rump Budgetting: The Bizzaro Version of Compassion

Alt-compassion


On Thursday morning, the White House’s budget director Mick Mulvaney rationalized Trump's budget cuts with the  The Bizzaro Version of Compassion. He said: “When you start looking at places that we reduce spending, one of the questions we asked was, can we really continue to ask a coal miner in West Virginia or a single mom in Detroit to pay for these programs? The answer was no,” Mulvaney told MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “We can ask them to pay for defense, and we will, but we can’t ask them to continue to pay for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.”


Eric Levitz has come thoughts about things we are already asking them to pay for:

(1) The U.S. already spends more more on its military than China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, France, India, and Germany — combined. By contrast, America spends far less than its peers (per capita) on many of the initiatives that the Trump’s budget cuts.
(2) Trump’s proposal cuts many programs that are more intuitively valuable to coal miners in West Virginia — and single mothers in Detroit — than a 10 percent increase in defense spending. The president’s budget cuts funding for early-childhood education, public housing, transit, food assistance, and job training — all programs that disproportionately benefit single mothers in cities with low median incomes. And it also abolishes the Appalachian Regional Commission and Rural Business-Cooperative Service, while shrinking the Labor Department — all moves that disadvantage coal miners.
(3) If the White House feels bad about taking money from coal miners and single mothers, then why is one of its top priorities to pass an enormous, regressive tax cut?

Reporters pressed him for futher clairificatiomn:

“Just to follow-up on that, you were talking about the steel worker in Ohio, coal worker in Pennsylvania, but they may have an elderly mother who depends on the Meals on Wheels program or who may have kids in Head Start,” Acosta said. “Yesterday, or the day before, you described this as a hard-power budget. Is it also a hard-hearted budget?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Mulvaney replied. “I think it’s probably one of the most compassionate things we can do.”
“To cut programs that help the elderly and kids?” Acosta asked, incredulously.

Now here is the crux of his reasoning, this is how he rationalizes it:

“You’re only focusing on half of the equation, right? You’re focusing on the recipients of the money. We’re trying to focus on both the recipients of the money and the folks who give us the money in the first place,” Mulvaney explained. “And I think it’s fairly compassionate to go to them and say, ‘Look, we’re not gonna ask you for your hard-earned money, anymore, single mother of two in Detroit … unless we can guarantee to you that that money is actually being used in a proper function.’”

That is Bizzazro logic. W can ask them to pay 149$ for a towelette seat (for defense--soldiers have to crap) but we can'task them to by an old lady lunch or for a hungry child  so he can learn and grow up to be a  brilliantine like Trump? 

If we look at murder from his perspective we have to take both ides of the equation we need to know if the murderer is getting a good clean kill. We can't just look at the victim's side of it, we should stick up for the murderer, make sure the she get's her monies worth worth.

Tax payers are not analogous to murderers but the principle is the same, both sides of every equation are not equal. The fact is the taxpayer only get's her money's  wroth from defense if it's used, but you have to have a war to use it. Not to worry I'm sure Trump will get us into  war, But there is one other point to be considered. Taxpayers benefit from services, social programs are not just helpful for some abstract category of lazy people called "the poor" they help tax payers too. We benefit from PBS,  from culture more than from defense.It's more important to go on with culture and civilization. We benefit from society we owe we should pay back. Defense id all overcharge anyway, no money's worth there.

This is a crime agaisnt humanity it is the essence of evil. The rich and powerful misusing a concept like compassion to justify their murder of the poor. It's double murder because they not only murder the poor but the English language as well.

March 16, 20175:13 p.m.

Eric Levitz, White House Says Cutting Meals on Wheels Is ‘Compassionate’ New Yorkb (March 16, 2017)

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/03/white-house-says-cutting-meals-on-wheels-is-compassionate.html?mid=fb-share-di

The Decline and Fall of The Repulican Party

I have never read an article by David Frum ,but someone whose views I admire, a guy named Boyton on FB comprehended him as a conservative vice of reason. Not too many of those left,


https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/03/the-republican-waterloo/520833/?utm_source=atlfb

• DAVID FRUM
 
•  MAR 24, 2017
 The Atlantic

Conservatives once warned that Obamacare would produce the Democratic Waterloo. Their inability to accept the principle of universal coverage has, instead, led to their own defeat.

