Trump Dump: Internal Policy (Thread I)

[K. A. Pital]

When one agrees to lower pay, so do others. That is how the market works, after all. It is normal that people who escape from hell cannot comprehend the living standard of the First World and immediately agree to lower pay, no matter the conditions. It is not normal for a side observer to consider this acceptable or desireable, as the only real accomplishment is the reduction of pay levels for all workers.

[Simon_Jester]

My own feeling is that as long as the global inequality of wages exists, this process cannot be avoided. There will always be either people moving from low-money areas to high where they can earn more, or capital moving from high-money areas to low where it can buy more. It's the economic equivalent of thermodynamics; you cannot prevent heat from moving from a high-energy area to a low-energy one. You can obstruct the heat transfer but not truly stop it.

My feeling is that since we cannot prevent the process of transfer of labor (one way) or capital (the other) between rich and poor countries...

Well, it might as well be allowed in a way that enables citizens of the poorer countries to individually and personally gain some of the wealth of the richer countries. In itself, this is not an abuse, though I can see how it might feel like an abuse if you look at it only from the point of view of the existing citizens of the rich country, and ignore any secondary benefits to them that might arise by trade or immigration from the poor country.

[His Divine Shadow]

This. It is an unacceptable compromise with conscience to me. Why are labour rights so low on everyone's radar? Maybe because most First Worlders are entitled rentiers who no longer have to work to enjoy the life standard? I am honestly baffled by the attitude.

Everyone's living in their own insulated bubbles nowadays, cut off from the parts of the world they don't want to see. You can live in a city and never realize or think about the origins of anything around you, not the food, not the products, not anything. It's a lot like a virtual reality, things just pop into existence.

As for labour and globalization and all that. I know that the free transfer of labor and capital can and has been effectively stopped by nations, capital controls have been erected plenty of times recently, I personally think it's time to bring them back on a more permanent basis. The market and globalization itself is only as powerful as the nation states and organizations it controls.

It's not an unstoppable force, it can be stopped, it will be stopped because the inevitable conclusion of globalization is the reduction of wages to the lowest common denominator, this would have far reaching consequences and the western world today is already cracking at the foundations due to globalization's effects.

[K. A. Pital]

My own feeling is that as long as the global inequality of wages exists, this process cannot be avoided. There will always be either people moving from low-money areas to high where they can earn more, or capital moving from high-money areas to low where it can buy more. It's the economic equivalent of thermodynamics; you cannot prevent heat from moving from a high-energy area to a low-energy one. You can obstruct the heat transfer but not truly stop it.

And what exactly is this doing to fix the global wage disparity? It seems like it is a very laid-back justification for a race to the bottom. I cannot accept such excuses.

Your feeling is that we can’t prevent free flow of capital? Well then we have already lost. Capital has won, big time. But I disagree. Capital is just inanimate matter worshipped by fetishists of the worst kind. It is only unstoppable because of the defeatist attitude and weakened social solidarity movements.

Well, it might as well be allowed in a way that enables citizens of the poorer countries to individually and personally gain some of the wealth of the richer countries. In itself, this is not an abuse, though I can see how it might feel like an abuse if you look at it only from the point of view of the existing citizens of the rich country, and ignore any secondary benefits to them that might arise by trade or immigration from the poor country.

I am pretty sure the benefits of a slave underclass are not lost on some of the co-beneficiaries from the rich countries. The benefits of cheap goods arising from a process of labour cannibalism, where cheap goods made by rightless workers are then sold to the First World poor to make them feel “richer” is the epitome of wrongness of this disgusting world.

[Simon_Jester]

My own feeling is that as long as the global inequality of wages exists, this process cannot be avoided. There will always be either people moving from low-money areas to high where they can earn more, or capital moving from high-money areas to low where it can buy more. It's the economic equivalent of thermodynamics; you cannot prevent heat from moving from a high-energy area to a low-energy one. You can obstruct the heat transfer but not truly stop it.

And what exactly is this doing to fix the global wage disparity? It seems like it is a very laid-back justification for a race to the bottom. I cannot accept such excuses.

