Yesterday, the Medicaid payment portal was shut down in all 50 states; they came back up when a federal judge put Trump’s illegal impoundment of federal funds on hold until February 3rd.
And it wasn’t just Medicaid. The Trump administration shut down Pell grants, federally supported student loans, veterans homeless shelters, veterans suicide prevention programs, school meals, home heating assistance, housing assistance, food stamps, food for women and infants, childcare, Headstart, child abuse investigations, rape crisis centers, and hundreds of other programs.
Why?
Because Trump is trying to gut the federal government the same way Mitt Romney gutted Clear Channel when I did my show from one of their studios a decade ago.
Romney’s company did it to shut down Air America and then extract the millions in wealth Clear Channel had, before throwing the husk of the company into bankruptcy; Trump is tearing our systems of governance apart because he and his billionaire buddies are offended by the idea of paying taxes to help the American middle class and the poor.
In the process, Trump is also breaking multiple laws and daring Congress and the courts to do anything about it. This is the beginning of the path to both economic chaos and dictatorship.
But first, let’s take a look at what Trump and his billionaire funders are up to and why.
Back in 1980, David Koch ran for vice president on a platform of shutting down virtually every federal function except the military and the court system. Some billionaires, you see, hate paying taxes and many of them think that all those “gummint” programs are both unnecessary and wasteful.
His platform included a whole series of positions that were specifically designed to roll back and gut FDR’s “big government” programs (along with those added on by both Nixon and LBJ’s Great Society) that had created and then sustained America’s 20th century middle class:
— “We urge the repeal of federal campaign finance laws, and the immediate abolition of the despotic Federal Election Commission.
— “We favor the abolition of Medicare and Medicaid programs.
— “We oppose any compulsory insurance or tax-supported plan to provide health services, including those which finance abortion services.
— “We also favor the deregulation of the medical insurance industry.
— “We favor the repeal of the fraudulent, virtually bankrupt, and increasingly oppressive Social Security system. Pending that repeal, participation in Social Security should be made voluntary.
— “We propose the abolition of the governmental Postal Service.
— “We oppose all personal and corporate income taxation, including capital gains taxes.
— “We support the eventual repeal of all taxation.
— “As an interim measure, all criminal and civil sanctions against tax evasion should be terminated immediately.
— “We support repeal of all law which impede the ability of any person to find employment, such as minimum wage laws.
— “We advocate the complete separation of education and State. Government schools lead to the indoctrination of children and interfere with the free choice of individuals. Government ownership, operation, regulation, and subsidy of schools and colleges should be ended.
— “We condemn compulsory education laws … and we call for the immediate repeal of such laws.
— “We support the repeal of all taxes on the income or property of private schools, whether profit or non-profit.
— “We support the abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency.”
— “We support abolition of the Department of Energy.
— “We call for the dissolution of all government agencies concerned with transportation, including the Department of Transportation.
— “We demand the return of America’s railroad system to private ownership. We call for the privatization of the public roads and national highway system.
— “We specifically oppose laws requiring an individual to buy or use so-called ‘self-protection’ equipment such as safety belts, air bags, or crash helmets.
— “We advocate the abolition of the Federal Aviation Administration.
— “We advocate the abolition of the Food and Drug Administration.
— “We support an end to all subsidies for child-bearing built into our present laws, including all welfare plans and the provision of tax-supported services for children.
— “We oppose all government welfare, relief projects, and ‘aid to the poor’ programs. All these government programs are privacy-invading, paternalistic, demeaning, and inefficient. The proper source of help for such persons is the voluntary efforts of private groups and individuals.
— “We call for the privatization of the inland waterways, and of the distribution system that brings water to industry, agriculture and households.
— “We call for the repeal of the Occupational Safety and Health Act.
— “We call for the abolition of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
— “We support the repeal of all state usury laws.”
In other words, gut the federal government the same way Mitt Romney’s company gutted Clear Channel. But in politics and governance, it’s called libertarianism, which is the hot new philosophy for Silicon Valley tech bro billionaires.
The “Project 2025” plan put together by the Heritage Foundation (funded in part for years by the Koch brothers’ network) was a 21st century cleaned-up version of Koch’s 1980 Libertarian Party platform. And now we’re seeing it put into place, one step at a time.
Like Romney stripping the liberal talk radio network out of Clear Channel, they are now stripping the 20th century out of our laws and policies.
It’s why Republicans are working so hard to disempower women in the workplace, starting with eliminating their control over their own reproductive capacity.
It’s also why they’re doing everything they can to shut down corporate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs nationwide; the majority of the hiring and increased pay benefits coming from corporate, government, and academic DEI programs go to women, a situation Republican men find intolerable.
