Category: “Dead Skunk in The Middle of The Road”

Issues and events that stink to high heaven

New York Daily News Scorches ‘Treason’ Trump With Brutal New Cover

HuffPost

New York Daily News Scorches ‘Treason’ Trump With Brutal New Cover

Rebecca Shapiro     July 16, 2018

Trump welcomes Putin. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

Critics slam Trump’s appearance with Putin at summit
Yahoo News Video

The New York Daily News hammered President Donald Trump  with its Tuesday cover, suggesting that his refusal to publicly condemn Russian leader Vladimir Putin was treason.

During a news conference Monday in Helsinki, Finland, Trump would not blame Russia or Putin for interference in the 2016 U.S. election, saying “we’re all to blame” for poor relations between the two countries. U.S. intelligence and government officials have concluded that the Kremlin meddled in the 2016 presidential election.

So the New York Daily News reacted to Trump’s remarks with a brutal illustration and headline, accusing the president of siding with an enemy over his own country. The illustration alluded to a statement Trump made during his presidential campaign that he could shoot someone on New York’s Fifth Avenue and not lose voters.

View image on Twitter
New York Daily News: Trump derides reports with which he disagrees as “fake news,” then buys the Russian narrative hook, line, sinker, pole and boat.

Trump’s comments after his meeting with Putin sparked outrage Monday, with even Republican leaders and Fox News hosts slamming the president.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said, “No prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant.” Fox Business host Neil Cavuto called Trump’s behavior “disgusting.”

Trump Didn’t Forget to Pack His White Supremacy for His U.K. Trip

Esquire

Trump Didn’t Forget to Pack His White Supremacy for His U.K. Trip

The president has made a biblical mess through his European tour.

By Jack Holmes      July 13, 2018

Getty Images

It’s comforting to wake on a Friday morning knowing your Large Adult President is stomping around Europe, making things great again. Having done wonders for the NATO alliance—particularly over breakfast—Donald Trump, American president is now in the United Kingdom. He’s there to touch base with our old allies through world war and more, and we can safely assume that, despite his penchant for innovation when it comes to foreign policy, Trump will seek to safeguard the U.S.-British friendship.

Right.

To coincide with his arrival, Trump did an interview with Britain’s trashiest newspaper, The Sun, and trashed British Prime Minister Theresa May throughout. On the subject of Brexit, Trump complained May hadn’t followed his advice and was instead pursuing a “soft” Brexit, in which the U.K. would maintain close ties to the European Union. This, he explained, would have profound implications on whether the U.K. can strike a separate trade deal with the U.S.:

TRUMP: If they do a deal like that, we would be dealing with the European Union instead of dealing with the U.K., so it will probably kill the deal … The deal she is striking is a much different deal than the one the people voted on.

So the United States and Great Britain just won’t have a formal trade relationship if Trump doesn’t like Britain’s deal with the E.U.? Oh, and you might have noticed that splintering Western Europe by getting Britain as far as possible from the Union is—like undermining NATO—a priority of Vladimir Putin.

But Trump had more to say about May—or, more precisely, about who he thinks would be a great a prime minister. The answer is not Prime Minister Theresa May:

Trump praised Boris Johnson as a future Prime Minister. The US President described the former Foreign Secretary as “a very talented guy”, adding: “I like him a lot.”

“I have a lot of respect for Boris. He obviously likes me, and says very good things about me. I was very saddened to see he was leaving government and I hope he goes back in at some point. I think he is a great representative for your country.”

Asked if the ex-minister could be in No 10 one day, he replied: “Well I am not pitting one against the other.”

Certainly not.

Johnson, of course, is the Brexit clown with Trumpian hair who just resigned as foreign secretary in what many believe is a prelude to challenging May, who is incredibly weak at present as her cabinet fractures over Brexit plans. This is an amazing way to announce your arrival in a country and kick off your summit with its leader. When you take into account the U.K. is one of our closest allies, it’s simply shocking. The United States president just shivved the leader of Britain on his way into town.

But the real shock was still to come. Our big strong president is steering clear of London during his visit because of mass protests that include a giant inflatable baby version of him. London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, approved the balloon’s deployment on free speech grounds—but has his own history with Trump, which includes when Trump attacked Khan in the immediate aftermath of a terrorist attack in his city, because leadership and civility. When Khan criticized Trump’s Muslim Ban—which the Supreme Court now assures us is, in its newest form, No Longer a Muslim Ban—Trump responded by challenging Khan to an IQ test.

Naturally, Trump’s response in this case was to…blame Khan, who is Muslim, for terror attacks in London:

“I look at cities in Europe, and I can be specific if you’d like. You have a mayor who has done a terrible job in London. He has done a terrible job. Take a look at the terrorism that is taking place. Look at what is going on in London. I think he has done a very bad job on terrorism. I think he has done a bad job on crime, if you look, all of the horrible things going on there, with all of the crime that is being brought in.”

