Orange Duce

[seacoaster]

Only the best people:

https://www.propublica.org/article/we-f ... blica+Main+

C'mon, these guys really know the industries!!

"At the halfway mark of President Donald Trump’s first term, his administration has hired a lobbyist for every 14 political appointments made, welcoming a total of 281 lobbyists on board, a ProPublica and Columbia Journalism Investigations analysis shows.

With a combination of weakened rules and loose enforcement easing the transition to government and back to K Street, Trump’s swamp is anything but drained. The number of lobbyists who have served in government jobs is four times more than the Obama administration had six years into office. And former lobbyists serving Trump are often involved in regulating the industries they worked for.

Even government watchdogs who’ve long monitored the revolving door say that its current scale is a major shift from previous administrations. It’s a “staggering figure,” according to Virginia Canter, ethics chief counsel for the D.C.-based legal nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “It suggests that lobbyists see themselves as more effective in furthering their clients’ special interests from inside the government rather than from outside.”

We tracked the lobbyists as part of an update to Trump Town, our database of political appointees. We’ve added the names of 639 new staffers with the administration and the financial disclosures of 351 political appointees who have filled different positions over the past year, and we tracked the careers of 338 who departed government during the same period.

The full extent of the lobbying industry’s influence is hard to measure because federal agencies decline to share details of recusals granted to officials who disclose potential conflicts with their new government roles.

Consider Colin Roskey. Days after leaving a two-decade career as what one former employer called the “smartest” health care lobbyist, he joined the Department of Health and Human Services in January. As deputy secretary for legislation for mandatory health, he headed the portfolio that he tried to influence for most of his career.

HHS declined to reveal any recusals he signed while appointed. A spokesman said that “all employees are expected to abide by the ethics rules.”

Just days before joining HHS, Roskey listed among his clients major dialysis providers that receive federal payments through Medicare, including Fresenius Medical Care — an industry juggernaut, with more than 330,000 patients in thousands of dialysis clinics in the U.S. A third of the company’s billion-dollar revenue comes from Medicare. A recent revamp in the dialysis industry ordered by Trump, expected to shift millions of dollars from dialysis centers to cheaper home-based options, put Roskey’s office at the heart of regulating how much profit or loss some of his former clients will see in coming years. Roskey said in an interview that he recused himself from this matter.

Public records show that Roskey lobbied for at least 27 clients between January 2017 and December 2018 on an array of issues other than dialysis involving public health care programs, from prescription drugs to palliative care.

In early October, Roskey stepped out of government and went straight back to work for his old lobbying firm, Lincoln Policy Group, which specializes in health care policy. “Spending time at HHS will make [Roskey] even more valuable to our team — and we are so excited to have him back,” the lobbying firm announced in a statement.

Roskey said he had no knowledge of how the new kidney care regulations will be implemented.

After his monthslong stint with the Health Department, Roskey said he plans to lobby the legislative branch, which is not prohibited by the current ethics rules. “While working with the government I gained knowledge and background, intellectually and professionally, and I intend to unapologetically utilize those skills for my employer and clients,” he said.

The senior-level appointment of a key lobbyist raises concerns for ethics experts like Canter. “There’s no way [he would’ve been hired under Obama] because Trump dropped a key provision of the Obama ethics pledge,” she said.

Indeed, an Obama-era ethics pledge clause absent in Trump’s prevented registered lobbyists from seeking or accepting employment with any executive agency that they lobbied the two years prior.

Federal laws forbid government employees who have served as registered lobbyists in the two years prior to their appointment from handling the particular matters or the specific issue areas that they used to lobby. Similarly, after leaving the government, all appointees-turned-lobbyists are barred from seeking to influence their former agencies and engaging in behind-the-scenes work with other senior officials across the administration.

The revolving door, of course, has been spinning since well before the Trump administration. In 2009, after President Barack Obama took office, ProPublica built a smaller version of Trump Town. During his administration, government watchdog groups also decried the conflicts of interest brought by some political appointees, and The Washington Post tallied 65 lobbyists among Obama’s ranks in five years.

One Obama-era alum, for instance, has gone on to lobby for the nation’s largest pharmaceutical industry trade group, according to public records. Bridgett Taylor, who occupied Roskey’s position until Trump took office, left the government to lobby Congress and federal agencies on matters related to those she oversaw at HHS. Taylor declined to comment. A spokesperson for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, Taylor’s employer, said that “her lobbying contacts have been confined to Congress,” and that she has not lobbied HHS in her new role.

If it’s certainly not new, the enforcement of ethics provisions has lagged under Trump. In governmentwide surveys conducted by the Office of Government Ethics, federal agencies reported only 106 registered lobbyists who joined the administration. In their answers, ethics officers argued that they “don’t know” how many registered lobbyists had been hired or that they didn’t “track the number of individuals who fell into this category.” When asked about referrals for further enforcement of ethics violations, an officer admitted that they “don’t maintain a centralized database of the bases of proposed disciplinary actions.”

Jeff Hauser, who heads the Revolving Door Project at the nonpartisan Center for Economic and Policy Research, contends that “Trump has organized the executive branch as a mechanism to reward allies and their political power. Lobbyists are hired not because they’re great at the specific matter that they lobby for but because their specialty is delivering political results.”

Corporations also see value in hiring former government staffers, as they bring connections within the agencies and exceptional knowledge about regulation. Among the staffers who recently left their administration positions, 29 went to work for K Street firms — as registered lobbyist or not. At least 59 former employees have done so over the past three years.

One is Laura Kemper, a former HHS senior official who, within days of leaving her post in March, was hired by Fresenius. Now vice president for government affairs, Kemper heads the company’s policy group.

According to lobbying records, she is listed among the in-house lobbyists who have visited Congress, the White House and HHS since March, pushing everything from reimbursement for dialysis services to home dialysis. The records show Fresenius shelled out more than $2.2 million for lobbying activities during the first half of the year.

Kemper had also spent years lobbying Congress and federal agencies on behalf of health care companies before joining HHS in March 2017.

Her pass through the revolving door tests the boundaries of ethics rules. Indeed, Trump’s pledge prohibits staffers-turned-registered lobbyists from advocating for the special interests of their corporate bosses before the agencies where they used to work for at least five years. It also restricts former employees from behind-the-scenes lobbying with any senior federal official for the remainder of Trump’s presidency. Kemper signed that pledge.

