Trump's hazy OMB pause of grants, loans and financial aid to the neediest groups in the country follow a path that has enriched the billionaire class since 1975.
To wit:
1) The Rand Corporation calculated that $50 trillion were redistributed upward from 1975 to 2020. WHo knows the current figures?
2) Wage theft in the U.S. has resulted in employers stealing $50 billion per year of their employees' wages.
3) We await clarification of the OMB's dictation yesterday.
The billionaires, multi-millionaires, and wannabes say, in the face of all this, "More for me," without irony or apology.
I can't understand why he has any following let alone the strength of it today. Imagine if his cabinet votes were secret? Not one of them would be confirmed, not one. And yet here he goes off on a tangent egged on by the likes of Miller, Musk and Bannon and they all stand by and cheer. Will the MAG faithful come around when it effects them? No they won't, they''ll blame who ever he blames. Regarding the freeze of funds, We are in a world upside-down and man I wish I found it amusing.I copied this from a friend... Back in the 1970s, President Nixon tried to impound funds on a much smaller scale, refusing to let the money be released that would enable several federal laws he didn't like to function. So Congress passed the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 to reinforce the Constitutional scheme. It is the law of the land! The Act saws that if the president wants not to spend money Congress has allocated for some purpose, the president must make a special request to Congress identifying the specific funds the president doesn't want to spend on a specific purpose and explaining why. (And those can't be funds required to be spent by a statute.) Congress then has 45 days to decide whether to agree to rescinding those funds or not.
We need to call our representatives whether they are democrats or republicans and voice our outrage (politely, of course) they need to hear from us. The Democrats are in the minority but they can still make noise - why aren't they screaming from the rooftops about this? I saw an article last night that Senators Warren, Murphy and King are starting to voice opposition. We need everyone of them and us to oppose this. We can start by telling them to vote no on Vought.
It appears the Trump administration has adopted the tech bros' motto of 'move fast and break things'.
They moved so fast, and so incompetently, with "pausing" federal spending they started to break government. After seeing the outcry from state and local officials as well as the public, they realized they overreached and backed off on pausing the funding for a number of programs.
Another initiative Trump has adopted from his "tech bro-in-chief,' Elon Musk, is an offer to federal employees to resign and receive severance pay through the end of September. The email, from the Office of Personnel Management, is entitled "Fork in the Road." It's the same title of the email Elon Musk used to help reduce the workforce of Twitter by two-thirds. As with many of Trump's initiatives, this is likely illegal and will be tested in the courts.
As in the past, every week with Trump is worse than the previous one.
Having served on many nonprofits, help from the government is always appreciated. But obviously, there’s more non profits seeking funds than there are funds available. So the nonprofits have to have good political connections to get funds. The competition between nonprofits can get ugly.
Thank you Ken and Will for always honing in on the impact of these immoral, dangerous actions. News deserts and villified news media, silenced national public health organizations, unregulated safety and production practices, unfunded and ridiculed scientific findings and research, threats to any opposing and truthful opinions, threatened and disenfranchised working people. Doesn't this evoke images of living under a dictatorship that commands roving secret police, creating an atmosphere of fear and submission and inevitably persecution of resistance? This is not "somewhere else in the world". This is what this administration is avidly working on.
Tired and dissolutioned by his callous nature already. Almost four years to go of this truly horrid selfishness. All from a man who doesn't see the beauty of art. Appreciate the music that could be made.
Value life. Cherish the good differences of all cutures. Only certain ones.
That we are equal in God's eyes escapes him. Which we are all of us every last human who has and will be in this blessed planet.
He could be a good man. He could use his I fluence to help others. Instead he enriches himself and others who share his views.
I will stay positive and pray. Rely on the God who has sustained me andit beautiful family. I pray safety and peace in all.
