Ohioans will benefit from tax reform

Record Herald
December 28, 2017

Rob Portman is a Republican U.S. Senator from Ohio

After years of talk, research, and debate, Congress passed tax reform legislation that the president recently signed into law. I’m proud of the bill because I know it will make a real difference for the people of Ohio.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will provide tax relief for middle-class families and tax reform for American workers and businesses so they can be more competitive in the global market.

It will help Ohioans by doubling the standard deduction to $24,000 per family, doubling the child tax credit to $2,000 per child, and lowering tax rates across middle-class income levels.

While our economy has seen some improvements recently, many hardworking Ohioans I represent are still not feeling the benefits. For a couple of decades, expenses have gone up—healthcare being the biggest expense of all—and wages have been flat. That’s the middle-class squeeze. The tax cuts in this plan, and the increased jobs and wages that will result from it, will give families the relief they deserve.

A typical family of four at the median income level will save more than $2,000 a year on their taxes as a result of this plan. That extra money can be used to help pay for health care, buy gas or groceries, or save for retirement.

In total, we are told that the tax cuts in this plan will take approximately three million people who have federal income liability now off the tax rolls altogether.

Workers will also benefit through more jobs and higher wages as a result of the business tax reforms in this plan. Already, a number of companies, including Fifth Third Bank in Ohio, have announced they will increase pay or investments, or both, because of this tax reform.

The U.S. has the highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world. By lowering that rate to be more competitive, companies will be encouraged to expand jobs and investments in this country rather than going overseas.

The status quo is not working. Because of our broken international tax code, American workers and businesses have been forced to compete with one hand tied behind their backs. Last year, there were three times as many American companies taken over by foreign companies than foreign companies taken over by American companies. And there is currently between $2.5 trillion to $3 trillion of U.S. company earnings trapped overseas because of our outdated international tax code. We want that money invested in America. The tax reforms in this plan encourage jobs and investments to return to the U.S. rather than going overseas.

As a member of the tax-writing committee and the House-Senate tax conference that negotiated the final bill, I worked throughout this process to develop and improve the bill on behalf of Ohioans.

I advocated for, and successfully protected, a number of incentives for urban redevelopment. We preserved the 20 percent Historic Tax Credit, which has been instrumental in raising private funds to restore historic landmarks in Central Ohio.

We also protected the New Markets Tax Credit and Private Activity Bonds. In Ohio, these tax incentives have leveraged more private sector investments for economic development and affordable housing. They have also spurred economic growth and job creation and have ultimately generated increased tax revenue.

I worked tirelessly as we developed this bill. I think the final result we have is a good tax reform bill that will achieve things Republicans and Democrats alike have long supported: tax cuts for the middle class and a more competitive tax code for American workers and businesses.

This is an investment into American families, American workers, and American businesses. Ohioans in Fayette County, and across the state, will be better off because of these overdue changes to the broken tax code.

Rob Portman is a Republican U.S. Senator from Ohio.

Russia accuses U.S. of training former Islamic State fighters in Syria

Yahoo News
December 27, 2017

FILE PHOTO: Chief of the General Staff of Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov arrives for the opening ceremony of the International Army Games 2017 in Alabino, outside Moscow, Russia, July 29, 2017. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The chief of the Russian General Staff has accused the United States of training former Islamic State fighters in Syria to try to destabilize the country.

General Valery Gerasimov's allegations, made in a newspaper interview, center on a U.S. military base at Tanf, a strategic Syrian highway border crossing with Iraq in the south of the country.

Russia says the U.S. base is illegal and that it and the area around it have become "a black hole" where militants operate unhindered.

Islamic State has this year lost almost all the territory it held in Syria and Iraq. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday the main part of the battle with Islamic State in Syria was over, according to the state-run RIA news agency.

The United States says the Tanf facility is a temporary base used to train partner forces to fight Islamic State. It has rejected similar Russian allegations in the past, saying Washington remains committed to killing off Islamic State and denying it safe havens.

