Lyin' Ryan Tweets Truth On Tax Plan, Deletes It In Shame

On Saturday, Lyin' Paul Ryan accidentally tweeted the truth about his tax scam:

Ooooh! A whole $1.50 per week! That's a whole $78.00 a year! Talk about your windfalls!

I'm sure that this secretary will be equally glad to know that while she's getting her $78.00, the Koch Brothers will get only $1.4 billion per year. That earned Ryan a good boy treat of $500,000 in his campaign coffers from Charles Koch and his wife.

The secretary will be smart to get that membership card at Costco, because she can spend the remaining $18 on the tissues she'll be needing next April when she finds out she actually owes money because she can't claim her property tax or rent, her student loan payments or any of the other deductions she used to claim.

Ryan deleted his tweet when Randy "Ironstache" Bryce busted him on it and turned it into a campaign talking point:

Moments ago, @PRyan deleted this tweet after we told him just how out of touch he was. Show Paul Ryan what you think of his tax bill. Chip in $1.50 now to help us repeal and replace Ryan permanently this November.https://t.co/c3Fii4Q0Jn

— Randy Bryce (@IronStache) February 3, 2018

And even though Ryan deleted, the world still saw it and gave him hell for it:

Paul Ryan deleted his embarrassing tweet of a blatant admission because he and Republicans don’t want you to know the truth: the #GOPTaxScam is a gift to corporate America and the top 1% at your expense.

He also doesn’t want you to know he got $500.000.00 from the Koch family. pic.twitter.com/ENXxASfAMP

— Nancy Pelosi (@TeamPelosi) February 3, 2018

Charles, a Koch brother in Wichita, said he was pleasantly surprised that his pay went up $26,923,076 a week... he said [that] will more than cover the cost of buying several more Paul Ryans. pic.twitter.com/pyNYDtTUGw

— LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) February 3, 2018

Paul Ryan deleted the below tweet after we responded with: "It will only take four and a half years for her raise to cover a single one of @PRyan’s $350 bottles of wine.” So RT if you want. pic.twitter.com/Ty9geDV9FH

— One Wisconsin Now (@onewisconsinnow) February 3, 2018

Dude. We all saw you. We all saw your pathetic boast about a woman making an extra $1.50 a week. You think deleting it mean we’re going to stop shaming you? Coward. @PRyan

— Kaili Joy Gray (@KailiJoy) February 3, 2018

Hey @SpeakerRyan (aka @PRyan) guess what? $1.50 a week doesn't even cover the cost of a box of crumbs. pic.twitter.com/xgLb24LsmH

— tracy fiore (@tracefiore) February 3, 2018

I bet about now that Lyin' Ryan is thinking even harder about retiring, especially before he gets embarrassed again by Ironstache beating him in November.

Cross posted from Crooks and Liars

Kochs Give Lyin' Ryan His Good Boy Treat For Tax Bill

Image courtesy of Shane Bakken

Last week, Randy "Ironstache" Bryce announced their 4th quarter fundraising was a huge success again:

Randy Bryce, one of the Democrats hoping to take on House Speaker Paul Ryan, raised $1.2 million at the end of last year, his campaign said.

Team Stache also reports that the donations came from over 80,000 donors and averaged about $25-30 each. How did Bryce raise so much? Well, as he said:

Bryce, a union ironworker and military veteran, was asked by Katy Tur on MSNBC in an interview Monday why he's raised so much money.

"People are seeing this wave. This resistance is very real," Bryce said. "People have had enough with where the president is taking us, and we're tired of not having a Congress that's acting as a check and balance to stand up to him."

A few days later, Ryan came out with his numbers. He reportedly raised $1.4 million during the same time frame, putting Ryan and Bryce at about an even pace.

But when you look at where the money comes from, there's a different story:

In the fourth quarter, Team Ryan raised nearly $5 million.

The Janesville Republican hasn't formally announced whether he'll run for another term representing the 1st Congressional district.

Ryan's re-election campaign announced it had nearly $10 million on hand at the end of 2017.

Of the $1.4 million raised by the campaign in the fourth quarter, more than $270,000 was raised directly in Ryan for Congress. The rest came from transfers from the speaker's joint fundraising committee.

In other words, he's using his position as Speaker of the House as a fundraising tool.

Ah, but there's more, friends. There's always more.

