Archive for the ‘Donald Trump’ Category

Donald Trump’s Voldemort Budget – The New Yorker

The White Houses proposed budget represents a wish list and a numerical expression of the President's political philosophy.CreditPHOTOGRAPH BY ALEX WONG / GETTY

Strictly speaking, the skinny budget that the White Housepublished on Thursday isnt a budget at all. It says nothing about roughly three-quarters of over-all federal spending, which goes to mandatory outlays such as Social Security, Medicaid, and interest on the national debt. It doesnt include any projections for the deficit. And a Presidential budget isnt binding. Ultimately, Congress sets spending levels. As Paul Ryan, the House Speaker, said on Thursday morning, this is just the very start of the budget process.

What a Presidential budget really represents is a wish list and a numerical expression of the Presidents political philosophy. Philosophy isnt a word often associated with Donald Trump, but this partial budget outlinethe White House is promising to release a fuller version lateraccurately reflects the impulses, prejudices, and slogans that animated Trumps campaign. Indeed, his budget director, Mick Mulvaney, has said that he saw his job as taking what Trump said on the stump and translating it into figures.

In carrying out this task, Mulvaney performed a public service of sorts. Thanks to his translation, the entire world can see what America would look like if Trumpism were fully converted into practice. The country would be an uglier, less equal, less prosperous, more paranoid, more myopic, and more mean-spirited place. Its claims that its a role model for other countries would be besmirched, perhaps beyond redemption. And far from being rendered great again, it would be a weaker world power.

Trump claims the opposite, of course. He says that his goal is to rebuild Americas military and secure its borders. But the White House provided few details of how the Pentagon would spend the extrafifty-four billion dollars Trump wants it to receive, or of how it might reallocate resources withinthe rest of itsbudget, which is already bigger than Swedens G.D.P.

To pay for this military buildup, plus the construction of a wall along the border with Mexico, Trump would slash the budgets of many other federal agencies. The blueprint calls for a cut of thirty-one per cent at the Environmental Protection Agency; twenty-nine per cent at the State Department; twenty-one per cent at the Agriculture Department and Labor Department; sixteen per cent at the Commerce Department; fourteen per cent at the Energy Department; and thirteen per cent at the Transportation Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Many of the budget cuts would be felt directly by the poor and needy.At the Department of Housing, for example, Trump would eliminate the three-billion-dollar Community Development Block Grant program, which helps big cities pay for affordable housing, slum clearance, and many other things, including the delivery of hot meals to home-bound seniors.At the Department of Education, cuts would be made to two programs designed to prepare low-income students for college, and to a work-study program that helps those students pay their way through school once theyre there.

Many poor rural counties would also see cuts. WhileTrump would leave in place the subsidies that the Department of Agriculture provides to Big Agra, he would scale back programs aimed at small farmers and workers, such as theRural Business-Cooperative Service, which promotes rural development and the spread of coperatives. The budget would also eliminate a number of federal agencies charged with spurring development in specific deprived areas of the country, many of which voted for Trump. The Appalachian Regional Commission would be killed; so would the Mississippi River regions Delta Regional Authority.

In the long term, the prosperity of the country as a whole depends on it having a skilled labor force; world-beating science, technology, and arts; first-rate public infrastructure; and a clean and healthy environment. This budget, if it ever went into effect, would undercut all of these things.

After all Trumps talk about deindustrialization and carnage in middle America, some observers might have expected him to provide more financial assistance for displaced workers who want to find new jobs. Instead, heis proposing to eliminate aLabor Department program that provides on-the-job re-training for people older than fifty-five. The budget would also shrink the Job Corps, which provides workplace training for disadvantaged youths.

Trump would reduce by a fifth the budget of the National Institutes of Health, which finances the basic scientific research that spurs the health-care, pharmaceutical, and biotech industries.The Department of Energys Office of Science, which supports research into clean-energy alternatives, would also take a big hit. So, it seems, would the grant-making National Science Foundation, although the latter agencys budget figure isnt broken out.

Adding to the vandalism, the budget would eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which supports museums and libraries all across the country. As the Washington Posts Philip Kennicott and Peggy McGlonepointed out, Federal dollars are used to leverage state, local and private funding that supports a complex network of arts organizations, educational entities, museums, libraries and public broadcasting affiliates. Eliminating federal funding, which is the linchpin of the cultural economy, could well have a multiplier effect.

