Citizens United, Donald Trump, & The Politics Of Fear
Donald Trump will destroy democracy to satisfy his own super inflated ego. That seems a poor reason to dismantle the Constitution.
Donald Trump will destroy democracy to satisfy his own super inflated ego. That seems a poor reason to dismantle the Constitution.
It’s an unusual edition of “Cleantech Leader & Laggard Of The Week” this week. We’ve got a country to highlight, not exactly for breaking news but rather for long-term improvement that has made itself more evident this past week. And then we’ve got a rather famous (or infamous) person. Let’s … [continued]
After President Richard Nixon proposed establishing the U.S. Environmental Protect Agency on July 9, 1970, Republicans have assumed some level of responsibility for cleaning our air and water. Yes, oil, gas, and coal came to heavily, heavily support Republicans (+90% in some years), funding their campaigns and then lobbying them.
President Trump has claimed to be economically successful based on a rather small set of metrics. One is joblessness data. Another is the Dow Jones Industrial Index (DJI). There are people who believe in his success, based on those limited data. They should look deeper.
We are approaching the 10th anniversary of the British Petroleum (BP) disaster, which killed 11 men, injured 17 others, and spilled more than 130 million gallons of oil in the Gulf of Mexico.
It seems that the EPA under Donald Trump wants to dump raw sewage into our rivers. The organization is now allowing cities to do just that. In an article by the New York Times, the Trump administration has decided to reverse almost 95 environmental rules in a massive retreat on environmental protection, because “it’s too costly for industry or taxpayers.”
It’s a shame — you’ve got a poor economy almost completely dependent on one industry (the oil industry) that is controlled by corrupt oligarchs, and that country’s totally corrupt president is apparently running foreign policy for what is supposed to be the most powerful nation on earth. It’s like a privileged, educated 20-year-old with kind and thoughtful parents who has fallen under the spell (or control) of a nasty, corrupt, immoral, drug-addicted street thug.
Manufacturing jobs have been lost in key states that swung right to elect Trump. Coal is still a dead industry walking (because it’s not competitive). Funding for military families has been taken from them and redirected to funding for what will be a useless portion of an ineffective, incomplete wall — a wall Mexico is very clearly not paying for. The middle class hasn’t benefited from any Trump-generated manufacturing revival or economic boom. Instead of protecting US national security and improving our global economic position with international partnerships, Trump is trading friendly US policies for personal political help from foreign countries.
It’s a real surprise that some Americans still support Donald Trump. He has vehemently attacked just about everything America is supposed to stand for — democracy, freedom of speech, the rule of law, patriotic heroes of justice, the FBI’s search for justice, former US presidents and vice presidents of both parties, racial equality and religious freedom, decency, honesty, compassion, and love.
A con man from Queens has run out his potential in New York City, so he takes his show on the road. Before long, he’s a national name, and he’s known to be such a big business failure that no American bank will touch him. How does he survive?