Trump 18: Info to Russia, With Love

[nvmbr02]

Has this been posted yet? I don't recall seeing it but sorry if it has been.

 

White House Moves to Block Ethics Inquiry Into Ex-Lobbyists on Payroll

Spoiler

The Trump administration, in a significant escalation of its clash with the government’s top ethics watchdog, has moved to block an effort to disclose any ethics waivers granted to former lobbyists who now work in the White House or federal agencies.

The latest conflict came in recent days when the White House, in a highly unusual move, sent a letter to Walter M. Shaub Jr., the head of the Office of Government Ethics, asking him to withdraw a request he had sent to every federal agency for copies of the waivers. In the letter, the administration challenged his legal authority to demand the information.

Dozens of former lobbyists and industry lawyers are working in the Trump administration, which has hired them at a much higher rate than the previous administration. Keeping the waivers confidential would make it impossible to know whether any such officials are violating federal ethics rules or have been given a pass to ignore them.

Mr. Shaub, who is in the final year of a five-year term after being appointed by President Barack Obama, said he had no intention of backing down. “It is an extraordinary thing,” Mr. Shaub said of the White House request. “I have never seen anything like it.”

 

[onekidanddone]

3 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

An interesting analysis: "So, let’s say Trump gets impeached. Then what?"

  Reveal hidden contents

To everyone dreaming of a quick and easy impeachment: What do you imagine happens the day after?

Passions subside. President Pence begins his orderly reign. Donald Trump retreats to Mar-a-Lago. Normalcy returns.

That’s about what you have in mind, right?

Dream on.

Here’s a likelier scenario: Trump goes to Mar-a-Lago to regroup, not retreat. Early in the morning, he tweets: “Join me on Day One of our campaign to reverse the most corrupt theft in political history and reclaim the White House in 2020.” His supporters vow to reverse the coup d’etat.

And the wars intensify.

Impeachment should not be ruled out. If special counsel Robert S. Mueller III gathers evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors, Congress should proceed, regardless of partisan advantage or political fallout.

But Trump opponents are kidding themselves if they think that sacking him will restore comity and peace to the nation. And they are dodging the work they need to do if they let a focus on impeachment or removal under the 25th Amendment keep them from offering solutions to problems that contributed to Trump’s victory.

Impeachment has been and should be considered a “drastic remedy,” as attorney Gregory Craig called it when he was defending President Bill Clinton before the House Judiciary Committee in 1998.

Trump was legitimately elected by Americans who knew they were voting for an inexperienced, bombastic, intermittently truthful, thin-skinned, race-baiting businessman. If Trump turns out to be an inexperienced, bombastic, intermittently truthful, thin-skinned, race-baiting president, that should not come as a surprise. Nor is it grounds for impeachment.

Even if Trump turns out to be worse than feared, a failure, a disappointment even to his voters, someone who would, say, boorishly disparage America’s FBI chief as a “nut job” while speaking to America’s adversaries — even that would not be grounds for impeachment. The remedy for poor performance is not to reelect. It is a decision for the voters.

Impeachment (by the House) and conviction (by a two-thirds vote in the Senate) would stoke, not calm, political anger. Even if some of his voters felt let down by his performance, many would see his removal from office as an undemocratic short-circuiting of the process. Already his reelection committee is claiming that Trump is a victim of “sabotage,” as The Post’s Abby Phillip reported.

“You already knew the media was out to get us,” a recent fundraising email began. “But sadly it’s not just the fake news. . . . There are people within our own unelected bureaucracy that want to sabotage President Trump and our entire America First movement.”

Would Trump, if convicted by the Senate, stage a run for redemption in 2020, fueling and feeding on that kind of paranoia? That would depend on many factors, including whether Congress chose to bar him from future service, which it is allowed but not required to do in an impeachment trial.

But certainly many among the 46 percent of the electorate who rallied to Trump’s side in order to “drain the swamp” of Washington elitism would not subside quietly if the swamp, as they saw it, swallowed him. Maybe their candidate would be Donald Jr. or Eric Trump, who last week tweeted, “This entire thing is a witch hunt propagated by a failed political campaign.” Maybe they would find another champion.

What’s least conceivable is that they, and other voters, would suddenly be satisfied again with the old Republican and Democratic parties. Which is why Trump opponents can’t afford to think that getting rid of Trump is all they need to do.

Neera Tanden and Matt Browne, in a recent Post op-ed on the French presidential election, noted that Emmanuel Macron did not win his landslide victory simply by stressing the danger of electing his populist, Russia-sympathizing opponent, Marine Le Pen. Although many observers said Macron lacked a substantive platform, Tanden, who is president and chief executive of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, and Browne, a senior fellow there, argued that Macron actually set out a “bold agenda” for political reform.

“For progressives in the United States, this is a critical lesson,” Tanden and Browne wrote. To rebut the politics of “ethno-nationalist populism” progressives need to offer more than opposition — they need “an aggressive agenda for political reform.”

We are far from knowing the whole story of Russia’s intervention in the 2016 election, its relationship over the years with Trump and his businesses, and the administration’s possible efforts to keep the truth from emerging. The country needs Mueller and members of Congress, of both parties, working overtime to expose that story.

