Public Policy and Governance

Buying Political Office

Americans are about to experience the political results of our new Gilded Age. After some forty plus years of growing financial inequality–where the gap between the rich and the rest has steadily grown–we have inaugurated a government by and for the obscenely rich.

As Heather Cox Richardson recently noted, Elon Musk is expected to have an office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Musk–who benefits from government contracts worth billions of dollars–will be in an office adjacent to the White House. (Whatever happened to that old-fashioned notion about the necessity of avoiding conflicts of interest?)

It isn’t just Musk. Other members of the world’s richest men’s club flanked Musk on the dais at Trump’s inauguration. They reportedly included Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Meta chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg, who are worth almost a trillion dollars combined, were joined by other obscenely rich panderers: the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman; the CEO of the social media platform TikTok, Shou Zi Chew; and the CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai.

During his confirmation hearing, the billionaire nominee Trump has chosen for Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, outlined his plans to enrich the rich (and screw over the poor) during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Banking Committee, telling committee members that extending Trump’s tax cuts for the rich would be his highest priority.

Trump has assembled a cabinet notable for the wealth of his nominees (and equally notable for their lack of relevant knowledge and experience), but as the Brookings Institution has recently pointed out, American governance by the rich rather than the competent has grown significantly at all levels.

The linked study documented three major conclusions, of which only the last is at all comforting:

Altogether, across four election cycles from 2018 to 2024 there were 183 candidates who contributed more than $1 million of personal money to their campaigns.

Republicans constituted 68% of all candidates contributing more than a million to their campaigns.

Most rich people who spend personal money on campaigns lose.

The study’s introductory paragraph asked the pertinent question.

The richest man in the world now sits close to the President elect and uses his powerful social media platform, X, to opine on everything from daylight savings time to visas for skilled workers. As the new administration takes shape, the number of multi-millionaires and billionaires moving to Washington grows. While this is good for Washington area real estate agents, is it good for democracy? Will someone who earns $14 million per day be able to appreciate how important $1,976.00 (the average monthly social security payment) is to millions of Americans?

The obvious answer to the question posed by that last sentence is no. The Brookings article cited a previous study that looked at the political priorities of the rich.

In 2013, three political scientists studied the political views of over 100 rich Americans, whose median wealth was $7,500,000.00. They found large differences between the policy preferences of the rich compared to average Americans.

Ya think?

Every so often, I cite a musical lyric that seems (at least to me) to illuminate a current political issue. Here’s one: the flower girl in My Fair Lady sings that all she wants is a “room somewhere, far away from the cold night air”–somewhere where she can have “warm hands, warm face, warm feet.” There are far too many Americans who fall into that category–people struggling every day to find lodging or keep the heat on and the car running and the baby fed.

I’ll go out on a limb here and suggest that Elon Musk and his fellow billionaires have absolutely no understanding of those struggles, no comprehension of the choices facing millions of America’s working poor–and rather clearly, no sympathy for them.

There are certainly wealthy individuals who do understand that their own ability to thrive depends upon a government that supports an economically stable middle class–who understand that job creation depends upon the existence of a public with enough disposable income to buy their widgets, rather than on the whim of an “entrepreneur” waving a magic wand. Those individuals didn’t share the dias with the fat-cat, self-satisfied billionaires who will have effective control of America’s government and who are interested only in amassing greater wealth and power. Trump’s billionaire toadies have evidenced zero understanding of the purpose of government and no interest whatsoever in the notion of the common good.

President Eisenhower warned us about the military-industrial complex, and he was right. President Biden warned us about the coming oligarchy, and he was also right.

Between the White Christian Nationalists and the oligarchs, the next few years will be…challenging. To say the least.

Comments

The Emerging Battles

Important notice: Due to the cold, the rally today has been moved to Broadway United Methodist Church, 609 E 29th St, Indianapolis. Indoors.

Today, to our great national shame, America will inaugurate our first felon President.

The fact that he’s a felon isn’t even the worst part of this disaster. Trump lacks a single redeeming characteristic–he’s ignorant, intellectually stunted, deeply disturbed and descending visibly into senility. That a (bare) majority of voters chose to place this specimen in the Oval Office may be the all-time saddest commentary on America’s current descent into White Christian Nationalism.

So what can we expect from the collection of grifters, racists and sycophants who will fill the upcoming administration?

I know my posts lately are rarely optimistic, but I think there may be cause–not for optimism, exactly, but reasons to moderate our pessimism. Because MAGA is more likely than not to eat its own. It isn’t just the nutcases in the House of Representatives, who will make it difficult for the GOP’s very thin majority (a majority that owes its status to gerrymandering, not voter sentiment) to pass anything. It’s the fault-lines between Trump’s White Nationalist MAGA base and the uber-wealthy grifters who see him as a tool to evade pesky regulations and fair taxes.

