Week 3 – the crazy continues

Last updated on: February 9, 2017 at 9:20 am by Jane the Actuary

Week 3 – the crazy continues 2017-02-09T09:20:54-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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I admit I’m still not used to the idea of Donald Trump as president. It certainly doesn’t seem as if it’s possible that this could continue for another 3 years and 49 weeks. And I can’t even keep track of all the crazy that’s happening — and that’s not just coming from the White House.

Item 1: Elizabeth Warren is being hailed as a new national hero, for nothing of any significance. She was in the middle of reading a 30 year old letter in which Coretta Scott King criticized Senator Jeff Sessions when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell invoked a senate rule against criticizing other senators, and, by a party-line vote, ended her speaking time. (See, e.g., CNN.) And now she’s got her own hashtag, #ShePersists, and is being labeled on twitter as a modern-day Rosa Parks. At the same time, there are theories that McConnell did this for strategic reasons; if Warren’s popularity increases, that keeps the Democratic party tilted to the left, and makes it more difficult for them to reach out to moderates, as well as giving the Republican grass roots a target for their own two minutes’ hate.

Item 2: Betsy DeVos. Was she really the right person for the job of Education Secretary? I don’t know. Her supporters say that, even though she wasn’t a professional politician or bureaucrat, she had deeply immersed herself in the issues. And the frenzy coming across my facebook feed went so overboard that it’s hard to take seriously, basically shouting out that four years from now, not a single child will be left in America that’s capable of reading, and portrayed the Secretary’s role as that of direct hands-on management, kind of like Atlas holding up the Earth, and that if she takes her eye off the ball for even a minute disabled children will lose their educational services. Yes, there is good and bad in voucher/school choice systems, but it’s also not clear to me how much DeVos can do with her position, when spending is generally dictated by law, except for whatever pet projects she might promote on a pilot basis.

Item 3: “Trump labor nominee said 40% of his workers were once undocumented” — that’s the headline of a CNN article that was linked to on its homepage earlier today. The headline makes it seem as if Andrew Puzder, the nominee and CEO of a fast food chain, intentionally hired illegal immigrants. The reality was that his quote was about the difficulty of excluding illegal workers, and the benefit of E-Verify in allowing employers to genuinely check documents in a way that wasn’t possible before (when questioning documents you suspect are fake is termed unlawful discrimination).

This E-Verify system has been wonderful for us because it used to be that we’d have people in the restaurants and somebody would announce that ICE was coming and 40% of the employees wouldn’t show up.”

“And it wasn’t that we were out there trying to hire illegal immigrants,” he continued. “They all have social security cards and driver’s licenses and there was no way to check through the government. So now we have it. But you can’t go back, you can’t go back and E-Verify former employees because there’s a lot of them and it’s expensive and you don’t want to look like you’re discriminating, but going forward we’re using E-Verify so we’re hiring a population that’s here legally.”

Item 4: Yes, I could write more than you care to read about Trump’s crazy twitter pronouncements, and his affection for lies of various kinds. It’s just painful. I still just can’t comprehend this continuing. And the “Muslim ban”? How hard would it have been to have said, “we will stop processing visa applications for 120 days”, instead of this PR mess and court battle? (Added:) And this whole bit with Nordstrom — the store removing the Ivanka Trump line, with the claim of low sales and the suspicion of politics, and Trump responding with an anti-Nordstrom tweet? It’s hard to know what the long-term story will be (will the line be shut down? will the Trump family use the White House to push Trump products?), but it’s not looking good.

Item 5: Local politics. In Illinois, the 2018 gubernatorial election will be multi-millionaire vs. multi-millionaire, as Chris Kennedy (who apparently isn’t trading on the Kennedy name so much as his wealth) announced his candidacy today. Politico reports,

Kennedy’s entrance in the race instantly raises the profile of a state Democratic primary where billionaire J.B. Pritzker is also exploring a run. Chicago Ald. Ameya Pawar was the first to file paperwork to enter the primary. . . .

Democrats have sought a wealthy candidate to counter Rauner in 2018. The first-term incumbent has poured an unprecedented amount of money into campaign spending — first breaking records in his run for governor, and recently depositing $50 million into his own campaign account.

So there you have it – and it’s only Thursday. What will next week bring?

Image: it’s a flippin’ train wreck. public domain, from pixabay.com

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