President Donald J. Trump is going to get a pass from me no matter what he does, because he is always funny. There is no single interview I’ve ever heard with this man where I did not laugh out loud – what the kids call “loling.”
With his latest “walk outside my house and just start talking to the press about whatever” event, I lost it at: “I’ve been here all weekend. A lot of the Democrats have been in Puerto Rico celebrating something. I don’t know, maybe they’re celebrating the shutdown.”
It is true that they were in Puerto Rico celebrating something.
Thirty of them went with a horde of lobbyists.
Washington Examiner (from Friday):
Some 30 Democratic lawmakers left the government shutdown behind Friday on a chartered flight to Puerto Rico for a winter retreat with 109 lobbyists and corporate executives during which they planned to see the hit Broadway show “Hamilton” and attend three parties including one with the show’s cast.
Those attending the Congressional Hispanic Caucus BOLD PAC winter retreat in San Juan planned to meet with key officials to discuss the cleanup after Hurricane Maria at a roundtable Saturday.
But the weekend is packed with free time for the members and their families on the trip.
“We are excited for you to join us for CHC BOLD PAC’s 2019 Winter Retreat in San Juan, Puerto Rico! Each year, this retreat serves as a way for our CHC BOLD PAC Members and friends in the D.C. community to come together to escape the cold and discuss our shared priorities for a stronger and more prosperous country,” said a memo on the trip.
Some 109 lobbyists and corporate executives are named in the memo, a rate of 3.6 lobbyists for every member. They include those from several big K Street firms, R.J. Reynolds, Facebook, Comcast, Amazon, PhRMA, Microsoft, Intel, Verizon, and unions such as the National Education Association.
The event is taking place in a seaside resort where rooms go for $429 a night. Food is being provided.
This sort of thing happens all the time, and no one ever hears about it. These massive vacations paid for by lobbyists.
The only reason anyone heard about this one is because Trump talked about it. Generally, the media makes no mention of it. Not even Fox News bothered to cover this until Trump brought it up on one of their television shows. And even then – get this – they didn’t do their own reporting, and instead cited the above quoted Washington Examiner article. They didn’t have people assigned to cover this, instead wrote up what was effectively a blog post about it after the cat went bagless.
It’s an open secret that being a congressperson is basically like being a Hollywood movie star, only with less actual work. These people have nonstop luxury foods brought to them all the time, they can go out for free drinks any night they want, they get all kinds of other free things, they go on vacations and stay in luxury resorts and hotels every month. They also (allegedly) get underage Dominican hookers, as Bob Menendez (pictured above enjoying the sun) was accused of – and I would assume also much worse things than that, for many.
They get much more than their nearly $200,000 a year salary could provide for them.
When you consider that they do not pay for their housing in Washington, and as I say their food is all brought to them by lobbyists, all of that $174,000 goes straight in the bank.
And honestly, that is too much money for these people to be making either way.
It would be appropriate in my view if they were paid the median income of the average American, which is $59,039. One-third of what they get paid. It would also be appropriate if it was illegal for lobbyists to give them gifts. Because let’s be real here: this is simply legalized bribery. Everyone knows that. The medical industry has begun to address the issue of drug company representatives bringing free food to doctors and nurses, but somehow in the government it just keeps going without anyone saying anything.
Their work is referred to as “service” – you know, “serves in Congress” – and they are anything but public servants. They are a gang of criminals.
If being in the government was not so absurdly profitable, a totally different class of people would be involved in it. Was Trump’s “H1-B Path to Citizenship” Tweet a Troll?
I think Trump has been doing a great job overall with the shutdown, and I felt a little bit bad yesterday for going at him so hard over his H1-B tweet.
It’s hard to know how critical I should be of the President. In my mind, I am torn between attacking him every time he does anything I don’t like and just being a complete shill and never criticizing anything he does. In general, I feel like I keep a relatively good balance.
This site is very influential, in a way that humbles me, and I do not want to give the impression that I am either against Trump or that I will just support whatever he does.
Ann Coulter already exists to go hard on Trump, so I don’t feel like I need to be in the role of checking him, especially given that she has a much larger direct audience than I (my biggest audience is from people copying my ideas – I won’t name any names, but you see it everywhere if you look for it).
With regards to the H1-B tweet, Jazzhands McFeels claimed on the latest episode of Fash the Nation that this was a “troll.”
He is someone who knows a lot more about partisan politics and the details of our immigration system than I do, and he said that H1-B visas already contain a path to citizenship because, he said, it is easy for them to get green cards. I know that they are allowed to apply for green cards, but I was not aware that awarding them is a major phenomenon. A green card is certainly a path to citizenship, however. I am not able to find the numbers on how many of these are awarded to H1-B pajeets.
Jazzhands went on to say that Trump has actually gutted the H1-B program by requiring that companies not only post ads for American workers but also do interviews with American workers before using the system. Furthermore, he’s forcing these companies to pay the Indians the same salary as they pay Americans, which defeats the purpose of the visa program, which was simply to undercut American workers.
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