Category: Government
On This Presidents’ Day…
Following is an excerpt from an article published in the NEW REPUBLIC July 12, 2016. On Presidents’ Day 2017, as we pay respect to President’s of the past as well as witnessing widespread dissatisfaction and protests of our current siting president, the words following now seem prescient
If making sense of Donald Trump requires regular reminders that he is an outgrowth of powerful, ingrained political forces, rather than an unfortunate aberration, the world is certainly obliging. He is the patron saint of resentful whites, who are in turn the dominant faction of the Republican Party. But these reminders provide little information about how the American political economy should be reordered to meet the needs of both white nativists and ethnically diverse liberals.
In a country divided such as ours is, an election can help break impasses by providing reasonably clear guidance on what changes the majority of people want to make. But the strangeness of Trump’s campaign is sidelining that guidance. Rather than serving as an exponent of white working-class interests, advancing a policy agenda that would materially benefit his supporters, Trump serves merely as their id.
This has made collateral damage out of ideology. Not since 2000 has a U.S. election been so untethered from substantive questions about how to make people more satisfied with the ways the government serves them. Trump has made this election a referendum on our national identity—are we the kind of country that turns to a demagogue when enough people are frustrated?—rather than on our policy status quo. Once that identity issue is resolved, the question of what comes next won’t have a clear answer.
America choose a demagogue and they got what only 40% of Americans apparently wanted. The other 60% either mildly or vehemently disapprove of the man America placed in the most powerful job I the world.
Aside from Trump’s gross incompetence on other thing can be said bout the man. He is keeping the promises he made on the campaign trail. Most of which are as in American and borsch and Putin.
America got what it voted for. Let the intense buyer remorse, and, extreme resistance begin.
Trump’s Attacks On The Media Should Un-nerve All Americans…
This weblog has been a critic of Donald J. Trump’s constant attacks on the legitimate press since he took office on January 20th. Make no mistake, his constant repetitive attacks are to Delegitimize the credible press that points out his deceptions and lies.
History provides a long list of demagogues and tyrants that have used the same rhetoric that Trump is using today. The end results for the people of the country they ruled? Lets just say it didn’t turn out well.
A free and independent press is one of the pillars of a democratic republic. Trump is attacking it because it is critical of him. For damn good reason. Anyone valuing the democratic republic built by our founders must resist Trump.
President Donald Trump ramped up his criticism of the news coverage of his administration Friday, again taking to his favorite social media platform.
“The FAKE NEWS media,” Trump wrote on Twitter, “is the enemy of the American People!”
An initial tweet put only The New York Times, CNN and NBC News on his enemies list. That message was quickly deleted, however, and replaced by an almost identical note that added two more domestic television networks: ABC and CBS.
The social media attack, the latest in a long series of Trump broadsides against the news media, came after the president had left Washington for a visit to a Boeing aircraft plant in South Carolina. The president later headed to Florida, where he is to spend the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago complex.
As the president arrived at the estate he has dubbed the Winter White House, social media and the networks crackled with debate about the significance of Trump calling some of the top American journalistic outlets enemies of the people, a phrase that goes back to ancient Rome and was used with chilling finality during the communist revolution in Russia a century ago.
U.S. diplomat recalls ‘petty tyrants’
“As an American diplomat, I stood up to petty tyrants who called journalists ‘enemies of the people,'” tweeted Tom Malinowski, former assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor. “Guess that’s not our policy anymore.”
“It is one of the most controversial phrases in Soviet history,” said Mitchell Orenstein, professor of Russian and East European studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
The phrase has its roots in Latin, during the Roman Empire, but “enemies of the people” gained its most notorious associations during the 20th century, during the purges ordered by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin that killed tens of millions of people.
An “enemy of the people” in the Soviet Union was not necessarily a criminal, but more often someone stigmatized by social origin or pre-revolutionary profession. The label alone was akin to a terminal illness, and merely being a friend of an enemy of the people was a certain cause for official suspicion.
Read the full Voice Of America article and then YOU be the judge.
As Trump Continues To Struggle…
It is an understatement to say the Trump administration is in disarray bordering on total chaos. Maybe it is by design. After all Trump selected Stephen Bannon, the former executive director of Breitbart News to be his Chief White House Strategist. As you probably know Breitbart is one of the right’s biggest purveyors of fake news and conspiracy theories, right alongside InfoWars.
Trump’s continually attacks on the credibility of legitimate media, his nominating individuals for key secretary positions who have zero experience or knowledge in the area they will be responsible for, and his slowness in filling necessary positions in the government are responsible for the disarray his administration finds itself.
Trump came into office promising to shake up the establishment, presumably an important rung in the ladder to Make America Great Again. Thriving on Chaos, a books by Tom Peters, must be the theory of business that Trump is adhering to as he attempts to run our sprawling federal government. The business of government is not the same as the business of profit driven organizations. Attempting to run the government as if it is will turn out poorly.
