Saturday, December 10, 2016

THE TRUMP CABINET of STOOGES, LOOTERS and CRONIES

Trump chooses millionaire fast food executive as secretary of labor


TRUMPERNOMICS: Serving the Rich, the Greedy and the Crooked.

TRUMP’S CABINET OF STOOGES, LOOTERS and CRONIES


Puzder’s nomination is of a piece with Trump’s other cabinet choices. Betsy DeVos, an enemy of public education, has been selected to head the Department of Education. Ben Carson, the neurosurgeon known for his antipathy towards government “interference” in housing regulation, has been nominated as the Housing and Urban Development Secretary.

AMERICA: A NATION RULED BY and FOR  CRONY BANKSTERS

TRUMP VOWS TO KEEP OBAMA’S CRONY BANKSTERS LOOTING

MNUCHIN: THE  FORECLOSURE  MACHINE!
The FDIC paid OneWest $1 billion, which Stein said went to “billionaire investors … to cover the close of foreclosing on working class, everyday American folks.”
“But the bank came under fire for its foreclosure practices as housing advocacy groups accused it of being too quick to foreclose on struggling homeowners. In 2011, dozens of demonstrators descended on Mnuchin's $26.5 million home in he wealthy Bel Air neighborhood to protest OneWest's eviction tactics, according to the Los Angeles Times.”

Wikileaks exposed!



BARACK OBAMA AND THE GOLDEN AGE OF CRONY BANKSTER LOOTING…. And not one went to prison!

 “Citigroup’s recommendations came just three days after then-President George W. Bush signed into law the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which allocated $700 billion in taxpayer money to rescue the largest Wall Street banks. The single biggest beneficiary was Citigroup, which was given $45 billion in cash in the form of a government stock  purchase, plus a $306 billion government guarantee to back up its worthless mortgage-related assets.”

MUCH MORE HERE:


“As president, Obama not only funneled trillions of  dollars to the banks, he saw to it that not a single leading Wall Street executive faced prosecution for the orgy of speculation and swindling that led to the financial collapse and Great Recession, and he personally intervened to block legislation capping executive pay at bailed-out firms.”

“So when Clinton was hobnobbing with  Goldman Sachs CEO Blankfein in 2013, while  investigations of wrongdoing by Goldman and the other Wall Street banks were still ongoing, she was consorting with a man who belonged in prison.”



 THANKSGIVING 2016 
THE LAST BEFORE THE REVOLUTION

STAGGERING ADDICTION and POVERTY IN AMERICA

Markets pushed to record highs on Trump surge

Markets pushed to record highs on Trump surge

By Nick Beams
12 December 2016

In his book on the 1930s Depression, The Great Crash, the economist John Kenneth Galbraith included a chapter titled “In Goldman, Sachs We Trust.” The title could well be reprised in an analysis of the stock market surge that has followed the election of Donald Trump to the US presidency.
Since November 8, Wall Street’s Dow Jones index has risen by 7.8 percent, closing on Friday at a record high of 19,765—the 14th record close since the election of Trump. It is heading toward 20,000 just weeks after it broke through 19,000 for the first time. The euphoric surge in the Dow is even more remarkable considering that on election night the futures index at one pointed indicated a possible 500-point decline.
The broader-based S&P 500 index has also enjoyed a surge. It has risen by 5.6 percent in the last month and also set a new record on Friday—the seventh time it has done so since the election.
The chief component in the rise of the Dow 

