RFK Jr. and his Globalist POS Buddy and the Chainsaw of Neoliberalism

(HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (right) with Argentina's fascist President Javier Milei [Photo: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.])

 

Why Kristi Noem hates FEMA

(Destroying the government, smaller government, is neoliberalism. Trump is a neoliberal globalist who hates our system of democracy. Our system of government.) 

from Salon

First things first: Mainstream media reports that Donald Trump has “backed away” or “scrapped” plans to destroy the Federal Emergency Management Agency are greatly exaggerated. Trump is just doing what he always does when faced with intense public scrutiny of his unpopular positions: Lying. As usual, he will go right back to doing the bad thing as soon as the news cycle moves on to something else. Right now, the aftermath of the tragic floods in Texas is dominating the news, so Trump will pretend he has no desire to end the federal agency doing the heroic work of helping people in the state recover and regroup. 

The misleading Washington Post headline from Friday, which claimed Trump “moves away” from abolishing FEMA was immediately undercut by the actual reporting, which revealed the White House is using weasel words like “rebranding” and “reorganizing” to conceal that the goal of destroying the agency has not changed. Observing that Trump “has dialed up and down his aversion to the agency, depending on the occasion,” the reporters noted that White House spokespeople continued to insist that the agency is part of “a bloated bureaucracy” and talked about how it’s the job of states to deal with natural disasters, not the federal government. Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of homeland security, admitted out loud to the Post that, under Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, “FEMA, as it is today, will no longer exist.”...

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How much has Elon Musk's Doge cut from US government spending?

from the BBC

 

... In October, Mr Musk pledged to cut "at least $2 trillion" from the federal government budget. He subsequently halved this target and on 10 April talked about making savings of $150bn from "cutting fraud and waste" by the end of the next financial year in 2026.

The US federal budget for the last financial year was $6.75tn.

Doge publishes a running total of its estimated savings on its website - which stood at $160bn the last time the site was updated on 20 April.

However, less than 40% of this figure is broken down into individual savings.

We downloaded the data from the Doge website on 23 April and added up the total claimed savings from contracts, grants and leases.

Our analysis found only about half of these itemised savings had a link to a document or other form of evidence...

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‘Vance Go Back!’ — Indian Farmers on US VP’s Visit

from Consortium News

Thousands of farmers and working-class people in cities and villages across India took to the streets to protest the visit of U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance.  They claim he has come to finalize an agreement which will be a disaster for India’s agriculture and small industries.  

Vance arrived in New Delhi on Monday on a four-day tour in the country. As per widespread reports, his primary agenda is to finalize a trade agreement between the two countries.  The talks over the agreement have been ongoing since the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the U.S. in February.  

The protesters gathered in villages and district headquarters across India with posters and banners denouncing the Indian government’s failures to safeguard their interests and chanting slogans such as “Vance go back,” and “India is not for sale!”  In some places protesters also burned effigies of Vance.  

Left-leaning All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), the largest farmers’ group in the country, issued a statement on April 18 in which it asked all its units to launch the Vance go back campaign and to oppose the proposed trade agreement with the U.S. It called the agreement a surrender of India’s interests.  

The AIKS statement claimed that Vance’s visit to India “is a part of putting pressure upon the state of India and the corporate-led ruling classes to surrender the national interests to facilitate windfall profiteering to the multinational companies.” ...

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Trump Administration is Prescribing a Discredited Globalist Neoliberal Shock Therapy 'Medicine' for America

by Scott Creighton

 

Where are all the Trump-trainers who jumped from the left onto the Orange Express for clicks and views and money in the lead-up to the 'election'? Where are they as it turns out The Donald and The Elon (character written by a Paperclip Nazi) are dropping the economic brick known as neoliberal Shock Therapy on the people of America?

Over at Fox News they are telling their audience that it's patriotic to 'tighten their belts' and suffer in silence as Musk, Theil, Trump and the rest of his administrations' billionaires collapse the economy... on purpose.

'Just shut up and take the pain' says America's 0.5%ers live on the TV screen. 'You'll all be rich once it's over and done' they promise. 'Just take the medicine and all will be fine in the end' is the prevailing mantra from the complicit Vichy media. It's always the same.

President Trump’s Tariff Plans on 'Liberation Day'

from the New York Times

Today is, in President Trump’s telling, “Liberation Day.” For decades, many countries have imposed higher trade barriers on the United States than America does on them. In a Rose Garden event, Trump plans to strike back with tariffs that he claims will be “reciprocal” — ones that merely counter the penalties of other nations.

