And this doesn't even count how much more we could do if the non-working rich actually paid their fair share.
Down with Tyranny:
If your goal is actually to balance the budget rather than just drown the last shreds of public service and government in the Commonwealth, there are a few sources of money you should tap before attacking the agencies that serve Kentucky citizens.
The Bevin administration asked constitutional officers and cabinet secretaries Friday to cut spending in most state agencies by 17.4 percent this fiscal year to address an expected $200 million budget shortfall.The cuts would not affect SEEK, the state’s school funding formula; universities; Medicaid; the Department of Corrections; and debt payments, said Bevin communications director Amanda Stamper.In a letter to state officials, State Budget Director John Chilton said Kentucky “must start preparing for the ongoing financial challenges facing the state” and come up with a budget reduction plan by Sept. 25.Chilton said the cuts would save an estimated $350 million, enough to close the $200 million projected shortfall for the fiscal year that began July 1 and replenish the state’s $150 million rainy day fund for emergencies. He said the emergency fund will be spent in coming months and must be replaced to protect the state’s credit rating.
SNIPHere's an easy way to judge anything Bevin says: If Governor I Got Mine Fuck You wants it, do everything you can to do the opposite.Kentucky has endured repeated rounds of budget cuts since the Great Recession of 2008. In all, some state agencies will have seen more than 70 percent of their budgets disappear in the last decade, according to the liberal-leaning Kentucky Center for Economic Policy.House Minority Leader Rocky Adkins, D-Morehead, called Bevin’s request “unprecedented.”The possible cuts to services, programs and jobs “seem premature,” Adkins said.“We’re only in the third month of the new fiscal year and the governor’s move is based on a projection from a group of independent economists,” Adkins said. “It would seem to me to be better and more responsible to wait until more months pass in the fiscal year to get a better reading of what the shortfall might be.”Jason Bailey, executive director of the Berea-based Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, said Friday that the new cuts “are sudden, so early in the fiscal year.”He said Friday’s announcement coupled with Thursday’s announcement by the administration that local governments in Kentucky might have to contribute up to 60 percent more money next year to provide pensions for their employees is “clearly an attempt to create a sudden crisis.”“We need long-term solutions more carefully and thoughtfully reached,” he said.Bevin promised as recently as July that he would call a special legislative session this year to overhaul the state’s tax system and fix its financially ailing pension plans, but he has since backed away from that promise and said lawmakers should consider the issues separately, starting with pensions.Pension consultants hired by Bevin released a list of recommendations last week that would save an estimated $1 billion, though leading lawmakers have said some of the most controversial proposals are “highly unlikely.”Without the changes, Chilton has said the state would have to cut funding for K-12 schools by $510 million and slash spending at most other agencies by at least 16.8 percent to make up the difference. Meanwhile, Bevin has pledged to fight any proposal that increases taxes to pay for pensions.
Another great midnight meme from Noah at Down with Tyranny:
One of the things I noticed during my trip from Rockport to Houston in the aftermath of the storm was that the narrative of people helping people was true and righteous altogether, to quote Abraham Lincoln quoting the Bible. What also struck me was that, if we could convince people again that they could help each other through the institutions of self-government as readily as they could hauling bottled water in a truck, or navigating a bass boat through what once was a suburban neighborhood, we would go a long way toward being the country we say we are again. Self-government is a creative act that ought to renew itself, over and over again, through the collective action of the people who choose to govern themselves. As such, it’s possible for government to be a mechanism for charity in this country, because the government is us—or it should be, anyway—and we have convinced ourselves that we are fundamentally a charitable people.
