Trump's Anti-Science Agenda Has Made America Far Less Safe

One characteristic has defined the Trump/Pence regime: facts and objective reality do not matter and pandering to far right ideology has usurped all other considerations.  Part of this process has involved a war on science - which both shows the lie of the Christofascists' world view and is hostile to the fossil fuel industry - in order to deny the reality of climate change, the truth about sexual orientation, and a host of other issues upon about which the right wing, racist, ignorance embracing GOP base is in  denial. Coupled with this is a hatred of government bodies that further scientific knowledge, including, sadly the White House’s National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense.  No doubt the Trump/Pence decision to disband this organization was motivated in part by a incorrect belief that pandemics can only occur in what Trump views as "shit hole countries" peopled by non-whites.  Coronavirus has shown the idiocy of both this underlying motivation and the move to disband the group.  A column in the Washington Post looks at this disastrous decision.  Here are highlights:

When President Trump took office in 2017, the White House’s National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense survived the transition intact. Its mission was the same as when I was asked to lead the office, established after the Ebola epidemic of 2014: to do everything possible within the vast powers and resources of the U.S. government to prepare for the next disease outbreak and prevent it from becoming an epidemic or pandemic.

One year later, I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like covid-19.

The U.S. government’s slow and inadequate response to the new coronavirus underscores the need for organized, accountable leadership to prepare for and respond to pandemic threats.

In a health security crisis, speed is essential. When this new coronavirus emerged, there was no clear White House-led structure to oversee our response, and we lost valuable time. . . .  The specter of rapid community transmission and exponential growth is real and daunting. The job of a White House pandemics office would have been to get ahead: to accelerate the response, empower experts, anticipate failures, and act quickly and transparently to solve problems.

It’s impossible to assess the full impact of the 2018 decision to disband the White House office responsible for this work. Biological experts do remain in the White House and in our government. But it is clear that eliminating the office has contributed to the federal government’s sluggish domestic response. What’s especially concerning about the absence of this office today is that it was originally set up because a previous epidemic made the need for it quite clear.

[I]in 2016, after the formidable U.S.-led Ebola response, the Obama White House established the global health security office at the National Security Council and asked me to lead the team. We were to prepare for and, if possible, prevent the next outbreak from becoming an epidemic or pandemic. 

Our team reported to a senior-level response coordinator on the National Security Council staff who could rally the government at the highest levels, as well as to the national security adviser and the homeland security adviser. This high-level domestic and global reporting structure wasn’t an accident. It was a recognition that epidemics know no borders and that a serious, fast response is crucial. Our job was to be the smoke alarm — keeping watch to get ahead of emergencies, sounding a warning at the earliest sign of fire — all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm blaze.

Shortly before Trump took office, we were watching many health security threats, including a rising number of cases in China of H7N9 influenza, a deadly strain with high mortality but low transmissibility between people. . . . . We were focused on naturally occurring diseases and potential bioterrorism — any and every biological threat that could cause a major global health and security emergency. 

Another critical task came in early 2017, when we began transitioning pandemic preparedness to the incoming Trump administration. As a civil servant and the head of the directorate, I remained at the White House for several months after the transition. I attended senior-level meetings and directly briefed the homeland security adviser and the national security adviser. After I left the White House that March, pandemic preparedness remained on the agenda; my office remained intact under the leadership of my well-respected successor, Rear Adm. Tim Ziemer; and the national security adviser was tracking H7N9 and other emerging threats.

It’s unclear whether the decision to disband the directorate, which was made in May 2018, after John Bolton became national security adviser, was a tactical move to downgrade the issue or whether it was part of the White House’s interest in simplifying and shrinking the National Security Council staff. Either way, it left an unclear structure and strategy for coordinating pandemic preparedness and response. Experts outside government and on Capitol Hill called for the office’s reinstatement at the time.

In his remarks Wednesday night, [Trump] the president talked about travel bans and the resilience of the U.S. economy but made little specific mention of the public health crisis unfolding across America — exactly the kind of detail a dedicated NSC pandemics infrastructure would have pushed to address.

Pandemics, like weapons of mass destruction and climate change, are transnational threats with potentially existential consequences. No single department or agency can be responsible for handling them. Pandemic threats may not arise every year, but the White House should constantly prepare for them. We can’t afford for federal decision-makers to waste time relearning old lessons when they should be innovating and acting. 

One can only wonder how many Americans will lose their lives because of Trump's stupidity and hostility to science and objective facts. 

Trump's Abject Failure Towards Veterans

Republicans always talk about "supporting the troops" and "honoring veterans" with talk being the operative word.  Republican talk and actions never coincide with the objective reality experienced by veterans and under the Trump/Pence regime the situation has grown far worse.  Many veterans find themselves waiting on benefits payments and facing eviction for non-payment of rent.  And then there is the issue of waiting to receive medical benefits - something my son-in-law can cite chapter and verse on.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at the growing scandal surrounding the VA and the plight of veterans.  When Trump says he honors and supports veterans, like so much that comes out of his mouth, it's a lie.  Here are article highlights:

Donald Trump did not go to Arlington Cemetery on Veterans Day. He was “extremely busy,” he told reporters in a press call on Friday. But his conscience does not appear to trouble him. During a recent visit to the Marine barracks in Washington, he even congratulated himself for his commitment to veterans. “The fact is I’ve done a lot,“ he said. But as is often the case, reality does not exactly comport with Trump’s version of events. [Trump] The president hasn’t accomplished much for veterans, as a burgeoning scandal within the Department of Veterans Affairs demonstrates.

