While You Were Distracted...

So, while we were all unpleasantly distracted...

From CNET: FCC chips away at net neutrality rules

This under-the-radar issue IS going to affect all of us.   Net Neutrality, basically, treats ISPs (internet service providers like cable and satellite and phone companies) as utilities.  After all, those towers, lines, satellites and such are utilizing our public transportation systems and airspace to provide the signals we use, they get plenty of money from us to maintain that system, and they've already got a dependent market often with very few, if any, choices.  Now, they want to control the flow of particular information.  When you consider just a few huge corporations already control most of the media access, from radio to TV to movies to ISPs, this is a recipe for complete corporate control of information.  Who thinks that's a good idea?

From CommonDreams: Trump's FCC Blocks ISPs from Giving Low-Income Families Web Access

This one is another attack as above.  In the "Information Age," in a time of economic stagnation in the working class, helping the poor get broadband was a wonderful idea, and very inexpensive.  But hey, they don't consume much!  They're poor, after all.  So, fuck them, right?  I say fuck you, Trump's FCC.

From TheIntercept: Republican Lawmakers in Five States Propose Bills to Criminalize Peaceful Protest

This is just ridiculous.  From the article: "In North Dakota, for instance, Republicans introduced a bill last week that would allow motorists to run over and kill any protester obstructing a highway as long as a driver does so accidentally. ...Although the bill ostensibly requires drivers to have acted “negligently” or accidentally in killing a protestor, the bill’s co-sponsor, Republican state Rep. Keith Kempenich, has said that some accidents might occur if motorists “punched the accelerator rather than the brakes,” according to the Bismarck Tribune."  I wonder what would happen if a "Stand Your Ground" defense came up against the "Run Over a Protester by Accident" defense (aside from the bloody mess)?

From The Hill: Leaked ObamaCare bill would defund Planned Parenthood

Ah, good ol' Planned Parenthood, the bane of people who've never used Planned Parenthood or have any substantive reason to even have an opinion about it.  Well, about 1 in 5 women do, and most not for abortion, but for a wide variety of health and personal reasons.  It's a necessary thing, PP, and if we harm it, we're harming the country.  This is placing ideological zealotry ahead of the real world health needs of the people.  It's bad enough we're the only developed nation on the planet without universal healthcare, but here comes worse!

From the NYT: President Trump Takes Aim at the Environment
  

This one is heartbreaking.  The coal industry has been in decline for years, as new technology has made natural gas cheaper and cleaner (well, it was always cleaner, as the whole notion of "Clean Coal" is a myth).  But Trump promised all those poor Appalachian unemployed coal miners a return to the days of King Coal, and this will do nothing to address their situation, but rather just make it easier to ruin even more of their land and water.
  

From Stars and Stripes: Shulkin promises ‘major changes’ at Veterans Affairs

If anyone thinks privatization of the VA is a good idea, and let's not pretend this is not what this is about, here are some thoughts for you: These vets put up their LIVES for this country, US, and WE have to take care of them.  It is OUR responsibility.  If we want to make the VA better, well, just like everything else, WE have to spend the money and do the work to make it so.  ALL of that money should be going to THEIR care, NOT the profits of some corporation.

This goes on, from privatizing PBS and ending the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, because, as we all know, Americans are already so very cultured, to an infrastructure plan that has pretty much nothing to do with our nation's crumbling and outdated infrastructure and everything to do with profiteering your tax dollars.

Are we Making America Great yet?  Anyone even paying attention?  Or was it always just bullshit, disguising the real impetus for the Trump presidency, just plain ol' hatred of one another?

JMJ

Anti-Trump Uber Alles

Malczewski's Meduza, ca.,1900

With the rise of Donald Trump many on the Left, like myself, have been hoping and praying that successful business folks of our particular political bent need to try to get to get close to him, to get in his ear.  But there seems to be a belief among Trump's critics, and though I am a critic I do not share this belief, that to get close to Trump is like coming into the gaze of the Medusa, turning anyone into stone, or maybe dumb as a stone, or maybe just a stone-thrower...

When Travis Kalanick, CEO of Uber, announced he would be departing Trump's economic advisory board the other day, under severe pressure from peers and employees, and a loss of 200,000 subscribers, it became clear the Left will simply not allow any engagement with the new President beyond opposition.  This is a 'Uuuuge' mistake.

I have a little familiarity with Chinese culture.  There is nothing worse that can happen to a Chinese person than to be ascribed an "outsider," to be without friends or kin.  Why?  Not as a matter of pride or dependence on incessant socializing, but because they understand the inter-connectivity of society, that without some connection to that network, one is helpless to accomplish anything.  It is probably why communism, which has failed miserably most everywhere else, has been much better to the Chinese (not that I am personally a supporter of communism!).

When you Google "Trump Malleable" you get page after page of articles and opinions for or against an aspect of Trump's personality that seems well-known and accepted - he is not an ideologue, he is malleable.  By now, this should be clear to everyone.  Well, you can't form clay if you're not within distance to put your hands on it, and we're not going to influence Trump by standing at a distance and shouting at him to stop doing whatever someone else has convinced him to do.

When I was a younger man, in the NYC area, I remember hearing Trump on the Howard Stern radio show.  He was pretty much a regular.  He was very different from the man we think we see today.  On Thursday, Stern, who knows the President well, said of Trump to CNN...

"I personally wish that he had never run, I told him that, because I actually think this is something that is gonna be detrimental to his mental health too, because, he wants to be liked, he wants to be loved," Stern said. "He wants people to cheer for him."

"I don't think it's going to be a healthy experience. And by the way, he's now on this anti-Hollywood kick. He loves Hollywood. First of all, he loves the press. He lives for it. He loves people in Hollywood. He only wants hobnob with them. All of this hatred and stuff directed towards him. It's not good for him. It's not good."

The key there is "he wants to be liked, he wants to be loved," and it's not something new said of Trump.  He can see his conservative moves just anger people and fail.  He will see this continue.  If we are going to avert another Great Recession or Great Depression, or worse, people on the Left, people with popular heft and power, need to get in Trump's ear, and we need to trust them and support them in their efforts, not shout at them for trying.

JMJ