That fight has already started. As Jonathan Last reported in the Daily Beast, Steve Bannon has unleashed on Elon Musk:

“I will have Elon Musk run out of here by Inauguration Day,” Bannon told the Italian daily Corriere della Sera this week. “He will not have a blue pass to the White House, he will not have full access to the White House, he will be like any other person.”

“He is a truly evil guy, a very bad guy. I made it my personal thing to take this guy down,” Bannon added.

Bannon focused on the recent fight over H-1B visas, and an immigration system he claimed is “gamed by the tech overlords.” He claimed that 76 percent of engineers working in Silicon Valley are non-Americans.

Bannon went on to accuse Musk of being self-serving, insisting that his “sole objective is to become a trillionaire.”

“He will do anything to make sure that any one of his companies is protected or has a better deal or he makes more money. His aggregation of wealth, and then—through wealth—power: that’s what he’s focused on,” Bannon said.
Bannon went on to describe Musk’s preferred objective as “techno-feudalism.”

Bannon is not the only MAGA person issuing broadsides against the tech bros:

This isn’t a one-off. Bannon has hated Musk for a long time. And the fight between OG MAGA and Elon MAGA started with Laura Loomer, who launched her own jihad against Musk over the holidays. You can listen to Loomer here but if you don’t want to click, after calling Musk a “welfare queen,” she went on to indict the entire MAGA oligarch class:

“If you have a bunch of tech bros with billions of dollars and direct unfettered access to the vice president and the president of the United States, and then they are also very cordial with our adversaries as in China and Iran—we see that Elon Musk is having these meetings off the books with Iranian officials, with Chinese officials—what does that mean for us?”

If the split among Trumpers was limited to the anger over H-1B visas, that would be one thing, but it isn’t. It’s relatively easy for a party to seem united when it’s in opposition, but once in power, conflicting interests collide and political realities exert pressure, and Trump supporters have distinctly conflicting interests.

Here’s my almost-rosy analysis.

Today’s Republican Party is a White Nationalist cult. What keeps them (barely) cohesive is the cult leader. Donald Trump is the Jim Jones of today’s GOP. Unlike most cult leaders, who rule with iron hands, his obvious disinterest in actual governing means he is less able to exert dominance over factions quarrelling over policy.

The greater danger to Republican power is that Trump is old, unhealthy and in obvious mental and physical decline. His belligerence has masked the extent of that decline, but it is statistically unlikely that he will live to “serve” a full four-year term–and when he’s gone (either drooling in a senility too obvious for even MAGA to ignore, or dead), the MAGA cult will implode.

If JD Vance becomes President, sharp knives will come out; even most Republicans detest him. More to the point, Trump is already demonstrating that he’s unable to exercise total control, and there is no new Jim Jones in the wings.

Until then, sane Americans need to do whatever we can to obstruct and delay MAGA’s efforts to undermine ethics, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Comments

Old Truths

Important notice: Due to the cold, the rally on January 20th has been moved to Broadway United Methodist Church, 609 E 29th St, Indianapolis. Indoors.

________________________________

.Several weeks ago, the Indianapolis Capitol Chronicle ran an article in which the author mused about civics instruction. She had come across the 1930 edition of a civics textbook, and noted that its focus on community responsibilities seemed very different from today’s preoccupation with individualism.

The book starts with this preface (and yes, I took photos while at the table): “It is generally agreed today that the main reason for the existence of schools is to help our pupils to become good citizens. Our schools teach the three R’s because everybody needs those tools in order to act intelligently in his relations with his fellow man. It is no less important for the pupil to learn that his life must be lived in close association with his fellow men, and to profit by the experience of human beings in regard to these relations.”

In those few introductory words lies the conundrum that faces all societies: how do we protect the political, religious and philosophical autonomy of the individual while building safe, orderly and supportive communities?

Several years ago, I made a speech in which I considered that question. As I said then, there is an African proverb to the effect that it takes a village to raise a child. Implicit in that saying is the question at the heart of political philosophy: What should that village look like? What is the common good, and what is the nature of social obligation? What sort of social and political arrangements are most likely to promote and enable what Aristotle called “human flourishing”? And perhaps, more importantly, do we live in an era when such questions have largely been abandoned?

That simple introductory paragraph from a long-ago textbook reminds us that our public schools have two vitally important tasks: first, giving children the intellectual tools and skills they will need, not just to negotiate the economic world they will inhabit, but also to lead richer, more fulfilled and considered lives; and second, equipping them for the responsibilities of citizenship.

