We wake up each day and think: âThereâs no way this could get any worse.â And every day, weâre proven wrong. Our reality is now anger and inhumanity. It is in most instances, instigated and promoted by the Trump administration.
What does all that anger and inhumanity say about America today? It says we must change for the better. It also means 63 million Americans are as morally deficient and as complicit as the president they voted for. Nice work.
Melania needs better jackets in her wardrobe:
ICE has cornered the market on huddled masses:
Science has determined how he does it:
Captain Bone Spurâs trade War is not off to a perfect start:
Apologies for the lack of posts, but it wasn’t a good week at the Mansion of Wrong. We said goodbye to Ms. Right’s favorite dog, the 15 year-old Havanese, Tuxedo. Tux lost his two-year battle with congestive heart failure. He was a brave little boy right to the very end. I think sometime in the future it might be a good idea to surprise Ms. Right with a new Havanese puppy, I might do some research into other crosses such as the bichon havanese or others that Ms. Right will instantly fall in love with.
Here is a picture of Tux when he was young, with his favorite yellow ball:
Tuxedo in California â 2007 photo by Wrongo
All in all, another week filled with big issues: Toddler care by government contractors, a real trade war, and the World Cup without a US team. But let’s focus on small, but significant indignities. From Thursday’s Bangor Daily News:
US Customs and Border Protection agents set up a checkpoint Wednesday on Interstate 95, stopping drivers and asking them questions about their citizenship before letting them proceed.
Agents set up cones narrowing the highway to one southbound lane, and then asked vehicle occupants about their citizenship. One agent was quoted as saying:
If you want to continue down the road, then yes ma’am. We need to know what citizen – what country you’re a citizen of…
When questioned about what would happen if a driver declined to answer, he said the car would only be able to keep going if, after further questioning and in the agent’s judgment, “the agent is pretty sure that you’re US citizens.”
These same border agents perform immigrant checks at Maine bus stops, where agents have been captured on video asking riders about their citizenship. More from the Bangor News:
In recent months, the bus stop checks have come under fire from the Maine American Civil Liberties Union, which is suing the federal agency for records to learn more about the practice. Lawyers for the Maine ACLU said they have questions concerning “the intrusive operation,” and whether it infringes on the Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights of bus passengers.
The Bangor Daily News quoted attorney Emma Bond:
People have the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, whether at a bus station or on the road.
Bill of Rights? We have no stinkin’ rights where Homeland Security is concerned. The tradeoff is to accept that immigrants, or possibly, terrorists, could make their way into the US from the enemy outpost of Canada. They could be infiltrating America.
For that, we are giving away the Constitution.
This isn’t some abstract abuse of internet privacy rights, these are uniformed federal government agents rousting people to produce their papers. Americans shouldn’t be required to answer questions about their comings or goings, unless law enforcement has probable cause to believe a violation of the law has occurred.
Stopping people for no reason is against the Constitution. It must be called out, and should be stopped immediately. We should not have to answer to anyone while driving down the roads our taxes pay for.
These are shock troops, exercising government power in a direct, one-on-one way. Let’s close with a cartoon that can’t wait until Sunday to be seen:
Another tough week. Unplug from the web and social media, it’s a time to cherish those closest to us, and to spend a little time away from the world.
Take your hot steaming cup outside, where you can hear the birds singing, maybe hear a distant lawn mower, and get comfortable. Now, listen to Aaron Copland’s “Quiet City” with solo trumpet by Winton Marsalis, backed by the Eastman Wind Ensemble. It is from the album, “Works by Copland, Vaughan Williams, and Hindemith“:
Now, let go of another pretty difficult week.
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
The last time Republicans in the North Carolina Legislature enacted a law making it harder for some of the stateâs residents to vote, a federal court said the statute targeted African-American voters âwith almost surgical precision,â and threw it out.
That was last year. Now the legislators are back with a new set of election proposals, and an unconventional plan to make them stick:
Shortly before midnight on Wednesday, Republican Senators unveiled legislation that would eliminate the final Saturday of early voting in state elections, a day that typically draws a large share of black voters to the polls. That followed a Republican proposal last week to place a constitutional amendment on the November ballot that would require all voters to display a photo ID before casting votes.
In addition, party leaders say they are preparing a constitutional amendment that would curb the power of the Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, over the state board that controls election procedures.