has been the leap in the share price of the 

investment and banking giant Goldman 

Sachs. Its shares have risen by 33 percent, 

making it responsible for 29 percent of the 

overall rise in the Dow, or 400 points out of 

the total 1,422-point increase in the index 

since the election.
The second biggest contributor to the stock market 

lift-off has been JPMorgan Chase. Its shares have 

risen by 22 percent, contributing 7 percent to the 

rise in the Dow.
During the election campaign, Trump railed against the Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton for her close connections with Wall Street, and Goldman Sachs in particular. On Friday, however, Trump offered a major economic post in his administration to Gary Cohn, the president and chief operating officer of Goldman Sachs, second in the chain of command to CEO Lloyd Blankfein.
Cohn has been tapped by Trump to head the incoming administration’s National Economic Council, responsible for implementing the White House’s economic policy agenda. If he accepts, he will join two other former Goldman Sachs operatives in the new administration—Steven Mnuchin, who is to head the treasury department, and the ultra-right-wing Steve Bannon, who is to be the chief strategist of the Trump administration.

As for Blankfein, who supported Clinton in the election, he has turned around. Summing up the attitude of much of the financial aristocracy to the new administration, he told the Wall Street Journal that Trump was “a very smart guy,” who “may turn out to be a much better president than anyone else who might have been in that place.”
On the basis of appointments made so far, the Trump cabinet will be the wealthiest in American history. His choices for the key posts of Treasury, Commerce, Education and Transportation have a combined net worth of at least $8.1 billion.
The chief motivating factor behind the rise on Wall Street is the understanding that the incoming Trump administration will not only carry out policies to benefit the financial elites, but that responsibility for implementing this agenda will be in the hands of some its foremost representatives.
One of the main reasons for the rise in bank stocks, reflected in the fortunes of Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, is that a Trump administration will tear up the few restrictions on the operations of the banks and finance houses put in place under the Dodd-Frank Act, which was introduced in response to the global financial crisis of 2008. The 2011 report on the financial crisis 

produced by the Senate Permanent 

Subcommittee on Investigations made 

it clear that Goldman Sachs’ 

operations in the lead-up to the 2008 

Wall Street crash were of a criminal character.
Another factor fuelling the enthusiasm on Wall Street is the prospect that a Trump administration will cut the corporate tax rate to as low as 15 percent from its present level of 35 percent, while introducing personal tax cuts for the very wealthy.
The so-called infrastructure program of the new regime is also viewed as providing a boost to the bottom line. The basis of the Trump plan, at least so far as it has been revealed, is not a program of government works, but rather the provision of massive tax write-offs—possibly as high as 80 per cent—for corporations that undertake infrastructure projects. These will involve public-private partnerships under which the corporations will enjoy a permanent revenue stream from their operation.
Consequently, engineering, transport and construction companies are among those that have enjoyed a rise on Wall Street. Energy companies have also benefited based on the view that a Trump administration will ease environmental and other regulations in line with a broader deregulatory program across the economy as a whole.
Trump campaigned on the slogan “Make America Great Again” in an attempt to tap into the hostility to the political and financial establishment across broad layers of the American population—a hostility reflected not only in support for him, but even more strongly in that received by the Democratic Party contender Bernie Sanders, who proclaimed himself a “socialist” and opposed to the “billionaire class” before swinging behind Clinton once she received the nomination.
The basis of that opposition has been underscored by a new study on economic inequality in the US issued by economists Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman released last week. It showed that in the period from 1980 to 2014, the latest year for which complete data were available, the share of income received by the bottom half of the population, a total of 117 million adults, fell from 20 percent of the total to just 12.5 percent.
No doubt one of the factors in the rise on Wall Street is the recognition that the new administration will increase these trends even further.
There is also the perception that US firms will be the beneficiaries of the economic nationalist “America-first” agenda that forms the centre of the Trump program.
In general, media commentary on the rise in the markets has been celebratory in tone. But some notes of caution have been sounded. According to a measure developed by economist Robert Shiller, the present level of the cyclically adjusted price/earnings ratio stands at a level exceeded only three previous times: in 1929, in 2000 at the height of the tech bubble, and in 2007 during the housing and stock bubble.
Others have drawn parallels with the economic nationalist and protectionist Hoover administration, which sparked a 13 percent market surge in 1928 before the US economy plunged into the Great Depression.


