Draining the Swamp

[Iamwhomiam]

Right, Elvis. Yours will be production numbers 7 & 8 of a limited (first?) run of 100.

[seemslikeadream]

Rex Tillerson Has A Long, Troubled History With Venezuela
01/15/2017 09:10 am ET | Updated 2 days ago

The Conversation Global
The Conversation is a collaboration between editors and academics providing informed news analysis and commentary free to read and republish

ExxonMobil and Venezuela have been spatting over oil for decades. Reuters

Sary Levy-Carciente, Universidad Central de Venezuela and María Teresa Romero, Universidad Central de Venezuela

If Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon Mobil and Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of state, is confirmed by the US congress, he has agreed to sever all ties with the world’s largest publicly traded international oil and gas company. But of course that won’t summarily erase the relationships he has built with leaders of oil-producing countries, which stand to influence his tenure.

Tillerson has no experience in government, the military or as a public servant. But he nonetheless knows the world and is well-known on the international stage. Having worked his way up through different positions in Exxon since 1975, he became Chairman and CEO in 2006. This position provides a familiarity with international diplomacy, expertise in managing large operations, and skills negotiating with global leaders.

Or, to quote Trump:



These features could make Tillerson the Trump administration’s ace card, bringing an extraordinary understanding of the role oil plays in the world - particularly in Russia and China - and of how to rebuild American political power in the global arena.

But conflicts of interest could haunt his term. Tillerson has close ties to Russia: in 2013 president Vladimir Putin granted him the Order of Friendship award, and a recent leak revealed that he once served as director of the Bahamas-based US-Russian oil firm, Exxon Neftegas.

His relationship with Venezuela, the world’s 11th ranked producer of crude, has been more fraught. This raises questions about how a Tillerson-run state department would engage the crisis-stricken, oil-rich South American country.

Exxon and Venezuela: a rocky road
ExxonMobil’s history in Venezuela starts in 1921, when its predecessor, Standard Oil, set up shop there. What’s happened since, particularly during the governments of the so-called “Socialism of the 21st Century“ under the successive administrations of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, does not necessarily augur well for bilateral US-Venezuela relations under Tillerson.

Venezuela’s ties to ExxonMobil were severed in 1976, when president Carlos Andres Pérez sought to nationalise the oil industry. They were reestablished in the 1990s when Pérez, in his second term, launched the so-called “Apertura Petrolera“ (“oil opening“), seeking to attract foreign investment and develop the Orinoco oil belt.

But when Hugo Chávez decided to re-nationalise the oil business in 2007, Venezuela’s state oil company, PDVSA, acquired a majority stake in domestic oil ventures. ExxonMobil, by now under Tillerson’s leadership, rejected the government’s offer to pay book value for its assets, countering with a request for arbitration by the World Bank’s investment disputes settlement centre. ExxonMobil aimed to receive market value for its investments, assessed at US$15 billion.

In 2014 Venezuela was ordered to compensate ExxonMobil $US1.6 billion.




Venezuelan Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez holds a paper declaring ‘PDVSA has beat Exxon’.
Jorge Silva/Reuters

Another problem arose in 2015, this time under Maduro, when ExxonMobil launched oil operations off the coast of neighbouring Guyana. That area lies very close to Venezuela’s Delta Amacuro state, in the Essequibo territory over which Venezuela has asserted ownership for more than a century.

In 2000 and 2002 the Venezuelan government brought claims to the World Petroleum Congress about Guyana’s proffered concessions in the Essequibo. International companies were initially compelled to cease drilling, but in 2012 operations resumed. Today both countries are seeking a peaceful agreement to this old border dispute with the UN Secretary General.

Meanwhile, Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Ltd, an ExxonMobil subsidiary, has declared that it will continue developing the region, which is part of a US$200 million, ten-year contract between Esso and the Guyanese government.

Maduro has accused ExxonMobil of trying to destabilise the region by siding with Guyana, while ExxonMobil has complained about the Venezuelan government trying to turn countries against the company.

Oil and the Venezuelan crisis
Venezuela is now facing the worst chapter of history since its 19th century civil war, and is experiencing a major humanitarian crisis - despite having enjoyed the greatest oil boom of its history during the first decade of this century.

The weaknesses of Venezuela’s economic model - a political-ideological project in which the country was able to leverage oil to buy domestic and international support - have been brought into stark perspective. After dismantling the private domestic productive apparatus (creating absolute dependence on oil exports) and weakening state institutions, Venezuela now has insufficient fiscal revenues, massive debt, a debilitated currency on the road to hyperinflation, scarcity of basic products - plus skyrocketing crime, legal insecurity, political imprisonments, social unrest, and so on.

Despite the terrible situation that’s now worn on for over a year, there is no sign of policy correction. The Maduro government blames an imperial economic war, wherein the US is highly culpable, along with the local oligarchy.

In September, US Secretary of State John Kerry, who supported the 2014 sanctions levied against Venezuelan officials (not general economic sanctions), expressed concern. “We’re very, very concerned for the people of Venezuela, for the level of conflict, starvation, lack of medicine,” he said.

Political bluster or business pragmatism?
A possible future Secretary of State Tillerson could take one of two paths.

Traditionally, Tillerson and ExxonMobil have been against economic sanctions as international policy. But a historically troubled relationship with Venezuela, coupled with its anti-American discourse, could nonetheless bring about an aggressive US stance toward Venezuela.

This might include increasing sanctions against Venezuelan officials (similar to those currently in force until 2019), severing diplomatic relations or suspending or significantly reducing Venezuelan oil purchases. Any of these measures would further devastate the country’s already critical economic situation and increase the Maduro government’s international isolation.

Given Tillerson’s experience and negotiating mastery, however, it is feasible that he could see beyond the radical left-wing discourse. He might compel Venezuela to honour its international financial commitments and act pragmatically given its situation, by privatising confiscated unproductive industries, reducing the mandatory 60% PDVSA national ownership in all oil projects and ending price controls for domestic production. In this scenario, the US and Venezuela might even reach an agreement to alleviate domestic food and medicine scarcity.

In the first scenario, Tillerson’s ExxonMobil proclivities are set aside in the service of a relationship based on hard principles and American values of the sort the incoming US president has said he seeks to resuscitate. In the second, the pragmatism and traditional interests of international business - that is, Tillerson’s own instincts - may predominate.

Which path will Tillerson follow with Venezuela? We’ll have to wait for his confirmation to find out.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-conve ... 83212.html

Senate Democrats to grill Trump education pick Betsy DeVos
Sara Ganim-Profile-ImageDan Merica-Profile-Image
By Sara Ganim and Dan Merica, CNN
Updated 11:03 AM ET, Tue January 17, 2017
President-elect Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos after their meeting at Trump International Golf Club, November 19, in Bedminster Township, New Jersey. Trump has offered her the Education Secretary.

Betsy DeVos has been a prolific Republican donor for decades
Democrats including Sen. Elizabeth Warren are preparing to grill her at her hearing Tuesday
Washington (CNN)Betsy DeVos has been a political heavyweight for decades, spending millions to advance conservative causes. But Tuesday evening, Donald Trump's nominee for education secretary will be asked to fill in her own personal beliefs on a host of controversial education issues.

