**President Trump 2018 Thread**

[Brian]

Figured 160 pages is enough on last years.

[Dick Allen]

Yesterday he was all about compromise, would sign anything the people in the room agreed upon. Today, back to the wall.

 

I know I would feel a lot safer with the wall. Face it, they aren't sending their best. Rapists, murderers, drug dealers, and fraudulent voters who only vote democrat are the ones coming over. It needs to stop. Trump will get this big wall built very cheaply, and it will be beautiful, and Mexico is going to pay for it.

Edited January 10, 2018 by Dick Allen

[caulfield12]

Consensual?

Or a deliberate choice of consent being modified?

 

 

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/201...ont-work-214167

The World is Full Of Walls That Don’t Work

 

 

https://sports.yahoo.com/ohio-youth-team-pl...-163830808.html

Racism coming out from the shadows...Ohio youth team thinks their racially offensive jerseys are just a funny joke

Edited January 10, 2018 by caulfield12

[Brian]

Consensual was a play of one of his recent tweets. Think I spelled it wrong in title

[Big Hurtin]

JUST IN: Trump refuses to commit to Mueller interview

 

https://twitter.com/thehill/status/951191999209713666

 

[pettie4sox]

JUST IN: Trump refuses to commit to Mueller interview

 

https://twitter.com/thehill/status/951191999209713666

 

Makes sense there was no collusion!

 

Let it go snowflakes!

[Balta1701]

Unfortunately for Mr. Trump, there is precedent here - the Supreme Court previously ruled that the President can be forced to testify in cases relating to things that happened before he took office, his staff can be forced to testify, his lawyers can be forced to testify. Almost all of that was officially decided during the Clinton administration due to subpoenas from Ken Starr. He can also be called to testify for crimes related to actions in office.

 

Apparently KellyAnne Conway's husband was one of the key litigators in those cases, I just learned.

[caulfield12]

Steve King

Steve King

@SteveKingIA

A DACA Amnesty in exchange for a wall and enforcement would be the LAST deal of a Trump administration. Unless a second amnesty is served up to trade for more enforcement. No civilized nation should be held hostage to amnesty as a requirement to secure its border.

11:21 AM · Jan 11, 2018 from Washington, DC

[Kyyle23]

King is a truly reprehensible person

[pettie4sox]

King is a truly reprehensible person

 

He is, Iowans should absolutely be ashamed of him.

Edited January 11, 2018 by KagakuOtoko

[StrangeSox]

Confused Trump Tricked by Fox News Into Opposing His Own Surveillance Bill

 

More live-tweeting during "Executive Time," this time he ends up opposing his own administration's policies. Love that the President's primary source of information and understanding is a cable propaganda network.

[Dick Allen]

https://t.co/3goQfjM7vC

 

Country’s top employer raises minimum wage and gives bonuses as a result of GOP tax plan.

Bonuses aren't as good as raises. Also, try to live on $11 an hour. Do you really think this is a windfall for those employees?

Edited January 11, 2018 by Dick Allen

[Brian]

AT&T laid off thousands after the GOP tax cut.

I get to see next week if I get any sort of raise. Fingers crossed.

[Dick Allen]

AT&T laid off thousands after the GOP tax cut.

I get to see next week if I get any sort of raise. Fingers crossed.

My employer gave us 2 mousepads. One to take home.

[StrangeSox]

https://t.co/3goQfjM7vC

 

Country’s top employer raises minimum wage and gives bonuses as a result of GOP tax plan.

 

Being at full employment is creating some of that pressure to raise wages, too. This is another good part:

 

The company said it's also expanding its parental and maternity leave policy. Full-time hourly workers in the United States will get 10 weeks of paid maternity leave and six weeks of paid parental leave.

 

What we will have to see, and it'll be years down the road, is a big complex mix of how this all shakes out with respect to income and wealth inequality, how the wage growth keeps up over time (easy to grab some good press with one-time bonuses right now), and how badly federal programs that many of these same workers rely on will get cut. If you get a $2k/year raise but all of a sudden you're losing $5k/year in assistance, that's still a net loss.

 

Tamping down the top statutory corporate rate in an honest effort to reform the tax code never was the big issue, but this legislation also didn't really simplifying anything.

