Oh Fuck Roundup.


Trump administration chief strategist Steve Bannon (Screen cap).

Trump administration chief strategist Steve Bannon (Screen cap).

Might as well start with the worst. One those ever so savvy business moves of Trump’s seems to be based on a very old office adage: always look busy. Because the most important thing is appearances, of course. It seems Donny wants to give the impression that he’s hard at work, right away. Unfortunately, he’s not doing anything, and he’s leaving the impression of busy work to others, who like Donny, don’t have the slightest fucking idea of what they are doing. I don’t like Pence, not even one tiny bit, he’s an evil fucker, but he is an experienced politician, who is actually familiar with the actual work, so I have to wonder why he’s so conspicuously missing. It turns out, Donny’s little nazis are busy churning out the busy work.

Two of Donald Trump’s senior advisors — neither of whom has any previous government or legal experience — have reportedly been writing executive orders without any input from the agencies they would effect.

Aides told Politico that Steve Bannon, the president’s chief strategist, and Stephen Miller, the senior White House advisor for policy, have made almost no effort to consult with federal agency lawyers or lawmakers as they wrote executive orders.

Bannon, the former chairman of Breitbart, and Miller, a Republican political operative who’s written most of Trump’s major speeches, are writing many of the orders based on ideas that came from transition officials or “landing teams” who weren’t working in the White House.

The orders have come so quickly, and from seemingly out of nowhere, that aides sometimes aren’t even sure which actions Trump will sign until they cross his desk.

“He was determined to show people that he’s getting to work from Day One,” a source told Politico.

The quick pace gives the appearance of momentum as the Trump administration gets up and running, but legal experts are concerned the White House is issuing “flawed orders that might be unworkable, unenforceable or even illegal,” the website reported.

For example, the website reported the White House failed to ask State Department experts to review the memorandum on the Keystone XL pipeline, although the Canadian company vying for a permit to build the project is currently suing the U.S. for $15 billion.

A former State Department lawyer who worked on the Keystone proposal said Trump’s order was “more than unusual, that’s reckless.”

There’s much more here. I’d call this a clown show, but actual clown shows are well planned and timed. This…I don’t know what this is. Even clusterfuck doesn’t cover it. Whatever the case, ‘government’ has nothing to do with it. These idiots don’t understand government, they don’t know how to govern, they don’t understand procedures or laws, or anything. It’s just a frenzy of second rate fascists trying to ram anything and everything through.

Moving on…

No more ethics! Is anyone surprised? The white house is now nothing more than a gigantic cash cow for assholes who already have pockets split at the seams from overflow. Oh yes, Donny also has his own little cash cow set up going on the side, raking in money and violating that beloved constitution half to death.

When ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson signed on to work for Donald Trump’s new administration, he set himself up to receive a quick cash infusion:  Exxon committed to giving him an $180 million retirement package just as he moves to lead a State Department that oversees Exxon-related public policy. For years, ethics watchdogs have said such payouts could be a way for corporations to buy influence from incoming government officials. But, watchdogs said, at least for federal officials’  first two years in office, they  were barred by a rule from from participating in government business affecting their former employers.

That prohibition may no longer apply. As President Trump stocks his administration with Tillerson and other moguls whose companies have business with the government, the 8-year-old rule appears to be going unenforced — even if it is still on the books.

A review of agreements between Trump’s top appointees and federal ethics regulators shows that none of the compacts mentions the 2009 executive order that requires incoming officials to sign a pledge to avoid participating in policies that “directly and substantially relate to [their] former employer or former clients” for the first two years of government service. Obama-era ethics agreements included standard language obligating political appointees to follow the rule.

If the ethics pledge rule is not enforced, watchdog groups say, Trump officials entering the administration from the private sector could quickly be in a position to use their government positions to enrich their former paymasters.

Oh yay, the filthy fucking rich are gonna line their pockets even more. When do we get to eat them? Full story here.

An American visitor walks past a cartoon of a Mexican wrapped in a taco sticking his tongue out at a depiction of President-Donald Trump, in an exhibition titled; “Trump: A wall of caricatures,” at the Caricature Museum in downtown Mexico City CREDIT: AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell.

An American visitor walks past a cartoon of a Mexican wrapped in a taco sticking his tongue out at a depiction of President-Donald Trump, in an exhibition titled; “Trump: A wall of caricatures,” at the Caricature Museum in downtown Mexico City CREDIT: AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell.

