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http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/world/us-election/team-trumps-cabinet-looks-like-a-different-kind-of-swamp-20161215-gtbz3c.html
Quote: There's a strong end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it whiff to this week's offerings – his foreign policy team wants war with Iran; he's delivering the US into Vladimir Putin's hands; and the oil and gas industry is amassing such inordinate power in Washington that a gang of climate change sceptics are set to trash the environment.
Trump's "wrecking ball and swamp creature" appointees are seen as delinquents and vandals; as foxes assigned to care for chickens, who are unfit for office – either through their past money-grubbing or their heretical outpourings against a litany of services and systems that, notionally at least, are the building blocks of a caring, inclusive and orderly society.
Steven Mnuchin is at Treasury – he's an investment banker who pocketed billions in the housing crisis.
Andrew Puzder is at Labor – a fast-food CEO, his contempt for a decent minimum wage is matched only by the disdain for workers displayed in his claim that robots "never take a vacation, they never show up late, there's never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex, or race discrimination case".
Billionaire Betsy DeVos is at Education – as a supporter of "school choice", her near-fanatical belief in charter schools and private instruction is read as a death knell for government-run schools.
Former Texas governor Rick Perry is at Energy – a department he once vowed to dismantle.
Tom Price is at Health and Human Services – he wants to eviscerate Obamacare and cut the guts from of Medicare and Medicaid.
Elaine Chao is at Transport – she wants to rip the innards from regulations that govern big business, especially auto, aviation, railroad and pipeline safety.
Scott Pruitt is at the Environmental Protection Agency – he's a self-described "leading advocate" against the agency's very existence.
Alabama senator Jeff Sessions as attorney-general is an unambiguous two-fingered gesture to civil rights and immigration activists – Sessions is a strident opponent of the historic Civil Rights Act and of any immigration reform; he wants to strike down federal protection for LGBT victims of hate crimes; and in the Reagan years, he was memorably denied Senate confirmation for a judicial appointment because he was accused of racism.
But fear of what might be wrought by that lot pales when it comes to the generals in Trump's national security team – Mike Flynn as national security adviser, James Mattis as defence secretary and John Kelly as secretary of homeland security
And though he's been plucked from the ranks of Congress and not the military, Mike Pompeo, Trump's choice as director of the CIA, has the same dangerous world view....
There's heaps more, all equally scary.
Paul D
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