Posted by Nikki Haley Named U.N. Ambassador on Wed, 23 Nov 2016 15:37 | #

NPR, “Trump Chooses South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley As U.N. Ambassador”, 23 Nov 2016:

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has been selected as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in President-elect Donald Trump’s administration, according to Trump’s transition team.

Haley has accepted the position, which requires Senate confirmation.

NPR State Department correspondent Michele Kelemen reports the position was elevated to Cabinet rank by President George W. Bush and that President Barack Obama kept the designation. But Kelemen says the job of U.N. ambassador was not traditionally Cabinet-rank and it’s unclear whether Trump will maintain that status.

Haley “has very little foreign policy experience,” Domenico tells NPR’s Steve Inskeep, noting that previous UN ambassadors have had extensive backgrounds in foreign policy or diplomacy. “It’s going to be a steep learning curve off the bat.”

She is the first woman and first minority named as Trump’s choice for a top administration official.

State Of The Union Response: 5 Things To Know About S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley

Posted by Betsy DeVos chosen for Education Secretary on Thu, 24 Nov 2016 03:00 | #

NPR, “Trump Chooses Betsy DeVos For Education Secretary”, 23 Nov 2016:

President-elect Donald Trump has picked billionaire Betsy DeVos, a Michigan Republican activist and philanthropist who is a strong supporter of school choice but has limited experience with public education, as his secretary of education.

DeVos, 58, is a former chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party and helped push a failed 2000 ballot proposal to amend the Michigan state Constitution to create a voucher system for students to attend nonpublic schools.

DeVos is chairman of The Windquest Group, a Michigan-based investment management company. She is married to billionaire Richard DeVos Jr., the son of Richard DeVos, who co-founded the home care products company Amway.

DeVos has also been adversary of teacher’s unions a staunch protector, of affirmative action, in fact the key stumbling block to its being overturned..

* Note: Amway is a pyramid scheme.

Posted by Trump's latest appointments on Sat, 26 Nov 2016 13:10 | #

White House counsel: Donald F. McGahn II

Deputy National Security Adviser: K. T. McFarland

Posted by Trump picks(((Steven Mnuchin))) Treasury Secretary on Wed, 30 Nov 2016 00:32 | #

Trump picks -

Treasury Secretary: (((Steven Mnuchin)))

Secretary of health and human services: Tom Price

Posted by Trump picks (((Wilbur Ross))) Commerce Secretary on Wed, 30 Nov 2016 16:10 | #

Trump picks (((Wilbur Ross))) for Commerce Secretary

Zero Hedge: Ironically, Ross even represented bondholders in Trump’s Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City. The creditors were angry about a possible missed payment and debated whether to seize control of the casino. Ross argued that Trump’s properties were worth more with the man involved and helped negotiate a plan to keep him in charge. Ross eventually became a key Trump ally, backing his campaign for president and helping him raise money from Wall Street executives.

Similar as with the case of Mnuchin, it seems as if the appointment is a form of payoff to appease a former adversary along with other disgruntled Jewish financiers of Trump’s failed businesses. .

Posted by Cronies in The Foreclosure Factory on Thu, 01 Dec 2016 23:29 | #

Steve Mnuchin (left) and Wilbur Ross (right). (Andreas Branch / Patrick McMullan / Sipa USA; AP Photo / Mark Lennihan)

The Nation, David Dayen -

“Wilbur Ross and Steve Mnuchin—Profiteers of the Great Foreclosure Machine—Go to Washington”, 1 Dec 2016:

In my book Chain of Title, I refer to the collection of lenders, mortgage-servicing companies, third-party document processors, foreclosure-mill law firms, and trustee banks as all part of the Great Foreclosure Machine. I’m now realizing I should have trademarked the phrase, because Donald Trump just picked two engineers of that machine to serve in his cabinet.

Yes, I said two. Most in liberal circles and on Capitol Hill are buzzing about Steve Mnuchin, chosen as Treasury secretary. And that’s with good reason; he is in fact despicable, the “Forrest Gump of the financial crisis,” as Elizabeth Warren put it, ever-present for every assault on homeowners. People keep bringing up Mnuchin’s 17 years at Goldman Sachs, following in the footsteps of his dad, also a partner there. But that may be the least distressing part of his résumé, depending on what you thought of Suicide Squad.

I did a comprehensive profile of Mnuchin six months ago when Trump tapped him as national finance chair of his campaign. And the picture that emerges is that of a profiteer. In an unusual deal with the FDIC, Mnuchin led an investment team that bought the predatory lender IndyMac, saddled with tens of thousands of failing mortgages, for $1.65 billion. The FDIC had a standard deal for buyers of crisis-era banks; they would cover all losses above the first 20 percent on loan defaults. Mnuchin, who became CEO of the lender, treated this as a money-printing machine: his bank, renamed OneWest, could foreclose on homeowners, harvest fees for appraisals and inspections and late payments, and get protected by a federal backstop. The FDIC lost $13 billion on IndyMac; Mnuchin and company made $3 billion in profits, most of that coming directly from the FDIC in loss-sharing costs.

[...]

It’s not hyperbole to say that every one of these foreclosures were fraudulent. I find it amusing that media outlets like Bloomberg describe this claim as a “mortgage meltdown controversy” and not a fact. But we have the information. The infamous July 2009 deposition of OneWest Vice President Erica Johnson-Seck is still online—you can see for yourself. Johnson-Seck signed 750 mortgage documents a week in the name of at least seven different financial institutions. These were sworn affidavits, where Johnson-Seck claimed under penalty of perjury that she reviewed all the relevant information in a mortgage file, material facts that could lead to someone’s losing their home. She was asked how long she spent executing each document.

“I have changed my signature considerably!,” Johnson-Seck said. “It’s just an E now. So not more than 30 seconds.”

She also admitted to not reading the documents before signing them, which at 30 seconds a clip was understandable. She didn’t know how any of the records were generated or who computed them. She didn’t even sign in the presence of a notary, undermining the entire purpose of having a notarized document. And by the way, these fraudulent affidavits and other fake documents covered up the underlying crime; IndyMac didn’t properly receive promissory notes or mortgages and were foreclosing without standing.

This is fraud upon the court, done 750 times a week on eventually 36,000-plus loans. Mnuchin’s OneWest was completely not unique in this regard; millions of homeowners were thrown out of their homes based on false documents, a phenomenon that continues to this very day. And Mnuchin profited, eventually selling OneWest to CIT (a company he will regulate at Treasury; he currently still sits on the board) for double the investment.