AMERICA DIES YOUNG, POOR AND 

ADDICTED!



A Nation Commits Suicide


TRUMPERNOMICS: Serving the Rich, the Greedy and the Crooked.

TRUMP’S CABINET OF STOOGES, LOOTERS and CRONIES


Puzder’s nomination is of a piece with Trump’s other cabinet 

choices. Betsy DeVos, an enemy of public education, has 

been selected to head the Department of Education. Ben 

Carson, the neurosurgeon known for his antipathy towards 

government “interference” in housing regulation, has been 

nominated as the Housing and Urban Development 

Secretary.



ANDREW PUZDER: 

ENEMY OF THE AMERICAN WORKER and 

ADVOCATE FOR OPEN BORDERS

TRUMP'S OPEN BORDERS AND AMNESTY/ NON-ENFORCEMENT POLICIES WILL HELP KEEP THE HAMBURGER INDUSTRY WELL STOCKED WITH "CHEAP" LABOR ILLEGALS.... The America people will then be forced to pay the REAL cost of all that staggeringly expensive labor



“Yet Andrew Puzder, the chief executive of the company that operates Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, has been chosen by President-elect Donald Trump as labor secretary.”


“Mr. Puzder, however, has been adamantly opposed to a meaningful increase in the federal minimum wage, which is $7.25 an hour. Mr. Trump has said he could stomach an increase to $10, which is still abysmal.”


“Here is the record at those restaurants. When the Obama Labor Department looked at thousands of complaints involving fast-food workers, it found labor law violations in 60 percent of the investigations at Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, usually for failure to pay the minimum wage or time and a half for overtime.”

HOW MANY HAMBURGER JOINTS HIRE legals???? 


TRUMPERnomics:

AFTER OBAMA-CLINTONIMCS, THE LOOTING OF AMERICA BY THE RICH TO CONTINUE UNDER THEIR OWN, DONALD TRUMP
TRUMP FILLS THE “SWAMP” WITH CRONY BILLIONAIRES!
"Far from Trump’s demagogic claims that he would 'drain the swamp,' the corrupt nexus between Wall Street and Washington is tighter than ever."
OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS ......
is now the new TRUMPERnomics!

TRUMP VOWS TO SERVE THE RICH WITH SUPER OBAMA-CLINTONIMCS!
There is a vast chasm between this empty populist rhetoric and the personnel that Trump has selected to populate his government. The speech followed a series of cabinet picks, including billionaire asset strippers, Wall Street bankers, and dedicated opponents of financial and corporate regulations, public education and Medicare and Medicaid, to lead the Treasury, Commerce, Education and Health and Human Services departments.
TRUMP  IMPOSES  OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS:  Cut Federal Pensions and Medicare to Cover Tax Cuts For the Super Rich
"Trump is not the initiator of this class war against working people. It has been underway for decades, beginning in earnest with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and continuing under every succeeding administration, including the eight-year tenures of Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. The colossal redistribution of wealth and income from the bottom to the top of American society reached record proportions under Obama, whose legacy of falling living standards and worsening economic crisis for tens of millions of workers was a decisive factor in the victory of the fascistic demagogue and con artist Trump."

 TO COVER TAX CUTS FOR THE SUPER RICH, TRUMP 

VOWS TO STRIP MEDICARE
It is obvious that this scheme will mean a drastic decline in health care for the elderly and disabled and result in increased poverty and disease and premature death for millions of people. This is precisely what corporate America, which considers health care for the elderly and poor an intolerable drain on its profits, intends.

 

THE TWISTED ROAD TO REVOLUTION CAME DOWN WALL STREET 

FIRST


OBAMA –CLINTONOMICS FOR THE SUPER RICH


"Between 2002 and 2015 annual earnings for the bottom 90 percent of Americans rose by 

only 4.5 percent, while earnings for the top 1 percent grew by 22.7 percent, according to the

Economic Policy Institute. Under the Obama administration, more than 90 percent of 

income gains since the so-called “recovery” began have gone to the top one percent."

