One of my favorite economists, Paul Krugman, has abandoned his New York Times column after 20 plus years. He has, however, continued his daily subscriber letter, which I receive, and in a recent one, he addressed the embarrassing pre-Christmas clown show that threatened to shut down the government. He titled the essay–quite appropriately–“The Chaos Monkeys Have Already Taken Over the Zoo.”
In an earlier Times piece, written before passage of the last-ditch, last-minute deal to keep government over, Krugman had written
Speaker Mike Johnson (soon to be ex-speaker?) is scrambling to put a budget deal together to avoid a government shutdown tomorrow. What a Holiday Gift from President Musk and First Laddy Trump. More at The NY Times here.
They couldn’t even wait till January to unleash the chaos. Classic hubris — too bad the country and the world are within the blast radius.
One more thing. Assuming Johnson is unable to remain Speaker in the next Congress, the days and weeks it might take the GOP to select a new ‘leader’ might take them past the deadline to certify the election.
(I hadn’t considered that possibility, and quite probably, neither did the congressional monkeys, aka “the usual suspects.” An inability to certify Trump’s election, brought on by the most MAGA members of the House, would have been..interesting…)
Krugman was far from the only observer who pointed out that the reasons “President Musk” gave for torpedoing the initial bipartisan measure were mostly bogus. His enumeration of the items in the measure he found unacceptable included a number that weren’t actually included in the measure. (I’m sure everyone reading this is shocked by the revelation that Musk is happy to depart from the truth when it serves his purposes…) A number of reports have zeroed in on what was apparently the real reason he wanted to kill the measure.
In a Friday letter to congressional leaders, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) claimed Musk derailed the deal that would have avoided a government shutdown “in order to protect his wallet and the Chinese Communist Party at the expense of American workers, innovators and businesses.”
The spending agreement released Tuesday included a bipartisan provision to limit and screen U.S. investments in China, among dozens of other proposals attached to the 1,500-page bill.
As the CEO and largest stockholder in Tesla, Musk has extensive business connections to China. The company operates a major manufacturing plant in Shanghai and has sought to build deeper connections with Chinese companies.
Interestingly, although the final bill did not include Trump’s demand to scrap the debt ceiling, it did omit the provision that would have curtailed Musk’s business with China. Musk evidently had more clout with lawmakers than Trump–quite possibly because he has ample resources to fund his threat to primary any legislators who failed to knuckle under.
What is most stunning about this particular “Chaos monkeys” episode is that the entire fiasco was triggered by a man with no official government authority–a man who has never submitted himself to the electorate, who has never received a single vote– yet clearly considers himself a co-President, and just as clearly, intends to use the considerable power of his purse to protect his personal financial interests, if need be, at the expense of the American public’s interests.
Musk is by far the richest of Trump’s proposed governing cabal, but he’s not the only billionaire, nor is he the only one who will bring multiple conflicts of interest to a designated role. The grifter-in-chief proposes to surround himself with other rich men (almost all of his designees are White “Christian” males) who are equally ignorant of government operations and constitutional constraints. They are clearly unconcerned about what policies might be in the national interest. Their first impulses will be to protect their own sources of wealth (or, in the case of RFK, Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, to impose their loony-tunes worldviews on the country.)
The dictionary defines Kakistocracy as “government by the least suitable or competent citizens of a state,” and Corporatism as economic control by powerful corporate interests.
I think we’re there.
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