Today (June 14) Trump turns 74. Happy Birthday!
Feel free to post birthday wishes for him.
Great news for the economy and true Americans, but bad news for the libs! 
Stocks are rushing higher in early trading Friday after a stunningly good report on the U.S. job market gave Wall Street's recent rally another shot of adrenaline.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 756 points, or 2.9 percent, at 27,037, as of 9.45am. The Nasdaq was up 1.6 percent and the S&P 500 was up 2.2 percent within the first 15 minutes of trading.
It came after the government said that U.S. employers added 2.5 million workers to their payrolls last month. Economists were expecting them instead to slash another 8 million jobs amid the ongoing fallout from the response to the coronavirus pandemic.
While economists cautioned that it's just one month of data and could be giving false hope, the report gives credence to the building optimism among stock investors that the economy can recover relatively quickly from its current hole.
That hope has been a big reason for the better than 40 percent rally for the S&P 500 since late March.
The S&P 500 is now down only about 6.3 percent from its record set in February after earlier being down nearly 34 percent.
'It looks like the healing process is underway in the jobs market and it looks like it´s happening sooner than expected,' said Todd Lowenstein, equity strategy executive of The Private Bank at Union Bank. 'It looks like the worst is behind us.'
In another show of increased confidence, the yield on the 10-year Treasury zoomed up to 0.90 percent from 0.82 percent late Thursday.
This area of the market was much earlier than stocks to give warning about the coming economic devastation from the coronavirus outbreak. It had also been much slower to rise than stocks recently, but the 10-year yield is now close to its highest level since late March.
Stocks began their tremendous rally in late March after the Federal Reserve came to the rescue once again with promises of immense aid to keep markets running smoothly.
Capitol Hill also agreed on unprecedented amounts of aid for the economy, which helped eliminate the worst-case scenario for many investors of a full-blown financial crisis.
Rest of the article.
Seriously? This is shameful!
NEW YORK — Health care workers that came to New York to help fight the coronavirus pandemic at its epicenter will have to pay state taxes, according to the governor.
He addressed the issues Tuesday at a news conference.
"We're not in a position to provide any subsidies right now because we have a $13 billion deficit," Gov. Andrew Cuomo said. "So there's a lot of good things I'd like to do, and if we get federal funding, we can do, but it would be irresponsible for me to sit here looking at a $13 billion deficit and say I'm gonna spend more money, when I can't even pay the essential services."
Even though the state government asked thousands of people to come to New York from out of state to help fight coronavirus, they will have to pay New York state taxes, even on income they might make from their home states that they're paid while in New York.
Cuomo said he needs help from Washington in order to cover budget deficits from COVID-19, let alone subsidize state income tax for essential workers that flocked to New York's aid.
"If we don't get more money from Washington, we can't fund schools, right, so at the rate we want to fund them. We are in dire financial need," he said.
The issue first came up when the temporary hospital in Central Park was being erected by Samaritan's Purse.
pay state income tax: Cuomo
items..image.alt
A field hospital with 68 beds under construction in Central Park.
By: Corey Crockett , James Ford
Posted at 9:11 PM, May 05, 2020
and last updated 7:15 AM, May 06, 2020
NEW YORK — Health care workers that came to New York to help fight the coronavirus pandemic at its epicenter will have to pay state taxes, according to the governor.
He addressed the issues Tuesday at a news conference.
"We're not in a position to provide any subsidies right now because we have a $13 billion deficit," Gov. Andrew Cuomo said. "So there's a lot of good things I'd like to do, and if we get federal funding, we can do, but it would be irresponsible for me to sit here looking at a $13 billion deficit and say I'm gonna spend more money, when I can't even pay the essential services."
Recent Stories from pix11.com
Even though the state government asked thousands of people to come to New York from out of state to help fight coronavirus, they will have to pay New York state taxes, even on income they might make from their home states that they're paid while in New York.
Cuomo said he needs help from Washington in order to cover budget deficits from COVID-19, let alone subsidize state income tax for essential workers that flocked to New York's aid.
