The Purge Continues

Meanwhile, over in the Trumpisphere, right-wing media outlets are gleefully printing lists of insufficiently loyal government employees who must be terminated in the name of Glorious Orange Leader.

Conservative news outlets, including one with links to a top White House official, are singling out individual career government employees for criticism, suggesting in articles that certain staffers will not be sufficiently loyal to President Donald Trump by virtue of their work under former President Barack Obama. 

The articles — which have appeared in Breitbart News, the Conservative Review and other outlets — have alarmed veteran officials in both parties as well as current executive branch staffers. They say the stories are adding to tensions between career staffers and political appointees as they begin to implement Trump’s agenda, and they worry that the stories could inspire Trump to try purging federal agencies of perceived enemies.

The claims posted on the conservative sites include allegations of anti-Israel and pro-Iran bias against staffers at institutions such as the State Department and the National Security Council. Breitbart News, whose former executive chairman Steve Bannon is now Trump’s chief strategist, has even published lists of workers that the president should fire. 

Washington veterans say they can’t recall similar targeting of government employees, who are required to stay apolitical and generally shun the spotlight.
“It’s deeply unfair to single people out and question their loyalty,” said William Burns, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former longtime diplomat. “It’s demoralizing for institutions. It’s demoralizing for professionals, and it’s offensive.”

The biggest bullseye continues to be on the back of the State Department career diplomats as the Trump regime continues the quest to dismantle American diplomacy and guarantee endless war.  The purge is especially targeting those who helped with the Iranian nuclear deal.

Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, a career civil service officer in State’s policy planning office who's been targeted in the past, has come under renewed fire because of her role shaping the Iran nuclear deal and other Iran policy during the Obama administration. Nowrouzzadeh, an American-born U.S. citizen of Iranian descent who joined the government in 2005 during the Bush administration, also has been criticized for once working for the National Iranian American Council, an activist group that some on the right accuse of lobbying on behalf of the Iranian government. 

According to Nowrouzzadeh’s LinkedIn profile and NIAC, she was an intern in the organization more than a decade ago. NIAC President Trita Parsi said Nowrouzzadeh interned part-time as a college undergraduate. “At the time our organization was very new, and our focus was primarily on voter registration," Parsi said. "We had no profile or position on foreign policy matters at that time.” 

Parsi also denied suggestions that his organization is tied to the Iranian regime. “The idea we’re an agent for the Iranian regime is preposterous,” he said. “We are the largest Iranian-American grass-roots organization, sustained by our own community, who overwhelmingly opposes the government in Iran.” 

Alan Eyre, director of the Office of the Middle East and Asia at State’s Bureau of Energy Resources, has also been targeted. Eyre served as State’s first Persian-language spokesman, and he’s been involved in Iran nuclear talks and outreach to Iranians. 

Calling him a “leftist State Department official,” the Conservative Review published an article this week reviewing Eyre's Twitter feed, saying he’s retweeting articles that are critical of Trump. But Eyre’s Twitter feed also includes plenty of Trump-friendly retweets that the article doesn't mention. 

Other targets for conservative news outlets have included Chris Backemeyer, State’s deputy assistant secretary for Iran; Michael Ratney, who deals with Syria and Israeli-Palestinian issues at State; and Anne Patterson, a recently retired former ambassador to Egypt and Pakistan. 

Secretary of Defense James Mattis wanted to tap Patterson as his undersecretary of defense for policy, but he ultimately withdrew her name from consideration after encountering resistance from the White House, another chilling signal to career officials. In a statement to POLITICO, Patterson said: "I believe that it is important for our elected officials, their appointees, and career civil service and foreign service personnel to know and respect the boundaries between their different roles."

Considering executive departments are now being larded with Trump loyalists to make sure employees are faithful to Trump first, of course this is the result.   This is one of those nice little incremental changes from a democracy to a bloody, brutal dictatorship that's happening before our eyes: loyalty tests for civil servants, the state media calling for purges and pograms as those left from the previous administration must be traitors, and watchful eyes making sure that departments are run "correctly".

This is how we are losing the American republic, guys.  In real time.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

If you were wondering on the time frame of why Devin Nunes went to the press yesterday afternoon in a brazen attempt to wreck the FBI investigation into the Trump campaign, wonder no more. Late last night CNN dropped a blockbuster on the FBI investigation into the Trump campaign and Russia:  leaks indicate that Trump campaign officials may have been involved with -- you guessed it -- the Russian leaks of DNC emails to hurt Hillary.

The FBI has information that indicates associates of President Donald Trump communicated with suspected Russian operatives to possibly coordinate the release of information damaging to Hillary Clinton's campaign, US officials told CNN. 

This is partly what FBI Director James Comey was referring to when he made a bombshell announcement Monday before Congress that the FBI is investigating the Trump campaign's ties to Russia, according to one source. 