It’s cheap and easy to point out that conservative Texas politicians have discovered a sweet-tooth for Big Gummint now that they’ve got a natural disaster and a public health catastrophe on their hands for the next decade or so. The job of reclaiming self-government is harder than the job of reclaiming the land and the sprawl of what Houston once was. We have been inundated by decades of mendacious propaganda, all aimed at convincing us that government is some alien entity so that we don’t once again engage the creative force of self-government and aim it at the people who are looting the country’s wealth and destroying its natural beauty. It’s worked, too. The many acts of charity in Texas over the past two weeks have been used far too often as anesthesia by the people who would rather not see the country apply its government as a permanent shelter for those in need. Look, they say, this is what people can do for each other. This is what the churches can do. We don’t need government program X, Y, and Z.This is said, often, by people who did not go to those places, by people who would have fought the Morrill Act, and by too many people who would have walked out of the Congress in 1861. Nobody can do anything but admire the charitable whirlwind that was J.J. Watt of the Houston Texans. But, out in the field, the little churches and small communities are hanging on by their fingernails. (One person told me that it was God’s miracle that there hadn’t been any of the customary summer thunderstorms since Harvey passed through. She didn’t know what she’d do with more water on her land.) The job of rebuilding (and, god knows, the job of preparing for the next hurricane, and the next one, and the one after that; they’re lined up at the moment like a chorus line out into the Atlantic) has to be done by the people acting through their government, and not through the little Baptist church with the twisted tin wall in its front yard.
The issue here is not whether GMO food is safe to eat. The issue is for-profit corporations having control of our food supply.
For more than ten thousand years, human beings have grown food by saving seeds from the harvest to plant next year. As long as we can grow food this way, we can survive.
But now Monsanto and other giant agriculture corporations are destroying subsistence agriculture. No more growing food unless you pay Monsanto for seeds you have to buy again every year.
And because you commie hippies might object to losing control over your own food supply, Monsanto is making sure you can't say anything about it.
Mother Jones:
With little notice, more than two dozen state legislatures have passed “seed-preemption laws” designed to block counties and cities from adopting their own rules on the use of seeds, including bans on GMOs. Opponents say that there’s nothing more fundamental than a seed, and that now, in many parts of the country, decisions about what can be grown have been taken out of local control and put solely in the hands of the state.“This bill should be viewed for what it is — a gag order on public debate,” says Kristina Hubbard, director of advocacy and communications at the Organic Seed Alliance, a national advocacy group, and a resident of Montana, which along with Texas passed a seed-preemption bill this year. “This thinly disguised attack on local democracy can be easily traced to out-of-state, corporate interests that want to quash local autonomy.”Seed-preemption laws are part of a spate of legislative initiatives by industrial agriculture, including ag-gag laws passed in several states that legally prohibit outsiders from photographing farms, and “right-to-farm” laws that make it easier to snuff out complaints about animal welfare. The seed laws, critics say, are a related thrust meant to protect the interests of agro-chemical companies.SNIPOrganic farmers can lose their crop if it becomes contaminated with genetically modified material. Even conventional farmers who rely on exports to Asia, where GMOs are banned by some countries, face risks from contamination. There are currently no plans to push for a GMO ban anywhere in Texas or Montana, and neither state requires companies to disclose the use of GMOs. (In Montana, at least, Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat, added an amendment to the preemption bill when he signed it, preserving the right of local governments to require that farmers notify their neighbors if they’re planting GMO seeds.) Yet critics of the preemption laws fear that they tie the hands of local governments, which will make it harder for communities to respond to problems in the future.Still, the fight isn’t just about GMOs, says Judith McGeary, noting that seeds coated with neonicotinoids — a class of pesticides linked to colony collapse disorder in bees — are also at issue. Under the Texas bill, a local government can’t ban neonic seeds in order to protect pollinator insects, and in the current political climate, it’s hard to imagine that such a ban would happen on the state level.
“We have an extremely large state with an incredible diversity of agricultural practices and ecological conditions, and you’ve now hobbled any ability to address a problem that’s found in one local area,” says McGeary. “Until it’s a big enough issue for a state of 23 million to pay attention to through the state legislature, nothing is going to happen,” she says.
Missouri’s Scrap Tire Grant Program recycles tires and subsidizes non-profits to upgrade their playgrounds with recycled rubber surfacing. Under the previous Democratic governor, religious institutions were barred from the program. This meant that Trinity Lutheran Church’s preschool could not receive a grant, but a Montessori school would be eligible.
