2016 Dec 13^th

The way to get an appointment as head of a cabinet department in the Trump administration is to declare that you wish to abolish that department.  The case in point is the fact that Trump, today, will name his erstwhile antagonist former Texas Governor Rick Perry, as Head of the Energy Department. Perry is notorious because in a debate he volunteered that he wanted to eliminate three cabinet departments and then named two that had to go but he just couldn’t remember the third…the third, he said later, was the Department of Energy which he now will head. The Department of Energy is on the list of “bad guys” by fans of the gas and oil industry because the Department’s stock in trade is restricting these companies from contaminating the environment and killing their employees and other people in the vicinity. Well, pshaw; what killjoys they are!

Mr. Tillerson of ExxonMobil has officially been tapped as Secretary of State… if he can be confirmed. I hope he has saved his salary because he will take quite a cut. I believe his salary last year fell to a measly 28 million, about on a par with an NFL quarterback. Now as Secretary of State, he’ll take a 93 percent salary cut to 205 thousand a year. (The sacrifices some business people are called to make for their country!)

He might have a problem in his confirmation hearings because he lobbied forcefully against imposing sanctions on Russia after their incursions into Crimea and Ukraine. But, as one of his promoters said this morning, most business people oppose most economic sanctions. I mean asking business people to forego economic gain for the good of the country; what will be next?

We now have john Bolton as assistant Secretary of State. Bolton is another “chicken hawk.” He supported the Vietnam War from the relative safety of the Yale Law School campus. He is sure the Iraq War was a good idea, flawed intelligence or not. And he believes the CIA intelligence about Russia interfering in our election was in fact a Clinton plant. It was really the Clinton camp just pretending to be the Russians. (We’ve seen Yale Law School graduates in government before haven’t we.)

Why is this man being considered? Follow the money! He is backed by the Mercer father and daughter, major contributors to the Trump campaign. You remember Trump explained that his campaign was impervious to the influence of contributors because he  himself was so rich. Well, maybe not because The Mercers were major donors to Trump, and Bolton is one of their favorite people. The curios question is:  What, if anything, did  Tillerson the new Secretary of State designate have to say about having to deal with this curiosity as his assistant secretary of state.  He will be asked and you can bet he’ll whitewash Bolton until you won’t recognize him. It’ll be his first truly diplomatic performance.