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What A Conservative Sees From Inside Trump’s Washington


Republicans wish all that bad news was fake. But no, it’s real: The administration is destroying itself.
by Megan McArdle

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‎May‎ ‎22‎, ‎2017‎ ‎10‎:‎52‎ ‎AM‎ ‎CDT
The conservative voters who elected Donald Trump seem to feel especially betrayed when those who document his failures and violations are fellow conservatives. Like me.
“Trump Derangement Syndrome,” they say: another libertarian sucked in by DC cocktail circuit, enjoying her cozy establishment perch.
Right-leaning writers are hearing a lot of such accusations these days, even those who never go to cocktail parties, and whose opposition to Trump has cost them readers and opportunities. And yet it’s easy to see where these accusations come from: Washington does tend to blunt the sharper ideological edges of conservatives and libertarians who spend much time here. That doesn’t necessarily happen because their values crumble toward the establishment consensus. It happens because their perspective changes. Certain things about Washington are visible only up close.
I’m not saying that Inside the Beltway is smart and the rest of the country is dumb; distance offers perspective. But that perspective comes at the expense of detail, and often those details change the picture considerably. Outsiders know things that insiders don’t, such as what’s happening in the world beyond 495. But the insiders know some things too, and those things also matter.
Consider the endless debates over last week’s series of leaks. Washington conservatives read the news stories too. But for connected conservatives in DC, the media isn’t the only source of information about this administration. I’d venture to say that most of them have by now heard at least one or two amazing stories attesting to the emerging conventional wisdom: that the president either can’t, or refuses to, follow any kind of policy discussion for more than a few minutes; that the president will not be told no, or corrected about anything, forcing his staff to take their concerns to the media if they want to get his attention; that the infighting within the West Wing is unprecedentedly vicious, and that those sort of failures always stem from the top; and that his own hand-picked staffers “have no respect for him, indeed they seem to palpitate with contempt for him.” They hear these things from conservatives, including people who were Trump supporters or at least, Trump-neutral. They know these folks. They know, to their sorrow, that these people are telling the truth.
They can also compare what they’re hearing to what they heard, both on and off the record, during the last Republican administration. Even in Bush’s final days, when the financial crisis was in full swing and his approval ratings hovered around 25 percent, there was nothing like this level of dysfunction inside the White House, this frenzy of backbiting leakage.
So even though they agree with conservative outsiders that the media skews very liberal, and take all its pronouncements about Republicans with a heavy sprinkling of salt, they know that the reports of this administration’s dysfunction aren’t all media hype. They have seen the media report on their own work, and that of their friends; they know what sort of things that bias distorts, and what it doesn’t. Washington conservatives know that reporters are not making up these incredible quotes, or relying only on Democratic holdovers, or getting bits of gossip from the janitor. They know that the Trump administration is in fact leaking like a rusty sieve — from the top on down — and that this is a sign of a president who has, in just four short months, completely lost control over his own hand-picked staff. Which is why the entire city, left to right, is watching the unfolding drama with mouth agape and heads shaking.
From watching the battles of the past, Washington conservatives know that the republic can survive bad domestic policy (at least of the sort that can actually make it through the American political and judicial processes), but that foreign policy missteps are harder to recover from, and easier for a president to make on his own. They know too, of course, that consultation and planning didn’t keep Bush and Obama from making plenty of mistakes, bad ones. It’s just that they know the mistakes are likely to be even more frequent, and more grievous, if the president has not put in the work to familiarize himself with complicated matters, and will not defer to the people who have.
And here’s the final thing that they know: that if you want to do anything big in Washington, there’s a lot of smaller stuff that has to happen first. You don’t write code or build a building without a lot of stuff that probably seems expensive and unnecessary to the customers, and our product requires similarly careful planning and management.
Some of the hoops that a president’s staff must jump through are legally required; some of them are simply necessary to make sure that your bill doesn’t explode on the steps of the Capitol, or die a gruesome public death in the Supreme Court. They include: appointing policy staff; deciding on policy goals, strategy and tactics; keeping the staff from descending into the infighting that inevitably besets any large organization; providing regular oversight of evolving policies to make sure they adhere to the president’s goals; setting up channels and a process to get input from Congress and legal advisers; writing a very detailed plan that provides guidance to staff and legislators, and reassurance to the public; and having your political and communications strategy lined up long before you roll out that plan. Insiders know that this process looks cumbrous and unnecessary to outsiders; they also know that getting majorities in Congress, and legislation that will survive a court challenge, is a Herculean task that cannot be completed without many thousands of people devoting many thousands of hours to these labors.
What conservatives in Washington also know is that the Trump administration hasn’t even completed the first step. And that political capital, vital to pushing a policy forward against the inevitably fierce resistance from special interests, is a rapidly depreciating asset. Which is why they know one more thing: that unless something changes, Trump poses no threat to the establishment, other than the same risk that they’d face from any ordinary Republican president — that the unpopularity of the man in the Oval Office will dribble downticket, and cost them seats in the next election
The hated “establishment” is firmly in charge of such policy process as exists in the Trump era, with Congress basically going ahead to make its own health-care bill because the White House has proven incapable of providing meaningful input. Non-policy accomplishments, such as the appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, are no more than his supporters would have gotten from any of the Republican candidates they derided as “RINOs.” On some issues, such as religious liberty, he has probably been worse for key portions of his base than any other Republican contender would have been.
The one area where Trump might actually override the establishment — immigration — has so far delivered only changes that can be easily reversed by the next president.  (Who is likely to be a Democrat, in 2020, unless Trump’s approval ratings turn around.) Any sort of lasting change will require legislation. And right now, the establishment owns the legislative process.
So what conservatives here know is that the freakout in Washington, which looks from afar like a battle between Trump and “the establishment,” is actually one side screaming in amazement as the other side turn their weapons on each other.
Clear thinking from leading voices in business, economics, politics, foreign affairs, culture, and more.
Of course, that’s not the only reason that Washington conservatives are screaming. They fear that Trump’s incompetence may torpedo the policies where they and the outsiders are in agreement: a better tax code, a fix for Obamacare’s many problems. They are desperately worried that his sinking approval ratings will hand Democrats at least one chamber of Congress, and the White House in 2020, where they will resume all the things both camps of conservatism hated about the Obama administration. And they are sincerely and deeply concerned that through bumbling or bad character, he will do considerable damage to things more important than party or ideology.
Are conservatives in Washington missing something through their myopia? Undoubtedly; that’s how they missed the rise of Trump, after all. But the folks outside of Washington are missing things too. The two sides can surely find some better way to share information than shouting past each other.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

