What's going on with the Executive Departments

[GrumpyGran]

16 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

“He should have told them in advance that they cannot use his title,” Noble said. “Once hearing the introduction, he should have made clear he was speaking in his personal capacity and not as secretary.” Carson didn’t.

 This implies that Carson knows or understands anything about government.

[GreyhoundFan]

This is a lengthy read, but worth the time: "Is Anybody Home at HUD? A long-harbored conservative dream — the “dismantling of the administrative state” — is taking place under Secretary Ben Carson."

I don't know how long, or if we will ever recover from this sham administration.

[GreyhoundFan]

"At CIA, a watchful eye on Mike Pompeo, the president’s ardent ally"

Spoiler

As CIA director, Mike Pompeo has taken a special interest in an agency unit that is closely tied to the investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, requiring the Counterintelligence Mission Center to report directly to him.

Officials at the center have, in turn, kept a watchful eye on Pompeo, who has repeatedly played down Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and demonstrated a willingness to engage in political skirmishes for President Trump.

Current and former officials said that the arrangement has been a source of apprehension among the CIA’s upper ranks and that they could not recall a time in the agency’s history when a director faced a comparable conflict.

“Pompeo is in a delicate situation unlike any other director has faced, certainly in my memory,” said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a CIA official for 23 years who served in Russia and held high-level positions at headquarters, “because of his duty to protect and provide the truth to an independent investigation while maintaining his role with the president.”

The Russia issue has complicated Pompeo’s effort to manage a badly strained relationship between the agency and a president who has disparaged its work and compared U.S. intelligence officials to Nazis. Amid that tension, Pompeo’s interactions with the counterintelligence center have come under particular scrutiny.

The unit helped trigger the investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia by serving as a conduit to the FBI last year for information the CIA developed on contacts between Russian individuals and Trump campaign associates, officials said.

The center works more closely with the FBI than almost any other CIA department does, officials said, and continues to pursue leads on Moscow’s election interference operation that could factor in the probe led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, a former FBI director.

Pompeo has not impeded that work, officials said. But several officials said there is concern about what he might do if the CIA uncovered new information potentially damaging to Trump and Pompeo were forced to choose between protecting the agency or the president.

“People have to watch him,” said a U.S. official who, like others, requested anonymity to speak frankly. “It’s almost as if he can’t resist the impulse to be political.”

A second former CIA official cited a “real concern for interference and politicization,” saying that the worry among some at the agency is “that if you were passing on something too dicey [to Pompeo] he would go to the White House with it.”

Pompeo has attributed his direct supervision of the counterintelligence center to a desire to place a greater emphasis on preventing leaks and protecting classified secrets — core missions of the center that are also top priorities for Trump.

Having the center report to him was designed “to send a signal to the workforce that this was important and we weren’t going to tolerate misbehavior,” he said at a security conference in Aspen, Colo., last month.

CIA spokesman Ryan Trapani described the suggestion that Pompeo might abuse his position as “ridiculous.”

Executive-order guidelines prohibit the CIA from passing information to the White House “for the purpose of affecting the political process in the United States,” Trapani said. “The FBI and special counsel’s office are leading the law enforcement investigation into this matter — not CIA. CIA is providing relevant information in support of that investigation, and neither the director nor CIA will interfere with it.”

Pompeo, 53, arrived as director at the CIA just days after Trump delivered a self-aggrandizing post-inaugural speech at agency headquarters. Appearing before a wall of carved granite stars that commemorate CIA officers killed in the line of duty, Trump used the occasion to browbeat the media and make false claims about the size of his inauguration crowds.

Pompeo has worked to overcome that inauspicious start, winning over many in the CIA workforce with his vocal support for aggressive intelligence gathering, his command of complex global issues and his influence at the White House. Pompeo spends several hours there almost every day, according to officials who said he has developed a strong rapport with the president.

But Pompeo is also known for berating subordinates, aggressively challenging agency analysts and displaying the fierce partisanship that became his signature while serving as a GOP member of Congress.

When asked about Russian election interference, Pompeo often becomes testy and recites talking points that seem designed to appease a president who rejects the allegations as “fake news” conjured by Democrats to delegitimize his election win.

“It is true” that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, Pompeo said at Aspen, “and the one before that, and the one before that . . . ”

The phrasing, which Pompeo has repeated in other settings, casts last year’s events as an unremarkable continuation of a long-standing pattern, rather than the unprecedented Kremlin operation described in a consensus report that the CIA and other agencies released in January.

Russia’s intervention in 2016 represented “a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort,” the report concluded. Its goal went beyond seeking to discredit U.S. democratic processes, the report said, and in the end was aimed at trying “to help President-elect Trump’s election chances.”

Pompeo has taken more hawkish positions on other areas of tension with Russia, saying that Moscow intervened in Syria, for example, in part because “they love to stick it to America.”

Almost all CIA directors have had to find ways to manage a supposedly apolitical spy agency while meeting the demands of a president. But Trump, who has fired his FBI chief and lashed out at his attorney general over the Russia probe, appears to expect a particularly personal brand of loyalty.

“It is always a balancing act between a director’s access to the president and the need to protect CIA’s sensitive equities,” said John Sipher, a former senior CIA official who also served in Russia. “Pompeo clearly has a more difficult challenge in maintaining that balance than his predecessors given the obvious concerns with this president’s unique personality, obsession with charges against him, lack of knowledge and tendency to take impulsive action.”

Pompeo has shown a willingness to handle political assignments for the White House. Earlier this year, he and other officials were enlisted to make calls to news organizations — speaking on the condition of anonymity — to dispute a New York Times article about contacts between Russians and individuals tied to the Trump campaign. Pompeo has never publicly acknowledged his involvement in that effort.

He has also declined to address whether he was approached by Trump earlier this year — as other top intelligence officials were — to publicly deny the existence of any evidence of collusion with Russia or to intervene with then-FBI Director James B. Comey to urge the FBI to back off its investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Pompeo has, by all accounts, a closer relationship with Trump than others who did field such requests, including Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers.

Pompeo was exposed to Trump’s wrath over the Russia investigation on at least one occasion, officials said. He was among those present for a meeting at the White House earlier this year when Trump began complaining about the probe and, in front of Pompeo and others, asked what could be done about it.

Trapani, the CIA spokesman, declined to address the matter or say whether Pompeo has been questioned about it by Mueller. Pompeo’s conversations with Trump “are entitled to confidentiality,” Trapani said, adding that “the director has never been asked by the president to do anything inappropriate.”

Pompeo spends more time at the White House than his recent CIA predecessors and is seen as more willing to engage in policy battles. In interviews and public appearances, Pompeo has advocated ousting the totalitarian regime in North Korea, accused the Obama administration of “inviting” Russia into Syria and criticized the nuclear accord with Iran.

Pompeo has also come under scrutiny on social issues. As part of an effort to expand chaplain services to CIA employees — which Trapani said was in response to requests from the agency workforce — Pompeo has consulted with Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, an organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled an anti-gay hate group. Perkins has described that characterization as “reckless.”

When Trump came under criticism for failing to specifically condemn Nazi sympathizers taking part in protests in Charlottesville — instead lamenting violence by “many sides” — Pompeo defended the president in a CBS interview, saying that Trump’s condemnation of bigotry was “frankly pretty unambiguous.”

Pompeo inherited an agency that had undergone a major reorganization under his predecessor, combing analysts and operators in a constellation of “centers” responsible for geographic regions, as well as transnational issues such as terrorism.

Pompeo’s alterations have been minimal. He added two centers — one devoted to North Korea and the other to Iran. All but the counterintelligence unit fall under Pompeo’s deputy on the CIA organizational chart.

Pompeo, who met with Russian intelligence officials in Moscow in May, would have been entitled to full briefings from the counterintelligence center even without making that bureaucratic tweak. But asserting more control of the unit responsible for preventing leaks probably pleased Trump, who has accused U.S. spy agencies of engaging in a smear campaign to undermine his presidency.

U.S. intelligence officials have disputed that spy agencies are behind such leaks but acknowledge broader concerns about security issues, pointing to episodes including the CIA’s loss of a vast portion of its hacking arsenal, which was obtained this year by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.

A descendant of the unit led by legendary CIA mole-hunter James Jesus Angleton, the counterintelligence center is run by a veteran female CIA officer who has served extensively overseas in Europe, East Asia and Russia. She was also one of the main authors of the CIA’s internal review of a deadly suicide bombing that killed seven agency employees in Khost, Afghanistan, in 2009.

“I think she’s wary about the administration,” said a former colleague who also described her as “someone who would not fall in line” if she suspected interference in the center’s role. Preventing the center from sharing information with the bureau would be difficult — an FBI official serves as head of the center’s counterespionage unit.

Last year, the center played an important part in detecting Russian efforts to cultivate associates of the Trump campaign. Former CIA director John Brennan testified in May that he became “worried by a number of the contacts that the Russians had with U.S. persons” and alerted the FBI.

The center has since been enlisted to help answer questions about key moments in the timeline of Trump-Russia contacts, officials said, possibly including the meeting that Donald Trump Jr. held in June with a Russian lawyer.

“Who sent her on the mission — was it Russian intelligence or on her own initiative?” a former official said, referring to the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya. “Mueller can’t do anything on that without the agency.”

Oh lovely, let's have the FRC involved in the CIA. (note sarcasm). I had not heard that Pompeo had consulted with Tony Perkins.

[GrumpyGran]

9 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"At CIA, a watchful eye on Mike Pompeo, the president’s ardent ally"

  Reveal hidden contents

As CIA director, Mike Pompeo has taken a special interest in an agency unit that is closely tied to the investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, requiring the Counterintelligence Mission Center to report directly to him.

Officials at the center have, in turn, kept a watchful eye on Pompeo, who has repeatedly played down Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and demonstrated a willingness to engage in political skirmishes for President Trump.

Current and former officials said that the arrangement has been a source of apprehension among the CIA’s upper ranks and that they could not recall a time in the agency’s history when a director faced a comparable conflict.

“Pompeo is in a delicate situation unlike any other director has faced, certainly in my memory,” said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a CIA official for 23 years who served in Russia and held high-level positions at headquarters, “because of his duty to protect and provide the truth to an independent investigation while maintaining his role with the president.”

The Russia issue has complicated Pompeo’s effort to manage a badly strained relationship between the agency and a president who has disparaged its work and compared U.S. intelligence officials to Nazis. Amid that tension, Pompeo’s interactions with the counterintelligence center have come under particular scrutiny.

The unit helped trigger the investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia by serving as a conduit to the FBI last year for information the CIA developed on contacts between Russian individuals and Trump campaign associates, officials said.