The VA owes GI bill payments to thousands of veterans, NBC News reported on Thursday. Some have waited months for their benefits, which cover living expenses in addition to tuition bills, and the VA has admitted that it has received several complaints from veterans who now face eviction because they haven’t been able to pay rent. VA officials have blamed the backlog on the department’s IT system. Though NBC has reported delays in payments since August, a Thursday hearing conducted by the U.S. House Committee on Veteran Affairs underscored the new extent of the crisis.

[V]eterans continue to struggle. “I can’t afford rent. I can’t afford groceries. It’s a lot of emotional strain and aggravation,” Daniel Gorman, an Iraq War veteran and Fordham University student, told the Washington Post on Thursday. “I’m supposed to graduate in May 2019, but I don’t know if that’s feasible if this persists.”

The flaws of the VA’s IT system predate the Trump administration. But as CNN reported on Thursday, the Forever GI bill Trump signed in 2017 may have exacerbated certain long-standing technology issues. “The legislation did not address the VA’s antiquated IT system used to account for those changes, and the department’s failure to implement changes to that system has resulted in a cascading series of errors affecting the distribution of housing allowances to veteran students,” CNN wrote. Congress provided $30 million for the VA to resolve its IT problems, but the Post reported that the department is six months late on a status update. Meanwhile, the department has over 45,000 unfilled job vacancies, no permanent information chief, and VA Secretary Robert Wilkie said in early November that he is planning unspecified budget cuts, at Trump’s request.

So though Trump doesn’t bear sole responsibility for the GI bill crisis, the issue illustrates the wide chasm between Trump’s professed affection for veterans, and the way veterans experience his preferred policies. Trump’s federal hiring freeze, which he temporarily instated not long after taking office, affected many veterans who relied on the federal government as a pathway to work. [Trump] The president has also repeatedly expressed interest in privatizing more of the VA’s functions, something most major veterans’ service organizations oppose.

Other Trumpian scandals threaten the department’s reputation, as well as its ability to fulfill its responsibilities to veterans. ProPublica reported in August that three Trump cronies — Palm Beach, Florida physician Bruce Moskowitz, Marvel Entertainment CEO Ike Perlmutter, and attorney Marc Sherman — wielded unprecedented influence over VA policy, though all three lack experience serving in either political office or in the U.S. military. The three are perceived by critics to favor the privatization of certain VA benefits, occasionally in ways that benefit their own business interests.

Public-private partnerships don’t always work out for veterans who are enrolled in the VA. Passed in 2014, the Veterans Choice Program, which allowed veterans burdened either by geographic distance from a VA facility, or by long waits for VA appointments, to seek alternative private care, should have reduced wait times. Efficiency was the program’s raison d’etre. But in June 2018, the Government Accountability Office concluded that the Choice program didn’t quite work as advertised. “The Choice program was aimed at reducing wait times through increased access to private health care, but the GAO’s performance audit conducted from April 2016 through May 2018 found that, in many cases, veterans would have been better off making appointments at VA facilities,” reported Military.com.

According to a November 13 story from Stars and Stripes, a separate GAO report found that private contractors hired to examine veterans who file disability claims often failed to meet basic standards for timeliness and accuracy. “Most contractors fell into the ‘unsatisfactory performance’ category, meaning 10 percent or more of their reports contained errors. The worst-performing contractor had errors in 38 percent of their exam reports,” Stars and Stripes reported.

As the GI bill crisis mushrooms and thousands of jobs go unfilled, the prospect of progress looks faint.

Upon first, superficial glance, Trump’s approach to the VA may look like hypocrisy. After all, he’s repeatedly claimed to love the troops. But hypocrisy is too simplistic a frame. Of course Trump says he loves the troops; try finding a politician in national office who’d say otherwise. And yes, [Trump] the president has failed to demonstrably improve conditions for veterans enrolled in the VA. But hypocrisy didn’t produce that outcome; instead, it was an inevitability, created by Trump’s commitment to small government.

Trump may not bear sole responsibility for the GI bill crisis, but his VA is in especially poor shape to remedy the problem. As a result, he’s inadvertently revealed the full consequences of a war on welfare. America may elevate veterans — may even bestow on them benefits she denies to civilians who have never taken up arms — but her benevolence is bounded by her more capitalist commitments. In the end, veterans are just citizens, subject to the same incompetencies and cruelties we all endure.

