[AMV] Amerikaanse politiek #299 Karma Comeyleon

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Op vrijdag 12 mei 2017 10:47 schreef Ulx het volgende:

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Dat doet hij dus door volledige loyaliteit van iedereen te eisen en mensen die dat niet kunnen/mogen/willen of gewoon kritisch zijn te ontslaan. Misschien nog wel erger dan een gevalletje doofpottenbakken.

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Op vrijdag 12 mei 2017 11:06 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:
Een burger die MacArthur, die ene van de MacArthur amendment, vertelt wat hij er van vindt: http://abcnews.go.com/Pol(...)hare_facebook_widget

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Op vrijdag 12 mei 2017 11:06 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:
Een burger die MacArthur, die ene van de MacArthur amendment, vertelt wat hij er van vindt: http://abcnews.go.com/Pol(...)hare_facebook_widget

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Op vrijdag 12 mei 2017 11:21 schreef DustPuppy het volgende:

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That was a beautiful thing.

Helaas waarschijnlijk aan dovemansoren gericht.

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Op vrijdag 12 mei 2017 10:18 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:
Mag je trouwens het feit dat het hoofd van elk intelligence agency die gehoord worden in de hearings van de senaat die keer op keer bevestigen dat het volgens hen de Russen waren als bewijs aan dragen of is ook dat fake news?

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Op vrijdag 12 mei 2017 10:39 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:
Meneer Elzies c.s. zijn als een wesp op een zonnig terras: irritant, maar je doet er het verstandigst aan om ze te negeren. Hoe harder je ze probeert te verjagen hoe irritanter ze worden. Uiteindelijk worden ze irrelevant door de realiteit van onvermijdelijke gebeurtenissen: wespen gaan in de winter dood, Trump is ook geen eeuwig gegeven.

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In a carefully-written statement, Grassley said that he and Feinstein were indeed briefed by Comey on the particular individuals targeted in the current FBI investigation. And Grassley strongly implied — in fact, did everything but come out and say directly — that the president is not one of those individuals.

http://www.washingtonexam(...)ssia/article/2622899

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Op vrijdag 12 mei 2017 10:53 schreef Ulx het volgende:

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Hij heeft het recht dat te doen. Maar ingrijpen in een lopend onderzoek mag niet. We zullen wel zien wat er nu gaat gebeuren. De FBI kan zijn bloed wel drinken nu. Ik verwacht dat die zich wel gaan vastbijten en dingen gaan lekken naar de pers.

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Former FBI Asst. Director: Trump and the FBI Are Not 'At War'

After President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, many in the media have suggested that Trump is now at war with the bureau.

Former FBI Assistant Director Ron Hosko said on "The Story" tonight that he does not believe that's the case.

He explained that Comey's firing doesn't directly impact the FBI's ongoing investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

http://insider.foxnews.co(...)ing-trump-vs-fbi-war

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Sessions moves to lengthen drug sentences
AG rolls back Obama-era policy that allowed many to escape stiff mandatory minimums

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is reversing one of the central elements of the Obama administration's criminal justice reform agenda: a Justice Department policy that led to prosecutors in drug cases often filing charges in a way that avoided triggering mandatory minimum sentences in federal law.

Sessions is withdrawing a 2013 directive from Attorney General Eric Holder that instructed federal prosecutors not to specify the amount of drugs involved when charging low-level and non-violent drug offenders. That policy effectively gave judges discretion to set sentences lower than the mandatory punishments ranging from five years to life in prison federal law dictates when someone is convicted of a crime involving a certain quantity of illegal drugs.

In a memo distributed to federal prosecutors nationwide Thursday, Sessions said the department default in future cases will return to a previous policy of filing the most serious charge available against a defendant under the provable facts.

"It is a core principle that prosecutors should charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense," Sessions said in the directive, dated Wednesday.

The attorney general suggested that moves to lessen the impact of mandatory minimums should come from Congress, rather than being unilaterally implemented by the Executive Branch.

