The Trump administration offered a budget that would deeply cut the Environmental Protection Agency and the State Department, eliminate the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, as well as the Legal Services Corporation. There will be cuts to the Department of Education but it is not clear which programs will be hit. The cuts fall heavily everywhere except the military and border defense. There will also be deep cuts to climate research. It seems we will be, under Trump, a garrison state with no culture, other than bugles and drums. And no future either, except as a nation locked in a shell and surrounded by a wall. Some Republicans might find Trump’s cuts hard to accept.
Archives for category: Trump
John Oliver breaks all my blog rules about cussing, but I forgive him because he explains things so clearly.
In this episode, he explains the Republican effort to replace Obamacare with Trumpcare.
It is a complicated subject, but he makes it comprehensible while being very funny.
Donald Trump demonized Goldman Sachs during the Presidential campaign and blasted Hillary Clinton for having the nerve to speak to them for high fees. But now he is stocking his economic team with men (yes, men) from…where else?…Goldman Sachs!
There should be a lot of room for advancement at that firm, what with all the top people leaving to join the Trump administration.
Their appointment reassures Wall Street, which can feel comfortable knowing that their friends are running the economy, not the King of Debt.
The business interests of the Trump family pose many possibilities for conflicts of interest. Jared Kushner is married to Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter. Jared Kushner is a trusted advisor to the president. A politically connected Chinese firm just bought a New York City property from Jared Kushner’s family on favorable terms.
“A company owned by the family of Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, stands to receive more than $400 million from a prominent Chinese company that is investing in the Kushners’ marquee Manhattan office tower at 666 Fifth Ave.
“The planned $4-billion transaction includes terms that some real estate experts consider unusually favorable for the Kushners. It provides them with both a sizable cash payout from Anbang Insurance Group for a property that has struggled financially and an equity stake in a new partnership.
“The details of the agreement, which is being circulated to attract additional investors, were shared with Bloomberg. It would make business partners of Kushner Cos. and Anbang, whose murky links to the Chinese power structure have raised national security concerns over its U.S. investments. In the process, an existing mortgage owed by the Kushners will be slashed to about a fifth of its current amount.”
Jared says there is no conflict of interest because he sold his shares to his family members.
This is a new definition of conflict of interest since family members are not independent or arm’s length.
The New York Times reports that two former Trump advisors have set up a lobbying firm to protect their clients against nasty tweets that can send their stock price into decline.
Attention: corporate America.
For a fee, Corey Lewandowski, President Trump’s pugilistic former campaign manager, and Barry Bennett, a former Trump senior adviser, will protect you from “tweet risk” — what happens to the stock price and reputation of your company when the president tells his 26 million Twitter followers that you’re killing factory jobs or refusing to sell Ivanka Trump handbags.
“If he’s gonna come after you, there’s nothing we can do to stop it,” Mr. Bennett said of Avenue Strategies, the firm he and Mr. Lewandowski opened in offices overlooking Mr. Trump’s White House bedroom window. “But if you want to figure out how to win in this environment, we can help you.
Raw Story says that the lobbyists hope to get foreign clients that want something from the Trump administration. They insist they are not “cashing in.” Right. And when Trump said that Obama wire tapped his phones, he didn’t mean that Obama tapped his phones.
Congressional Budget Office: Trumpcare Means 14 Million Lose Insurance Next Year, 24 Million by 2026
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office issued a report on the likely effects of Trumpcare.
It said it would save over $300 billion but 14 million Americans would have no health insurance next year. And by 2026, 24 million fewer Americans would have health insurance.
The GOP disagreed with the estimates.
CBO report: 24 million fewer insured by 2026 under GOP health care bill
http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/13/politics/cbo-report-health-care/index.html
Since those losing health insurance will be poor and working-class families, expect these changes to have a negative effect on children.
Press Secretary Sean Picer explained that when Trump accused President Obama of wire tapping the phones in Trump Tower, he didn’t mean that the President was wire tapping the phones in Trump Tower.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/13/politics/sean-spicer-donald-trump-wiretapping/index.html
We have to learn that when Trump tweets something, it should not be taken literally. Or figuratively. Or metaphorically. Or in any other way. It is Trump-speak.
Alternet’s Steven Rosenfeld interviews Yale historian Timothy Snyder, who is a specialist in the study of fascism and totalitarianism. Professor Snyder finished a boon “ON TYRANNY: Twenty Lessons from the Twentith Century,” a week after the election.
The subversion of Dem racy moves fast, Snyder warns:
“Nazi Germany took about a year. Hungary took about two and a half years. Poland got rid of the top-level judiciary within a year. It’s a rough historical guess, but the point is because there is an outside limit, you therefore have to act now. You have to get started early. It’s just very practical advice. It’s the meta-advice of the past: That things slip out of reach for you, psychologically very quickly, and then legally almost as quickly. It’s hard for people to act when they feel other people won’t act. It’s hard for people to act when they feel like they have to break the law to do so. So it is important to get out in front before people face those psychological and legal barriers.”
