Drumpf Diary 1/31/2017 - Lawyers, Drugs, and...

Le Deluge du Drumpf continues.

Drumpf has nominated Neil Gorsuch, "a Scalia clone," to the Supreme Court.  The Democrats' only choice is how they want to lose this battle.

Drumpf met with pharmaceutical executives and pressed them to manufacture more drugs in the U.S. and reduce prices. He promised to speed approval of new medicines and ease regulations. Essentially sounds like he is promising to relax standards on acceptable drugs. He's also said he will appoint a new FDA head soon. Vox states that Drumpf is abandoning a campaign pledge to let the government negotiate for lower drug-prices. A 2003 law drafted by congressional Republicans and signed by George W. Bush prohibits the federal government from using that negotiating power. Drumpf's ironically-named nominee for Health and Human Services Secretary, Tom Price, opposes negotiating for lower prices. 

Drumpf had recently reorganized his National Security Council. He just changed it again to include the CIA, which has not been part of the council since 2005. It is possible that his addition of Steve Bannon to the NSC will require Bannon to undergo a senate confirmation hearing, due to an obscure law.

Drumpf will apparently leave in place workplace protections enacted in 2014 by President Obama for LGBT employees of the federal government.

The Obama order banned companies that do federal work from discriminating against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employees. It was the first time the government explicitly protected federal workers from discrimination based on gender identity.

Drumpf Diary 1/29/17 - You Don't Have to Live With the Refugee

Some key facts about refugees to the United States courtesy of the Pew Research Center.

Most refugees to the United States in the last decade came from Burma (almost 160,000) and Iraq (over 135,000). 

Le Deluge Du Drumpf is well underway. The weekend is usually time where all is quiet on the political front. Normally, it seems like something will be enacted on Friday night to sneak past the public via the slower weekend news cycle. Not so this weekend. 

Drumpf issued an executive order banning refugees from entering the United States if they are citizens of Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and Sudan, all Muslim-majority countries. A lot of people weren't having it.

It all happened so fast. On Saturday it seemed like the refugee ban was implemented at breakfast, protests broke out at lunch, and the first federal court order attempting to declaw the ban was for dinner. 

It was kind of a weekend off for me, personally. It was more than I could keep up with. But apparently Steve Bannon has a creepy amount of power right now, basically the new national security czar and he has zero political or military experience. There are reports that he overruled the Department of Homeland Security's interpretation that the travel ban did not apply to certain green card holders, Bannon claimed it does and so it did. 

16 state attorneys general, so far, have united to declare their opposition to the ban, as have several major city mayors. Democrats in general are trying to keep up with "their base," as the NY Times calls the protesters (I know well that not all protesters would self-identify as the base of the Democratic party, though probably a majority would). 

Drumpf Diary 1/28/17 - Immigration Notes, The United Nations of Drumpf, Gag Orders

The Pew Research Center shares 5 facts about undocumented immigration into the United States. In 2014, there were 11.1 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. 8 million of them were in the workforce, accounting for 5% of the total workforce. Both of those numbers represent essentially no change from 2009, so for 5+ years immigration into the U.S. has leveled off. Undocumented immigrants represent a disproportionate share of farming and construction work, 26% and 15% respectively. Mexicans make up most of all undocumented immigrants but their numbers have actually been in decline in the 2009-2014 period. About 2/3rds of undocumented immigrants have been here for 10 or more years.

Mother Jones's Kevin Drum argues that there is logic in congressional Democrats voting for Drumpf cabinet nominees. He states that it is customary that new presidents get to pick most of their cabinet and, more importantly, Democrats don't have the votes to block every nominee so they hope that in yielding on some nominees they might persuade a few moderate Republicans to vote against a few especially egregious nominees.

I'm not holding my breath for that strategy to work out. I see the logic, and I suppose united opposition won't be any more effective given the lack of votes.

Nikki Haley, former South Carolina governor and the new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, made her first appearance there with an air of... I dunno... talking like the U.S. somehow owns the U.N., which I guess is a sadly honest stance.

In the same story on Haley, Reuters reports:

According to a draft executive order published by The Daily Beast, Trump wants a committee - including his secretary of state, attorney general and director of national intelligence -to carry out a one-year review of U.S. funding to international organizations with the aim of almost halving voluntary funding.

A senior U.S. administration official said on Friday that no such executive order was "expected at this time."

The United States is the largest contributor to the United Nations, paying 22 percent of the $5.4 billion core U.N. budget and 28 percent of the $7.9 billion U.N. peacekeeping budget. These are assessed contributions - agreed by the U.N. General Assembly - and not voluntary payments.

U.N. agencies, such as the U.N. Development Programme, the children's agency UNICEF, the World Food Programme and the U.N. Population Fund, are funded voluntarily.

It sounds like the media firestorm over administration gag orders on federal agencies may have been an overreaction. The above story is written by a Republican. But she points out:

The New York Times interviewed three different longtime career employees who all seemed a bit mystified by the reporting. "I've lived through many transitions, and I don't think this is a story," said a senior EPA career official. "This is standard practice." In a similar piece, Science magazine interviewed an official at a U.S. Agricultural Research Service, who said the memo, the magazine wrote, was "a poorly-worded effort by career officials – not anyone appointed by Trump – to remind employees of a longstanding U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) policy on clearing statements that have policy relevance with senior officials before releasing them." He went on to say that they essentially used the same memo that was used when Tom Vilsack took over the agency in 2009.

