The Trump budget has now been revealed and the only word to describe it is "abomination". It is feral, vindictive to the core, and immoral in the manner it waylays the most vulnerable. That includes many Trump voters.
Let us agree that if you find it necessary to add $54 billion to a defense budget that is already bloated (more than the total of the next eight nations together) you are not only a clown and nincompoop but an actual threat to the nation's security. As I've noted in previous posts, it is the health and welfare of citizens wherein the real national security resides. Without citizen health, for example, nothing else matters. Are you really going to send sick or disabled people against the North Koreans or Chinese, either in a cyber war or real one? I doubt it.
Let's also get it through our heads that Trump and his vile clowns are pushing this morally bankrupt budget in an environment still corrupted by hidden defense slush funding. See more at:
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/crack-cocaine-pentagon-exposing-defense-hawks-secret-slush-fund
and
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/pentagon-slush-fund-pays-for-isis-airstrikes-irking-some-in-congress/
Never mind. Entitled “America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again”. the Trump vermin have cynically exploited the word "America" to try to push this misbegotten crap on a mostly unsuspecting populace. Note also the term 'America First' borrows from a phrase denounced by the Anti-Defamation League for its links to 1940s American Nazi sympathizers, of which I will have more to expatiate on in a coming post. This foul plan signaled a change of direction likely to satisfy only the most extremist fringe of Trump’s populist base. Even so, it appeals only on the surface but undermines their welfare in reality. Especially when they realize their kids dependent on school meals, nutrition will now go hungry because of cuts, and the oldsters will no longer be able to benefit from 'Meals on Wheels'. That is the program - such as in our county- where volunteers drive to more than 2,100 indigent, disabled seniors' homes daily and provide them meals and often company. A spokesperson noted in the wake of the budget announcement that the program currently serves 2.4 million seniors, more than half in Trumpland. That includes 500,000 veterans - mainly Vietnam Vets. Is anyone paying attention? Well, maybe not because they're unaware of the harm that would be done. But that is why snakes like the Trumpies play on popular ignorance and the meme of 'fake news'.
One of the pricks who designed this offal, Mick Mulvaney (below), had the nerve to assert yesterday: "We can't do this any more, just because these programs sound good, like 'Meals on Wheels'"
Mick the prick Mulvaney trying to justify Trump's "America Last" budget yesterday
Hey, asshole, the program not only 'sounds' good but is often the only lifeline many of these oldsters and vets have to getting decent nutrition because they are no longer mobile or able to drive. The Meals on Wheels personnel also provide regular social contact for people who may otherwise see no one for days or even weeks. As Jonathan Capehart noted last night, one year's benefit from 'Meals on Wheels' for a senior is equivalent to his spending one day in the hospital. Given the cost of senior medical care is mind boggling that ought to register even with an amoral dolt like Mulvaney. What if he were in that position? Would he want people to just let him suck shit and starve? No? Then he shouldn't make out like the program is worthless!
This vindictive turd also insisted: "there is no demonstrable evidence school meals programs actually work". In fact, there is, including here in Colo. where many kids depend on those meals to get them through the day's classes, so they aren't distracted by hunger. Of, course, the POS Mulvaney probably never had to go through a day's hunger at elementary school, explaining his cavalier attitude.
But these degenerates didn't stop there. To enhance the increased military spending they plan cuts of up to 31.4% to the EPA, 28.7 % to the State Dept. and 13.5 % to the Dept. of Education. Mulvaney - defending the first, proclaimed "we're not going to waste money on climate change anymore". Brave words coming before millions of our citizens will likely feel the full lash of ramped up global warming - from insufferable heat waves, drought and power outages, to increased antibiotic resistance and spread of once tropical diseases like dengue fever. As for cuts to the State Dept., even Defense Secretary Gen. Mattis once remarked if that department had ample funds he would need fewer bullets to fight wars. (Intimating it always is less costly to resolve crises with diplomacy before reaching for weapons.)
