"Sorry, ma'am, I won't be back. There's a wall to build, so ..."
"Sorry, ma'am, I won't be back. There's a wall to build, so ..."
There will be a lot written today about the popular vote losing buffoon’s newly released budget plan, but let’s take a moment to focus on this one proposal that perfectly encapsulates Trump’s vision for America:
… the complete elimination of the $3 billion Community Development Block Grant program, which funds popular programs like Meals on Wheels, housing assistance and other community assistance efforts.
God bless America. Unless you’re poor and infirm. You can starve.
●IL-03: Chicago-area Rep. Dan Lipinski has long been one of the more socially conservative members of the House Democratic caucus. As recently as 2014, Lipinski responded to a candidate questionnaire by saying that he would support an amendment in the constitution to ban same-sex marriage. Lipinski hasn't gotten any better in the age of Trump: This year alone, Lipinski was one of just three Democrats who voted in favor of a GOP bill to ban federal funding for abortion services. Lipinski has also voted to overturn an Obama-era Health and Human Services rule that prevented states from withholding funds to Planned Parenthood and other healthcare groups that also provide abortions. Illinois' 3rd Congressional District backed Barack Obama 56-43 and supported Hillary Clinton 55-40, so Lipinski isn't voting with Team Red because he's worried about a GOP opponent.
Lipinski has only attracted token primary challenges for the last decade, but that may change soon. Marketing consultant Marie Newman has formed an exploratory committee ahead of a possible bid, and she says she's likely to announce in the spring. Newman has wasted no time arguing that Lipinski is too conservative for his seat, noting that he was one of the few Democrats to vote against Obamacare in 2010. Newman has lined up some well-known local consultants and has ties to anti-Trump groups like Indivisible, which could help her make connections. With progressives infuriated at Trump and donations to anti-Trump candidates high, Newman may be able to haul in the type of cash she'd need to get her name out in the expensive Chicago area.
However, even if Newman or another candidate can raise a credible amount of money, Lipinski will not be easy to beat. Back in 2008, Lipinski faced a well-funded primary challenge from Mark Pera, but Lipinski defeated him 54-25. Lipinski has been an ally of Chicago's powerful Democratic machine, and he's also close to local labor groups. Lipinski and his father Bill Lipinski have represented this area for a combined 18 terms, and plenty of voters are still loyal to the family. There are also still many local Democratic primary voters who share Lipinski's views on abortion and won't see them as a liability at all. It's also possible that, even if a majority of Democratic voters have soured on Lipinski, other candidates will run and split the anti-Lipinski vote enough to secure him renomination. But with progressives inflamed at Democrats who are giving Trump any support, there's probably never been a better time to unseat Lipinski.
A second federal judge has blocked Donald Trump’s Muslim Ban 2.0:
A federal judge in Greenbelt, Maryland, has blocked President Donald Trump's revised travel ban targeting six predominantly Muslim countries.
Judge Theodore Chuang ruled Thursday in a case brought near the nation's capital by the ACLU and other groups representing immigrants, refugees and their families. The groups argued that the underlying rationale of the ban was to discriminate against Muslims, making it unconstitutional. Chuang granted a preliminary injunction nationwide basis. [...]
Chuang granted a preliminary injunction nationwide basis pending further orders from this court. He declined to stay the ruling should an emergency appeal be filed.
This follows Wednesday night’s ruling handed down by a federal judge in Hawaii.
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"Depression Breadline" sculpture by George Segal at the FDR Memorial in Washington, D.C. The inscription (a quote from one of FDR's fireside chats) reads "I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, and ill-nourished. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." See Thomas Edsall
"Depression Breadline" sculpture by George Segal at the FDR Memorial in Washington, D.C. The inscription (a quote from one of FDR's fireside chats) reads "I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, and ill-nourished. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." See Thomas Edsall
The con Donald Trump committed on his voters is slowly coming undone. He is not honest. He is not a brilliant deal maker. He is not even competent.
His entire life, Trump has sold shimmer and called it silver. It was and is all an illusion, a brand built on selling banality with braggadocio. He shaped vapors into dreams and delivered them to those hungry for a taste of the showy, hollow form of the high life he came to represent. He was successful at exploiting those with an ostentatious appetite for the air of success. Trump’s life story is a pyramid scheme of ambitions. [...]
Now even some of the people who once supported him with vigor are being forced to remove the scales from their eyes. They are now the betrayed disciples of a false prophet.
What if the nation’s largest state, the capital of liberal America, goes their own way and shows a counterpoint, by improving a flawed system and realizing the goal of truly universal coverage?
