These Two Trump Picks Are Totally Unacceptable (Even To Many Right-Wingers)

If I said I approved of Trump's picks for his cabinet, I would be lying. I think he's made a lot of bad picks - picks that will damage the country. Pete Hegseth will damage our military, Lee Zeldin with damage our environment. Linda McMahon will damage our education system. Howard Lutnick is a tariff supporter, which will increase inflation. Robert Kennedy, Jr. will do harm to this nation'a health. And Marco Rubio will happily go along with Trump's denigration of our allies and kowtowing to dictators.

Having said that, I do believe any president has the right to make his own nominations - even a narcissistic right-wing radical. And he has the right to pick nominees who agree with him.

But Trump has made two picks that are unacceptable even to many right-wingers - Matt Gaetz and Tulsi Gabbard. Note in the image above that The New York Post (owned by Rupert Murdoch who also owns Fox News) is opposed to both of these picks.

Gaetz is a known sex abuser (including under-age girls) with the morals of an alley cat. He is far more interested in retribution (for both Trump and himself) than in justice. It would be a national embarrassment to install him as Attorney General.

Gabbard is well known for being a Russian sympathizer and for passing on Russian propaganda. The whole world should shudder at the thought of her heading the U.S. intelligence network.

The Senate has an advice and consent responsibility to approve or disapprove of presidential picks. They should deny these two picks!

It will not hurt Trump to deny him these two picks. He will just nominate others with his political bent, and they will be approved. But hopefully, they will not be immoral sex abusers or a danger to our intelligence agencies.

Trump Made The Right Picks To Establish A Police State

The following is part of a post by Robert Reich:

The most powerful levers of control in the United States government are found in the six positions where intelligence-gathering and brute force overlap — the Secretary of Defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Secretary of Homeland Security, Attorney General, Director of the CIA, and Director of National Intelligence.

 

These six constitute the raw muscle of the federal government, where information about the nation’s security is gathered and force is wielded. 

Trump could turn America into a police state by putting people into these positions who are more loyal to him than they are to America and the U.S. Constitution. 

Trump has repeatedly warned of a so-called “enemy within.” If he is serious about this putative threat — and we must assume he is — he, and the people around him now planning all of this, must be ready to wield the power of the nation to spy on and use military force against such so-called internal enemies.

 

Consider Trump’s nominations this week, and he seems well on his way. 

Trump has chosen Pete Hegseth, a Fox News TV host, for Defense Secretary; Matt Gaetz, a firebrand right-wing congressman, for Attorney General; Kristi Noem, governor of South Dakota, for Secretary of Homeland Security; Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic member of Congress turned fierce Trumper, for Director of National Intelligence; and John Ratcliffe, a former Republican member of Congress, to be director of the CIA.

 

What do these people have in common?

 

For one thing, none of them has any experience or expertise that would make them a natural fit in any of these roles, if experience or expertise mattered to Trump. 

Their most important “qualification” is that they have demonstrated fierce and unblinking loyalty to Trump. . . .

If — and I emphasize if — Trump is aiming to replace our system of self-government with an authoritarian or fascist one, he would begin by gaining control over these centers of intelligence-gathering and enforcement — staffing them with unquestioning loyalists — and aiming them at so-called “enemies within” the nation. 

I don’t want to be unduly alarmist, but within just 10 days after the election, Trump appears to be well on his way. 

Trump's Bad Picks Are Sending A Message To Congress (And The Country)

Donald Trump's picks for his administration are sending a message that he is serious about doing what he campaigned on - and serious about turning the presidency into an authoritarian institution.

His first picks (Homan/Miller/Noem) made it clear that he will be trying to deport millions of undocumented immigrants (and maybe even some with legal documentation).

His newest picks are even worse. They are totally unqualified and incompetent.

He has chosen a criminal and sex abuser to be Attorney General - Matt Gaetz. Gaetz immediately resigned from Congress upon being nominated in hopes of preventing the House Ethics Committee from releasing a scathing report on him. He has also said the federal policing agencies (FBI, ATF, etc.) should be defunded if they didn't stop "picking" on Trump. Now he will be in charge of all those agencies, and will likely turned them into a tool for retribution against Trump's detractors. His only qualification for the job is being a Trump sycophant - a person who will do whatever Trump wants (without regard to whether it's reasonable or legal).

