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In the last installment, R.K. and the Rise of the Rich Resistance - Meet the Mellons. (Part IV), R.K. Mellon, a logistics genius, took Andrew Mellon’s passion for power, slashed the inefficiencies of nepotism, and built a “respectable” public face for the Mellon empire, all the while investing in the Third Reich, to win WWII, and cut them into their global world order: a voting-free enslavement of the masses.

When it failed, he deftly took the family’s ambitions underground. The grandchildren, and great grandchildren built the generational infrastructure, that would insure that their plan, to end liberalism, equality, and the New Deal, would succeed, over time.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR)’s decision to leave the Mellons as “untouchable” got America through a world war. As we shall see, though, no punishment for treason only made them more untouchable.

It has allowed the Mellon’s 3D chess to both evolve, and distract us, with the daily outrages, rather than focus on what they have been doing to our nation, for generations.

‘There Will Be Another’

Sarah Mellon Scaife (1903–1965)

R.K. Mellon’s sister, Sarah Mellon (1903–1965), the daughter of R.B. Mellon, married Alan M. Scaife.

When their father, Richard Beatty Mellon, died, in 1933, his vast fortune was divided primarily between R.K., and Sarah.

R.K., as the only son, took on leadership of the Mellon business empire, and the political machinations that allowed it to keep its thumb on little-“d” democracy.

Sarah, as the daughter, received a large share of assets. She held no executive role in the family’s companies, though, or much of a say in the forward direction of the family1

Sarah passed away on December 28, 1965, at age 62.2

Upon her death, her son, Richard “Dickie” Mellon Scaife, and daughter Cordelia Scaife May, inherited a substantial fortune, including major stakes in Mellon Bank, Gulf Oil, and ALCOA aluminum.

Dickie also had principal control of her philanthropic entity, the Sarah Mellon Scaife Foundation, established in 1941.3

R.K. Mellon, himself, had no biological offspring. Only adopted children: Richard P. Mellon, and Seward Prosser Mellon. Along with R.K.’s widow, they inherited R.K.’s estate, when he passed, in 1970.

So Dickie commanded a significant share of not only the family wealth, and trusts, but a half-decade edge on the forward destiny of the family.

Richard “Dickie” Mellon Scaife (1932–2014)

In practical terms, once R.K. was gone, Richard “Dickie” Mellon Scaife took on the mantle of ideological/culture warrior, as the most direct male heir to the Mellon banking, oil, and aluminum fortune.4

He emerged as the most prominent standard-bearers of the Mellon fortune simply because he had both the money and the ambition to use it to achieve the family’s generational goals, where R.K.’s own children were far less committed.

Forbes, and other reports, routinely labeled Richard Mellon Scaife an “heir to the Mellon fortune.” His estimated his net worth was in the billions.

Mocking the Founding Fathers, he was often called the ‘Funding Father of the Right.’

Architect of a 21st Century Authoritarian America

If anyone is the architect of the 20th and 21st century devolution of democracy, into fascism, it is Dickie Mellon Scaife. He may be the worst traitor, to American democracy, in our 250 year history. Even worse than Andrew Mellon, who tried to sell the US out, to the Nazis.

Dickie spent decades and hundreds of millions bankrolling an architecture of think tanks, foundations, media outlets, and affiliated groups that shaped U.S. politics from the 1970s onward. His money helped build a “vast conservative infrastructure”sourcewatch.orgsourcewatch.org that advanced right-wing ideas – from welfare reform to climate change denial – and coordinated campaigns that often undermined democratic institutions and opponents

I wrote an ominous obit, “I did not Come to Praise Richard Mellon Scaife,” for HuffPost, after Dickie’s death, in 2014. (It now appears in DemoDirge.)

Watergate Waterloo

His backing of Richard Nixon spectacularly failed. Specifically, his indirect funding of dirty tricks, that paid for the bungled Watergate burglary, led to Nixon’s downfall, and a rebuke by a Republican Party that still believed in democracy.

Dickie’s takeaway was that Republican politicians, of that time, were too hard to control. Fear was not enough, to keep politicos in line.

The Modern Fascist Machine Arises

Scaife’s foundation, and other financial avenues, poured hundreds of millions of dollars into shaping U.S. conservative policy.

Dickie funded several prominent conservative think tanks, advocacy groups, and propaganda outlets, chartered with that mission.

• Founder of the Heritage Foundation.

  • Picking up from where Andrew Mellon’s liaison with the Nazis stopped, in the 1920s, and his 1972 Watergate failure, this “think tank,” which debuted in 1973, was designed to come up with long-range plans, to overhaul the American political system. The goal? To terraform the United States away from liberalism and “democracy,” to a more authoritarian / autocratic model, that served the rich better.

  • DeSmog’s grant compilation lists the Heritage Foundation as the top Scaife-family recipient from 1985 to 2006, at $23,096,640; Dickie even served on its board.

  • Most Americans know it, today, for Project 2025.

• Funding Father of the worst ultra-conservative terraforming think-tanks:

  • American Enterprise Institute

  • The Cato Institute

  • The Landmark Legal Foundation

  • Americans for Tax Reform Foundation (ATR): Public grant records show Scaife-family foundation money reached Ronald Regan’s real “whip” of Republican disciplie, Grover Norquist’s ATR. DeSmog’s compiled Scaife family table lists $700,000 total in grants. A Sarah Scaife Foundation annual report separately shows a $50,000 grant to ATR.

  • Immigration elimination tanks like:

    • Center for Immigration Studies

    • FAIR

• American Spectator: Scaife poured millions into The American Spectator, to turn into a national conservative attack platform. They packaged opposition research, and wild speculation, as investigative journalism.

• Judicial Watch is a conservative litigation and records-request organization that uses FOIA suits, public-records demands, and media amplification to target government agencies and political opponents, especially Democratic officials. Scaife money was significant to its Clinton-era rise: the Sarah Scaife Foundation gave Judicial Watch $1.1 million in 1997–1998, during its litigation campaign against the Clinton administration.

• Reason Foundation is a libertarian 501(c)(3) policy and media organization tied to the State Policy Network universe. Its work generally advances privatization, deregulation, market-based governance, pension reform, transportation privatization, and anti-regulatory policy. SourceWatch identifies it as a right-wing libertarian think tank and SPN associate member, while CMD-linked SFOF Exposed lists the Sarah Scaife Foundation among its top funders, with $3.675 million from 2012–2021

Beyond Watergate, he was also the architect of power-at-all-costs politics, picking up on “dirty tricks” politics that R.K. Mellon developed, during the Eisenhower campaigns.

• He was the Republicans’ obsession with “getting” Bill Clinton. He funded:

  • Arkansas Project: A private anti-Clinton opposition-research operation run through The American Spectator, targeting Whitewater, Troopergate, Paula Jones, Vince Foster, and other Arkansas-linked allegations.

  • Troopergate: Scaife-backed media helped turn Arkansas state trooper claims about Bill Clinton’s private life into national political ammunition.

  • Whitewater: Scaife-funded investigators and writers pursued Whitewater as a long-running pressure campaign against the Clintons.

  • David Hale / Parker Dozhier trail: The Arkansas Project’s payments to Parker Dozhier created one of the clearest money-to-witness-adjacent controversies in the Clinton investigations.

  • Vince Foster conspiracy laundering: Scaife-backed outlets and grantees kept false Vince Foster murder and cover-up claims alive after official investigations rejected them.

  • Western Journalism Center: Scaife funding supported Joseph Farah’s anti-Clinton media operation, which amplified Vince Foster and other conspiracy-driven attacks.

  • Anti-Clinton legal groups: Scaife foundation grants helped fund legal organizations that kept Clinton investigations and litigation pressure moving.

FreedomWorks

Founded in 2004, FreedomWorks:

• Recruited, educated, trained, and mobilized activists;

• Ran rallies and pressure campaigns

• Pushed petitions and congressional-contact drives;

• Helped turn Tea Party anger into an organized Republican primary, and legislative enforcement machine.

In Dickie’s declining years, Scaife money reached FreedomWorks, after the Koch-fed Tea Party’s first explosion.

The Sarah Scaife Foundation gave at least $1.23 million from 2012–2017, to Freedomworks, and again in 2022, helping sustain the limited-government, anti-tax, activist-training machinery that converted donor ideology into street pressure, primary threats, and congressional discipline. Overall, $2.96 million, from the Sarah Scaife Foundation, has gone to FreedomWorks.

The engine that Dickie built did what it was supposed to do: Metastasize, like cancer. It self-evaluated, executed what was efficient, to terraform America. It executed its own, who were too slow, too elite, or too dependent on persuasion, and the preservation of democratic norms.

The Scaife spawn exited their Reagan-era college conservative hatcheries, learning that selective political breeding, on college campuses, could inject their pro-authoritarian cancer into the body politic, via:

• Tax pledge discipline;

• Primary threats;

• Astroturf “grassroots” mobilization;

• Talk-radio emotional amplifications;

• Control of cable-news polarization, propaganda, and reactivity to it;

• Dark-money infrastructure, and norm shattering, that worked faster.

A traitor to democracy, Dickie Mellon Scaife ironically died, on July 4, 2014.

Timothy Mellon (b. 1942)

The machine which Dickie built, and the Scaife Foundation, that funded it, were built to be “maintenance free.”

Timothy Mellon started out as a family rebel. He revealed that he once held “radical” liberal views in the 1960s. He funded environmental and ACLU projects​.

In 2010, Timothy Mellon, Andrew Mellon’s grandson, and the only son of Paul Mellon, only became the family standard bearer of ultra-Right politics.

He gave $1.5 million to Arizona Governor Jan Brewer’s SB 1070 legal-defense fund. It was the first major public tell that immigration restriction was one of his core political triggers.

A Yale-educated transportation magnate, he founded Pan Am Systems, a railroad company. Timothy stayed out of the public eye. He avoided the East Coast social scene, for a reclusive life, in Wyoming​.5

In recent years, Timothy has emerged as a mega-donor, on the American far right. He’s bankrolled candidates, especially Trump, both directly, and via super PACs, on an unprecedented scale.

A Rare Glimpse

The Mellons seldom give us much understanding of their motives. In his self-published 2015 autobiography, the worldview, underneath Timothy Mellon’s checks, emerges. He is yet another rotten apple off of the same dark, twisted, family tree:

• Anti-welfare. Mellon expressed disdain for welfare programs.

• Anti-union;

• Anti-progressive education;

• Racially charged resentment. He invoked racist stereotypes, drawing criticism​. He wrote that, after 1960s Great Society programs, Black people “became even more belligerent” and unwilling to improve their situations​.

• A hostility toward the modern administrative state.

Described as “the most prominent member of the Mellon family today,”6​ Timothy has funneled millions into conservative causes. By 2024, he had given at least $227 million in recent years to Republican causes. It prompted observers, at the time, to compare him to the Gilded Age barons of his ancestry.

Indeed, one report notes the Mellon family is a leading example of dynastic wealth fueling modern elections, where “elections increasingly resemble struggles between wealthy aristocratic fiefdoms.”​

• Major GOP Donations: Since 2010, Mellon has ramped up political giving dramatically. He donated:

  • $1.5 million to Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s SB 1070 legal-defense fund. It was the first major public ‘tell’ that immigration restriction was a core political trigger.

  • $30 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund (House GOP super PAC);

  • $30 million to the Senate Leadership Fund in the 2020 cycle​.7

  • He was a “top donor” to President Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election:

    • In 2020, he gave $20 million to America First Action, the primary pro-Trump super PAC​ texastribune.org.

    • In total, from 2022, through mid-2023, Timothy Mellon donated about $150 million to federal candidates and committees.

    • The Mellon family was the third-highest political spending family in the 2024 election cycle​patrioticmillionaires.org​washingtonpost.com.

      • Notably, he contributed $15 million directly to Trump and even $20 million to support Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s 2024 independent campaign, apparently to siphon votes from Democrats​patrioticmillionaires.org.

      • By the end of the 2024 election, to defeat Kamala Harris, Mellon had given $172 million. Millions more than Elon Musk, who became the lightening rod of the ire of millions of center and liberal Americans.

        

• Border Wall Funding

  • In 2021, Timothy Mellon made headlines. He single-handedly underwrote Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s border wall crowdfunding campaign. The out-of-state billionaire, with no seeming ties to Texas, donated $53.1 million (98% of the total raised) in the form of stock, to Texas’s border wall fund​. It transformed a stalled campaign almost overnight​.

  • In 2010, Mellon gave $1.5 million to defend Arizona’s controversial SB1070 immigration law targeting illegal immigration​.

• Donald Trump outed Mellon as the donor behind a $130 million payment to that was allegedly to help cover U.S. troop pay during a government shutdown. It was a smokescreen, in a $4.6B monthly payroll, to install millions into an account, in control of the Trump Administration, for an unspecified purpose, months before the November mid-terms.

• Mellon’s giving is almost exclusively Republican. He donated a few thousand dollars to two Democrats, probably to spur contention, and division, on the far left and far right of their party.

  • Rep. Tulsi Gabbard in 2020, who later became the darling of Russia Today. It is entirely reasonable, and supported by the evidence, of Gabbard’s political evolution, to conclude that Timothy Mellon, and perhaps the Russians, who have substantial oil ties, may have strategically supported figures like Gabbard to shift them, co-opt them, or use them against their original political home. In Gabbard’s case, the investment seems to spectacularly have “paid off” for right-wing interests.

  • Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2018. She returned the unsolicited donation​.

• The strategy Mellon uses is similar to what other right-wing mega donors have done:

  • Boost third-party or fringe Democratic candidates who might siphon votes from mainstream Democrats.

  • Finance spoiler candidates (e.g., Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in 2024, where Mellon is again playing a major funding role).

  • Exploit ideological divides (e.g., stoking progressive vs. establishment Democratic tensions).

  • These tactics often mirror Russian active measures, which similarly aim to weaken Western political cohesion by amplifying extremes on all sides.

Timothy’s personal net worth, often estimated around $1B+, and willingness to “weaponize” it, in politics, demonstrate how the Mellon influence, now in its fourth generation, remains potent​.

Jennie K. Scaife (1963–2018) and David N. Scaife (b. 1966)

Jennie and David are Dickie Mellon Scaife’s two children.

Although he pointedly disinherited them from control of his estate, prior to his death, they have still carried on some of the family’s dystopian, and oil-supportive endeavors.

Jennie

In the 1990s, Jennie Scaife founded the Scaife Family Foundation. Both siblings became involved.

It was “among the largest contributors to the climate change denial movement from 2003 to 2010.”

It also gave to various conservative nonprofits.

In later years Jennie shifted the foundation’s focus “almost exclusively” to animal welfare and humanitarian issues​. Jennie was known as a horse enthusiast and charity donor in Palm Beach society. Jennie Scaife tragically died in 2018 at only 55​.

David

David Scaife, her younger brother, is now the surviving direct Scaife heir. Like those before him, he is likely the future “dark one” who maintains the Mellon family’s stranglehold on American politics and society.

He has generally stayed out of the spotlight. David is believed to continue involvement with the Scaife Family Foundation as its president, and possibly with the Allegheny or Sarah Scaife Foundations, as a trustee.

Under the stewardship of professional staff, the Sarah Scaife Foundation remains the primary vehicle of the family’s political philanthropy, still funding conservative think tanks nationally and internationally​.

David Scaife’s public profile is minimal. Unlike his father, he does not publish op-eds or lead newspapers. The siblings’ main significance lies in extending the Scaife philanthropic legacy, albeit with some redirection in focus. For instance, while Richard Scaife’s foundations still back groups like Judicial Watch and the Reason Foundation, the next-generation Scaife Family Foundation has pulled back from overt political funding in favor of apolitical causes (even receiving praise for donations to universities and museums)​en.wikipedia.org.

In sum, the Scaife branch of the Mellon family has exerted profound influence on the American conservative movement and key policy debates. From Richard Scaife’s role in building institutions that shaped Cold War and culture-war politics, to Cordelia Scaife May’s role in fueling anti-immigration activism, the Scaifes demonstrate how philanthropic capital can steer the direction of national issues. Even the next generation, while quieter, manages sizable endowments that continue to impact public policy (directly or indirectly).

What Should Be Done, To Stop Them?

Legislation, and changes in the tax code, that forever prohibit corporates, foundations or charities, of people, living, or dead, to give money to any political, or politically adjacent cause.

It took the Mellons 95+ patient years, to bring American democracy to its knees. It will take at least another 20 years to reverse it. We’re so busy with all of the distractions that their propaganda machines create, that it could be a long time before we’re “awoke” enough to start.

This is the final article. If you found it first? Start on Chapter I: Meet the Mellons, or select a chapter, below.

Chapters: I II III IV V

Footnotes

Is a coup, or a slide into Putinesque small “d” democracy-in-name-only (dINO), in the United States of America likely? Within the year 2026?

The likelihood that Republicans, building gulags, busting norms, breaking laws, trying to shatter the Constitution, and saying the fascist parts out loud, are likely to “play the game” within the rules of the American mid-terms is, especially after our invasion of Iran, is now at ZERO.

There is no way to cheat, at the ballot box, that is not something that will get bogged down in tons of legal challenges. Even with a stacked Supreme Court, an election could be ratified, going against the Funding Fathers, their puppets, minions, grifters, and bandits.

