Trump's Nominees

Below is introduction to Betsy (Prince) DeVos, Trump's nominee for Secretary of Education. My two sons attended secular-private, RC-private, public, and a charter school in Michigan. My biggest concerns with charters in Michigan are

over-reliance on market forces for accountability,
the predominance of for-profits esp in Detroit,
lack of support for language & speech and other special needs, and
lack of guidance to choosing schools, programs, and courses.

With regard to latter, both my sons earned associate degrees as part of their HS diplomas at a charter hosted by a community college with deep ties to the public system, but without parental guidance or unusual self-motivation, the default could easily be a nothing-burger certificate. I think this program could really help low income kids get good trade jobs or to transfer upon HS graduation to 4-year colleges as sophomores or juniors--IF they choose their programs wisely. (With regard to transfers, it took recent intervention by Governor's office to force our public universities to admit the charter kids' college credits without prejudice.)

The RC schools are known for guiding immigrant kids to college, but with shrinking numbers of Catholic families in inner cities, church-supported schools reluctantly have had to withdraw from inner cities, e.g., Detroit, abandoning their non-Catholic students, a number of whom were subsidized wholly or in part by the Church. (Certainly far less than we paid for our kids' Catholic educations in our prosperous town!) It's too bad, as I'm sure the RCs would do better by inner-city kids of any faith (or none) than some of the charters that replaced them.

Anyway, if Senate approves the DeVos nomination, the US will no doubt see as many charter schools as she can push--hopefully, free of the shortcomings we see here in MI.

... (The DeVos's) constant push has totally remade Michigan education. The cap on the number of charter schools eliminated and attempts to provide public oversight have been defeated, making Michigan’s charters among the most-plentiful and least-regulated in the nation. About 80 percent of Michigan’s 300 publicly funded charters are operated by for-profit companies, more than any other state. This means that taxpayer dollars that would otherwise go to traditional public schools are instead used to buy supplies such as textbooks and desks that become private property. It is, essentially, a giant experiment in what happens when you shift resources away from public schools.

And while a state constitutional amendment legalizing public funding for religious schools is unlikely to win public support anytime soon, charters have had much the same impact. While a charter school cannot be religiously affiliated, many walk a fine line, appointing, for instance, a preacher as head of the school board or renting school space from a church...

For students, the results of the Michigan charter boom have been mixed. Most charters perform below the state’s averages on tests, even while their enrollment has grown to include more than 110,000 students, nearly half of whom live in the Detroit area. A 2013 Stanford study that compared Detroit’s charters with its traditional public schools found that the charter students gained the equivalent of more than three months’ learning per year more than their counterparts at traditional public schools. But that doesn’t mean they’re performing at a high level, simply that by some measures, certain charters marginally outperform the historically challenged Detroit public schools.

Whatever the quality outcome, the political lesson isn’t lost. The DeVoses have transplanted their organizational model to other states—New Jersey, Ohio, Louisiana, Virginia, Wisconsin, among them...

As secretary, it’s likely DeVos will pursue a national expansion of school choice and charters. In this, DeVos has an ally in President-elect Trump. “There's no failed policy more in need of urgent change than our government-run education monopoly,” Trump said in a September 8 speech. “It is time to break up that monopoly.” In that speech, Trump proposed a $20-billion block grant program to fund national vouchers administered at the state level. “Parents will be able to send their kids to the desired public, private or religious school of their choice,” Trump said...

It’s one thing to be an advocate and quite another to be a policymaker in a realm where you have little professional training or personal experience—a charge that DeVos’ opponents are quick to lob. If confirmed by the Senate, DeVos would be the first secretary of education in at least 30 years without any experience as a government official, school administrator or teacher.

Julie Matuzak, the DeVoses’ foe from the 2000 voucher fight, disagrees strongly with DeVos’ appointment, but concedes the couple has good intentions. “I do believe they have a deep-seated belief in quality education for all children,” says Matuzak. “They see it as a continuum of public education that includes everything—private schools, parochial schools, charters, public schools. But they believe in the market force as the rule of the universe.”

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/betsy-dick-devos-family-amway-mic...

I worked at a charter school in Texas for 4 years. Pluses: more freedom to teach the way the teacher wants. This particular school targeted low-income students. High school offered college courses. A lot of STEM activities. Negative: Very low pay (I got a $17,000/year pay increase where I am now); huge teacher turnover. Teachers could be fired on the spot (witnessed it first hand); a LOT of nepotism; it seemed to be becoming administration-heavy. I wasn't fired, but my contract was not renewed due to "budget cuts". My position was replaced with paraprofessionals (to be fair, this often happens to librarians in public schools as well). Because this school targeted low-income students, behavior problems abounded...when hired, I was led to believe that behavior problems were taken care of, they had high standards, parents were contractually obligated to hold their kids to the standards, parents were contractually obligated to volunteer. I found none of those things were true (worst behaved kids I ever had). They seldom expelled students because they would lose state money if they did. At one time, they had a good enough reputation that they had a waiting list, but I don't think that's true any longer.

If charter schools are not held as accountable as traditional public schools, what's the point?

An acquaintance of mine worked at another charter, and had similar and even more horrendous stories.

Needless to say, I'm not a huge fan of charter schools. (And again, to be fair, I never really bought into it while working there).

So no, de Vos is not a good choice. But then, it seems this entire administration will be made up of business people rather than professionals.

There's no education like an Amway education. (Now with optional Blackwater Academi track for the best and brightest!)
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/01/betsy-devos-christian-schools-vouche...

It should go without saying that my contempt for this nomination knows no bounds.

In the interests of opposition research, see the following for a less restrained and edited take, broadly in line with Politico's (>1 margd: above) and Mother Jones' reporting. This is from talk2action, a specialized anti-"Dominionist" outlet sometimes given to hysteria (therefore best mined for information rather than taken straight):
http://web.archive.org/web/20150128010450/http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/...
-- talk2action.org seems to be down right now (hmm...), otherwise they'd probably have some up-to-date material on the DeVoses. But at least there's the Wayback Machine link.

ETA: Yeah, here we go: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:talk2action.org
But it looks like they just resurrected the same old 2011 piece as I did. Oh well. (That piece also links to another old talk2action four-part family profile, from when Betsy's husband Dick Devos was running for MI Governor)

ETA: And see one more old talk2action piece:
"DeVos Wages War On Public Education, But Meet His Brother In Law..."
http://web.archive.org/web/20161103231310/http://www.talk2action.org/story/2007/...

Also cf. this from National Jewish Democratic Council: http://njdc.typepad.com/njdcs_blog/2006/10/michigan_dick_d_1.html

The truly (overly?) interested might also seek out the writings of one "dogemperor" (on DailyKos and, as I recall, FireDogLake) which, while polemical and often hysterical, sometimes provide good leads. (Take care you don't start seeing Dominionists under the bed by the time you're through, though -- this author clearly does. NB: The signal-to-noise ratio here is poor.) See: https://www.google.com/search?q=dogemperor+devos&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8.
e.g. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/7/23/361219/-

And finally, cf. Merchants of Deception and False Profits regarding Amway and MLM more generally. (Anecdotally: I once attempted to use the latter, along with its website, to enlighten a couple of neighbors at an office space I used to have (roofers, to whom I also sold a bunch of Horatio Alger books) who tried to hook me into some MLM scheme selling -- if I recall correctly -- massively overpriced goji açai berry juice blends. It pains me to watch people fall for nonsense. I had no luck, but at least I tried!)
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Meanwhile, Mark Ames tweets:
https://twitter.com/MarkAmesExiled/status/821464259645345793
"It was when DeVos pushed "Right To Work" law in Michigan that I discovered Vance Muse and RTW's racist origins"
https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/right-to-work/
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For all that, the crowning irony is that Grand Rapids (the city that Amway built) is a boomtown these days. Holland, too, to a less pronounced degree -- or perhaps merely less noticeably for its smaller size. (Surely God has poured out His blessings upon His chosen!)
http://www.bestplaces.net/economy/city/michigan/grand_rapids
http://www.bestplaces.net/economy/city/michigan/holland

Well you can't say Trump doesn't appreciate irony, by nominating Perry.

"Nationally, Rick Perry is best known for his failed presidential attempts and his uttering "oops" during the 2011 debates when he forgot that the Department of Energy was one he pledged to eliminate."

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2017/01/19/energy-secretary-nominee-rick-...

Eliot fucking Abrams.

https://www.thenation.com/article/an-actual-american-war-criminal-may-become-our...

>5 davidgn: Yeah, it makes the whining anti-critics of US foreign policy appear vestigial, faint, puffs of inert gas.

>5 davidgn: What an absolutely grotesque, lizard brained thug with less sympathy than imprisioned diagnosed psychopaths.

Trump’s F.D.A. Pick Could Undo Decades of Drug Safeguards

...Mr. Trump has been vetting candidates to run (FDA), which regulates the safety of everything from drugs and medical devices to food and cosmetics. Among them is Jim O’Neill, a former official at the Health and Human Services Department who is an associate of the Silicon Valley billionaire and Trump supporter Peter Thiel. Mr. O’Neill has argued that companies should not have to prove that their drugs work in clinical trials before selling them to consumers.

... Mr. Trump said at the meeting that he was close to naming a “fantastic” person to lead the agency. In addition to Mr. O’Neill, candidates whose names have recently surfaced include Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former F.D.A. official with longstanding ties to pharmaceutical and biotech companies, and Dr. Joseph Gulfo, a former biotech and medical device executive.

All three have called for streamlining the drug approval process, but Mr. O’Neill’s stance has drawn the most attention. He is a managing director of Mithril Capital Management, an investment firm Mr. Thiel co-founded, and previously led the Thiel Foundation, Mr. Thiel’s philanthropic organization. During the George W. Bush administration, Mr. O’Neill held a series of roles in the Health and Human Services Department, including as principal associate deputy secretary, where he worked on policy, including for the F.D.A., according to his LinkedIn profile.

Mr. O’Neill is a libertarian who is on the board of the SENS Research Foundation, a charity that funds anti-aging research, and until recently served on the board of the Seasteading Institute, an effort to create new societies at sea.

At an anti-aging conference in 2014, Mr. O’Neill advocated something he called “progressive” approval, in which drugs that were proved safe, but not yet proven effective, could be allowed on the market. “Let people start using them, at their own risk,” Mr. O’Neill said. “Let’s prove efficacy after they’ve been legalized.” ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/05/health/with-fda-vacancy-trump-sees-chance-to-...

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Trump orders two-for-one repeal for all new regulations
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/01/30/trump-orders-two--one-rep...

A rogue agency tweet noted that FDA regs are there for a reason!

>8 margd: That's just great - I mean think of all the fun the US missed out on because one lone FDA scientist insisted on following tests through to completion before giving the stamp of approval to thalidomide - if I remember correctly we were the only major nation that didn't have a population of thalidomide babies. I guess with whomever that man appoints we can look forward to all kinds of great, headline grabbing, medical mishaps - never mind quack medicine that either doesn't do what it is supposed to or comes with some real nasty side effects. The new slogan: Making Money on Manufactured Misery or maybe just Make American Moan Again.

>9 alco261: Make American Moan Again

That has such double meaning with regard to Trump.

I like Walt Hickey's take on it for the 538 Significant Digits best: "President Trump signed an executive order Monday that would require two federal regulations to be rescinded for every new federal regulation implemented. This is fantastic news, as I have been a long-standing proponent of the idea that the government that governs best is the government that governs like it was cursed by a woods witch after getting caught in her garden in a German folktale."

I have stuff to say about the FDA, but I should probably take that up on a dedicated thread.

The "2 for 1" order is a clear indication that the Trump administration has no idea what most regulations actually do.

>10 prosfilaes: double meaning was intended. :-)

Non-vetted appointees, e.g., FCC (net neutrality):

Trump’s tweets are a sideshow: His executive orders are building a corporate state
The only thing certain is that more confrontation is coming

...look at what the Federal Communications Commission just did after Trump elevated Ajit Pai, an ex-lawyer for Verizon who was in the panel’s minority of Republicans under Obama, as its new chairman. Under Pai, the FEC released a dozen directives further privatizing the internet in ways that prey on consumers.

“He stopped nine companies from providing discounted high-speed internet service to low-income individuals. He withdrew an effort to keep prison phone rates down, and he scrapped an effort to break open the cable box market,” the New York Times reported. A Wall Street industry analyst said, “The speed of the ruling and the chairman’s tone are very encouraging to internet service providers. I think it’s a down payment on cutting net neutrality, with much more to follow.”

Pai didn’t need Senate confirmation, which is the case for the thousands of federal appointees each president makes. As Matt Wood, policy director for Free Press said, “The public wants an FCC that helps people. Instead, it got one that does favors for powerful corporations that its chairman used to work for.”...

http://www.salon.com/2017/02/08/trumps-tweets-are-a-sideshow-his-executive-order...

Stephen Colbert ‏@StephenAtHome 20h20 hours ago

Elementary math under Betsy Devos
Q: Ned and Sheryl each have 4 apples. Who has more apples?
A: Whomever Mike Pence decides has more apples.

Great timing, margd: I worry a lot less about my son's global political education because of primarily Colbert and John Oliver, whom he watches greedily.

PS 1: If I recall you are not a USer. I think it's rather remarkable that you are so generous with your energy here, though I guess as an fled USer I wonder what it is like in a border country.

& 2: We had Larry Wilmore for a year and he was great, but among the top four, including Trevor Noah in there, that I know of there is Sam Bee, but we get only about two videos per week of her here.

I'm from Canada, but moved to US as young woman to work for a US-Canadian commission, which reported to State Dept. and its Canadian counterpart. Focus was on maximizing benefits for both. First entered the US on a very minor diplomatic visa (created by President Kennedy executive order one month before he died), but since I wanted to vote where I lived and had a family, eventually sought green card and US citizenship. First decade in US was full of surprises, but before I was finished, I published on some of the legal and cultural differences in the sliver of common interest that occupied my agency. Now we have a summer place in Canada, so spend warmer seasons there--one mile from border. Dual, fer sure, eh?

You no doubt will agree, Rick Harsch, that emigrants and immigrants, both, have more reason than many stay-at-homes to ponder the arrangements we humans make. Right now I wish our times weren't so quite interesting...

I do agree, yes, but especially to immigrants. As an emigrant I would say that it is likely I've given more thought to the average USAmerican to such arrangements, so it's more effect and cause. But I've been close to a lot of migration and seen the misery and folly of migrating out of 'third world' middle class and culture into the US and the precariousness of 'capitalism' and its compadre, a degraded and vanishing culture.

>14 margd: The Baffler weighs in on DeVos and DeVos Land.
https://thebaffler.com/blog/holy-warriors-against-the-welfare-state

Trump's nominee for Labor Secretary...

Trump’s Labor Pick Loves Burgers, Bikinis, and Free Markets
The business philosophy and practice of Andrew Puzder.

...Trump promised working-class voters that they would benefit from a strong Trump economy, but he rarely spoke about the biggest group of working-class voters, those in the service sector, or one of their most oft-cited concerns, raising their hourly wages. Like Trump, Puzder promotes a nostalgic vision that occludes the reality of the American permanent low-wage workforce while enjoying the profits of the complex globalized world. “There’s nothing more fulfilling than seeing new and unskilled employees work their way up to managing a restaurant,” he told a Senate committee in 2014. Fast food is an inverted funnel, though, with very few such positions at the top. To get by, workers at CKE’s restaurants rely on about $250 million a year in taxpayer-funded safety net programs, according to the National Employment Law Project.

Puzder has said he doesn’t oppose a modest increase to the minimum wage. But he told Business Insider in March 2016 that if wages were raised too high, restaurants would replace cashiers with machines. Many executives in the fast-food industry and beyond have suggested the same. Puzder went one step further. “They’re always polite,” he said of the proposed robots. “They always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there’s never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex, or race discrimination case.”

Assuming Puzder does get confirmed, what could he actually do to enact his economic ideals? He could narrow the recently widened definition of who’s an employee in “gig economy” companies—Uber, for example—and who’s an independent contractor. That’s important because company employees are covered by federal labor laws, while independent contractors aren’t. He could limit three guest worker programs, including the H-1B visas for high-skilled employees that Silicon Valley in particular depends on. Judging from his record at CKE, he’d likely push back on attempts to hold companies equally responsible with their franchisees for labor violations. And even if a Puzder Labor Department doesn’t formally eliminate some of the 180 laws and thousands of regulations it oversees that affect 125 million people, it could accomplish more or less the same thing by simply not enforcing them. The department is also home to the bureau that releases the monthly employment numbers, statistics that Trump formerly derided as “phony.” But as of the latest release showing the creation of 227,000 jobs in January, he now says they’re “great.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-02-09/trump-s-labor-pick-loves-burg...

