Category Archives: Public Policy and Governance

Science Isn’t Waste Or Fraud

The daily damage being done by the Trump administration has given rise to a grim debate: how much of the wreckage can be remedied, or at least ameliorated, and how much is irremediable? How many of the attacks on purportedly “wasteful” and/or “fraudulent” expenditures are really based upon the appalling ignorance of those leveling the attacks–their profound lack of understanding of how things work?

Example: The sudden and draconian cuts to scientific and medical research don’t just threaten to cripple US global research prominence. They’ve thrown a wrench into promising research into cures for diseases like Alzheimers, Parkinson’s and Cancer. 

Last week, the news media reported on two breakthroughs: the use of advances in gene editing to cure a baby born with a rare genetic disorder; and a new blood test to detect Alzheimers. The exciting aspect of the technique used to cure the 9½-month-old baby is its potential to help people suffering with thousands of other uncommon genetic diseases. The blood test makes it possible to detect Alzheimer’s disease much earlier. As one doctor pointed out, the test will allow primary care physicians to order a blood test and, if that test is positive, immediately refer a patient to a neurologist. He predicted that the test will “dramatically change clinical care.”

These advances and others like them didn’t emerge from a few weeks experiments in a laboratory. They built on years of scientific research, much of which had no immediate relevance to the reported advancements.

Most Americans don’t recognize the importance of basic research–it simply isn’t salient to citizens the way cuts in Medicaid or attacks on Social Security are. And very few Americans understand the long-term and disastrous effects of abrupt terminations of multi-year grants.

As Josh Marshall has argued at Talking Points Memo,

Basic and applied research generates huge dividends for a society. But its immediate and salient relevance to the average voter varies greatly. Theoretical physics is very worth funding and has many real world applications. But its relevance to — and just as importantly, its political traction with — a middle income couple in your average community where he’s a bus driver and she’s a nurse may not be crystal clear. Yet everyone knows a family member or loved one or friend stricken with cancer, or conditions tied to aging and dementia, heart disease, or any number of other conditions against which medical science is making steady progress. The point is so obvious it barely merits arguing: People fear death and disease. They look to science for hope of cures and some promise of long and robust lives. For two or three generations, that hope has been tied to researchers, somewhere, perhaps operating with something akin to magic but consistently producing new and wonderful things….

The challenge is that the world of biomedical research is insular. It operates with a system of internal governance and mores that are broadly understandable to people who’ve been exposed to university life, especially in the sciences. But that’s a very, very rarified discourse — peer review, study sections, fundamental vs. applied research, pipelines of new researchers, etc. Let’s start with just the foundational point that almost no one has any fucking idea what any of those terms and concepts mean. And for most things, that’s fine. Society should be well-run and knowledgeable enough to keep its scientists and researchers funded so that they don’t need to focus on the song and dance of making the case for what they do in the public square. Unfortunately, that’s not the world we’re living in right now.

Researchers have an additional and under-ordinary-circumstances very understandable desire not to overpromise or give false hope. This is rooted both in ethical imperatives and the uncertainty-driven empiricism that is the hallmark of any good scientist. But at the moment, it is a big problem because it is providing an unmerited advantage to those who are using lies to shut down medical research in the U.S. 

Marshall’s essay is worth reading in its entirety, but his essential point is that people with big megaphones–those in the various “disease communities”– should inform the general public about what is happening. Loudly. As he says, “The more widely known this becomes, the more salient it becomes, the worse it will get for those people who are pushing these cuts, or at least trying to make them permanent through the 2026 budget process.”

Trump and Musk gave carte blanche to know-it-all interns who have no comprehension of how science or government works. Millions of Americans will suffer unnecessarily as a result.

Welcome to MAGA (Morons Are Governing America) world.

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Taxes And Spending

I am not an economist, nor do I play one on this blog. But let’s talk about economics and Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” 

As Heather Cox Richardson recently reported, despite the GOP’s pious (and entirely bogus) expressed concerns about the deficit, the speed with which Congressional Republicans are trying to pass this monstrosity is rooted in their effort to avoid widespread recognition of what it actually does. The bill blows the budget deficit wide open by extending the 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy and connected, and it does so by sticking it to the needy, via draconian cuts to Medicaid.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that extending the tax cuts for the already-rich will cost at least $4.6 trillion over the next ten years. (And in an especially despicable twist, the tax cuts would go into effect immediately but the cuts to Medicaid wouldn’t hit until 2029, after both the midterms and the 2028 election.)