 



 “Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes.  This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan THEAMERICAN THINKER.com

 

 

THE GIG JOB ECONOMY…. To keep wages DEPRESSED


As Barack Obama invites hordes to jump our borders jobs, welfare offices and voting booths…. WHAT IS LEFT FOR THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS HE HATES SO MUCH?

 

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-gig-economy-america-no-legal-need.html



FOLLOWING THE CRIMES OF BILL AND HILLARY CLINTON BECOMES AMERICA’S ROAD TO REVOLUTION

 

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/10/bill-and-hillary-clintons-global.html


Transcripts released by WikiLeaks of Clinton speeches to Wall 

Street bankers, for which she received six-figure paychecks, 

show her praising the recommendations of the 2010 Simpson-

Bowles deficit-reduction commission, which called for sweeping 

cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; the elimination 

of 200,000 federal jobs; a tax on employees’



SOARING POVERTY AND UNEMPLOYMENT  UNDER OBAMA’S OPEN 

 

BORDERS POLICIES.


http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/10/millions-of-americans-legals-unemployed.html



WAKE UP, FOOLS! It’s already here!!!

 

AMERICA’S TWISTED ROAD TO REVOLUTION: 

 

Fighting back Wall Street’s Looting and Rule


http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/09/america-nation-ruled-wall-streets.html

 

LUV FEST:

LIKE A W HORE AT AN ORGY…


HILLARY CLINTON and OBAMA’S CRONY BANKSTERS

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-secret-life-of-hillary-clinton.html


“So when Clinton was hobnobbing with  Goldman Sachs CEO Blankfein in 2013, while  investigations of wrongdoing by Goldman and the other Wall Street banks were still ongoing, she was consorting with a man who belonged in prison.”


OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS-TRUMPERNOMICS:


THE FINAL TRANSFER OF AMERICA’ ECONOMY TO THE SUPER RICH!

 

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/09/barack-obama-and-his-crony-bankstershow.html



THE GREAT DEPRESSION IS JUST AROUND THE/ALL CORNERS!

AMERICA’S ECONOMIC ARMAGEDDON – The Impact of Obama-Clintonomics
Under Obama-Clintonomics, the rich became VERY rich and we got the tax bills for their bailouts and crimes!

AMERICA’S FINAL DAYS:

The Global Looting of Bill & Hillary Clinton – unconvicted.

When asked to compare Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump, D'Souza said no contest.  "She is basically Obama plus gangsterism.  The Clintons are like Bonnie and Clyde.  Their goal is to steal America. 

In Hillary's America, D'Souza documents how Democrats transitioned from pro-slavery to pro-enslavement; the longstanding Democratic political war against women; how Hillary Clinton's political mentor was, literally, a cold-blooded gangster, Saul Alinsky; how the Clintons and other Democrats see foreign policy not in terms of national interest, but in terms of personal profit; and how Democratic-controlled cities have turned into hotbeds of crime and corruption.  American Thinker interviewed him about his latest projects

OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS:

IT WORKS!   BUT ONLY FOR THE SUPER RICH!!!
"The same period has seen a massive growth of social inequality, with income and wealth concentrated at the very top of American society to an extent not seen since the 1920s."

"He (Trump) is able to get a hearing because millions of people are being driven into economic insecurity and poverty while the rich and the super-rich continue to amass obscene levels of wealth. He is able with some success to divert mass discontent along reactionary nationalist and racialist channels precisely because what passes for the “left” in American politics, anchor by the Democratic Party, has moved ever further to the right, culminating in the Obama administration which has presided over endless war and an unprecedented redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top of the economic ladder."

BARACK OBAMA , HIS CRIMINAL BANKSTERS 

AND THE LA RAZA MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS….


