We will drain the swamp in Washington, D.C., and replace it with a new government, of, and by, and for the [RICH] people.
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| SWAMP CREATURE |
"Venturing Into the Swamp, Trump Dines With Major
Donors": "President Trump dined at the ornate Georgetown home of [C.
Boyden Gray,] a prominent Washington lawyer on Wednesday night with wealthy
donors who are expected to play crucial roles in financing his re-election
campaign. ...
"Attendees included donors and operatives who are working
to raise money for the America First groups, such as the Dallas financial
executive Roy W. Bailey and the Oklahoma oil billionaire Harold Hamm, as well
as the president's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., according to someone briefed
on the list of attendees and published reports." [Playbook Power Briefing, March 8, 2018]
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| REPUBLICAN PARTY |
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| RACE |
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| ISIS |
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| HEALTHCARE |
|
Azar to emphasize health data with
insurers
|
|
HHS
secretary Alex Azar has been everywhere lately, and will return to some of
his most prominent emerging themes today in a speech before America's Health
Insurance Plans, the industry's leading trade group.
What
to watch: Azar will focus at least partially on
health information technology and the need to give consumers more access and
control over their own information, according to excerpts of his prepared
remarks.
"Putting the health care consumer in
charge...will require some degree of federal intervention — perhaps even an
uncomfortable degree."
"But the status quo is far from a
competitive free market in the economic sense of the term...facilitating a
competitive, value-based marketplace is going to be disruptive to existing
actors." [Axios Vitals: Thursday, March 8]
|
NAFTA ROUND 7 HAS PROGRESS FOR AGGIES: President
Donald Trump's pledge to impose steel and aluminum tariffs may have
overshadowed the NAFTA talks, but negotiators from the U.S., Mexico and Canada
were able to finish a chapter long-described as nearly complete: food safety.
It was one of three chapters - along with good regulatory practices and
transparency - to wrap up during the Mexico City round, demonstrating slow, but
steady, progress in the renegotiation.
What's the deal with food safety? The
sanitary and phytosanitary chapter, which governs food safety, is the first of
its kind to fast-track and prioritize requests between the U.S., Mexico and
Canada related to trade and inspections, Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso
Guajardo said. The chapter will help breakdown obstacles to agricultural trade,
and it "guarantees animal and vegetable sanitation based in science,"
Guajardo told reporters at the close of the talks.
Small victories: Sector annexes on
proprietary food formulas and chemicals were also closed this round. The annex
on proprietary food formulas aims to protect the confidentiality of certain
mixes and ingredients that are traded in the region. The second annex would
make room for more regulatory cooperation in the use of chemicals [POLITICO's Morning Agriculture, March 8, 2018]
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| EDUCATION |
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| CLIMATE CHANGE |
TRUMP TRADE SUPPORTER: MAKE TARIFFS RETROACTIVE: Former
Nucor Corp. Chairman Dan DiMicco is urging Trump to stick to his guns on
tariffs and go one step further by making them retroactive to April 2017, when
the Commerce Department launched the Section 232 investigation leading to
Trump's pending decision.
As tariffs seem ever more likely, importers are beginning to
wonder how soon they will bite. Will they affect shipments already in transit,
or will they begin in a few months' time to give companies time to adjust? On
that point, DiMicco had a strong opinion. "Not only should there not be
any consideration for what's on the water, it should be retroactive to when
they first announced the 232 investigation," he told Morning Trade.
DiMicco, who worked as a trade adviser on Trump's 2016 campaign,
said once the president and Ross launched the investigation, importers rushed
to make deliveries before any tariff increases took effect. That's one reason
why U.S. steel imports increased in value to $29.1 billion in 2017, from $22.3
billion in 2016.
A 25 percent retroactive tariff could hit
importers with an approximately $6 billion to $7 billion bill, even before they
started paying the increased tariff on future shipments. That seems like a big
wallop, but DiMicco said duties are often made retroactive in anti-dumping and
countervailing duty cases because of the tendency for importers to ship product
early. [POLITICO's Morning Trade, March 7, 2018]
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| TECHNOLOGY |
AI AND THE FEDERAL GOVT - The
House Oversight IT subcommittee this afternoon holds the second in its series of hearings on artificial intelligence, and turns its focus to how
government bodies are using the nascent technology. In the panel today,
representatives from the Defense Department, General Services Administration
and Homeland Security Department will discuss how their respective agencies
leverage AI. Subcommittee chairman Will Hurd (R-Texas) has said he's interested in understanding how
AI can help make citizen interactions with government services more efficient.
"It should make every interaction an individual has with the federal
government take less time, cost less money, and be more secure," he'll
say, according to prepared remarks.
- The House Energy and Commerce's digital
commerce subcommittee is also due to look at the way
emerging technologies and the rise
of e-commerce platforms like Amazon are affecting the field of retail. [POLITICO's Morning Tech, March 7, 2018]
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| TAXES & TARIFFS |
HATCH TAKES A STAND, CALLS TARIFFS A TAX HIKE: Senate
Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch made his feelings known on Trump's steel and
aluminum tariff plans, suggesting that the trade restrictions would be a tax on
American consumers and businesses and sap the benefits of recent tax cuts.
"The proposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports
threaten to undermine that success [of tax reform]. Raising taxes on steel and
aluminum importers will increase production costs for American manufacturers
and raise prices on American consumers that rely on steel and aluminum
products," Hatch wrote in a letter to Trump. "History has demonstrated repeatedly
that consumers - American families and taxpayers - ultimately bear the burden
of tariffs on these kinds of imports."