A small community bank hosts one of my program sites. The manager told me they had two SBA loans set to go out to the small business owners yesterday that are now indefinitely on pause. A friend works for a large hospital system in NYS; they ceased scheduling any surgery paid for by Medicaid. This pause is going to affect everyone in ways they don't even know yet. And once the pause is lifted if the Executive Branch decides to block/slow walk funding they don't like, don't kid yourself they won't do it
Last night Rachel Maddow did a deep dive into past years of video interviews with J D Vance where he praised the treasonous teachings of a guy named Curtis Yarvin…who as early as 2012 (in videos Rachel showed) began ranting about his proposed R.A.G.E. Movement…actually spelling out strategies to “Remove All Government Employees”…(hence the tag RAGE)…
and to place in power a “National CEO Dictator” …a premise JD Vance heartily agreed with during recorded videos with Far Right broadcasters, years before Trump made him our present VP.
This was long before Project 2025 was published/“leaked” before our November elections. So though Stephen Miller and others claim to be the current architects of this seige over the past week, other bad guys have been planning this debacle for many years.
The 2-page memo to all federal employees issued yesterday, offering a buy-out/bribe to abandon their critical posts within the next few weeks, will no doubt tempt some to act out of fear/self-preservation. Sustained chaos is already making us the most vulnerable to foreign adversaries than ever before in our history.
I used to think that The Federalist Party was our internal enemy with their goal of wanting to give more power to Rich Old White Men. I wonder how Rove, Ryan, elder Cheney etc. are feeling today about their perverted vision …as General Milley has been stripped of security, threatened with demotion of his retired rank…and Trump’s message that Milley “ought to be DEAD…” with DEAD in caps…
It is time for democrats to behave like gQps... let morals be damn do evil for the good
in the context of: "be careful what you wish for"
The republicans are really banking on Democrats remaining moral...
they don't understand if Democrats became just like them, what could happen
If the Democrats win back the house and senate in the next mid-term.. making Hakeem Jeffries Speaking of the house and third in line
Then they impeach both trmpedo and sofa.vance (under the sedition act, charge them treason (penalty of death.. but we just give them life)
Hakeen declares marshal law and under marshal law restores
Congress, on a roll, impeaches Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, John Roberts.. puts them in jail for treason and replaces them with far left liberal judges
Dems go back to pre-reagan and the upper 10 percent of wealth have to pay 70% tax on a certain amount, also restore the monopoly laws that reagan demolished..
I dont know if you (Ken) or Will have ever seen this 1995 column by Charley Reese, former Orlando Sentinel - but it was a good one! As are all of yours!
nice.. but if I had a nit, I would pick: in theory congress makes the laws, but often (almost always) it is the lobbyist who write the laws.
it could be said that politicians allow this sometimes out of ignorance (who knows the laws about the chicken industry than the chicken industry)... but it is out of stupidity because they know that the industry that governs itself.. leans hard into evil.
Hi Maggie I read the article you linked to and the following link may show who is “responsible” for some of the problems now facing our country. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Byg8VZdKK88 Jon Stewart on Whether Dems' "Trump Is a Fascist" Accusations Are Warranted | The Daily Show
Don do have a link to the federal bailout money that you say was given to Elon Musk a few years ago to prevent Tesla from going under. In my short search of the web I do not find any reference to the event.
A quick web search, W, came up with this. It is not where I first read it. Article in Los Angeles Times, May 30, 2015, by Jerry Hirsch. Headline: “Elon Musk’s growing empire is fueled by $4.1 billion in government subsidies.” In article is following quote by Dan Doley, analyst at Jeffries Equity Research: “He definitely goes where there is government money.”
Still there, W? Back in the late 1950’s when I was still an economics major, I can’t recall my Corporation Finance nor my Corporation Accounting classes teaching us how to go “where there is government money.” Maybe I slept thru those lectures. :)
THEY ARE NOT ONLY TOUCHING MEDICARE/MEDICAID THEY ARE RAPING IT.
