For the Record: In the Bank

Stock photo via Rosenblum Law New Jersey.

South Korea pays close to a billion dollars a year to US in "host-nation financial contributions" and US is asking them to quintuple that. https://t.co/kWq2AuHpSE Pentagon tries to carry out Trump's wishes, but Trump doesn't know, as these obviously out-of-his-ass numbers show.

— Perfect Particularity (@Yastreblyansky) January 11, 2020

The mercenary subject only comes up because that's how Trump thinks of it--he lacks any concept of national interest or international cooperation, so the only thing he can imagine is that foreign deployments should make income. Either we "take the oil" or they write a check.

— Perfect Particularity (@Yastreblyansky) January 11, 2020

But anyway the US deployment to Saudi Arabia really does seem mercenary-like to me, based on secret negotiations between Kushner and MbS, and something clearly not in national interest (backing KSA's massacre of Yemenis--Congress voted in April to end US support but Trump vetoed)

— Perfect Particularity (@Yastreblyansky) January 11, 2020

While he focuses on his TV performance as president and whatever crimes are hidden in his financial records, the government has to work around his ignorance, hoping he doesn't hear something about them on Fox that he doesn't like and assault them with a Twitter howler. It's bad.

— In the Bank (@Yastreblyansky) January 11, 2020

What does "imminent" mean?

Update below

To the tune of:



(Isaac Cole Powell in the incoming Broadway revival of Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story.)

“There is no doubt that there were a series
of imminent attacks that were being plotted
by Soleimani. We don’t know precisely when
and we don’t know precisely where but this
was real”--Secretary of State Mike Pompeo

That's so darn imminent,
might already have been sent!
How would you know?
But whenever when it is,
then it is
ready to go!

Over here, over there,
that thing could be anywhere—
past the next bluff!
Or if it's some other hill
there it will
be close enough!

You can't predict it!
You cannot say precisely!
This imminence is nicely
unclear—

Is it real? Sure it is!
If it's not that's just show biz,
I am no fool.
When I called it imminent
I just meant
it would be cool.

It's really scary
and very military,
who knows?
I have just one reply:
we have got to kill that guy!
Maybe tonight.
Maybe tonight.
Maybe tonight.

Update

Pompeo clarifying his working logic here:

POMPEO: “Saying we didn’t know where and when the attacks would happen but also saying they were imminent and would‘ve targeted our embassy are consistent thoughts.”

These guys are so caught in their web of lies it’s actually fascinating to watch. pic.twitter.com/QWISa2gNml

— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) January 10, 2020

Trump was apparently pretty clear in private about what his motivations for the strike on Soleimani were:

The way the strike was handled has drawn scrutiny from Democrats and some Republicans. Critics say the decision was hasty, considering the risk of all-out war. They also question whether the intelligence that prompted the action was as clear-cut and alarming as the White House has said, and see the move as doing little to further U.S. interests in the region.

Mr. Trump, after the strike, told associates he was under pressure to deal with Gen. Soleimani from GOP senators he views as important supporters in his coming impeachment trial in the Senate, associates said. (PoliticusUSA picking up on a buried lede from Wall Street Journal)

He killed a man because he thought it might help corrupt his jurors.

Stupid Senate tricks and WWC society ladies

Tengrain must have liked my GIFs. Hi MBRU cowpokes!

GIF by headlikeanorange.

Learned something about the possible fate of the Affordable Care Act from an NPR interview with Senator John Thune yesterday. Not from that tool Thune, but from the interviewer:

INSKEEP: We spoke with a health care analyst who thought you might do something like this - pass a repeal and then give yourselves a couple of years to come up with a replacement. And the way he phrased it was that then creates a crisis because there's a deadline, it's expiring, and you'll have a desperate situation where you'll have to agree to something. Is that what you really mean to do?

It's one of those Stupid Senate Tricks, like the infamous Budget Sequester of 2013, where Congress digs itself a deep hole with the express purpose of not falling into it. "We can't agree on how to replace the ACA but if we were forced to, we surely would." Can God create a stone so big He can't roll it? Can Congress write a law so ineluctable they can't evade it?

Seq relief now! Robert Costa said so!