"If we don't get more money from Washington, we can't fund schools, right, so at the rate we want to fund them. We are in dire financial need," he said.
The issue first came up when the temporary hospital in Central Park was being erected by Samaritan's Purse.
"Our financial comptroller called me," said Ken Isaacs, a vice president of the organization, "and he said, 'Do you know that all of you are going to be liable for New York state income tax?'
"I said, 'What?'" Isaacs continued. "[The comptroller] said, 'Yeah, there's a law. If you work in New York State for more than 14 days, you have to pay state income tax.'"
"I didn't know that," Isaacs told PIX11 News.
"What we're even more concerned about than the money," Isaacs continued, "is the bureaucracy, and the paperwork, and I think that once that's unleashed...once you start filing that, you have to do that for like a whole year or something."
A top New York City certified public accountant explained the situation further in a FaceTime interview with PIX11 News at the time.
Entities from "these other states will have to register in New York," said Lawrence Spielman, a partner at the accounting firm Spielman, Koenigsberg & Parker, LLP, "and do withholding here in New York."
Continued in comments...
Within hours of President Trump's decision to restrict travel from China on Jan. 31, top Democrats and media figures immediately derided the move as unnecessary and xenophobic -- and they are now beating a hasty retreat from that position as the coronavirus continues to ravage the economy and cause scores of deaths.
Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden led the way, quickly attacking what he called Trump's "record of hysteria, xenophobia and fear-mongering" after the travel restrictions were announced, and arguing that Trump "is the worst possible person to lead our country through a global health emergency." Biden, on Wednesday, didn't criticize the travel ban in any way, and instead accused Trump of "downplaying" the virus early on in remarks to Fox News.
"I had Biden calling me xenophobic," Trump told Fox News' "Hannity" on March 26. "He called me a racist, because of the fact that he felt it was a racist thing to stop people from China coming in."
In March, another Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., conspicuously insisted at a Fox News town hall that he wouldn't consider closing the U.S. border to prevent the spread of coronavirus, before condemning what he called the president's xenophobia. The Vermont senator has since taken to promoting "Medicare-for-All" and workers' rights amid the outbreak, while deferring to health experts on border closings.
For many news outlets, the about-face has been stark. A Jan. 31 article in The New York Times quoted epidemiologist Dr. Michael Osterholm as saying that Trump's decision to restrict travel from China was "more of an emotional or political reaction."
Weeks later, though, the paper reported that dozens of "nations across the world have imposed travel restrictions to curb the spread of the coronavirus," and did not criticize any of them for the move.
The Washington Post ran a story quoting a Chinese official asking for "empathy" and slamming the White House for acting "in disregard of WHO [World Health Organization] recommendation against travel restrictions."
In March, The Post finally acknowledged that critics accused China and WHO of "covering up or downplaying the severity of an infectious disease outbreak."
A week earlier, Vox confidently declared that "The evidence on travel bans for diseases like coronavirus is clear: They don’t work." The article originally referred to the "Wuhan coronavirus" in its headline, before left-wing journalists and Democrats argued that terminology was racist.
Vox also tweeted on Jan. 31: "Is this going to be a deadly pandemic? No." On Mar. 24, Vox deleted that tweet, writing that it "no longer reflects the current reality of the coronavirus story."
The Heritage Foundation's Lyndsey Fifield identified numerous other instances of prominent media outlets criticizing the travel ban, in many cases without issuing any kind of correction. For example, The Verge cautioned that Trump's policies "contradict advice from the World Health Organization (WHO), which said yesterday that countries should not restrict travel or trade in their response to the new virus."
BuzzFeed News asserted that "barring foreign travelers from China, along with making U.S. citizens self-quarantine at home ... likely violated civil rights laws, without leading to any real lowered risk of a U.S. outbreak," citing "global health law expert" Lawrence Gostin of Georgetown University.
STAT, a health and medicine news site, reported that the travel ban was similar to calls from "conservative lawmakers and far-right supporters of the president," even as "public health experts ... warn that the move could do more harm than good."