The logic is intuitive: Why shouldn’t we impose tariffs on countries that have imposed tariffs on us? Europe’s tax on U.S. cars, for instance, has been four times as high as America’s tax on European vehicles. That doesn’t seem fair.

Past presidents asked the same question — and came to a different conclusion than Trump did. They saw such tariffs as self-harm. That’s because America would lose more in a global trade war than every major economy except Mexico, experts estimate...

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Call It the 'Dismantling Government Act': House GOP Advances Bill Backing Musk-Led Destruction

from Common Dreams

The top Democrat on the U.S. House committee tasked with holding the Trump administration accountable said Tuesday during a debate on a Republican proposal that the GOP knows President Donald Trump cannot legally "'delete' whole federal agencies" or "take a chainsaw to beloved programs like Social Security and Medicaid."

"Congressional Republicans also know these dangerous, deeply unpopular cuts would never be approved by Congress through regular order," said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. "So now they've brought us H.R. 1295, the so-called Reorganizing Government Act, in a desperate attempt to circumvent the normal congressional process."

The bill, said Connolly, would more accurately be called the Dismantling Government Act, with its resurrection of a "long-dormant statute as a Trojan horse to give President Trump and Elon Musk unprecedented, filibuster-proof authority to eliminate federal departments and agencies, statutory programs, government services, and regulatory protections that promote the health and well-being of American families."

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Stricter Social Security measures may challenge elderly and disabled beneficiaries

from Ch. 13 WHAM

Some 70 million Americans rely on Social Security benefits. As of Monday, the Social Security Administration will imposing stricter identity-proofing measures.

Millions of recipients and applicants will no longer be able to phone their information in. Instead, they will have to come to regional offices in person or complete forms online.

For those with limited transportation or computer access, that could be a problem. It's all part of an effort by the Trump administration to root out what it calls Social Security fraud, waste and abuse.

“I think it's bad because the folks that it's going to impact are the elderly and the disabled," said Lisa Arrington, an attorney who specializes in elder law.

“My elderly clients, they can't use email, they don't have a computer," Arrington continued. "And those are the people that are going to be forced to come in here (the Social Security office) physically."

John Ettlie said he’s fortunate to have a car. For other seniors, though, "It's going to be difficult."

"I suppose they could take Uber if they're aware," he said. "A lot of people are retired, don't even have a computer, so they may not even aware that you have to come in person."...

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If you’re not scared about Social Security, you should be

from Des Moines Register

What the heck is happening here?  

We believe there’s a plan at work: All the disruption at Social Security is designed to cause the program to eventually collapse.

Here’s the scenario: Continued declines in service lead to public frustration and anger. Citizens come to believe what they’re being told: the government can’t do anything well.  People lose faith in the system and become ready to accept radical change.

In other words, break it to fix it.

And the fix? Privatize the system. Let banks and financial firms run it. Turn Social Security contributions into investments in stocks, bonds, crypto or whatever. End guaranteed benefits and instead have every American responsible for their investment return, with some people succeeding and some failing.

President George W. Bush wanted to do this back in 2005. His plan failed because Americans liked Social Security and they had confidence in it. It also failed because enough members of Congress were independent-minded and wouldn’t go along...

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Yes Folks: Trump is 'making the economy scream' for a Reason

Some have been tentatively asking if Donald Trump is deliberately tanking the economy. The answer is yes. Just like Biden was doing. So Why you might ask? Let me tell you.

MAGA Heroes https://nomadiceveryman.blogspot.com/2025/03/maga-heroes-trump-bankrupts-businesses.html

Privatize Everything https://nomadiceveryman.blogspot.com/2025/03/elon-musk-wants-to-privatize-post.html

RFK Jr.'s idea of transparency https://nomadiceveryman.blogspot.com/2025/03/rfk-jr-rolls-back-transparency-policy.html

Veterans March on March 14th in DC https://nomadiceveryman.blogspot.com/2025/03/veterans-called-to-rally-nationwide-on.html

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Supreme Court Lifts Restraints on Wastewater Discharges, Further Eroding Clean Water Act

(Yep. More shit in your drinking water. Say hi to cholera again) 

MASTA!!!

Make Americans Shit Themselves Again!!!

from Democracy NOW!

The U.S. Supreme Court has further eroded the power of the Environmental Protection Agency and state governments to safeguard water quality under the Clean Water Act. In Tuesday’s 5-4 ruling, the majority overturned measures limiting the discharge of wastewater into harbors and coastal areas, including limits on the release of raw sewage. This comes less than two years after the Supreme Court gutted Clean Water Act protections for about half of all wetlands in the contiguous United States.

