Rand Paul’s Floor Speech
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., addressed the Senate Monday afternoon as his colleagues prepared to vote for a $900 billion coronavirus relief package and told his fellow Republicans who backed the stimulus that they are no better than the Democrats they criticize who align themselves with socialism.
“If free money was the answer… if money really did grow on trees, why not give more free money?” he said. “Why not give it out all the time? Why stop at $600 a person? Why not $1,000? Why not $2,000? Maybe these new Free-Money Republicans should join the Everybody-Gets-A-Guaranteed-Income Caucus? Why not $20,000 a year for everybody, why not $30,000? If we can print out money with impunity, why not do it?”
The Senate did pass the bill 91-6. That’s easily enough to override a Trump veto.
Trump has moaned, and rightfully so, about many of the things in the combined Covid-Budget package that has yet to hit his desk.
But curiously, Rand Paul and Trump are actually at odds.
AOC Agrees With Trump’s Request to Send $2,000 Free Money to Everyone
As noted yesterday, AOC Agrees With Trump’s Request to Send $2,000 Free Money to Everyone.
Will Trump sign it? Veto it? Something else?
Something Else?
Please note the Covid bill still has not reached Trump’s desk. Also note that Congress adjourns on January 3.
These dates are very important.
The constitution gives a president 10 days to sign or veto a bill. If it does not happen within that time, not counting Sundays, the bill becomes law.
But if Congress has formally adjourned (there are procedures to make sure that isn’t artificial, and this one isn’t), that supersedes the 10-day rule.
Letting time expire is known as a pocket veto.
The key date/time to watch is noon on Jan. 3. That is when the 116th Congress comes to an end.
We are now within the 10-day window giving Trump 4 options.
Trump Has Four Options In Play
- Trump can sign the bill and moan about it more.
- Trump can veto the bill but that veto could be overridden.
- Trump can kill the bill by putting it in his pocket.
- Trump can wait until January 2 or the morning of January 3, then veto it, giving Congress minimal time for an override.
Which option will Trump choose?
Mish
If Grassley can give himself $200k a year, he can give Americans $30k a year.
Another Sidney Powell witness is a lying scammer…no special knowledge of anything except making up shit on line and petty criminality…
…As she asked the U.S. Supreme Court this month to overturn President Trump’s election loss, the attorney Sidney Powell cited testimony from a secret witness presented as a former intelligence contractor with insights on a foreign conspiracy to subvert democracy.
Powell told courts that the witness is an expert who could show that overseas corporations helped shift votes to President-elect Joe Biden. The witness’s identity must be concealed from the public, Powell has said, to protect her “reputation, professional career and personal safety.”
The Washington Post identified the witness by determining that portions of her affidavit match, sometimes verbatim, a blog post that the pro-Trump podcaster Terpsichore Maras-Lindeman published in November 2019. In an interview, Maras-Lindeman confirmed that she wrote the affidavit and said she viewed it as her contribution to a fight against the theft of the election….
….In a recent civil fraud case, attorneys for the state of North Dakota said that Maras-Lindeman falsely claimed to be a medical doctor and to have both a PhD and an MBA. They said she used multiple aliases and social security numbers and created exaggerated online résumés as part of what they called “a persistent effort . . . to deceive others.”…
…Maras-Lindeman, 42, served in the Navy for less than a year more than two decades ago and has said she worked later as a government contractor and part-time interpreter. She has identified herself as a “trained cryptolinguist.”….
….North Dakota’s assertions about her credentials came in a civil case brought by the state’s attorney general in 2018 over a purported charitable event she tried to organize in Minot, N.D., where she and her family resided. Attorneys for the state said she used money she collected — ostensibly to fund homeless shelters and wreaths for veterans’ graves — on purchases for herself at McDonald’s, QVC and elsewhere.
A judge ultimately found that Maras-Lindeman violated consumer protection laws by, among other things, misspending money she raised and soliciting donations while misrepresenting her experience and education. He ordered her to pay more than $25,000…..
….Maras-Lindeman, who is of Greek heritage, joined the Navy in December 1996 and spent eight months training in Illinois and Florida as an airman recruit before departing the service in August 1997, according to a Navy record.
In their civil case, North Dakota state attorneys said that Maras-Lindeman created a profile on Together We Served, an online veteran community, that incorrectly depicted an extensive military career.
The profile, which is no longer online, said that Maras-Lindeman reached the rank of lieutenant, served in the combat zones of Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, and in the Office of Naval Intelligence, and was awarded multiple medals including a Purple Heart.