The prospect of that debt explosion led Moody’s on Friday to downgrade U.S. credit for the first time since 1917, following Fitch, which downgraded the U.S. rating in 2023, and Standard & Poor’s, which did so back in 2011. “If the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is extended, which is our base case,” Moody’s explained, “it will add around $4 trillion to the federal fiscal primary (excluding interest payments) deficit over the next decade. As a result, we expect federal deficits to widen, reaching nearly 9% of GDP by 2035, up from 6.4% in 2024, driven mainly by increased interest payments on debt, rising entitlement spending and relatively low revenue generation.”

The difficulty in passing this monstrosity has been the insistence of hardline Republicans that the cuts to Medicaid and SNAP weren’t draconian enough.

It’s a standard Republican accusation that federal spending is out of control, but as Richardson notes, discretionary spending has actually fallen more than 40% in the past 50 years as a percentage of gross domestic product, from 11% to 6.3%. What has really caused rising deficits were the Bush and Trump tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

But rather than permit those tax cuts to expire— or even to roll them back— the Republicans continue to insist Americans are overtaxed. In fact, the U.S. is far below the average of the 37 other nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, an intergovernmental forum of democracies with market economies, in its tax levies. According to a report by the Center for American Progress in 2023, if the U.S. taxed at the average OECD level, over ten years it would have an additional $26 trillion in revenue. If the U.S. taxed at the average of European Union nations, it would have an additional $36 trillion.

In a recent Substack, Paul Krugman described the Big Beautiful Bill as a “big tax giveaway to the wealthy combined with cruel cuts in programs that serve lower-income Americans,” writing that the measure’s cruelty is exceptional even by recent right-wing standards, and noting that it relies on

claims we know aren’t true and policies we know won’t work — what some of us call zombie ideas. And it’s hard to avoid the sense that the counterproductive viciousness is actually the point. Think of what we’re seeing as the attack of the sadistic zombies.

Krugman writes that this slashing of Medicaid will cause almost inconceivable hardship to the bottom 40 percent of Americans, especially to the poorest fifth. (Medicaid actually covers far more Americans than Medicare, including 39 percent of the nation’s children.)

Among the ways Republicans will slash Medicaid is by requiring that adult Medicaid recipients be gainfully employed — or, as Krugman points out, “more accurately, that they demonstrate to the satisfaction of government bureaucrats that they are gainfully employed, which is not at all the same thing.”

The belief that many Americans receiving government support are malingering, that they could and should be working but are choosing to be lazy, is a classic zombie idea. That is, like the claim that cutting taxes on the rich will unleash an economic miracle, it’s a doctrine that should be long dead. It has, after all, been proved wrong by experience again and again.

But right-wingers simply refuse to accept the reality that almost everyone on Medicaid is either a child, a senior, disabled or between jobs.

The evidence from state efforts to impose work requirements shows that–while such rules don’t get presumably “lazy” people to work–they do  take benefits away from people who are legally entitled to them through onerous paperwork and administrative barriers. 

If Republicans really cared about deficits, they’d tax the rich, not screw over the poor. They could begin by simply enforcing current tax rates, which our plutocrats evade to the tune of 150 billion dollars a year.

Your GOP at work…..

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Where We Are

Donald Trump opposes the “invasion” of immigrants.

Well, not all immigrants–just Brown or Black ones. Perhaps you have somehow missed the administration’s daily efforts to reverse the progress of women and people of color, but there’s no way to miss the racism of his recent exemption of (properly pale) folks from his otherwise unremitting war on immigration–his grant of refugee status to “persecuted” White folks from South Africa. According to our racist and demented Chief Executive,  White South Africans should be welcomed while dark-skinned people escaping actual persecution–and dark-skinned people already living in the U.S.–should be excluded.

Per the linked New York Times report:

Mr. Trump has halted virtually all refugee admissions for people fleeing famine and war from places like Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. But he has created an expedited path into the country for Afrikaners, a white ethnic minority that created and led the brutal apartheid regime in South Africa.

The refugee process often takes years. But only three months have passed from the time Mr. Trump signed an executive order establishing refugee status for Afrikaners to the first cohort making its way to America.

As I have often written, and as any sentient American knows, Trump’s appeal to his MAGA base is rooted in racism. Some wealthy Americans probably voted for further tax breaks and the ability to evade government oversight, but the devotion of his MAGA voters was and is firmly based upon his none-too-veiled promises to put “those people” in their place.

Unfortunately, people who embrace racist tropes are also likely to misinterpret–or entirely miss– numerous other aspects of the world they inhabit. It’s doubtful whether most of the fearful and angry folks who cast their ballots for an ignorant buffoon understood that they would get a demented puppet controlled by the authors of Project 2025, or that his profound ignorance would destroy the robust economy left by his predecessor.

But here we are.

