The Reach To Impeach, Con't

EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland took the stage today in House impeachment hearings against Donald Trump.  Sondland not only implicated Trump, but Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, and the major new one today, Vice President Mike Pence.

US Ambassador Gordon Sondland testified Wednesday there was a quid pro quo for Ukraine to announce investigations into President Donald Trump's political opponents that came from the President's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani at the "express direction of the President." 

What's more, Sondland provided House impeachment investigators with emails and texts showing it wasn't just him and Giuliani pushing for the investigations outside 

government channels — Trump's inner circle knew what was going on, too. He even said he raised concerns with Vice President Mike Pence that the freezing of $400 million in security aid to Ukraine was linked to the investigations. 

Sondland's testimony is the most damning evidence to date directly implicating Trump in the quid pro quo at the heart of the impeachment inquiry. His public remarks show a link between US security aid and a White House meeting and Ukraine publicly announcing investigations that would help the President politically. From the beginning of Wednesday's hearing, Sondland's comments dragged some of Trump's senior most officials -- including Pence, his chief of staff and his secretary of state -- into the scandal. 

"Everyone was in the loop," Sondland said. "It was no secret." 

In his remarkable opening statement before the fourth day of public impeachment hearings, Sondland told House impeachment investigators that Trump "wanted a public statement from President (Volodymyr) Zelensky committing to investigations of Burisma and the 2016 election." 

"Mr. Giuliani expressed those requests directly to the Ukrainians," said Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union. "Mr. Giuliani also expressed those requests directly to us. We all understood that these pre-requisites for the White House call and White House meeting reflected President Trump's desires and requirements." 

Sondland said that Trump's senior aides, including acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Energy Secretary Rick Perry, were all aware that Zelensky was briefed days ahead of the July 25 call to commit to doing investigations. 

"Everyone was informed via email on July 19, days before the Presidential call," Sondland said. "As I communicated to the team, I told President Zelensky in advance that assurances to 'run a fully transparent investigation' and 'turn over every stone' were necessary in his call with President Trump."

 Lawfare's Ben Wittes on Trump's bribery of Ukranian President Zelensky and the legal implications of Sondland's singing like Striesand:

Remember the words of the statute: Whoever, being a public official, directly or indirectly, corruptly demands anything of value personally in return for being influenced in the performance of any official act has engaged in the crime of bribery.

This exchange seems to me unambiguously to describe a corrupt demand for something personally valuable (investigations of political opponents) in return for being influenced in the performance of two official acts (granting a White House meeting and releasing hundreds of millions of dollars in military assistance).

In the questioning that followed, Republican counsel Steve Castor and Republican members sought to emphasize how little Sondland actually knew—suggesting that he, like witnesses last week, was not describing anything Trump had actually done, just his own impressions of a situation. But Sondland is unlike the witnesses last week. He had multiple, direct interactions on this subject with the president himself.

The first was on May 23, when Sondland and other officials went to brief Trump on Zelensky’s election and their excitement about having a reformist Ukrainian president with whom to work. They asked Trump to have a call with Zelensky and a White House meeting. “Unfortunately, President Trump was skeptical,” Sondland testified. “He expressed concerns that the Ukrainian government was not serious about reform. He even mentioned that Ukraine tried to take him down in the last election.” Sondland reported that “In response to our persistent efforts to change his views, President Trump directed us to ‘talk with Rudy’” Giuliani.

What did Giuliani, to whom Trump had personally directed Sondland, say to him? “Mr. Giuliani emphasized that the President wanted a public statement from President Zelensky committing Ukraine to look into corruption issues. Mr. Giuliani specifically mentioned the 2016 election (including the DNC server) and Burisma as two topics of importance to the President.”

In other words, behind the exchange with Schiff is a specific claim that Trump personally directed Sondland to Giuliani, who then made substantive demands on Trump’s behalf for the investigations he wanted.

But it doesn’t end there. Sondland also confirms, while quibbling over details, that he spoke by phone with Trump on July 26 from a restaurant in Kiev and that the president, as another witness recounts, asked him whether Zelensky was going to deliver the investigations. “Actually,” Sondland testified, “I would have been more surprised if President Trump had not mentioned investigations, particularly given what we were hearing from Mr. Giuliani about the President’s concerns.”

And then there’s, of course, the text of the Trump-Zelensky call itself, in which Trump asked for Zelensky to initiate the very investigations described in these other incidents, shortly after Zelensky asked for his continued military assistance.

Was Trump here acting “corruptly”? Duh. Seeking investigations of political foes for personal political gain is a prototypically corrupt. But beyond that, Sondland was clear in his testimony that Trump wasn’t actually asking for the investigations themselves, but merely the announcement of them. In other words, he wanted not an investigation of corruption, but the political optics of Ukraine’s declaring that his political opponents were under investigation. What’s more, Sondland also confirmed that Trump seemed not to care a whit about Ukraine—that he only cared about the investigations that could benefit him.

In short, a witness with first-hand knowledge of both U.S. interactions with the Ukrainians and the president’s own conduct today accused President Trump of soliciting a bribe from a foreign head of state. Whether or not this would qualify as a bribe under the criminal law, I would have no hesitation describing it as one if I were a member of Congress considering the impeachment of a president.

Yes, it went that badly for Trump this morning, an it will only get worse.

The Reach To Impeach, Con't

House Intelligence Committee members heard from Marie Yovanovich on Friday and it was devastating for Trump as I pointed out yesterday.  But the real damage may have come from a later closed-doors deposition from diplomat Bill Taylor's aide who overheard DOnald Trump's phone call with EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland about Ukraine.  His name is David Holmes, and he just might have delivered a fatal blow to both Sondland and Trump. WaPo's Aaron Blake:

At three distinct points, we have seen Sondland’s testimony called into question. The first time was when other witnesses said he talked about a quid pro quo with Ukrainian officials on July 10, which Sondland soon confirmed via clarified testimony. The second was this week, when Taylor disclosed that Holmes had overheard a Sondland call with Trump on July 26 that Sondland had failed to mention and in which Trump asked about the investigations he was asking for. “Sondland will address any issues that arise from this in his testimony next week,” his lawyer said Wednesday.

And now Holmes undermines a central claim in Sondland’s testimony: That Sondland didn’t know that Trump and his personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani’s interest in investigating a Ukrainian company that employed Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden had anything to do with the Biden family.

