Ted Faraone, please don't insult pigs with a comparison to the orange Mussolini. Pigs are beautiful, sentient, highly intelligent souls. May I suggest terms such as the orange pus bucket, or the orange shit encrusted reeking cretinous slob ? 😉
Although coming up with derogatory names may be a way to let off some steam, it does not bring our discussion forward in terms of understanding what is likely in store for us. Most importantly it is a distraction from coming up with strategies to rebuild our government, economy and nation after Trump and his sycophants efforts to destroy it. I have put forward Economic Democracy and the Progressive Utilization Theory as one innovative approach, but there are numerous thinkers and groups that also have novel ideas worth consideration. We must move out of fear and find paths into action. In my study of history, I have seen that out of crisis comes opportunity for significant change. In fact some of the greatest leaps forward in human history came as a result of terrible crisis. The situation that caused the American Revolution is the reason we have independence and what was at the time, a very daring and progressive Declaration of Independence and our current Constitution.
The challenges ahead are daunting. Complete dysfunction out of out of the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court, destruction of the weakest safety net among developed countries, and an increasing likelihood of a inappropriate use of the military are among the most significant. While these institutions degenerate around us, we cannot lose hope but we must engage in forward thinking progressive solutions. Hoping the Democratic Party will eventually save us is disempowering thinking. Finding ways to rebuild after this apocalypse is constructive use of our potentialities.
Marc, while I wholeheartedly agree with you, I am finding many on these substacks tend to ridicule or name call whenever anyone tries to express an idea or opinion! I would love to see Economic Democracy take hold here in our country! While I like what PROUT is teaching, I do not think a lot of people will accept it. I am afraid many will see it as too socialistic, and, of course, fear of too much change. While I believe PROUT would be a step forward for the entire world, there are too many "bad actors" like the orange man and the ultra wealthy who will fight anything that would be perceived as taking away their wealth and power. To me, Economic Democracy is a great solution to the huge gap that has formed between the "haves" and the "have-nots"! It reverts back to stakeholder capitalism from shareholder capitalism and I believe it would be a giant step forward for our country and the American citizens. No matter what is put forward, if 'We the people' do not come together united in our effort to stop the authoritarian take over of our country, we will simply wind up like the Russian citizenry - just sheep being herded into one way of thinking.
The Great Dismantling: Trump's Coming Attack on America's Economic Backbone
Thom Hartmann 11-7-24
Donald Trump is preparing to crash the American economy. He intends to do it by tearing up vital parts of our American government. He may even hire Elon Musk to pull it off.
And from his point of view, this is not going to be a bad thing. The farther the economy crashes, the greater the buying opportunity for billionaires.
It all has to do with something called the administrative state.
While it’s not sexy or even particularly interesting to the average American voter, having a strong administrative state is essential to a high-functioning economy.
A strong administrative state is the only thing that protects entrepreneurs and small businesses from being squashed like bugs by monopolistic behemoths, and small businesses are our nation’s main growth engine.
For example, over 70 percent of all new jobs created since 2019 were created by small businesses, producing almost 13 million new jobs over the past 25 years. Small business creation is up 50 percent over Trump’s years because the Biden administration has been enforcing the rule of law, including taking on the giant tech monopolies. Small businesses now account for over 43 percent of all American economic activity.
A strong administrative state is also the only thing that can protect the environment from those who’d destroy it for their own profits. It’s the only thing that can protect consumers from defective or even deadly products and food or drug contamination. It our only defense against predatory banks, airlines, and insurance companies, among others.
A strong administrative state that follows and enforces the rule of law — as opposed to the kind of grift-driven kleptocracies typical of strongman governments — is essential, in other words, to a functioning national economy.
Here in America, we see this best in the contrast between lightly bureaucratic and largely unregulated Red states and more bureaucratic and regulated (and taxed) Blue states and counties. While Red and Blue states are represented in Congress about 50/50, as the Brookings Institution found a few years ago:
“Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties represents just 29% of the economy.”
But now the administrative state is in the crosshairs of the incoming Trump administration, and their planned assault on it will almost certainly cause a loss of economic vitality, probably even leading to a major recession (every Republican president since Nixon has had a major recession after tinkering with tax and regulatory policies; none of the Democratic presidents have created one since Carter, and his started under Nixon).
We also see this at the level of the nation-state. As Professor Timothy Snyder notes:
“Now consider the Russian and Hungarian economies. Russia sits on hugely valuable natural resources, and yet is a poor country. The profits from its oil and gas are in the hands of a few oligarchs.
“Hungary sits in the middle of the European Union, the most successful trade project of all time.And yet Hungarians are poorer than their neighbors, in part because the Orbán regime corruptly channels EU resources to friendly oligarchs.
“The lesson is clear. Democracy is a method of checking corrupt rulers. When there is no functioning democracy, corruption is unchecked.And democracy is an element of a more fundamental guarantor of prosperity, the rule of law. In Hungary and Russia, the rule of law has been bent and broken, to the benefit of the few, and to the detriment of the many.Ending the rule of law is the Trump-Vance platform.”
Gutting the administrative state is the first and imperative aspect of ending or weakening the rule of law.
Because, as Steve Bannon famously told America, the main goal of the Trump administration is “the ‘deconstruction’ of the administrative state.” He added:
“Every business leader we’ve had in is saying not just taxes, but it is also the regulation. I think the consistent …[thing] is the deconstruction. The way the progressive left runs is, if they can’t get it passed, they’re just going to put in some sort of regulation in an agency. That’s all going to be deconstructed and I think that that’s why this regulatory thing is so important.”
We saw this movie before, during the last Trump administration. He put a coal lobbyist in charge of EPA, an oil lobbyist at Interior, a Telcom lobbyist and lawyer at FCC, a professional union-busting lawyer in charge of the Labor Department, an advocate for replacing public schools with religious ones in charge of the Education Department, etc., etc.
But that was more mere corruption than a wholesale destruction of administrative agencies. Since the Chevron deference decision by the Supreme Court this past year, though, it’s now possible that Trump could actually destroy the American administrative state.
Even when Chevron was still intact eight years ago, the result of Trump’s corruption in his previous administration, just like with Reagan’s and Bush’s deregulatory campaigns, was a massive recession that started before Covid came along.
Trump will fire Lena Kahn at the Federal Trade Commission, blowing up the antitrust efforts of the Biden administration; the fat cat billionaires already are eagerly anticipating running amok (which is why they threw billions at Trump’s campaign).
The result, predictably, will be another Republican economic disaster for America’s working class.
Interestingly, our country’s most famous investor also seems to be thinking along these same lines. Warren Buffett has recently sold over $325 billion in stock and is simply sitting on that huge pile of cash.
Why? Probably the Oracle of Omaha can see the same thing I’m pointing out here: Trump is preparing to turn the economy over to Musk and his billionaire buddies and the result will be a disaster.
A disaster, by the way, that will be very useful to Buffett and other billionaires; recessions and depressions are when America’s largest fortunes are typically made or expanded because they represent great buying opportunities to those with cash, while at the same time the small companies being squeezed are willing to sell for a song.
So get ready; we’re in for a bumpy few years as America descends into a strongman-run oligarchy while the Supreme Court and Trump’s toadies rip apart the protections of the administrative state we’ve so carefully constructed in the years since the Civil War and the Republican Great Depression.
It may well be a disaster for your 401(k), and millions will lose their jobs in a recession. If Musk cuts $2 trillion from the federal budget, as promised, it will almost certainly impact Social Security and take a huge bite out of programs for veterans, children, and the disabled.
It would probably also have to end all subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, and end hundreds of billions in federal aid to infrastructure construction programs.
Get ready now, to the extent that you can. Forewarned is forearmed.
Avoid reading my response to this piece until after you've reviewed and evaluated the content of that link. My response comes after the double dashed line.
Consider this very intelligent assessment of what has come to pass. It is chock full of truth. Your job is to identify how it's all a big lie. A hint is that a single item turns it into a big lie. Call this an entertaining exercise in critical thinking if you like. In reality, it is deadly serious naked truth. The way it follows on to today's discussion of Dr Reich's essay is where he states: "The media has it all wrong about Trump’s picks for his administration. The conventional view is they’re 'Trump loyalists' whom Trump 'recruited.'" That one little statement that Dr Reich picks up on makes the whole difference in how we understand what legacy media is saying.
=====================================
Very clever The big lie buried in a lot of truth. Tell me. What corporate and billionaire interests have benefited. What corporate and wealthy interests have the financial and political resources to implement such a wide scale psy op?
No, my friend. The multiply convicted felon and adjudicated sexual predator elect is their front man. Who has had decades of practice breaking labor unions - using psy ops? I refer you to the 1993 work entitled "Confessions of a Union Buster" by Marty Jay Levitt who discusses the practice of wielding psy ops on union leaders, members, and anyone else who stood against management excess.
Note also how the wages of that demographic have remained stagnant for at least that far back, and what Leavitt discusses took place even earlier, prior to releasing that book in '93. As far as I'm concerned, don't worry about the propaganda concerning some mythical "deep state." Worry about the real threat of a very real shadow government, that serves wealth and corporate intersects and dedicated to dismantling any means of containing their unelected, non-governmental authority which they wield through a government apparatus they effectively own.
And the criminal elect in service to Project 2025 is the fruit of that >>right-wing fascist<< effort and >not< the left-wing progressives who stand against it. Therein lies the big lie! If you haven't figured that out, you probably serve it. End of discussion.
Marc, yes and no. Social media, the surveillance state. How shall we organize, safely, when our every move and communication is recorded? I even fear for the readers and contributors to substacks such as this. The next congress is poised to give dumpster the power to declare nonprofits "terrorist organizations". An obviously unconstitutional law that will be upheld by a rogue court. dumpster can invoke any number of obscure laws having to do with emergencies, real or fabricated, to implement draconian measuress. I look, and dumpster looks, to the example of China's ruling class. he's remarked (with awe and favor) that Xi controls 1.3 billion people. There could be some as yet unkown tech players that can disrupt, even destroy the capabilities of the surveillance state. That would probably of collaterally destroy all our access to the information superhighway, which might be the best thing, especially for young people addicted to electronics.
We need to remember that the corrupt court now controls all. any lower court that gives "unfavorable" rulings will be overturned. any lower court that renders judgements favorable to the ruling class will be upheld.
there is a way to stop this, but biden won't do it. so it comes down to , either dumpster goes to jail, or biden does. dumpster has signaled his intentions on multiple occasions.
The Great Dismantling: Trump's Coming Attack on America's Economic Backbone
Thom Hartmann 11-7-24
Donald Trump is preparing to crash the American economy. He intends to do it by tearing up vital parts of our American government. He may even hire Elon Musk to pull it off.
And from his point of view, this is not going to be a bad thing. The farther the economy crashes, the greater the buying opportunity for billionaires.
It all has to do with something called the administrative state.
While it’s not sexy or even particularly interesting to the average American voter, having a strong administrative state is essential to a high-functioning economy.
A strong administrative state is the only thing that protects entrepreneurs and small businesses from being squashed like bugs by monopolistic behemoths, and small businesses are our nation’s main growth engine.
For example, over 70 percent of all new jobs created since 2019 were created by small businesses, producing almost 13 million new jobs over the past 25 years. Small business creation is up 50 percent over Trump’s years because the Biden administration has been enforcing the rule of law, including taking on the giant tech monopolies. Small businesses now account for over 43 percent of all American economic activity.
A strong administrative state is also the only thing that can protect the environment from those who’d destroy it for their own profits. It’s the only thing that can protect consumers from defective or even deadly products and food or drug contamination. It our only defense against predatory banks, airlines, and insurance companies, among others.
A strong administrative state that follows and enforces the rule of law — as opposed to the kind of grift-driven kleptocracies typical of strongman governments — is essential, in other words, to a functioning national economy.
Here in America, we see this best in the contrast between lightly bureaucratic and largely unregulated Red states and more bureaucratic and regulated (and taxed) Blue states and counties. While Red and Blue states are represented in Congress about 50/50, as the Brookings Institution found a few years ago:
“Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties represents just 29% of the economy.”
But now the administrative state is in the crosshairs of the incoming Trump administration, and their planned assault on it will almost certainly cause a loss of economic vitality, probably even leading to a major recession (every Republican president since Nixon has had a major recession after tinkering with tax and regulatory policies; none of the Democratic presidents have created one since Carter, and his started under Nixon).
We also see this at the level of the nation-state. As Professor Timothy Snyder notes:
“Now consider the Russian and Hungarian economies. Russia sits on hugely valuable natural resources, and yet is a poor country. The profits from its oil and gas are in the hands of a few oligarchs.
“Hungary sits in the middle of the European Union, the most successful trade project of all time.And yet Hungarians are poorer than their neighbors, in part because the Orbán regime corruptly channels EU resources to friendly oligarchs.
“The lesson is clear. Democracy is a method of checking corrupt rulers. When there is no functioning democracy, corruption is unchecked.And democracy is an element of a more fundamental guarantor of prosperity, the rule of law. In Hungary and Russia, the rule of law has been bent and broken, to the benefit of the few, and to the detriment of the many.Ending the rule of law is the Trump-Vance platform.”
Gutting the administrative state is the first and imperative aspect of ending or weakening the rule of law.
Because, as Steve Bannon famously told America, the main goal of the Trump administration is “the ‘deconstruction’ of the administrative state.” He added:
“Every business leader we’ve had in is saying not just taxes, but it is also the regulation. I think the consistent …[thing] is the deconstruction. The way the progressive left runs is, if they can’t get it passed, they’re just going to put in some sort of regulation in an agency. That’s all going to be deconstructed and I think that that’s why this regulatory thing is so important.”
We saw this movie before, during the last Trump administration. He put a coal lobbyist in charge of EPA, an oil lobbyist at Interior, a Telcom lobbyist and lawyer at FCC, a professional union-busting lawyer in charge of the Labor Department, an advocate for replacing public schools with religious ones in charge of the Education Department, etc., etc.
But that was more mere corruption than a wholesale destruction of administrative agencies. Since the Chevron deference decision by the Supreme Court this past year, though, it’s now possible that Trump could actually destroy the American administrative state.
Even when Chevron was still intact eight years ago, the result of Trump’s corruption in his previous administration, just like with Reagan’s and Bush’s deregulatory campaigns, was a massive recession that started before Covid came along.
Trump will fire Lena Kahn at the Federal Trade Commission, blowing up the antitrust efforts of the Biden administration; the fat cat billionaires already are eagerly anticipating running amok (which is why they threw billions at Trump’s campaign).
The result, predictably, will be another Republican economic disaster for America’s working class.
Interestingly, our country’s most famous investor also seems to be thinking along these same lines. Warren Buffett has recently sold over $325 billion in stock and is simply sitting on that huge pile of cash.
Why? Probably the Oracle of Omaha can see the same thing I’m pointing out here: Trump is preparing to turn the economy over to Musk and his billionaire buddies and the result will be a disaster.
A disaster, by the way, that will be very useful to Buffett and other billionaires; recessions and depressions are when America’s largest fortunes are typically made or expanded because they represent great buying opportunities to those with cash, while at the same time the small companies being squeezed are willing to sell for a song.
So get ready; we’re in for a bumpy few years as America descends into a strongman-run oligarchy while the Supreme Court and Trump’s toadies rip apart the protections of the administrative state we’ve so carefully constructed in the years since the Civil War and the Republican Great Depression.
It may well be a disaster for your 401(k), and millions will lose their jobs in a recession. If Musk cuts $2 trillion from the federal budget, as promised, it will almost certainly impact Social Security and take a huge bite out of programs for veterans, children, and the disabled.
It would probably also have to end all subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, and end hundreds of billions in federal aid to infrastructure construction programs.
Get ready now, to the extent that you can. Forewarned is forearmed.
Mark I totally agree with you on the rebuild. Post election depression has had a hold on me. I did my work, joined by my wife, friends and acquaintances and did not see the expected results. I have great respect and value greatly the work Reich and crew are doing. After watching the Thanksgiving speech from so long ago I have committed to a $50/ month donation to the cause of his media project.
I know we can never throw enough money at the problem to overcome it. We are out gunned by the wealthy few that fueled this change that is coming. We the people are the key and it is my hope with work and perseverance will convince our fellow citizens that there is a better way forward.
Marc, you are right that we need to come up with strong ideas, but alas, we need a laugh now and then to keep us on track. Republicans rarely laugh, and we see what kind of people they are and what they stand for if they stand for anything beyond their own selves, desires, and hatreds. I never want Dems or anyone else to become like them. Trump and Kump won this time mostly due to racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and homo/transphobia and it was hidden in economics, the price of eggs. We haven't really dealt with our nation's isms, so they go unexamined while they tear at the fabric of our society and cause people to lie to themselves and the world to cover the truths of their lives. In addition, a bunch of people were conned into claiming they were doing better 4 years ago than now. That was a lie for most Americans, but thinking through things is not an American gift these days, if ever. So, we got a chuckle, now we get to work!
Thank you for the analogy of Mussolini. You get an A+. I have been encouraging people to watch videos of Mussolini. Trump looks and acts like Mussolini, and is using Mussolini's techniques to set up a replica government. Trump is his doppelganger.
Valium is a very powerful chemical. It is not an addiction it is physical dependence. 99% of people on Valium, or other benzodiazepines, take it as prescribed. The brain and body get physically dependent on it. You can’t “cold turkey” off Valium, or other benzodiazepines, it could kill you or put you in a coma. It takes a long time to withdraw off Valium (Benzodiazepines). Most patients were not given informed consent. Most doctors do not know how to safely taper off this drug. It can take several years to come off. The chances of having horrific symptoms are high. Almost no American doctor understands that. If you’re planning to go off Valium, or any Benzodiazepine, see the Ashton Manual on Google. Find a support group. Keep the faith. It took me two years of endless agony but I’m only on a very small dose. For other issues
Ted..more of a monster. To everyone else…please ALWAYS refer to trump with truthful titles at all times…Felon trump, Rapist trump, Deadly Seditionist trump.
Fashion icon? He wears cheap suits for someone who's supposed to be rich and he has a tie that hangs all the way to his crotch. It's like he's using it to point to his mushroom because, otherwise, it's so little it can be easily missed.
Hey, now! What other septugenarian with a buttocks the size of Rhode Island can swimmingly squeeze said posterior into tennis whites with so much flair? Style eyesore is more like it.
As much as I hate to say so - I'm not sure Trump is either stupid or demented. I think he is masterful at convincing the hoi polloi to follow him - he has Barnum beat all to hell. He knows what he wants, total control, and has the skill to get the rich and powerful to help him. He couldn't give a rat's about America or anything else.
Certainly Trump CAN BE all of those.....unfortunately (for Trump) those qualities are harnessed to his mercurial temperament and saddled with extreme impulsivity and an inability to focus. He's also no genius, stable or otherwise. His "negotiating skills" are mostly comprised of bullying and use of extortion. Trump is nothing more than a name brand thug with (some) money.
His sugar daddy father's money at that. How many people are handed $400 million and a profitable business to start out in life? Also, throughout his adult life he has hidden behind aggressive, unscrupulous attorneys who do the bullying and "negotiating" for him. Now he has social media.
I don't believe it was $400 mil. He DID, HOWEVER, TRY TO STEAL HIS FATHER'S MONEY BY CHANGING THE WILL AND ATTEMPTING TO GET HIM TO SIGN IT, ONLY HIS FATHER OUTSMARTED HIM AND DIDN'T SIGN IT! THIS was in Mary Trump's book.
Like many narcissists who rise to power (Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin), Trump has a talent in saying/doing whatever is necessary to get others to do his bidding. Unlike most, he had a kind of "warped charisma/machismo" which was amplified and magnified by a television personna; unlike most, he had salesmenship skills and especially...money.
But in terms of almost every quality we think of as necessary in a leader (think Washington, Lincoln, both Roosevelts)--intelligence, knowledge of history and the world, moral stature and the ability to bring people together to work for good---he is a BIG FAT ZERO.
That is what is so shocking about his election. Analyses which say the voters aren't getting good information or none at all aren't an excuse. It seems we have become an amoral, airhead nation, half of whose voters would rather vote for this dangerous douchebag than a Black woman with a Dem Party attached. Sickening. Shocking.
Agree. In spite of everything, we gave him another term. I would really like to see an interviewer interview and film a good big sample of Trump voters from the last election. To me, it seems like a plurality of us must live in a different society than I do, in order for Trump to have won. And I do want to understand how those voters see the world so differently than I do.
This is an existential crisis for our democracy. Trump has hinted that the election he just won will be our last election.
The Great Dismantling: Trump's Coming Attack on America's Economic Backbone
Thom Hartmann 11-7-24
Donald Trump is preparing to crash the American economy. He intends to do it by tearing up vital parts of our American government. He may even hire Elon Musk to pull it off.
And from his point of view, this is not going to be a bad thing. The farther the economy crashes, the greater the buying opportunity for billionaires.
It all has to do with something called the administrative state.
While it’s not sexy or even particularly interesting to the average American voter, having a strong administrative state is essential to a high-functioning economy.
A strong administrative state is the only thing that protects entrepreneurs and small businesses from being squashed like bugs by monopolistic behemoths, and small businesses are our nation’s main growth engine.
For example, over 70 percent of all new jobs created since 2019 were created by small businesses, producing almost 13 million new jobs over the past 25 years. Small business creation is up 50 percent over Trump’s years because the Biden administration has been enforcing the rule of law, including taking on the giant tech monopolies. Small businesses now account for over 43 percent of all American economic activity.
A strong administrative state is also the only thing that can protect the environment from those who’d destroy it for their own profits. It’s the only thing that can protect consumers from defective or even deadly products and food or drug contamination. It our only defense against predatory banks, airlines, and insurance companies, among others.
A strong administrative state that follows and enforces the rule of law — as opposed to the kind of grift-driven kleptocracies typical of strongman governments — is essential, in other words, to a functioning national economy.
Here in America, we see this best in the contrast between lightly bureaucratic and largely unregulated Red states and more bureaucratic and regulated (and taxed) Blue states and counties. While Red and Blue states are represented in Congress about 50/50, as the Brookings Institution found a few years ago:
“Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties represents just 29% of the economy.”
But now the administrative state is in the crosshairs of the incoming Trump administration, and their planned assault on it will almost certainly cause a loss of economic vitality, probably even leading to a major recession (every Republican president since Nixon has had a major recession after tinkering with tax and regulatory policies; none of the Democratic presidents have created one since Carter, and his started under Nixon).
We also see this at the level of the nation-state. As Professor Timothy Snyder notes:
“Now consider the Russian and Hungarian economies. Russia sits on hugely valuable natural resources, and yet is a poor country. The profits from its oil and gas are in the hands of a few oligarchs.
“Hungary sits in the middle of the European Union, the most successful trade project of all time.And yet Hungarians are poorer than their neighbors, in part because the Orbán regime corruptly channels EU resources to friendly oligarchs.
“The lesson is clear. Democracy is a method of checking corrupt rulers. When there is no functioning democracy, corruption is unchecked.And democracy is an element of a more fundamental guarantor of prosperity, the rule of law. In Hungary and Russia, the rule of law has been bent and broken, to the benefit of the few, and to the detriment of the many.Ending the rule of law is the Trump-Vance platform.”
Gutting the administrative state is the first and imperative aspect of ending or weakening the rule of law.
Because, as Steve Bannon famously told America, the main goal of the Trump administration is “the ‘deconstruction’ of the administrative state.” He added:
“Every business leader we’ve had in is saying not just taxes, but it is also the regulation. I think the consistent …[thing] is the deconstruction. The way the progressive left runs is, if they can’t get it passed, they’re just going to put in some sort of regulation in an agency. That’s all going to be deconstructed and I think that that’s why this regulatory thing is so important.”
We saw this movie before, during the last Trump administration. He put a coal lobbyist in charge of EPA, an oil lobbyist at Interior, a Telcom lobbyist and lawyer at FCC, a professional union-busting lawyer in charge of the Labor Department, an advocate for replacing public schools with religious ones in charge of the Education Department, etc., etc.
But that was more mere corruption than a wholesale destruction of administrative agencies. Since the Chevron deference decision by the Supreme Court this past year, though, it’s now possible that Trump could actually destroy the American administrative state.
Even when Chevron was still intact eight years ago, the result of Trump’s corruption in his previous administration, just like with Reagan’s and Bush’s deregulatory campaigns, was a massive recession that started before Covid came along.
Trump will fire Lena Kahn at the Federal Trade Commission, blowing up the antitrust efforts of the Biden administration; the fat cat billionaires already are eagerly anticipating running amok (which is why they threw billions at Trump’s campaign).
The result, predictably, will be another Republican economic disaster for America’s working class.
Interestingly, our country’s most famous investor also seems to be thinking along these same lines. Warren Buffett has recently sold over $325 billion in stock and is simply sitting on that huge pile of cash.
Why? Probably the Oracle of Omaha can see the same thing I’m pointing out here: Trump is preparing to turn the economy over to Musk and his billionaire buddies and the result will be a disaster.
A disaster, by the way, that will be very useful to Buffett and other billionaires; recessions and depressions are when America’s largest fortunes are typically made or expanded because they represent great buying opportunities to those with cash, while at the same time the small companies being squeezed are willing to sell for a song.
So get ready; we’re in for a bumpy few years as America descends into a strongman-run oligarchy while the Supreme Court and Trump’s toadies rip apart the protections of the administrative state we’ve so carefully constructed in the years since the Civil War and the Republican Great Depression.
It may well be a disaster for your 401(k), and millions will lose their jobs in a recession. If Musk cuts $2 trillion from the federal budget, as promised, it will almost certainly impact Social Security and take a huge bite out of programs for veterans, children, and the disabled.
It would probably also have to end all subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, and end hundreds of billions in federal aid to infrastructure construction programs.
Get ready now, to the extent that you can. Forewarned is forearmed.
Agree- he started as a Democrat; so he uses institutions(charities,religions,NRA,Veterans,ect.) like foot stools to his power trip. Thanks respectfully
I agree with you on him being masterful, especially in being able to control some people! I can't help but feel dread with him coming into office with his band of misfits. He doesn't care a damn about America, Americans, or the rest of the world. He wants to be in total control and will do anything to get it!
Jan, I think all of your points are correct and now we must move out of reaction into meaningful action. Look at the ramifications of the Boston Tea Party. One rather small action sparked a revolution that rid us of the overpowering influence of the British.
Thank you! We are not powerless. Though based on a comic book character, I recommend watching the movie "V for Vengeance" with Hugo Weaving and Natalie Portman. In the end, taking down a corrupt totalitarian government involved little violence, but the mass of people who showed up in protest, facing a disillusioned military which refused to fire on them. I watch it several times during W's and tRumPutin's presidencies and it always cheers me up. I haven't seen it in 4 years, but now it's time.
Let's hope that early opposition to DT will lie with our Generals and Admirals who hold the line by defending the Constitution and not follow orders to turn our military members on civilians or illegal immigrants. If they don't, then most hope of surviving the coming fascist wave will be lost. One of the first things dictators do is co-op the courts, the military and then the local police. Not always in that order, but they really need all three to gain total control. Check out Orban in Hungary. Check out Venezuela just to name a couple current examples. The German generals knew that Hitler was a mad man who also thought he was smarter than all of them but they kept appeasing him and gradually just gave into him because they were afraid for themselves and their families. After DT pardons all of the Jan 6 traitors they will be looking for revenge at the highest order. Don't be surprised if he tries to organize them into some version of the Gestapo to target the political opposition including our loyal military leaders. I hope not, but... GH
Let's hope! Orban has actually already been to Mar a Lago to offer his advice and support. Putin is communicating with him through back channels(f-Elon). Hope is pretty thin, but like that "thing with feathers that sings and never stops", mine has built a snug little nest in my heart.
good points-and are the BRICS countries that want to supplant the dollar as the world's reserve currency,really our friends?brazil,Russia,India,China,south africa-i realize foreign relations are complex and often convoluted but our 'allies' siding with russia and china-really?
I look at globalization and i see consolidation of power and money in the hands of a relative few. they have no allegiance to anything except their money and power. state actors are more and more becoming corporate actors using state machinery as cover for looting the common good. this is fascism. all the old paradigms are being abandonned in favor of a greed induced mad rush to oblivion.
Government is here for the purpose of making society a smooth working, non-violent, operation. We can't have a government for everyone, if there is great wealth inequality. We can't have everyone sucking off of tax money either. The laws must prevent gathering benefits without production both for the rich and the poor, and everyone inbetween. And they must prevent extreme wealth inequality, because extreme wealth inequality means extreme power, and that means a breakdown in justice.
I often wonder if democracy can work with such a large and widely spread population. It would take a complete change of perspective from hyper individualism to a sense of belonging to and contributing to the commons, from my way or the highway to cooperation, compassion, and empathy. I don't see that happening in the near future short of a cataclysmic event that perhaps greatly reduces the population on planet earth. this would force us in one of two primary directions, cooperation or savagery.
Another huge problem is truth and it's attackers. Wilful, arrogant ignorace. Contempt for the rule of law (evidence, procedure, precedent). what must it have been like at the start of the enlightenment, when people discovering natural truths about our world were punished by burning at the stake?
Are we returning to that mindset? If one reads project 2025, there is plenty of sketchy theology attempting to inform their proposals for governance.
Nice explanation. We are now the most unequal that we have been in over on hundred years, and that cannot continue, not if we are to continue as a functional democracy rather than one that pretends to be.
perhaps i'm naive expecting friends and allies to at least not backstab us-then again,look at how NATO has come together-at least thus far-to defend Ukraine
I'm glad I won't be around to see the total destruction of our society. It will take longer than the few years I have left for them to complete. I just feel sorry for everyone that will have to deal with this. I hope we can really stop him. I still cannot believe he got elected!!!!
Also, he enjoys his mean little jokes: putting an actual Handmaid on our Supreme Court, putting Road Kill Kennedy in charge of public health. What fun!
I think Trump had now gone beyond sociopathy, which was bad enough, and into psychopathy. He was always a malignant narcissist, but now he is declining rapidly into a toxic, violent-prone stew. I don't see him lasting out his term. And I am not sure we will survive it, either.
Final line in Exposing the Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissist As A Moron that No Progressive E-Mag Would Publish for three months before the election:
So since the huge event of Joe Biden bowing out and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for President of the United States on Sunday the 21st of July, there is only one question before us: Would you rather have a Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron whose Father Also Had Dementia running this country or the Daughter of Two University Professors?
Exposing The Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissist As A Moron
A Comparison of President Biden's Mental Competency with Donald Trump's
Recently the media focus has been on the 'age issue' and the question of the mental competency of an octogenarian during President Biden's second term. So let's compare his mental competency with Donald Trump's starting with his most recent gaffow followed by a list of what he said and his cabinet members said about him during his first term. (A short list of my faves:)
Did Biden call Nancy Pelosi Nicky Haley when recently talking about the 1-6-21 assault on the capital?
Did he claim the ability to properly identify a giraffe in a multiple choice of three animals, proved he was a "real stable genius"?
Did his former college professor call him the "dumbest f--king student I ever had"?
Did Biden suggest we could build a wall with transparent concrete?
Did he ever say to the camera he wished his wife were present with him while she was literally standing next to him looking confused?
Did his own sibling say in a recorded interview that he paid someone to take the SAT for him because he was too stupid to get into college on his own?
Did Biden think people needed photo IDs to buy groceries?
Did Biden say Paris was a city in Germany?
Did he misspell basic words in dozens of different tweets only to "correct" them by misspelling them a different way?
Did he suggest injecting disinfectants into our bloodstream to kill COVID?
Did he say he didn't know what a blind trust is, despite having a "degree" in Finance?
Did he bankrupt every business he tried starting on his own, including a Casino?
Was Biden the first President in history to utter the sentence, "Belgium is a beautiful city"?
Did Biden ever say our captured prisoners of war are only heroes because they were captured?
Did he have more than a dozen of his hand picked cabinet members resign because they couldn't work with his incompetence?
Did his own Chief of Staff call him an "idiot"?
Did a Senator from his own party say, "The White House has become an adult day care center”?
Did his own Secretary of State say he was a "fucking moron"?
Did his own economic advisor say he was "dumb as shit...an idiot surrounded by clowns"?
Did his National Security Advisor say he was "a dope...an idiot [with the intelligence of] a kindergartner”?
I saved the above collection of quotes that was originally posted on a Facebook page dedicated to insuring Joe Biden's second term last year. That was before that Republican special prosecutor in his VP document's case harped on the age issue and Joe's forgetfulness of details when the guy interviewed him. I was going to submit the above to the Daily Kos before reading the two following articles updating Trump's mental problems amidst the failure of a media focus on the orange moron at the president's expense while he's trying to run this country as the GOP is fixed on trying to tear it apart.
I just read their lead article titled The media will not report that Trump appears to have middle-stage dementia, cataloging his further mental decline. A couple of days later Facebook suggested I look at a new site dedicated to the politics and humor of Jon Stewart which just 'happened' to have posted the original interview in Salon titled "Like someone pulled the metaphorical plug": Dr. John Gartner on Trump's "accelerating dementia". This whole interview was fixated on the dementia issue without mentioning that his father Fred had Alzheimer's/dementia, which I learned when I posted A Comparison to every response. Then on 7-8, after the idiot went into a long rant about choosing between being electrocuted by a battery on a sinking boat or eaten by a shark Robert Reich posted Why isn’t the media reporting on Trump’s growing dementia?
Trump has obviously been both a low IQ moron and a fascist all his life, his first attorney was Roy Cohn Christ's sake. For here's precisely how he became the Perfect GOP Candidate: A supreme Narcissist who first builds Hotels with his last Name plastered all over the top of each with a Will To Power Fixation that drives him to become a TV Star where the whole game was to have the contestants kiss his ass to see who was His most 'competent' Apprentice, Firing all the Losers before finally picking the Winner, Like Me. Which sets him up to run for President, Wrapping Himself In MAGA Flag to Beat all those Loser Politicians in the Primary and Lock Her Up Hillary in the 2016 Electoral College. Rejoice, rejoice an absolute field day for all the fascists, white supremacists, Christian nationalists, plutocrat billionaires, corporatists, corporate media, atheists, evangelical preachers and six Supreme Court Justices all Backing a Moronic and now progressively Demented Fuhrer for the MAGA Masses Who Worship Him Like A God, Further Feeding Its Insatiable Sociopathic Narcissism!!!
Turns out I also hadn't read the whole issue with A.J. Pennyfarthing's 10 stunning moments from Trump's late-night speech to religious broadcasters. You ain't going to be changing any preacher's or MAGA's minds about how unhinged DT is with any raft of articles cause that is the Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron's Lowest Common Denominator Appeal To The Wrap Yourself In MAGA Flag And $60 Bible Masses!
Hugh, I'm afraid you are right. He is not stupid enough, not to do great harm to the U.S and the world. Invectives are nice and satisfying but they won't help. The man was elected by the American people. How to get rid of him?
Tom, Trump was not elected by the people in a free and fair election. He was elected due to the influence of Russian cyber attacks, a MSM now almost totally controlled by Right wing Billionaires, and a Supreme Court decision that allowed corporations to pour billions into Trumps campaign. Additionally he was elected by the default of a vast number of voters so disenchanted by the choices, that they did not bother to vote.
Yes Marc, you are right in almost everything. I'm not sure about the Russian influencw although it is plausible. Putin talked about the chaos Trump would generate, which is in the interest of this imperialist.
But the problem is that the electorate has spoken and that an obvious unfit man is president-elect and Idon't know a way to get rid of him. Do you?
What remains is how to make him and his dubious nuts and psycho's powerless...
I just hope that the republicans, who have been elected to serve us, will protect America and not cave into trump's demands for changes in our country! Democrats and republicans will need to work together to keep control on the out of control bully about to take the White House!
Jan, to look to the existing Republicans and Democrats to work together to save us is not very likely. They are the very ones who got us in this situation after decades of dysfunction. We must and will find a way to install a government that is once again by the people and for the people. Now is the time to begin to plan for the post-Trump era.
Scary thought! I know everything he does is to get attention, the clothes and makeup draw the eye. But he does seem to have lost a lot of his previous energy.
Nah man. He IS dumb as a rock! His vile kvorka makes him SEEM somewhat intelligent/useful, but no. No, we Americans can clearly see that NO ONE is as dumb as that rapist pedophile.
Trump is dumb. One of his professors at Wharton said Trump was the dumbest student in his class. I am sure he got in at Wharton because of his rich father. Wharton was looking for money from his father, I have no doubt.
He is wilely and conniving, in some areas, as you note his special,skills, but it is superficial intelligence, as he knows very little, thinks very shallowly, and has zero attention span.
Hugh - I agree and point to this past summer's stellar performance as the bumbling incoherent (even bored) demented fool, distracting from all the machinations going on behind the curtain. masterful, i hate to admit.
The Great Dismantling: Trump's Coming Attack on America's Economic Backbone
Thom Hartmann 11-7-24
Donald Trump is preparing to crash the American economy. He intends to do it by tearing up vital parts of our American government. He may even hire Elon Musk to pull it off.
And from his point of view, this is not going to be a bad thing. The farther the economy crashes, the greater the buying opportunity for billionaires.
It all has to do with something called the administrative state.
While it’s not sexy or even particularly interesting to the average American voter, having a strong administrative state is essential to a high-functioning economy.
