Project 2025: From Lewis Powell Memo to Trickle-Down to the Project for the New American Century

by Scott Creighton

Project 2025 isn't actually called Project 2025 but rather the Mandate for Leadership 2025 program which is a reference back to the original Mandate for Leadership 1981 in which the economic brick of Milton Friedman neoliberal austerity was dropped on us under the name of Reaganomics.

'It took Everyman on Main Street some time to figure out that they’ve been had and finally revolt — 35 years to be more precise. There has been no shortage of big promises since Reagan’s “It’s Morning again in America,” but in the end, they all left the middle class staring into thin wallets while their manipulators were living high on the hog. The failed big ideas began with Reaganomics. The stimulating effect of its tax cuts was supposed to “trickle down” to the masses, but the flow had the viscosity of molasses and stuck with the ultrarich.

Under Reaganomics, the ultrarich had their taxes cut sharply — by about half. A millionaire who was paying $700,000 in taxes in the 1970s saw her taxes cut to $350,000 in the 1980s. But what was he or she going to do with the $350,000 windfall? Some spent it on conspicuous consumption, but many decided to fund think tanks and hire economists to support their ideology, while others used the windfall to influence politicians and shape laws. And so the tax cuts became a vicious circle in which wealth begot more wealth and still more influence.

Then came North Atlantic Free Trade Association, initiated by President George H. W. Bush and eventually signed into law by President Bill Clinton. Clinton promised that NAFTA would “promote more growth, more equality… and create 200,000 jobs in this country by 1995 alone.” Of course, he failed to mention how many hundreds of thousands of jobs would be destroyed at the same time, but few noticed such nuances at the time.' PBS

Project 2025 (for short) was put together at the Heritage Foundation who at this point believe they have to hit the ground running FAST in order to implement all the changes they want BEFORE folks figure out what they are doing.

'In January 2024, Roberts said that he did not believe that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election. He also said that he saw Heritage's role as "institutionalizing Trumpism," adding "the Trump administration, with the best of intentions, simply got a slow start. And Heritage and our allies in Project 2025 believe that must never be repeated." Wikipedia

The Project 2025 people believe government doesn't exist therefore they can and will make massive cuts to all sorts of agencies and programs.

'There is no such thing as “the government.” There are just people who work for the government and wield its power and who—at almost every opportunity—wield it to serve themselves first and everyone else a distant second. This is not a failing of one nation or socialist party, but inherent in human nature' page 14

 

The Project 2025 people promote the unitary executive theory last preached by Dick Cheney which puts the president in charge of all agencies and offices of federal government (even though they don't believe government exists) and allows his office (his advisors) to literally dictate every aspect of said federal government like a king or tin-pot dictator. So much for checks and balances. Yes, they believe the original plan of the Founding Fathers was to break us off from the totalitarian system of royal rule in England... so they could make a similar system here in the States despite what the actual wording of the constitution says.

'A President who refuses to do so and uses his or her office to reimpose constitutional authority over federal policymaking can begin to correct decades of corruption and remove thousands of bureaucrats from the positions of public trust they have so long abused' page 9

Reaganomics was the beginning of the downfall of the American working class. By every metric by every graph you can see in 1981 the wealthiest got richer while the working man lost ground. There was a plan put in place back then called The Mandate for Leadership. It was the economic brick that was dropped on the people of Chile in 1973. Project 2025 is also called The Mandate for Leadership and it is an attempt to bring it all back.

'Mandate for Leadership was published in January 1981—the same month Ronald Reagan was sworn into his presidency. By the end of that year, more than 60 percent of its recommendations had become policy—and Reagan was on his way to ending stagflation, reviving American confidence and prosperity, and winning the Cold War.' page 2

This couldn't sound more like Dick Cheney if he said it himself. Screw the environment, drill baby drill and take that oil from where ever we can and we will be better off... all of us. Of course, didn't work out that way in Iraq did it?