Kemper declined to comment. In a statement, Fresenius said Kemper “has strictly followed her legal and ethical obligations and has not been involved in lobbying the administration or anything related to the Executive Order.” Disclosure forms filed by Fresenius “cite the general activity of a team and do not ascribe any particular lobbying activity,” according to its statement.

Recently, during an earnings call to investors, Fresenius CEO Rice Powell said that the company has talked to the “appropriate people in Washington,” without naming any particular Fresenius or government staffer. “We are in the midst of commenting and asking questions” with HHS officials, he added.

As ProPublica has reported, political appointees who return to lobbying have found ways to tiptoe around ethics rules. Some register as lobbyists but limit their interactions to Congress, leaving colleagues to lobby the executive branch. Ethics restrictions don’t apply to congressional lobbying.

One such case is Geoffrey Burr, a lobbyist who joined the Labor Department early in the Trump administration. More recently, he was chief of staff to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. He left the Transportation Department in January and soon became policy director at one of the nation’s largest lobbying firms.

According to records, Burr now lobbies for clients with a stake in transportation issues, including The Northeast MAGLEV, the company behind what would be the first high-speed train in the U.S. A January press release announcing his hiring praised Burr’s “high-level involvement with Transportation and Labor [that will] provide clients with the strategic guidance they need to navigate business issues with the administration.”

Burr signed the ethics pledge and, according to records, lobbies only Congress, abiding by the rule of not contacting the executive branch. Other partners at his firm lobby the Transportation Department and the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.

The Transportation Department didn’t respond to requests for comment, and Burr declined to talk.

There are also former Trump administration staffers who go back to K Street but don’t register as lobbyists — the Lobbying Disclosure Act only requires those who spend 20% or more of their time lobbying to register.

Rebecca Wood and Brooke Appleton held senior Trump administration positions for more than a year at the Food and Drug Administration and the Agriculture Department, respectively. Both left the administration and returned to their former employers — this time, in more senior positions.

Wood now leads the food and drug practice at Sidley Austin, a powerful law and lobbying firm in Washington, where her colleagues lobby the FDA for various clients. Appleton went from being director to vice president for public policy for the National Corn Growers Association; she leads at least six people lobbying the Agriculture Department and other federal agencies.

Appleton declined to comment. Wood said she “advises clients on FDA-related issues and, in doing so, complies with all applicable ethics requirements.”

There is nothing illegal about returning to an old employer or being hired by a new one. Nor is there anything wrong with having colleagues who lobby the federal government. But the revolving door does present the possibility of conflicts of interests.

“The most important commodity in D.C. is information,” Hauser said. “Former insiders have rare access to strategic intelligence, which is of significant value to corporate entities, and they can do so without registering as a lobbyist.”

With the new data just released, Trump Town grew to include 3,859 names, 2,319 financial disclosures and hundreds of other records for Trump’s staffers. Our original goal remains intact: shining a light on the people in charge of running the government and how their career histories might influence their decisions."

[kramerica.inc]

You better listen to him. He’s a man for all people.

Poor Doc knows what he’s talking about. He’s had it tough. He has been oppressed for the past 40 years- at Johns Hopkins, at the BMW dealership, at Whole Foods, in his gated community...

Yea, you and the Wonderbread that is some on a lacrosse forum knows more about racism than anyone. Do you think the following is an isolated incident?

Driving While Black’: Delaware County Couple Claims They Were Racially Profiled By Pennsylvania State Police. Big pharma senior exec stopped just short of his home in affluent Chadds Ford.

https://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2019/ ... te-police/

Getting lectured on racism by the "woke" CT community now.



Cool.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Only the best people:

https://www.propublica.org/article/we-f ... blica+Main+

C'mon, these guys really know the industries!!

"At the halfway mark of President Donald Trump’s first term, his administration has hired a lobbyist for every 14 political appointments made, welcoming a total of 281 lobbyists on board, a ProPublica and Columbia Journalism Investigations analysis shows.

With a combination of weakened rules and loose enforcement easing the transition to government and back to K Street, Trump’s swamp is anything but drained. The number of lobbyists who have served in government jobs is four times more than the Obama administration had six years into office. And former lobbyists serving Trump are often involved in regulating the industries they worked for.

Even government watchdogs who’ve long monitored the revolving door say that its current scale is a major shift from previous administrations. It’s a “staggering figure,” according to Virginia Canter, ethics chief counsel for the D.C.-based legal nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “It suggests that lobbyists see themselves as more effective in furthering their clients’ special interests from inside the government rather than from outside.”

We tracked the lobbyists as part of an update to Trump Town, our database of political appointees. We’ve added the names of 639 new staffers with the administration and the financial disclosures of 351 political appointees who have filled different positions over the past year, and we tracked the careers of 338 who departed government during the same period.

The full extent of the lobbying industry’s influence is hard to measure because federal agencies decline to share details of recusals granted to officials who disclose potential conflicts with their new government roles.

Consider Colin Roskey. Days after leaving a two-decade career as what one former employer called the “smartest” health care lobbyist, he joined the Department of Health and Human Services in January. As deputy secretary for legislation for mandatory health, he headed the portfolio that he tried to influence for most of his career.

HHS declined to reveal any recusals he signed while appointed. A spokesman said that “all employees are expected to abide by the ethics rules.”

Just days before joining HHS, Roskey listed among his clients major dialysis providers that receive federal payments through Medicare, including Fresenius Medical Care — an industry juggernaut, with more than 330,000 patients in thousands of dialysis clinics in the U.S. A third of the company’s billion-dollar revenue comes from Medicare. A recent revamp in the dialysis industry ordered by Trump, expected to shift millions of dollars from dialysis centers to cheaper home-based options, put Roskey’s office at the heart of regulating how much profit or loss some of his former clients will see in coming years. Roskey said in an interview that he recused himself from this matter.

Public records show that Roskey lobbied for at least 27 clients between January 2017 and December 2018 on an array of issues other than dialysis involving public health care programs, from prescription drugs to palliative care.

In early October, Roskey stepped out of government and went straight back to work for his old lobbying firm, Lincoln Policy Group, which specializes in health care policy. “Spending time at HHS will make [Roskey] even more valuable to our team — and we are so excited to have him back,” the lobbying firm announced in a statement.

Roskey said he had no knowledge of how the new kidney care regulations will be implemented.

After his monthslong stint with the Health Department, Roskey said he plans to lobby the legislative branch, which is not prohibited by the current ethics rules. “While working with the government I gained knowledge and background, intellectually and professionally, and I intend to unapologetically utilize those skills for my employer and clients,” he said.