Since Republicans swept into power in 2010, controlling both the North Carolina Legislature and the governorship, the state has become ground zero for struggles over tightening election rules and weakening voting rights.
Democrats have recently made gains in the state, most notably with Mr. Cooperâs win of the governorship in 2016. That doesnât mean the Republicans arenât still trying to suppress votes. More from the NYT:
This time, however, the partyâs tactics have changed. The voter ID amendment would require approval by citizens as well as legislators. The final Saturday of voting has been popular â nearly 200,000 citizens voted on that day in 2016 â and African-Americans turned out at a rate 40 percent greater than their share of the electorate. But the bill to eliminate that Saturday would apportion those lost hours among other early voting days, so the total hours of polling would not change.
Look for more states to adopt the tactic of putting voter suppression efforts into state constitutions the same way Republicans did with gay marriage 15 years ago. The Republicans are willing to be transparent about disenfranchising everyone who isn’t inclined to vote for them.
The Republicans know that about half the country doesnât like their ideas, which is why they are trying to suppress voting. If they get their way, their messaging will appeal to everyone who still has the vote.
Maybe itâs time Democrats are brutally honest about what they are doing. Maybe Democratic candidates need to start by saying:
I plan to make it as easy to vote as possible. I want every eligible voter at the polls, no matter what we have to do
Time to wake up America, your voting rights are under attack by the Republican Party and the John Roberts court. To help you wake up, here is Twisted Sister with their only top 40 hit, 1984âs âIâm Not Gonna Take Itâ
During this yearâs teachers’ strikes, the song was used as a rallying cry by teachers striking in Arizona.
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
Two things to address on Monday. Take a look inside the program that separates the families of asylum seekers. The WaPo reports that:
A Honduran father separated from his wife and child suffered a breakdown at a Texas jail and killed himself in a padded cell last month, according to Border Patrol agents and an incident report filed by sheriffâs deputies.
The death of 39 year-old Marco Antonio Muñoz, had not been publicly disclosed by the DHS, and did not appear in any local news accounts. Muñoz was found on the floor of his cell May 13 in a pool of blood with an item of clothing twisted around his neck:
According to Border Patrol agents…Muñoz crossed the Rio Grande with his wife and three-year-old son on May 12 near the tiny town of Granjeno, Texas. The area is a popular crossing point for Central American families and teenagers who turn themselves in to apply for asylum in the United States.
Soon after Muñoz and his family were taken into custody, they arrived at a processing station in nearby McAllen and said they wanted to apply for asylum. Border Patrol agents told the family they would be separated. Thatâs when Muñoz âlost it,â according to one agent…
Unruly detainees are taken to local jails where they can be placed in more secure settings or isolation cells. Border Patrol agents found a vacant cell for Muñoz 40 miles away at the Starr County Jail in Rio Grande City. Muñoz was booked into the jail at 9:40 pm. He remained combative, and was placed in a padded isolation cell. Guards said they checked on Muñoz every 30 minutes, and observed him praying in a corner of his cell the following morning.
A guard who walked by the cell at 9:50 am said he noticed Muñoz laying in the center of the floor, unresponsive and without a pulse. Local sheriffâs deputies recorded the incident as a âsuicide in custody.â But the capper is this remark by an ICE agent: (emphasis by Wrongo)
Another agent familiar with what happened said he couldnât understand why Muñoz âwould choose to separate himself from his family foreverâ by taking his own life.
This assholeâs salary is paid by you and me! Itâs time we see these agents for who they really are.
Second, last week the DOJ filed a brief urging a Texas court to invalidate the Affordable Care Actâs crucial insurance reforms, including the prohibition on refusing to cover people with preexisting conditions. In their complaint, states (including Texas and other red states) point out that since Congress has repealed the penalty for going without insurance, the freestanding requirement to get insurance, which is still on the books, is therefore unconstitutional. And because itâs unconstitutional, the courts must invalidate the entire ACA. From the Incidental Economist:
Thereâs a strong argument to be made in the ACAâs defense. And the Justice Department has had a durable, longstanding, bipartisan commitment to defending the law when non-frivolous arguments can be made in its defense.