Seven years and three days ago, the House of Representatives grumblingly voted to approve the Senate’s version of the Affordable Care Act. Democrats in the House were displeased by many of the changes introduced by Senate Democrats. But in the interval after Senate passage, the Republicans had gained a 41st seat in the Senate. Any further tinkering with the law could trigger a Republican filibuster. Rather than lose the whole thing, the House swallowed hard and accepted a bill that liberals regarded as a giveaway to insurance companies and other interest groups. The finished law proceeded to President Obama for signature on March 23, 2010.
LATEST FROM POLITICS
Who Will Republican Voters Blame for the Failure of the GOP Health-Care Bill?A few minutes after the House vote, I wrote a short blog post for the website I edited in those days. The site had been founded early in 2009 to argue for a more modern and more moderate form of Republicanism. The timing could not have been worse. At precisely the moment we were urging the GOP to march in one direction, the great mass of conservatives and Republicans had turned on the double in the other, toward an ever more wild and even paranoid extremism. Those were the days of Glenn Beck’s 5 o’clock Fox News conspiracy rants, of Sarah Palin’s “death panels,” of Orly Taitz and her fellow Birthers, of Tea Party rallies at which men openly brandished assault rifles.
The conservative establishment in Washington caught the same fever that then raged among conservatives across the country. At that time, I worked at the American Enterprise Institute, the most high-toned of Washington’s conservative think tanks. In later years, AEI would provide a home for the emerging “reform conservative” tendency. Its president, Arthur Brooks, would speak eloquently of the need for conservatives to show concern for the poor and the hard-pressed working class. But all that lay ahead in 2010. The mood then was that supporters and opponents of the Obama administration were engaged in a furious battle over whether the United States would remain a capitalist economy at all.

more

chalk one up for the Resistence

Washington Post

By David Weigel March 24 at 9:35 PM 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/03/24/left-out-of-ahca-fight-democrats-let-their-grass-roots-lead-and-win/?utm_term=.f05428560523

On Friday afternoon, as congressional Democrats learned that the GOP had essentially given up on repealing the Affordable Care Act, none of them took the credit. They had never really cohered around an anti-AHCA message. (As recently as Wednesday, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi was still using the phrase “make America sick again,” which most Democrats had abandoned.) They’d been sidelined legislatively, as Republicans tried to pass a bill on party lines. They’d never called supporters to the Capitol for a show of force, as Republicans had done, several times, during the 2009-2010 fight to pass the Affordable Care Act.

Instead, Democrats watched as a roiling, well-organized “resistance” bombarded Republicans with calls and filled their town hall meetings with skeptics. The Indivisible coalition, founded after the 2016 election by former congressional aides who knew how to lobby their old bosses, was the newest and flashiest. But it was joined by MoveOn, which reported 40,000 calls to congressional offices from its members; by Planned Parenthood, directly under the AHCA’s gun; by the Democratic National Committee, fresh off a divisive leadership race; and by the AARP, which branded the bill as an “age tax” before Democrats had come up with a counterattack.Congressional Democrats did prime the pump. After their surprise 2016 defeat, they made Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) the outreach director of the Senate caucus. Sanders’s first project was “Our First Stand,” a series of rallies around the country, organized by local Democrats and following a simple format. Elected officials would speak; they would then pass the microphone to constituents who had positive stories to tell about the ACA.

Trump's Reason of State Argumemt

Metacrock's blog

http://metacrock.blogspot.com/2017/03/trumps-reason-of-state-argument.html

CALL YOUR MEMBER OF CONGRESS

202-224-3121

lump it all in and say "No cuts," If you need a list:

The Republicans have put forth 2000 bills so far everyone of them destroying some aspect of social progress. The entire edifices of social progress apprised throughout the 20th century is being devastated and pulled down in one college semester. They will terminate EPA, if that doesn't work they will gut 60% of it;s regulations, Tax dollars for private schools, Terminate Department of education, eliminate rules protective of wildlife, eliminate affordable care act, defend planned parenthood (only a minty part of that funding goes to abortion) destroy the vestigial remains of the labor movement iwth right to work legislation, [1] Trash the nation's clear water supply by allowing toxic dumpling, ruining tap water for 117 million Americans [2] Eliminate funding for meals on wheels, for the arts, destroy PBS and many other barbaric and unconscionable things. Destroying research on climate change at crucial moment when we are approaching tipping point and yes that science is proven, 97% of scientists agree that figure is firm and proven. [3]

LikeShow more reactions

Comment

Share

Best News Sources

The Columbia Journalism Review has published a new major study [1] that drives home the need for a means of creating criteria by which to judge valid sources of news. We as resistance fighters need this most of all since truth is our weapon. Can't wield truth as weapon if you don't know how to recognize it.

