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The Looting of America
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| Krugman |
On May 19, Paul Krugman wrote about the ‘Looting of America.’ Departing from his usual area, economic theory, here’s what this Nobel prize winner had to say:
“So the Trump administration is creating a $1.776 billion slush fund — 1776, get it? — to pay off victims of “lawfare and weaponization.” Just to be clear, if you’re a U.S. taxpayer, this action means that almost $1.8 billion of your money will be handed out to whomever a panel appointed by Donald Trump decides to reward. The beneficiaries are likely to include January 6 insurrectionists, as well as Trump, his family, and his allies.
Few things shock me these days, but this development — in which a Justice Department that works for Trump is paying a vast sum to “settle” a lawsuit brought by Trump himself — is a new nadir in self-dealing, further revealing Trump’s utter contempt for the American people.
Now, massive corruption on the part of Trump and his minions isn’t new. But the shamelessness of this latest episode of looting takes it to a new level. Until now, we’ve seen a combination of crony capitalism and insider trading. Plutocrats and corporations have been enriching Trump through back channels, especially crypto, in return for government contracts and policy favors, while Trump himself and people close to Trump have been making hugely profitable market bets thanks to advance knowledge of government policies.
But now Trump has eliminated the middlemen, effectively telling his officials to pay money directly to him or anyone else he favors.
Granted, we already knew that Trump was, by orders of magnitude, the most corrupt president in U.S. history. But now Trump is the most explicitly corrupt leader in today’s world. After all, Vladimir Putin has obviously stolen billions, but never this brazenly. Even Third World dictators normally try to mask their corruption.
Don’t say that this taxpayer-financed slush fund won’t have political consequences. On the contrary, the polling and focus-group analyses I’ve seen say that voters are very angry about corruption. Trump’s theft of taxpayer money, while people are losing healthcare coverage and food aid while suffering from Trump-induced higher prices, is perfect fodder for the Democrats in the upcoming elections.
So we should ask ourselves why the Trumpists have abandoned all restraint. There have been many corrupt politicians in U.S. history – although they were pikers in comparison to Trump. Yet they at least attempted to hide their corruption, or at least keep it discreet and deniable, in order to avoid a voter backlash. I would argue that the blatant nature of the new looting is a signpost of where America under Trumpism is heading in the months and years ahead.
It’s true that Trump has a base that will support him no matter what, in many cases literally believing that he has been chosen by God. This puts a floor under this support. But his disastrous recent polling, as Nate Cohn writes in the Times, suggest that this floor may be lower than many thought.
Now, we already know that Trump and his allies have no intention of facing free and fair elections. With the unstinting help of the Roberts Supreme Court, they have already rigged the midterms through redistricting. Trump minions are actively trying to depress Democratic-leaning voter turnout, by demanding from states the right to challenge their voting rolls. And it would be naïve to think that redistricting will be the end of the MAGA effort to undermine democracy.
Still, Trump is aware that, even with Republican gerrymandering, November may deliver a blue wave big enough to hand Democrats the House and, quite possibly the Senate. G. Elliott Morris estimates that Democrats will need a four point popular vote advantage to win the House, but the latest Times poll gives them an eleven point lead. Why, then, isn’t he trying to be at least slightly discreet in his corruption?
One answer is that even if MAGA loses big in November, Democrats can’t count on wave elections every cycle, and the field is now strongly tilted against them. As Morris writes: While the situation for Democrats is not necessarily dire for 2026, the situation for democracy in 2028 and beyond certainly is.
So you can think of the $1.8 billion slush fund as a promise to MAGA-world that there is a payoff to be had if they just stick with him for the next two and a half years. Beyond that, we are, in effect, watching what happens when a quasi-authoritarian regime’s corruption and criminality pass the point of no return.
At this point Trump and his MAGA minions have stolen so much, committed so many crimes — not just theft but taking America to war illegally, abusing ICE detainees, and much more — that if and when they lose power many of them will face personal ruin at best, years of jail time at worst. This would happen even if they stopped committing more crimes.
So there’s no incentive for them to end their criminality, or to end the attempts to bribe others to go along.
Either they succeed in destroying America as we know it, or they won’t. And until that’s resolved, they may as well engage in even more corruption and criminal acts.