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Sasse: Trump Firing Comey Helps Erode Public Trust


This is possibly one the few thinking members of Congress while a member of the Republican party (not Dupublican), he does not follow the party line without question which makes him more of a statesman. MA.

 

Gabrielle Levy • May 15, 2017, at 12:01 p.m.
Republican Sen. Ben Sasse said President Donald Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director James Comey contributes to an “erosion” of public trust in U.S. government institutions in light of the bureau’s ongoing investigation into potential collusion between Trump’s presidential campaign and Russian officials.
“The timing is very troubling,” he said Monday on ” CBS This Morning.” “Once you get to a place where there’s an active investigation, the FBI director is not supposed to be in a political chain of command, and that’s the appearance of this situation and it’s timing.”
“I think we have a crisis of public trust right now, and we need to restore that,” he also said during the interview. “The FBI’s a really special institution and the American people need to be able to know they can believe in it. The FBI director has a 10-year term for a reason, because it’s supposed to be insulated from politics. I want to restore the rule of law but also the institutional conventions around that so there’s more trust.”
The remarks echoed those Sasse made Sunday on CBS’ ” Face The Nation,” when the outspoken Nebraska freshman said Trump’s dismissal of the FBI director should be considered separately from concerns over Comey’s performance.
“Director Comey … is a fundamentally honorable man, but people can think that he executed his job in all sorts of clunky and imperfect ways,” he said.
“That’s a different question than whether or not he should have been fired the way he was last week, and I’ve been critical of that decision,” he continued. “I think it exacerbates the erosion of trust in our institutions. So I’m disappointed in the timing of the firing, but I want to preserve room that there are lots of reasonable reasons that people across the political spectrum can argue about the way the FBI leadership conducted its business in the 2016 cycle.”

Sasse, who two years into his first term in the Senate has earned a reputation for challenging his own party’s orthodoxy, declined to speculate on why Trump decided to fire Comey.
“I’m not sure how this president makes lots of decisions, so I honestly don’t know,” he said. “I do know that we are in the midst of a civilization-warping crisis of public trust, and we need to talk honestly about our institutions that need to be restored and need to have the ability for people in five and eight and 10 years to trust these institutions.”
Sasse said his concerns extend to what he sees as an environment in which political candidates will be forced to contend with leaks of private records that include some faked information but enough real data so as to be believable.
“We need to have a shared civic understanding of America before we get to partisan and policy differences. There are important fights to be had in policy. But we first need a civic sense of what America is,” he said. “And here’s what comes next in things like Russian interference in America and in other countries in the age of cyber war over the next decade. I’m obviously concerned about 2016, but I’m far more concerned about 2018 and 2020, because here is what comes next.”

With the media, Congress and institutions already deeply unpopular, Sasse said, the nation is vulnerable in such an environment.
“We’ve got a bunch of different institutions that have 9 percent and 12 percent and 15 percent public trust and public approval,” he said. “America can’t work that way, because we need a shared narrative about how we are as a people, what government can and can’t do, and what the beating heart of the First Amendment and free press and freedom of assembly and speech and religion means to us.”

