SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
tom price
Reverse Darwinian Selection Afflicts Trump's Washington
This administration always chooses the worst and the dumbest
Jun 26, 2019
In the 1960s, at the very dawn of the New Right rebellion, William F. Buckley, Jr., declared that he would rather be governed by persons selected from the phone directory than the faculty of Harvard. Conservative egghead bashing has a long pedigree, and even Buckley, an aspiring patrician with one of the most laboriously affected accents ever heard, felt obliged to join in the populist trolling.
Over the succeeding five decades, the conservative movement and its chosen vehicle, the Republican Party, have substantially achieved the goal of systematically devaluing expertise, thereby accomplishing one of their most cherished ideological goals: to prove to the American people that government doesn't work.
As I have written before, the Republican push for non-expertise got a big boost during the Gingrich speakership. It continued its long march through institutions during the riotously incompetent planning and conduct of the Iraq war under George W. Bush, and has reached ghastly perfection with Donald Trump.
Just look at a few of the uniquely awful Trump personnel at the top tier: Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, Stephen Miller, Ben Carson, Betsy DeVos, departing Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Their unsuitability is matched by Trump appointees at lower levels.
The conclusion is inescapable: one could get better people for the jobs by recruiting candidates from the checkout line at a dollar store. Would such people be qualified for their positions? Probably not. But they might occasionally heed reasonable advice rather than reflexively doing the opposite, and they almost certainly would not unanimously possess the iron and unerring resolve of the current Trump team always to do the stupid, unethical or immoral thing.
Recently leaked vetting documents show what the Trump administration looks for in personnel. Despite warnings that former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt and former HHS Secretary Tom Price had considerable ethics and management problems, they were hired anyway. In their jobs, they proceeded to demonstrate just those same qualities the administration had been warned about.
Their downfall was less the result of their grifting and self-dealing than the fact that the capo in the White House was irritated by the conspicuous swaggering of these two arrogant underlings. They ought to have realized that such public flaunting of their bad-assery is reserved for the mob boss and his immediate family.
The vetting criteria for General David Petraeus, who was mooted for either secretary of state or national security adviser, are particularly telling. There were legitimate grounds for rejecting Petraeus: he was a major player in the Iraq debacle, a policy disaster that Trump roundly condemned during his campaign. The general's government career as CIA director ended abruptly when the FBI found he had been sharing code-word level classified information with his lover, who just happened not to be his wife. Petraeus compounded the damage by lying to the FBI.
But why was he rejected for a position in the Trump administration? Vetting personnel at the Republican National Committee "red flagged" Petraeus because he opposed torture - possibly the one unambiguously praiseworthy thing about the man.
As with personnel, so inevitably with policy. Flipping a coin before deciding among critical policy options would seem statistically to produce a better result than what we have seen in the Trump administration. By some strange reverse-Darwinian principle, Trump and his coat-holders invariably default to the worst conceivable option. Examples follow.
Let us imagine you are in charge and want to improve this country's terms of trade with China. Three broad options present themselves:
- Enact long-term, non-tariff, World Trade Organization-compliant measures to restructure the US economy, such as tax benefits for manufacturing, programs for apprenticeships, tax incentives for companies that hire manufacturing labor, and various encouragements to American firms for on-shore production.
- Risk a tariff war with China by imposing duties on its imports, but first get our allies (who are also damaged by Chinese behavior) on board so that there is a united policy front. This move would prevent export shifting by China to those countries, and hinder it from working side-deals with them that would undermine U.S. economic goals.
- Get into a tariff war with the second-largest economy in the world on our own because we made superhuman efforts to systematically alienate our allies and non-Chinese trading partners.
Of course, Trump picked option 3 because it was objectively the worst option.
Now, let's try tax cuts:
- Enact tax cuts for low and middle income people, but make them revenue neutral by increasing marginal rates on the rich, taxing non-productive or destructive Wall Street practices, and by closing absurd loopholes like the one that results in a hedge fund manager paying taxes at a lower rate than his secretary or a cab driver.
- OK, let's now assume you're not fiscally responsible: tax cuts for everybody and they're not paid for, but the cuts are heavily biased towards low and middle income people on the principle that the wealthy already got a huge windfall from the Bush tax cuts.
- Enact tax cuts that are theoretically for everybody, but in reality 83 percent of the dollar value will go to the top one percent of individuals. Oh, and the revenue loss blows the deficit through the roof, even in a nominally booming economy.
Naturally, Trump, with united assistance from the Republican Congress, chose option 3.
