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The best days for American retailers are ahead, Vice President Mike Pence said Tuesday at a summit hosted by the National Retail Federation.

"I promise you that," Pence told the crowd.

More than 200 retail representatives from across the country, including small-business retailers, national executives and state officials, attended the Retail Advocates Summit in Washington, D.C.

This year's convention focused on the importance of tax reform for retailers and their employees.

"As retail goes, so goes America," Pence said. "This president is going to work with this Congress, this year, and pass the largest tax cuts since the days of Ronald Reagan." The current tax code creates "huge barriers" to creating more retail jobs, he added.

"The internal revenue code is [currently] two times as long as the Bible, with no good news," he joked.

The GOP has promised to simplify the tax code, making the language "fairer" and "simpler."

On Tuesday, Pence took the opportunity to speak about Trump's latest efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare. He opened the event by detailing Republicans' latest push in health care probably not the conversation many retailers were expecting to have.

Lately, Republicans have been facing heated pressure from big businesses, including retailers, to move on from health-care legislation to passing some sort of tax reform.

Many executives have stressed the importance of securing a major reduction in the corporate tax rate, which currently stands at 35 percent. On Tuesday, Pence suggested to the retailers a cut to 15 percent.

Though both White House and Republican leaders have proposed steep cuts, analysts say divisions within the GOP and the stalemate on health care have diminished the prospect of aggressive action.

Retail executives in particular remain concerned about one of House Speaker Paul Ryan's proposals: a border adjustment tax, also referred to as BAT.

But Pence didn't mention BAT a definite elephant in the room during his Tuesday speech.

The consumer-facing industry has been leading the fight against the proposed measure, which would tax imports into the United States.

In May, for example, a group of retail CEOs met with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to express frustration regarding the import tax, with many arguing this plan would cause companies to hike prices and pass the burden on to consumers. Present at the May meeting were executives from Coca-Cola, Dollar General and J.C. Penney.

The estate tax, however, did come under fire. "[U]nder President Trump we will repeal the death tax once and for all," Pence said, to a heavy round of applause. This is important to retailers because some closely held businesses are subject to the estate tax.

"Less regulation, lower taxes, better infrastructure," he said. The president wants retailers to be able to compete on a "level playing field" with companies all across the world, he said.

[We] "will put retailers back on the path to jobs and growth and back to competitiveness."

CNBC's Ylan Mui contributed to this report.

Read more details on Pence's Tuesday speech.

The rest is here:
'As retail goes, so goes America,' VP Pence tells a room full of retailers - CNBC

If youre wondering whether Vice President Mike Pence would be a better president than our current one,youre not the only one.

Dominique Salerno and Laura Hankin, the duo behind feminist comedy group Feminarchy, know that Pence would be a better president than Donald Trump. There would just be some, err,huge downsides. On Tuesday, the duo published a new sketch titled A Desperate Sexy Song For Mike Pence and weve never related more to anything ... ever.

The sketch is a parody music video (think of Britney Spears in the early 2000s) where Salerno and Hankin ask Pence to take over the government knowing full well that Pence would basically turn the country into a scene out ofThe Handmaids Tale.

Mike Pence, would you save us from nuclear war? the two sing in the video. Mike Pence, youd be awful for ladies and gays. Mike Pence, but you might not usher in the end of days.

The duo makes an important point in the video, singing that while Pences Christian principles contain a lot of hatred, its OK because at least his advisers wont include Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner.

Well never get a seat at your table, you wont eat with a woman whos not your wife,they sing. But at least there will still be tables, and sentient human life.

Hankin and Salerno told HuffPost that "sheer terror" is what inspired them to create the hilarious music video.

"We've been spending a lot of time lately wondering what's going to happen to our country," Hankin said. "One day, we'll read an article about how Trump needs to be impeached before he starts a nuclear war. The next, we'll read one about how impeaching Trump would be a horrible idea, because Pence would spend less time sitting in firetrucks, and more time pursuing his anti-women agenda. Basically, we're very confused and worried that our rights are going to be taken away, so what better way to sort through our feelings than by unleashing our inner Britney Spears?"

