Trump and Musk Scheme to Destroy the IRS »
Mar 21 2025On February 20th, termination letters were sent to 7,000 probationary employees at the IRS just as over 200 million tax returns were about to descend on the agency. In… Read More »
governing
governing
Trump’s Actions So Far: Sure Looks Like Fascism »
Jan 24 2025For over a year as he campaigned for the presidency, we have heard Donald Trump voice intentions that do not sound like our country's constitutional democracy. We heard about Project… Read More »
governing
Things You May Not Know About Project 2025 »
Jul 19 2024Project 2025’s blueprint for what Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts has called the “second revolution” divides the 920-page document by section, and chapters within that cover the government departments. It's an exhausting slog to plow… Read More »
the presidency
Autocrat or Dictator? Trump Lets Us Know How He’ll Govern »
Dec 22 2023The true Donald Trump has come out over the last few months. There have been symptoms all along, but now his fascist longings and racial hatreds have burst forth unrestrained. They have become his manifesto.
It has become standard for him in…
Read More »
government
Who Are the New Right and What Do They Have in Store for Us? »
Aug 11 2023Right off, we can't proceed without attempting a definition of "New Right", a term you perhaps have heard of but probably know little further, not least because, like antifa, it isn't a formal organization and has no consistent doctrine, other than a strident discontent with how things have turned out.… Read More »
the report
What Mueller Report? Trump, Putin and Barr Collude to Disappear It »
May 10 2019Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin spoke by phone for an hour on May 3rd, agreeing that the two-year Mueller investigation was a "Russian hoax", imaginary intrusions into the 2016 election apparently, and, as Trump said to reporters, the Mueller report "ended up being a mouse". The question of Russian intervention in the 2020 election? Trump said it did not come up.
Other subjects discussed sounded optimistic and mutually beneficial, but on this topic our president once again is in accord with Putin's claim of no election 
interference — he memorably said, standing alongside Putin…
Read More »
governing
It Doesn’t Take Absolute Power to Corrupt Absolutely »
Tom Price and others living big on our dime Oct 5 2017
Tom Price: Out
How does the average citizen grasp the workings of the mind of Tom Price, the disgraced and now former Secretary of Health and Human Services? How many transformations would we have to undergo in order to reach a state of mind so corrupted with self-importance as to think oneself deserving of private jets and military transports just to ferry oneself about to this or that meeting at exorbitant cost to…
Read More »
Columnist George F. Will, Ex-Republican, Goes After Jeff Sessions »
Dec 28 2016By guest columnist Al Rodbell
George Will gave up his long time registration in the Republican party when it chose their nominee for the Presidency, and unlike many others who protested this at the time, he has not backed down an inch. This is in contrast to the Bush family who all sent Trump their congratulations, and most egregiously Mitt Romney who fawned over him, along with so many other former “neverTrump” Republicans. This has freed Will from any party ideology or concern about how he appears to a target audience of its members. O.K. sure, he’s… Read More »
the election
Why Donald Trump Is Dangerous »
Once president, his weapons go far beyond Twitter Nov 11 2016The days-long assault on former Miss Universe Alicia Machado that peaked from 3:20am to 5:00am one morning underscored to what lengths Donald Trump will go for vengeance. It amplified concerns for how that character trait is 
likely to burst forth when transported to the affairs of the Oval Office. Bill Maher reminded viewers of "Hillary's ad from 2008, 'Who do you want answering the White House…
Read More »
election 2016
Why Trump Is Dangerous: #2: Nuclear? No Big Deal »
Once president, his weapons go far beyond Twitter Nov 4 2016The days-long assault on former Miss Universe that peaked from 3:20am to 5:00am one morning sounded an alarm that went far beyond concern for the undeserving Alicia Machado. It underscored to what lengths Donald Trump will go to revenge the most trivial of insults or rebukes. It amplified concerns for how that character trait is likely to burst forth when transported to the affairs of the Oval Office.
Bill Maher reminded viewers of the 2008 campaign ad, "Who do you… Read More »
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congress
Newly Minted Speaker Flubs Israel Aid. Is Government Shutdown His Next Act? »
Nov 4 2023Newly elected House Speaker, Louisiana's Mike Johnson, stumbled badly in his first attempt at legislation by pandering to his far right extremists with a bill for aid to Israel that stood no chance of passage by an irate Senate.
Johnson chose to sever aid to Israel from another desperately… Read More »
the presidency
Chief of Staff John Kelly Describes His Days Working for Trump »
Jan 13 2023Michael Schmidt, of The New York Times, has added a 13,000 word profile of Donald Trump's second chief of staff, John Kelly, to the paperback edition of his book "Donald Trump v. The United States", which is about to be released. Iinterviewed by Schmidt, the former 4-star Marine general… Read More »
the report
Mueller Comes Up Short of Expectations »
Apr 23 2019Those who think no one should be above the law are more than disappointed that Robert Mueller followed the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) guideline that a sitting president should not be indicted, and therefore came to no conclusion that the president had committed a crime despite Mueller's own overwhelming 10-count list of Trump's obstructions of justice. It's the limited scope he adopted, not any deficiency of evidence he found, that is meant by the report stating, "The evidence we obtained about the president's actions and intent present difficult issues that would need to be… Read More »
capitalism
How Corporate Welfare Fleeces American Cities »
Will voracious Amazon set a new record? Nov 10 2017
It's nothing new. This Time
cover dates from November, 1998
Wasn't there a time when a business moved to a new town — chosen for proximity to rail or highways, for its educated workforce, for a reliable energy supply, etc. — built a factory and set to work as a valued addition to a community, content to support it by paying its taxes?