For Director of National Intelligence, he has chosen Tulsi Gabbard. Gabbard is known for opposing U.S. foreign policy. She is a Putin supporter and has been known to pass on Russian propaganda. She is a supporter of Bashar al-Assad (Syria's dictator). As DNI, she will be in charge of all of U.S. intelligence agencies. Intelligence officials don't trust her (both here and abroad), and it is likely our allies will now stop sharing intelligence with us. Like Gaetz, her only qualification is being a Trump sycophant who will do whatever he asks her to do.

Trump has to know neither of these two are qualified. But he doesn't care. He is using them to send a message to Congress (and the nation). The message is that he is in control and he's going to rule as an authoritarian (like his heroes - Putin and Hitler). With these picks, he is literally daring the Senate to try and stop him. They won't.

We are entering a dark time for our democracy. Can it survive? 

Biden Chooses Competent Professional For His Economic Team

When Biden announced his National Security picks, he chose competent professionals who knew the job and could hit the ground running. He did the same with his choices for economic posts.

They are all experienced, competent, and professional. Even better, most of them came from working and middle class backgrounds. They know what it's like to have to work hard to make a living, so they understand what most citizens are experiencing. That's a far cry from the rich CEO's Trump chose for his cabinet -- people who had no conception of what workers have to do to make a living.

Refreshing! Biden Chooses Only Competent Professionals!

For the last four years we have seen a parade of criminals, grifters, and fanatics appointed to serve in the executive. It looks like those days are over (thank goodness).

Joe Biden has made his first seven picks, including his national security team, and it is a radical change from the Trump administration. There are no family members or criminals or greedy corporatists or conspiracy fanatics -- just competent professionals who have proven their worth through years of dedicated service to this country.

Here part of what Max Boot had to say about Biden's picks in The Washington Post:

After the past four years, it was a disorienting experience to read the rundown of President-elect Joe Biden’s selections for senior national security posts. Where, I wondered, were the unqualified businessmen? The grifters with the FBI hot on their tails? The Twitter trolls? The fanatics? The sycophants? The relatives of the president?

All mercifully missing. Instead, we have a diverse slate of highly competent appointees with decades of relevant experience. Most know each other and Biden well. The backstabbing, extremism and incompetence that were the hallmarks of the Trump administration appear likely to be replaced by professionalism, moderation and collegiality. . . .

All that said, it’s important to keep expectations in check. It’s a vast improvement to get rid of a clueless team that sabotaged the national interest at every turn. But simply because you stop doing the wrong things doesn’t mean that the right approach is obvious or that it will pay off anytime soon.

Biden's First Cabinet-Level Picks Are Announced

 Joe Biden is wasting no time in choosing his cabinet, even though Trump is trying to delay the transition process as long as possible. On Monday, Biden announced his first six picks for cabinet-level posts.

They are (clockwise from the upper left) -- Anthony Blinken (Secretary of State), Alejandro Mayorkas (Secretary of Homeland Security), Linda Thomas-Greenfield (U.N. Ambassador), Jake Sullivan (National Security Advisor), Avril Haines (National Intelligence Director), and John Kerry (Climate Czar).

Unlike Trump, who chose his rich corporate buddies, Biden is choosing competent and professional people to be in his cabinet.

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Later in the day, it was announced that Janet Yellen would be Biden's choice to be Treasury Secretary. Once again, Biden has chosen a competent professional who can hit the ground running.

Trump's Cabinet Officials Love To Spend Your Money

Republicans love to call themselves the party of fiscal responsibility. That has to be a sick joke, especially when it comes to this Republican administration.

The following is from Think Progress:

Donald Trump filled his cabinet with a who’s who of multi-millionaires (and the occasional billionaire) and yet several of them have spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars for private flights overseas, lavish furniture for their offices and residences, and the occasional soundproof phone booth.

Here’s a quick look at the creative and extravagant ways these millionaires have spent your money (so far).

