What if the stealth way of breaking a country is to empty its government of experienced workers?

[Grasswire2]

We have to stop assuming that he's just inadequate.

The intentions were stated by his strategist Steve Bannon: Shutter government; break down its structures.

Look what has happened.

The cabinet is largely "acting" and outside Congress confirmation.

Positions are empty all over the government because there was never any attempt to fill them. It's getting worse as time goes on.

That red light has been flashing from the beginning.

And now he has simply furloughed government workers, with no expectation of calling them back. A drain on services, but also on the economy.

Is this a plan, not simply an event?

[eleny]

1. I think it's all part of Putin's machinations

Any disruption will create internal problems. January 3rd can't come soon enough. There's a lot on Pelosi's shoulders to take charge of the great "ironing out". But she has the experience of how government is supposed to run and can get us on the right path.

[BadgerMom]

23. I'm not trying to start a firestorm here, but that's why Biden is in the mix for me.

I recognize his age, his ethnicity and his record with Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas, among other things. After Trump, I think we will need strong leadership, leadership that knows how government is meant to work. Biden offers that. Bernie has no executive experience. Beto has served only as a Congressman, Kamala is a first term Senator who might benefit from some seasoning. I will vote for the Democratic Party candidate in 2020, no matter who it is. But for the reasons stated, I will consider Biden in the primaries.

[Pacifist Patriot]

26. No firestorm from me.

We absolutely need strong experienced knowledgeable leadership in the Executive branch. It's exactly why Biden is high on my list. Even if he's just a one term president followed by someone younger and more charismatic, he may be exactly what we need to right the ship before we can even start to think about plowing into the waves.

[pangaia]

42. We don't HAVE until the next election...

Biden or not, it may be too late..

[Grasswire2]

62. the speed of destruction is accelerating.....nt

[UniteFightBack]

67. You damn right....and he knows all the players and will assemble A teams quickly. nt

[FreepFryer]

2. "Administrative deconstruction" is indeed a thing, aka "Reversing the New Deal"

I'm looking for Trump to model what we heard from Steve Bannon at CPAC," Glaude explained. "I'm looking for the three buckets. I expect to hear something about national security and sovereignty. I expect to hear something about economic nationalism. And I half expect to hear something about the deconstruction of the administrative state."

"So there is going to be all this talk about regulation rollback, tax reform, creating jobs. We've got to look at the details and what it means."

He continued: "I'm pretty unsettled by the notion of the deconstruction of the administrative state as a shorthand for all of these policies, we'll need to pay close attention to what that means. I think what it means in a nutshell is the dismantling of the New Deal. That final effort to strip away things that I think would benefit the people that are in so many ways going to benefit from the policies."

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2017/02/27/glaude_deconstruction_administrative_state_is_shorthand_for_dismantling_the_new_deal.html

[Grasswire2]

8. thank you

the more insight we have, the better.

[pangaia]

41. Not just the NEW DEAL--

The entire US government
Democracy
Same in Europe.

This was putin's aim from the beginning..

[FreepFryer]

50. Glaude's comment was about GOP reversal of the New Deal as domestic goal of administrative deconst.

I don’t disagree and so won’t contradict you in error, as you did with my post.

Do you have any citation that claims Putin is the architect of administrative deaconstruction?

Hint: Aleksander Dugin

[CrispyQ]

3. It's a plan.

Not the Con's plan, cuz he doesn't plan. He just reacts. But he is truly a puppet & Putin may be the grand puppet master, but he isn't the only one pulling Donald's strings.

[Quemado]

4. Bingo!

We must always remind ourselves that Trump is very much compromised by Putin. Trump is merely carrying out Putin's desire: to de-stabilize the U.S.

[FiveGoodMen]

19. Also remember: The GOP has been doing this since before Trump was any part of it.

There's not one enemy, there are 100,000,000.

[maxsolomon]

5. I keep telling my daughter: he's not just a fool.

stripping the federal agencies of professional competence, rendering them toothless, and clogging any progressive legislation with regressive courts IS the plan.

it will take decades to right this ship. decades. I'm 55 and I won't live to see it fixed. i'll die with gorsuch and kavanaugh still on the court.

I will live to see trump in the grave. cold comfort.

[Grasswire2]

9. thank you

And we are all bamboozled by the daily stories of goofy-ness, flim-flam, the clown show.

It's a plan.

[Quemado]

6. The shutdown will weaken TSA, Customs and Border Protection, and the Coast Guard

During this shutdown, "about 53,000 TSA employees, 54,000 Customs and Border Protection agents and officers, and 42,000 Coast Guard members and staff must work without pay, according to research from the Senate Appropriation Committee’s vice chair, Democrat Patrick Leahy. Essential employees also include anyone involved in counter-terrorism efforts, intelligence gathering, or providing telecommunications support for DHS workers." http://fortune.com/2018/12/22/government-shutdown-border-patrol-homeland-security-unpaid-workers/

A lot of these workers are people who are not making a lot of money. My guess is that many of them probably don't have enough money saved up to get them through an extended period of time without an income. Some of them will eventually leave their jobs and there will be no salaries to offer to any replacements.

