Democrats appear to be utterly oblivious to the fact that they are being played for chumps by the Trump/Musk tag team. Like a couple of frightful lucha libre wrestlers, the team has waded into the federal bureaucracy to grapple with voracious swamp creatures desperately guarding their feeding trough. The Democrats, seemingly unaware about just how this drama is playing out in the public eye, are instinctively charging into the trap.
As you are probably aware, Donald Trump appointed liberal nemesis Elon Musk to head up the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Musk has unleashed a squad of tech bros to scour the federal budget for waste and fraud. Democrats have argued that neither Trump nor Musk have any right to peek into the books to examine specific expenditures, and a temporary injunction is in effect as I write this.
Their first target was the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the federal agency tasked with disbursing international aid, where they found some eye-popping expenditures. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt described these expenditures as including $1.5 million to advance DEI in the Serbian workplace; $70,000 for a DEI musical in Ireland; $47,000 for a transgender opera in Colombia, and $32,000 for a transgender comic book in Peru.
Not surprisingly, Democrats circled the wagons to mount a defense, insisting that these expenditures were “taken out of context,” and represent just a small portion of their budget. Per the publication Factcheck, only the $1.5 million to a Serbian LGBTQ advocacy organization was made by USAID, and the others were actually made by the State Department, perhaps missing the larger point about government waste. Factcheck went on to defend the Irish DEI event as not being a “musical,” but a “musical event,” and clarified that the Peruvian comic book featured a gay, not trans, character. AP glowingly described the Colombian trans opera as intended to “raise awareness and increase trans representation.”
The defense ignored the most fundamental question: Why the hell are we using U.S. taxpayer money to fund musical events, comic books, and workplace programs in other countries?
Democrats are fools for even trying to defend these disbursements. If Democrats were smart, they would feign surprise and outrage and join in the indignant chorus demanding changes and the head of whoever approved these expenditures. But the louder Democrats howl in opposition, the more that they draw public attention to their waste of public funds and reinforce their image as reckless, wasteful spenders.
Perhaps recognizing that most voters are unlikely to see these sorts of expenditures as a good use of public funds, Democrats have turned to attacking Musk and the audit that uncovered the expenditures. They have depicted Musk as an unhinged, drug-addled foreigner who is being recklessly allowed to root around in government’s most confidential data with his band of teenage hackers, where they will exploit their access to empty the assets of the U.S. Treasury and taxpayers into their own pockets. They insist that neither Trump nor his DOGE auditors have the right to access this data, curiously insisting that only bureaucratic staffers, and not their boss and the boss’s chosen auditors, have a right to access.
In trying to scare the public, Democrats overlook the fact that Musk has only “read only” access, and not the right to order disbursements. They also ignore the fact the confidential data available is the same sort as most people routinely divulge to numerous and random minions every time they apply for a credit card, loan, rental application, medical care, etc. Perhaps this really isn’t the end of democracy after all.
The cacophony of Democratic protests are bound to get louder, as Trump has announced that he also wants to look into military spending and spending by the Department of Education. These are institutions which already have a reputation for waste. Recall $500 hammers and the like? There is no way the Democrats can protest without looking bad.
The reliably hyperbolic Democrats are crying that Trump is “trying to tear down the government,” perhaps overestimating how fond taxpayers are of our government and how much they trust it. Especially with tax time approaching, a little bureaucratic ass-kicking appeals to a lot of people. Those who feed off the government may not be happy with it, but those of us who pay for it aren’t. Government will survive a diet.
The Democratic theatrics may play well in the insular echo chambers of the left but are unlikely to convince others that an outside examination of federal spending is a bad idea. The more that the Democrats insist that the actual spending records are somehow sacrosanct and immune from review, the more it reinforces the belief that Democrats are hiding something and that an audit is needed. Nothing cleanses like sunlight.
