Showing posts with label Anti-government Governance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anti-government Governance. Show all posts

7.09.2018

Wretchxit


In short...
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12.14.2017

Today In Photo Ops

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9.09.2017

Not Acts Of God

Florida: the state with the highest percentage of elderly residents. Add in the usual category of invisible people, too poor to have vehicles or enough money to evacuate...







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8.27.2017

Twitler Twittles While City Drowns

Along with an evident pre-pardon of Clarke and the usual inappropriate electioneering, Trump continued hurling insults at Mexico.

It being up to the rest of the world to act like adults, the foreign ministry once more defended its sovereignty, while offering to send aid to Texas...
... Just as Mexico had sent aid after Katrina.
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7.28.2017

Today In Spite

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6.28.2017

Highly Successful Audition

State-run media's newest hire.
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4.17.2017

Worth A Thousand Words

It speaks, this image of bored, uncomfortable children forced to be there. The picture says, too, that these undoubtedly are children of White House staff. And volumes are spoken by how strikingly white they are.  

Most telling of all: the starkness of contrast between this and all pictures taken on such occasions in the previous eight years. But during those eight years, kids weren't used as props, and they were thrilled to be with the adults in the picture.

This time, the adult in the picture couldn't appear less simpatico with children. But her sole reason for being here (and in her job) is her being a fundamentalist billionaire, eager to siphon public money into family profit and theocratic control of schools.

So much going on in the image itself, it took a minute for me to see the story told by the caption.

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3.27.2017

New Week, Fresh Nepotism

Those questions about Ivanka...

... They're so last week.... On Sunday at 10 pm, here's the Washington Post: Trump taps Kushner to lead a SWAT team to fix government with business ideas.

Aside from the current particulars of who will divide the spoils, it's the usual GOP-Heritage-Business Roundtable template. In that regard, the WaPo's story doesn't sound very different from pro-privatization puff pieces of the last 25 or so years...
President Trump plans to unveil a new White House office on Monday with sweeping authority to overhaul the federal bureaucracy and fulfill key campaign promises — such as reforming care for veterans and fighting opioid addiction — by harvesting ideas from the business world and, potentially, privatizing some government functions.

The White House Office of American Innovation, to be led by Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and senior adviser, will operate as its own nimble power center within the West Wing and will report directly to Trump. Viewed internally as a SWAT team of strategic consultants, the office will be staffed by former business executives and is designed to infuse fresh thinking into Washington, float above the daily political grind and create a lasting legacy for a president still searching for signature achievements.
It would seem, in Kushner's spare time—when he's not bringing peace to the Middle East.

WaPo's Philip Rucker puffs (and fluffs) away—
Kushner's ambitions for what the new office can achieve are grand. At least to start, the team plans to focus its attention on reimagining Veterans Affairs; modernizing the technology and data infrastructure of every federal department and agency; remodeling workforce-training programs; and developing "transformative projects" under the banner of Trump’s $1 trillion infrastructure plan, such as providing broadband Internet service to every American.

In some cases, the office could direct that government functions be privatized, or that existing contracts be awarded to new bidders.

The office will also focus on combating opioid abuse, a regular emphasis for Trump on the campaign trail. The president later this week plans to announce an official drug commission devoted to the problem that will be chaired by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R). He has been working informally on the issue for several weeks with Kushner, despite reported tension between the two."
With malice toward all government; with spoils for some.

Also: a nice diversion from this.


Over here! Lean, mean, profit-generating machine; not at all aligned to certain ideologies...
The work of White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon has drawn considerable attention, especially after his call for the "deconstruction of the administrative state." But Bannon will have no formal role in the innovation office, which Trump advisers described as an incubator of sleek transformation as opposed to deconstruction.
But what about creative destruction? Here comes the supposed re-branding—
Kushner is positioning the new office as "an offensive team" — an aggressive, nonideological ideas factory capable of attracting top talent from both inside and outside of government, and serving as a conduit with the business, philanthropic and academic communities.

"We should have excellence in government," Kushner said Sunday in an interview in his West Wing office. "The government should be run like a great American company. Our hope is that we can achieve successes and efficiencies for our customers, who are the citizens."
In other words...


And,
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3.24.2017

Strongarming While Tiny-Handed

Last night...


Oh, but surely he never read what the ghost wrote...

Threatening...



In the end, anything at stake will probably come to this...

Plus...
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3.21.2017

Time's Running Out

They've only had 7 years to come up with something!