Will Donald J. Trump Live to See December?

If handing over power, to Democrats, is an impossibility, how does one, hypothetically stop/invalidate a mid-term election, that would clearly run against Republicans, when cheating isn’t going to be enough?

American politics have become like the WWE. Lots of drama. Highly scripted.

Donald J. Trump, the Human democracy Wrecking Ball, is currently being set up, as the fall guy, for the next act, in the Funders’ Fascist Follies.

How do you throw a huge enough monkey wrench, into the midterms, to stop them, even “temporarily?”

Have the POTUS killed by a bogeyman nation, Iran, that is so universally feared/hated by Americans that they can “buy in” to “delaying” an election, while the next phase leader, the puny-puppet-Putin-lite, J.D. Vance, is brought into power.

Sounds nuts? Trust me, I would love to be wrong. I would love, even more, that, by exposing what seems like utter insanity, to get people in the media, in the public, actively working to prevent the Wag the Dog gang, from Heritage and elsewhere, from imploding our 250 year old experiment in governance by the many.

Humor me. Read on. It sadly is not as crazy as you’d think.

The Road to Authoritarianism

We’ve been on the long road to authoritarianism since Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman beat it back, in WWII.

America had not only sympathizers with Nazism. It had powerful American collaborators, with an axe to grind against the limitations of their power in a democratic system that made the common man as powerful, with their vote.

These dynastic .01% families did not simply fade into history. They’ve continued, with other global players in oil, to create the conditions for the future to be theirs, not the “bubble” of liberalism that we’ve dreamily thought was a historic branch.

Andrew Mellon cozied up to the Nazis, after twelve years of running the United States, from the Treasury Secretary’s office.

R.K. Mellon introduced more nuanced dirty tricks into the Eisenhower era. He built the foundation for a generational resistance to liberalism.

Dickie Mellon-Scaife bought a Watergate burglary, and launched the Heritage Foundation (Later creator of Project 2025 and one of the key architects of the Trumpian fascist rollout), in the 1970s, to terraform our political system and get our population softened up for authoritarian rule.

Reagan looked malleable enough to take orders. He was sliding into senility. Still, unfortunately for the Funding Fathers, he believed in all of that American democracy that they found so inconvenient.

The Neocons were pussies. Low, not no, ethics. RINO chase the minimal moralists out.

The Kochs stepped up to the plate, for the assist. Build up the Federalist society. Compromise SCOTUS judges. Rise up, the Tea Party. They failed, to deliver, with Romney.

Enter the more weaponized grade of malleable moron: Trump, and his MAGA zombies leveraging white power’s frantic fears of being replaced by people of color.

The Funding Fathers have used Trump as both wrecking ball, and punching bag. They’ve adopted his, “if you can’t dazzle ‘em with brilliance, baffle ‘em with bullshit” made-for-TV style, while playing on the Bushes’ dumbing down American society, through cattle-worthy educational “reforms,” that unleashed the stupid, loud and proud.

Now it’s time to say goodbye to the wrecking ball. Trump is becoming the bogeyman around whose neck all that has been done in his name, is going to be used to sink the Funders’ foibles with him, into the East River.

Send in the Manchurian moron, J.D. Vance, to build the new order.

Catastrophic charisma? Out. Cold compliance? In.

Nothing Up My Sleeves

The slide into authoritarian rule is like a giant magic trick. There are a lot of moving pieces, that are laid down weeks, months, years, even decades in advance.

Most have been in front of our faces. Why don’t we see them?

The art of the fascist magician is burying the obvious in the daily outrage stream of both the propagandists, and the liberal/recovering Republican outrage industrial complex, nattering on about the trees, while you’re setting fire to the forest.

Everyone makes a buck off of controversy, and outrage.

Thus, the more important bits, and pieces, are quietly installed, for the “big reveal.”

Coups are Like Fires

There are three key elements to set off, and sustain a coup, or dINO:

• Power.

• Money.

• Crafted Opportunity.

Setting the Stage

Money Fuels All Tectonic Power Shifts

Read these linked articles, for context, if my work is new to you. If it’s not? Skip this section.

American Fascism

It’s good to first understand the trajectory in which the bankers to the richest of the rich, also owning Alcoa Aluminum, and for a time Gulf Oil, the Mellon Family (See: Meet the Mellons), and the generational .01% whom they shepherd, has been quietly terraforming American politics, since the late nineteenth century.

Social Darwinists, they believe that they are “chosen” because of their immense wealth, and power.

Further, consider that the Mellons tried to sell us out to the Nazis, more than a decade before 1941.

Petro Populism of the ‘Funding Fathers’

If I gave you $132 trillion dollars, what would you do to keep it from being devalued two-thirds, or more? Would you spend billions, to protect your trillions worth of oil, in the ground? Even if it was toxing out the planet?

Yep.

Petro populism, delivered by the paid stooges of the American, Russian, and Arab oil oligarchies, is driven by the hegemony of these dominant petro-nations, whom I call the “Funding Fathers.”

Why, though, have they begun such an aggressive campaign, to realign the world, rather than just manipulate existing governments, as they’ve done?

Migration and UBI

We know that the planet is cooking. The Funding Fathers know it too. They brought us here.

Every time that they keep distracting, delaying, and dividing, we grow closer to the point of tipping this planet into massive ecological failure.

When low temperatures, with high humidity exceed 40°c / 104°F, for weeks, or months, human beings will not be able to survive outdoors, without A/C.

Millions will have to move, north, or south, from the hottest nations, nearest to the Equator.

In 2017, presidential candidate Andrew Yang proposed a “freedom dividend,” effectively Universal Basic Income (UBI), for hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people.

To the Social Darwinist Mellon family, the idea of keeping people alive, because they exist, without exacting any work, or value, from them, is a big fat “NO.”

For years, I’ve been warning readers about this.

We are at the beginnings of a massive Democide - Killing people more by socioeconomic status than race, although race and racial discrimination are a key part.

Trump has served his purpose: setting up the chaotic new world order, where truths are malleable; up is down; and it’s time for the Funding Fathers to have their minions say the quiet parts out loud.

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Trump and the Long Treasonous Terraforming

Before you can build something new, you have to tear the existing thing down. Collapsing the East Wing of the White House, to build a gaudy ballroom, was a delicious metaphor for what the Funders have in store for those of us who serve no purpose to the .01% any longer.

The ballroom is as much about hardening the security assets, and the bunker beneath it, as anything. What was only meant to cover hours, or scant days, will be equipped to deal with long-term operations and control, without moving into a mountain somewhere. This will make it much harder to unseat the autocrat/dictator(s) who will follow Trump.

Teflon Don was able to literally get away with murder (COVID bumbling, Immigrants dying in “detention,” killing protestors; USAID, etc.) and tie the government in knots.

The ‘Drown[ing] American government in the bathtub’ comes to fruition

It didn’t start with him, though. The failure of the government has been the objective of the Funders since Bush-era minion Grover Norquist quipped about drowning American government in the bathtub (2011), and creating a “rubber stamp” presidency (2012).

Neocons, hardly “moderate” were “RINO” hunted out of the Republican Party, for not being blindly dogmatic enough.

While Democrats were smugly satisfied that no one could defy the majority will of the American people, that largely approved of liberal, pro-people reforms, they myopically focused on:

• the next election cycle;

• trying to drag the Republicans back to the comity that democracy requires of all running government: debate; disagree, vote, move forward.

Meanwhile the Funders were playing 3D chess. Their agents like Heritage, and acolytes like Norquist and Jack Abramoff, were laying the groundwork for a generational, tectonic shift into fascism.

The Three Elements of a Coup

Element One: Power. The Jack Boot in the Box is Sprung

Over the years, we’ve heard some pretty outrageous things from the Republican punditry. No one ever believed that they were voicing things that they were serious about doing.

We got a preview of it, when Donald Trump was installed as the Wrecking-Ball-in-Chief in 2016, with training wheels. The old guard of the GOP still had enough chops to get a leash on their mad dog. It was a test, to see what could be done, with most of the guardrails in place. That failed. Biden came in. Harris could have taken the country “backwards,” in a Funder’s eyes, and cost them decades more time, to achieve their goals.

KEY THING TO REMEMBER: Donald J. Trump is not the architect of any of this. He’s simply not smart enough. The Funders’ are Geppetto, in this game, feeding the plays to President Pinocchio. They are:

• Stephen Miller

• Susie Wiles

• Russell Vought

• Peter Navarro

• Dan Scavino

In 2025, though, the leash came off. The fascists fully emerged from the shadows. The quiet parts were now said out loud: hate; racism; sexism; death to the poor.

The degradation of our guardrails was swift. The congress, legal system, and new media, all crumbled, under challenge.

America built concentration camps, again.

Trump pardoned the insurrectionists of J6.

The Funders, pulling the strings, transformed ICE into a paramilitary force that started rounding up people without warrant, or due process, or even much care as to whom was “detained.”

ICE masked morons, and National Guard activated under false pretenses, were dispatched to liberal-leaning “blue” states, to instill fear, and intimidate.

Protests erupted. ICE shot people, in the street, without consequence. They even took pictures of their “kills.”

Element Two: The Money

• Under the guise of helping the US Military with its $14.5B payroll, during the government shutdown, Trump outed Tim Mellon’s $130M “gift” to the military. Illegal, it was parked in a holding account for the Armed Forces. Mellon never withdrew it. Secretary of Defense (War?) Pete Hegseth has been routing out the moderates, and liberals, from the Armed Forces hierarchy. The people who control the money are all Trump appointees. $130M can buy a lot of generals’ loyalty. The path to the money? All Trump appointees, loyal to the Funders’ mission.

• The Funders seized 50-80 million barrels of Venezuelan oil. Allegedly for the benefit of the Venezuelan people, the money was laundered through Qatar, allegedly to keep Venezuelan creditors’ hands off of it. At the end of February, control was moved to the Treasury Department, but, the funds still seem to be largely with an unnamed bank in Qatar. Currently, Marco Rubio, as Secretary of State, has control of the money’s release. Rubio answers to the President. The President, then, controls the money.

• The Funders started a seemingly “pointless” war with Iran. This war has a point. Oil prices spiked, as a result of the Iranians strangling supply out of the Strait of Hormuz. If the U.S. is holding, and slowly marketing, something like 50–80 million barrels of oil, the scale publicly discussed, then

  • At $60 per barrel? $3.0–$4.8 billion

  • At $75 per barrel? $3.75–$6.0 billion

  The Iran conflict could have increased the value of those barrels by roughly $750 million to $1.2 billion depending on timing and exact volumes.

Congress does not directly control those funds, because they are structured as foreign sovereign assets held in custody, not appropriated U.S. government money. That distinction is the legal mechanism used to avoid the normal appropriations process. The Secretary of State controls it. Which means that the President controls it.

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Element Three: Crafted Opportunity

These are events that have been decades in the making. Painstaking testing and failing from Eisenhower, through Nixon, Ford, Reagan, a pair of Bushes, and now Trump.

Democrats, progressives, tend to be more optimistic. I hate to burst your bubble, but, we’ve blown it.

The Maddow Effect

I will disclose a bias, here. Rachel Maddow is my hero. She may be the only one left, in the mainstream media, who, like much more humble me, and a handful of others, look at history, for guidance as to this moment in time.

Where we differ, is that she dances around the edges of the history, looking for hopeful signs that we can beat American fascism back, as we’ve done in the past.

After sixteen years of following the money? I’m not as sanguine.

There’s a reason that this journal is called “Demodirge.” We’ve past Rachel’s sunny rubicon.

The Funders have made their mistakes. They triangulate. Improve. Return. Strip away a bit more of our social order, and the pillars of our small ‘d’ democracy, with every turn at power. Now we’re at the precipice. There is no going back.

Democrats lack oppositional teeth. They have taken on so many people and points-of-view that they hide in institutions that are being nuked.

They have tried to be the grown-ups in the room. The Funders, and the thugs that they have hired, though, are bullies. Brawlers.

Republicans cannot yield back power. They cannot kick this fascism ball down the road any longer. The stakes for what they are laying down, in front of us, are too high. The camps? ICE? All of that is dismantled, and bulwarked against ever happening, if they play by the rules.

We had our shot, in 2011-2012, as the staging for this chapter of the collapse of our democracy was under way, that I chronicled for The Huffington Post, Daily Kos, Truth-2-Power.com and in research given to Open Secrets.

Rachel, and her staff did not connect the historic dots between the New Deal and the Raw Deal.

She has not yet found that the commonality, going on world-wide, is still an oil hegemony that bonds the Mellons, Putin, and the Arab petro-states in the common belief that they, as the Chosen, by dint of their enormous wealth, are all that matter.

Brexit. Ukraine. MAGA. All are focused on maximizing autocratic power to the petro-rich.

Why didn’t Putin storm Ukraine when Trump was president, before? Biden was gathering the democracies to address global warming.

They still hope to break the back of NATO, as much as the Ukrainian resistance, and expand autocracy throughout the EU.

The oil and banking rich are the real .01%. The Mellons, alone, have been at this for more than 95 years. Blame Musk? You’re following the shiny objects that are put there to misdirect you.

The Democide Unfolds

Those of us without purpose are unnecessary.

This is not a genocide. It is a democide. The herd being “thinned” for a world that will continue to suffocate in its own fossil fuel black gold, and lack the resources to keep the useless alive.

It’s why Republicans keep looking for ways to unplug us from health care. Send millions of people in the lesser developed parts of the world to an early grave, from disease, and starvation.

Use tariffs as a class weapon, here at home. Jack up inflation. Make survival more costly.

Shatter the “land of opportunity.”

Look to Greenland and Canada as breadbaskets when the equator begins to be uninhabitable, and crops in the American Heartland wither into dust-bowl El Niños.

With all due respect to Ms. Maddow, what we learn from history is that it is being shaped for us, aimed at a future with automation, and far more limited natural resources, to be shared by those who toxed out the planet, to their benefit, since the dawn of the Industrial Age.

The “Trump Must Die” Scenario

There could be several ways to stop the mid-terms, and prevent the Democrats from unwinding, even for another twenty years, what is being done right now.

What I’m layout out is not an absolute, by any means. It is a scenario. A hypothetical. I am not advocating it. I am demonstrating how one might go about holding on to power, beyond democratically prescribed term limits.

The fascist magicians have set the stage. Here’s how the trick might work:

Trump has served them well as a wrecking ball. They control the media, the government, and the highest court in the land.

They move, and act with impunity.

Bad news for Trump? The Funders now own his duck-and-evade brand well enough to get rid of him. They’ve allowed all of us to see:

• To see the walls cracking around his bullshit tornado;

• The depth of Epstein and Trump’ depravity;

• Trump’s failing health;

• His ailing mental capacity;

• Seemingly unfathomable demands for Canada and Greenland;

• Starting military conflicts, a huge broken promise, in Venezuela, with Cuba, and now Iran.

The Scripted President

The faked assassination attempt, during the 2024 campaign, was a preview of coming attractions. Charlie Kirk’s execution gave us a clear understanding of the Funders’ “retirement” plan for those who outlive their usefulness.

The Big Shocker

What is the way to create an event startling enough that it would keep states from running the mid-term elections?

Assassinate the President of the United States

With last Saturday’s out-of-the-blue attack of Iran, and Kash Patel’s sudden dismissal of Iran-specific counterterrorism experts, in charge of keeping the very effective Iranians from conducting operations on U.S. soil, we now have not just oil wealth to pay for a coup. We have:

• removed the people who could call out an event staged to look like the Iranians did it;

• the justification for invoking martial law, and temporarily “halting” the November mid-terms, to “protect” us from further acts of “terrorism;”

• the bogeyman that is going to be accused of taking out Trump, and intensify both war, and civilian counter-attacks, on our soil, by Iran.

  • This will continue to justify suspending large sections of the Constitution, consistent with even FDR’s sad handling of Japanese Americans, during WWII;

Putin-Lite: J.D. Vance

In such a scenario, Vice-President J.D. Vance, hand-picked for Trump by that .01%, will move us to, at best, a Putin-styled dINO republic. He has very few downsides, for the Funders. He does exactly what he is told.

With billions, in Venezuelan slush fund money, and some good seed money from Tim Mellon for the “acquisition” of the military, they can move to put us into a similar oligarchic stranglehold as has happened in Russia, Hungary, etc.

They can, in relatively short order, move against Canada, and Greenland. Wild? Remember that they always tell you what they’re going to do. We just refuse to believe it.

New America

When they’re good enough to “restore” elections? Their prison camps will grow. Dissidents will be rounded up. Freedom of speech will be silenced. America, as we’ve known it since the New Deal, will be officially dead. Drowned in the Funders’ toxic bathtub.

How Do We Get Our Country Back?

Between now, and November, it would take us:

• rising above the daily noise in the media. This is existential, not a game. Everyone needs to get their heads out of their asses;

• getting a very sober handle, as to how we’ve been played, over time;

• have the mainstream media focus on FOLLOWING THE MONEY and POWER;

• the Democrats growing a spine, and stopping the elements leading up to the coup. Restore the FBI. Get control of the money that is being laid out for it out of the hands of Funder stooges.

