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Issues and events that stink to high heaven
This woman was physically dragged from the microphone after announcing how much money her state’s politicians get from oil corporations (via NowThis Politics)
This woman was physically dragged from the microphone after announcing how much money her state's politicians get from oil corporations (via NowThis Politics)
Posted by NowThis on Monday, February 12, 2018
Todd Spangler, Detroit Free Press February 12, 2018
(Photo: Mike De Sisti/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump’s budget proposal for next year again calls for drastic cuts in Great Lakes restoration efforts, as well as for slashing rental aid that tens of thousands of Michiganders rely on and toughening work requirements for able-bodied adults receiving nutrition assistance.
It also calls for investing $1.5 billion in programs that support private and charter schools while cutting about $5 billion overall from the U.S. Department of Education.
Like the budget proposal made about this time last year, Trump is looking to nearly eliminate funding for a $300-million program that helps restore Great Lakes water quality by improving fish habitat, cleaning up polluted waterways and protecting wetlands. Trump’s earlier efforts to defund it have so far been rejected, as the program enjoys the support of Republicans as well as Democrats in the Upper Midwest.
Unlike last year, however, Trump’s White House did not make the proposed cut — from $300 million this year to $30 million in the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 — clear in its budget message or its list of major reductions and reforms, burying it in a line in a 96-page budget explanation by the Environmental Protection Agency without explanation.
President Donald Trump looks on before signing a proclamation to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in the White House on Jan. 12, 2018 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Olivier Douliery, Abaca Press, TNS)
“If there’s one thing we’ve learned, we can’t take it for granted that others understand how important our water is,” said U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich. “This is outrageous. People across Michigan spoke out and took action last year to stop these cuts and I know they’ll do so again.”
Added U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Flint Township, “Cutting Great Lakes investments by 90% — essentially eliminating the program — threatens the health of our lakes and jeopardizes Michigan’s economy.”
Trump’s budget also again looks to slash other programs considered important to Detroit and other cities in Michigan, including the Community Development Block Grant fund. But it’s unlikely he will be able to push through such draconian reductions — especially given that he was unable to do so in his first year in office with members of his own Republican Party in control of both chambers of Congress..
Trump plan slashes funding for Detroit, Great Lakes and much more
$300 million for Great Lakes protected in funding bill, thwarting Trump
Trump announced the $1.2-trillion budget for the next fiscal year as expected on Monday, including in it $23 billion for border security, $21 billion for infrastructure and $17 billion to fund efforts to fight the ongoing opioid epidemic, as well as substantially increasing military spending by $80 billion or 13%.
But with Congress having final say over appropriations for programs and agencies, the president’s budget proposal has in recent years become more of a political statement of his own than a plan likely to be embraced by either the House or Senate.
Congress has already rejected, for now at least, many of Trump’s last-year proposals such as the elimination of CDBG funds and the popular Great Lakes restoration efforts as it has cobbled together a series of resolutions to keep government funded from month-to-month in the current fiscal year.
Trump’s proposal on Monday even suggested spending about $57 billion less overall on nondefense programs even though Congress authorized that higher level in a bipartisan deal — one signed off on by Trump — just last week.
“The budget reflects our commitment to the safety, prosperity and security of the American people,” Trump said in his budget message to Congress. “The more room our economy has to grow, and the more American companies are freed from constricting
overregulation, the stronger and safer we become as a nation.”
As a policy document, however, the annual budget release still presumably indicates where the chief executive would cut or spend if he could, and he continues to have his sights set on cutting certain programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which helped feed 1.3 million people in Michigan as of December.
Trump proposed cutting back on a portion of the financial benefits received by families and sending them regular packages of milk, cereal, meat, canned fruit and other goods, saying it would save money, improve nutritional benefits and reduce fraud. His budget message also said his administration would move to expand “previous reforms aimed at strengthening the expectation for work” among SNAP recipients though details on how that would be accomplished weren’t provided.
Able-bodied receipients already have some work requirements in many cases. The Trump administration suggested more than $213 billion over a decade could be saved through the president’s proposed changes.
Trump’s budget also calls again for eliminating the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program — which helped more than 440,000 Michiganders pay home energy bills last year — and the Community Development Block Grant program, administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The program helps pay for home shelters, transportation services, housing rehabilitation and more. In 2017, Michigan communities received more than $111 million in CDBG funds, including $31 million for Detroit.
The budget also suggests reforms to some HUD rental assistance programs —including increasing tenants’ share of rent they must pay from 30% of their income to 35%, which could save the government about $4.3 billion. The Washington-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated last year that about 145,000 low-income households in Michigan used federal rental assistance.
An addendum to the budget suggests adding about $2 billion from the recently agreed upon budget deal in Congress back into rental assistance to keep elderly and disabled renters from getting hit with higher rents.
Meanwhile, the proposal also argues for investing $1.5 billion in school choice programs under U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, with states applying for funding for scholarships that would allow students from low-income families to transfer to private schools and local school boards requesting funding to expand “open enrollment” systems. About $500 million or more would also go to start new charter schools.
Overall the Department of Education would be cut by $5 billion or so with several programs being eliminated, including $2 billion in a grant program to the states to help improve the quality and effectiveness of teachers, principals and other educators.
The grants, the White House said, “are poorly targeted and funds are spread too thinly to have a meaningful impact on student outcomes.”
