Trump's Kakistocracy's First Two Achievements

Even as he was assembling and deploying an American kakistocracy and calling it his administration, there were people of goodwill urging everyone to just wait and be open-minded and see if Trump didn't turn out to be an OK president. "After all," one of that tribe told me several times, "he was a liberal Democrat most of his life." Nah... he was a Trumpist all of his life and the appointments-- from the neo-Nazi Steve Bannon to Pence cabinet picks like Betsy DeVos and Tom Price, it became clearer with each passing day that Trump will be the worst president in American history.

Even as he was being inaugurated yesterday, Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) President Scott Paul was looking for something hopeful in his address. "Trump's inaugural address," he said,"stuck close to the central theme of his campaign: Put America first. He vowed to return lost jobs, rebuild our domestic infrastructure with American-made goods and labor, and refurbish our atrophying defense industrial base. He’ll be building on what came before. His promise to 'Buy American and hire American' is very similar to the Buy America preferences that former President Obama saw embedded in the 2009 Recovery Act. I hope he learns from it and strengthens this principle...Ultimately, the proof will be in the policy. It will take a concerted effort on trade, tax, workforce, and infrastructure policy to create the economic and industrial renaissance the president is proposing."

Within minutes of being sworn in, Trump's first two actions as President were taken and neither was made to benefit American workers or American families. In his dark downer of an inauguration speech, written by neo-Nazi Steve Bannon, Trump's rhetoric had nothing to do with what Republicans are doing in Washington. "The establishment protected itself," he read from his teleprompter, "but not the citizens of our country. Their victories have not been your victories; their triumphs have not been your triumphs; and while they celebrated in our nation's capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land... Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs, will be made to benefit American workers and American families. But the new administration cancelled a fee cut on FHA-backed mortgages, an action by the Obama administration that was meant to help low-income and first-time buyers afford mortgages by lowering fees. The Obama Administration's lowering of the fees had been widely backed not just by consumer groups but by mortgage lenders, builders and realtors. Moments after the Trump move, the National Association of Realtors issued a statement asserting that Trump's reversal could keep as many as 40,000 would-be homebuyers out of the market in 2017 alone. Eliminating the cut was something congressional Republicans have been clamoring for.

Last week, during his confirmation hearing, Trump’s nominee for HUD secretary, Ben Carson, said the rate cut announced earlier this month surprised him and that if confirmed he would work with the “FHA administrator and other financial experts to really examine that policy.”

The suspension of the rate cut, set to take effect Jan. 27, came Friday before his confirmation vote.

In a letter announcing the suspension Friday morning, HUD, which oversees the FHA, said more analysis is needed on any “future adjustments” to insurance premium rates.

“FHA is committed to ensuring its mortgage insurance programs remains viable and effective in the long term for all parties involved, especially our taxpayers,” the letter to the real estate industry said.

In cutting the insurance premium, the Obama administration had argued that the FHA’s finances had vastly improved since it received its first-ever bailout in 2013 to cover potential losses on the huge volume of low-down-payment mortgages it insured from 2007 to 2009.

The administration noted that the agency’s Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund’s capital reserve ratio exceeded requirements for the second year in a row.

“With sufficient reserves on hand to meet future claims, it’s time for FHA to pass along some modest savings to working families,” former HUD Secretary Julian Castro said in announcing the cut.

The suspension of that decision will be a disappointment to home buyers currently out shopping, especially on top of the rise in mortgage interest rates following the November election.

If the planned reductions went into effect, borrowers who put down less than 5% on a $600,000, 30-year mortgage would have saved $1,500 a year. The Obama administration estimated that new FHA borrowers across the nation would have saved an average of $500 a year.

Needless to say, Trump's action against affordable housing isn't going over well among progressives in Congress. Ro Khanna, a freshman from Silicon Valley who Pelosi put on the Budget Committee, wants Trump to stick to his repeated promises to act in the interests of American workers. "The problem in Washington since the financial crisis," he told us, "is that tax dollars have gone to bank bailouts instead of to homeowners. This year voters demanded change. They want policies focused on Main Street, not Wall Street. What is sad is that despite his rhetoric, Trump has no interest in delivering that. His first was to increase the rate for low income home owners instead of raising taxes on the banks." Maryland freshman Jamie Raskin was another to react immediately. "Trump says he wants to put America first but he's already putting Americans last. How do you support American families by increasing mortgage payments?" The second Trump move by the brand new kakistocracy on its very first day in power was to signal that they will back Republican efforts to disenfranchise minority voters...  just in Texas so far.