Trump’s Know-Nothing Science Budget

The GOP and evangelical Christians have a common requirement to further their toxic agendas: ignorant, objective truth denying followers. A heavy dose of racially and homophobic bigotry and a belief in conspiracy theories, of course are similarly helpful ingredients.  Hence why knowledge and scientific knowledge of almost any sort is the enemy of fundamentalists and evangelicals and the political party that they now largely control.  Evolution is denied, climate change is denied, objective facts and figures are replaced with untrue "alternate facts," etc.   Indeed, anything that challenges the political and religious orthodoxy of these people is denied and attacked.  Donald Trump, the leading purveyor of alternate facts - read lies - is aiding in the effort by proposing dangerous and potentially deadly cuts i, science funding.  A piece in the New Yorker looks at Donald Trump's dangerous budget cuts to science and medical research.  Here are excerpts: 

Donald Trump’s disregard for science has never been much of a secret. Well before he became President, he tweeted that light bulbs can cause cancer, that wind farms are unhealthy, that fracking “poses ZERO health risks,” and that Ebola “is much easier to transmit” than the government lets on. As a candidate, he regularly called global warming a hoax, repeated the false notion that vaccines can cause autism, and stated confidently that spraying hair spray in one’s apartment does not harm the ozone layer. . . . He avoids exercise, proudly fears germs, and, in Mike Pence, has chosen a Vice-President who, when pointedly asked, won’t say whether he believes in evolution.

It’s been downhill ever since. Under Trump, the United States has withdrawn from the Paris climate agreement, and the phrases “climate change” and “evidence-based” have been scrubbed from federal Web sites—in the very same year that three once-in-a-century hurricanes and two major drought-fuelled wildfires ravaged parts of the nation. . . . . the Environmental Protection Agency has banned E.P.A.-funded scientists, but not industry representatives, from serving on its advisory boards; and the Centers for Disease Control, facing steep budget cuts, will soon all but shut down a vital program that helps more than three dozen developing countries detect and control the spread of infectious diseases.

Trump’s newly proposed federal budget for 2019 continues the assault on knowledge and reason. Funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the E.P.A. would each be cut by eighteen per cent or more, compared with the final 2017 budget, which was drafted by the Obama Administration and amended by Trump.

The National Institute of Mental Health would see its budget slashed by thirty per cent, despite Trump’s recent avowals that better mental-health treatment is the solution to gun violence. NASA’s budget would stay roughly the same, but a number of important Earth-science missions would be eliminated, and Trump would attempt to defund and privatize the International Space Station by 2025.

 

The few increases, to the budgets of the Energy and Interior Departments, are designed to fund fossil-fuel research, offshore drilling, and surface mining. Meanwhile, the Bureau of Land Management and the Oil Spill Research Program would be cut by at least fifteen per cent; Interior’s Land and Water Conservation Fund, which uses earnings from offshore oil and gas drilling to protect and restore federal public lands, would be cut by two-thirds; and research on clean energy would be cut by more than seventy per cent.

 

Other cuts would simply obfuscate. The 2019 proposal, like the 2018 budget, eliminates five satellite missions that study aspects of Earth’s surface and atmosphere—carbon-dioxide levels, the reflectivity of clouds and snow—specifically in order to monitor the dynamics of climate. According to Trump’s moral calculus, it is better to know nothing than to learn something that may conflict with what you think you know. Even the education departments of NASA and NOAA would be cut; should those agencies actually learn something, they’ll have a harder time sharing the information.

 

Thirteen months into his first term, key posts at numerous federal agencies remain unfilled, including the administrator positions for NASA and NOAA. The Department of the Interior lacks eleven of its seventeen senior officials, and Trump has yet to propose nominees for six of them, including the directors of the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service, and the Fish and Wildlife Service. Needless to say, it’s easier to ransack a store when no one is officially minding it.

 

And many of the candidates whom Trump has nominated for science-oriented roles are woefully underqualified.

 

It feels almost quaint to talk of “truth” and “facts” anymore, but, as an endeavor, science at least strives to honestly approach them. Which is why it’s all the more dispiriting that, for a full year now, Trump has operated without a Presidential science adviser—the longest the Oval Office has gone without one since the position was created, decades ago.onald 

 

[Trump] trusts no one; he can’t abide to read even his intelligence reports. Science thrives on curiosity, investigation, vigorous discourse, and flexibility of thought. Donald Trump is a party of one, interested solely in hearing the sound of his own voice, regardless of the veracity of what it has to say. For now, the interim science adviser is Michael Kratsios, the deputy assistant in the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Kratsios, who is thirty-one, worked previously as chief of staff to Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley billionaire and Trump supporter, and has a bachelor’s degree in political science—the only kind of science, perhaps, that Trump can understand.

Racism: Why Many Whites Give Trump/the GOP a Pass on Giveaways to the Rich

As noted in prior posts, Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer's "tax plan" is based on fairy tale assumptions and will result in huge new deficits if passed and throw the vast majority of the tax cuts to the very wealthy and large corporations.  But one example is the elimination of the estate tax that currently only impacts married couples with a net estate of over $11 million.  Average Americans simply get no benefit from a repeal of the estate tax, yet many foolishly support its elimination.  Similarly, many working class whites voted for Trump and Republican candidates even though for the last 37 years most of the GOP's policies have worked against the working class. So why the support for those who are behind the economic destruction of these people?  In a word, racism.  The GOP for decades now has played off of white racial animosities.   For an added bonus, the GOP and now Trump have also played to Christian extremists, LGBT rights being but one of the favored whipping boys to get out the GOP base on election day.  A piece in Slate looks at this disturbing phenomenon which has no sign of abating.  Here are excerpts:

Donald Trump wants to give himself a tax cut.