“The president’s budget request expands education freedom for America’s families while protecting our nation’s most vulnerable students,” said DeVos, a former Michigan school choice advocate and state Republican Party chairwoman. “The budget also reflects our commitment to spending taxpayer dollars wisely and efficiently by consolidating and eliminating duplicative and ineffective federal programs.”
Trump on Monday clearly tried to steer interest toward an infrastructure proposal he argues could help attract about $1.5 trillion in new investments in roads, bridges and other projects by using $200 billion over 10 years to leverage state, local and private funding. What’s unclear, however, is whether Congress would be willing to put up such funding or whether states and local governments have the matching money needed to pay for the remainder of the program.
Gov. Rick Snyder’s office said he is “happy to see President Trump and his team discussing infrastructure across the board” and that he looks forward to “working with the Trump administration and serving as a role model for infrastructure development and solutions.”
But it wasn’t immediately clear what benefit the infrastructure proposal could mean to key Michigan projects, such as a sought-after navigation lock at Sault Ste. Marie. Shippers have been seeking a new super-size lock for decades to protect against any potential shutdown of the one aging lock there now that is large enough to handle the biggest ships carrying iron ore and other freight through the Great Lakes.
“It appears there is very little in the proposal that would benefit the Soo Lock project,” Glen Nekvasil, vice president of the Lake Carriers’ Association, which represents shippers on the Great Lakes, said after reviewing the White House’s infrastructure plan. “Nor does it seem to provide any additional funding for authorized projects such as the second (large) lock.”
Contact Todd Spangler: 703-854-8947 or tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter at @tsspangler. USA TODAY contributed to this report.
Elham Khatami, Adam Peck February 12, 2018
Credit: Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post via Getty Images
President Donald Trump unveiled his long-awaited infrastructure plan on Monday, touting the proposal as a $1.5 trillion investment in the nation’s highways, bridges, waterways, and other infrastructure projects. The plan’s topline number sounds great on the surface, but it wildly misconstrues the actual investment being proposed by the federal government — and Trump knows it.
The proposal aims to turn $200 billion in federal funds into a $1.5 trillion investment over the next ten years by placing most of the financial burden on states and cities, which will have to cover at least 80 percent of the cost of any infrastructure project in order to qualify for federal grants, likely through higher taxes, tolls, and other user fees. The $200 billion number is a dramatic reduction in federal cost-sharing from years past.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal in January, Trump conceded that the $200 billion in federal funds is “not a large amount,” going on to criticize the amount of money the United States has spent on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In a tweet Monday morning, Trump reiterated his criticism:
Donald Trump: This will be a big week for Infrastructure. After so stupidly spending $7 trillion in the Middle East, it is now time to start investing in OUR Country!
But Trump’s plan barely makes a dent in what’s needed to fix the country’s ailing infrastructure. Instead, it places the onus on cash-strapped states and municipalities to come up with the revenue to improve their own infrastructure. As CityLab reported last year, this will be especially difficult for “cities that never financially recovered from the recession, like Detroit, Cleveland, Stockton, and Memphis,” which are limited in their spending ability and yet need infrastructure investments the most.
According to the American Society of Civil Engineers’ (ASCE) annual Infrastructure Report Card, the United States needs to invest $4.59 trillion by 2025 in order to improve the country’s infrastructure — a figure three times larger than even the rosiest estimate in Trump’s proposal and more than 20 times larger than the $200 billion actually allocated.
“If the United States continues on this trajectory and fails to invest, the nation will face serious economic consequences, including $3.9 trillion in losses to U.S. GDP and more than 2.5 million American jobs lost in 2025,” the ASCE report said.
The $200 billion in federal spending includes $100 billion in incentive grants, aimed at encouraging increased state, local, and private infrastructure investment; $50 billion in rural formula funds, which seeks to promote investment in rural infrastructure needs; and $20 billion in so-called transformative projects, described as projects “that can significantly improve existing infrastructure conditions and services” but are considered too risky to attract private or local investments.
Even calling it a $200 billion investment by the federal government is a misnomer. Instead of finding new sources of revenue, the funds will be entirely offset by cuts to other existing infrastructure programs, including a 19 percent decrease in funding for the Department of Transportation and a 3 percent decrease for the Department of Energy, as highlighted in Trump’s fiscal 2019 budget, which was also released today.
Pointing out the glaring lack of new sources of funding in the infrastructure proposal, Michael Linden, fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, said on Twitter, “All told, he’s basically proposing a $0 infrastructure plan.”
Michael Linden: No. No. No. This headline is budget-illiterate. Trump’s budget will include $200 billion in infrastructure spending, offset by 20% reductions in base funding for Depts. of Transportation and Energy. All told, he’s basically proposing a $0 infrastructure plan. https://twitter.com/TIME/status/962904104648499200 …
It is unlikely that most lawmakers on either side of the aisle will support Trump’s proposal — with Democrats, and some Republicans, criticizing the plan’s lack of new revenue sources.
But even if the proposal made its way through Congress and money began flowing to projects around the country, it’s unlikely the spending would have any meaningful impact on the worsening condition of the most vital infrastructure programs.
