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drcococalico · 16 days ago

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Jay Kuo article

(I did not write this, all credit to Jay Kuo -statuskuo.substack.com)

This weekend’s head-spinning headlines were enough to spike blood pressure nationwide. Mass purges of prosecutors and agents at the FBI. A shutdown of an entire agency at USAID. Even a tech bro putsch at Treasury and the Office of Personnel Management, giving an unelected billionaire access and possible control over our entire federal workforce HR and some $6 trillion paid annually by our federal payment system.

The most common question I saw across social media and in the comments was understandable: Is somebody doing something about this?

The short and important answer is yes. And we need to understand a few things to help bring things into focus.

First, the timing of all of this was intentional. It all went down on a Friday night, when there would be less ability among affected employees to communicate and resist; decreased national press attention; and closed congressional offices, courthouses and law offices. They wanted us to panic for several days and make us feel like we were rudderless and without clear options.

But today is the first business day after last Friday’s bombshells, and I can report confidently that the anti-Trump/Musk response is well underway.

It’s helpful to think of the response as falling into four distinct yet sometimes overlapping categories, each with increasing urgency. These responses include the personal, the political, the legal and the popular.

Once we place a response into one of these categories, it’s far easier to assess whether it is serving its intended purpose. This level of disciplined reasoning will also help us all prevent the common error of expecting, for example, personal responses to create legal results, or political responses to generate popular ones. These are all very different beasts, each important in its own right, but usually led by very different actors.

**The personal responses

The front line defenders of our democracy at this moment are the civil servants whose roles and responsibilities are being upended or whose jobs are on the chopping block under the new administration. How they respond matters a great deal for a number of reasons, both moral and practical.

From a moral standpoint, standing up to authoritarianism, while risking persecution or even violence from the MAGA mob, takes courage. One person’s courage is sometimes all it takes for many to find their own.

From a practical standpoint, stopping an illegal move initially buys valuable time for the press to be alerted, for union leaders and politicians to organize and respond, and for lawyers to be called in. Personal resistance is the first fistful of sand thrown into the gears of a takeover machine. In the past three days alone, we have witnessed some heroic personal responses.

-James Dennehy at the FBI-

Nine high-ranking career FBI officials had already been forced out, spreading fear and uncertainty in the ranks of the Bureau. Then on Friday the Justice Department, through its acting AG Emil Bove, who was once also Trump’s personal attorney, ordered the FBI to collect names of anyone who even so much as helped investigate the January 6 attack on the Capitol, a sign of a purge that would include some 6,000 rank-and-file agents.

A top ranking FBI official, James Dennehy, who heads up the largest FBI office in the country based in New York, refused to remain silent. He vowed in a defiant email to his staff to “dig in” while praising the interim leadership of the Bureau. Dennehy wrote, “Today, we find ourselves in the middle of a battle of our own, as good people are being walked out of the F.B.I. and others are being targeted because they did their jobs in accordance with the law and F.B.I. policy.” Dennehy compared the current situation to when he had to dig a small foxhole five feet deep as a Marine in the 1990s and hunker down for safety.

“It sucked,” he wrote. “But it worked.”

-David Lebryk at Treasury-

The first person to refuse Elon Musk’s team’s outrageous and illegal requests at Treasury was David Lebryk. He was the acting Treasury Secretary until Trump’s selection, Scott Bessent, was recently appointed and confirmed.

As a career civil servant, Lebryk oversaw the Fiscal Service, a little-known but mission critical office that handles more than one billion payments from the federal government every year, disbursing over $5.4 trillion. After Lebryk’s refusal to grant Musk’s team access, he was placed on administrative leave. Only then did Lebryk announce his retirement after 35 years of service.

Lebryk did not comply, meaning those 35 years’ of knowledge about how to read, sort and control payments was not immediately available to Musk’s team. More sand in the gears.

“The fiscal service performs some of the most vital functions in government,” Lebryk wrote to his colleagues in his farewell email. “Our work may be unknown to most of the public, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t exceptionally important.”

-Director and Dep. Director for Security, John Vorhees and Brian McGill at USAID-

When Elon Musk’s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) demanded access to classified materials in restricted areas from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), two officials said, “Not on my watch.”

Director of Security John Vorhees and Deputy Director for Security Brian McGill at USAID understood that granting such access could expose classified information to individuals lacking the security clearances to view them. In refusing DOGE access, both officials acted to protect our nation’s secrets. For that they were both placed on leave Saturday night, joining a growing list of suspensions and layoffs at that agency.

The Trump White House’s official response to press inquiries came from DOGE spokesperson Katie Miller (the wife of Stephen Miller…) who reposted an AP article on Twitter with the comment, “No classified material was accessed without proper security clearances.” For starters, that of course misses the point. Merely granting access to classified materials would have been a serious breach of security. Further, we shouldn’t take this administration’s word on anything, especially given Trump’s own mishandling and theft of classified documents.

**The political responses

Before I get into some of the responses of Democratic politicians to the many nightmares that unfolded over the weekend, I’d like to reset some common incorrect assumptions and expectations.

A party that is out of power in a democracy typically doesn’t have the power to do very much. In the Senate, for example, Democrats alone can’t prevent a quorum and can’t stop most legislation from passing. They can’t block nominees without help from less extreme GOP senators. And the number of procedural blocks they can put up are limited. At best these can stall, but ultimately not stop, things like cabinet confirmations.

The job of politicians from the party that is out of power is to make the political argument for why their party should be returned to power. That means highlighting the misdeeds, mistakes and malfeasance of the other party. It means providing clear statements about the rules, norms and processes that were violated so that the press can report on them from experts whose job it is to understand legislation and limits on power.

Note also that politicians normally do not themselves file lawsuits unless they were personally injured in some way. And even then there are many reasons why lawsuits are best left to other litigants, such as unions, state attorneys general or nonprofits, who have the resources and time to bring complex suits with seasoned lawyers.

Some political responses may help lead to other types of responses, but that is not their primary end. The primary goal of a political response is to make the political case. And that’s it.

So it will help us and our cause to stop rolling our eyes when, say, a politician writes a stern letter to a Trump official demanding that the administration cease its illegal activity. That is actually what our senators and representatives are supposed to do. That is how they set the record and inform the press and through them the larger public. As discussed above, politicians don’t bring lawsuits. They usually don’t lead street protests. And the more experienced among them don’t waste political capital on performative stunts that don’t actually fix anything.

That said, those letters and statements, which help establish the public record, are a vital resource. They are cited in lawsuits, often as evidence that the administration was on notice of its illegal actions. They point investigative journalists toward more reporting. And they are an important expenditure of political capital, signaling the priorities of our representatives.