There’s more than one way to destroy America’s white middle class!



HSBC laundered hundreds of millions and perhaps billions 

of dollars for drug cartels responsible for the deaths of tens 

of thousands of people over the past two decades. The bank 

transferred at least $881 million of known drug trafficking 

proceeds, including money from the Sinaloa Cartel 

in Mexico, which is known for dismembering its victims and 

publicly displaying their body parts.



STYLE DICTATORSHIP FOR ONE BARACK OBAMA, THE “Hope & Change” HUCKSTER FROM CHICAGO.


"The decline in homeownership is one sign of the deep social crisis in the United States. As rents and housing costs have soared, spurred on by financial speculation that has enriched the ruling elites, incomes and jobs for most Americans have shriveled."


SOARING POVERTY AND DRUG ADDICTION UNDER OBAMA

"These figures present a scathing indictment of the social order that prevails in America, the world’s wealthiest country, whose government proclaims itself to be the globe’s leading democracy. They are just one manifestation of the human toll taken by the vast and all-pervasive inequality and mass poverty 

OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS TO SERVE THE SUPER RICH:

The slow and painful death of America that dominates American society."

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/08/serving-super-rich-obama-clintonomics.html


THE OBAMA SOLUTION TO END WHITE CHRISTIAN AMERICA: 

DRUG ADDICTION!!!


MEXICO: AMERICA’S DRUG DEALER!

The same period has seen a massive growth of social inequality, with income and wealth concentrated at the very top of American society to an extent not seen since the 1920s.

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/08/obama-clintonomics-their-crony.html

“This study follows reports released over the past several months documenting rising mortality rates among US workers due to drug addiction and suicide, high rates of infant mortality, an overall leveling off of life expectancy, and a growing gap between the life expectancy of the bottom rung of income earners compared to those at the top.”

OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS FOR THE RICH: 
On behalf of bankster-owned Barack Obama, Yellen vows to the rich and crony banksters that they will be protected and subsidized with no strings bailouts during the next looming economic meltdown around the corner from elections.

“In fact, these policies have already produced financial and asset bubbles that are unsustainable, and there are increasing signs of financial instability and crisis. There are growing warnings that the spread of negative interest rates is leading to a new financial meltdown even worse than the disaster that struck eight years ago.”

"The same period has seen a massive growth of social inequality, with income and wealth concentrated at the very top of American society to an extent not seen since the 1920s."

THE OBAMA DOCTRINE: ABET CRONY BANKSTERS SO THEY CAN FINISH OFF THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS. KEEP BORDERS WIDE OPEN TO EASE MILLIONS OF MEX FLAG WAVERS INTO OUR JOBS, WELFARE OFFICES AND VOTING BOOTHS, AND EXPAND THE MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS’ MARKETS IN AMERICA’S OPEN BORDERS TO KILL OFF AMERICA’S WHITE POPULATION TO BUILD A MUSLIM-STYLE DICTATORSHIP FOR ONE BARACK OBAMA, THE “Hope & Change” HUCKSTER FROM CHICAGO.
\
AMERICA THE HOME OF THE HOMELESS: OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS AT WORK!

"The decline in homeownership is one sign of the deep social crisis in the United States. As rents and housing costs have soared, spurred on by financial speculation that has enriched the ruling elites, incomes and jobs for most Americans have shriveled."



AMERICA'S ROAD TO REVOLUTION




 “Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes.  This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan THE AMERICAN THINKER.com


OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS:

Build the La Raza Democrat Party base with open borders, no ID to vote Democrat, no E-VERIFY and NO DAMNED LEGAL NEED TO APPLY.

Keeping wages DEPRESSED with endless hordes of looting Mexicans invading keeps these corrupt politicians’ paymasters on Wall Street generous$.

"Republicans should call for lower immigration to stop the Democrat voter recruitment.  But more importantly, all Americans should call for lower immigration in order to offer a better opportunity of finding jobs for those millions of their fellow Americans of all political persuasions who would like to work."

