(2) Trump’s proposal cuts many programs that are more intuitively valuable to coal miners in West Virginia —and single mothers in Detroit — than a 10 percent increase in defense spending. The president’s budget cuts funding for early childhood education, public housing, transit, food assistance and job training — all programs that disproportionately benefit single mothers in cities with low median incomes. And it also abolishes the Appalachian Regional Commission and Rural Business-Cooperative Service, while shrinking the Labor Department — all moves that disadvantage coal miners.
“Just to follow-up on that, you were talking about the steel worker in Ohio, coal worker in Pennsylvania, but they may have an elderly mother who depends on the Meals on Wheels program or who may have kids in Head Start,” Acosta said. “Yesterday, or the day before, you described this as a hard power budget. Is it also a hard-hearted budget?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Mulvaney replied. “I think it’s probably one of the most compassionate things we can do.”
By itself, this budget has no impact on taxes — it just transfers federal spending from programs that directly benefit working families to ones that don’t. And the Trump administration has expressed no interest in significantly cutting payroll or sales taxes, which make of the bulk of many-a-Detroit resident’s tax burden.
Well, we’re not talking about a direct military confrontation between the US and Russia but a hybrid war scenario in which anti-Western forces in the ME operate with tacit Russian support under Russian anti-aircraft protection. S-400 missile systems comes to mind .
Montenegro is one of the focal points of interest for the Russia/USSR stemming from their centuries old obsession with a warm water port. The Black Sea Fleet is at the mercy of Turkey who can close the straits to Russian shipping, albeit by breaking existing international treaties.
Here’s a nice summary of these controversial events. It seems that both Mattis and Tillerson have discussed this in great detail.
A base in Montenegro helps the Russians project their military force in the Middle East with all the accompanying negative effects - they’re not wedded to a specific ideology regarding Islam so they can switch their support from shias to sunnis whenever they feel like it just to cause additional problems for the West.
I haven’t always agreed with McCain but why the hell did Paul object to Montenegro joining NATO? Initially McCain said he was carrying out Putin’s agenda, which is a bit different than his closing comment of Paul “working for Putin”. The closing statement sounded a bit more off script with McCain being pissed Paul walked off.
This gets thrown out often when discussing the US/Russia power balance but simply put carrier’s are overrated when 90% of your potential conflict is occurring around your own border. Strategically they don’t need carriers to exert force like we do considering we’re across the ocean. Instead it’s better for them to deny our Carrier fleet via their submarine fleet.
“We fund the provision of legal assistance to people who can’t afford to pay for a lawyer and are facing significant legal issues: things like needing a protection order against an abuser, people facing wrongful eviction or foreclosure, survivors of disaster who need legal assistance in restoring their legal documents and getting access to federal benefits; representing veterans who have been denied the benefits they earned through their service in the military,” Sandman said.