Rnc Goes After Bill De Blasio Hes Not On The Ballot And Already Has Low Approval Ratings
Dartunorro Clark
The RNC played a montage fearing residents and tenant leaders from New York Citys House Authority buildings, which houses low-income New Yorkers.
The residents and video slammed Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is not on the Democratic ticket. Whats more, he was not invited to speak at the Democratic National Convention. Since the start of the pandemic and racial unrest, de Blasio has been routinely criticized by both conservatives and progressives.
A Change Research poll in March put him at a 40 percent approval rating among the citys residents.
The Biden Campaigns Questionable Social Security Claims
The Biden camp justifies its claims about President Trumps proposed cuts to Social Security by pointing to the Trump administrations recent efforts to implement a payroll tax holiday as part of the ongoing efforts to blunt the economic impact of Covid-19. Payroll taxes help fund Social Security, but they are not synonymous with the program.
In August, the CARES Acts supplemental $600 weekly unemployment benefit ran out. Negotiations for a second stimulus package among the White House, the House Democrats and the Senate Republicans were going nowhere fast. In response to the deadlock in Congress, President Trump enacted a payroll tax holiday by executive order.
Ending the payroll tax has been something of a pet goal for President Trump, even though economists say it wont do much to alleviate the pain endured by laid-off workers.
At the end of the year, the assumption that I win, Im going to terminate the payroll tax, which is another thing that some of the great economists would like to see done, Trump said in mid-August. His political team tried to clarify and massage those comments later, saying Trump was referring to his executive order to defer payroll taxes.
At the end of August, the chief actuary at the Social Security Administration penned a letter saying that removing payroll taxes would cause funding for Social Security to run dry by the middle of 2023.
How Trump Is Proposing Changing Medicare Medicaid And Social Security
When it comes to Medicare, the White House has been very clear: Hes not cutting Medicare in this budget, Vought said. What we are doing is putting forward reforms that lower drug prices. Because Medicare pays a very large of drug prices in this country, has the impact of finding savings. We are also finding waste, fraud, and abuse.
Heres whats actually happening: This budget proposes finding $845 billion in savings over 10 years from Medicare as we know it. But $269 billion of that figure is reclassified under the Department of Health and Human Services, bringing the Medicare cuts to $575 billion. As Vox explained, the administration says it will achieve these cost reductions by targeting wasteful spending and provider payments and lowering prescription drug costs.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which advocates for fiscal responsibility, estimates that 85 percent of these cuts will come from reductions in provider payments, 5 percent would come from policies around medical malpractice, and 11 percent would come from reducing drug costs through the Medicare Part D program. Medicare Part D is the only area of these reforms that could raise out-of-pocket drug prices for some while lowering it for others. Otherwise, premiums, deductibles, and copays would largely be left unaffected.
But when it comes to Trumps proposed changes to Medicaid and Social Security, the intent is unambiguous: These are cuts to benefits.
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Trump Is Taking Aim At Social Security
The presidents budget proposals each year have sought large cuts in funding for Social Security disability. His 2021 budget proposal talks about a need to reduce the rate of increase in Social Security payments.
This should not come as a surprise. When he first ran for president, in 2000, he said he wanted to privatize Social Security, calling it a Ponzi scheme. He wanted to eliminate guaranteed benefits, and have people gamble on the stock market instead. He also promoted raising the age of full benefits up to 70.
After starting to serve as president in 2017, his budget proposals each year have sought large cuts in funding for Social Security disability. His latest one, for fiscal year 2021, seeks $75 billion in cuts for recipients of Social Security Disability , over 10 years. This includes $10 billion in benefit cuts, plus plans to reduce the number of people enrolled by about 5 percent. That would be accomplished with harsher work rules that determine who can qualify. Another cut is to lower the initial retroactive benefit that people get when they first go on Social Security Disability. It currently is 12 months retroactive, but Trump wants to reduce it to six months.
Sought cuts for administrative expenses
His budgets have also included cuts for Social Securitys administrative expenses. That translates into fewer offices, shorter hours, fewer staff, and longer times to process applications to get on Social Security, or even to get answers to simple questions.
Notre Dame Disavows Former Coach’s Attacks On Biden’s Religion
The president of the University of Notre Dame disavowed attacks on Joe Biden made by the school’s former football coach, Lou Holtz, at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday.
“While Coach Lou Holtz is a former coach at Notre Dame, his use of the universitys name at the Republican National Convention must not be taken to imply that the university endorses his views, any candidate or any political party,” Rev. John I. Jenkins said in a statement.
“Moreover, we Catholics should remind ourselves that while we may judge the objective moral quality of anothers actions, we must never question the sincerity of anothers faith, which is due to the mysterious working of grace in that persons heart,” he continued. “In this fractious time, let us remember that our highest calling is to love.”
In his speech at the convention, Holtz praised President Trump and called Biden a “Catholic in name only.”
Asked about the remarks on Thursday in an interview with CNN, Biden asked, Whens the last time darkened the doorway of a church?”
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How Would Trump Approach Fixing Social Security If Reelected To A Second Term
Now for the big question: What happens to Social Security if Donald Trump is reelected as president?
