n2doc
n2doc's JournalTuesday Toon Roundup 3: The Rest
CabinetACA
March
Climate
Divided
Deported
Political Systems
Approval
Dr. Ryan's Affordable Care Act Replacement (all too true!)
The Bad Reporter is Soooo Bad!
Toon- "It was their final, most essential command"
Trump freezes federal hiring
Source: Washington Post
President Trump issued executive orders Monday freezing federal hiring. The hiring freeze excludes national security employees.
A hiring freeze was included in the Trump presidential campaigns Contract with the American Voter. It was the second of six measures to clean up the corruption and special interest collusion in Washington, D.C. and part of his 100-day action plan to Make America Great Again.
The plan excludes the military, public safety, and public health.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/01/23/trump-freezes-federal-hiring/?utm_term=.a0f0b3cb1992
Doomsday Prep for the Super-Rich
Some of the wealthiest people in Americain Silicon Valley, New York, and beyondare getting ready for the crackup of civilization.
By Evan Osnos
Steve Huffman, the thirty-three-year-old co-founder and C.E.O. of Reddit, which is valued at six hundred million dollars, was nearsighted until November, 2015, when he arranged to have laser eye surgery. He underwent the procedure not for the sake of convenience or appearance but, rather, for a reason he doesnt usually talk much about: he hopes that it will improve his odds of surviving a disaster, whether natural or man-made. If the world endsand not even if the world ends, but if we have troublegetting contacts or glasses is going to be a huge pain in the ass, he told me recently. Without them, Im fucked.
Huffman, who lives in San Francisco, has large blue eyes, thick, sandy hair, and an air of restless curiosity; at the University of Virginia, he was a competitive ballroom dancer, who hacked his roommates Web site as a prank. He is less focussed on a specific threata quake on the San Andreas, a pandemic, a dirty bombthan he is on the aftermath, the temporary collapse of our government and structures, as he puts it. I own a couple of motorcycles. I have a bunch of guns and ammo. Food. I figure that, with that, I can hole up in my house for some amount of time.
Survivalism, the practice of preparing for a crackup of civilization, tends to evoke a certain picture: the woodsman in the tinfoil hat, the hysteric with the hoard of beans, the religious doomsayer. But in recent years survivalism has expanded to more affluent quarters, taking root in Silicon Valley and New York City, among technology executives, hedge-fund managers, and others in their economic cohort.
more
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich
Team Trump Is Launching a Frontal Assault on the EPA
By Ed Kilgore
Anyone laboring under the impression that the new Trump administration will be all bark and no bite when it comes to overturning long-established bipartisan policies should watch Team Trumps assault on the Environmental Protection Agency closely. Aside from appointing Scott Pruitt, who is mainly familiar with EPA as a hated adversary in court, to be in charge of that agency, plans for an initial regulatory wave and budgetary policies amount to a 180-degree turn in environmental enforcement, as reported today by Axios. They include the complete elimination of climate-change programs; a half-billion-dollars in funding cuts for EPA grants to state and local governments; an immediate halt to Clean Air Act regulations affecting new and existing power plants; an about-face on auto emissions standards; and a general defanging of EPAs crucial ability to overrule federal and state regulations that pose environmental dangers.
Thats probably just the beginning, because these plans were formulated by Trumps EPA transition director, Myron Ebell, mostly famous as a climate-change skeptic, but more generally active as a policy wonk at a very prominent libertarian-ish think tank called the Competitive Enterprise Institute, financed mostly by a rogues gallery of fossil-fuel industries and right-wing foundations.
more
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/01/team-trump-is-launching-a-frontal-assault-on-the-epa.html
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