One view of 2039

Economic Indicators

I never realized that the federal budget proposal issued by the Office of Management and Budget includes more than the budget. It also includes "indicators are drawn from six domains: economic, demographic and civic, socioeconomic, health, security and safety, and environment and energy." Below is a summary of economic indicators as shown by Tim Taylor. I will try to show the other indicators over the next week or so.

Economic

• Real GDP per person has more than tripled since 1960, rising from $18,036 in 1960 to $55,373 in 2017 (as measured in constant 2012 dollars).
• Inflation has reduced the buying power of the dollar over time such that $1 in 2016 had about the same buying power as 12.3 cents back in 1960, according to the Consumer Price Index.
• The employment/population ratio rose from 56.1% in 1960 to 64.4% by 2000, then dropped to 58.5% in 2012, before rebounding a bit to 62.9% in 2018.
• The share of the population receiving Social Security disabled worker benefits was 0.9% in 1960 and 5.5% in 2018. 
• The net national savings rate was 10.9% of GDP in 1960, 7.1% in 1980, and 6.0% in 2000. It actually was slightly negative at -0.5 in 2010, but was back to 2.9% in 2017.
• Research and development spending has barely budged over time: it was 2.52% of GDP in 1960 and 2.78% of GDP in 2017, and hasn't varied much in between.

Campaigning 2019

Source

Any American cities doing this?

Some quotations

From The Atlantic:

In a major speech in Alabama in 1921, President Warren Harding said there is “a fundamental, eternal, inescapable difference” between the races. “Racial amalgamation there cannot be.”

Calvin Coolidge wrote, “There are racial considerations too grave to be brushed aside for any sentimental reasons. Biological laws tell us that certain divergent people will not mix or blend,” in a 1921 article in Good Housekeeping.

Some guy named Adolph Hitler told The New York Times, "It was America that taught us a nation should not open its doors equally to all nations.” Another Hitler comment, the U.S. “simply excludes the immigration of certain races. In these respects America already pays obeisance, at least in tentative first steps, to the characteristic völkisch conception of the state.”

Another sign?

IPOs can tell us something about the market, particularly now when there are more than 300 companies preparing an IPO. Few of these companies have made money, some have never shown a profit. And the losses are not chicken feed. Lyft “posted losses of $911 million in 2018, a statistic that will make it the biggest loser amongst U.S. startups to have gone public," according to data collected by The Wall Street Journal. Uber, a Lyft competitor, lost $1.8 billion in 2018, down from a loss of $2.2 billion the year before, and it could take some time before the ride-sharing company closes the gap between its sales and profits.”

The percentage of IPOs with negative earnings in 2018 was the highest percentage since the dot.com bust of 2000, a year in which 81 percent of all IPOs had negative earnings – two percent less than last year.

Miscounting

Where is the snow?

March is just about over and we have yet to get our typical March snowstorm - and I really mean storm. Almost every year that I've been alive has seen at least one severe snowstorm in March. Here's a photo of a typical one:

This whole winter has not seen many snowfalls, let alone storms. The weather has been very odd. I never imagined a 60-degree day in February. Yet, we had one - followed a week later by 0-degree days.

Two births in less than a month

Here's how that's possible.

In late February a Bangladeshi woman gave birth to a boy prematurely. Twenty-six days later she felt agonizing pain in her stomach and was rushed to the hospital. Guess what? The doctors found she was still pregnant with twins in a second uterus, and performed an emergency Caesarean. Her twins were found to be healthy and were discharged with no complications.

Building the next empire

Where are the fish going?

Is this telling us something?

Il Volo

You've never seen photos like these

In England researchers have produced images of a baby's heart while it is still inside the womb. The technique is a combination of scanning a pregnant women in an MRI machine and then creating 3D models of the tiny beating hearts inside the unborn child. The 3D models are built from a series of 2D pictures of the heart taken from different angles using an MRI machine.

A look into a future

Change can take time, a lot of time

This is particularly true of major technological transitions. James Watt developed the coal-powered steam engine in 1776, but coal supplied less than 5 percent of the planet’s energy until 1840, and it didn’t reach 50 percent until 1900. While these transitions are happening, investors start shying away from the current options.

