Tag: liar-in-chief

Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies

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❝ Modern conservatives have been lying about taxes pretty much from the beginning of their movement. Made-up sob stories about family farms broken up to pay inheritance taxes, magical claims about self-financing tax cuts, and so on go all the way back to the 1970s. But the selling of tax cuts under Trump has taken things to a whole new level, both in terms of the brazenness of the lies and their sheer number. Both the depth and the breadth of the dishonesty make it hard even for those of us who do this for a living to keep track.

In fact, when I set out to make a list of the bigger lies, I thought there would be six or seven, and was surprised to come up with ten…

❝ Lie #1: America is the most highly-taxed country in the world

This is a Trump special: he’s said it many, many times, most recently just this past week. Each time, fact-checkers have piled on to point out that it’s false. Here’s taxes as a percentage of GDP, from the OECD:

❝ The blue bar is the US; the red bar the average for advanced countries.

Why does Trump keep repeating what even he has to know by now is a flat lie? I suspect it’s a power thing: he enjoys showing that he can lie repeatedly through his teeth, be caught red-handed in his lie again and again, and his followers will still believe him rather than the “fake news” media.

Read ’em and weep, folks. Paul Krugman nails our fake president. The chumps who voted for the Trump simply do not care if he lies. They love his misogyny, racism, broadcast bigotry and unabashed ignorance. He doesn’t have to know more than they do. Little enough is good enough for hypocrites. And losers.

One Hundred Days of Incompetence, from Populist to Neo-Conservative

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❝ President Donald Trump’s chaotic and ineffective first 100 days in office seem to have vindicated even his harshest critics. US policymaking has been rendered inscrutable and unpredictable to almost everyone – including, perhaps, to the president himself.

RTFA. Long, detailed, broadcast distribution of analysis by well-educated analysts, theoreticians, pedants. The kind of folks who wouldn’t waste a minute in Trump’s presence once they realized he has no interest in either aiding his fellow human beings or ever learning how to do so.

Published by Project Syndicate

Border Patrol Easing Lie Detector Exams To Boost Hiring

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❝ For the past three years, the U.S. Border Patrol has been using recruitment videos and job fairs to fill a gap in its ranks. It’s the largest law enforcement agency in the country but is still shy nearly 2,000 people from a target of 21,000.

That was the case even before President Donald Trump’s mandate that it bring in 5,000 more…rejection rates are high and it takes about 200 applicants to finally fill one position.

❝ “One of the things we do: we go to job fairs. We partner up with colleges and universities to look for candidates that are within the demographic of agents that we’re looking for,” Vicente Paco, a spokesman for the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector, said.

The Border Patrol also looks for military veterans and former police officers. But some agency critics said its strict lie detector tests are part of the reason it has such a hard time filling vacancies…

❝ Customs and Border Protection officials said a 2010 anti-corruption law requires it to administer these exams…The agency does appear to be trying to ease the application process by waiving the polygraph for applicants who have already worked in sensitive jobs such as certain military positions…

❝ Kevin McAleenan, the acting CBP commissioner…wrote that the Border Patrol receives 60,000 to 75,000 applications a year and since 2013, has hired an average of 523 agents a year but lost 904 agents a year to attrition.

McAleenan wrote that the agency will need to hire 2,729 agents a year to achieve the president’s order within five years.

Reliability of lie detectors is questionable. Results are still not admissible AFAIK in courts of law in the United States.

The chuckle remains – does anyone think Trump could pass a lie detector test. For anything?

Budget analysts point out Republican hypocrisy

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Republican efforts to scrap President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform took a hit on Thursday when budget analysts said repeal would add billions of dollars to the federal budget deficit.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated overturning the reform signed by Obama last year would add about $230 billion to the deficit by 2021 and result in 32 million fewer people having health insurance.

That was a blow to Republican campaign promises to slash the federal budget deficit…

“The Republicans have to understand that the healthcare bill is not going to be repealed,” Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid told reporters.

“We’re willing to work in any way that’s constructive in nature to improve the healthcare delivery system for our country,” he said. “But repealing healthcare? They should get a new lease on life and talk about something else…”

In a preliminary estimate, the CBO said repealing the healthcare overhaul would increase the federal budget deficit by roughly $145 billion by 2019. That figure would rise to about $230 billion by 2021, it said.

Republicans have never let fact, reality, honesty or the needs of the American people get in the way of ideology dedicated to the wealthiest class of business owners this planet has ever supported.

They aren’t about to start, now.