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Executive Departments Part 2


Coconut Flan

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"Scott Pruitt’s $25,000 soundproof phone booth? It actually cost more like $43,000."

Spoiler

Before Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt could install a secure, soundproof phone booth in his office last fall, officials had to create space for the addition in a nearby closet area.

Those preparations didn’t come cheap.

The agency paid a Virginia firm $7,978 to remove closed-circuit television equipment to make room for the booth, according to a federal database. Officials hired another contractor to pour 55 square feet of concrete more than two feet thick, at a cost of $3,470, according to invoices released under a public records request by the watchdog group American Oversight. Other workers installed a drop ceiling for $3,361, while still others patched and painted the small area for $3,350, records show.

In total, the EPA appears to have spent more than $18,000 on the prep work, readying the space for a $25,000 soundproof booth that has brought Pruitt a wave of criticism and official scrutiny. The total cost for the project now appears to be closer to $43,000.

“This is old news,” EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox said in an email Tuesday when asked about the additional expenses. “In September of 2017 we thoroughly discussed why this secure communications line was needed for the Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.”

The agency did not address specific questions about the work done before the phone booth was installed, particularly the need for that concrete slab.

When The Washington Post reported on the purchase of the booth last year, EPA officials said that Pruitt needed a secure communications area in his office so he could have private calls with White House officials and others in the administration. Pruitt reiterated that point when testifying before Congress in December, describing the booth as a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF.

“It’s necessary for me to be able to do my job,” Pruitt told lawmakers when questioned during a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing.

But no previous EPA leaders have had such a setup. The agency has long maintained a SCIF on a separate floor from the administrator’s office, where officials with proper clearances can go to share information classified as secret. Pruitt’s aides have never specified what aspects of that facility might be outdated, or whether the unit now inside the administrator’s office meets the physical and technical specifications generally required for a SCIF.

The EPA’s inspector general began investigating the purchase of the soundproof booth, after New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, requested an inquiry into the $24,570 expenditure. But that probe is now being conducted at the Government Accountability Office.

The agency’s contract last summer was with Acoustical Solutions, a Richmond-based company, for a “privacy booth for the administrator.” The company sells and installs various sound-dampening and privacy products, from ceiling baffles to full-scale enclosures like the one picked by the EPA.

Typically, such soundproof booths are used to conduct hearing tests. But Pruitt’s version was customized to ensure private communication, and so the final design cost several times more than a standard model. “They had a lot of modifications,” said Steve Snider, an acoustic sales consultant with the company, said at the time.

Around the same time, records show, the agency began preparing a small room off Pruitt’s office to hold the booth. The work included hiring a Virginia-based contractor to install the drop ceiling, as well as a separate Virginia contractor to pour the slab. A Maryland firm did the patching and painting.

The disclosures were part of a broader public records request for Pruitt’s remodeling or renovating expenditures since arriving at EPA. American Oversight filed a lawsuit late last year, seeking to compel the agency to release the records.

In addition to the preparations for the soundproof booth, the invoices released by the EPA showed that Pruitt paid $2,075 to refinish a desk that had been stored in a government warehouse, as well as $2,963 for a new “captain’s desk” in his office. In a memo included in the release, an EPA staffer wrote that officials had found lower-cost standing desks for Pruitt, but those were made overseas and did not meet federal requirements that government leaders buy products made in the United States.

I guess money doesn't matter if it's not your own money you're spending. It's "just" the public's money.

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"The Energy 202: Zinke labels travel spending critiques "insults" and "innuendos""

Spoiler

When Scott Pruitt weathered criticism over the cost of his first-class flights, the Environmental Protection Agency chief suggested his “very next flight” would be coach.

When the same happened to then-Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, he apologized for the private charter flights he took and pledged to repay taxpayers nearly $52,000. He also ultimately resigned.

But what about Ryan Zinke, head of the Interior Department?

On Tuesday, the former Montana lawmaker -- in a trip to see his old colleagues on Capitol Hill -- defended his use of charter planes for trips to Montana, Alaska and the U.S. Virgin Islands that critics of the Trump administration hold up as yet another of spendthriftiness among Cabinet officials.

Labeling criticism  as “innuendos,” Zinke defended his travel spending during a heated Senate budget hearing. Zinke went to Capitol Hill to defend the agency’s proposed $11.7 billion budget for 2019 and also argued that discounts for veteran and elderly visitors to national parks are forcing Interior to consider raising entrance fees.

“I resent the fact of your insults. I resent the fact they’re misleading,” Zinke told Maria Cantwell (Wash.), the top Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee who pressed the secretary about a $12,375 flight Zinke chartered from Las Vegas to near his home in Montana.

Raising his voice after delivering staid opening remarks, Zinke bristled at the suggestion of impropriety, pointing out that his predecessors as interior secretary, Ken Salazar and Sally Jewell, spent “just under a million dollars” on 81 trips.

“I never took a private jet anywhere,” Zinke said, emphasizing that the flights he chartered in Alaska, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Nevada were on propeller planes, not jets.

“We’re looking at the larger issue of how time and money is spent,” Cantwell responded, “and the reason why we are is because of our citizens who want to know why their park fees are going up,” referring to a National Park Service proposal to double or, in some cases, nearly triple entrance fees for popular parks and attempting to link the issues.