#19--I think an argument can be made that many voted for Trump at least in part because of their own personal dire economic straits that Obama's 8 years did almost nothing to correct. The generated wealth of the nation continues to go to the top 1%. For some people that turns into resentment against Asians stealing 'our manufacturing' or Mexicans crossing the border taking 'our jobs'--which misplaces where the real blame should be which is an economic system that has been built to systematically create the outcomes that we've been seeing pretty much since the Reagan years. And Mr. Puzder is another example of more of the same and Mr. Trump is not going to fundamentally change things for the better--if anything the greater likelihood is that four years from now he will braying that the economy is in great shape and it will be more about how well the mega-rich oligarchs and the investor class are doing while ignoring the bulk 99% of the population. You can tell a lot about what a president will do just by the cabinet choices they make. Mr. Trump has made some truly awful ones.

Interestingly Trump has come out with another McCain is a loser tirade. Not that it's not true mind you but if McCain and his good buddy Graham decided say to sabotage one (or two) of Trump's cabinet choices he/they could have the last laugh.

Our new Secretary of Health and Human Services...

Tom Price, Dr. Personal Enrichment

...it’s clear that orthopedics suffers from a professional culture that does not live up to medicine’s highest ideals. Too many orthopedists are rich and think it’s an injustice that they’re not richer.

This culture helped shape Dr. Tom Price, the orthopedic surgeon and Georgia congressman who is Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of health and human services.

Price had a thriving practice near Atlanta before being elected to Congress in 2004. His estimated net worth of more than $10 million (and possibly a lot more) makes him one of the House’s wealthier members.

Yet he hasn’t been content to make money in the standard ways. He has also pushed, and crossed, ethical boundaries. Again and again, Price has mingled his power as a congressman with his desire to make money.

So far, the nominee receiving the most attention is Betsy DeVos, Trump’s choice for education secretary, and she definitely deserves scrutiny. Still, I think Democrats have made a mistake focusing so much on her rather than on Price. He could do more damage — and his transgressions are worse than those that have defeated prior nominees...

Price has put the interests of drug companies above those of taxpayers and patients — and invested in those drug companies on the side...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/07/opinion/tom-price-dr-personal-enrichment.html...

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HHS pick Tom Price made ‘brazen’ stock trades while his committee was under scrutiny
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/hhs-pick-tom-price-made-brazen-stock-trades-...

Satire. (Chris Floyd has always been underrated.)

Blood Will Tell: Trump and Sessions Strike Historic Blow for Civil Rights
http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/02/10/blood-will-tell-trump-and-sessions-strike...

President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order today overturning the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, saying former President Abraham Lincoln’s action had been “hugely unfair” to Southern property owners.

“Free enterprise more important than political correctness!” Mr. Trump tweeted immediately after signing the executive order. “Beanpole Abe should know better! Sad!”

After Mr. Trump’s phone was gently prised from his hand by recently named Chief Operating Officer and Grand Vizier of the United States of America and All Its Dominions (Present and Future), Steve Bannon, the President read a prepared statement announcing the formation of a new Reparations Committee to “deal with the gross injustices arising from the abuse of federal power during the War for States’ Rights.”
...

Abrams is out. The spin is that Trump must have come across one of Abrams' old pieces dissing him. That's a convenient notion for some, but I don't really buy it. Really, I'm more inclined to view the question through the lens of section III in this post. In any event, I'm not shedding any tears over this one.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/10/politics/elliott-abrams-trump-state-department-til...

On a lighter note (though US ambassador has high profile in Canada--hosts a fun 4th of July party, I understand):

Sarah Palin touted as US ambassador to Canada? You betcha!
Canadians have expressed dismay on social media after the White House press secretary refused to rule out the ex-Alaska governor as our woman in Ottawa
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/08/sarah-palin-touted-as-us-ambassa...

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Doug Youmans ‏@dippedbanana Feb 8
Dear Mr. Trump: Rather than appoint Sarah Palin as ambassador to Canada, please bomb us. Signed, all intelligent life in Canada. #killmenow

Looks like the Senate Republicans have finally found a nominee they can't stomach, and it's the Carl Jr.'s guy. http://linkis.com/www.politico.com/sto/QkTx3

Trump’s Public Humiliation

...retired Vice Adm. Robert Harward—his first choice to replace Michael Flynn as national security adviser—told the president he’d have to think about the offer. It must have been a double shock when, a few days later, Harward turned him down flat.

...it is very unusual—almost unheard of—for a senior military officer, retired or otherwise, to turn down a request from the commander-in-chief.

...by rejecting the offer Harward has provided cover to other officers, and to civilian national-security analysts with a similar sense of patriotic duty, to turn down this president, too.

...Harward turned down the offer in part because Trump wouldn’t let him fire several officials that Flynn had hired for his staff and install his own team instead. This suggests that Trump is adamant on keeping certain people loyal to him—including Deputy National Security Adviser K.T. McFarland, a former Fox News commentator who Trump admired. The news reports don’t mention whether Harward made demands about Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief political strategist, who wrote the executive order that placed himself on the NSC Principals Committee and has created a parallel NSC structure called the Strategic Initiatives Group, comprised of a few extreme right-wing associates. But any serious person would insist on the dismantling of this weird group as another condition for taking the job.

...The Post reported that Harward was also reluctant to accept the offer for financial reasons, worried that leaving his job as a senior executive at Lockheed Martin would hurt his family.

...CNN quoted one of Harward’s friends saying that, in mulling over the decision, he was persuaded most of all by the sheer dysfunction of Trump’s presidency, describing the job he was offered as “a shit sandwich.”...

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2017/02/robert_harwa...
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Petraeus Says National Security Adviser Should Hire Own Staff
Wall Street Journal (subscription)-Feb 17, 2017
MUNICH—Former CIA director David Petraeus said anyone considering the national security adviser job in the Trump administration should ...

Reports: Petraeus off the list, Trump down to three candidates to ...
The Hill (blog)-15 hours ago

Mr Harward basically turned down an offer to contract bubonic plague.

Trump team building a wall inside National Security Council
There are fears of an even more insular decision-making process than reigned during the Obama administration.

...On Thursday (2/2/2017?), Flynn announced he has hired four top new deputies, all holding the title of deputy assistant to the president and responsible for broad portfolios — from economics to regional affairs and strategic planning.

"You will not have the experts in the room when the principals are having these discussions," worries one NSC veteran who has heard complaints from White House officials this week. The person, like others, agreed to speak on condition of anonymity.

"They are not being used," added another source with direct knowledge of the developments, who similarly expressed concern that the Trump team is "doubling down on cutting out the professional experts."

"They have been emasculated and have no authority," the source added. "But they are still getting hammered by agencies and allies and don't know what to tell them. … Many are heading for the exits."

The concerns come after Trump granted his political strategist, Steve Bannon, who is separately constructing his own power center inside the West Wing, membership on the highest rung of the National Security Council, traditionally reserved for Cabinet chiefs. Permitting a political operative to participate in the high-level meetings was seen by many as a dangerous break with tradition and prompted at least one member of Congress to recommend that the 1947 law that created the body be changed....

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/trump-national-security-234526

The Pruitt Emails: E.P.A. Chief Was Arm in Arm With Industry

As Oklahoma’s attorney general, Scott Pruitt, now the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, closely coordinated with major oil and gas producers, electric utilities and political groups with ties to the libertarian billionaire brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch to roll back environmental regulations, according to over 6,000 pages of emails made public on Wednesday.

The publication of the correspondence comes just days after Mr. Pruitt was sworn in to run the E.P.A., which is charged with reining in pollution and regulating public health. Senate Democrats tried last week to postpone a final vote until the emails could be made public, but Republicans beat back the delay and approved his confirmation on Friday largely along party lines.

The impolitic tone of many of the emails cast light on why Republicans were so eager to beat the release. And although the contents of the emails were broadly revealed in The New York Times in 2014, the totality of the correspondences captures just how much at war Mr. Pruitt was with the E.P.A. and how cozy he was with the industries that he is now charged with policing...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/22/us/politics/scott-pruitt-environmental-protec...

>30 margd: When will the hypocrisy of the Republican party become overwhelming enough to arouse anger that will make itself felt at the voting booth? I'm hoping we are finally experiencing the last straw, based on the huge number of angry town halls that Republicans are facing. Most people, contrary to Republican belief, like clean water and air (as well as health insurance). Most people love their children and want them to have a viable future.

DeVos resists, softens bathroom rules:

Trump Rescinds Rules on Bathrooms for Transgender Students

...Ms. DeVos initially resisted signing off and told Mr. Trump that she was uncomfortable because of the potential harm that rescinding the protections could cause transgender students, according to three Republicans with direct knowledge of the internal discussions.

Mr. Sessions, who has opposed expanding gay, lesbian and transgender rights, pushed Ms. DeVos to relent. After getting nowhere, he took his objections to the White House because he could not go forward without her consent. Mr. Trump sided with his attorney general, the Republicans said, and told Ms. DeVos in a meeting in the Oval Office on Tuesday that he wanted her to drop her opposition. And Ms. DeVos, faced with the alternative of resigning or defying the president, agreed to go along.

Ms. DeVos’s unease was evident in a strongly worded statement she released on Wednesday night, in which she said she considered it a “moral obligation” for every school in America to protect all students from discrimination, bullying and harassment...

Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues became a point of attack for opponents of Ms. DeVos’s nomination last month, as Democrats questioned her about the extensive financial support that some of her relatives — part of her wealthy and politically active Michigan family — had provided to anti-gay causes. Ms. DeVos distanced herself from her relatives on the issue, saying their political activities did not represent her views.

While Wednesday’s order significantly rolls back transgender protections, it does include language stating that schools must protect transgender students from bullying, a provision Ms. DeVos asked for, one person with direct knowledge of the process said.

“All schools must ensure that students, including L.G.B.T. students, are able to learn and thrive in a safe environment,” the letter said, echoing Ms. DeVos’s comments at her confirmation hearing but not expressly using the word transgender. Ms. DeVos, who has been quietly supportive of gay rights for years, was said to have voiced her concern about the high rates of suicide among transgender students. In one 2016 study by the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, for instance, 30 percent reported a history of at least one suicide attempt...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/22/us/politics/devos-sessions-transgender-studen...

#it's always someone else's fault? Media, Obama, staff...

Trump blames staff for Sessions brouhaha overshadowing his speech. (Whuh? Don't blame Sessions for perjury, except maybe for recusing himself quickly rather than waiting? At this point, recusing quickly was HIS best move, IMO! Though he won't be able to block Russian investigation?)

Bannon's star rises, while Priebus is (once again?) in doghouse?

Trump angry and frustrated at staff over Sessions fallout
http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/04/politics/donald-trump-jeff-sessions-reince-priebus...
______________________________________________

@jdawsey1 13h13 hours ago
White House official says they are "being careful" in comments on Trump's tweets. I asked if president's tweets were "careful." No response.

______________________________________________

@NickKristof
Journalists know: When leaders go berserk, furiously denying there's anything going on, blaming others--that's when you're getting close.

Meet the Hundreds of Officials Trump Has Quietly Installed Across the Government
We have obtained a list of more than 400 Trump administration hires, including dozens of lobbyists and some from far-right media.

A Trump campaign aide who argues that Democrats committed “ethnic cleansing” in a plot to “liquidate” the white working class. A former reality show contestant whose study of societal collapse inspired him to invent a bow-and-arrow-cum-survivalist multi-tool. A pair of healthcare industry lobbyists. A lobbyist for defense contractors. An “evangelist” and lobbyist for Palantir, the Silicon Valley company with close ties to intelligence agencies. And a New Hampshire Trump supporter who has only recently graduated from high school...

https://www.propublica.org/article/meet-hundreds-of-officials-trump-has-quietly-...

Sonny Perdue's nomination as Agriculture Secretary seems stalled.

But his business partner, Heidi Green, is already at her desk as Senior Advisor. See the list at >34 margd:.

Wow--surely, as a (high-ranking!) military retiree, Flynn will be prosecuted for lobbying for a foreign country without permission??
Because intent and direct contact with Turkey, that's far worse than Petraeus's lapse in sharing classified info with his lady friend, surely?

Dare we hope that Tillerson could be a good Secretary of State--or as good as is possible in current administration?

Tillerson Recuses Himself From Keystone XL Pipeline Review

Secretary of State was vocal Keystone advocate as Exxon CEO
Trump issued order overturning Obama’s rejection of Keystone

U.S Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has recused himself from State Department deliberations on granting a permit to TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL pipeline, heading off conflict-of-interest concerns over a project he praised when he was chief of Exxon Mobil Corp...He has “committed to full compliance with his ethics obligations”...The State Department didn’t say why it hadn’t announced Tillerson’s recusal when it happened...

https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-03-10/tillerson-recuses-himself...

ETA: I guess we dare not get our hopes up:
American Diplomats’ Comfort With Tillerson Gives Way to Unease
https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-03-10/relief-over-tillerson-fad...

Half my salary came from State Dept, and though I wasn't personally affected, State Dept tended to slash budgets in the worst way possible, e.g. clawbacks in existing budget just before field season. A director from Interior with a spouse in Defense observed after one sweaty readjustment session that our entire budget--not just the clawbacks we were trying to accommodate--would be rounding error in a Defense program...

>37 margd: My fear is precisely that no one will be prosecuted. In your dozens of posts since Trump's election, dozens of prosecutably offenses have been mentioned, most without real controversy. But who is calling for prosecution? That ball has to get rolling. The press has to get off its ass and do its job of holding the government to account.

(I watched All the President's Men again last night, and, first, it is even better than I recalled, but second, to my dismay, it is clearly of a different time. First, the press in general, I mean the big money press, the big papers especially, seem inured to government crimes that would have been shocking pre-Watergate while television news is many channels saying exactly the same thing plus Fox; second, the government is no longer in the least afraid of the press or the public finding out what they do.)

>39 RickHarsch: Lots of smoke, that's for sure! I have no doubt with this bunch that connections will be made, and crimes will be prosecuted. It takes time, though, for nefarious deeds to be revealed. I mean, how could Flynn's work for Turkey escape notice of Defense Dept, Trump, AND Senate??? We need vigilant press* like never before, as well as Senators & Congressmen, judges, FBI, and state attorneys general with spine... Also, citizens who remain capable of outrage.

* Trump, Russia, and the News Story That Wasn’t

LATE September was a frantic period for New York Times reporters covering the country’s secretive national security apparatus. Working sources at the F.B.I., the C.I.A., Capitol Hill and various intelligence agencies, the team chased several bizarre but provocative leads that, if true, could upend the presidential race. The most serious question raised by the material was this: Did a covert connection exist between Donald Trump and Russian officials trying to influence an American election?

One vein of reporting centered on a possible channel of communication between a Trump organization computer server and a Russian bank with ties to Vladimir Putin. Another source was offering The Times salacious material describing an odd cross-continental dance between Trump and Moscow. The most damning claim was that Trump was aware of Russia’s efforts to hack Democratic computers, an allegation with implications of treason. Reporters Eric Lichtblau and Steven Lee Myers led the effort, aided by others.

Conversations over what to publish were prolonged and lively, involving Washington and New York, and often including the executive editor, Dean Baquet. If the allegations were true, it was a huge story. If false, they could damage The Times’s reputation. With doubts about the material and with the F.B.I. discouraging publication, editors decided to hold their fire...

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/01/20/public-editor/trump-russia-fbi-liz-spayd-p...

Against all evidence EPA's Pruitt embraces alternative facts:

EPA Head Scott Pruitt Says CO2 Isn't A Primary Contributor To Global Warming. He's Wrong.

The molecular structure of carbon dioxide makes it good at trapping heat.

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has dramatically increased. So has the Earth's temperature.

Humans emit more carbon dioxide than any other greenhouse gas - and it sticks around longer.

Bottom line: Climate change is complicated. Its causes aren't.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2017/03/09/epa-head-scott-pruitt-says-co2...

ETA:
Scott Pruitt’s office deluged with angry callers after he questions the science of global warming
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/03/10/epa-adminis...

Scott Pruitt denies basic climate science. But most of the outrage is missing the point.

...Predictably, Pruitt’s comments were met with an outpouring of sciencesplaining. Article after article after article patiently walked through the evidence that, #actually, climate change is real and caused by human beings.

I suppose there might be some readers out there who have never been exposed to that evidence, though it has been available for decades and is always an easy Google search away. But there is zero chance Pruitt hasn’t been exposed to it. Clearly the facts have not swayed him.