Republicans want to either “return” to a pre-Civil War understanding of the Constitution (as advocated by Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito) or embrace Russell Vought’s “post-constitutional” order, in which the last century’s “innovations” (including the income tax, women’s suffrage, “welfare” programs, entitlements, and even free public school and college) are dialed back.
We also see this in the ways the Republicans on the Supreme Court have gutted both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, how they’ve stripped most of the teeth out of the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, and how they’re working to castrate most regulatory agencies including the EPA, FTC, and even the IRS.
Republicans are trying to do to our government, in other words, what corporate raiders do to companies.
Some of it is simple greed: as the middle class shrinks and poverty grows, the cash stash at the very top of the American economic pyramid grows exponentially.
Other American oligarchs follow the teachings of Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley, and Ronald Reagan who all argued that a larger-than-50% middle class is a threat to the stability of the nation.
The simple reality is that nations without a large and active federal government providing protections and services to its people never develop large middle classes.
Unregulated capitalism always produces the kind of nation Charles Dickens wrote about in Christmas Carol and his many other novels: A tiny 1% who own most wealth; a small 3-5% middle class of doctors, lawyers, and small business owners (Ebeneezer Scrooge); and a massive 90%+ class of the working poor (Bob Cratchit).
Ever since the 1950s when Russell Kirk wrote his manifesto The Conservative Mind, a small cabal of Republicans and billionaires have argued that FDR’s “big government” programs — that moved America from being 10% middle class in the 1930s to over 60% when Reagan came into office in 1981 (it’s under 50% now) — were dangerous.
As I detail in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy, their argument was largely based on the turmoil of the 1960s, when women, Blacks, and young people were demanding rights; they worried that these protests could lead to the destruction of our republic and a “communist takeover.”
Nowadays most rightwing billionaires have largely abandoned that argument, simply asserting their disgust at having to pay taxes to support programs that primarily benefit “the little people.”
And then, of course, there are those in the GOP who simply hate America because of its pluralism and diversity.
Most recently, Trump proved his commitment to fulfill their and Putin’s desire to see America’s government destroyed by sending an email to 2 million federal employees offering them 8 months pay if they’ll resign.
Just like when I was at Clear Channel and Romney’s company fired or laid off more than half of the employees here in Portland.
In the process of disemboweling our federal government, however, Trump is taking it a step farther and breaking multiple laws:
— The Impoundment Control Act, which was passed in the 1970s after Nixon withheld funding for programs he didn’t like, including the Clean Water Act, Public Housing projects, the elementary and Secondary Education Act that funded public schools in poor districts, school desegregation efforts, mass transit programs for cities, and health research and healthcare programs for low-income people.
The law says that presidents cannot refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress without the explicit permission of both the House and Senate, and requires him to give them 45 days to consider the impoundment or rescission of funds.
Our lawless, convicted-criminal president is nakedly breaking this law and daring Congress and the courts to do something about it.
— The Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883 and the Civil Service Reform Act guarantee that federal government employees can’t be fired for “retaliation” or political reasons; there must be actual evidence that they are not doing their jobs, doing them poorly, or behaving in ways that justify the firing.
When Trump fired all the career prosecutors and lawyers in the Justice Department who’d participated in his prosecution, it was a clear case of political retaliation and a clear violation of the law.
Our lawless, convicted-criminal president is nakedly breaking this law and daring Congress and the courts to do something about it.
— The Inspector General Act of 1978 (also responding to Nixon’s corruption) mandates that the president must notify Congress at least 30 days before removing an IG and provide detailed, case-specific reasons for the dismissal. Inspectors General are the watchdogs for federal agencies, keeping an eye out for people within those agencies committing fraud, stealing funds, or engaging in illegal favoritism or bribery, among other crimes.
Firing them is like a police department firing its Internal Affairs department that looks into corrupt cops. It sets up every federal agency affected by the firings to be corrupted by the Trump cronies put in charge of them. Even Republican Senator Chuck Grassley is furious about this.
Our lawless, convicted-criminal president is nakedly breaking this law, too, as he raids our government, and is daring Congress and the courts to do something about it.
As Alexandrian Ocasio-Cortez noted on social media yesterday:
“Trump is holding all the nation’s hospitals and vital services hostage to seize power from Congress and hand it over to billionaires. We must state the truth: this is a constitutional crisis. It’s a massive, illegal power grab that the House and Senate have a sworn duty to stop.”
Trump’s defiance of these three major laws (along with a few others) in the first two weeks of his presidency — and the GOP’s acquiescence to his criminality — are terrible signs for the future of American democracy.
They are frankly even more dangerous than his corporate raider-like efforts to bring the American government to its knees.
While most Americans who voted for Trump probably knew he was a convicted criminal, it’s unlikely they also thought he’d commit crimes in office that would gut the protections and programs that so many of them need. They f----- around and now they’re finding out.
Sadly, they’re taking the rest of us with them…
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