I could go on with Mnuchin: the $3.2 million in fake Bernie Madoff profits he refused to return, the quiet withdrawal of $50 million at Relativity Media just before it filed bankruptcy. But he’ll soon have a partner in the cabinet with whom to go over all these schemes: Commerce Secretary nominee Wilbur Ross.

Ross is an old school Wall Streeter, someone tied up in their secret societies and rituals. He’s a private-equity baron who scoops up failing companies (much like Mnuchin did with IndyMac), squeezes every last nickel out of them by firing workers and shipping business lines offshore, and manages to profit in the exchange, usually by navigating the companies through bankruptcy. His firm was in charge of the Sago Mine in West Virginia when it blew up, killing 12 workers; the mine had a history of safety problems. He moved Cone Mills overseas, eliminating about 75 percent of its US jobs. He invested in the Greek banking system and encouraged the fire sale of the country’s assets.

But Ross is tied up in the Great Foreclosure Machine as well. One of the companies he pulled out of bankruptcy in August 2007 was American Home Mortgage Servicing Inc., or AHMSI. Ross bought out the servicing rights—the rights to manage day-to-day operations and determine whether to modify or foreclose mortgages—on about $132 billion in loans. They were the second-largest servicer of subprime loans in America.

Lynn Szymoniak, a whistle-blower who fought AHMSI in court and who won a $95 million case against several servicers on behalf of the federal government in 2012, explains that Ross’s company outsourced its mortgage-document operations. They used a company called DocX, which forged millions of mortgage assignments, claiming to be the officers of dozens of different banks. These documents were fraudulently signed after the fact to recreate a chain of title that lenders broke; they were a document clean-up shop. Lorraine Brown, the CEO of DocX, went to prison for five years for this activity, making her the only person to be jailed for foreclosure fraud.

After entrusting its mortgage operation to fraudsters, AHMSI eventually changed its name to Homeward Residential, and got bought out by Ocwen. Wilbur Ross stayed involved in Ocwen, serving on the board of directors. If anything, Ocwen was worse than AHMSI. It routinely broke the law, with “systematic misconduct at every stage of the mortgage process,” according to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray. In 2013, CFPB fined Ocwen $2.1 billion for, among other things: charging borrowers unauthorized fees, failing to apply borrower payments to loans, failing to maintain accurate accounting statements, imposing insurance policies on borrowers who already had them, deceiving borrowers about loan modifications, and robo-signing foreclosure documents in fraud upon state courts.

One of my favorite Ocwen stories is the backdating scandal. Under the law, servicers must inform borrowers of why they were denied a loan modification and give them 30 days to appeal. Ocwen sent thousands of these letters backdated 30 days from the sending, giving borrowers no time to act.

Ross eventually stepped down from the Ocwen board, and miraculously was able to sell $72 million in stock right before it dropped 20 percent in price.

Ross and Mnuchin were profiteers in a crisis that bore nearly all its misery on the backs of working people who suffered from the misfortune of acquiring a bad loan at the wrong time. But there’s a supreme irony here: The foreclosure crisis that these two moguls (and Trump himself) used as a moneymaking scheme may have handed Trump the election.

The Center for American Progress just released a study looking at the role of Midwestern housing instability in the 2016 election. They found that, between 2012 and 2016, negative equity rates—where a homeowner owes more on their house than it’s actually worth—got worse in counties in the Midwest that shifted from blue to red. The Democratic vote was similarly lower in urban counties where housing conditions eroded.

In other words, Barack Obama’s handling of the mortgage crisis, by protecting bank balance sheets instead of homeowner balance sheets, may have cost Hillary Clinton the election. This was the biggest mistake of the Obama presidency, instituting a foreclosure-mitigation program that servicers used as a predatory-lending scheme, and then failing to take advantage of the extreme legal exposure of the industry after the revelations of foreclosure fraud. And in a sad twist, the very people who will benefit from that failure, and Trump’s election, are the ones who profited from foreclosures the entire time.

Posted by Tom Price for privatizing Medicaid on Sat, 03 Dec 2016 16:27 | #

PoliticusUSA, “Latest Cabinet Picks Are Proof That Trump Never Intended To ‘Drain The Swamp”, 29 Nov 2016:

By Sean Colarossi -

Sorry, Trump voters. The swamp your man promised to drain is only getting deeper.

After more than a year of hearing Donald Trump voters argue that a tax-dodging billionaire would be a working class savior, the president-elect is proving that he never intended to “drain the swamp” of special interests – instead, he wants to fill it up even more.

According to the New York Times, Trump will choose Steven Mnuchin – ex-Goldman Sachs banker and hedge fund manager – to be his treasury secretary. Mnuchin has financial connections to Hollywood but no political experience.

The swamp-filling doesn’t stop there.

As early as Wednesday, Trump is expected to announce billionaire Wilbur Ross as his choice for secretary of commerce, NBC News reported. Ross specialized in selling off steel companies and has been referred to as the “King of Bankruptcy.”

To put the icing on the cake, the president-elect chose Georgia Rep. Tom Price to be the health and human services secretary in his administration. Price is a proponent of privatizing Medicare and abolishing Medicaid for millions of low-income Americans.

That’s right, Trump supporters: You’ve been duped.

Despite his campaign rhetoric, Trump is not an outsider with plans to distance himself from the moneyed interests and stand up for the people. If anything, the decisions Trump has made since the election show that he is embracing these powerful influences, first by letting them run his transition team and now by asking them to run his government.

It’s important to note that many of us knew this would happen. After all, the idea that Trump would assume office and stand up to special interests was always a silly one. If anything, the president-elect’s lack of policy knowledge and political experience makes him more susceptible to outside influences, not less.

The idea that a man who spent a lifetime stiffing small businesses and workers is suddenly going to stand up for them is nonsense.

Like President Obama said repeatedly on the campaign trail, “If a guy’s spent 70 years on this earth showing no regard for working people, there’s no record that he’s supported the minimum wage or supported collective bargaining, invested in poor communities, and then suddenly he’s going to be the champion of working people? Come on.”

The swamp Trump promised to drain is only getting deeper.