In case you feel inclined to take anything written by a Republican with deep suspicion, she closes with, "There are more than enough real reasons to be concerned about what the new administration is doing."

Drumpf Diary - 1/26/17 - Of Course Mama's Gonna Help You Build the Wall

Drumpf has issued an executive order to build the wall.  From Fight Back News:

Trump’s executive order started with racist myths that undocumented immigrants from Mexico are a major source of crime and terrorist acts. In fact, immigrants to the U.S., including Mexicans, are jailed at a rate one-fifth that of native-born Americans. 

The executive order then goes on to order to begin planning and construction on a wall between the U.S. and Mexico. This wall will cost up to $20 billion and will need the Congress and Senate to allocate funds to build it. Trump has promised to make Mexico pay for the wall and part of the executive order is to report on U.S. foreign aid to Mexico. But even if the U.S. ended all aid to Mexico, it would take about 50 years to make up the cost of the wall. Furthermore, much if not most of the U.S. aid to Mexico is for anti-drug, anti-terror and military assistance which Trump claims to be concerned about.

The Fight Back article is worth reading in whole. It goes on to point out that The Wall has its roots in a 1996 bill, "Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act," signed by Bill Clinton.

TV Show Adam Ruins Everything has a succinct 2-minute video on why the wall would be a problem:




One thing that seems to be going rather quietly unacknowledged, from what I have read so far, is that this is a federal works program. Essentially a way for the federal government to engage in a massive public works program. The cost doesn't seem like the biggest problem because that is money that, presumably, will go mostly towards American workers. I am not sure who exactly would build the wall, perhaps it would be contracted out to a private company, in which case it might be that most of the money goes to the already-wealthy owners of the contracting company more than the workers, that would be in line with Drumpf's agenda so far.

That is not to say I favor building the wall at all, it just seems that the focus on the cost is a little odd, at least among left-wing critics, because government spending to stimulate the economy is generally a good thing. It is just that in this case, it is spending towards an inhumane program which is unlikely to achieve its stated ends.

Here is an article detailing the border-crossings the wall is attempting to quell. An excerpt:

In October, 46,195 people were caught attempting to illegally cross the Southwest border. That was up 17 percent from September, according to numbers released in November by the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees CBP.

Children, families and individuals continue to flee the violence of Central America making their way to the U.S. border. There has also been an increase in the numbers of people seeking asylum at the border.

The temporary, tented CBP facility, which was opened in Tornillo, Texas, 40 miles east of El Paso, can hold up to 500 people. It will be opened for 30 days, pending any changes in the volume of people entering the U.S. in that region illegally, according to CBP.

It sounds like there is some noteworthy legislation preceding and impacting the executive order, which the order at least partially uses as the basis for its justification: The 2006 Secure Fences Act, signed by George W. Bush, and the previously-referenced 1996 IIRIRA signed by Bill Clinton.

Also, economists generally say immigration, even massive immigration, is, overall, an economic boon to all involved. You can check out this exhaustive take on the issue, or this fun video by Crash Course:

Drumpf Diary 1/24/17 - Keystone/Dakota Access, Silencing Federal Departments

Scientists at the USDA are apparently not to communicate directly with the public about their work now, with an exception for peer-reviewed articles published in academic journals.

"...under the Obama administration, the Agriculture Department funneled research money into finding ways of cutting down the release of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from cows. 

The nomination of former Gov. Sonny Perdue of Georgia as agriculture secretary puts the fate of that and other department research touching on climate change into question. Like President Trump himself, Perdue has in the past bucked the overwhelming consensus among climate scientists that Earth’s atmosphere and oceans are warming due to human activity."

 Employees at the National Parks Service have been told to stop tweeting from official twitter accounts. Grants and contracts from the Environmental Protection Agency have also been frozen.

Via presidential memorandum, Drumpf is also ordering work on the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines to continue. The Indigenous Environmental Network released a statement, an excerpt:

"These actions by President Trump are insane and extreme, and nothing short of attacks on our ancestral homelands as Indigenous peoples. The actions by the president today demonstrate that this Administration is more than willing to violate federal law that is meant to protect Indigenous rights, human rights, the environment and the overall safety of communities for the benefit of the fossil fuel industry. 

These attacks will not be ignored, our resistance is stronger now than ever before and we are prepared to push back at any reckless decision made by this administration.  If Trump does not pull back from implementing these orders, it will only result in more massive mobilization and civil disobedience on a scale never seen of a newly seated President of the United States.”

14 Senate Democrats, including Minnesota's Amy Klobuchar and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, voted in favor of confirming Kansas' Mike Pompeo to be the director of the CIA.

Schumer has supported all of Drumpf's nominees so far, he states that he intends to oppose later ones.

Drumpf Diary 1/23/17

Drumpf is apparently withdrawing the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a free trade deal peddled heavily by Obama but opposed mostly by Democrats. A signal of political re-orientation around issues? Free trade has largely received bipartisan support, but it has always been Republicans who are at the forefront of peddling it. Yet here we have a new Republican president taking the axe to such a deal on his first Monday in office.

A bigger signal of such reorientation/realignment is Drumpf's announcement that he intends to withdraw from NAFTA and call in Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Nieto in for re-negotiation of the deal. This deal was the darling in the 90s of Drumpf's current Republican supporter, Newt Gingrich.

It's being reported that Drumpf will nominate a prominent former Verizon lawyer to head the FCC, Ajit Pai. He was nominated to the FCC by Barack Obama in 2012, as a recommendation by the Republican congress. Now he will be the head of the FCC with the departure of Democrat Tom Wheeler.

Drumpf has established a federal hiring freeze, exempting the military.

Drumpf claims he wants to cut rules on business by 75%, unclear which rules or where they are getting that number. He also wants to reduce corporate tax rates and middle class tax rates. This would balloon the national debt by trillions but Drumpf thinks economic gains woupd offset that.

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/23/trump-tells-business-leaders-he-wants-to-cut-regulations-by-75-percent-or-maybe-more.html

Regarding the TPP & NAFTA, twin cities activist Brad Sigal writes:

This makes very clear that he's not just another run-of-the-mill conservative who used populist rhetoric to get elected. He is going to try to implement a radically different program than conservatism as we've known it in the U.S. Of course, he is firmly committed to U.S. capitalism and imperialism, but this makes clear that he's not just going to fall in line with what the majority on Wall Street want him to do -- he has a different view on what is needed to ensure U.S. imperialist domination of the world. Wall Street loves these free trade agreements and sees them as fundamental to extending their power globally. His quick action on this seems to indicate that Trump will move ahead quickly to try to impose a new ruling class consensus. He's taking a big risk by moving boldly around this agenda, because he is going against the wishes of a majority of Wall Street. This could be the beginning of his undoing if they conclude that they cannot keep him within the bounds of their agenda and start to seriously plan to undermine him and/or cut his rule short one way or another. But on the other hand, if they fail at constraining him and his agenda, and he succeeds at quelling the voices in the ruling class that oppose him, and fashions a new ruling class consensus around a toxic white nationalism and xenophobic fortress America, we're in for a very bumpy ride.

Link Drumpf 1/22/17

Ethics lawyers will be taking Drumpf to court over allowing his businesses to continue accepting payments from foreign governments.

Drones in the time of Drumpf have arrived. Drones bombed "suspected Al Qaeda operatives" in Yemen. There is worry that Drumpf "will more aggressively conduct drone strikes, which are subject to little oversight from Congress or the judiciary."

This Huffington Post piece outlines how climate change is a public health problem in so many ways, and states that Scott Pruitt, Drumpf's nominee to head the EPA, will fail in court if he tries to dismantle or defang the EPA too much, because the EPA is legally tasked with protecting public health. Importantly, though, it argues that we cannot wait for Drumpf's actions to fail in court, because the problem is too urgent. States, cities, and individuals need to take action now.

The AP reports on Drumpf's "war with the media." 

Vox details how Drumpf's "American carnage" story doesn't gibe with facts. Murder rates, though they ticked upwards in 2015, are still at historic lows.

2nd Full Day And Already Drumpf Fatigue - Alternative Facts

Trying to keep up daily with the goings-on of the new administration is already proving daunting. Today I spent most of the day taking care of my son. I was scanning news headlines but not getting much time to deep-dive into any particular story. The thing making waves on social media is "alternative facts." Drumpf and Co. claim the media are downplaying the size of the inauguration crowd. Media claim they were reporting facts. Kellyanne Conway, Drumpf spokeswoman or something, said that in disputing the media's reports, Drump and Co. are presenting "alternative facts." People are pouncing on the term as Orwellian doublespeak for lies.

I am not going to get to deep into the details on that one as I think the story is largely a distraction and it might even be that paying too much attention to it works in Drumpf's favor.

The below YouTube video has become a favorite of mine while issues like these keep arising. It essentially argues that the extraordinarily absurd statements that repeatedly emanate from Trump's Twitter and/or his administration's spokespeople are effective distractions away from more serious concerns. It is a very amusing and thought-provoking video, worth watching for its entertainment value alone. That it is informative is a bonus:

Inaugural Bawls

Inauguration Day was a little overwhelming. I don't have time/energy to organize my thoughts as clearly as I would like. Gonna take a throw-things-at-the-wall approach.

-The inaugural speech sounded like boilerplate tinpot dictatorship. Full of lies and misrepresentations about the state of America: the main thing that stands out was this idea that American money is being given away to foreign nations for the enrichment of those nations at the expense of the American taxpayer. That notion is absurd but it was point central to Drumpf's "America First" theme. What countries is he talking about? I honestly am not sure. My first guess is China, with whom we certainly have a trade gap, but it is not to China's benefit and to our detriment. We give them money and we get things in return, and we get them in return for immorally cheap, for that matter. We ought to be paying more so the sweatshop laborers can live and work in better conditions. At the same time, our trade with China has elevated their living standards over the last few decades. But there are still working conditions that would be unacceptable to Americans. Anyway, I am getting off on another tangent. It should be mentioned that American foreign aid is actually pretty weak. We give a very small percentage of our GDP in aid to foreign countries and what little we give is often actually used to benefit American firms, the aid money is used by foreign governments to do business with American businesses. The idea that we are rotting away while giving away our tax dollars to enrich foreigners is absurd.

-Another central theme to Drumpf's candidacy and, apparently, now his presidency, is "law and order." Drumpf evokes an image of urban scenes of decay, rot, and, most potently, crime and, to take a phrase straight from his speech, "American carnage." There is no doubt crime is a problem. In this case, however, that fact falls in the "all propaganda has grains of truth" category. He is using the truth that we need less violence in our country to propel a solution that will not make our country better: "law and order." He wants a heavy-handed approach that will either make the problems he cites worse, or create entirely different problems. You can expect a worsening of police violence if his policies are enacted. You can expect a worsening of mass incarceration, a worsening of quality of life for non-white people and, probably, a majority of white people as well.

Portugal tried to solve drug problems by legalizing and carefully controlling all drugs in the country and everything got better. The Phillipines recently elected a violent thug, Rodrigo Duterte, who has ruled with an absolute iron fist in an almost literal war on drugs and the result has been over 6,000 people murdered in extrajudicial killings and tens of thousands of people stuffed into dramatically-overcrowded jail cells. I severely doubt this is solving drug problems but even if it is, the bloody problems it is creating outweigh any benefits. Really what is going on there is worthy of its own webisphere. It is a grievous and wretched thing.

In the interest of conserving time I am going to proceed with a link dump:

Corey Robin compares Reagan's inaugural address to Drumpf's, and concludes that Reagan was at least attempting to convey that he intended to govern for all Americans, while Drumpf's speech indicates his policies are geared towards appeasing a very narrow sector of the American electorate.

The White House website removed sections pertaining to climate change, LGBTQ rights, civil rights, and health care minutes after Drumpf was inaugurated.

One of Drumpf's very first acts after his inaugural parade was to issue an executive order directing federal agencies to "waive, defer, grant exemptions from, or delay" any taxes or penalties pertaining to the Affordable Care Act / Obamacare.

Drumpf reversed mortgage-fee cuts implemented by Obama.

Violence against water-protectors has escalated recently in Standing Rock

This opinion piece in TIME magazine makes Drumpf's nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency sound like he is straight out of Arkham Asylum

One of the most popular memes on social media regarding today has been a comparison of the inaugural crowds for Obama in 2009 and Drumpf today:

I attended a lively march in downtown Minneapolis protesting Drumpf.

Richard Spencer is a prominent spokesperson for the modern incarnation of a white supremacist movement which has been invigorated by Drumpf. To paraphrase a Facebook friend, here he is receiving an Alt-Right:

via GIPHY

The above seems to be a part of a rather destructive fringe of the mostly-peaceful DisruptJ20 protests in D.C. during the inauguration. Here is an AP article.

"That's Not Proficiency," Confirmation Hearings for Drumpf's Cabinet

Drumpf's pick for Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, was raked over the coals during her confirmation hearing. Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) asked her opinion on rating schools on student proficiency versus student growth, apparently (and understandably, now that I am familiar with it) a major debate among education policy-makers. Sen. Franken favors rating students on growth, as that would be a better indicator of student progress than proficiency. If a student comes into a school and is already proficient in something, it doesn't necessarily reflect well on the school if the student tests highly proficient, they already were highly proficient. It's a much better indicator of school success to measure growth. That's a simple concept, I just explained it in a few sentences, but the woman tapped by Drumpf to head the United States Department of Education was completely unfamiliar with the debate. She did not understand what Franken was talking about when he brought it up.

Here is video:

The above video appears to currently be the top-trending video on YouTube.

Ms. DeVos also took questions from Senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Chris Murphy among others.

She seems like a nice person who genuinely cares and at the same time she seemed out of her league, as far as being qualified to run the Department of Education. The exchange with Franken alone seems to demonstrate it.

Also in the hot seat: Scott Pruitt, Drumpf's nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Dan Rather said it well in a Facebook post on December 8, 2016:

Donald Trump's pick of Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency could easily turn the name of the group he might soon lead into a mockery. The EPA is the cop on the beat to make sure our air is safe to breathe and our water safe to drink. Its role, in the age of climate change, is more vital than ever. You could argue that its mission now is one of national - and global - security for life as we know it. It was created by a Republican president - Richard Nixon - at a time that now seems utterly foreign, when the health of the planet was largely a bipartisan concern. But Pruitt is not of the legacy of Teddy Roosevelt - or even Nixon. He has, at seemingly every turn of his public, life [sic] worked hard to lessen if not destroy the very regulations and initiatives he will now be tasked to oversee - on soot-free air, water free of poisonous chemicals, and of course the crisis of climate change.

Regarding the impact of lead on children, Pruitt apparently remarked in his hearing "I don't know. I've not looked at the scientific research on that." Quoting Mother Jones' Kevin Drum now:

If Pruitt had been asked about the effects of zirconium dioxide on Alzheimer's disease or something, then sure. Nobody knows everything, after all. But lead paint has been in the news for something like 50 years now and Flint's water pipes have been in big, bold headlines for the past two. You'd have to work pretty hard not to be aware of what lead does.

Minnesota's 2010 Governer's Race and What I Learned

In 2010, in my home state of Minnesota, the DFL (the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, our state's version of the Democratic Party), nominated Margaret Anderson-Kelliher ("Margaret") at their state convention in May for governor. However, it is actually winning the primary in August that secures the nomination. Normally the state convention nominee goes relatively uncontested to the primary. In this case, however, former Minnesota senator Mark Dayton was running for governor and was bucking the party just a little bit in that he refused to concede the race to the convention nominee, vowing to carry on his candidacy to the August primary.

