On Thursday April 14 Donald Trump spoke at the New York State
Republican Gala. The GOP candidate for
President gave the best speech of his 2016 campaign recalling Republican
President Gerald Ford and the GOP’s stance on a financially ailing New York
City in 1975, “Drop Dead.” From Bloomberg:
Excerpt:
Donald Trump Basks in Glow of New York Republicans
The brash billionaire was clearly
enjoying himself at a GOP fundraiser just a mile south of his eponymous Trump
Tower….
“It's great to be back in New
York,” Trump told the audience of 800 guests at the $1,000-a-plate New York
State Republican Gala at the Grand Hyatt hotel in Midtown Manhattan…
His 23-minute speech was packed
with stories about his real estate ventures and what he described as his magic touch for succeeding where others
had failed to rehabilitate a struggling city. He began in the mid-1970s,
when the Grand Hyatt was built during a fiscal crisis.
“The city was dead,” Trump said, recalling the front page of the Daily News
in 1975 that turned President Gerald Ford's refusal to send aid into an
outrage: “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD…”
Gerald Ford the hapless Republican President came to office
after Republican President Richard Nixon resigned rather than be impeached and
prosecuted for massive corruption in the Executive Office.
Ford, a 25 year veteran Republican congressman from
Michigan, became America’s first unelected President. Ford was first appointed to the Vice Presidency
vacated by Nixon’s Veep Spiro Agnew who had resigned in disgrace after facing
charges of accepting bribes and evading taxes.
Ford’s first action as President was to pardon Richard Nixon ensuring he
would never be prosecuted for his crimes.
In 1975 New York City was on the verge of financial collapse
after years of war in Vietnam (1955-1975) and congressional and presidential
impotence. From President Profiles:
Excerpt:
Adding to the controversies over
both congressional and presidential impotence was the question about the
looming financial default of New York City.
For eight months, the nation's most
populous city, paying the price for attempting to cope with overwhelming
economic and social forces, without budgetary discipline, stood at the brink of
economic collapse. Only in later months
did it become apparent that the New York
predicament merely epitomized the problems faced by the nation's older urban
centers…
… with default virtually a
certainty, those with traditionally
rural biases against big-city evils found satisfaction that, at last, the
"chickens had come home to roost" because of "misguided liberalism…"
Ford's position was never a mystery.
Yet, when he delivered a stern rebuke to the city on 29 October 1975, promising to veto any "bailout"
of the nation's premier city, the finality of his statement came as a
draconian blow.
That was 41 years ago, I guess the more things change the
more they stay the same. Now in 2016 the
GOP is saying to Puerto Rico “Drop Dead.”
From New York Daily News:
Excerpt:
GOP to Puerto Rico's nearly bankrupt government: 'Drop dead'
Republican leaders in Congress told
Puerto Rico’s nearly bankrupt government to drop dead on Tuesday.
Despite feverish efforts by the
White House and congressional Democrats to insert a provision into the federal
spending bill that would allow the Caribbean island territory to tackle its
massive $72 billion debt through bankruptcy restructuring, top Republicans in the Senate scuttled it at the last minute.
“The hedge funds won, they got their way in Congress,” said Richard
Ravitch, New York’s former lieutenant governor…
Puerto Rico governor Alejandro
Garcia Padilla should tell Congress, bondholders and hedge funds: "Puerto
Rico can't pay what it doesn't have."
Last week, it appeared that
confrontation could be avoided. New York Sen. Chuck Schumer expressed optimism
that a bipartisan compromise to aid Puerto Rico could be reached…
On Monday, Schumer and Sen. Maria
Cantwell (D-Wash.) huddled late into the night with three top GOP leaders —
Sens. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Judiciary Committee; Orrin Hatch,
chairman of the Finance Committee; and Lisa Murkowski, chairwoman of the Energy
Committee — and their top aides to find common ground.
But Grassley was adamant, according
to two participants in the meeting, that he didn’t want to extend municipal
bankruptcy laws to Puerto Rico, a right the 50 states already have….
“The bottom line is that neither
Chapter 9 (normal municipal bankruptcy) nor Super Chapter 9 (the territorial
alternative) do anything to help Puerto
Rico’s spending problems, which are the crux of the issue,” Foy said.