The center works more closely with the FBI than almost any other CIA department does, officials said, and continues to pursue leads on Moscow’s election interference operation that could factor in the probe led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, a former FBI director.

Pompeo has not impeded that work, officials said. But several officials said there is concern about what he might do if the CIA uncovered new information potentially damaging to Trump and Pompeo were forced to choose between protecting the agency or the president.

“People have to watch him,” said a U.S. official who, like others, requested anonymity to speak frankly. “It’s almost as if he can’t resist the impulse to be political.”

A second former CIA official cited a “real concern for interference and politicization,” saying that the worry among some at the agency is “that if you were passing on something too dicey [to Pompeo] he would go to the White House with it.”

Pompeo has attributed his direct supervision of the counterintelligence center to a desire to place a greater emphasis on preventing leaks and protecting classified secrets — core missions of the center that are also top priorities for Trump.

Having the center report to him was designed “to send a signal to the workforce that this was important and we weren’t going to tolerate misbehavior,” he said at a security conference in Aspen, Colo., last month.

CIA spokesman Ryan Trapani described the suggestion that Pompeo might abuse his position as “ridiculous.”

Executive-order guidelines prohibit the CIA from passing information to the White House “for the purpose of affecting the political process in the United States,” Trapani said. “The FBI and special counsel’s office are leading the law enforcement investigation into this matter — not CIA. CIA is providing relevant information in support of that investigation, and neither the director nor CIA will interfere with it.”

Pompeo, 53, arrived as director at the CIA just days after Trump delivered a self-aggrandizing post-inaugural speech at agency headquarters. Appearing before a wall of carved granite stars that commemorate CIA officers killed in the line of duty, Trump used the occasion to browbeat the media and make false claims about the size of his inauguration crowds.

Pompeo has worked to overcome that inauspicious start, winning over many in the CIA workforce with his vocal support for aggressive intelligence gathering, his command of complex global issues and his influence at the White House. Pompeo spends several hours there almost every day, according to officials who said he has developed a strong rapport with the president.

But Pompeo is also known for berating subordinates, aggressively challenging agency analysts and displaying the fierce partisanship that became his signature while serving as a GOP member of Congress.

When asked about Russian election interference, Pompeo often becomes testy and recites talking points that seem designed to appease a president who rejects the allegations as “fake news” conjured by Democrats to delegitimize his election win.

“It is true” that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, Pompeo said at Aspen, “and the one before that, and the one before that . . . ”

The phrasing, which Pompeo has repeated in other settings, casts last year’s events as an unremarkable continuation of a long-standing pattern, rather than the unprecedented Kremlin operation described in a consensus report that the CIA and other agencies released in January.

Russia’s intervention in 2016 represented “a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort,” the report concluded. Its goal went beyond seeking to discredit U.S. democratic processes, the report said, and in the end was aimed at trying “to help President-elect Trump’s election chances.”

Pompeo has taken more hawkish positions on other areas of tension with Russia, saying that Moscow intervened in Syria, for example, in part because “they love to stick it to America.”

Almost all CIA directors have had to find ways to manage a supposedly apolitical spy agency while meeting the demands of a president. But Trump, who has fired his FBI chief and lashed out at his attorney general over the Russia probe, appears to expect a particularly personal brand of loyalty.

“It is always a balancing act between a director’s access to the president and the need to protect CIA’s sensitive equities,” said John Sipher, a former senior CIA official who also served in Russia. “Pompeo clearly has a more difficult challenge in maintaining that balance than his predecessors given the obvious concerns with this president’s unique personality, obsession with charges against him, lack of knowledge and tendency to take impulsive action.”

Pompeo has shown a willingness to handle political assignments for the White House. Earlier this year, he and other officials were enlisted to make calls to news organizations — speaking on the condition of anonymity — to dispute a New York Times article about contacts between Russians and individuals tied to the Trump campaign. Pompeo has never publicly acknowledged his involvement in that effort.

He has also declined to address whether he was approached by Trump earlier this year — as other top intelligence officials were — to publicly deny the existence of any evidence of collusion with Russia or to intervene with then-FBI Director James B. Comey to urge the FBI to back off its investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Pompeo has, by all accounts, a closer relationship with Trump than others who did field such requests, including Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers.

Pompeo was exposed to Trump’s wrath over the Russia investigation on at least one occasion, officials said. He was among those present for a meeting at the White House earlier this year when Trump began complaining about the probe and, in front of Pompeo and others, asked what could be done about it.

Trapani, the CIA spokesman, declined to address the matter or say whether Pompeo has been questioned about it by Mueller. Pompeo’s conversations with Trump “are entitled to confidentiality,” Trapani said, adding that “the director has never been asked by the president to do anything inappropriate.”

Pompeo spends more time at the White House than his recent CIA predecessors and is seen as more willing to engage in policy battles. In interviews and public appearances, Pompeo has advocated ousting the totalitarian regime in North Korea, accused the Obama administration of “inviting” Russia into Syria and criticized the nuclear accord with Iran.

Pompeo has also come under scrutiny on social issues. As part of an effort to expand chaplain services to CIA employees — which Trapani said was in response to requests from the agency workforce — Pompeo has consulted with Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, an organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled an anti-gay hate group. Perkins has described that characterization as “reckless.”

When Trump came under criticism for failing to specifically condemn Nazi sympathizers taking part in protests in Charlottesville — instead lamenting violence by “many sides” — Pompeo defended the president in a CBS interview, saying that Trump’s condemnation of bigotry was “frankly pretty unambiguous.”

Pompeo inherited an agency that had undergone a major reorganization under his predecessor, combing analysts and operators in a constellation of “centers” responsible for geographic regions, as well as transnational issues such as terrorism.

Pompeo’s alterations have been minimal. He added two centers — one devoted to North Korea and the other to Iran. All but the counterintelligence unit fall under Pompeo’s deputy on the CIA organizational chart.

Pompeo, who met with Russian intelligence officials in Moscow in May, would have been entitled to full briefings from the counterintelligence center even without making that bureaucratic tweak. But asserting more control of the unit responsible for preventing leaks probably pleased Trump, who has accused U.S. spy agencies of engaging in a smear campaign to undermine his presidency.

U.S. intelligence officials have disputed that spy agencies are behind such leaks but acknowledge broader concerns about security issues, pointing to episodes including the CIA’s loss of a vast portion of its hacking arsenal, which was obtained this year by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.

A descendant of the unit led by legendary CIA mole-hunter James Jesus Angleton, the counterintelligence center is run by a veteran female CIA officer who has served extensively overseas in Europe, East Asia and Russia. She was also one of the main authors of the CIA’s internal review of a deadly suicide bombing that killed seven agency employees in Khost, Afghanistan, in 2009.

“I think she’s wary about the administration,” said a former colleague who also described her as “someone who would not fall in line” if she suspected interference in the center’s role. Preventing the center from sharing information with the bureau would be difficult — an FBI official serves as head of the center’s counterespionage unit.

Last year, the center played an important part in detecting Russian efforts to cultivate associates of the Trump campaign. Former CIA director John Brennan testified in May that he became “worried by a number of the contacts that the Russians had with U.S. persons” and alerted the FBI.

The center has since been enlisted to help answer questions about key moments in the timeline of Trump-Russia contacts, officials said, possibly including the meeting that Donald Trump Jr. held in June with a Russian lawyer.

“Who sent her on the mission — was it Russian intelligence or on her own initiative?” a former official said, referring to the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya. “Mueller can’t do anything on that without the agency.”

Oh lovely, let's have the FRC involved in the CIA. (note sarcasm). I had not heard that Pompeo had consulted with Tony Perkins.

Pompeo's a shit. The question is will he try to get in the way of the Mueller Investigation. He appears to want to keep close tabs on what's being passed on to the FBI and that's a concern. He should keep his nose out of it, that's not his job. When someone tries to micro-manage one area of a large organization, it should raise red flags.

All that said, I would not fuck with CIA employees. One of those places where the head honcho should be respectful of the underlings. After all, they are spies.

[fraurosena]

How appropriate that it was his wife's Instagram post that initially drew attention to the trip! 

Trump Treasury Secretary investigated by watchdog over claims he used taxpayer money to fund eclipse trip

Spoiler

The Treasury Department has confirmed they are investigating if its chief used taxpayer money for a personal trip to view the solar eclipse.

A watchdog group believed Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and his wife Louise Linton took a government plane to view the 21 August solar eclipse in Tennessee.

The pair joined Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in his home state to view the event atop Fort Knox, an Army base and home of $200 billion US gold bullion depository.

Mr Mnuchin is the first Treasury Secretary to visit the gold depository in 70 years.

Rich Delmar, counsel to Treasury’s Office of Inspector General, said in a statement that the agency is “reviewing the circumstances of the Secretary’s [21 August] flight to Louisville and Ft. Knox to determine whether all applicable travel, ethics, and appropriation laws and policies were observed.”

The agency’s original response to public inquiries from ethics watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and Democratic Senator Ron Wyden was that Mr Mnuchin was in the state to discuss Donald Trump’s tax reform plan.

It also said Mr Mnuchin will reimburse the government for Ms Linton's travel "as is longstanding policy regarding civilians on military aircraft. The trip was originally planned for earlier in August but was postponed to accommodate the Congressional calendar."

Mr Delmar said that when the review is complete, the agency will “advise the appropriate officials, in accordance with the Inspector General Act and established procedures.”

The Treasury Department for financial records showing "authorisation for and the costs" of the trip using a government plane.

In its Freedom of Information Act request, the group wrote: "At a time of expected deep cuts to the federal budget, the taxpayers have a significant interest in learning the extent to which Secretary Mnuchin has used government planes for travel in lieu of commercial planes, and the justification for that use."

 

[GrumpyGran]

22 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

How appropriate that it was his wife's Instagram post that initially drew attention to the trip! 

Trump Treasury Secretary investigated by watchdog over claims he used taxpayer money to fund eclipse trip

  Reveal hidden contents

The Treasury Department has confirmed they are investigating if its chief used taxpayer money for a personal trip to view the solar eclipse.

A watchdog group believed Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and his wife Louise Linton took a government plane to view the 21 August solar eclipse in Tennessee.

The pair joined Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in his home state to view the event atop Fort Knox, an Army base and home of $200 billion US gold bullion depository.

Mr Mnuchin is the first Treasury Secretary to visit the gold depository in 70 years.

Rich Delmar, counsel to Treasury’s Office of Inspector General, said in a statement that the agency is “reviewing the circumstances of the Secretary’s [21 August] flight to Louisville and Ft. Knox to determine whether all applicable travel, ethics, and appropriation laws and policies were observed.”