A few notes about what these figures do (and do not) include. Government officials always travel for work, but the Trump administration has an unusual appetite for first class or privately chartered flights. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in privately chartered domestic flights (not including his attempt to book an Air Force jet for his honeymoon), in sharp contrast to former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geither, who always flew in coach on commercial airlines.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has been dogged by similar accusations of exorbitant spending for months. His office shelled out over $40,000 for the purchase and installation of a soundproof phone booth for his office, more than $2,000 for two desks for his office (after his initial request for $70,000 was denied), and an additional $2,460 to repair the door to his deeply discounted apartment, which was busted down after his security detail grew concerned he was unconscious and in need of medical attention. Turns out he was taking a nap.

Pruitt also spent more than $150,000 on first class flights, an expenditure he defended by claiming to be the target of constant, unnamed threats. “Look, there have been incidents on planes. There have been incidents in airports, and those incidents, you know, occurred, and they are of different types,” Pruitt eloquently told CBS News earlier this year. “These threats have been unprecedented from the very beginning, and the quantity and type are unprecedented.” It’s unclear just how recognizable Scott Pruitt thinks he is to the general public, though judging by how many of you didn’t realize the photo above is a stock image of “caucasian politician” and not, in fact, Scott Pruitt, the answer is: not very.

What’s not included in this total are things like questionable salary expenses. Take Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Mick Mulvaney. From his days in Congress, Mulvaney has sought to abolish the CFPB, arguing the agency tasked with protecting taxpayers from predatory financial institutions is a federal boondoggle. During the most recent budget process, he submitted a request for zero dollars for the agency, arguing it was their duty to be “responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars.” Instead, he hired at least eight people to work at the CFPB, half of whom have annual salaries in excess of $250,000, more than $100,000 above the top salary allowed under the federal government pay scale.

New Polls Show Trump Is Deeply Unpopular

The Public Policy Polling survey was done between March 23rd and 25th of a random national sample of 846 registered voters, with a 3.4 point margin of error.

The CNN / SSRS Poll was done between March 22nd and 25th of a random national sample of 1,014 adults, with a 3.7 point margin of error.

Both polls show Trump still remains deeply unpopular, as the public continues to believe he is not doing a good job. The PPP survey shows him with a 15 deficit on job approval, and the CNN poll has that deficit at 12 points.

The PPP survey asked a rather humorous question that showed the depth of anti-Trump feeling. They asked if he ran against Stephanie Clifford in 2020, who would you vote for? Ms. Clifford won 42% to 41%. Then they used Clifford's stage name (Stormy Daniels), and her vote dropped to 32% -- but Trump's remained at 41%. It seems that a lot of people dislike Trump enough to vote for someone they don't even know, and after finding out she was a porn star, 32% would still vote for her over Trump.

The CNN poll also asked an interesting question. They asked about respondent's opinion of the cabinet in the Trump administration. It seems that the public has as low an opinion of Trump's cabinet members as they do of Trump himself.

The public is also not buying Trump's claims of innocence about his sexual liaisons outside of his marriage. By a 42 point gap, the public believes the women instead of Trump.

What Is The Most Important Post In The Presidential Cabinet ?

I thought this poll was interesting. Rasmussen asked voters which cabinet post was the most important. About 32% said the Secretary of State was most important. Secretary of Defense and Attorney General tied for second with 21% each.

I was a little surprised at how far down the list the Secretary of Treasury finished. Americans almost always vote for who they think will be better for the domestic economy -- and yet, the post with the biggest effect on the domestic economy (Secretary of Treasury) was chosen by only 6%.

The chart reflects the results of a recent Rasmussen Poll -- done on November 7th and 8th of a random national sample of 1,000 likely voters, with a 3 point margin of error.

Trump Is The Weakest President In Modern U.S. History

(Caricature of Donald Trump is by DonkeyHotey.)

Donald Trump likes to present himself as a strong, decisive, and ultra-competent leader. The sad fact is that he is none of those things -- and may, in fact, actually be the weakest president in modern American history.

Following is much of an excellent article on this by Jack Goldsmith at Lawfare. Mr. Goldsmith writes:

The Trump Presidency is a strange combination of menacing and impotent.  It is also fractured internally like no presidency in American history.

The menacing element is plain.  Trump sets everyone on edge with incessant verbal attacks and relentlessly indecorous behavior.  The maelstrom that is his presidency seems like it could at any moment push the country off the rails—massive pardons to kill the Russia investigation, a Justice Department meltdown as a result of firings and resignations, a North Korean miscalculation, or who-knows-what-other-crazy-thing.  Many people worry how the impulsive Trump will handle his first crisis.    