He adds:
“Democracy only has substance if there’s the rule of law. That is, if people believe that the votes are going to be counted and they are counted. If they believe that there’s a judiciary out there that will make sense of things if there’s some challenge. If there isn’t rule of law, people will be afraid to vote the way they want to vote. They’ll vote for their own safety as opposed to their convictions. So the thing we call democracy depends on the rule of law. And the things we call the rule of law depends upon trust. Law functions 99 percent of the time automatically. It functions because we think it’s out there. And that, in turn, depends on the sense of truth. So there’s a mechanism here. You can get right to heart of the matter if you can convince people that there is no truth. Which is why the stuff that we characterize as post-modern and might dismiss is actually really, really essential.
“The second thing about ‘post-truth is pre-fascism’ is I’m trying to get people’s attention, because that is actually how fascism works. Fascism says, disregard the evidence of your senses, disregard observation, embolden deeds that can’t be proven, don’t have faith in god but have faith in leaders, take part in collective myth of an organic national unity, and so forth. Fascism was precisely about setting the whole Enlightenment aside and then selling what sort of myths emerged. Now those [national] myths are pretty unpredictable, and contingent on different nations and different leaders and so on, but to just set facts aside is actually the fastest catalyst. So that part concerns me a lot.
“Where we’re going? The classic thing to watch out for is the shift from one governing strategy to another. In the U.S. system, the typical governing strategy is you more or less have to follow your constituents with legislation because of the election cycle. That’s one pulse of politics. The other pulse of politics is emergency. There’s some kind of terrorist attack and then the leader tries to suspend basic constitutional rights. And then we get on a different rhythm, where the rhythm is not one electoral cycle to the next but one emergency to the next. That’s how regime changes take place. It’s a classic way since the Reichstag fire [when the Nazis burned their nation’s capitol building and blamed communist arsonists].
“So in terms of what might happen next, or what people could look out for, some kind of event that the government claims is a terrorist incident, would be something to be prepared for. That’s why it’s one of the lessons in the book….
“The things that he might do that some people would like, like building a wall or driving all the immigrants out, those things are going to be difficult or slow. In the case of the wall, I personally don’t believe it will ever happen. It’s going to be very slow. So my suspicion is that it is much easier to have a dramatic negative event, than have a dramatic positive event. That is one of the reasons I am concerned about the Reichstag fire scenario. The other reason is that we are being mentally prepared for it by all the talk about terrorism and by the Muslim ban. Very often when leaders repeat things over and over they are preparing you for when that meme actually emerges in reality.”
Snyder says that people don’t realize how quickly the political situation can change, how easily people can accept the unacceptable:
“Let me put it a different way. Except for really dramatic moments, most of the time authoritarianism depends on some kind of cycle involving a popular consent of some form. It really does matter how we behave. The danger is [if] we say, ‘Well, we don’t see how it matters, and so therefore we are going to just table the whole question.’ If we do that, then we start to slide along and start doing the things that the authorities expect of us. Which is why lesson number one is: Don’t obey in advance. You have to set the table differently. You have to say, ‘This is a situation in which I need to think for myself about all of the things that I am going to do and not just punt. Not just wait. Nor just see how things seems to me. Because if you do that, then you change and you actually become part of the regime change toward authoritarianism.'”
Snyder describes the importance of resistance, of refusing to obey, of believing in truth, of being courageous. He also talks about Eugene Ionesco’s play “Rhinoceros.”
Snyder says:
“There are a few questions here. One is how to keep yourself going. Another is how to energize other people who agree with you. And the third thing is not quite “Rhinoceros” stuff, but how to catch people who are slipping. Like that CNN coverage last week of the speech to Congress, where one of the CNN commentators said, ‘Oh, now this is presidential.’ That was a “Rhinoceros” moment, because there was nothing presidential—it was atrocious to parade the victims of crimes committed by one ethnicity. That was atrocious and there’s nothing presidential about it.
“Catching “Rhinoceros” moments is one thing. I think it’s really important to think about. The example that Ionesco gives is people saying, ‘Yeah, on one hand, with the Jews, maybe they are right.’ With Trump, people will say something like, ‘Yeah, but on taxes, maybe he’s right.’ And the thing to catch is, ‘Yeah, but are you in favor of regime change? Are you in favor of the end of the American way of democracy and fair play?’ Because that’s what’s really at stake.”
Republicans love block grants. That is the purpose of HR 610, which would take a bunch of federal categorical programs with specific purposes and turn them over to states as block grants, to be used as they see fit.
State control of federal funds, in short, with no strings attached. What could possibly go wrong?
Denis Smith, who worked for the Ohio Department of Education for many years, explains that block grants will open the door to waste, fraud, and abuse.
The Republican introduced a bill called HR 610 with that goal in mind.
At the Network for Public Education, we have heard that the bill won’t go anywhere, but that is by no means certain. For many years, Republicans have longed to change federaid aid for specific groups of children into block grants. So, we will keep a close watch on HR 610.