Why are the Republicans digging in their heels and refusing
to bail out Puerto Rico? From HedgeClippers:
Excerpt:
#HEDGEPAPERS NO. 26 – PUERTO RICO: PAIN AND PROFIT
As 2015 came to an end, there was
much speculation about the January 1st deadline for Puerto Rico to pay its
creditors…
To pay back its creditors, Puerto
Rico has resorted to extreme measures including delaying tax refunds to its citizens,[4] increasing sales tax by more
than 50%,[5] and instituting massive cuts to education, healthcare, and social
services.
Unsurprisingly, Puerto Rico’s most disenfranchised
populations (including Medicaid and Medicare enrollees, incarcerated people,
and families with special needs children) are shouldering the burden of those
measures.
The crisis is driving more Puerto
Ricans off the island and onto the mainland, fueling an ongoing “population
swap”[6] in which unemployed, young Puerto Ricans leave the island in search of
work, while hundreds of wealthy
Americans move onto to the island because the “Millionaire’s Law”[7]and
other policies have turned it into a “fiscal
paradise” for the wealthy….[8]
Meanwhile, wealthy financiers are flocking to the island to take advantage of tax
exemptions and cuts on corporate taxes, personal income, and capital gains.[11]
At a recent investment conference,
billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson predicted Puerto Rico would become
the “Singapore of the Caribbean”[12]
–that is, an extremely wealthy tax
haven.
This report details how, in order
to pay back its creditors, the Puerto
Rican government has implemented a severe austerity budget that is is creating
a humanitarian crisis on the island and threatening Puerto Ricans’ access to
basic services including healthcare, education, and even electricity.
Meanwhile, the hedge funds that reportedly own nearly 50% of Puerto Rico’s debt
continue using vulture tactics to win as big a payday as possible at the
expense of Puerto Ricans….[13]
Bingo, the GOP is telling Puerto Rico to “Drop Dead” so
their hedge fund vultures can pick their bones clean and set up shop in a “fiscal
paradise.” So is Puerto Rico’s Governor going
to take the advice of Richard Ravitch and tell the hedge funds who own nearly
50% of their debt "Puerto Rico can't pay what it doesn't have?" I
guess so.
The GOP is pulling every dirty trick in the book to deny the
American people the right to choose their presidential candidates. They are trying to shoe horn in Ted Cruz with
parlor tricks designed to steal delegates from Donald Trump.
Cruz, the unnatural born American citizen has judge shopped
around and found a New Jersey Judge to declare him a “natural born American
citizen” eligible to be President of the United States. The case will go to the Supreme Court for
final determination. From WEBCommentary:
Excerpt:
Judge Masin Cannot Make Ted Cruz a Natural Born US Citizen
"A New Jersey judge has
declared Sen. Ted Cruz is constitutionally eligible to be president of the
United States….
Judge Masin relied on a 1898
Supreme Court Wong Kim Ark, in which the Fourteenth Amendment and English
common law resulted in a determination that “all persons born or naturalized in
the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the
United States."
However, the Constitution distinguishes between United States citizens and
natural born United States citizens.
Law professor Victor Williams and
others challenged Cruz’s certificate of eligibility to be on the New Jersey
ballot.
They argued that Cruz’s Canadian birth certificate on public
record "incontrovertibly proves, that he was, and is, a natural-born
Canadian” and that "[i]t simply a physical impossibility for him to be
both a natural-born Canadian and a natural-born American.”
Cruz's lawyers argued that it is “inconceivable that the Framers
intended to exclude a U.S. citizen at birth from holding the office of
president, simply because of where he or she happened to be born."
What IS inconceivable is that the Framers would have considered Cruz to
be a natural born United Statesw citizen. They would not have considered
him a United States citizen….
Politicians often try to be all
things, but Cruz is not both a natural born and naturalized United States
citizen and the Canadian citizenship which he did not renounce until after
becoming the first Canadian elected to
the United States citizen is the
kind of problem the "natural born Citizen" requirement was included
to avoid.