SNIP
Trinity Lutheran argues that jungle gyms aren’t religious, and that excluding parochial schools from public funding illegally penalizes them for their religion. Their Christian kids are just as entitled to protection from skinned knees as your heathen brats, right?Opponents argue that States have always had the right to exclude religious institutions from public funding, and 39 states expressly outlaw it in their Constitutions. For instance, Missouri’s Constitution says:Neither the general assembly, nor any county, city, town, township, school district or other municipal corporation, shall ever make an appropriation or pay from any public fund whatever, anything in aid of any religious creed, church or sectarian purpose, or to help to support or sustain any private or public school, academy, seminary, college, university, or other institution of learning controlled by any religious creed, church or sectarian denomination whatever; (Art. IX, § 8)Which seems pretty unambiguous, right?There is also a PLOT TWIST. The former Democratic governor of Missouri Jay Nixon was replaced by Republican Eric Greitens, who is happy to disburse state funds to religious institutions like it says in the Bible. Under normal circumstances, that would mean that the case was moot — Trinity would get its rubber playground, and the case would disappear. But the Republican Attorney General has hired outside counsel to defend the old law, on the theory that maybe one day a future Democratic governor could reenact it. And if you think this reeks to high heaven, YOU ARE RIGHT. Missouri has propped up a fake opponent so that Trinity Lutheran and its adorable, skinned-knee toddlers can give us the magical gift of public funding for religious schools forever. Hosanna!
Reed's discovery of its source ranks in medical history just a little bit behind the eradication of smallpox. But it never really went away—it killed almost 350 people in Angola last year. One of the reasons that outbreak got out of hand is that there happens to be a worldwide shortage of the vaccine against Yellow Fever. Can we have a show of hands from everyone who thinks the current administration is prepared to have epidemic disease land on its doorstep?
Members of the resistance have created alternative twitter accounts while agencies like NASA and the National Park Service are under occupation and being censored. It’s GLORIOUS!You know what happens when you piss off people who love both their jobs and the environment? You get resistance. By Tuesday afternoon, a rogue “AltUSNatParkService” Twitter account had been started by NPS employees, outside the official NPS Twitter channel. The rogue Tweeters made it very clear it was Park Service workers posting on their own time, and therefore not breaking any rules, so there. The channel description:The Unofficial “Resistance” team of U.S. National Park Service. Not taxpayer subsidised! Come for rugged scenery, fossil beds, 89 million acres of landscapeA sampling of their Tweets:
And there are more:In addition, the account has been tweeting climate data, proof of climate change, statements by scientific organizations, and even a “shoutout to the anonymous crews at @BadIandsNPS continuing the great work of the original before Trump’s (tiny) hand came down.” Free of the constraints of a government account, they got a little uppity, urging people to call their representatives to demand the gag orders be lifted and directing readers to the NPS website on climate change and how the Parks Service will work to preserve cultural resources, with the warning “Pls download before it is removed.”
But they're really sticking it to the niggers and the spics and the ragheads, and making liberals cry, so it's all worth it, right?
All the bustle and noise has been on the Senate side for a couple of weeks, what with the brawl over nominations at all. But the real mischief is going on over in the House of Representatives. That's where all those white working people who have had major publications and networks buying them cookies for the past two months are getting sold down the river in one quick hurry. As I think I've said before, I empathize, but I do not sympathize. Not a lick.They're going to be the ones that suffer when regulations get rolled back. It's their water and air that is going to get fouled when the regulations against mountaintop mining get eviscerated, which was debated on the House floor just Wednesday afternoon. It's their streams that will run green and purple. It's their landscapes that will get gouged and ruined.SNIPBut the real whopper came in a press conference in the Rayburn building in which Congressman Steve King and Congressman Joe Wilson—now there's a pair to draw to—announced that they would be filing a bill to enact a national right-to-work law. Of course, this has been a corporate and conservative dream shot ever since the National Labor Relations Act was passed in 1935.Needless to say, the enactment of this kind of law—which experience shows lowers wages precipitously, and which severely drains the ability of unions to lobby for themselves—would not do much for the president*'s image as a hero of the working class.