Zinke had said the proposed price increase is just that — a proposal. “Our proposal looked at multiple options,” Zinke said.

He continued: “When you give free or discounted or free passes to the elderly, fourth-graders, veterans, disabled, and you do it by the carload, there’s not a whole lot of people that actually pay.”

Unlike Pruitt or Price, Zinke seemed to take a tack from his boss’s media playbook on the flights issue by refusing to relent in the face of scrutiny not only from the lawmakers but from within his agency. Last October, Interior’s inspector general opened an investigation into Zinke’s use of taxpayer-funded charter and military planes and his mixing of official trips with political appearances.

Even so, Zinke's job is unique among Cabinet officials. As interior secretary, he oversees one in every five acres of land in the United States, requiring him to fly to remote corners of the country, making comparisons between his travel spending and that of other top Trump officials more difficult.

Zinke’s defensive tone stands in contrast to the outreach he made to Democratic senators when seeking confirmation as interior secretary, demonstrating the degree to which tensions are now strained between congressional Democrats and the Trump administration. A year ago this month, 16 Senate Democrats joined every Republican in the chamber to approve Zinke.

On Tuesday, one of those 16 said he deeply regretted that vote.

“I voted for your nomination,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said, suggesting Zinke has fallen short of emulating his role model Theodore Roosevelt. “As of today, it is one of my biggest regrets.”

Later in the hearing, Zinke found a sympathetic ear in Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) over perceived criticism of an approximately 400-mile flight Zinke took from Alaska’s North Slope to Fairbanks. “They’re giving you heck for taking a private plane from the North Slope?” Cassidy asked, referring to a remote northern region of Alaska managed mostly by the Interior Department

“Senator, I’ve been shot at before,” Zinke replied. “I’m very comfortable with it.”

...

These cabinet members all need to go.

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Sweet Trickle Down Rufus!  What caught my eye is that Larry Kulow is a man who may still have affiliations with or even be a member of Opus Dei.  Talk about Catholic deep state. 

And Newsweek? They've been doing some truly awesome reporting over the last year or two. 

 

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Trump decides to remove national security adviser, and others may follow

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President Trump has decided to remove H.R. McMaster as his national security adviser and is actively discussing potential replacements, according to five people with knowledge of the plans, preparing to deliver yet another jolt to the senior ranks of his administration.

Trump is now comfortable with ousting McMaster, with whom he never personally gelled, but is willing to take time executing the move because he wants to ensure both that the three-star Army general is not humiliated and that there is a strong successor lined up, these people said.

The turbulence is part of a broader potential shake-up under consideration by Trump that is likely to include senior officials at the White House, where staffers are gripped by fear and un­certainty as they await the next move from an impulsive president who enjoys stoking conflict.

For all of the evident disorder, Trump feels emboldened, advisers said — buoyed by what he views as triumphant decisions last week to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum and to agree to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The president is enjoying the process of assessing his team and making changes, tightening his inner circle to those he considers survivors and who respect his unconventional style, one senior White House official said.

Just days ago, Trump used Twitter to fire Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state whom he disliked, and moved to install his close ally, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, in the job. On Wednesday, he named conservative TV analyst Larry Kudlow to replace his top economic adviser, Gary Cohn, who quit over trade disagreements.

And on Thursday, Trump signaled that more personnel moves were likely. “There will always be change,” the president told reporters. “And I think you want to see change. I want to also see different ideas.”

This portrait of the Trump administration in turmoil is based on interviews with 19 presidential advisers and administration officials, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer candid perspectives.

The mood inside the White House in recent days has verged on mania, as Trump increasingly keeps his own counsel and senior aides struggle to determine the gradations between rumor and truth. At times, they say, they are anxious and nervous, wondering what each new headline may mean for them personally.

But in other moments, they appear almost as characters in an absurdist farce — openly joking about whose career might end with the next presidential tweet. Some White House officials have begun betting about which staffer will be ousted next, though few, if any, have much reliable information about what is actually going on.

Many aides were particularly unsettled by the firing of the president’s longtime personal aide, John McEntee, who was marched out of the White House on Tuesday after his security clearance was abruptly revoked.

“Everybody fears the perp walk,” one senior White House official said. “If it could happen to Johnny, the president’s body guy, it could happen to anybody.” 

Trump recently told White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly that he wants McMaster out and asked for help weighing replacement options, according to two people familiar with their conversations. The president has complained that McMaster is too rigid and that his briefings go on too long and seem irrelevant.

Several candidates have emerged as possible McMaster replacements, including John Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and Keith Kellogg, the chief of staff of the National Security Council.

Kellogg travels with Trump on many domestic trips, in part because the president likes his company and thinks he is fun. Bolton has met with Trump several times and often agrees with the president’s instincts. Trump also thinks Bolton, who regularly praises the president on Fox News Channel, is good on television.

Some in the White House have been reluctant to oust McMaster from his national security perch until he has a promotion to four-star rank or other comfortable landing spot. They are eager to show that someone can serve in the Trump administration without suffering severe damage to their reputation.

McMaster is not the only senior official on thin ice with the president. Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin has attracted Trump’s ire for his spending decisions as well as for general disorder in the senior leadership of his agency.