Indeed, the climate fight has long since moved past the stage when it was about the facts...

http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/3/10/14871696/scott-pruitt-climate-de...

Here’s What We Know About Trump’s FDA Head Nominee
Early tests for Scott Gottlieb, who was named to the post on Friday, will include a pair of bills immediately slated for congressional review

...Scott Gottlieb, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for FDA commissioner, has strong conservative credentials and a close relationship with the pharmaceutical industry. But there is no sign that Gottlieb, a doctor, former deputy commissioner at the agency and a partner at a large venture capital fund, truly hopes to return the FDA to the norms of half a century ago—an approach floated by Jim O’Neill, who had earlier been seen as Trump’s other top candidate for the position...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/heres-what-we-know-about-trumps-fda-h...

Defense Secretary Mattis withdraws Patterson as choice for undersecretary for policy

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has withdrawn retired senior diplomat Anne W. Patterson as his choice for undersecretary for policy after the White House indicated unwillingness to fight what it said would be a battle for Senate confirmation.

...it was primarily her service in Egypt, as the public face of Obama’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood-backed government of then-President Mohamed Morsi, that led to her rejection by the White House, officials said.

...Mattis’s acquiescence to her withdrawal came after he fought and won a major battle with the White House to remove Iraq from the list of Muslim-majority countries whose citizens are barred from U.S. entry under Trump’s executive order on immigration.

Although he reportedly insisted he be able to select his own team when he accepted Trump’s offer to head the department, Mattis has skirmished repeatedly with the White House over appointments....

Morsi was ousted by the Egyptian military in 2013, leading to strained relations between the Obama administration and Egypt under the installed president, Gen. Abdel Fatah al-Sissi.

Although Patterson was said to be supported by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) and was seen as likely to have garnered a majority of votes from both Republicans and Democrats, the Trump administration has voiced strong support for Sissi as a strong counterterrorism ally and largely dismissed criticism of his repression of human and civil rights...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/defense-secretary-mattis-...

Trump breaks promise to National Security Advisor on full authority over staffing, but what's new?

Trump rejects push to oust NSC aide
Bannon and Kushner prevail on the president to override his national security adviser and keep a Flynn protégé.
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/trump-national-security-mcmaster-overrule-...

Ivanka Trump set to get West Wing office as role expands
The first daughter will not, however, become a government employee, raising ethics questions.
By Annie Karni 03/20/17 05:56 PM EDT

...In everything but name, Trump is settling in as what appears to be a full-time staffer in her father’s administration, with a broad and growing portfolio — except she is not being sworn in, will hold no official position and is not pocketing a salary, her attorney said.

Trump’s role, according to her attorney Jamie Gorelick, will be to serve as the president’s “eyes and ears” while providing broad-ranging advice, not just limited to women’s empowerment issues. Last week, for instance, Trump raised eyebrows when she was seated next to Angela Merkel for the German chancellor’s first official visit to Trump’s White House.

As her role in the White House grows — a role that comes with no playbook — Trump plans to adhere to the same ethics and records retention rules that apply to government employees, Gorelick said, even though she is not technically an employee. But ethics watchdogs immediately questioned whether she is going far enough to eliminate conflicts of interest, especially because she will not be automatically subjected to certain ethics rules while serving as a de facto White House adviser...

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/ivanka-trump-white-house-236273

__________________________________________

ETA: (Since JFK, regs prevent direct hire of near relative? Even if not, Rs would have screamed alright.)

@altNOAA

If Hillary had won, and Chelsea got an office in the WH without taking an "official" job, would @jasoninthehouse launch an investigation?

___ YES

___ YES

________________________________________

ETA:

Nov 16, 2016
@realDonaldTrump
I am not trying to get "top level security clearance" for my children. This was a typically false news story.

March 21, 2017
Ivanka Trump to get top security clearance and office, WH official says
http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/21/politics/ivanka-trump-west-wing/

________________________________________

March 29, 2017
Ivanka Trump is now officially an employee of the U.S. government.
The White House announced Wednesday that she will take no pay and serve as an assistant to the president...
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/ivanka-trump-named-assistant-preside...

White House installs political aides at Cabinet agencies to be Trump’s eyes and ears(!)

...Most members of President Trump’s Cabinet do not yet have leadership teams in place or even nominees for top deputies. But they do have an influential coterie of senior aides installed by the White House who are charged — above all — with monitoring the secretaries’ loyalty, according to eight officials in and outside the administration.

This shadow government of political appointees with the title of senior White House adviser is embedded at every Cabinet agency, with offices in or just outside the secretary’s suite. The White House has installed at least 16 of the advisers at departments including Energy and Health and Human Services and at some smaller agencies such as NASA, according to records first obtained by ProPublica through a Freedom of Information Act request.

These aides report not to the secretary, but to the Office of Cabinet Affairs, which is overseen by Rick Dearborn, a White House deputy chief of staff, according to administration officials. A top Dearborn aide, John Mashburn, leads a weekly conference call with the advisers, who are in constant contact with the White House...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/white-house-installs-political-aides-at...

US Labor nominee Acosta says he’ll advocate for workers

...If confirmed, he would be the first Hispanic member of Trump’s Cabinet.

Senate Democrats want to know how he would enforce worker protections in an agency the president wants cut by 20 percent, including the deletion of a training program for jobless Americans age 55 and older.

In his prepared remarks to the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Acosta did not address Democratic priorities, including a big hike in the minimum wage and tougher enforcement of federal overtime rules.

Democrats also were expected to press him on whether he can withstand political pressure from Trump. Acosta’s career was touched by a political hiring scandal when he led the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. An independent inspector general’s report said Acosta insufficiently supervised a subordinate who used political tests in hiring.

...In Acosta, President Trump nominated a 48-year-old son of Cuban immigrants who has been unanimously confirmed by the Senate three times — to the
National Labor Relations Board, to lead DOJ’s civil rights division and to become South Florida’s federal prosecutor. That means Acosta, the dean of the Florida International University Law School, has received some vetting — a fact Trump and Senate Republicans trumpeted after his first Labor nominee, Andrew Puzder, withdrew from consideration on the eve of his confirmation hearing under questions about his hiring of a housekeeper not authorized to work in the U.S. and other issues.

...In his prepared remarks, Acosta promised to enforce workplace safety laws enacted by Congress.

“As a former prosecutor, I will always be on the side of the law and not any particular constituency,” he said. Democrats say the agency’s mission means Acosta should advocate for workers first.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a member of the panel, said in a letter Tuesday that Acosta’s tenure atop Justice’s civil rights department “raises serious concerns about whether you are capable of running a large government agency independently and without undue political influence.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/us-labor-nominee-acosta-says-hell-advoca...

Tillerson reveals he didn't want to be secretary of state: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/03/tillerson-reveals-he-didnt-want-to-...

From the interview:

“I didn’t want this job. I didn’t seek this job.” He paused to let that sink in.

A beat or two passed before an aide piped up to ask him why he said yes.

“My wife told me I’m supposed to do this.”

After watching the contortions of my face as I tried to figure out what to say next, he humbly explained that he had never met the president before the election. As president-elect, Trump wanted to have a conversation with Tillerson “about the world” given what he gleaned from the complex global issues he dealt with as CEO of Exxon Mobil.

“When he asked me at the end of that conversation to be secretary of state, I was stunned.”

When Tillerson got home and told his wife, Renda St. Clair, she shook her finger in his face and said, “I told you God’s not through with you.”

With a half-worn smile, he said, “I was supposed to retire in March, this month. I was going to go to the ranch to be with my grandkids.”

>48 sturlington:

With a half-worn smile, he said, “I was supposed to retire in March, this month. I was going to go to the ranch to be with my grandkids.”

One could tear up for the guy.

Oh well.

Some run off to join the circus, some get pushed there by their wives.

I was supposed to retire in March, this month

It is not too late for him to go through with that plan.

>49 LolaWalser: 'Some run off to join the circus, some get pushed there by their wives.'

lqarl

Just saw in the Wash Post that the Dems are planning to filibuster Gorsuch. Color me flabbergasted. Didn't think they had it in 'em.

Rick Perry, Secretary of Energy, weighs in on election results—at Texas A&M:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/03/22/energy_secretary_rick_perry_we...

While I understand the rage over Garland, filibuster risks a less-than-moderate court for decades to come. If Gorsuch is filibustered, Trump will have no incentive to (ETA: not) pick someone worse next time(s), if filibuster no longer be available.

Schumer Stance on Gorsuch Heightens Threat of 'Nuclear Option'
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2017/03/24/schumer_stance_on_gorsuch_h...

While I understand the rage over Garland, filibuster risks a less-than-moderate court for decades to come. If Gorsuch is filibustered, Trump will have no incentive to pick someone worse next time(s), if filibuster no longer be available.

If you are afraid to use the filibuster because you're afraid that the rules will be changed to prevent its use in the future, then there is no filibuster at all. "Saving" it for the future is a fool's game.

>55 StormRaven: "Saving" (filibuster) for the future is a fool's game.

I'm thinking strategic, more than fool's game:

Allow Gorsuch vote, you live to filibuster another day?

Filibuster Gorsuch: Senate eliminates filibuster, Gorsuch replacement and future nominees can be as bad as Trump and the alt-right nutballs who advise him can come up with?

Allow Gorsuch vote, you live to filibuster another day?

But if you try to use the filibuster "another day", what prevents the majority from eliminating the filibuster at that point? If the Senate will eliminate the filibuster if you use it now, nothing prevents the Senate from eliminating the filibuster in the future, so you're not really "saving" it for anything.

Can Senate eliminate filibuster DURING the hearing process, then?
(Thus giving Gorsuch his chance at 50 (Edit: 51) votes, rather than ending his nomination?)
______________________________________________
ETA: (Sounds like yes, if Republicans all vote for it?)

Democrats Plan to Filibuster to Thwart Gorsuch Nomination

...If Democrats band together, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, has threatened to pursue the so-called nuclear option eliminating the filibuster for Supreme Court selections. Mr. Trump has urged Mr. McConnell to take that step if necessary.

Some Republicans have expressed reservations about changing the rules, but Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said Thursday that he would relent if it meant seating Judge Gorsuch. “Whatever it takes to get him on the court, I will do”...

...To eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, Republicans would need to vote in virtual lock step: The party effectively has only 51 votes right now because one member, Senator Johnny Isakson of Georgia, is recuperating from back surgery, so just two Republican senators could block a rules change...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/23/us/politics/democrats-filibuster-neil-gorsuch...

Can Senate eliminate filibuster DURING the hearing process, then?

I am unaware of any rule of the Senate which would prohibit it.

Gorsuch faces extreme vetting for Supreme Court position:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/03/republicans_use...

Taxpayers' money well spent. /sarc

White House Official May Have Violated Campaign Finance Laws
K.T. McFarland appears to have used exploratory committee funds to promote her career as a political commentator.
Yashar Ali | Mar. 16, 2017

...K.T. McFarland—who currently serves as President Donald Trump's deputy national security adviser—appears to have used thousands of dollars of campaign money several years ago for the design and maintenance of a website promoting her work as a paid political pundit and for payments to a self-described "agent for expert commentators who enjoy being frequent guests on talk radio and TV."

...After Flynn's departure, Trump reportedly promised McFarland that she could remain in her current position. But the White House has also said that the new national security adviser, Lt. General HR McMaster, will be allowed to choose his own staff, making McFarland's future role uncertain. On Wednesday, Trump appointed Dina Powell, a former Bush administration official and Goldman Sachs partner, as deputy national security adviser for strategy. According to Politico, which first reported the appointment, McFarland will "technically" outrank Powell at the agency. However, Politico cited a source who "said that the move was designed to effectively push out McFarland by putting another person in her role."...

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/03/kt-mcfarland-fec-campaign-expenses-t...

National Security Advisor McMaster (plus Trump's new appreciation of gravity of issues? jealousy over Bannon Svengali press?) removes Bannon from Security Council. Bannon reportedly threatens to quit, puts best face on demotion:

Trump Removes Stephen Bannon From National Security Council Post
By PETER BAKER, MAGGIE HABERMAN and GLENN THRUSHAPRIL 5, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/05/us/politics/national-security-council-stephen...

____________________________________________________

...There are two things to cheer here.

First, Trump’s willingness to sideline one of his closest aides at McMaster’s recommendation suggests the new national security adviser’s influence within the administration is rapidly growing. That’s a very good thing: McMaster is widely respected, with a nuanced view of how to confront Islamist terrorism that is directly at odds with Bannon’s stated and dangerously simplistic belief that the US is locked in an existential conflict with Islam itself.

Second, the Bannon move comes alongside a broader NSC shake-up that restores the traditional roles, and power, of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of national intelligence. Under all previous presidents, both of them had attended all NSC meetings. When Trump first elevated Bannon, by contrast, the president said the two would only come when “issues pertaining to their responsibilities and expertise are to be discussed.”...

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/5/15191532/bannon-removed-nsc-mcma...
_____________________________________________________

ETA: Secretary of Energy restored to National Security Council. Makes sense because of his nuke responsibilities, but Rick Perry has less personal expertise than former appointees.

http://www.statesman.com/news/local/rick-perry-added-national-security-council-c...

I'm afraid he's just going undercover. The worrrrrrrrm burrowing in the darrrrrrrrrkkk...

>62 margd: Best satirical Twitter account tweet on Bannon:

https://twitter.com/DPRK_News/status/849657316991434752
DPRK News Service‏
@DPRK_News
US vice president Steve Bannon steps down from security council, citing desire to spend more time with his malt liquor and methamphetamine.
9:17 AM - 5 Apr 2017

But: is the SIG still sauering?
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/327296-wh-internal-bannon-think-tank-...

...The Trump Administration’s globalists, such as Kushner and Cohn, are growing in influence, while the nationalists—led by Bannon—are on the defensive.

...The question has always been, Which Trump will win out: the nationalist rabble-rouser or the avatar of global capitalism? It is still too early to say for sure. But the evidence is pointing in one direction, and the outcome of the meeting with President Xi may well confirm it.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/steve-bannon-is-losing-to-the-globali...

I just read about the Senate rules change...even out of the country over 16 years with no intention of returning I feel smothered...

Tillerson says coalition forming to target Assad, Trump hearing military options.

Remember when the big knock on Clinton was that she would get the U.S. into a war with Russia over Syria?

I just read about the Senate rules change

I never want to hear anything ever again about what a maverick or man of principle McCain is. He is neither. Neither is Lindsay Graham for that matter.

>68 StormRaven: Why would you ever have belived anything like that about McCain (or LG) anyway? I doubt you ever actually did. (Did you?)

Anyway, who doesn't sometimes follow principles? It means nothing if the person has no guts as well. Oh, and consistency.

At the same time, I think the refusal to hold hearings should have been made into the enormous betrayal of democracy that it was. So I believe Obama lacked the guts, along with leading Democrats...And did Sanders make much of it? It was in the back of my mind for nearly three quarters of a year.

>65 margd: The question has always been, Which Trump will win out: the nationalist rabble-rouser or the avatar of global capitalism?

Has this ever really been in question? Trump goes with whatever makes him money. He's not an avatar of nationalism or capitalism. He's an avatar of exploitation.

"The swamp is winning the battle."

From the State Department to the Environmental Protection Agency, a sharp dividing line has formed: Cabinet secretaries and their handpicked teams of GOP veterans are rushing to take power as Trump campaign staffers — "originals,” as they call themselves — gripe that they’re being pushed aside.

All of you who complained about Clinton being a "war-monger" can just go fuck yourselves now. Seriously, go fuck yourselves.

U.S. just launched 50 tomahawk missiles against Syria.

>72 StormRaven: What this means is that the war party and its propaganda have won. Trump has capitulated, and now we have the absolute worst of all possible worlds. (Except, perhaps, that Bannon's off the NSC).

cf. https://consortiumnews.com/2017/04/05/another-dangerous-rush-to-judgment-in-syri...
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/04/06/nyt-retreats-on-2013-syria-sarin-claims/

ETA: Depending on whether you prefer to listen to the Generals on CNN or the Maddow and Brokaw on MSNBC, this is either the beginning of a series of operations (former) or a stand-alone operation (latter). Given what I'm hearing about the target, it ain't WWIII yet, but this doesn't help.

The talking heads are putting forth that the intelligence attributing the chemical attack was slam-dunk. Perhaps. We'll see what comes out in the wash.

ETA: Hillary Clinton Called For Attack on Syrian Airfields Hours Before Attack on Syrian Airfield
http://www.nbcnews.com/video/hillary-clinton-called-for-attack-on-syrian-airfiel...
Why does this not surprise me?