Unleashing your inner Britney is never a bad thing, ladies.

Read the original here:
Feminists Serenade Mike Pence With Depressingly Honest Love ... - HuffPost

Photo Credit: Evan El-Amin / Shutterstock

Thank you, Mr. President, Vice President Mike Pence tweeted July 15, celebrating the one-year anniversary of candidate Donald Trump naming him to the 2016 ticket. Will ex-president Trump get to say the same thing to Pence when the new president pardons him?

Despite the I love it salivated by Donald Trump Jr. at the prospect of Kremlin help with the campaign, his fathers impeachment is a long shot. Unless Democrats retake Congress in 2018, the chance that elected Republicans will admit theyve been enabling a liar and an idiotwords that polled AmericanscallTrumpare just about nil. But I give even odds to Trumps resigning for health reasons.

Hell never admit to any of the crimes that congressional committees or special counsel Robert Mueller may fillet him for, and even if he fires Mueller, no amount of incriminating evidence uncovered by investigative journalists will awaken our man-baby-in-chief to grownup skills like telling true from false, reality from delusion and news from Fox News.

But bullies like Trump are cowards at heart. However appealing he finds sliming his prosecutors like a stressedhagfish, the thought of running away to spend more time with his 9-iron might prove irresistible. Would Pence trade the Oval Office for Trumps holding his resignation hostage to a pardon?

Pence could use the same reason Gerald Fordgavefor pardoning Richard Nixon in 1974: To write the ending of a nightmarish chapter in our history. When Ford lost the 1976 presidential election, he believed it was the pardon that doomed him, and most historians agree. You can imagine Pence wondering the same thing about his own fate in 2020.

Pence, though, may not have a choice. Trump has the goods on him.

Trump knows Pence lied when he claimed to be in the dark about the footsie former national security adviser Mike Flynn was playing with the Russians, the Turks and who knows who else. Trump also knows Pence knew how deep in the tank were Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner and Trump Jr. (and Ivanka? Steve Bannon? Bueller?) with Russian hackers, oligarchs and Vladimir Putin. As Trump might put it, many people aresayingthat Pence is either lying or wildly incompetent, or either a sucker and a dupe or a liar. Trump knows its all of the above, leaving Pence no alternative to paying the ransom of a pardon.

I have to believe that Pences political rise,like Sarah Palins, has been powered at least in part by his looks. If Pence, a right-wing talk radio host for an Indiana station, had looked like Rush Limbaugh or Alex Jones, he might never have made it to Congress. In the 2016 vice presidential debate, Penceliedthrough his teeth, claiming Trump never uttered the falsehoods Tim Kaine quoted. If Pence didnt look like central castings idea of Midwestern rectitude, he would have been laughed off the stage.

In May, at the U.S. Naval Academy graduation, Pencesaidthe most important quality of leadership is humility, a point hemadeagain July 12 to high school students attending the National Student Leadership Conference at American University, where he went on, with no irony, to cite Donald Trump as a paragon of that very humility. Really. He actually said that. He invoked Trump to illustrate other leadership virtues, too: integrity (!), self-control (!!) and respect for authority (?). How did Pence get away with it? Tonsorial integrity, Id venturethe proxy for honesty that his headful of snowy white hair absurdly confers on the blatant bull that comes out of his mouth.

Pences current priority, selling Mitch McConnells health care bill to wavering senators, isnt going very well. The damage he did to his credibility by lying about Flynn, Russia andwhyTrump fired FBI director James Comey is ananvilaround his neck. His approval ratings, atplus-11as recently as March, have fallen, like Trumps, toall-time lows. No wonder he bombed at the National Governors Associations meeting on July 14. When he lied about Medicaid (he said its expansion under the Affordable Care Act hurt developmentally disabled Americans and put far too many able-bodied adults on the program), he wasnailednot by a Democrat, but by the Republican governor of Ohio, John Kasich. Pence also scored zero points with three other Republican governors whose states expanded Medicaid: Brian Sandoval of Nevada, Doug Ducey of Arizona and Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas. When Republican senators from those states vote on McConnells bill, theyll take their lead from their governors, not from Pence.