Over the past few decades, there has been a very unfortunate narrowing of emphasis to just one portion of that first responsibility. Critics of public education have focused almost entirely on the subjects needed to produce a workforce–on giving students the skills they’ll need to compete economically. The sorts of instruction that will help them flourish, that will give them the insights and understandings that will help them create rich and enjoyable lives–music and art and literature–have been relegated to the sidelines or eliminated entirely, dismissed as “frills.”

Worse, the various educational “reforms” that have been pursued have ignored the second important purpose of public education–preparing students for thoughtful and engaged citizenship in a complicated and increasingly diverse society.

Not only have our public schools neglected the proper teaching of American history and government, the vouchers that facilitate evasion of the First Amendment have sent thousands of children to religious schools, most of which ignore civics instruction and deepen tribal commitments rather than helping students understand the complexity–and necessity– of seeking the common good and wrestling with the imperatives of our national motto: e pluribus unum.

Too many of our legislators, here in Indiana and elsewhere, confuse education with job training. They are most definitely not the same thing. We are impoverishing generations of students by depriving them of sustained contact with the liberal arts and with the enduring questions that separate thinking humans from automatons. By neglecting instruction in government and citizenship, we have contributed to the widespread ignorance that continues to elevate so many unfit and unstable individuals to positions of power. It isn’t just Trump–there are plenty of other examples at all levels of government, certainly in Indiana.

Finding the “golden mean” between too much emphasis on individualism and too much emphasis on community and conformity has never been simple. That search for a proper balance between individual rights and the imperatives of the common good is fatally compromised when a significant portion of the population remains uneducated because those responsible for education policy don’t know (or care about) the difference between educating students and training them.

When the body politic lacks a common understanding of their society’s foundational principles, culture warriors and plutocrats are enabled, and tribalism threatens to bring down the entire edifice of legitimate government. That is arguably where we find ourselves right now, and the sustained assault on American education–an assault that has hollowed out the very concept of education– is at the very heart of our impending Trumpian disasters.

We are reaping the whirlwind.

Comments

When You’re Rich They Think You Really Know

I typically listen to music when I’m trudging on the treadmill, and my preference is for tuneful songs with lyrics I can understand. (I’m old!).

I’ve previously posted about the insights and real wisdom often conveyed by musical lyrics, especially a favorite line from Fiddler on the Roof’s “If I Were a Rich Man.” Tevya sings that, if he were rich, the men of the town would all call on him for advice; he then sings “And it wouldn’t matter if I answered right or wrong. When you’re rich, they think you really know.”

As Trump assembles an administration of very rich men, we are about to see the fallacy that Tevya identified play out in real time.

Americans have a long history of confusing celebrity with competence and wealth with intellect. Those with eyes to see have always recognized that Trump himself is a deranged ignoramus with a bloated ego. Before Elon Musk bought Twitter and turned it into “X,” he’d been able to maintain a reputation as highly intelligent partly because few people knew that–like Trump–his fortune began with an inheritance, and that he’d purchased Tesla–not invented it.

The United States is about to be governed (or ruled) by a whole cohort of equally clueless rich White guys, and the most pertinent question is how much damage will they do? These are, after all, the “captains of industry” who think they know more than they do, who don’t know what they don’t know, and who are unlikely to listen to people who have actual expertise in economics and/or a wide variety of public policies. (As Tevya would say, “they think they really know.”)

Paul Krugman recently considered that conundrum in a newsletter titled “Never Underestimate the Ignorance of the Powerful.” He began by reproducing one of Trump’s “Truth Social” posts, in which the incoming President proposed substituting tariffs for income taxes. “Tariffs” Trump posted, “Will pay off our debt and MAKE AMERICA WEALTHY AGAIN.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m still extremely unsure what the incoming president will actually do about trade. The Smoot-Hawley level tariffs he promised during the campaign would be disastrous, but sometimes I think he may have at least a vague sense of the damage those tariffs would do, so what he’s really aiming for is an extortion scheme — one in which most companies would secure exemptions via political contributions and/or de facto bribes (e.g. buying Trump crypto.)

But then he’ll come out with something like the Truth Social post above, and I’ll be reminded that wealthy and powerful people like Trump or Andreesen or, of course, Elon Musk are often far more ignorant than policy wonks can easily imagine.

As Krugman reminds us, Trump very publicly disdains expertise, and Musk “appears to get what he thinks is intelligence from random posts on X.”

Krugman attributes this intellectual defect to “the arrogance of success.”

In the academic world there’s a familiar phenomenon sometimes called “great man’s disease,” in which a successful researcher in one field assumes that he (it’s usually a “he”) is so much smarter than experts in other fields that he doesn’t need to pay attention to their research. Physicists make confident, deeply ignorant pronouncements about economics; economists make confident, deeply ignorant pronouncements about sociology…

This kind of arrogance presumably comes even more easily to men of great wealth. After all, if these so-called experts are so smart, why aren’t they rich like me?