By leaving local governments on the hook for 80 percent of the cost of a project, the Trump administration is encouraging investments in public-private partnerships. A city will partner with a private developer, for instance, to construct a new building as part of neighborhood revitalization. But spending is most needed where public-private partnerships are hard to come by. Private financiers seek to tap into sustainable revenue streams when deciding what projects to invest in, and there are few revenue streams to be had for street repairs or water pipe maintenance. In states that have ceded some authority to private companies for the management and maintenance of highways, regressive tolls have hit the poorest workers the hardest.
Richard Wolf, USA Today February 9, 2018
(Photo: Michael Owens, USAT)
WASHINGTON — Supreme Court precedents that have stood the test of time for generations are in danger of falling like dominoes in the next few months.
First on the chopping block is a 1977 ruling that allowed public employee unions to collect fees from non-members for collective bargaining. The court’s conservative justices have been itching to overrule that unanimous decision for decades.
Next up is a 1992 case in which the court refused to require that mail-order retailers collect sales taxes from buyers in other states. For a quarter century, that has given online retailers a competitive advantage over brick-and-mortar stores.
The court also will consider second-guessing one of its least popular chestnuts — a 20-year-old ruling, based on one from 1945, that gives federal agencies broad discretion to interpret their own regulations.
Since Chief Justice John Roberts took the center seat on the court in 2005, the justices have been reticent to second-guess the decisions of their predecessors. They have done so at a pace just above once a year, considerably less often than in the past.
“That’s not an accident,” says Jonathan Adler, director of the Center for Business Law & Regulation at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. “The chief justice, in particular, doesn’t like the court to be a disruptive force. He prefers to maintain stability and predictability where possible.”
It’s not always possible. Roberts could not prevent the court’s conservatives from overturning two of their precedents in 2010’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling, which eliminated limits on independent political spending by corporations.
And five years later, the court’s decision in favor of same-sex marriage overruled a 1972 decision that found no federal basis to block states from prohibiting the practice.
The court usually adheres to the principle of stare decisis, or adhering to its earlier decisions. But occasionally those earlier rulings cry out for change, and the court waits too long to correct them. Perhaps the top example is Plessy v. Ferguson, which upheld separate public facilities on the basis of race and stood for 60 years before being overruled by Brown v. Board of Education.
The court in recent years has had scores of opportunities to overrule earlier decisions and has taken a pass, according to the Supreme Court Database, a research facility housed at Washington University School of Law. The Roberts Court has done so less than any of its predecessors dating to the 1950s.
Few rulings have been up for grabs as often as Auer v. Robbins, the 1997 decision that upheld federal agencies’ right to interpret their own regulations without court interference.
When the court last refused to hear a case that would have toppled Auer, dissenting Justice Clarence Thomas warned that “the doctrine is on its last gasp.” Now the justices have another chance to extinguish it in a case they will consider at next week’s private conference.
“You wrote it.”
Thomas is fond of recounting a conversation on the bench with the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who complained that “Auer is one of the worst opinions in the history of this country.”
“Nino,” Thomas responded, “you wrote it.”
The court later this month will hear a challenge to the fees paid by non-members to public employee labor unions that would overrule Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, a 1977 decision. The justices stopped short of that extreme step in 2012, 2014 and 2016.
Many of the court’s conservative justices believe Abood was wrongly decided to begin with, since it forces workers to contribute to a group they may disagree with. Opponents argue that as a constitutional case based on First Amendment rights, it is less sacred than rulings based on statutes that Congress can amend.
“Although this court reconsiders its precedents with caution, stare decisis does not warrant preserving Abood’s error,” Solicitor General Noel Francisco argues in the government’s court papers.
But Abood has its defenders, including Michael Kimberly, co-director of the Yale Law School Supreme Court Clinic.
If it’s scuttled, Kimberly warns, “Contracts entered into based on unions’ ability to provide specified services, funded through agency fees, would have to be renegotiated. And government employees’ existing reliance on unions’ abilities to negotiate effectively and to provide contractually required services would be eliminated.”
Precedents don’t last forever
The high court’s consideration in April of a case that would level the playing field between online and brick-and-mortar retailers when it comes to collecting sales taxes presents a clear case of technological change influencing legal rulings.
The justices ruled 8-1 in Quill v. North Dakota (1992) that companies selling wares by catalog across state lines were exempt from collecting sales taxes. Now that North Dakota case is being challenged by one from South Dakota.
“As this court has long recognized, stare decisis is not an inexorable command,” former Solicitor General Donald Verrilli wrote in a brief for the Retail Litigation Center. “When the world changes, it is appropriate to consider whether the law should change as well.”
Matt Bai, National Political Columnist February 8, 2018
Markets are careening all over the place. Congress is struggling, again, to keep the Capitol open. The White House is at war with the FBI, and the special counsel’s investigation into Russian influence is about to touch off a constitutional crisis. If you’re the president, what’s your next bold move?
A parade, obviously.
Not just any parade. What President Trump has in mind — what he has, in fact, ordered the Pentagon to spend weeks of time and millions of dollars planning, if the fake Washington Post can be trusted — is a garish show of military power, with tanks and missiles followed by warriors in full regalia marching up Pennsylvania Avenue for no apparent reason, except I guess that parades are super-fun and often involve things like cotton candy and sparklers, and that’s a hard thing for a grown man to resist.
Actually, Trump got this particular idea in Paris back in July, when he visited Emmanuel Macron and witnessed a similar display. Because you know, when you think about military might, your mind immediately goes to France.
