From Our Future
So far President Donald Trump has signed very few bills. One lets coal companies dump waste into streams. Another lets oil companies bribe foreign dictators in secret. Now he is moving to block a Labor Department "fiduciary rule" that requires financial advisers to act in the best interests of their clients when advising on retirement accounts.
Here's the thing: this isn't just Trump doing this. The Republican-controlled House and Senate passed those two bills, and the Republicans have been fighting that fiduciary rule tooth and nail.
It's not just Trump, Republicans as a party are using Trump to engage in a general assault on protections from corruption, pollution, corporate fraud and financial scams.
This is who they are.
"We Just Need A President To Sign This Stuff"
This is not just Trump. What we are seeing happening to our government is the end result of a decades-long effort by the corporate-and-billionaire-funded "conservative movement" to capture the Republican party, and through them to capture the country -- for profit. And here we are.
Are Republicans dismayed that they have put a loathsome, deranged, misogynistic, racist, psychopathic, uninformed, self-promoting, corrupt, insulting, genital-grabbing, conspiracy-theory-peddling, Jew-baiting, narcissistic-behaving, country-destroying, Putin-loving, generally disgusting, fascist, loofa-faced sh*t-gibbon into power in our White House?
No, they are not. They like it that he's squatting in the Oval Offic.
Grover Norquist, one of the key leaders and strategists of the conservative movement, worded it clearly and succinctly, "We just need a President to sign this stuff." "Pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to become President of the United States."
Stream Protection Rule
After waiting eight years, (yes, they waited that long), the Obama administration finally put a rule in place to protect "streams, fish, wildlife, and related environmental values from the adverse impacts of surface coal mining operations."
"The stream protection rule requires the restoration of the physical form, hydrologic function, and ecological function of the segment of a perennial or intermittent stream that a permittee mines through. Additionally, it requires that the postmining surface configuration of the reclaimed mine site include a drainage pattern, including ephemeral streams, similar to the premining drainage pattern, with exceptions for stability, topographical changes, fish and wildlife habitat, etc. The rule also, requires the establishment of a 100-foot-wide streamside vegetative corridor of native species (including riparian species, when appropriate) along each bank of any restored or permanently-diverted perennial, intermittent, or ephemeral stream."
Sounds great right? Well, protecting the environment and protecting people costs money that would otherwise go into the pockets of executives of and investors in coal companies, so...uh uh.
By the way, the rule would have created at least as many jobs as it might have "cost."
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