Trump 20: Sauron Doesn't Seem So Bad After All

[GreyhoundFan]

Not directly about Agent Orange, but some of his billionaire buddies and their war on the media: "Billionaires want to enlist you in their secret plans to take down the press"

Spoiler

This post discusses the documentary “Nobody Speak,” which premieres on Netflix on June 23.

The gusher of movies, television shows and documentaries currently welling out of Netflix can be daunting for even the most assiduous queue curator. Given that, I almost feel bad adding anything to your watch list, but I hope you’ll consider including Brian Knappenberger’s “Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press” when it becomes available tomorrow. Though you might think you know everything about Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker, or President Trump’s antipathy for the media, “Nobody Speak” still feels clarifying. It’s an argument that there is one animating force behind all of our current battles over press freedom — and against allowing reflexes of disgust or outrage to be weaponized by the wealthy individuals who want to control how they are covered.

The core of “Nobody Speak” is Knappenberger’s juxtaposition between the feverishly covered Gawker case and the takeover of the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

In the former, Terry Bollea, who plays the professional wrestler Hulk Hogan, sued the pugnacious website Gawker for publishing a short excerpt of a video of Bollea having sex with Heather Clem, then the wife of Bollea’s then-best friend. The lawsuit, as it turned out, was funded by the venture capitalist Peter Thiel, whom the publication had outed as gay. And it was structured in such a way that Gawker’s insurance would not be responsible for any damages; the suit was intended to kill the publication.

The quest to neuter the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which had provided tough coverage of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, took a different form. In 2015, the paper was sold to a limited liability corporation; the new owners denied any connection to Adelson. As the paper’s top reporters tackled the mystery of their new owner, it became clear that the LLC was, in fact, controlled by the Adelson family. Eventually, all the reporters who had discovered the truth left the paper. Columnist John L. Smith resigned after he was banned from writing about the Adelsons.

Examining the Gawker case alone, a casual observer might be tempted to conclude that what was at stake was personal privacy, and whether Terry Bollea the person is distinct from Hulk Hogan the character such that Bollea has privacy rights that Hogan, as a public figure who talked incessantly about his sex life, lacked. But juxtaposing Gawker and the Review-Journal is a sharp reminder that questions of privacy and obscenity were just the means to get Gawker, not the sole purpose of the lawsuit.

Both attempts to control these very different publications were about power: specifically, rich men who were determined to set the limits on what others could report and say about them. Sacrificing Gawker to decency standards wouldn’t have saved the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Or, as First Amendment litigator Floyd Abrams puts it in the film, “The reason to save Gawker is not because Gawker was worth saving. The reason to save is that we don’t pick and choose which publications are permissible.”

Of course, among the things that unites Thiel and Adelson is their support for Trump. And since Trump was sworn in as president, he appears to have spent more mental energy on his feuds with the press than on any other subject. It’s not yet clear to me that Trump actually has the discipline or energy to pursue the sweeping changes to libel law he floated on the campaign trail. But the increasingly corrosive attitudes toward the media that became a hallmark of his campaign are doing damage enough.

Because the Adelsons and the Thiels of the world act in secret, they avoid scrutiny. And by doing so, they also have the power to enlist accidental allies who would never be on board with their true intentions. People who don’t think sex tapes should be leaked against the participants’ will end up supporting a billionaire in his quest to make coverage of Silicon Valley less transparent. Shareholders in the Las Vegas Review-Journal hope to maximize profit, not acknowledging that the best deal for them financially might be the worst deal for the journalism that was their business.

The hatred aimed at journalists may be transparent, but the real plots to take us down may not be. “Nobody Speak” is a warning not to get tangled up in one by accident.

 

[Childless]

5 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Not directly about Agent Orange, but some of his billionaire buddies and their war on the media: "Billionaires want to enlist you in their secret plans to take down the press"

  Reveal hidden contents

This post discusses the documentary “Nobody Speak,” which premieres on Netflix on June 23.

The gusher of movies, television shows and documentaries currently welling out of Netflix can be daunting for even the most assiduous queue curator. Given that, I almost feel bad adding anything to your watch list, but I hope you’ll consider including Brian Knappenberger’s “Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press” when it becomes available tomorrow. Though you might think you know everything about Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker, or President Trump’s antipathy for the media, “Nobody Speak” still feels clarifying. It’s an argument that there is one animating force behind all of our current battles over press freedom — and against allowing reflexes of disgust or outrage to be weaponized by the wealthy individuals who want to control how they are covered.

The core of “Nobody Speak” is Knappenberger’s juxtaposition between the feverishly covered Gawker case and the takeover of the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

In the former, Terry Bollea, who plays the professional wrestler Hulk Hogan, sued the pugnacious website Gawker for publishing a short excerpt of a video of Bollea having sex with Heather Clem, then the wife of Bollea’s then-best friend. The lawsuit, as it turned out, was funded by the venture capitalist Peter Thiel, whom the publication had outed as gay. And it was structured in such a way that Gawker’s insurance would not be responsible for any damages; the suit was intended to kill the publication.

The quest to neuter the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which had provided tough coverage of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, took a different form. In 2015, the paper was sold to a limited liability corporation; the new owners denied any connection to Adelson. As the paper’s top reporters tackled the mystery of their new owner, it became clear that the LLC was, in fact, controlled by the Adelson family. Eventually, all the reporters who had discovered the truth left the paper. Columnist John L. Smith resigned after he was banned from writing about the Adelsons.

Examining the Gawker case alone, a casual observer might be tempted to conclude that what was at stake was personal privacy, and whether Terry Bollea the person is distinct from Hulk Hogan the character such that Bollea has privacy rights that Hogan, as a public figure who talked incessantly about his sex life, lacked. But juxtaposing Gawker and the Review-Journal is a sharp reminder that questions of privacy and obscenity were just the means to get Gawker, not the sole purpose of the lawsuit.

Both attempts to control these very different publications were about power: specifically, rich men who were determined to set the limits on what others could report and say about them. Sacrificing Gawker to decency standards wouldn’t have saved the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Or, as First Amendment litigator Floyd Abrams puts it in the film, “The reason to save Gawker is not because Gawker was worth saving. The reason to save is that we don’t pick and choose which publications are permissible.”

Of course, among the things that unites Thiel and Adelson is their support for Trump. And since Trump was sworn in as president, he appears to have spent more mental energy on his feuds with the press than on any other subject. It’s not yet clear to me that Trump actually has the discipline or energy to pursue the sweeping changes to libel law he floated on the campaign trail. But the increasingly corrosive attitudes toward the media that became a hallmark of his campaign are doing damage enough.

Because the Adelsons and the Thiels of the world act in secret, they avoid scrutiny. And by doing so, they also have the power to enlist accidental allies who would never be on board with their true intentions. People who don’t think sex tapes should be leaked against the participants’ will end up supporting a billionaire in his quest to make coverage of Silicon Valley less transparent. Shareholders in the Las Vegas Review-Journal hope to maximize profit, not acknowledging that the best deal for them financially might be the worst deal for the journalism that was their business.

The hatred aimed at journalists may be transparent, but the real plots to take us down may not be. “Nobody Speak” is a warning not to get tangled up in one by accident.

 

Freedom of the press is enshrined in our constitution.  If we start tearing up the constitution, then what's the point of the U.S.?  What's worth defending?

[GreyhoundFan]

9 minutes ago, Childless said:

Freedom of the press is enshrined in our constitution.  If we start tearing up the constitution, then what's the point of the U.S.?  What's worth defending?

In the billionaires' eyes, the almighty dollar...or should I say ruble?

[fraurosena]

If true, this is good news, right?

Fingers crossed that there will be enough repub opposition... 

I wonder how McTurtle and LyanRyan will react to a rejection of this atrocity by their own side?

[JenniferJuniper]

21 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

If true, this is good news, right?

Fingers crossed that there will be enough repub opposition... 

I wonder how McTurtle and LyanRyan will react to a rejection of this atrocity by their own side?

I hope I'm wrong, but my guess is with a few tweaks they will be persuaded to support it.

[GreyhoundFan]

14 minutes ago, JenniferJuniper said:

I hope I'm wrong, but my guess is with a few tweaks they will be persuaded to support it.

Exactly. I wouldn't bet a nickel on a single Repug having a conscience.

[laPapessaGiovanna]

Especially considering that they don't support it because it's not harsh enough. Not enough people will be left without coverage, not enough people will drown in debt to pay for healthcare bills, not enough people will die for lack of care.

[JenniferJuniper]

13 minutes ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

Especially considering that they don't support it because it's not harsh enough. Not enough people will be left without coverage, not enough people will drown in debt to pay for healthcare bills, not enough people will die for lack of care.

They really do want people to die, make no mistake about it.  The old, the infirm, the poor - they see them as nothing but takers.   They won't die in gas chambers, but "useless eaters" will be eliminated by these fascists. 

[fraurosena]

They are actually killing their 'golden goose' by doing this. By making the poorest pay for their taxbreak now, they are eliminating the poor, and in doing so, don't realize there will be nobody left to pay for another one. In addition, they are shooting themselves in the foot by eliminating their base. They are so short-sighted, they can't see past the dollarsigns in front of them.

All they can think is: "I wants it! And I wants it NOW! Give it to me! Precioussss!"

[JenniferJuniper]

6 hours ago, fraurosena said:

They are actually killing their 'golden goose' by doing this. By making the poorest pay for their taxbreak now, they are eliminating the poor, and in doing so, don't realize there will be nobody left to pay for another one. In addition, they are shooting themselves in the foot by eliminating their base. They are so short-sighted, they can't see past the dollarsigns in front of them.

I guess I'm a little more cynical.  They don't see the working poor as any kind of golden goose as they don't see them as paying for much more than payroll taxes.  Which becomes a non issue when you are planning on gutting SS and Medicare anyway. The disabled and the elderly are paying in even less, and they are barely consumers given their limited disposable income.  Useless!

Kill the poor and tax the middle class as much as possible while cutting taxes for the rich.  Granted, eventually there will be no more middle class left, but these guys will have made off with the loot by then and can afford to hide in their ivory towers somewhere else.

[GreyhoundFan]

7 hours ago, fraurosena said:

All they can think is: "I wants it! And I wants it NOW! Give it to me! Precioussss!"

This is the 1%:

 

 

49 minutes ago, JenniferJuniper said:

I guess I'm a little more cynical.  They don't see the working poor as any kind of golden goose as they don't see them as paying for much more than payroll taxes.  Which becomes a non issue when you are planning on gutting SS and Medicare anyway. The disabled and the elderly are paying in even less, and they are barely consumers given their limited disposable income.  Useless!

You're right. Many of the extremely wealthy just think of the poor and middle class as keeping them from having even more wealth.

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

So, the "jobs president" strikes again: "Trump visited this Boeing factory to celebrate jobs. It just announced layoffs"

Spoiler

Five months ago at a Boeing factory in South Carolina, President Trump proclaimed, “We are going to fight for every last American job.”

On Thursday, workers at the North Charleston plant learned they’d soon face layoffs.

The airplane manufacturer announced it would be cutting “fewer than 200 people” at the 787 Dreamliner campus and other facilities in the city.

“Our competition is relentless, and that has made clear our need as a company to reduce cost to be more competitive,” Boeing said in a statement. “We are offering resources to those affected by layoffs to help them in finding other employment and ease their transition as much as possible.”

The company has yet to notify the affected employees — who work in operations management, engineering, quality control and training, among other roles — and represent a tiny sliver of its workforce in the state. Boeing would not say how many, exactly, could lose their jobs and when the dismissals will begin.

The South Carolina plant was Trump’s first company visit outside the Beltway after he became president. The point of the trip was not to unveil a major economic policy or promote a new White House initiative, though. Rather, Trump celebrated the launch of the company’s new Dreamliner model.

