Watchdog Aims to Track Army of 'Self-Enriching Grifters' Slated to Join Trump's Cabinet

I have recently laid out the horror show so far of Trump's nominations here: https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2024/11/shining-bright-light-on-dark-places.html. And no doubt that this prediction is true: "Get ready this January for chaos, revenge, greed, rampant abuses of power, and the unbridled control of corrupt plutocrats and oligarchs. With Elon Musk in the lead." The calls for solidarity in gathering communities of resistance is clearly a vital need for the welfare of us all. — Molly

Tesla CEO Elon Musk attends a campaign rally with Republican nominee Donald Trump on October 5, 2024 in Butler, Pennsylvania. (Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

"The man who once said he was going to drain the swamp is instead flooding it."

By Eloise Goldsmith

As U.S. President-elect Donald Trump continues to select Cabinet picks for his second administration—and at least one is facing headwinds to confirmation despite a Republican-controlled Senate—the nonprofit consumer advocacy group Public Citizen Tuesday unveiled a new resource to keep tabs on potential conflicts of interest among Trump's appointees.

"Like the first Trump administration, this administration appears ready to staff critical government posts with as many corporate lackeys and self-enriching grifters as they can hire," said Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen.

The group's other co-president, Robert Weissman, said that"Donald Trump may have run for office pretending he was going to advocate for regular people, but his appointments show in reality he’s planning to govern, again, on behalf of the corporate class."

"The man who once said he was going to drain the swamp is instead flooding it," Weissman added.

Trump has already chosen many of the individuals he would like to serve in his Cabinet and other senior positions. On Tuesday he picked Mehmet Oz, the celebrity physician and TV personality known as Dr. Oz, to helm the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Other high profile picks include nominating Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—a once prominent environmental lawyer who has spread false claims about vaccines—to head the Department of Health and Human Services, and selecting prominent Trump donor and the world's richest man Elon Musk to oversee a yet-to-be-created government agency devoted to slashing government spending and federal regulation. Musk will oversee that agency, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, with biotech billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy.

Public Citizen's tracker so far details information for nine appointees, a list that "includes both Cabinet-level positions and other political appointments, many of which do not require Senate confirmation," according to a statement from the group. The tracker will be updated regularly and includes where the individual worked previously and former clients and/or business interests.

Sean Duffy, Trump's pick for transportation secretary, previously worked for the lobbying firm BGR Group, according to the tracker, where he lobbied on behalf coalition that included multiple airlines.

The group also details the past work of Susie Wiles, Trump's selection for chief of staff. Wiles has been a registered lobbyist on behalf of dozens of clients, including a tobacco company "that sought to block federal health restrictions on its candy-flavored cigars" and on behalf of a mining company "that wants to eliminate federal opposition to its plan to dig a massive mine in a pristine watershed," according to additional information on Wiles provided by Public Citizen that is linked in the tracker.

"As chief of staff, she'll be in a position to influence permits, approvals, and contracts that her former lobbying clients paid her to lobby for," according to the tracker.

The tracker notes that Musk's former clients and business interests include "himself" and the companies he owns, several of which are currently under federal probe. According to a longer briefing on Musk by Public Citizen, at least three of the entrepreneur's companies are currently under scrutiny for alleged misconduct by at least nine federal agencies. According to a pre-election breakdown by The New York Times, Musk's companies were "promised $3 billion across nearly 100 different contracts last year with 17 federal agencies." Both the probes and the contracts underscore Musk's exposure to a federal government that he is slated to play a key role in.

Musk has framed his quest to curb government regulation as existential. "Unless Trump wins and we get rid of the mountain of smothering regulations (that have nothing to do with safety!), humanity will never reach Mars," he wrote on X in early October.

After Trump's victory earlier this month, legendary consumer advocate Ralph Nader, who founded Public Citizen but hasn't been formally involved with the group for decades, warned of Musk's influence.

"Get ready this January for chaos, revenge, greed, rampant abuses of power, and the unbridled control of corrupt plutocrats and oligarchs," Nader wrote. "With Elon Musk in the lead."

Please go here for the original article: https://www.commondreams.org/news/public-citizen-trump-cabinet-picks

Howard Zinn: Why Do We Have To Be a Military Superpower? Why Can't We Be a Humanitarian Superpower?

