January 19, 2017

Report: Trump Team Wants to Slash Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Everything Except Defense

Here's the latest news on squeezing our bloated government down to size:

Donald Trump is ready to take an ax to government spending. Staffers for the Trump transition team have been meeting with career staff at the White House ahead of Friday’s presidential inauguration to outline their plans for shrinking the federal bureaucracy, The Hill has learned....Overall, the blueprint being used by Trump’s team would reduce federal spending by $10.5 trillion over 10 years.

This is terrifying, of course, but it's also puzzling. $10.5 trillion over ten years? That's a trillion dollars a year. If you eliminated the domestic discretionary budget entirely, you'd only save half a trillion bucks. So how do they do it?

Well, we're told that the proposed budget cuts "hew closely" to a recent Heritage Foundation report, so I went and took a look. The answer, of course, is that the only way to cut that kind of money is to take a meat axe to everything, including Social Security and Medicare. Here's a chart:

more
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/01/report-trump-team-wants-slash-social-security-medicare-medicaid-and-pretty-much-e

January 19, 2017

Lets Spend a Few Minutes with This Photo of Donald Trump, Shall We

by JOEL GOLBY

Let's talk about sex, bay-bee / let's talk about you– and –me / let's talk about every single pixel of this photo please:

For context: this is the tweet President-elect Donald J. Trump sent yesterday, which as best as I can tell had two primary objectives and one secondary objective:

Slowly put a smooth face on the first in a long, long, long, long, long line of Twitter-disseminated propaganda to be expected over the next four to eight years;
2. Launch the new official Twitter-endorsed #Inauguration emoji-hashtag, which, seeing as Donald Trump doesn't ever use hashtags – I don't think he knows how to access the deep menu on his phone for secondary symbols – and, because the text of this tweet is relatively well punctuated and un-insane, presumably means it was written, approved and sent by a member of staff, and not by DJT himself *1;

And:

3. Confirm to the world that yes, god, he is definitely working on his speech, god, shut up. Like: I used to pull this exact pose at my desk when I was supposed to have been doing homework for hours but had actually just been playing Sonic 2 on the Megadrive, and a parent or parents were checking up on me to make sure I was doing what I was supposed to be doing and not playing Sonic 2 on Megadrive, and I would hustle and rush into this exact pose, a placid simulation of working. Notebook tilt and everything. This was exactly me.

But what's going on in this photo is the question, really. Because there's a lot going on. And we are going to inhale the entire thing like a musky, complex whisky, and see what bones come out. Come. Come with me. Come with me on a journey. A journey into this photo of Donald Trump.

more

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/lets-spend-a-few-minutes-with-this-photo-of-donald-trump-shall-we?utm_source=vicefbuk&utm_campaign=global

He does make some excellent points!

January 19, 2017

xpost: Elizabeth Warren: Trumps nominees are putting us all at risk by ignoring ethics laws

By Elizabeth Warren

President-elect Donald Trump is selecting nominees to run his government. It’s no secret that I have deep reservations about the policy views of many of these nominees. I will vote against some of them.

But before we can debate and vote on whether these nominees’ policy positions make them suitable to run important parts of our government, it is critical that each nominee follows basic ethics rules to ensure that they will act for the benefit of all the American people and not simply to boost their bank accounts.

The Republican-led Congress wants to brush off these ethics requirements as a mere inconvenience. Failing that, they are willing to intimidate the public servants charged with implementing the rules. If they succeed, the Republican-led Congress will erode public confidence in our democracy and set the new administration up for scandal and failure.

It is illegal for any Cabinet member to participate in a government matter that will “affect his own financial interest” or those of his or her family members, or any organization with whom he or she is affiliated. The reason this law exists is obvious: Without it, federal officials might be tempted to pursue their own interests rather than those of the American people, throwing into question the motives behind every move they make.

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/01/19/the-gop-is-putting-the-country-in-danger-by-ignoring-ethical-rules-for-appointees/?utm_term=.724965cd61a7

January 19, 2017

Elizabeth Warren: Trumps nominees are putting us all at risk by ignoring ethics laws

By Elizabeth Warren

President-elect Donald Trump is selecting nominees to run his government. It’s no secret that I have deep reservations about the policy views of many of these nominees. I will vote against some of them.

But before we can debate and vote on whether these nominees’ policy positions make them suitable to run important parts of our government, it is critical that each nominee follows basic ethics rules to ensure that they will act for the benefit of all the American people and not simply to boost their bank accounts.

The Republican-led Congress wants to brush off these ethics requirements as a mere inconvenience. Failing that, they are willing to intimidate the public servants charged with implementing the rules. If they succeed, the Republican-led Congress will erode public confidence in our democracy and set the new administration up for scandal and failure.

It is illegal for any Cabinet member to participate in a government matter that will “affect his own financial interest” or those of his or her family members, or any organization with whom he or she is affiliated. The reason this law exists is obvious: Without it, federal officials might be tempted to pursue their own interests rather than those of the American people, throwing into question the motives behind every move they make.

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/01/19/the-gop-is-putting-the-country-in-danger-by-ignoring-ethical-rules-for-appointees/?utm_term=.724965cd61a7

January 19, 2017