No-trump

It is far passed time to stop giving the new President, Donald Trump, free coverage for the insanity that he is exhibiting. He has set the stage for trying to get the American public to stop listening to the legitimate Press who refuse to blindly go along with all of the wild agenda items he is implementing.


Instead of reporting that "Trump said this or said that, did this or did that..." the media must concentrate on that which he did. "Steve Bannon says media should keep its mouth shut." "Sean Spicer repeats lies which are told to him." "EPA and other federal entities are muzzled by Executive Orders." "Gag order on FDA information endangers Americans health and safety." "EPA shackled by funding cuts and demands to have all scientific reports vetted by Republican Congress."

All of these types of reporting leave the current President out of the picture. He doesn't need any more coverage than he can obtain by tweeting his opinions and claims of being victimized by dishonest press reporting. The lies are only the smoke and mirrors to divert out attention from the actions he is taking without dissent. Congress is not standing up to the man because he is furthering THEIR hopes and goals. He is acting like a "one man wrecking crew."

Even if he is eventually deposed before the 2020 elections, he will have stripped more of the social policy, most of the environmental protections and all of the safeguards which have been put in place since the 1920s. Using the excuse of a need for security he is using collective fear to curtail dissent by striking out at a few of the first adopters of protest.

The people who voted for the man are probably lost to any counter attacks against him. The opposition needs only to point out the results and impacts of his decisions and policies. After all you can't insult a racist by calling him a racist, nor a Fascist by calling him a Fascist. In both cases the label is a badge of honor. But stopping the label making and concentrating on the outcomes of the bad decisions give people the opportunity to get behind the new message. We need to stop characterizing his as a twit even though and especially You Can't Argue With a Twit.

Twit of the Week, Ben Carson

This week, the Twit of the Week Award goes to Ben Carson. The TOW Award comes with a 30-day supply of mouthwash to get the residue of those insipidly stupid remarks out of his head. Ben doesn't get this distinction for the usual ignorant ranting about women's health issues unless we include women's rights to an environment what won't kill them or deform their babies. Nor is he deserving of this Award for his take on Marriage Equality because people who need clean water can be married or single, it just doesn't matter. Also he doesn't get this Award for his desire to nuke Iran for their alleged enmity against America.

What Ben gets the Award for is his completely detached from reality position he has taken on the EPA and how it operates. What we need to establish is that IF businesses were responsible citizens of the Earth they would not engage in activities that will severely injure and kill living people and we would not need the EPA in the first place. Businesses failing to act responsibly makes that need imperative.

Now if there were not such an outcry by businesses that the EPA was being a bully and trying to make them spend shareholder value on making sure their operations are safe and that they ultimately clean up after themselves, the EPA would not have to go out on-site and clean up for them. Mothers routinely wipe up the spilt milk of their toddlers because the toddlers are not capable of doing it themselves. However when the child is older he needs to clean up after himself. He also has to be more careful of what he does in the first place.

The Animas River suffered a massive contamination event from a decades old brew of acid mine drainage that did not drain by the gallon.  This water backed up in the Gold King Mine in Colorado only to be let loose be an EPA contractor while they were trying to clean up the site for the defunct mining corporation. In short, the EPA is responsible for a 3 million gallon surge of orange slush into the Animas River.

Now here is where Ben Carson earns his title of TOW for the third week of August 2015.

“One wonders, if this accident had occurred at the hands of a private business, or even an individual property owner, would the EPA be as forgiving as they have been of themselves? I think not,” Carson said, as reported by John Frank of the Denver Post. Mr. Carson, let's just say the EPA was as hard on themselves as they would be on a private contractor. They would issue a paltry fine and move on to the next client. Then Congress would have to put the fine amount in the next EPA budget.

Again from the Post article, the candidate called on the EPA to perform a transparent investigation of the spill and provide “full compensation and reparations” to those affected. The response from the EPA should be "yeah, we caused the damage and will pay $650 million dollars for reparations, just as soon as Congress approves it.

Ben went on to assert that the reparations should be paid out of the fines that private companies incur for their violations and not use tax dollars. {takes a deep breath}

The focus is part of his (Ben's) effort to overhaul the EPA, for which he plans a new mission statement that downplays fines and penalties, allows for laws that protect business from “unnecessary liability” and incorporates a cost-benefit analysis in its regulatory decisions. (Emphasis added.)

So now Ben wants to protect violating corporations from unnecessary liability that would pay to clean up their disasters. Furthermore, he wants a cost-benefits analysis for EPA regulatory decisions. How about a Cost-Liability Analysis for any debacle that the company ultimately will create.

“We all want a better environment,” he said in the statement. “We all want to protect the environment for generations to come. We all want more common sense in the administration of our environmental laws and policies.” But we don't want to pay for them or reduce shareholder value. What we see is a process of privatizing profits and socializing losses, like we always have, but codified into law so the next Administration can't go changing it willy-nilly. What you must understand is the GOP-Equal-Sign has nothing to  its right side. [something = nada]

"Commonsense regulations" is dog-whistle for lax regulations and non-existent oversight. They want a better environment without a cost. You know, like the one God will give to us after this one is trashed.

So Dr. Carson, you get the TOW Award this week for trying to assert that TINSTAAFL is a hoax and even if it is not free, it is free to the businesses who destroy the only planet we have.

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