TRUMP WINS INDIANA AND KENTUCKY; HILLARY TAKES VERMONT

Sources: CNN, Youtube

MAINE HEARTS SANDERS - HE WINS CAUCUSES (DEMS VOTING GIMMICK)

Maine caucus

Last updated Mar 7, 2016 at 1:41 PM ET

REPUBLICAN

DEMOCRATIC

Mar 625 delegates

91% reporting	Delegates	Votes
Sanders (won)	15	64.3% 2,231
Clinton	7	35.5% 1,232

MAINE HEARTS SANDERS - HE WINS:

SANDERS IS DEMOCRAT'S GIMMICK TO ATTRACT VOTERS WHO DON'T LIKE HILLARY.

VOTING FOR SANDERS IS A VOTE FOR HILLARY.

Sources:  AP, NBC News, Youtube

**** Bernie Sanders Wins Maine Caucuses

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders wins the Maine caucuses, NBC News projects. 

This is the latest caucus state Sanders has won in the Democratic presidential nominating process. 

He also won two caucuses Saturday - Nebraska and Kansas. Sanders will win 15 of Maine's 30 delegates, while Clinton will be awarded eight, according to allocation estimates by NBC News.

 Including super delegates, the statewide totals are 16 for Sanders, who has the support of one super delegate, and 11 for Clinton, who has the support of three super delegates.

"With another double-digit victory, we have now won by wide margins in states from New England to the Rocky Mountains and from the Midwest to the Great Plains," Sanders said in a statement. "This weekend alone we won in Maine, Kansas and Nebraska. 

The pundits might not like it but the people are making history. We now have the momentum to go all the way to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia."

TRUMP & HILLARY WIN GEORGIA; SANDERS WINS VERMONT - (SUPER TUESDAY)

TRUMP & HILLARY WIN GEORGIA; SANDERS WINS VERMONT - (SUPER TUESDAY):

TRUMP PREDICTED TO WIN 10 STATES.

GOP ESTABLISHMENT PANICS AS TRUMP FORGES ON.

VOTERS BELIEVE ONLY TRUMP CAN STARE DOWN HILLARY WITHOUT FEAR.

Sources: CNN, WND, Youtube

**** SUPER TUESDAY GOP RESULTS: TRUMP SCORES 1ST WIN

Evening will require bourbon and soul-searching for Republicans

~ Georgia

76 delegates

(Polls closed at 7 p.m. EST)

With 2 percent reporting:

Trump: 49 percent

Cruz: 20 percent

Rubio: 20 percent

Carson: 5 percent

Kasich: 4 percent

~ Virginia

49 delegates

(Polls closed at 7 p.m. EST)

With 19 percent reporting:

Trump: 40 percent

Rubio: 31 percent

Cruz: 15 percent

Kasich: 8 percent

Carson: 6 percent

~ Vermont

16 delegates

(Polls closed at 7 p.m. EST)

With 1 percent reporting:

Trump: 37 percent

Kasich: 27 percent

Rubio: 19 percent

Cruz: 8 percent

Carson: 6 percent

~ Alabama

50 delegates

(Polls closed at 8 p.m. EST)

With 0 percent reporting:

Trump: 0 percent

Rubio: 0 percent

Cruz: 0 percent

Kasich: 0 percent

Carson: 0 percent

~ ~Massachusetts

42 delegates

(Polls closed at 8 p.m. EST)

With 0 percent reporting:

Trump: 0 percent

Rubio: 0 percent

Cruz: 0 percent

Kasich: 0 percent

Carson: 0 percent

~ Oklahoma

43 delegates

(Polls closed at 8 p.m. EST)

With 0 percent reporting:

Trump: 0 percent

Rubio: 0 percent

Cruz: 0 percent

Kasich: 0 percent

Carson: 0 percent

~ Tennessee

58 delegates

(Polls closed at 8 p.m. EST)

With 0 percent reporting:

Trump: 0 percent

Rubio: 0 percent

Cruz: 0 percent

Kasich: 0 percent

Carson: 0 percent

~ Texas

155 delegates

(Most polls close at 8 p.m. EST, and some in western region at 9 p.m. EST)

With 0 percent reporting:

Trump: 0 percent

Rubio: 0 percent

Cruz: 0 percent

Kasich: 0 percent

Carson: 0 percent

~ Arkansas

40 delegates

(Polls close at 8:30 p.m. EST)

With 0 percent reporting:

Trump: 0 percent

Rubio: 0 percent

Cruz: 0 percent

Kasich: 0 percent

Carson: 0 percent

~ Minnesota

38 delegates

(Caucuses convene at 8 p.m. EST)

With 0 percent reporting:

Trump: 0 percent

Rubio: 0 percent

Cruz: 0 percent

Kasich: 0 percent

Carson: 0 percent

~ Alaska

28 delegates

(Caucuses close around 12 a.m. EST)

With 0 percent reporting:

Trump: 0 percent

Rubio: 0 percent

Cruz: 0 percent

Kasich: 0 percent

Carson: 0 percent

Call it panic day for the Republican establishment: GOP front-runner Donald Trump is tightening his grip on the party’s nomination on Super Tuesday, the most important day yet in the 2016 election.

Republicans are facing off on Super Tuesday, a group of 11 primaries and caucuses in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia.

And it’s possible Trump could win as many as 10 Super Tuesday contests.

He already has one under his belt, as Fox News has called Georgia’s GOP race for Trump.

Predictions from the search engine Bing have Trump sweeping all Super Tuesday states except one. Republican candidate Ted Cruz is expected to take his home state of Texas.

“Tuesday night feels like an evening that will require bourbon and soul-searching for Republicans,” a GOP insider told Politico.

“Game. Set. Match. On both sides,” added a Virginia Republican. “Sure, there will be some surprises and zero candidates will drop out as most have the wherewithal and ego to slog ahead for weeks to come, but this thing is done. Despite conspiracy theories, Trump and Clinton will be cruising to their respective nominations.”

Even Trump’s GOP rivals are expecting a big night for the billionaire.

“Nobody’s going to win but Trump,” Republican candidate John Kasich told CNN on Thursday.

“Right now, Donald Trump has enormous momentum,” Cruz said Friday. “If he continues with that momentum and powers through and wins everywhere on Super Tuesday, he could easily be unstoppable.”

Trump is dominating the races, according to a CNN poll that has him scoring 49 percent of the primary vote.

“On Tuesday, you have a big day,” Trump said at a Tennessee rally on Saturday, urging his supporters to vote even if they are dying or their spouses suddenly decided to dump them.

“You get up, you go to the polls, and you vote!” he said. “I promise you, that you are going to look back on this night and you are going to say this was a very important night … a very important evening in your life.”

Also, Trump has a lock on Georgia and Tennessee, while Cruz is leading in Texas – Super Tuesday’s “crown jewel” with 155 delegates – according to a trio of new NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist polls.

The polls’ Georgia results are as follows: Trump, 30; Cruz, 23; Marco Rubio, 23; Ben Carson, 9; John Kasich, 9.

Tennessee results: Trump, 40; Cruz, 22; Rubio, 19; Carson, 9; Kasich, 6.

And in Texas: Cruz, 39; Trump, 26; Rubio, 16; Carson, 8; Kasich, 6.

While Cruz has a solid lead in Texas, his make-or-break moment comes Tuesday.

“If Cruz doesn’t win Texas, it’s game over for him,” Phillip Stutts, a Republican political consultant, told CNN. “Rubio doesn’t doesn’t have to win, but Cruz has to.”

Rubio won’t face his must-win home state primary in Florida until March 15. After that date, states will begin assigning delegates on a winner-take-all basis.

If Trump manages to build a strong delegate lead before March 15, first-place finishes in winner-take-all primaries such as Florida and Ohio could give him the Republican nomination.

For Republicans, 595 delegates are at stake in 11 states. To win the party nomination, GOP candidates need 1,237 delegates.

Super Tuesday results will be recorded below as they come in.

Sen. Bernie Sanders Admits Lobbyists Own Congress

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Lobbyists On Pace For Record Year



Main Street has had a tough year, losing jobs and seeing little evidence of the economic revival that experts say has already begun.

But K Street is raking it in.

Washington’s influence industry is on track to shatter last year’s record $3.3 billion spent to lobby Congress and the rest of the federal government — and that’s with a down economy and about 1,500 fewer registered lobbyists in town, according to data collected by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Many lobbying firms have escaped the worst of the corporate belt-tightening, thanks, in large part, to the ambitious agenda set out by President Barack Obama — who, ironically, came to Washington with a pledge to break what he considered the undue influence of special-interest lobbyists.

Plenty of sectors have scaled back their K Street spending, including traditional big spenders like real estate and telecommunications. But Obama’s push for legislation on health reform, financial reform and climate change has compensated for the grim economic times.

