Erstellt am: 10. 1. 2017 - 12:58 Uhr
Today's Webtip: What the Trump!?!?
You may have noticed some recent headlines mentioning the fact that Donald Trump has appointed his son in law to a prominent position in the Whitehouse. People were already concerned about his children's prominent positions on his transition team, but this latest announcement managed to get people even a bit more upset.
AFP / Timothy A. Clary
Not just because of some outrageously outdated sense of suspicion and outrage about the idea of nepotism, but because it is actually illegal in the U.S. And it has been since 1967. Maybe. Sort of. Right now there seem to be a lot of people saying that it's all not really as bad as it sounds and those damn liberals are just making much ado about nothing.
And quite a few have been making ado. The list of nothings has been making it's way across Facebook and looks like this:
The federal week in review:
1. Trump fires all Ambassadors and Special Envoys, ordering them out by inauguration day.
2. House brings back the Holman rule allowing them to reduce an individual civil service, SES positions, or political appointee's salary to $1, effectively firing them by amendment to any piece of legislation. We now know why they wanted names and positions of people in Energy and State.
3. Senate schedules 6 simultaneous hearings on cabinet nominees and triple-books those hearings with Trump's first press conference in months and an ACA budget vote, effectively preventing any concentrated coverage or protest.
4. House GOP expressly forbids the Congressional Budget Office from reporting or tracking ANY costs related to the repeal of the ACA.
5. Trump continues to throw the intelligence community under the bus to protect Putin, despite the growing mountain of evidence that the Russians deliberately interfered in our election.
6. Trump breaks a central campaign promise to make Mexico pay for the wall by asking Congress (in other words, us, the taxpayers) to pay for it.
7. Trump threatens Toyota over a new plant that was never coming to the US nor will take jobs out of the US.
8. House passes the REINS act, giving them veto power over any rules enacted by any federal agency or department - for example, FDA or EPA bans a drug or pesticide, Congress can overrule based on lobbyists not science. Don't like that endangered species designation, Congress kills it.
We - progressive, liberal, libertarian and conservative - need to all wake up to what is actually happening to our beloved country.
The funny thing about it is that this is all happening after years of what seemed like absolutely nothing getting done. And it is coming fast and furious, many things taking place or being announced simultaneously and making any kind of in depth media coverage nearly impossible.
Just reading that list gives you an idea of what is happening, but it doesn't really do much to understand why it might be worrying, or help to see any parallels with things that have been happening in other countries.
But VICE has been keeping track, and trying to keep a running tally with explanations of what it all means and why these things could be problematic. And if you are wondering why this should worry any one living in Europe, it's because this type of thing seems to be a trend amongst a group of politicians in many countries who have all been spending an increasing amount of time together. It's not the first series of questionable occurrences, and it is very likely not to be the last...