The price of solar and wind power and lithium-ion batteries used to store energy has really dropped over the last decade. Although sun and wind produced just 6 percent of the world’s electric supply in 2017, they made up 45 percent of the growth in supply, and the cost of sun and wind power continues to fall by about 20 percent with each doubling of capacity.

As the transitions take hold and prices lower, demand for fossil fuels will stop growing. Then, the market for fossil fuels will weaken. Witness Peabody, the world’s largest private-sector coal-mining company, which went from being on Fortune’s list of most admired companies in 2008 to bankrupt in 2016.

It also looks as though the natural gas market will also suffer. Between 2010 and 2014 the shale industry operated with negative cash flows of more than $200 billion. European utilities have written down about $150 billion in stranded assets.

Another example - While there are only three million electric cars out of a worldwide total of 800 million they accounted for 22 percent of the growth in global car sales.

Watch it!

It's cold where he is

It would be nice...

...if we did away with the Electoral College. But, it would be very hard. We would have to pass a constitutional amendment (passed by two-thirds of the House and Senate and approved by 38 states) — or convene a constitutional convention (which has never been done). Why would small states reduce their influence on the presidential outcome?

However, optimists - the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact - are trying to get rid of the current system by changing the way a state selects its electors. States that join the compact agree to pledge all their electors not to its state winner but to the victor in the national popular vote — but only if states controlling 270 or more electoral votes have agreed to do the same.

So far twelve states and the District of Columbia have joined the Compact.

How it looks to Visual Capitalist

George W on Immigration

"America's elected representatives have a duty to regulate who comes in and when. In meeting this responsibility, it helps to remember that America's immigrant history made us who we are. Amid all the complications of policy, may we never forget that immigration is a blessing and a strength." [Former President George W. Bush at a naturalization ceremony on Monday in Dallas, Texas]

Father of 50

And he didn't have sex with the mothers. Donald Cline was an early fertility doctor. In those days it was not easy to recruit sperm donors. So, he donated his sperm to many of his patients without letting them know. It is likely that there will be more women coming forth as there is now a group of Cline's 'partners' communicating via Facebook.

Be a college basketball coach.

If you're successful, you'll make tons of money. Business Insider has published a list of the thirty highest-paid coaches. Those at the bottom of the list take in only $2,200,000. The top coach, Calipari of Kentucky, makes $9,300,000.

Are CLOs the Mortgage Loans of today?

The big problem of The Great Recession was mortgage-backed securities. They were highly in demand because of their high yields. But many of the companies that issued them had trouble redeeming them, to the detriment of those seeking higher yields than those offered for safer securities. It looks like Collateralized Loan Obligations (C.L.O.s) have a similar issue. The big Wall Street banks make these loans to their corporate clients and then seek to move them off their balance sheets as quickly as possible, in the same way that a decade ago they packaged up and offloaded risky mortgage securities.

And, as with the mortgage-backed securities, we're not talking a tiny slice of the market. Of the trillions of dollars of corporate loans outstanding in the United States, roughly $1.2 trillion of them are considered “leveraged loans,” or loans to companies considered bigger credit risks. Some of those companies will not be able to handle the high level of debt they have taken on, and when they reach the breaking point, corporate bankruptcies will again begin to rise. 

Will he run for president?

She likes cruises

Ilene Weiner of South Florida has traveled on 282 Princess cruises and has logged 2,500 days at sea since 1989. That's 9.4 cruises per year and 8 days per cruise. She is Princess cruises “most travelled guest.” She now can wear four-stripe epaulettes, the same as the captain.

Thanks to our Florida correspondent.

Another old man

How long will you live

Looking at the moon

Why don't we first focus on what it is?

Will she make the Olympics?

They can't make up their minds

Fall River, MA, had an election yesterday. There were two questions on the ballot. The first asked whether or not the voters wanted to recall the current mayor, Jasiel Correia. The second asked voters who they would want as mayor instead. The vote on the first question showed that 61% want to recall Correia. On the second question, who should be mayor, Correia received 35% of the vote, narrowly edging out runner-up Paul Coogan, a School Committee member who got 34% of the vote. So, he lost and he won.