His new tax plan, a one-page summary unveiled on Wednesday in the last-minute scramble for an accomplishment before the end of his first 100 days, would cut the business rate down to 15 percent. Now, Trump isn’t a business, but he owns one, and it’s not structured like a typical one. Instead, it’s a “pass-through” corporation, meaning its earnings are passed through to the owners’ individual returns and then taxed at the appropriate marginal rate. Trump’s tax cut is structured to slash rates on pass-throughs as well other corporate forms. In other words, if passed, the president will save himself a nice chunk of change, on the order of tens of millions of dollars.

Trump’s plan would slash individual and business rates, repeal the estate tax, and end the alternative minimum tax (which hits a number of affluent households, in addition to the highest income earners). What’s more, Trump would eliminate the 3.8 percent investment surtax found in the Affordable Care Act, another break for the wealthiest households and estates.

Together, these tax cuts would cost an estimated $5.5 trillion over the next 10 years, according to a preliminary analysis from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.  . . . with $20 trillion added to the national debt by 2036.

This is just gravy for the rich: The large bulk of these cuts will go to the highest earners and wealthiest Americans. More than 30 percent of income gains accrue to those with annual incomes more than $200,000, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, with 14.3 percent accruing to those with incomes above $1 million.

His budget would slash tens of billions of dollars from anti-poverty programs; his health care plan would leave tens of millions of Americans without health insurance; and his tax proposals would blow a hole in the federal budget, starving the government of revenue and leaving future Americans the burden of attempting to re-knit the social safety net.

At first glance, it’s an odd populism that takes from the many to give to the few, that abandons the anxious and suffering in favor of the wealthy and comfortable. But remember, Trump’s populism wasn’t just an appeal to jobs and economic interest—it was a racial appeal.  Trump cast blame on Muslims, Hispanic immigrants, and foreign others; he pledged to reopen the mines, recover the factories, and restore the white male industrial wage-earner to his perceived place at the top of the material and social hierarchy.

If nothing else, the racial interests of white Americans have always been at the forefront of white politics, a powerful force across class and social lines. The collapse of support for all kinds of public goods, from robust schools to neighborhood pools, is tied to the perceived beneficiaries. When the majority of white Americans believed those beneficiaries looked like themselves, they backed those investments. When they didn’t, they rejected them, either explicitly or eventually under the guise of “color blind” ideologies.

[N]ow would not be the first time that millions of white Americans backed racial demagogues in the destruction of public goods as a means to restore white hegemony over a smaller, more limited public. We would, in a way, be reverting to form, extending to the country what has defined those regions where race hierarchy was most rigid.

 Yes, many Americans are just plain stupid - and bigots to boot.

George W. Bush: Keep HIV/AIDS Programs Fully Funded

Perhaps the largest beneficiary of the election of Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer,  to the White House is George W. Bush.  Loathed by many when he left the presidency, George W. looks better and batter with each and every passing day.  Had I been asked in say 2005 if I would ever have a softening of my views on George W. Bush, I would have said that Hell would need to freeze over first.  Yet, today in the Washington Post George W. Bush has an op-ed that argues against Der Trumpenführer's proposal to savagely slash funding to HIV/AIDS programs, especially in Africa. Despite his many, many failings, belatedly, George W. seems able to comprehend that others are equally human.  With the ego drive, malignant narcissist in the White House, I truly do not expect to ever see such an evolution and perhaps even sense of sadness over mistakes made. Trump, unfortunately, is foul through and through.  Here are excerpts from George W. Bush's op-ed (we can only hope that Congress listens and rejects Der Trumpenführer's proposed budget cuts:

Last week in Gaborone, Botswana, Laura and I sat in a small room in Tlokweng Main Clinic, a facility that recently started screening and treating women for cervical cancer. Seated with us was Leithailwe Wale, a 40-year-old woman who was diagnosed with the disease. Thanks to early detection and access to treatment, she told us, today she is alive, healthy and able to raise her son.

Good news like Leithailwe’s is becoming increasingly common in five African countries where Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon is operating. Since leaving the White House, Laura and I have been heartbroken to learn that because women with HIV are more likely to have cervical cancer, people who had been saved from AIDS were needlessly dying from another treatable, preventable disease. So at the Bush Institute, we formed this global public-private partnership to fight women’s cancers.

In the past six years, more than 370,000 women have been screened for cervical cancer and 24,000 for breast cancer through Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon. More than 119,000 girls have been vaccinated against the human papillomavirus (HPV), which can lead to cervical and other cancers. Nearly 1,000 health workers have been trained. With the proper resources and international commitment, we could end cervical cancer deaths on the continent in 30 years.

Critical to this effort is our Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon partner, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). My administration launched PEPFAR in 2003 to address the HIV/AIDS pandemic that threatened to wipe out an entire generation on the continent of Africa. Nearly 15 years later, the program has achieved remarkable results in the fight against disease. Today, because of the commitment of many foreign governments, investments by partners, the resilience of the African people and the generosity of the American people, nearly 12 million lives have been saved. And nearly 2 million babies have been born HIV-free to infected mothers.

This lifesaving work also has a practical purpose for Americans. Societies mired in disease breed hopelessness and despair, leaving people ripe for recruitment by extremists. When we confront suffering — when we save lives — we breathe hope into devastated populations, strengthen and stabilize society, and make our country and the world safer.

