Tag Archives: Project 2025

Drowning Gov’t in the Bathtub

Leave a reply

In this politically turbulent time, I can’t help but recall a quote from Grover Norquist in 2001. From Liasson, Mara (May 25, 2001). “Conservative advocate”. Morning Edition. NPR.

“I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”–Grover Norquist

The anti-government coup that is taking place presently resembles closely an attempt to convert the USA into a libertarian state. {How the Project 2025 elite will tolerate Trump’s authoritarian reflex is unclear.} More than just economics, there is also a component of Christian nationalism as well. From what I know about the John Birch Society, the combination of libertarianism and enthusiastic support from far-right Christian evangelicalism adds up to a theocratic-leaning anti-democracy regime. What’s wrong with minimal government? Some negatives are listed below. The six bullet points are copied directly from Google using the searched under libertarian negatives.

===========

  • “Increased inequality: Critics worry that with minimal government intervention and lower taxes, the gap between the wealthy and the poor could widen significantly. 
  • Difficulty addressing social and environmental problems: A philosophy that advocates for very limited government is criticized for being unable to effectively address issues like pollution, climate change, and other negative externalities that require collective action and regulation. 
  • Neglect of public goods and services: The libertarian ideal of minimal government may lead to underfunding or elimination of essential public services, which may negatively impact infrastructure, education, and social welfare programs. 
  • Conditional freedom: Some argue that a purely libertarian framework might make freedom conditional on an individual’s ability to afford certain protections or opportunities, failing to provide a baseline of security for everyone. 
  • Challenges in complex societies: The principles of libertarianism, which often rely on small-scale, community-based reasoning, may struggle to provide adequate solutions for the scale and complexity of modern societies and economies. 
  • Limited safety net: The minimal government model may not provide the necessary social safety net for those who are unable to work or are facing hardship, leaving vulnerable populations without support. “

============

What’s appealing about libertarianism? Again, straight from Google and searched under libertarian positives-

  • “Libertarians advocate the expansion of individual autonomy and political self-determination,
  • Emphasizing the principles of equality before the law and the protection of civil rights, including the rights to freedom of association, freedom of speech, freedom of thought and freedom of choice.”

============

What’s not to like about libertarianism in the above libertarian positives bullet points? In a more humorous mood, I might joke that libertarianism is the theoretical foundation which supports and normalizes greed. If not here already, we are approaching a new gilded age and Project 2025 will lock it into place. The lion’s share of natural resources and related industry is in the hands of fewer and fewer people and corporations. Theoretical question: Shouldn’t a child today expect that by virtue of being born on this planet expect to share in the resource wealth of this world? Every minute of every day, children are born into a world where its riches have already been hoarded by people or by entities far away.

The world is a hazardous place, and nature has many tricks to kill us. Our government in the US has been active in managing our safety and to construct frameworks to monitor infectious disease, dangerous weather, the actions of potential enemies, food safety, pollution, work safety, chemical and nuclear safety, air, land and sea transportation safety, and put in place and maintain the national highway system. Oh yes, and the US military is busy guarding our borders to protect commerce.

Over time our gov’t has identified ways to make life safer and healthier for all citizens, irrespective of race, color or creed. After WWII, the US became the global hegemon. While very far from perfect, the US has contributed to the health and wellbeing of countless people and countries. Where do so many people emigrating from their homelands want to go? To Russia or China? Until now the US was synonymous with opportunity and freedom. But the world has tired of US hegemony and new alliances are being forged.

The sly schemers at the Heritage Foundation who dreamt up Project 2025 seem to have put into play a populist movement that closely rhymes with Norquist’s idea. Make the unpopular cuts in the federal government during a conservative supermajority with a president who has risen to folk hero status. Presently, we are in a 2-year span between national elections. By the time the Democratic party has legislative or executive control, untying the MAGA/GOP web snugged into place will take a new Congress and a new president years to repair, if ever.

Trump is still in office partly because the bulk of the US population respects the national election schedule. In doing so, citizens are trapped in the stretch of history with him in office. This respect is in contrast to Trump’s disrespect for government institutions and the Constitution. His greed mentality, animated by his transactional approach to seemingly everything, keeps him pushing the boundaries of presidential norms. Instead of legislating his plans for the country, he rules by executive order and relies on the courts to validate his actions. The GOP strategy from years back of filling the courts with conservative judges is paying off by planting Trump-friendly judges in many districts. However, it doesn’t always payoff for the orange Jesus.

The viewpoint voiced by Michelle Obama saying to the effect of “if they go low, we go high” has fallen limp and become only a hopeful aphorism. The power of this statement seems inadequate to win many elections for liberal candidates. Part and parcel of the “Woke” accusation by MAGAs is the idea that liberals can’t stomach what needs to be done. It comes from the same playbook that includes advice to spank your kids and ignore the tragedy of gender misclassification. Dems, they say, are too soft headed to apply tough love.