The agency’s original response to public inquiries from ethics watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and Democratic Senator Ron Wyden was that Mr Mnuchin was in the state to discuss Donald Trump’s tax reform plan.

It also said Mr Mnuchin will reimburse the government for Ms Linton's travel "as is longstanding policy regarding civilians on military aircraft. The trip was originally planned for earlier in August but was postponed to accommodate the Congressional calendar."

Mr Delmar said that when the review is complete, the agency will “advise the appropriate officials, in accordance with the Inspector General Act and established procedures.”

The Treasury Department for financial records showing "authorisation for and the costs" of the trip using a government plane.

In its Freedom of Information Act request, the group wrote: "At a time of expected deep cuts to the federal budget, the taxpayers have a significant interest in learning the extent to which Secretary Mnuchin has used government planes for travel in lieu of commercial planes, and the justification for that use."

 

He was a vile demon before but then he married her! Birds of a feather. These two probably have enemies at the country club!

[sawasdee]

From a WaPo article about Mattis and Cohn

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/09/02/two-top-trump-advisers-were-asked-why-they-dont-quit-their-answers-speak-volumes/?utm_term=.eab0c88192a8

Quote

COHN: Look, tax cuts are really important to me. I think it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We haven’t done tax cuts in 31 years. So to be a part of an administration that gets something done that hasn’t been done for 31 years is enormously challenging, enormously interesting to me. So, yes, I am very excited about being part of that team that is able to work on something that is that important — and I think that important to our economy and that important to the citizens of this country.

Apart from the fact that there were two rounds of tax cuts in the GW years, and one (primarily aimed at middle, not upper earners) in the Obama years, please take a look at this article about income distribution. It has lots of charts, so I can't post it.

The present inequality is astounding - and this guy wants to INCREASE it?

http://www.businessinsider.com/inequality-is-worse-than-you-think-2013-3

[GrumpyGran]

2 hours ago, sawasdee said:

From a WaPo article about Mattis and Cohn

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/09/02/two-top-trump-advisers-were-asked-why-they-dont-quit-their-answers-speak-volumes/?utm_term=.eab0c88192a8

Apart from the fact that there were two rounds of tax cuts in the GW years, and one (primarily aimed at middle, not upper earners) in the Obama years, please take a look at this article about income distribution. It has lots of charts, so I can't post it.

The present inequality is astounding - and this guy wants to INCREASE it?

http://www.businessinsider.com/inequality-is-worse-than-you-think-2013-3

Of course. If you step back you can understand it. Having money requires money. If everyone in this country won 50 million in the lottery tomorrow, I would say 75% of them would be broke in 5 years. People buy things and don't realize that things cost money, aside from the initial price.

You would think that at some point these people would say, "I have enough." But you get some money, you buy a $75,000 car, three houses, a boat and join the country club. Then you learn that the car and house cost three times as much to insure as you paid before, and the boat, oh boy! That boat needs a dock and maintenance, one of the houses get broken into when you're not there so security for all the houses. And that country club? Always has their hand out.

These people need more money to take care of their money and maintain their prestige. They don't have the morals to see it any other way. Money is power and that's their addiction.

[GreyhoundFan]

This is a great, albeit lengthy, article that includes lots of graphics, so I can't quote. It's worth a read to see all the crap being done to screw over the American public: "The Same Agency That Runs Obamacare Is Using Taxpayer Money to Undermine It"

Price is such an ass. Those idiotic misleading tweets show how much he despises the public.

[GreyhoundFan]

Another "you can't make this shit up" situation: "EPA now requires political aide’s sign-off for agency awards, grant applications"

Spoiler

The Environmental Protection Agency has taken the unusual step of putting a political operative in charge of vetting the hundreds of millions of dollars in grants the EPA distributes annually, assigning final funding decisions to a former Trump campaign aide with little environmental policy experience.

In this role, John Konkus reviews every award the agency gives out, along with every grant solicitation before it is issued. According to both career and political employees, Konkus has told staff that he is on the lookout for “the double C-word” — climate change — and repeatedly has instructed grant officers to eliminate references to the subject in solicitations.

Konkus, who officially works in the EPA’s public affairs office, has canceled close to $2 million competitively awarded to universities and nonprofit organizations. Although his review has primarily affected Obama administration priorities, it is the heavily Republican state of Alaska that has undergone the most scrutiny so far.

EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman said that grant decisions “are to ensure funding is in line with the Agency’s mission and policy priorities,” with the number of awards denied amounting to just 1 percent of those made since EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt took office. “We review grants to see if they are providing tangible results to the American people,” she said in an email.

But the agency’s new system has raised concerns among career officials and outside experts, as well as questions among some in Congress that the EPA grant program is being politicized at the expense of their states.

Earlier this summer, on the same day that Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joined with two other Republicans in voting down a GOP health-care bill, EPA staffers were instructed without any explanation to halt all grants to the regional office that covers Alaska, Washington, Oregon and Idaho. That hold was quickly narrowed just to Alaska and remained in place for nearly two weeks.

The ideological shift is a clear break from the practices of previous Republican and Democratic administrations. It bears the hallmarks not just of Pruitt’s tenure but of President Trump’s, reflecting skepticism of climate science, advocacy groups and academia.

Although the EPA has taken the most systematic approach to scrutinizing the flow of money, it is not the only entity to do so. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has vowed to withhold Justice Department grants from “sanctuary cities” that refuse to hand over arrested immigrants who cannot prove they are in the country legally. The Interior Department, which is conducting a review of its grants, last month canceled a $100,000 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine study aimed at evaluating the impact of surface mining on nearby communities.

Yet several officials from the Obama and George W. Bush administrations said they had never heard of a public affairs officer scrutinizing EPA’s solicitations and its grants, which account for half of the agency’s roughly $8 billion budget.

“We didn’t do a political screening on every grant, because many of them were based on science, and political appointees don’t have that kind of background,” said former EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman, who served under Bush. She said she couldn’t recall a time when that administration’s political appointees weighed in on a given award.

Konkus is a longtime Republican operative from Florida who served as Trump’s Leon County campaign chairman and previously worked for the state’s lieutenant governor and as a political consultant. From 2000 to 2006, he was an executive assistant, primarily on scheduling and organizational matters, for then-House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood L. Boehlert (R-N.Y.). The panel has oversight of the EPA.

Now, as deputy associate administrator in the EPA’s public affairs office, Konkus helps to publicize the funding of awards and serves more broadly as a grants adviser on policy and management issues.

While most of the internal focus has been on individual grants with a connection to climate change, the decision on July 28 to put a temporary hold on all awards to Alaska attracted broader notice.

Two EPA officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said the action prompted a consultation with agency lawyers because of its unusual nature. The hold temporarily slowed awarding more than $10 million in federal funds through half a dozen tribal grants and one to the state’s Department of Conservation.

Bowman said Alaska was not singled out in the review, and aides to Murkowski and Alaska Gov. Bill Walker (I) said they were not aware that any funding was delayed. The Obama administration had identified “combating climate change by limiting pollutants” as one of its priorities for awarding tribal funds, but several of the pending Alaska grants were unrelated to climate change.

Konkus has nixed funding for nearly a half-dozen projects to date, including a Bush-era program to address indoor air pollution, a project to protect watersheds in Central and Eastern Europe, and a one-day training session in Flint, Mich., to help residents eradicate bedbugs.

He allowed a $300,000 award for a computer system to help implement the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan after the firm involved told the EPA that it could be used for policies other than climate change, officials said.

The newsletter E&E News first reported that Konkus was overseeing grant applications but did not describe the criteria he was applying or his specific work on the actual awards.

Bowman said that the agency’s approach, which required the development of a new computer-
reporting system, has allowed the Trump administration to determine whether decisions made by the previous administration were a wise use of taxpayer money.

“I want to underscore that only a select few have been rescinded,” she said in her email, noting that the EPA had given states nearly $74 million in competitive grants and $1.7 billion in noncompetitive awards between Feb. 1 and Aug. 22.

But Sen. Thomas R. Carper (Del.), the top Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee, sent Pruitt a letter late last month asking that he provide documents outlining which grant programs are now subject to political review, how this deviates from past practice and which grants recommended by career staff have been subsequently declined.

From February through July, Carper noted, EPA grant awards to several Democratic-leaning states — including Delaware, Massachusetts and California — had declined compared with the previous year.

“There could be many reasons for these apparent declines,” Carper wrote. Although he added that it warranted attention “in light of the potential that EPA’s decision to involve political appointees represents a change in the grant-solicitation process and may be indicative of the politicization of the grant-awarding process.”

James L. Connaughton, who was chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality under Bush, said new administrations routinely do “a soup-to-nuts review of the previous administration’s programs” and advance their own priorities through funding decisions.

“Some of the efforts might be more transparent than others, but let’s not fool ourselves,” he added.

Still, Connaughton said it was fair to question a review’s outcome. Two of the awards the EPA’s leadership rescinded — $1.1 million to the U.N. Foundation and a nearly $148,000 award to the nonprofit organization Winrock International — supported the deployment of clean cookstoves in the developing world. The U.N. Foundation grant grew out of a 15-year-old EPA program with the private sector, which aims to curb the kind of pollution that fuels climate change and disproportionately affects women and children.

The program addressed pollution that enters the air and “affects all of us,” Whitman said. “It was also good for human health in those countries, which we wanted to have stable for national security.”

Bowman said the agency was pulling back grants to international entities that are not “providing results for American taxpayers.”

But several U.S. firms that sell stoves and equipment benefit from the program, countered Radha Muthiah, chief executive of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves. “It’s a cutting-edge solution to one of the world’s oldest challenges, it’s working, and there is a lot still to be done,” she said in a statement.

The smallest grant revoked so far was a $20,000 award to the Midwest Pesticide Action Center to train Flint residents on how to combat bedbugs. Executive Director Ruth Kerzee said in an interview that regional EPA officials had urged the center to apply because it had a small amount of unused funds. The group was notified of the award and then told a month later that it was canceled.

Kerzee said bedbug infestations have spread over time in the Michigan city — which has grappled with lead-contaminated drinking water since 2014 — and the center’s past sessions attracted packed audiences. “People really do need this,” she said. “For low-income communities, it’s a really desperate situation.”

Bowman said the cancellation made sense in light of the agency’s overall priorities: “Let’s be clear, we are talking about $20,000 for a one-day workshop on bedbugs.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"What prompted the EPA to attack an AP reporter over an accurate Harvey story?"

Spoiler

The Environmental Protection Agency is all over Michael Biesecker, a reporter for the Associated Press. His reading habits, for instance. “We are able to see who opens our emails,” says an EPA official, referring to press-release blasts sent out by the agency. “Michael very rarely opens a positive story about [EPA Administrator] Scott Pruitt. He only opens stories where he tries to create problems.”