Yeah, we're all laughing at the pathetic manbaby in the white house, but the most dangerous thing is not that he has the nuclear codes.
It's been fun to point and laugh at the new administration. It's been fun to mock Sean Spicer's obvious discomfort at the podium, and to sit in awe at the obvious infighting within the White House this early in the game. But, while we're doing that, slowly and steadily, an actual government has been forming, and it is the most dangerously retrograde government that our system has produced in at least the past 150 years. It is secretive and it is resistant to any empirical information that it does not want to hear. It is grotesquely anti-science. It seeks to roll back progressive achievements dating back to Teddy Roosevelt and it has the power to do so, even if it is in its own bungling way. And it really hasn't gotten rolling yet.Oh, yeah, they may have picked a replacement for Antonin Scalia. His name is Neil Gorsuch. His mother, Anne Gorsuch, was the woman that the Reagan administration selected to destroy the EPA from within, a job that Scott Pruitt has been handed by the current administration. Anne Gorsuch eventually was held in contempt of Congress. The game plan never changes, no matter how incompetent the quarterback may seem.
That's the big one, folks. This legislation would allow corporate lobbyists the final say on which regulations they should be subject to. In other words, the EPA, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, SEC, FDA and FCC? The regulation they'd make would be rendered toothless. They wouldn't be watchdog agencies to protect Americans, they'd be government industry groups designed to protect corporations.
The Bush administration made this the default before the Obama administration used these regulatory agencies for their intended purpose. Now the GOP is changing their intended purpose by law to be nothing more than government industry advocacy groups, wholly subject to Congress.
Hopefully Senate Dems can block this with a filibuster, but I can think of a couple of Senate Dems would would be more than happy to destroy the EPA or the CFPA or to defang the FCC or FDA. Don't count on them saving us from this.
We'll see where this legislation goes, but expect the shock and awe portion of the Trump regime in earnest in a couple weeks. Things will move quickly after his inauguration, and America will be inundated by a deluge of GOP garbage like this. I'm betting a healthy chunk of it will become law.
I cannot believe this is a good thing. From The Washington Post:
The entire senior level of management officials resigned Wednesday, part of an ongoing mass exodus of senior foreign service officers who don't want to stick around for the Trump era. Tillerson was actually inside the State Department's headquarters in Foggy Bottom on Wednesday, taking meetings and getting the lay of the land. I reported Wednesday morning that the Trump team was narrowing its search for his No. 2, and that it was looking to replace the State Department's long-serving undersecretary for management, Patrick Kennedy. Kennedy, who has been in that job for nine years, was actively involved in the transition and was angling to keep that job under Tillerson, three State Department officials told me. Then suddenly on Wednesday afternoon, Kennedy and three of his top officials resigned unexpectedly, four State Department officials confirmed. Assistant Secretary of State for Administration Joyce Anne Barr, Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Michele Bond and Ambassador Gentry O. Smith, director of the Office of Foreign Missions, followed him out the door. All are career foreign service officers who have served under both Republican and Democratic administrations.I remember when institutional memory was a thing. Now, though, we're going to have a Texas oilman running the State Department, so who needs, you know, diplomats? Which reminds me—here's an interesting map from the Bloomberg News people. You will note that his executive order banning immigration from certain Middle East countries does not include immigrants from all certain Middle East countries in which the Trump organization does business. This, I think, could affect American foreign policy.
On the eve of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti had a message for an incoming administration with notoriously backwards views on climate policy.“Don’t get in our way,” he told a small group of reporters at the United States Conference of Mayors’ winter meeting.There are projects, Garcetti continued, where federal support would certainly be looked upon favorably — helping Los Angeles reduce its dependence on imported water, for instance, or transition its public transportation fleet from natural gas to electricity. But in the absence of a strong federal ally, the best case scenario for cities under Trump would be the autonomy to carry out their climate policies unencumbered.“We’d love a federal partner that can help accelerate this, but at the very least, just don’t get in our way,” Garcetti reiterated.