But the country also needs to beware of the fantasy that the nation’s problems, and the Democratic Party’s, could be solved if only that one man could magically be made to disappear.

Sadly, I could see this happening -- he gets impeached and goes to work on twitter and Faux, stirring up the BTs.

His becoming a martyr for the alt-right is very likely, but he can't be left in office either. Welcome to between a rock and a hard place. 

[sawasdee]

13 minutes ago, nvmbr02 said:

Has this been posted yet? I don't recall seeing it but sorry if it has been.

 

White House Moves to Block Ethics Inquiry Into Ex-Lobbyists on Payroll

  Reveal hidden contents

The Trump administration, in a significant escalation of its clash with the government’s top ethics watchdog, has moved to block an effort to disclose any ethics waivers granted to former lobbyists who now work in the White House or federal agencies.

The latest conflict came in recent days when the White House, in a highly unusual move, sent a letter to Walter M. Shaub Jr., the head of the Office of Government Ethics, asking him to withdraw a request he had sent to every federal agency for copies of the waivers. In the letter, the administration challenged his legal authority to demand the information.

Dozens of former lobbyists and industry lawyers are working in the Trump administration, which has hired them at a much higher rate than the previous administration. Keeping the waivers confidential would make it impossible to know whether any such officials are violating federal ethics rules or have been given a pass to ignore them.

Mr. Shaub, who is in the final year of a five-year term after being appointed by President Barack Obama, said he had no intention of backing down. “It is an extraordinary thing,” Mr. Shaub said of the White House request. “I have never seen anything like it.”

 

They're not even trying to cover the level of self interest now. The lack of transparency is breathtaking!

Does anyone know if the Office of Government Ethics has sub poena powers? If it doesn't, this is yet something else he gets away with - and it comes out while he is overseas, and there are so many other scandals hogging the headlines.

I'm starting to make a list of all the things which have hitherto been the norm for politicians, but never enshrined in law.

Publication of tax returns

Publication of ethics waivers

Publication of visitors' book at the WH

Compulsory placing of businesses in a true blind trust, with President having no access of any kind, including financial, until end of term.

Examination of such blind trusts, before access is granted, to ensure the President hasn't used his office to enrich such trust.

Any official who lies, either on his vetting documents, his financial disclosure forms or during his confirmation hearing, to be immediately debarred from public office for life.

I'm sure I'll think of more - tRump is opening more ways to evade the spirit of the law in quasi criminal ways daily.

 

[nvmbr02]

You just can't make this stuff up.

 

[sawasdee]

As my mum would say - Jaysus Mary and Joseph!

ETA But of course tRump isn't breaking the emoluments clause......

[nvmbr02]

I have mixed feelings about this. I really want to hear what Comey has to say, but at the same time I wouldn't want him to taint any criminal investigation. 

[sawasdee]

@nvmbr02 This is interesting!

It could be that Comey has information that, if disclosed, could hinder an ongoing criminal investigation - in fact, I can't think of any other explanation for him wishing to talk to special counsel before testifying in Congress.

Any other ideas why he would do this?

[GreyhoundFan]

22 minutes ago, sawasdee said:

They're not even trying to cover the level of self interest now. The lack of transparency is breathtaking!

Does anyone know if the Office of Government Ethics has sub poena powers? If it doesn't, this is yet something else he gets away with - and it comes out while he is overseas, and there are so many other scandals hogging the headlines.

snip

I don't believe OGE has subpoena powers. OGE doesn't have a lot of teeth, they offer guidelines.

 

In a word: NOPE:  "Can the pope save Trump?"

Spoiler

If anyone ever needed a conversion experience — and fast — it is President Trump. The issue here is not switching religions. What he could use is an honest examination of his conscience, his attitude toward himself and others, and his approach to what it means to be a leader.

Even to suggest such a possibility seems absurd, more an inspiration for a “Saturday Night Live” sketch than a serious prospect. Moving an incorrigible narcissist toward self-criticism is as likely as changing the course of a river or the trajectory of the Earth’s rotation around the sun.

But some people believe in miracles. One of them is Pope Francis, with whom Trump will be meeting on Wednesday. Might this compassionate Jesuit who preaches a God of mercy and the power of humility abandon his diplomatic role to engage in a pastoral intervention with a man whose soul (like all of our souls) could use some saving?

We’re unlikely to know if the pope even tries. Communiques on papal meetings with heads of state are usually opaque. At worst, the encounter may be blandly described as “a full and frank exchange.” The Vatican knows that a lot of American Catholics voted for Trump, and the Catholic Church hasn’t survived all these centuries by ignoring realpolitik.

Those of us who are critics of the president are hoping for something more: a stern talking-to from a religious leader who stands passionately on the opposite side of Trump on so many questions.

Francis, after all, has explicitly condemned “trickle-down” economics as a system that “has never been confirmed by the facts” and “expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power.” Capitalism, as he sees it, “tends to devour everything which stands in the way of increased profits.” He added that “whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of a deified market.”

The pope wrote an encyclical stating emphatically that a “very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic system,” that “things are now reaching a breaking point” and that greenhouse gases are “released mainly as a result of human activity.” To protect the planet, Francis called for “changes of lifestyle, production and consumption.”

