Confused by Trump: Too Much to Write About
Between Trump and AOC, there are too many topics to write about. So I will just list the crucial short lines or paragraphs from what I would have written on the topics.
Trump’s Two Trillion Dollar Deficit: While the military budgets have been at $700 billion-ish as Trump claimed, that was an increase of $200 billion-ish from their previous $500 billion-ish budgets. The total increase for two years was about $400 billion, only a fifth of the $2,000 billion deficit increase under Trump, and not an excuse for the whole Republican largesse.
The $11 billion dollar cost of the 35 day shutdown. This is presumably just a loss to the economy, and not an indication of the financial agony of the 800,000 unpaid workers during that period, including the 400,000 furloughs. It also may not include the 3 million government contractors, some of whom may also have been unpaid, and many of whom were left in limbo, like research scientists and their student assistants. That could have funded 850,000 one year scholarships to a state university.
The fact that the status of 700,000 DACA and the total of 2 million Dreamers were not included in the government refunding bill.
When Trump was dissing about extended family immigration, I hope that Melania and her parents and sister weren’t there.
It’s odd that Amazon’s withdrawal of Amazon 2.0 in Trump’s New York City, including executive clients for Trump’s Tower, occurred a week after a possible link was discovered to Trump associates in Jeff Bezos’ blackmail by the National Enquirer.
Rather than having the entire multi-trillion dollar and decades long plans of the Green New Deal being drawn up in the tiny office of a single freshman representative, maybe it would be better to have the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering gather inputs from thousands of scientists and engineers, in a permanent, government independent agency, to plan and direct a nationwide solution to the Clean Energy problem. Brains and Plans rather than a Political Fireworks Show.
The other problem with Federal climate action, is that energy grids are regional, utilities can be local, and states, like California, want to make their own regulations. Energy resources, especially renewables, are local. Like large hydro, solar power, wind areas, and offshore winds, which still have to be experimented with and developed until you get into economies of scale. The pure renewables scenario is still unreachable in modeling. It is unreasonable to give up already built nuclear power, which is largely paid off, and provides the US with 20% clean energy.
In planning to examine the effect of climate change on Trump Organization holdings, in detail, the first of his 17 golf courses that I looked at in Palos Verdes, south of Los Angeles, proved hilarious. The previous golf course there went bankrupt, after the 18th hole slid into the ocean. You just can’t make this stuff up!
I have discovered that I am only 105 miles North of Tijuana, where the National Emergency exists. I was worried until I looked up that there are 23,000 troops in the California National Guard. And I remembered that the highway to the border goes through the western Marine Corps base of Camp Pendleton, with a daytime population of 70,000. I guess that I can hold out here for a few more days.