The FBI is now reviewing that information, which includes human intelligence, travel, business and phone records and accounts of in-person meetings, according to those U.S. officials. The information is raising the suspicions of FBI counterintelligence investigators that the coordination may have taken place, though officials cautioned that the information was not conclusive and that the investigation is ongoing.

It's what many of us suspected all along, but finding proof of it remains the key and always has.  Again, the Trump regime has been busy attacking the investigation for a couple weeks now, implying that there's a massive Scary Black Guy conspiracy to wiretap Trump, and it especially serves to explain the sudden Nunes press conference that came out ahead of this story.  My guess is that CNN called and asked for a comment earlier Wednesday morning or late Tuesday, the White House refused, and then Nunes was dispatched yesterday afternoon.

One law enforcement official said the information in hand suggests "people connected to the campaign were in contact and it appeared they were giving the thumbs up to release information when it was ready." But other U.S. officials who spoke to CNN say it's premature to draw that inference from the information gathered so far since it's largely circumstantial. 

The FBI cannot yet prove that collusion took place, but the information suggesting collusion is now a large focus of the investigation, the officials said. 

The FBI has already been investigating four former Trump campaign associates -- Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone and Carter Page -- for contacts with Russians known to US intelligence. All four have denied improper contacts and CNN has not confirmed any of them are the subjects of the information the FBI is reviewing. 

One of the obstacles the sources say the FBI now faces in finding conclusive intelligence is that communications between Trump's associates and Russians have ceased in recent months given the public focus on Russia's alleged ties to the Trump campaign. Some Russian officials have also changed their methods of communications, making monitoring more difficult, the officials said. 

Last July, Russian intelligence agencies began orchestrating the release of hacked emails stolen in a breach of the Democratic National Committee and associated organizations, as well as email accounts belonging to Clinton campaign officials, according to U.S. intelligence agencies. 

The Russian operation was also in part focused on the publication of so-called "fake news" stories aimed at undermining Hillary Clinton's campaign. But FBI investigators say they are less focused on the coordination and publication of those "fake news" stories, in part because those publications are generally protected free speech. 

The release of the stolen emails, meanwhile, transformed an ordinary cyber-intrusion investigation into a much bigger case handled by the FBI's counterintelligence division.

Again, "largely circumstantial" evidence won't finish off Trump, and other journalists and outlets have implied the connection before.  But now we know what the stakes are being played for, and that the FBI is now suggesting that the DNC leaks are connected to the Trump investigation.  If there's proof, if somebody rolls over and talks on this, Trump goes down in flames.

We'll see what becomes of this, but again, this is the story of the century if it pans out.

Or hey, if it doesn't, that could still very well be true.

StupidiNews!

• London Metropolitan police say they have arrested seven in connection with yesterday's attack on Westminster Bridge that killed 3 and injured dozens as an SUV rammed through a crowd.
• Hawaii GOP State Rep. Beth Fukimoto says she'll switch parties after she was ousted as Hawaii's GOP House minority leader for participating in last month's Women's March.
• A last-minute rewrite on sharply reducing what health care must be covered by insurance plans is expected to entice GOP Freedom Caucus hardliners in today's expected Trumpcare vote.
• Reduced life expectancy for middle-aged white working class Americans could affect a generation as growing obesity, drug abuse, and suicide rates increase significantly.
• Some 17,000 AT&T employees went on strike in California and Nevada on Wednesday to protest what union reps say is the company breaking collective bargaining agreements.

Last Call For High Nunes

We now know what the Trump regime's response to Monday's devastating Russia testimony by FBI Director James Comey and NSA Director Mike Rogers confirming that the Trump campaign was under investigation:  GOP House Intelligence Committee chair Devin Nunes is now trying to outright interfere with an ongoing FBI investigation on behalf of Trump. Martin Longman:

House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes called a press conference a little while ago to announce that he intended to commit a blatant act of criminal obstruction of justice with respect to the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation of Trump and Trump associates’ connections to the Russians’ interference in our presidential election. Nunes began by declaring that President-Elect Trump’s personal communications may have been intercepted during the Transition due to “incidental collection” during an unrelated, completely legal and FISA-approved investigation. 

Let that sink in.  Intelligence community sources told Nunes and he called a press conference to leak it to the world while there's an ongoing investigation.

He then said that the potential surveillance was not related to Russia, that it wasn’t clear that it was collected at Trump Tower and that he was “alarmed by it.” 

He further stated that he had advised House Speaker Paul Ryan of his findings and that he was traveling to the White House this afternoon to share with them information that had been provided to him by the FBI in a classified setting for the purposes of advancing a congressional investigation into potential crimes committed by the people he will be meeting in the White House. 

