A Monarchy Does Not Desire or Require Logic and the Rule of Law

 

A Monarchy Does Not Desire or Require Logic and the Rule of Law

Is the Supreme Court beginning to realize its Trump-empowerment misstep? 

PETER ON THE WRITERS’ HANGOUT PODCAST!

"For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose." 

 Chief Justice John Roberts, March 18th, in a rare statement to the President.

A pundits decry the Trump-destroying tariffs, forcing markets to plunge, recover a bit and then dive again, sooner or later those tariffs will be settled, but the underlying message will remain: All Americans, especially big business, now know that the economy is governed by the whims of an unreliable President. Economic instability will be here for a while, maybe for a very long while, as our traditional trading partners, including our allies that have been with us for decades if not centuries, no long trust our commitment to treaties we signed… and are actively designing a world where the United States cannot decimate their protective military shield or define global monetary and fiscal policies: like US defined trade exchanges, reserve currency status and location of major financial institutions. Does this force US enterprises in this sector to push more work into other countries? Finance is our biggest private market sector; manufacturing never will be.

The administration’s goal of reshoring manufacturing has several thorny side-effects, all resulting in serious price increases. The manufacturing that does return will be driven heavily by AI and robots, with a lot fewer jobs than we might expect. Since Mexico and Canada already deploy those robots in their plants, that just means moving those machines or buying better ones to be used here. Agricultural products keep our grocery shelves filled with fruits and vegetables which would otherwise be out of season. Bye-bye. Hello, cost increases!

Red state agricultural interests beg Trump for an exemption for back-breaking farm labor (and for those souls who endure work in slaughterhouses), jobs US citizens will not take at any price despite efforts to lure them with substantial pay. We decry a housing shortage, which has several causes (including rich people protecting their property values from low-income housing), but cutting out roughly 20% of the skilled and semiskilled craftsmen as well as unskilled workers from the construction trades will kick housing costs to an even less affordable level.

Everyone who just might need coverage from Medicaid or those who have spent decades paying a payroll tax to fund their Medicare and Social Security plan are watching idiots explain why decimating the middle- and lower-income class is the only way to save the system. Really? Did these greedy planners drop out of elementary school? Everyone knows that if you cannot balance your budget, indeed you do have to cut your costs… OR generate more revenue. Duh.

When Social Security was enacted back in 1935, the ratio of workers to retirees was overwhelmingly “workers.” Look at the above chart (prepared by Mercatus senior research fellow Veronique de Rugy); see the issue? A funding system that worked during the depression began unraveling after WW2. There was no way in hell to maintain Social Security by applying a clearly obsolete funding mechanism: there just aren’t enough workers in the system to support an economic model that stopped working in the 1980s!!!! Obviously, the government should examine which new or combined old system will fund Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid most efficiently. Takes cap off FICA? Raise taxes for those at the top? Cutting taxes for the rich benefits… er… only the rich.

DOGE, even in very recent court filings, maintain that Elon Musk is not part of DOGE… even though in his address to Congress, Trump thanked Musk as the head of DOGE. Since Donald Trump has purged truly competent lawyers from every agency, particularly the Department of Justice, replacing them mostly with second rate-hacks, legal Stepford Wives, who seem to be unable to present coherent arguments to presiding federal judges that support a vast array of Trump’s dictatorial Executive Orders. Like a flight totally controlled by US agents is no longer subject to any judicial order once it reaches international waters. Or that in his unfettered discretion, without limitation by statutes or courts, Trump can deport any non-citizen, even long-term green card holders… without any due process.

In the 1990s, President Bill Clinton raised taxes on the wealthy and asked each of his cabinet and agency heads to identify area where cut could be justified without serious negative consequences. The result: $400 billion ($750 billion in today’s dollars) removed from the budget, and his efforts pushed the “United States federal budget into surplus from fiscal years 1998 to 2001, the only surplus years since 1969. Debt held by the public, a primary measure of the national debt, fell relative to GDP throughout his two terms, from 47.8% in 1993 to 31.4% in 2001.” Wikipedia.

The Trump/Musk approach encompasses wonton meat-axe destruction as MAGA smiles with schadenfreude. Kind of like Russia’s Peter the Great, who spent hours watching people being tortured. They don’t even think about how much consumer spending power is being retracted from the economy as federal workers and vendors lose their power. Many are suing for lost pay as civil servants, and we know that this country will not meet citizen expectations for public services, from air traffic controllers, agencies that protect us from corporate scammers, unsafe food, drugs and polluters to the rangers who maintain our national parks.

So, we could use the Clinton approach in which the heads of federal agencies manage reductions (which, by the way, generated NO litigation) or the imperious Trump/Musk approach of major slashing first and thinking later. Firing the watchdogs (inspectors general) against waste and corruption has resulted in more direct control in the President to customize corruption amongst his designated rich loyalists. As bad as the international retaliation has been, as isolated we are from our purported allies, Trump lumbers and bumbles into is joyful bromance with autocratic leaders the world over. What do you expect from a President whose campaign message was: “I am your retribution!”?

I’m Peter Dekom, as bad as all of the above is and is likely to remain, Trump’s vicious attacks on judges, the judicial system and the Constitution itself erode the last viable guardrails against tyranny given to us by our founding fathers.