But Gerasimov told the daily Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper on Wednesday that the United States was training up fighters who were former Islamic State militants but who now call themselves the New Syrian Army or use other names.

He said Russia satellites and drones had spotted militant brigades at the U.S. base.

"They are in reality being trained there," Gerasimov said, saying there were also a large number of militants and former Islamic State fighters at Shadadi, where he said there was also a U.S. base.

"They are practically Islamic State," he said. "But after they are worked with, they change their spots and take on another name. Their task is to destabilize the situation."

Russia has partially withdrawn from Syria, but Gerasimov said the fact that Moscow was keeping an air base and naval facility there meant it was well placed to deal with pockets of instability if and when they arose.

Tens of thousands of US citizens may die if Korean conflict breaks out – Russian Security Council

RT News
December 26, 2017

FILE PHOTO: Supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump display U.S. flags while waiting for Trump's motorcade to pass in central Seoul, South Korea © Kim Kyung Hoon

A full-scale military action on the Korean peninsula would kill tens of thousands of Americans living in South Korea, the head of Russia’s Security Council warned.

The US is well aware that a possible attack on North Korea would inflict heavy casualties on 250,000 Americans residing in the South, Nikolai Patrushev, Secretary of Russia’s Security Council, told Russian media on Tuesday.

“If large-scale hostilities break out on the Korean peninsula, tens of thousands of US citizens will die,” Patrushev stressed. He added such an outcome is known as “unacceptable casualties in every country’s military language.”

The security official reiterated that North Korea’s artillery and rocket launch sites are positioned just 50 kilometers from Seoul, a vibrant metropolis accommodating some 10 million people.

In the meantime, Washington bears responsibility for contributing to “a vicious circle” of tension on the peninsula. “Today, the US makes aggressive [and] provocative statements against the [North Korean] leadership and the entire North Korean people, and conducts large-scale aerial and naval drills together with South Korea,” Patrushev said.

For its part, Pyongyang responds with new ballistic missile launches and equally harsh statements. “This vicious circle is to be broken by political and diplomatic means only,” Patrushev added. Moscow and Beijing, he stressed, are now pushing for a comprehensive roadmap that includes North Korea halting its missile and nuclear tests, and the US ceasing its military drills on the peninsula.

Moscow believes that Washington, while ostensibly advocating a peace plan, is utilizing the North Korean nuclear issue to contain Russia and China and militarize the Asia-Pacific, the Security Council head stated.

“Washington is very consistent in its plans to deploy elements of its global missile defense system in the region,”Patrushev said. “We can’t rule out that raising tensions around North Korea benefits the United States’ strategic goals.”

ANTI-TRUMP APPEALS COURT RULES AGAINST TRAVEL BAN — FOR THIRD TIME!

Washington Times
December 24, 2017

President Donald Trump greets people on the tarmac as he arrives on Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport, in West Palm Beach, Fla., Friday, Dec. 22, 2017. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

A decidedly anti-Trump appeals court issued yet another ruling Friday blocking most of President Trump’s latest version of his travel ban, finding that the White House exceeded its powers.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said would-be visitors from six majority-Muslim countries can still travel to the U.S. despite the policy, as long as they have a preexisting relationship with an American person or entity.

It’s the latest ruling out of this particular appeals court to challenge the president’s claims. Earlier this week the Supreme Court delivered a spanking in overturning another 9th Circuit ruling related to the president’s decision to end the Obama-era DACA deportation amnesty program.

Read the entire article

THE BIG LIST OF TAX-CUT PAYOFFS

World Net Daily
December 24, 2017

President Donald Trump

Editor’s note: WND is chronicling the response by U.S. businesses to the biggest rewrite of the federal tax code since the 1980s Reagan administration and a tax cut of as much as $3.2 trillion in the form of this BIG LIST OF TAX-CUT PAYOFFS. It will be regularly updated as more companies respond.

WASHINGTON – Before the ink was even dry on President Trump’s signature on the Republican tax-cut bill, corporate America was not only toasting it, praising it and celebrating it, but handing out money to employees like Santa Claus.

