The Republican plan for Alabama is becoming crystal clear, and it makes a mockery of whatever the 23 of them who have spoken out actually means. The plan seems to be to get the word out that if you elect Moore, we will expel him from the Senate (not even remotely clear if this is even possible), thus allowing the GOP Governor of Alabama to name his replacement, keeping the seat in Republican hands. Basically, we don't want the child molester in the Senate, but we're MORE than happy to right his horse to an election victory if we PROMISE to kick him out and appoint someone else. Which, again, is legally dubious at best. This is just naked cynicism, but it's the plot being hatched right now. Vote for Moore because he'll never serve we'll get one of our guys in after. More total subversion of democracy on the right.
Because voting for the Democrat when you don't believe in what they stand for is somehow better? Sorry, I'll bet it'd be cold day in Hell before you ever voted for a Republican, no matter what the Democrat running for office supposedly did. Don't give me any BS otherwise. At best you might stay at home but judging from your political point of view, I doubt it...
I guess I wouldn't have any frame of reference. Since being able to vote, I've pulled the lever for Ralph Nader (stupid), John Kerry, Al Franken, Amy Klobuchar, Barack Obama, Heidi Heitkamp and Hillary Clinton (along with whatever Democrat was going to lose the House seat in my district, which they always have). I suppose if I'd been able to vote in '92 or '96 I could conceivably be guilty of whatever a shitload of voters in Alabama are about to do, but I couldn't so that's neither here nor there. Point being, no one I have ever voted for on a national level has been tarred with any kind of personal scandal whatsoever.
And let's get real....people equivocate about Trump and about Bill Clinton. But we are talking about a guy who was trolling shopping malls for underage girls and writing messages in their high school yearbooks. If he had been born 30 years later he would have been one of those guys who walks into the kitchen naked and runs into Chris Hanson on "To Catch a Predator". We're talking about pedophilia and attempted child rape with this guy.
I'll bet it'd be cold day in Hell before you ever voted for a Republican, no matter what the Democrat running for office supposedly did. Don't give me any BS otherwise. At best you might stay at home but judging from your political point of view, I doubt it...
On the contrary, it depends entirely on the candidate in question. I'd definitely vote for John McCain long before I voted for Anthony Weiner, party affiliation be damned.
I would have never voted for Anthony Weiner after his first sexting scandal came out. Like Nancy Pelosi (who kicked him out of the House by forcing him to resign nearly immediately) it was clear he was far too stupid and too much of a liability to have around, even if you toss morality aside. The sexting a 15-year old didn't even happen until years later. He tried to mount a campaign to win the Democratic nomination for mayor of NY twice and got trounced both times. Elliot Spitzer was similarly ran out of town when his prostitution scandal surfaced.
That said, I wouldn't vote for a Republican either. I'm not expecting them to vote for a Democrat. I think staying home or writing someone in is a perfectly viable alternative. I voted for Nader in 2000 so I'm intimately familiar with throwing away a vote. The only time my vote has made an ounce of difference was in 2008 when Al Franken beat Norm Coleman by 312 votes, one of which was mine.
I wouldn't vote for a Democrat who committed assault, but that doesn't mean voting for his or her Republican opponent is therefore the logical conclusion. I don't vote against people; I vote for people. To vote for a candidate--Republican or Democrat--I kinda need to have a reason. And for me, the most important things are their policies (do they support campaign finance reform?) and their competence (have they actually been able to accomplish their stated objectives in the past? do they have legislative accomplishments to their name?).
To be honest, I just don't know a lot of politicians in the Republican party today who are anything like McCain or H. W. Bush, people who actually sacrificed their own personal interests to do what they thought was right (McCain didn't profit from his military service or the McCain-Feingold Act; Bush certainly didn't profit from that tax hike that cost him his second term). The most famous Republicans today are people like Trump, McConnell, and Cruz, and I best know those three people for empty promises, obstructionism, and supporting a flat tax, respectively. I know there are more people than just incompetents and saboteurs in the GOP today--Graham isn't a bad guy--but the good guys are literally dying out.
Who in the Republican party should I vote for? Which Republican politicians support campaign finance reform?
Partisans are unlikely to flip, yes, but that's not required to win elections with a deeply divided electorate. Turnout--and by extension enthusiasm--wins. It's more whether partisans stay home, vote third party, or choose not to do vital campaign grunt work like phone bank, walk precincts, or donate.