Others considered at risk for being fired or reprimanded include Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, who has generated bad headlines for ordering a $31,000 dining room set for his office; Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, who has been under fire for his first-class travel at taxpayer expense; and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, whose agency spent $139,000 to renovate his office doors.

Meanwhile, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos drew attention this week when she stumbled through a pair of high-profile television interviews. Kelly watched DeVos’s sit-down with Lesley Stahl of CBS’s “60 Minutes” with frustration and complained about the secretary’s apparent lack of preparation, officials said. Other Trump advisers mocked DeVos’s shaky appearance with Savannah Guthrie on NBC’s “Today” show.

Kelly’s own ouster has been widely speculated for weeks. But two top officials said Trump on Thursday morning expressed disbelief to Vice President Pence, senior advisers and Kelly himself that Kelly’s name was surfacing on media watch lists because his job is secure. Trump and Kelly then laughed about it, the officials said.

The widespread uncertainty has created power vacuums that could play to the advantage of some administration aides.

Pompeo, who carefully cultivated a personal relationship with the president, had positioned himself as the heir apparent to Tillerson, whom Trump had long disliked.

Similarly, Pruitt has made no secret inside the West Wing of his ambition to become attorney general should Trump decide to fire Jeff Sessions, whom he frequently derides for his decision to recuse himself from the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

White House officials have grown agitated that Pruitt and his allies are privately pushing for the EPA chief to replace Sessions, a job Pruitt has told people he wants. On Wednesday night, Kelly called Pruitt and told him that the president was happy with his performance at EPA and that he did not need to worry about the Justice Department, according to two people familiar with the conversation.

With Hope Hicks resigning her post as communications director, the internal jockeying to replace her has been especially intense between Mercedes Schlapp, who oversees the White House’s long-term communications planning, and Tony Sayegh, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s top communications adviser.

Trump enjoys watching his subordinates compete for his approval. Many of the rumors are fueled by Trump himself because he complains to aides and friends about other staffers, or muses about who might make good replacements.

“I like conflict. I like having two people with different points of view,” Trump said last week, rapping his fists toward one another to simulate a clash. “I like watching it, I like seeing it, and I think it’s the best way to go.” 

Shulkin, meanwhile, is facing mounting trouble after The Washington Post first reported that he and his wife took a sightseeing-filled trip to Europe on taxpayer funds, including watching tennis at Wimbledon. Shulkin is now facing an insurrection at his own agency, with tensions so high that an armed guard stands outside his office.

Another episode haunting Shulkin was a trip to the Invictus Games in Canada last September with first lady Melania Trump’s entourage. Shulkin fought with East Wing aides over his request that his wife accompany him on the trip because he was eager for her to meet Prince Harry of Wales, who founded the games, according to multiple officials familiar with the dispute.

The first lady’s office explained there was not room on the plane for Shulkin’s wife, and officials said the secretary was unpleasant during the trip.

Shulkin said in an email sent by a spokeswoman: “These allegations are simply untrue. I was honored to attend the Invictus Games with the First Lady and understood fully when I was told that there wasn’t any more room for guests to attend.”

A leading contender to replace Shulkin is Pete Hegseth, an Iraq War veteran and Fox News personality who is a conservative voice on veterans policy, officials said.

White House officials said there are several reasons Trump has not axed Cabinet members with whom he has grown disenchanted: the absence of consensus picks to replace them; concern that their nominated successors may not get confirmed in the divided Senate; and reluctance to pick allied senators or House members for fear of losing Republican seats in special elections, as happened last year in Alabama.

Also, Trump has sometimes expressed confusion about what agencies and secretaries are in charge of what duties, a senior administration official said. For example, this official said, he has complained to Pruitt about regulatory processes for construction projects, although the EPA is not in charge of the regulations.

Amid the disarray, White House staff are training Cabinet secretaries and their staffs on ethics rules and discussing new processes to prevent mistakes. William J. McGinley, who runs the White House Office of Cabinet Affairs, and Stefan C. Passantino, a deputy White House counsel, have met individually and in groups with Carson, Pruitt, Shulkin, Zinke and other Cabinet secretaries to impress upon them the importance of changing behavior.

 

Simply following the letter of the law is not enough, administration officials said. Trump and Kelly demand that their Cabinet secretaries be mindful of political optics and the bad headlines that come with misbehavior.

“Even if the legal guys sign off on it,” one official said, “you still step back and say, ‘Does this make sense optically?’ ”

Of course Lying Sanders said that this is all a lie 

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Did youyou all welcome Larry Kudlow into the trainwreck? The new economic advisor named by the so called president is as qualified for the job as everyone else in this administration. He didn't receive an education about economy and has a very bad track record, having misjudged every single main economic turn since the nineties. Not bad, not bad.

Spoiler

It was the eve of the biggest economic collapse since the Great Depression. Many on Wall Street worried that a recession loomed and that the housing bubble was bursting.

And then there was Larry Kudlow, the man President Trump just tapped to be his top economic adviser.

“Despite all the doom and gloom from the economic pessimistas, the resilient U.S. economy continues moving ahead,” Kudlow wrote on Dec. 7, 2007, in National Review, predicting that gloomy forecasters would “wind up with egg on their faces.” Kudlow, who previously derided as “bubbleheads” those who warned about a housing bubble, now wrote that “very positive” news in housing should “cushion” falling home sales and prices.

