Downsizing America

Update: Thanks as always to Batocchio for including my blog at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! Remember to think positive, call your lawyers to sue Musk for stealing our personal data, and ignore any emails telling you there's a "fork in the road."

It's gotten ugly during the first two weeks of President trump Musk raiding and hijacking federal agencies (via David Ingram at NBC News):

The billionaire tech magnate has never been elected to office or been confirmed by the Senate for a high-level government job, but in the span of a few days, Musk has still gained access to sensitive federal data through his position as head of President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency project, or DOGE, to push a far-reaching agenda and potentially spark a constitutional crisis. 

Musk has embraced Silicon Valley’s most notorious instincts to “move fast and break things” in a lightning battle to muscle into the computer systems and power structures of federal agencies. As he did with his corporate takeover of Twitter in 2022, he has brought in a team to assess details such as office building leases, budget line items, vendor contracts and the performance of individual employees — with the stated intention of radically downsizing the organization...

There are deep concerns among many Democrats and some Republicans that Musk — and his staff members who are not government workers and are not bound by the same ethics and rules that apply to federal workers — are acting in secret, without accountability and potentially against the law in the Trump administration’s effort to shrink the federal government...

DOGE’s targets include the U.S. Agency for International Development, which closed its headquarters Monday in anticipation of shutting down entirely. Musk’s DOGE has staff members working at the Treasury Department, which pays the government’s bills, and he has said on X that he wants to slash or overhaul several other agencies, including the General Services Administration, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Education Department...

Inside the offices of USAID, more than 1,000 staff members and contractors have been fired or furloughed because of a near-total freeze on foreign assistance, and the agency’s security leaders were put on administrative leave Saturday after they tried to prevent DOGE employees from accessing secure systems, NBC News has reported. At least some of the DOGE employees had insufficient security clearances, sources have said.

None of this is legal. Musk is operating at a level in trump's administration that deserved a vote of approval from the Senate, operating without any level of accountability, and operating against a slew of laws and constitutional authority.

As Ingram noted, Musk is bulldozing through our federal agencies on a mission to downsize our government like he took over Twitter... which he turned into a disaster through mass firings, questionable policy changes, and a willingness to let the worst of the worst take control under his guidance. Musk - like many other CEO oligarchs and high-income pundits - is obsessed with the idea that "government should be run like a business".

There are two problems with that mindset. First, a government is not focused on generating profits - which businesses do, and for the most part that's how capitalism works - government is focused on performing public service (as Grover Cleveland noted: "Public office is a public trust.") so it's not about saving money as it is about effective customer service to the millions of Americans. Second, Musk - and that epic business failure donald trump - are not the best people to fucking run government. 

It's being documented - even as Musk and his techbro interns (gods, one of them barely graduated high school) try to hide from public scrutiny - how sloppy these office raids are being conducted in terms of cybersecurity. There's evidence Musk's teams are inserting bad code into existing networks that will make them more vulnerable to future attacks. They're violating every privacy requirement in the CFR and US Code books. Musk is literally mismanaging our nation's major institutions, and no one fucking voted for him to do that.

In the process, Musk is fulfilling the fantasy of every Far Right wingnut out there - from Grover Norquist on down - who dreamed of shrinking government small enough to drown in Grover's - and now Elon's - bathtub. They're convinced that there's too much waste in the federal system, and they believe it's all tied into to oversized staffing and bloated personnel budgets. This is why trump ordered a freeze for new hires and why Musk is pushing workers to retire early on questionable "deferred resignation" offers. They don't notice or care that a lot of agencies are understaffed - that's not where the bloat is, the wasteful spending is from corrupt vendor contracts - and by gutting many of these agencies of trained, qualified employees is going to make public service that much worse.

Treating the federal government like it's a new acquisition for a venture capital vulture capitalism firm is a bad idea. Mass firings - which you can see Musk is heading, because he's done it before - do not lead to improved services, only to overwhelmed staff that remained which now have to juggle more duties, and which worsens performance. Any attempt to refill those agencies will suffer from trump's need to staff people who are loyal to him, getting people not qualified for those duties.