“We’re going to need to have some institutions that we can rely on and believe are apolitical, when the public has more and more doubt,” he added. “And, right now, Washington isn’t at all focused on the long-term challenge of rebuilding a shared narrative about America and institutional trust in our [public] servants.”

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Congressional Members Receive Free Health Care?


This is an addendum to my Post of 5/4/2016-“Hard Not To Speak Up” regarding Healthcare. Additionally the Congressional Healthcare plan has options not available to the rest of American citizens. MA.

Prior to the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (also known as ACA, or Obamacare), members of Congress received the same healthcare insurance benefits as any other federal employee through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, or FEHBP.
During the mark-up of the ACA bill, however, lawmakers inserted a provision (Section 1312(d)(3)(D)) that requires members of Congress and designated congressional staff members to obtain their health insurance through ACA exchanges rather than continue to receive their healthcare coverage through the FEHBP.
As of 1 January 2014, Members of Congress (MOC) and Congressional staff purchase their insurance through the District of Columbia’s small business health options program (SHOP) exchange, also known as DC Health Link. Contrary to popular belief, Congressional members do not receive free health care. As it does for other federal employees who purchase their insurance through the FEHBP, the federal government provides a subsidy equivalent to 72 percent of the weighted average of all FEHBP premiums.
Therefore, MOC and staff pay approximately 28 percent of their annual healthcare premiums through pre-tax payroll deductions.
Although DC’s SHOP offers a total of 57 different ACA insurance plans at the bronze, silver, gold and platinum levels, the Office of Personnel Management has ruled that MOC and staff may only receive the employer contribution if they purchase insurance at the gold tier. If we look solely at the District of Columbia’s SHOP health plans and federal employer contributions, Members of Congress receive benefits very similar to those enjoyed by any employee of a large company.
The bottom line is this: Members of Congress and their staff members are required by law to purchase their health insurance through the exchanges offered by the Affordable Care Act. However, the federal government subsidizes approximately 72 percent of the premium cost.
Like those late-night Ginzu knife commercials on late-night TV, however: “but wait, there’s more!”
MOC and their staff are also eligible to set salary aside in Flex 125 savings plans, which help the employee pay for healthcare and childcare expenses with pre-tax dollars. If they enroll in high-deductible health plans (which is unlikely, since only the gold plans offer an employer contribution), they can also enroll in health savings accounts. If Members of Congress or staff purchase dental and vision or long-term care insurance, they pay 100 percent of their premiums through pre-tax dollars.
Again, these benefits are similar to those offered by many large employers. However, there are two areas where Members of Congress (not staff or family members) can receive free or low-cost health care that the average citizen cannot access. The first is having access to the Office of the Attending Physician. For an annual fee (unspecified), MOC can receive limited care for routine examinations, consultations, and certain diagnostic tests.
The second option is also only available to current Members of Congress. In the Capital region only, they may receive free medical outpatient care at military facilities. If they are outside of the Capital region or if they need inpatient care, then MOC must pay 100 percent of the full cost of that military health care.
Finally, upon separation from political life, Members of Congress may purchase FEHBP insurance if they are otherwise eligible for retirement and if they have had five years of continuous healthcare coverage under their DC SHOP plans.
If the Affordable Care Act is repealed, members of Congress have a fallback plan. They would be able to return to the FEHBP. Twenty million other Americans won’t.

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Here’s Why Congress Exempted Itself From The New Healhcare Bill


Josh Barro
Business Insider 22 hours ago

l reaction to passage of health care – Buffalo Scripps
Last week, Vox dug into the Republican healthcare bill and found a provision that would exempt Congress and its staff from many of the bill’s effects.
This provision was bad “optics,” as they say in Washington.
But instead of taking it out — like you would usually do with a provision you aren’t wedded to and can’t defend politically — the House passed the American Health Care Act with the exemption intact after first passing a separate bill that would repeal the exemption that would be created by the AHCA if both bills became law.
There’s a reason for this mess, and it’s not about Republicans in Congress not wanting to be subject to their law.
It’s about Senate procedure.
Republicans are attempting to pass the AHCA through a process called reconciliation. This process, created by the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, allows the Senate to pass certain bills relating to the federal budget with just a simple majority. There is no need to get 60 votes — and, in this case, some Democratic support — as there is for other legislation.
A variety of complex rules govern what matters may and may not be considered through reconciliation.
One of those is that reconciliation must be conducted pursuant to reconciliation instructions passed by both chambers of Congress. That happened earlier this year — Congress sent reconciliation instructions to two Senate committees (finance; and health, education, labor, and pensions) that were designed to allow those committees to write bills making changes to healthcare policy.
The problem, as the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget explains, is that Congress’ healthcare is governed by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and that committee was not sent any reconciliation instructions.
Therefore, if a reconciliation bill makes changes to the way Congress gets its healthcare, it might become subject to a 60-vote threshold because it addresses a matter that is supposed to be the purview of a committee that doesn’t get to participate in reconciliation this year.
Why would the AHCA need to touch Congress’ healthcare in the first place? Because Obamacare included, at Republican urging, a provision requiring members of Congress and their staffs to buy insurance through the Obamacare exchanges.
That Republicans are in this position at all reflects how rushed and ad hoc their healthcare policymaking has been. They set about passing reconciliation instructions right after taking office because they hoped to repeal Obamacare very quickly. Since they didn’t know what their repeal strategy would be, they didn’t know which committees would ultimately need reconciliation instructions, and now it’s too late for them to change which ones have them.
Now their hope is to enact the AHCA and the companion bill that would undo the congressional exemption created by the AHCA. That companion passed the House on Thursday unanimously with Democratic and Republican votes.
In the Senate, that bill would need 60 votes to pass because it’s not a reconciliation matter.
Democrats clearly like the talking point that Republicans exempted Congress from the AHCA — and if the AHCA were enacted, Democrats would have the power to filibuster the companion bill and make it a matter of law. But politically, I’m not sure how it would land, as Republicans could say they are trying to apply the AHCA to Congress and it’s Democrats who are blocking that simple bill from becoming law.
Of course, in all likelihood, the Senate will pass a healthcare bill that differs extensively from the AHCA, which might make moot the whole matter of needing to change the rules about Congress’ healthcare.