Trying to impose "Maxwell's demon" on the world economy isn't going to solve the problem either.*

If I have a choice between a policy that won't solve the problem but at least rewards individuals for trying to solve their personal problems, and a policy that won't solve the problem and doesn't allow individuals a path to solve their personal problems, I'd rather have the first than the second.
_____________

*If you don't recall, Maxwell's demon is a hypothetical entity that artificially preserves a division between hot and cold regions, by standing between them and selectively sending high-energy molecules into the hot region, and low-energy molecules into the cold reasons. In practice, any force capable of doing this would consume so much energy and generate so much entropy that it would be a net increaser of waste heat and entropy.

Your feeling is that we can’t prevent free flow of capital? Well then we have already lost. Capital has won, big time. But I disagree. Capital is just inanimate matter worshipped by fetishists of the worst kind. It is only unstoppable because of the defeatist attitude and weakened social solidarity movements.

Please note that I said either or.

Either we chop up the world economy into lots of autarkic little blocks, most of which will be much poorer and with less potential for development than today, OR we accept a world where labor and capital both try to move around in response to incentives. My view is that it's much more practical to take the second route than the first, and then to shape the incentives so that labor and capital can move in productive ways that are good for people as a whole. For instance, labor naturally gravitates from the countryside to the cities as a country develops, and it is pointless to try to retard this process. Even if you could succeed with a heavy dose of tyranny, why would you want to? Subsistence farming is not a sacred and superior profession to the things people do in cities.

My view is that capital is inanimate matter, indeed... But matter has its own laws. These laws are not to be worshipped, they are in no sense godlike, except perhaps in the sense that a cosmic blind babbling idiot unworthy of worship might be a god like Azathoth. But they do exist, and it is necessary and proper to plan around them rather than trying to ignore them. Man does not conquer nature, man lives in nature. The key is to manipulate the situation so that natural forces cause desirable outcomes, rather than undesirable outcomes.

No amount of willpower or commitment to ideology will make water flow uphill. You can divert the river, dam the river, deliberately boil the river into clouds of steam if you wish- but the water is still there. Incentive structures exist, and people respond to them, and men do not magically become alien beings because you change the laws under which they live.

Well, it might as well be allowed in a way that enables citizens of the poorer countries to individually and personally gain some of the wealth of the richer countries. In itself, this is not an abuse, though I can see how it might feel like an abuse if you look at it only from the point of view of the existing citizens of the rich country, and ignore any secondary benefits to them that might arise by trade or immigration from the poor country.

I am pretty sure the benefits of a slave underclass are not lost on some of the co-beneficiaries from the rich countries. The benefits of cheap goods arising from a process of labour cannibalism, where cheap goods made by rightless workers are then sold to the First World poor to make them feel “richer” is the epitome of wrongness of this disgusting world.

My view is that there is a proper way to balance and improve this system. It's a bit complicated and I am short on time, but suffice to say that done rightly it doesn't look much like labor cannibalism. I can explain later, if you care to know what I think on the matter.

[K. A. Pital]

I know what a Maxwell‘s demon is.

I am also a bit offended by the strawman of my position that the world should consist of autarkic little blocks, and by the implicit suggestion that any form of decoupling will leave the attempting nation poorer and worse off. This is a tactic used by freetraders to make their opponents corner themselves by accepting false axioms.

So let‘s start a discussion, sure, but these freetrader axioms will not be accepted so easily.

[Simon_Jester]

I know what a Maxwell‘s demon is.

Not everyone does, so I wanted to put it out there for everyone.

I am also a bit offended by the strawman of my position that the world should consist of autarkic little blocks,

My reason for saying "autarkic little blocks" isn't necessarily that I think you want autarkic little blocks, Stas.

It's that I don't think the result you desire can be achieved without them.

If you're not planning around national autarky, then your goals are too moderate to achieve your intended aim. If there are exchanges of goods and resources between the nations, there will be some kind of a process by which goods and resources shuffle around. Markets aren't necessarily better than whatever else you might have, the thing is that a market isn't something you engineer on purpose. It just happens. Trying to ignore it just turns the market black.

