Ex-Clinton spokesman to James Comey: ‘Democrats don’t want your endorsement’

Brian Fallon, the press secretary for Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, flatly rejected former FBI Director James Comey’s call to support Democrats in the 2018 midterm election. In a terse tweet early Wednesday morning, Fallon said Democrats want nothing to do with him.

“Democrats don't want your endorsement, but thanks,” Fallon, now executive director of Demand Justice, tweeted.

Fallon was responding to a tweet from Comey in which he urged those who support American "values" to cast their ballots for Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections. “This Republican Congress has proven incapable of fulfilling the Founders’ design that ‘Ambition must … counteract ambition.’ All who believe in this country’s values must vote for Democrats this fall,” Comey tweeted Tuesday evening. “Policy differences don’t matter right now. History has its eyes on us.”

Clinton and her allies have repeatedly blamed Comey for contributing to her 2016 election defeat because he announced the FBI was reopening its investigation into Clinton's unauthorized email server less than two weeks before the contest and closed it again just days before it took place.

Comey was fired by President Trump in May 2017. His tweet Tuesday followed Trump's controversial press conference performance in Helsinki alongside Russia President Vladimir Putin during which he appeared to take the word of his Russian counterpart over that of the U.S. intelligence community about Russian interference in the 2016 election. A day later, Trump said he misspoke when he claimed he did not see why Russia would have meddled in the electoral process. Comey, who in April said the Republican Party "left me" after it embraced Trumpism, tweeted Monday that Trump had "sold out our nation on an international stage" and called on the president to "sit down with a serious journalist."

https:// www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/ex-clinton-spokesman-to-james-comey-democrats-dont-want-your-endorsement

Trump administration reveals $3.9 billion Boeing deal for new Air Force One planes

The Trump administration on Wednesday said it struck multibillion dollar deal with Boeing to build two new Air Force One planes for the executive branch by 2024, marking the first time in more than three decades that the president's air fleet has been upgraded.

"The contract sets the total price for the two completed 'Air Force One' replacement aircraft at $3.9 billion, saving the taxpayers over $1.4 billion from the initially proposed $5.3 billion cost-plus contract," White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement. "President Donald J. Trump has emphasized the need to minimize the cost of replacing the two existing Air Force One aircraft.," Sanders added. "Yesterday’s action meets that objective and reflects the President’s commitment to our military and to protecting taxpayer dollars."

Construction of the new 747-8 planes is expected to occur in San Antonio, the Pentagon said in a separate statement on Wednesday, projecting a completion date sometime in 2024. The announcement comes just days after Trump told CBS News in an interview that he has directed Boeing to paint the presidential jets red, white, and blue, versus the iconic robin's egg-blue that he dubbed the "Jackie Kennedy color." The former first lady, along with President John F. Kennedy, selected the most recent color scheme in the 1960s.

“It’s going to be the top of the line, the top in the world,’’ Trump told CBS. "And it’s going be red, white and blue, which I think is appropriate."

https:// www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/trump-administration-reveals-3-9-billion-boeing-deal-for-new-air-force-one-planes

Four Democratic states misrepresent conservative writer in lawsuit against tax reform

New York, Connecticut, Maryland, and New Jersey filed a lawsuit against the federal government this week alleging the GOP tax law unfairly targets states that are primarily “Democratic leaning.”

The complaint, which names the IRS and the Treasury Department as defendants, argues that law’s cap on how much taxpayers are allowed to deduct for state and local taxes from the federal portion of their bill is an “unconstitutional assault” on state sovereignty (the cap used to be unlimited, but is set now at $10,000). “New York will not be bullied. This cap is unconstitutional — going well beyond settled limits on federal power to impose an income tax, while deliberately targeting New York and similar states in an attempt to coerce us into changing our fiscal policies and the vital programs they support,” New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood said this week in a statement. The complaint’s chief argument is a bit ridiculous on its face, and it becomes only more absurd when you get to the part where the plaintiffs float an argument relying on a poor paraphrasing of National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru.

The lawsuit, which can be read here in full, https:// static.reuters.com/resources/media/editorial/20180717/nyvmnuchin.pdf

contains the following paragraph above.

The funny thing is: This isn’t an honest characterization of what Ponnuru wrote on Nov. 8, 2017, in a post titled “Red States, Blue States, and Taxes.” In that article last year, he specifically argued against the idea that one version of the tax bill (the one that did away with the SALT deduction altogether) was designed to punish blue states. He wrote, “Republicans think they need to limit some deductions to make up some of the lost revenue from other parts of tax reform, and doing that in a way that minimizes the pain to their own constituents is bound to appeal to them.”

On Tuesday, Ponnuru defended his original article from being hijacked. “I note that if one assumes that the state-and-local-tax deduction is unjustified, its repeal eliminates a subsidy from red states to blue ones,” he writes. “I think, and have written elsewhere, that it would be a good thing if the scaling back of the deduction leads state and local governments to retrench. But I certainly don’t think, and have never said, that scaling back the deduction coerces states and should be celebrated for coercing them. And the post quoted in the lawsuit doesn’t come within hailing distance of that sentiment" (emphasis in original).

Then there are the lawsuit's other problems, of which there are many. It’s difficult to pick the worst of the arguments presented in the lawsuit, but it’s unlikely anything will top the uncharitable paraphrasing of Ponnuru.

https:// www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/four-democratic-states-misrepresent-conservative-writer-in-lawsuit-against-tax-reform

>>2201150

Agreed, and for all of the money Americans pay in taxes there is no legitimate excuse either, we should be light years ahead of all countries,

>>2201305

I believe it's more about the slow churning wheels of government red tape than anything else. As usual, if you want to buy a pen you better ask for at least that much in advance, just a stupid waste of money with too many hands in the requisitions.

EU fines Google $5 billion for Android OS market dominance

European Union regulators fined Google more than $5 billion on Wednesday for abusing the dominance of its Android operating system, and said the tech giant should look to make competition more fair. The EU is calling for Google to allow smaller players in the mobile operating system space to flourish in the marketplace, a source familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal. Android OS is the world’s most popular mobile software system, running on more than 80 percent of smartphones globally.

Phones with the Android OS come preloaded with Google apps and services for email, search, music, maps, videos, and the like. Competitors have complained that this gives Google an unfair advantage in attracting users to those apps. The EU's opinion specifically implies that more people would use MIcrosoft's Bing search engine if Google did not require or provide financial incentives for manufacturers to sell their devices preloaded with Google's own search engine. The EU also claims that through the preloaded apps, Google also gains an advantage in being able to collected and use data from a higher number of users in selling targeted advertising. The EU alleged that Google acted illegally when it leveraged its market power to get makers of phones that utilize Android OS to pre-install these apps on the devices.

https:// www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/technology/eu-fines-google-5-billion-for-android-os-market-dominance

>>2201540

In their pockets of course. No different than what happens here, from gov't to the trial attorneys and down the line it goes.