The senior-level appointment of a key lobbyist raises concerns for ethics experts like Canter. “There’s no way [he would’ve been hired under Obama] because Trump dropped a key provision of the Obama ethics pledge,” she said.

Indeed, an Obama-era ethics pledge clause absent in Trump’s prevented registered lobbyists from seeking or accepting employment with any executive agency that they lobbied the two years prior.

Federal laws forbid government employees who have served as registered lobbyists in the two years prior to their appointment from handling the particular matters or the specific issue areas that they used to lobby. Similarly, after leaving the government, all appointees-turned-lobbyists are barred from seeking to influence their former agencies and engaging in behind-the-scenes work with other senior officials across the administration.

The revolving door, of course, has been spinning since well before the Trump administration. In 2009, after President Barack Obama took office, ProPublica built a smaller version of Trump Town. During his administration, government watchdog groups also decried the conflicts of interest brought by some political appointees, and The Washington Post tallied 65 lobbyists among Obama’s ranks in five years.

One Obama-era alum, for instance, has gone on to lobby for the nation’s largest pharmaceutical industry trade group, according to public records. Bridgett Taylor, who occupied Roskey’s position until Trump took office, left the government to lobby Congress and federal agencies on matters related to those she oversaw at HHS. Taylor declined to comment. A spokesperson for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, Taylor’s employer, said that “her lobbying contacts have been confined to Congress,” and that she has not lobbied HHS in her new role.

If it’s certainly not new, the enforcement of ethics provisions has lagged under Trump. In governmentwide surveys conducted by the Office of Government Ethics, federal agencies reported only 106 registered lobbyists who joined the administration. In their answers, ethics officers argued that they “don’t know” how many registered lobbyists had been hired or that they didn’t “track the number of individuals who fell into this category.” When asked about referrals for further enforcement of ethics violations, an officer admitted that they “don’t maintain a centralized database of the bases of proposed disciplinary actions.”

Jeff Hauser, who heads the Revolving Door Project at the nonpartisan Center for Economic and Policy Research, contends that “Trump has organized the executive branch as a mechanism to reward allies and their political power. Lobbyists are hired not because they’re great at the specific matter that they lobby for but because their specialty is delivering political results.”

Corporations also see value in hiring former government staffers, as they bring connections within the agencies and exceptional knowledge about regulation. Among the staffers who recently left their administration positions, 29 went to work for K Street firms — as registered lobbyist or not. At least 59 former employees have done so over the past three years.

One is Laura Kemper, a former HHS senior official who, within days of leaving her post in March, was hired by Fresenius. Now vice president for government affairs, Kemper heads the company’s policy group.

According to lobbying records, she is listed among the in-house lobbyists who have visited Congress, the White House and HHS since March, pushing everything from reimbursement for dialysis services to home dialysis. The records show Fresenius shelled out more than $2.2 million for lobbying activities during the first half of the year.

Kemper had also spent years lobbying Congress and federal agencies on behalf of health care companies before joining HHS in March 2017.

Her pass through the revolving door tests the boundaries of ethics rules. Indeed, Trump’s pledge prohibits staffers-turned-registered lobbyists from advocating for the special interests of their corporate bosses before the agencies where they used to work for at least five years. It also restricts former employees from behind-the-scenes lobbying with any senior federal official for the remainder of Trump’s presidency. Kemper signed that pledge.

Kemper declined to comment. In a statement, Fresenius said Kemper “has strictly followed her legal and ethical obligations and has not been involved in lobbying the administration or anything related to the Executive Order.” Disclosure forms filed by Fresenius “cite the general activity of a team and do not ascribe any particular lobbying activity,” according to its statement.

Recently, during an earnings call to investors, Fresenius CEO Rice Powell said that the company has talked to the “appropriate people in Washington,” without naming any particular Fresenius or government staffer. “We are in the midst of commenting and asking questions” with HHS officials, he added.

As ProPublica has reported, political appointees who return to lobbying have found ways to tiptoe around ethics rules. Some register as lobbyists but limit their interactions to Congress, leaving colleagues to lobby the executive branch. Ethics restrictions don’t apply to congressional lobbying.

One such case is Geoffrey Burr, a lobbyist who joined the Labor Department early in the Trump administration. More recently, he was chief of staff to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. He left the Transportation Department in January and soon became policy director at one of the nation’s largest lobbying firms.

According to records, Burr now lobbies for clients with a stake in transportation issues, including The Northeast MAGLEV, the company behind what would be the first high-speed train in the U.S. A January press release announcing his hiring praised Burr’s “high-level involvement with Transportation and Labor [that will] provide clients with the strategic guidance they need to navigate business issues with the administration.”

Burr signed the ethics pledge and, according to records, lobbies only Congress, abiding by the rule of not contacting the executive branch. Other partners at his firm lobby the Transportation Department and the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.

The Transportation Department didn’t respond to requests for comment, and Burr declined to talk.

There are also former Trump administration staffers who go back to K Street but don’t register as lobbyists — the Lobbying Disclosure Act only requires those who spend 20% or more of their time lobbying to register.

Rebecca Wood and Brooke Appleton held senior Trump administration positions for more than a year at the Food and Drug Administration and the Agriculture Department, respectively. Both left the administration and returned to their former employers — this time, in more senior positions.

Wood now leads the food and drug practice at Sidley Austin, a powerful law and lobbying firm in Washington, where her colleagues lobby the FDA for various clients. Appleton went from being director to vice president for public policy for the National Corn Growers Association; she leads at least six people lobbying the Agriculture Department and other federal agencies.

Appleton declined to comment. Wood said she “advises clients on FDA-related issues and, in doing so, complies with all applicable ethics requirements.”

There is nothing illegal about returning to an old employer or being hired by a new one. Nor is there anything wrong with having colleagues who lobby the federal government. But the revolving door does present the possibility of conflicts of interests.

“The most important commodity in D.C. is information,” Hauser said. “Former insiders have rare access to strategic intelligence, which is of significant value to corporate entities, and they can do so without registering as a lobbyist.”

With the new data just released, Trump Town grew to include 3,859 names, 2,319 financial disclosures and hundreds of other records for Trump’s staffers. Our original goal remains intact: shining a light on the people in charge of running the government and how their career histories might influence their decisions."

The people knew this was coming when they voted for him. Trump was duly elected.

[seacoaster]

Only the best people:

https://www.propublica.org/article/we-f ... blica+Main+

C'mon, these guys really know the industries!!

