#79) Almost 100!

April 27, 2017

Dear Mr. President,

I recently saw a video of one of your campaign rallies AND since you are approaching your 100 days in office milestone I thought it a good time to check on how many of those campaign promises you have followed through on.

Here goes:

            -drain the swamp…nope

            -Hilary locked up…no

            -border wall built…not quite yet

            -who's paying for it…American taxpayers

            -improved relations with Russia…ha ha!

            -repeal/replace Obamacare….nope

            -Muslim ban…not even close

            -replace thousands of manufacturing jobs in the rust belt…no, not exactly

-remove environmental regulations that keep us safe…Yes!  Congratulations.  You will be remembered as the guy who took us back to the industrial revolution (with all the horrors that that entails).

-China formally reprimanded as a currency manipulator…LOL

-stay out of foreign entanglements…hardly!

It's not that you didn't try.  It's just that half the stuff you pledged to do is illegal and the other half requires legislative action and even though the Congress is majority Republican, they don't seem to want to work with you.  Weird.

Sincerely,

Amy Beaton

#78) Information vs. Knowledge

April 26, 2017

Dear Mr. President,

The other day when you met with Italian Prime Minister Gentiloni you were trying to praise Italy's contributions to art and culture but you mispronounced the name Verdi and then said that Luciano Pavarotti is (not was) "a friend of mine.  A great friend."  He, of course, died in 2007.  Much like Frederick Douglass (19^th century abolitionist, also very dead) who you said is an "example of somebody who's done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more I notice."  (At least you didn't say he was your friend). Which all leads me to think about the difference between information and knowledge.

As POTUS you have access to information, almost unlimited information.  You are surrounded by staff able tell you almost anything that you wish you to hear.  But what you don't have is knowledge.  Knowledge is what makes someone uniquely them.  It is only acquired through experience and/or education.  Knowledge is the way that you collect and cluster information to make it useful.  It's how you apply information.

When you make mistakes like you did with Mr. Gentiloni, it is more than just a social gaff, it is what's at the root of why I don't think you should be the President of the United States; you don't have the knowledge.  You look at the information presented to you but you only get a partial picture because you are missing the ever-critical knowledge that would make the information useful and meaningful.

You have tremendous business knowledge through your years of real estate development and tax evasion.  Now if I wanted to build a hotel in a large American city with someone else's money and avoid paying taxes on it, you would definitely be my go-to guy because that is your area of expertise and knowledge.  But that's not what I want.  I want comprehensive, affordable heath care.  I want an environment that is safe and clean. I want banks to stop stealing money from hard working Americans.  I want affordable and safe prescription medications. I want a government that works together to legislate quickly and equitably.  I want world peace.  And you just don't have the experience and/or education to make these things possible.  This becomes more and more clear to me with every passing day and with every new blunder. 

Play to your strengths Mr. Trump.  This isn't the job for you and no amount of information can turn you into the world leader that you would like to be or that we need you to be.

Sincerely,

Amy Beaton

#77) Don't Give Up

April 25, 2017

Dear Mr. President,

There has been some buzz in the media in the last few days that Republicans are preparing to release another health care proposal.  When you were asked about this you said, "This is a great bill.  This is a great plan and it will be great health care.  It's evolving.  It was never a give up. The press sort of reported there was a give up. There was no give up.  We started."

From what I can tell, this new incarnation of your health care plan would allow insurers to retain (for higher fees of course) or drop people with medical conditions.  It would allow insurers to pick and choose whom and what to cover…which completely defeats the purpose of health care.  It leaves us all at the mercy of insurance companies AGAIN.

And I love that you are pretending that you didn't "give up" on health care a few weeks ago when you literally said "We are moving on" to tax reform.  When the health care bill was pulled, Paul Ryan even said, "Obamacare is the law of the land for the foreseeable future."  That isn't the media calling it a "give up".  That's the Speaker of the House calling it a "give up".  Stop blaming everything on the media. 

The selective memory game you play is getting old.