During the campaign, Trump also talked a lot about rebuilding Americas infrastructure. That, too, now looks like empty rhetoric. His budget would cut funding for the Department of Transportation by thirteen per cent. Funding for long-distance Amtrak routes would be eliminated entirely. The air-traffic-control system would be privatized. And the amount of money going to other transit programs, including highway improvements, would be significantly reduced.

The E.P.A., which tries to preserve the natural environment and clean up man-made spills, would see the biggest cuts of all. Trumps budget would kill a program to clean up some of the nations grandest waterways, including theGreat Lakes and Chesapeake Bay. Money for the Superfund program, which cleans up the most toxic sites of all, would be slashed by a third. The Interior Department, which oversees the National Parks and other public lands, would get a twelve-per-cent cut, but the blueprint didnt say how this would be allocated.

Most, if not all, of these domestic policy cuts are unnecessary and shortsighted.Then there are thedeliberate assaults on anything that smacks of internationalism, or of a benign and coperative American presence in the world. Someone in the Trump Administration appears to have gone through the entire budget looking to eliminate funding for small entities that try todo some good.These include the Africa Development Foundation, an independent organization that provides grants to small businesses and community groups in some of the worlds poorest countries, and theInstitute of Peace, a nonpartisan organization, founded in 1984, that supports efforts to resolve violent conflict, promote gender equality, and strengthen the rule of law around the world.The budget would even eliminate a program co-founded by Bob Dole, who backed Trump in the Republican primary: the McGovern-Dole Food for International Education Program, which helps provide school meals and nutritional programs in impoverished nations.

What is the point of killing programs like these? Expenditures on diplomacy and foreign aid make up a very modest part of the over-all budget, and virtually all national-security experts agree that they promote Americas soft power: its ability to advance its interests without resorting to military force.The State Department, USAID, Millennium Challenge Corporation, Peace Corps and other development agencies are critical to preventing conflict and reducing the need to put our men and women in uniform in harms way, more than a hundred retired generals wrote in apublic letterlast month.

Fortunately, there is little chance of this proposal making it far on Capitol Hill, where individual appropriation bills often require sixty votes.You dont have fifty votes in the Senate for most of this, let alone sixty, Steve Bell, a former Republican budget aide who is now an analyst at the Bipartisan Policy Center,told the Wall Street Journal.Theres as much chance that this budget will pass as there is that Im going to have a date with Elle Macpherson.

Thats reassuring, but the White Houses proposal cant be dismissed entirely. It shows what you get when you combine the crass America First jingoism of Trump with the drown-the-government-in-the-bathtub philosophy of the House Republicans: a Voldemort budget.

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Donald Trump's Voldemort Budget - The New Yorker

Heslam: PR nightmare for McDonald’s after Donald Trump tweet – Boston Herald

McDonalds is being fried online in a public relations nightmare over a hackers post on the fast-food giants Twitter feed that attacked President Trump and touted Barack Obama.

The salty tweet that sparked it all stated: @realDonaldTrump You are actually a disgusting excuse of a President and we would love to have @BarackObama back, also you have tiny hands.

McDonalds deleted it and quickly laid blame on hackers, tweeting: Based on our investigation, we have determined that our Twitter account was hacked by an external source.

It was too late. The Twitterverse erupted in an endless flurry of McStupid puns and worse. Some Trump supporters vowed to boycott the worldwide hamburger chain, pointing out that former Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs is McDonalds executive vice president and global chief communications officer.

Never eating at McDonalds again, tweeted one Trump supporter. I support our President 100%.

Others threw their support behind the Golden Arches.

Ill buy 100 McNuggets right now if you put the tweet back up, said one user.

This isnt the first time McDonalds has found itself with egg on its Twitter account, said David Gerzof Richard, founder of Big Fish, a public relations agency, and an Emerson College communications professor.

He cited the ill-fated #McDStories campaign, where the fast-food chain asked customers to share their stories.

That backfired big time.

As you can imagine, not everybody has the greatest experience eating at McDonalds, Richard said. People were sharing stories about finding stuff in their burgers.

But the Trump tweet could burn the chain if the president (a fan of McDonalds fast food) lashes out. There are people that take what he says very seriously, said Sandy Lish, principal at The Castle Group. But there are plenty of people who take their french fry with a grain of salt and will continue to eat their french fries.

The Trump tweet probably wont hurt McDonalds in the long run, said Richard.