Scrutiny of Biesecker’s press-release consumption amped up in the summer months, after a significant dustup between the two organizations. In late June, Biesecker reported that Pruitt had “met privately with the chief executive of Dow Chemical shortly before reversing his agency’s push to ban a widely used pesticide after health studies showed it can harm children’s brains, according to records obtained by The Associated Press.”

Except that the private meeting didn’t really happen, though it was indeed listed on a schedule obtained by the AP. Scheduling conflicts prevented it from taking place. The AP ran a correction stating, in part, “A spokeswoman for the EPA says the meeting listed on the schedule was canceled, though Pruitt and [Dow Chemical CEO Andrew] Liveris did have a ‘brief introduction in passing.'”

Along with the correction, the AP ran a new story with more information about the non-meeting: “The EPA did not respond to inquiries about the scheduled meeting before the AP story was published and later did not state on the record that the meeting had been canceled.” (An EPA official protests that, indeed, the agency did respond before the story was published). The New York Times, by the way, made the very same error.

Following that episode, the EPA pulled Biesecker from its master email list. “He’s more than welcome to visit our website,” says an EPA official, noting that there are some 50 AP reporters on the blast list — and Biesecker can get the releases from them. But why de-list the guy? “We don’t think he’s a trustworthy reporter,” says the EPA official.

The evaluation of untrustworthiness, argues the official, stems from the Dow-Pruitt meeting story, plus a previous instance in which Biesecker — along with staffer Adam Kealoha Causey — wrote an article based on emails from Pruitt’s previous work as Oklahoma attorney general. “Newly obtained emails underscore just how closely Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt coordinated with fossil fuel companies while serving as Oklahoma’s state attorney general, a position in which he frequently sued to block federal efforts to curb planet-warming carbon emissions,” notes the lead of the piece.

An EPA official cited an editorial in the Oklahoman taking issue with the story. “The fact Pruitt regularly corresponded and dealt with energy industry officials as attorney general of a state where energy is the No. 1 industry should not be surprising nor should it, by itself, be considered nefarious,” wrote the newspaper.

Other alleged Biesecker infractions have also upset the EPA. In June, Biesecker forwarded to the EPA press office a news release from Investigative Reporters and Editors announcing that Pruitt had won the organization’s “Golden Padlock” award “recognizing the most secretive U.S. agency or individual.” Noted the EPA official via email, “this unnecessary email reiterates his dislike for Mr. Pruitt.”

So there was distrust in the water when Biesecker and the AP landed on Hurricane Harvey. A trail of emails shows that the wire service decided early on how it would focus its investigative efforts: Houston has long been a petrochemical hub, with $50 billion in chemical plant construction since 2013. The city’s deep roots in this industry mean that companies have left behind a fair number of messes, some of them qualifying as EPA Superfund sites. A team of AP journalists wanted to know how these sites would fare underwater.

On Aug. 17, more than a week before Harvey’s landfall, the AP requested a copy of EPA’s “screening analysis” involving Superfund sites around floodplains or in danger of sea-level rise. As Harvey later bounced out of Texas and into Louisiana, the AP sprung into action, checking out flooded Superfund sites — by foot and by boat — and pressing the EPA for information. Here’s an Aug. 30 email inquiry obtained by the Erik Wemple Blog: “How many Superfund sites are underwater? Specific locations? What monitoring are state and federal regulators doing this week? Are they visiting sites by boat? Are they sampling floodwater? What specific actions are they taking to potentially mitigate the risk of hazardous materials migrating off site due to flooding?” It continued pressing those issues over the following days.

On Sept. 2, Biesecker and colleague Jason Dearen showed the results of their efforts under the provocative and alarming headline, “AP EXCLUSIVE: Toxic waste sites flooded, EPA not on scene.” In all, the outlet had visited seven Superfund sites in the Houston region. Several hours after the AP issued its story, the EPA responded with a statement indicating that it had seen aerial imagery showing that 13 of 41 sites were flooded and were “experiencing possible damage.” The statement started out by denouncing “misleading and inaccurate reporting” on the topic.

The AP adjusted its article, but not its narrative:

The statement confirmed the AP’s reporting that the EPA had not yet been able to physically visit the Houston-area sites, saying the sites had “not been accessible by response personnel.” EPA staff had checked on two Superfund sites in Corpus Christi on Thursday and found no significant damage.

AP journalists used a boat to document the condition of one flooded Houston-area Superfund site, but accessed others with a vehicle or on foot. The EPA did not respond to questions about why its personnel had not yet been able to do so.

The next day, the EPA did something that federal agencies, as a general proposition, do not do. It put a news release on the EPA website blasting not just a news outlet, but a specific reporter. With attitude, too.

Yesterday, the Associated Press’ Michael Biesecker wrote an incredibly misleading story about toxic land sites that are under water.

Despite reporting from the comfort of Washington, Biesecker had the audacity to imply that agencies aren’t being responsive to the devastating effects of Hurricane Harvey. Not only is this inaccurate, but it creates panic and politicizes the hard work of first responders who are actually in the affected area.

Here’s the truth: through aerial imaging, EPA has already conducted initial assessments at 41 Superfund sites – 28 of those sites show no damage, and 13 have experienced flooding. This was left out of the original story, along with the fact that EPA and state agencies worked with responsible parties to secure Superfund sites before the hurricane hit. Leaving out this critical information is misleading.

In a chat with the Erik Wemple Blog, a second EPA official criticized the AP for allegedly getting in over its head. “I’ve never experienced in my career at EPA this kind of thing happening, where the reporter shows up at a devastated site and makes his own determination,” says the official, arguing that the required skills are technical and exacting. Nothing, in other words, that a generalist scribe could profitably undertake. It’s far better, said EPA officials, to join agency experts on one of their ride-along tours, as journalists from ABC, CBS, CNBC, CNN and Bloomberg did on Monday. “Crews were able to take videos, photographs and talk directly with technical staff and subject matter experts on the ground,” reads an EPA news release/damage-control document on the tour. “Boats were on the water determining impacts at the temporary armored cap in the San Jacinto River, to provide access to the crews.”

Much of the anger within the EPA stemmed from the AP’s headlining conclusion that the agency was “not on scene.” “The sites are flooded — I don’t know what we’re supposed to do,” says one of the EPA officials. The headline was later changed to, “AP EXCLUSIVE: Toxic waste sites flooded in Houston area.”

Asked about the EPA’s charges that the wire service omitted key facts and generally placed the government agency in a bad light, AP spokeswoman Emily Leshner responded, “We stand by our original reporting and provided the EPA with ample time to respond to our questions. We included the EPA’s responses when they were provided.” Executive Editor Sally Buzbee waded into the dispute with this statement: “AP‘s exclusive story was the result of on-the-ground reporting at Superfund sites in and around Houston, as well as AP‘s strong knowledge of these sites and EPA practices. We object to the EPA’s attempts to discredit that reporting by suggesting it was completed solely from ‘the comforts of Washington’ and stand by the work of both journalists who jointly reported and wrote the story.”

Those are strong words, though they’re too few. Buzbee would have done well to lament the trajectory of Biesecker’s treatment by the EPA: He makes a single mistake in a story based on original reporting and a records request — then he publishes a hard-edged enterprise piece that displeases those in power. He also engages in some snippy emailing. Based on these considerations, the EPA places its full authority behind the imperative of crushing him.

There is no question that reporters lack the capacity to deliver laboratory-quality assessments of the dangers posed by inundated Superfund sites. And the original headline was a touch on the harsh side. Yet the AP story was factually sound, it was an act of enterprise, and it showed editorial independence. As a taxpayer, would you prefer an Associated Press that waits for agency minders to escort its people to the sites, or an Associated Press that braves the elements on its own?

Those considerations notwithstanding, the EPA chose an ad hominem form of pushback, though an agency official dissents from this characterization. “This wasn’t personal. It’s about his reporting,” says the official. “It’s not about who he is as a person.”

Note that the attacks from agency officials against the AP and its Washington-based environmental reporter are hatched from the comfort of anonymity.

We’ll be seeing more of this approach to the media, of course. An EPA official tells this blog that the release slamming Biesecker boosted morale. “I was with 20 to 30 career folks who were appalled by the story and they nearly teared up when press release went out. … This administration was defending their hard work and dedication,” said the official.

This administration is just freaking ridiculous.

[GreyhoundFan]

Unfortunately, the TT still has some sycophants: "Wilbur Ross says CEOs were wrong to quit Trump’s councils after Charlottesville"

Spoiler

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross came to President Trump's defense Friday, arguing that CEOs were wrong to quit the White House business advisory councils in the wake of Trump's controversial Charlottesville remarks.

“I think what’s sad is for business leaders to give up an opportunity to influence policy over some singular issue with which they disagree,” Ross said in an interview with the author of The Washington Post's Daily 202 newsletter, James Hohmann. “I don't think that's very well considered.”

Trump received widespread condemnation after he blamed “both sides” in Charlottesville, appearing to drew an equivalence between white supremacists and counterprotesters. A number of high-profile business leaders resigned from Trump's CEO advisory groups in the days that followed, and he disbanded the councils as more chief executives planned to resign en masse.

Ross has not said anything publicly about Charlottesville. On Friday, his only remarks on the topic were that he thought CEOs were out of line to resign from the Strategy and Policy Forum and the Manufacturing Council.

Most of the CEOs who left “didn’t vote for the president to begin with,” Ross said, indicating he thought it was a political move. “Elon Musk is not exactly a right-wing person.”

Musk, head of car company Tesla, was one of the first to quit Trump's councils, before the Charlottesville comments. He and Disney CEO Bob Iger left in June after Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris climate agreement. Most CEOs remained on the councils this summer, arguing that it was better to be have a voice at the table than not, but they changed their minds after Charlottesville, triggering a mass exodus from the advisory groups.

Ross's comments Friday defending Trump are in sharp contrast to those of Gary Cohn, head of the National Economic Council. After initially facing criticism for staying quiet, Cohn told the Financial Times the administration “can and must do better in consistently and unequivocally condemning these groups.” Cohn reportedly drafted a letter of resignation but chose to stay to work on policies such as an overhaul of the tax code that he believes are critical to the United States' success.

Trump places a high value on loyalty, and he is reportedly so angry with Cohn that he might fire him. At the tax reform rally in Missouri, Trump took time to point out Ross and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to the crowd, but he did not mention Cohn, even though he was also in attendance and is one of the top White House negotiators on the tax code.

The dissolution of Trump's advisory councils was the latest example of tension between the White House and CEOs after Charlottesville, but Ross dismissed that tension as media fodder.