"At the halfway mark of President Donald Trump’s first term, his administration has hired a lobbyist for every 14 political appointments made, welcoming a total of 281 lobbyists on board, a ProPublica and Columbia Journalism Investigations analysis shows.

With a combination of weakened rules and loose enforcement easing the transition to government and back to K Street, Trump’s swamp is anything but drained. The number of lobbyists who have served in government jobs is four times more than the Obama administration had six years into office. And former lobbyists serving Trump are often involved in regulating the industries they worked for.

Even government watchdogs who’ve long monitored the revolving door say that its current scale is a major shift from previous administrations. It’s a “staggering figure,” according to Virginia Canter, ethics chief counsel for the D.C.-based legal nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “It suggests that lobbyists see themselves as more effective in furthering their clients’ special interests from inside the government rather than from outside.”

We tracked the lobbyists as part of an update to Trump Town, our database of political appointees. We’ve added the names of 639 new staffers with the administration and the financial disclosures of 351 political appointees who have filled different positions over the past year, and we tracked the careers of 338 who departed government during the same period.

The full extent of the lobbying industry’s influence is hard to measure because federal agencies decline to share details of recusals granted to officials who disclose potential conflicts with their new government roles.

Consider Colin Roskey. Days after leaving a two-decade career as what one former employer called the “smartest” health care lobbyist, he joined the Department of Health and Human Services in January. As deputy secretary for legislation for mandatory health, he headed the portfolio that he tried to influence for most of his career.

HHS declined to reveal any recusals he signed while appointed. A spokesman said that “all employees are expected to abide by the ethics rules.”

Just days before joining HHS, Roskey listed among his clients major dialysis providers that receive federal payments through Medicare, including Fresenius Medical Care — an industry juggernaut, with more than 330,000 patients in thousands of dialysis clinics in the U.S. A third of the company’s billion-dollar revenue comes from Medicare. A recent revamp in the dialysis industry ordered by Trump, expected to shift millions of dollars from dialysis centers to cheaper home-based options, put Roskey’s office at the heart of regulating how much profit or loss some of his former clients will see in coming years. Roskey said in an interview that he recused himself from this matter.

Public records show that Roskey lobbied for at least 27 clients between January 2017 and December 2018 on an array of issues other than dialysis involving public health care programs, from prescription drugs to palliative care.

In early October, Roskey stepped out of government and went straight back to work for his old lobbying firm, Lincoln Policy Group, which specializes in health care policy. “Spending time at HHS will make [Roskey] even more valuable to our team — and we are so excited to have him back,” the lobbying firm announced in a statement.

Roskey said he had no knowledge of how the new kidney care regulations will be implemented.

After his monthslong stint with the Health Department, Roskey said he plans to lobby the legislative branch, which is not prohibited by the current ethics rules. “While working with the government I gained knowledge and background, intellectually and professionally, and I intend to unapologetically utilize those skills for my employer and clients,” he said.

The senior-level appointment of a key lobbyist raises concerns for ethics experts like Canter. “There’s no way [he would’ve been hired under Obama] because Trump dropped a key provision of the Obama ethics pledge,” she said.

Indeed, an Obama-era ethics pledge clause absent in Trump’s prevented registered lobbyists from seeking or accepting employment with any executive agency that they lobbied the two years prior.

Federal laws forbid government employees who have served as registered lobbyists in the two years prior to their appointment from handling the particular matters or the specific issue areas that they used to lobby. Similarly, after leaving the government, all appointees-turned-lobbyists are barred from seeking to influence their former agencies and engaging in behind-the-scenes work with other senior officials across the administration.

The revolving door, of course, has been spinning since well before the Trump administration. In 2009, after President Barack Obama took office, ProPublica built a smaller version of Trump Town. During his administration, government watchdog groups also decried the conflicts of interest brought by some political appointees, and The Washington Post tallied 65 lobbyists among Obama’s ranks in five years.

One Obama-era alum, for instance, has gone on to lobby for the nation’s largest pharmaceutical industry trade group, according to public records. Bridgett Taylor, who occupied Roskey’s position until Trump took office, left the government to lobby Congress and federal agencies on matters related to those she oversaw at HHS. Taylor declined to comment. A spokesperson for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, Taylor’s employer, said that “her lobbying contacts have been confined to Congress,” and that she has not lobbied HHS in her new role.

If it’s certainly not new, the enforcement of ethics provisions has lagged under Trump. In governmentwide surveys conducted by the Office of Government Ethics, federal agencies reported only 106 registered lobbyists who joined the administration. In their answers, ethics officers argued that they “don’t know” how many registered lobbyists had been hired or that they didn’t “track the number of individuals who fell into this category.” When asked about referrals for further enforcement of ethics violations, an officer admitted that they “don’t maintain a centralized database of the bases of proposed disciplinary actions.”

Jeff Hauser, who heads the Revolving Door Project at the nonpartisan Center for Economic and Policy Research, contends that “Trump has organized the executive branch as a mechanism to reward allies and their political power. Lobbyists are hired not because they’re great at the specific matter that they lobby for but because their specialty is delivering political results.”

Corporations also see value in hiring former government staffers, as they bring connections within the agencies and exceptional knowledge about regulation. Among the staffers who recently left their administration positions, 29 went to work for K Street firms — as registered lobbyist or not. At least 59 former employees have done so over the past three years.

One is Laura Kemper, a former HHS senior official who, within days of leaving her post in March, was hired by Fresenius. Now vice president for government affairs, Kemper heads the company’s policy group.

According to lobbying records, she is listed among the in-house lobbyists who have visited Congress, the White House and HHS since March, pushing everything from reimbursement for dialysis services to home dialysis. The records show Fresenius shelled out more than $2.2 million for lobbying activities during the first half of the year.

Kemper had also spent years lobbying Congress and federal agencies on behalf of health care companies before joining HHS in March 2017.

Her pass through the revolving door tests the boundaries of ethics rules. Indeed, Trump’s pledge prohibits staffers-turned-registered lobbyists from advocating for the special interests of their corporate bosses before the agencies where they used to work for at least five years. It also restricts former employees from behind-the-scenes lobbying with any senior federal official for the remainder of Trump’s presidency. Kemper signed that pledge.

Kemper declined to comment. In a statement, Fresenius said Kemper “has strictly followed her legal and ethical obligations and has not been involved in lobbying the administration or anything related to the Executive Order.” Disclosure forms filed by Fresenius “cite the general activity of a team and do not ascribe any particular lobbying activity,” according to its statement.

