A Relatively Slow Week
I think this qualifies as a slow week in the Trump presidency.
Let’s see, we became the first country to open our embassy in Jerusalem. There were riots and deaths in the region. The First Lady went into the hospital. The President visited capital hill to try and push things along. Some continued to try and argue the progress with North Korea was a bad thing, claiming the President caved in. North Korea itself threatened to cancel the summit. Turkey kicked out our ambassador. The Mueller investigation entered year two. The supreme court over ruled seven lower courts and said sports gambling is legal. There’s more, and 60% of the week to go, but doesn’t it feel like a quieter week?
That’s the pace we have been on with Trump and the MSM.
Some Thoughts, Comments and Other News
FIRST: Did you see the new tax law passed in Seattle? The City Council voted 8-1 to impose a new tax on companies with $20 million revenue. The tax is $275.00 per person. The tax will impact companies headquartered there like Amazon and Starbucks. It is expected to raise $50 million per year and be used toward outreach efforts for the homeless, including affordable housing and emergency shelter.
We’ve reported before that Seattle is one of the high tax liberal cities. Now both Amazon’s Besos, and Stabucks’ Shultz, have been outspoken supporters of liberal causes. So far neither has commented on this new unique tax; though Amazon had halted planning on a new 17-story office tower pending the city council’s decision. They do employ more than 40,000 workers in Seattle, with plans for further expansion.
We’ll see now.
By the way, the original proposal was for $550 per person, but the mayor thought that was too much right now. Which means, wait a little while.
In addition to Amazon and Starbucks, Boeing, Costco Wholesalers and Microsoft are in Seattle. They too declined comment.
SECOND: Sports betting will be another state resource for new revenue. In fact NJ, which brought the case, is expected to have its first betting spot open by May 28. It will be at Monmouth Racetrack. Other states will follow quickly.
Now here’s the question. What will happen to the funds generated? Will they be used to lower your state taxes; or will the state just spend more? That’s one bet we would make, we know that answer.
Now you might hear “all the money will go to” and they’ll name something like education, or the homeless. Here’s a suggestion. See if those budgets increase or it is a sleight of hand. You see, what they do is direct those funds to say education, but then they reduce what they were giving before. So they can say “yes every dollar earned from this goes to education”, which is true, but its not an increase in that line, just a replacement.
Finally, remember this. Betting on horse racing was once king in this country. New York wanted some of the action, and to take it away from the street bookies. They passed and set up Off Track Betting shops (OTB). Know what happened? OTB went bankrupt in NY. The only ones who lost money taking the bets.
A Reversal: Can you believe that Democrats are running against Republicans for causing higher health care costs? You see when President Trump cancelled the mandate for all to buy, that led to higher costs for those buying. Now in some states the Dems have started advertising that Republicans tried to cancel your insurance and have driven the costs higher. Amazing isn’t it?
No changes in the Gina Haspel vote totals. 2 Dems for her, offset 2 Republicans against her. We still think she wins approval with votes to spare.
Did you hear that Bill O’Reilly who has been working at Newsmax may be getting a show on that station? The rumor is he is going to take the 8:00 slot. He has been featured on their web site often in the past month. We think this will happen.
Speaking of ratings here’s some news on May ratings and what CNN’s Stormy Daniels focus did for them:
During the first week of May this year, CNN averaged just 859,000 total viewers and 286,000 demo viewers, which represents a jaw-dropping collapse of 23 percent and 29 percent, respectively.
By comparison, year-over-year in primetime, Fox News is up 5 percent in total viewers (2.24 million compared to 2.359 million) and experience only a 1 percent drop in the demo (453K compared to 448K).
MSNBC enjoyed a 4 percent increase in total viewers (1.69 million compared to 1.755 million) and a 16 percent drop in the demo (417K compared to 352K).
So, during primetime last week, CNN was only able to attract an average of 859,000 total viewers compared to 1.755 million for MSNBC and 2.359 million for Fox.
In other words, MSNBC is nearly doubling CNN’s total primetime viewers while Fox News is nearly tripling CNN.
Here are the numbers for 2017 vs. 2018.
Primetime (total viewers — demo viewers)
Fox: 2.24 million — 453K
MSNBC: 1.69 million — 417K
CNN: 1.12 million — 399K
Total Day
Fox: 1.42 million — 302K
MSNBC: 925K — 221K
CNN: 821K — 274K
Primetime
Fox: 2.359 million — 448K
MSNBC: 1.755 million — 352K
CNN: 859K – 286K
Total Day
Fox: 1.358 million — 272K
MSNBC: 960K — 203K
CNN: 649K — 205K
Now back to our quiet week.