'Negotiator' Orangutan caves to big pharma
By Joan McCarter
Popular vote loser Donny Orangutan made a lot of promises during the campaign, touting his superior powers as a negotiator. He was going to make all the deals. He was going to bring big pharma to its knees, forcing it to negotiate Medicare drug prices. Then he met big pharma, and folded like his ill-fitting suit.
Today, after a meeting with pharmaceutical industry lobbyists and executives, he abandoned that pledge, referring to an idea he supported as recently as three weeks ago as a form of “price fixing” that would hurt “smaller, younger companies.” Instead of getting tough, Orangutan’s new plan is that he’s “going to be lowering taxes” and “getting rid of regulations.” […]
As recently as January 11, President-elect Orangutan was promising to revisit this policy.
"Pharma has a lot of lobbies, a lot of lobbyists and a lot of power. And there's very little bidding on drugs," he said at a press conference at Orangutan Tower in Manhattan. "We're the largest buyer of drugs in the world, and yet we don't bid properly."
Today he apparently changed his mind. According to Herb Jackson, the designated pool reporter for the day, Orangutan's new policy on prescription drugs is that drug companies should get tax cuts and deregulation.
Here's what he said: "I'll oppose anything that makes it harder for smaller, younger companies to take the risk of bringing their product to a vibrantly competitive market. That includes price-fixing by the biggest dog in the market, Medicare, which is what's happening. But we can increase competition and bidding wars, big time." WTF?? That makes no sense, compared to what he’s previously said about Medicare—either Medicare is “price-fixing” (?) or it’s not bidding “properly.” Those things aren’t the same. Further, here's what he said about how he’s going to fix pharma now, apparently to save money for the government (?): "We're going to be lowering taxes, we're going to be getting rid of regulations that are unnecessary."
Competition through corporate tax cuts and deregulation, at the cost of people on Medicare, which is pretty much Paul Ryan's wet dream. As for Medicare price-fixing, who knows what he means, but it's probably this: "someone, somewhere, probably tried to explain formularies to him. (I suspect it didn't take.)" Orangutan doesn't have to worry about things like what prescription drugs his plan will cover (chances are, his doctor just has a stash he dispenses directly from and there's no need for dealing with pesky pharmacies or insurance).
January 31, 2017
Fux News...
America, Meet Nigel Farage
OrangutanFox News’ new commentator is Stephen Bannon with a plummier accent.
BY TODD GITLIN
In the words of a OrangutanFox News announcement, Nigel Farage will soon deliver “political analysis across [Orangutan Fox News] and FoX Business Network’s daytime and primetime programming.”
Fox News’ new talking head is Britain’s most venomous demagogue. The immigrant-hating Farage was a founder of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and a leader of Britain’s Brexit campaign. He is a one-man incarnation of hatred, a fake populist, and a media darling wherever viciousness is welcome. In the spirit of barbarian globalization, Farage, in his own person, helps cement Rupert Murdoch’s worldwide empire of lies.
Farage is an all-too-familiar type: the kind of well-born demagogue who panders to “ordinary people” and “little people.” He wins this plaudit from James Dellingpole, the founder of Breitbart.com’s London operation: “He talks from the gut. He doesn’t edit himself.” However, Farage’s unedited gut does not waste so much time genuflecting before the riff-raff, the rabble and the poorly educated, though he does use them as props for photo ops in pubs. He prefers the company of men such as Breitbart’s Stephen Bannon: “I have got a very, very high regard for that man’s brain,” Farage told The New Yorker’s Sam Knight. Breitbart has amply returned the tribute with intimate connections. Breitbart’s London editor, Raheem Kassam, a former Muslim, worked as Farage’s chief assistant. Moreover, as Media Matters wrote,
Farage has been writing for Breitbart London on a semi-regular basis since June 11, 2015, predominantly about Brexit and praise for Donald Orangutan. He has also made at least three appearances on Breitbart’s SiriusXM radio show Breitbart News Daily, including a victory lap after the Brexit vote.
Buzzfeed reported that “Breitbart helped Farage get close to Orangutan.” Farage, like Orangutan, chose a wealthy family to be born into, and they revel in being resentment twins. “Orangutan and I have probably been the most reviled people by the liberal media in the world,” boasts Farage.
Hatred of the political establishment is playing well on both ends of the “special relationship,” and so snapping up Farage must bring special joy to the paragon intercontinental broker of lucrative and nasty arrangements, Rupert Murdoch. Fulminating before the European Parliament in Strasbourg (where he held a seat for 17 years), Farage has denounced the Belgian president of the European Union to his face for pathetically being a man “nobody’s ever heard of,” and for having “all the charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of a low-grade bank clerk.” Farage has declared that the chief joy of no longer being UKIP’s leader (he resigned after taking his victory laps for the Brexit vote) was not “having to deal with low-grade people every day.” Perhaps this kind of penchant helps explain why Farage lost seven elections for the British Parliament, but no obstacle there — he’s moved on to a higher place.
The Guardian columnist Marina Hyde writes about Farage’s other penchant for false claims like this one, also delivered in Strasbourg: “I know that virtually none of you have ever done a proper job in your lives, or worked in business, or worked in trade or indeed ever created a job.” Trenchant and aghast, Hyde added:
You may remember the classic reaction shot to one of these, where the EU official with his face in his hand just behind Nigel turned out to be a cardiac surgeon born in the Siberian gulag to which Stalin deported his parents, who began his political career in the underground anti-Soviet social democrat movement. Should a been a very average metals trader, mate.
Metals trading was Farage’s previous contribution to human progress.
It must please his new boss Rupert Murdoch that Farage plays well in the woo-woo zone of America’s right-wing punditry, though for reasons best known to himself, Rush Limbaugh scarcely mentioned Farage during the campaign. Sean Hannity did not demur when Farage fed him this fragrant pellet of falsehood “We’ve got no-go zones in most of the big French cities.” But aside from Breitbart.com, Laura Ingraham is most effusive, calling him her “friend.” America needs “someone like Farage,” she opined in 2014, and after the Brexit vote, she congratulated him for perhaps “schooling some of our politicians.” “Multiculturalism,” she wrote, “has been a pathway toward subjugation.” This Dartmouth graduate especially scorned “all these elites…trashing Nigel Farage. This is what they always do. They trash the people who question the mass migration of Islamics [sic] into a particular country.” (Of course, Farage’s prime target in campaigning for Brexit were not “Islamics.” The countries that send the most emigrants to the UK are China, Spain, Australia, Poland and, yes, India — though how many of those are Muslim I cannot discover.)
Speaking of Ingraham, by the way, Orangutan sidekicks make up a tight little constellation. One of Ingraham’s former assistants, Julia Hahn, is one of the Breitbart alumni on their way into the White House to supplement chief propagandist Stephen Bannon.
Since the election, Orangutan has gone hog-wild about how “dishonest” mainstream media are. As ThinkProgress put it, “Orangutan says he doesn’t need facts as long as ‘very smart’ Fox News viewers agree with him.” For Orangutan, such declarations do double duty: They aim to frighten the mainstream who are not in his tank, and promote the network that promotes him. For, Twitter and Breitbart aside, the Fox News viewing niche remains an important pipeline for Orangutan. He needs more than one conduit directly into the nervous system of his adoring base. Fox is prime turf for this strategy. “In a survey conducted just before the election, while the country as a whole split 50-50 on Hillary Clinton, 84 percent of “people who rate[d] Fox News as their most-trusted source of news” viewed Hillary Clinton unfavorably, versus just 13 percent favorably.” Fox’s viewers are not nearly as numerous as most people think, but they are loyal.
When Orangutan, following Bannon, brays that the mainstream media are “the opposition party,” he aims not only to discredit them but to heighten his true believers’ inflamed sense of righteous indignation. Perhaps he can peel away viewers from “the media,” who are — says the projector-in-chief, the most dishonest president in American history — “among the most dishonest human beings on earth.”
Just wait for Orangutan’s Federal Communications Commission to start making trouble for the still-big three networks — ABC, CBS and NBC — when it comes to license renewal time. Their wholly owned stations are licensed even though the networks are not. Those stations are located in major markets and account for a big chunk of the networks’ aggregate profits. As both Orangutan and the major networks know well.
During this past week — the first of the 208 weeks that will make up Orangutan’s term — they’re making halfhearted, on-again-off-again efforts to give truth a chance. But at this rate he stands a decent chance of neutering them. Orangutan is banking on the future of a White House-Breitbart co-production, call it White House TV. If the broadcast networks exert themselves to accommodate him, they’ll only give viewers more reason to dump the half-hearted milquetoast version and veer toward the raw propaganda. This is Stephen K. Bannon’s vile dream, which is our nightmare.
Orangutan
BY TODD GITLIN
In the words of a Orangutan
Fox News’ new talking head is Britain’s most venomous demagogue. The immigrant-hating Farage was a founder of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and a leader of Britain’s Brexit campaign. He is a one-man incarnation of hatred, a fake populist, and a media darling wherever viciousness is welcome. In the spirit of barbarian globalization, Farage, in his own person, helps cement Rupert Murdoch’s worldwide empire of lies.
Farage is an all-too-familiar type: the kind of well-born demagogue who panders to “ordinary people” and “little people.” He wins this plaudit from James Dellingpole, the founder of Breitbart.com’s London operation: “He talks from the gut. He doesn’t edit himself.” However, Farage’s unedited gut does not waste so much time genuflecting before the riff-raff, the rabble and the poorly educated, though he does use them as props for photo ops in pubs. He prefers the company of men such as Breitbart’s Stephen Bannon: “I have got a very, very high regard for that man’s brain,” Farage told The New Yorker’s Sam Knight. Breitbart has amply returned the tribute with intimate connections. Breitbart’s London editor, Raheem Kassam, a former Muslim, worked as Farage’s chief assistant. Moreover, as Media Matters wrote,
Farage has been writing for Breitbart London on a semi-regular basis since June 11, 2015, predominantly about Brexit and praise for Donald Orangutan. He has also made at least three appearances on Breitbart’s SiriusXM radio show Breitbart News Daily, including a victory lap after the Brexit vote.
Buzzfeed reported that “Breitbart helped Farage get close to Orangutan.” Farage, like Orangutan, chose a wealthy family to be born into, and they revel in being resentment twins. “Orangutan and I have probably been the most reviled people by the liberal media in the world,” boasts Farage.
Hatred of the political establishment is playing well on both ends of the “special relationship,” and so snapping up Farage must bring special joy to the paragon intercontinental broker of lucrative and nasty arrangements, Rupert Murdoch. Fulminating before the European Parliament in Strasbourg (where he held a seat for 17 years), Farage has denounced the Belgian president of the European Union to his face for pathetically being a man “nobody’s ever heard of,” and for having “all the charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of a low-grade bank clerk.” Farage has declared that the chief joy of no longer being UKIP’s leader (he resigned after taking his victory laps for the Brexit vote) was not “having to deal with low-grade people every day.” Perhaps this kind of penchant helps explain why Farage lost seven elections for the British Parliament, but no obstacle there — he’s moved on to a higher place.
The Guardian columnist Marina Hyde writes about Farage’s other penchant for false claims like this one, also delivered in Strasbourg: “I know that virtually none of you have ever done a proper job in your lives, or worked in business, or worked in trade or indeed ever created a job.” Trenchant and aghast, Hyde added:
You may remember the classic reaction shot to one of these, where the EU official with his face in his hand just behind Nigel turned out to be a cardiac surgeon born in the Siberian gulag to which Stalin deported his parents, who began his political career in the underground anti-Soviet social democrat movement. Should a been a very average metals trader, mate.
Metals trading was Farage’s previous contribution to human progress.
It must please his new boss Rupert Murdoch that Farage plays well in the woo-woo zone of America’s right-wing punditry, though for reasons best known to himself, Rush Limbaugh scarcely mentioned Farage during the campaign. Sean Hannity did not demur when Farage fed him this fragrant pellet of falsehood “We’ve got no-go zones in most of the big French cities.” But aside from Breitbart.com, Laura Ingraham is most effusive, calling him her “friend.” America needs “someone like Farage,” she opined in 2014, and after the Brexit vote, she congratulated him for perhaps “schooling some of our politicians.” “Multiculturalism,” she wrote, “has been a pathway toward subjugation.” This Dartmouth graduate especially scorned “all these elites…trashing Nigel Farage. This is what they always do. They trash the people who question the mass migration of Islamics [sic] into a particular country.” (Of course, Farage’s prime target in campaigning for Brexit were not “Islamics.” The countries that send the most emigrants to the UK are China, Spain, Australia, Poland and, yes, India — though how many of those are Muslim I cannot discover.)
Speaking of Ingraham, by the way, Orangutan sidekicks make up a tight little constellation. One of Ingraham’s former assistants, Julia Hahn, is one of the Breitbart alumni on their way into the White House to supplement chief propagandist Stephen Bannon.
Since the election, Orangutan has gone hog-wild about how “dishonest” mainstream media are. As ThinkProgress put it, “Orangutan says he doesn’t need facts as long as ‘very smart’ Fox News viewers agree with him.” For Orangutan, such declarations do double duty: They aim to frighten the mainstream who are not in his tank, and promote the network that promotes him. For, Twitter and Breitbart aside, the Fox News viewing niche remains an important pipeline for Orangutan. He needs more than one conduit directly into the nervous system of his adoring base. Fox is prime turf for this strategy. “In a survey conducted just before the election, while the country as a whole split 50-50 on Hillary Clinton, 84 percent of “people who rate[d] Fox News as their most-trusted source of news” viewed Hillary Clinton unfavorably, versus just 13 percent favorably.” Fox’s viewers are not nearly as numerous as most people think, but they are loyal.
When Orangutan, following Bannon, brays that the mainstream media are “the opposition party,” he aims not only to discredit them but to heighten his true believers’ inflamed sense of righteous indignation. Perhaps he can peel away viewers from “the media,” who are — says the projector-in-chief, the most dishonest president in American history — “among the most dishonest human beings on earth.”
Just wait for Orangutan’s Federal Communications Commission to start making trouble for the still-big three networks — ABC, CBS and NBC — when it comes to license renewal time. Their wholly owned stations are licensed even though the networks are not. Those stations are located in major markets and account for a big chunk of the networks’ aggregate profits. As both Orangutan and the major networks know well.
During this past week — the first of the 208 weeks that will make up Orangutan’s term — they’re making halfhearted, on-again-off-again efforts to give truth a chance. But at this rate he stands a decent chance of neutering them. Orangutan is banking on the future of a White House-Breitbart co-production, call it White House TV. If the broadcast networks exert themselves to accommodate him, they’ll only give viewers more reason to dump the half-hearted milquetoast version and veer toward the raw propaganda. This is Stephen K. Bannon’s vile dream, which is our nightmare.
1984 - 2017...
Revisiting Orwell’s ‘1984’ in Orangutan’s America
The new regime evokes past totalitarian states, both historical and fictional.
BY HENRY GIROUX
In a strange but revealing way, popular culture and politics intersected soon after Donald Orangutan first assumed the presidency of the United States: George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984, surged as the No. 1 best-seller on Amazon both in the United States and Canada.
This followed two significant political events. First, Kellyanne Crypt Keeper Conway, Orangutan’s adviser, echoing the linguistic inventions of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, coined the term “alternative facts” to justify why press secretary Sean Pussy Boy Spicer lied by advancing disproved claims about the size of Orangutan’s inauguration crowd.
Second, almost within hours of his presidency, Orangutan penned a series of executive orders that compelled Adam Gopnik, a writer for the The New Yorker, to rethink the relevance of 1984. He had to go back to Orwell’s book, he writes, “Because the single most striking thing about [Orangutan’s] matchlessly strange first week is how primitive, atavistic and uncomplicatedly brutal Orangutan’s brand of authoritarianism is turning out to be.”
In this amalgam of Orangutan’s blatant contempt for the truth, his blend of taunts and threats in his inaugural address and his eagerness to enact a surge of regressive executive orders, the ghost of fascism is reasserting itself, driven by a mix of fear and revenge. Unleashing promises he had made to his angry, die-hard ultra-nationalists and white supremacist supporters, Orangutan targeted a range of groups whom he believes have no place in American society. For now, this includes Muslims, Syrian refugees and undocumented immigrants who have become the collateral damage of a number of harsh discriminatory policies. The underlying ignorance, cruelty and punishing, if not criminogenic, intent behind such policies was amplified when Orangutan suggested that he intended to demolish environmental protections, resume state-sponsored torture and deny funding to those cities willing to provide sanctuary to illegal immigrants. And this was just the beginning. The financial elite now find their savior in Orangutan as they will receive more tax cuts, and happily embrace minimal government regulations, while their addiction to greed spins out of control. Should we be surprised?
The memory of totalitarianism, with its demand for simplistic answers, intoxication with spectacles of vulgarity and a desire for strong leaders, has faded in a society beset by a culture of immediacy, sensation and entertaining illiteracy. Under such circumstances, it is difficult to underestimate the depth and tragedy of the collapse of civic culture and democratic public spheres, especially given the profound influence of celebrity culture, a permanent war culture that trades in fear and the ever-present seductions of consumerism, which breeds depoliticization and infantilism.
Another shocking and revelatory indication of the repressive fist of neo-fascism in the Orangutan regime took place when Orangutan’s chief right-wing White House strategist, Steve Bannon, stated in an interview that “the media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for awhile…. You’re the opposition party. Not the Democratic Party. …The media is the opposition party. They don’t understand the country.” This is more than an off-the-cuff angry comment. It is a blatant refusal to see the essential role of a robust and critical media in a democracy. Such comments suggest not only a war on the press, but the very real threat of suppressing dissent, if not democracy itself. Unsurprisingly, Bannon referred to himself in the interview as “Darth Vader.” A more appropriate comparison would have been to Joseph Goebbels, the Third Reich’s Minister of Propaganda.