“I noted that there was ‘big stuff’ going on in Ukraine, like a war with Russia,” Holmes says of his conversation with Sondland on July 26, “and Ambassador Sondland replied that he meant ‘big stuff’ that benefits the president, like the ‘Biden investigation’ that Mr. Giuliani was pushing.”

The quote about the “Biden investigation” is key. Sondland said in his deposition that he had pushed for an investigation into Burisma Holdings, which had employed Hunter Biden, but that he didn’t know there was any connection to the Bidens.

Not only is that a lie, we now know Sondland very publicly, in the middle of a Ukrainian restaurant, put Donald Phone on speaker to signify how important He himself was to Trump's operation.  One of the great boneheaded moves in criminal history, no doubt.

It gets worse.

Holmes says Taylor told him that on a June 28 call he had with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky and the “three amigos” — Sondland, special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker and Energy Secretary Rick Perry — “it was made clear that some action on a Burisma/Biden investigation was a precondition for an Oval Office meeting.”

This detail, notably, was not part of Taylor’s own testimony, though Taylor quickly came to believe that such a meeting was indeed conditioned on Ukraine launching such an investigation.

Taylor testified that on the June 28 call, before Zelensky was added to the line, Sondland said he didn’t want interagency officials on the call, because “he wanted to make sure no one was transcribing or monitoring as they added President Zelensky to the call.”

So yes, the quid pro quo was premeditated and involved several US officials in the Trump regime: Rick Perry, Rudy Giuliani, Sondland, as well as Ukrainian criminal fixer Lev Parnas, who is currently singing like a canary to the feds.

Finally, Holmes says he agreed to testify because of the GOP "defenses" of Trump, because he knew they were lies.

Holmes’s account is something he says he didn’t consider to be relevant — until he saw some of the defenses of Trump.

Holmes mentions that Trump defenders have argued that perhaps Trump himself wasn’t personally involved in the quid pro quos. He also mentions a GOP argument that was prominent during Wednesday’s hearing featuring Taylor and top State Department aide George Kent: that the witnesses didn’t have firsthand knowledge of some of the key events.

“I came to realize I had firsthand knowledge regarding certain events on July 26,” he said, referring to the date of his overhearing the Sondland-Trump call, “that had not otherwise been reported and that those events potentially bore on the question of whether the president did, in fact, have knowledge that those officials were using the levers of our diplomatic power to induct the new Ukrainian president to announce the opening of a particular criminal investigation.”

It’s worth noting that, despite early GOP attempts to portray Holmes as a partisan — on Friday they promoted a photo of him shaking hands with Barack Obama — he won an award in 2014 after raising concerns about Obama’s Afghanistan policy. Holmes, who served in Afghanistan, was awarded for his “constructive dissent.”

Holmes doesn’t directly say that his testimony contradicts the GOP’s arguments, but it’s certainly suggested. And it makes his full deposition, which we have yet to see, worth paying close attention to.

Expect that to be released soon, and perhaps for Holmes to testify in open hearing as a result.

Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

It seems like every day we get new information on Trump's Ukraine efforts to pressure the country into fabricating evidence against Joe Biden in order to affect the 2020 race, and today is no different. 

CNN is reporting now that Trump ordered Energy Secretary Rick Perry and both the State Department diplomats at the heart of the mess, former Ukraine special envoy Kurt Volker and EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland, to all meet with Rudy Giuliani in May, well before the July 25th call with Ukraine's president, in order to coordinate a plan of attack against Biden.

President Donald Trump directed Secretary of Energy Rick Perry and two top State Department officials to deal with his private attorney Rudy Giuliani when the Ukrainian President sought to meet Trump, in a clear circumvention of official channels, according to two sources familiar with the conversation. 

Trump believed Ukraine was still rampantly corrupt and said that if President Volodymyr Zelensky wanted to meet with him, Giuliani would have to be convinced first, one source said. 

"If they can satisfy Rudy, they can satisfy the President," a person familiar with the meeting said. 

Trump's push to have Giuliani as gatekeeper is more direct than what was previously disclosed by one of the meeting's participants in his statement to the House last week. It also further demonstrates how significant Giuliani was in brokering access to the President regarding Ukraine policy and in passing messages to other administration officials. 

CNN has reached out to the White House for comment. 

A key accusation in the whistleblower's complaint that has prompted the impeachment probe into the President's dealings with Ukraine is that Giuliani, a private citizen, had been presenting to Ukraine a US policy different than that from US diplomats. 

At the May 23 meeting, Perry, US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland and Kurt Volker, then the State Department's special representative to Ukraine, were reporting back to Trump after they returned from Zelensky's inauguration. 

Their goal was to tell Trump that they had a favorable impression of Zelensky and his government, and that he was a reformer who Trump should trust and engage with, according to three sources familiar with the meeting. 

They were hoping to set up a meeting between Trump and Zelensky, the sources said. They believed Ukraine under Zelensky was a more trusted ally than previous Ukrainian regimes, and that a visit between Trump and Zelensky could demonstrate to the Russian government that the US embraced a free Ukraine, according to two of the sources. 

Notably, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was in Washington on May 23 but he did not attend the meeting with Trump. 

Perry had led the delegation who attended Zelensky's inauguration, and was a central figure in the May meeting with Trump. 

It became clear to the Trump administration officials, the sources said, that they would have to deal with Giuliani. 

Volker hinted last week in speaking to the House how central Giuliani was in the President's foreign policy approach to Ukraine.

So this backs up the AP reporting from a few days ago that Rick Perry was instrumental, and that the carrot was Zelensky's meeting with Trump in DC if Zelensky could deliver something on Biden. And we know that Ambassador Sondland spoke with Donald Trump directly after his now infamous "no quid pro quo" text.

In other words, these bozos have been caught red handed, Rick Perry and Mike Pompeo need to resign at the bare minimum, and Sondland's testimony was pulled at the last minute because it would have been fatal to Trump.

Again, it's up to the Dems to figure out where they want to go on inherent contempt, court fights, and impeachment.

Not-So-Slick Rick, Con't

The completely applicable adage of "The Trump Regime is always actually doing what they accuse Democrats of doing" is an adage not necessarily because it was was Nazi propagandist Joeseph Goebbels most cynical and effective tactic, but because Trump regime folks simply lack the imagination to come up with anything creative other than "Well, what illegal things are we up to?"