Another Trump-DeVos gambit that might make it into federal law is encouragement for vouchers via tax credits. This is a sneaky, seemingly benign way of accumulating hundreds of millions, even billions, that will not be paid in taxes but will be used instead to pay for vouchers at yeshivas, madrassas, and creationist schools. We have to fight this strategy so that Trump-DeVos can’t divert tax dollars from public institutions to religious schools. It is a terrible idea. The public doesn’t want public money to be used for religious schools.
We will keep a close eye on all of their efforts to undermine our nation’s public schools.
Arthur Camins, scientist and educator, describes how his schooling shaped his understanding of Justice and social responsibility. His article was originally published at the Huffington Post, but he also placed it in the Louisville Courier-Journal because of his professional experience in Louisville and the fact that the legislature is about to roll back Louisville’s successful desegregation program.
Camins writes:
Mr. Casey, my high school English teacher, was fond of proclaiming, “From suffering alone comes wisdom.” There seems to be plenty of suffering around, but wisdom seems insufficiently distributed to protect our nation from the alarming triple threats to our democracy from escalating authoritarianism, inequality and divisiveness. I wonder: What is it that turns the banality of suffering, into wisdom?
Why do some people turn against one another in tough times, while others toward one another? Moreover, what can be done to transform the wisdom of observers into mass engaged action?
As a teenager with a typical level of angst, I thought Mr. Casey was especially insightful. After all, maybe I too could be wise. He was one of my favorite teachers. His gift was to help to nudge natural self-centeredness toward empathy. With a little research, I discovered that his suffering quote was hardly original, but rather a tweak on a line from the writings of the ancient Greek playwright, Aeschylus. Mr. Casey helped me identify with novel’s characters and see myself their struggles. That helped me understand that I was not alone. But it was the movements of the 1960s that connected my self-absorbed worries with deeper struggles in the world around me and gave me a lifelong sense of belonging and purpose. I thought about him and the movements today as I wrestled with conflicting emotions of despair and commitment to act.
Personal suffering may sensitize people to the plight of others, but that is insufficient to move them to action. That requires empathy and a sense of belonging, shared experiences with common goals across typical divisions, and development of agency. These frame the requirements for a successful organized resistance.
I have little hope that elected officials will substantively address current threats to democracy and equity on their own. They never have. In the short-term, that responsibility rests on the shoulders of community activists. It always has. For the future, that obligation falls to educators. They have always been the hope.
Globalization, pervasive information technology, and escalating automation provide new contexts, but today’s threats are not unique. U.S. History is replete with examples of how the empowered have fostered divisiveness to protect their privileges: Poor whites against freed slaves and their descendants; Men against women; Old immigrants against recent arrivals; Previously persecuted religious sects against new religious minorities; Just-getting-by employed workers against the unemployed and underemployed; underpaid American workers against more exploited foreign workers in developing countries. The list is endless, as is its diversionary potential to protect the wealthy. Alternatively, the potential for unity across these groups to challenge power and insist on a more equitable future is monumental.
Historically, authoritarianism, lies, and repression have been the turn-to solutions when elites perceived a challenge. Today, empowerment of women, voter participation of non-whites and newer immigrants, and organized workers pose such threats. Even the potential for a widespread, unifying shift toward identification with the brighter values of collaboration, equity, and social responsibility challenge those who rely on traditional dark American myths of a dog-eat-dog competitive meritocracy and self-reliance to justify their position.
Trump and his Republican enablers depend on cynicism about the power of collective action, racial and socio-economic isolation, and a lack of empathy for others’ suffering.
Isolation breeds ignorance of the unknown other. Isolation makes us stupid. I use the term stupid purposefully. I do not mean intellectually limited. Rather, I mean committedly ignorant about matters of personal and social consequence. Such ignorance and stupidity are enabled when selfishness is exalted over empathy in the context of competition for structurally limited resources. Such ignorance and stupidity are promoted when the empowered encourage the disempowered to distrust each other and reject reason and evidence….
Shared experience across perceived differences combats the stupidity that isolation fosters. Community activists and educators can lead front-line push back, engaging citizens and students across traditionally divisive lines in explicitly designed shared experiences.
A disciplined resistance movement can provide an alternative sense of belonging by organizing around shared unifying concerns, such as health care, fair wages, equitable local, states and federal taxes, high-quality public education, protecting and expanding Medicare, Medicare and Social Security, climate change, protecting the environment, and sustainable development. Purposefully, doing so across neighborhood boundaries and workplaces enables empathy and identification with the suffering of others and structures for action.
Similarly, integrated schools that emphasize academic, as well as social and emotional learning can build trust and a common sense of belonging. Curricula that infuse personal and social meaning into daily instruction offers the possibility for young people to see past selfish concerns.
I imbibed the lessons of Mr. Casey’s English class in 1967. It was a moment framed by the civil rights and antiwar movements. Those were times of suffering but also an era of hope. The wisdom that carries forth and provides a guide to action is that isolation and segregation make us stupid. Belonging and integration make us smart. Common struggle makes a difference.