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Trump Isn’t A Do-Nothing President, He’s Done A lot of Undoing


 

Apr. 21, 2017 at 6:01 AM

 

 

By Ben Casselman, Kathryn Casteel, Anna Maria Barry-Jester and Maggie Koerth-Baker

Filed under The Trump Administration

 

Welcome to TrumpBeat, FiveThirtyEight’s weekly feature on the latest policy developments in Washington and beyond. Want to get TrumpBeat in your inbox each week? Sign up for our newsletter. Comments, criticism or suggestions for future columns? Email us or drop a note in the comments.

In the whirlwind first weeks of President Trump’s administration, it often seemed as though he was trying to enact his entire agenda within his first 100 days in office. On Day 1, he moved to undo parts of the Affordable Care Act. Within his first week, he instituted a federal hiring freeze; issued orders on abortion, immigration and manufacturing; and took the first steps toward building his signature border wall. And on the one-week anniversary of his swearing in, he issued the first iteration of his ban on travel from certain Muslim-majority countries.

In retrospect, the travel ban looks like the high-water mark for the “shock and awe” phase of Trump’s presidency. The ban, of course, was quickly blocked by the courts, and from there his momentum stalled. In recent weeks, the narrative has reversed to the point that some pundits are suggesting Trump is already a failure — that Trump, as Josh Barro of Business Insider put it this week, is heading for a “do-nothing presidency.”

That may be wishful thinking on the part of Barro and other Trump critics, however. Yes, Trump has encountered a string of setbacks, perhaps most notably the embarrassing defeat of his effort to repeal and replace Obamacare. And yes, many key elements of his agenda — tax reform, infrastructure spending, a rethinking of U.S. trade policy — are still stuck at the starting gate, or in some cases seem to have been abandoned altogether. But Trump has found plenty of other ways to make his influence felt, often by reversing policies put in place by his predecessor, Barack Obama.

The most obvious accomplishment — the one that even Trump’s sharpest critics acknowledge — is the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. The vote was a key political win for a president in dire need of one. But its real significance is in the longer term. Gorsuch restored (and perhaps deepened, if he proves to have influence with Justice Anthony Kennedy, for whom he once clerked) the court’s conservative majority. And at only 49, he could serve for decades. It’s too soon to say what effect the new justice could have on abortion or other contentious issues, but it’s safe to assume that Gorsuch’s confirmation will help ensure that Trump’s impact is felt long after he leaves office.

Outside of Gorsuch, Trump’s influence is subtler, but no less real. Take immigration: Courts may have blocked Trump’s travel ban, but they haven’t intervened to stop him from stepping up immigration enforcement and increasing deportations — including of immigrants who had been granted protected status by the Obama administration. Or look at law enforcement, where Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have said they will pull back on the investigations of law-enforcement agencies that were a major part of Obama’s police-reform efforts. Sessions also announced he would end a Justice Department commission working to improve standards for forensic evidence.

Then there is regulation. Trump (with help from the Republican-controlled Congress) has delayed, suspended or reversed dozens of Obama-era rules on banking, data privacy, firearm purchases and other issues. And he has ordered a “one in, two out” policy in which agencies must repeal two rules for every new one they create. (It isn’t clear how that policy will be implemented.) Some of the most significant rule changes are at the Environmental Protection Agency, where Trump and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt have moved to halt new fuel-economy standards and block new rules on coal-fired power plants, among other changes. Some scientists warn that these steps could put out of reach the greenhouse gas emissions cuts that the U.S. agreed to in Paris in 2015.