With that in mind, let’s look at some examples out of the many political responses we have already seen. And as a bonus, I’ll include some ratcheted up action by two U.S. senators addressing the travesty of the USAID office.

-Sen. Wyden on the Treasury takeover-

Shortly after news broke that private teams of software engineers had forcefully commandeered access to the federal payment system at the Treasury Department, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) wrote to newly confirmed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. In that letter, Wyden blasted the move as “politically motivated meddling” that “risks severe damage to our country and the economy."

Wyden was alarmed that “officials associated with Musk may have intended to access these payment systems to illegally withhold payments to any number of programs.” Wyden also raised the alarm over the current financial strain on the federal government, which is now relying on some accounting maneuvers to meet its obligations after reaching the debt limit.

He also noted Musk’s business dealings in China, which has a history of cyberattacks on U.S. government systems. Wyden warned that Musk’s Chinese business ties could create conflicts of interest and present a national security risk, particularly if Musk were granted access to these sensitive systems.

When a staffer or a lawyer reads such a demand letter, a few things jump out. Bessent is now on notice that the system could be severely injured by Musk’s access; that it would be illegal to withhold any payments; that the debt limit and the need for the GOP to raise it is on Wyden’s mind; and that there’s a huge security risk because of China. Those are things the public should understand, too. And they should know these things were communicated directly to the Trump White House, especially if they wind up coming true.

-Sens. Coons and Murphy on USAID-

Over the weekend, Musk and the White House went to war with USAID, the agency that provides billions in aid to stricken parts of the world. It’s the only thing keeping hundreds of thousands from starving in places like Somalia. And it’s keeping the promise of democracy alive in nations like Hungary—which is probably why Musk hates it so much.

Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) used his position to give interviews and to raise the alarm over what the administration was up to. “All the signals of how the senior staff have been put on administrative leave, many of the field staff and headquarters staff have been put on a gag order,” said Coons on Saturday. Coons is a member of both the foreign relations and appropriations Senate committees. “It seems more like the early stages of shutting down than it does of reviewing it or merely retitling it,” Coons added.

Also going to bat for USAID was Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), who warned over social media,

"Trump isn’t satisfied just to close programs and fire staff. He is now planning to ELIMINATE THE ENTIRE AGENCY. Maybe this weekend. That would be illegal. He cannot unilaterally close a federal agency. Another assault on the Constitution."

Trump may indeed have been planning to issue an Executive Order as early as today purporting to disband USAID. Indeed, Musk claimed in a Twitter Spaces talk late Sunday night that Trump had agreed that USAID should be shut down and that the two had gone over in great detail how that would be accomplished.

But as Sen. Murphy indicated, such a unilateral move would be illegal. As of this morning, employees at USAID headquarters have been told not to report to work. But that doesn’t mean USAID is dissolved. In fact, as a legal analysis in Just Security out on Saturday noted, Congress established USAID as its own agency, and therefore under current law only Congress can abolish it.

The enabling Act for USAID in fact is unequivocal:

"Unless abolished pursuant to the reorganization plan submitted under section 6601 of this title, and except as provided in section 6562 of this title, there is within the Executive branch of Government the United States Agency for International Development as an entity described in section 104 of title 5. (emphasis added)"

As Trump/Musk move to dissolve the agency, expect legal challenges from the nonprofits and organizations directly affected by the loss in funding and operational support.

-Sen. Blumenthal and the FBI purges-

Senior Democratic leaders have not remained silent as a purge of top FBI officials has unfolded. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), who sits on the Judiciary Committee and directly questioned FBI Director Kash Patel, released an official statement about the firings:

“This reported mass purging of professional law enforcement is surreal and sickening. Less than twenty-four hours after President Trump’s nominee to run the Federal Bureau of Investigation testified to me that there would be no political retribution against agents, apparently dozens – maybe even hundreds – of federal law enforcement officials may be fired. I am appalled by this vile retaliation against agents who sought to hold accountable people who stabbed cops with flagpoles and crushed officers until they broke bones. The silence from my Republican colleagues is disgusting and deafening.”

Again, using a lawyer’s ear on this, the words “mass purging,” “professional,” “political retribution,” “retaliation” and “hold accountable” jump out. That is not only the political case that Blumenthal intends to make to the electorate (and wants others to echo and amplify), but also a signal that the firings as he understands them violate rules protecting civil servants from this kind of politicized firing.

He also took to social media with a stark warning about firing any agents who even happened to work on January 6 cases:

"FBI agents working on the Trump criminal cases were almost all ASSIGNED—they weren’t volunteers. This political retribution is deeply destructive, telling agents they can be punished for following proper directives. It’s fatal to discipline, morale, & recruiting."

-Sens. Kim and Schatz-

As I was editing this, I saw two interesting developments with other U.S. Senators. Andy Kim (D-NJ) went to USAID office—his very first government job—and stood outside its doors, drawing press attention while indicating that employees had been blocked from entering the building. “This is a blatant, illegal action by the Trump administration that is trying to overturn something that is codified in federal law,” Sen. Kim said.

And Brian Schatz (D-HI) has announced he is putting a blanket hold on all of Trump’s State Department nominees until USAID is back up and running. At a press conference, Schatz blasted the administration, saying, “If you want to change an agency, introduce a bill and pass a law. You cannot wave away an agency that you don't like or that you disagree with by executive order, or by literally storming into the building and taking over the servers. That is not how the American system of government works.”

As former GOP strategist Rick Wilson of the Lincoln Project remarked, “This is the way.”

**Here come the lawsuits

We already have seen several legal actions against DOGE, with four cases alleging that the entity has violated transparency, conflict of interest and other relevant federal laws. These suits are seeking to kneecap DOGE from even being allowed to operate.

We have also seen lawsuits brought by blue state attorneys general (led by Leticia James of New York) and by nonprofits seeking an injunction against the federal government-wide pause on financing and grants. That entire effort by the Trump White House to freeze funds met with such pushback that the original memo implementing the freeze was rescinded, and a federal judge, who reviewed Press Secretary Karoline’s Leavitt’s misleading post on social media claiming that the freeze was still in effect, expanded the injunction beyond the memo to include the entire administration.

That is important, because Musk is currently threatening to halt payments that Congress has already authorized through his control of the federal payment system, deciding on his own that something is “fraud” or “waste.” But Musk doesn’t have that power, and he certainly doesn’t have it in light of the judge’s injunction. If he defies it, as he has shown a willingness to do in the past, he could be held in contempt of court.

On Sunday, the New York Times reported that the FBI agents affected by the purge and the inquiries into whether they even participated in any investigations of January 6 defendants have retained legal counsel to protect their rights as government employees. Their lawyers sent a letter to Acting Director Bove, warning, “If you proceed with terminations and/or public exposure of terminated employees’ identities, we stand ready to vindicate their rights through all available legal means.”