The current onslaught of revenge and destruction produced by this updated version of authoritarianism is glaringly visible and deeply brutal, and points to a dark future in the most immediate sense. But the arrogant and unchecked presence of this neo-fascist regime has also ignited the great collective power of resistance. Hope and sanity are in the air and the relevance of mass action has a renewed urgency. Some mayors are refusing to allow their cities to be Nazified, demonstrations are taking place every day and women are marching to protect their rights. This resistance will continue to grow until it becomes a movement whose power will be on the side of justice not injustice, bridges not walls, dignity not disrespect, compassion not hate. Let’s hope they dispel Orwell’s nightmarish vision of the future in our own time.
The new regime evokes past totalitarian states, both historical and fictional.
BY HENRY GIROUX
In a strange but revealing way, popular culture and politics intersected soon after Donald Orangutan first assumed the presidency of the United States: George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984, surged as the No. 1 best-seller on Amazon both in the United States and Canada.
This followed two significant political events. First, Kellyanne Crypt Keeper Conway, Orangutan’s adviser, echoing the linguistic inventions of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, coined the term “alternative facts” to justify why press secretary Sean Pussy Boy Spicer lied by advancing disproved claims about the size of Orangutan’s inauguration crowd.
Second, almost within hours of his presidency, Orangutan penned a series of executive orders that compelled Adam Gopnik, a writer for the The New Yorker, to rethink the relevance of 1984. He had to go back to Orwell’s book, he writes, “Because the single most striking thing about [Orangutan’s] matchlessly strange first week is how primitive, atavistic and uncomplicatedly brutal Orangutan’s brand of authoritarianism is turning out to be.”
In this amalgam of Orangutan’s blatant contempt for the truth, his blend of taunts and threats in his inaugural address and his eagerness to enact a surge of regressive executive orders, the ghost of fascism is reasserting itself, driven by a mix of fear and revenge. Unleashing promises he had made to his angry, die-hard ultra-nationalists and white supremacist supporters, Orangutan targeted a range of groups whom he believes have no place in American society. For now, this includes Muslims, Syrian refugees and undocumented immigrants who have become the collateral damage of a number of harsh discriminatory policies. The underlying ignorance, cruelty and punishing, if not criminogenic, intent behind such policies was amplified when Orangutan suggested that he intended to demolish environmental protections, resume state-sponsored torture and deny funding to those cities willing to provide sanctuary to illegal immigrants. And this was just the beginning. The financial elite now find their savior in Orangutan as they will receive more tax cuts, and happily embrace minimal government regulations, while their addiction to greed spins out of control. Should we be surprised?
The memory of totalitarianism, with its demand for simplistic answers, intoxication with spectacles of vulgarity and a desire for strong leaders, has faded in a society beset by a culture of immediacy, sensation and entertaining illiteracy. Under such circumstances, it is difficult to underestimate the depth and tragedy of the collapse of civic culture and democratic public spheres, especially given the profound influence of celebrity culture, a permanent war culture that trades in fear and the ever-present seductions of consumerism, which breeds depoliticization and infantilism.
Another shocking and revelatory indication of the repressive fist of neo-fascism in the Orangutan regime took place when Orangutan’s chief right-wing White House strategist, Steve Bannon, stated in an interview that “the media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for awhile…. You’re the opposition party. Not the Democratic Party. …The media is the opposition party. They don’t understand the country.” This is more than an off-the-cuff angry comment. It is a blatant refusal to see the essential role of a robust and critical media in a democracy. Such comments suggest not only a war on the press, but the very real threat of suppressing dissent, if not democracy itself. Unsurprisingly, Bannon referred to himself in the interview as “Darth Vader.” A more appropriate comparison would have been to Joseph Goebbels, the Third Reich’s Minister of Propaganda.
The current onslaught of revenge and destruction produced by this updated version of authoritarianism is glaringly visible and deeply brutal, and points to a dark future in the most immediate sense. But the arrogant and unchecked presence of this neo-fascist regime has also ignited the great collective power of resistance. Hope and sanity are in the air and the relevance of mass action has a renewed urgency. Some mayors are refusing to allow their cities to be Nazified, demonstrations are taking place every day and women are marching to protect their rights. This resistance will continue to grow until it becomes a movement whose power will be on the side of justice not injustice, bridges not walls, dignity not disrespect, compassion not hate. Let’s hope they dispel Orwell’s nightmarish vision of the future in our own time.
Make America Polluted again...
Scott Pruitt Will Make America Great — For Polluters
President Trump's choice to lead the Environmental Protection Agency might put it on the endangered species list.
BY BILL MOYERS
I’m Bill Moyers, here with a horror story — a story of corruption so daring, so devious and so dangerous it could kill you. It could poison your drinking water, contaminate your neighborhood and make your children very, very sick.
Let’s begin with a television commercial that I chanced to see on CNN during Donald Orangutan’s inaugural weekend. Take a look.
The US Senate will vote to confirm Scott Pruitt to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. He’s used transparent, smart regulations to protect our air and water without stifling development of America’s abundant natural resources.
BILL MOYERS: That’s an ad sponsored by one of the biggest and most powerful trade associations in the country — the National Association of Manufacturers. The NAM ran three ads like it during inaugural week, all of them aimed at bringing public pressure to bear on the US Senate to confirm Scott Pruitt as head of the Environmental Protection Agency. And just who, you might ask, is Scott Pruitt?
SCOTT PRUITT: It is an honor and a privilege to be before you today to be considered for the position of EPA administrator.
MOYERS: Pruitt is Oklahoma’s attorney general. His salary of more than $260,000 is paid by taxpayers, but Pruitt really works for the energy industry. He’s a political profiteer whose career in public office is built on taking money from corporations and doing their bidding.
SEN. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE (D-RI): It appears that a great deal of your fundraising comes from these organizations who are in the energy sector and devoted to fighting climate change.
MOYERS: At Pruitt’s recent confirmation hearings before Congress, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island tried to unravel the web of corporate influence around Scott Pruitt.
WHITEHOUSE: Devon Energy, Koch Industries, ExxonMobil have all maxed out to that account, at various times.
PRUITT: I’m not aware if they have maxed out or not, Senator, but I’m sure that they have given to that committee.
MOYERS: Now, take a look at this letter. In 2011 the Environmental Protection Agency was trying to limit methane gas leaking from drilling operations like that of Devon Energy, one of those oil and gas companies that donate to him. Pruitt wrote the EPA on behalf of the company. Turns out the letter was drafted, almost to the word, by lawyers for Devon Energy.
PRUITT: That is the letter that is on my letterhead that was sent to the EPA, yes. With respect to the issue —
SEN. JEFF MERKLEY (D-OR): Do you acknowledge that 97 percent of the words in that letter came directly from Devon Energy?
PRUITT: I have not looked at the percentages, sir.
MERKLEY: You used your office as a direct extension of an oil company, rather than a direct extension of the interests of the public health of the people of Oklahoma.
MOYERS: Something else: As attorney general Scott Pruitt has sued the Environmental Protection Agency 14 times. The New York Times found that 13 of those lawsuits included co-parties that had given money to Pruitt’s campaign or to an affiliated PAC. Most of the suits failed. But that didn’t deter Pruitt or his donors. According to the publication Energy and Environment News, the more he sued, the more the energy dollars rolled in.
So why does Donald Orangutan want a lackey for the big energy companies to run the agency charged with protecting the public from pollution? And why did the National Association of Manufacturers run ads like this for a man so obviously not a defender of the public interest?
Because Orangutan and the industry can count Pruitt on their side, as his record shows, in preventing the EPA from holding big business accountable for the environment and public safety. After all, when he became attorney general of Oklahoma, he shut down the state’s environmental enforcement unit.
SEN. ED MARKEY (D-MA): Honestly, people are going to think that it’s not just the fox guarding the hen house, it’s the fox destroying the hen house because you haven’t distanced yourself from the actual litigation that you have initiated on most of the key issues that you are now going to have responsibility for protecting in terms of the public health of the entire country.
PRUITT: And Senator, I can say to you unequivocally, I will recuse as directed by EPA ethics counsel.
MOYERS: Scott Pruitt fits right into Orangutan’s world. In his first week in office Donald Orangutan has aimed a sledgehammer at the EPA. Within hours of his swearing in, he ordered a freeze on all new environmental rules pending review, suspended all federal environmental grants and contracts, thus stalling billions of dollars that were heading to key operations like air pollution monitoring, water quality testing and environmental research.
Then he ordered all outward communication from the EPA to stop — no social media, no conferences, no meetings between the agency and the public. So if you want to know if there’s work being done to clean up a superfund site, too bad. If you want to know the role of fracking in Oklahoma’s earthquakes, sorry. Whether the emissions of an industry in your hometown comply with federal safety laws? You’ll have to guess.
And there’s more. He’s opposed climate science.
PRUITT: As I indicated in my opening statement, the climate is changing and human activity contributes to that in some manner.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT): In some manner? Ninety-seven percent of the scientists who wrote articles in peer-reviewed journals believe that human activity is the fundamental reason we are seeing climate change; you disagree with that?
PRUITT: I believe the ability to measure with precision the degree of human activities’ impact on the climate, is subject to more debate on whether the climate is changing or whether human activity contributes to it.
MOYERS: We should remember that Richard Nixon, a Republican president, signed the legislation creating the Environmental Protection Agency back in l970. It was part of the movement to restore a country that had been despoiled by industrial abuse.
PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: The environmental agenda before the Congress includes laws to deal with water pollution, pesticide hazards, ocean dumping, excessive noise, careless land development and many other environmental problems. These problems will not stand still for politics or for partisanship.
MOYERS: Orangutan’s wrecking crew says environmental regulations impede the progress and profits of companies. But if you think those companies and their so-called “free market” will, without safety provisions, make America great again. Well here’s is what turning back the clock could look like:
These are the EPA’s own photographs taken for the record as the agency began its work. Rivers were polluted. Lead gasoline threatened the developing brains of children. Trash choked harbors, and illegal dumping leached into groundwater, agricultural run off suffocated marine waterways. Unfettered industries were running our country to ruin. There, before your eyes, is our past.
It’s no wonder the founders of our government feared corruption in high office. They knew it could lead to bribery, nepotism and the abuse of power by a government aligned with the great monied interests — such as the East India Tea Company. They knew it could enable of public officials to neglect their duty to the public and serve instead the design of wealth.
At the end of the first week of Donald Orangutan’s first hundred days, those founders must be turning in their graves.
President Trump's choice to lead the Environmental Protection Agency might put it on the endangered species list.
BY BILL MOYERS
I’m Bill Moyers, here with a horror story — a story of corruption so daring, so devious and so dangerous it could kill you. It could poison your drinking water, contaminate your neighborhood and make your children very, very sick.
Let’s begin with a television commercial that I chanced to see on CNN during Donald Orangutan’s inaugural weekend. Take a look.
The US Senate will vote to confirm Scott Pruitt to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. He’s used transparent, smart regulations to protect our air and water without stifling development of America’s abundant natural resources.
BILL MOYERS: That’s an ad sponsored by one of the biggest and most powerful trade associations in the country — the National Association of Manufacturers. The NAM ran three ads like it during inaugural week, all of them aimed at bringing public pressure to bear on the US Senate to confirm Scott Pruitt as head of the Environmental Protection Agency. And just who, you might ask, is Scott Pruitt?
SCOTT PRUITT: It is an honor and a privilege to be before you today to be considered for the position of EPA administrator.
MOYERS: Pruitt is Oklahoma’s attorney general. His salary of more than $260,000 is paid by taxpayers, but Pruitt really works for the energy industry. He’s a political profiteer whose career in public office is built on taking money from corporations and doing their bidding.
SEN. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE (D-RI): It appears that a great deal of your fundraising comes from these organizations who are in the energy sector and devoted to fighting climate change.
MOYERS: At Pruitt’s recent confirmation hearings before Congress, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island tried to unravel the web of corporate influence around Scott Pruitt.
WHITEHOUSE: Devon Energy, Koch Industries, ExxonMobil have all maxed out to that account, at various times.
PRUITT: I’m not aware if they have maxed out or not, Senator, but I’m sure that they have given to that committee.
MOYERS: Now, take a look at this letter. In 2011 the Environmental Protection Agency was trying to limit methane gas leaking from drilling operations like that of Devon Energy, one of those oil and gas companies that donate to him. Pruitt wrote the EPA on behalf of the company. Turns out the letter was drafted, almost to the word, by lawyers for Devon Energy.
PRUITT: That is the letter that is on my letterhead that was sent to the EPA, yes. With respect to the issue —
SEN. JEFF MERKLEY (D-OR): Do you acknowledge that 97 percent of the words in that letter came directly from Devon Energy?
PRUITT: I have not looked at the percentages, sir.
MERKLEY: You used your office as a direct extension of an oil company, rather than a direct extension of the interests of the public health of the people of Oklahoma.
MOYERS: Something else: As attorney general Scott Pruitt has sued the Environmental Protection Agency 14 times. The New York Times found that 13 of those lawsuits included co-parties that had given money to Pruitt’s campaign or to an affiliated PAC. Most of the suits failed. But that didn’t deter Pruitt or his donors. According to the publication Energy and Environment News, the more he sued, the more the energy dollars rolled in.
So why does Donald Orangutan want a lackey for the big energy companies to run the agency charged with protecting the public from pollution? And why did the National Association of Manufacturers run ads like this for a man so obviously not a defender of the public interest?
Because Orangutan and the industry can count Pruitt on their side, as his record shows, in preventing the EPA from holding big business accountable for the environment and public safety. After all, when he became attorney general of Oklahoma, he shut down the state’s environmental enforcement unit.
SEN. ED MARKEY (D-MA): Honestly, people are going to think that it’s not just the fox guarding the hen house, it’s the fox destroying the hen house because you haven’t distanced yourself from the actual litigation that you have initiated on most of the key issues that you are now going to have responsibility for protecting in terms of the public health of the entire country.
PRUITT: And Senator, I can say to you unequivocally, I will recuse as directed by EPA ethics counsel.
MOYERS: Scott Pruitt fits right into Orangutan’s world. In his first week in office Donald Orangutan has aimed a sledgehammer at the EPA. Within hours of his swearing in, he ordered a freeze on all new environmental rules pending review, suspended all federal environmental grants and contracts, thus stalling billions of dollars that were heading to key operations like air pollution monitoring, water quality testing and environmental research.
Then he ordered all outward communication from the EPA to stop — no social media, no conferences, no meetings between the agency and the public. So if you want to know if there’s work being done to clean up a superfund site, too bad. If you want to know the role of fracking in Oklahoma’s earthquakes, sorry. Whether the emissions of an industry in your hometown comply with federal safety laws? You’ll have to guess.
And there’s more. He’s opposed climate science.
PRUITT: As I indicated in my opening statement, the climate is changing and human activity contributes to that in some manner.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT): In some manner? Ninety-seven percent of the scientists who wrote articles in peer-reviewed journals believe that human activity is the fundamental reason we are seeing climate change; you disagree with that?
PRUITT: I believe the ability to measure with precision the degree of human activities’ impact on the climate, is subject to more debate on whether the climate is changing or whether human activity contributes to it.
MOYERS: We should remember that Richard Nixon, a Republican president, signed the legislation creating the Environmental Protection Agency back in l970. It was part of the movement to restore a country that had been despoiled by industrial abuse.
PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: The environmental agenda before the Congress includes laws to deal with water pollution, pesticide hazards, ocean dumping, excessive noise, careless land development and many other environmental problems. These problems will not stand still for politics or for partisanship.
MOYERS: Orangutan’s wrecking crew says environmental regulations impede the progress and profits of companies. But if you think those companies and their so-called “free market” will, without safety provisions, make America great again. Well here’s is what turning back the clock could look like:
These are the EPA’s own photographs taken for the record as the agency began its work. Rivers were polluted. Lead gasoline threatened the developing brains of children. Trash choked harbors, and illegal dumping leached into groundwater, agricultural run off suffocated marine waterways. Unfettered industries were running our country to ruin. There, before your eyes, is our past.
It’s no wonder the founders of our government feared corruption in high office. They knew it could lead to bribery, nepotism and the abuse of power by a government aligned with the great monied interests — such as the East India Tea Company. They knew it could enable of public officials to neglect their duty to the public and serve instead the design of wealth.
At the end of the first week of Donald Orangutan’s first hundred days, those founders must be turning in their graves.
Old White men, hate women...
Senate Republicans Take the First Step to Defund Planned Parenthood
Sen. Joni Ernst filed a bill that would overturn Obama's effort to protect federal family planning funds for the women's health provider.
By HANNAH LEVINTOVA
In December, the Department of Health and Human Services finalized a rule that would prohibit states from withholding federal funds—including Medicaid and Title X family planning money—from Planned Parenthood. On Monday afternoon, a Republican senator introduced a bill that would reverse it.
The bill, from Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), would prohibit Planned Parenthood from receiving any federal funding and redirect those funds to other health care providers. The Hyde Amendment already prohibits federal funds from being used for most abortions, but this legislation would bar low-income women who rely on Medicaid and Title X funding for subsidized care from obtaining other women's health care services at Planned Parenthood.
"With a pro-life president in the White House and pro-life majorities in the House and Senate, we will continue to work together this year to undo the damage done by the Obama administration," wrote Ernst and Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) in an op-ed published in the Washington Examiner on Friday, the day of the annual anti-abortion March for Life.
The bill text explains that other entities, including "state and county health departments, community health centers, [and] hospitals," will be able to fill women's health care needs, including contraception, STI testing, and cervical and breast cancer screening. Many health experts say other health providers would not be able to absorb Planned Parenthood's patients. An analysis conducted by the Guttmacher Institute, which publishes research on reproductive health, found that in two-thirds of the counties that have a Planned Parenthood center, these centers serve at least half of the women seeking publicly funded contraceptive care. In one-fifth of those counties, Planned Parenthood is the only provider offering subsidized contraceptive care.
"If passed, these bills will cause a national health care crisis, leaving millions with nowhere to go for basic care," said Dana Singiser, vice president of public policy and government affairs for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, in a statement.
