I agree with Luther.
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I agree with Luther.
The Office of Government Ethics has been attempting to chase down Team Trump, who are doing everything in their power to evade, so far, successfully. Is “people who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear” still a thing? If so, it would appear that Team Trump has everything to fear.
New emails reveal that the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) reportedly “lost contact” with President-elect Donald Trump’s team during the ongoing transition to power, despite efforts to warn officials about ethical issues posed by nominees and “blind trusts.”
According to emails uncovered by MSNBC, OGE director Director Walter Shaub contacted Trump aides in November expressing deep frustration with the lack of cooperation between his organization and the president-elect’s team. Shaub reportedly cautioned Trump against creating a blind trust of his business holdings without speaking to the OGE first, noting that the ethics office only considers something a blind trust if its assets have “been sold off”—a very different standard that the “half-blind” trust floated by Trump’s own team. (To date, Trump has not suggested that he will sell off his assets.)
MSNBC noted that the emails, which it obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, included few details regarding any efforts by the president-elect to divest from assets that could result in potential conflicts of interest during his presidency.
[…]
Shaub also argued that Trump’s staff was risking “embarrassment” by refusing to allow the ethics office to review the financial records of potential cabinet selections before they were announced, saying some could potentially violate federal law.
“They run the risk of having inadvertently violated the criminal conflicts of interest restriction at 18 USC 208,” Shaub wrote. “If we don’t get involved early to prevent problems, we won’t be able to help them after the fact.”
The tension may explain the OGE’s effort to troll Trump on Twitter in late November.
Look, a bonus Sunday Facepalm! The only way to maybe get the Pendejo-elect’s attention is to troll him on Twitter. For fuck’s sake. Even some conservatives are appalled:
Unprecedented and deeply dangerous if McConnell jams through Cabinet nominees who have not been vetted by the Office of Government Ethics
— Norman Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) January 7, 2017
Yes. And not only that, but McConnell’s deep hypocrisy is on show as well:
The Republican-controlled U.S. Senate plans to rush forward this week with confirmation hearings for many of Donald Trump’s nominees for cabinet and other key executive positions. Though many of the picks have not yet completed the customarily required ethics clearances and background checks, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has shown no willingness to delay.
[…]
But back in 2009, McConnell took the exact opposite view. A letter to then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), posted on Twitter by Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington co-founder and former Obama administration ethics adviser Norm Eisen on Sunday, shows he demanded that “financial disclosures must be complete” before any confirmation hearings be scheduled.
How things change, eh?
Think Progress has the full stories: Government Ethics and McConnell.
Scott Walker, ALEC marionette. Credit: DonkeyHotey.
The American Legislative Exchange Council — a nonprofit better known as ALEC — briefed its members and allied groups on the bright future for its agenda now that Republicans will effectively control 68 of the nation’s 99 state legislative bodies, as well as 33 governor’s mansions. Among other things, group members said they would push bills to reduce corporate taxes, weaken unions, privatize schooling and influence the ideological debate on college campuses.
“We can pretty much do whatever we want to right now,” said Rep. Jim DeCesare, a Republican state legislator in Kentucky, where the party gained the state House for the first time in nearly a century.
DeCesare, who had been minority whip, described plans for “a pretty intense agenda” including a so-called right-to-work law allowing employees who are covered by collective bargaining agreements to opt out of joining labor unions. Another, he said, would be repealing rules that require government contractors to pay employees more than the minimum wage. Neighboring states competing for new businesses, he said, had already gutted such regulations.
“We’ve got some catching up to do, but we plan to make up a lot of ground in a very short time,” DeCesare said. “This is our time to shine.”
[…]
Inez Feltscher, director of ALEC’s education task force, outlined plans to advocate for legislation giving money to parents who take their children out of public schools — stipends they could use for private schooling or other educational expenses. Critics of these “education savings accounts” say they’re a drain on public-school funding, while proponents argue they give parents a chance to pick the best situation for their kids.
Feltscher acknowledged another motivation: “To break the monopoly on one of the most important institutions in America.” Conservatives have long been at odds with teachers unions over the structure and curriculum of public schools. “We’ve let the left take over almost all of the cultural institutions of this country,” she said.
Another ALEC target, Feltscher said, would be the state of “free debate on American universities,” which conservatives say are largely dominated by left-leaning faculty, courses and speakers. For example, she said, lawmakers could use a range of tactics to press administrators to include multiple ideologies during on-campus public policy talks, such as demanding an annual count of campus events that included more than one perspective. Simply requiring measurement and public reporting would apply pressure, she said, but legislators could also take it to “the nuclear level” and threaten to pull funding from schools that are perceived to be limiting discourse.
“There’s going to be a lot more aggression on this,” Feltscher said.