Musk’s team’s takeover of the OPM, USAID and Treasury has also triggered numerous apparent violations of law including the illegal exposure of personal private information and illegal access to classified documents by persons unauthorized to view them. Employees whose privacy rights were violated would have standing to sue, and it seems highly likely that such cases are coming quite soon. One lawsuit, filed by whistleblowers against Musk’s team for failure to conduct a privacy impact assessment before a new server mass emailed federal workers, already landed in the federal courts last week.

I’ll have more to say on the actual suits once they are filed. Again, because the attacks on our system and the violations of law occurred late on a Friday, we wouldn’t expect lawsuits to be ready to move forward until, at the earliest, the following business day—which is today.

**The popular response

Grassroots organizing groups are swinging into action. I want to highlight just a few examples from the groups Indivisible and MoveOn, which held an online collective action call late Sunday night with over 50,000 people registered to attend.

These groups are organizing direct pressure campaigns upon the Senate as well as protests outside of the federal buildings taken over by Musk and his engineers, who as Wired reported include several young men barely out of high school who have worked at Musk’s other companies or for his billionaire pal, Peter Thiel.

Specifically, Indivisible and MoveOn have called for daily protests outside of OPM each morning. They have also organized a protest set for Tuesday evening at Treasury demanding Musk and his team be ejected.

As a side note, the first organized protests against ICE and its policies, involving thousands of people in Los Angeles, Dallas, and many other cities across the country took place over the weekend.

It’s too early to tell whether protests against the Trump administration will continue to grow in strength or what effect they may have on the situation on the ground. There is some concern that Trump will use any sign of civil unrest as an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act and turn U.S. military forces against peaceful protestors. But the threat of possible overreach by Trump should not and likely will not deter protestors, and if Trump chooses to escalate in this fashion he may lose further public support.

But one thing is already clear: Resistance to Trump and Musk will take many forms, all of which can involve some level of participation from the public. We can amplify stories of the personal heroes who stood up to the illegal orders. We can support our Democratic leaders even as we urge them to take stronger stances. We can donate to the nonprofits who are litigating constitutional rights on our behalf. And we can take direct, peaceful action through organized groups like Indivisible and MoveOn.

As the saying goes, we can all be the someone who is doing something.

***

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#fuck trump #executive orders #fuck elon musk #Jay Kuo #Rational explanations of things

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jtownraindancer · 9 days ago

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Full text below the cut, just in case:

Is Somebody Doing Something?!

Yes. Let me break it down for you.

Jay Kuo Feb 03, 2025

The most common question I saw across social media and in the comments was understandable: Is somebody doing something about this?

The short and important answer is yes. And we need to understand a few things to help bring things into focus.

But today is the first business day after last Friday’s bombshells, and I can report confidently that the anti-Trump/Musk response is well underway.

The personal responses

James Dennehy at the FBI

“It sucked,” he wrote. “But it worked.”

David Lebryk at Treasury

Lebryk did not comply, meaning those 35 years’ of knowledge about how to read, sort and control payments was not immediately available to Musk’s team. More sand in the gears.

Director and Dep. Director for Security, John Vorhees and Brian McGill at USAID

The political responses

Before I get into some of the responses of Democratic politicians to the many nightmares that unfolded over the weekend, I’d like to reset some common incorrect assumptions and expectations.

Some political responses may help lead to other types of responses, but that is not their primary end. The primary goal of a political response is to make the political case. And that’s it.

Sen. Wyden on the Treasury takeover

Sens. Coons and Murphy on USAID

Also going to bat for USAID was Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), who warned over social media,

Trump isn’t satisfied just to close programs and fire staff. He is now planning to ELIMINATE THE ENTIRE AGENCY. Maybe this weekend. That would be illegal. He cannot unilaterally close a federal agency. Another assault on the Constitution.

The enabling Act for USAID in fact is unequivocal:

Unless abolished pursuant to the reorganization plan submitted under section 6601 of this title, and except as provided in section 6562 of this title, there is within the Executive branch of Government the United States Agency for International Development as an entity described in section 104 of title 5. (emphasis added)

As Trump/Musk move to dissolve the agency, expect legal challenges from the nonprofits and organizations directly affected by the loss in funding and operational support.

Sen. Blumenthal and the FBI purges

He also took to social media with a stark warning about firing any agents who even happened to work on January 6 cases:

FBI agents working on the Trump criminal cases were almost all ASSIGNED—they weren’t volunteers. This political retribution is deeply destructive, telling agents they can be punished for following proper directives. It’s fatal to discipline, morale, & recruiting.

Sens. Kim and Schatz

As former GOP strategist Rick Wilson of the Lincoln Project remarked, “This is the way.”

UPDATE: Over the course of the week, many members of Congress attended rallies held in front of government buildings including the Treasury Department and USAID demanding that DOGE members have their access to sensitive and private information be terminated.

Here come the lawsuits

UPDATES: Lawsuits filed this week by labor unions and other parties against the Treasury and its Secretary, the Office of Personnel Management, and the Department of Labor have all seen some form of judicial intervention. In the case of the Treasury, a federal court that had indicated it was leaning toward granting a temporary restraining order issued an order, agreed to by the parties, limiting access of DOGE members who were now working as Treasury employees to “read only” access and preventing the unauthorized distribution of sensitive material outside of the Department. This is an ongoing matter.

The popular response

As a side note, the first organized protests against ICE and its policies, involving thousands of people in Los Angeles, Dallas, and many other cities across the country took place over the weekend.

As the saying goes, we can all be the someone who is doing something.

Quietly losing my mind over the fact that Elon Musk has straight up orchestrated a coup of our executive branch and like....I don't even know what, if any, system we have in place to fix this. Like... He's just taken control of the money and locked out the actual appointed officials. What the fuck.

#reference #current events #long post #full text

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gofancyninjaworld · 5 years ago

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What does the Organization want, anyway?

Measure Twice. Destroy Once.

Metal Bat may be no one’s idea of a genius, but he’s asked the most important question yet -- where does the money come from?

We kind of suspect that the Neo Heroes has either been set up by The Organization, or that they at least have a big hand in it. Ah, The Organization, that most mysterious of villainy. They showed up early on in the story, being the third group of no-gooders to show up after the House of Evolution and the Paradisers. Unlike the former two, they’re still going.

They’ve got cyborgs, they use robots, they’re willing to work with even monsters when there’s something in it for them, but enough about their make up and modus operandi. What do they want? And why do they seem to be taking aim at heroes?

