Opinion echo - lowlights in Trumpzism

Eugene Robinson opinion published in the Oregon newspaper The Register-Guard: 

Donald Trump’s antics in his “Crazytown” White House inevitably dominate the headlines. Meanwhile, however, his wrongheaded policies are damaging far more than the nation’s dignity and honor.

Hampered by inexperience and incompetence, the administration is pursuing a radically un-American agenda that should alarm progressives and conservatives alike. Trump’s warped worldview is guiding federal government policy, with awful — and worsening — consequences for the nation and the world.

A few lowlights:

— More than 2,600 children of would-be Latino immigrants were ripped away from their families at the border, and 416 remained in federal custody last week at facilities around the country. It is likely that many will never see their parents again. This “zero-tolerance” policy of snatching kids and jailing their parents was intended as a deterrent, not as legitimate law enforcement, and it was an appalling exercise in gratuitous cruelty.

— Trump has reversed decades of environmental policy, adopting the 18th Century view that coal is the energy source of the future. He does not believe in climate change, though its effects are evident in rising seas, raging wildfires, deadly heat waves and the opening of a heretofore undreamed-of Arctic shipping lane. The administration seems determined to ensure that Europe, China and India reap the economic benefits of an inevitable global shift to a clean-energy economy — while the United States misses out.

— Under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the Justice Department has abandoned traditional civil rights enforcement. No longer is the focus on protecting and expanding the rights of minorities such as African-Americans, women, Latinos and the LGBT community. Instead, the government is now more concerned about alleged “reverse discrimination” and what it describes as threats to “religious freedom.” In particular, onerous voting laws that disproportionately affect minority groups are just fine with the Trump administration.

— White supremacist views have made their way into the mainstream of political discourse. “How hard can that be, saying that Nazis are bad?” former president Obama asked last week. No answer from the White House thus far.

— Housing Secretary Ben Carson wants to impose stiff work requirements on public housing tenants and raise their rents. He is also moving to gut Obama-era rules designed to identify and remedy patterns of housing segregation, criticizing federal efforts to integrate neighborhoods as “failed socialist experiments.”

— Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has largely failed in her war against public schools, though not for want of trying. Her proposal to spend $1.4 billion on private and charter schools went nowhere. But she has had a negative impact on public education merely through her studied inattention. In higher education, she has proposed rule changes regarding for-profit colleges that critics say will leave students more vulnerable. And regarding campus sexual assaults, she wants to rebalance the scales of justice in favor of the accused rather than the accuser.




— Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke bizarrely blamed the recent devastating wildfires in California on “environmental terrorist groups.” He was apparently referring to environmental groups that have lobbied to put more forested land off-limits to logging — a trend that Zinke is determined to reverse. But the excess fuel that turbocharged those fires consisted mostly of chaparral and scrub brush, not the trees that would have been taken out by the logging industry.

— U.S. diplomacy is in tatters, a state of affairs that is less the fault of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo than of his predecessor Rex Tillerson and, above all, Trump. Tillerson simply failed to fill hundreds of vital positions. Trump, from the beginning, has been a hugely destructive loose cannon. He has gone out of his way to offend, insult and demean some of our closest traditional allies — German Chancellor Angela Merkel is a favorite target — while lavishing praise on autocrats such as Vladimir Putin of Russia and Kim Jong Un of North Korea.

— Trump’s shift from free trade to protectionism is already being felt by growers and manufacturers whose products have been affected by reciprocal tariffs. But the ultimate impact will come years from now, and it will be huge: What Trump has done is encourage the other great economic powers — Europe, China and Japan — to go their own way without relying so heavily on the United States. For the better part of a century, our nation has served as the hub of the world economy. Trump’s unilateralism threatens to leave us on the outside looking in.

The point is that things don’t look better if you ignore Trump’s tiresome act. In many ways, things look worse.

Eugene Robinson’s email address is eugenerobinson@washpost.com.

America's labor shortage and help for farmers

Republicans are averse to investing in education and they also don't want farmers to have access to labor. There is no international company that wants to invest in helping Donald Trump when his only ambition is to make the rich more wealthy while farmers and middle class workers struggle.

Donald Trump was making a plea to the rich who gathered in Davos Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum, because he wanted their money invested in the United States. 