“In general, business community morale is really good. The regulatory reliefs that have been granted by this administration have been extremely well received,” Ross said. Tax reform is the next priority, and Ross says he hears overwhelming support for that among business leaders.

“We would be far better off as a country to have a lower base rate and far fewer complications,” Ross said. He decline to elaborate on how low the rate should go because the details are now “largely in the hands of Congress.”

Ross is a close adviser to the president and was early to back Trump during the campaign. Trump tapped Ross to be one of his economic advisers during the campaign. Ross co-wrote a paper with Peter Navarro, now the head of the White House National Trade Council, arguing that trade was hurting the United States and calling for much tighter restrictions on imports.

Before joining the Trump administration, Ross was a billionaire investor who often bought distressed companies on the cheap and tried to resuscitate them for a profit. At Commerce, a sprawling agency that he compared to a “conglomerate,” Ross oversees everything from trade policy to the team that monitors hurricanes.

One of Ross's biggest upcoming tasks is overseeing the 2020 Census. He says he is “actively searching” for a new director and that he would probably choose a businessman for the job because the census is “huge management challenge.”

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Rex Tillerson has lost his primary reason for being the secretary of state"

Spoiler

Last month, the hard-working staff here at PostEverything called on Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to resign. So far, he has not taken my advice.

This is hardly surprising, as the power of Spoiler Alerts is minuscule. What is surprising, however, is that Tillerson even wants the job at this point.

Seriously, why does Tillerson want to be the secretary of state? We know that in early February he said he accepted the position because his wife told him to do it. We know that since then, he has been nostalgic about his days in the oil industry, and the opposite of that in his conversations about running the State Department.

Maybe what animates him is the work of being America’s chief diplomat (well, sorta). This is what my Washington Post colleague David Ignatius suggested late last week:

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has often been the silent man in the Trump foreign policy team. But out of the spotlight, he appears to be crafting a broad strategy aimed at working with China to resolve the North Korea crisis and with Russia to stabilize Syria and Ukraine.

The Tillerson approach focuses on personal diplomacy, in direct contacts with Chinese and Russian leaders, and through private channels to North Korea. His core strategic assumption is that if the United States can subtly manage its relations with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin — and allow those leaders to take credit for successes — complex regional problems can be solved effectively.

Tillerson appears unfazed by criticism that he has been a poor communicator and by recent talk of discord with President Trump. His attitude isn’t exactly “take this job and shove it,” but as a former ExxonMobil chief executive, he doesn’t need to make money or Washington friends — and he clearly thinks he has more urgent obligations than dealing with the press.

Two things. First, as I already pointed out, Tillerson’s neglect of some aspects of his job puts extra pressure on him to produce deliverables at the other aspects of his job. The problem is that there is meager evidence that Tillerson’s private diplomacy has yielded anything. There is more evidence that Tillerson’s relationship with the president is strained. That is, in fact, the precise moment when “Washington friends” are desperately needed. But the Secretary of State cannot even count on the support of the Foreign Service at this point.

Second, Tillerson’s theory of diplomacy is bananas. Sure, personal relationships matter, but it has become increasingly clear that China, Russia and the United States have different policy preferences on North Korea, as the watering down of the proposed United Nations sanctions reveals. Despite louder grumbling in Beijing, Xi will not take any risky action toward North Korea. Putin has even less skin in this game, and has soured on Tillerson. Giving either of them credit for a successful resolution to the crisis will not be enough to get them to take the lead. Indeed, that’s pretty much a basic lesson of international diplomacy, but it’s one Tillerson has yet to learn.

If quiet diplomacy isn’t really the thing that motivates Tillerson, what does motivate him? In my conversations with those at the State Department, as well as those covering it, the one idea that seems to animate the secretary of state is reorganizing and streamlining the department. But last week, Senate Appropriations Committee members decided that whatever Tillerson was planning to do to Foggy Bottom, they did not like it. According to Foreign Policy’s Robbie Gramer:

In a stark repudiation of the Trump administration, lawmakers on Thursday passed a spending bill that overturned the president’s steep proposed cuts to foreign aid and diplomacy. Folded into the bill are management amendments that straitjacket some of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s efforts to redesign the State Department.

The Senate Appropriations Committee approved $51 billion for the State Department, foreign operations, and related programs in its 2018 appropriations bill — almost $11 billion above President Trump’s request. …

Among other things, the bill provides over $6 billion for humanitarian assistance — almost $1 billion above the administration’s request. The panel is also restoring $10 million in U.S. funding for the U.N. climate change agency, overruling Trump’s call to end spending on it. In a surprising move, the committee also passed an amendment overturning Trump’s policies limiting funding and access to women’s reproductive healthcare and family planning abroad.

The budget rebuff was surprising. Sure, budgets proposed by the president rarely get through Congress. And the legislative branch has been known to authorize greater greater spending in some areas than the executive branch would like. Still, Congress usually does not act like this toward the State Department. The constraints on Tillerson’s ability to reorganize the department, such as restrictions on the size of the Policy Planning Staff, are equally surprising.

The rebuff was not just about the budget though. Reuters’ Patricia Zengerle notes that the Appropriations Committee also authored a report about the State Department. It is pretty forthright:

In the report released on Friday accompanying the legislation, the committee criticized the administration’s request to cut spending on such operations by 30 percent from the year ending on Sept. 30, 2017.

“The lessons learned since September 11, 2001, include the reality that defense alone does not provide for American strength and resolve abroad. Battlefield technology and firepower cannot replace diplomacy and development,” it read.

“The administration’s apparent doctrine of retreat, which also includes distancing the United States from collective and multilateral dispute resolution frameworks, serves only to weaken America’s standing in the world,” it said.

So, to sum up: Tillerson’s efforts to convert the North Korean issue into a success in personal diplomacy will likely fail. His efforts to reorganize the State Department are likely to be thwarted by Congress.

There seems to be little reason that Tillerson is continuing as secretary of state. Maybe he should walk away now.

The only thing that worries me is -- if Tillerson leaves, what unqualified nutjob will the TT nominate in his place?

[Cartmann99]

4 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

The only thing that worries me is -- if Tillerson leaves, what unqualified nutjob will the TT nominate in his place?

 Trump could always nominate Scaramucci. Scaramucci would definitely add some excitement to the proceedings.

Mom: Timmy, we're going to watch C-Span today and learn more about how our government works.

Timmy: *bored* Okay, Mom.

Scaramucci on C-Span: 

Timmy: Mom? What's a ?

Mom:  *shuts off television* How about we go get some ice cream?

[GrumpyGran]

18 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

 Trump could always nominate Scaramucci. Scaramucci would definitely add some excitement to the proceedings.

Mom: Timmy, we're going to watch C-Span today and learn more about how our government works.

Timmy: *bored* Okay, Mom.

Scaramucci on C-Span: 

Timmy: Mom? What's a ?

Mom:  *shuts off television* How about we go get some ice cream?

Can you imagine? We'd be at war with half the world within a week.

[Cartmann99]

Mnuchin wanted a government plane for his honeymoon with Louise Linton:

Quote

Secretary Steven Mnuchin requested use of a government jet to take him and his wife on their honeymoon in Scotland, France and Italy earlier this summer, sparking an “inquiry” by the Treasury Department's Office of Inspector General, sources tell ABC News.

Officials familiar with the matter say the highly unusual ask for a U.S. Air Force jet, which according to an Air Force spokesman could cost roughly $25,000 per hour to operate, was put in writing by the secretary's office but eventually deemed unnecessary after further consideration of by Treasury Department officials.

Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said in an interview with ABC News that Mnuchin's request for a government jet on his honeymoon defies common sense.

"You don't need a giant rulebook of government requirements to just say yourself, 'This is common sense, it's wrong,'" Wyden said. "That's just slap your forehead stuff."

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/treasury-secretary-mnuchin-requested-government-jet-european-honeymoon/story?id=49777076

[candygirl200413]

But remember guys, small government only matters when you get it to pay for you to do whatever you want!!

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump FEMA Nominee Withdraws After NBC Questions on Falsified Records"

Spoiler

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump's nominee for the No. 2 spot at the Federal Emergency Management Agency withdrew from consideration on Wednesday after NBC News raised questions about a federal investigation that found he had falsified government travel and timekeeping records when he served in the Bush administration in 2005.

"Given the distraction this will cause the Agency in a time when they cannot afford to lose focus, I have withdrawn from my nomination," the former nominee, Daniel A. Craig, said in an email to NBC News.

The investigation, jointly conducted by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, concluded there was insufficient evidence that Craig had violated conflict-of-interest laws in the awarding of huge FEMA contracts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, according to a 2011 report that has never been made public but which was reviewed by NBC News.

... < video >

But the investigation revealed conduct by Craig, specifically falsification of records, that could have become a major stumbling block in his confirmation by the Senate.

With FEMA back in the news because of the recent hurricanes, and still smarting from its inadequate response to Katrina, senators would have had to decide whether he should be the person they want running its day-to-day operations.

Craig said he was withdrawing his nomination after NBC News contacted him about the report. He also said there was information in the report that was incorrect and the result of "poor" investigating and added that the IG had failed to follow up on information investigators were given at the time.

Craig was never charged with a crime for his actions and maintains he did nothing wrong. He said he properly accounted for all of the hours he worked.

In July, Trump nominated Craig to serve as FEMA’s deputy administrator. His nomination had been referred to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs; the committee had yet to move forward on the nomination.

In his email, Craig said he never tried to hide the investigation from the White House or the Senate, and said it was mentioned in the answers to the official questionnaire he had to fill out.

Craig came under scrutiny by the Inspector General for allegedly exploiting his position as FEMA’s director of recovery for personal gain. At the time, the agency was giving $100 million contracts to private firms for temporary housing of Katrina victims, and the report said that Craig was seeking employment with those firms.

NBC News reviewed 18 pages of the 21-page summary of the report issued by DHS’s Office of the Inspector General in March 2011, which has not been made public. It was provided by a source familiar with the investigation. NBC has not seen a copy of the full report.

Asked about Craig's withdrawal, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said Wednesday she did not want to “go down rabbit holes on personnel” at FEMA. The administration's focus is on “the safety and security of those affected by the hurricane," she said.

When the White House nominated Craig in July, it said in a news release that he had managed the recovery services and funds given to victims of more than 120 disasters, fires and emergencies, including the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the Space Shuttle Columbia explosion in 2003.

A former Republican operative and U.S. Chamber of Commerce official, Craig served from 2003 to 2005 as FEMA’s director of recovery, a senior position that oversees disaster recovery efforts. He most recently worked as a senior vice president at Adjusters International, a disaster preparedness and recovery firm.

