President-Elect Donald Trump: The Thread

[StrangeSox]

DeVos is pretty much universally hated in her home state and town. That says alot.

 

I love how Clinton was the "pay to play" candidate and literally the entire cabinet is being filled with people who are paying for their positions.

Conflicts of DeVos

Donald Trump, Betsy DeVos, and a Pay-to-Play Nomination

 

Billionaire activist Betsy DeVos and her family have given a massive $4 million to the Republicans who will decide whether to confirm her as Trump’s secretary of education, according to a new analysis by the authors.

 

Unfortunately, no member of the Senate has indicated that they might step aside. Put differently, Republicans under Trump are showing that they can be bought and sold.

For her part, DeVos, a long-time Republican megadonor, has made clear that her extensive campaign donations are meant to sway policymakers. “I have decided, however, to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence,” DeVos once remarked. “Now I simply concede the point. They are right. We do expect something in return.”

 

DeVos has taken this pay-for-play approach before. Just consider the impact she had in her home state of Michigan last year. As a reward for passing a no-accountability charter school law in the state, the DeVos family once gave state Republicans $1.45 million in a seven-week period. That’s about an average of $25,000 a day. “A filthy, moneyed kiss” is how the Detroit Free Press’ editorial page editor described the lobbying effort.

 

If Michigan was a kiss of graft, though, Congress might soon be an orgy of corruption. DeVos will have her hearings in front of five members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, or HELP, who have taken enormous checks from her and her relatives—interestingly, all in the last two election cycles.

 

It’s worth a closer look at the DeVos family donations to the HELP members. Sen. Tim Scott (R–SC) has received $49,200 from the DeVos family and was a keynote speaker at DeVos’ American Federation for Children annual summit in May 2016. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) has received at least $70,200 from the DeVoses. Two other HELP committee members, Sens. Richard Burr (R-NC) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), each have received $43,200 from the family. Newly elected Sen. Todd Young (R-IN), who has joined the HELP committee, got $48,600 from the DeVos family in 2016.

 

 

The Daily 202: Lamar Alexander is dragging Betsy DeVos across the finish line to become secretary of education

 

After postponing the secretary of education nominee's hearing for a week, the chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (known as HELP) rescheduled it for last night at the very unusual time of 5 p.m. (It then started 15 minutes late.)

 

The obvious goal was to minimize how many people would watch. The late start meant that cable news could not cover the proceedings live unless TV executives preempted lucrative primetime programming (which they didn't do), and it made it harder for print reporters to make early newspaper deadlines - which forced some outlets to run shorter stories than they might have otherwise[...]

 

Alexander allowed each member to ask five minutes of questions. He permitted just one round of questioning, compared to the three rounds that Rex Tillerson and Jeff Sessions faced last week. Most committees also give members 10 minutes per round, not five.

[bmags]

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/us/po...=0&referer=

 

Perry thought the department of energy was the department of the interior when he accepted the job. Because of course he did.

[Balta1701]

Yeah so apparently Rick Perry accepted the Secretary of Energy job without knowing that it didn't deal with Oil and Gas. Like anyone didn't expect that.

[bmags]

Jinx!

[StrangeSox]

Ahahaha how is this possible? How can this administration already be the most incompetent in history before it is even in office?

[StrangeSox]

Oh and the GOP is approaching Democrats to pull their assess out of the Repeal fire.

 

https://twitter.com/TPM/status/821861984253...src=twsrc%5Etfw

[Balta1701]

There are way too many positions in an administration that require senate confirmation. This goes back to the 9/11 commission - they strongly suggested that there needed to be fewer positions requiring confirmation because the time it takes for the Senate to confirm deputies to undersecretaries makes it difficult for the government to conduct ordinary business - things like compiling intelligence related to large terrorist attacks. The Congress refused to give up that power despite that recommendation.

 

Anyway...yeah we won't have a functioning government next Monday. Hopefully no major attacks are being planned in the next couple months.

