Well, the new Congress is off to a rousing start!
In a secret session on Monday, GOP House members voted to gut the independent Office of Congressional Ethics, apparently feeling that the House Ethics Committee was good enough. But the vote got out in time to make the morning news, and there was so much outrage - even from other Congressmen - that
they had to quickly beat a retreat. Even the President-Elect got on their case about it; although it must be stated that he did actually refer to the OCE as "unfair", and was only really concerned about their not dealing with more important things first.
Perhaps he was referring to their list of some 200 regulations that the House GOP would like to do away with. Gersh Kuntzman of the NY Daily News has read the list, and prepared a summary (full article
here):
1. Get rid of rules calling for more nutritious school lunches.
2. Move the inspection of catfish from the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service back to the FDA. The change was made back in March, and made all catfish, both foreign and domestic, subject to inspection. The FDA was only covering one to two percent of foreign catfish. So in effect, going back could make the catfish we eat less safe.
3. Get rid of the Rural Utilities Services' guaranteed loan program. This program provides loans, grants, and other guarantees to small communities working to upgrade their utilities infrastructure. The GOP hates it because the program is being used to help expand clean energy generation (wind and solar).
4. Get rid of a rule that required stores participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (aka Food Stamps) to stock a wider variety of healthy foods. Some retailers hate the rule because they have to get more inventory if they want to participate. But the rule also stated that junk foods like Twinkies and pork rinds could not be accepted in place of real food.
5. Stop the FDA from regulating cigars and smokeless tobacco products. The rule they want to get rid of was primarily aimed at expanding the FDA's authority to cover e-cigs, but it also gave them "additional tools to reduce the number of illnesses and premature deaths associated with tobacco product use." So the GOP prefers more deaths and illnesses from under age tobacco use.
There's more, but you get the idea.
Meanwhile, we're still waiting to hear how Trump will divest himself from his businesses. He can say he'll step aside, but that's not good enough. Especially since foreign governments are already booking rooms and scheduling events in his DC hotel in an effort to curry favor. As reported in
The Atlantic, it's virtually impossible for him
not to be influenced by such apparent trivialities.
Study after
study after
study has shown that doctors are easily influenced in their prescription choices by even the most insignificant of "gifts".
It seems that the general public isn't taking Trump's word for it - or for anything else, for that matter. A
Gallup Poll just released shows that most people don't have confidence in him to be able to handle an international crisis or deal with scandals in his administration. While a majority do have confidence in him to handle the economy and work with Congress, the percentage is much lower than that of our three previous presidents when they were preparing to take office.
To be fair, Gallup notes that there's a sharp divide in "confidence" when you look at the breakdown by political party, and that you have to take into account the fact that confidence in government is at a low to begin with. But it must be noted that presidents tend to take office on a high note, with "political capital" to spend on getting their major policy initiatives pushed through Congress. Trump, even if he did have any real policy initiatives, has essentially no political capital to spend....
Oh, and by the way, it kind of got shoved into the background after the election, but did they ever straighten out the mess with Melania's work visa paperwork? Last I heard, it looks like she was working as a model in the US
when she wasn't legally able to do so....