MILLIONS OF AMERICAN JOBS HANDED OVER TO ILLEGALS ALONG WITH BILLIONS IN WELFARE.... AND THE PARTY HAS JUST BEGUN!


THE DEMOCRAT PARTY PLATFORM: 

NO DAMNED LEGAL NEED APPLY!

VIVA LA RAZA FASCISM? THEN VOTE DEM!

"Republicans should call for lower immigration to stop the Democrat voter recruitment.  But more importantly, all Americans should call for lower immigration in order to offer a better opportunity of finding jobs for those millions of their fellow Americans of all political persuasions who would like to work."

WHY OBAMA’S CRONY BANKSTERS WANT MORE OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS
            
“Clinton has also stepped up her efforts to woo billionaires who have traditionally supported Republican campaigns on the grounds that she will be a more effective “commander in chief” and defender of the interests of Wall Street.”



AMERICA’S YOUTH STARVE 

FOR EIGHT YEARS BARACK OBAMA AND HIS HAREM OF CORRUPT DEM POLS HAVE  SABOTAGED OUR BORDERS TO EASE TENS OF MILLIONS OF ILLEGALS INTO OUR JOBS, WELFARE OFFICES AND VOTING BOOTHS. 


What is left for Legals is only the tax bills for La Raza's looting!


The new reports show that in addition to “traditional” coping strategies of skipping meals and 

eating cheap food, these teens and pre-teens are increasingly forced into shoplifting, stealing, 

selling drugs, joining a gang, or selling their bodies for money in a struggle to eat properly.



THE DEMOCRAT PARTY: 

MUCK AMERICA’S YOUTH…. WE’VE GOT OUR ILLEGALS CLIMBING THE BORDERS, JOBS AND VOTING BOOTHS!



OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS pounds America’s youth as they build a border to border Mexican welfare state on our backs!

AMERICA’S YOUTH STARVE…… ILLEGALS SUCK IN BILLIONS IN WELFARE… they also get our jobs!



The new reports show that in addition to “traditional” coping strategies of skipping meals and eating cheap food, these teens and pre-teens are increasingly forced into shoplifting, stealing, selling drugs, joining a gang, or selling their bodies for money in a struggle to eat properly.