As for impotence, Trump has accomplished nothing beyond conservative judicial appointments.  His administration is otherwise a comedy of errors in the exercise of executive power.  What is most remarkable is the extent to which his senior officials act as if Trump were not the chief executive.  Never has a president been so regularly ignored or contradicted by his own officials.  I’m not talking about so-called “deep state” bureaucrats.  I’m talking about senior officials in the Justice Department and the military and intelligence and foreign affairs agencies.  And they are not just ignoring or contradicting him in private.  They are doing so in public for all the world to see. . . .

As others have noted, it’s all a remarkable inversion of the unitary executive.  Even Trump’s hard power to fire subordinates—the crux of unitary executive power—hasn’t worked so well.  Comey’s firing led to a more vigorous independent investigation, thanks to Trump-angering actions by Sessions and Rosenstein.  Trump may well fire Sessions, but last week he suffered the embarrassing spectacle of Senate Republicans and conservative commentators warning him not to.  It’s clearer now than a week ago that firing Sessions would bring Trump to yet a worse place vis a vis his own administration and Congress.  The exercise of hard power won’t help him.

The fractured executive branch is partly a result of terrible executive organization but mainly the product of an incompetent, mendacious president interacting with appointed or inherited executive branch officials who possess integrity.  The President says and does things that his senior officials, when asked, cannot abide.  And so they tell the truth, often with an awkward wince, or they ignore the President.  And in response to this overt disrespect, President Trump does … nothing.

The president seems scary, and he is, but he also has no control over his administration.  There is lots of talk about Trump’s threat to the independence of the Justice Department, the FBI, the intelligence community, and the like.  But the truth is that these agencies are operating with an independence to presidential wishes like never before.  It’s a very strange state of affairs.  

Andrew Puzder Is Not Fit To Be The Labor Secretary

(Photo of Andrew Puzder is by Fred Prouser/Reuters from pbs.org.)

Perhaps the worst of Trump's cabinet picks (with the possible exception of Betsy DeVos to be Education Secretary) is Andrew Puzder to head the Labor Department -- a corporate CEO known for his abuse of his own workers. Here is a letter the Economic Policy Institute sent to senators on the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (the committee that will hold hearing on Puzder's appointment):

Dear Members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions:

The Economic Policy Institute Policy Center strongly opposes the nomination of Andrew Puzder for U.S. secretary of labor, and we urge you to vote against his confirmation. Simply, Mr. Puzder is particularly ill-suited for the job of advocating for and protecting American workers. Both his public statements and his record as an employer stand in sharp contrast to the Department of Labor’s (DOL’s) mission of enforcing labor law and improving the wages and working conditions of everyday Americans.

It is the Labor Department’s job to enforce labor laws and promulgate rules that protect workers. However, Mr. Puzder has made it clear time and again that he does not believe in many of those rules: he has publicly opposed raising the federal minimum wage; he has opposed the updated overtime rule that would give millions of workers the right to reasonable work hours or the overtime pay they deserve; and he has opposed the Affordable Care Act, which has expanded access to affordable health insurance to tens of millions of working people.

Even in an industry notorious for low pay and poor working conditions, Mr. Puzder’s record as an employer and CEO of CKE Restaurants stands out. In 60 percent of DOL investigations since 2009, CKE restaurants were found to be in violation of wage and hour laws. Notably, restaurants in violation included not only independently owned and operated franchises but also restaurants owned and operated by CKE. As secretary of labor, Mr. Puzder would be responsible for enforcing laws against wage theft—yet he has failed to ensure that the law is followed in his own restaurants. Moreover, in a recent survey, two-thirds of female CKE employees reported experiencing sexual harassment at work—alarming evidence that Mr. Puzder is either unable or unwilling to ensure a decent working environment for all workers.

For nearly four decades, policymakers have stood by passively as labor standards enforcement has weakened, the value of the minimum wage declined, and globalization undermined the economic security of workers. The Labor Department has for the past eight years been a bulwark against this erosion of workers’ rights and protections, but it is clear that Mr. Puzder does not have working people’s best interests at heart and will not vigorously defend them. We strongly urge you to vote against confirming Mr. Puzder and in favor of a labor secretary who will work to strengthens workers’ rights and raise wages across the board.

