News and commentary for understanding and coping with the years ahead...
Is an an economic meltdown the goal?
The gap between the oligarchs’ wealth and everyone else’s will grow. Knowing what they themselves will do and when, they will have bet against the stock market in advance of Trump’s deliberately destructive tariffs, and will be ready to tell everyone to buy the crypto they already own. But that is just tomorrow and the day after.In general, the economic collapse they plan is more like a reverse flood from the Book of Genesis, in which the righteous will all be submerged while the very worst ride Satan’s ark. The self-chosen few will ride out the forty days and forty night. When the waters subside, they will be alone to dominate.
A coup d'etat is effectively if not formally, under way in Washington. It's being engineered by American billionaire oligarchs who make their Russian counterparts look like minor league nobodies.
They aren't hiding what they're up to. As is clear from this piece – including chapter and verse on how dangerous their plot is for all of us – they're flaunting it.
Our major journalism organizations are mostly refusing to believe what is in front of their faces, "covering" this coup like it's just another day at the office – which, in fact, it is for them. One big journalism organization – Reuters – has done good work on this. So has one smaller newsroom, at Wired magazine (see this example). As far as I can figure out, that's about it.
As they continue to normalize the extremism that has led us to this terrifying moment, my contempt for the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and all the rest of the "mainstream media" has never been greater. If they understand what's happening, they are damned cowards. If they don't, they are completely incompetent. I don't care which it is anymore.
So you have to pay attention to the alarm bells from people who a) know what they're talking about, and b) are willing to say what's happening in a direct way. The author of the piece above is one of America's leading experts on how dictatorships form and how they work. Please understand how bad this could get. Then please call the politicians who represent you and demand that they resist before they, too, are rendered irrelevant.
“What we're seeing is unprecedented in that you have these actors who are not really public officials gaining access to the most sensitive data in government,” says Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. “We really have very little eyes on what's going on. Congress has no ability to really intervene and monitor what's happening because these aren't really accountable public officials. So this feels like a hostile takeover of the machinery of governments by the richest man in the world.”
Wired magazine, as I mentioned, is doing excellent reporting on the Musk takeover of vital government functions. This story is an example.
Trump, Musk et al turn US into global pariah
The global freeze on most of U.S. foreign aid is already sending shockwaves around the world. Field hospitals in Thai refugee camps, landmine clearance in war zones, and drugs to treat millions suffering from diseases such as HIV are among the programs at risk of elimination.
If Trump wants to destroy America's reputation, this is the way. As Reuters reports, the administration is demonstrating its contempt for every conceivable good work our nation has done with its foreign aid.
Look at the programs they're dismantling. I'd call it unconscionable, but the people swinging this wrecking ball – including Musk, who, remember, has no legal right to do any of this – are visibly without anything resembling a conscience.
Expert: Keep beating the drums against lawbreaking
[T]hese issues aren’t mere technicalities. “Impoundment” sounds like it’s something only lawyers would care about, but what we’re really talking about is this: Our democratic system, acting in the best way it can, decided to spend money on certain things (green investments, money to Lutheran Family Services for migrant kids, etc.). Members of Congress, accountable to people in their districts across the country, voted for this funding. And the president signed the funding into law. Now a new president comes along and decides he doesn’t like what Congress voted for. Under our constitutional democracy, it’s his job to go back to Congress and convince them to pass a new law eliminating that funding. If he doesn’t want to do that–and, worse, if he wants to just delegate to some outside billionaire the decision of which of Congress’s spending laws to follow–that’s a fundamental democratic problem. That’s why it violates Congress’s constitutional power of the purse, as well as the Impoundment Control Act–a statute Congress adopted to underscore its constitutional power in the face of President Nixon’s efforts to eviscerate it.
A law professor with highly relevant government experience is freaked out, as this newsletter post shows, by the Trump-Musk putsch. But he offers a slightly more optimistic view on whether the rule of law will, in the end, work in favor of fending off dictatorship.
He is appropriately scathing about the way Democratic office-holders are sleepwalking through the greatest constitutional crisis since at least the Nixon years. Again, though, he seems willing to believe that even they will recover their spines, and attention.
This newsletter is a compendium of the reporting and commentary that best explains the America's political, economic, and social conditions – and, most important, how we can find a way back from the dark days ahead. You will rarely find anything here from the New York Times or Washington Post or any of the other Big Journalism companies that failed us so completely during the 2024 elections and are now sucking up – even more than usual – to Donald Trump, his cult, and corporate oligarchs. My focus will be on smaller, more honorable outlets (and individuals). I hope you'll support them with your attention and your money. For more details, please read my About page.
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Vittoria Elliott
