Author: Robert I. Grundfest

I am a teacher, writer, voice-over artist and rationally opinionated observer of American and international society. While my job is to entertain and engage, my purpose is always to start a conversation.

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Democracy

Witch Hunting for Nuts

The good thing, and perhaps the only good thing, about the Trump Administration (shudder) is that you never really have to wait very long before the real story becomes apparent. This is decidedly not a regular presidency or White House where the shrouds of secrecy and intrigue hide covert actions for months or years at a time. They do try, the people with some political experience, to navigate Trump through what should be safe political harbors, but then he slams his foot on the speedboat’s gas and heads towards the bathers. And the bathers are the ones who voted for him.

Such has been the previous, tumultuous week in a fast-moving storm that seems to have no sunshine behind it, only darker clouds.

It’s clear that the president dismissed James Comey for delving too deeply into the matter of Russian interference in the election and the extent to which Trump campaign/ administration workers involved themselves in that contretemps. Trump also clearly believe(s)(d) that firing Comey would lessen the pressure the FBI guy was putting on the administration. Calling Comey “nuts” was just Trump projecting his fears and insecurities.

Which he does a lot.

In fact, I’ve come to believe that when Trump uses words like nuts and witch hunt, he’s actually referring to himself because that’s the type of behavior he’s exhibiting and the type of management style he’s using in the White House. Further, the country seems to be turning a corner on the president and his credibility. People like Trump, who think that they’re always right and are bolstered by people who are loyal to him, tend to believe that those who disagree with them must have something wrong with them. It’s difficult to run an administration on that, as we’re learning. And the worst part is that it’s getting even more difficult to see anything the president says as having the weight of probity or thought (if it ever did).

He’s also making it difficult for the Republicans to project a unified message on their agenda because Trump’s tweets keep getting in the way. And besides, the conservative agenda is not widely popular anyway, as the fight against the ACA repeal proves. Add in the other components such as huge tax cuts for the wealthy, and you have a real problem. And when James Comey makes his public testimony, the country will stop and listen.

Trump will not be impeached, and I would urge those who are calling his behavior and words treasonous to redirect their energies to 2018 and to confronting legislators who support his agenda. Let the Mueller investigation run its course and see where it leads. In the meantime, Trump will continue to hurt himself by trying to explain his actions and contradicting his aides, and his aides will leave because it’s really the president who can’t be trusted.

And just remember what types of people invoke witch hunts.

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Featured

The Comey Storm

The editorial boards of these reliable conservative newspapers were geniuses in the fall, and they’re geniuses now because they saw what other Republicans refused to see: that Donald Trump was, and is, not fit to be president.

I’m not psychoanalysis him. I’ll leave that to the professionals. He doesn’t have the personal skills or ideas or knowledge to be an effective president, and the entirety of his tenure has proven that.  What he does is not presidential, what he says is not presidential and what he sees as his role in the national conversation is not presidential.

In and of itself, Trump’s firing of James Comey should not have been big news. Comey has lived on borrowed time since the inaugural, and would have been immediately sacked at 12:02 pm on January 20 had Hillary won. But the Trump White House looks like a rat’s nest with people peeking their heads out to see if there’s a trap. Good public servants have dutifully explained what the talking-points said and legislators have responded as expected to their party over country.
Then the president (shudder) weighs in. And by now it should be crystal clear that he has little sense of protocol or how to shape a message, and it is not clear if he wants to acquire these skills. It’s all personal. Venomous. Vindictive. Vile. Accusatory. Threatening…  This is not presidential and it never will be. There is no normal here.
As for the actual content, clearly Comey has something on Trump or Trump has something on Trump, and Comey should just come right out and say what he has and see if Trump releases any “tapes” if they exist. This is how you confront a bully. I think one of Hillary’s big mistakes in the debates was not taking Trump’s offer that he would release his tax returns if she released her deleted emails. As soon as he proposed it, she should have extended her hand and said, “Deal. We’ll release them on the same day.”  Comey needs to do the same thing in response to Trump’s threats. The country is bigger than one person’s personality.
As I said before, my life has become much easier now that I reject anything that comes out of Trump’s mouth, twitter feed or pen. And now that he has essentially said his administration will say anything or even cancel press briefings, my life is getting even more relaxing. The problem is that we still live in a democratic republic that demands an active press. Shutting down the process is dangerous.
And finally, let’s not overplay Trump’s dysfunction. He has done nothing impeachable nor can people who oppose him gain anything by demonizing those who voted for him. What we need is a responsible opposition that focuses on the issues such as health care, taxes, immigration and jobs and makes clear what we think the country should do about these things. That’s what voters will eventually use to make their choices. There is plenty of time to identify quality candidates and to begin the process of making a case.
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Featured Health Care