If the Justice Department can just throw in the towel whenever a law is challenged in court, it can effectively pick and choose which laws should remain on the books. Thatâs a flagrant violation of the Presidentâs constitutional duty to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. More:
The President has a duty to take care that all the laws are executed, not just the ones he likes. And while there are cases in which the Justice Department has deviated from that principle, they are extremely rare.
The Trump administration has just announced that it doesnât care that a law was passed by Congress and signed into law by the President. All that matters is that it hates the law and has a (weak) argument for casting it aside.
Time to wake up America! There is a revolution underway, and weâre being fed the elephant of authoritarianism one little slice at a time. This time, the revolution is televised every day, but weâre not connecting the dots quickly enough.
To help America wake up, here is Iris DeMent with âLiving in the Wasteland of the Freeâ, from her 1996 album, âThe Way I Shouldâ:
This song is 22 years old, but still rings true. Iris says:Â “The poor have now become the enemy” and “Let’s blame our troubles on the weak ones“.
Today, both are true, and are simply sickening.
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
Rakotz Bridge, Kromlauer Park, Germany via @archpics
With the press busy mourning the deaths of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain, you probably missed a couple of news stories about press freedom.
First, on Thursday night, the DOJ unsealed an indictment of James Wolfe, the long-time Director of Security for the Senate Intelligence Committee. Wolfe, a former Army intelligence analyst, had worked for the committee in a nonpartisan capacity for nearly 30 years. He is accused of one count of false statements to the FBI. The indictment alleges that he lied about his conversation with four journalists, Ali Watkins of the NYT, and three others.
The NYTrevealed that Watkins, who had a three-plus year relationship with Wolfe, has had years of her communications subpoenaed. The DOJ obtained her subscriber information, and additional information from her phone.
The subscriber information that can be obtained by the DOJ is invasive. It includes your name, financial and other contact information, and IP and device addresses that allow them to map out all the communications a person uses.
It gives the government all of a journalistâs sources.
And the DOJ also sought and received Ali Watkinsâ her email from when she was an undergraduate at Temple. She graduated in 2014. She broke her first national security story as a senior in college, so perhaps her school emails are relevant to the government’s investigation.
But this breach of the reporter/source privilege needs to explained. The government must delineate the boundary of what is, and isn’t acceptable in terms of vacuuming up a reporter’s source information.
It is important that counterintelligence sources and information be kept secret. James Wolfeâs motives are unclear, since he shared information with other reporters that he wasnât having an affair with.
As of now, we donât know if there was actual damage to an investigation.
The second item is the report, originally in April, that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) intends to list and track  290,000 news outlets, journalists, bloggers, and influencers following select news stories. Their intent is to share those data with federal, state, local and private partners.
Naturally, there was pushback by news organizations, enough for the DHSâs Tyler Houlton to say:
Sure. Only a crank could possibly have an issue with one of the least transparent government agencies, the one with an Orwellian name, tracking and cataloging journalists. This amounts to mass monitoring of the press by the state.
So, two attacks on press freedom by the Trumpets, one by DOJ, and the other by DHS.
Remember, the government now has virtually unlimited processing power, bandwidth, and storage, and with that: Anything that can be monitored will be monitored.
This wasn’t feasible in the past, but now it is. We are at the point when privacy, as we have understood it in America, is over. For most of our country’s first 200 years, the government accepted that reporters would never reveal their sources, and by and large, no prosecutor and no judge would force them to try. It was a sacred protection guaranteed by the First Amendment.
Well, thatâs changed. And it isn’t just the hard right bunch currently running the country. They are building on the efforts by Obamaâs DOJ to seize journalists’ emails using the Espionage Act, to increase surveillance pressure on journalists and prosecute leakers of classified secrets.
It will take another court case similar to the Pentagon Papers to stem this undermining of press freedom. Good luck with that, given the current and likely future makeup of the Supreme Court.
Trump must respect and obey the First Amendment, in its entirety. The First Amendment is the core of our free society. Most whistle blowers are heroes.
This is how freedom is lost a little at a time, until one day weâll wake up and find out that weâre no longer free. Technology has made Big Brother possible, but it is Congress that has made it legal.
Only pushback from freedom loving citizens will prevent it.