For the rest of 2017, all eyes on the Jazira.

If the United States were truly interested in curbing human rights issues in the Middle East they would start with their friends--Saudi Arabia, the gulf states and Israel. That's not going to happen and I'm sorry to say wouldn't happen no matter who were Potus.

As for Syria--the Obama administration began the process of regime change which includes the corporate media's engagement as a propaganda tool for that end--so it's not surprising to me that a chest thumper like Trump would follow up on this one thing that the Obama administration began. As well it's been an objective of our security services such as the CIA to incite a conflict and they've been working on this for a while. As for Hillary my recall was that she is and has always been for using force in the region at least when those countries that force should be applied to aren't Saudi Arabia, the gulf states or Israel. If she's not for attacking Syria now let her speak up and say so. Her voice--if it's against could make a real difference.

My own opinion is that we have no legitimate reason for having any military force anywhere (including Iraq) in the region. None. We have no legal standing for regime change anywhere in the world. What we're seeing is extra legal (illegal) force on our part over and over again. The republicans have been leading but the democrats have been enabling that to happen. We also should not have military bases in countries other than our own.

>74 lriley: The only thing I disagree with is 'Her voice--if it's against could make a real difference.'

I get the feeling she's buried.

Changing the rules so that one is sure to win the game is pathetic! Why lower to 50 votes - why not 40 or 33? Why bother voting at all???

<76

Can Merrick Garland Kill the Filibuster?

>77 cpg: The point that someone saw it coming means that the anit-democratic nature of the Republican leadership and cowardice of their entire Republican senate was obvious at the time. Any Republican who is gloating over this is a shitheel, and anyone at all who approves of this is tired of democracy, probably because of the exertion involved, particularly the mental effort.

>78 RickHarsch:

Toobin did a bit more than see it coming:

"If a moderate like Garland can get majority support but not sixty votes, what will the Democrats do? It is a good bet that they will go nuclear again—and abolish filibusters for Supreme Court nominees as well. That would be a healthy step for both Democrats and democrats. The filibuster has become a cancer on the legislative process, creating the need for supermajorities on even the most routine business. The less it exists, the better."

How to Destroy the Republican Party, in 3 Easy Steps

"The second necessary reform is liberating the Senate from the encumbrances of the filibuster. In November 2013, the Democratic-led Senate ended the use of the filibuster for executive-branch and non–Supreme Court judicial nominees—this was the so-called 'nuclear option.' should the Democrats ever recapture the House as well, a Senate without a filibuster would allow for a true political revolution. Had there been no need to get 60 votes in the US Senate, we might have had the much bigger discretionary fiscal stimulus in Obama’s first year. We would have had a 'public option' for Obamacare. We might have put government-appointed trustees on the boards of banks that were bailed out."

>80 cpg: Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe they only killed the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees. Although I don't necessarily disagree. Perhaps taking a bullet over Garland/Gorsuch was the right long con, because if the Democrats do capture the Senate again, we can then put our people on the SCOTUS as well. And I think it's easier for Democrats to take the Senate than the House, although if we have enough unrest over Republican policies, maybe...

>81 sturlington: Please listen to yourself, before it's too late.

>82 davidgn: I honestly don't know what you mean. If you want to discuss, I'm open to that, but cryptic and vaguely insulting statements are not helpful.

I don't mean to insult you. My point is that you're rationalizing quite a lot, and I'd encourage you to step back for a moment. I understand the impulse to search for a silver lining in this, but you're ending up by acquiescing to what was done here (and in 2013) in the hopes that it can be bent to future partisan strategic advantage. To call this short-sighted is an understatement. A drift towards a majority-rules Senate without the possibility of a filibuster is a double-edged sword. You might even call it a sword of Damocles on a pendulum, and you're just waiting with bated breath for it to swing over the other side's heads again. You may get the swing you're looking for, but these days the pendulum isn't exactly stable. Like as not when it swings back the other way again, it will have changed direction so as to decapitate half the front row of your side of the aisle.

To put it another way: Geoghan's scenario of a supine Republican party just waiting for the Democratic deathblow looks a little silly with a year's hindsight, doesn't it?

>84 davidgn: I understand what you're getting at, but all of this became inevitable when the Senate refused to hold hearings for Merrick Garland. And since there is absolutely nothing that someone like me can do about it, rationalizations keep me from hitting the bottle (too hard).

I mean, it's a bit laughable to say I am acquiescing to this, as I have any choice about it. I am a middle-income self-employed person living in a small liberal bubble in a red state, and I have never felt so powerless or unrepresented when it comes to national or state politics. As far as I can tell, the GOP is determined to do what it wants whether it has popular support, whether people call their senators, whatever.

Look, it is what it is. We are not going back to partisanship and everybody playing nicely by the same rules, if that ever truly existed. But when one side plays by the rules while the other side lies, cheats, and uses every dirty trick in the book, then one side's just a sucker.

>73 davidgn: Trump has capitulated

Cite needed. This is completely along the lines of MAGA and his budget.

>86 prosfilaes: Well, these would be a start.

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-reverses-policy-syrian-airstr...
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/whiplash-trump-completes-dramatic-revers...

Meanwhile, look at Trump's base:
http://www.breitbart.com/video/2017/04/06/ron-paul-zero-chance-assad-behind-syri...

You seem to be of the opinion that whatever Trump does is what he always secretly intended to do, because he's just tricky like that. I don't think that analysis holds up to much scrutiny.

In fact, if I were a betting man, I'd say the ejection of Bannon from the NSC and the strike have quite a lot to do with one another in terms of their timing.

ETA: Parry has a reaction piece out now, and as usual it's solid and demands the widest possible attention. https://consortiumnews.com/2017/04/07/trumps-wag-the-dog-moment/

>87 davidgn: It's more like Trump has over the course of his campaign come down on every side of every issue so nothing he does could be out of character.

>85 sturlington: Yeah, that's why I said even I, a fervent exile, a rabid anti-US US citizen safely in Slovenia felt smothered by this tactic...which seems a weak word for it. What happened was grotesque. And I really believe the Democrats fell far, far short of representing their constituents by not making it an enormous issue from the beginning.

>89 RickHarsch: It's Friday night. Time for a drink!

Oh, how I miss it...

eta: drink, not country

>87 davidgn: You seem to be of the opinion that whatever Trump does is what he always secretly intended to do, because he's just tricky like that.

I don't know how you got that. Trump is full of shit. I don't believe he intended anything about Syria. He claimed that Obama or Clinton was all wrong, and gave some shit from the top of his head that he promptly forgot. But MAGA and his budget have been consistent with his narcissistic need to be head of a big military and throw his weight around. When on April 4, he posted "President Obama said in 2012 that he would establish a 'red line' against the use of chemical weapons and then did nothing.", that was entirely consistent with everything he'd said before. Even to the extent he changed position, I wouldn't call it a capitulation; Trump does not feel that he gave in to anyone on this, and to the extent that he was convinced, it wasn't by someone pressuring him; I doubt pressuring Trump is a successful method for getting him to change his plans.

It appears the spectacularly stupid idiocy of the Pseudo-Left's "Trump and Putin are in cahoots"; "Trump is a tool of Moscow" (quotations not to be interpreted stictly but merely loosely) went up in smoke from Tomahawk Cruise missles in Syria.

Not that such things make the slightest difference to these blinkered morons.

So, an airfiled's infrastructure wasn't the only thing that Trump's decision "blew to smithereens."

The Riddle of Trump’s Syria Attack (New York Times)
Frank Bruni APRIL 7, 2017
_________________________

"The agony of Donald Trump — well, one of the many agonies — is that there are times when he will actually do the right thing, or at least a defensible thing, and we’ll be left wondering, even more than we did with other presidents, about what his motivations were, whether they fit into any truly considered plan or whether his actions amount to the newest episode of a continuing reality show.

"Such is the case with the strike against Syria, which is too big a risk in too complicated a place to be used for distraction, for diversion, for the pose he needs in the narrative du jour.

"There’s justification for it, absolutely. President Obama had advisers who wished he’d done something similar, and there were Democrats aplenty — Hillary Clinton apparently among them — who found his restraint when it came to Syria and the regime of Bashar al-Assad to be infuriating," ...

LMAO!

What happened to Trump is insane? "He's got to be removed via a medical doctor's intervention," etc?

The Kids Take Over And Turn Trump Into Dubya
That was the week that was: How the Bannon crowd got cornered by Jared, Ivanka, the generals—and a president who maybe seems to get that it hasn’t been working.
Joy-Ann Reid | 04.07.17

...Kushner and Ivanka...have reportedly come to believe Bannon and his alt-right coven are ruining pop’s presidency.

...(National Security Advisor) McMaster is cleaning house, including trying to evict political hacks loyal to Bannon and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn...with Kushner and Ivanka’s full support. The source says that Republican donors and GOPers outside of Trumpworld have made it clear that if McMaster and (Defense Secretary) Mattis go, Trump is on his own.

...Kushner, Ivanka and Trump’s chief economic adviser Gary Cohn (along with Cohn ally, deputy national security adviser Dina Powell and public liaison communications rep Omarosa Manigault)...also appear to be behind the coming ouster of White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, who is taking the blame for the failure of Trumpcare, and whose deputy Katie Walsh was already banished to an outside group founded by Trump funder Rebekah Mercer, who has since pulled her money, and who is reportedly urging her other fundee Bannon to hang on.

The sidelining of the Bannonites is in effect the sidelining of Mercer, whose other ally inside Trumpworld is Kellyanne Conway, whose profile and star have also dimmed considerably inside the West Wing.

“The White House is starting to understand that this situation is not sustainable,” the first GOP source told me. “The power centers are shifting.”

Ironically, those centers appear to be shifting into the hands of the last people Trump’s angry Republican base expected to empower: neoconservative, war hawk Republicans on Capitol Hill and a couple of young, rich, politically inexperienced New York Democrats who also happen to be family.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/04/07/the-kids-take-over-and-turn-tru...

_______________________________________________________

Trump Fires Warning Shot in Battle Between Bannon and Kushner
By JEREMY W. PETERS and MAGGIE HABERMANAPRIL 7, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/us/white-house-kushner-bannon-military-strike...

If the EPA goes away, is the state up to the job of protecting Florida's environment?
Craig Pittman | March 14, 2017
http://www.tampabay.com/news/environment/if-the-epa-goes-away-is-the-state-up-to...

(No.)

What a mess Syria is...

The war in Syria, explained (6:46 timeline)
How Syria’s civil war became America’s problem.
Zack Beauchamp | Apr 8, 2017
http://www.vox.com/2017/4/8/15218782/syria-trump-bomb-assad-explainer

>93 proximity1: Carrots and sticks. The NYT has got a pocketful of carrots... of a sort.
Watching the early coverage of the strike on MSNBC, you'd think everyone in the studio had just won the lottery.
The generals on CNN looked giddy enough as well. Anderson Cooper, on the other hand, looked appropriately spooked. I'll give him that.

Some keen analyses:

From an ol' MI6 diplomat-spy:
Trump’s 59-Tomahawk ‘Tweet’
In what amounted to a 59-Tomahawk middle-of-the-night “tweet,” an impulsive President Trump reacted emotionally, not rationally, in attacking Syria, says ex-British diplomat Alastair Crooke.
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/04/08/trumps-59-tomahawk-tweet/

And from a journalistic summer-upper par excellence:
Luring Trump into Mideast Wars
After launching a missile strike on Syria, President Trump is basking in praise from his former critics – neocons, Democrats and mainstream media – who want to lure him into more Mideast wars, reports Daniel Lazare.
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/04/08/luring-trump-into-mideast-wars/

Crazy talk all, I suppose. But keep in mind: if the talking heads are correct, there is a legal case for impeaching Trump for his violation of international law, but it will go nowhere: the U.S. foreign policy establishment always cares about international law until they don't. On the other hand, if these analyses are accurate, there would seem to be clear political grounds for impeaching Trump as well. Even so, of course, that doesn't mean any such thing will necessarily go forward: a man with a noose squarely around his neck can be a useful asset. (n.b.: Trump's a squirmy guy with respect to evading the noose for his shady international organized crime connections, but he put this one on his own neck.) In that scenario, you won't ever hear the Crooke/Parry/Lazare line coming out of the NYT et al. unless they're preparing to kick the stool.

As for the international fallout, I think Crooke has a good take:

So what are the consequences? Some may assess that there will be almost none: the Russians were forewarned of the missile attack – and they, in turn, had forewarned the Syrians, who had removed most of their aircraft from the airfield before the attack occurred.

And the missile attack was focused on a secondary airport from which the Syrian air attack had launched. In short, the event could be viewed as nothing more than a muscular, missile-delivered, ($59 million) “tweet” from Trump. Message sent and done.

It could be (viewed in this way), but it won’t. It will not be business as usual, after Trump’s firing-off his 59 Tomahawk “tweets” (39 percent of which reached their target), but nor will it precipitate the opening of war. There will be no visible military reaction, and some may congratulate themselves on America having somehow “stood up” for its values.

The Tomahawk “Tweets”

But silently, geo-strategic calculations are being re-formulated. The world today has changed. Tomahawk “tweets” do not strike terror into “non-compliant” governments, as once they might have. The “non-West” has learned a different repertoire of responses against which the U.S. lately has floundered.

Consider what happened: less than a week ago, Rex Tillerson was saying (in Ankara), that the “longer-term status of President Assad will be decided by the Syrian people.” Then, some 100 hours later, Assad has become a “war criminal”; and Russia is complicit in the chemical “attack” (according to Nicki Haley, the U.S Ambassador at the U.N.), and 24 hours after that, missiles are flying.

The message seems pretty clear: the U.S. has reverted completely. It has reverted to its old, neocon, groupthink. Russia, China, Iran and many others must now factor this in. They will all be amazed at how quickly U.S. doctrine has flip-flopped – with nary a moment’s reflection – on a whim, as it were.

Russia, China and Iran will not launch the cavalry in response, but China will be considering what this means for its South China Sea spat with the Trump Administration; Russia will be re-calculating on Syria, now that “the possibility of anti-terror co-operation with the U.S. has been undermined,” and Iran will be reinforcing in Syria, Iraq (and in Yemen).

More dangerously, the fault line in the region between Iran and its allies, and Saudi Arabia and its allies, will sharpen and become more belligerent – now that the U.S. has explicitly placed itself in the Israeli and Gulf States’ camp.

The point is that these 59 Tomahawks have demonstrated that America’s foreign policy has no strategic “anchor,” and will revert to its neocon “default mode” when faced with a sudden event....

It was much closer to $100 million dollars worth of Tomahawks than 59 million unless he was talking euros. They are being upgraded all the time.

>99 DugsBooks: Afford an old spy some allowance for inflation -- not to mention hedonic quality adjustment!
(That, or maybe he was thinking pounds. ;-) )

ETA: >96 margd: I haven't heard a more succinct statement of the official U.S. position. For anyone who wants to know what that position is, it's a great piece. (From Vox, I would expect no less.)

Also see also Parry's observation, just out, on the lack of intelligence community officials surrounding Trump in the official photos released from around the time when he ordered the strike: https://consortiumnews.com/2017/04/08/where-was-cias-pompeo-on-syria/
He might be reading too far into this... but on the other hand, perhaps not.

....(I)n almost every similar situation that I ha(ve) covered over decades, the CIA Director or the Director of National Intelligence has played a prominent role in decisions that depend heavily on the intelligence community’s assessments and actions.

For instance, in the famous photo of President Obama and his team waiting out the results of the 2011 raid to kill Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, CIA Director Leon Panetta is the one on the conference screen that everyone is looking at.

Even when the U.S. government is presenting false information, such as Secretary of State Colin Powell’s 2003 speech laying out the bogus evidence of Iraq hiding WMDs, CIA Director George Tenet was seated behind Powell to lend credibility to the falsehoods.

At the Table

But in the photo of Trump and his advisers, no one from the intelligence community is in the frame. You see Trump, Secretary of State Tillerson, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, strategic adviser Steve Bannon, son-in-law Jared Kushner and a variety of other officials, including some economic advisers who were at Mar-a-Lago in Florida for the meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

However, you don’t see Pompeo or Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats or any other intelligence official. Even The New York Times noted the oddity in its Saturday editions, writing: “If there were C.I.A. and other intelligence briefers around, … they are not in the picture.”

That made me wonder whether perhaps my original source did know something. The claim was that CIA Director Pompeo had briefed Trump personally on the analysts’ assessment that Assad’s forces were not responsible, but – then with Pompeo sidelined – Trump conveyed his own version of the intelligence to his senior staff.