Electrifying cars

Pay to Go

The NY Times just announced that Federal prosecutors have charged 50 people, including Hollywood actresses and coaches at top universities around the country, for paying for or accepting bribes to admit student applicants.

And we're not taking chicken feed, its millions of dollars. Schools include Yale, Georgetown, UCLA, Wake Forest, Stanford and University of Southern California. One parent paid $6.5 million.

Another Guiness World Record

Are you in the market for a new car?

Setting records

In 2017 we set records in the number of deaths from alcohol, drugs and suicide since the collection of this type of federal mortality data started in 1999. This is based on data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

These causes killed more than twice as many as they did in 1999. More than 150,000 Americans died from alcohol and drug-induced fatalities and suicide in 2017. Nearly a third — 47,173 — were suicides. 

Twenty years ago, less than 1,000 deaths a year were attributed to fentanyl and synthetic opioids. In 2017, more than 1,000 Americans died from synthetic opioid overdoses every two weeks, topping 28,000 for the year. Suicides by gun increased 22 percent over the last decade. Guns were used in nearly half of the nation’s 47,173 suicides in 2017.

Where is the money?

The BBC has a couple of interesting charts.

They fly through the air

Courtesy of a Duncaster resident

Meet Mustafa

Causes of death

Ocean heat waves

A study in the journal Nature Climate Change found that heat waves were destroying the framework of many ocean ecosystems. The waves affect fishing and fish farming, or aquaculture. They found that from 1925 to 2016, marine heat waves became, on average, 34 percent more frequent and 17 percent longer. Over all, there were 54 percent more days per year with marine heat waves globally.

Scientists estimate that the oceans have absorbed more than 90 percent of the heat trapped by excess greenhouse gases since mid-century. Humans have added these gases to the atmosphere largely by burning fossil fuels, like coal and natural gas, for energy.

There has been a significant loss of what biologists call foundational species, like coral reefs, sea grasses and kelp forests. They support the diversity of aquatic life by providing shelter from predators, moderating temperatures and acting as food sources. When they disappear, the entire ecosystem disappears along with them.

Is this your car or hers?

The 81

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) on Monday issued document requests to 81 individuals and entities as part of a sweeping investigation into President Trump’s campaign, business and administration.

1. Alan Garten

Garten serves as the chief legal counsel for the Trump Organization.

2. Alexander Nix

Nix previously served as the head of Cambridge Analytica, a data firm that did work for the Trump campaign and was later embroiled in a Facebook privacy scandal.

3. Allen Weisselberg

Weisselberg is the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, and has worked for the Trump family for decades. Michael Cohen identified him last week to lawmakers as an individual who was aware of the president’s asset inflation and a scheme to silence women who alleged affairs with Trump.

4. American Media Inc. (AMI)

AMI is the publisher of the National Enquirer and has been accused of engaging in “catch and kill,” a scheme to purchase unflattering stories about Trump and bury them.

5. Anatoli Samochornov

Samochornov was a translator for Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya at a 2016 Trump Tower meeting. Veselnitskaya had promised Trump associates damaging information on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ahead of the meeting, but other attendees — including Donald Trump Jr. — said no such information was shared.

6. Andrew Intrater

Intrater is the head of investment firm Columbus Nova and has ties to Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg. The New York Times reported that Intrater gave Trump attorney Michael Cohen a $1 million consulting contract in 2017.

7. Annie Donaldson

Donaldson served as chief of staff to former White House counsel Donald McGahn, who left the administration in October.

8. Brad Parscale

Parscale worked for the Trump Organization prior to joining the president’s 2016 presidential campaign to oversee digital operations. Parscale is the campaign manager for the president’s 2020 reelection bid.

9. Brittany Kaiser

Kaiser is a former employee of Cambridge Analytica and was subpoenaed earlier this year in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

10. Cambridge Analytica

The data firm made headlines last year over a privacy scandal involving millions of users’ Facebook data. The firm did work for the Trump campaign and has ties to former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon.