A strong administrative state is the only thing that protects entrepreneurs and small businesses from being squashed like bugs by monopolistic behemoths, and small businesses are our nation’s main growth engine.
For example, over 70 percent of all new jobs created since 2019 were created by small businesses, producing almost 13 million new jobs over the past 25 years. Small business creation is up 50 percent over Trump’s years because the Biden administration has been enforcing the rule of law, including taking on the giant tech monopolies. Small businesses now account for over 43 percent of all American economic activity.
A strong administrative state is also the only thing that can protect the environment from those who’d destroy it for their own profits. It’s the only thing that can protect consumers from defective or even deadly products and food or drug contamination. It our only defense against predatory banks, airlines, and insurance companies, among others.
A strong administrative state that follows and enforces the rule of law — as opposed to the kind of grift-driven kleptocracies typical of strongman governments — is essential, in other words, to a functioning national economy.
Here in America, we see this best in the contrast between lightly bureaucratic and largely unregulated Red states and more bureaucratic and regulated (and taxed) Blue states and counties. While Red and Blue states are represented in Congress about 50/50, as the Brookings Institution found a few years ago:
“Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties represents just 29% of the economy.”
But now the administrative state is in the crosshairs of the incoming Trump administration, and their planned assault on it will almost certainly cause a loss of economic vitality, probably even leading to a major recession (every Republican president since Nixon has had a major recession after tinkering with tax and regulatory policies; none of the Democratic presidents have created one since Carter, and his started under Nixon).
We also see this at the level of the nation-state. As Professor Timothy Snyder notes:
“Now consider the Russian and Hungarian economies. Russia sits on hugely valuable natural resources, and yet is a poor country. The profits from its oil and gas are in the hands of a few oligarchs.
“Hungary sits in the middle of the European Union, the most successful trade project of all time.And yet Hungarians are poorer than their neighbors, in part because the Orbán regime corruptly channels EU resources to friendly oligarchs.
“The lesson is clear. Democracy is a method of checking corrupt rulers. When there is no functioning democracy, corruption is unchecked.And democracy is an element of a more fundamental guarantor of prosperity, the rule of law. In Hungary and Russia, the rule of law has been bent and broken, to the benefit of the few, and to the detriment of the many.Ending the rule of law is the Trump-Vance platform.”
Gutting the administrative state is the first and imperative aspect of ending or weakening the rule of law.
Because, as Steve Bannon famously told America, the main goal of the Trump administration is “the ‘deconstruction’ of the administrative state.” He added:
“Every business leader we’ve had in is saying not just taxes, but it is also the regulation. I think the consistent …[thing] is the deconstruction. The way the progressive left runs is, if they can’t get it passed, they’re just going to put in some sort of regulation in an agency. That’s all going to be deconstructed and I think that that’s why this regulatory thing is so important.”
We saw this movie before, during the last Trump administration. He put a coal lobbyist in charge of EPA, an oil lobbyist at Interior, a Telcom lobbyist and lawyer at FCC, a professional union-busting lawyer in charge of the Labor Department, an advocate for replacing public schools with religious ones in charge of the Education Department, etc., etc.
But that was more mere corruption than a wholesale destruction of administrative agencies. Since the Chevron deference decision by the Supreme Court this past year, though, it’s now possible that Trump could actually destroy the American administrative state.
Even when Chevron was still intact eight years ago, the result of Trump’s corruption in his previous administration, just like with Reagan’s and Bush’s deregulatory campaigns, was a massive recession that started before Covid came along.
Trump will fire Lena Kahn at the Federal Trade Commission, blowing up the antitrust efforts of the Biden administration; the fat cat billionaires already are eagerly anticipating running amok (which is why they threw billions at Trump’s campaign).
The result, predictably, will be another Republican economic disaster for America’s working class.
Interestingly, our country’s most famous investor also seems to be thinking along these same lines. Warren Buffett has recently sold over $325 billion in stock and is simply sitting on that huge pile of cash.
Why? Probably the Oracle of Omaha can see the same thing I’m pointing out here: Trump is preparing to turn the economy over to Musk and his billionaire buddies and the result will be a disaster.
A disaster, by the way, that will be very useful to Buffett and other billionaires; recessions and depressions are when America’s largest fortunes are typically made or expanded because they represent great buying opportunities to those with cash, while at the same time the small companies being squeezed are willing to sell for a song.
So get ready; we’re in for a bumpy few years as America descends into a strongman-run oligarchy while the Supreme Court and Trump’s toadies rip apart the protections of the administrative state we’ve so carefully constructed in the years since the Civil War and the Republican Great Depression.
It may well be a disaster for your 401(k), and millions will lose their jobs in a recession. If Musk cuts $2 trillion from the federal budget, as promised, it will almost certainly impact Social Security and take a huge bite out of programs for veterans, children, and the disabled.
It would probably also have to end all subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, and end hundreds of billions in federal aid to infrastructure construction programs.
Get ready now, to the extent that you can. Forewarned is forearmed.
"We may never recover" is the thought that bothers me the most, and that is looking on the bright side. I have visions of our country being like an airplane going into an unrecoverable tailspin straight into the ground.
What about a passenger plane that suddenly had both engines fail but made a safe landing on the Hudson River and all survived? One cool headed pilot is all it took to save a planeload of passengers.
Mine was an analogy, not to be taken literally. I didn't anticipate anyone interpreting it otherwise. In addition, the plane Sullenberger landed on the Hudson was not in an unrecoverable tail spin.
Marc, It's heartening to read such positivity. I've read in The Fourth Turning Is Here, that a "wise" man will emerge to lead the re-grouping after the Orange Maggot leads us into a crisis. I'm hopeful!!!
Daniel, it is best to go a bit more radical and have a new implant instead. A root canal is to maintain a dead tooth while an implant is a whole new start!
I know what one emergency can be - needing a root canal. I had to have an emergency root canal myself. I was in more toothache pain than pain from a ruptured appendix I also had. I may be wrong, but I can think of no greater excruciating pain than that of a certain type of toothache. You have to feel it to believe it.
Not so sure about McConnell. He is known to switch sides in an instant so I would not put my hope on him. I am hoping that our elected officials truly are loyal to America and not to trump!
When you sail the sea, there is always a wind that brings you somewhere. The "trust" in old Mitch is an ill wind, but one incompetent official less in the Trump administration is quite a result...
The Great Dismantling: Trump's Coming Attack on America's Economic Backbone
Thom Hartmann 11-7-24
Donald Trump is preparing to crash the American economy. He intends to do it by tearing up vital parts of our American government. He may even hire Elon Musk to pull it off.
And from his point of view, this is not going to be a bad thing. The farther the economy crashes, the greater the buying opportunity for billionaires.
It all has to do with something called the administrative state.
While it’s not sexy or even particularly interesting to the average American voter, having a strong administrative state is essential to a high-functioning economy.
A strong administrative state is the only thing that protects entrepreneurs and small businesses from being squashed like bugs by monopolistic behemoths, and small businesses are our nation’s main growth engine.
For example, over 70 percent of all new jobs created since 2019 were created by small businesses, producing almost 13 million new jobs over the past 25 years. Small business creation is up 50 percent over Trump’s years because the Biden administration has been enforcing the rule of law, including taking on the giant tech monopolies. Small businesses now account for over 43 percent of all American economic activity.
A strong administrative state is also the only thing that can protect the environment from those who’d destroy it for their own profits. It’s the only thing that can protect consumers from defective or even deadly products and food or drug contamination. It our only defense against predatory banks, airlines, and insurance companies, among others.
A strong administrative state that follows and enforces the rule of law — as opposed to the kind of grift-driven kleptocracies typical of strongman governments — is essential, in other words, to a functioning national economy.
Here in America, we see this best in the contrast between lightly bureaucratic and largely unregulated Red states and more bureaucratic and regulated (and taxed) Blue states and counties. While Red and Blue states are represented in Congress about 50/50, as the Brookings Institution found a few years ago:
“Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties represents just 29% of the economy.”
But now the administrative state is in the crosshairs of the incoming Trump administration, and their planned assault on it will almost certainly cause a loss of economic vitality, probably even leading to a major recession (every Republican president since Nixon has had a major recession after tinkering with tax and regulatory policies; none of the Democratic presidents have created one since Carter, and his started under Nixon).
We also see this at the level of the nation-state. As Professor Timothy Snyder notes:
“Now consider the Russian and Hungarian economies. Russia sits on hugely valuable natural resources, and yet is a poor country. The profits from its oil and gas are in the hands of a few oligarchs.
“Hungary sits in the middle of the European Union, the most successful trade project of all time.And yet Hungarians are poorer than their neighbors, in part because the Orbán regime corruptly channels EU resources to friendly oligarchs.
“The lesson is clear. Democracy is a method of checking corrupt rulers. When there is no functioning democracy, corruption is unchecked.And democracy is an element of a more fundamental guarantor of prosperity, the rule of law. In Hungary and Russia, the rule of law has been bent and broken, to the benefit of the few, and to the detriment of the many.Ending the rule of law is the Trump-Vance platform.”
Gutting the administrative state is the first and imperative aspect of ending or weakening the rule of law.
Because, as Steve Bannon famously told America, the main goal of the Trump administration is “the ‘deconstruction’ of the administrative state.” He added:
“Every business leader we’ve had in is saying not just taxes, but it is also the regulation. I think the consistent …[thing] is the deconstruction. The way the progressive left runs is, if they can’t get it passed, they’re just going to put in some sort of regulation in an agency. That’s all going to be deconstructed and I think that that’s why this regulatory thing is so important.”
We saw this movie before, during the last Trump administration. He put a coal lobbyist in charge of EPA, an oil lobbyist at Interior, a Telcom lobbyist and lawyer at FCC, a professional union-busting lawyer in charge of the Labor Department, an advocate for replacing public schools with religious ones in charge of the Education Department, etc., etc.
But that was more mere corruption than a wholesale destruction of administrative agencies. Since the Chevron deference decision by the Supreme Court this past year, though, it’s now possible that Trump could actually destroy the American administrative state.
Even when Chevron was still intact eight years ago, the result of Trump’s corruption in his previous administration, just like with Reagan’s and Bush’s deregulatory campaigns, was a massive recession that started before Covid came along.
Trump will fire Lena Kahn at the Federal Trade Commission, blowing up the antitrust efforts of the Biden administration; the fat cat billionaires already are eagerly anticipating running amok (which is why they threw billions at Trump’s campaign).
The result, predictably, will be another Republican economic disaster for America’s working class.
Interestingly, our country’s most famous investor also seems to be thinking along these same lines. Warren Buffett has recently sold over $325 billion in stock and is simply sitting on that huge pile of cash.
Why? Probably the Oracle of Omaha can see the same thing I’m pointing out here: Trump is preparing to turn the economy over to Musk and his billionaire buddies and the result will be a disaster.
A disaster, by the way, that will be very useful to Buffett and other billionaires; recessions and depressions are when America’s largest fortunes are typically made or expanded because they represent great buying opportunities to those with cash, while at the same time the small companies being squeezed are willing to sell for a song.
So get ready; we’re in for a bumpy few years as America descends into a strongman-run oligarchy while the Supreme Court and Trump’s toadies rip apart the protections of the administrative state we’ve so carefully constructed in the years since the Civil War and the Republican Great Depression.
It may well be a disaster for your 401(k), and millions will lose their jobs in a recession. If Musk cuts $2 trillion from the federal budget, as promised, it will almost certainly impact Social Security and take a huge bite out of programs for veterans, children, and the disabled.
It would probably also have to end all subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, and end hundreds of billions in federal aid to infrastructure construction programs.
Get ready now, to the extent that you can. Forewarned is forearmed.
The Great Dismantling: Trump's Coming Attack on America's Economic Backbone
Thom Hartmann 11-7-24
Donald Trump is preparing to crash the American economy. He intends to do it by tearing up vital parts of our American government. He may even hire Elon Musk to pull it off.
And from his point of view, this is not going to be a bad thing. The farther the economy crashes, the greater the buying opportunity for billionaires.
It all has to do with something called the administrative state.
While it’s not sexy or even particularly interesting to the average American voter, having a strong administrative state is essential to a high-functioning economy.
A strong administrative state is the only thing that protects entrepreneurs and small businesses from being squashed like bugs by monopolistic behemoths, and small businesses are our nation’s main growth engine.
For example, over 70 percent of all new jobs created since 2019 were created by small businesses, producing almost 13 million new jobs over the past 25 years. Small business creation is up 50 percent over Trump’s years because the Biden administration has been enforcing the rule of law, including taking on the giant tech monopolies. Small businesses now account for over 43 percent of all American economic activity.
A strong administrative state is also the only thing that can protect the environment from those who’d destroy it for their own profits. It’s the only thing that can protect consumers from defective or even deadly products and food or drug contamination. It our only defense against predatory banks, airlines, and insurance companies, among others.
A strong administrative state that follows and enforces the rule of law — as opposed to the kind of grift-driven kleptocracies typical of strongman governments — is essential, in other words, to a functioning national economy.
Here in America, we see this best in the contrast between lightly bureaucratic and largely unregulated Red states and more bureaucratic and regulated (and taxed) Blue states and counties. While Red and Blue states are represented in Congress about 50/50, as the Brookings Institution found a few years ago:
“Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties represents just 29% of the economy.”
But now the administrative state is in the crosshairs of the incoming Trump administration, and their planned assault on it will almost certainly cause a loss of economic vitality, probably even leading to a major recession (every Republican president since Nixon has had a major recession after tinkering with tax and regulatory policies; none of the Democratic presidents have created one since Carter, and his started under Nixon).
We also see this at the level of the nation-state. As Professor Timothy Snyder notes:
“Now consider the Russian and Hungarian economies. Russia sits on hugely valuable natural resources, and yet is a poor country. The profits from its oil and gas are in the hands of a few oligarchs.
“Hungary sits in the middle of the European Union, the most successful trade project of all time.And yet Hungarians are poorer than their neighbors, in part because the Orbán regime corruptly channels EU resources to friendly oligarchs.
“The lesson is clear. Democracy is a method of checking corrupt rulers. When there is no functioning democracy, corruption is unchecked.And democracy is an element of a more fundamental guarantor of prosperity, the rule of law. In Hungary and Russia, the rule of law has been bent and broken, to the benefit of the few, and to the detriment of the many.Ending the rule of law is the Trump-Vance platform.”
Gutting the administrative state is the first and imperative aspect of ending or weakening the rule of law.
Because, as Steve Bannon famously told America, the main goal of the Trump administration is “the ‘deconstruction’ of the administrative state.” He added:
“Every business leader we’ve had in is saying not just taxes, but it is also the regulation. I think the consistent …[thing] is the deconstruction. The way the progressive left runs is, if they can’t get it passed, they’re just going to put in some sort of regulation in an agency. That’s all going to be deconstructed and I think that that’s why this regulatory thing is so important.”
We saw this movie before, during the last Trump administration. He put a coal lobbyist in charge of EPA, an oil lobbyist at Interior, a Telcom lobbyist and lawyer at FCC, a professional union-busting lawyer in charge of the Labor Department, an advocate for replacing public schools with religious ones in charge of the Education Department, etc., etc.
But that was more mere corruption than a wholesale destruction of administrative agencies. Since the Chevron deference decision by the Supreme Court this past year, though, it’s now possible that Trump could actually destroy the American administrative state.
Even when Chevron was still intact eight years ago, the result of Trump’s corruption in his previous administration, just like with Reagan’s and Bush’s deregulatory campaigns, was a massive recession that started before Covid came along.
Trump will fire Lena Kahn at the Federal Trade Commission, blowing up the antitrust efforts of the Biden administration; the fat cat billionaires already are eagerly anticipating running amok (which is why they threw billions at Trump’s campaign).
The result, predictably, will be another Republican economic disaster for America’s working class.
Interestingly, our country’s most famous investor also seems to be thinking along these same lines. Warren Buffett has recently sold over $325 billion in stock and is simply sitting on that huge pile of cash.
Why? Probably the Oracle of Omaha can see the same thing I’m pointing out here: Trump is preparing to turn the economy over to Musk and his billionaire buddies and the result will be a disaster.
A disaster, by the way, that will be very useful to Buffett and other billionaires; recessions and depressions are when America’s largest fortunes are typically made or expanded because they represent great buying opportunities to those with cash, while at the same time the small companies being squeezed are willing to sell for a song.
So get ready; we’re in for a bumpy few years as America descends into a strongman-run oligarchy while the Supreme Court and Trump’s toadies rip apart the protections of the administrative state we’ve so carefully constructed in the years since the Civil War and the Republican Great Depression.
It may well be a disaster for your 401(k), and millions will lose their jobs in a recession. If Musk cuts $2 trillion from the federal budget, as promised, it will almost certainly impact Social Security and take a huge bite out of programs for veterans, children, and the disabled.
It would probably also have to end all subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, and end hundreds of billions in federal aid to infrastructure construction programs.
Get ready now, to the extent that you can. Forewarned is forearmed.
That is true only if people throw in the towel. There is ALWAYS a road that leads back to more freedom and democracy.
Americans have been fed on fatalistic bullshit for FAR TOO long. When I was growing up in the 50s, they tried to feed me on the notion that once a nation "went communist" there was no coming back. Once Red, always Red, so better dead than Red -- was the saying. And we were ready to engulf the world in a nuclear holocaust in order to "keep our freedom."
That the USSR fell, and collapsed relatively peacefully was NOT in the US program.
In support of Progressive Utilization Theory (PROUT) please read the following.
Post-Election analysis shows working-class people voted for Republicans and Trump to shake up things and get rid of the DEEP STATE.
Democrats have a chance to use this by claiming the deep state is made up of politicians paid for by corporations.
Projectleapfrog.org is working on a LIMITED Convention of States that will NOT run away but will amend the Constitution and get rid of corporations and money in politics.
We have 18 college students in 18 state capitals working on this.
In support of Progressive Utilization Theory (PROUT) please read the following.
Post-Election analysis shows working-class people voted for Republicans and Trump to shake up things and get rid of the DEEP STATE.
Democrats have a chance to use this by claiming the deep state is made up of politicians paid for by corporations.
Projectleapfrog.org is working on a LIMITED Convention of States that will NOT run away but will amend the Constitution and get rid of corporations and money in politics.
We have 18 college students working on this in 18 state capitals.
Thomas, while I would NEVER, EVER be cruel to any animal, I do understand what you are saying, I think. The orange man and his cruel band of miscreants are whipping us really hard right now to keep that fear alive in all of us; however, there comes a time when you just get fed up with the whipping and decide to do something about it. I hope for all of our sake, Americans are getting tired of the whipping and are waking up to the fact we must do something sooner rather than later!
Agree Peggy. We cannot waste energy repeating our complaints. Now we must take action to deploy opposition to these childish souls stupidly becoming in charge. As always, it's up to us, the people, to change the path of history.
Peggy, that's not quite what I meant. It's more along the lines of "Just because the only tool you have is a hammer, stop treating every situation as though it were a nail."
America has had big sticks and whips -- and we're going to need to new tools and new skills to use them.
Okay, I see. What tools will we need? What skills will we need? I am ready to start pushing back but have no idea how to go about it! I have joined many organizations in the hopes of discovering what exactly I can do to help alter the course America is currently on.
Cathi, I believe that we will absolutely recover. We recovered from British colonialism and we recovered from a disastrous Civil War. We also recovered from McCarthyism. But recovering does not mean we will go back to Democracy and the economics of 20 or 30 years ago; it means to install an improved system to replace the one that is failing us now.
The Great Dismantling: Trump's Coming Attack on America's Economic Backbone
Thom Hartmann 11-7-24
Donald Trump is preparing to crash the American economy. He intends to do it by tearing up vital parts of our American government. He may even hire Elon Musk to pull it off.
And from his point of view, this is not going to be a bad thing. The farther the economy crashes, the greater the buying opportunity for billionaires.
It all has to do with something called the administrative state.
While it’s not sexy or even particularly interesting to the average American voter, having a strong administrative state is essential to a high-functioning economy.
A strong administrative state is the only thing that protects entrepreneurs and small businesses from being squashed like bugs by monopolistic behemoths, and small businesses are our nation’s main growth engine.
For example, over 70 percent of all new jobs created since 2019 were created by small businesses, producing almost 13 million new jobs over the past 25 years. Small business creation is up 50 percent over Trump’s years because the Biden administration has been enforcing the rule of law, including taking on the giant tech monopolies. Small businesses now account for over 43 percent of all American economic activity.
A strong administrative state is also the only thing that can protect the environment from those who’d destroy it for their own profits. It’s the only thing that can protect consumers from defective or even deadly products and food or drug contamination. It our only defense against predatory banks, airlines, and insurance companies, among others.
A strong administrative state that follows and enforces the rule of law — as opposed to the kind of grift-driven kleptocracies typical of strongman governments — is essential, in other words, to a functioning national economy.
Here in America, we see this best in the contrast between lightly bureaucratic and largely unregulated Red states and more bureaucratic and regulated (and taxed) Blue states and counties. While Red and Blue states are represented in Congress about 50/50, as the Brookings Institution found a few years ago:
“Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties represents just 29% of the economy.”
But now the administrative state is in the crosshairs of the incoming Trump administration, and their planned assault on it will almost certainly cause a loss of economic vitality, probably even leading to a major recession (every Republican president since Nixon has had a major recession after tinkering with tax and regulatory policies; none of the Democratic presidents have created one since Carter, and his started under Nixon).
We also see this at the level of the nation-state. As Professor Timothy Snyder notes:
“Now consider the Russian and Hungarian economies. Russia sits on hugely valuable natural resources, and yet is a poor country. The profits from its oil and gas are in the hands of a few oligarchs.
“Hungary sits in the middle of the European Union, the most successful trade project of all time.And yet Hungarians are poorer than their neighbors, in part because the Orbán regime corruptly channels EU resources to friendly oligarchs.
“The lesson is clear. Democracy is a method of checking corrupt rulers. When there is no functioning democracy, corruption is unchecked.And democracy is an element of a more fundamental guarantor of prosperity, the rule of law. In Hungary and Russia, the rule of law has been bent and broken, to the benefit of the few, and to the detriment of the many.Ending the rule of law is the Trump-Vance platform.”
Gutting the administrative state is the first and imperative aspect of ending or weakening the rule of law.
Because, as Steve Bannon famously told America, the main goal of the Trump administration is “the ‘deconstruction’ of the administrative state.” He added:
“Every business leader we’ve had in is saying not just taxes, but it is also the regulation. I think the consistent …[thing] is the deconstruction. The way the progressive left runs is, if they can’t get it passed, they’re just going to put in some sort of regulation in an agency. That’s all going to be deconstructed and I think that that’s why this regulatory thing is so important.”
We saw this movie before, during the last Trump administration. He put a coal lobbyist in charge of EPA, an oil lobbyist at Interior, a Telcom lobbyist and lawyer at FCC, a professional union-busting lawyer in charge of the Labor Department, an advocate for replacing public schools with religious ones in charge of the Education Department, etc., etc.
But that was more mere corruption than a wholesale destruction of administrative agencies. Since the Chevron deference decision by the Supreme Court this past year, though, it’s now possible that Trump could actually destroy the American administrative state.
Even when Chevron was still intact eight years ago, the result of Trump’s corruption in his previous administration, just like with Reagan’s and Bush’s deregulatory campaigns, was a massive recession that started before Covid came along.
Trump will fire Lena Kahn at the Federal Trade Commission, blowing up the antitrust efforts of the Biden administration; the fat cat billionaires already are eagerly anticipating running amok (which is why they threw billions at Trump’s campaign).
The result, predictably, will be another Republican economic disaster for America’s working class.
Interestingly, our country’s most famous investor also seems to be thinking along these same lines. Warren Buffett has recently sold over $325 billion in stock and is simply sitting on that huge pile of cash.
Why? Probably the Oracle of Omaha can see the same thing I’m pointing out here: Trump is preparing to turn the economy over to Musk and his billionaire buddies and the result will be a disaster.
A disaster, by the way, that will be very useful to Buffett and other billionaires; recessions and depressions are when America’s largest fortunes are typically made or expanded because they represent great buying opportunities to those with cash, while at the same time the small companies being squeezed are willing to sell for a song.
So get ready; we’re in for a bumpy few years as America descends into a strongman-run oligarchy while the Supreme Court and Trump’s toadies rip apart the protections of the administrative state we’ve so carefully constructed in the years since the Civil War and the Republican Great Depression.
It may well be a disaster for your 401(k), and millions will lose their jobs in a recession. If Musk cuts $2 trillion from the federal budget, as promised, it will almost certainly impact Social Security and take a huge bite out of programs for veterans, children, and the disabled.
It would probably also have to end all subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, and end hundreds of billions in federal aid to infrastructure construction programs.
Get ready now, to the extent that you can. Forewarned is forearmed.
Agree. I can't help but think that when Trump, or anyone like him, selects only syncophants to serve the "master's" wishes, they are also surrounding themselves with unethical, dangerous people perhaps even worse than themselves. Is a coup against Trump by one of his selected extremists out of the question? Is an even worse downward spiral possible? I am feeling very pessimistic, while hoping my worst fears are either unlikely, or not unrealized.
As a 71 year old who has always thought of our country as a guiding force for democracy and decency. I keep thinking that we are just in a bad dream and that we will all wake up and all of this chaos will be over. How the heck did America become this stupid? Trump and his billionaire buddies are going to make everyone else suffer because everyone else is believing his Conspiracy Theory that he will MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. America has never been great and never will be! In order to make a more perfect union we need to stop ignoring those who continue to commit unlawful acts and penalize perpetrators with equal justice under the law!
Rather, I'd characterize it by saying that America has always had great principles and great goals but that we've always fallen short of the mark. We've made progress, though.
EXACTLY, Cécile. We have striven for greatness based on great ideals, but because we are human beings, we make mistakes. This has been a Mega-mistake, but we will eventually rise again like a Phoenix from the ashes, with new hard-won knowledge. I hope to live to see it.
I certainly hope so. We need to get a whole lot better at creating systems that cannot be cheated on, or at least, are much harder to cheat on. That starts with good principles and integrity, the latter of which we are quite poor on, especially in these times.
Just an example: In Portage county, WI, which is extremely sandy, our ground water is easily polluted by nitrates. Yet Farmers are on the honor system to let us know how much they applied. So it comes as no surprise that we have many miscarriages due to nitrate pollution..
"Doveryai, No Proveryai" said Stalin. [Trust but verify].
Speaking of ground water, all the groundwater we've extracted for irrigation, municipal & residential use, etc. has affected the tilt of the Earth's axis, by changing the relative weight & balance from much lower quantities of water in certain places, especially US & India, & it has by itself raised the sea level (it's not only melting glaciers, Greenland & Antarctica, or the warming ocean).
Whatever progress we've made in the last 45 years has come in fits & starts, interspersed with great setbacks, especially for democracy, equality, justice & stability.
Keith Olson, America is great and always has been because of the people. The people who believe in and embody democratic ideals. The people who work, live, and sometimes die together for something bigger than themselves. The people who think beyond, who invent, who care, who include everyone. The people who serve others more than they serve their egos. The people whose patriotism means freedom and concern for all on the land. The people who ask what they can do for their country not just what their country can do for them. And the people who look inward for any personal blindspots to be attended to, who grow in their understanding and compassion and so restore dignity to fellow Americans.
America is great because of all these people. She always has been because of the people who have always aspired to creating a more perfect union.
Thomas, what about the people who voted for democracy? The people who spoke to neighbors, friends, and family about the importance of the election and the candidates? What about the countless pro-democracy volunteers, donors, writers, podcasters, etc who worked tirelessly to elect pro-democracy candidates? Are they not great? Are they not a greatness in America?
Thomas, who were part of the resistance, who sheltered, fed, and protected people, who among all the monsters still saw the greatness in some, in their country.. I'm not discounting the monsters but I am rejecting them usurping my belief in and gratitude for the greatness of some.
M Tree, there are about 75 million people in this country who have a claim to potential greatness, and these people voted for Harris. The 175 million Americans eligible to vote, who did not vote for Harris forfeited their claim to greatness by enabling a despot to return to office, simply put. Dad and two of my uncles sacrificed portions of their sanity to destroy fascism during WWII in Europe. Now the tsunami has rebounded toward world autocracy, and the opportunistic trump is riding the wave at its crest. To rebuild a viable government based upon the democratic principle, from the debacle of trumpism will require much effort and courage. Dr. Reich aptly has pointed out that a government by one 'dear leader' who passes his phony dictations to a subservient band of toadies can't possibly be effective. The fact is that trump and his sycophants, and supporting cast of billionaires, have no plan and no strategy to allow for a better life for 300 million-plus citizens of lesser wealth, rather quite to the contrary. Here is an article by Prof. Reich about everybody's problem, the economy, from a month ago.
Dennis King, I too have WW2 vets in my family. The stories of sacrifice by those at home and the service people abroad are seared in my memory. And in my heart where honor, reverence, and gratitude lie. Someone posted recently in a comment to me that younger people don't feel this or know this like we do. I hadn't thought of that. So those who didn't vote because they didn't see the election as existential, I give them some grace. I'm sure the two of us recognized the danger years ago, but we were primed by the great generation.
It really is quite stark and shocking when you point out that they have no plan for a better life for 300 million plus. It just boggles the mind. How vast the neglect will be. And of course the abuse and cruelty.
Something about this election, really threw me. It didn't seem that it should go this way. There were so many folks I knew, that absolutely were convinced not to vote for trump; that they'd vote for Vp Harris. Even if they felt they were somewhat, holding their noses. And I don't live in an echo chamber. The area I reside in is about 85% republican; but the cities were definitely leaning towards Ms.Harris, it seemed. Folks on Social media seemed overall, utterly turned off by trump; especially after his first term & the covid debacle.
Something just doesn't feel right. Does anyone recall during the first trump election, when a part (a few districts)of South Florida appeared to have been compromised ( terms of voting results), by what appeared to be "russian" interference? The FBI advised Gov. DeSantis after that election, I believe.
I'd have to really dig, to be more specific. But what if that was an early dry run, for putin's Russia? If they found vulnerabilities in the voting system? And with musk-rat on board with trump, there are additional possibilities it would seem, that might have impacted the outcome.
In the past few days, I listened to members of Harris's team doing a debrief with speechwriter, Jon Favreau. They revealed that in the weeks leading up to Biden's debate with Trump, their internal polling showed Biden losing to Trump by a very large electoral vote margin -- even though the popular vote would be close. They were looking at Trump getting over 370 electoral votes.
You can come up with all kinds of what-ifs and other things to cause you to feel strange. I just know that in my home state of Georgia -- one of the seven battleground states -- the election was clean and fair, and Biden would have lost by a larger margin than Harris did.
One writer saw this coming from the 2020 election. He noted that a number of solidly Democratic counties in Texas -- mainly Hispanic -- and which gave Obama 60 point margins -- flipped in 2020 from Biden to Trump. A few more of them flipped this year.
Sorry, but theories about Russia and stuff will ultimately cause more harm than benefit. Whatever impact they might have had here in Georgia, it was insignificant -- just as when Biden won our state in 2020.
Your intuition is not misleading you. The results were contrary to all signs approaching the election: much huger crowds for Harris, much more positivity, much higher enthusiasm, much more on message, record early voter turnout led by women, independents & late deciders breaking for Harris.
Multiple election anomalies: high voter suppression, voting machines switching votes from Trump to Harris, thrown out ballots, rejected mail-in ballots, vandalized dropboxes, bomb scares in majority Democratic precincts from a Russian source to scare voters away, unusually high number of "bullet ballots" voting Trump only, especially in swing states, & the reverse with ballots for Democrats except blank for President; previous examination & tampering of voting machines by Trump officials; codes placed in election system by Trump partisans, Musk's payment to people to "register" so that he could get their personal data to use for faked ballots for Trump, the internet sending election tabulations to Musk's Starlink to be corrupted upon publication, Musk knowing election results ahead of time when they were publicized, numerous contacts between Trump & Musk, Trump & Putin, & Musk & Putin, & possible collaboration with other high tech billionaires like Thiel & Mercer, as well as Fox personnel from Murdoch to Carlson to Hudseth, Putin's directive to Trump expecting rewards from helping Trump win the election, many comments prior to election by Trump & other Republicans that the election was already set to go for Trump, to the point that Trump' was telling his base he didn't need their votes. Add to that the motivation & capacity for these billionaires with access to the latest technology, all highly motivated for Trump to win, having a long record of lying, cheating, corruption & deception. How can anyone doubt that they did everything they could to help Trump win.
Thomas, I hold on to the belief that our country can and will be great again! We have succumbed to a horrible disease which is the orange man and his cult. Much like Hitler did when he took over Germany. The Germans only woke up when he began to take away and murder so many. There were resistance fighters and we will have ours, too. Americans have always taken pride in their country and I believe with all my heart these same Americans will take whatever measures are necessary to return her to the beacon of Democracy she once was.
M Tree ; Well said ; We have tried to move toward a more perfect union. Money apparently does not buy perfection. that is why our Founders did not want government to take money or gifts from outside the country. We were supposed to have no 'poll taxes'. Money was not considered the end all, be all. It was a problem, as we can see clearly now. As Robert Reich has mentioned, there are a lot of billionaires appointed to tRUMP's cabinet. And he has received millions from the richest man in the world, to help him purchase his power in an illegitimate 'presidency'. He will Never be great, at least not in a good way. A Great Disaster is more like it.
The Great Dismantling: Trump's Coming Attack on America's Economic Backbone
Thom Hartmann 11-7-24
Donald Trump is preparing to crash the American economy. He intends to do it by tearing up vital parts of our American government. He may even hire Elon Musk to pull it off.
And from his point of view, this is not going to be a bad thing. The farther the economy crashes, the greater the buying opportunity for billionaires.
It all has to do with something called the administrative state.
While it’s not sexy or even particularly interesting to the average American voter, having a strong administrative state is essential to a high-functioning economy.
A strong administrative state is the only thing that protects entrepreneurs and small businesses from being squashed like bugs by monopolistic behemoths, and small businesses are our nation’s main growth engine.
For example, over 70 percent of all new jobs created since 2019 were created by small businesses, producing almost 13 million new jobs over the past 25 years. Small business creation is up 50 percent over Trump’s years because the Biden administration has been enforcing the rule of law, including taking on the giant tech monopolies. Small businesses now account for over 43 percent of all American economic activity.
A strong administrative state is also the only thing that can protect the environment from those who’d destroy it for their own profits. It’s the only thing that can protect consumers from defective or even deadly products and food or drug contamination. It our only defense against predatory banks, airlines, and insurance companies, among others.
A strong administrative state that follows and enforces the rule of law — as opposed to the kind of grift-driven kleptocracies typical of strongman governments — is essential, in other words, to a functioning national economy.
Here in America, we see this best in the contrast between lightly bureaucratic and largely unregulated Red states and more bureaucratic and regulated (and taxed) Blue states and counties. While Red and Blue states are represented in Congress about 50/50, as the Brookings Institution found a few years ago:
“Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties represents just 29% of the economy.”
But now the administrative state is in the crosshairs of the incoming Trump administration, and their planned assault on it will almost certainly cause a loss of economic vitality, probably even leading to a major recession (every Republican president since Nixon has had a major recession after tinkering with tax and regulatory policies; none of the Democratic presidents have created one since Carter, and his started under Nixon).
We also see this at the level of the nation-state. As Professor Timothy Snyder notes:
“Now consider the Russian and Hungarian economies. Russia sits on hugely valuable natural resources, and yet is a poor country. The profits from its oil and gas are in the hands of a few oligarchs.
“Hungary sits in the middle of the European Union, the most successful trade project of all time.And yet Hungarians are poorer than their neighbors, in part because the Orbán regime corruptly channels EU resources to friendly oligarchs.
“The lesson is clear. Democracy is a method of checking corrupt rulers. When there is no functioning democracy, corruption is unchecked.And democracy is an element of a more fundamental guarantor of prosperity, the rule of law. In Hungary and Russia, the rule of law has been bent and broken, to the benefit of the few, and to the detriment of the many.Ending the rule of law is the Trump-Vance platform.”
Gutting the administrative state is the first and imperative aspect of ending or weakening the rule of law.
Because, as Steve Bannon famously told America, the main goal of the Trump administration is “the ‘deconstruction’ of the administrative state.” He added:
“Every business leader we’ve had in is saying not just taxes, but it is also the regulation. I think the consistent …[thing] is the deconstruction. The way the progressive left runs is, if they can’t get it passed, they’re just going to put in some sort of regulation in an agency. That’s all going to be deconstructed and I think that that’s why this regulatory thing is so important.”
We saw this movie before, during the last Trump administration. He put a coal lobbyist in charge of EPA, an oil lobbyist at Interior, a Telcom lobbyist and lawyer at FCC, a professional union-busting lawyer in charge of the Labor Department, an advocate for replacing public schools with religious ones in charge of the Education Department, etc., etc.
But that was more mere corruption than a wholesale destruction of administrative agencies. Since the Chevron deference decision by the Supreme Court this past year, though, it’s now possible that Trump could actually destroy the American administrative state.
Even when Chevron was still intact eight years ago, the result of Trump’s corruption in his previous administration, just like with Reagan’s and Bush’s deregulatory campaigns, was a massive recession that started before Covid came along.