Now let us assume that for some reason you are dissatisfied with the Iran nuclear agreement (The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA) that your predecessor signed. Let us run though the options:
- Recognize that for all the generalized railing against it because the plan was the handiwork of the Obama administration, and for all the massive financial pressure of the Israel Lobby, Iran had been compliant with JCPOA's terms. The agreement is the best single means of preventing that country from becoming a nuclear-armed state, and, like our arms agreements with the old Soviet Union, it is inherently imperfect but better than other options, like war.
- Articulate which provisions of the agreement are technically defective rather than just ranting about JCPOA without ever having read it. Engage diplomatically with the other signatories of JCPOA to amend the agreement.
- Unilaterally withdraw from the agreement, alienate the other countries guaranteeing JCPOA by making them potentially subject to the additional sanctions you are imposing on Iran (which, it must be repeated, was complying with the agreement), and engage in juvenile trash talk and saber-rattling. Put a cherry on the cake, even as you claim you want a diplomatic solution, by sanctioning the leader and foreign minister of Iran, thus making it impossible for the Europeans or anyone else to engage with the country diplomatically.
The answer to the Iran policy conundrum is of course now playing out in the news headlines.
Throughout American history, there has always been a strident minority opinion that aggressive and self-righteous stupidity is nobler and more virtuous in the sight of God than prudent and circumspect intelligence. This view now controls most of our government and is in a position to make its will the law of the land. Sooner or later, we shall see whether the higher laws of natural selection act to weed out stupidity in as spectacular and unpleasant a fashion as occurred with the Habsburg and Ottoman empires.
Keep ReadingShow Less
New Analysis Catalogs Trump's Controversy-Riddled Cabinet-Level Selections
"His cabinet picks are proving a particularly stark example" of how Trump has failed to deliver on his promise to "drain the swamp."
Feb 16, 2018
As the heads of Veterans Affairs and the Environmental Protection Agency face intense scrutiny over taxpayer-funded travel decisions, a new analysis by the Washington Post reveals that more than 40 percent of President Donald Trump's initial cabinet-level selections have faced ethical or other controversies.
Aaron Blake at the Post found that nine out of the 22 people whom the president initially chosen for cabinet-level positions have faced some degree of public criticism for their actions, highlighting "what has been a pretty rocky first year-plus for the Trump cabinet" and demonstrating how Trump has failed to deliver on his oft-repeated campaign promise to "drain the swamp."
Five have come under fire for decisions about tax-payer funded travel:
- Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin: A report by his agency's inspector general found that Shulkin and top aides edited an email and made false statements "to create a pretext for taxpayers to cover expenses for the secretary's wife on a 10-day trip to Europe last summer," according to another Post story.
- Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt: As Common Dreams reported earlier this week, Pruitt is in hot water for "taking expensive first class flights and staying in luxury hotels on the taxpayer's dime...to avoid uncomfortable interactions with people who are mad at him for trying to destroy the planet."
- Former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price: He resigned in September amid a growing scandal that invovled using tax dollars to travel throughout the country in pricey private jets.
- Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke: As Price was submitting his resignation, Zinke was ridiculed for taking, according to Politico, "several flights on private or military aircraft, including a $12,000 charter plane to take him to events in his hometown in Montana," which subsequent reports revealed belonged to fossil fuel executives.
- Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin: He not only requested a military jet to take him and his wife, Louise Linton, to Europe for their honeymoon, but also for a trip to Fort Knox to view the solar eclipse (after which Linton provoked outrage over a classist tirade she posted on social media alongside a photo of them disembarking from the aircraft).
Two are in trouble for making false statements:
- Chief of Staff John Kelly: Women's advocates and others have called for Kelly--who initially served as Trump's Homeland Security secretary--to resign amid criticism that he ignored and improperly handled allegations of domestic violence levied against former White House staff secretary Rob Porter, who resigned following a series of reports about the alleged abuse. Kelly reportedly instructed aides to lie and claim he took immediate action to address the allegations.
- Attorney General Jeff Sessions: The nation's top attorney had to recuse himself from the investigation into alleged election interference by Russians--and claims that members of the Trump campaign colluded with Russians and obstructed justice--after it was discovered that during his Senate confirmation hearing, Sessions failed to disclose his communication with Russian officials, potentially committing perjury.
Two have faced personal controversies:
- Labor secretary nominee Andrew Puzder: The fast food executive withdrew his nomination to lead the Labor Department amid charges that he had made "derisive public comments about his restaurants' employees and other low-wage workers" as well as "concerns about past employment of an undocumented housekeeper and later-recanted domestic violence accusations from an ex-wife."
- Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson: Despite warnings from the department attorneys, Carson let his son organize an agency "listening tour" in Baltimore last summer, which might have violated federal ethics ruled, according to documents obtained by the Post, because "local businessman Ben Carson Jr., and daughter-in-law were inviting people with whom they potentially had business dealings."
"The repeated travel controversies, in particular, suggest the administration isn't running a particularly tight ethical ship or that there is a ton of overcompensation for Trump's promise to 'drain the swamp,'" Blake notes. "His cabinet picks are proving a particularly stark example of where that effort has come up short."
Keep ReadingShow Less
The Trumpy Awards, Round Six: Worst Cabinet Member
Today's nominees certainly do represent the worst of the Trump administration.
Jan 28, 2018
Today's Trumpys are the second set of nominees for Worst Cabinet Member, following yesterday's consideration of Mick Mulvaney, Ryan Zinke, Gary Cohn and Jeff Sessions.
The judges wish to acknowledge the many atrocious candidates not receiving nominations, including Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry and Secretary of Treasury Steve Mnuchin.
Today's nominees, however, certainly do represent the worst of the Trump administration.
You can vote for the worst of this motley crew here.
Secretary of State: "Making a Great Case for Himself as the Worst Secretary of State in Modern History."
Lots of people are making the exact point in that quote, not just Slate, from which the headline is borrowed.
- Gutting and demoralizing diplomatic corps.
- Says human rights advocacy "creates obstacles" to advancing U.S. interests.
- With the White House, reimposed and expanded the global gag rule, denying U.S. aid funding to overseas nongovernmental health organizations unless they stipulate they will not talk to patients about abortion options.
On the positive side of the ledger for Tillerson, he reportedly has called Trump a "moron."
Secretary of Education: "There's Probably a Gun in the School to Protect from Potential Grizzlies"
Blocked implementation of rules designed to protect students from predatory for-profit colleges.
- Pushing for privatization of public schools by shifting resources from public to private schools, and refusing to commit that those schools should abide by anti-discrimination rules.
Rolled back protections for disabled students.
Tom Price/Empty/Alex Azar
Secretary of Health and Human Services: "Tom Price Sure Knows A Lot About Waste, Fraud and Abuse"
Secretary Tom Price was famously forced out of office after racking up more than $1 million in flight expenses in a matter of months. The Senate just confirmed Alex Azar, a former Eli Lilly executive, to take the post.
- Price sought - and there's every reason to expect Azar to continue to seek - to gut Medicaid expansion and the protections of the Affordable Care Act.
- Threatening birth control and reproductive health programs.
- Enacting Big Pharma's coup over health policy by installing a former drug company executive (Azar) as the nation's top health official.
Administrator, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): "What they're doing is conscientiously tearing the place down" ... "Mindless. There's no other word for it."
Those quotes are from former EPA administrators, Carol Browner (under Bill Clinton) and Christine Todd Whitman (under George W. Bush)
- Repealing the Clean Power Plan - and claiming it as an environmental achievement - and engineering the U.S. announced withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement.
- Rolling back 19 public health and environmental rules, covering everything from clean water to chemical safety.
- Meeting with Dirty Energy and industry interests almost 20 times more frequently than environmental organizations.
Which of these characters should be named Worst Cabinet Official? Vote here.
And don't to forget to vote for:
Yesterday's entry for Worst Cabinet Official.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump's Private Jet-Loving Health Secretary Tom Price Resigns
Price was increasingly under fire after it was revealed that he had spent boatloads of taxpayer cash to fly private
Sep 29, 2017
Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price resigned Friday amid a growing scandal involving his use of expensive private jets to travel throughout the U.S.--all on the taxpayer dime.
"Trump has repeatedly used the presidency for profit and it is no surprise that members of his cabinet are following his lead and taking advantage of their positions."
--Ben Schreiber, Friends of the EarthPrice apologized for his excessive and costly flying habits and promised to reimburse taxpayers on Thursday, but his remorse appears to have been too little, too late.
Politico reported that Price had "taken at least 24 flights on private charter planes at taxpayers' expense since early May," with costs exceeding over $300,000.
Price was also on the hot seat with President Donald Trump after the GOP's Obamacare repeal attempt failed in the Senate. Trump had in the past threatened to fire Price if Obamacare was not repealed.
In a statement on Friday, Ben Schreiber, senior political strategist at Friends of the Earth, said that while Trump was right to accept Price's resignation, corruption in the White House ultimately stems from the president himself.