(elect a rapist and you will get rape)
Chicken: when our food isn't inspected.. corporations make bigger profits by putting lives in danger... welcome to more of hmpy trmPEDO's death panels for the rich
Stelter reporting: in other words, what we knew, hmpy trmPEDOphile was lying.. sorry, but this isn't just proof he is liar. it is MORE proof he never tells the truth
Thanks for writing about this, yet another example of absolutely thoughtless planning by the new administration. Few of us appreciate the scope and scale of the not for profit organizations in our communities ~ economic development agencies, libraries, health care facilities, performing arts venues and theater groups, houses of worship and museums. Truly, if you try and visualize your community without the nonprofit organizations, you would not want to live there. They are the fabric that holds us together; they are what makes our towns "communities". I watched the sheer panic that this heartless, and thankfully short lived, edict had on our local nonprofits, through the panic of the emails generated to the Adirondack Nonprofit Network, a group facilitated thorough the Adirondack Foundation in Lake Placid. To think that an one could implement cut backs like this, obviously with not a thought given to the consequences, is beyond thoughtless and callous, it is heinous, and in any other time, in any other administration, would have caused it's downfall. But here we are, just another day in Trumpworld. We must have each other's backs, for certainly no one in the White House gives a damn about us.
If only your summation could be read and truly heard by state and national officials who could and should be taking action to stand up to the tyranny they co-created. Thank you for providing a voice for the groups you are advocating for.
Trump's hazy OMB pause of grants, loans and financial aid to the neediest groups in the country follow a path that has enriched the billionaire class since 1975.
To wit:
1) The Rand Corporation calculated that $50 trillion were redistributed upward from 1975 to 2020. WHo knows the current figures?
2) Wage theft in the U.S. has resulted in employers stealing $50 billion per year of their employees' wages.
3) We await clarification of the OMB's dictation yesterday.
The billionaires, multi-millionaires, and wannabes say, in the face of all this, "More for me," without irony or apology.
I can't understand why he has any following let alone the strength of it today. Imagine if his cabinet votes were secret? Not one of them would be confirmed, not one. And yet here he goes off on a tangent egged on by the likes of Miller, Musk and Bannon and they all stand by and cheer. Will the MAG faithful come around when it effects them? No they won't, they''ll blame who ever he blames. Regarding the freeze of funds, We are in a world upside-down and man I wish I found it amusing.I copied this from a friend... Back in the 1970s, President Nixon tried to impound funds on a much smaller scale, refusing to let the money be released that would enable several federal laws he didn't like to function. So Congress passed the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 to reinforce the Constitutional scheme. It is the law of the land! The Act saws that if the president wants not to spend money Congress has allocated for some purpose, the president must make a special request to Congress identifying the specific funds the president doesn't want to spend on a specific purpose and explaining why. (And those can't be funds required to be spent by a statute.) Congress then has 45 days to decide whether to agree to rescinding those funds or not.
We need to call our representatives whether they are democrats or republicans and voice our outrage (politely, of course) they need to hear from us. The Democrats are in the minority but they can still make noise - why aren't they screaming from the rooftops about this? I saw an article last night that Senators Warren, Murphy and King are starting to voice opposition. We need everyone of them and us to oppose this. We can start by telling them to vote no on Vought.
...the "fox" is guarding the chicken coop- liberate chickens from coop: lock fox in [throw away key]...
and the 'fox' news is promoting salmonella
It appears the Trump administration has adopted the tech bros' motto of 'move fast and break things'.
They moved so fast, and so incompetently, with "pausing" federal spending they started to break government. After seeing the outcry from state and local officials as well as the public, they realized they overreached and backed off on pausing the funding for a number of programs.
Another initiative Trump has adopted from his "tech bro-in-chief,' Elon Musk, is an offer to federal employees to resign and receive severance pay through the end of September. The email, from the Office of Personnel Management, is entitled "Fork in the Road." It's the same title of the email Elon Musk used to help reduce the workforce of Twitter by two-thirds. As with many of Trump's initiatives, this is likely illegal and will be tested in the courts.
As in the past, every week with Trump is worse than the previous one.
the tech bros like to paraphrase Friedrich Nietzche ( “Out of life's school of war—what doesn't kill me, makes me stronger.”)
only theirs is:
"what doesn't hurt me and makes me money, is for the fools to suffer"
Having served on many nonprofits, help from the government is always appreciated. But obviously, there’s more non profits seeking funds than there are funds available. So the nonprofits have to have good political connections to get funds. The competition between nonprofits can get ugly.