Insofar as you want to retard the shuffling process itself, you must erect barriers to exchanges of resources. To fully halt the process, your barriers must be tall, deep, and impenetrable.

The idea I'm trying to promote is to permit the shuffling process while preventing the exploitation, and forcing the resource-shuffling to find channels by which it can flow, without causing an increase in human suffering.

and by the implicit suggestion that any form of decoupling will leave the attempting nation poorer and worse off. This is a tactic used by freetraders to make their opponents corner themselves by accepting false axioms.

Coming from me, the argument is not that any decoupling leaves the attempting nation worse off, it's that total decoupling will have this effect. But at the same time, only total decoupling will prevent flow of resources in the direction of comparative advantage.

If all attempts to use "cheap labor due to low standard of living" as a source of comparative advantage are by definition exploitation, exploitation is inevitable unless you create impenetrable barriers to the exchange of goods and migration of labor. Which I suppose you could... but it would not be without costs.

I'd much rather try to find ways to allow the kind of exchange I'm talking about to bring about good results for those involved, instead of calling it by definition bad and trying to wall it out.

[TheFeniX]

Personal issues and the lack of Internet have sidelined me for a bit. Sorry for the late reply.

The thing is, the driver's license people are people who would get licenses if they could. They'd rather be law-abiding citizens or at least residents, but there is literally no way for them to attain this goal because of how low we've set our immigration quotas. And yet, we still offer them wages that give them opportunities they never had at home, for themselves and their children, whether they're law-abiding citizens or not.

My comment was more in a general sense. People treat driving and slamming 3,500lb death mobiles into other death mobiles, while carrying no insurance or being underinsured, as if it's not big thing.

I'm not going to say the situation is well and good, but if you aren't licensed to drive it means you aren't trained to drive. Which also means you are almost certainly unable to pay for the damage you are likely to cause.

Given that our society still wants cheap immigrant labor, the only non-schizo solutions we have are to make it legal for illegal immigrants to drive, or to let in legal immigrants to do the damn jobs, the way we used to back in the 1800s when you could immigrate to the US for the purpose of performing unskilled labor.

Our country didn't want cheap labor, Walmart dumped it on us. They dragged down labor and other costs, forcing multiple industries to completely retool how they worked, drove near everyone else the fuck out of business, and made us dependent on low low prices.

Illegal labor made it possible, at multiple links in the change. Countries willing to treat their legal citizens and environment as expendable handled the rest.

And Walmart passed all the burden off for paying legal citizens a living wage onto the taxpayer by relying on welfare and demanding huge tax breaks through armies of lawyers and lobbyists. I can't find the paper now, but at one point, in a single year: Walmart spent near 1.5 times on lobbyists and bribes than what the welfare system paid to feed Walmart's employees.

"Want" has not a damn thing to do with it. Maybe the want of our elected "representatives" to line their pockets.

[K. A. Pital]

If I have a choice between a policy that won't solve the problem but at least rewards individuals for trying to solve their personal problems, and a policy that won't solve the problem and doesn't allow individuals a path to solve their personal problems, I'd rather have the first than the second.

A policy that rewards individuals for trying to solve their problems on an individual level already exists. It is called capitalism. In a great many ways it has succeeded, but in many ways it has also failed. The problem with this approach is that again an individual solution is accepted instead of looking for a collective solution. This devalues the collective (both in host and recipient nations, actually: the former suffers from brain drain, the latter has now created a semi-permanent national division to class, creating divisions among its subjects which are very easy to exploit).

Either we chop up the world economy into lots of autarkic little blocks, most of which will be much poorer and with less potential for development than today, OR we accept a world where labor and capital both try to move around in response to incentives. My view is that it's much more practical to take the second route than the first, and then to shape the incentives so that labor and capital can move in productive ways that are good for people as a whole. For instance, labor naturally gravitates from the countryside to the cities as a country develops, and it is pointless to try to retard this process. Even if you could succeed with a heavy dose of tyranny, why would you want to? Subsistence farming is not a sacred and superior profession to the things people do in cities.

