THE SWAMP
The chant echoed through Donald Trump’s boisterous rallies leading up to Election Day: “Drain the swamp! Drain the swamp! Drain the swamp!”
“We are fighting for every citizen that believes that government should serve the people, not the donors and not the special interests,” the billionaire real estate developer promised exuberant supporters at his last campaign rally in Manchester, N.H.
But just days later, there is little evidence that the president-elect is seeking to restrain wealthy interests from having access and influence in his administration.
It’s not just corporate lobbyists who are playing early, visible roles in the new power structure. Some of Trump’s biggest political donors are shaping the incoming administration, including Rebekah Mercer, a daughter of billionaire Robert Mercer, who is figuring prominently in behind-the-scenes discussions, according to people familiar with the transition.
Mercer is among four major donors appointed by Trump Friday to a 16-person executive committee overseeing his transition. The others are campaign finance chairman Steven Mnuchin, New York financier Anthony Scaramucci and Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel.
Meanwhile, top campaign fundraisers and a raft of lobbyists tied to some of the country’s wealthiest industries have been put in charge of hiring and planning for specific federal agencies. They include J. Steven Hart, chairman of the law and lobbying shop Williams & Jensen; Michael McKenna, an energy company lobbyist who is overseeing planning for the Energy Department; and Dallas fundraiser Ray Washburne, was has been tapped to oversee the Commerce Department.
Billionaires who served as Trump’s policy advisers, such as Oklahoma oil executive Harold Hamm, are under consideration for Cabinet positions.
— Donors and lobbyists already shaping Trump’s ‘drain the swamp’ administration, Matea Gold and Tom Hamburger, Washington Post, today
LOL. LOL. So how about a new chant for protesters: DRAIN THE SWAP!?
Why not begin this in, say, Youngstown? With people who display their driver’s licenses bearing their Ohio addresses?
Funny what doormats Trump & Friends think Democrats are that next election they won’t campaign on this. On second thought, why would they care? The damage will be done by then, and Trump will still be president anyway.
But Sanders and Warren and others still need to start telling the public about this now, since it will otherwise get no attention even if the news media does focus on this like they did on Clinton’s emails. Which they won’t.
____
UPDATE:
Asked about the tensions, and about Kushner’s role in the leadership change at the transition team, Trump spokesman Jason Miller said, “Anybody seeing today’s news about the appointment of Vice President-elect Mike Pence to run the Presidential Transition Team realizes that President-elect Donald J. Trump is serious about changing Washington whether the town likes it or not. This might ruffle the delicate sensitivities of the well-heeled two-martini lunch set, but President-elect Trump isn’t fighting for them, he’s fighting for the hard-working men and women outside the Beltway who don’t care for insider bickering.”
It’s not uncommon for rivalries to emerge inside campaigns and administrations as advisers jockey to place allies in key roles and advance their policy priorities. But the level of internecine conflict during Trump’s drive toward the GOP nomination was so extreme that it sometimes resulted in conflicting directives for even simple hiring and spending decisions.
— Trump team rivalries spark infighting, Kenneth P. Vogel, Nancy Cook and Alex Isenstadt, Politico, late last night
This is about as Orwellian as anything I’ve ever heard. This is profoundly sick.
I’m done posting on this. There’s nothing more for me to say. Other than this: Does anyone really think that the public would not have known about these people and their role in funding Trump’s campaign and their getting what they were paying for, if Sanders had been the nominee?
Anyone?
I know that this is hard for you to post about but I would like to thank you for doing so at least this once. Each post of facts is important and may be very useful on the future to stop another candidate like Trump in the future.
Thank You for doing the hard posts that you need to. I for one appreciate it.
Thank you so very much. Mostly I’ve received really intense criticism from people who I’d thought were on my side.
Appreciate your bothering to post that comment.
Bev,
What do you want Trump to do? Go down to the gas station, grab the attendant and say “you’re going to head my transition team>”
Gee Sammy, how thoughtful of you to be so condescending. Maybe he should start by putting his former construction manager in charge for starters: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/to-donald-trump-my-former-boss_us_58276828e4b02d21bbc907c7
I second Ray’s comment. Thank you Bev
You’re very welcome, Mark. Thank you so much. I didn’t see your comment until just now, but I’m glad I did. I really appreciate it.
Beverly
no reason you should be done posting on this. maybe done for now. and maybe not quite so often, but we will need help holding the dems… and the progressives… feet to the fire if we have any chance of surviving the next four years and building a coalition for the future.
and probably no need to answer the sixth graders in the back of the room who say the first thing that comes into their minds if they think it will get a laugh from their friends.
