This is an outstanding article by Best-selling author Michael Lewis.
It will give you a scary insight into the Trump administration’s determination to stamp out any reference to climate change and to turn the basic functions of government over to the industries that are supposed to be regulated.
Here is a small snippet. The USDA staff waited to greet the transition team with briefing books.
“More than a month after the election, the Trump transition team finally appeared. But it wasn’t a team: it was just one guy, named Brian Klippenstein. He came from his job running an organization called Protect the Harvest. Protect the Harvest was founded by a Trump supporter, an Indiana oilman and rancher named Forrest Lucas. Its stated purpose was “to protect your right to hunt, fish, farm, eat meat, and own animals.” In practice it mainly demonized organizations, like the Humane Society, that sought to prevent people who owned animals from doing terrible things to them. They worried, apparently, that if people were forced to be kind to animals they might one day cease to eat them. “This is a weird group,” says Rachael Bale, who writes often about animal welfare for National Geographic.”
The man chosen as Secretary of Agriculture was Sonny Perdue, former governor of Georgia.
“One week after being sworn in, Sonny Perdue staged a public event at a school in Leesburg, Virginia. The Obama administration had pushed successfully to raise the nutritional requirements of school meals fed to 30 million American schoolchildren, for the first time in 20 years. To receive federal subsidies for the meals they serve, schools are now required to behave more like responsible parents than indifferent ones: more whole grains, more fruits and vegetables, less sodium, no artificially sweetened whole milk, etc. Concannon expanded the breakfast programs for kids who did not get fed at home—and that meal, too, became more nutritious. “You can’t just serve them pancakes and hot dogs,” he says.
“Big companies that provided the schools with meals fought back: it was more profitable for them to serve pancakes and hot dogs than fruits and vegetables. But by the end of 2016, America’s children were eating better than they had been in 2008. “Ninety-eight percent of the schools were meeting the new standards,” says Concannon, “and to those that weren’t, that had some problem, we’d say, ‘We’ll work with you!’”
“At the school in Leesburg, Perdue announced that the U.S.D.A. would no longer require schools to meet the whole-grain standard, or the new sodium standard, or ban fat in artificially sweetened milk. Those changes sound trivial, but the stakes are huge. This is a matter not just of what kind of milk America’s schoolchildren drink but also of the process by which we as a society decide which milk they will drink: will it be driven by the dairy industry and the snack-food industry, or by nutritionists?”
What a dispiriting article. Even more depressingly, dozens of articles like it could be written about every executive agency. The public interest has been trumped by private greed at last. This regime must smile ear to ear every morning when a Charlie Rose or Matt Lauer situation completely deflects attention from things that actually impact people every day.
I agree. When Republicans say that they support “personal responsibility,” it is generally a euphemism for what they truly represent: greed and exploitation of everyone and everything. I seriously doubt that most Democrats would be opposed to the notion of personal responsibility. Sometimes the very poor, particularly when corporations keep the minimum wage low, need a helping hand. We either need to raise the minimum wage or face that some families need help to make it.
Somehow that call for personal responsibility doesn’t apply to corporations. I thought they were supposed to be people?
Corporations only want to be legally people when they are donating money to campaigns.
What history will remember about Trump’s name and legacy: The Trump Years: “When public interest was fully Trumped by private greed.”
Just IMPEACH that dump.
Impeach Slimy Dump’s entire cabinet and his VP, and send in Delta teams to take out the autocratic millionaires, billionaires, and CEOs that belong to ALEC.
Trump is on a campaign to stamp out any regulations made by Obama administration. The relaxation of regulations signals that this administration places profit over people. The food Americans eat has declined in quality over the past fifty years or so. Our foods contain too much fat, sugar, high fructose corn syrup, hormones, antibiotics and a lot of chemicals that are hard to pronounce. Our poorest young people have the worst diets. They eat what is cheap and available like fast food. School lunch should be a nutritionally dense meal for poor students. The Obamas tried to improve the nutrition of school lunches, Trump, of course, is rolling back any nutritional gains in school lunches from the Obama era. If we consider food to be the building blocks of young bodies, this move will have negative consequences for the health and well-being of many of our young people for years to come.
Here’s a look at school lunches around the globe. It is clear that we can and should do better, but with corporations in charge of the decisions, our students will continue to get the cheapest meal possible to enhance profitability. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/25/school-lunches-around-the-world_n_6746164.html
Trump is SO JEALOUS of Obama he eeks. Dump will do anything to DISS Obama.
If you have an interest in the issues in this post, you can seen the convoluted history of federal legislation bearing on school lunches here, including recommendations by grade level (deep in the report). This is the latest version.
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/11/30/2017-25799/child-nutrition-programs-flexibilities-for-milk-whole-grains-and-sodium-requirements
There’s a special place in heaven—or an asylum—for those who take on the Federal Register. 😃
Trump’s unwritten campaign slogan … the one he will never Tweet about unless he has an old man’s brain fart at three in the morning.
Trump’s real campaign agenda: “Vote to Make American Strong Again and I promise that I will poison your children to make more money for another billionaire while bringing back that GREAT polluted water and air we lived with before that lying crook and fake President Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency and took that water and air that kills people away from them.”
President Richard Nixon proposed the establishment of EPA and it began operation on December 2, 1970, after Nixon signed an executive order. The order establishing the EPA was ratified by committee hearings in the House and Senate.
Agree, “Trump’s unwritten campaign slogan … the one he will never Tweet about unless he has an old man’s brain fart at three in the morning.”