In some cases, Trump doesn’t need to do anything to have an impact. Republicans may have failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but Trump has thrown into disarray one of the key features of the ACA: the health insurance marketplaces that collectively insure more than 12 million Americans who don’t get coverage through their employers. Some insurers were backing away from the marketplaces even before Trump took office, but uncertainty over the future of the law is threatening to spark an outright exodus. There are steps Trump could take to shore up the marketplace system, but so far he hasn’t taken them — and he has hinted that he will let the marketplaces collapse through inaction.

Taking all these things together, it appears that Trump may not yet have done much to secure his own legacy, but he is making significant progress toward undoing Obama’s. In the long term, for Trump’s presidency to be a success, he will need to begin making policies and passing legislation, steps he has so far been slow to take. But don’t mistake the lack of clear early-term victories for inaction — the consequences of Trump’s first 100 days, good or ill, will be felt for years.

Immigration: Back to square one

Some of Trump’s first actions in office were two executive orders meant to crack down on illegal immigration by implementing tougher enforcement not just at the border but also within the country. This week The Washington Post reported that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had arrested 21,362 unauthorized immigrants across the country since Trump took office, a 32.6 percent increase from the previous year. (The data runs through mid-March.) At first glance these numbers might seem consistent with Trump’s promise to get “the bad ones” out of the country. But the Post also noted that of those arrested roughly a quarter, or 5,441, had no criminal record. That’s more than double the number of noncriminal arrests of undocumented immigrants during the same period in 2016. (Many of those arrested eventually will be deported, but because that process can be slow, changed enforcement patterns show up more quickly in arrest data.)

Look back a bit further, however, and the recent increase in enforcement looks less dramatic. The pace of arrests is running well behind the 29,238 made during the same period in 2014; that year, there were 7,483 noncriminal arrests through mid-March, which represented a similar share of the total as this year’s numbers.

Immigration arrests from Jan. 20 to March 13, by year
YEAR ADMINISTRATION NONCRIMINAL CRIMINAL TOTAL
2017 Trump 5.4k 15.9k 21.3k
2016 Obama 2.2 13.8 16.1
2015 Obama 2.3 15.6 18.0
2014 Obama 7.4 21.7 29.2

Source: Immigration Customs and Enforcement

In the final two years of Obama’s term, however, both arrests and deportations dropped sharply. That was no accident: In November 2014, then-Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson issued a memorandum setting out new priorities for immigration enforcement. Under the new policy, the administration said it would focus on deporting noncitizens who were considered national security threats, who were convicted felons or gang members, or who were apprehended immediately at the border. In fiscal year 2016, 83.7 percent of people deported fell into one of those groups.

Trump’s orders reset these priorities. ICE agents no longer exempt any categories of unauthorized immigrants from enforcement, and the general rhetoric from the Trump administration surrounding who is considered a “criminal” has become broader. “It is fair to say that the definition of criminal has not changed, but where on the spectrum of criminality we operate has changed,” said Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Drug policy: Will opioid use be treated as a crime or a health problem?

Promising to end the opioid crisis was a frequent refrain of Trump’s campaign, and the issue was one of the few for which he laid out policy approaches. He would close the borders so drugs couldn’t get across and instate tough sentences for dealers while simultaneously improving treatment options for people with addiction. He has begun to follow through on the latter, with his health and human services secretary’s announcement of $485 million in grants that states can use for addiction treatment. (The funding came from a bipartisan bill signed by Obama.) He also tasked New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — who has supported treating drug addiction as a public health problem rather than only a criminal one — with leading a commission on the opioid crisis.

Targeting the supply of drugs once they are in the U.S. is a more complicated matter, however. Is a person with an addiction to prescription pain pills a criminal if he or she sells a handful of pills to a friend or a person in need of treatment? A recent analysis in Florida by the libertarian publication Reason found that local law-enforcement agencies have made a habit of convincing pain patients to sell pills and then doling out long prison sentences. Of the estimated 2,300 people serving time in Florida for trafficking opioids (overwhelmingly oxycodone or hydrocodone) under laws meant to target large-scale traffickers, 63 percent are in prison for the first time. Many worked as confidential informants in exchange for reduced sentences, helping to expand the web of people in jail for relatively minor drug offenses.

Tough approaches to minor drug crimes are hardly isolated to Florida. One Ohio city is charging people who overdose with misdemeanors. An analysis from The New York Times found that nationally, prison admissions from counties with fewer than 100,00 people have risen, even though crime has fallen in those same places, largely because of drug-related crimes.

Under Trump, Sessions has supported using criminal prosecution as a primary tool for reducing drug-related crimes, as well as tough sentencing laws. He recently hired Steven H. Cook, one of the most vocal supporters of policies from the 1980s and ’90s that filled state prisons with people serving long, mandatory minimum sentences for drug-related crimes. The Obama administration had begun moving away from these strict approaches, which disproportionately penalized-African Americans, and granted clemency to hundreds of people serving prison terms for nonviolent drug offenses. Trump’s administration appears to be bringing that old model back.