“There’s no recession coming. The pessimistas were wrong. It’s not going to happen,” wrote Kudlow. “ . . . The Bush boom is alive and well. It’s finishing up its sixth consecutive year with more to come. Yes, it’s still the greatest story never told.”

If that was the greatest story, this should be a close runner-up: Trump has just put the country’s economic fate in the hands of the man who has arguably been more publicly and consistently wrong about the economy than any person alive.

Kudlow’s tendency to err has been nearly flawless, as Jonathan Chait lays out in New York magazine. But never has Kudlow been as spectacularly wrong as he was before the signal economic event of our time. If you heeded Kudlow’s advice in the months before the 2008 crash, you would have been ruined.

Even as trouble became clear, Kudlow, a CNBC pundit who is not trained in economics, wrote a Feb. 5, 2008, column in National Reviewsaying he was “still betting on and buying Goldilocks [a just-right scenario] for the long run.” He wrote, “Maybe we are going to have a mild correction. Maybe not,” adding: “I’m going to bet that the economy will be rebounding sometime this summer, if not sooner. We are in a slow patch. That’s all. It’s nothing to get up in arms about.”

Move along. Nothing to see here.

When the economy didn’t rebound and housing continued its collapse, Kudlow pronounced, in a CNBC column on July 24, 2008, that he saw in the data “an awful lot of very good new news, which appear to be pointing to a bottom in the housing problem; in fact, maybe the tiniest beginnings of a recovery.” Stocks lost nearly half their value in the coming months.

All of this is to say Kudlow should fit right in with his new colleagues in the Trump administration.

This is the same president, after all, who tapped to be the chief scientist at the Agriculture Department a talk-radio host who is not a scientist, named a brain surgeon to run the Department of Housing and Urban Development and floated the idea of his personal pilot as head the Federal Aviation Administration. A party planner, a bartender, a Meineke Car Care branch manager and a cabana boy all found plum administration jobs.

And those were Trump’s first choices. With Kudlow now replacing Gary Cohn, the impeccably qualified former Goldman Sachs executive, the second-stringers could make their predecessors look like Camelot.

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, they say. But Kudlow’s misfires just keep coming, as Chait documented.

1993: Kudlow proclaims in a speech: “There is no question that President Clinton’s across-the-board tax increases on labor, capital and energy will throw a wet blanket over the recovery and depress the economy’s long-run potential.” The economy goes into an eight-year expansion and adds 21 million jobs.

2001: Kudlow writes in National Review about the George W. Bush tax cuts: “Faster economic growth and more profitable productivity returns will generate higher tax revenues at the new lower tax-rate levels. Future budget surpluses will rise, not fall.” Tax revenue falls, and the budget goes from surplus into deep deficits.

2002: Kudlow, arguing for war in Iraq, writes in National Review: “The shock therapy of decisive war will elevate the stock market by a couple-thousand points.” The market falls and the Dow Jones doesn’t get that couple-thousand-point elevation for years.

2009: Kudlow says in an interview: “President Obama is waging war on investors. He’s waging war against businesses.” In a piece in the Washington Times he warns that inflation could “ratchet higher.” The stock market and corporate profits climb to records, while inflation remains historically low.

Now, history is repeating itself. Writing in National Review in December, Kudlow embraced the Trump tax cuts, dismissed “dreary mainstream” forecasts and predicted annual growth as high as 5 percent. Echoing almost word for word his failed 2002 prediction, he forecast that “faster economic growth will generate much higher tax revenues.”

What could possibly go wrong?

Naming him as economic advisor is criminal.

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15 minutes ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

Did youyou all welcome Larry Kudlow into the trainwreck? The new economic advisor named by the so called president is as qualified for the job as everyone else in this administration. He didn't receive an education about economy and has a very bad track record, having misjudged every single main economic turn since the nineties. Not bad, not bad.

  Hide contents

It was the eve of the biggest economic collapse since the Great Depression. Many on Wall Street worried that a recession loomed and that the housing bubble was bursting.

And then there was Larry Kudlow, the man President Trump just tapped to be his top economic adviser.

“Despite all the doom and gloom from the economic pessimistas, the resilient U.S. economy continues moving ahead,” Kudlow wrote on Dec. 7, 2007, in National Review, predicting that gloomy forecasters would “wind up with egg on their faces.” Kudlow, who previously derided as “bubbleheads” those who warned about a housing bubble, now wrote that “very positive” news in housing should “cushion” falling home sales and prices.

“There’s no recession coming. The pessimistas were wrong. It’s not going to happen,” wrote Kudlow. “ . . . The Bush boom is alive and well. It’s finishing up its sixth consecutive year with more to come. Yes, it’s still the greatest story never told.”

If that was the greatest story, this should be a close runner-up: Trump has just put the country’s economic fate in the hands of the man who has arguably been more publicly and consistently wrong about the economy than any person alive.

Kudlow’s tendency to err has been nearly flawless, as Jonathan Chait lays out in New York magazine. But never has Kudlow been as spectacularly wrong as he was before the signal economic event of our time. If you heeded Kudlow’s advice in the months before the 2008 crash, you would have been ruined.