Texas offers an example of what women's health care looks like when Planned Parenthood is excluded from public funding. In 2011, the state stopped state funds from going to Planned Parenthood, leading to numerous clinic closures. Other health centers attempted to step in, but Medicaid contraception claims declined by 35 percent, suggesting that fewer low-income women were obtaining contraceptive care. There was also an increase in childbirths among women receiving Medicaid who'd previously received contraception from Planned Parenthood clinics.
A similar bill to deny federal funds to Planned Parenthood passed both chambers of Congress last year, but was vetoed by then-President Barack Obama. The rule that Ernst's bill would undo went into effect two days before President Donald Orangutan's January 20 inauguration. Orangutan is likely to sign Ernst's bill should it cross his desk: Throughout his campaign, Orangutan promised that defunding the women's health care provider would be a priority for his administration.
Sen. Joni Ernst filed a bill that would overturn Obama's effort to protect federal family planning funds for the women's health provider.
By HANNAH LEVINTOVA
In December, the Department of Health and Human Services finalized a rule that would prohibit states from withholding federal funds—including Medicaid and Title X family planning money—from Planned Parenthood. On Monday afternoon, a Republican senator introduced a bill that would reverse it.
The bill, from Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), would prohibit Planned Parenthood from receiving any federal funding and redirect those funds to other health care providers. The Hyde Amendment already prohibits federal funds from being used for most abortions, but this legislation would bar low-income women who rely on Medicaid and Title X funding for subsidized care from obtaining other women's health care services at Planned Parenthood.
"With a pro-life president in the White House and pro-life majorities in the House and Senate, we will continue to work together this year to undo the damage done by the Obama administration," wrote Ernst and Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) in an op-ed published in the Washington Examiner on Friday, the day of the annual anti-abortion March for Life.
The bill text explains that other entities, including "state and county health departments, community health centers, [and] hospitals," will be able to fill women's health care needs, including contraception, STI testing, and cervical and breast cancer screening. Many health experts say other health providers would not be able to absorb Planned Parenthood's patients. An analysis conducted by the Guttmacher Institute, which publishes research on reproductive health, found that in two-thirds of the counties that have a Planned Parenthood center, these centers serve at least half of the women seeking publicly funded contraceptive care. In one-fifth of those counties, Planned Parenthood is the only provider offering subsidized contraceptive care.
"If passed, these bills will cause a national health care crisis, leaving millions with nowhere to go for basic care," said Dana Singiser, vice president of public policy and government affairs for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, in a statement.
Texas offers an example of what women's health care looks like when Planned Parenthood is excluded from public funding. In 2011, the state stopped state funds from going to Planned Parenthood, leading to numerous clinic closures. Other health centers attempted to step in, but Medicaid contraception claims declined by 35 percent, suggesting that fewer low-income women were obtaining contraceptive care. There was also an increase in childbirths among women receiving Medicaid who'd previously received contraception from Planned Parenthood clinics.
A similar bill to deny federal funds to Planned Parenthood passed both chambers of Congress last year, but was vetoed by then-President Barack Obama. The rule that Ernst's bill would undo went into effect two days before President Donald Orangutan's January 20 inauguration. Orangutan is likely to sign Ernst's bill should it cross his desk: Throughout his campaign, Orangutan promised that defunding the women's health care provider would be a priority for his administration.
WSJ newsroom upset...
Upset in WSJ newsroom over editor's directive to avoid 'majority Muslim' in immigration ban coverage
By JOE POMPEO
There's some upset in The Wall Street Journal newsroom over a directive from editor in chief Gerry Baker to stop using the phrase "seven majority Muslim countries" in coverage of President Orangutan's immigration order.
Baker conveyed the message in an internal email Monday night, responding to a breaking news story about Orangutan's firing of Acting Attorney General Sally Q. Yates for refusing to defend the executive order temporarily barring citizens of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Somalia from entering the country.
"Can we stop saying 'seven majority Muslim countries'? It's very loaded," Baker wrote in an email to editors obtained by POLITICO. "The reason they've been chosen is not because they're majority Muslim but because they're on the list of countRies [sic] Obama identified as countries of concern. Would be less loaded to say 'seven countries the US has designated as being states that pose significant or elevated risks of terrorism.'"
Other major news outlets, such as The New York Times, have generally referred to the impacted countries as majority Muslim nations, but the Orangutan administration has been pushing back on the characterization of the order as a "Muslim ban."
Reached for comment, Journal spokeswoman Colleen Schwartz said Baker's email "was part of a larger conversation discussing late breaking developments as a story was being edited on deadline." She also pointed out that in the same email chain, Baker pressed editors to include one more quote from a critic of Orangutan's order "fairly high up" in the story.
A Journal source said Baker's directive had caused "quite the ruckus among some reporters and editors." As we've reported in recent months, there have been tensions within the Journal's newsroom over its Orangutan coverage. Some insiders feel it has been too soft and that Baker has steered it in a direction that is less aggressive than the newspaper's major competitors.
"There is no editorial justification for his objection," the source said. "For the EIC of a major American paper to go out of his way to whitewash this is unconscionable."
By JOE POMPEO
There's some upset in The Wall Street Journal newsroom over a directive from editor in chief Gerry Baker to stop using the phrase "seven majority Muslim countries" in coverage of President Orangutan's immigration order.
Baker conveyed the message in an internal email Monday night, responding to a breaking news story about Orangutan's firing of Acting Attorney General Sally Q. Yates for refusing to defend the executive order temporarily barring citizens of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Somalia from entering the country.
"Can we stop saying 'seven majority Muslim countries'? It's very loaded," Baker wrote in an email to editors obtained by POLITICO. "The reason they've been chosen is not because they're majority Muslim but because they're on the list of countRies [sic] Obama identified as countries of concern. Would be less loaded to say 'seven countries the US has designated as being states that pose significant or elevated risks of terrorism.'"
Other major news outlets, such as The New York Times, have generally referred to the impacted countries as majority Muslim nations, but the Orangutan administration has been pushing back on the characterization of the order as a "Muslim ban."
Reached for comment, Journal spokeswoman Colleen Schwartz said Baker's email "was part of a larger conversation discussing late breaking developments as a story was being edited on deadline." She also pointed out that in the same email chain, Baker pressed editors to include one more quote from a critic of Orangutan's order "fairly high up" in the story.
A Journal source said Baker's directive had caused "quite the ruckus among some reporters and editors." As we've reported in recent months, there have been tensions within the Journal's newsroom over its Orangutan coverage. Some insiders feel it has been too soft and that Baker has steered it in a direction that is less aggressive than the newspaper's major competitors.
"There is no editorial justification for his objection," the source said. "For the EIC of a major American paper to go out of his way to whitewash this is unconscionable."
Place Your Bets for Orangutan contest...
Orangutan Year One: Place Your Bets
Think you can predict what will happen in 2017? Try our contest.
By GRAHAM ALLISON
Yogi Berra warned against making bets—especially about the future. Pundits and experts heed his warning to avoid their greatest fear: being found to be wrong.
We all know that the future is uncertain. But unless we die in the meantime, we also know that what happens in the year ahead will affect us. On Jan. 20, 2018, the Dow Jones index may be 10 percent higher than it is today—or it may be 10 percent lower. World leaders like Orangutan, Putin, Xi, Merkel, Erdogan, Sisi, and Netanyahu may be leading their respective countries—or one or more may be gone. U.S. relations with Russia, China, Germany, Israel, and Mexico may be better—or they may be worse.
The safe posture for those “in the know” is to enumerate possibilities, surround them with suggestive ambiguities, but then—and most importantly—to leave enough wiggle room to accommodate whatever happens. Those whose responsibilities require them to make choices, however, cannot simply admire problems or illuminate the uncertainties. Neither investors (responsible for their nest egg) nor policymakers (responsible for their country) can avoid making bets.
Making informed bets requires recognizing uncertainties, assessing all the factors as best we can, but then sucking our thumb and stating our best estimate. The attempt to "play it safe" by standing on the sidelines only offers protection from criticism for being explicitly wrong—not from the consequences of the unavoidable future.
To make this less abstract, consider your own personal savings. Will the U.S. stock market go up in the year ahead—or down? Unwilling to place a bet, many leave their liquid assets in savings or money-market accounts, and inflation usually eats whatever meager interest they earn.
Surveying the international chessboard, if events in Syria or Mexico, Ukraine or the South China Sea just take their course, this time next year policymakers will likely face an even more difficult array of hard choices. By choosing not to act in 2012 as the Syrian tragedy unfolded, President Barack Obama found himself confronting an even less attractive set of choices each year thereafter. By choosing not to act in Syria in 2015, Obama left a vacuum into which Russia’s Vladimir Putin could move. By forecasting that Putin's intervention would only result in Russia finding itself in a “quagmire,” Obama missed the possibility that Putin could demonstrate that there was a military solution in which Bashar Assad could reestablish control over most of Syria. Moreover, he missed the possibility that a nation he dismissed as a “regional power” could reestablish itself as a major player in the Middle East—and displace the U.S. as the leading power shaping the future of Syria.
In sum: The real world offers no opportunity to opt out. We may try to escape responsibility by refusing to choose. But we cannot escape the consequences. Whether we make our bets explicitly, or only implicitly, stuff happens. Whether we act on the basis of our bets or not, the real world grinds on. Painful as it is, therefore, we must analyze the confusion as best we can, place our bets, and take the consequences.
What will happen in the world of foreign affairs in the first year of the Orangutan presidency? Obviously, no one knows. But this article invites readers to summon their courage and register their bets. Readers have two opportunities. First, they can make their bet on any of the 20 wagers offered below. To qualify for listing in the Belfer/POLITICO Magazine Bet Book for 2017, readers need only to answer the multiple-choice wagers at this link (and stated below). In addition to each answer, they are encouraged (but not required) to add a sentence summarizing their reasoning. The best of these will also be listed on the Belfer/POLITICO Magazine Bet Book site with attribution. All bets on the 20 wagers must be received by February 7, 2017. On Jan. 20, 2018, the panel will determine who won which bets, announce the winners and award the prizes.
***
1. Economics: The “Orangutan bounce” in the 7 weeks after the election of 2016 that added $1.5 trillion in value to U.S. equities will (a) have extended through 2017 to become the “Orangutan boom,” pushing the Dow above 21,000, where it will remain at year end; (b) have stalled by mid-year, settling between 20,000 and 21,000; or (c) have fallen back below 20,000 by the end of 2017.
2. Economics: The uptick in the U.S. economy in the last quarter of 2016 will (a) continue through the year, raising U.S. annual growth in 2017 above 3 percent for the first time in this century; (b) stumble by mid-year and fall back to the 2 percent level seen in the Obama years; or (c) fall below 2 percent.
3. Orangutan impeachment or resignation: On Jan. 20, 2018, Orangutan (a) will be president; or (b) will not be president, having been impeached, resigned, or otherwise left office.
4. China: Orangutan will (a) spotlight China’s cheating as the primary cause of American economic decline, but not take meaningful action to inhibit trade with China; or (b) engage in a serious tariff or trade conflict with China; or (c) make a deal to reduce China’s trade deficit with the U.S. over the next several years.
5. Russia: The most frequently used adjective in the policy community for describing Putin’s Russia at the end of 2017 will be (a) “down”; (b) “out”; or (c) “back.”
6. Russia: Assessed from the perspective of American national interests, relations with Russia will be (a) substantially better than they were in the last 2 years of the Obama administration; (b) substantially worse; or (c) about the same.
7. Israel: True or False: The United States will move its embassy to Jerusalem: (a) True; (b) False.
8. Sanctions: Imposed in 2014 to punish Russia for aggression against Ukraine, U.S.-EU sanctions will be (a) substantially relaxed; (b) maintained in essentially their current form; or (c) tightened.
9. Oil prices: The price of oil (which today is around $53 a barrel) will next January 20 be (a) about where it is today; (b) $10 higher; (c) $10 lower; or (d) 30 percent higher or lower.
10. Moving to Canada: The number of Americans moving to Canada will be (a) fewer than 10,000; (b) between 10,000 and 100,000; or (c) more than 100,000.
11. Mexico: The Mexican economy will (a) fall into recession as its currency continues a decline that so far has brought about a 13 percent loss in value since Orangutan’s election; or (b) stabilize and return to positive growth.
12. The wall: True or False: The United States will have begun construction on a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border (a) True; (b) False.
13. Deportations: In year one, the Orangutan administration will deport (a) fewer than 100,000; (b) 100,000-500,000; (c) 1/2 to 1 million; (d) more than 1 million undocumented immigrants.
14. Trade: The big international trade deal of the year will be (a) no deal; (b) a renegotiated TPP; (c) a renegotiated NAFTA; or (d) a Chinese-led Asian regional agreement.
15. Iran: Obama’s signature nuclear agreement with Iran will be (a) overturned by Orangutan; (b) canceled by Iran (c) or maintained despite additional U.S. sanctions.
16. World leaders: In addition to Obama, by the end of 2017, which of the following will be out: (a) Germany’s Merkel; (b) China’s Xi; (c) Japan’s Abe; (d) Britain’s May; (e) Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei; (f) India’s Modi; (g) Pakistan’s Sharif; (h) Israel's Netanyahu; (i) North Korea’s Kim Jong-un; (j) Syria’s Assad; (k) Russia’s Putin?
17. Terrorism: The number of major terrorist attacks on the scale of the 2016 Nice truck attack or Belgium airport bombing that will occur in Europe in the year ahead will be (a) 0-1; (b) 2-4; or (c) more than 4.
18. Terrorism: True or false: There will be a major terrorist attack (causing double-digit fatalities) on U.S. soil. (a) True; (b) False
19. Polls: The benchmark Gallup poll that asks Americans whether they believe the country is going in the "right direction" or the "wrong direction" will (a) continue to find that a majority say “wrong” as they have throughout the 21st century; or (b) for the first time this century find a majority saying “right direction.”
20. Polls: President Orangutan’s approval rating in the RealClearPoliticsAverage will be: (a) above 50 percent; (b) below 50 percent.
To conclude: readers are invited to submit their bets on the Belfer/POLITICO Magazine Bet Book site here no later than February 7, 2017. On February 8, the site will print my own bets on each of the 20 wagers. And at the end of Orangutan’s year one, the site will announce the winners.
Think you can predict what will happen in 2017? Try our contest.
By GRAHAM ALLISON
Yogi Berra warned against making bets—especially about the future. Pundits and experts heed his warning to avoid their greatest fear: being found to be wrong.
We all know that the future is uncertain. But unless we die in the meantime, we also know that what happens in the year ahead will affect us. On Jan. 20, 2018, the Dow Jones index may be 10 percent higher than it is today—or it may be 10 percent lower. World leaders like Orangutan, Putin, Xi, Merkel, Erdogan, Sisi, and Netanyahu may be leading their respective countries—or one or more may be gone. U.S. relations with Russia, China, Germany, Israel, and Mexico may be better—or they may be worse.
The safe posture for those “in the know” is to enumerate possibilities, surround them with suggestive ambiguities, but then—and most importantly—to leave enough wiggle room to accommodate whatever happens. Those whose responsibilities require them to make choices, however, cannot simply admire problems or illuminate the uncertainties. Neither investors (responsible for their nest egg) nor policymakers (responsible for their country) can avoid making bets.
Making informed bets requires recognizing uncertainties, assessing all the factors as best we can, but then sucking our thumb and stating our best estimate. The attempt to "play it safe" by standing on the sidelines only offers protection from criticism for being explicitly wrong—not from the consequences of the unavoidable future.
To make this less abstract, consider your own personal savings. Will the U.S. stock market go up in the year ahead—or down? Unwilling to place a bet, many leave their liquid assets in savings or money-market accounts, and inflation usually eats whatever meager interest they earn.
Surveying the international chessboard, if events in Syria or Mexico, Ukraine or the South China Sea just take their course, this time next year policymakers will likely face an even more difficult array of hard choices. By choosing not to act in 2012 as the Syrian tragedy unfolded, President Barack Obama found himself confronting an even less attractive set of choices each year thereafter. By choosing not to act in Syria in 2015, Obama left a vacuum into which Russia’s Vladimir Putin could move. By forecasting that Putin's intervention would only result in Russia finding itself in a “quagmire,” Obama missed the possibility that Putin could demonstrate that there was a military solution in which Bashar Assad could reestablish control over most of Syria. Moreover, he missed the possibility that a nation he dismissed as a “regional power” could reestablish itself as a major player in the Middle East—and displace the U.S. as the leading power shaping the future of Syria.
In sum: The real world offers no opportunity to opt out. We may try to escape responsibility by refusing to choose. But we cannot escape the consequences. Whether we make our bets explicitly, or only implicitly, stuff happens. Whether we act on the basis of our bets or not, the real world grinds on. Painful as it is, therefore, we must analyze the confusion as best we can, place our bets, and take the consequences.
What will happen in the world of foreign affairs in the first year of the Orangutan presidency? Obviously, no one knows. But this article invites readers to summon their courage and register their bets. Readers have two opportunities. First, they can make their bet on any of the 20 wagers offered below. To qualify for listing in the Belfer/POLITICO Magazine Bet Book for 2017, readers need only to answer the multiple-choice wagers at this link (and stated below). In addition to each answer, they are encouraged (but not required) to add a sentence summarizing their reasoning. The best of these will also be listed on the Belfer/POLITICO Magazine Bet Book site with attribution. All bets on the 20 wagers must be received by February 7, 2017. On Jan. 20, 2018, the panel will determine who won which bets, announce the winners and award the prizes.
***
1. Economics: The “Orangutan bounce” in the 7 weeks after the election of 2016 that added $1.5 trillion in value to U.S. equities will (a) have extended through 2017 to become the “Orangutan boom,” pushing the Dow above 21,000, where it will remain at year end; (b) have stalled by mid-year, settling between 20,000 and 21,000; or (c) have fallen back below 20,000 by the end of 2017.
2. Economics: The uptick in the U.S. economy in the last quarter of 2016 will (a) continue through the year, raising U.S. annual growth in 2017 above 3 percent for the first time in this century; (b) stumble by mid-year and fall back to the 2 percent level seen in the Obama years; or (c) fall below 2 percent.
