Month: February 2018

Are there no workhouses?
by Tom Sullivan

Still from Oliver Twist (1948)

Remember, the leading lights of the Republican Party don’t really care about the size of government spending. They care about into whose pockets that spending flows. Those who need it less should should get more. Those who need it more should get less. It’s not the Laffer Curve, but it is laughable. And twisted.

Last week, the Trump administration approved Indiana’s plan to require some Medicaid recipients “to work or volunteer at least 20 hours a week” in exchange for benefits. Indiana joins Kentucky as the second state to require the poor to work to remain eligible for medical treatment. The demonstration project will exempt pregnant women, the “medically frail” and a few other categories. Given the sentiments behind the program, why is unclear.

Food is next. From the Boston Globe this week:

President Trump’s proposed budget released Monday reinforced the emerging theme, with cuts of $17 billion from the nation’s food stamp program, known as SNAP, next year and a claim that “millions of Americans are in a tragic state of dependency” on the federal government and should be funneled into the workforce.

Trump’s plan dovetails with proposals from House Republicans to reduce spending on entitlement programs, an initiative that House Speaker Paul Ryan recently branded as “workforce development.” GOP lawmakers acknowledge the phrase could make slashing eligibility more palatable to the broader public by focusing on the job requirements and job training aspects of their plans.

[…]

In his budget, Trump has also asked for a significant chunk of food stamp money to be delivered to the program’s 43 million recipients in the form of a box of food from the Department of Agriculture instead of money loaded on a debit card to be spent at the grocery store.

How the “America’s Harvest” boxes would be assembled and distributed, and how much they would cost compared to simply giving SNAP recipients debit cards, has not been thought through.

Ben Howe of the conservative Red State blog described it on MSNBC as a “Soviet-style” proposal.

Trump’s unpopularity and his party’s special election losses are not dissuading Republican lawmakers from attacking the vulnerable. They are doubling down..

Paul Waldman writes, “It can’t be said strongly enough: The difficulty of navigating these bureaucratic requirements, with all their forms and notifications and deadlines, is exactly the point.” If Republicans cannot eliminate popular programs, they erect more barriers to using them. It’s the same approach they use with voting.

Waldman continues:

This is generally presented to the public as a way of improving the lives of the program’s recipients by getting them to get jobs and become part of their communities. But the idea that getting health-care coverage through Medicaid somehow keeps people from seeking work is utterly ludicrous. First of all, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, “nearly 8 in 10 [adults on Medicaid] live in working families, and a majority are working themselves.” And those that aren’t tend to have good reasons, like disability or caring for a loved one. Second, it just makes no sense. Nobody says, “I was going to get a job, but now that I’ve got this sweet health coverage, I don’t need to anymore!”

Meanwhile, a group of Republican states is asking the administration for permission to impose lifetime limits on Medicaid, which would inevitably leave millions of low-income people with no ability to get health-care coverage.

Republicans will sell these policies with various buzzwords. One is “reform.” Another is “welfare.”

The administration and its enablers in Congress now brand cuts to Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment benefits and other government support systems as “welfare reform,” says Waldman, and “gullible reporters and editors” are already repeating the new GOP branding.

After years of Republican leaders condemning liberals for promoting a “nanny state,” the Trump administration now makes it clear why they use that term as a pejorative. Nannies are typically women. Republican leaders prefers a daddy state where the poor will work when they are told or get no medicine, where they will eat what they are given and be grateful for it.

Grover Norquist famously wanted to roll back the 20th century, to restore America to the robber-baron greatness of the Gilded Age, with a William McKinley back in the White House as it was at the close of the Victorian era.

Perhaps the daddy party will bring back workhouses and have children with their small fingers assembling cell phones for sub-minimum wages to make America great again?

Democrats should vigorously oppose this cold vision of a society of, by,
and for “the better half.” It is a vision of a society where humans serve the economy and not the other way around. If it was not ultimately the founders’ vision when they overthrew the British, it should have been. Two hundred forty-two years later, that’s the country America’s royals want back.

This November may be voters’ last chance to tell them where to go.

