Government By Extortion

Do nothing for months, then claim the matter is urgent

When somebody is fired from a job, often they’re only given a few minutes to “collect their things” (often watched by security) before they’re forced to leave. These days, it’s not even unusual that security actually collects the “stuff” and simply delivers it to the fired employee, who’s forced to wait in the lobby.

The rationale behind these decisions is obvious — the company doesn’t want a disgruntled former employee to sabotage operations after they find out they’re fired.

Yet after the Democrats got their behinds kicked in November’s election cycle, they’re doing everything they can to gum up the works for the incoming Trump administration. From recklessly escalating (and funding) our proxy war with Russia to ensuring federal employees don’t actually have to show up at the office, the outgoing Biden administration seems intent to hand out political favors right up until Trump’s sworn in.

And there’s no better way to hand out favors than a huge (1500+ page) omnibus bill, rammed through literally days before a government shutdown. (And just before Christmas, to boot!)

Ironically, the intent of my article today was going to be the need for the incoming Trump administration to FINALLY get some overdue relief to Hurricane Helene victims, many of whom are STILL sleeping in tents. It’s been just under 3 months since the disaster, and the response from the federal government has been underwhelming at best. (While they continue shoveling money to Ukraine.)

But it turns out maybe there was a reason for slow-walking that aid allocation — now it can be used as a cudgel to “force” lawmakers to vote for the minibus monstrosity:

And Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R, if you can believe it) is on board with this view (because of course he is).

Repeat — it’s been almost 3 months since Hurricane Helene. Farmers have been struggling (as admitted by Johnson!) for YEARS. Donald Trump takes office in 33 days, and he’ll have Republican control over the House and Senate as well.

But suddenly this is an emergency that immediately requires legislation?

And we can somehow just…..not separate this stuff out from the Continuing Resolution?

Bullshit.

This is one last Uniparty bite at the apple before Trump and his Merry Men assume control of the Juggernaut.

One last chance to give themselves a 40% pay bump.

One last chance to enshrine the censorship complex. (Matt Taibbi also dropped an article about this today.)

One last chance to replace those overrun Ukrainian biolabs with different ones.

One last chance to cover their tracks and ignore subpoenas. (Gato wrote about this today!)

One last chance to solidify pandemic rules and gain-of-function (that obviously isn’t REAL gain-of-function) research.

One last chance to help build that shiny new NFL stadium in DC!

These are some of the worst aspects of the proposed CR, but it’s certainly not an exhaustive list of bad stuff in the bill — which once again goes to show that Republicans simply aren’t serious about reigning in government spending.

Chip Roy knows:

(Politicians forcing us to pay attention to politics a week before Christmas — humbug!)

The good news? Americans are pushing back and it seems like the politicians might be listening. The bad news? “Plan B” is nearly as stupid as “Plan A”.

“We have to pass this because of ABC, but the first thing to cut from the bill is ABC.”

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Edit: Trump weighed in just after publication. (Of course.)

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I asked grok about Screaming into the Void. How’d it do?

(When pressed and forced to admit government DOES collude with corporations, grok stated the “conspiracy theories” label is how OTHER people might categorize the issues we discuss.)