Democrats on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions are preparing to question DeVos on a broad scope of topics, honing in on the fact that, to date, DeVos has been largely a blank slate on college affordability, transgender issues in schools and for-profit colleges.
Warren letter to Trump education pick highlights 'lack of experience'
Warren slams Trump's pick for education secretary
Her paperwork, however, remains unapproved by the Office of Government Ethics, an issue Democrats will be certain to bring up. The hearing remains set for 5 p.m. Tuesday and committee Republicans say the lack of OGE clearance will not delay the hearing. While the paperwork is due before the panel can actually vote on a nominee, the hearing can proceed nevertheless.
DeVos, who bridges two powerful and wealthy conservative families, has been a prolific Republican donor for decades. She has given millions to groups that advocate for school privatization and voucher programs, including the American Federation for Children, a group she chaired from 2009 to 2016.
She has also given millions to political groups like the Republican National Committee and the Republican National Senatorial Committee and contributed to four senators on the committee overseeing her confirmation. And she donated to a handful of 2016 presidential campaigns, although notably, she was not a Donald Trump supporter and was critical of him during the campaign.
All of this giving has Democrats on the committee concerned, especially because DeVos lacks on-the-record statements about a host of issues that will fall within the education secretary's purview, meaning they will have to question the Michigan Republican on a variety of topics.
"I am troubled by your seemingly nonexistent record on higher education," Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a member of the Senate panel that will consider DeVos, wrote in a letter Monday.
RELATED: Charter schools controversy will only grow under Trump
Warren lambasted DeVos in the scathing letter for a lack of public education experience, arguing her only experience with education was through her "deep record of political activism, bankrolling and lobbying for policies" she supported.
"There is no precedent for an Education Department secretary nominee with your lack of experience in public education," Warren wrote, adding, "As such, your nomination provides the Senate and the public with few clues about your actual policy positions on a host of critical issues."
Others Democrats have hit DeVos, arguing that spending on education issues does not make someone qualified to lead the department that oversees the issue.
DeVos has used her family's considerable fortune to staunchly advocate her positions, particularly in K-12 education.
Through a trio of family foundations, DeVos has substantially backed school voucher programs, fulfilling the belief that they not only benefit children in poverty, but that they also allow families to send their children to religious schools with state funds.
While Democrats plan to push DeVos on this view -- committee ranking member Patty Murray charged DeVos with wanting to "block accountability for charter schools" after meeting her earlier this month -- DeVos' view is in line with Trump and many Republicans in Congress.
Trump, as a candidate, advocated using as much as $20 billion in federal money to fund vouchers, possibly by redirecting $15 billion that benefits schools which serve the nation's poorest children.
Trump's transition team has so far declined to get into a back-and-forth regarding DeVos' credentials, telling CNN that DeVos looks forward to answering questions from the committee at Tuesday's hearing.
DeVos will be introduced by former Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, a committee aide tells CNN.
Lieberman, the Democrat-turned independent who was Al Gore's vice presidential running mate in 2000, spent years on Capitol Hill trumpeting school choice, a position likely to be at the center of DeVos' testimony. He currently serves on the board of the American Federation for Children, a group DeVos recently chaired.
Fight over vouchers, religion
Senate Republicans expect a fight Tuesday, especially on DeVos' positions regarding vouchers, which are widely seen as benefitting families who want to send their children to parochial schools, and raises questions about tax dollars funding religion.
"There is a religious agenda behind voucher proposals," said Katherine Stewart, author of the book, "The Good News Club," which explores the religious right in schools. "There is a segment of the conservative evangelical world that sees public education as secular, and is therefore hostile to it."
DeVos herself has made comments about the role of religion in schools. She and her husband, Dick DeVos, sent their kids to parochial schools, and Dick DeVos told the Associated Press in 2006 that he's for the teaching of intelligent design in schools.
Randi Weingarten, a Hillary Clinton supporter and the head of the American Federal of Teachers, called DeVos the "most anti-public education nominee in the history of the department" in a speech this month.
But it's not just Democrats who have been critical. Over the years, DeVos has seen opposition from Republicans on vouchers and school choice. Most notably, Scott Romney told The New York Times in June that her idea of a free market for schools wasn't working.
"This is a public service, this isn't just a business," he told the New York Times. "I don't believe in the free market for police or fire." (Romney backtracked on this comment following her nomination, telling CNN that he thinks DeVos will make a great secretary of education.)
And in 2002, the Grand Rapids Press reported that her "near-obsession" with school reform caused her to resign her position as chairwoman of the state GOP because of "a rift with Gov. Engler over the voucher issue. DeVos quit to devote more time to the state referendum on vouchers -- a proposal Engler feared could hurt the GOP by driving up Democratic turnout," the newspaper reported.
Senate Republicans, according to committee aides, plan to defend DeVos' support for charter schools by emphasizing the fact that many Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, have backed those same kinds of schools.
"Mrs. DeVos' support for charter schools and giving low-income parents the kinds of school choice that wealthier parents have is in the mainstream of those who want better public schools," said a spokesperson for Sen. Lamar Alexander, the chairman of the committee.
Committee aides noted ahead of DeVos' hearing that not only did Hillary Clinton back charter schools at one time (specifically those were non-profit) and her husband -- former President Bill Clinton -- in 1997 called for creating 3,000 charter schools by 2002.
Additionally, Republicans will note that Arne Duncan, President Barack Obama's first education secretary, and John King, Obama's current education secretary, both supported charter schools at one time. King founded and ran a charter school before heading up the Department of Education, an aide noted.
The director of one of DeVos' foundations, the Great Lakes Education Project, told CNN last year that she would be a good education secretary should Trump want to follow through on his campaign suggestion that the Department of Education should be shuttered.
"I may cut Department of Education," Trump said in October 2015, a comment that electrified conservative education advocates who believe states should be in charge of schooling children.
Role of department in LBGTQ issues
In the last few weeks, DeVos has taken calls from Sen. Jim Lankford, a vocal critic of the Education Department's Office of Civil Rights, which handles some of the most controversial issues, like sexual assault on campuses and LGBTQ issues. Lankford has accused the office of overreach and abuse.
Alison Kiss, executive director of The Clery Center for Security on Campus, said that these contacts have raised concerns.
"If she were confirmed, she could potentially not name someone to be assistant secretary for civil rights," Kiss said, adding that shuttering the office would "really dial back progress" and say that the Trump administration is "accepting" behavior like sexual assault on campuses.
Without a clear outline of her views issues where LGBT issues and education meet, many advocacy groups have been left with only DeVos' contribution record to guess her personal beliefs. And that's left many people skeptical. Over the years, she's given to groups that are considered anti-LGBT, promote conversion therapy and religious liberty legislation.
David Stacy, government affairs director of the Human Rights Campaign, which advocates for LGBTQ equality, said they hope to get clarity out of the confirmation hearings on some of the more recently controversial issues.
"We come necessary not in favor or opposed (to DeVos), but with some really serious concerns, and we view the hearing as an opportunity for her to lay out her views and her beliefs, but even more important after getting a sense of where she stands," Stacy said.
Political contributions
Like several of Trump's cabinet picks, DeVos' tremendous wealth, investments and political contributions have raised questions, and are likely to be a major point of questioning from Democrats.
According to The Wall Street Journal, DeVos is an "indirect investor in online-lending company Social Finance Inc., a startup whose fortunes hinge in part on policies crafted by the department Ms. DeVos would run."
DeVos was also the director of the Ohio pro-voucher organization All Children Matter when in 2008 it violated campaign finance laws by sending $870,000 in campaign contributions from its Virginia PAC to its unregistered Ohio PAC, according to the Columbus Dispatch. The result was a $5.3 million fine which has gone unpaid.
The Trump transition claims that is because the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United has left it null and void.
"The courts ruled on this matter many years ago, noting that none of the officers or board members of All Children Matter were liable for any fines," said a spokeswoman for the Trump transition.
The Detroit News reported that the DeVos and her husband, with a net-worth of $5 billion -- estimated by Forbes -- were partially denied a tax break on their $7.8 million compound near Grand Rapids. The exemption they claimed kept $306,000 from public schools between 2009 and 2016, and they were forced to pay back some of the money.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/17/politics/ ... y-hearing/

[seemslikeadream]

NEWS & POLITICS
James Mattis Is a War Criminal: I Experienced His Attack on Fallujah Firsthand
Mattis, known to some by the nickname of "Mad Dog," has shown a callous disregard for human life, particularly that of civilians.
By Dahr Jamail / Truthout January 17, 2017


Retired marine General James Mattis, who retired from being the head of CENTCOM in 2013, has become known recently for his stance against what he calls "political Islam."

"Is political Islam in the best interest of the United States?" Mattis said at the far right-wing Heritage Foundation in 2015. "I suggest the answer is no, but we need to have the discussion. If we won't even ask the question, how do we even recognize which is our side in a fight?"

Another controversial aspect of his selection that much of the media is focusing on is the fact that in order to get the job, Mattis would need Congress to pass new legislation to bypass a federal law stating that it has to have been seven years since defense secretaries have been on active duty. Congress has only bypassed that law once in US history, and that occurred over 50 years ago.

More importantly, Mattis, known to some by the nickname of "Mad Dog," has shown a callous disregard for human life, particularly civilians, as evidenced by his behavior leading marines in Iraq, comments he made about enjoying fighting in Afghanistan because "it's fun to shoot some people. You know, it's a hell of a hoot," and myriad other problems.

Mattis' Role in the Haditha Massacre

While Mattis has ample military experience -- serving as NATO's supreme allied commander and with more than 40 years in the Marine Corps, his nickname seems apt.

He also said, when speaking to a group of soldiers about how to behave in Iraq during a 2003 speech, "Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet."

But more importantly, he is clearly responsible for carrying out and/or aiding and abetting in several war crimes.

In November 2005 US marines in Iraq committed a massacre of 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians. The slaughtering of unarmed men, women, children and elderly people, shot multiple times at close range, was retribution for a roadside bomb attack on a convoy of marines. The war crimes were extremely well documented and the atrocity garnered international attention.

When it came time to bring the marines responsible for the massacre to justice, Mattis was the convening authority over the eight charged with crimes at Haditha.

Mattis went on to dismiss all of the charges leveled against the marines who had been accused of killing the civilians and of the eight originally charged, only one still faces possible prosecution, but one can guess how that will end up.

Mattis' Role in Fallujah

Mattis was the head of Camp Pendleton's 1st Marine Division in Iraq and played a lead role during both of the US sieges of Fallujah in 2004.

During the April 2004 siege, more than 700 civilians were killed by the US military, according to Iraqi doctors in the city whom I interviewed in the aftermath of that attack.

While reporting from inside Fallujah during that siege, I personally witnessed women, children, elderly people and ambulances being targeted by US snipers under Mattis' command. Needless to say, all of these are war crimes.

During the November siege of Fallujah later that same year, which I also covered first-hand, more than 5,000 Iraqi civilians were killed. Most were buried in mass graves in the aftermath of the siege.

Mosques were deliberately targeted by the US military, hospitals bombed, medical workers detained, ambulances shot at, cease-fires violated, media repressed, and the use of depleted uranium was widespread. All of these are, again, war crimes.

At that time I broke the story of the US military's use of white phosphorous, an incendiary weapon similar to napalm in its ability to burn all the way down to the bone. The use of white phosphorus was a violation of international law, given that it was unleashed in the city during a time when the Pentagon itself admitted to at least 50,000 civilians still being present.

More than 200,000 civilians were displaced from their homes during the November siege, and over 75 percent of the city was destroyed.

The horrific legacy of depleted uranium contamination continues, with stillbirths and birth defects still occurring at astronomical rates, creating a situation so extreme that some Iraqi doctors are calling it a genocide.