Gavin Newsom, currently the favorite to win the California governor’s race in 2018, wants to create this contrast. So does the state Legislature. And they are following different paths to get there.
Last month, the Legislatureintroduced SB 562, which would create a single-payer system for all of California’s 38 million citizens, including the undocumented. The Legislature has passed this concept twice, both in 2006 and 2008, only to have it vetoed by Arnold Schwarzenegger. But “concept” is the key word. There aren’t many details in the bill beyond the desire to move to single-payer, where the government acts as the only insurer to bargain down provider costs.
THE CONTINUITY OFWall Street’s dominant role in American politics — regardless of what party sits in power or how reviled the financial industry finds itself across the country — was perhaps never more evident than when Jake Siewert, now a Goldman Sachs spokesperson, on Tuesdaypraised the selection of Jim Donovan, a Goldman Sachs managing director, for the No. 2 position in the Treasury Department under Steve Mnuchin, himself a former Goldman Sachs partner.
“Jim is smart, extraordinarily versatile, and as hard-working as they come,” Siewert gushed. “He’ll be an invaluable addition to the economic team.”
The punch line?Siewertwas counselor at the Treasury Department to Timothy Geithner, as well as a White House press secretary under Bill Clinton.
The ubiquity ofGoldman Sachs veteransacross numerous presidencies throughout history, both Republican and Democratic, has been well documented. But Donald Trump sold himself as something different, an economic nationalist determined to rankle Wall Street. He evenran campaign adssavaging bankers like Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein for their role in a “global power structure.”
That populist smokescreen is long gone now.
Mnuchin and Donovan are just two of five Goldman expats in high-level positions on Trump’s team. Steve Bannon spent a limited time at Goldman Sachs, but White House assistant Dina Powell, who headed the bank’s philanthropic efforts, and National Economic Council director Gary Cohn, Goldman’s former president, had higher-ranking positions for a longer period. Jay Clayton, Trump’s nominee for the Securities and Exchange Commission, was a partner for Goldman’s main law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell. [...]
QUOTATION OF THE DAY
”It is fatal for any body of workers to have forever hanging from the fringes of its skirts other bodies on a level just below its own; for that means continual pressure downward, additional difficulty to be overcome in the struggle to maintain reasonable rates of wages.”
~Florence Kelley, The Present Status of Minimum Wage Legislation, 1913
At Daily Kos on this date in 2010—Radical Roadmap: Whack the Middle Class:
NPR's Guy Raz interviewed Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan Sunday. It was another softball moment. You could almost see Raz nodding in agreement with the genial Congressman as he plugged his radical Roadmap for America's Future. It's this era's Contract with America, with Ryan as a more appealing, more narrowly focused Newt Gingrich, pitching a plan for completing the bumpy 30-year-long journey whose destination for middle-class citizens is the bottom of a cliff. A Deadend Plan for America.
Except, of course, for that hunk of the population that decades of upwardly transferring wealth has already fattened to the proportions of http://www.courier-journal.com/blogs/vel12/uploaded_images/creosote-747728.jpg">Mr. Creosote. For that Top Tenth, Ryan's plan offers more of the same smooth ride. Raz asked Ryan if he weren't concerned that the leadership of the GOP has failed to publicly back his plan. That's the line that Newsweek and the Cato Institute have taken, too. But why should Ryan worry? The leadership will eventually come around. The Roadmap, after all, would transform their Reaganomic fantasies into reality.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Everything is a distraction! So we invited everyone on to distract you. Greg Dworkin, Armando and Joan McCarter offer their takes on DonT Care, Trump’s taxes, and the growing realization of The Donald’s betrayal of the voters of Greater Trumpistan.
As more results come in, it's clear that Dutch voters have rejected the anti-Muslim rhetoric of Geert Wilders. Instead voters will return Prime Minister Mark Rutte and the center-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy to power. Rutte will be forced to form a new coalition, as the center-left Labor Party was all but eliminated — punished by liberal voters who felt it had compromised its position. But while other centrist parties made some gains, they weren't the biggest winners.
The center-left Green-Left party, led by Jesse Klaver, a 30-year-old upstart who embraced Barack Obama-style campaign tactics, also appeared to do well, potentially quadrupling its seats.
Despite big, ugly talk from Wilders, Dutch voters maintained their nation's traditions of openness and acceptance. And in rejecting the hateful nationalist rhetoric, they may have also drawn a line that will make it harder for Wilders’ equivalents elsewhere in Europe.
