Trump’s Cabinet: Make America Dumber, Sicker, Smoggier, and Thirstier Again
While I have commented on Trump’s policies and Cabinet with respect to the main subject of the blog on energy and environment, I am also an educator, and care about health care as well.
The average Senate review of cabinet appointees is a little over two hours. Unless you stay at home all day, it is hard to monitor all of their hearings, especially when they stack several in a day. Half of the time is spent by Republican Senators distributing praise, or at most, lobbing softballs. Who likes to watch softball? One Republican Senator complimented Rep. Tom Price, appointee for Secretary of Health and Human services, on sitting for four hours of hearings. That must have been very hard for Price, but maybe not as hard as those suffering from serious medical problems that won’t have health care when Price cuts a trillion dollars from Medicaid programs. It seems cruel to start a healthcare program from a budget number of how much you want to save, rather than from what the needs of people are.
In the two-hour sessions, it seems that each Senator only gets 5 minutes. But it also seems that they get two go-arounds. Still, two hours to interview a candidate who is going to run an agency with over 10,000 employees and budgets that can go as high as $580 billion, for from four to eight years, seems to have no similarity to what goes on in private business hiring, as Trump’s backers have expected from electing a businessman.
The “dishonest, mainstream, liberal press” that I read points out that Rep. Price has never passed up a chance to oppose and vote against funding for health care for children. Even given that Republicans never like to help out poor people, claiming they should have worked hard enough so that they don’t need help, these are children, who haven’t had a choice in the matter. Shorting children from health care can lead to lifelong requirements for aid. He spouts the standard Republican stance that the government in health care stands between the patient and their doctor. For needy kids with no government aid, there is no doctor in the first place.
President and healer-in-chief Trump has not disclosed his health plan. He won’t until Tom Price takes office. So how can the Senate interview him about Trump’s health care policies? And clearly, Price’s own health care ideas and budgeting are of no consequences compared to those of his master, Trump. And Trump will announce his plan within a day of Price taking office. So there will essentially be no time for consultation or evaluation of any plan between them. So why does Trump need Price in the first place? Not just catch 22, but catch 22222222222. Wasting time questioning Price about a stock purchase is such a red herring compared to the importance of the healthcare plans and funding that really matter to the American people.
Trump’s appointee to be Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, has no experience in education. Her main qualification may be that her family of Amway money has given over $200 million to Republican candidates. She did not go to a public school, and neither did her children. She has no personal experience with funding higher education. She backs charter or private schools, and expects vouchers for students to go to a school of their choice. She appears to be unconcerned whether tests show that charter schools are better or worse than public schools. I don’t think teachers at charter schools have to meet the same standards as those at public schools. They are also underpaid, and have no tenure. A lot of the private schools are for-profit schools, and that is obviously a diversion of public funds. Mrs. DeVos is also strongly religiously oriented. Some fear that she would have vouchers used to support religious schools, which raises a constitutional issue. She and her husband are involved in some brain feedback institute to cure some childhood learning issues. This is not scientifically proven, and they are not evaluating their treatments scientifically for their success. This is clearly a conflict of interest if they try to sell this unproven method to schools, or fund it federally.
California has good standards for charter schools, but other states might not. Obviously if many students leave public schools, there will be cuts of young teachers who don’t have tenure or seniority, and lower teacher pay. Despite having weeks to study for her hearing, with two hour, 120 question challenge sessions, she does not seem well prepared for the questions. A lot of education issues are complicated, and it is a disservice to teachers and students to start at the top with a total novice. An ambassadorship would have been a better appointment for her. Republican Senators who unquestioningly vote for her, essentially sight unseen, only soil their own reputations for advice and consent. It’s almost as if they were swimming in a murky Trump swamp.
Since most of education is funded at the state level, the federal government has very little influence, except on the national loan programs. The fake issue of Common Core is that it is only a recommended curriculum. Each state votes on whether they want to follow it or not. While Trump’s national program of $20 billion is for vouchers, compare it to California’s funding of K-12, which itself is over $50 billion.
In the few minutes that I got to listen to Oklahoma’s Attorney General Scott Pruitt, Trump’s appointee for Administrator of the EPA, actually sued the EPA when they tried to lower the ozone standard from 0.75 ppm to 0.70 ppm, a subject that is very close to my lungs, since it causes asthma attacks. Pruitt did at least say that he would try to encourage fewer days of violation of the standard. For California, though, he did not say that California could have an exemption to set its own emission standards again, but he would have to study it.
For Making America Thirstier Again, take your pick of more polluted drinking water, by neglect of dissolving lead piping, running oil pipelines under rivers, polluting rivers from scraping off mountaintop coal fields, ash mountains from coal plants sliding into rivers, fracking near rivers and national forests or parks, and ignoring greenhouse gas emissions that lead to global warming and droughts.
Trump is a super-salesman. He sold “The Art of The Deal”, although it was ghostwritten, and may have been taken from other such books. Seeing the difference between Trump’s campaign promises and his post-election writing down of those promises, we can conclude that Trump has the usual salesman’s motto of promise them anything, just get their signature on the contract, then do what you wanted to do. He or his more politically savvy advisors may have instructed his nominees to look agreeable and divert any policy questions that they may be held to. This would be believable, since Trump has few firm plans or commitments. Once confirmed, they may turn out to be just enforcers of Trump’s policies.