A major new study of social-media sharing patterns shows that political polarization is more common among conservatives than liberals — and that the exaggerations and falsehoods emanating from right-wing media outlets such as Breitbart News have infected mainstream discourse.
Though the report, published by the Columbia Journalism Review, does an excellent job of laying out the challenge posed by Breitbart and its ilk, it is less than clear on how to counter it. Successfully standing up for truthful reporting in this environment “could usher in a new golden age for the Fourth Estate,” the authors write. But members of the public who care about such journalism are already flocking to news organizations like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and, locally, The Boston Globe, all of which have experienced a surge in paid subscriptions since the election of President Trump. That’s heartening, but there are no signs that it’s had any effect on the popularity or influence of the right-wing partisan media.[2]

I am going to pull together some articles that take different approaches to the problem of crossing the best sources of  news, since the article says the study didn't solve it.Then I am going to present my own criteria and show which sources are may  favorites and why.

These article I chose because they had a more comprehensive approach to the issue than just "its popular,." First article is from a conservative  source of which I am critical, Business Insider, one reason I use it is because it doesn't tell, me only what I want to hear,

News outlets like CNN and ABC News might have the biggest audiences, but they're not the most trusted across-the-board in America.The most trusted news outlets in America, according to a new study from Pew Research Center, are actually British.BBC and The Economist top the list of outlets that are trusted by every ideological group, while BuzzFeed and The Rush Limbaugh Show are at the bottom.[3]

You don;t say! What a shocker. They offer a cool chart showing both trusted and distrusted and including many from BCC to Hanity (least trusted). Their major method is to follow Pew research study which I',getting to latter, (read the article).

Amy Mitchell writes an article for a Pew Research source reporting on their study. They take more than one approach which I think is very helpful. These approaches include (1)Popularity (2) didst vs just unknown (3) Trust to distrust ratio (4) spot the significance  between the differences, BBC makes it through all four. CNN starts out at the top but drops out in favor of NPR when distrust v unknown is adjusted for. In other words a lot of people distrust NPR because they don't know what it is,or they don't watch PBS., When we look at those who know NPR it is highly trusted. BBC Trust/distrust ratio is 36% trust 7% distrust. NPR is 29/7. 29% know and trjst, 75 know and distrust,.(READ)[4]

Chad Lorenz writes an article laying out a course he would design for a school of Journalism, or for any university about how to pick the media sources one trusts. His Aristotle is very important:

The course would guide students through the critical thinking necessary to determine how reliable a site is: How long has it existed? Has it won major awards or the favor of journalistic bodies like Poynter? What are the potential conflicts with its corporate parent? What are the backgrounds of its writers and editors? How much original reporting is the site doing? How often are its basic facts in agreement with similar coverage elsewhere? Students each would be randomly assigned a web-only publication to study and determine its level of trustworthiness on a 20-point scale based on these criteria.
While these rough categories are meant to provide a baseline understanding for what kinds of publications to trust, there are still reasons a reader should be skeptical about any piece of content, because no publication is immune to journalistic failures such as hidden bias, fabrication, plagiarism, and errors. At least one lecture of the class would be spent reviewing the high-profile scandals generated by journalists Janet Cooke (the Washington Post), Stephen Glass (the New Republic), Jayson Blair (the New York Times), Jack Kelley (USA Today), and Sabrina Rubin Erdely (Rolling Stone). In addition to those cases of fabrication, students would learn about key instances of bias and conflict of interest. A few good places to start: the Bush-era media-manipulation efforts, Judith Miller’s Iraq WMD reporting, and CBS News’ flawed “Rathergate” investigation of President Bush’s National Guard record.
Students would then learn just how much bias has become a hot-button issue in journalism lately, as the number and variety of news outlets has exploded to serve political views have become more polarized. In one assignment, students would be asked to analyze a print article and a news segment and identify potential signs of bias.[5]

 I urge all to read it,

Before going into my choices here are my credentials for deciding this, most of my face book Friends know of my academic career,PH,D candidate in history of ideas (UT Dallas) and MTS in theology,(SMU). What most may not know is that I was not only a Central America Activist in the 80s but also an activist for a media watch dog group called FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting). I was the North Texas organizer. I dealt with the press a lot in my activist days and I think I have a good sense of what makes for good source of news.