“We're here to day to celebrate American engineering and American manufacturing,” Trump said at the time. “We're also here today to celebrate jobs. Jobs!” (The White House did not respond to a request for comment.)

Boeing employs about 140,000 workers in the United States, mostly in Washington, California, Missouri and South Carolina. Roughly 50,000 work on the factory floor, putting planes together. Approximately 7,300 work in the Palmetto State.

In December, Boeing said it planned to cut jobs this year because of a dropping demand for new planes. The company revealed it would decrease production of the Boeing 777 by 40 percent in 2017.

By March, the company had accepted about 1,880 voluntary layoffs from employees in Washington state. Then nearly 500 workers near Seattle received involuntary layoff notices in April, according to the Seattle Times

Jonathan Battaglia, representative for the Machinists Union, which the Boeing employees in North Charleston voted not to join in February, said about 700 people in South Carolina have taken buyouts over the past year. The coming wave of layoffs at the North Charleston campus are the first involuntary dismissals to hit its South Carolina workforce.

“Despite Boeing’s promises, it’s clear that job security is something they don’t feel their so-called ‘teammates’ deserve,” Battaglia said. “This isn't about competitiveness, it's about more money for shareholders and executives.”

Boeing, meanwhile, promotes its investment in American jobs.

“Boeing’s market success plays a key role in supporting high-value aerospace jobs across its supply chain and across the United States,” according to the company website. “In 2015 alone, Boeing paid nearly $50 billion to more than 13,600 businesses, supporting an additional 1.5 million supplier-related jobs.”

Yet, the BTs will only remember the pep rally...

[GreyhoundFan]

"The anti-innovation presidency"

Spoiler

“Innovation” is one of those Washington priorities, like “security” or “the children,” that politicians in both parties tend to describe as investments rather than spending. Even as budget wars have raged on Capitol Hill, there’s been a fairly broad consensus that funding research and development is vital to American competitiveness. The Beltway seems to churn out an inexhaustible supply of bipartisan reports proclaiming that bigger government investments in science and technology today will pay economic dividends for taxpayers down the road.

This week has been “tech week” at the White House, and President Trump has jumped onto the rhetorical bandwagon, hailing the glories of innovation. “My administration is embracing a new spirit of innovation that will make life better for all Americans,” he told a group of technology leaders gathered in the Oval Office on Monday; he doubled down Thursday, promising another group of new-economy executives that his government would “help unleash technological breakthroughs that will transform our lives.”

But Trump’s 2018 budget goes the opposite direction: It proposes the deepest cuts in innovation investments that any administration has ever proposed.

Not only does the Trump budget slash climate science and clean energy research beloved by Trump’s critics, it whacks advanced manufacturing programs and fossil energy research catering to Trump’s supporters, as well as basic science and medical research beloved by almost everyone. It’s a powerful rejection of the innovation-industrial complex, and even though Congress is likely to ignore most of it, a similarly powerful reflection of Trump’s political war on Washington elites.

Overall, Trump’s budget cuts research and development spending by about 5 percent from current levels, but that figure includes hefty increases for late-stage weapons development at the Pentagon. It would roll back non-defense R&D by an unprecedented 19 percent, taking the axe to the popular as well as the obscure. The National Institutes of Health would absorb a 21.5 percent hit, including major cuts in research on aging, cancer, infectious disease, mental health, and drug abuse; NIH grant programs would have their stingiest award rates since 1970. There would be even harsher cuts for the Agricultural Research Service, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NASA’s education funding, NOAA’s ocean research, and EPA’s science office.

The Trump blueprint would also eliminate the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, which oversees studies of which medical treatments actually work; the U.S. Geological Survey’s monitoring programs for volcanoes, earthquakes and the climate; and a popular Manufacturing Extension Partnership that provided technical assistance for more than 25,000 companies last year. And it would wipe out ARPA-E, the most futuristic agency in Washington, a cutting-edge incubator for energy research modeled on the high-tech Pentagon unit that pioneered GPS and the Internet.

Trump aides believe some federal investments in R&D have been duplicative or ineffective, while others ought to be handled by the private sector. And they’re still proposing $150 billion in R&D funding, which is considerably more than zero. But their main argument for spending less on innovation is simply that America can’t afford to spend more. Trump’s Office of Management and Budget director, Mick Mulvaney, is an ardent limited-government conservative, and the budget he crafted for Trump reflects his belief that Washington spends way too much of your money. Trump made it clear his top budget priorities are strengthening the military and securing the border, while somehow reducing deficits without raising taxes or cutting Medicare or Social Security for the elderly. Mulvaney had to shrink something—really, just about everything else—to try to check all those boxes.

“We wanted more for defense and the border, so we had to offset those increases somewhere,” one senior budget official explained. “We’re still making a big commitment to R&D. It’s just less than other administrations might make.”

In fact, even within Trump’s top government priorities, like the military and the border, innovation is getting a haircut. The American Association for the Advancement of Science calculated that Trump’s budget would squeeze the Pentagon’s science and technology spending by 5 percent, including an 18 percent cut for its “manufacturing innovation institutes.” The Department of Homeland Security’s science and technology budget would shrink by 20 percent, limiting research into cybersecurity, bioweapons defense, and border technologies.

There’s a political logic to Trump’s innovation policy heresies. Two thirds of R&D spending goes to blue states, and most of it tends to cluster in large cities and college towns rather than farm country or the Rust Belt, one reason these issues have more resonance for cosmopolitan technocrats than for Trump voters. President Obama talked about them incessantly, clamoring for aggressive investments in innovation to help America “win the future,” but Trump has attacked just about everything Obama was for, from health care reform to the Paris climate agreement. On the campaign trail, he never emphasized winning the future, just winning, and he never proposed any new innovation policies of note.

Trump did create a White House Office of American Innovation led by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and at his meeting with tech leaders he vowed that the office would help upgrade the federal government’s balky technology. But he did not suggest that it would help promote innovation in the private sector; he suggested that was the private sector’s job. In fact, one of the office’s main tasks will be shrinking and reorganizing the government, reflecting the belief of Mulvaney and other movement conservatives in the administration that the best thing government can do to spur innovation is to get out of the way of innovative businesses. In fact, during last year’s crisis over the Zika virus, as public health experts were racing to study its link to birth defects, Mulvaney asked a provocative question on Facebook: “Do we really need government-funded research at all?”

Historically, though, the U.S. government has played a vital role in seeding and developing technological advances ranging from supercomputing to hydraulic fracking, advanced prosthetics to lactose-free milk, LED lighting to MRI testing. The Trump budget represents an abrupt departure from this tradition, at a time when federal expenditures on R&D have already drooped to their lowest level as a share of the economy since the Russians launched Sputnik. This has innovation experts scratching their heads, since Trump’s entire budget depends on yet another departure from budget tradition, a blithe assumption of 3 percent annual growth. Mark Muro, policy director at the Brookings Institution’s metropolitan studies program, says that with America’s workforce shrinking, the clearest pathways to that kind of robust growth would be more immigration and more innovation—and Trump has made it clear he doesn’t want more immigration. But he doesn’t seem to think Uncle Sam can help make innovation happen, either.

“There’s no conception in this budget of any positive role for government,” Muro says. “It’s totally out of step with everything we know about the innovation economy. I guess you could say that’s an innovation.”

OBAMA FIRST UNVEILED his innovation agenda in a November 2007 speech at Google headquarters, calling for major investments in clean energy, digital technology, medical research, and basic science—as well as education reform, job training, and infrastructure, which he also categorized as innovation spending. Two years later, he was elected president during an economic meltdown, and quickly tucked a remarkable amount of that egghead agenda into his $800 billion stimulus bill, using public dollars to jump-start private industries that felt like the future.

For example, the stimulus poured billions of dollars into solar power, and while the highest-profile result was a busted loan to a manufacturer called Solyndra, other stimulus projects have helped increase U.S. solar generation by more than 3000 percent since 2009. Similarly, the stimulus financed an entirely new domestic battery industry for electric vehicles, as well as a $465 million loan to rescue a failing automaker called Tesla; more than 400,000 EV’s have been sold in America since 2009, and Tesla is now the most valuable U.S. car company. Overall, the stimulus sparked the largest federal investment in innovation since the moon mission, including record funding for a smarter electric grid, factories producing clean energy components, digital health records, NIH research, and an out-of-the-box grant competition called TIGER for innovative transportation projects.

Obama kept banging the drum for innovation throughout his presidency, repeatedly calling on America to “out-educate, out-innovate, and out-compete the rest of the world.” On October 21, 2015—also known as Back to the Future Day, because that’s the day Marty McFly time-traveled to in his cinematic DeLorean—Obama unveiled an ambitious agenda for future investments in growth areas like precision medicine, brain science, artificial intelligence, and educational technology. But the huge bump in innovation funding through the stimulus turned out to be a one-time bump. The Republicans who took back the House in 2011 consistently rejected Obama’s requests for more money, so federal R&D expenditures have stagnated, dipping to about half their 1980s levels as a share of GDP.

Now Trump is proposing to gut them, sending an unmistakable message about his priorities. He’s not interested in helping the geeks who carried signs poking fun of him at the March for Science.

“Nobody has ever proposed cuts of this scale,” says Matt Hourihan, who oversees R&D policy at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “Nobody has ever drawn this narrow a boundary around what government should be doing with basic science. It’s really a clean break with a bipartisan consensus.”

The Trump budget would kill the loan program for fuel-efficient automakers that saved Tesla, as well as similar loans for “innovative technologies” in the green energy world. It would also kill TIGER, even though Trump’s transportation secretary, Elaine Chao, told Congress she would push to boost the program’s funding because it was working so well, and the AHRQ, even though its comparative effectiveness studies help save lives (by highlighting safety measures like a checklist that reduced central line infections in hospitals) and taxpayer dollars (by exposing wasteful and ineffective surgeries, drugs, and medical devices). It would cut the Energy Department’s clean energy program by more than two thirds, and fossil energy by half. If you include education, job training and infrastructure in your innovation bucket, Trump’s budget cuts all of them as well, although he has promised a still-unspecified $1 trillion infrastructure program outside his budget.

As for R&D, the senior budget official told me the administration wants to shift the government focus from applied research towards early-stage experimentation that private firms tend to avoid, partly because they tend to focus on short-term earnings, partly because they worry that their competitors will end up reaping the benefits of their expensive research. But that doesn’t explain why the Trump wants to dismantle ARPA-E, which finances disruptive energy technologies in their earliest stages. Since 2009, its grant recipients have gone on to raise more than $1 billion in private capital, for ideas ranging from easier-to-make silicon wafers for solar panels to laser-operated drill bits for oil wells. Bill Gates and other business leaders have described ARPA-E as a model for what government ought to be doing to help America compete in the 21st century “Look, we had to make some tough choices,” the official explained. “We’re still going to have national labs.”

The Trump budget also calls for a 70 percent cut in an Obama program called Manufacturing USA, which has partnered with industry and academia to finance early-stage research into growth areas like robotics, photonics, 3-D printing and lightweight materials at “hubs” in cities like Detroit, Knoxville, and Youngstown. And it would shut down the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, a $120-million-a-year program with offices providing technical assistance to small and medium-sized manufacturers in all 50 states. Atkinson said that Canada invests ten times as much in similar programs as a share of its GDP, while Germany invests 20 times as much and Japan 40 times as much—and they’ve lost less of their manufacturing base.

“I thought reviving U.S. manufacturing was going to make America great again,” says Rob Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. “These programs are already terribly underfunded, and they’re serving Trump’s voters. But this administration is under the ideological delusion that the government is always the problem. No other country acts like this.”

