Trump's 7 point Drain the Swamp Plan & 100 Day Agenda

[VectorVictor]

So Trump is trying to delegitimize the CIA. Wonder who's next. Congress and the Supreme Court?

 

The military?

 

And considering Trump is so cozy with Putin now...what if Putin decides to use one of those nuclear submarine drones on a naval base, or just decides to flat-out nuke us? Is Trump going to retaliate, or will he let things slide since he's buddies with Putin?

[zoogs]

Trump would retaliate, because a friend is a friend only until he insults him. Putin wouldn't do this because it would be disastrous to all. Keep saying nice things to Trump and obtain America's tacit support for the important things on Russia's agenda. Make Russia Great Again is the project, and Trump will sign on to it as long as Putin praises him.

[AR Husker Fan]

 

While Trump may want to "drain the swamp" (which he claims but does not practice) the Republican Party certainly doesn't. First they tried to reinstate entitlements until Ryan shamed them, and now this.

[Danny Bateman]

I believe this is the MO of the modern day GOP.

 

Cripple or dismantle tools for oversight, then ram through unpopular legislation or act in an openly corrupt or undemocratic manner, increasingly free from accountability. I don't understand the argument FOR disbanding the ethics office.

 

I worry about the type of actions we've seen in North Carolina spreading nationwide. Of course that's just the worst of the worst in the party, but I don't hear a bunch of reasonable voices speaking out against it.

[AR Husker Fan]

The failure to condemn is necessarily the act to condone.

[knapplc]

The failure to condemn is necessarily the act to condone.

 

Succinctly put, this is what I've been on about for months in this forum.

[VectorVictor]

Looks like the mandate isn't there anymore, folks...

 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/after-backlash-house-gop-backs-down-from-plan-to-gut-ethics-office-172736628.html

 

After an intense backlash, House Republicans on Tuesday reversed their move gutting Congress’ independent ethics watchdog group.

The GOP vote to back down from reining in the Office of Congressional Ethics was unanimous, Jake Sherman of Politico reported.

Earlier in the day, President-elect Donald Trump, who campaigned on a promise to “drain the swamp,” criticized House Republicans for making their first move one that rolled back ethics safeguards. He said the Office of Congressional Ethics had been “unfair,” but Congress has bigger priorities they should attend to now.

 

 

 

[Danny Bateman]

A new rule quietly protects some lawmaker records from Congressional ethics inquiries

 

 

That sentence enables individual members to hide official documents that could prove embarrassing or even incriminating if they were suddenly investigated by the ethics office or the Justice Department for criminal activity.

 

The new rule states that records created, generated or received by the congressional office of a House member “are exclusively the personal property of the individual member” and that the member “has control over such records,” according to a report by OpenSecrets.org.

While the rule change might seem relatively benign on the surface, it has severe and troubling implications for future ethical oversight and investigations of members of Congress as the Republicans fully take charge of Congress and the White House.

 

Man, even after staving off the attempt to neuter the OGE, these guys still found a way to try and destroy transparency.

Want to investigate whether a lawmaker was misusing funds? Too bad. They own their spending records.

 

This is why Congress has an approval rating in the single digits. Stuff like this is indefensible. Good lord these are some sketchy individuals.

[knapplc]

Trump national security pick Monica Crowley plagiarized multiple sources in 2012 book

 

 

Conservative author and television personality Monica Crowley, whom Donald Trump has tapped for a top national security communications role, plagiarized large sections of her 2012 book, a CNN KFile review has found.

 

Trump’s transition team is standing by Crowley.

 

"Monica’s exceptional insight and thoughtful work on how to turn this country around is exactly why she will be serving in the Administration," a statement from a transition spokesperson said. "HarperCollins—one of the largest and most respected publishers in the world—published her book which has become a national best-seller. Any attempt to discredit Monica is nothing more than a politically motivated attack that seeks to distract from the real issues facing this country."

 

In the book, Crowley lifted an entire section on Keynesian economics from the IAC-owned website Investopedia.

 

In one instance, Crowley lists a variety of so-called "pork" items she claimed were part of the 2009 stimulus package. Many of the instances were copied wholesale from a conservative list of pork barrel spending, with some items dating back to the 1990s. Most of the copied instances were listed on a website for a podiatrist dating back to 2004.

 

A section on organized labor appears largely copied from a 2004 article by the libertarian think tank the Mises Institute. Another portion of her book on torture is copied from a Fox News article.

 

Sections of her book are repeatedly lifted from articles by National Review author Andrew C. McCarthy, who is a friend of Crowley’s. Lines in her book also match word-for-word the work of other columnists, including National Review’s Rich Lowry, Michelle Malkin, conservative economist Stephen Moore, Karl Rove, and Ramesh Ponnuru of Bloomberg View.

 

Crowley also lifted word-for-word phrases from the Associated Press, the New York Times, Politico, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, the BBC, and Yahoo News.

 

Crowley has been accused of plagiarism before. In 1999, Slate reported a column by Crowley in the Wall Street Journal mirrored a 1988 article in Commentary, the neoconservative magazine.

 

"Had we known of the parallels, we would not have published the article," a Journal editor’s note said at the time. Crowley denied the charge at the time, saying, "I did not, nor would I ever, use material from a source without citing it."

The last line in bold is particularly hilarious when, if you click the link and check the side-by-side comparisons, it's obvious she did exactly that.

[knapplc]

 

Which is why now is the PERFECT time to axe their health insurance. Because what America needs right now is a nation even further in debt, more people in bankruptcy, financially ruined because they got sick.

[AR Husker Fan]

[Bigred_inSD]

2 executive orders from him already. Remember when Obama did them and they were "awful abuse of power"

 

Executive order is the only way this moron will get things done. I think someone explained checks and balances to him and now he's a lost confused puppy

[QMany]

[Danny Bateman]

"Divested"

 

[Danny Bateman]

Since this thread was initially created to talk about lobbyists, I thought this was an interesting read on them:

 

 

It mentions Trump's EO on lobbying, and how they're either ignoring or exempting ex-lobbyists from his declaration that they cannot work on issues for which they've directly lobbied in the past. The rule shown in the tweet details how the exemptions work - Trump removed rules both for the OGE to list such waivers annually and explain why they were granted in public interest.

 

The article found 3 ex-lobbyists hired to government positions dealing directly with issues on which they've previously lobbied. I also pointed out the ex-Anthem lobbyist that was hired as WH council and may soon lead the DOJ antitrust division, in charge of overseeing mergers... like the Anthem-Cigna one.

 

Had to bump this one to point out that on the issue of lobbyists, like with many others, the emperor has no clothes.