Think of it this way: 'The gravity of what the Trumpists have already done has created a sort of black hole at the center of American political life — and the Trumpists have already crossed the event horizon, the boundary beyond which there is no escape. So they will do ever more terrible things, because they have nothing more to lose.”
JL
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Poetry Triumphs over Politics!
If Paul Krugman’s column (and what has been all over the nation’s newspapers this week) hasn’t gotten you fired up, I strongly recommend that you take a minute to read the South Florida SunSentinel’s editorial published in its May 19 edition. Here it is:
Editorial by Sun Sentinel Editorial Board
'In September 1941, the death of a family member prompted President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to say how he should be remembered. One of America’s greatest presidents wanted only a plain block of stone, about the size of his desk, to be placed on the front lawn of the National Archives Building, with the words “In memory of … ”
Friends — not the government — installed it, 20 years after he died. It’s still there, although a more elaborate memorial to one of our greatest presidents now stands beside the Tidal Basin. An elegant simplicity.
Another great president, Thomas Jefferson, also insisted on simplicity. The epitaph on his gravestone would state only that he had written the Declaration of Independence and Virginia’s Statute for Religious Freedom and had founded the University of Virginia — not that he was elected president twice.
The accidental president, Gerald Ford, pocket-vetoed a bill to name a Michigan post office for him, writing that it would be “improper for me as an incumbent president to approve legislation which places my name on a federal building. This is a precedent I do not wish to establish.”
Such modesty is lost on Donald Trump, who constantly memorializes himself with monuments to bad taste, from Washington to West Palm Beach.
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Artist renderings and diagrams for President Donald Trump’s new triumphal arch released by the U.S. Commission on Fine Arts that is planned to be built in Washington between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery, are photographed Friday, April 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick) |
He slapped his name on the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; intends to build a vastly oversized ballroom in place of the White House East Wing he razed without Congress’ consent; proposes a triumphal arch larger than any that the ancient emperors built for themselves, which would crudely overshadow Arlington National Cemetery; and plans an enormous “Garden of Heroes” with 250 statutes of notable Americans among whom, one suspects, there will be yet another gilt image of Donald John Trump, fist raised. When asked by a CBS News reporter whom the arch would honor, Trump replied ‘Me’.”
His name is on a State Department building. His image is on gold commemorative coins, passports and national park passes. His signature is going on paper currency. He wants a new class of white elephant battleships to be named for him.
And the airport, of course - The licensing deal for Palm Beach International Airport to be named for him, as demanded by a law the state Legislature passed without local consent, requires a logo resembling the White House seal, in — you guessed it — gold with gold stars. The renaming and branding will cost taxpayers $5.5 million and Trump will control who will be allowed to operate concessions there.
Trump’s personal edifice complex is unmoored to any qualifying achievements or to any corresponding esteem from any sector of the public, other than MAGA diehards. In a new Washington Post-Ipsos poll, Trump’s approval rating has sunk to 37% and his disapproval has climbed to 62%. His approval among Republicans was 85%, but among independents it’s 25%. Across the entire electorate, the public disapproves of how he’s handling every major issue, especially inflation, the cost of living, the overall economy and his illegal war.
He argues heedlessly that he needs the colossal ballroom to protect him from potential assassins, with the recent attempt at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner as the pretext. But that thought conflicts with his personality, because it presumes that he would hunker down in the White House, never leaving for MAGA rallies or rounds of golf. It would not be an acceptable venue for independent associations that need to keep a respectful distance from whoever is president. The East Room was adequate for John F. Kennedy’s state dinners and for the one to which Trump welcomed King Charles III last week.
A poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ozymandias,” taught to generations of Florida high school students, is still listed in the state language arts curriculum. It behooves Trump to read it. It’s short enough that he could do so:
‘I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said: “Two
vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the
desert … Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a
shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled
lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its
sculptor well those passions read
Which yet
survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that
fed:
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is
Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my
works, ye mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside
remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal
wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and
level sands stretch far away.’
(The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.)
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Once the Republicans who run Florida’s government have read this editorial and realize that the Shelley poem is in Florida’s high school language curriculum, they will probably take steps to remove it, since Shelley was clearly ‘woke’ according to the standards of his day and today as well.