I’m going to speculate seriously here! :)

They probably don’t want the heroes all dead. They couldn’t kill them all if they tried -- there’s heroes too strong. And people become heroes when their hearts move them.

But they can discredit the idea of heroes. That they can do handily.

Why?

Calamity in a tailored suit

I think that OPM is going to look at a third aspect of heroes, one many western comics run from. So we’ve seen heroes as the brave people attacking evil beasts. We’ve seen heroes as the protectors and saviors of people, comforting and helping even when there’s little they can do. There’s a third thing heroes do: challenge power structures. No matter how feted, heroes exist ever so slightly outside the law -- they have their moral compass and they’ll take on anyone, even entrenched and powerful interests, if they feel it’s in the greater good. And heroes have a bad habit of pulling people along with them.

I’m looking again at The Organization. They have money: can’t do high tech stuff without it. They have weapons and are always making more. They have some contacts with wealthy people. When I see something like that, you know what that smells like to me?

Coup d’etat. Or if you prefer German, putsch. To take over the apparatus of government by force. And since there’s only one nation left, to do so is to rule the world of men. Give people a sense of security, which in this world means crushing monsters and powerful organised crime gangs. The Organization is well set up to do both. Also crush any actual opposition, which The Organization is also well set up to do. Their wealthy backers? They’ll do very well too -- and they know how to forge consent and bend laws to establish a cod sense of legitimacy. Call it an emergency. Promise elections, eventually. And it’s done.

evil doesn’t have to cackle or froth at the mouth. It doesn’t have to promise the Apocalypse, knock down buildings, or eat people. It can be well-dressed, well-spoken and even reasonable, for a given value of reasonable. Sometimes, that’s the most dangerous kind of evil.

You and what army?

Literally the only thing that can stop them are heroes. Heroes may be law abiding, but they’re not of the law. Heroes have a troublesome habit of looking at actual harms, not what the law claims to be crimes. They have an irritating habit of standing up for the downtrodden, even if those stepping on them are considered respectable. And they have a lethal habit of serving as nucleating crystals around which mass movements can grow. It only takes a single hero to stand up and say ‘no, this is wrong.’ And as long as the symbolism of a hero stands for something, even cutting down that annoying hero won’t prevent a mass revolt that will mean the coup will fail. Under the right circumstances, Mumen Rider could foil them. Not to mention that if heroes of this world are working together, they’re a formidable fighting force of their own. Despite all the studying they’ve done, there still exist heroes who are just too damn strong for anything The Organization can engineer.

One-Punch Man heroes stand for a lot. None of them appear to be politically-savvy, but they all have a lot of moral power, if only they cared to use it. If one wants to take over the world, it’s necessary to make the word ‘hero’ about as positive as ‘drunken crack addict’. No easy task when they’re seen to be doing real good at all times.

Set the Neo Heroes against the Hero Association, split the membership of heroes, set them to interfere with each other, and with very little work, they’ll discredit the entire institution and reduce public trust. And when everything looks hopeless, then they can swan in and take over.

Or in other words: how to take over the world, intelligently.

It’s going to be interesting to see how they get stopped.

#speculation #The Organization #actual intelligent bad guys #I bet Saitama will put a wrench in it all somehow #One Punch Man

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mikeshouts · 2 years ago

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Casey Putsch’s Turbine-powered 1989 Batmobile To Go Under The Hammer

Batman, here's your ride!

#Auctions #Barrett-Jackson Auction Company #Batmobile #Casey Putsch #Putsch Racing #Replica #Turbine-powered

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korrektheiten · 4 years ago

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Superreiche planen Putsch: So gehen Tech-Giganten gegen das Volk vor

Wochenblick: In Kalifornien läuft eine Unterschriftensammlung zur Absetzung des Gouverneurs Gavin Newsom. Die 1,5 Millionen Unterzeichner, die dafür nötig wären, Neuwahlen auszurufen, sollen bereits vorliegen. Von Seiten der Organisatoren wird die Zahl von mehr als 2,2 Millionen Unterschriften genannt. Laut einem Bericht von Politico verfasste nun eine Gruppe von 75 führenden Namen der Tech-Branche einen Brief, […] Weiterlesen: Superreiche planen Putsch: So gehen Tech-Giganten gegen das Volk vor http://dlvr.it/RwtzdS

#Allgemein #Brisant

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ohwowitssarah · 4 years ago

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Social Innovation or Tabulation?, by Sarah Wright

Tech Companies Know All

I was about 17 minutes into watching “The Social Dilemma” on Netflix when I became seriously creeped out and inspired all at the same time. Immediately, I had to turn to my Google Docs page to type my first draft of my blog before I lost my train of thought. However, when I came up with a working title and typed “by Sarah W” next to it, something interesting happened. The autofill suggestion instantly came up with my last name after I typed ‘W’. I’m lazy by nature so, of course, I let autofill do its thing and my last name appeared. Google Docs went even further with its autofill capabilities by automatically connecting my full name to my Gmail account, which is kinda creepy if you think about it.

The Transition of Social Media

This kind of ‘magic’ that we see every day when we log onto our phones and computers is exactly what the former big tech CEOs and VPs were discussing in “The Social Dilemma.” When social media platforms like Google and Facebook were introduced to us in the 1990’s and 2000’s, millions of lives changed. Social media was able to connect people from all across the globe with organ donors, their life partners, and even long lost family members.

At the beginning of it all, social media companies were created to spread positivity. As it’s gotten larger and more powerful, these innovator’s ideas have backfired and are dividing people further than ever before. This is seen when Jonathan Haidt talks about the increase in teen and pre-teen girls admitted to the hospital due to non-fatal self harm. He says that since 2009, the amount of teen girls who were admitted to the hospital has risen 62% and that of pre-teen girls has increased 189%. He places the blame of this rise in depression and suicidal thoughts on the increase in availability of social media on mobile devices, beginning in 2009 (The Social 40:00-41:13).

Another perfect example of how the algorithms have backfired on us is seen in the current political climate. Now, I really didn’t want my blogs to be hyper fixated on politics but it’s imperative to talk about in order to recognize and solve our problems. For instance, computers have become so advanced that no matter how similar you and one of your friends are, you will not see the same things when you log online; that algorithm is selecting what is perfect for just you (The Social 55:54-56:12). This inevitably causes you to believe that everyone agrees with you because you are only surrounded by those who agree with you. Additionally, when you are now presented with information that contradicts your new views, you are unable to accept them. This is exactly how the Republican and Democratic parties have become the most divided they’ve ever been in a long time (The Social 57:11-58:14). In fact, we can see all of this happening right in front of us.

Connection to Liberal Arts?