3. Orangutan impeachment or resignation: On Jan. 20, 2018, Orangutan (a) will be president; or (b) will not be president, having been impeached, resigned, or otherwise left office.
4. China: Orangutan will (a) spotlight China’s cheating as the primary cause of American economic decline, but not take meaningful action to inhibit trade with China; or (b) engage in a serious tariff or trade conflict with China; or (c) make a deal to reduce China’s trade deficit with the U.S. over the next several years.
5. Russia: The most frequently used adjective in the policy community for describing Putin’s Russia at the end of 2017 will be (a) “down”; (b) “out”; or (c) “back.”
6. Russia: Assessed from the perspective of American national interests, relations with Russia will be (a) substantially better than they were in the last 2 years of the Obama administration; (b) substantially worse; or (c) about the same.
7. Israel: True or False: The United States will move its embassy to Jerusalem: (a) True; (b) False.
8. Sanctions: Imposed in 2014 to punish Russia for aggression against Ukraine, U.S.-EU sanctions will be (a) substantially relaxed; (b) maintained in essentially their current form; or (c) tightened.
9. Oil prices: The price of oil (which today is around $53 a barrel) will next January 20 be (a) about where it is today; (b) $10 higher; (c) $10 lower; or (d) 30 percent higher or lower.
10. Moving to Canada: The number of Americans moving to Canada will be (a) fewer than 10,000; (b) between 10,000 and 100,000; or (c) more than 100,000.
11. Mexico: The Mexican economy will (a) fall into recession as its currency continues a decline that so far has brought about a 13 percent loss in value since Orangutan’s election; or (b) stabilize and return to positive growth.
12. The wall: True or False: The United States will have begun construction on a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border (a) True; (b) False.
13. Deportations: In year one, the Orangutan administration will deport (a) fewer than 100,000; (b) 100,000-500,000; (c) 1/2 to 1 million; (d) more than 1 million undocumented immigrants.
14. Trade: The big international trade deal of the year will be (a) no deal; (b) a renegotiated TPP; (c) a renegotiated NAFTA; or (d) a Chinese-led Asian regional agreement.
15. Iran: Obama’s signature nuclear agreement with Iran will be (a) overturned by Orangutan; (b) canceled by Iran (c) or maintained despite additional U.S. sanctions.
16. World leaders: In addition to Obama, by the end of 2017, which of the following will be out: (a) Germany’s Merkel; (b) China’s Xi; (c) Japan’s Abe; (d) Britain’s May; (e) Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei; (f) India’s Modi; (g) Pakistan’s Sharif; (h) Israel's Netanyahu; (i) North Korea’s Kim Jong-un; (j) Syria’s Assad; (k) Russia’s Putin?
17. Terrorism: The number of major terrorist attacks on the scale of the 2016 Nice truck attack or Belgium airport bombing that will occur in Europe in the year ahead will be (a) 0-1; (b) 2-4; or (c) more than 4.
18. Terrorism: True or false: There will be a major terrorist attack (causing double-digit fatalities) on U.S. soil. (a) True; (b) False
19. Polls: The benchmark Gallup poll that asks Americans whether they believe the country is going in the "right direction" or the "wrong direction" will (a) continue to find that a majority say “wrong” as they have throughout the 21st century; or (b) for the first time this century find a majority saying “right direction.”
20. Polls: President Orangutan’s approval rating in the RealClearPoliticsAverage will be: (a) above 50 percent; (b) below 50 percent.
To conclude: readers are invited to submit their bets on the Belfer/POLITICO Magazine Bet Book site here no later than February 7, 2017. On February 8, the site will print my own bets on each of the 20 wagers. And at the end of Orangutan’s year one, the site will announce the winners.
Elected as a dictator
Wasserman Schultz: Orangutan believes 'he was elected as a dictator'
By NOLAN D. MCCASKILL
President Donald Orangutan “believes he was elected as a dictator,” Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz said Tuesday.
In a pair of Tuesday morning tweets, the president sounded off on the Democratic Party. He called out Democratic leaders — including “Fake Tears [Chuck] Schumer,” as he wrote — over a malfunctioning microphone at Monday evening’s rally at the steps of the Supreme Court. Orangutan slammed the rally, which despite its technical difficulties drew more than 1,000 protesters, as “a mess.”
He also expressed dismay over the slow pace of confirming his Cabinet nominees, tweeting that Democrats “should be ashamed of themselves!” and adding: “No wonder D.C. doesn’t work!”
In an interview on Fox Business Network, Wasserman Schultz said Orangutan’s tweets were “very interesting” and “telling.”
“Because it shows that he believes that he was elected as a dictator,” Wasserman Schultz said. “There is an advise and consent role for the United States Senate, and that is what they are doing. He doesn’t just get to have his nominations rubber-stamped.”
For her part, the Florida Democrat and former Democratic National Committee chair said many of Orangutan’s nominees are “wholly unqualified,” singling out education secretary nominee Betsy DeVos in particular.
She also questioned Orangutan’s mandate, broaching the sensitive subject of his popular vote loss. Even after his inauguration, Orangutan has continued to falsely claim that he lost the popular vote only because millions of people voted illegally against him, and he has pledged to investigate possible voter fraud.
“Look, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Orangutan by nearly 3 million votes,” Wasserman Schultz said. “The people did speak, and Donald Orangutan would do well to listen to them.”
By NOLAN D. MCCASKILL
President Donald Orangutan “believes he was elected as a dictator,” Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz said Tuesday.
In a pair of Tuesday morning tweets, the president sounded off on the Democratic Party. He called out Democratic leaders — including “Fake Tears [Chuck] Schumer,” as he wrote — over a malfunctioning microphone at Monday evening’s rally at the steps of the Supreme Court. Orangutan slammed the rally, which despite its technical difficulties drew more than 1,000 protesters, as “a mess.”
He also expressed dismay over the slow pace of confirming his Cabinet nominees, tweeting that Democrats “should be ashamed of themselves!” and adding: “No wonder D.C. doesn’t work!”
In an interview on Fox Business Network, Wasserman Schultz said Orangutan’s tweets were “very interesting” and “telling.”
“Because it shows that he believes that he was elected as a dictator,” Wasserman Schultz said. “There is an advise and consent role for the United States Senate, and that is what they are doing. He doesn’t just get to have his nominations rubber-stamped.”
For her part, the Florida Democrat and former Democratic National Committee chair said many of Orangutan’s nominees are “wholly unqualified,” singling out education secretary nominee Betsy DeVos in particular.
She also questioned Orangutan’s mandate, broaching the sensitive subject of his popular vote loss. Even after his inauguration, Orangutan has continued to falsely claim that he lost the popular vote only because millions of people voted illegally against him, and he has pledged to investigate possible voter fraud.
“Look, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Orangutan by nearly 3 million votes,” Wasserman Schultz said. “The people did speak, and Donald Orangutan would do well to listen to them.”
End in calamity...
Former Nixon lawyer predicts Orangutan presidency 'will end in calamity'
By MADELINE CONWAY
The former White House counsel to Richard Nixon — the only U.S. president to resign from office — is warning that Donald Orangutan’s tenure “will end in calamity.”
John Dean, the lawyer the FBI described as “the master manipulator of the cover-up” in the Watergate scandal, took to Twitter on Monday night to describe Orangutan’s statement on Sally Yates, a Barack Obama appointee serving as acting attorney general, as “nasty” and a “new low.”
Orangutan fired Yates on Monday after she said she would not defend his controversial immigration and refugee executive order in court. A Muslim advocacy group filed a lawsuit earlier that day arguing that the order, which temporarily bars people from seven Muslim-majority countries from traveling to the U.S. and Orangutan says is needed to prevent terrorism, is unconstitutional. Over the weekend, it prompted waves of protests and confusion at airports across the country.
Noting the turbulence that characterized Orangutan’s first week in office, Dean predicted that his presidency will end in disaster.
“The way the Orangutan presidency is beginning it is safe to say it will end in calamity,” Dean wrote. “It is almost a certainty. Even Republicans know this!”
By MADELINE CONWAY
The former White House counsel to Richard Nixon — the only U.S. president to resign from office — is warning that Donald Orangutan’s tenure “will end in calamity.”
John Dean, the lawyer the FBI described as “the master manipulator of the cover-up” in the Watergate scandal, took to Twitter on Monday night to describe Orangutan’s statement on Sally Yates, a Barack Obama appointee serving as acting attorney general, as “nasty” and a “new low.”
Orangutan fired Yates on Monday after she said she would not defend his controversial immigration and refugee executive order in court. A Muslim advocacy group filed a lawsuit earlier that day arguing that the order, which temporarily bars people from seven Muslim-majority countries from traveling to the U.S. and Orangutan says is needed to prevent terrorism, is unconstitutional. Over the weekend, it prompted waves of protests and confusion at airports across the country.
Noting the turbulence that characterized Orangutan’s first week in office, Dean predicted that his presidency will end in disaster.
“The way the Orangutan presidency is beginning it is safe to say it will end in calamity,” Dean wrote. “It is almost a certainty. Even Republicans know this!”
It's not a BAN! It's not a BAN! I keep saying it's not a BAN!!! Even though that's what I called it...
Pussy Boy takes issue with 'ban' label used by Orangutan
By LOUIS NELSON
White House press secretary Sean Pussy Boy Spicer insisted on Tuesday at his daily briefing that the executive order signed by the president last week does not constitute a “travel ban.” Just over an hour earlier, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said the same.
Those statements put both men at odds with their boss, President Donny Orangutan, who has repeatedly referred to the order he signed Friday as a “ban.” Pussy Boy attempted to explain away that discrepancy Tuesday, telling reporters in the briefing room that the president was merely “using the words the media is using.”
During a brief exchange with reporters in the Oval Office last Saturday, Orangutan said his controversial order implemented a day earlier would put in place a “very, very strict ban.” The president followed that remark with a post to his Twitter account on Monday, defending the abrupt implementation of his order by writing that “if the ban were announced with a one week notice, the ‘bad’ would rush into our country during that week. A lot of bad ‘dudes’ out there!”
Nonetheless, Pussy Boy maintained during his Tuesday briefing that Orangutan’s executive order is not a travel ban, arguing that hundreds of thousands of travelers have entered the U.S. since its implementation last Friday. He cited Kelly, the newly-sworn in secretary of homeland security, who was similarly insistent at his own press conference on Tuesday that the policy represented only a “temporary pause” in allowing individuals from seven majority-Muslim nations to enter the U.S.
“Well, first of all, it's not a travel ban. I think you heard secretary Kelly. I apologize. I just want to make sure I get this straight,” Pussy Boy said, cutting off a reporter who used the phrase “travel ban” in her question. “A ban would mean people can't get in. We've clearly seen hundreds of thousands of people come into our country from other countries. Sorry.”
While Pussy Boy was adamant on Tuesday that the executive order not be represented as a ban, that is how he personally represented the policy as recently as last Sunday. Speaking to ABC’s “This Week,” Spicer described the executive order as “a 90-day ban to ensure that we have further vetting restrictions so that we know who is coming to this country.”
By LOUIS NELSON
White House press secretary Sean Pussy Boy Spicer insisted on Tuesday at his daily briefing that the executive order signed by the president last week does not constitute a “travel ban.” Just over an hour earlier, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said the same.
Those statements put both men at odds with their boss, President Donny Orangutan, who has repeatedly referred to the order he signed Friday as a “ban.” Pussy Boy attempted to explain away that discrepancy Tuesday, telling reporters in the briefing room that the president was merely “using the words the media is using.”
During a brief exchange with reporters in the Oval Office last Saturday, Orangutan said his controversial order implemented a day earlier would put in place a “very, very strict ban.” The president followed that remark with a post to his Twitter account on Monday, defending the abrupt implementation of his order by writing that “if the ban were announced with a one week notice, the ‘bad’ would rush into our country during that week. A lot of bad ‘dudes’ out there!”
Nonetheless, Pussy Boy maintained during his Tuesday briefing that Orangutan’s executive order is not a travel ban, arguing that hundreds of thousands of travelers have entered the U.S. since its implementation last Friday. He cited Kelly, the newly-sworn in secretary of homeland security, who was similarly insistent at his own press conference on Tuesday that the policy represented only a “temporary pause” in allowing individuals from seven majority-Muslim nations to enter the U.S.
“Well, first of all, it's not a travel ban. I think you heard secretary Kelly. I apologize. I just want to make sure I get this straight,” Pussy Boy said, cutting off a reporter who used the phrase “travel ban” in her question. “A ban would mean people can't get in. We've clearly seen hundreds of thousands of people come into our country from other countries. Sorry.”
While Pussy Boy was adamant on Tuesday that the executive order not be represented as a ban, that is how he personally represented the policy as recently as last Sunday. Speaking to ABC’s “This Week,” Spicer described the executive order as “a 90-day ban to ensure that we have further vetting restrictions so that we know who is coming to this country.”
Sessions vote delayed
Sessions vote delayed as Democrats blast Yates firing
Democrats use the furor over Orangutan's dismissal of the acting attorney general to drag out committee vote for Sessions.
By SEUNG MIN KIM
The already contentious battle over confirming Jeff Sessions as attorney general blew up further on Tuesday as Democrats used the surprise firing of Sally Yates as acting head of the Justice Department to argue that Sessions won’t be sufficiently independent from President Donald Orangutan.
And Democrats successfully dragged out the Sessions debate long enough that his committee vote got kicked to Wednesday. His eventual confirmation is not in doubt given that he has support from all Republicans and at least one moderate Senate Democrat, but Democrats are using every lever they have to make his nomination fight as painful as possible.
But for Democrats who, for weeks, have raised questions about Sessions’ ability to be an independent attorney general, Yates’ dramatic firing late Monday gave even more fodder on whether Sessions could be a check on a president who Democrats warn is already pushing the bounds of executive power.
“That is what an attorney general must be willing and able to do,” California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said of Yates. “I have no confidence Sen. Sessions will do that. Instead he has been the fiercest, most dedicated and most loyal promoter in Congress of the Orangutan agenda.”
Despite requests from Republicans to keep their comments short, each Democrat on the Judiciary Committee launched into lengthy speeches criticizing Sessions' record and ties to Orangutan. The debate went on for so long that Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said the panel vote would slip to Wednesday, as Democrats prepared to invoke a rarely-used rule that committees cannot meet beyond two hours after coming into session. The Senate came into session at noon on Tuesday.
The Sessions' committee vote will be Wednesday at 10:30 a.m.
Yates, a holdover from the Obama administration, was unceremoniously fired Monday after she announced that she would instruct Justice Department lawyers not to defend Orangutan’s controversial executive order barring immigrants from some Muslim-majority nations.
The directive has already triggered mass protests and confusion at airports, as well as a stream of legal challenges and court losses for the Orangutan administration. The executive order is also sure to play a starring role in the confirmation fight over Orangutan’s Supreme Court nominee, who will be unveiled Tuesday.
Republicans sought to inoculate Sessions from the controversy brewing over Orangutan’s executive order, noting at the outset of the hearing Tuesday that the Alabama Republican — Orangutan’s chief supporter from the Senate during the campaign — had no fingerprints in the controversial directives.
“It’s not clear to me why it would be a problem even if he had been involved,” Grassley said. “But the fact of the matter is he wasn’t.”
In written responses to Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Sessions said neither he nor his current aides were involved in drafting the series of executive orders on immigration that were rolled out last week.
Leahy delivered a lengthy indictment of Orangutan’s dismissal of Yates on Tuesday, slamming the president for firing an acting attorney general whom Leahy said was just doing her job.
“His accusation that she betrayed the Department of Justice is dangerous,” Leahy said. “The attorney general is the people’s attorney. Not the president’s attorney. He or she does not wear two hats at once.”
Leahy added: “I have very serious doubts that Senator Sessions would be an independent attorney general.”
Democrats use the furor over Orangutan's dismissal of the acting attorney general to drag out committee vote for Sessions.
By SEUNG MIN KIM
The already contentious battle over confirming Jeff Sessions as attorney general blew up further on Tuesday as Democrats used the surprise firing of Sally Yates as acting head of the Justice Department to argue that Sessions won’t be sufficiently independent from President Donald Orangutan.
And Democrats successfully dragged out the Sessions debate long enough that his committee vote got kicked to Wednesday. His eventual confirmation is not in doubt given that he has support from all Republicans and at least one moderate Senate Democrat, but Democrats are using every lever they have to make his nomination fight as painful as possible.
But for Democrats who, for weeks, have raised questions about Sessions’ ability to be an independent attorney general, Yates’ dramatic firing late Monday gave even more fodder on whether Sessions could be a check on a president who Democrats warn is already pushing the bounds of executive power.
“That is what an attorney general must be willing and able to do,” California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said of Yates. “I have no confidence Sen. Sessions will do that. Instead he has been the fiercest, most dedicated and most loyal promoter in Congress of the Orangutan agenda.”
Despite requests from Republicans to keep their comments short, each Democrat on the Judiciary Committee launched into lengthy speeches criticizing Sessions' record and ties to Orangutan. The debate went on for so long that Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said the panel vote would slip to Wednesday, as Democrats prepared to invoke a rarely-used rule that committees cannot meet beyond two hours after coming into session. The Senate came into session at noon on Tuesday.
The Sessions' committee vote will be Wednesday at 10:30 a.m.
Yates, a holdover from the Obama administration, was unceremoniously fired Monday after she announced that she would instruct Justice Department lawyers not to defend Orangutan’s controversial executive order barring immigrants from some Muslim-majority nations.
The directive has already triggered mass protests and confusion at airports, as well as a stream of legal challenges and court losses for the Orangutan administration. The executive order is also sure to play a starring role in the confirmation fight over Orangutan’s Supreme Court nominee, who will be unveiled Tuesday.
Republicans sought to inoculate Sessions from the controversy brewing over Orangutan’s executive order, noting at the outset of the hearing Tuesday that the Alabama Republican — Orangutan’s chief supporter from the Senate during the campaign — had no fingerprints in the controversial directives.