Even as trouble became clear, Kudlow, a CNBC pundit who is not trained in economics, wrote a Feb. 5, 2008, column in National Reviewsaying he was “still betting on and buying Goldilocks [a just-right scenario] for the long run.” He wrote, “Maybe we are going to have a mild correction. Maybe not,” adding: “I’m going to bet that the economy will be rebounding sometime this summer, if not sooner. We are in a slow patch. That’s all. It’s nothing to get up in arms about.”

Move along. Nothing to see here.

When the economy didn’t rebound and housing continued its collapse, Kudlow pronounced, in a CNBC column on July 24, 2008, that he saw in the data “an awful lot of very good new news, which appear to be pointing to a bottom in the housing problem; in fact, maybe the tiniest beginnings of a recovery.” Stocks lost nearly half their value in the coming months.

All of this is to say Kudlow should fit right in with his new colleagues in the Trump administration.

This is the same president, after all, who tapped to be the chief scientist at the Agriculture Department a talk-radio host who is not a scientist, named a brain surgeon to run the Department of Housing and Urban Development and floated the idea of his personal pilot as head the Federal Aviation Administration. A party planner, a bartender, a Meineke Car Care branch manager and a cabana boy all found plum administration jobs.

And those were Trump’s first choices. With Kudlow now replacing Gary Cohn, the impeccably qualified former Goldman Sachs executive, the second-stringers could make their predecessors look like Camelot.

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, they say. But Kudlow’s misfires just keep coming, as Chait documented.

1993: Kudlow proclaims in a speech: “There is no question that President Clinton’s across-the-board tax increases on labor, capital and energy will throw a wet blanket over the recovery and depress the economy’s long-run potential.” The economy goes into an eight-year expansion and adds 21 million jobs.

2001: Kudlow writes in National Review about the George W. Bush tax cuts: “Faster economic growth and more profitable productivity returns will generate higher tax revenues at the new lower tax-rate levels. Future budget surpluses will rise, not fall.” Tax revenue falls, and the budget goes from surplus into deep deficits.

2002: Kudlow, arguing for war in Iraq, writes in National Review: “The shock therapy of decisive war will elevate the stock market by a couple-thousand points.” The market falls and the Dow Jones doesn’t get that couple-thousand-point elevation for years.

2009: Kudlow says in an interview: “President Obama is waging war on investors. He’s waging war against businesses.” In a piece in the Washington Times he warns that inflation could “ratchet higher.” The stock market and corporate profits climb to records, while inflation remains historically low.

Now, history is repeating itself. Writing in National Review in December, Kudlow embraced the Trump tax cuts, dismissed “dreary mainstream” forecasts and predicted annual growth as high as 5 percent. Echoing almost word for word his failed 2002 prediction, he forecast that “faster economic growth will generate much higher tax revenues.”

What could possibly go wrong?

Naming him as economic advisor is criminal.

You may not believe it possible, but he’s even worse than @laPapessaGiovanna’s evidence shows.

 

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2 hours ago, fraurosena said:

You may not believe it possible, but he’s even worse than @laPapessaGiovanna’s evidence shows.

 

And then they accuse the liberals of selling utopias. Pffff

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Trump White House Worked with Newt Gingrich on Political Purge at State Department, Lawmakers Say

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White House and State Department officials conspired with prominent conservatives, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, to purge the State Department of staffers they viewed as insufficiently loyal to President Donald Trump, two top House Democrats allege in a letter released Thursday.

The letter states that an unidentified whistleblower shared documents with Democrats on the House Oversight and Foreign Affairs committees showing that a group of White House officials pressed political appointees at the State Department to oust career civil service employees they described with terms like “Turncoat,” “leaker and a troublemaker,” and “Obama/Clinton loyalists not at all supportive of President Trump’s foreign policy agenda.”

As described in the letter, those actions would likely violate federal laws protecting federal civil servants from undue political influence.

In the letter to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and State Department Deputy Secretary John Sullivan, Reps. Elijah Cummings of Maryland and Eliot Engel of New York, the top Democrats on the House Oversight and Foreign Affairs committees, cite an email forwarded by Gingrich to Trump appointees in the State Department (the Democrats released a summary of the leaked documents, rather than the original emails). In an undated email, David Wurmser, who advised former Vice President Dick Cheney and former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton, wrote, “Newt: I think a cleaning is in order here. I hear [Secretary of State Rex] Tillerson has actually been reasonably good on stuff like this and cleaning house, but there are so many that it boggles the mind.” (Trump fired Tillerson earlier this week.)

Cummings and Engel say they are “particularly concerned” about documents showing an effort to drive out Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, a career civil servant at the State Department assigned to the policy planning staff. The letter notes that Brian Hook, the director of that division, forwarded an email from Nowrouzzadeh in which she defended herself against an attack that had been published in a conservative publication. The officials then discussed whether she was too supportive of the nuclear deal with Iran negotiated by President Barack Obama. Several of the officials discussed ousting Nowrouzzadeh. Julia Haller, a White House liaison to the State Department, wrote that Nowrouzzadeh “was born in Iran and upon my understanding cried when the President won.” 

Nowrouzadeh was removed from her post on the Policy Planning Staff three months earlier than scheduled in a manner she said violated a memorandum of understanding governing her assignment.