• finding rich enough people who still believe in democracy to stand up to their richer peerage and put equal force behind the recovery of our democracies, around the world;

• containing the .01% oil rich, forever;

  • publicly fund campaigns, and ban all special interest money in politics, from either side;

  • defund oil, permanently, and seek a path back from the ecological brink;

• reaffirming the democratic value and dignity of every human;

• doing our best to repair the damage that will kill millions;

• find better ways to address humanity’s purpose, as technology replaces us, in the majority of what we have traditionally called “labor.”

Now you see why I’m not as hopeful, as is Rachel Maddow, about our chances. America, and the world, need a lot more hurt, before they come out of their media-induced comas.

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Writers note: I will not be part of the daily noise brigade. I write very well thought out, very well researched work, that is intended to stimulate discussion, and move people to action. If you like my style, I would appreciate your support first by sharing this free article, and, second, by becoming either a free, or paid subscriber.

You won’t get something daily in your box, but, do you really need more words on all of the misdirection out there?

FOLLOW THE MONEY!

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Originally Published in The Huffington Post 07.26.2017, 05:37 AM EDT

|Updated 07.27.2017 | Updated/Modernized 07.30.2025

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Science’s latest inconvenient truth is that 110 of 111 brains of football players studied showed signs of the debilitating brain damage Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative disease that is caused by repeated blows to …

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In the last installment, The Mellons Bet on Hitler and The Reich - Meet the Mellons. (Part III), we learned that Andrew Mellon crossed the line, and made deals with the Nazis, putting a bet on their success, by giving them full access to patented aluminum technologies, and manipulating the markets for aluminum and manganese, on their behalf.

In this ins…

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You can’t “take back” real wage gains, by the average Joe. You can, however, render them meaningless.

Welcome to Tariffs, as a social weapon of the 1%’s class warfare.

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History Repeats Itself

There is a direct 1:1 correlation between the politics of “overturning” the New Deal, that began in earnest, in the 1970s, and the return to the Guilded Age wage disparities of the 1920s, in the 2020’s.

• In 1929, the top 0.1% of families held more wealth than the bottom 42% combined.

• In 2023, the top 1% of households held approximately 31–34% of total U.S. wealth.

Maintaining the Wealth Gap

It is maintaining this wealth gap, not trade, that is important to the 1%. They are expecting a need for a massive downsizing of the human population, that the global warming that they unleashed on the world is bringing upon us faster than conceived.

This is why our current generation of Mellon-manufactured Republicans have been busy at work on ways to make the general public economically and physically vulnerable, with things like tariffs.

Don’t know who the Mellon family is? They’ve been terraforming the United States, with a bit of help from alliances of common interest, in the oil producing world, for a century. Musk, and the “tech bros.” are newcomers to the party. Meet the Mellons, my multipart series, breaks down their inter-generational ‘contributions’ to the regression of the United States, economically, and culturally, to where we are today.

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Liberalism’s Historic Bubble

What most Americans have been raised on, the idea of liberal democracy being a permanent change in the economic, and social liberalization of the United States, is really more of a bubble.

The second World War, along with the New Deal, pulled us out of the economic shattering that the excesses of greed, and wealth inequality caused to America, in the Great Crash that led to the Great depression.

• 1950s–1970s: Broad-based gains. Wages rose with productivity. The middle class expanded, unionization was high, and social mobility improved.

• 1980s–present: Wages stagnated for the bottom 60%, while high earners captured a growing share of national income.

  • Since 1980, real wages for typical workers have grown ~17%, while productivity rose over 70%.

  • The top 1% has captured more than half of all new income growth since 2000.

Inequality and Job Quality

• Deindustrialization (starting in the late 1970s) led to:

  • Loss of high-wage union manufacturing jobs.

  • Rise in lower-wage, less stable service-sector jobs (especially retail, food service, and gig work).

• Wealth inequality has returned to Gilded Age levels by some measures.

  • In 2023, the top 10% own ~70% of U.S. wealth, while the bottom 50% hold ~2.5%.

The current Industrialist order has made trillions, and produced huge shareholder value, which has, in turn, increased the wealth gap between the haves, and have-nots, almost to pre-Great Depression levels.

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Popping the Poor’s Post-Pandemic Prosperity Possibilities

We’re told, very regularly, that Tariffs are a tax. They are. Individual Americans pay them, not foreign companies, or governments. They’re something more though…

Tariffs are also a leash, and a collar, to remove the effect of the gains that America made coming out of the pandemic.

They aren’t just regressive, in that the burden of them is born as another tax on Americans.

Tariffs are a means of erasing any real gains that Americans, especially more economically vulnerable Americans made, under the Biden Administration, coming out of the pandemic.

The Economist called America’s successful rise out of the COVID Pandemic the “envy of the world.”

Wages rose.

Spending power rose.

Money, injected to stabilize an economy, that was ground to a halt by COVID’s social distancing requirements, started to hyper-inflate the country. In 2023-2024, though, the Federal Reserve found a relatively soft landing, curbing inflation.

If Trump had not been elected, we would have continued to build on that stability, in that rapidly recovering global community.

If you’re of a mind to make sure that the poor stay poor, as the 1%, under Mellon Social Darwinist theology of over a century dictates, you need instability.

They needed a giant monkey wrench dropped into the global system. Trump, and his general erratic insanity can be curbed, by other world leaders. They learned that in his first presidency.

Tariffs, though, grind the gears of global commerce. They break the global economic system, to the point of increasing the world’s most vulnerable populations’ demise.

Tariffs, then, are a part of the democide that is, to the .1%, necessary to bring the expected resources of the planet, affected by the global warming, the byproduct of their fossil fuels businesses, and the population, into balance.

Tariffs, broadly applied, would reintroduce inflationary pressure. They would erode real wages again, especially in sectors like food, clothing, and consumer electronics.

No country makes everything that they need.

Tariffs raise the prices of imported goods. Lower-income households spend a greater share of their income on them, especially things like electronics, clothing, appliances.

The relative burden, then, beccomes heavier on them, than on wealthier households.

A 2019 study by economists Amiti, Redding, and Weinstein found that the full cost of Trump-era tariffs was borne almost entirely by U.S. importers and consumers, not foreign exporters.

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Tariffs act like a giant pumping of the brakes on the economy.

By creating fear of tariffs, you don’t even need the tariffs to really be applied, to damage the global economic flow.

Businesses try to insulate themselves, from the financial effects.

Tariffs create uncertainty for them, especially those with global supply chains. When tariff policy is used as a political lever (e.g., the first Trump China-U.S. trade war of 2018-2019), it prompts companies to:

• Stockpile goods in anticipation of price increases;

• Delay hiring or investment;

• Quickly pass on costs to consumers.

These reactions cumulatively slow down growth. The 2018–2019 tariffs reduced GDP growth by about 0.3% annually, according to the Tax Foundation and IMF estimated.

Real costs quickly rise. They wipe away any gains that people, who live more paycheck to paycheck, received from raises in the minimum wage, or the lowest unemployment in history.

You Don’t Have to Have Actual Tariffs to Create Chaos

Businesses act on expected costs, not just actual ones. Trump’s threats of tariffs, and wildly erratic application of them, affects purchasing decisions, contracts, investment in automation. It even complicates reshoring efforts for companies bringing work back to the United States.

Even if tariffs are never enacted, the market reaction can preemptively raise prices, which creates disorder, and inefficiencies.

Tariffs Disproportionately Hurt Real Economic Gains of Low-Income Workers

Low-income workers benefited from minimum wage increases, at the state-level. Coming out of COVID, they also commanded stronger earnings, from a tight labor market. This empowered better bargaining, with employers.

Tariffs knock back the purchasing power of those higher wages, through price inflation.

The BudgetLab at Yale University reports, in April of 2025:

“Current Tariff Rate: Consumers face an overall average effective tariff rate of 17.8%, the highest since 1934.”

Even when there was a TACO moment, and shifts in buying, both by companies and consumers, the taxation rate of the tariffs remained brutal:

The reduction since the April 15 report is almost entirely due to the lower rates on Chinese imports—the US-UK trade deal has minimal effects on average tariff rates. Even after consumption shifts, the average tariff rate will be 16.4%, the highest since 1937.”

Authors keep mentioning the 1930s for a reason. The Treasury Secretary, under Herbert Hoover, Andrew Mellon, and his GOP cronies, were the last idiots to push broad tariffs. These ill-fated protections, of the 1%’s massive wealth maldistribution, of course, led to the Great Depression.

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Surgical Tariffs Can Serve a Purpose. Broad Tariffs Only Crush the Poor and Businesses alike.

Tariffs are not sometimes purely used for economic gain. They can serve as geopolitical tools, like putting pressure, on China, to stop Internet theft.

Trump’s 2025 tariffs were tragi-comically ridiculous. They were so broad, that we were imposing tariffs on barren sub-Antarctic territories, like Heard, and McDonald Islands.

It was a “nowhere on Earth is safe” action.

The only purpose of such overkill? Make sure that the terror of American tariffs is global. That it shatters the flow of goods that have generally helped the world to prosper.

Economically Fragile Suffer

The most economically vulnerable are then put into greater struggle. The most impacted may simply die.

Businesses Suffer

Broad tariffs also crush American businesses. In 2018, the U.S. imposed tariffs, under Section 232, for national security, on steel, and aluminum. While Chinese steel was the primary concern, the tariffs hit major trading partners, and allies, that were not engaged in dumping allies like Canada, the EU, and South Korea. This weakened alliances. It domestically raised costs. All without materially addressing the Chinese steel dumping.

The Peterson Institute for International Economics found that these tariffs reduced U.S. manufacturing output, in sectors reliant on imported steel, like auto parts, more than they helped domestic steel producers.

Reduce the materials? Curb their consumption. Which means the bottom of the economic ladder doesn’t get that refrigerator that keeps their food at a safe, proper food temperature. A car, for work, out of reach, means more difficulty in seeking work, or educational opportunity.

The study found that each steel job saved generated roughly $270,000 in extra industry profits. At the same time, though, it inflicted approximately $650,000 in annual costs on U.S. industries that used steel, such as auto parts manufacturers.1

Tariffs as Class Warfare

If you read my article “Republicans Defy. You Die. But Why?” You’ll see the connectivity between Democide, a eugenic cleansing of the lower-tier classes of the world, and the Second Industrial Age.

AI, and machines, including robots will continue to make a lot of humanity irrelevant.

It’s all about the Useless, and the UBI

The ultra rich do not see the purpose, then, of keeping us alive, with something like Universal Basic Income (UBI), if we serve no purpose to making money for them.

They’re well aware of the damages that they have wrought to the environment, and how it will limit the “usable” parts of the globe. They deem themselves the winners.

Therefore, you must go.

So tariffs, along with cutting social programs, and social safety nets, are another way of quietly accelerating the demise of those who can least afford to live.

They are a stealth socioeconomic weapon, that only has to upend/disrupt the positive global flow of capital long enough to send the costs of everything to levels that make things unaffordable, and a struggle, once again, for hundreds of millions of people around the planet.

They’re not just an annoying tax. For the most financially fragile, whether they are imposed, or just used as a terror tool, they will be a death sentence.

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Updated 07.08.2025

Author’s NOTE - Research, for the following chapters, uncovered a MASSIVE portion of the story, that unearths decades-lost connections between the Mellons and Hitler’s Nazi Party. It required a NEW section, which Part III now becomes. Please read this article in FULL. It will change the way that you view American government, and our manipulation by the 1%, forever.

In the last installment, Meet the Mellons, Part II, we learned how Andrew Mellon’s crushing grip on the American experiment, for twelve years, ushered in the Great Depression.

Chapter III, of “Meet the Mellons,” is the story of how Andrew, in his failure, tried to tilt the playing field to the benefit Adolph Hitler, and the German Third Reich.

The Nazi Appeal

The Mellon vision of America for the few, versus the promise of the Constitution of, for, and by the PEOPLE, has been the tectonic struggle of the history of America’s 20th, and 21st Century.

To Andrew Mellon, and the plutocrats, the Nazi Party was on a sympathetic track to their own view of how the world should be run.

The German Nazi state was, from its inception, explicitly constructed to suppress labor, crush socialism, and restore corporate dominance. It:

• Abolished independent unions;

• Banned strikes;

• Broke leftist political parties

• Guaranteed profits, through rearmament contracts, and state coordination with industry.

These were not unfortunate side effects. They were central features.

American elites faced similar challenges:

• Unions

• Civil unrest

• Wealth redistribution of the New Deal

The Robber Barons naturally looked abroad. They saw, in Germany, a “solution” to the problem of democratic resistance.

The Nazis offered unfettered capitalism, without the friction of consent. They also promised to purify the white race, an American plutocratic Social Darwinist’s dream of a world free of “mongrel” peoples and Jews.

That appealed to men like Andrew Mellon, who told President Herbert Hoover, afer Mellon, as Treasury Secretary, for three presidents, triggered the Great Depression:

Purge the weak. Reward the fittest. That is not neutral economic advice. It is Social Darwinism, bordering on eugenic ideology, dressed in financial clothing. If it sounds familiar, in 2025, it’s because the Mellons have brought it back to us.

Andrew Mellon’s Revenge

Andrew Mellon, did not take his humiliation lightly, or well. Nor did his plutocratic peers. They began a multi-pronged attack against Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), and the New Deal.

American Liberty League

The American Liberty League was a powerful, extremely well-funded, political organization. It was formed, in 1934, by the DuPont family. Its leadership read like a Who’s-Who of American plutocracy: Du Ponts; Rockefellers; Morgans; Pews; and Mellons were all involved.1

They organized to oppose what they viewed as the New Deal’s "socialist" and "authoritarian" tendencies. Specifically FDR’s use of government intervention against their previously unfettered, rapacious, capitalism.

While not a public standard-bearer, as he was in full disrepute, Andrew Mellon became a prominent supporter, and, at least publicly, a $1,000 donor.

According to historians, the League did far more than just issue legal challenges to FDR’s policies. It formed “affiliations with pro-Fascist, anti-labor, and anti-Semitic organizations,” effectively coordinating with extremist groups that shared its goal of rolling back the New Deal, and silencing progressive reforms.2

The Liberty League subsidized openly fascistic outfits like the Sentinels of the Republic and the Crusaders, whose leader even urged the lynching of President Roosevelt.3

Sound familiar, in the 21st century?

Republican Slaughter

The 1936 presidential election, the backlash, to the Great Crash, and the ensuing Great Depression, was one of the most profound events in American history.

The Mellons, and the broader Robber Baron class, became key targets in FDR’s 1936 political strategy. Voters condemned corporate wealth, and minimal-regulation capitalism.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) won overwhelmingly: 523 electoral votes, to Republican Alf Landon’s 8. FDR carried 60.8% of the popular vote. Landon carried just 36.5%.

Every state, except Maine and Vermont, voted for FDR.

The Century-Long Fight to End the New Deal Begins

As the New Deal became America’s new path forward, Andrew Mellon and his relatives, threw their weight behind anti-labor, anti-minority, and even fascist-sympathizing movements.

Quietly Hog-Tying the Media

The Mellon-aligned newspapers regularly criticized New Deal programs, and promoted Mellon ideology. They exerted strategic regional influence in key industrial areas through trusted allies like the Pittsburgh Gazette owner Paul Block.

The Mellons have always controlled the press indirectly, through advertising power, big lender banking clout, and political pressure. Their media strategy was more shadowed and network-based, consistent with their broader pattern of discreet but effective power brokerage.

Liberty League Loses; The Think Tank is Born

By 1940, the Liberty League was essentially defunct. It never really dented FDR’s popularity, or slowed down the New Deal’s momentum.

It did, however serve as the intellectual and political predecessor to future conservative think tanks, that the Mellon family, and others would set up, to roll back liberalism.

The Mellons’ Embrace of Fascism

Andrew was very much still in control of the Mellon family, prior to his death, in 1937. Demonized by FDR, he was blamed by the Robber Barons, for embroiling them in the public spotlight. He never publicly spoke much about fascism, or Hitler. It would have only made things worse for him, his family, and his business empire.

Andrew Mellon not only did business with the Nazis. He was fully aware of what they were doing. He not only applauded their “master race” plan. He wanted to be a part of it.

He tilted the raw materials playing field, necessary to the British, then Allied war effort, in the Nazis’ direction.

ALCOA and the Cartel

During the period between WWI, and WWII, the Mellons’ Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA), dominated the U.S. aluminum industry. It was a near-monopoly. Aluminum was becoming increasingly important in manufacture, especially in the growing aviation business.

Evidence shows, during that time, that ALCOA also participated in international cartel arrangements with European firms, including those tied to Nazi Germany. The surface level reasoning? To control markets, and limit competition.

It was more than that, though.

Notably, as the Great Depression, another Mellon-mess, went into full meltdown, in 1931, ALCOA, through its affiliated Canadian subsidiary, Aluminium Ltd., joined a Swiss-based alliance, L'Alliance Aluminium Compagnie (AAC)

AAC was a global aluminum cartel.4 It included major producers from Britain, France, Switzerland, and Germany.

Vereinigte Aluminium Werke or VAW, was the Nazi-era aluminum trust.5 The cartel fixed each member’s production quotas, and minimum prices.6

Crucially, Alliance members agreed not to sell or even handle aluminum from outside of the cartel. It effectively blocked all non-members from undercutting the cartel’s prices.7

The stated aim of the cartel, for the Mellons, was to prevent any foreign surplus aluminum from flooding into the United States, at low prices, which would threaten ALCOA’s domestic monopoly.8

ALCOA, and its allies, curbed output. They stockpiled excess metal, to keep prices high globally.