I have long deeply respected, loved, and been grateful for Howard Zinn. His legacy of wisdom and truth, integrity and activism, courage and love live on. Howard Zinn remains a national and international treasure. May we remember and be inspired in some way to embody within ourselves the wisdom, truth, and fierce courage and love of this beautiful human being. And just imagine "how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own..." Just imagine. 🙏 Molly

 

Wisdom Quotes from Howard  Zinn

We all have an enormous responsibility to bring to the attention of others information they do not have, which has the potential of causing them to rethink long-held ideas.

Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders…and millions have been killed because of this obedience…Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves… (and) the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem...

But I suppose the most revolutionary act one can engage in is... to tell the truth...

* * * * *

 Small Acts When Multiplied by Millions

If those in charge of our society - politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television — can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

The challenge remains. On the other side are formidable forces: money, political power, the major media. On our side are the people of the world and a power greater than money or weapons: the truth. Truth has a power of its own. Art has a power of its own. That age-old lesson – that everything we do matters – is the meaning of the people’s struggle here in the United States and everywhere. A poem can inspire a movement. A pamphlet can spark a revolution. Civil disobedience can arouse people and provoke us to think, when we organize with one another, when we get involved, when we stand up and speak out together, we can create a power no government can suppress. We live in a beautiful country. But people who have no respect for human life, freedom, or justice have taken it over. It is now up to all of us to take it back. 

We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.

* * * * * 

History Is Important

 
What struck me as I began to study history was how nationalist fervor--inculcated from childhood on by pledges of allegiance, national anthems, flags waving and rhetoric blowing--permeated the educational systems of all countries, including our own. I wonder now how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own. Then we could never drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, or napalm on Vietnam, or wage war anywhere, because wars, especially in our time, are always wars against children, indeed our children.

Americans have been taught that their nation is civilized and humane. But, too often, U.S. actions have been uncivilized and inhumane.

Historically, the most terrible things — war, genocide, and slavery — have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.

How can you have a war on terrorism when war itself is terrorism?

History is important. If you don't know history it is as if you were born yesterday. And if you were born yesterday, anybody up there in a position of power can tell you anything, and you have no way of checking up on it. 

I'm worried that students will take their obedient place in society and look to become successful cogs in the wheel - let the wheel spin them around as it wants without taking a look at what they're doing. I'm concerned that students not become passive acceptors of the official doctrine that's handed down to them from the White House, the media, textbooks, teachers and preachers.

Nations are not communities and never have been. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals the fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such as world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners.

There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.

We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children.

* * * * * 

The Cry of the Poor

The prisons in the United States had long been an extreme reflection of the American system itself: the stark life differences between rich and poor, the racism, the use of victims against one another, the lack of resources of the underclass to speak out, the endless "reforms" that changed little. Dostoevski once said: "The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons."

It had long been true, and prisoners knew this better than anyone, that the poorer you were the more likely you were to end up in jail. This was not just because the poor committed more crimes. In fact, they did. The rich did not have to commit crimes to get what they wanted; the laws were on their side. But when the rich did commit crimes, they often were not prosecuted, and if they were they could get out on bail, hire clever lawyers, get better treatment from judges. Somehow, the jails ended up full of poor black people.

The cry of the poor is not always just, but if you don't listen to it, you will never know what justice is. 

I am convinced that imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve the problem of crime. It does nothing for the victims of crime, but perpetuates the idea of retribution, thus maintaining the endless cycle of violence in our culture. It is a cruel and useless substitute for the elimination of those conditions--poverty, unemployment, homelessness, desperation, racism, greed--which are at the root of most punished crime. The crimes of the rich and powerful go mostly unpunished.

In the long run, the oppressor is also a victim. In the short run (and so far, human history has consisted only of short runs), the victims, themselves desperate and tainted with the culture that oppresses them, turn on other victims.

It must surely be a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit that even a small number of those men and women in the hell of the prison system survive it and hold on to their humanity. 

If people could see that Change come about as a result of millions of tiny acts that seem totally insignificant, well then they wouldn't hesitate to take those tiny acts.

* * * * *

It Is Impossible To Be Neutral

Why should we cherish “objectivity”, as if ideas were innocent, as if they don’t serve one interest or another? Surely, we want to be objective if that means telling the truth as we see it, not concealing information that may be embarrassing to our point of view. But we don’t want to be objective if it means pretending that ideas don’t play a part in the social struggles of our time, that we don’t take sides in those struggles.