'The next conservative President should go beyond merely defending America’s energy interests but go on offense, asserting them around the world. America’s vast reserves of oil and natural gas are not an environmental problem; they are the lifeblood of economic growth. American dominance of the global energy market would be a good thing: for the world, and, more importantly, for “we the people.” page 13

Are we still pretending Donald Trump and Project 2025 have somehow become the 'party of the people' as RFK Jr. recently told Tucker Carlson? Keep in mind, Project 2025 was created over the course of 3 years by the folks at the Heritage Foundation:

'The Heritage Foundation was founded on February 16, 1973, during the Nixon administration by Paul Weyrich, Edwin Feulner, and Joseph Coors. Growing out of the new business activist movement inspired by the Powell Memorandum, discontent with Richard Nixon's embrace of the liberal consensus, and the nonpolemical, cautious nature of existing think tanks..' Wikipedia

'Written in 1971 to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Lewis Powell Memo was a blueprint for corporate domination of American Democracy.'

The Lewis Powell Memo of 1971 was a plan to bring straight fascism to the United States of America and the Heritage Foundation was created in it's wake as the flagship think tank to help facilitate that transition. They hated Nixon for not dropping the Milton Friedman neoliberal brick on America, as is explained in the above quote.

Their Mandate for Leadership 1981 plan helped usher in Reaganomics which had disastrous effects on the working class of America. Good thing RFK Jr.'s fans don't read very much:

'Thus, Reagan eliminated a large attribution that the wealthy provided the American economy, claiming it would “trickle down” to middle and working-class Americans. However, this has not been the case. 

According to Statista Research, the top 1% of the nation’s earners have seen their share of the nation’s income rise from 8.6% in 1989 to 13.9% in 2023, while the poorest 50% of Americans have seen their share of the nation’s wealth decrease from 3.5% to 2.6%.

Wealth statistics are always difficult to grapple with, especially when considering that these differences may not seem like much, but these stats show that 10% of Americans own 66.6% of the nation’s total wealth, while 50% of the nation only owns 2.6%. Simply put, wealth has become centralized with the wealthiest Americans becoming richer and richer every year.

Before Reagan, fellow Republican former President Dwight D. Eisenhower boasted a tax rate of 90% for the richest people in the country, while now they pay merely 37% due to Reagan-era tax cuts.' Matthew Schaffer

And lets make this clear, the Heritage Foundation, from their inception, are neocons.

'In 1983, the Heritage Foundation's founded The Heritage Foundation's Asian Studies Center, which publishes research studies and commentary on Asia and the Pacific Rim and U.S. policy toward the region. The center also has hosted Asia-specific lectures by Henry Kissinger (1995), Donald Rumsfeld (1988), Paul Wolfowitz (2000), Henry Paulson (2007), and others' Wikipedia

They might as well call Project 2025 the Project for the New American Century because they advocate for the same things including the absolute control of the world's energy resources taken by any means necessary.

Endless oil and LNG wars.

Makes you wonder why such 'progressive' thought leaders like Jimmy Dore and RFK Jr. and others are endorsing Trump knowing full well that such a large and influential think tank has been crafting a new Reagan-era economic brick to drop on all of us just as fast as possible as soon as he is in office.

Well, remember, Jimmy and Bobby are rich and the rich do very well under Milton Friedman economic plans.

Not so much for the rest of us.

I am continuing to read the 'Mandate' and it's pretty ugly. The unitary executive scheme of theirs leaves nothing to the imagination: they want a dictator to implement all of these unconstitutional revisions and they want to do it at 'Warp Speed' before Trump's fan base figure out they've been had.

Truth be told these fascists at Heritage have put together several of this 'mandate' over the years since Ronny RayGun's days in office with varying degrees of acceptance. 

But today we have a certain deadline if you will hanging over our heads. The BRICS nations and many many others have decided they are done allowing us to push them around and they are taking action to strengthen their positions in opposition to our New American Century plans.