"This policy affirms our responsibility to enforce the law, is moral and just, and produces consistency. This policy fully utilizes the tools Congress has given us," he wrote.
Sessions' move bucks a growing trend in recent years—in Washington and in states across the country—to abandon some of the harshest sentencing policies created in the 1980s-era war on drugs. Many experts say those laws and sentencing rules led to drug offenders spending decades in prison or even receiving life behind bars, when lesser sentences would have been adequate. The laws also ballooned the prison population, leading to costs that were unsustainable for some state governments.

"The Justice Department’s expected shift to prosecuting and incarcerating more offenders, including low-level and drug offenders, is an ineffective way to protect public safety," Brett Tolman, a U.S. Attorney for Utah under President George W. Bush, said in a statement anticipating the policy change. "Decades of experience shows we cannot arrest and incarcerate our way out of America’s drug problem. Instead, we must direct resources to treatment and to specifically combatting violent crime. This will help law enforcement do our jobs better.”

However, Sessions' action does appear to dovetail with his concern that violent crime and drug-related crime are on the rise and that more aggressive law enforcement can help combat that trend. While violent crime statistics have ticked up in the past couple of years, they remain near historic lows. There is a bipartisan consensus that certain forms of drug abuse are on the rise, particularly abuse of opioids and prescription painkillers.

Speaking at an opioid-abuse summit in West Virginia Thursday, Sessions conceded that problem won't be solved solely by putting more people in prison but he insisted that tougher law enforcement is an essential part of the solution.

"It is a big, critical part of it," the attorney general said. "We’re on a bad trend right now. We've got too much complacency about drugs. Too much talk about recreational drugs," Sessions said, railing against what he called "the pro-drug crowd."

While the new policy does instruct prosecutors to generally pursue the most serious provable charge, it does allow for exceptions based on "good judgment." The policy does not list any criteria for those exceptions, but says they must be approved by supervisors in U.S. attorneys' offices or at Justice Department headquarters.

Sessions' move will change plea negotiations with defendants, although it's not entirely clear what the ultimate impact will be. Individuals transporting a large quantity of drugs or with tangential involvement in a conspiracy involving large amounts of drugs will expect to more often be exposed to the potential of a stiff minimum mandatory sentence, which could induce them to cooperate.

Much will depend on the exceptions allowed under the new policy and whether prosecutors use that mechanism to file reduced charges against such cooperators or whether prosecutors use their continuing discretion in such instances not to file any charges at all against the lowest-level participants in a crime.

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Tax credits may provide rallying point for Senate Obamacare repeal
At least one part of the Senate's health care plan might look a bit like Obamacare.

Senate Republicans are working on a potential breakthrough that could help push through an Obamacare repeal bill – by making insurance subsidies look a lot like Obamacare.

There’s growing support for the idea of pegging the tax credits in the House repeal bill to income and making aid more generous for poorer people. But those moves — while they may win consensus among Senate moderates — are unlikely to sit well with House conservatives.

The financial assistance in the House bill “is just not robust enough to make sure that low-income individuals can actually afford a [health] plan,” said Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.). “If you bring those income limits down for people who really need the help, you can give them more help.”

Though the senators are intensely divided on other issues in the repeal package, the tax subsidies are emerging as one of the few areas of agreement within the Senate GOP as they start to write their own Obamacare repeal bill. The goal is to provide more assistance to very low-income Americans than the House did, according to several Republican lawmakers and congressional aides.

Details haven’t been sketched out, but lawmakers are already downplaying any resemblances to Obamacare.

“Because we’re talking about a health care bill, virtually anything we do is going to have some elements of some sort of artifact of Obamacare,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who supports the emerging tax subsidies plan. “I keep telling people … don’t get caught up in appearances, let’s fix the problem.”

The House bill increased tax credits by age. Senators instead want to embrace Obamacare’s model of basing premium assistance on income. Fearing that the House plan punishes people just below Medicare eligibility, they would also boost support for people aged 50 to 64 who stand to see the largest price increases under Obamacare repeal.

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the third-ranking Senate Republican and one of the members of a 13-person working group working on the health bill, floated the general framework of a plan in March. Thune’s idea has gained attention since the House bill passed.

An early draft of the proposal would phase out the tax credits — just like Obamacare and the House plan, these are all advanced refundable tax credits — at 621 percent of the federal poverty level.