Popularity has nothing to do with it,I care about how wiling they are to dig for the story, how accessible they are able to make the major figures and principle players in the story. Who do they thinkers and intellectuals of the day listen to? I see part of this as reflected in awards. Awards are not a perfect measure they have their problems. But when a paper wins Pulitzer;s all the time it;s a good sign it;s a good paper,


Here are my major sources--the one;s I trust and use most in research;


I. NY Times

II. Washington Post

III. BBC

IV. NPR

Those are sacrosanct. The next set i trust in general way but am usually highly critical of them. The old three tv net works's news plus some magazines like The New Yorker and the Atlantic, After that a big grain of salt the Guardian and Mother Jones, I don't ever mess with Huff post, I wouldn't use it for anything it;snot absorbent enough. Wall Street journal used to be up there with NYT but in recent years they have declined a lot.

The New York Times excels in all the criteria I gave above,it is the choice of the intellectuals for new papers,of course it doesn't rival academic publications, we are talking about News. It's been at the top of the heap for over 100 years, They have won 119 Pulitzer prizes since 1918.[6] The Washington post is right up there with it. They are both at the center of power,m New York and Washington DC, The Post broke Watergate and nursed the story all the way to Nixon;s near impeachment and designation, they have not abandoned that level of journalistic excellence. They have won thier share of awards as well. [7]

What you need to do with this knowledge is to research the issues of the day and spread it about in arguments agaisnt Trump and the Republican agenda every day on face book an in blogs and other places, Then  be sure and put in that capital switchboard number and call your congressman every day! you can tell your congressman about the articles you read in NYT. That's good to do.


CALL YOUR MEMBER OF CONGRESS 202-224-3121



Sources

[1]

http://news.wgbh.org/2017/03/15/politics-government/major-new-study-shows-political-polarization-mainly-right-wing

[2] Ibid.

[3]

http://www.businessinsider.com/here-are-the-most-and-least-trusted-news-outlets-in-america-2014-10


[4]
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/30/which-news-organization-is-the-most-trusted-the-answer-is-complicated/


[5]
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/classes/2015/08/news_media_literacy_class_which_newspapers_magazines_and_websites_are_reliable.html

[6]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pulitzer_Prizes_awarded_to_The_New_York_Times

[7]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prizes_won_by_The_Washington_Post

Urgent action alert!

The obscene stupidity replacing Obama Care goes to the house this week. it is time to call congress and demand that they vote no! CALL YOUR MEMBER OF CONGRESS 202-224-3121

Trump, Fascism, and The Rise of hate

Steve Bannon Once Suggested Only property owners should vote

 Philip Bump The Washington Post November 28, 2016 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/28/steve-bannon-once-suggested-only-property-owners-should-vote-what-would-that-look-like/?utm_term=.ae6722d6bde2

When America was born, the right to vote largely extended only to white men who owned property. In the early 1800s, that expanded outward slightly to include white men regardless of property ownership. In the wake of the Civil War, it expanded outward again to include nonwhite men (though this didn’t mean they could immediately vote). About a century ago, another expansion: Women were given the right to vote and, setting aside efforts to artificially restrict voting, every American citizen had suffrage. Done and done.
In its Monday editions, the New York Times reported on a conversation in which Stephen K. Bannon, named as a senior strategist by President-elect Donald Trump, had allegedly floated the idea of reverting the right to vote back to the 18th century. The Times quotes Julia Jones, a former colleague of Bannon’s when he worked in the film industry.
Ms. Jones, the film colleague, said that in their years working together, Mr. Bannon occasionally talked about the genetic superiority of some people and once mused about the desirability of limiting the vote to property owners.
“I said, ‘That would exclude a lot of African-Americans,’ ” Ms. Jones recalled. “He said, ‘Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.’ I said, ‘But what about Wendy?’ ” referring to Mr. Bannon’s executive assistant. “He said, ‘She’s different. She’s family.’ ”
This is not something that should be considered a current policy proposal from Bannon (or, for that matter, from Trump). But it raises an interesting question: What would happen if the franchise were extended only to those who own property?