We are not alone in our concerns about Mr. Puzder. As of January 11, 2017, more than 38,000 people have signed a petition opposing Mr. Puzder’s confirmation, and that number is growing.

Signed,

Ross Eisenbrey
Economic Policy Institute Policy Center

Trump Has Assembled The Worst Cabinet In U.S. History

(This image of Trump's cabinet is from CNN.com.)

It's happened. We now have a narcissistic, racist, incompetent in the White House. There are those who believe that Trump will be mostly a figurehead, and leave the real governing to others. I doubt that. He just has too high an opinion of himself to leave most decisions to others.

But even if he did, I'm not sure whether that would be better or worse. The cabinet he has assembled is a terrible one, and might well do even worse at governing than Trump himself.

Consider that he appointed Jeff Sessions as Attorney General (a position with the mandate to protect civil and voting rights) a man known to have a history of racist views. Then you have Rick Perry who didn't even know what the Department of Energy does (the department he will head). He thought it was just an ambassadorship for the oil and gas industry, and had no idea he would be in charge of overseeing nuclear plants along with the nuclear arsenal of the United States.

And if those two picks aren't scary enough, here's how the Washington Post describes some of Trump's other (equally scary) cabinet picks.

Let’s run through some of the other highlights of the Trump cabinet and cabinet-level appointees:

• Steven Mnuchin, Secretary of the Treasury: Mnuchin has never served in government and has no experience in setting macroeconomic policy, but he did lead Donald Trump’s fundraising effort. In advance of his confirmation hearing, Mnuchin “failed to disclose his interests in a Cayman Islands corporation as well as more than $100 million in personal assets.”
• Tom Price, Secretary of Health and Human Services: Rep. Price, a doctor who has taken a particular interest in legislating on health care, has a habit of trading in health care stocks that are affected by the legislation he writes; he also recently got a “sweetheart deal” on stock in a foreign biotech firm. 
• Betsy DeVos, Secretary of Education: DeVos, a billionaire Republican donor, has spent much of her adult life attempting to destroy public education in America. Despite that work, at her confirmation hearing she displayed a shocking ignorance of basic issues in education policy, though she did opine that schools should be able to have guns in them to ward off grizzly bear attacks.
• Andrew Puzder, Secretary of Labor: If Trump had searched America to find the individual most hostile to the rights of workers, he could not have done much better than Puzder, the CEO of a fast-food company. The man who will be responsible for safeguarding workers’ rights is an ardent opponent of minimum wage increases and laws mandating things like break time and overtime pay; his company has been repeatedly cited for wage theft. 
• Ben Carson, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development: The former presidential candidate, who has precisely zero experience in housing policy, was apparently appointed to lead this department because he’s one of the few African-Americans Donald Trump has met.
• Mick Mulvaney, Director of the Office of Management and Budget: Mulvaney was just revealed to have employed a nanny without paying payroll taxes for her, to the tune of over $15,000.
• Wilbur Ross, Secretary of Commerce: The billionaire investor just realized that one of the dozen or so household staff he employs was undocumented. 
• Ryan Zinke, Secretary of the Interior: Rep. Zinke is a former Navy Seal whose career was hampered by the fact that he was caught repeatedly billing the government for personal trips home which he falsely claimed were for the purpose of scouting training locations. 
• Scott Pruitt, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency: Like Puzder and DeVos, Pruitt seems to have been chosen for his fervent opposition to the mission of the agency he’ll be leading. As Attorney General of Oklahoma, he sued the EPA multiple times over its efforts to enforce environmental laws. In his confirmation hearings, he refused to commit to recuse himself from the cases among those that are still open, in the apparent belief that there isn’t anything wrong with essentially being both plaintiff and defendant in a lawsuit. When asked about lead poisoning, a vital and longstanding environmental issue that gained new urgency with the poisoning of the water in Flint, MI, he said that he had “not looked at the scientific research on that.”
• Michael Flynn, National Security Adviser: Flynn, an ardent Islamophobe and purveyor of lunatic conspiracy theories, was fired from his last job in government because of mismanagement.
• Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State: Tillerson has no government or diplomatic experience, though he has been to many countries that have oil.
• Nikki Haley, United Nations Ambassador: Haley’s foreign policy experience consists of going on a couple of trade missions as governor of South Carolina.