The IG report six years ago highlighted potential ethics concerns surrounding Craig after he left FEMA and became a lobbyist for a Miami-based law firm, Akerman Senterfitt, working on behalf of a client that secured more than $1 billion in FEMA contracts as part of the Katrina relief effort.

As a former federal employee in a senior position, Craig was subject to a one-year prohibition on lobbying FEMA officials.

But before a full year had passed since he left the agency, he had dinner with two FEMA employees and submitted the bill to his firm as business expenses, according to Akerman account statements cited in the report.

One of them was the FEMA administrator at the time, David Paulison, the agency’s top-ranking official, who told NBC News he secretly recorded Craig at the FBI's request after federal investigators informed him of the potential conflict-of-interest violation, the report said. In the recorded conversation, Craig told Paulison he had done nothing wrong and denied that their dinner had violated the one-year lobbying ban, according to the report.

Paulison told NBC News that the report’s description of his conversations with investigators was accurate regarding his 2006 dinner with Craig, but said that he could not comment on the investigation’s other findings since he had not seen the report.

"Dan was a great employee when he worked for me, very bright, a hard worker," Paulison said in an interview before Craig withdrew.

... < video of SHS dodging questions >

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Louisiana had conducted its own investigation into whether Craig had violated federal conflict-of-interest laws by seeking employment at firms that won big FEMA contracts, the Inspector General report noted. The Justice Department had similarly concluded that there was not enough evidence to prove that he had violated the law, and closed its file on Craig in 2010, the report said.

DHS’s Office of Inspector General has never made its own findings public. Unlike audits or inspections, which are usually publicly available, Inspector General investigations into alleged criminal, civil, and administrative misconduct are seldom released.

A Trip to Baton Rouge and Falsified Expenses

The IG report alleges that Craig committed travel-voucher fraud for a trip he took to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in August 2005, claiming his travel expenses were for official government business when in fact he was interviewing for a job with the Shaw Group, an engineering and construction firm that received a big post-Katrina contract.

In an interview with investigators, the FEMA official responsible for signing travel vouchers said that his signature had been forged on Craig’s voucher. Craig’s Louisiana trip cost taxpayers $482.43, the report said, but the report did not specify whether he had paid back the money.

Craig also falsified his time and attendance records at FEMA, interviewing for potential new jobs during times he claimed to be at work, the report alleged.

During the summer of 2005, Craig had met to discuss employment with Shaw and the Fluor Corporation — another engineering firm with a big post-Katrina contract — during times that he reported to be at work, investigators concluded. The report cited an affidavit that Craig submitted to DHS’s Office of Inspector General in September 2005, which described his job-hunting meetings with Shaw and Fluor. (The summary of the investigation that NBC News reviewed did not cite any interviews with Craig or any responses by him to the report’s findings.)

In an email, Craig denied any wrongdoing. He said that he took the Baton Rouge trip to meet with the Louisiana governor's office on government business — not to interview with Shaw. He added that he had worked "ten hours or more" a day during the time period that federal investigators said that he was going on job interviews.

Shaw ultimately offered Craig a job, which he accepted but then later turned down, according to company executives cited in the report. On Sept. 8, 2005, Shaw announced that FEMA had awarded the firm a $100 million contract to provide temporary housing for victims of Katrina, which hit the Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005. Fluor and two other federal contractors landed similarly large deals with FEMA.

Under federal law, executive-branch employees are prohibited from participating in government matters in which they have a financial interest. In a Sept. 21, 2005 letter to Paulison, then FEMA’s acting director, Craig made an effort to recuse himself, but the letter was dated after the report said he had begun interviewing with Shaw, and after FEMA had already awarded the contract to the firm. A FEMA official also told investigators that Craig had not properly recused himself before interviewing with Shaw, according to the report.

Craig told Paulison that he was potentially pursuing a job with Shaw, among other firms, and could no longer participate in matters that affected the financial interests of those companies, according to the letter, which was obtained by the Project on Government Oversight, a non-partisan watchdog group.

Craig also informed DHS’s Office of Inspector General that he had landed a job with a FEMA contractor but did not take it, according to the report. That was what prompted the IG’s office to open its initial investigation into Craig’s potential conflict-of-interest violation, the report said.

"While I knew I did not violate any conflicts, I believed in my mind there would be a perceived conflict," Craig said, explaining why he had reported the job to the IG's office.

Craig left his post at FEMA on Sept. 30, 2005, the report continued, and went to work for Akerman instead.

FEMA’s deal with Shaw was one of four controversial, no-bid contracts for FEMA trailers that the agency doled out in Katrina’s aftermath. Each contract originally had a $100 million ceiling, but their value quickly swelled. By July 2006, the government had committed to paying Shaw more than $900 million for its FEMA trailer contract, the agency said.

FEMA quickly came under heavy criticism for the no-bid contracts, which the agency claimed were necessary given the overwhelming demands of the Katrina recovery.

Matt Jadacki, special inspector general for Gulf Coast Hurricane Recovery, testified to a Senate subcommittee that FEMA had not adequately documented why it chose to award the four contracts to certain firms over others, which created the impression of "bias or favoritism."

In the summer of 2007, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Louisiana asked the FBI to investigate whether Craig had violated federal law during his job search with firms that received the no-bid contracts from FEMA, the report said. At the request of the U.S. Attorney, DHS re-opened its own investigation into the matter. The joint FBI-DHS inquiry built upon an earlier DHS investigation that concluded there was not enough evidence to prove that Craig had a substantial role in FEMA’s decision to award a contract to Shaw, in violation of federal law, according to the report.

Through interviews with his former colleagues, the report said, federal investigators confirmed that Craig was involved in the internal discussions at FEMA about the temporary housing contracts.

One colleague asked Craig to recommend names of individual contractors in late July or early August — around the time that investigators said Craig was interviewing with Shaw — and Craig had suggested Shaw without going into further detail, according to the report. But the colleague, like others at FEMA, told federal investigators that he wasn’t aware of any effort on Craig’s part to influence the selection of contractors.

The housing contracts would ultimately become exemplars of government waste and mismanagement during the Katrina recovery.

Describing the four contracts as "the largest written by FEMA during the response to Hurricane Katrina," DHS’s Inspector General concluded in a 2008 audit that government waste and questionable costs were responsible for $46 million out of the $3.2 billion that it had committed to spending on FEMA trailers. The audit faulted the government for awarding the four contracts without properly vetting the firms, negotiating prices, or defining critical terms and conditions for them. (The audit did not cite Craig by name or allege any wrongdoing on his part.)

The Shaw Group Severs Ties

Shaw, for its part, was eager to have Craig help the firm apply for its next FEMA contract by bringing him on board as a consultant, according to Shaw executives cited in the IG report. Though Craig decided not to join the firm’s staff, Shaw still managed to employ his services and hired Akerman Senterfitt, where Craig worked as a consultant and lobbyist from October 2005 through May 2008, according to his LinkedIn profile.

In an interview with federal investigators cited in the report, a Shaw executive said that Craig acted as a consultant to help the firm land a second contract with FEMA, which the executive estimated to be worth about $600 million. (FEMA awarded new housing contracts to Shaw and five other firms in August 2006.) But soon after the second contract was awarded, according to an email cited in the report, Shaw terminated its business relationship with Akerman after a lobbying disclosure appeared to show that Craig had potentially run afoul of a second federal ethics law.

Under that federal law, which was enacted for executive branch employees in 1978, senior federal employees are subject to a one-year "cooling off" period after leaving the government, during which they’re prohibited from lobbying their former departments or agencies. But less than a year after leaving the administration, Craig lobbied FEMA on disaster relief and housing issues on behalf of Shaw, according to a federal lobbying disclosure cited in the IG report from Akerman Senterfitt — which has since changed its name to Akerman — dated July 5, 2006.

A few months later, Craig told the Shaw Group that Akerman staff had filed the July lobbying disclosure in error, as the one-year ban prohibited him from lobbying FEMA, according to documents cited in the IG report. Akerman also filed an amended version of the lobbying report that removed Craig’s name. Troubled by the revelation, Shaw immediately ended its business relationship with Akerman, according to the report, adding that Shaw said it had never asked or intended for Craig to lobby FEMA on the firm’s behalf.

During his one-year cooling-off period, Craig had dinners with Paulison, the head of the agency, and Jadacki, FEMA’s head of Katrina oversight, that he charged to Akerman as business expenses, according to account statements described in the report. Under federal law, Craig would have been prohibited from communicating with FEMA officials with the intent to influence them.

Speaking to federal investigators, Jadacki explained that he was friends with Craig, but said that they had never discussed Shaw or FEMA housing contracts, according to the report.

Similarly, Paulison told investigators that Craig had not lobbied him and did not recall him bringing up the FEMA contracts; he described their dinner in August 2006 as a social occasion and said he was angry with Craig for listing it as a business expense, according to the report. After speaking with investigators, the report continued, Paulison agreed to meet with Craig again, secretly record their conversation, and debrief federal agents afterwards.

During that meeting, which took place in December 2008, Craig told Paulison that he hadn’t done anything wrong, the report said. He denied writing off the 2006 dinner as a business expense and said he had not violated the one-year ban on lobbying, according to the report. Paulison showed him a subpoena from the U.S. Attorney’s office requiring all documentation of his business meetings with Craig, the report continued. Craig said that he had broken no laws and told Paulison to tell the truth.

I can see why the TT nominated him, he sounds like he'd fit right in with this sham administration.

[GrumpyGran]

On 9/14/2017 at 1:07 AM, Cartmann99 said:

Mnuchin wanted a government plane for his honeymoon with Louise Linton:

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/treasury-secretary-mnuchin-requested-government-jet-european-honeymoon/story?id=49777076

These two are the epitome of what is wrong with this administration. She's enamored of having things, expensive things and a trophy husband. He's no better, trophy wife and the notion that his job allows him to get everything for free. Arrogance, entitlement and a HUGE blind spot that covers pretty much everything that's not on the airplane they're currently hijacking.

[GreyhoundFan]

@GrumpyGran -- I so agree, he is a real piece of work.

The WaPo published an interesting analysis: "Steven Mnuchin’s terrible response to his plane controversy"

Spoiler

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is wrapped up in a growing controversy over his use of a government airplane to travel to Fort Knox during last month's solar eclipse and his request to use one for his European honeymoon over the summer.

And his response Thursday isn't going to help put this to bed.

"You know, people in Kentucky took this stuff very serious,” he said of the eclipse at a conference hosted by Politico. “Being a New Yorker and (living for a time in) California, I was like, the eclipse? Really? I don’t have any interest in watching the eclipse.”