And that’s after Obama kicked off the year with a massive economic stimulus package — and every major business sector tried to get a piece of the action.

“Lobbyists love it ... when you’ve got an activist agenda like this, and you’ve got serious problems like this, and people want to do something about it,” said James Thurber, director of American University’s Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies.

“It is the most active time that I have ever seen in the advocacy business — from 1973 on,” Thurber added.

“We’ve never had as good a year,” said one lobbyist whose shop deals mostly with financial services and health care issues. “It’s been a tremendously busy year, and it’s going to keep getting that way,” the lobbyist said, noting that both health care and financial reform will remain active as congressional action moves from drafting legislation to implementation to the inevitable fixes.

The year-end lobbying expenditure figures don’t come out until late January, but Thurber and others predict that the top line number will exceed the $3.3 billion spent in 2008. Groups spent $2.5 billion during the first three quarters of 2009, which is a slightly faster quarterly pace than 2008, according to CRP.

And the fourth quarter has been a particularly busy time on Capitol Hill, with the House passing health care and financial reform bills and the Senate digging in on health care, too.

Health care has provided a particular jolt to the lobbying business, insiders say, since the scope of the legislation outstrips any health efforts in recent history.

“This was the biggest, most broad attempt at passing legislation that we’ve seen. This is even bigger or more broad than ’93,” said Bill Pierce, senior vice president and health care guru at APCO Worldwide, referring to President Bill Clinton’s attempt at health care reform. “It touches all the various parts of the entire health care environment. ... Everybody has some dog in the fight.”

And the lobbying expenditure figures don’t include the heaps of cash interest groups are throwing at advertising, coalition-building, grass-roots and Astroturf outreach — all of which don’t get reported in the figures. Advocacy groups have spent almost $200 million on ads on the health care issue so far this year, according to Campaign Media Analysis Group.

The legislation’s reach has drawn in an almost-encyclopedic expanse of interest and corporate groups — from activists on both sides of the abortion debate, to MoveOn.org and FreedomWorks to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to health insurance companies.

“That doesn’t happen every day. When it does happen, you get this great deal of money being pumped into the political system on the lobbying end because all of these folks feel like they need to be a participant, and that if they don’t participate, they do so at their own peril,” said Dave Levinthal, a spokesman for CRP, a nonpartisan, nonprofit watchdog group. Nearly $400 million has been spent on health care lobbying during the first nine months of 2009, according to CRP’s data.

A closer look at some of the health care lobbying expenditures shows just how high the stakes are. PhRMA, a top trade group for drug makers, spent as much as it did in all of 2008 — $20.2 million — during the first nine months of 2009. America’s Health Insurance Plans is also on pace to outspend its 2008 lobbying budget, spending $6.3 million during the first nine months of this year.

The Obama administration’s determination to revamp the nation’s financial rules and regulatory structure has fueled a somewhat less broad but no less intense advocacy business.

Lobbyists for the industry describe working nonstop since last August, when the financial system started to crumble, through the fight for the $700 billion bailout last fall. This year, they’ve battled several attempts by Democrats to pass so-called cramdown legislation allowing bankruptcy judges to modify troubled mortgages and fought — ultimately unsuccessfully — against strict new credit card rules, among other policy battles.

All this while the industry must keep up with the larger financial reform bill, which is moving through Congress. “If it weren’t for the crisis, that bill could have easily taken four years, minimum,” observed one exhausted financial lobbyist of the bill that the House passed Dec. 11.

The Credit Union National Association has already spent about $650,000 more than it did during the same period last year and is on track to spend “considerably more” lobbying than it did in 2008, said John Magill, the trade association’s senior vice president of legislative affairs.

“It’s been such a frantic pace this year. The Congress has churned out so many things,” he said, ticking off a list that includes financial reform, credit card legislation, new bank overdraft rules and credit unions’ ongoing battle to raise the amount they can lend to small businesses.

Magill said that the lobbying expenditures CUNA reports to Congress don’t take into account its extensive grass-roots efforts, such as the 5,000 members that “hiked the Hill” last spring or the approximately 650 who flew into town the week the House debated the financial reform bill on the floor.

Magill credits that grass-roots lobbying for the defeat of a House bill on a cramdown amendment, which came after the House passed a similar measure earlier in the year.

While times may be good for lobbyists, there’s a more dismal lesson to be learned from the relentless upward trend of lobbying spending that appears undaunted by even a massive recession: Lobbying is seen as an issue of political and economic survival in this town.