Within hours of Donald Trump becoming president, lawyers for the U.S. Department of Justice late Friday asked to postpone a scheduled Tuesday hearing in the Texas voter ID case.

In its filing with a Corpus Christi federal court, the agency attributed its request to "the federal government's change in administration, which took place on January 20, 2017.

"Because of the change in administration, the Department of Justice also experienced a transition in leadership," the filing states. "The United States requires additional time to brief the new leadership of the Department on this case and the issues to be addressed at that hearing before making any representations to the Court."

I wonder if this came from the not-yet-confirmed Jeff Sessions, a big supporter of voter suppression efforts. And I wonder if any of his colleagues will have the cajones to use it against him when the final vote comes. I'm not overly optimistic. Congressman Beto O'Rouke isn't in the Senate-- at least not yet; he has to beat Ted Cruz in 2018 first-- but this morning he told us that "Voter I.D. is, at best, a solution in search of a problem; at worst it's an effort to stop people from voting, to remove that fundamental right that makes us all Americans. I'm concerned that this delay will allow the new administration to give up the fight for voter rights begun by the Obama administration."

UPDATE: Ted Lieu Seems Disappointed In Trump's First Move

Ted Lieu, calling in from the Women's March in Los Angeles told us this morning that "In his Inaugural Address yesterday, Trump said 'the forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.' Hours later his new Administration reversed a decision intended to make it easier for low-income and first-time home buyers to afford a mortgage. On day 1 Trump forgot about the men and women who make our country great."

So What If They Die Of Black Lung-- At Least They Saved America From Hillary's Toxic E-mails

Yesterday comedian Steve Weinstein joked on twitter that he “never thought Repubs would take away my Medicare and Medicaid. I just thought they were nice white people who'd put that bitch in jail.” A few weeks after Putin managed to place his puppet into the winner’s circle, we started bearing witness to Trump’s and the GOP’s betrayal of the voters who were tricked into supporting them. NPR took a good look at the same set of facts early on as well— particularly inside the South's diabetes and stroke belt, which voted heavily for Trump, depends on Obamacare for health insurance and is now at risk of shrinking life expectancy resulting from that fatal vote last November. It doesn’t make sense to say “they deserve it.” Too many other people who didn’t vote for Trump will suffer as well.

Greg Sargent focused on the problem yesterday in his Washington Post column, These coal country voters backed Trump. Now they’re worried about losing Obamacare. Sargent referred to the CNN segment up top. If you didn’t watch it, you should. Sargent observed that Trump voters in Appalachia “are now worried that [Trump’s] vow to repeal Obamacare will deprive them of crucial protections that enable them to stay afloat financially. This dovetails with other reporting that suggests a lot of Trump voters may be harmed by repeal of the law.” Old news to DWT readers but the question Sargent raises still hasn’t been resolved: “Did voters such as these know they were voting for this? After all, Trump promised countless times throughout the campaign to repeal the Affordable Care Act, didn’t he? If they are complaining about this now, don’t they have only themselves to blame?” Sargent says No.

[W]hile Trump did repeatedly vow repeal, these voters were absolutely right to conclude that he would not leave them without the sort of federal protections they enjoy under Obamacare. That’s because Trump did, in fact, clearly signal to them that this would not happen.

The CNN segment features people who live in Eastern Kentucky coal country and backed Trump because he promised to bring back coal jobs. Now, however, they worry that a provision in the ACA that makes it easier for longtime coal miners with black lung disease to get disability benefits could get eliminated along with the law. That provision shifted the burden of proving that the disability was directly caused by work in the mines away from the victim. Those benefits include financial and medical benefits. Some benefits now also extend to the widows of miners who had black lung disease — or pneumoconiosis, a lung illness associated with inhalation of coal dust — after their husbands die. Other reporting has also confirmed widespread coal country worries about losing these protections.