The Republican plan for Alabama is becoming crystal clear, and it makes a mockery of whatever the 23 of them who have spoken out actually means. The plan seems to be to get the word out that if you elect Moore, we will expel him from the Senate (not even remotely clear if this is even possible), thus allowing the GOP Governor of Alabama to name his replacement, keeping the seat in Republican hands. Basically, we don't want the child molester in the Senate, but we're MORE than happy to right his horse to an election victory if we PROMISE to kick him out and appoint someone else. Which, again, is legally dubious at best. This is just naked cynicism, but it's the plot being hatched right now. Vote for Moore because he'll never serve we'll get one of our guys in after. More total subversion of democracy on the right.
Because voting for the Democrat when you don't believe in what they stand for is somehow better? Sorry, I'll bet it'd be cold day in Hell before you ever voted for a Republican, no matter what the Democrat running for office supposedly did. Don't give me any BS otherwise. At best you might stay at home but judging from your political point of view, I doubt it...
I guess I wouldn't have any frame of reference. Since being able to vote, I've pulled the lever for Ralph Nader (stupid), John Kerry, Al Franken, Amy Klobuchar, Barack Obama, Heidi Heitkamp and Hillary Clinton (along with whatever Democrat was going to lose the House seat in my district, which they always have). I suppose if I'd been able to vote in '92 or '96 I could conceivably be guilty of whatever a shitload of voters in Alabama are about to do, but I couldn't so that's neither here nor there. Point being, no one I have ever voted for on a national level has been tarred with any kind of personal scandal whatsoever.
And let's get real....people equivocate about Trump and about Bill Clinton. But we are talking about a guy who was trolling shopping malls for underage girls and writing messages in their high school yearbooks. If he had been born 30 years later he would have been one of those guys who walks into the kitchen naked and runs into Chris Hanson on "To Catch a Predator". We're talking about pedophilia and attempted child rape with this guy.
Maybe I was a bit presumptive in that last statement. I'm fairly conservative but I've voted for Democrats plenty of times in the past (although never for president). Rick Perry is the 1st Republican governor I've ever voted for due to the long list of dipshits they've paraded out there. I even voted for Ross Perot way back in the day so I'm also familiar with throwing away a vote. Perhaps there are more people like me out there than I thought...
For the record, I would not vote for Moore unless he was running against a serial killer. Even then I'd probably go with the Libertarian.
Do not fall prey to the lie that voting a third party is wasting your vote. Just because your candidate didn't win doesn't equate to "wasting" anything. The only way a person wastes their vote is if they walk into the booth and hit the straight ticket option without doing any research on the candidates for whom they just voted. We are in the second decade of the 21st Century--if you haven't used the Internet to research candidates then you are failing at being a responsible person.
Do not fall prey to the lie that voting a third party is wasting your vote.
In a First Past the Post voting system it is a waste of your vote. That doesn't mean you shouldn't follow your conscience, but that's the price of being principled. Third parties will never succeed until we have a better voting system like Instant Runoff Voting. If you want more viable voting options, you'll need to push for voting reforms first.
Otherwise every time a third party starts to gain traction, one of two things will happen. The more common is that you'll see its message co-opted and absorbed by one of the existing two. Alternatively, it could achieve viability and will then replace one of the existing two parties, leaving you right where you started with different names.
Do not fall prey to the lie that voting a third party is wasting your vote.
In a First Past the Post voting system it is a waste of your vote. That doesn't mean you shouldn't follow your conscience, but that's the price of being principled. Third parties will never succeed until we have a better voting system like Instant Runoff Voting. If you want more viable voting options, you'll need to push for voting reforms first.
Otherwise every time a third party starts to gain traction, one of two things will happen. The more common is that you'll see its message co-opted and absorbed by one of the existing two. Alternatively, it could achieve viability and will then replace one of the existing two parties, leaving you right where you started with different names.
Canada disagrees, and uses FPTP too. Our NDP is fairly far left and has won provincial elections while on the federal level they achieved official opposition status (ie 2nd place). Far right parties have also had some success. If the US as a whole could step away from the 2 party system I think that'd make a bigger difference. Incidently, other parties have proven willing to steal ideas from less popular parties, so a party can have an influence despite not winning.