Critics of the president see in this the aspirations of a strongman. They point out that the whole thing has a certain Kim Jong Un feel to it, with Trump and his ruling generals solemnly reviewing the troops as they high-kick it past the White House. It’s a show of force that could only be interpreted as threatening toward adversaries abroad, if not to the investigators working a few miles away.
But I give Trump more credit than that. I don’t actually think he’s motivated by some secret agenda to install himself as a small-handed dictator. I doubt he’s read enough history to understand why a parade like this might make a lot of thinking people nauseous.
No, I think Trump’s real agenda is getting clearer every day, and his silly parade fits in perfectly. His goal is to govern at the dawn of the Cold War, in the 1950s America he knew as a boy, when it wasn’t so uncommon for presidents to march alongside tanks and batteries.
He’s stuck in a moment most Americans can’t remember, and he wants the rest of us stuck there with him.
You can see it in Trump’s approach to foreign policy generally. A year into office, he’s moving to restart the nuclear arms race that darkened the second half of the 20th century, and he’s seeking billions more to ramp up conventional forces, rather than modernize them, in case we have to fight another land war on the Korean Peninsula.
Trump’s personal taunting of the North Korean leader, his boast about the superior size of his “nuclear button,” brings to mind America’s bygone fixation with Khrushchev or Castro. All that’s missing is the black-and-white TV.
About the only way Trump’s foreign policy isn’t lifted directly from the Cold War is that he just can’t summon any real antipathy for the Russians, no matter how menacing they become. Go figure.
You can see it in the way Trump fetishizes the stock market as the only indicator of economic progress, as if we still lived in the moment when the state of General Motors and IBM told you everything you needed to know about the state of the American worker. You can see it in the way he champions protectionism, as if American manufacturers could still subsist without foreign markets.
You can see it in the way he throws around explosive charges of treason and disloyalty, in the mold of Joe McCarthy and Dick Nixon (not to mention Trump’s idol, Roy Cohn). You can see it, not least of all, in the way he baldly mythologizes pre-civil-rights America for the thousands of resentful white men who still wear the red hats at his rallies.
(And just by the way, you can hear it in the way he called Stormy Daniels, his alleged onetime paramour, “honeybunch.” Seriously. The last time someone used that term to refer to something other than breakfast cereal, man hadn’t yet walked on the moon.)
This is, after all, what making America great again was really all about. A more precise slogan would have been “Make America Eisenhower’s Again.” Minus the dignity and statesmanship.
It amazes me, still, that even now Republicans in Washington can’t seem to grasp the existential peril in all of this time traveling. Make no mistake: They don’t love Trump, and they wouldn’t prefer him as president. They’ve just decided, by and large, that protecting Trump from judgment is the likeliest route to protecting their majorities.
But I wonder if the Devin Nuneses and Paul Ryans of the world managed to put down their beers and weenies long enough to watch the Super Bowl last Sunday. If they did, they might have noticed that the companies who advertised to the largest single audience of the year wanted nothing to do with this Trumpian vision of lost greatness.
If Republican leaders sat through the commercials, they would have seen an almost endless array of multiracial faces, untraditional families and not-so-subtle messages about social progress and leaving the past behind.
For all the controversy stirred up by that boneheaded ad that had Martin Luther King hawking Dodge trucks, what was lost is that the company was clearly trying to repossess this limited concept of American greatness. However much that spot may have offended King’s admirers, its intended message was a rebuke of Trump’s core appeal.
So I ask you, Washington Republicans: Who do you figure knows more about where American society is headed? Would that be the most sophisticated corporations in America, which spend hundreds of millions of dollars on consumer research, or the president of the United States, whose approval after the customary State of the Union bump barely broke 40 percent?
Why don’t you call all those companies that market-tested the shih tzu puppy out of those Super Bowl ads and ask them whether Cold War nostalgia will be an especially sellable commodity over the next decade of American life?
This is a crisis for modern Republicans. The larger point, though, is that however much Trump’s 1950s fantasy may endanger his party, I fear it endangers his country more.
Every day spent thinking about more tanks and nukes we don’t need is a day closer to the moment when European powers and China are seen as the indispensable peacemakers on the world stage.
Every day spent obsessing over stock prices and tariffs (something plenty of retro Democrats do, too) is another day spent not thinking about how to maintain our influence in global markets or how to retool the social contract so we can compete in this century, rather than the last one.
Everybody loves a parade, right up until the moment it passes you by.
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Posted by The Free Thought Project on Tuesday, January 30, 2018
John Hanno February 2, 2018
Believe Me!
If it were only that simple? trump’s campaign apparatus, his transition team and now his administration, have taken bold faced lying, deception, subterfuge, misrepresentation, prevarication, equivocation, exaggeration, fabrication, distortion, evasion, grand dissimulation and good old jive talking, to incredibly new heights.
trump de-classified and signed off on releasing an extremely partisan, diversionary, ass-covering “Memo,” concocted by his own White House staff and their water carrier on the House Intelligence Committee – devin nunes, over the alarmed objections of all the Democrats on the committee, the FBI and the Department of Justice.