Khan responded by pointing out that the Home Office—a division of the national government—is responsible for immigration policy. But it seems hopeless to point out these distinctions to the world’s most powerful man, who elsewhere in the Sun interview veered into the kind of rhetoric you might find among bona fide white nationalists:

Chris Hayes

“I think it changed the fabric of Europe and, unless you act very quickly, it’s never going to be what it was and I don’t mean that in a positive way.”

“So I think allowing millions and millions of people to come into Europe is very, very sad.”

“I think you are losing your culture. Look around. You go through certain areas that didn’t exist ten or 15 years ago.”

This is exactly the kind of cultural anxiety—which most often manifests as xenophobia and racism—that fuels all far-right movements in the West. The message is clear: If you allow non-white people from Africa and the Middle East to migrate to Europe, the continent as you know it will cease to exist.

Of course, this is predicated on the idea that a country like Britain is defined by ethnicity more than values like free expression, equality before the law, and self-determination. (Or that non-white migrants cannot assimilate to a society that has these values.) It also clings to the delusion that the U.K., like the U.S., has not been a thoroughly multicultural place for decades and can still be refashioned into an Anglo-Saxon ethnostate.

It is not a coincidence that Trump attacked London’s Muslim mayor, or tried to tie him to Islamic extremist terrorism and crime, or tried to tie all of that to the migration issue. This is the methodology of white nationalism.

But there was still time for a run-of-the-mill batshit presidential moment.

Matthew Garrahan: Trump tells The Sun he’s more popular than Abraham Lincoln

Some have pointed out already that one reason Lincoln might not have fared so well in opinion polls is that he was assassinated a decade before the method of conducting them, known as “the telephone,” was invented. But sure, whatever. Keep on winning.

Having made a biblical mess in the lead-up to the summit, Trump of course arrived expecting to field questions about it.

MSNBC: President Trump reacts to question about his recent comments to The Sun while sitting next to British PM May.

Oh, you believed that? No, he decided to lend some credence to that baby blimp caricature instead. Then, in a subsequent press conference, he called the whole thing Fake News:

Trump made secret deal with Kennedy over retirement, replacement

ThinkProgress

White House doesn’t deny report Trump made secret deal with Kennedy over retirement, replacement

It’s not supposed to work like this.

Aaron Rupar     July 10, 2018

CREDIT: SCREENGRAB
CREDIT: SCREENGRAB
During an CNN interview on Tuesday morning, White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah did not deny an NBC report that outgoing Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy “received assurances” from President Trump that if he retired, Judge Brett Kavanaugh — one of Kennedy’s former clerks — would be nominated to be his replacement

Asked repeatedly if some sort of deal between Trump and Kennedy was struck before Kennedy announced his retirement, Shah dodged, saying things like “I’m not going to read out private conversations that Justice Kennedy had with either members of the White House or the president,” and, “Justice Kennedy can speak for himself.” But what Shah didn’t do is deny the NBC report.

If NBC’s report is accurate, it means Kennedy would effectively have been given control over a SCOTUS seat for 60 years — the 30 years he served, and the 30 or so the 53-year-old Kavanaugh will likely serve on the court if confirmed.

At another point during the CNN interview, Shah was asked if Trump was familiar with an article Kavanaugh’s wrote that could become relevant to SCOTUS as special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of the Trump campaign unfolds — a 2009 law review article in which Kavanaugh argued that sitting presidents are above the law.

CREDIT: Chris Maddaloni/Roll Call/Getty Images

Who is Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s pick to replace Anthony Kennedy?

“The indictment and trial of a sitting president… would cripple the federal government, rendering it unable to function with credibility in either the international or domestic areas,” Kavanaugh wrote. “Such an outcome would ill serve the public interest, especially in times of financial or national security crisis.”

Shah again dodged, saying that “the president and the White House are aware of all of Judge Kavanaugh’s public record, but what we are focused on is that if you look at his opinions, if you look at his writings, there are some that would emphasize greater power for the executive, some that would limit the power. Some that would put a ruling on one or another side of a specific issue. But the constant strain through all of the rulings, through all the opinions, through all the writings is an individual who interprets the law and the Constitution as it was written and doesn’t legislate from the bench.”

CREDIT: SCREENGRAB

The suspicious business relationship between Trump and Justice Kennedy’s son

“Does the president agree with the 2009 writing?” host John Berman followed up.

“I haven’t asked the president about that writing,” Shah said.

UPDATE (7/10, 2:24 p.m.) — Later Tuesday, NBC sought to clarify that whatever deal the White House had with Kennedy had a bit of wiggle room.

“I am told by a source who was not directly part of the talks that Kennedy provided Pres. Trump/ WH a list of acceptable replacements,” Leigh Ann Caldwell reported on Twitter.