Sincerely,

Amy Beaton

#76) What's Up With That?

April 23, 2017

Dear Mr. President,

Hey, what's up with those Russian jets buzzing around Alaska?

Can we blame this on Sarah Palin somehow?

Sincerely,

Amy Beaton

#75) Heroin

April 22, 2017

Dear Mr. President,

Today we need to talk about something hard – heroin.  Do you know about this stuff?  People tell me a hit of heroin is cheaper than a happy meal at McDonald's…can you believe that?!  I can't actually fact check that myself but here are the facts that I can report:

-the number of deaths from heroin nationwide was about 2,000 in 2002.  In 2015 it was 14,000 (a 700% increase). 

-heroin deaths have increase more than 26% annually over the course of the last 13 years.  This is, literally, exponential growth.

-in 2012 259 million prescriptions were written for opioids which is more than

enough to give every adult in America their own bottle of pills

-heroin usage has increased among all demographic groups (sex, age, race, income)

-in a 2014 survey of people in treatment for opioid addiction, 94% said that they chose to use heroin because prescription opioids were "far more expensive and harder to obtain".  Heroin was easy and cheap.

My daughter was exposed to heroin in-utero. She is 21 now.  She's beautiful and kind and funny.  But she is also completely fucked because guess what…heroin destroys your brain. Yup, it's true.  She has an overall IQ of around 100 (pretty average) but a 3^rd grade reading level (on a good day) and don't even get me started on her numeracy.  Let's just say it's bad.  Remember those fried egg, anti-drug commercials from the 70s that said, "This is your brain."  Crack egg.  Sizzle, sizzle.  "This is your brain on drugs."  Well, it turns out that's a pretty accurate description of a brain on drugs.

My daughter is 21 now so she was at the crest of the heroin tidal wave that has now engulfed most of the nation.  But there are tens of thousands of children following along behind her.  Tens of thousands of children who will never meet their potential. Children whose lives will be forever handicapped and limited and they will need educations and jobs, homes and healthcare.  I think we will look back in 30-40 years and call them the lost generation.  And there are a LOT of them Mr. Trump.  So put on your big boy britches and make a plan worthy of the greatest and wealthiest country on Earth because as Whitney Houston so poignantly pointed out, children ARE in fact the future.  And from where I'm sitting the future looks pretty bleak.

Today a funeral is being held for my friend's ex – the father of her 10 year old daughter.  He died from an overdose and had been a long-time user.  That means he wasn't the most reliable father.  Certainly not very responsible either.  But he WAS a father; a living, breathing person who was kind and loving and generous and who had a daughter that loved him very much.  Now he is gone, just another statistic.  Just one more of the 150 people who die each and every day from heroin and opioids.  Another death that leaves behind friends, families and children who must pick up the pieces and continue on as best they can, with hearts that will never feel whole again. Millions of people united by grief and tragedy.

These are hard times Mr. Trump.  This is a problem that is still growing and must be addressed aggressively and comprehensively. For once, do the right thing even though it's hard: rather than spend $25 billion on that stupid and unnecessary wall, apply that money to addiction and treatment programs.  That's how you can really make America great again.

Sincerely,

Amy Beaton

#74) Political Theater

April 21, 2017

Dear Mr. President,

At your inaugural address in January you said, "We will bring back our jobs.  We will follow two simple rules: buy American and hire American."  That sounded pretty good and lots of people cheered.  And then on Tuesday you went to Wisconsin, America's heartland, to promote your executive order that encourages companies to buy American and hire American.  But I've got some problems with this catch phrase;  you don't follow those "two simple rules" in your own businesses, the loss of American manufacturing jobs is mostly due to mechanization/automation, and free trade isn't the root of all evil.

I'm not an investigative journalist by any means, but in just a 20 minute Internet search I found that the Mar-a-Lago resort recently hired 64 foreign workers through the H-2B visa program.  Trump Wine (owned by Eric) hired an "undisclosed" number of foreign workers through the H-2A visa program.  Ivanka's clothing line is made almost entirely in China and is shipped in to the US.  And this is just the most cursory of searches.  Truly I didn't have to go very far to turn these things up. Do as I say, not as I do may work for a parent scolding a 5 year old, but it doesn't work for an international businessman turned President of the United States. 