Life Under Attack by Mattis-Led Forces

In this moment, as we countenance Mattis' planned ascension as secretary of defense, I'd like to share an excerpt from my book Beyond the Green Zone. Taken from a chapter about the April 2004 US siege of Fallujah, this report offers a clear view of the war crimes over which Mattis presided, including the deliberate targeting of innocent civilians, widespread collective punishment and more:

***

We rolled toward the one small clinic where we were to deliver our medical supplies. The small clinic was managed by Maki al-Nazzal, who was hired just four days ago. He was not a doctor. The other makeshift clinic in Fallujah was in a mechanic's garage. He had barely slept in the past week, nor had any of the doctors at the small clinic.

Originally, the clinic had just three doctors, but since the US military bombed one of the hospitals and were currently sniping at people as they attempted to enter or exit the main hospital, effectively, there were only these two small clinics treating the entire city.

The boxes of medical supplies we brought into the clinic were torn open immediately by the desperate doctors. A woman entered, slapping her chest and face, and wailing as her husband carried in the dying body of her little boy. Blood was trickling off one of his arms, which dangled out of his father's arms. Thus began my witnessing of an endless stream of women and children who had been shot by the US soldiers and were now being raced into the dirty clinic, the cars speeding over the curb out front, and weeping family members carrying in their wounded. One 18-year-old girl had been shot through the neck. She was making breathy gurgling noises as the doctors frantically worked on her amid her muffled moaning. Flies dodged the working hands of doctors to return to the patches of her vomit that stained her black abaya.

Her younger brother, a small child of 10 with a gunshot wound in his head from a marine sniper, his eyes glazed and staring into space, continually vomited as the doctors raced to save his life while family members cried behind me. "The Americans cut our electricity days ago, so we cannot vacuum the vomit from his throat," a furious doctor tells me. They were both loaded into an ambulance and rushed toward Baghdad, only to die en route.

Another small child lay on a blood-spattered bed, also shot by a sniper. The boy's grandmother lay nearby, shot as she was attempting to carry children from their home and flee the city. She lay on a bed dying, still clutching a bloodied white surrender flag. Hundreds of families were trapped in their homes, terrorized by US snipers shooting from rooftops and the minarets of mosques whenever they saw someone move past a window.

Blood bags were being kept in a food refrigerator, warmed under running water before being given to patients. There were no anesthetics. The lights went out as the generator ran dry of fuel, so the doctors, who had been working for days on end, worked by light provided by men holding up cigarette lighters or flashlights as the sun set. Needless to say, there was no air-conditioning inside the steamy "clinic."

One victim of the US military aggression after another was brought into the clinic, nearly all of them women and children, carried by weeping family members. Those who had not been hit by bombs from warplanes had been shot by US snipers. The one functioning ambulance left at this clinic sat outside with bullet holes in the sides and a small group of shots right on the driver's side of the windshield. The driver, his head bandaged from being grazed by the bullet of a sniper, refused to go collect any more of the dead and wounded.

Standing near the ambulance in frustration, Maki told us, "They [US soldiers] shot the ambulance and they shot the driver after they checked his car, inspected his car, and knew that he was carrying nothing. Then they shot him. And then they shot the ambulance. And now I have no ambulance to evacuate more than 20 wounded people. I don't know who is doing this and why he is doing this. This is terrible. This has never happened before. And I don't know who to call because it seems that nobody is listening."

The stream of patients slowed to a sporadic influx as night fell. Maki sat with me as we shared cigarettes in a small office in the rear of the clinic. "For all my life, I believed in American democracy," he told me with an exhausted voice. "For 47 years, I had accepted the illusion of Europe and the United States being good for the world, the carriers of democracy and freedom. Now I see that it took me 47 years to wake up to the horrible truth. They are not here to bring anything like democracy or freedom.

"Now I see it has all been lies. The Americans don't give a damn about democracy or human rights. They are worse than even Saddam." I asked him if he minded if I quoted him with his name. "What are they going to do to me that they haven't already done here," he said.

Another car skipped over the curb outside and a man who was burned from head to toe was carried in on a stretcher. He surely died shortly, as there was no way this clinic could treat massive burns. Maki, frustrated and in shock, said, "They say there is a cease-fire. They said 12 o'clock, so people went out to do some shopping. Everybody who went out was shot and this place was full, and half of them were dead."

More than 20 dead bodies had been brought to this clinic during the last 24 hours of the "cease-fire." Shortly after this, another car skidded to a stop, and a man hit with cluster bombs was unloaded. "The Americans have been using cluster bombs often here," Maki tells me somberly. "And of course they love their DU [depleted uranium]."

***

It is clear that Trump's secretary of defense selection of Mattis, an unprosecuted war criminal, is yet another egregious act against justice and the rule of international law.

Mattis was a high-level marine commander overseeing both sieges of Fallujah who then played an active role in making sure eight marines involved in a massacre walked away from any appropriate punishment.

These are just a few of his highlights from Iraq.

Imagine what he could do to the rest of the world.
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politi ... -firsthand

[seemslikeadream]

500+ Groups Urge Senators: 'Use All Your Power' to Block Anti-Environment Pruitt

'Anyone that breathes air and drinks water should be aggressively opposed to this man leading the EPA,' says head of Food & Water Watch
byDeirdre Fulton, staff writer

The confirmation hearing for Scott Pruitt, President-elect Donald Trump's pick to head the EPA, begins Wednesday morning. (Photo: Gage Skidmore/flickr/cc)
More than 500 national, state, and local organizations on Tuesday announced their opposition to Donald Trump's fossil-fuel soaked nominee to run the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Scott Pruitt.

In a letter (pdf) to U.S. senators sent one day before Pruitt's confirmation hearing before the Environment and Public Works committee on Wednesday, the groups urge lawmakers "to not only vote against Pruitt's nomination, but actively use all the power of your office and position to block it. We urge you to lobby your colleagues on both sides of the aisle to oppose his nomination, to speak out in the media highlighting his egregious environmental record, and use all procedural means at your disposal to block Scott Pruitt from becoming EPA administrator."

Asserting that "[w]e could write a book on Pruitt's anti-environmental views," the signatories offer the following "highlights" of his record:

As Attorney General of Oklahoma, Pruitt campaigned in support of a ballot measure that would have made it virtually impossible for the state to regulate pollution caused by factory farms—pollution which poisons surrounding communities' air and drinking water. Fortunately, Oklahoma voters have the good sense to reject this measure;
Pruitt is a climate denier who has said that the link between human activity and climate change is "far from settled." He is part of an effort to shield Exxon and other energy companies from accountability over years of misleading the public about the science around climate change;
Pruitt opposes the ability of the EPA to regulate carbon as a pollutant, something that is essential to combating climate change;
Pruitt has opposed the EPA's Waters of the U.S. rule, which strengthened regulations aimed at protecting water from runoff pollution;
Pruitt even opposes protecting the environment around our national parks. In 2014, Pruitt unsuccessfully sued the EPA over its Regional Haze Rule, a law designed to foster cleaner air at national parks by reducing coal-fired power plant emissions;
As earthquakes caused by fracking and waste disposal have ravaged Oklahoma, Pruitt has done nothing to protect the people of his state or hold the fossil fuel industry accountable;
None of this should come as a surprise, given that Pruitt has accepted over $300,000 in campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry.
"Given Scott Pruitt's long record of insulating industrial polluters from even the most basic environmental safeguards, anyone that breathes air and drinks water should be aggressively opposed to this man leading the EPA," said Wenonah Hauter, executive director at Food & Water Watch, which spearheaded the letter. "We are putting every senator on notice: anyone who supports his nomination will have Mr. Pruitt's dreadful history of pollution and poisoning on their own hands, and we the people will hold each of them personally responsible moving forward."

The missive, signed by a wide-ranging coalition of environmental, civil rights, public health, and pro-democracy organizations, comes on the heels of another letter from 13 former heads of state environmental bureaus to Senate leaders, also calling for Pruitt's rejection as head of the EPA. In addition, last week, top Senate Democrats asked federal ethics officials for more information about Pruitt's abundant conflicts of interest, noting that "during his tenure as attorney general of Oklahoma, Mr. Pruitt has blurred the distinction between official and political actions, often at the behest of corporations he will regulate if confirmed to lead the EPA."

All these opponents note that Pruitt spent his time as Oklahoma attorney general launching multiple legal attacks against the EPA on behalf of fossil fuel corporations. The Intercept on Tuesday delved into one such case—Pruitt's suit, filed in coordination with Murray Energy, Peabody Energy, and Southern Power Company ("all of whom donated to Pruitt and his political action committee," reporter Sharon Lerner writes), challenging the EPA's Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR).

The cost of not implementing that rule, which sought to limit smog emissions from coal- and oil-burning power plants, would be staggering, Lerner reports:

By reducing CO2 emissions, the rule would avert significant costs from climate-related incidents, such as floods, droughts, rising sea levels, and damage to coastlines. And because smog and soot cause illnesses and sometimes even death, limiting emissions can amount to between $120 and $280 billion in health savings annually.

That startling sum represents the cost of vast human suffering, including:

400,000 cases of aggravated asthma
1.8 million days of missed work and school
15,000 nonfatal heart attacks, and
Up to 34,000 premature deaths
The U.S. Supreme Court in 2014 ruled against Pruitt and his fossil-fuel cronies, "[b]ut as head of the EPA, he would be in a position to undermine this rule and others that would save both money and lives," Lerner writes.

And that's why so many people are fighting his nomination.