In other words, the other officials didn’t get the direct word from Pompeo but rather received a second-hand account from the President, the source said. Did Trump choose to rely on the smug certainty from the TV shows and the mainstream news media that Assad was guilty, rather than the contrary view of U.S. intelligence analysts?

It's an interesting interpretation. Pros might even find it consonant with his own take, to some degree.

BONUS: Scott Adams has got his own take. http://blog.dilbert.com/post/159264981001/the-syrian-gas-attack-persuasion
And if that sounds far-fetched to you, here's a crazyburger on toast for you to digest: http://www.mediaite.com/tv/lawrence-odonnell-wonders-what-if-vladimir-putin-mast...

Trump doesn't give a shit about the New York Times, nor, for that matter, "the mainstream 'media' ", either. And he's right in this attitude.

Pseudo-liberals are too stupid to grasp this or to grasp why and how it's actually something for which they ought to be grateful--and, really, there isn't much in that department.

President's often shoot off rockets and flex their muscles on the international stage so as to raise their popularity ratings. Trump--if not bothered by what the NYT thinks of him--is acutely aware of his popularity numbers which last I knew was in the 30's. He is a publicity hound. I'm thinking the honeymoon might be over already. Anyway whether or not the failure to repeal the ACA (known as Obamacare but similar in many respects to Romneycare) and replace it with an even more right wing health care plan was a colossal failure. I expect that the republicans will eventually repeal ACA and maybe not replace it with anything. Between his staff and cabinet choices it's been a clown show--a continual fight to get his ear. From my point of view he's been winging it from almost the minute he was sworn in. If there's one clear trend that I see he's cut away from his populist shtick and is cozying up more and more with the corporations and high finance types whose circles he's used to moving in.

I'm trying to think of something good to say about him....well let's forget about that--I started the day with a headache. It's too hard. He's going to be a disaster in so many ways. So much science based denial. Personally there is one thing he could do--along with his VP, staff and cabinet that would benefit us all and that is drop dead. What could have been with Sanders.

So... despite Trump, despite Congress being in Republican hands (I just googled--the LARGEST MAJORITY SINCE 1931!), despite Obama, an actual Democrat, being unable to move on Syria (or anything much) during his eight years in office... these strikes now are somehow the doing of the DEMOCRATS.

#103--the missile strikes are not the doing of the democrats.

That being said there has been support from key democrats for those missile strikes. Nancy Pelosi referenced them as a 'proportional response'. Sen. Schumer--NY--'Making sure Assad....will pay a price is the right thing to do'. Sen. Coons-Del. and a member of the Senate's Foreign relations committee wants Assad prosecuted for war crimes. Honestly I want GW Bush and Dick Cheney prosecuted for war crimes but if you're an American head of state that's not going to happen because being an American head of state means you'll never have to answer for the shit you do. Sen. Brown of Ohio--one of the most progressive voices in the house and Senate for years has also called it a 'proportional response'. There are others. This country of mine is war happy. We spend more on military shit than anybody and it's not close. It's way more a priority than all of education, the environment, infrastructure investment and health care combined. The United States is seriously fucked up in its priorities.

>104 lriley:

"Honestly I want GW Bush and Dick Cheney prosecuted for war crimes but if you're an American head of state that's not going to happen because being an American head of state means you'll never have to answer for the shit you do."

Yep. And pseudo-liberals have shown (again and again, whenever their partisan-prejudices are at risk) that, in the current idiotic expression, "They're fine with that."

Trump can act as he has--arbitrarily using military deadly-force--in part, of course, because no Democrat has ever taken a "to-the-mat" stand on developing and defending a system of enforcable international law which binds all heads of state everywhere and holds them--the U.S., with all the rest--legally-liable for their acts. Not one. And, again, pseudo-liberals have shown that, in the current idiotic expression, "They're fine with that."

The camp that bitches the loudest about Trump has a major role in having made the circumstances which opened the way to his election.

Live and don't learn--the Dim Dems' motto.

An open letter to Pruitt from a retiring EPA employee

To see the effects of climate change, Cox invited Pruitt to “visit the Pacific Northwest and see where the streams are too warm for our salmon to survive in the summer; visit the oyster farmers in Puget Sound whose stocks are being altered from the oceans becoming more acidic; talk to the ski area operators who are seeing less snowpack and worrying about their future; and talk to the farmers in Eastern Washington who are struggling to have enough water to grow their crops and water their cattle. The changes I am referencing are not impacts projected for the future, but are happening now.”
...

The EPA did not respond to requests for comment on Cox’s letter, but Myron Ebell, who led Trump’s EPA transition team, did.

Now that Trump is moving toward “radically downsizing the EPA,” Ebell said, “employees who are opposed to the Trump Administration’s agenda are either going to conduct themselves as professional civil servants or find other employment or retire or be terminated. I would be more sympathetic if they had ever expressed any concern for the people whose jobs have been destroyed by EPA’s regulatory rampage.”

Scott Pruitt, EPA Director:

...Several sources outlined to CNN three feuding factions within the agency: firm conservatives who want to see a more aggressive pullback of the agency's regulatory footprint; career employees, many of whom are concerned the new administration is hostile to environmental and climate concerns; and Pruitt's inner circle, who are reluctant to go along with some of the most unpopular rollbacks that are controversial even among moderate Republicans.

"Pruitt shares the ideology that excessive EPA overreach and over regulation does need to be rolled back, but he's resistant to some regulatory action for fear some of the more unpopular actions could harm his future political career," said another source close to the administration who is concerned about Pruitt's first month on the job...

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/29/politics/trump-epa-cuts-infighting-climate-change/

# 8 contd. (Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former F.D.A. official with longstanding ties to pharmaceutical and biotech companies...called for streamlining the drug approval process).

One in Three Newly Approved Drugs Has Safety Issues
Postmarket safety study highlights need for ongoing surveillance
Salynn Boyles | May 09, 2017

... this analysis of a decades-worth of FDA approval data found that roughly one-third of new drugs have post-marketing safety events.
Only three of the 222 novel therapeutics were withdrawn after initial approval, however.

Nearly a third of drugs approved by the FDA from 2001 through 2010 had new safety issues detected in the years after they entered the market, researchers found....

https://www.medpagetoday.com/publichealthpolicy/fdageneral/65139

____________________________________________________

Trump's Pick (Gottlieb) to Lead FDA Has Backing of Big Pharma
Joseph Walker | May 09, 2017
http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2017/05/09/trumps-pick-to-lead-fda-has-backi...

Physicist, William Happer, Trump's potential science adviser:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2017/feb/21/trumps-potential-s...

CO2 is just food for plants

Happer says CO2 levels and temperatures have been much higher in the past and that life “flourished” under these conditions many millions of years ago.

He doesn’t mention that during those times sea levels were probably several metres – sometimes well over 10 metres – higher than they are today.

Interior Dept. nominee says Trump's views could outweigh climate science
STEPHANIE EBBS | May 18, 2017

President Donald Trump's nominee for Deputy Secretary of the Interior said today that Trump's economic policy could take priority over climate science.

In his confirmation hearing in front of the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee, David Bernhardt said that he will consider science on climate change but that Trump's policy opinions that prioritize jobs could outweigh scientific conclusions.

... Bernhardt held multiple positions at the Interior Department between 2001 and 2009, including as solicitor for the department.

More than 100 environmental groups wrote to senators earlier this week asking them to oppose Bernhardt's nomination, citing concerns about conflicts of interest from his work as a lobbyist and inspector general reports from during the time that Bernhardt was solicitor, including one that found that department staff had presented misleading data in a report....

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/interior-dept-nominee-trumps-views-outweigh-clima...

(!) Wouldbe journalists?

You Can Now Apply to Intern in President Trump's White House
Madeline Farber | May 19, 2017

If you've ever wondered what it's like to work in the White House, you may be able to find out.

In a statement, The White House announced on Friday that it is now accepting applications for its Fall 2017 Internship Program. The internship lasts from September 6 to December 8...

http://time.com/4786655/donald-trump-white-house-internship-apply/

Meet the Real Jared Kushner
He’s a lot tougher than he looks.
David Freedlander | May 25, 2017

(A former employee whose bonus was withheld:) ...“We’re talking about a guy who isn’t particularly bright or hard-working, doesn’t actually know anything, has bought his way into everything ever (with money he got from his criminal father), who is deeply insecure and obsessed with fame (you don’t buy the NY Observer, marry Ivanka Trump, or constantly talk about the phone calls you get from celebrities if it’s in your nature to ‘shun the spotlight’), and who is basically a shithead.”...

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/05/25/jared-kushner-russia-fbi-donal...

Donald Trump's new FBI director pick has Russian ties of his own
Kenneth F. McCallion, Opinion contributor | June 8, 2017

On paper, Christopher Wray appears to be an excellent choice to serve as the next FBI director. He has "impeccable" academic credentials (Yale law school) and has had a decades-long distinguished career as a federal prosecutor and high-level official in the Department of Justice. As the criminal defense lawyer for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie during the “Bridgegate” investigation, he did raise some eyebrows when it was learned that one of Christie’s “missing” cellphones mysteriously ended up in Wray’s possession, but this is unlikely to derail Wray’s confirmation.

The most troubling issue that Wray may face is the fact that his law firm — King & Spalding — represents Rosneft and Gazprom, two of Russia’s largest state-controlled oil companies.

Rosneft was prominently mentioned in the now infamous 35-page dossier prepared by former British MI6 agent Christopher Steele.

...Gazprom was a partner in RosUkrEnergo AG (“RUE”), which is controlled by Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash. He is under federal indictment in Chicago for racketeering charges, has had numerous financial dealings with former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, and is generally considered to be a member of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle.

...Though there is no indication that Wray personally worked on any of the Rosneft or Gazprom legal matters handled by his law firm, he might well have an ethical and legal conflict of interest that would prevent him from any involvement of the FBI’s Russian probe. When a law firm such as King & Spalding represents clients, then all of the partners in that law firm have an actual or potential conflict of interest, preventing them from undertaking any representation of any other client that has interests clearly adverse to those of these two Russian companies. These conflict rules continue to apply even after a lawyer leaves the law firm, so Wray could be ethically barred from involving himself in a federal investigation that includes within its scope a probe of Rosneft, Gazprom and affiliated companies. The public appearance of conflict of interest and impropriety might require him to recuse himself from the investigation.

If Wray was confirmed as the FBI director, and then had to recuse himself with regard to some or all of the Russia-related aspects of the critical investigation being conducted by the FBI and special counsel Robert Mueller, the potential damage to the investigation could be significant. If Wray refused to recuse himself from the Russia-Trump investigation — or at least acknowledge the potential conflict issue, a serious cloud could be cast over the FBI’s level of commitment to the investigation...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/06/08/trump-new-fbi-director-chris-w...

Trump's first full cabinet meeting begins with a praise-a-thon.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/12/politics/donald-trump-cabinet-meeting/index.html

>114 Taphophile13: I wonder how all of those adults feel this morning.

Trump’s Personal Lawyer Boasted That He Got Preet Bharara Fired

Kasowitz’s claimed role in the Bharara firing appears to be a sign that the New York lawyer has been inserting himself into matters of governance and not just advising the president on personal legal matters.

>115 2wonderY: Stockholm syndrome? Maybe they are just numb.

116: That's just more of this President blurring the line between his personal interests and his office. This should worry everyone, but the GOP seems to be turning a blind eye into this mixing of the President's business interests into his administration.

Undercut, blamed, shamed, and now this:

Spicer searching for candidates to take over White House briefing
White House press secretary Sean Spicer has spoken with radio host Laura Ingraham and Daily Mail editor David Martosko, among others.
Tara Palmeri | 06/19/2017

Who would want to work for the jerk-in-chief???

My Boss is a Jerk by Kathleen Rao is must-read for all new hires!

FBI nominee says Trump-Russia probe is no 'witch hunt'
SADIE GURMAN and ERIC TUCKER | July 12, 2017

...He appeared to have bipartisan support from senators.

...unlike the outspoken Comey, Wray would be a more reserved leader. His mild-mannered style could bode well for the agency at a time when its work has been thrust into the center of a political maelstrom.

...Over the past decade, he has worked in private practice at King & Spalding in Atlanta, where he's defended large corporations and financial institutions in criminal and civil cases.

He provided legal services to Johnson & Johnson, Wells Fargo, Credit Suisse and fantasy sports providers DraftKings and FanDuel, among other big-name clients, according to ethics documents released Monday. If confirmed (as FBI Director), he'll have to step aside for a year from matters involving those clients and the law firm. He also assisted New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie during the so-called Bridgegate scandal.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article160877059.html

Good pick for the Trump Rogue Gallery.

Senate Begins Confirmation Hearings for Trump FBI Pick Tied to Torture, Gitmo

Over the past decade, he has worked in private practice at King & Spalding in Atlanta, where he's defended large corporations and financial institutions in criminal and civil cases.

I see that Trump is doing a great job at "draining the swamp".

Senate Republicans Advance Federal Judge Nomination of Right Wing Blogger Who Joked About 'F*ggots'
Nomination Now Heads to Full Senate
David Badash | July 13, 2017

Republicans of the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday pushed through the nomination of John K. Bush, an attorney and a former pseudonymous right wing blogger who once delivered a speech in which he joked about not wanting to appear like a "faggot." Bush, who has been nominated by President Donald Trump to the the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, has made his very anti-gay views known. He also supported Trump's fanatical birtherism. Thursday's vote was 11-9.

Bush is married to a woman has helped raise a reported $14 million for the re-election campaign of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Both men are from Kentucky...

http://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/davidbadash/senate_republicans_push_thr...

Trump picks climate skeptic with no science degree for top USDA science job http://hill.cm/d3yRpIG

Meanwhile: Col. Lang weighs in with a well-deserved excoriation of (DCI) Pompeio, couched in a very amusing anecdote from his days teaching at West Point. Select figures are still spouting a very old line of propaganda, it seems -- even though it's now looking increasingly like sour grapes.

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2017/07/beat-navy-beat-russia...
The anecdote is worth the time, but for those who want to skip it:

Oh my! Minimal evidence of Russia fighting IS in Syria? Even CIA must know better than that. This utterance at an Aspen Institute "fight rally" indicates to me that this fellow has a completely closed mind on the subject of Russia and undoubtedly Iran as well. Clapper and Brennan expressed similar sentiments at the same meeting. The great minds have met! Clapper cannot keep himself from saying "Soviet" occasionally when what should be said is "Russia." He was always a blockheaded group think schemer, so one should not be surprised. As for Brennan it is easy to see Torquemada's spirit lurking behind the ruddy complexion and scowl.
....
Former cadet Pompeo says that he has seen minimal evidence of Russia fighting IS? Oh my! Robert Fisk of the Independent has now reported (see link below) that he recently sat in a meeting in the dust bowl desert south of Raqqa, but hard by, in which SAA, and the YPG/SDF coordinated their joint fight against IS (ISIS). A Russian Army colonel who called himself Yevgenii sat in the their midst as a full participant. There were no Americans present.

Pompeo has a record of pompous (a sad linguistic joke) bellicosity. He seems to desire enemies everywhere. Perhaps someone should tell him that grown ups don't act like that. pl

Two more lovelies:

Trump Pick to Run DOJ Criminal Division Worked for Russia

“President Trump’s nominee to lead the Justice Department’s criminal division, Brian A. Benczkowski, has disclosed to Congress that he previously represented Alfa Bank, one of Russia’s largest financial institutions, whose owners have ties to President Vladimir V. Putin,” the New York Times’s Charlie Savage and Adam Goldman reported last night. “Alfa Bank was at the center of scrutiny last year over potential ties between the Trump campaign and Russia after computer experts discovered data suggesting a stream of communications between a server linked to the Trump Organization and a server linked to the bank. Reports about the mysterious data transmissions fueled speculation about a back channel. The F.B.I. investigated the matter, however, and concluded that the servers’ interactions were not surreptitious exchanges between the campaign and Russia, according to current and former law enforcement officials.”

The decision to take on such a controversial Russian client raises questions about Benczkowski’s judgment that could come up during his confirmation hearing today...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2017/07/25/daily-...

________________________________________

Look for The Young Turks' story on WH lawyer Sekulow, a Christian convert, who with his family benefited from $millions of donations from often poor people concerned about abortion, Obama, etc. Eew! (I watched courtesy of a subscriber, but should be available to public at some point?)

>126 margd: I looked and found the Young Turks piece on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0YRwiC1mrE

Apparently, we like people who repeat our gestures (crossing arms, etc.), but not so obviously that we notice. Scarimucci takes it to a new level, but bet HIS boss won't be offended!

