All posts by Alec Baldwin

News

Californians Say No to Higher Taxes and Debt.

California pays some the highest taxes on pay and gas in the country.   And there are signs voters have had enough.

Voters defeated on Tuesday the largest borrowing proposal in the history of California schools — $15 billion for repairs. And it has led to questions if the state is on the cusp of a 1970s style tax revolt.

It has been a generation since a school bond failed. Voters also rejected more than half of the 237 local tax and bond measures on that ballot.

“There is a sense that California isn’t working,” Claremont McKenna College political scientist Jack Pitney said. When a fresh request came from Sacramento for billions in new debt, voters said: “We’ve been taxed enough.”

Soaring taxes are not the only thing angering residents. The high cost of housing, a costly high-speed rail project and the homelessness crisis in the state’s major cities are also contributing to voter unease.

Others are asking why voters are being asked to pay more taxes at a time when the economy has been strong and the state is rolling up a multibillion-dollar budget surpluses?

Read More: USNews

Connecting The Dots, News

Trump to Sign Executive Order to End U.S. Reliance on China for Drugs.

The President is seeking to end the country’s reliance on drugs and essential medical supplies from China. The Coronavirus pandemic has reignited the debate about the nations reliance on China for the supply of life saving drugs.

Trump will tighten “Buy American” laws to encourage the purchasing of American-made pharmaceuticals and medical equipment.

“China has managed to dominate all aspects of the supply chain using the same unfair trade practices that it has used to dominate other sectors — cheap sweatshop labor, lax environmental regulations and massive government subsidies,” said the White House trade adviser Peter Navarro.

“As President Trump has said, what we need to do is bring those jobs home so that we can protect the public health and the economic and national security of the country.”

Despite America being a world leader in drug discoveries, manufacturing of drugs has moved off shore. With China producing much of the world’s penicillin, antibiotics, face masks, and other key medical devices.

America’s last penicillin factory closed in 2004. But Chinese pharmaceutical companies have supplied more than 90 percent of U.S. antibiotics, vitamin C, ibuprofen and hydrocortisone, as well as 70 percent of acetaminophen and 40 to 45 percent of heparin in recent years, according to Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Read More: NYTimes

News

Investors and Analysts Predict Market Turmoil Could Threaten Trump’s Re-Election Bid

Monday saw global markets plummet and oil prices fall heavily, as fears around Coronavirus fuel the prospect of a global recession.

Analysts are now warning that if the economy is severely affected by the global outbreak of Corvid-19 it could harm Trump’s re-election bid.

“President Trump’s re-election likely hinges on the economy — a medical and/or economic shock from COVID-19 are arguably the biggest threats to his re-election,” Raymond James analysts said in a note on Sunday, referring to the virus’s official name.

“To preserve the economy and prevent a further market sell-off, it is in the best interest of President Trump to aggressively push for a large-scale fiscal response,” they wrote.

“If we go into recession, history speaks for itself. No sitting president has ever been re-elected in a recession,” said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist for Spartan Capital Securities.

Read More: Newsmax

News

Trump Expected to Announce Payroll Tax Cut for Workers Affected by Coronavirus

The President is expected to announce new measures to help  ease the economic affects of Coronavirus. These include payroll tax cuts for those directly affected by the virus.

“The president has tasked this economic team and is working already with leaders in the Congress to make sure that [no one] feels that they are at risk of losing their job or their paycheck if they contract the coronavirus,” Pence said. Pence has been placed at the head of the committee to tackle coronavirus.

Read More: The Daily Caller

News

Super Tuesday Win for Biden

Joe Biden’s campaign was very much back on track with impressive wins on Super Tuesday. He is now favourite to take the nomination for the democrats.

Bloomberg, who despite spending millions, failed to take a single state. He has dropped out of the race. Elizabeth Warren also dropped out.

The race is now between Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden.  Biden has the support of the African American votes, Sanders has struggled to connect with black voters, and this is hurting his campaign.

Read More: BBC

News

Hilary Clinton Deposition Ordered by Federal Judge to Address Private Email Scandal

Hillary Clinton, who is rumoured to be a possible running mate to Michael Bloomberg, has been ordered by a federal judge to a deposition to answer still unanswered questions surrounding the 2016 email scandal. It emerged in 2016 Clinton was using her private email to conduct government business. Clinton has argued he has already answered questions, and the matter should be closed.

However, D.C. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth said: “As extensive as the existing record is, it does not sufficiently explain Secretary Clinton’s state of mind when she decided it would be an acceptable practice to set up and use a private server to conduct State Department business,”

Clinton’s previous answers to written question left many unanswered questions in his opinion: “those responses were either incomplete, unhelpful, or cursory at best. Simply put her responses left many more questions than answers.”