Hatch, who earlier in the day had expressed skepticism with Trump's preference for across-the-board
tariffs, suggested that the president sidetracked his own trade agenda with his
surprise announcement of the pending restrictions last week. [POLITICO's Morning Trade, March 7, 2018]
THE DAY IN ONLINE SALES TAX: The
Trump administration's decision to advocate for giving states more power to
collect sales tax on internet purchases has raised the ire of at least one
advocate for certain online retailers. The solicitor general's briefargued, among other things, that states have the
authority to force out-of-state online retailers to collect sales tax, but
suggested that catalog sales aren't pervasive enough to require that step.
"They justify this anti-tech position by saying that any American who puts
up a website is creating an electronic presence in all states," said Steve
DelBianco of NetChoice.
DelBianco also argued to Morning Tax that the administration's
stance could run afoul of the Internet Tax Freedom Act, which bans
discriminatory taxes against electronic commerce. "The idea that if you're
a catalog or mail order seller that Quill still protects you,
but when you put up a website you've lost the protection is
discriminatory," DelBianco said, referring to the current Supreme Court
precedent that allows states to only collect sales tax from companies with a
physical location.
But Joseph Bishop-Henchman of the Tax Foundation cast some doubt
on that argument, saying the taxes at issue were neutral and that just taxing
online retailers differently didn't rise to the level of discrimination.
"Discrimination means motivated by animus against a group, and that's just
not present in this case," Bishop-Henchman told Morning Tax in an email. [POLITICO's Morning Tax, March 7, 2018]
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MIDDLE EAST
|
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| AFGHANISTAN |
MATTIS ARRIVES IN AFGHANISTAN, TALKS PEACE, via The Washington
Post: "Defense Secretary Jim Mattis visited Afghanistan on Tuesday to meet
senior U.S. and Afghan officials and discuss both the military campaign and
'peeling off' some members of the Taliban to pursue a peace deal with the
Afghan government.
"The unannounced visit comes two weeks after Afghan President
Ashraf Ghani made what many observers consider an unprecedented offer, inviting
the Taliban to begin peace talks without preconditions to end the 16-year war.
The Taliban said last month that it is open to reaching a political settlement
and negotiating, but it has not responded to Ghani's offer.
"Mattis, speaking on a flight to Afghanistan from Oman,
said Tuesday that talking about a peace settlement is 'not cart before the
horse,' and that is backed by the ongoing efforts of the U.S. and Afghan militaries.
Still, some members of the Taliban may be willing to pursue peace, especially
considering a fracturing in the group that has occurred over the last few
years, he said.
"'All wars come to an end,' Mattis said. 'You don't want to
miss an opportunity because you weren't alert to the opportunity. So, you need
to have that door open, even if you embrace the military pressure.'" [POLITICO's Morning Defense, March 13, 2018]
SecDef
Mattis made a surprise visit to Afghanistan today. Under
discussion: "both the military campaign and 'peeling off' some members of
the Taliban to pursue a peace deal with the Afghan government," the Washington
Post reports, traveling with the secretary.
Scene-setting: "The defense secretary and his staff arrived at Kabul's
Hamid Karzai International Airport on an C-17 jet in the morning before being
whisked away on a CH-47 Chinook helicopter in damp, chilly weather to the U.S.
military headquarters in Kabul. He met immediately with senior officials,
including U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan John Bass and Army Gen. John W.
Nicholson Jr., the top U.S. officer in Afghanistan. He planned to meet later in
the day with Ghani."
FWIW, "The defense secretary's latest visit included a
new security precaution in which journalists traveling with him were directed
to withhold publishing anything until after he left the airport and arrived at
the U.S. military headquarters in Kabul. That followed a Taliban attack on the
airport in September a few hours after Mattis's last visit." Read on, here.
The Taliban's tug-of-war with government forces continues in
the western Farah province,the New York
Times reported Monday
from Kabul. "Dadullah Qani, a member of the Farah provincial council, said
Taliban fighters stormed Anardarah district, which used to be a safe area, and
overran a number of government compounds early on Monday. Additional troops
that were later sent in retook the district and pushed the Taliban back
out," a spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry told the Times.
"They lost 56 fighters and a dozen of them were wounded," the Afghan
MoI spox said of the Taliban. "Of our forces, I can confirm eight men were
killed and 13 wounded." That, here.
Evergreen
headline: "U.S. Officials Brace For Return Of Terrorist Safe
Havens To Afghanistan." That's a separate New York
Times' read on how the
war in Afghanistan is going presently. One depressing sentence from that:
"now, Afghan and American officials said, the same area that was
obliterated by the United States' biggest conventional bomb [the MOAB] is once again being used by extremists to plot attacks
against the Afghan government and the West." More on America's ongoing war
in the legendary "graveyard of empires," here. [The D
Brief, March 13, 2018]
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| TURKEY |
NOTE: The news sources here vary. Not all sources have the same credibility, but in an effort to share some different perspectives, they are included here. This compendium itself cannot claim to be unbiased. Please take into consideration where these different perspectives originate in assessing their value. Thank you
NOTE: I have no official connection to any organization from which information is shared.. Occasionally, I post informational material and/or an opportunity to donate or join as a "community service" announcement. These again are shared for their varying perspectives.
Any books listed are random or topic-related to something else in the post. Think of these as a "library bookshelf" to browse. They are shared for informational or entertainment value only, not as being recommended
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