Every squawk coming out the Democrats reinforces their image as impulsive, irresponsible spendthrifts who just cannot be trusted with money. Δ
John Donegan is a retired attorney in Pismo Beach who agrees that with a billion here and a billion there, pretty soon we’re talking real money. Send a response for publication to letters@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Health & Wellness 2025.
John Donegan, friend of Herbert Hoover asks, “The defense ignored the most fundamental question: Why the hell are we using U.S. taxpayer money to fund musical events, comic books, and workplace programs…” These are the same type of questions the opposition asked when FDR created the New Deal. These seemingly stupid programs, and many are, are what you get when, in an attempt to enrich a certain class of people, you export factory jobs. The researchers and engineers involved in these bizarre programs would normally be the ones involved in a company’s R&D department in an economy that produced actual “things.” Where else, John, do you expect these researchers to work? Your generation exported the factories and jobs that your parents generation relied on support you but your generation has eliminated. You want social harmony? Bring well paying jobs back to the United States.
We are in a Depression and have been for a long time, the only difference now is that it can’t be hidden. The growth of government since the 80s on has is directly correlated the diminution of an industrial economy. You only have yourself to blame.
During the Great Depression, FDR put 15 million Americans to work directly hired by the federal government. Their jobs included painting murals, building trails, cutting trees, building dams, and building many of the sidewalks you still walk on your way to your Tesla, the bank, or enroute to your 1.5 million dollar house.
When will people like you get it? The government and its resources belong to all of us, not just a coterie of rich, lettered, whiners like you.
The smartest law boy in Pismo Beach thinks a billionaire unconstitutionally overseeing federal spending while his companies receives billions in federal funds is a-ok but spending on diplomacy is wasteful. Very cool and patriotic corner you’ve backed yourself into just to be able to criticize the democrats.
I’m no fan of the this era’s iteration of the Democratic party, but what John fails to understand is that there were plenty of people just like him, comfortable, self satisfied, and pompous right up until the stock market crashed in ’29. No one survived, people jumped out of windows out of sheer panic and desperation.
I’m guessing ol’ John is in his mid 70’s, white, retired, and as a former attorney, probably well off. However, I’d bet my bottom dollar it wasn’t one or two generations before him, his family may have been sod busters in Oklahoma who, like every single American at that time, lost everything and thanks to a Democratic president putting millions of Americans on the roles of public employment, including his parents or grandparents, may have otherwise perished.
This goes for every other Boomer out there who has forgotten their roots and now CHEERS for the destruction of the institutions that allowed their families to survive the hard times of the Great Depression and later, after WWII and post war economy, send their kids (John Donegan) to college (or not) and vacuum up all that wealth only to pull up the bridge on the rest of us.
John, we haven’t forgot, why have you? Has all that prosperity clouded your mind? You know what I find helpful for boosting one’s memory? Missing a meal (or three). You aught to try it, John. Perhaps everyone like you should too. Maybe then, you and the POS’s in both houses of Congress and the Executive Office won’t be so quick to ruin the lives of millions of Americans nor tear down public institutions your late parent’s and grandparent’s built for posterity.
Workers know our history, why don’t you?
So fly, your solution is to continue to allow our tax $ to continue to be thrown away? Tax $ are not intended to be used to achieve goals of the unelected bureaucrats but to provide certain items for the citizens of the US. The scope of the Federal government in the US is intended to be very limited. Our tax moneys are confiscated with no accountability for ridiculous purposes. Taxpayers could easily provide the $ to the causes that are important to them if the $ was confiscated to subsidize DEI initiatives around the world and worse.
I think it’s always a good thing to reduce budgets in the face of deficits. And if Mr. Trump was really serious about downsizing the federal government, he would find allies all across D.C. from both sides of the isle. Unfortunately, Mr. Trump is not interested in reducing deficits. Rather, he wants to save money so he can redirect it to other areas.
