2017 is on us with a lot at stake

New Year 2017—Hope for the Best, Prepare for Something Less Than

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— 
because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— 
because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) was a prominent Protestant pastor who emerged as an outspoken public foe of Adolf Hitler and spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps.

Benjamin Franklin: “We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”

(Maloni: The above are messages to all Americans in what may be unsettling times. Be resolute. Our nation’s founding principles never should be compromised or surrendered to any person or for any cause.)

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GSE Good News and Bad News

One of the best Fannie/Freddie developments of late are the plethora out there of high quality GSE articles, reports, and blogs which increasingly are being read and commented on (again, check GSE Links for most/all of them). First and foremost, among those, are “the real” Tim Howard’s blog and responses to questions.

In the Congress, initially, it’s all about the Mnuchin hearings due to occur this Thursday before the Senate Finance Committee (but not Senate Banking).  He’ll face some challenges.

As others have written and most know, Mnuchin has a plan to return the GSEs to private ownership and some degree of management driven operation, as opposed to run by the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the US Treasury.

If he gets approved by the Senate, then Mnuchin should be primed to put into place his ideas.

Some D’s will play partisan roles and, in addition to Wall Street hassles,  Mnuchin could encounter Fannie/Freddie opponents—opposed to GSE resurrection-- because they want to see the GSE’s annual revenues freed up for big banks if/when F&F are dismantled.

Steve Mnuchin faces an uphill fight, having little to do with his smarts and financial experience. The D’s need, desperately, to knock off one of the Trump appointees to show they can. (Although some possibly deeply personal news—in Legal Schnauzer-- trickling out last week about Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) could serve that purpose.)

If SM doesn’t win approval, it’s not a good thing for the GSEs and a Trump setback, although a replacement TSY Secy could pick up the GSE cudgels if that’s what President Trump wants.

But, Mnuchin’s situation may get overtaken when President Trump and his Treasury team have to decide—beginning in the following week—on another pending GSE matter, i.e. whether to keep opposing release of 11,000 likely politically embarrassing federal documents the Obama DoJ has tried to block in Judge Margaret Sweeney’s Court of Claims.

Looming behind it is the pending Appeals Court case involving the original Lamberth decision, blessing the “sweep.”

So we may soon hear about several major GSE developments.

Also not “news” or very startling, but a pain in the ass (especially for those who thought Mnuchin’s nomination was all the pro-GSE side needed) is there are a lot of anti-GSE types populating the transition teams, with many of them expecting to get second tier jobs in the Trump Cabinet agencies.

Someone needs to keep an eye on those potential; troublemakers.

Trump’s Presidency: An early look,

Which I hope changes once DT’s comfy

I suspect in the coming Trump Administration “post-fact” years I will be accused of being overly dramatic or possibly too critical of Trump and the GOP controlled Senate and House. I likely will lose some readers, too, because to the extent I have readers, I understand they want GSE discussion first and, maybe some politics second.

But, without blaming either the new folks in town or the outgoing D’s, collectively they’ve contributed to a devaluation of truth and facts, creating an era where individuals need to be personally responsible for ferreting out right and wrong. We all must be active not passive in our analyses.

No longer can we rely on the media, alone, to help us as they face the same challenges and Tweet threats.

So, without building too high a blog soap box, in my commentary I will try and separate wheat from chaff and point people in certain directions, making clear my motives and reasoning.

That’s my 2017 pledge.

DJT Hot Button: I have to start with stating Donald Trump appears incapable of handling any sort of challenge or disagreement without deprecating his critics.

Further, his amazing insecurity--having amassed so much money, power, including winning the presidency which nobody will take from him—still forces him to project his self-doubt by shouting to the world everything he is, has, or thinks is “great” and that all of his critics deserved for be Twitter bombed for being losers, bad, old, overrated, or worse.

DJ Hot Button: Is he so insecure in his own skin that nobody in any part of our society can challenge him on anything? That is pretty scary, but it’s hard to see him reacting in any other manner than he has in the weeks leading up to his inauguration.

Margaret Sullivan, writing about the PEOTUS in today’s Washington Post;

That Trump will be what columnist Frida Ghitis of the Miami Herald calls “the gaslighter in chief” — that he will pull out all the stops to make people think that they should believe him, not their own eyes. (“Gaslighting” is a reference to the 1940s movie in which a manipulative husband psychologically abuses his wife by denying the reality that the gaslights in their home are growing dimmer and dimmer.)

“The techniques,” Ghitis wrote, “include saying and doing things and then denying it, blaming others for misunderstanding, disparaging their concerns as oversensitivity, claiming outrageous statements were jokes or misunderstandings, and other forms of twilighting the truth.”