JL
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A Reminder for November 3, Election Day
Buried in the numbers quoted above is the statistic reporting that 85% of Republicans still support President Trump. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?
Why do they close their minds to facts, such as those presented in this posting?
It is tragic that their vision of the United States includes Donald J. Trump’s corruption as an acceptable part of government coupled with the unbridled narcissism of a wannabe tyrant. How and why do so many Americans buy into those ideas? Do they really endorse corruption? Do they really prefer being ruled by a tyrant? What is wrong with these people?
There is a story or legend, probably untrue, about how Henri Christophe, KIng of Northern Haiti from 1811–1820, to demonstrate the discipline of his army to a visiting diplomat, ordered a group of his soldiers to march over a cliff to their deaths. They complied and all died. There are similar stories about Alexander the Great, also probably untrue, but they serve to make the same point about those who assume absolute power.
But is this the kind of loyalty 85% of Republicans have to President Trump? It shows up in Republican primaries where those he endorses defeat incumbent Republicans whose only fault is that their loyalty to him is questionable.
Years ago Trump said that he could shoot someone dead in the middle of Fifth Avenue and get away with it, echoing the absolutist boast of Haitian ‘King’ Henri Christophe. Does it describe the 85% of Republicans voters who support President Trump regardless of what he may say or do? Are they no more than any supposed onlookers to that hypothetical murder on Fifth Aveue?
It is up to them to answer that question. Most lack the brains or guts to do so … at least until they also become victims of his wrath, a list of whom is slowly growing.
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As we approach the November elections, which Trump and his supporters are trying to ‘rig’ through illegal gerrymandering, threatening to place ‘observers’ at polling places, seizing of voting records, and other trickery, keep the facts posted above by Paul Krugman and the SunSentinel editorial in mind. And please, pass them on to others, and ask them to do the same.
There is a lot at stake. It will take massive Democratic victories throughout the nation to overcome that 85% of Republicans whose political involvement goes no further than blind adherence to whatever corrupt ‘King’ Donald says and does. You are in the front lines. You have your weapons at your fingertips. Use them to persuade others.
JL
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Ignoring the Intent of the Constitution
The checks and balances built into the Constitution limit what the Executive Branch of our government can do by assigning the ‘power of the purse’ to Congress, the Legislative Branch. The President cannot purchase a pencil if Congress hasn’t authorized him to do so somewhere in the budget it approves.
Of course, there are exceptions possible in ‘national emergencies,’ but determining if one exists is usually left to the president. A shortage of pencils in the White House is not such a national emergency, even if a president might decree it to be one.
When the ‘power of the purse’ of the Legislative Branch is surrendered to the will of a president who uses his endorsement of Congressional candidates as a weapon, an intended Constitutional check on the Executive Branch is removed. This is unconstitutional.
JL
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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri
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More on the Sources of Information in Jackspotpourri: The sources of information used by Jackspotpourri include a delivered local daily ‘printed’ newspaper (now the South Florida Sun Sentinel) and what appears in my daily email; that includes the views of many contributors, including the New York Times and other respected journals.
Be aware that when I open that email, I first quickly glance at and screen out those sent to my very old former email address and those considered ‘promotional’ by Gmail’s system as no more than advertisements or requests for donations.
Besides these sources, I also utilize the Google search engine where I can look up any subject I want.
Lately, these search results have been headed by a very generalized summary clearly labeled as being developed by AI (Artificial Intelligence). On occasion I might use such search results, but when I do, I will say that I am doing so. Generally, however, I try not to use such summaries in preparing Jackspotpourri.
Following such ‘AI’ search results, there follows the other results of my search. Unlike the anonymous AI-generated summaries, the sources of these results are clearly indicated, giving them a greater credibility than any AI summary.
It comes down to who YOU want to be in the driver’s seat in seeking information: yourself or something else (Artificial Intelligence), the structure of which somewhere along the way had to have been created by others, with whose identity I am neither familiar nor comfortable. At least when I read a column by Timothy Snyder, for example, I know from where it comes, and to some extent, what to expect.
Caution should be exercised in using Artificial Intelligence. Always!
JL
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