Bevin knows that if you die in slow agony from fire and suffocation in a public venue you naturally assumed was safe, that's your own fault for expecting repug government to protect you.On May 28, 1977 a devastating fire swept through the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Southgate. It was discovered shortly before 9 p.m. and burned throughout the night, killing 165 people. Official investigations into what caused the fire were inconclusive, but the most commonly cited factor was the aluminum wiring.SNIPThe Kentucky fire brought statewide attention to the lack of building-code enforcement and put renewed emphasis on legislation that sought to provide proper oversight of the construction industry.SNIPBecause Gov. Julian Carroll and the legislature worked together to address this tragedy, we are able to celebrate 39 years of protecting the public from a repeat. That’s why one must wonder at the thought process, or lack thereof, of the Bevin administration in its current effort to effectively gut the department and silence its correlative trades, architects, associations, code officials and professionals.Gov. Matt Bevin’s Executive Order 2016-849, issued Nov. 29, violates or conflicts with over 30 enacted statutes and recklessly replaces the Kentucky Board of Housing with a 17-member advisory committee. The real danger is the abolition of the eight boards and committees that have been lifelines for protecting the public and ensuring an educated and professional workforce in all trades.
We’re seeing the same thing with Obamacare data.The White House is encouraging researchers to copy government data on Obamacare out of concern that President-elect Donald Trump might hit the delete key when he takes office.Spooked by Trump’s rhetoric and pledge to repeal Obamacare, several dozen independent researchers are racing to download key health care data and documents before Jan. 20. They say they began the effort on their own, and then got a boost from Jeanne Lambrew, the White House’s top health reform official, who also sounded alarms the new administration might expunge reams of information from public websites and end access to data, researchers told POLITICO.
But the GOP never does anything that's not at least a twofer. Privatization — of roads and water systems, for example, or public schools via charter expansion — is not just about converting "We the People" assets into private profits for cronies. It's about disrupting the income streams of Democratic-leaning city governments. The goal is to weaken them politically, stripping them of revenue by creating a slow-rolling economic crisis that will force cities to either raise taxes or slash services or both, allowing Republicans in a few years to argue, See, see how badly Democrats have handled your economy? Elect us and we'll show you how it's really done.
You know what would happen if every single corporate executive on earth - starting with the ones currently committing mass casualty event while masquerading as public servants - were loaded onto rockets and fired into the sun?
Lots of good. Businesses would be run by the workers who actually do the work instead of playing games with stock prices and people's lives. Governments would be staff and run by people who have the education, experience and enthusiam about public service to actually be good public servants.
And we wouldn't be under attack by nonsense like this:
Government is not a business. It is pretty much the opposite of a business, in that it is supposed to be operated for the good of all the people, not just the good of the owners.FRANKFORT, Ky. (Dec. 14, 2016) - Gov. Matt Bevin today announced the appointment of Terry R. Gill, Jr. as Secretary of the Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development.The Cabinet is the primary state agency responsible for encouraging new jobs and investment in the state. Gov. Bevin says Gill is the right choice to help lead the Commonwealth to new heights.“Kentucky is poised for unparalleled success in the years ahead,” said Gov. Bevin. “Thanks to a new pro-business majority in the legislature and our focus on eliminating bureaucratic red tape, Kentucky is becoming more business-friendly by the day. Terry brings integrity, business competence and a passion for economic development that will foster a stronger environment for job creation in every region of Kentucky. The Commonwealth is on track to becoming the undisputed engineering and manufacturing hub of excellence in America.”Gill most recently served as President of OneTouchPoint, a $140MM marketing services organization. He was responsible for growth and M&A initiatives resulting in the creation of the largest privately held marketing services and technical printing company in the region.Prior to OneTouchPoint, Gill served as the Vice President of EnterpriseCorp, the arm of Greater Louisville Inc., which is focused on increasing the number of high potential companies headquartered in the Louisville and Southern Indiana market. Before coming to EnterpriseCorp, he served as President and Chief Executive Officer of FetterGroup.Gill holds a BA degree in Marketing with a Minor in Economics from the University of Kentucky. In addition to his charitable and civic involvement, he is a Board Member and serves on the Investment Committee for AccessVentures, a Louisville based impact investment firm.