Trump will fire Lena Kahn at the Federal Trade Commission, blowing up the antitrust efforts of the Biden administration; the fat cat billionaires already are eagerly anticipating running amok (which is why they threw billions at Trump’s campaign).
The result, predictably, will be another Republican economic disaster for America’s working class.
Interestingly, our country’s most famous investor also seems to be thinking along these same lines. Warren Buffett has recently sold over $325 billion in stock and is simply sitting on that huge pile of cash.
Why? Probably the Oracle of Omaha can see the same thing I’m pointing out here: Trump is preparing to turn the economy over to Musk and his billionaire buddies and the result will be a disaster.
A disaster, by the way, that will be very useful to Buffett and other billionaires; recessions and depressions are when America’s largest fortunes are typically made or expanded because they represent great buying opportunities to those with cash, while at the same time the small companies being squeezed are willing to sell for a song.
So get ready; we’re in for a bumpy few years as America descends into a strongman-run oligarchy while the Supreme Court and Trump’s toadies rip apart the protections of the administrative state we’ve so carefully constructed in the years since the Civil War and the Republican Great Depression.
It may well be a disaster for your 401(k), and millions will lose their jobs in a recession. If Musk cuts $2 trillion from the federal budget, as promised, it will almost certainly impact Social Security and take a huge bite out of programs for veterans, children, and the disabled.
It would probably also have to end all subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, and end hundreds of billions in federal aid to infrastructure construction programs.
Get ready now, to the extent that you can. Forewarned is forearmed.
At this time, people need to work together for the common good of democracy and freedom. Too many people have worked for the benefits of wealthy people. Too many are getting wealthy on the backs of workers. Workers should not pay higher tax rates than wealthy people. Those getting subsidies should not be millionaires.
Keith Olson, I acknowledge and respect that. However, my point stands that America's greatness lies in and always has in the people who move us forward to greater peace, fairness, equality and dignity for all. A blanket generalization that labels America as not great or ever great, misses out on giving gratitude and reverence to Americans past and present who were great. What about those who came together to fight for safety policies and greater pay in the mines in the South. Or those who fought for The Union in the Civil War? How about all the people against slavery who played a role in the underground railroad or abolitionist activites? What about those who marched and supported women's rights to vote and voting rights for everyone, civil rights, lgbt rights, animal rights, etc. How about all the people who showed up to protest the pipeline that would put indigineous peoples' water at risk? The examples of greatness are infinite. I acknowlege the awfulness too, Keith. But I will not let the awful people be all I see.
I totally agree that America has had many Great People in its history. But until all Americans are treated equally regardless of race she will never be a great country.
I don't believe in your comment that America has never been great! It was great long before trump coined the MAGA term. That has drawn our country down! Trump has created an "Us vs Them" world and tries to turn us on each other! As long as the MAGAs continue to attack those who don't agree with trump's policies, we will never be a "United States of America"! The MAGAs continue to attack Biden and Biden's administration even though trump won! They can't be happy with a win; they have to continue to attack. Who will they attack when it is nothing but republicans and trump in charge and responsible for the mess that is about to unfold!
In that way Trump has been an instrument of billionaires & foreign enemies by furthering their goal of dividing Americans & having us turn on each other so as to divert attention from the real culprits of our tremendous destabilizing inequality, the billionaires themselves, who have been plundering our treasury & diverting our money into their coffers, with lots of assistance from Putin & his Russian trolls & bots.
The Great Dismantling: Trump's Coming Attack on America's Economic Backbone
Thom Hartmann 11-7-24
Donald Trump is preparing to crash the American economy. He intends to do it by tearing up vital parts of our American government. He may even hire Elon Musk to pull it off.
And from his point of view, this is not going to be a bad thing. The farther the economy crashes, the greater the buying opportunity for billionaires.
It all has to do with something called the administrative state.
While it’s not sexy or even particularly interesting to the average American voter, having a strong administrative state is essential to a high-functioning economy.
A strong administrative state is the only thing that protects entrepreneurs and small businesses from being squashed like bugs by monopolistic behemoths, and small businesses are our nation’s main growth engine.
For example, over 70 percent of all new jobs created since 2019 were created by small businesses, producing almost 13 million new jobs over the past 25 years. Small business creation is up 50 percent over Trump’s years because the Biden administration has been enforcing the rule of law, including taking on the giant tech monopolies. Small businesses now account for over 43 percent of all American economic activity.
A strong administrative state is also the only thing that can protect the environment from those who’d destroy it for their own profits. It’s the only thing that can protect consumers from defective or even deadly products and food or drug contamination. It our only defense against predatory banks, airlines, and insurance companies, among others.
A strong administrative state that follows and enforces the rule of law — as opposed to the kind of grift-driven kleptocracies typical of strongman governments — is essential, in other words, to a functioning national economy.
Here in America, we see this best in the contrast between lightly bureaucratic and largely unregulated Red states and more bureaucratic and regulated (and taxed) Blue states and counties. While Red and Blue states are represented in Congress about 50/50, as the Brookings Institution found a few years ago:
“Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties represents just 29% of the economy.”
But now the administrative state is in the crosshairs of the incoming Trump administration, and their planned assault on it will almost certainly cause a loss of economic vitality, probably even leading to a major recession (every Republican president since Nixon has had a major recession after tinkering with tax and regulatory policies; none of the Democratic presidents have created one since Carter, and his started under Nixon).
We also see this at the level of the nation-state. As Professor Timothy Snyder notes:
“Now consider the Russian and Hungarian economies. Russia sits on hugely valuable natural resources, and yet is a poor country. The profits from its oil and gas are in the hands of a few oligarchs.
“Hungary sits in the middle of the European Union, the most successful trade project of all time.And yet Hungarians are poorer than their neighbors, in part because the Orbán regime corruptly channels EU resources to friendly oligarchs.
“The lesson is clear. Democracy is a method of checking corrupt rulers. When there is no functioning democracy, corruption is unchecked.And democracy is an element of a more fundamental guarantor of prosperity, the rule of law. In Hungary and Russia, the rule of law has been bent and broken, to the benefit of the few, and to the detriment of the many.Ending the rule of law is the Trump-Vance platform.”
Gutting the administrative state is the first and imperative aspect of ending or weakening the rule of law.
Because, as Steve Bannon famously told America, the main goal of the Trump administration is “the ‘deconstruction’ of the administrative state.” He added:
“Every business leader we’ve had in is saying not just taxes, but it is also the regulation. I think the consistent …[thing] is the deconstruction. The way the progressive left runs is, if they can’t get it passed, they’re just going to put in some sort of regulation in an agency. That’s all going to be deconstructed and I think that that’s why this regulatory thing is so important.”
We saw this movie before, during the last Trump administration. He put a coal lobbyist in charge of EPA, an oil lobbyist at Interior, a Telcom lobbyist and lawyer at FCC, a professional union-busting lawyer in charge of the Labor Department, an advocate for replacing public schools with religious ones in charge of the Education Department, etc., etc.
But that was more mere corruption than a wholesale destruction of administrative agencies. Since the Chevron deference decision by the Supreme Court this past year, though, it’s now possible that Trump could actually destroy the American administrative state.
Even when Chevron was still intact eight years ago, the result of Trump’s corruption in his previous administration, just like with Reagan’s and Bush’s deregulatory campaigns, was a massive recession that started before Covid came along.
Trump will fire Lena Kahn at the Federal Trade Commission, blowing up the antitrust efforts of the Biden administration; the fat cat billionaires already are eagerly anticipating running amok (which is why they threw billions at Trump’s campaign).
The result, predictably, will be another Republican economic disaster for America’s working class.
Interestingly, our country’s most famous investor also seems to be thinking along these same lines. Warren Buffett has recently sold over $325 billion in stock and is simply sitting on that huge pile of cash.
Why? Probably the Oracle of Omaha can see the same thing I’m pointing out here: Trump is preparing to turn the economy over to Musk and his billionaire buddies and the result will be a disaster.
A disaster, by the way, that will be very useful to Buffett and other billionaires; recessions and depressions are when America’s largest fortunes are typically made or expanded because they represent great buying opportunities to those with cash, while at the same time the small companies being squeezed are willing to sell for a song.
So get ready; we’re in for a bumpy few years as America descends into a strongman-run oligarchy while the Supreme Court and Trump’s toadies rip apart the protections of the administrative state we’ve so carefully constructed in the years since the Civil War and the Republican Great Depression.
It may well be a disaster for your 401(k), and millions will lose their jobs in a recession. If Musk cuts $2 trillion from the federal budget, as promised, it will almost certainly impact Social Security and take a huge bite out of programs for veterans, children, and the disabled.
It would probably also have to end all subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, and end hundreds of billions in federal aid to infrastructure construction programs.
Get ready now, to the extent that you can. Forewarned is forearmed.
Though I hate pointing to “Star Wars” as a philosophical wellspring, Obi-wan Kenobi’s rhetorical question “Who’s the bigger fool, the fool, or the fool who follows him?” reflects that, irrespective of whether the dog wags the tail, or the tail wags the dog, the only thing that matters is that that dog is incurably, virulently rabid.
Obi Wan The Return of the Jedi I told you the truth about your father from a different point of view. Hamilton Who wins who dies, who tells your story. What story are we telling and from what point of view
"How many Americans would publicly grovel before Trump, making it clear they’ll do whatever he asks of them regardless of consequence?"
I'll respectfully suggest quite a large number of Americans would. They are the maga cult members who are incapable of rational thought. They'd crawl over broken glass if Trump demanded it because they worship the"dear leader " and cult master.
As Shakespeare said most appropriately, the behavior is tantamount to "base spaniel fawnings" .....
It's hard to be rational, principled and independent after one drinks the Kool aid.
And the gullible who work for a living will be the last to realize that they got played and owned by the Cheeto colored grifter and his posse billionaires and grovelling wannabes.
And when the do get wise, the street justice justice will come for the posse. It'll be cruelly comical to hear the rats' protestations of "it wasn't my idea.." when they try to jump off the sinking ship. No justice, no peace, say I!
12-1-24 Caption contest showing a calendar that stops cold at a cliff on Sunday 1-19-25. My reply 11 hours later: January 20 2025 is the day the United States of America collapses into what Revelation 11:7 calls the "Beast's Bottomless Pit" of Hell On Earth.
Professor Reich: and speaking of the orange jeesus, where is he? has anyone seen him (like, in the flesh) since he supposedly won the recent election? the rumours about his health are deafening.
Mweiner, I'm not sure.....the kind of work he needs done would take over 6 months just to reduce the post surgical swelling. 😂 I was suspecting he was getting some hair plugs done, notice how he's always wearing the idiotic red maga cap?? He's as bald as a billiard ball.
All things considered, I doubt that most of these nominees campaigned for the specific jobs they have been assigned. Given the total lack of credible credentials of the large majority of nominees, I would hazard that if they did any "campaigning" for their employment, it was to get _any_ job in Trump's Administration. Given the disparity of job requirements and nominee's job experience, It is almost like Trump is filling jobs by pulling names out of a hat. Besides, I doubt that these people will be **doin their jobs**. More likely they will simply do whatever Donald tells them to do.
Also given that Trump is NOT one to deal with minutiae, when these people are given assignments and their lack of expertise, there WILL be quite a few SNAFUs and FUBARs that will embarrass Trump as the one who appointed them. So I expect quite a few "Your fired" events in the first year. (That is, if they even make it through the Senate advise & consent screenings.)
CaptainPatch— agree. There will be a lot of “you’re fired. He learned how well this technique of misdirection worked in his first term. The people love it. They stand and clap and make him feel like he’s in control, and that’s all he wants. That and looting our country, and 46 million people gave him that right.
This is the first time big business and those that directly support and control these businesses have gotten together as a quasi group to agree upon certain techniques for control of the population. They huge amounts of cash and power at their disposal, now.
IMO we are being herded as a people and our power to refuse that control is being stripped by the very ones that claim they’re giving power back.
It’s all a shell game of misdirection by a new type of organized crime under the guise of conservatism.
It's perhaps worth noting that had all the people that voted for candidates other than Trump or Harris had instead voted for "the lesser of two evils", Harris, she would have won. Also worth noting is that Trump gained about 3 million votes over his tally in 2020. Meanwhile, Harris _lost_ about 7 million votes over what Biden got in 2020.
The Great Dismantling: Trump's Coming Attack on America's Economic Backbone
Thom Hartmann 11-7-24
Donald Trump is preparing to crash the American economy. He intends to do it by tearing up vital parts of our American government. He may even hire Elon Musk to pull it off.
And from his point of view, this is not going to be a bad thing. The farther the economy crashes, the greater the buying opportunity for billionaires.
It all has to do with something called the administrative state.
While it’s not sexy or even particularly interesting to the average American voter, having a strong administrative state is essential to a high-functioning economy.
A strong administrative state is the only thing that protects entrepreneurs and small businesses from being squashed like bugs by monopolistic behemoths, and small businesses are our nation’s main growth engine.
For example, over 70 percent of all new jobs created since 2019 were created by small businesses, producing almost 13 million new jobs over the past 25 years. Small business creation is up 50 percent over Trump’s years because the Biden administration has been enforcing the rule of law, including taking on the giant tech monopolies. Small businesses now account for over 43 percent of all American economic activity.
A strong administrative state is also the only thing that can protect the environment from those who’d destroy it for their own profits. It’s the only thing that can protect consumers from defective or even deadly products and food or drug contamination. It our only defense against predatory banks, airlines, and insurance companies, among others.
A strong administrative state that follows and enforces the rule of law — as opposed to the kind of grift-driven kleptocracies typical of strongman governments — is essential, in other words, to a functioning national economy.
Here in America, we see this best in the contrast between lightly bureaucratic and largely unregulated Red states and more bureaucratic and regulated (and taxed) Blue states and counties. While Red and Blue states are represented in Congress about 50/50, as the Brookings Institution found a few years ago:
“Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties represents just 29% of the economy.”
But now the administrative state is in the crosshairs of the incoming Trump administration, and their planned assault on it will almost certainly cause a loss of economic vitality, probably even leading to a major recession (every Republican president since Nixon has had a major recession after tinkering with tax and regulatory policies; none of the Democratic presidents have created one since Carter, and his started under Nixon).
We also see this at the level of the nation-state. As Professor Timothy Snyder notes:
“Now consider the Russian and Hungarian economies. Russia sits on hugely valuable natural resources, and yet is a poor country. The profits from its oil and gas are in the hands of a few oligarchs.
“Hungary sits in the middle of the European Union, the most successful trade project of all time.And yet Hungarians are poorer than their neighbors, in part because the Orbán regime corruptly channels EU resources to friendly oligarchs.
“The lesson is clear. Democracy is a method of checking corrupt rulers. When there is no functioning democracy, corruption is unchecked.And democracy is an element of a more fundamental guarantor of prosperity, the rule of law. In Hungary and Russia, the rule of law has been bent and broken, to the benefit of the few, and to the detriment of the many.Ending the rule of law is the Trump-Vance platform.”
Gutting the administrative state is the first and imperative aspect of ending or weakening the rule of law.
Because, as Steve Bannon famously told America, the main goal of the Trump administration is “the ‘deconstruction’ of the administrative state.” He added:
“Every business leader we’ve had in is saying not just taxes, but it is also the regulation. I think the consistent …[thing] is the deconstruction. The way the progressive left runs is, if they can’t get it passed, they’re just going to put in some sort of regulation in an agency. That’s all going to be deconstructed and I think that that’s why this regulatory thing is so important.”
We saw this movie before, during the last Trump administration. He put a coal lobbyist in charge of EPA, an oil lobbyist at Interior, a Telcom lobbyist and lawyer at FCC, a professional union-busting lawyer in charge of the Labor Department, an advocate for replacing public schools with religious ones in charge of the Education Department, etc., etc.
But that was more mere corruption than a wholesale destruction of administrative agencies. Since the Chevron deference decision by the Supreme Court this past year, though, it’s now possible that Trump could actually destroy the American administrative state.
Even when Chevron was still intact eight years ago, the result of Trump’s corruption in his previous administration, just like with Reagan’s and Bush’s deregulatory campaigns, was a massive recession that started before Covid came along.
Trump will fire Lena Kahn at the Federal Trade Commission, blowing up the antitrust efforts of the Biden administration; the fat cat billionaires already are eagerly anticipating running amok (which is why they threw billions at Trump’s campaign).
The result, predictably, will be another Republican economic disaster for America’s working class.
Interestingly, our country’s most famous investor also seems to be thinking along these same lines. Warren Buffett has recently sold over $325 billion in stock and is simply sitting on that huge pile of cash.
Why? Probably the Oracle of Omaha can see the same thing I’m pointing out here: Trump is preparing to turn the economy over to Musk and his billionaire buddies and the result will be a disaster.
A disaster, by the way, that will be very useful to Buffett and other billionaires; recessions and depressions are when America’s largest fortunes are typically made or expanded because they represent great buying opportunities to those with cash, while at the same time the small companies being squeezed are willing to sell for a song.
So get ready; we’re in for a bumpy few years as America descends into a strongman-run oligarchy while the Supreme Court and Trump’s toadies rip apart the protections of the administrative state we’ve so carefully constructed in the years since the Civil War and the Republican Great Depression.
It may well be a disaster for your 401(k), and millions will lose their jobs in a recession. If Musk cuts $2 trillion from the federal budget, as promised, it will almost certainly impact Social Security and take a huge bite out of programs for veterans, children, and the disabled.
It would probably also have to end all subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, and end hundreds of billions in federal aid to infrastructure construction programs.
Get ready now, to the extent that you can. Forewarned is forearmed.
"....over 70 percent of all new jobs created since 2019 were created by small businesses, producing almost 13 million new jobs over the past 25 years." Over those 25 years the USA experienced the Great Recession and the COVID pandemic, and between those two, _millions_ of jobs were lost. So when someone tosses out a stat like "13 million new jobs" were created, I have to wonder if that number is the NET gain, after all those lost jobs were deducted? Or is that 13 million only the pluses over those 25 years, with no consideration for the minuses over that same span of time?
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and Statistics." -- Mark Twain (probably)
(Suggestion) It would be helpful if you cite your source. (We're looking for verification for _13_ million in 25 years, and then you mention 50 out of 51.)
This Nightmare Began Because The Chickenshit Progressive Media Would Not Print Any One Of Three Papers Ending With What Would Have Been This One Viral Line - There is only one question before us: Would you rather have a Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron whose Father Also Had Dementia running this country or the Daughter of Two University Professors?
The morning before the election I posted the following on selected replies to two Joe Rogan interviews with J.D. Vance and John Fetterman. Once I got thrown off that site for 'spamming' I moved on to Robert Reich and Micheal Moore's sites, finishing the night on the Republican Voters Against Trump's Facebook page:
Thom Hartmann 11-1-24
America’s billionaires would love to have a recession, particularly a really severe one.
In a recent “town hall,” billionaire Elon Musk acknowledged what 23 Nobel Prize-winning economists across the country have predicted: If Trump is elected and he and Elon undertake their project to gut government spending, it will provoke a severe recession.
Thom goes on to give the reason Why Billionaires Would Actively Force A Stock Market Crash: Buy Cheap, Sell High. It won't be a mere recession, it will be a full blown Depression that can only Begin to End when another Democrat Enters Their Office As President on January 20 2029, one hundred years after the 1929 Stock Market Crash!
My advise to anyone with money is soon after Musk is in charge of implementing Project 2025 is then to buy Puts shorting the market. They are good for a month and though it would likely take a couple to sink in, as all exchanges are at an all time high, they'd likely be worth something if not more before you cash out. If new to trading you can establish an online account at some brokerage like Ameritrade and recommend doing some homework on what stocks will take the biggest hits with Weiss Ratings and Googling what sectors took the biggest hits in previous crashes (noting that the pandemic crash of March 2020 was a fluke that cost me mucho while the next is Guaranteed by 23 Nobel Laureates!).
My 11-9-24 response to Will on my post of Thom Hartmann's 11-8 essay on Robert Reich's site: It might be shorted before then but is guaranteed to Collapse after 1-20-25. Am listening to a guy who is telling his listeners to buy 4 Partner Companies with Tesla before the 24th when Musk will announce Project X that will Replace Power Companies around the world by a gadget that would save every consumer over 2000 bucks a year! And something like 300,000 homes in Australia are already using this gadget. Now this grifter is hyping how to buy this inside trading info and more for just 49 dollars, it's over lol! Here is my free tip on how to make 10x your money or more - Buy Electric Utility Company Puts on January 21, a day after the Inauguration and MLK's birthday!!! And then you take your profits after the 24th and do it again with your Googled companies before the real crash!
It's not just "Progressive Media". ALL Media are businesses, and the primary goal of Business is to maximize Profits. Despite posturing themselves as being supposedly more objective, the Progressive Media showed they were more interested in a Trump victory. Not only did they fail to highlight Trump's failings, they were laser-focused on, first, Biden's infirmities, and then later Harris' shortcomings. About the only actual Media showing Trump for what he is were CNN and MSNBC -- which for anyone NOT already a Leftie generally considered to be blatantly biased and therefore to be disregarded. Other than those two, the Left's heavy guns were TV Talk show hosts: Colbert, Fallon, Kimmel, Maher and Stewart. (Maher was something of a switch-hitter, lambasting the Dems nearly as much as he lambasted Trump and MAGA.)
On Media Suppression Of Trump's Increasing Dementia
I first read the Daily Kos's lead article (2-26-24) titled The media will not report that Trump appears to have middle-stage dementia. A couple of days later Facebook suggested I look at a site dedicated to the politics and humor of Jon Stewart, which just 'happened' to have posted the original interview in Salon titled "Like someone pulled the metaphorical plug": Dr. John Gartner on Trump's "accelerating dementia". This whole interview was fixated on the dementia issue without mentioning that at least his father Fred had Alzheimer's/dementia, which I learned when I posted A Comparison of President Biden's Mental Competency to Donald Trump's to every response. After the idiot went into a long rant about choosing between being electrocuted by a battery on a sinking boat or eaten by a shark Robert Reich's newsletter (7-8-24, 8-8-24) posted Why isn’t the media reporting on Trump’s growing dementia?
Well when it comes Corporate TV Media the answer to this question is pretty apparent. Sinclair Broadcast Group, an extreme right-wing controlled conglomerate, owns and operates 40% of all TV broadcasting stations in the US. Popular Information (7/23/24) reported that Sinclair anchor Eugene Ramirez quit in part over a requirement that he air at least three stories from the network's "Rapid Response Team" nightly. "The RRT has produced 147 stories this year that portray Democrats in a negative light," Popular Information found, "and just seven stories that portray Democrats positively." Nexstar Media Group is even larger, John Muse is controlling shareholder and contributes almost exclusively to Republicans. Nexstar owns ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX among many other broadcast, cable, and streaming networks. So there is your answer as to why it is so difficult to get "fair and balanced" coverage of Biden and Trump. Over 90% of all TV and cable news sources in the US have owners who want Trump to win so they can keep their billions, low taxes, and government handouts.
Likewise that of course is also evident with Corporate Print Media as well. Which is headed by the Murdoch Media Empire: The News was founded in Australia by Rupert's father, incorporated in the US in 1980 as News Corp and acquired various newspapers since 1973 including 50% of 20th Century Fox in 1985, various British newspapers in the next two years and finally the Wall Street Journal in 2007. In 2013, the much richer head of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, bought the Washington Post. New York Times (12-6-21): “That media “neutrality” has a tacit pro-Trump tilt, is associated with prominent press critics like Jay Rosen of New York University and the Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan (formerly this newspaper’s public editor) and it recently found data-driven expression in a column by The Post’s Dana Milbank.” So then I googled Bias against president Biden in the New York Times editorials. The first article was a 3-5-24 post by CNN titled The New York Times is facing backlash over its coverage of Donald Trump and the 2024 election. First paragraph: “The Gray Lady has for several weeks been in the crosshairs of a vocal set of critics and readers who believe that Donald Trump poses a grave threat to American democracy and that the influential news organization isn’t adequately conveying those stakes to the public.” And most recently this article by Julia Hollar from FAIR (9-8-24) titled Not Reporting on Trump as a Threat to Democracy Is Also a Threat to Democracy: New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger has issued a lengthy warning in the Washington Post (9/5/24) on the dangers another Donald Trump presidency would pose to a “free and independent press.” Sulzberger details Trump’s many efforts to suppress and undermine critical media outlets during his previous presidential tenure, as well as the more recent open declarations by Trump and his allies of their plans to continue to “come after” the press, “whether it’s criminally or civilly.” He documents the ways independent media have been eroded in illiberal democracies around the world, and draws direct links to Trump’s playbook. You might expect this to be a prelude to an announcement that the New York Times would work tirelessly to defend democracy. Instead, Sulzberger heartily defends his own miserably inadequate strategy of “neutrality”—which, in practice, is both-sidesing—making plain his greater concern for the survival of his own newspaper than the survival of US democracy. The FAIR article goes to list Five New York Times articles about "Biden's Age Problem." Which I have been trying address since I sent my first copy of "A Comparison of President Biden's Mental Competency with Trump's" to the White House so-called 'communication' directors on Superbowl Sunday 2-11! A more balanced transcript of a 7-12-24 interview from NPR: “Former President Trump is “unfit to lead.” President Biden is “embarrassing himself.” These aren’t the words tossed across party lines, but laid out by The New York Times editorial board.” And finally a week before the election both Bezos and the billionariare owner of the Los Angeles Times for the first time in history overrode their editors endorsement of VP Kamala Harris for POTUS!
As that pretty well covers corporate TV and print media bias so now we get to the meat of the matter: Corporate Social Media starting with the Richest guy on the planet – Elon Musk. From a 10-2-23 article titled What was Elon Musk's strategy for buying Twitter? by NBC New's Ben Collins: On the day that public records revealed that Elon Musk had become Twitter’s biggest shareholder, an unknown sender texted the billionaire and recommended an article imploring him to acquire the social network outright. Turns out those anonymous text messages were sent by the far-right blogger Darren Beattie, a former Trump White House speechwriter who was fired in 2018 for having spoken on a panel alongside white nationalists. The article on Beattie’s site (revolver.news) begins with a baseless claim that censorship on Twitter cost President Donald Trump the 2020 election. “Free speech online is what enabled the Trump revolution in 2016,” the anonymous author wrote. “If the Internet had been as free in 2020 as it was four years before, Trump would have cruised to reelection.” The author said that “Step 1” after a Musk takeover would be: “Blame the platform for its users.” He or she predicted that “Twitter would be blamed for every so-called act of ‘racism’ ‘sexism’ and ‘transphobia’ occurring on its platform.” After Musk’s purchase of Twitter was finalized in October 2022, he allowed previously suspended accounts to return. “In the nearly 18 months since (he bought Twitter), many of the decisions Musk made after he bought Twitter appear to have closely followed that road map, up to and including his ongoing attacks against the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit organization founded by Jewish Americans to counter discrimination,” which the fascist went on to blame for the 25 billion buck loss of 60% of the X Twitter ad revenue. And of course Musk then not only endorsed Trump for president and established a 100 million dollar PAC for him but in the weeks before the 11-5-24 election established an illegal million dollar a day lotttery for new voters!
Of course Musk also has his Facebook fan page, whose “free speech” algorithm has been updated to at last barring me from responding to or posting any comment. On July 16 the Jim Hightower team's daily post was titled We've been censored by Facebook! And you probably have been, too. They said in the last week or so they'd seen a lot of social media posts about Project 2025 and when they tried to post their article about it on Facebook it was immediately removed as going against their Community Standards on spam. (Ironically one of the author's of the piece barred me “for 100 years” from posting anything on Hightower's site after posting my months old paper that ends with “the new speaker of the House who openly wants to establish a 'moral' Christian Nationalism run by the next Republican president, who will implement a fascist plan called Project 2025” on multiple comments to their post, violating Their policy on 'spam'!) “I started asking colleagues who work in progressive communications and technology if they’d heard about things like this happening. We’ve now found out that this has been a pattern happening to other organizations publicizing the harm that Project 2025 (“P25”) could do to the country.”
So now that we have fully summarized Anti-Trump News Suppression In Corporate Media, the first question is how in the hell can Progressive Media Counter Mega Billionaire Support Of Trump? Easy and Only Answer – make sure everybody is presented with this Comparison Between The Candidates: Since the huge event of Joe Biden bowing out and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for President of the United States on Sunday the 21st of July, there is only one question before us: Would you rather have a Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron whose Father Also Had Dementia running this country or the Daughter of Two University Professors?
It is sad and unfortunate that because SCOTUS has ruled that Money = Speech (which must remain "free"), We The People are pretty much screwed. With all of the billions upon billions at their disposal, the Wealthy can easily drown out The People whenever and wherever they desire. About the only place We can find truthful journalism about the Left is on the Internet, primarily in blog forums like Substack and Tremr (where I spout off on a daily basis). The problem with blogs though, is that they almost entirely "sing to the choir". The Lefty message is NOT getting out to the people that really need to hear/read it: the Independents. People assume right off the bat that, if it's a blog, it's biased. Which is actually fairly true. What _should_ be the pertinent question is, "How TRUTHFUL is the site?" There can be bias, but if what is being passed around is actual Facts, then that's tolerable and even desirable. But with 90% of Media is blaring "You can't trust Democrats!", with next to nothing about the flaws of the Right, the audience WILL be hard-pressed to make sound decisions. (As has been recently demonstrated.)
Jd vance, of course. Why do you think they shoved him on trump in the first place? They needed trump to win the election for them. Vance is not a likeable person, but vance is in total alliance with Project 2025 and it is they who cause the most concern.
I think you're exactly right, Fay Reid. Trump does not seem to like Vance at all but had him forced on him. Trump and Musk seem to be in sync. Trump is out selling trash and trinkets (cologne called "Fight Fight Fight" is his newest junk for the suckers) while Musk (and others) will do all the dirty work of destroying the country. Eventually Trump will leave the scene, maybe the moneyed powers behind the fake-gold throne will force him out, and Vance, Musk, Thiel, and all the rest of the criminal oligarchs will assume power and hold onto it. Musk is ever-present with Trump these days; Vance is almost nowhere to be seen. Media's "eyes" are trained only on the dirtiest, most salacious object - Hegseth at the moment - with endless talk about him and nothing else. Meanwhile, the conniving plans for the destruction of everything moves ahead.
We cannot allow ourselves, this country, to be powerless against these sadistic psychopaths. We need to be loud and demanding of our elected officials that they wake up and do the work to save the country and all of us!
It's called "misdirection", and while we're focusing on his ridiculous cabinet picks, the real destruction of Democracy is going on behind closed doors.
Paula Dean, 💯🎯 You're exactly right ! They also think the corporate media is too dumb to look past the click bait shiny object they're waving around. Hell, these initial picks might just be solely for "distraction" purposes, to buy time while they set up the real impending nightmare.
Not a single person I know, in "real life," who I encouraged to read Project 2025 even took the time (a couple minutes) necessary to download the file - which was free to get on the Project 2025 website. Just a brief look at the overview of that "project" would tell you Trump's surrogates (or puppet masters - take your pick) will be fine with a road to fascism. Will our economy sustain a return to the robber baron era? Well, people llik Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckreberg and a seemingly endless list of America's OLIGARCHS are lining up with Trump. My belief is they are planning a great harvest of America's Natural Resources once the economy tanks. The income inequality in America just got a boost from the very people who are angry abour it. The American voters! Go figure! The "you know what" is about to hit the "fan."
My computer - or whatever, I have no idea - won't allow me to show the "heart - like" button, so I will use words to say that I heartily "like" this comment, David Piper. They already ARE robber barons - Musk alone has become richer and richer gratis American taxpayers' dollars going to him as HUGE government contracts.
David Piper, I think you're exactly right. Also, they published the Project 2025 knowing the majority of the people are too lazy to bother reading it, while the rest CAN'T read it because they're illiterate (the inbred contingent of the maga cult cretins).
South Korean democracy is only about 80 years old, a young democracy that is highly valued. Martial law lasted only two hours, the people came out into the streets in protest. Elected officials entered parliament any way they could find and voted to overturn the order for martial law. The president rescinded his order and police and military returned to barracks. The greatest fear is what happened in South Korea won’t happen here.
Thomas, yes Maria Ressa is such a wealth of information. She was on The Reid Out last night and explained how they're still trying to get things right. We could be in this fight for a long time. It's not just the orange Mussolini, it's also all his dumb shit enablers too.
The difference between loyalty and subservience isn't found in the definition of the two words, it's who they are referring to. One end demands taking an oath the other finds people surrendering their souls.
Trump has a pathological (IMO) hang-up with this "loyalty" thing. It's interesting that the dictionary definition of "loyal" is ambiguous. I think you are on to something that needs further exploration by people and the press vis-a-vis Trump. Thanks for your comment.
Dorothy, you are absolutely correct in making the important distinction between loyalty and fealty. I hope to see the word fealty used more frequently in the press regarding Trump in the future, but I'm not holding my breath. Thank you very much for a fascinating lesson in word use.
It's called a pathological "Narcissistic Personality Disorder". Here's precisely how he became the Perfect GOP Candidate: A supreme Narcissist who first builds Hotels with his last Name plastered all over the top of each with a Will To Power Fixation that drives him to become a TV Star where the whole game was to have the contestants kiss his ass to see who was His most 'competent' Apprentice, Firing all the Losers before finally picking the Winner, Like Me. Which sets him up to run for President, Wrapping Himself In MAGA Flag to Beat all those Loser Politicians in the Primary and Lock Her Up Hillary in the 2016 Electoral College. Rejoice, rejoice an absolute field day for all the fascists, white supremacists, Christian nationalists, plutocrat billionaires, corporatists, corporate media, atheists, evangelical preachers and six Supreme Court Justices all Backing a Moronic and now progressively Demented Fuhrer for the MAGA Masses Who Worship Him Like A God, Further Feeding Its Insatiable Sociopathic Narcissism!!!
I know about Trump's "Narcissistic Personality Disorder" and much has been written and spoken about that. My comment was limited to Trump requiring/demanding loyalty and what loyalty means.
This Nightmare Began Because The Chickenshit Progressive Media Would Not Print Any One Of Three Papers Ending With What Would Have Been This One Viral Line - There is only one question before us: Would you rather have a Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron whose Father Also Had Dementia running this country or the Daughter of Two University Professors?
The morning before the election I posted the following on selected replies to two Joe Rogan interviews with J.D. Vance and John Fetterman. Once I got thrown off that site for 'spamming' I moved on to Robert Reich and Micheal Moore's sites, finishing the night on the Republican Voters Against Trump's Facebook page:
Thom Hartmann 11-1-24
America’s billionaires would love to have a recession, particularly a really severe one.
In a recent “town hall,” billionaire Elon Musk acknowledged what 23 Nobel Prize-winning economists across the country have predicted: If Trump is elected and he and Elon undertake their project to gut government spending, it will provoke a severe recession.
Thom goes on to give the reason Why Billionaires Would Actively Force A Stock Market Crash: Buy Cheap, Sell High. It won't be a mere recession, it will be a full blown Depression that can only Begin to End when another Democrat Enters Their Office As President on January 20 2029, one hundred years after the 1929 Stock Market Crash!
My advise to anyone with money is soon after Musk is in charge of implementing Project 2025 is then to buy Puts shorting the market. They are good for a month and though it would likely take a couple to sink in, as all exchanges are at an all time high, they'd likely be worth something if not more before you cash out. If new to trading you can establish an online account at some brokerage like Ameritrade and recommend doing some homework on what stocks will take the biggest hits with Weiss Ratings and Googling what sectors took the biggest hits in previous crashes (noting that the pandemic crash of March 2020 was a fluke that cost me mucho while the next is Guaranteed by 23 Nobel Laureates!).
My 11-9-24 response to Will on my post of Thom Hartmann's 11-8 essay on Robert Reich's site: It might be shorted before then but is guaranteed to Collapse after 1-20-25. Am listening to a guy who is telling his listeners to buy 4 Partner Companies with Tesla before the 24th when Musk will announce Project X that will Replace Power Companies around the world by a gadget that would save every consumer over 2000 bucks a year! And something like 300,000 homes in Australia are already using this gadget. Now this grifter is hyping how to buy this inside trading info and more for just 49 dollars, it's over lol! Here is my free tip on how to make 10x your money or more - Buy Electric Utility Company Puts on January 21, a day after the Inauguration and MLK's birthday!!! And then you take your profits after the 24th and do it again with your Googled companies before the real crash!
Sean Sheeter, he's a malignant narcissist with borderline personality disorder. The show he grifted from was even rigged. They didn't pick the person(s) who really accomplished the tasks properly; they picked who the orange Mussolini liked and thought was more telegenic. They had to make up a bullshit reason to sack the real winners if the orange toad didn't like them for whatever bizarre reasoning he had.
My name ain't Dean dear, it's Sean. This Nightmare Began Because The Chickenshit Progressive Media Would Not Print Any One Of Three Papers Ending With What Would Have Been This One Viral Line - There is only one question before us: Would you rather have a Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron whose Father Also Had Dementia running this country or the Daughter of Two University Professors?
The morning before the election I posted the following on selected replies to two Joe Rogan interviews with J.D. Vance and John Fetterman. Once I got thrown off that site for 'spamming' I moved on to Robert Reich and Micheal Moore's sites, finishing the night on the Republican Voters Against Trump's Facebook page:
Thom Hartmann 11-1-24
America’s billionaires would love to have a recession, particularly a really severe one.