"Trump's corrupt cabinet begins at the top," Schreiber concluded. "Trump has repeatedly used the presidency for profit and it is no surprise that members of his cabinet are following his lead and taking advantage of their positions."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump Health Secretary Thinks Medicaid Is Wasteful, But Not Lavish Private Flights
"HHS won't pay for Obamacare enrollment but they have plenty of cash for Secretary Tom Price's private jet lifestyle."
Sep 20, 2017
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tom Price once remarked that "tough choices" must be made to reduce "waste" in government spending. Apparently, in Price's mind, frequent and lavish private flights don't qualify as wasteful spending, but programs that provide life-saving healthcare to millions of Americans do.
"HHS won't pay for Obamacare enrollment but they have plenty of cash for Secretary Price's private jet lifestyle."
--Adam Smith, Every VoiceAccording to a Politico report Tuesday, Price "last week took private jets on five separate flights for official business, at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars more than commercial travel." Based on sample flight rates, the cost for Price to fly commercial would have been somewhere between $400 and $725--as opposed to $25,000 to charter a jet for a short trip from Washington, D.C. to Philadelphia and back.
Price's aversion to commercial flights constitutes a "sharp departure" from the travel habits of the HHS secretary's predecessors, who would only fly private on rare occasions--for instance, "to get to remote areas in Alaska," Politico's Dan Diamond and Rachana Pradhan observe.
Politico goes on to detail Price's travel schedule, noting that it fits with a pattern of Trump officials taking advantage of taxpayer dollars to charter private planes.
The secretary's five flights, which were scheduled between Sept. 13 and Sept. 15, took him to a resort in Maine where he participated in a Q&A discussion with a health care industry CEO, and to community health centers in New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, according to internal HHS documents.
The travel by corporate-style jet comes at a time when other members of the Trump administration are under fire for travel expenditures, and breaks with the practices of Obama-era Secretaries Sylvia Mathews Burwell and Kathleen Sebelius, who flew commercially while in the continental United States.
When the Senate GOP unveiled their first Affordable Care Act (ACA) repeal bill, Price made multiple television appearances to defend the proposed cuts to Medicaid, which critics argued would "gouge poor people."
Price, however, declined to respond to Politico's reporting Tuesday, relying on an HHS spokesperson to declare that the secretary's "mission [is] to enhance and protect the health and well-being of the American people."
"First Mnuchin, now Tom Price. The Trump Cabinet has a big problem charging taxpayers for private flights."
--Ben White, Politico
As the GOP gears up for one more "brutal and deadly" ACA repeal attempt, many commentators scoffed at the notion that Price cares about the health of the public.
"HHS won't pay for Obamacare enrollment but they have plenty of cash for Secretary Price's private jet lifestyle," noted Adam Smith, communications director for the advocacy group Every Voice, on Twitter.
Walter Shaub, former head of the Office of Government Ethics (OGE), denounced Price's "wasteful conduct," in an interview with Politico, and said it "reflects disdain for the ethical principle of treating public service as a public trust."
"Public office isn't supposed to come with frivolous perks at taxpayer expense," Shaub concluded.
Many others also took aim at Price's affinity for corporate jets, particularly as he enthusiastically supports inflicting deep cuts to Medicaid, a program that insures over 70 million Americans.
Keep ReadingShow Less
I Grew Up in Tom Price's District. The Sex Ed He Promotes Is Dangerous.
Last month, the Trump administration silently slashed $213.6 million from at least 81 institutions working on teen pregnancy prevention. The cuts hit a wide variety of programs: the Choctaw Nation's initiatives to reduce teen pregnancy in Oklahoma, the University of Texas' guidance for youth in foster care, and Baltimore's Healthy Teen Network's work on an app that could answer health questions from teen girls.
Aug 05, 2017
Last month, the Trump administration silently slashed $213.6 million from at least 81 institutions working on teen pregnancy prevention. The cuts hit a wide variety of programs: the Choctaw Nation's initiatives to reduce teen pregnancy in Oklahoma, the University of Texas' guidance for youth in foster care, and Baltimore's Healthy Teen Network's work on an app that could answer health questions from teen girls.
This move came at the recommendation of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), headed by Tom Price. In many ways, it's on brand with Price's career as an enthusiastic advocate for restricting women's choices: He has signed personhood acts that ban emergency contraception and abortion, opposed the Obamacare birth control mandate, tried to defund Planned Parenthood, and defended cuts to Medicaid that would deny millions of low-income women health care.
On an intellectual level, Price's cuts are frustrating because they represent another piece of a regressive puzzle the Trump administration is assembling in order to control women's choices. And personally, I'm devastated because I know what these cuts mean to the communities that they will affect.