Combative Populist Steve Bannon Found His Man in Trump

By SCOTT SHANE New York Times NOV. 27, 2016

Continue reading the main storyShare This Page

• Share
• Tweet
• Email
• More

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/27/us/politics/steve-bannon-white-house.html?_r=1&mtrref=thinkprogress.org&gwh=3EC56B578B7C2B139275EEFDA78A81C9&gwt=pay

In a radio interview last year with Mr. Trump, Mr. Bannon complained, inaccurately, that “two-thirds or three-quarters of the C.E.O.s in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or from Asia.” He has sometimes portrayed a grave threat to civilization not just from violent jihadists but from “Islam.” He once suggested to a colleague that perhaps only property owners should be allowed to vote. In an email to a Breitbart colleague in 2014, he dismissed Republican congressional leaders with an epithet and added, “Let the grass roots turn on the hate.”

(read article in link above)

This call to unleash the hate of the grass roots has been headed by the rise of ate groups

Southern Poverty Law Center Says Hate Groups om the Rise

 Abigail Hauslohner Washington post February 15 (2017) 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/southern-poverty-law-center-says-american-hate-groups-are-on-the-rise/2017/02/15/7e9cab02-f2d9-11e6-a9b0-ecee7ce475fc_story.html?utm_term=.e39450060733

According to the SPLC*, the number of American hate groups has been climbing steadily for most of the past 30 years, but the new arrivals to the SPLC’s list in 2016 were predominantly characterized as white nationalist and anti-Muslim groups.
“By far, the most dramatic change was the enormous leap in anti-Muslim hate groups,” wrote the report’s author, Mark Potok, an SPLC senior fellow. The report says hate groups in the United States nearly tripled, from 34 in 2015 to 101 last year.
Nearly 50 of those new additions are local chapters of ACT for America, an anti-Muslim activist group that claims Michael Flynn, who this week resigned as Trump’s national security adviser, as a board member.
Potok argues that Trump’s rhetoric throughout the campaign — including calls for a ban on immigration from some Muslim-majority countries, proposals for ideological vetting of those seeking entry to the United States, and accusations that American Muslims harbor terrorists — stoked popular fears in the aftermath of terrorist attacks in Europe, California and Florida. Potok wrote that Trump’s rhetoric has helped fuel a spike in anti-Muslim sentiment, a view that is shared by several other civil rights advocacy groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

*Southern Poverty Law Center


Traditional fascism such as we found in Franco's Spain and the Argentine manifest themselves imn  groups such as "Tradition,Family,Property," Or even Hitler;s talk of blood and soil, show that populist grass roots man of the people image that Trump tried so hard to cultivate, we see the echos of the sacred nature of property in Bannon;'s ideal of only property owns have any real stock in the system, The man of the people is a lie and the real authoritarian strong man rule is based in the elate who can sucker the ignorant and the lynch mob into thinking it was their idea to lynch the enemities of the elite.

Trump wreck's nations clean water

TRUMP PLAN TO GUT STREAM PROTECTIONS IMPERILS TAP WATER OF 117 MILLION AMERICANS

http://www.ewg.org/research/trump-plan-gut-stream-protections-imperils-tap-water-117-million-americans

The Trump administration is threatening to remove safeguards that protect the drinking water of more than one-third of Americans.
Some 117 million people get at least some of their drinking water from small streams.^[1] For 72 million people in 1,033 counties, more than half of their drinking water comes from small streams. Ensuring that their water is safe means keeping the water in these streams clean. (See map below. Click here for a more detailed interactive map.)