The president and the pope have already tangled on immigration. During the 2016 campaign, the pope labeled Trump’s Mexican wall “not Christian,” comments Trump called “disgraceful.” The contrast between the two men on immigrants and refugees could not be starker. “We must make our immigrant brothers and sisters feel that they are citizens, that they are like us, children of God,” Francis has said, pleading for compassion toward “the stranger in our midst.”

It’s hard to imagine Francis remaining silent on these questions when he talks with Trump. But the pope also believes in our capacity to transform ourselves and in an Almighty willing to forgive our sins. So he might well take on one of the toughest counseling jobs of his life by urging Trump to consider the value of thinking beyond the self.

Was the pope preparing for this moment in a surprise talk he filmed for the TED2017 conference late last month? “Please, allow me to say it loud and clear,” he declared. “The more powerful you are, the more your actions will have an impact on people, the more responsible you are to act humbly. If you don’t, your power will ruin you, and you will ruin the other.

“There is a saying in Argentina,” Francis continued. “’Power is like drinking gin on an empty stomach.’ You feel dizzy, you get drunk, you lose your balance, and you will end up hurting yourself and those around you.” I hope Francis conveys something like that to our president. Trump could profit from it right now.

Trump enjoys mocking “losers,” so he might pay heed to Francis’s injunction that when the fortunate encounter those who are not, they should ask themselves, “Why them and not me?” Francis’s answer was different from the one Trump would likely give. “I could have very well ended up among today’s ‘discarded’ people,” the pope said.

Trump has recently been portrayed as being in a dark and sour mood, and the disclosures over the past few days could hardly have improved his disposition. This just might make him open to a pastor who teaches: “We must regain the conviction that we need one another, that we have a shared responsibility for others and the world, and that being good and decent are worth it.”

Mr. President, what do you have to lose?

Somehow, I just can't see TT being swayed.

[JMarie]

Not that I think she wants to be anyone's hero, but...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/chelsea-handler-says-melania-would-be-an-american-hero-if-she-divorced-donald-trump_us_59230f52e4b034684b0e68d1

Quote

“I have a fantasy. I just want Melania to finally come out and divorce him. She would be an American hero,” Handler told the “View” co-hosts. “We would embrace her if she just said, ‘Listen, this guy’s disgusting, and I know all of his dirty secrets and I’m willing to tell everybody.’”

 

[nvmbr02]

A link to the letter from Elijah Cummings to Jason Chaffetz regarding Michael Flynn's security clearance lies. 

 

[RoseWilder]

2 hours ago, sawasdee said:

@RoseWilderBut do we actually KNOW that NY is bringing laundering charges? I desperately want it to be true......but Palner Report is not always reliable - a watered down Drudge of the left, sometimes.

I'm trying to remember all the sources where I read about this. Here is the article about Eric Schneiderman targeting Trump (and it's important t note here that Schneiderman is the one who got Trump's foundation shut down last October): 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ny-ag-trump-prosecutor_us_58cf4a83e4b00705db50667e

Quote

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has reportedly hired a prosecutor to examine the activities of the Trump administration.

Schneiderman has tapped public-corruption expert Howard McMaster from the office of former Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, The Wall Street Journal reported. 

Damn, I can't find where I read about the money laundering. I'm going to search Rachel Maddow's blog, but I think I might have seen it on her show. I'll post it when I find it. 

[sawasdee]

@RoseWilder Thanks! I truly, truly, truly want this to be so......

[onekidanddone]

29 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I don't believe OGE has subpoena powers. OGE doesn't have a lot of teeth, they offer guidelines.

 

In a word: NOPE:  "Can the pope save Trump?"

<snipped article>

Somehow, I just can't see TT being swayed.

In a very short answer, no. The Pope can't do anything to sway TT because TT does not want to learn, grow, or in anyway listen to anybody else but his own flow of festering orange sewage which spews from his mouth. He once said he and the Pope had lots in common because they were both so humble. I know the Pope is gentle man of peace, but if he smacked TT upside the head, I'm Jesus would approve.

[nvmbr02]

 

More great reporting from the WaPo

Trump asked intelligence chiefs to push back against FBI collusion probe after Comey revealed its existence

Quote

President Trump asked two of the nation’s top intelligence officials in March to help him push back against an FBI investigation into possible coordination between his campaign and the Russian government, according to current and former officials.

Trump made separate appeals to the director of national intelligence, Daniel Coats, and to Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, urging them to publicly deny the existence of any evidence of collusion during the 2016 election.

Coats and Rogers refused to comply with the requests, which they both deemed to be inappropriate, according to two current and two former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private communications with the president.

Trump sought the assistance of Coats and Rogers after FBI Director James B. Comey told the House Intelligence Committee on March 20 that the FBI was investigating “the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts.”

 

He just doesn't give up.

[GreyhoundFan]

41 minutes ago, JMarie said:

Not that I think she wants to be anyone's hero, but...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/chelsea-handler-says-melania-would-be-an-american-hero-if-she-divorced-donald-trump_us_59230f52e4b034684b0e68d1

 

I'm sure she signed an NDA as part of her pre-nup. She won't say a word about him publicly.

