Trump's cabinet: breaking all the rules

Including some rules of Trump's.

This morning's Vox Sentences saves me a lot of linkage work.

• The most orthodox, from a Republican standpoint, is Trump's nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency: Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, who hates pretty much everything the EPA has done for the past eight years. [Vox / Brad Plumer]
• Trump's pick for the Small Business Administration, likewise, is a big GOP donor and former Senate candidate. Of course, she's also the co-founder and former CEO of the pro wrestling association WWE, which Trump was affiliated with for a long time, so it seems a little weird. [Reuters / Steve Holland]
• Conversely, it seems totally reasonable that Trump would nominate Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad to serve as his ambassador to China ... until you realize Branstad wants closer ties with China and Trump has all but promised them a trade war. [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]
• (The conflict will presumably be up to Trump's as-yet-unnamed secretary of state to resolve — and, yeah, naming ambassadors before a secretary of state is kind of weird in its own right.) [Politico / Louis Nelson]
• And then there's retired Gen. John F. Kelly, former head of US Southern Command, who has not officially been confirmed as Trump's secretary of the Department of Homeland Security but has been reported as the pick so widely that it's basically official. [Military Times / Andrew deGrandpre]
• Kelly, like the other ex-generals in Trump's Cabinet, has a reputation as a tough talker. But he doesn't appear to see the problems facing the US as the sort of thing that can be, ahem, walled off — which could create conflicts within Trumpworld. [Vox / Dara Lind]
• (Trump's rumored deputy homeland security secretary, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, is a much more orthodox immigration hawk.) [Washington Examiner / Gabby Morrongiello]
• And in case you're wondering, picking three ex-generals for Cabinet-levels positions where they're supposed to represent the civilian face of national security is definitely not normal. [TPM / Josh Marshall]

They didn't mention Tom Price for HHS or Ben Carson for HUD, but hey, it's been a busy week for all of us.  These new picks are almost capable of eclipsing his first ones, detailed last week here.

In another indication that Trump really does not care who he pisses off, Mitt Romney has indeed moved to the top of the pile for secretary of state.  Which beats the hell out of Rudy Guiliani and David Petreaus, I guess.

Just documenting the atrocities is hard work.

Update: Let's add fast-food magnate and now Labor Secretary-designate Andrew Puzder, who wants to replace all his workers with robots. And via Public Citizen...

The December 7th anniversary nobody celebrates

It's pretty horrible.

The last reported instance of white Texans burning an African American at the stake occurred eighty-three years ago today, December 7, 1933, near a black neighborhood in Kountze, Texas.

On Saturday, December 2, a 30-year-old white woman named Nellie Williams Brockman left her and her husband’s farm and headed to a department store in Kountze by truck. Somewhere along the way she ran into trouble and was apparently shot. They found her body next to the truck and both the vehicle and her corpse were partially burned.

After Brockman’s body was discovered, a few folks claimed they had seen a shotgun-carrying black man head into the woods not far from where the crime was committed. Local law enforcement officials mounted an intensive search for the suspect, utilizing platoons of armed volunteers and keen bloodhounds, but turned up nothing.

A few days into the manhunt, the Kountze Police Department became interested in an African American man named David Gregory. According to the San Antonio Express, Gregory, a preacher’s son, only became a suspect after a anonymous “tip”: “Cloaking their investigation in secrecy, officers said the tip was of such nature that to divulge it would greatly jeopardize chances of apprehending the fugitive.”

The Galveston Daily News indicated that the tip came after Gregory was suspected and that its source was one of the suspect’s aunts. Whatever the case, when Gregory learned that he was a suspect, he disappeared and at least six African American men (including Gregory’s brother) were arrested in an attempt to determine his location. The News suggested that the informer placed Gregory at an African American church in the small community of Voth (now part of the northwest section of Beaumont, just east of U.S. Hwy 96 and the Pine Island Bayou).

On December 7, Hardin County Sheriff Miles D. Jordan, Sr., Deputy Sheriff Ralph B. Chance, Jefferson County Sheriff W.W. “Bill” Richardson and Deputy Sheriff Homer French headed to Voth and discovered Gregory at the described church, apparently concealed in the belfry. When they asked him to come down he refused and “flourished” a pistol (not a shotgun, the weapon the black suspect was reported carrying near the crime scene). Deputy Chance subsequently felled Gregory with a shotgun blast, the buckshot tearing into Gregory’s face and neck and rendering him unconscious.

Sheriff Jordan et al took custody of Gregory and immediately transported him to a Beaumont hospital. He was in critical condition and received emergency treatment, but the doctors indicated that he probably wouldn’t survive until morning. 