As Rudy Giuliani was pushing Ukrainian officials last spring to investigate one of Donald Trump’s main political rivals, a group of individuals with ties to the president and his personal lawyer were also active in the former Soviet republic.

Their aims were profit, not politics. This circle of businessmen and Republican donors touted connections to Giuliani and Trump while trying to install new management at the top of Ukraine’s massive state gas company. Their plan was to then steer lucrative contracts to companies controlled by Trump allies, according to two people with knowledge of their plans.

Their plan hit a snag after Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko lost his reelection bid to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, whose conversation with Trump about former Vice President Joe Biden is now at the center of the House impeachment inquiry of Trump.

But the effort to install a friendlier management team at the helm of the gas company, Naftogaz, would soon be taken up with Ukraine’s new president by U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry, whose slate of candidates included a fellow Texan who is one of Perry’s past political donors.

It’s unclear if Perry’s attempts to replace board members at Naftogaz were coordinated with the Giuliani allies pushing for a similar outcome, and no one has alleged that there is criminal activity in any of these efforts. And it’s unclear what role, if any, Giuliani had in helping his clients push to get gas sales agreements with the state-owned company.

But the affair shows how those with ties to Trump and his administration were pursuing business deals in Ukraine that went far beyond advancing the president’s personal political interests. It also raises questions about whether Trump allies were mixing business and politics just as Republicans were calling for a probe of Biden and his son Hunter, who served five years on the board of another Ukrainian energy company, Burisma.

On Friday, according to the news site Axios, Trump told a group of Republican lawmakers that it had been Perry who had prompted the phone call in which Trump asked Zelenskiy for a “favor” regarding Biden. Axios cited a source saying Trump said Perry had asked Trump to make the call to discuss “something about an LNG (liquefied natural gas) plant.”

While it’s unclear whether Trump’s remark Friday referred specifically to the behind-the-scenes maneuvers this spring involving the multibillion-dollar state gas company, The Associated Press has interviewed four people with direct knowledge of the attempts to influence Naftogaz, and their accounts show Perry playing a key role in the effort. Three of the four spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. The fourth is an American businessman with close ties to the Ukrainian energy sector.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Energy Department said Perry, a former Texas governor and Republican presidential candidate, was not advancing anyone’s personal interests. She said his conversations with Ukrainian officials about Naftogaz were part of his efforts to reform the country’s energy sector and create an environment where Western companies can do business.

The Trump and Giuliani allies driving the attempt to change the senior management at Naftogazt, however, appear to have had inside knowledge of the U.S. government’s plans in Ukraine. For example, they told people that Trump would replace the U.S. ambassador there months before she was actually recalled to Washington, according to three of the individuals interviewed by the AP. One of the individuals said he was so concerned by the whole affair that he reported it to a U.S. Embassy official in Ukraine months ago.

So the mystery of Rick Perry's resignation is now quite clearly solved.  Following up on Saturday night's Last Call, we know that Perry was trying to get Americans on the board of Ukraine's biggest natural gas company.

Among other changes, Perry pushed for Ukraine’s state-owned natural gas company Naftogaz to expand its board to include Americans, two people familiar with the matter said. Two long-time energy executives based in Perry’s home state of Texas were among those under consideration for that role, one source familiar with the administration’s dealings with the company said.

Perry was in deep on the whole Ukraine mess, hence his sudden resignation last week.  Do read the entire piece, Giuliani was in on it too, and the plan is laid out here in rich detail by AP's reporters, Desmond Butler, Mike Biesecker, and Rich Lardner.

Last Call For Not-So-Slick Rick

Trump Energy Secretary Rick Perry is resigning by the end of next month and naturally, people are asking what role he played in the Ukraine/Biden mess, considering Hunter Biden was on the board of a Ukrainian energy company.  While the focus has rightfully been on Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Perry played a role in Trump's efforts to fabricate evidence against the Bidens to use in 2020 too, and that certainly explains his sudden exit.

Energy Secretary Rick Perry urged Ukraine's president to root out corruption and pushed the new government for changes at its state-run oil and gas company, people familiar with his work said Friday — indications that he was more deeply involved than previously known in President Donald Trump’s efforts to pressure officials in Kiev.

The people said they have no indication that Perry explicitly called on Ukrainian officials to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, the issue that has spawned a House impeachment inquiry into Trump. But at the very least, they said, Perry played an active role in the Trump administration's efforts to shape decisions by the newly elected government of President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Among other changes, Perry pushed for Ukraine’s state-owned natural gas company Naftogaz to expand its board to include Americans, two people familiar with the matter said. Two long-time energy executives based in Perry’s home state of Texas were among those under consideration for that role, one source familiar with the administration’s dealings with the company said.

Energy Department spokeswoman Shaylyn Hynes said Perry had advised that the board be expanded. She was not immediately able to comment on whether Perry had suggested names to fill new seats.

A White House spokesman referred questions to DOE.

So just to be clear, Perry's job was to use his influence to get Americans on to a board of an Ukrainian energy company, exactly what Trump is accusing Joe Biden of doing, only this was Perry's stated goal as Energy Secretary.

It gets worse, of course.

Trump has defended his calls for Ukraine to investigate the Bidens, maintaining he has an “obligation to look at corruption.” Text messages released on Thursday showed U.S. diplomats discussing how a potential summit between Zelensky and Trump would depend on Ukraine “getting to the bottom of what happened” in the 2016 U.S. election, which Trump maintains was marred by an unproven conspiracy against him by Democrats and foreign allies.

Perry, who POLITICO reported is expected to resign next month, attended Zelensky's May inauguration in Kiev in place of Vice President Mike Pence. In addition, he was one of the administration’s "three amigos" on Ukrainian policy, along with Kurt Volker, the U.S. special representative for the Ukraine conflict, and Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, as Sondland described their relationship in a July broadcast interview.

And keep in mind Volker has already talked, his damning text messages showing a delightful little quid pro quo game in the works, implicating Sondland, who is expected to talk Tuesday.

Now do you see why the "third amigo" is planning his resignation?  He's up to his neck in this, and he wants out.

Democrats need to get him in front of a committee under oath.

Now.

Trump Cards, Con't

With renewable power sources like wind and solar becoming more cost-effective and efficient every month, the Trump regime has declared war on the planet and is looking to instead prop up coal and nuclear plants by using the power of the government to mandate environment-wrecking energy companies and throttle green initiatives.