You Think This Is About Health Care? Sucka.

This is not about health care, and as a matter of fact, the Republican self-immolation this past week has never been about health care. Or health insurance. Or health. Or care.

It’s the taxes, stupid.

That’s what the Republicans care about. That’s what they think will make them healthy and insure their political future. Taxes. as in lower taxes. As in lower taxes than Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush would ever consider because as repellent as their political and economic philosophies were, they were rooted in real-world and real-economy assumptions. Those assumptions turned out to be wrong, as is amply evidenced by the deficits they created and the fact that economic growth never reached the heights it would need to pay back the Treasury for their rashness.

And Reagan even raised taxes over the course of his term in office to cover part of the shortfall. W’s dad gave up his political career when he raised taxes and set the stage for the Clinton boom in the 90s that was further fueled by the tax hikes in Bill’s budgets.

But now we have the ultra-right wing sycophants who forget or, my assumption, never learned those lessons. They’ve wanted to cut taxes for the past eight years and now they have the ultimate know-nothing in the White House who’s going to make their dreams come true.

In order to do that, though, they need to claim the money that President Obama used to revolutionize the health care system. To make sure that uninsured Americans can get affordable health insurance, which they are getting thanks to government subsidies, and to make sure that those people who have pre-existing conditions or are women or are elderly and should not be denied or price-gouged, taxes went up for the wealthy. And corporations. That’s obviously too much for the GOP to handle, so repeal became the rallying cry.

Well, when your goal is to repeal instead of making people healthier, then repeal is what you get. Except, the bill the House passed last week is not repeal. It just guts the best parts of the ACA while making the most vulnerable and sick people in this country subject to paying far more for health care.

Like they used to. When America was great. We’re going to make it great again by making health insurance more expensive, less comprehensive, unfairly discriminatory, and less job-friendly.

But at least taxes will go down, way down, for the already wealthy and to pay for the cuts Donald Trump will sell our intellectual and cultural soul. Because in the end, Trump only wants victories. He knows nothing about health insurance, or about how to be president for that matter, and only counts wins and losses. He considers the vote last week a win. It was not.

Let’s hope that the Senate proposes an actual health care bill that benefits real people. Otherwise, 2018 will not be kind to the Republicans.

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Democracy Featured

100 Days of Ineptitude

With sincere apologies to Gabriel Garcia Marquez. After all, Marquez knew it wasn’t easy to write a book, which is more than we can say about how easy Donald Trump thought (?) being president was going to be. It’s really a stunning admission given that, well, almost everyone else in the country over the age of 12 has an inkling that being president is a terrifically difficult job if you want to do it well, which clearly Trump has no interest in.

What’s not so easy is realizing that Trump has only been in the White House for 100 days. Maybe that’s because the first two weeks of bumbling and blathering seemed like a year in Roosevelt time. And only three years and change to go.

If this past week solidified anything, it’s that President Trump (shudder) is on course to be one of the least effective, least visionary and least truthful presidents in, um, a long, long time. There isn’t an issue he’s given little thought to including health care, taxes, deficits, infrastructure, foreign relations and the environment. On the unthinking agenda of the future is surely human rights, disaster relief, an economic downturn and a full-blown foreign crisis. Note to the president (shudder): these are not easy eventualities.

