Trump signs executive orders aimed at loosening clout of federal labor unions

USA Today

Trump signs executive orders aimed at loosening clout of federal labor unions

Gregory Korte, USA Today       May 25, 2018

    Photo: Mandel Ngan, AFP/Getty Images

Washington – President Trump wants federal agencies to fire low-performing workers, negotiate better union agreements and slash the time that federal employees can spend union activity and still be paid.

Those directives appear in a series of executive orders Trump signed Friday, the afternoon before the Memorial Day weekend.

Andrew Bremberg, the director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, said the orders fulfill a promise in Trump’s State of the Union address to overhaul the federal workforce.

Then, Trump asked Congress to “empower every Cabinet secretary with the authority to reward good workers — and to remove federal employees who undermine the public trust or fail the American people.”

But labor unions representing federal workers said the moves were part of a politically motivated assault on the merit system.

“It’s basically an attempt to make federal employees at-will employees, so you cam make them political employees, so you can hire anyone who had a bumper sticker for you in the last election,” said J. David Cox, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union representing federal employees.

“This would begin the process of dismantling the merit system that governs our civil service,” said Tony Reardon of the National Treasury Employees Union. “It is worth remembering that many of these federal employees are on the job over this holiday weekend protecting our borders, ensuring our food supply is safe and welcoming visitors to our national parks.”

More: ‘Hire the best and fire the worst’: Trump proposes biggest civil service change in 40 years

The executive orders aim to:

► Make it easier agencies to fire low-performing workers by limiting the amount of time that workers can spend on probation, encourage firing instead of suspensions, and requiring agencies to share information about bad employees so they don’t hop from one agency to another.

► Get tougher at the bargaining table when the government negotiates union contracts. The order centralizes negotiating strategy in the White House Office of Management and Budget, which will post copies of federal labor agreements online.

► Limit the amount of time that federal workers can spend on union business. The federal government spent almost $175 million to pay workers for this “official time” in 2016, according to the Office of Personnel Management. That includes time spent lobbying Congress and representing workers in disciplinary actions — practices Trump wants unions to pay for themselves.

John McCain is a “gangster” and Obama was born in Africa

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

May 25, 2018

John McCain is a “gangster” and Obama was born in Africa… Arizona’s 2018 senate race is stuck in the craziest parts of the 2008 presidential race.

Profiles In Discourage: Joe Arpaio’s Second-Wave Birtherism

John McCain is a “gangster” and Obama was born in Africa… Arizona’s 2018 senate race is stuck in the craziest parts of the 2008 presidential race.

Posted by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Friday, May 25, 2018

The Real Patriots Are the NFL Protesters

act.tv

September 27, 2017

This local sportscaster in Dallas is woke.

— via The People For Bernie Sanders

Kneeling doesn't disrepect the flag or veterans.

This local sportscaster in Dallas is woke. — via The People For Bernie Sanders

Posted by act.tv on Wednesday, September 27, 2017

Trump has a habit of hiring “the best people,” firing them when they turn out to be terrible, and then quietly re-hiring them

Trump has a habit of hiring “the best people,” firing them when they turn out to be terrible, and then quietly re-hiring them. #TheCheckIn

The Check In: Fired Trump Aides and Officials

Trump has a habit of hiring “the best people,” firing them when they turn out to be terrible, and then quietly re-hiring them. #TheCheckIn

Posted by Late Night with Seth Meyers on Tuesday, May 22, 2018

Myths are used to scare people away from liking socialism.

AJ+’s Newsbroke posted a new episode on  Facebook Watch — with Francesca Fiorentini.

May 20, 2018

A bunch of myths are used to scare people away from liking socialism. Here are the biggest lies we’ve all heard.

The Biggest Myths About Socialism

A bunch of myths are used to scare people away from liking socialism. Here are the biggest lies we've all heard.

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Messages in a bottle sent across the sea to North Korea

 CNN
May 21, 2018

These bottles contain food, medicine, and messages of hope — and they’re being thrown into the sea in the hope that they might reach North Korea: https://cnn.it/2wXKs9N

Messages in bottles sent across the sea to North Korea

These bottles contain food, medicine, and messages of hope — and they're being thrown into the sea in the hope that they might reach North Korea: https://cnn.it/2wXKs9N

Posted by CNN on Sunday, May 20, 2018

Trump Opens Door to Dangerous Fracking in Northern Arizona

EcoWatch

Trump Opens Door to Dangerous Fracking in Northern Arizona

Center for Biological Diversity      May 22, 2018

Petrified Forest National Park. Andrew Kearns / National Park Service

A new Trump administration plan proposes to auction off 4,200 acres of public land for oil and gas development in northern Arizona. The lands straddle the Little Colorado River, are within three miles of Petrified Forest National Park, and are near habitat for a federally threatened fish called the Little Colorado spinedace. Drilling and fracking would threaten to deplete and pollute groundwater in the Little Colorado River Basin.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is planning the September auction—which would convey development rights to fossil-fuel companies—without any site-specific public or environmental review, as required by federal law. Planning documents cite Trump policies that forego National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) analysis to fast-track fracking on public lands. According to BLM, about 90 percent of new oil and gas wells on public lands are fracked.

