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Trumped Up Trickle Down

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Oh, what a week. And it’s only Wednesday.

While the current President was bidding a dignified farewell and leaving hardly a dry eye in the audience on Tuesday, his successor was tweeting in response to accusations of water sports.

An opposition report, dog-eared from months of circulation around the national press corps, surfaced. It was, we were told, compiled by an ex-British spy with some credibility in intelligence circles, and the internet went wild over claims about Russian dealings with President-elect Donald Trump, including blackmail involving sex workers in a luxury Moscow hotel in 2013.   [Read more…]

Grand Theft, GOP-Style: Art Today, Civil Rights Tomorrow

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Trump’s day of triumph is rapidly approaching, and it has become clear his administration’s policies will amount to open season on the assets of the United States.

Congressman Duncan Hunter couldn’t wait for the inauguration and lifted a painting that displeased him from a Congressional art exhibit. Also, House members quietly changed a rule last week allowing them to hide records from future ethics probes. (More on these later in the story)

Not all assets are measured by monetary value, and this is today’s big story. In a hearing room originally used for inquiries into the sinking of the Titanic and the Teapot Dome Scandal, Senate Republicans are lobbing softballs at Attorney General nominee Sen. Jeff Sessions in the hope they can kick-start the erosion of civil and human rights in this country.   [Read more…]

Senator Elizabeth Warren Denounces Trump’s “Horrifying” Education Pick

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By Deirdre Fulton / Common Dreams

In a scathing memo sent Monday to Donald Trump’s pick for education secretary, Betsy DeVos, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) joined a growing chorus of opposition to the nominee, probing her past support for “privatizing and defunding K-12 education” as well as her “paper-thin record on higher education and student debt.”

“There is no precedent for an Education Department secretary nominee with your lack of experience in public education,” Warren wrote (pdf) to DeVos ahead of the billionaire’s Wednesday confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, on which the senator sits.   [Read more…]

Democrats Vote for Change in ADEM Elections As Labor Council Infighting Continues

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You wouldn’t know from reading today’s newspapers, but there were elections in California over the weekend. And, although the results aren’t finalized yet, it’s obvious something significant is going on in the state’s Democratic party.

Although these changes (in the short term) amount to little more than a sea of new faces at the state Democratic Party convention, the significance of record turnouts, competing slates of candidates, and the openly stated desire for progressive ideals all should give us optimism for a new era in politics in the Golden State.

Locally, controversies arose in Oceanside and Chula Vista. The North County event seems to have been procedural; the South County occurrence reflects a deep division among organized labor groups threatening the unity Democrats will need in opposing the actions of the incoming administration.   [Read more…]

On the Topic of the GOP and Ethics

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It makes perfect sense to me that the House Republicans tried to secretly curtail the powers of the Office of Congressional Ethics because, if you have no ethics, you damn sure don’t want some nosy person poking around documenting it.

And these GOP characters are as to ethical behavior as a sea turtle is to Death Valley. They’ve demonstrated for decades, which anyone can google, that they are not, by any means, on speaking terms with anything anywhere near synonymous with “ethics.” They are, in a word, ethic-less, if you will.

And their leader – The Donald – twittered some jive that supposedly caused these alleged “representatives” to back away from their devious deportment.   [Read more…]

25 Smears, Hoaxes, Grifts and Whoppers on Climate and the Environment in the Obama Era

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By Peter Dykstra / Environmental Health News

As the curtain comes down on Barack Obama’s eight years in the White House, most Americans seemed convinced of one of two things: We’re either about to Make America Great Again®, or we’re about to hurtle into an uncertain epoch that I like to call the Idiocene.

But before we turn the page on this administration let’s take a look back at the tall tales, regrettable pronouncements, farces and scams on climate and the environment during the Obama years. Anti-regulatory zealots led the pack, but President Obama contributed a few of his own – starting on his first full day in office.   [Read more…]

Faulconer for Governor, Kill the Wabbit, Save the Chargers, and Other Post-Holiday News

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Ladies and Gentlemen, we’ve officially entered the Twilight Zone in San Diego.