I get that you want to make America great again (who doesn't?), but our economy has been built largely on free trade.  I'm not saying that we shouldn't look out for #1, but free trade isn't the great evil you purport it to be, and curbing it is not a cure-all for what ails the American economy.  It's complicated.  "Buy American, hire American" is a gross oversimplification of a huge and nuanced problem.  Your trip to Wisconsin and your executive order are nothing more than political theater (probably because we are nearing your 100 day mark and you want to appear as if you are making good on your campaign promises). 

Also, I don't have time to explain the decline of manufacturing to you, but you should really look into it because the real job killer of American manufacturing is automation (not China and Mexico). The shrinking of employment in manufacturing is a worldwide trend because technology is being used globally…it's not particular to us.  Doesn't matter how catchy your catch phrase is, machines are here to stay.

Sincerely,

Amy Beaton

#73) The Campaign Is Really Over

April 20, 2017

Dear Mr. President,

Sometimes it seems like you miss being on the campaign trail.  I can see why too because on the campaign trail you get to give the same speech over and over again.  You can talk about throwing Hilary Clinton in jail (or building the wall, or radical Islamic terrorists, or repealing Obamacare) in Wisconsin, and then 6 hours later in Kentucky, and then 8 hours later in Florida.  The repetition really gives you time to get comfortable with the information. So even if you don't know about the issues you can spew forth a lot of memorized facts (possibly not true facts) without ever even thinking.

But now that you are actually the President of the United States, it is time to start thinking.  Stop relying on your old stand-by come backs when someone calls you out, like "the protesters are being paid" and "that's fake news" and my favorite, "only the media care about that".  It's time to start reading the briefings and learning about what's actually going on in the world and crafting some presidential-type of responses.  Your improvisational approach to leadership hasn't landed you in too much troubled yet…but it will.  So instead of just reframing your key campaign themes (because that's what gets you the biggest applause and makes you feel most comfortable) learn about something new and add a few new words to your vocabulary.  It will be good for you.

On the campaign trail you had your stump speech about Obamacare down pat.  You could holler it out loud and smooth like a barker at the circus because you repeated it a hundred times a day in every city that you landed in.  But when faced with the reality of creating a new health care plan, this is what you had to say:

            "We have to come up, and we can come up with many different plans.

            In fact, plans you don't even know about will be devised because we're

            going to come up with plans – health care plans – that will be so good."

This was your plan to "replace" Obamacare. And we all know how that ended.  Maybe get yourself a tutor or something.

Sincerely,

Amy Beaton

#72) Science Rocks!

April 19, 2017

Dear Mr. President,

Do you know what's awesome?  Science.  There is probably no other single thing that has brought so much health, wealth, or happiness to all of humankind.  Now because your election has lit the fires of protest and activism all across America, you will have a few hundred thousand science-loving folk descending on you on April 22.  The purpose of this science march is a "public celebration of science and the enormous public service it provides to our democracy, our economy, and our daily lives."

I really don't understand why your budget proposes to cut so much science-related funding.  That's really not a smart move. Think of it this way: Science education develops critical thinking, problem solving skills, and perseverance (and don't we all want that for our students?) Scientific knowledge and expertise is one of our biggest exports (think medicine and computers).  What better way to "build our brand" as you businessmen say then to support scientific research and development that keeps the United States at the forefront of world science issues.  Right now highly skilled doctors, computer programmers, and researchers from all over the world want to come HERE because the US is the epicenter of world-changing science.  Science transcends geopolitical boundaries.  It's a unifier, and don't we need a little more global unity right now?  There are many issues such as climate change and diminishing energy sources that will only be solved through the diligent and rigorous application of science.  Melting glaciers in Greenland means loss of waterfront property in Palm Beach (sorry Mar-a-Lago).  Cutting funding to science related programs right now just seems like shooting yourself in the foot.  And why cause more problems for yourself…you've got quite enough already.