11. Carter Page

Page served as a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign and has faced intense scrutiny over his contacts with Russia. Page is also the subject of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant issued against him to wiretap his conversations over concerns raised by his Russian ties. Some House Republicans have claimed the warrant was an overreach of Justice Department surveillance powers and proof of bias against Trump within the department.

12. Columbus Nova

Columbus Nova is a private equity firm headed by Andrew Intrater, who is cousins and business associates with Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg.

13. Concord Management and Consulting

The Russian consulting firm is one of several groups indicted by Mueller for interfering in the 2016 presidential election and is accused of helping to fund a Russian troll farm. The company is linked to Russian oligarch Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin, who is known as “Putin’s chef” over his proximity to Putin. Concord is the only Russian entity to fight Mueller’s charge in court.

14. Corey Lewandowski

Lewandowski worked as Trump’s campaign manager until his firing in June 2016.

15. David Pecker

Pecker is the chairman of American Media Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer. He reportedly received immunity from prosecutors in the investigation into payments to women who alleged affairs with the president.

16. Department of Justice

Trump has come under scrutiny for his frequent criticism of DOJ officials, including former FBI Director James Comey, former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who each at one point had oversight for the Russia probe. The president’s firing of Comey sparked the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller.

17. Donald McGahn

McGahn worked as the White House counsel until his departure in October. McGahn reportedly sat for hours of interviews with the special counsel’s office and is said to have persuaded the president not to fire Robert Mueller.

18. Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust

The trust holds the president’s business assets, ostensibly so that he avoids conflicts of interest during his presidency. Experts, however, have warned that that the trust provides little distance between Trump and his business empire.

19. Donald Trump Jr.

The president’s oldest son is an executive vice president of the Trump Organization, and has drawn scrutiny from investigators over his involvement in and subsequent cover-up of a summer 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer who promised damaging information on his father’s then-opponent, Hillary Clinton.

20. Dylan Howard

Howard is the chief content officer for American Media Inc. Michael Cohen testified that Howard would have information on “catch and kill” efforts on stories related to the president.

21. Eric Trump

Eric Trump is the president’s son and an executive vice president of the Trump Organization, largely overseeing the family business during his father’s presidency.

22. Erik Prince

The former Blackwater head caught the eye of investigators over a meeting he reportedly arranged between Donald Trump Jr. and a Gulf emissary in August 2016, the first sign a country other than Russia had sought to influence the presidential election. Prince, whose sister is Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, said last year that he has cooperated fully in the Mueller probe.

23. Federal Bureau of Investigation

Trump has been fiercely critical of former FBI leaders James Comey and Andrew McCabe. The president fired Comey in May 2017, sparking the appointment of the special counsel. The bureau first began investigating possible Russian interference in the 2016 election

24. Felix Sater

Sater is the Russian businessman at the heart of negotiations over the attempted Trump Tower Moscow project. Sater worked with Michael Cohen on the real estate project, which never came to fruition. Sater will also appear in a public hearing before the House Intelligence Committee later this month.

25. Flynn Intel Group

The Flynn Intel Group is a now-defunct lobbying organization created by former national security adviser Michael Flynn. The retired general and another partner at the group have since been implicated in illegal lobbying efforts in Turkey.

26. General Services Administration

The federal agency was reprimanded in an internal watchdog report last month stating it failed to properly assess the constitutional ramifications of allowing the Trump family to continue its lease on the old D.C. post office building following the 2016 election.

27. George Nader

Nader is a Lebanese-American businessman who serves as an adviser to the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates. The special counsel’s office has reportedly examined Nader’s influence on Trump administration policy.

28. George Papadopoulos

The former Trump campaign staffer was first thrust into the national spotlight when he pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe. Since that guilty plea, Papadopoulos has disputed the Trump campaign’s assertion that he was essentially a “coffee boy” for the campaign, saying he consulted on foreign policy.

29. Hope Hicks

Hicks worked as the spokeswoman for the Trump campaign in 2016 and later joined the White House as the communications director. She left the administration in February 2018.

30. Irakly Kaveladze

Kaveladze is an associate of Russian developer Aras Agalarov and was one of the attendees of a 2016 meeting at Trump Tower where a Russian lawyer promised Trump associates damaging information on Hillary Clinton.