It was pointless to retard the influx of cheap labour, which was often mistreated all the way down to murder, by urban employers? Perhaps it was. But is it pointless to point out that it has, in fact, happened and is also happening now? There is nothing sacred about specific occupations, but there is nothing human in saying that the human himself is only worth as much as capital says he or she is worth. The system of money is dehumanizing and divisive, and by letting it more and more penetrate every place on Earth we aren't doing mankind a service.

No amount of willpower or commitment to ideology will make water flow uphill. You can divert the river, dam the river, deliberately boil the river into clouds of steam if you wish- but the water is still there. Incentive structures exist, and people respond to them, and men do not magically become alien beings because you change the laws under which they live.

A lot of bending happened to force hunter-gatherers to become agricultural labourers, and no less violence was used to dismantle the other society in turn. Humans are shaped by the environment. If the environment is creating perverse incentives, then it will shape the human mind (and it has, indeed). And it has for centuries. We must think a bit before we blindly admit that our society is a "force of nature" and we have to accept what our own social order does to us.

My view is that there is a proper way to balance and improve this system. It's a bit complicated and I am short on time, but suffice to say that done rightly it doesn't look much like labor cannibalism. I can explain later, if you care to know what I think on the matter.

Yes, I'd like to know, because so far I haven't seen a system that encourages development for the better.

If you're not planning around national autarky, then your goals are too moderate to achieve your intended aim. If there are exchanges of goods and resources between the nations, there will be some kind of a process by which goods and resources shuffle around. Markets aren't necessarily better than whatever else you might have, the thing is that a market isn't something you engineer on purpose. It just happens. Trying to ignore it just turns the market black. Insofar as you want to retard the shuffling process itself, you must erect barriers to exchanges of resources. To fully halt the process, your barriers must be tall, deep, and impenetrable. The idea I'm trying to promote is to permit the shuffling process while preventing the exploitation, and forcing the resource-shuffling to find channels by which it can flow, without causing an increase in human suffering.

Maybe you're right that I aimed too low with my initial criticism. Maybe barriers should be tall. Human trafficking, sex slavery, construction site slavery and other abuses are good reasons to halt the process which creates incentives to do these things. Maybe one should act like an engineer, because otherwise he is in the position of God from Epicurus' dilemma: he understands the evil, but is either impotent to stop it or is actually evil.

If all attempts to use "cheap labor due to low standard of living" as a source of comparative advantage are by definition exploitation, exploitation is inevitable unless you create impenetrable barriers to the exchange of goods and migration of labor. Which I suppose you could... but it would not be without costs.

There is a cost to everything, you are absolutely right. Refusing to be exploited also comes with a cost, often severe and drastic. We've seen it throughout history. Just as the cost of keeping your human dignity may well cost your your job, not to talk of things more extreme. The barriers need not be absolutely impenetrable, but they need to take into account the dignity of those who come. If they are provided with a life standard and conditions close to those received by the locals, the severity of their exploitation is reduced, at least in a relative sense.

One has to also take into account that the developed nations are nothing but thieves, poachers and highway robbers in terms of world history. They've robbed the entire world for its natural resources, and for humans as well.

They can and do employ bribery to make sure brain drain proceeds in a favorable direction for them, but they don't stop to reflect on the ruined nations. They take construction workers from abroad, but they don't plan for anything but an underclass; once immigrants from a certain nation become "too expensive", as it happened with EU migration, another nation with a cheaper workforce is sought out. But the goal isn't noble, the goal is to get another shot of cheap workforce to clean the streets, now that the original migrants suddenly realized their rights and started demanding better pay and conditions.

It is a voracious Chthonic entity, ever hungry for more.

