Government Contractors No Longer Have to Disclose Labor Law Violations

From APNews…

The Senate on Monday reversed an Obama administration rule designed to ensure government contractors disclose violations of federal labor laws as they seek more work.

Senate approval of the measure sends it to President Donald Trump for his signature and marks another success in the GOP’s efforts to quash an array of regulations issued during President Barack Obama’s final months in office.

This time, the Senate voted 49-48 to overturn a rule that required contractors to disclose violations of 14 federal labor laws, including those pertaining to workplace safety, wages and discrimination. Contracting officers would then consider the violations when evaluating bids.

The rule addressed government auditors’ concerns over the years that contracting officers frequently failed to consider violations when awarding contracts because they lacked adequate information.

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DHS Outright Tells Us That They’re Going to Separate Children from Their Parents

Just pure evil…

From CNN…

Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly confirmed that the department is considering separating children from their parents at the border.

“We have tremendous experience of dealing with unaccompanied minors,” he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on “The Situation Room.” “We turn them over to (Health and Human Services) and they do a very, very good job of putting them in foster care or linking them up with parents or family members in the United States.”

He continued: “Yes I’m considering (that), in order to deter more movement along this terribly dangerous network. I am considering exactly that. They will be well cared for as we deal with their parents. … It’s more important to me, Wolf, to try to keep people off of this awful network.”

A senior DHS official had previously told CNN that the department was considering a proposal to separate children from adults when they are trying to enter the country illegally at the southern border.

The official told CNN the proposal is meant to deter the exploitation of children.

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Republicans Finally Tell Us How They Plan On Replacing The ACA

From the Washington Post…

House Republicans on Monday released long-anticipated legislation to supplant the Affordable Care Act with a more conservative vision for the nation’s health-care system, replacing federal insurance subsidies with a new form of individual tax credits and grants to help states shape their own policies.

Under two bills drafted by separate House committees, the government would no longer penalize Americans for failing to have health insurance but would try to encourage people to maintain coverage by allowing insurers to impose a surcharge of 30 percent for those who have a gap between health plans.

The legislation would preserve two of the most popular features of the 2010 health-care law, letting young adults stay on their parents’ health plans until age 26 and forbidding insurers to deny coverage or charge more to people with preexisting medical problems. It would also target Planned Parenthood, rendering the women’s health organization ineligible for Medicaid reimbursements or federal family planning grants — a key priority for antiabortion groups.

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Planned Parenthood Can Keep Their Funding… if They Stop Providing Abortions

From the New York Times…

The White House, concerned about the possible political repercussions of the Republican effort to defund Planned Parenthood, has proposed preserving federal payments to the group if it discontinues providing abortions.

The proposal, which was never made formally, has been rejected as an impossibility by officials at Planned Parenthood, which receives about $500 million annually in federal funding. That money helps pay for women’s health services the organization provides, not for abortion services.

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Agent Orange Signs a New Islamophobic Travel Ban

From Reuters…

President Donald Trump signed a revised executive order on Monday banning citizens from six Muslim-majority nations from traveling to the United States but removing Iraq from the list, after his controversial first attempt was blocked in the courts.

The new order, which takes effect on March 16, keeps a 90-day ban on travel to the United States by citizens of Iran, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. It applies only to new visa applicants, meaning some 60,000 people whose visas were revoked under the previous order will now be permitted to enter.

Immigration advocates said the new ban still discriminated against Muslims and failed to address some of their concerns with the previous order. Legal experts said it would, however, be harder to challenge because it affects fewer people living in the United States and allows more exemptions to protect them.

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Updates on Agent Orange’s Wiretapping Claims

Y’all already know the story… Agent Orange claimed on Twitter that President Obama wiretapped his cell phone.

Here’s some more info…

First, from the Hill…

White House press secretary Sean Spicer early Sunday said investigations into Russian attempts to influence the election should include President Trump’s claims that the Obama administration “abused” its investigative powers in 2016.

“Reports concerning potentially politically motivated investigations immediately ahead of the 2016 election are very troubling,” Spicer tweeted.

Second, from the NY Times…

The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, asked the Justice Department this weekend to publicly reject President Trump’s assertion that President Barack Obama ordered the tapping of Mr. Trump’s phones, senior American officials said on Sunday. Mr. Comey has argued that the highly charged claim is false and must be corrected, they said, but the department has not released any such statement.

Mr. Comey, who made the request on Saturday after Mr. Trump leveled his allegation on Twitter, has been working to get the Justice Department to knock down the claim because it falsely insinuates that the F.B.I. broke the law, the officials said.

A spokesman for the F.B.I. declined to comment. Sarah Isgur Flores, the spokeswoman for the Justice Department, also declined to comment.

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Agent Orange Wants to Slash NOAA Funding by 17%

From the Washington Post…

The Trump administration is seeking to slash the budget of one of the government’s premier climate science agencies by 17 percent, delivering steep cuts to research funding and satellite programs, according to a four-page budget memo obtained by The Washington Post.

The proposed cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would also eliminate funding for a variety of smaller programs, including external research, coastal management, estuary reserves and “coastal resilience,” which seeks to bolster the ability of coastal areas to withstand major storms and rising seas.

NOAA is part of the Commerce Department, which would be hit by an overall 18 percent budget reduction from its current funding level.

The Office of Management and Budget also asked the Commerce Department to provide information about how much it would cost to lay off employees, while saying those employees who do remain with the department should get a 1.9 percent pay increase in January 2018. It requested estimates for terminating leases and government “property disposal.”

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In More Very Obvious News, Jeff Session is a Lying Liar Who Lies

From the Washington Post…

Then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) spoke twice last year with Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Justice Department officials said, encounters he did not disclose when asked about possible contacts between members of President Trump’s campaign and representatives of Moscow during Sessions’s confirmation hearing to become attorney general.

One of the meetings was a private conversation between Sessions and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak that took place in September in the senator’s office, at the height of what U.S. intelligence officials say was a Russian cyber campaign to upend the U.S. presidential race.

The previously undisclosed discussions could fuel new congressional calls for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Russia’s alleged role in the 2016 presidential election. As attorney general, Sessions oversees the Justice Department and the FBI, which have been leading investigations into Russian meddling and any links to Trump’s associates. He has so far resisted calls to recuse himself.

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Terrifying Bills Filed in Congress…

The following bills have been filed in Congress. Some have even already passed the Senate or House.

They include terminating needed agencies, defunding Planned Parenthood, criminalizing abortion, etc. Some have no summaries written at the Congress.gov link, so I did not include summaries here. For those who don’t know, Congress.gov is where you can go to basically, follow legislative sessions. You can find out what bills, resolutions, etc have been filed, and keep a close watch on ones that interest or worry you.

Please make your voices heard and register your complaints about these bills. Not one can be allowed to pass…

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Agent Orange’s Plan to Increase Military Spending

So… back on February 27th, it was reported that Heir Tanline wanted to sink another $54 Billion US into our “defense” budget.

How did he plan on doing this?

President Trump put both political parties on notice Monday that he intends to slash spending on many of the federal government’s most politically sensitive programs — relating to education, the environment, science and poverty — to protect the economic security of retirees and to shift billions more to the armed forces.

The proposal to increase military spending by $54 billion and cut nonmilitary programs by the same amount was unveiled by White House officials as they prepared the president’s plans for next year’s federal budget. Aides to the president said final decisions about Medicare and Social Security would not be made until later in the year, when he announces his full budget. But Sean Spicer, his spokesman, cited Mr. Trump’s campaign commitments about protecting those programs and vowed that “he’s going to keep his word to the American people.”

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