"The political revolution relies on those who fight for economic, social, racial, and environmental justice—and there will be no environmental justice if Scott Pruitt is in charge of the EPA," said Shannon Jackson, executive director of Our Revolution, which signed onto Tuesday's letter. "Pruitt's disturbing denial of science and close financial ties to the fossil fuel industry make him completely unfit to hold the position—and would put the future of our planet and the lives of future generations at risk. Our country deserves a leader who understands that we have a moral obligation to reduce emissions and invest in renewable energy—not the man who has sued the EPA over their Clean Power Plan. We will fight this appointment like our lives depend on it—because they do."

Pruitt's hearing begins Wednesday at 10am.
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/0 ... ent-pruitt

[seemslikeadream]

'King of bankruptcy' would be complicated choice for Commerce
Critics say Wilbur Ross' restructuring of failing industries sometimes came at workers' expense.
By ADAM BEHSUDI 11/23/16 08:26 PM EST

Wilbur Ross wouldn’t be the first billionaire to lead the Commerce Department: He would replace
By MOLLY K. MCKEW

By ALEX MASSIE
Admirers praise Wilbur Ross as “the king of bankruptcy," calling him a savior of failing U.S. industries.

But his critics have a different name for the 78-year-old investor said to be Donald Trump’s pick for Commerce secretary. They describe him as a “vulture,” and say his restructuring of ailing industries has sometimes come at the expense of workers’ safety — in one egregious case, contributing to the deaths of 12 miners in Sago, West Virginia.

Should Ross be nominated as Commerce secretary, some of those questionable practices are sure to be under a spotlight during his confirmation hearings, making him a complicated choice as the official in charge of promoting U.S. business abroad and defending U.S. trade laws. Also likely to get attention are his dizzying array of domestic and foreign investments and business dealings. Those include board positions on at least five major public companies and leadership in several private firms.

“He might be the second-most complicated person in the administration to vet, behind the president-elect himself,” said Norman Eisen, a Brookings Institution visiting fellow who once served as President Barack Obama's chief ethics lawyer.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Ross has told associates he’s likely to take an administration job and that it would mean the end of his business career because he would be forced to divest himself of his investment holdings. He declined to comment to POLITICO.

Ross is precisely the sort of Cabinet pick that Trump boasted on the campaign trail he would make: By all accounts, Ross is a savvy negotiator and a member of the same club of enormously successful billionaires as Trump: He has an estimated net worth of $2.9 billion and a house down the street from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach. During the campaign, he helped Trump argue the case to renegotiate “bad” trade deals and impose “defensive tariffs” on imports from China and Mexico. And he shares Trump’s views that China and other countries are taking U.S. industry to the cleaners based on his experience snapping up assets bankrupted in part by foreign competition.

Most experts agree that to serve as Commerce secretary, the Wall Street insider would have to end personal involvement in business activities, step down from boards, recuse himself from certain decisions and put his investments in a blind trust. Obama, as a rule, made his Cabinet members give up any corporate board seats, although it remains to be seen whether Trump will demand the same.

“There would be a lot of work that would have to go into clearing someone with that many financial entanglements,” said Doug Graham, managing director at the intelligence firm Investigative Group International. Graham oversaw vetting operations for Obama's second term.

Ross, who has degrees from Harvard and Yale and heads his own private equity firm, WL Ross and Co. wouldn’t be the first billionaire to lead the Commerce Department, as he would replace Chicago tycoon Penny Pritzker in the top spot.

Ross is also on the boards of directors of the Bank of Cyprus, the natural-gas and oil exploration company EXCO Resources, the bank holding company Sun Bancorp, the chemicals and plastics distribution company Nexeo Solutions, and the shipping company DSS Holdings, among others.

His investments in steel, in particular, place him close to an industry that has waged an aggressive campaign of trade cases against foreign competitors. That could raise questions over whether he might benefit financially from favorable trade rulings by Commerce’s International Trade Administration, which determines retaliatory tariff margins.

In 2002, Ross created the International Steel Group by buying up beleaguered companies like LTV Steel and Bethlehem Steel Corp. for pennies on the dollar, only to sell the business for $4.5 billion in 2005 to Mittal Steel Co., which later merged with European steelmaker Arcelor to become ArcelorMittal. He still sits on the board of directors of that company, the world’s largest steelmaker. The company’s U.S. subsidiary has been an active petitioner in trade remedy cases.

Ross also restructured major U.S. textile companies into the International Textile Group, although he is no longer invested in that company. He’s done the same with companies in the coal and auto-parts sectors.

“Having experience with Mr. Ross and one of his holdings, I realize that he does place significant value on U.S. production and the U.S. workforce and U.S. investment, and I think that’s a good thing,” said Auggie Tantillo, who heads the trade group, National Council of Textile Organizations

Similarly, Ross is seen by those in the steel industry as a shrewd pick who has his finger on the pulse of America’s distressed manufacturing sectors.

“There have been people who have found their way to this position who are in charge of laws they don’t believe in,” said one industry source, noting that Ross would likely take full advantage of his authority at Commerce if he assumes the job.

The depth of Ross’ investments in U.S. manufacturing likely make him a true believer in the need to ratchet up enforcement of trade violations, as Trump has said he wants to do.

That could help burnish Ross’ image among industry and labor heads as a Rust Belt savior. Even though his restructurings have led to the shedding of pensions and some pain among workers, some labor leaders have praised the industrialist for daring to take a chance on companies others had left for dead.

“I really think the future of domestic manufacturing is people like Wilbur Ross,” Bruce Raynor, former head of the garment workers union Unite Here, said in a 2011 New York Magazine profile.

But Ross could invite scrutiny from lawmakers for other business activities. In buying up distressed coal properties, for instance, he acquired a mine in Sago, West Virginia, where in 2006 an explosion killed a dozen workers. The mine was owned by a subsidiary of one of his companies, International Coal Group, Inc. Ross faced findings that he ignored dozens of safety concerns and citations.

The federal Mine Safety and Health Commission said the injury rate at the mine was significantly above the national average and cited the mine 208 times in 2005 for safety violations. The agency noted that less than half of the citations were for “significant and substantial” violations, and all but eight of the problems had been corrected before the accident.

Ross’s holding company had acquired the mine only seven weeks before the disaster. In an interview with Fox News a few days after the accident, Ross said claims that he cut back on safety measures at the mine or at any other distressed company he acquired were “totally fallacious,” adding that his company has never declined a penny’s worth of requests for safety purposes.

Federal investigators pointed to a lightning strike as the “most likely” ignition source for the blast but said that proper methane monitoring, among other things, could have prevented the disaster. The federal government imposed fines of $134,000, which were later reduced.

Politicians, moguls and even a few Democrats: Trump's revolving door of post-election visitors
Political observers have closely watched Donald Trump’s every move as he goes about the massive task of filling the thousands of political appointee jobs, with acute interest in the makeup of his Cabinet. Hundreds of people have called on Trump’s Manhattan office, rural New Jersey getaway and Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida over the past two months; here’s a day-by-day look at some of the people who have visited since Trump was elected.

“Whenever you have a disaster like that, it’s going to get re-litigated,” said Brookings’ Eisen.

Ross has also run into trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In August, the SEC ordered Ross to pay a $2.3 million fine for failing to disclose certain fees to investors. He reportedly agreed to pay back all the fees with interest, in addition to the fine.

Despite his past transgressions, U.S. industry and workers would see Ross as a strong ally in enforcing the bulk of U.S. trade laws, giving him some appeal to labor-friendly lawmakers. That could make him less of a target in the confirmation process, where Democrats might put their focus on stopping more ideologically right-wing appointments.

Ross’s own take on the Trump team’s plans suggest a pro-U.S. worker stance that could play well to both the left and the right.

“If America’s trading partners continue to cheat, a President Trump will use all available means to defend American workers and American manufacturing facilities from such cheating, including tariffs,” he wrote in a paper on Trump’s economic plan released in September with economist Peter Navarro, another senior Trump adviser.

Ross added that tariffs would not be used as an endgame but rather “a negotiating tool to encourage our trading partners to cease cheating.”

But sparking an all-out trade war with a country like China might not be in the country’s, or the businessman’s best interests.

Ross returned from a trip to China in October where he told Bloomberg News he was scoping out opportunities in the country’s distressed asset market as Beijing goes through the painful process of trying to transition from an export-oriented market to a more consumer-driven economy.

That could give hope to U.S. businesses that desperately want to see the conclusion of a U.S.-China bilateral investment treaty.

“China will be an opportunity,” he said. “They have promulgated, when I was over there, some new rules for sorting out the excess capacity among the state-owned enterprises — the steel industry, the cement industry, even the electrical industry.”

Ross’ moves could also be called into question if it seems he is profiting off U.S. government efforts to pressure Beijing to become a more market-driven economy. As Commerce secretary, he would likely be involved in the formation of a new “global steel forum” the U.S., China and other countries agreed to create this year, which aims to find solutions to the global glut of steel.

U.S. steel producers blame China’s overproduction for adding excess capacity in the global steel market and driving down world prices. U.S. steel producers accuse Beijing of continuing to promote that with state subsidies.

As a Cabinet member with international dealings, Ross could also draw fire over the profits he made from financial crises in other countries, as well as any current overseas holdings that he has. At the height of the Eurozone crisis in 2011, Ross and a group of investors made a $1.5 billion investment to bail out the Bank of Ireland and save it from being taken over by the government. Three years later, he earned a profit by cashing out his shares for more than $600 million.