I will once again argue that this is an important conversation to have for many reasons. First of all, social media platforms are manipulating us all by appealing to our psychological instincts. It has now become clear that we all need to take steps to understand just how much of a hold our media has on us and use that knowledge to combat the inevitable brainwashing. When asked what he was most worried about when it comes to the impact social media addiction and manipulation will have on society, the former president of Pinterest said that civil war was not too far away (The Social 1:20:09-1:20:22). When he said that, my mind couldn’t help but wander back to when I discussed the connection between the Beer Hall Putsch in 1920s Germany and the storming of The Capitol in January of 2021 in my blog. Our awareness of the facts surrounding us coupled with the recognition of our history will help us to create a world where the arts and humanities are valued just as much as science.

Works Cited

The Social Dilemma. Directed by Jeff Orlowski, performances by Skyler Gisondo, Kara Hayward, and Vincent Kartheiser, Netflix, 2020.

https://pixabay.com/photos/code-hacker-data-security-707069/

#liberal arts #college #tech

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arcticdementor · 4 years ago

Link

Imagine that you are a resident in a low-population county in 1950. You run afoul of the small group of families who are effectively in charge. Your political and legal rights are unimpaired. You are free to vote and you are free to sue in municipal and county and state courts. The police treat you with unfailing courtesy and respect.

But strange things start to happen. The only newspaper in the county refuses to take ads for your business. The only bank in the county announces that it is closing your account and calling in your mortgage. Your car breaks down and the only garage and service shop in the county refuses to repair it. The only general store in the county refuses your patronage and the few restaurants in the county turn you away at the door. After you lose your business to the newspaper advertising boycott, you try to get a job, but discover that you have been blacklisted by all of the employers in the county. Nobody will hire you.

Are you free, in this scenario, just because there is no official interference with your voting rights and your civil rights? Private power is power, no less than government power. You can be immobilized, impoverished, humiliated, tormented, and perhaps driven to suicide by hostile businesses and banks in an otherwise functioning liberal democracy, just as surely as by the police or military in a dictatorship.

The United States in 2021 is a continental nation-state with nearly 330 million people. And yet its social system today, in disturbing respects, resembles that of my imaginary county in 1950. Instead of one general store, there is Amazon with its dominant online position. Instead of one local newspaper, there is Google, which serves as the 21st century version of the old Yellow Pages. Instead of one county bank, there are a handful of giant banks and credit card companies. As in the old Texas county, if one essential firm spurns you there may be no alternatives in that industry who want your business, as a practical matter. If one or all of these national monopolies and oligopolies turns against you, for whatever reason, your business or your reputation or your life can be destroyed.

Following the Capitol riot on January 6, the world was doubly shocked by the attack on the seat of American power and by the power of America’s irresponsible corporations, which are accountable to nobody except their shareholders. The president of the United States—who has been impeached for the second time by the House but has yet to be removed by the Senate or officially accused of any specific crimes in a court of law, much less convicted—was banned by numerous media platforms, including Twitter, Facebook and Spotify (he can’t even share his music lists!)

The purges and proscriptions have not been limited to Trump or to the criminals involved in the Capitol riot, or in planning others. The dragnet has been widened to include Republicans and conservatives in general, as well as figures on the dissident non-corporate left. Parler, a social media app favored by the right as an alternative to Twitter, was destroyed by Apple and Amazon. The baseball legend Curt Schilling claims that AIG Insurance cut off his family health plan because of his pro-Trump tweets.

Many tech tycoons and companies insist that their mass purge even of conservatives and Republicans was necessary to prevent fascists from organizing insurrections against the federal government. But tracking potentially violent criminals and terrorists and foiling their plots is what the folks at the FBI, Homeland Security, NSA, and CIA, along with state and local police, are paid to do. Who needs the FBI when Spotify can save America from a fascist putsch?

The truth is that the corporate proscriptions, purges, and de-platformings were a brutal exercise of raw power by a few very rich people who shares jurisdiction over the citizens and residents of the United States under the corporate constitution.

Today Americans live under two constitutions: The political constitution and the corporate constitution. The political constitution is functioning reasonably well. The corporate constitution, by comparison, is a lawless realm of out-of-control tyranny.

…

Most of the attention has focused on Twitter and Facebook, because so many American journalists, academics, activists and politicians live online. But the importance of social media is exaggerated. According to Pew, only about a fifth of Americans are on Twitter and 10% of the users generate 80% of the tweets. Individuals, parties and movements were able to communicate easily before Twitter was created in 2006. Getting banned from Twitter is a nuisance, not the death of free speech.

Of graver concern in a democratic republic should be arbitrary powers exercised by companies in the real economy against dissident individuals or unpopular businesses or organizations. If businesses are banned from advertising their goods and services on electronic platforms and other forms of media; if authors of controversial books can be banned from online and physical book distributors; if political groups are banned from making electronic transactions, or having bank accounts; if individuals who hold the wrong opinions can be denied health insurance; if lenders deny credit cards to people who voted the wrong way in the last election or said something inflammatory on social media, then the United States is now a tyranny, even if the courts are open and elections are free.

…

More than a century ago, the development of modern infrastructure industries like electricity and telephony and national banking created predatory businesses like Samuel Insull’s Midwestern electrical empire that were as out-of-control as many tech giants are today. The phrase “Robber Baron”—inspired by medieval German barons who exacted tolls from travelers on the Rhine—is most apt when it is applied to tycoons who control essential infrastructure that society cannot do without.

During and after the New Deal, essential industries were tamed and regulated under our political constitution. Today you do not fear that your water or electricity or gas will be turned off because the local providers do not like your political views. Both publicly-owned and privately-owned water, electricity and gas firms are regulated by public utility commissions that set their rates and rules..

In the science fiction of the mid-twentieth century, it was usually assumed that the “central computer banks” of the future would be boring regulated public utilities more like the old highly regulated Ma Bell telephone monopoly than like Samuel Insull’s electrical industry holding company or Jack Dorsey’s Twitter. If they were dangerous, it was because the computers themselves might run amok, or perhaps because they were used by a despotic government, not because the new technology would empower individual plutocrats to lord it over their fellow citizens in an Ayn Rand fantasy come to life.

…

Putting an “e” in front of something for “electronic” (ooh, electronic!) provided a get-out-of-regulation-or-taxation free card in the era of Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton and their neoliberal and libertarian successors. Amazon isn’t a retailer that should collect and pay state sales taxes. It is… e-commerce! Uber isn’t a taxi company subject to taxi company regulations… it’s a tech company! If an online payday lender charges 3000% annualized interest, the government shouldn’t do anything about it because… it’s fintech!