The effects of the deal became apparent. ALCOA enriched itself, while Germany’s aluminum production surged, and the U.S., and Allied, output lagged.

In addition to market-sharing, ALCOA directly partnered with Nazi-linked companies via patent, and technology-sharing agreements. These are the more significant indicators that something far bigger, darker, and sociopolitically huge, was about to happen.

The Alted Agreement

In 1931, ALCOA and Germany’s IG Farben, the massive Nazi-affiliated chemical conglomerate, signed what came to be known as the “Alted Agreement.” This pact pooled aluminum production patents between ALCOA and IG Farben. It facilitated technology transfer, to Germany.9

Under the agreement, ALCOA provided IG Farben with advanced aluminum manufacturing know-how, which enabled German industry to rapidly expand output.

Nazi leaders exploited this capacity for war. Alongside aluminum, IG Farben and ALCOA, also formed joint ventures in magnesium, a strategic lightweight metal for aircraft, incendiary munitions, and chemicals for human extermination.

In 1932, they created the Magnesium Development Corp. (“ALIG”), a 50–50 venture to share magnesium technology and “dominate the magnesium and electro-metals field.”10

IG Farben likewise took large ownership stakes in German aluminum and magnesium plants, integrating these cartels tightly with the Nazi war economy.11

Joseph Borkin, a U.S. Justice Department cartel expert, of that era, later observed that major American firms like ALCOA, Dow Chemical, and Standard Oil, became “junior partners” in IG Farben’s global cartel empire, with IG Farben “sitting at the head of the table” in these arrangements.12

By 1942, after a decade of Nazi rearmament, and annexations of neighboring states, giving them control over almost all of Europe, Germany had also become the world’s largest aluminum, and magnesium producer.

Credible historical evidence shows that ALCOA entered into formal alliances that allocated markets and gave away highly proprietary technology to Nazi-controlled, or Nazi allied companies, boosting their industrial might while constraining U.S. production. The connection between this, and Hitler’s control of Europe, moving into North Africa, is inescapable.

Fascism Offers the Mellons a New Path Forward

Historians note that ALCOA’s management was primarily pursuing profit and market control.

That is a sanitization of the historic evidence, though.

The Mellons were definitely tilting the raw materials playing field in the Nazi’s favor.

The Nazis held the same goals, of bringing the kind of Social Darwinist order, that the Mellons were trying to impose themselves, on America, to the world.

Could Andrew Mellon, maker of American presidents, have found that Hitler’s less restrained fascist dictatorship, that steamrolled democracies, and their norms, be worth investing in?

Here’s how they quietly put their bet on the future, and why that’s important to both our history, and our future, now.

The ALCOA - IG Farben Alliance Empowers the Nazi Regime

Mellon-controlled ALCOA maintained formal business relationships with IG Farben. It was not just “another German firm.” It was a core industrial pillar of the Nazi regime. Their relationship was the epicenter of the cartel.

By 1933, it explicitly aligned with the Nazi state, which was using American proprietary patents to produce synthetic fuels, explosives, and even Zyklon B, used in the gas chambers, at the extermination camps.

IG Farben benefitted from forced war prisoner, and concentration camp Jewish labor. Any American, conducting business with it, would have not missed this.

One of the most well-documented cartel partnerships was in the magnesium industry, directly involving ALCOA, IG Farben, and Dow Chemical.

The ALCOA–IG Farben magnesium joint venture, and patent-sharing agreements, were unusal, for large American corporations: structured, long-term partnerships, not incidental contacts, with solid deals, that had little to no chance of having those patents used against the companies that shared them.

Magnesium was a critically important element used for aircraft engines, incendiary bombs, and alloying aluminum for strength.13

By the late 1920s ALCOA had acquired the American Magnesium Co. and then ceased its own magnesium production in 1927. It then gave the field to Dow Chemical, as the sole U.S. producer.14

Shortly thereafter, Alcoa and IG Farben formed a patent-sharing “combine,” eventually joined by Dow, that tightly controlled magnesium technology.15

According to a February 1941 federal indictment, this combine refused to grant licenses for magnesium processing to any other American company, unless they agreed to buy all magnesium metal from Dow, the designated producer.16

The alleged result was that Dow Chemical remained the only U.S. magnesium source, and magnesium prices stayed artificially high – about 27¢/lb, roughly 50% above the price that the Germans were making it. (17¢).17

Meanwhile, Dow was selling magnesium to Germany at lower prices (≈21¢/lb) than it charged in the U.S., effectively giving the Nazi regime cheaper access to this strategic material.18

ALCOA, and IG Farben, also had a side agreement: neither would start new magnesium production, without offering the other an equal partnership.19

By the late 1930s, U.S. magnesium output was minuscule. Only ~2,400 tons were produced, in 1938.20

Germany, benefitting from intense rearmament, and cartel tech-sharing, had increased its magnesium production by 500% in 1938 (to ~25,000 tons in 1940!21

This deliberately stunted American magnesium production, at a time where the US could be dragged into WWII, at any moment.

Thurman Arnold, the head of FDR’s Antitrust Division, exposed “startling evidence of German influence” in the magnesium industry.22

In early 1941, a federal grand jury indicted ALCOA, Dow, a half-dozen of their officers, and IG Farben (in absentia) on charges of conspiring to throttle U.S. magnesium output, in violation of antitrust laws.23

The indictments detailed the scheme: After 1927, ALCOA bought its magnesium from Dow, instead of making its own. ALCOA, and IG Farben’s patent pool excluded all other competitors. Dow’s monopoly was shielded, while prices were kept exorbitantly high. 24

Detailed corporate histories and economic studies corroborate that these patent and trade agreements were designed for long-term collaboration, not short-term business convenience.

IG Farben’s aluminum, and magnesium capacities were closely tied to the know-how provided by ALCOA. By the early 1940s, German output was consistently elevated, a clear testament to knowledge transfer.

By limiting licenses and output, they slowed the growth of U.S. magnesium capacity to a crawl. A fact that alarmed American officials, once the Japanese attacked, forcing America to join the Allies.

More importantly, it was proof that American industrialists, especially the Mellons, had made an immense investment, in the future of the Nazi takeover of the world.

Other Mellon Companies Backed Germany, and the Axis Powers

Andrew Mellon’s gambit was not an isolated scheme. Virtually all major Mellon business interests were implicated in these arrangements.

The Mellon empire spanned: banking, oil, coal, steel, insurance, and chemicals. ALCOA was the clearest example, but other Mellon-controlled firms also had cozy understandings with Axis-linked counterparts.

The Mellons’ Carborundum Company, and Koppers, a leading coal-tar, and chemical producer, similarly had oligopolistic positions that benefited from transnational cartels.

Gulf Oil, another Mellon asset, pursued foreign concessions and maintained overseas operations that skirted the edges of wartime trade restrictions.25

In essence, the Mellon family’s entire corporate portfolio was aligned to profit from global conflict, often by directly, or tacitly, cooperating with Nazi German industries.

Mellons’ Walk into Fascism, Eyes Wide Open

The Mellon family, and their firms, had every institutional and informational advantage to understand who the Nazis were, and what they were doing. Yet, they continued doing business.

What they did cannot be explained away, or excused. It was by ideological, and business self-interest. They wanted to make sure that they were heavily invested in the Germans, whom they saw as the winners of a new global world order, that aligned with their own ideals. They wanted to be a part of the inner circle.

Executives, legal advisors, and board members would have read consular dispatches, business intelligence memos, and press reports, that documented Nazi policies, racial laws, rearmament, and political repression. This especially was true after Hitler’s 1933 rise.

By the issuance of the Nuremberg Laws (1935) and certainly by Kristallnacht (1938), no informed industrialist could plausibly claim ignorance of the Nazi regime’s violent antisemitism or militaristic ambitions.

Fascist Collaboration, Evidenced by Investments & Patents

The Mellons’ cartels are proof of full collaboration. They violated lots of fundamental rules of basic unfettered capitalism. American companies pushed money, and their proprietary technology, ramping up for an aggressive campaign to dominate Europe.

Plutocrats, of Andrew Mellon’s stature, NEVER gave away an advantage. One doesn’t hand the keys to proprietary secrets over to Nazi-controlled competitors, if they have even a slight fear that they will be used against them, to drive their business under, in the future.

The cartels demonstrated a clear, and lasting, technology transfer from ALCOA to IG Farben, (The Nazi German Government) via a formal agreement.

Andrew Mellon, and the other plutocrats of that day, didn’t throw their words behind fascism. They threw the most precious things in the world to them: Their future, via their proprietary, and monopolistic, technologies.

The Nazis’ rapid technological advances, in a wide number of areas, that killed millions, including American GIs, were facilitated by access to materials, and processes, provided by the Robber Barons. Their investments clearly show that they were a part of the fascist globalist movement to remove democracies, to dominate/crush labor, and to “purify” the planet of the impure peoples that did not advance the world in their image.

Andrew Mellon, and his peers, literally invested in the Nazi war machine.

So, in the 21st century, is it any great surprise that they are now trying to do the same thing, coming at the problem from a different angle?

The Heat Is On

The Mellons’ ALCOA cartel arrangements lasted until the late 1930s. The ending of them was not a matter of global conflict making collaboration commercially impractical.

The shuttering of these deals to enable the Nazis were the result of deliberate government action, both by the Roosevelt Administration, and Congress. It was triggered by the recognition that leading American firms had effectively collaborated with the economic infrastructure of Nazi fascism.

Without political intervention, under a Democratic White House, Senate, and House, these elite actors would have continued their endorsement of the Hitler’s vision of a Master Race. A vision in which they, themselves, would be a critical enough part that Hitler, and anyone who came after him, would not be able to control that world without them.

Why Didn’t FDR Arrest the Mellons and the Others?

Roosevelt was as patrician as they were. He was an institutionalist, not a revolutionary.

Worried about the extreme pressure, over decades of the Mellon-led plutocratic economic, and social repression that had tanked the economy, and unleashed titanic class warfare, that there would be a major revolution, that would upend our democracy and push America into another Bolshevik-style Russian revolution, that would only install a new set of oligarchs, to replace this set of plutocrats.

The government game was also rigged, over Andrew Mellon’s control of the whole government apparatus, via his manipulations, over three presidents. Mellon had money in both the Republican, and Democrat camps. Southern Democrats, backed by the same families who stoked the South removing itself from the United States, were definitely more aligned with pro-fascist politics.

From the earliest days of industrialization, the government of the United States was designed to be of, by, and for the people with the means to control it.

The government did not arrest Mellon, DuPont, and their peers, despite their obstruction of the war effort. Doing so would have required dismantling the very class structure that the government was built to preserve.

These men were too embedded in the machinery of war, finance, and governance. Instead of treating their behavior as treasonous, the state treated it as a regulatory problem, a quiet immunization.

As we’re seeing today, that “too big to be accountable” inoculation of the Mellons, and their peers, was a fatal flaw woven into FDR’s New Deal. Leaving the foxes in the hen house made drove them to more subtle tactics, and something that the German’s blitzkreig, the big rush to change the world order lacked, for true success.

Patience.

In the next installment of “Meet the Mellons” we’ll discover how the Mellons, in stealth mode, have been manipulating the New Deal, and the liberal reforms that average Americans have come to count upon, into a bubble, not a branch of history.

If you found this article, start on Chapter I: Meet the Mellons.

Chapters: I II III IV V

Footnotes

More materials are cited at the end of the series.

In last week’s installment of Meet the Mellons, Part I, we discovered how, even into the 2024 Trump election, the Mellon family’s hand, from the shadows, continued to mold America in the Social Darwinist image of fantastic wealth as a “fittest” of the species. The rest of us? Struggle, and die.

Look at what the Mellons spent on Trump, in 2024. Far more than the very visible Elon Musk…

Yet so few Americans even know that the Mellon family have had their silent hand in every major regressive act in US history before, and after, the Great Depression.

Why is this “ancient” history important to what is going on today? We’re being dragged slowly backward, into it, as you’ll see, in 2025.

In Part I, you met the family founder, Thomas Mellon (BNY Mellon) whose adoption of the mythic Social Darwinist socioeconomic theory shaped the view that both the family, and most of the wealthy elites of the Gilded Age, the “Robber Barons” held about America prosperity: A dark, dog-eat-dog, ruthless survival of the economically fittest.

Thomas Mellon set the tone that would define both the Antebellum (post-Civil War) white power structure.

While the money never really “trickled down” to the middle-class and the poor, his ruthless yardstick for capitalistic success, became a mantra for a new wave of European immigrants.

Wealth found, through any means, made one a “winner,” and improved social status to “respectability,” no matter from what means, in the old country, one came.

The classic American immigrant story, purified, and weaponized.

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Mellon Control of American Life Begins

It was Thomas’ children, and their descendants, who really built the mechanics of the Mellon family’s dark political, and philanthropic terraforming of the United States, that remains with us today.

Andrew W. Mellon (1855–1937)

Andrew Mellon, Thomas’ youngest son, served the family as both inspiration, of an America in their father’s mold, and a powerful cautionary tale, that would move them out of the public’s view, forever.

The true builder of the family’s vast fortune, Andrew Mellon was, as well. the architect of the same plutocratic policies that Republicans are trying to enact, in 2025, that shattered America, in 1929. The “trickle down” economics that led to the Great Depression, and, when they’ve been floated, the various economic meltdowns post Reagan, both Bushes, and Trump.

Many of his policies, and his unethical practices in government, will be familiar to you. They’re making a comeback, because the people who suffered at the hands of the Robber Barons are long gone, as their children. The active generations have no real experience of the full devastation and harm of plutocratic policy.

Until Trump, round two.

Financial Power

Andrew used Mellon Bank as a quiet control mechanism. He was really one of the first venture capitalists. He lent to startups, with high potential, then assumed control of them, via preferred stock, board seats, or convertible debt instruments. This, and the market panic of 1907, are how Mellon acquired controlling interest in companies like Alcoa (aluminum), Gulf Oil, Union Steel, and Pittsburgh Coal. ​1

Carborundum, Westinghouse, Koppers, and various railroads also came under Mellon influence, in much the same way.

His investments were instrumental in shaping the industrial landscape of the United States, during this period. Mellon's approach to business emphasized efficiency and ruthless consolidation, at the expense of smaller competitors and the welfare of labor.2

He became the most powerful of the“Robber Barons,” through ruthless tactics, using the power of his banking interests to undercut competitors. He enabled his wealthy allies to do the same.

The Inferiority of the Working Poor

Andrew’s upbringing, in Social Darwinism, gave him a very low opinion of workers. They were: inferiors; just so many cogs, in his economic machine. It’s a theme that Mellon amplified, that we see revisited in Republican politics over, and over, and over again.

Mellon companies were notorious for poor:

• worker safety;

• sanitation;

• pay;

• hours.

It was this kind of abusive excess that led to both the Great Depression, and the New Deal. Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) called Andrew Mellon “The mastermind among the malefactors of great wealth.”

Wage Slavery

Wage slavery was a common tactic of Mellon industrial enterprises, such as the Pittsburgh Coal Company. They established company towns. Workers’, and their families’, lives were supervised by company private police, who were unrestricted in how they meted out “justice.”

Nearly every aspect of daily life was under corporate control. Housing was provided by the company, often at inflated rents. Workers were required to live in these accommodations. They usually paid in “scrip,” company money, to insure that they wouldn’t be able to spend it drinking in the nearby towns, or quit and move away.

This setup ensured that a good portion of employee wages returned directly to the employer, reducing cost of the coal mined, and reinforcing economic dependence.

Richard Mellon, Andrew's brother, testified before the U.S. Senate Interstate Commerce Committee in 1928.

By the 1920s, Mellon was one of America’s wealthiest, and most powerful men​, in the United States.4

Political Power

To understand how many of Trump’s more illegal, and unethical moves are straight out of the Andrew Mellon playbook, let’s put them into perspective of a largely forgotten part of America’s political history, that needs to be remembered.

Political Puppetry: Warren Harding vs. Donald Trump

Donald J. Trump is the second, cruder, more corrupt coming of President Warren G. Harding.

Harding was not a particularly smart, or able man, but he was one thing that Andrew Mellon found quite useful: He was controllable.

Like Elon Musk, Mellon wanted to get his hands into more direct control of government.

“Mellon needed a change, and the Grand Old Party needed the cash,” quipped one of his enemies. Mellon Bank lent $1.5M (23.67M in 2025) to Harding’s campaign, in 1920.5

It was a perfect solution, for Mellon. After two administrations of dreaded progressives like Teddy Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson, Harding would do as he was told.

Harding, like Trump, carried both the House and the Senate. Harding, like Trump, was a total puppet.

Harding appointed Andrew Mellon as Treasury Secretary. His rationale? Mellon was SO rich that he couldn’t be bought.

Mellon had become bored with being a mere tycoon. As one of his enemies put it, “Mellon needed a change, and the Grand Old Party needed the cash.”

The Acme of Corruption

Andrew Mellon would stay, in office, as Treasury Secretary from 1921, to 1932, under three presidents: Harding; Coolidge; and Hoover. ​ He remains the longest-serving Treasury Secretary in U.S. History. 7

He also remained the head of some of America’s biggest corporations, while serving in office. Like Trump, today, he had no “blind trust.” He used that combined power, in a way that no one, including Trump, has done, before, or since.