Replying to LA Caldwell, Here’s Politico’s version: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/09/brett-kavanaugh-trump-private-meeting-706137 …

Leigh Ann Caldwell: I’ve deleted this tweet because it incorrectly implies a transactional nature in Kennedy’s replacement. I am told by a source who was not directly part of the talks that Kennedy provided Pres. Trump/ WH a list of acceptable replacements.

In another tweet, Caldwell added that while Kennedy’s list contained a number of names, “Kavanaugh was the only one who was thought conservative enough to consider.”

We’re “on the cusp” of “losing the American constitutional republic forever”

Salon

Malcolm Nance on Trump: We’re “on the cusp” of “losing the American constitutional republic forever”

Former intelligence officer turned author says Putin is Trump’s “handler” and we’re in a “Benedict Arnold moment”

Chauncey DeVega             July 9, 2018

The crisis that has befallen America under Donald Trump’s presidency is not ripped from the pages of a John le Carré or Jason Matthews spy novel. It is all too real.

The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee has unanimously endorsed the intelligence community’s conclusion that the Russian government interfered with the 2016 presidential election, with the goal of electing Donald Trump and undermining American democracy.

Former CIA director John Brennan agrees that Vladimir Putin commanded his spies and other agents to assist Donald Trump so that he would defeat Hillary Clinton. Brennan also believes that Putin may be blackmailing Trump as a means of forcing the president to do his bidding.

Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller has indicted numerous people in connection with Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election and related criminal behavior.

Trump openly encouraged Putin and his agents to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. Trump continues to publicly praise Putin and make excuses for his apparent efforts to subvert American democracy. Trump now plans to meet privately with Putin later this month. It has been reported that no American advisers or other observers will attend these meetings.

If what now seems apparent is indeed true, Putin has successfully conducted one of the greatest covert operations in modern history. He and his agents have undermined the United States’ standing in the world and apparently now control a president, the Republican Party, and tens of millions of Americans who have embraced authoritarianism and betrayed their own country’s democratic values and institutions.

How was Russia able to accomplish this? Is Donald Trump actively working for Vladimir Putin and Russia or is he just a “useful idiot”? What social cleavages did Russia exploit in order to do so much damage to the United States? How does Russia’s support of Trump and American fascism fit into a much larger global plan?

In an effort to answer these questions I recently spoke with Malcolm Nance, a career intelligence and counterterrorism officer for the United States government. In his more than three decades working in that capacity, Nance served with U.S. Special Operations forces, the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies. He has worked in the Middle East, North Africa, the Balkans, South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. A frequent guest contributor on MSNBC, Nance has authored several books, including the bestselling “The Plot to Hack America: How Putin’s Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election.”

Nance’s new book is “The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West.” This conversation has been edited for clarity and length. A longer version can be heard on my podcast.

It has been about a year since we last spoke about President Trump and Russian interference in the 2016 election. At this point are matters better, worse or about what you expected in terms of how Trump is behaving and his impact on the country?

Things are happening as expected. But who would have thought that Donald Trump would be feeling so much pressure about being caught working with the Russians that he would feel the need to start paying them off so greatly? Trump is now warning that he may eliminate or downgrade NATO.

It’s just insane. We created NATO. It was a United States invention for the collective security of Europe. It has been a Russian desire since 1947 to break up NATO. Trump also wants to remove the United States from the World Trade Organization. He is doing this all before his summit meeting with Putin.

But in some ways Donald Trump is way worse than I thought he would be at this point. He is acting like a guy who has to rob a bank to pay off the Colombian drug lord. Every day that he wakes up alive is like a blessing. This is the level of debt and peril that I think Donald Trump is in — that he would literally take a sledgehammer to everything the United States has built in an effort to save himself.

Donald Trump is acting like Putin’s vassal. The public evidence that Trump and his inner circle colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 presidential election is overwhelming. Yet Trump’s voters, the Republican Party and the right-wing news media keeps denying the facts.

Putin is his handler. There are too many people who keep saying that they are “sick of hearing about Russia.” These people refuse to acknowledge the  evidence. There is a national counterintelligence investigation targeting the White House. The president and all of his staff are implicated.

We have Michael Flynn, the [former] national security adviser to the president, pleading guilty to lying to the FBI because he covered up secret contacts with a foreign government and lied about it when confronted with the facts. The evidence is now in the realm of the Justice Department, and they’re not going to just come out and give it to you. This is what all these Republican congressmen are trying to do. For example, Devin Nunes and Trey Gowdy. They’re trying to get the evidence so that they can use it to try to exonerate Donald Trump.

This is obstruction of justice on a grand scale. I suspect that when it’s all said and done and the sum total of the evidence comes out, it’ll be overwhelming and undeniable. As I told you last year, we’re entering a Benedict Arnold moment in American history. Robert Mueller is not playing games here. He cannot accelerate things because Donald Trump is taking a sledgehammer to government, although I’m certain he will accelerate things in order to make sure that justice is served. There will be more indictments, some of them very high profile. For example, Jared Kushner lied when he was asked about using Russian secret communications in an effort to hide his communications with Russia from the NSA and CIA.