In a recent newsletter, Robert Hubbell described our current civic/governmental landscape. He began by reporting on the most recent violation of the Emoluments Clause–the fancy airplane being gifted to Trump by Qatar (a country that has supported Hamas to the tune of 1.8 billion dollars and for whom Pam Bondi, our current Attorney General, once lobbied, for a hefty $115,000 a month.)

He then turned to the recurring question that arises as evidence of corruption mounts: how does he get away with it?

The short answer is that Trump has neutralized the guardrails of democracy that would prevent behavior violating US criminal laws and constitutional provisions.

First, the US Supreme Court has immunized Trump from the criminal laws of the US (in Trump v. US). In the normal course, the DOJ would investigate and prosecute Trump under the the US criminal code.

Second, Trump has immunized himself from impeachment and conviction by engineering a hostile takeover of the Republican Party. In the normal course, Congress would impeach, convict, and remove Trump from office.

Third, Trump has neutered Congress, which could stop his corruption through legislation, oversight, and investigations.

Finally, Trump has corrupted, compromised, or destroyed the DOJ, FBI, and the system of inspector generals and independent agencies.

All in one hundred days! But as Hubbell notes, Trump didn’t do all those things alone. He had help weakening the guardrails of democracy–the damage he’s done has been “enabled and assisted by a corps of cultural war shock troops who believe in white supremacy, Christian nationalism, and antisemitism.”

Trump remains in control of about one-third of the electorate–the segment of the population that has embraced White supremacy and Christian nationalism. But as Hubbell reminds us, a third is not a majority. It is not enough—or should not be enough–to turn America into a country governed by a White Christian Taliban. 

The outcome of this very fraught time in our national story depends on the rest of us.

I wish there were a better, easier answer than saying that years of protesting in the streets and showing up at town halls and ballot boxes will be needed to get us out of this mess. But here we are. The only question is, “What are we going to do about it?” For me, the answer is, “Exactly what we have been doing, only louder, more frequently, and in greater numbers.”

No new leader will emerge who can miraculously save us. We cannot hope for a “deus ex machina” end to our current national story.

It’s up to us.

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The Brazen Corruption…

One thing about life under an autocracy: it spawns a particular kind of black humor. Among the various telling memes and cartoons making the rounds, one especially has captured (at least in my mind) the essence of our current situation. The cartoon shows Nixon and Trump; Nixon is famously saying “I am not a crook.” Trump is saying “I am a crook. So what?”

I think that sums up how far we’ve traveled–and in what direction.

I’m willing to believe that some of our former Presidents have been less than honest. But those who failed to meet social expectations of honor and virtue did work to hide their bad behaviors–to deny dishonesty or venality, to appear to be the sort of leaders Americans had the right to expect. Trump doesn’t bother.

Most of us who find this administration horrifying have focused upon the damage being done to the federal government and  Constitution, and on the out-and-proud racism and misogyny motivating so much of that damage. Only recently has the media turned to what has been the elephant in the room: the immense corruption that Trump makes no effort to hide.

In the Contrarian, Norm Eisen recently addressed the enormity of that corruption.

As a former White House Ethics Czar, I have been stunned by the sheer number of ethics issues afflicting Donald Trump’s first 100 Days. But Trump and his cronies’ ethics violations have been overshadowed by his other frequent and flagrant transgressions. For example, in his first term, there was heavy mainstream media attention from day one of his selling hotel rooms to foreign governments and the like. This time around, not so much–although they have been a steady theme here on The Contrarian and for the Democracy Movement.

This should be a national scandal, which is why I co-authored this major report on Trump’s crypto corruption. It is the single most profound Presidential conflict of the modern era: a POTUS who has almost 40% of his net worth in his crypto ventures, at the same time as he is regulating the digital currency industry–and, for good measure, has substantial foreign government cash pouring into those ventures!

Eisen is not alone in highlighting the unprecedented corruption. Senator Mark Kelly–among others–recently blasted what he called Trump’s “corruption in broad daylight.”

Kelly is one of the sponsors of what is called the “End Crypto Corruption Act,” which would prohibit the president, vice president, senior executive branch officials, members of Congress and their immediate families from issuing, endorsing or sponsoring crypto assets, such as meme coins and stablecoins.

As Kelly put it in a news release, “Trump is cashing in on his presidency and making millions from his own crypto coins — this is corruption in broad daylight. I’m supporting this bill to make it illegal for the President and other government officials to make a profit from crypto assets. It’s time to put a stop to this.”

A number of other lawmakers and media outlets have reported on what can only be called Trump’s open invitation to bribe him. The most egregious example: he has invited the 220 largest holders of his personal $TRUMP “memecoin” to a dinner at which the top 25 will get “exclusive access” to the president.

