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The Front Page Cover
The Events of the Week -- Featuring:
The Trump Cabinet: Bonfire Of The Agencies
by Charles Krauthammer
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Tillerson at State: More Questions Than Answers
Michael Swartz: It's been a hallmark of President-elect Donald Trump's transition so far: supply a willing media with a batch of politically obvious names for open positions within his cabinet and among his advisers, then pull the rug out from under everyone with a less orthodox choice.
So while the rumors and stories were circulating among the chattering class about who would run the State Department, they focused on some obvious names: Sen. Bob Corker, Rudy Giuliani, Gen. David Petraeus, John Bolton, and even uber-Trump detractor Mitt Romney were supposedly on the short list, despite the flaws and baggage each of them carried.
If you believe the report that Trump wasn't happy with any of those prospective candidates, it's not a shock that he went off the board. Pending confirmation, the prize will go to someone who was suggested by former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates: ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, a man whom no conventional wisdom had previously considered.
Yet Tillerson did get a recommendation from other key officials besides Gates. Because of their post-political dealings, both Gates and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice knew Tillerson well and reportedly considered him a fine choice, as did former Vice President Dick Cheney. Obviously a support roster like that leads to queuing up the concern from certain quarters of the Trump coalition about the influence of George W. Bush.
But many more have noticed the close ties between Tillerson and Russia in general, and Vladimir Putin in particular. They point out that before Tillerson took the top job at Exxon, he was in charge of their Russian operations and inked an Exxon pact with the Russian oil company Rosneft for exploration there, as well as giving Rosneft the opportunity to partner with Exxon on their American projects. For his work with the Russians over the years, Tillerson was presented Russia's Order of Friendship by Putin himself in 2013. Fairly or not, writes David French, "Tillerson is the pick least likely to ease concerns that Trump is too close to Putin," and the current Russian election manipulation narrative will get a lot more mileage if Tillerson takes the reins.
And there's another aspect of Tillerson's background that raises concerns about him being America's face to the world: Despite being the CEO of an oil company, Tillerson is in favor of a carbon tax. Exxon has also called the Paris Climate accord "an important step forward," which makes little logical sense from the fiduciary standpoint of an energy company looking to preserve its market — although it may have been a smokescreen to throw the radical Left off their trail. So Tillerson is neither the obvious option given his lack of formal diplomatic or political experience, nor the safest of choices when it comes to the American interests of avoiding dealings with enemy nations or of not being the only nation forced to make sacrifices in the name of combating the fallacy of man-made climate change. (However, on the former point, the previous two secretaries of state had political experience aplenty, and look what they've done to America's reputation and national security.)
With this choice, perhaps Donald Trump is channeling his inner Winston Churchill. In 1939, Churchill noted, "I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest." So why not select our own riddle wrapped in a mystery? Not only that, Dick Morris came up with the interesting take of Trump "reverse-engineering" the Nixon strategy of cozying up to China as a counterweight to the Soviet Union assisting North Vietnam during the Vietnam war: working with Putin and the Russians to counterbalance China's aggressive foreign policy in both military and economic terms. It's already clear Trump is unafraid to make waves with China, so perhaps Tillerson is an additional reinforcement of the adage of using the enemy of one's enemy.
A fine line is being walked when both sides of the political aisle see reasons to support and oppose a nominee. Welcome to the America of Donald Trump. ~The Patriot Post
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China agrees to return captured
Navy drone to U.S.
by Carlo Munoz
{washingtontimes.com} ~ Washington and Beijing have agreed to terms to return a Navy drone captured in the disputed waters of the South China Sea to the U.S., the Pentagon announced Saturday... The Chinese navy’s seizure of the underwater drone — known as an “ocean glider” — in international waters 50 nautical miles northwest of Subic Bay off the Philippine coast was the latest diplomatic row in America’s increasingly tense relationship with China. “We have registered our objection to China’s unlawful seizure of a U.S. unmanned underwater vehicle operating in international waters in the South China Sea,” Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said in a statement... http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/dec/17/china-agrees-return-captured-navy-drone-us/
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FBI in agreement with CIA that Russia aimed
to help Trump win White House
by Adam Entous and Ellen Nakashima
{washingtonpost.com} ~ FBI Director James B. Comey and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. are in agreement with a CIA assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election... in part to help Donald Trump win the White House, officials disclosed Friday, as President liar-nObama issued a public warning to Moscow that it could face retaliation. New revelations about Comey’s position could put to rest suggestions by some lawmakers that the CIA and the FBI weren’t on the same page on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intentions. Russia has denied being behind the cyber-intrusions, which targeted the Democratic National Committee and the private emails of liar-Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta. Trump, in turn, has repeatedly said he doubts the veracity of U.S. intelligence blaming Moscow for the hacks...In this article, I have not read if there was any evidence mention only hearsay. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/clinton-blames-putins-personal-grudge-against-her-for-election-interference/2016/12/16/12f36250-c3be-11e6-8422-eac61c0ef74d_story.html?utm_term=.d3062047f473