I wish that I could be there for the march but I will be leaving Washington on Thursday.  Take my advice and listen to the demonstrators.  Read the signs, listen to the speeches, and at least try to understand their messages because right now you don't understand this issue very well and you are making decisions that will affect our country for generations to come.

Sincerely,

Amy Beaton

#71) Are We Having Fun Yet?

April 18, 2017

Dear Mr. President,

I follow politics the way most people follow sports; I've got my favorite teams and my favorite players, I cheer for the victories and I groan for the defeats and I enjoy watching to see what will happen next. But this thing I've got following you, it's not fun.  It's not a pastime and I definitely don't enjoy it.  It's depressing and scary at the same time because you are supremely unqualified to be president yet you control the fate of our country and the 324,000,000 people who live here.  But writing to you, bringing people's attention to your actions, and shining the light of common sense on your foibles feels very important to me.  So here I sit and write.

My husband always accuses me of oversimplifying things, and maybe I do.  But some things just don't need to be over-complicated.  Take North Korea for example: do you know why we haven't attacked them openly despite their years of military buildup?  Because they will attack back.  Do you know what's better than nuclear war in the Pacific Rim?  A cold war in the Pacific Rim (hey don't laugh, we did it for 45 years with the Soviet Union).  Do you know what's less effective than strategic patience?  Mike Pence in a leather bomber jacket making threats like a schoolyard bully.

If you'd like me to untangle any other weighty issues on your presidential to-do list I'll be in Washington, DC Sunday through Thursday.  Give me a call. We'll do lunch.

Sincerely,

Amy Beaton

#70) Talk To Me Goose

April 17, 2017

Dear Mr. President,

What the hell is Mike Pence doing in the Korean demilitarized zone wearing a f***ing leather jacket like he's 20 year old Tom Cruise in Top Gun??!  Do not, I repeat, DO NOT start World War III in North Korea. 

Kim Jong-un may be crazier than a shit-house rat but he's NOT stupid.  That's why he is so dangerous.  You, on the other hand, have remarkably poor judgment, an erratic temperament (at best), and a falsely elevated sense of accomplishment because of your moderate successes bombing Syria and Afghanistan.  So this is a recipe for disaster!  Take a breath, slow down, bring Mike Pence home for God's sake, and re-think your strategy.  Oh wait…you don't actually have a strategy so I guess there's nothing to re-think.  Great.

Flying by the seat of your pants and making decisions as you go probably makes you feel very successful and powerful in the moment.  And your foreign adventurism this month (bombing Syria and Afghanistan) was accomplished with very little negative fallout.  So all in all you're feeling like you've got this global-leadership-bombing-sovereign-nations-whenever-you-feel-like-it-thing mastered.  Well you don't!  Not even close.

How did we even get here?!  How did we arrive at a place where a one-term governor from Indiana whose claims to fame are that he's a former talk show host and a hard core Christian is now standing in the Korean DMZ threatening a foreign, nuclear-armed nation doing the bidding of a former reality TV personality and real estate developer who is armed with our nuclear codes?  It's unfathomable and yet here we are.

North Korea is not a problem to be solved by dropping a single bomb or launching a single missile strike.  Messing with North Korea will not be quick, clean, or simple.  You must understand this.  You must also understand the global implications of bombing North Korea.  Any action you take in North Korea will be answered by both Russia and China.  Remember them?  Are you prepared for that?  Do you have a f***ing plan?!  If so I'd love to hear it!

Sincerely,

Amy Beaton

#69) Tax Time: Finances, Clonflics, Honesty

April 16, 2017

Dear Mr. President,

Well April 15, tax day, has come and gone.  Protests and demonstrations were held all over the country including Berkley, California where things turned violent and at least 20 arrests were made and about a dozen people were sent to the hospital with injuries - all because you refuse to make your taxes public.  You do seem to bring out the worst in people.  You should also know that the pro-Trump group involved in the Berkley melee were white supremacists. Probably that doesn’t bother you, but it bothers me, quite a bit actually. These are dangerous and evil people and they support you.

