Tag Archives: Trump

The Real Reason For Decimating The Federal Government…

I should have seen it.

The Washington Post recently reported on what should have been obvious to those of us who have studied the Right’s constant efforts to privatize governmental functions: Elon Musk’s mass government cuts will make private companies millions. While Trump and Musk are framing the immense and indiscriminate cuts to federal governance as removal of “waste,” they are really likely to provide what the article calls “a boon to private companies – including Musk’s own businesses – that the government increasingly relies on for many of its key initiatives.”

Much of my academic life was devoted research on contracting-out, a/k/a privatization–the decision to provide government services through private contractors rather than government employees.

My skepticism began with obvious misuse of the term.  Actual privatization would mean selling off government operations and allowing them to sink or swim in the marketplace (a la Margaret Thatcher). Americans, however, use the term to mean something else entirely: government “contracting out” with private companies to supply goods and services being financed with tax dollars.

There are certainly times where contracting makes sense, but government hasn’t been a very good judge of when those are. Contracts with units of government are qualitatively different from contracts between private actors, and those differences make it far more likely that the contracts ultimately negotiated will be unfavorable to the taxpayers who are funding them–and that’s even without the predictable “crony capitalism” that rewards campaign donors and favored billionaire sycophants with lucrative contracts at taxpayer expense.

As Musk has proceeded to lay waste to the federal bureaucracy, many objectors have noted that despite population growth, the federal workforce has been flat for decades. There’s a reason: a few years ago, I came across data showing that the federal government was actually paying the salaries of some 17 million full-time contract workers who weren’t technically government employees.

Criticisms of government operations ignore the reality that programs are often stymied by a lack of skilled in-house personnel. That includes–among other things– the government’s inept handling of refugees and the (mis)management of Medicare and Medicaid ($103.6 billion in improper payments in 2019 alone).

Too few critics recognize that passing a law to do X or Y is only a start; the unit of government charged with administering the law or program needs sufficient resources to do so. Those resources include adequate numbers of well-trained employees and skilled supervision– virtually impossible when contractors are providing the bulk of the services.

Back in 2021, I posted about an example from 2004, when George W. Bush turned the job of collecting the hundreds of billions of dollars that tax scofflaws owed Uncle Sam over to private collectors–parroting the GOP insistence that private business would do a better job than federal workers.  Most of what the private firms brought in was from easy-to-collect cases that began running out after just a few months. When the IRS brought the work back in-house, agents collected some two-thirds more money in that same few months, and it came from the harder cases the private companies had avoided. Relying on private tax collectors actually ended up costing the federal government money.

I should note that Republicans’ subsequent actions suggested that “efficiency” hadn’t really been the goal. They slashed 20 percent of the IRS’s budget and 22 percent of its staff. For people making more than $1 million, the number of tax audits dropped by 72 percent—and the money the IRS collected from audits fell by 40 percent.

The Guardian report noted that private firms are salivating as Musk decimates the federal bureaucracy.

Musk’s plans have already excited Silicon Valley mainstays such as Palantir, whose executives praised Doge on an earnings call last week and talked about how the disruption by the billionaire’s strike squad was good for the company. Palantir already has won hundreds of millions of dollars in US military contracts in recent years for AI-related projects.

Musk himself has extensive contracts worth billions of dollars through companies like SpaceX that are set to expand under the new administration.

There are certainly situations in which contracting out makes sense–but we are already relying on private contractors beyond the point of reason. We have contractors who do more or less the same work as civil servants, sitting in the same offices, for years on end, and typically at far higher cost. We have contractors who oversee contractors, contractors who write policy for government officials, and Trump is firing federal contract managers who are already too few in number and too outgunned in skills to manage it all.

The GOP’s persistent attacks on civil servants costs taxpayers and enriches privateers. The Trump/Musk goal is more of the grift.

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Let’s Talk About “Merit”

I don’t think anything has pissed me off more than Donald Trump’s insistence that DEI programs are just an effort to privilege “those people” (insert the object of your bias) over meritorious White guys. As a meme I’ve seen points out, that has it exactly backwards: DEI is an effort to level a very tilted playing field–an effort to combat the longstanding automatic preference given to White guys over more qualified women and minorities.

Study after study confirms that when identical resumes are sent to prospective employers by fictitious applicants–differing only in use of “white sounding” or “black sounding” names–the white sounding applicants get over twice as many interviews.

His pious defense of merit is especially ironic (to put it mildly)  when it is accompanied by Trump’s own incredibly unqualified nominees–a collection of cranks, clowns, conspiracy theorists and sycophants the likes of which no previous President has ever tried to elevate to positions of responsibility. As a friend has noted, in what was a massive understatement, “I’ve seen better cabinets at IKEA.”