Andrew Mellon not only exemplified the openly corrupt melding of wealth and politics. As a major financier of Republican candidates, during the Gilded Age, and Progressive Era, he was a key Republican power broker; an “influential donor to the Republican Party.” ​8 His contributions effectively “bought” him influence. He used that influence to:

• Enrich himself, and his friends

• Punish, or outright stop, aspiring capitalist social climbers

• Keep the “working poor” poor enough to make cheap goods, and consume enough to be over their heads, in debt, to him, or people like him, for their whole lives.

As Treasury Secretary, he shaped federal tax policy, to favor business growth, and the wealthy:

• Eliminating gift taxes;

• Halving estate tax rates;

• Slashing income taxes on the most wealthy​.9

Sound familiar?

Fascism As Stability

Mellon’s policies, and hatred of the New Deal, have been the drumbeat of Republican politics through every administration. The Bolshevik revolution, that brought about “communism” in Russia, was a profound event in his later life. ]

He remained silent on the rise of European fascism, despite its increasing brutality. The family business empire, especially through Gulf Oil, did not divest from Europe during the 1930s. Like many American industrialists, the Mellons likely saw fascist regimes as stable markets, and bulwarks against Bolshevism (Communism), that he feared might engulf his own empire, if the poor, whom he had oppressed for so long, rose up in the same way.

Mellon’s influence on American politics was so baldfaced, that journalist William Allen White quipped the 1920s might be called “the reign of Coolidge and Mellon.”​ 10

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Andrew Mellon Culturally Defined Both Legal, and Illegal Power for Generations

Andrew Mellon was perhaps THE major figure in embedding amoral capitalism into American life:

Wealth justifies the means.

The Social Darwinist ultra wealthy maintained their superiority was grounded in their immense wealth. Andrew Mellon, who became the most visible maker of policy, as Treasury Secretary, made it all about the money, have, and have-not, in his time.

The Promise (and Lie) of America’s Liberal Democracy

The Statue of Liberty.

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

The nobility of the Emma Lazarus poem wasn’t a recipe for a great nation. It was more of a cookbook.

Poor immigrants were allowed in, in great numbers, because they were a necessary evil. They were the hands to be exploited, until they could work no more.

Arriving immigrants absorbed this “acme” of achieving immense wealth, both as a goal, even for their children’s future. The dim hope of a better life was their survival mechanism.

The Hard-Bitten, Hard Fought Reality of Industrial America

Some found it sometimes through hard, honest work, if they stayed in their communities (ghettos). Some found it through crime, to bypass the barriers at the banks, and in real estate, to attain the wealth and status that was all that mattered.

Avenues to wealth reflected the same internalized metrics:

• Success at all costs;

• Proof of worth through accumulation.

Failure to do that, physical frailty, or poor mental health, led to state slavery (poor houses), institutionalization (mental hospitals), or incarceration.

As is true today, with our fractured America, the people with the most money in America set the bars for both success, and cultural acceptance.

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Millionaire to Middle to Mafioso - Greed fits all

Mellon was THE voice of Gilded Age capitalism. He set the bar for both government, and societal dog-eat-dog monopolistic aggression that permanently infected every tier of American capitalism.

For the Super Rich - The Reality

For the wealthy, key tenets of his time at Treasury, are yarns that remain part of Republican fiscal dogma, to this day:

• Minimal government intervention,

• Tax reductions for the wealthy,

• The belief that prosperity would "trickle down" to the lower classes.

These policies economically polarized the economy, and squeezed the nascient “middle class,” made up mostly of small businesspeople.

For the Middle Class - The American Dream, with Limits

The same influx of immigrants, seeking better economic opportunities, that Mellon, and his friends, siphoned into wage slavery, also arrived as aspiring millionaires, “the American Dream.”

Some tried to follow the prevailing Algerist "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" ideology, that encouraged immigrants to believe that hard work, and determination, alone, would lead to success. The truth was that, other than in red-lined (ghettoed) neighborhoods, systemic barriers, discrimination, limited access to financial resources, and cultural obstacles intentionally limited upward mobility for most immigrants.

This is the system that the Mellons would like to return to American life, in 2025.

For the Poor - Survival & Crime

For immigrants marginalized by upper-class society, Italians, Jews, Hispanics, African-Americans, organized crime emerged, as an alternative avenue, to achieve the wealth that was the only real sign of respect in Andrew Mellon’s America.

Mafia figures, like Al Capone, or Meyer Lansky, capitalized on the limited legitimate opportunities available to them. They built criminal empires, on the vices that “proper” society either tolerated in that mirrored the hierarchical and profit-driven structures of legitimate businesses in the Mellon model.. These organizations often adopted the same symbols of success—such as luxury goods and philanthropic endeavors—that were celebrated in the broader capitalist culture. In this context, the "bootstraps" narrative was co-opted to justify illicit means of achieving the American Dream.

This approach aligned with Social Darwinist principles, which posited that societal progress resulted from the survival of the fittest individuals in a competitive environment. Mellon's philosophy suggested that success was a result of individual effort and merit, thereby reinforcing the notion that those who failed to prosper did so due to personal shortcomings.

What’s the difference between a Gilded Age Millionaire and the organized crime of rich grifters, like Trump, that still exists, today?

Self-Serving Philanthropy

Wherever Andrew Mellon “gave” to the public, it wasn’t patrician generosity. It was a system of elite self-preservation, masking itself in virtue.

Rather than addressing, or healing, the causes of poverty, it preserved social hierarchies, legitimized great wealth, and allowed elites to choose the terms of their generosity, often to their own long-term tax and wealth advantage.

Investing in America’s Scientific and Industrial Reputation

Europeans did a fair share of looking down their noses at the “provincial” Americas.

In 1913, Andrew and his brother co-founded the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research, to drive scientific innovation. The Institute later became part of Carnegie Mellon University​.11

‘The Mellon Plan’ Familiar in both 20th and the 21st century’s “20’s”

If we ignore history, we are doomed to repeat it. Trump echoes Andrew Mellon’s conservative fiscal policies, which included sweeping tax cuts for top earners (the “Mellon plan”) and debt reduction​12.

These reckless policies, enacted via the Revenue Acts of 1921, 1924, and 1926, slashed the top income tax rate from 73% to 24% by 1929​.13 This vast off-loading of the 1%’s tax burden was one of the financial horsemen of the apocalypse that let to the Great Depression.

Andrew Mellon’s reputation was shattered by the 1929 Wall Street Crash, and the onset of the Great Depression. Amid impeachment calls, it led to his resignation, as Treasury Secretary, in 1932​.14

Arts as Influence

Andrew developed the open hand/closed fist policies that shaped the family dynasty. Give generously lavish public works, while robbing the poor, busting unions, keeping minorities in their place, and exploiting immigrant labor.

An avid art collector, he donated $10M ($219M, in 2025 Dollars), of his priceless art collection, and funds, in 1937, to build, and stock, the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, D.C.​ 15 The museum enhanced U.S. cultural diplomacy, primarily with Europe. Contributing great public buildings to cities, especially the capital, made the patrician plutocrats seem larger than life.

Like many Republicans who have followed, Andrew Mellon believed that such “charitable” policies were pro-growth. Critics accused him, though, of merely entrenching the plutocracy.

A plutocracy is the more correct way to refer to the control of government by the wealthiest. It is a form of oligarchy, which is the more fashionable modern term, for such control, as it is a reference often made about Russia’s richest robbers.

Plutocrat Poster Boy Gets His Day of Infamy

Andrew Mellon’s disastrous fiscal policies, and institutionalization of greed, literally brought the Mellon family name down.

After Wall Street’s Great Crash, in October, 1929, Mellon made statements like “liquidate labor, liquidate stocks…” They were seen as heartless. Public anger turned on the Mellons.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR)’s “New Deal” was a direct reaction to Mellonist policies. FDR used Mellon as a symbol of excess. Newspapers ran editorials blasting the Mellon empire, as a case study in concentrated, unaccountable wealth.

The public scandal toppled both Andrew’s public career, and his place atop the Mellon family.

It set the stage for the next chapter in the Mellon family’s attempt to retake America from the liberals by remaking the nation back in the Mellonist worldview.

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Richard B. Mellon (1858–1933)

Richard Beatty Mellon, Andrew’s younger brother, was a close business partner in building the Mellon industrial empire.

Together, the brothers controlled Mellon Bank. They held major stakes in Gulf Oil, Alcoa, and numerous other companies​.16

Richard stayed out of elected office. He was a behind-the-scenes force, though, in finance and, by extension, politics. He was known to quietly support Republican causes in Pennsylvania. Although not as publicly prominent as Andrew, his wealth, and the family’s power, passed to children, would have a devastating impact on American political life in the 20th century:

• Richard (R.K.) King Mellon

• Sarah Mellon Scaife

Richard B. Mellon died in 1933, at the height of the Great Depression. He would not live to see what his heirs did to bring the family’s control of America, to reality, a century later.

COMING UP…

In our next installment of “Meet the Mellons,” America’s Worst Family rises from ashes, from shepherding the ruinous roaring 20’s collapse of the stock market, to rebuild both the family name, and set off on their quest to recover the dominant economic, and political, power that they had enjoyed. The R.K.’s Rise of the Resistance, is our next story…

Chapters: I II III IV V

Footnotes

Who’s Responsible for Our Slide into Fascism?

We’ve been watching the puppets, in the sidewalk show. We blame them, as we’re supposed to, as good little sheep.

Trump!

Musk!

Few, if any, utter their name, though.

Until now.

The puppets, who say out loud what the real Funders want said. They are the broad bogeymen, of the show. The ones who make the heat; whose network puts out the “flack” that keeps the media, and the public, distracted, and divided.

They’re both symptoms of the power, that has colored the Republican Party, since the Guilded/Industrial Age, of the 19th century.

The Funders?

When FDR turned the direction of the country towards progressive policy, there were a number of very powerful, very wealthy families that were not at all happy about losing their plutocratic1 power over the United States.

The family who is most responsible for our slide back into plutocracy?

Yes, BACK.

Meet the Mellons.

Of that group, the apex sociopolitical predators, are one particular family. The bankers who not only shepherded the titanic fortunes of dynasties like the Carnegies, and Rockefellers. Beyond their staggering wealth, this family, with oil ties to other bad actors, in Russia has been America’s worst family.

In 2025, the Mellon, and Scaife, families remain amongst the United States’ most influential, albeit shadowy dynasties. They gave more money than Elon Musk to the Trump 2024 campaign, yet their names never appear in the news, or on an angry protest sign.

Shows like Succession, and Billions, lampoon miserable rich people, and their silver spoon heirs, climbing over one another to get to the top of the family pile.

The Mellons are anything but that. They work in a very coordinated manner, like a hive. Everyone has their role.

They move slowly, with great patience, over a long period of time. It’s taken a century to bring them to visualize their darkest plans for a fascist America, of automation’s Second Industrial Revolution.

Their fortunes originated in the first Industrial Age, in banking in the late 1800s to early 1900s. Their rich clients, the Carnegies, Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, and others, later cut them into deals, in oil, and industry, that made them fantastically wealthy.

In fact, their total lack of desire to take the limelight, for their handiwork, is a staple of the family’s operational M.O.

From the Great Depression, to today, members of these intertwined families have quietly played outsized roles in American politics, philanthropy, and policy.

They keep improving upon the model, of the Rubber Stamp president: A useful idiot who will do their bidding.

One family member, in particular, may be the worst person in American history. Benedict Arnold, on steroids. Richard “Dickie” Mellon-Scaife unleashed the Far Right think-tanks, terraforming of America that has brought this nation down. Under Nixon, where he funded the Watergate burglaries, Ford, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and (twice) Donald J. Trump. More on him, later, in our series.

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Answer to the “Why’s” of the Mad King’s Craziest Actions.

As we all, in the second Trump Administration, ask repeated “whys” to this side-show carny’s seeming madness, why Republicans seem to be trying to kill so many of us off, the method lies largely with the Mellons.

Trump is finally saying, out loud, what has been their agenda for almost a century: People who are rich are genetically blessed, and have a purpose on this Earth. The unnecessary?

Better we die, than pay UBI (Universal Basic Income).

The Mellons have been, without question, the most corrosive influence on American democracy’s fulfillment of its pledge that “We, the People” means ALL of the people. From Race to Class to Gender, their toxic hand has been felt in virtually every dark day of American history, since the Guilded Age of early industrialism.

Republican policies and ideas ARE theirs.

Lighting up the Shadows

This report profiles Mellon, and Scaife, family members, living, and deceased. It details their biographies, political donations, advocacy roles, and collective initiatives that have clawed the United States back into their regressive, 19th century white power economic theory, politics, and social agenda.

It also examines how their wealth has been deployed in U.S. and global political alliances, with other like-minded oil interests, through direct contributions, think-tank funding, media ownership, and power-play “philanthropic” ventures.

The Mellon Family: Origins and Key Figures

Thomas Mellon

Thomas Mellon (1813–1908), the immigrant son of Scotch-Irish farmers, became a lawyer, judge, and then financier, and founder of the Mellon dynasty.

Educated at the Western University of Pennsylvania ( Now University of Pittsburgh), Mellon was admitted to the bar, in 1839. He was elected to the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas, in 1859. He served until 1869.

Thomas Mellon’s Judicial Tenure and Extremist Social Philosophy

During his judgeship, Mellon was known for rulings that emphasized property rights, male authority, and social hierarchy. They define not only his worldview, practiced habits, and temperament, during his own life. They also have infused, into American politics, and culture, the antiquated pathways of racial, and gender bias that he, and has family, have promoted throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.

Gender

In one widely criticized case, Mellon displayed his misogynist patriarchal tendences. He barred an abused wife from returning to her home. He sided with the husband, reflecting his belief in patriarchal household order.

Race

Mellon believed that true self-respect for the colored race could only be achieved through separation from the white race. He considered social equality between the races impossible.

George Boyer Vashon, a Black lawyer, Oberlin graduate, and abolitionist, was twice denied admission to the Pennsylvania bar, first in 1847 and again in 1868. Vashon’s rejection was explicitly racial, despite his credentials.

Mellon vocally, and vociferously supported the principle of racial separation. He viewed legal equality across racial lines as unworkable and undesirable.

In a public statement, he wrote that Black men should be allowed to practice law, vote, and serve in courts, but only in regions where white men would be under the same social disadvantages. He opposed their presence in white institutions.

“I would have colored men practice as attorneys, sit on juries, hold courts and exercise the right of suffrage—not here, however, but among themselves…,” he wrote. He went on to advocate for their removal from white society. He framed this as a path to self-respect for Black Americans, but insisted that “social equality… seems to me impossible.”2

This was not passive racism. It was active support for legal and geographic segregation. Mellon’s thinking reflected a system of racial control that dovetailed more with Southern white rule. Vashon was systematically erased from Pittsburgh’s legal memory for over a century, as Mellon “sculpted” Pittsburgh in his image.

He His views, along with his great wealth, and power, would extend long beyond his death, continuing to drag segregationist racial injustice deep into the 20th and 21st centuries.

Poverty

Thomas Mellon viewed poverty as a consequence of personal failings, rather than systemic inequalities for opportunity.

In his autobiography, he criticized the notion of providing aid to the poor, stating that such actions encouraged idleness and undermined self-respect. He argued that extending safety and immunity to wrongdoers, or dividing wealth among the poor, was an absurdity, in religious teaching.

Banker to the Billionaires

The family’s wealth dates back to Thomas Mellon’s 19th century Pittsburgh banking empire, Mellon Bank (Merged with the Bank of New York, as BNY Mellon, in 2007).

The foundation of the bank was also the engine of control of his family, and the ultra-conservative viewpoint that has dominated Republican politics, ever since.

Historians note that Mellon was “steeped in social Darwinism.” He admired pseudoscientific thinkers like Herbert Spencer, a discredited 19th-century English philosopher who warped Darwin’s theories. Spencer promoted the idea that social, and economic success, reflected natural superiority.

Mellon embraced this theory, that wealth was a sign of inherent merit. Poverty was a personal failing​.

As the banker to the billionaires, Mellon’s views were hugely influential amongst the wealthy.

The Guilded Age’s general notion of “success,” that you “pulled yourself up by your own bootstraps,” another falsehood, was also very much tied to being white, and Christian.

Republicans may have been instrumental in freeing the slaves. Through Mellon, and a handful of other “Robber Baron” industrialists, clients and cronies, like the Carnegies, Rockefellers, etc., the GOP abandoned its fight for socioeconomic equality and freedom. Mellon, and a handful of other Robber Baron elites, used Republican power to entrench economic hierarchy and suppress minority, women’s and workers’ rights.

His views heavily influenced those of Industrialist society, then permeated downwards, into white American culture, and Republican politics. His views not only set the stage for his family, and peers, but the transformation of the Republican Party from the Party of Lincoln to the Party of Mellon.

They have continued to permeate the culture, and thinking of Republican politics, to this day. The conditions that moved the party through various terraformings, under their watch, from pro-Nazi Republicans opposing FDR, to the Cold War Republicans of Goldwater, to the Nixon Republicans, then Reagan’s Neocons, the Tea Party, and now, Trump’s MAGA. These are all devolutions that have seen the hand of a long-dead plutocrat, and the family that committed to get back what they rightfully saw as theirs.

