Redefining Political Correctness to Include Criticism of Appointments of Wall Street, Banking and Fossil Fuel Insiders to Regulatory Bodies
And Extreme Pro-Corporate Lawyers and Judges to the Supreme Court and the Lower Federal Courts. Seriously.
So far, the Trump transition team does not seem particularly concerned, for instance, about a transition team staffed heavily with lobbyists from energy, agriculture, transportation, and banking.
“Frankly, one of the refreshing parts of it about the whole Trump style is that he does not care about political correctness. From a practical standpoint, I have heard lots of people say, ‘Why would we box ourselves out of the most knowledgeable policy people in the country?'” said one source close to the transition team.
Donald McGahn II, a partner at the firm Jones Day and Trump’s lawyer, is expected to play a central role in vetting nominees. So is Arthur Culvahouse, Jr., a partner at the firm O’Melveny & Myers, who helped vet vice presidential candidates and, according to a source, has been helping the campaign organize its White House picks.
Culvahouse declined a request for an interview. None of the lawyers in the political law practice at Jones Day returned POLITICO’S calls. Culvahouse has faced backlash from colleagues at his firm for working with Trump, according to people familiar with the situation, with one person saying the decision was “amazingly controversial” within the firm. Many top partners at O’Melveny, including Tom Donilon, were vocal Clinton backers.
— Trump advisers steamroll Christie’s transition: The new, top-down approach is likened to how Dick Cheney ran the Bush transition., Andrew Restuccia and Nancy Cook, Politico, today
Just so you know, Culvahouse played a large role in turning the Supreme Court and lower federal courts into a proxy arm of the far-right Chamber of Commerce, including in Citizens United but also in ways most people have no idea about but would really care about. These are not pro-union justices and judges, nor are they pro-employee, pro-consumer, pro small-business, anti-financial-industry-fraud, or ant-securities-fraud. Nor anti-fossil-fuel-industry. For starters.
So. From a practical standpoint, who do you think are all those people who are saying to this source close to the transition team, “Why would we box ourselves out of the most knowledgeable policy people in the country?” And might that source close to the transition team be Mike Pence, who is so close to the transition team that he heads it?
And how likely do you think it is that among the many people who are saying this to the source is, say, a blue-collar voter from Toledo or Youngstown? Or any region of Michigan? Or Erie, Pennsylvania?
Or anywhere?
We’re extremely close to down-the-rabbit-hole language of the Arbeit macht frei variety, folks—something I saw last Saturday and mentioned in the update to this post.
George Orwell and Lewis Carroll are laughing. Really hard.
Good god. This is the most successful Trojan Horse since the original one. And every bit as sinister. But also funny, in that this is what’s now called a top-down approach. Always great to see a new euphemism for insider corruption.
They’re not gonna box themselves in, folks. But massive, intensive publicity might.
Nothing he’s done or allowed to be done in his name has hurt him so far. What makes you think this will be different? Remember his line about being able to shoot someone in Times Square and they’ll still vote for him? He’s right. It may make a difference after a while when nothing gets better and maybe gets worse for them but that’s not guaranteed either.
So you think it won’t matter a whit if it is illustrated to the public that he was just a Trojan Horse for the Republican establishment, Wall Street, and all the rest.
I disagree. The difference between pre-election and post-election is that, pre-election, he kept assuring voters that he was one thing, and post-election he’s tangibly proving that he is the thing he said he was the opposite of. The backgrounds of these people he’s putting into office, if her denies them, will be shown to be fact. But his campaign is not denying them.
And this time, his opponent won’t be Hillary Clinton. It will be Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. And for many of these people, there will be Senate confirmation hearings at which Sanders, Warren and other progressives will get to ask questions.
Pre-election and post-election aren’t the same things.
The trump bashing is pointless. The election is over.
In case you haven’t noticed he got elected precisely because the usual suspects opposed him. Their bashing Trump only makes him more powerful.
Take a hint from Bernie Sanders. There is a lot in what Trump has proposed that you probably like.
Embrace what you like and things night turn out better than you expect. Bash what you don’t like and history tells us that is guaranteed to turn out worse than you expect.
The usual suspects are proving right.
These appointees are who they are. The campaign isn’t denying their backgrounds. And cabinet and sub-cabinet nominees will face Sanders, Warren and other progressives during their confirmation hearings. And Sanders and Warren do tend to get actual media attention.
Bev – You lost. The horse you loved failed to get to the finish line. Get over it. She was a very bad candidate. You deserve to lose. You loved a liar. And now you complain about the outcome. Get over it.