“Former FBI Director James Comey torched Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee over the release of a memo alleging the Department of Justice abused a surveillance program on Friday, tweeting: “That’s it?” he asks. “Dishonest and misleading memo wrecked the House intel committee, destroyed trust with Intelligence Community, damaged relationship with FISA court, and inexcusably exposed classified investigation of an American citizen. For what?” Comey tweeted Friday.” “DOJ & FBI must keep doing their jobs,” he added.
Republican Sen. John McCain said: “In 2016, the Russian government engaged in an elaborate plot to interfere in an American election and undermine our democracy,” McCain said. “Russia employed the same tactics it has used to influence elections around the world, from France and Germany to Ukraine, Montenegro and beyond.”
“The latest attacks against the FBI and Department of Justice serve no American interests ― no party’s, no President’s, only Putin’s,” McCain added. “The American people deserve to know all the facts surrounding Russia’s ongoing efforts to subvert our democracy, which is why Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation must proceed unimpeded. Our nation’s elected officials, including the president, must stop looking at this investigation through the lens of politics and manufacturing political sideshows. If we continue to undermine our own rule of law, we are doing Putin’s job for him.”
This is not just politics as usual. Not only did trump-world spring this word turd on the American public, regardless of the security implications to our Intelligence Agencies, but they refused to release the rebuttal memo prepared by the Democrats on the committee that exposed this trump/nunes propaganda pamphlet for what it is, an attempt to obstruct the Russia/trump investigation and tarnish the reputations and credibility of Deputy Attorney General Rob Rosenstein and Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
Its becoming ever more obvious; the Russians have Donald Trump and his entire cast of traitors by the Kompromatical short hairs, and consequently, now also the Republi-cons in Congress, who’ve turned a blind eye to trumps maniacal and reckless schemes to barter his political survival for, and sacrifice of, America’s sovereignty and Democratic institutions.
They lie to their voters, to their donors, their own families, to Congress, to the Courts, lie to America, lie to the world, even lie to themselves and now lie to history.
From past experience, we know the amount of ones deception, rivals the level of their wrongdoing. We can only imagine the treasonous conspiracies and dastardly deeds propagated behind trumps gold plated closed doors. Hopefully Robert Mueller will eventually fill in the blanks, unless trump schemes of a means to fire him.
Republicans, conservatives, far right propagandists, complicit evangelical poohbahs, and especially the republic-cons in Congress, have fled the sanctity of the Grand Old Party and conjoined with the trump protectorate.
This transmogrification was on display during trumps confustication (SOTU) speech before the republi-con congressional supplicants.
We’re reminded of watching despotic militaristic assemblages like those in North Korea. Wretched smiling all around and thunderous, rehearsed clapping on cue, glorifying the latest Kim Jong-un whimsy.
But we’ve never witnessed an American president like trump actually applauding his own speechifying. And his back-drop of Vice President mike pence and Speaker paul ryan vigorously standing up, cheering and applauding trump, applauding his own telepromted best words. Trump was elated with himself. Kim Jong is surely jealous. Some folks just don’t get it. We don’t congratulate ourselves.
What we can’t forget: the folks at the FBI and DOJ are career government employees dedicated to the rule of law, serious about their oaths of office and loyal to the U.S. Constitution. Harvard Law Educated Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein joined the DOJ in 1990. From all accounts he’s conducted himself with integrity for the last 27 years. Harvard Law Educated FBI Director Christopher Wray joined the DOJ in 1997. Both of them, along with Ex-FBI Director Robert Mueller, highly respected by both Republicans and Democrats and fired FBI Director James Comey, respected and admired throughout the Bureau, along with highly regarded Assistant FBI Director Andrew McCabe, forced to retire by the trump cabal, and Attorney General Sally Quillian Yates, who trump fired, were all in trumps gun sites. Why? Because they were investigating the trump cabal’s corruption and evil deeds.
trump and the Republi-cons in congress couldn’t care less if America is deprived of their decades of expertise and devotion to duty, and couldn’t care less if their lives are thrown into chaos, just because trump is attempting to cover-up his crimes. (trump cries – You’re Fired!) These selfless patriots deserve better; America deserves better.
What President – what chief executive – would decide – “without a doubt – 100%”, to release a critical intelligence document, a day before even having read it. Does anyone even remotely believe Presidents Clinton or Obama would release any such document to the world before actually reading it?
Is trump the racist old white misogynist who, during locker-room conversations, routinely drops N bombs, C bombs and F bombs? Is he the crazy old uncle who ruins way too many family gatherings? Is he the dirty old man who creeps you out much too often? Is he the Luddite who’s too lazy to explore, or read, or feel compelled to increase his very limited knowledge of anything beyond his own self interests. Unless he can plunder it, or make money from it, its just not in his realm of thought.
From The Seattle Times: President Donald Trump said Thursday he “really didn’t care” about opening a portion of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling but insisted it be included in tax legislation at the urging of others. Addressing fellow Republicans at the House and Senate Republican Member Conference in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, mentioned the wildlife refuge known as ANWR in Alaska’s northeast corner as he recounted accomplishments in the last year, including the tax bill passed by Congress in December.
Trump said he “never appreciated ANWR so much” but was told of its importance by others. “A friend of mine called up, who’s in that world and in that business, and said, ‘Is it true that you’re thinking about ANWR?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I think we’re going to get it, but you know.’ He said, ‘Are you kidding? That’s the biggest thing, by itself.’ He said, ‘Ronald Reagan and every president has wanted to get ANWR approved.” “I really didn’t care about it, and then when I heard that everybody wanted it — for 40 years, they’ve been trying to get it approved, and I said, ‘Make sure you don’t lose ANWR,’” Trump said.”