One of those is spending upwards of $5,000 per migrant deported (a recent Army transport flew 80 migrants back to Latin America for a whopping $800,000). In contrast, Biden was spending less than $400 per person on coach to fly migrant deportees home. In fact, Mr. Trump has never put a price tag on his mass deportations, but estimates put the cost at about $1.5 trillion at the scale he is suggesting. And probably billions more in loss of production, especially in the agricultural sector.
Mr. Trump also needs federal funds to pay for his secret service detail so he can play golf on his courses. During his first administration, he was charging the secret service double the government rate or higher to put up his security detail at Bedminster and Mar-A-Lago. And you know Mr. Trump will spend at least 100 days at these resorts each year for four years.
That’s not to mention the real budget busters that Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk have in mind. First, Trump will need money for his tax cut/extension, which will slash taxes for the top 1% (Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk) by nearly 4% while the lesser tax brackets see only about a 1% decrease if anything. Estimates say the tax cut extension will add $5 trillion to the federal debt. Not sure eliminating the Education Department ($260 billion) gets him anywhere close.
Second, Mr. Musk is certainly not doing all of this out of the goodness of his heart (Musk’s heart is smaller than the Grinch). His ultimate goal is to spend trillions on sending people to Mars and somehow colonizing that planet. I guess that is important since we seem hell bent on destroying our own instead of reducing our reliance on fossil fuels.
But, sure, I get it, Mr. Donegan has to be gleeful to see the hysteria from the left. Trump is certainly “sticking it to the libs” right now. I just wonder what the ultimate damage will be to our nation.
Tony V.
John Locke would be proud of your position, however, we don’t live in the 18th century. John Locke had no idea what industrial capitalism would create and the fact that for most Americans, we’ve moved beyond religion. The steam engine was barely invented in John Locke’s era and assembly line production wasn’t going to be perfected until Henry Ford came around 150 years later. Income tax and the government’s obligation to pay in kind for those revenues in the form of a generous social safety net wouldn’t become a thing until roughly 125 years later. If you resent America’s anemic welfare state so much, why don’t you just return any social security check you currently receive? Until you’ve met little old ladies living in beat up trailers in the blazing summer in southern California, surviving on their paltry social security check, you don’t know problems.
You insist, “Taxpayers could easily provide the $ to the causes that are important to them…” Are you referring to Victorian era workhouses? Poorhouses? Perhaps the Salvation Army? Are you suggesting our seniors just check themselves into the local glue factory? Have you seen the price for eggs lately? Have you seen the price of a hamburger? Have you noticed how many mass layoffs are happening on a daily basis? Have you seen the purchasing power of the dollar just go right out the window after all the failed banks gambled our money away and the federal government just bailed every single one of them out?
You state, “The scope of the Federal government in the US is intended to be very limited.” Says who? The John Birch society? Opus Dei? The Constitution is a living document. If you ever bother to read it, you might note that in its preamble it clearly states, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, PROMOTE THE GENERAL WELFARE…” This “general Welfare” is why we pay taxes. I expect, nay, I demand the federal government live up to its obligation to return our tax money in the form of a GENEROUS WELFARE STATE. People like you, in the privilege of material comfort given to you for no other reason than being born at the close of WWII into a booming economy, now, as Rome is being sacked and all the institutions designed to provide the welfare we paid for are aflame, sit there and tell us to pay for our own defense?
What is it about DEI that bothers you? Does it bother you that in light of enslaving, murdering, and separating Black families for centuries, interning Japanese, and turning Chinese and Mexican laborers into de facto slaves should be addressed by government? African-Americans, to this day, have some of the worst demographic outcomes. When you were born, I’m guessing the late 40’s or early to mid 50’s, the U.S. was about %85 White. Guess what, those days are gone. If you want a hyper individualistic, tax free, religious, White ethno-state, move out of California and go to Alabama. If that is asking too much, at least get a passport and go to a developing country.