The loss of jobs cascades across the employment spectrum: places that relied on a major employer - like a regional federal agency that staffed 200-500 people - will see less income coming in, gutting local businesses that will have to fire their own employees, which adds to the downward spiral. All of that job growth that happened under Biden is going to stop, unemployment is going to go up, and without any genuine investment from public spending - as Musk grabs every penny from a hijacked Treasury - our economy is going to tank.

All of this is happening because a Republican-controlled Congress refuses to fight trump - or Musk - on this issue, relinquishing any authority they have with "the power of the purse" to enforce the spending and staffing they already voted for. It's been up to the agencies' unions or outside advocacy groups filing lawsuits to try and stop Musk's rampage. And even that might not work as these lawsuits will end up before a conservative - and trump-friendly - Supreme Court that may well expand their definition of presidential powers to eliminate any checks or balances the Constitution demands.

This is going to get ugly, as fast as Musk can break everything.

Gods help us.

Current Status: My Writing Efforts

Just as a quick note, since I can no longer submit blog articles to the FWA Royal Palm Literary Awards, I submitted two unpublished short stories - one involving vampire bikers, and a sci-fi flash fiction - for consideration instead.

In the meantime, my trip to last weekend's Sunshine State Book Festival yielded zero sales for Funny Locations or any of the Strangely Funny anthologies I had on display. The guy on my right sold seven of his books, the guy on my left sold four. 

/deep heartbroken sigh 

I gotta work on my marketing skills ('cause I don't have any).

Will blog later tonight.

The Bank Alarms Are Going Off, But Will Anyone Stop Musk's Raids?

This is how chaotic things are going with President trump Elon Musk taking a sledgehammer to the federal government (via Jeff Stein, Isaac Arnsdorf, and Jacqueline Alemany at the Washington Post, so it may be paywalled):

The highest-ranking career official at the Treasury Department left the agency after a clash with allies of billionaire Elon Musk over access to sensitive payment systems, according to three people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private talks.

David A. Lebryk, who served in nonpolitical roles at Treasury for several decades, announced his retirement Friday in an email to colleagues obtained by The Washington Post. President Donald Trump named Lebryk as acting secretary upon taking office last week. Lebryk had a dispute with Musk’s surrogates over access to the payment system the U.S. government uses to disburse trillions of dollars every year, the people said. The exact nature of the disagreement was not immediately clear, they said.

Officials affiliated with Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” have been asking since after the election for access to the system, the people said — requests that were reiterated more recently, including after Trump’s inauguration...

Typically only a small number of career officials control Treasury’s payment systems. Run by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, the sensitive systems control the flow of more than $6 trillion annually to households, businesses and more nationwide. Tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people across the country rely on the systems, which are responsible for distributing Social Security and Medicare benefits, salaries for federal personnel, payments to government contractors and grant recipients, and tax refunds, among tens of thousands of other functions.

The clash reflects an intensifying battle between Musk and the federal bureaucracy as the Trump administration nears the conclusion of its second week. Musk has sought to exert sweeping control over the inner workings of the U.S. government, installing longtime surrogates at several agencies, including the Office of Personnel Management, which essentially handles federal human resources, and the General Services Administration, which manages real estate...

With the kind of control Musk is seeking, you have to question by what authority Musk can do any of this. He's not a Secretary of the Cabinet, he's the head of a non-approved advisory committee that Congress never budgeted or signed off on. Yet he's out here doing the things a Cabinet member would be doing, and without any accountability to anyone except trump. And even trump might not be in control of this train wreck.

This is what's scaring the experts and people in the know:

The executive order Trump signed creating DOGE also instructed all agencies to ensure it has “full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems,” which would appear to include the Treasury payment systems.

It is unclear precisely why Musk’s team sought access to those systems. But both Musk and the Trump administration more broadly have sought to control spending in ways that far exceed efforts by their predecessors and have alarmed legal experts.

Musk is going after the money: Either to shut down spending in part or in whole - which is unconstitutional and would crash the economy - or to funnel moneys into his and others pockets - which would be the largest bank heist in history and also crash the economy.

All of this is happening on the whims of a person whom NO ONE ELECTED to any office. Musk does not have the approval of the voters, he does not have confirmation from the Senate, he does not have any established legal authority outside of trump's executive orders. What he's doing ought to be illegal as hell.