Trump administration officials are making plans to order grid operators to buy electricity from struggling coal and nuclear plants in an effort to extend their life, a move that could represent an unprecedented intervention into U.S. energy markets.

The Energy Department would exercise emergency authority under a pair of federal laws to direct the operators to purchase electricity or electric generation capacity from at-risk facilities, according to a memo obtained by Bloomberg News. The agency also is making plans to establish a "Strategic Electric Generation Reserve" with the aim of promoting the national defense and maximizing domestic energy supplies.

“Federal action is necessary to stop the further premature retirements of fuel-secure generation capacity,” says a 41-page draft memo circulated before a National Security Council meeting on the subject Friday.

The plan cuts to the heart of a debate over the reliability and resiliency of a rapidly evolving U.S. electricity grid. Nuclear and coal-fired power plants are struggling to compete against cheap natural gas and renewable electricity. As nuclear and coal plants are decommissioned, regulators have been grappling with how to ensure that the nation’s power system can withstand extreme weather events and cyber-attacks.

Although the memo describes a planned Energy Department directive, there was no indication President Donald Trump had signed off on the action nor when any order might be issued. The document, dated May 29 and distributed Thursday, is marked as a "draft," which is "not for further distribution," and could be used by administration officials to justify the intervention.

While administration officials are still deciding on their final strategy -- and may yet decide against aggressive action -- the memo represents the Energy Department’s latest, most fully developed plan to intervene on behalf of coal and nuclear power plants, pitched to the president’s top security advisers.

Energy Department representatives did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

The notion that solar and wind power are unreliable to the point of constituting a potential threat to national security is ludicrous, especially when pitched against the proven dangers of nuclear power.  Of course this is Trump paying off energy executives who supported him, because this is what Trump does. Paul Waldman:

You might think that Republicans would be outraged about this. We’re talking about the federal government not just “picking winners and losers,” something free-marketeers claim to abhor, but literally ordering utilities to buy a certain kind of fuel, which just happens to be the kind that creates the most pollution and in many cases costs more (don’t worry about the inclusion of nuclear energy; this is really about coal).

But Republicans are not outraged, because as former House speaker John Boehner said yesterday, “There is no Republican Party. There’s a Trump party.” And the rule in the Trump party is: Reward those who serve you, and punish those who don’t.

Any ideological considerations must take a back seat to that principle. Sometimes it means cutting regulations, and sometimes it means increasing regulations; it just depends on who the winners and losers are. Liberals may say mockingly that this proposed rule smacks of socialism, but it isn’t guided by any kind of philosophy of governing. It’s a payoff.

In 2016, Trump repeatedly promised the residents of states such as West Virginia, Kentucky and Pennsylvania that he was going to revive the coal industry. He went to West Virginia, donned a helmet, pantomimed digging with his lips pursed, and said, “For those miners, get ready because you’re going to be working your a–––– off.” Everyone cheered, and it’s hard to blame them, since many of their communities have been devastated by the steady loss of what were once well-paid jobs with good benefits (negotiated by a union, of course). Unlike Clinton, who accepted the reality of coal’s decline and wanted to help those communities find other ways of reviving themselves, Trump simply said that he’d bring back coal.

But the idea that we could eliminate some environmental regulations and thereby bring all the coal jobs back was always ludicrous. Estimates of the number of coal jobs in America vary slightly (see here or here), but they generally come in between 50,000 and 75,000, which means that there are more Americans who work at Arby’s than there are in the entire coal industry. That’s the product of a long-term decline attributable mostly to automation (you don’t need to send 1,000 miners down into the hole with pickaxes anymore) and competition, especially from natural gas, the price of which has plummeted with the fracking boom.

No reasonable person thinks that the coal jobs are coming back, but this was one of the most explicit promises Trump made, and if he doesn’t deliver, it will make everything he said in 2016 look like a scam. And if the market no longer wants coal, Trump will force power plants to buy it.

Trump made promises.  He will keep them by abusing the powers of his office, no matter how much damage it does to the country and the planet, because only his supporters matter to him.  The rest of us are just collateral damage, we're not even Americans, we're not even human, we're "animals".  The irony is that his promises will damage his supporters the most, but as long as they can be convinced that those who are the "enemy" and didn't support Trump are in an even worse place, they'll vote for Trump and the GOP every time.

The constant dehumanization and demonization of the Obama coalition has metastasized into today's GOP.  We are chattel to be ruled, kine to be slaughtered by Trump and his forces, and they want to be on the "winning" side even as it costs them everything.

History says this road leads to apocalypse, and we're running out of time to prevent it.

Trump Gets The Coaled Shoulder

Trump Energy Secretary Rick Perry's big plan to save the coal industry has been completely wrecked by Trump's own appointees to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, who unanimously voted to scrap the Trump regime's plan to require states to use more "reliable" coal and nuclear power (and to stockpile coal and nuclear fuel as a "national security issue") over "unreliable" wind and solar.

As proposed, the rule aimed to improve the resilience and stability of the electrical grid. Citing some electricity problems that struck during the “polar vortex”-induced cold snap of 2014, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry proposed that utility companies should pay coal and nuclear plants to keep weeks of extra fuel on hand.

The Department of Energy, which Perry leads, doesn’t have the power to force utilities to follow such a rule itself. But the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, is charged by Congress with regulating interstate electricity sales and some power utilities. Perry asked FERC’s five commissioners to adopt his proposed rule within 60 days.

The plan was always controversial. Critics argued that Perry’s bailout would harm natural-gas plants, slow the growth of solar and wind energy, and introduce new and costly distortions to U.S. energy markets.

They also doubted the logic of the rule, saying that power plants rarely went down because they didn’t have enough fuel on hand. The Rhodium Group, an economics-research firm, found that only 0.00007 percent of U.S. power-outage hours between 2012 and 2016 were caused by a lack of available fuel.

Energy economists and environmental groups also maintained the rule would effectively subsidize carbon-dioxide pollution, which causes global warming. “Doing nothing [about climate change] is already not merited by economics,” Michael Greenstone, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, said in October. “This is like doubling down.”

Worst of all, critics said, the plan would spike Americans’ electricity bills. The energy-consulting group ICF estimated that the rule would cost ratepayers an extra $800 million to $3.8 billion every year.

In a statement on Monday, FERC thanked Perry for his attention to grid resiliency and said it would continue to research and pay attention to the issue. But individual commissioners were more cutting in their replies.