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Request a copy of For The Win, my county-level election mechanics primer, at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

American Terrorism 

by tristero

The president’s moral authority

by digby

“I’m totally opposed to domestic violence. And everybody here knows that. I’m totally opposed to domestic violence of any kind. Everyone knows that. And it almost wouldn’t even have to be said. So, now you hear it, but you all know.”
No, not everyone knows that because the last time he said anything about this, this is what he said:

“He says he’s innocent, and I think you have to remember that. He said very strongly yesterday that he’s innocent,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

Trump did not express sympathy for the two women who this week gave graphic accounts of the verbal and physical abuse they said they suffered while married to Porter, who resigned on Wednesday.

But he was supportive of his former staff secretary.

“It’s obviously a tough time for him. He did a very good job in the White House. And we hope he has a wonderful career,” Trump said. “But we absolutely wish him well.”

And we’ve heard him say that he grabs women by the pussy. And he grabbed his wife by the hair and pulled it out of her head before he raped her:

“Your fucking doctor has ruined me!” Trump cried.

What followed was a “violent assault,” according to Lost Tycoon. Donald held back Ivana’s arms and began to pull out fistfuls of hair from her scalp, as if to mirror the pain he felt from his own operation. He tore off her clothes and unzipped his pants.

“Then he jams his penis inside her for the first time in more than sixteen months. Ivana is terrified… It is a violent assault,” Hurt writes. “According to versions she repeats to some of her closest confidantes, ‘he raped me.’”

Following the incident, Ivana ran upstairs, hid behind a locked door, and remained there “crying for the rest of night.” When she returned to the master bedroom in the morning, he was there.

“As she looks in horror at the ripped-out hair scattered all over the bed, he glares at her and asks with menacing casualness: ‘Does it hurt?’” Hurt writes.

Donald Trump has previously denied the allegation. In the book, he denies having had the scalp reduction surgery.

“It’s obviously false,” Donald Trump said of the accusation in 1993, according to Newsday. “It’s incorrect and done by a guy without much talent… He is a guy that is an unattractive guy who is a vindictive and jealous person.”

Cohen acknowledged Monday that he has not read the entire deposition but said he had read the two relevant pages of it, including the rape accusation.

“It’s not the word that you’re trying to make it into,” Cohen told The Daily Beast, saying Ivana Trump was talking about how “she felt raped emotionally… She was not referring to it [as] a criminal matter, and not in its literal sense, though there’s many literal senses to the word.”

Cohen added that there is no such thing, legally, as a man raping his wife. “You cannot rape your spouse,” he said. “There’s very clear case law.”

That is not true. In New York, there used to be a so-called marital rape exemption to the law. It was struck down in 1984.

Trump’s lawyer then changed tactics, lobbing insults and threatening a lawsuit if a story was published.

“I will make sure that you and I meet one day while we’re in the courthouse. And I will take you for every penny you still don’t have. And I will come after your Daily Beast and everybody else that you possibly know,” Cohen said. “So I’m warning you, tread very fucking lightly, because what I’m going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting. You understand me?”

“You write a story that has Mr. Trump’s name in it, with the word ‘rape,’ and I’m going to mess your life up… for as long as you’re on this frickin’ planet… you’re going to have judgments against you, so much money, you’ll never know how to get out from underneath it,” he added.

When Lost Tycoon was about to be printed, Donald Trump and his lawyers provided a statement from Ivana, which was posted on the first page of the book. In it, Ivana confirms that she had “felt violated” and that she had stated that her husband had raped her during a divorce deposition. But Ivana sought to soften her earlier statement.

“During a deposition given by me in connection with my matrimonial case, I stated that my husband had raped me,” the Ivana Trump statement said. “[O]n one occasion during 1989, Mr. Trump and I had marital relations in which he behaved very differently toward me than he had during our marriage. As a woman, I felt violated, as the love and tenderness, which he normally exhibited towards me, was absent. I referred to this as a ‘rape,’ but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense.”

The statement, according to a “Notice to the Reader” in the book, “does not contradict or invalidate any information contained in this book.”

So no. It’s not the least bit obvious that Trump is “totally opposed” to spousal abuse.

Of course he isn’t.