DJT Hot Button: He hasn’t shown any signs of intellectual challenge, just retaliatory bombast.

I truly hope that when his cabinet gets in place, he will step back and let these people, many of whom seem intellectually and morally superior to him, do their jobs—as he promises he will—and not interfere unless it’s clear they are violating legal, Constitutional, or long held US policy principles.

I want him to surprise me. I want him to force me to write, “I was wrong and underestimated Donald Trump’s capacity to be a good US President.” I want him to show me he cares about low income Americans of all ethnicities and can perform on an international stage and—with staff assistance—can understand domestic issues.

DJT Hot Button: I am haunted by the feeling that but President Trump won’t have the political/policy sensitivity and “sekel” (Yiddish: prudence, insight, common sense) to do the hard work of driving positive sustainable change for the vast majority of Americans, i.e. “his pledge is “make America Great Again”.

He’s also has named a ton of chiefs, i.e. billionaires, generals, lions of industry and commerce, who are not the best disciples, lining up behind a peripatetic leader and do things his way. They are used to doing things their way. That’s how they succeeded, by following their instincts and guts.

I’ve never seen a panoply of so many elites in a single political cabinet (assuming all/most get approved).

This past week Trump WH press secretary, Sean Spicer, proclaimed all these cabinet giants would “follow President Trump.” The next day PEOTUS Trump said he wants his appointments “to say and do what they think.” Begin to see the problem?

  

A Few Words about Russia and Putin

One of my favorite themes/worries is Russia and Vladimir Putin, because I have history on my side.

DJT Very Hot Button: Given all the Trump family/campaign lies about Russia, how can any of those individuals or his “yes men/women” look our nation with a straight face and say Putin and his goons weren't working for Trump’s election and acted on that objective or that no business discussions with Putin/Russia have been going on for years?

I am thinking of Kellyanne “Conwoman,” who after declaring that if she took a high profile Washington job, her four children never would brush their teeth in the morning or get to school on time, six days before she took a high powered Washington job. (That five Pinocchio’s, right there, KC.) Oh, and poor Conway kids.

Does anyone think the happy Russian officials would have been so happy if HRC won?

The Russians are giving Trump crumbs from their table and he’s going to loosen US sanction against the Oligarch Putin and his thugs?

Here’s some of what columnist Nicholas Kristoff said about on Trump and Russia in yesterday’s Sunday NYT: 

“So what’s going on?

“The most important question is simply why our president-elect has been so determined to side with Russia — undermining his own intelligence community as he does so. Perhaps it’s a genuine if naïve attempt to “reset” relations. But, oops, new presidents have tried that before, and it fails each time.

“The Trump view is so far from the foreign policy mainstream that inevitably there will be darker theories offered for the softness toward Russia. These involve financial ties with Moscow, since Trump refuses to release his tax statements, or the kind of sordid blackmail alleged in the dossier.

“Such rumors may well be wrong and unfair — but they persist. They damage Trump, the intelligence community and the United States itself, and the best disinfectant will be transparency. That means congressional inquiries, led by Republicans, and a continued F.B.I. investigation.”

  

DJT Hot Button: Sorry, but I believe DJT, the businessman—who still dominates, not the US President--is all about the $$$.

Those dozen new hotels he and his sons have been desperate to open in Russian certainly won’t provide much needed jobs to those out of work miners in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio, which they will need even more when the GOP cuts off their access to health insurance.

As noted, I am guardedly hopeful he’ll still can make good on job-generating campaign rhetoric. It still is early in the Trump Admin’s life, and I promise to speak up, as loud as I can, and tout any policy successes DJT drives.

But, I’ll also point to any screw up Trump makes and remind his supporters if those actions represent broken election promises, corporate giveaways, or just naked Trump family wealth accumulation owing to daddy's new job.

If misbehaves across the board and generates a backlash from those who voted for him, it could make all of this unique partisan/personal headhunting, drama, anger, hostility, preening and egotism worth the inevitable fights.

But as Don, Eric, and the family advisors sweep up all of the inevitable coins thrown Trump Inc.’s way--owing to the President’s win--can DJT keep the nation strong, out of nuclear war, a functioning democracy for all Americans, and remember all of those to whom he promised "wonderful and huge" new jobs, added income, and other goodies for displaced Southern, Midwestern, and Eastern Rust Belt residents, in return for their November votes.

To whom will his voters bitch, when a dozen or so new Trump Russian hotels open—plus whatever “deals’ come down to the kids—and they don’t produce many domestic jobs.

I hope those coal miners and their kids remember those unfulfilled Trump promises especially if they begin losing their health insurance on the planned GOP cutbacks with no substitute coverage in place?

Maloni, 1-16-2017