Late Tuesday afternoon, with the subtlety of a wrecking ball and the morality of a foreclosure notice, the Trump administration announced the most devastating attack on the U.S. Forest Service in the agency’s 121-year history. Not a budget cut. Not a policy shift. Not a “reorganization.” An execution.

Late Tuesday afternoon, with the subtlety of a wrecking ball and the morality of a foreclosure notice, the Trump administration announced the most devastating attack on the U.S. Forest Service in the agency’s 121-year history. Not a budget cut. Not a policy shift. Not a “reorganization.” An execution.

They’re ripping the headquarters out of Washington and shipping it to Salt Lake City, Utah — the beating heart of the anti-public-lands movement in America. They’re shuttering every single one of the ten regional offices that have governed this agency since Gifford Pinchot built the system over a century ago — and with them, the career professionals who spent entire lifetimes earning the expertise and the authority to push back when politicians came calling with bad ideas and worse motives. They’re destroying more than fifty research facilities across thirty-one states, labs that house decades of irreplaceable long-term science, the kind you literally cannot restart once it’s gone. And they’re replacing all of it — the offices, the scientists, the institutional knowledge, the professional independence — with fifteen political appointees called “state directors,” embedded in state capitals alongside the very governors, legislators, and industry lobbyists who have spent their careers demanding that the Forest Service log more, protect less, and get out of the way.

  • stephen01king@piefed.zipEnglish
    4·
    7 days ago

    You guys need more progressive policies. Examples being:

    1. Proper healthcare system, either through single payer system or through government-controlled pricing of medicine and drugs and a national insurance. The rights to access healthcare for anyone should also be enshrined if possible.
    2. Tax your billionaires properly. The top bracket should not be 37%.
    3. Get rid of Citizen United. Get uncontrolled money lobbying out of your politics. To go even further, you might even want to get rid of corporation personhood and stop people in charge and investors from being shielded from the consequence of their decisions.
    4. Move away from car dependency and invest more in public transport. Get better standards for driving tests and get rid of loopholes that allows car manufacturers to categorise SUVs and all pickup trucks as a work vehicle to avoid emission requirements.
    5. Stricter gun regulations, especially for private gun sales. Psychological evaluation should be a basic requirement to owning a gun.
    6. Improving worker’s rights with federal minimums for paid leave, sick leave, maternity and paternity leave, increased minimum wage to a livable wage, and remove exceptions for minimum wage by counting tips and such.
    7. Invest more in lower education while regulating the price of universities and colleges. Education is one of the first steps toward improving the lives of the future generation and the country.

    These are just some examples of things that can help the US catch up with the rest of the world. It might not be possible to achieve all of these within 4 years, but you guys need a politician that are willing to fight for them instead of ones that only flip flops their opinion based on consultant recommendation.

    • orclev@lemmy.world
      3·
      7 days ago

      I would add to that list banning at a federal level first past the post elections for any partisan election. That’s just as important as overturning Citizens United. We need to break out of this cycle of constantly being forced into voting against a candidate instead of for one because it allows them to keep ratcheting policy ever rightward.