In short, if Trump gets in office, they wont have much time so they will have to hit the ground running with a full plan and appointed staffs ready to wage war both foreign and domestic on the world and on us in order to get things done before BRICS (or we) can manifest a reaction.

If you really wish to understand what the Lewis Powell Memo and the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 are then I would suggest you read Benito Mussolini's The Doctrine of Fascism. He was a unitary executive kind of guy himself who fully believed in the trickle down mythology. He also believed, like Lewis Powell and all the folks at Heritage, in the power of corporate rule and the non-existence of government.

Well, the non-existence of government in so much as we understand it now.

I mean these guys tell you in one breath government does not exist only to contradict themselves immediately claiming there are employees of that non-existent entity.

In truth the fascist state doesn't seek to destroy government, it seeks indemnify it, embolden it, make it unassailable by it's subjects. 

But the fascist does this knowing full well that what will remain of government under the fascist state only serves the interests of the ultra-rich and the mega-corporations, never getting in the way of either of their plans or profits no matter what the cost to the subjects living under fascist rule.

When the neocon plans from the Heritage Foundation went public and were picked up by the Dems and used against the Trump campaign, Donald had to finally speak out against it, as if somehow he had no idea this thing had been in the works since 2021 when he was out of office.

The whole point of the Mandate is to rush massive changes on our people before we figure out what is going on during the early days of the Trump campaign and it was put together, literally, by hundreds of conservative fascists many of whom served in the Trump administration from 2016 to 2020 and many of whom plan to serve under him again in 2025.

Pretending Trump didn't know about it or understand it or opposes it is the worst kind of self delusion. Like expecting Obama to bring that CHANGE he talked about in his second term in office.

Trump ran as a populist in 2016 and governed as a neoliberal neocon. And you think somehow this trend is going to change?

Trump cannot run for a third term (now at least) and so those who wrote and are planning the implementation of Project 2025 see him as a lame duck president from the start. It doesn't matter if his support wanes after 4 more years because they will get what they want and Trump retires no matter what to publish his ghost-written memoirs and bask in the glory of beautiful cake by the 9th hole.

Now here is an interesting development: some of the main architects of Reaganomics 2025 are disappointed in Trump's efforts when it comes to this campaign. They are concerned he might not be the horse to bring them home over the wire so they can then swarm into his White House and start dictating policy via unitary executive authority and remaking the country.

But oddly enough, right at the same time, seems like there is a push on the 'alt-left' side to help compensate for what Trump is failing to garner on the right. 

Well of course that is true. Big Business, or at least a faction of it, has plans for that new round of Reaganomics money and it seems they are willing to spend some of it early in an effort to buy 'progressive liberal' votes. 

Cute right? Talk about being beggars to one's own demise.

But that's where we are.

Today there will be something akin to a debate. No audience. No cross discussion. No questions from one candidate to another. And I am pretty sure Kamala will be wearing some kind of inner ear receiver so they can tell her what too say. 

Let's see if Project 2025 is even brought up in all it's PNAC glory.

Whatever the case may be, Trump is on board with Project 2025 and it is remarkably detailed when it comes to laying out the final transition of America way from a constitutional republic to an all out fascist state.

Not to say who is worse or better when it comes to this sham 'election' just is what it is.

(remember how wealthy all three of these guys are. How much a new Reaganomics will save them. Remember what 3 televangelists look like sitting around talking about how it makes sense for the parish to dig deep to buy them a G5)

You are a child if you wish to pretend to believe Donald Trump will live up to his populist promises... this time.

You are a fool if you think Heritage Foundation and all those former and future Trump administration officials don't have every intention of dropping Project 2025 on us just as soon as he gets into office.

Say what you will about Kamala, I've said it all myself, but this is a bold plan conceived by desperate oligarchs who know in the coming year global economic shifts are going to make things very difficult on them and this plan will help insulate them and their portfolios by a considerable measure.

Also keep in mind part of Project 2025 is the dangerous ideology of resource acquisition at all costs.

Resource wars.