And yet, thanks to the President First Felon in the White House, all of the checks and balances from the legislature or the judiciary might not be able to hold Musk - or trump - to account here.

If any advocacy groups outside of the federal government have the power to fight these corrupt acts, for the love of GOD do so, please and thank you.

Otherwise, the nation drowns in Grover's Elon's bathtub.

The Revenge Tour

trump promised he would seek vengeance on those who convicted or attempted to convict him on the many crimes he'd committed over the years, and while he's a known liar we all knew this was going to happen because trump is a tiny, spiteful, bitter man who must lash out against those who humiliated him in public (and to the history books). 

So it's one week into his second attempt to fleece and destroy the United States when trump got around to firing anybody he could who was involved in his insurrection and stolen documents federal cases (from Ryan Lucas and Carrie Johnson at NPR): 

The acting attorney general moved on Monday to fire several Justice Department officials who worked on the federal criminal investigations into President Donald Trump, according to two department officials familiar with the matter.

In termination letters sent to more than a dozen officials, acting Attorney General James McHenry wrote that he did not believe they "could be trusted to faithfully implement the President's agenda because of their significant role in prosecuting the president," one of the officials said...

The move comes the same day that Trump's acting U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., Ed Martin, issued a memo announcing a "special project" to review the department's prosecutions of Jan. 6 Capitol rioters, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

Martin instructed prosecutors to provide all information related to the use of a specific obstruction charge, including files, documents, emails, notes and other information. He also describes the use of the charge against rioters as a "great failure," according to the person who described the memo to NPR...

Martin is lying, because those obstruction charges worked in the court trials to convict 1,500 or so rioters who were violent towards law enforcement and threatening the safety of Congressional elected officials and staff. This is trump and his loyalists attempting to rewrite the facts into trump's fantasies. Back to the firings:

President Trump, has lashed out for years at the Justice Department, accusing it of unfairly targeting him and his supporters in what he claims were politically motivated investigations.

He was particularly angry about the two investigations brought by special counsel Jack Smith. One case revolved around Trump's efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and the other case stems from Trump's keeping of classified documents after he left office. Both cases were dropped after Trump won the election.

Department officials, including former President Joe Biden's attorney general, Merrick Garland, have rejected the allegations of weaponizing the department. They point out that the department prosecuted prominent Democrats during Biden's term, including the president's son, Hunter, as well as two prominent Democratic members of Congress.

The horrifying thing is, trump - and those lackeys who have their own agendas against American ideals - needs to accuse Democrats of "politicizing" the Justice Department because he himself wants to turn it into his own political enforcement tool. he needs to turn the courts away from holding him accountable for the many crimes he wants to accomplish back in the Oval Office, and to harass everyone else to keep them broken or too afraid to stop him.

Look at the other firings trump committed over the weekend, when he purged the Inspector Generals of most of the Executive branch agencies that will be most affected by trump's schemes (via Lucia Suarez Sang, Scott MacFarlane, and Nancy Cordes at CBS News):

The Trump administration purged at least a dozen federal inspectors general overnight Friday, multiple sources confirmed to CBS News. It is an unprecedented move that will likely result in legal challenges.

Speaking to reporters abroad Air Force One on his way to Florida, President Trump on Saturday described the firings as "standard" and a "very common thing to do."

But one of the fired inspectors general, Mark Greenblatt, who was nominated to be inspector general of the Interior Department by Mr. Trump during his first term, told CBS News in a phone interview Saturday that he was "stunned" when he received the notification.

Asked why he thinks Mr. Trump fired him and others, he responded, "The most charitable interpretation is that he doesn't believe in our independence or our fairness. The least charitable interpretation is that he wants lackeys to rubber stamp what he's trying to do."

"It's very bizarre," Greenblatt said. "There's no unifying theme as to why he chose this group of 17. It just doesn't make sense, to be completely honest. It does not make sense. No one can figure out what was driving the list."

Don't forget, it was an inspector general who provided direct testimony into trump's illicit phone call to Ukraine withholding funds, which led to trump's first impeachment trial. You can bet trump did not forget that slight either.