For the last three decades, many of America’s elected officials, Democrats and Republicans alike, have rejected the argument that new essential economic infrastructure industries should be regulated like the old ones. They have claimed that the infant internet economy was so fragile that it would be crushed under the regulatory burdens that apply to old-timey electrical utilities or book publishers. Some of the politicians of both parties who made such arguments just happened to receive massive amounts of Silicon Valley cash, or were given shares of companies before their IPOs, or were hired after serving in government as managers or consultants or lobbyists or put on corporate boards by the same companies that they regulated, or rather, refused to regulate.

The result is our present situation, in which some of the indispensable industries in the U.S. economy, social life, the media and politics are allowed to make their own rules, in the form of ever-changing “terms of service” that nobody reads; allowed to subject themselves to oversight by commissions which they themselves appoint; and allowed to deputize themselves as vigilantes protecting us from any enemies of the people whom they happen to designate.

Was there an alternative to allowing a dystopian informal corporate constitution to emerge and engross more and more of the American economy and society like a black hole devouring a galaxy?

…

In practice, extending our imperfect but somewhat accountable political constitution to replace the wholly despotic digital corporate constitution is difficult, given the financial control that tech firms and tycoons exercise over our politicians and our media. In theory, however, it is easy to strip the protective “e” away from tech companies and define them either as common carriers or public accommodations. There is no need to invent any new categories or concepts. The old common law concepts are flexible and will do as the basis for new legislation—with one exception.

The exception consists of social media platforms like Twitter and Parler and YouTube and Facebook, which allow individuals to put up material without prior editorial or curatorial approval. Their business model exists only because they are exempt from the legal regime regarding libel and obscenity that governs regular magazines and book publishers. If Section 230 is repealed, these sites will shut down or become conventional online magazines or media firms, whose lawyers will ensure that all material is carefully vetted before it goes up online.

Good. Traditional publications don’t publish things written under aliases by people whose identities they don’t know. I have no right to publish a libel against someone in the pages of a magazine without editors and possibly lawyers seeing it first. Why should I be able to publish the same libel on Twitter or YouTube, and force the victim to lobby for its deletion only after the damage has been done?

The CEOs and especially the staffs of Twitter and YouTube and Facebook tend to be Democratic partisans, hostile to conservatives and Republicans. Fine. Turn Twitter and YouTube and Facebook into the equivalents of regular online left-of-center magazines like the Nation and Salon and Jacobin, and let them explicitly reject conservative content. Let the right have its own magazines and media outlets.

…

The remedies for arbitrary corporate power in the new infrastructure industries, then, are simple and straightforward. Define online opinion and video platforms as regular publishers, subject to traditional publishing regulations that seek to deter dissemination of libels, profanity, obscenity, intellectual property theft and so on. And define all the other big tech firms either as common carriers or public accommodations that are clothed in a public interest.

Oh, and one more thing. If you thought this essay was worth reading, you might wish to print out a paper copy before it vanishes from the Internet.

#tablet magazine #michael lind

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sonicwarfareofficial-blog · 5 years ago

Text

Sonic Warfare Chapter 3

“Tails, ya see this?” Trump asks Tails as he lifts the scuffed up gray-green uniform hat from his lap to camera,

“Whoa! Where'd you get that SS hat?”.

“Always had it” Trump vaguely explains knowing he flew to Germany one time and plainly took it from one of the historic sights. “What would ya think if this-” Trump drops the hat, “never happened?”

“Not catching your drift, Mr. President. What are you saying?” Tails asks rather plainly, for in his mind the president will ask for a rashly requested mission that would be impossible to follow. What did he want him to do, look for modern day Hitler in Argentina? Make more conspiracies with the crazy theorists out there? Tails wasn’t typically the kid interested in that stuff.

“What I mean is that we can send Sonic back in time with a feat of incredible speed to send Hitler to hell-”

“Whoa there, though I'd love to show that man what for but there are two things that I'm not sure about: Sonic is fast but he's not that fast-” Trump trumps Tails’ problem with his idea:

“Under normal circumstances, yes, but watch this-” The richest man to show up on a McDonald's commercial reveals the emerald he had fished to the holographic projection of Tails. “Whoa!” exclaims the furry tech genius who was normally tough to impress. “You have a chaos emerald!”

“Thanks for stating the obvious, numbnut,” Sonic thought. Besides being butthurt for his lack of knowledge that his sidekick has, he was feeling particularly uneasy, for the thought of killing another soul clung to him and every aspect of his life, he didn't want voices around him, forever subjecting him to the anguish brought by the act of murder. Why become responsible for something you weren’t in control of? And changing the past...couldn’t that hurt the present in some Butterfly Effect? It made Sonic worry, stuffed in his thoughts.

“You mind if I let you two talk while I stretch my legs around the room?”

“Not at all, big blue dude. Feel free to go where ever you please. You’re going to change the world of tomorrow, after all. That’s pretty yuge if I say so myself,” Trump validated, then turned back to the hologram of his friend. “Here’s what I’m thinking…”

Sonic walks out of the room and steps back into the one with Eggman.

“What, did Trump send you here?” The doctor inquires, irritated.

“No. I don’t know what or who this Hitler dude is. And I don’t want to kill anyone.” Sonic said, holding one of his legs in a calf stretch.

“Well, that’s completely normal to not want to kill anyone, but you’ll get used to- wait. You don’t know who Adolf Hitler was?” Dr. Eggman scoffed. “Really?”

One of the guards scolded him. “Quiet, Doctor.”

“I’m handcuffed to this chair. What am I going to do, give him a black-eye with a loogey?”

The guard shrugged. “I normally just protect the president’s ego. I’m not prepared to handle anthropomorphic hedgehogs that talk and a egg-hybrid professor. Talk if you must.”

Sonic swapped legs. “Who is the guy?”

Eggman gave him the whole spill on the man. How the Austrian was rejected from art-school, How he felt the treatment of Germany was awful after the first World War, his life as a spy of sorts, the Beer Hall Putsch, his rise as chancellor and the overall rise of Nazism, his role in World War Two, The Final Solution, and his suicide. As each shocking fact of the tyrant came out of the doctor’s mouth Sonic slowly stopped stretching and started to sweat nervously. This was the man he was supposed to kill? A man who killed millions. A man who hated his own human race because of a lust for power fueled by his resentment of his known world. This spiel would reinforce the list of reasons to finish the man. However, this image only made the hero grow nauseous thinking about slaying somebody this powerful, let alone the fact he didn’t enjoy the idea of killing at all.

“And his elite forces were lead by a failed chicken farmer” The doctor concludes.

“Geez. This is heavy stuff, heh” The blue hero chuckles lightly.

“Yes it is. Yet, Nobody should tamper with history however. It teaches us what to prevent. Of course, preventing the deaths of many innocent would be great, but at what cost?”