You sent out two tweets yesterday, both wondering why your taxes matter to anyone.  But I know that you can't really be this thick. You know that your taxes matter because you are no longer a private businessman, you are the President of the United States.  If you are being audited, as you asserted during the campaign, WHY?  An audit is a serious matter and the American public should know why you are being audited in order to assess your qualifications for the presidency.  Now that you are the President, public concerns outweigh your private concerns.  That's just the nature of the job.

People want to evaluate your finances (are you really as successful as you claim, did you really give as generously to charity as you claim), conflicts (will your proposed tax code overhaul benefit your personal interests unfairly), and level of honesty (have you committed tax evasion or avoidance).  Reviewing your taxes is the best way to do that.  When asked to release his personal taxes, President Richard Nixon famously said, "People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook." and every president since then has voluntarily released their records…until you; the one guy with the most to hide and the most to lose.

This is going to seriously impact your ability to pass the upcoming tax reform plan.  If you thought health care reform was hard, just wait.  You ain't seen nothing yet and you've got no one but yourself to blame.

Sincerely,

Amy Beaton

#68) Reality Check

April 15, 2017

Dear Mr. President,

During the campaign you spouted some pretty strong (and occasionally hateful) rhetoric about many, many aspects of government.  Here are just a few of the things you took exception with:

            -the value of the Export-Import Bank

            -the value of NATO

-the value of Janet Yellen as Chair of the Federal Reserve (you actually said that her actions were "shameful")

            -the value of NAFTA

            -the value of the Affordable Care Act

            -the value of US intervention in Syria (and foreign countries in general)

-the value of Chinese currency (because you said the Chinese were currency manipulators)

Now you have been in office for 84 days and it turns out that you were wrong about ALL of these things and in the past week you have done a complete about face on every single one of these issues.  It doesn't bother me because I knew that your campaign rhetoric was totally off-base and wrong, but what about all of the people who believed you and thought that you actually knew what you were talking about?  What must those people be thinking about you right now? 

At the Republican National Convention you said, "Nobody knows the system better than me which is why I alone can fix it."  Well, the truth of the matter is that nobody alone can fix it and you really don't know the system very well at all.  Every day the curtain on your charade gets pulled back a little farther and the American public gets to see just how poorly equipped and uninformed you actually are.  For the first couple of weeks of your presidency it was only Democrats and liberals who were scared of your incompetence.  But now that reality is sinking in, missiles are being fired, and real decisions are being made, Republicans and conservatives are scared of your incompetence too. 

Sincerely,

Amy Beaton

#67) Page Investigation Continues

April 13, 2017

Dear Mr. President,

Do you know why you can't shake off the speculation about your collusion with Russia?  It's because you have surrounded yourself with such a bunch of shifty, slimy operators like Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, and Carter Page.  What a crew!  I'm particularly interested in Carter Page this week because he's the guy whose actions were actually fishy enough to convince the FISA court to authorize surveillance of his communications.  And that is REALLY hard to do.  Those judges do not mess around and they require a tremendous amount of just cause to warrant something like the level of surveillance Page was under.  The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was designed to be a politics-proof system too so you can't complain about liberal judges with ulterior motives.

I like watching this guy because he is so smooth and is just a master of deflection. Nothing ruffles his feathers.  I can see what made him appeal to you as a foreign policy advisor.  Only too bad he's probably acting as an agent of a foreign power (at least that's what I think they will eventually accuse him of).  He did say in an interview yesterday that when he spoke to Russian officials during the campaign, "something may have come up" about lifting US sanctions. Woops. Not cool Carter.

This one is going to take some time to sugar off but don't worry,  I'll stay tuned.