If there's any good news, it's that trump's firings may have been illegal, and could well raise the ire of even a Republican-controlled Congress:

The inspector general of the U.S. Small Business Administration, Hannibal "Mike" Ware, said the firings are legally dubious and will be challenged.

Ware, who was among those fired and who chairs the the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, argued in a letter to a White House personnel official that he "does not believe the actions taken are legally sufficient."

According to Ware, he and other inspectors general were sent an email from Sergio Gor, the director of presidential personnel, on Friday informing them that "due to changing priorities, your position as Inspector General...is terminated, effective immediately."

Ware, in his letter, which was obtained by CBS News, recommended Gor reach out to White House legal counsel to discuss the "intended course of action" as "we do not believe the actions taken are legally sufficient to dismiss Presidentially Appointed, Senate Confirmed Inspectors General."

Federal law requires the White House to give Congress a full month of warning and case-specific details before firing a federal inspector general.

The fired inspectors general include many who were appointed during the first Trump administration, according to one source. Ware and Greenblatt were both sworn in during Mr. Trump's first administration. Back in 2020, Mr. Trump fired five inspector generals.

Ware, who is also the chair of the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, an independent oversight body, said in a separate statement that inspector generals are not "immune from removal." However, he echoed that unjustified removals are a "significant threat" to the jobs they're meant to do.

"Congress specifically established the authorities and structure of the IGs to safeguard their vital oversight role, by mandating independence under the IG Act," he said. "Removals inconsistent with the law are a significant threat to the actual and perceived independence of IGs."   

Ware also noted that Congress recently amended the Inspector General Act to require the president to notify Congress 30 days prior to the removal of an inspector general, as well as requiring a "substantive rationale, including detailed and case-specific reasons."

in short: trump has to show cause, direct evidence that all of these inspector generals were in violation of some other law, or performing at a level of incompetence that would justify removal. But trump doesn't have that: All he has are his grievances and his corrupt needs to behave without accountability to anyone.

The firings of career prosecutors at Justice may also be unlawful, but it depends on how the civil service protects their professional employees from wrongful terminations.

This is now all on a Congress that may be controlled by Republicans, and whether they are keen to at least push back against trump's aggressive assaults on the rule of law and threats to their own authority. This is also on a Supreme Court - also controlled by Far Right jurists - who already granted presidents - trump especially - with broader executive powers, to which they could justify these firings and allow trump to escape further accountability.

None of this would be happening, by the by, if 77 million of you sadists and assholes didn't vote for the Convicted Felon and Court-Confirmed Sex Offender.

You're going to see corrupt rule by the worst people now over the coming months, and it's a legitimate question if most of us will even survive any of it.

(on a personal note, this is blog No. 2491, I'm nine away from 2500 which should be celebrated in some way. Maybe if people would visit the Sunshine State Book Festival in Gainesville, FL this February 1st when I'll be there promoting my books! Ow stop hitting me...)

Begun, the 2025 Trade Wars Have

If anybody had Colombia on their trump Tariff Bingo card, you can cash in your winnings with Vegas tonight (via Regina Garcia Cano and Astrid Suarez at AP News):

The United States and Colombia, long close partners in anti-narcotics efforts, clashed Sunday over the deportation of migrants and imposed tariffs on each other’s goods in a show of what countries could face if they intervene in the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

Presidents Donald Trump and Gustavo Petro, in a series of social media posts, defended their views on migration, with the latter accusing Trump of not treating immigrants with dignity during deportation and announcing a retaliatory 25% increase in Colombian tariffs on U.S. goods.

Earlier, the U.S. president had ordered visa restrictions, 25% tariffs on all Colombian incoming goods, which would be raised to 50% in one week, and other retaliatory measures sparked by Petro’s decision to reject two Colombia-bound U.S. military aircraft carrying migrants.

At issue are the methods of how trump is sending the deportees. We have long-standing agreements in place with various Central and South American nations about returning illegals to their place of origin, but there's supposed to be procedure and protocols and trump reportedly rejects all that. Instead of standard air transport, he's ordered the use of military planes. Instead of going through a evaluation - which takes time - he's deporting people without due process and without informing the other nations of when and where.