…But what did Trump actually “promise”?

These coal country residents are not quite in the same situation as many of the law’s other beneficiaries, who are currently gaining access to health coverage due to increased federal spending and regulation. But they are all benefiting from increased governmental intervention under the law designed to expand health care and support to lower-income or sick people who were unable to secure it for themselves under the old system. Many of them would lose these benefits if the law is repealed.

There is some evidence that many of those people voted for Trump. The Wall Street Journal recently demonstrated that rural, aging, and working class counties that went overwhelmingly for Trump also showed large drops in the uninsured rate. Similarly, Gallup-Healthways data shows that among non-college, lower income whites — a Trump demographic — the uninsured rate has dropped 10 percentage points.

Now, obviously, many Trump voters may still not like the flawed aspects of Obamacare, even if it did expand coverage to a lot of them. And many Trump voters may have backed him because of his promise of jobs — which they’d prefer over government as their means to gaining health care.

But these coal country voters in the CNN segment were very clear: They don’t want to lose the protections Obamacare grants them. Other reporting has found similar worries in Trump country. Still other reporting has turned up examples of Trump voters who don’t actually believe he’ll take away their Obamacare.

So what did Trump really tell these voters?

Yes, Trump said endlessly that he’d do away with the ACA instantly. Yes, his own replacement plan would leave millions without coverage. But here’s the rub: Trump also went to great lengths to portray himself as ideologically different from most other Republicans on fundamental questions about the proper role of governmental intervention to help poor and sick people without sufficient access to medical care.

In January of 2015, Trump said he wanted “to try and help” lower income people get health care, even if it cost him the GOP nomination — signaling a core difference with the GOP on this moral imperative. During the primaries, Trump pointedly told fellow Republicans he would not allow people to “die on the street,” telegraphing that core difference once again. Trump also repeatedly vowed not to touch Medicare, explicitly holding this up as proof he is not ideologically aligned with Paul Ryan on the safety net. As David Leonhardt details, Trump repeatedly demonstrated an ideological willingness to embrace a role for government in expanding health care to, well, all Americans.

And so, if many Trump voters didn’t really believe they’d lose protections under President Trump, this was not a crazy calculation to make. Now, Trump and congressional Republicans may indeed end up rolling back protections for millions who voted for him. But if that happens, and these voters do end up feeling betrayed by Trump, they will be right to feel that way — they will, in fact, have been scammed by Trump.

Perhaps, like other scam victims, they should have looked more closely at the fine print. But the broad conclusion they reached was a perfectly reasonable one.

Trump stole so much of his populist rhetoric from Bernie Sanders— who absolutely crushed Hillary in the coal mining counties of West Virginia, Kentucky and Wyoming— that maybe voters who weren’t paying close enough attention mixed the two up in November and just wanted to make sure they didn’t vote for Hillary.

Districts Like OH-06 Put Trump Over The Top-- And They Are Slated By The GOP To Feel The Most Pain

Bill Johnson's Ohio River Valley district (OH-06) is one of the poorest districts in the country ($41,719 median income) and one of the whitest (95%). It borders on West Virginia and Kentucky and often seems more politically in synch with those states than with the rest of Ohio. Many of the district's voters in fact, live in the Wheeling, Parkersburg and Huntington, West Virginia suburbs. It used it be Blue Dog territory but flipped to the Republicans in 2010 and has grown redder and redder since then. Ohio was a good state for Trump this year but the 6th district went for him with the most gusto-- and the most votes. He beat Clinton 69.3-26.7%, much more like a West Virginia district than like an Ohio one. Obama lost to Romney in 2012, but not nearly as miserably. That race finished at 55.2% for Romney and 42.7% for Obama. That's a gargantuan 16 point collapse for Clinton, which looks like her worst performance compared to Obama anywhere in the country.

Johnson beat Democrat and small town mayor Michael Lorentz of Belpre 209,177 (70.6%) to 86,938 (29.4%), Johnson raised $1,659,553 to Lorentz's $11,889. You may recall that in 2014 Steve Israel handpicked reactionary Blue Dog Jennifer Garrison to run against Johnson and helped her raise $909,151. That year the DCCC spent around $40,000 of their own on the race before recognizing the futility and pulling out of the district. Johnson beat her 111,026 (58%) to 73,561 (39%).

