Will Pence By The First Man On Mars? And Will Zephyr Teachout Be New York Attorney General?

What sounds better, "half a trillion" or "$500,000 billion?" Either way, that's how much the national debt Trump and his GOP enablers plan to leave American taxpayers jumped in the last 6 months. That's an all-time high ($21.4 trillion), complements of a fake president whose only certifiable talent is going bankrupt. Worse: as the debt continues to rise, the pace of growth has slowed this year.

Trump's always been a "What, Me Worry?" kind of guy. For his entire miserable life, someone else has cleaned up after him. No one in their right mind could have thought his stay in the White House would have been any different. He has one over-arching goal: steal everything that isn't bolted down. His newest scheme: the space force. He "came up" with it after months of lobbying for other greed-obsessed scum bags with deep financial ties to the aerospace industry. They speak his language. This is going to be another big bonanza... at the taxpayers' expense.

Rep. Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN), one of the early supporters of a separate service, complained that Trump’s impromptu endorsement had “hijacked” the issue and could vastly inflate the budget process. “There are many vendors of all types who are excited at the prospect of an explosion of new spending, which was not our goal,” he said.

Still, when Trump abruptly embraced the idea at Miramar-- and began promoting it to wild applause at other rallies-- a moribund notion opposed by much of the Pentagon hierarchy and senior members of the Senate became a real possibility.

A few days after the San Diego speech, Trump took a phone call at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida from Rep. Mike D. Rogers, an Alabama Republican who is chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on strategic forces. He had been promoting the space force to Trump and his advisors for months.

“This is something we have to do,” Rogers said he told Trump. “It’s a national security imperative.”

“I’m all in,” Trump replied, according to Rogers. “We are going to have a space force.”

The story of how that happened is a window into the chaotic way Trump sometimes makes key decisions, often by bypassing traditional bureaucracy to tout ideas that work well as applause lines but aren’t fully thought-out.

To be sure, only Congress can create a new military service, and the administration still has not said what the space force would do, what it would look like or what it would cost. The existing services — the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard — not only deploy forces. They also run war colleges, recruiting stations, security and vast contracting operations, with costs in the billions of dollars.

Vice President Mike Pence said this month that the administration would send a legislative proposal to Capitol Hill next year and aims to stand up a space force by 2020. For its part, Congress has shown little appetite for a costly new expansion of government, especially one that would cut the Air Force budget, a service with powerful backing on Capitol Hill.

Those political headwinds could reduce the space force to a presidential rallying cry, like his unfulfilled vow to build a “big, beautiful wall” on the border with Mexico. But Trump’s enthusiasm has clearly provided momentum, exciting proponents who see a rare opportunity to win more attention and resources for space defense.

They agreed on the threat. China and Russia were building weapons and cyber capabilities aimed at knocking out satellites that the Pentagon relies on for communication, precise targeting of bombs and missile defense, according to U.S. intelligence.

Last summer, Rogers and Cooper inserted an amendment in the annual defense policy bill to create a separate service they called the space corps. It would be part of the Air Force, just as the Marine Corps is technically in the Navy.

But Rogers worried that putting it in the Air Force might not fly. The Air Force is dominated by fliers more interested in warplanes than in outer space, he noted in a speech last year, explaining Air Force opposition to a separate service.

“I mean, this is about money,” Rogers said. “As long as space is in the [Air Force] portfolio, they can move money from space to support fighter jets, bombers or whatever. The Air Force is run by fighter pilots. Space will always lose.”

Moreover, defense contractors involved in space “were complaining to us about how impossible it was to deal with the Air Force,” Rogers said. “They kept describing this bureaucratic morass in Air Force procurement, where nobody had decision-making authority.”

Rogers, who was first elected to Congress by a razor-thin margin in 2002, has solidified control of his rural district, with a campaign war chest swelled with money from the aerospace industry. Defense industry firms have contributed $395,000 to his campaign committee and leadership PAC since 2017, becoming by far his largest industry donor, according to Open Secrets, a campaign spending database.

Also key in pushing for the space corps was Douglas L. Loverro, a retired Air Force officer and the former executive director of its Space and Missile Systems Center in El Segundo. Loverro said in an interview that a dedicated corps of space experts would be necessary to ensure a space force could fulfill its mission.

The Air Force focus on conventional air combat prevents it from “building the best space war fighters-- the ones who can conceive of, imagine, prepare for, and think doctrinally, operationally and technically about space,” Loverro told an industry conference in April. “But those are precisely the people we need today.”

The space corps never got off the ground.

The Air Force lobbied to kill it. Defense Secretary James N. Mattis took the unusual step of sending a letter to Congress voicing his objections.

“At a time when we are trying to integrate the Department's joint warfighting functions, I do not wish to add a separate service that would likely present a narrower and even parochial approach to space operations," Mattis wrote.

Even the Trump White House called the idea "premature at this time" in a July 2017 statement.

That was enough to kill the plan in the Senate, though Rogers got other lawmakers to agree to order the Pentagon to study the idea and issue a report on its findings.

He also began trying to enlist Trump.

Last December, Rogers said, he arranged for an intermediary to give Trump information his subcommittee had collected about Russian and Chinese development of anti-satellite weapons, as well as about the Air Force effort to kill a separate military service. He declined to identify the intermediary.

“With the Air Force having poisoned the well, I knew I needed to get some energy back in it,” he said. “I knew once I got the word to him about what we’d found, I was certain he’d embrace it.”