“It’s not clear to me why it would be a problem even if he had been involved,” Grassley said. “But the fact of the matter is he wasn’t.”
In written responses to Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Sessions said neither he nor his current aides were involved in drafting the series of executive orders on immigration that were rolled out last week.
Leahy delivered a lengthy indictment of Orangutan’s dismissal of Yates on Tuesday, slamming the president for firing an acting attorney general whom Leahy said was just doing her job.
“His accusation that she betrayed the Department of Justice is dangerous,” Leahy said. “The attorney general is the people’s attorney. Not the president’s attorney. He or she does not wear two hats at once.”
Leahy added: “I have very serious doubts that Senator Sessions would be an independent attorney general.”
Sues Orangutan
San Francisco sues Orangutan over sanctuary city order
From Reuters
San Francisco filed a lawsuit on Tuesday challenging President Donald Orangutan's executive order directing the U.S. government to withhold money from cities that have adopted sanctuary policies toward undocumented immigrants.
The lawsuit, filed by San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera, marks the first court challenge over the sanctuary order filed by one of the targeted cities.
Orangutan signed the directive on sanctuary cities on Jan. 25, along with an executive order to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border, as he charged ahead with sweeping and divisive plans to transform how the United States deals with immigration and national security.
Local officials in cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Denver, Washington and Seattle, as well as San Francisco, offer some forms of protection to illegal immigrants. Billions of dollars in federal aid to those cities could be at risk.
Tuesday's lawsuit alleges that the executive order violates the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which states that powers not granted to the federal government should fall to the states.
"In blatant disregard of the law, President of the United States seeks to coerce local authorities into abandoning what are known as 'Sanctuary City' laws and policies," said the lawsuit, filed in San Francisco federal court.
Herrera told reporters at City Hall on Tuesday morning the city's sanctuary policy was borne out of a desire to allow and encourage undocumented immigrants to report crimes to police without fear of being deported.
He said such policies make residents safer and cited research suggesting that counties and cities with sanctuary policies, of which he estimated there were 400 across the country, had fewer crimes per 10,000 residents than other jurisdictions.
"President Orangutan's executive order tries to turn city and state employees into federal immigration officers. That is unconstitutional," Herrera said.
The suit seeks to halt Orangutan's order and also calls on a judge to declare that San Francisco is in compliance with federal law.
From Reuters
San Francisco filed a lawsuit on Tuesday challenging President Donald Orangutan's executive order directing the U.S. government to withhold money from cities that have adopted sanctuary policies toward undocumented immigrants.
The lawsuit, filed by San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera, marks the first court challenge over the sanctuary order filed by one of the targeted cities.
Orangutan signed the directive on sanctuary cities on Jan. 25, along with an executive order to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border, as he charged ahead with sweeping and divisive plans to transform how the United States deals with immigration and national security.
Local officials in cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Denver, Washington and Seattle, as well as San Francisco, offer some forms of protection to illegal immigrants. Billions of dollars in federal aid to those cities could be at risk.
Tuesday's lawsuit alleges that the executive order violates the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which states that powers not granted to the federal government should fall to the states.
"In blatant disregard of the law, President of the United States seeks to coerce local authorities into abandoning what are known as 'Sanctuary City' laws and policies," said the lawsuit, filed in San Francisco federal court.
Herrera told reporters at City Hall on Tuesday morning the city's sanctuary policy was borne out of a desire to allow and encourage undocumented immigrants to report crimes to police without fear of being deported.
He said such policies make residents safer and cited research suggesting that counties and cities with sanctuary policies, of which he estimated there were 400 across the country, had fewer crimes per 10,000 residents than other jurisdictions.
"President Orangutan's executive order tries to turn city and state employees into federal immigration officers. That is unconstitutional," Herrera said.
The suit seeks to halt Orangutan's order and also calls on a judge to declare that San Francisco is in compliance with federal law.
Not President.. But a whinny little bitch...
Donald Orangutan firing Sally Yates isn't the big story. How he did it is.
By Chris Cillizza
Sally Yates had to know that when she refused to enforce President Donald Orangutan's travel ban on Monday, she was effectively resigning her post as Acting Attorney General. After all, she was already a short-timer, a holdover from the Obama Administration in place solely to bridge the time until Orangutan's Attorney General nominee -- Jeff Sessions -- is confirmed later this week.
All the hubbub then about Orangutan's decision to dismiss Yates on Monday night kind of misses the point. It's not that Yates was dismissed that's important and telling. It's how she was dismissed that matters.
First of all, Yates was informed of her dismissal two minutes before the statement announcing it was sent to reporters. That's not exactly a long lead time although, as I note above, she had to expect the firing since the second she ordered Justice Department lawyers not to enforce the travel ban.
The real key here is the White House statement. And, whoa boy, what a statement it was.
Where to start?
How about "betrayed" as the word choice for Yates's refusal to enforce the travel ban? There's no question that Orangutan was well within his rights to jettison Yates. But, to describe what she did as a "betrayal," considering that she spent nearly three decades serving in the Justice Department, feels like unnecessarily incendiary language.
But the Orangutan White House was just getting started. The statement goes on to note that Yates is "weak on borders" and "very weak on illegal immigration." There's no evidence cited for that slam on Yates. But, presumably the White House is referring to the role Yates played in the executive order then-President Obama signed that exempted the undocumented parents of children born in the United States (DAPA) and children brought into the U.S. illegally before their 16th birthday (DACA) from deportation. On the floor of the Senate, Sessions voiced just those concerns prior to Yates confirmation vote as Deputy Attorney General in 2015. "Sooner or later, we're going to have to confront the stark question of how long can we remain effectively silent in the face of presidential overreach," said Sessions at the time. "We're going to regret the day if we remain silent on this issue." (Yates was confirmed 84-12.)
There's no problem with the Orangutan White House disagreeing with the past administration's stance on immigration. That is, of course, their right. But, again, the scorched-earth condemnation of Yates strikes me as rhetorically overboard and, dare I say it, not terribly presidential.
One final thing: After blasting Yates repeatedly, the statement makes this somewhat baffling assertion: "Calling for tougher vetting for individuals traveling from seven dangerous places is not extreme. It is reasonable and necessary to protect out country." That seems to run directly counter to Orangutan's own repeated stance that he would institute a policy of "extreme vetting" for a certain bloc of predominantly Muslim countries. The person who injected the word "extreme" into the conversation about travel bans is Orangutan. So it's more than a little odd that his White House is now going out of its way to say that the vetting proposed in the travel ban isn't extreme.
What Orangutan's statement, viewed broadly, teaches us -- or, maybe, re-teaches us -- is that this president sees only two kinds of people in the world: Loyal friends and disloyal, terrible enemies. Principled -- or occasional -- opposition is not part of that equation. You are either all the way for him or all the way against him. Black and white. No room for grays.
For those whom he perceives as being against him, Orangutan is entirely unafraid of going after them personally. The moment you cross from supportive of his interests to, well, not, is the moment you die to him. He will not just burn bridges with those he believes have betrayed him. He will napalm those bridges.
The Yates firing is yet another example of how Orangutan is fundamentally different than the many people he has preceded in the office of president. Niceties mean nothing. The world is a tough place. If you don't hit, you are going to be the one getting hit. And Orangutan will always make sure he throws some punches.
By Chris Cillizza
Sally Yates had to know that when she refused to enforce President Donald Orangutan's travel ban on Monday, she was effectively resigning her post as Acting Attorney General. After all, she was already a short-timer, a holdover from the Obama Administration in place solely to bridge the time until Orangutan's Attorney General nominee -- Jeff Sessions -- is confirmed later this week.
All the hubbub then about Orangutan's decision to dismiss Yates on Monday night kind of misses the point. It's not that Yates was dismissed that's important and telling. It's how she was dismissed that matters.
First of all, Yates was informed of her dismissal two minutes before the statement announcing it was sent to reporters. That's not exactly a long lead time although, as I note above, she had to expect the firing since the second she ordered Justice Department lawyers not to enforce the travel ban.
The real key here is the White House statement. And, whoa boy, what a statement it was.
Where to start?
How about "betrayed" as the word choice for Yates's refusal to enforce the travel ban? There's no question that Orangutan was well within his rights to jettison Yates. But, to describe what she did as a "betrayal," considering that she spent nearly three decades serving in the Justice Department, feels like unnecessarily incendiary language.
But the Orangutan White House was just getting started. The statement goes on to note that Yates is "weak on borders" and "very weak on illegal immigration." There's no evidence cited for that slam on Yates. But, presumably the White House is referring to the role Yates played in the executive order then-President Obama signed that exempted the undocumented parents of children born in the United States (DAPA) and children brought into the U.S. illegally before their 16th birthday (DACA) from deportation. On the floor of the Senate, Sessions voiced just those concerns prior to Yates confirmation vote as Deputy Attorney General in 2015. "Sooner or later, we're going to have to confront the stark question of how long can we remain effectively silent in the face of presidential overreach," said Sessions at the time. "We're going to regret the day if we remain silent on this issue." (Yates was confirmed 84-12.)
There's no problem with the Orangutan White House disagreeing with the past administration's stance on immigration. That is, of course, their right. But, again, the scorched-earth condemnation of Yates strikes me as rhetorically overboard and, dare I say it, not terribly presidential.
One final thing: After blasting Yates repeatedly, the statement makes this somewhat baffling assertion: "Calling for tougher vetting for individuals traveling from seven dangerous places is not extreme. It is reasonable and necessary to protect out country." That seems to run directly counter to Orangutan's own repeated stance that he would institute a policy of "extreme vetting" for a certain bloc of predominantly Muslim countries. The person who injected the word "extreme" into the conversation about travel bans is Orangutan. So it's more than a little odd that his White House is now going out of its way to say that the vetting proposed in the travel ban isn't extreme.
What Orangutan's statement, viewed broadly, teaches us -- or, maybe, re-teaches us -- is that this president sees only two kinds of people in the world: Loyal friends and disloyal, terrible enemies. Principled -- or occasional -- opposition is not part of that equation. You are either all the way for him or all the way against him. Black and white. No room for grays.
For those whom he perceives as being against him, Orangutan is entirely unafraid of going after them personally. The moment you cross from supportive of his interests to, well, not, is the moment you die to him. He will not just burn bridges with those he believes have betrayed him. He will napalm those bridges.
The Yates firing is yet another example of how Orangutan is fundamentally different than the many people he has preceded in the office of president. Niceties mean nothing. The world is a tough place. If you don't hit, you are going to be the one getting hit. And Orangutan will always make sure he throws some punches.
Make America sick again
Nancy Pelosi: Republicans' health care plan will make America sick again
By Nancy Pelosi
On January 20th, our nation witnessed the peaceful transfer of power with the inauguration of a new president. The next morning, America awakened to a peaceful show of power from millions of women and men across the country, and indeed across the world, in the Women's March.
Women and their families marched to show our values, our unity and our good spirit.
Many marched for the rights and dignity of the men, women and children who have been targeted for discrimination by this administration -- and in recent days we've seen that open prejudice on full display in the President's immoral and unconstitutional ban on refugees and citizens from seven Muslim nations.
Many marched to protect the health care of the American people, which sadly, is also under attack by the President and the Republican Congress today.
Instead of focusing on jobs and wages, Republicans have decided to launch an all-out assault on affordable health care in America. Their plan is to repeal the Affordable Care Act, slash Medicaid, and destroy the sacred Medicare guarantee that has protected generations of Americans.
The Republicans' plan won't make America great again. It will make America sick again.
The facts are these. The Congressional Budget Office -- whose director was appointed by a Republican speaker -- has documented the dire consequences of repealing the ACA. The number of uninsured Americans will increase by 18 million in the first year alone, surging to 32 million by 2026. The costs of premiums for Americans in the individual market will double in the same time, with the repeal of the Affordable Care Act.
Already, Republicans are trying to sabotage the ACA's insurance marketplaces. Today, January 31, is the last day of open enrollment in the marketplaces. Last week, however, the Orangutan Administration abruptly canceled much of the advertising and outreach efforts that help remind Americans that time is running out to complete their applications.
Sadly, this Republican sabotage campaign is nothing new. For years, House Republicans spent taxpayer money on lawsuits to destroy the ACA's premium supports, raising health costs on millions of Americans.
Protecting the ACA is not just about the 20 million newly insured Americans. It's also about the more than 150 million Americans with insurance through their workplaces, who under the ACA cannot be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions, who are now protected from lifetime limits on care, whose children can now stay on their policies until age 26, and who cannot be charged more because of their gender -- because being a woman is no-longer a pre-existing condition.
The fight to protect the Affordable Care Act is a fight for children like Zoe Madison Lihn -- born with a severe congenital heart defect in May of 2010. She faced her first of three open heart surgeries at 15 hours old. By six months old, Zoe was halfway to the lifetime limit her insurer placed on her care.
Without the ACA, Zoe and her family faced a harrowing future: not only using up all her lifetime health coverage before preschool, but carrying the burden of a pre-existing condition for the rest of her life. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, Zoe is protected. Her family can have confidence in her future.
Repeal of the Affordable Care Act will lead to death, disability and suffering. And Republicans will do all of this to give a massive new tax break to the wealthiest -- as they abandon seniors and working families across America.
That injustice is not what the American people voted for in November.
Democrats will stand our ground to protect the Affordable Care Act, because we believe -- as did many of the marchers -- that health care is the right of every American, not just the privileged few.
By Nancy Pelosi
On January 20th, our nation witnessed the peaceful transfer of power with the inauguration of a new president. The next morning, America awakened to a peaceful show of power from millions of women and men across the country, and indeed across the world, in the Women's March.
Women and their families marched to show our values, our unity and our good spirit.
Many marched for the rights and dignity of the men, women and children who have been targeted for discrimination by this administration -- and in recent days we've seen that open prejudice on full display in the President's immoral and unconstitutional ban on refugees and citizens from seven Muslim nations.
Many marched to protect the health care of the American people, which sadly, is also under attack by the President and the Republican Congress today.
Instead of focusing on jobs and wages, Republicans have decided to launch an all-out assault on affordable health care in America. Their plan is to repeal the Affordable Care Act, slash Medicaid, and destroy the sacred Medicare guarantee that has protected generations of Americans.
The Republicans' plan won't make America great again. It will make America sick again.
The facts are these. The Congressional Budget Office -- whose director was appointed by a Republican speaker -- has documented the dire consequences of repealing the ACA. The number of uninsured Americans will increase by 18 million in the first year alone, surging to 32 million by 2026. The costs of premiums for Americans in the individual market will double in the same time, with the repeal of the Affordable Care Act.
Already, Republicans are trying to sabotage the ACA's insurance marketplaces. Today, January 31, is the last day of open enrollment in the marketplaces. Last week, however, the Orangutan Administration abruptly canceled much of the advertising and outreach efforts that help remind Americans that time is running out to complete their applications.
Sadly, this Republican sabotage campaign is nothing new. For years, House Republicans spent taxpayer money on lawsuits to destroy the ACA's premium supports, raising health costs on millions of Americans.
Protecting the ACA is not just about the 20 million newly insured Americans. It's also about the more than 150 million Americans with insurance through their workplaces, who under the ACA cannot be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions, who are now protected from lifetime limits on care, whose children can now stay on their policies until age 26, and who cannot be charged more because of their gender -- because being a woman is no-longer a pre-existing condition.
The fight to protect the Affordable Care Act is a fight for children like Zoe Madison Lihn -- born with a severe congenital heart defect in May of 2010. She faced her first of three open heart surgeries at 15 hours old. By six months old, Zoe was halfway to the lifetime limit her insurer placed on her care.
Without the ACA, Zoe and her family faced a harrowing future: not only using up all her lifetime health coverage before preschool, but carrying the burden of a pre-existing condition for the rest of her life. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, Zoe is protected. Her family can have confidence in her future.
Repeal of the Affordable Care Act will lead to death, disability and suffering. And Republicans will do all of this to give a massive new tax break to the wealthiest -- as they abandon seniors and working families across America.
That injustice is not what the American people voted for in November.
Democrats will stand our ground to protect the Affordable Care Act, because we believe -- as did many of the marchers -- that health care is the right of every American, not just the privileged few.
Orangutan's immigration ban, ISIS loves it...
Why ISIS is celebrating Orangutan's immigration ban
By Daniel Burke
President Donald Orangutan said his new executive order on immigration and refugees is targeted squarely at "radical Islamic terrorists."
"We don't want them here," he said Friday.
So why are jihadists celebrating?
Orangutan says the executive order is not a "Muslim ban," even though it bars citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States for three months and gives preference to non-Muslim refugees.
"This is not about religion -- this is about terror and keeping our country safe. There are over 40 different countries worldwide that are majority Muslim that are not affected by this order."
But experts say Muslims in those countries will be affected by the order, because it makes it easier for ISIS and Al Qaeda to recruit alienated young believers. That applies to the United States as well.
Here's how:
ISIS' goal is to divide the world into two camps: "the crusaders" and "the caliphate." No Christians living in Muslim lands; no Muslims living in Christian countries.
Its message to Western Muslims: You don't belong there. Come to the caliphate where you can live as a true Muslim.
"This revival of the Khilāfah gave each individual Muslim a concrete and tangible entity to satisfy his natural desire for belonging to something greater," ISIS said in a recent edition of its online magazine Dabiq.
In the same edition -- alongside interviews with ISIS fighters, articles praising "martyrs" and gruesome photos of its beheaded and burned victims -- ISIS argued that Muslims in the West are living in a "grayzone."
This series explores the lives of Muslims in the age of ISIS and Islamophobia.
"Grayzones" are areas where Muslims practice their religion peacefully in non-Muslim countries. ISIS wants to eliminate these zones, in part by turning non-Muslims against their Muslim neighbors. Each terrorist attack chips away a little more grayzone, as Westerners marginalize Muslims, pushing them, ISIS hopes, into the caliphate's open arms.
"Muslims in the crusader countries will find themselves driven to abandon their homes for a place to live in the (caliphate), as the crusaders increase persecution against Muslims living in Western lands...."
