So how are Trump’s economists justifying this?

The answer is simplicity itself. The Wall Street Journal explains:

What’s unusual about the administration’s forecasts isn’t just their relative optimism but also the process by which they were derived. Normally, the executive branch starts with a baseline forecast prepared by career staff of the CEA….Discussions for the Trump administration unfolded differently, with transition officials telling the CEA staff the growth targets that their budget would produce and asking them to backfill other estimates off those figures.

So…they’re doing it by just telling their economists what growth will be. That’s an interesting approach. But what’s the point of this? Here’s a pair of growth forecasts—one for 2 percent and one for 4 percent—that should illustrate things:

If you assume higher growth, you can cut taxes and still get more revenue. Alternatively, you can spend more on the military or a border wall without increasing the deficit. Or a combination of both.

In other words, it’s magic fairy dust. Sprinkle it around and you can do anything you want. Problems only arise if a bunch of snooty Ivy League economists insist that you’re delusional, which explains why Trump hasn’t bothered to hire anyone for his Council of Economic Advisors. They would just tell him stuff he doesn’t want to hear. It also explains why Paul Ryan isn’t playing this game too: his budget is vetted by the CBO, which has no intention of aiding and abetting fantasyland figures like these.

It’s hard to know what the point of this is. Most likely, Trump said on the campaign trail that he’d grow the economy at 4 percent, and by God he’s going to stick with that. (Remember: 3.5 rounds up to 4, so his campaign promise is safe.) Besides, Trump probably really believes that he can get the economy growing that fast through the sheer force of his personality.

The real shock here isn’t Trump—we already know he’s divorced from reality—but the rest of his staff. Is there really not a single person in the White House who has both the gumption and the standing to tell Trump that the president can’t peddle this kind of drivel in an official document? Is there no one who can tell him that Twitter is one thing, but the Budget of the United States of America is another?

I guess not.

UPDATE: The original illustration of 2 percent vs. 4 percent growth used figures for nine years of growth instead of ten. It’s been corrected.

Originally posted here – 

Trump Decrees That the Economy Must Grow Twice as Fast

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Donald Trump Demands an Apology From You

by ElvinEwers9297 Posted on January 16, 2017

Mother Jones

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Just out of curiosity, I did a quick check to see how many people/organizations Donald Trump has demanded an apology from since he began his presidential campaign. The answer is 21:

Intelligence chiefs
Cast and producers of Hamilton
Mika Brzezinski
The media
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
CNN
Wall Street Journal
Vicente Fox
Mark Halperin
Hillary Clinton
Rachel Maddow
Chuck Todd
Chris Christie
The liberal media
The Washington Post
Carly Fiorina
Fox News
Tom Llamas
Charles Krauthammer
John McCain
Univision

For a guy who never apologizes himself, he sure does demand a lot of apologies from others, doesn’t he?

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Donald Trump Demands an Apology From You

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Trump Somehow Found Time Today to Meet With Monsanto Execs

by BeatrizVSGP Posted on January 12, 2017

Mother Jones

Amid the furor surrounding allegations of covert ties with Russian intelligence figures as well as his first press conference since winning the election, President-elect Donald Trump found time in his hectic Wednesday schedule to meet with two towering figures in the agriculture world, reports Fox Business Daily. But the main conversation topic wasn’t the job opening atop the US Department of Agriculture, the sole cabinet spot awaiting an appointment from Trump.

Rather, the meeting involved German chemical giant Bayer’s $66 billion buyout of US seed/agrichemical giant Monsanto—a deal that will have to pass antitrust muster with Trump’s Department of Justice (more on that here). Fox reports that Bayer CEO Werner Baumann and his Monsanto counterpart Hugh Grant met with the incoming president at Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan to promote the merger. In an email to the news organization, a Monsanto spokesperson confirmed that the two execs “had a productive meeting with President-Elect Trump and his team to share their views on the future of the agriculture industry and its need for innovation.”

