Hat tip to Bill Moyers’ website for this article in The Intercept:
Zaid Jilani reports in The Intercepr that Trump’s budget is copied from the Swamp-dwelling, Establishment, Beltway right wing Heritage Foundation.
Trump the Outsider Outsources His Budget to Insider Think Tank
Nothing in the budget protects the blue-collar and rural people who voted for him. Instead, they are likely to be hit hard by cuts to federal programs they rely on.
The only complaint of the Heritage Foundation is that Trump didn’t add enough billions to defense.
Unless they join the military, Trump voters are shafted along with the rest of us.
The Heritage Foundation has always spoken for corporations and the uber-rich.
Jilani writes:
“PRESIDENT TRUMP’S BUDGET proposal, released on Thursday, echoes none of the populist, anti-establishment themes of candidate Trump’s campaign for higher office. Instead, it calls for a large increase in defense spending while reducing spending for a variety of popular domestic programs.
“That’s not surprising considering where those ideas came from. Rather than bringing in new ideas from outside of the Beltway, many of its proposals are lifted straight from the recommendations of an elite ultra-conservative D.C. think tank: the Heritage Foundation.
“Founded in 1973, Heritage has served as a sort of a watering hole for the Republican establishment, providing policy papers and staffers for GOP members of Congress and presidential administrations. Its 2015 annual report listed almost $100 million in revenues — drawn from conservative mega-donors and corporations — which it uses to facilitate the spread of its ideas across Washington, D.C.
“And those ideas have found a home in the Trump administration, which leaned heavily on Heritage advice during the transition period. Many of the White House proposal’s ideas are identical to a budget blueprint Heritage drew up last year.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
who remembers Demint; he still has power and influence…. he was never gone from the scene
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The Heritage Foundation, incidentally, is where Obamacare came from. First incarnated as Romneycare.
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Obamacare is basically Romneycare, which is basically a plan from the Heritage Foundation. It was their alternative to a Canadian/European-style national health plan. Too bad conservatives can’t embrace their own plan.
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Just what I was going to write. The health care proposal was written in the early 1990s, when Heritage was a legitimate right-wing organization that had an interest in governing, no matter how much we might have disagreed with them. Now they are far-right reactionary proselytizers who have no interest in governance whatsoever. They are all about imposing their will and ignoring opposition.
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I don’t know that Heritage was ever a legitimate think tank . Nor were they ever moderate . Nixon was a moderate conservative. . Heritage was the bought and paid for shills of Richard Mellon Scaife and Joseph Coors who thought Nixon was a sell out, a Liberal or a Commie . In spite of him elevating Powell of the infamous Powell Memorandum to the Supreme Court and helping the Roundtable get its act together, to lead the corporate assault the American people.
Every time I see Stephen Moore get on TV, I am ready to vomit .
The economist who could not see the economic collapse of 2007. Who has been wrong on everything from inflation and interest rates to income inequality, now pretends to be a Trumpian populist in a 180 on every major position . Somehow he calls himself an Economist .
Yet he is put on by the media like he has some credibility .Just like Ryan is treated like the numbers wonk whether the numbers ever add up or not and Trump was called Presidential by being able to read a few sentences without foaming at the mouth during the State of the union.
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Joel, they were never moderate, but in the early 90s, you could talk to them, disagree, and for the most part they tried to listen even as they strongly pushed their points of view. I spent a lot of time in the bar across from their building arguing with them. The health care proposal is a good example. The framework for the ACA was written in the early nineties and presented to the Clinton team as a viable alternative by Sen. John Chafee, one of the last of the reasonable Republicans. It was rejected and health reform died an ugly death that took another 14-plus years to try to resurrect. I am convinced that if Clinton had taken the deal in 1994 that we would have single payer insurance today. And I often wonder what those Heritage staffers of 25 years ago think about what is going on today.
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They’re letting their idea of perfect be the enemy of the good.
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I’d say they are letting their idea of the virtual be the enemy of the real.