The story gets even worse from there, and I'll leave it to you to finish.  Here's the author's last few paragraphs, which are worth considering in this new era we're heading into.

It is important to recall this history because folks that look like me—white folks—got away with it. Folks who burned dozens of black men at the stake. Folks who committed racial expulsions and perpetrated wholesale massacres.

Today, we approve of voter suppression and summary execution and elect governors who hunt at places with names like Niggerhead Ranch. We have the upper hand and we maintain it assiduously. We feel it’s our birthright. And as our privilege and pseudo-superiority are increasingly questioned and challenged, we claim we’re being put upon, or wrongfully vilified. We consider criticism of our entitlement an act of subversion and sedition.

White fragility has its roots in white monstrosity. And since we white folks have never had to acknowledge much less atone for our catalogue of inhumanities here in Texas—particularly involving persons of color—ignorance must prevail. We feel our entire way of life depends on it.

E.R. Bills isn't talking about himself or even me, but really ... he is.

#DAPL: It ain't over

Sorry about raining on the victory parade.

It helps in understanding the next move in what is now a waiting game if you distill it down to this: America is an oil company with two standing armies; one foreign and one domestic.  The national one is the legion of police from around the country who are on the scene, earning overtime and travel perks while they spray water cannon in freezing temperatures on people, blow up a woman's arm with a grenade, and bring associated hell on the protestors at Standing Rock.  It's a wide-open window into our police state.

Police departments from 24 counties and 16 cities in 10 different states (including North Dakota) have poured into Standing Rock, according to the Morton County Sheriff's Department, the local law enforcement agency.

[...]

Per DeSmog Blog, Standing Rock is one of the few times that EMAC (the Emergency Management Assistance Compact, see the very first link for more) has been called upon to respond to social activism. In April 2015, during Black Lives Matter protests in Baltimore in the wake of Freddie Gray's death while in police custody, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan declared a state of emergency and sent out an EMAC request. About 300 state troopers from Pennsylvania and another 150 from New Jersey responded. The city racked up an estimated $20 million in extra policing costs.

[...]

The increased law enforcement presence at Standing Rock has coincided with mounting concerns over police brutality. The deployment of military-grade equipment, including land-mine-resistant trucks and armored personnel carriers, as well as the use of pepper spray, rubber bullets, and alleged strip searches led Standing Rock Sioux tribal chairman Dave Archambault II to ask the Justice Department to investigate civil rights abuses. [...] Some of the police details that have arrived in Standing Rock are among the largest recipients of military transfers from the federal government, according to an In These Times investigation. The South Dakota Highway Patrol has received $2 million worth of military equipment since 2006. The Lake County Sheriff's Office in Northwest Indiana obtained $1.5 million worth of military equipment over the same time period. The Pennington County Sheriff's office in South Dakota, the Anoka County Sheriff's office in Minnesota, and the Griffith Indiana Police Department have all received assault rifles through military equipment transfer programs as well.

Much more at the article, which concludes with how communities are beginning to push back against these abuses of authority and blank checks from taxpayers for their local peace officers (*coughBScough*) to go on a mayhem vacation.

Now then, on to the generals politicians directing this assault, one of whom is ND Sen. Heidi Heitkamp.  Bold emphasis mine:

“It’s long past time that a decision is made on the easement going under Lake Oahe. This administration’s delay in taking action -- after I’ve pushed the White House, Army Corps, and other federal agencies for months to make a decision -- means that today’s move doesn’t actually bring finality to the project. The pipeline still remains in limbo. The incoming administration already stated its support for the project and the courts have already stated twice that it appeared the Corps followed the required process in considering the permit. For the next month and a half, nothing about this project will change. For the immediate future, the safety of residents, protesters, law enforcement, and workers remains my top priority as it should for everyone involved. As some of the protesters have become increasingly violent and unlawful (sic; notice the conflicting accounts about fires being set, and associated water cannon usage) and as North Dakota’s winter has already arrived – with a blizzard raging last week through the area where protesters are located -- I’m hoping now that protesters will act responsibly to avoid endangering their health and safety, and move off of the Corps land north of the Cannonball River.”

Read only the first bullet point in this lengthy piece for more about the violence and tactics used by authorities.  Heitkamp, a very conservative Democrat, was referenced in this post last week as she interviewed for a job in the Trump administration.  If she remains in the Senate, my prediction is that she will change parties in order to hold her seat in 2018.  Trump, as you may already know, supports DAPL and may own stock (Bloomberg says so, but Snopes says 'unproven' -- Update: Confirmed just after post time, he's sold out) in Energy Transfer Partners, the pipeline company owned by Dallas billionaire Kelcy Warren, who's donated heavily to Trump and other Republicans, specifically Texan ones, in this cycle.  I wonder if any of this came up in Trump's conversation with Al Gore yesterday.