Recently, during an earnings call to investors, Fresenius CEO Rice Powell said that the company has talked to the “appropriate people in Washington,” without naming any particular Fresenius or government staffer. “We are in the midst of commenting and asking questions” with HHS officials, he added.

As ProPublica has reported, political appointees who return to lobbying have found ways to tiptoe around ethics rules. Some register as lobbyists but limit their interactions to Congress, leaving colleagues to lobby the executive branch. Ethics restrictions don’t apply to congressional lobbying.

One such case is Geoffrey Burr, a lobbyist who joined the Labor Department early in the Trump administration. More recently, he was chief of staff to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. He left the Transportation Department in January and soon became policy director at one of the nation’s largest lobbying firms.

According to records, Burr now lobbies for clients with a stake in transportation issues, including The Northeast MAGLEV, the company behind what would be the first high-speed train in the U.S. A January press release announcing his hiring praised Burr’s “high-level involvement with Transportation and Labor [that will] provide clients with the strategic guidance they need to navigate business issues with the administration.”

Burr signed the ethics pledge and, according to records, lobbies only Congress, abiding by the rule of not contacting the executive branch. Other partners at his firm lobby the Transportation Department and the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.

The Transportation Department didn’t respond to requests for comment, and Burr declined to talk.

There are also former Trump administration staffers who go back to K Street but don’t register as lobbyists — the Lobbying Disclosure Act only requires those who spend 20% or more of their time lobbying to register.

Rebecca Wood and Brooke Appleton held senior Trump administration positions for more than a year at the Food and Drug Administration and the Agriculture Department, respectively. Both left the administration and returned to their former employers — this time, in more senior positions.

Wood now leads the food and drug practice at Sidley Austin, a powerful law and lobbying firm in Washington, where her colleagues lobby the FDA for various clients. Appleton went from being director to vice president for public policy for the National Corn Growers Association; she leads at least six people lobbying the Agriculture Department and other federal agencies.

Appleton declined to comment. Wood said she “advises clients on FDA-related issues and, in doing so, complies with all applicable ethics requirements.”

There is nothing illegal about returning to an old employer or being hired by a new one. Nor is there anything wrong with having colleagues who lobby the federal government. But the revolving door does present the possibility of conflicts of interests.

“The most important commodity in D.C. is information,” Hauser said. “Former insiders have rare access to strategic intelligence, which is of significant value to corporate entities, and they can do so without registering as a lobbyist.”

With the new data just released, Trump Town grew to include 3,859 names, 2,319 financial disclosures and hundreds of other records for Trump’s staffers. Our original goal remains intact: shining a light on the people in charge of running the government and how their career histories might influence their decisions."

The people knew this was coming when they voted for him. Trump was duly elected.

You're right, of course. If you grab the p*ssy before being elected, you get to grab the p*ssy after being elected.

[CU88]

DEPLORABLE!

How can the r's ever claim to honor and respect the Office of POTUS when they allow this disgraceful performance to go on, without comment or rebut?


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... -it-worse/

[RedFromMI]

An in depth look of how the Rudes (all the best people!) really has NOT changed in the last 30 years:

https://citylimits.org/2020/01/13/meet- ... w-on-view/

[calourie]

DEPLORABLE!

How can the r's ever claim to honor and respect the Office of POTUS when they allow this disgraceful performance to go on, without comment or rebut?


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... -it-worse/

What is it about all this absolute Trumpian horse manure that Trump apologists and fans think is okay ? There is absolutely nothing okay about it if the world is not to turn into the distopian nightmare that the Trump White House projects as the way it wants politics to operate.

[tech37]

DEPLORABLE!

How can the r's ever claim to honor and respect the Office of POTUS when they allow this disgraceful performance to go on, without comment or rebut?


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... -it-worse/

What is it about all this absolute Trumpian horse manure that Trump apologists and fans think is okay ? There is absolutely nothing okay about it if the world is not to turn into the distopian nightmare that the Trump White House projects as the way it wants politics to operate.

Geez, get a grip calourie...

BTW, it's "dystopian"

[MDlaxfan76]

DEPLORABLE!

How can the r's ever claim to honor and respect the Office of POTUS when they allow this disgraceful performance to go on, without comment or rebut?


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... -it-worse/

What is it about all this absolute Trumpian horse manure that Trump apologists and fans think is okay ? There is absolutely nothing okay about it if the world is not to turn into the distopian nightmare that the Trump White House projects as the way it wants politics to operate.

Geez, get a grip calourie...

BTW, it's "dystopian"

nevertheless he's right

But, calorie, all these guys want is to "own the libs"...that's it, end of story.

[seacoaster]

DEPLORABLE!

How can the r's ever claim to honor and respect the Office of POTUS when they allow this disgraceful performance to go on, without comment or rebut?


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... -it-worse/

What is it about all this absolute Trumpian horse manure that Trump apologists and fans think is okay ? There is absolutely nothing okay about it if the world is not to turn into the distopian nightmare that the Trump White House projects as the way it wants politics to operate.

Geez, get a grip calourie...

BTW, it's "dystopian"

Always “get a grip” or “get some help,” while you deflect and condone all the bad behavior. But pointing out a spelling error isn’t something you ignore. TSS.

[tech37]

DEPLORABLE!

How can the r's ever claim to honor and respect the Office of POTUS when they allow this disgraceful performance to go on, without comment or rebut?


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... -it-worse/

What is it about all this absolute Trumpian horse manure that Trump apologists and fans think is okay ? There is absolutely nothing okay about it if the world is not to turn into the distopian nightmare that the Trump White House projects as the way it wants politics to operate.

Geez, get a grip calourie...

BTW, it's "dystopian"

nevertheless he's right

But, calorie, all these guys want is to "own the libs"...that's it, end of story.

It's calourie mdlax, not calorie...you concerned about your weight?

[DMac]

Really gotta give the Prez a BZ for grabbin' the spotlight on NC football night. Reality star knows how to work it, Melania in hand and all. Prez was dapper, Melania's latex fetish fashion statement was bold. Handsome cou[ple all in all. Trump can claim the ratings.

[MDlaxfan76]

DEPLORABLE!

How can the r's ever claim to honor and respect the Office of POTUS when they allow this disgraceful performance to go on, without comment or rebut?


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... -it-worse/

What is it about all this absolute Trumpian horse manure that Trump apologists and fans think is okay ? There is absolutely nothing okay about it if the world is not to turn into the distopian nightmare that the Trump White House projects as the way it wants politics to operate.