The Stoney Nakoda, a first nations group, wants to change the name of the city of Calgary to Wichispa Oyade.
This is to allow the culture and history of the land to become more known and respected. They also want tk change the names of Canmore, the Bow River and Mount Allan and about a dozen more they consider part of their territory.
I am all for per serving the culture of Indigenous people and think renaming geographical sites like Bow River would be benficial, but they are pushing it when they want to rename one of Canada's well known cities. Besides, there was nothing close to Calgary as a settlement until the National Railroad was built bringing in countless immigrants to the prairies.
Plus the Wichispa Oyade Flames/Stampeders does' t have that same ring to it.
Incidently, other parties have proven willing to steal ideas from less popular parties, so a party can have an influence despite not winning.
Indeed. The UK Independence Party has always been something of a shambles as an organisation and has had no success in the national parliament - but has still had a major influence on policy within the country.
Meanwhile in Germany, our top court has ruled that there must be a category for intersex people. Just this year Germany has legalized same sex marriage and now this
Notice, the video may be a bit confusing. They're talking about gender but this is not about gender but about sex, more specifically about intersexual people, which is NOT the same as transgender people.
The latter can already reassign their official gender.
This is about people who have an "ambiguous" sex by biology as in they're not clearly male nor female by their biology.
I don't think that's a good idea. The whole purpose of documentation is to provide people with data about the general populace. Adding a third category would give us more information in official documents; removing the question entirely from birth certificates and other documents would rob us of information.
Compare it to removing race from official documents. Modern science has told us that the entire concept of distinct races is fiction; the only real differences are allele frequencies. But if you stopped recording that data, you couldn't document racial disparities and such. There are good reasons not to remove these fields from documents.
I don't think it's particularly controversial to say payday lenders are by nature predatory and can destroy peoples lives but apparently Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) disagrees.
To be honest, I just don't know a lot of politicians in the Republican party today who are anything like McCain or H. W. Bush, people who actually sacrificed their own personal interests to do what they thought was right (McCain didn't profit from his military service or the McCain-Feingold Act; Bush certainly didn't profit from that tax hike that cost him his second term).
I don't see anyone like that on the Democrat side, at all, to be honest. To use an example, which D politician demanded Menendez resign for his alleged corruption and ongoing trial or his alleged involvement with underage girls? None that I know of and they have had plenty of time.
I don't think that's a good idea. The whole purpose of documentation is to provide people with data about the general populace. Adding a third category would give us more information in official documents; removing the question entirely from birth certificates and other documents would rob us of information.
Compare it to removing race from official documents. Modern science has told us that the entire concept of distinct races is fiction; the only real differences are allele frequencies. But if you stopped recording that data, you couldn't document racial disparities and such. There are good reasons not to remove these fields from documents.
Is it though? There are still the national census that can keep track of this information (and more accurately) and when it comes to births, when hasn't it been close to a 50-50 split?
Now take into consideration how many hoops a person needs to jump through in an attempt to change their gender on these documents and why, when it is not reflective of who they actually are, this information is needed on things like driver licences or ID cards.
Well, when you live in a warmer country there is a tendency to produce more girls. Erm, not relevant to Canada I think...
I'm not sure how it helps Canada to remove potentially relevant scientific data from birth certificates. It certainly can be a helpful piece of information when using documents to identify someone, though its not technically something you can check readily. Does it actually help transpeople and I'm just not seeing it?
I don't see condemnations for Menendez, whose case is still underway, but I do see two of his colleagues defending him. But his defenders are Coy Booker, a Democrat, and Lindsay Graham, a Republican.
I don't know what you're looking for in a politician, @WarChiefZeke, but for me, the single most important thing is support for campaign finance reform so politicians will be more responsive to average voters rather than campaign contributors. Nancy Pelosi apparently supports it; it's been a figure in previous Democratic party platforms; Democrats introduced the DISCLOSE Act to increase transparency of campaign contributions and impose other limits, but Republicans defeated the measure; both Sanders and Clinton supported reform in the 2016 debates; and there's a list of demands by Senate Democrats about reforms we need.