[link to document]

Sickening moves, that are clearly designed as manoeuvres toward an authoritarian state, wherein no criticism (real or perceived) of the dear leader is tolerated.

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Another thief: "Mnuchin’s plane travel cost taxpayers $1 million, documents show"

Spoiler

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s use of military aircraft has cost taxpayers nearly $1 million for eight trips, newly released documents show.

That includes a one-week trip to the Middle East in late October, which cost $183,646 for flights on military aircraft. That trip came on top of $811,797.81 in previously reported expenditures for government-funded military aircraft.

Emails and other documents were obtained by watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington through a Freedom of Information Act request. They corroborate information released in October by the Treasury Department’s inspector general about Mnuchin’s plane use.

Officials in President Donald Trump’s administration are facing scrutiny for their use of government-funded flights. EPA chief Scott Pruitt has drawn criticism for flying first class. And former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price was forced to resign last year after facing intense fire over his extensive use of taxpayer-funded charter flights.

“Secretary Mnuchin is one of a host of cabinet secretaries who collectively have incurred millions of dollars of airfare expenses just during the first year of the Trump administration,” CREW said in its report on the documents.

The group said the Treasury chief could schedule calls “when he is not on a short domestic flight“ and could potentially use smaller aircraft.

Treasury released the documents under FOIA until after CREW filed a lawsuit.

A Treasury spokesperson said Mnuchin has not used any military aircraft since the Middle East trip but is scheduled to use one next week to fly to Buenos Aires for the G20 Summit. The official also emphasized that the Treasury inspector general in its October report said Mnuchin had not violated any laws.

The agency did encourage the Treasury secretary to provide more information to prove that he couldn’t use a regular commercial flight.

“Much of CREW’s ‘report‘ consists of falsehoods and mischaracterizations,“ Treasury said in a statement. “Even CREW concedes that the Secretary’s travel requests ‘bear a remarkable similarity‘ to the requests submitted by secretaries in the Obama Administration, using the same approval process and level of justification.

“These documents explicitly demonstrate Treasury’s concern for being prudent with taxpayer dollars while fulfilling important departmental responsibilities,” the statement said.

On the Middle East trip, Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was originally scheduled to fly with Mnuchin but was later removed from the flight manifest, CREW points out. Kushner visited Saudi Arabia on an unannounced trip via a commercial airline, POLITICO reported at the time. Then-deputy national security adviser Dina Powell flew with Mnuchin on the first leg of the trip, according to the flight manifest.

Mnuchin’s wife, Louise Linton, was also included on the flight manifest, with a note saying that any non-governmental passengers would reimburse Treasury a total of $6,138.03.

Treasury first requested the aircraft on Aug. 31 “[d]ue to complexities of scheduling, logistics, costs, and secure communications needs during travel.” After the inspector general released its report and budget director Mick Mulvaney issued a memo on the administration’s travel policies, Treasury updated its request to note that it had conducted an “in-depth review of commercially available flights,“ according to the documents.

 

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White House and State Department officials conspired with prominent conservatives, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, to purge the State Department of staffers they viewed as insufficiently loyal to President Donald Trump, two top House Democrats allege in a letter released Thursday.

I didn't think it was possible to despise Newt Gingrich more than I already do.  I had to reach deep, DEEP I tell you, to scrape up a bit more enmity for this scabrous festering open sore of a parasitic life form.  (Can something be festering and scabrous at the same time?  I'm not sure, but you get the picture.)  He has no moral compass, but he can smell a turd-stirring opportunity from miles away. 

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CNN is reporting that Sessions just fired McCabe, on a Friday night, two days before McCabe was to retire, so McCabe won't be eligible for his pension, which means the Trump administration is especially heartless (at least in my opinion)

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A gloating presidunce. :puke-front:

A couple of on point reactions:

 

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I hope McCabe, James Comey, and Sally Yates sue Trump for ungodly amounts of money.  Maybe enough to make him declare bankruptcy (again).

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8 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

And then Trump bitches about the trade deficit and Europe not wanting to import low quality food from the US. Idiot.

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"All hail Ryan Zinke, our imperial viceroy"

Spoiler

Were these normal times, we would now be saying “sayonara” to Ryan Zinke.

President Trump’s secretary of the interior has inspired a half-dozen ongoing investigations into his travel expenses, his blending of official business with political activities and personal pleasure, and his whimsical management of a 70,000-person, 500 million-acre agency.

And now this:

Testifying before Congress last week, Zinke was questioned by Rep. Colleen Hanabusa (D-Hawaii), who mentioned that two of her grandparents were held as Japanese American internees during World War II. She asked Zinke why the administration wants to cut funds to preserve Japanese American internment sites.

Zinke smirked. “Oh, konnichiwa,” he replied to Hanabusa, a fourth-generation American.

Even after he had time to reflect, Zinke was unapologetic. “How could ever saying ‘Good morning’ be bad?” he said over the weekend.

Actually, it’s closer to “Good afternoon,” but let’s follow Zinke’s logic on this: He’ll soon be greeting a Jewish lawmaker with “Shalom,” an African American lawmaker with “Jambo,” Mexican American questioners with a spirited “Que pasa?” and Native Americans with “How.” It is the benevolent ruler who greets the natives in their ancestral tongues.