It’s clear by now that Trump also has little idea about how health care works or what kind of plan might be helpful to the greatest number of people. The conservatives in the GOP just want to help the insurance companies and make the plan as cheap as they can. Their plan will let the states cover what they can afford which isn’t going to be much. Plus, a law like that will have no chance of passing the Senate, so it doesn’t look like Trump is going to get the extra billions he needs to fund a tax cut.

Which now doesn’t seem to be a problem because the new tax plan plows through every assumption that makes a functioning, rational economy work. It’s a giant sop to the already wealthy and it comes with the promise that history has never justified – that we can make up the budget shortfall through…growth. As if Donald Trump’s crack team of Goldman Sachsers and Paul Ryan can guarantee us 3% economic growth for…ever? And this is going to get done despite the fact that Trump’s insular trade policy and his hounding of immigrant laborers will likely lead to a backlash against American goods and services. Add in the global competition from other low-wage countries, and how exactly are we growing so fast?

But again, the whole plan comes from the mind (?) of someone who hasn’t really thought about much since he became president. And given that he hasn’t released his tax returns so we can learn how this new plan will benefit him, it’s unlikely that he’ll get anywhere near what his original proposal calls for. That’s a good thing, because this plan will hurt the very people who voted for him. It’s irresponsible at best and destructive at worst.

Now that Trump is unshackled from the 100 day expectation, it will be interesting to see how he approaches the long slog that is the presidency. The tweets will continue, as will the bragging and misdirection that has already buried the Russia hacking from the news headlines. Some in the media have reported that Trump started out as horrible, but that he’s become a rather predictable Republican president. Honestly, I don’t see the difference.

But I did make a decision a few weeks back that has made my life infinitely easier I’m just not going to take anything Trump says at face value. If he says it, I immediately disbelieve it and look to find independent, verifiable information. Which I do in the responsible press.

You know, the one Donald Trump doesn’t believe.

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Democracy Featured

Wrong Way Flows The Don(ald)

I imagine that to a Trump supporter, the president’s moves seem like a new direction for the country.

For me, we are taking giant steps backwards.

It’s not just the denial of climate science or the reversal of protections for LGBTQ citizens, or the hounding of Muslims or threatening North Korea with a ship that was going the wrong way. Or any of the other executive orders undoing any number of worthwhile things like protecting consumers from financial advisers who might value commissions over investors, or net neutrality, or allowing cable television companies to continue to monopolize set-top boxes, or trying to repeal a health care law and replace it with a law that covers 24 million fewer people.

No, despite all of those gems and more, I see the country going back to a time when it was fine to say terrible things to women and minorities and to create groups that deserve protection and those that do not and the ones that do not are usually weaker or vulnerable.

But then there’s the light that illuminated the swamp that is FOX News, resulting in the toppling of Chairman O’Reilly and, perhaps, more executives who tolerated his abuse. And there’s the energy in Georgia and Montana and the other places where Democrats will be challenging Republicans on their own turf. After all, Trump went into the Midwest and won the election. Surely, Democrats can go into the South and the Plains and win some races there.

The big plus, though, is that Republicans are actually in charge and they are proving the point that it’s very difficult to run a government when you want that government to disappear. Yes, the GOP is making noise about reviving the health care bill, but the problem of cost and coverage, especially for those who voted for Trump but still need Obamacare, will doom any attempt to gut the bill, which is really what the rank and file want. They will rue the day.

And tax reform? Show us your returns, Mr. President, so we know how you benefit from the system. Then maybe we’ll support an overhaul that actually helps the middle class. But I don’t see that being a priority for the right. Get rid of the mortgage and state tax deductions? Slap an import tariff on my Kohl’s clothes sprees? Get into a trade war with Canada over milk? Good luck with that.