In a recent “town hall,” billionaire Elon Musk acknowledged what 23 Nobel Prize-winning economists across the country have predicted: If Trump is elected and he and Elon undertake their project to gut government spending, it will provoke a severe recession.
Thom goes on to give the reason Why Billionaires Would Actively Force A Stock Market Crash: Buy Cheap, Sell High. It won't be a mere recession, it will be a full blown Depression that can only Begin to End when another Democrat Enters Their Office As President on January 20 2029, one hundred years after the 1929 Stock Market Crash!
My advise to anyone with money is soon after Musk is in charge of implementing Project 2025 is then to buy Puts shorting the market. They are good for a month and though it would likely take a couple to sink in, as all exchanges are at an all time high, they'd likely be worth something if not more before you cash out. If new to trading you can establish an online account at some brokerage like Ameritrade and recommend doing some homework on what stocks will take the biggest hits with Weiss Ratings and Googling what sectors took the biggest hits in previous crashes (noting that the pandemic crash of March 2020 was a fluke that cost me mucho while the next is Guaranteed by 23 Nobel Laureates!).
My 11-9-24 response to Will on my post of Thom Hartmann's 11-8 essay on Robert Reich's site: It might be shorted before then but is guaranteed to Collapse after 1-20-25. Am listening to a guy who is telling his listeners to buy 4 Partner Companies with Tesla before the 24th when Musk will announce Project X that will Replace Power Companies around the world by a gadget that would save every consumer over 2000 bucks a year! And something like 300,000 homes in Australia are already using this gadget. Now this grifter is hyping how to buy this inside trading info and more for just 49 dollars, it's over lol! Here is my free tip on how to make 10x your money or more - Buy Electric Utility Company Puts on January 21, a day after the Inauguration and MLK's birthday!!! And then you take your profits after the 24th and do it again with your Googled companies before the real crash!
My parents taught me the difference between right and wrong, not to tell lies and what happens when you do, using my own brain to determine my own course of action, to never go along with the crowd if my inner voice tells me I shouldn't, to let my conscience be my guide and never, ever grovel or go against my morals in order to be with the "in" crowd. It is so very important right now for me to hang on to the lessons my parents taught me. While everyone seems to be going around acting as if the orange smear is "normal", I know that is not true. What he does and all of the sycophants that grovel before him do is "NOT NORMAL"! I won't accept the MSM sane-washing his sick and perverted actions. Right now, my government, all three branches, are in a quagmire of insanity. These people who are going to run the government have no morals, do not believe in the common good, do not give a tinker's damn about the American people and even less about our country, only want that power, power, power so they can make money, money, money and live in an alternate universe where they perceive good, honest and decent Americans as the enemy. They will delight in bringing as much hurt as they possibly can to all of us. Until such time as decent, patriotic Americans decide to come together and push them back, we will be living in a nightmare.
The Great Dismantling: Trump's Coming Attack on America's Economic Backbone
Thom Hartmann 11-7-24
Donald Trump is preparing to crash the American economy. He intends to do it by tearing up vital parts of our American government. He may even hire Elon Musk to pull it off.
And from his point of view, this is not going to be a bad thing. The farther the economy crashes, the greater the buying opportunity for billionaires.
It all has to do with something called the administrative state.
While it’s not sexy or even particularly interesting to the average American voter, having a strong administrative state is essential to a high-functioning economy.
A strong administrative state is the only thing that protects entrepreneurs and small businesses from being squashed like bugs by monopolistic behemoths, and small businesses are our nation’s main growth engine.
For example, over 70 percent of all new jobs created since 2019 were created by small businesses, producing almost 13 million new jobs over the past 25 years. Small business creation is up 50 percent over Trump’s years because the Biden administration has been enforcing the rule of law, including taking on the giant tech monopolies. Small businesses now account for over 43 percent of all American economic activity.
A strong administrative state is also the only thing that can protect the environment from those who’d destroy it for their own profits. It’s the only thing that can protect consumers from defective or even deadly products and food or drug contamination. It our only defense against predatory banks, airlines, and insurance companies, among others.
A strong administrative state that follows and enforces the rule of law — as opposed to the kind of grift-driven kleptocracies typical of strongman governments — is essential, in other words, to a functioning national economy.
Here in America, we see this best in the contrast between lightly bureaucratic and largely unregulated Red states and more bureaucratic and regulated (and taxed) Blue states and counties. While Red and Blue states are represented in Congress about 50/50, as the Brookings Institution found a few years ago:
“Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties represents just 29% of the economy.”
But now the administrative state is in the crosshairs of the incoming Trump administration, and their planned assault on it will almost certainly cause a loss of economic vitality, probably even leading to a major recession (every Republican president since Nixon has had a major recession after tinkering with tax and regulatory policies; none of the Democratic presidents have created one since Carter, and his started under Nixon).
We also see this at the level of the nation-state. As Professor Timothy Snyder notes:
“Now consider the Russian and Hungarian economies. Russia sits on hugely valuable natural resources, and yet is a poor country. The profits from its oil and gas are in the hands of a few oligarchs.
“Hungary sits in the middle of the European Union, the most successful trade project of all time.And yet Hungarians are poorer than their neighbors, in part because the Orbán regime corruptly channels EU resources to friendly oligarchs.
“The lesson is clear. Democracy is a method of checking corrupt rulers. When there is no functioning democracy, corruption is unchecked.And democracy is an element of a more fundamental guarantor of prosperity, the rule of law. In Hungary and Russia, the rule of law has been bent and broken, to the benefit of the few, and to the detriment of the many.Ending the rule of law is the Trump-Vance platform.”
Gutting the administrative state is the first and imperative aspect of ending or weakening the rule of law.
Because, as Steve Bannon famously told America, the main goal of the Trump administration is “the ‘deconstruction’ of the administrative state.” He added:
“Every business leader we’ve had in is saying not just taxes, but it is also the regulation. I think the consistent …[thing] is the deconstruction. The way the progressive left runs is, if they can’t get it passed, they’re just going to put in some sort of regulation in an agency. That’s all going to be deconstructed and I think that that’s why this regulatory thing is so important.”
We saw this movie before, during the last Trump administration. He put a coal lobbyist in charge of EPA, an oil lobbyist at Interior, a Telcom lobbyist and lawyer at FCC, a professional union-busting lawyer in charge of the Labor Department, an advocate for replacing public schools with religious ones in charge of the Education Department, etc., etc.
But that was more mere corruption than a wholesale destruction of administrative agencies. Since the Chevron deference decision by the Supreme Court this past year, though, it’s now possible that Trump could actually destroy the American administrative state.
Even when Chevron was still intact eight years ago, the result of Trump’s corruption in his previous administration, just like with Reagan’s and Bush’s deregulatory campaigns, was a massive recession that started before Covid came along.
Trump will fire Lena Kahn at the Federal Trade Commission, blowing up the antitrust efforts of the Biden administration; the fat cat billionaires already are eagerly anticipating running amok (which is why they threw billions at Trump’s campaign).
The result, predictably, will be another Republican economic disaster for America’s working class.
Interestingly, our country’s most famous investor also seems to be thinking along these same lines. Warren Buffett has recently sold over $325 billion in stock and is simply sitting on that huge pile of cash.
Why? Probably the Oracle of Omaha can see the same thing I’m pointing out here: Trump is preparing to turn the economy over to Musk and his billionaire buddies and the result will be a disaster.
A disaster, by the way, that will be very useful to Buffett and other billionaires; recessions and depressions are when America’s largest fortunes are typically made or expanded because they represent great buying opportunities to those with cash, while at the same time the small companies being squeezed are willing to sell for a song.
So get ready; we’re in for a bumpy few years as America descends into a strongman-run oligarchy while the Supreme Court and Trump’s toadies rip apart the protections of the administrative state we’ve so carefully constructed in the years since the Civil War and the Republican Great Depression.
It may well be a disaster for your 401(k), and millions will lose their jobs in a recession. If Musk cuts $2 trillion from the federal budget, as promised, it will almost certainly impact Social Security and take a huge bite out of programs for veterans, children, and the disabled.
It would probably also have to end all subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, and end hundreds of billions in federal aid to infrastructure construction programs.
Get ready now, to the extent that you can. Forewarned is forearmed.
Here's the followup with some betting advice: This Nightmare Began Because The Chickenshit Progressive Media Would Not Print Any One Of Three Papers Ending With What Would Have Been This One Viral Line - There is only one question before us: Would you rather have a Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron whose Father Also Had Dementia running this country or the Daughter of Two University Professors?
The morning before the election I posted the following on selected replies to two Joe Rogan interviews with J.D. Vance and John Fetterman. Once I got thrown off that site for 'spamming' I moved on to Robert Reich and Micheal Moore's sites, finishing the night on the Republican Voters Against Trump's Facebook page:
Thom Hartmann 11-1-24
America’s billionaires would love to have a recession, particularly a really severe one.
In a recent “town hall,” billionaire Elon Musk acknowledged what 23 Nobel Prize-winning economists across the country have predicted: If Trump is elected and he and Elon undertake their project to gut government spending, it will provoke a severe recession.
Thom goes on to give the reason Why Billionaires Would Actively Force A Stock Market Crash: Buy Cheap, Sell High. It won't be a mere recession, it will be a full blown Depression that can only Begin to End when another Democrat Enters Their Office As President on January 20 2029, one hundred years after the 1929 Stock Market Crash!
My advise to anyone with money is soon after Musk is in charge of implementing Project 2025 is then to buy Puts shorting the market. They are good for a month and though it would likely take a couple to sink in, as all exchanges are at an all time high, they'd likely be worth something if not more before you cash out. If new to trading you can establish an online account at some brokerage like Ameritrade and recommend doing some homework on what stocks will take the biggest hits with Weiss Ratings and Googling what sectors took the biggest hits in previous crashes (noting that the pandemic crash of March 2020 was a fluke that cost me mucho while the next is Guaranteed by 23 Nobel Laureates!).
My 11-9-24 response to Will on my post of Thom Hartmann's 11-8 essay on Robert Reich's site: It might be shorted before then but is guaranteed to Collapse after 1-20-25. Am listening to a guy who is telling his listeners to buy 4 Partner Companies with Tesla before the 24th when Musk will announce Project X that will Replace Power Companies around the world by a gadget that would save every consumer over 2000 bucks a year! And something like 300,000 homes in Australia are already using this gadget. Now this grifter is hyping how to buy this inside trading info and more for just 49 dollars, it's over lol! Here is my free tip on how to make 10x your money or more - Buy Electric Utility Company Puts on January 21, a day after the Inauguration and MLK's birthday!!! And then you take your profits after the 24th and do it again with your Googled companies before the real crash!
I know, Edie, but for some reason their greedy little hands want to hoard it and keep it and try to make even more! Naturally, everyone needs money to live but when money becomes everything to you and you lose your morals and principles in order to acquire more of it, then you have a really bad problem.
A couple of facts to support Robert's conclusions.
Having spent some time reviewing Trump's activities or lack there of and having been in direct negotiations on large business opportunities that would required his investment...basic skin in the game stuff and would have made him and others in legal ventures...I have learned the following.
He is incredibly lazy when it comes to doing much other than hold meetings to leverage power and money from whomever comes to him. He doesn't make much effort to recruit with the exception of having others handle his sales, projects and promotions. He has learned the art of manipulating others to do his work for him. The deadly attack on our capital a perhaps a perfect example?
He has learned... how not to spend any of his money (of which he doesn't have much in liquidity) on anything he wants...even when it comes to staying out of prison...he will always find another way to get someone else to pay. Perhaps selling government secrets to foreign countries or selling pardons to obvious and dangerous criminals or selling positions in government institutions?
He enjoys being praised but also allows people to do so if he sees a way in which that person can assist him in some way down the road and in turn he will throw them a trinket as a reward for their assistance in one way or another. Alan D. would be an example of one who ended up under the bus although for quite some time he was rewarded financially by about 10% per year off the books on the monies he saved Trump, per year, in taxes, insurance expenses and loan interests and other financially rewarding slights of hand.
The behind the curtain question here is how is he able to get away with such nonsense?
Because... he is a convenient public tool and distraction from the behind the scenes activities of the oligarchical clan... that has quite literally taken over the entirety of the/our US Government. Keeping it simple... when you take the time to stand back and assess all the factual information, activities, players and outcomes.
The People (We The People) are beginning to see through this manufactured curtain and recognize them for what they are...and the real culprits behind this take over are beginning to show some concern. They and their families will have more security where ever they go. They will be less public as to where they hang out...and they will be more paranoid than ever before because they are now more exposed, oddly thanks to the internet and of all places to look, Tik Toc and more oddly X. In their efforts to become more obscene and in your face people are realizing that there are lots of miscreants out there, government can't or won't protect law abiding citizens from them and something has to change.
The Great Dismantling: Trump's Coming Attack on America's Economic Backbone
Thom Hartmann 11-7-24
Donald Trump is preparing to crash the American economy. He intends to do it by tearing up vital parts of our American government. He may even hire Elon Musk to pull it off.
And from his point of view, this is not going to be a bad thing. The farther the economy crashes, the greater the buying opportunity for billionaires.
It all has to do with something called the administrative state.
While it’s not sexy or even particularly interesting to the average American voter, having a strong administrative state is essential to a high-functioning economy.
A strong administrative state is the only thing that protects entrepreneurs and small businesses from being squashed like bugs by monopolistic behemoths, and small businesses are our nation’s main growth engine.
For example, over 70 percent of all new jobs created since 2019 were created by small businesses, producing almost 13 million new jobs over the past 25 years. Small business creation is up 50 percent over Trump’s years because the Biden administration has been enforcing the rule of law, including taking on the giant tech monopolies. Small businesses now account for over 43 percent of all American economic activity.
A strong administrative state is also the only thing that can protect the environment from those who’d destroy it for their own profits. It’s the only thing that can protect consumers from defective or even deadly products and food or drug contamination. It our only defense against predatory banks, airlines, and insurance companies, among others.
A strong administrative state that follows and enforces the rule of law — as opposed to the kind of grift-driven kleptocracies typical of strongman governments — is essential, in other words, to a functioning national economy.
Here in America, we see this best in the contrast between lightly bureaucratic and largely unregulated Red states and more bureaucratic and regulated (and taxed) Blue states and counties. While Red and Blue states are represented in Congress about 50/50, as the Brookings Institution found a few years ago:
“Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties represents just 29% of the economy.”
But now the administrative state is in the crosshairs of the incoming Trump administration, and their planned assault on it will almost certainly cause a loss of economic vitality, probably even leading to a major recession (every Republican president since Nixon has had a major recession after tinkering with tax and regulatory policies; none of the Democratic presidents have created one since Carter, and his started under Nixon).
We also see this at the level of the nation-state. As Professor Timothy Snyder notes:
“Now consider the Russian and Hungarian economies. Russia sits on hugely valuable natural resources, and yet is a poor country. The profits from its oil and gas are in the hands of a few oligarchs.
“Hungary sits in the middle of the European Union, the most successful trade project of all time.And yet Hungarians are poorer than their neighbors, in part because the Orbán regime corruptly channels EU resources to friendly oligarchs.
“The lesson is clear. Democracy is a method of checking corrupt rulers. When there is no functioning democracy, corruption is unchecked.And democracy is an element of a more fundamental guarantor of prosperity, the rule of law. In Hungary and Russia, the rule of law has been bent and broken, to the benefit of the few, and to the detriment of the many.Ending the rule of law is the Trump-Vance platform.”
Gutting the administrative state is the first and imperative aspect of ending or weakening the rule of law.
Because, as Steve Bannon famously told America, the main goal of the Trump administration is “the ‘deconstruction’ of the administrative state.” He added:
“Every business leader we’ve had in is saying not just taxes, but it is also the regulation. I think the consistent …[thing] is the deconstruction. The way the progressive left runs is, if they can’t get it passed, they’re just going to put in some sort of regulation in an agency. That’s all going to be deconstructed and I think that that’s why this regulatory thing is so important.”
We saw this movie before, during the last Trump administration. He put a coal lobbyist in charge of EPA, an oil lobbyist at Interior, a Telcom lobbyist and lawyer at FCC, a professional union-busting lawyer in charge of the Labor Department, an advocate for replacing public schools with religious ones in charge of the Education Department, etc., etc.
But that was more mere corruption than a wholesale destruction of administrative agencies. Since the Chevron deference decision by the Supreme Court this past year, though, it’s now possible that Trump could actually destroy the American administrative state.
Even when Chevron was still intact eight years ago, the result of Trump’s corruption in his previous administration, just like with Reagan’s and Bush’s deregulatory campaigns, was a massive recession that started before Covid came along.
Trump will fire Lena Kahn at the Federal Trade Commission, blowing up the antitrust efforts of the Biden administration; the fat cat billionaires already are eagerly anticipating running amok (which is why they threw billions at Trump’s campaign).
The result, predictably, will be another Republican economic disaster for America’s working class.
Interestingly, our country’s most famous investor also seems to be thinking along these same lines. Warren Buffett has recently sold over $325 billion in stock and is simply sitting on that huge pile of cash.
Why? Probably the Oracle of Omaha can see the same thing I’m pointing out here: Trump is preparing to turn the economy over to Musk and his billionaire buddies and the result will be a disaster.
A disaster, by the way, that will be very useful to Buffett and other billionaires; recessions and depressions are when America’s largest fortunes are typically made or expanded because they represent great buying opportunities to those with cash, while at the same time the small companies being squeezed are willing to sell for a song.
So get ready; we’re in for a bumpy few years as America descends into a strongman-run oligarchy while the Supreme Court and Trump’s toadies rip apart the protections of the administrative state we’ve so carefully constructed in the years since the Civil War and the Republican Great Depression.
It may well be a disaster for your 401(k), and millions will lose their jobs in a recession. If Musk cuts $2 trillion from the federal budget, as promised, it will almost certainly impact Social Security and take a huge bite out of programs for veterans, children, and the disabled.
It would probably also have to end all subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, and end hundreds of billions in federal aid to infrastructure construction programs.
Get ready now, to the extent that you can. Forewarned is forearmed.
This Nightmare Began Because The Chickenshit Progressive Media Would Not Print Any One Of Three Papers Ending With What Would Have Been This One Viral Line - There is only one question before us: Would you rather have a Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron whose Father Also Had Dementia running this country or the Daughter of Two University Professors?
The morning before the election I posted the following on selected replies to two Joe Rogan interviews with J.D. Vance and John Fetterman. Once I got thrown off that site for 'spamming' I moved on to Robert Reich and Micheal Moore's sites, finishing the night on the Republican Voters Against Trump's Facebook page:
Thom Hartmann 11-1-24
America’s billionaires would love to have a recession, particularly a really severe one.
In a recent “town hall,” billionaire Elon Musk acknowledged what 23 Nobel Prize-winning economists across the country have predicted: If Trump is elected and he and Elon undertake their project to gut government spending, it will provoke a severe recession.
Thom goes on to give the reason Why Billionaires Would Actively Force A Stock Market Crash: Buy Cheap, Sell High. It won't be a mere recession, it will be a full blown Depression that can only Begin to End when another Democrat Enters Their Office As President on January 20 2029, one hundred years after the 1929 Stock Market Crash!
My advise to anyone with money is soon after Musk is in charge of implementing Project 2025 is then to buy Puts shorting the market. They are good for a month and though it would likely take a couple to sink in, as all exchanges are at an all time high, they'd likely be worth something if not more before you cash out. If new to trading you can establish an online account at some brokerage like Ameritrade and recommend doing some homework on what stocks will take the biggest hits with Weiss Ratings and Googling what sectors took the biggest hits in previous crashes (noting that the pandemic crash of March 2020 was a fluke that cost me mucho while the next is Guaranteed by 23 Nobel Laureates!).
My 11-9-24 response to Will on my post of Thom Hartmann's 11-8 essay on Robert Reich's site: It might be shorted before then but is guaranteed to Collapse after 1-20-25. Am listening to a guy who is telling his listeners to buy 4 Partner Companies with Tesla before the 24th when Musk will announce Project X that will Replace Power Companies around the world by a gadget that would save every consumer over 2000 bucks a year! And something like 300,000 homes in Australia are already using this gadget. Now this grifter is hyping how to buy this inside trading info and more for just 49 dollars, it's over lol! Here is my free tip on how to make 10x your money or more - Buy Electric Utility Company Puts on January 21, a day after the Inauguration and MLK's birthday!!! And then you take your profits after the 24th and do it again with your Googled companies before the real crash!
Henry, very informative. How about some names of the members of the “oligarchal clan” of which you speak? I don’t want to assume I know who you are talking about. Talk to us!
There are many...In just a brief excerpt from one informed article...
In a review of the book for The Financial Times, Simon Kuper writes:
“The book distinguishes various types of oligarchs. ‘Business oligarchs’ like Musk turn wealth into political power, while ‘political oligarchs’ go the other way. A classic example of the latter, says the book, is Vladimir Putin, ‘a billionaire with nuclear weapons’. Oligarch presidents have decision-making power, oligarch influencers such as Rupert Murdoch, Charles Koch and George Soros set agendas, while platform owners such as Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Larry Page have rewired the information streams that flow into our brains.”
This just scratches the surface...Presently there are over 800 billionaires in the country. They didn't get there by being outrageous philanthropists.
They are following the Russian plan which so far is working fairly well in Russia with the exception of a few that had voiced some kind of disapproval and then found that falling out of high place with a sudden stop was somewhat troubling. This is our new reality.
If you have the time check out one of the many sites to check out The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists web site. It caries some interesting articles about climate change and such and the movers and shakers that negatively effect everyone's survival in exchange for profits and power. they also cover such items as fusion power and how that might save us from ourselves...perhaps?
The Great Dismantling: Trump's Coming Attack on America's Economic Backbone
Thom Hartmann 11-7-24
Donald Trump is preparing to crash the American economy. He intends to do it by tearing up vital parts of our American government. He may even hire Elon Musk to pull it off.
And from his point of view, this is not going to be a bad thing. The farther the economy crashes, the greater the buying opportunity for billionaires.
It all has to do with something called the administrative state.
While it’s not sexy or even particularly interesting to the average American voter, having a strong administrative state is essential to a high-functioning economy.
A strong administrative state is the only thing that protects entrepreneurs and small businesses from being squashed like bugs by monopolistic behemoths, and small businesses are our nation’s main growth engine.
For example, over 70 percent of all new jobs created since 2019 were created by small businesses, producing almost 13 million new jobs over the past 25 years. Small business creation is up 50 percent over Trump’s years because the Biden administration has been enforcing the rule of law, including taking on the giant tech monopolies. Small businesses now account for over 43 percent of all American economic activity.
A strong administrative state is also the only thing that can protect the environment from those who’d destroy it for their own profits. It’s the only thing that can protect consumers from defective or even deadly products and food or drug contamination. It our only defense against predatory banks, airlines, and insurance companies, among others.
A strong administrative state that follows and enforces the rule of law — as opposed to the kind of grift-driven kleptocracies typical of strongman governments — is essential, in other words, to a functioning national economy.
Here in America, we see this best in the contrast between lightly bureaucratic and largely unregulated Red states and more bureaucratic and regulated (and taxed) Blue states and counties. While Red and Blue states are represented in Congress about 50/50, as the Brookings Institution found a few years ago:
“Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties represents just 29% of the economy.”
But now the administrative state is in the crosshairs of the incoming Trump administration, and their planned assault on it will almost certainly cause a loss of economic vitality, probably even leading to a major recession (every Republican president since Nixon has had a major recession after tinkering with tax and regulatory policies; none of the Democratic presidents have created one since Carter, and his started under Nixon).
We also see this at the level of the nation-state. As Professor Timothy Snyder notes:
“Now consider the Russian and Hungarian economies. Russia sits on hugely valuable natural resources, and yet is a poor country. The profits from its oil and gas are in the hands of a few oligarchs.
“Hungary sits in the middle of the European Union, the most successful trade project of all time.And yet Hungarians are poorer than their neighbors, in part because the Orbán regime corruptly channels EU resources to friendly oligarchs.
“The lesson is clear. Democracy is a method of checking corrupt rulers. When there is no functioning democracy, corruption is unchecked.And democracy is an element of a more fundamental guarantor of prosperity, the rule of law. In Hungary and Russia, the rule of law has been bent and broken, to the benefit of the few, and to the detriment of the many.Ending the rule of law is the Trump-Vance platform.”
Gutting the administrative state is the first and imperative aspect of ending or weakening the rule of law.
Because, as Steve Bannon famously told America, the main goal of the Trump administration is “the ‘deconstruction’ of the administrative state.” He added:
“Every business leader we’ve had in is saying not just taxes, but it is also the regulation. I think the consistent …[thing] is the deconstruction. The way the progressive left runs is, if they can’t get it passed, they’re just going to put in some sort of regulation in an agency. That’s all going to be deconstructed and I think that that’s why this regulatory thing is so important.”
We saw this movie before, during the last Trump administration. He put a coal lobbyist in charge of EPA, an oil lobbyist at Interior, a Telcom lobbyist and lawyer at FCC, a professional union-busting lawyer in charge of the Labor Department, an advocate for replacing public schools with religious ones in charge of the Education Department, etc., etc.
But that was more mere corruption than a wholesale destruction of administrative agencies. Since the Chevron deference decision by the Supreme Court this past year, though, it’s now possible that Trump could actually destroy the American administrative state.
Even when Chevron was still intact eight years ago, the result of Trump’s corruption in his previous administration, just like with Reagan’s and Bush’s deregulatory campaigns, was a massive recession that started before Covid came along.
Trump will fire Lena Kahn at the Federal Trade Commission, blowing up the antitrust efforts of the Biden administration; the fat cat billionaires already are eagerly anticipating running amok (which is why they threw billions at Trump’s campaign).
The result, predictably, will be another Republican economic disaster for America’s working class.
Interestingly, our country’s most famous investor also seems to be thinking along these same lines. Warren Buffett has recently sold over $325 billion in stock and is simply sitting on that huge pile of cash.
Why? Probably the Oracle of Omaha can see the same thing I’m pointing out here: Trump is preparing to turn the economy over to Musk and his billionaire buddies and the result will be a disaster.
A disaster, by the way, that will be very useful to Buffett and other billionaires; recessions and depressions are when America’s largest fortunes are typically made or expanded because they represent great buying opportunities to those with cash, while at the same time the small companies being squeezed are willing to sell for a song.
So get ready; we’re in for a bumpy few years as America descends into a strongman-run oligarchy while the Supreme Court and Trump’s toadies rip apart the protections of the administrative state we’ve so carefully constructed in the years since the Civil War and the Republican Great Depression.
It may well be a disaster for your 401(k), and millions will lose their jobs in a recession. If Musk cuts $2 trillion from the federal budget, as promised, it will almost certainly impact Social Security and take a huge bite out of programs for veterans, children, and the disabled.
It would probably also have to end all subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, and end hundreds of billions in federal aid to infrastructure construction programs.
Get ready now, to the extent that you can. Forewarned is forearmed.
How bad will this be? I’m not sleeping well these days. I’m so afraid for our country. We deserve so much better, and we could have had it. This is being dragged through the mud on a daily basis.
The Great Dismantling: Trump's Coming Attack on America's Economic Backbone
Thom Hartmann 11-7-24
Donald Trump is preparing to crash the American economy. He intends to do it by tearing up vital parts of our American government. He may even hire Elon Musk to pull it off.
And from his point of view, this is not going to be a bad thing. The farther the economy crashes, the greater the buying opportunity for billionaires.
It all has to do with something called the administrative state.
While it’s not sexy or even particularly interesting to the average American voter, having a strong administrative state is essential to a high-functioning economy.
A strong administrative state is the only thing that protects entrepreneurs and small businesses from being squashed like bugs by monopolistic behemoths, and small businesses are our nation’s main growth engine.
For example, over 70 percent of all new jobs created since 2019 were created by small businesses, producing almost 13 million new jobs over the past 25 years. Small business creation is up 50 percent over Trump’s years because the Biden administration has been enforcing the rule of law, including taking on the giant tech monopolies. Small businesses now account for over 43 percent of all American economic activity.
A strong administrative state is also the only thing that can protect the environment from those who’d destroy it for their own profits. It’s the only thing that can protect consumers from defective or even deadly products and food or drug contamination. It our only defense against predatory banks, airlines, and insurance companies, among others.
A strong administrative state that follows and enforces the rule of law — as opposed to the kind of grift-driven kleptocracies typical of strongman governments — is essential, in other words, to a functioning national economy.
Here in America, we see this best in the contrast between lightly bureaucratic and largely unregulated Red states and more bureaucratic and regulated (and taxed) Blue states and counties. While Red and Blue states are represented in Congress about 50/50, as the Brookings Institution found a few years ago:
“Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties represents just 29% of the economy.”
But now the administrative state is in the crosshairs of the incoming Trump administration, and their planned assault on it will almost certainly cause a loss of economic vitality, probably even leading to a major recession (every Republican president since Nixon has had a major recession after tinkering with tax and regulatory policies; none of the Democratic presidents have created one since Carter, and his started under Nixon).
We also see this at the level of the nation-state. As Professor Timothy Snyder notes:
“Now consider the Russian and Hungarian economies. Russia sits on hugely valuable natural resources, and yet is a poor country. The profits from its oil and gas are in the hands of a few oligarchs.
“Hungary sits in the middle of the European Union, the most successful trade project of all time.And yet Hungarians are poorer than their neighbors, in part because the Orbán regime corruptly channels EU resources to friendly oligarchs.
“The lesson is clear. Democracy is a method of checking corrupt rulers. When there is no functioning democracy, corruption is unchecked.And democracy is an element of a more fundamental guarantor of prosperity, the rule of law. In Hungary and Russia, the rule of law has been bent and broken, to the benefit of the few, and to the detriment of the many.Ending the rule of law is the Trump-Vance platform.”
Gutting the administrative state is the first and imperative aspect of ending or weakening the rule of law.
Because, as Steve Bannon famously told America, the main goal of the Trump administration is “the ‘deconstruction’ of the administrative state.” He added:
“Every business leader we’ve had in is saying not just taxes, but it is also the regulation. I think the consistent …[thing] is the deconstruction. The way the progressive left runs is, if they can’t get it passed, they’re just going to put in some sort of regulation in an agency. That’s all going to be deconstructed and I think that that’s why this regulatory thing is so important.”
We saw this movie before, during the last Trump administration. He put a coal lobbyist in charge of EPA, an oil lobbyist at Interior, a Telcom lobbyist and lawyer at FCC, a professional union-busting lawyer in charge of the Labor Department, an advocate for replacing public schools with religious ones in charge of the Education Department, etc., etc.
But that was more mere corruption than a wholesale destruction of administrative agencies. Since the Chevron deference decision by the Supreme Court this past year, though, it’s now possible that Trump could actually destroy the American administrative state.
Even when Chevron was still intact eight years ago, the result of Trump’s corruption in his previous administration, just like with Reagan’s and Bush’s deregulatory campaigns, was a massive recession that started before Covid came along.
Trump will fire Lena Kahn at the Federal Trade Commission, blowing up the antitrust efforts of the Biden administration; the fat cat billionaires already are eagerly anticipating running amok (which is why they threw billions at Trump’s campaign).
The result, predictably, will be another Republican economic disaster for America’s working class.
Interestingly, our country’s most famous investor also seems to be thinking along these same lines. Warren Buffett has recently sold over $325 billion in stock and is simply sitting on that huge pile of cash.
Why? Probably the Oracle of Omaha can see the same thing I’m pointing out here: Trump is preparing to turn the economy over to Musk and his billionaire buddies and the result will be a disaster.
A disaster, by the way, that will be very useful to Buffett and other billionaires; recessions and depressions are when America’s largest fortunes are typically made or expanded because they represent great buying opportunities to those with cash, while at the same time the small companies being squeezed are willing to sell for a song.
So get ready; we’re in for a bumpy few years as America descends into a strongman-run oligarchy while the Supreme Court and Trump’s toadies rip apart the protections of the administrative state we’ve so carefully constructed in the years since the Civil War and the Republican Great Depression.
It may well be a disaster for your 401(k), and millions will lose their jobs in a recession. If Musk cuts $2 trillion from the federal budget, as promised, it will almost certainly impact Social Security and take a huge bite out of programs for veterans, children, and the disabled.
It would probably also have to end all subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, and end hundreds of billions in federal aid to infrastructure construction programs.
Get ready now, to the extent that you can. Forewarned is forearmed.
The last fat president who was a "style icon" was William Howard Taft. Trump is a pig.
Ted Faraone, please don't insult pigs with a comparison to the orange Mussolini. Pigs are beautiful, sentient, highly intelligent souls. May I suggest terms such as the orange pus bucket, or the orange shit encrusted reeking cretinous slob ? 😉
Thank you, peace and love 🙏💕🕊️
Really Diane you are far too generous in your praise of the Orange cesspit.
Colin, why thank you 🙏. I do like the moniker "cesspit"....it has a nice ring to it 😉
Although coming up with derogatory names may be a way to let off some steam, it does not bring our discussion forward in terms of understanding what is likely in store for us. Most importantly it is a distraction from coming up with strategies to rebuild our government, economy and nation after Trump and his sycophants efforts to destroy it. I have put forward Economic Democracy and the Progressive Utilization Theory as one innovative approach, but there are numerous thinkers and groups that also have novel ideas worth consideration. We must move out of fear and find paths into action. In my study of history, I have seen that out of crisis comes opportunity for significant change. In fact some of the greatest leaps forward in human history came as a result of terrible crisis. The situation that caused the American Revolution is the reason we have independence and what was at the time, a very daring and progressive Declaration of Independence and our current Constitution.
The challenges ahead are daunting. Complete dysfunction out of out of the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court, destruction of the weakest safety net among developed countries, and an increasing likelihood of a inappropriate use of the military are among the most significant. While these institutions degenerate around us, we cannot lose hope but we must engage in forward thinking progressive solutions. Hoping the Democratic Party will eventually save us is disempowering thinking. Finding ways to rebuild after this apocalypse is constructive use of our potentialities.
Marc, while I wholeheartedly agree with you, I am finding many on these substacks tend to ridicule or name call whenever anyone tries to express an idea or opinion! I would love to see Economic Democracy take hold here in our country! While I like what PROUT is teaching, I do not think a lot of people will accept it. I am afraid many will see it as too socialistic, and, of course, fear of too much change. While I believe PROUT would be a step forward for the entire world, there are too many "bad actors" like the orange man and the ultra wealthy who will fight anything that would be perceived as taking away their wealth and power. To me, Economic Democracy is a great solution to the huge gap that has formed between the "haves" and the "have-nots"! It reverts back to stakeholder capitalism from shareholder capitalism and I believe it would be a giant step forward for our country and the American citizens. No matter what is put forward, if 'We the people' do not come together united in our effort to stop the authoritarian take over of our country, we will simply wind up like the Russian citizenry - just sheep being herded into one way of thinking.
The Great Dismantling: Trump's Coming Attack on America's Economic Backbone
Thom Hartmann 11-7-24
Donald Trump is preparing to crash the American economy. He intends to do it by tearing up vital parts of our American government. He may even hire Elon Musk to pull it off.
And from his point of view, this is not going to be a bad thing. The farther the economy crashes, the greater the buying opportunity for billionaires.
It all has to do with something called the administrative state.
While it’s not sexy or even particularly interesting to the average American voter, having a strong administrative state is essential to a high-functioning economy.
A strong administrative state is the only thing that protects entrepreneurs and small businesses from being squashed like bugs by monopolistic behemoths, and small businesses are our nation’s main growth engine.
For example, over 70 percent of all new jobs created since 2019 were created by small businesses, producing almost 13 million new jobs over the past 25 years. Small business creation is up 50 percent over Trump’s years because the Biden administration has been enforcing the rule of law, including taking on the giant tech monopolies. Small businesses now account for over 43 percent of all American economic activity.
A strong administrative state is also the only thing that can protect the environment from those who’d destroy it for their own profits. It’s the only thing that can protect consumers from defective or even deadly products and food or drug contamination. It our only defense against predatory banks, airlines, and insurance companies, among others.
A strong administrative state that follows and enforces the rule of law — as opposed to the kind of grift-driven kleptocracies typical of strongman governments — is essential, in other words, to a functioning national economy.
Here in America, we see this best in the contrast between lightly bureaucratic and largely unregulated Red states and more bureaucratic and regulated (and taxed) Blue states and counties. While Red and Blue states are represented in Congress about 50/50, as the Brookings Institution found a few years ago:
“Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties represents just 29% of the economy.”
But now the administrative state is in the crosshairs of the incoming Trump administration, and their planned assault on it will almost certainly cause a loss of economic vitality, probably even leading to a major recession (every Republican president since Nixon has had a major recession after tinkering with tax and regulatory policies; none of the Democratic presidents have created one since Carter, and his started under Nixon).
We also see this at the level of the nation-state. As Professor Timothy Snyder notes:
“Now consider the Russian and Hungarian economies. Russia sits on hugely valuable natural resources, and yet is a poor country. The profits from its oil and gas are in the hands of a few oligarchs.
“Hungary sits in the middle of the European Union, the most successful trade project of all time.And yet Hungarians are poorer than their neighbors, in part because the Orbán regime corruptly channels EU resources to friendly oligarchs.