In the interview, Maras-Lindeman denied creating the profile and said whoever did had misstated the details of her career. She previously posted to Twitter a purported copy of her Navy separation paperwork, which said that she specialized in communications and intelligence.
Neither the record provided to The Post nor the paperwork Maras-Lindeman posted online stated a reason for her departure, but the papers she posted said that the character of her discharge was “general (under honorable conditions).”
In response to questions about the nature of the discharge, a Navy spokesman referred to the Navy Military Personnel Manual. The manual said it means, “The quality of the member’s service has been honest and faithful; however, significant negative aspects of the member’s conduct or performance of duty outweighed positive aspects of the member’s service record.”…
Many people struggling to make ends meet. Multiple part time jobs. Meth lab and propane tank delivery service out of an RV, for example.
According to my calculations, the 3 trillion the Fed gave to the Ultra Rich/Wall Street is equal to $10,000 per person in the US.
Anything less than it a stimulus check of about $30,000 per person is basic common sense.
If you oppose it, you clearly are an advocate of Royalty and despise working folk.
Trump should demand the $3 Trillion of free money Jerome Powell gave to Wall Street and the Ultra Rich plus the $5 Trillion in tax cuts Trump gave to rich gigantic monopoly like Amazon Google Walmart FekeBook that Mist SOOOOOO LOOOOOVESSSSS, and other corporations like medical drug monopolies that already don’t pay don’t pay taxes because Ireland and offshoring, but rebated back to those of who have paid for these Socialist Subsides…and DEMAND A $100,000 rebate check to every single working American.
Another couple of lumps of coal in the stocking…
President Donald Trump’s ineffectual bid to persuade the courts to overturn his defeat at the polls last month suffered another defeat on Christmas Eve as a federal appeals court rejected his attempt to challenge President-elect Joe Biden’s win by nearly 21,000 votes in Wisconsin.
A three-judge panel of the Chicago-based 7th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously dismissed arguments from Trump’s attorneys that the Wisconsin Election Commission violated the U.S. Constitution through steps prompted by the coronavirus pandemic, including easing photo identification requirements and allowing the use of dropboxes to collect absentee ballots.
The appeals court judges who ruled against Trump on Thursday were all Republican appointees. The author of the court’s opinion, Judge Michael Scudder, was appointed by Trump….
…Republicans were also rebuffed Thursday afternoon by a Georgia court over a bid to tighten restrictions on dropboxes and increase access for poll watchers in connection with the pivotal twin Senate runoff elections set for Jan. 5.
At the end of a 90-minute hearing held via Zoom, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Kimberly Esmond Adams dismissed the suit brought earlier this month by the Republican National Committee and the Georgia GOP.
Decisions by the judges at various U.S. Courts give me some hope for this country mired in TrumPandemic.
To paraphrase a line from a romantic comedy, you had me at “Chicago”.
Rand talks big, but KY gets 40% of its state budget from the feds and has the 3rd highest rate of citizens dependent on the feds (ND and NM are higher)–making it the number 3 consumer of the fed dollars–in good times!!
Another case of fine Americans misled on how righteous and independent they are.
Maybe its time Rand should implement some of his philosophy in his state.
Whoops., actually number 2 (!) consumer of fed dollars.
It’s no problem that fat cat capitalists get billions, but “bad economics” when workers get $2,000. Even if they are going to be paying it back through their taxes. And the boss class will pay less than the working class, bet on it.
He only went to the $2k idea for the same reason as Sen Hawley (POS) did – b/e it was devisee to getting anything. He’s just throwing hand grenades. He’s gone so over the top he’s becoming a caricature of himself.
“In the US Senate, Rand Paul’s floor speech against COVID-19 went viral. But the Senate passed the bill.”
A speech went viral. I think you have fallen into the trap of social media Mish. Social media is basically a bunch of Trumps and Rand Pauls – whiny assholes and bitches – who create crises and do nothing to solve them for the average person.
It takes a minimum of 270 elected officials to make a change, not a single person. Rand Paul has been re-elected, so voter must like the job he is doing. Voicing objections (identifying the problem) is the first step to making a change (solving the problem). And if voters in other districts agree with the objections; then they will force their elected officials to respond.
Rand Paul is making a point. That point is that when people realize that US dollars, backed by debt, is a ponzi scheme that relies on the belief that those dollars are money, otherwise we are Venezuela. But then I wonder if 10 people even understand the difference between asset backed money and debt backed money
Most money is based on debt. Asset prices should be renamed debt prices. Asset values are mostly accounting chicanery.