While no one knows this answer with any certainty, we’ve been given a number of clues during his presidency to make logical guesses. Perhaps the biggest clue came in January 2020 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. In an interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box, host Joe Kernen asked Trump if “entitlements ever be on your plate?” to which the president replied, “At some point they will be.”
To be crystal clear, this doesn’t mean that Trump has decreed Social Security spending cuts are coming. However, it does raise eyebrows given the contrasting nature by which Democrats and Republicans have approached fixing Social Security’s imminent cash shortfall.
For instance, Democrats have predominantly been in favor of increasing revenue by raising or eliminating the earnings cap associated with the payroll tax. In 2020, all earned income between $0.01 and $137,700 is subjected to the payroll tax, with earnings beyond $137,700 exempted. Raising or eliminating this cap would require the well-to-do to pay more into the system.
Again, while Trump has not specifically said that spending cuts are going to happen, there is a good likelihood that outlay reductions would be how Trump would tackle Social Security’s imminent cash shortfall.
President Trump speaking to reporters on the White House lawn. Image source: Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian.
How Alice Marie Johnson Became Of Symbol Of Trumps Criminal Justice Reform Agenda
Dartunorro Clark
Two years ago, reality star Kim Kardashian West personally lobbied the president in an Oval Office meeting to intervene on behalf of Alice Marie Johnson.
Johnsons story went viral after she did an interview from inside of an Alabama federal prison in which she was serving a life sentence without parole for a first-time, nonviolent drug offense.
In that video, Johnson shared the details of her story.
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Tv Viewership Dips On Rnc’s Night 3
About 17.3 million people tuned in for Night 3 of the RNC, a decline compared to the second night of the convention and about the same as the first night, according to data released by media measurement company Nielsen.
Night 3 of the Democratic convention drew about 22.8 million viewers.
The downtick happened during a busy news day an NBA player walkout, a hurricane barreling toward Louisiana, and the ongoing unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin that partially drowned out the convention, which Vice President Mike Pence headlined.
The Nielsen data does not take into account people who watched some or all of the convention online. Most major broadcast networks and many other media companies have livestreamed the conventions on various platforms.
But the viewership is still a significant drop off compared to 2016, when Night 3 drew 23.4 million viewers, according to Nielsen.
Trump White House Claim The Tax Relief Will Not Impact Social Security
On Sunday, as he boarded Marine One, Trump told reporters that the executive order deferring payroll taxes for some Americans will “have zero impact on Social Security.”
“We protect Social Security,” he added, according to Fox News.
An official from the White House told USA TODAY on Tuesday that the Social Security Trust Fund is not at risk, since payment deferral is only temporary, and at present, must be paid back early in 2021. The official confirmed, though, that the president called on Congress to make the deferral permanent, thereby eliminating the tax.
Garrett Watson, a senior policy analyst at the Tax Foundation, an independent tax policy think tank, told USA TODAY that eliminating the tax is not the same as eliminating Social Security.
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“Strictly speaking, Social Security could be funded using general fund revenue or alternative revenue source, so terminating a tax and terminating a program are distinct things,” he wrote in an email.
“However, it would be reasonable to ask what would happen with the program absent an alternative plan to fund it,” Watson added.
On Wednesday, Trump suggested an alternate source for the first time the general fund of government revenues per Fox Business.
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Nypd Union Boss Pat Lynch Underscores Trumps Law And Order Message
Dartunorro Clark
Pat Lynch is the president of the Police Benevolent Association, a union with 50,000 active and retired NYPD officers. While it is unusual for him to speak at a political convention, he has been a bullhorn for law enforcement in New York City and around the country, particularly as officers violently clashed with protesters calling for defunding the police.
Lynch has been at loggerheads with the citys mayor, Bill de Blasio, and has generated controversy over the years, such as fiercely opposing the firing of the officer who killed Eric Garner.
His RNC speech was similar to Trumps rhetoric about Democratic-run cities.
Undocumented Immigrants Without Health Care Were Among The ‘essential Workers’ Felled By Covid
Republicans repeated their campaign talking point Thursday night that Democrats want to give health care to immigrants without legal status. But the coronavirus pandemic has shown some of the consequences of high uninsured rates among people without legal status in the U.S.
Early in the pandemic, meat plants slowed their production and Americans feared meat shortages as workers became ill. Some died.
There are an estimated 10.5 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. The rates of those uninsured are high for the population. Not all plant workers are undocumented but the agricultural industry and others are known to rely on these workers and immigrants with legal status.
Undocumented workers are not eligible for health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid or Medicare and most do not have health care coverage through their employers, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Many forgo health care to avoid exposing their undocumented status or affecting future chances for citizenship. Some states provide health coverage with state funding regardless of status, but others deny health care even to pregnant women.
Some immigrants get health care through non-profit community clinics, but the clinics usually only provide preventive and primary care. Often, undocumented immigrants will only seek care when the situation is dire at more costly emergency rooms.
