Tag: 2020 Presidential Campaign

Trump promises seniors $200 prescription drug gift certificates, but questions abound

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Trump promises seniors $200 prescription drug gift certificates, but questions abound

The administration is getting its authority to ship the coupons from a Medicare demonstration program, a White House spokesman told STAT in a statement. The nearly $7 billion required to send the coupons, he said, would come from savings from Trump’s “most favored nations” drug pricing proposal. That regulation has also not yet been implemented — meaning the Trump administration is effectively pledging to spend $6.6 billion in savings that do not currently exist. The cards, he said, would be “actual discount cards for prescription drug copays.”

Related:

Trump’s ‘most favored nation’ executive order on drug prices is a scam for seniors

Yet none of these reference pricing proposals show how they would directly reduce out-of-pocket costs for seniors at the pharmacy counter. For example, an Avalere study found that fewer than 1% of older adults in Medicare Part B would see a reduction in out-of-pocket costs as a result of the international pricing index model. In all likelihood, the prices of drugs in other countries will be more affected by the executive order than U.S. drug prices.

How COVID-19 stimulus money will end up in U.S. tobacco farmers’ pockets

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

How COVID-19 stimulus money will end up in U.S. tobacco farmers’ pockets

U.S. government aid payments to tobacco farmers will be channeled through a new account within the office of the agriculture secretary, an unusual move that bypasses the normal mechanism for distributing farm aid and stokes concerns about how the government is using COVID-19 stimulus.

…

The payments would benefit farmers in North Carolina, a swing state in the Nov. 3 presidential election and the country’s top tobacco producer. President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden are locked in a dead heat among likely voters in North Carolina, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Tuesday.

Election ploy!

Steve Bannon Says War Begins on Nov. 3rd – a podcast with Col. Lawrence Wilkerson

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Steve Bannon Says War Begins on Nov. 3rd – a podcast with Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (Listen on YouTube)

Steve Bannon says only in-person voting should be counted on Nov. 3rd, and there will be a “war” to “stop Biden from stealing” the election. Larry Wilkerson says Trump’s forces are creating conditions for violence in the streets if he is defeated. AOC calls on people to get organized to defeat Trump as part of a larger battle for survival. Col. Lawrence Wilkerson joins Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news podcast.

How to Plan a Coup

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

How to Plan a Coup

On September 10, Trump’s friend and adviser Roger Stone appeared on Infowars, the show run by the far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Convicted of lying to Congress and tampering with witnesses before they testified concerning the ties of the 2016 Trump campaign to Russia, Stone publicly asked Trump to commute his sentence and, in exchange, promised to campaign for him.

Stone was a political operative for Richard Nixon—he famously has a picture of Nixon tattooed on his back—and was a business partner of Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort, now also a convicted felon. Stone calls himself a “rat-f**ker” — a term used by Nixon insiders to describe electoral fraud and dirty tricks — and was an instigator of the “Brooks Brothers Riot” that shut down the recount of ballots in Florida in 2000.

In July, Trump commuted Stone’s 40-month prison sentence, and now, apparently, Stone is holding up his end of the deal.

Related:

Roger Stone’s dirty tricks helped sway the 2000 Florida recount

Pro-Trump youth group enlists teens in secretive campaign likened to a ‘troll farm,’ prompting rebuke by Facebook and Twitter

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Pro-Trump youth group enlists teens in secretive campaign likened to a ‘troll farm,’ prompting rebuke by Facebook and Twitter

Related (Not reported by WaPo):

No Navajos Appear To Be Involved In ‘Navajos For Trump,’ But Charlie Kirk Sure Is

Pro-Trump super PAC backed solely by bank executive used donations to fund Facebook conspiracy meme campaign

Democrats Go All-Out for Israel

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Democrats Go All-Out for Israel

Israel for its part has played its cards carefully. It knows that either Biden or Trump will do whatever it wants, but it has deferred its planned annexation of much of the Palestinian West Bank, which will now take place after the election. It did that knowing that otherwise some liberals in the Democratic Party might try to turn Israel into an issue and split the Jewish community while also alienating Jewish donors and some Jewish voters if the annexation had taken place. After November 3rd, no matter who wins Israel will benefit and will have a free hand to do anything it wishes to the Palestinians. Or perhaps one should say the “remaining Palestinians” until they are all gone.