Mountain Mule
Mountain Mule's JournalAt State Department, 'Dissent Channel' In High Gear With Refugee Ban Protests
NPR:
At the State Department, employees are expressing concern via an official dissent channel about the Trump administration's temporary visa and refugee ban.
At the State Department, there is an easy — and usually private — way for employees to register their concerns about U.S. policy. It's called the "Dissent Channel." And today, an unusually large number of foreign service officers are using it.
A dissent cable says Donald Trump's temporary visa and refugee ban "runs counter to American values" and could be "counterproductive."
Trump's Immigration Freeze Omits Those Linked To Deadly Attacks In U.S.
The White House claims it consulted for "many weeks" with the State Department before issuing its executive order on Friday, temporarily banning visas for citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries and suspending the U.S. refugee resettlement program.
State Department officials who were involved in the refugee program deny this. One retired ambassador, Laura Kennedy, says the executive order did not read as if it had been reviewed by State Department lawyers or by consular or refugee officials.
"It is just, as the dissent message makes clear, inconsistent with values, with security aims of the administration, with process, with any number of things," Kennedy says.
More - this is very good stuff coming in from National Public Radio right now!
http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/01/30/512494230/at-state-department-dissent-channel-in-high-gear-with-refugee-ban-protests?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=news
Trumps 10 Troubling Deals with Foreign Power-Players
The latest from ProPublica:
(By Derek Kravitz and Al Shaw, ProPublica, and John Kelly, USA Today, January 19, 2017)
I really thought that I had seen it all when it comes to political corruption, but as usual, Comrade trump trumps them all when it comes to corruption and a complete lack of personal ethics in the highest office in this country. How much longer must we tolerate this man running amuck in streets both domestic and foreign? He should be sitting in a solitary cell in Gitmo right now, awaiting a trial that stretches off in some distant future just like any other terrorist who imperils the security of our country:
Government ethics experts have strongly criticized Trump’s refusal to divest ownership of any of his businesses. But they point to his ongoing foreign deals with those connected to power as the most troubling.
“These foreign deals are fertile ground for corruption,” Norman Eisen, the White House chief ethics lawyer under President Obama, told ProPublica. "When there's a pre-existing relationship, there can be wink, wink, nod, nod, or even a private whisper that turns into a quid pro quo.”
“He has to get rid of his foreign deals,” said Matthew T. Sanderson, an attorney at Caplin & Drysdale who has served as legal counsel on three Republican presidential campaigns.
Trump’s Byzantine business structures and his lack of disclosures -- he has released neither his tax returns nor details of his foreign deals -- make it difficult to get a full picture of the incoming president’s business relationships. But using government records, Trump’s own local disclosures and press reports, we’ve identified 10 Trump deals in which he has partnered with power players abroad.
We asked the Trump Organization about each of these deals. We’ve included the responses they gave.
https://projects.propublica.org/trump-conflicts/
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