As the official in charge of crypto policy for the Securities and Exchange Commission during the Biden administration put it, “This is really incredible. They are making the pay-to-play deal explicit.”  The executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics was even more blunt.

“I’m not sure we ever saw anything as blatant as this meme coin dinner. This is over the top — even for Trump — because while the practice of putting money in his pocket and subsequently gaining access to the presidency is far from new, it is more shameless than it has ever been.”

The entire Trump crime family is participating in the grift. Several media outlets have reported that an Abu Dhabi state-backed investment firm is making a $2 billion investment in the Trump family’s crypto venture, World Liberty Financial– the latest example of a foreign entity making a major investment in a Trump family business. Anyone who thinks that such an “investment” doesn’t give that foreign entity leverage with the administration is smoking something strong.

As the extent of the Trump corruption becomes more widely known, the question will be whether it matters to the MAGA cultists. After all, they are getting exactly what they voted for: an administration promoting White Christian nationalism.

Thus far, there’s no evidence that they care about the honesty or competence of those they’ve elected, or about the America the Founders bequeathed us.

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An Excellent Open Plea

My sister was one of those Hoosiers who once held out hope that Indiana’s Senator Todd Young would grow a spine. After all–unlike Senator Jim Banks–he appears to have a working brain and at least a dim understanding of the current constitutional crisis. But after several attempts to communicate with him, she concluded direct messaging was useless–that he is simply more concerned with retaining his seat in the Senate than in fulfilling his constitutional duties or protecting the common good. Frustrated, she has written an “open letter” to him, and sent it to local media outlets.
I don’t know whether those media outlets will print it, but today I am reproducing–and enthusiastically endorsing– it.
______________
Senator Young,
I am one of the many constituents who have written, phoned, and/or visited your office, and given the non-responsive form letters I’ve received in return, I seriously doubt if any of my concerns have been heard, so I am writing this open letter in hopes that someone will share it with you. (I have not made a similar effort to communicate with Senator Banks, who is clearly a lost cause, but due to previous actions and remarks on your part, I had hoped you might be more independent, more open to reason – thus your recent behavior has disappointed me greatly.)
You were a Marine. You are currently a member of Congress. In both of those capacities, you swore an oath to uphold the Constitution. You did not swear allegiance to a person or a party, but to our founding document – to a set of principles. You continue to violate that oath in multiple ways.
In spite of his obvious gross incompetence and lack of qualifications for the job, you voted to confirm Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense, putting the lives of service members and the national security of our country at risk. You put your loyalty to a cult leader ahead of concern for the health of your constituents by confirming another grossly unqualified candidate – a conspiracy theorist without any scientific background – as head of the HHS. You ignored questions about the dependability of Tulsi Gabbard to guard sensitive information necessary to the safety of our country. These are just three of the many example of times you have shirked your duty.
The United States is in a crisis, one that could be somewhat mitigated if only a few Republicans would put country before party and the good of the people before their own self-interest – if they would remember their oath to uphold the Constitution and take back the power it grants them and which they have so cravenly ceded to a wannabe dictator.
You could help negate Trump’s executive orders, most of which are grossly illegal. You could help counter the horrific consequences of Elon Musk’s attempts to destroy government agencies that provide critical services to your constituents. (And whose actions have, coincidentally, put an end to several of those agencies’ investigations into his very questionable business dealings.) How does cutting off funding for cancer research or Alzheimer’s disease benefit the residents of Indiana? How will gutting Education and the Arts help citizens of this (already under-educated) state? Tell me how your own children will benefit from leaving them an environment with less breathable air, drinkable water, and safe food. How do you think women and other marginalized groups in Indiana feel about being returned to second class citizenship, and how do citizens on the edge of retirement—many of them Hoosiers who have struggled for years to put food on their tables– feel about the GOP’s vicious proposed cuts to Social Security and Medicaid?.
In my almost 78 years (several of which I spent as a member of a Republican Party that no longer exists), I have never seen an administration that is so brazenly corrupt. History will record that every member of Congress who failed to protest this corruption, who cravenly enabled our would-be autocrat, was complicit in that corruption.
It’s probably just as well that former principled Republicans such as William Ruckelshaus, Dick Lugar, and Bill Hudnut are not here to see the debacle you have made of a once Grand Old Party.
_________
Those of you who are so inclined might forward a copy of the letter to Young’s office, with a note suggesting your agreement with its message. Given the sentiments expressed at Young’s “empty chair” Town Hall, it’s clear my sister speaks for a significant number of angry Hoosiers…..
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