[Grasswire2]

11. there ya go....

Kill the work force of those doing the people's business.

So......eventually it hits the IRS and tax collections.

It hits Social Security.

Medicare.

Regulatory agencies, of course.

Federal law enforcement.

Courts?

[pangaia]

44. You got it....

[Grasswire2]

63. AND the social safety nets that would feed and house all those bereft workers are under attack

What a grim picture THAT is.

The Great Depression would be nothing compared to hundreds of thousands of workers suddenly without food, housing, benefits, medical care........all at the same time.

[enough]

7. This has been a major element of the Republicans wish list for years.

If we spend too much energy blaming Putin, we will be blind to the actual forces at work in our politics.

[DENVERPOPS]

31. Project PNAC

Recall, or at least research:

PROJECT NEW AMERICAN CENTURY written and published by Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al in 1997.
If you do by chance look into it, and read what they wrote for their wet-dream wish list for the future you will be frightened to death when you reflect how many of their declarations they have made happen to the demise of the people and the Democracy of our nation........................

They wrote this TWENTY YEARS AGO.....!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WASF

And if anyone thinks it's just Putin......he is only the ringmaster folks. The repubs in house and senate are all on board and have been for some time. Another interesting thought.......has anyone heard from the Cheney Rumsfeld crowd???????? Folks, believe me, they are all in the back ground there somewhere. Meeting in a secret location daily and orchestrating all the shit that the Repubs are doing and accomplishing day to day.??????????
Trump is merely a distraction that daily serves their purpose as a diversion to the media and the people of the U.S.
Everyone is watching, reporting on Trump's daily antics and it serves as a great smoke screen to all that they are doing out of sight...........

[Grasswire2]

64. He's the rodeo clown. The carnival barker.

The illusionist.

And we've played along.

[Hekate]

10. Rachel Maddow spotted this on Day One. She calls it "hollowing out" the federal government. So yes.

[pangaia]

46. So did PANGAIA! Or very, very soon there after.

And quite a few others.

[AJT]

12. That's what Republicans have been hoping for. Kill the

government from the inside. Make people angry about government agencies by doing a terrible job. "Why are my tax dollars paying for this mess, let's get rid of it."

[Quemado]

14. Grover Norquist's "shrink and drown"quote

Can't find a link, this is a famous Grover Norquist quote: "I'm not in favor of abolishing the government. I just want to shrink it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."

[durablend]

25. Mmmhmm

I was thinking this earlier too.

Going right according to plan, sounds like.

[Turbineguy]

13. That's why there is

Liberty University.

To infiltrate idiots into the government.

[Quemado]

15. Forty years ago, a friend of mine predicted

that the U.S. would not be destroyed from the outside, it will be destroyed from within.

[FiveGoodMen]

21. And by "reaching across the aisle" we've enabled this.

We should have been screaming bloody murder about the enemy within for the last four decades.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

16. Could very well be *somebody's* plan

and whoever it is knows that Trump doesn't know and/or care. For any other Administration, such incompetence and/or ineptitude would be grounds for impeachment in and of itself. I've noticed that no Republicans (not even the Never Trumpers) AFAIK have spoken out about this "gutting" of the Federal bureaucracy.

[ooky]

32. Yeah I haven't seen any evidence he is capable of a plan on his own

but he is very usable by others to promote their evil plans.

[eleny]

17. Thom Hartmann just gave a heads up to your thread on his program

[FreepFryer]

28. Did he make the Russia connection, or downplay/ignore it? I'm guessing the latter. Nt

[eleny]

36. He referenced Grasswire's points

I only caught part of what he said except that he quoted it.

I listen to him almost every day and he regularly speaks against Putin and Russia's efforts. Btw, he recently spoke about how glad he was to have left RT.

[FreepFryer]

43. I bet he's relieved they allowed it at all.

And I hope he is truthful when his time comes to testify about illicit Russian Intelligence influence campaigns based out of RT.

[eleny]

49. You can always write and ask him directly about your concerns

[FreepFryer]

51. He should be ready to answer for every time he called the Russia investigation "new McCarthyism"

That one in particular won’t age at all well, so I hope he didn’t fall for it when choosing from his Russia- approved talking points.

I would write him, but I don’t forgive him his willingness to lay down with our enemy enough to do so.

[eleny]

53. I just remembered ...

He recently commented that he chose not to renew his contract with RT and how glad he was to be aired on Free Speech TV.

Given how strongly you feel about him it's more appropriate that you reach out to him. I'm not the one to speak for him. I'll only share a quote.

That's all I have to add to our exchange. Please take the last word.

[FreepFryer]

54. Actually I don't feel strongly about him, I feel strongly about Russian propagandists.

We will see if he is no longer among them.

My last word is to wish you well.

[elmac]

18. this has always been the repug way since nixon, not so much to dumb down but to profit,

put industrialists, banksters in control, just like tRump just put a military industrial complex guy in charge of military spending.

