Friday, December 02, 2016
Plutocracy Is Here - Trump Has Richest Cabinet In History
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.
Thursday, December 01, 2016
Public Believes The Trump Administration Will Be Corrupt
I found this survey interesting. It is the YouGov Poll done between November 24th and 28th of a random national sample of 1,000 adults, with a 4 point margin of error.
It shows that while the public thought the past two presidents, Bush II (+4) and Obama (+9), considered the common good more important than their own financial interests, they don't think the same of Donald Trump (-20). A majority of Americans (51%) think Trump will consider his own good more important than the common good of all Americans.
As the middle chart shows, 54% of the general public believes that Trump will use his presidency to make himself richer, while only 33% don't think he will do that. And that belief crosses all gender, age, and racial groups.
And while the Obama administration was corruption scandal-free, the public doesn't think that will be true of the incoming Trump administration. About 52% think it is likely the Trump administration will have a major corruption scandal -- and that belief also crosses all gender, age, and racial lines.
The true trumpistas may be proud of their hero and expect him to do great things, but that is not true of the rest of America. They are very leery of the incoming administration, and expect the worst.
Trump Appointees Mean Trouble For Obamacare & Medicare
I don't think the Republicans expected to be in the position they are in -- controlling both houses of Congress and the White House. They have voted over 40 times to repeal Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act), but that was just political theater. They knew the White House would never agree to it, and they were just playing to their ignorant base for their own political well-being.
But now they are in a position where they must actually do something (i.e., live up to all their anti-Obamacare rhetoric). And Donald Trump has appointed a new head of HHS that will increase that pressure. Rep. Tom Price of Georgia is Trump's pick. Price has been one of the loudest anti-Obamacare voices, even to the point of writing several of the repeal attempts.
This means Obamacare (and those who depend on it for health insurance) are now in a lot of trouble. I still doubt that Congress can completely repeal Obamacare, since Senate Democrats have the numbers to filibuster to death such an effort. But the GOP Congress can use budget reconciliation (which can't be filibustered) to defund many of the aspects of Obamacare (including the subsidizing of insurance premiums and funding for Medicaid expansion). If they follow through, then millions of Americans will lose their health insurance.
Even if they don't use budget reconciliation to destroy Obamacare, having Price as the head of HHS could mean serious damage to Obamacare could be done without any congressional action. And there is no reason to believe that won't happen. Having an avid Obamacare hater in charge of the program can't result in any good.
But the health care problems don't stop there. Trump has appointed Seema Verma to oversee Medicare and Medicaid. She and Price are both opponents of Medicare and Medicaid, and both support the privatization of Medicare and turning Medicaid into a block grant program (giving states full authority to ignore the health needs of the poor).
Privatization of Medicare will be a disaster. The private health insurance companies don't want to have to insure seniors. Seniors are, in general, sicker than the rest of the population -- and you can be sure those companies will make insurance premiums for seniors sky-high (far more than the subsidies proposed to help them buy insurance).
The charts below (from the Kaiser Family Foundation) show what would happen if Medicare is privatized (under the current plan by Speaker Paul Ryan) -- and they are the best-case scenarios. It could be far worse. Seniors will be paying significantly more for health care, and it will eat up a lot more of their Social Security checks.
With these two picks, Donald Trump hasn't just put the foxes in charge of the henhouse -- he has given them the deed to that henhouse. The poor, the working class, and seniors will find getting health care much more difficult if the Republicans get their way -- and it will be very difficult to stop them.
Even if no congressional action is taken, seniors can expect to pay a lot more for Medicare starting in 2018, the poor can expect no further Medicaid expansion, and insurance premiums will continue to rise for the working class (while subsidies won't).
Hate Actions Have Increased Since Trump Election
It seems like the election of Donald Trump has given the proponents of hate permission to spread that hate . The charts below, from Think Progress, show the number and distribution of those hateful acts (from the election through last Monday). States with the darker colors have the most incidents of hate. Sadly, my own state of Texas shows up in every chart (meaning there are incidents of hate there against all groups).
About 15% Of Texas Energy Is Now Supplied By Wind
Although coal and natural gas still provide most of the electricity for homes and businesses in Texas, wind energy is growing fast. In 2016, it has provided nearly 15% of all energy. The following article is by Katherine Tweed at Green Tech Media.
First, some definitions:
Megawatt -- unit of power equal to 1 million watts.
Gigawatt -- init of power equal to 1 billion watts.
1 Megawatt will provide enough energy to supply the needs of 400 to 900 homes (depending on the time of year and location of those homes).
Tweed writes:
Texas grid operator ERCOT announced a new record for wind on Monday. For the first time, wind provided more than 15,000 megawatts of electricity to the state on a single day.
The record wind on Sunday supplied an average of 41 percent of electricity throughout the day. But it was not an all-time record for wind in Texas. On one day in March, wind supplied more than 48 percent of load during one hour.
It is not the hour-by-hour records that are impressive, however.
Texas is already the clear leader in wind power in the U.S., and that lead is widening. Texas has more than 18,000 megawatts installed and another 5,000 megawatts under construction, according to the American Wind Energy Association.
Wind power made up an average of 11.7 percent of electricity in 2015 in Texas, a figure that will be at least 14.7 in 2016, according to ERCOT.
The final tally of wind power’s contribution to the Texas electric grid will likely be slightly higher, as the wind blows harder in winter and therefore wind power contributions to the power mix usually go up.
Of course, the growing share of wind is still half the amount of coal in Texas and about one-third of natural gas generation.
Coal and natural gas may dominate in Texas, but the investment the state has made in transmission and improving renewable energy forecasts could allow for even more wind and solar in the future.
The wind power in Texas is coming from across the state, including the Texas Panhandle, the west and the south. Texas’ success with wind power is largely due to its Competitive Renewable Energy Zones, which were identified mostly in West Texas and the state's Panhandle region. A key to the project was about $7 billion in transmission lines to carry the wind power where it is needed.
With wind power flowing across the state, solar power is now starting to catch on to take advantage of the transmission lines. In 2015, ERCOT did not even list solar as a fuel source on its annual demand and energy report.
In 2016, the figures are still very small -- but they're growing. ERCOT reports about 685 megawatts of solar will be on-line in Texas in 2016, up from less than 300 in 2015. For the first time, solar energy received its own designation as a fuel type in ERCOT’s annual demand and energy report.
Large-scale solar could grow quickly in Texas, but will not even come close to wind. By 2020, ERCOT expects 2.5 gigawatts of solar on its system, compared to more than 28 gigawatts of wind.
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