Industry-Backed Legislation Would Bar the Use of Science Behind Hundreds of Environmental Protections

from ProPublica

For decades, Republican lawmakers and industry lobbyists have tried to chip away at the small program in the Environmental Protection Agency that measures the threat of toxic chemicals.

Most people don’t know IRIS, as the program is called, but it is the scientific engine of the agency that protects human health and the environment. Its scientists assess the toxicity of chemicals, estimating the amount of each that triggers cancer and other health effects. And these values serve as the independent, nonpartisan basis for the rules, regulations and permits that limit our exposure to toxic chemicals.

Now IRIS faces the gravest threat to its existence since it was created under President Ronald Reagan four decades ago.

How Social Security cuts could put millions of older Americans at risk

from PBS

Laura Barron-Lopez:

The acting agency head told employees this week that it's Musk and DOGE that are calling the shots at SSA.

The Washington Post reported that Leland Dudek told senior staff at SSA that Musk's team of — quote — "outsiders who are unfamiliar with nuances of SSA programs are making decisions and that they will make mistakes."

And, this morning, the agency told its workers they can no longer use their government computers to look at, among other things, news Web sites, even blocking access to some of them. The restriction was said to help protect sensitive information. But news sites and obituaries are often relied on to confirm death information and prevent fraud.

For a closer look at the effect of potential cuts to Social Security, I'm joined by Martin O'Malley, who was the commissioner of SSA during the Biden administration and previously served as the governor of Maryland.

Governor O'Malley, thank you so much for joining the "News Hour."

Elon Musk wants to privatize the Post Office. This country is shutting part of its down entirely

from Business Insider

The government "should try to privatize everything we possibly can," Musk said this week.

Elon Musk wants to privatize the United States Postal Service.

Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, and Telecom Conference on Wednesday, Musk said the government "should try to privatize everything we possibly can," including the USPS, according to audio reviewed by Business Insider.

Musk acknowledged that privatizing it would likely require congressional approval.

Yet, while Musk envisions a private US postal system, another country is taking an entirely different approach — shutting down its traditional letter-delivery service altogether...

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Trump to Sign Order Abolishing Education Department Soon, Reports Say

from Inside Higher Education

The Trump administration appears to have called off a planned signing of an executive order that would have directed Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps” to close the agency.

After The Wall Street Journal and other media outlets reported on the White House's plans, President Trump's press secretary called those reports “fake news” and added that an order to shut down the Education Department wouldn’t be signed Thursday.

The reported order would be the first step in carrying out Trump’s controversial campaign promise to abolish the 45-year-old department. A draft of the order provided to Inside Higher Ed criticizes the department for spending “more than $1 trillion without producing virtually any improvement in student reading and mathematics scores.”

Education advocates quickly shown staunch opposition to the executive action after the initial news reporters. The American Federation of Teachers, a key higher ed union, called the order a government attempt to “abdicate its responsibility to all children, students and working families.”...

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Why Republicans Want to Dismantle the Education Department

from the NYT

Right from the start, Republicans opposed President Jimmy Carter’s signature on a 1979 law creating the department, citing beliefs in limited government control, fiscal responsibility and local autonomy.

They argued that education should be primarily managed at the state and local levels rather than through federal mandates.

A year later, Ronald Reagan won the White House, his third attempt at the presidency, thanks to a promise that he would rein in a federal government that he said had overstepped its bounds on myriad issues, including education. In 1982, Mr. Reagan used his State of the Union address to call on Congress to eliminate two agencies: the Energy Department and the Education Department.

“We must cut out more nonessential government spending and root out more waste, and we will continue our efforts to reduce the number of employees in the federal work force,” Mr. Reagan said.

He was unable to persuade Democrats in control of the House to go along with his plan, and the issue started to fade as a top priority for Republicans — but never quite disappeared.

Newt Gingrich, then the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, called for the abolition of the agency in the mid-1990s. In the 2008 Republican presidential primary, both Representative Ron Paul and former Gov. Mitt Romney supported either terminating the Education Department or drastically reducing its size...

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Asked if U.S. Needs Education Department, Its Head Says ‘No’

from the NYT

Education Secretary Linda McMahon delivered a stark message on Friday about the future of her agency. Asked on “Fox & Friends” whether the United States “needs this department,” Ms. McMahon answered: “No, we don’t.”