So maybe things are looking up? A monosyllabic chief executive can only say “great” so many times before he actually has to do something, or get Congress to pass some actual laws. In the meantime, the country will continue to slip backwards, harking back to a time that might have been great for some, but not for all.

It’s a shame that we’ll have to wait to move forward.

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Democracy Featured

Who Knew It Could Get So Dangerous?

On the (months ago) heels of a 40 watt light bulb going off in the president’s head about how complicated health care could be, comes another revelation – unstated, about how dangerous the world could be.

Perhaps Donald Trump believed that throwing 59 missiles at Syria would startle Presidents Assad and Putin to the point that they would give up the fight and flee. Or maybe Trump giving his generals the green light to MOAB the Afghani desert would cause ISIS to run a white flag up a flagpole like the Vietcong did (not) when Richard Nixon decided we had too many leftover bombs in our arsenal and thought that Christmas would be a fabulous time to send a message of peace war.

In any case, this is now getting dangerous.

Never mind that North Korea’s attempts to rattle us ended in a failure that can be traced back to President Obama’s program to disrupt Kim Jong-un’s military through cyber-warfare. President Trump (shudder) will try to take credit for waking up in the morning and thinking that his actions will solve any and all real world problems. This is the kind of diplomacy we’ve seen before from politicians who believe that sending a military message without any diplomatic follow-up will yield meaningful fruit. It will not. Add the yeasty smell of a candidate who questioned the validity of NATO, and you have the makings of a loaf of something that makes matzah seem like a 7 layer cake.

For three months we saw Donald Trump’s attempts at domestic policy and the utter failure that resulted from his ineptitude. Foreign policy is much trickier and, as we’ve seen, can kill far more people than repealing the ACA. Rex Tillerson has his work cut out for him.

Gee, wouldn’t it be nice to have a president with some foreign policy and diplomatic experience? Like…

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Democracy Donald Trump Donald Trump Featured

Trump Has a Good Week: The World and Country Suffer

Some in the media are hailing this past week as Trump’s best as president, so let’s take a look at the highlights:

  1. The chair of the House committee looking into the Russia scandal had to recuse himself.
  2. The Republicans had to alter Senate rules to get their Supreme Court nominee into a seat that was wrongfully denied to President Obama.
  3. The number of new jobs dipped substantially in what could be considered the first real Labor Department report of the Trump Administration.
  4. The president and House negotiators tried to revive their failed health care bill by adding provisions for states to deny people insurance who have pre-existing conditions and raising rates for the elderly.
  5. The president threw some missiles into Syria after a dastardly and cowardly attack by President Assad. The endgame? Like much of Trump policy, it depends on what’s on FOX News tonight.
Compared to the utter helplessness of the first few weeks of the Trump presidency, last week was fairly orderly. And yet…
To be fair, I thought that President Obama should have backed up his red line comment with a military response in 2013, because that’s when it could have had more of an impact on the Syrian Civil War, and Trump was justified in responding last week. The issue is what will happen now? Will it take more attacks on children for Trump to respond? If only adults are hit, will we stay silent? And what about the Russians, who I believe are responding disingenuously to something they should have seen coming.
Is Donald Trump having his George W. “No Nation-Building” Bush moment?

As for the other events of the best week of Trump’s presidency, it’s really par for the overused course. Representative Devon Nunes used information given to him by executive branch sources and then ran and told the president rather than sharing said information with his House colleagues. So now we are in the unique position where only the Senate has the moral authority to investigate the Russia allegations.

On the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation won’t mean too much for the balance of the court as it replaces one conservative with another, but that seat should have belonged to President Obama’s nominee. Changing the filibuster rules will eventually favor Democrats, but by that time the real damage could be more conservatives replacing more liberal voices on the Court. Somehow I think the republic will survive, but Congress will need to step in and pass laws to mitigate some of the legal damage.