[Lost Soal]

Apparently this administration thinks fraud is a legitimate business practice.
bbc

Debt relief for defrauded students halted under Trump, says report
The US Education Department has stopped cancelling student debts for people defrauded by failed for-profit schools, according to its Inspector General.
A new report by the independent auditor says affected borrowers face mounting interest and other financial burdens.
Before leaving office, President Barack Obama passed new laws speeding up debt cancellations for defrauded students.
But under President Donald Trump and his Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, cancellations have ground to a halt.
Ms DeVos has delayed the implementation of Mr Obama's reforms, saying they would create costs for taxpayers.
According to the Inspector General's report, the Education Department under Ms DeVos has received 25,991 debt cancellation claims, denying two and approving none.
During Mr Obama's final months in office, from 1 July 2016 to Mr Trump's inauguration in January 2017, the Education Department received 46,274 claims, approving 27,986 and denying none.
In 2015, a huge for-profit school network, Corinthian Colleges, collapsed after investigations into fraud and malpractice in the company led the government to cut off federal funds.
Nearly 80,000 students were left facing debts to the Education Department, despite the department having authority to cancel debts when schools have violated students' rights or broken the law.
Senator Patty Murray, the senior Democrat on the Education Committee, said: "Hundreds of thousands of students were defrauded and cheated by predatory colleges that broke the law, but today's report confirms Secretary DeVos tried to shirk her responsibility to these students and shut down the borrower-defense program, leaving them with nowhere to turn."
A. Wayne Johnson, chief operating officer of the federal student aid programme, said that the Education Department would soon approve 11,000 claims for Corinthian students and had "authorised an interest credit" for long-term outstanding claims.

[Civil War Man]

Makes sense. Stopping fraud would cut off one of Trump's primary revenue streams. This case in particular would hit close to home for him since he owned one of those fraudulent schools.

[The Romulan Republic]

Apparently this administration thinks fraud is a legitimate business practice.
bbc

And Trump is a "legitimate businessman".

[Simon_Jester]

A policy that rewards individuals for trying to solve their problems on an individual level already exists. It is called capitalism. In a great many ways it has succeeded, but in many ways it has also failed. The problem with this approach is that again an individual solution is accepted instead of looking for a collective solution. This devalues the collective (both in host and recipient nations, actually: the former suffers from brain drain, the latter has now created a semi-permanent national division to class, creating divisions among its subjects which are very easy to exploit).

That breaks down into two separate objections.

As to the recipient nation, I oppose such class divisions. The US has sometimes been successful in preventing such divisions from becoming set in stone (Irish, Italian, etc. immigrants) and sometimes failed. However, that is a specific policy question to be addressed by the recipient nation after immigrants arrive.

As to the source nation, I prefer a solution that allows freedom of movement to a solution that involves nailing people's feet o the floor because allowing them to emigrate would be "brain drain." I may not have a perfect track record of walking away from Omelas, obviously. But a world in which we forbid people from leaving a country where their skills benefit them little, so that they may work for the notional benefit of the collective, strikes me as a bit too deliberately engineered an Omelas for comfort.

It was pointless to retard the influx of cheap labour, which was often mistreated all the way down to murder, by urban employers? Perhaps it was. But is it pointless to point out that it has, in fact, happened and is also happening now? There is nothing sacred about specific occupations, but there is nothing human in saying that the human himself is only worth as much as capital says he or she is worth. The system of money is dehumanizing and divisive, and by letting it more and more penetrate every place on Earth we aren't doing mankind a service.

What is pointless is to discourage people from trying to move from one country to another, at least up to the limit where the entire national culture is in danger of dislocation from the size of the immigrant population.

What is wrong is to take this movement of population and turn it into a target for exploitaiton, as opposed to a target for fair dealing.

No amount of willpower or commitment to ideology will make water flow uphill. You can divert the river, dam the river, deliberately boil the river into clouds of steam if you wish- but the water is still there. Incentive structures exist, and people respond to them, and men do not magically become alien beings because you change the laws under which they live.

A lot of bending happened to force hunter-gatherers to become agricultural labourers, and no less violence was used to dismantle the other society in turn. Humans are shaped by the environment. If the environment is creating perverse incentives, then it will shape the human mind (and it has, indeed). And it has for centuries. We must think a bit before we blindly admit that our society is a "force of nature" and we have to accept what our own social order does to us.

See, I don't disagree with that, but the point is that society follows some laws and some incentive structures. We cannot simply construct arbitrary structures by force of will and expect them to be stable.

My view is that there is a proper way to balance and improve this system. It's a bit complicated and I am short on time, but suffice to say that done rightly it doesn't look much like labor cannibalism. I can explain later, if you care to know what I think on the matter.