The Energy Department has rejected a request from Donald Trump's transition team to list staffers at the department who were engaged in climate policy under the Obama administration.“The Department of Energy received significant feedback from our workforce throughout the department, including the National Labs, following the release of the transition team’s questions. Some of the questions asked left many in our workforce unsettled,” Energy Department Spokesman Eben Burnham-Snyder said in a statement first reported by the Washington Post. “Our career workforce, including our contractors and employees at our labs, comprise the backbone of DOE (Department of Energy) and the important work our department does to benefit the American people. We are going to respect the professional and scientific integrity and independence of our employees at our labs and across our department."
The biggest anti-Trump secret weapon no one is talking about is the
federal bureaucracy. The one without whose cooperation no president can
accomplish jack shit.
Yes, there are trumpies everywhere and the scientists are already being lined up for execution,
but there are millions of civil servants who see ill presidente as an
existential threat to the nation that they work every day to improve and
safeguard.
And they have the power.
The Vandals are busy filling 4,000 political appointment positions with radioactive sewage like Betsy DeVos and Rex Tillerson.
The president-elect has no governing experience, and neither does his chief of staff. The same is true of his chief strategist. And his Treasury secretary. And his HUD secretary. And his Education secretary. And his Commerce secretary. And some of his deputy cabinet officials.
And while those appointees may have the titles and the pay, they are vastly outnumbered by the civil servants who actually run the country.In other words, Trump and many of those he’s surrounded himself with have no idea what they’re doing, and about a month from now, they’ll be running the executive branch of a global superpower. These are the same folks, however, who’ve decided to “largely ignore” detailed governing plans.
According to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), as of December 2011, there were approximately 2.79 million civil servants (civilian, i.e. non-uniformed) employed by the US Government.
And the Freedom From Religion Foundation. And proud, loud, courageous Freethinkers like Bennie L. Hart.
Because a state that issues "In god We Trust" license plates at no extra change to any random motherfucking freakazoid has no standing to refuse a far less offensive and obnoxious specialty plate to a follower of reason and freethought.
Right now, the ACLU is the only thing standing between us and the Republic of Gilead. Donate today.An atheist's request to say "IM GOD" on his license plate was denied by the state of Kentucky, which said it might distract other drivers, could spark confrontations and would be in bad taste.Bennie L. Hart says that by driving around with the "IM GOD" message, he simply wants to spread his views about religion — that it's impossible to disprove anyone's claim to being "God."Besides, Hart says, he had the same plate for a dozen years when he lived in Ohio, without causing any problems.Hart sued Kentucky's transportation secretary, Greg Thomas, on Tuesday on free speech grounds, asking a federal judge in Frankfort to strike down some Kentucky laws and rules for personalized plates."Under the First Amendment, government officials do not have the authority to censor messages simply because they dislike them," said William Sharp, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, which helped file the lawsuit. "And in this instance, personalized license plates are a form of individual speech equally deserving of First Amendment protection."State Transportation Cabinet spokesman Ryan Watts said the agency doesn't comment on pending litigation.Hart, who moved to Kenton County in northern Kentucky in February, intends to reapply for the "IM GOD" plate, his suit says.When Hart was first turned down in March for the "IM GOD" plate, an administrative branch manager for Kentucky's Division of Motor Vehicle Licensing cited state law and regulations forbidding vulgar or obscene personalized plates, the suit says. That characterization is "demeaning" to Hart and his views and amounts to censorship, the suit says."I simply want the same opportunity to select a personal message for my license plate, just as any other driver," Hart said in an ACLU release Tuesday. "There is nothing 'obscene or vulgar' about my view that religious beliefs are subject to individual interpretation."
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