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Pension Collapse in Big D
by Steven Malanga
{city-journal.org} ~ When Detroit filed for bankruptcy in 2013, the city’s emergency-financial team said that high levels of retirement debt could prevent them from rescuing the Motor City’s finances... Detroit had been in economic decline for decades, and the pension problem—including billions of dollars in bonuses handed out while the city was hurtling toward insolvency—was just one part of the depressing financial picture. Dallas, by contrast, has been one of the fastest-growing American cities in recent years. Becoming a magnet for investment and opportunity, however, hasn’t protected the Texas city from experiencing its own Detroit-style financial crisis. Dallas’s retirement system for cops and firefighters combines many of the features that have nearly sunk state and local pension plans around the country. Things got so dire over the summer that retirees began pulling their money out of the system. It’s the first run on a government pension plan in recent memory... http://city-journal.org/html/pension-collapse-big-d-14894.html
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“Faithless”—and Destructive
by Matthew Hennessey
{city-journal.org} ~ The world waits and wonders: will the cadre of “faithless” Electoral College electors seeking to upend the election of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States convince enough of their colleagues to “vote their conscience”... on Monday and send the matter to the House of Representatives to decide? As political gambits go, it’s a doozy. There are 538 Electoral College delegates. This year, 306 are Republicans and 232 are Democrats. To win, a candidate needs the votes of 270 electors. In other words, for the plotters to succeed, at least 37 electors must switch their votes from Trump to some other candidate. Since the election of 1832, no more than one elector in any cycle has ever has ever voted against his or her pledged candidate. Chances are more than good, then, that this insurrection will fail. What’s really troubling is that we’re even talking about it... http://city-journal.org/html/faithless-and-destructive-14904.html
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37% of the Detroit Precincts Cast More Votes Than Registered Voters- All for liar-Hillary
by Dave Hodges
{thecommonsenseshow.com} ~ Voters in Detroit are adept at magic. They have successfully delivered more votes for liar-Hillary Clinton than there were registered voters in 37% of the precincts. Reportedly, there were no Russians voting, but there were plenty of “undocumented aliens” voting along with recent Syrian refugees. http://www.thecommonsenseshow.com/2016/12/17/37-of-the-detroit-precincts-cast-more-votes-than-registered-voters-all-for-hillary/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=37-of-the-detroit-precincts-cast-more-votes-than-registered-voters-all-for-Hillary
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The Trump Cabinet: Bonfire Of The Agencies
by Charles Krauthammer
{freedomsback.com} ~ Democrats spent the first two decades of the post-Cold War era rather relaxed about Russian provocations and revanchism. President liar-nObama famously mocked Mitt Romney in 2012 for suggesting that Russia was our principal geopolitical adversary. Yet today the Dems are in high dudgeon over the closeness of secretary of state nominee, Rex Tillerson, to Vladimir Putin.
Hypocrisy aside, it is true that, as head of ExxonMobil, Tillerson made major deals with Russia, received Russia’s Order of Friendship and opposed U.S. sanctions. That’s troubling but not necessarily disqualifying. At the time, after all, Tillerson was acting as an agent of ExxonMobil, whose interest it is to extract oil and make money.
These interests do not necessarily overlap with those of the United States. The relevant question is whether and how Tillerson distinguishes between the two and whether as agent of the United States he would adopt a tougher Russia policy than he did as agent of ExxonMobil.
We don’t know. We shall soon find out. That’s what confirmation hearings are for.
The left has been in equally high dudgeon that other Cabinet picks appear not to share the mission of the agency which they have been nominated to head. The horror! As if these agency missions are somehow divinely ordained. Why, they aren’t even constitutionally ordained. The Education Department, for example, was created by President Carter in 1979 as a payoff to the teachers unions for their political support.
Now, teachers are wonderful. But teachers unions are there to protect benefits and privileges, not necessarily to improve schooling. Which is why they zealously defend tenure, protect their public-school monopoly and reflexively oppose school choice.
Conservatives have the odd view that the purpose of schooling — and therefore of the Education Department — is to provide students with the best possible education. Hence Trump’s nominee, Betsy DeVos, a longtime and passionate proponent of school choice, under whom the department will no longer be an arm of the teachers unions.
She is also less likely to allow the department’s Office for Civil Rights to continue appropriating to itself the role of arbiter of social justice, micromanaging everything from campus sexual mores to the proper bathroom assignment for transgender students. If the mission of this department has been to dictate policy best left to the states and localities, it’s about time the mission was changed.
The most incendiary nomination by far, however, is Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency. As attorney general of Oklahoma, he has joined or led a series of lawsuits to curtail EPA power. And has been upheld more than once by the courts.