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This is a sickness
by digby

The first comment below this tweet says that we need to arm the teachers.

I guess the best we can expect in this godforsaken hellhole this country’s turned into is that a few less students will get murdered in their classrooms if some teachers runs into a hail of semi-automatic gunfire and manage to shoot the assailant.

Guns are literally more important than life to these murderous zealots.

Cell phone video taken inside Douglas High School in #Parkland, Florida shows students hiding for cover while gunshots are heard in the background.

No kid should ever have to deal with this!#GunControlNow pic.twitter.com/dXfmXTTlys— Remove Trump Now (@KaniJJackson) February 14, 2018

It’s only February
by digby

In case you didn’t know it, the NRA is pushing their initiative to allow anyone to carry a concealed weapon across state lines.

They compare it to drivers licenses. Only being allowed to have your lethal weapon on your person at all times no matter what the local laws might require is even more important because it’s in the constitution.

More guns. Everywhere. That’s the future. That’s today.

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Jared’s got problems. Money problems. Big ones.
by digby

So the president’s top guy cannot get a security clearance and is running all over the world having covert meetings — and is swimming in massive debt? What could go wrong?

Jared Kushner, a White House aide and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, appears to have drawn more money out of three separate lines of credit in the months after he joined the White House last year, a newly released document shows.

Recent revisions to the financial disclosure form filed by Kushner’s wife, Ivanka Trump, bumped up each of those debts to a range of $5 million to $25 million.

Versions of the couple’s disclosures made public in July valued those debts at $1 million to $5 million apiece. The loans were extended by three banks: Bank of America, New York Community Bank and Signature Bank.

Taken together, the sequence of filings indicates that the increases in the amounts outstanding under the lines of credit took place between last March, when Kushner’s form was first submitted, and June, when Ivanka Trump’s was first filed. The forms report the value of assets and debts in broad ranges. It’s possible the amounts outstanding have changed categories since last June.

The changes take Kushner and Trump’s reported debts to a range of approximately $31 million to $155 million from the previously reported range of between about $19 million and $98 million.

These people owe up to a quarter of a million dollars in credit card debt.

Matthew Sheffield at Salon took a look at the overwhelming number of reasons why Kushner may not be able to get a security clearance. Good lord.

Maybe it’s about Kushner and Ivanka Trump’s close friendship with Wendi Deng Murdoch, the former wife of News Corporation CEO Rupert Murdoch. She is often rumored to be an asset or agent of the Chinese government, witting or otherwise. It might have something to do with Kushner’s presence at the now-infamous June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer the younger Trump believed was offering “dirt” on Hillary Clinton, courtesy of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Kushner’s inability to get a permanent security clearance might also relate to his apparent attempt to set up encrypted lines of communications with the Russian government during the presidential transition, before Trump had assumed office. He might also have difficulty because he formerly headed a foundation which donated money to illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank and failed to disclose this in his security clearance application.

Intelligence community officials might also be perturbed that Kushner failed to disclose numerous meetings he had with foreign bankers and leaders, including a Russian financial institution that is effectively controlled by Putin.

Several news organizations have also reported, and Kushner has all but admitted publicly, that he ordered former national security adviser Michael Flynn to work with Russia to block a December 2016 United Nations vote that condemned Israel’s settlement policy. Flynn pleaded guilty to lying about this to the FBI, and Kushner was referenced anonymously in Flynn’s plea bargain deal, filed by Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller a year later.

And who knows? They might have information about debt obligations to nefarious characters that would make him subject to blackmail. He certainly owes a lot of it.

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The Nunes conspiracy theory is preposterous
by digby

Chis Cuomo did a nice job today of simply dismantling the Freedom Caucus member Jim Jordan’s incoherent meanderings:

Jordan’s theory is that the FBI took out a warrant against Carter Page in October 2016 as part of then-director James Comey’s effort to throw the election for Hillary Clinton, with help from Obama mixed in. But as Cuomo pointed out, if the FBI was indeed scheming against Trump by quietly surveilling a low-level associate who, by that time, had disassociated himself from the campaign, it would be a very odd strategy — not to mention the fact that Comey was going out of his way that same month to hurt Clinton by publicizing the investigation into her emails.