Wow! We really need a Saturday soothing. So, get off the couch, and brew up a cup of Kiniyota Espresso by Madison, Wisconsinâs JBC Coffee Roasters. It is produced entirely of the heirloom Bourbon variety of Arabica. Then, taste its rich notes of stone fruit and dark chocolate ($17.60/12oz). Now, sit outside, hopefully in a shady spot, and listen to the Viola Concerto in G major by Georg Philipp Telemann. It was probably composed in 1715. It was the first concerto for Viola. Here, it is played by Midwest Young Artists Conservatory:
Someone said that the viola is like the cream in an Oreo cookie; sweet and creamy, while holding the top and the bottom together.
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
Manhattan, NYC skyline viewed from Brooklyn – 2018 photo by Max Guilani
The gay wedding cake ruling was absurd. If a wedding photographer didnât want to take photos at the wedding, it would be understandable, because then theyâd be present at the ceremony, in some way, participating.
But a person baking and decorating a cake? The baker isnât participating in the event, and the cake isnât usually at the ceremony either. The cake canât represent a religious belief unless itâs actually a religious cake.
Thereâs a difference between freedom âfromâ and freedom âtoâ. This case, and a few others, notably Hobby Lobby, have swung the pendulum in the direction of âfreedom toâ. That could be the freedom to refuse to serve a customer, to refuse to provide health coverage, to claim an infringement of your religious rights, to say that baking the cake causes undue harm to your right to believe as you do. Much of what the Right touts as freedoms fall under this category, like the freedom to bear arms.
But at the same time, will the court protect those groups who need freedom âfromâ something, like freedom from discrimination, or harassment?
So, here we are in 21st century America: Stuck, this time by the Supreme Court.
And most of the time, we are stuck by the House and Senateâs inability to move the country forward. The question is: How long will the majority of Americans consent to be governed by the minority?
Now the two-party system has rigidified and ossified. The two parties no longer bend to the center. They push to the extremes, where the donor bases and their media propaganda arms are. More and more people feel politically homeless, alienated from both parties and without any say in how the country is run.
Our system of democracy must evolve. Under our winner take all rules, the minority can control the country with say, 20 million votes, representing about 6% of the population.
Consider that every state has two senators. The 22 smallest states have a total population less than California. Â If the Senateâs filibuster remains in effect, just 21 States can stop any presidential appointment, or any legislation. Even without the filibuster, it takes 26 states to stop legislation.
And the smallest 26 states have a population of about 57 million, less than the population of California and the New York metro area. And today, neither major political party commands more than 30% of the voters.
How long can the country sustain this lack of balance and democratic fairness? The competing interests that the framers tried to balance in 1789 have been overtaken by newer competing interests that they never envisioned.
Maybe itâs time to seriously rethink our electoral processes.
In a recent column in the NYT (quoted above), David Brooks recognizes the problem, and argues for multi-member House districts and for ranked-choice voting (RCV). Russell Berman explained how it works in The Atlantic:
Ranked-choice voting, which cities like San Francisco, Minneapolis, and Portland, Maine, use to elect their mayors, has been likened to an âinstant runoffâ: Instead of selecting just one candidate, voters rank their choices in order of preference. If no candidate receives a majority of first-place votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and whoever their voters chose as their second choice is added to the tally of the remaining contenders. That process continues until there are only two candidates left, and the one with the most votes wins.
Supporters say RCV ensures that candidates with the broadest coalitions of support will win, and that it allows voters to choose the candidate they prefer, without splitting the vote and handing the election to the other party. They also say RCV will inspire more positive campaigning, because candidates will aim to become voterâs second and third choices instead of targeting each other with negative advertisements. Further, they hope that RCV could create room for third-party candidates to succeed.
Wrongo thinks something needs to change. We canât keep a system that allows the minority to run the country, especially if it is persistently a racist minority, a misogynist minority, a fundamentalist minority, and a cruel minority.
Wrongo grew up believing that having public education, public housing, public transportation (including roads) and human services paid for by the public in proportion to their income or wealth, was what created a civilized nation, an educated populace, a world-class work-force. Now, Wrongo really worries about our current political situation. He worries about his grandchildren. Unless there is political change, their future looks grim.
Herbert Stein said: âIf something canât go on forever, it wonât.â
The Blue Grotto, Malta â photo by SingularET. Not to be confused with THE Blue Grotto on Capri, the hangout of the Roman emperor, Tiberius.
