Tuesday, November 22nd, 2016
Lisa Rein, Reporter - The Washington Post
Stephan: This new group of politicians who call themselves Republicans but are not Republicans in any traditional sense are about to try and gut the federal government. The one guaranteed outcome of such a program will be that the government's ability to be responsive to voters will be degraded. And the federal workers, well they're going to be very unhappy. As will coal workers and steel workers once it becomes clear to them that that their factories and mines will not be coming back. Put on your seat belts; it's about to get very strange.
Credit: VOA News
President-elect Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress are drawing up plans to take on the government bureaucracy they have long railed against, by eroding job protections and grinding down benefits that federal workers have received for a generation.
Hiring freezes, an end to automatic raises, a green light to fire poor performers, a ban on union business on the government’s dime and less generous pensions — these are the contours of the blueprint emerging under Republican control of Washington in January.
These changes were once unthinkable to federal employees, their unions and their supporters in Congress. But Trump’s election as an outsider promising to shake up a system he told voters is awash in “waste, fraud and abuse” has conservatives optimistic that they could do now what Republicans have been unable to do in the 133 years since the modern civil service was created.
[Trump and the federal workforce: Five key issues]
“You have the country moving to the right and being much more anti-Washington than it was,” said former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), a leading Trump adviser who serves on the president-elect’s transition team.
“We’re going to have to get the country […]
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Monday, November 21st, 2016
Darren Samuelsohn, - Politico
Stephan: We never did get the Trump tax returns, and I doubt we ever will. It should have been a wake-up call to all who voted for him, that they were putting into office an utterly corrupt man; but it wasn't, race fear was too important. And now we know that he has no intention or putting his businesses in a blind trust. Instead he is going to milk public office for everything it can give his family. Do you doubt that? Consider his meetings over the past few days with Indian business partners. And here is a starting list of all the places corruption is likely to occur.
Here is my prediction: In 4 years the Trumps will be four times richer than they are today, no matter where they are starting from.
President-elect Trump meets with his Indian business partners.
Credit: New York Magazine
Donald Trump’s new hires should brace themselves for a full immersion in government ethics school.
They’re going to need it given the president-elect’s sprawling business empire and his lack of interest in selling off his companies and properties outright.
The Republican’s appointees will be running departments and agencies with direct ties to their boss’ businesses and wider political interests, from an IRS audit into his tax records to National Labor Relations Board enforcement of cases involving his hotel workers to the FBI’s investigation into the suspected Russian cyberespionage aimed at influencing an election that Trump just won.
Unlike past presidents who took office with considerable wealth, from George H.W. Bush to John F. Kennedy, the setup Trump is creating for his financial assets — leaving his three oldest adult children and a “team of highly skilled executives” in charge while he’s in the Oval Office — appears likely to expose large numbers of people the president […]
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Monday, November 21st, 2016
Mary Pascaline, - The Raw Story/International Business Times
Stephan: Fewer Americans are getting married, but those that do are tending to stay married. On balance I think that is good news.
Credit: Shutterstock
The divorce rate in the U.S. has fallen to its lowest levels in over 35 years, a report published Thursday has found. The divorce rate fell for its third consecutive year in 2015, the data indicated.
The report by Bowling Green State University’s National Center for Family and Marriage Research in Ohio also found that the marriage rate in the U.S. has gone up and is at its highest since 2009. The rate rose from 31.9 marriages for every 1,000 unmarried women aged 15 and older in 2014 to 32.3 marriages in 2015. The annual report uses the previous year’s census data to calculate marriage and divorce rates.
“The decline has stopped,” Wendy Manning, co-director of the National Center for Family and Marriage Research, reportedly said.
Divorce rate in the country has dropped to 16.9 in 2015 from 17.6 in 2014. The rate has decreased by 25 percent since 1980 when it was at its peak at 22.6. Washington D.C. has had the highest divorce rate for two years straight with nearly 30 […]
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Monday, November 21st, 2016
Chris Riotta, - International Business Times
Stephan: I have heard several people say they are thinking of leaving the U.S.. Unfortunately it is not that simple. Here is some essential data you will need to consider.
Nuri Katz has heard it all before: whether it’s a pessimistic attitude toward the direction of the country, hoping to gain a new perspective of the world or avoiding tax hikes, thousands seek aid from the international citizenship expert on how to move out of the country in the wake of every national election.
With six passports himself, Katz knows just how unrealistic it is for everyday Americans to pick up and leave every time someone they don’t like is elected into the White House. Google saw an unprecedented surge in searches for moving out of the country after George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection victory – and again each time President Barack Obama was elected after. Most recently, Canada’s immigration website crashed the same night Donald Trump was announced the official president-elect. Despite the public’s dire interest in escaping each White House administration, however, the immigration practitioner says “citizenship hopping” is a freedom exclusively held by the mega-rich.
“Unless you’re someone extremely wealthy, or you somehow have the ability to sell your house, your car and move to Canada, the idea of leaving the country after an election isn’t exactly […]
1 Comment
Monday, November 21st, 2016
G. Pascal Zachary , - Alternet (U.S.)
Stephan: Here is yet another take on the growing public response to the West coast states seceding. I don't think this is going to happen, but I do think that an unintended consequence of a Trump Administration is the exacerbation of The Great Schism Trend, and a shift of emphasis which will empower localities over the federal.
Goldengate Bridge Credit: canadastock / Shutterstock
The stunning defeat of Hillary Clinton this month provides a painful reminder of the size and scale, diversity and divisions, of the United States. Democratic candidate Clinton won the popular vote by close to 2 million votes, but she lost the Electoral College by a significant margin because of losing three, large, typically blue states by razor-thin margins. The entire West Coast of the U.S.—Washington, Oregon and California—voted for Clinton by a margin of more than 60 percent, but because regional blocs are meaningless by themselves in the American political system, the Left Coast gains no direct path toward influencing the new administration.
The American method of choosing presidents seems especially painful this month with the imminent inauguration of Donald Trump, a right-wing populist who appealed openly to base fears and prejudices. Trump’s opponents are strongest in the most dynamic, educated and cosmopolitan parts of the U.S. Yet these bastions of progressive values face four years of powerlessness, at least in the executive branch of government. […]
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