Friday, June 02, 2017
It's Official - Trump Doesn't Care About The World's Future
As was expected, on Thursday, Donald Trump announced that he is withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement on fighting global climate change. He called the agreement unfair, and said he would be willing to "negotiate" a fairer agreement. That is a LIE!
Trump has decided that the short-term profits of fossil fuel producers and energy companies is more important than protecting the future of this planet. It is a ridiculous position, and probably the biggest blunder of his administration.
All the nations of the world had signed the Paris Agreement (promising to do their part to curb global climate change) except two nations -- Syria (who is in the middle of a terrible civil war) and Nicaragua (who refused to sign because they said the agreement didn't go far enough). Now the United States joins them as an outlaw nation.
Fareed Zakaria puts it best:
"[T]his will be the day that the United States resigned as the leader of the free world."
He's right. The rest of the world is horrified that the world's biggest user of fossil fuels, and second biggest producer of greenhouse gases, will not do its part to save the world for future generations -- and that failure cedes the leadership of the United States to other, more responsible nations. Those other nations now know the United States cannot be depended on to keep its promises, or to offer leadership that will benefit all the world's population.
The other nations are all saying they will continue to abide by the Paris agreement, and do their part to control global climate change. But how effective can they be with the United States pouring more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at an enormous rate.
Trump is also lying when he claims he wants to negotiate a better deal. If he really cared about global climate change, he would not ha put Pruitt in charge of the EPA, and he would not be asking for the EPA budget to be cut by 25% to 30%. His actions, including this new one, show that he doesn't care about the environment or the world's future.
Trump's Rhetoric And Policies Are Hurting Tourism
Donald Trump's bigoted rhetoric and policies are not just hurting sick and poor Americans, posing a danger to the environment, and hurting the economy. They are also hurting American businesses -- especially those that depend on tourism. The following post is by Kate Taylor in the Business Insider:
The US tourism business is in trouble — and President Trump may be to blame.
America's share of international tourism has dropped 16% in March, compared to the same month in 2016, according to Foursquare data released Wednesday.
The decline began in October 2016, the month before the presidential election. From October to March, tourism-related traffic has fallen an average of 11% in the US, compared to the previous year. Meanwhile, tourism in the rest of the world has increased 6% year-over-year during the same period.
Foursquare a location intelligence company best known for its app that tracks user visits to restaurants, bars, hotels, and other sites, as well as the company's work in analytics, advertising and developer solutions.
Foursquare analysts connected the drop to President Trump's America first rhetoric and policies that have made some international tourists wary of visiting the US. Foursquare CEO Jeff Glueck notes that residents from the Middle East and Central/South America — regions for which Trump has encouraged stricter immigration and travel policies — have been avoiding the US more than residents of Asia, Europe, and other regions.
"Proponents of President Trump’s new policies might argue that the President intended to reduce visitors from certain countries, and that the economic cost is outweighed by claimed security needs," Glueck writes. "Critics of the administration may question the effectiveness of these new tactics. Either way, we believe that the direct economic impact from these policies should be in the conversation."
Foursquare estimates that the drop in international tourism could result in an additional 1% to 2% drop in sales at US shops, restaurants, and attractions. Hotels, with 15% of booking from foreign visitors, are expected to be hit even harder.
In 2017, the retail industry can't afford to lose potential sales. Retailers have announced more than 3,400 store closures so far this year, and Credit Suisse analysts expect that figure to grow to more than 8,600 before the end of the year.
Foursquare isn't alone in highlighting international visitors' reluctance to travel to the US in the Trump era. Online searches for trips to the US dropped 6% year-over-year in the first quarter of 2017, according to Adobe data released in late April.
Thursday, June 01, 2017
A Growing Number Favor Start Of Impeachment Proceedings
Whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians to affect the 2016 campaign or not, it has become pretty obvious that Donald Trump has acted (more than once) to obstruct justice by trying to use his power to stop or obstruct the investigation. That alone is enough to impeach him and remove him from office -- and a growing number of Americans is starting to believe that Congress should start the impeachment proceedings now.
About 43% of the public would like to see impeachment proceedings started, while 45% say those proceedings should not be started. That's only a 2 point difference -- which is the margin of error of this survey. It should also be pointed out that those opposed to starting the impeachment proceedings are less than a majority of Americans. That should be very worrying for the current occupant of the White House.
The groups who would like to see impeachment started are women (by 2 points), 18-29 (by 25 points), 30-44 (by 17 points), Blacks (by 48 points), Hispanics (by 35 points), and other races (by 24 points). The groups that don't want impeachment started are men (by 6 points), 45-54 (by 8 points), 55-64 (by 22 points), 65+ (by 21 points), and Whites (by 12 points).
These results are from a recent Morning Consult / Politico Poll -- done between May 25th and 30th of a random national sample of 1,991 registered voters, with a 2 point margin of error.
The American Public Really Doesn't Like Trumpcare
The House of Representatives recently passed their health care plan (the AHCA, or Trumpcare) to repeal and replace the ACA (Obamacare). Then they went to the White House and joined Donald Trump in celebrating the passage of their odious plan.