Then we have the ever moronic wall. It’s going to cost a whole lot of money, and if you think anyone outside the U.S. taxpayer is going to foot the bill, you’re just as much an idiot as Donny.

Trump’s $10 billion cost estimate derives from a figure given to him by the National Precast Concrete Association. But that figure is probably too low. According to the MIT Technology Review’s Konstantin Kakaes, the true cost of the wall could actually be as much as $40 billion.

As Konstantin explains, the cost of the concrete alone could cost nearly $9 billion. Steel reinforcement will add an estimated $4.6 billion in costs. And that’s before you hire a single worker to actually build the wall.

“The total cost of highways and other megascale projects in the U.S. is generally two to three times the material costs,” after you add in labor and other expenses, Konstantin writes. That leads to a total price tag of somewhere between $27 billion and $40 billion.

Forty billion is more than the 2016 annual budget of the Departments of Energy, Housing and Urban Development, the Interior, Justice or State. It’s enough to double the annual budget of NASA and still have more than a billion left over to buy Trump steaks and a whole mess of martinis with caviar in them.

Full story here.

Donny’s determination to kill the EPA and destroy and all regulations is going to do a whole lot of harm. He’s going to destroy jobs, strangle job growth, strangle innovation, make people sick (conveniently without health coverage!) and make everyone and everything much less productive. Here’s a little chart:

Total jobs created by recent 2-term Presidents. CREDIT: Bureau of Labor Statistics via CNNMoney.

Total jobs created by recent 2-term Presidents. CREDIT: Bureau of Labor Statistics via CNNMoney.

Any takers on a bet that ol’ Donny is going to make Bush look good? The full story is here, read it.

Aaaaand, the State Department just quit.

Comments

  1. Pierce R. Butler says

    Re my # 2 -- sorry for echoing our esteemed host’s closing line (at least I cited a different source).

    What do those people know that we don’t?

  2. militantagnostic says

    legal experts are concerned the White House is issuing “flawed orders that might be unworkable, unenforceable or even illegal,”

    Given the nature of the orders I see this as not a bug, but a feature.

  3. says

    rq@#6:
    It all comes apart so easily. And so quickly.

    This is still mostly knock-on from 9/11. The US punched itself silly just like Bin Laden hoped it would. Except that now it’s switched to bashing itself in the head with a clawhammer.

  4. says

    I haven’t thought about it in awhile, but holy shit yes, Bin Laden played the US like a fiddle. He was dying for an invasion of Afghanistan to demoralize the West and sow the seeds for new generations of terrorists. Tearing ourselves apart (not to mention invading Iraq) was quite the added bonus.

    If ISIS indeed wants an apocalyptic war, it doesn’t seem like it’ll be too hard to goad Trump into it. Making fun of his tiny hands should suffice

  5. Pierce R. Butler says

    Giliell… @ # 3: Do you need any additional information to decide you want no part of it?

    Those people had, apparently, intended to stick it out -- but (I suspect) found out something(s) between the inaugurmageddon and now that got them all moving towards the door.

    Yes, I want additional information. Considering the collective DC experience of the six State Dept escapees, I think we might get it, too -- and it won’t make us happy.

  6. StevoR says

    There’s an excellent audio-visual chilling summary of Trump’s first week here :

    https://www.pedestrian.tv/news/arts-and-culture/watch-waleed-aly-recounting-trumps-first-week-as-p/3daf581f-f886-4200-9803-ff412c009a83.htm

    By Aussie Muslim TV host, writer, academic and more, Waleed Aly on the TV show The Project spoken and shown in under 5 minutes.

    That link also contains Keith Olberman’s pre-Trump election 176 reasons why Trump shouldn’t become POTUS

    See also & posted as comment to :

    http://freethoughtblogs.com/atg/2017/01/27/thinkprogress-dedicates-an-entire-column-to-trumps-gish-gallop/#ixzz4X1dJcpW0

    Slight tangent but also an interesting Trump related summary here :

    http://www.usatoday.com/pages/interactives/trump-lawsuits/

    complete with some good graphs on the four thousand and ninety-five lawsuits filed against Trump over three decades. (Not sure up to which date -- looked for but couldn’t find a date of publication on that page.)

    Hope these are interesting / useful for y’all.

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