As I mentioned, at the head, we like to laugh at the miserable rich in TV shows like “Succession.” and “Billions.” The Mellons are no laughing matter. They are not the satirical backstabbing elites. They are focused. They are patient. When they make mistakes, or see their fortunes reversed, by progressives, they triangulate. They return even more forcefully.

The Mellons take on help from international players. First the Saudis (Bushes I & II/Neocons) and then the Russians/Qataris (Trump).

The Mellon family have waged social cultural warfare in the United States, for almost a century. Their Social Darwinist beliefs, of life for the genetically superior, and death for everyone useless, are the explanation of why Trump is working so feverishly to pull the social safety net out from under us all.

To fix America, is to know what is wrong with it.

The Mellons have been that hidden cancer…

IN PART II…

In Part II of “Meeting the Mellons” we’ll meet Andrew Mellon, the man whom Franklin Delano Roosevelt called “The mastermind among the malefactors of great wealth.”

As a three-term Secretary of the Treasury, from presidents Harding, to Hoover, he pushed tax cuts for the richest, installed a corporate police state that kept workers in a state of wage slavery, and installed high tariffs, for competing goods that were produced by America’s biggest industrialist families (the Robber Barons). He triggered the 1929 Great Crash, and the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Sounds familiar? Learn how Trump carries water for the Mellon’s playbook. It’s the tail end of a century of America’s Worst Family, trying to recapture power in America, and subjugate, or eliminate, those less fabulously wealthy.

Chapters: I II III IV V

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FOOTNOTES

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Trump’s Rent-A-Gulag is Run By?

The Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), a mega-prison located in Tecoluca, is managed by the Salvadoran government.​ Photos of the arrival of Trump-supplied detainees, to CECOT, show a force that has experience with both significant control of subjects, and a desire for anonymity.

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The New York Times reported this week that Elon Musk’s data privateers at DOGE are pulling data from all over the government, pretty much all of which is firewalled off to exactly stop what he and the “Kids” are doing:

Getting complete data pictures of every American. As the Times reported, DOGE likely has the following information aggregated:

• Active-duty military status

• Addiction treatment records

• Adjusted gross income

• Adopted child’s name

• Adverse credit history

• Alimony paid

• Business debts canceled or forgiven

• Charitable contributions

• Child support received

• Country of birth

• Country of citizenship

• Credit and debit card numbers

• Criminal history

• Date of birth

• Date of hiring

• Dependent Social Security numbers

• Disability entitlement

• Driver’s license or state ID number

• Effective tax rate

• Employer name

• Employment termination dates

• Farm income/loss

• Foreign business partners

• Full name - Past legal names

• Gambling income

• Health provider name and number

• High school

• Home/personal phone number

• Incarceration status, past & present

• IP address

• Marital status

• Marriage certificate

• Medical diagnoses

• Mother’s maiden name

• Moving expenses

• Nonresident alien status

• Parent educational attainment

• Passport number

• Personal bank account number

• Personal email address

• Personal taxpayer ID number

• Place of birth

• Prior status in foster care

• Reason for separation (for unemployment claims)

• Social Security number

• Sources of income

• Spouse’s demographic information

• Student loan defaults

• Taxable I.R.A. distributions

• U.S. visa number

and at least 263 other categories of data.

That they may already have this data together is, aside from being scary beyond any Stephen King novel’s best day, also indicates the commission of several federal crimes, especially regarding Social Security information.

This is not the first time that the Funders, most notably the Mellon Family (Mellon Bank), have taken a crack at maintaining autocratic control of the U.S. government. The Privacy Act of 1974 was put in place, after Richard “Dicky” Mellon Scaife allegedly funded both Nixon, and the Watergate burglaries, and unleashed Nixon, who attempted to use the IRS to quietly go after those whom he saw as “enemies” of himself, and the Funders’ agenda.

As a result, attempting to use IRS data, for unauthorized purposes, such as targeting political opponents, journalists, or private citizens, is a felony under 26 U.S.C. § 7213, with severe criminal penalties, including prison time, fines, and termination of employment.

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DON’T GET INTO JAIL CARD

As we learn about the fragility of our democratic system, we discover where norms need to be replaced with the rule of law.

Even though those acts are a felony, the likelihood that either Musk, or the DOGE Kids, see a minute behind bars is near zero, because one of the lynchpins of law and order, in the federal government, the Department of Justice (DOJ).

Pam Bondi, as Trump’s lawyer, should be our Attorney General (AG). Instead, she has compromised DOJ’s independence. She is both shield, and spear, for the Trump Administration.

Bondi has evidenced, through the firings of DOJ attorneys, like Erez Reuveni, in the Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia case, over the deportation of Garcia to a Salvadoran detention gulag, for telling legally required truths to the court, and using the United States Marshalls as thugs to intimidate government employees,

Judicial rulings lose teeth when Federal law, which applies to the president, who is not a king, becomes unenforceable.

The Congress should serve as a check to both of them, but the Republican majority, who would have howled had a Barack Obama tried to appoint a Bondi to the DOJ, is now complicitly silent.

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“It all makes no sense!”

Shut down USAID?

People die.

Hobble the Veteran’s Administration?

People die.

Curtail Medicaid/Medicare?

People die.

Shatter Social Security?

People die.

Destroy NOAA?

People die.

Hamstring FEMA?

People die.

Blow up the Affordable Care Act?

People die

Disrupt and disable the military?

People die.

Gut $6T from the stock market?

People die.

Why?

Why is the Trump Administration pursuing plans to shatter an economy that the Economist called “the envy of the world,” back on October 19th, of last year? Why are the Republican controlled House and Senate sitting silently by?

The Eight Billion Reasons

As of January 1, 2025, the global population was approximately 8.09B people. That’s an increase of about 71M people (0.89%), from the previous year. The United Nations estimates that the global population will peak out at 10.3, to 11 billion in the mid-2080s. That’s a lot of pull on a world’s dwindling resources.

Global Warming Causes Population Redistribution

Fossil fuel use will have cooked a good chunk of the planet, about ten years (2070) before we hit max-peak population. It is expected to force continuing mass migration, from the hottest parts of the world, mostly around the equator, and in the deserts of North Africa.

At the same time, disruptions in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a crucial component of the global ocean conveyor belt, that regulates climate, by transporting warm water, northward, from the tropics, and cold water southward, is breaking down, due to melting glaciers, and warming conditions, at the poles.

AMOC has developed a dark “blob,” of cold water, in the middle of the flow. It’s slowing everything down, and may bring it to a stop, as it grows.

This may plunge Europe into 30°c drop in average daily temperatures, across the board.

It could send Africa, South America, and much of Asia into staggering combinations of daily heat and humidity at +35°c that will only allow a select few to live/work indoors.

All the sweaty starving people, where do they all belong?

The 1% can buy themselves means to survive all of this, including positioning themselves in the most geographically advantageous parts of the world that are likely to benefit from global warming:

Canada, Greenland, and Russia / Siberia, in the Northern Hemisphere

Yes, now you know why the 1% is having Trump pump up the rhetoric around “owning” these prime pieces of land.

The Three Most Terrifying Letters to the World’s 1%

U-B-I.

Universal Basic Income (UBI), would be government programs that provide all citizens, of a country, with a regular, unconditional cash payment, regardless of employment status, or income level.

Its goal is to reduce poverty, provide economic security, and help people adapt to job losses, caused by automation and technological change.

Here’s a great explanation of it:

The 1% Say Nay, Nay!

In the first Industrial Age, there was a need for a lot of cheap labor. Factories, to the fields, it took a lot of people to make, or grow things.

The Second Industrial Age

In this second Industrial Age, we’ve already discussed how the majority of people will become an ‘Unnecessary’ to a labor market that is highly automated.

A 2026 Senate study, sponsored by Senator Sanders, notes that:

“According to the ChatGPT-based model [which they put together], artificial intelligence and automation could replace nearly 100 million jobs over the next ten years, including 89% of fast food and counter workers, 64% of accountants and 47% of truck drivers.

“Dario Amodei, the CEO of the main competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic, warned that AI could lead to the loss of half of all entry-level white-collar jobs, spiking unemployment to 10 to 20% in one to five years.”

It won’t just be cashiers, and low-wage workers, this go-round: doctors; lawyers; pharmacists; surveyors, accountants.

I did a refinement of the Sanders report to the Senate. Its methodology tried to count “jobs,” instead of man-hours saved.

Everyone will feel the wrath.

The Social Darwinist Response

To the Social Darwinist, who believes in their innate, God-given, right to be filthy rich, as they’re genetically superior, the billions of humans, in the weaker end of the gene pool, need to be drowned. Eliminated. Gone.

Governments, through welfare programs, and social safety nets, like Social Security, keep millions of people alive, every day.

That, to the Funders, seems untenable, and, yes, costly. UBI, to them, is just another form of welfare. The “nanny state.”

The richest 1% don’t pay their fair share of taxation, ever. The world increasingly needs to redistribute wealth, to try to: slow global warming; responsibly handle migration; and, in a democracy, provide a basic standard of living, that supports all.

Which means that the rich would have sizable tax bills, to allow that redistribution of wealth to happen, for the greater good.

Except of course, the only ‘good’ that interests them, is their own self-preservation.

They have a far different, and very dark solution, that they’ve tried to employ before.

Eugenics

What is eugenics?

Eugenics is a totally disproven idea, cultivated first in England, based on Darwin’s “survival of the fittest,” that some people are more “fit” to live, reproduce, or lead, than others. The people advocating it called themselves Social Darwinists, although Darwin would have laughed at their ideas.

Social Darwinism became a prominent social movement, amongst the rich, and white protestants, especially with the richest prominent late 19th, to early 20th century industrialists (The “robber barons.”).

President Theodore Roosevelt, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, Adolph Coors, Thomas Edison, James Mellon, and even Helen Keller, amongst others, were supporters of eugenics. Many took on the racism component, especially when it came to Jews.

In the United States, it meant forced sterilizations, and other inhumane acts, of prisoners, the mentally ill, people with birth defects, and poor women seeking public assistance.

Amazingly these forced sterilizations lasted up until 2014, just eleven years ago.

After the world saw what this led to in Nazi German-controlled Europe, during WWII, genocides, small or large became globally publicly unacceptable.

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Eugenics New Political Face: False Populism

Today, they won’t call it eugenics. That’s stigmatized. The belief behind it didn’t disappear, though. It has just changed its tactics, and politics.

Eugenics no longer a social movement. It’s highly political. In the US, it has hidden behind many names: Anti-Communism; The Tea Party; and MAGA, to name a few. It uses the false front of populism, to speed the demise of the very people who support it.

The people who pay for it are patient. Where they lose a step, they triangulate, and move their agenda forward.

What we see, with the MAGA movement, and the Trump Administrations, are the policies that strip away healthcare, housing, food aid, and education, not only from the highest need people. They’re now coming after the working person. Not just in blue collar, but white collar, and professions. They’re coming after people who they see as imperfect: The disabled. The brown-skinned. The LGBTQIA+

As I’ve mentioned, in several articles in the past, this is not a genocide. They’re not killing off people for their faiths, or tribes. This is a democide. This is a slow, mass euthanasia of people based upon their social class, or “imperfect” social status, and their need/relevance to a more automated world.

Trump Policy is NOT Insanity. It’s a Tactic.

So what about those decisions that the Trump Administrations, and the Republican Party, as a whole, have been making? They seem, on their face, as being “crazy.” They can cause millions of Americans to lose everything that they have, including their lives.

Donald Trump may well be crazy. He may not be capable of forming a coherent sentence, let alone an impactful public policy.

The decisions that the GOP are putting out the public don’t happen by accident. This is NOT TRUMP. He’s not that smart. This is the will of the 1%, their Funders.

All of the GOP’s policies, from illegally slashing the federal workforce, especially in the areas of public healthy and safety, to tariffs that crumble the current world order of finance, and politics, are quite intentional.

They’re not just budget policy. They are a quiet way to decide who gets to survive and who doesn’t.

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A New Mass Extermination

This is quiet democide. It’s not mass extermination by violence, but systemic erasure through neglect, abandonment, and engineered scarcity.

The people targeted aren’t always named. You can see, though, based on what is taken away, who’s left to suffer: the sick, the old, the poor, the incarcerated, the unhoused, the different, the people whose skin color, or nationality aren’t welcome.

It’s why they want to root out as many of these “imperfect” people, who live now in the United States, legal, protected, or alien.

These aren’t accidents. These are filters, designed to thin the population of those deemed “useless” by a system calibrated for elite survival.

Demolish Education - Eliminate Historical Challenges

At the same time, there’s a push to weaken public education, especially the kind that teaches critical thinking, or honest history. If people don’t learn how to spot patterns or question power, it becomes easier to keep these systems running without being challenged. If you can feed people alternative history, within a decade, or two, the truth is lost.

21st Century Eugenics

When you combine all of these efforts, with the rising support for authoritarian leaders, and/or oligarchies, which answer only to the powerful, you see that eugenics now uses laws, not labs, and silence, not science, to decide how to purge the world of people they don’t see fit to be alive.

What are the Funders’ Current Goals?

While we aren’t privy to the fascists’ playbook, if one were to game out what a 1% that espoused political eugenics might do, to prepare the future for a future of far more limited land and resources, they might:

1. Depopulate strategically

   1. Reduce public services

   2. Limit access to healthcare;

   3. Cut education, especially for groups seen as “nonproductive,” or politically unreliable. Allow rising inequality to do the rest.

2. Privatize survival – As climate change worsens, public protections (FEMA, EPA, Medicare, etc.) are weakened. Survival becomes a private luxury: clean air, water, medicine, security—only for those who can afford it.

3. Secure future territory – Canada and Greenland become desirable not because of current value, but because of their future livability. As the U.S. South and Midwest become hotter, drier, and storm-prone, these northern areas are the new “green zones.”

4. Automate the economy – As AI, robotics, and vertical integration take over labor and logistics, fewer workers are needed. The economy no longer depends on mass consumption by the poor. It depends on total control by the few.

5. Consolidate governance – Replace democratic checks with oligarchic or corporate control. Remove obstacles like unions, press, or dissenting voters/voices. Once dissent is neutralized, resource management follows long-term private interests, without interruption.

Why would the ultra-rich want to reduce the population? Who would buy their products? That Makes No Sense!

From the Funder’s perspective, the goal isn’t to sell more things to more people. It’s to sell fewer, more profitable things to the RIGHT kind of people.

It’s not about eliminating all consumers. It’s about reshaping the population to favor a “productive,” “desirable,” or “genetically superior” class. People who are seen as: more obedient; more stable; or more capable of wealth creation. In that worldview, the “correct” population is expected to flourish without the social costs, like poverty, disease, and rebellion, that the Funders associate with so-called “inferior” groups.

There’s more: The Funders control everything that matters once fewer people are left. That includes land, water, energy, and food. These core resources will become more scarce and more valuable as the climate collapses and infrastructure breaks down.

So while the total population shrinks, the buying power of the approved population grows. According to their theory, there are fewer people, but they’re better off, cleaner, more controllable / easier to politically and economically manage.

It’s not mass-consumer capitalism. It’s selective survival, with profit margins.

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Thus, “Who will buy all the products?” becomes the wrong question.

The real questions?

• Who will own what’s left when the climate, economy, and civil society collapse?

• Who will be allowed to survive?

This isn’t about selling shampoo. It’s about ensuring that when the dust settles, control over the future belongs to a small, self-selected group.

The Funders, in America, in Russia, and who hold the oil in the Middle East? They’re preparing to be the winners.

All of the rest of us?

If we’re not necessary to them?

Be damned.

A Citizen One Action

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I don’t write Broadway reviews.

This isn’t an Entertainment piece. It’s a political primer.

George Clooney’s Broadway adaptation of his 2005, George W. Bush era film, Good Night, and Good Luck, is a loud, proud, call-to-action, TODAY.

The people who are served up to you, by the media, as responsible for our slide into fascism, are only the tip of the iceberg.

If we don’t learn from history, we’re not only doomed to repeat it. There is no focal voice of reason, no one like CBS News‘ most influential commentator of the 1950’s, Edward R. Murrow, to save us, in this age.

This is the teaser for the 2025, Musk-Trump Era, Broadway play. It will give you the vibe:

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Broadcast Journalist Edward R. Murrow was about facts. Here are those facts:

On March 9, 1954, journalist Edward R. Murrow aired a segment on his CBS program, See It Now. It was an exposé of Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy, chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI).

House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) had been started, in 1938, under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) to root out both Fascist, and Communist extremists. McCarthy’s PSI and HUAC worked concurrently, but not together. McCarthy wasn’t part of HUAC. A small error in the play’s narrative.

Notably, McCarthy was part of a much broader effort, by the Far Right of his day, to take back America from the liberalization of the nation, the “New Deal.” (Listen to Rachel Maddow’s Ultra Podcast series.)

Seeing it, I noticed that many of the people who came to the play were being “woken up” to how long this crusade to drag America’s democracy into the fascist sewers has been going on.

See it, or not, take a trip with me, here, to understand why Clooney’s play is a call-to-action to all Americans. We must be our own “Murrows.”

