Donald Trump’s radical campaign cost him a considerable chunk of Republican Party support, but the President-elect has been gradually winning back the endorsement of those lost GOP members with his recent Cabinet appointments.
While the Republican establishment may be pleasantly surprised with Trump’s picks, many of us are observing exactly what we expected: counter-productivity.
Trump’s appointment of Scott Pruitt as head of the Environmental Protection Agency serves as possibly the most clear-cut example of the bizarre trend being formulated here. The President-elect has been unapologetic in his beliefs that climate change is a hoax, that fossil fuel drilling should be increased, and that windmills are disadvantageous due to the bird fatality rates they effect.
Thus, we cannot be too shocked that Trump would choose for this position a climate-change denier who has labeled himself a “leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda.” Pruitt has worked in close connection with the fossil fuel industry in the past to fight against the EPA, and is literally in the process of suing the agency right now – so, naturally, he must be the perfect fit.
The nature of Pruitt’s appointment is not an anomaly. For Secretary of Education, Trump has chosen Betsy DeVos, a billionaire who advocates the privatization of education. While DeVos’s brand is “school choice,” her vision and policies are widely detested — especially in Detroit, where many have suffered under the detrimental system of charter schools that has been implemented there, largely thanks to DeVos.
Next, we have Andrew Puzder, CEO of Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. and future Secretary of Labor. Puzder disapproves of a higher minimum wage for employees until they have moved up to higher managerial positions, because he believes that “there’s no way in the world that [a job such as] scooping ice cream is worth $15 an hour.”
But what Puzder and other billionaires, blinded by the “everyone on welfare is lazy” myth, fail to realize is that it is virtually impossible to live off of the current national minimum wage — hence the existence of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) which provides what many of us refer to as food stamps. The maximum net income allowed in order to receive SNAP benefits varies depending upon family size: $990 per month for one person, $1,335 for two, $1,680 for three, etc.
This means that a three-person family who makes over $20,160 annually (an amount which can hardly be considered tolerable for even one person) does not qualify. And a family who does qualify receives, on average, only $1.50 per meal. These are people who are working full-time simply to put food on the table, something which should not be impossible, even for those who are “just” scooping ice cream.
Trump’s promises to “drain the swamp” have thus far gone unfulfilled as more and more insiders, who do not represent the common people and who are often deeply disconnected from average American reality, continue to fill his Cabinet. While Trump is basking in the glory of what he likely envisions as four more years of reality TV, his supporters and opponents will all be watching closely. It is up to him to decide how the era of President Trump will be recorded in history books.
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