31. Jared Kushner

Kushner is married to Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, and serves as a senior adviser to the president. He has come under scrutiny during his time in the administration over concerns regarding his security clearance. The New York Times reported that the president last year ordered Kushner be given a top secret clearance against the concerns of intelligence officials.

32. Jason Maloni

Maloni worked as a spokesman for Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman who was convicted of bank and tax fraud in the Mueller investigation.

33. Jay Sekulow

Sekulow is one of Trump’s personal attorney representing the president in the special counsel’s investigation.

34. Jeff Sessions

Sessions served as the attorney general until his resignation in November. He recused himself from overseeing the special counsel’s investigation because of previously undisclosed contact with a Russian official during the 2016 campaign, prompting relentless criticism from the president.

35. Jerome Corsi

Corsi, a conspiracy theorist known for promoting the unfounded Obama birther theory, landed in investigator’s crosshairs over messages he exchanged with Roger Stone about WikiLeaks’s forthcoming release of hacked Democratic emails during the 2016 campaign. He also was given draft court documents by Mueller’s team last year alleging he had made a false statement to the investigators, but has since said he no longer believes he will be indicted.

36. John Szobocsan

Szobocsan was an associate of the late Peter Smith, a GOP operative who sought to track down missing Hillary Clinton emails from Russian hackers.

37. Julian Assange

The infamous WikiLeaks founder has been at the heart of investigations over his organization’s release of damaging Democratic emails ahead of the 2016 presidential election. But Assange may already be facing sealed charges filed against him, after a court filing in a separate case mistakenly named him.

38. Julian Wheatland

Wheatland was named the chief executive of Cambridge Analytica in April in the aftermath of a privacy scandal that plagued the data firm, according to The Wall Street Journal.

39. Keith Davidson

Davidson was an attorney for both Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal. He arranged agreements between the women and American Media Inc. as part of “catch and kill” schemes to silence their allegations of an affair with Trump.

40. K.T. McFarland

McFarland was deputy to former national security adviser Michael Flynn. She came under fire after her testimony before the Senate claiming she was “not aware” of Flynn’s contacts with Russians during the transition was at odds with emails she exchanged during that period of time. She also has interviewed with Mueller, but revised her statement after the conflicting accounts emerged.

41. Mark Corallo

Corallo previously worked as a spokesman for Trump’s legal team who reportedly spoke to the special counsel about the administration’s attempts to coordinate an explanation for a summer 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer.

42. Matt Tait

Tait is a U.K.-based security consultant who alleged the late GOP operative Peter Smith tried to recruit him to find Hillary Clinton’s missing emails.

43. Matthew Calamari

Calamari is an executive vice president of the Trump Organization. He previously worked as Trump’s bodyguard.

44. Michael Caputo

Caputo worked as a communications adviser on the Trump campaign and has spoken with special counsel Robert Mueller’s team.

45. Michael Cohen

Cohen worked for roughly a decade as Trump’s personal attorney and "fixer." In testimony to House lawmakers, he implicated the president in potentially criminal activity, including bank fraud and campaign finance law violations. Cohen faces a three year prison sentence for a host of charges he pleaded guilty to last year.

46. Michael Flynn

Flynn served a brief stint as Trump’s national security adviser, but has remained a central figure in investigations into the administration. Trump said in February 2017 that he fired Flynn for lying to the vice president, but later tweeted he also fired the retired general for lying to the FBI, raising questions about whether the president obstructed justice. Flynn has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about contacts with a Russian official and admitted to lying about lobbying efforts for Turkey.

47. Michael Flynn Jr.

Flynn Jr., the son of the former national security adviser, had a brief role on the Trump transition team, but was fired after he promoted a conspiracy theory.

48. Paul Erickson

Erickson is a conservative political operative and the boyfriend of Maria Butina, who admitted last year to working as an agent of the Russian government. Butina’s attorneys identified Erickson as an individual who helped her establish unofficial lines of communications with people able to influence U.S. politics leading up to the 2016 election.