You must be a VERY new follower of this blog if you don’t know that the candidate I loved, and love, is Bernie Sanders, and that I am not (nor have I ever been) a Hillary Clinton fan.
But I certainly supported her, against the pathological liar you love.
Krasting
one would think that after your “bombshell!” post re the emails, even you would think twice about calling attention to your idiocy so soon.
Jim
it’s important to get on the winning side, isn’t it. that’s how the good Germans started out.
didn’t turn out so good for them.
So Bev,
How is this so different from Obama oppointees?
Good question, Sammy. You tell me.
Don’t recall Obama promising to drain the swamp and tear down the establishment, though, much less building his campaign around it.
So all those Rust Belt blue-collar workers got played, and you just shrug.
The Democratic Party has been too politically correct. They have brought a knife to a gun fight too long.
The typical Trump speech went:
” Crooked Hillary. And she is so crooked you don’t know how crooked she is, but she is really crooked.”
And we get, “when they go low, we go high”. Yeah, maybe in high school.
What should have been the opening statement of every Hillary speech was:
“Racist Donald, and he is so racist you don’t know how racist his is, but he is really racist.”
Knives. Gun fights.
The election was determined by less than a 150,000 pe4ople in three states. And lost because the Dems went high and would not call Trump a racist.
Incredible stupidity.
I would have had t-shirts printed up for every swing state with the words:
“Vote Against The Racist”.
And the election would have been different.
Now, as the platform is being formed by the Dems for 2018 and beyond, I have the same thought:
“Vote Against The Racists”
Can’t lose.
And as an extra added benefit, it is true.
Actually, Clinton did almost nothing BUT campaign against Trump as a racist, xenophobe and misogynist–which is why all those deplorables supported him.
She said the same thing over and over and over again, including in her ads, telling people what they knew as well as she did, based on the very same high-profile things Trump said.
I can’t even begin to guess why yo think the public didn’t know that Trump is a racist. They didn’t know that the Mercers, the Ricketts, and two oil billionaires were funding his campaign, nor that the Heritage Foundation was writing his fiscal and regulatory proposals. But they did absolutely, truly and thoroughly know that he is a racist.
What campaign were watching?
Jim,
“Bash what you don’t like and history tells us that is guaranteed to turn out worse than you expect.”
Are you serious? Before you argue further in favor of acquiescence (hey, if rape is inevitable, lay back and enjoy it), and before you pronounce on what history “guarantees,” you ought to read a little history. Make that argument to the American revolutionaries, the American abolitionists, the Suffragettes, the French resistance fighters, Martin Luther King, Czech intellectuals in the ‘60s – see what they would say of such a fatuous, historically illiterate comment.
One thing I got out of a book I read a while ago titled: Why Nations Fail, was that in essence there are 2 directions a society can go it. Inclusive or Exclusive. Based on the history as presented in this book, it was evident that moving from and inclusive society to an exclusive society can happen far easier than the reverse. It is much harder for a society to move to inclusiveness and much harder for a society to keep it.
I think we are seeing this now.
With that, as much as these people Trump is bringing in and thus via the media “normalizing” I’m not certain people (the labor class) will get to know never mind understand what these people are and are about.
Frankly, I can see the “news” thinking that this reality TV show is just getting better and the cash from ads will roll in even more.
Perhaps I can shed a bit more light on come of this by asking you to go see today’s TED.com talk from Bettina Walburg on the Block Chain. You will gain a much better perspective of what is happening to our society regarding inclusiveness, exclusiveness, normalizing and guarantees fears and anxieties. Remember to succeed at anything in life one must model the way, inspire and share, challenge the status quo, enable other and encourage from the heart.
Remember Lyndon Johnson’s line about keeping critics “inside the tent peeing outward” rather than outside. Trump and his folks are milling about inside their new quarters, pleased with themselves no doubt for excluding The Disloyal Opposition. Angry Bear and other websites aren’t going to change who comes out on top in these transition squabbles or the early days of the Trump administration. We aren’t even going to interest more than a handful of citizens in the deeds and misdeeds of these insiders until their own actions draw attention to them.
Sad. But we aren’t required to watch the comings and goings of our new masters with total passivity. We aren’t required to give them our love and support or even useful advice — THEY CONQUERED US, as they seem to enjoy pointing out, and they seem to enjoy the thought. So we are entitled to make such resistance as we can
Gather ’round those tents, people. Watch those flies for movement. Take your own … uh .. weapons … in hand and assume the position, then fire on any targets that present themselves.