“The proposed rule had little, if anything, to do with resilience, and was instead aimed at subsidizing certain uncompetitive electric generation technologies,” said Richard Glick, a Trump-appointed FERC commissioner, dubbing the plan “a multi-billion dollar bailout targeted at coal and nuclear generating facilities.”

He added that he was sympathetic to the plight of coal miners and nuclear workers, but that helping them was outside the agency’s legal power. “We have a history in this country of helping those who, through no fault of their own, have been adversely affected by technological and market change. But that is the responsibility of Congress and the state legislatures. It is not a role that the Federal Power Act provides to the commission,” he said.

So, if Trump wants to give King Coal a bailout, Republicans in Congress are going to have to do that. And raise power bills for Americans.  In an election year.

Good luck, guys.

The funny part is Trump is so incompetent, he can't even get his own cronies to approve his own quid pro quo plans to reward wealthy coal baron donors.  This should have been a slam dunk, as Trump has appointed four of the five commissioners on the FERC board, and all five of them said "This is stupid even for Trump".

I mean it's obviously the definition of crony capitalism here.  But it was so obvious that even Trump's own cronies wouldn't do it.

How pathetic is that?

Sunday Long Read: Nukes, Mooks, and Spooks

This week's Sunday Long Read is Michael Lewis's profile on the Trump Department of Energy, currently run by former Texas GOP Gov. Rick Perry (who doesn't know Ukraine from Russia and doesn't bother to check.)  Perry famously said he wanted the agency abolished, and still has no idea what he's supposed to do with it.  That's okay, his boss doesn't either, and that should scare the crap out of all of us.

On the morning after the election, November 9, 2016, the people who ran the U.S. Department of Energy turned up in their offices and waited. They had cleared 30 desks and freed up 30 parking spaces. They didn’t know exactly how many people they’d host that day, but whoever won the election would surely be sending a small army into the Department of Energy, and every other federal agency. The morning after he was elected president, eight years earlier, Obama had sent between 30 and 40 people into the Department of Energy. The Department of Energy staff planned to deliver the same talks from the same five-inch-thick three-ring binders, with the Department of Energy seal on them, to the Trump people as they would have given to the Clinton people. “Nothing had to be changed,” said one former Department of Energy staffer. “They’d be done always with the intention that, either party wins, nothing changes.” 

By afternoon the silence was deafening. “Day 1, we’re ready to go,” says a former senior White House official. “Day 2 it was ‘Maybe they’ll call us?’ " 

“Teams were going around, ‘Have you heard from them?’ ” recalls another staffer who had prepared for the transition. “ ‘Have you gotten anything? I haven’t got anything.’ ” 

“The election happened,” remembers Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, then deputy secretary of the D.O.E. “And he won. And then there was radio silence. We were prepared for the next day. And nothing happened.” Across the federal government the Trump people weren’t anywhere to be found. Allegedly, between the election and the inauguration not a single Trump representative set foot inside the Department of Agriculture, for example. The Department of Agriculture has employees or contractors in every county in the United States, and the Trump people seemed simply to be ignoring the place. Where they did turn up inside the federal government, they appeared confused and unprepared. A small group attended a briefing at the State Department, for instance, only to learn that the briefings they needed to hear were classified. None of the Trump people had security clearance—or, for that matter, any experience in foreign policy—and so they weren’t allowed to receive an education. On his visits to the White House soon after the election, Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, expressed surprise that so much of its staff seemed to be leaving. “It was like he thought it was a corporate acquisition or something,” says an Obama White House staffer. “He thought everyone just stayed.”

Oh, but it gets so much worse.

At this point in their administrations Obama and Bush had nominated their top 10 people at the D.O.E. and installed most of them in their offices. Trump had nominated three people and installed just one, former Texas governor Rick Perry. Perry is of course responsible for one of the D.O.E.’s most famous moments—when in a 2011 presidential debate he said he intended to eliminate three entire departments of the federal government. Asked to list them he named Commerce, Education, and … then hit a wall. “The third agency of government I would do away with ... Education ... the … ahhhh … ahhh … Commerce, and let’s see.” As his eyes bored a hole in his lectern, his mind drew a blank. “I can’t, the third one. I can’t. Sorry. Oops.” The third department Perry wanted to get rid of, he later recalled, was the Department of Energy. In his confirmation hearings to run the department Perry confessed that when he called for its elimination he hadn’t actually known what the Department of Energy did—and he now regretted having said that it didn’t do anything worth doing. 

The question on the minds of the people who currently work at the department: Does he know what it does now? D.O.E. press secretary Shaylyn Hynes assures us that “Secretary Perry is dedicated to the missions of the Department of Energy.” And in his hearings, Perry made a show of having educated himself. He said how useful it was to be briefed by former secretary Ernest Moniz. But when I asked someone familiar with those briefings how many hours Perry had spent with Moniz, he laughed and said, “That’s the wrong unit of account.” With the nuclear physicist who understood the D.O.E. perhaps better than anyone else on earth, according to one person familiar with the meeting, Perry had spent minutes, not hours. “He has no personal interest in understanding what we do and effecting change,” a D.O.E. staffer told me in June. “He’s never been briefed on a program—not a single one, which to me is shocking.”

So if there's a real crisis that the Department of Energy -- or any Trump era executive agency has to deal with, because they're all in the same boat -- has to deal with, the potential for failure is spectacular.  The distinct issue with the Department of Energy is these are the guys that guard our nuclear weapons and track down rogue nuclear material, and the Trump regime could not give less of a good god damn about it.

The GOP pathology of starving government until it cannot work and then declare "see, we told you government is a failure" is being taken to its endpoint, and that endpoint is a government that cannot perform the most basic of functions, headed by people who have no idea how or any desire to even try to fix the problem.

And so it goes in the Age of Trump.

Last Call For Not Having The Energy For Climate Change

The Trump regime embarrasses America again, this time with Energy Secretary Rick Perry spouting climate denier nonsense as the official position of the Klep-Trump-cracy.

Energy Secretary Rick Perry told CNBC on Monday he does not believe carbon dioxide emissions from human activity are the main driver of climate change, joining the EPA administrator in casting doubt on the conclusion of some of the government's top scientists.

Asked whether CO2 emissions are primarily responsible for climate change, Perry told CNBC's "Squawk Box": "No, most likely the primary control knob is the ocean waters and this environment that we live in."