Paul is about 20 years late on whatever points he is trying to make. The problem is the system was solvent 20 years ago. Now it isn’t. The problem with Paul and others like him is they don’t realize they are part of the system. If Paul truly believed what he was saying, he would not hold any dollars or cash in his “asset” portfolio. Has Paul done anything to start even changing the system he complains about ? Anything with changing accounting laws ? Anything with changing anything related to finance or accounting ?
Rand Paul can make his point. He can even be correct. And still millions of people are in financial peril from federal inaction.
When RON Paul last ran for President I checked his asset disclosures on his website and it mostly all gold and silver miners.
Not quite, US dollars ultimatly are backed by the US taxpayers, perhaps at this point by not yet born taxpayers.
That’s a myth and often presumed.
The Government has no obligation to ever redeem US dollars. Once printed, how do they redeem them? They’d have to just burn or cancel them so ultimately they’d be left to circulate and their purchasing power would rely purely on the confidence of the general public. If the public lose confidence in them they’d just demand more and more for them when buying goods and services with them.
Regarding interest bearing debt such as US Treasuries, they are guaranteed by the US Government but their only obligation is to repay them at maturity with US dollars. They’re under no obligation to raise taxes to do so, their ultimate obligation is to just print US dollars to do so, which is what they’re ultimately backed by, the printing press.
Unless you dig that gold out of the ground yourself, your still acquiring them some form of debt exchange. Debt and assets are the same thing, just put on different sides of a ledger.
Choice 3. Republicans winning at least one of the two Senate races in Georgia is the game now. The Republican majority Senate really didn’t want such a large “stimulus” check to go to individuals, but they can’t afford to take the blame for voting it down. The fact that the Senate has not presented the President with the bill so close to adjournment and the special election in GA tells me Republicans have left Georgia voters with the impression they are getting their “stimulus”, but want the clock to run out on the bill. If the President vetoes the bill before the special election is over; then Republicans look bad, even if there are a near unanimous amount of votes to override the President.
This is an extension of the Hastert Principle. Instead of preventing an unwinnable bill from being voted on, pass a bill knowing the President will veto the bill unchallenged since there is no more time on the clock.
“Trump can sign the bill and moan about it more.”
And if he doesn’t, unemployment benefits will expire in two days time…..for the same people he’s supposedly so worried about needing money . Bit of a Catch-22, don’t you think?
“Trump can veto the bill but that veto could be overridden.”
If he vetoes it it surely will be overridden. So that would be pointless….unless he is just trying to make some statement that makes sense only to Himself.
“Trump can kill the bill by putting it in his pocket.”
That would cause a government shutdown unless the Senate passes a unanimous continuing resolution early next week. Think McConnell would be eager to do that after being ratf**ked by Trump? I doubt it.
If wants Trump really just wants to kill the bill, this is the best option to accomplish that…but I doubt he’d do it.
“Trump can wait until January 2 or the morning of January 3, then veto it, giving Congress minimal time for an override.”
I still think the veto gets over-ridden, but it would add to the drama….and Trump is a drama queen.
Pelosi tried and failed to push a $2K payment by unanimous consent in the House today and the GOP blocked it.
She is going to push a standalone $2K bill on Monday, and she probably will get it through the House. That would allow Trump to sign the first bill and then the Senate could fight over whether or not to approve the larger handout.
But that doesn’t address the pork in the Omnibus part of the bill.
I expect Trump to threaten the veto and try to get McConnnell to make the changes he wants next week…and will sign some slightly altered version…..proving he is a true Hugo Chavez populist…..and a Real Tough Negotiator.
Then all the people will gather around to insist that we should ignore the results of the election and give Trump at least four more years….if not a lifetime tenure.
In his mind.
You do realize that his administration went along with the omnibus before he suddenly turned against it. In a 1.2 trillion omnibus that covers half of the government you can find line items taken out of context that are “pork” until the reasoning behind them is explained.
Just watched a video that had Charlie Munger interview. He said China, over the past 30 years had sustained a high rate of growth that any other country would love and it was done under one party. A controlling communist party. A one party system can be successful if they create a lot of Smithian capitalism. I think he is referring economist Adam Smith.
That was a surprising comment?
Makes me think what are the differences?
In China, the state makes laws and controls the state owned companies while in the U.S and because of the power of lobbying, public and private companies are now making the laws and control their own fate.