49. Paul Manafort

Manafort was the Trump campaign's chairman for the months leading up to the 2016 election. He has since been convicted in the special counsel’s investigation on bank fraud and tax fraud charges.

50. Peter Smith (Estate)

Smith, a longtime GOP operative who died by suicide last year, had reportedly raised thousands of dollars to try to obtain emails he believed were stolen from Hillary Clinton ahead of the 2016 election. But investigators are likely most interested in the Wall Street Journal’s reporting that Smith was in touch with Michael Flynn ahead of his search for Clinton’s emails.

51. Randy Credico

Credico, a New York radio host, found himself testifying with congressional investigators after Roger Stone claimed that Credico was his back channel to WikiLeaks. Credico has repeatedly denied the allegation, saying that he did not get inside knowledge from Julian Assange and the group ahead of the WikiLeaks email dumps.

52. Reince Priebus

Priebus was the chairman of the Republican National Committee during the 2016 campaign and went on to serve as Trump’s first chief of staff. He left the administration in the summer of 2017.

53. Rhona Graff

Graff served as President Trump’s longtime secretary at the Trump Organization. Michael Cohen repeatedly pointed to her as being able to corroborate his testimony during his public hearing last week.

54. Rinat Akhmetshin

Akhmetshin, a former Soviet military officer, was one of several Russians who attended a meeting in Trump Tower with Trump campaign officials during the 2016 election. BuzzFeed News reported last month that he received half a million dollars in deposits linked to a Russian businessman around the time of the meeting.

55. Rob Goldstone

Goldstone is a British publicist who set up the 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between members of the campaign and a Russian lawyer promising dirt on Hillary Clinton.

56. Roger Stone

The self-described GOP political trickster has been eyed by investigators for years now, after Stone made statements during the 2016 presidential election that suggested he had prior knowledge of WikiLeaks’s dump of damaging Democratic emails. Stone, who was arrested and charged earlier this year by Mueller for making false statements to Congress, has denied having any direct contact with WikiLeaks, maintaining that he instead had a back channel to the group.

57. Ronald Lieberman

Lieberman is an executive vice president of the Trump Organization. Michael Cohen testified that Lieberman was aware that the president had inflated his assets to an insurance company.

58. Sam Nunberg

Nunberg served as a staffer for the Trump campaign before being fired for breaching a confidentiality agreement. He has testified with Mueller’s team, after initially publicly announcing that he would defy the subpoena, and has also met with congressional investigators. Nunberg is also known to have made false statements in the past.

59. SCL Group Limited

SCL Group Limited is the parent company of Cambridge Analytica, the data firm with ties to the Trump campaign that was embroiled in a Facebook data privacy scandal last year.

60. Sean Spicer

Spicer was the communications director for the Republican National Committee and worked as the party’s chief strategist leading up to Trump’s election. He went on to serve as White House press secretary for six months.

61. Sheri Dillon

Dillon has worked as a tax lawyer for the president. House lawmakers said earlier this month that Dillon may have given false information to government ethics officials about payments to women who alleged affairs with Trump.

62. Stefan Passantino

Passantino previously oversaw compliance with ethics rules during a stint in the Trump White House. He has since reportedly joined a private law firm run by former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus.

63. Stephen Bannon

Bannon worked as the chief executive on the Trump campaign and went on to serve as White House chief strategist. He left the administration in the summer of 2017.

64. Ted Malloch

Malloch, an American businessman said to have played a minor role in the Trump campaign, claimed last year that he was detained and questionedby the FBI at Boston’s Logan Airport about his involvement in the Trump campaign and his contacts with Roger Stone.

65. The White House

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Monday that White House officials will review and respond to Nadler’s request “at the appropriate time.”

66. Trump campaign

The president’s 2016 election bid has been the subject of several investigations, probing whether it colluded with Russia to win the election. Campaign figures, including former head Paul Manafort, Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner, have been questioned by investigators over their roles and what they observed during the course of the campaign.

67. Trump Foundation

The president’s private charity is already the subject of a lawsuit with New York state, alleging that it participated in a “shocking pattern of illegality.” Among the allegations are that Trump used the charity to illegally benefit his campaign, as well as settle issues with his privately owned Mar-a-Lago estate.

