Federalism suicides itself — "Il Duce" Trump grabs more power

© 2020 Peter Free

 

14 July 2020

 

 

US presidential power is killing the Republic

 

I start with what seems a small news item. Then build to a larger observation.

 

My ultimate point regards the catastrophic decline of levels and branches of American government willing to do their jobs with integrity and purpose.

 

A power vacuum results from this abdication of constitutionally assigned responsibility. The United States' increasingly Il Duce-like presidency fills it.

 

This is not a good thing for a purportedly "free" people.

 

 

First, the news item

 

The New York Times reported the following (politically motivated) bypassing of the CDC's arguable quasi-neutrality with regard to COVID-19:

 

 

The Trump administration has ordered hospitals to bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and send all Covid-19 patient information to a central database in Washington beginning on Wednesday.

 

The move has alarmed health experts who fear the data will be politicized or withheld from the public.

 

The new instructions were posted recently in a little-noticed document on the Department of Health and Human Services website. From now on, the department — not the C.D.C. — will collect daily reports about the patients that each hospital is treating, the number of available beds and ventilators, and other information vital to tracking the pandemic.

 

Officials say the change will streamline data gathering and assist the White House coronavirus task force in allocating scarce supplies like personal protective gear and remdesivir, the first drug shown to be effective against the virus.

 

But the Health and Human Services database that will receive new information is not open to the public, which could affect the work of scores of researchers, modelers and health officials who rely on C.D.C. data to make projections and crucial decisions.

 

© 2020 Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Trump Administration Strips C.D.C. of Control of Coronavirus Data, New York Times (14 July 2020)

 

 

Il Duce Donny is flexing his diaper-biceps again

 

He's not new in doing this.

 

Every American president has taken advantage of the openings that other branches and levels of government surrender to him.

 

The point is not Toddling Donny's alleged badness.

 

The American System has simply not been working as the Founders designed it. Conflicting jealousies that the Founding Fathers supposedly built into American governance have evaporated.

 

Today, government (at top US levels) exists primarily to benefit those who hold it. Because such a high proportion of these folks rake in loot and prestige — but without doing their jobs to any notably impressive degree — the expansion of presidential power remains unopposed.

 

 

American history eventually evolved . . .

 

. . . a bureaucracy-controlled agency process to fill in for some aspects of lapsing federalism.

 

Modernity's increasing complexity makes legislatures and judiciary unsuited (by occupational background and procedural laggardness) to dealing with day to day regulatory demands.

 

Ergo, agency bureaucracies have been authorized to rule-make and enforce.

 

This evolution might have worked somewhat neutrally, had politicians been willing to shield agencies from politically motivated meddling by people ignorantly unsuited to it.

 

We know how this turned out.

 

 

Today's is just another example letting the boneheads rule

 

We have yet another American president deciding that he does not like the exercise of mildly competent bureaucratic neutrality.

 

Therefore, he's stuck a long-handled wrench into the CDC's COVID data-collection process.

 

Screwing any mildly competent overview of his Administration's COVID response — and killing off noticeable portions of the public — are the President's certainly intended results.

 

 

This is US il duce-ism at its rawest

 

Meaning that (literally) a fatly dictatorial slob is in charge, doing whatever he wants.

 

There is no rational way around this non-partisan conclusion.

 

 

How does this 'shit' happen?

 

Of the decline of federalist checks and balances, Tony Woodlief recently wrote that:

 

 

When our nation’s founders were stratifying authority between branches and levels of government, they assumed we would elect officials with the wisdom and moral courage to exercise that authority.

 

Sadly, it appears we’ve achieved the opposite.

 

Rather than wield powers granted by the U.S. and their respective state constitutions on behalf of citizens, too many elected officials want to push decisions upstairs. It’s a new Anti-Federalism.

 

Scholars have long-noted this Congressional habit. Congressmen pass vague laws, allow unelected federal bureaucrats to interpret and enforce them, then swoop in to aid select constituents caught up in the Federal gears.

 

Not only is the new Anti-Federalism literally costing lives, it’s rapidly making states and cities mere adjuncts of Washington, D.C.

 

States now get roughly a third of their revenue from Washington, and it comes with strings.

 

The scandal is that our elected officials make it their business not to scrutinize those strings.

 

[S]tate and local officials have to act like they were elected to do something other than take orders from people higher up the food chain.

 

Every single one of them takes an oath to uphold their state constitutions in the service of we the people. It’s high time they remember that.

 

© 2020 Tony Woodlief, The Shirking Pandemic: Everyone Is Passing The Buck, American Conservative (14 July 2020)

 

 

Regarding this latest CDC-skirting ploy

 

States and counties should refuse to report anything about COVID to Trump's captive HHS, rather than the CDC.

 

Congress 'should' step in to support them.

 

The House of Representatives should make it clear that federal pandemic money is not going to stop flowing from the top down, just because the Grand Orange Buffoon wants to use stopped funds as a threat to beat 'We the Serfs' back into line.

 

 

What is at stake is maintaining some semblance of integrity in governance

 

Not who is in the White House.

 

In that regard, Republicans might get some credit for finally finding their gonads — in resisting Trump's totalitarian bullshit — when November 2020's elections roll around.

 

 

The moral? — The Founders' federalist checks and balance system has collapsed

 

When high-ranking government officials are (for the most part) just out for loot and pillage, can an American Führer-ship be far behind?