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Trump Swings His Wrecking Ball At Social Security
With everything else that is going wrong in the country and the world in 2020, the one policy issue that I imagined was simply not going to pop back up on the radar screen was Social Security. True, there is always an uninformed audience in the media that falls for fantastical tales of doom and gloom in our retirement system, but with so much genuine doom and gloom in the world, I had hoped that Social Security would escape unscathed.
But Donald Trump has now come up with a truly ridiculous short-term policy that is part of a long con, and it might actually end up destroying Social Security altogether. As I explain below, Social Security would be fine if it were left alone, even under bad long-term scenarios. There are also straightforward ways to make it even better.
Trumps recent talk, however, for the first time raises the very real possibility thatmuch like everything else he touchesthe entire Social Security system could be burned to the ground. We cannot allow that to happen.
And Dont Forget About Dear Leader
The former president condemned the student debt relief program in a statement, saying, Joe Biden and the Radical Left Democrats have just orchestrated another election enhancing money grab, this time to the tune of $300,000,000,000 and just like I predicted, its coming right out of the pocket of the working-class Americans who are struggling the most!
I believe we know from his performance in the White House that Trump was not a fan of homework.
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Fact Check: No Evidence For Trump’s Covid
Jane C. Timm and
In recent months, our nation, and the entire planet, has been struck by a new and powerful invisible enemy. Like those brave Americans before us, we are meeting this challenge. We are delivering lifesaving therapies, and will produce a vaccine before the end of the year, or maybe even sooner! Trump claimed on Thursday night.
This is largely false. The U.S. is still struggling to meet the challenge of the deadly coronavirus, which is still spreading rapidly and killing sometimes more than a thousand people a day while other countries have managed to reduce transmission and dramatically reduce deaths. The U.S. has a quarter of the globe’s confirmed infections, despite having just 4.2 percent of the global population. Meanwhile, testing is limited and shortages of personal protective equipment persist six months after the first days of the pandemic.
Fact Check: Giuliani Wrong About ‘riots’ In ‘democrat’ Cities
Rudy Giuliani made several wrong, exaggerated or misleading claims about policing and law enforcement in the U.S. during his RNC speech Thursday.
Speaking about the protests sparked across the U.S. in response to the death of a Black man, George Floyd, under the knee of a White Minneapolis police officer, Giuliani said, Soon protests turned into riots in many other American cities, almost all Democrats.”
He blamed the violence on “Black Lives Matter and ANTIFA” who he said “sprang into action” and”hijacked peaceful protest into vicious brutal riots.”
He added that, in those riots, “people beaten, shot, and killed. Police officers routinely assaulted, badly beaten, and occasionally murdered.
This is all a substantial distortion and exaggeration of the facts.
According to multiplereports, including a Washington Post fact check, there were no signs that that antifa was behind violence at these protests. As of earlier this month, federal prosecutors had not been able to link dozens of people arrested in protests in Portland, Ore., to antifa.
In fact, in at least one instance where a police officer was killed during a protest, the suspect was actually aligned with a far-right extremist group. In Oakland, Air Force Staff Sgt. Steven Carrillo a member of the boogaloo, an online extremist group with violent views is accused of killing a federal officer. Authorities have said he was using nearby peaceful protests as cover.
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Trump Promises A ‘safe And Effective’ Coronavirus Vaccine ‘this Year’
The president boasts of lifesaving therapies, but critics argue there isn’t enough evidence to back up this claim. One treatment, Remdesivir, has been shown to reduce deaths in severely ill patients with COVID-19. The U.S. recently approved the use of convalescent plasma for COVID-19, but without results from randomized clinical trials the gold standard of medical research theres no clear proof the plasma treatment saved lives. Studies have shown that the treatment is safe and other research suggests it holds promise for treating patients, though.
There is also no evidence that an effective vaccine will be delivered by the end of the year. There are four vaccines currently in clinical trials in the U.S, with the one from Moderna furthest along. But its impossible to know if these vaccines will prove effective.
Vaccines dont always work, one expert told NBC News earlier this year.
Fact Check: Mcconnell Claims Dems Want To Defund Police Give Free Health To Undocumented Immigrants
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said during his RNC speech Thursday that Democrats want to defund the police and that they want free health care for illegal immigrants.
The first claim is misleading, and the second false. Though some progressives within the Democratic Party do support calls to “defund the police,” the official Democratic Party platform, approved last week, includes no reference to it. And, as NBC News has pointed out on the the first, second and third nights of the RNC, Joe Biden, the party’s nominee, does not support defunding the police. He has explicitly said so on multiple occasions.
NBC News has an explainer on the different and sometimes overlapping proposals from activists on how to address police violence here.
Additionally, while some on the left have called for free health care for undocumented immigrants, Biden has not. He supports allowing undocumented immigrants to purchase health care with their own money, they would not be eligible for taxpayer-funded subsidies. The official Democratic Party platform calls for extending Affordable Care Act coverage to Dreamers, and working with Congress to lift the five-year waiting period for Medicaid and Childrens Health Insurance Program eligibility for low-income, lawfully present immigrants.
McConnell also said Democrats want to make Washington, D.C., Americas 51st state.
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