That’s fitting, because Zinke runs his department much like a 19th-century colonial governor or imperial viceroy — and not just because he showed up on horseback his first day of work. As The Post’s Lisa Rein reported, Zinke assigned a staffer to hoist a special secretarial flag whenever he enters Interior Department headquarters. He also commissioned a commemorative coin with his name on it.

The Interior Department is Zinke’s plaything. He toyed with disbanding 200 federal advisory boards (most members of the national parks advisory board resigned, saying Zinke sidelined them), but he created a new one — a group of big-game trophy hunters to advise him on big-game trophies. To run the national parks, Zinke tapped an official who improperly helped Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder remove 130 trees to improve his estate’s river views. Now Zinke’s talking about $70 entrance fees at national parks, because freeloaders — the elderly, the disabled, veterans and “fourth-graders” — pay discounted fees.

Zinke reassigned dozens of senior career employees, suspecting them of disloyalty. As The Post’s Dino Grandoni and Juliet Eilperin reported last week, Zinke’s Bureau of Land Management distributed “vision cards,” featuring an image of an oil rig, to be worn by the natives — er, the employees. And Zinke’s department now has political appointees screening grants, a process overseen by a kindergarten classmate and football buddy of Zinke’s.

Zinke’s fine tastes befit a colonial ruler. It’s possible that, as his spokeswoman says, he didn’t know about a decision by career staffers to spend $138,670 to replace three sets of doors in his office. But he certainly knew of the tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars spent on private plane and helicopter rides. This included a $12,000 private flight from Las Vegas to an airport near his home in Montana after an event he did with a political donor made him miss a commercial flight, and $6,000 on government helicopters so Zinke could go horseback riding with Vice President Pence.

The department’s inspector general is trying to sift through Zinke’s expenses, which don’t adequately “distinguish between personal, political and official travel,” she said.

Zinke, asked about his expenses at a Senate hearing last week, replied that “I never took a private jet anywhere” — because he flew on prop planes.

At Thursday’s House hearing, Rep. Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.) asked why he had not replied to her letter about his expenses. Zinke, rebuking Barragán for her lack of “courtesy,” replied by waving a copy of a reply that he said had been addressed to the top Democrat on the committee.

It turned out the letter was not addressed to any Democrat.

The viceroy needn’t trouble himself with such details. Nor need he fret that he told lawmakers last week that “Florida did not get an exemption” from expanded offshore oil drilling — even though Zinke himself announced in January that Florida was “off the table.”

And we are not to question the viceroy’s integrity when he claims his trip to Pennsylvania last month was official, not political — even though it was attended by Trump-endorsed congressional candidate Rick Saccone, it occurred just outside the district where the special election was held last week and it involved Zinke handing over a large ceremonial check.

Zinke has worked hard to reach such stature. Back when he was a Navy SEAL, he was found to have billed the government for personal travel to his home in Montana.

“I ended up having to repay $211 in unauthorized expenses,” he wrote in his book, “American Commander,” “but the biggest penalty was being embarrassed for wrongdoing.”

It would seem the viceroy is no longer vulnerable to such sentiments.

With Zinke's "konnichiwa", all I could think of was Jim Boob Duggar shouting "HOLA" at the poor unsuspecting folks in SCA.

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Sure, Ben, blame your wife for your over-extravagance.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ben-carson-wife-31k-dining-set_us_5ab153b0e4b008c9e5f20794

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After reports surfaced earlier this month that Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson spent $31,000 of taxpayer funds on a dining set for his government office, the former Republican presidential candidate said he was “as surprised as anyone to find out” about the lavish purchase. 

That’s because Carson’s wife was responsible for the decision, the secretary said at a congressional hearing on Tuesday.

After staffers gave Carson a few options for tables, the secretary said he “left it with [his] wife” and asked her to “help choose something.” 

“The next thing that I, quite frankly, heard about it was that this $31,000 table had been bought,” he told a House Appropriations subcommittee. “I said, ‘What the heck is that all about?’ I investigated, I immediately had it canceled. Not that we don’t need the furniture, but I thought that that was excessive.”

A request to cancel the purchase was issued only after multiple news outlets reported about it. The steep cost raised ethics concerns for exceeding the $5,000 federal limit on office decor, especially in light of the agency’s proposed budget cuts. Carson said at the hearing that all funds had been returned to the U.S. Treasury. 

Additionally, when The New York Times first reported on the extravagant purchase, HUD spokesman Raffi Williams told the paper that Carson did not think the purchase was over-the-top and did not intend to return the furniture set.

Carson has also said that he was not involved with the final decision, arguing again on Tuesday that he was busy doing other things and “really wasn’t concerned about furniture.” A HUD spokesperson first told CNN that neither Carson or his wife, Candy, were involved in the decision to purchase the $31,000 dining set.

But emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by American Oversight, a liberal watchdog group, show that Carson and his wife, Candy, were both involved in selecting the furniture.

At Tuesday’s hearing, Carson described his wife as “the most frugal person in the world.” When asked if his wife had any other involvement with taxpayer money, he replied, “None whatsoever.” 

Candy’s involvement with the process had already raised questions, with former HUD official Helen Foster filing a whistleblower complaint with the department’s special counsel last year. Foster said she was demoted after raising concerns about the office decor expense exceeding the $5,000 federal limit. The Times reported the complaint also accused Candy of pressuring the HUD staff to find ways to get around the price limit.