“What kind of caper is this, that this is what they came up with to hurt President Trump is to put surveillance on Carter Page, a guy that had almost no real connection to Trump… and then do it just for a few weeks before the election, and they think this is going to affect the outcome of the race? It’s preposterous,” Cuomo said.

Instead of dealing with Cuomo’s counterpoints on the merits, Jordan responded by advancing another already-debunked conspiracy about text messages exchanged between two FBI agents who were having an affair in 2016. Jordan claimed a September 2, 2016 text Lisa Page sent Peter Strzok telling him that “potus wants to know everything we’re doing” is evidence of anti-Trump malfeasance.

However, as Cuomo pointed out, there are straightforward explanations that don’t involve deep state plots.

“What about [Obama] meeting with Putin two days later, and has a conversation with him about ‘stop what you’re doing, cut it out,’” Cuomo said, alluding to a September 4, 2016 meeting between Obama and Putin in which Obama reportedly confronted Putin about election interference. “How come you don’t factor that in to why they were saying Obama wanted to know everything? Maybe that’s exactly what it was about Jim, it was exactly about, ‘tell me what I need to know about what their interference is, I’m about to talk to the guy.’”

Jordan didn’t have any good answers. Later, Cuomo summarized the absurdity of his conspiracy.

“Peter Strzok wrote the letter about reopening the [email] case,” he said. “Jim Comey crushed Hillary Clinton. This is crazy unless Dan Brown is writing it and putting it in a book!”

Jordan isn’t the brighest candle in the candleabra. Unless he’s on Fox with Hannity or Ingraham gently leading away from the cliff, he makes no sense whenever he tries to talk about this. And this is even after he cluelessly admitted publicly that he’s working hand in glove with the White House.

Of course, it’s very difficult for anyone to explain why Comey would have publicized the Weiner emails just days before the election if he was trying to help her, but Trump supporters aren’t too picky about logic.

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Trumpist Dems? Oh yeah.
by digby

It was inevitable that what’s left of the Blue Dogs would end up pulling their punches when it comes to Trump:

Moderate House Democrats are launching a new effort to highlight Russian election interference — while not directly tying the issue to President Donald Trump in a way that could alienate crucial swing voters in November.

The push by the Blue Dog Coalition — a group of 18 center-left House Democrats — comes as Democrats have struggled to determine their messaging on the Trump-Russia investigations ahead of the midterm elections. And it follows warnings by top intelligence officials this week that Russia is intent on disrupting the upcoming midterm elections even as Trump has seemingly done little to head off expected meddling.
[…]
Liberal Democrats have been happy to talk up the Trump campaign’s potential collusion with Russia in 2016, going so far as to call for his impeachment and forcing impeachment-related votes on the floor. Democratic megadonor Tom Steyer continues to pressure lawmakers to back his multimillion dollar campaign calling for Trump’s impeachment.

But the aggressive progressive push has put centrist Democrats in an awkward spot. They too think the Russia investigation deserves attention, particularly with the looming midterm implications, but worry that tying it too closely to Trump will politicize the issue in a way that will drive away critical voters.

Democratic leaders are also wary of how much to highlight the Russia investigation in the months before the midterms.

This tracks nicely with news from yesterday that “strategists” are warning Democrats not to talk about Trump and instead concentrate on issues that people really care about. Those ladies of the Resistance should just shut up and fill envelopes. They don’t know what they’re doing. You must appease Real Americans by being the most boring, non-confrontational bucket of warm spit in the race. That’s what gets people out to the polls.

This is an even more interesting move, however. One would think that a group that fashions itself as national security and fiscal hawks would go hard after the miscreant in the White House on just those issues. He is a disaster on national security and has just hiked the deficit by the trillions. But no. Instead they feel the need to shy away from criticizing the president, just like their cowardly GOP cohorts.

It makes you think that maybe they aren’t all that sincere about their “issues” and instead just want to align themselves with Republicans, no matter what they do, without having to say so.

Just like their spiritual twins The Tea party and the Freedom Caucus, that cowardly inability to stand for anything, even their own alleged principles, is leading them inexorably to Trumpism.