Enraging the Colombian government - as well as other nations - is how the deportees are treated: chained up like prisoners instead of people:

Earlier in the day, Petro said his government would not accept flights carrying migrants deported from the U.S. until the Trump administration creates a protocol that treats them with “dignity.” Petro made the announcement in two X posts, one of which included a news video of migrants reportedly deported to Brazil walking on a tarmac with restraints on their hands and feet.

“A migrant is not a criminal and must be treated with the dignity that a human being deserves,” Petro said. “That is why I returned the U.S. military planes that were carrying Colombian migrants... In civilian planes, without being treated like criminals, we will receive our fellow citizens.”

While other nations like Honduras and Guatemala are accepting trump's use of military planes to return deportees, having Central/South American countries reject these attempts are going to create humanitarian dilemmas for the United States.

In the meantime, trump's swift use of tariffs as a stick to beat nations like Colombia into doing his bidding is going to hurt Americans who are relying on that nation's various imported goods... like coffee. While Colombian coffee only makes up 20 percent of our intake, any increase in costs is going to cripple the amount of what we get. With Brazil's market hit by lowered production due to natural disasters, there's already a shortage to where coffee prices have gone up. Are Americans - seriously addicted to coffee - ready to pay $20 a latte at Starbucks?

trump is looking to make an example of Colombia, hoping to bully them with weaponized tariffs into accepting his mass deportation scheme the way he wants it: cruel and clumsy. But all he's doing is signaling to the world that he has no care or concern about what tariffs and trade wars actually do (don't forget, trump thinks trade wars are good, and easy to win). And he's pushing our major trade partners in this hemisphere into shopping for other markets, likely with a China that is eager to supplant the United States in economic dominance... the very thing that's triggering trump's demands to take back the Panama Canal.

In the meantime, trump is ramping up the "mass deportation" plan here at home, with orders getting sent down to ICE departments to reach daily quotas of 1,200 to 1,500 arrests per day. We're talking about pressure on immigration officers to round up at least 50 people an hour, as though locating and targeting undocumented migrants is easy. What's going to happen is that ICE agents will grab anybody who looks Latino and claim they're illegals, even if they have genuine IDs proving they are American citizens. 

This is like Stop And Frisk - a shameful and failed practice that's still deployed by police - on steroids, with the horrifying implications that thousands of Americans are going to have their rights and their freedoms denied.

None of this is doing our economy or our citizenry any favors. Both the war on trade and the war on Latinos are going to turn into disasters, and a lot of innocent people are going to get hurt (or even killed).

Welcome back to the trumpian chaos that makes America even worse. Thanks a lot, 77 million trump voters, for fucking us all over.

Update: the next morning the news reports are that cooler heads prevailed and that Colombia's insistence on better treatment for deportees will get handled. trump of course is crowing that it's a victory because "he fixed it" and got a nation to admit to taking back "criminals". It's more likely some of his people warned him a large tariff on coffee would be a very bad idea. Either way, this incident demonstrates what we'll expect - again - out of the Eternal Shitgibbon: political acts no different from bullying, designed to cause controversy and disrupt things until trump can profit from it. And he's going to keep doing this until somebody - maybe Mexico, maybe Canada, hopefully most of Europe and Asia - punches back and keeps punching.

Remaining Awake

The thought that keeps me going in dark days like this one:

Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice. 

-- Martin Luther King Jr., 

trump and the Republicans have turned that arc into a goddamned pretzel, but the fight continues.

What If: So How Bad Is It Gonna Get?

So the Eternal Shitgibbon ahem Dark Lord is returning, greedier and more terrible than before, and there's not so much panic as there is despair and regret among the Center-Left people I hang out with. I know I'm feeling it, the utter dread of knowing trump - a court-convicted felon, a certified sex offender - is getting back into a White House with Presidential powers now more far-reaching than he wielded last time.

Meaning things after January 20th are going to get worse than what we saw from 2017 to 2020. Which - given the racism, the cruelty, and the greedy self-glorification - was pretty bad.

I could game out what I expect to see out of the Cruelty Is Policy 2.0 administration trump is about to unleash. But I got to admit when I attempt these "What If" guessing games, I'm really not making the correct predictions. The last couple of "What Ifs" were actually heart-breaking.