I noticed you have an ethnic last name, Tony. Which wave of immigrants did your relatives get here? Maybe the late 1800s or early 1900s. If so, they, like most Americans, were wiped out in the Great Depression starting in 1929. Thank god for organized labor and a responsive President. Your relatives quite possibly worshipped the ground FDR walked on and were amongst the MILLIONS of American who voted for him for a total of FOUR TERMS in office. Why? Because rather than tell Americans go to hell when the economy collapsed, as you now do in so many words, he and Congress (along with threatening to expand the Supreme Court) rolled out the New Deal and a minimum wage, an old age pension, FDIC, and stabilized farm products.
So Tony, for your own self interest, I’d recommend giving hungry men and women a WIDE BERTH. As Lenin remarked, “Every society is three meals away from chaos.” Americans have had it and it won’t take much to settle this class war.
Tech bro’s? Oh you mean CODERS NOT ACCOUNTANTS, as what should be done, instead the fire theIG’s actually going after the waste.
President Musk and Co Presdent Trump are simply gutting Gov’t, whether it’s waste, fraud or abuse. It’s the rights wet dream since FDR
Without false premises, distortions and LIES what would the right wing ever have?
Sorting Out the Facts on ‘Waste and Abuse’ at USAID
https://www.factcheck.org/2025/02/sorting-…
Jon K:
The only reason FDR responded to the people’s needs, through creating unemployment insurance, old age insurance, the Works Progress Administration, etc. is because the wealth of America’s rich was based in its productive capacity in the form of its factories. Wealth at that time wasn’t ephemeral or diffused to the extent it is now. If workers had a strike at a factory and stopped production, it would hit the company, its owner, or its shareholders immediately in their pocket. If FDR didn’t respond, his wealthy benefactors would be hit worse (through labor action) than whatever tax increase they would be obliged to pay for America’s new (modest) safety net.
The right, acting through a liberal president, BIll Clinton, passed NAFTA and destroyed unions and organized labor by packing up our factories and moving them offshore. Now, our economy is basically taco shops, liquor stores, gyms, salons, and gas stations and capital is global. Workers have absolutely no power ergo, not a single thing our political class does ever improves the material condition of our lives. Rather, they are removing the public institutions needed to administer the welfare state. And yes, this is their wet dream. All they have to do now is wake up, have a cigarette and leave a rose on our pillows. And no, it wasn’t as good for us as it was for them.
Our country is collapsing, the dollar buys nothing, and we have to find our own way. They elite have sailed away and taken everything. The one thing they can’t take away though is our history. Everything FDR did, good and bad, is public record. The WPA was real, public employment in a Depression was real, Medicaid was real, social security was real. As they roll these programs up and if we actually survive, all we have to do is remember, there are more of us then there are of them. These politicians are our enemy. They go into office making perhaps $125k a year and leave 10 years later multimillionaires. How is this other than full blown corruption and you and I both know who I am referring to. Teachers have to deliver pizzas at night to pay rent. Old people eating dog food to survive. Parents foregoing meals so that their children might eat. The infirm taking half their medication so they can spread it out until their next social security check. Workers taking pay cut after pay cut. Make no mistake, our political class, all of them, work against the interests of the American people. They have guaranteed and extremely bleak future for the next generation. They need to be prosecuted and jailed. Concentrated wealth needs to be seized and returned to the American people immediately. This is called redistribution.
Musk’s Magical DOGE Show: A Billionaire’s Circus of Grift and Distraction
Ah, yes. At long last, the American people are saved! The ever-heroic Donald Trump and his tag-team partner, Elon Musk—the unhinged visionary known for exploding cars, playing “free speech absolutist” while banning critics, and running a social media platform into the ground—have bravely stormed the federal bureaucracy to expose the most egregious government waste of all: musical events, comic books, and workplace programs in other countries.