NSC is ahead of the curve for this administration. Look at the big four departments. There's no Trump appointee for any of the top State Department jobs below secretary nominee Rex Tillerson. No Trump appointee for any of the top Department of Defense jobs below retired general James Mattis. Treasury? Same story. Justice? It is one of two departments (along with, bizarrely, Commerce) where Trump has selected a deputy secretary. But no solicitor general, no one at civil rights, no one in the civil division, no one for the national security division.

 

And the same is true in department after department. Not to mention agencies without anyone at all nominated by the president-elect.

 

Overall, out of 690 positions requiring Senate confirmation tracked by the Washington Post and Partnership for Public Service, Trump has come up with only 28 people so far.

 

The Atlantic's Russell Berman had a good story two weeks ago about how far behind Trump was. Since then? If anything, it's getting worse -- he's added only two of those 28 since Jan. 5. As Berman reported, the Partnership for Public Service suggested a president should have "100 Senate-confirmed appointees in place on or around Inauguration Day." At this pace, he won't have 100 nominees by the end of February, let alone having them confirmed and hard at work.

Bloomberg

[BigSqwert]

Is it too late for him to change his slogan to Making America Pathetic?

[caulfield12]

Is it too late for him to change his slogan to Making America Pathetic?

 

M.A.P. sounds like there is actually a cohesive plan or strategy in place other than firing off tweets.

Edited January 19, 2017 by caulfield12

[NorthSideSox72]

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/us/po...=0&referer=

 

Perry thought the department of energy was the department of the interior when he accepted the job. Because of course he did.

 

 

Yeah so apparently Rick Perry accepted the Secretary of Energy job without knowing that it didn't deal with Oil and Gas. Like anyone didn't expect that.

 

I said this on social media, and maybe even in here, the moment he was announced for it. I was sure that Perry, nor Trump, knew that Energy's main thing is atomic energy and running the national labs (Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, etc.). Trump nominated Rick Perry to run that. Frightening.

 

[bmags]

I said this on social media, and maybe even in here, the moment he was announced for it. I was sure that Perry, nor Trump, knew that Energy's main thing is atomic energy and running the national labs (Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, etc.). Trump nominated Rick Perry to run that. Frightening.

 

The only silver lining here, is Perry seems to now be the only of Trump's nominees aside from Gen Mattis to be actively trying to learn what the department does and how to run it. He's been an executive, so as long as he can get a team that knows what they are doing it could be fine. I have more confidence in that then something like the EPA, where actively undermining it seems to be goal #1. Or Education. Or whatever giveaways Mnuchin is going to give.

[StrangeSox]

‘He Has This Deep Fear That He Is Not a Legitimate President’

On the eve of the inauguration, Trump’s biographers ponder his refusal to bend his ego to his new office.

 

Michael Kruse: The last time we talked, we were in the immediate aftermath of the shock of November 8, and now we are days away from the swearing in of Donald Trump as the president of the United States. Has the transition over these last two months gone better than you’ve expected, or worse?

 

Gwenda Blair: I think it’s gone exactly as I expected. It seems like the exact same M.O. that we saw throughout his career, throughout the campaign, and now. This is all about him completely dominating the news cycles—the use of Twitter to distract from any real questions, emphasis on loyalty, vituperation toward anyone he sees who is disloyal or doesn’t toe his line, and his emphasis on conflict, the notion of setting people against each other. Now it’s countries against each other. It’s news organizations against each other.

 

Kruse: Michael, in your book, and other places, too, he has talked about how much he enjoys fighting. And he certainly fought a lot of people throughout the campaign, and he hasn’t stopped fighting. From Meryl Streep to the intelligence community, he’s still picking fights. Do you think he is going to pick fights with leaders of other countries? In other words, is there any indication that he would be able to separate the interests of the country now from his own personal pique?

 

Blair: Zero.

 

O’Brien: Absolutely not. There will be no divide there. The whole thing has been a vanity show from the second he ran to the Republican Convention. I think we can expect to see the same on Inauguration Day. He’s been unable to find a clean division between his own emotional needs and his own insecurities and simply being a healthy, strategically committed leader who wants to parse through good policy options and a wide series of public statements about the direction in which he’ll take the country.