 

Wow, I guess Christie is still mad about Jared forcing him out: "Christie on Comey: He's not a 'nut job'"

Spoiler

TRENTON — New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Monday that former FBI director James Comey is not a “nut job” and also criticized the hiring of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, saying he wouldn’t have let the man set foot in the White House.

In a roughly 75-minute, freewheeling press conference in his state’s Capitol building, the Republican governor continued to defend President Donald Trump — but also began to put some daylight between the two men.

Christie, who initially ran Trump’s transition team, said he disagreed with comments Trump reportedly made to Russian officials in which he called Comey “crazy, a real nut job.”

“I would disagree with the characterization of Jim as a ‘nut job,’” Christie, the former U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, said. “I’ve known Jim for a long time. I don’t always agree with him, as I’ve told you guys before, but, no, that wouldn’t be the way I would characterize Jim.”

The New York Times reported Friday that Trump told Russian officials during a meeting in the Oval Office that firing Comey relieved “great pressure” brought on by the investigation of Russian involvement in the presidential election.

Christie said those remarks could be taken multiple ways.

“I have no idea what the president meant by relieving ‘pressure,’” Christie said. “People are presuming certain things. It could mean a lot of things. You know, he may have been feeling pressure to fire Comey and now that he did it, it relieved him of that pressure. You don’t know what pressure he was discussing.”

The governor, who was unceremoniously fired from the transition team despite being one of the first establishment Republicans to back Trump, also doubled down on comments he’d made about Flynn.

“I will just say this to you: If I was president of the United States, I wouldn’t let General Flynn in the White House, let alone give him a job,” Christie said.

The two had reportedly clashed during transition meetings, but Christie said that wasn’t the case — Flynn’s just “not my cup of tea.” Christie said he was not aware during his time as transition chairman that Flynn was under investigation as part of an inquiry into Russian meddling in the election.

“I think it’s safe to say that General Flynn and I didn’t see eye to eye,” the governor said. “I didn’t think he was someone who would bring benefit to the president or to the administration. And I made that very clear to candidate Trump and I made it very clear to President-elect Trump. That was my opinion, my view. Do I feel vindicated? I don’t have any need to feel vindicated one way or the other.”

The governor added, cryptically, that he couldn’t discuss specifics “because some of it involves classified information that I’m just not at liberty to discuss.”

On Monday, Flynn notified the Senate Intelligence committee that he will ignore a subpoena seeking documents, citing his Fifth Amendment rights, the Associated Press reported, citing a source.

 

[Howl]

2 hours ago, sawasdee said:

I'm sure I'll think of more - tRump is opening more ways to evade the spirit of the law in quasi criminal ways daily.

No surprise there.  It's the way he's run his business dealings for the last 40 years. 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is interesting (and true): "The Trump Administration Talent Vacuum"

Spoiler

After an eruption, volcanoes sometimes collapse at the center. The magma chamber empties out and the volcano falls in on itself, leaving a caldera and a fractured ring of stone around the void, covered by deadening ash.

That’s about the shape of Washington after the last stunning fortnight. The White House at the center just collapsed in on itself and the nation’s policy apparatus is covered in ash.

I don’t say that because I think the Comey-Russia scandal will necessarily lead to impeachment. I have no idea where the investigations will go.

I say it because White Houses, like all organizations, run on talent, and the Trump White House has just become a Human Resources disaster area.

We have seen White Houses engulfed by scandal before. But we have never seen a White House implode before it had the time to staff up. The Nixon, Reagan and Clinton White Houses had hired quality teams by the time their scandals came. They could continue to function, sort of, even when engulfed.

The Trump administration, on the other hand, has hundreds of senior and midlevel positions to fill, and few people of quality or experience are going to want to take them.

Few people of any quality or experience are going to want to join a team that is already toxic. Nobody is going to want to become the next H. R. McMaster, a formerly respected figure who is now permanently tainted because he threw his lot in with Donald Trump. Nobody is going to want to join a self-cannibalizing piranha squad whose main activity is lawyering up.

That means even if the Trump presidency survives, it will be staffed by the sort of C- and D-List flora and fauna who will make more mistakes, commit more scandals and lead to more dysfunction.

Running a White House is insanely hard. It requires a few thousand extremely smart and savvy people who are willing to work crazy hours and strain their family lives because they fundamentally believe in the mission and because they truly admire the president.

Even on its best early days, the Trump White House never had that.

Trump was able to recruit some talented people, mostly on the foreign policy side, but organizational cultures are set from the top, and a culture of selfishness has always marked this administration.

Even before Inauguration Day, the level of leaking out of this White House was unprecedented, as officials sought to curry favor with the press corps and as factions vied with one another.

But over the past 10 days the atmosphere has become extraordinary. Senior members of the White House staff have trained their sights on the man they serve. Every day now there are stories in The Times, The Washington Post and elsewhere in which unnamed White House officials express disdain, exasperation, anger and disrespect for their boss.

As the British say, the staff is jumping ship so fast they are leaving the rats gaping and applauding.