Big pic: McConnell World fears if Ds get seq relief now, that card will be hard to play in future, makes revenue the chief trade option
— Robert Costa (@robertcostaNRO) October 13, 2013

McConnell World? Is that some kind of theme park?

Forest Park Turtle Playground, St. Louis. Photo by St. Louis Punk-Rocker.

SequesterFail

Jared Bernstein took up the idea of reporting on the sequester as an ongoing slow-moving disaster; apparently on Tuesdays, I haven't noticed it before, but he's already up to installment 12. It's just links, 27 in this round, to stories of the impact of the loss of funds:

The 5% cut to the US Forest Service's $2-billion firefighting budget.

The reductions come as officials brace for a wildfire season they say might rival last year’s, when about 9.3 million acres burned, one of the largest totals on record. The West in particular faces tinderbox conditions, which, combined with high winds, proved deadly last weekend when a wildfire killed 19 members of a firefighting crew outside Yarnell, Ariz.

“This reduces our capability and significantly constrains our work in fire response” and restoring land after fires, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last month about the cuts. (Salon)

Black Forest fire, Colorado Springs, June 13. Photo by Jerilee Bennett/MCT for Los Angeles Times.

 The 5% cut to $5 million for the facilities at Assateague Island, Maryland, with the famous wild horses, visited by 2 million people per year.

Here, that impact is to our visitor entrance station, that first line of contact to our visitors. It’s to our water quality monitoring program,” says Justin Unger, acting park superintendent. 

Park officials maintain the water is safe for recreational activity, but if the budget cuts continue in the next year there could be other cuts. The park has nearly 100 seasonal and full time workers, but there is now a hiring freeze and staff reductions could be in the future. (WJLA TV, Washington)

Image from Dog Breed Info Center (no, I don't know).

The loss of 4 million meals for seniors, 2.1 million people who will be denied needed food internationally, 1.17 million farmers and small businesspeople who will miss out on antipoverty support, and more.

Meals on Wheels recipient, home delivery program, La Crosse County, Wis.: “These meals are sometimes the only meal that I have a day. I don’t drive, so I have to rely on others to get around to doctors’ appointments. I only get $16 a month for food (Moyers & Co.)

Of course on the other hand it's reducing the deficit. That's just what we need, huh, Sparky?

Cheap shots and expensive lifestyles

De Sacha Guitry à Diane Arnaud.

Please tell me David Petraeus with his visiting professor gig at the Macaulay Honors College, City University of New York, isn't burnishing his academic credentials for that presidential run (perhaps it could be a bipartisan Joint ticket with Anthony Wiener). Washington Post:

Petraeus has a doctorate from Princeton University and has written widely on international relations, military strategy and tactics and national security issues.

He says in a statement released by Macaulay he’s pleased to teach at the college, where most students are children of immigrants. He says he looks forward to leading a seminar on the global economic slowdown.

It would be cool to have one of those certified Serious people out there recommending a fiscal Surge on the Sunday morning shows, though I guess around five years [jump]

Let them study cake

WIBV TV Buffalo:

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) - Roswell Park Cancer Institute is expected to be hit hard by government spending cuts.

The world-renowned hospital is expected to lose $6 million in research funding because of the sequester. Officials predict the loss of money could lead to reduced treatment time and job cuts.

Lab retirement cake from Cake Central.

South Florida Sun-Sentinel:

With hopes of finding out why older people get diseases like osteoporosis, dementia and arthritis, scientist Laura Niedernhofer came to Scripps Florida in Jupiter last year to do research on aging and degenerative diseases. "There's some underlying change. That's why older people are vulnerable," she said. [jump]

Justice delayed is justice derided

Via Hindustan Times.

New York Post:

A New York judge yesterday blasted federal “sequestration” cuts, calling it “stunning” that they could force him to delay the start of a terrorism trial for Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law. 

Manhattan federal Judge Lewis Kaplan appeared flabbergasted when a defense lawyer for Sulaiman Abu Ghaith said mandatory work furloughs would make it “very difficult to be ready” for trial by September. 

Kaplan began calling the situation “ironic” before noting that was “not exactly the right word.”