 

Blair: There’s a fusion, I think, of his childhood, an emphasis on being combative, being killers—as his dad famously instructed his boys to be—but also, I think, his own competitive nature, and then his grasp in early adulthood that being a bully and really putting it to other people and not backing down often works. He also had his church background telling him that being a success was the most important thing and that got fused with the sort of ‘You want a crowd to show up, start a fight,’ P.T. Barnum-type thing early on in his career. And then Roy Cohn as a mentor, a guy who stood for cold-eye calculus about how bullying people works. And you put all of those pieces together, that he’s been doing this his whole life, and I don’t see a single reason for him to back down. He’s going to go full blast ahead with that.

 

O’Brien: His father and Roy Cohn, those are the two most singular influences on his whole life, and they provided him with a militarized, transactional view of human relationships, business dealings and the law. And he’s going to carry all of that stuff and all of that baggage with him into the White House.

 

Blair: I wanted to go back to one of the words that Michael used, which was “gaming the system,” which is so much a part of his dad’s—what Fred Trump did, what Donald has done. Looking for the loophole, pushing it as wide as possible, going through it. Donald did it through his whole career. His dad did it through his whole career with his use of federal subsidies and tax abatements. And now we’re seeing that he’s gaming the White House. He’s gaming, looking for the loopholes. The president is exempt from these conflict of interest laws. There’s an awful lot, it turns out, that are matters of tradition, of habit, of what we expect. But they’re not actually legally required—the tax returns, all of that. He’s gaming all of that. All of the things that people thought had to be done, don’t have to be done.

 

D’Antonio: I think Donald Trump measures himself by the number of norms that he can violate. The more he can get away with, the more he can thumb his nose at convention, the more powerful he feels.

 

O’Brien: He’s a profoundly anti-institutional person, and I think that’s part of his great appeal to voters. Voters right now are sick of institutions, and he’s got no problem railing against them. I think the danger here is he’s completely ill-informed and lacks, I think, the generosity of public spirit to think about what the right replacements should be for the same institutions that he’s railing against.

 

much more at the link

Edited January 19, 2017 by StrangeSox

[BigSqwert]

Approval rating for GWB after Katrina was 43.7%

 

Trump's approval rating before inauguration is 40%

Edited January 19, 2017 by BigSqwert

[MexSoxFan#1]

You don't need to be a political genius to see that Trump's presidency will be one of constant conflict (inside and out) and complete and thorough incompetence.

 

He might just still completely destroy the GOP after his tenure...but then again, it's 'Muricans we're talking about. Hard headed and ignorant as hell.

[bmags]

Unsure how tweet with video will work out but this is legitimately very funny:

Perry to @alfranken: "I hope you are as much fun on that dais as you were on your couch."

Franken: "Well..."

Perry: "May I rephrase that?" pic.twitter.com/jlx0lztfRL

— POLITICO (@politico) January 19, 2017

<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8">

[bmags]

So far everything I've read from Mnuchin's answers is he is sane and fine and I'd prefer Dems fight against DeVos, Sessions and Tillerson

[Brian]

So far everything I've read from Mnuchin's answers is he is sane and fine and I'd prefer Dems fight against DeVos, Sessions and Tillerson

 

Sam Bee says he is John Oliver's evil twin

[StrangeSox]

They don't care that we won't have a functional federal government after 12:15PM tomorrow because they're going to burn the whole thing down anyway.

 

The departments of Commerce and Energy would see major reductions in funding, with programs under their jurisdiction either being eliminated or transferred to other agencies. The departments of Transportation, Justice and State would see significant cuts and program eliminations.

 

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting would be privatized, while the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities would be eliminated entirely.

 

Overall, the blueprint being used by Trump’s team would reduce federal spending by $10.5 trillion over 10 years.

 

The proposed cuts hew closely to a blueprint published last year by the conservative Heritage Foundation, a think tank that has helped staff the Trump transition.