"The fact is this shouldn't be a debate about, 'Is the climate changing, is man having an effect on it?' Yeah, we are. The question should be just how much, and what are the policy changes that we need to make to effect that?" he said.

In March, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt told "Squawk Box" he does not believe carbon dioxide is a primary contributor to global warming.

Those statements contradict the public stance of the Environmental Protection Agency, at least until recently.

We're still "having the debate" so of course any action taken by our new government would be "rash" at this point, despite decades of data and literally dozens of other countries choosing to take action that we now refuse to.

The EPA's webpage on the causes of climate change used to state, "Carbon dioxide is the primary greenhouse gas that is contributing to recent climate change." The EPA recently took down the web page containing that statement.

Perry and Pruitt's views are also at odds with the conclusion of NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Despite those conclusions, Perry said, "This idea that science is just absolutely settled and if you don't believe it's settled then somehow you're another neanderthal, that is so inappropriate from my perspective."

Being a skeptic about climate change issues is "quite all right," he said, suggesting that skepticism is a sign of a "wise, intellectually engaged person."

Gravity isn't "settled science" and neither is the earth being round, so questioning that makes me smart like Rick!  At least, that's how the logic goes.  If you don't believe in science, it still doesn't give a damn about you personally but it still goes about working anyway.

Last Call For The Trump-go Cult

At this point, the Cult of Dear Leader Trump has reached Jim Jones/David Koresh/Charles Manson levels of insanity, as CNBC's John Harwood reports.

Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump has displayed various reactions to the pressures of his job, from angry tweets to effusive exaggerations to self-defeating candor. 

On Monday, Trump tried something new: bathing in praise from his Cabinet in front of TV cameras. 

After a weekend dominated by discussion of whether he had committed obstruction of justice, the president called in reporters for what he billed as his first full Cabinet meeting. He began with an opening statement laced with the sort of wild self-congratulatory boasts that are his trademark.

"Never has there been a president with few exceptions … who has passed more legislation, done more things," Trump declared, even though Congress, which is controlled by his party, hasn't passed any major legislation. 

He hailed his plan for the "single biggest tax cut in American history," even though he hasn't proposed a plan and Congress hasn't acted on one. He said "no one would have believed" his election could have created so many new jobs over the past seven months (1.1 million), even though more jobs (1.3 million) were created in the previous seven months. 

Typically, a president's initial comments mark the end of on-camera coverage of White House Cabinet meetings, with administration aides then escorting members of the small press "pool" out of the room. But Trump invited reporters to remain as he called on his senior-most advisers to "go around, name your position" and say a few words about the administration's work. 

"Start with Mike," Trump said, referring to his vice president. Mike Pence, whom Trump kept in the dark for two weeks after learning that then-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn had given the vice president false information earlier this year, responded by saying that serving as Trump's number two is "the greatest privilege of my life." 

"An honor to be here," said Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who recently offered his resignation amid strains over the Russia investigation. 

"My hat is off to you," said Energy Secretary Rick Perry, referring to the president's explanation of his decision to abandon a global climate change agreement. 

"We thank you for the opportunity and blessing you've given us to serve your agenda and the American people," said Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, the subject of recent reports that Trump may fire him.

The kayfabe continues.  The true believers will believe.  Most of all, they will vote.

But please, tell me another one about Obama's "cult of personality".

I Don't Have The Energy Anymore To Care

Trump looks like he's going to name former Texas GOP Gov. Rick Perry to head the Department of Energy.  You know, the infamous third department Perry couldn't name in the GOP debates when asked which federal departments he wanted to get rid of.

Donald Trump has narrowed his search for energy secretary to four people, with former Texas Governor Rick Perry the leading candidate.

People familiar with the president-elect’s selection process said two Democratic senators from energy-producing states -- Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin of West Virginia -- are also in the mix, along with Ray Washburne, a Dallas investor and former chairman of the Republican National Committee.

If Trump picks any of the four he’ll break with recent tradition of putting scientists at the top of the Energy Department. Among other things, the agency is responsible for policies on the safe handling of nuclear material and on emerging energy technologies.

Trump met with Perry and Washburne while attending the Army-Navy football game in Baltimore on Saturday. It was at least the second time he’d spoken to the men for potential roles in the new administration. Trump interviewed Heitkamp at Trump Tower in New York on Dec. 2, and is scheduled to meet with Manchin on Monday.

Again, the Obama administration's Department of Energy, under Dr. Ernest Moniz, was vital in coming up with the president's clean energy plan. Under Perry, it will certainly become the Trump's climate change denial arm as America will get back into the natural gas and nuclear plant business. After all, we'll need to award plenty of government power plant projects to Trump's oil, gas, and coal donors, and we'll have to purge those pesky climate change scientists after all.

Meanwhile, Trump's friends in Saudi Arabia and Russia are happily looking at even more oil production cuts to send oil prices up worldwide.  I sure hope you didn't think the Trump era was going to continue with gas prices at $2.00 a gallon, did you?

Who did you think was going to end up paying for those hundreds of billions in oil profits?

Mexico?

So Who's Next Out Of The Clown Car?

Good question.  The Washington Post's Philip Bump crunches the numbers in the aftermath of Scott Walker's disastrous run:

Walker, like many other candidates, saw a bump in the polls shortly after he announced. But the top of that bump wasn't as high as his poll numbers had reached earlier on either nationally or in Iowa, where he was consistently the front-runner for months. He announced, he got the bump -- and then it vanished. 

The vanishing, it's worth noting, happened shortly after the first debate, in which Walker offered an unimpressive performance. 

That sort of erosion isn't as common as it seems. Rick Perry saw it in 2012. Rudy Giuliani saw it when the bottom fell out in 2008. Usually, fade-outs are less steep and more extended. Walker plummeted.

Specifically, Bump found the high point of Walker's national polling since announcing and measured the change in that number, then did that for the rest of the GOP field.

Walker and Perry had the worst drops in national polling averages since announcing.  They are both now out.

The lowest-performing candidate left is now Rand Paul, but the continual zero candidates (Gilmore, Graham, Pataki, Jindal) are still at zero too.  There's not too much pressure on people who started with nothing to leave, they can only go up (case in point, Fiorina.)  However, these guys are to the point of desperation now, needing attention and donors, and are willing to say whatever they need to in order to get both.

Also, both candidates out have been governors who couldn't catch on nationally.  That means Santorum or Christie.

