Tag: Trump

Trump picks NASA transition team leader

10:40 am

The Trump transition team has named its first member whose focus is NASA.

The pick is Chris Shank, who worked under Mike Griffin during the last Bush administration and has more recently been a staffer at the House science committee.

Shank is an experienced space policy professional. From 2001-2005, he served on what was then the House Science Committee staff specializing in human spaceflight and Earth science issues. After joining NASA as a special assistant to Griffin in 2005, he was appointed NASA’s chief of strategic communications in 2008. He left NASA in January 2009 at the end of the Bush Administration and worked first at the Applied Physics Lab and later Honeywell Aerospace. He returned to Capitol Hill in 2011 as Deputy Chief of Staff to Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), who is now chairman of House SS&T, and in 2013 was appointed policy and coalitions director for the full committee.

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The science lobby looks at Trump’s pick for Health Secretary

10:11 am

Link here. The Nature article clearly takes a partisan and opposition view of Trump’s pick, Congressman Tom Price (R-Georgia). Nonetheless, it does give good insight into Price himself. I especially like this quote, used by Nature to imply that Price is somehow hostile to science:

But Price’s stance on biomedical research issues is harder to parse. He has taken few public positions on science, but has consistently pushed to cut overall federal spending. Last year, he voted against a bill that would overhaul FDA regulations and provide US$8.75 billion in mandatory funding to the NIH over five years.

Price also opposes President Barack Obama’s proposed $755-million Cancer Moonshot, which seeks to double the pace of cancer research over the next decade. “We’re all in favour of increasing funding for cancer research,” Price told STAT News in January. “The problem that the administration has is that they always want to add funding on, they never want to decrease funding somewhere else. That’s what needs to happen.” [emphasis mine]

There was once a time where Price’s approach would have been considered plain common sense. In today’s mad leftwing world however the idea that resources are not unlimited and that people have to make careful choices is considered evil and anti-science.

Expect these kinds of attacks to continue nonstop throughout the entire Trump administration, especially if that administration and Congress continue to push for a bit of restraint on budget issues. This is what happened during Reagan’s first term in the 1980s. The result was that eventually Reagan was never able to trim costs or eliminate any federal agencies, as the attacks caused many of his more radical cabinet picks to resign and the Republicans in Congress to eventually back down.

Today, however, things are different in one major way. Then, there was no alternative to the liberal press. Today, there are such alternatives. Moreover, the bias of the liberal press today is much more evident. Many more people recognize it, and do not take their howls of indignation as seriously. If Trump and the Republicans have some courage and do not back down, they can win this battle. All it will take is some courage. We shall see if they have it.

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Trump and the Republican establishment team up

6:11 pm

The House Republican majority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-California) today said that their partnership with Trump will allow them to ignore the conservative Freedom Caucus.

Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy signaled that Republican brass doesn’t plan to kowtow to the conservatives anymore. Ryan’s No. 2 predicted that it’ll finally be the other way around. The group will be forced to fall in line. During a forum hosted by The Washington Post, McCarthy forecasted a less influential Freedom Caucus, a bolder GOP leadership team, and a more unified GOP conference. Altogether, the California Republican explained, “you’re going to see us sticking together more.” That’d be a significant change from the last two years.

…Famous for making deals, Trump won’t worry about reaching across the aisle to compromise with Democrats. For the pragmatic president-elect, bipartisanship is a bonus, not a liability. The threat of losing 35 members of the Freedom Caucus won’t fill Trump’s White House with fear. Depending on the significance of the legislation, Trump won’t have much trouble getting his agenda through the House. Democrats have already signaled that they’re ready to work with the new administration. They won’t hesitate to jump onboard a trillion-dollar infrastructure package or a protectionist trade deal.

I am not surprised. I do feel bad for all those conservatives who went with Trump instead of Cruz because they imagined him first as an “outsider” instead of the moderate Democrat that he is.

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Trump picks pro-voucher conservative for Education Secretary

10:55 am

President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Betsy DeVos, a wealthy pro-voucher Republican activist, to head the Education Department.