NewdealDemocrat over at Angry Bear raised a few excellent points about historically low unemployment and stagnant wage growth: (emphasis by Wrongo)
As I noted several weeks ago, even though we are at least closing in on full employment, the percentage of employers not raising wages at all has gone up in the last year:
(The blue line is the percentage of employers who have not increased wages. The grey shaded areas are recessions.)
There was more bad news from Axios , reporting on a meeting with the Dallas Federal Reserve about how big companies arenât planning on raising wages at all:
The message is that Americans should stop waiting for across-the-board pay hikes coinciding with higher corporate profit; to cash in, workers will need to shift to higher-skilled jobs that command more income.
Troy Taylor, CEO of the Coke franchise for Florida, said he is currently adding employees with the idea of later reducing the staff over time “as we invest in automation.” Those being hired: technically-skilled people. “It’s highly technical just being a driver,” he said.
The moderator asked the panel whether there would be broad-based wage gains again. “It’s just not going to happen,” Taylor said. The gains would go mostly to technically-skilled employees, he said. As for a general raise? “Absolutely not in my business,” he said.
John Stephens, chief financial officer at AT&T, said 20% of the company’s employees are call-center workers. He said he doesn’t need that many. In addition, he added, “I don’t need that many guys to install coaxial cables.”
The Civilian Non-Institutional Population (those who the government tracks for jobs analysis), grew 21.3% between April 2000 and April 2018, yet, full-time jobs grew only 11.7%. This means that we canât possibly be at full employment, despite the governmentâs headline unemployment rate of 3.8%, the lowest since 2000.
And if most employers are thinking like those at Coke and AT&T, wages wonât increase, despite the countryâs nine-year economic recovery. If wages will not be increasing, where do employers think increased demand will come from? And, if companies are freezing wages during the supposed good times, what will happen when times turn bad?
Corporate policies are designed primarily to respond to the requirements of its management and its institutional shareholders, not employees. Employersâ profits have been increasing steadily, but the wealth keeps getting transferred upwards. And itâs the employers who are responsible for layoffs, and who use other methods to increase profits, such as automation, which leave the surviving workers in an increasingly poor negotiating position when itâs time for the annual raise discussion.
Do workers âdeserveâ an annual increase? By performing their jobs, workers produce value for the company. If a company is profitable, workers should get a cut, and if profits go up, so should their share.
If a particular individual isnât performing well, then in an efficient/well-managed company, theyâll be replaced. If the job itself is not structured to produce effectively, in an efficient/well-managed company, the job will change. And if the company fails to do either, then in an efficient/well-managed company, the company will change, or it will fail.
It appears that with their paltry increases, workers are losing ground. Rents are rapidly rising in most cities. Wrongo saw a story about a New York City couple who moved from Brooklyn, NYC to Westport, CT for cheaper housing. It wasnât many years ago that Westport was substantially more expensive than Brooklyn. In fact, it was once the home town of Paul Newman and Martha Stewart.
Many workers are fighting for a 2% raise. (Remember, 2.6% is the average, which means many workers are getting less than that). Factor in the rising rents, food costs, and health care insurance, and you can see that the average hourly worker has little chance of upward mobility.
Is this an inevitable outcome caused by Mr. Market? Not really. Our government has its thumb on the scale via tax benefits to corporations, combined with a Federal minimum wage that is impossibly low.
Time to wake up, America! We must stop letting corporations hoard the profits! Capitalism is institutionalized avarice. Its purpose is concentration of power. And one outcome is the spreading of economic misery.
To help you wake up, here is the Soup Nazi who, says, âNo soup for you! Come back 1 year!â Just like many employers say when hourly employees ask for a raise.
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
Roseanne, Starbucks, Singapore, Trade War. We had a rockinâ good time last week. Letâs start by acknowledging that June 2nd was National Gun Violence Awareness day. These days, active shooter drill has a new meaning:
You may have missed that the White House made a coin for the Singapore Summit. Why?
Trumpâs pardoning this week didnât include those who could really use it:
Sessions tries to count all the captured kids:
Roseanne was invited to the Starbucks training:
Trump rushes into trade war without a strategy:
Trump didnât get the numbers right in Puerto Rico either:
(Today, Wrongo repeats 2017âs Memorial Day column. It still seems all too appropriate for America)
The Daily Escape:
NYCâs Grand Central Station â 1943
âOn Memorial Day we commemorate those who died in the military service of our country. In 1974, a sci-fi novel called âThe Forever Warâ was released. It is military science fiction, telling the story of soldiers fighting an interstellar war. The protagonist, named Mandella, is sent across the galaxy to fight a poorly understood, apparently undefeatable foe.