Trump, for his part, is resentfully returning fire, blaming his underlings for his own mistakes, complaining that McMaster is a pain, speculating about firing and demoting people. This is a White House in which the internal nickname for the chief of staff is Rancid.

The organizational culture is about to get worse. People who have served in administrations under investigation speak eloquently about how miserable it is. You never know which of your friends is about to rat you out. No personal communication is really secure. You never know which of your colleagues is going to break ranks and write the tell-all memoir, and you think that maybe it should be you.

Even people not involved in the original scandal can find themselves caught up in the maelstrom and see their careers ruined. Legal costs soar. The investigations can veer off in wildly unexpected directions, so no White House nook or cranny is safe.

As current staff leaves or gets pushed out, look for Trump to try to fill the jobs with business colleagues who also have no experience in government. It’s striking that the only person who this week seems excited to take a Trump administration job is Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke, who made his name as a TV performance artist calling the Black Lives Matter movement “black slime,” and who now claims he has been hired to serve in the Department of Homeland Security.

Congressional Republicans seem to think they can carry on and legislate despite the scandal, but since 1933 we have no record of significant legislation without strong presidential leadership. Members of this Congress are not going to be judged by where they set the corporate tax rate. They will be defined by where they stood on Donald Trump’s threat to civic integrity. That issue is bound to overshadow all else.

The implosion at the center is going to affect everything around it. The Trump administration may survive politically, but any hopes that it will become an effective governing organization are dashed.

He's not exactly getting the best and brightest, is he?

[GreyhoundFan]

In another "you couldn't make this shit up" moment: "Trump’s budget is so cruel a Russian propaganda outfit set the White House straight"

Spoiler

So it has come to this: A Russian government-funded propaganda outfit schooling the Trump administration on the cruelty of its proposed federal budget.

Mick Mulvaney, President Trump’s budget director, unveiled Trump’s ghastly 2018 budget proposal Monday afternoon in the White House briefing room, and one point of pride was that it proposed that the child-care tax credit and the earned-income tax credit — benefits for working families — be denied to illegal immigrants. “It’s not right when you look at it from the perspective of people who pay the taxes,” Mulvaney declared.

But Andrew Feinberg, a reporter with Russia’s Sputnik news outfit, pointed out that many of the children who would be cut off under Trump’s proposal are U.S. citizens. “Whether they’re here illegally or not,” Feinberg noted, “those families have American-citizen children.”

Mulvaney, who probably didn’t know he was being interrogated by Sputnik, argued back, saying that Feinberg wasn’t duly considering taxpayers and that “we have all kinds of other programs” for poor kids.

At this, another reporter in the room interjected: “You’re cutting that, too.”

It was a bizarre scene: An organization financed by Vladimir Putin’s regime, in the White House, lecturing a Trump administration official. (Maybe they aren’t “colluding” after all.) But Trump’s budget is such that it leaves this White House’s credibility on a par with (or perhaps below) that of Russian propaganda outfit.

The budget claims it balances the budget over a decade without touching Social Security and Medicare, while spending more on national security, the border, infrastructure and more.

How? The budget would eviscerate aid to the poor, and it makes preposterous assumptions about future growth. In other words — a cruelty wrapped in a lie. Mulvaney on Monday acknowledged it’s a “fair point” that Congress will ignore the proposal. But this outrage deserves attention.

Trump, who once vowed “no cuts” to Medicaid, would now cut Medicaid by more than $800 billion, denying support to 10 million people. He lops a total of $1.7 trillion off that and similar programs, including food stamps, school lunches and Habitat for Humanity.

Mulvaney, defending the budget Monday, made a frank admission: “This is, I think, the first time in a long time an administration has written a budget through the eyes of people who actually are paying the taxes. Too often in Washington I think we often think only on the recipient side.”

Exactly. The rich pay the most in overall taxes (even if not by percentage), and they get the lion’s share of benefits from Trump’s budget. The poor and working poor pay little or nothing in federal income taxes — and they would get little or nothing.

But even taking all benefits from the poor and the working class wouldn’t make a budget balance, particularly if Social Security and Medicare aren’t chopped. Even Mulvaney said he was “honestly surprised” he could balance the budget. How? By making magical assumptions.

Mulvaney said the annual growth the Obama administration and Congressional Budget Office forecast were “pessimistic.” A better word might be “responsible,” but the Trump administration realized what Mulvaney called an “ugly truth”: “You can never balance the budget at 1.9 percent” growth.

And so — voila! — the Trump administration assumes 3 percent growth for the next decade, a level not seen in decades. Assuming that faster growth, Mulvaney said, makes Social Security and Medicare “healthier,” even if “it does not solve their long-term deficiencies.” Magical assumptions make budgets magically balance.

Many of the press corps regulars were traveling, so Brian Karem, from the Montgomery County Sentinel in Maryland, called out the first question: “What about critics who say this budget is incredibly hardhearted, especially for the least of our brothers?”

Mulvaney said it was “hardhearted” to take money from taxpayers for ineffective programs.

CNBC’s John Harwood asked about Trump’s promise not to touch Medicaid. Mulvaney’s response was about Obamacare.