I think Rand Paul will stick around.  He's already invested a lot of cash in his Kentucky GOP caucus scheme in order to be able to run for both offices, dropping out before the caucus and he loses his investment (and he's got his dad's network to fall back on.)  Besides, like the other sitting GOP senators in the race, he's still got his cards to play during the upcoming Shutdown Season, something Perry and Walker didn't have.

Santorum on the other hand, well, let's just say the guy knows what losing looks like, because he's been there before, and he's there now.

I'd keep an eye on him being the next out, if I had to venture a guess.

Going in the other direction, well, it's Trump, Fiorina, and Carson, the three candidates who haven't held office.  Seeing Kasich and Cruz be the only two politicians in office who have improved their positions since announcing is notable.

Keep an eye on them, too.

Last Call For Goobye, Governor Goodhair

And Rick Perry is the first out of the clown car.

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) said Friday he is suspending his presidential campaign, becoming the first casualty in a 17-person Republican presidential field.

Perry announced the news on Friday at an event in St. Louis, Missouri.

"I am suspending my campaign for the presidency of the United States," he said Friday at an event in St. Louis, according to prepared remarks sent out by his campaign.

The former governor's campaign has struggled in recent weeks after he failed to qualify for the Fox News main stage debate in early August.

Perry also failed to qualify for the second main stage Republican debate, which will be held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, next week.

Get used to that losing feeling, Republicans.   You'll get to experience a lot more of it soon.

Last Call For In Mortal Perry

Looks like the first casualty of last Thursday's GOP debate isn't one of the also-rans with 1% or so, or the disaster that is Trump, but somebody who given his performance in 2012 should be doing far better than he is right now: former Texas Gov. Rick Perry may be the first out of the Clown Bus.

Former Texas governor Rick Perry's presidential campaign is no longer paying its staff because fundraising has dried up, while his cash-flush allied super PAC is preparing to expand its political operation to compensate for the campaign's shortcomings, campaign and super PAC officials and other Republicans familiar with the operation said late Monday.

Perry, who has struggled to gain traction in his second presidential run, has stopped paying his staff at the national headquarters in Austin as well as in the early caucus and primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, according to a Republican familiar with the Perry campaign who demanded anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.

Perry campaign manager Jeff Miller told staff last Friday, the day after the first Republican presidential debate, that they would no longer be paid and are free to look for other jobs -- and, so far at least, most aides have stuck with Perry -- according to this Republican.

"As the campaign moves along, tough decisions have to be made in respect to both monetary and time related resources," Miller said in a statement. "Governor Perry remains committed to competing in the early states and will continue to have a strong presence in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina."

Katon Dawson, Perry's South Carolina campaign chairman and head of a six-person staff there, said, "Money is extremely tight. We all moved to volunteer status." But, he added, "Our team is working as hard as it was last week."

Let's face it folks, the smart money was never on this idiot.  He crashed and burned in 2012 after his famous "I'll close three government departments" disaster when he could only remember two of them, and even Republicans realized the last person people were going to vote for was another idiot of a Texas GOP governor.

Perry (like Huckabee and Santorum, also in the basement of the poll numbers) is a proven loser.  Republicans don't like losers. The news that Perry doesn't have the cash to keep going makes him even more of a loser, so he'll lose even more fundraising.  Republican fundraisers are tired of backing losers, it's expensive and embarrassing.

That SuperPAC will keep him going or a while, but that too will stop taking in money as the deck reshuffles after the rise of Trump.

But barring a miracle, Perry's done.

Paxton, Some Heat

It looks like Texas GOP Attorney General Ken Paxton, who's been spending the last six weeks having one long temper tantrum over same-sex marriage, suddenly has far bigger problems to deal with in the form of a securities fraud investigation that could land him in prison for the rest of his life.

The criminal investigation against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has taken a more serious turn, with special prosecutors now planning to present a first-degree felony securities fraud case against him to a Collin County grand jury, News 8 has learned.

Special prosecutor Kent Schaffer told News 8 Wednesday afternoon that the Texas Rangers uncovered new evidence during the investigation that led to the securities fraud allegations against the sitting attorney general.

"The Rangers went out to investigate one thing, and they came back with information on something else," Schaffer told News 8. "It's turned into something different than when they started."

Schaffer, a Houston criminal defense attorney, said the securities fraud allegations involve amounts well in excess of $100,000. He declined to comment specifics of the fraud allegations.

A first-degree felony conviction is punishable by up to life in prison.

Now, securities fraud isn't sexy or anything, but an attorney general facing a felony fraud indictment is a pretty big deal.  I'm interested to see how this plays out.  Paxton is such a raging asshole that he can't have made too many friends among prosecutors and cops in Texas.  If there's a special prosecutor that was looking for one crime and managed to find a much bigger one hiding nearby, it's a pretty safe bet ol' Ken here has some pretty dirty laundry.

How he made it this far, well that might be a question for, say, Rick Perry.

Who is facing his own investigation.

Last Call For Texas Wreckonomics

With former Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry back in the race, The Kroog revisits the "Texas Miracle" that Perry touted in 2012 and finds things are not nearly as rosy.

The facts: For many years, economic growth in Texas has consistently outpaced growth in the rest of America. But that long run ended in 2015, with employment growth in Texas dropping well below the national average and a fall in leading indicators pointing to a further slowdown ahead. In most states, this slowdown would be no big deal; occasional underperformance is just a fact of life. But everything is bigger in Texas, including inflated expectations, so the slowdown has come as something of a shock.

Now, there’s no mystery about what is happening: It’s all about the hydrocarbons. Texans like to point out that their state’s economy is a lot more diversified than it was in J.R. Ewing’s day, and they’re right. But Texas still has a disproportionate share of the U.S. oil and gas industry, and it benefited far more than most other states from the fracking boom. By my estimates, about half the energy-related jobs created by that boom since it began in the middle of the last decade were in Texas, and this extractive-sector windfall accounted for about a third of the difference between growth in Texas and growth in the rest of the country.

What about the other two-thirds? Like the rest of the Sunbelt, Texas is still benefiting from the long southward shift of America’s population that began with the coming of widespread air-conditioning; average January temperature remains a powerful predictor of regional growth. Texas also attracts new residents with its permissive land-use policies, which have kept housing cheap.

Now one of the three big drivers of Texas growth has gone into reverse, as low world oil prices are bringing the fracking boom to a screeching halt. Hey, things like that happen to every state now and then.

