Saturday, May 05, 2018

It's About Corruption, Baby


The Socialist Worker editorializes that, when you boil it all down, the Trump Administration isn't about drama. It's about corruption:

Trump is obviously not the first or only corrupt American leader, but, just as he's pushing the acceptability of open racism and sexism to new lows, he's normalizing naked corruption -- and, therefore, impunity for the rich and powerful.
This isn't just about his scandals -- it's his philosophy of government to replace laws and systems with a series of individual decisions that increase the power of the decision-maker.
Trump's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau fines Wells Fargo for defrauding customers even as the administration strips regulations to prevent future crimes. That may seem like a contradiction, but for business, the message is clear: what matters less is legality than staying in Trump's good graces.

Trump has always been about corruption. His focus has always been on getting rich -- by whatever means possible. Those who have worked for Trump are a remarkable group of grifters:

Like Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt, who has repeatedly accepted gifts from the energy companies on whose behalf he is wiping out inconvenient regulations. And Trump hatchet men Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn, whose unreported lobbying work for foreign governments made them early targets of Mueller's special investigation into collusion between the Russian government and Trump's presidential campaign.

Stormy Daniels may occupy today's news. But the real news is about how Donald Trump is getting rich -- as he has always gotten rich -- at the public's expense.

Image: Me.me


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

!?

"Trump has always been about corruption."

One wonders if that's how Giuliani gottis current position with Trump.

Owen Gray said...

They both appear to be cashing in, !?.

The Mound of Sound said...


I think America looks corrupt when the nation is considered a democracy. When Princeton released the 2014 paper by professors Gilens and Page, it became manifest that America had long since ceased to function as a democracy. It had become a plutocracy, a transactional state in which political power was rented out to very narrow and affluent interests. The authors documented how the public interest was routinely subordinated to private interests where the two clashed.

America underwent political capture followed by regulatory capture. Regulated industries now control their regulators thanks to a thoroughly corrupted legislative and judicial branch. The Citizens United decision is an act of pure judicial corruption. There's a remarkably accommodating law for the right, the special interests, and a far less accommodating law for everyone else.

If you have the legislative and the regulatory and the judicial arms of the state stitched up, is it not almost inevitable that the executive branch would follow suit? Trump is of the ruling class, the plutocrats, which is why he so often chooses to rule as a monarch, not a president. This is particularly evident in the manner in which he's organized his White House where disagreement is nothing less than disloyalty, a firing offence.

On another note, I'd like to know where Jared and Ivanka are hiding out. Perhaps they're scouting out luxury homes in countries that have no extradition treaty with America. Only until daddy can pardon them, you see.

Owen Gray said...

Once they captured the legislature and the judicary, it was only a matter of time until the plutocrats installed one of their own in the presidency, Mound. Jared and Ivanka are hiding, waiting for the all clear signal.