Mnuchin has denied that he used the plane for the purpose of seeing the eclipse from Fort Knox with his wife -- he says there was official government business at hand -- so it's understandable that he would seek to downplay his interest in it. But it's difficult not to read his comments as pretty demeaning to the people of flyover country. Those people were interested in the natural phenomenon, he seems to be saying, but as a metropolitan man who has lived on both coasts, it just wasn't that interesting to me.

Why invoke where you are from if that's not your point?

The comments recall the also-controversial ones made by his wife, Louise Linton, who apologized a few weeks ago after talking down to someone who criticized her for showing off her wardrobe on the trip to Fort Knox on social media. In the posting, Linton played up the expensive brand names she was wearing.

... < tweets >

After the person said they were "glad we could pay for your little getaway," Linton responded: "Adorable! Do you think the US govt paid for our honeymoon or personal travel?! Lololol. Have you given more to the economy than me and my husband? Either as an individual earner in taxes OR in self sacrifice to your country? I’m pretty sure we paid more taxes toward our day ‘trip’ than you did. Pretty sure the amount we sacrifice per year is a lot more than you’d be willing to sacrifice if the choice was yours.”

She added: "You’re adorably out of touch … Thanks for the passive aggressive nasty comment. Your kids look very cute. Your life looks cute.”

Against that backdrop, it would behoove someone like Mnuchin to avoid further suggestions that he and his wife are somehow superior or more evolved than his wife's critic or the people of Kentucky. If your argument is that you don't see government airplanes as your own personal charter planes for personal getaways, humility is the best policy.

 

[GrumpyGran]

56 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

@GrumpyGran -- I so agree, he is a real piece of work.

The WaPo published an interesting analysis: "Steven Mnuchin’s terrible response to his plane controversy"

  Hide contents

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is wrapped up in a growing controversy over his use of a government airplane to travel to Fort Knox during last month's solar eclipse and his request to use one for his European honeymoon over the summer.

And his response Thursday isn't going to help put this to bed.

"You know, people in Kentucky took this stuff very serious,” he said of the eclipse at a conference hosted by Politico. “Being a New Yorker and (living for a time in) California, I was like, the eclipse? Really? I don’t have any interest in watching the eclipse.”

Mnuchin has denied that he used the plane for the purpose of seeing the eclipse from Fort Knox with his wife -- he says there was official government business at hand -- so it's understandable that he would seek to downplay his interest in it. But it's difficult not to read his comments as pretty demeaning to the people of flyover country. Those people were interested in the natural phenomenon, he seems to be saying, but as a metropolitan man who has lived on both coasts, it just wasn't that interesting to me.

Why invoke where you are from if that's not your point?

The comments recall the also-controversial ones made by his wife, Louise Linton, who apologized a few weeks ago after talking down to someone who criticized her for showing off her wardrobe on the trip to Fort Knox on social media. In the posting, Linton played up the expensive brand names she was wearing.

... < tweets >

After the person said they were "glad we could pay for your little getaway," Linton responded: "Adorable! Do you think the US govt paid for our honeymoon or personal travel?! Lololol. Have you given more to the economy than me and my husband? Either as an individual earner in taxes OR in self sacrifice to your country? I’m pretty sure we paid more taxes toward our day ‘trip’ than you did. Pretty sure the amount we sacrifice per year is a lot more than you’d be willing to sacrifice if the choice was yours.”

She added: "You’re adorably out of touch … Thanks for the passive aggressive nasty comment. Your kids look very cute. Your life looks cute.”

Against that backdrop, it would behoove someone like Mnuchin to avoid further suggestions that he and his wife are somehow superior or more evolved than his wife's critic or the people of Kentucky. If your argument is that you don't see government airplanes as your own personal charter planes for personal getaways, humility is the best policy.

 

He couldn't be humble if he tried! Of course he sees no reason to try. She's worse. If they weren't going to see the eclipse, why was she even on the plane? I can see that she has no friends, volunteer commitments, job, family so nothing else to do but it's not our responsibility to amuse her or to pay government employees to babysit her.

[GreyhoundFan]

I certainly don't mind seeing Sessions humiliated: "The Daily 202: Trump’s DACA ‘deal’ is another humiliation for Jeff Sessions"

Spoiler

THE BIG IDEA: Photographers caught a giddy Jeff Sessions cracking a satisfied smile last week as he prepared to announce that 690,000 undocumented immigrants who had been brought into the United States as minors would no longer be shielded from deportation.

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program “is being rescinded,” the attorney general declared in the first line of his statement. “There is nothing compassionate about the failure to enforce immigration laws. … Failure to enforce the laws in the past has put our nation at risk of crime, violence and even terrorism. … The effect of this unilateral executive amnesty, among other things, contributed to a surge of unaccompanied minors on the southern border that yielded terrible humanitarian consequences. It also denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans by allowing those same jobs to go to illegal aliens.”

Fact checkers called these and other claims Sessions made about the immigrants known as “dreamers” dubious or outright false. Perhaps that’s why he didn’t take questions afterward. Regardless, the speech was widely covered as a triumph for the nation’s chief law enforcement officer and a sign that he was out of President Trump’s doghouse. Not only did Sessions get the outcome he wanted; he also got to deliver the news from the Justice Department briefing room.

Trump’s DACA decision last week seemed to validate Sessions’s decision to slog on through the summer even after being frozen out of the inner circle. From interviews to tweets, Trump repeatedly attacked his attorney general throughout July as “weak” and “beleaguered.”

The main reason Sessions chose to put up with indignities that might cause most people to quit was because he believed he could make a difference on immigration policy. That has always been his signature issue and animated his two decades in the Senate.

-- But it took less than 10 days for Trump to once again undercut Sessions. The president on Thursday signaled his embrace of granting permanent legal status to these “dreamers” as part of a deal with Democrats that he said is close to being finalized. He also acknowledged that he’s not going to make a deal to save DACA contingent on getting funding for the wall he wants to build along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Discussing the exact same group of people that Sessions painted with such a sinister brush one week earlier, Trump tweeted yesterday: “Does anybody really want to throw out good, educated and accomplished young people who have jobs, some serving in the military? Really!” Trump tweeted yesterday. “They have been in our country for many years through no fault of their own — brought in by parents at young age.”

-- Adding insult to injury, the New York Times reported last night that Trump “berated” Sessions during an Oval Office meeting this spring. “Accusing Mr. Sessions of ‘disloyalty,’ Mr. Trump unleashed a string of insults on his attorney general,” Michael Schmidt and Maggie Haberman report. “Mr. Trump told Mr. Sessions that choosing him to be attorney general was one of the worst decisions he had made, called him an ‘idiot,’ and said that he should resign. … Ashen and emotional, Mr. Sessions told the president he would quit and sent a resignation letter to the White House … Mr. Sessions would later tell associates that the demeaning way the president addressed him was the most humiliating experience in decades of public life.”

Here’s how the May 17 meeting went down: The president blames Sessions’s recusal from the Russia investigation for the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller. Sessions was in the Oval Office with Vice President Pence, White House Counsel Don McGahn and others to discuss who should be tapped to replace James Comey as FBI director. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein called McGahn during the meeting to say that he was going to name Mueller that evening. Trump erupted when he learned the news.

“An emotional Mr. Sessions told the president he would resign and left the Oval Office,” the Times reports. “In the hours after the Oval Office meeting, however, Mr. Trump’s top advisers intervened to save Mr. Sessions’s job. Mr. Pence; Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s chief strategist at the time; and Reince Priebus, his chief of staff, all advised that accepting Mr. Sessions’s resignation would only sow more chaos inside the administration and rally Republicans in Congress against the president. … The president relented, and eventually returned the resignation letter to Mr. Sessions.”

-- A spokesman for the Justice Department declined to comment on both the president’s DACA comments and the Times’s story.

-- Rachel Maddow asked Hillary Clinton on her show last night about Trump’s eruption at Sessions. “Well, look, this is a man who engages in humiliation and domination as a tactic of control,” replied the 2016 Democratic nominee, who is giving a flurry of interviews to promote her new book. “I think that's pretty deeply embedded in his character. … I think the goal might well have been, psychologically, to really make Jeff Sessions, who is a very proud man, … more dependent on pleasing the president. … It's all part of his manipulation.”

-- Sessions believed at the start of this year that he and the incoming president were genuinely friends. He was the first member of the Senate to endorse Trump’s outsider campaign. It stung this summer when the president told reporters that he only backed him because of his popularity in Alabama. Sessions felt like he had really gone out on a limb and snubbed Ted Cruz, a friend and colleague, to do so.

-- The thrice-married Trump has long struggled with staying loyal, even to people he once loved. As Ashley Parker and Philip Rucker wrote last weekend after the debt ceiling deal, Trump has a long history of broken alliances and agreements: “In business, his personal life, his campaign and now his presidency, Trump has sprung surprises on his allies with gusto. His dealings are frequently defined by freewheeling spontaneity, impulsive decisions and a desire to keep everyone guessing — especially those who assume they can control him. He also repeatedly demonstrates that, while he demands absolute loyalty from others, he is ultimately loyal to no one but himself. … Foreign diplomats euphemistically describe the president as ‘unpredictable.’”

...

The NYT article linked in the spoiler is also excellent. And Sessions is delusional if he ever thought he and the TT were friends.

[GrumpyGran]

52 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I certainly don't mind seeing Sessions humiliated: "The Daily 202: Trump’s DACA ‘deal’ is another humiliation for Jeff Sessions"

  Hide contents

THE BIG IDEA: Photographers caught a giddy Jeff Sessions cracking a satisfied smile last week as he prepared to announce that 690,000 undocumented immigrants who had been brought into the United States as minors would no longer be shielded from deportation.

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program “is being rescinded,” the attorney general declared in the first line of his statement. “There is nothing compassionate about the failure to enforce immigration laws. … Failure to enforce the laws in the past has put our nation at risk of crime, violence and even terrorism. … The effect of this unilateral executive amnesty, among other things, contributed to a surge of unaccompanied minors on the southern border that yielded terrible humanitarian consequences. It also denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans by allowing those same jobs to go to illegal aliens.”

Fact checkers called these and other claims Sessions made about the immigrants known as “dreamers” dubious or outright false. Perhaps that’s why he didn’t take questions afterward. Regardless, the speech was widely covered as a triumph for the nation’s chief law enforcement officer and a sign that he was out of President Trump’s doghouse. Not only did Sessions get the outcome he wanted; he also got to deliver the news from the Justice Department briefing room.

Trump’s DACA decision last week seemed to validate Sessions’s decision to slog on through the summer even after being frozen out of the inner circle. From interviews to tweets, Trump repeatedly attacked his attorney general throughout July as “weak” and “beleaguered.”