[StrangeSox]

Guy Who Defended Prop 8 And Backed Torture Memo Author Says He’ll Make A Great Judge

Trump court nominee Howard Nielson told senators not to worry about that time he attacked a gay judge’s impartiality.

 

WASHINGTON ― Howard Nielson fought for California’s short-lived ban on same-sex marriage, argued that a gay judge should be disqualified from overseeing a case challenging that law, and defended a former Justice Department colleague who wrote a controversial and now-rescinded memo authorizing the CIA’s use of torture.

 

Now Nielson is President Donald Trump’s nominee to a lifetime seat on the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah. On Wednesday, he insisted to the Senate Judiciary Committee that his record shouldn’t call into question his ability to be fair-minded.

 

The conservative movement is largely okay with whatever Trump wants to do or say or whatever outside forces helped win him the election because he largely gives them what they want.

 

 

[Iwritecode]

Bonuses aren't as good as raises. Also, try to live on $11 an hour. Do you really think this is a windfall for those employees?

 

This is completely anecdotal but I actually worked at a Wal-Mart for about 3 years in the early 2000s. I don't remember how much I was actually making, probably around $7/hour or so. Maybe $8/hour. It was simply a second job for me so I didn't care all that much.

 

Most of the people I worked with were either younger (HS/college age) and didn't have a family to support or were a second income for their family. Their spouse worked somewhere else and made decent enough money. Most of the people that were the main bread-winnners for their family were in supervisor or management positions where they made more money.

 

According to one of the articles I read the average salary for their full-time workers is already $13. So I wonder what percentage of their workforce this will actually affect.

 

I also read that the bonus is UP TO $1000 based on service time. Only employees with 20 years of service will get the full $1000.

[Dick Allen]

This is completely anecdotal but I actually worked at a Wal-Mart for about 3 years in the early 2000s. I don't remember how much I was actually making, probably around $7/hour or so. Maybe $8/hour. It was simply a second job for me so I didn't care all that much.

 

Most of the people I worked with were either younger (HS/college age) and didn't have a family to support or were a second income for their family. Their spouse worked somewhere else and made decent enough money. Most of the people that were the main bread-winnners for their family were in supervisor or management positions where they made more money.

 

According to one of the articles I read the average salary for their full-time workers is already $13. So I wonder what percentage of their workforce this will actually affect.

 

I also read that the bonus is UP TO $1000 based on service time. Only employees with 20 years of service will get the full $1000.

Yeah, just their lowest employees get a raise, and if they work a full day it comes to probably just under $7 a day after taxes since their minimum was $10.

[Balta1701]

Yeah, just their lowest employees get a raise, and if they work a full day it comes to probably just under $7 a day after taxes since their minimum was $10.

?

[Bob Sacamano]

This is completely anecdotal but I actually worked at a Wal-Mart for about 3 years in the early 2000s. I don't remember how much I was actually making, probably around $7/hour or so. Maybe $8/hour. It was simply a second job for me so I didn't care all that much.

 

Most of the people I worked with were either younger (HS/college age) and didn't have a family to support or were a second income for their family. Their spouse worked somewhere else and made decent enough money. Most of the people that were the main bread-winnners for their family were in supervisor or management positions where they made more money.

 

According to one of the articles I read the average salary for their full-time workers is already $13. So I wonder what percentage of their workforce this will actually affect.

 

I also read that the bonus is UP TO $1000 based on service time. Only employees with 20 years of service will get the full $1000.

 

This is exactly how these types of jobs are supposed to be unless you are in management at the company, IMO. Of course you aren't going to be paid great.

Edited January 11, 2018 by soxfan2014

[GoSox05]

Regardless if your supporting a family or a college student you should be properly paid for your labor.

[StrangeSox]

This is exactly how these types of jobs are supposed to be unless you are in management at the company, IMO. Of course you aren't going to be paid great.

 

Increasingly, and this means going back at least a couple of decades, that's not how these jobs are even if they're "supposed" to be. More and more people have had to rely on low-wage service sector jobs like retail and restaurants as manufacturing and other better-paying work has disappeared. The average age of a worker in this sort of job has steadily crept upwards. This is from a few years back and is specifically about fast-food workers, but I think the stats apply broadly across food and retail sectors.