 

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I wonder if she'll try to be "Miss State Department" now? "Susan Pompeo’s role as ‘first lady of the CIA’ draws critics and defenders"

Spoiler

Susan Pompeo, the wife of Central Intelligence Agency Director Mike Pompeo, has taken an unusually active and prominent role at the organization, and has fashioned herself as an unofficial “first lady of the CIA,” according to people with knowledge of her activities. 

Pompeo, who is a volunteer at the CIA, uses office space on the seventh-floor headquarters in Langley, Va., where senior leaders, including the director, have their offices. A support staff of CIA employees assists her in her duties, although that is not their full-time job. And Pompeo travels with her husband, who President Trump nominated last week to replace Rex Tillerson as secretary of state, including on trips he takes overseas to meet with foreign intelligence officials. 

Last year, Pompeo accompanied the CIA director on a trip to Britain, where he met with his counterpart Alex Younger, the head of the Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6, according to people familiar with the trip. Pompeo also went with the CIA director on a tour of Fort Monckton, a military base in southern England where MI6 trains its personnel.

While it is not unheard of for directors’ spouses to take on volunteer work, particularly advocating for families, Susan Pompeo’s presence at the agency, along with her use of office space and help from staff, has raised questions internally about the nature of her duties and why agency resources are being used to support her, according to people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk about a sensitive subject. 

The misuse of government travel and other perquisites of office has been a persistent issue in the Trump administration. But an agency spokesman said that all of Pompeo’s work and travel has been reviewed by appropriate agency authorities, and, when necessary, the Pompeo family has reimbursed the CIA. 

Pompeo does not control a budget and is not paid for her work, which is focused on her role as honorary chair of the Family Advisory Board, a group that includes the spouses and domestic partners of agency personnel and addresses quality-of-life issues and the needs of personnel stationed overseas, said Ryan Trapani, a CIA spokesman.

The staffers who assist her with her work on the volunteer board also maintain their duties as CIA officers, Trapani said, noting that while Pompeo does use CIA office space, she does not have a permanent, dedicated office of her own at headquarters.

“Mrs. Pompeo’s work on behalf of CIA officers and their families has been broadly praised and welcomed, particularly by officers stationed in the field,” Trapani said. “She has graciously volunteered her time, much like former directors’ spouses, to drive initiatives that specifically make the lives of CIA officers and their families better for nothing more than the proud satisfaction of helping the agency achieve its mission.” 

Some of the Pompeo family’s activities also have raised concerns among some people about the director’s use of his position, people familiar with the matter said. 

Over the Christmas holidays, the Pompeo family stayed at the CIA’s storied training facility in Virginia, known as the Farm. Trapani said in a statement that the Pompeo family “stayed at an Agency-owned facility for three days over Christmas 2017.” But he said they opted to do so instead of traveling out of state and incurring additional costs to protect the director and his family, which includes one adult son who doesn’t live with his parents. 

“In an effort to reduce the CIA security and support footprint required for them over the holidays, the Pompeos did not travel to visit their families, which would have required a significant number of our officers to be away from their families,” Trapani said.

“These false and disgusting rumors being peddled about Director Pompeo, his wife, and their family are nothing more than a disgraceful attempt to politicize his nomination for Secretary of State without regard for the truth,” Trapani said. 

Pompeo isn’t the first director’s spouse to take on a portfolio of agency-specific issues on a volunteer basis. Stephanie Glakas-Tenet helped to revive the Family Advisory Board, which was moribund when her husband, George Tenet, was sworn in as director in 1997, said Bill Harlow, who served as Tenet’s spokesman. Glakas-
Tenet didn’t have an office and a staff, Harlow said. But he said her work was important in part because the families of CIA personnel experience unique stresses: They often can’t talk about their work, or sometimes say why they’re in a particular country. 

There is no role at the CIA comparable to the first lady. And there is no expectation that CIA directors’ spouses will become involved in the agency’s work. Some have taken little or no role, either because they had their own careers, were caring for young children or simply chose not to get involved, according to current and former U.S. officials. 

But Pompeo has long been a partner in her husband’s career in public service. 

“We decided we would do this together,” she told the Wichita Eagle about Mike Pompeo’s decision to run for Congress in 2010. “We set out to do this like we would do any venture. I loved the campaigning part of it, much more than Mike did.” 

At their home in Kansas, the Pompeos shared an office. “We had our desks in the office facing each other, and we worked in there all the time,” she told VIP Wichita magazine in March of last year, as the couple was preparing to move to Washington. 

Michael Hayden, who served as CIA director from 2006 until 2009, said his wife, Jeanine, was also a partner in his work, not unlike Pompeo. She traveled with him abroad on many trips, he said, visiting with people at CIA stations, visiting schools that their children attended, and checking on the medical facilities that people used. Her job, he said, was to be an advocate for the workforce and to tell him what could be improved. 

The trips were often grueling, he said, and his wife spent time working on the ground just like he did. 

“My wife, Stephanie [Glakas-Tenet] and Susan Pompeo clearly did things to contribute to the agency’s mission,” Hayden said. “If you’re looking for a balance here, the CIA and the government got two for the price of one.” 

 

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