I attended public school for my entire K-12 education in Tom Price's former district, where abstinence-only education is the norm. The single day of sex education I received promoted the idea that all sexual acts outside of a heterosexual marriage are dangerous and shameful, and did not make any distinction about whether these acts were consensual or not. It espoused gendered roles that posited women as defenders of their precious virginity, and put the responsibility on women to prevent sex from happening to them. That's perfectly in line with the content requirements for sex education in Georgia: They consciously exclude information about contraception, coercion, orientation, and HIV/AIDS, and they stress abstinence and marriage.
Because I was lucky, and because I am privileged, I was able to go to a college with real resources--extracurricular trainings, a health clinic, and actual academic courses--that helped me unlearn the detrimental sexual education I received in high school. I got the practical information that I needed, and I started unraveling my skewed concept of consent.
College gave me a second chance at sex ed, but a lot of people don't have that opportunity. For rural communities, low-income communities, and communities of color, high school sex education and community-based programs are often the only options available to acquire stigma-free, accurate education about consent, contraception, and sexual health. These populations already face myriad barriers to sex education, including culture, finances, and distance. In my home state of Georgia, there are only four Planned Parenthood clinics--one of the only affordable health centers with enough name recognition that people know to seek it out when they need help--and three of the four are located in the Atlanta metro area in the northwest corner of the state.When I attended a "Take Back the Night" rally my freshman year of college, I realized that my abstinence-only education had led me to view myself as responsible for sexual acts committed without my consent. Consequently, I felt shame instead of empowerment to take the steps I needed to recover. This is a common phenomenon for young people that experience abstinence-only education; when all expressions of sexuality are described as negative and shameful, the lines between consensual and nonconsensual acts become blurred.
Still, teen pregnancy and birth rates are at an all-time low across the country. Georgia has experienced one of the most drastic declines in these rates, from the highest teen birth rate in the United States in 1995 to the 17th in 2015. The grants that Price slashed last week were a part of that story. The target audience of all of these programs are marginalized youth who have a demonstrated need for increased education. And these are the groups that are at the greatest risk for high teen birth rates: Rural counties reported an average birth rate of 30.9 (30.9 teens per 1,000 females aged 15-19), compared with the much lower rate of 18.9 for urban counties. Similarly, black and Latino teenagers experience teen pregnancy at rates twice as high as white teenagers. For these communities, removing teen pregnancy prevention programs that these grants funded will restore the negative effects of abstinence-only education that the grants were originally provided to combat. For example, one of the programs cut was run by the Augusta Partnership for Children Inc., which focuses on reducing teen pregnancy and STI rates in four rural East Georgia counties. In one of these counties, Augusta-Richmond county, the teen birthrate is 22.9 percent higher than the state average.
It almost goes without saying that cuts to teen pregnancy prevention programs could reverse the downward trends in teen pregnancy and birth rates. And the Trump administration is attacking other lifelines marginalized groups depend on, too. Funding decreases imposed on safety net programs and Medicaid, both threatened under the Trump and congressional budgets, will significantly impact teen parents who often rely on public assistance for food, housing, and healthcare. Similarly, without sex education and community-based programs funded by HHS, teen parents and youth in general will likely need to turn toTitle X providers for contraception, abortion services, and sex education. But President Trump and congressional Republicans have been chipping away at Title X providers too, by rolling back an Obama-era regulation that prevents state and local governments from denying funding to health care providers for "political" reasons--namely, the provision of abortion services.
These cuts can't be written off as a difference in ideology. I experienced firsthand the powerlessness that results from a shaming, abstinence-focused education, and it can be a matter of life and death for communities already on the margins. I had a second chance at a more holistic education, but it was due to luck and privilege that most folks in Georgia do not have access to. And when we're talking about pregnancy, HIV/AIDS infection rates, and domestic and sexual violence, luck and privilege shouldn't be the factors we have to rely on.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trying to Explain the Disdain for Poor Americans
Americans with wealth and power don't generally care about the middle and lower classes. Even worse, they are doing real damage to the people they don't care about.
But why? Either these well-positioned people are 100 percent out of touch with the realities of middle-class life in our country, or they're contemptuous of those they consider inferior, or they believe so strongly in individual 'freedom' that even the word 'social' is repugnant to them. Or perhaps they're just not smart enough to see the value of people who are different from them.
May 15, 2017
Americans with wealth and power don't generally care about the middle and lower classes. Even worse, they are doing real damage to the people they don't care about.
But why? Either these well-positioned people are 100 percent out of touch with the realities of middle-class life in our country, or they're contemptuous of those they consider inferior, or they believe so strongly in individual 'freedom' that even the word 'social' is repugnant to them. Or perhaps they're just not smart enough to see the value of people who are different from them.