In the interview, her first since she was confirmed to her cabinet post this week, Ms. McMahon said that President Trump intended to sign an executive order aimed at closing her department, but she declined to give details on timing.

She also did not address how the administration might persuade lawmakers to go along. The department cannot be closed without the approval of Congress.

Such a move, in a closely divided Senate, would require support from Democrats, which appears unlikely after Ms. McMahon was confirmed along party lines. During the previous session of Congress, a proposal to eliminate the department failed in the Republican-controlled House when 60 Republicans voted against it...

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Former Social Security head claims DOGE will cause payment interruptions

(The DOGE fascists and Nazis are going to cut costs at the SSA by cutting employee numbers from 57,000 to 50,000. The plan is to save government money so they can justify Trump's tax breaks for billionaires like Trump and Elon Musk who runs DOGE supposedly. The layoffs will put lots of people out of work and cause delays on everything at the administration including payments. They tried to lie about waste and fraud over there but people fact checked them and discovered they were lying... so now they are firing a bunch of people instead. In the end they WANT the delays and the problems so they can come back in 6 months and say 'see? Social Security doesn't work cus Gubmint so we have to PRIVATIZE it' and then Elon and Trump and Thiel and all their billionaire friends get to ransack that money pot as well. This is sickening and obscene.) 

from SAN

A former director of the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) claims that reduction efforts by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will lead to an interruption of benefits. The administration has reportedly never missed a payment, but the former agency head predicted it could happen in the near future.

Martin O’Malley, the former Democratic Maryland governor who former President Joe Biden tapped to run SSA, told CNBC that payment interruptions could come as soon as this spring. 

“Ultimately, you’re going to see the system collapse and an interruption of benefits,” O’Malley said. “I believe you will see that within the next 30 to 90 days.”...

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Musk, Social Security, and the Ponzi-Scheme Boomerang

 

from Common Dreams

...

Musk has been recruited by Trump to take on the role of special advisor for allegedly seeking to root out waste, fraud and abuse from the federal bureaucracy, even as Musk’s private companies continue to profit in the millions of dollars from contracts from that bureaucracy. For some reason, Musk’s own contracts have been exempted from his investigations, but Social Security has not. Dismantling the most prominent social welfare program of the last century is undoubtedly an extremist undertaking and Musk is employing Trumpism as a discourse to help make that happen. Whether he succeeds is dependent in no small part on our ability to call out and resist his verbal jujitsu.

Dismantling Social Security would be very significant, for it not only provides major benefits to over 70 million retirees and persons receiving disability and survivor benefits (about one in five Americans). The program was enacted by Congress during the Great Depression with the Economic Security Act of 1935 (which quickly came to be known as the Social Security Act). It has become the cornerstone of the American welfare state, limited as it is compared to its counterparts in the rest of the developed world. It is nonetheless the most effective anti-poverty program in the history of the country, basically reducing the poverty rate among the elderly by half once its benefits started getting adjusted annually in 1972 to keep up with inflation. It has long been considered the “third rail” of American politics for any politician who tries to tamper with it usually ends up getting repudiated, just as President George Bush did when he tried to privatize it after winning re-election in 2004. Now Trump is going down that road but using the discourse of Trumpism to legitimate undermining this bedrock foundation of the U.S. welfare state.

Calling Social Security the “biggest Ponzi scheme in American history” is pure Trumpism. It is a boomerang. Many people have pointed out the Ponzi-scheme nature of Musk’s own preferred cryptocurrency Dogecoin. Dogecoin was the source for Musk calling his anti-federal government initiative “DOGE” (Department of Government Efficiency). Musk’s response was like him saying “no Dogecoin is not a Ponzi scheme, but Social Security is,” thereby redirecting the criticism of Dogecoin (and all cryptocurrencies) toward the government’s largest and most effective social welfare program. Cryptocurrencies, like Dogecoin, but also even more prominently Bitcoin, have been, for the last decade or so, very popular, especially with people who want to be free of having to rely on government-backed currency like the dollar. Cryptocurrencies have an anti-government elan that attracts all kinds of people, including libertarians and even anarchists. Calling Social Security the biggest Ponzi scheme in history is an anti-government boomerang perpetuated in the name of speculators who want to be free of government regulation...

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Facts Matter: Please Stop Sucking Up to Neoliberal Fascist Nazis in Ukraine

Facts Matter. Zelensky ambushed Trump in the White House not the other way around. He made it clear there would be no peace. He wants the war to continue. Trump doesn't. But somehow that makes Trump the warmonger in the eyes of the virtue signalling left.

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