Dawn Allen is a freelance writer and editor who is passionate about sustainability, political economy, gardening, traditional craftwork, and simple living. She and her husband are currently renovating a rural homestead in southeastern Michigan.
While Americans went nuts last week spreading negative covfefe about a Presidential Twitter typo, the White House was reluctantly disclosing nearly a score of ethics waivers granted by President Trump to his senior staff, including former lobbyists and corporate lawyers.
Bathrooms have been in the news for a while, but it’s more likely that folks are worried about who’s using which one than about what they’re doing once they’re in there. Even if we can’t leave the culture war at the door, perhaps there’s something we can all agree on: everyone alive knows the nearly-religious fervor of the sudden need to Be There Now. People have some of their most honest bodily moments in the can. So if you’re heading to the loo, here’s some reading material to take with you. (You might want to disinfect your phone afterwards.)
What’s up at the Labor Department? Since Trump’s inauguration, there’s been a new lack of transparency over at the United States Department of Labor. (I’d call it “scandalous,” but that word seems to have been redefined upward in the last several months.)
When job openings are plentiful and workers in short supply, empowered employees can more effectively stand up for their interests. However, when opportunities are scarce and workers are desperate, the natural power differential between the owners of jobs and the people that need them is magnified. That’s why the renewed Republican effort to scuttle the ability of workers to organize in micro-unions is ill-timed and mean-spirited.
Rolling back regulations was one of Trump’s many campaign promises. Shortly after his inauguration, he signed the Presidential Executive Order on Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs (itself, perhaps ironically, a regulation). The aim of this executive order is ostensibly to control costs by scrapping two regulations for every new regulation imposed on businesses. However, underneath this facile rhetoric lies a dirty trick. Truth is, regulations are protections.
Earlier this month, Time Magazine printed an interview with Donald Trump. In the interview, Trump spoke about the Navy’s Gerald Ford-class aircraft carriers and the kinks that they’re still working out with the new magnetic catapult technology. The Electro-Magnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) isn’t perfect yet, but Trump, who seems to believe that nobody else can understand what he fails to understand, called for the Navy to trash EMALS and return to catapults powered by “G*ddamned steam.” While Trump’s steampunk directive is a bit cringeworthy, other retro trends merit a closer look. History may not repeat, but it certainly rhymes, and lately, everything old is new again.
In an unpredictable and changing world, disasters are bound to happen. As Congress considers affordable insurance, cascading predicaments may make it a practical impossibility. It depends upon our priorities – and each other.
Here we are, not yet half a year into the Trump administration’s Demagogues and Dragons game, and the Dungeon Master is still creating characters for the campaign which is, believe it or not, barely getting underway. The dice have really botched the stats for the most recent additions to the party, but what’s worse, the DM seems to be choosing the worst possible character classes for them. You don’t pick your weakest character to be the warrior, or your least intelligent to be the mage, but that’s exactly what our DM is up to. Here’s the gallery of rogues, as it were.
Among the Obama-era protections that the Trump administration and Republican-led Congress are working over with an eye towards dismantling is the Dodd-Frank Act.
Trump’s Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, announced a striking change of policy last Friday concerning how alleged criminals are to be charged with crimes going forward. In a memo Sessions sent to over five thousand federal prosecutors across the country, he instructed them to seek the toughest, longest penalties possible for the most easily proven allegations against each defendant. Critics claim that this is a move aimed at packing jails with nonviolent, low-level drug offenders.