Indeed, it is impossible to be neutral. In a world already moving in certain directions, where wealth and power are already distributed in certain ways, neutrality means accepting the way things are now. It is a world of clashing interests — war against peace, nationalism against internationalism, equality against greed, and democracy against elitism — and it seems to me both impossible and undesirable to be neutral in those conflicts.

There is a power that can be created out of pent-up indignation, courage, and the inspiration of a common cause, and that if enough people put their minds and bodies into that cause, they can win. It is a phenomenon recorded again and against in the history of popular movements against injustice all over the world.

The power of a bold idea uttered publicly in defiance of dominant opinion cannot be easily measured. Those special people who speak out in such a way as to shake up not only the self-assurance of their enemies, but the complacency of their friends, are precious catalysts for change. 

Let's talk about socialism. I think it's very important to bring back the idea of socialism into the national discussion to where it was at the turn of the century before the Soviet Union gave it a bad name. Socialism had a good name in this country. Socialism had Eugene Debs. It had Clarence Darrow. It had Mother Jones. It had Emma Goldman. It had several million people reading socialist newspapers around the country. Socialism basically said, hey, let's have a kinder, gentler society. Let's share things. Let's have an economic system that produces things not because they're profitable for some corporation, but produces things that people need. People should not be retreating from the word socialism because you have to go beyond capitalism.

Dissent is the highest form of patriotism. 

* * * * *

To Be Hopeful In Bad Times

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
 
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
 
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

Have we reached a point in history where we are ready to embrace a new way of living in the world, expanding not our military power, but our humanity?

https://www.howardzinn.org/

Michael Moore: Hey, If You Can Kill 20 Million Native Americans, Enslave 12 Million Africans, and Let Biden Fund the Slaughter of 40,000 Women, Children and Elderly...

This is such a gift and blessing for us all. Deepest gratitude, respect, and appreciation, as always, to Michael Moore. And I love that Michael began with Practice Kindness. YES! And I am so grateful for everything that he is suggesting in this piece, including alternative media resources which are not corporate funded ― and to which I would definitely add Democracy Now! I've long loved Amy Goodman. And Michael Moore. And even though he embarrassed my oldest son in 2003 before an overflow crowd of 10,000 at the Coliseum in Portland when Michael had 10 "bright" Americans on stage competing with 1 Canadian to see who was more informed related to Iraq and the surrounding countries. The Canadian won, of course. And my son was certainly inspired to research and learn a lot more when he got home! I also appreciated Michael's "forgiveness" those many years ago when I confessed to him that I'd grown up in Grosse Pointe, but escaped to the Pacific Northwest in 1975. And for so many years I've been watching and listening to and reading Michael Moore; and I've also seen him speak many times over the years, like in the photo here taken at Powells Books in Portland. Deepest gratitude for Michael Moore and the many gifts he's long been offering us all. The below is yet another gem. 🙏 Molly

— Of Course You Can Install a Rapist/Felon/Fascist as your President! In the Meantime, Breathe, Take Care of Yourself, Read a Good Book.

By Michael Moore

If you stop and think about it, we’ve come up with a lot of doozies in our history. Like the genocide of 20 million Native Americans. Or the enslavement of 12 million kidnapped Africans. Or us invading Vietnam and killing 4 million Asian people for no reason at all. We are not a good people. We have a non-stop cavalcade, a sordid laundry list of evil deeds that led us directly to last week, to the point where we the people, by popular vote, elected a 34-time convicted felon, a fascist, and a civilly-charged and convicted sexual abuser to be our 47th president of the United States. And we did so after he clearly and quite honestly warned us that he was going to do a mass round-up and deportation of nearly 15 million people. And that he would consider executing people he referred to as “the enemy within” (i.e. his political opponents and those who were disloyal to him).

It’s possible that history may be kinder to us if, next time, the working class doesn’t see our candidate campaigning with Wall Street billionaires. Or having to watch the campaign celebrate being endorsed by war criminals. And not having our side enthusiastically funding and arming the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent women, children and elderly in a land we call “Holy” in the months leading up to an election where we are seeking to defeat someone who “admires” Hitler’s generals. Oh — and we commit to getting just 1% more of our people who voted with us last time, to vote with us next time.