So if I'm going to do a "What If" for trump's second term of office, I'm going to have to recognize that - given how sadistic and greedy the upcoming policies we already know is coming - whatever I'm guessing at is likely going to be worse.

I mean, it's already a given that trump will use his inauguration speech to rage through his grievances. The media is already reporting how he's going to issue Executive Orders to begin mass deportations, to declare Mexican drug cartels as terrorists so he can deploy the military against them, to begin purging the civil service through Schedule F rules to decimate the federal agencies, pardoning every person convicted in the January 6th insurrection, and even change the rules on electric vehicles (which benefits his BFF Elon Musk).

But let's suppose the "What If" has trump going full Dictator on Day One like he threatened to do during the campaign. What if trump goes completely overboard with the abuse of executive power?

Let's say trump during his speech gives the order to arrest every Democratic figure on the stage with him - Biden, Obama, both Bill and Hillary Clinton, any other congressional leader - on "charges" that they "conspired to steal" the 2020 Election from him. Don't forget, that's still a serious thorn in his pride as he can never admit he loses at anything. Most of the punditry and power players in DC knows he's going to unleash "his" Justice Department on those who slighted, indicted, and convicted him. But what if he does it right there, Day One, ordering the Secret Service and other law enforcement at the inauguration to drag the Democratic leaders off to jail cells?

We know trump wants to implement massive tariffs on our major trading partners. While his handlers are trying to talk him into a slow incremental process at 5 percent (which would still cause serious havoc), trump is likely eager to jump right at the 15 percent across-the-board hike just to show how tough he is on trade.

We know the mass deportations and round-ups of "illegals" are going to begin the second he gives the order - they're already telling us which city (Chicago) so the media can show up and let them get their publicity while they harass and attack thousands of people and families - but we shouldn't expect ICE or any of trump's eager brownshirts to go by proper procedure. We're going to see bloody faces and bodies as a show of force. We're going to see a lot of innocent people who aren't "illegals" - a lot of Puerto Ricans are going to have a rough week - get caught in the chaotic dragnets.

Worse, don't be surprised if the migrant hunters go after the local schools instead of workplaces. trump is going to issue Executive Orders removing the Birthright Citizenship protections. They're going to aim for loopholes so they can "detain" any Latino or dark-skinned child even if they were genuinely born in the United States and gained their citizenship (even children who have one parent who IS a natural citizen will get targeted). Remember everybody: Cruelty Is the Point with trump's anti-immigrant crusade and they WILL go after kids. It may be unconstitutional right now, but don't be surprised if trump gets this before his puppets on the Supreme Court and gets them to uphold the loopholes as "legal."

I wouldn't even be surprised if trump declares we're in a "state of war" with Mexico concerning the border, which would excuse his attempt to create a national emergency and grant himself more power. It would let him - through the Joint Chiefs - seize control of every National Guard in every state including the Democratic-controlled ones, and use them to fill the logistical - manpower and firepower - holes in the deportation plans.

If trump declares that national emergency, he could go to Congress and get his Republican lackeys to pass legislation activating the draft (Selective Service): It will allow him to quickly fill the military ranks to use in his deportation schemes, and also shake the stick even harder at Mexico to get them to bend the knee to trump. Thing is, trump could try to ignore Congress altogether and set up his own draft using his own parameters to pick and choose who gets drafted. It may be against the law, but he'll certainly try it because he's testing the limits of "official acts" of the presidency. What he'll set up will be no lottery, no physical or educational requirements, no psych evals: A way to bring in a lot of the Proud Boy and white supremacist extremists who'd otherwise get filtered out of the military.

And because trump is fully "anti-woke" - he opposes racial diversity in hiring practices - he's going to abuse his office to purge our own military of what he'll call "DEI" hires of Black and Latino (and maybe even women) officers and undo everything we've done since Truman to make our armed forces a truly American - and honestly diverse - institution. he's going to turn our military into an overpowered national police force for which it wasn't designed to do, while crippling the chain of command during all of these adjustments.

Oh, and he's going to insist on the military and every civil servant to swear a new oath of loyalty, not to the United States or the Constitution. he's going to insist they swear loyalty to himself.

The result of all this madness? Arguably within the first week of trump's takeover?