Yes, I'd like to know, because so far I haven't seen a system that encourages development for the better.

Still relatively short on time or I'd have gotten to this already. I do seriously intend to respond.

Short answer is that labor protections should always apply to everyone in a given country, and that nations have good reason to place tariffs on goods coming from nations whose labor protections are lesser than their own.

If you're not planning around national autarky, then your goals are too moderate to achieve your intended aim. If there are exchanges of goods and resources between the nations, there will be some kind of a process by which goods and resources shuffle around. Markets aren't necessarily better than whatever else you might have, the thing is that a market isn't something you engineer on purpose. It just happens. Trying to ignore it just turns the market black. Insofar as you want to retard the shuffling process itself, you must erect barriers to exchanges of resources. To fully halt the process, your barriers must be tall, deep, and impenetrable. The idea I'm trying to promote is to permit the shuffling process while preventing the exploitation, and forcing the resource-shuffling to find channels by which it can flow, without causing an increase in human suffering.

Maybe you're right that I aimed too low with my initial criticism. Maybe barriers should be tall. Human trafficking, sex slavery, construction site slavery and other abuses are good reasons to halt the process which creates incentives to do these things. Maybe one should act like an engineer, because otherwise he is in the position of God from Epicurus' dilemma: he understands the evil, but is either impotent to stop it or is actually evil.

This raises the question: how much can and should we do to discourage immigration, before what we do becomes a greater human rights abuse in its own right?

Allowing open, orderly immigration means less demand for human trafficking, and fewer people with an incentive to live outside the law. Banning it creates more such demand and more such people.

My point about markets is that incentives create markets. If you don't fix the incentive, the market will still exist, and trying to suppress the market without changing the incentives does little good and sometimes much harm. For instance, how much of America's "drug problem" is actually a "no drug treatment problem?" How much is caused by our being stuck with the incentive to illegally trade in and abuse drugs, due to a lack of alternatives open to the existing drug users? Trying to suppress the market in drugs hasn't worked.

There is a cost to everything, you are absolutely right. Refusing to be exploited also comes with a cost, often severe and drastic. We've seen it throughout history. Just as the cost of keeping your human dignity may well cost your your job, not to talk of things more extreme. The barriers need not be absolutely impenetrable, but they need to take into account the dignity of those who come. If they are provided with a life standard and conditions close to those received by the locals, the severity of their exploitation is reduced, at least in a relative sense.

One has to also take into account that the developed nations are nothing but thieves, poachers and highway robbers in terms of world history. They've robbed the entire world for its natural resources, and for humans as well.

At the same time, someone had to be first to invent these technologies. The bare fact of using them isn't theft, though many of the things done by using them certainly were.

I'm pretty sure that if China had been 100 years in advance of Europe technologically during the Industrial Revolution instead of the other way around, the Chinese would be the thieves and the Europeans would be the victims- and not due to any moral inferiority of the Chinese, or any moral superiority of the Europeans.

They can and do employ bribery to make sure brain drain proceeds in a favorable direction for them, but they don't stop to reflect on the ruined nations. They take construction workers from abroad, but they don't plan for anything but an underclass; once immigrants from a certain nation become "too expensive", as it happened with EU migration, another nation with a cheaper workforce is sought out. But the goal isn't noble, the goal is to get another shot of cheap workforce to clean the streets, now that the original migrants suddenly realized their rights and started demanding better pay and conditions.

It is a voracious Chthonic entity, ever hungry for more.

And it is right and proper to adjust the system to create incentives towards fairness. The problem comes when you try to ban the system to enforce fairness, without dealing with the underlying incentives.

[K. A. Pital]

Short answer is that labor protections should always apply to everyone in a given country, and that nations have good reason to place tariffs on goods coming from nations whose labor protections are lesser than their own.

A noble intent. How do you make employers apply any protection to their illegal workforces? If you toughen up labour laws, the effect on migration opportunities might be their drastic reduction.

[Simon_Jester]

To answer the question, there shouldn't need to be a huge illegal workforce, and there wouldn't be nearly as massive a one in a country with less xenophobic immigration laws than the 21st century US. And if there were, then there should be amnesties or at least immunities for illegal immigrants reporting illegal working conditions, and employers should be subject to punishment for breaking the law no matter what.