[MaeScott]

20. It's definitely intentional. Stealth attack from within.

[Liberalhammer]

22. Which is treason

Why is Bannon not in Prison On treason charges?

[pangaia]

47. Oh, come on.

Why not?

republicans. That's why not.

[Mrs. Overall]

24. Exactly. Weakening government and oversight has always been the plan of conservatives, but

Trump and his associates are taking it to an extreme level.

[ancianita]

27. This has long been a plan by those who've leaked details at CPAC of what 'small gov' means.

Isn't this the fulfillment of the Rove and Norquist mission? I believe it is.

[FreepFryer]

29. Yup. But thankfully, nowhere near small enough to drown in a bathtub yet. (n/t)

[ancianita]

33. Not thankfully. We all know it's a figure of speech pointing to a slow roll killing of democracy

by GOP and their globalist owner-donor masters.

Only two things stand between their already far advancement and their ultimate goal -- Mueller and the Democratic House.

People knew in 2016 -- way too late for any strong defense -- that if we didn't take over something or as much as possible in state and federal government, we would have Mercer/Koch/DeVos states, Trump for eight years, and some other Putin pick thereafter.

This is serious. And worse than we ever dreamed it could become.

[FreepFryer]

45. Suffice it to say we disagree - there's a lot more than the House and Mueller

There’s us. If the GOP had staunched the Blue Wave with more voter suppression, hacking, disinfo and other crimes, it would still be up to us.

And yes, thankfully - I’m thankful that the Norquist ideology is being increasingly exposed and repudiated. Aren’t you?

[ancianita]

57. Only in our circles. It's too big a country for our ideas to influence whole pockets of govt. haters

I wish it weren't true, but I've traveled this country enough to know it is.

[FreepFryer]

58. Imho you're wrong if you discount the power of the demos, but you're entitled to your opinion. nt

[ancianita]

60. We're good, no doubt. Great House Counsel, yes. But it's an uphill battle and maybe our last chance.

You're right about the larger "us." But in such a large country, people can get confused about which group's activities endanger or protect their freedoms.

Vigilance can work both ways.

Our opponents' vigilance is about advancing their monetary gains, about creating opportunities to advance their capitalist owners' no-government goals.

Vigilance on our side is about preserving their attack on democratic processes, government and citizens' constitutional rights.

We need to stay vigilant about advancing both capitalism's regulation and democracy. As one is diminished, the other grows, and we've got to realize that democracy will never preserve and protect itself. That's where we come in.

It's ironic that millions who get monthly checks fail to understand or accept that the third biggest country on the planet needs the big government they depend on, yet choose to hate.

[FreepFryer]

61. Agree with all of the above. I keep an optimistic view, because I honestly do believe...

...that our republic will be stronger in the long run having repelled this infiltration.

[BlueJac]

30. k&R

[slumcamper]

34. WE know it's the plan.

There's a sign along IA Hwy 1 I pass while on my way to work: TIRED OF BIG GOVERNMENT? VOTE REPUBLICAN.

The word "BIG" is merely a distraction.

[volstork]

35. I don't think that there's

anything “stealthy” about it; I think this was the intention all along.

It never ceases to amaze me how utterly quickly things can be broken. It will take decades to repair this damage.

[trev]

37. The Republicans have been dismantling the government

ever since Ronnie Raygun.

[TygrBright]

38. Not much actual "stealth" about it... n/t

[enid602]

39. Tax law

And don’t forget that tRump’s new tax law goes a long way in defunding the Government also.

[pangaia]

40. OF COURSE it is the plan. It was from the beginning.

Destroy the institution of American democracy by destroying the government.
Same with all of Western Europe.

And---
Look at Syria right now...

CHAOS !!!!

[FirstLight]

48. I agree

It's a slow coup

[Rizen]

52. No, the Republican party controlling the gov is in chaos

Trump and Republicans are staggeringly stupid. None of their "plans" work, like repealing Obamacare.

[matt819]

55. This is a coordinated attack

From within and without.

[Grasswire2]

69. yes

and we've been suckers. Comity. Bipartisanship. Gentleman's agreements.

[Initech]

56. Just take a look at what is happening in Turkey, the Philippines, Poland and Hungary.

To see what Putin has in store for us.

[FreepFryer]

59. We are far from powerless, if we can only resist the constant pessimistic insinuation to give up. Nt

[Grasswire2]

65. the difference now is there's a front man.

A false target.

A "chimera" -- "an imaginary monster compounded of incongruous parts" that reveals himself daily in an outrageous way to focus our hate and disgust.

It isn't enough to stop him.

[former9thward]

66. The cabinet is not "largely acting".

Almost all have been confirmed. The shutdowns are a regular event going on since the Carter administration. Every president has had them. Even this shutdown only affects 25% of government. 75% is up and running.

[akraven]

68. Quick! Somebody call Putin and ask him!

It's obvious to most of us that The Donald is owned and operated by Russia.