 

Great plans for the Department of Justice

 

At the Department of Justice, the blueprint calls for eliminating the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, Violence Against Women Grants and the Legal Services Corporation and for reducing funding for its Civil Rights and its Environment and Natural Resources divisions.

 

Nothing good at Energy or State, either:

 

At the Department of Energy, it would roll back funding for nuclear physics and advanced scientific computing research to 2008 levels, eliminate the Office of Electricity, eliminate the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and scrap the Office of Fossil Energy, which focuses on technologies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

 

Under the State Department’s jurisdiction, funding for the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the Paris Climate Change Agreement and the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are candidates for elimination.

 

It's great that our electoral system is structured such that one party can have the power to implement a radical right-wing agenda and staff the courts with radical right-wingers despite receiving millions of fewer votes for both the Presidency and the Senate. We'll be suffering from the results of this election for at least a generation.

Edited January 19, 2017 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

Oh and Republicans are also laying the groundwork to give away hundreds of millions of acres of public federal lands for pennies on the dollar.

 

In the midst of highly publicized steps to dismantle insurance coverage for 32 million people and defund women’s healthcare facilities, Republican lawmakers have quietly laid the foundation to give away Americans’ birthright: 640m acres of national land. In a single line of changes to the rules for the House of Representatives, Republicans have overwritten the value of federal lands, easing the path to disposing of federal property even if doing so loses money for the government and provides no demonstrable compensation to American citizens.

 

I honestly cannot comprehend what gets people to support this sort of ideology.

[illinilaw08]

Oh and Republicans are also laying the groundwork to give away hundreds of millions of acres of public federal lands for pennies on the dollar.

 

 

 

I honestly cannot comprehend what gets people to support this sort of ideology.

 

Yep. I understand the ideology that says "return the land to the states" or "allow industry on the federal lands." Both of those are (potentially) productive uses of the land (I disagree with both of those ideologies, but I can understand the arguments). But government giving away assets to private individuals or industry for pennies on the dollar provides no benefit to taxpayers, and no benefit to the federal government.

[Steve9347]

http://www.vox.com/first-person/2017/1/18/...ump-vote-regret

F*ck this idiot.

[StrangeSox]

Kevin Drum took a quick look at the budget. The budget reportedly "hews closely" to a recent Heritage Foundation proposal, and this is essentially what it boils down to:

 

 

Medicaid: No details. There will be a spending cap, and all mandatory spending will somehow be cut to fit.

 

Medicare: Increase eligibility age, add a "temporary" premium for Part A, increase premiums for Parts B and D, phase out subsidies for seniors with "significant" income, "reform" cost-sharing arrangements, transition to vouchers premium support starting in 2021.

 

Domestic Discretionary: Magic spending cap.

 

Social Security: Increase retirement age, index retirement age so it keeps going up, reduce benefits by adopting chained CPI for inflation adjustments, and "transition the payment to a flat, anti-poverty benefit focused on individuals who need it most," whatever that means.

 

Destroy our entire social safety net, destroy a huge chunk of domestic spending, and leave military spending almost 100% intact.

[Quin]

Perry actually didn't sound half bad in his hearing.

[Soxbadger]

Perry actually didn't sound half bad in his hearing.

 

Well usually people dont "put themselves out of business", so I have feeling Perry may quickly become the champion of the department of energy. It may be an unintended consequence.

[Balta1701]

Yeah so apparently Rick Perry accepted the Secretary of Energy job without knowing that it didn't deal with Oil and Gas. Like anyone didn't expect that.

For full disclosure, a number of outsiders are calling out the NYT on the sourcing on this one as there is only one named source in the article and he disputes the Times's characterization. However, they have replied that they have multiple sources who said the same thing and stand by the story. In the article itself they did not clearly credit the claim of him thinking it would focus on oil and gas to anyone, including the typical statement that anonymous sources stated it, it was just put out in the first 2 paragraphs, so some confusion due to the way it was written is absolutely justified.