Where is the mass protest and outrage among the American people? There should be massive  protests and marches that disrupt day-to-day life. Is this passivity and perhaps exhaustion also part of Russia and Putin’s psy-op against the American people?  

I think they chose their asset well. Donald Trump knows how to play this game. He understands that his only salvation is to manipulate the public. He doesn’t care if he destroys the fundamental infrastructure of the FBI. He has Rudy Giuliani telling him the good guys are the average field officers and the leadership needs to be completely redone because Trump wants to control the Justice Department. This is Trump’s way of obstructing justice and expanding his power.

Republicans are so taken by and loyal to Trump that they will believe and do anything he says. A good example of that is the Harley-Davidson factory and the nail factory that were shut down or may go away due to his tariffs. There have been interviews with people who said, “Well, we know it’s going to affect us firstly, but if Donald Trump says it’s for the best, then OK.” That’s cultism. Lo and behold, they actually say, “Well, Donald Trump didn’t do that. That’s the Europeans or that’s the liberals or that’s the Democrats that made me lose my job.”

We’re entering a very dangerous period in American history. It is terrifying. I was rereading my book last weekend and I really had no idea that putting all of this together in one solid package would lead to the conclusion that there is, in fact, a plot. The Russians have a plan and a strategy. They have been executing the strategy for 15 years, by finding Donald Trump and building him up as a character and fostering his betrayal of the United States of America. They clearly set out to destroy American democracy and Donald Trump is the man to do it. We are, as of this November, on the cusp of possibly losing the American constitutional republic forever.

The Russians have been doing this in Europe with ultra-right-wing groups, fascist groups and others that have their origins with the Nazis. The Russians aren’t Communist anymore. They are ultra-conservative Christian nationalists.

Their goal is to use democracy to destroy democracy. You want to get rid of democracy, have an election. But this is an election where they vote away your rights. This is an election where you lose to voter suppression and aid from a foreign power. But at the end of that loss, these enemies of real democracy then say, “Oh, no. It was all fair and square.” The Republicans want an autocracy where the rights of minorities and others are not protected. Vladimir Putin, with Donald Trump and with the European conservative movements, are building an axis of autocracies, and the United States is on the relatively quick road to becoming an autocracy and no longer a constitutional republic.

Were American conservatives particularly vulnerable to being manipulated because they are anti-intellectual and already predisposed towards authoritarianism? Or was the Russian plan just that masterful and devious?  

The Russians watch very carefully. We have to recognize their president is a former career KGB officer. The goals of Russia since 1917 have been to destroy capitalism, discredit democracy and show that Communist collectivism was the greatest social and political system in the world.

The Russians realized that that the American right wing, with its hatred of Barack Obama, was a natural ally. So the Russians went about co-opting these right-wingers. I call them the “American beachhead.” Since 2005 the Russians have been hammering almost every conservative political movement in Europe — they are now funded by Moscow, particularly the neo-Nazi and the fascist ones.

The Russians really invest in these organizations because their goal is to create autocracies. To re-engineer the world away from a Washington-centric European alliance to a Moscow-centric, autocratic one.

Steve Bannon was just in Europe speaking to right-wing and fascist groups, telling them to be proud of being called racists. Trump’s former adviser Sebastian Gorka actually wore a literal medal that was awarded by a Hungarian group allied with the Nazis. 

In my book I call Steve Bannon “the American Goebbels.” He is the evangelist of the American alt-right. In Europe there are groups such as Pegida (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West), which is the rabid anti-foreigner movement in Germany who got power through the AFD (Alternative für Deutschland), and went from something like 3 percent of the polls last year to now being the second-largest party in Germany with 30 percent of the vote.

Trump is pretty much riding a high wave with 40 or so percent support. Hitler won with 37 percent. Bannon was just in Europe meeting with the Hungarian government and the Jobbik Party. Bannon also went to meet with the Five Star Movement in Italy whose foreign minister, Matteo Salvini, just threatened to deport and put on trains all of the Roma people — the “gypsies” — in Italy. The last guy who put the Roma out of a country and round them up on trains was Adolf Hitler and he sent them straight to Auschwitz.

So this is really dangerous talk that’s going on in Europe. We may be one or two elections in Europe from seeing the complete collapse of the European order that we established at the end of World War II.

In effect, Trump’s immigration policy amounted to putting the families of black and brown refugees in concentration camps. The United States has withdrawn from the United Nations’ Human Rights Council. How do these images of crying babies and broken families help Vladimir Putin’s plot against America?

This all works out for the Russians. First, note how the Russians have now shifted. Remember, last year they were starting to criticize Trump by saying that he had been consumed by the swamp. Now it is all completely reversed. Trump is a strong leader. Trump is closing his borders. Middle East and African immigration into Europe is the No. 1 platform for European conservatives. Trump is the Johnny-come-lately to the story. So Trump saying the same is a double thumbs-up for the Russians and their strategy of inciting nativism and racism and chaos.