Graham, Chris Christie, and Ted Cruz have complained about the issue of money in politics, and as I pointed out many pages ago, a leak on Clinton showed her complaining about the same problem. McCain, of course, is a singular figure for supporting campaign finance reform, hence his name on the McCain-Feingold act, which unfortunately was not as strong as it could have been due to bipartisan weakening of its reforms. And on the state level, there are Republicans who have supported reform.
However, the most recent official GOP platform says it opposes campaign finance reform and wants to raise or completely remove limits on campaign contributions:
We oppose any restrictions or conditions that would discourage citizens from participating in the public square or limit their ability to promote their ideas, such as requiring private organizations to publicly disclose their donors to the government. Limits on political speech serve only to protect the powerful and insulate incumbent officeholders. We support repeal of federal restrictions on political parties in McCain-Feingold, raising or repealing contribution limits, protecting the political speech of advocacy groups, corporations, and labor unions, and protecting political speech on the internet.
Trump himself has taken no action to reform the system beyond requiring that his advisers not become lobbyists, like Obama did, but it's easy to be a lobbyist but still not meet the legal definition of a lobbyist; there are loopholes that make the promise largely meaningless.
According to some polls, most Americans want to limit campaign contributions.
I get what you're saying, and why you believe the Democrats are the right pick for the issues you feel strongly about i.e campaign finance reform.
To be honest, I am increasingly becoming less concerned about campaign finance because of the fact that it is proving to be a less relevant factor in elections with the advent of the internet and less and less gatekeeping mechanisms. Money can't drown message anymore and the overbudget candidates have seen a rather dismal losing streak lately, including but not limited to Clinton who outspent Trump on the campaign by nearly double.
But I do support campaign finance reform, of course.
I don't think the Internet will do much to mitigate the influence of money in politics, not when people can pay for political ads on Facebook and other websites, instead of paying for political ads on TV. The Internet is just going to give people another platform for political advertising.
Actually, money helps a ton online. Badly made sites/videos garner less attention, and you can pay to make things 'go viral' regardless of whether its true. Hire the right people and you will be able to exploit algorithms and before you know it people believe what you want them to believe, not whats true.
I don't think all the political ads in the world amounted to as much influence as Trump wielded with a few tweets. As long as there exists free and open platforms to say things and discuss ideas I think this dynamic will remain the same.
Clinton out spent Trump during the campaign sure but it sure seems like Trump is out-corrupting whatever we would have got from Clinton. As president Trump has turned over his administration to Goldman Sachs and hired Corporate lobbyists and billionaires for other positions. Every position and department has industry lobbyists running it instead of scientists or people from the department.
His main policy concern has been this tax cut which cuts corporate taxes nearly in half (and leaves their loopholes) and the repeal of the estate tax which affects his family.
Republicans just addee a provision to the tax cut that would (again) gut the ACA and kick 13 million people off their insurance. They will never, ever, ever stop trying to take away health care from as many people as possible. Ever.
One of these days they will finally get around to getting rid of private health insurance or health insurance provided through employers, move everyone to Medicare, then double or triple the Medical tax taken out of everyone's paychecks, currently 1.45%--it could be 5% with no income cap and most people wouldn't notice since they aren't also having to pay for health coverage.
Meh. This is probably just "tough talk" to get started on next year's reelection bids.
"Not having health insurance" is not the same thing as "taking away health care". It does often make it unaffordable, clearly, but it doesn't actually *prevent* you from going to a doctor.
To be more accurate, Clinton outspent Trump and also got more corporate money than Trump because her trade policies were more pro-corporate especially if you are taking into consideration her private statements. Protectionism doesn't help mega corps bottom line but the nation's workers whereas something like the TPP was thinly veiled corporate rule and considering the artificial court system it sets up that's not really hyperbole.
It's hard to be outraged about Goldman Sachs when they've been a top donor and permanent part of Republican and Democrat administrations for many years now even helping to choose Obama's hiring choices; operating of course by the laws of the progressive stack i.e white men go to the back of the bus.
Well, it's not hard to be outraged, just not selectively outraged.
Nobody goes untreated in America insurance or no, I could walk into any emergency room to get treated and when uninsured and in need I've done so before. The costs are high but the downsides to paying them aren't even that bad. Never dealt with a landlord that counted unpaid medical bills against me or had it kill my credit. The costs have to be put into line but sometimes the rhetoric around health care goes a bit too far almost into scare tactics imho.