Posted by James Mattis Defense Secretary on Sat, 03 Dec 2016 17:18 | #

Trump names Marine General James Mattis as Defense Secretary

Business Insider, “Here’s what legendary Marine General James ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis is really like, from people who served with him”, 3 Nov 2016:

President-elect Donald Trump just tapped Retired Marine Gen. James Mattis for Defense Secretary, so it’s worth asking what kind of leadership the Pentagon is in for.

As it turns out, according to a number of those who served with him, the more than 3 million civilian and military personnel of DoD can expect a well-read history buff with a strategic mind, a senior man who is not above talking to even the most junior personnel, and a sometimes gruff, opinionated leader who isn’t afraid to tell it like it is.

Business Insider spoke with a number of people who served with Mattis, and gathered up other anecdotes, to understand what the former four-star general is really like when he’s in charge.

Here’s what we learned.

Mattis has often been praised by senior leaders at the Pentagon as both a strategic thinker with an encyclopedic knowledge of history, and an incredible leader.

That reputation was earned over a 44-year career in the Marine Corps, where he rose to the highest rank of four-star general, eventually retiring as the top leader of US Central Command in 2013.

Before he took that job, then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates praised him as one of the most formidable “warrior-scholars” of his generation. “General Mattis is one of our military’s foremost strategic thinkers and combat leaders,” he said.

And Adm. Michael Mullen, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters of Mattis: “I watched him interact in NATO at the highest levels, diplomatically, politically, on very sensitive subjects. I have great confidence” in his skills.

Mattis isn’t just admired by the top brass. His interactions with junior troops over the years has earned him legendary status among active-duty and veterans alike.

Nate Fick, a former Marine captain who first served as a 2nd lieutenant under Mattis while he was in charge of Task Force 58 in Afghanistan, recalled to Business Insider the moment he realized “this guy was an incredible leader.”

It was a cold night in Dec. 2001 at the Marines’ patrol base in Kandahar, Fick recalled. They had been patrolling outside of the base, but once they were back, Fick had ordered his Marines to have two men awake in each hole on perimeter security, while everyone else slept.

“I was out walking the lines one night at 2, maybe 3 a.m.,” Fick said, adding that he was coming closer to a fighting hole his Marines were manning. “As I got closer, I saw a third head.”

He was initially angry that there was another Marine either not sleeping or away from the hole they were supposed to be in, but then he realized, “It was General Mattis.”

“He had stopped to talk to the sergeant and the lance corporal.”

Mattis was doing the same thing that Fick was doing: Checking on the junior Marines.

“Nobody would’ve criticized Mattis if he had a lieutenant like me heating up his MREs and if he stayed inside to sleep on a cot,” Fick said.

“But Mattis understood that it all comes down to personal leadership. He’s the classic fighter leader. He’s the player coach. He’s out there with his troops,” he explained.

“You can have all the staff meetings you want, but theres no substitute for walking around and talking to people who do the work.”

Fick detailed a bit more of the story in his book, “One Bullet Away.” The general then asked if the Marines had any complaints, to which one replied, “Just one, sir. We haven’t been north to kill anything yet.”

“You can have all the staff meetings you want, but theres no substitute for walking around and talking to people who do the work.”

Fick detailed a bit more of the story in his book, “One Bullet Away.” The general then asked if the Marines had any complaints, to which one replied, “Just one, sir. We haven’t been north to kill anything yet.”

It was Christmas Day, and then-Marine Commandant Gen. Charles Krulak always brought cookies to officers and other troops in the D.C. area who had to stand duty on that day. When he walked in to surprise the officer on duty — which should have been a Major — he asked, “Who’s the officer of the day?”

The lance corporal there said, “Sir, it’s Brigadier General Mattis.” After a brief back-and-forth where Krulak thought he was being misunderstood, he said, “OK ... who was the officer who slept in that bed last night?”

“And the Marine said, ‘Sir, Brigadier General Mattis,’” Krulak later told Stars & Stripes.

Then, Gen. Mattis walked around the corner, in his duty uniform. He explained to Krulak that he took the Major’s duty since he had a family at home, and Mattis didn’t.

“I’m a bachelor,” Krulak recalled him saying. “I thought why should the major miss out on the fun of having Christmas with his family, and so I took the duty for him.”

“That’s the kind of officer that Jim Mattis is,” Krulak told a professor at the US Naval Academy of the encounter.

Stanton S. Coerr, a Marine officer who served with Mattis on multiple occasions, recalled their first meeting in 1994, when Mattis was a colonel in charge of 7th Marine Regiment in 29 Palms, California.

Coerr was checking into 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines as a captain, expecting only a brief talk with the top leader of the regiment.

“Colonel Mattis called for me. He stood to greet me, and offered to get coffee for me,” he wrote in The Federalist.

“He put a hand on my shoulder; gave me, over my protestations, his own seat behind his desk; and pulled up a chair to the side. He actually took his phone off the hook — something I had thought was just a figure of speech — closed his office door, and spent more than an hour knee-to-knee with me.”

That was quite different than the five minute meeting that Coerr was expecting.

In 2003, Mattis was the commanding general of 1st Marine Division, and he was getting ready to take his troops into harm’s way with the invasion of Iraq. Before they crossed the border, every single person in the unit received a now-famous letter to inspire them before battle.

             

“On your shoulders rests the hope of all mankind,” Mattis wrote in a one page letter that instructed his Marines to use good judgment and take care of innocent civilians who had suffered under Saddam Hussein’s regime. “Carry out your mission and keep your honor clean. Demonstrate to the world there is ‘No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy.’”

Jack Mandaville was just a lowly Private First Class six months out of boot camp when he received it. “I still have that letter,” he told Business Insider.

“A couple of months later, after Iraq fell into US hands, Major General Mattis came to speak to our battalion as we sat in Al Diwaniyah, Iraq,” he recalled.

“I have sat through multiple speeches given by senior officers. They are typically rife with platitudes and disingenuous praise. This was not one of those speeches.

“Mattis spoke like an enlisted man. He spoke to the enlisted man. He did this while keeping a gentlemanly manner about him. In that speech, he sounded like an articulate warrior scholar as he simultaneously praised us with unrepeatable expletives. He understood war. More importantly, he understood the people fighting it. We were the generation that started calling him “Mad Dog.’”
The first story retired Sgt. Maj. Carlton Kent recalled was of a time when he and then-Lt. Gen. Mattis were walking with a Marine squad on the streets of Ramadi during the Iraq War. “We went to this one outpost,” Kent, who retired as Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps, told Business Insider.