It should be pointed out in fairness to Tom Peters that Trump very likely does not understand Peter’s Thriving on Chaos to begin with.
Following is an opinion piece from The New York Times that further describes what we’ve stated above.
It’s with a whiff of desperation that President Trump insists these days that he’s the chief executive Washington needs, the decisive dealmaker who, as he said during the campaign, “alone can fix it.” What America has seen so far is an inept White House led by a celebrity apprentice.
This president did not inherit “a mess” from Barack Obama, as he likes to say, but a nation recovered from recession and with strong alliances abroad. Mr. Trump is well on his way to creating a mess of his own, weakening national security and even risking the delivery of basic government services. Most of the top thousand jobs in the administration remain vacant. Career public servants are clashing with inexperienced “beachhead” teams appointed by the White House to run federal agencies until permanent staff members arrive.
Mr. Trump lost his national security adviser this week in a scandal involving ties to Russian intelligence. Robert Harward, a retired vice admiral, refused the job on Thursday, rattled by a dysfunctional National Security Council and a president who has alienated Mexico, Australia and even the British royal family, while cozying up to Moscow.
… at this point in the Obama presidency, which did inherit a mess, Congress had passed laws aimed at dragging the economy back from the brink of depression while committing $800 billion in Recovery Act spending to projects ranging from housing to roads to advanced energy technologies.
Mr. Trump’s vaunted $1 trillion infrastructure spending program, by contrast, doesn’t yet exist, because the president confuses executive orders with achievements. Orders are dashed off without input from Congress and the government officials who would implement them. The White House is a toxic mix of ideology, inexperience and rivalries; insiders say tantrums are nearly as common as the spelling errors in the press office’s news releases. Steve Bannon writes the president’s script, and Reince Priebus, the embattled chief of staff, crashes meetings to which he has not been invited.
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The most damaging downside to the administration’s stumbles could be an exodus of talent from the broader government; scientists, lawyers and policy specialists at the Environmental Protection Agency, for instance, are openly disheartened at the prospect of working for Scott Pruitt, whose nomination as the agency’s new boss was approved by the Senate on Friday. And if others follow Mr. Hayward’s lead, capable people may be reluctant to come on board and fix things. That would leave the White House further isolated, particularly on foreign policy.
There is an old saying that goes like this, a leopard can’t change its spots. As much as we might like to believe otherwise it is highly unlikely that Trump will be able to change his.
Read article in its entirety BLOW THE FOLD.
Republicans Block Obama Regulation Preventing Mentally Ill From Firearm Purchase/Ownership…
WASHINGTON — The Republican-led Senate voted Wednesday to block an Obama-era regulation that would prevent an estimated 75,000 people with mental disorders from being able to purchase a firearm. The measure now goes to President Donald Trump, who is expected to sign it.
The regulation was crafted as part of President Barack Obama’s efforts to strengthen the federal background check system in the wake of the 2012 massacre of 20 young students and six staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Adam Lanza, a 20-year-old man with a variety of impairments, including Asperger’s syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder, shot and killed his mother at their home, then went to school where he killed the students, adults and himself.
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The 57-43 vote to revoke the regulation sends the measure to Trump.
With a Republican ally in the White House, the GOP has moved aggressively on several fronts to rescind some of the Obama administration’s final regulations on the environment, financial reporting and now guns. Under an expedited process established through the Congressional Review Act, a regulation is made invalid when a simple majority of both chambers pass a joint resolution of disapproval and the president signs it.
Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) spearheaded the repeal effort and said the regulation unfairly stigmatizes the disabled and infringes on their constitutional right to bear arms. He said that the mental disorders covered through the regulation are filled with “vague characteristics that do not fit into the federal mentally defective standard” prohibiting someone from buying or owning a gun.
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Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said he didn’t know how he could explain to his constituents that Congress was making it easier rather than harder for people with serious mental illness to have a gun.
“If you can’t manage your own financial affairs, how can we expect that you’re going to be a responsible steward of a dangerous, lethal firearm,” Murphy said.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) argued that anyone who thinks they’re treated unfairly can appeal, and are likely to win if they’re not a danger to themselves or others. But Grassley said federal law requires a formal hearing and judgment before depriving someone of owning a firearm due to mental illness.
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“This heartless resolution puts the most vulnerable Americans at risk,” said Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. “Make no mistake, this vote was really about deepening the gun industry’s customer pool, at the expense of those in danger of hurting themselves or others.”
Once again we see the Republicans in congress and the National Rifle Association putting firearms sales ahead of public safety. There exists no earthly reason why individuals with a history of mental illness should be able to purchase and own firearms.
Individuals who were put on the list and prevented from purchasing or owning a firearm could appeal the decision. If they could demonstrate they were no danger to themselves or others they were likely to win their appeal.
Americans support for stricter firearm control is up sharply.