As the executive and legislative branches review the federal budget, they will have vigorous debates about how best to spend taxpayers’ money — and they should. . . . . But they should fully fund programs that have proven to be efficient, effective and results-oriented. Saving nearly 12 million lives is proof that PEPFAR works, and I urge our government to fully fund it. We are on the verge of an AIDS-free generation, but the people of Africa still need our help. The American people deserve credit for this tremendous success and should keep going until the job is done.  

Apparently, Hell is beginning to freeze over.  Kudos to George W. and Laura Bush.  Don't hold you breath for Trump or his spawn to do something like this.

Trump’s Budget Would Brutally Hit Rural Towns

Durant, Oklahoma Boys and Girls Club

Working on my April column for VEER Magazine, I've been reviewing aspects of Der Trumpenführer's campaign against minorities of all types, and over all find the situation downright sickening and depressing.  In the process I remind myself that this is what Trump voters supported: marginalizing and harming others.  The one perverse consolation is that, if Trump's proposed budget cuts are adopted, many of those motivated by hate, rage over lost white privilege, religious extremism and outright racism may find themselves severely harmed by their very own Dear Leader. I will concede, wishing harm on others is not something admirable, yet when that harm is self-inflicted, I find it harder to resist the urge to say that these folks are getting what they sought to inflict on others. A piece in the Washington Post looks at the self-harm that befall one area of southern Oklahoma where Trump received 76% of the vote.  I feel sympathy for the children who may be harmed such as those pictured above.  As for the adults that voted based on ugly beliefs and emotions, I'm sorry, but I have no sympathy. None. Here are article excerpts:

At the Boys and Girls Club in this rural city in southern Oklahoma, the director is unsure how he will stay open if President Trump’s proposed budget goes through, eliminating money for several staff positions. 

Similar conversations are happening at the Oklahoma Shakespearean Festival’s after-school arts program, which relies on National Endowment for the Arts grants that Trump wants to eliminate. And at the county senior center, which already lost its state funding and could lose all or most of its federal funding, too. And at the Farm Service Center, which supports 1,200 local producers and is staffed with employees whose positions were targeted in the budget.

In this town of 16,000 — located near the Texas border in Oklahoma’s Bryan County, where Trump won 76 percent of the vote — excitement about Trump’s presidency has been dulled by confusion over an agenda that seems aimed at hurting their community more than helping it.

The president’s proposed budget would disproportionately harm the rural areas and small towns that were key to his unexpected win. Many red states like Oklahoma — where every single county went for Trump — are more reliant on the federal funds that Trump wants to cut than states that voted for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Trump wants to eliminate the federal Corporation for National and Community Service, which provides the county volunteer program with about $35,000 each year. This money goes to pay for supplemental insurance and mileage for volunteers who serve in the area, deliver meals to the county’s homebound and drive the elderly to medical appointments, including taking veterans to the closest VA medical center, 100 miles away in Dallas. The center also indirectly receives federal funds to pay for meals, which also could be cut.

Trump’s budget promises “robust funding for critical drinking and wastewater infrastructure,” but it also would eliminate a $498 million grant and loan program that helps rural communities that are smaller than Durant upgrade their water and wastewater systems.

Trump promised that within 100 days of taking office he would introduce legislation to “spur $1 trillion in infrastructure investment over ten years.” He has yet to do so. And when his aides discuss infrastructure, they talk more about toll roads, pipelines and major airports than crumbling Main Streets.

The Durant-based Oklahoma Shakespearean Festival offers a summer theater camp and after-school theater, dance and music classes to local students, many of whom come from poor families. The festival used to receive $150,000 a year in state and federal funds, which have been slashed to $26,000 a year, including NEA grants that Trump wants to eliminate.

And the Boys and Girls Club of Durant watches over about 200 children and teenagers each day after school and during the summer in a former middle school that is being renovated. 

Trump has also proposed cutting all federal funding for AmeriCorps VISTA, which provides staff during the summer, and reducing funding for the federal work-study program, which pays some of the club’s college-aged workers.

One of the senior workers, Sharon Green, said she learned about the potential cuts while watching PBS, which could also lose federal funding.

 Many will likely suffer before the Trump/Pence nightmare is over.  Some, like those in Durant, Oklahoma, will be reaping the results of their own embrace of bigotry and ignorance.  Their pain could have been perhaps avoided, but they are the ones that have unleashed hate and ugliness. 

Trump's America: Dumber, Dirtier, Sicker and More Destitute

click image to enlarge

In keeping with the Republican Party's goal of restoring the worse aspects of the Gilded Age, Der Trumpenführer's proposed budget slashes budgets for programs that aid the less fortunate - even Meals on Wheels would be eliminated - and cut education spending while pouring money into the military.  The Washington Post described the budget as follows:

President Trump on Thursday will unveil a budget plan that calls for a sharp increase in military spending and stark cuts across much of the rest of the government including the elimination of dozens of long-standing federal programs that assist the poor, fund scientific research and aid America’s allies abroad. . . . . would increase defense spending by $54 billion and then offset that by stripping money from more than 18 other agencies. Some would be hit particularly hard, with reductions of more than 20 percent at the Agriculture, Labor and State departments and of more than 30 percent at the Environmental Protection Agency.

It would also propose eliminating future federal support for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Within EPA alone, 50 programs and 3,200 positions would be eliminated.

