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Ben Rhodes, Obamas deputy national security adviser for strategic communication, condemned Grisham and called her accusation a lie.

If this happened I also dont think the entire Trump staff would wait 3 years to tell us, he said. Sad to see the WH press secretary fall this far.

Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to Obama, demanded that Grisham "produce the notes that back this up."

She added: I cannot imagine a single one of my former colleagues who would do this. From @BarackObama on down, we all tried to help facilitate a smooth and orderly transition just as President Bush and his team had done for us."

Former West Wing staffers also countered Grishams claim by recalling the words of advice they left in the White House for their successors or noting they left briefing books in an attempt to smooth the transition of power.

Ned Price, a former CIA intelligence officer, argued Grisham was right about one point.

I left a note -- tucked away in my desk -- for my successor. I wished him success and encouraged him not to grow jaded despite the pace and obstacles. I also left my personal email in case he wished to seek candid advice, he wrote on Twitter, adding: I never heard from him.

Rice also retweeted the CNN reporter, Abby Phillip, who had quoted an excerpt from Rices book recounting how Rice left a note for her successor Michael Flynn: "On a White House stationary card, I reiterate my best wishes for his success in a job so crucial to the nation's security. I offer to help him, if ever I could..."

Peter Boogaard, an Obama-era press secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, called Grishams assertion ridiculous.

WH Staff spent countless hours, right up until President Trump Inauguration, preparing memos to facilitate a smooth transition and left notes of encouragement and support for their predecessors, he tweeted. Have to wonder what prompted this outright lie.

And even Grishams predecessor in the East Wing press shop tweeted out the text of the letter she left for Grisham upon assuming her new role in the White House.

Others reacted with humor.

Former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau, now host of the popular liberal podcast Pod Save America, tweeted that it's appalling that she thinks our notes would have been that lame. Another former speechwriter, Cody Keenan, joked in a tweet that I actually left an iPhone charger if anybodys seen it, but no, nobody left unimaginative notes written at a sixth-grade level.

Grisham told POLITICO just days into the new administration that the outgoing press staff left a variety of books about Obama in the press office space for the incoming team though its not clear she mentioned any kinds of disparaging notes.

The disparaging notes would mark a dark turn for high jinks that have occasionally greeted incoming administrations. White House aides have a history of pulling pranks on their successors. When President George W. Bush took office, his staff discovered Clinton officials had removed the W key from keyboards in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

Grisham elaborated on the pushback from Obama officials, saying in an email to POLITICO that "Im not sure where their offices were, and certainly wasnt implying every office had that issue."

"In fact, I had a lovely note left for me in the East Wing, and I tracked the woman down and thanked her. I was talking specifically (and honestly) about our experience in the lower press office nowhere else, " she continued. "I dont know why everyone is so sensitive! At the time we saw it as kind of a prank, and something that always happened. We were so busy trying to learn where the bathrooms were and how to turn on the lights, it wasnt that big of a deal."

But other Obama alums rebuffed that explanation as well.

"Ive known @joshearnest almost my entire career, and not only are these accusations antithetical to the ethos of the @BarackObama administration, they are also the exact opposite of how teams he leads acthed never tolerate that kind of BS," wrote Brent Colburn, who worked in the comms department of various federal agencies.

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Obama alums bristle at Stephanie Grisham's claim that they left 'you will fail' notes - POLITICO

Barack Obama used to be the Hope and Change guy. He wrote a book called The Audacity of Hope. His campaign slogans were: Yes we can! and: Change you can believe in. He inspired people to dream big and, at his rallies, exhilarated crowds chanted: Fired up! Ready to go!

But that was a long time ago. Obama is older now and wiser. He realises hope can sometimes be too audacious and he appears to have adopted new slogans to reflect that. No we cant! and Dont believe in change its too hard to achieve. Post-presidency, his rallying cry seems to be: Simmer down, kids: youre going way too far to the left.

Last Friday, the former president addressed the annual meeting of the Democracy Alliance, a network of wealthy Democratic donors, and praised realism over idealism. Even as we push the envelope we also have to be rooted in reality, he said. The average American doesnt think we have to completely tear down the system and remake it They just dont want to see crazy stuff. He cautioned against the Democrats adopting too progressive a platform, arguing that voters arent aligned with the ambitions of certain left-leaning Twitter feeds or the activist wing of our party.

Obamas remarks to the Democracy Alliance come just weeks after he made similarly disparaging comments about the left during a conversation at the Obama Foundation summit in Chicago. We cant completely remake society in a minute, he said. This idea of purity and youre never compromised and youre always politically woke you should get over that quickly.