Theres all kinds of conjecture. Was it a hack? Was it a disgruntled employee? Was it an employee tweeting from the wrong account? Richard said. Those things have happened before and have not taken down a brand.

In 2011, for example, an employee mistakenly tweeted on Chryslers official Twitter account instead of his personal one, I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to (expletive) drive.

The employee, as you might have guessed, was fired.

Chrysler is, obviously, still selling cars in the Detroit area, Richard said.

That said, whether it hurts business comes down to taste buds.

At the end of the day, how much do you love your Big Mac? asked Lish. Because if you really love it, even if youre mad about it, youre going to go get your Big Mac.

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Heslam: PR nightmare for McDonald's after Donald Trump tweet - Boston Herald

President Trump Wants Sheriffs to Help With Deportations. Here’s What Sheriffs Think – TIME

Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke leaves Trump Tower on November 28, 2016 in New York City.Spencer PlattGetty Images

David Clarke, the mustachioed and cowboy-hatted sheriff of Milwaukee County, made a request to the Department of Homeland Security earlier this month.

In a March 9 letter to acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Thomas Homan, Clarke said he was deeply concerned " about the potential threats that he said undocumented immigrants pose to citizens under his jurisdiction. He asked ICE to empower his officers to round up undocumented immigrants in his community.

Clarke, a cheerleader of President Donald Trumps hardline immigration policies, wanted Milwaukee County to join an ICE program called 287(g). Named after a provision in a 1996 immigration law, the voluntary program lets the feds deputize state and local officers to perform some of the duties of federal immigration agents. Clarke wanted to participate in a version of the program that screens for undocumented immigrants in local jails and allows trained officers to patrol the streets and identify undocumented immigrants in the community for removal.

The controversial sheriff is one of several to make such a request in the early weeks of the Trump Administration. Officials in Anne Arundel County, Md. , have applied to join the program. Bill Waybourn, the sheriff of Tarrant County, Tex. , wants deputies in his jail to be able to identify undocumented immigrants. Sheriff P.J. Tanner of Beaufort County, S.C . applied to revive the task force model of 287(g), which would allow certain officers in his jurisdiction to arrest and detain the worst of the worst among undocumented immigrants, including gang members, drug dealers and other violent criminals.

Those requests are pending, and formalizing the agreements will take time. But Trump's support for 287(g) alarms immigration-reform advocates. I thought that we were close to closing the chapter of the ugly history of the 287(g) program, says Chris Newman, the legal director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network . Since the first 287(g) agreements were signed in 2002, the program has been a source of controversy. The Obama Administration reduced its use, instead focusing on a mandatory program that identified criminal undocumented immigrants in police custody. The number of places participating in 287(g) dwindled during Obama's presidency, from 72 in 2011 to 37 in 16 states as of this month.

That could change under Trump. The President asked DHS to enter into more 287(g) partnerships in his January executive order on immigration. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly called the program a "highly successful force multiplier" in memos outlining the order's guidelines . "Empowering state and local law enforcement to assist in the enforcement of federal immigration law is critical to an effective enforcement strategy," Kelly said. Between 2006 and 2015, more than 402,000 immigrants were identified for removal as a result of the program.

Trump has ordered DHS to hire 15,000 new agents and taken aim at so-called sanctuary cities places where local officials choose either to limit engagements with ICE or not actively enforce civil immigration lawby threatening to block some federal funding. But hiring officers takes time, and getting the money to pay them takes an act of Congress. To fulfill his pledges, the President could use the help of local and state officials. Through 287(g), ICE can tap into local resources to carry out its mission.

The program has a fraught history . Initially, its focus was supposed to be narrow: officers apprehended only dangerous criminals, and its application was limited to jails. But that changed in 2006, when Jim Pendergraph, a sheriff in the Charlotte, N.C., area, allowed his officers to screen for violations of civil immigration law. Pendergraph, whose goal was to get as many undocumented immigrants out of the area as possible, went on to become the chief of ICEs Office of State and Local Coordination , and his model informed the department's approach as the program's use grew, especially in the South.

Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio ran the most notorious program , using it to justify massive sweeps during which Latinos were racially profiled and suffered civil rights abuses. In Arpaio's Maricopa County, "there were people in yellow suits running around catching Hispanics," recalls Muzaffar Chishti of the Migration Policy Institute, which published an in-depth study on the programs in 2011. There was a lot of bad imagery.