People like Paul Ryan inhabit a land that is not accessible to most thinking brings: Ayn Rand Land. It has its own set of laws — including physical ones – that are completely different than the ones that apply in this land (indeed, this universe). There seems to be no hope of ever sending a communication between the real world and Randland.
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Yet they call themselves Objectivists.
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Well, they object to reality.
Maybe that’s what they mean.
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With a military larger than the combined militaries of the next 5 (or more) biggest military countries is it reasonable to assume that we may succumb to military rule someday?
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Check out the terrific film “Seven Days in May”. I have lived in countries where the military took over. It can happen in South America. It can happen here.
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Ask people in minority communities about that. The “military” that rules might not be Army, Navy, Air Force or Marines, but they have all the same hardware and the same mindset. Coming soon to a middle class neighborhood near you.
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Agreed. Best example for me is the militarization of the police departments around the country.
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My weekly visit to this blog continues to reveal the same – this site used to be about teaching and learning, now it is 90% about politics. Disappointing.
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Just checked the homepage and 7 1/2 of the 10 posts are on education. Since when does 25=90?
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8 out of 10 on education POLICY, not actual day-to-day matters of educating students. I can’t control what Trump and DeVos do.
Look at the other comments in this own thread – health care, military, North Korea, Dutch elections, etc. All this is politics.
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I’ve read a few of Diane’s books and been following this blog for almost two years. When have either focused on day-to-day matters of educating students? I think you’re in the wrong place. This is about policy, which, in the big picture, has everything to do with day-to-day matters of educating students. At least that’s what my sons’ teachers tell me.
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Anyone who expects me to tell teachers how to teach is reading the wrong blog.
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Matt Metzgar, it’s true we used to have a lot of discussions 2010-2015 trying to translate Obama/Duncan ed policies to what could & could not be be done on the ground in the classroom. We kind of ran the course– & so little could be done (& so much not done), we naturally began to lean toward trying to change policy, which is a political matter. Stay tuned.
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There is no discussing Education outside of politics and economics . What ever problems exist in our Educational systems are inherently economic in nature .
The Education Wars are now and have always been about politics and economics. Talking about education with out discussing the influence of Politics/economics is like playing baseball with a soccer ball .
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Put whatever and without back together
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On another subject, please note Tillerson’s statement on North Korea today implying the possibility of a pre-emptive strike.
Remember that one of the fundamental precepts of fascism is to use violence as a first policy choice, not one of last resort. Add the anti-intellectualism embodied in the budget proposal and the systemic lying, the attack on the press and judiciary, and then you’ve got a full-fledged fascist state. I think we can quit asking, “Are we there yet?”
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What’s the point of upgrading all those nukes if you’re not going to use them? (paraphrasing Madeleine Albright). Truly insane.
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Real-estate in Soul just dropped to bargain basement prices.
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This is a huge drop in pay:
“A fairly consistent research finding is that unions raise wages for employees, and this generally holds up for teachers. It’s unsurprising, then, that the steps taken by Wisconsin led to a substantial decline in total teacher compensation — by about 8 percent, or $6,500 of total pay, according to one study. About two-thirds of that decline came in the form of reduced fringe benefits, including health insurance and retirement. The remaining drop was in salary, with senior teachers feeling that loss the most.”
I’m sure Wisconsin teachers are feeling very “empowered” by ed reform. They were “empowered”right into a big pay cut.
Here’s a tip: anytime you hear the word “empowered” look for a pay cut, because it’s coming. For some reason none of the people who use this word ever “empower” higher wages.
Ed reformers love teachers. They just don’t want to pay them. It’s a pure, abstract kind of ‘love” – in theory 🙂
https://www.the74million.org/article/impact-of-weaker-unions-in-wisconsin-and-other-states-much-clearer-for-teachers-than-students
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Has anyone been following the 2017 Dutch election? Up to 13-million Dutch voted, the highest turnout in 31 years, and the Trumpish, right-wing copycat, populist lost.
