Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:34 pm
In a series of tweets this morning, Nobel laureate, economist, and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, warned that we are “about to enter, or may have already entered, an era of corrupt governance unprecedented in U.S. history.”
We're about to enter, or may already have entered, an era of corrupt governance unprecedented in U.S. history. What does it mean? 1/
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) November 21, 2016
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Further tweets elaborated on the nature of the threat posed by a Trump administration that we face as a nation:
Important to realize that the money stolen by the first family is a minor issue; $10 billion, say, skimmed off the top is rounding error 2/
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) November 21, 2016
What matters much more is the distortion of policy in directions that can be monetized. Gratuitous private investors in infrastructure 3/
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) November 21, 2016
is just the start. Expect to see lots of privatization and a general shift from transparent to murky so that favors can be traded 4/
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) November 21, 2016
And think about the pro-tyrant bias of foreign policy. Democratic regimes — say, in Europe — are by their own rules unable to offer 5/
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) November 21, 2016
de facto personal bribes to the U.S. president. Putin's Russia or, for that matter, Xi's China, will be fine with sending huge business 6/
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) November 21, 2016
to the profiteer-in-chief. And that will cause a tilt of U.S. policy toward authoritarian regimes. Stay alert 7/
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) November 21, 2016
As Krugman warned Sunday,
“It was obvious that Trump would exploit office for personal gain to an unprecedented degree. He has already started.”
The president-elect’s administration is filling with lobbyists, and his infrastructure rhetoric is just a huge tax break for corporations and, Krugman has suggested, a “privatization bid.”
The mainstream media is again cooperating with Trump, largely ignoring his Trump U. settlement, let alone drawing any reasonable conclusions from it. Media Matters’ Eric Boehlert, on the other hand, noted that,
“[It] turns out crooked Trump Foundation is EXACTLY what DC press fantasized that Clinton Foundation was. press reax to $25M settlement? meh.”
Two things are already clear: the evidence is mounting steadily that Trump never meant to make America great but to fill his own pockets, and that the mainstream media, complicit in his election, now intends to normalize (and profit by) the new low in the swamp Trump once promised to drain but is now rapidly filling instead.
Photo: By Bin im Garten (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