Mary Papenfuss at HuffPo points out that a great deal of the money came from Charles Koch and his wife and few other multibillionaires:

Just 13 days after the tax law was passed, Charles Koch and his wife, Elizabeth, donated nearly $500,000 to Ryan’s joint fundraising committee, according to a campaign finance report filed Thursday.

Five other donors, including billionaire businessmen Jeffery Hildebrand and William Parfet, each contributed $100,000 in the last quarter of 2017, according to the records.

“It looks like House Speaker Ryan is quickly being rewarded for passing this legislation that overwhelmingly benefits the Kochs and billionaires like them,” Adam Smith, spokesman for campaign finance reform nonprofit Every Voice, told the International Business Times, which first reported the Koch contributions.

The Koch donations were paid into Team Ryan, which raises money for the speaker, the National Republican Congressional Committee and a PAC run by Ryan. On the same day, Charles and Elizabeth Koch also each donated $237,000 to the NRCC.

Without the dark money, Bryce is keeping pace with Ryan, and could actually be doing better.

And Bryce made sure people take notice of Ryan's dirty money:

And Ryan’s Democratic challenger, ironworker and military veteran Randy Bryce, made sure that these massive gifts and the context around them did not go unnoticed.

Paul Ryan passed a 1.5 trillion dollar tax bill that takes from working people to give to the super rich.

Days later, he got $500,000 in Koch contributions.https://t.co/mctzh9RYu8

— Randy Bryce (@IronStache) January 21, 2018

Ryan would be hard-pressed to claim that these donations had nothing at all to do with the passage of the bill, considering the Koch brothers spent millions on the effort to sell the scam to the American people.

It needs to be also pointed out that the Kochs and Ryan's other benefactors are using our own money against us, seeing how they will gain exponentially more money from Ryan's tax plan. Thanks, Citizens United!

If you can, please help Randy keep getting his message out so that he can kick Ryan out. Give whatever you can to help the cause of regaining our country from the plutocrats and oligarchs that are pulling Ryan's strings. Don't let Ryan and his dark money overlords buy another election.

It's A Big Club and You Ain't In It!

By Jeff Simpson

Fourth of July weekend, and everyone gets together with their friends and likes to have a nice cookout, maybe some Spotted Cow and a burger.  It is always good to take a couple days and relax with friends.  

The members of the Bourgeoisie did just that.  

 Lally Weymouth, the former owner of the Washington Post and currently a senior associate editor there, held her annual summer party.   Being owned by Jeff Bezos has its privileges. 

Ms. Weymouth, at her house in the Hamptons, entertained with a long gold carpet leading to a big tent put up next to her house, where the guests were served, champagne, rare filet and a big chocolate cake w/ice cream (among many other delicacies).  

Ms. Weymouth, whose birthday was the next day, would of course, know many people in Washington D.C., since her grandmother bought the Washington Post many years ago.  

No one should be surprised when a couple of celebrity guests walked in:

Yes , fresh from their offices in the White House, where their father continually calls any mainstream media that criticizes him #fakenews, here are Jared and Ivanka partying with a senior editor of the Post.  

Ok it could just be a random thing, but as we all know --- But Wait There is more!! 

A quick peak at the guest list and who do we see? 

Who are all these rich, almost-completely white people? Here’s a breakdown:

• Joel Klein: Former Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education; then Executive Vice President of News Corps.; now an executive at New York-based health start-up Oscar.
• Alan Patricof: Investor; founder and chairman of New York Magazine; a Democrat who supported Hillary Clinton, though he often lunched with Young Jared Kushner.
• Boyden Gray: Former counsel to President Bush and a main architect of the Clean Air Act; former ambassador to the E.U.
• Chris Ruddy: CEO of Newsmax; Trump confidant.
• Katharine Weymouth: The former publisher of the Washington Post; daughter of Lally Waymouth.
• Mary Jordan: Washington Post correspondent “currently traveling America writing about the Trump era.”
• Richard Cohen: Washington Post columnist.
• Margaret Carlson: Bloomberg News columnist; the first female columnist at Time.
• Gillian Tett: U.S. managing editor of the Financial Times.
• Steve Clemons: Washington editor-at-large of The Atlantic.
• Robert Hormats: Vice Chairman of Kissinger Associates.
• Carl Icahn: Billionaire investor.
• Charles Koch: One half of the infamous Koch brothers and CEO of Koch Industries.
• John Paulson: An investor and one of Trump’s top economic advisers during his campaign.
• Dina Powell: The U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategy to Trump, evidently hand-fed to him by Mika Brzezinski.
• Richard Edelman: Founder of the PR firm Edelman Group.
• Maria Bartiromo: Anchor at FOX News.
• Ray Kelly: Former Commissioner of the NYPD.
• Bill Bratton: Ibid.
• Jeff Rosen: Legal commentator.
• KellyAnne Conway:
• William Drozdiak: A non-resident senior fellow at Brookings Center of the United States and Europe; senior advisor for McLarty and Associates.
• Steven Spielberg is there too, unfortunately for him.