“If lobbying the federal government did not work, people wouldn’t spend money doing it,” Levinthal said.



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Sources: MSNBC, Morning Joe, Politico, Google Maps

Harry Reid's Deals To Get His 60 Votes, Defense Bill Clears

Mass., Vermont Bigger Medicaid Winners Than Nebraska


Perhaps the Republican criticism of Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) is misplaced: Nebraska is set to reap only a fraction of the $1.2 billion in special Medicaid deals for three states.

Vermont, which is represented by the once-wavering Sen. Bernie Sanders, would recieve $600 million over 10 years for its Medicaid costs, according to Congressional Budget Office figures requested by Senate Republicans.

Massachusetts would see $500 million, according to the CBO.

Nelson, who has been lambasted throughout the day, steered only (!) $100 million to his state to cost the full cost of the Medicaid expansion.





Payoffs For States Get Harry Reid To 60 Votes



Ben Nelson’s “Cornhusker Kickback,” as the GOP is calling it, got all the attention Saturday, but other senators lined up for deals as Majority Leader Harry Reid corralled the last few votes for a health reform package.

Nelson’s might be the most blatant – a deal carved out for a single state, a permanent exemption from the state share of Medicaid expansion for Nebraska, meaning federal taxpayers have to kick in an additional $45 million in the first decade.

But another Democratic holdout, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), took credit for $10 billion in new funding for community health centers, while denying it was a “sweetheart deal.” He was clearly more enthusiastic about a bill he said he couldn’t support just three days ago.

Nelson and Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) carved out an exemption for non-profit insurers in their states from a hefty excise tax. Similar insurers in the other 48 states will pay the tax.

Vermont and Massachusetts were given additional Medicaid funding, another plus for Sanders and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) Three states – Pennsylvania, New York and Florida – all won protections for their Medicare Advantage beneficiaries at a time when the program is facing cuts nationwide.

All of this came on top of a $300 million increase for Medicaid in Louisiana, designed to win the vote of Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu.

Under pressure from the White House to get a deal done by Christmas, Reid was unapologetic. He argued that, by definition, legislating means deal making and defended the special treatment for Nelson’s home state of Nebraska.

“You’ll find a number of states that are treated differently than other states. That’s what legislating is all about. It's compromise," he said.

It was Nelson who proved that he who plays hardest to get, gets the most.

He forced Reid to redraft the bill’s restrictions on federal funding of abortion. And while most insiders were focused on that deal, Nelson was quietly ensuring that his state would never have to pay for the Medicaid expansion being written into the bill – an agreement that had been in the works for weeks.

Medicaid is usually paid for with a mix of federal and state funding, but Nelson's carve out means that any Medicaid beneficiaries who join the program under the bill will be fully paid for by the federal government.

It's an important deal considering that many governors are worried that the Medicaid expansion will further strain already stressed state budgets – and one that came after Nebraska Gov.Dave Heineman called on Nelson to vote against the bill.

"The State of Nebraska cannot afford an unfunded mandate and uncontrolled spending of this magnitude,” the governor wrote to Nelson.

Nelson deferred all questions on the provision to Reid, saying only that he was “comfortable” the deal took care of Nebraska.

But Nelson’s deal could be a pittance compared to where the Nebraska compromise might ultimately lead – to 49 other states demanding that the feds pick up their share of health reform’s new Medicaid burden when it kicks in during 2017.

"When you look at it, I thought well, God, good, it is going to be the impetus for all the states to stay at 100 percent [federal funding]. So he might have done all of us a favor," Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) said of Nelson’s dealings.

Nelson and Levin also pushed a provision that exempts non-profit insurers in Nebraska and Michigan from an annual multi-billion dollar excise tax on insurance companies.

Not surprisingly, both states are home to non-profit insurers who control a high-percentage of the industry’s profits. In Michigan, non-profit insurers control 76 percent of the industry’s profits – one of the highest percentages in the nation – while Nebraska non-profits control 46 percent of their state’s profits.

And in an example of how closely senators guarded details, Levin’s office did not answer any questions about the proposal when asked about it on Friday.

Republicans, meanwhile, expressed outrage at the wheeling and dealing, as if their party had never cut a legislative deal in its 150-year history.

“This bill is a monstrosity, a 2,100-page monstrosity full of special deals for people who are willing to vote for it,” said Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell. “And they’re playing these kind of games with the nation’s health care. This is an outrage.”

