Donald Trump’s first visit to California is about two things: division, and greed.
The official reason for Trump’s visit is to examine prototypes for a new border wall. This wall would cost tens of billions and will never be built. But what it represents is hatred and fear. Trump is a bigot, and Mexican immigrants are his target today. We must stand united as Californians to oppose these vicious attacks on our solidarity.
The other reason for Trump’s visit is campaign fundraising. Trump is expected tonight at a $250,000-a-plate Beverly Hills fundraiser.
More than 58,000 people are unhoused in Los Angeles.
We know our country is badly broken when a reality TV star president wins on building a border wall and comes into our state to wine and dine with heirs and corporatists while the poor sleep on the sidewalks.
I am an anti-corruption candidate. This is because so many of our troubles as a nation stem from abuses of power by corporations. This is a multi-generational fight, and it’s not about businesses, it’s about greed. Collective efforts are how we take care of each other and build a society – but the horrible divisions and inequality we are experiencing are the result of greed-driven corporations that will go so far as to elect and support a Trump to get more.
Trump can raise up to $250,000 a head at a Beverly Hills fundraiser while people sleep on the streets outside because he is giving the 1% and the corporations everything – even $1 trillion in tax cuts!
OpenSecrets reports that donors from Walt Disney Corporation – Anaheim Disneyland avoids millions in taxes each year since a statewide property tax freeze in 1975 – gave Trump more than $5 million in his last election.
While collective efforts can build great things, corporate greed takes the efforts of huge communities of people and turns their labor into dangerous leaders like Trump and those who fund him.
Corporate greed under Trump has ended Net Neutrality protections. It wasn’t the hundreds of smaller ISPs who wanted this – it was a handful of megacorporations that want to regulate the internet themselves, to make as much money as possible at the cost of the consumer.
Energy companies also love Trump. While big name brands stayed away from Trump when it looked like he wouldn’t be president, now that his “drill, baby, drill” brand of politics is back in power, and former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson and a klatch of generals in charge of foreign policy, they will give and give big (don’t think they’ll be dissuaded by Tillerson’s outster today – CIA chiefs are good for oil oligarchs, too). California’s oil companies already save hundreds of millions in taxes each year by avoiding a state severance tax on their extraction wells. And they’re jumping at the chance to drill off our beautiful coast.
Trump is at home with the media, and for all the attacks various hosts hurl at him day in and day out, the corporate media – right and “left” – are at home with Trump. All the outrage and strife Trump stirs up has made the corporate media very, very rich.
Today, let’s turn our outrage at Trump into determination for a corporate-free political future. Things are pretty grim, but we know that together we can turn this darkness into dawn.