It started with AT&T expanding its bonus program to an additional 200,000 staffers getting $1,000 apiece.

Next came Boeing announcing a gift of $300 million in investment in its employee-related charitable program “to support our heroes, our homes and our future.”

Wells Fargo and Fifth Third Bancorp announced they would raise their minimum wage to $15 in the New Year, with Fifth Third kicking in an additional bonus of $1,000 to 13,000 employees.

Comcast NBC Universal anted up $1,000 bonuses to more than 100,000 non-executive employees, announcing the move was not only tied, like all the others, to the tax cut but to the Federal Communications Commission’s elimination of government regulation of the Internet. Comcast NBC Universal Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Brian L. Roberts added the company plans to spend more than $50 billion in the next five years on infrastructure investments that he expects will create “thousands of new direct and indirect jobs.”

In fact, before the bill was even passed, Kroger Chief Executive Officer W. Rodney McMullen offered that the legislation would influence his company “to continue to invest in our business, which will grow jobs.”

You might remember, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the bill “Armageddon.”

Here’s the growing BIG LIST of companies reacting to the tax cuts with bonuses, more pay and expansion leading directly to new jobs:

• U.S. Bank of America employees making up to $150,000 per year in total compensation – about 145,000 teammates – will receive a one-time bonus of $1,000 by year-end.

• PNC Financial Services will give $1,000 bonus to about 47,500 workers.

• New Braunfels-based Rush Enterprises of Texas is giving each of its 6,600 employees a $1,000 bonus – a total of $6.6 million. Chief Financial Officer Steven Keller said: “You’ve got a choice – we could’ve kept it and stuffed it in the company bank account or coffers, or we can share it with the people.”

• Associated Bank in Wisconsin boosted its minimum hourly wage to $15 and paying workers a $500 bonus.

• Idaho health-care and home-products company Melaleuca Inc. is providing its 2,000 employees $100 bonuses for every year they worked for the company. The company has 147 employees who have worked for the company for 20 years or more.

• In Hawaii, Royal Hawaiian Heritage Jewelry plans to open up three more shops – in Honolulu, in Kauai and Maui in addition to its existing three shops.

• Washington Federal in Seattle will increase wages for most of its workers by 5 percent and is adding 25 people to its information-technology staff.

• Aquesta Financial Holdings in Cornelius, N.C., will raise hourly pay to $15 and will be giving $1,000 bonuses to all of it workers.

• Canary LLC announced it will hire new employees and purchase more equipment.

• First Hawaiian Bank said it will give out $1,500 cash bonuses to 2,264 employees, or all but 11 members of its senior management team. The state’s largest bank also will increase its minimum wage to $15 an hour from $12.75 an hour for 613 employees.

• Bank of Hawaii, the state’s second-largest bank, said it will give out $1,000 cash bonuses to 2,074 employees, or 95 percent of its workforce. The bonuses affect all employees below the senior vice president level. The bank also will increase its minimum wage to $15 an hour from $12 an hour.

• American Savings Bank, the third-largest bank in Hawaii, said it will award $1,000 bonuses to nearly all of its employees. In addition, the bank said it was increasing its starting wage to $15.25 an hour from $12.21 an hour.

• AT&T expanding its bonus program to an additional 200,000 staffers getting $1,000 apiece.

• Boeing gift of $300 million in investment in its employee-related charitable program “to support our heroes, our homes and our future.”

• Wells Fargo raises minimum wage to $15.

• Fifth Third raises minimum wage to $15 and offering bonuses of $1,000 to 13,000 employees.

• Comcast NBC Universal anted up $1,000 bonuses to more than 100,000 non-executive employees.

Pennsylvania man targets police officers in string of shootings; one injured, suspect killed

abc News
December 23, 2017

Ahmed Aminamin El-Mofty, 51, allegedly shot at police officers in Harrisburg, Pa., three times before being killed on Dec. 22, 2017.

Federal authorities are investigating after a Pennsylvania man with ties to the Middle East opened fire on police officers in three different locations in the state's capital on Friday afternoon. Dauphin County District Attorney Ed Marsico said it remains under investigation whether the shootings were acts of terror.