The Hill list some of the programs to be cut and the only redeeming factor - if one is a cynic and believe that actions need to have consequences - is that many Trump voters will be severely hurt by the proposals, underscoring the dangers of voting based on calls to racism, religious extremism and general misogyny.   Here are a dew of the programs:

The Appalachian Regional Commission, which funds projects meant to bolster businesses, education, culture, and economic development in Appalachia.

The Chemical Safety Board, which investigates accidents in the chemical industry and makes safety recommendations.

The Denali Commission, which supports utilities and infrastructure in Alaska.
 The Legal Services Corporation, which provides civil legal aid for low-income Americans.
 The Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation, which funds community development project throughout the U.S.

The Northern Border Regional Commission, which supports economic development in poor areas near the Canadian border.

The United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, which coordinates efforts to fight homelessness among nearly 20 federal agencies.

Add these to the assault on the EPA, allowing coal mining wastes to be dump into rivers and streams, and the proposed curtailments to Medicaid and the message to poorer Americans is just go ahead and die.  The thing to remember through all of this is that the GOP claims to be the party of "Christian values."  The fact that 81% of evangelicals voted for this underscores the reality that conservative Christianity is toxic to the general welfare.  A column in the Washington Post aptly describes Der Trumpenführer's concept of "Making America Great Again."  Here are excerpts:

President Trump’s first budget is an attempt to reshape the federal government in his own image — crass, bellicose, shortsighted, unserious and ultimately hollow.

 

The reality is that if Congress were to accept these numbers — which it can’t possibly do — America would be made dumber, dirtier, hungrier and sicker. That may be Trump’s idea of greatness, but it’s certainly not mine.

Would we at least be safer? I doubt it. Trump wants to boost defense spending by $54 billion, or about 9 percent. But at the same time, he proposes cutting funding for the State Department by an incredible 28 percent, slashing the relatively modest hands-across-the-sea assistance and advice the United States gives to other nations. Most of the generals and admirals I know believe in projecting U.S. strength through soft power as well as hard power. Trump apparently disagrees.

[T]he proposal to cut the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget by 31 percent can only be seen as a first step toward dismemberment. “The president wants a smaller EPA,” Mulvaney explained. “He thinks they overreach.”

Trump wants to eliminate more than 3,200 EPA jobs, representing more than 20 percent of the workforce. It was a Republican president, Richard Nixon, who founded the agency, and it is another Republican president who apparently wants to end the federal government’s role in protecting the environment. It is perhaps no surprise that Trump wants to end EPA programs and regulations aimed at halting global warming, since he has ventured the opinion that climate change is a Chinese hoax; NASA programs to study warming would be cut as well. But the budget would also eliminate federal funding for efforts to clean up the Chesapeake Bay and the Great Lakes. Make America’s Water Dirty Again!

The National Institutes of Health would suffer a 19 percent cut, sharply reducing the amount of federal money available for research grants to universities.

There’s barely a peep in Trump’s budget about Medicare or Medicaid. Given the angry reaction to the Republican health-care plan, Trump must have decided — for once — that silence was the best choice.

House GOP Budget Departs from Reality

The House Republicans have passed a proposed budget that departs from both economic and political reality.   Like everything the House Republicans do, the budget demonstrates that the GOP is incompetent at governing and that the only concern is pandering to the lunatic party base.  The budget continues the GOP reverse Robin Hood agenda by slashing programs that help low- and middle-income people, and cutting taxes on those with high incomes, capital gains, and multinational corporations.  This policy of harming the poor and less fortunate is applauded by the Christofascists in the party base that underscore that greed and hatred of others are what it means to be a conservative Christian in today's America.  Here are excepts from a Washington Post column:

The policies put forth in this document suggest that America’s main problem is that the poor have too much and the wealthy, too little. The budget plan “corrects” this perceived imbalance by deeply cutting programs that help low- and middle-income people, and cutting taxes on those with high incomes, capital gains, multinational corporations and “pass through” business income.

Programs that provide affordable health coverage for the middle class (Obamacare, which they repeal) and the poor (Medicaid, which is “block granted”) face large spending cuts. Future elderly persons do not escape unscathed, either, as Medicare is “voucherized” beginning in 2024. The budget includes more than $1 trillion in unspecified cuts that would appear to fall on nutritional support for the poor and tax credits for low-income, working families.

These cuts are inevitable in the following sense. The budget plan purports to balance spending and tax revenue in 10 years. Meanwhile, the Republican caucus will not raise any tax revenue, though it does, as I’ll show in a moment, propose tax cuts (or at least such cuts are implicit in the plan). The one area where the Republicans boost spending is defense.

What’s left to cut? All the low- and middle-income programs noted so far, along with “non-defense discretionary” spending: the annual appropriations for many education and training programs, research, infrastructure, and investments in less advantaged kids.

Though cuts in top tax rates are largely unspecified — Republican budget writers have learned over the years to leave out specifics — the budget does include cuts in taxes on capital gains and stock dividends (through the repeal of Obamacare), along with cuts for business income and the foreign earnings of multinational corporations.

The only way to get there [to balance] — and we’ve seen this in all the previous House budgets written by Paul Ryan — is the magic asterisk that assumes extra revenue comes from somewhere (i.e., somewhere other than higher tax rates): Don’t ask, they won’t tell. 

Based on demographics alone, the plan departs from reality:The share of elderly Americans is expected to rise from about 15 to about 20 percent over the next 20 years. According to economist Larry Summers, about a third of the federal budget is spent on those above age 65.