Trump picks oil mogul as secretary of state

Trump picks oil mogul as secretary of state

14 December 2016
The selection of ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of state is a political milestone. For the first time in US history, a corporate boss—and not just any executive, but the CEO of one of the world’s largest and most profitable corporations—is being put in charge of foreign policy for the US government. Nothing could more clearly define the central goal of the Trump administration: to increase the profits and wealth of the American plutocracy.
Significantly, the Democratic Party has responded to the nomination by denouncing Tillerson’s links to Russia, not his role as ExxonMobil CEO. Just as subservient to the billionaires as the Republicans, the Democrats have seized on Tillerson’s myriad business dealings with Russia, the world’s largest oil-producing nation, to push their campaign over Trump’s alleged ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
This campaign revolves around bogus claims that “Russian hacking” dominated the US presidential election and contributed to Trump’s narrow victory in the Electoral College. As the World Socialist Web Site has explained, the claims of undue Russian influence on the election are the product of a vicious conflict over foreign policy with the US ruling elite, driven by the strategic defeat US imperialism has suffered in Syria and divisions over whether Washington’s global military buildup should target Russia or China first.
The anti-Russia campaign to some extent cuts across party lines. It is noticeable that while most Senate Democrats expressed reservations about the Tillerson nomination, the most enraged denunciations came from Republicans with close links to the Pentagon.
Senator John McCain decried the fact that Tillerson received an award from Russian President Putin in 2011 after a major oil deal with the Russian oil giant Rossneft. “When he gets the friendship award from a butcher, frankly, it’s an issue that I think needs to be examined,” he said Sunday on Fox News.
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who opposed Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, initially tweeted a similar view, writing, “Being a ‘friend of Vladimir’ is not an attribute I am hoping for from a #SecretaryOfState.”
Editorials in the New York Times and the Washington Post attacked the nomination along similar lines. The Times wrote, “In naming Mr. Tillerson to lead the State Department and having Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn as his national security adviser, Mr. Trump will have filled two top national security posts with pro-Russia apologists.”
The Post warned that “[Tillerson’s] nomination could augur a sellout by Mr. Trump of vital US interests in Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere.” The newspaper suggested that Trump should be compelled to disclose “any investments or loans his companies have received from Russian firms and individuals.”
More telling are the aspects of the Tillerson nomination on which the Democrats and the liberal editorialists chose not to focus, including glaring conflicts of interest. Secretary of State Tillerson would play a critical role in a range of areas where ExxonMobil has huge profit interests:
* The Keystone pipeline, which would connect Canada’s oil sands to US refineries, allowing Imperial Oil of Calgary (majority-owned by Exxon) to reach the world market.
* Iraq, where Exxon has lucrative contracts with the Kurdish regional government to develop oilfields in the northern part of the country, in defiance of the US-backed central government in Baghdad.
* Venezuela, which has been targeted by ExxonMobil for suits before international tribunals to the tune of billions of dollars.
* The Persian Gulf, where ExxonMobil has some of its biggest deals, particularly with Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
* Mexico, which has just opened its huge oil industry to foreign investment, under heavy US government pressure. ExxonMobil is a major player.
In the Trump administration, these are considered not conflicts, but pluses. Tillerson’s experience in bullying countries and buying presidents and prime ministers is exactly what is wanted in the Department of State. Hence his endorsement by such figures in the national security establishment (with close connections to the oil industry) as former secretaries of state James Baker and Condoleezza Rice, former Vice President Dick Cheney, and former Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
The Tillerson nomination is a milestone in another sense. It puts the finishing touches on a Trump administration that is dominated by multi-millionaires and billionaires. The billionaires begin with Trump himself, joined by Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross (with a $3 billion fortune amassed from buying and closing coal mines, steel mills and auto parts plants), Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos (of the $5 billion Amway fortune), and Small Business Administration chief Linda McMahon (the billionaire co-owner of World Wrestling Entertainment). Ross’s deputy at the Department of Commerce is also a billionaire, Todd Ricketts, heir to the TD Ameritrade fortune and owner of the Chicago Cubs.
The billionaires are joined by only slightly less wealthy bankers and CEOs: Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin ($50–$100 million) and Gary Cohn ($300 million), who will head the National Economic Council, both from Goldman Sachs; Secretary of Labor Andrew Puzder (at least $30 million in stock in his Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s restaurant chains); and now Tillerson, whose personal fortune is well over $300 million, including $238 million in ExxonMobil shares and a pension valued at more than $70 million.
There is no precedent for a US president selecting a cabinet with such a concentration of wealth. It demonstrates that the Trump administration is not an historical accident, but rather the culmination of a protracted political process in which a narrow, parasitic financial aristocracy has come to dominate every American institution. American society is smothering in the grip of the super-rich.
Along with the billionaires, Trump has brought in right-wing political figures identified with the dismantling of the social programs and regulatory agencies they will oversee. These include Representative Tom Price, an enemy of Medicare and Medicaid, to head the Department of Health and Human Services; ultra-right former presidential candidate Ben Carson to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development; former Texas Governor Rick Perry to run the Department of Energy; and Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, who is currently suing the Environmental Protection Agency to block anti-pollution rules, to run the EPA.
For the three top national security positions, Trump has selected retired generals: Michael Flynn as national security adviser, James Mattis to run the Department of Defense, and Robert Kelly to head the Department of Homeland Security.
There is nothing accidental here. The Trump 
administration represents the coming 
together of billionaire oligarchs, ultra-right 
ideologues and the military brass. It is, in the 
full sense of the terms, the most reactionary 
and anti-democratic government in the 
history of the United States.
Patrick Martin


