CORRUPTION AND HYPOCRISY IS NOT THE AMERICAN WAY. OR IS IT?

Welcome to the new norm of government corruption, out of the shadows and now in full celebration. A new club just opened in DC called “Executive Branch.” It’s an invitation-only club backed by Donald Trump Jr. and megadonor Omeed Malik. It costs more than half a million dollars to join and is designed to allow top business executives to talk privately with Trump advisors and cabinet members. The club already has a waiting list. History repeats. Back to the future of a marriage of the very rich to the US government. Back to an era of robber-barons, industrialists and financiers who flood political campaigns with money to convince voters that those trying to rein them in are socialists or anarchists. Then call upon the politicians they put into power to pass laws that benefit their businesses. This was seen in the obscene amounts of money given to the Trump inaugural fund. Where does all this money go? We can see where $5M of it went. USDA is withdrawing a Biden-era rule requiring poultry companies to keep the levels of salmonella bacteria below a certain level in their meats to prevent food poisoning. Pilgrim’s Pride $5M donation to the campaign was the largest donor to defeat that safety effort. The Trump administration has dropped federal investigations and lawsuits against 89 corporations. Many of whose leaders donated heavily to Trump’s inaugural fund. But corporate ties to the government are not just about avoiding oversight. They are also about snagging lucrative federal contracts. Elon’s slashing and burning certainly works to his advantage in doing that. Staffers for DOGE have been working on a multimillion-dollar communications project called “Project Lift” at the FAA. The plan appears to be to insert Musk’s Starlink into the $2.4B contract Verizon currently holds to upgrade the FAA’s systems. But DOGE staff have made FAA employees sign NDAs so details are scarce. AI companies. Cryptocurrency. The Trump organization and Trump family members have all benefited financially from Donald Trump using the power of the presidency. Where is the GOP Congress’s well-known outrage over this type of behavior? Especially when it might actually be true. So while we see the constant headlines of program after program designed to help less-fortunate Americans live stable lives with a bit of dignity being cut, persistent attempts to give tax cuts to people who don’t need them, and to balance it all by cutting Medicaid, Medicare, and/or Social Security benefits, be aware that we also see the abuses of government by a person who doesn’t have a clue how most of us live. Or cares. He is transforming government into a pay-to-play operation. And that type of blatant corruption bleeds into the rest of our society. Is this your vision of government too? Using it to make money hand over fist while at the same time destroying it for the rest of us? Is that the GOP trickle down you’re always talking about?