For generations, American White guys–more accurately, straight White Christian males–have enjoyed a raft of entirely unmerited advantages.

I will grant that many of the DEI programs have proven to be less than effective, and some have suffered from a surfeit of what we used to call “political correctness.” But they aren’t being attacked for dubious efficacy. If there was any lingering doubt about the profound racism of Trump and MAGA, Trump’s immediate attacks on DEI efforts, and his race to scrub government websites of anything remotely “woke,” should erase it. (No one could ever accuse MAGA folks of being woke–a term that simply means that one has awakened to the existence of structural impediments to civic and economic fairness. They aren’t interested in being fair, or to rewarding individual merit found in women or members of minorities.)

The idea of an actual meritocracy is appealing. But a lot of what we attribute to “merit” is really a leg up, rooted in racial, religious or financial privilege.

The problems with America’s approach to meritocracy implicate–yet again–my two favorite admonitions: “it depends” and “it’s more complicated than that.” We are gradually and reluctantly coming to see, for example, that our definition of what constitutes merit in a given area is often too constricted, and our devices for measuring and determining what constitutes relevant merit may be inadequate.

When I was still teaching, I used to cite the example of an old rule (I’ve long since forgotten which southern state it was from) that restricted entry into local carpenters’ unions to high school graduates who weighed at least 180 pounds. Those requirements kept most Black and female applicants out–in that place at that time, few Blacks graduated from high school, and few women weighed over 180 pounds. The purported justification for the rule was that carpenters needed to be able to read construction plans and needed to be able to pick up at least X number of pounds of materials on the worksite.

But–rather obviously–the best way to determine whether applicants should be admitted to the carpentry trade would be to test them on their ability to read and understand plans and drawings, and to have them demonstrate that they could pick up the necessary weight.

The bottom line is that even seemingly neutral criteria can be–and frequently have been–manipulated so that they are not really neutral.

Those of us who’ve served on university admissions committees know that an applicant’s GPA and test results are necessary but incomplete indicators of whether that applicant will do the academic work required.  We also look for evidence of motivation and discipline.

The definition of merit in a given situation can be complicated. What skills are relevant? What evidence is probative?

One thing has already become obvious: Donald Trump’s criterion for “merit”– being a straight White Christian Nationalist loyal to Donald J. Trump–is inconsistent with the demands of the positions to be filled.

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What We Face

On February 13th, Robert Hubbell’s daily letter included a (partial) list of what Trump/Musk had done in the first days of the administration. 

Pardoned 1,500 insurrectionists who assisted Trump in his first attempted coup.

Converted the DOJ into his political hit squad by opening investigations into members of the DOJ, FBI, Congress, and state prosecutors’ offices who attempted to hold Trump to account for his crimes.

Fired a dozen inspectors general, whose job it is to identify fraud and corruption and to serve as a check on abuses of power by the president.

Fired dozens of prosecutors and FBI agents who worked on criminal cases relating to Trump

Fired dozens of prosecutors who worked on criminal cases against January 6 insurrectionists

Opened investigations into thousands of FBI agents who worked on cases against January 6 insurrectionists

Disbanded the FBI the group of agents designed to prevent foreign election interference in the US

Disbanded the DOJ group of prosecutors targeting Russian oligarchs’ criminal activity affecting the US

Fired the chairs and members of the National Labor Relations Board, the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, and the Federal Election Commission and refused to replace them, effectively shutting down those independent boards in violation of statute

Shut down and defunded the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Shut down and defunded USAID by placing virtually the entire staff of the agency on leave

Impounded billions of dollars of grants appropriated by Congress to USAID, National Institutes of Health, Department of Education, and the EPA, all in violation of Article I of the Constitution, which grants Congress the power to make appropriations

Allowed a group of hackers to seize control of large swaths of the federal government’s computer network by attaching unauthorized servers, changing and creating new computer code outside of federal security protocols, creating “backdoors” in secure systems, installing unsanctioned “AI” software to scrape federal data (including personal identification information), and installing “spyware” to monitor email of federal employees

Disobeyed multiple court orders to release frozen federal funds (an ongoing violation; see the NYTimes on Wednesday)
Granted a corrupt pardon to the Mayor of New York in exchange for his promise to cooperate in Trump’s immigration crackdown

The occasional trolls who visit this site to register their approval of these illegal and unconstitutional measures discount their illegality, confirming disdain for what is a significant protection of individual liberty–the insistence that the ends cannot justify the means. The entire Bill of Rights is founded on that premise, which is central to the rule of law.

It requires a total lack of civic literacy and historic understanding to look at that list and approve of those actions–to fail to see that they are fundamentally contrary to sound policy, to the rule of law, and to America’s global interests and stature.