That’s not to mention the sub-cabinet appointments who are already in trouble, like the Army secretary who punched out a concession worker at a horse auction or the national security spokesperson revealed as a plagiarist, nor the fact that Trump’s senior adviser used to run a white nationalist web site and the President-elect intends to employ his family members, all while insisting again and again that ethics laws don’t apply to him.

While prior presidents have had some miserable appointments — James Watt and Anne Gorsuch in the Reagan administration, Michael “Heckuva Job” Brown and Alberto Gonzales in George W. Bush’s — never before has one president assembled such a remarkable collection of individuals who are either unqualified for their jobs, devoted to subverting their agencies, or both, not to mention the ethical questions that will continue to swirl around this administration. 

We expect the Republican contempt for government to be evident to some degree in the appointments of any GOP administration. But Donald Trump has truly blazed a new trail with the people he has gathered around him. One can only imagine the damage they’re going to do.

I honestly don't know which is worst -- Trump or his cabinet. Together they scare the hell out of me.

An Open Letter To Trump's Pick For Education Secretary

One of the most unqualified cabinet picks Donald Trump has made is choosing Betsy DeVoss to be Secretary of Education. The following is an open letter to Devoss from educator Patrick Kearney:

Dear Ms. DeVos,

I don’t think we’ve really met yet; we are America’s public school teachers. There are about 3.1 million of us. We teach in large urban areas, we teach in the suburbs, we teach in small rural communities, and we teach in some really remote parts of our country. The most important thing to recognize is that we teach every kid who shows up. We don’t pick and choose the types of kids that we will teach, we teach ALL of them.

Because we haven’t really had much interaction, we thought it might be nice to share a little bit about the public schools we teach in. First of all, we are very proud of our schools. Public schools today have the highest graduation rate in American history. The Gallup Poll says that the rate of parents who are satisfied with their public school is the highest in American history. We are also very proud that our public schools offer more services to students with low socioeconomic backgrounds and special education needs than ever before. Not to be redundant, but we are proud that we serve ALL of the students in our communities.

Our communities are very important to us. We are taxpayers in our local communities and many of us have children of our own who attend the public schools that we teach in. We care deeply that our schools are safe and that they are providing a rigorous and relevant curriculum to EVERY student who walks in the door. We recognize that each of our communities have different needs and sometimes get frustrated with a “one size fits all” mentality.

We also know that our public schools face real challenges. Twenty-two percent of U.S. public school students live in poverty, 50 percent more than the next highest industrialized nation. English is a second language to almost 10 percent of the students we serve. Enrollment in teacher preparation programs has fallen more than 10 percent in the last 10 years. We are challenged to keep up with increasing state and federal mandates regarding standardized testing.

America’s public schools are here to serve EVERY kid. As the teachers who keep those schools ticking, all that we ask is that you listen to us.

So, I suppose we also need to address the elephant in the room. We are a little freaked out by your nomination to be secretary of education. You aren’t an educator. You haven’t ever attended or sent your children to a public school, yet you seem to have some pretty strong opinions about them. You don’t seem to have been involved in the study of curriculum or school standards. What you have done is lobby (and spend millions of dollars of your own money in advocacy) for taxpayer dollars to go to unregulated for-profit charter schools. As teachers we like to look at data. Interestingly, the data from Michigan (where you have been able to use your wealth to influence a lot of education policy) would suggest that the charter schools you lobby for aren’t really achieving any better than their public counterparts.

If you are confirmed by the Senate to become secretary of education (and we hope it doesn’t hurt your feelings that many of us will work to oppose your nomination), we hope that you will work to get to know us. It seems that anecdotes of ineffective teachers who get to hold on to jobs without accountability are popular these days. Those anecdotes really don’t match up with what we see in our schools. No one is going into education to get wealthy. We go into teaching because we care about young people. We go into teaching because a teacher in our lives inspired us. When you get to know us we think you will find that we desperately continue to work to improve our schools. If you were to meet us and find that you don’t think much of the work we are doing, we will be curious if you can find an army of better qualified people who want to do this work for less money, fewer benefits, and with more regulation.