When the Republicans snuck a provision to mess with retired coal miners' health care benefits into a must-pace funding bill, coal state Republicans split on supporting/opposing it. Both senators from the biggest coal state in the country, Wyoming-- Mike Enzi (R) and John Barrasso (R)-- stabbed their coal miners in the back. As did Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. On the other hand, Republicans Rand Paul (KY), Shelley Moore Capito (WV) and Rob Portman (OH) knew better than to screw over their own state's retired miners and all joined with Democrats like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Mazie Hirono and even Joe Manchin in voting against the bill.

Virtually all the coal mined in Ohio, the 10th biggest coal-producing state in the country-- is mined in OH-06. These 5 counties produce over 80% of the coal mined in Ohio. Each county is in the 6th district and each county voted overwhelmingly for Trump (who earned 52.1% statewide)-- as noted below:

• Belmont- 67.9%
• Harrison- 72.2%
• Perry- 68.1%
• Jefferson- 65.9%
• Tuscarawas- 65.1%

These retired coal miners are going to be hit with a loss of benefits, a collapse of Obamacare and a weakening on Medicare next year. They voted overwhelmingly for Trump and fully believe he's going to protect them. Yesterday, in the Washington Post, Greg Sargent asked, provocatively when we're likely to see Trump's "pro-worker" agenda. I noticed that one of Sargent's twitter pals, Paul Krugman, answered rather succinctly: never.

Sargent wondered aloud what would happen if Trump tries doing something for his working class voters. "Will Congress," he asked, "actually spend money to help them? There are two key ways Congress might do this: By spending more on efforts to help workers navigate the changes in the economy; and by spending more to create jobs, say, via a big infrastructure package (the latter of which Trump himself has promised). Those aren’t the only ways to help them, of course. But many progressive economists think those are two very important tools that could help workers whose plight Trump himself has highlighted-- workers displaced by trade and automation." Theoretically, they can do it through the Trade Adjustment Assistance, which helps workers who are certified to have been dislocated by trade with unemployment insurance and retraining. The problem, though is that the Republican-controlled Congress, according to Sargent-0- and presumably Krugman, "will not support large boosts in this kind of spending." Sargent also says that the big infrastructure boost everyone is expecting isn't likely to pass through Congress anytime soon either.

Reince Priebus is now saying that any big infrastructure stimulus spending plans Trump has talked about are likely to be on hold. Republicans are going to prioritize Obamacare repeal and tax reform (which of course will include tax cuts across the board, especially for top earners and businesses)... Asked whether Trump will pursue any stimulus plan, Priebus dodged: “I would love to not get into the details with you. We’re not going to do that today.”

So will we be seeing the big Stephen Bannon-approved agenda of “economic nationalism” anytime soon? Bannon, the keeper of the Trump narrative, appears to approve of massive spending to help workers. “We’re going to build an entirely new political movement,” Bannon gushed in a recent interview. “It’s everything related to jobs. The conservatives are going to go crazy. I’m the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. With negative interest rates throughout the world, it’s the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Shipyards, ironworks, get them all jacked up.”

But Trump’s own infrastructure plan already looks more like a tax break and privatization scheme than a plan for big public spending, and now we’re learning that Obamacare repeal and tax reform (i.e., tax cuts) are going to come first in any case. There’s no telling how long those things will take. And it’s hard to imagine the party of Paul Ryan going along with a Bannon-style spending plan, anyway. Nor should we expect Trump’s call for tariffs to come up in the near future, either.

Trump and Republicans, of course, will argue that their immediate agenda-- rolling back regulations (Obamacare, Wall Street oversight, environmental regs), slashing taxes, and even pushing measures that weaken unions and worker bargaining power-- will unleash a boom that will send workers’ wages soaring. Added into that will be periodic efforts to intervene in Carrier-style situations. Those will not address the broader problem, but they will produce blasts of good press featuring handfuls of workers thankful for Trump’s efforts to save their jobs. All of this will likely be Trump’s pro-worker agenda, at least in the short term.