With the opioid crisis in front of us, many politicians have pushed for a public health approach to drug-related crimes. But so far under Trump, such crimes are still often being treated with jail time.

Environmental policy: Honest work

The Trump administration has faced lots of criticism for its steps to roll back open data and its proposed cuts to environmental and scientific programs. So it might seem like the scientific community would embrace a Republican-backed effort to promote transparency in decision making at the EPA. But the HONEST Act, as it is known, is getting a chilly reception from many scientists who say the bill is really a stealth effort to undermine the EPA’s ability to protect the environment.

The act, which passed the House at the end of March, sure sounds good on paper. It would require the EPA to base its decisions on scientific research that is publicly available for independent analysis. But the biggest issues are tied to that “publicly available” part. Most of the academic journals that edit, coordinate the peer-review of, and publish scientific research exist to make money. So they charge for access, making most scientific papers not exactly publicly available by many standards. The HONEST Act goes even further, requiring that raw data behind a published research paper also be publicly available in order for the EPA to use it. There are hundreds of open data repositories online, but using them is not yet the norm — and definitely wasn’t common just a few years ago. A 2016 review found that for all the research published before 2010, just over 2,200 data sets had been uploaded to the five most-respected generalist repositories. There are 2.5 million research papers published every year. Even the 77,000 data sets published by those five repositories in 2015 don’t come close to keeping pace.

There are some good reasons why scientists should be making their data publicly available — and, increasingly, they’re doing so. But making data, especially old data, public is expensive, time-consuming work that requires workers to convert data, servers to store it and funding to pay commercial publishers for rights. Then there is the cost of making sure that the data stays secure and anonymous.

Officially, the EPA says implementing the HONEST Act would require only “minimal funding.” But according to an internal EPA estimate that was leaked to the public radio program Marketplace, the bill would cost $250 million a year — a big deal for an agency that has proposed to cut or freeze funding to damn near every program it operates. Pruitt’s office appears to have gotten around that hurdle by assuming that the agency will simply not use any research that doesn’t already meet the open-data standard, which according to the leaked document could reduce the research the EPA is allowed to reference by as much as 95 percent. No wonder scientists are nervous.

Ben Casselman is a senior editor and the chief economics writer for FiveThirtyEight. @bencasselman

Kathryn Casteel writes about economics and policy issues for FiveThirtyEight. @kathryncasteel

Anna Maria Barry-Jester reports on public health, food and culture for FiveThirtyEight. @annabarryjester

Maggie Koerth-Baker is a senior science writer for FiveThirtyEight. @maggiekb1

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The Most Complicated Word In English?


© Tatiana Ayazo/Rd.com
Imagine you’re a dictionary editor. For eight hours a day, five days a week, every week until the heat death of the universe or the day human beings stop speaking English (whichever comes first), it’s your job to ensure that your trusted reference book keeps pace with the relentlessly evolving definitions of our ceaselessly expanding English language. ‘No sweat,’ you think, picking up two boxes of citations for words beginning with the letter R. ‘Where do I start?’ That’s when you realize these boxes of citations, hundreds of scraps of paper showing each word in every possible context, are all for a single word. A three-letter word—the most complicated, multifaceted word in the English language.You might think it’s absurd (and maybe it is), but Oxford English Dictionary editors recently revealed that ‘run’ has indeed become the single word with the most potential meanings in all of English, boasting no fewer than 645 different usage cases for the verb form alone. The copious definitions of ‘run’ featured in the OED’s upcoming third edition begin with the obvious, ‘to go with quick steps on alternate feet,’ then proceed to run on for 75 columns of type. This entry, in all its girth, took one professional lexicographer nine months of research to complete. How could three little letters be responsible for so much meaning?
Context is everything. Think about it: When you run a fever, for example, those three letters have a very different meaning than when you run a bath to treat it, or when your bathwater subsequently runs over and drenches your cotton bath runner, forcing you to run out to the store and buy a new one. There, you run up a bill of $85 because besides a rug and some cold medicine, you also need some thread to fix the run in your stockings and some tissue for your runny nose and a carton of milk because you’ve run through your supply at home, and all this makes dread run through your soul because your value-club membership runs out at the end of the month and you’ve already run over your budget on last week’s grocery run when you ran over a nail in the parking lot and now your car won’t even run properly because whatever idiot runs that Walmart apparently lets his custodial staff run amok and you know you’re letting your inner monologue run on and on but, God—you’d do things differently if you ran the world. Maybe you should run for office,to run through the whole list of definitions? Alas, to read all 645 meanings you’ll have to wait for the next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. The print run is expected in 2037.

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Judge rejects motion to dismiss suit against Trump


The beat goes on, President Trump has incited National unrest primarily due to his rhetoric. I believe he is no more than a shoot from the hip idiot..MA.

