By Patrick F. Cannon
Business owners and managers are inevitably faced with decisions about staffing. The reasons are diverse: inferior performance, automation, sales decline, changing product mix; and on and on. The Capitalist economic system, which has raised people from poverty throughout the world, can also seem cruel when profits are at stake.
While I toiled for most of my career in the non-profit world, I still occasionally had to fire or lay employees off. I took no joy in it, since I know firsthand how it was to lose a job and face all the uncertainty that looking for a new job entails, especially when you have a family.
President Trump – whose only job has been being Donald Trump – has had no such compunctions. His most memorable public utterance has been “you’re fired!” He did it with great glee on the “reality” program that made him famous outside of his native New York. Of course, the people who got fired knew only one of them was going to get hired, just like the missies who appear on “The Bachelor” know only one will get the famous Rose.
You who read this blog regularly will know that I believe that governments at all levels spend too much money. What we have needed for a long time is a president and Congress that would work together to systematically eliminate wasteful and unneeded programs and the employees who operate them.
Instead, we have a president who thinks Congress is an annoyance. If Republican members do his bidding, fine. If not, or they take too much time, President Trump just goes ahead and does what he wants, regardless of any pesky laws that might annoyingly be on the books. I predict that he’s also going to ignore the courts too, in hopes he’s made cowards of us all.
In case Trump voters haven’t yet noticed, he doesn’t care about you. Just as he doesn’t care about the lives and families of the people he and his deranged accomplice Musk are so gleefully firing. They don’t exist for him as living, breathing human beings who mostly are just doing the best they can in the jobs they’ve been given. It’s easier to think and say that they’re sub human denizens of the “deep state.” Mostly, they just go to work and do what the laws tell them to do. And that’s part of the rub – many of them know their president is guilty of most of what he was charged with, and he hates them for that knowledge.
Finally, I’ve been getting emails from Republican lawmakers from around the country asking for dough to help them support President Trump in his efforts to “Make American Great Again.” Obviously, they have been given talking points from on high because they inevitably mention that President Trump is donating his $400,000 a year salary. As it happens, he did donate his salary to various entities during his first term. And he can certainly do the same this time since he shamelessly monetized his first term and is going even bigger this time. The lowest estimate of his income during those years totaled about $1.6 billion. Match that, “Crooked Joe!”
I don’t doubt that former President Biden’s family parlayed their relationship to make some extra bucks. But did he or his family break any laws? If they did, why didn’t the Republican House of Representatives, with full investigative and subpoena powers for two years, find anything? Anyway, there seems to be no law that prevents a president from using his office to enrich himself. He just can’t accept bribes (emoluments) from foreign governments or potentates. Or will he ignore that part of the Constitution too?
Copyright 2025, Patrick F. Cannon
cannonnadedotcom 
When I read this, I had to get out my handkerchief. Jill asked, “Is that gentle sobbing”? In the background, Bonnie Raitt sings,
I told you yes, and then, you told me no
Baby, how can you say
You should be free and I should pay?
And you talk and talk about you and what you need
But sooner or later, your love is gonna make me bleed
I suppose we should all have a heart, but frankly I’ve been enjoying the Bad Man show, the almost daily press conferences, his appointees (“The name is Bondi, Pam Bondi”), the endless flurry of EOs (“This is a big one”!), the non-stop action on multiple fronts (Ukraine, Middle East, Illegal Immigration, renaming bodies of water, energy development, AI, tariffs threats against those profiting from the US). It’s all badass.
Who knew the government paid media outlets for favorable coverage? Who knew what USAID does? Who knew the government paid millions to the media to have its political narrative disseminated. The country is drowning in debt, and we have money for condoms in Mozambique.
The Democrats (and quite a few Republicans) are the party of big government. AQs any Chicago mayor knows, when you control the contracts, you have the money and the power, so the more the better. Trump has the audacity to take their sacred cow to the stockyards, and they are squealing like fatted pigs. The media will do their usual fact-checking nit-picking, nipping at his heels.
Nobody loves the efficiency expert.
I used to work for the City of New York (Department of Social Services) under the hapless John Lindsay, one of the last liberal Republicans. Pay and benefits were very good, purpose of the department was altruistic. But like all bureaucracies, it was terribly inefficient, wasteful, and subject to fraud. Employees didn’t have to work hard. Some didn’t work at all. Many would check out for “field work” and go to the movies or the beach. The payments flew out with nominal control. The city went broke; Lindsay was hounded out of office.
The federal bureaucracies are far more vast and sophisticated. Who runs them? Yes, Congress is charged with allocating funding, but that legislative process is largely rubber-stamped. Staff does the work. Find me a congressman who actually knows what’s in those thousand-page bills.
Do the cabinet secretaries run them? According to some liberal experts, agency heads are just figureheads. What about the president? He is the CEO of the Executive branch. No, not him either? The courts maybe? But their role is judicial. So the agencies pretty much run themselves. They don’t even need to worry about elections. Until now, that is.
Trump may be partly motivated by vindictiveness (can you blame the man?) but the ultimate beneficiaries of his actions will be taxpayers and the national balance sheet; we need some serious cost-accounting. Musk may be deranged (geniuses tend to be that way), but he’s the most successful deranged billionaire I know. His companies have government contracts (Starlink, for example, provides communications services), but he is probably the most publicly scrutinized person on the planet. Where’s the conflict of interest?
DoGE may or may not at some point need to get Congressional blessing for reducing government waste and corruption. Ho hum. But this is no “constitutional crisis.” That’s just equine fecal matter the NYT likes to shovel against the tide at Coney Island.
You note Trump businesses made an estimated $1,6 billion while he was president. I suppose he should have sold everything and taken a vow of poverty before he took office. Biden & Co made millions peddling influence to foreign governments (Clinton and his foundation were more elegant). Biden then pardoned his family just before he left office. He must have pardoned them for something.
I think more government employees will take Trump’s generous buyout offer, which has now been okayed by the courts. The DEI stuff has DIEd. We’ll soon learn what’s going on in that Pennsylvania mine shaft. Meanwhile, coming to a government office near you:
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My point is simple — Trump has no human feeling. I don’t doubt that there are many government employees who fit your profile, but all of them? Really? He’s throwing shit against the wall to see what sticks. It still smells.
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