Nunes also revealed that said “he discovered the potential surveillance of Trump himself while reviewing intelligence reports,” but he did not divulge that he kept his discovery from the Democrats on the committee who “appeared blindsided by Nunes’ announcement.”

To recap:

• GOP Rep. Devin Nunes is the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee.
• Nunes has been told of legal surveillance on foreign nationals that recorded conversations with not just the Trump campaign, but Trump himself. 
• He's going to the White House to brief Trump on this.
• He's not going to the Intelligence Committee to brief them on this.

Do we see the problem yet?

When Nunes arrives at the White House and begins sharing information about which Transition officials were captured on “incidental surveillance,” he will be committing what appears to be an obvious crime.

He claims that the surveillance is unrelated to Russia, and that may be his only criminal defense. He better hope that it will stand up in court. His press conference performance was a dishonest attempt to suggest that perhaps Trump wasn’t completely wrong when he said that Trump Tower was wiretapped at the behest of President Obama. He couldn’t assert either of those things but he made it seem like he had evidence pointing in that direction. 

And his failure to share this information with the Democrats or notify them that he would be holding the press conference shows just how disingenuous his “alarm” really is. 

But it’s his intent to share classified investigatory information with the subjects of a counterintelligence (and potentially criminal) probe that constitutes a crime. He must not be very bright. And he’s just destroyed his own committee’s investigation.

Which of course is the point, because within hours of Nunes's press conference this afternoon, this went out.

Team Trump fundraising off of what @DevinNunes (who was literally on Team Trump) just said. pic.twitter.com/Xhyzk851Cv

— justin kanew (@justin_kanew) March 22, 2017

The "vindicated" Trump regime now fundraising off this.  Guys, this was planned and executed. Nunes is sinking the investigation and remember he was a Trump transition team member.  He's working with Trump all the way through.

I'm hoping as Martin said that this catastrophically stupid and obviously rotten ploy will lead to a special investigator that will fry these Republican assholes up like catfish, but odds are that the Trump regime now has all the cover it needs for their supporters, and the results of this will be to derail the investigation completely.

Trump is trying to manufacture the "Obama wiretapped me!" conspiracy wholesale.  He just might get away with it.

Regrets, I've Had A Few

A "few" in this case being that only 3.5% of Trump voters in a new Washington Post poll say they would change their vote today, as Steve M points out over at his place.

According to this survey, Trump retains the passionate support of nearly his entire voting bloc. Remember that his most primal instinct is self-preservation -- does he really care whether Republicans suffer in the midterms or there's less security and prosperity in America and the world? Yes, the Gallup poll is bad for him -- but it may just be that angry anti-Trump voters are more willing to talk to pollsters these days than Trump backers, who tend to believe all mainstream media and polling outfits are deceitful. 

I believe that Trump is historically unpopular for a president in the first months of his term. But if he can sustain this level of support until 2020, he might just slip by a Democrat again, taking advantage of GOP voter suppression and a wealthy corporate donor community that will never bail on the GOP, not to mention campaign finance rules that are only going to get worse once Neil Gorsuch is on the Supreme Court.

Reminder: Trump won the election with about 25% of the total eligible voting population, because of the electoral college and the fact only about 26% voted for Hillary.  If Trump's approval rating among voting eligible adults is 37%, and all of them vote for him, he'd win in a landslide.

People have to actually vote to beat Trump and the GOP, and so far not enough of us give a damn. So when Republicans shave off a couple percentage points with red state voter suppression tactics, it's a good move for them that will pay off for decades.  It already gave them the White House and Congress (and soon the Supreme Court).

Remember that Richard Nixon and George W. Bush won reelection before disapproval of them reached critical mass. It takes a long time for Republicans to lose faith in one of their own, even when the rest of the country has already done so. 

Credibility? Trump's base thinks he has all the credibility he needs, even now. And that base is essentially the entire GOP electorate.

The only way we win is a united front.  As Zandardad said yesterday, we had the chance to unite behind Hillary and enough of us chose not to so that Trump won.  We wouldn't be in this epic disaster documentary right now if we had just done the right thing.  And before the usual suspects come in and complain, ask yourself given Trump's actions right now and his Supreme Court nominee, would you rather have Hillary or Donald as president today?

If you can't answer that, you're the reason why we have Donald.  You picked a side, and it was Trump's. End of line.

Pink, Black, And Blue In Bevinstan

Kentucky GOP Gov. Matt Bevin has signed a raft of bills from the now deeply red GOP-controlled General Assembly, and Kentucky's transformation into yet another awful Republican state is pretty much complete at this point.

Planned Parenthood stands to lose any shot it had at government funding for family planning under a bill signed into law by Gov. Matt Bevin on Tuesday.

The law will puts Planned Parenthood at the back of the line among organizations seeking family planning funding in Kentucky.