Trump has been on Fox News and elsewhere joking about Putin and Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. Is he a  “useful idiot” for Putin’s spies? Or is Trump actually afraid of being caught by Robert Mueller and his behavior reflects that? Either way he is acting like a guilty person.

I’m certainly been pretty vocal on this point. “Useful idiot” is a technical term. It’s a person who is an unwilling dupe, who through their own actions helps your cause. I think Trump started out as a useful idiot when it came to selling apartments and getting money from Russians who were liquidating their assets from the Soviet Union. I think he then became a willing asset when they started using him when he wanted to run for president. Trump knows everything is being done in his benefit. He is one step from being an agent. We may find out with Donald Trump that is the case. Who knows?

There are multiple examples of Trump and his confidants meeting with Russian representatives in private without American translators or media present. Trump will meet with Putin again in a few weeks. Again, this conversation will be private. How unusual is this?

It’s extremely unusual and people that should know better, like Gen. [John] Kelly, are not alarmed. They think this is just Trump’s way of doing things. But Trump meeting Putin in private is like him going in for his quarterly evaluation. I would not doubt if it actually comes out to effectively be that. As I said, I think this nation is in a Benedict Arnold moment.

Moreover, I think that there will be multiple Benedict Arnolds in the story. No other president would ever do this. No other president would be allowed to do this. Trump is getting away with this behavior because he has cowed the Republican Party with fear that they’ll be put out of office by his cult members. There is nothing Trump cannot do at this point.

Matters are very dire. I think this “blue wave” in the midterms is much exaggerated. Trump will win in 2020 — if he runs again — for a variety of reasons. What will America look like if Trump continues to get his way in terms of serving Putin’s and Russia’s interests, rather than those of the United States and the American people?

You will not recognize the United States. The country will vote itself into an autocracy. Trump and the Republican Party will suspend parts of America’s representative democracy. They will amend the Constitution. And America will see 65 percent of its people living under subjugation. Now, I don’t say that lightly. That’s an intelligence analysis based on the empirical data. I say that with experience honed with humility. Donald Trump makes no secret of his desires in that regard. His biggest problem has been democracy. I disagree with you, however, on one point. I do believe there will be a “blue wave.”

The problem with the progressives and liberals right now is that they are still treating this situation like we are in a state of normalcy.

Vladimir Putin actually warned that if Trump wins, he has to be careful of an American backlash like the one that swept the pro-Moscow government out of power in the Ukraine. He’s terrified of democracy. He’s terrified of people power. That’s my message. We have got to mobilize.

It has to be made clear that American democracy may go away this November because if the Democrats don’t win the House of Representatives, it’s done. Trump will get whatever he wants. I don’t think he will win in 2020, because at that point I hope a hero will emerge.

Michael Moore recently said that the American people must be prepared to die to stop Trump’s authoritarian and fascist movement. Do you think Moore is just being hyperbolic? Or is he correct?  

I think he’s a little hyperbolic. Look, when the alt-right killed Heather Heyer the response from law enforcement has essentially run the alt-right underground. They had no idea that punching Nazis is a pretty deep-seated American value.

What would you tell people who are terrified or afraid of Trump and what he is doing to America? What advice would you give them?

I get those types of questions every day. The first thing I tell people is: “Stand fast. We will win this.” You have to understand that we are not up against one man. We are up against 40 percent of the American public who don’t understand what’s going on because they only believe Donald Trump. What we must do now is commit ourselves to the American democratic experiment and the best spirit of the founding.

If we turn out this year like it was a presidential election year, then we will win in a phenomenal landslide. You must vote like your life depends on it, because it could, if you’re a woman that might need an abortion. It could, if you’re a Latino. It could, if you’re a young black man where shootings can now essentially be written off with a rubber stamp.

When this nation was built out of my city, Philadelphia, the odds were simple. They win or they hang. And now it’s simple again. We win or we lose American democracy. We lose it forever, and I don’t think we’ll come back from autocracy.

What trump has done this past week?

Wake Up America
July 8, 2018

The Trumpiest thing Trump has done this week!

The Trumpiest thing Trump has done this week!

Posted by Wake Up America on Sunday, July 8, 2018

Big Oil Knew: Denial and Distraction

War On Our Future  June, 2018

Big Oil Knew: Denial and Distraction

The oil industry discovered the links between fossil fuels and climate change back in the 1960’s. Here’s what they did when they found out… #YEARSproject #BigOilKnew

Big Oil Knew: Denial and Distraction

The oil industry discovered the links between fossil fuels and climate change back in the 1960s. Here's what they did when they found out… #YEARSproject #BigOilKnew

Posted by War On Our Future on Wednesday, June 13, 2018

Through Our Eyes: Teachers Living on the Brink of Bankruptcy

NowThis Reports

June 28, 2018. Being a full-time teacher shouldn’t mean working multiple jobs and still turning to food pantries just to feed your family. But in Oklahoma, it does.