Administration officials point out federal programs with noble goals and unobjectionable-sounding names are not necessarily effective, and they’ve got a point. The Manufacturing Extension Partnership’s offices in all 50 states, including states without much manufacturing, is hidden-in-plain-sight evidence that political considerations often drive funding decisions. It may seem odd that Trump wants to get rid of the Economic Development Administration, when he talks so much about economic development, and when the EDA specifically focuses on the depressed rural regions and smaller cities where so many Trump voters live. But a Government Accountability Office report found that every one of the agency’s 80 programs overlapped with some other federal program.

Andy Roth, a lobbyist at the conservative Club for Growth, said Trump and Mulvaney deserve credit for taking on the sacred cow of “investment in innovation,” because it’s really just a euphemism for corporate welfare. Roth argued that when government helps a company or an industry with basic research or applied research or anything else, it’s picking winners and losers, substituting the judgment of politicians and bureaucrats for the genius of the free market. Roth said the government should protect businesses from high taxes and intrusive regulations, but should otherwise leave innovation to the innovators in the private sector.

“We don’t believe the government should be in the innovation business,” Roth said. “We’re thrilled that the Trump administration is getting rid of some of these programs, because there are a lot of stinkers out there.”

But innovation experts say there’s voluminous evidence that the long-term benefits of these investments far outweigh the costs, and that cutting them is like eating seed corn. Atkinson estimates that Trump’s cuts would reduce GDP by $139 billion by 2027. And some programs the administration portrayed as stinkers don’t really sound so awful. For example, the budget proposed to save $1.16 billion a year by axing the “21st Century Community Learning Centers” after-school program for needy children, declaring “performance data demonstrates the program is not achieving its goals.” It cites evidence that “student improvement in academic grades was limited, with states reporting higher math or English grades for less than half of regular program participants.” But a program that helped nearly half its participants improve their grades sounds quite successful. On standardized tests, according to the budget, “less than 20 percent of participants improved from ‘not proficient’ to ‘proficient’ or above.” Again, that’s real improvement. Maybe it’s not enough improvement for $1.16 billion a year, but it’s pretty weak evidence of a boondoggle.

Republicans in Congress have already made it clear that much of Trump’s funding attack on innovation is dead on arrival. They won’t eliminate ARPA-E or TIGER. They won’t slash medical research at NIH or shred science at EPA. But advocates worry about the death of Washington’s innovation consensus. In the past, even though lawmakers didn’t always back up their R&D rhetoric with R&D funding, science and technology were treated like motherhood and apple pie, a kind of no-fly zone in the thick of Capitol Hill’s partisan bombardments. But in Trump’s Washington, norms cease to be norms, and anything can come under attack.

“Government support for innovation is an American success story, and one of the few places of American consensus,” Muro says. “At least it used to be.”

Agent Orange: Partying Like It's 1850.

[JMarie]

27 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"The anti-innovation presidency"

  Hide contents

“Innovation” is one of those Washington priorities, like “security” or “the children,” that politicians in both parties tend to describe as investments rather than spending. Even as budget wars have raged on Capitol Hill, there’s been a fairly broad consensus that funding research and development is vital to American competitiveness. The Beltway seems to churn out an inexhaustible supply of bipartisan reports proclaiming that bigger government investments in science and technology today will pay economic dividends for taxpayers down the road.

This week has been “tech week” at the White House, and President Trump has jumped onto the rhetorical bandwagon, hailing the glories of innovation. “My administration is embracing a new spirit of innovation that will make life better for all Americans,” he told a group of technology leaders gathered in the Oval Office on Monday; he doubled down Thursday, promising another group of new-economy executives that his government would “help unleash technological breakthroughs that will transform our lives.”

But Trump’s 2018 budget goes the opposite direction: It proposes the deepest cuts in innovation investments that any administration has ever proposed.

Not only does the Trump budget slash climate science and clean energy research beloved by Trump’s critics, it whacks advanced manufacturing programs and fossil energy research catering to Trump’s supporters, as well as basic science and medical research beloved by almost everyone. It’s a powerful rejection of the innovation-industrial complex, and even though Congress is likely to ignore most of it, a similarly powerful reflection of Trump’s political war on Washington elites.

Overall, Trump’s budget cuts research and development spending by about 5 percent from current levels, but that figure includes hefty increases for late-stage weapons development at the Pentagon. It would roll back non-defense R&D by an unprecedented 19 percent, taking the axe to the popular as well as the obscure. The National Institutes of Health would absorb a 21.5 percent hit, including major cuts in research on aging, cancer, infectious disease, mental health, and drug abuse; NIH grant programs would have their stingiest award rates since 1970. There would be even harsher cuts for the Agricultural Research Service, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NASA’s education funding, NOAA’s ocean research, and EPA’s science office.

The Trump blueprint would also eliminate the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, which oversees studies of which medical treatments actually work; the U.S. Geological Survey’s monitoring programs for volcanoes, earthquakes and the climate; and a popular Manufacturing Extension Partnership that provided technical assistance for more than 25,000 companies last year. And it would wipe out ARPA-E, the most futuristic agency in Washington, a cutting-edge incubator for energy research modeled on the high-tech Pentagon unit that pioneered GPS and the Internet.

Trump aides believe some federal investments in R&D have been duplicative or ineffective, while others ought to be handled by the private sector. And they’re still proposing $150 billion in R&D funding, which is considerably more than zero. But their main argument for spending less on innovation is simply that America can’t afford to spend more. Trump’s Office of Management and Budget director, Mick Mulvaney, is an ardent limited-government conservative, and the budget he crafted for Trump reflects his belief that Washington spends way too much of your money. Trump made it clear his top budget priorities are strengthening the military and securing the border, while somehow reducing deficits without raising taxes or cutting Medicare or Social Security for the elderly. Mulvaney had to shrink something—really, just about everything else—to try to check all those boxes.

“We wanted more for defense and the border, so we had to offset those increases somewhere,” one senior budget official explained. “We’re still making a big commitment to R&D. It’s just less than other administrations might make.”

In fact, even within Trump’s top government priorities, like the military and the border, innovation is getting a haircut. The American Association for the Advancement of Science calculated that Trump’s budget would squeeze the Pentagon’s science and technology spending by 5 percent, including an 18 percent cut for its “manufacturing innovation institutes.” The Department of Homeland Security’s science and technology budget would shrink by 20 percent, limiting research into cybersecurity, bioweapons defense, and border technologies.

There’s a political logic to Trump’s innovation policy heresies. Two thirds of R&D spending goes to blue states, and most of it tends to cluster in large cities and college towns rather than farm country or the Rust Belt, one reason these issues have more resonance for cosmopolitan technocrats than for Trump voters. President Obama talked about them incessantly, clamoring for aggressive investments in innovation to help America “win the future,” but Trump has attacked just about everything Obama was for, from health care reform to the Paris climate agreement. On the campaign trail, he never emphasized winning the future, just winning, and he never proposed any new innovation policies of note.

Trump did create a White House Office of American Innovation led by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and at his meeting with tech leaders he vowed that the office would help upgrade the federal government’s balky technology. But he did not suggest that it would help promote innovation in the private sector; he suggested that was the private sector’s job. In fact, one of the office’s main tasks will be shrinking and reorganizing the government, reflecting the belief of Mulvaney and other movement conservatives in the administration that the best thing government can do to spur innovation is to get out of the way of innovative businesses. In fact, during last year’s crisis over the Zika virus, as public health experts were racing to study its link to birth defects, Mulvaney asked a provocative question on Facebook: “Do we really need government-funded research at all?”

Historically, though, the U.S. government has played a vital role in seeding and developing technological advances ranging from supercomputing to hydraulic fracking, advanced prosthetics to lactose-free milk, LED lighting to MRI testing. The Trump budget represents an abrupt departure from this tradition, at a time when federal expenditures on R&D have already drooped to their lowest level as a share of the economy since the Russians launched Sputnik. This has innovation experts scratching their heads, since Trump’s entire budget depends on yet another departure from budget tradition, a blithe assumption of 3 percent annual growth. Mark Muro, policy director at the Brookings Institution’s metropolitan studies program, says that with America’s workforce shrinking, the clearest pathways to that kind of robust growth would be more immigration and more innovation—and Trump has made it clear he doesn’t want more immigration. But he doesn’t seem to think Uncle Sam can help make innovation happen, either.

“There’s no conception in this budget of any positive role for government,” Muro says. “It’s totally out of step with everything we know about the innovation economy. I guess you could say that’s an innovation.”

OBAMA FIRST UNVEILED his innovation agenda in a November 2007 speech at Google headquarters, calling for major investments in clean energy, digital technology, medical research, and basic science—as well as education reform, job training, and infrastructure, which he also categorized as innovation spending. Two years later, he was elected president during an economic meltdown, and quickly tucked a remarkable amount of that egghead agenda into his $800 billion stimulus bill, using public dollars to jump-start private industries that felt like the future.

For example, the stimulus poured billions of dollars into solar power, and while the highest-profile result was a busted loan to a manufacturer called Solyndra, other stimulus projects have helped increase U.S. solar generation by more than 3000 percent since 2009. Similarly, the stimulus financed an entirely new domestic battery industry for electric vehicles, as well as a $465 million loan to rescue a failing automaker called Tesla; more than 400,000 EV’s have been sold in America since 2009, and Tesla is now the most valuable U.S. car company. Overall, the stimulus sparked the largest federal investment in innovation since the moon mission, including record funding for a smarter electric grid, factories producing clean energy components, digital health records, NIH research, and an out-of-the-box grant competition called TIGER for innovative transportation projects.

Obama kept banging the drum for innovation throughout his presidency, repeatedly calling on America to “out-educate, out-innovate, and out-compete the rest of the world.” On October 21, 2015—also known as Back to the Future Day, because that’s the day Marty McFly time-traveled to in his cinematic DeLorean—Obama unveiled an ambitious agenda for future investments in growth areas like precision medicine, brain science, artificial intelligence, and educational technology. But the huge bump in innovation funding through the stimulus turned out to be a one-time bump. The Republicans who took back the House in 2011 consistently rejected Obama’s requests for more money, so federal R&D expenditures have stagnated, dipping to about half their 1980s levels as a share of GDP.

Now Trump is proposing to gut them, sending an unmistakable message about his priorities. He’s not interested in helping the geeks who carried signs poking fun of him at the March for Science.

“Nobody has ever proposed cuts of this scale,” says Matt Hourihan, who oversees R&D policy at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “Nobody has ever drawn this narrow a boundary around what government should be doing with basic science. It’s really a clean break with a bipartisan consensus.”

The Trump budget would kill the loan program for fuel-efficient automakers that saved Tesla, as well as similar loans for “innovative technologies” in the green energy world. It would also kill TIGER, even though Trump’s transportation secretary, Elaine Chao, told Congress she would push to boost the program’s funding because it was working so well, and the AHRQ, even though its comparative effectiveness studies help save lives (by highlighting safety measures like a checklist that reduced central line infections in hospitals) and taxpayer dollars (by exposing wasteful and ineffective surgeries, drugs, and medical devices). It would cut the Energy Department’s clean energy program by more than two thirds, and fossil energy by half. If you include education, job training and infrastructure in your innovation bucket, Trump’s budget cuts all of them as well, although he has promised a still-unspecified $1 trillion infrastructure program outside his budget.

As for R&D, the senior budget official told me the administration wants to shift the government focus from applied research towards early-stage experimentation that private firms tend to avoid, partly because they tend to focus on short-term earnings, partly because they worry that their competitors will end up reaping the benefits of their expensive research. But that doesn’t explain why the Trump wants to dismantle ARPA-E, which finances disruptive energy technologies in their earliest stages. Since 2009, its grant recipients have gone on to raise more than $1 billion in private capital, for ideas ranging from easier-to-make silicon wafers for solar panels to laser-operated drill bits for oil wells. Bill Gates and other business leaders have described ARPA-E as a model for what government ought to be doing to help America compete in the 21st century “Look, we had to make some tough choices,” the official explained. “We’re still going to have national labs.”

