Politics

As first previewed over the weekend, tomorrow at 11:15am, President Trump will sign an executive order aimed at taking action on health care, or as the White House put it, "to promote health care choice and competition", after Congress's failure to repeal ObamaCare.  The order - which is expected to further weaken Obamacare - should, in theory, ease rules on small businesses banding together to buy health insurance, through what are known as association health plans, and lift Obama administration limits on short-term health insurance plans, according to a source on a call with administratio

Authored by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

WAR is a racket. It always has been.

 

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

 

Back in July, the state of Illinois narrowly avoided a junk bond rating with a last minute budget deal that included a 32% in hike in income taxes.  Republican Governor Bruce Rauner vetoed the budget and called it a "disaster," but both houses of the state legislature voted to override his veto.  Meanwhile, S&P and Moody's were apparently both convinced that the budget deal was sufficient for the state to remain an investment grade credit and all lived happily ever after, if just for a few months.

Two and a half months after President Donald Trump picked John Kelly to replace Reince Priebus as White House Chief of Staff, Trump has reportedly settled on Kelly’s replacement at DHS. And unsurprisingly, it's the candidate that Kelly has been pulling for, Kirstjen Nielsen, who served as his deputy when he ran the department.

A handful of media outlets reported Wednesday afternoon that Trump would soon announce that he’s selected Nielsen, who will then need to be confirmed by the Senate.

It was exactly one week ago when just as Bloomberg reported that Yellen was most likely out of consideration as next Fed chair, and as the WSJ reported that Trump was meeting with Kevin Warsh, that Politico reported, for the first time, that discussions with people close to the Fed Chair selection process "confirmed Kevin Warsh and Jerome Powell as the current front-runners with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said to be favoring Powell. That’s something of a head scratcher to outside observers of the process who did not have Powell on short-lists before the process began.