Trumpian mayhem 2.0

And so it begins, the chaotic second term of ‘the man who would be king’, the convicted felon and mob boss, as he takes a sledgehammer to our precious democratic institutions, with help from compliant sycophants in Congress and from an unelected billionaire from South Africa. Rod Serling could hardly come up with a more outrageous, improbable scenario on the Twilight Zone.

Fifty-six years ago, for reasons still unclear, I dropped out of college in the middle of my senior year and volunteered for the draft. I then refused to agree to a third year of service, basically guaranteeing I’d be infantry. In other words, foolish or not, I chose to go to war when I didn’t have to, for a country I believed in, a country seen as a shining light by much of the world, the ‘arsenal of democracy’, as Churchill once described it.

And now, to see it all come down to this? To all who voted for this vile, unhinged, hateful man – shame on you. When the day of reckoning comes, and I have no doubt that it WILL come, I’m not going to say, “I told you so” – I’m saying it now.
Lynn Scott, retired miner
Soudan, Minnesota

What would Jehovah do?

Won’t Trump’s new Gaz-a-Lago resort get in the way of the Greater Israel project? Will Jehovah grant a sub-lease like that? At least “gentrification” sounds better than genocide and ethnic cleansing.
David A Sorensen
Duluth, Minnesota

Will saner minds come to the rescue of the planet?

Climate change is of growing importance to Americans. A CBS News poll taken last October showed 45% of voters viewed it as “very important.” Yet, President Trump continues to dismiss climate science, and policies to lessen or adapt to climate change, and vows to disregard our past international pledges to slow global warming. Record and rhetoric seem out of touch with nearly half of American voters.

These political crosswinds make predictions about future climate policies difficult. Will other participants – Congress, state and local governments, businesses, environmental groups – step forward to resist attempts at implementing carbon-friendly deregulation and subsidies for fossil fuel interests?  

As a climate voter, I certainly hope such actions would occur. Moreover, as economic history shows, when economies become fundamentally unbalanced, they do not last. They are not sustainable. Global economic growth, fueled by our continued burning of fossil fuels, is no longer compatible with stability in planetary ecosystems – the carbon cycle, predictable climate patterns and myriad ecological services essential for planetary life.

The notion of a “triple bottom line” has been suggested as a metric for determining the sustainability of business decisions. The“three P’s” as it’s also known consist of profit, people and planet. Sustainability is defined as only those actions that give some importance to each. (Google for a multicolored graphic.) Obviously, the challenge for decision-makers is assigning, for any given situation, the relative weights of importance of each. 

An even stronger case can be made, I believe, for applying this model of choice in the public sector, and particularly to climate policies. Market-based incentives like carbon taxes, the clean energy subsidies and regulatory reforms (on permitting, fuel standards, power plant emissions) of the Inflation Reduction Act all offer myriad opportunities for guiding our economy onto a more sustainable path. 
Robert Schlack
Bayfield, Wisconsin