The Trump budget also calls for a 70 percent cut in an Obama program called Manufacturing USA, which has partnered with industry and academia to finance early-stage research into growth areas like robotics, photonics, 3-D printing and lightweight materials at “hubs” in cities like Detroit, Knoxville, and Youngstown. And it would shut down the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, a $120-million-a-year program with offices providing technical assistance to small and medium-sized manufacturers in all 50 states. Atkinson said that Canada invests ten times as much in similar programs as a share of its GDP, while Germany invests 20 times as much and Japan 40 times as much—and they’ve lost less of their manufacturing base.

“I thought reviving U.S. manufacturing was going to make America great again,” says Rob Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. “These programs are already terribly underfunded, and they’re serving Trump’s voters. But this administration is under the ideological delusion that the government is always the problem. No other country acts like this.”

Administration officials point out federal programs with noble goals and unobjectionable-sounding names are not necessarily effective, and they’ve got a point. The Manufacturing Extension Partnership’s offices in all 50 states, including states without much manufacturing, is hidden-in-plain-sight evidence that political considerations often drive funding decisions. It may seem odd that Trump wants to get rid of the Economic Development Administration, when he talks so much about economic development, and when the EDA specifically focuses on the depressed rural regions and smaller cities where so many Trump voters live. But a Government Accountability Office report found that every one of the agency’s 80 programs overlapped with some other federal program.

Andy Roth, a lobbyist at the conservative Club for Growth, said Trump and Mulvaney deserve credit for taking on the sacred cow of “investment in innovation,” because it’s really just a euphemism for corporate welfare. Roth argued that when government helps a company or an industry with basic research or applied research or anything else, it’s picking winners and losers, substituting the judgment of politicians and bureaucrats for the genius of the free market. Roth said the government should protect businesses from high taxes and intrusive regulations, but should otherwise leave innovation to the innovators in the private sector.

“We don’t believe the government should be in the innovation business,” Roth said. “We’re thrilled that the Trump administration is getting rid of some of these programs, because there are a lot of stinkers out there.”

But innovation experts say there’s voluminous evidence that the long-term benefits of these investments far outweigh the costs, and that cutting them is like eating seed corn. Atkinson estimates that Trump’s cuts would reduce GDP by $139 billion by 2027. And some programs the administration portrayed as stinkers don’t really sound so awful. For example, the budget proposed to save $1.16 billion a year by axing the “21st Century Community Learning Centers” after-school program for needy children, declaring “performance data demonstrates the program is not achieving its goals.” It cites evidence that “student improvement in academic grades was limited, with states reporting higher math or English grades for less than half of regular program participants.” But a program that helped nearly half its participants improve their grades sounds quite successful. On standardized tests, according to the budget, “less than 20 percent of participants improved from ‘not proficient’ to ‘proficient’ or above.” Again, that’s real improvement. Maybe it’s not enough improvement for $1.16 billion a year, but it’s pretty weak evidence of a boondoggle.

Republicans in Congress have already made it clear that much of Trump’s funding attack on innovation is dead on arrival. They won’t eliminate ARPA-E or TIGER. They won’t slash medical research at NIH or shred science at EPA. But advocates worry about the death of Washington’s innovation consensus. In the past, even though lawmakers didn’t always back up their R&D rhetoric with R&D funding, science and technology were treated like motherhood and apple pie, a kind of no-fly zone in the thick of Capitol Hill’s partisan bombardments. But in Trump’s Washington, norms cease to be norms, and anything can come under attack.

“Government support for innovation is an American success story, and one of the few places of American consensus,” Muro says. “At least it used to be.”

Agent Orange: Partying Like It's 1850.

But think of all the money he'll have to build that wall!  You know, before Mexico reimburses us.  Then we can resume all the above programs.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump is struggling to stay calm on Russia, one morning call at a time"

Spoiler

President Trump has a new morning ritual. Around 6:30 a.m. on many days — before all the network news shows have come on the air — he gets on the phone with a member of his outside legal team to chew over all things Russia.

The calls — detailed by three senior White House officials — are part strategy consultation and part presidential venting session, during which Trump’s lawyers and public-relations gurus take turns reviewing the latest headlines with him. They also devise their plan for battling his avowed enemies: the special counsel leading the Russia investigation; the “fake news” media chronicling it; and, in some instances, the president’s own Justice Department overseeing the probe.

His advisers have encouraged the calls — which the early-to-rise Trump takes from his private quarters in the White House residence — in hopes that he can compartmentalize the widening Russia investigation. By the time the president arrives for work in the Oval Office, the thinking goes, he will no longer be consumed by the Russia probe that he complains hangs over his presidency like a darkening cloud. 

It rarely works, however. Asked whether the tactic was effective, one top White House adviser paused for several seconds and then just laughed.

Trump’s grievances and moods often bleed into one another. Frustration with the investigation stews inside him until it bubbles up in the form of rants to aides about unfair cable television commentary or as slights aimed at Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his deputy, Rod J. Rosenstein.

And, of course, it emerges in fiery tweets about the “WITCH HUNT” — or, as he wrote Thursday morning, shortly before an event promoting leadership in technology, “a big Dem HOAX!”

The morning calls reflect another way that Trump’s tumultuous administration is adapting to an unremitting season of investigations and to the president’s seemingly uncontrollable reactions to them. Interviews with 22 senior administration officials, outside advisers, and Trump confidants and allies reveal a White House still trying, after five months of halting progress, to establish a steady rhythm of governance while also indulging and managing Trump’s combative and sometimes self-destructive impulses.

The White House is laboring to prevent the Russia matter from overtaking its broader agenda, diligently rolling out a series of theme weeks, focusing on topics including infrastructure and workforce development. West Wing aides are working to keep the president on schedule, trotting him around the country in front of the supportive crowds that energize him. Trump is also planning several big announcements on trade in the coming weeks, before jetting off to Poland and Germany in early July.

“This is not astrophysics,” chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon said. “You solidify your base and you grow your base by getting things done. That’s what people want to see.”

Senior officials have also been devising an overhaul of the White House communications operation to better meet the offensive and defensive demands of the president they serve, as well as the 24-hour cycle of tweet-size news.

“As his detractors suffer from this never-ending ‘Russian concussion,’ the president has been tending to business as usual — bilateral meetings, progress on health care, tax and infrastructure reform, and job creation,” said Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president. “Conjecture about the mood and momentum of the West Wing is inaccurate and overwrought. The pace is breakneck, the trajectory upward.” 

Inside and outside the White House, advisers and friends are also engaging in quiet, informal conversations about when it makes sense for embattled Chief of Staff Reince Priebus to step aside — and who his replacement should be. Some of Priebus’s most senior colleagues speak ill of his leadership abilities, with one tagging him “the most imperiled person here,” although others insist Priebus is in solid standing with the president.

Some in the White House fret over what they view as the president’s fits of rage, and Trump’s longtime friends say his mood has been more sour than at any point since they have known him. They privately worry about his health, noting that he appears to have gained weight in recent months and that the darkness around his eyes reveals his stress. 

But others who interact with Trump each day have a more positive interpretation of his behavior, saying his mood is far sunnier than news reports would suggest. Hope Hicks, Trump’s director of strategic communications, who sits at a desk just outside the Oval Office, said the president is optimistic and expressing the fighting spirit that appeals to voters. 

Citing his 1987 book, “The Art of the Deal,” Hicks said, “Perhaps President Trump said it best many years ago when he wrote, ‘My general attitude all my life, has been to fight back very hard. . . . [A]s far as I’m concerned, if they had any real ability they wouldn’t be fighting me, they’d be doing something constructive themselves.’ The president promised the American people they elected a fighter and he embodies that with his instincts, spirit and energy.” 

Many Republicans observing from the outside, however, voice dismay about the president’s behavior.

“What’s playing out is a psychological drama, not just a political drama or a legal drama,” said Peter Wehner, who was an aide in George W. Bush’s White House and has frequently been critical of Trump. “The president’s psychology is what’s driving so much of this, and it’s alarming because it shows a lack of self-control, a tremendous tropism. . . . He seems to draw psychic energy from creating chaos and disorder.” 

After Trump fired James B. Comey as FBI director in May and scrutiny over Russia intensified from investigators and journalists, the president and his inner circle settled on a combative strategy to discredit critics, undermine the probe itself and galvanize his most loyal supporters.

The approach also put Bannon on firmer ground after a rocky patch just weeks earlier, in part because of feuds with Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser. Trump views Bannon as his wartime consigliere — the sort of political street fighter he wants as his presidency is threatened.

“This is a train that’s coming,” said Roger Stone, a former Trump adviser and longtime confidant, referring to the investigation led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. “These guys are going to move on him despite the fact that they don’t have a case. The question on the table is what is he going to do about it, and that is a legal and political question.”

Trump and his top aides have tried to partition the Russia matter away from official White House business. Although the president’s personal lawyers and communications strategists have counseled him and manage inquiries from the outside the White House, they nonetheless visit the West Wing for meetings and coordinate some matters with administration officials.

There is disagreement within the Trump circle about how large the outside legal team should be. It currently is led by Marc E. Kasowitz, a New York-based lawyer who has worked with Trump off and on for several decades. Jay Sekulow, a Washington lawyer with deep ties to the Christian conservative movement, is the public face of the team. Some White House officials said they felt Sekulow got roughed up in a series of television interviews last Sunday, but noted that Trump admires Sekulow’s aggression and polished appearance. 

“Having worked for both of them, the president and Jay have a lot of similarities — media savants, quick on their feet, fighters, and I think the president would, of course, appreciate Jay’s many connections and past experiences in D.C.,” said Sam Nunberg, a former Trump adviser. 

Two other lawyers — Michael J. Bowe of Kasowitz’s firm and John Dowd, a veteran of D.C. legal circles — as well as communications strategist Mark Corallo are part of the outside team.

White House Counsel Donald F. McGahn — who has been trying to separate himself and his office from the Russia probe so that they can concentrate on the official business — has advocated for the outside team to retain additional lawyers, according to officials inside and outside the White House. But Kasowitz maintains that at this point he has the appropriate legal strategy and sees no need to enlist additional help, the officials said.

Trump is most bothered by what he views as the one-sided portrayal and overall unfairness of the Russia investigation, senior White House officials said. He thinks media reports automatically treat Comey’s version of events as superior to his own and have not focused enough on Mueller’s hiring of some investigators who have donated to Democratic candidates. He is angry that Comey’s reputation has not been tarnished by his admission that he asked a friend to leak a private memo of his interactions with Trump to the news media. And he is irritated that — as he tweeted — Rosenstein penned a memo outlining possible justifications to fire Comey and then appointed Mueller to investigate Trump, in part, for doing just that.

The president has also seemed at times to regret his decision to fire his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, after Flynn misled Vice President Pence about his contacts with the Russians. Shortly after dismissing Flynn, the president mused privately that maybe he could bring him back — despite understanding, said a senior White House official, that Flynn faced other challenges within the administration and realistically could not rejoin the team. 

Still, the president continues to privately praise Flynn, calling him a “nice guy” who “served the country well” and accusing the news media of bringing him down.

“The president just has to get it out of his mind, stop tweeting and focus on running the government, and let the investigation go on, because without that, he’ll always have this problem,” former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg told CNN this week. 

The president’s senior aides, including Priebus, who have tried for months to wean Trump from his Twitter habit, have resigned themselves to managing — rather than curtailing — his almost-daily missives. 