Geez, get a grip calourie...

BTW, it's "dystopian"

nevertheless he's right

But, calorie, all these guys want is to "own the libs"...that's it, end of story.

It's calourie mdlax, not calorie...you concerned about your weight?

Glad you're on the ball catching spelling, tech, though, in this instance, it was just an auto-correct I didn't notice.
Good catch on dystopian, though.

I'm actually doing pretty well on my weight, thanks, though it did get out of control pre-hip operation, with some resultant bad scores on the BP and cholesterol. Never had those before. But with a new hip, I can work out again, though not my old routine that involved a lot of weight bearing pounding.

I eat smart and have been putting in 45 minutes daily on the Peloton.
At age 62, I'm always in the top 8% of all riders, nearly always top 12% of all male riders, regardless of age.
However, I'm not in peak shape yet. Improving every month.
And feeling pretty darn good, needed to get rid of a bunch of clothes that are way too big now!
And the BP and cholesterol scores are excellent again.

I'm enjoying the Peloton process, though I do miss the competition of squash and tennis and paddle.

[calourie]

DEPLORABLE!

How can the r's ever claim to honor and respect the Office of POTUS when they allow this disgraceful performance to go on, without comment or rebut?


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... -it-worse/

What is it about all this absolute Trumpian horse manure that Trump apologists and fans think is okay ? There is absolutely nothing okay about it if the world is not to turn into the distopian nightmare that the Trump White House projects as the way it wants politics to operate.

Geez, get a grip calourie...

BTW, it's "dystopian"

Thanks for the correction, Tech. My grip on my point of view is pretty solid. Give me the counter view other than it is okay to normalize and thereby sanction such school yard moronic behavior. My advice to many is try aiming hgher.

[kramerica.inc]

Really gotta give the Prez a BZ for grabbin' the spotlight on NC football night. Reality star knows how to work it, Melania in hand and all. Prez was dapper, Melania's latex fetish fashion statement was bold. Handsome cou[ple all in all. Trump can claim the ratings.

And a pretty positive crowd. Of course it was Clemson and LSU.

[Brooklyn]

Here's why the Cheesehead state will go Red again:


Wisconsin judge orders up to 209K voter names be deleted

https://waow.com/2020/01/13/wisconsin-j ... e-deleted/


A Wisconsin judge has ordered the state's election commission to immediately begin removing up to 209,000 names from the state's voter rolls or face hundreds of dollars in fines every they don't do so.

Judge Paul Malloy said in his ruling Monday that "time is in the essence in this case" and cannot wait for the state Supreme Court to decide the case.

The state Justice Department asked Malloy to stay his order of contempt pending an appeal of his ruling, but the judge denied the request.



Yup. Another election for sale.

[seacoaster]

The Emergency -- on Duce's say-so -- continues:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigrat ... story.html

"President Trump is preparing to divert an additional $7.2 billion in Pentagon funding for border wall construction this year, five times what Congress authorized him to spend on the project in the 2020 budget, according to internal planning figures obtained by The Washington Post.

The Pentagon funds would be extracted, for the second year in a row, from military construction projects and counternarcotics funding. According to the plans, the funding would give the government enough money to complete approximately 885 miles of new fencing by Spring 2022, far more than the 509 miles the administration has slated for the U.S. border with Mexico.

Trump took $2.5 billion from military counterdrug programs for border barrier construction in 2019, but this year his administration is planning to take significantly more — $3.5 billion. Trump administration officials also are planning to take $3.7 billion in military construction funding, slightly more than the $3.6 billion diverted in 2019.

The move would bring the total amount of federal funds allocated to border fencing to $18.4 billion under Trump, who made the border barrier a priority during his campaign for the presidency in 2016. He also pledged to make Mexico pay for the barrier, delighting crowds at his rallies.

The Trump administration has completed 101 miles of new barriers so far, according to the latest figures, far less than the 450 miles the president has promised to erect by the end of the year. But construction along the border — largely on land the federal government already owns — has been continuing even as legal challenges have aimed to disrupt it.

A federal district court in El Paso ruled last month that the White House broke the law when it commandeered funds for the border wall that had been authorized by Congress for another purpose. The court froze $3.6 billion the administration budgeted for new barriers.

The move would bring the total amount of federal funds allocated to border fencing to $18.4 billion under Trump, who made the border barrier a priority during his campaign for the presidency in 2016. He also pledged to make Mexico pay for the barrier, delighting crowds at his rallies.

[Smugglers are sawing through new sections of Trump’s border wall]

The Trump administration has completed 101 miles of new barriers so far, according to the latest figures, far less than the 450 miles the president has promised to erect by the end of the year. But construction along the border — largely on land the federal government already owns — has been continuing even as legal challenges have aimed to disrupt it.

A federal district court in El Paso ruled last month that the White House broke the law when it commandeered funds for the border wall that had been authorized by Congress for another purpose. The court froze $3.6 billion the administration budgeted for new barriers.

Jared Kushner, whose father-in-law has placed him in charge of the border wall project, had discussions last summer with top military officials about once more siphoning money from the Pentagon budget to construct the barriers. But those plans were on hold because of the legal challenges to the maneuver.

Several dozen Pentagon construction projects were delayed or suspended as a result of last year’s reprogramming of $3.6 billion, including road repairs, a waste treatment plant and school construction projects on military bases. It’s unclear if those project will be delayed again, or if a different set of repairs and improvements could be postponed.

The White House asked Congress for $5 billion for 2020 border barrier construction, and Trump’s demand led to the 35-day government shutdown a year ago. The shutdown ended with Democrats agreeing to provide just $1.4 billion in taxpayer funding and the White House turning to military budgets to obtain billions more.

Congress authorized nearly $700 billion in defense spending for 2020, a slight increase over last year’s levels.

The federal appeals court in New Orleans ruled 2-1 last week that the plaintiffs suing the Trump administration to block the use of the military funds — El Paso County, Tex., and the Border Network for Human Rights, an activist group — likely lacked the legal standing to make the challenge.

The decision came six months after the U.S. Supreme Court issued a similar ruling lifting an injunction from a federal court judge in California that temporarily blocked the administration's first attempt to reprogram military funds.

The 5th Circuit panel said the administration would be entitled to the same relief granted by the Supreme Court in that decision.

Stephanie Grisham, the White House press secretary, celebrated the court’s ruling in a statement, saying it had “lifted an illegitimate nationwide injunction,” and “in doing so has allowed vital border wall construction to move forward using military construction funds."

