Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

Broadband access is a necessity, not a luxury. Period.

Since taking over the FCC, President Trump’s Chairman, Ajit Pai, has been waging war on internet access and consumer protections on the behalf of large corporations like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T.

Last week, Mr. Pai took action to remove price caps that are meant to protect schools, hospitals, libraries, and small businesses from being price gouged by large corporations that provide internet services.

Mr. Pai says that price caps to protect schools, hospitals, libraries, and small businesses aren't necessary in “areas with sufficient competition.”

The problem with that is 97 percent of the schools, hospitals, libraries, and small businesses he thinks don’t need price protections are only served by one or two providers. 73 percent are only served by one provider.

What this lack of choice means is that this increasingly concentrated industry is able to raise prices to whatever they want and we as consumers are left with the option of paying their exorbitant prices or going without internet. And do we as consumers get better services in return? No.

Since its inception, the Internet has been a tool of democracy. It has allowed the dissemination of ideas, and enabled entrepreneurs to build companies.

The action Mr. Pai took is simply unacceptable. We must prevent the Internet from being auctioned off to the highest corporate bidder and keep the Internet a space for the open exchange of ideas and information, free of discrimination.

Trump's FCC Votes to Allow Broadband Rate Hikes for Schools and Libraries
 
Illegal immigrants working in the construction industry bring down wages for Americans working in the construction industry. Basic economics. Supply and demand. If you have a large labor pool that is willing to work for less, who will get hired? Also, the companies that choose not to hire illegals still have to bid jobs against companies who use em, therefore affecting wages negatively. It is what it is, but it's not only illegals who work in this industry. Illegal immigration is not a victimless crime.

"Basic" economics does not work in a work controlled by greed

Look into the books of any non-union general contractor and you can see for yourself. They underpay illegals blackmailing them then charge outrageous hourly tariffs but keep the profits for themselves
 
"Basic" economics does not work in a work controlled by greed

Look into the books of any non-union general contractor and you can see for yourself. They underpay illegals blackmailing them then charge outrageous hourly tariffs but keep the profits for themselves
I agree but it doesn't stop there. They then use that bs as a bargaining chip against paying legal employees right, citing how "even if they don't work them, they have to complete with others who do." I honestly don't blaim them (illegals) for doing what they have to but I sure as fuck don't support it when I get negatively impacted by it.
 
I knew right out of the gate that Trump was gonna do some things I wouldn't like or agree with. I'm happy with some of the things he's done but also don't blindly support everything he does. No politician is going to make you happy all the time. But truth told, one of the most important things about Trump getting elected was him being able to appoint a conservative justice to the supreme court. If Hillary would have won, we probably wouldn't have seen another conservative victory in the supreme courts in our lifetime.
 
For the First Time, a U.S. President Backs a Fascist France
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/for_first_time_a_us_president_backs_a_fascist_france_20170424

While she is highly unlikely to win the run-off presidential election on May 7 against the Bill Clinton of France, Emmanuel Macron, Marine Le Pen managed to come in second in the first round on Sunday. She came ahead of the leaders of both major French political parties, the Socialists and the Gaullists. It is a sad day for France, and for the world, that such a hateful person—a neofascist—is in the running to be president.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt hated fascism and was determined to defeat it, even if it meant allying with Joe Stalin of the Soviet Union.

During World War II, Germany occupied northern France and installed a right wing puppet government in the south of the country at Vichy, led by Marshal Henri-Philippe Petain, the victor at Verdun in WW I.

Roosevelt despised the Vichy, and ultimately his troops defeated it.

Today we are presented with the spectacle of the American president, Donald J. Trump, praising the neofascist National Front candidate, Marine LePen. It would be like FDR cozying up to Marshal Petain.

Trump said, “Le Pen is “strongest on borders, and she’s the strongest on what’s been going on in France.”

We are living in an alternate universe not so different from Philip K. Dick’s “Man in a High Castle.” The Nazis won after all.

...

Here’s her security platform:

Massive build-up of the police, disarming the slums. Building 40,000 new prison cells. Restore borders, keep out all but 10,000 immigrants a year. Breaking Muslim fundamentalist networks in order to eradicate terrorism.

She also has a re-industrialization plan that will depend, she says, on “Smart protectionism” and “Economic patriotism”.

She wants to leave the NATO command. Her war department budget will grow to 2% of GDP and 3% by the end of five years.

Hatred of the 5 million French Muslims is central to her program, even thought the majority of French Muslims are not religious.

It is like she plagiarized from Trump. Or maybe it is the other way around and Steve Bannon, Trump’s Brain, has been studying far right European neo-Fascists as a blueprint for America.

It is a sad day when all those millions of American veterans who served in the European theater during WW II have their memory besmirched by the reemergence of fascism, in the White House and in French politics. How many Americans died to prevent a fascist take-over here and to end the Vichy in France itself.
 
Trump’s Fake War on the Fake News
Trump’s Fake War on the Fake News

On the campaign trail, Trump called the press “dishonest” and “scum.” He defended Russian strongman Vladimir Putin against charges of murdering journalists and vowed to somehow “open up our libel laws” to weaken the First Amendment. Since taking office, he has dismissed unfavorable coverage as “fake news” and described the mainstream media as “the enemy of the American people.”

And there's been a string of symbolic, almost gratuitous little slaps: He not only rejected the traditional invitation to the White House Correspondents Association dinner, but announced the Saturday beforehand that he'd be holding a rally the same night, meaning some reporters will have to skip their own professional event to cover his.

Not since Richard Nixon has an American president been so hostile to the press—and Nixon largely limited his rants against the media to private venting with his aides.
But behind that theatrical assault, the Trump White House has turned into a kind of playground for the press.

We interviewed more than three dozen members of the White House press corps, along with White House staff and outside allies, about the first whirlwind weeks of Trump’s presidency. Rather than a historically toxic relationship, they described a historic gap between the public perception and the private reality.

...
On top of the sloppiness, there is the lying. One veteran White House correspondent said he was warned by a transition official to be wary of good color emanating from the Trump camp on background. “They will screw with you,” the correspondent was told. “They will feed you things that are not true.”

Bannon, it is worth noting, is a devoted reader of the “neoreactionary” internet philosopher Curtis Yarvin, an advocate of the strategic benefits of spreading misinformation. But two people close to the administration say that White House staffers do much of their lying for sport, rather than to further any larger agenda.

“They all lie,” said a conservative journalist with close ties to the West Wing, who described an informal contest to smuggle the biggest whoppers into print. “It’s a game to them.”

A conservative activist close to the administration said a member of the White House communications team recently divulged the same to him over drinks. According to the activist, the staffer described the attitude inside the press shop toward lying to reporters as: “They’ll print what they want anyways, so we may as well have fun.”
 
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