They should have said only Regan and a couple of other Republican presidents have wanted to get drilling in Alaska’s National Wildlife Refuge approved. All the others, for many decades, both Democrats and Republicans, including President Obama, have fought to preserve ANWR. But there’s surely nothing pristine, or precious, or regal, or untouchable or priceless in trump-world, only as it might relate to his self serving base needs and desires.
trumpism is all this and much more. There’s no limit to trump’s depravity, his deviancy from normal human decency, his avoidance of critical thinking. Trump is a diabolical megalomaniac, void of all empathy and reason. trump has defiled the conservative party, defiled our democratic institutions and defiled the Office of the Presidency.
The harder trump pushes against what’s right with America, the harder we must resist. But don’t expect the browbeaten Republi-cons in congress to cry uncle.
By Michael Tomasky February 1, 2018
Liberals like to scoff at Joe Manchin, but after yesterday I think it’s pretty obvious that a lot of them can learn something from the West Virginia senator. He knows how to hit back.
Vice President Mike Pence was in Lewisburg, West Virginia, Wednesday where he gave a speech that tore into Manchin. Pence attacked Manchin’s vote against the tax bill and then continued: “But it’s not just the tax cut. Senator Joe Manchin has voted no time and again on the policies that West Virginia needs. When the time came to repeal and replace the disaster of Obamacare, Joe voted no. When we empowered West Virginia to defund Planned Parenthood, Joe voted no.”
As you know, Donald Trump is popular in Manchin’s state. Gallup found this week that it’s his best state, at 61 percent approval. And Manchin is up for reelection this year (hence Pence’s tirade).
Under such circumstances, a lot of Democratic politicians would go hide. They’d start explaining defensively: Oh but I like the president. Oh but I voted for Gorsuch. Oh this, oh that.
Manchin, famous for that ad where he shot the cap-and-trade bill, apologized for nothing. He took square aim at Pence and tweeted: “The VP’s comments are exactly why Washington Sucks.” Far from giving any ground, he went on the attack in a second tweet: “I am shocked that after the @VP worked for almost a year in a divisive & partisan way to take healthcare away from almost 200k WVians, bankrupt our hospitals & push tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans & huge corporations that he would come to #WV & continue partisan attacks.”
Manchin, of course, has taken some pro-Trump votes. In a state like that, he has to. He also was the only Democrat to applaud Trump’s State of the Union address at certain points. But what’s smart and tough about his reply is that he’s saying to Pence (and inferentially to Trump): No. You guys are hurting the people of my state.
Nearly 200,000 people are losing their health care, in a state with high rates of uninsured people and a raging drug crisis and all kinds of bleak health care indicia. West Virginia—my home state, as some of you know—also ranks 49th in the number of millionaires, so it’s not as if that tax bill is exactly tailored to the needs of the state.
And don’t think that Manchin hasn’t taken some tough votes that by West Virginia standards took guts. On Planned Parenthood, back in 2015, after that infamous (but very heavily edited) video came out with the PPFA person speaking cavalierly about fetal organs, Manchin did indeed vote to cut the group’s funding. But then, an investigation ensued, and it turned out that Planned Parenthood wasn’t engaged in any of those kinds of activities. So in March 2017, Manchin voted against a Republican defunding bill.
That’s not an easy vote in West Virginia. Manchin press aide Jonathan Kott defended his boss’ position this way last May to Axios: “‘The senator will vote to fund Planned Parenthood because the investigations showed no evidence that the organization was selling or profiting from fetal organs. His support for PP is also contingent on the Hyde Amendment being law, to ensure public funds don’t go to abortions.’ Kott also points out that the only Planned Parenthood clinic in West Virginia doesn’t perform abortions.”
That’s admirably fact-based. It’s going to open Manchin up to some ugly 30-second ads this fall, probably. Manchin may not be pro-choice advocates’ favorite Democrat (and he wouldn’t want to be), but liberals ought to ask themselves if any of the West Virginia Republicans vying to run against Manchin would be that bold.
But now let’s get to the heart of the matter to me, which is the opioid crisis. It’s killing the state. Read this heartbreaking report about the town of Kermit, sometimes called the ground zero of the opioid crisis, from the excellent web site 100 Days in Appalachia, which has been vividly chronicling life in the region since the election. It’s merely one of hundreds of stories.
Did Pence take time out from his diatribe against Manchin to address the crisis? Oh, he mentioned it, once. Boilerplate; the usual fulsome and cloying praise of Trump that we’ve come to associate with the vice president. But he said nothing of substance—you might call his line substance abuse.
He was following up on Dear Leader’s shocking discussion of the crisis in his State of the Union address Tuesday night. “In 2016, we lost 64,000 Americans to drug overdoses: 174 deaths per day. Seven per hour,” Trump said. Good start. But then what did he pivot to? Not treatment. “We must get much tougher on drug dealers and pushers if we are going to succeed in stopping this scourge,” he said.
This is so idiotic as to be offensive. If you get rid of one drug dealer, three others fight to take his place. Anybody knows this at this point. Trump mentioned treatment afterward, but in a pro forma sort of way. The Republicans won’t do anything real about this crisis because doing something real about it takes money, and they won’t spend money; it might even require a tax, and we all know they will never do that.