USA TODAY
Grace Schneider
9 hrs ago

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A federal judge said in a ruling that then-candidate Donald Trump incited the use of violence against three protesters when he told supporters at a campaign rally a year ago to “get ’em out of here.”

U. S. District Judge David J. Hale of the Western District of Kentucky also wrote in an opinion and order released Friday that because violence had broken out at a prior Trump rally and that known hate group members were in the Louisville crowd, Trump’s ordering the removal of an African-American woman was “particularly reckless.”
Citing case law from tumultuous 1960s race riots and other student protests, Hale rejected motions to dismiss the pending complaint against Trump and three supporters in the crowd that was filed by three protesters after a March 1, 2016, campaign rally in Louisville. Only a portion of the defendants’ motion was granted, but the decision means that the bulk of the claims will proceed.
The protesters, Henry Brousseau, Kashiya Nwanguma and Molly Shah, are seeking unspecified monetary damages. They claim they were assaulted by audience members who were riled up by Trump. Besides Trump, the lawsuit names three defendants in attendance — Matthew Heimbach, a leader with the white supremacist group Traditional Youth Network from Paoli, Ind.; Alvin Bamberger, a member of the Korean War Veterans Association from Ohio; and an unknown individual.
The men were caught on video pushing and shoving Nwanguma to usher her out of the Kentucky International Convention Center after Trump’s urging from the stage.
Trump’s lawyer, R. Kent Westberry of Louisville, had argued that the suit’s allegations threaten fundamental constitutional protections by chilling political speech and that those accused of assaulting the three were not acting for or at the direction of Trump or the campaign. Instead, they were acting on their own initiative and for their own purposes, Westberry wrote.
Hale pointed out that, as the protesters had alleged, the violence began as soon as Trump gave a command and an order to get the protesters out of the rally.
The judge dismissed one of the plaintiffs’ claims that Trump was vicariously liable for Heimbach and Bamberger’s actions. The men weren’t employed by Trump or his campaign and therefore weren’t under his control during the rally, Hale wrote.

Follow Grace Schneider on Twitter: @gesinfk

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Republicans Eye Cutting More Obama Era Regulations


 

Kerry Picket

Reporter

10:11 PM 02/16/2017
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump signed two of the three pieces of legislation this week passed by Congress that roll back Obama-era regulations.
Republicans are repealing the regulations through the Congressional Review Act (CRA). The president’s signature on such legislation Tuesday is the first time the CRA has been used to repeal regulation in 16 years, when Trump signed legislation to roll back a Securities and Exchange Commission rule that would mandate energy companies to show their payments to foreign governments.
The coal industry cheered on another CRA piece of legislation Thursday that came to Trump’s desk for his signature that repealed an Obama-era Department of the Interior rule on coal mine discharge into nearby streams. (RELATED: Trump Signs Repeal Of Obama Coal Mining Regulations)
The CRA allows for Congress to review and repeal federal government department regulation within a 60-day window after the rule has been established. Legislation under the CRA cannot be filibustered in the Senate.

Congress initially proposed 37 resolutions under the CRA as a means to repeal the Obama-era rules.
“Congressional Review Act legislation provides relief for Americans hurt by regulations rushed through at the last minute by the Obama administration. This means freeing up American entrepreneurs, creating jobs, and jump-starting our economy,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said in a statement of the numerous bills passed under CRA.
One piece of legislation waiting for Trump’s signature that passed the Senate Wednesday under the CRA repealed a Social Security Administration rule established in December. The regulation mandated that the agency would submit Social Security recipients’ information to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) with the intent of showing those who may not be eligible to purchase a firearm.
Democrats say the rule would keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill, but Republicans argue the rule cast way too large of a net around social security recipients.
“Over the last several weeks we’ve been using a Congressional Review Act or what is known as CRA’s to take action on the explosion of Obamacare regulations. Hundreds and hundreds of pages of regulations that we’ve seen hurting families destroying jobs all across the country and here’s why our work is so historic. Up until now only six of those bills have ever reached the president’s desk in 21 years and only one was ever signed into law by the end of this week. We will have passed 13 in the last three weeks,” House Republican Conference Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers said at a press conference Thursday.
The Senate is expected to take up two more resolutions passed by the House in the coming days, one of which repeals a regulation established by the Bureau of Land Management as well as a rule put forth by the Department of Labor.
The House passed three resolutions under the CRA last week and by the end of Friday, the Senate will be on track to consider 10 resolutions that repeal Obama administration regulations in the next legislative period.
Follow Kerry on Twitter

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Charles Barkley hammers Democrats and Republicans, calls them ‘fools’ that ‘lie to real people’


Very well stated. MA

On the eve of the college basketball spectacle known as March Madness, CNBC sat down with announcer Charles Barkley and discussed the NCAA, politics and everything in between.
True to form, the basketball Hall of Famer didn’t mince his words.
Barkley, who will be part of the broadcast team airing on CBS and Turner, had a good reason for how March Madness can really make a difference in everyday life.