Unfortunately, the rich people who can afford to attend the World Economic Forum (WEF) won't be enticed to help Donald Trump to bolster the American economy. Anybody who believes otherwise is delusional. Those rich who gathered in Davos were looking for economic prosperity, to feather their own philanthropist or governmental nests.

Nevertheless, in Donald Trump's "straight jacket" teleprompter speech delivered to the attendees who bothered to listen (to quote the description of his delivery style, reported by Peggy Noonan on Morning Joe).....he said "America is open for business".

Unfortunately, what Trump forgot to tell the audience was that the US labor shortage is acute. In fact, it's been worsened by Republican cuts to education that have made it difficult for potential workers to access the training needed to meet the needs of many employers.  

Rich people are looking for places to invest where highly skilled laborers are affordable for their purposes. That's not here in America, because Republicans have taken away the tax revenues that would be available to invest in growing our nation's workforce. In other words, if you want to open a business in America, the company must train the workers on their own payroll, plus pay for their health care.  Again, anybody who believes rich international investors want to make this deal with Donald Trump, must be delusional, especially when China and India have the infrastructure to make their businesses profitable.

Yet, American farmers need the help of unskilled laborers and Republicans are preventing them from hiring the people who will work in the harvests.  

Here is the opinion on this under-reported subject described in an editorial "echo", published in America Magazine.  

What we owe America's farmworkers

U.S. agriculture is facing a silent crisis. 

The Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants has sown fear among farmworker communities, making workers harder to find than ever. 

Farm owners across the country are anxious about meeting their labor needs. Millions of dollars worth of crops are at the risk of rotting.

The present labor shortage reveals U.S. society’s dependence on farmworkers. The hands that pick what Americans eat are hands the country relies on. And with almost no native-born Americans willing to do the job, Latino immigrants have become indispensable. Even in the midst of the severe fires in California, farmworkers could not stop working lest harvests be lost.
Yet the nation’s collective reliance on farmworkers is not reflected in the way they are treated. In California, which produces two-thirds of the nation’s fruits, rates of food insecurity for farmworkers and their families range from 40 percent to 70 percent. Farmworkers’ low wages directly contribute to growers’ profit, but farmworkers regularly cannot afford to buy the food they pick.

Working conditions for farmworkers can be (and are often) harsh. 

Even under the best conditions, a day of work is one of hard manual labor, with long hours and often high temperatures. The Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency has approved the use of a pesticide known to be harmful to human beings. Farmworkers have already gotten sick on the job as a result.

Society’s failures toward farmworkers extend beyond poor working conditions. The children of migrant farmworkers endure seasonal displacement that can make staying in school difficult. 

Social mobility is weak for those born into farmworker communities, creating a generational cycle of poverty. State and local governments resist attempts by farmworkers to organize for greater protections. And despite being dependent on farmworker labor, many local communities are openly hostile to migrant workers.

It does not have to be this way. 

In 2016, California recognized the right of farmworkers to equal overtime pay. In Florida, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers secured commitments from fast-food chains to buy only from agricultural sources that meet improved standards on pay and work conditions. That model of direct pressure on major companies is spreading. In Vermont, immigrant dairy workers just claimed victory in an agreement with the ice cream maker Ben and Jerry’s.

It is curious that so many Americans care about eating ethically (vegan, vegetarian, organic or free range) but do not think as much about the poverty and exploitation among the largely Latino farmworkers who are making their meals possible. 

Labeling programs, including the Equitable Food Initiative label, the Food Justice Certified label and the United Farm Workers Union label, support the fair treatment of farmworkers, but there is little indication that products carrying those labels are sought out by consumers.

The United States must do more to treat farmworkers with justice. A huge step would be to lift the threat of deportation that looms over many farmworkers by passing comprehensive immigration reform that recognizes both the need for labor in the United States and those laborers’ right to dignity and opportunity. Rectifying the injustice of the 1930s—when farmworkers were excluded from new federal labor standards—and finally offering farmworkers the same labor protections as other workers is also necessary. Farmwork, like all work, carries an inherent dignity and should be a viable path for immigrant families into the American middle class.

The common thread in all the challenges farmworkers face is a lack of urgency. Perhaps every time Americans say grace before a meal, they could spare a moment to remember those who make that meal possible.