General bloging: January 2017

Friday 20 January 2017

Trump's plan for energy independence sacrifices the environment

Shortly after Donald Trump was sworn into office, the White House's website changed. Beyond the splash image of him and Vice President Mike Pence, under the "issues" tab the President outlines what he plans to do next: eliminate the Climate Action Plan and Waters of the U.S. rule. These "burdensome regulations on our energy industry" have been keeping American workers down for too long, and by nixing them wages will increase by $30 billion over the next seven years. Somehow. And almost assuredly at the expense of the environment.

"Sound energy policy begins with the recognition that we have vast untapped domestic energy reserves right here in America. The Trump Administration will embrace the shale oil and gas revolution to bring jobs and prosperity to millions of Americans. We must take advantage of the estimated $50 trillion in untapped shale, oil, and natural gas reserves, especially those on federal lands that the American people own. We will use the revenues from energy production to rebuild our roads, schools, bridges and public infrastructure. Less expensive energy will be a big boost to American agriculture, as well."

Meaning, you can bet we'll begin mining federal lands for fossil fuels and energy independence. But the plan so far is vague enough that, as presented to the public, just about anything can be done under it. What's more, the closing sections are at odds with what came before it. The post goes on to say that "protecting clean air, clean water, conserving our natural habitats and preserving our natural reserves and resources will remain a high priority." The types of extraction typically used in mining and oil drilling aren't exactly environmentally (or worker) friendly, hence Obama's $28 million investment in training former coal workers for high-tech jobs last October.p.c:https://www.engadget.com/2017/01/20/trumps-plan-for-energy-independence-sacrifices-the-environment/

Rather than having the Environmental Protection Agency focus on pesky things like climate change, Trump's version of the administration, led by climate change skeptic Scott Pruitt, will "refocus" on protecting our air and water. Protecting them from what, exactly?

In May 2016 Trump said he'd rescind the Climate Action Plan as part of his first 100 days in office, so he's working to keep one of his campaign promises. Already, the White House's website has been scrubbed of any reference to the Climate Action plan. Same goes for anything regarding climate change, or the climate itself. Versions from the Obama administration live on in archived form.

Barack and Michelle Obama wave goodbye to Washington

p.c:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-HWlHiemTM

Twitter transfer of power: Trump gets @POTUS

Immediately after Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States, he gained another prestigious title: @POTUS.

The Obama administration handed over the Twitter handles for official accounts like @POTUS, @FLOTUS, @VP, @WhiteHouse and @PressSec to the incoming Trump administration on Friday in the first Twitter transfer of power in U.S. history.

The Twitter handles officially switched over at 12:01 p.m., right after Trump was sworn in as president.

The accounts for Trump's team start fresh. All of the tweets from the previous administration were removed and archived on a set of newly created accounts, including @POTUS44, @VP44 and @FLOTUS44.

If you've retweeted or embedded posts from these accounts over the years, they will still show up, but from an account ending in 44.

These archived accounts, along with White House social media accounts on Facebook (FB, Tech30), Instagram, YouTube and Tumblr, will be managed by the National Archives and Records Administration.

But perhaps most importantly, Trump's administration will inherit the millions of followers for each account. The @WhiteHouse and @POTUS accounts each have more than 13 million followers.

The transfer of those followers was not immediate, however. The @POTUS account started with zero followers and was back up to about four million after an hour.

Those who chose to follow these accounts for Obama will automatically be following Trump and his administration -- at least until they opt out.

The massive social media transfer has been in the works for months. The White House first announced its plan just days before the election -- at a time when many expected Hillary Clinton to win.

"While much of the digital transition is unprecedented in the United States, the peaceful transition of power is not," Kori Schulman, special assistant to the president and deputy chief digital officer, wrote in a blog post in October.

As a result of those efforts, Trump and his team will now be able to choose whether to tweet from @POTUS or his personal account @RealDonaldTrump, which recently topped 20 million followers.

It's unclear which one Trump, known for tweeting at all hours, will prefer. Trump's first tweets after his inauguration were posted to @RealDonaldTrump. It took another 90 minutes for Trump's team to tweet as @POTUS.

Trump has also reportedly traded in the Android phone he sometimes uses to tweet for a "secure, encrypted device approved by the Secret Service," according to The New York Times.

Kellyanne Conway, Trump's former campaign manager, appeared to confirm the device change in an interview with Fox News on Friday. When asked if Trump would still be able to tweet from the new phone, she said, "Oh yes, there'll be social media platforms."

Some have raised concerns in recent weeks about the risks of Trump continuing to tweet from his personal account. If his account were hacked by a group, it could effectively create a national security crisis.

Ian Plunkett, a spokesman for Twitter (TWTR, Tech30), directed questions about specific security protocols to Trump's transition team. But he noted Twitter does have a dedicated team in Washington that works with the White House and Congress on best practices, including security.

Reps for Trump's transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In one interview this week, Trump said that he does not actually enjoy tweeting, but feels it's the best way to get his message directly to people.

"If the press were honest, which it's not, I would absolutely not use Twitter," Trump said. "I wouldn't have to."

-- Additional reporting contributed by David Wright.

p.c:http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/20/technology/donald-trump-twitter-potus/index.html

Monday 9 January 2017

What You Need To Know About Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's Son-In-Law And Newly Appointed Advisor

Today, the Donald Trump transition team revealed that Jared Kushner, husband to Trump's daughter Ivanka, would play a special advisory role in the Trump White House, despite ethical concerns related to nepotism rules.

Kushner played a crucial role in Trump's campaign, but has never been involved in politics before that. So, how did Kushner end up gaining special access to America's president-elect? Here's what you need to know.