Baumann and Grant have plenty to be concerned about regarding possible antitrust obstacles to their mega-deal. As I’ve reported before, a combined Bayer-Monsanto would own 29 percent of the global seed market, and 25 percent of the global pesticide market. And if the pending merger between agribiz goliaths Dow and DuPont also wins approval, three enormous companies—the above two combined firms, plus Syngenta (itself recently taken over by a Chinese chemical conglomerate)—would sell about 59 percent of the globe’s seeds and 64 percent of its pesticides. In this post, I tease out how such concentrated power can harm farmers and consumers alike.

And as The Wall Street Journal reports, opposition to these mergers has arisen even in rival agribusiness circles, including among the motley crew of execs and aligned GOP farm-state pols who served on Trump’s rural advisory committee during the campaign. Iowa corn, pork, and ethanol magnate Bruce Rastetter, a member of that committee and a leading candidate for the USDA post, told The Journal he “plans to raise his concerns about the mergers directly with Mr. Trump in the near future.” Rastetter is tightly aligned with Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, whom Trump has picked to serve as ambassador to China.

As with everything else he does, Trump seems intent on plunging these momentous decisions—on both the future of the seed market and the leadership of the USDA—into a swirling sea of chaos and drama.

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Trump Somehow Found Time Today to Meet With Monsanto Execs

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Living At Home Has Become Steadily More Popular Since the 1960s

by VioletLJGnnihr Posted on December 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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According to the Wall Street Journal, millennials are living in their parents’ basements at record rates:

Almost 40% of young Americans were living with their parents, siblings or other relatives in 2015, the largest percentage since 1940, according to an analysis of census data by real estate tracker Trulia.

Despite a rebounding economy and recent job growth, the share of those between the ages of 18 and 34 doubling up with parents or other family members has been rising since 2005. Back then, before the start of the last recession, roughly one out of three were living with family.

Hmmm. “Rising since 2005.” I’ll assume that’s technically true, but take a look at the chart that accompanies the Journal piece. The number of young adults living with their parents rose in the 70s. And the 80s. And the aughts. And the teens. Basically, it’s been on an upward trend for nearly half a century. That seems more noteworthy to me than the fact that it failed to blip slightly downward after the Great Recession ended.

Part of the reason, of course, is that people have been getting married and settling down later in life. According to the OECD, the average age at first marriage has increased nearly five years just since 1990, and ranges between 30 and 35 around the world:

The United States is still at the low end of the world average.

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Living At Home Has Become Steadily More Popular Since the 1960s

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ERP Blogstorm Part 3: Banking

by GrantBramlett Posted on December 18, 2016

Mother Jones

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Part three of our series of charts from the Economic Report of the President is all about banking. Mostly, it’s a trip down memory lane. Here’s a look at the worldwide market in derivatives over the past couple of decades:

The volume of derivatives went from $10 trillion to $35 trillion in two years starting right before the market crashed. Here’s another perspective on that:

In 1990, shadow banking was about the same size as the traditional banking sector. By 2007 it was more than twice as big. Just before the crash, shadow banking comprised two-thirds of the entire banking industry and it was almost entirely unregulated. This is why I was happy that Hillary Clinton at least mentioned shadow banking during the campaign.

Here’s how all this affected tradition banks:

In 2007, losses from trading amounted to about $30 billion. By 2009 that had skyrocketed to about $100 billion—and that’s in addition to about $40 billion in traditional loan losses. This is what happens when you start with a housing market that’s already in bubble territory and then egg it on with insane levels of rocket science derivatives, most of them unregulated bastard offspring of the shadow banking sector.

So what’s happened since then? We had a huge crash, the Fed instituted higher capital ratios for “systemically important financial institutions,” and we passed the Dodd-Frank reforms. Here’s what banks look like now:

Before the Great Recession, the biggest banks (green line) had Tier 1 equity ratios of about 7 percent. That’s why they couldn’t weather the crash. Today they’re above 12 percent. Is that enough? Maybe not. But it’s a helluva lot better than it used to be.

Finally, here’s an intriguing chart that shows one of the specific consequences of Dodd-Frank:

Most single-name derivatives are now cleared through a central clearinghouse, which makes it easy for traders to cancel out mirror-image positions they hold. This is called “compression,” and it reduces the total volume of derivatives and increases the safety of the financial system. Today, derivatives worth $200 trillion (notional) are compressed out of existence each year.