Her record puts her dead center within establishment Republican Party circles.

In related news, Trump has chosen Elaine Chao as Transportation Secretary. Chao was previously labor secretary in the last Bush administration, and also happens to be the wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Once again, someone deeply linked to the establishment Republican Party.

At the same time, both picks have strong links to the very conservative Heritage Foundation.

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Donor pulls funds from Hawaii college for Trump protest

7:48 pm

Pushback: A donor to arts department of the University of Hawaii has pulled more than $40,000 of funding after the department chairwoman organized an anti-Trump rally.

It is pretty clear from the article that the chairwoman was doing the protest on her own time and was not violating any rules of the university. The donor simply felt that if she could express her political opinions to which he disagreed, so could he.

Link fixed!

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NASA global warming advocate Gavin Schmidt fights back

10:05 am

The head of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS), Gavin Schmidt, declared in a newspaper interview on Thursday that “Global warming doesn’t care about the election.”

The science community and environmental campaigners in the US have already begun efforts to persuade Mr Trump that climate change is actually real before he takes office next year. Dr Gavin Schmidt, the director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, signalled they would have allies among the federal science agencies. He tweeted a graph including new data from Nasa showing that last month was the second warmest October on record, putting 2016 firmly on course to be the warmest year. “No surprise here, planetary warming does not care about the election,” he wrote.

I would not be surprised if Schmidt ends up getting fired by Trump. His monthly graphs showing each month to be the hottest on record, such as the one he tweeted in the quote above, have been absurd campaigning, not science. For one thing, the differences from month to month have been in the hundredths of a degrees, well within the margins of error and essentially insignificant in value. To claim that his data has determined the “hottest” month on record from this is demonstrating that he is not a scientist, but a political activist.

Gavin Schmidt vs the satellite data

Secondly, his data is not trustworthy to begin with. Schmidt has been in charge of all of the data tampering at NASA that has consistently altered the decades-old surface temperature record — without any clear scientific justification — to cool the past and warm the present so that the amount of warming is emphasized. While his graphs show the climate to be warming, based on surface data that he has been adjusting, the satellite data that NASA gathers that he (a NASA scientist) generally ignores, does not. The image to the right illustrates this, and shows that the divergence between his adjusted surface data and the satellite data has been increasing steadily over the years.

I fully expect Schmidt and the other global warming scientists in NASA and NOAA to team up with the press, as Schmidt does here, to defy Trump. Whether Trump will have the courage to fight back, something no Republican has been willing to do for decades, will be the key question.

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No Trump NASA transition team yet

9:09 am

It appears that the Trump transition operation has no plans as yet to form a transition team for NASA.

NASA Associate Administrator Robert Lightfoot sent a memo to NASA employees stating that NASA has been informed that no ART will be assigned to NASA for now. “The President-Elect Transition Team (PETT) has indicated that NASA will not be receiving an Agency Review Team (ART) at this time. NASA, as all federal agencies, stands ready to support the PETT at a future date.” A NASA transition team could be set up later, although time is getting short, or the incoming Administration could wait until after the inauguration to address NASA and other space issues.

Rumors were that former Congressman Bob Walker would be very involved in a NASA transition team. He was the point man for space policy during the final weeks of the Trump campaign. He co-authored two op-eds for Space News, one on civil space policy, the other on national security space, and spoke to the FAA’s Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) on October 26 outlining top-level Trump space priorities. Walker became a lobbyist after he retired from Congress and is now executive chairman of one of the top lobbying firms in Washington, Wexler|Walker. The lobbyist ban presumably excludes him from serving now.

One pattern I see developing with Trump is his willingness to hire and fire people. The change in transition leadership between Christie and Pence shows this. I suspect that he will be replacing cabinet appointees and administration management heads much more frequently that we are used to seeing in government. This is good. And it will certainly be different from the Obama administration, where you could literally commit crimes and not be fired.

