Protesters in Orlando, Florida at a Hands Off protest on April 5, 2025. Photo: JER3L1337 on Wikimedia Commons

As Trump & Co. hurl horror after horror at us from the murky darkness of their extremely wasteful “war on government waste,” I think of Lily Tomlin, who said years ago: “No matter how cynical you get, it’s almost impossible to keep up.”

But no need to swat frantically at their every assault. Their blitzkrieg against everything at once is an intentional ploy to divide us into small, separate scrambles to save this and that, rather than rallying a unified, furious opposition to them. The evil is not in the budget cuts, but in the cutters.

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Second, let’s be clear that their war-on-waste is NOT about eliminating useless taxpayer expenditures. Note that Elon Musk, Trump’s silly “efficiency czar,” ignores such walloping waste as Pentagon boondoggles and tax scams for überrich hucksters… like him.

But—by gollies!—those budget-whacking plutocrats are fearless when it comes to killing essential benefits for regular people. A longstanding energy program, for example, helps very-low-income families across America pay to heat their homes in bitter winters, and to cool homes in areas of brutal heat. It saves lives—efficiently!—being administered by a staff of only 25. But this month, Trump’s government reform thugs stormed in, fired all 25, and shut down the program. As Sen. Ed Markey said, “This isn’t reform. It’s sabotage.”

This is Jim Hightower saying… Exactly! Soft words like “efficiency” are their knives for castrating government of, by, and for The People, allowing a cabal of Trump, Musk, and allied financial elites to impose a moneyed monarchy over America. But remember our history—we democratic rebels won all-out wars in the 1770s and 1860s to defeat them. So, toughen up, here they come again.

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