On Jan. 15, when the first American with coronavirus returned from China, House Democrats were ceremoniously carrying their articles of impeachment against Trump to the Senate. (The president was acquitted overwhelmingly on each article of impeachment.)
Continued in comments...
Breaking news!!!...President Donald Trump has fired the intelligence community’s chief watchdog, Michael Atkinson, who was the first to sound the alarm to Congress last September about an “urgent” complaint he’d received from an intelligence official involving Trump’s communications with Ukraine.
Trump formally notified the Senate Intelligence Committee of his intention to fire Atkinson and remove him from his duties, to take effect 30 days from Friday, according to two congressional officials and a copy of the letter obtained by Politico.
That takes old-school to a new level.
A space engineer who despises smartphones and text messaging built her own cell phone -- and it has a rotary dial.
Justine Haupt, 34, spent three years creating the cute device, which has a battery that lasts up to 30 hours, according to report in SWNS. The phone, which is 4 inches tall, 3 inches wide and about 1 inch thick, takes an AT&T prepaid SIM card that's compatible with cell phone radio.
Public interest in her writing about the retro phone apparently crashed her website.
Haupt, who works as an astronomy engineer at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, has since been inundated with requests from fellow smartphone haters begging for their own version of the phone and she is now offering build-it-yourself kits, SWNS reports.
“I work in technology but I don’t like the culture around smartphones,” she told SWNS. “I don’t like the hyper connected thing. I don’t like the idea of being at someone’s beck and call every moment and I don’t need to have that level of access to the Internet."
The engineer used a 3D printer to create the cell phone case and added speed dialing buttons so she could call her husband and her mother at the click of a button. She also added an e-paper display to the phone so that she could see messages and missed calls.
She wasn't planning on selling the phones, but Haupt ended up creating a kit that users can use to put together their own version of the tiny phone -- minus the rotary dial, although a newer kit will be more inclusive -- after being inundated with emails from people who wanted to purchase the phone.
“It is actually my phone - I don’t carry my flip phone with me anymore," Haupt said. "I never expected to go viral with this."
“But there’s a surprising number of people who have identified with my philosophy of not liking smartphone culture -- I’m pleasantly surprised that those people are out there," she added.
For those who has seen the movie "Cast Away", you'll understand.
WASHINGTON (CNN) — In a bold, emergency action to support the economy during the coronavirus pandemic, the Federal Reserve on Sunday announced it would cut its target interest rate near zero.
The swifter-than-expected rate cut is designed to prevent the kind of credit crunch and financial market disruptions that occurred the last time the Fed had to cut rates all the way to the bottom: The Fed last cut rates to zero during the global financial crisis just over a decade ago.
In addition to rate cuts, the Fed also said it would purchase another $700 billion worth of Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities. It also struck a deal with five other foreign central banks, the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank and the Swiss National Bank, to lower their rates on currency swaps to keep the financial markets functioning normally.
The Fed last lowered currency swaps during the European debt crisis in 2011. The move makes borrowing US dollars cheaper for banks around the world. Swapping currencies, particularly dollars, is a staple of global financial transactions.
The coordinated move will lower the cost of short-term borrowing for banks around the globe, and it could also keep the global economy clear of an all-out credit crunch similar to the one the world’s economies encountered a decade ago.
The bond and mortgage security purchases are tools the Fed previously used during the most recent recession. They helped to shore up housing and US government debt — two crucial markets that keep the gears of the American financial system turning.
Although the underlying US economy has remained on solid ground — unemployment is at a historic low and consumer confidence has stood near all-time highs — the Fed said the coronavirus outbreak has significantly hurt the global financial conditions.
The Fed could, in theory, take rates negative, as some other central banks have, but Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has resisted that idea. The Fed said Sunday it would hold rates steady near zero until it is confident that the US economy pulls out of the coronavirus-fueled economic quagmire.
SHAWNTHOR Blog (217)
