US Politics Mega-thread - Page 7122

The US Defence Secretary, General James ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis, has warned that climate change is already destabilising parts of the world.

In written responses to questions put during his confirmation hearings, which were not published but were obtained by the ProPublica news website, the former Marine Corps officer indicated he had very different views to other leading members of the Trump administration.

While the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency recently denied that carbon dioxide is causing global warming – an idea scientists have compared to disputing gravity – General Mattis made clear climate change was a serious problem.

“Climate change is impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating today,” he told senators.

“It is appropriate for the Combatant Commands to incorporate drivers of instability that impact the security environment in their areas into their planning.”

ProPublica said his responses had been given to them by “someone involved with coordinating efforts on climate change preparedness across more than a dozen government agencies”. The documents were confirmed as genuine by Senate staff, it added.

Asked by Senator Jeanne Shaheen if he believed “climate change is a security threat”, General Mattis replied: “Climate change can be a driver of instability and the Department of Defence must pay attention to potential adverse impacts generated by this phenomenon.”

Ms Shaheen then asked how the military should prepare “to address this threat”.

“As I noted above, climate change is a challenge that requires a broader, whole-of government response,” General Mattis replied.

“If confirmed, I will ensure that the Department of Defence plays its appropriate role within such a response by addressing national security aspects.”

He added: “I agree that the effects of a changing climate — such as increased maritime access to the Arctic, rising sea levels, desertification, among others — impact our security situation.

“I will ensure that the department continues to be prepared to conduct operations today and in the future, and that we are prepared to address the effects of a changing climate on our threat assessments, resources, and readiness.”

Late Monday, a spokesman for House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) threatened to subpoena the Trump administration to produce evidence of Trump's claim that President Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower during the campaign. The White House has declined to produce this evidence publicly, offering various excuses, including the Constitution's separation of powers and — most recently on Monday — arguing that Trump wasn't speaking literally when he made the claim.

The Justice Department missed Nunes's deadline to provide evidence Monday, which drew Nunes's subpoena threat.

“If the committee does not receive a response, the committee will ask for this information during the March 20 hearing and may resort to a compulsory process if our questions continue to go unanswered,” Nunes spokesman Jack Langer said.

Then, on Tuesday, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) made his own threat. Last week, Graham — who is clearly skeptical of the wiretapping claim and chairs a subcommittee looking into it — asked the Justice Department and the FBI to provide copies of any warrants or court orders related to the alleged wiretapping. Having not received anything, Graham said Tuesday that he would announce his next steps Wednesday and may push for a special committee.

On March 15 2017 22:55 Doodsmack wrote:
The 2005 returns do support the point that Trump should release the rest of his taxes, because obviously there's nothing wrong and nothing to hide.

On March 15 2017 22:58 LightSpectra wrote:


It's never seemed to me that Trump was withholding his taxes because he has something bad to hide. It seems more like some psychological positioning, e.g. "I am not beholden to whatever standards other politicians are held to, I am a New Breed and I make my own rules."

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Wednesday said the Republican proposal to replace Obamacare was “mortally wounded,” and that he would tell President Donald Trump to pursue letting Obamacare collapse and starting over with a new bill.

In an appearance on NBC’s “Today," Graham was asked whether House Republicans’ health care bill was “dead on arrival.”

“It is mortally wounded, I don’t know if it’s died yet,” Graham replied. “Rand Paul will not vote for the House bill, because he believes refundable tax credits is an entitlement in another form. My state did not take Medicaid expansion. The House bill allows open enrollment for the entire country all the way through 2019 for Medicaid, which is fundamentally broken. I don’t like that. This is the last best chance for Republicans to pass health care by themselves and screw it up.”

Graham said that he would advise Trump to “try to get a good bill,” but that, if he can’t, to keep Obamacare as law, and wait for what Graham described as its eventual collapse.

“Let Obamacare collapse and challenge the Democrats to help him fix a problem they created,” he said.

“We’re trying to do too much too quick as Republicans. We’re running through stop signs like the CBO letter,” he added later.

Graham noted that it was “a fantasy in the Senate” that something like a bill to buy insurance across state lines — which proponents of the current bill say is part of “phase three” of health reform, to come in the future — would get 60 votes in the Senate

“Slow down, get it right,” he said.

On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Wednesday, Graham had similar advice for the Trump administration

“Here’s what I would tell the President,” Graham said. “If you can't get a better deal and if you can’t protect that 62-year-old worker in Greenville from having dramatic premium increases because Democrats won't work with you and you can't get the Republican Party on board, stop, take a time-out, let it collapse then turn to the Democrats and say, ‘This was the system you created. It has collapsed now help me replace it,’ and that is what I would do.”

