Trump may potentially want to let dangerously unskilled people build your house

This is from an email I got from the Minnesota AFL-CIO:

The future of America's construction workers is at risk. A new federal proposal could drive down training and labor standards in registered apprenticeship programs and set off a race to the bottom throughout the industry.

In June, the Department of Labor proposed regulations to implement Industry-Recognized Apprenticeship Programs (IRAPs). Unlike the Registered Apprenticeship model that Building Trades unions have used for decades, the IRAPs puts the fox in charge of the henhouse.

The new IRAP system will give private organizations, such as employers and trade associations, free rein to create new watered-down standards and certify subpar apprenticeship programs.

It’s actually a little more complicated than that. It looks like, for now, the intent is for the construction industry to be exempt from the proposed change. Emphasis on “for now.”

In any case, the public comment period is ongoing, and you can leave one, if you like, here.

Weirdness in Round 2 of Trump farm bailout

Happened yesterday:

The U.S. government will pay American farmers hurt by the trade war with China between $15 and $150 per acre in an aid package totaling $16 billion, officials said on Thursday, with farmers in the South poised to see higher rates than in the Midwest. - Reuters

The "weirdness" is political. Why would they send more to the safely red states of the South, than to the much more iffy (to say the least, for Republicans in 2020) Midwest?

Here's more information. Things are being figured differently this time around, and apparently that's what's leading to the notable geographic differences.

In other words, political calculation is not overtly the #1 factor here. What's best for corporate ag profits is. That's my inexpert take, based on what I've seen so far, anyway.

Fucking asshole from Minnesota has Trump trying to kick millions off food stamps

Revolting. Despicable. And I haven't been able to bring myself to see whether Minnesota's corporate "news" media is deifying this prick.

Three million poor people could be booted from the food stamps system under a Trump administration regulatory proposal issued Tuesday.

The Department of Agriculture (USDA) is aware the proposal will shrink grocery budgets for that massive share of people. It just cares more about making a conservative millionaire in Minnesota happy...

Enter Robert Undersander, a Minnesota retiree with a net worth north of $1 million. He and his wife applied for and received food stamps, intending to serve as living examples of the Republican argument that the program is systematically rotten. Had Minnesota not gotten rid of the asset-limit component of its eligibility test for SNAP, Undersander claimed, people like him never could have fleeced taxpayers.

Undersander’s story quickly went viral in conservative media circles after he published an op-ed in his local paper recounting the stunt. When Democrats convened a House Agriculture Committee hearing this June in anticipation of the kind of regulatory assault on BBCE that Perdue unveiled Tuesday morning, Undersander didn’t make the official witness list but became the star of the show anyhow, after Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-SD) recounted the Minnesota millionaire’s story. - Think Progress

China is not loading up on U.S. farm products

Yeah, guess who got totally suckered again.

In a humiliating (July 11) statement, Trump was forced to admit that he was wrong when he promised farmers that China would soon buy large quantities of American agricultural products.

Trump was reduced to groveling, essentially begging China to start buying products from U.S. farmers.

"China is letting us down in that they have not been buying the agricultural products from our great Farmers that they said they would," Trump wrote on Twitter. "Hopefully they will start soon!" - Shareblue

Though I don't often link to Politico, this one is important: "Trump's trade wars thrust farmers into desperation loans."

Trump seems to have gotten away from targeting veterans' earned benefits, for now

- When I searched recent news for “Mar-a-Lago Trio” just now, the most recent thing there was from February, when a House committee started investigating. Whether that means that Trump really has ditched those despicable greedheads (though certainly no more despicable than himself), I don’t know.

- However, an effort at some privatization is continuing. It’s a gray area, of course - it’s hard to argue that an elderly veteran who lives six or eight hours from the nearest VA facility shouldn’t be able to go to a closer clinic or hospital, instead. But the expansion of that needs to be carefully monitored for abuse by profiteers, and additional efforts at privatization need to be crushed, and I don’t know that either will happen. Not as long as Republicans are in charge, anyway.

- A recent poll shows that a majority of veterans agree with a majority of Americans that US involvement in wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria hasn't been worth it. How questions are worded means everything in polling like this, and for a majority of veterans to admit, even anonymously to a pollster, that sacrifices made by fellow military personnel, including those who were killed, weren’t worth it, is very notable.

An important step backward for Line 3, if we're lucky

Hopefully, what with one thing and another, the whole plan will plunge into a bottomless pit.

Minnesota regulators announced (July 3) that they will revisit their environmental review of the Line 3 pipeline project, rather than asking the state Supreme Court to take up the case.

Last June, the state Public Utilities Commission approved Enbridge Energy's $2.6 billion plan to replace its aging Line 3 oil pipeline across northern Minnesota.

But early last month, the Minnesota Court of Appeals reversed the PUC's approval of the project's environmental impact statement — a review of potential impacts the pipeline might have on the surrounding environment — saying it didn't adequately address the potential impact of a spill in the Lake Superior watershed. - MPR

Also: "'Protesters as terrorists': growing number of states turn anti-pipeline activism into a crime" - The Guardian

Trump's immigration goons target Minnesota farm workers

As you would expect. It’s a good article, well worth clicking and reading in full.

Morrison County is Trump country, with the state's highest voter turnout for the president in 2016. It's also a place where local farmers rely on Hispanic immigrants for labor, and the president's national push to catch unauthorized workers is starting to bite. A rise in farm worker arrests and deportations the past few months has Little Falls on edge.

Concerns about the increased level of enforcement echo throughout this rural community of about 8,000 people, two hours north of the Twin Cities, where several residents, activists and farmers say Border Patrol trucks, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have been highly visible in the area since last fall. - MPR

As a matter of fact the Trump administration has sought to make it easier, at least as far as getting here, for seasonal farm workers to do their thing. But that has not been well-publicized, as there’s no question as to what Trump’s base would “think” of that. It’s also entirely unclear what really will happen when harvest time rolls around, soon.

Getting more concerned about Trump/Iran

I am more worried about Trump starting a war with Iran than I was, especially given the pretty much daily evidence of his deteriorating mental health. Not sleepless nights-worried, yet. But maybe getting there.

Rightwing hawks in the US criticized Trump for calling off the attack. Liberal Democrats pointed out that he started the whole mess by withdrawing from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Trump supporters tried to pass off the flip flop as a brilliant tactical move that threw the Iranians off balance.

In fact, the Iranian government saw Trump’s vacillation as a sign of weakness, according to a Tehran journalist with close government ties, who is not authorized to speak to the media.

“Iran was ready to retaliate on an unbelievable scale,” the journalist tells me in a phone interview. “After the first US missile launch, Trump wouldn’t be able to control the consequences, not only in the Persian Gulf but from Saudi Arabia to Israel.” - Informed Comment