Dump is really a COWARD at heart. All that bravado cannot hide his stupidity.
You know all those top level jobs Trump has yet to fill? He’s probably planning to never fill them. This man is crazy like a fox: “How Trump Uses ‘Acting’ Directors To Give Himself More Power, Less Scrutiny” http://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/how-trump-uses-acting-directors-give-himself-more-power-less-scrutiny-2621588
Hard to believe Trump thought of this himself. Must be Bannon or Miller or some other sycophant in his posse who is advising him on how to become the tyrannical despot he so yearns to be.
Trump is doing what Bannon wants: The destruction of the administrative state. That is, the destruction of a federal government that meets the neeeds of the public.
See “The war on science” here:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/03/science-doubters/achenbach-text
Some 30% of Americans, believe that humans have existed in our current form, since the beginning of time. Biology is incomprehensible, without evolution.
Obviously, the education establishment, has failed to deliver a basic scientific literacy to the American people. Sad;
Charles blames religion doctrine on public education when he wrote, “Obviously, the education establishment, has failed to deliver a basic scientific literacy to the American people. Sad”
It’s sad that you blame this on the public schools that don’t have that much of an impact on what most children grow up to think as adults. The first 5-years of a child’s life is crucial to who they are and what they think.
And outside of that five-year window, you lose opportunities you may never get back.
That all takes place before a child starts kindergarten.
“Children build their vocabulary by listening to and interacting with their moms, dads, grandparents, and caregivers. Just as a healthy diet and physical activity help toddlers grow, reading and talking to them helps their brains develop and builds language skills that form the foundation for learning the rest of their lives.
“The more words a child hears from caring adults between birth and age 5, the better he or she will learn over a lifetime. However, these words need to be delivered in face-to-face interactions. Passive listening — watching videos or having the TV on in the background — does not show a positive association with language development.”
http://toosmall.org/news/commentaries/childs-first-5-years-hold-key-to-success
Studies have also concluded that K-12 has an insignificant impact on who a child becomes as an adult because the home environment has more of an influence than a classroom or teacher.
Most children have only one or two parents while growing up. They spend more time with those one or two parents and other family members then they will ever spend with one teacher.
The average child in the United States has 30 to 50 teachers by the time they finish high school. In fact, almost every year, most if not all of the children start out with new teachers.
The second most significant factor in who a child becomes as an adult is there friends and peers that they also spend a lot of out of class time with. And it is obvious that fundamentalist Christian families spent most of their time with other fundamentals Christians so when a child leaves school each day, who do you think these children are spending most of that out-of-school time with?
Charles, your ignorant statement is strong evidence that your thinking has been heavily influenced by the decades-long, neo-conservative/neo-liberal/libertarian Alt-Right lying, conspiracy theory generating PSYOPs war against traditional public education.
One of the reasons for this war, obviously, is to remove the teaching of science and evolution from the school so children only learn what idiots like Betsy DeVos and the Koch brothers want them to learn. The religious right isn’t satisfied with programming their children to believe this crap that all life was created in six days several thousand years ago. They want all of our children to get this crap crammed into the brains.
Live Science reports that 4 in 10 Americans Beleive God Created Earth 10,000 Years Ago. Where did the 6 out of 10 Americans learn that this creationist crap was wrong – from their parents and friends or from their teachers?
https://www.livescience.com/46123-many-americans-creationists.html
The Koch brothers, ALEC, the Waltons, Betsy DeVos, et al, won’t be satisfied until that number is 10 out of 10 who think God created the Earth and all life 10,000 years ago and they can’t do that if public education stays community-based, democratic, non-profit and free from their meddling.
This is why public school teachers must have a strong labor union protecting them from the creationists.
What are you smoking? Give me a toke. Since when is it the responsibility of parents to teach a 5 year old, about DNA and fossils, and carbon-12 dating?
Charles, here is where I practice restraint and do not unleash all the profanity and insults churning in my head.
It is obvious that the 40-percent that think God created the earth about 10,000 years ago started teaching their children all about that God from birth and some if not all of them made sure to teach that child to distrust anyone that taught them about the science of evolution.
“Since when is it the responsibility of parents to teach a 5-year-old, about DNA and fossils, and carbon-12 dating?”
If you are insinuating in that trick question that parents do not teach their children about DNA, fossils and carbon-12 dating, then who taught the 60-percent that think evolution is correct and intelligent design and/or creationism is a toilet full of ignorant crap – teachers?
Thank you for the evidence that teachers are the ones that teach about the science of evolution but it helps when parents support the teachers — that’s why 60-percent think evolution is correct and creationism is wrong.
I don’t smoke anything.
I don’t take any drugs, illegal, or prescribed.
I don’t drink alcohol.
In fact, most Americans would label me as a health nut.
Soon after I was born, my parents had me baptized at a local Catholic Chruch. Years before I started kindergarten at age 5, I was attending lessons at the Catholic Church being taught how to think about God and religion by the Church. I can’t remember what those lessons were called. There was a name for them.
Not one of my teachers from K to 12 ever talked about God, the Church, or Christianity and the Bible. Not one teacher attempted to indoctrinate or program me to be a Christian.
That indoctrination started in the home and my mother was responsible for that decision. By the time I started kindergarten, I’d already had several years of Church doctrine crammed into my head.
And not one of my K – 12 teachers ever said or indicated that anything that I was taught by the Church was wrong even while I was learning about the science of evolution.
I’m pretty sure that is the experience of most children K through 12.