Nothing like getting hard hitting news coverage from a paper of record after a night of the editor and reporters partying with all of the major players.

While families have been split over the current political climate, the people behind the scenes are eating rare filet and toasting to your foolishness.   

When George Soros and Chuck Koch are toasting together, or Chuck Schumer and Jared Kushner are sharing pleasantries over bacon wrapped scallops and billionaire investors from both The Donald and Hillary are sharing stories of their multiple divorces, all at a party of the editors of the Washington Post....then we know the whole thing is a sham.   

In the end we just turn into Spiculus, fighting for the Emperor Nero's enjoyment.  

George Carlin was dead on:

Hillary's Losing Formula

By Jeff Simpson


An interesting article came out this weekend letting the Democratic party know that they should ignore the Bernie Sanders backers at their own peril. 

Nor are young people simply opposing things with easy slogans; they have overwhelmingly gathered behind Bernie’s standard this year. They preferred him to Hillary 84-14 in Iowa; that’s not a typo. Here’s a video from a *side street* next to Sanders’ rally in Washington Square Park, NYC this week.
And yet the older generation continue to shut younger voters out, denigrating their causes as pie in the sky. It’s amazing that they continue to make their voices heard, with all the institutional and media forces acting against them. Again, credit where credit is due.
Since Obama became President, Democrats have lost 13 net Senate seats, 69 House seats, 11 governorships, a whopping 913 state legislature seats and 30 state legislature chambers. No typos there either. In most of those categories, these are the biggest losses by a two-term President in history.

Then almost like clockwork this from the New York Times.

Despite the passions stirred during the primary, Mrs. Clinton does not feel pressure to enthrall the supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, since she thinks most of them would ultimately vote for her, an assertion backed up by polling. 

 You can not make this stuff up.   As we have found out, the one thing we learned this election season is that the Democratic Party does not have much affection for the Progressives in America.

 Over the past year, the insurgent political campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders has revealed quite a bit about the reasoning of partisan Democrats, and thus separated the progressives from the liberals. As a populist candidate who has refused support from Super PACs and big monied interests, Sanders has shined a light on the unpleasant reality that the Democratic party — and its likely presidential nominee — is almost as reliant on funding from billionaires and Wall Street as the detested Republican party is.How much will partisan Democrats be willing to forgive a Hillary Clinton administration? Many neoconservatives have already admitted that they prefer Clinton over Trump. At this rate, Clinton could fulfill most of Trump’s reactionary platform and still find widespread support among the Democratic faithful.
Earlier this week, the Clinton campaign accused Sanders “of trying to convince the next generation of progressives that the Democratic party is corrupt.” But do progressives really need to be persuaded that the Democratic Party is part of a corrupt political system, or that it is more reactionary than progressive on many issues? This is self-evident, and the Democratic party has done an excellent job over the past few decades making that case itself. The question is: how long will Democratic voters remain blindly loyal to their party?

One last thing, for the hillbots and Clintonistas who brag about the New York primary win....lets not go so fast. 








One good thing to know is that the elected officials in Wisconsin and most of our superdelegates side with Charlie Koch

Wisconsin Governor Promoted Walker Campaign With Gov't Email

 

By Jeff Simpson

The Governor of Wisconsin has been found using his official government e-mail address to promote the Scott Walker for Governor campaign. Walker is a Republican running againstMary Burke,  the Democratic Challenger. The news first emerged Thursday afternoon in my email box.. He is the Governor of Wisconsin, formerly the county executive of Milwaukee. According to the e-mail

Great Revenue Projections Show Reforms Are Working

We got some great news for all Wisconsinites this week.  The non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau announced Thursday the State of Wisconsin’s general fund revenue is projected to be $911.9 million higher than previously anticipated.  This additional projected revenue is a sign Wisconsin’s economy continues to grow and add jobs, and it’s more great news for our hardworking taxpayers.