As to NASA, it is not surprising that Trump is not making this a priority. It is not unusual for it to take months, even a year, for a new administration to pick its NASA administrator. That is what happened under Obama. The new administration has far more important slots to fill that must come first.

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Three things Trump can do to strengthen the 2nd amendment

11:13 am

Link here. The three things are, first appoint Supreme Court judges who support the individual’s right to bear arms; second pass a law forcing states to recognize the gun permits issued by other states, as they do with driver’s licenses; three eliminate the absurd gun-free regulations imposed on the military at military bases.

It is very likely that all three of these things will happen, which at a minimum will make a Trump administration a success, at least in terms of the second amendment.

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A list of potential Trump staffers

9:03 am

Link here. Once again, providing lists like this with information about the individuals being considered for potential senior White House staff positions is something the press should have been doing prior to the election, not after. They, unfortunately, were too busy campaigning rather than doing their jobs.

The list is interesting, because like the list of cabinet candidates from yesterday it includes people with a range of outlooks. In this case, however, the range has to do with whether they are friends of the Washington establishment or hostile to it. Thus, until Trump makes some decisions we still have no idea what direction his administration will go.

I will add that the general political tone of these people however is conservative, which is a very hopeful sign. So is this story also: Trump plan calls for nationwide concealed carry and an end to gun bans

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““Die whites die”

12:01 pm

The hate is real: An anti-Trump protest turned into a riot in New Orleans yesterday, with broken windows and defaced monuments.

Lee Circle was fully covered in graffiti with phrases like “Black Power” and “Dismantle White Supremacy”. Later, an effigy of Trump was burned while glass windows at a nearby bank were shattered. Other phrases like “No Trump, no KKK” were used to vandalize surrounding areas, as well as the threatening phrase “Die whites die” and “F*ck Trump”.

So tell me please, who is exhibiting the most race hatred here?

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A list of potential Trump cabinet picks

10:35 am

Link here.

As is usual, the bankrupt press didn’t do this work before the election, when it might have helped voters make their decisions. I tried to dig out some of this beforehand, and was somewhat successful, but I wish I could have seen lists like this prior to election day.

The list is interesting in that it includes an incredible range of political positions. For example, the three names touted for Secretary of State, John Bolton, Senator Bob Corker, and Newt Gingrich, cover the full political range. Bolton would be a solid conservative hawk, as would Gingrich. Corker however was instrumental in making Obama’s bad Iran nuclear deal possible, and would end up more or less continuing Obama’s foreign policy at State. All three, however, have previously been mentioned as possible choices, so as of this moment we still do not know where Trump will be going in this area.

I see the same political range in other positions as well. Even though the list leans heavily to the right, until Trump announces some appointments, we will not really know the direction his administration will take.

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Will Republicans and Trump reduce the budget? Maybe not!

10:23 am

Hypocrites and liars: Less than two days after winning the Presidency and retaining control of both houses of Congress, Republican budget cutters are already signaling that they are now more willing to considering big spending projects, now that they are no longer opposing a Democratic president.

Sen. David Perdue (R-.Ga) stood on the Senate floor a little more than one month ago and declared that “we have a budget crisis. We have a debt crisis.” Two weeks ago, he wrote in an op-ed that “President Obama’s budgets ignored fiscally responsible principles, instead leaving an ever-growing mountain of debt for taxpayers down the road,” and he urged the United States to pass a balanced-budget amendment ensuring that the government can’t spend more than it takes in.

But asked about President-elect Donald Trump’s fiscal plans on Wednesday morning, Perdue sounded much less of an urgent note. “Well, I think there’s a short-term view and a long-term view. What we need is a long-term strategy, and by long-term, I’m talking, you’re going to say, 30 to 40 years to solve this debt crisis eventually,” Perdue said in an interview on CNBC.

,,,Perdue’s comments on CNBC could be one sign of how the politics of debt in Washington may shift when Trump takes office Jan. 20. Under George W. Bush, the nation’s debt exploded with federal spending and tax cuts, often with the consent of Republicans in Congress. But over the past eight years, the Republican establishment has repeatedly excoriated President Obama for plans that don’t immediately balance the budget.