Sound familiar? Today the forever war is not simply fiction. Our all-volunteer military has been fighting in the Middle East for the past 16 years in the longest war in American history. And there is little reason to hope that we will not be fighting there 16 years from now. Brian Castner, a former explosive ordnance disposal officer who served three tours in Iraq, observes:
Our country has created a self-selected and battle-hardened cohort of frequent fliers, one that is almost entirely separate from mainstream civilian culture, because service in the Forever War, as many of us call it, isnât so much about going as returning. According to data provided by the Center for a New American Security, of the 2.7 million veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, half have done multiple tours. More telling, 223,000 have gone at least four times, and 51,000 have done six or more deployments.
We canât get our fill of war. In fact, since 1943, the year the picture above was taken in New York City, the US has been at peace for just five years: 1976, 1977, 1978, 1997 and 2000 were the only years with no major war.
So today, we gather to celebrate those who have died in service of our global ambitions. We watch a parade, we shop at the mall, and we attend a cookout. Perhaps we should be required to spend more time thinking about how America can increase the number of years when we are not at war.
Wrongo canât escape the idea that if we re-instituted a military draft, and required military service of all young Americans, it would soon become impossible for the politicians and generals to justify the forever war.
So, wake up America! Instead of observing Memorial Day with another burger, get involved in a plan to re-institute the draft. It wonât stop our involvement in war, but it will unite American mothers and fathers to bring about the end of this forever war, and any future ‘forever war’â.
To help you wake up, listen to Curtis Mayfield doing his tune âWe Got To Have Peaceâ, live on the Old Grey Whistle Test, a BBC2 TV show that was aired from 1971 to 1988. In 1965, Mayfield wrote “People Get Ready” for the Impressions, another of his politically charged songs. Here is âGot To Have Peaceâ:
Gotta have peace.
Sample Lyrics:
And the people in our neighborhood
They would if they only could
Meet and shake the other’s hand
Work together for the good of the land
Give us all an equal chance
It could be such a sweet romance
And the soldiers who are dead and gone
If only we could bring back one
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
Members of a special team at the Education Department that had been investigating widespread abuses by for-profit colleges have been marginalized, reassigned or instructed to focus on other matters, according to current and former employees.
The unwinding of the team has effectively killed investigations into possibly fraudulent activities at several large for-profit colleges where top hires of Betsy DeVos, the education secretary, had previously worked.
But Wrongoâs vote goes to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos for doing the most damage to America because of her undermining of America’s education system. And her relentless efforts continue the entrapment of millions of young people in the for-profit student loan system that has now reached $1.5 trillion. This will threaten America’s economy for decades.
More from the NYT: (emphasis by Wrongo)
During the final months of the Obama administration, the team had expanded to include a dozen or so lawyers and investigators who were looking into advertising, recruitment practices and job placement claims at several institutions, including DeVry Education Group. The investigation into DeVry ground to a halt early last year. Later, in the summer, Ms. DeVos named Julian Schmoke, a former dean at DeVry, as the teamâs new supervisor.
With the reorganization, now just three employees still work on the team, their mission has been scaled back to focus on processing student loan forgiveness applications.
This is Trumplandia, where agencies are run based on the personal motivations of the head of the agency. DeVos has long had personal and financial interest in the for-profit segment of education. She has pursued funding of private charter schools and religious schools using public funds.
Corporations and moneyed interests now directly control several of our key agencies. Trump has opened the doors wide to industry lobbyists. Pruitt is running the EPA at the behest of industry, at the expense of the well-being of the American people. Zinke is out to shrink public lands to aid private interests.
People who want the best for the nation clearly are not welcome in the Trump administration.
This is another reason for people to go out and vote in huge numbers in November. It is the only way to change the dangerous course that Trump has placed us on.
And itâs not simply Trump. This is who and what the GOP is now.
Time to take the country back from those in Washington who see privatization as the holy grail of corporatism.
Trump didnât get the numbers right in Puerto Rico either:
