Monthly Archives: February 2017

business news, national news, political news

POTUS takes credit he doesn’t deserve

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Flash! National debt drops a tad, while the president of the United States takes credit for it!

Hold on for just a New York minute, shall we?

Donald J. Trump shouldn’t be taking credit for a slight dip in the national debt, any more than Barack Obama should have taken the hickey for it when it blipped up in the first month of his administration.

However, do not expect that to inhibit the new president from taking credit on such matters.

The president has shown this habit of taking credit for positive things but then passing off negative elements as if he’s some sort of innocent bystander.

The New York Times reported: “The federal debt is determined by the government’s decisions about taxing and spending, and by the strength of the American economy. The debt was increasing rapidly in early 2009 because the economy was in free fall, and because of policy decisions made during the administration of President George W. Bush.

“The debt is rising more slowly now because economic growth has strengthened and because of policy decisions made during Mr. Obama’s administration. But the debt is on a clear upward trend. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated in January that the debt would increase by $559 billion in the current fiscal year, ending in September.”

Trump has been in office for a whole month. He’s got 47 more of them to go. The president, though, is so darn quick with his Twitter trigger finger that he cannot help but assume this minor downtick in the debt is all his doing.

We’d better get used to this kind of thing.

Oh, the fact-checkers will be busy.

media news, national news, political news

Do as Trump says, not as he does

Donald J. Trump cracks me up.

Except that I’m not laughing with the president, but rather I’m laughing at him for the preposterous declarations he makes about the media — and what he does before and after he makes them.

Trump stood before the Conservative Political Action Conference audience this week and excoriated the media — the “enemy of the people,” remember — for using anonymous sources.

What, then, occurred that makes this attack so laughable?

His White House staff talked to a select group of media on the grounds that they be allowed to speak anonymously.

D’oh! Huh? Eh? What the … ?

Trump’s CPAC rant was the latest ramping up of his war against the media, the folks whose task is to report to their own constituents what is going on with the White House, the president’s staff and, by golly, the president himself.

This ridiculous and nonsensical rant in which he blasts the media for granting anonymity to sources only demonstrates the president’s utter ignorance of the traditional role between the media and the White House.

It’s supposed to be adversarial. Every single president — regardless of party or ideology — has bitched about his treatment by the media. Some have taken that complaint to more intense levels than others; President Nixon’s troubles come to mind.

However, every single one of them has said essentially the same thing: The media treat me unfairly; they’re too harsh; they’re too probing; they pry too much and too deeply.

The treatment Trump is getting is really no different than what has occurred since the founding of the Republic.

Now, for him to blast the media for granting anonymity — while allowing his staff to request it of the media — simply makes me shake my head in sheer amazement at this president’s ignorance.

medical news, State news

Planned Parenthood … crossing many lines

You’ve got to connect a lot of dots with this item, but once you do you might find the symmetry fascinating in the extreme.

It involves Planned Parenthood, the bogeyman of those on the political right and, yes, the far right.

A U.S. District judge has just ruled that Texas cannot ban Planned Parenthood health services from being covered by Medicaid assistance.

Now we hear that Barbara Pierce Bush, one of former President George W. Bush’s two daughters, is going to be the keynote speaker next week at Planned Parenthood’s annual luncheon in Fort Worth. President Bush was an avid foe of abortion while serving as Texas governor and then as president.

His daughter, though, is a supporter of Planned Parenthood, which has been targeted by right-wingers because of the referrals it gives to women seeking to terminate their pregnancy.

But as the Texas Tribune reports, Barbara’s mother, Laura, doesn’t share the former president’s disdain for Planned Parenthood. Neither does Barbara’s grandmother, another former first lady.

The Tribune reported: “The younger Bush, the CEO and co-founder of Global Health Corps, called Planned Parenthood an ‘exceptional organization’ in a June New York Times interview, and attended a fundraiser for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in Paris in October.”

Then there’s Cecile Richards, daughter of the late former Gov. Ann Richards, who now runs the national Planned Parenthood operation. George W. Bush defeated Ann Richards in 1994, although abortion wasn’t an issue in that contentious campaign.

This story is circuitous, indeed. But there’s another interesting catch to it.

Young Barbara’s grandfather, former President George H.W. Bush, was a noted supporter of organizations just like Planned Parenthood when he served in Congress in the 1960s. Then he agreed to toss aside his pro-choice views when he agreed to join the Republican presidential ticket led in 1980 by Ronald W. Reagan.

I guess you could say that this entire issue of reproductive rights, the pro-life movement, the pro-choice movement and all that they entail crosses many lines … even in the midst of the most high profile of political families.

As one who opposes laws that would criminalize abortion, I am glad to see that a well-known former first daughter is standing tall, speaking her own mind.

media news

Mr. President, now that you are talking about ‘fake news’ …

I would love to meet the reporter who stands in front of the president of the United States and asks him the following:

Thank you, Mr. President. You are complaining about “fake news,” which I take to mean is news with which you disagree.

I’m wondering, sir, how would you describe the “news” you kept promoting for about a half-dozen years that President Barack Obama was a foreign-born individual who wasn’t constitutionally qualified to serve in the office to which he was elected twice?

Was that news “fake,” sir? And how do you compare that outright lie with what you contend is taking place today?

***

I would bet the mortgage, the farm, my left leg that the president would go ballistic if he were to hear such a question from “the enemy of the American people.”

media news

Trump has chosen the wrong ‘enemy’

Donald J. Trump’s war on what he calls the “enemy of the American people” has taken a seriously counterproductive and dangerous turn.

It’s also patently frightening. Outrageous. Un-American. Pick whatever negative description you prefer.

The president has ordered several major media organizations excluded from White House briefings. They include CNN, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Daily News, The Hill, Buzzfeed, Politico and the BBC.

He calls them “fake news” outlets. He doesn’t like the tone of their coverage. He is limiting access to, um, more “friendly” media organizations.

So help me, I am running out of ways to express my utter outrage over this treatment of the media by the president of the United States. Not since the late Richard Nixon have we seen anything quite like this — and not even Tricky Dick managed to do what one of his successors has done.

If you think for a moment about this, you have to wonder: What in the world is Trump hoping to accomplish? White House press flack Sean Spicer will deliver his briefings to certain media outlets; meanwhile, those that are left out will be left to write about their being excluded. That reporting, then, might simply anger those Americans who understand the meaning of the First Amendment’s protection of a “free press.”

Trump’s bullying of the media is an outrageous act of a thin-skinned narcissist who doesn’t comprehend — seemingly at any level — what the nation’s founders envisioned when they provided for a press that should be free of government intimidation.

We now are hearing the president of the United States of American declaring that the media are the “enemy of the people.”

Are you kidding me?

The irony of this approach is mind-boggling in the extreme. It can be argued that Trump owes his ascent to the pinnacle of political power to the media, which covered his every utterance for months without ever challenging their veracity.

Now that they have done what they should have done from the beginning, the president has decided he doesn’t like being challenged.

Mr. President, that’s what the media do. It’s their job.

You, sir, do not get it.

military news

McMaster: right man for national security adviser

Some of us thought Michael Flynn was a bad choice for national security adviser from the get-go.

He had called Islam a “cancer” and that Americans’ fear of Muslims was justified. Then the retired Army lieutenant general reportedly lied to the vice president about the nature of some talks he had with Russian government agents during the 2016 presidential campaign.

If you’ll forgive the chest-thumping, here’s what I wrote in early December.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2016/12/get-rid-of-flynn-as-national-security-adviser/

He got the boot from the president.

Now we have another Army three-star, H.R. McMaster, coming in to be the national security adviser. He’s a renowned military scholar and deep thinker who says, among other things, that Russia is a pre-eminent threat and that our war against terror shouldn’t morph into a war against Islam.

I feel significantly better about this guy than I did about his immediate predecessor.

I believe Donald Trump has chosen well in filling this highly critical staff post.

Even critics of the president, such as Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, speak highly of McMaster. Indeed, McCain speaks well of the president’s national security team. McCain added that he “could not imagine a better, more capable national security team than the one we have right now.”

The question I will continue to have is whether the new national security adviser will be able to provide unfettered, unfiltered and unambiguous advice to Trump — without the influence of senior political strategist Steve Bannon, who Trump has installed as a member of the National Security Council principals committee.

A lot of sharp military minds believe Bannon’s role on that panel is a huge mistake. One of them, former Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen, said the NSC’s principals committee must be absolutely clear of politics; Bannon’s presence there, Mullen said, politicizes it egregiously.

McMaster reportedly received assurances from the president that he’ll be able to hire the staff he wants and will be allowed to proceed in the manner in which the adviser must proceed. He will have full and complete access to the president and will be able to give him the assessment he needs about national security threats.

The Flynn story is far from over.

However, the national security team now appears to have added a valuable new member to help protect Americans against our nation’s enemies.

International news, legal news, national news

Private prisons remain a detestable idea

Oh, how I hate the principle of letting private firms incarcerate prisoners.

Yet, according to USA Today, the private-prison industry thinks it’s about to score big if Donald J. Trump goes ahead with his plan to round up millions of people who are in the United States illegally.

These outfits have given big money to Trump and now see a potential payoff if the president follows through with his pledge to put all the illegal immigrants behind bars before deporting them.

Let me offer this notion about private prisons.

First of all, the public already pays police officers, prosecutors, judges and juries to arrest, detain and prosecute criminals. The public, therefore, ought to be responsible for their incarceration when they are convicted of crimes.

It’s a social responsibility thing, the way I see it.

Second of all, if the president believes illegal immigration presents a dire threat to our national security, our way of life and our national identity, doesn’t that mean that the public should step up and foot the bill for these alleged threats?

Here is how USA Today reports the issue: “Earlier this week, the Department of Homeland Security issued sweeping new instructions to carry out Trump’s executive orders on immigration. They require all federal agents — including Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — to identify, capture and quickly deport undocumented immigrants.

“Significantly for private-prison operators, the orders also require that undocumented people caught entering the country be detained until their cases are resolved, ending the ‘catch and release’ program in which undocumented immigrants were processed by immigration agents, released into the USA and ordered to reappear for court hearings.”

So now the Trump administration wants to farm out this responsibility to for-profit prison companies? I’m trying to understand where the nation derives the cost savings if it is going to pay these companies to do what state and local authorities should be doing.

And I haven’t even mentioned the public oversight of the manner in which these private lockups are managed.

The idea of private prisons is loony, in my view. If we’re going spend public money to send criminals to prison, we need to spend public money to ensure they are treated humanely.

And that includes illegal immigrants.

business news, medical news

Polls get in the GOP’s way regarding the ACA

Darn those pesky public opinion polls anyway.

The Pew Research Center, one of the more reliable polling organizations out there, has delivered another gut punch to congressional Republicans who are getting a snoot full already from constituents about the Affordable Care Act.

The ACA — which I now will no longer refer to as “Obamacare” — is more popular than ever with Americans.

Pew says 54 percent of Americans approve of the ACA, with 43 percent opposing it.

Republicans — and that includes the president of the United States — keep saying they’ll have a replacement plan ready to go once they repeal the ACA.

Really? Who’s seen it? I haven’t. Have you?

The GOP has eight years to craft their own version of affordable health care for Americans. Instead, they have come up empty, preferring to target the author of the ACA, former President Barack H. Obama. They detest him so much they cannot bring themselves even to refer to the ACA by its legal name, instead using the president’s last name to talk disparagingly about the plan.

Twenty million Americans have health care today who didn’t have it before the ACA was enacted in 2010. Is it perfect? Of course not. The federal government is incapable of crafting perfect legislation and then creating a perfect law.

It might need some tinkering around the edges.

Indeed, former U.S. House Speaker John Boehner — who sued the president over repeal of the ACA — this week has predicted that repeal of the act won’t happen. Congress will work to refine it, make it better, make it more “affordable” for Americans.

Oh wait! Didn’t Congress do something like this before, such as when it enacted Medicare and Social Security?

My advice to Congress is simple: Pay attention to what Americans are telling  you.

local news

City manager shows serious class

I like Jared Miller’s style.

The Amarillo city manager has been on the job for just a few days and he already is serving notice that he is in the business of learning about the municipal government he is now administering.

Miller has told all candidates for the City Council and for mayor that he wants to hear from them. He wants to know their objectives, their goals and their aspirations. Miller wants to sit down with all them and, I am going to presume for a moment, listen intently to what these individuals have in mind if they get elected to the council.

They, after all, will be his bosses. Two incumbents are running for re-election. Three new council members will take their seats after the May 6 election; one of the newbies will be the mayor, the presiding officer of the governing body.

Yes, it will be a consequential election with the second consecutive new majority taking over from the previous group. The size of that new majority, of course, is yet to be determined.

Miller’s role will be determined by how well he and the new council work together.

The part of Miller’s style I find appealing is his proactive approach to determining how that relationship should develop. He’ll learn about all the candidates, who in turn will learn about the city’s chief executive officer.

Moreover, Miller is likely to learn about this community and the amazing change that’s occurring at this very moment.

I have encountered a tiny handful of individuals over the years who have come to communities such as this one, assume positions of importance and power — and never ask a single question about their new city of residence. They come here believing they have all the answers and aren’t interested in learning anything new.

An individual such as that, simply, doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.

Jared Miller looks to me as though he is intent on learning.

I am heartened by what I am sensing early in the Miller administration at City Hall.

local news, national news

‘Bosses’ demand answers from ’employees’

Representative democracy is a messy business.

Members of Congress are finding out just how messy it can become. Many of them have gone “home” during the congressional break. Moreover, many of them have had town hall meetings in which they’ve been shouted down by voters angry over any plan to get rid of the Affordable Care Act.

Many others of them have decided against having town hall meetings. They need not hear from their bosses, they say.

I have to express some admiration for congressmen and women who are willing to stand up, take the heat, and then absorb the comments.

Many citizens have been chanting at their employees — these members of Congress — with a simple message: We’re the boss!

Indeed, they are.

And they deserve to be heard. They deserve all they time they desire to make themselves heard. The people whose salary they pay must take it. They must listen.

This recent development brings to mind a local government body that used to operate in a more “employer-friendly” manner.

Randall County, Texas, voters elected a county judge, Ted Wood, who took office in 1995 and restructured the way county Commissioners Court meetings would take place. Wood did so to give county constituents a greater voice; he intended to give them a broad forum to speak their peace.

Wood’s thought was a simple one: We work for the county’s residents and we owe it to them to give them all the time they need to tell us what’s on their mind.

He would open the floor at the end of county commissioners meetings to residents. He would let them speak for as long as they wanted. Wood’s policy drew the ire of some of his fellow county commissioners. His constituency, though, encompassed the entire county, while each commissioner represented only a section of the county, a single county precinct.

Therefore, Wood threw his weight around.

Was he wrong? Did he allow county residents to take control of these meetings? My recollection was that the meetings didn’t go on forever. They did have end points.

However, the county judge had his heart in the right place. He knew who were the bosses in this form of government we call “representative democracy.” Ted Wood understood that he worked for the taxpayers who pay the bills, not the other way around.

Members of Congress who aren’t listening to complaints from their bosses need to understand that truth, too.