Page 6 - Florida Sentinel 11-13-18

White House And Political News
As California’s Wildfires Rage Out Of Control, Trump
Trump Wants Alaska Open For Inhumane Hunting Practices
Threatens To Pull Funding
As California’s wildfires threaten heavily populated areas and rage out of con- trol, President Donald Trump is threatening to pull funding to fight the flames.
“There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in Califor- nia except that forest man- agement is so poor,” Trump said in a tweet in the wee hours of Saturday morning. “Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mis- management to the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!”
At least nine people had died in the most recent string of blazes as of Satur- day afternoon, and officials were calling it the most de- structive California wildfire in history. Almost the entire city of Paradise, Calif., has
President Donald Trump speaks about his plan to combat opi- oid drug addiction at Manchester Community College in Man- chester, N.H.
A man hunting caraboo in Alaska.
been ravaged by the fire. The most recent bout of wildfires began this week, ABC News reported.
On Friday, President Trump approved an emer- gency declaration for Cali- fornia to respond to the crisis. The funds will pay for air support, relief supplies,
and evacuations, according to ABC News.
The president’s tweet in- dicated, however, that there might be no more payments coming. Trump’s com- ments drew a wave of re- criminations from people who accused him of lacking empathy and being cruel.
Alaska's national preserves are wild and remote places where large carnivores like wolves and bears are valued by the public as important contributors to natural ecosystems. But President Trump has a different set of values — and a different idea of what "National Preserve" means.
If the Trump administra- tion gets its way, Alaska's na- tional preserves will allow vicious carnivore killing methods like shooting wolf pups and bear cubs in their own dens.
Trump's National Park Service proposed to repeal a 2015 Obama administration rule that banned extreme predator hunting practices in these national preserves. They're accepting public com- ments until November 5. We need your help to make a public outcry, block the Park Service's attempts to under- mine this rule, and save
Alaskan wildlife.
If this rule is repealed, it
will become legal to:
• Lure grizzly bears
and black bears with bait so they can be shot point-blank
• Use dogs to hunt black bears
• Kill hibernating black bear mothers and cubs
• Slaughter wolves and coyotes and their pups during denning season, when the young animals are still de- pendent on their parents
Why? So that the state of Alaska can conduct "predator control" — a scientifically in- defensible method of popula- tion control that involves killing off native carnivores to artificially boost populations of deer, moose, and other prey animals for hunters to shoot. Predator control is cruel and unethical, and it threatens the natural diver- sity of Alaska's wildlife and fragile ecosystems.
Trump’s Rising Debts Will Soon
Force The U. S. To Spend More On
Interest Than Medicaid Defense
U. S. government spend- ing on the interest costs of rising federal debt will soon force lawmakers to choose between competing spend- ing on health care and edu- cation programs, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Interest costs on the 2017 federal debt of $263 billion accounted for 6.6 percent of all U. S. government spend- ing and a 1.4 percent share of the country's GDP. But the Congressional Budget Office predicts interest spending will spike to $915 billion by 2028, or about 3.1 percent of the gross domestic product.
Guided by Congress' fed- eral spending boost of $300 billion earlier this year and the Trump administration's individual income tax cuts, a divided Congress will soon be forced to spend more on interest than Medicaid, na- tional defense and a host of
other government pro- grams.
Analysts note the $1.5 trillion tax cut enacted last year and the two-year budget agreement to boost federal spending by $300 billion is pushing up deficits. But at the same time, inter- est expenses on the federal debt are climbing as bond
yields rise.
By 2020, the government
is on track to spend more on interest than it spends on Medicaid, and by 2023, more than on national de- fense, and by 2025, the gov- ernment will spend more on debt interest than every non- defense discretionary federal program combined.
PAGE 6 FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2018