Maybe Trump feels he’s not making enough money for himself and his family from the presidency, though its doesn’t seem that way to me. Why is he doing things to screw the American public, particularly the lower and middle classes? Between crypto and all the “gifts” he’s received from tech titans, Middle East royalty, and others asking for favors or trying to get on his good side, it seems like he’s really raking in plenty of dough. In fact, his use of the presidency for personal gain seems to outweigh all of the past U.S. presidents put together. Yet he doesn’t mind doing things that will hurt Americans and the world’s population. Every day he appears to come up with new “executive measures” that will cause Americans pain, even though they may be helpful to his wealthy sycophants.
For example, cutting the staff at the Internal Revenue Service dramatically. It was crazy to do that. As it was, there were not enough employees at the IRS in the first place. Ordinary people who want a refund or needed help with their tax returns can now wait forever, because there are not enough employees to handle all the returns and answer all the questions. And fortunately for Trump’s rich buddies, there are not enough staff to check all the tax returns of the wealthy who are using various schemes to evade or reduce the amount of taxes they have to pay. It’s been shown that the more IRS employees there are to check returns, the more taxes are collected. But it doesn’t matter to Trump even when our national debt is about $36 trillion or so. If the government can’t collect a few extra billion from the wealthy, so what.
There is also Trump’s reducing the staff at the Environmental Protection Agency. This means greater pollution in our air, water and soil will not be uncovered and the guilty companies will not be forced to clean it up and be fined. The money really doesn’t count as much as lowering the levels of pollution that are regularly damaging American health. But for Trump, It’s more important for Big Business to avoid paying for the pollution they cause, so the executives and owners of the offending companies can boost their incomes. All his buddies. A recent article showed that industrial facilities owned by profitable companies released more of their toxic waste into the environment. (Fikru and Brodman) Trump doesn’t care.
Also in the pollution arena is black lung disease endemic in coal miners. Trump has been pushing coal as a fuel for the nation even though it is the worst fuel for climate change and the dirtiest fuel in terms of pollution. And the miners invariably come down with the deadly black lung disease from inhaling coal dust. Miners are demonstrating, saying that the Trump administration is not enforcing limits on coal dust to protect them from black lung disease. Trump doesn’t care as long as the owners make more money. Screw the environment and the miners.
Trump also thinks of climate change as a hoax and a scam. He’s eliminating subsidies for electric vehicles hurting employees at GM and Ford and decimating our electric vehicle industry. H’e handing the whole industry to China. Trump is in bed with the fossil fuel companies who have given money for his campaign and support him. Electric is the future and Trump is going with the past- coal, oil, natural gas. Climate change is real and Trump is hurting Americans and the world with his environmental policies. He’s letting the Chinese eat our lunch with solar and wind generated electricity which is cheap and non-polluting while he sucks up to the fossil fuel companies and abandons clean electricity. Trump’s domestic policies are bad for America and bad for the world.
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Political junkie, Vietnam vet, neurologist- three books on aging and dementia. Book on health care reform in 2009- Shock Therapy for the American Health Care System. Book on the need for a centrist third party- Resurrecting Democracy- A Citizen’s Call for a Centrist Third Party published in 2011. Aging Wisely, published in August 2014 by Rowman and Littlefield. Latest book- The Uninformed Voter published May 2020