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I wrote about yesterday’s intelligence hearing for Salon this morning:

Tuesday’s televised annual Global Threat Hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee seemed like a rare and special event. What used to be considered routine and ordinary in American political life — open hearings with government officials testifying about the issues of the day — felt like an exciting look into the secret workings of the Star Chamber. Considering that we are in the midst of one of the most significant presidential scandals in American history, concerning possible conspiracy with a foreign power and an active coverup, it’s extremely odd that we have so little public congressional testimony about any of it. That’s not the way our system is supposed to work.

Yesterday’s hearing was dramatic in that it featured all the leaders of the so-called nefarious Deep State, many in uniform with their chests covered in medals, sitting in a row facing the glare of the lights they seek to avoid while carrying out their traitorous schemes against President Donald Trump.

A world beyond the Beltway
by Tom Sullivan

Maps show a change in Pat McCrory’s support in Mecklenburg County between 2012 and 2016. Red is Republican (McCrory) and Blue is Roy Cooper (Democrat).
N.C. STATE BOARD OF ELECTIONS. (via WFAE)

The Zero Hour‘s R.J. Eskow makes a most incisive point that as much as those of us on the left dislike the sitting president, we cannot seem to stop talking about him. But we need to. He dominates the media landscape in overwhelming fashion and crowds out any progressive messages. Running against Trump did not close the deal in 2016 and it won’t win hearts and minds in 2018.

While we are talking about Russia, Eskow writes, Republicans:

• Want to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid by $1.8 trillion.
• Would impose work requirements and lifetime caps on Medicaid.
• Want to sell large chunks of America’s infrastructure, including highways, to corporate interests.

These are issues that matter to Americans not obsessed as political junkies are with what happens each day inside the Beltway. We need to start talking about what typical voters care about:

As Sam Pizzigati notes, the intrusion of corporations into government, combined with the free-market ideology that has gripped leaders of both parties, has already led to rush-hour highway tolls that approach $50 for a one-way trip in suburban Washington D.C.

Rather than tax the area’s millionaires to build and maintain adequate roads, leaders in the surrounding states have opted to impose “market-driven” tolls on commuters. Meanwhile, the DC-area Metro subway system – once a source of national pride – continues to crumble as funding declines.

Trump’s infrastructure plan is a sham. Its “$1.5 trillion” price tag actually amounts to only $200 billion in federal spending over ten years – less than one-sixth of the advertised figure – and that amount would be purloined from other vital programs.

Recall that Danica Roem, the first transgender candidate elected to a state assembly seat, ran a campaign in northern Virginia focused on alleviating local traffic problems and fixing local schools.

Recall too that former NC governor Pat McCrory lost the governor’s mansion in 2016 on Charlotte home turf the Republican had once won decisively. He lost in part because of opposition to tolling I-77:

But this year was different. McCrory fared worse, collecting about 159,000 votes, compared to almost 220,000 four years ago – despite a higher turnout. And Cooper won the county overall. He got nearly 295,000 votes, including some northern and southeastern precincts that went for McCrory last time.

In north Mecklenburg, McCrory’s support for NCDOT’s I-77 toll lane project drove some voters to Cooper, says Kurt Naas, who leads the anti-toll group Widen I-77.

“The message is that the governor has had multiple opportunities to cancel the toll contract that is unanimously reviled by north Mecklenburg. And he has refused to do so. And I think north Meck has spoken at the ballot box,” Naas said Wednesday.

Health care is an issue that dominates outside the Beltway hothouse. And those Medicare cuts harm seniors, Eskow writes, noting Medicare accounts for roughly two-thirds of nursing home costs and is the primary payer of health care for retirees. Eskow adds, “As Nancy Altman of Social Security Works says, Trump also has proposed slashing Meals on Wheels, home heating assistance, and other programs for seniors.” And seniors turn out in off-year elections.

Democrats have to spend more time building their own brand than they do helping spread Trump’s. Even Trump voters know deep down they’ve bought a pig in a poke. What do Democrats have to offer that’s better? That’s what our voters need to hear.

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Request a copy of For The Win, my county-level election mechanics primer, at tom.bluecentury at gmail.