I was among a few holdout delegates at the state party convention who refused to vote Margaret even as the candidate field dwindled. For one, I found her thoroughly uninspiring. I joked that, based on her speeches, her platform was largely, "I grew up on a dairy farm." To be completely honest there were a few other reasons I did not support her which I do not recall, some things she had done in the state congress which did not sound appealing to me, or something. It was a crowded field, my choice for nominee was John Marty, the far-left standard-bearer who even Democrats don't get behind because he is "unelectable." My 2nd choice was Mark Dayton because he was unapologetically campaigning primarily on one idea: "Tax the rich!"

There was some worry that no one would get the nomination at the state convention. During that worry, a lot of delegates tried to rally me behind Margaret and I repeatedly heard two worries, "We can't leave the convention divided! We can't back Dayton because we can't be attacking each other for the next 2 months!" And "Dayton will lose! The tax the rich thing will ruin our chances with centrists and moderate Republicans!!"

At the time I had a co-worker and good friend who was a staunch Republican, "Charlie." He used to tease me about being a commie. He referred to Richard Nixon as "Richard the Great," and once cheered the idea (somewhat tongue-in-cheek, I don't know that he really believed it) that the 90s economic boom was the late result of Reagan's trickle-down economics. I was shocked to learn, weeks before the election, that he was going to vote for "Tax the rich!" Mark Dayton. Charlie's reasoning was that GOP nominee Tom Emmer seemed like an "I got mine, good luck getting yours" politician. Keep in mind, there was a prominent 3rd party centrist running that Charlie could've voted for, but he voted Dayton.

That experience is branded in my memory. To this day it makes me sick to hear Democrats talk about the need for unity during primaries and that we can't stand full-throatedly behind our principles and issues because we fear the Republican backlash. I can't tell you how afraid so many DFL delegates were of how Dayton's "Tax the Rich!!" message would play in the general. I recognize that this is anecdotal, this is Minnesota, not the whole USA. But it left me convinced that a full-throated populist message is the way to win for Democrats. I *am* re-evaluating and in a back-to-the-drawing-board mentality. But experiences like that have left me with a powerful bias that favors whatever I see as full-throated, genuine populism.

Is Cory Booker a Traitor to the Cause?

*Note: this is a new blog, I am still learning with it, and as a result am encountering some formatting problems, especially when I copy/paste from different websites, resulting in some odd format in the post below. Apologies.
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Cory Booker was a hero a few days ago for doing something unprecedented: being a sitting U.S. senator testifying against the confirmation of a fellow sitting U.S. senator, Alabama's Jeff Sessions, as U.S. Attorney General.

Days later he was a turncoat among progressives for being among 13 Democrats to vote against an amendment to the Senate's budget resolution bill put forward by Bernie Sanders and Amy Klobuchar (one of my senators) to allow the importation of drugs to the U.S. from Canada. The rap was that Booker represents a state with a strong pharmaceutical industry presence, and is drowning so desperately in industry contributions that he voted in their interest and against that of his constituents (and all Americans) who are in desperate need of affordable medications.

It seems especially egregious because, from what I have been reading, it seems *everyone* agrees that medications for Americans should be cheaper and that drug importation from Canada is one way to do it. Ted Frickin' Cruz (R-TX) voted for it along with about 11 other Republicans. But Booker sided with mostly Republicans to strike down the amendment.

The story easily feeds a common presumption among what is now being called the "Sanders wing" of the Democratic party that the U.S. political system is awash in corporate money and the U.S. government acts in the interests of corporate donors even when the interest conflicts with those of the average American. In this case, because we are talking about life-saving drugs, it seems like a dramatic of example corporate interests trumping (pun intended) that of the very lives of the American people. And Cory Booker, who has spent a career fashioning himself as a hard-nosed, results-oriented, charismatic politician of the people, somewhat in the Obama mold, and who everyone believes has aspirations to be the Democratic presidential candidate in 2020, took the same side as those greedy Republicans.

The "Sanders wing," still feeling deeply torched and searing with angst over the outcome of the 2016 Democratic primary, is almost gleefully declaring that Booker's career is finished. "Cory Booker will never be president. Ever."

A good friend of mine wrote on Facebook, "Cory Booker can still go to hell. I would call him a turncoat, but I can't be sure that everything he's ever done was not just a self-serving ploy for his own political career, and really stands for nothing like Clinton." 

The rage is palpable.

But how much of a traitor is he? I ask this honestly, not rhetorically to imply disagreement.

My friend's post was in response to this piece by Lamar White, Jr. It is very much worth reading in its entirety. It argues that Sanders' amendment had legitimate flaws. Senator Booker himself, feeling the backlash, responded to it with a statement that included the below:

I support the importation of prescription drugs. It should be part of a strategy to control the skyrocketing cost of medications. Further, we should be willing to try a lot of ways to control drug prices, because we’re going to need a comprehensive approach to truly solve this problem. Many of them will be counter to the desires of the pharmaceutical industry, but just as insurance companies shouldn’t drive health policies, drug companies shouldn’t dictate them either. 

Any plan to allow the importation of prescription medications should also include consumer protections that ensure that the drugs coming into this country are safe. The amendment I voted against last week didn't meet this test. 

The statement was long and posted to Facebook. Not only that, Booker himself appears to have replied to several of the over 9,000 comments posted in reply to the statement (many of them in angry disagreement).