But inside and outside the White House, patience is running thin with Priebus, who many perceive as looking out only for himself and as having failed to bring order and discipline to a White House that often appears to lack both. 

Priebus allies say they think the chief of staff’s tenure will last at least a year. Indeed, news reports about Priebus’s imminent demise often only heighten the president’s sense of loyalty toward his chief of staff, whom he views as hardworking.

Those frustrated with Priebus stir rumors of an earlier departure, possibly as soon as the congressional recess in August. If a health-care bill passes the Senate, they say, and tax reform is up next on the docket, Priebus can plausibly save face by leaving as the White House appears on the way to notching a few legislative achievements.

“For somebody who was rumored to be on his way out week one, if he lasts six or seven months, it is a success,” one senior White House official said. 

Several White House aides and Trump confidants say that, for his next chief of staff, they expect the president to choose someone whom he views as more of a peer or someone with more governing experience. 

Two names being floated are Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.). 

Lindsay Walters, a White House spokeswoman, said Priebus is committed solely to helping Trump succeed.  “Reince’s only priority is moving the president’s agenda forward, and he works day and night toward that goal,” Walters said. “He is keeping the entire administration, from the White House to the agencies, focused on the president’s top policy objectives: repealing and replacing Obamacare, significant tax reform and rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure.”

Last month, White House communications director Mike Dubke resigned from his post, and White House press secretary Sean Spicer — who has taken on many of Dubke’s responsibilities as officials try to recruit a replacement — is expected to transition into a more behind-the-scenes strategic messaging role. 

The White House is also considering a communications “brain trust” — basically, a media team equipped to handle incoming and outgoing issues, as well as everything from surrogate response to regional and national media. Conway has been asked to play a larger role on the communications team, where she could possibly oversee surrogacy and other areas. 

Trump is hungry to see his spokesmen and spokeswomen more aggressively defend him and take the fight directly to his critics, people familiar with his thinking said.

“I don’t care if it’s Mickey Mouse, Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon or Donald J. Trump, you have to have a communications strategy to defend the president,” said one friend of the president’s, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to comment candidly.

Barry Bennett, a former Trump campaign adviser, said he understands why the president seems “horribly frustrated.” 

 “He’s being called a traitor and he knows none of it is true,” Bennett said, “and no one seems able to stop the stories.”

Um, uttering "Kellyanne" and "brain trust" in the same sentence is utter madness.

[GreyhoundFan]

Great article from NPR: "Despite Claims To Contrary, Trump Has Signed No Major Laws 5 Months In"

Spoiler

President Trump is set to sign a bill Friday that will make it easier for the secretary of veterans affairs to fire and discipline employees. The Department of Veterans Affairs Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act of 2017 will mark Trump's 40th law signed.

Sounds like a lot.

And in recent days, Trump has boasted about all the legislation he has signed.

"We passed and signed 38 pieces of legislation, which nobody likes to talk about," Trump said June 13 before a lunch with lawmakers. "I think probably seldom has any president and administration done more or had more success so early on, including a record number of resolutions to eliminate job-killing regulations."

And he tweeted the same message on Friday morning.

...

Measuring laws passed by counting rather than by significance is pretty meaningless. More on that in a bit. Among modern Oval Office occupants, Presidents Jimmy Carter (52), George H.W. Bush (41) and Bill Clinton (41) had all signed more bills into law than Trump has by this point in their presidencies.

So, what has Trump accomplished with Congress so far? Nothing that political scientists would categorize as major pieces of legislation. We looked at this question as Trump hit his 100 days mark. This story contains more detail on legislation he signed in the early part of his presidency.

...

As he said, Trump has signed a record number of resolutions reversing Obama-era regulations, 15 in total. These resolutions were passed under the Congressional Review Act and only required a simple majority for passage in the Senate. It was only used once before, by George W. Bush.

That made it much easier to get them through than regular legislation. The Congressional Review Act was passed in 1996 and allows Congress to reverse rules within 60 legislative days of their submission. That period is now over, so you won't see more laws like these any time soon.

Two of the laws he has signed are budget related. One simply extended federal spending for a week while Congress worked out its differences on a longer-term funding bill. The other was possibly the most significant legislation signed by Trump so far. It kept the government funded and set spending levels through the end of September.

But these sorts of spending bills are also the most basic functions of Congress and the president, literally keeping the lights on.

On June 6, Trump signed a law designating the courthouse on Church Street in Nashville, Tenn., as the Fred D. Thompson Federal Building and United States Courthouse. Thompson served in the Senate, representing Tennessee from 1994 to 2003 and briefly ran for president in 2008. But he is best known for playing District Attorney Arthur Branch on the long-running police procedural drama Law and Order on NBC. He died in 2015. There was no formal signing ceremony for that bill.

On May 16, the president signed a law requiring the government to allow federal employees to use Uber, Lyft, bike sharing and other forms of alternative transportation for official travel. The Modernizing Government Travel Act was also introduced last year and passed the House but wasn't taken up by the Senate.

"I will say that never has there been a president — with few exceptions; in the case of [Franklin D. Roosevelt], he had a major depression to handle — who's passed more legislation, who's done more things than what we've done," Trump said at the start of a recent Cabinet meeting, "between the executive orders and the job-killing regulations that have been terminated. Many bills; I guess over 34 bills that Congress signed."

The 39 Laws President Trump Has Signed

Repealing Obama-Era Rules And Regulations (15)

• H.J.Res. 67: "Disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of Labor relating to savings arrangements established by qualified State political subdivisions for non-governmental employees"
• H.J.Res. 43: "Providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the final rule submitted by Secretary of Health and Human Services relating to compliance with title X requirements by project recipients in selecting subrecipients"
• H.J.Res. 69: "Providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the final rule of the Department of the Interior relating to 'Non-Subsistence Take of Wildlife, and Public Participation and Closure Procedures, on National Wildlife Refuges in Alaska' "
• H.J.Res. 83: "Disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of Labor relating to 'Clarification of Employer's Continuing Obligation to Make and Maintain an Accurate Record of Each Recordable Injury and Illness'"
• S.J.Res. 34: "A joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Federal Communications Commission relating to 'Protecting the Privacy of Customers of Broadband and Other Telecommunications Services' "
• H.J.Res. 42: "Disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of Labor relating to drug testing of unemployment compensation applicants"
• H.J.Res. 57: "Providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Department of Education relating to accountability and State plans under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965"
• H.J.Res. 58: "Providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Department of Education relating to teacher preparation issues"
• H.J.Res. 37: "Disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of Defense, the General Services Administration, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration relating to the Federal Acquisition Regulation"
• H.J.Res. 44: "Disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of the Interior relating to Bureau of Land Management regulations that establish the procedures used to prepare, revise, or amend land use plans pursuant to the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976"
• H.J.Res. 40: "Providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Social Security Administration relating to Implementation of the NICS Improvement Amendments Act of 2007"
• H.J.Res. 38: "Disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of the Interior known as the Stream Protection Rule"
• H.J.Res. 41: "Providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of a rule submitted by the Securities and Exchange Commission relating to 'Disclosure of Payments by Resource Extraction Issuers' "
• S. 496: "A bill to repeal the rule issued by the Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Transit Administration entitled 'Metropolitan Planning Organization Coordination and Planning Area Reform.' "
• H.J.Res. 66: "Disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of Labor relating to savings arrangements established by States for non-governmental employees."

Modifying Existing Programs (6)

• H.R. 353: "Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act of 2017"
• S. 442: "National Aeronautics and Space Administration Transition Authorization Act of 2017"
• H.R. 72: "GAO Access and Oversight Act of 2017"
• S. 419: "Public Safety Officers' Benefits Improvement Act of 2017"
• S. 583: "American Law Enforcement Heroes Act of 2017"
• H.R. 657 "Follow the Rules Act"
• Encouraging An Agency To Try Something New (5)
• H.R. 321: "Inspiring the Next Space Pioneers, Innovators, Researchers, and Explorers (INSPIRE) Women Act"
• H.R. 255: "Promoting Women in Entrepreneurship Act"
• H.R. 534: "U.S. Wants to Compete for a World Expo Act"
• H.R. 274: "Modernizing Government Travel Act"
• H.R. 366: "DHS SAVE Act"

Naming Something/Siting A Memorial/Encouraging Flag Flying (5)

• S.J. Res. 1: "A joint resolution approving the location of a memorial to commemorate and honor the members of the Armed Forces who served on active duty in support of Operation Desert Storm or Operation Desert Shield"
• H.R. 1362: "To name the Department of Veterans Affairs community-based outpatient clinic in Pago Pago, American Samoa, the Faleomavaega Eni Fa'aua'a Hunkin VA Clinic"
• H.R. 609: "To designate the Department of Veterans Affairs health care center in Center Township, Butler County, Pennsylvania, as the 'Abie Abraham VA Clinic'"
• S. 305: "Vietnam War Veterans Recognition Act of 2017"
• H.R. 375: "To designate the Federal building and United States courthouse located at 719 Church Street in Nashville, Tennessee, as the 'Fred D. Thompson Federal Building and United States Courthouse.'"

Personnel-Related (5)

• S.J.Res. 30: "A joint resolution providing for the reappointment of Steve Case as a citizen regent of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution"
• S.J.Res. 36: "A joint resolution providing for the appointment of Roger W. Ferguson as a citizen regent of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution"
• S.J.Res. 35: "A joint resolution providing for the appointment of Michael Govan as a citizen regent of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution"
• H.R. 1228: "To provide for the appointment of members of the Board of Directors of the Office of Compliance to replace members whose terms expire during 2017, and for other purposes"
• S. 84: "A bill to provide for an exception to a limitation against appointment of persons as Secretary of Defense within seven years of relief from active duty as a regular commissioned officer of the Armed Forces"

Extending Obama-Era Policy (2)

• S. 544: "A bill to amend the Veterans Access, Choice, and Accountability Act of 2014 to modify the termination date for the Veterans Choice Program, and for other purposes."
• H.J.Res. 99: "Making further continuing appropriations for fiscal year 2017, and for other purposes."

Omnibus Appropriations Bill (1)

• H.R. 244: "Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2017"

Legislative links and text via GovTrack.

When my grandma got older, she would list all the errands "we" would have to do (I would run the errands, she would sit in the car). The errands could be as simple as dropping a letter in the drive-up mailbox. She would make a great show of "checking off" each errand. The TT sounds like he's applying this model to the crap he's doing.

[fraurosena]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"The anti-innovation presidency"

  Reveal hidden contents

“Innovation” is one of those Washington priorities, like “security” or “the children,” that politicians in both parties tend to describe as investments rather than spending. Even as budget wars have raged on Capitol Hill, there’s been a fairly broad consensus that funding research and development is vital to American competitiveness. The Beltway seems to churn out an inexhaustible supply of bipartisan reports proclaiming that bigger government investments in science and technology today will pay economic dividends for taxpayers down the road.

This week has been “tech week” at the White House, and President Trump has jumped onto the rhetorical bandwagon, hailing the glories of innovation. “My administration is embracing a new spirit of innovation that will make life better for all Americans,” he told a group of technology leaders gathered in the Oval Office on Monday; he doubled down Thursday, promising another group of new-economy executives that his government would “help unleash technological breakthroughs that will transform our lives.”

But Trump’s 2018 budget goes the opposite direction: It proposes the deepest cuts in innovation investments that any administration has ever proposed.

Not only does the Trump budget slash climate science and clean energy research beloved by Trump’s critics, it whacks advanced manufacturing programs and fossil energy research catering to Trump’s supporters, as well as basic science and medical research beloved by almost everyone. It’s a powerful rejection of the innovation-industrial complex, and even though Congress is likely to ignore most of it, a similarly powerful reflection of Trump’s political war on Washington elites.