Coal mining communities in Pennsylvania and Ohio helped him win those two must-win swing states. And about a month ago, the NYTimes ran a piece singling out coal miners as a group most likely to quickly be betrayed by Trump. It isn't even Trump's fault. Demand for coal has been dropping, automation in mining has been increasing and it doesn't matter who the president is or what he promises. Natural gas is way cheaper and, ultimately, its fracking that killing those coal jobs.There are only 50,000 coal mining jobs left in the U.S., down from 250,000 in 1980.

The Trump administration could help the coal industry somewhat by unwinding President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which was designed to replace coal-fired utility plants with those using natural gas and renewable energy sources. But the effects of the plan so far may be hard to reverse.

The tighter air pollution regulations, which are still under challenge in court, forced utilities to choose between revamping aging coal-fired power plants to make them cleaner, or switching to natural gas or green sources like wind and solar. Utilities across the country typically decided to switch.

Last year, as a result, 94 coal-fired power plants were closed across the country, and this year 40 more are expected to close by the end of December. It is most unlikely that Mr. Trump could do anything to bring those plants back online.

“All the older power plants that burned Eastern coal have been basically torn down, dismantled, put in mothballs, some of them permanently,” said Robert J. Zik, the now-retired former vice president for operations at TECO Coal, a subsidiary of TECO Energy that was sold to another operator last year.

Other marginal measures the Trump administration might be able to take on coal’s behalf, industry executives say, include rolling back the rules that protect streams from surface mining and easing those for leases and royalties on coal mined on federal lands.

Industry executives say that to extend the life of at least some of the 400 or so coal-burning power plants still in use in the United States, the Trump administration and lawmakers in Congress could work with them on “clean coal” initiatives.

Acknowledging that climate change is an issue even if Mr. Trump does not, Mr. Reavey of Cloud Peak Energy wants federal incentives for utilities to refit existing power plants to burn coal more efficiently and to attach systems to their facilities that will capture carbon emissions and sink them permanently in the ground. Such systems, known as carbon capture and sequestration, are currently so costly that utilities simply prefer to replace coal-fired plants with gas-fired ones.

And if Trump cared anything about workers at all, would he have nominated anti-worker fanatics like Wilbur Ross and Andrew Puzder, as, respectively, Secretaries of Commerce and Labor? And Elaine Chao, who earned a terrible reputation as Secretary of Labor under Bush, is back, this time as Secretary of Transportation. Tom Price has a long and sordid record as a dedicated enemy as working families and Trump named him as Secretary of Health and Human Services.

You Know What A Political Leader Plans To Do By Listening To What He Says He Plans to Do, No?

Trump was hopped up on something Sunday morning, railing against the NY Times and bragging about how his Republican enemies are now lining up to kiss his ass. And then-- revisiting his anti-Times screed-- he started in with his nuclear proliferation shtik again. He's against nuclear proliferation-- whew-- except he thinks Japan and South Korea will have to protect themselves from nuclear-armed North Korea by developing their own nuclear weapons. And Saudi Arabia will need them to protect itself from Iran.

As Sharona Coutts reminded us in Rewire over the weekend, millions of citizens voted for Trump with enthusiasm and enormous hopes-- not just against Hillary and the elites she represents, but for the Donald Trump he and his team created out of thin air. His voters, she insisted, very much approved of Trump's "sexism, aggression, bullying, and bragging."

Instead of assuming that Trump cynically described plans to deport millions of immigrants, to target refugees and immigrants based on their religion, to punish women for having an abortion should it become illegal, and to rip up decades-old international agreements that form the basis of what has been a historic period of global stability in order to excite supporters, we should take him at his word.

Time and again, people have written off the stated plans of leaders who turned out to be fascists and dictators, choosing to believe they could not or would not do the outlandish things they said they had planned.

That was even true of Adolf Hitler, who had taken the time to lay out a program of ethnic cleansing in his book Mein Kampf, which became a bestseller when it was published.

History teaches us the same lesson that life experience does: The best way to know what a person plans to do is to listen to what they say they are going to do.

