For four decades the U.S. Congress has been pretending that the POTUS or Commander in Chief sets policy and directs the affairs of the nation. Indeed, there has been some speculation that the real purpose for invading Iraq was so George W. Bush could be a Commander-in-Chief and reverse the preception of the executive’s subordination to Congress that was affirmed by the impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton. Indeed, by passing the PATRIOT Act, Congress handed over all authority to the executive. And then the SCOYUS ruled that the Constitution is superior in assuring even alien terrorists rights to judicial review.
Comes now Donald J. Trump, who’s been persuaded by someone that all his actions are immune from review (as he announced in his last civilian press conference on January 11, 2017), and proceeds to dismantle the administrative agencies, whenever he encounters some resistance to his profit taking. Unlike William Jefferson Clinton, Trump has not been deterred from his authoritarian inclinations by being impeached. Never mind that the Senate was not sufficiently craven to punish behavior its own members engage in all the time (extortion, the solicitation of bribes and profitting from privileged information).
However, the viral pandemic and the possibility of the majority in the Senate also being thrown out of office has prompted the admission of the fact that Congress is, in fact, in charge of the currency and, when it suits their purposes can disburse as many dollars as needed to both natural persons and artificial corporate entities.
This is an admission that needs to be firmly fixed in the public consciousness. No longer should it be possible to argue that Congress’ hands are tied by the limited revenue that trickles into the Treasure because of Congressionally mandated tax manipulation and cuts. Why we ever bought the argument that the insertion of the Federal Reserve Bank as a middle man into the distribution process is a puzzlement. It makes no sense to believe that the entity that originates the cash has to rely on whatever is returned to distribute it again.
It makes no sense, but it is what Congress expected the electorate to believe. Why? So the members of Congress would not be held accountable for the deprivation that resulted from the privatization it engineered in 1919.
Yes, the scam has been going on for over a hundred years.
Do not let it continue. From now on, Congress has to be held to account for how the currency is distributed to the electorate. Shall it be direct, as Richard Nixon proposed in 1972, or shall we continue to count on the banksters and corporate middlemen to let the currency trickle down?
Republicans are, by and large, triangulators. Like a Mafia don, they prefer to act through subordinates (corporations, parties, henchmen) in the interest of deniability. In that sense, Donald Trump is the perfect mascot. At the same time, he is exposing all their liabilities. It was probably inevitable when we consider Palin and Gingrich and the audio nation ruled by Limbaugh.