Overall, Trump’s budget cuts research and development spending by about 5 percent from current levels, but that figure includes hefty increases for late-stage weapons development at the Pentagon. It would roll back non-defense R&D by an unprecedented 19 percent, taking the axe to the popular as well as the obscure. The National Institutes of Health would absorb a 21.5 percent hit, including major cuts in research on aging, cancer, infectious disease, mental health, and drug abuse; NIH grant programs would have their stingiest award rates since 1970. There would be even harsher cuts for the Agricultural Research Service, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NASA’s education funding, NOAA’s ocean research, and EPA’s science office.

The Trump blueprint would also eliminate the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, which oversees studies of which medical treatments actually work; the U.S. Geological Survey’s monitoring programs for volcanoes, earthquakes and the climate; and a popular Manufacturing Extension Partnership that provided technical assistance for more than 25,000 companies last year. And it would wipe out ARPA-E, the most futuristic agency in Washington, a cutting-edge incubator for energy research modeled on the high-tech Pentagon unit that pioneered GPS and the Internet.

Trump aides believe some federal investments in R&D have been duplicative or ineffective, while others ought to be handled by the private sector. And they’re still proposing $150 billion in R&D funding, which is considerably more than zero. But their main argument for spending less on innovation is simply that America can’t afford to spend more. Trump’s Office of Management and Budget director, Mick Mulvaney, is an ardent limited-government conservative, and the budget he crafted for Trump reflects his belief that Washington spends way too much of your money. Trump made it clear his top budget priorities are strengthening the military and securing the border, while somehow reducing deficits without raising taxes or cutting Medicare or Social Security for the elderly. Mulvaney had to shrink something—really, just about everything else—to try to check all those boxes.

“We wanted more for defense and the border, so we had to offset those increases somewhere,” one senior budget official explained. “We’re still making a big commitment to R&D. It’s just less than other administrations might make.”

In fact, even within Trump’s top government priorities, like the military and the border, innovation is getting a haircut. The American Association for the Advancement of Science calculated that Trump’s budget would squeeze the Pentagon’s science and technology spending by 5 percent, including an 18 percent cut for its “manufacturing innovation institutes.” The Department of Homeland Security’s science and technology budget would shrink by 20 percent, limiting research into cybersecurity, bioweapons defense, and border technologies.

There’s a political logic to Trump’s innovation policy heresies. Two thirds of R&D spending goes to blue states, and most of it tends to cluster in large cities and college towns rather than farm country or the Rust Belt, one reason these issues have more resonance for cosmopolitan technocrats than for Trump voters. President Obama talked about them incessantly, clamoring for aggressive investments in innovation to help America “win the future,” but Trump has attacked just about everything Obama was for, from health care reform to the Paris climate agreement. On the campaign trail, he never emphasized winning the future, just winning, and he never proposed any new innovation policies of note.

Trump did create a White House Office of American Innovation led by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and at his meeting with tech leaders he vowed that the office would help upgrade the federal government’s balky technology. But he did not suggest that it would help promote innovation in the private sector; he suggested that was the private sector’s job. In fact, one of the office’s main tasks will be shrinking and reorganizing the government, reflecting the belief of Mulvaney and other movement conservatives in the administration that the best thing government can do to spur innovation is to get out of the way of innovative businesses. In fact, during last year’s crisis over the Zika virus, as public health experts were racing to study its link to birth defects, Mulvaney asked a provocative question on Facebook: “Do we really need government-funded research at all?”

Historically, though, the U.S. government has played a vital role in seeding and developing technological advances ranging from supercomputing to hydraulic fracking, advanced prosthetics to lactose-free milk, LED lighting to MRI testing. The Trump budget represents an abrupt departure from this tradition, at a time when federal expenditures on R&D have already drooped to their lowest level as a share of the economy since the Russians launched Sputnik. This has innovation experts scratching their heads, since Trump’s entire budget depends on yet another departure from budget tradition, a blithe assumption of 3 percent annual growth. Mark Muro, policy director at the Brookings Institution’s metropolitan studies program, says that with America’s workforce shrinking, the clearest pathways to that kind of robust growth would be more immigration and more innovation—and Trump has made it clear he doesn’t want more immigration. But he doesn’t seem to think Uncle Sam can help make innovation happen, either.

“There’s no conception in this budget of any positive role for government,” Muro says. “It’s totally out of step with everything we know about the innovation economy. I guess you could say that’s an innovation.”

OBAMA FIRST UNVEILED his innovation agenda in a November 2007 speech at Google headquarters, calling for major investments in clean energy, digital technology, medical research, and basic science—as well as education reform, job training, and infrastructure, which he also categorized as innovation spending. Two years later, he was elected president during an economic meltdown, and quickly tucked a remarkable amount of that egghead agenda into his $800 billion stimulus bill, using public dollars to jump-start private industries that felt like the future.

For example, the stimulus poured billions of dollars into solar power, and while the highest-profile result was a busted loan to a manufacturer called Solyndra, other stimulus projects have helped increase U.S. solar generation by more than 3000 percent since 2009. Similarly, the stimulus financed an entirely new domestic battery industry for electric vehicles, as well as a $465 million loan to rescue a failing automaker called Tesla; more than 400,000 EV’s have been sold in America since 2009, and Tesla is now the most valuable U.S. car company. Overall, the stimulus sparked the largest federal investment in innovation since the moon mission, including record funding for a smarter electric grid, factories producing clean energy components, digital health records, NIH research, and an out-of-the-box grant competition called TIGER for innovative transportation projects.

Obama kept banging the drum for innovation throughout his presidency, repeatedly calling on America to “out-educate, out-innovate, and out-compete the rest of the world.” On October 21, 2015—also known as Back to the Future Day, because that’s the day Marty McFly time-traveled to in his cinematic DeLorean—Obama unveiled an ambitious agenda for future investments in growth areas like precision medicine, brain science, artificial intelligence, and educational technology. But the huge bump in innovation funding through the stimulus turned out to be a one-time bump. The Republicans who took back the House in 2011 consistently rejected Obama’s requests for more money, so federal R&D expenditures have stagnated, dipping to about half their 1980s levels as a share of GDP.

Now Trump is proposing to gut them, sending an unmistakable message about his priorities. He’s not interested in helping the geeks who carried signs poking fun of him at the March for Science.

“Nobody has ever proposed cuts of this scale,” says Matt Hourihan, who oversees R&D policy at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “Nobody has ever drawn this narrow a boundary around what government should be doing with basic science. It’s really a clean break with a bipartisan consensus.”

The Trump budget would kill the loan program for fuel-efficient automakers that saved Tesla, as well as similar loans for “innovative technologies” in the green energy world. It would also kill TIGER, even though Trump’s transportation secretary, Elaine Chao, told Congress she would push to boost the program’s funding because it was working so well, and the AHRQ, even though its comparative effectiveness studies help save lives (by highlighting safety measures like a checklist that reduced central line infections in hospitals) and taxpayer dollars (by exposing wasteful and ineffective surgeries, drugs, and medical devices). It would cut the Energy Department’s clean energy program by more than two thirds, and fossil energy by half. If you include education, job training and infrastructure in your innovation bucket, Trump’s budget cuts all of them as well, although he has promised a still-unspecified $1 trillion infrastructure program outside his budget.

As for R&D, the senior budget official told me the administration wants to shift the government focus from applied research towards early-stage experimentation that private firms tend to avoid, partly because they tend to focus on short-term earnings, partly because they worry that their competitors will end up reaping the benefits of their expensive research. But that doesn’t explain why the Trump wants to dismantle ARPA-E, which finances disruptive energy technologies in their earliest stages. Since 2009, its grant recipients have gone on to raise more than $1 billion in private capital, for ideas ranging from easier-to-make silicon wafers for solar panels to laser-operated drill bits for oil wells. Bill Gates and other business leaders have described ARPA-E as a model for what government ought to be doing to help America compete in the 21st century “Look, we had to make some tough choices,” the official explained. “We’re still going to have national labs.”

The Trump budget also calls for a 70 percent cut in an Obama program called Manufacturing USA, which has partnered with industry and academia to finance early-stage research into growth areas like robotics, photonics, 3-D printing and lightweight materials at “hubs” in cities like Detroit, Knoxville, and Youngstown. And it would shut down the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, a $120-million-a-year program with offices providing technical assistance to small and medium-sized manufacturers in all 50 states. Atkinson said that Canada invests ten times as much in similar programs as a share of its GDP, while Germany invests 20 times as much and Japan 40 times as much—and they’ve lost less of their manufacturing base.

“I thought reviving U.S. manufacturing was going to make America great again,” says Rob Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. “These programs are already terribly underfunded, and they’re serving Trump’s voters. But this administration is under the ideological delusion that the government is always the problem. No other country acts like this.”

Administration officials point out federal programs with noble goals and unobjectionable-sounding names are not necessarily effective, and they’ve got a point. The Manufacturing Extension Partnership’s offices in all 50 states, including states without much manufacturing, is hidden-in-plain-sight evidence that political considerations often drive funding decisions. It may seem odd that Trump wants to get rid of the Economic Development Administration, when he talks so much about economic development, and when the EDA specifically focuses on the depressed rural regions and smaller cities where so many Trump voters live. But a Government Accountability Office report found that every one of the agency’s 80 programs overlapped with some other federal program.

Andy Roth, a lobbyist at the conservative Club for Growth, said Trump and Mulvaney deserve credit for taking on the sacred cow of “investment in innovation,” because it’s really just a euphemism for corporate welfare. Roth argued that when government helps a company or an industry with basic research or applied research or anything else, it’s picking winners and losers, substituting the judgment of politicians and bureaucrats for the genius of the free market. Roth said the government should protect businesses from high taxes and intrusive regulations, but should otherwise leave innovation to the innovators in the private sector.

“We don’t believe the government should be in the innovation business,” Roth said. “We’re thrilled that the Trump administration is getting rid of some of these programs, because there are a lot of stinkers out there.”

But innovation experts say there’s voluminous evidence that the long-term benefits of these investments far outweigh the costs, and that cutting them is like eating seed corn. Atkinson estimates that Trump’s cuts would reduce GDP by $139 billion by 2027. And some programs the administration portrayed as stinkers don’t really sound so awful. For example, the budget proposed to save $1.16 billion a year by axing the “21st Century Community Learning Centers” after-school program for needy children, declaring “performance data demonstrates the program is not achieving its goals.” It cites evidence that “student improvement in academic grades was limited, with states reporting higher math or English grades for less than half of regular program participants.” But a program that helped nearly half its participants improve their grades sounds quite successful. On standardized tests, according to the budget, “less than 20 percent of participants improved from ‘not proficient’ to ‘proficient’ or above.” Again, that’s real improvement. Maybe it’s not enough improvement for $1.16 billion a year, but it’s pretty weak evidence of a boondoggle.

Republicans in Congress have already made it clear that much of Trump’s funding attack on innovation is dead on arrival. They won’t eliminate ARPA-E or TIGER. They won’t slash medical research at NIH or shred science at EPA. But advocates worry about the death of Washington’s innovation consensus. In the past, even though lawmakers didn’t always back up their R&D rhetoric with R&D funding, science and technology were treated like motherhood and apple pie, a kind of no-fly zone in the thick of Capitol Hill’s partisan bombardments. But in Trump’s Washington, norms cease to be norms, and anything can come under attack.

“Government support for innovation is an American success story, and one of the few places of American consensus,” Muro says. “At least it used to be.”

Agent Orange: Partying Like It's 1850.

Just what is the the 'logic' they're using to justify utterly destroying the governmental system, education, science, healthcare, the environment, journalism? 

The only reason that makes any bit of sense is that they're setting things up for authoritarian rule. Scary stuff, happening right before your eyes. The repugliklan morons are not only selling their own souls for the almighty dollar sign, their also happily selling the soul of the American republic.