Given this history, some law enforcement leaders have come forward to say they won't participate in the program, no matter Trump's wishes. Local law enforcement is pushing back because [287(g)] doesnt serve their interests in terms of public safety, says Ali Noorani, the executive director of the National Immigration Forum. In late February, the newly elected sheriff of Texass Harris County, which includes Houston, announced he would no longer participate in the program. The Los Angeles Chief of Police said in November he planned to maintain separation between his departments activities and those of immigration enforcement officials. After a recent raid in Santa Cruz, Calif., the citys police chief denounced the feds' tactics.

Were not here to enforce federal, civil immigration laws. We dont enforce federal civil debt collection laws. Were a criminal law agency, says Lawrence Byrne of the New York City Police Department. Our mission is to prevent crime, investigate crime, and prevent acts of terrorism.

On March 1, the 63 police chiefs and sheriffs who make up the Law Enforcement Immigration Task Force signed onto a letter that said they dont want their officers acting as immigration enforcement agents. Mike Tupper, the chief of police in Marshalltown, Iowa, was one of the signatories. He says programs like 287(g) make it hard for immigrant communities to trust local officers. If immigrants cannot differentiate between the local police and immigration-enforcement officers, Tupper says, they wont know who to trust if they witness or are the victim of a crime. The nuts and bolts of policing is daily interaction with the community that youre serving, the chief told TIME. Its very difficult to do that when youre engaged in federal immigration enforcement.

This view has been criticized by Trump and fellow immigration hardliners. The Federation for American Immigration Reform says that local authorities that shun enforcement responsibilities are being unfair to legal immigrants, and create an environment where terrorists and other criminal aliens can go unnoticed and uninterrupted.

Like other opponents of the 287(g) program, Harris County, Texas, Sheriff Ed Gonzalez says it is not that he doesn't want to work with ICE, or even that he will not. He told TIME he backed out of the 287(g) program earlier this year not only because of the controversy it generated, but also because of his departments limited resources. The county spent $675,000 staffing the program, money Gonzalez says could be used to buy new patrol cars or bolster his investigative unit. I felt that it would also be appropriate," Gonzalez says, "to separate ourselves from that program and to focus instead on community policing.

The 287(g) program is more popular among sheriffs than police chiefs. Newman, of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, says that may be because police chiefs are more pragmatic, while elected sheriffslike Clarke, a celebrity among the far-right grassrootscan be driven by politics. Of the 37 existing 287(g) agreements, only two are with metropolitan police departmentsone in Las Vegas and one in Carrollton, Tex. In the city of Milwaukee, the seat of Clarkes county, Police Chief Edward Flynn has said he does not intend to have officers act in an immigration-enforcement capacity.

Pro-immigration advocates like Newman says they hope that "racist" policies like the 287(g) program are not on the rise again under Trump. I think in the future," he says, "we will look on this period with embarrassment.

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President Trump Wants Sheriffs to Help With Deportations. Here's What Sheriffs Think - TIME

Who Is Leaking Donald Trump’s Tax Returns? – NBCNews.com

Someone with access to all or parts of President Donald Trump's tax returns wants them made public. But who?

Tuesday's disclosure of two pages from Trump's 2005 federal returns marked the second time in the last seven months that portions of Trump's tax filings have been leaked to reporters.

In October, The New York Times published a story based on a leaked portion of Trump's 1995 state tax returns in multiple states, showing that he declared a massive $916 million loss that year that could have enabled him to avoid paying federal income taxes for nearly two decades. And on Tuesday, investigative reporter David Cay Johnston unveiled some details of Trump's 2005 federal income tax return on MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show."

Trump promised during the 2016 presidential campaign to release his tax returns, but has repeatedly refused to do so, citing an IRS audit he has yet to show proof of.

Related: Trump paid $38 million in federal taxes

Here's what we know about how the leaks happened and what they tell us about who the leaker or leakers might be:

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Who Is Leaking Donald Trump's Tax Returns? - NBCNews.com

Donald Trump Condemns Snoop Dogg on Twitter for Satirical Video – New York Times


New York Times
Donald Trump Condemns Snoop Dogg on Twitter for Satirical Video
New York Times
The music video was for a remix of the song Lavender by the band BadBadNotGood. A satirical music video featuring the rapper Snoop Dogg and a clown called Ronald Klump is the latest piece of pop culture drawing the attention and ire of President ...
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Donald Trump Condemns Snoop Dogg on Twitter for Satirical Video - New York Times