Sure, you might think government oversight should focus on multi-billion-dollar defense contracts, corporate subsidies, or the unaccounted-for trillions hemorrhaging into military black holes. But no! The real crime is that a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percentage of the budget was spent on… a comic book in Peru. The horror!
Naturally, this heroic crusade is being led by Musk, the man whose own companies feast on government subsidies while failing to meet their own contracts. SpaceX, Tesla, and The Boring Company have collectively siphoned off billions in taxpayer money. But worry not—his “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE, named, of course, after a joke cryptocurrency he pumped and dumped on his followers) is here to save the day. And no, please don’t ask about the billions Tesla pocketed from federal EV subsidies or the Starship contracts that just keep getting extended despite missed deadlines. That’s good spending.
Meanwhile, the article laments that Democrats are “overlooking the fact” that Musk only has “read-only” access, as if we should all sigh in relief that an impulsive billionaire with documented ties to foreign adversaries is merely browsing sensitive government data instead of directly siphoning funds. What could possibly go wrong?
And let’s talk about the real grift here. This is not an “audit” in any meaningful sense of the word. A proper government spending review involves independent agencies, career experts, and data-driven policy recommendations. Instead, Trump has handed the job to Musk—whose own companies have a legendary track record of financial mismanagement, broken promises, and SEC violations—to cherry-pick out-of-context numbers, feed them into his right-wing outrage machine, and pretend he’s rooting out corruption.
Yes, taxpayers should demand accountability in government spending. But let’s not pretend that a carnival act run by a grifter and a conman is an actual audit. The only thing getting streamlined here is the transfer of power from government institutions to the whims of an erratic billionaire with a vendetta.
The truth is, this isn’t about fiscal responsibility. It’s about distraction. It’s about deflecting attention from Trump’s economic wreckage, Musk’s crumbling empire, and the GOP’s utter lack of a serious policy agenda. And it’s about using faux-outrage over trivia to sell the idea that democracy itself is the real problem.
And that, dear readers, is the ultimate grift.
Tim:
“…deflecting attention from Trumps economic wreckage…” He’s been in office for roughly a month, how has he “wrecked” the economy? It’s been wrecked for decades, just ask all the young people unable to buy homes, not having children, or getting married. Our economic wreckage is bipartisan, sir.
I hate to break it to you, you can’t just neatly pin it on one party. Our economy is broken and we are in a Depression. People can’t even afford to eat at McDonald’s. Both parties, fronts for bankers, have been on a generational looting spree and it’s come to its logical end. We are done. All Trump is doing is what bankers and the rich want. He is attempting to cut costs so the credit rating of the US can be maintained so these thiefs in Brooks Brothers suits can continue to enrich themselves. They see hard won social spending as unprofitable.
Have you forgot, Tim? The US is a corporation, not a polity of free people paying taxes with the absurd idea that when they get laid off when their industry gets exported to Vietnam or they get so old they can no longer work, they might receive a meager unemployment or social security check.
I don’t know why anyone would defend NOT auditing the Pentagon, Fort Knox, or the Fed, but that’s what you are doing, Tim. Trump literally proposed cutting defense spending 50%, I pray to God he can.
I’ll say it again, above all else, we need to keep our eye on the prize: Protecting Social Security, protecting unemployment insurance, protecting Medicare with the goal of replacing it with a national healthcare/public system, protecting maternity and paternity leave, protecting Meals on Wheels, and protecting public education and the separation between church and state.
If a Republican does this, who cares?
@TIM BENNETT: Who says Musk and Trump are through auditing and cutting? Trump has promised to look at the defense budget and the Dept. of Education. And there were a number of other wasteful items discovered which I didn’t list.
Professional auditors never found these abuses. They just rely upon the numbers and reporting that the agency provides, and accept them at face value. You may recall that Trump got into trouble in NY City from falsifying his corporate accounting. It happens. That is why Musk’s auditors went directly digging in computer records to find this waste, which the Democrats howled about.