 

edit: some more specifically on retail workers, consider the source is a pro-worker group but the main takeaways are the statistics

 

Effect on Workers and Their Families

More than 700,000 Americans would be lifted out of poverty, and more than 1.5 million retail workers and their families would move up from in or near poverty. Retail jobs are a crucial source of income for the families of workers in the sector, yet currently more than 1 million retail workers and their family members live in or near poverty.3 More than 95 percent of year-round employees at large retail firms are ages 20 and above. More than half (54.2 percent) of workers in this group contribute at least 50 percent of their family’s total income. A large number of them

– almost 1 in 5 – are the sole earner for their family. Our study finds:

 

A wage standard equivalent to $25,000 for a full-time, year-round employee would lift 734,075 people currently in poverty – including retail workers and the families they support – above the federal poverty line.

An additional 769,191 people hovering just above poverty would see their incomes rise to above 150 percent of the poverty line.

 

 

The model of retail or fast food jobs being mainly "high schooler's first job" died out in the 90's. Those workers are still there, but so are a lot of older workers including some who are the sole provider for a family.

Edited January 11, 2018 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

And speaking of better-paying jobs that could lead to careers and paths out of retail/food sector poverty wage work, the tax bill is only going to hurt that.

 

Tax Law May Send Factories and Jobs Abroad, Critics Say

 

“Factories will be pouring into this country,” Mr. Trump told a crowd in St. Charles, Mo., in November. “The tax cut will mean more companies moving to America, staying in America and hiring American workers right here.”

 

The bill that Mr. Trump signed, however, could actually make it attractive for companies to put more assembly lines on foreign soil.

 

Under the new law, income made by American companies’ overseas subsidiaries will face United States taxes that are half the rate applied to their domestic income, 10.5 percent compared with the new top corporate rate of 21 percent.

“It’s sort of an America-last tax policy,” said Kimberly Clausing, an economist at Reed College in Portland, Ore., who studies tax policy. “We are basically saying that if you earn in the U.S., you pay X, and if you earn abroad, you pay X divided by two.”

 

What could be more dangerous for American workers, economists said, is that the bill ends up creating a tax break for manufacturers with foreign operations. Under the new rules, beyond the lower rate, companies will not have to pay United States taxes on the money they earn from plants or equipment located abroad, if those earnings amount to 10 percent or less of the total investment.

So while companies will now have to pay some tax in most cases, wherever they operate, they will pay much less on what they make abroad than at home.

 

“Having such a low rate on foreign income is outrageous,” said Stephen E. Shay, a senior lecturer at Harvard Law School and a Treasury Department official during the Reagan and Obama administrations. “It creates terrible incentives.”

 

Mr. Shay said the new rule could make a big difference for small and medium-size companies, which make up a vast majority of American businesses. When those companies used to ask him whether to open offices abroad, he advised against it if they needed to bring their cash home.

 

Such companies, Mr. Shay said, now have no reason to resist the temptation to shift some of their operations abroad, since they would end up paying half the rate they would pay in the United States.

[Iwritecode]

Increasingly, and this means going back at least a couple of decades, that's not how these jobs are even if they're "supposed" to be. More and more people have had to rely on low-wage service sector jobs like retail and restaurants as manufacturing and other better-paying work has disappeared. The average age of a worker in this sort of job has steadily crept upwards. This is from a few years back and is specifically about fast-food workers, but I think the stats apply broadly across food and retail sectors.

 

edit: some more specifically on retail workers, consider the source is a pro-worker group but the main takeaways are the statistics

 

 

 

 

The model of retail or fast food jobs being mainly "high schooler's first job" died out in the 90's. Those workers are still there, but so are a lot of older workers including some who are the sole provider for a family.

 

In the overall scheme of things, 1 million isn't a lot. There are 123 million full-time workers in the country right now. I don't know if that includes part time workers or not. Less than 1% of them live in poverty?

[Dick Allen]

In the overall scheme of things, 1 million isn't a lot. There are 123 million full-time workers in the country right now. I don't know if that includes part time workers or not. Less than 1% of them live in poverty?

What is really the poverty level vs. what is considered the poverty level are two very different things.