Thanks, Obama, but these patronising lectures are getting old. Most progressives, Id wager, are well aware change doesnt happen overnight. But that doesnt mean we need to compromise our values or ambitions. That doesnt mean we should get over the crazy idea that we can build a more equal world for everyone.

While Obamas recent denunciations of the left are disappointing, they are not exactly surprising. After all, while he may have promised hope and change, Obama was never truly progressive. He deported 1.2 million people during his first three years in office; Trump, by the way, has deported fewer than 800,000 while he has been president. Obama spearheaded a secretive drone war; he expanded the surveillance state; he attempted to cut social security benefits, even though his campaign promised he would expand them; he denounced the influence of money in politics and then gave his big-money donors plum posts in his administration. Dont get me wrong. Im not here to demonise Obama. He did a lot of good and he was a million times better than Trump although that is, of course, an incredibly low bar. But he was always centrist. He never believed in systemic change.

Heres the thing, though: we live in an age when wanting systemic change isnt idealism, its realism. Unconscionable inequality and the climate crisis mean that we have run out of time for compromises. We have run out of time for vague promises of hope. Obama may think he is being practical, but he misunderstands the urgency of the current moment. If liberal leaders persist in standing in the middle of the road, we will all get run over.

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Thanks Obama, but these patronising lectures are getting old - The Guardian

The Texas woman who sent former President Barack Obama an explosive package only to be tracked down because of a cat hair on the parcel was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Monday, authorities said.

Julia Poff, who pleaded guilty in July to transporting explosives with intent to kill, was sentenced to 120 months behind bars by District Judge Vanessa Gilmore for the caper, according to the FBI.

Poff, who reportedly worked for a number of years at a fireworks stand, assembled the explosives and sent them to Obama, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Social Security Administration Commissioner Carolyn Colvin in October 2016.

The bomb sent to Abbott didnt detonate because the governor didnt open it as designed, according to court papers.

Security screeners intercepted the packages sent to Obama and Colvin.

Federal investigators were able to track the devices back to Poff after they found shipping labels, a salad dressing cap used in one of the bombs and cat hair that was traced to one of her cats.

All I can say is Im sorry, Poff said at her sentencing Friday, the Houston Chronicle reported. Im sorry to the people Ive hurt.

Excerpt from:
Obama mail bomber busted thanks to cat hair gets 10 years behind bars - New York Post

Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers recommends more investment in the IRS.

It wouldnt take much to rake in a lot of tax money, according to research published Monday by former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, a high-profile economist who served in two Democratic presidential administrations.

The federal government could have $535 billion more in its coffers in the coming decade if the Internal Revenue Serviceaudited returns as often as it did back in 2011 when audit rates were higher than they are now and focused those audits on millionaires and billionaires, Summers said.

High-net-worth returns may take more time to review, but they are well worth the time investment, according to the research. Under-reporting is more than five times as high for individuals who earn $10 million or more annual than it is for those who make under $200,000 a year, Summers wrote.

Under-reporting is when taxpayers intentionally report less income than they actually have. Its one of the problems that leads to uncollected taxes, which is projected to cost the government about $630 billion in 2020, according to research by Summers.

In 2011, the IRS peaked with an audit rate of 1.1% for all individual returns and has since fallen to 0.5% in 2018, according to Summers, the onetime Treasury Department secretary in the Clinton administration and director of the White House National Economic Council in the Obama administration.

Returning to 2011 audit rates would mean approximately 131,000 more audits on individual tax returns, said Summers, now a professor at Harvard University, where he was once president.

Summers wrote the study with University of Pennsylvania law professor Natasha Sarin.

Others argue IRS audit policies need a hard look because they already disproportionately go after low-income taxpayers.

The IRS referred a request for comment to the Treasury Department, ***where a spokesman said the administration agrees that reducing the tax gap in an important goal and urged Congress to enact its proposed in its Fiscal Year 2020 budget.

The proposed IRS budget contains various ways to boost tax revenue, including proposals to clarify worker classifications and reporting requirements, extend IRS oversight of tax preparers and give it power to correct more tax return errors and tighten taxpayer compliance. Those provisions alone could raise roughly another $20 billion in revenue, according to the Treasury Department.

The proposed budget called the IRS one of the most cost-effective investments in the federal government and one of the most efficient tax administrators in the world, noting the agency collected $3.5 trillion in tax revenue in Fiscal Year 2018. ****

Dont miss: Wealthy taxpayers have one big advantage with the IRS (that has nothing to do with Trumps tax reform)

At a time when Democratic presidential candidates like Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders are calling for new taxes on the super-rich, the paper focuses on the money that the government leaves on the table right now.

