, - Mass Transit/ Management National Association of Railroad Passengers
Stephan: It is really difficult to witness stupidity like this in the making of public policy. While the rest of the world is moving increasingly to mass transport in the form of high speed rail, the Trump administration is attempting to gut Amtrak. The elimination of light rail, and short haul passenger travel will have both local and national negative implications. Locally it will make life more difficult for people and local businesses which have previously depended on short haul rail for mobility or custom.
Nationally I think it will reduce travel into the middle of the country and greatly exacerbate The Great Schism Trend, increasing the regionalism of the United States.
The National Association of Rail Passengers denounced the budget outline released by the Trump Administration, which slashes investment in transportation infrastructure. These cuts to Amtrak, transit, and commuter rail programs, and even air service to rural towns, would not only cost construction and manufacturing jobs, but place a disproportionate amount of pain on rural and working class communities.
“It’s ironic that President Trump’s first budget proposal undermines the very communities whose economic hardship and sense of isolation from the rest of the country helped propel him into office,” said NARP President Jim Mathews. “These working class communities — many of them located in the Midwest and the South — were tired of being treated like ‘flyover country.’ But by proposing the elimination of Amtrak’s long distance trains, the Trump Administration does them one worse, cutting a vital service that connects these small town economies to the rest of the U.S. These hard working, small town Americans don’t have airports or Uber to turn to; they depend on these trains.”
“What’s more, these proposed cuts come as President Trump continues to promise that our tax dollars […]
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Kali Holloway , Associate Editor and Senior Writer - Alternet
Stephan: The March jobs report was a disappointing 98,000. But that is really just the beginning. Trump and the Republicans are creating a workplace stacked against workers, and not really supportive of job creation. And then thers is the robotization of many jobs. The people who voted for Trump just have no idea what is coming.
Again and again on the campaign trail, Donald Trump made promises he couldn’t keep, playing on the ignorance of his base and revealing his own glaring misunderstanding of policy. The GOP candidate repeatedly vowed to strongarm companies into keeping jobs at home instead of sending them to Mexico, renegotiate NAFTA and impose stiff import taxes on foreign goods. It was a message that appealed widely to Trump supporters, blending the illusion of economic hope with the rubric of “America First” nationalism.
Problem is, nothing about Trump’s vision has anything to do with reality, and U.S. jobs continue to be sent across the border. As Bloomberg reports:
Illinois Tool Works Inc. will close an auto-parts plant in Mazon, Illinois, this month and head to Ciudad Juarez. Triumph Group Inc. is reducing the Spokane, Washington, workforce that makes fiber-composite parts for Boeing Co. aircraft and moving production to Zacatecas and Baja California. TE Connectivity Ltd. is shuttering a pressure-sensor plant in Pennsauken, New Jersey, in favor of a facility in Hermosillo.
Those companies aren’t alone. Indianapolis-based firm Rexnord is moving 300 jobs to Monterrey, Mexico, despite a December tweet by Trump meant to shame the company into staying. That company is located just up […]
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Bryce Covert, Economic Editor - Think Progress
Stephan: As the Trump vision of America plays out day by day I can only feel sorry for the people who voted for him. Each day this administration further degrades safety regulations, and the safety net upon which so many people increasingly depend. Here is the latest. The nastiness of Trump and the Republican Party is breathtaking.
Jaqueline Barber in the home that was threatened with eviction in 2012.
Credit: AP/David Goldman
It was right around Christmas last year when Michael Esnault got the news: he had two months to move out of the affordable apartment in New Orleans he’s lived in for six years and find another place to live.
But Esnault, a 68-year-old Vietnam War veteran who suffers from PTSD, knew he wouldn’t be able to find a new place on his own. “I was going to be out on the street. I didn’t have no money to move,” he said. “This is something that just came out of the blue.”
It wasn’t just him, either. Fifty-three other low-income families were facing the same fate. “This is very stressful,” he said. “This is taking years off our life.”
“I knew I needed help,” he said.
Esnault decided to do something about it. So he marched over to the offices of Southeast […]
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Jordi Lippe-McGraw, - Today
Stephan: The validity of Associate Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis' observation that states are laboratories has never been more relevant and or accurate. As you read this story note the correlation between Republican governance and plantation economies and high stress in the citizenry.
Stress is something everyone deals with. But apparently, some of us are more stressed than others. That is according to WalletHub, which just released a new study in honor of April being Stress Awareness Month, revealing their 2017 list of the most and least stressed states in the country. And the findings may surprise you.
To determine the list, the personal finance website compared the 50 states and Washington, D.C., across four key dimensions: work-related stress, money-related stress, family-related stress and health- and safety-related stress. Then 33 further metrics, like average hours worked per week, median income and cost of childcare, were used to generate a list based on a 100-point scale with a score of 100 being the highest level of stress.
Which state could use a chill pill? Alabama! The Southern state earned a score of 56.91 out of 100, ranking No. 2 for low credit scores, fourth for the highest percentage of adults in fair/poor health, No. 2 for fewest psychologists per capita, and No. 4 for fewest average hours of sleep per night. […]
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Saturday, April 8th, 2017
Evan Halper, Contact Reporter - Los Angeles Times
Stephan: Syria, Russia, and the zombie clown car that is the White House have taken all the oxygen out of the mainstream media atmosphere. But that doesn't mean horrible things aren't going on in the depths. I have been paying particularly close attention to regulations that impact the quality of peoples' lives, especially the young and elderly. One of the things I have learned is that just working for Scott Pruitt in Donald Trump's EPA is a crisis event. Here's a report to give you a sense of what I mean.
As California’s top energy regulator, Michael Picker has an absurdly busy job. So it was a little surprising to find him recently near a Washington, D.C., metro stop, randomly handing out help-wanted fliers in the middle of a workday.
But with morale plummeting at the Environmental Protection Agency since President Trump took office, Picker saw in that patch of sidewalk near its headquarters an opportunity — and perhaps a publicity stunt — to lure top-shelf talent that never before would have considered bolting from the agency.
The dim outlook at the EPA is weighing heavily on its 15,000 scientists, engineers, investigators and other employees, many of whom perceive their life’s work to be under assault from within. The Trump administration is moving as quickly as it can to diminish the place, with plans to cripple the EPA science office, stop the agency’s climate change work, cut its Superfund program in half and outright eliminate 50 programs, down to the voluntary Energy Star stickers that help consumers locate efficient appliances.
It all has Jared Blumenfeld’s phone ringing off the hook. “The number one call I get everyday is, ‘Jared, can you help us find work […]
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