Judge Masin noted "that the
parliamentary legislation recognized in Blackstone and presumably known to the
founders that declared children born abroad to English-subject fathers to be
natural born subjects did not provide
that the children born abroad whose mother was the sole English subject parent
were 'natural-born.'"
Judge Masin conceded that "an
originalist interpretation 'would almost certainly' see the father-only
distinction as one that the Supreme Court would today uphold."
Nevertheless, he opined: "such
an outcome seems to be at complete odds with contemporary understandings of
equal protection as it is hard to discern any rational basis that would favor
the child of father over child of the mother…
That analysis is fundamentally flawed.
Judge Masin did not note it in his
opinion, but It was not until 1934 that mothers were empowered to transmit
United States citizen to their children."
The "contemporary understandings of equal protection" relied upon by Judge Masin are not relevant to what
"natural born Citizen" as used in the Constitution means.
No evidence is cited for the proposition that the Fourteenth Amendment
was intended to change the
understanding of what "natural born
Citizen" as used in the Constitution meant, because the Fourteenth Amendment was NOT intended to amend the Constitution's"natural born Citizen
requirement."
Accordingly, the Fourteenth Amendment should not be
misused based on "contemporary understandings of equal protection."
Ha ha what a laugh.
The Fourteenth Amendment that states that a child born in the United
States, even if the parents aren’t citizens, is a natural born citizen has been
attacked by the GOP for years. They have
called these natural born citizens “anchor babies.” From NPR:
Excerpt:
The amendment, ratified more than
140 years ago, grants automatic citizenship to nearly any child born in the
U.S.
Critics say it's an irresistible
lure to illegal immigrants — and needs to be revised. Recently, it's been
getting a lot of play on the cable news shows…
"People come here to have
babies," Graham said. "They come here to drop a child — it's called
drop and leave. To have a child in America, they cross the border, they go to
an emergency room, have a child and that child is automatically an American
citizen. That shouldn't be the case — that attracts people here for all the
wrong reasons."
Graham has been joined by other
leading Republicans, including Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Senate Minority
Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, in calling for Senate hearings on whether
changes to the 14th Amendment are needed….
Many refer to these children of
illegal immigrants as "anchor babies."
But now they claim that unnatural born Ted Cruz is a natural
born American because the Fourteenth Amendment changed the meaning of “natural
born.” What a joke.
At the Republican Gala in New York where Donald Trump
reminded New Yorkers that it was Republican
President Gerald Ford and the GOP who told New York City to “drop dead” in 1975,
Ted Cruz also gave a speech.
Excerpt:
Cruz got little reaction when he
opened his speech by saying, “I will tell you I haven’t built any buildings in
New York City, but I have spent my
entire life defending the Constitution of the United States.”
Several minutes into Cruz's speech,
many in the audience were flat-out ignoring him, conversing loudly at their
tables.
Trump is almost certain to crush
his rivals in the New York primary on Tuesday….
He’s polling at higher than 50 percent with GOP voters here, more than
30 points ahead of Kasich, who’s at 22 percent in the RealClearPolitics rolling
average of polls, and Cruz, who’s at 18 percent.
But instead of coasting to the
nomination on his victories in primaries and caucuses, Trump is scrambling to
build a competitive delegate-hunting machine by spending money and hiring fresh
national political talent.
Meanwhile, Cruz continues to shoehorn his most loyal supporters into delegate
slots, trying to increase the odds of a contested convention, his only
realistic chance of winning the nomination.
In 1975 the GOP said to New York “Drop Dead” but Donald
Trump took on the GOP and rebuilt New York into a prosperous thriving city that
is the envy of the world. In 2016 the
GOP is telling the Puerto Rican people “Drop Dead.” The GOP will do anything to stop Donald Trump
from rebuilding America.
Donald Trump has won millions more votes cast by the
American people than Cruz and Kasich combined.
The GOP is trying to deny Trump the candidacy based on delegate
votes. Delegate votes are cast by party
insiders to overturn the will of the voters.
If Trump is denied the nomination at the Republican convention
in Cleveland, he will run as a third party candidate. Then finally the American people can tell the
GOP “Drop Dead.”
By Patricia Baeten
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