I don’t believe you could find majoritarian support for this sort of a budget in America. In fact, I doubt you’ll see much support for it even among partisans on Capitol Hill. We’ve already seen Senate Republicans, particularly those running for office in swing states, expressing discomfort with the non-reality of the plan.

With the GOP clowns in Congress, the last thing we need is a Republican in the White House. 

The Tea Party and the Collapse of America's Infrastructure

In the magical alternate universe of the Tea Party/Christofascists highways, bridges and other elements of the nation's infrastructure somehow maintain themselves without spending and without taxes to construct improvements and/or replacement structures.  And since the beginning of the George W. Bush presidency, infrastructure spending has plummeted even as the Chimperator took America into two unfunded wars based on lies.  The result is inadequate highway systems - a phenomenon well know in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia - collapsing bridges and other dangerous conditions.  Think Progress has a piece that looks at this dangerous trend.  Here are highlights:

The austerity fervor that’s seized Washington ever since the 2010 elections has lead to a sudden, steep drop in spending on building things. The collapse in infrastructure spending is illustrated in this chart [above]from investment research firm BCA Research.

After hovering around $300 billion per year from the middle of President George W. Bush’s tenure through 2010, government spending on building things not related to defense fell by about $60 billion in just a few years. The drop is a result of Republicans blocking President Obama’s efforts to invest in infrastructure that the country needs.

As the Financial Times’ Cardiff Garcia notes, the policy choices represented in the chart above aren’t compatible with a responsible effort to cut the country’s debt. Indeed, they’ll make things worse: “It’s also likely that much of the investment that has been forgone in the name of fiscal consolidation will have to be made eventually anyways — only it will be made when rates are higher, exacerbating the long-term fiscal outlook rather than improving it,” Garcia writes. In order to bring America’s infrastructure up to a reasonable level by 2020, Congress needs to be spending about $450 billion per year, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Infrastructure spending levels are tied fairly directly to economic performance. Continued underfunding in this arena over the coming years will cost businesses a trillion dollars in lost sales and cost the economy 3.5 million jobs. Infrastructure spending enjoys overwhelming support from voters. Democrats want to create a national infrastructure bank, something that would require just a $10 billion up-front investment but would provide an ongoing, sustainable funding stream for infrastructure projects.

GOP Backed Spending Cuts Cause Drop in Virginia’s Median Household Income

To listen to demagogues of the Republican Party, tax cuts for the wealthy and government spending cuts are supposed to magically spur the economy.  This false vision, of course, ignores the fact that when government spending cuts kick in, this means fewer goods are purchased and even more significantly, government employees are fired or laid off and their purchasing power and family income is decimated.  Especially in an economy where jobs are scare and wages are falling.  Of the 50 states, Virginia is particularly vulnerable to the impact of GOP backed government spending cuts.  And new data shows that Virginia's median household income has fallen thanks to the GOP's distorted voodoo economics.  Here are highlights from the Washington Post:

Virginia’s median household income fell more than 2 percent last year, the most significant drop in the country at a time when most states saw their incomes go flat, according to Census Bureau figures.

Several economists said the declining figure is the result of budget cutting in Washington that rippled across the state even before the sequestration-mandated cuts took effect this year.

The median income for Virginia households fell in a single year by $1,400, to less than $62,000, the Census Bureau said. Adjusting for inflation, that is almost $1,000 less than it was in 2000.

Median household income is considered a broad measure of economic well-being, and Virginia’s loss stood out in a year in which, according to the Census Bureau, incomes and poverty rates finally leveled off after four straight years of decline during the recession and an uneven recovery.

A Washington Post analysis of census data by county shows that almost every region in Virginia experienced a decline in that critical yardstick. In every county in Northern Virginia, the median income slipped, just as it did in most counties and cities around Hampton Roads and the areas around Richmond and Roanoke.

In contrast, the median household income plateaued in Maryland, which has the highest median figure in the country. It rose in the District and in Montgomery County
The federal government spends about $17,000 in Virginia for every resident in the state, one of the highest per capita levels in the country and almost double the national average. About one in 10 state workers is employed by the federal government.

“Virginia is very vulnerable to cuts in federal spending because roughly a third of its economy is tied to the federal government,”
[I]ndicators suggest that Virginia’s economy has been struggling, especially in contracting. The state’s economy grew by 1.1 percent in 2012, less than half the rate of such neighbors as Maryland and North Carolina.

“A lot of large organizations are having to cut their overhead,” he said. “It means folks are losing positions. It’s been a progressive annual decline — 2012 was worse than 2011.”

Many people who have lost jobs are support staff — such as maintenance employees — whose work cannot be billed directly to the government, Antonelli said. Often, the cuts have led to less work for subcontractors, he added.

There is more in the article.  The lesson: when you see some moron driving around with a Tea Party license plate, remember that they are part of the problem and are fueling Virginia's economic decline.  And if a government shut down does occur, things will only get worse.