Through Our Eyes: Teachers Living on the Brink of Bankruptcy

Through Our Eyes: Teachers Living on the Brink of Bankruptcy

Being a full-time teacher shouldn't mean working multiple jobs and still turning to food pantries just to feed your family. But in Oklahoma, it does.

Posted by NowThis Reports on Tuesday, June 12, 2018

Trump freezes Obamacare payment program, leaving insurers scrambling

ThinkProgress

UPDATED: Trump freezes Obamacare payment program, leaving insurers scrambling

The sabotage of Obamacare continues.

Amanda Michelle Gomez     July 7, 2018

Washington, D.C. – July 25, President Trump holds a joint news conference with Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri in the rose garden at the White House July 25, 2017. Trump began the news conference by announcing that senate Republicans had passed a procedural vote on repealing Obamacare. Photo: by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

The Trump administration is freezing a critical Affordable Care Act (ACA) insurance payment program that discourages insurers from cherry picking healthier enrollees by compensating them for sicker ones.

The move could rattle insurance companies at the very moment when they’re deciding whether to continue selling ACA plans and setting premiums for 2019. It’s not immediately clear what this means for ACA enrollees, if anything.

The news comes after the Wall Street Journal reported they might suspend the program:

“The suspension of some payouts under the program, known as risk adjustment, could come in the wake of a recent decision by a federal judge in New Mexico, who ruled that part of its implementation was flawed and hadn’t been adequately justified by federal regulators, people familiar with the plans said.”

“We were disappointed by the court’s recent ruling. As a result of this litigation, billions of dollars in risk adjustment payments and collections are now on hold,” said the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Seema Verma in a statement released on Saturday. “CMS has asked the court to reconsider its ruling, and hopes for a prompt resolution that allows CMS to prevent more adverse impacts on Americans who receive their insurance in the individual and small group markets.”

CMS argues the ruling prevents it from making further collections or payments in the risk adjustment program, including amounts for the 2017 benefit year which amount to $10.4 billion, until the litigation is resolved. However, outside experts are skeptical of the claim.

To make it easier for people with pre-existing conditions to buy coverage and ensure market stability in the process, the risk adjustment program moves money from insurers who cover healthier populations than the statewide average to insurers who cover sicker populations.

The government uses a complicated formula to determine which insurers pay in and this formula was the point of contention, prompting two nonprofit insurers to file two different lawsuits.

CREDIT: KAISER FAMILY FOUNDATION

A New Mexico-based federal judge called the risk adjustment formula  “arbitrary” and “capricious” in ruling that the CMS formula was flawed. However, a Massachusetts based-federal judge upheld the risk adjustment formula, which means the Trump administration doesn’t need to end the payments altogether.

“Although the ongoing litigation raises the question of whether there will be a delay in risk adjustment transfers for 2017 and 2018, the payments themselves should not be at risk,” said Health Affairs’ Katie Keith.

Former CMS administrator Andy Slavitt added on Twitter that there’s “[n]ot a reason to stop all the payments unless politically motivated.”

Replying to ASlavitt: This has a lot of similarities to Trump and DOJ taking a court case to stop protections against pre-ex conditions.

In this case, there is a court case in New Mexico with a simple remedy for the Administration.

ASlavitt: Even Trump’s HHS stated in the case in question that what is happening would be “disruptive for insurers, policyholders and state insurance markets.”

That apparently is exactly what those in (what I assume we will learn to be) the White House wanted.

For 2016, risk-adjustment payments were valued at 11% of total premium dollars, so insurers could lose a good amount of money. But this doesn’t affect all insurers who participate on the marketplaces, as ACA policy expert David Anderson points out. For example, insurers who are the only carriers in the state for 2017 and 2018 should remain unaffected. Nor does it mean big loses for all insurers participating in the program, as ending risk adjustment could mean windfalls for others, as Kaiser Family Foundation’s Larry Levitt said on Twitter.

So far, ACA marketplaces have proven to be resilient, defying expectations that Trump sabotage would destroy the exchanges. Roughly 12 million people signed up for the ACA marketplace in 2018 and insurance options are growing for 2019. That’s because companies have learned how to turn a profit, and are now joining the ACA marketplaces. That said, insurers are still submitting pricey premium ratesfor 2019, citing uncertainty and repeal of the individual mandate. For this reason, the market will be even less affordable for people who don’t qualify for federal subsidies.

Ending the risk adjustment program or temporarily freezing payments could unnerve insurers who thought they were in for a relatively calm ACA season. CMS added in its statement that it will issue guidance shortly on how insurers should treat the news, in terms of financial losses.

Georgetown health policy expert Edwin Park said should the risk adjustment program end, insurers over the long run “would be forced to sharply raise premiums or reconsider participation.”

This story has been updated to reflect the official CMS statement ending the program that was released on Saturday. 