That time is long gone. Corporations now make colossal demands of any… Read More »
the cabinet
A Quartet of Trump Cabinet Choices »
Dec 22 2016Donald Trump's appointments make it clear that he is putting together not just a conservative government, but a cabinet whose mission is to reverse what preceding governments — Democrats and moderate Republicans alike — have worked to accomplish, underscored by appointing Rick Perry to head Energy, one of three departments in the 2012 campaign debates he (and many Republicans) wanted abolished ("it's three agencies of government that when I get there are gone"). On this page are short takes on four appointees that we foresaw in December would run into strong objections in their confirmation hearings.
3 Comments
election 2016
Why Trump Is Dangerous: #1 First Amendment? Let’s Sue the Press »
He fundamentally does not believe in freedom of the press Nov 4 2016Donald Trump would hardly be the first president to be irked by the prodding and poking of the press. An adversarial relationship is its job in order to pry open the secrets of government. But not yet in government, Trump already harbors a corrosive animus toward the fourth estate. "I gotta tell you, the media is [sic] among the most dishonest groups of people I've ever met", Trump has said. "They're terrible". He has said that most reporters are “absolute… Read More »
the partisan divide
To Confront Climate Change, Progressives Are Coming for Your Lifestyle »
Conservatives are having none of it Sep 15 2023On August 1, the ban against incandescent light bulbs took effect. That LEDs (light emitting diodes) now cost little more than Thomas Edison's creation of the late 1800s, last years longer than incandescents, and require far less power such that $3 billion a year is expected to vanish from American… Read More »
the report
Trump Sours on Mueller Report After Its Details Paint a Darker Picture »
Apr 23 2019The Mueller report is finally out but unsurprisingly it has resolved little between proponents and opponents of the Trump presidency. Each camp has taken away what it hoped to find, and like the War of the Roses, the discord promises to drag on interminably.
Essentially, the president and those on the right hold to the top line — no collusion
Robert Mueller
and a questionable claim of no obstruction — whereas the left burrowed into the details and found a president and an administration guilty of appalling conduct.
Almost lost in the heated… Read More »
national security
Trump Won’t Read Daily Intel Brief, But Kushner Does »
No security clearance, but the son-in-law sees everything Feb 18 2018For the last seven presidencies, the day began with reading the daily intelligence briefing, the product of an arduous nightly undertaking by the intelligence agencies that pulls together for morning delivery findings from all over the world.Kushner Clearance Downgraded: Feb. 28: His contacts with certain foreign government officials have raised concerns causing access to classified information to be reduced from top-secret to secret, still extraordinary for someone well past the time limit for temporary clearance.
But…
Read More »
governing
The Government Shutdown of a Different Sort »
Feb 14 2018There are about 2 million people employed by the federal government so it may not seem all that important that a comparatively small number of posts sit empty. But these are the jobs of key personnel, some 1200 top jobs that call for presidential nomination and Senate confirmation. Of those The Washington Post 
tracks 630 that are thought to be the most important. More than a year into the Trump presidency, 240 of those…
Read More »
governing
Exiting the World: Trump Gutting the State Department »
Nov 25 2017
“There is simply no denying the warning signs that point to mounting threats to our institution and to the global leadership that depends on us”, writes Ambassador Barbara Stephenson, a career diplomat with the U.S. State Department for over 30 years, in a letter to a foreign service publication:
"The talent being shown the door now is not only our top talent, but also talent that cannot be replicated overnight. The rapid loss of… Read More »
Andy Puzder for Labor Secretary »
Dec 22 2016
If you want a cabinet position, write op-eds for The Wall Street Journal. How else could Trump have come upon Andy Puzder, the CEO of a restaurant chain whom Trump has appointed to be labor secretary. He's not new to us, though. It has filled us with wonder to watch the Journal give Puzder extraordinary free access to its op-ed page — at one point we counted four submissions in one…
Read More »
Tom Price for Health & Human Services »
Dec 22 2016
For health secretary, Trump has chosen a House representative who has drafted a complete replacement of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), leaving no doubt that he is allied with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who says, "I can tell you where we're going to start" the new term. "With a process to repeal and replace Obamacare".
Trump's choice is Tom Price, an orthopedic surgeon from… Read More »
Scott Pruitt to Head EPA »
Dec 22 2016
The Attorney General of Oklahoma can finally stop suing the Environmental Protection Agency. Donald Trump has appointed him to run it, from which vantage he can reverse decades of policy extending back to when government environmentalism began: Richard Nixon's signing of the Clean Air Act. He is to head an agency charged with the role of regulating the industry he has made a career of promoting because it will now become an agency that…
Read More »
Betsy DeVos at Education Department »
Dec 22 2016
DeVos, a long time advocate of vouchers and charter schools, presumably will champion the conservative desire to make free choice of schooling the norm. This would bring a complete reorientation to the Education Department. The mission would no longer be support of public education, if Ms DeVos has her way. It is notable that DeVos, a billionaire, has never attended a public school.
In her home state of Michigan, she has lobbied for parents to… Read More »