Tag: America First Policy Institute

Trump 2.0: Prepare for the further dumbing down of America

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

No, it’s not Communism! It’s the privatization of education. “School choice” takes away from government spending for public schools!

Source

Trump Chooses Longtime Ally Linda McMahon to Run Education Dept.

President-elect Donald J. Trump on Tuesday tapped Linda McMahon, a former professional wrestling executive who ran the Small Business Administration for much of his first term, to lead the Education Department, an agency he has routinely singled out for elimination in his upcoming term.

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In part because of her recent policy role and her experience as the small business administrator, Ms. McMahon had been discussed as a possible pick to lead the Commerce Department until the role was officially offered to Howard Lutnick, a Wall Street executive and a chairman of the Trump transition team, earlier in the day.

Ms. McMahon will be in charge of overseeing what is widely expected to be a thorough and determined dismantling of the department’s core functions, as Mr. Trump and many of those in his orbit have questioned the agency’s purpose and disparaged its work as overregulating schools on political and ideological terms.

Other than a brief appointment in 2009 to the Connecticut State Board of Education, where she served for just over a year, Ms. McMahon has no experience in overseeing education policy. She would assume the role at a time when school districts across the country are facing budget shortfalls, many students are not making up ground lost during the pandemic in reading and math, and many colleges and universities are shrinking and closing amid a larger loss of faith in the value of higher education.

While Mr. Trump has repeatedly called for an outright dissolution of the agency, any effort to shutter it would require congressional action and support from some Republican lawmakers whose districts depend on federal aid for public education.

But the America First Policy Institute has set out a more immediate list of changes it says could be achieved through vastly changing the department’s priorities. Those include stopping schools from “promoting inaccurate and unpatriotic concepts” about American history surrounding institutionalized racism, and expanding “school choice” programs that direct more public funds to parents to spend on home-schooling, online classes or at private and religious schools.

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Howard Lutnick, the Wall Street Billionaire Staffing Trump’s Cabinet, Hosted a Fundraiser for Hillary Clinton’s Presidential Bid in 2016

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

On Friday evening, August 2, Howard Lutnick, the Chairman and CEO of the Wall Street trading house, Cantor Fitzgerald, held a fundraiser populated by the super wealthy at his home in the Hamptons. The bash was to help presidential candidate Donald Trump shore up his sagging campaign coffers. Tickets went for $25,000 each or $50,000 if you wanted a photo with Trump. You could be listed on the program as a host for a mere $500,000. According to Lutnick, the event raised $15 million. According to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records, Lutnick himself was responsible for a third of that amount. He wrote out a check for $5 million to the Trump campaign the Monday after the event.

Howard Lutnick, the Wall Street Billionaire Staffing Trump’s Cabinet, Hosted a Fundraiser for Hillary Clinton’s Presidential Bid in 2016

Previously:

Nothing will change under Trump:

Trump’s transition team has ties to the front organization Atlas Network through the America First Policy Institute.

Pro-Israel leaders encouraged by Brian Hook’s role on State Department transition team

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

As questions emerge about how President-elect Donald Trump will handle the ongoing turmoil in the Middle East during a second term, some pro-Israel foreign policy voices say they have been reassured by recent news reports that Brian Hook, a special envoy for Iran in the first Trump administration, is expected to lead the transition team at the State Department.

Hook, who previously worked in the State Department under former President George W. Bush and is now the vice chairman of Cerberus Global Investments, helped to oversee Trump’s so-called “maximum pressure” campaign toward Iran, including punishing sanctions after the U.S. withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear deal. He was also a key player on the team that negotiated the Abraham Accords, Trump’s signature foreign policy achievement, which the president-elect has pledged to expand when he returns to office.

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Among the candidates rumored to be under consideration for secretary of state are Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN), a former ambassador to Japan; Robert O’Brien, Trump’s former national security advisor; and Ric Grenell, who served as the former president’s ambassador to Germany as well as his acting director of national intelligence.

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But conservative foreign policy experts surveyed by JI said they did not envision ideological tensions between Hook and Grenell emerging should they serve together. “Grenell mirrors Trump in being a champion-level supporter of Israel and Iran hawk,” said a former official on Trump’s National Security Council, who was granted anonymity to discuss the transition. “There would be no reason for friction.”

Pro-Israel leaders encouraged by Brian Hook’s role on State Department transition team

Previously:

Making Excuses for Trump: Where Does the Buck Stop?

But Trump’s seemingly aimless foreign and national security policies are only part of the problem. More to the point, the president keeps appointing people to senior level positions where they have a hand in shaping the policies ranging from hardline on civil liberties issues to complete interventionism vis-à-vis America’s role worldwide. The list is long and includes John Bolton, Rick Grenell, Mike Pompeo, Brian Hook, James Jeffrey, Robert O’Brien, John Ratcliffe and Gina Haspel. And one might suggest that the latest move might very well be the worst of all, naming Eliot Abrams as Special Envoy on Iran.

Warmongering Republicans Have Throbbing Hard-Ons For Pelosi’s Taiwan Trip

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)1 Comment

Warmongering Republicans Have Throbbing Hard-Ons For Pelosi’s Taiwan Trip

When it comes to China, the so-called “populist right” is in lockstep with both Nancy Pelosi and with murderous neoconservatives like Bill Kristol, Max Boot and John Bolton. Steve Bannon’s support for regime change in Beijing is indistinguishable from Bill Kristol’s support for regime change in Beijing. You will never, ever see a Trump supporter address this perfect harmony between their faction and neocons and liberal hawks with any degree of intellectual honesty.

In reality, though Democrats tend to lean more toward supporting aggressions against Russia while Republicans lean more toward favoring aggressions against China, they’re both just manufacturing consent for the same unipolarist agenda of total global domination. They pretend to be on opposing sides, but if you ignore the narratives and just look at the actions what you see is a steadily escalating “great power competition” designed to facilitate the US empire’s longstanding agenda of securing unipolar planetary hegemony at all cost.

More about Steve Bannon and regime change for China:

The Globalists Driving the Anti-China Crusade – Thiel, Soros, Wenghui, and… Steve Bannon

Steve Bannon and Guo Weingui vs Hong Kong

Updated: Sources for Hong Kong Video

Hong Kong ‘Protests’ Were About Regime Change for China!