The main reason Sessions chose to put up with indignities that might cause most people to quit was because he believed he could make a difference on immigration policy. That has always been his signature issue and animated his two decades in the Senate.

-- But it took less than 10 days for Trump to once again undercut Sessions. The president on Thursday signaled his embrace of granting permanent legal status to these “dreamers” as part of a deal with Democrats that he said is close to being finalized. He also acknowledged that he’s not going to make a deal to save DACA contingent on getting funding for the wall he wants to build along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Discussing the exact same group of people that Sessions painted with such a sinister brush one week earlier, Trump tweeted yesterday: “Does anybody really want to throw out good, educated and accomplished young people who have jobs, some serving in the military? Really!” Trump tweeted yesterday. “They have been in our country for many years through no fault of their own — brought in by parents at young age.”

-- Adding insult to injury, the New York Times reported last night that Trump “berated” Sessions during an Oval Office meeting this spring. “Accusing Mr. Sessions of ‘disloyalty,’ Mr. Trump unleashed a string of insults on his attorney general,” Michael Schmidt and Maggie Haberman report. “Mr. Trump told Mr. Sessions that choosing him to be attorney general was one of the worst decisions he had made, called him an ‘idiot,’ and said that he should resign. … Ashen and emotional, Mr. Sessions told the president he would quit and sent a resignation letter to the White House … Mr. Sessions would later tell associates that the demeaning way the president addressed him was the most humiliating experience in decades of public life.”

Here’s how the May 17 meeting went down: The president blames Sessions’s recusal from the Russia investigation for the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller. Sessions was in the Oval Office with Vice President Pence, White House Counsel Don McGahn and others to discuss who should be tapped to replace James Comey as FBI director. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein called McGahn during the meeting to say that he was going to name Mueller that evening. Trump erupted when he learned the news.

“An emotional Mr. Sessions told the president he would resign and left the Oval Office,” the Times reports. “In the hours after the Oval Office meeting, however, Mr. Trump’s top advisers intervened to save Mr. Sessions’s job. Mr. Pence; Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s chief strategist at the time; and Reince Priebus, his chief of staff, all advised that accepting Mr. Sessions’s resignation would only sow more chaos inside the administration and rally Republicans in Congress against the president. … The president relented, and eventually returned the resignation letter to Mr. Sessions.”

-- A spokesman for the Justice Department declined to comment on both the president’s DACA comments and the Times’s story.

-- Rachel Maddow asked Hillary Clinton on her show last night about Trump’s eruption at Sessions. “Well, look, this is a man who engages in humiliation and domination as a tactic of control,” replied the 2016 Democratic nominee, who is giving a flurry of interviews to promote her new book. “I think that's pretty deeply embedded in his character. … I think the goal might well have been, psychologically, to really make Jeff Sessions, who is a very proud man, … more dependent on pleasing the president. … It's all part of his manipulation.”

-- Sessions believed at the start of this year that he and the incoming president were genuinely friends. He was the first member of the Senate to endorse Trump’s outsider campaign. It stung this summer when the president told reporters that he only backed him because of his popularity in Alabama. Sessions felt like he had really gone out on a limb and snubbed Ted Cruz, a friend and colleague, to do so.

-- The thrice-married Trump has long struggled with staying loyal, even to people he once loved. As Ashley Parker and Philip Rucker wrote last weekend after the debt ceiling deal, Trump has a long history of broken alliances and agreements: “In business, his personal life, his campaign and now his presidency, Trump has sprung surprises on his allies with gusto. His dealings are frequently defined by freewheeling spontaneity, impulsive decisions and a desire to keep everyone guessing — especially those who assume they can control him. He also repeatedly demonstrates that, while he demands absolute loyalty from others, he is ultimately loyal to no one but himself. … Foreign diplomats euphemistically describe the president as ‘unpredictable.’”

...

The NYT article linked in the spoiler is also excellent. And Sessions is delusional if he ever thought he and the TT were friends.

The White House Christmas party this year will involve Trump making everyone go down to a transit hub with him and then he'll order all of them to lie down under the buses while he giggles uncontrollably. 

[GreyhoundFan]

Sigh: "EPA will reconsider Obama-era safeguards on coal waste"

Spoiler

The Environmental Protection Agency plans to reconsider parts of an Obama-era effort to regulate potentially toxic waste known as coal ash, again siding with energy-industry efforts to slow or reverse standards put in place in recent years.

Federal regulators have struggled for several decades with how to address coal ash, the substance that remains when coal is burned in power plants to generate electricity. A toxic mix of mercury, cadmium, arsenic and other heavy metals, coal ash can pollute waterways, poison wildlife and cause respiratory illness among those living near the massive storage pits plant operators use to contain it.

A rule finalized in 2015 by the Obama administration imposed new standards on coal ash disposal sites by ramping up inspection and monitoring levels and requiring measures such as liners in new waste pits to prevent leaking that could threaten adjacent drinking water supplies.

In May, however, industry officials petitioned the EPA to ask that the new administration revisit the rule. The existing regulation, they wrote, “affects both the utility and coal industries and also affects the large and small businesses that support and rely upon those industries. It is causing significant adverse impacts on coal-fired generation in this country due to the excessive costs of compliance — even EPA acknowledges the costs of the rule outweigh its benefits.”

Their pleas found a sympathetic ear in EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, who in a letter dated Wednesday replied that it was “appropriate and in the public interest” for the agency to rethink the regulation.

“It is important that we give the existing rule a hard look and consider improvements that may help states tailor their permit programs to the needs of their states, in a way that provides greater regulatory certainty, while also ensuring that human health and the environment remain protected,” Pruitt said in a statement Thursday.

The agency stressed that it had not committed to changes or that it necessarily agrees with the merits of the industry’s petition. If the EPA ultimately decides to roll back the coal ash standards, it will go through the usual rulemaking procedure, which could take years.

Environmental groups were quick to criticize Pruitt’s latest decision as another nod to special interests.

“Donald Trump and Scott Pruitt are continuing their capitulation to the coal industry at the expense of the health of our families,” Mary Anne Hitt, director of Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, said in a statement. “This is another example of Pruitt not caring about science, working families, or clean water, and instead bending over backwards for polluters eager to avoid accountability to the laws that keep our communities and families healthy.”

Ken Kopocis, the former top official in EPA’s water office under President Barack Obama, said the original rule had taken industry concerns into account and that rolling it back would endanger public health.

“We bent over backwards for industry both in terms of the substance of the rule and in terms of the timing,” Kopocis said. He noted the dangers that coal ash pits pose, particularly in light of the severe storms the country has experienced in recent weeks. “These things are ticking time bombs.”

Calls to strengthen safeguards for coal ash waste intensified after a massive December 2008 spill. A dike failed at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Fossil Plant, allowing 5.4 million cubic yards of ash to flow into nearby rivers. Another accident at a Duke Energy facility in North Carolina in February 2014 resulted in thousands of tons of coal ash pouring into the Dan River.

Utility operators produce more than 110 million tons of coal ash annually, according to the EPA, and a rule the agency finalized in December 2014 established stricter guidelines for constructing and maintaining coal ash storage pits. The regulations said new pits had to be lined — to prevent the waste from seeping out — and that companies must conduct local water quality tests as well as disclose more information about their operations on a publicly available website.

The regulation did not classify coal ash as hazardous waste, as environmentalists have sought unsuccessfully for more than 35 years. More than 40 percent of coal ash is recycled to help make concrete, gypsum wallboard and pavement, and a broad industry coalition has said identifying it as hazardous would raise the cost of handling the material.

Then-EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy described the Obama administration’s standards as “a pragmatic step forward,” and key industry players said they viewed them as acceptable.

I don't know if there will be a planet left after Pruitt and the TT get done.

[GreyhoundFan]

I love the characterization of Moochin and his wife: "The administration’s Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI must go"

Spoiler

ABC News reports:

[Treasury] Secretary Steven Mnuchin requested use of a government jet to take him and his wife on their honeymoon in Scotland, France and Italy earlier this summer, sparking an “inquiry” by the Treasury Department’s Office of Inspector General, sources tell ABC News.

Officials familiar with the matter say the highly unusual ask for a U.S. Air Force jet, which according to an Air Force spokesman could cost roughly $25,000 per hour to operate, was put in writing by the secretary’s office but eventually deemed unnecessary after further consideration of by Treasury Department officials. …

“You don’t need a giant rulebook of government requirements to just say yourself, ‘This is common sense, it’s wrong,'” [Democratic Sen. Ron] Wyden said. “That’s just slap your forehead stuff.”

That comes after the flap over Mnuchin’s wife, Louise Linton, concerning her “Instagram bragging“:

Dressed in all white and carrying a handbag and silk scarf, the Scottish-born actress and producer tagged a series of luxury designers, including Hermes, Roland Mouret, Tom Ford and Valentino.

“Great #daytrip to #Kentucky! #nicest #people #beautiful #countryside #usa,” she wrote. Instagram user Jenni Miller, a mother of three from Oregon, took issue with the post, commenting, “Glad we could pay for your little getaway. #deplorable”

Linton fired back in a sarcastic tone.

“@jennimiller29 cute! Aw!!! Did you think this was a personal trip?! Adorable! Do you think the US govt paid for our honeymoon or personal travel?! Lololol,” she wrote in a response peppered with kiss emojis.>
Her reply escalated further as she touted her family’s wealth and personal “sacrifice.”

The Mnuchins have become the Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI of an administration stocked with millionaires and billionaires. At a time when Mnuchin is hawking a tax plan, which at least in previous incarnations bestowed a windfall on the super-rich (he can buy his own plane next time), they stand out as two comically awful symbols of a president who ran as a populist and governs like a plutocrat.

Firing Mnuchin not only would reaffirm Trump’s pledge to help the “forgotten men and women” — who have been forgotten on tax reform, health care and budget initiatives — but also remove an inept negotiator from tax discussions. The Hill reported on Mnuchin’s performance in the debt-ceiling talks:

“His performance was incredibly poor, and his last words, and I quote, were ‘vote for the debt ceiling for me,’ ” said Rep. Mark Walker (R-N.C.), chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee (RSC), a group that opposed the bill.

“It was a very arrogant lecture that turned off more of the conference,” added another RSC member. “I’m less sold than when I walked into the meeting.”

Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.), a Freedom Caucus member, called the comments “unhelpful” and “intellectually insulting.”

In sum, Republicans on the Hill, President Trump’s base (fast becoming demoralized by Trump’s frequent betrayal on campaign themes), his harried aides and good-government advocates would no doubt applaud the move. The Mnuchins — along with Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner — remain entertaining reminders that billionaires with no government experience and little contact with regular people can be detrimental to an administration, particularly one as hapless and incompetent as this one.