Trump threatens to drown out the voices of despair

[applegrove]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-threatens-to-drown-out-the-voices-of-despair/2017/03/29/2b7d99ca-14b4-11e7-9e4f-09aa75d3ec57_story.html?utm_term=.26314eb73a22

By E. J. Dianne, Jr

"SNIP..........

What ever happened to the interests of the working class? Weren’t they supposed to be front and center in the Trump administration?

Here’s one clue: When a policy that helps some corporate sector can be repackaged to make it look like a pro-worker move, President Trump will always hide his real purpose behind a phalanx of workers. Thus did he surround himself with coal miners on Tuesday when he signed a shamefully shortsighted executive order nullifying President Barack Obama’s climate-change efforts.

..........

Actually, Trump’s promise to the “fellas” is no more believable than any of his other promises. As Clifford Krauss and Diane Cardwell reported in the New York Times, the biggest challenges to coal come from market forces — cheap natural gas and the increasing competitiveness of wind and solar power, for example. So don’t count on those jobs.

And workers and consumers are nowhere to be seen or heard when it comes to the rest of Trump’s corporate priorities. The president, for example, is expected to sign a bill passed on a party-line House vote this week that eliminates Obama-era online privacy protections. This is good for Verizon, AT&T, Comcast and other providers that, as The Post’s Brian Fung noted, “will be able to monitor their customers’ behavior online and, without their permission, use their personal and financial information to sell highly targeted ads.” Not exactly empowering to the ordinary Americans.

...........SNIP"