Sunday AM driving down a main street in a larger NH town, one of those electric billboards flashing “Ayotte is a criminal”.
A little state about 1 million people, the democrat challenger to Ayotte raises $60M and calls Ayotte a slave to special interests!!!!!
Democrat political correctness is Stalinist calling a Christian a criminal!
And raise gobs of money claiming not to hold sway to special interests.
“The world turned upside down”.
Not …. the same Stalinists attacking imaginary criminal fascists.
Note the following from today: http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/pence-removes-lobbyists-trump-transition-team-controversial-names-remain-n684836
That those who are/were lobbists are being removed from the transition teams. It may be that Chris Christie staffed the transition this way because it is all he understood. Will be interesting to see the effects.
Except the new transition team are still more lobbyists and corporate cronies. There is nothing to see here.
Reading further the lobbist ban includes a 5 year ban on lobbying after leaving office. If a lobbyist takes an office they have to prove they ceased to be a registered lobbyist before being selected. Now as note in some articles id does make a federal appointive job far less potentially lucrative, in that after you leave office it will be harder to make the big bucks in particular for lawyers. (It applies to both the transition and being in office).
IMHO it will make it harder to take find folks willing to take a federal office. I did hear an interesting comment today that federal government has about the lowest paid CEO in the US
What a farce.
“Trump aide Sean Spicer laid out the lobbying ban during a hastily arranged conference call with reporters, the Trump team’s first since last week’s election. All appointees will be required to sign a form agreeing to abide by the ban before starting work.”
http://www.rollcall.com/news/trump-team-announces-five-year-lobbying-ban-appointees?utm_name=newsletters&utm_source=rollcallnews&utm_medium=email
We are a nation of laws, not men. “Bans” on lobbyists’ activities are accomplished through legislation, through laws, not cynical, self-serving, ad hoc fiats handed down by Trump. Signing a form “agreeing to abide by the ban” means absolutely nothing in law. And no one in the world has more contempt for forms and promises than Der Donald.
Bev,
There is not one Trump voter in the entire country who cares, if they are even surprised, that Trump is surrounding themselves with the usual cast of characters.
Just like they could care less that the Mercers were the power behind the throne.
Yeah, Clinton did spend a lot of time talking about Trump’s racist policies. Did she ever tell him flat out, “Donald, you are a stone cold racist and your election will hurt the millions of millions of black and brown people in this country. You are a disgrace to America, and you should go back to the 50s where you belong”?
Guns, not knives.
Ya’ gotta remember who these people are.
“What did you expect? ‘Welcome, sonny’? ‘Make yourself at home’? ‘Marry my daughter’? You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know… morons.” — Jim (Blazing Saddles)
Yup. “Marry my daughter?” Definitely what’s uppermost in their minds right now. Presumably more so than in 2008 and 2012, when many of them voted for Obama.
You seem to think it’s the Reagan era. Big mistake. It’s not.
Here’s what I just wrote in response to your comment, in another thread, that Trump received more votes in Wisconsin than Romney did:
Indeed he did. And Bernie Sanders received fully 140,000 more votes in that state’s primary than did Clinton–140,000 more votes than Clinton, in a smallish state that is very predominantly white.
THAT’s what should be enough. After all, Trump as an option for those voters on that very same day.
But should you need more, Sanders received 17,000 more votes in Michigan than Clinton. He did that by keeping the African-American vote for Clinton down to 2-1–it was expected to be about 3-1–and by beating Clinton in every single county other than Wayne (Detroit) and Genesee (Flint).
That was an awful lot of white voters, in order to negate a 2-1 advantage for Clinton in Wayne and, probably, about that in Genesee.
We’re talkin’ some mega-Republican-stronghold counties here.
I just read those statistics–140,000-vote margin in Wisc. and a 17,000-vote margin in MI for Sanders, just a few days ago. And I remember being shocked at the MI counties map the day after the primary.
Also telling: Sanders won the Indiana primary, as well, notwithstanding that a very sizable part of Indiana’s Democrats are African-Americans in Indianapolis and in the Gary/Hammond area.
And also very much was made of Clinton’s large win in the Ohio primary, that primary was on the very last day of the state-primaries/caucuses season. Only the DC primary came later, by a week. Ohio’s primary was on the same day as California’s, and the evening before, the AP reported that Clinton had just clinched the nomination with new commitments from super delegates. Meanwhile, in OH, Kasich, who was still on the ballot, won the Republican primary–although partly because the rest of the vote was split between Trump and Cruz.