Another reporter asked whether there would be anything to replace cuts to medical care for pregnant women or preventive-care services. “The short answer is I don’t know,” Mulvaney said.

The budget director employed creative euphemisms, saying cuts to food stamps were part of a “cost sharing” plan with states. But he wasn’t really fooling anybody — certainly not the man from Sputnik. Feinberg, an American, explained while smoking a Camel outside the briefing room that he was a freelancer who took the job because it was a paying gig. He filed two items for Sputnik, including one noting that Trump’s budget would deny tax credits to “parents who aren’t legally in the United States even if their children are American citizens.”

Feinberg’s reports were true. It’s the Trump budget assumptions and justifications that amount to propaganda.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is a good analysis about what the Agent Orange/Paul Lyan Deathcare plan will do, based on what has happened in Iowa: "Want to know what Trumpcare would do to the country? Look at the implosion in Iowa."

Spoiler

Wondering what the country’s health-care system would look like under Trumpcare?

Take a gander at Iowa, where the individual market is on the verge of collapse.

Just one insurer remains in most of the state, and that insurer, Medica, is threatening to exit. Republicans love to point to Iowa’s struggles as evidence of Obamacare’s failures. But in reality, the Hawkeye State has functioned as a petri dish for the GOP’s health plan. The state’s problems provide useful lessons for what could go wrong if Trumpcare becomes law nationwide.

So what, exactly, is the matter with Iowa?

The state’s individual market faces several major problems. The first is that, to a large extent, it did not actually implement Obamacare.

Nationwide, nearly all people who bought their insurance on the individual market are enrolled in plans that meet certain Obamacare requirements. For example, these govern what health benefits must be covered, how much patients can be forced to spend out of pocket, and whether or how much insurers can charge based on age and preexisting conditions.

This is not true in Iowa. There, most individual market enrollees are in plans that have been exempted from these federal requirements.

These non-Obamacare-compliant plans are allowed to stick around because they were created before the Affordable Care Act exchanges launched, and Iowa’s state regulators have been more than willing to let them linger.

Because these noncompliant plans offer relatively skimpy coverage and, back in the day, were allowed to effectively screen out older and sicker patients, they’re cheap. As a result, they have siphoned off many of the healthier, younger people in the state. 

That means the pool of people left buying more generous Obamacare-compliant plans has been sicker, older and more expensive — a problem known as “adverse selection.” This drives up premiums and causes even the relatively healthy people on the ACA exchanges to drop coverage.

Trumpcare, in the name of promoting “choice,” would basically replicate Iowa’s adverse-selection problem on a much larger scale.

As passed in the House, the American Health Care Act would let states get waivers allowing insurers to offer new plans that don’t meet Obamacare’s coverage or cost requirements. In other words, as in Iowa, Trumpcare would permit healthier and younger people to sort themselves into cheaper plans that cover little, and leave sicker and older people in more expensive plans. Which, as in Iowa, would probably cause markets to unravel.

This isn’t the only thing throwing Iowa’s individual markets out of whack. The state also has one very sick, very expensive enrollee on its Obamacare exchange — and the predicament this presents offers a further lesson for what we should expect from Trumpcare.

According to Wellmark, an insurer that recently announced plans to leave the Iowa exchange next year, a single unnamed patient there racks up more than $1 million in health bills per month. In a sparsely populated state, with an already relatively sick and small insurance pool, no insurer wants to catch this falling knife, as Duke University health researcher David Anderson put it.

From the start, Obamacare had several provisions designed to reduce such expensive risks for insurers, such as reinsurance. Those provisions have either expired, been kneecapped by Republicans or otherwise proved insufficient. Last fall, the Obama administration issued a regulation designed to spread these costly risks over larger pools of people, precisely so that a small regional insurer wouldn’t have to fear getting stuck with the tab for a $12 million patient. That new regulation won’t kick in until 2018, however.

Meanwhile, Trumpcare takes the opposite approach: Rather than making the risk pool bigger, it encourages states to segregate their most expensive patients into smaller “high-risk pools.” There’s no indication that Republicans are willing to come anywhere close to adequately funding these pools. Consequently, insurers will run away (as in Iowa), states will ration care (as in lots of states pre-Obamacare), or both. 

Finally, insurance companies in the state have publicly said they’re struggling with the uncertainty over the rules of the road. Will there still be an individual mandate? Will the Trump administration continue reimbursing insurers for the discounts they are legally required to give to poor people? Will there be huge cuts to Medicaid, dumping more low-income and disproportionately sick people onto the exchanges?

Republicans have unified control of government, but they still can’t answer these questions. Even if some version of the Trumpcare bill passes, uncertainty and instability will linger while new regulations are written and states decide what to do with waivers, risk pools and reduced Medicaid funding.

Iowa’s market, already fragile and regulated by state officials who don’t seem terribly committed to making the ACA-compliant market work, is especially sensitive to mounting uncertainty. But it’s merely the canary in the coal mine.

This is sobering, but the Repugs don't care, as long as they get their tax cuts for the super-wealthy and don't have to take care of anyone who dared to be poor.

[Rachel333]

Here's a comparison of Obama vs. Trump scandals.