Musk’s crumbling empire? Really? In just 15 years, Tesla has become the most valuable American auto manufacturer, and the share price of Tesla has climbed dramatically over the last year. SpaceX now completely dominates the space launch industry. In fact, they are the only entity capable of rescuing the astronauts that NASA left stranded on the ISS. If that is “crumbling: and failure, count me in. I want some.
You Democrats have a curious relationship with money. Normally, if someone points out waste and saves you money, everyone usually says “thank you”, not “that’s not enough”. It seems that the primary Democratic objective is just spending money, with how it is applied of mere secondary importance. Trying to dismiss and justify waste is a losing proposition politically, and the voters are paying attention to the Democratic posturing.
@JON K: The Inspector Generals missed the spending abuses discovered by Musk. It took direct digging in the the computer records to discover this waste, not relying on the accounting the agencies had sanitized. This requires “tech bros”, not accountants.
“Gutting government”? To a fisherman, “gutting” is what you do when you “clean” the fish. So, yes, I agree that our government needs “cleaning”.
To Fly_meet_ointment: Ah yes, the time-honored tradition of declaring both parties utterly corrupt while simultaneously praying that Donald J. Trump—an altruistic billionaire best known for fraudulent charities, stiffing contractors, and tanking casinos—will finally deliver the 50% defense cut you’ve been waiting for. I assume you’ll be holding your breath for that, right?
Sure, the U.S. economy has been circling the drain for decades, but let’s not pretend Trump isn’t greasing the pipes with another round of tax cuts for billionaires while mumbling something about cutting Social Security “for the future generations.” But I’m sure that’s just 3D chess to make sure we all end up with national healthcare, right? Just like he built infrastructure and made Mexico pay for the wall—oh, wait.
And while we’re on the subject, are you sure it’s the Pentagon audit you’re mad about? Because if you squint hard enough, you might notice that Trump’s idea of “draining the swamp” has mostly consisted of giving military contractors free rein, inflating the deficit, and putting hedge fund guys in charge of… well, everything. But hey, maybe if we just really believe this time, the Brooks Brothers Bandits will suddenly grow a conscience.
At least we agree on protecting Social Security, unemployment insurance, and public education. It’s just that Trump’s “plan” for all of that seems to involve a lot more deregulation, privatization, and letting the Heritage Foundation set the national agenda. But I’m sure this time it’ll work out great.
John Donegan Re: “Trump’s chumps”– Oh, what a delightful fairy tale! Trump and Musk—the dynamic duo of fiscal responsibility—auditing their way to a government so lean it might just disappear altogether. Never mind that Trump’s own business empire was found guilty of financial fraud, or that Musk’s legendary cost-cutting involves firing entire departments and then realizing—oops!—he actually needed them.
And yes, let’s talk about SpaceX, that totally private company thriving on government contracts, subsidies, and NASA partnerships. If only other businesses could get billions in taxpayer support while claiming to be self-made successes! And Tesla? Fantastic—if you ignore the plummeting margins, Musk’s personal stock dumps, and the mounting lawsuits.
But my favorite part is the claim that Democrats don’t care about how money is spent. Right, because nothing screams “fiscal conservatism” like Trump ballooning the deficit while handing out tax cuts to billionaires, or Musk personally torching $44 billion on a social media site he now admits is worth half that.
But sure, let’s keep pretending that these two are just good old-fashioned, hard-nosed auditors, bravely fighting against “waste”—as long as it’s the kind that doesn’t benefit them personally.
Tim. B
It’s a good thing Musk’s wealth isn’t based on just Tesla, in an act that truly goes against laisse faire capitalism, Trump has enacted tariffs against the Chinese electric car manufacturer BYD that protects Tesla from competition with BYD’s electric car that starts out about $9000 and higher quality than a Tesla. If it wasn’t for this protectionist measure, Americans would be zipping around in affordable electric cars. Further, this market intervention continues America’s dependance on the internal combustion engine and reverses any attempt at lowering carbon emissions. Ford, GM, Chevron, Shell, and Chevy are probably breathing a sigh of relief now that the U.S. auto market and consumers are held hostage to fossil fuel.