In every one of these states, as well as in Iowa and New Hampshire, the Republican and Dem primaries were held on the same day. Both states are heavily white and largely blue-collar. Sanders beat Clinton by 22 points in NH and won far more votes than did Trump. And in Iowa, while Clinton the caucus count by 0.03%, it is pretty widely believed that Sanders won the popular vote–which is why the state party committee, which had supported Clinton, refused to release the popular-vote count.
Maybe soon, they will. I hope so.
Bev,
The “Reagan Era” started on the day the Civil Rights Act was signed. It is still going on, and Trump is the beneficiary of it. Just like Nixon. And Reagan. And Bush.
EMichael
is it your hypothesis that in the counties referenced, the people who voted for Obama…presumably all black, because as we know all white people are racists… stayed home rather than vote for Hillary, while huge numbers of people who stayed home rather than vote against Obama were nevertheless white enough, racist enough, to turn out to vote for Trump?
i would be the last person to deny that “country people are dumb”, but they are no dumber than city people or even, as it turns out, liberals who think the way to win elections is to shout “racists” at the people who vote for the winner.
or is it that you don’t care about winning elections, because then what could you feel sorry for yourself about?
oh, full disclosure, i am also a country person and just as dumb as everyone else. i voted for Obama the first time. i think he was just as black then as he was the second time when i didn’t vote for him because as far as i could tell he was “same as the old boss.”
more full disclosure
i voted for Hillary because I thought.. still Think… that Trump is going to be a major disaster we may not be able to recover from
not so much because he is a racist, but because he will cement the rule of the corporate predator state. the corporate predators may be racists, but in fact they will be happy to screw everybody white and black. they will use racism– white against black as well as black against white– as a tool to keep the people hating each other while they love the guy screwing them.
I read today over at Counter Punch.com that Trump may offer Sanders to head the Commerce dept. Just thought that you might like to see it…
EM
it occurs to me that no one is going to want to marry your daughter. (that’s not a mean remark about your daughter, it’s a kind of looking-glass comment on your form of racism.
but i do think it’s possible that if the Democrats ever get elected again, and this time do something for the disappointed workers, there is a good chance that those workers will gradually start voting Democratic again, and if the all the anti-racist programs of the Dems are introduced quietly and without “hate white people” messaging, the racists will hardly notice, and if it all goes well for a number of years many of them will get used to treating black people as equals. even if they don’t want to at first, just doing it without heavy pressure will gradually make them forget to even think about being racists. and then, after a generation, forget about being racists entirely.
Mourning for Whiteness
By Toni Morrison
This is a serious project. All immigrants to the United States know (and knew) that if they want to become real, authentic Americans they must reduce their fealty to their native country and regard it as secondary, subordinate, in order to emphasize their whiteness. Unlike any nation in Europe, the United States holds whiteness as the unifying force. Here, for many people, the definition of “Americanness” is color.
Under slave laws, the necessity for color rankings was obvious, but in America today, post-civil-rights legislation, white people’s conviction of their natural superiority is being lost. Rapidly lost. There are “people of color” everywhere, threatening to erase this long-understood definition of America. And what then? Another black President? A predominantly black Senate? Three black Supreme Court Justices? The threat is frightening.
In order to limit the possibility of this untenable change, and restore whiteness to its former status as a marker of national identity, a number of white Americans are sacrificing themselves. They have begun to do things they clearly don’t really want to be doing, and, to do so, they are (1) abandoning their sense of human dignity and (2) risking the appearance of cowardice. Much as they may hate their behavior, and know full well how craven it is, they are willing to kill small children attending Sunday school and slaughter churchgoers who invite a white boy to pray. Embarrassing as the obvious display of cowardice must be, they are willing to set fire to churches, and to start firing in them while the members are at prayer. And, shameful as such demonstrations of weakness are, they are willing to shoot black children in the street.
To keep alive the perception of white superiority, these white Americans tuck their heads under cone-shaped hats and American flags and deny themselves the dignity of face-to-face confrontation, training their guns on the unarmed, the innocent, the scared, on subjects who are running away, exposing their unthreatening backs to bullets. Surely, shooting a fleeing man in the back hurts the presumption of white strength? The sad plight of grown white men, crouching beneath their (better) selves, to slaughter the innocent during traffic stops, to push black women’s faces into the dirt, to handcuff black children. Only the frightened would do that. Right?
These sacrifices, made by supposedly tough white men, who are prepared to abandon their humanity out of fear of black men and women, suggest the true horror of lost status.