Remember when the scandal people were getting worked up about was the color of the president's suit?

(Which, by the way, he looked amazing in.)

[Dark Matters]

And in other news:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40006354

A sinkhole has opened at President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago golf resort in Florida.

The town of Palm Beach, where Mr Trump's retreat is located, tweeted a traffic alert on Monday morning about the 4ft by 4ft (1.2m) road cavity.

City officials tweeted that the hole had formed "directly in front of Mar-a-Lago" and was close to a newly installed water main.

City construction crews were to carry out "exploratory excavation" of site.

Social media users have been poking fun at the cave-in, which comes in the middle of Mr Trump's first foreign trip as president.

 

Would it be to much to ask of the Universe that the next time Trumpigula visits Mar-a-Lago, the sinkhole swallows him up and disappears?

[apple1]

7 hours ago, Rachel333 said:

Here's a comparison of Obama vs. Trump scandals.

Remember when the scandal people were getting worked up about was the color of the president's suit?

(Which, by the way, he looked amazing in.)

I agree!

[GreyhoundFan]

This is an interesting analysis of Melania's clothes and body language thus far on the trip: "On her first official trip, Melania Trump is dressed for control and containment". You really have to see some of the pictures.

Spoiler

Melania Trump this week is in the midst of that awkward activity of being first lady. Accompanying her husband on his debut foreign trip, her role is mostly to be seen and not heard — at least not until the final leg of the journey when she is scheduled to deliver remarks to U.S. military personnel and families in Italy. Until then she moves silently, striding across tarmacs, proceeding through receiving lines, posing for photographs and gazing intently at whatever landmark, person or happening is in her line of vision.

All of this is done for the benefit of cameras. And quite often, her expression is not one of delight. This is atypical for U.S. first ladies, who tend to offer up a sort of facial diplomacy that suggests pleasure, happiness or at least mild interest in the activities at hand. To be fair, Trump’s non-smiling expression may very well indicate little more than she is jet-lagged or that she simply has a neutral opinion about the goings-on around her. Or maybe she just tends to be reserved in showing her emotions. Still, it is striking that she does not seem compelled to emote for the photographers, which would essentially mean cementing a smile on her face whenever she is in public, because in public there are always cameras.

Demanding that women smile is akin to suggesting that women are not entitled to be in charge of their own emotional life. But for women who live the greater part of their lives in the public eye, smiling is a kind of code for being not only engaged, but also being engaging. For a woman who was once a model, who ostensibly is practiced in the art of nonverbal communication, the willingness to forgo a grin seems less like an accident and more like the tiniest declaration of personal control and rebellion. She is here for you, but she is not going to perform for you.

Saudi Arabia was the first stop on this trip abroad, and Melania Trump acknowledged the country’s traditions of conservative dress by choosing long sleeves, high necklines and nothing that revealed much skin. She did not, however, cover her head. Doing so is not necessary for visiting Western dignitaries. Indeed, Michelle Obama did not wear a head covering when she toured Saudi Arabi as first lady. However, in 2007, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi covered her head when she visited a mosque in Damascus. A lady has the right to choose.

Trump has favored wide belts, close-fitting skirts and jackets with ’80s-style prominent shoulders. In particular, the white skirt suit, by Michael Kors Collection, that she wore in Israel, which was her second stop, exemplifies what is quickly becoming her signature style. There is a businesslike polish to her daytime aesthetic, one defined by angles and sharp lines. When she departed the White House on Friday afternoon, a day when the temperature ticked up past 90 degrees, Trump wore a high-waisted, pumpkin-colored leather skirt by designer Herve Pierre and a long-sleeve ivory sweater. She is not one to let the weather derail a fashion decision.

While in Saudi Arabia, she wore an olive-drab safari dress, with flap pockets and epaulettes, and a wide brown leather belt. It was the sort of belt that does not just cinch a dress, it highlights a narrow waist. It brags about it.

Trump’s daytime ensembles do not exude ease or fluidity. They are strict and confining. They paint a picture of a woman who is self-contained, controlled and reserved. Her clothes are in keeping with the family style: Her husband rarely wears anything but a suit, and their 11-year-old son, according to his mother, prefers jackets and ties to T-shirts and jeans.

Her clothes speak to fashion’s usefulness as protective armor and, perhaps, a negotiating tactic. Trump has worn American designers on this trip, although those designers have hardly been trumpeting that fact on their social media. Trump has also worn European brands. In fact, when she stepped off Air Force One in Riyadh, she was wearing a long-sleeve black jumpsuit by Stella McCartney, which she’d paired with a wide, metallic gold belt and a thick, gold link necklace. The black jumpsuit called to mind an abaya.

To a Western eye, the choice seemed to pay homage to the aspects of Saudi society that confine women instead of emphasizing the broader world that is available to them. In the first lady’s own social media, she made note of the “great strides being made towards the empowerment of women” in Saudi Arabia, which seems like quite a stretch in a country where women cannot drive, guardianship laws are enforced and clothing serves as a form of patriarchal control. She, like the president, may not have come to Saudi Arabia to judge or to tell others how to live, but whitewashing social inequality in a tweet is another matter entirely. In that context, her black jumpsuit became a combination of passive approval and transactional acceptance of clothing as a form of imprisonment.

