Changes: Obama's vs. Trump's

Someone rather smart once said, "The only thing that never changes is change itself." Now, changes range from better to worse. Better change we call "progress". Worse change is regression and means we have to go back someday and repair the damage it does.

Progressives attempt to make changes for the better--a good definition of progress. Conservatives hope to conserve the good things in the present as we progress. A good balance. But reactionaries, like the Tea Partiers, Freedom Caucus, or whatever they are calling themselves this year, want to move us back to "the good old days" which, of course, were far worse than today.

Trump came to power on promises to make big changes in Washington, to make America great again. On the face of it, he has kept that promise. But are his changes for better or worse? Let's compare Trump's "different" solution to a nonexistent problem, the Muslim threat to America, with President Obama's solution to real one, the Ebola outbreak.

Ebola actually attacked the US, and, sadly, a few Americans died from this disease. The threat of its spread was real. Republicans, including congressmen Tom Marino and Lew Barletta, demanded that President Obama ban all flights from the West African nations affected by the disease. Let's just deal with the spread of the disease from those victims already in the US. After all, who cares about Africa?

Obama ignored this simplistic Republican notion and came up with a more complex, a more intelligent and compassionate solution. He organized all relevant departments of the US government, CDC, DoD, NIH, USAID, and sent field hospitals and personnel to those African nations where the disease first emerged. This set of actions wiped out the disease at its source. He not only protected the American population, but by wiping out the virus completely, he made the West African nations, and all other nations on the planet, safe from it.

Trump, on the other hand, the man who promised America change, went back to the same old Republican solution: banning people from entering the US. He responded to the fake threat of ISIS by banning all Muslims from six countries from entering the US until officials could figure out how to modify the already successful 12-18 month vetting process Democrats have in place currently. (http://www.heritage.org/immigration/commentary/how-the-refugee-vetting-process-works) Trump's executive order has been rewritten three times now, because it keeps failing the constitutional test of the courts.

Now that Republicans are in power, they are trying the same thoroughly debunked ideas over and over to take the US back in time: deregulation, 'trickle down' economics, and banning all people from problem countries from entering the US. The Republicans' health care plan does the reverse of Robin Hood: it takes Medicaid from the poor and gives the money saved to the rich in the form of tax breaks.

I see now why one of their policies is to also undo the American education system: they never learn.