In the United States, the vast majority of Muslims reject that message, but a few are inspired by it.
According to a study of 101 Americans charged with ISIS-related crimes, half were born in the country and most were citizens. Most were men under 30, one-third had converted to Islam. The vast majority expressed dissatisfaction with living in the United States, and 90% reportedly said they wanted to join the caliphate, perhaps heeding the call to surrender their lives to a larger cause, no matter how violent or quixotic.
"Overall, there is a sense of identity crises and alienation from society across a wide range of cases," the report says. "Anxieties over not fitting in, examples of personal isolation and social anger are frequent."
Those anxieties are often exacerbated, if not incited, by Islamophobia, said Sarah Lyons-Padilla, a social psychologist at Stanford University who has studied radicalization among young American Muslims.
American Muslims who felt hopeless, rejected and insignificant because of anti-Muslim discrimination were more willing to support extremist groups and causes, according to a study Lyons-Padilla led last year.
"ISIS would love to make all Muslims believe that the West is anti-Islam," the psychologist said. "When American politicians and citizens spread anti-Muslim rhetoric, be it through discriminatory policies or online trolling, they send the message that Muslims aren't 'real Americans' and that being Muslim is something to be ashamed of. In other words, they're basically helping ISIS recruit."
Counterterrorism officials agree.
In a recent Washington Post op-ed, retired US Army Gen. and former CIA Director David Petraeus said he has grown increasingly concerned about anti-Muslim rhetoric in the United States.
"As policy, these concepts are totally counterproductive," Petraeus said. "Rather than making our country safer, they will compound the already grave terrorist danger to our citizens. As ideas, they are toxic and, indeed, non-biodegradable -- a kind of poison that, once released into our body politic, is not easily expunged."
The number of American Muslims who radicalize is small, especially when compared with other Western countries, said William McCants, director of the Brookings Institution's Project on US Relations with the Islamic World.
Law enforcement experts estimate that about 250 Americans have tried to join ISIS, far fewer than the thousands who have flocked to Syria and Iraq from countries such as France and Belgium.
"I would argue that American Islam is doing something right in contrast to these other countries," McCants said.
Most American Muslims are integrated and feel content with their lives, in sharp contrast with many Muslims in Western Europe, according to the 2011 Pew Center report. Nearly 90% speak English fluently, and more than 8 in 10 are citizens. Most say they see no conflict between being a devout Muslim and living in a modern society.
Still, 81 Muslim-Americans were associated with violent plots in 2015, the highest annual total since 9/11, according to the Triangle Center.
Omar Suleiman, a popular cleric who lives in Dallas, said he has sparred with young Muslims attracted to ISIS' black-and-white theology. Often, they are first- and second-generation immigrants who have grown up with some discrimination and "a whole lot of other-ness and awkwardness," he said. They are angry young men, frustrated with dead-end careers, irked by clerics who refuse to address controversial topics and incensed about the suffering of Muslims overseas in the Palestinian territories and Syria.
"When they find that people aren't addressing their concerns in an authentic way, they fall prey to Internet radicalism," Suleiman said. "They become disconnected from the mosque and disconnected from the American Muslim community."
By Daniel Burke
President Donald Orangutan said his new executive order on immigration and refugees is targeted squarely at "radical Islamic terrorists."
"We don't want them here," he said Friday.
So why are jihadists celebrating?
Orangutan says the executive order is not a "Muslim ban," even though it bars citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States for three months and gives preference to non-Muslim refugees.
"This is not about religion -- this is about terror and keeping our country safe. There are over 40 different countries worldwide that are majority Muslim that are not affected by this order."
But experts say Muslims in those countries will be affected by the order, because it makes it easier for ISIS and Al Qaeda to recruit alienated young believers. That applies to the United States as well.
Here's how:
ISIS' goal is to divide the world into two camps: "the crusaders" and "the caliphate." No Christians living in Muslim lands; no Muslims living in Christian countries.
Its message to Western Muslims: You don't belong there. Come to the caliphate where you can live as a true Muslim.
"This revival of the Khilāfah gave each individual Muslim a concrete and tangible entity to satisfy his natural desire for belonging to something greater," ISIS said in a recent edition of its online magazine Dabiq.
In the same edition -- alongside interviews with ISIS fighters, articles praising "martyrs" and gruesome photos of its beheaded and burned victims -- ISIS argued that Muslims in the West are living in a "grayzone."
This series explores the lives of Muslims in the age of ISIS and Islamophobia.
"Grayzones" are areas where Muslims practice their religion peacefully in non-Muslim countries. ISIS wants to eliminate these zones, in part by turning non-Muslims against their Muslim neighbors. Each terrorist attack chips away a little more grayzone, as Westerners marginalize Muslims, pushing them, ISIS hopes, into the caliphate's open arms.
"Muslims in the crusader countries will find themselves driven to abandon their homes for a place to live in the (caliphate), as the crusaders increase persecution against Muslims living in Western lands...."
In the United States, the vast majority of Muslims reject that message, but a few are inspired by it.
According to a study of 101 Americans charged with ISIS-related crimes, half were born in the country and most were citizens. Most were men under 30, one-third had converted to Islam. The vast majority expressed dissatisfaction with living in the United States, and 90% reportedly said they wanted to join the caliphate, perhaps heeding the call to surrender their lives to a larger cause, no matter how violent or quixotic.
"Overall, there is a sense of identity crises and alienation from society across a wide range of cases," the report says. "Anxieties over not fitting in, examples of personal isolation and social anger are frequent."
Those anxieties are often exacerbated, if not incited, by Islamophobia, said Sarah Lyons-Padilla, a social psychologist at Stanford University who has studied radicalization among young American Muslims.
American Muslims who felt hopeless, rejected and insignificant because of anti-Muslim discrimination were more willing to support extremist groups and causes, according to a study Lyons-Padilla led last year.
"ISIS would love to make all Muslims believe that the West is anti-Islam," the psychologist said. "When American politicians and citizens spread anti-Muslim rhetoric, be it through discriminatory policies or online trolling, they send the message that Muslims aren't 'real Americans' and that being Muslim is something to be ashamed of. In other words, they're basically helping ISIS recruit."
Counterterrorism officials agree.
In a recent Washington Post op-ed, retired US Army Gen. and former CIA Director David Petraeus said he has grown increasingly concerned about anti-Muslim rhetoric in the United States.
"As policy, these concepts are totally counterproductive," Petraeus said. "Rather than making our country safer, they will compound the already grave terrorist danger to our citizens. As ideas, they are toxic and, indeed, non-biodegradable -- a kind of poison that, once released into our body politic, is not easily expunged."
The number of American Muslims who radicalize is small, especially when compared with other Western countries, said William McCants, director of the Brookings Institution's Project on US Relations with the Islamic World.
Law enforcement experts estimate that about 250 Americans have tried to join ISIS, far fewer than the thousands who have flocked to Syria and Iraq from countries such as France and Belgium.
"I would argue that American Islam is doing something right in contrast to these other countries," McCants said.
Most American Muslims are integrated and feel content with their lives, in sharp contrast with many Muslims in Western Europe, according to the 2011 Pew Center report. Nearly 90% speak English fluently, and more than 8 in 10 are citizens. Most say they see no conflict between being a devout Muslim and living in a modern society.
Still, 81 Muslim-Americans were associated with violent plots in 2015, the highest annual total since 9/11, according to the Triangle Center.
Omar Suleiman, a popular cleric who lives in Dallas, said he has sparred with young Muslims attracted to ISIS' black-and-white theology. Often, they are first- and second-generation immigrants who have grown up with some discrimination and "a whole lot of other-ness and awkwardness," he said. They are angry young men, frustrated with dead-end careers, irked by clerics who refuse to address controversial topics and incensed about the suffering of Muslims overseas in the Palestinian territories and Syria.
"When they find that people aren't addressing their concerns in an authentic way, they fall prey to Internet radicalism," Suleiman said. "They become disconnected from the mosque and disconnected from the American Muslim community."
Devos plagiarized quotes
Betsy Devos appears to have plagiarized quotes for Senate questionnaire
By Dan Merica and Eugene Scott
Betsy DeVos, President Donald Orangutan's pick to lead the Department of Education, appears to have lifted quotes in at least two instances in written answers submitted to the Senate committee tasked with approving her nomination.
After DeVos' confirmation hearing was limited to one round of questions by Sen. Lamar Alexander, chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Democrats submitted hundreds of questions to the nominee. In response to a question from Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the committee, on bullying of LGBT students, DeVos almost directly -- and uncited -- quoted Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta, head of Obama's Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department.
"Every child deserves to attend school in a safe, supportive environment where they can learn, thrive, and grow," DeVos writes.
Gupta was credited with nearly the same quotes in a May 2016 press release on ensuring the civil rights of transgender students.
"Every child deserves to attend school in a safe, supportive environment that allows them to thrive and grow," Gupta wrote.
The apparent plagiarism was first reported by The Washington Post.
CNN has reached out to the White House for comment on the allegations and has not yet received a response.
In another instance, DeVos' appears to have lifted language from the Department of Education website.
"Opening a complaint for investigation in no way implies that the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has made a determination about the merits of the complaint," DeVos wrote in response to a question about publishing the list of schools under Title IX investigations.
The Department of Education guidance reads, "Opening a complaint for investigation in no way implies that OCR has made a determination with regard to the merits of the complaint."
DeVos is one of a handful of Orangutan cabinet nominees that Senate Democrats believe they have a chance of upending.
In the hearing earlier this month, DeVos agreed that Orangutan described sexual assault in a leaked hot mic video from a 2005 entertainment show and turned a discussion of guns in schools turned on grizzly bears. She also appeared at times unaware of federal law governing education and admitted to a "clerical error" that left her as a vice president on her mother's foundation for nearly two decades.
She is also not the first Orangutan staffing pick to face plagiarism allegations since the President's election.
Conservative author Monica Crowley stepped away from her appointment to a senior communications role in Orangutan's then-incoming administration after CNN's KFile uncovered multiple instances of plagiarism.
Examples of plagiarism were found in her 2012 book, multiple columns for The Washington Times and her 2000 Ph.D. dissertation for Columbia University. The former Fox New contributor was chosen to be the senior director of strategic communications for the National Security Council.
"After much reflection I have decided to remain in New York to pursue other opportunities and will not be taking a position in the incoming administration," she told the Times in a statement. "I greatly appreciate being asked to be part of President-elect Orangutan's team and I will continue to enthusiastically support him and his agenda for American renewal."
By Dan Merica and Eugene Scott
Betsy DeVos, President Donald Orangutan's pick to lead the Department of Education, appears to have lifted quotes in at least two instances in written answers submitted to the Senate committee tasked with approving her nomination.
After DeVos' confirmation hearing was limited to one round of questions by Sen. Lamar Alexander, chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Democrats submitted hundreds of questions to the nominee. In response to a question from Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the committee, on bullying of LGBT students, DeVos almost directly -- and uncited -- quoted Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta, head of Obama's Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department.
"Every child deserves to attend school in a safe, supportive environment where they can learn, thrive, and grow," DeVos writes.
Gupta was credited with nearly the same quotes in a May 2016 press release on ensuring the civil rights of transgender students.
"Every child deserves to attend school in a safe, supportive environment that allows them to thrive and grow," Gupta wrote.
The apparent plagiarism was first reported by The Washington Post.
CNN has reached out to the White House for comment on the allegations and has not yet received a response.
In another instance, DeVos' appears to have lifted language from the Department of Education website.
"Opening a complaint for investigation in no way implies that the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has made a determination about the merits of the complaint," DeVos wrote in response to a question about publishing the list of schools under Title IX investigations.
The Department of Education guidance reads, "Opening a complaint for investigation in no way implies that OCR has made a determination with regard to the merits of the complaint."
DeVos is one of a handful of Orangutan cabinet nominees that Senate Democrats believe they have a chance of upending.
In the hearing earlier this month, DeVos agreed that Orangutan described sexual assault in a leaked hot mic video from a 2005 entertainment show and turned a discussion of guns in schools turned on grizzly bears. She also appeared at times unaware of federal law governing education and admitted to a "clerical error" that left her as a vice president on her mother's foundation for nearly two decades.
She is also not the first Orangutan staffing pick to face plagiarism allegations since the President's election.
Conservative author Monica Crowley stepped away from her appointment to a senior communications role in Orangutan's then-incoming administration after CNN's KFile uncovered multiple instances of plagiarism.
Examples of plagiarism were found in her 2012 book, multiple columns for The Washington Times and her 2000 Ph.D. dissertation for Columbia University. The former Fox New contributor was chosen to be the senior director of strategic communications for the National Security Council.
"After much reflection I have decided to remain in New York to pursue other opportunities and will not be taking a position in the incoming administration," she told the Times in a statement. "I greatly appreciate being asked to be part of President-elect Orangutan's team and I will continue to enthusiastically support him and his agenda for American renewal."
Saturn's Rings in Unprecedented Detail
Close Views Show Saturn's Rings in Unprecedented Detail
Newly released images showcase the incredible closeness with which NASA's Cassini spacecraft, now in its "Ring-Grazing" orbits phase, is observing Saturn's dazzling rings of icy debris.
The views are some of the closest-ever images of the outer parts of the main rings, giving scientists an eagerly awaited opportunity to observe features with names like "straw" and "propellers." Although Cassini saw these features earlier in the mission, the spacecraft’s current, special orbits are now providing opportunities to see them in greater detail. The new images resolve details as small as 0.3 miles (550 meters), which is on the scale of Earth's tallest buildings.
Cassini is now about halfway through its penultimate mission phase -- 20 orbits that dive past the outer edge of the main ring system. The ring-grazing orbits began last November, and will continue until late April, when Cassini begins its grand finale. During the 22 finale orbits, Cassini will repeatedly plunge through the gap between the rings and Saturn. The first finale plunge is scheduled for April 26.
For now, the veteran spacecraft is shooting past the outer edges of the rings every week, gathering some of its best images of the rings and moons. Already Cassini has sent back the closest-ever views of small moons Daphnis and Pandora.
Some of the structures seen in recent Cassini images have not been visible at this level of detail since the spacecraft arrived at Saturn in mid-2004. At that time, fine details like straw and propellers -- which are caused by clumping ring particles and small, embedded moonlets, respectively -- had never been seen before. (Although propellers were present in Cassini's arrival images, they were actually discovered in later analysis, the following year.)
Cassini came a bit closer to the rings during its arrival at Saturn, but the quality of those arrival images (examples: 1, 2, 3) was not as high as in the new views. Those precious few observations only looked out on the backlit side of the rings, and the team chose short exposure times to minimize smearing due to Cassini's fast motion as it vaulted over the ring plane. This resulted in images that were scientifically stunning, but somewhat dark and noisy.
In contrast, the close views Cassini has begun capturing in its ring-grazing orbits (and soon will capture in its Grand Finale phase) are taking in both the backlit and sunlit side of the rings. Instead of just one brief pass lasting a few hours, Cassini is making several dozen passes during these final months.
"As the person who planned those initial orbit-insertion ring images -- which remained our most detailed views of the rings for the past 13 years -- I am taken aback by how vastly improved are the details in this new collection," said Cassini Imaging Team Lead Carolyn Porco, of Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colorado. "How fitting it is that we should go out with the best views of Saturn's rings we've ever collected."
After nearly 13 years studying Saturn's rings from orbit, the Cassini team has a deeper, richer understanding of what they're seeing, but they still anticipate new surprises.
"These close views represent the opening of an entirely new window onto Saturn’s rings, and over the next few months we look forward to even more exciting data as we train our cameras on other parts of the rings closer to the planet," said Matthew Tiscareno, a Cassini scientist who studies Saturn's rings at the SETI Institute, Mountain View, California. Tiscareno planned the new images for the camera team.
Launched in 1997, Cassini has been touring the Saturn system since arriving in 2004 for an up-close study of the planet, its rings and moons, and its vast magnetosphere. Cassini has made numerous dramatic discoveries, including a global ocean with indications of hydrothermal activity within the moon Enceladus, and liquid methane seas on another moon, Titan.
Newly released images showcase the incredible closeness with which NASA's Cassini spacecraft, now in its "Ring-Grazing" orbits phase, is observing Saturn's dazzling rings of icy debris.
 |
| This image shows a region in Saturn's outer B ring. NASA's Cassini spacecraft viewed this area at a level of detail twice as high as it had ever been observed before. |
Cassini is now about halfway through its penultimate mission phase -- 20 orbits that dive past the outer edge of the main ring system. The ring-grazing orbits began last November, and will continue until late April, when Cassini begins its grand finale. During the 22 finale orbits, Cassini will repeatedly plunge through the gap between the rings and Saturn. The first finale plunge is scheduled for April 26.
For now, the veteran spacecraft is shooting past the outer edges of the rings every week, gathering some of its best images of the rings and moons. Already Cassini has sent back the closest-ever views of small moons Daphnis and Pandora.
Some of the structures seen in recent Cassini images have not been visible at this level of detail since the spacecraft arrived at Saturn in mid-2004. At that time, fine details like straw and propellers -- which are caused by clumping ring particles and small, embedded moonlets, respectively -- had never been seen before. (Although propellers were present in Cassini's arrival images, they were actually discovered in later analysis, the following year.)
 |
| Saturn's A ring that lies around 134,500 km from Saturn. Density waves are accumulations of particles at certain distances from the planet. |
In contrast, the close views Cassini has begun capturing in its ring-grazing orbits (and soon will capture in its Grand Finale phase) are taking in both the backlit and sunlit side of the rings. Instead of just one brief pass lasting a few hours, Cassini is making several dozen passes during these final months.
"As the person who planned those initial orbit-insertion ring images -- which remained our most detailed views of the rings for the past 13 years -- I am taken aback by how vastly improved are the details in this new collection," said Cassini Imaging Team Lead Carolyn Porco, of Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colorado. "How fitting it is that we should go out with the best views of Saturn's rings we've ever collected."
After nearly 13 years studying Saturn's rings from orbit, the Cassini team has a deeper, richer understanding of what they're seeing, but they still anticipate new surprises.