Is it possible that the malignant narcissist in the White House has grabbed the attention of the world to the point that people in Europe and other democracies have been warned; are afraid, and are turning out to vote to make sure there are no more Trumps taking over countries?
The headline at Fortune.com:
The Dutch Just Stopped the Advance of Europe’s Populists
“As such, it’s five more years of socially liberal, consensus-based rule by cosmopolitan establishment parties in the Netherlands. President Donald Trump’s prophesy of other countries rushing to follow the U.K. out of the European door is as far as ever from being realized.”
http://fortune.com/2017/03/16/netherlands-election-result-populist-wilders/
The French are next in May.
The German election will be in September.
The U.S. has to wait until 2018 for the midterms. All the country needs is to take the majority away from the GOP in the U.S. Senate to cripple the malignant narcissist.
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Yes I did follow the election . Yes I was happy for the results. Yes this is two wins in a row now with Austria . I do not want to cripple the “malignant narcissist” I want to jail him.
However I strongly object to using the word populist. And using it in a derogatory manner, to describe a right–wing assault on ‘Democracy’ by xenophobic, fascistic leaning authoritarian leaders, who are not populists, whose agenda does not fit this definition:
“a member or adherent of a political party seeking to represent the interests of ordinary people”
Now I am not accusing you Lloyd , but It smacks of a certain elitism. That depicts working class citizens of many nations and their concerns as somehow less important than the interest of the ruling elite class . Who have rigged the system so that income inequality has soared . There is nothing ordained in economic systems. The entire function of politics is to pick winners and losers in the economy.
We have free trade for ordinary workers be they in a factory or computer programmers . Yet those same trade agreements use patent protection to protect the profits and rents of Pharmaceutical, Electronics Hardware and Software plutocrats. . While other statutes protect the wages of Doctors and Dentists. (Dean Baker)
The definition of working class must now be expanded to include way more than the uneducated laborer or store clerk. As teachers, college professors and even Lawyers are being thrown into the meat grinder by global capitalism. Get the hot ticket to a career in coding that the BLS forecasts will be on the decline ,able to be off shored at 186,282 miles per second.
So just as the phrase Neo-Liberal, which can only be described as the economic philosophy of Ayn Rand ,Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan and Margret Thatcher, has been misused to describe what are essentially corrupt Democrats. Somehow wrongly associating that economic philosophy of totally free (liberal) markets with word liberal which is inappropriate.
Associating populism with fascists is equally disturbing . The only populist in 2016 was Bernie Sanders . Not a xenophobe or a fascist.
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I agree, Joel.
Trump is not a populist. He is a would-be fascist with demagogic tendencies.
He doesn’t give a thought to the lives of ordinary people.
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That term did not originate from me. It came from the media source I quoted.
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Lloyd Lofthouse
Operative sentence
“Now I am not accusing you Lloyd.”
I read the Green party leader of the Netherlands. (the new left). who won votes use it . The reality is that immigration is used as a wage wedge . One does not have to be a demagogue to solve this. Strong labor laws that protect the wages of all workers, citizens or not solves the problems, of employers using immigrants to drive down wages . We keep blaming immigrants for problems that employers create.
The Republicans don’t want to solve the problem they want the cheaper labor. Trump will build a wall then open the gates with no path to citizenship ,few if any legal protections on short term permits at the will of the employer.
Republicans have even floated the idea of “Anchor Babies” ( their discretion of Americans born to undocumented Immigrants ) not being grated citizenship.
Obama should have wired Trump and the whole lot , to an electric chair.
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A few military drones with Hellfire missiles would work faster than wiring Trump to an electric chair. If only Trump is electrocuted, we’d be stuck with Pence, or Paul Ryan, or Orrin Hatch, or Rex Tillerson, or Steve Mnuchin.
To reach Mattis, who is #6 on the list, will take at last six drones.
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granted .