Thank you Ken and Will for always honing in on the impact of these immoral, dangerous actions. News deserts and villified news media, silenced national public health organizations, unregulated safety and production practices, unfunded and ridiculed scientific findings and research, threats to any opposing and truthful opinions, threatened and disenfranchised working people. Doesn't this evoke images of living under a dictatorship that commands roving secret police, creating an atmosphere of fear and submission and inevitably persecution of resistance? This is not "somewhere else in the world". This is what this administration is avidly working on.
I deleted my prior post.
I'm frustrated and sad.
I wrote some things out of anger.
Sorry to have polluted the air with my angst.
So I deleted it.
Tired and dissolutioned by his callous nature already. Almost four years to go of this truly horrid selfishness. All from a man who doesn't see the beauty of art. Appreciate the music that could be made.
Value life. Cherish the good differences of all cutures. Only certain ones.
That we are equal in God's eyes escapes him. Which we are all of us every last human who has and will be in this blessed planet.
He could be a good man. He could use his I fluence to help others. Instead he enriches himself and others who share his views.
I will stay positive and pray. Rely on the God who has sustained me andit beautiful family. I pray safety and peace in all.
Be well and have a good day.
A small community bank hosts one of my program sites. The manager told me they had two SBA loans set to go out to the small business owners yesterday that are now indefinitely on pause. A friend works for a large hospital system in NYS; they ceased scheduling any surgery paid for by Medicaid. This pause is going to affect everyone in ways they don't even know yet. And once the pause is lifted if the Executive Branch decides to block/slow walk funding they don't like, don't kid yourself they won't do it
It’s not that they misunderstand rural communities, it’s that they JUST DONT CARE. This was the grift all along.
Last night Rachel Maddow did a deep dive into past years of video interviews with J D Vance where he praised the treasonous teachings of a guy named Curtis Yarvin…who as early as 2012 (in videos Rachel showed) began ranting about his proposed R.A.G.E. Movement…actually spelling out strategies to “Remove All Government Employees”…(hence the tag RAGE)…
and to place in power a “National CEO Dictator” …a premise JD Vance heartily agreed with during recorded videos with Far Right broadcasters, years before Trump made him our present VP.
This was long before Project 2025 was published/“leaked” before our November elections. So though Stephen Miller and others claim to be the current architects of this seige over the past week, other bad guys have been planning this debacle for many years.
The 2-page memo to all federal employees issued yesterday, offering a buy-out/bribe to abandon their critical posts within the next few weeks, will no doubt tempt some to act out of fear/self-preservation. Sustained chaos is already making us the most vulnerable to foreign adversaries than ever before in our history.
I used to think that The Federalist Party was our internal enemy with their goal of wanting to give more power to Rich Old White Men. I wonder how Rove, Ryan, elder Cheney etc. are feeling today about their perverted vision …as General Milley has been stripped of security, threatened with demotion of his retired rank…and Trump’s message that Milley “ought to be DEAD…” with DEAD in caps…
It is time for democrats to behave like gQps... let morals be damn do evil for the good
in the context of: "be careful what you wish for"
The republicans are really banking on Democrats remaining moral...
they don't understand if Democrats became just like them, what could happen
If the Democrats win back the house and senate in the next mid-term.. making Hakeem Jeffries Speaking of the house and third in line
Then they impeach both trmpedo and sofa.vance (under the sedition act, charge them treason (penalty of death.. but we just give them life)
Hakeen declares marshal law and under marshal law restores
Congress, on a roll, impeaches Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, John Roberts.. puts them in jail for treason and replaces them with far left liberal judges
Dems go back to pre-reagan and the upper 10 percent of wealth have to pay 70% tax on a certain amount, also restore the monopoly laws that reagan demolished..
and we make america great.
I dont know if you (Ken) or Will have ever seen this 1995 column by Charley Reese, former Orlando Sentinel - but it was a good one! As are all of yours!
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/reese-final-column/
nice.. but if I had a nit, I would pick: in theory congress makes the laws, but often (almost always) it is the lobbyist who write the laws.
it could be said that politicians allow this sometimes out of ignorance (who knows the laws about the chicken industry than the chicken industry)... but it is out of stupidity because they know that the industry that governs itself.. leans hard into evil.