Sincerely,

Amy "The People" Beaton

#66) Spicy

April 12, 2017

Dear Mr. President,

Sean Spicer is the worst.  I hate to say I told you so (that's not true, I actually love to say I told you so) but I told you on Day 2 of your presidency that he wasn't going to cut it as Press Secretary.  And he's not cutting it.  I'm not going to include any quotes from that train-wreck of a press briefing he gave yesterday where he made Assad-Hitler comparisons because the internet is doing a lovely job of preserving it for all eternity and there's nothing that I need to add. 

But I do want to clarify something – you do know that chemical weapons have been used for hundreds of years, right?  And in terms of recent history, mustard, chlorine, lewisite, phosgene, and Paris Green gas were all pretty common during WWII.  And then, of course, Adolph Hitler special built actual gas chambers (aka Holocaust Centers) for the sole purpose of killing as many people as possible as quickly as possible.  I'm not a historian or anything, these are just things I learned in middle school.

I hear that you are planning a massive government reorganization.  That is a really bad idea given A) your lack of experience and knowledge about the government, and B) the crap-team you have assembled to "guide" you. But if I can't stop you and you are determined to move ahead with it, cut Spicer loose.  Seriously, that guy is a joke.

Sincerely,

Amy Beaton

P.S.  If Sean Spicer were locked in a room with a gun with two bullets, Hitler and Assad, he would shoot himself in the foot twice (ha ha, thanks Internet!)

#65) Problem Solvers

April 10, 2017

Dear Mr. President,

I just learned about the Problem Solvers Caucus.  Have you heard of them?  It's a group of 26 congress-people working together to break the current governmental gridlock, founded by Vermont's own Rep. Peter Welch.  Welch says that this group of Democrats AND Republicans will work from within Congress to "reform its operations and advance legislation on practical policy issues that cut across party lines to address some of the nation's pressing challenges."

Right now they are working on energy efficiency, infrastructure investments, and mortgage relief (besides recruitment of new members).  This is the best idea I've heard in months!  I don't know much about politics, but just from what I see on the news and read in the papers it's very clear to me that the current state of ideological warfare in the Congress isn't working.  And not only is it not working, I believe it will be dangerous in the long run.  Score keeping and bipartisan fighting isn't what gets stuff done and the longer that Congress is at an impasse the less respect people have for the system in general.  Gov. Jon Huntsman said, "Problem Solvers are about an attitude more than anything else.  It's about searching for areas of common ground instead of searching for chances to score points against the other side."

The current level of partisan gridlock in Congress is unprecedented, and it's time that the Congress comes together to actually get something done for the good of the country (while they still have some measure of legitimacy and respect from the American people).  The clock is ticking and the public's patience is running thin.

Sincerely,

Amy Beaton

#64) Think Long Term

April 9, 2017

Dear Mr. President,

Well, I have good news and bad news.  The good news is that the missile strike of the Syrian air base was pretty successful and well received by most of the world.  I've been keeping score and here are the countries that have been supportive:  UK, Turkey, France, Germany, Israel, Australia, Japan, the EU, Italy, Saudi Arabia, and the Syrian rebels (obvi).  The only countries expressing anger are Russia, Iran, and the government of Syria.  So you've got a little momentum and a little good will, now for the bad news…you need a long-term plan regarding Syria. 

As President of the United States and Commander in Chief of our armed forces, you need to articulate to BOTH Congress and the American people a clear, long-term strategy with goals.  You need to surround yourself with smart people (e.g. NOT Steve Bannon) who can help you understand the complex political realities of the Syrian situation.  And please remember that when I say the 'Syrian situation' I am also speaking of refugees. 

Yesterday Hilary Clinton said, "I also hope that they will recognize that we can not in one breath speak of protecting Syrian babies and in the next close America's doors to them."  Any Syrian strategy must include aid for the people that have lived through this brutal war.  As of March 2017 more than 5 million Syrians have fled the country and 6.3 million have been displaced internally.  These numbers are staggering and the world cannot continue to turn a blind to it. 

I've said it before but I'll say it again – it's a small world after all.

