Actual economist Dean Baker explains why last quarter's GDP growth was not "amazing." Long story short: two quarters of 2015 surpassed it, and even President Carter had a quarter with four times the GDP growth of this past one. Long story somewhat longer: we're not seeing wage growth along with GDP growth, we're not even seeing investment growth in significant amounts, and the rich are getting most of the benefits from the Republican tax scam. Remember, kids: you can't eat GDP.
Dan Alexander at Forbes suggests that our Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, has demonstrated a "Pattern of Grifting" at his businesses. Out of the over $120 million Mr. Ross might have stolen, if all the multitudinous complaints against him are true, he's paid at least $12 million in settlements and fines, plus his corporation returned $12 million to investors as part of an SEC settlement in 2016. Given how well his corporation was doing in 2016 (i.e., not), perhaps Mr. Ross looked at our President as an escape hatch. And maybe our President looked at Mr. Ross and saw a kindred spirit!
Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) says Republicans made a "big mistake" in trying to "reform" health care first. He's absolutely right that health care was tactically the wrong thing to try to do first, and maybe even that health care "reform" (recall that Mr. Heller's name was also on the notorious Graham-Kennedy bill that comprised the Senate's second failed health care "reform" bill) could have passed if they'd done taxes first. I suppose if you're conspiracy-minded, you'd find it odd that Republicans tried to do that first, since surely they knew the "resistance" had already made defending the Affordable Care Act its top priority.
Add Jonathan Last to the list of right-wingers who think Democrats can win in 2020 by going considerably further left. I disagree strongly, of course, that Howard Dean is all that liberal (he was, after all, the only state governor who chose to balance his state's budget during the '90s!) or that Barack Obama is all that liberal (n.b. virtually everything I've ever said about him), but Mr. Last's thesis that the more "mainstream" candidate tends to lose does map fairly well onto my thesis that the candidate who seems less like a politician tends to win, even if I would quarrel with how he describes many of these candidates (Mr. Mondale was the more liberal alternative in 1984 even if he was also the more "mainstream" one, and Mr. Bush the Lesser posed as a moderate in 2000 before governing as a far right-winger).
Finally, in advance of an Inspector General report on the matter, FCC Chair Ajit Pai admits that last year's alleged hack of the FCC's commenting system during its net neutrality repeal process never actually happened. And of course Mr. Pai blames underlings and the Obama Administration, just like his boss. He's gotta hope that he's slung so much fecal matter against the wall that a court hearing challenges to his net neutrality repeal won't be able to keep up -- also, just like his boss.
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