“The lesson is clear. Democracy is a method of checking corrupt rulers. When there is no functioning democracy, corruption is unchecked.And democracy is an element of a more fundamental guarantor of prosperity, the rule of law. In Hungary and Russia, the rule of law has been bent and broken, to the benefit of the few, and to the detriment of the many.Ending the rule of law is the Trump-Vance platform.”
Gutting the administrative state is the first and imperative aspect of ending or weakening the rule of law.
Because, as Steve Bannon famously told America, the main goal of the Trump administration is “the ‘deconstruction’ of the administrative state.” He added:
“Every business leader we’ve had in is saying not just taxes, but it is also the regulation. I think the consistent …[thing] is the deconstruction. The way the progressive left runs is, if they can’t get it passed, they’re just going to put in some sort of regulation in an agency. That’s all going to be deconstructed and I think that that’s why this regulatory thing is so important.”
We saw this movie before, during the last Trump administration. He put a coal lobbyist in charge of EPA, an oil lobbyist at Interior, a Telcom lobbyist and lawyer at FCC, a professional union-busting lawyer in charge of the Labor Department, an advocate for replacing public schools with religious ones in charge of the Education Department, etc., etc.
But that was more mere corruption than a wholesale destruction of administrative agencies. Since the Chevron deference decision by the Supreme Court this past year, though, it’s now possible that Trump could actually destroy the American administrative state.
Even when Chevron was still intact eight years ago, the result of Trump’s corruption in his previous administration, just like with Reagan’s and Bush’s deregulatory campaigns, was a massive recession that started before Covid came along.
Trump will fire Lena Kahn at the Federal Trade Commission, blowing up the antitrust efforts of the Biden administration; the fat cat billionaires already are eagerly anticipating running amok (which is why they threw billions at Trump’s campaign).
The result, predictably, will be another Republican economic disaster for America’s working class.
Interestingly, our country’s most famous investor also seems to be thinking along these same lines. Warren Buffett has recently sold over $325 billion in stock and is simply sitting on that huge pile of cash.
Why? Probably the Oracle of Omaha can see the same thing I’m pointing out here: Trump is preparing to turn the economy over to Musk and his billionaire buddies and the result will be a disaster.
A disaster, by the way, that will be very useful to Buffett and other billionaires; recessions and depressions are when America’s largest fortunes are typically made or expanded because they represent great buying opportunities to those with cash, while at the same time the small companies being squeezed are willing to sell for a song.
So get ready; we’re in for a bumpy few years as America descends into a strongman-run oligarchy while the Supreme Court and Trump’s toadies rip apart the protections of the administrative state we’ve so carefully constructed in the years since the Civil War and the Republican Great Depression.
It may well be a disaster for your 401(k), and millions will lose their jobs in a recession. If Musk cuts $2 trillion from the federal budget, as promised, it will almost certainly impact Social Security and take a huge bite out of programs for veterans, children, and the disabled.
It would probably also have to end all subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, and end hundreds of billions in federal aid to infrastructure construction programs.
Get ready now, to the extent that you can. Forewarned is forearmed.
Since I hear your cry for meaningful discussion, let me proffer the following:
https://youtu.be/EqSVhVr0i-U?si=V2pyRvLv7hNSVn4A
Avoid reading my response to this piece until after you've reviewed and evaluated the content of that link. My response comes after the double dashed line.
Consider this very intelligent assessment of what has come to pass. It is chock full of truth. Your job is to identify how it's all a big lie. A hint is that a single item turns it into a big lie. Call this an entertaining exercise in critical thinking if you like. In reality, it is deadly serious naked truth. The way it follows on to today's discussion of Dr Reich's essay is where he states: "The media has it all wrong about Trump’s picks for his administration. The conventional view is they’re 'Trump loyalists' whom Trump 'recruited.'" That one little statement that Dr Reich picks up on makes the whole difference in how we understand what legacy media is saying.
=====================================
Very clever The big lie buried in a lot of truth. Tell me. What corporate and billionaire interests have benefited. What corporate and wealthy interests have the financial and political resources to implement such a wide scale psy op?
No, my friend. The multiply convicted felon and adjudicated sexual predator elect is their front man. Who has had decades of practice breaking labor unions - using psy ops? I refer you to the 1993 work entitled "Confessions of a Union Buster" by Marty Jay Levitt who discusses the practice of wielding psy ops on union leaders, members, and anyone else who stood against management excess.
Note also how the wages of that demographic have remained stagnant for at least that far back, and what Leavitt discusses took place even earlier, prior to releasing that book in '93. As far as I'm concerned, don't worry about the propaganda concerning some mythical "deep state." Worry about the real threat of a very real shadow government, that serves wealth and corporate intersects and dedicated to dismantling any means of containing their unelected, non-governmental authority which they wield through a government apparatus they effectively own.
And the criminal elect in service to Project 2025 is the fruit of that >>right-wing fascist<< effort and >not< the left-wing progressives who stand against it. Therein lies the big lie! If you haven't figured that out, you probably serve it. End of discussion.
DZK, thank you for this YouTube........I did not understand what Daniel kept saying about psy ops....this clarifies it
Marc, yes and no. Social media, the surveillance state. How shall we organize, safely, when our every move and communication is recorded? I even fear for the readers and contributors to substacks such as this. The next congress is poised to give dumpster the power to declare nonprofits "terrorist organizations". An obviously unconstitutional law that will be upheld by a rogue court. dumpster can invoke any number of obscure laws having to do with emergencies, real or fabricated, to implement draconian measuress. I look, and dumpster looks, to the example of China's ruling class. he's remarked (with awe and favor) that Xi controls 1.3 billion people. There could be some as yet unkown tech players that can disrupt, even destroy the capabilities of the surveillance state. That would probably of collaterally destroy all our access to the information superhighway, which might be the best thing, especially for young people addicted to electronics.
We need to remember that the corrupt court now controls all. any lower court that gives "unfavorable" rulings will be overturned. any lower court that renders judgements favorable to the ruling class will be upheld.
there is a way to stop this, but biden won't do it. so it comes down to , either dumpster goes to jail, or biden does. dumpster has signaled his intentions on multiple occasions.
The Great Dismantling: Trump's Coming Attack on America's Economic Backbone
Thom Hartmann 11-7-24
Donald Trump is preparing to crash the American economy. He intends to do it by tearing up vital parts of our American government. He may even hire Elon Musk to pull it off.
And from his point of view, this is not going to be a bad thing. The farther the economy crashes, the greater the buying opportunity for billionaires.
It all has to do with something called the administrative state.
While it’s not sexy or even particularly interesting to the average American voter, having a strong administrative state is essential to a high-functioning economy.
A strong administrative state is the only thing that protects entrepreneurs and small businesses from being squashed like bugs by monopolistic behemoths, and small businesses are our nation’s main growth engine.
For example, over 70 percent of all new jobs created since 2019 were created by small businesses, producing almost 13 million new jobs over the past 25 years. Small business creation is up 50 percent over Trump’s years because the Biden administration has been enforcing the rule of law, including taking on the giant tech monopolies. Small businesses now account for over 43 percent of all American economic activity.
A strong administrative state is also the only thing that can protect the environment from those who’d destroy it for their own profits. It’s the only thing that can protect consumers from defective or even deadly products and food or drug contamination. It our only defense against predatory banks, airlines, and insurance companies, among others.
A strong administrative state that follows and enforces the rule of law — as opposed to the kind of grift-driven kleptocracies typical of strongman governments — is essential, in other words, to a functioning national economy.
Here in America, we see this best in the contrast between lightly bureaucratic and largely unregulated Red states and more bureaucratic and regulated (and taxed) Blue states and counties. While Red and Blue states are represented in Congress about 50/50, as the Brookings Institution found a few years ago:
“Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties represents just 29% of the economy.”
But now the administrative state is in the crosshairs of the incoming Trump administration, and their planned assault on it will almost certainly cause a loss of economic vitality, probably even leading to a major recession (every Republican president since Nixon has had a major recession after tinkering with tax and regulatory policies; none of the Democratic presidents have created one since Carter, and his started under Nixon).
We also see this at the level of the nation-state. As Professor Timothy Snyder notes:
“Now consider the Russian and Hungarian economies. Russia sits on hugely valuable natural resources, and yet is a poor country. The profits from its oil and gas are in the hands of a few oligarchs.
“Hungary sits in the middle of the European Union, the most successful trade project of all time.And yet Hungarians are poorer than their neighbors, in part because the Orbán regime corruptly channels EU resources to friendly oligarchs.
“The lesson is clear. Democracy is a method of checking corrupt rulers. When there is no functioning democracy, corruption is unchecked.And democracy is an element of a more fundamental guarantor of prosperity, the rule of law. In Hungary and Russia, the rule of law has been bent and broken, to the benefit of the few, and to the detriment of the many.Ending the rule of law is the Trump-Vance platform.”
Gutting the administrative state is the first and imperative aspect of ending or weakening the rule of law.
Because, as Steve Bannon famously told America, the main goal of the Trump administration is “the ‘deconstruction’ of the administrative state.” He added:
“Every business leader we’ve had in is saying not just taxes, but it is also the regulation. I think the consistent …[thing] is the deconstruction. The way the progressive left runs is, if they can’t get it passed, they’re just going to put in some sort of regulation in an agency. That’s all going to be deconstructed and I think that that’s why this regulatory thing is so important.”
We saw this movie before, during the last Trump administration. He put a coal lobbyist in charge of EPA, an oil lobbyist at Interior, a Telcom lobbyist and lawyer at FCC, a professional union-busting lawyer in charge of the Labor Department, an advocate for replacing public schools with religious ones in charge of the Education Department, etc., etc.
But that was more mere corruption than a wholesale destruction of administrative agencies. Since the Chevron deference decision by the Supreme Court this past year, though, it’s now possible that Trump could actually destroy the American administrative state.
Even when Chevron was still intact eight years ago, the result of Trump’s corruption in his previous administration, just like with Reagan’s and Bush’s deregulatory campaigns, was a massive recession that started before Covid came along.
Trump will fire Lena Kahn at the Federal Trade Commission, blowing up the antitrust efforts of the Biden administration; the fat cat billionaires already are eagerly anticipating running amok (which is why they threw billions at Trump’s campaign).
The result, predictably, will be another Republican economic disaster for America’s working class.
Interestingly, our country’s most famous investor also seems to be thinking along these same lines. Warren Buffett has recently sold over $325 billion in stock and is simply sitting on that huge pile of cash.
Why? Probably the Oracle of Omaha can see the same thing I’m pointing out here: Trump is preparing to turn the economy over to Musk and his billionaire buddies and the result will be a disaster.
A disaster, by the way, that will be very useful to Buffett and other billionaires; recessions and depressions are when America’s largest fortunes are typically made or expanded because they represent great buying opportunities to those with cash, while at the same time the small companies being squeezed are willing to sell for a song.
So get ready; we’re in for a bumpy few years as America descends into a strongman-run oligarchy while the Supreme Court and Trump’s toadies rip apart the protections of the administrative state we’ve so carefully constructed in the years since the Civil War and the Republican Great Depression.
It may well be a disaster for your 401(k), and millions will lose their jobs in a recession. If Musk cuts $2 trillion from the federal budget, as promised, it will almost certainly impact Social Security and take a huge bite out of programs for veterans, children, and the disabled.
It would probably also have to end all subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, and end hundreds of billions in federal aid to infrastructure construction programs.
Get ready now, to the extent that you can. Forewarned is forearmed.
Mark I totally agree with you on the rebuild. Post election depression has had a hold on me. I did my work, joined by my wife, friends and acquaintances and did not see the expected results. I have great respect and value greatly the work Reich and crew are doing. After watching the Thanksgiving speech from so long ago I have committed to a $50/ month donation to the cause of his media project.
I know we can never throw enough money at the problem to overcome it. We are out gunned by the wealthy few that fueled this change that is coming. We the people are the key and it is my hope with work and perseverance will convince our fellow citizens that there is a better way forward.
Marc, you are right that we need to come up with strong ideas, but alas, we need a laugh now and then to keep us on track. Republicans rarely laugh, and we see what kind of people they are and what they stand for if they stand for anything beyond their own selves, desires, and hatreds. I never want Dems or anyone else to become like them. Trump and Kump won this time mostly due to racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and homo/transphobia and it was hidden in economics, the price of eggs. We haven't really dealt with our nation's isms, so they go unexamined while they tear at the fabric of our society and cause people to lie to themselves and the world to cover the truths of their lives. In addition, a bunch of people were conned into claiming they were doing better 4 years ago than now. That was a lie for most Americans, but thinking through things is not an American gift these days, if ever. So, we got a chuckle, now we get to work!
👍
Diane, I like pus bucket too.
I just call him Azzz Clown. He is the leader of the Azz Clown party. Not every member is a republican but most are.
Thank you for the analogy of Mussolini. You get an A+. I have been encouraging people to watch videos of Mussolini. Trump looks and acts like Mussolini, and is using Mussolini's techniques to set up a replica government. Trump is his doppelganger.
And look what happened to Mussolini.
I call the President-elect "Shitmouth", because nothing but shit comes out of his foul mouth
💓Reich💓:"...these people will also bring about ... the downfall of America... because .....one of the most important things a president
needs is accurate and useful feedback. These are in short supply..."
Me:"..one of the most important things an opposition to The Orange Cesspit with Kool-Aide
needs is accurate and useful feedback. These are in short supply...":
Don't join our Focus Group if you're going to Wimp out... otherwise Direct Message me with some times to zoom.
STOP BEING SUBSERVIENT TO GULLIBILITY!
VALIUM& OPIOID PILL CRISES MAKER:"Our pills aren't addictive.'
All Americans know Valium is suppose to be for calming us and NO AMERICAN KNOWS THE SCIENCE OF CALMING:
Ms.FDR:"Do one thing every day that scares you. "--Eleanor Roosevelt
Valium is a very powerful chemical. It is not an addiction it is physical dependence. 99% of people on Valium, or other benzodiazepines, take it as prescribed. The brain and body get physically dependent on it. You can’t “cold turkey” off Valium, or other benzodiazepines, it could kill you or put you in a coma. It takes a long time to withdraw off Valium (Benzodiazepines). Most patients were not given informed consent. Most doctors do not know how to safely taper off this drug. It can take several years to come off. The chances of having horrific symptoms are high. Almost no American doctor understands that. If you’re planning to go off Valium, or any Benzodiazepine, see the Ashton Manual on Google. Find a support group. Keep the faith. It took me two years of endless agony but I’m only on a very small dose. For other issues
I've always liked the orange stain. Short and yet so descriptive.
Sugar coating is much better 🤭
I noticed that our other portly presidents all were well-groomed and knew how to dress.
Please don't insult pigs. They are smart - unlike Trump.
We pigs resent that. We know affection.
Ted..more of a monster. To everyone else…please ALWAYS refer to trump with truthful titles at all times…Felon trump, Rapist trump, Deadly Seditionist trump.
How about Killer Trump! Remember COVID? Or maybe American Assassin Trump?
My personal choice: tRumPutin
Taft was a PRETTY GOOD president! Bunkerboy is THE worst. BY FAAAAAAAAAR.
DJT’s ties are made in China.
Fashion icon? He wears cheap suits for someone who's supposed to be rich and he has a tie that hangs all the way to his crotch. It's like he's using it to point to his mushroom because, otherwise, it's so little it can be easily missed.
Hey, now! What other septugenarian with a buttocks the size of Rhode Island can swimmingly squeeze said posterior into tennis whites with so much flair? Style eyesore is more like it.
Wouldn't tRump be flattered by being called a style icon? Flattery will get you everywhere in this administration.
He is as much a style icon as my dog, which has more style than 'T'.
Ted, and that is an insult to pigs. People who get near Trump are not in any way describing him as stylish!
Whose administration was famous for the Tea Pot scandal
Harding's I believe.
As much as I hate to say so - I'm not sure Trump is either stupid or demented. I think he is masterful at convincing the hoi polloi to follow him - he has Barnum beat all to hell. He knows what he wants, total control, and has the skill to get the rich and powerful to help him. He couldn't give a rat's about America or anything else.
Certainly Trump CAN BE all of those.....unfortunately (for Trump) those qualities are harnessed to his mercurial temperament and saddled with extreme impulsivity and an inability to focus. He's also no genius, stable or otherwise. His "negotiating skills" are mostly comprised of bullying and use of extortion. Trump is nothing more than a name brand thug with (some) money.
His sugar daddy father's money at that. How many people are handed $400 million and a profitable business to start out in life? Also, throughout his adult life he has hidden behind aggressive, unscrupulous attorneys who do the bullying and "negotiating" for him. Now he has social media.
He's never actually made money. He gets unscrupulous lenders to keep bailing him out of each successive debacle.
Agree ,,,he also was a democrat in his early days- when it suited his purpose.Very slippery🪬🔎🧿
I don't believe it was $400 mil. He DID, HOWEVER, TRY TO STEAL HIS FATHER'S MONEY BY CHANGING THE WILL AND ATTEMPTING TO GET HIM TO SIGN IT, ONLY HIS FATHER OUTSMARTED HIM AND DIDN'T SIGN IT! THIS was in Mary Trump's book.
Like many narcissists who rise to power (Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin), Trump has a talent in saying/doing whatever is necessary to get others to do his bidding. Unlike most, he had a kind of "warped charisma/machismo" which was amplified and magnified by a television personna; unlike most, he had salesmenship skills and especially...money.
But in terms of almost every quality we think of as necessary in a leader (think Washington, Lincoln, both Roosevelts)--intelligence, knowledge of history and the world, moral stature and the ability to bring people together to work for good---he is a BIG FAT ZERO.
That is what is so shocking about his election. Analyses which say the voters aren't getting good information or none at all aren't an excuse. It seems we have become an amoral, airhead nation, half of whose voters would rather vote for this dangerous douchebag than a Black woman with a Dem Party attached. Sickening. Shocking.
Agree. In spite of everything, we gave him another term. I would really like to see an interviewer interview and film a good big sample of Trump voters from the last election. To me, it seems like a plurality of us must live in a different society than I do, in order for Trump to have won. And I do want to understand how those voters see the world so differently than I do.
This is an existential crisis for our democracy. Trump has hinted that the election he just won will be our last election.
The Great Dismantling: Trump's Coming Attack on America's Economic Backbone
Thom Hartmann 11-7-24
Donald Trump is preparing to crash the American economy. He intends to do it by tearing up vital parts of our American government. He may even hire Elon Musk to pull it off.
And from his point of view, this is not going to be a bad thing. The farther the economy crashes, the greater the buying opportunity for billionaires.
It all has to do with something called the administrative state.
While it’s not sexy or even particularly interesting to the average American voter, having a strong administrative state is essential to a high-functioning economy.
A strong administrative state is the only thing that protects entrepreneurs and small businesses from being squashed like bugs by monopolistic behemoths, and small businesses are our nation’s main growth engine.
For example, over 70 percent of all new jobs created since 2019 were created by small businesses, producing almost 13 million new jobs over the past 25 years. Small business creation is up 50 percent over Trump’s years because the Biden administration has been enforcing the rule of law, including taking on the giant tech monopolies. Small businesses now account for over 43 percent of all American economic activity.
A strong administrative state is also the only thing that can protect the environment from those who’d destroy it for their own profits. It’s the only thing that can protect consumers from defective or even deadly products and food or drug contamination. It our only defense against predatory banks, airlines, and insurance companies, among others.
A strong administrative state that follows and enforces the rule of law — as opposed to the kind of grift-driven kleptocracies typical of strongman governments — is essential, in other words, to a functioning national economy.
Here in America, we see this best in the contrast between lightly bureaucratic and largely unregulated Red states and more bureaucratic and regulated (and taxed) Blue states and counties. While Red and Blue states are represented in Congress about 50/50, as the Brookings Institution found a few years ago:
“Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties represents just 29% of the economy.”
But now the administrative state is in the crosshairs of the incoming Trump administration, and their planned assault on it will almost certainly cause a loss of economic vitality, probably even leading to a major recession (every Republican president since Nixon has had a major recession after tinkering with tax and regulatory policies; none of the Democratic presidents have created one since Carter, and his started under Nixon).
We also see this at the level of the nation-state. As Professor Timothy Snyder notes:
“Now consider the Russian and Hungarian economies. Russia sits on hugely valuable natural resources, and yet is a poor country. The profits from its oil and gas are in the hands of a few oligarchs.
“Hungary sits in the middle of the European Union, the most successful trade project of all time.And yet Hungarians are poorer than their neighbors, in part because the Orbán regime corruptly channels EU resources to friendly oligarchs.
“The lesson is clear. Democracy is a method of checking corrupt rulers. When there is no functioning democracy, corruption is unchecked.And democracy is an element of a more fundamental guarantor of prosperity, the rule of law. In Hungary and Russia, the rule of law has been bent and broken, to the benefit of the few, and to the detriment of the many.Ending the rule of law is the Trump-Vance platform.”
Gutting the administrative state is the first and imperative aspect of ending or weakening the rule of law.
Because, as Steve Bannon famously told America, the main goal of the Trump administration is “the ‘deconstruction’ of the administrative state.” He added:
“Every business leader we’ve had in is saying not just taxes, but it is also the regulation. I think the consistent …[thing] is the deconstruction. The way the progressive left runs is, if they can’t get it passed, they’re just going to put in some sort of regulation in an agency. That’s all going to be deconstructed and I think that that’s why this regulatory thing is so important.”
We saw this movie before, during the last Trump administration. He put a coal lobbyist in charge of EPA, an oil lobbyist at Interior, a Telcom lobbyist and lawyer at FCC, a professional union-busting lawyer in charge of the Labor Department, an advocate for replacing public schools with religious ones in charge of the Education Department, etc., etc.
But that was more mere corruption than a wholesale destruction of administrative agencies. Since the Chevron deference decision by the Supreme Court this past year, though, it’s now possible that Trump could actually destroy the American administrative state.
Even when Chevron was still intact eight years ago, the result of Trump’s corruption in his previous administration, just like with Reagan’s and Bush’s deregulatory campaigns, was a massive recession that started before Covid came along.
Trump will fire Lena Kahn at the Federal Trade Commission, blowing up the antitrust efforts of the Biden administration; the fat cat billionaires already are eagerly anticipating running amok (which is why they threw billions at Trump’s campaign).
The result, predictably, will be another Republican economic disaster for America’s working class.
Interestingly, our country’s most famous investor also seems to be thinking along these same lines. Warren Buffett has recently sold over $325 billion in stock and is simply sitting on that huge pile of cash.
Why? Probably the Oracle of Omaha can see the same thing I’m pointing out here: Trump is preparing to turn the economy over to Musk and his billionaire buddies and the result will be a disaster.
A disaster, by the way, that will be very useful to Buffett and other billionaires; recessions and depressions are when America’s largest fortunes are typically made or expanded because they represent great buying opportunities to those with cash, while at the same time the small companies being squeezed are willing to sell for a song.
So get ready; we’re in for a bumpy few years as America descends into a strongman-run oligarchy while the Supreme Court and Trump’s toadies rip apart the protections of the administrative state we’ve so carefully constructed in the years since the Civil War and the Republican Great Depression.
It may well be a disaster for your 401(k), and millions will lose their jobs in a recession. If Musk cuts $2 trillion from the federal budget, as promised, it will almost certainly impact Social Security and take a huge bite out of programs for veterans, children, and the disabled.
It would probably also have to end all subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, and end hundreds of billions in federal aid to infrastructure construction programs.
Get ready now, to the extent that you can. Forewarned is forearmed.
Agree- he started as a Democrat; so he uses institutions(charities,religions,NRA,Veterans,ect.) like foot stools to his power trip. Thanks respectfully
Not no mo'! He is "CASH POOR" at this point, with MAYBE $10,000 spending money gifted to him at any given time by his masters. Sad!
Not Right. Trump has a cult following. He knows how to form a cult following. Not many know how to do that.
Kool-Aid King….
TL Mills, 💯🎯
i wish substack would upgrade reply options; switch Like to Agree or Thank you
Thank you!
agree
Yes, very good suggestion. 👍
I agree with you on him being masterful, especially in being able to control some people! I can't help but feel dread with him coming into office with his band of misfits. He doesn't care a damn about America, Americans, or the rest of the world. He wants to be in total control and will do anything to get it!
Jan, I think all of your points are correct and now we must move out of reaction into meaningful action. Look at the ramifications of the Boston Tea Party. One rather small action sparked a revolution that rid us of the overpowering influence of the British.
Thank you! We are not powerless. Though based on a comic book character, I recommend watching the movie "V for Vengeance" with Hugo Weaving and Natalie Portman. In the end, taking down a corrupt totalitarian government involved little violence, but the mass of people who showed up in protest, facing a disillusioned military which refused to fire on them. I watch it several times during W's and tRumPutin's presidencies and it always cheers me up. I haven't seen it in 4 years, but now it's time.
Let's hope that early opposition to DT will lie with our Generals and Admirals who hold the line by defending the Constitution and not follow orders to turn our military members on civilians or illegal immigrants. If they don't, then most hope of surviving the coming fascist wave will be lost. One of the first things dictators do is co-op the courts, the military and then the local police. Not always in that order, but they really need all three to gain total control. Check out Orban in Hungary. Check out Venezuela just to name a couple current examples. The German generals knew that Hitler was a mad man who also thought he was smarter than all of them but they kept appeasing him and gradually just gave into him because they were afraid for themselves and their families. After DT pardons all of the Jan 6 traitors they will be looking for revenge at the highest order. Don't be surprised if he tries to organize them into some version of the Gestapo to target the political opposition including our loyal military leaders. I hope not, but... GH
Let's hope! Orban has actually already been to Mar a Lago to offer his advice and support. Putin is communicating with him through back channels(f-Elon). Hope is pretty thin, but like that "thing with feathers that sings and never stops", mine has built a snug little nest in my heart.
Orban is worse than Putin in my opinion! Orban should not be allowed in our country let alone be able to coach trump on how to be a dictator!
but it took violence.
tRump is cunning and selfish and a bit dim.
he’s sadistic
He doesn't care that his disastrous policies will send the economy into a tailspin!
It won' t affect his comfort level.
He doesn't care! The middle class can become the lowest class and it won't matter to him. He wants a country of rich people only!
True, but sadly he has people who will praise him and, in return, he will do whatever they want him to do!
Putin has plans.... Trump is his willing idiot.
As I type this. our currency is devaluing....Bitcoin making new highs....BRIC making new allies. Even France is falling....
good points-and are the BRICS countries that want to supplant the dollar as the world's reserve currency,really our friends?brazil,Russia,India,China,south africa-i realize foreign relations are complex and often convoluted but our 'allies' siding with russia and china-really?
I look at globalization and i see consolidation of power and money in the hands of a relative few. they have no allegiance to anything except their money and power. state actors are more and more becoming corporate actors using state machinery as cover for looting the common good. this is fascism. all the old paradigms are being abandonned in favor of a greed induced mad rush to oblivion.
Government is here for the purpose of making society a smooth working, non-violent, operation. We can't have a government for everyone, if there is great wealth inequality. We can't have everyone sucking off of tax money either. The laws must prevent gathering benefits without production both for the rich and the poor, and everyone inbetween. And they must prevent extreme wealth inequality, because extreme wealth inequality means extreme power, and that means a breakdown in justice.
I often wonder if democracy can work with such a large and widely spread population. It would take a complete change of perspective from hyper individualism to a sense of belonging to and contributing to the commons, from my way or the highway to cooperation, compassion, and empathy. I don't see that happening in the near future short of a cataclysmic event that perhaps greatly reduces the population on planet earth. this would force us in one of two primary directions, cooperation or savagery.
Another huge problem is truth and it's attackers. Wilful, arrogant ignorace. Contempt for the rule of law (evidence, procedure, precedent). what must it have been like at the start of the enlightenment, when people discovering natural truths about our world were punished by burning at the stake?
Are we returning to that mindset? If one reads project 2025, there is plenty of sketchy theology attempting to inform their proposals for governance.
Humans are not yet capable of managing, let alone sustaining, a democracy.
Nice explanation. We are now the most unequal that we have been in over on hundred years, and that cannot continue, not if we are to continue as a functional democracy rather than one that pretends to be.
perhaps i'm naive expecting friends and allies to at least not backstab us-then again,look at how NATO has come together-at least thus far-to defend Ukraine
I'm glad I won't be around to see the total destruction of our society. It will take longer than the few years I have left for them to complete. I just feel sorry for everyone that will have to deal with this. I hope we can really stop him. I still cannot believe he got elected!!!!
Bitcoin is BS! Musk and trump are going to ruin America all by themselves!
Also, he enjoys his mean little jokes: putting an actual Handmaid on our Supreme Court, putting Road Kill Kennedy in charge of public health. What fun!
Yup. Trump is amazingly awful! He is a sociopath with others going along with his a abberant behavior. How to undo this is our test.
I think Trump had now gone beyond sociopathy, which was bad enough, and into psychopathy. He was always a malignant narcissist, but now he is declining rapidly into a toxic, violent-prone stew. I don't see him lasting out his term. And I am not sure we will survive it, either.
Final line in Exposing the Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissist As A Moron that No Progressive E-Mag Would Publish for three months before the election:
So since the huge event of Joe Biden bowing out and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for President of the United States on Sunday the 21st of July, there is only one question before us: Would you rather have a Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron whose Father Also Had Dementia running this country or the Daughter of Two University Professors?
Exposing The Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissist As A Moron
A Comparison of President Biden's Mental Competency with Donald Trump's
Recently the media focus has been on the 'age issue' and the question of the mental competency of an octogenarian during President Biden's second term. So let's compare his mental competency with Donald Trump's starting with his most recent gaffow followed by a list of what he said and his cabinet members said about him during his first term. (A short list of my faves:)
Did Biden call Nancy Pelosi Nicky Haley when recently talking about the 1-6-21 assault on the capital?
Did he claim the ability to properly identify a giraffe in a multiple choice of three animals, proved he was a "real stable genius"?
Did his former college professor call him the "dumbest f--king student I ever had"?
Did Biden suggest we could build a wall with transparent concrete?
Did he ever say to the camera he wished his wife were present with him while she was literally standing next to him looking confused?
Did his own sibling say in a recorded interview that he paid someone to take the SAT for him because he was too stupid to get into college on his own?
Did Biden think people needed photo IDs to buy groceries?
Did Biden say Paris was a city in Germany?
Did he misspell basic words in dozens of different tweets only to "correct" them by misspelling them a different way?
Did he suggest injecting disinfectants into our bloodstream to kill COVID?
Did he say he didn't know what a blind trust is, despite having a "degree" in Finance?
Did he bankrupt every business he tried starting on his own, including a Casino?
Was Biden the first President in history to utter the sentence, "Belgium is a beautiful city"?
Did Biden ever say our captured prisoners of war are only heroes because they were captured?
Did he have more than a dozen of his hand picked cabinet members resign because they couldn't work with his incompetence?
Did his own Chief of Staff call him an "idiot"?
Did a Senator from his own party say, "The White House has become an adult day care center”?
Did his own Secretary of State say he was a "fucking moron"?
Did his own economic advisor say he was "dumb as shit...an idiot surrounded by clowns"?
Did his National Security Advisor say he was "a dope...an idiot [with the intelligence of] a kindergartner”?
I saved the above collection of quotes that was originally posted on a Facebook page dedicated to insuring Joe Biden's second term last year. That was before that Republican special prosecutor in his VP document's case harped on the age issue and Joe's forgetfulness of details when the guy interviewed him. I was going to submit the above to the Daily Kos before reading the two following articles updating Trump's mental problems amidst the failure of a media focus on the orange moron at the president's expense while he's trying to run this country as the GOP is fixed on trying to tear it apart.
I just read their lead article titled The media will not report that Trump appears to have middle-stage dementia, cataloging his further mental decline. A couple of days later Facebook suggested I look at a new site dedicated to the politics and humor of Jon Stewart which just 'happened' to have posted the original interview in Salon titled "Like someone pulled the metaphorical plug": Dr. John Gartner on Trump's "accelerating dementia". This whole interview was fixated on the dementia issue without mentioning that his father Fred had Alzheimer's/dementia, which I learned when I posted A Comparison to every response. Then on 7-8, after the idiot went into a long rant about choosing between being electrocuted by a battery on a sinking boat or eaten by a shark Robert Reich posted Why isn’t the media reporting on Trump’s growing dementia?
Trump has obviously been both a low IQ moron and a fascist all his life, his first attorney was Roy Cohn Christ's sake. For here's precisely how he became the Perfect GOP Candidate: A supreme Narcissist who first builds Hotels with his last Name plastered all over the top of each with a Will To Power Fixation that drives him to become a TV Star where the whole game was to have the contestants kiss his ass to see who was His most 'competent' Apprentice, Firing all the Losers before finally picking the Winner, Like Me. Which sets him up to run for President, Wrapping Himself In MAGA Flag to Beat all those Loser Politicians in the Primary and Lock Her Up Hillary in the 2016 Electoral College. Rejoice, rejoice an absolute field day for all the fascists, white supremacists, Christian nationalists, plutocrat billionaires, corporatists, corporate media, atheists, evangelical preachers and six Supreme Court Justices all Backing a Moronic and now progressively Demented Fuhrer for the MAGA Masses Who Worship Him Like A God, Further Feeding Its Insatiable Sociopathic Narcissism!!!
Turns out I also hadn't read the whole issue with A.J. Pennyfarthing's 10 stunning moments from Trump's late-night speech to religious broadcasters. You ain't going to be changing any preacher's or MAGA's minds about how unhinged DT is with any raft of articles cause that is the Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron's Lowest Common Denominator Appeal To The Wrap Yourself In MAGA Flag And $60 Bible Masses!
Hugh, I'm afraid you are right. He is not stupid enough, not to do great harm to the U.S and the world. Invectives are nice and satisfying but they won't help. The man was elected by the American people. How to get rid of him?
Tom, Trump was not elected by the people in a free and fair election. He was elected due to the influence of Russian cyber attacks, a MSM now almost totally controlled by Right wing Billionaires, and a Supreme Court decision that allowed corporations to pour billions into Trumps campaign. Additionally he was elected by the default of a vast number of voters so disenchanted by the choices, that they did not bother to vote.
Yes, the voters who stayed home will have much to contemplate in the coming years.
they don't contemplate-apathy is worse than ignorance
Yes Marc, you are right in almost everything. I'm not sure about the Russian influencw although it is plausible. Putin talked about the chaos Trump would generate, which is in the interest of this imperialist.
But the problem is that the electorate has spoken and that an obvious unfit man is president-elect and Idon't know a way to get rid of him. Do you?
What remains is how to make him and his dubious nuts and psycho's powerless...
I just hope that the republicans, who have been elected to serve us, will protect America and not cave into trump's demands for changes in our country! Democrats and republicans will need to work together to keep control on the out of control bully about to take the White House!
Jan, to look to the existing Republicans and Democrats to work together to save us is not very likely. They are the very ones who got us in this situation after decades of dysfunction. We must and will find a way to install a government that is once again by the people and for the people. Now is the time to begin to plan for the post-Trump era.
He's the mouthpiece and meat puppet of his advisors and Vladimir Putin.
👆👆👆👆👆👆👆🎯
Scary thought! I know everything he does is to get attention, the clothes and makeup draw the eye. But he does seem to have lost a lot of his previous energy.
Nah man. He IS dumb as a rock! His vile kvorka makes him SEEM somewhat intelligent/useful, but no. No, we Americans can clearly see that NO ONE is as dumb as that rapist pedophile.
Trump is dumb. One of his professors at Wharton said Trump was the dumbest student in his class. I am sure he got in at Wharton because of his rich father. Wharton was looking for money from his father, I have no doubt.
Nailed it!
He is wilely and conniving, in some areas, as you note his special,skills, but it is superficial intelligence, as he knows very little, thinks very shallowly, and has zero attention span.
Hugh - I agree and point to this past summer's stellar performance as the bumbling incoherent (even bored) demented fool, distracting from all the machinations going on behind the curtain. masterful, i hate to admit.
Superb insight. Sadly, very dangerous for our country. We may never recover
“We may never recover.” My fear as well.
And mine
Me 2.
The Great Dismantling: Trump's Coming Attack on America's Economic Backbone
Thom Hartmann 11-7-24
Donald Trump is preparing to crash the American economy. He intends to do it by tearing up vital parts of our American government. He may even hire Elon Musk to pull it off.
And from his point of view, this is not going to be a bad thing. The farther the economy crashes, the greater the buying opportunity for billionaires.
It all has to do with something called the administrative state.
While it’s not sexy or even particularly interesting to the average American voter, having a strong administrative state is essential to a high-functioning economy.
A strong administrative state is the only thing that protects entrepreneurs and small businesses from being squashed like bugs by monopolistic behemoths, and small businesses are our nation’s main growth engine.
For example, over 70 percent of all new jobs created since 2019 were created by small businesses, producing almost 13 million new jobs over the past 25 years. Small business creation is up 50 percent over Trump’s years because the Biden administration has been enforcing the rule of law, including taking on the giant tech monopolies. Small businesses now account for over 43 percent of all American economic activity.
A strong administrative state is also the only thing that can protect the environment from those who’d destroy it for their own profits. It’s the only thing that can protect consumers from defective or even deadly products and food or drug contamination. It our only defense against predatory banks, airlines, and insurance companies, among others.
