The State of the This Union Address—from the Metaphor Café

My fellow Americans: what you will hear today is one of two things—outright exaggerations or a blind ignorance of the world we live in. So let’s take heed in the words of Winston Churchill, “With great power comes great responsibility” and ask ourselves if this administration has been responsible.

First, let take on their biggest claim—the Tax reduction. 21% corporate rates will drive the Stock Market up, no doubt, although it has been climbing for 7 years under President Obama. Mr. Trump has inherited a hot market. President Obama offered a 28% corporate rate and a closing of certain loopholes to counter the loss of government income. The Republican in Congress never gave it a chance…well, it was Obama’s plan. The $1.5 trillion price tag will have implications on infrastructure; how does this administration hope to pay for a 1.8 trillion dollar infrastructure bill?. Doubling the personal deduction is temporary, while corporate rates are not.
Second, the Stock Market rise is as much of Mr. Trump’s ‘wins’ is an inherited one: however, it’s trickle down to the bottom of the pay scale is a misnomer. It will and has lined the pockets of the top executives.  Don’t be suckered into believing that these onetime bonuses being given recently will continue. Remember, many of those companies underpaid their employees terribly in the first place. It is guilt money. And has the market brought back jobs from overseas? What Americans forget is that these companies move to the poorest nations where labor is dirt cheap. So which is it is Mr. Trump asking us to believe:  companies will increase wages here in America or companies and their shareholders will continue to opt for profit motive? Don’t bet on companies ‘doing the right thing.’
Perhaps most importantly, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA begun under Mr. Nixon) has been stripped to the bone and is run by an administrator, Scott Pruitt, who sued the EPA fourteen times and thinks the EPA is the problem; his mantra is deregulate, deregulate, etc. For example, the administration knows that 80 percent of Arizona voters and 80 percent of Americans support permanent protection from new uranium mining for lands in the Grand Canyon region, but it allowed uranium to mined from our National Parks. Why? Someone is going to big profit, and the watersheds and Colorado River will be threatened.
Oil rigs are proposed to pop up on our coastlines (except Florida, naturally). Why? We already have a surplus of oil and we are shipping it overseas via oil pipelines that are leaking. How soon we forget the BP Oil disaster. Fossil fuels are not the future. Remember the promise of clean coal and more coal jobs returning. Not happening. What is happening is solar, and guess what? The administration just put a 33% tariff on imported panels. One of the top Trump donors, who switched from years of  investing in coal-fired power to solar power named Jim Lamon, CEO of DEPCOM Power, just got the wind knocked out of him as Time reported on February 5th, 2018.  He cannot compete without the cheaper panels from China. Thus, solar energy will cost more for the consumer and he may be out of business, unless he starts making the panels in the USA—which will still cost more for labor. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Trump’s supporters and Republicans in Congress simply ignore the science behind global warming: Mr. Trump pulls out of the Paris Accords and argues the whole thing is a hoax perpetrated by China.

Speaking of China, consider that the pulling out of TPP trade means that China now has all the leverage with all those nations. Mr. Trump claims he wants to negotiate better terms, but that train has left the station. He wants the same with NAFTA, which he says is sucking jobs out of the USA. Really? Which are we to believe: that unemployment is an all time low? That Mexicans are crossing our borders and taking the jobs? Which is it? The truth is that every hour a million dollars of trade crosses both borders each day according to NPR. Besides, if you ask the administration what they want to change…they do not know.
On foreign policy, Jerusalem as the capital of Israel was an unnecessary move and one that will only contradict the administration’s other Middle East priorities, namely stopping Saudi financed terrorism, ISIS, and Iran’s funding of attacks on Israel. Besides, how does it bring any semblance of peace or compromise in the region? Remember, the State Department is gutted of diplomatic advisors, so don’t count on Rex Tillerson to accomplish much…because as Mr. Trump claims, “He’s wasting his time.”

Meanwhile at home, the administrations tells America to ignore whatever ‘bad press it receives’ as “fake news”; claims the FBI and CIA cannot be trusted (unless it is favorable to their policies); ignores the separation among the various agencies like the Justice Department and the White House; and fans the flames of racial division with their eco-nationalism (which is a fancy word for having only certain people and nations as our allies [see Norway}).
That brings me to Russia and the elections which this administration has turned a blind eye to all the work the CIA and FBI have done to alert the nation to the attacks on our outdated voting machines that are easily hacked and a a campaign that had (so far) five major players involved in lying to the FBI and are under incitement or FISA surveillance. Here is the point—if an American voter needs to be told who these men are, then we are not paying attention. And it is that ignorance of factual information that this President’s staff are counting to dismiss any investigation of the financial obligations this President has to foreign nations like Russia. Never, in the history of the republic, has any President been so compromised by foreign powers. That is why, as I speak, they are trying to roll back sanctions on Russia placed by the Congress after the election. (And you did not know that….)
As for immigration, DECA will be leveraged by a $25 billion dollar wall which will come from US taxpayers pockets. If you think the so called ‘bad hombres’ are going to be stopped by a wall, then look no further than your local airport, sea port, or package delivery service…not to mention tunnel builder. The fact is Americans buy the drugs. We are our own worst enemy. As for the poor people trying to cross through the desert, perhaps revising our immigration laws so a 10 year wait is not the norm and that money for bribes are not the ‘golden ticket’ to come here.
So my fellow Americans, there is much to pay attention to. We are the greatest nation on Earth, but to stay that way we must have leaders who are representing the needs of the many and not the few; who are willing to cross party lines and vote their conscience; who know their position should not be a permanent one but merely a torchbearer for the next generation; and that we as Americans must realize that each of us has the responsibility to understand the issues and hold those accountable to the truth…only then can we claim to have the great power the founders proclaimed when they uttered “We the People in order to form a more perfect union….”