The assault continues non-stop: Taking away healthcare, either by disposing of the Affordable Care Act or slashing Medicaid; weakening consumer protection laws; repealing fair wage and workplace safety laws; cutting overtime pay; jeopardizing civil rights in the name of "religious freedom"; putting low-income mothers at risk by cutting their maternity care; increasing penalties for minor drug offenses; giving our public lands -- including the homes of Native Americans -- to oil companies; and even denying kids healthy lunches.
The Vicious Cycle of Disdain
A method can be detected amidst the madness, looking at it from the disdainer's point of view.
(1) I'm an individual who succeeded on his own
(2) Poor people could make it if they worked harder
(3) No handouts for those slackers
(4) No regulations to interfere with MY success
(5) Back to (1)
Some evidence comes from a Pew study that found 2/3 of Republicans believing that a person is rich because he/she has worked harder than others. Those disdainful of the poor may not realize that in the eight years since the recession, the Wilshire Total Market valuation has more than TRIPLED, rising from a little over $8 trillion to nearly $25 trillion, with the great majority of that passive wealth going to the very richest Americans. In 2016 alone, the richest 1% effectively shifted nearly $4 trillion in wealth away from the rest of the nation to themselves, with nearly half of the wealth transfer ($1.94 trillion) coming from the nation's poorest 90% -- the middle and lower classes, according to Piketty and Saez and Zucman. That's over $17,000 in housing and savings per lower-to-middle-class household lost to the super-rich.
#1 Possible Reason for the Disdain -- They're Delusional
Ever since University of Chicago economist Arthur Laffer sketched a curve on a napkin to convince Dick Cheney and other Republican officials that lowering taxes on the rich would generate more revenue, conservatives have pounced on the concept, convincing submissive politicians that all tax reductions are revenue-producing. It was proved wrong from the start. Several economic studies have concluded that the revenue-maximizing top income tax rate is anywhere from 50% to 75%.
Conservatives are reluctant to change the status quo, and loathe to have their core beliefs challenged. This is Cognitive Dissonance. It's typical for them to construct their personal beliefs on a moral basis, before all the facts are in, and if necessary to reshape the evidence to fit these beliefs.
So conservatives tend to believe that inequality is part of the natural order, and that any attempt to change it is senseless. Cognitive dissonance kicks in for them with the overwhelming evidence for a collapsing middle class. Rather than re-evaluating their beliefs, they go to the other extreme and DEFEND the widening fracture in U.S. society:
- George Will: "How income inequality benefits everybody." Quoting John Tamny, Will agrees that "the best way to spread the wealth around is to leave it in the hands of the wealthy."
- The Federalist: "Income Inequality Is Good For The Poor."
- Goldman Sachs adviser Brian Griffiths: "We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all."
- The Boston Globe calls the Oxfam analysis of extreme global inequality "irrelevant," and Reuters calls it a "silly stat."
#2 Possible Reason for the Disdain -- They're Narcissistic
The sense of "I'm better than you" is evident in the "white savior" approach to K-12 education, where billionaires assume their money makes them more qualified than lifelong educators to prepare our children for the future.
Numerous studies have shown that wealthier individuals tend to possess a distinct sense of entitlement. As their sense of superiority grows, they care less about the feelings and needs of others, they become anti-social, they are lessgenerous with their money, they become less willing to support the economic needs of all members of society, and they even tend to behave more unethically than average citizens, doing anything necessary to get ahead. And as they degenerate, they move further to the conservative side.
The costly and dysfunctional state of health care in the U.S. shows the absurdity of entrusting basic human needs to the narcissistic tendencies of capitalism. As Time explains about the Ebola virus, "Even though it had been killing people on and off for decades, there were no drugs or vaccines approved to fight it--and there still aren't today, chiefly because there's little incentive for pharmaceutical companies to bring them to market." Little incentive, plenty of profits, lots of disdain for human life.
#3 Possible Reason for the Disdain -- They're Just Plain Dumb
A maxim by the name of "Hanlon's Razor" declares, "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." So, for example, it's more mindless than malicious for Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price to impose work requirements on people who may be sick or disabled, seniors, students, or sole providers.
Numerous studies support the observation that conservatives are somewhat on the dullish side in comparison to liberals. Political conservatism is associated with low-effort thinking. Liberals have more gray matter in the region of the brain that helps people cope with complexity. Lower intelligence in childhood predicts greater racism in adulthood, largely through conservative attitudes.