Wilders’s showing will probably slow the momentum of French anti-immigrant leader Marine Le Pen, who, if she captures her nation’s presidency in May, would try to lead France out of the E.U., shattering the bloc in the process. German leaders also face a challenge as the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party stands to capture seats in Parliament.
One thing that may have contributed to the white nationalist defeat — Donald Trump. The embarrassing chaos surrounding Trump’s first two months hasn't exactly made nationalism look like a winning team. Trump's the poster boy for incompetence, confusion, and international disdain.
In an odd way, Donald Trump may end up being the man who stopped the tide of nationalism around the world … by providing a giant cautionary tale.
The GOP "replacement" for Obamacare doesn't repeal the ACA's $1.1 trillion in Medicare savings. Wonder why?
The GOP "replacement" for Obamacare doesn't repeal the ACA's $1.1 trillion in Medicare savings. Wonder why?
The acronym CBO doesn’t just stand for “Congressional Budget Office.” As President Trump, Speaker Ryan and their GOP allies learned the hard way on Monday, CBO is also shorthand for “Conservative Bullshit Obliterator.”
In a day of unrelenting bad news for their would-be “replacement” bill for the Affordable Care Act, Republicans got the word from the nonpartisan budget scorekeeper that their plan would leave 14 million more Americans uninsured next year, a figure forecast to reach a staggering 24 million by 2026. Just hours after Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tom Price protested that “we disagree strenuously” with CBO’s prediction, it turned out that the Trump White House’s own assessment of 26 million newly uninsured was even worse than the CBO number. Further undermining GOP talking points were the CBO conclusions that there is no Obamacare “death spiral” and that average premiums under the Republican replacement will drop over time simply because many older and sicker Americans won’t be able to afford insurance at all.
But there was seemingly a silver lining—or perhaps more fitting, a golden shower—in Trumpcare’s cloud of gloom. After years of consistently predicting that Obamacare would reduce the national debt and warning that GOP repeal efforts would inevitably increase, CBO forecast the Republican bill would save Uncle Sam $337 billion over the next decade:
CBO and JCT estimate that enacting the legislation would reduce federal deficits by $337 billion over the 2017-2026 period. That total consists of $323 billion in on-budget savings and $13 billion in off-budget savings. Outlays would be reduced by $1.2 trillion over the period, and revenues would be reduced by $0.9 trillion.
As it turns out, what Speaker Ryan trumpeted as “dramatically” reducing the deficit is a scam, too. That’s because the GOP’s “American Health Care Act” doesn’t repeal Obamacare’s Medicare savings currently projected to reach $1.1 trillion over the next decade.
Chicago-area Rep. Dan Lipinski has long been one of the more socially conservative members of the House Democratic caucus. As recently as 2014, Lipinski responded to a candidate questionnaire and said he would support an amendment in the constitution to ban same-sex marriage. Lipinski hasn’t gotten any better in the age of Trump: This year alone, Lipinski was one of just three Democrats who voted in favor of a GOP bill to ban federal funding of abortions. Lipinski has also voted to overturn an Obama-era Health and Human Services rule that prevented states from withholding funds to Planned Parenthood and other healthcare groups that also provide abortions. Illinois' 3rd Congressional District backed Barack Obama 56-43 and supported Hillary Clinton 55-40, so Lipinski isn’t voting with Team Red because he’s worried about a GOP opponent.
Lipinski has only attracted token primary challenges for the last decade, but that may change soon. Marketing consultant Marie Newman has formed an exploratory committee ahead of a possible bid, and she says she’s likely to announce in the spring. Newman has wasted no time arguing that Lipinski is too conservative for his seat, noting that he was one of the few Democrats to vote against Obamacare in 2010. Newman has lined up some well-known local consultants and has ties to anti-Trump groups like Indivisible, which could help make connections. With progressives infuriated at Trump and donations to anti-Trump candidates high, Newman may be able to haul in the type of cash she’d need to get her name out in the expensive Chicago area.
However, Lipinski will not be easy to beat. Back in 2008, Lipinski faced a well-funded primary challenge from Mark Pera, but Lipinski beat him 54-25. Lipinski has been an ally of Chicago’s powerful Democratic machine, and he’s also close to local labor groups. Lipinski and his father, Bill Lipinski, have represented this area for a combined 18 terms, and plenty of voters are still loyal to the family. There are also still many local Democratic primary voters who share Lipinski’s views on abortion and won’t see them as a liability at all. It’s also possible that, even if a majority of Democratic voters have soured on Lipinski, other candidates will run and split the anti-Lipinski vote enough to secure him renomination. But with Democratic voters inflamed at Democrats who are giving Trump any support, there’s probably never been a better time to unseat Lipinski.