“I suspect Mr. Ross did not spend his career thinking of what the Senate would say about it,” said Graham of Investigative Group International.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/w ... tcy-231823

[liminalOyster]

Donald Trump's Pick to Enforce Civil Rights Is a Civil Rights Disaster

Just before he became president, a report came out indicating how Donald Trump’s Justice Department would be treating Civil Rights. The Hill on Thursday offered a sneak peek of the blueprint for Trump’s DOJ, one major upshot being a reduction in funding for its civil rights division.

If it was already clear before the inauguration that Trump and Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions are likely to short shrift the issue, on Friday it became more so.

It was reported on Friday that John M. Gore, an attorney at the Jones Day firm, would be leading the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division as the deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights.

This is indicative for a number of reasons of the disregard with which Trump's administration will treat civil rights enforcement.

First and foremost, as Deputy Director for the Center for American Progress Action Fund Igor Volsky noted, Gore was one of the defense attorneys who argued in court on behalf of North Carolina's discriminatory and economically disastrous anti-transgender bill HB2. The bill blocks transgender people from using public bathrooms that align with their gender identity. (Gore pulled out of the case last week and this appears to explain why.) As Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern has written, the bill has received mixed reviews in federal court. Gore was helping the state defend it against allegations that it violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and federal law. Basically, he was on the side of discrimination in the country’s most high-profile LGBTQ rights case of the past year.

Secondly, as Richard Hasen notes over at the Election Law Blog, one of Gore’s main areas of expertise appears to be defending redistricting plans against claims of civil rights violations, with his online bio boasting of a number of successful such defenses.

Thirdly, in one of the most high-profile civil rights cases he litigated in recent years, the state of Florida was found to have violated the National Voter Registration Act with a systemic purge of voters it suspected of being non-citizens. As the New York Times wrote of Florida’s voter restriction attempt:

The program to identify and remove noncitizens from the rolls prompted a national outcry and several lawsuits in 2012 because it was riddled with mistakes and was being pushed through months before the election. A number of people on the lists, which were sent by the state to county election supervisors, were, in fact, citizens (including the two lead plaintiffs in the lawsuit).
And as MSNBC’s Zachary Roth wrote:

The Miami Herald found that “Hispanic, Democratic and independent-minded voters are the most likely to be targeted,” while whites and Republicans were the least likely.
Again, Gore was helping defend the state of Florida and this illegal law that blindly purged voters.

And now he’s going to be in charge of defending the civil rights of Americans, including enforcement of the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the National Voter Registration Act (the one that Florida was found to be violating when he defended the state), and the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, among others.

It also seems relevant—considering that Trump’s cabinet is going to be the whitest, most male one in nearly three decades—that this department has in recent years more often than not been run by a woman and/or a person of color. Gore looks like this.

Civil Rights under President Trump: Enforced by white cisgender men, for white cisgender men.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/ ... aster.html

[seemslikeadream]

Trump’s Not Draining the Swamp—He’s Filling It
Under President Trump, banking sharks will once again have immense influence on the American economy.
By Nomi Prins
YESTERDAY 4:15 PM

Irony isn’t a concept with which President Donald J. Trump is familiar. In his Inaugural Address, having nominated the wealthiest cabinet in American history, he proclaimed, “For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished—but the people did not share in its wealth.” Under Trump, an even smaller group will flourish—in particular, a cadre of former Goldman Sachs executives. To put the matter bluntly, two of them (along with the Federal Reserve) are likely to control our economy and financial system in the years to come.

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com.

Infusing Washington with Goldman alums isn’t exactly an original idea. Three of the last four presidents, including The Donald, have handed the wheel of the US economy to ex-Goldmanites. But in true Trumpian style, after attacking Hillary Clinton for her Goldman ties, he wasn’t satisfied to do just that. He had to do it bigger and better. Unlike Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, just a sole Goldman figure lording it over economic policy wasn’t enough for him. Only two would do.

THE GREAT VAMPIRE SQUID REVISITED
Whether you voted for or against Donald Trump, whether you’re gearing up for the revolution or waiting for his next tweet to drop, rest assured that, in the years to come, the ideology that matters most won’t be that of the “forgotten” Americans of his Inaugural Address. It will be that of Goldman Sachs and it will dominate the domestic economy and, by extension, the global one.

At the dawn of the 20th century, when President Teddy Roosevelt governed the country on a platform of trust busting aimed at reducing corporate power, even he could not bring himself to bust up the banks. That was a mistake born of his collaboration with the financier J.P. Morgan to mitigate the effects of the Bank Panic of 1907. Roosevelt feared that if he didn’t enlist the influence of the country’s major banker, the crisis would be even longer and more disastrous. It’s an error he might not have made had he foreseen the effect that one particular investment bank would have on America’s economy and political system.

There have been hundreds of articles written about the “world’s most powerful investment bank,” or as journalist Matt Taibbi famously called it back in 2010, the “great vampire squid.” That squid is now about to wrap its tentacles around our world in a way previously not imagined by Bill Clinton or George W. Bush.

No less than six Trump administration appointments already hail from that single banking outfit. Of those, two will impact your life strikingly: former Goldman partner and soon-to-be Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and incoming top economic adviser and National Economic Council Chair Gary Cohn, former president and “number two” at Goldman. (The Council he will head has been responsible for “policy-making for domestic and international economic issues.”)

Now let’s take a step into history to get the full Monty on why this matters more than you might imagine. In New York, circa 1932, then-Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt announced his bid for the presidency. At the time, our nation was in the throes of the Great Depression. Goldman Sachs had, in fact, been one of the banks at the core of the infamous crash of 1929 that crippled the financial system and nearly destroyed the economy. It was then run by a dynamic figure, Sidney Weinberg, dubbed “the Politician” by Roosevelt because of his smooth tongue and “Mr. Wall Street” by the New York Times because of his range of connections there. Weinberg quickly grasped that, to have a chance of redeeming his firm’s reputation from the ashes of public opinion, he would need to aim high indeed. So he made himself indispensable to Roosevelt’s campaign for the presidency, soon embedding himself on the Democratic National Campaign Executive Committee.

After victory, he was not forgotten. FDR named him to the Business Advisory Council of the Department of Commerce, even as he continued to run Goldman Sachs. He would, in fact, go on to serve as an adviser to five more presidents, while Goldman would be transformed from a boutique banking operation into a global leviathan with a direct phone line to whichever president held office and a permanent seat at the table in political and financial Washington.

Now let’s jump forward to the 1990s when Robert Rubin, co-chairman of Goldman Sachs, took a page from Weinberg’s playbook. He recognized the potential in a young, charismatic governor from Arkansas with a favorable attitude toward banks. Since Bill Clinton was far less well known than FDR had been, Rubin didn’t actually cozy up to him from the get-go. It was another Goldman Sachs executive, Ken Brody, who introduced them, but Rubin would eventually help Clinton gain Wall Street cred and the kind of funding that would make his successful 1992 run for the presidency possible. Those were favors that the new president wouldn’t forget. As a reward, and because he felt comfortable with Rubin’s economic philosophy, Clinton created a special post just for him: first chair of the new National Economic Council.

It was then only a matter of time until he was elevated to Treasury secretary. In that position, he would accomplish something Ronald Reagan—the first president to appoint a Treasury secretary directly from Wall Street (former CEO of Merrill Lynch Donald Regan)—and George H.W. Bush failed to do. He would get the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 repealed by hustling President Clinton into backing such a move. FDR had signed the act in order to separate investment banks from commercial banks, ensuring that risky and speculative banking practices would not be funded with the deposits of hard-working Americans. The act did what it was intended to do. It inoculated the nation against the previously reckless behavior of its biggest banks.

Rubin, who had left government service six months earlier, wasn’t even in Washington when, on November 12, 1999, Clinton signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act that repealed Glass-Steagall. He had, however, become a board member of Citigroup, one of the key beneficiaries of that repeal, about two weeks earlier.

As Treasury secretary, Rubin also helped craft the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). He subsequently convinced both President Clinton and Congress to raid US taxpayer coffers to “help” Mexico when its banking system and peso crashed thanks to NAFTA. In reality, of course, he was lending a hand to American banks with exposure in Mexico. The subsequent $25 billion bailout would protect Goldman Sachs, as well as other big Wall Street banks, from losing boatloads of money. Think of it as a test run for the great bailout of 2008.

A WORLD MADE BY AND FOR GOLDMAN SACHS

Moving on to more recent history, consider a moment when yet another Goldmanite was at the helm of the economy. From 1970 to 1973, Henry (“Hank”) Paulson had worked in various positions in the Nixon administration. In 1974, he joined Goldman Sachs, becoming its chairman and CEO in 1999. I was at Goldman at the time. (I left in 2002.) I remember the constant internal chatter about whether an investment bank like Goldman could continue to compete against the super-banks that the Glass-Steagall repeal had created. The buzz was that if Goldman and similar investment banks were allowed to borrow more against their assets (“leverage themselves,” in banking-speak), they wouldn’t need to use individual deposits as collateral for their riskier deals.

In 2004, Paulson helped convince the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to change its regulations so that investment banks could operate as if they had the kind of collateral or backing for their trades that goliaths like Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase had. As a result, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, and Bear Stearns, to name three that would become notorious in the economic meltdown only four years later (and all ones for which I once worked) promptly leveraged themselves to the hilt. As they were doing so, George W. Bush made Paulson his third and final Treasury secretary. In that capacity, Paulson managed to completely ignore the crisis brewing as a direct result of the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the one I predicted was coming in Other People’s Money, the book I wrote when I left Goldman.