As Krugman also notes, wealth and power attract hangers-on who will tell the great man what he wants to hear. “There are wealthy men with enough humility to accept constructive criticism — I’ve met some of them. But such men don’t seem likely to play a role in the incoming administration.”

When Trump or Andreesen ask why we can’t go back to the McKinley era, when the government subsisted on tariffs and didn’t need an income tax, their problem isn’t failure to understand the revenue function; it’s failure to appreciate the simple fact that in the 1890s America barely had a government by modern standards.

Sure, tariffs could pay for a government without Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, at a time when even the military was tiny. But the constituency for returning to that kind of small government consists, as far as I can tell, of a couple of dozen libertarians in bow ties. And the kind of government we have now needs a lot more than tariffs to pay its way.

Bottom line: we’re about to discover the real downsides of a kakistocracy…

Comments

What We Will Inaugurate

In a little over a week, Donald Trump will be inaugurated as President of the (dis)United States–an outcome that seemed unthinkable not that long ago. Among the reasons for that outcome was the refusal of millions of Americans to cast a ballot; if turnout had just held steady from 2020, Harris would have won. It’s hard to dismiss suspicion that racism and misogyny were more potent than a desire to keep a mentally-ill felon out of the Oval Office.

Some political supporters saw Trump as a path toward personal gain. As Josh Marshall wrote on Talking Points Memo, many Washington “players” saw Trump as a vehicle for their own ambitions. He wasn’t just old and increasingly worn out, but he also wasn’t particularly invested in what would happen once he was in the White House. His focus was on not going to jail and exacting vengeance over his foes. As Marshall noted, that disinterest in actual governing leaves lots of openings for people who see an opportunity to direct–and benefit from– government policy. There’s little sign Trump cares. He’s already gotten what he wants.

We see evidence supporting Marshall’s thesis in what currently looks like the “co-Presidency” of Elon Musk. An article in Common Dreams introduced readers to the Mump regime:

Welcome to America’s “Mump regime,” governance of, by and for the oligarchs in which an erratic unelected white supremacist gazillionaire whose new hobby is buying presidents is cosplaying as shadow president to cash in – and fuck kids with cancer – alongside a senile grifter selling everything in sight: Bibles, sneakers, perfume, hotels, cabinet seats, diplomatic posts and democracy itself. Beware: Just to be clear, “We now have a criminal enterprise, not a government.”

The article notes that Trump has assembled a group of billionaires–13 so far–to staff his oligarchy, but notes that Musk is both the richest and most influential.

A likely illegal alien and white supremacist who grew up in apartheid South Africa, made a fortune from a car that kills twice as many people as the industry average, and though foreign-born found a way to power by giving a useful idiot $277 million to become his puppet master. A good investment: Since the election, Musk has made $170 billion, most from Tesla and SpaceX investors eager to see him end all those pesky safety and labor rules that cut into profits.

Buying Trump was so profitable Never-Elected Pres. Musk is already malevolently branching out. He’s threatening people in Congress, including “jackass” moderates of both parties, with unseating them by throwing money at potential primary opponents if they dare to disagree with him. Governing by threat, tweet and financial heft comes so easily to the guy who quickly turned Twitter into a bigot-invested haven for hate akin to “a Munich beer hall hall in 1933” that he’s even telling Germans how to vote – for Nazis. “Only the AFD can save Germany,” he posted in defense of anti-immigrant fascists who want to purify Europe by casting out people it considers lesser, if not subhuman. Weirdly, he did it on the same day 100 years ago Hitler was released from a Bavarian prison, and the New York Times declared him a “tamed…sadder and wiser man” than when he’d tried to overthrow the government.”

It’s difficult to predict how successful the Mump Administration will be in implementing its announced policies. Despite having “served” as President for a term, Trump has clearly learned little or nothing about governance, and Musk (who believes he knows everything) is equally ignorant of the way things actually work. The GOP’s majority in the House is narrow and it’s filled with culture warriors and White Nationalists more intent upon appearing on Fox News than governing. They’re adamantly opposed to anything approaching negotiation or compromise. If the country emerges relatively unscathed by the looney-tune administration taking shape, we will owe that escape to their massive dysfunctions.

Unfortunately, however, even incompetent clowns can do a lot of damage.

I keep thinking of that Mark Twain quote: Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.

On Inauguration Day, a number of Hoosiers who might be considered “Mark Twain patriots” will reaffirm our support for and love of our country and for what I have called “the American Idea”–the philosophy animating our constituent documents, and summarized by America’s first motto: e pluribus unum.

Ours will be a simple message: in our America, government serves the common good, and everyone deserves a seat at the civic table. (You can find more information about that gathering here.)

Join us if you can.

Comments