It grows tiresome to continue chronicling the bluster and misdirection of Donald Trump - especially at a time when our country so needs a real leader. But here we are - still without a real leader. Instead we have one who doesn't even know what he doesn't know.
Take for instance his temper tantrum Monday - ostensibly over TVA's outsourcing of IT workers in Chattanooga and Knoxville. Trump told reporters at the White House that he was firing TVA chairman James "Skip" Thompson and former TVA Chairman Richard Howorth from the nine-member board. And he said he may fire more board members if they continue to support the outsourcing plan and current TVA president Jeff Lyash. Spoiler alert: It is Lyash whom Trump really wants to fire, but he can't. The TVA board members (all of whom were and must be Senate-approved presidential appointees) hire and fire TVA CEOs.
Sure Trump's action sounds dramatic, and TVA now says it's restudying the outsourcing plan, but this is a many-layered, albeit shallow, mess. Thompson's term expires in 2021 - just five months away, right? And Howorth's term ended in May. He's only still serving because Trump's appointment of board members to replace him and two other vacancies) has been so slow.
Trump soured on Lyash, calling him "ridiculously overpaid," after Lyash ignored Trump's bullying tweets earlier this year to save coal and coal power plants. Lyash and TVA opted instead to shut down the last unit at its Paradise coal plant in Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's state of Kentucky. And when Trump responded with a call to cut Lyash's pay "by a lot," board chairman Thompson sent out a memo to TVA's more than 10,000 employees and contractors and said Trump's effort was "ill informed." The board, he said, stood behind Lyash and the TVA team.
As the highest paid federal employee, Lyash earns a $920,000 salary as part of a pension, relocation and incentive package that could top $8 million if he stays five years. As president, Trump is paid about $400,000 year.
Before Monday's firing, the White House issued an executive order aimed at ensuring that all federal agencies and contractors hire American citizens (never mind that almost all already do) and requiring agencies to complete an internal audit to show they are not hiring foreigners instead of Americans.
But all of that is not even the real reason for the TVA tantrum and order, which one administration official told the Washington Post (speaking only on the condition of anonymity in order to be truthful), was a "meaningless dog whistle to political constituencies to make clear the administration is 'tough' on foreigners."
The real reason was that Trump needed another shiny object to deflect attention away from other news about an ongoing investigation of Trump finances and tax returns.
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., continuing to seek eight years of the president's tax records after the Supreme Court rejected Trump's claims of "immunity," on Monday suggested in a court filing that the Trump records held by accounting firm Mazars USA are needed because investigators may be looking at "alleged insurance and bank fraud."
Trump dismissed Vance's probe as "Democrat stuff" and "just a continuation of the worst witch hunt in American history."
But he still doesn't want us hearing much about it - especially not down here in the very GOP red states where anything TVA usually makes Page 1 headlines all across its seven-state Southeastern coverage area.
So Trump's "dog whistle" serves a dual purpose. Trump's not completely stupid. He has a heck of a survival instinct - the cunning of a fox, as old-timers described malign trickery.
But back to TVA. We've long said we believe the Tennessee Valley Authority's executive compensation packages - especially its bonuses - are outrageous. We also went on the record in May opining that we believe TVA should not outsource its information technology to three software development contractors - Capgemini, which is based in France and has half its staff in India; the Canadian-based CGI, and Accenture Federal Services, which is headquartered in Virginia and is a subsidiary of the Irish-based Accenture plc.
Our exact words were: "Raise your hand if you feel perfectly at ease with a decision to outsource cybersecurity and IT functions for a utility that operates nuclear plants within plume-sight distance of Chattanooga." And especially not during the worst national economic downturn since the Great Depression.
We still feel that way. And there's some evidence TVA listened - not just to these pages but also to members of Congress like U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, a Democrat from Memphis, who in a mid-May letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other top Democrats, asked that the fiscal relief measures to help prop up the economy during the COVID-19 pandemic also prevent the privatization and outsourcing of these and other federal jobs during this or any other national emergency.
Weeks later, in June, TVA said nearly half of the 120 jobs being cut had already been phased out as workers found other jobs at TVA or left the agency. The remaining 62 workers were offered outplacement services. TVA spokesman Jim Hopson said the IT work done for TVA will still be done by U.S. workers and the contractors are likely to hire at least some of the TVA workers being displaced. The contractors being hired by TVA have also done software programming work for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Navy, among other government agencies, Hopson said.
Now, back, again, to Trump, who suffers from the eternal disconnect of living in his own small-mind bubble.
In April - just a month before he began sounding off about Lyash's too-high pay, Trump announced the creation of the Great American Economic Revival Industry Group - described as a bipartisan advisory group to "produce a more independent, self-sufficient, and resilient Nation."
Among the energy advisers he appointed to that group were Alabama Power's Mark Crosswhite and Southern Company's Tom Fanning. Alabama Power is a for-profit electricity utility that serves central and southern Alabama with rates 30% higher than TVA's rates. Did we mention that it is building a new billion-dollar fossil fuel plant?
Alabama Power's CEO Crosswhite made $8 million last year. Southern Company, based in Atlanta, is Alabama Power's for-profit parent company (ditto Georgia Power, Mississippi Power and others). Southern Company's CEO Thomas Fanning made $28 million last year.
Let this all sink in. Trump wants Lyash's salary cut to $500,000-a-year and fires the board chairman of the publicly owned TVA, but he celebrates "as esteemed executives" the for-profit CEOs of Alabama Power and Southern Company and puts them on his Great American Economic Revival Industry Group.
Tiresome is a poor descriptor for these incompetent shell games.