Republicans say you can't put a terrorist on civilian trial in New York City, it's too dangerous. Administration says you can too, and does it, repeatedly, with success, but that doesn't stop the Republicans. Finally, five years later, a terrorist trial is in trouble. Why? Republican budget terrorism! Hey, Judge, you may be able to use "ironic" after all!

The tissue samples are next to the Hot Pockets

From PBS News Hour:

Rebecca Riggins, an assistant professor of oncology at Georgetown University, was about to stick a FedEx shipping label onto a package containing about two dozen samples of human breast tumors for analysis when the phone rang. Her team was in the process of investigating why certain types of breast cancer respond well to the common hormone therapy Tamoxifen while others fare poorly. The tumor analysis was a critical part of the project. 

The Feb. 25 phone call was from her colleague, the study's principal investigator. Program officials at the National Institutes of Health had just told him to expect at least a 50 percent reduction in funding to their research. It was part of the sequestration cuts to the federal budget, which include 5.1 percent cuts across the board to non-defense agencies. 

She had no choice but to put the mailing on hold and move the samples to the freezer, where they remain today. 

Riggins' team can no longer afford to continue some of their more expensive experiments, like the tumor analyses. And they're scaling back their smaller experiments involving breast cancer cells grown in the lab and mouse model studies.

I swear I do not hope Senator Portman's son gets breast cancer. But it would be nice if something got their attention.

Volare? Uh, no.

The Navy grounded the Blue Angels on Tuesday, canceling all shows for the remainder of 2013 due to cutbacks mandated under sequestration, NBC News reported. (via TPM)

Talk to me, Goose.

Call any vegetable! Call it by name!

This month chances are it may not respond to you, as communications are down. Sequester!

Le bonne fleur. (Ugh! USDA French proofreaders must have been furloughed too, that should be La bonne fleur.)

The industry will not escape unscathed from mandated sequester cuts in the U.S. Department of Agriculture and other federal agencies.

The USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service said in mid-March it is suspending several reports for the balance of the fiscal year because of budget cuts caused by sequestration. Of those important to the industry, the USDA said it did not plan to issue the potato stocks report and those for all non-citrus fruit, nut and vegetable forecasts and estimates.

The list of suspended fruit crop estimates includes the closely watched first estimate of the 2013 apple crop, released in August.

What’s more, export promotion funds in the Market Access Program for U.S. fresh produce exports were cut by 10% by the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service.

Of course, this says nothing of expected cutbacks in border service by the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol in coming weeks.

The by-now familiar sequestration cuts were put in motion during the 2011 debt ceiling negotiations, as a plan to motivate lawmakers to stop disagreements over the federal budget from being kicked down the road indefinitely.

It hasn’t worked, of course, but that is no reason to hold U.S. agriculture hostage to Washington’s dysfunction. (The Packer)

Government didn't build that.

In fact nobody did. I wonder where all those job creators were.

The Department of Homeland Security campus might have gotten built by 2021 under last year's projections;  maybe we should get the volunteer organizations together and make the homeland a quilt.

Engineering News-Record via Glass Magazine:

The Associated General Contractors of America released a 24-page sequestration report in February, providing a closer look at the construction segments that would feel the budget reductions the most. While several government construction arenas are exempt— the Highway Trust Fund, the Airport Improvement Program, Department of Veterans Affairs accounts, and General Services Administration accounts—the impact of the cuts on other parts of governmental construction spending could be severe, and could cause a ripple effect of slowed spending throughout the economy, according to the report. The sequestration cuts to construction for this fiscal year “could put some 114,000 jobs, $13.6 billion in GDP and $4.4 billion in personal income at risk,” according to the report. 

Not killing anybody yet

Your waiting room will be with you in a moment, sir.

CBS News:

For Tom McCloskey, a painful change is coming to an already difficult routine. For nine years he's been a chemotherapy patient at North Shore Hematology Oncology. But now, he'll have to be treated at a hospital instead.

"It's scary. I know how they treat me here and I know how they get treated in the hospital," McCloskey told WCBS-TV.

He's one of thousands of senior citizens with cancer being told by clinics to get their treatment elsewhere. At North Shore Hematology Oncology alone, 5,000 patients have been told they can no longer be treated. Patients blame lawmakers.

