To the editor:
I read with interest Bob Sherman’s proud endorsement of President Donald Trump. As his letter is clearly for a Canadian audience here in Kelowna, I would like him to know that while we are polite, we are not uninformed. He says Trump’s great accomplishments to date are far too many to list in his letter. Well, let me help him here, and apply them to his current hometown, Kelowna.
A coal-powered power plant could now be built, preferably along Mission Creek as the laws to protect the waterways have been as decimated as those protecting the atmosphere. Trump is also reducing the automobile emission standards going forward because human behaviour has no effect on climate. If you want to see what our air will be looking like, check out the videos on the London smog of 1952.
And while we are on his impact on the environment, through his secretary Pruitt, the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) has now, for the most part, excluded human risk assessment through exposure to chemicals such as dry-cleaning solvents, paint thinners via air, water and soil.
Moving on to guns, since the slaughter of children in schools has no impact on Trump, in Kelowna, we would open up many gun shops with limited checks on buyers, and promote open carrying of weapons in restaurants, at university and in churches. On his recommendation, we would try to get teachers to carry guns to protect the school children.
As for healthcare, we would cancel health insurance on 15 per cent of residents, have modest but expensive coverage for others and gold-plated coverage for politicians, the wealthy and some government employees, to bring the percentages in line with the good old U.S.A. Oh yes, and forget about women’s right to control their own bodies, as abortions for example, become increasingly more difficult to obtain and government planned parenthood programs are defunded.
In the agriculture sector, there would be labor shortages as limits are placed on temporary workers and many migrant Mexican workers stay home, wary of their treatment.
As Trump uses terrorist attacks in other countries to bolster his immigration policies, little attention is paid to US domestic violence, where for example more people are murdered in Chicago annually than are killed by all terrorist attacks across Western Europe, hundreds more in most years. Or compare similar sized cities Hamilton, Ontario (10 murders last year) and Baltimore, 400 miles to the south (343), not an issue to Trump.
As for the economy I chuckle at supporters who credit Trump for the state of the US economy. One and a half years into their mandates presidents Reagan and Bush2 took no responsibility for the recessionary conditions of the US economy, blaming it on the previous administration and monetary policy, but about 3 months after the Obama era, Trump was in full crowing mode. I would think any economy should be humming if the country is running a trillion dollar deficit annually. Just this week Trump borrowed another $12 billion to prop up farmers hurt by his trade wars. The Republican senator from Nebraska said the farmers want to sell their products, not be subsidized.
I grew up in Montreal admiring the USA; their WWII effort, baseball, Eisenhower, Kennedy, the Civil Rights Movement, success of the Vietnam War protest, but the current president is throwing a lot of shade on my perspective. The Trumpian world is not for me.
Don Henderson
Kelowna