If youre dreaming of an abbreviated Trump administration, you need to reconcile yourself not only to a Pence presidency, but also to a Pence pardon. That would make Trump even more insufferable, but as many people are saying, at least Pence would be a normal Republican. You know, the garde-variety Republican whowantsto kill Planned Parenthood and end gay marriage, who calls global warming a myth and longs for the day that Roe v. Wade is sent to the ash heap of history.

We have to keep reminding ourselves not to get used to Trump, that hes not normal. Pence may be normal, but so is poison ivy.

Read the original post:
Will Mike Pence Pardon Donald Trump? - AlterNet

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus and several House Democrats asked Vice President Mike Pence on Tuesday to remove Kris W. Kobach as vice chair of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity and to cancel the requests made last month for states to turn over voter information.

The pressure comes after several lawsuits have been filed against the commission, alleging it violated federal law after asking states to turn over names, partial Social Security numbers, birthdays, political party affiliations, military status and other public information. The commission has stopped gathering the data until a judge resolves the matter.

In an 11-page letter sent to Mr. Pence, the lawmakers alleged Mr. Kobach may have violated the Hatch Act by touting his position on the commission in furtherance of his 2018 gubernatorial campaign. The Hatch Act forbids executive branch employees from using their positions to influence an election.

Mr. Kobachs partisan activity and his recent sanctions for dishonesty before a court of law cast a shadow over the Commission and undermine its integrity, the lawmakers wrote. Mr. Kobach should step down as Vice-Chair and be replaced with an individual who can be trusted to ensure that the Commission operates in a bipartisan manner to protect voter information and to protect the right of Americans to vote.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Common Cause and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law all have lawsuits pending against the commission, hoping to prevent it from collecting the information.

The lawmakers asked Mr. Pence to address questions and speculation about the commission at its next meeting on July 19.

Continued here:
Pence pressured by CBC, Dems to remove Kris Kobach from election integrity commission - Washington Times

An act in three parts, featuring Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), played out on Twitter over the last few days.

VP Pence went first, posting a video of himself on Friday speaking about the (now dead) Senate health-care bill.

Let me be clear: The Senate health-care bill strengthens and secures Medicaid for the neediest in our society. #BetterCare pic.twitter.com/rThIZtB9zi

The next day, Sen. Murphy quote-tweeted Pence's video and said that there was a "real evil in the epidemic rate of lying" that is currently happening in Washington.

I'm going to say it - there is real evil in the epidemic rate of lying that is going on right now. This is not normal. https://t.co/ifkV1GWAUH

To which Pence replied on Monday that the current Obamacare law contained quite a bit of lies and half-truths as well--namely, the 2013 PolitiFact Lie of the Year of "if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor." For good measure, Pence also included the Pinocchio emoji of a face with a growing nose.

You mean like, "If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor."? ?? https://t.co/GUpFKhe7pz

Daaaaaaaaang.

While not quite admitting defeat, Murphy then thanked Pence for the reply, and claimed that pointing out that others lied too "isn't a defense." (Although one could say it's at least progress now that Democrats are admitting that people lied during the leadup to the passage of Obamacare.)

Thanks for the reply, but claiming someone else lied too isn't a defense. The bill does not "secure Medicaid". I'm confident you know this. https://t.co/0OqkijAaK7

Who knew VP Pence could be that intense on Twitter?

Even The New York Times Noticed the Dems' Obstructionism

Read more from the original source:
Mike Pence Demolishes Sen. Chris Murphy on Twitter - Townhall