One important point is that this amendment was wholly non-binding. Many people, including Booker, have pointed out that it was a "sense of the senate" vote, a sort-of temperature check to see what kind of support existed for the measure in the senate. It sounds like it was part of what many sources have referred to as a "vote-a-rama." A period of blistering activity where several measures were put before the senate for a vote. Exactly how binding any of them were, I do not know. I get the sense many were non-binding "temperature checks" of this sort.

Also, it apparently needed 60 votes to pass. Booker's vote alone was not pivotal, and even if all 13 Democrats who opposed it had favored it, it still would have failed. Only 46 senators voted in favor.

As Lamar Clark, Jr. pointed out, the 30 Democratic senators who voted for the amendment received an aggregate of $1,038,971 from the pharmaceutical industry last year. Bernie Sanders himself received $309,575 from the industry during his 2016 presidential bid. Clark, Jr. uses these facts to declare that industry money does not singularly dictate legislative action. That's a strong declaration in itself worthy of several blog-posts, if not books, of exploration. This particular instance certainly seems to support his claim.

In a political reality where even the Republican President-elect has declared that the pharmaceutical industry is "getting away with murder," it feels like a safe environment for Booker to take a stand against the industry. That he did not in this case could be for nefarious commitments to the industry as demonstrated by how fat his campaign pockets are with their money, or because of the reasons he himself outlined in his statement. Given that the political environment, based on Drumpf's "getting away with murder statement," based on the heat Booker is feeling for his vote, and based on the fact that even Ted Frickin' Cruz (R-TX) voted for the amendment, seems to favor drug importation, it seems like a stretch to believe that Booker is going so publicly rogue in defense of his puppet-masters. It seems based on legitimate concerns about the amendment which, again, was wholly non-binding anyway. There has been criticism that Booker should step up and deliver a better amendment if he wants one. Well, voting against the Sanders/Klobuchar amendment may have indeed been an act in the process of getting a better amendment by declaring the need for it. His future actions will help enlighten us.

The Shit World Before Drumpf and Blog Purpose Clarification

Some day Drumpf will no longer be in office. Perhaps a Democrat will be back in office. It seems worth noting that the end of Drumpf will not be the end of the very serious problems of the world as many of them are well-entrenched. We are concerned about him because he is probably going to make many of those problems worse. But they persisted heartily under the watch of Barack Hussein Obama.

Militarism Abroad:

-Yemen
"Yemen: A Calamity at the end of the Arabian Peninsula" (The Independent)
"Yemen: The Graveyard of the Obama Doctrine" (The Atlantic)

-Pakistan
"Living Under Drones," a Stanford study detailing the horror of life in Pakistan under U.S. drones.

Healthcare
-Even with Obamacare, it is too easy to find people in desperate financial straits as a result of medical bills. See, for example, this Fusion article:

it is impossible to spend much time browsing GoFundMe without wondering about the sheer uselessness of our already thin social safety net.

Immigration and Deportation
Obama deported more people from the United States than any other president in history. The preceding link is to an Al Jazeera story about the "deportation machine" Drumpf will inherit from Barack Obama. It reports that possibly up to 2/3rds of Obama's deportees were deported for minor legal infractions or had no criminal record. It mentions the stories of Jose Marvin Martinez and Giovanni Miranda, both of whom were deported for rather meager infractions and then murdered after being returned to their "home" countries. "Home" in quotation marks because, in the case of Miranda, he had come to the United States as a child and barely knew the country to which he was deported.

Why did these things happen under Obama? Isn't he supposed to be progressive and aren't progressives the peace-loving, inclusive party offended to its core by the idea of Drumpf and his plans to deport so many undocumented immigrants?

It seems a stretch to exculpate Obama's responsibility for things like his highly-problematic drone program. It seems a stretch to exculpate him for anything. He was in charge of the U.S. government's executive office.

But, especially on issues like immigration, I can already hear his liberal defenders identifying Republican obstructionism is the major impediment to Obama's progressive accomplishments. Regarding immigration, Obama protected millions of DREAM ACT people against deportation, a move he performed to fierce Republican opposition.

But I really do not know much about the episode. And that gets to my purpose for this blog. I want a repository of information on Drumpf's administration for my own reference. A record that can be reviewed when the things he does, and the major political actions of others in the time of his administration, are inevitably discussed in hindsight, and people attempt to pass moral judgements and take future actions based on those judgements.

Obviously the internet itself is a repository. Wikipedia, Google, etc. There are plenty of sources of exhaustive information. I am not sure what special contribution this blog will have other than my own selfish reasons, so I do not know if it will ever be a useful project to anyone other than me. I am not doing it professionally so the kind of time I have to devote to it is severely limited. So its focus will be necessarily limited. If my own personal history is a good indicator, I may keep it up for about 3 months before abandoning it, as I do with so many personal pet projects. We'll see. I hope not.

Foreign Policy, and Universal Healthcare??

Drumpf gave an interview with the Times of London (registration required) in which he states that he wants to negotiate nuclear arms reduction with Russia, in exchange for sanctions reductions. This would be consistent with recent history wherein significant nuclear arms reductions seem to only happen under Republican administrations (because Republicans block nuke reductions when Democratic presidents attempt to do it). He also calls Russia's role in the Syrian war disastrous.

He calls the Iraq War one of the biggest disasters in American history. That's debatable, given slavery and indigenous genocide, among other indescribable crimes against humanity in America's history, but it's far from an objectionable opinion.