[and maybe work a little on telling the difference between enemies and friends who just disagree with you.]
coberly,
Trump also knows that CO2 global warming is a hoax and a con. Expect corresponding policy moves and a big economic boost.
Beverly,
I think the issue which strikes you as so important is actually not the biggest. Let’s pose this in graphic terms: : DONALD TRUMP IS A CORRUPT BUSINESSMAN WHO RECEIVED AID FROM OTHER BUSSINESSMEN DURING THE CAMPAIGN AND NOW THEY’RE CARVING UP THE PROFITS.
Seriously, does this come as a surprise to liberals? Or even to anyone else? It’s not as if Nobel laureates routinely get together in this country to advise successful politicians on whom they should hire to fill office posts. Who on earth did you imagine that Donald Trump would listen to or give offices to, if not to people pretty much just like him?
Now lets suppose we’d built a “Bernie-bot” — a little drone, made in the hundreds of millions, which we’d shipped off each day to fly about the head of every single American of voting age, to pipe into their ears each day such fascinating news as “August Meckler of Philadelphia just contributed 90.000 dollars to the Trump campaign. He’s a man who owns three TV stations and who wants regulators to approve a fourth! Sherman Thompson of Kansas just donated 2 million dollars to an anonymous political action committee.” Every day, without fail. Just like Bernie, Wonderful thought, right?
Now suppose you are an out of work plumber or carpenter or road construction manager in central Ohio, worrying about your bills and your wife’s unemployed cousin, and so forth. And you’ve got that damned drone at your ear yammering about you don’t case what because you’ve got enough on your plate already. You know Hillary isn’t going to ever lift a finger that will help you? So what’s wrong with Trump? He’s a businessman, he knows other businessmen, who really cares about the frigging details?
You get my point, perhaps? What I think Hillary should have said is something like: “We’ve got to patch the busted roads in this country. Our highways could be safer. We’ve got bridges falling down which need work. Every city in America’s got a sewage system which is fity years old or more and which desperately needs renovation. We’re going to fix this country up and I’m pledging to spend a hundred billion dollars a year to do that. We need people who can build roads to do that, and electricians and people who understand sewer systems and people who can build hospitals and people who can get their hands dirty doing all the other jobs that need doing. Are you with me?”
But Hillary couldn’t say that. It wasn’t the message she wanted to deliver, or knew how to deliver, or saw any sense in delivering, even when people pleaded with her and her entourage.
Y’know, I expect Donald Trump is going to be pretty damn awful, but maybe we dodged a different catastrophe by not electing Hillary. That’s the thought I’m coming to.
Shupp
maybe another catastrophe like 2008. but at least i wouldn’t have to worry about Trump’s brownshirts beating people in the streets.
i doubt Trump’s “business” people know anything about actual work. what they know is the “big deal”… how to use money to build power to cheat people out of everything they have. their hands are dirty, but not from honest work.
“Every city in America’s got a sewage system which is fity years old or more and which desperately needs renovation. We’re going to fix this country up and I’m pledging to spend a hundred billion dollars a year to do that.”
And the people in the hinterland would say, “The cities have more money than we do, let them pay to fix their own damned pipes.”
Warren
They do. That is, city people pay most of the taxes for infrastructure in this country. HInterland people don’t even pay enough taxes to bring them the water they need for their crops, or the roads they need to get them to market. Or the government that finally protected them from the railroads “what the traffic will bear” pricing. Or the armies that protect them from having to learn enough Russian to say “yes boss.”
The trouble with hinterland people… and I am one of them these days, is that they are stupid. They believe everything Paul Harvey tells them on their lunch break.
Some day I’ll tell you a funny story about Ayn Rand, John Galt, and Tom Paine.
heh!
Trump’s new horrid corruption, not being tough on wall street is the same stuff that DNC mains said Bernie would be not be able to stop.
But HRC was more likely to let the wall street corruption gewt done while taking care of gays and planned parenthood.
The former dem voters in Pa don’t care for how minutely less bad the democrat is.
I do not disagree, Coberly. I am only saying that that argument would not have won Clinton any hinterland votes.
We both agree that the cities do not need the central government to pay for their sewer systems or school systems.
Warren
i think i agree that we don’t need the feds to help the cities. i’d have to see real numbers to be reasonably sure about this. a guess would suggest that “some” cities might need “some” help. but the tax money for that help would mostly come from other cities, the hinterland still does not pay out as much in taxes as it gets back in services they cannot supply for themselves.
as for the argument that (might) win the hinterland for the dems…. i think it’s too late for that. has been for ten years. obama, whatever good he did that i missed, and whatever excuses he has (republican obstruction) did not deliver for working people. there was reason to expect that neither would Hillary.
so we are going to have a few years at least of Trumpism and Ryanism which are very dangerous.