Trump’s evening wear so far is streamlined and minimalist. When she walked with the president to the Murabba Palace for a reception and dinner, she wore a full-length fuchsia gown with a cape. The dress was elegant and glamorous. In one striking photograph, she is surrounded almost entirely by men, most of them in traditional attire or in military uniforms. The president is in a dark business suit and a blue and white striped tie that, as usual, hangs well below his belt. His jacket is unbuttoned.

The first lady is dressed for a formal dinner. The president is dressed for a business meeting. Their hands appear to be touching. But they are not clasped. They are looking in opposite directions.

She is the bedazzled bird in this photograph. The one with the brightly-colored plumage. The eye is automatically drawn to her. But by the set of her mouth and the distant look in her eyes, she does not invite your gaze to linger. You are not welcome to lean in closer. She demands that you look away.

I agree that women should not be forced to smile, but it's sad that she looks bored or disinterested in pretty much every picture.

[GreyhoundFan]

The Onion has published "The Trump Documents", over 700 pages of fake leaks from the administration. They are hilarious, and sadly believable. My favorite is the three presidential briefings that are rendered as the paper placements that kids color in family restaurants.  This is an example:

[fraurosena]

The WUT for today. Sorry, it's not funny.

Trump seeks to sell off half of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve

Spoiler

As part of its 2018 budget, the Trump administration is proposing to reduce by half the size of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a cushion against global price shocks and supply disruptions. The administration said it expects the drawdown to reduce the federal deficit by $16.6 billion, part of a package of deficit reduction measures over the next 10 years.

The proposal probably will run into sharp differences in Congress and among oil experts, most of whom say that the reserve should remain a buffer in an emergency. As of May 12, the reserve had 688.1 million barrels, equal to about 141 days of net imports of crude oil and refined petroleum products.

The administration included the words “Reduce Strategic Petroleum Reserve by half” among a long list of budget proposals distributed under embargo to journalists.

The sales would start at half a billion dollars in the next fiscal year and climb to $3.9 billion, for a total of $16 billion over the next decade. A policy brief floated by the conservative Heritage Foundation, a group that has exerted a major influence on the Trump budget, suggests selling off the entirety of the SPR over a two-to-three-year period (a more radical proposal than the Trump idea).

“The SPR has not served its purpose, as Presidents have used the SPR as a political tool or failed to release reserves in a timely and impactful manner,” Heritage fellow Nicolas Loris wrote in 2015. “It is time for Congress to recognize it is not the government’s role to respond to high prices. Congress should therefore pull the plug and drain the SPR once and for all.”

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is the world’s largest stockpile of emergency crude oil, and lies near the largest U.S. refiners and pipeline networks in four large salt caverns in Louisiana and Texas.

It was established in December 1975 in the wake of the oil embargo imposed on the United States by Arab members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

That cutoff of oil sales to the United States delivered a shock to the U.S. economy. More recently, strategists have defended the reserve as a bulwark against a possible disruption in supplies from Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, or a closure of the narrow Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf.

Some analysts have argued that the United States no longer needs a big stockpile because of the surge in domestic production resulting from shale oil output over the past decade and the reduction in U.S. imports of crude oil. Economist Philip Verleger has been among the leading advocates of shrinking the reserve. “The reserve was created at a time when the nation was very dependent on imported oil,” he wrote in a blog article for S&P Global Platts in 2014.  “The dependency is in the past.  The Reserve no longer serves the purpose for which it was developed.”

Other experts say that the reserve is as needed as ever.

“The risk of complete collapse in Venezuela is just one of many reminders that the world remains vulnerable to oil price shocks, and those will be felt by U.S. consumers at the pump just as much today even though we import less oil than we used to because oil is a global commodity,” said Jason Bordoff, director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University.

“The SPR is a 40-year-old national security asset that helps to protect the U.S., in partnership with other countries, from potential oil supply disruptions and price spikes. It would be foolish to sell it off just because our imports have fallen or to fill short-term budget holes, especially when oil prices are so low.” (Bordoff was President Barack Obama’s National Security Council adviser on energy and climate.)

This isn’t the first time the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has been tapped for revenue. A budget deal in October 2015 included sales of 58 million barrels — 8 percent of the reserve — from 2018 through 2025 to raise $5.1 billion, which would equal 0.125 percent of that year’s budget. In addition, Congress turned to sales of the reserve to meet financing needs of the Highway Trust Fund, which would drain the reserve of another 101 million barrels.

The administration’s plan to shrink the petroleum reserve would come after these earlier drawdowns, leaving the emergency buffer with about 270 million barrels, or less than 40 percent of the current level.

Let me get this straight. This administration is not interested in science, and therefore not interested in durable engergy resources. This means the dependency of what the US has now on oil, is not going to dimish soon. But hey, we need some money for the budget, so let's sell our oil reserves.

If a foreign oil-exporting country wants to mess with the US, or if Venezuela collapses as the article says could happen, things could get ugly very soon.

Get ready to travel by horse and carriages, everyone! Traveling by car (let alone airplane) is going to be something only the 1% will be able to afford...