MAGA in One Step

Photo by William Warby on Unsplash

H.L. Mencken was correct in his assessment of democracy and elections. It’s about getting something for nothing, always and necessarily from someone else’s pot. Electing an executive, who in turn spends trillions of borrowed and stolen money every year – mainly to buy the next election, enrich themselves and their allies, always unaccountable, always unauditable, always failing to deliver more freedom and more prosperity – why, that how it works, isn’t it?

Trump, with no third term to game, and with a new and extraordinary team of patriots, entrepreneurs and even soldiers, is returning to the White House. He has a well-published agenda, and it is not the one from the Heritage Foundation, a den of neocon and elitist iniquity up until a few years ago.

Just the other day, friend of mine, waiting for a plane, overheard (how could she not) one side of a loud conversation between a contractor working to acquiring DHS contracts for next year. Responding to a question from the other side “...but what about Trump?” he said, “My contacts are several levels deep in DHS…” implying they are safe from any purges.

Those that suck at the federal teat aren’t worried, not yet.

Also just the other day, my TikTok feed gave me the latest from the USDA. Horse shows and local competitions, even trail rides, were always self-policed, by designated volunteers, for animal welfare. From 2025 onward, they will be USDA policed, and the designated qualified person option is ver boten. Job creation by bureaucrats, for bureaucrats, of bureaucrats. This on top of endless land and property rights grabs from past administrations from the “land and water management” side of the federal government. We need to shed 90% of not just the USDA, but the entire federal bureaucracy in the next two years, but I doubt this is radical enough.

Government employees at state, local and federal levels are the most heavily unionized set of “workers” in the US – obviously this includes public school teachers, but it reveals a possibility that these unionized workers could strike in the face of a major policy change at the federal level. It brings to mind something Ronald Reagan did in 1981, and a phrase Trump made famous – but will he use it?

The immediate action by any new president is to put loyal and like-minded people in charge of all the departments and agencies, and Trump intends to do that. Past budgets (continuing resolutions in omnibus form passed at midnight on voice votes) exist, and his new appointees must cease to spend those authorized funds, by immediately demanding zero-based budgets from their agencies and departments and holding every fiat penny hostage. Even this is not radical enough.

When the executive branch presents the next budget, it truly needs to be a tiny shadow of its predecessor. Smaller in employees, in mission, in infrastructure, in funding. We often hear of the “successful” drawdown the US military conducted via the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process. In the five drawdowns conducted between 1988 and 2005, 350 installations (not missions) around the world were cut, saving a paltry $12 Billion dollars over 17 years – that’s a couple of month’s worth of wasted aid to Ukraine, not even close to the surge amount flowed into Israel since October 2023, on top of US regular assistance to Israel. Drawdowns as we have done in the past are clearly not radical enough.

Assuming the new President can manage and lead the massive federal bureaucracy with his own committed, loyal, honest and future oriented people, assuming he cuts and fires federal employees as all levels, he shrinks their spending starting on day one, and commits to putting to Congress drastically reduced future budgets, we can expect that Congress – owned by special interests and lobbies, and constitutionally ignorant, and financially incompetent – will “correct” and counter with the same kind of massive spending they’ve been doing. Trump would need to veto again, and again, and again. Yet, this would not be radical enough.

There is so much to do, and it’s a lot to expect. Trump can (maybe) harness the Executive branch, but can he rely on the House and Senate to assist? Of course not! The best, and the only, thing Trump can do is to liberate the money system by ending the Fed.

Jerome Powell’s public intransigence is astonishing given that the Constitution does not authorize or establish a National Bank. First, Powell should be fired, and replaced not by another Chairman, but by a Trump team of raiders who will first audit, then strip and sell any real value that may exist.

If Trump – like the President he often brings to mind, Andrew Jackson – could simply close down the US Inflation and Devaluation Factory, suddenly the tremendously complicated job of shrinking federal personnel, authority, infrastructure, mission descriptions, eliminating whole departments and agencies, would not be on Trump’s shoulders at all. The market would decide.

When the cost of public borrowing is unaffordable – and the government-sanctioned ongoing theft of purchasing power from 340 million Americans, their children and grandchildren is no longer tolerated – money becomes more honest, more real, more useful. Congress, the people, and the market would be simultaneously liberated by honest money. How the federal government shrinks – both the big picture and the small details – would transform overnight into a matter of innovation and problem solving, rather than of fear and panic. A meritocracy of federal spending would emerge overnight, replacing the corrupt lobbi-cracy, the scummy kakistocracy, and the greedy oligarchy all at once.

We would have Thomas Massie wannabe’s throughout the capitol building, all coming up with a myriad of great ideas to make government constitutional again. Would ending the Fed be more physically dangerous to politicians than dissolving the CIA, or eliminating 75% of the Defense Department? Is cutting off the head of a snake more dangerous than cutting off its tail? Will this one act be just radical enough to MAGA, and save the Republic?

It’s time we found out.