The Government Is Us. And We Need To Protect It.
Without government, profit and oligarchy rule the day and the rest of us suffer.
by Bob Cesca
WASHINGTON, DC – For as long as I can remember, our elected leaders have perpetuated the lie that “government is the problem.” Even President Clinton borrowed the conservative meme, declaring that the “era of big government” was over back in 1996.
Somewhere along the line, another dimension was added to the anti-government movement: that it should be run like a business. Suffice to say, it’s absolutely not a business in any way shape or form – it’s not required to earn a profit, it’s meant to serve the common good, and it’s run by, for, and answerable to the people rather than a CEO and shareholders.
No doubt the constant demonization of government tests well with focus groups but that’s only because the news media and politicians have been beating the government to death for decades. Consequently, most people think it’s an out-of-control, faceless, nameless machine that must be tamed, chiefly because we don’t understand why it is what it is, nor can we grasp why it’s so important.
And why is it so important? Because there’s simply no other resource in the world that’s readily available to all 340 million of us, without exception. Among many other things, it needs to defend us from attack, it needs to provide services that private industry can’t possibly handle without costing a fortune, it needs to protect the functioning of democracy, and it needs to maintain both stability and consistency through shifting political winds.
Is it perfect? Of course not. The government is big because America is big, with widely diverse needs and priorities. But its successes and its importance far outweigh its flaws, by a lot. Besides, name a single organization tasked with providing for 340 million people, across a large land mass, that’s absolutely flawless. Good luck.
The co-leaders of the Republican Party, Donald Trump and Elon Musk, will never truly understand the need for a healthy government, nor will they have any sense of what will actually happen if it’s indiscriminately torn down. They say it’ll make America great again, and if it doesn’t, that’s someone else’s fault. That’s the public message, at least. Privately, I suspect they’re clearing a wide path to further enrich themselves with zero accountability for the damage they’ll incur.
We’ve all observed in horror as a drugged up, marbled mouthed, South African weirdo has been wrecking the place. But what’s happened so far with DOGE is merely prologue. Acting on orders from the despotic chief executive Trump, Project 2025 architect Russ Vought, the new director of the Office of Personnel Management, issued a directive this week to ramp up the process. NBC News:
The memo notes that President Donald Trump has required "large-scale reductions in force" and in order to implement that, it calls on the heads of departments and agencies to submit the first phase of reorganization plans by March 13, which "shall focus on initial agency cuts and reductions."
And:
[The] second part of the plan should include "any proposed relocations of agency bureaus and offices from Washington, D.C. and the National Capital Region to less-costly parts of the country," it said.
The American Prospect reported on Wednesday that many of the cuts will come at the expense of the Social Security Administration.
The acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration (SSA) requested in a meeting on Tuesday that managers present him with a plan for a 50 percent reduction in staff, a mass firing that could affect tens of thousands of employees across the country.
Donald and his goon-squad of oligarchs and assholes are gearing up to destroy whatever remains of the federal government – mostly the parts that provide life-saving services for regular people like you and me.
This rogues gallery of villains are blindly poking blocks out of the national Jenga puzzle and it’s just a matter of time before it all crashes down, precipitating untold economic, public health, and national security calamities – worst case, think 9/11, COVID, and the Great Recession all at once. And then, all the voters who stupidly bought into this nonsense that “government is the problem” will quickly find out how desperately they need it back.
Simply put: you can’t randomly overturn a government designed to function for 340 million people and expect it all to turn out painlessly on the other side. If you seriously believe that, you’re just as dumb as the ignoramuses running the show.
Right-wing crank Grover Norquist once said, “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.” He was essentially talking about drowning government to make way for unregulated free market capitalism (despite not being able to point to a single example of a democracy that has successfully coexisted with such an economy).
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Unregulated markets, unlike government, act in the interest of a small number of wealthy people whose obligation is to profit, and nothing else. But with a functioning government, we have the power to push back whenever corporations cut costs by poisoning our air and water or risking the health and safety of its workers to increase profits and expand the wealth of its owners.
Without government, profit and oligarchy rule the day and the rest of us suffer. The challenge of the American government is to draw a balance between protecting the interests of the people, regulating industry, and stewarding a strong economy, including the freedom to start and grow your own business. Successfully executing this balancing act is neither simplistic nor easy to understand. Tearing it all down, rather than striving to perfect it, will result in nothing but chaos.
As of this writing, I still believe democratic institutions will remain intact long enough to downsize Republican political leadership in future elections. Best case, the Democratic Party can spend the next three decades in power, correcting this mess, if it can successfully make an unwavering, unflinching, unified case to voters for democracy, government, and the overreach of the billionaire class. But they better hurry. Grover’s about to arrive with his bathtub.
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The Case for Trump as a Russian Asset
The media won't touch this story even though the evidence is mounting.
by Ben Cohen
Last Friday, the Daily Beast published a bombshell story alleging that Donald Trump had been recruited as a KGB asset in 1987 under the codename "Krasnov." The report cited a Facebook post by former Soviet intelligence officer Alnur Mussayev.
The story was then scrubbed from the site the following day with no retraction or acknowledgment that the story had ever been published:
The article was authored by Isabel Van Brugen, a Newsweek reporter specializing in Russia and Ukraine, but she has not acknowledged the piece on her social media. Mainstream outlets haven’t touched the story either and Google and X searches yield very little outside of fringe publications.
There are a number of questions worth asking about this story, the primary being whether it is legitimate. And if it is legitimate, why is the media refusing to cover it?…
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Agree Bob. Been chafing at that nonsense GOP talking point since Reagan. And then, locally, these same cranks who always spout this junk will complain that road repairs are taking too long or “why won’t someone do something about ‘x.” In Illinois, we have the most local govt entities and I’m sure we all scratch our heads on that one. Townships maintain our roads instead of a larger state run system. Probably thought to be more responsive to needs of our communities. But. Then most of the property tax goes to schools and there’s howling when our local scores dip! GOP looks to govt only as a source of revenue. In Reagan’s era it was the military contractors. Now it’s google, starlink, etc. I think Bernie, Warren, AOC, Crockett et al are gearing up for the barn storming “explain it to me like I’m a 3rd grader” tour. In the meantime, we still have the streets.
I think the biggest annoyance is that all the anti-government rhetoric is just re-direction of the false promises of capitalism. We can't tell companies what to do, and their focus is to make a profit not make better outcomes, so we as a country direct it towards a thing we do have a say in our represented leaders, who are required to listen to us. I agree with your sentiment though Bob that people need to take ownership of their role in government and not see themselves a part from it.