“I love sports because it takes me away from reality and I tell people, no matter how bad your life is, if you are having problems at home, you are having problems at work, that’s the beauty of sports.”
When applying that principle to the current environment, the NBA great was his usual outspoken self: “If it wasn’t for sports we would have to isolate ourselves in just reality and right now reality sucks.”
In the interview Tuesday, Barkley spoke of the political situation in Washington and the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s election. He also didn’t spare either side of the aisle. Currently, both major parties are sparring over just about everything, including health-care reform and Russia’s accused meddling in the U.S. elections.
“What bothers me the most are the Republicans and the Democrats, they act like little kids,” Barkley said. “They are lying to real people out here trying to get through life. … It’s both parties: They disagree on every single issue and it [angers] me … because their job is to work for us.”
He took offense at their usual approach of showing up “on TV yelling and screaming they are fighting each other” rather than what he expects from them. “They are supposed to take care of people and they are not doing that.”
Barkley didn’t stop there. He denounced Trump’s proposed travel ban as “stupid” and “ridiculous” and lashed out at the way the U.S. is treating immigrants. After suffering several decisive legal rebukes last month, Trump’s revised plan restricts travel from six majority-Muslim countries linked to terrorism and imposes new levels of vetting on refugees.
That is “probably bugging me the most right now,” Barkley said, especially the treatment against people “who have been here many years.”
He also railed against the nation’s divide between rich and poor. “My perspective is never gonna change on that. … We’ve got to do a much better job to take care of poor people, because you cannot put all the poor people in bad neighborhoods send them to bad schools and say good luck in life. That’s just not right.”
Barkley, 54, has undertaken his own efforts to make it better, discussed donations he’s made to three schools: Morehouse, Clark Atlanta University, and Alabama A&M. “I wanted to help historically black colleges,” said Barkley, who is from Alabama.
Asked whether he would run for office himself, he said no. His reason was characteristically blunt: “Because I don’t have time to go to work and argue with fools every day,” said the former member of the Philadelphia 76ers, Phoenix Suns and Houston Rockets.

Eric Chemi
Sr. Editor-at-Large, Data Journalism

Jessica Golden

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Don’t ever answer calls with phone numbers with THESE area codes


The Scammers will never stop trying to get you, so beware of these listed below, rule of thumb: if you do not recognize the number or caller ,let your answering device pick up or do not answer! MA 

10 / 26

Hello Giggles
Gina Florio   16 hrs

There’s nothing more frustrating than eagerly answering a call only to find out it’s a telemarketer or, worse, a scammer. You’d think that as technology gets more and more advanced we could avoid moments like this, but there are plenty of people out there who have found loopholes in the system in order to steal money from innocent people like you. Luckily, there is a way for you to avoid getting roped into these scams. There are some phone calls with certain area codes that you should never pick up under any circumstances.
Joseph Steinberg, CEO of SecureMySocial, lays out some easy guidelines to follow to avoid scammers. First, it’s important to know what their scam game is. These callers essentially call you and either don’t say anything or play disturbing sounds of someone crying for help, all in an attempt to get you to call them back once they hang up. Or they just try to get you to stay on the phone, which will charge you an exorbitant amount of money.
Steinberg says you should never ever call someone back if you happen to pick up this kind of call, but there’s a way to avoid answering the call altogether. And that’s by looking at the area codes of the scam call.
Any phone number that starts with 473 is a surefire sign that the call is a scam. “The name ‘473 scam’ comes from the fact that criminals have been known to use caller IDs with the area code 473–which appears to be domestic, but is actually the area code for the island of Grenada and several other islands outside the United States,” Steinberg writes for Inc.com.
809 is another area code to be wary of, since scammers use this area code from the Caribbean Islands. 900 is another classic one to look out for, since it was one of the first area codes to indicate a suspicious call.
When in doubt, just don’t answer the call and let it go to voicemail. If it’s not a scam and it’s instead someone who needs to speak with you, they’ll leave a message and you can just call them back.
10 signs you’re getting scammed while shopping online
To err on the side of caution, these are the other international area codes with a +1 country code you should avoid.
242 — Bahamas
246 — Barbados
268 — Antigua
284 — British Virgin Islands
345 — Cayman Islands
441 — Bermuda
473 — Grenada, Carriacou and Petite Martinique
649 — Turks and Caicos
664 — Montserrat
721 — Saint Maarten
758 — St. Lucia
767 — Dominica
784 — St. Vincent and Grenadines
809, 829 and 849 — Dominican Republic
868 — Trinidad and Tobago
869 — St. Kitts and Nevis
876 — Jamaica
Remember, it’s always better to be safe than sorry. If you don’t recognize the number, don’t pick it up.

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