We can hope that Trump will not attempt to implement the many irrational and dangerous things he talked about during the campaign and then laid out in his plan for his first 100 days, but we must come to terms with the real possibility that he will.

Likewise, it is dangerous to dismiss Trump’s supporters as having been hoodwinked into voting for him, or having done so reluctantly or as a mere protest vote.

Not all of the nearly 50 million people who voted for Trump did so because they wanted to “Trump the bitch,” “lock her up,” “ban” Muslims, and “build a wall.” But many did. Reporters must accept that reality, as must activists and advocates in progressive circles.

Instead of focusing on the fact that many of Trump’s supporters are not “college-educated”-- which surely sounds like code among some journalists for “ignorant” or “stupid,” a point I suspect is well understood by the recipients of that label-- it’s incumbent upon everyone to come to terms with the reality that millions of Americans have simply not accepted the ideas held dear by progressives.

They are rejecting globalism, both cultural and economic. They are rejecting reproductive rights. They are rejecting LGBTQ rights-- especially trans rights. They are rejecting multiculturalism and racial and ethnic diversity as inherently good things, let alone as an unavoidable reality.

They agree with Trump’s plans to tear up NAFTA and other trade deals, to diminish the United States’ role in NATO, to overturn Roe v. Wade as well as Obergefell v. Hodges. They want Trump to scrap the executive measures taken by President Obama to allow young undocumented immigrants to work and study in the United States without fear of deportation. They want Trump to rid the country of the 11 million undocumented immigrants living here, regardless of how many families would be broken up in the process.

It is imperative to take these developments literally, because apart from stripping rights from millions of vulnerable people, such ideas can lay the groundwork for even more perilous developments.

For example, if he does do away with the Affordable Care Act, many of Trump’s supporters will find themselves with enormous health bills, and facing medical bankruptcies. If he deports many of the workers who support the agriculture, child-care, and food service industries, local economies will suffer. As Bloomberg Businessweek reported in 2011, when Alabama enforced a law that “require[d] police to question people they thought might be in the U.S. illegally and punish[ed] the businesses that hired them,” immigrants-- both legal and undocumented-- fled, leaving crops rotting in fields, hotel beds unmade, and restaurant dishes unwashed. The businesses who had employed them could not find workers to replace the immigrants and their families. Alabama residents debated whether the fault lay with those who were unwilling to take on the tough jobs, or employers who weren’t willing to pay fair wages for that work. Either way, there will be negative consequences for similar laws at a federal level. And if Trump makes good on his promise to start a trade war, many of those same supporters will discover the prices they pay for goods at Walmart and Costco have soared.

When those things start to happen, Trump and his supporters will be looking for someone to blame because blame has been the core of Trump’s campaign. Immigrants are blamed for crime and for the loss of U.S. jobs; “elites” are responsible for government inaction; and “international bankers” are to blame for financial problems.

These are classic examples of one of the hallmarks of fascist rhetoric: identifying the “external enemy within.”

And that kind of language puts millions of people living in the United States in the realm of real danger. It’s the kind of logic that contributes to “priming,” a phenomenon studied by genocide scholars wherein a population begins to accept and normalize acts against other people that would have previously been abhorrent.

The ways in which Trump’s rhetoric conforms to fascist priming, and how it fits within the framework of the type of “dangerous speech” that often precedes mass violence, are fodder for a separate article.

For now, suffice to say that it is high time for reporters to stop assuming that Trump and his supporters either don’t know what they mean, or don’t mean what they say.

Trump won by allowing them to project onto him their desires for their own prosperity and strength, and promising that voting for him would make them more like him.

It is very unlikely that he will be able to deliver on those promises, but it is likely that he will try. And just as he prepped his supporters to believe that they could not “lose” the election, but that any loss would be proof that the system was rigged, we can expect Trump to tell Americans that any of his administration’s failures are due to similar interference from enemies within and without.

We must be ready for all of this.

Or worse. As Nick Kristof pointed out in his Times column yesterday, one takeaway from this astonishing presidential election is that fake news spread by pernicious and increasingly influential alt-right websites is gaining ground, "empowering nuts and undermining our democracy."