A strong administrative state that follows and enforces the rule of law — as opposed to the kind of grift-driven kleptocracies typical of strongman governments — is essential, in other words, to a functioning national economy.
Here in America, we see this best in the contrast between lightly bureaucratic and largely unregulated Red states and more bureaucratic and regulated (and taxed) Blue states and counties. While Red and Blue states are represented in Congress about 50/50, as the Brookings Institution found a few years ago:
“Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties represents just 29% of the economy.”
But now the administrative state is in the crosshairs of the incoming Trump administration, and their planned assault on it will almost certainly cause a loss of economic vitality, probably even leading to a major recession (every Republican president since Nixon has had a major recession after tinkering with tax and regulatory policies; none of the Democratic presidents have created one since Carter, and his started under Nixon).
We also see this at the level of the nation-state. As Professor Timothy Snyder notes:
“Now consider the Russian and Hungarian economies. Russia sits on hugely valuable natural resources, and yet is a poor country. The profits from its oil and gas are in the hands of a few oligarchs.
“Hungary sits in the middle of the European Union, the most successful trade project of all time.And yet Hungarians are poorer than their neighbors, in part because the Orbán regime corruptly channels EU resources to friendly oligarchs.
“The lesson is clear. Democracy is a method of checking corrupt rulers. When there is no functioning democracy, corruption is unchecked.And democracy is an element of a more fundamental guarantor of prosperity, the rule of law. In Hungary and Russia, the rule of law has been bent and broken, to the benefit of the few, and to the detriment of the many.Ending the rule of law is the Trump-Vance platform.”
Gutting the administrative state is the first and imperative aspect of ending or weakening the rule of law.
Because, as Steve Bannon famously told America, the main goal of the Trump administration is “the ‘deconstruction’ of the administrative state.” He added:
“Every business leader we’ve had in is saying not just taxes, but it is also the regulation. I think the consistent …[thing] is the deconstruction. The way the progressive left runs is, if they can’t get it passed, they’re just going to put in some sort of regulation in an agency. That’s all going to be deconstructed and I think that that’s why this regulatory thing is so important.”
We saw this movie before, during the last Trump administration. He put a coal lobbyist in charge of EPA, an oil lobbyist at Interior, a Telcom lobbyist and lawyer at FCC, a professional union-busting lawyer in charge of the Labor Department, an advocate for replacing public schools with religious ones in charge of the Education Department, etc., etc.
But that was more mere corruption than a wholesale destruction of administrative agencies. Since the Chevron deference decision by the Supreme Court this past year, though, it’s now possible that Trump could actually destroy the American administrative state.
Even when Chevron was still intact eight years ago, the result of Trump’s corruption in his previous administration, just like with Reagan’s and Bush’s deregulatory campaigns, was a massive recession that started before Covid came along.
Trump will fire Lena Kahn at the Federal Trade Commission, blowing up the antitrust efforts of the Biden administration; the fat cat billionaires already are eagerly anticipating running amok (which is why they threw billions at Trump’s campaign).
The result, predictably, will be another Republican economic disaster for America’s working class.
Interestingly, our country’s most famous investor also seems to be thinking along these same lines. Warren Buffett has recently sold over $325 billion in stock and is simply sitting on that huge pile of cash.
Why? Probably the Oracle of Omaha can see the same thing I’m pointing out here: Trump is preparing to turn the economy over to Musk and his billionaire buddies and the result will be a disaster.
A disaster, by the way, that will be very useful to Buffett and other billionaires; recessions and depressions are when America’s largest fortunes are typically made or expanded because they represent great buying opportunities to those with cash, while at the same time the small companies being squeezed are willing to sell for a song.
So get ready; we’re in for a bumpy few years as America descends into a strongman-run oligarchy while the Supreme Court and Trump’s toadies rip apart the protections of the administrative state we’ve so carefully constructed in the years since the Civil War and the Republican Great Depression.
It may well be a disaster for your 401(k), and millions will lose their jobs in a recession. If Musk cuts $2 trillion from the federal budget, as promised, it will almost certainly impact Social Security and take a huge bite out of programs for veterans, children, and the disabled.
It would probably also have to end all subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, and end hundreds of billions in federal aid to infrastructure construction programs.
Get ready now, to the extent that you can. Forewarned is forearmed.
"We may never recover" is the thought that bothers me the most, and that is looking on the bright side. I have visions of our country being like an airplane going into an unrecoverable tailspin straight into the ground.
What about a passenger plane that suddenly had both engines fail but made a safe landing on the Hudson River and all survived? One cool headed pilot is all it took to save a planeload of passengers.
Mine was an analogy, not to be taken literally. I didn't anticipate anyone interpreting it otherwise. In addition, the plane Sullenberger landed on the Hudson was not in an unrecoverable tail spin.
Marc, It's heartening to read such positivity. I've read in The Fourth Turning Is Here, that a "wise" man will emerge to lead the re-grouping after the Orange Maggot leads us into a crisis. I'm hopeful!!!
I am hoping that "wise" man will be Jamie Raskin.
I can picture this; it's already spinning.
My head is spinning just thinking about this - and that's before we hit the ground. Hopefully, I'll black out before impact.
Is this an emergency, or what?
We need a root canal! Now!
Daniel, it is best to go a bit more radical and have a new implant instead. A root canal is to maintain a dead tooth while an implant is a whole new start!
Marc, having your "dead tooth" description is light-years better than having an implant. Think about it.
I know what one emergency can be - needing a root canal. I had to have an emergency root canal myself. I was in more toothache pain than pain from a ruptured appendix I also had. I may be wrong, but I can think of no greater excruciating pain than that of a certain type of toothache. You have to feel it to believe it.
Kidney stones are near the top of the pain chart too!!! GH
It is an ill wind that nobody blows any good. There still is an old nut like Mitch McConnell to put hope on...
Not so sure about McConnell. He is known to switch sides in an instant so I would not put my hope on him. I am hoping that our elected officials truly are loyal to America and not to trump!
I am not sure as well: I call him an old nut. But I see some opposition...
As Elaine goes, so goes Mitch. Elaine's sister makes more from government contracts than just about anybody.... even Musk.
I see nothing wrong with hope, especially Hope AR.
I'm sorry, but I don't understand your 1st sentence. Would you please translate it to a 5th-grade level for me? Your 2nd sentence is nice.
When you sail the sea, there is always a wind that brings you somewhere. The "trust" in old Mitch is an ill wind, but one incompetent official less in the Trump administration is quite a result...
Ah, I "sea" said the blind man. Thanks for the clarification. Long ago, I had a sailboat and turned it over, nearly killing a friend of mine.
I gave up sailing for glider flying; but it has ill winds too.
The Great Dismantling: Trump's Coming Attack on America's Economic Backbone
Thom Hartmann 11-7-24
Donald Trump is preparing to crash the American economy. He intends to do it by tearing up vital parts of our American government. He may even hire Elon Musk to pull it off.
And from his point of view, this is not going to be a bad thing. The farther the economy crashes, the greater the buying opportunity for billionaires.
It all has to do with something called the administrative state.
While it’s not sexy or even particularly interesting to the average American voter, having a strong administrative state is essential to a high-functioning economy.
A strong administrative state is the only thing that protects entrepreneurs and small businesses from being squashed like bugs by monopolistic behemoths, and small businesses are our nation’s main growth engine.
For example, over 70 percent of all new jobs created since 2019 were created by small businesses, producing almost 13 million new jobs over the past 25 years. Small business creation is up 50 percent over Trump’s years because the Biden administration has been enforcing the rule of law, including taking on the giant tech monopolies. Small businesses now account for over 43 percent of all American economic activity.
A strong administrative state is also the only thing that can protect the environment from those who’d destroy it for their own profits. It’s the only thing that can protect consumers from defective or even deadly products and food or drug contamination. It our only defense against predatory banks, airlines, and insurance companies, among others.
A strong administrative state that follows and enforces the rule of law — as opposed to the kind of grift-driven kleptocracies typical of strongman governments — is essential, in other words, to a functioning national economy.
Here in America, we see this best in the contrast between lightly bureaucratic and largely unregulated Red states and more bureaucratic and regulated (and taxed) Blue states and counties. While Red and Blue states are represented in Congress about 50/50, as the Brookings Institution found a few years ago:
“Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties represents just 29% of the economy.”
But now the administrative state is in the crosshairs of the incoming Trump administration, and their planned assault on it will almost certainly cause a loss of economic vitality, probably even leading to a major recession (every Republican president since Nixon has had a major recession after tinkering with tax and regulatory policies; none of the Democratic presidents have created one since Carter, and his started under Nixon).
We also see this at the level of the nation-state. As Professor Timothy Snyder notes:
“Now consider the Russian and Hungarian economies. Russia sits on hugely valuable natural resources, and yet is a poor country. The profits from its oil and gas are in the hands of a few oligarchs.
“Hungary sits in the middle of the European Union, the most successful trade project of all time.And yet Hungarians are poorer than their neighbors, in part because the Orbán regime corruptly channels EU resources to friendly oligarchs.
“The lesson is clear. Democracy is a method of checking corrupt rulers. When there is no functioning democracy, corruption is unchecked.And democracy is an element of a more fundamental guarantor of prosperity, the rule of law. In Hungary and Russia, the rule of law has been bent and broken, to the benefit of the few, and to the detriment of the many.Ending the rule of law is the Trump-Vance platform.”
Gutting the administrative state is the first and imperative aspect of ending or weakening the rule of law.
Because, as Steve Bannon famously told America, the main goal of the Trump administration is “the ‘deconstruction’ of the administrative state.” He added:
“Every business leader we’ve had in is saying not just taxes, but it is also the regulation. I think the consistent …[thing] is the deconstruction. The way the progressive left runs is, if they can’t get it passed, they’re just going to put in some sort of regulation in an agency. That’s all going to be deconstructed and I think that that’s why this regulatory thing is so important.”
We saw this movie before, during the last Trump administration. He put a coal lobbyist in charge of EPA, an oil lobbyist at Interior, a Telcom lobbyist and lawyer at FCC, a professional union-busting lawyer in charge of the Labor Department, an advocate for replacing public schools with religious ones in charge of the Education Department, etc., etc.
But that was more mere corruption than a wholesale destruction of administrative agencies. Since the Chevron deference decision by the Supreme Court this past year, though, it’s now possible that Trump could actually destroy the American administrative state.
Even when Chevron was still intact eight years ago, the result of Trump’s corruption in his previous administration, just like with Reagan’s and Bush’s deregulatory campaigns, was a massive recession that started before Covid came along.
Trump will fire Lena Kahn at the Federal Trade Commission, blowing up the antitrust efforts of the Biden administration; the fat cat billionaires already are eagerly anticipating running amok (which is why they threw billions at Trump’s campaign).
The result, predictably, will be another Republican economic disaster for America’s working class.
Interestingly, our country’s most famous investor also seems to be thinking along these same lines. Warren Buffett has recently sold over $325 billion in stock and is simply sitting on that huge pile of cash.
Why? Probably the Oracle of Omaha can see the same thing I’m pointing out here: Trump is preparing to turn the economy over to Musk and his billionaire buddies and the result will be a disaster.
A disaster, by the way, that will be very useful to Buffett and other billionaires; recessions and depressions are when America’s largest fortunes are typically made or expanded because they represent great buying opportunities to those with cash, while at the same time the small companies being squeezed are willing to sell for a song.
So get ready; we’re in for a bumpy few years as America descends into a strongman-run oligarchy while the Supreme Court and Trump’s toadies rip apart the protections of the administrative state we’ve so carefully constructed in the years since the Civil War and the Republican Great Depression.
It may well be a disaster for your 401(k), and millions will lose their jobs in a recession. If Musk cuts $2 trillion from the federal budget, as promised, it will almost certainly impact Social Security and take a huge bite out of programs for veterans, children, and the disabled.
It would probably also have to end all subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, and end hundreds of billions in federal aid to infrastructure construction programs.
Get ready now, to the extent that you can. Forewarned is forearmed.
The Great Dismantling: Trump's Coming Attack on America's Economic Backbone
Thom Hartmann 11-7-24
Donald Trump is preparing to crash the American economy. He intends to do it by tearing up vital parts of our American government. He may even hire Elon Musk to pull it off.
And from his point of view, this is not going to be a bad thing. The farther the economy crashes, the greater the buying opportunity for billionaires.
It all has to do with something called the administrative state.
While it’s not sexy or even particularly interesting to the average American voter, having a strong administrative state is essential to a high-functioning economy.
A strong administrative state is the only thing that protects entrepreneurs and small businesses from being squashed like bugs by monopolistic behemoths, and small businesses are our nation’s main growth engine.
For example, over 70 percent of all new jobs created since 2019 were created by small businesses, producing almost 13 million new jobs over the past 25 years. Small business creation is up 50 percent over Trump’s years because the Biden administration has been enforcing the rule of law, including taking on the giant tech monopolies. Small businesses now account for over 43 percent of all American economic activity.
A strong administrative state is also the only thing that can protect the environment from those who’d destroy it for their own profits. It’s the only thing that can protect consumers from defective or even deadly products and food or drug contamination. It our only defense against predatory banks, airlines, and insurance companies, among others.
A strong administrative state that follows and enforces the rule of law — as opposed to the kind of grift-driven kleptocracies typical of strongman governments — is essential, in other words, to a functioning national economy.
Here in America, we see this best in the contrast between lightly bureaucratic and largely unregulated Red states and more bureaucratic and regulated (and taxed) Blue states and counties. While Red and Blue states are represented in Congress about 50/50, as the Brookings Institution found a few years ago:
“Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties represents just 29% of the economy.”
But now the administrative state is in the crosshairs of the incoming Trump administration, and their planned assault on it will almost certainly cause a loss of economic vitality, probably even leading to a major recession (every Republican president since Nixon has had a major recession after tinkering with tax and regulatory policies; none of the Democratic presidents have created one since Carter, and his started under Nixon).
We also see this at the level of the nation-state. As Professor Timothy Snyder notes:
“Now consider the Russian and Hungarian economies. Russia sits on hugely valuable natural resources, and yet is a poor country. The profits from its oil and gas are in the hands of a few oligarchs.
“Hungary sits in the middle of the European Union, the most successful trade project of all time.And yet Hungarians are poorer than their neighbors, in part because the Orbán regime corruptly channels EU resources to friendly oligarchs.
“The lesson is clear. Democracy is a method of checking corrupt rulers. When there is no functioning democracy, corruption is unchecked.And democracy is an element of a more fundamental guarantor of prosperity, the rule of law. In Hungary and Russia, the rule of law has been bent and broken, to the benefit of the few, and to the detriment of the many.Ending the rule of law is the Trump-Vance platform.”
Gutting the administrative state is the first and imperative aspect of ending or weakening the rule of law.
Because, as Steve Bannon famously told America, the main goal of the Trump administration is “the ‘deconstruction’ of the administrative state.” He added:
“Every business leader we’ve had in is saying not just taxes, but it is also the regulation. I think the consistent …[thing] is the deconstruction. The way the progressive left runs is, if they can’t get it passed, they’re just going to put in some sort of regulation in an agency. That’s all going to be deconstructed and I think that that’s why this regulatory thing is so important.”
We saw this movie before, during the last Trump administration. He put a coal lobbyist in charge of EPA, an oil lobbyist at Interior, a Telcom lobbyist and lawyer at FCC, a professional union-busting lawyer in charge of the Labor Department, an advocate for replacing public schools with religious ones in charge of the Education Department, etc., etc.
But that was more mere corruption than a wholesale destruction of administrative agencies. Since the Chevron deference decision by the Supreme Court this past year, though, it’s now possible that Trump could actually destroy the American administrative state.
Even when Chevron was still intact eight years ago, the result of Trump’s corruption in his previous administration, just like with Reagan’s and Bush’s deregulatory campaigns, was a massive recession that started before Covid came along.
Trump will fire Lena Kahn at the Federal Trade Commission, blowing up the antitrust efforts of the Biden administration; the fat cat billionaires already are eagerly anticipating running amok (which is why they threw billions at Trump’s campaign).
The result, predictably, will be another Republican economic disaster for America’s working class.
Interestingly, our country’s most famous investor also seems to be thinking along these same lines. Warren Buffett has recently sold over $325 billion in stock and is simply sitting on that huge pile of cash.
Why? Probably the Oracle of Omaha can see the same thing I’m pointing out here: Trump is preparing to turn the economy over to Musk and his billionaire buddies and the result will be a disaster.
A disaster, by the way, that will be very useful to Buffett and other billionaires; recessions and depressions are when America’s largest fortunes are typically made or expanded because they represent great buying opportunities to those with cash, while at the same time the small companies being squeezed are willing to sell for a song.
So get ready; we’re in for a bumpy few years as America descends into a strongman-run oligarchy while the Supreme Court and Trump’s toadies rip apart the protections of the administrative state we’ve so carefully constructed in the years since the Civil War and the Republican Great Depression.
It may well be a disaster for your 401(k), and millions will lose their jobs in a recession. If Musk cuts $2 trillion from the federal budget, as promised, it will almost certainly impact Social Security and take a huge bite out of programs for veterans, children, and the disabled.
It would probably also have to end all subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, and end hundreds of billions in federal aid to infrastructure construction programs.
Get ready now, to the extent that you can. Forewarned is forearmed.
"We may never recover."
That is true only if people throw in the towel. There is ALWAYS a road that leads back to more freedom and democracy.
Americans have been fed on fatalistic bullshit for FAR TOO long. When I was growing up in the 50s, they tried to feed me on the notion that once a nation "went communist" there was no coming back. Once Red, always Red, so better dead than Red -- was the saying. And we were ready to engulf the world in a nuclear holocaust in order to "keep our freedom."
That the USSR fell, and collapsed relatively peacefully was NOT in the US program.
Thomas, you are spot on.
In support of Progressive Utilization Theory (PROUT) please read the following.
Post-Election analysis shows working-class people voted for Republicans and Trump to shake up things and get rid of the DEEP STATE.
Democrats have a chance to use this by claiming the deep state is made up of politicians paid for by corporations.
Projectleapfrog.org is working on a LIMITED Convention of States that will NOT run away but will amend the Constitution and get rid of corporations and money in politics.
We have 18 college students in 18 state capitals working on this.
Please support our effort by going to ProjectLeapfrog.org
In support of Progressive Utilization Theory (PROUT) please read the following.
Post-Election analysis shows working-class people voted for Republicans and Trump to shake up things and get rid of the DEEP STATE.
Democrats have a chance to use this by claiming the deep state is made up of politicians paid for by corporations.
Projectleapfrog.org is working on a LIMITED Convention of States that will NOT run away but will amend the Constitution and get rid of corporations and money in politics.
We have 18 college students working on this in 18 state capitals.
Please support our effort by going to ProjectLeapfrog.org
Possibly what you described as "fatalistic bullshit" actually worked?
If you whip a horse it WILL run faster -- for awhile.
Thomas, while I would NEVER, EVER be cruel to any animal, I do understand what you are saying, I think. The orange man and his cruel band of miscreants are whipping us really hard right now to keep that fear alive in all of us; however, there comes a time when you just get fed up with the whipping and decide to do something about it. I hope for all of our sake, Americans are getting tired of the whipping and are waking up to the fact we must do something sooner rather than later!
Agree Peggy. We cannot waste energy repeating our complaints. Now we must take action to deploy opposition to these childish souls stupidly becoming in charge. As always, it's up to us, the people, to change the path of history.
Amen, Joan!
Peggy, that's not quite what I meant. It's more along the lines of "Just because the only tool you have is a hammer, stop treating every situation as though it were a nail."
America has had big sticks and whips -- and we're going to need to new tools and new skills to use them.
Okay, I see. What tools will we need? What skills will we need? I am ready to start pushing back but have no idea how to go about it! I have joined many organizations in the hopes of discovering what exactly I can do to help alter the course America is currently on.
Yours is an interesting analogy. I learned something from it. Thank you. BTW, I hate animal cruelty.
Cathi, I believe that we will absolutely recover. We recovered from British colonialism and we recovered from a disastrous Civil War. We also recovered from McCarthyism. But recovering does not mean we will go back to Democracy and the economics of 20 or 30 years ago; it means to install an improved system to replace the one that is failing us now.
Agreed, and the two critical traits for recovering are adaptability and cooperation. The traits of every successful species on this planet.
Marc. Thanks for a different perspective
The Great Dismantling: Trump's Coming Attack on America's Economic Backbone
Thom Hartmann 11-7-24
Donald Trump is preparing to crash the American economy. He intends to do it by tearing up vital parts of our American government. He may even hire Elon Musk to pull it off.
And from his point of view, this is not going to be a bad thing. The farther the economy crashes, the greater the buying opportunity for billionaires.
It all has to do with something called the administrative state.
While it’s not sexy or even particularly interesting to the average American voter, having a strong administrative state is essential to a high-functioning economy.
A strong administrative state is the only thing that protects entrepreneurs and small businesses from being squashed like bugs by monopolistic behemoths, and small businesses are our nation’s main growth engine.
For example, over 70 percent of all new jobs created since 2019 were created by small businesses, producing almost 13 million new jobs over the past 25 years. Small business creation is up 50 percent over Trump’s years because the Biden administration has been enforcing the rule of law, including taking on the giant tech monopolies. Small businesses now account for over 43 percent of all American economic activity.
A strong administrative state is also the only thing that can protect the environment from those who’d destroy it for their own profits. It’s the only thing that can protect consumers from defective or even deadly products and food or drug contamination. It our only defense against predatory banks, airlines, and insurance companies, among others.
A strong administrative state that follows and enforces the rule of law — as opposed to the kind of grift-driven kleptocracies typical of strongman governments — is essential, in other words, to a functioning national economy.
Here in America, we see this best in the contrast between lightly bureaucratic and largely unregulated Red states and more bureaucratic and regulated (and taxed) Blue states and counties. While Red and Blue states are represented in Congress about 50/50, as the Brookings Institution found a few years ago:
“Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties represents just 29% of the economy.”
But now the administrative state is in the crosshairs of the incoming Trump administration, and their planned assault on it will almost certainly cause a loss of economic vitality, probably even leading to a major recession (every Republican president since Nixon has had a major recession after tinkering with tax and regulatory policies; none of the Democratic presidents have created one since Carter, and his started under Nixon).
We also see this at the level of the nation-state. As Professor Timothy Snyder notes:
“Now consider the Russian and Hungarian economies. Russia sits on hugely valuable natural resources, and yet is a poor country. The profits from its oil and gas are in the hands of a few oligarchs.
“Hungary sits in the middle of the European Union, the most successful trade project of all time.And yet Hungarians are poorer than their neighbors, in part because the Orbán regime corruptly channels EU resources to friendly oligarchs.
“The lesson is clear. Democracy is a method of checking corrupt rulers. When there is no functioning democracy, corruption is unchecked.And democracy is an element of a more fundamental guarantor of prosperity, the rule of law. In Hungary and Russia, the rule of law has been bent and broken, to the benefit of the few, and to the detriment of the many.Ending the rule of law is the Trump-Vance platform.”
Gutting the administrative state is the first and imperative aspect of ending or weakening the rule of law.
Because, as Steve Bannon famously told America, the main goal of the Trump administration is “the ‘deconstruction’ of the administrative state.” He added:
“Every business leader we’ve had in is saying not just taxes, but it is also the regulation. I think the consistent …[thing] is the deconstruction. The way the progressive left runs is, if they can’t get it passed, they’re just going to put in some sort of regulation in an agency. That’s all going to be deconstructed and I think that that’s why this regulatory thing is so important.”
We saw this movie before, during the last Trump administration. He put a coal lobbyist in charge of EPA, an oil lobbyist at Interior, a Telcom lobbyist and lawyer at FCC, a professional union-busting lawyer in charge of the Labor Department, an advocate for replacing public schools with religious ones in charge of the Education Department, etc., etc.
But that was more mere corruption than a wholesale destruction of administrative agencies. Since the Chevron deference decision by the Supreme Court this past year, though, it’s now possible that Trump could actually destroy the American administrative state.
Even when Chevron was still intact eight years ago, the result of Trump’s corruption in his previous administration, just like with Reagan’s and Bush’s deregulatory campaigns, was a massive recession that started before Covid came along.
Trump will fire Lena Kahn at the Federal Trade Commission, blowing up the antitrust efforts of the Biden administration; the fat cat billionaires already are eagerly anticipating running amok (which is why they threw billions at Trump’s campaign).
The result, predictably, will be another Republican economic disaster for America’s working class.
Interestingly, our country’s most famous investor also seems to be thinking along these same lines. Warren Buffett has recently sold over $325 billion in stock and is simply sitting on that huge pile of cash.
Why? Probably the Oracle of Omaha can see the same thing I’m pointing out here: Trump is preparing to turn the economy over to Musk and his billionaire buddies and the result will be a disaster.
A disaster, by the way, that will be very useful to Buffett and other billionaires; recessions and depressions are when America’s largest fortunes are typically made or expanded because they represent great buying opportunities to those with cash, while at the same time the small companies being squeezed are willing to sell for a song.
So get ready; we’re in for a bumpy few years as America descends into a strongman-run oligarchy while the Supreme Court and Trump’s toadies rip apart the protections of the administrative state we’ve so carefully constructed in the years since the Civil War and the Republican Great Depression.
It may well be a disaster for your 401(k), and millions will lose their jobs in a recession. If Musk cuts $2 trillion from the federal budget, as promised, it will almost certainly impact Social Security and take a huge bite out of programs for veterans, children, and the disabled.
It would probably also have to end all subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, and end hundreds of billions in federal aid to infrastructure construction programs.
Get ready now, to the extent that you can. Forewarned is forearmed.
Agree. I can't help but think that when Trump, or anyone like him, selects only syncophants to serve the "master's" wishes, they are also surrounding themselves with unethical, dangerous people perhaps even worse than themselves. Is a coup against Trump by one of his selected extremists out of the question? Is an even worse downward spiral possible? I am feeling very pessimistic, while hoping my worst fears are either unlikely, or not unrealized.
As a 71 year old who has always thought of our country as a guiding force for democracy and decency. I keep thinking that we are just in a bad dream and that we will all wake up and all of this chaos will be over. How the heck did America become this stupid? Trump and his billionaire buddies are going to make everyone else suffer because everyone else is believing his Conspiracy Theory that he will MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. America has never been great and never will be! In order to make a more perfect union we need to stop ignoring those who continue to commit unlawful acts and penalize perpetrators with equal justice under the law!
Rather, I'd characterize it by saying that America has always had great principles and great goals but that we've always fallen short of the mark. We've made progress, though.
We need to continue.
EXACTLY, Cécile. We have striven for greatness based on great ideals, but because we are human beings, we make mistakes. This has been a Mega-mistake, but we will eventually rise again like a Phoenix from the ashes, with new hard-won knowledge. I hope to live to see it.
I certainly hope so. We need to get a whole lot better at creating systems that cannot be cheated on, or at least, are much harder to cheat on. That starts with good principles and integrity, the latter of which we are quite poor on, especially in these times.
Just an example: In Portage county, WI, which is extremely sandy, our ground water is easily polluted by nitrates. Yet Farmers are on the honor system to let us know how much they applied. So it comes as no surprise that we have many miscarriages due to nitrate pollution..
"Doveryai, No Proveryai" said Stalin. [Trust but verify].
Speaking of ground water, all the groundwater we've extracted for irrigation, municipal & residential use, etc. has affected the tilt of the Earth's axis, by changing the relative weight & balance from much lower quantities of water in certain places, especially US & India, & it has by itself raised the sea level (it's not only melting glaciers, Greenland & Antarctica, or the warming ocean).
Whatever progress we've made in the last 45 years has come in fits & starts, interspersed with great setbacks, especially for democracy, equality, justice & stability.
Keith Olson, America is great and always has been because of the people. The people who believe in and embody democratic ideals. The people who work, live, and sometimes die together for something bigger than themselves. The people who think beyond, who invent, who care, who include everyone. The people who serve others more than they serve their egos. The people whose patriotism means freedom and concern for all on the land. The people who ask what they can do for their country not just what their country can do for them. And the people who look inward for any personal blindspots to be attended to, who grow in their understanding and compassion and so restore dignity to fellow Americans.
America is great because of all these people. She always has been because of the people who have always aspired to creating a more perfect union.
And a nation that freely elects a twice-impeached, multiple-felon and rapist as leader has just disqualified itself from ANY claim to greatness.
Greatness can only be discussed in the recovery from such a SELF-inflicted wound.
Thomas, what about the people who voted for democracy? The people who spoke to neighbors, friends, and family about the importance of the election and the candidates? What about the countless pro-democracy volunteers, donors, writers, podcasters, etc who worked tirelessly to elect pro-democracy candidates? Are they not great? Are they not a greatness in America?
I'm sure there were many good/great Germans during the Third Reich too.
Thomas, who were part of the resistance, who sheltered, fed, and protected people, who among all the monsters still saw the greatness in some, in their country.. I'm not discounting the monsters but I am rejecting them usurping my belief in and gratitude for the greatness of some.
M Tree, there are about 75 million people in this country who have a claim to potential greatness, and these people voted for Harris. The 175 million Americans eligible to vote, who did not vote for Harris forfeited their claim to greatness by enabling a despot to return to office, simply put. Dad and two of my uncles sacrificed portions of their sanity to destroy fascism during WWII in Europe. Now the tsunami has rebounded toward world autocracy, and the opportunistic trump is riding the wave at its crest. To rebuild a viable government based upon the democratic principle, from the debacle of trumpism will require much effort and courage. Dr. Reich aptly has pointed out that a government by one 'dear leader' who passes his phony dictations to a subservient band of toadies can't possibly be effective. The fact is that trump and his sycophants, and supporting cast of billionaires, have no plan and no strategy to allow for a better life for 300 million-plus citizens of lesser wealth, rather quite to the contrary. Here is an article by Prof. Reich about everybody's problem, the economy, from a month ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XnjJTNo5vk
Dennis King, I too have WW2 vets in my family. The stories of sacrifice by those at home and the service people abroad are seared in my memory. And in my heart where honor, reverence, and gratitude lie. Someone posted recently in a comment to me that younger people don't feel this or know this like we do. I hadn't thought of that. So those who didn't vote because they didn't see the election as existential, I give them some grace. I'm sure the two of us recognized the danger years ago, but we were primed by the great generation.
It really is quite stark and shocking when you point out that they have no plan for a better life for 300 million plus. It just boggles the mind. How vast the neglect will be. And of course the abuse and cruelty.
Thanks for the RR link. So grateful for him.
Something about this election, really threw me. It didn't seem that it should go this way. There were so many folks I knew, that absolutely were convinced not to vote for trump; that they'd vote for Vp Harris. Even if they felt they were somewhat, holding their noses. And I don't live in an echo chamber. The area I reside in is about 85% republican; but the cities were definitely leaning towards Ms.Harris, it seemed. Folks on Social media seemed overall, utterly turned off by trump; especially after his first term & the covid debacle.
Something just doesn't feel right. Does anyone recall during the first trump election, when a part (a few districts)of South Florida appeared to have been compromised ( terms of voting results), by what appeared to be "russian" interference? The FBI advised Gov. DeSantis after that election, I believe.
I'd have to really dig, to be more specific. But what if that was an early dry run, for putin's Russia? If they found vulnerabilities in the voting system? And with musk-rat on board with trump, there are additional possibilities it would seem, that might have impacted the outcome.
In the past few days, I listened to members of Harris's team doing a debrief with speechwriter, Jon Favreau. They revealed that in the weeks leading up to Biden's debate with Trump, their internal polling showed Biden losing to Trump by a very large electoral vote margin -- even though the popular vote would be close. They were looking at Trump getting over 370 electoral votes.
You can come up with all kinds of what-ifs and other things to cause you to feel strange. I just know that in my home state of Georgia -- one of the seven battleground states -- the election was clean and fair, and Biden would have lost by a larger margin than Harris did.
One writer saw this coming from the 2020 election. He noted that a number of solidly Democratic counties in Texas -- mainly Hispanic -- and which gave Obama 60 point margins -- flipped in 2020 from Biden to Trump. A few more of them flipped this year.
Sorry, but theories about Russia and stuff will ultimately cause more harm than benefit. Whatever impact they might have had here in Georgia, it was insignificant -- just as when Biden won our state in 2020.
Your intuition is not misleading you. The results were contrary to all signs approaching the election: much huger crowds for Harris, much more positivity, much higher enthusiasm, much more on message, record early voter turnout led by women, independents & late deciders breaking for Harris.
Multiple election anomalies: high voter suppression, voting machines switching votes from Trump to Harris, thrown out ballots, rejected mail-in ballots, vandalized dropboxes, bomb scares in majority Democratic precincts from a Russian source to scare voters away, unusually high number of "bullet ballots" voting Trump only, especially in swing states, & the reverse with ballots for Democrats except blank for President; previous examination & tampering of voting machines by Trump officials; codes placed in election system by Trump partisans, Musk's payment to people to "register" so that he could get their personal data to use for faked ballots for Trump, the internet sending election tabulations to Musk's Starlink to be corrupted upon publication, Musk knowing election results ahead of time when they were publicized, numerous contacts between Trump & Musk, Trump & Putin, & Musk & Putin, & possible collaboration with other high tech billionaires like Thiel & Mercer, as well as Fox personnel from Murdoch to Carlson to Hudseth, Putin's directive to Trump expecting rewards from helping Trump win the election, many comments prior to election by Trump & other Republicans that the election was already set to go for Trump, to the point that Trump' was telling his base he didn't need their votes. Add to that the motivation & capacity for these billionaires with access to the latest technology, all highly motivated for Trump to win, having a long record of lying, cheating, corruption & deception. How can anyone doubt that they did everything they could to help Trump win.
Thomas, I hold on to the belief that our country can and will be great again! We have succumbed to a horrible disease which is the orange man and his cult. Much like Hitler did when he took over Germany. The Germans only woke up when he began to take away and murder so many. There were resistance fighters and we will have ours, too. Americans have always taken pride in their country and I believe with all my heart these same Americans will take whatever measures are necessary to return her to the beacon of Democracy she once was.
M Tree ; Well said ; We have tried to move toward a more perfect union. Money apparently does not buy perfection. that is why our Founders did not want government to take money or gifts from outside the country. We were supposed to have no 'poll taxes'. Money was not considered the end all, be all. It was a problem, as we can see clearly now. As Robert Reich has mentioned, there are a lot of billionaires appointed to tRUMP's cabinet. And he has received millions from the richest man in the world, to help him purchase his power in an illegitimate 'presidency'. He will Never be great, at least not in a good way. A Great Disaster is more like it.
The Great Dismantling: Trump's Coming Attack on America's Economic Backbone
Thom Hartmann 11-7-24
Donald Trump is preparing to crash the American economy. He intends to do it by tearing up vital parts of our American government. He may even hire Elon Musk to pull it off.
And from his point of view, this is not going to be a bad thing. The farther the economy crashes, the greater the buying opportunity for billionaires.
It all has to do with something called the administrative state.
While it’s not sexy or even particularly interesting to the average American voter, having a strong administrative state is essential to a high-functioning economy.
A strong administrative state is the only thing that protects entrepreneurs and small businesses from being squashed like bugs by monopolistic behemoths, and small businesses are our nation’s main growth engine.
For example, over 70 percent of all new jobs created since 2019 were created by small businesses, producing almost 13 million new jobs over the past 25 years. Small business creation is up 50 percent over Trump’s years because the Biden administration has been enforcing the rule of law, including taking on the giant tech monopolies. Small businesses now account for over 43 percent of all American economic activity.
A strong administrative state is also the only thing that can protect the environment from those who’d destroy it for their own profits. It’s the only thing that can protect consumers from defective or even deadly products and food or drug contamination. It our only defense against predatory banks, airlines, and insurance companies, among others.
A strong administrative state that follows and enforces the rule of law — as opposed to the kind of grift-driven kleptocracies typical of strongman governments — is essential, in other words, to a functioning national economy.
Here in America, we see this best in the contrast between lightly bureaucratic and largely unregulated Red states and more bureaucratic and regulated (and taxed) Blue states and counties. While Red and Blue states are represented in Congress about 50/50, as the Brookings Institution found a few years ago:
“Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties represents just 29% of the economy.”
But now the administrative state is in the crosshairs of the incoming Trump administration, and their planned assault on it will almost certainly cause a loss of economic vitality, probably even leading to a major recession (every Republican president since Nixon has had a major recession after tinkering with tax and regulatory policies; none of the Democratic presidents have created one since Carter, and his started under Nixon).
We also see this at the level of the nation-state. As Professor Timothy Snyder notes:
“Now consider the Russian and Hungarian economies. Russia sits on hugely valuable natural resources, and yet is a poor country. The profits from its oil and gas are in the hands of a few oligarchs.
“Hungary sits in the middle of the European Union, the most successful trade project of all time.And yet Hungarians are poorer than their neighbors, in part because the Orbán regime corruptly channels EU resources to friendly oligarchs.
“The lesson is clear. Democracy is a method of checking corrupt rulers. When there is no functioning democracy, corruption is unchecked.And democracy is an element of a more fundamental guarantor of prosperity, the rule of law. In Hungary and Russia, the rule of law has been bent and broken, to the benefit of the few, and to the detriment of the many.Ending the rule of law is the Trump-Vance platform.”
Gutting the administrative state is the first and imperative aspect of ending or weakening the rule of law.