And the health care bill? Right now it’s pretty dead, but you know how much the GOP loves science. They will try to revive it and make it worse, even though the data suggests that the ACA is healthy enough to keep the insurance companies in green for the foreseeable future. The simple fact is that the GOP needs the money from a health care repeal to pay for their tax cuts, otherwise, it won’t have the splash they’re looking for, but it’s looking more and more like they won’t get it. I guess they’ll have to soak the middle class even worse than they thought they might.

The Trump presidency is fast approaching its 100th day, the usual, if outdated, benchmark of presidential accomplishment, and it hasn’t done much in the way of legislation. Most of the action has been done via formerly-hated-by-conservatives executive orders, and there don’t seem to be any grand laws in the sausage grinder at the moment. The believable media has made a great deal about Trump’s unpredictability and his penchant for reacting when personally affronted or moved, as evidenced by the Syria gambit. It’s really only a matter of time before this manifests itself in something far more dangerous, and darker.

If you can fathom it.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

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Featured

The Emperor Has No…Power

Remember the good old Obama Administration, the one the Republicans accused of treason and fascism and abuse of power because the president had the audacity to use…executive orders? That’s when America was great, right? Congress obstructed the president from improving people’s lives so he leaned on the only legal authority he had to run the country.

Now we have a president (shudder) who can only use executive orders to get things done, and the GOP naysayer whistle-blowers are blowing smoke. They all-of-a-sudden love Trump’s use of orders to undo what they consider to be outrageous acts of governmental control like net neutrality or protecting consumer privacy or allowing states and local governments to set up retirement accounts for people who don’t have them at work or clamping down on pollution and coal-belching plants that spew noxious fumes into the atmosphere.

Imagine what this president could do with a Republican majority Congress.

And that’s exactly the point. He obviously does have a majority. The problem is that he has no power base. This is why Trump will be hard pressed to get much done during the catastrophe that will be the next three years and nine months.

Power comes from influence, fear, a united group that sees a way forward and leadership that uses its moral, ethical and electoral mandates to move legislation through the congress. Donald Trump has very little of any of this. And he’s no LBJ. Trump was opposed by the party regulars and the conservative wing that actually had some ideas written down. He was opposed by right-leaning news outlets, many of which wrote that he didn’t have the personality or character to be an effective president. And of course, he was opposed by a majority of voters on election day, which makes it extraordinarily difficult for him to claim any kind of mandate for his platform.

We were told that he was a master negotiator and a strong personality who could persuade legislators and world leaders if only he could get them into a room to negotiate with him. We were told that he would be pragmatic and try to get the best deal possible. We were told that he would strong arm recalcitrant lawmakers into seeing that if they didn’t support him they would face some unlovely music at the ballot box come 2018.

You can stop laughing now.

What we have instead, and the Republicans in Congress now know this, is a president who lacks the knowledge of policy necessary to make deals. In the health care debacle, Trump was throwing ideas and promises around simply to appease the conservatives. The law he was fighting for was a disaster by any measure. He made threats; the GOP stalwarts ignored them. He fulminated on Twitter, then caved. The country is better off. For now.

But the die has been cast. Trump does not have the negotiating skills or the knowledge or the leverage necessary to get difficult laws through this Congress. He’s decided to move on to tax reform, which makes repealing the ACA akin to the niceties of a PTA meeting. The health care debate didn’t affect a vast majority of Americans, but taxes will. And each tax and each deduction has an interest group and lobbyists behind it. Plus, the windfall the GOP thought they would have from the ACA repeal is nowhere to be found. Congressional leaders have little to fear from a man who’s going to make a habit of leading from behind. The fight over tax reform will take longer, and we know that Trump has no attention span beyond the next news cycle. What will he do with all that time?

At some point in the near future, Republicans running in 2018 will need to make the critical decision about whether they will continue to follow Trump through the maze he’s created, or whether they’re going to go their own way and render him even more superfluous. If they don’t fear him, I can say with reasonable certainly that there will be a further split in the party. The result will not be pretty.