In 2006, Paulson was questioned on his obvious conflicts of interest and responded, “Conflicts are a fact of life in many, if not most, institutions, ranging from the political arena and government to media and industry. The key is how we manage them.” At the time, I wrote, “The question isn’t how it’s a conflict of interest for Paulson to preside over our country’s economy but how it’s not?” For men like Paulson, after all, such conflicts don’t just involve their business holdings. They also involve the ideology associated with those holdings, which for him at that time came down to a deep belief in pursuing the full-scale deregulation of banking.

Paulson was, of course, Treasury secretary for the period in which the 2008 financial crisis was brewing and then erupted. When it happened, he was the one who got to decide which banks survived and which died. Under his ministrations, Lehman Brothers died; Bear Stearns was given to JPMorgan Chase (along with plenty of government financial support); and you won’t be surprised to learn that Goldman Sachs thrived. While designing that outcome under the pressure of the moment, Paulson pled with Nancy Pelosi to press the Democrats in the House of Representatives to support a staggering $700 billion bailout. All those taxpayer dollars went with the 2008 Emergency Financial Stability Act that would save the banking system (under the auspices of saving the economy) and leave it resplendently triumphant, bonuses included), even as foreclosures rose by 21 percent the following year.

Once again, it was a world made by and for Goldman Sachs.

GOLDMAN BACK IN THE (WHITE) HOUSE
Running for office as an outsider is one thing. Instantly inviting Wall Street into that office once you arrive is another. Now, it seems that Donald Trump is bringing us the newest chapter in the long-running White House-Goldman Sachs saga. And count on Steven Mnuchin and Gary Cohn to offer a few fresh wrinkles on that old alliance.

Cohn was one of the partners who ran the Fixed Income, Currency and Commodity (FICC) division of Goldman. It was the one that benefited the most from leverage, trading, and the complexity of Wall Street’s financial concoctions like collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) stuffed with derivatives attached to subprime mortgages. You could say, it was leverage that helped propel Cohn up the Goldman food chain.

Steven Mnuchin has proven particularly adept at understanding such concoctions. He left Goldman in 2002. In 2004, with two other ex-Goldman partners, he formed the hedge fund Dune Capital Management. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, Dune went shopping, as Wall Street likes to do, for cheap buys it could convert into big profits. Mnuchin and his pals found the perfect prey in a Pasadena-based bank, IndyMac, that had failed in July 2008 before the financial crisis kicked into high gear, and had been seized by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). They would pick up its assets on the cheap.

At his confirmation hearings, Mnuchin downplayed his role in throwing homeowners (including members of the military) out of their heavily mortgaged homes as a result of that purchase. He cast himself instead as a genuine hero, the guy who convened a cadre of financial sharks to help, not harm, the bank’s customers who, without their benevolence, would have fared so much worse. He looked deeply earnest as he spoke of his role as the savior of the common—or perhaps in the age of Trump “forgotten”—man and woman. Maybe he even believed it.

But the philosophy of swooping in, attacking an IndyMac-like target of opportunity and converting it into a fortune for himself (and problems for everyone else), has been a hallmark of his career. To transfer this version of over-amped 1 percent opportunism to the halls of political power is certainly a new definition of, in Trumpian terms, giving the government back to “the people.” Perhaps what our new president meant was “the people at Goldman Sachs.” Think of it, in any case, as the supercharging of a vulture mentality in a designer suit, the very attitude that once fueled the rise to power of Goldman Sachs.

Mnuchin repeatedly blamed the FDIC and other government agencies for not helping him help homeowners. “In the press it has been said that I ran a ‘foreclosure machine,’” he said, “On the contrary, I was committed to loan modifications intended to stop foreclosures. I ran a ‘Loan Modification Machine.’ Whenever we could do loan modifications we did them, but many times, the FDIC, FNMA, FHLMC, and bank trustees imposed strict rules governing the processing of these loans.” Nothing, that is, was or ever is his fault—reflecting his inability to take the slightest responsibility for his undeniable role in kicking people out of their homes when they could have remained. It’s undoubtedly the perfect trait for a Treasury secretary in a government of the 1 percent of the 1 percent.

Mnuchin also blamed the Federal Reserve for suggesting that the Volcker Rule—part of the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 designed to limit risky trading activities—was harming bank liquidity and could be a problem. The way he did that was typically slick. He claimed to support the Volcker Rule, even as he underscored the Fed’s concern with it. In this way, he managed both to make himself look squeaky clean and very publicly open the door to a possible Trumpian “revision” of that rule that would be aimed at weakening its intent and once again deregulating bank trading activities.

Similarly, at those confirmation hearings, he said (as Trump had previously) that we needed to help community banks compete against the bigger ones through less onerous regulations. Even though this may indeed be true, it is also guaranteed to be another bait-and-switch move likely to lead to the deregulation of the big banks, too, ultimately rendering them even bigger and more dangerous not just to those community banks but to all of us.

Indeed, any proposition to reduce the size of big banks was sidestepped. Although Mnuchin did say that four monster banks shouldn’t run the country, he didn’t say that they should be broken up. He won’t. Nor will Cohn. In response to a question from Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell, he added, “No, I don’t support going back to Glass-Steagall as is. What we’ve talked about with the president-elect is that perhaps we need a 21st-century Glass-Steagall. But, no I don’t support taking a very old law and saying we should adhere to it as is.”

So, although the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall was part of the 2016 Republican election platform, it’s likely to prove just another of Trump’s many tactics to gain votes—in this case, from Bernie Sanders supporters and libertarians who see too-big-to-fail institutions and a big-bank bailout policy as wrong and dangerous. Rest assured, though, Mnuchin and his Goldman Sachs pals will allow the largest Wall Street players to remain as virulent and parasitic as they are now, if not more so.

Goldman itself just announced that it was the world’s top merger and acquisitions adviser for the sixth consecutive year. In other words, the real deal-maker isn’t the former ruler of The Celebrity Apprentice, but Goldman Sachs. The government might change, but Goldman stays the same. And the traffic pile up of Goldman personalities in Trump’s corner made their fortunes doing deals—and not the kind that benefited the public either.

A former Goldman colleague recently asked me whether it was just possible that Mnuchin was a good person. I can’t answer that. It’s something only he knows for sure. But no matter how earnest or sympathetic to the little guy he tried to be before that Senate confirmation committee, I do know one thing: He’s also a shark. And sharks do what they’re best at and what’s best for them. They smell blood in the water and go in for the kill. Think of it as the Goldman Sachs effect. In the waters of the Trump-Goldman era, don’t doubt for a second that the blood will be our own
https://www.thenation.com/article/trump ... al-crisis/

[seemslikeadream]

Trump Cabinet pick paid $50K by ‘cultlike’ Iranian terrorist group
By JON GAMBRELL The Associated Press
First Published Feb 05 2017 05:33PM • Last Updated Feb 05 2017 06:17 pm

FILE- In this Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2017 file photo, transportation Secretary-designate Elaine Chao testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, at her confirmation hearing before the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee. The Cabinet nominee of U.S. President Donald Trump and one of his advisers gave paid speeches for an Iranian exile group that killed Americans before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, ran donation scams and saw its members set themselves on fire over the arrest of their leader. (AP Photo/Zach Gibson, File)
State Department delisted its political wing as foreign terrorist organization in 2012.

Dubai, United Arab Emirates • An official in President Donald Trump's Cabinet and at least one of his advisers gave paid speeches for organizations linked to an Iranian exile group that killed Americans before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, ran donation scams and saw its members set themselves on fire over the arrest of their leader.

Elaine Chao, confirmed this week as Trump's transportation secretary, received $50,000 in 2015 for a five-minute speech to the political wing of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, previously called a "cultlike" terrorist group by the State Department. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani also was paid an unknown sum to talk to the group, known as the MEK.
http://www.sltrib.com/home/4907210-155/story.html

[stillrobertpaulsen]

How Trump Filled The Swamp


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs0BfPDvUQg

[Nordic]

[0_0]

poor eddie

[seemslikeadream]

Abrams at State: The Marriage of Trump and the Neocons?

by Michael Flynn

The growing anticipation that President Donald Trump will name Elliott Abrams deputy secretary of state under Rex Tillerson has observers from across the political landscape scratching their heads—and in some cases fuming. An opponent of Trump during the presidential race, Abrams is a deeply divisive figure with a notorious political history and views that contrast sharply with those of other leading figures in the new foreign policy establishment.

There is a widespread tendency to label Abrams a “respected” foreign policy analyst. Everyone from the mainstream media like CNN to liberal blogs like Talking Points Memo have used this term in describing him. Although a knowledgeable and capable operator, Abrams is better known for being convicted on charges of withholding information from Congress about the Iran-Contra scandal, smearing those with whom he disagrees with charges of anti-Semitism, and defending perpetrators of mass human rights violations, including in particular people accused of genocide in the Central American conflicts of the 1980s.

Currently a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Abrams has been closely associated with neoconservative foreign policy advocacy for more than three decades, including the campaign to push war in Iraq even before the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He’s the son-in-law (through his spouse Rachel Abrams who passed away in 2013) of former Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz and writer Midge Decter, the trailblazing couple who helped shape neoconservatism in the 1970s. Abrams has also worked with a large number of neoconservative groups, including the Project for the New American Century, the Center for Security Policy, the Hudson Institute, and the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he served as president for several years.

Involvement in Iran-Contra

Abrams was indicted by a special prosecutor for deceiving Congress about the Reagan administration’s role in supporting the Contras—including his own role in the Iran-Contra arms deal, which involved the sale of weapons from Israel to Iran in exchange for Iran helping broker the release of Americans held hostage by Hezbollah. Some of the money made from the sale was channeled to the U.S.-backed and -organized Contras in Nicaragua in violation of a congressional prohibition.