Corporate rule. Oh, joy. They’ll get all the money and cozy breaks, friendly legislation, and all the people working? Screwed. And no more education, we prefer ignorant dumbfucks! Oh, we are beyond fucked.
Just the highlights here, head over to Alternet for all the gory details.
1. Calling for an investigation of NBC instead of the Russian hacks.
2. Making personal calls instead of doing his friggin’ job.
3. Accepting Julian Assange’s word over 17 intelligence agencies.
4. Admitting he duped his no-nothing voter base on the border wall, then lying again.
5. Lying about having a hand in every job-saving deal.
6. But refusing to take credit for job losses.
7. Calling Democratic senator Chuck Shumer a ‘clown,’ then saying we need to unite 9 minutes later.
8. Throwing Obama’s political ambassadors and their families out on short notice.
9. Scheduling a news conference to distract from his appointee hearings.
10. Still publicly smarting about being dissed by all the cool-kid pop stars for his little inauguration thing.
Pretty sure that’s barely the top layer of lies, it’s harder and harder to keep up, what with all the lies, obfuscation, and never ending tantrums.
As most people should be aware by now, the scum-sucking assholes who will be in charge just can’t wait to kill off “Obamacare” for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Oh, except for spite. Pretty soon, a whole lot of people are going to find themselves without healthcare, and they’ll be looking at dying much sooner than they planned, because that’s what happens when you don’t have healthcare. The republican thugs want you to believe it’s about saving money, but that really couldn’t be further from the truth. They have no replacement plan, and dismantling the ACA will be costly.
An analysis by the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Budget reveals that repealing the Affordable Care Act will likely cost the federal government at least $350 billion, and that doesn’t include the cost of replacing it.
“Repealing the entire ACA would leave no funds available for ‘replace’ legislation, and in fact would require further deficit reduction to avoid adding to the debt,” the report notes.
The analysis also focuses only on the net cost to the federal government and doesn’t consider the economic burden (which CNBC calls “the far bigger economic impact”) that will face insurers, hospitals, doctors, drug companies, and others in the existing health system. And of course, it doesn’t include an estimate of the financial impact on the 23 million Americans who will lose their health coverage if the ACA is repealed and not replaced.
CREDIT: Department of Energy (DOE).
Clean energy. It’s the only possible way to go right now, and there’s more promise in clean energy than anything else, but Pendejo-elect Trump is making sure that America will not only miss out on all the money clean energy can bring, but the millions of jobs which go with it. No, much better to commit to filthy energy, which can stuff a few select, already overflowing pockets with more money, making sure that the environment gets destroyed, and to keep on denying climate change. Oh yes, that’s just so much better, by golly, that will make America great again, you betcha. :insert near-fatal eyeroll here.:
A few days ago, Joe Romm at Think Progress had an article up about the clean energy, and how it will be a $50 trillion industry, and how Trump has determined that the U.S. will not be a part of it.
The best charts of 2016 reveal the clean energy revolution is unstoppable. At least, it is unstoppable globally.
But if the United States makes a historic blunder and shifts its focus back toward dirty energy just when the rest of the world has made a $50 trillion (or higher) commitment to a carbon-free future, then it won’t reap the vast job-creating benefits of the remarkable ongoing cost reductions shown in chart above.
That article is here.
Today, there’s an article about all the jobs created by clean energy.
Renewable energy jobs in select countries (excluding large hydropower). CREDIT: IRENA.
China is preparing to go big on the only major new source of sustainable high-wage employment in the coming decades.
Beijing’s newest 5-year energy development plan invests a stunning 2.5 trillion yuan ($360 billion) in renewable generation by 2020. Of that, $144 billion will go to solar, about $100 billion to wind, $70 billion to hydropower, and the rest to sources like tidal and geothermal power.
The Chinese National Energy Administration said in a statement Thursday the resulting “employment will be more than 13 million people.”
China is already doing way better than the U.S. in this regard, and President-elect Trump’s commitment to opposing clean energy will not make things any better. As the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) reported last year, China already has over 40 percent of all jobs in renewables, globally, while the U.S. has under 10 percent (see chart above).
We know clean energy jobs are the only major new source of sustainable high-wage employment in the coming decades for several reasons.
If you’re one of those Americans who fell for Trump’s “jobs!” bullshit, perhaps you should look into moving to China, I hear they are hiring. The full article is at Think Progress.
© Richard Misrach. Border Cantos.
It seems that Trump is still determined to waste an insane amount of money on a wall, but as Mexico has rightly refused the offer to foot the bill, eyes are looking elsewhere, to the American taxpayer, specifically. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I do not want one cent of my earnings to go for this gargantuan stupidity. This whole idea is bad, all the way around, and on top of all the bad, makes me feel very claustrophobic, like I might not be able to get out.
President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is working on making his proposed U.S.-Mexico border wall, the cornerstone of his 2016 presidential campaign, a reality. However, there is a slight change in plans.
