Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:51 pm
*The following is an opinion column by R Muse*
There isn’t anything that should shock and awe Americans with a lying authoritarian leading the lying barbarous Republican congress, but the latest hint of what is about to occur in America, although not shocking, is unprecedented. No-one alive in America doubts that with Trump and his overinflated ego seeking a means of claiming 100 percent support for every last Republican atrocity wrought on Americans, and his lust for vengeance against anyone not kissing the ground he walks on, there is a new proposal from a trusted Trump advisor that does not bode well for federal employees.
One of the new atrocities Republicans in the House put in place was a reiteration of the Holman rule that allows any individual legislator or Republican Congress to unilaterally summon, interrogate, terminate or cut the salary to $1 of any private citizen working for the government who fails to hew closely to the Trump-Republican ideology and all the badness it entails. Top Trump supporter and advisor, Newt Gingrich, has an addendum to the Holman rule that mandates firing any federal employee at any level who voted for Trump’s opponent and winner of the popular vote Hillary Clinton. This tyrannical and anti-democratic concept is not as far away from reaching fruition as one might think at first blush. In fact, it is a very real and present danger with a Republican Congress, vindictive lying occupant of the White House and an ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation plan to enact wholesale discretionary spending cuts intended to dismantle every last aspect of the government.
The disgraced, and corrupt, Gingrich was speaking at, where else, the Heritage Foundation when he was wetting his underpants over the horrendous Heritage plan Trump-Republicans intend to use as a blueprint to take apart the government. What seems to have given Gingrich a waking wet dream is the plan to kill over 20 percent of the federal workforce. In fact, Trump’s inhumane transition team led by former Heritage Foundation employees has been meeting for months with “career officials in the White House to outline its plan for massive cuts to the workforce.” The plan is the result of the Heritage Foundation model that “essentially calls for cutting nearly all of the government’s discretionary spending.”
Gingrich is seriously excited that Trump will give Republicans the Koch vision of America, one he’s called for over a couple of decades that deconstructs the government. He told a bunch of cruel and inhumane Heritage event attendees that, “I would say by one week after the inaugural, it will be very interesting to look at how many things have changed.” But good old Newt sees one risk to the Trump’s immediate demolition of the government; instantly slashing a federal agency to death will lead other employees “to find ways to sabotage each new cabinet secretary as soon as they walk through the door.” Gingrich is describing the typical Trump-Republican voter, not any Democrat.
His solution, “perhaps the most nakedly political argument for mass firings of federal employees,” is summarily terminating every single federal worker who voted for Hillary Clinton. He said, “all those bureaucrats overwhelmingly voted for Clinton. There won’t be any real cooperation until we change federal law so we can fire them.” (author bold) It is vindictive and it is also a shamelessly racist attack on the Black community. Gingrich, like the malcontent conservatives at the Heritage Foundation, is well aware that African Americans make up about 20 percent of the “overall federal workforce.” It is not enough satisfaction for Republicans to kill off federal jobs for sheer sport, they have to make sure a very large percentage of those jobs are held by African Americans; it is so typically Republican racist.
But just firing federal workers who voted for Hillary Clinton wasn’t the only Trump vengeance Gingrich called for. He also demanded summarily abolishing the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) for not rubber-stamping fiscally detrimental Trump-Republican policies. He took a page out of deceitful Donnie’s book and lied saying,
“The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is simply incompatible with the Trump era. It is a left-wing, corrupt, bureaucratic defender of big government and liberalism.”
Gingrich is fuming that the non-partisan CBO revealed that repealing the Affordable Care Act would “increase the number of uninsured Americans by 18-million in the first year,” and increase insurance premiums for the “non-group” market by 20 to 25 percent, also in the first year. Like Trump, Gingrich subscribes to the philosophy that anyone in any agency that doesn’t praise a Trump-Republican policy or agenda as “god-sent” is Satanic and has to be deleted from existence.
Gingrich claims that the Republicans and Democrats serving in the CBO are not only dirty liars, he says they are indefensible, wrong and they are “clearly corrupt.” It is worth reiterating again that the only reason Gingrich and the Trump believe the CBO is corrupt is because it didn’t give its glowing approval of a fiscally disastrous and inhumane action called for by Trump Republicans.
Many pundits keep throwing around the word “unprecedented” to describe what is happening to America with Trump-Republicans’ wielding unchecked control over the nation. Although it may be ‘unprecedented’ in a representative democracy like America, it is completely normal in authoritarian regimes where a tyrant will not countenance dissent or criticism. Any American who still believes Trump or Republicans have any regard for the people or the government that exists to serve and protect them is an idiot. Maybe in the Trump era today Republicans will only target Clinton voters, women and minorities, but like any tyrannical regime, the autocracy will eventually get around to terrorizing the entire population like Iraq under Saddam Hussein, North Korea under Kim Jong-un, Germany under Hitler and rapidly developing America under the Trump.
Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn't look good.
Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.
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