February 6, 2019

  • The Progressive Lens Monthly Round-up: January 2019

    Trump Era Days 712-742

     

    What was reported?

    • China landed a spacecraft on the side of the moon which never faces the Earth, becoming the first to do so.
    • The new Fascist Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro kicked off his first day in office by rapidly winding back numerous progressive policies, from diversity education funding to various diversity programs involving protections for LGBT citizens as well as switching consideration of territory designation for the indigenous from the justice ministry to the agriculture ministry (which effectively makes the decision a matter of profit over people). He then dissolved the Ministry of Culture. Additionally, Bolsonaro has transformed how the country treats its journalists, with a wide array of restrictions placed on their ability to cover government activity.
    • The Jobs Report showed a leap of 312,000 jobs created, unemployment at 3.9%, and wage growth at 3%. Home sales plummeted to their worst showing in three years.
    • A lower federal court issued a ruling (later upheld by the Supreme Court) which permitted Trump to limit the military service of transgender members.
    • In the midst of the longest government shutdown in history – which disrupted vital services such as food inspections by the FDA and forced “essential” federal employees such as federal prison guards to report for work unpaid and even work double shifts to cover call-offs, and which only ended after Trump finally agreed to a short-term reopening wherein he received NOTHING that he was demanding -, Trump floated the idea of abusing his power to declare a national emergency so as to build the wall – which he now claims he never meant Mexico would DIRECTLY pay for - using disaster funds typically reserved for mostly-natural disaster emergencies.  When the shutdown led Speaker Pelosi to force Trump into postponing the State of the Union address – citing security concerns-, the president childishly responded by preventing her from going on an important national security-related foreign trip via military aircraft. The shutdown had also featured the detachment of Trump’s Administration from the plight of the working class, as Trump’s Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, dismissed reports of unpaid federal workers going to food pantries and struggling to pay their bills; saying that those workers should just take out a loan to pay for their needs. Trump had himself displayed his lack of grasp on reality (big surprise, I know) when he claimed that unpaid workers could ask for leniency from grocery stores. In the end, it was the unpaid air traffic controllers effectively shutting down a handful of major airports which tipped the scales and applied the final push required to bring the shutdown to its close.
    • The debate over the wall brought up some interesting reports, which covered some facts about what a wall would NOT do: stop most illegal immigration, and put a dent in the trafficking of illegal drugs.
    • Republican Congressman Tom Marino resigned just 20 days after being sworn in for a fifth term so that he could pursue a job in the private sector.
    • Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rejected and criticized HR 1 – the For The People Act of 2019 – which would make Election Day a federal holiday, require presidential candidates to disclose their tax returns, require that Super-PACs disclose their donors while incentivizing small donations to campaigns, and which protects voters from being unjustly purged. Mitch considered it to be a “power grab”.
    • Trump’s ex-lawyer, Michael Cohen, postponed his public testimony before Congress, citing a series of public “threats” against him and his family by the president and the president’s lawyer-spokesman, Rudy Giuliani.
    • Longtime political consultant to Trump, Roger Stone, was arrested in a dramatic FBI late-night raid. He was charged with obstruction for attempting to mislead investigators in the Russian probe.
    • There was reportedly a secret transport of nuclear bomb-making, radioactive material by Trump’s government across the country into Nevada without the state government of Nevada’s knowledge.
    • As part of the Russia probe, Mueller’s team is prosecuting a Russian firm accused of financing the hacking which interfered with the 2016 election. Russia decided to hire American lawyers and exploit their right to disclosure to obtain the evidence presented against them. After getting those files, the Russian government then took the shared documents and made them public via a hacking twitter account.

     

     

    Tonight’s Conclusion

     

                2019 is off to a crazy start, and the insanity only looks as if it will ramp up in February as the 2020 campaign to depose Donald Trump – and make no mistake, that is precisely what this election will be about – gets underway. The longest shutdown in history had risked shaking the longest economic expansion in history. We will see if a sequel is on the horizon.

     

    #NotMeUs #OurRevolution #TheResistance #ImpeachTrump

     

    Purchase my manifesto, “The Pillars of Unitism”.

     

    Before I part, here are some articles – recently discovered, but not necessarily published recently - which may interest you:

     

    • None at this time.

     

    Until next time…

     

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