Brainlessness is apparent in the conservative approach, little though it is, to global warming. Geo-Engineering is the favored approach for groups like the Heartland Institute. Rex Tillerson said climate change is "an engineering problem and it has engineering solutions."
Those 'solutions' include fertilizing the oceans to absorb more carbon dioxide, coating the upper atmosphere with sulfate particles to block the sun, or building millions of wind-powered pumps over the Arctic to bring more water to the existing ice.
No thought to the potentially harmful consequences of massive, untried, expensive, earth-altering productions that may or may not work. Now THAT is dumb.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Reporter Arrested for Asking Health Secretary Tom Price About Trumpcare
"First time I've ever been arrested for asking a question. First time I've ever heard of someone getting arrested for asking a question"
May 10, 2017
A reporter said he was arrested Tuesday in Charleston, West Virginia for asking Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price a question about the cruel GOP healthcare bill that passed the U.S. House last week.
"Our First Amendment rights are under attack every day, particularly from the Trump administration."
--Jamie Lynn Crofts, ACLU of West VirginiaDan Heyman, who works for Public News Service, said he repeatedly asked Price whether domestic violence is considered a pre-existing condition under Trumpcare. Price, who was visiting the state capitol, refused to answer, and Heyman was suddenly arrested by West Virginia Capitol Police.
During a statement to local press, Heyman said, "I think they just decided I was too persistent in asking this question and trying to do my job, and so they arrested me."
"First time I've ever been arrested for asking a question," he added. "First time I've ever heard of someone getting arrested for asking a question."
"This is my job, this is what I'm supposed to do," Heyman added. "I'm supposed to go in and find out how someone is going to be affected by this law. A women who is being affected by domestic violence--her life is a hundred times worse than mine[...] I think it's a question that deserves to be answered."
"I was just doing my job," Heyman repeated.
Heyman asserted that he was asking Price questions in a public space, and was never warned by police that any of his actions could result in his arrest.
Valerie Woody, an outreach coordinator for the West Virginia Citizen Action Group, discussed the arrest to Public News Service: "I saw nothing in his behavior, I heard nothing that indicated any kind of aggressive behavior or anything like that. Just simple, you know, trying to get somebody's attention and ask them a question. It seems to me there was no violation of anyone's space, or physicality, other than the arrest itself."
Public News Service reported further:
Kristen O'Sullivan also saw the arrest and recorded it on her phone. She said she was at the Capitol to protest the American Health Care Act as a breast-cancer survivor who is concerned about future coverage limitations for people with pre-existing medical conditions. O'Sullivan didn't know the reporter, who she said was grabbed by the back of the neck and put against a wall by Capitol security officers.
"And it's a shame," she said, "to see not only the fact that we may be losing the ability for ourselves to get our pre-existing conditions covered, but we're losing out on the First Amendment. We can't even report on that anymore."
Heyman was released under a $5,000 bond and is being represented by a lawyer from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of West Virginia. He is being charged with "willful disruption of governmental processes."
ACLU of West Virginia's legal director Jamie Lynn Crofts said in a press conference: "Our First Amendment rights are under attack every day, particularly from the Trump administration. It's not surprising to me that an incident like this would happen when a reporter tried to ask a question of a member of the Trump administration. They have shown us every day since [President] Donald Trump took office that they don't care about the First Amendment or the free press, and today was just another example of that happening."
Watch a video of the arrest here:
And watch Heyman make his statement, with his lawyer from the ACLU, here:
Keep ReadingShow Less
Scott Walker Puts Forth His 'Cruelest' Idea Yet: Drug Tests for Medicaid Applicants
Walker is one of several Republican governors pushing for conservative changes to Medicaid in the wake of last month's TrumpCare debacle
Apr 03, 2017
Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker, who has refused millions of dollars in federal funding for Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), wants his state to become the first in the nation to make Medicaid applicants undergo a drug test in order to qualify for benefits under the safety-net program.
Walker, who is one of several Republican governors pushing for conservative changes to Medicaid in the wake of last month's TrumpCare debacle, will present the proposal to the public on April 19, take comment for one month, and then send a formal request to the Trump administration.
According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, which interviewed Walker last week, he "and aides think the governor's proposal is likely to be approved by the Trump administration because it loosely mirrors some actions taken in Indiana under that state's former governor, Vice President Mike Pence, and Seema Verma, a former consultant to Indiana who is now head of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services."
Pence and Verma, along with Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, are seen as leaders in the Republican effort to gut Medicaid or make it crueler, whether through block-grant or per-capita-cap schemes (like the one found in the GOP's American Healthcare Act, or AHCA) or via other avenues like imposing work requirements (a provision that also showed up in the AHCA).