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Featured Healthcare

The Madness Will Last Beyond March

This is what happens when you’ve hitched your political wagon to a semi-trailer that has “Government Sucks” written on the side in patriotic colors. And when the driver of that semi has no political skill, cogent philosophy or enough sense to know that he’s being led by the nose by unrelenting, uncompromising, unapologetic conservative ideologues while his wingman looks like the deer in the headlights. Then you are heading for a monumental crash.

And the GOP did. Big time.

The Seven Year Obamacare Itch could not be scratched with a made-in-China plastic backscratcher or any of the GOP’s well-manicured fingernails. It was stunning and messy and terrible for the country, except for the fact that millions will keep their health insurance. And it’s only the beginning.

This was supposed to be the easy first step towards a better, Republican-led future but it exposed the House of Representatives as a hotbed of contradictions and competing constituencies. You know, the way the framers envisioned government when they created it. They even built in the idea that democratic ideas need to take time, to marinate in the bowl of public consumption, to gain a consensus, to be debated by the populace over the course of months to make sure that the terrible parts are squeezed out. None of that happened with the health care bill. President Know-Nothing thought this would be quick, and since he has no attention span to speak of, he approved of the GOP’s leadership idea that the bill needed to be introduced one week and voted on in the next.

Oopsy.

But the worst was the spectacle of Trump and Ryan throwing publicly approved healthcare provisions overboard with no thought about how a final bill with no protections for those with preexisting conditions, or guaranteed maternity care or no-cost preventive care would play in, well, Peoria and the areas where Trump won the election. There simply was no health or care in the bill. No wonder only 17% of respondents in the latest poll approved of it.

The other issue with the health care bill, though, is more far-reaching. The money saved in this bill was supposed to fund the giant tax-cut-for-the-wealthy that the GOP was going to tackle next. Now there’s no cash in the till, which means that there will need to be more spending cuts. The ultra-conservatives didn’t like government spending for health care, so they sure as heck aren’t going to vote for a tax cut or a trillion dollar infrastructure bill that might explode the deficit and fund Planned Parenthood. The ultras have the power now and they are immune to Trump’s lame threats and simpering appeals for American greatness.

And, of course, there’s the issue of the Republicans actually funding and running a United States that has an Affordable Care Act. If they were smart, they would regroup and find an alternative that would shore up the insurance markets or make sure that elderly people don’t have to pay more for less care or to make insurance portable so that no American would have to worry about losing their insurance simply because they lost their job or move to take care of a family member. You remember family? The Republicans are supposed to be the family party.

Doing any of this would require Democratic acquiescence, which is doable. The question is whether the GOP will actually ask.

Of course, this won’t happen because the president has already said that the healthcare will “explode” and the insurance markets will tank because…he will make sure that this happens. Then he thinks he’s going to blame the Democrats. The GOP owns health care now, and if the law fails it will be because of their actions.

Do keep in mind that it’s still only March. But the madness will last far longer.

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Featured

Reality Sinks In

Really now: What did you expect?

The great know-nothing Donald Trump is president, having run on an incoherent mixture of lies, half-truths, innuendo, sexism, nationalism, xeno- and Islamophobia and promises about jobs that he couldn’t possible keep. Add in an ultra right wing Congress that’s committed itself to acting first and thinking about consequences later. And what do get get?

Our present reality.

Yes, I know that the Trump budget will never pass as it is currently constructed, but it still does provide a framework from which the Republicans can build their cuts and aggressively apply their ideology, which assumes that the best budget Congress ever passed was in 1790 when the federal government was appropriately small and anyone who wanted a gun could have one (and abortion, by the way, was still legal up to about 15-20 weeks of pregnancy). Many of the programs on the chopping block are ones used by Trump voters who are struggling economically and need some government support to stay alive or to keep their jobs.