Bevin has signed more than 50 bills into law since the start of this year’s legislative session, including another on Tuesday that allows attacks on police officers and other first responders to be prosecuted as hate crimes.

While the so-called “Blue Lives Matter Law” doesn’t increase penalties against those convicted of committing a hate crime, it is considered when violaters come up for sentencing, and it is included when it comes time to consider probation or parole.

Kentucky becomes only the second state, beside Louisiana, to enact such a law.

With the family planning funding law, pro-life advocates hope that, after health departments and similar organizations receive their money, none would be left for Planned Parenthood.

Sen. Max Wise, R-Campbellsville, sponsored the legislation, which established a tiered system for distributing federal family planning dollars.

“This would place Planned Parenthood, which does not provide comprehensive health services at the back of the line for federal family planning dollars,” Wise said last week.

Kentucky lawmakers have make implementation of the law dependent on Congress reversing the Obama administration’s action blocking states from withholding funds from Planned Parenthood affiliates. Wise said he included that provision to protect Kentucky against potential lawsuits.

Planned Parenthood supporters said the organization has voluntarily stopped accepting those family planning funds for its Kentucky operations. But Wise said he hopes his bill would cut off that funding source if Planned Parenthood seeks the dollars again.

Also passing: Kentucky will join the race to the bottom with charter schools that have already become major scandals in neighboring Ohio and Indiana.  As in other states, the bill was passes to help low-income and black and Latino students as they have the "most to benefit" but in Ohio's case at least, charter schools continue to be a complete disaster.

Meanwhile the bill most likely to go to court is the state's new "student religious freedom" law, which among other things allows students in public schools to openly participate in religious activities while on campus and would allow student religious organizations at publicly-funded schools and universities to openly discriminate against LGBTQ students for membership.

The law, Senate Bill 17, will allow students to engage in religious activities and to express religious views in public schools and in their assignments. It would also allow teachers to include lessons about the Bible in discussions of religion and history.

The legislation stems from a 2015 decision to remove references to Jesus Christ from a student production of “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”

But LGBT rights groups assailed the new law, which they say codifies legal discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. One provision of the law allows student religious groups to set their own rules for membership, which LGBT rights groups say is a path to discrimination.

“No student should fear being excluded from a school club or participating in a school activity because they are LGBTQ,” said Sarah Warbelow, legal director at the Human Rights Campaign. “While of course private groups should have the freedom to express religious viewpoints, they should not be able to unfairly discriminate with taxpayer funds.”

The bill passed both the state Senate and state House with broad bipartisan support. Just three state senators and eight House members voted against the new law.

Bevin's not off the hook on this one even facing the veto-proof margin, he gladly signed it anyway.

But this is my state now, Bevin has signed dozens of new GOP laws and they'll take effect later this summer, and any hope that Kentucky wasn't totally the joke of the nation will disappear in a flash.  Anyone who isn't a Christian white male cop isn't wanted here, it seems.

By the way, the first time a public school kid in Kentucky decides they want to pray towards Mecca under this new law, I wonder how it will hold up.

StupidiNews!

• Pentagon sources say a North Korean missile test launch failed "within seconds of launch" as the missile crashed, US and South Korean officials are still trying to determine more details.
• Senate Republicans are urging GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan to delay a planned House vote tomorrow on the GOP bill to replace Obamacare, cautioning that the vote could fail.
• Chinese stores will pull Brazilian meat imports from shelves over a growing bribery scandal involving tainted beef and chicken by the country's largest meat exporter. 
• Bankers fleeing London the wake of Brexit may be settling on Dublin as their destination of choice, according to one relocation study.
• Donald Trump has signed a NASA bill designed to keep the space agency on its current exploration course as Republicans in space job states looked on.

Last Call For Ukraine, You Saw, You Laundered

Hey guys, remember our old friend Paul Manafort?  Trump's former campaign manager who resigned in disgrace after the world found out he was in Putin's circle so deeply that he previously worked for Putin's front man in Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovich?

Handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from Mr. Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012, according to Ukraine’s newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Investigators assert that the disbursements were part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials. 

In addition, criminal prosecutors are investigating a group of offshore shell companies that helped members of Mr. Yanukovych’s inner circle finance their lavish lifestyles, including a palatial presidential residencewith a private zoo, golf course and tennis court. Among the hundreds of murky transactions these companies engaged in was an $18 million deal to sell Ukrainian cable television assets to a partnership put together by Mr. Manafort and a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin.

Well after yesterday's Trump/Russia bombshell from the FBI and NSA, the Ukrainians are playing hardball again as Andrew Roth at the Washington Post picks up this story from Kiev.

A Ukrainian lawmaker on Tuesday released new financial documents allegedly showing that a former campaign chairman to President Trump laundered payments from the party of a disgraced ex-leader of Ukraine using offshore accounts in Belize and Kyrgyzstan. 