Until then, here are my suggestions of other things for each of us to do, in our own personal time, to recharge, reboot, and revitalize our spirit before we head back into the fray. Try these:

1. Be the Anti-Trump. Make a simple commitment to yourself to do the three things that Trump never does and has proven he never will:  

• Practice Kindness. The first step in counteracting Trump’s crusade of cruelty, hatred, bigotry, misogyny, ignorance and fear is for each of us, in our daily lives, to be kind. To live by the ancient code of Philo: “Be kind, for everyone you encounter is quietly carrying a great burden.” And to paraphrase something Jesse Jackson once explained to me: Ignorance and prejudice create a paralyzing and irrational, out-of-control Fear. Fear of “the Other.” Fear of the Different. Fear of the New. And Fear leads to Hate. And Hate leads to Violence. So in order not to end up with Violence, ignorance and stupidity must be the first to go.

So, perform at least one act of kindness each day. You will instantly make a small piece of this world a better place. 

• Listen. Especially listen to women.

• Read. Books.

2. Join something. Anything. Being in community is a radical act. Those in power know that one of the key components of staying in power is to divide people because when the people get together, well, it never seems to turn out well for those in power. So right away, simply deciding to join with others — for any reason — is one of the purest acts of Democracy. And I’m serious, join anything. A knitting circle. A darts team. Your local HRC, ACLU, BLM, or any one of a number of social justice groups. Neighborhood clean-up. Food bank. Community theater. Over-50 hockey. Regardless of which state of grief any of us are in, nothing beats being with other humans. And by coming together — even if it’s just to make a quilt — it is during gatherings like these that somebody randomly comes up with an idea, and two other people pile on with their ideas, and before you know it, you have the beginnings of a new First People’s Cultural Center in town.

3. Take care of yourself. We need strength to fight. It’s really that simple. And for us to win, really win, this will require 100% of our body, mind and soul. So… Drink tea. Listen to music. Go snowshoeing. Eat ice cream. Rest, on a shoulder. Randomly just start singing The Beatles’ “Let It Be” — right now. Don’t wait, just sing. “When I find myself in times of trouble…” Practice gratitude. Get a pedicure. Notice birds. Do standing push-ups against a closet door. Cross the river into Canada — with no clue as to why you’re there. (Pro Tip: Call home and announce you’ve left the country.)

4.  Get some real news. Go outside the mainstream media. There’s all kinds of journalism these days — dangerous muckrakers, investigative humorists, fearless instigators, unbought and unrepentant writers — find them. Embrace it. Read it. Watch it. Listen to it: ProPublica. The Guardian. Ha’aretz. CBC nightly news “The National.” Labor Notes. John Oliver. Current Affairs. BBC NewsNight. The Chris Hedges Report on Substack. Ayman on MSNBC. Drop Site News. A Closer Look on Seth Meyers. The Lever. Hammer & Hope. More Perfect Union. The Katie Halper Show. Night School with Marc Lamont Hill. “Citations Needed”. Jewish Currents. Al-Jazeera English.  

Start there.

5. Make this pledge: I will be the first to stand for __________. Migrants who’ve come to this land. The unjustly incarcerated. The Palestinians who are being erased. The books I want my daughter to read — especially at 8 years old. The frightened Trans kid who sees political ads on TV warning the world that he is the monster.

6.  Live your life by doing good for those who have the least among us. 

(I’m guessing this needs no further explanation.)

7. Breathe. Hydrate. Rinse. Repeat.

8.  Forgive someone.  

Just because you know you should. Because it’s been too long. Because it’s the right thing to do. You will give this person a sense of redemption and they are likely to do the same for others. It will make you feel better about yourself. It will eliminate stress inside you from the simple act of letting go. The release itself will create its own healing. And the example you set will bring more forgiveness in the family and community around you.   

9. Laughter. Comedy. Wit. Satire.  

It’s the best medicine, the biggest high, the most effective vehicle for you to use to communicate your ideas and to create change. People like to laugh and they’ll listen to you better if you let them enjoy being with you. Sometimes when the moment we’re in or the facts that we’re facing are just too god-awful to handle, that’s exactly when a spoonful of sugar helps this bitter pill go down.

Please go here for the original article: https://www.michaelmoore.com/p/hey-if-you-can-kill-20-million-native