I look forward to Charlie and Warren relocating to Wuhan to hold their folksy annual meetings.
The effective merger of state and corporate bosses has always been the chief hallmarks of fascism. In the US this has already taken place behind the theatre of the duopoly that keeps the population divided and distracted by launching campaigns about guns, gays, gender, god, whatever. In the US this will probably become more and more open, with no realistic political challenges to the rulers.
There are also differences of course. In China the party has to improve the lives of the people and is not exclusively out for the benefits of the oligarchy, capital only has so much freedom and autonomy. The political class is much more competent and far less corrupt. And the support behind the leadership and its policies at all levels is an order of magnitude higher than in the US. At the same time, Chinese civilization has granted fewer individual rights, but in the USA these seem to be melting away as well in the new techno-feudal imperial surveillance state. And the imperial conquest of adjacent land or for that matter lands at much further reach have never formed a theme in Chinese civilization — that seems to be more of a Western value.
My guess would be number 1: If the bill doesn’t go through he’d perceive that as bad for the stock market which would be more damaging to him and his friends.
And Pelosi’s friends and McConnell’s friends.
And Pelosi’s friends and McConnell’s friends.
Regardless his hissy fit is causing 15 million people to lose benefits for no fault of their own the week after Christmas. Grow up. I know it is too late for that. BTW: his administration has been deep into the talks on this all the way, with many of the things he is railing against part of his own administration’s demands. So saying “I hate it” is just stupid.
I find it absurd that a President who allowed nearly 350,000 deaths on his watch is suddenly concerned Americans need $2000 . It’s all ego and self destruction. There are no principles involved
8000 people die per day in US x 365 days/year x 4 years = 11,650,000 dead during Trump’s time in office.
Thank you, Captain Irrelevant.
Deaths went up in 2020 compared to 2019 by over 400,000, the largest percentage increase since 1918, and possibly the largest absolute increase ever.
Lots of reasons this hit harder in the USA than Egypt or Morocco or India, but as soon as I saw a video of orderlies training on how to turn intubated people with 8 people, I realized they were obese, and soon after obesity was confirmed as one of the strongest co-morbid factors. Fat Americans never had a chance.
The people who think things would have been different without Trump are engaged in partisan self-delusion. Multi-variable studies of the severity in various countries do not point to NPI’s having much weight. Much of the difference cannot be explained, the most important of 24 variables is the extent of the flu mortality burden the two years prior (‘dead wood’). I would add a variable to the mix, but not one I have seen in a study: influence of the Pharma complex (countries without it have had far more success getting the fatality rate down).
Close to 700k died in last Pandemic. It’s still too early but based on population we might not be doing that bad.
Better 2k here than to others, ridiculous amounts of monies for what? Are we buying our friends?
If anything he has identified the waste and the problem that has infiltrated our system. Don’t stop there! Who put forward these monies destined for foreign soil? They need to be identified and callout and explain their rational.
Trump may be all you think but right now he is doing exactly (won’t go far enough) what we want. Transparent government right?
We need change badly!
Trump is unbridled rage at this point. His actions can’t be judged from a logical framework. He vetoed the defense bill and threatened not to sign the covid bill because he feels irrelevant. He’s angry he lost and scared about a post Presidential life. Want to know what he’s going to do? Ask a psychiatrist. I’ve said for years Trump is a psychopath. It was a always going to end with angry chaos and vengeance. None of this is normal. Stop treating it as such
“His actions can’t be judged from a logical framework.”
They NEVER could as he is an incoherent, inarticulate, incompetent, incontinent, morbidly obese, narcissistic psychopath.
Mish, thanks for the civics lesson.
Even the “I’m Just A Bill” from Schoolhouse Rock during the Saturday morning cartoons 50 years ago is old law school quality as compared to what crap the mass media spins today about the branches of government and legislation.
Ya mean than the Supreme Court doesn’t invent laws? Ya mean that governors of states can’t invent laws or “orders” or “mandates”?
I’d take option 4, primarily for the purpose of speeding up the RINO extinction.
America First.
Have a link to one of these, or are you just spewing bs like usual?
RINO? I presume you mean Trump?
Governors absolutely have authority to issue mandates related to public health in an emergency, it’s called the 10th Amendment.
State and local governments absolutely have that power. Regulation for the benefit of public health is one of the oldest, longest established valid functions of governments, ranking right up there with the police and the military. Nevertheless, what is and isn’t a valid exercise of that power depends on the Constitutions, statutes, and regulations on a state by state basis.