The new documents may revive questions about the ties between the Trump aide, Paul Manafort, and the party of the former president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, who has been in hiding in Russia since being overthrown by pro-Western protestors in 2014. He is wanted in Ukraine on corruption charges. 

Manafort, who worked for Yanukovych’s Party of Regions for nearly a decade, resigned from Trump’s campaign in August after his name in connection with secret payments totaling $12.7 million by Yanukovych’s party. Manafort has denied receiving those payments, listed in the party’s so-called “black ledger.” 

The latest documents were released just hours after the House Intelligence Committee questioned FBI Director James Comey about possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Moscow, which also touched on Manafort’s work for Yanukovych’s party in Ukraine. 

Comey declined to say whether or not the FBI was coordinating with Ukraine on an investigation into the alleged payments to Manafort.

Oops.  And yes, given the events of the last 36 hours, the Manafort story is very much relevant again even after Trump booted him in August, because we now know that the FBI investigation into Trump's connections to Russia began earlier in late July and is even now continuing.

Serhiy Leshchenko, a lawmaker and journalist, released a copy of an invoice on letterhead from Manafort’s Alexandria, Va.-based consulting company from Oct. 14, 2009 to a Belize-based company for $750,000 for the sale of 501 computers. 

On the same day, Manafort’s name is listed next to a $750,000 entry in the “black ledger,” which was viewed as a party slush fund. The list was found at the party headquarters in the turmoil after Ukraine’s 2014 revolution. The ledger entries about Manafort were released by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, a government law enforcement agency, last August.

Leshchenko alleges that Manafort falsified an invoice to the Belize company in order to legitimize the $750,000 payment to himself. 

“I have found during this investigation that [Manafort] used offshore jurisdictions and falsified invoices to get money from the corrupt Ukrainian leader,” Leshchenko said during a press-conference in downtown Kiev, where he provided a copy of the invoice to journalists.

This is a huge story guys, it's not going away, and it's going to turn up evidence that buries Trump and the GOP for a long time.  Manafort was in Putin's pocket and crooked as hell and had been for years, and then he ends up Trump's campaign director, when Trump himself has major ties to Putin's circle of oligarchs?  C'mon.

Oh, and Manafort?  Still lives in Trump Tower.

Follow the money.

Testing Your Patience (And Everything Else)

Don't look now, but Republicans have once again used the Congressional Review Act to kill an Obama executive action.  This time the plan is to overturn an Obama-era Labor Department rule that limited what occupations states could demand drug testing for unemployment benefits for.  Those limits are expected to be abolished this week when Trump signs the bill, meaning states can now require drug testing for anyone to receive federal jobless benefits as long as the occupation is "regularly drug tested" (which in 2017 is everyone.  You know, except Congress.)

Senators voted along party lines 51-48 under the Congressional Review Act to cut the rule. The legislation already passed the House and now heads to President Trump's desk, where he is expected to sign it.

Under a 2012 law, states can only drug test individuals applying for unemployment benefits if they were previously fired for drug use or work in jobs for which workers are regularly drug tested. The Obama rule specified a list of jobs the could be included under the law.

Republicans have argued the Obama regulation amounted to a federal overreach that limited a state's ability to determine its own drug testing policy.

"As we saw too often, the Obama administration went beyond its legal authority in creating legislation that limits the role of state governments," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said from the Senate floor.

He added that the Labor Department "should go back to the drawing board."

The Trump administration has also voiced support for getting rid of the rule, arguing its definition of occupations is too narrow and limits a states ability to drug test.

But Democrats warn that by nixing the rule lawmakers will be allowing states the ability to randomly drug test workers who through no fault of their own are unemployed, poor or in need of public assistance.

"This idea that there is a presumption of irresponsible conduct and guilt is just baseless," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said from the Senate floor.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out in court, I'm sure new state laws for drug testing everyone will run into roadblocks in the judicial, just as states testing everyone on cash assistance programs.

Still, don't tell me about how the parties are the same, especially you folks in states where pot is now legal.

Trump's Budget Gets The Coal-ed Shoulder In Kentucky

Trump came to Louisville last night to sell Trumpcare and coal jobs to the Bluegrass State.  The people at the rally were certainly buying, but it doesn't mean everyone was.

Trump pledged to rework trade deals, bolster the military, build a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico and put coal miners back to work. Trump also pledged that the Republican replacement for the Affordable Care Act would pass the House of Representatives on Thursday, only hours after U.S. Sen. Rand Paul told a group of Louisville businessmen that it would fail. 

“It’s a financial disaster waiting to happen right here in your own state,” Trump said, bashing the signature health care legislation of his predecessor. “Thursday is our chance to eliminate Obamacare and the Obamacare disaster in our country.” 