But Texas wasn’t supposed to be like other states. It was supposed to be the shining exemplar of the economic payoff to reverse Robin-Hood economics. So its recent disappointments hit the right-wing cause hard — especially coming on the heels of the Kansas debacle.

So no, Perry's second term set Texas up for a disaster and now the state is cutting back even more on social programs. It's amazing how tax cuts for the state's top earners manage to not create anything but more money for the state's top earners.

Stopped Clock Is Right Alert

Today's contestant: Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, at a South Carolina barbecue.

“Something I want you all to think about is that the next president of the United States, whoever that individual may be, could choose up to three, maybe even four members of the Supreme Court,” he said. “Now this isn't about who's going to be the president of the United States for just the next four years. This could be about individuals who have an impact on you, your children, and even our grandchildren. That's the weight of what this election is really about.” 

“That, I will suggest to you, is the real question we need to be asking ourselves,” he continued. “What would those justices look like if, let's be theoretical here and say, if it were Hillary Clinton versus Rick Perry? And if that won't make you go work, if I do decide to get into the race, then I don't know what will.”

Yes.  Rick Perry was 100% right about something actually important.  Steve Benen explains:

To appreciate why, consider a chart.

 

If we assume that the current court does not change for the remainder of the Obama presidency – and really, no one can even say that for sure – three justices will be at least 80 by Inauguration Day 2017. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will be 83. (In the chart, blue lines refer to justices appointed by Democratic presidents; red lines refer to justices appointed by Republican presidents.) 

The significance of these statistics is important: as the Bloomberg Politics piece added, “The average retirement age for a U.S. Supreme Court justice is 78.7, a 2006 study in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy found.”

Imagine what the Court would look like with Scalia and Kennedy replaced by Hillary Clinton picks.

Now imagine what the Court would look like with Ginsberg and Breyer replaced by Jeb Bush's nominees.

Still think there's no difference between the two parties, and no reason to vote for Hillary Clinton if she's the nominee?

In Which Zandar Answers Your Burning Questions

BooMan, on Rick Perry:

“Texas has been criticized for having a large number of uninsured,” he said, “but that’s what Texans wanted. They did not want a large government program forcing everyone to purchase insurance.”

Texas wanted “a large number of [medically] uninsured” people in their state. 

Why would anyone want that?

Well, it's really simple.  Texans believe Obamacare is a handout to blacks and Latinos from a black President.  They'd rather see blacks and Latinos go without insurance rather than help all uninsured Texans for two reasons, one, because they've been convinced they're "paying for healthcare" for people too lazy to go buy insurance, and two, because to Texans like Rick Perry, blacks and Latinos are subhuman scum who deserve to die.

Long and the short of it.

Your Sunday Long Read

The White House and CDC have been telling hospitals to prepare for possible Ebola patients for a while now.  It would have been nice if the hospital where one of them showed up last week actually listened, because the entire process was a carnival of errors that came close to a medical disaster in Texas.

Health officials’ handling of the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the United States continued to raise questions Friday, after the hospital that is treating the patient and that mistakenly sent him home when he first came to its emergency room acknowledged that both the nurses and the doctors in that initial visit had access to the fact that he had arrived from Liberia.

For reasons that remain unclear, nurses and doctors failed to act on that information, and released the patient under the erroneous belief that he had a low-grade fever from a viral infection, allowing him to put others at risk of contracting Ebola. Those exposed included several schoolchildren, and the exposure has the potential to spread a disease in Dallas that has already killed more than 3,000 people in Africa.

On Thursday, the hospital, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, released a statement essentially blaming a flaw in its electronic health records system for its decision to send the patient — Thomas E. Duncan, a Liberian national visiting his girlfriend and relatives in the United States — home the first time he visited its emergency room, Sept. 25. It said there were separate “workflows” for doctors and nurses in the records so the doctors did not receive the information that he had come from Africa.

But on Friday evening, the hospital effectively retracted that portion of its statement, saying that “there was no flaw” in its electronic health records system. The hospital said “the patient’s travel history was documented and available to the full care team in the electronic health record (E.H.R.), including within the physician’s workflow.”

The hospital had said previously that the patient’s condition during his first visit did not warrant admission and that he was not exhibiting symptoms specific to Ebola.

The admission came on a day when health officials narrowed down to 10 the number of people considered most at risk of contracting Ebola after coming into contact with Mr. Duncan. They also moved the four people who had shared an apartment with him from their potentially contaminated quarters, as local and federal officials tried to assure the public that the disease was contained despite initial missteps here.

Now, this could be the hospital administration throwing the ER staff into the grinder, and it certainly wouldn't be the first time that ever happened in the annals of hospital administration politics (yes, my mother was indeed a hospital nurse for 25 years) but it seems to me that somebody dropped the ball here and sent the guy home.

The larger issue is that Texas's healthcare system is overloaded and that of course Gov. Rick Perry and the state's GOP controlled legislature turned down billions in Medicare expansion money to help fix that, so the real responsibility lies in the hands of the Republicans running the show.

As you read the article, keep in mind that Republicans are demanding a better healthcare system, but refuse to do anything to actually pay for it, administer it, or take federal dollars for it, some of which have already been paid for by Texas taxpayers.  Hey, if Texas wants to pay for Medicare expansion for California and New York and get nothing in return, well, that's your call, guys.

Your Libertarian Moment Of The Day

So let's all strive to deal with Ebola in a responsible manner that respects the rights of citizens and reasonably protects the populace OH WAIT IT'S TEXAS YEEHAW MUTHA BITCHEZ!

Health officials say the family of a Liberian man diagnosed with Ebola while visiting them in Dallas left their home, and that's why a "control order" was put in place to keep them inside. 

Family members of Thomas Eric Duncan were ordered Wednesday night to stay home or face criminal charges. Four to five people, who are not showing symptoms of the deadly disease at this time, were put under the quarantine by Texas health officials. 

The group is not allowed to leave their home in Dallas and cannot visit with anyone outside the home, the State Health Department said on Thursday. 

"We have tried and true protocols to protect the public and stop the spread of this disease," Texas Health Commissioner Dr. David Lakey said. "This order gives us the ability to monitor the situation in the most meticulous way." 

The family must also be available to give blood samples and be monitored until the incubation period for Ebola has passed on Oct. 19.

Glad the state with the largest number of uninsured Americans led by a governor that has repeatedly said that heath care is not a government issue is suddenly very worried now about the government stepping in on a public health issue.