But Sanders didn’t sound outraged when he talked about the extra Medicaid funding Vermont will get for six years. Massachusetts, meanwhile, received three years worth of additional Medicaid funding. Under the original bill, neither state had qualified for the money.

Republican Sen. Mike Enzi accused Democratic leaders of favoring Medicare Advantage beneficiaries in Pennsylvania, New York and Florida at the expense of seniors in other parts of the country.

“The Democrats are playing ‘Let’s make a deal’ with trillions of your hard-earned tax dollars. You and all the American people should know that the majority leader is buying his votes with your money,” said Enzi (R-Wyo.) “The Reid bill gives sweetheart deals to a few states and the rest of the country will foot the bill. Making unfair deals like this is the wrong way to legislate and the American people know it.”

And while there were plenty of state-specific deals, some of the changes were clearly aimed at pleasing specific Democratic factions. For instance, tightened insurance regulations went a long way toward putting a smile on the faces of liberal senators who have lost their much-loved public option.

The amendment mandates that insurers spend no less than 80 percent of their premium revenues providing medical care. Currently, insurers spend about 70 percent of their premiums paying for health care. The bill also eliminates insurers’ ability to cap annual coverage amounts.

In brief remarks at the White House, President Barack Obama also highlighted some new provisions, including penalties for insurers who “arbitrarily jack up rates” and an immediate prohibition on insures’ ability to deny children coverage.

Obama, too, talked of the deals as just the cost of doing business in Washington.

“As with any legislation, compromise is part of the process,” Obama said. “But I'm pleased that recently added amendments have made this landmark bill even stronger.”





War bill Survives Poisonous Vote



A $626 billion Pentagon budget narrowly advanced in the Senate Friday morning, but not before Washington’s political battles seemed to eclipse the real wars of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Senate scene, played out in a post-midnight session on a freezing night, dramatized how poisonous the atmosphere has become in the health care fight.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates had to weigh in for fear the military would be left with only stop-gap funding while fighting two wars overseas. And ailing 92-year-old Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.V.) was wheeled in for the 1 a.m. vote while his old friend Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) deserted the bill under pressure from his own leadership to slow action.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) made no secret of the fact that he was looking for leverage over Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to delay action on health care reform until after Christmas. The pressure on rank-and-file members was severe, and it was only after Democrats had secured the needed 60 votes that three Republicans broke ranks in support of cutting off debate.

“Not even the darkness outside can conceal the games being played inside this Senate chamber,” Reid said in closing remarks before the vote. “We are here in the middle of the night, but the reason is as clear as day.”

By contrast, the same defense measure — including $128 billion for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan — sailed through the Houseon Wednesday on a 395-34 vote. Cochran, the ranking Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, had worked closely with Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) to ensure passage. And toward this end, Democrats pared back extraneous provisions and devoted the bulk of the additional domestic spending to jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed.

“It is a good bill. It ought to be passed, and it ought to be passed as soon as possible,” Cochran said on the floor Wednesday. But after a health care blowup on the floor that day infuriated McConnell, Cochran was pressed by his leadership to slow progress at least until Reid comes forward with the text of proposed changes being made in the Democrats' health care package.

In a statement after the vote, the Mississippian said his party felt it was important to act in “unison,” but that he was confident the measure would soon pass. “I regret that its consideration is being affected by the divisive end-of-session debate on health care reform.”

Neither party is blameless in the sorry state of the defense budget, which should finally clear Congress on Saturday, almost three months into the fiscal year that began Oct. 1.

Democrats stalled action themselves for months, hoping to use it as the locomotive for an end-of-the-year train of legislative items. “The Republicans didn’t control the timing on this bill,” said Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.). “Why haven’t the Democrats been able to bring this most important bill to the Senate for a vote until a week before Christmas?”

Nonetheless the bare-knuckle Republican tactics are most striking because GOP members are typically very supportive of defense spending and reluctant to do anything to obstruct the annual Pentagon budget.

That tradition is wearing thin in today’s Washington. The 1 a.m. vote in the Senate echoed a fight last summer in the House during which Republicans opposed new war funding because they were upset that money for the International Monetary Fund had been added to the package.

“I think they picked the wrong bill for it,” said Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin (D-Ill.). “Why are we putting the men and women in uniform in the middle of this debate? They didn’t ask for that.”

The three Republicans who supported cloture were Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas and Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins — all representing states with a major economic stake in the defense budget.



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Sources: Politico, Google Maps