Daily Show video:
...Scaramucci is seen mirroring Trump's body language and hand gestures almost perfectly...
http://www.businessinsider.com/anthony-scaramucci-trump-speaking-style-perfectly...

>128 margd:

Mirroring happens in face to face dialogue because it makes sense that, if we're going for a friendly interaction, both people are smiling, giving the same signs of animation and interest. It signals "yes, I'm with you, I'm following".

But to have our mannerisms copied and reflected is actually unnerving to most people. I think most would find it insulting rather than flattering. This isn't mirroring, it's imitating Trump in public.

The person Trump wants to serve as the ambassador to the Netherlands:

Hoekstra has spoken out against gay marriage and as a congressman consistently voted to limit women’s right to abortion. He is also a strident supporter of the death penalty.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/26/gay-rights-opponent-picked-ambassa...

That would be the Netherlands who jumped in first to save financial donations for women's health in Africa after Trump--on his very first day in office--cut off American foreign aid; the Netherlands where recently after a homophobic attack on a gay couple, men of every description joined a campaign to publicly hold hands everywhere:

Dutch men hold hands to protest against homophobia

Diplomacy was supposed to be a game for sophisticates. Why not save this guy's retainer and just tweet when the mood strikes in the general direction of the Hague a FUCK YOU TREMENDOUSLY or some such?

But y'see, he's Dutch. From Holland, no less.
*snorts*
Wouldn't surprise me if this was De Vos's idea.

In fairness, my old Occupy group did manage to convince him to change his vote on the NDAA. Not that it meant squat.

Someone should have sent Trump this:
http://www.hollandsentinel.com/x796071399/West-Michigans-Dutchness-has-evolved-t...

Derek Harvey, our erstwhile Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Middle East Affairs in the National Security Council -- a.k.a. Derek the Unready. Won't be missed.
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2017/07/derek-harvey-one-less...

Col. Lang reports:

I have known DH for a very long time.

1. He evidently does not like to talk about his service in DIA as a captain in the late '80s. He was then a very green junior analyst in the Current Intelligence branch of DIA down in the basement of the Pentagon. Bob Woodward in "The War Within..." writes that in the late 80s Harvey wandered the back roads in Iraq traveling about 500 miles, chatting with villagers, headmen and tribal leaders to learn what the true state of affairs might be. This is untrue. If Harvey told Woodward that, he lied IMO. Saddam was then fully in power and an American who wandered in Iraq would shortly have been in prison or worse. No, Harvey was scribbling away in his basement cubicle in the Pentagon and hanging around my upstairs offices whenever my staff were silly enough to let him in through the alarmed door. I finally banned him from the office suite because he had no legitimate business there other than to try to obtain tutoring from me.
2. I should be clear about his supposed adventures in Saddam's Iraq. Nobody in DIA would have sent or allowed this junior desk jockey to go do anything of the kind. He would have required orders in writing to make this trip. A number of people would have been needed as signatures on the permission, among them, me, and that never happened. If there had been official orders they would have required the allocation of funds in the orders. The idea that DIA would have funded this is laughable. If he had gone to Iraq on leave without permission the Iraqi police would have picked him up at the point of entry. In any event he would have needed the permission of the US ambassador and the US DATT to be in the country. That never happened either. In other words he seems to have built a "Harvey of Iraq" legend about himself out of whole cloth.
3. He speaks no Arabic. None. That would have made his Laurentian or Munchausian adventures somewhat more difficult. In some web bios he is said to have an elementary knowledge of French and Farsi. Farsi? How would that have happened?
4. He does not seem to have ever had any training as a field intelligence collector.
5. He does not seem to have been board selected for senior Army schools like C&GSC and the War College. Perhaps he did these schools by correspondence or was given constructive credit for "experience?"
6. It does not seem that he has an advanced degree in Middle East connected studies. This is very rare for an Army Foreign Area Officer. It is possible to be so designated on the basis of truly grand experience but I don't know what that would have been before 9/11.
7. So far as I know he never served in a Middle East or North African country before 9/11.
8. His teaching job at South Florida University does not seem to have involved teaching about the Middle East. It was something about management that he taught.

And Lang's diagnosis of why Derek is gone?

In the present instance of his dismissal from the NSC staff it is now clear to me that he thought he could wrestle control of the ME policy function away from McMaster and Mattis. He seems to have believed that he could do that with the slick persuasiveness that had worked so well for so long on so many and with the support of his neocon patrons.

Sort of puts into perspective the NYT's decision, vis-a-vis Khan Sheykhoun, to rely on the analysis of the Atlantic Council's Bellingcat (run by a college dropout named Eliot Higgins who admits he has zero expertise with chemical weapons apart from what he gained playing video games and surfing the web -- but damn can he push that propaganda line!) in preference to that of MIT's Prof. Ted Postol, one of the country's most senior and experienced academics specializing in issues related to NCB weapons. But hell, if it's not in the New York Times, it's definitely not news fit to print.

No tears for dear Derek. He'll land on his feet. Loyal neocons always do.

Scary to think that this guy would decide on chem safety at a national level--underestimates risk, doesn't declare conflict of interest, (shreds documents?). Locally, we have a toxic plume of dioxane in groundwater--"downstream" of us, thank goodness--that leaves folks unable to use their wells and in time may threaten municipal water source.

Trump’s EPA Chemical Safety Nominee Was in the “Business of Blessing” Pollution
Sharon Lerner | July 21 2017

Michael Dourson, President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, founded and ran a toxicology consulting firm (TERA) whose work enabled DuPont to avoid providing clean water to people in West Virginia after the company contaminated the area around one of its plants with a dangerous industrial chemical. (PFOA used to make Teflon seeped into water near the plant.)

...In 2002, (Dourson's) company (TERA) helped West Virginia set a safety threshold of 150 parts per billion — a number that stayed in place from 2002 to 2006, and determined whom DuPont was obligated to provide with clean water during this period. That number was 150 times higher than the maximum safety level DuPont’s own scientists had determined in 1988 — 1 pbb — based on internal company research showing that PFOA was toxic to both workers and lab animals.

In May 2016, the EPA set a national drinking water health advisory level for PFOA at .07 ppb — thousands of times lower than TERA’s number. As research has increasingly tied PFOA to kidney and testicular cancer, thyroid disease, immune deficiency and other health problems, several regulatory agencies have arrived at safe drinking water levels that are even tinier fractions of TERA’s. Minnesota, for instance, recently proposed a level of .035 ppb. Vermont set an even lower drinking water standard of .02 ppb. And New Jersey has proposed, though not yet officially set, a level of .014.

Attorneys investigating how the consultants arrived at 150 ppb were unable to obtain the notes from the discussions that led to it. A science adviser at the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection later admitted that she had shredded documents from the meeting and that the state agency had a “standard practice and policy of destroying documents they anticipate might be the subject of a subpoena in this litigation,” according to a court document.

In 2015, DuPont was found liable for negligence in the case of a woman who developed kidney cancer after drinking water contaminated by PFOA.

...If confirmed by the Senate, the man who helped put forward the extremely high level of PFOA contamination would oversee the implementation of the recently overhauled chemical safety law, the Toxic Substances Control Act. In that role, Dourson could decide which chemicals are subject to the high priority reviews laid out in the new law, how many company-requested risk evaluations the EPA will grant, and how the EPA will use its newly expanded authority to test chemicals. Dourson, who has worked for Dow, will also be in a position to make decisions about the pesticide chlorpyrifos, a chemical manufactured by Dow that the EPA was poised to ban before Trump took office...

https://theintercept.com/2017/07/21/trumps-epa-chemical-safety-nominee-was-in-th...

ETA _________________________________________________

Trump's Pick For EPA Post Writes “Science-Bible Stories” And Has Ties To The Chemical Industry
Zahra Hirji and Ellie Hall | July 18, 2017

(Michael Douson is a) toxicologist at the University of Cincinnati and at the nonprofit consulting company Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment, a group he founded in 1995 that assesses whether chemicals are safe.

...He was a scientist (at EPA) for more than a decade.

EPA spokesperson Amy Graham said...“Dourson has a proven resume to lead the EPA’s chemical and pesticides office having served multiple positions at EPA, American Board of Toxicology, Society of Toxicology, Society for Risk Analysis, and Toxicology Education Foundation.”

...TERA has close ties to the chemical manufacturing and tobacco industries, according to a 2014 investigation by the Center for Public Integrity and InsideClimate News.

...“We are deeply concerned over the nomination of Michael Dourson to head the toxics office at EPA,” Richard Denison, lead senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, wrote in a recent blog post. “Dr. Dourson has extensive, longstanding ties to the chemical industry (as well as earlier ties to the tobacco industry). He also has a history of failing to appropriately address his conflicts of interest.”

According to one example from the EDF blog post, West Virginia hired TERA to organize a health effects expert panel following a massive chemical spill in 2014. Dourson chaired the panel and served as its sole spokesperson. The panel’s resulting report did not disclose that Dourson and TERA had done consulting work for the companies that produced the spilled chemicals.

...Independent toxicologists are more upset about Dourson’s scientific views than his religious ones.

...Adam Finkel, a clinical professor of environmental health sciences at the University of Michigan and former director of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s health standards program...worked (with Dourson) years ago on a group that critiqued a set of National Academy of Sciences’ recommendations for calculating chemical risk. (Finkel left the group before it published anything because of disagreements.) The two do not agree on the best methods, Finkel said, with Dourson tending to think that the EPA overestimates risk. This is worrisome, Finkel said, particularly for people most vulnerable to exposure, such as factory workers, children, and the elderly...

https://www.buzzfeed.com/zahrahirji/michael-dourson-writes-science-bible-books?u...

Who would WANT a job with this White House?? This week alone, Spicer, Sessions, and Priebus treated like crap, e.g.,

...Priebus' final departure was a humiliating coda for what had been a largely demeaning tenure during which he endured regular belittling from rival advisers -- and even, at times, the president himself. His exit was described by one Republican strategist as "the red wedding," a reference to a mass-murder blood bath episode of HBO's "Game of Thrones."

When Air Force One touched down Friday afternoon at Andrew's Air Force base, Priebus, senior policy adviser Stephen Miller and social media director Dan Scavino all loaded into a Suburban. But moments later, Miller and Scavino hopped out of the vehicle, and as word trickled out about the chief of staff's ouster, reporters inched close to snap photos of Priebus, who sat alone on the rain-soaked tarmac. Priebus' vehicle then pulled out of the presidential motorcade, which proceeded along to the White House without him...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/07/28/trump-names-home...

ETA___________________________________________

With Reince Out, Trump's Plan for Survival Is Clear
Simply hire more thugs.
Charles P. Pierce | Jul 29, 2017

It all ended for obvious anagram Reince Priebus with him left alone aboard an SUV in the rain. He had just returned from a trip to Long Island where he'd watched the president* put the presidential* imprimatur on the kind of police violence that killed, among others, Freddie Gray. When Air Force One landed at Andrews, everybody except the president* got out of the SUV. Priebus was invited in. Within minutes, he was no longer the White House chief-of-staff, the president* was long gone, and obvious anagram Reince Priebus was alone in the rain as Friday evening fell. Poor bastard. I'll bet they even took the cannoli....

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a56706/reince-fired/

>133 margd: That one hits close to home.

I live near a now-closed Navy-Air Force base. In the last year we have learned that they used a lot of PFOS and PFOA in fire fighting foam and that those chemicals have seeped into the ground water and wells of several counties. The military have been unwilling or unable to state specifically what level of contamination is too much and won't pay for blood testing for residents. The tests can cost $500 and many labs don't even perform the test. No one seems to know what to do if high levels are detected. I personally know two neighbors who have had kidney cancer. We have to pay more to obtain water from unaffected counties and we don't know if we have ticking time bombs about to explode inside us.

It sounds as if more such scenarios can be expected as a result of appointments like this one. Good luck to us all.

Trump nominates partisan blowhard, with some history as economics prof, USDA chief scientist...

Trump nominee Sam Clovis blasted progressives as 'race traders' and 'race traitors' in old blog posts
Andrew Kaczynski and Paul LeBlanc | August 2, 2017

Sam Clovis, President Donald Trump's nominee to be the Department of Agriculture's chief scientist, maintained a now-defunct blog for years in which he accused progressives of "enslaving" minorities, called black leaders "race traders," and labeled former President Barack Obama a "Maoist" with "communist" roots.

...Trump's nomination of Clovis, a fervent supporter of Trump during the presidential campaign, has drawn criticism from Senate Democrats and climate activists, who have attacked his lack of scientific credentials and skepticism of climate science. (a long-time Iowa political activist and former economics professor)

... A spokesperson for the USDA said, "Dr. Clovis is a proud conservative and a proud American. All of his reporting either on the air or in writing over the course of his career has been based on solid research and data. He is after all an academic."

...In a post from September 2011, Clovis wrote in reference to Obama, "He was brought up by socialists to be a socialist. His associations were socialists or worse, criminal dissidents who were bent on overthrowing the government of the United States. He has no experience at anything other than race baiting and race trading as a community organizer."

The month before, Clovis said the 2012 Republican primary candidates needed to call out progressives for what they were — "liars, race traders and race 'traitors.'"...

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/02/politics/kfile-sam-clovis-blog-posts/index.html

Hurricanes, wildfires, coastal flooding incl L Ontario: climate change? what climate change?

Trump’s Leader for FEMA Wins Praise, but Proposed Budget Cuts Don’t

RON NIXON | JULY 21, 2017

... state and local officials fears were eased ...when President Trump’s choice to head FEMA, Brock Long, the former Alabama Emergency Management Agency director, was confirmed by the Senate, 95 to 4.

...the selection of Mr. Long, state disaster relief officials say, inspires confidence.

“Brock has relationships with state emergency managers across the country. He can put himself in their shoes,” said Art Faulkner, the current director of the Alabama agency. “He knows what we go through in dealing with these issues.”

Even with Mr. Long leading the agency, FEMA still faces issues that are not related to its leadership. His skill will soon be tested.

...In his budget blueprint for 2018, Mr. Trump wants to reduce FEMA’s state and local program grants by $600 million. The administration says many of the grants were not authorized by Congress.

Officials at the Department of Homeland Security said the administration wanted to encourage states and cities to budget for their own preparedness and shift the cost of paying for disaster preparation and response away from the federal government.

...The budget also eliminates money for efforts to improve and redraw the nation’s flood maps and cuts about $90 million from the Pre-Disaster Mitigation Program. The program provides funding to local communities to move people to safer locations and to help rebuild schools, hospitals and police and fire stations so they can better withstand the impact of hurricanes and coastal storms.

Many of the programs have received bipartisan support. Lawmakers from areas that are frequently struck by natural disasters or are thought to be targets of terrorist attacks are unlikely to support reductions in funding, said Michael Coen, former chief of staff at FEMA in the Obama administration.

“The new FEMA administrator is going to have quite the challenge defending the president’s budget and working with Congress to make sure that there is money for programs that they care about,” Mr. Coen said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/21/us/politics/trumps-leader-for-fema-wins-prais...

Makan Delrahim nominated to lead Justice Department’s antitrust division

Warren blocking Trump’s pick for antitrust chief: report
Harper Neidig | 08/07/17

...Makan Delrahim was nominated for the post (Justice Department’s antitrust division) in March and approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee in a 19-1 vote in June, but (Sen. Elizabeth) Warren has placed a hold on the nomination that could delay a final vote until September at the earliest

...The antitrust division has been tasked with reviewing the $85 billion merger between AT&T and Time Warner, which has invited criticism from many Democrats and even Trump, who railed against the deal on the campaign trail.

Warren has pointed to Delrahim’s nomination as an example of the Trump administration’s willingness to put the “interests of giant corporations ahead of the American people,” as she wrote in an April 3 Facebook post, citing his work lobbying for Anthem in its attempted merger with Cigna...

http://thehill.com/policy/technology/345571-report-warren-puts-hold-on-antitrust...

Weird experience today. I work for the USDA, and was at a large training meeting when an elderly man and his retinue came up to the front. He got an appreciative and immediate standing ovation. Meet Sonny Perdue.

He gave a few general remarks and then worked the room, trying to shake as many hands as possible and kissing a few of the women and posing for one or two selfies.

There were at least four secret service agents, all dressed casually, Two took up positions at the front corners of the room while Sonny spoke, watching the audience intently. But when Sonny went through the room, all four (and possibly a couple more) flanked him closely, and paid no attention to the bulk of people behind them.

I liked his remarks. He referred to being accountable to our ultimate boss - the taxpayer.