"These close views represent the opening of an entirely new window onto Saturn’s rings, and over the next few months we look forward to even more exciting data as we train our cameras on other parts of the rings closer to the planet," said Matthew Tiscareno, a Cassini scientist who studies Saturn's rings at the SETI Institute, Mountain View, California. Tiscareno planned the new images for the camera team.
Launched in 1997, Cassini has been touring the Saturn system since arriving in 2004 for an up-close study of the planet, its rings and moons, and its vast magnetosphere. Cassini has made numerous dramatic discoveries, including a global ocean with indications of hydrothermal activity within the moon Enceladus, and liquid methane seas on another moon, Titan.
Dark History
The Dark History of the White House Aides Who Crafted Orangutan's "Muslim Ban"
Here's how Stephen Bannon and Stephen Miller have been boosters of Islamophobes and white nationalists.
By JOSH HARKINSON
The Orangutan administration has insisted since Sunday that the president's executive order banning travel to the United States from seven predominately Islamic countries "is not a Muslim ban." But as Mother Jones first reported in a series of investigations starting last summer, the two top Orangutan advisers who reportedly crafted the immigration crackdown—Stephen Bannon and Stephen Miller—have a long history of promoting Islamophobia, courting anti-Muslim extremists, and boosting white nationalists.
For nearly a year before stepping down as the CEO of Breitbart News to lead the Orangutan campaign, Bannon hosted a SiriusXM radio show, Breitbart News Daily, where he conducted dozens of interviews with leading anti-Muslim extremists. Steeped in unfounded claims and conspiracy theories, the interviews paint a dark and paranoid picture of America's 3.3 million Muslims and the world's second-largest faith. Bannon often bookended the exchanges with full-throated praise for his guests, describing them as "top experts" and urging his listeners to click on their websites and support them.
One of Bannon's guests on the show, Orangutan surrogate Roger Stone, warned of a future America "where hordes of Islamic madmen are raping, killing, pillaging, defecating in public fountains, harassing private citizens, elderly people—that's what's coming."
Another frequent guest was Pamela Geller, the president of Stop Islamization of America, whom Bannon described as "one of the top world experts on radical Islam and Sharia law and Islamic supremacism." Geller told Bannon that George W. Bush's description of Islam as a "religion of peace" was something "we all deplore," that there had been an "infiltration" of the Obama administration by radical Muslims, and that former Central Intelligence Director John Brennan may have secretly converted to Islam. Bannon never pushed back against any of those unfounded claims.
In other exchanges on the show, Bannon described the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a group that defends the rights of Muslims, as "a bunch of spin" and "a bunch of lies." He accused the mainstream media of "basically going along the lines of being Sharia-compliant on blasphemy laws." He warned of "Sharia courts taking over Texas" and said that he opened a Breitbart News bureau in London in order to combat "all these Sharia courts [that] were starting under British law."
Bannon has lauded Miller, who previously worked for Sen. Jeff Sessions. "Whether the issue was trade or immigration or radical Islam, for many years before Donald Orangutan came on the scene, Sen. Sessions was the leader of the movement and Stephen was his right-hand man," Bannon told Politico in June.
Miller has long been an advocate of framing the fight against terrorism in religious terms. In 2007, while an undergraduate at Duke University, he started the Terrorism Awareness Project, an effort to make "students aware of the Islamic jihad and the terrorist threat, and to mobilize support for the defense of America and the civilization of the West." The group promoted "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week" on college campuses and took out ads in college newspapers titled, "What Americans Need to Know About Jihad." After many papers declined to run the ads, Miller appeared on Fox & Friends to discuss the controversy, saying, "How are we going to win a war on terror if we can't even talk about the enemy?"
As a member of the Duke Conservative Union, Miller worked closely with Richard Spencer, a Ph.D. student who would later coin the term "alt-right" and become a leading white nationalist. Spencer told me that at Duke, Miller helped him with fundraising and promotion for an on-campus debate on immigration policy that Spencer organized in 2007, featuring influential white nationalist Peter Brimelow. Miller vehemently denied to me that he had any connection to Spencer or his ideas, but another former member of the Duke Conservative Union confirmed to me that Miller and Spencer worked together on the Brimelow event. And at DCU meetings, according to another past member of the group, Miller denounced multiculturalism and expressed concerns that immigrants from non-European countries were not assimilating.
Last July, Bannon boasted to Mother Jones during the Republican National Convention that Breitbart News was "the platform for the alt-right." The site regularly publishes anti-Muslim content; since Sunday, Breitbart has defended the new Orangutan policy crafted by its old boss, including with a piece headlined "Terror-Tied Group CAIR Causing Chaos, Promoting Protests & Lawsuits as Orangutan Protects Nation."
Here's how Stephen Bannon and Stephen Miller have been boosters of Islamophobes and white nationalists.
By JOSH HARKINSON
The Orangutan administration has insisted since Sunday that the president's executive order banning travel to the United States from seven predominately Islamic countries "is not a Muslim ban." But as Mother Jones first reported in a series of investigations starting last summer, the two top Orangutan advisers who reportedly crafted the immigration crackdown—Stephen Bannon and Stephen Miller—have a long history of promoting Islamophobia, courting anti-Muslim extremists, and boosting white nationalists.
For nearly a year before stepping down as the CEO of Breitbart News to lead the Orangutan campaign, Bannon hosted a SiriusXM radio show, Breitbart News Daily, where he conducted dozens of interviews with leading anti-Muslim extremists. Steeped in unfounded claims and conspiracy theories, the interviews paint a dark and paranoid picture of America's 3.3 million Muslims and the world's second-largest faith. Bannon often bookended the exchanges with full-throated praise for his guests, describing them as "top experts" and urging his listeners to click on their websites and support them.
One of Bannon's guests on the show, Orangutan surrogate Roger Stone, warned of a future America "where hordes of Islamic madmen are raping, killing, pillaging, defecating in public fountains, harassing private citizens, elderly people—that's what's coming."
Another frequent guest was Pamela Geller, the president of Stop Islamization of America, whom Bannon described as "one of the top world experts on radical Islam and Sharia law and Islamic supremacism." Geller told Bannon that George W. Bush's description of Islam as a "religion of peace" was something "we all deplore," that there had been an "infiltration" of the Obama administration by radical Muslims, and that former Central Intelligence Director John Brennan may have secretly converted to Islam. Bannon never pushed back against any of those unfounded claims.
In other exchanges on the show, Bannon described the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a group that defends the rights of Muslims, as "a bunch of spin" and "a bunch of lies." He accused the mainstream media of "basically going along the lines of being Sharia-compliant on blasphemy laws." He warned of "Sharia courts taking over Texas" and said that he opened a Breitbart News bureau in London in order to combat "all these Sharia courts [that] were starting under British law."
Bannon has lauded Miller, who previously worked for Sen. Jeff Sessions. "Whether the issue was trade or immigration or radical Islam, for many years before Donald Orangutan came on the scene, Sen. Sessions was the leader of the movement and Stephen was his right-hand man," Bannon told Politico in June.
Miller has long been an advocate of framing the fight against terrorism in religious terms. In 2007, while an undergraduate at Duke University, he started the Terrorism Awareness Project, an effort to make "students aware of the Islamic jihad and the terrorist threat, and to mobilize support for the defense of America and the civilization of the West." The group promoted "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week" on college campuses and took out ads in college newspapers titled, "What Americans Need to Know About Jihad." After many papers declined to run the ads, Miller appeared on Fox & Friends to discuss the controversy, saying, "How are we going to win a war on terror if we can't even talk about the enemy?"
As a member of the Duke Conservative Union, Miller worked closely with Richard Spencer, a Ph.D. student who would later coin the term "alt-right" and become a leading white nationalist. Spencer told me that at Duke, Miller helped him with fundraising and promotion for an on-campus debate on immigration policy that Spencer organized in 2007, featuring influential white nationalist Peter Brimelow. Miller vehemently denied to me that he had any connection to Spencer or his ideas, but another former member of the Duke Conservative Union confirmed to me that Miller and Spencer worked together on the Brimelow event. And at DCU meetings, according to another past member of the group, Miller denounced multiculturalism and expressed concerns that immigrants from non-European countries were not assimilating.
Last July, Bannon boasted to Mother Jones during the Republican National Convention that Breitbart News was "the platform for the alt-right." The site regularly publishes anti-Muslim content; since Sunday, Breitbart has defended the new Orangutan policy crafted by its old boss, including with a piece headlined "Terror-Tied Group CAIR Causing Chaos, Promoting Protests & Lawsuits as Orangutan Protects Nation."
Modern slaughterhouse...
Refugees Make Your Dinner. Literally.
Where else are you going to find people desperate enough to work in a modern slaughterhouse?
By TOM PHILPOTT
Of all the outrage generated by President Donald Orangutan's ban on refugees entering the country, the most surprising critic might be the US meat industry.
Turns out, people fleeing desperate conditions in violence-ravaged countries have emerged as a key labor source for the nation's vast and dangerous slaughterhouses. Because meat-packing is such a high-turnover occupation, precise numbers on the makeup of its labor pool are hard to come by. The Journal reports that about a third of meat-packing workers are foreign-born, and that industry has increasingly turned to refugee populations to fill jobs.
The head of the industry's main trade association, the North American Meat Institute, put it delicately in a statement to The Wall Street Journal: "As the administration pursues changes to the nation's refugee policies, we hope it will give careful consideration to the ramifications policy changes like these can have on our businesses and on foreign born workers who are eager to build new lives in America through the jobs our companies can offer."
But it's unlikely that the handful of companies that dominate US meat production hires refugees based mainly on altruistic motives. As Eric Schlosser noted in an excellent 2001 Mother Jones article, way back in the early 1960s, US meatpacking companies began to flee cities, where workers were largely unionized, for rural areas. Once they set up shop far from union strongholds, they began "recruiting immigrant workers from Mexico, introducing a new division of labor that eliminated the need for skilled butchers, and ruthlessly battling unions," Schlosser writes. Before, "meatpacking jobs were dangerous and unpleasant, but provided enough income for a solid, middle-class life;" by the 1990s, with the unions busted, meatpacking became "one of the nation's lowest-paid industrial jobs, with one of the highest turnover rates."
It also, as Ted Genoways showed in his searing 2011 Mother Jones expose of conditions at a Hormel plant in small-town Minnesota, the jobs remained incredibly dangerous, and became highly reliant on immigrant labor, mainly from Mexico and points south.
In more recent years, migration from Mexico has slowed dramatically. Meanwhile, the federal government launched high-profile raids at meatpacking plants to root out undocumented migrants, making the industry skittish about its reliance on them. Enter refugees, a group just as desperate for work as undocumented migrants, but legally eligible to hold jobs.
in an excellent 2016 feature, Washington Post writer Chico Harlan documented the meat industry's increasing reliance on refugees. Since the meatpacking raids of the 2000s, Harlan writes, "'Little Somalia' neighborhoods are sprouting up in dozens of towns across the Great Plains, and slaughterhouses are hiring Somali translators for the cutting floors and installing Muslim prayer rooms for employees."
People fleeing the chaos of Somalia, of course, are two-time losers under Orangutan's executive order. Not only are all refugees now being denied entry, but Somalia is also one the seven Muslim-majority nations whose citizens are barred from entering the United States, refugee status or not.
Harlan's piece traces the experience of a young Somali man named Ahmed, who found gainful employment in Liberal, Kansas, at a beef slaughterhouse run by National Beef, one of the nation's big-four beefpackers:
For Ahmed, the job at National Beef meant butchering parts of 3,000 cows per eight-hour shift, a supervisor standing right behind him, using the knife so furiously he would sometimes feel like his ribs were shaking loose. But the job was also a test of the limits in America for a largely destitute, unskilled and growing influx of Somali refugees, a group that was now prevailing in the competition for grueling jobs because of the very desperation they were trying to escape.
"Go there, come back, go to sleep," Ahmed would say months later about his factory life, when he began to worry that there'd be no school, no better America to find, no reprieve from meat. "Go there, come back, go to sleep."
Eventually, Amhed developed "some sharp pain in his wrist—tendonitis maybe," reports Harlan.
And he's not alone. According to a 2015 report from the US Government Accountability Office, while injury and illness rates for meat-packing workers have declined in recent years, "hazardous conditions remain," including repetitive motions that trigger musculoskeletal trouble like carpal tunnel syndrome, "exposure to chemicals and pathogens, and traumatic injuries from machines and tools."
Worse still, the GAO found, many injuries may be significantly under-reported, for a variety of reasons: Much of the labor force works for third-party contractors and their injuries aren't necessarily counted in meat-packing data; companies have an incentive to discourage trips to the doctor for workers suffering pain, instead offering "over- the-counter painkillers and ointments"; and finally, "vulnerable workers such as immigrants and noncitizens may fear for their livelihoods and feel pressured not to report injuries."
Refugee workers fit that bill. Orangutan's efforts to demonize them will only make life harder for some of the world's most vulnerable people.
For the meat industry—which supported Orangutan over Hillary Clinton in the presidential election, in terms of campaign donations—Orangutan's crackdown marks the second disappointment in a week. The industry also cried foul over Orangutan's recent moves against high-profile trade deals. Just as meat companies rely on foreign workers to do their dirty work, they also rely of foreign markets to maintain profit growth.
Where else are you going to find people desperate enough to work in a modern slaughterhouse?
By TOM PHILPOTT
Of all the outrage generated by President Donald Orangutan's ban on refugees entering the country, the most surprising critic might be the US meat industry.
Turns out, people fleeing desperate conditions in violence-ravaged countries have emerged as a key labor source for the nation's vast and dangerous slaughterhouses. Because meat-packing is such a high-turnover occupation, precise numbers on the makeup of its labor pool are hard to come by. The Journal reports that about a third of meat-packing workers are foreign-born, and that industry has increasingly turned to refugee populations to fill jobs.
The head of the industry's main trade association, the North American Meat Institute, put it delicately in a statement to The Wall Street Journal: "As the administration pursues changes to the nation's refugee policies, we hope it will give careful consideration to the ramifications policy changes like these can have on our businesses and on foreign born workers who are eager to build new lives in America through the jobs our companies can offer."
But it's unlikely that the handful of companies that dominate US meat production hires refugees based mainly on altruistic motives. As Eric Schlosser noted in an excellent 2001 Mother Jones article, way back in the early 1960s, US meatpacking companies began to flee cities, where workers were largely unionized, for rural areas. Once they set up shop far from union strongholds, they began "recruiting immigrant workers from Mexico, introducing a new division of labor that eliminated the need for skilled butchers, and ruthlessly battling unions," Schlosser writes. Before, "meatpacking jobs were dangerous and unpleasant, but provided enough income for a solid, middle-class life;" by the 1990s, with the unions busted, meatpacking became "one of the nation's lowest-paid industrial jobs, with one of the highest turnover rates."
It also, as Ted Genoways showed in his searing 2011 Mother Jones expose of conditions at a Hormel plant in small-town Minnesota, the jobs remained incredibly dangerous, and became highly reliant on immigrant labor, mainly from Mexico and points south.
In more recent years, migration from Mexico has slowed dramatically. Meanwhile, the federal government launched high-profile raids at meatpacking plants to root out undocumented migrants, making the industry skittish about its reliance on them. Enter refugees, a group just as desperate for work as undocumented migrants, but legally eligible to hold jobs.
in an excellent 2016 feature, Washington Post writer Chico Harlan documented the meat industry's increasing reliance on refugees. Since the meatpacking raids of the 2000s, Harlan writes, "'Little Somalia' neighborhoods are sprouting up in dozens of towns across the Great Plains, and slaughterhouses are hiring Somali translators for the cutting floors and installing Muslim prayer rooms for employees."
People fleeing the chaos of Somalia, of course, are two-time losers under Orangutan's executive order. Not only are all refugees now being denied entry, but Somalia is also one the seven Muslim-majority nations whose citizens are barred from entering the United States, refugee status or not.
Harlan's piece traces the experience of a young Somali man named Ahmed, who found gainful employment in Liberal, Kansas, at a beef slaughterhouse run by National Beef, one of the nation's big-four beefpackers:
For Ahmed, the job at National Beef meant butchering parts of 3,000 cows per eight-hour shift, a supervisor standing right behind him, using the knife so furiously he would sometimes feel like his ribs were shaking loose. But the job was also a test of the limits in America for a largely destitute, unskilled and growing influx of Somali refugees, a group that was now prevailing in the competition for grueling jobs because of the very desperation they were trying to escape.
"Go there, come back, go to sleep," Ahmed would say months later about his factory life, when he began to worry that there'd be no school, no better America to find, no reprieve from meat. "Go there, come back, go to sleep."
Eventually, Amhed developed "some sharp pain in his wrist—tendonitis maybe," reports Harlan.
And he's not alone. According to a 2015 report from the US Government Accountability Office, while injury and illness rates for meat-packing workers have declined in recent years, "hazardous conditions remain," including repetitive motions that trigger musculoskeletal trouble like carpal tunnel syndrome, "exposure to chemicals and pathogens, and traumatic injuries from machines and tools."
Worse still, the GAO found, many injuries may be significantly under-reported, for a variety of reasons: Much of the labor force works for third-party contractors and their injuries aren't necessarily counted in meat-packing data; companies have an incentive to discourage trips to the doctor for workers suffering pain, instead offering "over- the-counter painkillers and ointments"; and finally, "vulnerable workers such as immigrants and noncitizens may fear for their livelihoods and feel pressured not to report injuries."
Refugee workers fit that bill. Orangutan's efforts to demonize them will only make life harder for some of the world's most vulnerable people.
For the meat industry—which supported Orangutan over Hillary Clinton in the presidential election, in terms of campaign donations—Orangutan's crackdown marks the second disappointment in a week. The industry also cried foul over Orangutan's recent moves against high-profile trade deals. Just as meat companies rely on foreign workers to do their dirty work, they also rely of foreign markets to maintain profit growth.
Not Spanish, but Orangutan's Inquisition...