And the proposed cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will devastate many state and educational arts programs for people who live outside areas that have museums or universities that promote the arts. Many teachers also use the endowments for educational purposes in K-12 classrooms and for their own academic enrichment throughout the school year and in the summer. To say there is no place anywhere in the federal budget for these programs is a capitulation to ignorance. The arts and humanities, and public television and radio, provide services that are vital and should be insulated from the ravages of competition because they promote ideas that sometimes aren’t prized by the market until they are introduced, viewed or broadcast.

Are there programs that could and should be cut? Yes. Many federal programs overlap or have outlived their usefulness, but many have not and even if they serve a small population, if that population depends on that program, it’s up to the government to provide an alternative or a path forward for those people. Otherwise, citizens will lose their jobs, their education, their heat, their health insurance, or their lives. All in the name of increased military spending.

But the true moral bankruptcy of the GOP is their proposed replacement for the Affordable Care Act. Their argument seems to be that it’s OK for 24 million fewer people to have health insurance as long as the wealthy get their tax break and we can save over $300 billion over ten years to fund it. And the extra bonus is that by 2026 (!) health insurance premiums will be approximately 10% cheaper.

Where do I sign up?

I can certainly understand an appreciate that there are conservative voters who voted for this, want these cuts, and believe that the federal government has grown too large. Those who voted for Trump based on his promises, though, should be extremely wary at this point. Many of them are going to get much less than they bargained for domestically and in lost international trade because of this budget and his actions.

A shrinking America is not, and never will be, a great America.

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Healthcare

To Hell With the Health of the State

I really do try to see the intellectual arguments behind the politicians that utter them and I really do try to keep my judgements closely aligned to the agree/disagree axis, as opposed to the anger/unreasonably mean axis that seems to be in vogue these day.

But on both health care and the environment, I just can’t help but think that the Republican Party is using its treasured Second Amendment rights to shoot itself in multiple locations on its body politic. I understand that the voters who installed this regime thought terribly of President Obama and wanted the ACA repealed, and I also understand that many farmers and ranchers and manufacturers detest Environment Protection Agency rules on land use and cleanup, and many more deny the science behind the changing climate, but did these voters truly want what’s ambling down the lane? Do they really want to lose health insurance coverage and to make the air and water dirtier? Because that’s what’s going to happen.

It’s no secret that the Trump administration wants to take us back to some mythical past where the country was greater than it is now, but that invariably means that we’ll go back to a time when air and water pollution was at its height, lead paint sickened children, DDT killed eagles, sludge in rivers forced any kind of wildlife to flee or die and people died because they did not have adequate health insurance or access to medicine. Is this what people voted for?

On health care, the GOP is so bent on repealing the ACA quickly that they’ve created a program that will strip away insurance from millions of people, cut taxes for the wealthy, and only the wealthy, cut back on assurances that certain medical procedures – especially those that relate to women and the elderly – would continue, and increase the budget deficit. Their plan will also make insurance cost more for those unable to qualify for Medicaid and to cut money for Medicaid recipients to the point where they won’t be able to get the full coverage they would under present rules. And all of this is being done because the GOP believes that insurance companies, who will still have to cover people with pre-existing conditions, will magically cut their premiums in the name of competition.

I certainly appreciate that premiums have risen under the ACA, but at least people still retain their insurance and most are shielded from the cost because they qualify for subsidies. Rather than fixing the problems so people can retain coverage, the GOP plan ensures that many insured citizens will lose their plans. And all in the name of ideology.

As for the environment, EPA Chief Scott Pruitt’s statement last week that he doesn’t believe that human activity has anything to do with any climate change is beyond ignorant, and is a danger to life on this planet. His position, then, is that we should be able to freely pollute the air and water because, really, who are we hurting? Has someone ever shown him the pictures from the 1960s and 70s that show the haze and pollution over both urban and rural areas? It’s astounding.