Holding both parties responsible for this hell hole of an economy is a reasonable assessment. I’m not going to waste my time going down the list of positive and negative things both parties have down, the record speaks for itself.
For all of Trump’s rhetoric about bringing jobs and industry back to America, it will never happen. The first thing we Americans will do is organize our workplaces and engage in collective bargaining so that we don’t turn into the workers seen on the media at iPhone factories in China where workers live in dorms and commit suicide on a daily basis. We aren’t going to return to 19th century working conditions either. We aren’t going to force our children to work in factories only to get mangled in industrial weaving looms. What the Trump administration wants, as do all capitalists and those who base their self-worth on their net worth, is to extract every drop of surplus value from workers as they can as cheaply as they can. If that means rolling back labor laws, polluting rivers and streams, overfishing the oceans, paying workers in scrip in company towns, breaking strikes with armed Pinkertons or busing in scabs, living in cramped tenements, so be it. They don’t care. As in the past, they will bribe politicians so they can monopolize any industry left that is monopolized, they will pay off politicians as they currently do to lower their tax rates, they will have offshore bank accounts to hide their blood money, they will let Americans die of preventable disease right in their front doors rather than have public hospitals or health insurance.
There will be no industrial rebirth in America, it’s all rhetoric and another scam from yet another politician. We will continue to become impoverished, there will be no more upward mobility, and lastly, Americans will continue to simmer with a rage that will eventually break. Americans will go to each and every house of those in certain tax brackets and arrest the occupants. Think Pol Pot, think the French Revolution, think Kristallnacht, think Cuba, think Vietnam. They are engaging in pure and unadulterated CLASS WAR.
There should be incentive for entrepreneurs to take risks and make investments, but it shouldn’t include the obscene levels of wealth our oligarchs have. At a certain point, any profit a company makes needs to be returned through taxes back to the state. This is how a social safety net is paid for. As it is, corporations and the rich, in collusion with politicians and the media, have engaged in a decades long tax boycott. Lets have a free market, but lets tax wealth at the levels seen in the early 1950s. This is why Musk et. al. are engaging in tearing down the public institutions designed to administer our social safety net. It won’t cost them any thing. Just fire workers or better yet, eliminate the public institutions entirely, right? This way they avoid paying the taxes they should be paying in a humane society. This is their “innovation,” just fire everyone and destroy the institutions providing the social safety net we Americans earn every day we get up to drive a bus, a trash truck, pound nails building houses, provide day care, and all the other things we do to provide a living for ourselves.
These public institutions were literally paid for in blood by my grandparents generation and their parents generation. They were bombed and shot at at coal mines and steel mills or burned up in factories when they were locked in in their workplaces unable to escape. These institutions were paid for in WWII when my grandparent’s generation were blown up at Normandy or sunk in the Atlantic. These institutions aren’t for the rich, they’re for people like me. People who, despite spending an entire life never sitting around on public assistance, always working, serving my country, find myself overeducated, poor, and trapped in a system that needs to collapse as soon as possible so that through its ashes, we can take what worked and leave the rest. Taxing the rich works. A social safety net works. Breaking up monopolies works. Providing low interest mortgages works. Clean rivers and lakes works. Allowing new parents time to spend with their children (paid) works. Dealing with our national past through remunerative policies such as reparations works, truth and reconciliation panels work. Defending our borders works as does regulated immigration. Providing free education works. Supporting farmers works.
As Trump and Co. destroy our country, maybe this is what it will take for Americans to get off our collective asses and do something. That’s the thing about being unemployed, it gives people plenty of time to organize and plan.
*We are going to need rent control, price caps, and eviction moratoriums real soon.