"Every one of them should be fired," said McCloskey.

They're victims of sequester cuts from the bitter federal budget fight. Across-the-board cuts went into effect March 1. Medicare saw only 2 percent cut, but when it comes to expensive chemo drugs, that is still big bucks.

But then everybody has to sacrifice

Like, my boss had to sacrifice me.

Via Passim inter al.—can't find a credited version.

From NPR:

The cuts in the budget for long-term unemployment benefits are not big; about 10 percent. Maurice Emsellem of the National Employment Law Project says the actual reductions in people's checks will be bigger than that, at least over the next few months.

"Because the sequester is calculated on a fiscal year, which started in October, the amount of the cut has to be condensed into a much shorter time period," Emsellem says. "So they have until the end of September to implement a year's worth of cuts in benefits."

And if you lose $30 off that $300 a week,

That $30 might not seem like a lot, but Joan Cirillo says it is when you've been out of work a long time and are just scraping by.

Gosh, do ya think so? 

You don't have to make a federal case

ABC News:

Sequester Furloughs Start… With a Whisper - Parts of the federal government are finally showing the effects of the furloughs prescribed by sequestration — one month and four days after the law went into effect. The Northern Division of Maryland’s Federal Public Defender’s office was closed all day today, with only one assistant federal public defender on hand. Upon calling the office, a message attributed the closure to “furloughs,” which Katherine Newberger, the one lawyer on duty, confirmed were because of sequestration.

They're all guilty anyway, right? From Paulo Gabriel.

Post that, austerian swine!

Huffington Post:

March's jobs numbers did not yet reflect much of the "sequester," the across-the-board federal budget cuts that will slowly take effect throughout the year, resulting in less hiring and fewer hours worked by government employees. Nevertheless, austerity is already pinching job growth in other ways. The federal government shed 14,000 jobs in March, almost all of which were accounted for by the U.S. Postal Service.

Union buster. Just kidding.

Choice cuts

From CBS News:

Meat Power. From Papergreat.

• Furlough notices have been sent out at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), proposing furloughs of 13 days or less for employees over the next seven months as a result of sequestration.
• The U.S. Department of Agriculture will furlough 6,200 food inspectors for 11 days this summer, starting in July, according to the Iowa Farmer Today. The USDA says that would disrupt meat exports to the tune of $8 billion. A spending bill passed in the Senate Wednesday would provide $55 million to the USDA through September to help avoid these furloughs. The money will be allocated if the House passes the bill today and then gets signed into law by the president.

Of course the inspectors themselves won't be eating meat for a while, will that cover it?

Sludge report

Arthur Delaney at Huffington Post:

Stephens said that he doesn't pay much attention to politics, but he does know the regular budgeting process has been dysfunctional during the years of Barack Obama's presidency and that sequestration is a symptom of that dysfunction. The cuts kicked in last month and forced the federal government to find $85 billion worth of savings this year. Now Stephens is out of a job.

Stephens, a 32-year-old father of two who lives in Richland, Wash., spent several years as a radiological control technician for one of several companies tasked by the U.S. Department of Energy with cleaning up nuclear waste at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state. The biggest challenge at the site is dealing with 53 million gallons of nuclear sludge stored in leaky underground tanks.

Of the 9,000 workers at the site, more than 200 members of the Hanford Atomic Metal Trades Council like Stephens received layoff notices last month, and more than 2,000 non-union workers will have to take unpaid days off this year.

Photo by US Department of Energy via WorldCrunch/Le Monde.

It holds two thirds of the nuclear waste in the United States, or did until it started leaking (378 million liters so far, a record, and less than 10 kilometers from the Columbia River, which is uncontaminated as yet). My maternal grandparents both worked here in the Manhattan Project, as it happened, and there is some family romance connected with it, because they had been divorced (from each other) for a long time, and now remarried, shortly before my grandfather's death. The Department of Energy promises that the layoffs will not  cause any risk to the workforce or to the general public. Oh, good.

See you in Sequester

I think I'm going to start posting these as I see them, maybe even Tweeting them if I can be arsed, on the model of David Waldman with the gun violence incidents (see #gunfail).

