Dakota Beacon

Here’s a good question, in the wake of Joe Biden being threatened with imposition of the 25th Amendment (replacing the President of the United States due to his inability to function in that office):  Who does run the government?  Congress? Hardly.  Joe Biden?  Not bloody likely.  So just who does?  

Well, for quite a long time now, our government has not been run by the people we think we elected to do so.  For many decades now the people in charge have been non-elected bureaucrats.  In some cases even the frontmen are being manipulated from behind the scenes - as Biden has been - people like Barack Obama, in some instances perhaps Hillary Clinton.  And behind all of these powers, huge corporations which use their considerable leverage to arrive at the answers they want.  

You have seen this - government agencies - the “three-letter” or “alphabet” agencies, most of the time act as law-givers, enforcers, judge and jury.  Think of the IRS.  Think of the EPA.  And so many, many more.  It’s no wonder people feel that they’ve lost control of “their” government - indeed, they have!  And this is another reason why it is not a good idea to campaign for term limits for people we elect.  All this does is usher in new, inexperienced (at least in the ways of dealing with the bureacracy) officials every few years.  By the time they know who they need to “get around” to get the people’s will honored they are term-limited out of office.  

All of this explains why Trump - who ran in 2016 on throwing Hillary in jail and “draining the swamp”  - instead spent more maintaining said swamp than all previous presidents, from Washington to Obama, instead.  You could say it wasn’t his fault, although it must be someone’s.  In one respect, however, Trump and other presidents could at least shine a light on the real problem, that is to say, the fact that no one we run to the polls to vote for has much influence on this crippling spending spree that has been going on for most of our lifetimes.  

Surely we will hear more this year again about this “swamp” we must elect Trump to “drain”.  But his performance during his term as President doesn’t promise as much.  It turned out that once in office he found excuses why it wasn’t practical or do-able to clean up this mess.  Now he has chosen JD Vance as his running mate.  Well, he could have done worse, perhaps, but Vance seems to have a strange approach to this clean-up project.  He was something of a surprise to some because he was not an early enthusiast for Trump.  He explains it thusly:  “What changed my mind about Donald Trump more than anything is that I saw the corruption in our institutions.”

“A lot of what this campaign is about — and a lot of my own thinking about politics is about — is that our institutions are corrupt,” he said to the crowd of about 50. “We have to replace the people who run them. Some of those institutions we have to destroy.”

And therein lies the problem.  Vance states that the problem is because “their” guys are in office and they need to be replaced by “our” guys.  No mention here of the real issue - which is the enormous expansion of the bureaucracy itself.  There is no way that one of “our” guys will use less money out of the public exchequer than one of “their” guys.  The only real difference is minimal - and has more to do with which corporations are invested in “their” guys and which are invested in “our” guys - in other words, which will be the end point of our hard-earned tax dollars.  It will not matter other than the objectives of the specific corporate powers that are pulling the strings of the bureaucrats.  And the elected officials too, by the way.  These corporate entities fund the campaigns of the elected members of congress just as they do the president and vice president.  And their is a lot of direct incest among corporations, bureaucrats and these elected puppets.  Vance’s reference to “destroying” them is meaningless without names, means and a schedule for doing this.  It’s just another platitude.  

The only way to combat this devastating spending and national debt - which will, if left unchecked, bankrupt us -  is to elect people who vow to ELIMINATE these bureaucratic offices and institutions.  We have had several such candidates in the past, who have promised that they would work to eliminate the IRS (such as Ted Cruz) and the Department of Education (such as Cruz, Ramaswamy, Thomas Massie and even Pence).  Why do they all cave?  Trump even gave it lip service, but he was actually more of a showman than a serious president when it came to cost-cutting and elimination of offices in Washington.  And that is our problem.  We do not hold the people we elect to account for this.  All they have to do is what Trump did - say it was a good idea but there is no practical way to actually do it, now that they see it from the White House or Congress.  And we not only let them off the hook, we vote them back into office and say we’ll “ride or die” on their candidacy.  Why would we do this?  

So there it is.  That is the answer.  Our government and our lives are being run by non-elected bureaucrats who are being run by mega corporations who couldn’t care less about us or about America’s future.  Trump played right into this, as do Democrats and most squishy Republicans by making excuses rather than fulfilling their promises to us.    So America will go bankrupt while enslaving us to “regulations” and orders coming from above in these corporate monstrosities.  

It’s a death sentence.  Only one candidate is even willing to talk about the debt - Kennedy - and so far he remains the “outsider”.  We will see which set of puppets will take over the stage next.

We need to point-blank ask these people who talk loosely about “destroying” government agencies “which ones?”  “how will you do it?” and above all, “WHEN?”  And if they end up in office, hold them to it or vote them out for their betrayal, regardless of their excuses.  There isn’t any other civil way to wrest control away from these faceless bureaucrats and CEOs.  

Our spending - whether to adulterate our education system, intimidate us through the tax system or on pointless and destructive foreign wars - all profits someone, usually some corporate leadership that doesn’t answer to us in any way.  If we don’t get blown up by a nuclear attack through this feckless policy of baiting Russians for profit we will surely succumb to bankruptcy - we are nearly there thanks to the same policies.