Read More: Fox News

News

Adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Dies of Coronavirus

Coronavirus has hit Iran hard. With members of the Iranian government contracting the illness. It has now been confirmed that Mohammad Mirmohammadi, 71,  who was an Expediency Council member and adviser to Khamenei has died. COVID-19 has already infected Iran’s Vice President and Deputy Health Minister.

Iran has rejected help from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The US are concerned that Iran is covering up details about the spread of the virus.

Iran’s mortality rate of the virus has been 5.5%, compared with 2% in China. The virus has killed at least 66 people in Iran, the highest death toll outside of China. The majority of 1,150 cases throughout the Middle East are linked back to the country.

Iran has closed schools, but has allowed religious sites to remain open. Footage from Iran last week showed Iranians licking shrines in defiance to the virus.

Read More: Fox News

News

Billionaire Republican Paul Singer Buys Sizeable Stake in Twitter

Billionaire Paul Singer has bought a sizeable stake in Twitter. Singer who is also a Republican donor has been reported as having “plans to push” Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey out of the company.

Singer has also been very vocal in the past against President Trump. In 2017 it was reported that Singer leaked to Fusion GPS’s opposition research of President Trump during his campaign. Breitbart reported:

Late Friday, Singer’s Washington Free Beacon came clean as the original funding source for Fusion GPS’s research against now-President Donald Trump. Fusion GPS research was later funded by Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign, and created the now-infamous fake news dossier against Trump, but the efforts originally lay with Singer.

Multiple outlets reported Friday night that lawyers for the Free Beacon had just informed the House Intelligence Committee that their outfit was the first to engage Fusion GPS to conduct opposition research against then-candidate Trump. The neoconservative media outlet emphasized in a statement that this engagement involved all of the GOP candidates for president – not merely Trump – and never involved Russia or dubious former intelligence asset Christopher Steele, before the project was dropped and taken over by Hillary for American and the Democratic National Committee in the Spring of 2016 through potentially illegal payments made through law firm Perkins Coie.

When news of the DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign’s involvement in the dossier, a primary source of the “Russia Story” dogging the first ten months of Trump administration, first broke, the Washington Post reported “one Republican” had been involved. That Republican is now clearly Singer, the Free Beacon’s main funder.

Singer’s involvement in the dossier, and opposition research on Trump more generally, comports with a years-long pattern of advocacy for mass immigration, massive funding of establishment GOP candidates, and antagonism towards the populist-nationalist movement.

President Trump responded with, “As you know, Paul was very much involved with the anti-Trump or as they say ‘Never Trump,” and Paul just left [the White House] and he’s given us his total support and it’s all about unification. So, I want to thank Paul Singer for being here and coming up to the office. He was a very strong opponent and now he’s a very strong ally and I appreciate that.”

Read More: Breitbart

News

New York Reports First Case of Coronavirus

New York has it’s reported case of Coronavirus. A woman in her 30s has tested positive, and is recovering in her apartment.

“This evening we learned of the first positive case of novel coronavirus — or COVID-19 — in New York State,” said New York Democrat Gov. Andrew Cuomo “The patient, a woman in her late thirties, contracted the virus while traveling abroad in Iran, and is currently isolated in her home. The patient has respiratory symptoms, but is not in serious condition and has been in a controlled situation since arriving to New York.”

“There is no reason for undue anxiety — the general risk remains low in New York. We are diligently managing this situation and will continue to provide information as it becomes available,” he added.

Read More: Breitbart

News

Louvre France Closes Over Coronavirus

The famous Louvre Museum,  house to the Mona Lisa, has been closed due to Coronavirus. The closure is part of the French government’s response to the outbreak.

The French government have also banned all public gatherings greater than 5,000 in a bid to halt the spread of the virus. France has 130 reported cases, with more being confirmed everyday.

Read More: Breitbart

News

Judge Rules Hillary Clinton can be Deposed About her Emails

A judge has ruled that Hilary Clinton can be deposed about her emails.

Judge Royce Lamberth’s order authorises Judicial Watch to question Clinton and others about the email scandal, and breaths fresh life into the investigation.

“Any further discovery should focus on whether she used a private server to evade [the Freedom of Information Act] and, as a corollary to that, what she understood about State’s records management obligations,” Lamberth wrote in his order.

Read More: CNN

News

Former Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg Drops Out of White House Race

Former Mayor of Indiana Pete Buttigieg has dropped out to the race to be the Democratic candidate for the White House. Buttigieg ended his campaign after a poor showing in the South Carolina primary.

“Tonight I am making the difficult decision to suspend my campaign for the presidency,” Buttigieg told his supporters. “I will do everything in my power to ensure that we have a new Democratic president come January.”

Read More: Breitbart