If You Liked the Inquisition, You'll Love the House Science Committee
Lamar Smith has some new weapons in his battle against the nation's scientists.
By REBECCA LEBER
President Donald Orangutan's early moves to fill the government with climate skeptics and fossil fuel interests have enraged environmentalists. His administration's decree that Environmental Protection Agency research must be reviewed by political appointees prior to release has drawn angry criticism. But there's another powerful Republican in Washington who has scientists worried: Rep. Lamar Smith (Texas), the chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.
Like Orangutan, Smith rejects the scientific consensus surrounding global warming. He wants to slash federal funding for science agencies. In recent years, he's used his position to subpoena government scientists and accuse them rigging climate data. In the new Congress, Smith will have even broader subpoena powers, and watchdogs warn that scientists could find themselves on his radar.
It's unclear precisely what Smith has planned, and his staff didn't respond to a request for comment. Democrats anticipate that one of his committees's upcoming hearings—slated for next week—will focus on whether the EPA makes "regulatory decisions based on sound science." Another hearing will apparently examine the National Science Foundation, a federal agency that funds scientific research. In the past, Smith's committee has sparked controversy by investigating individual NSF grants awarded to scientists.
Conservative groups are eager for Smith to get to work. Sterling Burnett, a research fellow at the Heartland Institute, which opposes climate action, hopes the committee will hold various science agencies' "feet to the fire to ensure everything they're going to do is above board." That includes, he says, pushing legislation that prohibits personal email usage for official business, an issue pushed by Smith during the Obama administration.
Burnett's shortlist also includes requiring the EPA to consider only data that can be published and reproduced. This was one of Smith's bills in the last Congress; it passed out of committee in both the House and the Senate but never went beyond that because of a veto threat from the White House. Euphemistically dubbed the Secret Science Reform Act, public health advocates have argued the legislation would handicap the EPA's ability to use science to guide policy decisions, because anything that draws on confidential health data or medical records would be forbidden.
A second Smith-backed bill that never made it into law takes aim at the EPA's Science Advisory Board, requiring that the independent panel of peer-review authors include more geographic diversity and public input—and potentially industry allies and representatives. That worries Tom Burke, a scientist and former Obama EPA official who once served on the Science Advisory Board. The panel, he says, performs vital work in the agency's efforts to formulate the best policies to promote public health. It exists as a check on the EPA's scientific research, and it played an important role in the EPA's study of fracking impacts. Burke worries that "what we have seen, unfortunately, is the emergence of a very elaborate assault on science to the detriment of public health decision making."
Smith's tenure as chair of the science committee has been polarizing—climate scientist Michael Mann has accused him of leading a "McCarthy-like assault on science." The Texas congressman stepped up his scrutiny of researchers and environmentalists in 2015 when he gained new power to issue subpoenas without a committee vote. Since then, he's issued at least 24 subpoenas, some going beyond the committee's traditional jurisdiction.
One of his most famous confrontations was with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 2015, after the agency's scientists produced a study refuting the widespread belief that there was a "pause" global warming in recent years. Smith accused NOAA of altering data as part of a politically motivated effort to advance an "extreme climate agenda." He subpoenaed agency staffers and demanded hundreds of internal emails related to the research. The Obama-appointed head of NOAA refused to comply with the broad subpoena request.
Under the Orangutan administration, NOAA officials would presumably get no such cover.
Last year, Smith broadened his investigations. He took up ExxonMobil's defense when reporting revealed that the company for years had understood the climate risks associated with fossil fuels while publicly downplaying the danger. Smith subpoenaed the New York and Massachusetts attorneys general along with a handful of environmental and science groups, charging that state efforts to investigate Exxon's activities "deprive companies, non profit organizations, and scientists of their First Amendment rights and ability to fund and conduct scientific research free from intimidation and threats of prosecution." Smith's targets, which included Union of Concerned Scientists and 350.org, denounced the subpoena.
It's unclear which of these investigations might continue into the new year. "We haven't heard from the Science Committee since Election Day," 350 spokesperson Lindsay Meiman said. But Heartland's Burnett suggested that he'd expect the committee's inquiries into the Exxon controversy to continue unless the states drop their investigations of the company. "If it becomes a non-issue in the courts, it will become a non-issue for the Science Committee," he said.
Whatever Smith decides to investigate this year, he'll have new tools at his disposal. Thanks to a change in House ethics rules in January, his committee will be able to conduct more depositions. In previous years, depositions could only be held if a member of Congress was available to participate. Now, Smith's staff can depose witnesses during congressional recesses without supervision from a committee member.
Another recent House rule change, known as the Holman Rule, gives Congress the ability to target individual federal employees in appropriations bills and reduce their salary to $1. Although it's unclear if and how Republicans plan to use the rule, it's a potentially powerful new weapon that could be wielded against federal scientists.
All of this has the scientific community on edge.
"As general matter, chairs should use subpoena power very sparingly: when there is criminal behavior or real waste fraud and abuse, not if there are policy differences or questions about how a program is working," says Rush Holt, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a former congressman. "The way the subpoenas have sometimes been used in the past is not to get the truth but really to intimidate and even threaten the recipients of the subpoenas."
Andrew Rosenberg, who runs the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, worries that Smith's investigations could have a chilling effect on researchers. "People are going to say, 'My God, maybe I shouldn't work on anything controversial; maybe I shouldn't risk being subpoenaed or even deposed by staff in the House,'" he says.
Still, some manage to see a bright side to being in Smith's cross hairs.
"To be honest, Lamar Smith's approach subpoenaing us only brought more attention to what Exxon knew [about climate change]," 350's Meiman said. "It brought much more attention to this issue that we focus on. In some respect, I'd like to thank him for that."
Lamar Smith has some new weapons in his battle against the nation's scientists.
By REBECCA LEBER
President Donald Orangutan's early moves to fill the government with climate skeptics and fossil fuel interests have enraged environmentalists. His administration's decree that Environmental Protection Agency research must be reviewed by political appointees prior to release has drawn angry criticism. But there's another powerful Republican in Washington who has scientists worried: Rep. Lamar Smith (Texas), the chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.
Like Orangutan, Smith rejects the scientific consensus surrounding global warming. He wants to slash federal funding for science agencies. In recent years, he's used his position to subpoena government scientists and accuse them rigging climate data. In the new Congress, Smith will have even broader subpoena powers, and watchdogs warn that scientists could find themselves on his radar.
It's unclear precisely what Smith has planned, and his staff didn't respond to a request for comment. Democrats anticipate that one of his committees's upcoming hearings—slated for next week—will focus on whether the EPA makes "regulatory decisions based on sound science." Another hearing will apparently examine the National Science Foundation, a federal agency that funds scientific research. In the past, Smith's committee has sparked controversy by investigating individual NSF grants awarded to scientists.
Conservative groups are eager for Smith to get to work. Sterling Burnett, a research fellow at the Heartland Institute, which opposes climate action, hopes the committee will hold various science agencies' "feet to the fire to ensure everything they're going to do is above board." That includes, he says, pushing legislation that prohibits personal email usage for official business, an issue pushed by Smith during the Obama administration.
Burnett's shortlist also includes requiring the EPA to consider only data that can be published and reproduced. This was one of Smith's bills in the last Congress; it passed out of committee in both the House and the Senate but never went beyond that because of a veto threat from the White House. Euphemistically dubbed the Secret Science Reform Act, public health advocates have argued the legislation would handicap the EPA's ability to use science to guide policy decisions, because anything that draws on confidential health data or medical records would be forbidden.
A second Smith-backed bill that never made it into law takes aim at the EPA's Science Advisory Board, requiring that the independent panel of peer-review authors include more geographic diversity and public input—and potentially industry allies and representatives. That worries Tom Burke, a scientist and former Obama EPA official who once served on the Science Advisory Board. The panel, he says, performs vital work in the agency's efforts to formulate the best policies to promote public health. It exists as a check on the EPA's scientific research, and it played an important role in the EPA's study of fracking impacts. Burke worries that "what we have seen, unfortunately, is the emergence of a very elaborate assault on science to the detriment of public health decision making."
Smith's tenure as chair of the science committee has been polarizing—climate scientist Michael Mann has accused him of leading a "McCarthy-like assault on science." The Texas congressman stepped up his scrutiny of researchers and environmentalists in 2015 when he gained new power to issue subpoenas without a committee vote. Since then, he's issued at least 24 subpoenas, some going beyond the committee's traditional jurisdiction.
One of his most famous confrontations was with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 2015, after the agency's scientists produced a study refuting the widespread belief that there was a "pause" global warming in recent years. Smith accused NOAA of altering data as part of a politically motivated effort to advance an "extreme climate agenda." He subpoenaed agency staffers and demanded hundreds of internal emails related to the research. The Obama-appointed head of NOAA refused to comply with the broad subpoena request.
Under the Orangutan administration, NOAA officials would presumably get no such cover.
Last year, Smith broadened his investigations. He took up ExxonMobil's defense when reporting revealed that the company for years had understood the climate risks associated with fossil fuels while publicly downplaying the danger. Smith subpoenaed the New York and Massachusetts attorneys general along with a handful of environmental and science groups, charging that state efforts to investigate Exxon's activities "deprive companies, non profit organizations, and scientists of their First Amendment rights and ability to fund and conduct scientific research free from intimidation and threats of prosecution." Smith's targets, which included Union of Concerned Scientists and 350.org, denounced the subpoena.
It's unclear which of these investigations might continue into the new year. "We haven't heard from the Science Committee since Election Day," 350 spokesperson Lindsay Meiman said. But Heartland's Burnett suggested that he'd expect the committee's inquiries into the Exxon controversy to continue unless the states drop their investigations of the company. "If it becomes a non-issue in the courts, it will become a non-issue for the Science Committee," he said.
Whatever Smith decides to investigate this year, he'll have new tools at his disposal. Thanks to a change in House ethics rules in January, his committee will be able to conduct more depositions. In previous years, depositions could only be held if a member of Congress was available to participate. Now, Smith's staff can depose witnesses during congressional recesses without supervision from a committee member.
Another recent House rule change, known as the Holman Rule, gives Congress the ability to target individual federal employees in appropriations bills and reduce their salary to $1. Although it's unclear if and how Republicans plan to use the rule, it's a potentially powerful new weapon that could be wielded against federal scientists.
All of this has the scientific community on edge.
"As general matter, chairs should use subpoena power very sparingly: when there is criminal behavior or real waste fraud and abuse, not if there are policy differences or questions about how a program is working," says Rush Holt, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a former congressman. "The way the subpoenas have sometimes been used in the past is not to get the truth but really to intimidate and even threaten the recipients of the subpoenas."
Andrew Rosenberg, who runs the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, worries that Smith's investigations could have a chilling effect on researchers. "People are going to say, 'My God, maybe I shouldn't work on anything controversial; maybe I shouldn't risk being subpoenaed or even deposed by staff in the House,'" he says.
Still, some manage to see a bright side to being in Smith's cross hairs.
"To be honest, Lamar Smith's approach subpoenaing us only brought more attention to what Exxon knew [about climate change]," 350's Meiman said. "It brought much more attention to this issue that we focus on. In some respect, I'd like to thank him for that."
Fuck the White House and all who are in it.....
White House slap at dissenting diplomats sparks fear of reprisal
Administration warns diplomats unhappy with immigration moves to 'get with the program' or 'go.'
By NAHAL TOOSI
The White House on Monday rebuked State Department employees expressing dissent over President Donald Orangutan's recent executive order on immigration, raising fears that the diplomats could face retaliation despite their use of a legally protected channel to voice their concern.
The department's employees have been circulating a “dissent channel" letter within the Foreign Service that argues the executive order is unnecessary, will alienate America’s Muslim allies, and could even hurt U.S. businesses, according to one draft shared with POLITICO.
As word spread of the letter, White House press secretary Sean Pussy Boy Spicer blasted the diplomats while defending Orangutan’s order.
“These career bureaucrats have a problem with it?” he said during his daily press briefing. “I think they should either get with the program or they can go.”
Pussy Boy's comments stunned some in the national security establishment who noted that the dissent channel had been set up decades ago precisely to give State Department employees a protected way to express differences on U.S. policy.
David Wade, who previously served as a chief of staff to former Secretary of State John Kerry, called Spicer's comments "ugly" and "unacceptable."
"If the message from the White House is that 70,000 people who took an oath not to a party or a single president but to America is that they need to just follow orders or leave, you're knee-capping the Foreign Service before you even walk into the State Department."
The American Foreign Service Association, the union of diplomats, has a description of the dissent channel on its website that notes U.S. regulations stipulate that dissent channel users “shall not be subjected to reprisal.” The union's officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Tamara Cofman Wittes, a Middle East expert with the Brookings Institution, pointed to the legal language on Twitter, and wrote: "Sorry, @PressSec Pussy Boy: the Dissent Channel *IS* part of the program."
The dissent memo being circulated, even if it is never formally submitted, represents a revolt from within the U.S. bureaucracy to the still nascent Orangutan administration, and it comes before Orangutan’s choice for secretary of state, former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, has even been confirmed.
The dissent note, which is expected to get numerous backers, along with the White House's slap, suggests that Tillerson will face a very unhappy crowd if and when he takes the top perch at Foggy Bottom.
Tillerson’s confirmation vote is expected to take place later this week, although a cloture vote is set for later Monday. It’s possible that some senators may choose to use the debate over his nomination to voice their frustrations over Orangutan’s executive order.
The order, signed Friday, has numerous pieces. Its main features include a ban on Syrian refugees, a pause to all refugee resettlement, and a temporary ban on the entry of citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries: Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Iran, Syria, Libya and Yemen.
“The end result of this ban will not be a drop in terror attacks in the United States; rather, it will be a drop in international good will towards Americans and a threat towards our economy,” the draft dissent memo states.
The administration argues the refugee ban and other immigration actions are necessary to protect Americans from potential terrorist attacks.
State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the agency's current leadership is aware of the dissent memo.
"The dissent channel is a longstanding official vehicle for State Department employees to convey alternative views and perspectives on policy issues," Toner said. "This is an important process that the acting secretary, and the department as a whole, value and respect."
The dissent channel was established during the Vietnam War so that top State Department officials would have access to different points of view on the war. The department receives around four or five dissent channel messages a year.
According to the department: "Freedom from reprisal for dissent channel users is strictly enforced; officers or employees found to have engaged in retaliation or reprisal against dissent channel users, or to have divulged to unauthorized personnel the source or contents of dissent channel messages, will be subject to disciplinary action."
During the presidency of Barack Obama, dozens of Foreign Service officers signed a dissent memo urging the administration to take military action against the Syrian government of Bashar Assad to help end the war in that country.
Administration warns diplomats unhappy with immigration moves to 'get with the program' or 'go.'
By NAHAL TOOSI
The White House on Monday rebuked State Department employees expressing dissent over President Donald Orangutan's recent executive order on immigration, raising fears that the diplomats could face retaliation despite their use of a legally protected channel to voice their concern.
The department's employees have been circulating a “dissent channel" letter within the Foreign Service that argues the executive order is unnecessary, will alienate America’s Muslim allies, and could even hurt U.S. businesses, according to one draft shared with POLITICO.
As word spread of the letter, White House press secretary Sean Pussy Boy Spicer blasted the diplomats while defending Orangutan’s order.
“These career bureaucrats have a problem with it?” he said during his daily press briefing. “I think they should either get with the program or they can go.”
Pussy Boy's comments stunned some in the national security establishment who noted that the dissent channel had been set up decades ago precisely to give State Department employees a protected way to express differences on U.S. policy.
David Wade, who previously served as a chief of staff to former Secretary of State John Kerry, called Spicer's comments "ugly" and "unacceptable."
"If the message from the White House is that 70,000 people who took an oath not to a party or a single president but to America is that they need to just follow orders or leave, you're knee-capping the Foreign Service before you even walk into the State Department."
The American Foreign Service Association, the union of diplomats, has a description of the dissent channel on its website that notes U.S. regulations stipulate that dissent channel users “shall not be subjected to reprisal.” The union's officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Tamara Cofman Wittes, a Middle East expert with the Brookings Institution, pointed to the legal language on Twitter, and wrote: "Sorry, @PressSec Pussy Boy: the Dissent Channel *IS* part of the program."
The dissent memo being circulated, even if it is never formally submitted, represents a revolt from within the U.S. bureaucracy to the still nascent Orangutan administration, and it comes before Orangutan’s choice for secretary of state, former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, has even been confirmed.
The dissent note, which is expected to get numerous backers, along with the White House's slap, suggests that Tillerson will face a very unhappy crowd if and when he takes the top perch at Foggy Bottom.
Tillerson’s confirmation vote is expected to take place later this week, although a cloture vote is set for later Monday. It’s possible that some senators may choose to use the debate over his nomination to voice their frustrations over Orangutan’s executive order.
The order, signed Friday, has numerous pieces. Its main features include a ban on Syrian refugees, a pause to all refugee resettlement, and a temporary ban on the entry of citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries: Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Iran, Syria, Libya and Yemen.
“The end result of this ban will not be a drop in terror attacks in the United States; rather, it will be a drop in international good will towards Americans and a threat towards our economy,” the draft dissent memo states.
The administration argues the refugee ban and other immigration actions are necessary to protect Americans from potential terrorist attacks.
State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the agency's current leadership is aware of the dissent memo.
"The dissent channel is a longstanding official vehicle for State Department employees to convey alternative views and perspectives on policy issues," Toner said. "This is an important process that the acting secretary, and the department as a whole, value and respect."
The dissent channel was established during the Vietnam War so that top State Department officials would have access to different points of view on the war. The department receives around four or five dissent channel messages a year.
According to the department: "Freedom from reprisal for dissent channel users is strictly enforced; officers or employees found to have engaged in retaliation or reprisal against dissent channel users, or to have divulged to unauthorized personnel the source or contents of dissent channel messages, will be subject to disciplinary action."
During the presidency of Barack Obama, dozens of Foreign Service officers signed a dissent memo urging the administration to take military action against the Syrian government of Bashar Assad to help end the war in that country.
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