There they encountered a group of Marines standing post, maintaining security. Shortly after, they all started taking enemy fire, and the machine gunner started unloading on insurgents, screaming all kinds of “four-letter words” along the way.

When it was all over, the junior Marine was a bit embarrassed, thinking he might have been out of line to be screaming obscenities in front of a general.

“General Mattis just had this smile, ear-to-ear,” Kent said. “He just gave him the thumbs up.”

“This guy leads by example. He’s not out there trying to be a hero,” Kent said. “He’s out there leading Marines and he’s telling them ‘I am just like you, and I can go where you go.’”

He added: “One thing he didn’t like was when Marines were in the dirt, and senior leadership was in a cozy little area.”

Mattis’ philosophy, according to Kent, was that if the junior Marines were in the dirt, so was everyone else at the top.

“He’s a leader by example. That’s the best type of leader for any organization. He’s not the type that’s ‘do as I say, not as I do.’ He’s out there doing it.”

Shane Hafner, a medically retired infantry Staff Sgt. who was wounded by an improvised explosive device in 2010, had only one meeting with Mattis, but it left a notable impression on him.

Hafner had just come to after having surgery, and attendants told him that Mattis was coming for a visit. He told Business Insider that he was excited, but wondered if he needed a haircut first.

Mattis came in, told him “at ease,” and started talking with him, man to man. Hafner told him that he hoped Mattis would one day become Commandant of the Marine Corps, but Mattis told him that wasn’t likely, since he said, “I don’t have the best track record with quotes.”

The general asked if there was anything he could do for the sergeant, and he told him he’d like his Kevlar helmet back — bloodied but still intact — which the hospital had taken away from him.

The next time he got out of surgery, Hafner told BI, “There was my helmet sitting there at the foot of my bed.”

“Even off the battlefield, he improves morale,” Hafner said.

If Mattis is confirmed for Defense Secretary, he’ll definitely need to tackle the morale problem in the military, which has been described as hitting “rock bottom.”

And even if many see him as a down-to-earth leader, retired Sgt. Maj. Carlton Kent saw the side of him that was also a voracious reader — “if you go into his house, books are lined up wall to wall” — who can think and make decisions at the tactical and strategic levels.

“When you go to General Mattis you better have your facts in line, because he probably already knows,” Kent told Business Insider, though he added that he welcomed input from others. But, “when you leave a meeting, there is no doubt in your mind the direction of where Gen. Mattis wants to go.”

“People say he’s like Chesty Puller,” Kent said, noting the legendary Marine officer Lt. Gen. Lewis Puller, nicknamed ‘Chesty’ because he earned five Navy Crosses. “No, he’s a General Mattis, in his day. He is General Mattis. He’s just an awesome leader.”

Posted by TheZOG on Sat, 03 Dec 2016 18:09 | #

She is married to billionaire Richard DeVos Jr., the son of Richard DeVos, who co-founded the home care products company

Note that Richard DeVos Jr./Sr. are crypto-Jews, although you won’t find this fact mentioned anywhere online.

Also, I’ve greatly expanded the list of Donald Trump’s Jewish cabal:

http://thezog.info/who-controls-donald-trump

Posted by Trump's economic team... on Tue, 06 Dec 2016 06:03 | #

...resounding brackets:

Posted by Trump taps Ben Carson for HUD on Tue, 06 Dec 2016 15:40 | #

CNN, “Trump taps Ben Carson for HUD secretary”, 5 Dec 2016:

Dr. Ben Carson, “for such a time as this.”

Story highlights

  Carson accepted the HUD position after reportedly turning down an offer to be nominated for secretary of Health and Human services

  Carson unsuccessfully ran for the GOP nomination in 2016, and became an early and vocal supporter of Trump after dropping out

(CNN)Ben Carson will be nominated as the next secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Trump transition team announced Monday.

“I am thrilled to nominate Dr. Ben Carson as our next Secretary of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development,” President-elect Donald Trump said in a statement. “Ben Carson has a brilliant mind and is passionate about strengthening communities and families within those communities.”

During their primary fight, though, Trump had derided Carson as “super low energy” and delivered a number of sharp attacks on Twitter, questioning Carson’s temperament and qualifications for office.

“With Ben Carson wanting to hit his mother on head with a hammer, stab a friend and Pyramids built for grain storage - don’t people get it?” Trump tweeted in November of 2015, when he and Carson were still rivals. At a rally in Fort Dodge, Iowa, the same month, Trump had delivered a similarly blistering attack on Carson.

“If you’re a child molester, a sick puppy, a child molester, there’s no cure for that. There’s only one cure, and we don’t want to talk about that cure, that’s the ultimate cure. No there’s two, there’s death and the other thing. But if you’re a child molester, there’s no cure, they can’t stop you. Pathological, there’s no cure,” Trump said.

Posted by John Kelly, Sec. Homeland Security on Thu, 08 Dec 2016 15:47 | #

Washington Post, “Trumps taps retired Marine general for homeland security”, 8 Dec 2016:

WASHINGTON — Retired Marine Gen. John Kelly carved out a reputation as a highly respected, but often outspoken commander who could roil debate with blunt assessments or unpopular directives on issues ranging from women in combat to the treatment of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention center.

But the man chosen by President-elect Donald Trump to lead the Department of Homeland Security holds a more somber distinction. The battle-hardened veteran, who served three tours in Iraq, is the highest-ranking officer to lose a child in combat in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Posted by Pruitt, Anti-Environmentalist, to head EPA on Thu, 08 Dec 2016 16:05 | #

Washington Post, 8 Dec 2016:

“Trump names Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma attorney general suing EPA on climate change, to head the EPA.”

Pruitt has spent much of his energy as attorney general fighting the very agency he is being nominated to lead.

He is the third of Trump’s nominees who have key philosophical differences with the missions of the agencies they have been tapped to run. Ben Carson, named to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development, has expressed a deep aversion to the social safety net programs and fair housing initiatives that have been central to that agency’s activities. Betsy DeVos, named education secretary, has a passion for private school vouchers that critics say undercut the public school systems at the core of the government’s mission.

