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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: longnshort who wrote (1134413)	5/11/2019 10:23:01 PM
From: Land Shark	1 Recommendation Recommended By sylvester80 Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1577025

Fake shit from a brain dead asshole FatRumper

To: longnshort who wrote (1134413)	5/11/2019 10:29:36 PM
From: Heywood40	2 Recommendations Recommended By rdkflorida2 sylvester80 Respond to of 1577025

Elderly FatRumpLicker Busted For Wild Sunroof Stunt Man 70, nabbed for reckless driving on Florida interstate Sunroof Stunt MAY 10--A 70-year-old Florida motorist was arrested Tuesday after an off-duty cop spotted the suspect driving while “sitting on the sunroof” of his Cadillac sedan, according to court records. Leonard Olaf Olsen, the accused septuagenarian, was traveling on Interstate 4 around 1 PM on May 7 when the sheriff’s deputy spotted him recklessly driving his vehicle. The deputy, who recorded Olsen in action, estimated that the Cadillac reached speeds in excess of 100 mph. After the deputy called 911, Florida Highway Patrol officers pulled Olsen over on a Lakeland roadway. He was alone in the vehicle. After initially claiming not to recall being atop the sunroof, Olsen copped to the dangerous driving (which, he said, occurred while the car was on cruise control). “The car drives itself and has a gigantic computer in it," Olsen explained. “I thought it would be a nice way to praise God for a minute, and I thought it would be nice at the time and that's what I did.” Seen in the adjacent mug shot, Olsen was booked into the Polk County lockup on a misdemeanor reckless driving charge. Jail records show that he is also being held on four felonies related to an alleged domestic battery, but court records offer no details of those charges. Olsen’s rap sheet includes weapons convictions in 2006 and 2017. In the latter case, he was arrested for firing a .40 caliber handgun into the air while standing in the driveway of his Lakeland residence. Olsen’s wife told police that the July 2017 incident occurred after he “became upset and began to act out in an aggressive manner.” Olsen’s spouse said that before the shooting started, he stated that he “was going to make America Great Again and Donald Trump told him to do it.” Fearing that Olsen would shoot her, the woman told police that she ran into the couple’s home for safety as Olsen declared, “I’ve got to let the world know this is their last chance.” During police questioning, Olsen admitted firing the gun “until the ‘clip’ was empty.” While being driven to jail, Olsen reportedly rued not creating a bigger spectacle. “I should have waited until the media showed up,” he said, according to an arrest report. Olsen was subsequently convicted of illegally discharging a weapon and was placed on probation for six months. (2 pages)

To: longnshort who wrote (1134413)	5/12/2019 1:54:11 AM
From: sylvester80	1 Recommendation Recommended By rdkflorida2 Respond to of 1577025

Trump Trade War Just Raised Taxes On US Consumers By Tens Of Billions of Dollars The president keeps falsely claiming that China is paying his higher tariffs, but economists point out that Americans, not China, pay those costs. By S.V. Date 05/10/2019 04:04 pm ET huffpost.com WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump Friday raised taxes on American importers by tens of billions of dollars, costs that consumers will soon be paying on everything from clothes to electronics to frozen seafood. Tariffs on thousands of Chinese products totaling more than $200 billion each year that Trump originally imposed at 10 percent last September jumped to 25 percent just after midnight, thanks to Trump ramping up his trade war in hopes of forcing concessions. Trump nevertheless on Friday continued falsely claiming that China was paying the new duties. “Tariffs are NOW being paid to the United States by China of 25% on 250 Billion Dollars worth of goods & products. These massive payments go directly to the Treasury of the U.S.,” Trump wrote on Twitter, repeating the false claim he made to reporters Thursday about “all of the tariffs that China has been paying us for the last eight months ? billions and billions of dollars.” But that assertion, one that Trump has made in various forms dozens of times through the years, has no basis in fact. “No, no, no. No! Not so. False. Wrong. Nuh-uh,” said Jared Bernstein, once the top economic adviser to former Democratic Vice President Joe Biden. “Tariffs are paid by the importing company who then typically tries to pass the tax off on consumers. There’s a separate argument as to whether the tariffs are hurting the Chinese economy, but that’s different.” Neither China nor any other sovereign nation pays tariffs to the United States. Rather, they are collected by Customs and Border Protection from importers — manufacturers, wholesalers or even private individuals. Goods manufactured in the United States using Chinese parts will be more expensive now, as will retail items that were made entirely in China. The vast majority of those higher costs will be borne by consumers, economists from across the political spectrum agree. “Consumers pay tariffs. That is because importers who get hit with tariffs pass on the cost increase to consumers. Maybe not all, but at least some,” said Monica de Bolle, a trade expert with the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “So, U.S. consumers are paying for Trump’s war.” One recent University of Chicago study showed just how much they are already paying. Trump imposed tariffs on foreign-made washing machines a year ago to help Michigan-based Whirlpool. The duties increased the price of a typical washing machine by $86 — but also the price of dryers, on which there was no new tariff. Other protectionist politicians, including some Democrats, support tariffs but acknowledge the cost to U.S. consumers. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent who votes with Democrats, has said that tariffs do raise prices, but that consumers would be willing to pay higher prices if it meant more Americans would have better-paying jobs. It is unclear whether Trump’s falsehoods on the tariff question are the result of his lack of understanding of the issue or are deliberate lies designed to fool his supporters who continue to believe him. Trump has displayed a fundamental misunderstanding of international trade for decades, routinely conflating the United States’ federal budget deficit, for example, with the balance of trade deficit. In response to HuffPost’s queries on the matter, the White House press office responded with a study predicting that prices in the U.S. would only rise 4.5 percent on the affected goods because importers would substitute non-Chinese sources wherever possible. The White House press office would not address Trump’s false claim that China is paying “billions and billions” of dollars into the U.S. Treasury. “We’re not going to get a good deal with China if we let Trump keep negotiating by impulse, tweet, and campaign rally one-liner,” said Andrew Bates, a spokesman for now-presidential candidate Biden, whom Trump attacked by name during his Friday morning tweet storm. “So far all Trump has delivered is a bigger trade deficit than when he took office, and more pain for American farmers and consumers.”