Nobody goes untreated in America insurance or no, I could walk into any emergency room to get treated and when uninsured and in need I've done so before. The costs are high but the downsides to paying them aren't even that bad. Never dealt with a landlord that counted unpaid medical bills against me or had it kill my credit. The costs have to be put into line but sometimes the rhetoric around health care goes a bit too far almost into scare tactics imho.
If you want to see your healthcare costs go through the stratosphere, start treating everyone in emergency rooms. Seriously, let's give it a shot. We'll send 20 or 30 million more people to strictly the emergency room for their healthcare. 85% of them won't pay their bill (because they CAN'T, because almost no one can pay healthcare costs out of pocket) and the costs will get passed on to......you. And everyone else. Because treating people in emergency rooms when it isn't an emergency is literally one of the stupidest and most cost inefficient (not to mention health inefficient) ways to conduct health care in a society. It's a neat little talking point that takes almost NO real issues into consideration, such as the lack of any type of preventative medicine, the increased workload on doctors, nurses and clerical workers who are supposed to be treating actual emergencies, the massive cost increases to everyone from inevitable unpaid bills, and the simple fact that many people are simply NOT going to go to the Dr. without insurance because they don't think they can afford it. Which causes them to get sick, which causes other people to get sick. Because we live in a country with hundreds of millions of people. And maybe you don't give a shit if someone else's kid gets sick. But you'll damn sure care when that kid gets YOUR kid sick. And you'll damn sure care when your premium goes up because of a massive up-tick in emergency room visits being used as common doctor visits because of lack of insurance. All so multi-millionaires can get a few hundred thousand more dollars a year in tax breaks. It isn't scare tactics. It's real-life, with real-life consequences, not libertarian fantasy-land.
And beyond that, in this tax cut proposal, we are talking about Medicare cuts. $25 billion. You know, the thing we as a society have promised to everyone over the age of 65, after they've worked hard for their entire lives. So they can have their health-care taken care of in the back part of their life. The program Donald Trump explicitly promised not to touch at nearly every campaign stop. The one that makes sure many people's grandparents aren't destitute. Yeah. That Medicare.
Comments
And let's get real....people equivocate about Trump and about Bill Clinton. But we are talking about a guy who was trolling shopping malls for underage girls and writing messages in their high school yearbooks. If he had been born 30 years later he would have been one of those guys who walks into the kitchen naked and runs into Chris Hanson on "To Catch a Predator". We're talking about pedophilia and attempted child rape with this guy.
That said, I wouldn't vote for a Republican either. I'm not expecting them to vote for a Democrat. I think staying home or writing someone in is a perfectly viable alternative. I voted for Nader in 2000 so I'm intimately familiar with throwing away a vote. The only time my vote has made an ounce of difference was in 2008 when Al Franken beat Norm Coleman by 312 votes, one of which was mine.
To be honest, I just don't know a lot of politicians in the Republican party today who are anything like McCain or H. W. Bush, people who actually sacrificed their own personal interests to do what they thought was right (McCain didn't profit from his military service or the McCain-Feingold Act; Bush certainly didn't profit from that tax hike that cost him his second term). The most famous Republicans today are people like Trump, McConnell, and Cruz, and I best know those three people for empty promises, obstructionism, and supporting a flat tax, respectively. I know there are more people than just incompetents and saboteurs in the GOP today--Graham isn't a bad guy--but the good guys are literally dying out.
Who in the Republican party should I vote for? Which Republican politicians support campaign finance reform?
For the record, I would not vote for Moore unless he was running against a serial killer. Even then I'd probably go with the Libertarian.
Otherwise every time a third party starts to gain traction, one of two things will happen. The more common is that you'll see its message co-opted and absorbed by one of the existing two. Alternatively, it could achieve viability and will then replace one of the existing two parties, leaving you right where you started with different names.
The Stoney Nakoda, a first nations group, wants to change the name of the city of Calgary to Wichispa Oyade.
This is to allow the culture and history of the land to become more known and respected. They also want tk change the names of Canmore, the Bow River and Mount Allan and about a dozen more they consider part of their territory.
I am all for per serving the culture of Indigenous people and think renaming geographical sites like Bow River would be benficial, but they are pushing it when they want to rename one of Canada's well known cities. Besides, there was nothing close to Calgary as a settlement until the National Railroad was built bringing in countless immigrants to the prairies.