The Washington Post reported Sunday that Walker's "approach--which also would mandate treatment for those testing positive--aligns with the goals of several Republican governors intent on tightening the program's rules. Although the Obama administration allowed them to place expectations on enrollees, they're hoping for far more leeway from" the Department of Health and Human Services under Price.
The Post noted that governors in Indiana, Arizona, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Arkansas have all either requested or plan to request a work requirement for Medicaid beneficiaries.
"Red states have good reason to believe they'll be successful," the Post wrote, citing a letter sent in March from Price and Verma to governors, indicating "that proposals related to 'training, employment, and independence' would be welcome."
Indeed, the Kaiser Family Foundation concurred in a brief last month that while the Obama administration "concluded that work requirements were not related to Medicaid's objectives of increasing access to coverage and care...the new administration has signaled that it may reach the opposite conclusion."
This would not be a positive development, argued MaryBeth Musumeci, KFF's associate director for the Program on Medicaid and the Uninsured. "[C]onditioning eligibility for health coverage on satisfying a work requirement," she wrote, "and terminating health coverage for those who are unable to comply, could penalize the people who most need these supports."
Meanwhile, Walker's drug-testing proposal is likely to meet stiff resistance in Wisconsin, where Robert Kraig, executive director of Citizen Action of Wisconsin, told the Post: "We're singling out lower-income people, playing on stereotypes, on the premise that somehow people on Medicaid are getting something they shouldn't be getting."
"Does Scott Walker really hate poor people that much, or does he just find it convenient to scapegoat them as a means to getting himself more power?" wondered Daily Kos columnist Laura Clawson. "Maybe it doesn't matter--he's evil either way."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Why Was US Attorney Preet Bharara Fired? Dem Senators Seek Answers
Former New York U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara was at the 'nexus of multiple Trump scandals,' Rachel Maddow noted Tuesday evening
Mar 29, 2017
Three Democratic senators have written to Attorney General Jeff Sessions demanding to know the circumstances surrounding the firing of U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, noting that he was reportedly investigating one member of President Donald Trump's cabinet--and potentially the president himself--when he was dismissed earlier this month.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Jeff Merkley (Ore.), and Richard Blumenthal (N.J.) signed the letter sent Tuesday, asking bluntly: "Why was Mr. Bharara fired?"
As Common Dreams reported, the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York was among the 46 U.S. attorneys who were abruptly asked to resign on Friday, March 10--despite Bharara having being told by Trump during the transition that he would be able to keep his job. When Bharara refused to comply with the Trump administration's request, he was fired, leading Warren to warn the president, "You can't fire the rule of law."
As many pointed out at the time, Bharara's jurisdiction included Trump Tower, and he had been asked just that week by watchdog groups to probe potential violations by Trump of the Constitution's emoluments clause. What's more, Bloomberg noted, he "was involved in a number of sensitive investigations including one involving Deutsche Bank AG, the largest known lender to Trump's businesses, and one of 21st Century Fox Inc., the media conglomerate that is [Sean] Hannity's employer." (Some suggested the attorney purge came at Hannity's suggestion.)
Meanwhile, a ProPublica investigation earlier this month revealed that Bharara was overseeing an investigation into stock trades made by Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price--trades that became a matter of contention during Price's confirmation hearing.
The senators cited that ProPublica reporting in their letter to Sessions, saying they "have questions about whether such an investigation had any impact on President Trump's decision to fire Mr. Bharara."
Bharara hinted at such a motivation following his firing, as ProPublica wrote Tuesday:
After his dismissal, Bharara fanned suspicions that the move was politically motivated via his personal Twitter account.
"Now I know what the Moreland Commission must have felt like," he wrote, referring to a commission that was launched by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo only to be shut down by the governor after its work grew close to his office.
The letter goes on to ask, "Was Mr. Bharara conducting any other investigation of President Trump, his family, or other administration officials at the time he was fired?" And then, the senators inquire:
- If so, what was the nature of these investigations?
- If so, were you aware of this investigation at the time Mr. Bharara was fired?
- Was President Trump aware of these investigations at the time Mr. Bharara was fired?
- Which other White House or DOJ officials were aware of these investigations at the time Mr. Bharara was fired?
The senators ask for Sessions to respond by Monday, April 3.
Rachel Maddow also tackled the topic on Tuesday night's show, saying Bharara was at the "nexus of multiple Trump scandals":
Keep ReadingShow Less
See More Stories
Most Popular
To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
News & Opinion
Trending
Common Dreams, Inc. Founded 1997. Registered 501(c3) Non-Profit
Privacy Policy