Half-Baked Executive Orders

"Half-Baked" strikes me as a good description of President Trump's executive orders. Various publications have commented on a number of the executive orders.

Trump's executive orders not well thought through, Politico:
"The breakneck pace of Trump's executive actions might please his supporters, but critics are questioning whether the documents are being rushed through without the necessary review from agency experts and lawmakers who will bear the burden of actually carrying them out."

The "wall" order is vague, The Atlantic:
The order is "really just a set of instructions for Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly. The American public still doesn't know how big the wall will be, when it will be built, or how it will be paid for -- to pick only the most glaring questions."

Trump to suspend refugee program, Politico:
"[A] State Department official said the White House had done next to no consulting with his agency on whether the executive orders are legally tenable or what impact they would have on America's alliances."

Trump needs to find workers to build a wall, Bloomberg:
"A labor shortage has left few hands to build houses and factories in the region, where wages have already been rising and projects delayed. Now, the president's plan for 'immediate construction of a border wall' will force the government to find legal builders for a project that could employ thousands, if not tens of thousands. About half of construction workers in Texas are undocumented..."

The attack on regulation will be subtle, The Atlantic:
"Offered under the label of regulatory 'reform,' what is being contemplated is complicating the rulemaking process even further so that the machinery of public administration produces few new regulations and courts have even more power to rebuff those rules that do emerge."

"EPA science under scrutiny by Trump political staff" reports AP:
"The Trump administration is scrutinizing studies and data published by scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency, while new work is under a 'temporary hold' before it can be  released. The communications director for President Trump's transition team at EPA, Doug Erickson, [has said] the review extends to all existing content on the federal agency's website, including details of scientific evidence showing that the Earth's climate is warming and man-made carbon emissions are to blame."

Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush are two presidents in the recent past who had scant regard for science. It now appears that Trump will make them look like pikers.

What I find stunning is that the Republicans raised unholy hell about President Obama's executive orders, but we haven't heard a pip out of them regarding President Trump's executive orders. So executive orders signed by a black Democratic president were destroying  the republic, while executive orders from a white Republican president are pearls of wisdom, not to be questioned.

Scorched Earth
It is widely anticipated that President Trump will become a dedicated enemy of the environment. Here are a few ways that Trump might carry out a scorched earth policy:
1. Weaken the Antiquities Act of 1906, which President Obama recently used to preserve 1.65 million acres of federal land.

2. Curtail public comment regarding decisions to change U.S. land-management policies.

3. Open up lesser-known, less-visited public lands for fossil-fuel development.

4. Reverse the decision to review alternative routes for the Dakota Access Pipeline.

5. Rescind President Obama's moratorium on new coal-mining leases for federal lands.

6. Gut NASA's climate research.

7. Drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuse, which is home to some of the greatest wildlife diversity found in the Arctic Circle. (Source: "Scorched Earth," The Nation, January 30, 2017.)

Breaking News on Steve Mnuchin
Democrats are boycotting the Senate hearing on Steve Mnuchin, the Treasury Secretary-designee, because he lied to them on using robo-signing of bank documents. The Courage Campaign has called Mnuchin a corporate criminal, because his bank, OneWest, "mugged thousands of people for their homes instead of their wallets, including more than 30,000 foreclosures in California."

The Courage Campaign refers to a "memo leaked from the California Department of Justice [showing] just how far OneWest Bank's criminality, callousness, and greed went under Mnuchin's leadership. Essentially, the bank falsified the dates on potentially thousands of foreclosure documents in order to expedite the foreclosure, depriving homeowners of critical due process rights that could have given them the opportunity to save their homes. One former federal prosecutor said Mnuchin's bank had 'a pattern of creating whatever documents that appear necessary at the time... to grease the wheels of the foreclosure machine.' "

Losing Settled Rights
"With Donald Trump and Mike Pence in the White House and a conservative majority once again in the Court, decisions that seemed like settled law only a few days ago -- gay marriage, legal abortion, the right to join a union, indeed the very right to citizenship itself to anyone born inside the country may well come under attack." (Source: D. D. Gutterplan, "Mourn, Resist, Organize," The Nation, November 28/December 6, 2016.)

ADDENDUMS:
*A PEW poll has found that 50% pf white Americans think African Americans are treated less fairly in interactions with police. Yet, 75% of whites say the police use the right amount of force for each situation, versus 33% of African Americans. These findings appear to be contradictory to a significant degree; however, there is little doubt that law enforcement is the primary agent of the widening gap in race relations in the nation.