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RE: French election: LePen at 25% has a slight edge. Though broad-brush US media calls her populist, Houllebecq’s futuristic novel “Soumission” describes her party as “identitaire” which is roughly equivalent to our white-supremacists. In real time her party has been ‘invaded by’ the ‘identitaires’ & she is in détente w/them, so this is the party to watch with concern. Dark horse centrist Macron is just a point behind at 24%; he represents a marriage of free-market w/social protections (?!). And Republican Fillon– who recently apologised for an admittedly anti-semitic characterization of [not Jewish] Macron– is close at 21%.
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#AmericasBudget delivers on @POTUS’ promise to expand #SchoolChoice and focus on serving students.
Except public school students because DC is ideologically opposed to public schools.
Which is a bit of a problem for people who claim to be “public servants’ since 90% of kids attend the unfashionable and much-maligned public sector schools.
They support schools! They just exclude 90% of them.
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91%! Never forget that 1%. 🙂
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Anyone folowing Trump’s ed budget? As near as I can figure it: 3.5billion cut from teacher training & after-school/summer programs, defunding of 20 unspecified other programs, add 1.4bilion for school choice (1b Title I but voucherized, 4mm divided 5/4 for privates/ charters) — w/promises to build toward an eventual 20b in voucher funding.
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As you wrote: “The Heritage Foundation has always spoken for corporations and the uber-rich.”
But one thing too many progressives may not know is that Obama’s Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, started out as a Heritage Foundation plan, then was adapted by then-governor Mitt Romney as Romneycare in Massachusetts, before Obama, with help from insurance corporation people, adapted it to become the ACA.
As with public schools, health care is NOT suitable for the alleged “free market”. People’s lives are at stake, and should NEVER be at the mercy of corporate bottom lines, despite what conservatives and libertarians such as Republicans believe, nor what neoliberals such as Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and too many other Democrats believe.
Medicare for All is what we need, and Rep. John Conyers’ is sponsoring a bill, H.R. 676, that would do just that. He needs more co-sponsors in the House, and a companion bill in the Senate. I have written to my two NY Senators, Gillibrand and Schumer, urging them to sponsor such a bill, but as yet have received no reply. Bernie Sanders’ constituents should also urge him to sponsor a Medicare for All bill.
It is NOT enough to justly condemn and oppose Ryan-TrumpCare for its cruel redistribution of wealth from the poor and seniors to the already rich. Democrats must offer an alternative, and Medicare for All is supported by a majority of Americans (not that Congress or the president actually care what we want and need).
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Ed Ciaccio
You should find this interesting. I believe this is your Democratic congressman . He is having a Town Hall Saturday 3/18 in Glencove .
I did not think I voted for him to gut financial regulation. While putting Health Safety , consumer , and environmental regulations, on the chopping block.
Somehow I don’t think he is signing on to Medicare for all but you can ask him.
I’ll let everyone know his response to today’s email from me and the NFPE on school budget cuts and privatization. . His automated response assured me one is coming. I am sure it will not be worth the paper it is printed on in doublespeak .
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/thomas_suozzi/412717
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A cut-and-paste job… and I urge everyone to call this the “GOP budget” because they are complicit in this and it DOES look a lot like their platform… If we want any change at all we need to do more than removing Trump: we need to vote the GOP House and Senate members out so that Ryan and McConnell cannot enable the President…
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I despise everything Trump. That said and for argument purposes only, maybe it would not be such a bad idea to eliminate regional programs like the Appalachian Regional Commission. New York State, (and especially NYC to NYS) as I understand it are net payers in taxes to the federal government while states with lower income/property taxes etc are net receivers of federal tax dollars. From my perspective the states with the highest taxes that support infrastructure like mass transit, the arts, public schools etc have a higher standard of living.
In reality I support a much bigger social safety net, much higher support for the public good such as the arts & public education, much greater funding for European style mass transit, much stronger EPA rules and so on. To pay for this I support much higher taxation of the wealthy and corporations with severe punishments for corporations that offshore jobs/factories and keep profits in foreign tax havens such as Cyprus to avoid corporate taxes.
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