Posted by Labor Secretary: Andrew Puzder on Fri, 09 Dec 2016 15:58 | #

Labor Secretary: Andrew Puzder

AMNY, CKE Restaurants CEO Andrew Puzder has been named the nominee for Labor secretary, the Trump transition team announced on Dec. 8, 2016. Puzder is a vocal critic of government intervention in labor markets and he has argued that a higher minimum wage would hurt workers by forcing restaurants to close. His company owns the Carl’s Jr., Hardee’s, Green Burrito and Red Burrito fast-food chains.

This is the “Labor Secretary”? Similar as with the head of the EPA, it is rather like putting the fox in charge of the hen house.

Posted by Linda McMahon on Fri, 09 Dec 2016 16:16 | #

Linda McMahon: Administrator of the Small Business Administration

Ibid. Linda McMahon has been chosen as Trump’s nomination for administrator of the Small Business Administration, transition team officials said on Dec. 7, 2016. McMahon is the co-founder and former CEO of WWE wrestling. She is also the current co-founder and CEO of Women’s Leadership Live LLC, which aims to help women start or expand their own businesses. The Small Business Administration extends loans to small businesses and makes sure they get a percentage of federal contracts.

WWE - a co-founder of a professional wrestling. That’s a sad but apparently true light on Trump voters. We don’t have to worry about them getting too intellectual on us.

And isn’t is so good that she is concerned particularly with businesses for women - as if they don’t have enough of an edge against the atomized White man of the anti-racist American context.

Posted by Puzder worse than you thought on Fri, 09 Dec 2016 16:34 | #

Occidental Dissent, “Andy Puzder Is Even Worse Than You Thought” 8 Dec 2016:

by Hunter Wallace

Cheap Labor Express seizes Labor Department

He’s so bad that Breitbart won’t even defend him:

  “Pro-American immigration reformers and advocates for higher-wages are hammering Donald Trump’s selection of a cheap-labor, migration-boosting employer to run the Department of Labor.

  The opponents — some of whom backed Trump’s pro-American, immigration-reducing promises in the election — are rallying opposition to Puzder’s appointment via the twitter hashtag, #NeverPuzder. …”

What happened to #DrainTheSwamp? Did anyone have a clue that #DrainTheSwamp meant Betsy DeVos, Tom Ricketts and Puzder in Trump’s Cabinet? I certainly didn’t. I remember Trump hammering ¡Jeb! over his ties to these people:

  “In early 2015 (before Trump entered the race), Puzder participated in a press call warning the Republican candidates for president to follow Jeb Bush’s “lead” on immigration. “People vote with their hearts … our values dictate we should be the party of immigration reform,” he said.

  By pretty much any measure, this attitude was totally repudiated in the GOP primary by Trump and his supporters. Trump mocked Bush mercilessly for calling unauthorized immigration an “act of love,” and his own characterizations of immigrants tended to focus on their potential to kill American citizens. And many Republican voters — voting with their hearts — sided with Trump.

  But Puzder’s feelings about unauthorized immigrants are much more Bushian than Trumpian.

  In a 2013 panel hosted by the American Enterprise Institute, as Frum pointed out on Twitter, Puzder said that immigrant workers were often more grateful for their jobs than native ones — an attitude that contrasts starkly with Trump’s crusade against companies that “replace” native workers with non-native ones so they can pay lower wages.

  And during the 2015 call, Puzder expressed sympathy for unauthorized workers who “live in fear of being deported, losing what they’ve built and being separated from their families.”

  Trump has made that fear much more widespread and much more palpable for millions of immigrants. And Andy Puzder is now in a position to try to impede Trump (and Sessions) from using the full power of the federal government to enforce immigration law. …”

Yes, we should be very worried.

There is no doubt about it now: this was by far the worst Cabinet pick yet. It also speaks volumes that Kris Kobach was passed over for DHS, but Andy Puzder got Labor Secretary. How do you defend that?

Update: Robert Reich, who I sometimes agree with on labor issues, has this to say about him:

  “Apparently, Donald Trump will pick Andy Puzder as his Secretary of Labor.

  Having myself served as Secretary of Labor, I cannot imagine someone more unsuited to the job of advancing the cause of working people in America.

  If Puzner is confirmed, the working people who voted for Trump will suffer. …”

Trump’s decision to pick Andy Puzder as Labor Secretary is like nominating Ebenezer Scrooge for Secretary of Christmas. I hope the Senate votes against his confirmation.

Posted by Trump taps Goldman Sachs' Gary Cohn on Fri, 09 Dec 2016 18:30 | #

This is getting to be like some kind of bizarre joke -

Business Insider: “Trump taps Goldman Sachs’ Gary Cohn as the National Economic Council director”, 9 Dec 2016:

President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Goldman Sachs’ Gary Cohn as the National Economic Council director, according to NBC News.

Cohn is the president and COO at the firm, and he trails only CEO Lloyd Blankfein in stature.

The National Economic Council advises the president on US and global economic policy.

Trump appointed former Goldman Sachs banker Steven Mnuchin as Treasury secretary last month. And Steve Bannon, his incoming chief strategist, is also a Goldman Sachs alum.

Goldman shares are up by about 30% since Trump’s victory on November 8.

The president-elect was highly critical of Wall Street throughout his campaign. He condemned Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton for her ties to Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms - and for earning hundreds of thousands of dollars for speeches given to the global investment bank and its clients.

Posted by Tillerson set to become Secretary of State on Sat, 10 Dec 2016 20:34 | #

DM, “BREAKING NEWS: President-Elect Trump ‘will name Exxon CEO with close links to Putin as his secretary of state’, snubbing Mitt Romney”, 10 Dec 2016:

  Trump is expected to name Rex Tillerson as secretary of state, reports claim
  Exxon Mobil chief emerged on Friday as the president-elect’s leading candidate
  Favored status was revealed as Rudy Giuliani withdrew from consideration

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is expected to name the chief executive of Exxon Mobil as the country’s top diplomat, NBC News reported Saturday.

Exxon chief Rex Tillerson emerged on Friday as Trump’s leading candidate for U.S. secretary of state and is expected to meet with him later on Saturday, a transition official told Reuters.

NBC News cited two sources close to the transition team in reporting that Tillerson will be named as secretary of state.

The president-elect had interviewed 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney twice – taking him to a three-Michelin starred dinner on one of those occasions.

Should Tillerson be nominated, his business ties, too, will come under scrutiny. Exxon Mobil has operations in more than 50 countries and boasts that it explores for oil and natural gas on six continents.