The education of America’s young people is important. The challenges in front of us are real. Giving families “choice” in their education options is a worthy conversation, but let us not presume that using tax dollars to support those interested in turning a profit to open unregulated schools with no record of success will improve education in our country. How we use our resources is a reflection of what we value. The most unpopular thing a teacher can say is that there is a cost to providing the best possible education to our students, and yet like most things, you often get what you pay for. Many for-profit charter schools have gone out of business because they quickly discovered that the public schools they replaced weren’t the inefficient operations they assumed them to be.

America’s public schools are here to serve EVERY kid. As the teachers who keep those schools ticking, all that we ask is that you listen to us. You are new to all of this and we are here to help. Once we introduce you to the young Bosnian kid who translates letters home to his parents; the kid living out of the family car who does homework with only a street light to illuminate his textbook; the kids who wants to be sure their school offers great music courses, a world language program, and some advanced courses; and the special education students who love spending part of their day with their peers, we think that you will fall in love with our public schools.

Sincerely,

America’s Teachers

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Patrick Kearney is facilitator for Teacher Leadership in the Johnston Community School District in Iowa. He spent 25 years as a band director in private and public schools of Iowa, and is a past-president of the Iowa Bandmasters Association and past co-chair of the Iowa Jazz Championships. He was also a founding board member of the Jazz Educators of Iowa.  His wife teaches in the Des Moines Public Schools and his son is studying education at Drake University.

Trump Favored The Rich/Wall Street With Cabinet Picks

The chart above was made from information in a recent Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between December 10th and 13th of a random national sample of 1,465 adults, with a margin of error of 3.1 points.

While Donald Trump may be happy with his cabinet picks, the general public is not. They believe those picks have shown too much concern for rich people and Wall Street -- and too little concern for the middle class, poor people, small business, working people, and ordinary Americans.

The Plutocracy Is Here - Say Goodbye To Democracy

Americans like to think of their government as being a democracy (actually a representative democracy) -- rule by the people. But for a while now, many (including me) have been warning that we are well on the way to abandoning our democracy in favor of a plutocracy -- rule by the wealthy. And with the election of Donald Trump, we may well have crossed the line into a true plutocracy.

The current Congress, for the first time, had a majority of members who were millionaires -- and the incoming Congress did not change that. Add in the fact that we will soon have a self-reported multi-billionaire as president. And then we have the cabinet that billionaire has picked so far -- the people who will direct and set policy for the many government departments.

The 17 people Trump has chosen so far for cabinet-level positions have a combined wealth of $9.5 billion. That's more money than the combined wealth of about a third of the households in the United States -- the 43 million least wealthy households. That is unprecedented.

One has to wonder if any of those people have actually done any real work in their lives. Do they have any conception of how difficult it is for hard-working Americans to buy food, shelter, and clothing for their families? Do they understand that half of all Americans live within 150% of the poverty line, and are just a paycheck or two away from poverty? Do they understand that ordinary working Americans need government to actually help, instead of just breaking promises?

I doubt it. They seem to think that giving more to the rich will help all Americans. It won't, as we have seen. That has been tried for decades now, and it has been a miserable failure.

The truth is that ordinary Americans have little to no voice in their government anymore. We have a government of the rich and for the rich -- a plutocracy. Kiss democracy goodbye, because it's fading fast.

A Troubling Pattern

And the pattern continues. He has now chosen a billionaire Commerce Secretary (Wilbur Ross) called the "king of bankruptcy", who is famous for buying companies in financial trouble and laying off their workers. The Deputy Secretary of Commerce is also a Wall Street billionaire.

His pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency is Scott Pruitt -- a friend of Big Oil, opponent of efforts by the EPA to make power plants and other industries clean up their pollution, and climate change denier. He will be sure to help roll back EPA restrictions on corporations -- and the result will be dirtier air and water.

And word now is he has chosen multi-millionaire Andy Puzder to be Secretary of Labor (who is CEO of CKE Restaurants Holdings (owners of Hardee's and Carl Jr's). He is opposed to raising the minimum wage, and to overtime pay recently mandated by the Obama administration. This corporate CEO (who makes more in one day than the minimum wage workers in his restaurants make in a year) is bad news for the hopes of workers.