He also talks about wanting to negotiate a trade treaty with the U.K., saying that he will do it soon. He expresses respect for the Brexit vote, predicts that other European countries will follow suit, and calls policies to welcome refugees sorely misguided, specifically targeting Angela Merkel's decision to welcome 1 million refugees into Germany. He somewhat echoes the white supremacists who have supported him in saying that Brexit happened because countries want their own identity (a subtle dig at multiculturalism and inclusiveness).

Regarding the Iraq War, Russia's involvement in Syria, and talk of nuclear arms reduction, Drumpf is right.

Drumpf has also hinted, in a separate story, that his people are almost done drafting a replacement plan for after Obamacare's repeal. He claims that it will allow everyone to have insurance. He doesn't use the term "universal" healthcare coverage, but it is what he means. Will be very interesting to see what this policy looks like. I am not optimistic that it will bring about the expanded coverage with reduced costs that any good healthcare reform should bring. As the story mentions, House Speaker Paul Ryan has stated that he wants "universal access," which is very far from the same thing as universal coverage. Universal access means you can buy it if you want to, which is meaningless. We all have "universal access" to ferraris, it does not mean we can all afford it. However, Drumpf hints in the Washington Post story that he also values affordability, but he does not favor single-payer insurance coverage. It is pretty much impossible to contain healthcare costs while providing near-universal coverage without implementing some kind of single-payer or "medicare-for-all" system.

Drumpf's Disastrous Reaganomics

I have just discovered a December, 2016 piece in Vanity Fair written by Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Laureate economist, former chief economist at The World Bank. It seems worth devoting an entire post to.

It is a warning that Drumpf's economic plans strikingly resemble failed Reagan economic policies. Drumpf is calling for massive tax cuts which mostly benefit the rich. This will reduce government revenue. But he is also calling for deportarion of 11 million undocumented immigrants. On top of being indescribably inhumane, this would also be very expensive. He is calling for medicare privatization, also expensive. He is calling for increased military spending. So he is looking to spend money while decreasing government income. This means massive deficits and debt.

So he is proposing policies which will hurt people directly by forcibly removing them from their homes, or cutting their healthcare insurance, or engaging in military actions, and will hurt all of us indirectly through actual wreckless spending.

Stiglitz takes particular aim at Drumpf's infrastructure plan:

His infrastructure program is supposed to be financed out of an 82 percent tax credit to hedge funds and others who undertake this investment. But unless one is willing to be patient—to wait three to six years—one has to rely on the long discredited “shovel ready” projects, which may create jobs willy-nilly, but won’t constitute the strategic infrastructure revolution the country needs.
Hedge funds are not noted for their long-term thinking—for them, a quarter is an eternity. Their goal will be to turn a quick buck on the government’s magnanimous offer before Washington wakes up. Here’s what they’ll likely do: they’ll try to privatize whatever public assets can be sold. Of course, from a societal point of view, this is not investment—it’s just changing ownership and control of assets. With the federal government paying 85 cents of every dollar spent in privatization, we can expect a gold rush. Ordinary citizens will pay twice for this gift to the hedge funds: first through the cost of the tax credits, and second through the tolls and fees that private owners will charge to recuperate their “investment.” 

John Lewis, War with China

The current headlines are obsessed with Drumpf's Twitter feud with John Lewis. The feud and the headlines are both as offensive as they are tiresome. This is pageantry and a distraction. I guess to whatever extent it humiliates and undercuts his credibility and approval rating it is all fine and good. But I would really like the focus to stay on policy, the hard fights and complicated issues. Not the easy fights.

China sent its only aircraft carrier into the South China Sea, or something like that. Disputed waters. Drumpf's Secretary of State nominee, Rex Tillerson, former CEO of Exxon, has expressed disapproval of this and the whispers among the headline weeds say China state media is reporting that these are fightin' words, Drumpf could be getting us into war.

A lot of news about all the protests coming up in the next week and a half, in D.C. and nationwide. Several demonstrations in the twin cities, I heard 200 buses have been reserved in D.C. for inauguration attendees, 1200 buses reserved for protests/demonstrations.

Obamacare Repeal

I am certain that other things are going on and I even hear whispers about them, but really it is all Obamacare Repeal all day, every day right now. The U.S. House of Representatives apparently voted for repeal in the wee hours last night, without a replacement plan. A recent poll showed only 18% favor repeal without replace. My grandma-in-law is among them but almost no one else is, according a Facebook post she re-shared without adding her own commentary.

Personal testimonials to Obamacare's usefulness are popping up on my Facebook feed. Owen Barney Good III, a friend of friends, writes:

If the ACA (Obamacare) is quashed I will have to keep my job for as long as I'm alive. I'm insured here, but will not be able to get insurance once I decide I want to retire. I have a pre-existing condition. I will have to work 40-hours a week while on dialysis until I die. #saveobamacare".  

People are commenting with their own testimonies about expensive prescriptions they require due to epilepsy, osteoporosis. People are really worried.

I think there may be denial among people like me who are less directly impacted by Obamacare/ACA about how helpful it has been for people and how bad repeal might be. I see posts like Owen's and even a part of me seems to believe, "there can't really be NO other option for them, right? There has to be SOME solution." I should know better.

Al Franken is going to vote against Jeff Sessions for Attorney General.