When we took office in 2011, we pledged to do away with the failed policies of the past and confront the fiscal and economic crisis we faced.  We made tough, but prudent, decisions over the last three years, and now our bold reforms are producing results for the people of Wisconsin.  While it is no doubt there will be people who want to spend the money, I believe it should be returned to the taxpayers.  My administration will work with the Legislature on the best way to move forward with our next tax relief plan. 

The days of billion-dollar deficits and double digit tax increases are over, and we have led ourselves into a new era of financial responsibility and continued investment in Wisconsin’s priorities.  Our state is heading in the right direction, and together, we are moving Wisconsin forward.

(Edit note- Scott Walker is lying)  


The campaign e-mail, which includes "office of the Governor" invites recipients to watch the State of the State address next week on his other campaign website that is paid for by taxpayers "prosperity.wi.gov ".

It appears the e-mail targets donors and adoring press, explaining that attendees can, “hear Scott's ideas about the ways we are moving Wisconsin forward.” at the event.

It is unknown just how many donors and adoring press got the e-mail from Lindgren; though it is clear that some recipients who received the political solicitation were outside of the state he leads.


An archived video of the Governor shows that he promised a "floor" of 250,000 jobs which he has fallen woefully short of.

 A career politician and a candidate for both state and local office herself, Walker knew exactly what he was doing when he explained his strategy to his boss:

 Scott Walker should have known that what he was doing was against ethics and campaign laws when he seriously considered adding violence to the peaceful protests in the Capitol.

The State of Wisconsin should understand that the only people who actually "drop bombs" are terrorists who are trying to harm you:

 
With the help of TWO of the countries top criminal defense firms(and a few hundred thousand dollars), Scott Walker was able to avoid charges in the first John Doe hearing.  Now there is a second John Doe investigation into Walker's perpetual unethical and unlawful behavior.  What happens next to Scott Walker  now appears to rest in the hands of Federal and state Prosecutors.  

Paul Ryan's Sequester

 

By Jeff Simpson

Like so many things in his life, Paul Ryan(R- Wall St.) Loved it before he hated it. We already know that is the case with Obamacare, now it is also the case with the sequester!

Ryan: What conservatives like me have been fighting for, for years are statutory caps on spending, legal caps in law that says government agencies cannot spend over a set amount of money. And if they breach that amount across the board, sequester comes in to cut that spending, and you can’t turn that off without a supermajority vote. We got that in law. That is here. So, the best way you can actually bank that trillion dollar spending cut is to have legal caps in law which we haven’t had since the 1990s. We now have them.

Wow, that’s quite a win for the Republicans, eh? They got their 2.4 trillion in cuts, they got the sequester that they’ve always wanted, they got legal caps in law…. Boy things are going to be tight in DC from now on. A new sheriff is in town and he’s going to whip up some budget discipline!

Wait. Ryan wasn’t lovin’ it so much on May 10, 2012:

Ryan: The select committee, people call the Super Committee, that committee failed to produce a result. And as a result of that, a sequester occurs. And the sequester, according to people on a bipartisan basis, is not good government.

So like every other policy in his career, Ryan was for it before he was against it!

However, we have come to find out that there are two Universal truth about the sequester:

1.  All of these cuts and republican political games have cost Americans JOBS!

Contributing to the hangover from the worst financial crisis in decades is a wave of cuts in domestic and military spending, known collectively as the sequester, which is causing government furloughs as well as job losses and curtailed hours among federal contractors. 

Although the sequester became law on March 1, some of the effects, like the forced leaves, have begun to ramp up only recently. More job losses, rather than shorter workweeks, are predicted if the cuts remain in place into next year.

2.  The republican congress is so upset about Americans being out of work, they went on a 6 week vacation!

 House Republicans left Washington Friday with their tails between their legs after a humiliating, unproductive and disastrous legislative session. And they couldn’t escape without constant reminders of their brutal failures. Now, Republican members will have some explaining to do to voters in their districts about the impact of this broken Congress: no jobs agenda, no relief for the middle class while special interests get special treatment and no path forward in the fall.

Except Paul Ryan, he had to report to his boss before vacation( But you were not supposed to know that)!