Members of Congress should be the first line of defense against this coup. Most of these arbitrary actions can only be properly and constitutionally taken by Congress, and the actions comprising the Trump/Musk coup send an unmistakable message that our co-Presidents find Congress irrelevant and expendable. One might expect even MAGA Senators and Representatives to object to their political castration, but–as James Baldwin once noted–in order for evil to flourish, “it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless.”

Unfortunately, MAGA Senators and Representatives only come in two flavors: Christian Nationalist (in Indiana, think Jim Banks) and spineless (in Indiana, think Todd Young). The Christian Nationalists are profoundly, if ignorantly, anti-American; the spineless are interested only in retaining their positions–positions that their meek obedience has divested of any significance other than the right to retain a title and receive a paycheck.

America’s government has three branches (someone needs to explain them to Tommy Tuberville), so in the absence of a live and breathing Congress, it is falling to the courts to restrain our would-be co-Kings. However, it looks all too likely that our would-be monarchs will ignore the courts–echoing Jackson’s infamous statement that “the courts have issued their decision, now let them enforce it.” 

If that happens, it will be left up to We the People to counter this coup, and we can’t wait until the midterm elections, by which time our overlords may have put even more vote suppression laws on the books. We must participate in protests, in general strikes, in civic resistance of all kinds. Jessica Craven has posted about several:—a nationwide protest on February 17, a one-day general strike on February 28, and a “total shutdown” on March 15.

Studies have determined that participation in non-violent protest by only 3.5% of a population forces political change. We the People can do this. 

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The Worst Threat

Rational Americans have been spending every day since January 20th freaking out as report after report details new assaults on the Constitution, the rule of law, science, poor people, minorities and women…basically, on the fabric of modern society. As justifiable as those reactions are, however, there is one assault that is easily the worst–because it poses an existential threat to all of humanity. As damaging–indeed, as terrifying– as all the other assaults are, history teaches us that they will eventually be overcome. (Granted, not necessarily in our lifetimes, and not without a lot of pain.)

But that return to sanity faces an unprecedented challenge. Overcoming social and political dysfunction requires residence on a habitable planet.

The single most dangerous and damaging aspect of the MAGA movement is its refusal to occupy reality–a reality that requires co-ordinated efforts to combat climate change.

As Cass Sunstein has recently written,

With the deluge of executive orders in the initial weeks of the second Trump administration, an important directive flew under the radar. It requires the federal government to consider abandoning “the social cost of carbon,” potentially undercutting all climate policymaking.

That is a technical way of signaling something simple and false: Climate change is not real. If the social cost of carbon is treated as zero, then greenhouse gas emissions inflict no damage. Regulations that reduce those emissions have no benefits, which suggests that those regulations should be eliminated.

The social cost of carbon has often been described as the most important number you’ve never heard of. The metric is meant to capture the harm caused by a ton of carbon emissions, making it a foundation of national climate change policy. A lower value would justify weaker regulations, while a higher one would warrant more aggressive policies.

The MAGA movement is hell bent on rejecting science, evidence and reality. Whether MAGA Neanderthals believe that their God will protect them, or cling to the belief that fossil fuel companies’ bottom lines are more important than the lives of their grandchildren, or share the fanciful beliefs of the world’s Musks and Trumps that they are demigods safe from the possibility that ignorance and viciousness won’t bring us all down, the consequences will be the same.

And those consequences are inevitable.

Trump and Musk attack every structural barrier they encounter in exactly the same way: they declare that it has been “politicised” and “weaponized.” So the Department of Justice has to be turned into an agency directed by Trump against his perceived enemies, the press must be cowed into a “balance” favoring euphemistic coverage of Trump’s lawbreaking, efforts to overcome systemic discrimination must be characterized as departures from competence (a particularly ludicrous accusation considering the incredible ignorance and lack of relevant skill of Trump nominees) –and the science of climate change must be demonized and dismissed as some sort of liberal myth.

As Sunstein concludes after his rather technical explanation of the social cost of carbon, “climate change is real. No president, and no federal agency, has the authority to pretend otherwise.”

Americans are currently under the thumb of madmen so arrogant they believe they can defeat reality by the simple act of denial.

Rational people, of course, recognize that belief as insanity. It is one thing to fall short of compliance with global efforts to counter–or at least slow–global warming; it is another thing entirely to reject science and simply refuse to accept the undeniable and mounting evidence that is now all around us.  

The average global temperature has increased by about 2°F (1.1°C) since 1850. The rate of warming has increased in recent decades. Glaciers are shrinking, and the amount of Arctic sea ice is decreasing.  Sea levels are rising at an increasing rate. Rainfall events are becoming more intense. Snow is melting earlier, and spring is coming earlier; plants are leafing out and spring migrant birds arrive earlier each year. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing. More land areas are experiencing more hot days and heat waves. Wildfires are starting more easily and spreading more rapidly (as Californians can attest). Etc. Etc.