Because, well... "people should be punished for breaking the law" is a basic principle. And even if we accept that there ought to be laws against immigrating-while-being-an-unskilled-laborer, that is clearly a lesser violation of law than it is to exploit and abuse large numbers of people. And it is in the state's interest to provide immunity from prosecution for the weak, in order that they may safely testify against the strong.

I may not be a communist, or even a socialist, but I do believe the law goes all the way to the top, and should be treated as such.

Meanwhile, for a gross abuse of office in the "you must be joking" variety...

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nati ... story.html

Trump administration officials are forbidding officials at the nation's top public health agency from using a list of seven words or phrases - including "fetus" and "transgender" - in any official documents being prepared for next year's budget.

Policy analysts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta were told of the list of forbidden words at a meeting Thursday with senior CDC officials who oversee the budget, according to an analyst who took part in the 90-minute briefing. The forbidden words are: "vulnerable," "entitlement," "diversity," "transgender," "fetus," "evidence-based" and "science-based."

In some instances, the analysts were given alternative phrases. Instead of "science-based" or "evidence-based," the suggested phrase is "CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes," the person said. In other cases, no replacement words were immediately offered.

The question of how to address such issues as sexual orientation, gender identity and abortion rights - all of which received significant visibility under the Obama administration - has surfaced repeatedly in federal agencies since President Donald Trump took office. Several key departments - including Health and Human Services, which oversees CDC, as well as Justice, Education and Housing and Urban Development - have changed some federal policies and how they collect government information about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans.

In March, for example, HHS dropped questions about sexual orientation and gender identity in two surveys of elderly people.

HHS has also removed information about LGBT Americans from its website. The department's Administration for Children and Families, for example, archived a page that outlined federal services that are available for LGBT people and their families, including how they can adopt and receive help if they are the victims of sex trafficking.

At the CDC, the meeting about the banned words was led by Alison Kelly, a senior leader in CDC's Office of Financial Services, according to the CDC analyst who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak publicly. Kelly did not say why the words are being banned, according to the analyst, and told the group that she was merely relaying the information.
CDC abruptly cancels long-planned conference on climate change and health

Other CDC officials confirmed the existence of a list of forbidden words. It's likely that other parts of HHS are operating under the same guidelines regarding the use of these words, the analyst said.

At the CDC, several offices have responsibilities for work that uses some of these words. The National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention is working on ways to prevent HIV among transgender people and reduce health disparities. The CDC's work on birth defects caused by the Zika virus, for example, includes research on the developing fetus.

The ban is related to the budget and supporting materials that are to be given to CDC's partners and to Congress, the analyst said. The president's budget for 2019 is expected to be released in early February. The budget blueprint is generally shaped to reflect an administration's priorities.

Federal agencies are sending in their budget proposals to the Office of Management and Budget, which has authority about what is included.

Neither an OMB spokesman nor a CDC spokeswoman responded to requests for comment Friday.

The longtime CDC analyst, whose job includes writing descriptions of the CDC's work for the administration's annual spending blueprint, could not recall a previous time when words were banned from budget documents because they were considered controversial.

The reaction of people in the meeting was "incredulous," the analyst said. "It was very much, 'Are you serious? Are you kidding?' "

"In my experience, we've never had any pushback from an ideological standpoint," the analyst said.

News of the ban on certain words hasn't yet spread to the broader group of scientists at the CDC, but it's likely to provoke a backlash, the analyst said. "Our subject matter experts will not lay down quietly - this hasn't trickled down to them yet."

The CDC has a budget of about $7 billion and more than 12,000 employees working across the nation and around the globe on everything from food and water safety to heart disease and cancer to infectious disease outbreak prevention. Much of the CDC's work has strong bipartisan support.

Kelly told the analysts that "certain words" in the CDC's budget drafts were being sent back to the agency for corrections. Three words that had been flagged in these drafts were "vulnerable," "entitlement" and "diversity." Kelly told the group she had been authorized to give verbal instructions about the remaining banned words.