Who Backed McCarthy & His Anti-Communist Crusade?

Anti-Unionists

While most of the major backers of McCarthy were labeled as “anti-communist” they were largely anti-union/organized labor:

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“We are in the middle of a Ketamine-fueled, middle of the night, autocratic power grab, that is rendering congress irrelevant, rendering policy irrelevant, and rendering the rule of law an afterthought.”

-Rachel Maddow

Has voting just been a thin veneer over the beginnings of autocratic rule?

How is the voice of the people heard?

Through voting, we are told.

Does it really work for us, though?

The Theory

We allegedly elect politicians, from the town council, to the President of the United States, by systems that use both the popular vote, and the popular vote to inform an Electoral College, for the presidential elections.

These politicians are then sworn to uphold and defend their city laws, state Constitution, and the federal Constitution.

Yet we have seated governments, in 2025, which are of the money, by the money, and for the money.

Many of the modern oligarchs have come out of the shadows, and are now pushing us towards an authoritarian government which has focused on democide, policies guaranteed to eliminate millions of people, by any means possible.

Voting, and your vote, in particular, has been hollowed out, over the last fifty years.

What are Symptoms of the Hollowing-out of Our Vote?

We often look at these as “causes,” but they’re really just symptoms.

Polarized Electorate

A polarized electorate, with both the dogmatic, and the disgusted, has written off their responsibilities to uphold, protect, and defend the Constitution. This would be why more than a third of American voters stayed home, in the 2024 presidential election.

Right Wing Legal & Political Maneuvering

Over the past several election cycles, the Far Right has diminished voting power in the U.S., through:

• Restrictive laws - The Shelby County v. Holder decision (2013) weakened the Voting Rights Act, leading to stricter voter ID laws, purges, and reduced early voting, disproportionately affecting minorities. Post-2020, states introduced over 100 bills limiting mail-in and early voting, often justified by unfounded fraud claims.

• Judicial rulings - Leonard Leo has helped Republicans engage in a shocking level of “judicial activism,” their primary charge against liberal-leaning justices. With the help of the false-originalist Federalist Society, he has generated a legion of low-qualification, highly dogmatic, and often highly unqualified judicial appointees that Trump has placed on the bench. They have upheld restrictive laws, and partisan gerrymandering.

• Political strategies. Misinformation, and election denialism, have eroded public trust in the elections process. This discourages participation, which, in turn threatens to collapse the integrity of the democratic electoral process. Approximately 90 million eligible voters, about 36% of the voting-age population, didn’t participate in the 2024 election. They were a bigger slice of the electorate than the number of votes cast for either major candidate. Paricularly the Far Right has exacerbated these trends:

  • Voting Isn’t Socially Expected – There’s no widespread societal pressure to vote.

  • Alienation from Politics – Politicians are seen as being “out-of-touch elites.”

  • Low Civic Engagement – The U.S. has weaker civic education and engagement compared to other democracies.

Advertising & Marketing

The media becomes complicit because news is a for-profit business. The billions spent on political campaigns? Where do you think that money goes? Into the coffers of CNN, NBC, Fox, Facebook, X, and the myriad others.

There was a time, in the days of William S. Paley, in the early 1930s, who set a high bar for journalistic independence at CBS News, when news was not a profit center. It was a public service.

In the 2024 election, total U.S. political ad spending was projected to hit $12.32 billion, marking a nearly 29% increase from the 2020 election.12

The money heavily skews towards better-funded conservative messaging.

Traditional Media (Television, Radio, & Print): Roughly 71.9% of the total political advertising budget, for 2024, went to traditional media channels. That amounted to approximately an $8.86B total spend, with Fox News receiving $2.42B (27.4%), of that, alone.3

$3.46B went to new media, most of which does not report political buy figures.

Dark money, anonymous sources, are estimated to have spent more than $1B, in the 2024 campaign, into super PACs and other political committees. It was a significant increase from previous election cycles.​ 4

​In the 2024 U.S. election cycle, dark money—funds spent to influence elections by groups that do not fully disclose their donors—reached unprecedented levels. Estimates indicate that over $1 billion in such funds were funneled into federal elections, surpassing previous records. ​56

This surge in undisclosed funding has raised significant concerns about transparency and the influence of wealthy donors on the democratic process. Notably, Elon Musk emerged as a major contributor, donating $277 million to support Donald Trump and allied Republicans, making him the largest individual political donor in the 2024 election. ​Wikipedia

The increasing flow of dark money underscores the growing challenges in tracking the true sources of political funding, highlighting the need for comprehensive campaign finance reform to ensure transparency and accountability in U.S. elections.​

Two principal problems keep us from restoring our democratic republic, and wresting it from the hands of the world’s richest.

Is Democracy Failing?

We have assumed, for a quarter of a millennia, that: our constitutional democracy is legitimate. How? Largely because we have imperfectly tried to fulfill the purpose of the United States Constitution: To serve WE, THE PEOPLE.

We learn, in school, that the Constitution is the bedrock of our laws. Not only our politicians swear an oath to it, but so do our military servicepeople, civil servants, and federal law enforcement.

Beyond laws, we have established “norms,” common agreements as to how a civilized society conducts itself. Boundaries beyond which we do not exceed.

We have been told, that these laws, and societal norms, protect us from kings, tyrants, and dictators, by an elaborate series of checks-and-balances, between the Executive, Legislative, and Judiciary branches of government.

Except, at the first sign of major stress, in this century, they are all miserably failing.

Blame the Norms.

There are two fundamental weaknesses, in American democracy.

Government was envisioned as servant of the people. It was also supposed to be the place where politicians, of different constituencies, could come together, argue in good faith, and move forward, as one nation. This relies not only on laws, but on “norms,” customs, and agreed upon rules, that the parties will not violate, as they engage in governance.

The second is that the Founders trusted that those whom we elect would be people of honor, who didn’t take the money of our enemies, and ignore the voice of the people.

Send in the Clowns

Grover Norquist began, decades ago, to stock our political system with morons, and ignorants. They take orders well. The less that they question the “plays” being sent into them, the better.

They installed the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) the far-right’s McBill mill, to distribute successful agenda legislation both federally and to the state by way of their political ‘yes’ people.

The Republican Party, over the past decades, from the 1970’s, to today, have generated: the semi-autonomous Neoconservatives, like George W. Bush, John McCain, Mitt Romney, etc.; to the automaton Tehadis, like Bachmann, Cruz, Rubio, etc.; to the auto-pilot, check-your-brain-in-at-the-door MAGA reactionaries, like Marjorie Taylor-Greene, Tommy Tuberville, Lauren Boebert, etc.

At the Party level, they have purged anyone who does not dogmatically, blindly, follow the direction that those paying for them choose.

Bad Faith Strips Away the Illusion of Democracy

What happens, when there is not that good faith? We’re seeing that unfold, before our eyes.

Congressional leadership, and co-presidents Elon Musk (unelected) and Donald J. Trump (narrowly elected), have exposed one of the greatest weaknesses of our system:

An outright refusal to obey the laws, and norms, which make our system work, yield supreme power, and destroy the Constitutional order of our Republic.

They will say that court orders will be followed.

When?

Whenever the courts are willing to stand up to Trump, and define the limits of executive power, they lack enforcement capability.

The Attorney General, allegedly independent, and the FBI, are supposed to stop extralegal attacks on the system. When they, themselves, are under attack, by their own Administration hacks?

Democracy dies.

Wealth Determines Who Gets “Freedom.”

In a post Citizens-United world, money, stacked on both sides of the political spectrum, determines all other individual citizens fate, not voting.

Americans for Tax Fairness did a giving data pull from the last election cycle. If you want to know why Trump narrowly won? Look at the outsized legal giving, excluding substantial dark money investments, by Republican donors.7

Democrats, even with Soros, Bloomberg, Wyss, and Gates, were badly outspent. When you look at the largest legal donors, an interesting picture forms that is not familiar to most Americans, but is very familiar to long-term researchers into far-Right politics.

The Funders of Fascism that Media Seldom Mentions

Elon Musk is a newbie to Far Right politics. Old money runs deeper, longer, and has a bigger grievance with liberal democracy.

The Dead Billionaires Club

The Mellon family, whose spawn, Richard “Dickie” Mellon-Scaife, set America on this Republican, far-right path of terraforming the electorate back into the state of political decay, in the 1970’s, via the think tanks and PACs that he created, at that time.

The first Industrial Age’s Robber Barons have been an almost bottomless pit of poison for American democracy, since they lost control of America, during the Great Depression. They back Social Darwinism, a twisted interpretation of Darwin’s “survival of the fittest,” that the rich are so endowed because they’re genetically superior to the other 99% of us.

When I reported about them, in 2011, for the article Dead Billionaires Club, the Mellon family’s foundations, that give heavily to terraform America back into their image, had:

• Sarah Scaife Foundation ( $244 million (fair market value) in 2009)

• Carthage Foundation ( $24 million (fair market value) in 2009)

• Allegheny Foundation ( $47 million (fair market value) in 2009)

• Scaife Family Foundation ( $70 million (fair market value) in 2009)

With $172 million in legal 2024 contributions, the well, it would seem, can be perpetually replenished.

The Club for Growth

Their second string, The Club for Growth, includes:

• The Uihlein Family, owners of U-Line supplies. Still sizable givers, at $132M, just under Elon Musk, they like to stay under the radar, with their conservative values. U-Line is a good product to avoid, if you love democracy.

• The Koch Brother - Charles & David Koch led the hijacking of the Republican Party during the “Tea Party” era. David passed. Charles Koch is still instrumental in pushing agenda that further degrade legislative and judicial autonomy. Leave Brawny paper towels on the shelf.

• Former Trump National Economic Council director and CNBC host Larry Kudlow was recruited from the Club. They’re best known for their RINO (Republicans in Name Only) targeting and eliminating of moderates in the Republican Party.

The Tech Bros Freak Show

The new line of Social Darwinian billionaires who are stepping up to push the fascist agenda. Lowlifeslights include:

• Elon Musk - Enough has been said about Donald Trump’s co-president, Mr. Musk.

• Peter Thiel - Contributed over $20.4 million to Republican candidates, notably building up, and fundamentally buying elections for Blake Masters in Arizona, and J.D. Vance in Ohio, both of whom had professional ties to Thiel. Even though he publicly divorced himself from political donations in 2023, in 2019, he co-founded the Rockbridge Network, with J.D. Vance. Their aim was to support right-wing political groups, and promote nationalist agendas. Backed by Silicon Valley investors, including Thiel and another dark money darling, Rebekah Mercer, Rockbridge put an estimated $75m into the 2024 elections, focusing on conservative media, voter turnout, and political activism among churchgoers. ​

• The Mercer Family

  • Robert Mercer is an American computer scientist and former co-CEO of Renaissance Technologies, a highly successful quantitative hedge fund. He played a pivotal role in the 2016 election, allegedly deploying bots into social media that promoted populist turnout. He’s financed or supported analytics firm Cambridge Analytica, and has been linked to media outlets like Breitbart News.​

  • Rebekah Mercer, his daughter, manages the Mercer Family Foundation, directing significant funds to conservative think tanks and political campaigns. She co-founded Reclaim New York, with Steve Bannon. She serves, or has served, on the boards of organizations such as The Heritage Foundation. She co-founded the social media platform Parler, known for its conservative user base.

• Miriam Adelson, the widow of the late casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, put in $137M of your money spent at The Venetian, in Vegas, or Macao, into pushing America into authoritarianism. Might stay at other properties, to preserve democracy.

• Jeffrey Yass is a billionaire gambler. He is a co-founder, and the managing director, of Susquehanna International Group (SIG), a global trading, and technology firm, based in Philadelphia. He began his career as a professional gambler, applying his mathematical skills to poker, and horse racing, before transitioning to another form of gambling, options trading, in the early 1980s. ​

  A Libertarian, he was one of the top political donors in the United States, in 2024. He contributed approximately $100 million to Republican groups and campaigns. He was a prime backer of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. ​8

  • His wife, Janine Yass, donated, from 2010 to 2022, $41.7 million to the Students First PAC, which advocates the undermining of public education through for-profit charter schools

• Kenneth C. Griffin is the founder and CEO of Citadel LLC, a global hedge fund and market-making business. He began trading during his time at Harvard University. He founded Citadel in 1990, growing it into one of the world's largest alternative investment firms.​ In the 2024 election cycle, he contributed over $108 million to Republican causes, making him one of the top political donors in the country.

• Paul Singer - A major Republican donor, he has backed presidential campaigns of George W. Bush, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, and Marco Rubio. Despite initial opposition to Donald Trump's candidacy, and the millions that he gives to LGBTQIA+ initiatives, still, Singer “reconciled” with Trump, contributing to his inauguration festivities.​

In 2025, Voting is a Veneer

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reports that about 21% of U.S. adults have below-basic literacy skills. They struggle with reading comprehension, and practical applications of reading. Republican demolition of education, but in particular higher education, looks to further increase that number.

The Annenberg Public Policy Center found that only 47% of Americans could name all three branches of government in 2023. It was an improvement, from previous years. Still, it’s a sign of weak civic understanding.

A 2016 survey, by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) found that 10% of college graduates thought Judge Judy was on the Supreme Court. This was a troubling sign of eroding civic awareness.

In the 2016 U.S. presidential election, approximately 62% of U.S. adults accessed news through social media.

Fake news stories favoring Donald Trump were shared about 30 million times on Facebook, while those favoring Hillary Clinton were shared 8 million times.

The average American adult was exposed to fake news stories. Just over half of those recalling seeing them believed them. People were more likely to believe stories that favored their preferred candidate, especially if they had ideologically segregated social media networks. ​

This continues to be a problem, as a rising generation of voters takes in most of its political information from social media outlets like X, and TikTok.

Money moves media. Media moves the mindless. The mindless vote, or stay home.

Until we can turn around education, and super-inform the rising generations of voters, voting, in our democratic republic, if it remains that way, and we vote again, will continue to slide towards authoritarian governance, filled with empty promises, and easy answers to the hardest questions.

As the Adelsons know, the house (money) always wins, in the end, over the suckers, and sheeple.

Autocracy / oligarchy is here, and it may be here for a long while.

Originally appeared in Truth-2-Power.com on October 15, 2013 |

Revised completely on February 9, 2025

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‘Demon government!’

‘The government is too BIG. Drown it in the bathtub.’

‘Get the government off of our backs!’

Government is the DEEP STATE. The government is Eeevil.

Extremist conservatives rant and rave, about gun confiscations, black helicopters, stolen elections, and other fantasies. They more quietly drop their purification of America. “Woke” education. Liberals as needing to be ‘eradicated.’

Extremist liberals rant and rave about the NSA, drones, and everything that Obama, Biden, and Harris didn’t deliver to them, on a progressive platter. Perhaps why 36% of Americans smugly stayed home.

For the rest of us, over the last few years, we’ve endured the unintended consequences of:

• GOP shutdowns of the government;

• The House Republicans’ embarrassing internal putsches of their leadership;

• Disinforming the public to the point where fact is fiction, and fiction? Their truth.

• Trump’s ability to outlast the legal system, and accountability:

• Trump narrowly winning as president, and engaging in his anti-government reign of terror, over the last 21 days.

What we’ve learned, from attacks on the US military, the Justice Department, USAID, the Library of Congress, and more?

That government, overall, is good.

American political life, over the last few decades, has imitated comedy:

The Tea Party, then that MAGAts, in itheir mad headlong rush towards destroying America’s solvency, and sovereignty, has been doing us a very unintended favor. The political stunts, and now their billionaire-fueled, full-on putsch, remind us of:

• how much good that government does;

• how involved, as a generally positive force, that government is, in so many American lives.

The anti-Obama Teahadis cracked the ice for fascism with the Greatest Generation vets storming the WWII Memorial like Normandy. Then Trump ginned up the MAGAts to Wagnerian fervor as they tried to overthrow the government for him, on January 6th.

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Trump 2.0’s Attempt To Destroy American Government Reminds Us for What We Fight

In Trump 2.0, the fascists have learned a lot about how government runs, and how to break it.

Immigration Bogeyman

They told the world that they were removing “criminal” aliens, then designated all illegal people as “criminals.” A 2016 report, by the Center for American Progress, noted two things. Undocumented workers contribute about 3% of the U.S. GDP, which equated to approximately $5 trillion, over a decade, at that time. They also noted that providing undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship, would boost U.S. GDP by a cumulative total of $1.7 trillion, over that same decade.

USAID is Deeply Invested, Not the ‘Deep State’

They picked on the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), figuring that most Americans would just see it as “wasteful spending.”

What Americans learned, instead, is that USAID is an independent federal agency that’s responsible for administering civilian foreign aid, and development assistance, that prevents military needs, promotes democracy, and brings a whole lot of benefits to the average Joe, right here in America:

• USAID was actively involved in responding to an Ebola outbreak in Uganda. Abrupt suspension of USAID operations, due to Musk/Trump’s shutdown, led to significant concerns, among health officials, about the disruption in critical health services, to combat Ebola, that might see it spread to other shores, including the United States.

• USAID supports American farmers, through its food assistance programs. In fiscal year 2020, the agency purchased $2.1 billion worth of food aid from them. Agricultural research, sponsored by USAID, has led to innovations, for American farmers, like the development of greenbug aphid-resistant sorghum varieties. These saved American agriculture $389 million, in 1989, alone.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) can’t keep us safe with Musk/Trump staffing slashing, and IT meddling.