In politics and religion, you find people who are devotees of particular doctrines that they perhaps do not understand clearly. If you are a devotional thinker, you strive to absorb doctrine. If you are an analytical thinker, you will make the effort to dissect an assertion and examine it for accuracy, clarity and implications. This is obviously a spectrum and “devotional” and “analytical” are the bookends of that spectrum. America is a mix of doctrinaire and analytical thinkers who may respond differently to a given idea or point.

The most effective way to outfox your political opponents is to make outrageous statements and repeat them endlessly à la Trump. An outrageous sentence takes only a few seconds to utter but can take many hours or days to research and prepare a rebuttal. Worse yet, the rebuttal isn’t guaranteed to get popular airtime unless delivered by a famous person like a late-night TV host, George Clooney or Gov. Newsom. We’ve become accustomed to outrageous statements paraded in the media in the form of a freak show. Everyone has watched satire and absurdism as entertainment. Superficially, Trump’s absurd statements seem to cray that no one could believe him. But people do take his ridiculous utterances seriously.

All of the legacy news organizations in the US media are owned by corporations. Corporations have both stockholders and stakeholders. Stockholders (owners) of a corporation can be the public, select individuals or the founder and/or upper management. The stakeholders are customers, employees, vendors and other organizations whose livelihood depends on the corporation. The management and stockholders of the major media outlets demand maximum quarterly profits (normal), so news directors have no motive to risk losing eyeballs to the competition for fear of losing their jobs. Newsrooms usually have a well-honed sense of what it takes to hold the flighty attention span of its audiences. Factually accurate and rational analysis, if ever delivered, are likely to remain on a hard drive unless there are some important heart strings to tug. News directors and editors are loathe to broadcast or print content that Dan Rather once called MEGO- My Eyes Glaze Over.

One of the attributes of stockholder ownership of a public stock is that the stockholders are very often like absentee landlords. They have nothing to do with the actual day-to-day operation of the corporation other than apply pressure on C-Suite management from a distance. To them, a given company is just a profitable parking spot for their cash irrespective of the merits of the company’s product to society. They have been given legal personhood but without the expectation of kindness and other human attributes. It’s hard to fathom how this might be different.

The popular news media are more accurately defined as semi-analytical show business.

While the news media have been bathing in the warm glow of its status as the 4th Estate, the inherent attribute of being a corporate entity with stockholders as absentee landlords is approaching the corporate bookend. That bookend can be found in the curriculum of any popular MBA program. Find the gap between the current state and the desired conditions and use KPIs, Key Performance Indicators, to close the gap. The more quantitative the KPIs, the more enshrined they’ll become in the C-Suite. It allows the accounting and finance MBAs to sit at their spreadsheets and plot impressive bar graphs with hockey stick projections of near-term EBITDA.

I will offer that if Trump somehow gets elected for a 3rd term, the USA as we knew it has collapsed. If a single party can manage to illegally keep a man in office for an extra term, then the government is very much out of control. At that point, what are the citizens to do? Sit and endure the new authoritarian state like so many have in history? Or do we take up arms and fight a tyrannical government? Isn’t that what the 2nd amendment to the Constitution is for? Something to think about.

America’s Upcoming Self-Immolation

Leave a reply

The reader should know that I would much prefer to write about sciency topics like chemistry or mining geochemistry. But I have become aware of a political tsunami that could arrive at our shores in 2025. It is a planned sequence of actions aiming to convert our American civilization, its economy and politics so drastically as to be unrecognizable by the standards of today. It is breathtaking in its sweep and amounts to nothing less than a sociopolitical revolution. I refer to “Project 2025” organized by the Heritage Foundation. Short of a mainland invasion of North America, I am hard pressed to think of something that will so drastically alter the course of American civilization. Republicans are seeking to emplace a permanent conservative state. My view is this- screw ’em.

At present, the US is the global hegemon and has been one since WWII. Many nations resent this, especially China and Russia, and seek to become the major hegemonies themselves. They strongly desire to knock the US off the sandpile and take up residence for themselves. Trump’s America First policy would allow Russia and China to step up as US foreign influence is purposely relaxed. As the unity of the US/EU and NATO collapses, Russia’s influence in Eastern Europe will rise as they move forward to the reestablishment of a Soviet-scale state. China’s dominance along the South China Sea, Southeast Asia, Taiwan, Philippines, Indonesia, Malasia and Australia will grow, as they intend it to.