Pruitt has been deemed unfit to serve because he fails liberalism’s modern-day religious test: belief in anthropogenic climate change. They would love to turn his confirmation hearing into a Scopes monkey trial. Republicans should decline the invitation. It doesn’t matter whether the man believes the moon is made of green cheese. The challenges to EPA actions are based not on meteorology or theology, but on the Constitution. The issue is that the EPA has egregiously exceeded its authority and acted as a rogue agency unilaterally creating rules unmoored from legislation.
Pruitt’s is the most important nomination because it is a direct attack on the insidious growth of the administrative state. We have reached the point where EPA bureaucrats interpret the Waters of the United States rule — meant to protect American waterways — to mean that when a hard rain leaves behind a pond on your property, the feds may take over and tell you what you can and cannot do with it. The final rule excluded puddles — magnanimity from the Leviathan.
On a larger scale, liar-nObama’s Clean Power Plan essentially federalizes power generation and regulation, not coincidentally killing coal along the way. This is the administration’s end run around Congress’ rejection of liar-nObama’s proposed 2009-2010 cap-and-trade legislation. And that was a Democratic Congress, mind you.
Pruitt’s nomination is a dramatic test of the proposition that agencies administer the law, they don’t create it. That the legislative power resides exclusively with Congress and not with a metastasizing administrative bureaucracy.
For some, this reassertion of basic constitutionalism seems extreme. If so, the liar-nObama administration has only itself to blame. Such are the wages of eight years of liberal overreach. Some legislation, like liar-nObamacare, will be repealed. Some executive orders will be canceled. But most important will be the bonfire of the agencies. We may soon be secure not just in our puddles but our ponds.
Hypocrisy aside, it is true that, as head of ExxonMobil, Tillerson made major deals with Russia, received Russia’s Order of Friendship and opposed U.S. sanctions. That’s troubling but not necessarily disqualifying. At the time, after all, Tillerson was acting as an agent of ExxonMobil, whose interest it is to extract oil and make money.
These interests do not necessarily overlap with those of the United States. The relevant question is whether and how Tillerson distinguishes between the two and whether as agent of the United States he would adopt a tougher Russia policy than he did as agent of ExxonMobil.
We don’t know. We shall soon find out. That’s what confirmation hearings are for.
The left has been in equally high dudgeon that other Cabinet picks appear not to share the mission of the agency which they have been nominated to head. The horror! As if these agency missions are somehow divinely ordained. Why, they aren’t even constitutionally ordained. The Education Department, for example, was created by President Carter in 1979 as a payoff to the teachers unions for their political support.
Now, teachers are wonderful. But teachers unions are there to protect benefits and privileges, not necessarily to improve schooling. Which is why they zealously defend tenure, protect their public-school monopoly and reflexively oppose school choice.
Conservatives have the odd view that the purpose of schooling — and therefore of the Education Department — is to provide students with the best possible education. Hence Trump’s nominee, Betsy DeVos, a longtime and passionate proponent of school choice, under whom the department will no longer be an arm of the teachers unions.
She is also less likely to allow the department’s Office for Civil Rights to continue appropriating to itself the role of arbiter of social justice, micromanaging everything from campus sexual mores to the proper bathroom assignment for transgender students. If the mission of this department has been to dictate policy best left to the states and localities, it’s about time the mission was changed.
The most incendiary nomination by far, however, is Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency. As attorney general of Oklahoma, he has joined or led a series of lawsuits to curtail EPA power. And has been upheld more than once by the courts.
Pruitt has been deemed unfit to serve because he fails liberalism’s modern-day religious test: belief in anthropogenic climate change. They would love to turn his confirmation hearing into a Scopes monkey trial. Republicans should decline the invitation. It doesn’t matter whether the man believes the moon is made of green cheese. The challenges to EPA actions are based not on meteorology or theology, but on the Constitution. The issue is that the EPA has egregiously exceeded its authority and acted as a rogue agency unilaterally creating rules unmoored from legislation.
Pruitt’s is the most important nomination because it is a direct attack on the insidious growth of the administrative state. We have reached the point where EPA bureaucrats interpret the Waters of the United States rule — meant to protect American waterways — to mean that when a hard rain leaves behind a pond on your property, the feds may take over and tell you what you can and cannot do with it. The final rule excluded puddles — magnanimity from the Leviathan.
On a larger scale, liar-nObama’s Clean Power Plan essentially federalizes power generation and regulation, not coincidentally killing coal along the way. This is the administration’s end run around Congress’ rejection of liar-nObama’s proposed 2009-2010 cap-and-trade legislation. And that was a Democratic Congress, mind you.
Pruitt’s nomination is a dramatic test of the proposition that agencies administer the law, they don’t create it. That the legislative power resides exclusively with Congress and not with a metastasizing administrative bureaucracy.
For some, this reassertion of basic constitutionalism seems extreme. If so, the liar-nObama administration has only itself to blame. Such are the wages of eight years of liberal overreach. Some legislation, like liar-nObamacare, will be repealed. Some executive orders will be canceled. But most important will be the bonfire of the agencies. We may soon be secure not just in our puddles but our ponds.
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