Last edited Sun Aug 20, 2017, 11:58 PM - Edit history (3)
...that are likely to take many, many years to repair.
Perhaps that’s precisely the intent:
Disrupt, distract, dissipate, and drown out independent voices and inconvenient realities while fulfilling his agenda with an eager Republican Congress. Critics and the press chase their tails in a tizzy, while Trump’s executive orders get signed and cabinet picks get confirmed, one by one.
MoreAmid the distraction of the chaotic horror show he is definitely "getting things done."
All of this smoke is missing the steady progress that the modern Republican Party is achieving,” said Grover Norquist, the longtime anti-tax advocate. “The idea that Trump isn’t getting anywhere is wrong. Those free market guys are picking up maybe not all the marbles in the world, but a large quantity of them. And we haven’t thrown away any marbles.”... His appointment of Ajit Pai to head the Federal Communications Commission is one of them. Pai is poised to dismantle net neutrality rules, moving away from treating online content as a public utility and toward a system that allows cable and telecom industry interests to control content and traffic. “That appointment,” Norquist said, “is [determining] 16 percent of the economy.”
Some of the things tracked on
presterity.org:
Executive action telling government agencies to slash "job killing" rules that environmentalists argue serve as important protections... executive action establishing a framework to scale back the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial-overhaul law... killing off the so-called fiduciary rule requiring brokers and financial advisers to act in the best interest of retirement savers.... remove Neo-Nazi and White Supremacist groups from terror watch list and focus solely on Islamic groups... "unprecedented" approach to staffing cabinet without ethics vetting... spend taxpayer money meant to encourage enrollment in the Affordable Care Act on a public relations campaign aimed at methodically strangling it... Actions by the Trump administration are triggering double-digit premium increases on individual health insurance policies purchased by many people... signs an executive order that will allow federal contractors to discriminate against LGBT employees... intervening in an important private employment case, urged a federal appeals court to rule that civil rights law does not bar job discrimination based on sexual orientation... revives Reagan-era ban on use of foreign aid for abortion counseling... FCC is stopping nine companies from providing federally subsidized Internet to the poor... Individuals with Disabilities Education website vanishes without explanation... Trump administration revoked a grant to Life After Hate, a group that works to de-radicalize neo-Nazis... DOJ Argues Title VII Does Not Protect LGBTQ People... appointed an activist who led a campaign to restrict bathroom access for transgender students to the office of Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment in the US Agency for International Development.... emoving sexual orientation and gender identity from the list of categories explicitly protected from discrimination in its latest equal employment opportunity statement... executive order that will allow federal contractors to discriminate against LGBT employees... Appoints Anti-LGBTQ Activist to Lead HHS Civil Rights Office... rescinded directive that sought to curtail the government’s use of private prisons... Sessions and Cook bringing back the national crime strategy of the 1980s and ’90s from the peak of the drug war... abandoning Paris agreement on climate change... made it harder for workers to set up retirement accounts and has delayed the implementation of workplace safety rules... repealed a regulation protecting workers from wage theft... allowed employers with spotty labor records to get government contracts... Occupational Safety and Health Administration has hit the brakes on a rule that would require firms to report worker injury data online.
I fear that the actions that are big enough, or implemented at a level high enough, to make the news are just the tip of the iceberg compared to damage being done by the systematic decimation of executive regulatory functions going on at every level. And this doesn't even touch on his abusive use of executive power over foreign policy, which is making the world a more dangerous .place, not to mention his withdrawal from efforts to use of our influence and dollars to advance human rights.
Human beings are naturally pulled in when confronted with something that is beyond understanding. As we witness DT's evermore explosive and bizarre verbal diarrhea, our attention is diverted. At the same time, we are being overwhelmed by the shear volume and breadth of the damaging actions he's pulling off. Generalized opposition is strong, but a whole lot is getting by without fanfare or organized opposition.
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