The Washington Post’s Sarah Kliff reports that even the sequester’s relatively mild two percent cut to Medicare is forcing clinics to choose between providing care to patients, absorbing debilitating financial losses, or downsizing medical staff. Faced with those unsavory choices, clinics like North Shore Hematology Oncology Associates in New York are refusing to see as many as 5,000 of their Medicare patients. (Think Progress)

How to handle hair loss from chemotherapy.

How stupid do I think you are?

Svaneke Harbor, Bornholm, Denmark. Phil Degginger, Mira.

This is Mr. Haven Pell, retired naval officer and investment banker, and doubtless a dab hand at tying a bow tie. Apparently between the 19th hole and cocktail hour back at the old hovel, he finds time to maintain a blog called LibertyPell, maybe while dressing for dinner. It's his trophy career.

Late last February he predicted that the dread sequester was not likely to end up pooping anybody's party, given that the federal government already has far more money than it really knows what to do with from its ridiculously persistent taxation of the Pells and the Havenses and all their in-laws and fraternity brothers and dance partners and bridge companions, and offered the following as a way of keeping tabs on the issue:

As a public service, here are 10 questions you can ask to anyone who suggests plagues of locusts or frogs because of the sequester.

1.  How many White House staff personnel will be furloughed?
2.  How many Congressional staff personnel will be furloughed?
3.  If a departmental budget reverts to the level of 2007 or 2008 (when that level of spending was presumably satisfactory) is that a problem?
4.  Is anything useful found in any part of a budget other than the top line?
5.  Has any elected official given up even one of his earmarks?
6.  If you had to bet your own personal funds on the threatened outcome actually happening, would you do so?
7.  Are you telling the truth or is it time to bring back Congressman Joe “you lie” Wilson of South Carolina who shouted those words at the President?
8.  Would you be willing to tender your resignation if your statements about the effects of sequestration proved to be hyped or indeed false?
9.  If this tiny percentage is so important, why don’t we spend that and cut all the rest?
10.  How stupid do you think we are?

Whatever the actual impact of this political silliness, be assured those whose job it was to avoid it will feel it least.

So, hm?

1. So far 480 staffers at OMB, plus slowed hiring and refilling of vacant positions, with more pay cuts and furloughs possible.  President Obama has given himself a five percent pay cut. All 60,000 employees at Customs and Border Services have received furlough notices, almost all 47,000 of the Federal Aviation Administration's personnel will be on furlough one or two days per pay period, 20,000 federal court employees will be furloughed for 16 days, 4,700 employees of the Labor Department will be furloughed between April and September, 20,500 NASA contractors may lose their jobs, and so on. For a detailed idea of how ongoing cuts affect every aspect of government work see the list of 100 prepared by Sam Stein and Amanda Terkel for Huffington Post (via Ed Kilgore).

2. With the exception, of course, of the Congress. With the sure instinct that has made them the least popular institution since the disbanding of the International Brotherhood of Public Executioners, they exempted themselves. As a matter of fact they were required to, by law. But they are going to lose staff and support, they just aren't talking about it. That's because Congress is run by Republicans who say that the sequester is no big deal.

3. The levels of spending were not satisfactory in 2007 and 2008, unless you were in war propaganda. They were already staggering under a decade of ruthless cuts, first to balance the budget (Clinton), then to unbalance it beyond anyone's wildest dreams (Bush). Does that answer your question?

4. Yes. That is why they consist of more than one line. Did you say you used to work as an investment banker?

5. Earmarks were banned two years ago. (Now they have something else which may be considerably worse, but I've made the point I wanted to make.)

6. Ooh, shall we say $10,000?

7. It is never time to bring back ex-Congressman Wilson, if you've been brought up properly.

8. Are you sure you used to work as an investment banker?

9. Huh? How about we do that with your tax bill? Since you're so desperate to hold on to that additional 4.6% on income over $450,000, which I'm sure you're out there creating jobs with, why don't you just keep it and let the government take the rest of your income in exchange?

10. Explain how question 9 is supposed to work and we'll talk.

Seal Harbor, Maine, Greg A. Hartford.