“This is a victory for the rule of law,” Grisham’s statement said. “We are committed to keeping our borders secure, and we will finish the wall.”

Homeland Security officials have repeatedly moved the goal posts to scale back Trump’s ambitious construction targets, bringing criticism that they have not worked fast enough to deliver on the president’s signature promise.

During an event at the border in Yuma, Ariz., last week marking the completion of the 100th mile of barrier, acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said the administration has not fallen behind.

“I can tell you that we remain confident that we are on track to 400, 450 miles that are either completed or under construction by the end of 2020,” Wolf told reporters.

It was the first time an administration official had counted barriers “under construction” toward the president’s pledge to complete 450 miles by Election Day."

[Brooklyn]

So true!

[seacoaster]

The corrosive effects of lying, about everything, all the time, every single day, on issues small and great:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-un ... 3d360c94ea

"As our president sat across from Volodymyr Zelensky in New York last autumn, he explained to the newly elected leader that he knew all about his country because, after all, he used to own the Miss Universe pageant, and one year the winner was from Ukraine.

“We got to know the country very well in a lot of different ways,” Donald Trump said.

It was, unsurprisingly, completely false. A Miss Ukraine had never won the Miss Universe title in the pageant’s 66-year history, including the 20 that Trump had owned it.

Equally unsurprisingly, the lie went largely unnoticed and uncared about. In the flood of falsehoods that gush from Trump’s mouth and Twitter feed most every day, something like this lacked anywhere near the heft to make a splash.

Indeed, on that day during his United Nations General Assembly visit, Trump also claimed: “We have created the greatest economy in the history of our country.” Of the USMCA trade agreement: “It’s a great trade deal — the greatest we’ve ever had. NAFTA was a horrible trade deal. It replaces NAFTA.” Of Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: “A lot of her members now are having second thoughts. They’re saying they’re in a very bad position.” Of his long-promised wall along the Mexican border: “And the wall is going up, many miles a week.” Of the WTO: “World Trade Organization was not one of the greats. Not one of the greats. That was the creation of China, which went like a rocket ship from the day they signed.” And of new automotive plants: “Many of the great Japanese companies, at my request, are now building their plants in the United States. … Big ones going up in South Carolina, Florida.”

Not a single one of Trump’s assertions was true.

Today’s economy is not the greatest economy in the country’s history, and has, in fact, over the past year been slowing down. Trump’s United States Mexico Canada Agreement is essentially the North American Free Trade Agreement with some minor tweaks. Pelosi was not losing support among her Democratic members. Not a single mile of new fence had been built someplace where there hadn’t already been a barrier. China did not create the WTO, and Toyota and Nissan are not suddenly building new plants here. Not in Florida. Not anywhere.

And on that day, the scandal now threatening Trump’s presidency – his request of Zelensky for the “favor” of investigating a political rival – was just erupting into full bloom, the day after Pelosi had announced a formal impeachment inquiry.

It was easy for the fake Ukrainian Miss Universe to get lost.

It is exhausting. All of it.

I’ve been a journalist for 33 years. I’ve covered Congress. NASA and the military space program. City and county halls. The Florida statehouse. Criminal courts, including armed robbers and serial killers. In all of that time, I have never encountered a public official, a candidate for office, a bureaucrat, a defense lawyer or, frankly, an actual criminal who is as regularly and aggressively dishonest as the current president of the United States. And that includes a dozen years covering the Florida legislature.

It is, in fact, the defining feature of this White House: The president will spew falsehoods about nearly everything, morning, noon and night. He lies in one-on-one interviews, in formal news conferences, and standing beside other world leaders. He lies in “official” government speeches and at campaign rallies.

It is exhausting. All of it.

I’ve been a journalist for 33 years. I’ve covered Congress. NASA and the military space program. City and county halls. The Florida statehouse. Criminal courts, including armed robbers and serial killers. In all of that time, I have never encountered a public official, a candidate for office, a bureaucrat, a defense lawyer or, frankly, an actual criminal who is as regularly and aggressively dishonest as the current president of the United States. And that includes a dozen years covering the Florida legislature.

It is, in fact, the defining feature of this White House: The president will spew falsehoods about nearly everything, morning, noon and night. He lies in one-on-one interviews, in formal news conferences, and standing beside other world leaders. He lies in “official” government speeches and at campaign rallies.

In all, to date, there have been many thousands of falsehoods, and a significant percentage of them are lies: That is, Trump knows what he saying is not true, but says it anyway. It is not worth trying to list even a small subset of them – other journalists are doing yeoman’s work in that area – but it is nevertheless truly astonishing when you stop and think about it: Whenever the president of the United States opens his mouth, odds are that the words that tumble forth are false. Whenever the erstwhile leader of the free world puts his thumbs to his iPhone keypad, it is more likely than not that the assertions that pop up on social media moments later are an exaggeration. Or a random fabrication. Or a dramatic embellishment. Or a deliberate lie.

And perhaps the most troubling part of all this? That three years into the Donald Trump presidency, these observations lack the capacity to shock or even to raise an eyebrow. It is no longer newsworthy that the person leading the world’s most powerful nation, commanding the most destructive arsenal in human history, is untrustworthy to his core. It is simply where we are today.

If Ronald Reagan is the president who won the Cold War, and Obama will be remembered as the first Black president, Trump’s place in the history books is certain to be considerably less flattering: the impeached president who made up the most stuff, pretty much all day, pretty much every day.

Once upon a time, not terribly long ago, Donald J. Trump’s difficult relationship with the truth was of little actual consequence to anyone.

He was an outer-borough real estate guy turned Manhattan celebrity turned game show host, whose fame was built largely on his willingness to fill New York City’s tabloid gossip pages. He would say whatever juicy or outrageous or provocative thing that came to mind to get himself ink. It mattered not at all whether he was truly sleeping with a particular supermodel, as his made-up-spokesman alias would claim, or if a member of the royal family was really moving into one of his properties – except perhaps to the writer struggling to fill those remaining column inches by deadline.

That all changed in May 2016, when he became the presumptive presidential nominee for one of the two major American political parties. Overnight, his utterances became deeply significant, every syllable pored over both in America, where many until that point had not paid much attention to him, and more so in capital cities the world over ― even if he didn’t appreciate it or care.

Three and a half years later, pretty much everyone on the planet paying even the least bit of attention understands that when it comes to assertions of fact from the American president, there is good reason to take them with a healthy dose of skepticism. Several healthy doses, in fact. And because Donald Trump demands loyalty both in words and deed – expecting behavior that tends to normalize his own – that caveat became necessary early on for just about everyone who works at the White House as well as the political appointees across the executive branch agencies.