Because, as Steve Bannon famously told America, the main goal of the Trump administration is “the ‘deconstruction’ of the administrative state.” He added:
“Every business leader we’ve had in is saying not just taxes, but it is also the regulation. I think the consistent …[thing] is the deconstruction. The way the progressive left runs is, if they can’t get it passed, they’re just going to put in some sort of regulation in an agency. That’s all going to be deconstructed and I think that that’s why this regulatory thing is so important.”
We saw this movie before, during the last Trump administration. He put a coal lobbyist in charge of EPA, an oil lobbyist at Interior, a Telcom lobbyist and lawyer at FCC, a professional union-busting lawyer in charge of the Labor Department, an advocate for replacing public schools with religious ones in charge of the Education Department, etc., etc.
But that was more mere corruption than a wholesale destruction of administrative agencies. Since the Chevron deference decision by the Supreme Court this past year, though, it’s now possible that Trump could actually destroy the American administrative state.
Even when Chevron was still intact eight years ago, the result of Trump’s corruption in his previous administration, just like with Reagan’s and Bush’s deregulatory campaigns, was a massive recession that started before Covid came along.
Trump will fire Lena Kahn at the Federal Trade Commission, blowing up the antitrust efforts of the Biden administration; the fat cat billionaires already are eagerly anticipating running amok (which is why they threw billions at Trump’s campaign).
The result, predictably, will be another Republican economic disaster for America’s working class.
Interestingly, our country’s most famous investor also seems to be thinking along these same lines. Warren Buffett has recently sold over $325 billion in stock and is simply sitting on that huge pile of cash.
Why? Probably the Oracle of Omaha can see the same thing I’m pointing out here: Trump is preparing to turn the economy over to Musk and his billionaire buddies and the result will be a disaster.
A disaster, by the way, that will be very useful to Buffett and other billionaires; recessions and depressions are when America’s largest fortunes are typically made or expanded because they represent great buying opportunities to those with cash, while at the same time the small companies being squeezed are willing to sell for a song.
So get ready; we’re in for a bumpy few years as America descends into a strongman-run oligarchy while the Supreme Court and Trump’s toadies rip apart the protections of the administrative state we’ve so carefully constructed in the years since the Civil War and the Republican Great Depression.
It may well be a disaster for your 401(k), and millions will lose their jobs in a recession. If Musk cuts $2 trillion from the federal budget, as promised, it will almost certainly impact Social Security and take a huge bite out of programs for veterans, children, and the disabled.
It would probably also have to end all subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, and end hundreds of billions in federal aid to infrastructure construction programs.
Get ready now, to the extent that you can. Forewarned is forearmed.
This is 1 of the best comments I've read. A very accurate assessment of what we're likely to face based on all the signs.
So, maybe half great! We have the greatest misinformers in the world - so, who knows?
Gordon Hoffman, ha ha, thanks, maybe those are the right words.
In your opinion America may be a great country, many others, not so much. Especially minorities like African Americans and the indigenous.
At this time, people need to work together for the common good of democracy and freedom. Too many people have worked for the benefits of wealthy people. Too many are getting wealthy on the backs of workers. Workers should not pay higher tax rates than wealthy people. Those getting subsidies should not be millionaires.
Keith Olson, I acknowledge and respect that. However, my point stands that America's greatness lies in and always has in the people who move us forward to greater peace, fairness, equality and dignity for all. A blanket generalization that labels America as not great or ever great, misses out on giving gratitude and reverence to Americans past and present who were great. What about those who came together to fight for safety policies and greater pay in the mines in the South. Or those who fought for The Union in the Civil War? How about all the people against slavery who played a role in the underground railroad or abolitionist activites? What about those who marched and supported women's rights to vote and voting rights for everyone, civil rights, lgbt rights, animal rights, etc. How about all the people who showed up to protest the pipeline that would put indigineous peoples' water at risk? The examples of greatness are infinite. I acknowlege the awfulness too, Keith. But I will not let the awful people be all I see.
I totally agree that America has had many Great People in its history. But until all Americans are treated equally regardless of race she will never be a great country.
Keith Olson, I respect your opinion. It's okay that we disagree on this.
Keith--My bitch is in the wording, America never stopped being great.
I don't believe in your comment that America has never been great! It was great long before trump coined the MAGA term. That has drawn our country down! Trump has created an "Us vs Them" world and tries to turn us on each other! As long as the MAGAs continue to attack those who don't agree with trump's policies, we will never be a "United States of America"! The MAGAs continue to attack Biden and Biden's administration even though trump won! They can't be happy with a win; they have to continue to attack. Who will they attack when it is nothing but republicans and trump in charge and responsible for the mess that is about to unfold!
Jan : Ah! : Revenge is black pudding! especially when they do it to themselves!
In that way Trump has been an instrument of billionaires & foreign enemies by furthering their goal of dividing Americans & having us turn on each other so as to divert attention from the real culprits of our tremendous destabilizing inequality, the billionaires themselves, who have been plundering our treasury & diverting our money into their coffers, with lots of assistance from Putin & his Russian trolls & bots.
Fifty years of propaganda did it.
The Great Dismantling: Trump's Coming Attack on America's Economic Backbone
Thom Hartmann 11-7-24
Donald Trump is preparing to crash the American economy. He intends to do it by tearing up vital parts of our American government. He may even hire Elon Musk to pull it off.
And from his point of view, this is not going to be a bad thing. The farther the economy crashes, the greater the buying opportunity for billionaires.
It all has to do with something called the administrative state.
While it’s not sexy or even particularly interesting to the average American voter, having a strong administrative state is essential to a high-functioning economy.
A strong administrative state is the only thing that protects entrepreneurs and small businesses from being squashed like bugs by monopolistic behemoths, and small businesses are our nation’s main growth engine.
For example, over 70 percent of all new jobs created since 2019 were created by small businesses, producing almost 13 million new jobs over the past 25 years. Small business creation is up 50 percent over Trump’s years because the Biden administration has been enforcing the rule of law, including taking on the giant tech monopolies. Small businesses now account for over 43 percent of all American economic activity.
A strong administrative state is also the only thing that can protect the environment from those who’d destroy it for their own profits. It’s the only thing that can protect consumers from defective or even deadly products and food or drug contamination. It our only defense against predatory banks, airlines, and insurance companies, among others.
A strong administrative state that follows and enforces the rule of law — as opposed to the kind of grift-driven kleptocracies typical of strongman governments — is essential, in other words, to a functioning national economy.
Here in America, we see this best in the contrast between lightly bureaucratic and largely unregulated Red states and more bureaucratic and regulated (and taxed) Blue states and counties. While Red and Blue states are represented in Congress about 50/50, as the Brookings Institution found a few years ago:
“Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties represents just 29% of the economy.”
But now the administrative state is in the crosshairs of the incoming Trump administration, and their planned assault on it will almost certainly cause a loss of economic vitality, probably even leading to a major recession (every Republican president since Nixon has had a major recession after tinkering with tax and regulatory policies; none of the Democratic presidents have created one since Carter, and his started under Nixon).
We also see this at the level of the nation-state. As Professor Timothy Snyder notes:
“Now consider the Russian and Hungarian economies. Russia sits on hugely valuable natural resources, and yet is a poor country. The profits from its oil and gas are in the hands of a few oligarchs.
“Hungary sits in the middle of the European Union, the most successful trade project of all time.And yet Hungarians are poorer than their neighbors, in part because the Orbán regime corruptly channels EU resources to friendly oligarchs.
“The lesson is clear. Democracy is a method of checking corrupt rulers. When there is no functioning democracy, corruption is unchecked.And democracy is an element of a more fundamental guarantor of prosperity, the rule of law. In Hungary and Russia, the rule of law has been bent and broken, to the benefit of the few, and to the detriment of the many.Ending the rule of law is the Trump-Vance platform.”
Gutting the administrative state is the first and imperative aspect of ending or weakening the rule of law.
Because, as Steve Bannon famously told America, the main goal of the Trump administration is “the ‘deconstruction’ of the administrative state.” He added:
“Every business leader we’ve had in is saying not just taxes, but it is also the regulation. I think the consistent …[thing] is the deconstruction. The way the progressive left runs is, if they can’t get it passed, they’re just going to put in some sort of regulation in an agency. That’s all going to be deconstructed and I think that that’s why this regulatory thing is so important.”
We saw this movie before, during the last Trump administration. He put a coal lobbyist in charge of EPA, an oil lobbyist at Interior, a Telcom lobbyist and lawyer at FCC, a professional union-busting lawyer in charge of the Labor Department, an advocate for replacing public schools with religious ones in charge of the Education Department, etc., etc.
But that was more mere corruption than a wholesale destruction of administrative agencies. Since the Chevron deference decision by the Supreme Court this past year, though, it’s now possible that Trump could actually destroy the American administrative state.
Even when Chevron was still intact eight years ago, the result of Trump’s corruption in his previous administration, just like with Reagan’s and Bush’s deregulatory campaigns, was a massive recession that started before Covid came along.
Trump will fire Lena Kahn at the Federal Trade Commission, blowing up the antitrust efforts of the Biden administration; the fat cat billionaires already are eagerly anticipating running amok (which is why they threw billions at Trump’s campaign).
The result, predictably, will be another Republican economic disaster for America’s working class.
Interestingly, our country’s most famous investor also seems to be thinking along these same lines. Warren Buffett has recently sold over $325 billion in stock and is simply sitting on that huge pile of cash.
Why? Probably the Oracle of Omaha can see the same thing I’m pointing out here: Trump is preparing to turn the economy over to Musk and his billionaire buddies and the result will be a disaster.
A disaster, by the way, that will be very useful to Buffett and other billionaires; recessions and depressions are when America’s largest fortunes are typically made or expanded because they represent great buying opportunities to those with cash, while at the same time the small companies being squeezed are willing to sell for a song.
So get ready; we’re in for a bumpy few years as America descends into a strongman-run oligarchy while the Supreme Court and Trump’s toadies rip apart the protections of the administrative state we’ve so carefully constructed in the years since the Civil War and the Republican Great Depression.
It may well be a disaster for your 401(k), and millions will lose their jobs in a recession. If Musk cuts $2 trillion from the federal budget, as promised, it will almost certainly impact Social Security and take a huge bite out of programs for veterans, children, and the disabled.
It would probably also have to end all subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, and end hundreds of billions in federal aid to infrastructure construction programs.
Get ready now, to the extent that you can. Forewarned is forearmed.
Well said, Keith!
Though I hate pointing to “Star Wars” as a philosophical wellspring, Obi-wan Kenobi’s rhetorical question “Who’s the bigger fool, the fool, or the fool who follows him?” reflects that, irrespective of whether the dog wags the tail, or the tail wags the dog, the only thing that matters is that that dog is incurably, virulently rabid.
May the Force be with you - and us - Avie!
Obi Wan The Return of the Jedi I told you the truth about your father from a different point of view. Hamilton Who wins who dies, who tells your story. What story are we telling and from what point of view
You ask:
"How many Americans would publicly grovel before Trump, making it clear they’ll do whatever he asks of them regardless of consequence?"
I'll respectfully suggest quite a large number of Americans would. They are the maga cult members who are incapable of rational thought. They'd crawl over broken glass if Trump demanded it because they worship the"dear leader " and cult master.
As Shakespeare said most appropriately, the behavior is tantamount to "base spaniel fawnings" .....
It's hard to be rational, principled and independent after one drinks the Kool aid.
About 38% of Americans drank the Kool aid. 😞
And the gullible who work for a living will be the last to realize that they got played and owned by the Cheeto colored grifter and his posse billionaires and grovelling wannabes.
And when the do get wise, the street justice justice will come for the posse. It'll be cruelly comical to hear the rats' protestations of "it wasn't my idea.." when they try to jump off the sinking ship. No justice, no peace, say I!
And the rest of us will pay the price for their Kool-Aid binge!
Qell said
12-1-24 Caption contest showing a calendar that stops cold at a cliff on Sunday 1-19-25. My reply 11 hours later: January 20 2025 is the day the United States of America collapses into what Revelation 11:7 calls the "Beast's Bottomless Pit" of Hell On Earth.
Dean Sheeter, 💯🎯. 👹
Professor Reich: and speaking of the orange jeesus, where is he? has anyone seen him (like, in the flesh) since he supposedly won the recent election? the rumours about his health are deafening.
he’s probably having some work done so he looks better when he takes office.
He would need a lot of work to make him look better!
He is lazy so he will be resting up with a slimline coke and a burger. remember he sleeps on his plane every chance he gets.
Mweiner, I'm not sure.....the kind of work he needs done would take over 6 months just to reduce the post surgical swelling. 😂 I was suspecting he was getting some hair plugs done, notice how he's always wearing the idiotic red maga cap?? He's as bald as a billiard ball.
Grrl, Which is all the more disconcerting, because when he becomes incoherent, we're left with Just Dumb Vance.
All things considered, I doubt that most of these nominees campaigned for the specific jobs they have been assigned. Given the total lack of credible credentials of the large majority of nominees, I would hazard that if they did any "campaigning" for their employment, it was to get _any_ job in Trump's Administration. Given the disparity of job requirements and nominee's job experience, It is almost like Trump is filling jobs by pulling names out of a hat. Besides, I doubt that these people will be **doin their jobs**. More likely they will simply do whatever Donald tells them to do.
Also given that Trump is NOT one to deal with minutiae, when these people are given assignments and their lack of expertise, there WILL be quite a few SNAFUs and FUBARs that will embarrass Trump as the one who appointed them. So I expect quite a few "Your fired" events in the first year. (That is, if they even make it through the Senate advise & consent screenings.)
CaptainPatch— agree. There will be a lot of “you’re fired. He learned how well this technique of misdirection worked in his first term. The people love it. They stand and clap and make him feel like he’s in control, and that’s all he wants. That and looting our country, and 46 million people gave him that right.
This is the first time big business and those that directly support and control these businesses have gotten together as a quasi group to agree upon certain techniques for control of the population. They huge amounts of cash and power at their disposal, now.
IMO we are being herded as a people and our power to refuse that control is being stripped by the very ones that claim they’re giving power back.
It’s all a shell game of misdirection by a new type of organized crime under the guise of conservatism.
Minor correction: Trump voters exceeded _77_ million votes.
https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php
It's perhaps worth noting that had all the people that voted for candidates other than Trump or Harris had instead voted for "the lesser of two evils", Harris, she would have won. Also worth noting is that Trump gained about 3 million votes over his tally in 2020. Meanwhile, Harris _lost_ about 7 million votes over what Biden got in 2020.
I think you're right, GP.
The Great Dismantling: Trump's Coming Attack on America's Economic Backbone
Thom Hartmann 11-7-24
Donald Trump is preparing to crash the American economy. He intends to do it by tearing up vital parts of our American government. He may even hire Elon Musk to pull it off.
And from his point of view, this is not going to be a bad thing. The farther the economy crashes, the greater the buying opportunity for billionaires.
It all has to do with something called the administrative state.
While it’s not sexy or even particularly interesting to the average American voter, having a strong administrative state is essential to a high-functioning economy.
A strong administrative state is the only thing that protects entrepreneurs and small businesses from being squashed like bugs by monopolistic behemoths, and small businesses are our nation’s main growth engine.
For example, over 70 percent of all new jobs created since 2019 were created by small businesses, producing almost 13 million new jobs over the past 25 years. Small business creation is up 50 percent over Trump’s years because the Biden administration has been enforcing the rule of law, including taking on the giant tech monopolies. Small businesses now account for over 43 percent of all American economic activity.
A strong administrative state is also the only thing that can protect the environment from those who’d destroy it for their own profits. It’s the only thing that can protect consumers from defective or even deadly products and food or drug contamination. It our only defense against predatory banks, airlines, and insurance companies, among others.
A strong administrative state that follows and enforces the rule of law — as opposed to the kind of grift-driven kleptocracies typical of strongman governments — is essential, in other words, to a functioning national economy.
Here in America, we see this best in the contrast between lightly bureaucratic and largely unregulated Red states and more bureaucratic and regulated (and taxed) Blue states and counties. While Red and Blue states are represented in Congress about 50/50, as the Brookings Institution found a few years ago:
“Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties represents just 29% of the economy.”
But now the administrative state is in the crosshairs of the incoming Trump administration, and their planned assault on it will almost certainly cause a loss of economic vitality, probably even leading to a major recession (every Republican president since Nixon has had a major recession after tinkering with tax and regulatory policies; none of the Democratic presidents have created one since Carter, and his started under Nixon).
We also see this at the level of the nation-state. As Professor Timothy Snyder notes:
“Now consider the Russian and Hungarian economies. Russia sits on hugely valuable natural resources, and yet is a poor country. The profits from its oil and gas are in the hands of a few oligarchs.
“Hungary sits in the middle of the European Union, the most successful trade project of all time.And yet Hungarians are poorer than their neighbors, in part because the Orbán regime corruptly channels EU resources to friendly oligarchs.
“The lesson is clear. Democracy is a method of checking corrupt rulers. When there is no functioning democracy, corruption is unchecked.And democracy is an element of a more fundamental guarantor of prosperity, the rule of law. In Hungary and Russia, the rule of law has been bent and broken, to the benefit of the few, and to the detriment of the many.Ending the rule of law is the Trump-Vance platform.”
Gutting the administrative state is the first and imperative aspect of ending or weakening the rule of law.
Because, as Steve Bannon famously told America, the main goal of the Trump administration is “the ‘deconstruction’ of the administrative state.” He added:
“Every business leader we’ve had in is saying not just taxes, but it is also the regulation. I think the consistent …[thing] is the deconstruction. The way the progressive left runs is, if they can’t get it passed, they’re just going to put in some sort of regulation in an agency. That’s all going to be deconstructed and I think that that’s why this regulatory thing is so important.”
We saw this movie before, during the last Trump administration. He put a coal lobbyist in charge of EPA, an oil lobbyist at Interior, a Telcom lobbyist and lawyer at FCC, a professional union-busting lawyer in charge of the Labor Department, an advocate for replacing public schools with religious ones in charge of the Education Department, etc., etc.
But that was more mere corruption than a wholesale destruction of administrative agencies. Since the Chevron deference decision by the Supreme Court this past year, though, it’s now possible that Trump could actually destroy the American administrative state.
Even when Chevron was still intact eight years ago, the result of Trump’s corruption in his previous administration, just like with Reagan’s and Bush’s deregulatory campaigns, was a massive recession that started before Covid came along.
Trump will fire Lena Kahn at the Federal Trade Commission, blowing up the antitrust efforts of the Biden administration; the fat cat billionaires already are eagerly anticipating running amok (which is why they threw billions at Trump’s campaign).
The result, predictably, will be another Republican economic disaster for America’s working class.
Interestingly, our country’s most famous investor also seems to be thinking along these same lines. Warren Buffett has recently sold over $325 billion in stock and is simply sitting on that huge pile of cash.
Why? Probably the Oracle of Omaha can see the same thing I’m pointing out here: Trump is preparing to turn the economy over to Musk and his billionaire buddies and the result will be a disaster.
A disaster, by the way, that will be very useful to Buffett and other billionaires; recessions and depressions are when America’s largest fortunes are typically made or expanded because they represent great buying opportunities to those with cash, while at the same time the small companies being squeezed are willing to sell for a song.
So get ready; we’re in for a bumpy few years as America descends into a strongman-run oligarchy while the Supreme Court and Trump’s toadies rip apart the protections of the administrative state we’ve so carefully constructed in the years since the Civil War and the Republican Great Depression.
It may well be a disaster for your 401(k), and millions will lose their jobs in a recession. If Musk cuts $2 trillion from the federal budget, as promised, it will almost certainly impact Social Security and take a huge bite out of programs for veterans, children, and the disabled.
It would probably also have to end all subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, and end hundreds of billions in federal aid to infrastructure construction programs.
Get ready now, to the extent that you can. Forewarned is forearmed.
"....over 70 percent of all new jobs created since 2019 were created by small businesses, producing almost 13 million new jobs over the past 25 years." Over those 25 years the USA experienced the Great Recession and the COVID pandemic, and between those two, _millions_ of jobs were lost. So when someone tosses out a stat like "13 million new jobs" were created, I have to wonder if that number is the NET gain, after all those lost jobs were deducted? Or is that 13 million only the pluses over those 25 years, with no consideration for the minuses over that same span of time?
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and Statistics." -- Mark Twain (probably)
50 million of the last 51 million net jobs were under Democratic administrations.
(Suggestion) It would be helpful if you cite your source. (We're looking for verification for _13_ million in 25 years, and then you mention 50 out of 51.)
This Nightmare Began Because The Chickenshit Progressive Media Would Not Print Any One Of Three Papers Ending With What Would Have Been This One Viral Line - There is only one question before us: Would you rather have a Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron whose Father Also Had Dementia running this country or the Daughter of Two University Professors?
The morning before the election I posted the following on selected replies to two Joe Rogan interviews with J.D. Vance and John Fetterman. Once I got thrown off that site for 'spamming' I moved on to Robert Reich and Micheal Moore's sites, finishing the night on the Republican Voters Against Trump's Facebook page:
Thom Hartmann 11-1-24
America’s billionaires would love to have a recession, particularly a really severe one.
In a recent “town hall,” billionaire Elon Musk acknowledged what 23 Nobel Prize-winning economists across the country have predicted: If Trump is elected and he and Elon undertake their project to gut government spending, it will provoke a severe recession.
Thom goes on to give the reason Why Billionaires Would Actively Force A Stock Market Crash: Buy Cheap, Sell High. It won't be a mere recession, it will be a full blown Depression that can only Begin to End when another Democrat Enters Their Office As President on January 20 2029, one hundred years after the 1929 Stock Market Crash!
My advise to anyone with money is soon after Musk is in charge of implementing Project 2025 is then to buy Puts shorting the market. They are good for a month and though it would likely take a couple to sink in, as all exchanges are at an all time high, they'd likely be worth something if not more before you cash out. If new to trading you can establish an online account at some brokerage like Ameritrade and recommend doing some homework on what stocks will take the biggest hits with Weiss Ratings and Googling what sectors took the biggest hits in previous crashes (noting that the pandemic crash of March 2020 was a fluke that cost me mucho while the next is Guaranteed by 23 Nobel Laureates!).
My 11-9-24 response to Will on my post of Thom Hartmann's 11-8 essay on Robert Reich's site: It might be shorted before then but is guaranteed to Collapse after 1-20-25. Am listening to a guy who is telling his listeners to buy 4 Partner Companies with Tesla before the 24th when Musk will announce Project X that will Replace Power Companies around the world by a gadget that would save every consumer over 2000 bucks a year! And something like 300,000 homes in Australia are already using this gadget. Now this grifter is hyping how to buy this inside trading info and more for just 49 dollars, it's over lol! Here is my free tip on how to make 10x your money or more - Buy Electric Utility Company Puts on January 21, a day after the Inauguration and MLK's birthday!!! And then you take your profits after the 24th and do it again with your Googled companies before the real crash!
It's not just "Progressive Media". ALL Media are businesses, and the primary goal of Business is to maximize Profits. Despite posturing themselves as being supposedly more objective, the Progressive Media showed they were more interested in a Trump victory. Not only did they fail to highlight Trump's failings, they were laser-focused on, first, Biden's infirmities, and then later Harris' shortcomings. About the only actual Media showing Trump for what he is were CNN and MSNBC -- which for anyone NOT already a Leftie generally considered to be blatantly biased and therefore to be disregarded. Other than those two, the Left's heavy guns were TV Talk show hosts: Colbert, Fallon, Kimmel, Maher and Stewart. (Maher was something of a switch-hitter, lambasting the Dems nearly as much as he lambasted Trump and MAGA.)
Maher's an Anti-Woke Libertarian who is clueless about the Neoliberal Agenda.
On Media Suppression Of Trump's Increasing Dementia
I first read the Daily Kos's lead article (2-26-24) titled The media will not report that Trump appears to have middle-stage dementia. A couple of days later Facebook suggested I look at a site dedicated to the politics and humor of Jon Stewart, which just 'happened' to have posted the original interview in Salon titled "Like someone pulled the metaphorical plug": Dr. John Gartner on Trump's "accelerating dementia". This whole interview was fixated on the dementia issue without mentioning that at least his father Fred had Alzheimer's/dementia, which I learned when I posted A Comparison of President Biden's Mental Competency to Donald Trump's to every response. After the idiot went into a long rant about choosing between being electrocuted by a battery on a sinking boat or eaten by a shark Robert Reich's newsletter (7-8-24, 8-8-24) posted Why isn’t the media reporting on Trump’s growing dementia?
Well when it comes Corporate TV Media the answer to this question is pretty apparent. Sinclair Broadcast Group, an extreme right-wing controlled conglomerate, owns and operates 40% of all TV broadcasting stations in the US. Popular Information (7/23/24) reported that Sinclair anchor Eugene Ramirez quit in part over a requirement that he air at least three stories from the network's "Rapid Response Team" nightly. "The RRT has produced 147 stories this year that portray Democrats in a negative light," Popular Information found, "and just seven stories that portray Democrats positively." Nexstar Media Group is even larger, John Muse is controlling shareholder and contributes almost exclusively to Republicans. Nexstar owns ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX among many other broadcast, cable, and streaming networks. So there is your answer as to why it is so difficult to get "fair and balanced" coverage of Biden and Trump. Over 90% of all TV and cable news sources in the US have owners who want Trump to win so they can keep their billions, low taxes, and government handouts.
Likewise that of course is also evident with Corporate Print Media as well. Which is headed by the Murdoch Media Empire: The News was founded in Australia by Rupert's father, incorporated in the US in 1980 as News Corp and acquired various newspapers since 1973 including 50% of 20th Century Fox in 1985, various British newspapers in the next two years and finally the Wall Street Journal in 2007. In 2013, the much richer head of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, bought the Washington Post. New York Times (12-6-21): “That media “neutrality” has a tacit pro-Trump tilt, is associated with prominent press critics like Jay Rosen of New York University and the Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan (formerly this newspaper’s public editor) and it recently found data-driven expression in a column by The Post’s Dana Milbank.” So then I googled Bias against president Biden in the New York Times editorials. The first article was a 3-5-24 post by CNN titled The New York Times is facing backlash over its coverage of Donald Trump and the 2024 election. First paragraph: “The Gray Lady has for several weeks been in the crosshairs of a vocal set of critics and readers who believe that Donald Trump poses a grave threat to American democracy and that the influential news organization isn’t adequately conveying those stakes to the public.” And most recently this article by Julia Hollar from FAIR (9-8-24) titled Not Reporting on Trump as a Threat to Democracy Is Also a Threat to Democracy: New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger has issued a lengthy warning in the Washington Post (9/5/24) on the dangers another Donald Trump presidency would pose to a “free and independent press.” Sulzberger details Trump’s many efforts to suppress and undermine critical media outlets during his previous presidential tenure, as well as the more recent open declarations by Trump and his allies of their plans to continue to “come after” the press, “whether it’s criminally or civilly.” He documents the ways independent media have been eroded in illiberal democracies around the world, and draws direct links to Trump’s playbook. You might expect this to be a prelude to an announcement that the New York Times would work tirelessly to defend democracy. Instead, Sulzberger heartily defends his own miserably inadequate strategy of “neutrality”—which, in practice, is both-sidesing—making plain his greater concern for the survival of his own newspaper than the survival of US democracy. The FAIR article goes to list Five New York Times articles about "Biden's Age Problem." Which I have been trying address since I sent my first copy of "A Comparison of President Biden's Mental Competency with Trump's" to the White House so-called 'communication' directors on Superbowl Sunday 2-11! A more balanced transcript of a 7-12-24 interview from NPR: “Former President Trump is “unfit to lead.” President Biden is “embarrassing himself.” These aren’t the words tossed across party lines, but laid out by The New York Times editorial board.” And finally a week before the election both Bezos and the billionariare owner of the Los Angeles Times for the first time in history overrode their editors endorsement of VP Kamala Harris for POTUS!
As that pretty well covers corporate TV and print media bias so now we get to the meat of the matter: Corporate Social Media starting with the Richest guy on the planet – Elon Musk. From a 10-2-23 article titled What was Elon Musk's strategy for buying Twitter? by NBC New's Ben Collins: On the day that public records revealed that Elon Musk had become Twitter’s biggest shareholder, an unknown sender texted the billionaire and recommended an article imploring him to acquire the social network outright. Turns out those anonymous text messages were sent by the far-right blogger Darren Beattie, a former Trump White House speechwriter who was fired in 2018 for having spoken on a panel alongside white nationalists. The article on Beattie’s site (revolver.news) begins with a baseless claim that censorship on Twitter cost President Donald Trump the 2020 election. “Free speech online is what enabled the Trump revolution in 2016,” the anonymous author wrote. “If the Internet had been as free in 2020 as it was four years before, Trump would have cruised to reelection.” The author said that “Step 1” after a Musk takeover would be: “Blame the platform for its users.” He or she predicted that “Twitter would be blamed for every so-called act of ‘racism’ ‘sexism’ and ‘transphobia’ occurring on its platform.” After Musk’s purchase of Twitter was finalized in October 2022, he allowed previously suspended accounts to return. “In the nearly 18 months since (he bought Twitter), many of the decisions Musk made after he bought Twitter appear to have closely followed that road map, up to and including his ongoing attacks against the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit organization founded by Jewish Americans to counter discrimination,” which the fascist went on to blame for the 25 billion buck loss of 60% of the X Twitter ad revenue. And of course Musk then not only endorsed Trump for president and established a 100 million dollar PAC for him but in the weeks before the 11-5-24 election established an illegal million dollar a day lotttery for new voters!
Of course Musk also has his Facebook fan page, whose “free speech” algorithm has been updated to at last barring me from responding to or posting any comment. On July 16 the Jim Hightower team's daily post was titled We've been censored by Facebook! And you probably have been, too. They said in the last week or so they'd seen a lot of social media posts about Project 2025 and when they tried to post their article about it on Facebook it was immediately removed as going against their Community Standards on spam. (Ironically one of the author's of the piece barred me “for 100 years” from posting anything on Hightower's site after posting my months old paper that ends with “the new speaker of the House who openly wants to establish a 'moral' Christian Nationalism run by the next Republican president, who will implement a fascist plan called Project 2025” on multiple comments to their post, violating Their policy on 'spam'!) “I started asking colleagues who work in progressive communications and technology if they’d heard about things like this happening. We’ve now found out that this has been a pattern happening to other organizations publicizing the harm that Project 2025 (“P25”) could do to the country.”
So now that we have fully summarized Anti-Trump News Suppression In Corporate Media, the first question is how in the hell can Progressive Media Counter Mega Billionaire Support Of Trump? Easy and Only Answer – make sure everybody is presented with this Comparison Between The Candidates: Since the huge event of Joe Biden bowing out and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for President of the United States on Sunday the 21st of July, there is only one question before us: Would you rather have a Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron whose Father Also Had Dementia running this country or the Daughter of Two University Professors?
It is sad and unfortunate that because SCOTUS has ruled that Money = Speech (which must remain "free"), We The People are pretty much screwed. With all of the billions upon billions at their disposal, the Wealthy can easily drown out The People whenever and wherever they desire. About the only place We can find truthful journalism about the Left is on the Internet, primarily in blog forums like Substack and Tremr (where I spout off on a daily basis). The problem with blogs though, is that they almost entirely "sing to the choir". The Lefty message is NOT getting out to the people that really need to hear/read it: the Independents. People assume right off the bat that, if it's a blog, it's biased. Which is actually fairly true. What _should_ be the pertinent question is, "How TRUTHFUL is the site?" There can be bias, but if what is being passed around is actual Facts, then that's tolerable and even desirable. But with 90% of Media is blaring "You can't trust Democrats!", with next to nothing about the flaws of the Right, the audience WILL be hard-pressed to make sound decisions. (As has been recently demonstrated.)
And who among them will confront a dementia addled Trump with the news he should resign for the good of the Country?
Wonder what vicious infighting that will unleash should this feckless bunch contain someone with the courage to speak truth to power?
Jd vance, of course. Why do you think they shoved him on trump in the first place? They needed trump to win the election for them. Vance is not a likeable person, but vance is in total alliance with Project 2025 and it is they who cause the most concern.
I think you're exactly right, Fay Reid. Trump does not seem to like Vance at all but had him forced on him. Trump and Musk seem to be in sync. Trump is out selling trash and trinkets (cologne called "Fight Fight Fight" is his newest junk for the suckers) while Musk (and others) will do all the dirty work of destroying the country. Eventually Trump will leave the scene, maybe the moneyed powers behind the fake-gold throne will force him out, and Vance, Musk, Thiel, and all the rest of the criminal oligarchs will assume power and hold onto it. Musk is ever-present with Trump these days; Vance is almost nowhere to be seen. Media's "eyes" are trained only on the dirtiest, most salacious object - Hegseth at the moment - with endless talk about him and nothing else. Meanwhile, the conniving plans for the destruction of everything moves ahead.
We cannot allow ourselves, this country, to be powerless against these sadistic psychopaths. We need to be loud and demanding of our elected officials that they wake up and do the work to save the country and all of us!
It's called "misdirection", and while we're focusing on his ridiculous cabinet picks, the real destruction of Democracy is going on behind closed doors.
Paula Dean, 💯🎯 You're exactly right ! They also think the corporate media is too dumb to look past the click bait shiny object they're waving around. Hell, these initial picks might just be solely for "distraction" purposes, to buy time while they set up the real impending nightmare.
That's what I'm afraid of, Diane.
Fay, this maybe right: the US on the way to the middle age and religious war...
I do hope we are wrong...
Agree!💯💯💯💯💯💯
We're in the Caligula stage of the Roman Empire. Musk could be our Nero.
Agree.
that will be the battle of the first 100 days
Not a single person I know, in "real life," who I encouraged to read Project 2025 even took the time (a couple minutes) necessary to download the file - which was free to get on the Project 2025 website. Just a brief look at the overview of that "project" would tell you Trump's surrogates (or puppet masters - take your pick) will be fine with a road to fascism. Will our economy sustain a return to the robber baron era? Well, people llik Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckreberg and a seemingly endless list of America's OLIGARCHS are lining up with Trump. My belief is they are planning a great harvest of America's Natural Resources once the economy tanks. The income inequality in America just got a boost from the very people who are angry abour it. The American voters! Go figure! The "you know what" is about to hit the "fan."
My computer - or whatever, I have no idea - won't allow me to show the "heart - like" button, so I will use words to say that I heartily "like" this comment, David Piper. They already ARE robber barons - Musk alone has become richer and richer gratis American taxpayers' dollars going to him as HUGE government contracts.
It was 900 pages to read in "a couple minutes"!
It took a couple minutes to download it. That had to happen before anyone could attempt to read it.
David. You, as usual, just "said a mouhtful"..your insights are right-on and expressed so well!!
Project 47 is even more frightening
Constance Breslin, you're totally right! It's a horror show coming at us 😔
David Piper, I think you're exactly right. Also, they published the Project 2025 knowing the majority of the people are too lazy to bother reading it, while the rest CAN'T read it because they're illiterate (the inbred contingent of the maga cult cretins).
Very distressing stuff we're facing. 😞
What just now happened in S Korea may happen in the States — that’s a great fear.
South Korean democracy is only about 80 years old, a young democracy that is highly valued. Martial law lasted only two hours, the people came out into the streets in protest. Elected officials entered parliament any way they could find and voted to overturn the order for martial law. The president rescinded his order and police and military returned to barracks. The greatest fear is what happened in South Korea won’t happen here.
Well, in actuality, they had a brutal dictator during the 60s and 70s... Park Chung Hee.
And were able to recover.
The Philippines has had to come back from two autocrats -- Marcos and Duterte. Maria Ressa's story is extremely inspiring.
Thomas, yes Maria Ressa is such a wealth of information. She was on The Reid Out last night and explained how they're still trying to get things right. We could be in this fight for a long time. It's not just the orange Mussolini, it's also all his dumb shit enablers too.
Exactly.
here djt will give the order to shoot the demonstrators
Mweiner, 💯🎯 absolutely right 👍
hopefully, they will refuse to do it.
He might be kind and just "Shoot 'em in the legs". He wanted to shoot!!!
I can see that happening.
The difference between loyalty and subservience isn't found in the definition of the two words, it's who they are referring to. One end demands taking an oath the other finds people surrendering their souls.
Trump has a pathological (IMO) hang-up with this "loyalty" thing. It's interesting that the dictionary definition of "loyal" is ambiguous. I think you are on to something that needs further exploration by people and the press vis-a-vis Trump. Thanks for your comment.
Someone has said Trump wants fealty not loyalty. I think,that is right
And unfortunately, he's been getting it.
Dorothy, you are absolutely correct in making the important distinction between loyalty and fealty. I hope to see the word fealty used more frequently in the press regarding Trump in the future, but I'm not holding my breath. Thank you very much for a fascinating lesson in word use.
