Upstream of the Herd

Republicans Are Trying to Take Away Your Health Care Republicans spent the last several years trying to destroy "Obamacare" and it appears that they may now be succeeding. Amongst other things, the Affordable Care Act's (the ACA's) "mandate" required that all Americans obtain health insurance or pay a penalty for not doing so. Republicans fought against this ACA mandate, claiming it was "unconstituional" to "force" people to purchase something. The mandate was contested all the way to the Supreme Court, where it was deemed "Constitutional". Since then, Republicans have attempted to halt, alter, undo, change, or otherwise "repeal and replace Obamacare" over 50 times- all unsucessfully. Until now. Trump and the Republican tax reform bill of 2017 ammended the ACA to remove the mandate, or tax penalty, for going uninsured (but kept the requirement that all Americans buy health insurance). http://fortune.com/2017...

Paul Manafort's Sentencing Memo Here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tvjar-y3FjDrzT5rXQBRneipnGLjRxjk/view This document doesn't make any recommendations for Paul Manafort's sentencing. It only says that Manafort lied to them all the time. It says that Manafort agreed to cooperate "fully, truthfully, completely and forthrightly" with the Special Counse/Mueller investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 US election but that Manafort "failed to perform" and also continued his criminal activities even after agreeing to cooperate. It also says that there are "pending investigations" and/or "uncharged individuals", so some of the information is "sealed". Manafort met with investigators 12 times, but continued to lie "in multiple ways and on multiple occasions", even after agreeing to cooperate with investigators. When Manafort's defense team was informed of his continued lying to the Special Coun...

Michael Cohen's Sentencing Memorandums Cohen had two Sentencing Memorandums filed on Friday (12/7/2018). One was from the Special Counsel/Mueller investigation into Russian interferance in the 2016 US presidential election, here: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5453418-Mueller-Cohen-filing.html The sentencing memo says that Cohen lied to the House and Senate investigations and also to the Special Counsel investigators about Russian interferance into the 2016 election, and about the Trump Tower Moscow plans. It notes that the Mocow project was under negotiation with high level Kremlin staffers during and after Trump's election, while Russia was also interfering with our election, that Trump was aware of these things, and that Trump and all those in his orbit hid their knowledge of this meddling and project from voters (leaving him/them subject to blackmail). Page 4 of the memo appears to say that Trump asked Cohen to arrange a personal meeting with Putin about...

There were two parts to the Flynn documents released on December 4, 2018- a Sentencing Memo, and an Addendum. Sentencing Memo here: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5425861-Flynn-filing.html#document/p1 The sentencing memo charges Flynn with one count of lying to the FBI. He has pleaded "guilty". The Mueller investigation has been very kind to him and only charged him with one count due to his "substantial assistance" in cooperating with the investigation(s), and has also recommened a very light prison sentence of "0-6 months" in prison. Flynn has been proven to have made "multiple false statements, to multiple Department of Justice (“DOJ”) entities" about two issues: the Russian interference in our election, and about Flynn's role as a paid representative of Turkey (including the possibility of kidnapping Muhammed Fethullah Gülen from Pensylvania and retruning him to Turkey). Both of these issues mean that Flynn was ...