I Hope They Made Scott Pruitt Turn Out His Pockets on His Way Out the Door

Esquire

I Hope They Made Scott Pruitt Turn Out His Pockets on His Way Out the Door

The departing EPA chief was a first-class grifter—but he did his lasting damage elsewhere.

By Charles P. Pierce

Getty Images

I have to admit, while watching the preposterous nomination of Scott Pruitt to be the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, I knew he was being put in the job not to do the job. That’s been Republican practice going back to Ronald Reagan, who put Anne Gorsuch in charge of the EPA for roughly the same reasons and with roughly the same results. (Her son, of course, will now afflict us from the Supreme Court for decades.) I expected the environmental calamity, the wholesale sell-off of our public lands, and the rolling back of the regulations that protected the air and the water. Even the climate denial came as no surprise. That was what he was getting paid to do.

What I didn’t anticipate was that Pruitt also would turn out to be so enthusiastic about gobbling at the public trough. (Borrowing your aides’ credit cards to book rooms and then not paying them back? That’s some first class deadbeatery right there.) It appears now that there’s only room for one first-class deadbeat and grifter in this administration*. From The New York Times:

Mr. Pruitt, a former Oklahoma attorney general who built his career on lawsuits against the agency he would eventually lead, remained a favorite of Mr. Trump’s for the majority of his tenure at the E.P.A. He began the largest regulatory rollback in the agency’s history, undoing, delaying or blocking several Obama-era environmental rules. Among them was a suite of historic regulations aimed at mitigating global warming pollution from the United States’ vehicles and power plants. Mr. Pruitt also played a lead role in urging Mr. Trump to follow through on his campaign pledge to withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris climate agreement, despite warnings from some of the president’s other senior advisers that the move could damage the United States’ credibility in foreign policy. Under the landmark accord, nearly every country had committed to reducing emissions of planet-warming fossil fuel pollution.

That was his real job and he did it well enough to ride through an incredible array of scandals, most of them the kind of penny-ante greed that would embarrass Scott Walker, who is the master of that form. Pruitt did most of what he was hired to do and now he’s going to be replaced by Andrew Wheeler, who used to be a coal lobbyist. The lasting damage will continue to be done. Anyway, I hope they locked up the office supply closet before they canned Scott Pruitt, or at least made him empty his pockets on the way out the door.

P.S.—Here is Pruitt’s letter of resignation. If we had a functioning EPA, it would be a SuperFund site:

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Americans Already Living EPA Rollbacks Under Pruitt

U.S. News and World Report

Americans Already Living EPA Rollbacks Under Pruitt

Ordinary people across America already living the results of environmental changes under Pruitt.

By Ellen Kickmeyer, Associated Press     July 5, 2018

Seen in this 2017 photo, Drew Wynne who quit his job in 2016 to pursue a career manufacturing cold-brew coffee died in October 2017 after using a paint stripper at the business in Charleston, S.C. EPA administrator Scott Pruitt had put on hold the Obama administration’s attempt to ban consumer sales of paint strippers containing the compound methylene chloride. But he reversed course in May after meeting with families of men who died after using paint stripper. Brian Wynne, brother of Drew, believes, methylene chloride may already have been out of stores by fall 2017, when his brother was found dead at the business, killed by methylene chloride, according to coroners. (Brad Nettles/The Post and Courier via AP) The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — For 37 mostly female farm-workers in California‘s Central Valley, U.S. policy under Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt became personal not long after sunup one day in May 2017.

Picking cabbage that morning, the workers noticed a tarry smell drifting from a nearby orchard. Mouths and lips tingled or went numb. Throats went dry. Soon some workers were vomiting and collapsing.

Officials in California’s farm-rich Kern County, where the workers fell ill, concluded that the harvesters were reacting to a pesticide, chlorpyrifos, misapplied at the neighboring orchard.

Five weeks before, in one of his first acts at EPA, Pruitt had reversed an Obama-era initiative to ban all food crop uses of the pesticide, which damages the brain and nervous system of fetuses and young children and has been prohibited as a household bug-killer since 2001.

While the new ban would not have gone into effect by the time of the Central Valley incident, Pruitt’s action postponed any further consideration of barring the popular bug-killer on food crops at least through 2022. Chlorpyrifos is crucial to agriculture, and the farms using it need “regulatory certainty,” Pruitt’s EPA said in announcing his March 2017 decision, using a phrase that would become a watchword for his business-friendly environmental rulings.

In all, the Trump administration has targeted at least 45 environmental rules, including 25 at EPA, according to a rollback tracker by Harvard Law School’s energy and environment program. The EPA rule changes would affect regulation of air, water and climate change, and transform how the EPA makes its regulatory decisions.

Pruitt, who resigned Thursday after months of ethics scandals, announced many of the policy changes quickly, and former EPA officials and environmental group predict that his proposed rollbacks will be vulnerable to court challenges.