Fortunately, I live in New Jersey, where the air is clean, the water is crystal clear and fresh, the traffic is minimal and there are, thankfully, no toxic waste sites. None. Because if I lived in a state that had a great deal of pollution or an abundance of carbon monoxide-spewing cars or terrible traffic or long-ago-but-obvious-today violations of industrial laws because let’s say chemical and manufacturing companies illegally dumped ungodly amounts of toxins in the water or in leaky rusting drums and left them beside some chain link fenced in area near a stinky, foul river and then claimed that they didn’t have to clean it up or vented smelly fumes without cleaning the smokestacks near the, well, let’s call it a Turnpike for want of a better word, then I would be outraged that the new head of the governmental agency responsible for ensuring that the country is as clean as can be recently denied that humans have anything to do with why the climate is changing.

So when I take my giant SUV out to drive along this great flat earth of ours, I can do so with a clear conscience and the freedom to pollute at will because not only is carbon monoxide not responsible for climate change, it’s also non-polluting. Because if it polluted the air, then it would be a contributing factor in the climate. But it doesn’t. So it doesn’t. Scott Pruitt told me so. So shut up.

The Republican agenda is danger to the country. A government that purposefully ignores the health of its citizens and actively works to undermine it deserves to be opposed at every turn.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

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Democracy Featured

Beware the Idiocies of March

Yes, my friends, this is getting frighteningly Shakespearean. And we have a variety of dysfunctional, murderous, illegal and psychologically damaged examples to choose from. Is the Trump White House Macbeth? Hamlet (soon to be starring Jared Kushner as the prince)? Othello? Any of the histories? We know there’s no Falstaff because this really isn’t funny. The field is wide open.

As for reality, we have a mucking mess. President Trump (shudder) gave what many distracted and fooled pundits called a presidential speech last week where he created false realities and set himself up as the only person who could solve them.

  • Mexicans swarming the border? False, but let’s build a wall.
  • Public education failing? False, so let’s funnel money to private, religious and charter schools.
  • Unvetted radical Muslims crashing our shores? False, so let’s forget that we vet asylum seekers for two years and claim that our porous borders are swarming with terrorists.
  • Health care law failing? False, so let’s make sure that everybody has the freedom to have to pay for their care, whether they can afford it or not.
  •  Foreign policy failures from the Obama Administration? False, so let’s cut money to the State Department because, really, the only policy we need is what Trump tweets in the morning.
  • Anti-Semitism? True, though wait 6 months before tepidly denouncing the longest hatred, but only after you dress down an Orthodox Jewish press reporter who’s actually on your side at your head-scratching press conference.

Trump might have delivered his speech without devolving into a red-faced, spitting mess, but is that really our expectation from the leader of the free world? He then followed up for a few days with policy-laden tweets and pronouncements that sounded rather…normal. But that’s what this presidency is all about, has been all about and will be all about: Vacuous pronouncements and personality-driven drivel. The words of the speech came out well; the words themselves were hateful, deceitful,  and troubling.

And then came Jeff Sessions and the Trump Administration Two-Step: Lie at your hearings and hope the real media doesn’t pick up on it or hope that the leakers have taken a public sector job sick day. Looks like that’s not going to happen so much. When the Attorney General shades the truth (benefit of the doubt) or baldly lies (probably the truth), then your administration is in trouble. And the Russia stories just keep on coming, like bottomless cups of coffee at the diner. Served with a smile, but hyper-inducing nonetheless.

But the week couldn’t end without the president reverting to form, accusing President Obama of tapping his phones. Which is ludicrous. And not based on reality. And even more troubling because if Trump is basing his information on some security briefing, then he’s compromising national security. There’s always a source for his anger, and in this case it’s likely a Breitbart story he read. And now he’s calling for a Congressional investigation as part of the Russia probe to show what a fair-minded person he really is. Trump is going to do these types of things for the rest of his term, and they are decidedly not normal. He just can’t help himself.

Or the country.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

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