U.S. President Donald Trump and his senior advisor Jared Kushner arrive for a meeting with manufacturing CEOs at the White House in Washington, DC, U.S. February 23, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque.
None of what follows has yet been confirmed officially. If this does end up being rubber stamped, it’s bad news. Again. This one falls firmly in the What Government? category.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday is set to announce his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, will take on a White House role to oversee a broad effort to overhaul the federal government, The Washington Post reported, citing statements from both men.
Kushner, who is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and currently serves as a senior adviser, will lead the newly formed White House Office of American Innovation with an eye on leveraging business ideas and potentially privatizing some government functions, the Post said.
“The government should be run like a great American company. Our hope is that we can achieve successes and efficiencies for our customers, who are the citizens,” Kushner told the Post in an interview.
Is there such a thing as a great American company? One that does not screw over workers, pays a decent wage, provides full benefits, gladly offers extended parental leave, has accommodation for working parents, and so on? Oh, and one that actually makes a useful product that would last more than 6 months, with no outsourcing? If so, that might make a semi-decent model, however, a government is not supposed to be a corporation, especially not a twisted, incestuous mess of one, like all of the Trump scams. The only thing you fucking assholes care about is lining your own pockets. Hard to see how that’s going to benefit anyone except yourselves.
Some of the areas he will focus on are veterans’ care, opioid addiction, technology and data infrastructure, workforce training and infrastructure, according to the report.
In a statement to the Post, Trump said: “I promised the American people I would produce results, and apply my ‘ahead of schedule, under budget’ mentality to the government.”
Right. Ahead of schedule by cutting corners, leaning on the people doing the actual work, then refusing to pay anyone. Yeah, that’s one hell of a way to run a regime. Have we become North Korea Jr. yet?
Via Raw Story.
Well now, the best deal for the customers would be essential services like housing, mass transport, phone and internet service, health care and enough food to live on, at cost.
Oops, socialism again. Will I never learn?
I wonder if the republicans are going to complain a lot if Trump putinizes their party by stuffing it with hand-picked minions in line with a dynastic plan? Did they just hate Hillary because she’s a woman and if so will they bow down to Ivanka? Clearly Kushner’s being groomed for big things -- steamroll the party brass and put new faces in at the top, that’s what Trump’s going to try to do. After the healthcare blowup, his simplest and most brute-force strategy will be to dilute the republicans, and that’s what he’ll try to do, because: simple and brute-force.
Things I wouldn’t put a businessman in charge of:
1.) Small children
2.) Government
3.) A business
—
Daz, the real customer is the shareholder. I wonder who that is? Probably not the citizens, which is what you might expect or at least hope for in a democratic nation.
How can this even be legal?
As far as I know, it isn’t, strictly speaking. There are loopholes, of course. Ivanka was moved into the white house, given an office, and security clearance for all the juicy classified stuff, buuuuut, she was not given a title, so it doesn’t come in under the nepotism rule.
Caine #5:
Just out of interest, how did the rule not bar Robert Kennedy from being appointed Attorney General by his brother?
As for running the government on a more businesslike basis, does anybody have any numbers on how many corporations happen to provide employment for CEOs’ sons-in-law who have no experience outside of family enterprises?
Clearly Jared Kusher’s talents extend far beyond the piffling assignment he already handles of bringing peace to the entire Middle East -- he has to do something after lunch, too!
Daz:
I have no idea. I was all of six years old when JFK died (turned 6 two days prior). Aha! It wasn’t illegal then, the reason it’s illegal now is because of that.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/3110
WOW -- wouldn’t it be great to see that kind of outrage now? Politico has a story about it too: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/11/1976-nepotism-law-lyndon-johnson-bobby-kennedy-trump-kushner-214465
Now, apart from the fact that the citizens as customers might like different things for their money and not an overblown military budget*, it nicely erases the fact that the people who make up the whole government apparatus are also citizens.
*Did you hear that he really presented Merkel with a 300 billion dollar bill for “outstanding dues to Nato” because he apparently thinks that the Nato is like a US government run military Mar-a-Lago…
Giliell:
Oh yes, I read about that. Thank the universe Merkel is an adult, and is capable of treating this correctly, like a piece of garbage from a know-nothing.