My family has known Joe’s for a long time. My father was a prominent attorney who was involved in Democratic politics. Joe’s uncle, A. James, was the flamboyant secretary of state forever when I was kid, with his floral ties and wide-brimmed fedoras and his erudite 19th-century vocabulary (he once called a man who had sullied the state’s good name a “scurrilous jackanapes”). So yes, I have a soft spot for him.
After this exchange with Pence, you should too. More liberal Democrats, Democrats who are far better positioned to be Trump critics, can learn a thing or two from how he handled this.
John Hanno January 30, 2018
Yes, our political system is broke, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United, to Republi-cons who respect no ethical or legal boundaries (including congressional and legislative district borders) – who will do anything to “Win” and prop up their dying party, and to a cabal of obscenely rich autocratic and predatory old white men, who believe they alone should rule the world.
But all the benefits they’ve received from our erstwhile prosperous and expanding middle-class based economy is in serious jeopardy. Unfortunately they’re too stupid or obsessed with greed to realize, that if America’s middle-class crumbles, their gravy train will eventually derail.
These toxic crony capitalists somehow believe they’re solely responsible for their wealth and good fortune. They’re quick to criticize folks who just “need to pull themselves up by their boot-straps.” “If they can do it, anyone can.” Thankfully, everyone’s not so obsessed with greed, that they follow in their “mo money” footsteps.
If it were up to these greedy bastards, they would pay absolutely no taxes to support the commons, would refuse to fairly share their wealth with faithful employees or their communities and would engage in any scheme, legal or otherwise, that would make them even richer.
Fortunately these old farts will soon be spreading their toxic brand of capitalism and far right ideology in the Here-After. America and the world will be better for it.
I read a study where once you reach an annual income of $75,000, you’re no happier if you earn more. I think the authors were on to something because every time I see trump, the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson, the Mercers or any of the other GOP mega donors, they all look incredibly miserable. They must store up their regrets, the imagined slights and persecution and just can’t seem to appreciate their good fortune.
Charles and David Koch have a combined net worth of almost $100 billion, the second richest family in America. I’m sure they’ve always worked hard but they didn’t accumulate that enormous wealth on their own. They were left a fortune by their father and I’m sure their vast assortment of businesses have benefited greatly from taxpayers who support our government and the public commons and infrastructure.
I don’t know if the Koch’s are as averse to paying taxes as trump or as reluctant to show their tax returns, but they spent $20 million supporting the just passed Republican tax legislation for the betterment of corporations, the rich and the politically connected, and a conservative group led by the brothers are now funding a $20 million public relations campaign to tout the benefits of that tax bill con. They also pledged almost $900 million from their political action committee to Republican candidates during the 2016 campaigns. And will spend $400 million more during the 2018 mid-term elections.
As rabid Libertarians, they’ve never been fans of America’s particular form of democratic socialism. Corporations hate social welfare, unless that socialism benefits their bottom line. So worried that America would sink to the depths of say, a socialist European country, or God forbid even worse, a Scandinavian country, that the Koch’s have spent their entire adult lives supporting libertarian causes and fighting against socialist tendencies of any sort.
They’re particularly fond of supporting ALEC anti-labor and right-to-work legislation across the country. And in Wisconsin, they’ve showed a particularly venomous bent by supporting an anti public employee, anti-teacher union, anti-environmental and pro corporate agenda. Wisconsin, a birthplace of the Progressive movement, now represents the worst of corporate controlled state government.
Some recent polls show Millennials and younger Americans harbor an increasing distaste for the predatory form of capitalism practiced by trump, the Koch’s and others. When these old buzzards have all died off, hopefully a more democratic form of social community will emerge and begin to reverse America’s enormous wealth and income disparity.
I don’t wish to leave the impression that all rich folks are like these turkey vultures. A large group of wealthy Americans signed petitions and supported efforts to defeat the Republi-con tax cut fraud. They actually believed their taxes should be raised instead of cut. And there are many thousands who obey the law, pay their fair share of taxes, or even more, aren’t afraid to show their tax returns, play by the rules, share their wealth and good fortune with their governments, their communities and their employees and partners. They support the commons, don’t cheat, tell the truth and from all appearances, are well respected happy human beings.
The Koch’s typically re-invest more that 90% of their profits back into their companies. They’re the number one supporter of conservative, Republican, libertarian, anti-labor and anti-social welfare and anti-socialist programs. I guess that doesn’t leave much for charitable donations.
Compare that to Warren Buffet and the Gate’s family (including Bill’s wife Melinda and his father). In July of 2017, Mr. Buffet donated another $3.17 billion of Berkshire Hathaway stock to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and four family charities. That brings his total contributions since 2006 to $30 billion or more. Buffet has pledged more than 99% of his wealth to charity during his lifetime or within 10 years of the settlement of his estate. The Gates have also donated more than $30 billion of their wealth to their foundation. In 2010, Buffet and Gates created the Giving Pledge program, which encourages billionaires throughout the world to donate at least half their fortunes to charity. As of 2017, there have been 173 pledgers. Mr. Buffet still owns 17 percent of Berkshire, despite donating more than 40 percent of his stock. I think one can be sure that trump, the Koch’s and others of their ilk are not Giving Pledgers.