The billionaire conservative philanthropists and mega-donors held one of their two annual conferences just outside of Albuquerque, where they booked every room at the Hyatt Regency Tamaya. This fact puzzled Albuquerque media, apparently unaware of the event’s implications. Reported a local TV station:

“Something is going on at the Hyatt Regency Tamaya that no one wants to talk about. Everyone is hush-hush. KOB Eyewitness News 4 has been told the entire place has been sold out the last three nights. When KOB sent one of our photographers out tonight, he was stopped at a roadblock about a mile from the high-end resort on Santa Ana Pueblo.”

What did Ryan do or say at the conference? His office won’t tell. Absolute silence appears to be one of the first rules of dealing with the Kochs.

“I can confirm he was there,” responded Ryan aide William Allison by email. “But not confirming/commenting on anything beyond that.”

The Kochs Can Paaaaaarrrrteeee!

By Jeff Simpson

We know that the Koch Brothers, like to have retreats for republican elected officials, where are two friends paul ryan and scott walker are always special guests!

 ThinkProgress has now learned of another attendee addressing the Koch meeting: House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). Ryan’s office confirmed his attendance this afternoon to ThinkProgress. Ryan, who has a long record of flying off to junkets for groups of bankers like the Club for Growth, is pushing forward with radical cuts to Medicare and Social Security in his “Roadmap for America’s Future.” In line with Koch’s peculiar supply-side side ideology of soaking the the poor, Ryan’s budget idea also calls for increasing taxes on the middle class, while cutting them for the rich. Other Republican legislators were at the event, including Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA).

We also know that one of the ways to get an invite, and not be an elected officio, is to be part of the Million dollar club(which Wisconsin's very own Diane Hendricks and John Menard belong too)!

 At a secretive retreat held in June, Charles Koch thanked his 32 biggest supporters who gave more than $1 million. Our local billionaire made the list: "The Menards: John Menard of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, is the founder of Menards, the country's third-largest hardware company. He's worth a reported $5.2 billion and has donated about $80,000 to his state's Republican Party and federal candidates, mostly Republicans, according to FEC records. His company backed a recent anti-union program that was linked to the Kochs' Americans for Prosperity and supported by Gov. Scott Walker" (Mother Jones).

We know they have these retreats in the nicest of locations!  

Next week, hundreds of business executives and wealthy conservative donors will arrive in Palm Springs, California, at the behest of Charles Koch, the billionaire industrialist and older half of the Koch brothers duo. The occasion is the latest Koch donor retreat, dubbed the "billionaires caucus" by some, an exclusive, two-day confab with a speaker list that features governors, senators, and members of the House Republican leadership. It is the first Koch retreat since the 2012 elections.

NOW, we know what they do at these retreats(hint its crazier than we thought)!

 The bitter falling-out between Carmel businessman Stephen Hilbert and billionaire hardware chain owner John Menard Jr. was initially portrayed as a deal gone bad from misspent millions. 

A lawsuit suggests a more unseemly origin for the split: sexual extortion.
Hilbert’s wife, Tomisue, charges that Menard tried to extort sexual favors from her two years ago while he was visiting the Hilberts’ Caribbean home in Saint Martin. 

When she resisted his sexual demands — then and later — Menard launched a vindictive effort through the courts and his businesses to “crush” the Hilberts, the lawsuit says. 

The allegations, worthy of a grocery store tabloid, are contained in a 24-page lawsuit filed in Hamilton Superior Court in late May

If that is just his business partner, what do the politicians have to do to get their millions?

AFP - Americans for (middle class) Poverty are Coming!!

The extreme right wing the Koch Brothers front group Americans for Prosperity is flooding our great state with money and out of state right wing thugs.   Since we do not have Paul Revere to warn us when the redcoats are coming, we at CogDis will.   And the correct answer is ONE if by land as Americans for (middle class) Poverty already have an unheard of 70 field organizers running around corrupting our state, there is never enough for the billionaire leeches of our society so now they are recruiting a bunch of poor suckers and violent thugs from IL to bus into WI . 

The Americans for Poverty crew have not been this excited to screw over Americans since they spent millions trying to make sure you do not have access to healthcare! 

6 Minutes of Reality!

Amidst all of the noise that the republicans led by Karl Rove and the Koch Brothers are filling our airwaves with, comes Billionaire venture capitalist Nick Hanauer.  Paul Ryan (R-Wall St.) should put down Atlas Shrugged for a few minutes and watch this video. It would be life changing for him.

"It is astounding how significantly one idea can shape a society and it's policies." Nick Hanauer