“This dangerous plan puts national parks, precious groundwater and wildlife in the crosshairs. We’ll do everything we can to stop it,” said Taylor McKinnon with the Center for Biological Diversity. “Fracking is a dirty, dangerous business that consumes enormous amounts of water and threatens wildlife and public health. Northern Arizonans won’t tolerate public lands being sacrificed as gifts from Trump to the fossil fuel industry.”

The BLM is using a shortcut to bypass the analysis of fracking’s harm to the land and water that is required under NEPA. The sweeping “determinations of NEPA adequacy,” or DNAs, presume that oil and gas development complies with the agency’s 30-year-old resource management plan, which predates the U.S. fracking boom. The agency is also foregoing tribal consultations, stating that “tribal consultation was adequate for the [resource management plan].” By deferring all analysis until the drilling-permit stage—after industry has the right to develop the land—the bureau is unable to deny subsequent drilling plans.

“Fracking or drilling development could be catastrophic for the region’s groundwater,” said McKinnon. “This is Trump’s energy dominance policy at work, where nothing matters except fossil-fuel interests.”

Trump policies issued in January require the BLM to auction lands nominated by the fracking industry, skip site-specific environmental review and limit public input. BLM records show that since 2014 the fracking industry requested 145 parcels in northern Arizona for oil and gas leasing, most near the Hurricane Cliffs and Big Valley north of Grand Canyon National Park.

The Center for Biological Diversity has sued the BLM for using DNAs to plan oil and gas auctions in Ohio and Colorado. In April the Center for Biological Diversity sued the Trump administration over its January policy encouraging their use.

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“We didn’t cross the border. The border crossed us.”

The Wall posted a new episode on  Facebook Watch.

How a new barrier will fracture the Tohono O’odham tribe and its rich history. “We didn’t cross the border. The border crossed us.” https://usat.ly/2xe10td

EcoWatch shared The Wall‘s episode    May 22, 2018

Tribal lands: Most sacred places (From the USA TODAY Network)

How a new barrier will fracture the Tohono O'odham tribe and its rich history. "We didn't cross the border. The border crossed us." https://usat.ly/2xe10td

Posted by The Wall on Friday, September 29, 2017

The Noose is Tightening!

John Hanno     May 21, 2018

Image result for the noose is tightening

For someone who stridently claims he didn’t collude with the Russians and BMF Putin, and didn’t obstruct the Department of Justice or congressional investigations into his and his cabals shenanigans, trump sure acts like the guiltiest purp we’ve ever witnessed. He sounds like a Mafia hit man who’s just discovered his underling has been wearing a wire during his last half dozen wacks. It’s pretty apparent, gleaned from the bits and pieces dribbling out from the folks already questioned by the Mueller investigation and the tons of dirt dug up by hundreds of patriots now laboring at America’s last line of institutional defense, our denigrated “Fake News,” we see the noose tightening around the most corrupt administration in my lifetime, more corrupt and toxic than even the Nixon criminal cartel.

These Republi-con evildoers have shown no compunction what so ever, about selling or trading government access or surrendering our national sovereignty in return for their own financial self enrichment.

No venality is too low to stoop for these cancerous swamp creatures; no vile conspiracy a bridge too far and no deviancy from normal is too outrageous for trump’s supporters and enablers to ignore or forgive.

The more the noose tightens, the more unhinged trump flails.

trump’s latest tweet: I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes – and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!

trump also no doubt sicked Rep. Nunes on the DOJ

From the Chicago Tribune: “A subpoena that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., issued to the Justice Department last week made a broad request for all documents about an individual who people close to the matter say is a sensitive, longtime intelligence source for the CIA and FBI. The Justice Department has refused to provide the documents. Intelligence officials say the material could jeopardize the source, a U.S. citizen who has aided the special counsel investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 campaign.”

The ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, in a follow-up tweet on Sunday:  Trump’s claim of an embedded “spy” is nonsense. His “demand” DOJ investigate something they know to be untrue is an abuse of power, and an effort to distract from his growing legal problems. Never mind that DOJ has warned that lives and alliances are at risk. He doesn’t care.