Security can sure feel weird. I remember an ENVIRONMENTAL meeting in Detroit in which the mayor at the time (Coleman Young) arrived in force with 4-6 burly bodyguards. (Our other politician, a New England governor, was accompanied by a pony-tailed staffer carrying a clipboard!) Young probably had his reasons for the heavy security, but it seemed to me that we couldn't have been less scary, short of preschoolers?

In light of De Vos: I'm listening to the most stimulating podcast on charter schools that I've ever heard, put out by a couple of FAIR contributors. It's called Citations Needed.

https://twitter.com/CitationsPod/status/885095140611817472

She hasn't come up yet specifically, but I'm spellbound.
ETA -- First mentioned about 35 minutes in.

This may well become my single favorite media criticism podcast. An incredible breath of fresh air on domestic issues.
==============================
Finished the first episode. This is absolutely top-notch.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/citations-needed/id1258545975?mt=2
https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded

Former fossil-fuel lobbyist, WH aide Michael Catanzo helps write order terminating Clean Power Plan and methane rule.

In Trump's Government, The 'Regulated Have Become The Regulators'
35:58 Fresh Air | August 16, 2017

...(Eric Lipton of The New York Times) LIPTON: One of the more prominent (examples of lobbyists who now appear to be working in agencies that they use to lobby) is Michael Catanzaro, who was a lobbyist for Devon Energy and also for an electric utility that operates some of the largest coal-burning power plants in the United States. And so he was lobbying on things like trying to block a rule that the EPA had passed that was going to limit methane emissions from oil and gas drilling sites across the United States. Methane is many times more potent as a climate change component than CO2. And methane also - when you release methane, you're often also releasing volatile organic chemicals, which are - you know, can be carcinogens and cause other health consequences.

So the EPA was trying to regulate methane emissions. And Michael Catanzaro was working for Devon Energy to try to kill that rule. So he then goes into the White House. And he also had previously been representing the largest - one of the largest coal-burning utilities in the United States. And he had been fighting the Clean Power Plan, which was trying to force coal-burning power plants to reduce their CO2 emissions.

And so once he gets to the White House, among the things that he does is he helps write an executive order that essentially instructs the federal agencies to terminate the Clean Power Plan and the methane rule. And so he is essentially continuing the work that he'd been doing on behalf of his private-sector clients. But he's now doing it as one of the most powerful, you know, policy people in the United States. And so you wonder, how is that possible?

...I...interviewed a number of industry lobbyists who were lobbying the White House to try to get those rules repealed...

And I said, have you talked to Michael Catanzaro since he went into the White House? And they said, yes. And I said, how is this possible? I thought there was this two-year ban on participating in a particular matter that you had represented a client on. And so we - and then I asked the White House, well, can I see his waiver because he must have been granted a waiver...

http://www.npr.org/2017/08/16/543876454/in-trumps-government-the-regulated-have-...

Dept of Education hires fox to guard henhouse (Student Aid Enforcement Office).
They might as well have tapped Trump U, sounds like! Poor kids.

Ed Dept Hires Enforcement Chief
Paul Fain | Aug 30, 2017

The U.S. Department of Education has hired a community college administrator and former DeVry University official to run its enforcement unit... Julian Schmoke is executive director of campus relations for West Georgia Technical College, a two-year public institution. He has previously worked for DeVry, most recently as associate program dean for the for-profit chain's college of engineering and information sciences.

The Obama administration last February created the Student Aid Enforcement Office. Its goal, the department said, was to respond more quickly to complaints about potentially illegal or fraudulent actions by colleges. The new unit's primary focus has been the for-profit sector...

Last year DeVry Education Group settled with the department and the FTC over allegations that it had used an incorrect, aggregate job-placement rate of 90 percent that dated back to 1975 -- a "since 1975" claim -- for graduates within their field of study. The company's $100 million settlement of the FTC's lawsuit included a $49 million payment to the commission, which used that payment to refund DeVry students. The rest of the $100 million settlement went to forgiving former students' loans and outstanding payments.

The department's resulting sanction of the company included tighter scrutiny of its finances, a penalty called heightened cash monitoring.

DeVry in February settled with New York's attorney general for $2.25 million over allegations that it had made false claims in advertisements about graduates' job placement and salaries.

In May DeVry changed its name to Adtalem Education Global Education Inc...

https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2017/08/30/report-ed-department-hires-...

Omarosa Manigault, Communications Director, WH Office of Public Liaison:

John Kelly Pushing Out Omarosa for ‘Triggering’ Trump
The new chief of staff is trying to cure the chaos that infected the West Wing. And Omarosa is ‘Patient Zero’ for unfettered access to the Boss.
Lachlan Markay & Asawin Suebsaeng | 09.02.17

Newly minted White House chief of staff John Kelly has sought to put a dent in the influence of one of President Donald Trump’s most famous advisers: Omarosa Manigault.

The former Apprentice co-star—who currently serves as the communications director for the Office of Public Liaison—has seen her direct access to the president limited since Kelly took the top White House job in late July, sources tell The Daily Beast. In particular, Kelly has taken steps to prevent her and other senior staffers from getting unvetted news articles on the president’s Resolute desk—a key method for influencing the president’s thinking, and one that Manigualt used to rile up Trump about internal White House drama...

http://www.thedailybeast.com/john-kelly-pushing-out-omarosa-for-triggering-trump

Climate-denying Tom Bridenstone championed by commercial space companies nominated to head NASA,
marijuana- hardliner/Trump-supporter Tom Marino for drug czar... SNAFU!

Trump Picks Another Non-Scientist for Science Post and Makes 'A Disastrous Choice' for Drug Czar
Rep. Jim Bridenstine is a climate denier, while Rep. Tom Marino has called for some sort of 'hospital-slash-prison' for drug treatment
Andrea Germanos | Sept 3, 2017

President Donald Trump's newly-announced nominee to head the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)...Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-Ohio), who serves on the House Armed Services Committee and the Science, Space, and Technology Committee, is "unlike previous NASA administrators," Newsweek notes, as "the 42-year-old Michigan native does not have any formal qualifications in science or engineering, having earned a triple bachelor's degree in economics, psychology, and business from Rice University, and later an MBA from Cornell University."

...ThinkProgress' Joe Romm(:) ... in 2013, Bridenstine not only gave a speech on the House floor filled with standard denier talking points, he actually ended his remarks with a demand that President Obama apologize for funding research into climate science.

"Mr. Speaker, global temperatures stopped rising 10 years ago," he falsely claimed.

ArsTechnica reported last month that Bridenstine "was championed by several commercial space companies because he is open to increased privatization of U.S. civil and military space activities."

...The White House statement Friday also announced the nomination of Rep. Tom Marino (R-Penn.) to be director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, a position often referred to as drug czar.

... "was one of Trump's most enthusiastic supporters" during his presidential campaign...

His "congressional voting record...is that of a hard-liner on marijuana issues, and he recently said that he'd like to put nonviolent drug offenders in some sort of 'hospital-slash-prison.'"...

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/09/03/trump-picks-another-non-scientist-s...

National Labor Relations Board--Marvin Kaplan, William Emanuel
Secretary of Labor--Alexander Acosta
Deputy Secretary of Labor--Patrick Pizzella

Trump’s Labor Picks Give Workers Nothing to Celebrate on Labor Day
The president is filling key positions with allies of ALEC, union busters, and a defender of sweatshop wages.
John Nichols | Sept 3, 2017

...Trump’s National Labor Relations Board picks—Marvin Kaplan and William Emanuel—have been greeted with scorn by advocates for a living wage and workplace fairness. As Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren explained to Emanuel during his confirmation hearing: “You have spent your career at one of the country’s most ruthless, union-busting law firms in the country. How can Americans trust you will protect workers rights when you’ve spent 40 years fighting against them?”

Trump’s Secretary of Labor, Alexander Acosta, has a miserable history of aligning with right-wing and corporate interests. After law school, Acosta clerked for US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit Judge Samuel Alito. Alito is now the US Supreme Court’s aggressive foe of worker rights. Acosta, who served briefly as a George W. Bush appointee to the National Labor Relations Board, went on to face harsh criticism for the partisanship he displayed on voting rights cases while leading the US Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.

As Labor Secretary, Acosta has remained on the wrong side. Just weeks ago, he appeared before the annual gathering of the militantly anti-labor American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_Council )—along with anti-union zealot Betsy DeVos, Trump’s secretary of education.

Trump’s pick to serve as deputy secretary of labor, Patrick Pizzella, has an even more troubling record than Acosta. A former campaign staffer for Ronald Reagan who has served in Republican and Democratic administrations, Pizzella was once employed by the viscerally anti-union National Right to Work Committee and later joined the firm that scandal-plagued lobbyist Jack Abramoff was associated with before his 2006 conviction on federal charges that included attempted bribery.

When Alaska Republican Senator Frank Murkowski proposed legislation to raise wages for workers in the Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory that corporations used to get a “Made in the USA” label on sweatshop products, Pizzella lobbied on behalf of the folks who wanted to build an economy on sweatshop wages.

Senator Al Franken, D-Minnesota, grilled Pizzella about his anti-worker lobbying and the best the Trump nominee could respond with was: “I was not one of Abramoff’s colleagues who was convicted.”...

https://www.thenation.com/article/trumps-atrocious-labor-picks-give-workers-noth...

The Leading Candidate to Replace Tom Price Seems Way Less Inclined to Sabotage Obamacare
Mark Joseph Stern | Sept 29, 2017

The inglorious resignation of Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price on Friday leaves vacant an extremely powerful position in President Donald Trump’s cabinet. The early frontrunner for the job is Seema Verma, a former healthcare consultant who currently heads the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Despite this administration’s crusade against Medicaid, Verma actually worked to expand Medicaid in Indiana while she worked as former governor Mike Pence’s protégé in that state. Verma is no friend of the Affordable Care Act, and she has long wished to impose extra burdens on Americans who receive subsidized health care. She is, however, almost certainly the most qualified and least dogmatic official who could possibly lead HHS under the Trump administration. In fact, Verma replacing Price would be a significant improvement.

A key irony of Verma’s career is that, even though she is a conservative Republican, she has spent much of her life helping to implement Obamacare.

...it is quite clear that Verma would like to see Obamacare repealed, notwithstanding her years of work expanding the law. As HHS secretary, she would not be an ally to the ACA. But she might not be as much of an enemy as Price, either. So long as the law remains in place, Verma does not appear keen to sabotage it—since doing so would, of course, undermine her own Medicaid work for no real reason other than political hostility toward the law.

...In any Verma reign at HHS, Democrats would have reason for cautious optimism. She is not the secretary that a progressive would pick, but she is not a pure partisan ideologue like Price. Make no mistake—Verma wants Congress to kill the ACA. But until it does, she does not seem opposed to letting the law run smoothly.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/09/29/seema_verma_is_less_inclined_t...

DAVID BROOKS: If Donald Trump thought he was a good secretary of defense — of health and human services, and he knew his policies, which he did — he knew the policies — and he was generally supportive, which, as far as I could see, he was, then this scandal doesn’t merit a firing/resignation.

He made Trump look bad. And Trump’s only loyalty is to himself. So, I get that. He had to go.

But, personally, I think the government should have a fleet of planes to take around Cabinet secretaries. It would just be more efficient. Any company of any size has this sort of thing. And so this scandal makes Trump look bad, but it certainly doesn’t merit firing, I would say.

E.P.A. Chief’s Calendar: A Stream of Industry Meetings and Trips Home
ERIC LIPTON and LISA FRIEDMAN | OCT. 3, 2017

...Since taking office in February, Mr. Trump’s E.P.A. chief has held back-to-back meetings, briefing sessions and speaking engagements almost daily with top corporate executives and lobbyists from all the major economic sectors that he regulates — and almost no meetings with environmental groups or consumer or public health advocates, according to a 320-page accounting of his daily schedule from February through May, the most detailed look yet at what Mr. Pruitt has been up to since he took over the agency. (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4064980-Pruitt-Sked-and-McCarthy-Sked.html)

Many of those players have high-profile matters pending before the agency, with potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in regulatory costs at stake. Some of these same companies and trade associations were allies of Mr. Pruitt when, as Oklahoma’s attorney general, he sued the E.P.A. at least 14 times to try to block rules Mr. Pruitt is now in charge of enforcing.

He also took several trips home to Oklahoma for long weekends, often with one or two brief work meetings, followed by long stretches of downtime.

...William K. Reilly, the E.P.A. administrator under the first President George Bush, described the level of meetings between Mr. Pruitt and industry executives as unusual.

...He said Mr. Pruitt’s history of suing the E.P.A. should have prompted him to meet regularly with public health advocates and environmentalists.

“I would think he would feel a responsibility to bend over backward to show a sense of judicious impartiality,” Mr. Reilly said...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/03/us/politics/epa-scott-pruitt-calendar-industr...

Bob Murray, of Murray Energy (mentioned below), was interviewed last night re cancellation of the Clean Power Plan: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/revoking-clean-power-plan-means-sides/ . Watch it for jaw-dropping insight into whose interests are being served these days at EPA... Not hurricane, wildfire, flood victims, asthma sufferers that's for sure!! :-(

Trump Nominates a Coal Lobbyist to Be No. 2 at E.P.A.
LISA FRIEDMAN | OCT. 5, 2017

...Andrew R. Wheeler, a coal lobbyist with links to outspoken deniers of established science on climate change...former aide to Senator James M. Inhofe, (nominated) to be deputy administrator of (EPA), the White House tapped an experienced legislative hand reviled by environmental activists but hailed by industry as having the know-how to dismantle Obama-era fossil fuel regulations.

(Graphic: 52 Environmental Rules on the Way Out Under Trump
The list shows dozens of environmental policies that the Trump administration has targeted, often in an effort to ease burdens on the fossil fuel industry.)

...Since 2009, Mr. Wheeler has been a leader in the energy practice of the law firm Faegre Baker Daniels. His clients at the firm have included Murray Energy, one of the nation’s largest coal mining companies. Before joining the firm, he worked on Capitol Hill for more than a decade, much of that time serving under Senator Inhofe as the Oklahoma Republican’s chief counsel and as the staff director for the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

...Senator Inhofe is perhaps best known for having brought a snowball to the Senate floor to assail the “hysteria on global warming.” Yet those who work with Mr. Wheeler say he is reliably conservative but not a firebrand in the mold of his former boss. He has opposed the Obama administration’s efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants; criticized an agreement Mr. Obama made with China to jointly cut carbon pollution as “unilateral disarmament with China”; and heralded Murray Energy’s opposition to the Paris agreement on climate change, which Mr. Trump has vowed to abandon.

...(Quick confirmation) may not be in the cards. Democrats have already raised concerns about how the administration is filling out the E.P.A., and in a hearing this week clashed with nominees over issues like climate change and pesticides. Moreover, tax reform remains at the top of the Senate calendar...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/climate/trump-epa-andrew-wheeler.html

McConnell ratchets up judicial wars — again
The Senate leader wants to end the long-running practice of giving home-state senators sign-off on court nominees.
BURGESS EVERETT and SEUNG MIN KIM | 10/11/2017

...McConnell indicated to The Weekly Standard that he plans to push through judicial nominees even if they are opposed by their home-state senators — abandoning the so-called blue-slip rule that has been in practice for at least a century. Yet he apparently didn't get buy-in from Grassley (R-Iowa), who has the power to jam through candidates for the federal bench.

...Grassley has also repeatedly said the Senate should skip its recesses, particularly so senators can confirm more judges.

...McConnell is pledging to speed up the rate of confirming judges on the Senate floor. Just seven judges, including Gorsuch, have been confirmed this year, and Republicans are beginning to worry they could lose the Senate next year, and with it the ability to confirm lifetime judges.

...McConnell is indicating that he will begin prioritizing judges over executive branch nominees, who leave their posts when a new president takes office. District and circuit judges, in contrast, receive lifetime appointments...

http://www.weeklystandard.com/mitch-mcconnell-goes-to-the-mattresses-for-trumps-...

Trump to nominate Kelly's White House deputy as DHS secretary
Kirstjen Nielsen, who served as Kelly's chief of staff at DHS, was his pick to fill his old job, which has been vacant since July.
ELIANA JOHNSON, ANDREW RESTUCCIA and DANIEL LIPPMAN | 10/11/2017

...Kirstjen Nielsen...served as White House chief of staff John Kelly’s top aide during his time as DHS secretary and moved with him to the West Wing as his principal deputy chief of staff when he was appointed in July, leaving the Cabinet post vacant.

Nielsen, 45, is a cybersecurity expert and an attorney with an extensive background in homeland security, including stints at the Transportation Security Administration and on the White House Homeland Security Council under President George W. Bush.

