FILL THE SWAMP: Trump Filling Pentagon with Defense Contractors

[charley]

President Trump promised time and time again to ?Drain the swamp,? but there is no real evidence to suggest that he is actively trying. Recently, he has been filling top positions at the Pentagon with defense contractors, along with their lobbyists.
The positions in the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and the State Department will have contractors stemming from companies paid to manufacture weapons and vehicles for the United States government. President Trump promised time and time again to ?Drain the swamp,? but there is no real evidence to suggest that he is actively trying. Recently, he has been filling top positions at the Pentagon with defense contractors, along with their lobbyists.



Irony isn't a concept with which President Donald J. Trump is familiar. In his Inaugural Address, having nominated the wealthiest cabinet in American history, he proclaimed, For too long, a small group in our nation's capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished but the people did not share in its wealth. Under Trump, an even smaller group will flourish in particular, a cadre of former Goldman Sachs executives. To put the matter bluntly, two of them (along with the Federal Reserve) are likely to control our economy and financial system in the years to come. Infusing Washington with Goldman alums isn't exactly an original idea. Three of the last four presidents, including The Donald, have handed the wheel of the US economy to ex-Goldmanites. But in true Trumpian style, after attacking Hillary Clinton for her Goldman ties, he wasn't satisfied to do just that. He had to do it bigger and better. Unlike Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, just a sole Goldman figure lording it over economic policy wasn't enough for him. Only two would do.
Whether you voted for or against Donald Trump, whether you?re gearing up for the revolution or waiting for his next tweet to drop, rest assured that, in the years to come, the ideology that matters most won?t be that of the forgotten Americans of his Inaugural Address. It will be that of Goldman Sachs and it will dominate the domestic economy and, by extension, the global one.
 No less than six Trump administration appointments already hail from that single banking outfit. Of those, two will impact your life strikingly: former Goldman partner and soon-to-be Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and incoming top economic adviser and National Economic Council Chair Gary Cohn, former president and ?number two? at Goldman.

 Running for office as an outsider is one thing. Instantly inviting Wall Street into that office once you arrive is another. Now, it seems that Donald Trump is bringing us the newest chapter in the long-running White House-Goldman Sachs saga. And count on Steven Mnuchin and Gary Cohn to offer a few fresh wrinkles on that old alliance.
Cohn was one of the partners who ran the Fixed Income, Currency and Commodity (FICC) division of Goldman. It was the one that benefited the most from leverage, trading, and the complexity of Wall Street's financial concoctions like collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) stuffed with derivatives attached to subprime mortgages. You could say, it was leverage that helped propel Cohn up the Goldman food chain.

 

[charley]

Goldman Sachs was a bete noire of the Trump campaign, figuring prominently in his closing ad, widely seen as anti-Semitic, denouncing a global power structure controlling the country. Trump blasted Hillary Clinton's speeches to the investment bank and deemed it a pillar of the corrupt establishment, saying it had total control over his opponents.
But Trump just named former Goldman Sachs partner (and Hollywood executive) Steven Mnuchin to be his treasury secretary. He's reportedly in talks to hire Goldman's No. 2 executive, Gary Cohn, to be his budget director. Both men are Jewish a welcome sign Trump is dropping the sinister themes of his campaign, but no doubt a disappointment to the bigoted alt-right, who cheered Trump's rise. (Alt-right ally Stephen K. Bannon, to be Trump?s White House strategist, also used to work at Goldman.)

Mnuchin, worth about $40 million, and Cohn, who according to Bloomberg News owns at least $175 million in Goldman stock, are lightweights on Trump's Team of Oligarchs. But they are ahead of Trump's pick for transportation secretary (Elaine Chao and her husband, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, are worth a paltry $22 million) and Health and Human Services. (Tom Price is a pauper at $14 million.)
These must be who Trump had in mind when he promised to help the forgotten men and women. They will profit hugely from his plan to reduce the top income tax rate to 33 percent from 39.6 percent.
Remember Trump's vow to drain the swamp, and his boast that he's too rich to be bought by donors..

Those who funded Trump are getting a good return on their investments: As the Washington Post reported, Mnuchin, Ross, Ricketts and their families gave hundreds of thousands to help Trump win. Foreign diplomats are flocking to the new Trump International Hotel in Washington to curry favor.

Trump made a core issue of Clinton's conflicts of interest because of the Clinton Foundation. But his transition has been full of such entanglements, as he and his children mix affairs of state and business interests. Trump remains vague about how he will separate his presidency from the business ties he has to two dozen countries.





​

 

[clicting]

Amen! Not gonna happen.

 

[Arnold]

 

[charley]

Gingrich: Trump backing away from 'drain the swamp'

President-elect Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to drain the swamp in Washington of corruption, but now that he's preparing to move into the White House, Newt Gingrich said the Manhattan real estate mogul is looking to distance himself from that message.

I'm told he now just disclaims that. He now says it was cute, but he doesn't want to use it anymore, the former House Speaker and close Trump adviser said of the drain the swamp message in an NPR interview published Wednesday morning. I've noticed on a couple of fronts, like people chanting Lock her up, that he's in a different role now and maybe he feels that as president, as the next president of the United States, that he should be marginally more dignified than talking about alligators in swamps.

While Trump made his drain the swamp pledge a major part of his campaign message in the final weeks of the presidential race, his transition team was, in its early days after the election, packed with lobbyists for the pharmaceutical, chemical, fossil fuel and tobacco industries. Under pressure, Trump's team instituted a rigid lobbying ban that prompted some to leave, but the group orchestrating the president-elect's transition still relies heavily on GOP insiders. Trump's Cabinet and other high-level appointments seem to have deviated somewhat from his drain the swamp message. After attacking Democrat Hillary Clinton regularly throughout the campaign for being too close to Wall Street banks, Trump has put three former Goldman Sachs executives in prominent White House positions, including Steven Mnuchin as treasury secretary, Steve Bannon as chief White House strategist and Gary Cohn as the director of the National Economic Council.
Gingrich also suggested that Trump should quickly find a transparent solution to concerns about conflicts of interest between his presidency and the massive business empire he has pledged to hand over to his kids once he takes office. The former House speaker said putting such complex assets into a blind trust, the arrangement generally promised by presidents, would be an absurdity for Trump but that some other "common-sense" arrangement will be necessary.

This is not a country that wanders around trusting people with power. This is a country that wants accountability, Gingrich said. "He has to understand and his family has to understand that there is a public interest which transcends them.