The Senate is just getting started on its Obamacare repeal work. A Republican working group met Thursday to discuss insurance market reforms, one of the many areas of policy the GOP wants to address.

Tax credits are the first area where there is likely to be a significant difference between the House and Senate, but it is too early to know whether it will be the biggest divide. Thornier issues, including Medicaid expansion and insurance market reforms, lie ahead.

“The key is putting it all in a package that could get 51 votes,” said Tillis.

House Republicans have been concerned that the Senate would push the repeal bill so far to the center that it wouldn’t be able to get back through the House. Any differences between the House and Senate plans would have to be sorted out in a conference or by one chamber passing the other’s bill.

The House health care plan would provide financial assistance to a broader spectrum of people than the proposal being discussed by the Senate. The House tax credits wouldn’t start to phase out until an individual made $75,000, or a married couple, $115,000, or 800 percent of the federal poverty level. And older people got more help than younger people to account for their higher health costs.

In contrast, Thune’s proposal would phase out the tax credits at a lower income — 621 percent of the federal poverty level or $74,907 for a family of four — but those credits would be larger.

The details will matter here: providing tax credits cost money and will have to be set off by other savings.

Lawmaker such as Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) back the idea of making bigger payments to a smaller group of people.

“I very much support lowering” the subsidy eligibility, he said. “Instead of going to 800 percent, getting it to a level where people who are lower income, lower middle income can actually afford to purchase health insurance. To do health care reform and yet people may not have the means to actually purchase health insurance policy doesn’t seem to me to take us anywhere.”

The Senate plan would also provide additional assistance to people between the ages of 50 and 64, who stand to see significant premium hikes under repeal because insurers will be able to charge them more. It's still unclear what the additional help will look like. But it will be important to the House.

The House included some funding in their bill that lawmakers hoped the Senate would use to add financial help for the pre-Medicare population.

“We added money to this bill, which the Senate will complete the job, of making sure that the tax credits for those people who are in their older cohorts, 50s and 60s, with a much larger tax credit to reflect those changes, the fact that their health care costs more,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), a key player in the Senate discussions, said there has been a “good deal of discussion” on the Thune proposal but it hasn’t been a working group topic yet. “We’re working on Medicaid and lowering premiums right now. Tax credits is coming up.”

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Op vrijdag 12 mei 2017 13:13 schreef Monolith het volgende:
Sessions gaat vrolijk door met het reanimeren van falend beleid:

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bron

En nog wat nieuws over de zorgwet in de senaat:

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bron

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Op vrijdag 12 mei 2017 12:55 schreef Vader_Aardbei het volgende:

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Helaas voor jou denkt de FBI zelf daar anders over.

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Op vrijdag 12 mei 2017 10:48 schreef Mystikvm het volgende:

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Het is in elk geval niet strafbaar. Zolang het Congres niet ingrijpt moet men gewoon op de volgende verkiezingen wachten, ben ik bang.

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Op donderdag 11 mei 2017 23:25 schreef Nintex het volgende:

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realDonaldTrump twitterde op donderdag 11-05-2017 om 21:55:34 We finally agree on something Rosie. https://t.co/BSP5F3PgbZ reageer retweet

The Donald strikes again

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https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/05/trump-wants-goddamned-steam-not-digital-catapults-on-aircraft-carriers/526386/?utm_source=atlfb

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realDonaldTrump twitterde op vrijdag 12-05-2017 om 13:53:48 The Fake Media is working overtime today! reageer retweet

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Op vrijdag 12 mei 2017 13:54 schreef monkyyy het volgende:

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Misschien dat hij Comey wel ontslagen heeft, zodat hij Rosie op dr plek kon zetten.

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realDonaldTrump twitterde op vrijdag 12-05-2017 om 13:59:00 As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!.... reageer retweet

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WSJ twitterde op vrijdag 12-05-2017 om 05:04:48 Breaking: Trump administration says it has struck deal with Beijing to increase U.S. companies' access to Chinahttps://t.co/tAD3oTeFMs reageer retweet

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thehill twitterde op vrijdag 12-05-2017 om 02:52:04 Saudi Arabia to announce investment of $40 billion in US infrastructure: report https://t.co/kkXnMSXypj https://t.co/6vwjST5lYZ reageer retweet