And what will all the lickspittles, who are blindly and dutifully ass-kissing now, say afterwards when they find themselves under the thumb of a psychopathic despot? I bet it's something like "Wir haben es nicht gewußt."  

[GrumpyGran]

59 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Trump is struggling to stay calm on Russia, one morning call at a time"

  Reveal hidden contents

President Trump has a new morning ritual. Around 6:30 a.m. on many days — before all the network news shows have come on the air — he gets on the phone with a member of his outside legal team to chew over all things Russia.

The calls — detailed by three senior White House officials — are part strategy consultation and part presidential venting session, during which Trump’s lawyers and public-relations gurus take turns reviewing the latest headlines with him. They also devise their plan for battling his avowed enemies: the special counsel leading the Russia investigation; the “fake news” media chronicling it; and, in some instances, the president’s own Justice Department overseeing the probe.

His advisers have encouraged the calls — which the early-to-rise Trump takes from his private quarters in the White House residence — in hopes that he can compartmentalize the widening Russia investigation. By the time the president arrives for work in the Oval Office, the thinking goes, he will no longer be consumed by the Russia probe that he complains hangs over his presidency like a darkening cloud. 

It rarely works, however. Asked whether the tactic was effective, one top White House adviser paused for several seconds and then just laughed.

Trump’s grievances and moods often bleed into one another. Frustration with the investigation stews inside him until it bubbles up in the form of rants to aides about unfair cable television commentary or as slights aimed at Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his deputy, Rod J. Rosenstein.

And, of course, it emerges in fiery tweets about the “WITCH HUNT” — or, as he wrote Thursday morning, shortly before an event promoting leadership in technology, “a big Dem HOAX!”

The morning calls reflect another way that Trump’s tumultuous administration is adapting to an unremitting season of investigations and to the president’s seemingly uncontrollable reactions to them. Interviews with 22 senior administration officials, outside advisers, and Trump confidants and allies reveal a White House still trying, after five months of halting progress, to establish a steady rhythm of governance while also indulging and managing Trump’s combative and sometimes self-destructive impulses.

The White House is laboring to prevent the Russia matter from overtaking its broader agenda, diligently rolling out a series of theme weeks, focusing on topics including infrastructure and workforce development. West Wing aides are working to keep the president on schedule, trotting him around the country in front of the supportive crowds that energize him. Trump is also planning several big announcements on trade in the coming weeks, before jetting off to Poland and Germany in early July.

“This is not astrophysics,” chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon said. “You solidify your base and you grow your base by getting things done. That’s what people want to see.”

Senior officials have also been devising an overhaul of the White House communications operation to better meet the offensive and defensive demands of the president they serve, as well as the 24-hour cycle of tweet-size news.

“As his detractors suffer from this never-ending ‘Russian concussion,’ the president has been tending to business as usual — bilateral meetings, progress on health care, tax and infrastructure reform, and job creation,” said Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president. “Conjecture about the mood and momentum of the West Wing is inaccurate and overwrought. The pace is breakneck, the trajectory upward.” 

Inside and outside the White House, advisers and friends are also engaging in quiet, informal conversations about when it makes sense for embattled Chief of Staff Reince Priebus to step aside — and who his replacement should be. Some of Priebus’s most senior colleagues speak ill of his leadership abilities, with one tagging him “the most imperiled person here,” although others insist Priebus is in solid standing with the president.

Some in the White House fret over what they view as the president’s fits of rage, and Trump’s longtime friends say his mood has been more sour than at any point since they have known him. They privately worry about his health, noting that he appears to have gained weight in recent months and that the darkness around his eyes reveals his stress. 

But others who interact with Trump each day have a more positive interpretation of his behavior, saying his mood is far sunnier than news reports would suggest. Hope Hicks, Trump’s director of strategic communications, who sits at a desk just outside the Oval Office, said the president is optimistic and expressing the fighting spirit that appeals to voters. 

Citing his 1987 book, “The Art of the Deal,” Hicks said, “Perhaps President Trump said it best many years ago when he wrote, ‘My general attitude all my life, has been to fight back very hard. . . . [A]s far as I’m concerned, if they had any real ability they wouldn’t be fighting me, they’d be doing something constructive themselves.’ The president promised the American people they elected a fighter and he embodies that with his instincts, spirit and energy.” 

Many Republicans observing from the outside, however, voice dismay about the president’s behavior.

“What’s playing out is a psychological drama, not just a political drama or a legal drama,” said Peter Wehner, who was an aide in George W. Bush’s White House and has frequently been critical of Trump. “The president’s psychology is what’s driving so much of this, and it’s alarming because it shows a lack of self-control, a tremendous tropism. . . . He seems to draw psychic energy from creating chaos and disorder.” 

After Trump fired James B. Comey as FBI director in May and scrutiny over Russia intensified from investigators and journalists, the president and his inner circle settled on a combative strategy to discredit critics, undermine the probe itself and galvanize his most loyal supporters.

The approach also put Bannon on firmer ground after a rocky patch just weeks earlier, in part because of feuds with Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser. Trump views Bannon as his wartime consigliere — the sort of political street fighter he wants as his presidency is threatened.

“This is a train that’s coming,” said Roger Stone, a former Trump adviser and longtime confidant, referring to the investigation led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. “These guys are going to move on him despite the fact that they don’t have a case. The question on the table is what is he going to do about it, and that is a legal and political question.”

Trump and his top aides have tried to partition the Russia matter away from official White House business. Although the president’s personal lawyers and communications strategists have counseled him and manage inquiries from the outside the White House, they nonetheless visit the West Wing for meetings and coordinate some matters with administration officials.

There is disagreement within the Trump circle about how large the outside legal team should be. It currently is led by Marc E. Kasowitz, a New York-based lawyer who has worked with Trump off and on for several decades. Jay Sekulow, a Washington lawyer with deep ties to the Christian conservative movement, is the public face of the team. Some White House officials said they felt Sekulow got roughed up in a series of television interviews last Sunday, but noted that Trump admires Sekulow’s aggression and polished appearance. 

“Having worked for both of them, the president and Jay have a lot of similarities — media savants, quick on their feet, fighters, and I think the president would, of course, appreciate Jay’s many connections and past experiences in D.C.,” said Sam Nunberg, a former Trump adviser. 

Two other lawyers — Michael J. Bowe of Kasowitz’s firm and John Dowd, a veteran of D.C. legal circles — as well as communications strategist Mark Corallo are part of the outside team.

White House Counsel Donald F. McGahn — who has been trying to separate himself and his office from the Russia probe so that they can concentrate on the official business — has advocated for the outside team to retain additional lawyers, according to officials inside and outside the White House. But Kasowitz maintains that at this point he has the appropriate legal strategy and sees no need to enlist additional help, the officials said.

Trump is most bothered by what he views as the one-sided portrayal and overall unfairness of the Russia investigation, senior White House officials said. He thinks media reports automatically treat Comey’s version of events as superior to his own and have not focused enough on Mueller’s hiring of some investigators who have donated to Democratic candidates. He is angry that Comey’s reputation has not been tarnished by his admission that he asked a friend to leak a private memo of his interactions with Trump to the news media. And he is irritated that — as he tweeted — Rosenstein penned a memo outlining possible justifications to fire Comey and then appointed Mueller to investigate Trump, in part, for doing just that.

The president has also seemed at times to regret his decision to fire his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, after Flynn misled Vice President Pence about his contacts with the Russians. Shortly after dismissing Flynn, the president mused privately that maybe he could bring him back — despite understanding, said a senior White House official, that Flynn faced other challenges within the administration and realistically could not rejoin the team. 

Still, the president continues to privately praise Flynn, calling him a “nice guy” who “served the country well” and accusing the news media of bringing him down.

“The president just has to get it out of his mind, stop tweeting and focus on running the government, and let the investigation go on, because without that, he’ll always have this problem,” former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg told CNN this week. 

The president’s senior aides, including Priebus, who have tried for months to wean Trump from his Twitter habit, have resigned themselves to managing — rather than curtailing — his almost-daily missives. 

But inside and outside the White House, patience is running thin with Priebus, who many perceive as looking out only for himself and as having failed to bring order and discipline to a White House that often appears to lack both. 

Priebus allies say they think the chief of staff’s tenure will last at least a year. Indeed, news reports about Priebus’s imminent demise often only heighten the president’s sense of loyalty toward his chief of staff, whom he views as hardworking.

Those frustrated with Priebus stir rumors of an earlier departure, possibly as soon as the congressional recess in August. If a health-care bill passes the Senate, they say, and tax reform is up next on the docket, Priebus can plausibly save face by leaving as the White House appears on the way to notching a few legislative achievements.

“For somebody who was rumored to be on his way out week one, if he lasts six or seven months, it is a success,” one senior White House official said. 

Several White House aides and Trump confidants say that, for his next chief of staff, they expect the president to choose someone whom he views as more of a peer or someone with more governing experience. 

Two names being floated are Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.). 

Lindsay Walters, a White House spokeswoman, said Priebus is committed solely to helping Trump succeed.  “Reince’s only priority is moving the president’s agenda forward, and he works day and night toward that goal,” Walters said. “He is keeping the entire administration, from the White House to the agencies, focused on the president’s top policy objectives: repealing and replacing Obamacare, significant tax reform and rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure.”

Last month, White House communications director Mike Dubke resigned from his post, and White House press secretary Sean Spicer — who has taken on many of Dubke’s responsibilities as officials try to recruit a replacement — is expected to transition into a more behind-the-scenes strategic messaging role. 

The White House is also considering a communications “brain trust” — basically, a media team equipped to handle incoming and outgoing issues, as well as everything from surrogate response to regional and national media. Conway has been asked to play a larger role on the communications team, where she could possibly oversee surrogacy and other areas. 

Trump is hungry to see his spokesmen and spokeswomen more aggressively defend him and take the fight directly to his critics, people familiar with his thinking said.

“I don’t care if it’s Mickey Mouse, Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon or Donald J. Trump, you have to have a communications strategy to defend the president,” said one friend of the president’s, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to comment candidly.

Barry Bennett, a former Trump campaign adviser, said he understands why the president seems “horribly frustrated.” 

 “He’s being called a traitor and he knows none of it is true,” Bennett said, “and no one seems able to stop the stories.”

Um, uttering "Kellyanne" and "brain trust" in the same sentence is utter madness.

Kellyanne vomits up word hash. I think she just likes to hear herself talk. Because the left doesn't believe a word she says. And Trump lovers can't understand the words she says.

And Hope Hicks quotes his 30-year-old book. Her way of saying "Yeah, he doesn't talk to me either."

[GreyhoundFan]

Since I can't bear to watch Faux News, I read this annotated transcript of their fawning interview with Agent Orange and Melania the statue. The notes are very good, but I can't quote them here. "Trump congratulates himself for influencing Comey’s testimony with White House tapes ruse"

[VelociRapture]

Just a FYI: Senator Chris Murphy (CT-D) will be holding a Facebook Live session tomorrow morning concerning the "Healthcare" bill. He's currently taking questions that he'll try and answer tomorrow. If you're a Connecticut resident (or you have a Senator who sucks balls and won't explain things) then you may want to try and tune in to learn more. It's set to start at 9:00 am. Here's his profile:

https://www.facebook.com/ChrisMurphyCT/

And I'm sorry I don't come in here much anymore. It's all just... it's a lot to take in and I feel like avoiding this forum tends to be better for me emotionally and mentally (especially concerning my anxiety.) I'm doing my best to stay up to date through the Internet though and I'm really hoping we get through the next few years without things falling completely to crap.

