People Will Die, What’s New?


A man delivers heating oil to a house in Maine in 2015. CREDIT: AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty.

A man delivers heating oil to a house in Maine in 2015. CREDIT: AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty.

That’s a familiar scene. Living rural, I’m on propane for heating and cooking. Propane is expensive, very expensive. Most people who live rural have large tanks, which when full, might be able to see them through a winter. Depending on how harsh the winter might be, sometimes a tank will last, sometimes it won’t. We have two tanks, totally 1,500 gallons. We rarely have the full amount. Naturally, it’s cheaper to fill your tanks in the dead of Summer, but that won’t keep you all the way through to winter, especially in places like Maine, or nDakota. We’re still in Winter here. There have been times when there’s been no power; there have been times when there’s been a heating failure, and it’s not easy to cope when you don’t have heat. When you don’t have heat, you’re prone to doing unsafe things, like opening the oven, and cranking it up, stringing electric heaters everywhere, lighting candles, firing up kerosene heaters and so on. And in such cases, people often die. People also die of hypothermia, because yes, it gets that damn cold. Out here in rural land, USA, we’re a tad short on mansions. Houses tend to be old, and not terribly energy efficient, and subject to drafts. A lot of older people simply close off most of their house and live in one or two rooms come winter, as do a lot of people without a ton of money. Most of us rural types don’t have handy get aways in Florida, either.

The Tiny Tyrant is so unhinged from reality, it never crosses that atrophied pea brain of his that most people in this country are not wealthy, they don’t have mansions, they don’t have the wherewithal to con people in order to stuff their pockets, and get very concerned when faced with the choice of either starving to death or freezing to death. The same people who, while faced with such dire choices, are having their pockets picked clean by the fucking Tiny Tyrant, so he can hide out in his Florida Fucking Mansion near to every weekend. Over $3 Million every effing trip. This weekend marks the 5th weekend, and the 7th weekend spent flaking off to huge sums of money. The Monstrous Narcissist Evil which is Trump is happily planning to kill off the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which uses very little money in comparsion to say, the military budget, but is crucial in keeping people alive in not only brutal winters, but brutal summers as well. As Global Warming gets worse, also hastened by the The Monstrous Narcissist Evil Trump, both of these extremes will worsen, and without aid, even more people will die. Not that the thought of people dying ruffles Trump’s tiny, smooth brain.

“You’ve got a population that’s got very little money, not able to work because of their age or their health, and this is the way we keep them in their apartments and keep them safe,” said Wolfe.

“If you withdraw that, some of them will die. But that doesn’t seem too important to them at the moment,” he said.

“He doesn’t know anybody like that. They don’t belong to Trump’s club.”

And that last line sums it up. In the Tiny Tyrant’s world, people without money aren’t even on the radar. As far as Trump is concerned, they barely exist, and they certainly don’t matter. Not that it would make much difference if he was more aware, it still wouldn’t register. There isn’t any empathy in The Monstrous Narcissist Evil which is Trump. There is plenty of hypocrisy, though! There’s a mine full of it. If only hypocrisy were food, then everyone would have enough. The Tiny Tyrant is intent on killing off any and all programs which so much as hint of helping people, and won’t shut up about “slashing” the budget (while massively increasing the military money), while the money being spent out of taxpapyer’s pockets by the fucking evil asshole is overwhelming:

President Trump doesn’t want to spend federal dollars on after-school programs, meals for poor people, or heating assistance that helps keep folks alive.

But he has no problem wasting more than $3 million a pop to spend weekends at his private Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. Trump has already made four trips there since becoming president on January 20, and on Friday he confirmed he’s headed there this weekend for the fifth time.

[…]

Despite vowing during his campaign that he “would rarely leave the White House because there’s so much work to be done” and “would not be a president who took vacations” because “you don’t have time to take time off,” Trump has visited Trump-branded properties each of the past six weekends. That streak will hit seven when Trump lands at Mar-a-Lago later Friday.

In fact, Trump has spent time at Trump-branded property every weekend of his presidency other than the very first, when he created chaos throughout the country by signing a Muslim ban executive order that was later stayed by a federal court.

[…]

As Quartz reported on Friday, after this weekend, Trump will have already spent about $16.5 million on trips to Mar-a-Lago. For that amount, Meals on Wheels could feed 5,967 seniors for a year and after school programs could feed 114,583 children for a year.