I believe an overwhelming number of humans, if blessed with the Koch’s wealth and power, would be thankful to keep just a few hundred million or half a billion dollars for themselves and their families and then donate the rest to those in need; and would also spend their time making this world a better place. I’m sure most of us would not spend so much money and effort fighting attempts to increase the minimum wage and living wages for public employees, teachers and organized laborers.
Or would not spend millions to defeat and overturn the lifesaving Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and would not support efforts to stop the inevitable march to single payer health care for all Americans. We would not stay up nights scheming ways to cripple Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other social welfare programs for the poor and middle-class. We would not be obsessed with turning a vibrant and prosperous middle-class into a horde of desperate workers willing to work for peanuts.
What drives these folks to deny others just a little bit of the good fortune they’ve been blessed with? I remember the July 2007 Senator Ted Kennedy speech in the U.S. Senate, advocating for an increase in the $5.15 minimum wage to $7.25 over a 2 year period, which hadn’t been increased in 10 years because Republicans filibustered any vote on the bills. After 5 whole days of debate, Kennedy asked: “$240 billion in tax cuts for corporations, $36 billion in tax breaks for small businesses, a 42% increase in productivity, but no increase in the minimum wage. What is the price you want from these working men and women? What cost? How much more do they have to give? and “When does the greed stop?”
And what drives people like the Koch’s to plunder the earth by destructive mining and fossil fuel extraction, including the dirtiest of all toxic tar sand mining and pipelines, no matter the harm to our environment? Why do they risk destroying America’s air and precious water just so they can become even richer? “When does the greed stop?
These predatory capitalists will try their damnedest to accumulate as much money as they can – any way they can. Buying political fealty is their primary modus operandi. This current crop of elected Republi-con enablers have forsaken all integrity and sense of duty to the American people. No deviancy from the normal is too low to stoop for this corrupt white house and republi-con congress. Even conspiring with the Russians is not a bridge too. And attacking and tearing down the free press and our Democratic institutions, including the Justice Department, is part of their tyrannical grand plan.
Unless the corporate and toxic dark money is wrenched from our political system, nothing much will change; the enormous infusion of mega donor payoffs are too tempting for low character republi-con supplicants to pass up. Public financing of campaigns is the only real answer.
The Koch’s are worried that their paid political sycophants in the U.S. Congress and in state legislatures across the country, even in red states, are heading for a 2018 mid-term ass-whoopin. Its patriotic American’s job to make their premonition come true. Vote for folks who will stand up for women, for workers, for immigrants and dreamers, for our environment, for our National Parks and public lands, for common sense and science, for public education, for American Democracy, for a free and fair media and most importantly, for the truth.
Jay Busbee, Devil Ball Golf January 29, 2018
President Donald Trump takes great pride in his golf game, and plenty of notable names have attested to the president’s astonishing, borderline-unbelievable skill on the golf course. But now comes a new perspective.
Suzann Pettersen, a 15-time winner on the LPGA Tour and a frequent playing partner of Trump’s, gave an interview to Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang in which she talked about her friendship with the president … and she didn’t hold back in her assessment of his game.
“He cheats like hell,” Pettersen said, “so I don’t quite know how he is in business. They say that if you cheat at golf, you cheat at business. I’m pretty sure he pays his caddie well, since no matter how far into the woods he hits the ball, it’s in the middle of the fairway when we get there.” The newspaper notes that Pettersen was “laughing heartily” as she spoke, so spin that however you wish.
Pettersen also noted that Trump picked up the final putt of every round she’d played with him, avoiding that one extra stroke. “He always says he is the world’s best putter,” she said. “But in all the times I’ve played him, he’s never come close to breaking 80.”
That’s a pretty sharp contrast from what others have said about the president’s game, like Sen. Lindsey Graham:
Aspiring pro Taylor Funk said the president shot a front-line 36 when they played recently. Tiger Woods has offered some more measured praise, saying about a year ago that he was impressed with “how far [Trump] hits the ball at 70 years old. He takes a pretty good lash.”
Trump apparently saves his best games for the times when Pettersen isn’t on the course. “[W]hat’s strange is that every time I talk to him he says he just golfed a 69, or that he set a new course record or won a club championship some place,” she said. “I just laugh. I’m someone who likes being teased and I like teasing others, and Trump takes it well, and that must be why he likes me.”
Pettersen said she considers Trump a friend—she caught some heat on Twitter for congratulating him on his victory in November 2016—but adds that she is “not a supporter of what he says or stands for.” She added that she takes Trump’s words in what she considers a proper perspective: “I’m sure he has said things that can be hurtful to a lot of people, but I take everything he says with a pinch of salt. I know where it’s coming from.”
After the story was published, Pettersen tried to walk back the implication that Trump was a cheater by using the same tired “fake news” line that always seems to come up when facts don’t line up with feelings:
So either the reporter falsified an entire raft of detailed quotes about Trump’s corner-cutting on the golf course, or Pettersen saw how the words looked in print and tried to recant. You can decide for yourself which you believe, but it’s worth noting that half a dozen other people from Oscar de la Hoya to Samuel L. Jackson to Alice Cooper have either stated or strongly, strongly hinted that Trump cheats on the golf course.
Believe what you want to believe, friends. But if you ever get a chance to golf with the president, make sure to let us know how it goes.
____ Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter or on Facebook.