Obviously, the lawsuits from various civil rights groups to counter trump's efforts. They will try to delay the immediate effects of trump's cruelty, but there's no guarantee they'll succeed in a legal system now skewed to trump's will.

We will see serious damage to our federal bureaucracy and in ways that will make service to the public even worse. trump's purge of agencies will leave behind those unqualified at their jobs or overwhelmed by the workload expanding as more people are fired (or quit in disgust). In terms of the military, gutting the officer corps could also trigger mass resignations, disrupting the chain of command even more. I doubt trump and his Far Right buddies will care, though.

The more interesting consequences will be with the economy, which was chugging along pretty well under Biden. trump's efforts to enact tariffs will create shock among investors and cause markets to crash - much like they did during trump's first round of tariffs - all the while forcing prices to go up, because those tariffs will both be an extra tax on the citizenry as well as create supply chain shortages making goods more expensive. Not to mention the tariffs will trigger trade wars on a greater scale than we saw earlier, because the other nations - Canada, Mexico, and China in particular - are not exactly keen on dancing to trump's tune.

trump's efforts to create a national emergency over immigration will trigger international outrage, especially if trump tries to start a border war with Mexico. Considering how trump is panicking Europe over his obsession with buying annexing Greenland from Denmark, we're going to find ourselves with few allies.

trump's also threatening to send troops to the Panama Canal to retake it, arguing that China is getting too influential with that nation (but more than likely he's angry with them for shutting down his properties there). If he pushes too hard, we're going to witness most of Central and South America - and other global powers affected by trade through the Canal - retaliate however they can. trump is rattling his sabers at everyone (except Russia) and he's going to make more enemies that are willing and able to push back.

And speaking of Russia: trump is likely going to do everything he can to lift the massive economic sanctions to allow Putin more freedom to attack Ukraine even harder. I don't buy the public narrative that he'll issue more sanctions on Russian oil. he's too beholden to Putin to play the tough guy. There may be foreign policy experts - and a sizable number of Republican congresscritters - who are pro-Ukrainian and hopeful that success on this front would break Russia's corrupt influence across most of the planet. But trump doesn't care about experts, he only cares about getting adoration from those he views as his equals (the rich and the corrupt).

So by next Saturday: expect Wall Street to be engulfed in flames, with half of the Armed Forces seriously considering a coup to overthrow trump and the Republican Congress before they fire a third of their generals and admirals, while Mexico and Canada agree to a mutual self-defense pact escalating the chance of a two-front war along America's borders. All the while half our nation's sheriffs departments and National Guardsmen overwhelmed chasing after migrant workers instead of doing their normal duties in their communities.

That's what I'm expecting. I don't believe I am over-exaggerating. trump and his wingnut allies really want to disrupt everything they can so they can profit from the chaos.

Don't forget: 77 million of you voted for his madness to drive our nation over the cliffs. Goddamn you.

Biden's Farewell

Update 1/20/25: Thanks again to Steve in Manhattan for including this article on Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! I know today is going to be a dark and stressful one, so my suggestion to survive this day is 1) don't fcking watch and 2) hug your pets/loved ones. Good luck. We're all counting on you.

As most outgoing Presidents are wont to do - since Washington set the tone - President Joe Biden issued a formal Farewell Address to the nation, pointing out his term's successes and making dire warnings about what lays ahead (via Chris Megerian, Zeke Miller, and Colleen Long at AP News):

President Joe Biden used his farewell address to the nation Wednesday to deliver stark warnings about an “oligarchy” of the ultra-wealthy taking root in the country and a “tech-industrial complex” that is infringing on Americans’ rights and the future of democracy.

Speaking from the Oval Office as he prepares to hand over power Monday to President-elect Donald Trump, Biden seized what is likely to be his final opportunity to address the country before he departs the White House to spotlight the accumulation of power and wealth in the U.S. among just a small few.

“Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead,” Biden said, drawing attention to “a dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a few ultra-wealthy people and the dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked...”

Biden’s speech in the Oval Office is the latest in a series of remarks on domestic policy and foreign relations he has delivered that are intended to cement his legacy and reshape Americans’ grim views on his term. Earlier in the day, he heralded a long awaited ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, which could end more than a year of bloodshed in the Middle East.