“She would be the first person to run the department who has actually worked there”...

Nielsen developed a close working relationship with Kelly during the transition, in which she served as his “sherpa,” guiding him through the Senate confirmation process.

...a dark horse candidate...

Nielsen’s no-nonsense style...has been instrumental in Kelly’s efforts to push Trump and his senior aides to use the disciplined policymaking processes of previous administrations, which has limited the flow of paper to the president as well as the stream of advisers who had breezed in and out of the Oval Office.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/11/kirstjen-nielsen-dhs-department-of-home...

Trump taps climate skeptic for top White House environmental post
Brady Dennis and Chris Mooney| October 13, 2017

President Trump on Thursday tapped Kathleen Hartnett-White, a former chairman of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, to head a key White House office that coordinates environmental and energy policies across the government.

...Like other members of the Trump administration, she has long questioned the overwhelming scientific consensus on human-fueled climate change and has criticized the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a volunteer group of climate scientists whose findings are considered the gold standard of climate science. And she has described efforts to combat global warming as little more than an attack on the fossil fuel industry.

...Hartnett-White is a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, an organization whose board of directors includes oil industry executives and GOP activists. Koch Industries, an oil-based conglomerate that has funded a variety of libertarian political groups, was among the group’s broad range of original donors.

...book she co-authored in 2016, titled “Fueling Freedom: Exposing the Mad War on Energy,”

...The Council on Environmental Quality or CEQ, formed in 1970, doesn’t just coordinate environmental policy at the White House. It plays a central role in the implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, which requires an assessment of the environmental impacts of many proposed federal actions before they are undertaken.

That’s where Hartnett-White could have a lot of influence in an administration that has called for speeding up infrastructure projects and cutting down on holdups due to environmental requirements.

...Hartnett-White...must be confirmed by the Senate...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/10/13/trump-taps-...

Trump declines to express confidence in drug czar nominee in wake of Post/‘60 Minutes’ probe
Ed O'Keefe, Scott Higham and Lenny Bernstein | October 16, 2017

President Trump...declined to express confidence in Rep. Tom Marino (R-Pa.), his nominee for drug czar, in the wake of revelations that the lawmaker helped steer legislation making it harder to act against giant drug companies.

Trump’s remarks came amid widespread reaction across the political spectrum to a Washington Post/“60 Minutes” investigation that explained how Marino helped guide the legislation, which sailed through Congress last year with virtually no opposition.

Trump said “we’re going to be looking into” the investigation, while many Democrats and at least one Republican called for modification or outright repeal of the law. Democrats also urged Trump to drop Marino as his pick to lead the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Speaking in the White House Rose Garden, Trump defended Marino as “a very early supporter of mine” and “a great guy.” ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/manchin-calls-on-trump-to-withdraw-mari...

_________________________________________________________________________

Thank goodness for free press--exhibit A of how the swamp operates:

Ex-DEA agent: Opioid crisis fueled by drug industry and Congress
Bill Whitaker | 2017 Oct 15

Whistleblower Joe Rannazzisi says drug distributors pumped opioids into U.S. communities -- knowing that people were dying -- and says industry lobbyists and Congress derailed the DEA's efforts to stop it

In the midst of the worst drug epidemic in American history, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's ability to keep addictive opioids off U.S. streets was derailed -- that according to Joe Rannazzisi, one of the most important whistleblowers ever interviewed by 60 Minutes. Rannazzisi ran the DEA's Office of Diversion Control, the division that regulates and investigates the pharmaceutical industry. Now in a joint investigation by 60 Minutes and The Washington Post, Rannazzisi tells the inside story of how, he says, the opioid crisis was allowed to spread -- aided by Congress, lobbyists, and a drug distribution industry that shipped, almost unchecked, hundreds of millions of pills to rogue pharmacies and pain clinics providing the rocket fuel for a crisis that, over the last two decades, has claimed 200,000 lives.

...distributors know exactly how many pills go to every drug store they supply. And they are required under the Controlled Substances Act to report and stop what the DEA calls "suspicious orders" -- such as unusually large or frequent shipments of opioids. But DEA investigators say many distributors ignored that requirement.

...One example: a pharmacy in Kermit, West Virginia, a town of just 392 people, ordered nine million hydrocodone pills over two years.

... (distributors were) big companies, Fortune 500 companies

... the drug industry used...money and influence to pressure top lawyers at the DEA to take a softer approach.

...DC's notorious revolving door... DEA lawyers switch sides and jump to high-paying jobs defending the drug industry.

...As cases nearly ground to a halt at DEA, the drug industry began lobbying Congress for legislation that would destroy DEA's enforcement powers.

...The bill, introduced in the House by Pennsylvania Congressman Tom Marino and Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, was promoted as a way to ensure that patients had access to the pain medication they needed.

Jonathan Novak, who worked in the DEA's legal office, says what the bill really did was strip the agency of its ability to immediately freeze suspicious shipments of prescription narcotics to keep drugs off U.S. streets -- what the DEA calls diversion.

...Who drafted the legislation that would have such a dire effect? The answer came in another internal Justice Department email released to 60 Minutes and The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act: "Linden Barber used to work for the DEA. He wrote the Marino bill."

...According to federal filings, during the two years the legislation was considered and amended, (the major drug companies) spent $102 million lobbying Congress on the bill and other legislation, claiming the DEA was out of control, making it harder for patients to get needed medication.

...a week after the hearing on legislation that would hobble the DEA's enforcement authority, Marino and Blackburn wrote the inspector general for the Justice Department, demanding that Rannazzisi be investigated for trying to quote "intimidate the United States Congress."

...The investigation requested by Congressman Marino against Rannazzisi went nowhere, but soon after, Rannazzisi was stripped of his responsibilities. He says he went from supervising 600 people to supervising none -- so he resigned.

...Majority Leader Mitch McConnell brought the legislation to the floor and it passed the Senate through unanimous consent with no objections and no recorded votes.

It passed the House the same way, with members of Congress chatting away on the floor.

A week later, with no objections from Congress or the DEA, President Barack Obama signed it into law without ceremony or the usual bill signing photo-op. Marino issued a press release the next day claiming credit for the legislation.

The drug distributors declared victory and told us the new law would in no way limit DEA's enforcement abilities. But DEA chief administrative law judge, John J. Mulrooney, who must adjudicate the law, wrote in a soon-to-be-published Marquette Law Review article we obtained, that the new legislation "would make it all but...impossible" to prosecute unscrupulous distributors.

...Seven months after the bill became law, Congressman Marino's point man on the legislation, his Chief of Staff Bill Tighe, became a lobbyist for the National Association of Chain Drug Stores.

Since the crackdown on the distributors began, the pharmaceutical industry and law firms that represent them have hired at least 46 investigators, attorneys and supervisors from the DEA, including 32 directly from the division that regulates the drug industry.

...Joe Rannazzissi now consults with state attorneys general who have filed suit against distributors for their role in the opioid crisis. Tennessee Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn is running for the Senate. As for Congressman Marino, he was just nominated to be President Donald Trump's new drug czar....

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ex-dea-agent-opioid-crisis-fueled-by-drug-industry-...

>153 margd: I thought it was interesting how the first words out of his mouth about Tom Marino were about how he was an early supporter of his. Like that's the most important qualification for a nominee for drug czar.

The reputational hazards of working for Trump, even if you're doing it for the best of reasons (protect the country from Trumpish disaster):

John Kelly and the Dangerous Moral Calculus of Working for Trump
Ryan Lizza | October 20, 2017

....Working for Trump means that one’s credibility is likely to be damaged, so there is a kind of moral calculation that any Trump supporter must make: Does working for him serve some higher purpose that outweighs the price of reputational loss?

There is a hierarchy of justifications for backing Trump. At the bottom are the spokespeople and purely political officials who are almost instantly discredited, because they are forced to defend the statements of a President who routinely lies and manufactures nonsensical versions of events. Sean Spicer...

Republicans in Congress...justify their support by noting that Trump will implement the core Republican agenda, and that alone is worth the price of a person at least some of them believe is unfit to be President.

...at the top of the pyramid, especially in positions of national security, it’s hard to argue against anyone taking a senior position at the Pentagon, the State Department, or the National Security Council to insure that Trump’s worst instincts are contained...Defense Secretary James Mattis; the national-security adviser, H. R. McMaster; and the White House chief of staff, John Kelly. They were all generally respected for their military service, untainted by prior association with Trump, and their work in the Administration was generally believed to be a continuation of their service to the country by making sure our erratic President doesn’t fulfill Corker’s warning (WW III).

We learned this week that, even if you maintain the most sympathetic view of why these ex-generals continue to serve Trump, there is no way to work for him without paying the Trump tax on one’s reputation. Since joining the White House, Kelly has been viewed as a force for good. He helped defactionalize the West Wing by removing some of its most difficult personalities, such as Steve Bannon. He has implemented some basic processes that all modern White Houses have had, such as a system for controlling who meets with Trump and what information flows to him. But then, yesterday, he was dragged into the sordid spectacle of Trump’s fight with a congresswoman and the grieving family of La David Johnson, the Army sergeant who was killed in Niger earlier this month.

...no matter how good one’s intentions are, when you go to work for Trump, you will end up paying for it with your reputation. For Kelly, not even his four stars prevented that.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/ryan-lizza/john-kelly-and-the-dangerous-moral-cal...

which sailed through Congress last year with virtually no opposition.

Ryan Lizza is the Washington correspondent for The New Yorker, and also an on-air contributor for CNN. Before joining the magazine, in 2007, he was a political correspondent for The New Republic, from 1998 to 2007, and, before that, a correspondent for GQ and a contributing editor at New York. He has also written for the New York Times, Washington Monthly, and The Atlantic Monthly. His awards include the 2012 National Press Club's Hood Award for Diplomatic Correspondence, for his article “The Consequentialist,” and the White House Correspondents' Association’s Aldo Beckman Memorial Award, for a series on Obama’s Presidency and reëlection campaign.

As badly as White House chief of staff John Kelly roasted Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., his statements about her unseemly politicization of the president's call to a Gold Star widow were at the same time a rebuke to how the media reflexively aided Wilson's narrative.

Kelly said at the press briefing Thursday that he was "stunned" and "brokenhearted" when he saw Wilson in TV interviews and quoted in news reports divulging details about a personal call from Trump to Myeisha Johnson, whose husband died in an enemy ambush earlier this month in Niger.

In front of a room of uncharacteristically hushed reporters, Kelly said he was dismayed to see Wilson politicize one of the few sacred things left: The mourning of a fallen soldier. In this case, Sgt. La David T. Johnson.

In front of a room of uncharacteristically hushed reporters, Kelly said he was dismayed to see Wilson politicize one of the few sacred things left: The mourning of a fallen soldier. In this case, Sgt. La David T. Johnson.

Wilson told reporters earlier in the week that she was there for the on-speaker call between President Trump and Myeisha Johnson. She said Trump was "insensitive" because, according to Wilson, Trump told Johnson, "Well, I guess he knew what he signed up for, but I guess it still hurts."

Wilson told the story to a Miami NBC affiliate and it was passed around by journalists on social media.

Jill Filipovic, a liberal contributor to the New York Times, said on Twitter, "What kind of awful soulless human says this? How does anyone still support this man?"

CNN national security analyst Michael Weiss said the quote relayed by Wilson would be comparable to Trump saying, "If you can't stand the heat, stay outta the kitchen."

Wilson went on CNN Tuesday night to recount the story and then did it again Wednesday morning on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."

There is no recording of the conversation to corroborate Wilson's quote or even her ungenerous interpretation of the phone call. Assuming the quote is accurate, Kelly said he had told Trump to say something along those same lines, because it was what most comforted Kelly after his own son died serving in Afghanistan.

But MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, who spends three hours each weekday giving his best daring look into a TV camera, helped Wilson's tale move along.

When Wilson said at the end of the interview that she's "not trying to politicize" the call, Scarborough sympathetically replied, "No, we completely understand. We completely understand."

Trump said Thursday night on Twitter that Wilson's version of the call was a "total lie," which CNN's Chris Cillizza, the Golden Corral of political commentary, said was an example of the president taking "the low road."

When a congresswoman from the opposing party tells an impugning story about the president's respect for a dead soldier, "We completely understand." But when Trump defends himself, it's "the low road."

News publications running articles on Wilson's story botched it even further, readily printing the first half of Wilson's Trump quote ("He knew what he was getting into when he signed up...") while disregarding the rest ("…but I guess it still hurts.")

The New York Times, the Associated Press, the Washington Post, and NBC all ran pieces that included the first half of Wilson's quote without the second.

To print the only the first part of the quote is to portray Trump as indifferent to a lost loved one. But the second part makes all the difference, instead showing someone who sees the pain a person has to endure.

At the press briefing Thursday, Kelly also recalled an event he attended in 2015, the dedication of a new FBI building in Florida to two agents who were killed by drug traffickers. He said that at the ceremony, Wilson, "in the long tradition of empty barrels making the most noise," stood up and "talked about how she was instrumental in getting the funding for that building."

A video from the speech shows Kelly was wrong about the funding, but right about Wilson making the most noise.

Dressed in one of her trademark loud hats, she told the audience about how, under a tight government deadline, it was she who secured the dedication under the two agents' names.

"Everyone said that's impossible," Wilson said of the time crunch. "It takes at least eight months to a year to complete the process through the House, the Senate, and to the president's office. I said, 'I'm a school principal,' and I said, 'Excuse my French — oh, hell no! We're going to get this done.' Immediately, I went to attack mode."

What followed was a long story about how Wilson saved the day.

Journalists are now asserting that the resurfaced video took the weight out of Kelly's statements Thursday, but it doesn't.

Kelly is a retired marine with an extended career commanding armed forces in Iraq, Central America, and elsewhere. His son died in the war in Afghanistan. That he got a minor point wrong about Wilson funding the FBI building is irrelevant, because he was right about Wilson making the speech a tribute to herself.

Kelly said at the briefing Thursday that what Wilson did, spreading information about a deeply personal phone call, was tasteless.

It was, and the press helped her.

>136 margd: contd.

The Daily 202: 10 takeaways from Mueller’s shock-and-awe gambit
James Hohmann | October 31, 2017

...2. Sam Clovis is about to be in the hot seat...awaiting Senate confirmation to serve in the Agriculture Department’s top scientific post...

...“At one point, Papadopoulos emailed Clovis and other campaign officials about a March 24, 2016, meeting he had in London with a professor, who had introduced him to the Russian ambassador and a Russian woman he described as ‘Putin’s niece,’” (WaPO's Rosalind) Helderman reports. “The group had talked about arranging a meeting ‘between us and the Russian leadership to discuss U.S.-Russia ties under President Trump,’ Papadopoulos wrote...Clovis responded that he would ‘work it through the campaign,’ adding, ‘great work,’ according to court documents.

“In August 2016, Clovis responded to efforts by Papadopoulos to organize an ‘off the record’ meeting with Russian officials. ‘I would encourage you’ and another foreign policy adviser to the campaign to ‘make the trip, if it is feasible,’ Clovis wrote...

...10. The indictments cast fresh doubts on Trump’s judgment and his discernment in surrounding himself with good people...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2017/10/31/daily-...

136, 160 contd. Clovis, nominee for USDA top scientist post

Sam Clovis withdraws his nomination for USDA’s top scientist post after being linked to Russia probe
Juliet Eilperin and Philip Rucker | November 2, 2017

...The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s chief scientist nominee, Sam Clovis withdrew his name from consideration Wednesday amid revelations that he was among top officials on the Trump campaign who was aware of efforts by foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos to broker a relationship between the campaign and Russian officials.

...In August 2016, Clovis encouraged (George) Papadopoulos to organize an “off the record” meeting with Russian officials, according to court documents. “I would encourage you” and another foreign policy adviser to the campaign to “make the trip, if it is feasible,” Clovis wrote.

...In a letter to the president Wednesday, Clovis explained that he did not think he could get a fair consideration from the Senate, which was slated to hold a hearing on his appointment on Nov. 9.

“The political climate inside Washington has made it impossible for me to receive balanced and fair consideration for this position,” wrote Clovis, who currently serves as USDA’s senior White House adviser. “The relentless assaults on you and your team seem to be a blood sport that only increases with intensity each day.”

...On Thursday White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed that Trump had accepted Clovis’s request, saying, “We respect Mr. Clovis’s decision to withdraw his nomination.”

However, Clovis indicated in his letter that he will stay on at the Agriculture Department in a senior role, writing, “I will remain a devoted and loyal supporter and will continue to serve at the pleasure of you and the Secretary of Agriculture.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/11/02/sam-clovis-withdraws...