Former Texas governor who called for abolition of Energy Department to be Trump’s energy secretary

By Patrick Martin 
14 December 2016
In nominating former Texas Governor Rick Perry as secretary of energy, President-elect Donald Trump is continuing the pattern of selecting enemies of consumer protection and regulation of business to run the federal agencies charged with these responsibilities.
Perry is on record as a supporter of the complete elimination of the Department of Energy. It was the third of three federal departments he called for abolishing during a Republican presidential debate in 2011, the one whose name he forgot, leading to the widely ridiculed “Oops” moment that helped torpedo his campaign for the 2012 nomination.
The Department of Energy has two major functions: regulatory oversight of energy industries, including fossil fuel, wind, solar and nuclear; and production, storage and replenishment of the US nuclear weapons stockpile. The latter function, including massive cleanup costs involved in disposing of nuclear waste, accounts for two-thirds of the department’s budget.
When Perry and other right-wing Republicans and think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation call for the abolition of the Department of Energy, they have in mind its regulatory functions and programs for promoting non-fossil-fuel energy sources such as wind and solar, not its nuclear weapons operations, which would be transferred to the Pentagon.
The direction that Trump intends for the Department of Energy was indicated by a questionnaire sent by Trump’s transition team to the agency, which sought, among other things, “a list of all Department of Energy employees or contractors who have attended” certain meetings related to climate change. Energy Department officials declined to provide such a list, but the request led to widespread complaints from workers in the agency that the incoming administration was preparing a witch-hunt against those who upheld the scientific case for the dangers of global warming.
Perry’s signing on with the government of Donald Trump is a remarkable act of political cynicism on both sides. During the campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Perry made some of the most scathing comments as Trump began to emerge as the frontrunner. Perry described Trump as a “cancer on conservatism” whose campaign was “a toxic mix of demagoguery, mean-spiritedness and nonsense that will lead the Republican Party to perdition if pursued.”
Now this cancerous demagogue has offered Perry a position of considerable power, commanding a department with 100,000 employees and contractors and a $30 billion budget, with influence over policies critical to the business interests Perry has long represented politically, and Perry has leapt at the chance.
As the governor for 14 years of the state with the highest oil and gas production, Perry has the closest ties to the industry, invariably taking its side on issues such as antipollution regulation, legally required cleanup efforts and workers’ safety.
After the BP oil spill polluted much of the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, the worst environmental disaster in US history, the Texas governor alibied for the giant corporation even as tar balls were washing up on Texas beaches. He called the explosion on the Deep Horizon oil platform an “act of God.”
BP was also responsible for one of the worst industrial disasters on land, which occurred during Perry’s governorship. This was the May 2005 Texas City refinery explosion, which killed 15 workers and injured 170 others.
After leaving office, Perry immediately signed on as a shill for the oil and gas industry. He is currently on the board of directors of Energy Transfer Partners, the company that is building the Dakota Access Pipeline, the target of mass protests by Native Americans and environmentalists near the Standing Rock Reservation.
Perry is an adamant opponent of climate science, going even beyond Trump. While the president-elect has alternately denounced climate change as a “hoax” perpetrated by China and declared that he has an “open mind” on the subject, the former Texas governor has claimed that climate change is a scam by “a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects.”
As energy secretary, Perry will be in charge of major nuclear weapons facilities, including Hanford, Washington; Los Alamos, New Mexico; and Savannah, Georgia. At all of these facilities there are pressing issues of worker safety and the safety of the populations living near the sites.
One of the most important issues for the next energy secretary will be the ongoing preparations for a permanent storage site for nuclear waste generated by the military and the civilian nuclear power industry. The facility is to be built at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Its completion was long blocked by Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

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