“The world is focusing on Pruitt and his indiscretions, but they’re minuscule when you look at the impact of that change” on decision-making, said Chris Zarba, who quit this year as coordinator of two of the agency’s science advisory panels.

He was referring to allegations, now the subject of several federal investigations, about Pruitt’s lavish spending on travel and security, including a $43,000 soundproof telephone booth, and claims that he misused his office for personal gain, including seeking a fast-food franchise for his wife.

“This is not phone booths and Chick-fil-A issues,” Zarba said. “This is Americans’ lives.”

EPA spokesman Lincoln Ferguson defended the agency’s work under Pruitt, although some achievements Ferguson noted were largely completed in previous administrations.

“The science is clear, under President Trump greenhouse gas emissions are down, Superfund sites are being cleaned up at a higher rate than under President Obama, and the federal government is investing more money to improve water infrastructure than ever before,” the EPA spokesman said in a statement. The EPA declined to make an official available to speak directly on Pruitt’s policy initiatives.

Among Pruitt’s actions and proposals:

CLIMATE CHANGE

President Donald Trump, who famously called manmade climate-change an “expensive hoax” before his election, declared last summer that the United States would pull out of the Paris global accord on cutting climate-changing emissions from coal plants and other sources.

Pruitt, for his part, said he doesn’t believe humans are one of the main causes of climate changes.

Pruitt in October formally proposed the repeal of an Obama-era rule targeting climate-changing emissions from electricity plants powered by coal and other fossil fuels, part of his pro-coal and gas policies. “The war against coal is over,” Pruitt told Kentucky coal miners then.

The Obama rule would have cut power plant emissions by one-third. The Obama administration projected that it would prevent up to 6,600 premature deaths a year from air pollution.

CLEAN AIR

Pruitt’s other proposals affecting clean air include allowing truck-builders to retrofit new tractor-trailer bodies with old diesel engines that were built before tougher pollution standards. He called the Obama administration’s ban on the dirtier truck engines an example of regulatory overreach that “threatened to put an entire industry of specialized truck manufacturers out of business.”

Though just a tiny niche in overall truck sales, the Obama administration said the retrofitted trucks would account for up to 1,600 early deaths each year from the soot alone.

CLEAN WATER

Pruitt suspended an Obama-era version of a rule that ultimately governs what farmers, ranchers and businesspeople must do to protect water flowing through their property on its way to lakes, oceans and bays.

The so-called Waters of the United States rule impacts the water supply for people and wildlife. Pruitt, who had not yet publicly released his rewritten version of the rule when he resigned, told Nebraska farmers that his version would provide clarity and regulatory reform. “That’s how you save the economy $1 billion dollars,” he added.

Americans already are living with results of slowdowns and rollbacks in environmental regulation, said Elizabeth Southerland, who resigned last year as director of science and technology of the EPA’s Office of Water.

“Everybody in the country is now exposed to ongoing pollution, future environmental crises, because so many of these are being repealed,” Southerland said.

SCIENCE

Pruitt boosted industrial and business representation on panels that advise the EPA. Other Pruitt changes called for more consideration of the costs of environmental rules. And a major Pruitt change would allow EPA decision-makers to consider only studies for which all the underlying data is available.

Supporters say those changes are broadening the EPA’s decision-making and making it more transparent.

Opponents said that change could throw out the kind of decades-long public-health studies, using confidential patient information, that drove landmark regulation of air pollutants and other threats.

PESTICIDES

Pruitt also paused or slowed action on some other regulations that were started but not completed during the Obama administration, as with chlorpyrifos.

Chlorpyrifos used as directed offers “wide margins of protection for human health and safety,” said Gregg M. Schmidt, spokesman for DowDupont Inc., maker of the pesticide.

Industries said Pruitt’s EPA is giving business and economic impacts the consideration and input that past administrations long denied them.

“This is about how you find the appropriate balance here, where we can continue to make significant progress in environmental and health protection while continuing to benefit the economy,” said Mike Walls, vice president of regulatory and technical affairs at the American Chemistry Council trade group.

“The fact that industry no longer has an adversary in its government, and specifically at the EPA, is a huge step forward in common sense regulation,” said Ashley Burke of the National Mining Association. The mining group’s members include coal companies, which stand to benefit from proposed Pruitt rollbacks of Obama-era initiatives on fossil-fuel power plants and disposal of toxic coal ash.

A RETREAT

Pruitt had put on hold the Obama administration’s attempt to ban consumer sales of paint strippers containing the compound methylene chloride. But he reversed course in May after meeting with families of men who died after using paint stripper.

Brian Wynne, brother of 31-year-old Drew, is grateful. But if Pruitt’s EPA had never stayed the rule in the first place, Brian Wynne believes, methylene chloride may already have been out of stores by fall 2017, when his brother went to a South Carolina home-goods store to buy paint stripper to use on the floor of his cold-brew coffee company. Drew Wynne was found dead at the business last October, killed by methylene chloride, according to coroners.