Right now, the Clean Water Act protects these streams from pollution. But this week President Trump issued an executive order directing Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt to rescind or revise the Clean Water Rule, or replace it with a new rule.
This critically important rule determines which streams, rivers and lakes are protected from pollution by the Clean Water Act. The rule also extends protection for millions of acres of wetlands that filter drinking water.
Industry and agribusiness have been pushing for years to roll back the Clean Water Rule and protect only the biggest streams and rivers. Now they’ve found a friend in the Trump administration.
Small streams are where big rivers start, and the best science confirms that dirty streams means even dirtier rivers. Millions of Americans drink water directly connected to 234,000 miles of small, potentially unprotected streams.
In 21 different states, small streams provide drinking water for 1 million or more people. (See chart below.) More than 5 million people in each New York, Texas and Pennsylvania get drinking water from small streams, as do more than 3 million in each California, Georgia, Maryland, Ohio, North Carolina and Arizona.

The New Administration Aims To Scale Back The Clean Water Act

http://www.savingthewest.org/blog/new-administration-aims-scale-back-clean-water-act/?utm_content=bufferf7db9&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

President Donald Trump is moving to scale back which bodies of water are protected under the federal authority of the Clean Water Act. He has signed documents directing the EPA and US Army Corps of Engineers to review the rule.Environmentalists fear that scaling the Clean Water Act back is the first step to eliminating it altogether. It designates major bodies of freshwater within the United States as federal lands and offers protection to these bodies of water from pollution. Some of the debate may be calmed by having the law more clearly define which bodies of water are protected, and which are not:

In Tuesday’s executive order, Trump said that in any future proposed rule, the EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers should consider Justice Antonin Scalia’s opinion in a 2006 Supreme Court ruling, which focused on the scope of the Clean Water Act.In that case, Scalia stated  that the “waters of the United States” are limited to “only relatively permanent, standing or flowing bodies of water.” He added: “The phrase does not include channels through which water flows intermittently or ephemerally, or channels that periodically provide drainage for rainfall.”Read More

Hundreds of current, former EPA employees urge Senate to reject Trump’s nominee for the agency

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/02/06/hundreds-of-current-former-epa-employees-urge-senate-to-reject-trumps-nominee-for-the-agency/?utm_term=.a971672eb567

Nearly 450 former Environmental Protection Agency employees Monday urged Congress to reject President Trump’s nominee to run the agency, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, even as current employees in Chicago sent the same message during a noon rally.
“We retirees, we tend to like to lay low. But this has gotten a bunch of us quite concerned,” said Bruce Buckheit, whose three decades in government included working in the EPA’s enforcement division under the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations.
Republicans have defended Pruitt as a capable leader who will return the agency to its core mission of protecting the environment while rolling back what they see as years of regulatory overreach that has unnecessarily burdened industry. A coalition of nearly two-dozen conservative advocacy groups has backed his nomination, insisting that Pruitt has “demonstrated his commitment to upholding the Constitution and ensuring the EPA works for American families and consumers.”

from daily action

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is sweatin' it out down in old D.C. on Thursday after seemingly getting caught having lied to the Senate Judiciary Committee during his confirmation hearing about whether he'd had "communications with the Russians" during the 2016 presidential campaign. A number of Democrats have called on Sessions to resign his job, and even several Republicans have said the issue creates a conflict of interest that should require Sessions to recuse himself from any involvement in the Department of Justice's apparently ongoing investigation into contacts between Russian officials and Trump advisers. (Update, 7:15 p.m.: Sessions says he'll recuse himself from all current and future Trump campaign-related investigations.)

Senators who've said Sessions should resign:

• Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer
• Vermont "independent" Bernie Sanders
• Massachusetts Democrat Elizabeth Warren
• Missouri Democrat Claire McCaskill
• New York Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand
• Oregon Democrat Jeff Merkley
• California Democrat Kamala Harris
• Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown
• Maryland Democrat Chris Van Hollen
• Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy

Senators who've said Sessions should recuse himself:

• Ohio Republican Rob Portman
• California Democrat Dianne Feinstein, the party's ranking member on the Judiciary Committee
• Virginia Democrat Tim Kaine
• Trump-friendly West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin (who also says Sessions should resign "if" he lied)
• New Jersey Democrat Cory Booker
• Illinois Democrat Tammy Duckworth

Representatives who've said Sessions should resign:

• Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi
• Maryland Democrat Elijah Cummings, the party's ranking member on the Oversight and Government Affairs Committee
• Florida Democrat Charlie Crist
• New Jersey Democrat Donald Payne Jr.
• California Democrat Barbara Lee
• New Jersey Democrat Albio Sires
• New York Democrat Jerrold Nadler

Representatives who've said Sessions should recuse himself:

• Republican House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz
• Arizona Republican Martha McSally
• Florida Republican Brian Mast

We'll continue to update this list as it, presumably, keeps growing.