[Dragon Angel]

Man ... all those calls about "political correctness" really take on a new meaning when the party that ostensibly hates it wants to impose its own brand of it on actual US governmental policy.

You know, the original definition of political correctness.

[loomer]

Let's look on the upside. The ban does not include the term 'embryonic parasite' so they can just use that until the administration begs them to start using fetus again.

[Dominus Atheos]

I'm probably going to regret asking this because the answer is going to be fucking stupid, but what is their problem with "vulnerable"?

[Ralin]

I'm probably going to regret asking this because the answer is going to be fucking stupid, but what is their problem with "vulnerable"?

Imagine if they were researching the spread of some disease and they found that certain demographics were way more likely to have it, like gays or poor people or blacks, and moreover that this was connected to some systematic way that people in that demographic are treated. If they referred to those demographics as 'vulnerable' then that would imply that there was something wrong about the way that demographic was collectively being treated and moreover that the government should take action to change that, instead of it being their fault for living in certain neighborhoods or not getting good paying jobs or something.

[Esquire]

Fortunately, everybody who's ever read a public health paper knows at least five synonyms for all of these. Way to make an effective coherent meaningful a policy, guys!

[The Romulan Republic]

I'm probably going to regret asking this because the answer is going to be fucking stupid, but what is their problem with "vulnerable"?

Republicans like fucking over vulnerable people, and don't like being called on it.

[FaxModem1]

Newsweek

PRESIDENT TRUMP IS VERY OVERWEIGHT, WON’T STOP EATING BURGERS AND DRINKING SODA AFTER DOCTOR'S VISIT
BY CRISTINA SILVA ON 12/28/17 AT 8:39 PM
U.S.
Donald Trump was told more than a year ago by his doctor that he was overweight. But that hasn't stopped the president from eating hamburgers and drinking soda.

The White House announced Thursday that Trump will undergo his first physical since becoming president on January 12. Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the exam will be at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. The White House physician, Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson, will examine the president, just as he did for Barack Obama. But the president might not like what he hears after he steps on the scale.

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As a candidate in 2016, Trump released a letter from his personal physician, Harold Bornstein, that revealed the former reality-TV star weighed 236 pounds, meaning that his body mass index was 29.5, which is considered overweight and bordering on obese. Trump's campaign said the letter revealed the results of a physical exam conducted by Bornstein in September 2016. Bornstein concluded in the letter that "if elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency."

Still, the president's poor eating choices have become somewhat of a national joke since the 2016 election. He once posted a picture on Twitter of himself preparing to tackle a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. He is known to drink about a dozen Diet Cokes each day and likes well-done steaks with a side of ketchup. Former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski revealed in his recent book that Trump liked to order two Big Macs, two Filet-o-Fish sandwiches and a chocolate milkshake from McDonald's to keep his energy up while on the campaign trail.

"Well, he never ate the bread, which is the important part," Lewandowski told CNN's Alisyn Camerota. "He was busy campaigning. We didn't have time to sit down for a meal." Even without the bread, the meal contains about 1,880 calories and a ton of sugar.

Beyond the president's diet, critics have raised other questions about his mental and physical health, in part because Trump, 71, is the oldest man to serve as a first-year president. Most recently, he appeared to slur during his December announcement on recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Sanders told the press at the time that "the president's throat was dry, nothing more than that."

For the dieticians in the room, what does this say about Trump as a person with his diet, if anything?

[The Romulan Republic]

That all the people hoping for a heart attack to get us out of this mess still have a hope?

Though personally, I don't want him to drop dead. I want him to stand trial and go to prison, because I believe that the Justice System making an example of him is important for the future health of our government and society.

[bilateralrope]

That all the people hoping for a heart attack to get us out of this mess still have a hope?

I don't want the conspiracy bullshit that would follow Trump dying of a heart attack. Especially when some of the people believing it are armed.

[FireNexus]

That all the people hoping for a heart attack to get us out of this mess still have a hope?

I don't want the conspiracy bullshit that would follow Trump dying of a heart attack. Especially when some of the people believing it are armed.

If Trump doesn’t serve eight years, they’ll be the same way no matter how he leaves office.