At the time of his involvement, Abrams was the assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, working under George Shultz. Abrams pleaded guilty to two lesser offenses (including withholding information from Congress) to avoid a trial and a possible jail term. Throughout the proceedings, Abrams denied knowledge of the NSC and CIA programs to support the Contras. He blamed Congress for the deaths of two U.S. military members shot down by the Sandinistas in an illegal, clandestine arms supply operation over Nicaragua. He described the legal proceedings against him as “Kafkaesque” and called his prosecutors “filthy bastards” and “vipers.”

Abrams was notorious for his efforts to support dictators and mass murderers in the Central American wars of the 1980s, including notably Guatemala’s Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt, who was indicted for acts of genocide committed during his bloody rule in the early 1980s. During the height of the genocide, Abrams was serving as assistant secretary of defense for human rights. According to one account, as the killing continued apace in Guatemala he insisted that “the amount of killing of innocent civilians is being reduced step by step” and pressed Congress to reward the regime by giving it advanced weapons.

Abrams has also been unapologetic about U.S.-abetted humanitarian crises elsewhere, including in El Salvador, as documented by historian Philip H. Burch: “A few years after he stepped down as assistant secretary of state for Inter-American Affairs, Abrams, once the State Department’s top human rights official, wrote an article on El Salvador in the National Review titled ‘An American Victory’; at the end of this piece he proudly proclaimed that ‘El Salvador’s decade of guerrilla war cost thousands of Salvadoran lives, and those of eight Americans. … In this small corner of the Cold War, American policy was right, and it was successful.’”

President George H.W. Bush pardoned Abrams and five other Iran-Contra figures in 1992, shortly before leaving office. Abrams later served in a number of posts in the George W. Bush administration, including as an adviser on human rights and on Mideast policy at the National Security Council, where he was a key advocate for an aggressive “war on terror” after 9/11 and a stronger backer of a one-sided take on Israeli affairs.

Bush’s “Pro-Israel” Activist

In January 2005, after Bush’s second inauguration, the White House announced that Abrams would serve as Bush’s deputy assistant and as the deputy national security adviser for global democracy strategy under national security advisor Stephen Hadley, who had been Condoleezza Rice’s deputy at the NSC.

In this capacity Abrams played a role in several controversial U.S. actions in the Middle East. A report by Vanity Affair revealed how in 2006, Abrams, together with President Bush and Condoleezza Rice, helped ignite a civil war in Gaza that ultimately strengthened the position of Hamas. Dubbed “Iran-Contra 2.0,” the plan was to provide weapons to Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan to enable him to oust the democratically elected Hamas-led government. As Vanity Fair reported, “Instead of driving its enemies out of power, the U.S.-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of Gaza.”

In 2006, Abrams played a role in shaping the U.S. response to the summer war between Israel and Hezbollah. The New York Times noted that Secretary of State Rice was accompanied on her mediating trips in the Middle East “by two men with very different outlooks on the conflict”—namely, Abrams and the State Department’s C. David Welch. According to the Times, “Abrams, a neoconservative with strong ties to [Vice President Dick] Cheney, has pushed the administration to throw its support behind Israel. During Ms. Rice’s travels, he kept in direct contact with Mr. Cheney’s office.”

According to an unnamed U.S. government consultant “with close ties to Israel” interviewed by Seymour Hersh, Israel had put together bombing plans long before Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers, which set off the conflict. As they developed their plans, according to the consultant, Israeli officials went to Washington “to get a green light for the bombing operation and to find out how much the United States would bear…. Israel began with Cheney. It wanted to be sure that it had his support and the support of his office and the Middle East desk of the National Security Council.”

Although an NSC spokesman who talked with Hersh denied that Abrams had any role in supporting Israel’s plan, a second unnamed U.S. official, a former intelligence officer, claimed, “We told Israel, ‘Look, if you guys have to go, we’re behind you all the way. But we think it should be sooner rather than later—the longer you wait, the less time we have to evaluate and plan for Iran before Bush gets out of office.'”

Neocon at the Council on Foreign Relations

In the intervening years before Trump, Abrams has held a number of posts, including at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). In his CFR blog “Pressure Points” Abrams comments on a variety of U.S. foreign policy issues and discusses political problems in the Middle East, often with a view to encouraging U.S. intervention, promoting a right-wing Israel-centric agenda, and launching rhetorical broadsides against regimes he does not favor.

Abrams is frequently called out for maintaining double standards in his political arguments, in particular as he seeks to promote a grand Israeli coalition with Sunni Arab leaders, who Abrams writes should look to Israel as “an ally against the jihadis and against Iran.”

A case in point was his response to the dispute between Iran and Saudi Arabia that erupted in early 2016 after the Saudi regime executed the high-profile Shiite cleric and political dissident Sheik Nimr Baqr al-Nimr. When a group of protestors attacked the Saudi embassy in Tehran, Abrams used the occasion to denounce Iran as well as the Iran nuclear deal. He wrote that the incident was “another piece of evidence that Iran refuses to live by the rules of civilized diplomatic practice, and that its behavior has gotten worse not better since the signing of the nuclear deal.” One observer remarked on how “the sacking of Riyadh’s embassy in Tehran, rather than Nimr’s execution, was of great concern for Abrams.”

Push and Pull with Trump

During the 2016 presidential race, Abrams was more equivocal in his opposition to Trump than other neoconservative figures. He did, however, initially support other candidates in the GOP primary and was selected by Sen. Ted Cruz to be a member of his campaign’s national security team. In a May 2016 article for the Weekly Standard titled “When You Can’t Stand Your Candidate,” Abrams urged readers not to “allow the Republican convention to be a coronation wherein Trump and Trumpism are unchallenged.”

Abrams has also unabashedly used accusations of anti-Semitism to smear people he disagrees with over Middle East policy, including patently non-anti-Semitic figures like former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. Abrams thus appears an unlikely member of an administration whose chief policy adviser—Steve Bannon—identifies his former publication Breitbart News as “the platform for the alt right,” a rightwing movement closely associated with white supremacists.

Abrams is likely to use his new post at State to press a hardline on Iran, which he repeatedly pushed during the 2016 presidential campaign. He wrote in Newsweek:

The new president will want to think about possible Iranian responses and how to blunt them as well. And [candidate Jeb Bush] is right in saying that we need a comprehensive Iran strategy—something the Obama administration has lacked. Reversing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the Iran deal is formally known, is only part of that.
When news began to spread about Abrams’s likely appointment, among those decrying the news were various conservative groups and individuals, including the libertarian Cato Institute, which called it “baffling.” Wringing his hands about “hundreds” of neocons “scurrying” into the administration if Abrams is admitted, Republican Sen. Rand Paul said that he voted to confirm Tillerson because he appeared to have a “realist approach” while Abrams didn’t espouse “any type of foreign policy realism.”

Ultimately, it may be Trump’s proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border that best symbolizes the inglorious connection between Trump’s and Abrams’s worldviews. After all, many of the men, women, and children who have sought to cross that border in recent years have fled desperate social conditions that exist in no small part because of the wars in Central America supported by Abrams and his colleagues three decades ago.

Michael Flynn, project director of Right Web, is a writer based in Geneva, Switzerland. Photo: Elliott Abrams by Miller Center via Flickr.
http://lobelog.com/abrams-at-state-the- ... e-neocons/

Stop Elliott Abrams!

The news that President Trump is seriously considering renown neoconservative Elliott Abrams for the key position of Deputy Secretary of State should alarm all Americans who want to "avoid the mistakes of the past," as Trump put it in his major foreign policy speech. Abrams stands for everything the President said he opposes: regime change, globalism, hostility to Russia, endless wars on behalf of ungrateful "allies."

What's more, Abrams consistently attacked Trump during the campaign, calling him a danger to national security. Why is the President appeasing his enemies?
http://www.antiwar.com

General: Thousands More US Troops Needed in Afghanistan
Warns Congress that War Is in 'Stalemate'
by Jason Ditz, February 09, 2017

When he took over as commander of the ongoing US war in Afghanistan late last year, Gen. John Nicholson was seen as opposed to the drawdown, and there was even speculation he’d seek increases in troop levels there, though he initially said levels should just remain flat.

Today, however, during his testimony to Congress, Nicholson is starting to push a major new military buildup for Afghanistan, complaining to Congress that the war is in a “stalemate,” and that several thousand more US troops need to be sent to break that stalemate.

The assessment of a “stalemate” is not new, and is a very generous interpretation of the state of the Afghan War, over 15 years in, as the Afghan government has actually been losing ground left and right, holding less territory now than at any time since the occupation began.

While the US has been presenting the war as more or less over, they’ve been increasingly deploying troops back into combat areas around the country for awhile, and stepping up airstrikes in support of the floundering Afghan military. This call for thousands more troops appears to portend even deeper military involvement.

Yet 15+ years into the war, it’s going to be a very tough sell that several thousand more troops are going to do anything, particularly when even larger troop levels earlier in the occupation never made any serious improvement in the situation on the ground.

Gen. Nicholson appears to be hoping that selling Russia as involved in the conflict might lead to approval of the new plan, though as with most allegations of Russian involvement there is little to no evidence of it.
http://news.antiwar.com/2017/02/09/gene ... ghanistan/

[stefano]

A handy primer from a longer piece by Nafeez Ahmed which is worth a read (although I think the situation is messier and more fluid than he does).

