The MSM, Trump,Grand Juries and The Future:
The WSJ broke two stories, only one you heard about I bet.
You heard that Special counsel Robert Mueller has convened a grand jury in Washington to investigate allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, right? Big news, which means this investigation has months and months to go. The MSM loves it.
Now here’s a question. We are pretty convinced that there was no collusion between the Trump camp and the Russians. This was the reason for a special counsel, right? To determine if there was. But the charter Mueller has allows him to veer off wherever it takes him. So it will go beyond just the “did the Russians”. Our question is this. We know Trump and team tried to get this behind them because the president thought it was interfering with his message. So can someone be charged for “Obstruction of Justice” for a crime that didn’t happen? What’s the charge, you tried to prevent us finding out you didn’t commit a crime?
Oh yea, the second WSJ story. The Journal has a major story that the Debbie Wasserman Schultz story with the $4 million paid to those Pakistani IT people and the destroyed hard drives has a lot more to it. They are wondering why there is not more coverage and say it deserves much more.
It can’t be because she is a Democratic leader can it?
Speaking of the MSM, isn’t it odd how this AM they have avoided the big news that the Governor of W. Va. announced last night he is switching to the Republican party from the Democratic one. Isn’t that big? How often do you see a sitting Governor change parties? The number one AM show (GMA) ignored the whole thing while covering Mueller and Trump extensively. Shameful bias.
By the way, that makes thirty four states with Republican Governors and twenty five states that have a Republican Governor and state houses and senates. There are only six with Democrats leading all three. Might be news worthy for the MSM if that were reversed.
That said, the MSM and Democratic leaders are convinced they can retake the House next year. That Trump’s been beaten down so badly they can retake control and make Nancy Pelosi speaker again. Now 15 months away in politics is a lifetime, but if the election were held today that would probably occur.
General Kelly, Chief of Staff:
We can be ahead of ourselves but we do see some order coming to the chaos of the WH. General Kelly appears be to bringing military style discipline to the place. We should all hope.
Politicio had this story to support this:
“But unlike Priebus, who allowed staff members to meet directly with Trump or to leave information for him to read on his desk, Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general, has set up a military-style chain of command. The purpose is to see that the president gets good information rather than a mishmash of sometimes conflicting reports.John Kelly knows the challenges he is facing,” Leon Panetta, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, told Politico. Panetta talked to Kelly shortly after he took over as chief of staff. He’s not going to just stand to the side and watch the White House fall apart piece by piece,” Panetta said.
There were two other points in the story we thought you might like:
1. Trump has a reported habit of consuming information from all corners — whether it is reliable or not — and will often act on the last information he received.
2. He also has been known to trust reports he sees on the news more than the classified reports he has access to.
This will get interesting:
The Justice Department has told four cities Albuquerque, Baltimore, and Stockton and San Bernardino in California — that they wouldn’t be eligible for a federal program to combat drug trafficking and gang crime unless they cooperate with immigration agents.
This will get lots of coverage and be some fight to watch. We ask again why do city mayors think they can make their own law whenever they want?
Did you hear this good news?
Japanese automakers Toyota and Mazda on Friday announced it plans to build a $1.6 Billion U.S. plant, with up to 4,000 new jobs as part of an extensive new alliance .
Toyota said it would make the Corolla sedan at the factory instead of Mexico as previously intended.
If we were the MSM our next words would be: Now back to the Russian story.
They did not announce where they will build it, but below the ratings we added part of an analysis as to why Foxconn chose Wisconsin over six other states, including NY, last week to build their plants.
The Ratings:
Total Viewers (Live +SD) WEDNESDAY. Fox wins the night.
- Total day: FNC: 1.671 | CNN: 880 | MSNBC: 1.358 | HLN: 236
- Primetime: FNC: 2.615 | CNN: 1.214 | MSNBC: 2.396 | HLN: 306
| 4p: | 5p: | 6p: | 7p: | 8p: | 9p: | 10p: | 11p: | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FNC | Cavuto: 1.500 |
Specialists: 1.720 |
Baier: 2.156 |
MacCallum: 1.886 |
Carlson: 2.761 |
Five: 2.530 |
Hannity: 2.554 |
Carlson: 1.470 |
| CNN | Tapper: 1.079 |
Blitzer: 1.137 |
Blitzer: 1.030 |
Burnett: 1.173 |
Cooper: 1.342 |
Cooper: 1.226 |
Tonight: 1.071 |
Cooper: 803 |
| MSNBC | Wallace: 1.230 |
MTPDaily: 1.486 |
Melber: 1.332 |
Matthews: 1.930 |
Hayes: 2.045 |
Maddow: 2.635 |
O’Donnell: 2.493 |
Williams: 1.904 |
| HLN | Files: 155 |
Files: 176 |
Files: 181 |
Files: 215 |
Banfield: 246 |
Files: 264 |
Files: 409 |
Files: 390 |
Why did Foxconn choose Wisconsin over states like NY?
