In other news, a California man charged by special prosecutor Robert Mueller for selling fake IDs and bank accounts to Russia's professional troll farm, the so-called Internet Research Agency, has been sentenced to 6 months in prison. US District Judge Dabney Friedrich said she took 28-year-old Richard Pinedo's cooperation with Mueller into account when issuing a sentence.
Meanwhile, vaping congressman Duncan Hunter could face new charges. The FEC says Hunter's campaign did not record the occupation of some of his biggest donors as required by law and gave him a limited amount of time to update his records.
The letter this week regarding missing occupational information is unrelated to the criminal case — although the origin of the criminal investigation was a similar inquiry letter from the FEC about campaign reports. [...]
Donors for whom the campaign could not identify job and employer in previous reporting periods include six top-level executives for defense contractor Cubic Corporation, who contributed a combined $3,250 to Hunter’s campaign on the same day, March 28, 2016.
The next day, Cubic announced that one of its business units was awarded a $2.3 million contract from the U.S. Army’s Maneuver Center of Excellence, Clarke Simulation Center at Fort Benning, Georgia, to support Live, Virtual, Constructive and Game-based (LVCG) training for mission command systems.
Finally, wages remained largely flat during the month of August according to Labor Department data. Inflation increased at nearly the same rate as wages, meaning real wages increased by just 0.3 percent. Yearly average wages have risen by 2.8 percent in 2018, down from 2.9 percent in 2017 before the GOP passed tax cuts for corporations. Wages dropped after they passed the tax cuts.
Also -- the market fell into the toilet today because government debt is growing, making treasury bonds more attractive and making more risky investments less attractive. The Dow dropped by 830 points before closing at 4 pm; the biggest drop since February.