In 2011, Exxon Mobil signed a deal with Rosneft, Russia’s largest state-owned oil company, for joint oil exploration and production. Since then, the companies have formed 10 joint ventures for projects in Russia.

In 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin awarded Tillerson his nation’s Order of Friendship.

‘He has had more interactive time with Vladimir Putin than probably any other American with the exception of Henry Kissinger,’ John Hamre, a deputy defense secretary to Bill Clinton told the Wall Street Journal.

But U.S. sanctions against Russia for its incursion into Crimea cost Exxon Mobil dearly, forcing it to scrap some projects and costing it at least $1 billion in losses. Tillerson has been a vocal critic of the sanctions.

Trump has spoken of wanting warmer relations with Moscow, which has sparked concerns in Congress that he could lift or loosen some of the sanctions on Russia.

       
Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin speaks with Rex Tillerson in Sochi in 2011

Tillerson has been chairman and CEO of Exxon Mobil since 2006. He is expected to retire from the company next year.

Should Tillerson be nominated, climate change could be another divisive issue. The company is under investigation by the New York Attorney General’s Office for allegedly misleading investors, regulators and the public on what it knew about global warming.

Trump’s campaign was unavailable for comment.

Posted by prospect of Bolton on Wed, 14 Dec 2016 01:07 | #

The Hill:

With President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson for secretary of State, national attention has fixated on the relative political newcomer: Who is Tillerson? What are his policies? What will he be like as America’s top diplomat?

Less noticed but more important than every detail of the Tillerson pick, however, is Trump’s consideration of former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton for deputy secretary of State, a role in which a transition team source told NBC News he would be “handling day-to-day management of the department.”

Bolton’s name was on the table for State since well before Tillerson was publicly favored, which suggests he is a serious contender. That is terrible news.

Bolton is a dangerous pick for State who will undermine Trump’s own agenda and risk American security.

A hardline, unrepentant neoconservative, Bolton embodies the worst of the bipartisan foreign policy failures of the last decade and a half. His inclination is ever toward war — preemptive, reckless, counterproductive war that costs much and gains little for U.S. national interests while putting far too many lives on the line.

Posted by Trump's cabinet richer than bottom 1/3 of U.S. on Thu, 15 Dec 2016 14:25 | #

EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES

Quartz, 15 Dec 2016:

“Trump’s 17 cabinet-level picks have more money than a third of American households combined”

The 17 people who US president-elect Donald Trump has selected for his cabinet or for posts with cabinet rank have well over $9.5 billion in combined wealth, with several positions still unfilled. This collection of wealth is greater than that of the 43 million least wealthy American households combined—over one third of the 126 million households total in the US.

Affluence of this magnitude in a US presidential cabinet is unprecedented.

Quartz

Trump’s Cabinet has more money than one-third of Americans combined

Trump has almost finished compiling his Cabinet picks, and the list doesn’t exactly reflect the populist theme of his campaign.

Thus far, all of Trump’s Cabinet nominees — including the elected vice president and appointed chief of staff — possess more money than a third of the 126 million American households combined, according to Quartz. With picks yet to be named for six positions, the 17 named nominees’ wealth totals well over $9.5 billion.

The four richest members of Trump’s Cabinet are:

  Betsy DeVos, Secretary of Education: $5.1 billion in net worth
  Wilbur Ross Jr., Secretary of Commerce: $2.5 billion in net worth
  Linda McMahon, Small Business Administration: $1.16 billion in net worth
  Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State: over $150 million in net worth

Some of these nominees’ business entanglements, while less extensive than the president-elect’s, could raise conflicts of interest.

As Quartz noted, matching the nominees’ combined wealth would take about 120,000 U.S. households with median net worths of $83,200. The current median household income is $55,775, according to the U.S. Census.

http://qz.com/862412/trumps-16-cabinet-level-picks-have-more-money-than-a-third-of-american-households-combined/#int/words=dinner_supper&smoothing=3

Posted by Energy: Rick Perry (another climate skeptic) on Thu, 15 Dec 2016 14:41 | #

        Energy Secretary: Rick Perry

Guardian, 14 Dec 2016:

Perry, 66, the longest-serving governor in Texas history, former two-time presidential candidate and Dancing with the Stars contestant. Perry, along with secretary of state pick Rex Tillerson and EPA administrator pick Scott Pruitt, is a climate change skeptic. Perry attempted in a 2011 presidential debate to say that he would as president eliminate the department of energy, but he forgot the name of the department. Once called Trump “a cancer on conservatism”.

FiveThirtyEight, 14 Dec 2016:

Scientists Protest Climate-Change Deniers Among Trump’s Cabinet Picks

Posted by Trump picks Ryan Zinke for Secretary of Interior on Thu, 15 Dec 2016 15:42 | #

Trump chooses Ryan Zinke as Secretary of Interior.

Reuters, 12 Dec 2016:

The League of Conservation Voters, which ranks lawmakers on their environmental record, gave Zinke an extremely low lifetime score of 3 percent.

The Wilderness Society, a leading conservation group, said it was concerned by Zinke’s support for logging, drilling and mining on public lands.

The Interior Department also oversees the Bureau of Indian Affairs and handles tribal policy.

Under Obama, the department played a big role in efforts to curb the effects of climate change by limiting fossil fuel development in some areas.

Posted by (((Kerry))): Trump's picks "thoughtful" on Mon, 19 Dec 2016 05:02 | #

The Hill: Secretary of State (((John Kerry))) says in a new interview that President-elect Donald Trump was thoughtful with some of his cabinet picks, offering praise for both Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary nominee James Mattis.

What does (((Kerry))) hope will be done with Tillerson and Mattis?

         
          Secretary of State (((John Kerry)))

Posted by Trump's 'Mad Dog' Military Policy on Mon, 19 Dec 2016 15:52 | #

Trump’s ‘Mad Dog’ Military Policy

Posted by More mostly business-as-usual Repugs on Tue, 20 Dec 2016 10:00 | #

K.T. McFarland: Deputy national security adviser

Kathleen Troia “K.T.” McFarland, left, will work alongside Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s national security adviser pick. McFarland served as an aide to Henry Kissinger in the 1970s and served in three Republican administrations. McFarland is also a national security analyst for Fox News.

Don McGahn: White House counsel

Trump named attorney Donald McGahn his White House counsel, a senior transition official said on Nov. 25, 2016. A partner at law firm Jones Day and former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, McGahn served as counsel to Trump during his presidential campaign. He has also previously served as counsel to the National Republican Congressional Committee, which oversees campaigns for the House of Representatives. The White House Counsel’s office advises the president on the legality of proposed executive orders and legislation passed by Congress and vets potential administration appointees.