All together, the feds could take in over $1.1 trillion in tax revenue using the papers proposals, which include more audits on the highest end of the income ladder and other measures.

Theres a difference though between ideas on papers and politics in action especially on Capitol Hill. After all, President Donald Trumps impeachment inquiry is roiling an already-divided Congress. Meanwhile, a 2017 tax code overhaul passed without a single Democratic vote.

But Summers told MarketWatch his call for more audits and other reforms could be achieved.

Its the easiest lift to raise a trillion dollars there is, because all it requires is a change in budget score-keeping rules, which are made by political leaders, he said. On both sides of the aisle, almost everyones vision for America requires new tax revenue, whether its to finance tax cuts or public investments or deficits reductions.

As for the possibility of more taxes on the wealthy, Summers said, This may not be where the tax discussion should end, but its where it should begin.

The IRS will collect an estimated $630 billion less than is due in 2020. Between 2020 and 2029, it will collect $7.5 trillion less than its owed, the study estimated.

The paper also scrutinized the consequences of a shrinking IRS staff. The organization had 73,519 full-time equivalent positions in 2018, down 15.5% from 2013, statistics show.

Today, the IRS has fewer auditors than it had at any point since World War II, the researchers wrote.

More audits for the wealthy are the biggest way to address tax underpayments going forward, Summers and Sarin said. Combined with audits for filers like businesses and estates at 2011 rates, enhanced enforcements could yield $715 billion between 2020 and 2029, according to their paper.

The IRS could claw another $450 billion in that time by increasing its investment in computer analysis of tax returns and increasing certain reporting requirements, they said.

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This former top Obama official says one silver bullet would raise $500 billion in personal-income tax - MarketWatch

Barack Obama's former doctor, who served the 44th president for over two decades before his presidency, voiced concern for Donald Trump's health after the president's unscheduled weekend visit to a physician placed his well-being under scrutiny.

Trump, 73, took an impromptu trip to the doctor on Saturday, before then announcing that his results from "phase one" of his annual physical exam were "very good."

Later that day, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham released a statement asserting that the president is "healthy and energetic without complaints," and confirmed he used a relatively "free weekend" to "begin portions of his routine annual physical exam."

Despite her remarks, Washington insiders immediately began speculating about Trump's physical and mental wellbeing, with some experts noting that it is unusual for a sitting president to undergo their medical exam in numerous stages conducted months apart.

Speaking on CNN's Erin Burnett on Monday's Erin Burnett OutFront, Dr. David Scheiner expressed his worries about the president's allegedly failing mental health, which he claims is demonstrated by his occasional inability to string together coherent sentences.

"These aren't words, these are slips of the tongue," Scheiner said. "These are words he can't find and this is happening over and over again. Comedians joke about it, but it's not a joking matter. I think there is a neurological issue that is not being addressed. And if he's having an MRI of his head over there, I would be very pleased because I think he needs it."

"Is that something that could have happened in the two-hour time he was there?" Burnett asked, referring to Trump's Saturday trip to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda.

"Yes it certainly could," the former Obama doctor responded, before going on to speculate about Trump's health.

"The worry that I have is maybe he's having small strokes," Scheiner said. "We've had that once before in the White House when Woodrow Wilson was president. His inability to find words is peculiar and has not been explained, and I think one has to think of it as a possible neurological issue."

Scheiner's remarks on Monday was not the first time the doctor has commented on Trump's health. In the months leading up to the 2016 presidential election, the doctor appeared on Erin Burnett OutFront and told the anchor that he had been concerned by the Republican nominee's "erratic behavior."

"We know he's got a narcissistic personality disorder at the very least," Scheiner said in September 2016. "But I sometimes wonder if he might even be hypomanic. But I think psychologic testing would be important for him."

Scheiner, however, has not diagnosed Trump himself and is not a psychiatrist.

Following continued speculation about the president's health, the White House on Monday released a note written by Trump's doctor, which said the visit was a "routine, planned interim checkup."

"Despite some of the speculation, the President has not had any chest pain, nor was he evaluated or treated for any urgent or acute issues," Navy Cmdr. Sean Conley, physician to the president, wrote in the letter.

See the article here:
Ex-Obama Doctor Is Worried About Trump's Alleged Inability to Find Words, Suggests He's Having 'Small Strokes' - Newsweek