We found out how much routine stuff that the the government does to keep us safe in the air.

Following Musk and DOGE’s engagement with the FAA, a tragic mid-air collision occurred over Washington, D.C., between an American Airlines passenger jet and a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter, resulting in sixty-seven fatalities.

Investigations revealed that air traffic control staffing, at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, was not normal, at the time of the collision. One controller, handling duties typically assigned to two people, was linked to the Trump administration's workforce reduction efforts, which included offering buyouts to federal employees, including air traffic controllers, who received the memo, prior to the incident.

Prior to that crash, the last time that there was a major civilian commercial airliner crash, with a large number of fatalities, was in 2009, in Buffalo, New York. To date, not only have there been two crashes, two days apart, in Washington, and Philadelphia, but pilots, and controllers, especially at Reagan National, have reported a greater increase in “near-miss” incidents, across various airports. Reagan Airport reported at least 50 incidents, where aircraft had to maneuver, to avoid other planes, or obstacles, alone.

Despite the Trump administration's clarification that air traffic controllers are exempt from the buyout offers, the initial confusion, and ongoing staffing challenges, continue to pose risks to both air, and ground operations.

DOGE also has been criticized for its unauthorized access to sensitive systems by DOGE IT personnel, who lack proper security clearances, infiltrating FAA IT systems, under the guise of “enhancing efficiency.” The breach called into question the integrity of critical aviation operations.

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Silencing Health and Safety Agencies Threatens Average Americans

Trump’s executive order, aimed at diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), saw several federal health agencies, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) all dropping information about a wide variety of health and safety issues, that caused the advocacy group, Doctors for America, to sue the Trump Administration, for undermining doctors’ ability to provide necessary care, for their patients.

Americans Now Know More About What the Treasury Does

DOGE, and its young hacker-based, insecure IT team, gained access to the Treasury Department's payment systems, which handle over $5 trillion annually, including Social Security and government paychecks.

A senior Treasury official resigned, responsible for protecting the system, resigned, or was removed by Musk, for having resisted DOGE's involvement.

This allowed Musk’s employees, like hacker Edward “Big Balls” Coristine, a 19-year-old technologist, into one of the most sensitive systems in the U.S. government. He has no security clearance. He was hired by DOGE, despite being previously dismissed from a cybersecurity internship, due to leaks of company information. His past associations with hacker communities and controversial online behavior raised significant concerns about his suitability for the DOGE job.

U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer issued a preliminary injunction to stop DOGE intrusions after 19 Democratic attorneys general sued President Donald Trump over Musk’s illegal use of . Musk, via X, commented that Engelmeyer was a “corrupt judge protecting corruption.” He called for the justice’s impeachment.

The Law of Intended Consequences

For every Musk/Trump action, there is often myriad other consequences, which has caused both mass outrage, and the Trump Administration to walk back many of its Project 2025-inspired slashings of government:

• Virginia, has more government employees, and contracts, than any other state. $106 billion in federal contracts and, as of December, 2024, approximately 192,200 federal government employees. With an average annual salary of $112,665, they bring about $21.6 billion in compensation into the communities of the state. This filters down to every aspect of life, in every city and township in the state. Impact of Trump’s witch hunt for the “deep state,” could be severe.

• Plans to cut up to $4 billion annually in federal funding for U.S. medical research by reducing "indirect" support from an average of 27% to 15% has already affected research hospitals, and universities, slowing, or stopping both active clinical trials for cancer patients, and many others with rare, life-threatening conditions, or diseases.

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Aim at Foot. Pull Trigger

Much of what America has accomplished as a great industrial engine has been through government funding of massive infrastructure, research, and development.

In 2018, federal R&D investments directly and indirectly generated:

• Over 1.6 million U.S. jobs;

• $126 billion in labor income;

• $197 billion in economic value;

• $39 billion in federal and state tax revenue.

Science funding often might seem arcane, but billions in research have landed a man on the moon, developed rapid commerce and communications systems like the Internet, advanced medicines and health technologies, synthetic fabrics, high impact plastics and provided a standard of living for the planet that continues to rise.  

Take just one target of the ire of Trump fans, fanned on by right-wing media: NASA, and privatized space companies. In 2022, the U.S. space economy contributed approximately $131.8 billion to the nation's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), accounting for 0.5% of the total U.S. GDP. A study that analyzed fifteen NASA technologies that permeated into American business, from telecommunications, to better safety equipment, found that, with a research and development investment of $64 million, there was a value-added benefit of over $1.5 billion.

Government is about a system of laws that protect businesses and citizens from civil and criminal harm. We have the greatest law enforcement systems in the world, flaws and all.

Complaining about Government is the True ‘National Pastime.’

No one likes being told that they can’t do something:

• A farmer bristles at a regulation that runs afoul of their fouled hog waste pond.

• Fisherman freak when a limit is set on how much of a particular fish species can be hauled in.

• Wall Street rails against reform of the practices that led to the 2008-2009 melt-down and the Great Recession.  

The largest noise, though, always comes from the NRA, and the MAGA crowds. The largely white, largely Right folks who fear the rising tide of the minority majority more than they do the meat inspector, or the DEA agent.

When Trumpists talk about “taking America back,” does anyone ask from whom, or if you live South of the Mason-Dixon and wear red hats, and black shredded flag gear, from who?

This is why wiping DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) from America is such a big deal to the Trump Administration. These programs stand to reduce white power further, in the coming decades.

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Is Big Government Really Too Big?

The “big government” lie isn’t supported by the data. Government is at its biggest during war years. Executive branch civilian employment decreased from approximately 3.4 million, in 1945, to about 2.1 million, by 1950.

While fluctuating, over time, that official number hasn’t really changed much, other than a reduction of over 300,000 employees during the Clinton Administration. It is misleading, though. Throughout our history, private contractors have been brought in when there are specific, or more temporary needs for labor, that shouldn’t be done by career civil servants.

Professor Paul Light, at New York University, estimated, in 2015, that the "true size" of the federal workforce was approximately 9.1 million individuals, comprising:

• 2 million federal employees

• 3.7 million contract employees

• 1.6 million grant employees

• 1.3 million active-duty military personnel

• 492,000 Postal Service employees

Government has a Civil Service to Avoid a ‘Deep State.’

Employees of the civil service are apolitical. They work for both Republican, and Democratic administrations. Trump is trying to bring us back to 1882, before the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883, which replaced “spoils based” political party patronage jobs with workers who served all of the people, all of the time, without fear of political reprisal for doing their jobs.

The civil service system promotes fairness, for all who come with business, or issues, with the government. It was designed to reduces the risk of corruption, favoritism, or misuse of public resources for political gain. All of which are things that Trump hates, as he has shown, both in his prior four-year term, and in the years since, a callous disregard for pretty much everyone other than himself.

The Hatch Act of 1939 restricting federal employees from engaging in partisan political activities while on duty, or using their official positions to influence elections. This would be the law of which Trump, himself, along with many of his appointees, have found themselves afoul.

What avoids a ‘deep state,’ Trump’s favorite anti-government rant?

• Merit-Based Hiring and Promotion;

• Legal protections for civil servants from those who seek to exercise political influence.

• Judicial oversight. Elrod v. Burns (1976), reinforced protections against politically motivated dismissals of non-policymaking public employees.

• The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is supposed to enforce these rules. Another Trump executive order charged OPM to offer a "deferred resignation" program, where federal employees could take the option to resign, effective September 30, 2025, while continuing to receive pay and benefits until that date. Such a program is illegal. Changes to federal employment compensation and benefits require congressional approval.

To try to break this system, Trump has signed executive orders. One directs that more people be classified as “policymaking public employees,” under Schedule F, which would expose them to being fired.

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Is There Waste, and Fraud, in Government?

Sure. Every human enterprise, and every government, now, or in the history of humanity, has it.  

It’s just not where most Right wingers tend to think it is.

The Far Right sells minority loafers and white-trash ne’er-do-wells sponging off the government.  Waste and fraud more often than not comes from middle class and affluent folks ripping off the system, and government contractor rip-offs.

Between fiscal years 2018 and 2022, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimated that the federal government lost between $233 billion and $521 billion annually due to fraud.

The greatest sources of government fraud aren’t welfare queens. Leading the list:

• Doctors and hospitals overbilling for services;

• A Nigerian fraud ring, “Scattered Canary” has sapped the unemployment program of hundreds of millions of dollars in false claims;

• Contractor over-billing, falsifications to secure government contracts, and failures to deliver;

• Wealthy tax evaders using offshore accounts to lower their income tax burdens. Would that be “wealth-fare” queens?

One of the best ways to root out fraud? The various watchdog Inspectors General that go after waste and abuse in government.

Who did Trump go after first? Them.

In January 2025, President Donald Trump dismissed seventeen inspectors general (IGs), from various federal agencies, without providing the legally mandated 30-day notice to Congress, or the required specific reasons for the dismissal. The latter requirement was put in place to avoid political mass firings, such as this.

Our Government is the Envy of the World

People in most parts of the world would tell you that, as governments go, we have one of the best in the world. More than a quarter of the world’s population has to pay bribes to get their government bureaucrats to do anything for them.  While our politicians are, in the post Citizens United world of  campaign funding, highly bribed,  civil servants in the nuts-and-bolts side of government are pretty straightforward.

We take for granted all of those people who make sure that our roads are paved, our trash is picked up, and that our toilets flush. That our taps have clean water running out of them. That we don’t have to bribe a police officer to help us, and that the fire department won’t let our house burn to the ground without paying for their services rendered.  

In a lot of parts of the world, those are unimaginable luxuries.

A lot of what government does is routine, boring, and absolutely necessary. Things that American businesses and citizens alike use to platform the success, peace and security which we consider “normal.”

So why is it that we seem drawn, like rubber-neckers at a major freeway accident, to listen to the rantings of handfuls of crazies screaming and yelling, amplified by an South African billionaire opportunist, an Australian propaganda hawker, and a few shovelfuls of assorted other nuts and whack jobs ranting endlessly into the airwaves bouncing off the ionosphere who seem to have been able to poison the public perception of government as this malignant force of evil?

We can laugh off the Pythons crazy counterrevolutionaries.  We can’t laugh off Trump, and his MAGAts, as they move us towards a fascist oligarchy, and the end of our Constitutional democracy, that is the real “shining light” for the world.

It’s time to get the word out:

The Government is US.

Government is GOOD.

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Musk’s WreXing Crew

Yesterday? It was USAID’s turn.

The New York Times reported, on Sunday that “[t]he two top security officials at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) were put on administrative leave on Saturday night after refusing to give representatives of Elon Musk access to internal systems, according to three U.S. officials with …

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We are at war.

It’s not the normal kind of shooting war, with tanks, and planes, and ships. It’s not the “cyber war” that we’ve seen deployed, here, and there to prove that we can mess with each other’s technology.

This is the war for the development, deployment, and ‘soul,’ of artificial intelligence (AI).

For most folks, this subject can feel a bit complex. The whole point of AI is that it’s supposed to be simple, right?

Therein lies the quietest of dangers.

Okay, What EXACTLY is an AI?

An AI is not human. It is meant to emulate the way that humans interact with one another, though. It is built with that kind of super broad ability to understand us, no matter how we communicate, to improve our very imperfect ability to communicate what we want to know.

If you’ve never directly used an AI, it isn’t like any interaction that you’ve had with a computer before.

Usually, we put something simple into a search box. Whether it’s a web browser, or a spreadsheet, the computer tries to localize that information, and provide answers. Users have been programmed, to structure our search queries so that we get an answer, close enough to what we want, that we don’t have to scroll through pages of “wrong” answers.

Imagine having a super-smart assistant, who knows pretty much everything, or at least, can find something very quickly for you.

That still sounds like a search engine? True. Try to argue with Siri, or Google? They just provide you with other, usually wrong, or inappropriate, information.

You can argue, though, with an AI. Point out weaknesses, or inconsistencies in what it is telling you. Ask it about its methods to find information, and set your own parameters, if you’re subscribed to the paid versions.

At one point, since ChatGPT 4.0 now shows you sourcing, I asked the AI to use first, or original sources, not secondary ones that were referencing the original source. It did. They were much better. I then asked it to only show me first sources.

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As you notice, it’s not a “programming language.” If you can speak a human language, you can ‘talk’ to an AI.

Why AI is Booth Great & Dangerous

AI is a human design. You can have relatively benign designers, who program it to do good, routine, and even pretty inspirational things, at incredible speeds.

There are, in the AI world, some very dark individuals, owners, and governments, though. Their developers and decision-makers, can:

• embed specific biases,

• enforce a political dogma,

• steer people toward, or away from information in a user request;

• appease a user’s bias, or point-of-view, providing incomplete information.

This is done through:

• Data Selection and Curation:

  • Data that builds AI models, curated to reflect a particular perspective, by selectively including, or excluding. information aligning with that desired worldview.

  • The AI then may continue to reinforce biases through algorithm design, and weighting that prioritizes content that fits a preferred narrative, subtly shaping users' perceptions.

  • Iterative Training - Reinforcement of learning techniques that further adjust the model’s output to favor desired viewpoints.

• Content Framing and Language Use

  • Word choice, tone, and/or structure, can influence user interpretations of information.

  • Seemingly neutral guidance, with subtle bias, can get users to adopt particular values, or conclusions, over time.

• Adaptive Feedback Loops and Omissions

  • AI systems can adapt responses, based on user interactions, to reinforce preferred ideas by amplifying preferred feedback from like-minded users, while suppressing dissenting viewpoints, creating an echo chamber effect, without overt coercion.

  • AI can subtly omit opposing perspectives, or competing ideas. Users believing they have received comprehensive information, will not challenge it. Only subject experts would know that they have only been exposed to a curated, omissive subset.

Ownership Matters

The big players are warring for the “soul” of AI. Their approaches, to both its growth, and the “guardrails” on how it is developed, vary widely.

There is open disagreement about how best to move forward. There are no real, consistent guardrails, or regulation for AI beyond some very limited rules. There is also intense competition, from moneyed players, and a new Chinese entry

What is Stargate?

Trump, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, and Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison announced the new mega-company. Trump called it the “largest AI infrastructure project in history.”

Stargate proposes to centralize and pool compute resources for the next generation of AI models, by:

• Massively Scaling AI Training Infrastructure – Leveraging high-performance supercomputers for AGI development, amongst the competitors.

• Accelerating Research – Coordinating efforts, among industry leaders, to fast-track AI advancements.

• Creating an AI Safety Framework – A potential governance model to mitigate risks associated with powerful AI systems, is mentioned, but has no depth, beyond a resolution. It does present a vision into which all of the existing larger AI developers are going to buy.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk, who is very embedded in the Trump Administration, took a shot at Stargate on X.

Musk opposes all regulation. His xAI has a goal of being “truthful,” but if it mirrors Musk’s ideas of “truth,” it will be sorely lacking. Ellison, at Oracle, and Softbank, are more peripheral players, to date, in the burgeoning AI marketplace.

If that wasn’t messy enough, a Chinese startup just crushed most American and European AI projects.

What is DeepSeek?

The AI world was rocked, on Tuesday, when DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup, revealed that it’s product, Deepseek-R1, which is democratically Open Source, delivers higher performance, at a fraction of the development costs of the competitors, as well as reduced costs in both power consumption, and data processing time.

The announcement promptly wiped a staggering $593B of value from Nvidia, which makes advanced hardware for AI.

Oversight? What Oversight?

The Trump Administration has been gutting every form of regulation, since he took office. The Biden Administration’s AI Executive Order is no less likely to be scrapped. That leaves the European Union’s EU AI Act as the strongest, and clearest regulatory structure in the world.

There is no single authority yet. Nuclear, and aviation businesses have the international watchdogs, like the IAEA or ICAO.

The U.S., EU, and China argue over AI governance models. We either need an international body, like the International Atomic Energy Agency, or an international treaty organization. Neither, with Trump in the White House, seem to be on the horizon.

Militarization / Weaponization

With the government dangling billion dollar contracts for the military, NSA, and other less “friendly” uses of AI, many companies have abandoned their “peaceful uses” pledge. Google quietly dropped its promise not to use its AI research for such projects. OpenAI dropped their restrictions to work with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and with Anduril, to develop drone defense technologies. Meta, Anthropic, and Palantir, similarly have made their AI research available to the US Military.

Star Trek or 1984?

Whether AI becomes a beneficent boon to world knowledge, improving processes, and more, or descends into despotic mind control of the masses, is still in flux.

Demanding more unification, and accountability, of the world’s AI leading companies, and governments, is up to us, as citizens, of our respective countries. We have to be loud about making sure that one of the most impactful technologies works for the benefit of ALL of humanity, not just the richest few.

If we leave it to the 1% titans, fighting for control of its Soul, AI will become our manipulative master, not our friend.

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Donald Trump is in bed, in the White House. He’s downing his third Mickey D’s Big Mac.

He’s upset.

His coronation, er, inaugeration, was sparsely attended. He moved it indoors, sticking it to the people who paid thousands to see their cult leader, er, candidate(?) drive by.

Suddenly, the ghost of George Washington steps out of the wall, by the fireplace, …

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