Trump, who was introduced by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, pointed out Republican U.S. Reps. Andy Barr and Jamie Comer in the audience, all of whom have said they support the GOP’s health plan. 

Trump offered few details about the bill or changes he’d like to see, instead taking the stance that it will look different after it gets through both the House and the Senate. 

“The end result is going to be wonderful, and it’s going to work great,” Trump said. 

The audience enthusiastically applauded Trump’s message on health care, but some of the biggest applause of the night came when Trump talked about returning coal jobs to Kentucky. 

“We are going to put our coal miners back to work,” Trump said, repeating a campaign pledge popular in Appalachia.

Only one problem: Kentucky Republicans are pissed at the Trump's proposed budget cuts, and here the Trump budget cuts fall apart as we run into the reality of sacred cows.  It's Republicans who are going to have to own these nearly $60 billion in cuts for 2018 and they're not going to do it.  Case in point, Kentucky Republicans are definitely not going to go along with Trump's plans to kill jobs programs for out-of-work coal miners.

During the campaign, Donald Trump billed himself as the “last shot” for coal country. He alone could save regions like Appalachia that had long suffered from poverty and dwindling coal jobs. And voters in West Virginia and eastern Kentucky believed him — choosing Trump over Hillary Clinton by wide, wide margins.

So it’s striking that President Trump’s first budget proposal would slash and burn several key programs aimed at promoting economic development in coal regions — most notably, the Appalachian Regional Commission and the Economic Development Administration. In recent years, these programs have focused on aiding communities that have been left behind as mining jobs vanished.

Even some of Trump’s staunchest allies were livid at the proposed cuts. “I am disappointed that many of the reductions and eliminations proposed in the President’s skinny budget are draconian, careless and counterproductive,” said Rep. Hal Rogers, a senior House Republican from a key coal-mining district in southeastern Kentucky.

Remember, Rogers is the old warhorse for the KY GOP, on the House Appropriations Committee.  He's been in the House since the Reagan Revolution, and nobody's come close to beating him, period.  In those 36 years the closest contest he had was merely a double-digit thrashing of his opponent, as compared to the 50-point margins he's won by since. The man's literally had a parkway named after him here. If there's anyone who should be safe voting for the Trump budget, it's Hal Rogers.

And if this has got him scared enough to speak out against Trump, it's serious.

First, Trump’s proposing to eliminate the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC), an independent agency set up in 1965 “to address the persistent poverty and growing economic despair of the Appalachian Region.” Since October 2015, the ARC has invested $175.7 million in 662 projects around the region, with a disproportionate focus on “distressed” counties and coal towns. In some places, that means new highways or broadband infrastructure. In others, it means grants to help former coal communities develop, say, outdoor recreation industries instead.

A government review estimated that, last year, the ARC created or saved at least 23,000 jobs and provided 25,500 households with infrastructure services such as water or broadband. There have been criticisms of the program over the years — it’s odd to have a standalone agency for this one region, and the ARC often focuses on bigger towns and neglects rural areas — but it’s also broadly popular with Democrats and Republicans alike in Appalachia.

Second, Trump is proposing to zero out the Economic Development Administration (EDA), which sits within the Commerce Department and provides about $250 million per year in grants to support economic growth in certain regions. During the Obama years, the EDA began devoting a sizable portion of that money to coal communities around the country that were suffering economically as cheap natural gas and new air pollution rules shriveled the coal industry. (The EDA also supports non-coal communities, providing trade adjustment assistance and other services.)

Needless to say, Rogers is furious.

It’s unclear if the White House conferred with coal-state politicians before proposing these cuts. Rogers, who helped double the ARC’s budget as chair of the House Appropriations Committee from 2011 to 2016, was absolutely scathing in response:

"While we have a responsibility to reduce our federal deficit, I am disappointed that many of the reductions and eliminations proposed in the President’s skinny budget are draconian, careless and counterproductive.

In particular, the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) has a long-standing history of bipartisan support in Congress because of its proven ability to help reduce poverty rates and extend basic necessities to communities across the Appalachian region. Today, nearly everyone in the region has access to clean water and sewer, the workforce is diversifying, educational opportunities are improving and rural technology is finally advancing to 21st Century standards. But there is more work to be done in these communities, and I will continue to advocate for sufficient funding for ARC and similar programs, like the Economic Development Administration."

I'd say if Hal is typical, then the Trump/Ryan austerity plan is DOA. Even Mitch the Turtle is assuring everyone that the cuts to ARC and EDA will never happen.

We'll see who wins this battle, but I assure you that Kentucky workers will lose either way now that the GOP is in total control.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/latest-news/article139644553.html#storylink=cpy

StupidiNews!

• GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan and other Republican leaders have offered more conservative cuts to the ACHA in order to earn votes, but the bill may still fail this week's scheduled vote.
• The Trump regime will put into effect new Homeland Security rules that bar passengers on some flights from the Mideast from using large electronic devices in flight. 
• Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will skip a planned NATO meeting in April to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Florida, and will visit Russia later next month.
• Democrats took aim at Trump Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch yesterday as confirmation hearings continue later this morning.
• New Zealand lawmakers have questions for Apple after a report shows that Apple sold billions in products there but got around paying a single dollar in local taxes.

Last Call For Russian To Judgment, Con't

Today's House Intelligence Committee hearing with FBI Director James Comey and NSA Director Mike Rogers did not disappoint.  The five big takeaways:

1. Comey and Rogers both ended any credibility of Trump's claims he was wiretapped by Obama.  Both men straight up said that Trump Tower was not wiretapped, and Rogers confirmed that the Brits were definitely not brought on board to spy on Trump.  It also means Trump is an inveterate liar, and the whiff of outright panic is beginning to emanate from the White House at this point.
2. Comey confirmed that the Russians influenced the 2016 elections towards Trump in order to hurt Clinton. Again, this wasn't vote-flipping and hacking, but rather disinformation and leaks.  This investigation is still ongoing, but at this point Comey feels comfortable enough to say outright that Russia was not only anti-Clinton, but pro-Trump.  And that leads us to the big one:
3. Comey admitted that there is an investigation into collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.  That's the big one folks, treason is a nasty crime and the FBI is indeed looking into whether or not people in the Trump camp were playing footsie with Vlad Putin and the Russians.  There are certainly a lot of suspects: Mike Flynn, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, but don't forget Trump himself, who has a decades-long relationship with Russia and its oligarchs.
4. Republicans at the hearing ignored the Trump/Russia story in favor of grilling Comey and Rogers over leaks.  Rep. Devin Nunes, the GOP chair of the House Intel Committee, made a point of saying that while the FBI is investigating possible crimes, actual crimes of leaks have been committed, and all the Republicans wanted answers on that rather than the, you know, possible treason.
5. Trey Gowdy went as far as accusing several Obama aides of being the leakers. Previous committee chair Rep. Trey Gowdy (of Benghazi! fame) directly asked Comey and Rogers if either thought a number of Obama aides had access to intelligence community reports on FISA suspects, i.e. any Russians that the NSA might have been looking into.  Mostly it was "I don't know" but the tactics were clearly trying to attack both the leaks themselves and the reporting of the leaks as an Obama conspiracy to undermine Trump.  (Why? Trump's doing an amazing job of undermining himself.)

So that's where things stand.  Frankly, Trump is in a lot of trouble right now, and he knows it. Republicans are running interference, but it's clear that trying to pull the fire alarm when the republic is in fact on fire isn't a crime. 

More on this from Reuters, CNN, Politico, NY Times, and WaPo.

Rand Betting On A Disaster

Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul tells the Lexington Herald-Leader that he'll not only skip tonight's Trump rally in Lexington to sell the AHCA, but that he expects the Trumpcare bill won't even pass the House, let alone the Senate, and that then the "real negotiations" will get underway.

Paul, R-Bowling Green, spoke to the St. Matthews Chamber of Commerce several hours before President Donald Trump was scheduled to tout the GOP plan to replace Obamacare Monday night in nearby Freedom Hall. 

Paul said he would not attend Trump’s rally, which is his first visit to Kentucky as president. 

“I have work to do in Washington,” Paul told reporters. In contrast, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is scheduled to welcome the president to Louisville. 

Paul has been at the forefront of opposition to the House GOP plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, calling the proposal “Obamacare lite.” 

The major problem with the House plan, Paul said, is its continued reliance on an individual insurance market. 

He said President Barack Obama tried to fix the individual insurance market by mandating insurance coverage, but not enough young people bought insurance.
“I want it gone,” Paul said of the individual market. 

In its place, Paul envisions a network of associations that individuals could join to get insurance coverage. 

“I would legalize the ability for you to join an association,” Paul said, noting that the St. Matthews Chamber of Commerce has an association health plan. 

“I would like to legalize that you could join with other chambers, national chambers and have an insurance association,” he said, predicting more people would have insurance at lower costs. 

Paul also advocated more use of health savings accounts, arguing they would also help lower costs. 

An audience member asked Paul if he would want to keep the popular provision in the Affordable Care Act that says people with pre-existing health conditions could not be denied health insurance. The GOP health plan contains the same protection. 

Paul responded by saying that joining an insurance group would take care of the problem. If a person does not do that, he said, Medicaid could be a back-up. 

“It’s capitalism that will bring down health care costs,” he said.