Seema Verma: Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

Seema Verma was selected to be the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, an agency that oversees government health programs and insurance standards, the Trump transition team said Nov. 29, 2016. Verma is the president, CEO and founder of SVC Inc., a health care policy consulting company. Verma previously worked with Vice President-elect Mike Pence in Indiana to expand Medicaid coverage for the state’s poor using federal funding.

Todd Ricketts: Deputy secretary of commerce

Todd Ricketts, the co-owner of the Chicago Cubs, was nominated to be the deputy secretary of commerce, the transition team announced on Nov. 30, 2016. Ricketts’ family reportedly donated money to the Ours Principles PAC, which had a goal of defeating Trump, during the Republican primaries. Trump called them out on Twitter in February, saying “I hear the Rickets family, who own the Chicago Cubs, are secretly spending $‘s against me. They better be careful, they have a lot to hide!” Todd Ricketts became a Trump ally later in the campaign.

Vincent Viola: Secretary of the Army

Vincent Viola was selected as Trump’s nominee for secretary of the Army on Dec. 19, 2016. Viola is a former U.S. Army infantry officer and the founder and executive chairman of Virtu Financial. The West Point graduate was born and raised in Brooklyn, and still lives in the city with his wife, Teresa, according to Trump’s transition team.

Mick Mulvaney: White House Office of Management and Budget director

Trump chose South Carolina Rep. Mick Mulvaney to be director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, a position which will require Senate confirmation. Mulvaney, 49, is a fiscal conservative and was an outspoken critic of former House Speaker John Boehner, who resigned in 2015 amid opposition from fellow Republicans who were members of the House Freedom Caucus.

David Friedman: Ambassador to Israel

David Friedman, left, was chosen as Trump’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to Israel, the transition team announced on Dec. 15, 2016. Friedman has been one of the president-elect’s top advisers on the U.S.-Israel relationship during his campaign. He speaks Hebrew fluently and is a founding partner of the law firm Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman LLP.

Source, AMNY

Posted by Trump appoints Robert Lighthizer on Wed, 04 Jan 2017 17:06 | #

Financial Times, “Trump chooses protectionist-leaning trade representative”, 3 Jan 2017:

Appointment of Robert Lighthizer signals expected shift in US trade policy

Donald Trump has chosen a longtime advocate of greater protectionism as his US trade representative, in another signal that his administration is poised to take into government the aggressive policies he advocated during the campaign.

Robert Lighthizer, who has been leading the Trump transition team’s meetings on trade with the Obama administration, served as deputy US trade representative in the administration of Ronald Reagan at a time when the office was renowned for its battles with Japan. He has long represented the US steel industry in cases as a partner at law firm Skadden Arps and in recent years has been a vocal advocate for a protectionist shift in the Republican party.

..

Posted by (((Carl Icahn))) et al. on Fri, 06 Jan 2017 10:36 | #

Securities and Exchange Commission chairman: Jay Clayton - another Goldman-Sachs crony

U.S. trade representative: Robert Lighthizer - Served as deputy US trade representative in the administration of Ronald Reagan at a time when the office was renowned for its battles with Japan.

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats.

Special adviser to the president (((Carl Icahn))) - This one is significant; more on that to come..

Posted by Rupert Murdoch on Sat, 07 Jan 2017 16:14 | #

The Verge, “Donald Trump asked Rupert Murdoch to name picks for FCC chair”, 4 Jan 2017:

Newscorp CEO Rupert Murdoch may have a significant influence in the next four years of American telecom policy. According to a new report from New York Magazine’s Gabriel Sherman, President-elect Trump has asked the conservative Australian broadcast titan to submit names of his preferred candidates for chair of the Federal Communications Commission. Current chairman Tom Wheeler plans to step down when Trump takes office, and the president-elect is expected to nominate a successor in the weeks to come.

There’s no guarantee Trump will follow Murdoch’s recommendations, but the news suggests Murdoch already wields significant influence in the incoming administration. Sherman’s source says Murdoch is also lobbying for further conditions on AT&T’s proposed acquisition of Time Warner, potentially because he sees the new conglomerate as a threat to his holdings.

The FCC advisers on Trump’s transition team have been staunch critics of Wheeler’s work as FCC chair, which included historic new protections for net neutrality. Trump’s incoming chair will likely seek to reverse those protections, although it’s still unclear how difficult that process will be.

Posted by (((Ike Perlmutter))) on Tue, 10 Jan 2017 14:41 | #

New York Post, 7 Jan:

Marvel Entertainment billionaire Ike Perlmutter is set to become a key aide on veterans affairs in the Trump administration, sources told On the Money.

The comic book king, who parlayed his ownership of Marvel into a large independent stake in Disney, is best known for being a recluse.

News organizations have almost no images of the 74-year-old executive, though a photographer nabbed a shot of him standing next to Trump at a window at Mar-a-Largo in December.

“He’s becoming a key adviser on veterans’ health care,” said a source.

Our tipsters suggest Perlmutter will be coming from the shadows in the coming months.

The Marvel money man, who is a neighbor of Trump’s in Palm Beach, is a backer of university hospitals and wants to see veterans taken care of. Perlmutter himself was a soldier in Israel’s Six-Day War back in 1967, we’re told.

Perlmutter had a big meeting with the CEOs of university-associated hospitals last week, according to sources. His wife, Laura, is on the presidential inaugural committee.

Trump has more than a few Tinseltown executives at his side. His aides include former Relativity studio co-Chairman Steven Mnuchin, who is lined up to be the next Treasury Secretary. Former Miramax owner and PE investor Tom Barack of Colony Capital is on the inauguration committee. Also helping organize the festivities is MGM executive and producer Mark Burnett.

Posted by (((David Shulkin))), Secretary of Veterans Affairs on Thu, 12 Jan 2017 04:05 | #

(((David Shulkin))): Secretary of Veterans Affairs

Posted by (((Jared Kushner))) Senior Adviser to President on Thu, 12 Jan 2017 04:29 | #

(((Jared Kushner))): Senior Adviser to The President

Posted by Trump's picks complete with Purdue at Agriculture on Thu, 19 Jan 2017 12:31 | #

Washington Post, “Trump picks Sonny Perdue for agriculture secretary”, 18 Jan 2017:

       
President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Sonny Perdue as Agriculture Secretary, rounding out his Cabinet-level picks. (Victoria Walker/The Washington Post)

Donald Trump has chosen former Georgia governor Sonny Perdue to be his secretary of agriculture, completing a protracted search with implications for how the president-elect plans to deliver on his promises to the army of rural voters widely credited with helping him win the election.