It may be hard to feel pity for the men who are making these bizarre sacrifices in the name of white power and supremacy. Personal debasement is not easy for white people (especially for white men), but to retain the conviction of their superiority to others—especially to black people—they are willing to risk contempt, and to be reviled by the mature, the sophisticated, and the strong. If it weren’t so ignorant and pitiful, one could mourn this collapse of dignity in service to an evil cause.
The comfort of being “naturally better than,” of not having to struggle or demand civil treatment, is hard to give up. The confidence that you will not be watched in a department store, that you are the preferred customer in high-end restaurants—these social inflections, belonging to whiteness, are greedily relished.
So scary are the consequences of a collapse of white privilege that many Americans have flocked to a political platform that supports and translates violence against the defenseless as strength. These people are not so much angry as terrified, with the kind of terror that makes knees tremble.
On Election Day, how eagerly so many white voters—both the poorly educated and the well educated—embraced the shame and fear sowed by Donald Trump. The candidate whose company has been sued by the Justice Department for not renting apartments to black people. The candidate who questioned whether Barack Obama was born in the United States, and who seemed to condone the beating of a Black Lives Matter protester at a campaign rally. The candidate who kept black workers off the floors of his casinos. The candidate who is beloved by David Duke and endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan.
William Faulkner understood this better than almost any other American writer. In “Absalom, Absalom,” incest is less of a taboo for an upper-class Southern family than acknowledging the one drop of black blood that would clearly soil the family line. Rather than lose its “whiteness” (once again), the family chooses murder.
For the various Trump supporters getting all pompous about the Trump “victory” and how everybody should just go along with whatever he and his gang of cronies want, they should keep in mind that Clinton has not only won the popular vote, but by a fairly solid margin, now over a million votes and steadily increasing as the final vote count continues. There simply is no popular mandate here.
Toni Morrison is a novelist who has been much honored by white Americans. It is interesting that she resorts to another work of fiction to make her case against white racism.
There is no doubt there are white racists. There is no doubt there are a lot of them, and used to be a lot more.
But here Morrison is committing an act of racism herself. This kind of thinking will no no one any good.
Toni Morrison is a novelist who has been honored around the world by people of all colors and all nations and all continents, not just “white Americans.” She is also an essayist, of which the above is an example. Essays are non-fiction.
It’s not surprising that you feel so defensive, or resort to the habit of mind of the school playground — “I know you are but what am I.” Your true complaint is that she has pricked your foul heart, called you out, hit the mark — and thus you squeal. Only a racist would take her essay personally.
no Ms
only a moron would make a comment like yours.
i’m glad you know essays are “non-fiction.” That makes them “fact”, right?
And Morrison must not be a novelist if she wrote and essay, right?
And she was not honored by white Americans because she was honored by people of all colors all over the world, right?
I missed the part of my comment where I said “i know you are.. etc.”
Morrison did not prick my foul heart, but she and you are in a fair way to touch a match to the latent racism that exist in this country, white and black. If I could be sure that I and my gets could get out of the way I wouldn’t waste my time trying to explain things to you…. or maybe only someone who still has an actual brain that might be listening.
i see i made some typos above. Have fun with them.
but since i am getting old i will metion that i did my bit for civil rights back in the sixties at some risk to myself.
What the hell useful have you ever done besides sit on your ass and complain about “racists” every time someone disagrees with you?
Morrison is a Nobel Prize winner, a Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. Morrison has won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award. In 1996, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected her for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government’s highest honor for achievement in the humanities. She was honored with the 1996 National Book Foundation’s Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. She has received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction. But all you see is a black woman, and thus oink that what she has to say is not helpful to anyone.
You are an ignorant, incurious, bigoted, close-minded poltroon.
Actually, Ms
I knew all that. I was trying to point out that all those racist white people had bestowed honors on her. Funny that racists would do that.
I am glad you are able to read my character so insightfully from where you sit. Do you know any other words besides “racist”?
Let me say again: people like YOU are the cause of so much racial strife in this country. We could have fixed it forty years ago if you didn’t get your jollies from calling other people racists.
Let me go further, in my ignorant incurious bigoted and close minded wandering through the world I have had occasion to despair because human beings are so stupid… you are a case in point.
Don’t worry about fighting racism where it exists. You have too much fun seeing it everywhere.
And seeing nothing else.
I was sorry to see Morrison, who ought to know better, falling into that level of racist thinking.
By the way, what do you think “poltroon” means?