The team told GOP officials the real estate mogul had signaled that the building of the wall be funded by American tax dollars and not by Mexico, as he had previously claimed, CNN reported Thursday citing House Republicans. Officials are looking to fund the construction using the appropriations process as early as April.
[…]
The 2006 law allowed the construction of a “physical barrier” running for 700 miles on the country’s southern border, Politico reported earlier Thursday. The law was never fully implemented and did not include a sunset provision allowing Trump to continue where Bush left off using the funds Congress would allocate for the project.
“It was not done in the Obama administration, so by funding the authorization that’s already happened a decade ago, we could start the process of meeting Mr. Trump’s campaign pledge to secure the border,” Indiana Rep. Luke Messer told CNN on Thursday.
[…]
Republicans would have to add millions to the spending bill — which needs to pass by the end of April — to keep the government open, should Mexico refuse to pay for the wall. But the move could irk House Democrats who might threaten the GOP with a government shutdown.
Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise, a senior GOP leader in the House, did not say if Congress will pay for the construction of the wall.
“We want President Trump to have all the tools he needs to build the wall,” Scalise reportedly said. “We’re in talks with him on the details of it as they’re still putting together their team. We still got a few months before there’s another funding bill that’s going to move. We’re going to work with him to make sure we can get it done. We want to build a wall. He wants to build a wall.”
The GOP lawmaker said the project would involve “big dollars, but it’s a question of priorities,” citing Homeland Security Chairman Mike McCaul’s $10 billion border security bill that he proposed last year.“Democrats may well find themselves in the position to shut down all of government to stop the buildout of a wall, or of a barrier, or of a fence,” Messer added.
America: excels in stupid, like building a gigantic wall; never builds bridges.
Via Raw Story.
© Getty Images.
House Republicans this week reinstated a procedural rule created in 1876 that allows lawmakers to cut the pay of individual federal workers down to $1, The Washington Post reported Thursday.
The Holman Rule allows members of Congress to propose amendments to appropriations bills that target specific government employees or programs in an effort to cut spending.
Under the rule passed this week in larger rules package, any such amendment that would target an employee or program would have to be passed by a majority of the House and Senate. That makes it unlikely, albeit possible, for lawmakers to reduce a federal worker’s pay.
Democrats and federal employees who worry about how President-elect Donald Trump could use it blasted the rule.
Resurrecting a very old rule is never good news, you know people are planning to do very bad things, and this has one hell of a chill factor:
“This is a big rule change inside there that allows people to get at places they hadn’t before,” he told reporters.
The new rule follows requests by the Trump transition team for lists of the names of employees involved in specific programs, such as Energy Department scientists who have worked on climate change.
The ability to legally reduce someone’s salary to a dollar is a good way to get rid of people, isn’t it? Or just using it as a threat, fall in line, or…
Via The Hill.
Getty Images.
More than 50 Electoral College members who voted for Donald Trump were ineligible to serve as presidential electors because they did not live in the congressional districts they represented or held elective office in states legally barring dual officeholders.
That stunning finding is among the conclusions of an extensive 1,000-plus page legal briefing prepared by a bipartisan nationwide legal team for members of Congress who are being urged to object to certifying the 2016 Electoral College results on Friday.
“Trump’s ascension to the presidency is completely illegitimate,” said Ryan Clayton of Americans Take Action, who is promoting the effort. “It’s not just Russians hacking our democracy. It’s not just voter suppression at unprecedented levels. It is also [that] there are Republicans illegally casting ballots in the Electoral College, and in a sufficient number that the results of the Electoral College proceedings are illegitimate as well.”
[…]
It may be that the efforts to convince Congress to challenge the ratification of the 2016 Electoral College amounts to little more than a Hail Mary aimed at derailing a Trump presidency. As of late Wednesday, Clayton thought there would be House members willing to object to certifying the Electoral College vote, but he was less certain about finding a senator willing to go along.
But even if a challenge is mounted and fails, it underscores the illegitimate basis of Trump’s presidency and the deep opposition to it, and refutes the GOP’s outrageous claim that it has a mandate for dismantling government programs across the board.
“We have a list of 50 illegal electors,” Clayton said. “That puts Donald Trump below the threshold that he needs to be elected president. Let’s debate it in an open session. According to the Constitution, the Congress, if nobody wins on the first round of balloting, picks from the top three candidates. That will be Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and Colin Powell.”
I won’t be holding my breath here, everyone knew that the Bush jr presidency was illegitimate, but it didn’t matter. I don’t think it will matter this time, either. This is, however, yet another reason to dismantle the electoral college.
Full story at Alternet.
Credit: fourever.eu
Looking at America today, we have repubs going nuts over porn; the active dismantling of ethics and ethical oversight in favour of open corruption; and Donny “Pendejo” Trump waging twitter war with Kim Jong Un, because nothing screams “Greatness!” like two sociopaths with all the maturity of a toddler in full meltdown. And nukes, can’t forget the nukes.