Ben Mathis-Lilley edits the Slatest. Follow @Slatest on Twitter.

1.4k

87

123

Extreme emergency 9 terifying bills Reps putting though

Resistance Report

http://resistancereport.com/politics/gop-bills-congress/

1. H.R. 861: To terminate the Environmental Protection Agency

This bill — cosponsored by Republican members of Congress from fossil fuel-producing states — is just one sentence long, and says nothing about what would happen to the multiple environmental regulations the EPA has instituted since 1970, or its multibillion-dollar budget, or its thousands of staffers. H.R. 861 is currently awaiting action in the subcommittee on environment.

2. H.R. 610: Tax dollars for private schools

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) introduced this bill in January, which would redistribute funding earmarked for public schools in the form of vouchers for parents to send children to private schools. Over the long term, this would eventually bankrupt public schools, and create a stratified education system in which cash-strapped public schools would be unable to meet the educational needs of low-income students. The bill is awaiting action in the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

3. H.R. 899: To terminate the Department of Education

If this bill, introduced by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky), becomes law, the U.S. Department of Education would terminate by the end of 2018. The bill’s brevity leaves many questions unanswered, like what would happen with Department of Education grants for public schools and universities, its budget, or its staff. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has said she would personally be “fine” if the agency she heads were to be abolished.

4. H.J.R. 69: To repeal a rule protecting wildlife

Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), whose constituents likely include hunters who kill wildlife for sport rather than for food, introduced this joint resolution voicing displeasure with a Department of Interior rule that prohibits “non-subsistence” hunting in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. The resolution passed the House and is awaiting action in the Senate.

5. H.R. 370: To repeal the Affordable Care Act

While President Obama was in office, House Republicans voted at least 60 times to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — also known as Obamacare — despite its futility. However, the Trump administration has made the repeal of Obamacare a top priority, meaning the repeal bill from Rep. Bill Flores (R-Texas) is likely to pass.

6. H.R. 354: To defund Planned Parenthood

Despite the widely publicized debunking of the video alleging the women’s health nonprofit was selling human organs, Republicans are still refusing to stop destroying Planned Parenthood. Rep. Diane Black (R-Tennessee) introduced a bill that would prevent any federal grants from going to Planned Parenthood for a full year unless they swore to not perform abortions. As the chart below from Planned Parenthood shows, only 3 percent of Planned Parenthood resources go toward abortions, while the vast majority of funding is used to help low-income women get STD tests, contraceptive care, and breast cancer screenings:

7. H.R. 785: National Right-to-Work legislation

Conservative ideologue Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) is aiming to cripple unions at the nationwide level with a bill that would systematically deprive labor unions of the funding they need to operate. Unions often provide one of the crucial pillars of support for Democratic candidates and causes, and conservatives aim to destroy them once and for all by going after their funding. It’s important to note that right-to-work is bad for all workers, not just union members — in 2015, the Economic Policy Institute learned that wages in right-to-work states are roughly 3.2 percent lower than in non-right-to-work states.

8. H.R. 83: Mobilizing Against Sanctuary Cities Act

Multiple cities and states around the country have openly stated that they won’t abide by President Trump’s plan to aggressively round up and deport undocumented immigrants. A bill by Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Pennsylvania) would strip all federal funding of any city that doesn’t obey Trump’s immigration policies for up to a year.

9. H.R. 147: To criminalize abortion

Rep. Trent Franks (R-Arizona) wants to aggressively prosecute pregnant women seeking abortions, along with abortion providers, by making abortion a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. The bill is currently awaiting action in the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice.

To fight back against these bills, call 202-224-3121, ask for your member of Congress, and tell them to vote no.

Tom Cahill is a writer for the Resistance Report based in the Pacific Northwest. He specializes in coverage of political, economic, and environmental news. You can contact him via email at tom.v.cahill@gmail.com, or follow him on Facebook.