Of course Rand Paul is predicting that the bill won't get past the House, he really doesn't want to take a vote on this bill. It's why he's doing everything he can to rile up the House GOP Freedom Caucus to reject the bill before he's forced to vote on taking Medicaid away from 10% of Kentucky, or defying Trump in a state that he won by 16 points.

I'm not sure why Rand is in panic mode, he literally just won re-election in November and won't be up again until 2022 (and by then Trump will hopefully be long gone.)   But hey, the bill is pretty awful, and he knows it.

The stuff he's talking about replacing Obamacare with?  It has no chance, but clearly he thinks it will after the bill dies screaming in the House.

We'll see how true that is.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article139626248.html#storylink=cpy

Not Just Kentucky, But Ohio Too

I know we've read a lot of stories about Obamacare here in Kentucky, where 440,000 stand to lose health coverage under the GOP bill.  But the story in Ohio is even worse, where a million people could end up with no coverage  John Kasich went with Medicaid expansion through an overwhelmingly GOP state legislature (and Lord knows they did everything they could to try to stop it) but now the reality of Obamacare repeal in this newly-minted Midwest Trump state is hitting home.

James Waltimire, a police officer on unpaid medical leave, has been going to the hospital in this small city twice a week for physical therapy after leg surgery, all of it paid for by Medicaid.

Mr. Waltimire, 54, was able to sign up for the government health insurance program last year because Ohio expanded it to cover more than 700,000 low-income adults under the Affordable Care Act. He voted for President Trump — in part because of Mr. Trump’s support for law enforcement — but is now worried about the Republican plan to effectively end the Medicaid expansion through legislation to repeal the health care law.

“Originally the president said he wasn’t going to do nothing to Medicaid,” Mr. Waltimire said the other day after a rehab session. “Now they say he wants to take $880 billion out of Medicaid. That’s going to affect a lot of people who can’t afford to get insurance.”

As Republicans in Washington grapple with how to meet their promise of undoing the greatest expansion of health care coverage since the Great Society, they are struggling with what may be an irreconcilable problem: bridging the vast gulf between the expectations of blue-collar voters like Mr. Waltimire who propelled Mr. Trump to the presidency, and longstanding party orthodoxy that it is not the federal government’s role to provide benefits to a wide swath of society.

If they push forward the House-drafted health bill, which could come to a vote as early as this coming week, Republicans may honor their vow to repeal what they derided as Obamacare, but also risk doing disproportionate harm to the older, working-class white voters who are increasingly vital to their electoral coalition.

Many of those voters live in small Midwestern cities like Defiance and neighboring Bryan, home of a candy company that makes Dum Dum lollipops but has moved many of its jobs to Mexico. Though unemployment is low in the region, where farmland stretches for miles between towns, the slow erosion of manufacturing has taken a toll, and “what’s left in our communities are lower-paying jobs,” said Dr. Neeraj Kanwal, the president of Defiance Regional Hospital.

The region has voted Republican in presidential contests for decades, but its support for Mr. Trump — he took 64 percent of the vote in Defiance County and an even larger share in most of the surrounding counties — was more resounding than for any candidate since Ronald Reagan. Yet many people here tend to have conflicting values that make repeal of the health law appealing on its face but ultimately hard to swallow.

“People in this community are very conservative. They struggle with the federal budget deficit, and they like the idea of personal responsibility,” said Phil Ennen, the president and chief executive of Community Hospitals and Wellness Centers, which has a 75-bed hospital in Bryan. “But at the same time, we have a lot of friends and family and neighbors who just don’t have a lot going for them. There is a population out there that needs Medicaid. That’s the dilemma.”

And yet most of the people who voted for Trump, if not every single one of them, bought the promise that Trump would never take Medicaid away from them, personally. 

But here we are.

Oh I don't feel sorry for them.  They gladly voted to take health care coverage away from those people who "didn't deserve it", anyone black or brown.  They knew what Trump was selling.  They just figured he wouldn't screw them over this early.

But again, here we are.  

Only now are people like Jim Waltmire asking questions. Only now are they showing up at town halls.  Only now are they worried about losing what Obama gave them.  Only now.  And the rest? They think Trump will fix it all for them.

When that doesn't happen, then what?

StupiidNews!

• FBI Director James Comey will publicly testify in front of the House Intelligence Committee today, Democrats have questions on Russia and wiretapping, the GOP wants answers on leaks.
• In the Senate on Monday, Trump Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch will face the Senate Judiciary Committee for his confirmation hearing.
• Another round-up by Turkish authorities has resulted in nearly 2,000 arrests of people with "links" to Kurdish militants or Islamic militants involved in last July's coup attempt.
• Director Roman Polanski wants to return to the US to visit his wife's grave after being a fugitive on multiple felony sexual abuse against a minor charges for nearly 40 years.
• Launch sales of the Nintendo Switch have been promising enough for Nintendo to double hardware production over the next 12 months.