After Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement of staggering “reciprocal” tariffs triggered days of steep stock market plunges, the President painted a picture of a world groveling at his feet, saying on Tuesday:

“These countries are calling us up, kissing my ass. They are, they are dying to make a deal. Please, please, sir, make a deal. I’ll do anything.
President Trump displays his by-country list of "reciprocal" tariffs.

I’ll do anything, sir.”

At a Republican dinner that evening he said:

"They’re all coming here. Japan is coming here as we speak. They’re in a plane, flying, lots of them”.

But after yet another day of stock index collapse, on Wednesday the President could only weakly urge everyone to buy stocks, posting at 9:37 that morning on Truth Social, “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT.”

That was before Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that morning instilled in him what must have been a fear bordering on panic, enough to induce him to announce at 1:18 that afternoon his 90-day pause in the steep tariff imposition penalizing countries around the world.

Bessent undoubtedly schooled him in what it meant that both the bond markets and the dollar were in sharp declines of their own other than just the stock markets. Trump evidently took fright from the tariff chaos he had created when he was made to understand that the sell-off of U.S. Treasury bonds — normally regarded as the safest refuge from world turmoil — was signaling a loss of confidence in America’s future. The U.S. operates on borrowed money — witness our huge national debt — and if the world decides to pull its funds because the U.S. looks to become unstable, the government would need to offer exorbitant… Read More »

Over the last decade or so, the younger generations have expressed increasing resentment that Social Security will not be there for them when they reach retirement age, that the 6.2% deducted from their paychecks – double that for the self-employed who have to pay the employer’s 6.2% as well – would make it what Elon Musk is calling "the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time".

But their fear of losing out was only that Social Security would run short of funds when their time came and not be able to pay full benefits.

What they nor current retirees hadn’t bargained for is the Trump administration’s multifaceted attempt to finally take great strides toward accomplishing the Republican dream of seeing Social Security destroyed altogether despite candidate Trump repeatedly telling us that he would not “touch” Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. “I will not cut one penny from Social Security”, he said.

What he did not say was that he intended to have Elon Musk lay hands on the agency for him. Musk and his acolytes have been doing so in several ways, starting with having acting commissioner Michele King and her chief of staff fired when they refused access to the agency’s data. Trump's replacement, Leland Dudek, threw open the doors despite a federal judge blocking access to personal data and accusing Musk of a "fishing expedition".

 First announced, in February, were 7,000 job cuts at the already understaffed Social Security Administration (SSA) to bring the personnel count down to 50,000. Worse, The Washington Post ran a story that said its management had been told to swiftly produce plans to cut the agency’s staff by half. Neither has happened – yet – but firings are happening all over government, most notably this week… Read More »

On February 20th, termination letters were sent to 7,000 probationary employees at the IRS just as over 200 million tax returns were about to descend on the agency. In an e-mail sent this Wednesday, Acting IRS Commissioner Melanie Krause reinstated them. Why? ProPublica uncovered that a top IRS lawyer warned the administration the letter, which fired the employees for poor performance, was “a false statement” that amounted to a phony predicate the Trump administration would claim in court, "an anticipatory fraud on tribunals of jurisdiction over these employment actions” in attorney Joseph Rillotta's words.

The performance of those dismissed had never been considered. To the contrary, many had received laudatory reviews.
Krause had to back down. The cohort would continue to be paid but were not to return to work, never mind tax season.

President Trump may have instructed Elon Musk to start using a scalpel rather than a chainsaw, to keep good people and eliminate the “bad ones”, but the 7,000 remain unchanged as an arbitrarily chosen group with no attention given to individual merit.

On top of that, the "continuing resolution" passed by Congress a week ago — a Republican plan with deep cuts in social programs grudgingly acceded to by a few Democrats to avoid a government shutdown — contained a little noticed line item that docked the IRS $20 billion in funding. And it's not the first time.

Nothing so clearly illuminates the Republicans’ fiscal irresponsibility than their repeated actions to hobble the IRS. Nothing makes it more obvious that Republican policy is to convert the U.S. into an oligarchy, to create a billionaire class that rules the country, than their repeated actions to stymie the pursuit of tax cheats and tax collection in general.

It was salvation far too long in coming when the Democratically-controlled Congress passed in 2022 President Biden’s Inflation… Read More »