68. Trump Organization

Questions about the president’s private business have been a sticking point for Democrats, some of whom have suggested that Trump may be using the presidency for financial benefit. Trump handed over responsibility of his company to his adult sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., but questions about the role of the Trump Organization even before the election, including negotiations on the Trump Tower Moscow project, have lingered.

69. Trump transition

The team overseeing Trump’s transition into the presidency is also facing questions from investigators. Michael Flynn’s contacts with Russians during the transition and Jared Kushner reportedly being the official who ordered him to do so have captured widespread media attention.

70. Viktor Vekselberg

Vekselberg is a Russian billionaire with ties to the Kremlin. He was a target of U.S. sanctions last year related to Russia's election interference. He reportedly attended Trump’s inauguration and has spoken with investigators from the special counsel’s team.

71. WikiLeaks

The group known for its distribution of classified materials has been facing intense scrutiny from Congress and reportedly from federal prosecutors. WikiLeaks released sensitive Democratic emails in the months ahead of the 2016 presidential election in two separate dumps. Mueller has indicted a dozen Russian military officers in the hack of the Democratic National Committee, the source of some of the emails shared by the group.

72. 58th Presidential Inaugural Committee

The president’s inaugural committee is reportedly under investigation for possible misuse of funds. Multiple attorneys general have also subpoenaed the organization for documents related to how it raised and spent money.

73. Christopher Bancroft Burnham

Burnham is the head of Cambridge Global Capital and served on Trump’s State Department transition team. He was recently named an independent director at EN+, a business with ties to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.

74. Frontier Services Group

Frontier Services Group is a private security and logistics firm founded by Erik Prince, the ex-head of Blackwater.

75. J.D. Gordon

Gordon worked in the George W. Bush administration and served as a national security adviser to the Trump campaign. He reportedly exchanged messages with Maria Butina, a woman who admitted last year she worked as a Russian agent.

76. Kushner Cos.

Kushner Cos. is owned and operated by the family of White House senior adviser Jared Kushner.

77. The National Rifle Association

The NRA has come under scrutiny from Democrats over its communications with the Trump campaign in 2016.

78. Richard Gates

Gates worked as an aide on the Trump campaign and is a business associate of Paul Manafort. Gates pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI as part of a plea deal with the special counsel and later testified against Manafort.

79. Tom Barrack

Barrack is a longtime Trump associate and was chairman of the president’s inaugural committee in 2016.

80. Tom Bossert

Bossert worked as Trump’s top homeland security aide from the time the administration took office until his resignation in April.

81. Tony Fabrizio

Fabrizio worked as a pollster for the 2016 Trump campaign and was once an associate for former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. He was spotted by CNN reporters late last year interviewing with Mueller’s team.

Get rid of the Electoral College

Twice in the past twenty years - Clinton and Gore - we have elected the person who got fewer votes nationwide than the other aspirant. Well, over the past few years something called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact has been approved by twelve states. By the terms of the Compact these states will award their electoral votes to whomever wins the popular vote nationally, regardless of the results in the Electoral College.

These states control only 181 of the 270 electoral votes needed. This may change as legislators in 16 states have introduced bills this session seeking to join the Compact.

Not looking good

Every year Gallup issues a report "Rating World Leaders". Here are what they feel are the highlights of this year's report.

REPORT HIGHLIGHTS
• In 2017, U.S. leadership approval ratings declined substantially — by 10 percentage points or more — in 65 countries. In 2018, it declined this much in just five. 
• The median 40% worldwide who disapprove of U.S. leadership is still at record levels — and higher than median disapproval of Germany’s (22%), China’s (28%) or Russia’s (31%) leadership. 
• China’s advantage over the U.S. in terms of leadership approval has widened

She passed the advanced driving test with room to spare

What do you say?

And they are still doing well

Will Trump experience something similar?

It is expected that Netanyahu will be indicted on three charges - bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. The indictment is pending the results of a hearing and is not final. Naturally, Netanyahu has accused investigators of leading a “witch hunt” against him and decried the “liberal” media for conspiring to undermine him. He believes that he is “the most vilified person in the history of Israeli media.”