Defund The Presidency

[The Mad Monk]

By which I mean, ban any and all private funding to build or maintain any action, service, or structure under the control of the Federal Government.

Make Congress do its ****ing job.

[Geronimo]

I wonder how difficult it will be in a couple of years to work out what kind of favors the donors to these projects secured from the president for privately funding his tacky public works projects? I have no hope anybody can get a close look at it until Trump is out of office.

[BeBMan]

Trump is working hard to defunct the presidency

[Geronimo]

of course a proposal to ban private funding of these projects in favor of public funding of these projects is actually more of a "fund the presidency" proposal in that other defunds like "defund planned parenthood" are basically proposals to remove congressional funding and force reliance on private funds. The ban on private funding of these projects is in turn a bit like the reverse of efforts to tax the wealthy in that it essentially bans wealth transfers from the private to the public sector even though taxes essentially mandate wealth transfers from the private sector to the public sector.

[Lorizael]

I wonder how difficult it will be in a couple of years to work out what kind of favors the donors to these projects secured from the president for privately funding his tacky public works projects? I have no hope anybody can get a close look at it until Trump is out of office.

Maybe just ask Trump.

[Dauphin]

of course a proposal to ban private funding of these projects in favor of public funding of these projects is actually more of a "fund the presidency" proposal in that other defunds like "defund planned parenthood" are basically proposals to remove congressional funding and force reliance on private funds. The ban on private funding of these projects is in turn a bit like the reverse of efforts to tax the wealthy in that it essentially bans wealth transfers from the private to the public sector even though taxes essentially mandate wealth transfers from the private sector to the public sector.

Funding a pet project with ringfenced funds vs general tax revenue or voluntary payments to the Treasury that ultimately funding government spending under Congressional oversight are two different beasts.

Politically Connected Charitable Giving (PCCG) has huge corruption implications that circumvent direct bribery, I mean lobbying, rules. This is no different.

[Geronimo]

Funding a pet project with ringfenced funds vs general tax revenue or voluntary payments to the Treasury that ultimately funding government spending under Congressional oversight are two different beasts.

Politically Connected Charitable Giving (PCCG) has huge corruption implications that circumvent direct bribery, I mean lobbying, rules. This is no different.

And as with other cases of PCCG the contribution side is far less scary than the unseen transactional favors that the contributions secure. The only thing that makes this case more annoying is the appalling taste driving these tacky changes to highly visible public assets.

[Geronimo]

Maybe just ask Trump.

Trump works very hard to become one of those people for which there is truly no point in asking him anything at all apart from analyzing his choice of manipulative responses.

The really sad thing about that is the way every MAGA supporter at any level is so quick to claim that what "everybody" loves about Trump is his unfiltered transparancy.

[Lorizael]

Trump is an inveterate liar, yes, but he is also, in fact, incredibly transparent.