Trump’s liberal roots had him immediately propose a variety of big government spending projects in his acceptance speech, and it appears that the Republican leadership is eager to go along, as they did with Obama, to put those big spending plans in place. Unfortunately, it also appears that that leadership might not get much resistance for bigger spending from its rank and file, who will no longer be fighting a Democratic administration and thus can jump on the bandwagon for more pork in their districts.

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The pushback against Trump begins

9:59 am

Articles today in the science journals Science and Nature give us a taste of the upcoming resistance by the science community to any policy changes put forth by the new Trump administration.

Both articles assume that the Paris climate agreement is already the law of the land, despite the basic fact that the Senate has not approved it. In fact, if Trump and Congress decide to cut all American ties with it, they can. Right now it is merely something that Obama has agreed to, and under our Constitution, the legalities binding us to that agreement are weak, at best.

This quote from the Science article outlines how the science community plans to structure its resistance:

With oilmen like Harold Hamm, CEO of Continental Resources, and Forrest Lucas, the founder of Lucas Oil, named as potential candidates to lead the Departments of Energy and the Interior, respectively, in a Trump administration, the mostly likely historical analogue for the next few years could be the start of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, when he appointed senior officials who were often hostile to the policies of their own agencies. For example, Reagan’s Secretary of the Interior, James Watt, wanted to sell off public lands and reduce forest protections, and his EPA head, Anne Gorsuch, moved to soften clear air and water rules. Some agency staff fought back, and there were frequent leaks, resignations, and lawsuits. Both Watt and Gorsuch ultimately resigned amidst political chaos, and were replaced by less polarizing appointments. If Trump follows a similar path, “there could be a whole lot of churn,” Victor predicts.

Indeed, Trump may quickly learn the limits of the presidency, Victor adds. “The Oval Office will be a lonely place,” he says, if the White House attempts to make radical changes that agency professional staff fiercely opposes. [emphasis mine]

And then there is this quote from the Nature article:

“Trump will be the first anti-science president we have ever had,” says Michael Lubell, director of public affairs for the American Physical Society in Washington DC. “The consequences are going to be very, very severe.”

Calling Trump “the first anti-science president” is the kind of name-calling that is typical of the left and the Democratic Party. Not only is it a silly statement, based merely on the partisan hatred of Republicans by scientists, almost all of whom are Democratic Party loyalists, it has nothing to do with reality. Scientists have no more right to a blank check from the government than anyone else. They need to justify their research, and show that it is worthwhile. Since the 1990s they have not had to do this, which has resulted in blooming budgets and a lot of questionable results. And I say this as a science guy. Unlike these partisans, however, I also recognize that there is a gigantic amount of needless spending in the science budgets of numerous government agencies. Their budgets have grown significantly since 2000, with little to show for it. It is time to bring that spending under some control.

This is only the first shot across the bow. I have no doubt that the science community plans to link up with the partisan mainstream press to create a full-court press against any policy changes or budget cuts that either Trump or Congress may propose. These people do not respect the concept of democracy, and will resist the will of the public in every way they can.

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Anti-Trump protesters vandalize Richmond Republican headquarters

9:17 pm

The hate is real: Anti-Trump protesters today vandalized Richmond Republican headquarters while also blocking roads.

I could also add that this is only the beginning. You see, the left doesn’t really believe in democracy, whereby you accept the will of the majority. To them, the only ones who are qualified to rule are themselves, or their leaders, and any other choice by the rest of the population must be destroyed, by any means necessary.

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Clinton supporters issue death threats and riot

9:16 am

The hate is real: In response to Donald Trump’s victory, Clinton supporters in California and Oregon rioted, with others issuing death threats on social media.

I could also list several dozen stories detailing the horror and disbelief of the intellectual community, in Washington, in the major cities, and across academia. They will not accept this election, and are right this second starting to plan their resistance to any policy Trump or the Republicans may put forth.

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