Betsy DeVos has been nominated for Education Secretary. She’s a billionaire married to the Amway conglomerate.

Andrew Puzder has been nominated as Labor Secretary. He’s a billionaire CEO of fastfood chain owner CKE Restaurants.

Trump’s nominee for Commerce Secretary is Wall Street veteran Wilbur Ross. He’s a billionaire financier who invests in buying and selling companies in distressed industries, and who made his early fortune as a fund manager at the Rothschild Group.

Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s Treasury Secretary, is a former partner at the global investment bank Goldman Sachs, a hedge fund manager and, until his nomination, a board member of the Fortune 500 financial holding company, CIT Group. He’s also a member of the Yale University secret society, Skull and Bones.

Vincent Viola is Trump’s nominee for Army Secretary. He’s a billionaire, former chairman of the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX), and current chairman of Virtu Financial, a high-frequency trading firm.

Linda McMahon is Trump’s Small Business Administrator. She’s a co-founder and former CEO of WWE, which is now valued at around $1.5 billion, and married to billionaire WWE promoter Vincent McMahon.

Gary Cohn is Trump’s chief economic advisor and Director of the White House National Economic Council. He just left his previous post as president and chief operating officer at Goldman Sachs for the job.

Anthony Scaramucci has served as a senior advisor to Trump on the executive committee of the Presidential Transition Team. Previously he was founding co-managing partner of global investment firm SkyBridge Capital. Like Steve Bannon, he also began his career at Goldman Sachs.

Walter ‘Jay’ Clayton is Trump’s nominee for the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), the financial industry’s top regulatory watchdog. Yet Clayton himself is a Wall Street lawyer who has worked on deals for major banks, such as Barclays Capital’s acquisition of Lehman Brothers’ assets, the sale of Bear Stearns to JP Morgan Chase, and the US Treasury’s capital investment in Goldman Sachs. In the same capacity, he has campaigned to reduce restrictions on foreign public companies, and sought lax enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. His wife, Gretchen Butler, works for Goldman Sachs as a private wealth advisor.

Trump’s crack team of money monsters is clearly not planning on acting in the interests of American workers — they will instead do what they know best: use the considerable power of the American state to break down as many regulatory constraints on global banking finance as possible, with a special view to privilege US banks and corporations.

Trump’s administration has not just been bought by Wall Street. It’s been bought by the oil, gas and coal industries.

Rex Tillerson is Trump’s Secretary of State, and former chairman and CEO of giant oil and gas conglomerate ExxonMobil. As the world’s largest oil major of all, ExxonMobil is the de facto king of fossil fuel interests. Tillerson has close business ties with Russian president Vladimir Putin, and has previously headed up the joint US-Russian oil company Exxon Neftegas.

Perry holds board directorships at Energy Transfer Partners LP and Sunoco Logistics Partners LP, which jointly developed the Dakota Access Pipeline project. The CEO of Energy Transfer Partners, Kelcy Warren, donated $5 million to a super-PAC supportive of Perry. More generally, his two presidential campaigns received over $2.6 million from the oil and gas industry.

Scott Pruitt, former Attorney General in Oklahoma, is the new head of the Environment Protection Agency. Pruitt has a track record of launching federal lawsuits to weaken and overturn EPA regulations not just on carbon emissions, but on all sorts of basic environmental rules on air and water pollution. The New York Times reports that he and other Republican attorneys general have forged an “unprecedented, secretive alliance” with the oil industry.

Congressman Ryan Zinke is Trump’s nominee for Secretary of the Interior. During Senate confirmation hearings, he refused to admit the accuracy of the scientific consensus on human activity being the dominant cause of climate change. Zinke has supported clean energy measures in the past, but in May 2016, he sponsored a bill for a time limit on Obama’s moratorium on federal coal leasing. He routinely voted against environmental protection measures, supporting fossil fuel use, seeking to minimize public and state involvement in managing public lands, while opposing protections for endangered species.

Mike Catanzaro is Trump’s nominee for Special Assistant for Energy and the Environment. He is also a climate-denying lobbyist for the oil and gas industry, working for Koch Industries, America’s Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA), Halliburton, Noble Energy, Hess Corporation, and many others. Early on in his career, he was Deputy Policy Director of the 2004 Bush-Cheney presidential campaign.

General ‘Mad Dog’ James Mattis is Trump’s Secretary of Defense. He was also, until his resignation due to his political appointment, on the board of directors of General Dynamics, the fifth largest private defense contractor in the world. Mattis is also on the board of Theranos, a biotechnology company known for its questionable automated fingerstick blood test technology.

Lieutenant-General Mike Flynn was Trump’s National Security Advisor until his resignation on February 13 over his ties to Russia. He is a former head of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) under Obama, and a longstanding military intelligence and special operations insider. Previously, he was director of intelligence for the Joint Special Operations Command; director of intelligence for the US Central Command; commander of the Joint Functional Component Command for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance; chair of the Military Intelligence Board; and Assistant Director of National Intelligence. Flynn also runs Flynn Intel Group, a private intelligence consulting firm.

General John F. Kelly is Trump’s Secretary of Homeland Security. He is a retired United States Marine Corps general who previously served under Obama as commander of the US Southern Command, responsible for American military operations in Central America, South America and the Caribbean. Before that Kelly was the commanding general of the Multi-National Force-West in Iraq, and the commander of Marine Forces Reserve and Marine Forces North. Kelly is also a vice chairman at the Spectrum Group, a defense contractor lobbying firm; and on the board of directors of two other private Pentagon contractors, Michael Baker International and Sallyport Global.

Mike Pompeo is the icing on the cake. As Trump’s CIA director, this Republican Congressman has no obvious experience relevant to running a national intelligence agency, except perhaps for one thing: as Jane Mayer writes in her book Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right (Doubleday 2015), Pompeo is “so closely entwined with the climate-change denying Koch brothers that he was known as the ‘congressman from Koch.’”

Steve Bannon was founding executive chair of Breitbart News, “the platform of the alt-right” according to Bannon himself. Breitbart is widely known for its publication of “racist, sexist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic material.” Bannon himself is also a prolific film producer, and has made or contributed to a range of xenophobic films.

Senator Jeff Sessions is Trump’s Attorney General. Gaffney’s CSP awarded Sessions the annual ‘Keeper of the Flame’ award in 2015. Sessions has previously expressed sympathies for the Ku Klux Klan. He has closely associated with far-right anti-immigrant organizations founded by John Tanton, a driving force in America’s white nationalist movements. In 1993, Tanton declared: “… for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that.” Yet Trump’s new Attorney General is known for frequently quoting from Tanton’s groups, showing up at their press conferences, and has even received recognition and campaign contributions from them.

The John Tanton connection opens up a can of worms. Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s Counsellor, is also connected to Tanton. Her polling firm was previously contracted by Tanton’s anti-immigration platform Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).

Rupert Murdoch has a direct line to the Trump White House through Michael Anton, but it’s one the News Corp owner has gone to pains to build personally. Murdoch and his wife Jerry Hall were hosted for dinner by Trump at his golf course in Scotland in June 2016. Later Murdoch was seen visiting Trump Tower in November 2016. Murdoch is set to have significant influence on Trump, who reportedly asked the Fox News owner to recommend his top preferred candidates to chair the Federal Communications Commission.

The Murdoch connection has other alarming ramifications. Since 2010, Murdoch has been an equity-holding board member of the American energy firm, Genie Oil & Gas. He had teamed up with Lord Jacob Rothschild, chairman of Rothschild Investment Trust (RIT) Capital Partners, to buy a 5.5% stake in the corporation then worth $11 million. Genie Oil & Gas has two main subsidiaries. One of them, Afek Oil & Gas, operates in Israel and is currently drilling in the Golan Heights, which under international law is recognized as Syrian territory.

[seemslikeadream]

10 Headlines From The Federalist Papers Project, Which The White House Just Invited Into The Daily Briefing
Blog ››› February 14, 2017 4:10 PM EST ››› TYLER CHERRY

The Federalist Papers Project is a hyperpartisan right-wing website that traffics in clickbait headlines, racist content, and misleading stories. And one of its authors just got to ask a question at the White House press briefing.

Jason Stevens, author at The Federalist Papers Project, asked a question via Skype to White House press secretary Sean Spicer on February 14 about regulatory reform. The Federalist Papers Project has, until now, not had a seat in the White House press briefing room.

The hyperpartisan right-wing website regularly pushes outlandish articles that border on fake news. Similar to websites known as fake news purveyors that share a combination of fake news and other types of content -- like real news or misleading information -- the Federalist Papers Project publishes its stories with exaggerated clickbait headlines, out-of-context quotes, and racist themes.

In addition to the various Federalist Papers Project stories that have been rated as half-true, or “mixture,” statements by fact-checking site Snopes.com, here are some other problematic headlines that the site has published:










Throughout the election, now-President Donald Trump and his associates frequently peddled lies and pushed fake news stories and conspiracy theories, and they were in regular contact with conspiracy website InfoWars. Since his inauguration, Trump and his cadre of aides have continued parroting fake news stories. The Gateway Pundit, a website that regularly publishes false stories and conspiracy theories, has also been given a press briefing credential, and InfoWars’ Alex Jones claims that he has been offered White House credentials.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2017/02/14 ... ing/215345

[seemslikeadream]

Labor Sec. nomination DEAD!


he has withdrawn

Oprah Winfrey’s 1990 Interview With Labor Secretary Nom Andrew Puzder’s Ex-Wife Goes Public

http://deadline.com/2017/02/oprah-winfr ... 201912479/