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3.14.2017

Deluxe Wrecking Crew

Charles Pierce has read Bannon's "Comprehensive Plan For Reorganizing The Executive Branch," signed by Trump yesterday.
...the fine print of the measure shows that it is likely more a creature of Bannon's professed love for vandalism for its own sake. From the order itself:
The proposed plan shall include, as appropriate, recommendations to eliminate unnecessary agencies, components of agencies, and agency programs, and to merge functions. The proposed plan shall include recommendations for any legislation or administrative measures necessary to achieve the proposed reorganization.
This "reorganization" of the executive departments sounds very much like how a polar bear "reorganizes" your innards prior to making a meal of you. That the job has been handed officially to a guy who doesn't believe in what many of those agencies do—and, unofficially, to a guy who wants to blow them up simply to see how pretty the shrapnel is—gives something of a lie to the public face of the initiative as a good-government effort to root out the unholy trinity of waste, fraud, and abuse.

This isn't a cost-cutting measure. It's a function-cutting measure. It's not about what the agencies are. It's about what they do. This is like handing a group of drunk teenagers a flamethrower and pointing them toward a lumber yard.
See also: "Special Assistants" and other vaguely-titled moles, installed secretively throughout agencies.
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3.09.2017

Stealth Deconstruction

Not at all surprising, but disturbing to see in detail: "Meet the Hundreds of Officials Trump Has Quietly Installed Across the Government"...

"Beachead teams"—for when you need to storm the defenses of a functioning government.
While President Trump has not moved to fill many jobs that require Senate confirmation, he has quietly installed hundreds of officials to serve as his eyes and ears at every major federal agency, from the Pentagon to the Department of Interior.

Unlike appointees exposed to the scrutiny of the Senate, members of these so-called “beachhead teams” have operated largely in the shadows, with the White House declining to publicly reveal their identities.
...
The list we obtained includes obscure campaign staffers, contributors to Breitbart and others who have embraced conspiracy theories, as well as dozens of Washington insiders who could be reasonably characterized as part of the "swamp" Trump pledged to drain.

The list is striking for how many former lobbyists it contains: We found at least 36, spanning industries from health insurance and pharmaceuticals to construction, energy and finance. Many of them lobbied in the same areas that are regulated by the agencies they have now joined.
ProPublica's writers have organized the names into some major categories:
The Breitbart wing
Swamp denizens, including health care lobbyists hired by HHS Secretary Tom Price
Trump campaign vets — including very young ones
Quite the tell about their qualifications, when all are vaguely "Special Advisor" to this and "Special Assistant" to that; details in this rogue's gallery.
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1.11.2017

Confederates Win Civil War

It's mere SOP to the GOP that those who would destroy a government department be named to run it. A Trump/Heritage Foundation/Big Oil cabinet will be the most extreme illustration to date, but it was inevitable: once Republicans gained control of all branches, new heights of klepto-kakistocracy were there for the grabbing.

For all that, the Jefferson Beauregard Nathan Bedford Forrest Sessions nomination is especially offensive, when his history is so long and familiar. Someone whose record was so terrible, even  Republicans under Reagan rejected him for a federal judgeship.

Since then, he has been a Senate fixture of the Confederate caucus. An early backer who became part of Trump's inner circle, he attended "Lock Her Up" rallies. Certainly, Sessions was well-positioned to encourage Twitler's rants about voter fraud. Sessions' reward (and his payback for 1986) will be the power to pound last nails in the coffin of voting rights. That's along with overseeing the FBI; anything related to federal enforcement of "justice" will be the purview of the anti-immigrant, anti-minority, anti-woman, anti-police accountability Sessions.

There will at least be historical witness to this. John Lewis has also lived long enough to remain a link to the struggle for civil rights. There's no forgetting that the near-lethal beating he survived in 1965 was at the hands of those who were the ideological allies of Jeff Sessions.Rep. Lewis testified against the nomination, as did Cory Booker; both spoke in a rare break from the usual displays of congressional collegiality.

Regarding Sessions' past abuses of power, an old "disgrace to his race" issued this statement.

Also introduced: a 1986 letter from Coretta Scott King, sent to, and then suppressed by, Judiciary Committee chair Strom Thurmond. Mrs. King wrote that the prospect of Sessions on the federal bench—
...raises serious questions about his commitment to the protection of the voting rights of all American citizens.

Anyone who has used the power of his office as United States Attorney to intimidate and chill the free exercise of the ballot by citizens should not be elevated to our courts....Mr. Sessions has used the awesome powers of his office in a shabby attempt to intimidate and frighten elderly black voters. For this reprehensible conduct, he should not be rewarded with a federal judgeship.

The irony of Mr. Sessions' nomination is that, if confirmed, he will be given a life tenure for doing with a federal prosecution what the local sheriffs accomplished twenty years ago with clubs and cattle prods...
And so: history on one side.

On the other: Southern Strategy. Jeff Stein at Vox tweeted this morning:
Trump team at the Sessions hearing just passed out a dossier citing an article about "how black Democrats stole votes"

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