“It’ll take time to feel the full impact of what we’ve done together but the seeds are planted and they’ll grow and they’ll bloom for decades to come,” Biden said. It was a tacit acknowledgement that many Americans say they have yet to feel the impact of his trillions of dollars spent on domestic initiatives...

Biden offered his own set of solutions for the problems that he laid out: change the tax code to ensure billionaires “pay their fair share,” eliminate the flow of hidden sources of money into political campaigns, establish 18-year term limits for members of the Supreme Court and ban members of Congress from trading stocks. His policy prescriptions come as his political capital is at its nadir as Biden prepares to exit the national stage, and after he has done little to advance those causes during his four years in power at the White House...

That last sentence aptly defines what could prove to be Biden's legacy: Both the long-term accomplishments he focused on working to rebuild the economy post-COVID and post-trump, and the frustration at letting too many needed reforms go pass. ALL of those things that Biden offered as solutions - especially the needed caps on campaign financing and on judicial overreach and corruption - were things HIS OWN administration could have worked on during the brief window of opportunity 2021 to 2023 when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress.

To this, I would point to Professor James David Barber's cheat sheet of Presidential Character. Where Biden falls on that spectrum - Passive-Positive - explains a lot about the lack of energy or focus when working on extensive and radical reforms. Passives are the type that don't want to "rock the boat" too hard and shake off any support from the more extreme elements of their own coalitions (and are willing to work with opponents thinking everyone's all in one big happy Starfleet); while the Positive trait of seeing the powers of high office as a good thing for the public can blind such Presidents from the need to stop corruption in government. Such Congeniality wouldn't be a problem in times of normalcy: However, we are in the Age of trump, where lies and greed are the coins of the realm, and Biden exposed himself to attacks he couldn't overcome.

This is why Passive-Positives preside over either administrations of high corruption or low energy. The good news is that Biden's personal incorruptibility - in spite of the MAGA accusations that he's corrupt like his son Hunter - drove him to surround himself with good people who did their jobs. This keeps him from getting grouped with the likes of U.S. Grant (who failed to surround himself with good people) and Warren Harding (who happily surrounded himself with corrupt friends) and Ronald Reagan (who may not have been fully aware of his regime's corruption but allowed it to happen). Biden falls in with the likes of William Taft: Who rose to power during a Progressive reformist wave and served a relatively scandal-free term, but failed to capitalize on more economic reforms and corporate regulations that were needed in that era.

As a side note, this is where Barber's Character chart of creating four major traits falls apart in the specific successes and failures of each presidency. Not all Active-Positive Presidents behave the same way, nor do Passive-Positives or Active-Negatives (there have been too few Passive-Negatives to make that observation). Even within each Character there seems to be two types: With Passive-Positives there's the type that presides over corruption because they don't want to lose friends (Appeasers) or the type that doesn't want to push harder on things that need doing (Slackers) because they feared the risks (something Actives never worry about).

Biden ended up as a Slacker President, trying to focus on big-menu items like job growth and infrastructure but unwilling to press harder on major crises such as trump's lawlessness and foreign wars/interventions such as Ukraine (where Biden's fear of Putin's nuclear retaliation paralyzed our support efforts to Zelensky) and Gaza (even as Biden claims success with a ceasefire, it took too many months and too many innocent Palestinian lives to get here).

Because of Biden's inability to see trump as a genuine and ongoing threat to American democracy and political well-being - and because he feared falling into the accusations of dictatorship if they pursued trump's criminality - he didn't push too hard - and hired a like-minded Attorney General in Merrick Garland who also didn't press the need - to see trump held accountable for his actions on January 6th. That delay cost us dearly: It allowed trump to campaign again and use his gaslighting and denials to escape justice, and return to power with a vengeance (literally).

Biden's administration is going to be less remembered for the accomplishments he did achieve - especially a key infrastructure bill that should improve local manufacturing and job growth for the next 20 years - and more remembered for all the missed opportunities to end global threats like Putin and greedhead threats like Elon Musk. He'll be among the ranks of the recently passed Jimmy Carter: A Good man who didn't exactly do a Great job.