Remember though, that starving seniors and children don’t matter! Nope.

On Thursday, Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney defended the draconian cuts included in the Trump administration’s proposed budget by arguing that the federal government can’t ask “a coal miner in West Virginia or a single mom in Detroit to pay for” programs like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. But one wonders whether those struggling Americans would rather have public radio or dole out their share of the $3.3 million a self-proclaimed billionaire is spending each weekend to mingle with his ludicrously wealthy club members down in Florida.

Oh yes, of course, why a coal miner or a single mom are just your general dumbfucks who have absolutely no interest whatsoever in quality educational TV, or good quality radio broadcasts, oh no. Why, they are just stupid peons, they don’t think, or feel, or care about anything at all, no. Certainly, they’d have no interest in their children having access to good education and information, no sir. They are, however, supremely happy to have the food taken out of their mouths in order to support the Tiny Tyrant when he wanders off to play golf and collect those $200,000 dues from his “friends” at the club.

Via Think Progress: Ending home heating subsidies is a choice to let people die. Trump to spend 7th consecutive weekend at Trump-branded property, at enormous cost to taxpayers.

Comments

  1. says

    Can you imagine Trump spending a night in the back of an SUV, wrapped up in a blanket, running the motor for 15 minutes every hour to power the inverter to keep the house’s pipes from freezing? Yeah, me either. Fortunately, global warming!

    That’s a familiar scene. Living rural, I’m on propane for heating and cooking

    And you don’t need good internet, either. Because you rural folks’ tax-base is small something something something. (spits)

  2. Kengi says

    It makes sense in conservative-world. Once their dream budget is passed, these people will die from starvation long before winter comes again. Only libruls would want to give money to dead people to heat their homes!

  3. springa73 says

    Back to the Gilded Age! Yeah, I rely on heating oil for my house and was lucky to get financial help from family to pay the bills when I was unemployed. Taking support away from people who aren’t so lucky is unconscionable, but it’s the “logical” endpoint of a worldview that sees everyone who is poor or vulnerable as a parasite who doesn’t deserve any help.

  4. says

    Also, we shouldn’t forget the around $183 effing million it’s taking to “protect” Mrs. Trump and the kid, as they refuse to move to Washington DC.

  5. rq says

    For that amount, Meals on Wheels could feed 5,967 seniors for a year and after school programs could feed 114,583 children for a year.

    For a year. For a fucking year.

  6. says

    Caine:

    Also, we shouldn’t forget the around $183 effing million it’s taking to “protect” Mrs. Trump and the kid, as they refuse to move to Washington DC.

    And aren’t these the same conservatives who railed against the expense of protecting the Obama children?

  7. says

    Was not Trump the champion of the opressed rural people? Chamipon of those for whom Democrats care too little? I am sure those people he does so enthusiastically try and kill now will vote for him next term again, in the hope that while he is killing them, he is killing “the others” faster. Or they will find a way to blame Clinton or Obama for what Trump is doing for them.

  8. says

    Charly:

    I am sure those people he does so enthusiastically try and kill now will vote for him next term again, in the hope that while he is killing them, he is killing “the others” faster.

    That’s actually the baseline reasoning of his hardcore supporters. In the end, they don’t care how many people get screwed, including themselves and their neighbours, as long as all those liberals and icky type people get it in the neck first.

  9. says

    I’ve wondered how we can manage to reduce the population of Trump voters, but my chosen method was persuading them to change their minds. I never dreamed that the Angry Cheeto himself would advocate schemes for making his supporters die early…

  10. says

    In the end, they don’t care how many people get screwed, including themselves and their neighbours, as long as all those liberals and icky type people get it in the neck first.

    It’s some perverse version of the crab bucket.
    But it’s also the same everywhere. We have a state election next weekend and the AfD is campaigning on social issues. Nevermind that pensions are a federal issue and as such irrelevant for these elections, they also claim they want to “fight poverty”. As I have read as much of their program as I was capable of without puking, I know they want to cut support for single parents (read: single mothers) because “the government shouldn’t subsidise those choices, especially since they destroy families*” and their solution to the clusterfuck that was the last big welfare reform is to introduce forced labour.

    *People also speculate that it’s a personal revenge issue for Petry whose ex husband saw where she was going, took the kids and left.

Leave a Reply