Trump's picks seem to be perfect for accomplishing two things -- 1) rolling back all of the protections for workers and minorities of the past few decades, and 2) turning our government over to the giant corporations. The ones who aren't defenders of white privilege (Flynn, Bannon, Sessions) are Wall Street billionaires and corporate CEO's.

Ordinary and hard-working Americans will get no help from the Trump administration. This is now a government of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations.

Plutocracy Is Here - Trump Has Richest Cabinet In History

(Cartoon image is by Steve Sack in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.)

Many people (including me) have warned that we are losing our democracy. It is becoming a plutocracy (rule by the wealthy class). The current Congress has a median wealth of more than a million dollars, and a majority of members of Congress are millionaires -- and I expect the incoming Congress will not change that.

In addition, we will soon have our first billionaire president -- and he is filling his cabinet with billionaires and millionaires. He had promised to drain the Washington swamp, but he's just filling that swamp with bigger monsters -- rich people who lick their chops at the prospect of making themselves (and their peers) even richer at the expense of all other Americans.

The following article, written by Jim Tankersley and Ana Swanson for The Washington Post, discusses how Trump is in the process of appointing the richest presidential cabinet in the history of this country.

When George W. Bush assembled his first Cabinet in 2001, news reports dubbed them a team of millionaires, and government watchdogs questioned whether they were out of touch with most Americans’ problems. Combined, that group had an inflation-adjusted net worth of about $250 million — which is roughly one-tenth the wealth of Donald Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary alone.

Trump is putting together what will be the wealthiest administration in modern American history. His announced nominees for top positions include several multimillionaires, an heir to a family mega-fortune and two Forbes-certified billionaires, one of whose family is worth as much as industrial tycoon Andrew Mellon was when he served as treasury secretary nearly a century ago. Rumored candidates for other positions suggest Trump could add more ultra-rich appointees soon.

Many of the Trump appointees were born wealthy, attended elite schools and went on to amass even larger fortunes as adults. As a group, they have much more experience funding political candidates than they do running government agencies.

Their collective wealth in many ways defies Trump’s populist campaign promises. Their business ties, particularly to Wall Street, have drawn rebukes from Democrats. . . .

“It fits into Trump’s message that he’s trying to do business in an unusual way, by bringing in these outsiders,” said Nicole Hemmer, an assistant professor in presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. But Trump and his team, she added, won’t be able to draw on the same sort of life struggles that President Obama did, in crafting policy to lift poor and middle-class Americans.

“They’re just not going to have any access to that” life experience, she said. “I guess it will be a test — does empathy actually matter? If you’re able to echo back what people are telling you, is that enough?”

Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary is industrialist Wilbur Ross, who has amassed a fortune of $2.5 billion through decades at the helm of Rothschild’s bankruptcy practice and his own investment firm, according to Forbes.

Ross’ would-be deputy at the Commerce Department, Todd Ricketts, is the son of a billionaire and the co-owner of the Chicago Cubs. Steven Mnuchin, who Trump named to head the Treasury Department, is a former Goldman Sachs executive, hedge fund executive and Hollywood financier.

Betsy DeVos, a Michigan billionaire who was named as Trump’s education secretary, is the daughter-in-law of Richard DeVos, the co-founder of Amway. Her family has a net worth of $5.1 billion, according to Forbes. Elaine Chao, the choice for transportation secretary, is the daughter of a shipping magnate.

It is a group that has long spent big to influence politics. Mnuchin, Ross and DeVos each made hundreds of thousands of dollars of political contributions within the last two years, according to OpenSecrets.org. . . .

The question now is whether public officials who come from such privileged backgrounds will favor policies that benefit the rich.

“This isn’t a criticism or a conspiracy . . . but it’s important to recognize that everyone’s perspective and policy and government is shaped by the kind of life you’ve lived,” said Nicholas Carnes, a political scientist at Duke University. “The research really says that when you put a bunch of millionaires in charge, you can expect public policy that helps millionaires at the expense of everybody else.”

Future appointments could further increase the wealth of Trump’s cabinet. Harold Hamm — a self-made oil industry executive who ranks 30th on the Forbes 400, a list of the wealthiest Americans, with a net worth of $16.7 billion, — is on Trump’s shortlist for secretary of energy. Andrew Puzder, a restaurant industry executive, has been floated for labor secretary.