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This is from a just released Pew Poll …
A second major issue likely to be considered by the 115th Congress – possible changes to Medicare – has not resonated widely with the public. Overall, only about half of the public (51%) has heard a lot (12%) or a little (39%) about a proposal to change Medicare to a program that would give future participants a credit toward purchasing private health insurance. About as many either have heard nothing (48%) or don’t know (1%).
Since Donald Trump’s surprise election one month ago, there’s been a bubbling conversation about the mammoth conflicts of interest he will have if he is running or even owning his far flung business enterprises while serving as the head of state. I’ve suggested that the whole notion of ‘conflicts of interest’ doesn’t really capture what we’re dealing with here, which is really a pretty open effort to leverage the presidency to expand his family business. But a couple things came together for me today which make me think we’ve all missed the real issue.
There’s something disturbing about Tulsi Gabbard.
Gabbard has something of a dissident stance within the Democratic party. She resigned from the DNC during the primaries over claims of bias against Bernie Sanders. She very conspicuously met with President-elect Trump a couple weeks ago. She’s very critical of President Obama’s foreign policy which she calls a “neo-con” foreign policy. These all seem like reasonable critiques, though not all ones I’d agree with.
But she just answered a question on CNN that struck me as very troubling and made me see some of her earlier comments in a different light. It was about the number of generals Donald Trump is putting in senior cabinet positions.
Millions of people’s lives and livelihoods are on the line. So it’s not funny. But if there weren’t such dire real world consequences, Paul Ryan’s current flimflam would be straight up hilarious. Repealing Obamacare has immediate real world consequences. It will trigger providers to leave the system. It will deprive between 20 and 30 million people of the health care coverage they now have. (Here are the details of who loses their coverage, down to the state level.)
We are in the final three weeks of our 2016 Prime membership drive. We have 1815 signups to go. Today I wanted to let you know about a new feature we’re introducing today. Many of you know friends or relatives who read TPM and who might like Prime as a gift for the holiday season. That’s now possible. To be clear, these are separate from “credit subscriptions” which users can buy for readers who lack the financial means to join. These are straight-up holiday season gifts you can give to a spouse or parent or child or anyone you wish. If you’d like to buy some friend or loved one a gift, click right here.
If you’d like to apply to get a credit subscription—in essence a free subscription for people of limited financial means (full time students, seniors on fixed incomes, any kind of financial hardship), you can go to the page that has a sign-up form for just this purpose. You can also purchase one or more credit subscriptions for others. You can do each right here.
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Meet Trump’s pick for Labor secretary, CEO of the company that owns Carl’s Jr.:
I like our ads. I like beautiful women eating burgers in bikinis. I think it’s very American. I used to hear, brands take on the personality of the CEO. And I rarely thought that was true, but I think this one, in this case, it kind of did take on my personality.
Yesterday we learned that Donald Trump is having members of his presidential transition sign non-disclosure agreements. During the campaign he said that presidential appointees and nominees should, too, because he doesn’t like the idea of members of a government being critical after they leave the government. The key is that the transition, unlike the campaign, is a government entity. It has a government budget, access to government services, government offices, government emails etc. I am not sure of its technical standing or whether there is much relevant case law. But it is definitely not a private entity like a campaign.
We now have three of the four top national and domestic security agencies of the government under the management of recently retired generals. (One might reasonably change the number to five if considered the DOJ which houses the FBI.) We could have a fourth if President-elect Trump chooses David Petraeus as Secretary of State. They are Mattis at the Pentagon; Kelly at DHS; Flynn as the President’s National Security Advisor. There is nothing inherently wrong with having retired generals serve in high level administration positions. We’ve had a number of accomplished retired general presidents—Washington, Jackson, Grant, Eisenhower. Barely more than a decade ago, Colin Powell served as Secretary of State. Brent Scowcroft served as National Security Advisor. Petraeus served as CIA Director under President Obama. But the issue is one of concentration and recency.
I was just corresponding with someone about how Trump has jumped out several laps ahead of everyone who is trying to keep Trump and his grasping kids from making billions off the Presidency. Here’s what I said.