You may recall that long-standing Republican slogan. It was used by traditional conservatives to mean that the government should be innovative, accountable, prudent with its outlays, and balance its books. Well, that day has arrived, though not in the sense that old-fashioned conservatives intended. Trump runs the government exactly like he runs his businesses—based on deceptions, frauds, stiffing of creditors (including both the IRS and his contractors), and piling up massive losses and deficits. It would be comforting to think that Trump is an anomaly. But he’s not; he’s merely a crude caricature of what American business has become. Tax frauds to stiff the IRS have become routine. Creating
artificial losses to camouflage real, immense profits is what they teach at the business schools. Hedge funds and private equity are simply more polished versions of the Trump enterprises. Ever since Reagan and the two Bushes, the tax code has been revised to enable and semi-legalize these frauds on honest taxpayers. Trump just pushes the game to its logical extreme. The oasis of honesty in our system is what remains of the traditional public sector, which is actually accountable to the public, and far more transparent than developers, traders, Big Tech, Big Pharma, extractive industries, and of course Wall Street. So flip that slogan: It’s time for business to be run more
like the government. That would be the hated deep state that serves so many ordinary Americans, not Trump’s corrupt government.