It's called a pathological "Narcissistic Personality Disorder". Here's precisely how he became the Perfect GOP Candidate: A supreme Narcissist who first builds Hotels with his last Name plastered all over the top of each with a Will To Power Fixation that drives him to become a TV Star where the whole game was to have the contestants kiss his ass to see who was His most 'competent' Apprentice, Firing all the Losers before finally picking the Winner, Like Me. Which sets him up to run for President, Wrapping Himself In MAGA Flag to Beat all those Loser Politicians in the Primary and Lock Her Up Hillary in the 2016 Electoral College. Rejoice, rejoice an absolute field day for all the fascists, white supremacists, Christian nationalists, plutocrat billionaires, corporatists, corporate media, atheists, evangelical preachers and six Supreme Court Justices all Backing a Moronic and now progressively Demented Fuhrer for the MAGA Masses Who Worship Him Like A God, Further Feeding Its Insatiable Sociopathic Narcissism!!!
I know about Trump's "Narcissistic Personality Disorder" and much has been written and spoken about that. My comment was limited to Trump requiring/demanding loyalty and what loyalty means.
This Nightmare Began Because The Chickenshit Progressive Media Would Not Print Any One Of Three Papers Ending With What Would Have Been This One Viral Line - There is only one question before us: Would you rather have a Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron whose Father Also Had Dementia running this country or the Daughter of Two University Professors?
The morning before the election I posted the following on selected replies to two Joe Rogan interviews with J.D. Vance and John Fetterman. Once I got thrown off that site for 'spamming' I moved on to Robert Reich and Micheal Moore's sites, finishing the night on the Republican Voters Against Trump's Facebook page:
Thom Hartmann 11-1-24
America’s billionaires would love to have a recession, particularly a really severe one.
In a recent “town hall,” billionaire Elon Musk acknowledged what 23 Nobel Prize-winning economists across the country have predicted: If Trump is elected and he and Elon undertake their project to gut government spending, it will provoke a severe recession.
Thom goes on to give the reason Why Billionaires Would Actively Force A Stock Market Crash: Buy Cheap, Sell High. It won't be a mere recession, it will be a full blown Depression that can only Begin to End when another Democrat Enters Their Office As President on January 20 2029, one hundred years after the 1929 Stock Market Crash!
My advise to anyone with money is soon after Musk is in charge of implementing Project 2025 is then to buy Puts shorting the market. They are good for a month and though it would likely take a couple to sink in, as all exchanges are at an all time high, they'd likely be worth something if not more before you cash out. If new to trading you can establish an online account at some brokerage like Ameritrade and recommend doing some homework on what stocks will take the biggest hits with Weiss Ratings and Googling what sectors took the biggest hits in previous crashes (noting that the pandemic crash of March 2020 was a fluke that cost me mucho while the next is Guaranteed by 23 Nobel Laureates!).
My 11-9-24 response to Will on my post of Thom Hartmann's 11-8 essay on Robert Reich's site: It might be shorted before then but is guaranteed to Collapse after 1-20-25. Am listening to a guy who is telling his listeners to buy 4 Partner Companies with Tesla before the 24th when Musk will announce Project X that will Replace Power Companies around the world by a gadget that would save every consumer over 2000 bucks a year! And something like 300,000 homes in Australia are already using this gadget. Now this grifter is hyping how to buy this inside trading info and more for just 49 dollars, it's over lol! Here is my free tip on how to make 10x your money or more - Buy Electric Utility Company Puts on January 21, a day after the Inauguration and MLK's birthday!!! And then you take your profits after the 24th and do it again with your Googled companies before the real crash!
Sean Sheeter, he's a malignant narcissist with borderline personality disorder. The show he grifted from was even rigged. They didn't pick the person(s) who really accomplished the tasks properly; they picked who the orange Mussolini liked and thought was more telegenic. They had to make up a bullshit reason to sack the real winners if the orange toad didn't like them for whatever bizarre reasoning he had.
I would hate to be a cat or dog with Trump as my owner - having to rely on how telegenic I looked in order to get food, water or treats.
Am sure he never had a pet in his life.
My name ain't Dean dear, it's Sean. This Nightmare Began Because The Chickenshit Progressive Media Would Not Print Any One Of Three Papers Ending With What Would Have Been This One Viral Line - There is only one question before us: Would you rather have a Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron whose Father Also Had Dementia running this country or the Daughter of Two University Professors?
The morning before the election I posted the following on selected replies to two Joe Rogan interviews with J.D. Vance and John Fetterman. Once I got thrown off that site for 'spamming' I moved on to Robert Reich and Micheal Moore's sites, finishing the night on the Republican Voters Against Trump's Facebook page:
Thom Hartmann 11-1-24
America’s billionaires would love to have a recession, particularly a really severe one.
In a recent “town hall,” billionaire Elon Musk acknowledged what 23 Nobel Prize-winning economists across the country have predicted: If Trump is elected and he and Elon undertake their project to gut government spending, it will provoke a severe recession.
Thom goes on to give the reason Why Billionaires Would Actively Force A Stock Market Crash: Buy Cheap, Sell High. It won't be a mere recession, it will be a full blown Depression that can only Begin to End when another Democrat Enters Their Office As President on January 20 2029, one hundred years after the 1929 Stock Market Crash!
My advise to anyone with money is soon after Musk is in charge of implementing Project 2025 is then to buy Puts shorting the market. They are good for a month and though it would likely take a couple to sink in, as all exchanges are at an all time high, they'd likely be worth something if not more before you cash out. If new to trading you can establish an online account at some brokerage like Ameritrade and recommend doing some homework on what stocks will take the biggest hits with Weiss Ratings and Googling what sectors took the biggest hits in previous crashes (noting that the pandemic crash of March 2020 was a fluke that cost me mucho while the next is Guaranteed by 23 Nobel Laureates!).
My 11-9-24 response to Will on my post of Thom Hartmann's 11-8 essay on Robert Reich's site: It might be shorted before then but is guaranteed to Collapse after 1-20-25. Am listening to a guy who is telling his listeners to buy 4 Partner Companies with Tesla before the 24th when Musk will announce Project X that will Replace Power Companies around the world by a gadget that would save every consumer over 2000 bucks a year! And something like 300,000 homes in Australia are already using this gadget. Now this grifter is hyping how to buy this inside trading info and more for just 49 dollars, it's over lol! Here is my free tip on how to make 10x your money or more - Buy Electric Utility Company Puts on January 21, a day after the Inauguration and MLK's birthday!!! And then you take your profits after the 24th and do it again with your Googled companies before the real crash!
Yes dear, I made the correction on your name, it was a typo on my part, I know your name is Sean. My apologies for that. 😉
Of course ya knew, just flirting with ya after a long day,
My parents taught me the difference between right and wrong, not to tell lies and what happens when you do, using my own brain to determine my own course of action, to never go along with the crowd if my inner voice tells me I shouldn't, to let my conscience be my guide and never, ever grovel or go against my morals in order to be with the "in" crowd. It is so very important right now for me to hang on to the lessons my parents taught me. While everyone seems to be going around acting as if the orange smear is "normal", I know that is not true. What he does and all of the sycophants that grovel before him do is "NOT NORMAL"! I won't accept the MSM sane-washing his sick and perverted actions. Right now, my government, all three branches, are in a quagmire of insanity. These people who are going to run the government have no morals, do not believe in the common good, do not give a tinker's damn about the American people and even less about our country, only want that power, power, power so they can make money, money, money and live in an alternate universe where they perceive good, honest and decent Americans as the enemy. They will delight in bringing as much hurt as they possibly can to all of us. Until such time as decent, patriotic Americans decide to come together and push them back, we will be living in a nightmare.
Peggy Freeman, so eloquently stated, you're totally correct. You're parents did a great job raising you 💙
Everything you said sums it up perfectly. 👍
Thank you, Diane! My parents were the absolute best, and I miss them every single day!
The Great Dismantling: Trump's Coming Attack on America's Economic Backbone
Thom Hartmann 11-7-24
Donald Trump is preparing to crash the American economy. He intends to do it by tearing up vital parts of our American government. He may even hire Elon Musk to pull it off.
And from his point of view, this is not going to be a bad thing. The farther the economy crashes, the greater the buying opportunity for billionaires.
It all has to do with something called the administrative state.
While it’s not sexy or even particularly interesting to the average American voter, having a strong administrative state is essential to a high-functioning economy.
A strong administrative state is the only thing that protects entrepreneurs and small businesses from being squashed like bugs by monopolistic behemoths, and small businesses are our nation’s main growth engine.
For example, over 70 percent of all new jobs created since 2019 were created by small businesses, producing almost 13 million new jobs over the past 25 years. Small business creation is up 50 percent over Trump’s years because the Biden administration has been enforcing the rule of law, including taking on the giant tech monopolies. Small businesses now account for over 43 percent of all American economic activity.
A strong administrative state is also the only thing that can protect the environment from those who’d destroy it for their own profits. It’s the only thing that can protect consumers from defective or even deadly products and food or drug contamination. It our only defense against predatory banks, airlines, and insurance companies, among others.
A strong administrative state that follows and enforces the rule of law — as opposed to the kind of grift-driven kleptocracies typical of strongman governments — is essential, in other words, to a functioning national economy.
Here in America, we see this best in the contrast between lightly bureaucratic and largely unregulated Red states and more bureaucratic and regulated (and taxed) Blue states and counties. While Red and Blue states are represented in Congress about 50/50, as the Brookings Institution found a few years ago:
“Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties represents just 29% of the economy.”
But now the administrative state is in the crosshairs of the incoming Trump administration, and their planned assault on it will almost certainly cause a loss of economic vitality, probably even leading to a major recession (every Republican president since Nixon has had a major recession after tinkering with tax and regulatory policies; none of the Democratic presidents have created one since Carter, and his started under Nixon).
We also see this at the level of the nation-state. As Professor Timothy Snyder notes:
“Now consider the Russian and Hungarian economies. Russia sits on hugely valuable natural resources, and yet is a poor country. The profits from its oil and gas are in the hands of a few oligarchs.
“Hungary sits in the middle of the European Union, the most successful trade project of all time.And yet Hungarians are poorer than their neighbors, in part because the Orbán regime corruptly channels EU resources to friendly oligarchs.
“The lesson is clear. Democracy is a method of checking corrupt rulers. When there is no functioning democracy, corruption is unchecked.And democracy is an element of a more fundamental guarantor of prosperity, the rule of law. In Hungary and Russia, the rule of law has been bent and broken, to the benefit of the few, and to the detriment of the many.Ending the rule of law is the Trump-Vance platform.”
Gutting the administrative state is the first and imperative aspect of ending or weakening the rule of law.
Because, as Steve Bannon famously told America, the main goal of the Trump administration is “the ‘deconstruction’ of the administrative state.” He added:
“Every business leader we’ve had in is saying not just taxes, but it is also the regulation. I think the consistent …[thing] is the deconstruction. The way the progressive left runs is, if they can’t get it passed, they’re just going to put in some sort of regulation in an agency. That’s all going to be deconstructed and I think that that’s why this regulatory thing is so important.”
We saw this movie before, during the last Trump administration. He put a coal lobbyist in charge of EPA, an oil lobbyist at Interior, a Telcom lobbyist and lawyer at FCC, a professional union-busting lawyer in charge of the Labor Department, an advocate for replacing public schools with religious ones in charge of the Education Department, etc., etc.
But that was more mere corruption than a wholesale destruction of administrative agencies. Since the Chevron deference decision by the Supreme Court this past year, though, it’s now possible that Trump could actually destroy the American administrative state.
Even when Chevron was still intact eight years ago, the result of Trump’s corruption in his previous administration, just like with Reagan’s and Bush’s deregulatory campaigns, was a massive recession that started before Covid came along.
Trump will fire Lena Kahn at the Federal Trade Commission, blowing up the antitrust efforts of the Biden administration; the fat cat billionaires already are eagerly anticipating running amok (which is why they threw billions at Trump’s campaign).
The result, predictably, will be another Republican economic disaster for America’s working class.
Interestingly, our country’s most famous investor also seems to be thinking along these same lines. Warren Buffett has recently sold over $325 billion in stock and is simply sitting on that huge pile of cash.
Why? Probably the Oracle of Omaha can see the same thing I’m pointing out here: Trump is preparing to turn the economy over to Musk and his billionaire buddies and the result will be a disaster.
A disaster, by the way, that will be very useful to Buffett and other billionaires; recessions and depressions are when America’s largest fortunes are typically made or expanded because they represent great buying opportunities to those with cash, while at the same time the small companies being squeezed are willing to sell for a song.
So get ready; we’re in for a bumpy few years as America descends into a strongman-run oligarchy while the Supreme Court and Trump’s toadies rip apart the protections of the administrative state we’ve so carefully constructed in the years since the Civil War and the Republican Great Depression.
It may well be a disaster for your 401(k), and millions will lose their jobs in a recession. If Musk cuts $2 trillion from the federal budget, as promised, it will almost certainly impact Social Security and take a huge bite out of programs for veterans, children, and the disabled.
It would probably also have to end all subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, and end hundreds of billions in federal aid to infrastructure construction programs.
Get ready now, to the extent that you can. Forewarned is forearmed.
For the first time I approve of the multiple postings of a statement. This one is worth it.
Here's the followup with some betting advice: This Nightmare Began Because The Chickenshit Progressive Media Would Not Print Any One Of Three Papers Ending With What Would Have Been This One Viral Line - There is only one question before us: Would you rather have a Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron whose Father Also Had Dementia running this country or the Daughter of Two University Professors?
The morning before the election I posted the following on selected replies to two Joe Rogan interviews with J.D. Vance and John Fetterman. Once I got thrown off that site for 'spamming' I moved on to Robert Reich and Micheal Moore's sites, finishing the night on the Republican Voters Against Trump's Facebook page:
Thom Hartmann 11-1-24
America’s billionaires would love to have a recession, particularly a really severe one.
In a recent “town hall,” billionaire Elon Musk acknowledged what 23 Nobel Prize-winning economists across the country have predicted: If Trump is elected and he and Elon undertake their project to gut government spending, it will provoke a severe recession.
Thom goes on to give the reason Why Billionaires Would Actively Force A Stock Market Crash: Buy Cheap, Sell High. It won't be a mere recession, it will be a full blown Depression that can only Begin to End when another Democrat Enters Their Office As President on January 20 2029, one hundred years after the 1929 Stock Market Crash!
My advise to anyone with money is soon after Musk is in charge of implementing Project 2025 is then to buy Puts shorting the market. They are good for a month and though it would likely take a couple to sink in, as all exchanges are at an all time high, they'd likely be worth something if not more before you cash out. If new to trading you can establish an online account at some brokerage like Ameritrade and recommend doing some homework on what stocks will take the biggest hits with Weiss Ratings and Googling what sectors took the biggest hits in previous crashes (noting that the pandemic crash of March 2020 was a fluke that cost me mucho while the next is Guaranteed by 23 Nobel Laureates!).
My 11-9-24 response to Will on my post of Thom Hartmann's 11-8 essay on Robert Reich's site: It might be shorted before then but is guaranteed to Collapse after 1-20-25. Am listening to a guy who is telling his listeners to buy 4 Partner Companies with Tesla before the 24th when Musk will announce Project X that will Replace Power Companies around the world by a gadget that would save every consumer over 2000 bucks a year! And something like 300,000 homes in Australia are already using this gadget. Now this grifter is hyping how to buy this inside trading info and more for just 49 dollars, it's over lol! Here is my free tip on how to make 10x your money or more - Buy Electric Utility Company Puts on January 21, a day after the Inauguration and MLK's birthday!!! And then you take your profits after the 24th and do it again with your Googled companies before the real crash!
They can't take it with them
I know, Edie, but for some reason their greedy little hands want to hoard it and keep it and try to make even more! Naturally, everyone needs money to live but when money becomes everything to you and you lose your morals and principles in order to acquire more of it, then you have a really bad problem.
A couple of facts to support Robert's conclusions.
Having spent some time reviewing Trump's activities or lack there of and having been in direct negotiations on large business opportunities that would required his investment...basic skin in the game stuff and would have made him and others in legal ventures...I have learned the following.
He is incredibly lazy when it comes to doing much other than hold meetings to leverage power and money from whomever comes to him. He doesn't make much effort to recruit with the exception of having others handle his sales, projects and promotions. He has learned the art of manipulating others to do his work for him. The deadly attack on our capital a perhaps a perfect example?
He has learned... how not to spend any of his money (of which he doesn't have much in liquidity) on anything he wants...even when it comes to staying out of prison...he will always find another way to get someone else to pay. Perhaps selling government secrets to foreign countries or selling pardons to obvious and dangerous criminals or selling positions in government institutions?
He enjoys being praised but also allows people to do so if he sees a way in which that person can assist him in some way down the road and in turn he will throw them a trinket as a reward for their assistance in one way or another. Alan D. would be an example of one who ended up under the bus although for quite some time he was rewarded financially by about 10% per year off the books on the monies he saved Trump, per year, in taxes, insurance expenses and loan interests and other financially rewarding slights of hand.
The behind the curtain question here is how is he able to get away with such nonsense?
Because... he is a convenient public tool and distraction from the behind the scenes activities of the oligarchical clan... that has quite literally taken over the entirety of the/our US Government. Keeping it simple... when you take the time to stand back and assess all the factual information, activities, players and outcomes.
The People (We The People) are beginning to see through this manufactured curtain and recognize them for what they are...and the real culprits behind this take over are beginning to show some concern. They and their families will have more security where ever they go. They will be less public as to where they hang out...and they will be more paranoid than ever before because they are now more exposed, oddly thanks to the internet and of all places to look, Tik Toc and more oddly X. In their efforts to become more obscene and in your face people are realizing that there are lots of miscreants out there, government can't or won't protect law abiding citizens from them and something has to change.
Interesting times ahead.
The Great Dismantling: Trump's Coming Attack on America's Economic Backbone
Thom Hartmann 11-7-24
Donald Trump is preparing to crash the American economy. He intends to do it by tearing up vital parts of our American government. He may even hire Elon Musk to pull it off.
And from his point of view, this is not going to be a bad thing. The farther the economy crashes, the greater the buying opportunity for billionaires.
It all has to do with something called the administrative state.
While it’s not sexy or even particularly interesting to the average American voter, having a strong administrative state is essential to a high-functioning economy.
A strong administrative state is the only thing that protects entrepreneurs and small businesses from being squashed like bugs by monopolistic behemoths, and small businesses are our nation’s main growth engine.
For example, over 70 percent of all new jobs created since 2019 were created by small businesses, producing almost 13 million new jobs over the past 25 years. Small business creation is up 50 percent over Trump’s years because the Biden administration has been enforcing the rule of law, including taking on the giant tech monopolies. Small businesses now account for over 43 percent of all American economic activity.
A strong administrative state is also the only thing that can protect the environment from those who’d destroy it for their own profits. It’s the only thing that can protect consumers from defective or even deadly products and food or drug contamination. It our only defense against predatory banks, airlines, and insurance companies, among others.
A strong administrative state that follows and enforces the rule of law — as opposed to the kind of grift-driven kleptocracies typical of strongman governments — is essential, in other words, to a functioning national economy.
Here in America, we see this best in the contrast between lightly bureaucratic and largely unregulated Red states and more bureaucratic and regulated (and taxed) Blue states and counties. While Red and Blue states are represented in Congress about 50/50, as the Brookings Institution found a few years ago:
“Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties represents just 29% of the economy.”
But now the administrative state is in the crosshairs of the incoming Trump administration, and their planned assault on it will almost certainly cause a loss of economic vitality, probably even leading to a major recession (every Republican president since Nixon has had a major recession after tinkering with tax and regulatory policies; none of the Democratic presidents have created one since Carter, and his started under Nixon).
We also see this at the level of the nation-state. As Professor Timothy Snyder notes:
“Now consider the Russian and Hungarian economies. Russia sits on hugely valuable natural resources, and yet is a poor country. The profits from its oil and gas are in the hands of a few oligarchs.
“Hungary sits in the middle of the European Union, the most successful trade project of all time.And yet Hungarians are poorer than their neighbors, in part because the Orbán regime corruptly channels EU resources to friendly oligarchs.
“The lesson is clear. Democracy is a method of checking corrupt rulers. When there is no functioning democracy, corruption is unchecked.And democracy is an element of a more fundamental guarantor of prosperity, the rule of law. In Hungary and Russia, the rule of law has been bent and broken, to the benefit of the few, and to the detriment of the many.Ending the rule of law is the Trump-Vance platform.”
Gutting the administrative state is the first and imperative aspect of ending or weakening the rule of law.
Because, as Steve Bannon famously told America, the main goal of the Trump administration is “the ‘deconstruction’ of the administrative state.” He added:
“Every business leader we’ve had in is saying not just taxes, but it is also the regulation. I think the consistent …[thing] is the deconstruction. The way the progressive left runs is, if they can’t get it passed, they’re just going to put in some sort of regulation in an agency. That’s all going to be deconstructed and I think that that’s why this regulatory thing is so important.”
We saw this movie before, during the last Trump administration. He put a coal lobbyist in charge of EPA, an oil lobbyist at Interior, a Telcom lobbyist and lawyer at FCC, a professional union-busting lawyer in charge of the Labor Department, an advocate for replacing public schools with religious ones in charge of the Education Department, etc., etc.
But that was more mere corruption than a wholesale destruction of administrative agencies. Since the Chevron deference decision by the Supreme Court this past year, though, it’s now possible that Trump could actually destroy the American administrative state.
Even when Chevron was still intact eight years ago, the result of Trump’s corruption in his previous administration, just like with Reagan’s and Bush’s deregulatory campaigns, was a massive recession that started before Covid came along.
Trump will fire Lena Kahn at the Federal Trade Commission, blowing up the antitrust efforts of the Biden administration; the fat cat billionaires already are eagerly anticipating running amok (which is why they threw billions at Trump’s campaign).
The result, predictably, will be another Republican economic disaster for America’s working class.
Interestingly, our country’s most famous investor also seems to be thinking along these same lines. Warren Buffett has recently sold over $325 billion in stock and is simply sitting on that huge pile of cash.
Why? Probably the Oracle of Omaha can see the same thing I’m pointing out here: Trump is preparing to turn the economy over to Musk and his billionaire buddies and the result will be a disaster.
A disaster, by the way, that will be very useful to Buffett and other billionaires; recessions and depressions are when America’s largest fortunes are typically made or expanded because they represent great buying opportunities to those with cash, while at the same time the small companies being squeezed are willing to sell for a song.
So get ready; we’re in for a bumpy few years as America descends into a strongman-run oligarchy while the Supreme Court and Trump’s toadies rip apart the protections of the administrative state we’ve so carefully constructed in the years since the Civil War and the Republican Great Depression.
It may well be a disaster for your 401(k), and millions will lose their jobs in a recession. If Musk cuts $2 trillion from the federal budget, as promised, it will almost certainly impact Social Security and take a huge bite out of programs for veterans, children, and the disabled.
It would probably also have to end all subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, and end hundreds of billions in federal aid to infrastructure construction programs.
Get ready now, to the extent that you can. Forewarned is forearmed.
This Nightmare Began Because The Chickenshit Progressive Media Would Not Print Any One Of Three Papers Ending With What Would Have Been This One Viral Line - There is only one question before us: Would you rather have a Fascist Dementia Addled Supreme Narcissistic Moron whose Father Also Had Dementia running this country or the Daughter of Two University Professors?
The morning before the election I posted the following on selected replies to two Joe Rogan interviews with J.D. Vance and John Fetterman. Once I got thrown off that site for 'spamming' I moved on to Robert Reich and Micheal Moore's sites, finishing the night on the Republican Voters Against Trump's Facebook page:
Thom Hartmann 11-1-24
America’s billionaires would love to have a recession, particularly a really severe one.
In a recent “town hall,” billionaire Elon Musk acknowledged what 23 Nobel Prize-winning economists across the country have predicted: If Trump is elected and he and Elon undertake their project to gut government spending, it will provoke a severe recession.
Thom goes on to give the reason Why Billionaires Would Actively Force A Stock Market Crash: Buy Cheap, Sell High. It won't be a mere recession, it will be a full blown Depression that can only Begin to End when another Democrat Enters Their Office As President on January 20 2029, one hundred years after the 1929 Stock Market Crash!
My advise to anyone with money is soon after Musk is in charge of implementing Project 2025 is then to buy Puts shorting the market. They are good for a month and though it would likely take a couple to sink in, as all exchanges are at an all time high, they'd likely be worth something if not more before you cash out. If new to trading you can establish an online account at some brokerage like Ameritrade and recommend doing some homework on what stocks will take the biggest hits with Weiss Ratings and Googling what sectors took the biggest hits in previous crashes (noting that the pandemic crash of March 2020 was a fluke that cost me mucho while the next is Guaranteed by 23 Nobel Laureates!).
My 11-9-24 response to Will on my post of Thom Hartmann's 11-8 essay on Robert Reich's site: It might be shorted before then but is guaranteed to Collapse after 1-20-25. Am listening to a guy who is telling his listeners to buy 4 Partner Companies with Tesla before the 24th when Musk will announce Project X that will Replace Power Companies around the world by a gadget that would save every consumer over 2000 bucks a year! And something like 300,000 homes in Australia are already using this gadget. Now this grifter is hyping how to buy this inside trading info and more for just 49 dollars, it's over lol! Here is my free tip on how to make 10x your money or more - Buy Electric Utility Company Puts on January 21, a day after the Inauguration and MLK's birthday!!! And then you take your profits after the 24th and do it again with your Googled companies before the real crash!
Henry, well said 👍
You have Trump & the oligarchs so accurately pegged!
Henry, very informative. How about some names of the members of the “oligarchal clan” of which you speak? I don’t want to assume I know who you are talking about. Talk to us!
There are many...In just a brief excerpt from one informed article...
In a review of the book for The Financial Times, Simon Kuper writes:
“The book distinguishes various types of oligarchs. ‘Business oligarchs’ like Musk turn wealth into political power, while ‘political oligarchs’ go the other way. A classic example of the latter, says the book, is Vladimir Putin, ‘a billionaire with nuclear weapons’. Oligarch presidents have decision-making power, oligarch influencers such as Rupert Murdoch, Charles Koch and George Soros set agendas, while platform owners such as Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Larry Page have rewired the information streams that flow into our brains.”
This just scratches the surface...Presently there are over 800 billionaires in the country. They didn't get there by being outrageous philanthropists.
They are following the Russian plan which so far is working fairly well in Russia with the exception of a few that had voiced some kind of disapproval and then found that falling out of high place with a sudden stop was somewhat troubling. This is our new reality.
If you have the time check out one of the many sites to check out The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists web site. It caries some interesting articles about climate change and such and the movers and shakers that negatively effect everyone's survival in exchange for profits and power. they also cover such items as fusion power and how that might save us from ourselves...perhaps?
Calm, factual, judicious, and no swear words. A brilliant and grown up post. Thank you
The Great Dismantling: Trump's Coming Attack on America's Economic Backbone
Thom Hartmann 11-7-24
Donald Trump is preparing to crash the American economy. He intends to do it by tearing up vital parts of our American government. He may even hire Elon Musk to pull it off.
And from his point of view, this is not going to be a bad thing. The farther the economy crashes, the greater the buying opportunity for billionaires.
It all has to do with something called the administrative state.
While it’s not sexy or even particularly interesting to the average American voter, having a strong administrative state is essential to a high-functioning economy.
A strong administrative state is the only thing that protects entrepreneurs and small businesses from being squashed like bugs by monopolistic behemoths, and small businesses are our nation’s main growth engine.
For example, over 70 percent of all new jobs created since 2019 were created by small businesses, producing almost 13 million new jobs over the past 25 years. Small business creation is up 50 percent over Trump’s years because the Biden administration has been enforcing the rule of law, including taking on the giant tech monopolies. Small businesses now account for over 43 percent of all American economic activity.
A strong administrative state is also the only thing that can protect the environment from those who’d destroy it for their own profits. It’s the only thing that can protect consumers from defective or even deadly products and food or drug contamination. It our only defense against predatory banks, airlines, and insurance companies, among others.
A strong administrative state that follows and enforces the rule of law — as opposed to the kind of grift-driven kleptocracies typical of strongman governments — is essential, in other words, to a functioning national economy.
Here in America, we see this best in the contrast between lightly bureaucratic and largely unregulated Red states and more bureaucratic and regulated (and taxed) Blue states and counties. While Red and Blue states are represented in Congress about 50/50, as the Brookings Institution found a few years ago:
“Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties represents just 29% of the economy.”
But now the administrative state is in the crosshairs of the incoming Trump administration, and their planned assault on it will almost certainly cause a loss of economic vitality, probably even leading to a major recession (every Republican president since Nixon has had a major recession after tinkering with tax and regulatory policies; none of the Democratic presidents have created one since Carter, and his started under Nixon).
We also see this at the level of the nation-state. As Professor Timothy Snyder notes:
“Now consider the Russian and Hungarian economies. Russia sits on hugely valuable natural resources, and yet is a poor country. The profits from its oil and gas are in the hands of a few oligarchs.
“Hungary sits in the middle of the European Union, the most successful trade project of all time.And yet Hungarians are poorer than their neighbors, in part because the Orbán regime corruptly channels EU resources to friendly oligarchs.
“The lesson is clear. Democracy is a method of checking corrupt rulers. When there is no functioning democracy, corruption is unchecked.And democracy is an element of a more fundamental guarantor of prosperity, the rule of law. In Hungary and Russia, the rule of law has been bent and broken, to the benefit of the few, and to the detriment of the many.Ending the rule of law is the Trump-Vance platform.”
Gutting the administrative state is the first and imperative aspect of ending or weakening the rule of law.
Because, as Steve Bannon famously told America, the main goal of the Trump administration is “the ‘deconstruction’ of the administrative state.” He added:
“Every business leader we’ve had in is saying not just taxes, but it is also the regulation. I think the consistent …[thing] is the deconstruction. The way the progressive left runs is, if they can’t get it passed, they’re just going to put in some sort of regulation in an agency. That’s all going to be deconstructed and I think that that’s why this regulatory thing is so important.”
We saw this movie before, during the last Trump administration. He put a coal lobbyist in charge of EPA, an oil lobbyist at Interior, a Telcom lobbyist and lawyer at FCC, a professional union-busting lawyer in charge of the Labor Department, an advocate for replacing public schools with religious ones in charge of the Education Department, etc., etc.
But that was more mere corruption than a wholesale destruction of administrative agencies. Since the Chevron deference decision by the Supreme Court this past year, though, it’s now possible that Trump could actually destroy the American administrative state.
Even when Chevron was still intact eight years ago, the result of Trump’s corruption in his previous administration, just like with Reagan’s and Bush’s deregulatory campaigns, was a massive recession that started before Covid came along.
Trump will fire Lena Kahn at the Federal Trade Commission, blowing up the antitrust efforts of the Biden administration; the fat cat billionaires already are eagerly anticipating running amok (which is why they threw billions at Trump’s campaign).
The result, predictably, will be another Republican economic disaster for America’s working class.
Interestingly, our country’s most famous investor also seems to be thinking along these same lines. Warren Buffett has recently sold over $325 billion in stock and is simply sitting on that huge pile of cash.
Why? Probably the Oracle of Omaha can see the same thing I’m pointing out here: Trump is preparing to turn the economy over to Musk and his billionaire buddies and the result will be a disaster.
A disaster, by the way, that will be very useful to Buffett and other billionaires; recessions and depressions are when America’s largest fortunes are typically made or expanded because they represent great buying opportunities to those with cash, while at the same time the small companies being squeezed are willing to sell for a song.
So get ready; we’re in for a bumpy few years as America descends into a strongman-run oligarchy while the Supreme Court and Trump’s toadies rip apart the protections of the administrative state we’ve so carefully constructed in the years since the Civil War and the Republican Great Depression.
It may well be a disaster for your 401(k), and millions will lose their jobs in a recession. If Musk cuts $2 trillion from the federal budget, as promised, it will almost certainly impact Social Security and take a huge bite out of programs for veterans, children, and the disabled.
It would probably also have to end all subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, and end hundreds of billions in federal aid to infrastructure construction programs.
Get ready now, to the extent that you can. Forewarned is forearmed.
8.5 on the obsequy scale.
How bad will this be? I’m not sleeping well these days. I’m so afraid for our country. We deserve so much better, and we could have had it. This is being dragged through the mud on a daily basis.
The Great Dismantling: Trump's Coming Attack on America's Economic Backbone
Thom Hartmann 11-7-24
Donald Trump is preparing to crash the American economy. He intends to do it by tearing up vital parts of our American government. He may even hire Elon Musk to pull it off.
And from his point of view, this is not going to be a bad thing. The farther the economy crashes, the greater the buying opportunity for billionaires.
It all has to do with something called the administrative state.
While it’s not sexy or even particularly interesting to the average American voter, having a strong administrative state is essential to a high-functioning economy.
A strong administrative state is the only thing that protects entrepreneurs and small businesses from being squashed like bugs by monopolistic behemoths, and small businesses are our nation’s main growth engine.
For example, over 70 percent of all new jobs created since 2019 were created by small businesses, producing almost 13 million new jobs over the past 25 years. Small business creation is up 50 percent over Trump’s years because the Biden administration has been enforcing the rule of law, including taking on the giant tech monopolies. Small businesses now account for over 43 percent of all American economic activity.
A strong administrative state is also the only thing that can protect the environment from those who’d destroy it for their own profits. It’s the only thing that can protect consumers from defective or even deadly products and food or drug contamination. It our only defense against predatory banks, airlines, and insurance companies, among others.
A strong administrative state that follows and enforces the rule of law — as opposed to the kind of grift-driven kleptocracies typical of strongman governments — is essential, in other words, to a functioning national economy.
Here in America, we see this best in the contrast between lightly bureaucratic and largely unregulated Red states and more bureaucratic and regulated (and taxed) Blue states and counties. While Red and Blue states are represented in Congress about 50/50, as the Brookings Institution found a few years ago:
“Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties represents just 29% of the economy.”
But now the administrative state is in the crosshairs of the incoming Trump administration, and their planned assault on it will almost certainly cause a loss of economic vitality, probably even leading to a major recession (every Republican president since Nixon has had a major recession after tinkering with tax and regulatory policies; none of the Democratic presidents have created one since Carter, and his started under Nixon).
We also see this at the level of the nation-state. As Professor Timothy Snyder notes:
“Now consider the Russian and Hungarian economies. Russia sits on hugely valuable natural resources, and yet is a poor country. The profits from its oil and gas are in the hands of a few oligarchs.
“Hungary sits in the middle of the European Union, the most successful trade project of all time.And yet Hungarians are poorer than their neighbors, in part because the Orbán regime corruptly channels EU resources to friendly oligarchs.
“The lesson is clear. Democracy is a method of checking corrupt rulers. When there is no functioning democracy, corruption is unchecked.And democracy is an element of a more fundamental guarantor of prosperity, the rule of law. In Hungary and Russia, the rule of law has been bent and broken, to the benefit of the few, and to the detriment of the many.Ending the rule of law is the Trump-Vance platform.”
Gutting the administrative state is the first and imperative aspect of ending or weakening the rule of law.
Because, as Steve Bannon famously told America, the main goal of the Trump administration is “the ‘deconstruction’ of the administrative state.” He added:
“Every business leader we’ve had in is saying not just taxes, but it is also the regulation. I think the consistent …[thing] is the deconstruction. The way the progressive left runs is, if they can’t get it passed, they’re just going to put in some sort of regulation in an agency. That’s all going to be deconstructed and I think that that’s why this regulatory thing is so important.”
We saw this movie before, during the last Trump administration. He put a coal lobbyist in charge of EPA, an oil lobbyist at Interior, a Telcom lobbyist and lawyer at FCC, a professional union-busting lawyer in charge of the Labor Department, an advocate for replacing public schools with religious ones in charge of the Education Department, etc., etc.
But that was more mere corruption than a wholesale destruction of administrative agencies. Since the Chevron deference decision by the Supreme Court this past year, though, it’s now possible that Trump could actually destroy the American administrative state.
Even when Chevron was still intact eight years ago, the result of Trump’s corruption in his previous administration, just like with Reagan’s and Bush’s deregulatory campaigns, was a massive recession that started before Covid came along.
Trump will fire Lena Kahn at the Federal Trade Commission, blowing up the antitrust efforts of the Biden administration; the fat cat billionaires already are eagerly anticipating running amok (which is why they threw billions at Trump’s campaign).
The result, predictably, will be another Republican economic disaster for America’s working class.
Interestingly, our country’s most famous investor also seems to be thinking along these same lines. Warren Buffett has recently sold over $325 billion in stock and is simply sitting on that huge pile of cash.
Why? Probably the Oracle of Omaha can see the same thing I’m pointing out here: Trump is preparing to turn the economy over to Musk and his billionaire buddies and the result will be a disaster.
A disaster, by the way, that will be very useful to Buffett and other billionaires; recessions and depressions are when America’s largest fortunes are typically made or expanded because they represent great buying opportunities to those with cash, while at the same time the small companies being squeezed are willing to sell for a song.
So get ready; we’re in for a bumpy few years as America descends into a strongman-run oligarchy while the Supreme Court and Trump’s toadies rip apart the protections of the administrative state we’ve so carefully constructed in the years since the Civil War and the Republican Great Depression.
It may well be a disaster for your 401(k), and millions will lose their jobs in a recession. If Musk cuts $2 trillion from the federal budget, as promised, it will almost certainly impact Social Security and take a huge bite out of programs for veterans, children, and the disabled.
It would probably also have to end all subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, and end hundreds of billions in federal aid to infrastructure construction programs.
Get ready now, to the extent that you can. Forewarned is forearmed.
We are amuck in an alternate Universe.