President Trump last week suggested that economically struggling upstate New York residents should be willing to move to areas with better job prospects. This wasn’t exactly an original or outrageous idea — yet it still managed to ruffle feathers among defensive New York officials.
Trump’s remark was linked to the announcement that Foxconn had picked Wisconsin over six other states — including New York — as the site for a $10 billion flat-screen manufacturing plant. The president said the unemployed in states like New York should follow the manufacturing-jobs boost to Wisconsin and other states.
“You’re going to need people to work in these massive plants,” Trump said. “I’m going to start explaining to people: When you have an area that just isn’t working like upper New York state, where people are getting very badly hurt, and then you’ll have another area 500 miles away where you can’t get people, I’m going to explain, you can leave.”
Indeed they can. And they have been.
From mid-2010 to mid-2016, nearly 194,000 people moved out of the 50 counties north of the New York City metro region — a net out-migration rate exceeded only by four states. Births and foreign immigrants made up some of the difference, but the total upstate population still dropped by nearly 60,000 people.
Trump, in effect, was simply prodding upstaters to act in their own best economic interests. This nonetheless prompted blowback from, among others, Gov. Cuomo.
Claiming to “deal in facts — not fake news,” a Cuomo spokesman said: “The facts are unemployment has been cut nearly in half and private-sector jobs are at an all-time high in New York.”
The governor’s favorite “facts” are misleading, however.
The unemployment rate has dropped upstate because there are fewer people seeking and available for work, not because more have found jobs.
And those “record” job levels cited by Cuomo’s office are confined mainly to New York City and its suburbs. In most of upstate New York, private-sector employment is still below the 2000 level.
Cuomo has attempted to reverse the trend by spending billions on “economic development,” including new high-tech factories. So far he has little to show for it. Upstate as a whole has continued losing manufacturing jobs since 2010, even as Wisconsin and other Midwestern rust-belt states were adding them for the first time in decades.
To lure Foxconn, Wisconsin reportedly offered up to $3 billion in state tax breaks, or $230,700 per projected worker. That’s a rich package even by Albany standards — one New York couldn’t duplicate at least in part because (thanks to Cuomo) it no longer imposes any state corporate tax on manufacturers. And while upstate New York’s property taxes on homes are sky-high, property taxes on industrial plants in upstate cities are roughly equal to those in Milwaukee. Electricity rates for industrial customers in much of upstate also are competitive with those in the Midwest.
So, taxes aside, what advantages does Wisconsin offer over New York?
For one thing, it’s a right-to-work state, making it harder for unions to organize and force employees to join them. New York, by contrast, is the most heavily unionized state in the nation, and Albany is dominated by organized labor’s political agenda. Not by coincidence, New York employers are saddled with the nation’s third-highest workers’ compensation insurance rates — 54 percent above average, and 38 percent higher than Wisconsin.
While Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has been an aggressive deregulator, New York’s regulatory climate in general is notoriously hostile to businesses. The 1970s-era State Environmental Quality Review Act, which has no equivalent in most states, hands a potent weapon to anti-development activists.
Cuomo, while reducing corporate taxes, has pushed environmental and labor policies that can significantly boost business costs. For example, the governor hasn’t just prohibited shale-gas production via hydro-fracking; he also has blocked expansion of existing natural-gas pipelines in depressed regions such as the Southern Tier, whose few remaining manufacturers would benefit from the alternative energy source.
For all of the challenges faced by upstaters, Wisconsin’s giveaway to Foxconn is not something New York should emulate. Rather, Cuomo and legislative leaders need to dedicate themselves to the much harder, less glamorous work of creating a truly pro-growth climate — which will mean defying some of Albany’s most powerful special interest groups