Cory Booker posted on Facebook in defense of his vote against the Sanders/Klobuchar amendment to import drugs from Canada. He states:

Any plan to allow the importation of prescription medications should also include consumer protections that ensure that the drugs coming into this country are safe. The amendment I voted against last week didn't meet this test. 

Public health leaders have long-stressed the need for strong safety standards coupled with any drug importation plan – everyone from commissioners, top officials, and researchers at the FDA to HHS secretaries under Presidents Obama, Bush, and Clinton.
Please know how committed I am to finding solutions ‎to the problem of skyrocketing drug prices – it’s a problem I’ve been working to alleviate for years. This is a life-or-death issue for millions of families, particularly seniors and those struggling with chronic health conditions like diabetes or asthma. This is a crisis for countless American families, and it is stretching them to the breaking point.  

That’s why as mayor of Newark, I brought clinics, nonprofits, and drug companies to the table and developed a free drug discount card program that aimed to cut drug costs for under- and un-insured residents of our city. 

It’s why I voted this week for measures that bring drug prices down and protect Medicare's prescription drug benefit.

The most-liked comment in reply, currently with over 2800 "likes," reads:

*checks to see if people are dying at alarming rates in Canada because of unsafe prescription drugs*
Gonna call bullshit on this one Corey. 

Obamacare Repeal, Imported Canadian Drugs

At about 1:30 am ET the U.S. Senate passed a budget resolution act, most notable right now for containing elements which will fast-track the repeal of Obamacare. Stricken down were amendments (or something- provisions?) which might have preserved coverage for pre-existing conditions, the ability for young people to stay on their parents' plans well into their 20s, and other good stuff. Slate reported that it is going to be a tax-break windfall for the rich. There is little clear vision for any kind of replacement to Obamacare. This has been referred to as bridge-burning. Basically saying it is a move of political strategy, the Washington Post had an article describing the strategy. Not simply "bridge-burning" in the traditional idea of the term, but bridge-burning in a military sense. When your military opponent sees you have burned the bridges behind you, they see that you are unable to retreat and this changes their mindset (perhaps in your favor) for how they are going to attack you. 

I posted an article, a rather dense one from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, stating that one thing the GOP might do is include the money employers pay to cover their employees in those employees' incomes (it is currently not counted as income and thus not counted in figuring the employees' tax dues). So essentially we have a clear-cut tax boon for the rich and a tax on the average American. 

Bernie Sanders and Amy Klobuchar proposed an amendment that would allow Americans to import prescription drugs from Canada. It narrowly failed, but not entirely along party lines. 12 Republicans voted in support of it (including Ted Frickin' Cruz), and 13 Democrats voted against it, most notably New Jersey's Cory Booker, often a name bandied about as a potential presidential nominee in 2020. Booker and other Democrats who opposed it stated that they were concerned about unfit safety standards for those imported drugs. Baloney, says Robert Reich (and Bernie Sanders). Essential rebuttal to that is that we import many thing from Canada, and also the drugs we'd be importing are often made by American companies (I am a little confused about how, then, they are coming in from Canada. I guess American companies do business in Canada, not that complicated, I s'pose). I don't know. Booker and others have riposted that they did in fact support other amendments to import drugs, apparently those amendments had such safety provisions. They basically want to make sure that the drugs live up to American safety standards. But Canadians care about safe drugs, too, says Reich. We're not talking about importing from some desolate dictatorship.

Cabinet Hearings and Golden Showers

Drumpf's cabinet nominees are grinding through their hearings right now. Jeff Sessions for Attorney General yesterday and today, Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State today. Elaine Chao for Dept of Transportation today as well. I understand a flurry of other appointments are in for hearings right now as well.

News is being dominated, however, by Obama's farewell address last night and, even moreso, a "dossier" making major headlines claiming that Russia has blackmail-worthy evudence against Drumpf, claiming Drumpf paid prostitutes to urinate on him in a Moscow hotel. It is a sweeping story even though nearly every report notes that it is, so far, an unsubstantiated report.

Drumpf held his first press conference in 168 days today and talk of Russia apparently dominated the news. One article posted by news site Fusion, as well as an articulate post on facebook by my friend Brad Sigal, observed how troublesome it is to see a press conference and cabinet confirmation hearings dominated by talk of Russia when so many substantial issues are at stake (immigration, economy, environment, etc.)

I just read an Atlanta Journal-Constitution article stating that Republicans want to tax people on the amount of money their employer spends on their healthcare benefits, a potentially substantial source of revenue. Also a tax hike that would profoundly impact working people the most. Quite a regressive policy.

Ethics Committee - Ford Plants - Free Public Colleges in NY

Republican congressmen decided to gut an ethics committee created in 2008. They flip-flopped a day later after fierce constituent opposition in the form of phone calls. So happened that Trump also brought some flak on twitter, but a WaPo reporter claimed most congressmen told him they reversed position after the constituent calls.

Ford Motor Co. announced plans to cancel a $1.6 (or so) billion plant in Mexico and instead invest $700 million in a plant in Detroit. Word is they made the decision after being promised sweetheart deals, tax breaks and lax health and environmental regulations. Robert Reich also thinks the jobs preserved will be replaced by automation in the near future anyway.

NY governor Andrew Cuomo announced today, with Bernie Sanders at his side, that he wants NY state to implement free college tuition at all public universities in NY. I believe it was for all families earning $125,000/year or less.