In a land where ten percent of the people own 90% of the country, how much more is there to lose? It seems we are about to find out.
The silence in the face of Donald Trump’s daily barrage of words and actions and Elon Musk’s outright purchase of people including DJT, may very well answer that question. But there is more.
It is called the “Unitary Executive” – a theory of leadership first formulated in the 1980s during the Reagan Administration.
One has to know a bit about history to understand that what Ronnie managed to do with the help of the Heritage Foundation is essentially end the liberalization of America developed during WWII when labor and management were forced to work together to win a truly world war.
Examining the idea of a Unitary Executive with complete and total control over the Executive branch, the theory envisioned a King-like President who could do anything he wanted to do with what conservatives saw was written into Article 11 of the U.S. Constitution, which delineates presidential powers and according to their interpretation, gives the president sole authority over the Federal Government’s executive branch.
Then, perhaps, but not now.
Clearly from the very first day in office as he began his second term, Trump has produced one order or another taking control of Congressional programs without any hesitation, taking on Federal judges by demanding that some be impeached and literally tearing down what has existed between the three branches of government since the nation’s founding.
Working with a series of appointments of people in his cabinet – in most cases men and women with little or no experience in the agencies they are now running = he has surrounded himself with “yes” people who have little or no experience in the fields that now involve them.
They are there to be told what to do and then do it as quickly as possible.
At first it looks like the Heritage Foundation has simply developed Project 2025 to hand Mr. Trump a script.
When you write a damned good script for a reality show salesman who spent 15 successful years as host of a national broadcasting network’s weekly show, all you need is another super script for the same guy in a very different job and you find success all over again.
But it is far more than that.
It is an idea that Heritage believes has found its natural leader.
Congress has remained eerily quiet.
The Democrats seem lost and divided between older leadership which has proven itself even if it seriously mangled the Presidential campaign handing the Presidency to Trump.
The Republicans are led by two men – one always fighting for his job, the other new to leadership who see little value in being anything but totally loyal and essentially quiet, letting Mr. Trump do anything he wants to do.
One of those things was to fire a member of the National Labor Relations Board, an independent executive branch agency created by Congress.
This direction goes directly against a significant law and whether the Supreme Court will step into the issue remains to be seen. 90- years ago the Supreme Court established a precedent that limits a president’s ability to dismiss certain agency heads.
Those who support the idea of a unitary executive argue that any President can fire anyone in the Executive branch even if such an action violates job protections established by laws passed in Congress.
There are those who believe that unless the Supreme Court blocks Trump’s activities, it will help cement the unitary theory of the unitary executive into American constitutional law.
Some years ago Trump said something about having an Article 11 where he could do anything he wants to do as President.
During the recent campaign he told many at his meetings to please vote this time because it will be the last vote they have to make. Could he have been thinking about the very powers he is now exploiting?
There is already an indication that forces within his government are preparing the case for another term of office for him.
SIGNS OF RESPONSE
He decided that it would be suicide to close the government letting Trump choose whether he wanted to open some or all of it whenever he chose to do so.
Trump’s call for impeachment of Federal judges so disturbed Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts that he spoke out claiming that there are official ways to question a judge’s decision but impeachment is not one of them. This rebuke was so soft given how many judges are involved in the Project 2025 attempt to change our government with Trump and Musk as front men closing government offices and programs, attacking Medicaid and medical affairs for veterans etc. that it sounded childish.
The daily attack on the judicial system is accompanied by the daily attack against programs established by Congress and these attacks are led solely by the Executive Branch with Trump and his busy ally, Elon Musk and his very active desire to simply but generously buy people the way he has bought Donald Trump, to get the job done.
The latest attack is to close down the Department of Education and even Trump finds that his own attempt to do so is “strange and disconcerting.” It is a very interesting reality for him – something he would never have thought about doing himself.
His feelings tell us again that his actions are coming directly from the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 – a full boar attack on America’s democracy and an obvious effort to turn that democracy into an oligarchy led by and for the rich and powerful.
THE POLITICS OF CHANGE
Maybe then people could see the Democratic Party begin to rely on the educated class not just the working class. And maybe then the working class began to feel the change and wonder whether their needs and influence mattered as much as it used to matter.
Years have passed since then and as our approach to education began to literally fail to educate, it was possible for working class Americans – so very definitely black and brown – to wonder if anyone in America cared about them at all.
It is that America that we live in today where a Donald Trump could turn a cold Republican Party away from its class act and get them to act as if they represented another class altogether. Add the Democrat’s failure to control migrant entrance into this country, and one could see those at the bottom of the heap begin to resent a new group of those in this country who could and would work more cheaply as members of an “illegal” working class.
Try as it might, Congress could not develop an immigrant program that worked at all and after years of good intentions but complete failure, the migrant movement into America slid out of control.
The Democrat’s essential silence in these first months of the Trump Administration could come from some sense of shock or an aging of its leadership, or a sharp contrast between middle-of-the -road- Democrats and their younger Progressives.
On the other hand, there is also silence from the Republican Party. There is no indication that the majority of Republican politicians are of the MAGA persuasion and yet the silence from them is clearly an indication that they fear what is promised or threatened – work against MAGA and you will face a fight for your job.
Mr. Trump, acting as the Front Man for Heritage has not only silenced the Democrats but the Republicans as well.
He clearly deserves an A for effort as he plans for a 4 trillion dollar corporate tax cut introduced a little further down the road.
And so we experience the silence of the Republican Party, and the confusion of the Democratic Party as our two party system seems to no longer count to do anything at all about the new government being formed by an outside group of individuals with help from the President of the United States.