Can you breathe money?
It’s inevitable that this week everyone will lose their minds. The impeachment process is at the point where the Judiciary committee will begin taking witnesses from both the accusers and from the President to decide on the actual impeachment of the President of the United States.
Presidential supporters make a claim that nothing the President has done has been illegal. Even if it was, it’s not bad enough to warrant impeachment.
Let’s think about that for a moment. If you were to break a local law, wherever you live, and were caught in the act, wouldn’t the local police arrest you? Wouldn’t the district attorney prosecute you? Of course, they would. So why on earth would anyone think that the president’s illegal activities shouldn’t be called out and prosecuted? Beyond me.
All of that remains to be seen as the first witnesses are called for December 4th, the day this is scheduled to appear. In the meantime, let’s talk about why I’m not a Trump fan.
One of the first things I remember he did as President was begin the rollback of environmental laws. He’s continued this roll back unabated ever since. Watch dog groups have already reported that air and water quality has declined since he took office in 2017. I have to take a moment here because I was a teen when people in the United States started to become serious about the environment. Why did they?
Because the water quality was so toxic, water down stream hundreds of miles away couldn’t be used for drinking water. It’s because air quality was so bad you couldn’t see a mountain half a mile away. I have personal experiences with these things. In my hometown, leather mills routinely dumped their toxic wastewater from the tanning of hides into the local streams. I remember knowing when to hold my breath when my mom drove us across a bridge over one of those streams. The vapors would make your eyes water. https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Gloversville-tanneries-fade-away-but-illness-8343901.php This wasn’t a one-off thing. Towns and cities all across the northeast had the same things going on.
Air quality also was a nightmare. Children and the elderly and anyone with any respiratory problems at all were told not to go outside. When I was a young airman in the Air Force, I met my future husband and once in awhile we’d drive down to Los Angeles, where he came from. I hated the look of the air as we descended into the L.A. basin. The air was a brown-gray sludge color. I wanted to hold my breath it looked so bad. We stayed at his mom’s house. A small place built after World War II for the returning veterans looking for a place to start their families.
On one trip, it was raining the night we arrived. In the morning I got up and looked out of the window. I was totally shocked to see mountains, not very far away. I had no idea they were there. I’d never seen them on previous trips.
So now, with over four decades of work to improve these and other environmental disasters, we were getting to the point where with exceptions, people were no longer told they should keep their children inside because the air quality was poor. They were at the point where the water flowing through their hometowns wasn’t going to kill them. https://cityofjohnstown.ny.gov/parks.html and scroll down for the entry on Cayadutta Creek.
Instead, the President is rolling back environmental protection laws. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/climate/trump-environment-rollbacks.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fclimate&fbclid=IwAR2u1Ut0kYUlGeU6Vysal3s6KMmwyqdGBUgOKs2yW2dstdB6_fJVZHXsYac.
I’m angry about this. Since 2017, scientists can see where the air and water quality is rapidly degrading. Why? Well, so that Trump’s oligarch friends can make money by not taking care of their own trash. His rollbacks allow these mega-corporations to just dump their toxins into the air, the water, and onto the land. It saves them money. Too bad for the people down wind, downstream, or who live nearby. I don’t know about you, but spending my tax dollars to clean up some corporation’s dump sites is not how I want to spend my money. If it makes whatever product too expensive for consumers if the company has to actually pay to take care of their waste, well, then, perhaps we don’t need whatever the item is.
I have to pay to have my trash dealt with properly. Why don’t big companies?
Of course, his rollbacks of environmental laws isn’t impeachable. It is however, short-sighted, dastardly, unethical, a health hazard, and plain wrong. It endangers people’s health. This doesn’t even include the rollbacks that protect wildlife preserves, national parks, animal protections, and more.
The news reports that the economy is growing, that is if you don’t count the record deficit. Unemployment is down. Both of those are good things. But if it’s at the expense of our environment, that’s not a good thing. You can’t breathe money. You can’t drink money. You can’t eat money. If you or your family are choking to death on the air, or if the the water coming out of your faucets will kill you, what good is a job?
Think about that during the next election.