That plan has now stalled in the Senate, as Republican senators act like they're afraid to get anywhere near it. And that is probably pretty smart of them, because the American public has a very low opinion of Trumpcare. While the Republican base say they view the plan favorably either because they think it's good to take insurance away from 23 million people, or they just feel obligated to support whatever the congressional GOP does), no one else likes the plan. About 84% of Democrats, 57% of Independents, and 55% of the general public views Trumpcare in an unfavorable light.
These charts are from a new Kaiser Family Foundation Poll -- done between May 16th and 22nd of a random national sample of 1,205 adults, with a 3 point margin of error.
Leaving Paris Agreement - "Trump's Biggest Blunder To Date"
Donald Trump is an extremely unpopular president. It's not because of the media, or "fake news". It's because he has made one blunder after another since taking office -- some small and some large, but all combining to chip away at the public perception of his credibility and competence. However, he now seems to be on the verge of making his biggest blunder yet -- leaving the Paris Agreement on fighting global climate change.
It would be his biggest blunder because this isn't just political -- but will affect the health of this planet and the humans living on it. It took years for the world's nations to come up with a workable agreement, and in one simple move Trump will destroy it. The agreement cannot survive if the United States does not do it's part, because the U.S. is the world's largest consumer of fossil fuels, and one of the largest contributors to the pollution causing the global warming (which is the cause of the global climate change).
Here is the take of Joe Romm at Think Progress on Trump's impending decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement:
President Donald Trump will reportedly soon announce he plans to exit the Paris climate agreement, humanity’s last, best hope of avoiding catastrophic climate change.
If Trump has made such a disastrously dumb decision — the latest in a long series of bad decisions — a major reason will be his self-described strategy of surrounding himself with people who are not as “successful” and “smart” as he is.
In 2007, Trump told CNBC that his leadership philosophy was to hire people who were not as smart as he is: “You have to be smarter than they are. I hear so many times, ‘Oh, I want my people to be smarter than I am.’ It’s a lot of crap.” He added, “Never trust them too much because all of a sudden things will start to happen that you’re not gonna like.”
His position hasn’t changed. During the 2016 campaign, he told college students that when you’re very successful, “the people that you will like best are the people that are less successful than you,” since they’ll listen to your stories. He ended, “Always be around unsuccessful people because everybody will respect you. Do you understand that?”
Tragically, it appears President Trump followed his own advice when staffing up. That’s certainly clear in the case of climate change and Paris, where Trump’s advisors presented him with the narrowest range of uninformed and anti-scientific views— from those who think Paris is a terrible deal that we should quit ASAP to those who think it is a terrible deal we should stay in to renegotiate.
On the one side, we had the hard-core deniers who, like the president, believe climate change is a hoax and clean energy a scam. This group includes White House strategist Steve Bannon, who routinely pushed the most extreme conspiracy theories about climate change and renewable energy when he ran Breitbart. EPA head Scott Pruitt has spread similar false and misleading views, emerging as the administration’s most outspoken opponent of Paris.
But even the so-called “moderate” voices on climate are wildly misinformed. Consider Trump’s top economic adviser, Gary Cohn. Cohn understands coal is a dead end, while solar and wind can make us “a manufacturing powerhouse.” Yet he still believes such outright nonsense on Paris as “the Europeans as a whole have a much easier standard to abide by than the standard we were left with by the previous administration.”
In reality, the reverse is true. Obama’s Paris pledge requires the United States to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 14–17 percent below 1990 levels by 2025. The EU target is a 40 percent cut in GHGs below 1990 levels by 2030.
What about the Jared Kushner, who, along with his wife Ivanka Trump, was touted as a moderating force that would save Paris? In a Sunday profile on Kushner, the New York Times reported:
Mr. Kushner appears to be modifying his centrist stances. Instead of urging the president to keep the United States in the Paris climate accord, as he sought to months ago, he has come to believe the standards in the agreement need to be changed, a person close to him said.
Finally, we have Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-ND), a “leading proponent of the renegotiation strategy,” as the Times put it Friday. “It seems to be very important to a lot of other countries for us to stay in Paris,” Cramer said. “But if they really think we’re the hinge-pin of this deal, then that gives us a lot of leverage to change the terms.”
In other words, Trump received such a shrewd advice from the stay-in-Paris camp as it “seems to be very important to a lot of other countries” that we don’t destroy our one remaining chance to save a livable climate. And this supposedly means we have a lot of leverage to weaken the agreement — likely to the point where we fail to avoid catastrophe.
So we have know-nothings on both “sides” of the Paris debate. Of course, anybody actually looking at what the president has done would have realized that the hard-core know-nothings are ascendant. Trump’s policiesare aimed at repealing even the most flexible and cost-effective climate actions. His proposed budget would gut one of the most successful and cost-effective federal programs in U.S. history — funding for energy efficiency and renewables, which also has perhaps the greatest job-creating potential of any federal program.
Despite those moves, leaving Paris could be Trump’s biggest blunder to date, from a historical and personal perspective. It would simultaneously weaken his presidency and ruin his brand. It would give him a Neville Chamberlain or Richard Nixon level of historical notoriety — all to destroy a global deal that requires minimal effort by us to fulfill.
Trump told us he believed in surrounding himself with people who were not as smart or successful as he is. As Maya Angelou famously said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
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