So why undermine citizens' health and security, by cutting the funds that support them to fund an already overbloated military? Wait! Many of the Trump groupies don't buy the military is bloated. Incredibly, since they don't read widely or watch TV outside of FAUX News, they are convinced the military is weak. They are deluded, big time!Since 9/11 the share of GDP going for defense has gone from 2.1 percent to 4. 4 percent, a change that former Pentagon defense analyst Chuck Spinney called a "crime" and "unjustified" in an appearance on Bill Moyers' NOW show 15 years ago. Indeed, the U.S. currently spends more on defense than the next eight nations combined - including Russia and China. But Trump, asshole that he is, would rather pump more into it than provide meals for kids or seniors, or funding for climate science. I guess he'd rather the planet burn before he can be held to account as a planetary criminal.
Do the poor little bastards - admirals, generals, five star and others - need this extra money? In two words, fuck no! In the words of one academic critic, the Pentagon is “a bureaucratic juggernaut accounting for 57% of the federal discretionary budget and nearly 40% of all military spending on this planet.” But instead of bringing our tax dollars home with our troops, the Pentagon and allies in Congress want to protect the profits of Pentagon contractors by adding billions to their off-budget slush fund.
Trump’s first budget proposal is, to quote Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., “morally obscene and bad economic policy.” Sanders was referring to deep, gouging cuts to every agency that isn’t explicitly military related. The departments that oversee environmental policy (including removal of toxins from lakes, streams), international relations, education, housing, health care and agriculture are all to be hollowed out so that more immigrants can be deported, more bombs built and more fencing constructed on the southern border.
The Trumpy toady and asswit Mick Mulvaney, in his appearance yesterday, also had the unmitigated gall to say that this deranged budget merely accords Trump's base what they were promised. He asked:
"Can we really continue to ask a coal miner in West Virginia or a single mom in Detroit to pay for these programs? The answer was no. We can ask them to pay for defense, and we will. But we can’t ask them to continue to pay for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.”
I'd warrant from what I know of Appalachia and Detroit, many more than one single mom or miner has kids that s/he can't fully afford to clothe or feed and likely are in need of meal assistance. So this assertion is total bullshit. Add in the fact the average miner will generally contribute not much more than 1 cent per each dollar of his taxes anyway, and one can see this isn't the extraordinary sacrifice (say to support PBS) Mulvaney makes it out to be. In fact, The Washington Post did the math and found that less than one cent of a West Virginia coal miner’s taxes goes to public broadcasting. Moreover, a Detroit single mom likely draws more of a direct benefit from her minuscule investment in PBS “Sesame Street” than she does from one more F-35 fighter.
Further the Trump budget would trim $200 million from the Women, Infants, and Children supplemental nutrition assistance — precisely the sort of government program a low-income single mother in Detroit would rely on to feed her kids. WIC is a hugely successful program that helps increase birth weights and provides better childhood nutrition. It has historically been run quite efficiently, with less than 10 percent of spending going toward administrative costs.
(Apart from the fact that study after study has shown the Blue states contribute much more in taxes to federal programs, including those that assist poor Trumpies, than the Red)
The most immoral aspect of this asinine budget has to be the $4.1 billion allocated to building the border wall, which Trump - fucking liar that he is - originally promised his deluded followers would be paid for by Mexico. Now, it will be paid for by American taxpayers themselves - but with the extra costs (due to cuts to come up with the $4.1b) taken out of school meals programs, senior assistance programs, after school programs for at risk kids and funding for PBS and the endowment for the arts - lest we all mutate to Philistines. Which we already are under Trump.
The biggest joke is on the poor WVA coal miner or Detroit single mom who will now likely pay a lot more of his (or her) taxes -including in cuts for support programs like 'Meals on Wheels', school nutrition - for a dumbass border wall with Mexico for which Mexico will never ever reimburse U.S. taxpayers.
If a budget proposal is a moral document reflecting a nation's priorities and moral convictions, then the one on offer from Trump falls flat. Contrary to the spin and PR it does not make America "first", or great. It makes us a second or third class nation in every measure that counts, starting with humanity. But what can one expect from a savage, pussy grabbing asshole who lacks any moral bearing or compass given he's a soulless psychotic?
Again, the nation's future well being, not to mention citizen welfare, depends on getting rid of Trump and his bunch as soon as possible. One WSJ columnist (Daniel Henninger) has already forecast next year's midterm will be the bellwether - in which Dems will take back the House in tidal wave, if the 'pukes fail to repeal the ACA. He added that the Dems will then take the 2020 presidential election too, adding "no one may ever vote for Republicans again, why would they?" Let's hope he's right!
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