Trump’s insistence that none of this is connected is undoubtedly motivated in part by his close relationship with fossil fuel magnates, but the motivation is irrelevant. As he and Musk continue their slow-rolling coup, they are destroying more than the Constitution and rule of law. They aren’t just waging war on the legal and philosophical framework of the Founders; they are virtually guaranteeing that much of the Earth will be inhospitable to human life–and sooner, rather than later.

Musk thinks Mars will be a viable substitute. This Earthling begs to differ.

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When Ignorance Meets Arrogance

In Federalist No. 1, Alexander Hamilton wrote

It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.

Reflection and choice require something entirely absent from Trump, Musk and their respective clown shows: knowledge and understanding.

MAGA’s ferocious assault on knowledge, expertise, and factual communication has given us today’s constitutional crisis–a crisis that reflects not just the massive civic ignorance of the general population, but the arrogance of the White Christian Nationalists who can–thanks to the Internet–choose such “facts” as they want to believe. Of course, as Hamilton would tell us, choosing false facts is not “reflection,” and ignoring both inconvenient facts and laws does not facilitate rational choice.

There is a chasm between the world inhabited by people who are capable of recognizing the current coup and the credulous souls and MAGA cultists who combine profound and visible ignorance with a wholly unearned arrogance–who take the laughable pronouncements from Trump and Musk at face value.

In a recent Substack letter, Paul Krugman described that chasm. 

Here’s where we are as a nation right now:

1. We may be in the middle of a trade war. Or maybe not

2. We’re in the middle of a constitutional crisis. No maybe.

3. We may be in the midst of a sort of digital coup, which might as a side consequence cause large parts of the federal government to cease functioning at all.

The unifying theme here, I guess, is that the federal government has been taken over by bad people who also are stunningly ignorant.

Krugman referenced the “concessions” made by Mexico and Canada, in return for Trump backing off his ridiculous tariffs.  Neither country agreed to do anything it wasn’t already doing--indeed, as Heather Cox Richardson has noted–these “concessions” confirmed agreements previously reached with the Biden administration.

As Krugman wrote,

The U.S., on the other hand, agreed to crack down on weapons shipments to Mexico. Trump will spin this as a victory; low-information voters and some intimidated media outlets may go along with the lie. But basically America backed down.

So is Trump the classic bully who runs away when someone stands up to him? It definitely looks that way.

Let’s be clear, however: this isn’t a case of no harm, no foul. By making the tariff threat in the first place, Trump made it clear that America is no longer a nation that honors its agreements. By caving at the first sign of opposition, he also made himself look weak. China must be very pleased at how all this has played out.

And as I argued the other day, the now ever-present threat of tariffs will have a chilling effect on business planning, inhibiting economic integration and damaging manufacturing.

Krugman described Musk’s effort to abolish USAID (which the man-child called a “viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America,”) pointing out that Musk not only isn’t president — he isn’t even a government official. Trump’s approval is irrelevant: shutting down an agency established by Congress is both illegal and unconstitutional.  Only Congress can legally abolish it.

This isn’t about saving money–USAID is responsible for a tiny fraction of the federal budget, although few voters understand enough about the federal budget to recognize how small a portion it is. Krugman observes that “in Musk’s worldview the mere fact of trying to help people in need makes you a radical-left Marxist who hates America.” And helping people is what USAID does; it funds humanitarian programs around the world. It feeds, medicates and vaccinates people. It saves lives.

Its termination–or even a pause–will cause many deaths.

And how many voters understand the enormity of the threat posed by the takeover of the Treasury’s computers by Musk’s interns?

Those systems control all federal payments, from grants to nonprofits to Social Security checks to salaries of federal workers. The potential for mischief is immense. 

Imagine that you’re a federal contractor who has made campaign donations to Democrats; suddenly the government stops paying what it owes you and brushes off inquiries by saying that they’re working on the problem. Or you’re a federal employee who, according to somebody in your office who has a personal grievance, has expressed sympathy for DEI; somehow your regularly scheduled salary payments stop being deposited into your bank account. Or even imagine that you’re a retiree who canvassed for Kamala Harris, and for some reason your checks from Social Security stop coming.

Don’t say they wouldn’t do such things. We’ve seen these people in action, and of course they would if they could.

As I type these words, America is in thrall to people who disregard the law, disregard court orders to stop, and whose arrogance deprives them of any understanding of the immense and long-lasting harm they are doing, as they play to the cheers of an equally ignorant cult.

Instead of “reflection and choice,” America is submitting to “accident and force.” And the rest of the world is watching.

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