Seems folks thought Clinton’s policies were more dangerous, and would be irreversible. For instance, many people consider illegal immigration and chain migration a big problem. Especially those whose jobs are threatened by it. If all the illegal immigrants are given amnesty and the border is not secured, then those policies can never be reversed. The democrats will have a lock on the immigrant vote, they will continue to vote for and implement the socialist policies of the banana republics they left, and we will see the U.S. become just another banana republic.
At least we won’t have to make laws to prevent people from leaving, because there will be nowhere left to go.
What is really interesting is that the ACA website is being built primarily by immigrants. So much for “jobs Americans won’t do.”
Warren
and we were doing so well.
the essence of a banana republic is that it is run by a dictatorship in the interest of an international corporation. sorry to have to tell you this, but you have just elected a banana republican.
if those illegal aliens were made legal they would not take jobs away from “real” americans because they would be much harder to exploit at low wages, and when the people who hire illegal aliens were put in jail, instead of the poor people just trying to survive, the reason for the illegal immigration would evaporate.
i don’t like excessive “immigration” myself. haven’t liked it since the year the Rhine froze over and your people crossed it and spoiled my people’s good thing. but i don’t think essentially racist hysteria and treating human beings cruelly is the answer… at least not in this age when we have better ways.
Those immigrants aren’t taking your jobs, they are creating jobs and paying taxes.
in any case they are not the problem that an essentially facist government is going to create for US.
my guess is that people like you can’t get past a superficial fear of “my money, my precious money” and are easily led by the real predators into hating the wrong people, while the bankers pick your pocket.
wages in this country started to fall, and jobs went overseas, before there was any “immigrant problem” (unless you count the Irish), because the bankers insisted upon a “strong dollar,” which made it desirable for corporations to locate overseas. the last recession was caused by the banks. who, absent decent government oversight, continued to steal people’s homes throughout the “recovery,” while wages dropped because of “excess labor supply” and lack of unions to level the playing field. .
.
we were told in my part of the country that the loss of jobs in logging was because of the spotted owl.
we were not told about automation of the mills, and shipping the logs overseas were prices were higher.
didn’t stop the hero loggers from going out and shooting spotted owls.
it’s not that any particular party, or amount of education, is particularly stupid, it’s that all humans are not as much evolved beyond chimpanzees as they think they are. We are all suckers for the Big Lie. Always have been.
It takes a genius like LIncoln or Roosevelt to move civilization beyond each new circle of lies and self deceptions people create for themselves.
you are looking at people (Ryan) who would move people back before the New Deal, and back before Emancipation if they could… except that they have learned that whites are as good as blacks and its cheaper to rent than to buy… and back before the American Revolution… except for the rhetoric… the new aristocracy is okay without the titles as long as they have the money.
and they have always been able to find one of the “little people” to write their lies and do their dirty work.
which, under the circumstances, is probably not a bad career choice for them.
“[When] the people who hire illegal aliens were put in jail….”
When was that? I must have missed it. You can be sure Clinton would not have done THAT.
Employers are now required to use I-9 forms to verify employment eligibility. If an employer did not do that, and has hired illegal immigrants, then the hiring manager spend one hour in jail for every man-hour of illegal employment. (And, of course, the person working without a permit is deported.)
Now, one reform we need NOW is, if you are given an immigrant visa, permanent resident visa, whatever they call it, that IS your “green card.” As it is now, people come here legally as immigrants, but are not allowed to work until their green card paperwork comes through, which can be a very long time. That is insane.
Warren
i could be wrong about the grammar, but I think “when the employers of illeagal aliens” is in what is called subjunctive mode and thereby alerts the reader to “a statement contrary to fact,” that is, not a lie, but the kind of statement that follows “if..” in a sentence. As in, “if I were an apple on a tree.”
i did not understand your second paragraph. are you speaking subjunctively?
yes, what you describe in your third paragraph sounds insane. that might be the kind of government stupidity we can agree about… hopefully do something about. but the government is stupid for a reason…. no more stupid than the average corporation for all that… it is very hard to get something done when a lot of people don’t agree with what you are trying to do.
Lincoln understood this. It took him four years and 600 thousand deaths to free the slaves. Up to the last minute there were people who wanted to just write off the 600 thousand and return to the status quo ante (bellum). and during the four years there were radical republicans who wanted Lincoln to move too fast… too fast for the country to keep up and would have lost all.
for now i think the green card situation is low priority. first priority is getting people to understand why they need Social Security and Medicare and labor unions… or some reliable substitute… and then and only then step carefully forward to see to what degree the Republican agenda can actually help them.
you won’t get there. the R’s have all the best lies. and the Dems don’t even seem to understand the problem.