Two more things:  Activists contend that ETP will dig the pipeline under the Missouri River and just pay the fines, and ETP says they will see the project through to completion (a necessary assurance for stock- and stakeholders).  And if you want to see how corporate media reports this story, read this.  Either way the pipeline will happen, even if it has to wait for Trump to be inaugurated in six weeks.

Despite the celebrations taking place at the site of protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), experts say the recent decision to stop the pipeline could be reversed by the Trump administration or the next Congress. "Legally, this is an action that can be overturned easily," says Sharon Buccino, an attorney and director of the Land and Wildlife program at the National Resources Defense Council.

[...]

(A)ccording to Deborah Sivas, a professor of environmental law at Stanford University, there are multiple ways the pipeline might still be completed legally in its current location. The Republican-led Congress could vote to clear the way for ETP to drill under the Missouri River by passing an appropriations rider. Then the company would no longer need an easement from the Army Corps to comply with the Clean Water Act, and could thus complete the pipeline. "Trump could sign off on it in week one," Sivas says. "All it takes is one sentence."

Or Trump could go a slightly more patient route and still achieve the same result.

Alternatively, according to Buccino, Congress could exclude public input from the environmental impact statement ordered by the Army Corps, excluding Standing Rock Sioux tribal members from participating and thereby sidestepping complaints that the project desecrates sacred burial sites. Such actions would likely be subject to public criticism, she acknowledges. Buccino also points out that Jo-Ellen Darcy, the Army Corps official who made the announcement, was appointed by President Barack Obama and will leave her position in January. Donald Trump and his administration officials could exert pressure and guidance on the Army Corps' commanders to reverse their decision.

A battle was won, but the war is still lost.

The Weekly Wrangle

With the first December blog post roundup, the Texas Progressive Alliance plans to send half its members to Mexico unless it gets a tax break.

Off the Kuff takes a deeper look at the judicial races in Harris County to get a better sense of the partisan mix this year.

Libby Shaw at Daily Kos notes that Trump’s promise to drain the swamp by packing it with billionaires, bigots, homophobes, Islamaphobes, climate change deniers and white supremacists is not helpful to his working class voters. In fact, with this crew in place, Trump promises to stiff his base. Welcome to Trump’s United States of Texas.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme is still processing Donald Trump, the racist, misogynistic con man as president-'elect' while Greg Abbott acts out the white nationalist agenda here in Texas.

Socratic Gadfly, in the third of a series of posts on the Jill Stein presidential vote recount snarks on Greg Palast while taking a serious look at recount and Green Party issues.

In evaluating the Trump Cabinet picks to date, PDiddie at Brains and Eggs discovered there was also a much deeper hole than initially perceived that the Democrats have dug themselves into ... and must dig their own way out of.

The Lewisville Texan Journal reports that Denton County's former elections adminstrator has been rehired as their new one, after holding the same post in Tarrant County and following the retirement of the current one, prompted by a slew of voting irregularities there.

Dos Centavos advances an upcoming panel discussion at Rice University on the evolving nature of Mexico-US business relations under the Trump administration.

Texas Freedom Network assembles the quotes of the week from around the state.

Neil at All People Have Value says he does whatever graffiti instructs him to do. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

=====================

And here are some posts of interest from other Texas news outlets.

The Dallas News hears that Louie Gohmert is still a little raw after getting scalded about his balcony barbecue operation.

The SAEN reports that Bexar County Democrats want their new party chair, Manuel Medina,  to run for mayor of San Antone.  (Clue to Texas Dems: this might be the star you're looking for.  He's got all the $$$ sources, situational ethics, and identity politics you like to see in your candidates.)

Grits for Breakfast indicates that the first Waco Twin Peaks biker trial is slated to begin in January, and also complains about the falsehoods associated with crime being reported as fact.

Lawflog laughingly noted the TABC officials who served liquor illegally at their recent conclave.

The Texas Election Law Blog comments on vote "fraud" and recounts in our post-truth atmosphere.

The TSTA Blog highlights the problems with private school vouchers.

The WAWG Blog answers the question: "Why privatize Social Security?"

The Texas Living Waters Project asks what steps your utility is taking to conserve water.

Katie Singh lists some Texas organizations that could use your support.

BeyondBONES asks for your assistance in helping the scientists of tomorrow.

And CultureMap Houston lists some Hill Country Christmas holiday events in Gruene, Fredericksburg, Johnson City, and Wimberley.

Sunday Funnies

Troll-in-Chief inadvertently makes SNL's point