It would be easier to claim the United States was still a functional democracy if every last sodding branch of government were not a subsidiary of Some Filthy Rich Bastard, Inc. Oh, look—Donald Trump's nominee for the Supreme Court slot Mitch McConnell illegitimately reserved was groomed for his career by one of the richest people in America: Philip Anschutz.
As a lawyer at a Washington law firm in the early 2000s, Judge Gorsuch represented Mr. Anschutz, his companies and lower-ranking business executives as an outside counsel. In 2006, Mr. Anschutz successfully lobbied Colorado’s lone Republican senator and the Bush administration to nominate Judge Gorsuch to the federal appeals court. And since joining the court, Judge Gorsuch has been a semiregular speaker at the mogul’s annual dove-hunting retreats for the wealthy and politically prominent at his 60-square-mile Eagles Nest Ranch.
This is what they don't tell you in school, kids. Work hard, take odd jobs to put yourself through school, become a successful whatever-you-want-to-be, and you'll still be passed over your whole life in favor of some guy who knows somebody who's filthy rich and can call in a few favors.
Relax, though. It's not as if Gorsuch is in the man's pocket. They just happen to hang out in the same crowd. On the same property. In the same house. That they built together for funsies.
But he has connections with others who work with the Colorado billionaire. For nearly a dozen years, Judge Gorsuch has been partners in a limited-liability company with two of Mr. Anschutz’s top lieutenants. Together, they own a 40-acre property on the Colorado River in the mountains northwest of Denver, where they built a vacation home together.
Outstanding, just outstanding.
Anyway, this is how the world works. But none of this should matter in the slightest, because this "nomination" isn't about Neil Gorsuch to begin with.
The boss’s orders come before a worker’s health, according to Neil Gorsuch, Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee. That was the gist of Gorsuch’s dissent in a case in which a truck driver was stranded with broken equipment in subzero temperatures late at night, waiting for a replacement who was delayed for how long he did not know. The driver’s supervisor told him to keep waiting despite his heater also being broken, and wait he did, until:
At 1:18 am — nearly two hours after first calling Road Assist — Maddin was awakened by a cell-phone call from his cousin. The cousin became alarmed by how Maddin sounded; he seemed to be shivering, and his speech was slurred. Maddin straightened up in the cab and noticed that his skin was “crackling” from the cold, his torso was numb, and he couldn’t feel his feet, according to the administrative review board ruling. Maddin hung up with his cousin and called TransAm’s Road Assist unit again. He was told to “hang in there.”
According to the review board opinion, Maddin “tried to follow this suggestion but became fearful of losing his feet, dying, and never seeing his family again.” After another half-hour with no relief, he called his TransAm supervisor, reporting his physical symptoms which, by then, also included trouble breathing. Maddin explained that he wanted to unhook the trailer from the cab and drive to a gas station. The supervisor ordered him, however, according to the review board decision, “to either drag the trailer with its frozen brakes or stay where he was,” warning that the company could be fined if Maddin left the trailer unattended.
The driver finally unhooked his truck and left after 2 AM; he was fired a week later. According to Gorsuch—but, thankfully, not according to the other two judges on his appeals court panel—the driver should have stayed, so the firing was justified.
Donald Trump’s second labor secretary nominee, Alexander Acosta, had an incredibly easy act to follow: Trump’s first nominee, Andy Puzder, went down in flames before even getting to his confirmation hearing. By comparison Acosta is qualified, experienced, and has a record remarkably lacking in domestic violence allegations or statements directly insulting workers. That said, he remains a Donald Trump nominee who offers a reminder of some of the worst of the George W. Bush administration.
Under Mr. Acosta’s watch [at the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division], his office had repeatedly violated federal law and department policies by weighing political affiliations in hiring and assessing civil rights employees.
The inspector generallaid most of the blameon a subordinate of Mr. Acosta’s, Bradley Schlozman, but the investigation concluded that Mr. Acosta had ignored warning signs about hiring practices. [...]
“There was a coordinated, political effort to drive out career attorneys, people who had been there for many years, and replace them with conservative ideologues,” said Mr. Yeomans, who worked for Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, and is active in liberal legal circles. “Acosta certainly knew what was going on.”
Someone who would turn a blind eye to illegally stacking the government with partisan Republicans is likely to be a good fit in the Trump regime. And that’s the problem.
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