November 12, 2016

The Daily Trump Shitshow Is About to Begin


In the near term, the Donald Trump shitshow is going to unfold on a daily basis as we learn who will be running things in the new administration. The bad news starts at the top: Mike Pence is replacing Chris Christie as head of Trump’s transition team. Christie may be an intolerable prick, but he’s not a conservative ideologue and might have played a slightly calming role. Pence is nothing of the sort. He’s a stone right winger who will be perfectly happy to put the Heritage Foundation in control of the country.

As for the lower-level folks, it turns out that Trump doesn’t hate lobbyists all that much after all. That whole “Drain the Swamp” thing was just red meat for the rubes. The Associated Press reports that far from hating lobbyists, Trump absolutely adores them. Here’s the Trump transition team:

The behind-the-scenes transition operation is being run by Ron Nichol, a senior partner at The Boston Group, a management consulting firm where 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney launched his business career.

Ken Blackwell…senior fellow at the Family Research Council…Veteran agribusiness lobbyist Michael Torrey…Energy industry lobbyist Mike McKenna…David Bernhardt…represents mining companies seeking to use resources on federal lands…Lobbyist Steven Hart, who focuses on tax and employee benefits, is leading the transition team for the Labor Department.

Cindy Hayden…top lobbyist for Altria, the parent company of cigarette-maker Philip Morris…Homeland Security Department. Jeff Eisenach, a consultant and former lobbyist…Federal Communications Commission….Michael Korbey…former lobbyist who led President George W. Bush’s effort to privatize America’s retirement system….Shirley Ybarra…champion of “public-private partnerships” to build toll roads and bridges….Myron Ebell…man-made global warming is a hoax…David Malpass…Bear Stearns’ chief economist…Dan DiMicco…former chief executive of steel company NUCOR and a board member at Duke Energy…Former Rep. Mike Rogers…serves on boards for consulting firms IronNet Cybersecurity and Next Century Corp.

Kevin O’Connor…partner at the law firm of close Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani…Jim Carafano…Heritage Foundation’s vice president for Foreign and Defense Policy Studies…retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg…chief operating officer for Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq…Mira Ricardel…vice president of business development for Boeing Strategic Missile & Defense Systems.

Buckle up. This is going to be a rough ride.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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