First, it’s a MOOD, not a mode. Second, the construction, “WHEN the people who hire illegal aliens were put in jail…” is past tense, not present tense subjective mood. As you point out, that requires IF, not WHEN. Or you can start with WERE (IS in the present tense subjective mood), as in, “Were the people who hire illegal aliens put in jail…”
“the government is stupid for a reason…. no more stupid than the average corporation for all that…”
Perhaps, but stupidity in corporations leads to loss of revenue, and perhaps to the failure of the business entirely. Stupidity in government just means the government throws more money that way.
“It took [Lincoln] four years and 600 thousand deaths to free the slaves.”
That was merely a pleasant side-effect. His goal was to preserve the Union, with or without slavery.
Warren
you do better when you comment on pseudo economics.
you don’t know a damn thing about grammar or Lincoln.
here is the first page from Google on subjunctive MODE
Understandig the Spanish subjuntive mode in English? – Learn …
https://www.italki.com/question/197868
Hi guys, this question is for advanced Spanish students as well as for advanced English students whose mother tongue is Spanish: Could you please share your …
El subjuntivo 2/ The subjuntive mode 2: Nivel Avanzado … – AbeBooks
http://www.abebooks.com/subjuntivo-subjuntive-mode-Nivel…/bd
Synopsis: El subjuntivo 2 provides insight into the more complex functions of the subjunctive in Spanish. Each lesson is presented in context, allowing students …
El subjuntivo 2/ The subjuntive mode 2: Nivel Avanzado … – Walmart
https://www.walmart.com/ip/42884037
Be the first to review this item. Share your rating and review so that other customers can decide if this is the right item for them.
“Quizá(s)”, “tal vez” and “a lo mejor” and the use of indicative vs …
http://www.spanishdict.com/…/quizs-tal-vez-and-a-lo-mejor-and-the-use-of- indicative-vs-subjuntive-mode
Feb 7, 2013 … ASK A QUESTION “Quizá(s)”, “tal vez” and “a lo mejor” and the use of indicative vs subjuntive mode. 2 Vote. syringa_patula. When it comes …
When should I use subjunctive verbs in Spanish? | Yahoo Answers
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/?qid…
Apr 4, 2008 … We use the subjuntive in subordínate clauses when the main verb … some sentence as example in subjuntive mode (subjuntive verbs in spanis)
El subjuntivo 2/ The subjuntive mode 2: Nivel … – Shopping UOL
shopping.uol.com.br/el-subjuntivo-2-the-subjuntive-mode-2-nivel-avanzado- advance-level-paso-a-paso-spanish-edition-jose-amenos-pilar-diaz-maria- …
El subjuntivo 2/ The subjuntive mode 2: Nivel Avanzado / Advance Level (Paso a Paso) (Spanish Edition) – Jose Amenos, Pilar Diaz, Maria Luisa Rodriguez …
The Accidence; or First rudiments of English grammar. Designed for … – Google Books Result
https://books.google.com/books?id=ultiAAAAcAAJ
Ellin DEVIS – 1786
How js the Subjuntive Mode formed ? By addinga Conjunction to the Indicative Mode, and ropping the pėrfonal terminations in the fecond and third periòns …
Encyclopedia of German Literature – Google Books Result
https://books.google.com/books?isbn=113594122X
Matthias Konzett – 2015 – Literary Criticism
The function of the theater would thus be to reintroduce the subjuntive mode, to open up possible worlds without filling in an actual reality. While the potential for …tive MODE:
This is English, not Spanish. It’s a MOOD in English. My wife is an English teacher, and part of my job at work is proof-reading proposals and deliveries to the customer.
http://www.grammar-monster.com/glossary/subjunctive_mood.htm
http://www.cws.illinois.edu/workshop/writers/verbmood/
(Never studied Spanish. I have studied English, German, Russian, Latin, Japanese, and Welsh. Just starting Georgian now. And by “just starting,” I mean I’m still learning the alphabet and can say, “Hello.”)
Warren
read the rest of the goddam entries.
Warren
i am pretty sick of you. you seem to have nothing to do with your life but lurk around here annoying and boring your betters.
you have a talent for finding some meaningless, trivial, irrelevant nit and using it to sidetrack the discussion into “how smart i am.”
reminds me of an english teacher i had in the tenth grade.
I see a bunch of Spanish and German stuff.
Perhaps you should have listened to your English teacher. He might have taught you the difference between WHEN and IF, and he might have taught you standard capitalization usage.
It seems that MODE is an outmoded word for MOOD. So my apologies on that point. Nonetheless, it takes IF, not WHEN.