{"id":1425,"date":"2017-07-26T17:23:09","date_gmt":"2017-07-26T22:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lisa.rushworth.us\/?p=1425"},"modified":"2017-07-31T14:24:42","modified_gmt":"2017-07-31T19:24:42","slug":"government-by-threat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/?p=1425","title":{"rendered":"Government by Threat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Trump is reportedly\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.adn.com\/politics\/2017\/07\/26\/trump-administration-signals-that-murkowskis-health-care-vote-could-have-energy-repercussions-for-alaska\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">threatening Alaska<\/a>, hoping to garner enough votes to pass<em> something<\/em> health-care related. No matter how bad the bill might be, no matter how it may impact *his* voters, no matter how much money it will end up costing everyone (great, I save 20$ in taxes but I&#8217;m spending 20k on insurance each year instead of 6k).<\/p>\n<p>A president looking to influence legislative decisions is certainly not new, but I question the legality and ethics of this technique. What is the point of &#8220;checks and balances&#8221; if the party that implements the policy and uses the budget uses their responsibilities to force legislative direction? Or threatens to abdicate their responsibilities to the same end?<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m reminded of every bad mafia don show ever made &#8212; that&#8217;s a really nice building you got there, be a shame if something happened to it. The president has become this caricature! That&#8217;s some really lucrative mining we&#8217;re planning to approve for your area. Be a shame if someone lost this approval form.<\/p>\n<p>Goofiness aside, this (if true) is the most frightening report to come out of the nascent Trump presidency. Well, maybe not\u00a0<em>the<\/em> most frightening. That dubious honor, thus far, goes to Michael Lewis&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/news\/2017\/07\/department-of-energy-risks-michael-lewis\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">nuclear threat piece in Vanity Fair<\/a>. I have to categorize the potential for nuclear destruction due to administrative ineptitude and malfeasance as\u00a0<em>worse<\/em> than the breakdown of the entire system of American governance. Despite coming in a close second to nuclear annihilation &#8230; why in the world is there not an investigation into Trump&#8217;s strong-arming of Alaska for votes?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Trump is reportedly\u00a0threatening Alaska, hoping to garner enough votes to pass something health-care related. No matter how bad the bill might be, no matter how it may impact *his* voters, no matter how much money it will end up costing everyone (great, I save 20$ in taxes but I&#8217;m spending 20k on insurance each year &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[143,240,283],"class_list":["post-1425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-aca","tag-bcra","tag-disfunction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1425"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1429,"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1425\/revisions\/1429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}