To: longnshort who wrote (1134413)	5/12/2019 3:43:53 AM
From: sylvester80	Respond to of 1577025

BOMBSHELL: 40 states file price-fixing lawsuit against generic drug makers Nation May 11, 2019 3:41 PM EDT pbs.org BOSTON — Attorneys general from more than 40 states are alleging the nation’s largest generic drug manufacturers conspired to artificially inflate and manipulate prices for more than 100 different generic drugs, including treatments for diabetes, cancer, arthritis and other medical conditions. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Connecticut on Friday, also names 15 individual senior executives responsible for sales, marketing and pricing. Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, a Democrat, said investigators obtained evidence implicating 20 firms. “We have hard evidence that shows the generic drug industry perpetrated a multibillion dollar fraud on the American people,” Tong said. “We have emails, text messages, telephone records and former company insiders that we believe will prove a multi-year conspiracy to fix prices and divide market share for huge numbers of generic drugs.” Tong said the investigation had uncovered a primary reason why the cost of health care — and specifically generic prescription drugs — has been so high in this country. The surging prices of prescription drugs have drawn the attention of a number of politicians across the political spectrum from President Donald Trump to liberal Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. The new court suit was the second that has been filed in the investigation. The first, filed in 2016, named 18 corporate defendants and two individual defendants. Two former drug company executives entered into settlement agreements and are cooperating with the attorneys general in the investigation. A spokesman for one of the companies named in the suit, Teva Pharmaceuticals USA Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Israeli-based Teva Pharmaceuticals Industries Ltd, said Teva hasn’t engaged in any conduct that would lead to civil or criminal liability. “The allegations in this new complaint, and in the litigation more generally, are just that — allegations,” Kelley Dougherty, a Teva vice president, said in a statement Saturday. “The company delivers high-quality medicines to patients around the world and is committed to complying with all applicable laws and regulations in doing so.” Investigators said the drugs covered in the suit account for billions of dollars of sales in the United States. The suit was filed by 43 states and Puerto Rico with Connecticut taking the lead in the probe. The suit alleges that for many years these makers of generic drugs had operated under an agreement not to compete with each other and to settle instead for what these companies referred to as a “fair share” of the market to avoid pushing prices down through competition. But by 2012, the suit says that Teva and the other companies decided to “take this understanding to the next level.” It alleges that “Teva and its co-conspirators embarked on one of the most egregious and damaging price-fixing conspiracies in the history of the United States.” The suit says that the companies sought not only to maintain their “fair share” of the generic drug market but also to “significantly raise prices on as many drugs as possible.” To accomplish this goal, the suit says that Teva selected a core group of competitors with which it already had “very profitable collusive relationships,” and developed understandings to lead and follow each other’s price increases. The suit contends that this resulted in “many billions of dollars of harm to the national economy over a period of several years.” During a 19-month period beginning in July 2013, the suit says Teva significantly raised prices on approximately 112 different generic drugs and on at least 86 of those drugs colluded with a group it referred to as “high quality” competitors. The suit says that the size of the price increases varied but was over 1,000% for a number of the drugs. The suit says that the defendants knew their conduct was unlawful and usually chose to communicate in person or by cell phone “in an attempt to avoid creating a written record of their illegal conduct.” “When communications were reduced to writing or text messages, defendants often took overt and calculated steps to destroy evidence of those communications,” according to the suit. The civil suit is asking for a finding that the defendants’ actions violated federal and state antitrust and consumer protection laws and is seeking a permanent injunction preventing the companies from continuing the conduct. The suit also seeks reimbursement of profits from the actions and damages to be paid to the state agencies and consumers who were harmed by the drug company practices. Crutsinger reported from Washington.