One officer was injured in the spate of shootings, but her injuries are considered non-life-threatening, police said.

Police identified the alleged shooter as Ahmed Aminamin El-Mofty, 51, and Marsico said he recently returned from a trip to the Middle East.

The FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) are involved in the investigation.

The first shooting took place at about 4:10 p.m. when El-Mofty allegedly opened fire on a Capitol Police officer in his cruiser, striking the vehicle several times, but missing the officer. The shooting took place just steps from the Pennsylvania state Capitol Building. About a half hour later, the same man is suspected to have opened fire on a female officer who was struck once, but is in good condition at a local hospital, according to Marsico.

Capital Police pursued the suspect to a residential area, who then allegedly opened fire on them with two handguns, Marsico said. The officers fired back, striking and killing the suspect. None of the officers were struck.

Marsico said there was "no doubt" the man was targeting police officers.

Read the entire article

Report: Russia ‘Dossier’ Based on 10-Year-Old Wall Street Journal Articles

Breitbart
December 21, 2017

AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais

Lee Smith of Tablet magazine has traced the origins of the Russia “dossier” — the Democrat-funded opposition research project that may have laid the foundations for the ongoing Russia investigation — to several Wall Street Journal articles that appeared in print a decade ago.

Smith’s article, “Did President Obama Read the ‘Steele Dossier’ in the White House Last August?”, suggests that the information compiled by opposition research firm Fusion GPS, with funding from Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee, could have been repackaged as genuine U.S. government intelligence and presented to President Barack Obama on that basis as his administration began investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Smith recounts how the “dossier” likely prompted the surveillance and investigation of aides to Donald Trump by the Obama administration, and efforts to delegitimize the incoming administration.

He notes:

[I]f a sitting president used the instruments of state, including the intelligence community, to disseminate and legitimize a piece of paid opposition research in order to first obtain warrants to spy on the other party’s campaign, and then to de-legitimize the results of an election once the other party’s candidate won, we’re looking at a scandal that dwarfs Watergate—a story not about a bad man in the White House, but about the subversion of key security institutions that are charged with protecting core elements of our democratic process while operating largely in the shadows.

But the real news in Smith’s well-researched article is that the information compiled by Fusion GPS in the dossier might have relied heavily on earlier reporting done by the firm’s founder about Russian lobbying in the U.S.

Smith writes:

A Tablet investigation using public sources to trace the evolution of the now-famous dossier suggests that central elements of the Russiagate scandal emerged not from the British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s top-secret “sources” in the Russian government—which are unlikely to exist separate from Russian government control—but from a series of stories that Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson and his wife Mary Jacoby co-wrote for The Wall Street Journal well before Fusion GPS existed, and Donald Trump was simply another loud-mouthed Manhattan real estate millionaire.

Simpson and Jacoby co-wrote a Journal article in April 2007, “How Lobbyists Help Ex-Soviets Woo Washington.” In it, Smith notes, they identified Paul Manafort as a key player in introducing Russians to Beltway circles. They kept reporting on him over the years. When Manafort was hired to manage the Trump campaign, Simpson — by now running Fusion GPS — made him a focus of his research, and knew enough background information to build a plausible case.

Smith points out that Fusion GPS had few sources within Russia. Nellie Ohr, who also worked with Fusion GPS and happened to be married to a senior official in Obama’s Department of Justice, had not lived in Russia for decades. on the  Even former Christopher Steele, the former British spy who was hired to work on the dossier, probably had few good contacts. Simpson’s earlier Journal reporting was probably his best resource. And the CIA and FBI probably had few better sources: as Smith points out, their intelligence on Russia was terrible.

So the entire Russia investigation may not be based on actual intelligence at all, but on reporting that is ten years out of date. Manafort’s enduring Russia ties certainly provided fodder for Special Counsel Robert Mueller, but the overall theory that Russia may have colluded with the Trump campaign is looking shoddier than ever.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. He is the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.