Plus the Wichispa Oyade Flames/Stampeders does' t have that same ring to it.
Compare it to removing race from official documents. Modern science has told us that the entire concept of distinct races is fiction; the only real differences are allele frequencies. But if you stopped recording that data, you couldn't document racial disparities and such. There are good reasons not to remove these fields from documents.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/payday-lenders-democrats_us_5a0a211ee4b0bc648a0d5325?ncid=engmodushpmg00000004 I don't see anyone like that on the Democrat side, at all, to be honest. To use an example, which D politician demanded Menendez resign for his alleged corruption and ongoing trial or his alleged involvement with underage girls? None that I know of and they have had plenty of time.
Now take into consideration how many hoops a person needs to jump through in an attempt to change their gender on these documents and why, when it is not reflective of who they actually are, this information is needed on things like driver licences or ID cards.
I'm not sure how it helps Canada to remove potentially relevant scientific data from birth certificates. It certainly can be a helpful piece of information when using documents to identify someone, though its not technically something you can check readily. Does it actually help transpeople and I'm just not seeing it?
I don't know what you're looking for in a politician, @WarChiefZeke, but for me, the single most important thing is support for campaign finance reform so politicians will be more responsive to average voters rather than campaign contributors. Nancy Pelosi apparently supports it; it's been a figure in previous Democratic party platforms; Democrats introduced the DISCLOSE Act to increase transparency of campaign contributions and impose other limits, but Republicans defeated the measure; both Sanders and Clinton supported reform in the 2016 debates; and there's a list of demands by Senate Democrats about reforms we need.
Graham, Chris Christie, and Ted Cruz have complained about the issue of money in politics, and as I pointed out many pages ago, a leak on Clinton showed her complaining about the same problem. McCain, of course, is a singular figure for supporting campaign finance reform, hence his name on the McCain-Feingold act, which unfortunately was not as strong as it could have been due to bipartisan weakening of its reforms. And on the state level, there are Republicans who have supported reform.
However, the most recent official GOP platform says it opposes campaign finance reform and wants to raise or completely remove limits on campaign contributions: Trump himself has taken no action to reform the system beyond requiring that his advisers not become lobbyists, like Obama did, but it's easy to be a lobbyist but still not meet the legal definition of a lobbyist; there are loopholes that make the promise largely meaningless.
According to some polls, most Americans want to limit campaign contributions.
To be honest, I am increasingly becoming less concerned about campaign finance because of the fact that it is proving to be a less relevant factor in elections with the advent of the internet and less and less gatekeeping mechanisms. Money can't drown message anymore and the overbudget candidates have seen a rather dismal losing streak lately, including but not limited to Clinton who outspent Trump on the campaign by nearly double.
But I do support campaign finance reform, of course.
...a bit on the nose you say?? Huh.
His main policy concern has been this tax cut which cuts corporate taxes nearly in half (and leaves their loopholes) and the repeal of the estate tax which affects his family.
Not Medicaid, MEDICARE.
Meh. This is probably just "tough talk" to get started on next year's reelection bids.
"Not having health insurance" is not the same thing as "taking away health care". It does often make it unaffordable, clearly, but it doesn't actually *prevent* you from going to a doctor.
It's hard to be outraged about Goldman Sachs when they've been a top donor and permanent part of Republican and Democrat administrations for many years now even helping to choose Obama's hiring choices; operating of course by the laws of the progressive stack i.e white men go to the back of the bus.
Well, it's not hard to be outraged, just not selectively outraged.
http://observer.com/2016/10/obama-makes-first-appearance-in-wikileaks-receives-admin-list-from-big-banker/
And beyond that, in this tax cut proposal, we are talking about Medicare cuts. $25 billion. You know, the thing we as a society have promised to everyone over the age of 65, after they've worked hard for their entire lives. So they can have their health-care taken care of in the back part of their life. The program Donald Trump explicitly promised not to touch at nearly every campaign stop. The one that makes sure many people's grandparents aren't destitute. Yeah. That Medicare.
I think we should ditch all the Goldman Sachs employees in the Trump and Clinton administrations, that fair? No selectivity there.
Donald Trump is assembling the richest administration in modern American history
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/30/donald-trump-is-assembling-the-richest-administration-in-modern-american-history/