“Nemesis to Nemesis, that was deep, Eggman.” Sonic said, sitting of the ground with his legs extended head down, silent.

“Sonic, Trump has asked for you to return to the conversation,” the Big fan guard called. Sonic stood up and walked into the room.

0 notes

red-and-black-paladin · 7 years ago

Note

Kristine couldn’t stop smiling. She kiss his nose his cheek. Then she putsch Pidge item across the table to her. “Since you finish half of your food, you can have this back.”

Grabbing her item, the girl smiled and continued tinkering with the piece of tech. When kissed, Keith smiled and leaned back against her. Soon finished with his food.

#nekonokitty #ask #Keith answers

0 notes

moonwalkertrance · 7 years ago

Link

Trump portrayed as uninformed, unprepared and lacking focus in unflattering new book

During his campaign and tumultuous first year in office, President Trump demonstrated little knowledge of policy details. He was not interested in advice that conflicted with his instincts, and it was often impossible for White House staff to figure out what course he wanted to take. One compared it to “trying to figure out what a child wants.”The portrait that emerges in the new book “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” by Michael Wolff — which became the talk of the town in Washington on Wednesday — is hardly a flattering one.Trump is depicted as presiding over a chaotic White House, struggling to settle into his new reality and eagerly trying to maintain his normal golf habits.In the book, set to be officially released next week, Wolff writes that Trump became upset that he couldn’t give a Supreme Court seat to a friend rather than someone he didn’t know. He casts Trump as having “little or no interest” in Republican attempts to overhaul the Affordable Care Act. And Wolff says aides were incredulous over Trump’s claims that President Obama had “wiretapped” Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign.

Trump aides vigorously sought to undermine the book on Wednesday, with White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders saying in a statement that it is “filled with false and misleading accounts from individuals who have no access or influence with the White House.”

Wolff says that his book is based on 200 conversations over the past 18 months with Trump, most members of his senior staff, some of whom he talked to dozens of times, and many people with whom they had spoken. Some conversations were on the record, while others were off the record or on “deep background,” allowing him to relay a “disembodied description of events provided by an unnamed witness to them.”At a White House briefing Wednesday afternoon, Sanders said Trump only had “one brief conversation” with Wolff and that most dialogue with White House staff was coordinated by one person: former chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, whom Trump dismissed in an unusually harsh statement, saying he “has nothing to do with me or my presidency.”Comments attributed to Bannon in the book drew the most attention Wednesday, including a suggestion that a meeting during the campaign between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer was “treasonous.”

But there is plenty else for the White House not to like about the book by Wolff, a longtime journalist who has written for Vanity Fair, the Guardian, the Hollywood Reporter and other publications.

During the campaign — which few aides expected Trump to win — and the transition that followed, Wolff writes about several instances in which Trump’s lack of knowledge and interest in public affairs was evident.Early in the campaign, for example, Trump aide Sam Nunberg was sent to explain the Constitution to the candidate, Wolff writes, and Nunberg offered this assessment of the experience: “I got as far as the Fourth Amendment before his finger is pulling down on his lip and his eyes are rolling back in his head.”Wolff reports that in early August 2016, Trump asked former Fox News chairman Roger Ailes to take over management of the campaign. Ailes turned him down, Wolff writes, because he knew of Trump’s disinclination to take advice “or even listen to it.”After Trump prevailed, Trump turned to Ailes for advice on a chief of staff, the book says.“You need a son of a b---- as your chief of staff,” Ailes reportedly said. “And you need a son of a b---- who knows Washington.”Ailes had a suggestion: “Speaker Boehner.”

“Who’s that?” Trump reportedly asked, unaware that Boehner had been the speaker of the House until he was forced out in a tea party putsch in 2015.Despite this scene in the book, Trump’s Twitter feed and past news reports show that he knew Boehner.Wolff also writes that Reince Priebus — the chairman of the Republican National Committee who later became the chief of staff — was alarmed how often during the transition Trump offered people jobs on the spot, including many he had never met before.Wolff writes that one of the reasons Trump didn’t want John Bolton, a famously hawkish diplomat, as his national security adviser, was because of his mustache.“Bolton’s mustache is a problem,” Wolff quotes Bannon saying. “Trump doesn’t think he looks the part.”In December, toward the end of the transition, a high-level delegation from Silicon Valley came to Trump Tower to meet the president-elect, though Trump had repeatedly criticized the tech industry throughout the campaign, Wolff writes.

Later that afternoon, Trump called Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul, who asked him how the meeting had gone.“Oh, great, just great,” Trump reportedly said, adding that they would like to see an expansion of the H-1B visa program, which allows employers to hire highly skilled foreign workers in specialty occupations.Murdoch reportedly suggested that taking a liberal approach to H-1B visas might be hard to square with his immigration promises. But Trump seemed unconcerned, Wolff writes, assuring Murdoch, “We’ll figure it out.”“What a f---ing idiot,” Murdoch said, according to Wolff, as he got off the phone.Wolff writes Trump was in a foul mood as he assumed office, fighting with first lady Melania Trump on Inauguration Day and bringing her to the verge of tears.Trump had been dissuaded by his staff from staying at theTrump International Hotel in Washington the night before and regretted his decision to sleep at Blair House, the official guest residence across the street from the White House, according to Wolff’s account.

Wolff details how Trump did not take well to living in the White House, recounting a reprimand to the housekeeping staff for picking his shirt up from the floor. Trump also reportedly imposed a rule that no one touch his toothbrush.Wolff describes at length the competing power centers in the early days of the Trump White House: Priebus, the chief of staff; Bannon, the chief strategist; and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner.Told through the eyes of Katie Walsh, then a deputy chief of staff, the factions broke down this way, Wolff writes: “Bannon was the alt-right militant. Kushner was the New York Democrat. And Priebus was the establishment Republican.”“For Walsh, it was a daily process of managing an impossible task: almost as soon as she received direction from one of the three men, she was would be countermanded by one or another of them,” Wolff writes.According to the book, Walsh also observed that Trump had conflicting impulses and urges that required a lot of guesswork to translate into policy. Wolff quotes her as saying it was “like trying to figure out what a child wants.”

In early October, after reports that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had called Trump a “moron,” other senior advisers had “there-but-for-the-grace-of-God” moments, Wolff writes. Some had called Trump an “idiot,” “dumb as s---” and a “dope,” according to Wolff.Wolff also writes that Trump “had little or no interest in the central Republican goal of repealing Obamacare,” an effort that failed in dramatic fashion.