Monday afternoon, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer responded to trump: “That he would issue such an absurd and abusive demand based on no evidence shows just how little regard the president has for the rule of law,” Schumer said on the Senate floor.

ABC News: “trump met Monday at the White House with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray a day after he tweeted that he would “demand” the Justice Department investigate whether his 2016 presidential campaign was improperly “infiltrated or surveilled” for political purposes by an alleged FBI informant contacting Trump campaign associates.”

A White House statement followed that meeting: “Based on the meeting with the President, the Department of Justice has asked the Inspector General to expand its current investigation to include any irregularities with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s or the Department of Justice’s tactics concerning the Trump Campaign. It was also agreed that White House Chief of Staff Kelly will immediately set up a meeting with the FBI, DOJ, and DNI together with Congressional Leaders to review highly classified and other information they have requested,” Sanders said in the statement.

Later Monday, Schumer took issue with the White House: “The White House plan to arrange a meeting where ‘highly classified and other information’ will be shared with members of Congress is highly irregular and inappropriate. The president and his staff should not be involved in the viewing or dissemination of sensitive investigatory information involving any open investigation, let alone one about his own activities and campaign,” Schumer said in a statement.

We’re heartened a bit by the statement issued by Mr. Rosenstein and the DOJ, ordering an investigation by the Inspector General, apparently offering a diversion and at the same time emphasizing the seriousness of the charges under investigation.

From ABC News: “Later Sunday, Rosenstein issued a statement saying, “If anyone did infiltrate or surveil participants in a presidential campaign for inappropriate purposes, we need to know about it and take appropriate action.” “The Department has asked the Inspector General to expand the ongoing review of the FISA application process to include determining whether there was any impropriety or political motivation in how the FBI conducted its counterintelligence investigation of persons suspected of involvement with the Russian agents who interfered in the 2016 presidential election,Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said in a statement.

Where in the real world is it proper for the purp under investigation, to summon the investigators to their offices and grill them on the ongoing investigations or demand evidence and documents related to that confidential investigation. trump’s declared war on “the rule of law.”

We can only hope Rod Rosenstein and the Justice Department can devise some way to bend but not break under the onslaught from the White House and the cowardly sycophants in the Republi-con congress, so they can complete their investigation before trump’s brain blows up, or before Mr. Rosenstein finds it necessary to resign.

Wake up America! This is not just dirty politics! This is your children’s and grandchildren’s Democracy under siege.

John Hanno    tarbabys.com

For Now, We’ll Trust That Rod Rosenstein Is Playing the President* Like a Five-Cent Violin

Esquire

For Now, We’ll Trust That Rod Rosenstein Is Playing the President* Like a Five-Cent Violin

The indications are the Deputy AG is a crafty bureaucrat.

By Charkes P. Pierce      May 21, 2018

Getty Images

Every day that Robert Mueller and his tunnel rats continue to labor under the foul mire that is this administration* is a day when the White House loses. Every day in which Mueller goes home at night still in the same job is a day when the president* is one day closer to possibly losing his.

So it’s easy to read too much into the meeting late Monday afternoon when deputy AG Rod Rosenstein and FBI director Chris Wray dropped by the White House to talk to the president* in response to the latest administration* fever dream about how the previous administration had gone all Gordon Liddy on the Trump campaign—and just because that campaign was lousy with crooks, mountebanks, and influence-peddling in a dozen different languages.

THAT CAMPAIGN WAS LOUSY WITH CROOKS, MOUNTEBANKS, AND INFLUENCE-PEDDlING IN A DOZEN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES.

So, Rosenstein and Wray dropped by and, when the meeting was over, the three principals issued a very curious statement. It stated that the DOJ’s inspector-general will expand his ongoing investigation to include “tactics” employed by the FBI in its investigation of the Trump campaign. Further:

“It was also agreed that White House Chief of Staff Kelly will immediately set up a meeting with the FBI, DOJ, and DNI together with congressional leaders to review highly classified and other information they have requested.”

Nobody seems to know what that second part means. The intelligence community would be out of its mind to hand over material vitally important to its investigation to the leakiest White House since before they put the roof on the joint. At the same time, it seems that Rosenstein et. al. have agreed to give to the administration* material that the FBI has fought tooth-and-claw to keep from the congressional Republicans.

For the moment, I’m going to give Rosenstein credit for being a gifted bureaucratic infighter and survivor who has played the president* like a five-cent violin. (There are precedents supporting this view to be found just this morning.) There are a dozen ways for Rosenstein to slow-play the review of any classified documents. I think the president* got played on behalf of all of us.

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