The Mayor of the second largest city in a State with the fastest GDP growth in the nation is exploring a run for Governor.

Which might seem unremarkable, except that poverty rates in the region anchored by San Diego have increased by more than 2% since the ‘recovery’ began, homelessness has nearly doubled, and he’s reportedly scheming to cough up $200 million for a football stadium concept soundly rejected by voters just two months ago.   [Read more…]

Call to Action! Protect San Diegans’ Obamacare

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The 115th Congress convened for the first time earlier this week. After their disastrous behind closed doors attempt to gut the Office of Ethics went down in flames, they decided that it was time to concentrate on the number one priority–Repeal and Replace Obamacare.

Repeal and Replace Obamacare has been the Republican mantra since 2009. Their call for repeal of the Affordable Care Act is gratuitous, but it has kept the base hopeful if not happy. Repeal is infinitely easier than proposing a replacement and Republicans have nothing to offer in its place. Maybe that is because the Affordable Care Act IS the Republican healthcare coverage position. Democrats advocated for a universal health coverage system, an expansion of Medicare.   [Read more…]

Urging Millions to Rise Up, Trump Foes Issue Call to ‘Resist Fascism’

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‘Millions must rise up in a resistance [to] stop the Trump/Pence regime before it starts!’

By Nadia Prupis / Common Dreams

Thousands of activists, journalists, scientists, entertainers, and other prominent voices took out a full-page call to action in the New York Times on Wednesday making clear their rejection of President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence with the simple message: “No!”

Trump is “assembling a regime of grave danger” that is an “immoral peril to the future of humanity and the earth itself,” the call to action continues. “Millions must rise up in a resistance with a deep determination such that we create a political crisis that prevents the Trump/Pence fascist regime from consolidating its hold on the governance of society.”   [Read more…]

War on the Poor Starts Soon

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The Safety Net Will Soon be in Shreds

The Trump administration will take over in a couple weeks. Essential benefits for tens of millions of low-and moderate-income Americans are in danger of being phased out or canceled immediately. These include the Affordable Care Act, the Medicaid health-insurance program for the poor and further reduction of already squeezed funding for scores of other important programs serving the most vulnerable Americans such as rental vouchers for low-income families, programs to fight homelessness, job training, funding for poor school districts, Head Start for young children and Pell grants to help low-income students afford college.

Republicans are all about cutting non-defense discretionary spending, and that means any program that helps the poor and middle class. After Trump showers tax cuts on the rich and corporations, the Republican Congress will attempt to balance the budget on the backs of the poor. It’s what they’ve been trying to do for years, but Obama stood in their way. Now they have a green light. In the House GOP’s most recent budget plan, 62 percent of a stunning $6 trillion in budget cuts over 10 years would come from programs to help the poor.   [Read more…]

The Year of ‘Post-Truth’

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Thanks to fake news and hyper partisanship, many of us can no longer distinguish facts from opinions — or lies.

By Jill Richardson / OtherWords

“Post-Truth.” The Oxford English Dictionary named this its word of the year for 2016.

This was a year when campaign lies — most, though not all, coming out of the Donald’s mouth — were so numerous that fact checking became nearly impossible.

Yes, each individual statement could be fact checked. But there were so many rapid-fire falsehoods that it was impossible to debunk them one by one on TV without devoting entire shows to just that.   [Read more…]

Letting Morality Guide You in the Age of Trump

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By Kerry Eleveld / Daily Kos

The writings of activist and author Masha Gessen instantly became must-read material when, following Donald Trump’s win, she penned “Autocracy: Rules for Survival.”

Gessen’s insights were driven by her experiences living in Russia under the rule of Vladimir Putin, and the piece enumerated six rules that serve as a gut check for right action amid the political drift of our time. But a second piece she published contemplating how much compromise could be too much compromise in a Trump presidency is also essential reading.
  [Read more…]

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