On March 15 2017 23:47 Plansix wrote:
“It makes me smart” would not have been enough in the 80s and 90s. Not paying taxes when the average voter was would have been election losing. It shows how much times have changed and how voters view taxes.

On March 16 2017 00:06 KwarK wrote:

People being okay with the underfunding of the IRS is amazing to me. If you give the IRS a dollar they go out and find forty dollars in tax fraud to give back to you. You can then give them those forty dollars and they'll come back with sixteen hundred more for you. Rinse and repeat. Deliberately underfunding the IRS and handicapping their ability to collect taxes shifts the burden from people who commit tax fraud onto people who don't, a group including the vast majority of working Americans. If you don't like taxes, but you pay your taxes anyway, then it's important that you fund the IRS as much as possible because the less they're funded, the more taxes become a burden exclusively borne by the honest. The more you fund the IRS, the less the honest man pays in taxes.

Maybe some people take comfort in the knowledge that even though they have to pay taxes there is someone else out there beating the system. I don't know. But it's dumb as fuck.

A culture of paranoia is consuming the Trump administration, with staffers increasingly preoccupied with perceived enemies — inside their own government.

In interviews, nearly a dozen White House aides and federal agency staffers described a litany of suspicions: that rival factions in the administration are trying to embarrass them, that civil servants opposed to President Donald Trump are trying to undermine him, and even that a “deep state” of career military and intelligence officials is out to destroy them.

Aides are going to great lengths to protect themselves. They’re turning off work-issued smartphones and putting them in drawers when they arrive home from work out of fear that they could be used to eavesdrop. They’re staying mum in meetings out of concern that their comments could be leaked to the press by foes.

Many are using encrypted apps that automatically delete messages once they’ve been read, or are leaving their personal cellphones at home in case their bosses initiate phone checks of the sort that press secretary Sean Spicer deployed last month to try to identify leakers on his team.

It’s an environment of fear that has hamstrung the routine functioning of the executive branch. Senior advisers are spending much of their time trying to protect turf, key positions have remained vacant due to a reluctance to hire people deemed insufficiently loyal, and Trump’s ambitious agenda has been eclipsed by headlines surrounding his unproven claim that former President Barack Obama tapped his phone lines at Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign.

One senior administration aide, who like most others interviewed for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the degree of suspicion had created a toxicity that is unsustainable.

“People are scared,” he said, adding that the Trump White House had become “a pretty hostile environment to work in.”

A White House official rejected the notion that there’s a culture of paranoia.

Spicer on Tuesday emphasized that cellphone checks are not White House policy and said that neither he nor others are still conducting them. “The only incident in which that occurred was limited to the one involving myself,” he said.

Trump has a history of overseeing pressure-cooker organizations rife with suspicion, setting up sophisticated surveillance in part to monitor employees at his properties, including at his campaign headquarters, where some campaign aides suspected their offices were bugged.

One widespread concern in the Trump White House: that career intelligence operatives are working to undermine the new president through a series of leaks of classified information.

Much of the suspicion is directed at the Central Intelligence Agency, which many Trump loyalists believe is targeting CIA skeptics who sit on the National Security Council. Some of them allege that the CIA was behind the damaging leaks to the press that culminated in the resignation of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn in February and that the agency has pushed for the removal of other staffers.

They also believe the CIA exaggerated security clearance concerns that led to the removal of a top Flynn deputy, Robin Townley, from the NSC. Last week, another top NSC staffer who had drawn opposition from some within the CIA, intelligence director Ezra Cohen-Watnick, was told he was being removed, only to have Trump overrule the decision after Trump advisers Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner intervened, two people familiar with the episode said.

On March 16 2017 00:06 KwarK wrote:

People being okay with the underfunding of the IRS is amazing to me. If you give the IRS a dollar they go out and find forty dollars in tax fraud to give back to you. You can then give them those forty dollars and they'll come back with sixteen hundred more for you. Rinse and repeat. Deliberately underfunding the IRS and handicapping their ability to collect taxes shifts the burden from people who commit tax fraud onto people who don't, a group including the vast majority of working Americans. If you don't like taxes, but you pay your taxes anyway, then it's important that you fund the IRS as much as possible because the less they're funded, the more taxes become a burden exclusively borne by the honest. The more you fund the IRS, the less the honest man pays in taxes.

Maybe some people take comfort in the knowledge that even though they have to pay taxes there is someone else out there beating the system. I don't know. But it's dumb as fuck.