[GreyhoundFan]

Another lawsuit: "Trump Sued For Allegedly Violating Presidential Records Act"

Spoiler

Two government watchdog groups, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive, filed a lawsuit Thursday against President Trump and the Executive Office of the President.

The complaint alleges that White House staffers' widely reported use of encrypted messaging apps, such as Signal and Confide, for internal communication violates the Presidential Records Act.

In the lawsuit, the groups claim the Trump administration has "failed to adopt adequate policies and guidelines to maintain and preserve presidential records."

Encrypted messaging apps automatically delete messages, which would prevent those communications from being archived.

"The American people not only deserve to know how their government is making important decisions, it's the law," CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder said in a statement. "By deleting these records, the White House is destroying essential historical records."

Presidential records are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act while a president is in office. However, they become eligible under the PRA five years (and 12 years for classified material) after a president leaves office.

Additionally, the lawsuit draws attention to Trump's use of his personal Twitter account. Under the Obama administration, social media posts were included as a type of communication to be archived under the PRA.

Any of Trump's statements made on Twitter are subject to federal record keeping, and the lawsuit argues that any deleted tweets would count as a violation of the PRA as well.

The lawsuit points to an instance in November when Trump deleted a tweet about meeting with generals at his Mar-a-Lago resort.

CREW and NSA say they have the legal standing to sue, though that assertion is likely to be challenged by the White House. CREW spokesman Jordan Libowitz tells NPR that both groups have what's called "informational injury," which would allow them to sue.

This isn't the first lawsuit CREW has filed against Trump and his administration. The watchdog group filed one in January stating that Trump's failure to fully divest from his businesses allows him to receive favors from foreign governments by their staying at his properties or holding events at his hotel, which the group says violates the Constitution's Emoluments Clause.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the latest lawsuit.

 

[VixenToast]

^^^^^ hahahaha

[GreyhoundFan]

"5 things Trump did while you weren't looking: Week 3"

Spoiler

The White House declared it “Tech Week,” inviting a group of CEO’s to repair the administration’s somewhat rocky relationship to the innovation industries. But for all intents and purposes, this turned out to be Healthcare Week in Washington.

The Senate GOP’s healthcare bill dropped with a bang on Thursday, drafted so secretly that even key Republican lawmakers didn’t know what was in it. The bill so dominated the Washington news that even Trump’s walk back of his Comey-tape threat got only a short ride in the spotlight.

Whether Congress really gets a health care bill done is anyone’s guess; for now, it’s a massive rethink of Medicaid and some significant changes to Obamacare. But away from Capitol Hill, the White House really is still getting stuff done, quietly continuing its broad rollback of Obama-era policies. As part of our weekly roundup of what’s really changing across the government, here are five big policy changes from the last week:

1. The Labor Department loosens a rule on beryllium exposure
You haven’t heard of it since chemistry class, but beryllium is a chemical toxic to lung tissue. The Department of Labor took years to finalize a rule protecting workers from exposure, and didn’t issue the final version until the tail end of Obama’s presidency—January 9, to be exact. It was always at risk of removal by the Republican Congress, which could have repealed it with just a majority vote, but it survived until now.

On Friday, the Department of Labor proposed a new rule on beryllium exposure; it doesn’t change the original exposure limits imposed by Obama but instead eliminates additional safety requirements for the construction and shipyard industries, such as conducting medical surveillance or providing training for those workers who are near, but not above, the exposure limits. Labor groups slammed the change, saying that it would lead to more lung disease and cancer among workers. Industry groups applauded the changes; the original rule, they argued, was too restrictive.

The DOL must still go through a full rule-making process, so the new beryllium rule won’t be finalized for months. In the meantime, the department said it wouldn’t be enforcing the Obama-era rule.

2. A new emergency alert for cops
We’ve all noticed the emergency warnings on television or radio, which alert audiences about a child abduction (the “Amber Alert”) or severe weather. Soon, there may be a new alert: a “Blue Alert” for when a police officer is missing, seriously injured or killed in the line of duty.

On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission unanimously approved the first stage of rulemaking to add such a “Blue Alert” to the FCC’s Emergency Alert System (EAS), which was created in 1997 to enable the president to communicate quickly and directly with the American people in the case of an emergency. Stations are required to carry such presidential alerts but alerts for a child abduction or severe weather are voluntary.

A “Blue Alert” has already been implemented in 27 states; the FCC proposal would make it a national standard. The change has bipartisan support—it’s hard to see politicians taking a stance against showing concern for officer safety—but it also fits with the Trump administration’s focus on attacks on cops, and the Department of Justice’s pivot from Obama-era policies on police accountability toward a more protective stance on police.

3. The Yucca nuclear controversy re-opens
So … where is America supposed to put its spent nuclear fuel over the long term? A decades-old debate was reawakened this week when Rick Perry, the energy secretary, announced at a congressional hearing on Tuesday that he was reconstituting the Office of Civilian Radioactive Management, which ran a proposed Nevada site for long-term waste storage.

Throughout the Obama administration, with Nevada Sen. Harry Reid leading the Senate Democrats, plans to store nuclear waste in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain had no chance of actually happening. Now it’s back. This wasn’t exactly a surprise, since Trump’s budget included $120 million to restart the licensing process for the Yucca site; in fact, in May, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission took the first steps towards restarting that process. But Perry’s words nevertheless created a sharp backlash from Nevada politicians who have long fought any plan to store nuclear waste in their state.

Perry somewhat walked back his comments at a separate congressional hearing on Wednesday, saying that “no decision has been made at this time with respect to the timing or the location, for that matter, of waste storage." But the Office of Civilian Radioactive Management is still set to reopen during fiscal 2018. The next Yucca fight is just beginning.

4. The White House gets tough with Russia
Amid multiple congressional inquiries and the investigation by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller, the Trump administration hasn’t done much to distance itself from Moscow. So it may have come as a surprise on Tuesday when the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on more than three dozen individuals and organizations involved in Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

The announcement coincided with Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko’s visit to the White House, but many observers wondered if the administration had a different motive: discouraging the House from taking up the Senate’s Russian sanctions bill. That legislation, which passed the Senate last week by a 98-2 vote, would limit Trump’s ability to ease sanctions on the Russian government. The White House has been working to water down or kill the Senate bill. The new sanctions can’t hurt those efforts.

5. Trump quietly releases another immigration executive order
It went almost entirely unnoticed: At 9:20 p.m. on Wednesday, the White House released a new executive order on immigration. Compared to Trump’s past orders on immigration, which have set off national protests and ongoing court cases, this one was minor. It makes a very small change to an Obama-era executive order, removing one section that directed the secretaries of state and homeland security to create a plan so that “80 percent of nonimmigrant visa applicants are interviewed within 3 weeks of receipt of application.”

So now, DHS and State can take more time to review nonimmigrant visa applicants. What’s the reasoning for this? Michael Short, a White House spokesperson, said in an email that the change was “a very straightforward step that removes an arbitrary requirement and ensures the State Department has the needed discretion to make real world security determinations.” He explained that the White House didn’t want to set an “arbitrary deadline” for reviewing and vetting visa applicants.

For people seeking nonimmigrant visas, which include everything from business travelers to foreign athletes to diplomats, this could mean longer waits as their applications are processed. But to the White House, any additional waits are simply a necessary step to keep the country safe.

 

[47of74]

I see Michael Bloomberg is kissing orange tapeworm ass now (Yeah, I know, pleasant mental image).

Spoiler

Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City and owner of several media outlets, thinks it’s time that Americans “get behind” President Donald Trump and “make it work.”

Democratic opponents of Trump need to get over themselves, Bloomberg argued during an interview on ABC’s “The View.” “The public has spoken, whether you like the results or not,” he said.

The media magnate compared liberal resistance to Trump with comments made by Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the Republican leader in the Senate, when he said, “the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

According to Bloomberg, such thinking is petty and risks breaking the American political system by making it dysfunctional.

He better check the temperature in hell first.

[GreyhoundFan]

10 minutes ago, 47of74 said:

I see Michael Bloomberg is kissing orange tapeworm ass now (Yeah, I know, pleasant mental image)

 

I saw this and it made me sick. I haven't always agreed with Bloomberg, but at least respected him. Note past tense.

 

Interesting opinion piece; "How can you still doubt Trump’s intelligence?'

Spoiler

Five months into Donald Trump’s administration, only the unwise doubt the president’s intelligence.

Just ask former FBI director James B. Comey, who, in addition to being fired by Trump, has been redefined by the president as a dishonest leaker who might have lied were it not for nonexistent tapes of their conversations.

Wait, what?

It takes a craven sort of cunning to pull that one off. One day, Comey, a man admired for his brilliance and integrity, is investigating possible collusion in the 2016 presidential race between Russia and the Trump campaign. The next, he’s watching his professional life unravel on television and reading that he’s not to be trusted.

Trump didn’t stop at upending the man’s career, cutting short his FBI directorship by six years. He next tweeted that Comey better hope there were no “tapes” (quotation marks his) of their private conversation that subsequently became the focal point of congressional investigations.

There were tapes?!

Of course, there were no tapes. Did anyone really think there were? Well, yes, there could have been tapes — just as there could have been a legitimate Trump University. To the credulous goes the nation.

But no president ever admits to tapes, at least not until a subpoena becomes inevitable. Or, as in this case, when the House Intelligence Committee demands such tapes, if they exist.

They don’t, Trump finally tweeted after more than a month of suspense-building hedging. But caveat trumptor : The president says he doesn’t personally have any recordings of the conversation, but who knows, what with all the surveillance around these days?

The media, alas, had no choice but to entertain the possibility that there were tapes. Like it or not, there’s no ignoring a president’s statements. Thus, television anchors and pundit panels have devoted hundreds of hours to examining the what, ifs and buts of the illusory tapes: What would it mean if they existed? What would it mean if they didn’t? Was Trump bluffing? Was he trying to intimidate Comey?

No doubt enjoying the scramble to his latest manufactured distraction, Trump chided reporters: “You’re going to be very disappointed when you hear the answer.” Perhaps. But then, life with Trump is a roller coaster of anticlimaxes.

Trump supporters, I suspect, knew all along that he was bluffing. They’re in on the joke, which is actually a Southern tradition — goofing on the media, saying outrageous stuff for the pleasure of watching reporters write it down. Who cares what reporters think, anyway, goes the thinking.

To them, Trump was taunting Comey the way they wish they could, giving him the what-for. You think you’re so tall. Toying with media and other elites has become the sport of both “commoners” and the king these days. When Trump isn’t playing king, he’s happy to be the court jester. With a shrug of his shoulders and a smirkish smile, he conveys “whatever.”

We tend to forget, too, that Trump is a professional bluffer. We keep thinking he’s the president of the United States. That’s his title, but his identity is Donald J. Trump, television star, celebrity wheeler-dealer, a man who grabs what he wants. Everything he says or does should first be considered in this context.

Poor Comey. Burdened with seriousness, he wore a black tie to a circus.

When he testified earlier this month before the Senate Intelligence Committee, saying that Trump suggested that he drop his investigation of Michael Flynn, that he wrote memos about his interactions and leaked them to the media because he feared Trump might lie about them — he was obviously telling the truth.

Otherwise, why admit to the leak — otherwise known as discreet information-sharing, which, you may as well know, makes the world go ’round. It also occurred post-firing and after Trump’s tweet about the tapes.

Yet Trump, who denies everything, has managed to create a fictional narrative that not only justifies his dangling bluff but also gilds it as a moral victory: He tweeted about tapes to make sure “leaker” Comey would be honest when he testified.

Well now.

It takes a certain kind of intelligence to spin a yarn so counterintuitive and defiantly false that some people will believe it anyway. Alternatively, Trump could be just as confused as he hopes others will be.

I'm not confused. The TT is a lying sack of shit.