“An overweight seventy-year-old man with various physical phobias (for instance, he lied about his height to keep from having a body mass index that would label him as obese), he personally found health care and medical treatments of all kinds a distasteful subject. The details of the contested legislation were, to him, particularly boring.”Before appointing Neil M. Gorsuch to the Supreme Court — widely viewed as one of his early successes — Trump wondered why the job wasn’t going to a friend and loyalist, Wolff writes. “In the Trump view, it was rather a waste to give the job to someone he didn’t even know.”

#Donald Trump #Steve Bannon #Jared Kushner #Ivanka Trump #Politics #GOP #Republicans #Robert Mueller #TrumpRussia

0 notes

janetoconnerfl · 7 years ago

Text

Trump portrayed as uninformed, unprepared and lacking focus in unflattering new book

During his campaign and tumultuous first year in office, President Donald Trump demonstrated little knowledge of policy details. He was not interested in advice that conflicted with his instincts, and it was often impossible for White House staff to figure out what course he wanted to take. One compared it to “trying to figure out what a child wants.”

The portrait that emerges in the new book “Fire and Fury” by Michael Wolff – which became the talk of the town in Washington on Wednesday – is hardly a flattering one.

Trump is depicted as presiding over a chaotic White House, struggling to settle into his new reality and eagerly trying to maintain his normal golf habits.

In the book, set to be officially released next week, Wolff writes that Trump became upset that he couldn’t give a Supreme Court seat to a friend rather than someone he didn’t know. He casts Trump as having “little or no interest” in Republican attempts to overhaul the Affordable Care Act. And Wolff says aides were incredulous over Trump’s claims that President Barack Obama had “wiretapped” Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign.

At a White House briefing Wednesday afternoon, Sanders said Trump only had “one brief conversation” with Wolff and that most dialogue with White House staff was coordinated by one person: former chief strategist Steve Bannon, whom Trump dismissed in an unusually harsh statement, saying he “has nothing to do with me or my presidency.”

Comments attributed to Bannon in the book drew the most attention Wednesday, including a suggestion that a meeting during the campaign between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer was “treasonous.”

But there is plenty else for the White House not to like about the book by Wolff, a longtime journalist who has written for Vanity Fair, the Guardian, the Hollywood Reporter and other publications.

During the campaign – which few aides expected Trump to win – and transition that followed, Wolff writes about several instances in which Trump’s lack of knowledge and interest in public affairs was evident.

January 3, 2018 Paul Manafort sues Mueller, Justice Department over Russia probe

January 3, 2018 Trump signs order disbanding voter fraud commission

January 3, 2018 Boulder County residents prepaid more than $32.83M in property taxes due for 2018

January 3, 2018 Fact-checking President Trump’s post-New Year’s tweets

January 3, 2018 “He lost his mind”: Trump blasts Bannon after new book

Early in the campaign, for instance, Trump aide Sam Nunberg was sent to explain the Constitution to the candidate, Wolff writes, and Nunberg offered this assessment of the experience: “I got as far as the Fourth Amendment before his finger is pulling down on his lip and his eyes are rolling back in his head.”

Wolff reports that in early August 2016, Trump asked former Fox News chairman Roger Ailes to take over management of the campaign. Ailes turned him down, Wolff writes, because he knew of Trump’s disinclination to take advice “or even listen to it.”

After Trump prevailed, Trump turned to Ailes for advice on a chief of staff, the book says.

“You need a son of a b—h as your chief of staff,” Ailes reportedly says. “And you need a son of a b—h who knows Washington.”

Ailes had a suggestion: “Speaker Boehner.”

“Who’s that?” Trump reportedly asked, reportedly unaware that Boehner had been the speaker of the House until he was forced out in a tea party putsch in 2015.

Despite this scene in the book, Trump’s Twitter feed and past news reports show that he knew Boehner.

Wolff also writes that Reince Priebus – the chairman of the Republican National Committee who later became the chief of staff – was alarmed how often during the transition that Trump offered people jobs on the spot, including many he had never met before.

Wolff writes that one of the reasons Trump didn’t want John Bolton, a famously hawkish diplomat, as his national security adviser, was because of his mustache.

“Bolton’s mustache is a problem,” Wolff quotes Bannon saying. “Trump doesn’t think he looks the part.”

In December, toward the end of the transition, a high-level delegation from Silicon Valley came to Trump Tower to meet the president-elect, though Trump had repeatedly criticized the tech industry throughout the campaign, Wolff writes.

Later that afternoon, Trump called Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul, who asked him how the meeting had gone.

“Oh, great, just great,” Trump reportedly said, adding that they would like to see an expansion of the H-1B visa program, which allows employers to hire highly skilled foreign workers in specialty occupations.

Murdoch reportedly suggested that taking a liberal approach to H-1B visas might be hard to square with his immigration promises. But Trump seemed unconcerned, Wolff writes, assuring Murdoch, “We’ll figure it out.”

“What a f—–g idiot,” Murdoch said, according to Wolff, as he got off the phone.

Wolff writes that Trump was in a foul mood as he assumed office, fighting with first lady Melania Trump on Inauguration Day and bringing her to the verge of tears.

Trump had been dissuaded by his staff from staying at the Trump International Hotel in Washington the night before and regretted his decision to sleep at Blair House, the official guest residence across the street from the White House, according to Wolff’s account.

Wolff describes at length the competing power centers in the early days of the Trump White House: Priebus, the chief of staff; Bannon, the chief strategist; and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Told through the eyes of Katie Walsh, a deputy chief of staff, the factions broke down this way, Wolff writes: “Bannon was the alt-right militant. Kushner was the New York Democrat. And Priebus was the establishment Republican.”

“For Walsh, it was a daily process of managing an impossible task: almost as soon as she received direction from one of the three men, she was would be countermanded by one or another of them,” Wolff writes.

According to the book, Walsh also observed that Trump had conflicting impulses and urges that required a lot of guess work to translate into policy. Wolff quotes her as saying it was “like trying to figure out what a child wants.”

Wolff also writes that Trump “had little or no interest in the central Republican goal of repealing Obamacare,” an effort that failed in dramatic fashion.

“An overweight seventy-year old man with various physical phobias (for instance, he lied about his height to keep from having a body mass index that would label him as obese), he personally found health care and medical treatments of all kinds a distasteful subject. The details of the contested legislation were, to him, particularly boring.”

Before appointing Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court – widely viewed as one of his early successes – Trump wondered why the job wasn’t going to a friend and loyalist, Wolff writes. “In the Trump view, it was rather a waste to give the job to someone he didn’t even know.”

The Washington Post’s Callum Borchers contributed to this story.

from Latest Information https://www.denverpost.com/2018/01/03/fire-and-fury-michael-wolff-donald-trump/

0 notes

jackdoakstx · 7 years ago