Hi Maggie I read the article you linked to and the following link may show who is “responsible” for some of the problems now facing our country. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Byg8VZdKK88 Jon Stewart on Whether Dems' "Trump Is a Fascist" Accusations Are Warranted | The Daily Show
Thanks W tucker - I saw the show this week - havent missed one yet as far as I know. He is the greatest!
Thanks, Ken.
Do you think it's possible to put a freeze on all ....
-costs of the Executive branch of the government, including cabinet positions and staffing;
-the salaries of Congress members and their staffs who ignore the human needs of their
constituents;
-corporate welfare--the kind of federal bailout money that was given to Musk a few years
ago to prevent Tesla from going under?
I think not, sadly...
Sadly, Probably not.
wouldn't that be nice
- - > the government we deserve
Not the one foisted upon us < - - -
Don do have a link to the federal bailout money that you say was given to Elon Musk a few years ago to prevent Tesla from going under. In my short search of the web I do not find any reference to the event.
Sorry , no. Read it somewhere sometime back.
A quick web search, W, came up with this. It is not where I first read it. Article in Los Angeles Times, May 30, 2015, by Jerry Hirsch. Headline: “Elon Musk’s growing empire is fueled by $4.1 billion in government subsidies.” In article is following quote by Dan Doley, analyst at Jeffries Equity Research: “He definitely goes where there is government money.”
Still there, W? Back in the late 1950’s when I was still an economics major, I can’t recall my Corporation Finance nor my Corporation Accounting classes teaching us how to go “where there is government money.” Maybe I slept thru those lectures. :)
Yup, just thinking there Don, Sometimes I find the only thing that moves slower then my ability to think is a sloth.
I don’t know about bailout money but much of his wealth can be traced back to government help to get started.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/20/business/elon-musk-wealth-government-help/index.html
Nonprofits: Yes non-profits lose money, will have to cut staff, won't fill their mission, BUT
IT MEANS THAT EVERY DAY PEOPLE, ESPECIALLY MARGINALIZED PEOPLE, WILL BE HURT IN WAYS THEY MAY NEVER RECOVER.
Think about those various hotlines that have talked people out of suicide.
pos_tfnKK, hmpy trmPEDO, decKKKstec have blood on their hands
Freeze: remember when the gQpeds said they wouldn't not touch medicare/medicaid, The federal spending freese (part of Project 2025 - > https://www.politico.com/news/2025/01/29/trump-federal-spending-freeze-project-2025-007378)
THEY ARE NOT ONLY TOUCHING MEDICARE/MEDICAID THEY ARE RAPING IT.
(elect a rapist and you will get rape)
Chicken: when our food isn't inspected.. corporations make bigger profits by putting lives in danger... welcome to more of hmpy trmPEDO's death panels for the rich
Stelter reporting: in other words, what we knew, hmpy trmPEDOphile was lying.. sorry, but this isn't just proof he is liar. it is MORE proof he never tells the truth
White House response adds to confusion on federal funding freeze
https://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/npr/g-s1-45313/white-house-response-adds-to-confusion-on-federal-funding-freeze
posts should be made announcing that hmpy trmPEDO doesn't know what he is doing and is just throwing mud on the way and hoping it sticks
and that he stays clean
Thanks for writing about this, yet another example of absolutely thoughtless planning by the new administration. Few of us appreciate the scope and scale of the not for profit organizations in our communities ~ economic development agencies, libraries, health care facilities, performing arts venues and theater groups, houses of worship and museums. Truly, if you try and visualize your community without the nonprofit organizations, you would not want to live there. They are the fabric that holds us together; they are what makes our towns "communities". I watched the sheer panic that this heartless, and thankfully short lived, edict had on our local nonprofits, through the panic of the emails generated to the Adirondack Nonprofit Network, a group facilitated thorough the Adirondack Foundation in Lake Placid. To think that an one could implement cut backs like this, obviously with not a thought given to the consequences, is beyond thoughtless and callous, it is heinous, and in any other time, in any other administration, would have caused it's downfall. But here we are, just another day in Trumpworld. We must have each other's backs, for certainly no one in the White House gives a damn about us.
If only your summation could be read and truly heard by state and national officials who could and should be taking action to stand up to the tyranny they co-created. Thank you for providing a voice for the groups you are advocating for.