Meanwhile, in Sweden, there’s a move to break the consumer cycle of “buy, it breaks, toss it out, buy another.”
Sweden’s Minister of Financial Markets and Consumer Affairs Per Bolund says we need to change that mindset.
“Part of that is making it more affordable and economically rational to stop the buying and throwing away, instead repairing your goods and using them for a longer time,” says Bolund.
He’s trying to push people in that direction through tax breaks; he’s spearheading a 50-percent tax cut for Swedes to repair items like clothes, shoes and bicycles. The new rule takes effect on Jan. 1, 2017, with a goal of decreasing waste in the world’s landfills, which are filling up at an alarming rate.
This idea — not just discarding stuff — it’s not exactly revolutionary.
A 50% tax break. I just bet that wouldn’t get the attention of Americans, nooooo. [Serious, deadly sarcasm there.]
And in Finland, they are breaking out a guaranteed universal income pilot program.
Giving people money regardless of whether or not they’re working seems to defy common sense about personal responsibility and how to boost productivity. But supporters of UBI have argued that it just makes sense as public policy, for several reasons. First, in the long run, it might be simpler and cheaper for the state to give people money than to oversee a complicated welfare bureaucracy. And it looks as if technological advances might level industries that may have seemed impervious to automation, such as truck driving: driverless vehicles will soon be out of the experimental stage, journalist Gwynne Dyer has noted.
So, America: bowl full of rotten apples.
Dan Rather speaks to ‘All In’ host Chris Hayes on July 11, 2016. (MSNBC).
An actual journalist has weighed in on The Wall Street Journal’s declaration of not calling a lie a lie. Dan Rather did not mince words, and I am so thankful.
On Facebook, Rather blasted Baker by opening with “A lie, is a lie, is a lie.”
“Journalism, as I was taught it, is a process of getting as close to some valid version of the truth as is humanly possible. And one of my definitions of news is information that the powerful don’t want you to know,” Rather wrote.
“It is not the proper role of journalists to meet lies—especially from someone of Mr. Trump’s stature and power—by hiding behind semantics and euphemisms. Our role is to call it as we see it, based on solid reporting. When something is, in fact, a demonstrable lie, it is our responsibility to say so,” he continued. “As I have said before and will say as long as people are willing to listen, this is a gut check moment for the press. We are being confronted by versions of what are claimed to be ‘the truth’ that resemble something spewed out by a fertilizer-spreader in a wind tunnel. And there is every indication that this will only continue in the Tweets and statements of the man who will now hold forth from behind the Great Seal of the President of the United States.”
Rather concluded by warning news consumers, “You as the paying, subscribing public, can use your leverage and pocketbooks to keep those who should be honest brokers of information, well, honest. ”
Thank you, Mr. Rather.
Via Raw Story.
In a secret vote held behind closed doors Monday night, House Republicans voted to cripple the Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent body created in 2008 to rein in corruption and other misconduct by members of Congress.
The move was spearheaded “by lawmakers who have come under investigation in recent years,” according to Politico. Among those speaking in favor of the changes were Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX), who was accused by a staffer of sexual harassment, and Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL), who allegedly received “an impermissible gift when he and his wife traveled to Taiwan in October 2011.”
Under the new rules, the Office of Congressional Ethics would be renamed the Office of Congressional Complaint Review and, critically, lose its independence. It would be placed under the auspices of the House Ethics Committee, which famously has turned a blind eye to wrongdoing by members of Congress. It became clear that an independent body was necessary after scandals largely ignored by the the Ethics Committee sent several members of Congress, including Randy “Duke” Cunningham and Bob Ney, to jail.
Ooooh, a complaints department! We’re all so sure that will work wonderfully, right?
Many of the new restrictions on the body appear designed to make it easier to sweep misconduct under the rug.
The new Office of Congressional Complaint Review cannot make any of its findings public — or make any other public statement — without the approval of the House Ethics Committee.
Ah, how cozy. All the corrupt, unethical, immoral republicans now have a lovely shelter, and no one will ever tell them they are wrong.
Even if the Office of Congressional Complaint Review finds evidence of criminal conduct, it cannot report it to the police without prior approval.
Even better! If caught, they can’t be punished.
The rules also prohibit the new office from considering anonymous complaints or investigating any conduct that occurred before 2011.
Very convenient. That effectively prohibits any investigation via a complainant who might have every reason to be concerned about retaliation.
The House leadership will get a chance to prove their opposition Tuesday, when a public vote on a rules package that includes the changes to ethics oversight will occur on the House floor.
Yeah, I’m not gonna hold my breath. More American Greatness™ folks, Look Ma, no ethics! Via Think Progress.