Which brings us to today. The president faces removal from office for withholding hundreds of millions of dollars of congressional approved military aid to coerce a foreign leader into helping Trump’s own reelection campaign. He is simultaneously embracing a go-it-alone escalation with Iran that could easily blossom into a full-on war.

Regarding Ukraine, there are a great number of facts out there, both from witness testimony and documents, corroborating the accusations against him. And on Iran, there seem to be few facts backing up his claims that it was preparing imminent attacks against the United States.

To survive a Senate trial and win reelection later this year, the president needs a substantial plurality of Americans to ignore all of that and instead accept Trump’s word.

Based on his track record, there is zero reason for anyone to do so. Zero.

....

As Trump made dishonesty a principal feature of his White House, he had an unwitting accomplice: the White House press corps itself.

Part of this was inevitable, at least in the beginning. Journalists generally assume that someone is telling the truth when they talk to us, and Trump and his staff were afforded that same benefit of the doubt. Now, arguably, given his decades-long history as a fabulist – recall that he used to dial up gossip columnists and, identifying himself as “John Barron” or “John Miller,” try to plant fake stories about his sexual and business conquests – perhaps Trump should not have been trusted from the outset.

But there was a notion, pushed strongly by national Republican leaders, that Trump would grow into the job, that the responsibility of the office would weigh on his shoulders and that he would finally act like an adult.

Of course, that did not happen. I was by chance the pool reporter for Trump’s first full day in office, and watched with my own eyes as he stood in front of the memorial wall at CIA headquarters across the river in Langley, Virginia, and claimed, falsely, that there had been as many as a million and a half people on the National Mall for his inauguration and that the media were lying about him having had a much smaller crowd than Barack Obama eight years earlier. A couple of hours later, White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s first official act in that job was to march into the briefing room, repeat those lies and then march out.

The barrage of near-daily dishonesties that followed helped sweep away that deep-seated aversion that most journalists – including this one – had to using the word “lie” in print and on the air. The likelihood of turning off some in the audience with such a charged term aside, there was the definitional problem: A lie means that the purported liar knows what he is saying is false at the moment that he says it. On a real-time basis, of course, that’s nearly impossible to prove. How can we know what is going through people’s heads as they say things?

As the weeks and months passed, though, we began to see that Trump had, in fact, time after time, been given accurate information about topics as silly as to whether Ronald Reagan had won Wisconsin (he had) to as consequential as to whether China was paying the tariffs Trump had imposed (they were not). Yet he had continued to make the false claims anyway. This eventually led to more and more news organizations getting past their reticence and calling Trump a liar as warranted.

Unfortunately, other more deeply rooted factors remain that have served to make this president’s relationship with the truth seem to reside within a band of normal, when in reality it is an extreme outlier.

Instead of pointing out the casual lies coming from the administration as they happen, too many members of the press corps just put the lie out there as news. “The president said X,” is the headline, rather than: “The president lied about X” or, more accurately, “The president lied about X again.”

As a former Associated Press reporter versed in the responsibility of providing just-the-facts coverage, I appreciate that there are times our jobs require that we act as stenographers. As someone who has covered Trump from the day he rode down his escalator, I appreciate that this approach does our audience an enormous disservice. Yet it remains a staple of far too much White House coverage.

Some of this is a function of journalists too young and too inexperienced to understand that Trump’s behavior is not merely unusual, but aberrant and dangerous to a self-governing society.

Once upon a time, covering the White House was a mid- or late-career assignment. Reporters making their way there would have spent decades covering school boards, county commissions, criminal courts, statehouses, Congress, the Pentagon, the State Department – all of which provided a solid foundation for understanding the functioning of American government and the players who make it work.

....

After Richard Nixon, the nation came to a consensus that what had happened was not at all good, and introduced institutional safeguards to try to prevent it from happening again. Nixon’s use of barely regulated slush funds to pay the Watergate burglars resulted in new campaign finance laws imposing limits and requiring better disclosure. Other laws provided privacy protections, created independent inspectors general for executive agencies, codified presidential record keeping and strengthened the Freedom of Information Act.

Underlying all of these reforms was the shared conviction that a president ought not to lie and cheat. This was the fundamental virtue Jimmy Carter was selling in 1976: that he would not lie to the American people. He was a long shot, but that message made him a winner.

Four decades later, is truth still of value to Americans? Polling shows that the vast majority of the public knows full well that Trump and his White House are profoundly dishonest. A CNN survey in September showed that only 28% of Americans believe all or most of the information coming out of the White House. Yet some 40% to 45% continue to approve of Trump. I’ve talked to a great number of people in that subset who disbelieve Trump but support him anyway. Among their top rationales: All politicians lie, so what’s so terrible about Trump’s lies?

And that, perhaps, is the worst, most corrosive lie that Trump has sold to his defenders: That everyone is corrupt, that everyone lies, so Republicans may as well go with a corrupt liar who is on their side.

I’ve seen this attitude in Trump supporters from Wisconsin to New Hampshire to Florida when confronted with irrefutable evidence of Trump’s falsehoods and self-dealing. A selectman from Plymouth, New Hampshire, population 6,752, said he didn’t mind if Trump was dishonest because all politicians were, although he could not at that moment give any examples. A treasurer for a county GOP committee in western Iowa told me it didn’t bother him that Trump was trying to steer a multi-million dollar government contract to his own South Florida golf resort because all elected officials find ways to funnel themselves public money.

Well, everyone is not corrupt. Everyone does not lie."

[Kismet]

George Conway is one of the most entertaining Twitter accounts - this from today's latest, excerpting from new book out today by WaPo journalists Philip Rucker and Carol Leoning entitled "A Very Stable Genius"

George Conway
"@gtconway3d
“Early in his presidency, Trump agrees to participate in an HBO documentary that features all ... living presidents ... reading aloud from the Constitution. But Trump struggles and stumbles over the text, ... griping, ‘It’s like a foreign language.’”

Moron."

In addition, in a new interview with TIME, Jared Kushner points out the wall in the office next to the oval that used to be a door he claimed was used by Monica Lewinsky to visit Bill Clinton. Another Einstein on the WH staff.

Just reinforces that this administration is nothing more than a boatload of serial liars and morons who are in charge of the country right now.

This is the way the Roman Empire finally fell through the total corruption of the emperors and those in charge of running the empire.