Saturday, September 2, 2017

Observations in mid-summer, 2017

     The recently installed, but illegitimate, forty-fifth resident of the nation's capital has continued his demolition of 'life as we know it' for millions of people. The axe of presidential authority falls primarily on the necks of people who are poor, speak English as a second or third language, or belong to a 'Middle-Eastern faith community.'
     My friends have an old eucalyptus on the hillside above the street that needs to come down before it falls down. They called the crew that's been trimming their trees forever. The crew is down to the boss, one guy and a trainee. The rest of his guys had to leave, or stay home while their wives went to work. My friends tried another tree trimmer, but he said the tree was too big for his crew.
     Almost every day now people are in the streets for immigrants' rights, protesting the round-ups and deportations, the travel bans. Civil rights groups are raising funds to challenge the executive orders in the courts. The government is confident it will prevail. With the confirmation of the White House's choice for the Supreme Court, this seems likely in the end. Meanwhile, on the streets, ICE, the new Migra, is working overtime to fill those buses.
     The new crew in the White House, a collection of billionaires and vulture capitalists like 45, has cleaned house, giving pink slips to everyone left, scrubbed department websites, and ruthlessly rolled back as much of the previous administration's regulatory protections as it can reach, with help from the Republican controlled Congress. Privacy and net neutrality are about gone. Environmental protections: gone. School lunches and women's health: gone. Voting rights: going. Police reviews: on hold. Pipelines: green light. Arctic drilling: green light. And these "executive actions" have yet to be complemented by the Congress' legislative agenda, including repeal of ACA, tax reform, energy policy, immigration reform, trade agreements and another shot at privatizing Social Security.
     And there's the war business, the engine that drives the the imperial juggernaut across borders, the endless struggle for domination of markets and resources. By some experts' figuring, more than half of all Federal tax revenue goes to "defense" (which also includes veterans' benefits, pensions, etc.), a fact that validates the assertion that the US spends more on its military than the next seven nations combined. If we spent less on defense, we could divert our tax dollars to do all kinds of things that need doing! That's not going to happen with the current regime in control.