What Budget Cuts?

From NY MAG:

After a long week of rubbing shoulders with the leaders of the Western world despite having no formal role in her dad’s administration, Ivanka Trump and her husband — along with her brothers, Eric and Donald Jr., and their respective wives and children — will reportedly descend upon the unsuspecting town of Aspen, Colorado.

…snip…

There was some discrepancy about the number of Secret Service agents that travel with them — one source said “about 100,” while another said “quite a bit less than 100,” so it could go either way.

Meanwhile, President Trump is set to spend his fifth weekend at Mar-a-Lago, which will cost taxpayers about $3 million.

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They can’t decide whether to wear black capes or white hoods!

From POLITICO:

As they fleshed out the budget blueprint released Thursday morning by the White House, Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney said officials from the administration of President Donald Trump asked themselves: Can we ask the taxpayer to pay for this?

For a dramatic uptick in military funding, Mulvaney said, the answer was yes. For a wide array of domestic programs, it turns out, the answer was no.

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Bloodsuckers

Hey kids!  I’m poking my head out of the computer/carpal tunnel doldrums rabbit hole.  How could I not post something now that Mitt Romney has selected his running mate?  I’m still having massive computer problems (it turns off constantly with no warning whatsoever), so I figured I’d dust off some old posters that are once again relevant.  Let’s begin with the new team, Mittsie and Eddie Munster Paul Ryan…

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Well, at least Grandpa Dick Cheney will be happy…

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A Poisoned Apple for Teacher

From INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TIMES:

Presidential candidate Rick Perry has touted Texas’ thriving economy as a sign that he would make an excellent economic steward, but one of his proposals might not do so well on a national scale: a plan to let Wall Street gamble on when retired Texas teachers would die.

According to notes of a meeting provided to The Huffington Post, Perry’s budget director Mike Morrissey advanced a plan in which investors from Swiss banking firm UBS profited from teachers’ deaths by purchasing life insurance policies on them. A fee for arranging the deals would accrue to Texas, which Morrissey said could eventually generate as much as $700 million for Texas.While Perry’s office has repeatedly denied explicitly backing the scheme, maintaning that the governor was simply keeping an open mind by listening to the proposal, an attendee at a meeting where the idea was pitched to teachers’ groups told The Huffington Post that the governor was fully behind the idea. Insurance Commissioner Jose Montemayor, a Perry appointee, was a particularly enthusiastic advocate.

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A Tale of Two (P)Ricks

From THINK PROGRESS:

Yesterday, ThinkProgress caught Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) on video threatening Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke during a trip to Iowa. Perry, the latest Republican to announce a campaign for the White House, called any effort by the Fed to provide monetary stimulus “treasonous in my opinion” and added that he would treat Bernanke “pretty ugly down in Texas.” On CNN this afternoon, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), another candidate in the race, slammed Perry’s comment and said any suggestion of treason is pure politics:

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Name That Toomey

From USA TODAY:

Sen. Pat Toomey voted against the debt-limit compromise last week, partly because he didn’t think the budget-balancing recommendations of the bipartisan committee it created would stick.

A week later, Toomey finds himself serving on the committee he voted against.

The Pennsylvanian was one of six Republican members appointed Wednesday to Congress’ new 12-member “supercommittee.”

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A Pasch of Blue

From the Los Angeles Times:

During her son’s graduation in May from Bowdoin College, Sandy Pasch listened as filmmaker Mira Nair urged students to get involved in society, citing the impact of citizen uprisings around the world.

“And then she gave as examples what’s happening in Libya, in Egyptand Wisconsin,” Pasch recalled.

“I thought, ‘Wow. I don’t know that everyone sees us in the same light as Egypt and Libya, but there’s something happening here,’ ” she said. “There’s something happening, and the common refrain I hear is that people want to take their state back.”

Pasch, 57, who for three years has represented Milwaukee’s northern suburbs in the state Assembly, is among six Democrats challenging Republican state senators in special recall elections Tuesday.

The elections are the latest fallout from controversial moves by the Republican-controlled Legislature and GOP Gov. Scott Walker to eliminate most collective bargaining rights for public employees.

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I’ll take ‘Rigging Elections’ for a few million, ALEC

From Sandra Khalifa at CAMPUS PROGRESS:

If there has been any doubt regarding the intent behind this year’s upsurge in voter ID legislation, Governor Scott Walker’s latest move leaves little room to question the conservative disenfranchisement agenda, at least in the state of Wisconsin. In what seems like a blatant attempt to lessen the accessibility of photo identification, Governor Walker’s administration has announced the closure of sixteen DMV centers throughout the state – for “economic” purposes.

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