Budgets and the Supreme Court

The appalling effort to destroy American democracy continues at full speed.  There are so many outrages it is hard to know where to begin.  Lets start with the destruction of various departments in the executive branch.

Let me explain how it is supposed to work.  The president is supposed to act within bounds set by Congress and the courts.  There is a process here and of course Trump is abusing executive power and privilege.  But how is it supposed to work?  Here is a brief but oversimplified description.

There is a complicated budgeting process in Congress in which the House and the Senate each come up with their proposed budget.  Then the two groups meet in a joint process and try to hash things into a single budget.   Obviously some things get funded and some do not and people do not get everything they want. There is endless haggling here.  Some spending is mandatory, some is optional, there is lots of history. There is so much for foreign aid, so much for the National Institute of Health, so much for the National Parks, the Dept of Defense, Medicare and Medicaid, etc. Sometimes the budgets are broken into pieces, sometimes it is all one comprehensive budget. The various parties martial their votes and the house and the senate work to align their bills.  There is horse trading.  There are limitations on the debt and many other things.  When both houses agree, and when there are 60 votes in the Senate, then it gets sent to the president who could veto it, but if not, that becomes the budget for the year.  And when they can not agree, that is when we have a "continuing resolution" to give more time to hash things out.

If the president could just decide to do some of it and not all of it, that would give him a so-called item veto.  And so far as I know, we do not have an item veto.  Now of course there is a lot of leeway in how the president implements the budget.  A pentagon project, 50 people in the DEA, lots of adjustments.  But they are adjustments.  Not wholesale deletions.  If that is what he wants he does that during budget time. .  It all has to be in accordance with the intent of congress.  It all has to be more or less in good faith.  Is that what we are seeing here with Trump?  Good faith?  No, certainly not.  

So why hasn't the courts put a stop to this nonsense?  Specifically, why hasn't the Supreme Court put a stop to this?

You know why.  The Supreme Court is filled with corrupt right wingers who are installing an authoritarian government in America.  If I am wrong, the Supreme Court will act at once.  

But it wont.

Maybe too busy fishing?

Predictions 2/16/2025

I am going to predict the general destruction of large parts of the US government in the current situation.

Trump/Musk will not stop.  The courts wont stop them. Congressional Republicans wont stop them.  Congressional Democrats wont stop them.  And then, when the Trump/Musk shitstorm has passed, no one will be able to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

First, Elon Musk and his fanboys and Trump with his orders will continue to violate the law and the constitution.  They will fire people right and left, destroy Medicare and Medicaid, USAID, the Veterans Administration, DEI everywhere, the NIH, CDC, whole chunks of science, academia, etc.  Who will stop them?  Well, we can be sure that the Republicans in congress will not stop them and will not defend the constitution.  As for the Democrats, they could potentially hold up the budget and shut down the government.  But I dont think they will based on past experience. They are too weak and living in another universe.  And even if they do, my guess is that Trump and the Republican congress will just ignore them and declare their budget law.  Who would stop them?  The courts?  Not likely.  Not only is the federal appeals system filled with complete jokes like Cannon, any court ruling would be appealed to the Supreme Court and we all know what that means.  Nine tenths of the time the Supreme Court will support Trump and Musk even if they hide it a little bit to make things look a little better.  Then the stupid press will suck down on that and talk about how Trump/Musk did not get everything they wanted, even though, of course, they did get everything they wanted.  The DOJ and the FBI will attack any judge or officer who opposes this administration and people will be, in general, intimidated into compliance.  Then of course there will be new laws, and who will fix them or go against them?  Not the Democrats, that is for sure.  Not the Republicans.  Not the courts.   If there is even the slightest protests that can be looked at as violent: say someone blocks a freeway for more than an hour, then Trump will declare a military emergency and call out the national guard.  Besides, it is clear that Americans are too weak and dont really care enough about liberty to do anything.  Not only does that mean that the Federal govt is wildly disabled, but many state governments will be as well.  As I understand it, states like California will be thrown into chaos by a variety of actions that Trump/Musk will do.  Again, who will stop them?

Moving forward, again it is not at all clear who will attempt to fix this catastrophe. Even if there is a clean sweep of Congress and the White House in 4 years most things will not be fixable.  The Democrats dont have the will to  take a stand.  Remember Lejoy at the USPS?  Biden couldnt even get rid of one person, and he had cause.  Sure we can create a new USAID organization, maybe, or restore the NIH, maybe, but those research programs are already dead. The people in the third world are dead.  Ukraine is destroyed.  China will just pick up the slack.  The Iron Dome will not be built, not really, because it is not practical to do so except in very specific geographical areas like Washington and Mar-a-Lago.  It is far easier to destroy and fire people, then to get the budgets and hire people.  By that time, there will be hundreds more Trump lovers on the federal courts, and the Supreme Court will be refreshed with two or three more Alito/Kavanaugh clones.  Which means that any lawsuits will be dismissed.  

So its a fait accompli.  America will be diminished, the rich will get richer, silicon valley will do whatever the heck it wants with AI and so forth.  

Of course, I could be wrong.  The American people could stand up and the Republicans and the Democrats, working together, could remove Trump from office.  Do you think that is a realistic possibility?

Four Bad Things in One Day

draft

Let me tell you what happened today.

1. The senate republicans voted against a trial for trump on procedural grounds, and while they lost it indicates there is no chance of a trial on its merits. For a second time the Republicans vote entirely on political grounds and show zero integrity.

2. Manchen (D-WVA) indicates he will not vote to get rid of the filibuster under any circumstances. Without Manchen the Democrats will lose every vote in the Senate, and with the filibuster, most bills will not even get to a vote.

3. A Trump appointed judge in Texas put a hold on the temporary block that Biden put in place on deportations. The judiciary has been destroyed and even if we passed bills the Trump judiciary would just block them.

4. The Russians, who put Trump in power, loved the insurrection and so they are now hosting Parler so the nutty boy right can plan more deaths.

I propose that given the Republicans are traitors, the judiciary is fucked, that the Democrats do not control the senate and with the right now having a secure comm channel, that the situation is about as bad as it can be.