Needless to say, Republicans are hellbent on repealing Dodd-Frank. Sure, it makes the banking system safer and helps protect consumers, but big banks don’t like it, so that’s that. The party of Donald Trump, the working man’s president, will do whatever Wall Street tells them to do. Funny how that works, isn’t it?

Continued: 

ERP Blogstorm Part 3: Banking

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No, the Senate Will Not "Heavily Vet" Trump’s Cabinet Nominees

by VictoriaEtheridg Posted on December 15, 2016

Mother Jones

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At the Wall Street Journal today, Damian Paletta notes that Donald Trump is announcing his cabinet picks at a faster pace than his predecessors:

But there also are signs some of Mr. Trump’s choices haven’t been rigorously vetted during the informal deliberation process….That leaves open the possibility that the first officials to study such material will be the Senate committees that next year will conduct the confirmation hearings, a process that can be grueling and disqualifying.

….People involved in the process said Mr. Trump is running an unorthodox transition process—much like his campaign. He is making some decisions based on gut instinct and his chemistry with people, and at times has revealed the name of a nominee before his transition team was ready for the announcement.

Well, that’s about what we expect from Trump. But the Journal’s headline writer concludes that this means Trump’s picks are “likely to face heavy Senate vetting.” Raise your hand if you believe that. Anyone?

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No, the Senate Will Not "Heavily Vet" Trump’s Cabinet Nominees

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Trump and a Bunch of Silicon Valley Moguls Had an Awkward Little Talk Today

by Valenci2942 Posted on December 15, 2016

Mother Jones

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Executives from Facebook, Apple, Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Amazon, and other Silicon Valley tech giants had a much-anticipated meeting with Donald Trump this afternoon, despite the rocky relationship between tech groups and Trump during his campaign. According to the Wall Street Journal, the president-elect struck a “conciliatory tone,” leading off the meeting with the reassurance that he wants “to help you folks do well.”

“We want you to keep going with the incredible innovation,” he continued. “Anything we can do to help this go along we’re going to be there for you.”

That tone is in sharp contrast to the more critical, sometimes hostile words exchanged between Silicon Valley leaders and Trump in the months leading up to his election. Many tech moguls repeatedly lambasted Trump, characterizing his views on immigration and trade as “a disaster for innovation,” while Trump castigated tech executives for, among other things, sending jobs overseas. In one notable instance, Trump also accused Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos for buying the Washington Post—temporarily blacklisted by Trump for its unfavorable coverage of his campaign—to keep taxes low and avoid antitrust scrutiny.

The only tech billionaire at the meeting who supported Trump during his campaign was Peter Thiel, the entrepreneur and venture capitalist who founded PayPal. Thiel, who spoke at the Republican National Convention in July and is now on Trump’s transition team, helped decide who from Silicon Valley should be invited to the meeting. One striking omission from the guest list was Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who was reportedly excluded as retribution over a failed “crooked Hillary” emoji hashtag.

According to sources close to the meeting, the official agenda was focused on jobs and the role of technology in government. It’s unclear whether other issues important to the attendees were topics of discussion at the meeting. Climate change, for example, which Trump has repeatedly denied, is a priority for Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who acquired the solar panel company SolarCity only a week before the election. Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook and author of Lean In, has forcefully advocated better women’s workplace rights.

On Tuesday, Bill Gates paid a visit to the president-elect only a day after launching a $1 billion fund to fight climate change with clean energy innovation. “We had a good conversation about innovation, how it can help in health, education, impact of foreign aid, and energy,” Gates said after the meeting.

Many in Silicon Valley remain wary of how a Trump presidency will change the industry following its exponential growth during the Obama administration. But Trump is doing his best to be liked. “I’m very honored by the bounce,” he said during the meeting Wednesday in reference to the recent uptick in stocks. “Everybody’s talking about the bounce, so everybody in this room has to like me at least a little bit.”

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Trump and a Bunch of Silicon Valley Moguls Had an Awkward Little Talk Today

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