SENATE PASSES FISCAL PACKAGE, HEADS TO THE HOUSE

In a much discussed move by President Trump, the Senate, led by Demorcrats Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer reached an agreement on funding the government for three more months and providing billions of dollars in relief for Hurricane Harvey victims.

The president also noted he was open to eliminating the need for Congress to hold votes on raising the country’s borrowing limit.

President Trump recently urged support for tax reform as a benefit to the middle class at the Andeaver oil refinery in Bismarck, ND.

However, he didn't reveal specific details of the plan, instead, reiterating his prior ideas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxkdB80TivA

President Trump has promised a tax plan that would provide relief to middle-class Americans so that they could achieve the American dream, let people keep more money in their pockets, and increase after-tax wages.

In the 1980's, the diversity in media was much greater than it is today, with about fifty companies controlling the majority of the news market. Even then, voices were raised over the problems with media concentration. Today, some 30 years later, they have all been merged down into only a handful of giant corporations.

419-3.

Three Republicans voted against a bill that, in part, provides $7.85 billion in emergency financial assistance to the victims of Hurricane Harvey.

Michigan Rep. Justin Amash, Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, and Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs said no to the aid package.

Minutes before the vote, Amash tweeted that funding for the disaster relief should be offset instead of being added to the deficit.

https://twitter.com/justinamash/status/905465795416862720

US Senators John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) are joining the legal fight against partisan gerrymandering.

September 6, 2017, Salt Lake City, UT -- Pledging to take the fight to the Supreme Court if necessary, officials with the Our America Initiative plan to appeal an August 29 decision by the federal D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold an earlier dismissal of Johnson v. Commission on Presidential Debates.

The lawsuit challenges the Commission on Presidential Debates and its exclusion of qualified candidates other than the Republican and Democratic presidential and vice-presidential nominees.

The amounts are huge. A search in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation website for grant awards with the keyword “Common Core” returns 257 results accumulating more than $300 million.

Substituting the Common Core euphemism “college and career readiness” uncovers another $130 million for another 52 grantees.

If you were born after 1968, you’ve never seen a third-party presidential candidate receive a single electoral vote.

Even in 2016’s “lesser-of-two-evils” contest, third-party candidates combined to earn roughly five percent of the vote, the same number Ross Perot achieved on his own in 1992.

Our system is becoming increasingly stratified. Presidential election numbers make good illustrations, but they don’t define our political system.

Congress, you’re up.

As expected, President Trump has ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program put in place by Barack Obama through executive action. No surprise there; Trump promised to end DACA during the campaign, even though he had teased the so-called Dreamers with assurances that they need not worry. His exact words: “I love these kids.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfjWIpnfjgQ

As voters, we’ll be asked to ignore the dereliction of duty demonstrated by our elected leaders; threatened with horrible outcomes if a federal budget isn’t passed and the debt ceiling isn’t increased; then, suffer through the traditional blame game, where the two major parties take turns distorting the truth and casting aspersions at each other in an attempt to gain a political advantage in next year’s midterm elections.