We live under the dictatorship of the billionaires
If this isn’t oligarchy, I don’t know what is.
From Claudia De la Cruz and Karina Garcia:
Unless there’s a last-minute deal, the federal government is set to shut down at midnight.
Why? Because Elon Musk woke up one day and decided he wanted to block aid to natural disaster victims and farmers.
Here’s what happened:
Congress was about to vote on a bill called a “Continuing Resolution", which would fund the operations of the federal government.
But yesterday, Musk started tweeting around the clock about how he hated the bill and that he would fund the campaigns of politicians who ran against Congress members who supported it.
The Continuing Resolution included new money for victims of natural disasters and farmers. So Musk viewed it as part of his “DOGE” mission to destroy any program that helps working people.
Shortly after Musk decided he was against the Continuing Resolution, Trump and JD Vance issued a statement saying they were against it, too.
The politicians in Congress fell in line, and now it looks like the government funding plan is dead.
Without receiving a single vote, Elon Musk has taken control of the government.
Now it appears likely that there will be a government shutdown – which means that all “non-essential” federal workers are told to stay home, and those who are deemed essential have to work without being paid.
Musk and Trump’s plan is to use this crisis as leverage to demand cuts to programs that help the working class.
There are plenty of parts of the government that should be shut down, like the Pentagon’s 800+ overseas military bases. But that’s not what’s considered “non-essential” in a shutdown.
Instead, workers who administer programs in crucial areas like workplace safety, environmental protection, and public housing would be forced to stop their vital work.
We live under the dictatorship of the billionaires! On a whim, the richest man in the world can force the federal government to shut down – because he paid for the election campaign of the incoming president.
Trump’s agenda is a billionaire’s agenda, and his government is of, by and for the super-rich. The fight against Trump is a fight to end the stranglehold that a tiny handful of unbelievably wealthy people have over the government and both corporate political parties.
Now it’s clearer than ever before, the billionaires’ control of government has been, and will mean, the worsening of a crisis at all levels, for the people and the planet. None of these billionaires have an interest in advancing the lives of the people. They will take whatever is left in public funding, and gamble it for their profits.
Berkeley professor and former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich said today: “My message today is the same as it was nearly 30 years ago when Newt Gingrich shut down the government: You cannot balance the budget on the backs of vulnerable and working people.”
Reich wrote yesterday in Common Dreams:
“If this isn’t oligarchy, I don’t know what is… A billionaire wielding his influence over the rest of us proves we are in a Second Gilded Age.
But there may be a silver lining to this Gilded Age cloud. The lesson of the First Gilded Age is that when concentrated wealth, corruption, and ensuing hardship for average working Americans become so blatant that they offend the values of the majority of us, we rise up and demand real, systemic change.
It’s only a matter of time. A government shutdown that hurts average working people, engineered by the richest person in the world, might just hasten it.”