Posted by Trump appoints (((two more))) on Fri, 20 Jan 2017 19:11 | #

       
        Avraham Berkowitz

JTA, “Trump appoints surrogate Boris Epshteyn as special assistant”, 19 Jan 2017:

Boris Epshteyn attending SiriusXM’s “White in America”special at SiriusXM Studios in New York City, June 30, 2015. (Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images for SiriusXM)

(JTA) — Donald Trump named Boris Epshteyn, a Republican political strategist who has appeared as a surrogate for the president-elect on TV, as special assistant to the president.

Epshteyn, who is in his mid-30s and is Jewish, would also serve as assistant communications director for surrogate operations, according to a transition team statement released on Thursday.

In addition, the statement said Avraham Berkowitz would serve as special assistant to the president and assistant to Jared Kushner, Trump’s Jewish son-in-law who is serving as his senior adviser.

A New York-based investment banker and finance attorney, Epshteyn worked as a communications aide for Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign in 2008, focusing his efforts on the Arizona senator’s running mate, then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

He has since defended Trump on major TV networks over 100 times, according to The New York Times. TV hosts have described Epshteyn, who moved to the United States from his native Moscow in 1993, as “very combative” and “abrasive.”

In 2014, he was charged with misdemeanor assault after being involved in a bar tussle. The charge was dropped after Epshteyn agreed to undergo anger management training and perform community service.

Posted by Bannon adds (((Julia Hahn))) to his team on Thu, 26 Jan 2017 09:16 | #

Forward, “Julia Hahn, Jewish Breitbart Reporter, Tapped for White House Post Under Steve Bannon”, 23 Jan 2017:

Julia Hahn, a Jewish journalist at Breitbart News, is reportedly being tipped for a job at the White House working for Steve Bannon, the firebrand ex-editor of the far right-wing news site.

Politico says two sources briefed on the move told it that Hahn will be hired as a special assistant to the president and will report to her old boss, who is now White House chief strategist.

She was quoted singing the praises of Bannon after others slammed him as a mouthpiece for white nationalists, anti-Semites and other members of the so-called “alt-right.”

“Steve is a fearless voice for people who have been made voiceless, and it is an honor to have worked with him,” she said in a Breitbart article.

Before joining Breitbart two years ago, Hahn worked for right-wing talk show host Laura Ingraham.

Hahn stayed on at Breitbart even as other conservative Jewish scribes left the site amid controversies over its backing of Trump during the presidential campaign.

Ben Shapiro, a prominent right-wing editor, famously quit in the aftermath of a dispute over Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski allegedly manhandled another Breitbart reporter during a campaign event.

Posted by Michael Flynn resigns on Tue, 14 Feb 2017 15:40 | #

        National Security Adviser: Michael Flynn

The Hill, National Security Adviser Michael Flynn resigns”, 14 Feb 2017:

National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has resigned, after reports he misled senior Trump White House officials about his conversations with Russia. President Trump has named retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg as acting national security adviser. Kellogg previously served as Flynn’s chief of staff on the National Security Council.

The embattled Flynn blamed his resignation late Monday on the “fast pace of events” that led him to “inadvertently” give Vice President Mike Pence and others “incomplete information” about his phone conversations with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak.

“I have sincerely apologized to the president and the vice president, and they have accepted my apology,” Flynn wrote in his resignation letter.

Posted by Scott Pruitt axes key EPA scientists on Tue, 09 May 2017 05:36 | #

Vice News, “Scott Pruitt axes key EPA scientists who were told their jobs were safe”, 8 May 2017:

Even with Donald Trump in the White House, 18 members of a key scientific review board at the Environmental Protection Agency thought their jobs were safe. They’d been told twice they could remain at the agency for at least one more term.

But that was before EPA administrator Scott Pruitt decided to dismiss half of them, all in the name of a good overhaul, according to the Washington Post. Other estimates put the number of affected staffers as high as 12.

The Science Advisory Board is responsible for reviewing the quality and relevance of the scientific and technical information used by the EPA and ensures policies are based on credible scientific data, analyses, and interpretations.

“I’ve never heard of any circumstance where someone didn’t serve two consecutive terms,” one dismissed scientists, Robert Richardson, told The Washington Post, adding that the dismissals gave him “great concern that objective science is being marginalized in this administration.”

Although the positions aren’t being renewed, as they often are, Pruitt’s Chief of Staff Ryan Jackson offered the opportunity to reapply in the future. He also said the agency may consider industry scientific experts for some board positions, as long as their appointments wouldn’t pose conflicts of interest. Last month, in fact, the House passed a bill to include more corporate voices on the EPA’s scientific review board.

“We’re not going to rubber-stamp the last administration’s appointees,” said a spokesman for the EPA, J.P. Freire. “This approach is what was always intended for the Board, and we’re making a clean break with the last administration’s approach.”

The decision comes from an administration already removing scientific data on climate change from its websites, publicly questioning established science on carbon dioxide’s role in climate change, and instituting a massive rollback of environmental regulations.

Posted by General Kelly from central casting on Mon, 07 Aug 2017 10:37 | #

NY Times, “Reince Priebus Is Ousted Amid Stormy Days for White House”, 28 July 2017:

WASHINGTON — Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff who failed to impose order on a chaos-racked West Wing, was pushed out on Friday after a stormy six-month tenure, and President Trump replaced him with John F. Kelly, the secretary of homeland security and retired four-star Marine general.

Priebus was more of a standard Republican insider type than most of the Trump cabinet; now he makes way for General John F. Kelly as White House Chief of Staff.

Probably the most unusual way this change happened was that it happened by means of Twitter.

Posted by cnk guy on Thu, 24 Aug 2017 15:29 | #

Here’s what American’s really think! 54% Of Americans Support Confederate Monuments
http://freedomnews.today/2017/08/24/54-of-americans-support-confederate-monuments/

Posted by Trump's friends get rich off fracking boom on Thu, 13 Sep 2018 21:06 | #