...When Pence gave an update during a Cabinet meeting in March, Trump marveled at model rocket ships displayed on the table in front of him. He touted the private space launch companies owned by billionaire businessmen, including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Tesla’s Elon Musk and Microsoft founder Paul Allen.

“We're letting them use the Kennedy Space Center for a fee,” Trump said. “And you know, rich guys, they love rocket ships, and that's good. That's better than us paying for it.”

But Trump showed no interest publicly in a space force until his speech in San Diego that month, indicating it was his idea. By then, the Pentagon’s attitude was beginning to shift. A Trump appointee, Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick M. Shanahan, had begun preparing the congressional-ordered report on whether to create an independent space force.

A former senior Boeing executive, Shanahan was familiar with the cumbersome Air Force procurement system. He became the administration’s space force point person, consulting with Pence, Rogers, the Air Force and other Pentagon players, and the space council.

“I can hear my dad kind of whispering in my ear, ‘Don't screw anything up,’” Shanahan told reporters on Aug. 9, adding: “There are extensive military operations going on throughout the world right now and they're heavily reliant on space."

Trump began talking up a space force privately, ordering Pence to take the project on, according to an administration official who confirmed reporting first published in Axios.

The aerospace industry, which was initially cool to the plan, began to come around as well, seeing it as a lucrative avenue not just for expensive new space systems but potentially for uniforms, constructions projects, support services and other trappings of a new military service.

...Just before going public, Trump gathered the industry-dominated panel that was supposed to be advising him on space policy, telling them it was a done deal. “It wasn’t like there was a meeting weeks ahead of time,” said Witt.

Trump then walked into the East Room for the public portion of the meeting, where a press pool was gathered.

“I’m hereby directing the Department of Defense and Pentagon to immediately begin the process necessary to establish a space force as the sixth branch of the armed forces,” he said.

As TV cameras rolled, he added, “Gen. Dunford, if you would carry that assignment out, I would be very greatly honored, also. Where’s Gen. Dunford? General? Got it?”

“We got it,” Dunford [Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] replied.

“It was the president’s way of making sure nobody could stop them,” Rogers said. “He ordered it on live TV.”

The phrase "another Trump boondoggle" comes to mind. Or... scam.




Back on planet earth, this evening, the NY Times editorial board endorsed Zephyr teach out for Attorney General:Zephyr Teachout Is the Right Choice As Attomey General For Democrats, saying that "The officer is a potential firewall against an out-of-control president and a historically corrupt New York State government. I've never appreciated The Times editorial board as much.

The most important choice facing New York voters this fall is whom they will pick as their next state attorney general. The office could be the last line of defense against an antidemocratic president, a federal government indifferent to environmental and consumer protection and a state government in which ethics can seem a mere inconvenience.

Even in the best of times the office plays a critical role, policing fraud on Wall Street and ensuring enforcement of state and federal laws, from regulating the financial system to preventing employment discrimination. Its influence is felt across the nation.

These are not the best of times. With the right leadership, the office could serve as a firewall if President Trump pardons senior aides, dismisses the special counsel, Robert Mueller, or attacks the foundations of state power. Only a handful of American institutions are equipped to resist such assaults on constitutional authority, and the New York attorney general’s office, with 650 lawyers and a history of muscular law enforcement, is one of them.

The next attorney general will have a full docket in New York as well. Albany has long been a chamber of ethical horrors. In March, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s former senior aide Joseph Percoco was convicted on corruption charges. In May, former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Democrat, was also convicted of corruption. In July, the former Republican Senate majority leader, Dean Skelos, was convicted of bribery, extortion and conspiracy. Prosecutors said he used his office to pressure businesses to pay his son $300,000 for no-show jobs. The same month, Alain Kaloyeros, a key figure behind Mr. Cuomo’s “Buffalo Billion” economic initiative, was convicted in a bid-rigging scheme.

... From a refreshingly strong field competing in the Democratic primary, to be held on Sept. 13, the best candidate is Zephyr Teachout, an independent-minded lawyer unusually well prepared to curb abuses of power and restore integrity and pride to this office. Ms. Teachout waged a strong primary challenge against Mr. Cuomo four years ago, lending her additional credibility and distance from a governor who remains all too cozy with the donors, contractors, union leaders and influence peddlers who dominate Albany and beyond.

The office of attorney general has been held by a long line of formidable lawyers and strong, if at times deeply flawed, men. No woman has ever been elected to the position. Barbara Underwood, the current occupant, assumed office after Mr. Schneiderman’s resignation. Ms. Teachout lacks direct experience as a prosecutor but is equipped with legal firepower comparable to previous attorneys general.

A Fordham Law School professor and activist, she’s widely respected among lawyers and academics. She’s known as a thoughtful and innovative scholar who has been a pioneering thinker in the legal case against Trump’s entanglements with foreign favor-seekers who are lining his pockets through his hotels, golf courses and other private holdings. We are persuaded she will not let a focus on the Trump administration detract her from other efforts on behalf of New York, including securing tenants’ rights and voting rights and pursuing criminal justice reform.

Ms. Teachout has written the book on political corruption-- literally-- and is recognized as a national expert on this scourge.

We believe Ms. Teachout would also be able to recruit some of the best lawyers in the country to the state attorney general’s office, which competes for talent with the Southern District of New York, the Department of Justice in Washington, top private law firms and prestigious public-interest groups.

...New York needs a great lawyer. We believe that Democrats who are seeking a means of standing up to the Trump presidency and graft in Albany can find in Ms. Teachout their most effective champion for democracy and civil rights, good government and the environment, workers’ rights, fair housing and gender equality.