Sequestration Cuts Causing Scientists to Contemplate Moving Overseas

While the Republican Party has become the anti-knowledge party as a result of it having been hijacked by the Christofascists and moronic members of the Tea Party crowd, it nevertheless does not bode well for America's future that the sequestration cuts caused by GOP intransigence are cause nearly 20% of U.S. scientists to consider moving overseas in pursuit of better funding.  America has long been a leader in scientific research and development, but a mass exodus of research scientists could leave the country in a non-competitive position.  This may be fine with those who choose to leader their lives according to the anonymous writings of Bronze Age herders, but sentient individuals should be deeply concerned.   Here are excerpts from a Huffington Post piece that looks at this worrisome development:

New data compiled by a coalition of top scientific and medical research groups show that a large majority of scientists are receiving less federal help than they were three years ago, despite spending far more time writing grants in search of it. Nearly one-fifth of scientists are considering going overseas to continue their research because of the poor funding climate in America.

The study, which was spearheaded by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) and will be formally released next week, is the latest to highlight the extent to which years of stagnant or declining budgets, made worse by sequestration, have damaged the world of science.

More than 3,700 scientists from all 50 states participated in the study, offering online responses in June and July 2013. They offered sobering assessments of the state of their profession. Eighty percent said they were spending more of their time writing grants now than in 2010, while 67 percent said they were receiving less grant money now than they were back then. Only two percent of respondents said they had received money from their employers -- predominantly academic institutions -- to make up for the loss of federal funds.

The drying up of resources has had a damaging effect on the research being conducted, forcing scientists to curtail their projects or trim their staffs.

According to the survey, 68 percent of respondents said they do not have the funds to expand their research operations; 55 percent said they have a colleague who has lost a job or expects to soon; and 18 percent of respondents said they were considering continuing their careers in another country. 

Sequestration is responsible for much of the damage being done to scientific research. The sweeping federal budget cuts have decreased funding for research and development projects across a wide swath of government agencies by $9.3 billion. The $1.7 billion budget cut to the National Institutes of Health alone has meant more than 700 fewer grants were funded this year, NIH Director Francis Collins told The Huffington Post. 

[I]n terms of percentage of gross domestic product, the United States is reducing its investment in scientific research. In fact, of the 10 countries investing the most money in scientific research, the United States is the only country that has reduced its investment in scientific research as a percentage of GDP since 2011."

Republicans Against Reality

One of the Republican Party's biggest hurdles in the coming years is overcoming the control of the party grassroots by those who live in an alternate universe from objective reality.  Yes, once again I am talking about the Christofascists and Tea Party nutcases who now make up much of the GOP base.  Science and knowledge continue to advance and the demographic make up of the country continues to change, yet the GOP base wants to return to a 1950 world when minorities were subservient (and segregated in the South), gays were invisible, and unwarranted deference to religion was perhaps at its height.  Paul Krugman looks at this GOP disconnect from reality in a column in the New York Times.  Here are excepts:

Last week House Republicans voted for the 40th time to repeal Obamacare. Like the previous 39 votes, this action will have no effect whatsoever. But it was a stand-in for what Republicans really want to do: repeal reality, and the laws of arithmetic in particular. The sad truth is that the modern G.O.P. is lost in fantasy, unable to participate in actual governing. 

I may believe that Republicans have their priorities all wrong, but that’s not the issue here. Instead, I’m talking about their apparent inability to accept very basic reality constraints . . .

Am I exaggerating? Consider what went down in Congress last week. 

First, House leaders had to cancel planned voting on a transportation bill, because not enough representatives were willing to vote for the bill’s steep spending cuts. Now, just a few months ago House Republicans approved an extreme austerity budget, mandating severe overall cuts in federal spending — and each specific bill will have to involve large cuts in order to meet that target. But it turned out that a significant number of representatives, while willing to vote for huge spending cuts as long as there weren’t any specifics, balked at the details.

Then House leaders announced plans to hold a vote cutting spending on food stamps in half — a demand that is likely to sink the already struggling effort to agree with the Senate on a farm bill. 

Then they held the pointless vote on Obamacare, apparently just to make themselves feel better. (It’s curious how comforting they find the idea of denying health care to millions of Americans.)

In other words, Republicans, confronted with the responsibilities of governing, essentially threw a tantrum, then ran off to sulk. 

How did the G.O.P. get to this point? On budget issues, the proximate source of the party’s troubles lies in the decision to turn the formulation of fiscal policy over to a con man. Representative Paul Ryan, . . .  What’s happening now is that the G.O.P. is trying to convert Mr. Ryan’s big talk into actual legislation — and is finding, unsurprisingly, that it can’t be done. Yet Republicans aren’t willing to face up to that reality. Instead, they’re just running away. 

When it comes to fiscal policy, then, Republicans have fallen victim to their own con game. . . . . For a long time the Republican establishment got its way by playing a con game with the party’s base. Voters would be mobilized as soldiers in an ideological crusade, fired up by warnings that liberals were going to turn the country over to gay married terrorists, not to mention taking your hard-earned dollars and giving them to Those People. Then, once the election was over, the establishment would get on with its real priorities — deregulation and lower taxes on the wealthy.

At this point, however, the establishment has lost control. Meanwhile, base voters actually believe the stories they were told. . . . .  And the party establishment can’t get the base to accept fiscal or political reality without, in effect, admitting to those base voters that they were lied to.

What makes this frightening is that Republicans do, in fact, have a majority in the House, so America can’t be governed at all unless a sufficient number of those House Republicans are willing to face reality. And that quorum of reasonable Republicans may not exist.