Sincerely,

Amy Beaton

#63) Not Bad

April 7, 2017

Dear Mr. President,

I can't believe that I'm saying this, but I'm glad that you bombed that airbase in Syria.  I think you did the right thing. I wish that something had been done in 2013 (the last time al-Assad used chemical weapons) but deals were made and compromises were found and people moved on, for better or for worse.  But you did something for a reason other than financial gain and showed actual emotions rather than your usual bombast and bravado.  Maybe you are human after all.

Sincerely,

Amy Beaton

P.S.  Don't let this go to your head.  I still hate you.

#62) Bye Felicia

April 6, 2017

Dear Mr. President,

Well my day just got a whole lot better.  I was going to write you a very lengthy letter about why that little weasel Devin Nunes should be removed as Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee's probe into your Russia connections.  But now I don't have to!  Yahoo!  He has recused himself.  Of course it took an official investigation from the Office of Congressional Ethics for him to see that he had a problem and that his little secret night trips to the White House weren't really as secret as he thought. But that's OK.  He's stepping down. 

I guess my work is done for the day.  Good luck with your meeting with Xi Jinping.  Try not to mess it up.

Sincerely,

Amy Beaton

#61) Principles Before Politics

April 5, 2017

Dear Mr. President,

Syria released deadly nerve agents on it's own people in it's most recent chemical attack.  This is not the first time that they have done so. North Korea just launched another missile into the Sea of Japan AND is known to be manufacturing chemical weapons (used recently in the assassination of Kim Jong Nam).  But you have said repeatedly that you are not interested in global politics.  It's America first and America only for you.

What you don't seem to understand is that the United States of America already IS a global leader (whether you want it to be or not) and global leadership is both messy and costly…it just is!  It always has been.  It also, occasionally, demands that we put principles before politics.

I was happy to see that you removed Steve Bannon from the National Security Council.  Maybe you are finally realizing that the world is a dangerous place and it will take more brains and less bravado to keep everyone safe.

Sincerely,

Amy Beaton

#60) Consequences

April 4, 2017

Dear Mr. President,

Remember the other day when I told you that you should care about climate change because it was expensive?  Well let's take a closer look at the flooding and landslide that happened in Mocoa, Colombia this week.

So far 254 people are confirmed dead but hundreds are still missing after torrential rain caused massive and sudden landslides.  The government has pledged financial compensation to the families of the dead. They are paying hospital costs for the injured, funereal costs for the dead, and reimbursing victims for lost homes.  They will rebuild schools, stores, hospitals, roads and bridges.  President Santos has promised to make whatever financial investment is necessary to rebuild Mocoa and make it "better than it was before", but no amount of money can replace lost loved ones or heal families torn apart by this horror.

Of course President Santos' critics say he should have done more to protect the area from disaster.  But who wants to invest in the environment?  Who wants to be the one to slow economic growth by limiting the timber industry?  Adriana Soto said, "When the basins are deforested, they break down.  It is as if we removed the protection for avoiding landslides." And President Santos himself is on record saying that climate change is to blame for this disaster. 

Like I said before, this is where we live.  This is the only home we've got and when we destroy it through deforestation or shortsighted environmental de-regulation, we all pay the cost.  Colombia is paying a particularly heavy cost at the moment because the Mocoa landslide isn't their only one.  In October 2016 10 people were killed in the north of the country when sudden, extreme weather ripped through a particularly deforested area causing flooding and landslide.  There was also one in El Tambo in November 2016 which killed 9 people.  This is a painful wake up call to both the people and the government of Colombia that they need to invest in their land, in their trees, in their infrastructure and they (and WE) need to stop emitting the chemical pollutants that cause global warming and extreme weather. 

As a species there is precious little that we share.  We don't have a common language, religion, culture or legal system.  But what we do share is this planet that we live on and the environment that it is nestled within. It seems hard for you to understand that there are geopolitical, financial, and human consequences to climate change. But there are and you need to wake up to this fact before it is too late.

Sincerely,

Amy "The People" Beaton