The expansion of Chinese and Russian influence will come as a result of the loss of global US influence. As technology and the quality of life expands across the world, US hegemony will necessarily diminish somewhat. What we can and should hold onto is our standing as an influential and thriving democracy.

To my many friends, colleagues and readers, all I can say is that now is not the time to shrink back into your shells and wait out the 2024 political season in the US. If your visual acuity takes you past your nose you will see that Project 2025 will strongly alter the function of the federal government. This is a step towards a dictatorial architecture that will directly affect our lives and our standing in the world.

Hyperbole? Visit the link and think it through for yourself.

Project 2025 is nothing less than a coherent plan to deconstruct the administrative function of the federal government, especially under the executive branch. The many designers of this project believe in the so-called “deep state” which, they say, is firmly nested in the ponderous federal bureaucracy. As a story it has the necessary elements of a conspiracy novel. There are protagonists, antagonists, narrators and enough historical detail to make their storyline convincing. In my view, the deep state exists in the form of dark money and the subsequent influence over politicians, mostly the recipients of big conservative money.

The US media will be of little help here and will relegate themselves to documenting the downfall for the infotainment of everyone around the world. Decades hence, dissertations and documentaries will be produced attempting to explain the collapse to authoritarianism to puzzled citizens.

But Project 2025 is more than just a rejiggering of the administrative apparatus of the federal government. Significantly, it aims to intensify the many powers of the federal bureaucracy directly into the hands of the president by aligning the federal workforce job security to be politically accountable to the president.

It represents a transition from a primary emphasis on expertise to that of political reliability for one’s career-sake. The plan will go into effect the first day of the next Republican president’s administration, be it Trump or otherwise. This is what the plan states in clear English.

In our federal government, laws are passed and placed into the Unites States Code, USC. This content is then translated into the Code of Federal Regulations, CFR, for promulgation. The CFR is a structure of regulations based on the USC for practical application and enforcement.

It is easy and quite lazy to claim that the US federal government is completely broken. It seems to be hypersensitive in some areas and intractably slow elsewhere. Nonetheless, much of it functions like it should behind the curtains. Do we really want a government that is incontestably and quickly responsive to the whims of a president? Or should there be checks and balances built into the system? Handing over more power to a morally bankrupt person like Trump is grossly irresponsible, stupid and may not be reversable. Other than a foreign invasion, this could not be more serious.

Those Wacky Republicans!

Leave a reply

Yet again, very serious and doctrinaire House Republicans apply their skills in the art of clusterf**kery. The act of legislating and otherwise steering the big federal boat is secondary to their acquisition of power. A core of ultraorthodox conservatives called the Freedom Caucus is tangled in an internecine battle for control and don’t seem to care much about collateral damage. The roots of this group go back to the delightful Tea Party in 2015.

What the Freedom Caucus may be doing is laying the groundwork for Project 2025: Presidential Transition Project. This plan, organized by The Heritage Foundation, seeks to deconstruct or reorganize the administrative branch of the federal government and populate it with vetted, politically reliable staff. Winning seats in Congress or the Whitehouse is now deemed insufficient.

House Republicans leading the way.

This plan from The Heritage Foundation is the result of a very extensive collaboration of groups from all over the right-wing. I don’t think that anyone will deny that the federal bureaucracy is too big and too slow. But what Project 2025 plans to do is to apply a conservative foundation of politically reliable personnel. There would be a political test to pass prior to getting a government job. The effect will be to polarize the government in a way that would be quite difficult to change. They want a Republican America set in stone and they plan on starting the first day of the next Republican administration. We know this because they have written a book on how they plan to do it.

“The project is the effort of a broad coalition of conservative organizations that have come together to ensure a successful administration begins in January 2025. With the right conservative policy recommendations and properly vetted and trained personnel to implement them, we will take back our government.”

Source: The Heritage Foundation.

Meanwhile, Emperor Trumpus Maximus continues to blunder forward with promises of MAGA, all the while trampling over the garden of civilization. It’s like watching Godzilla destroying 1950’s Tokyo while a jabbering and ineffectual media makes sure to capture and replay every delicious morsel of bad adult behavior.

As always, Trump continues to rack up hours of free TV coverage. They call it news, but it’s really a nonstop freak show. The headliner, DJT, is a genius at attracting big-media coverage. Trump’s legacy is now totally out of his control. He has fumbled his business empire to the edge of extinction and his political career is disintegrating. What a dangerous idiot.

The Russians are gleefully watching our Republican House of Representatives implosion. It validates Putin’s (and China’s) claim that the US is a declining empire in moral disarray and that democracy can’t be made to work. The upcoming 2024 elections offer the hope of declining US and NATO backing of Ukraine. All Putin has to do is outlive Ukraine’s ability to wage war.