Kushner Began Work For Trump's Campaign By Advising Him On Issues With Israel

Soon after his first foray into the campaign, Kushner began putting his mark on increasingly more things:

It was Jared who helped prepare Trump for an appearance before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in March, and Jared who helped broker a truce with Fox News when Trump fought with Megyn Kelly, the network's star anchor. After Trump fired Corey Lewandowski, his campaign manager, in June, it was reported that Ivanka had demanded Lewandowski's dismissal for trying to marginalize Jared's influence...Most recently, Jared was on hand to help Trump choose Indiana governor Mike Pence as his running mate—over and above, it did not go unnoticed, the great nemesis of the Kushner family, Chris Christie.

[Esquire]

Eventually, Kushner Organized And Ran The Marketing And Data Operation Of Trump's Campaign

Kushner walked into a campaign with very little central power and took over — running the campaign like a start-up:

Kushner structured the operation with a focus on maximizing the return for every dollar spent. "We played Moneyball, asking ourselves which states will get the best ROI for the electoral vote," Kushner says. "I asked, How can we get Trump's message to that consumer for the least amount of cost?" FEC filings through mid-October indicate the Trump campaign spent roughly half as much as the Clinton campaign did.

[Forbes]

Kushner And His Team Used Unorthodox Political Tactics To Create Hype Around Trump

Trump’s own approach to self-promotion, reinforced by Kushner’s advice, was at odds with the highly targeted logic of the web. “If you’re running a burger shop, you have to let people know that your burgers are good and get them into your shop to buy them,” says a source close to the candidate. “It’s pretty similar with voting: You have to find out what people want and then convince them why your product is the right one.”

[Bloomberg]

Kushner Runs His Family's Business Empire, Which Includes Media And Real Estate

Unlike the Trump Organization, which has shifted its focus from acquisition to branding of the Trump name, the Kushner family business, led by Mr. Kushner, is a major real estate investor across the New York area and beyond. The company has participated in roughly $7 billion in acquisitions in the last decade, many of them backed by opaque foreign money, as well as financial institutions Mr. Kushner’s father-in-law will soon have a hand in regulating.

[The New York Times]

Kushner And His Companies Have Major Conflicts Of Interest With Government Service, Which Rival Trump's

Kushner has a loan from an Israeli bank under Justice Department investigation. He does business with a Chinese company that the Obama administration has blocked from acquiring some American hotels out of security concerns. Investors in some of his projects have benefited from a federal program that hands out US visas in exchange for hefty investments in American companies.

[Vox]

As Trump's Son-In-Law, The Appointment Raises Questions About Nepotism

Federal government guidelines stipulate that employees at federal agencies are not permitted to hire family members, though Kushner's legal representatives have argued that the White House is not a federal agency.

[Business Insider]

Questions Remain, But A 1993 Case Involving Hillary Clinton Might Provide Precedent

When President Bill Clinton appointed his wife to chair the Task Force on National Health Care Reform, a lobbying group filed a lawsuit in the D.C. courts. The central legal question in that case wasn't actually about the anti-nepotism statute – it was about whether Hillary Clinton's task force had to publicly disclose records. But almost as a passing mention in the D.C. Circuit's 1993 opinion, the court said that the federal anti-nepotism statute does not appear to cover staff in the White House or in the Executive Office of the President.

[NPR]

Kushner Is An Orthodox Jew, And Has Faced Criticism For Supporting Trump Who Is Associated With Anti-Semitic Politics

In an article published in The Observer, which he owns, a Jewish employee called him out for supporting an "anti-Semetic" ticket:

You went to Harvard, and hold two graduate degrees. Please do not condescend to me and pretend you don’t understand the imagery of a six-sided star when juxtaposed with money and accusations of financial dishonesty.

[The Observer]

The next day, Kushner responded, saying that Trump has proved to him personally that he is supportive of the Jewish faith:

Donald Trump is not anti-Semitic and he’s not a racist. Despite the best efforts of his political opponents and a large swath of the media to hold Donald Trump accountable for the utterances of even the most fringe of his supporters—a standard to which no other candidate is ever held—the worst that his detractors can fairly say about him is that he has been careless in retweeting imagery that can be interpreted as offensive.p.c:http://digg.com/2017/jared-kushner-trump-advisor-ethics-nepotism

The Google Voice website is hinting at a big redesign

It’s been a long, long, long time since Google Voice gained any new features or even received much attention from Google. But it appears that’s about to change. Maybe. Hopefully.

Today there’s a banner at the top of the Google Voice website that says “The New Google Voice is here.” There’s a clickable link to “try now,” and that URL points to: https://www.google.com/voice/b/0/redirection/new. Some people are seeing it, and others are not.

But as of right now, heading to that site just reloads the existing Google Voice website without any visible changes or updates. When contacted by The Verge, a Google spokesperson offered this statement acknowledging the slip-up:

Sorry, it looks like we must have dialed the wrong number! But don't worry, this wasn't a prank call. We're working on some updates to Google Voice right now. We have you on speed dial and we'll be sure to share what we've been up to just as soon as we can.

Google previously attempted to merge some of Google Voice’s functionality with Hangouts. I never really went along with that and still use the apps and desktop website — same as always. They’re not looking so great these days. But with Allo now serving as the company’s primary messaging app, well, perhaps Mountain View is ready to help Google Voice stand on its own again as the awesome service it started as. Make it so, Google. Start off 2017 right.

Google Voice has more or less been sitting still without any major feature additions for several years running. On mobile, the iOS app was most recently updated last June with “bug fixes.” (On Android, it was May.) The last significant update before that for iPhone was in October 2015 when the app was updated to support the native display resolutions of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. So yeah... not much has been happening. The service still works fine. It just hasn’t done anything new in forever. Google might just be getting ready to introduce Voice to a new generation.