It doesn’t seem like taking Steve Bannon at his word is a very good idea. Reports here and here from various sources have done just that though (video of Bannon @ CPAC).
The phrase that is been used frequently to describe Bannon’s agenda is — ‘deconstruction of the administrative state’. Breitbart, Steve Bannon’s gig. seems real happy about this narrative, declaring it:
“The most important two minutes of Steve Bannon’s CPAC speech”
It’s a mistake to repeat this kind of framing — imo
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Sure,.. the GOP is happy with neutering the EPA; handing over the State to a Climate denying Big Oil Magnate with enormous financial ties (obligations) to Russia; putting a Wall Street hedge fund “foreclosure king” in charge of the Treasury Dept; a forced-birther to head the Health and Human services Dept; a segregationist with a long anti-civil rights record as the top cop in the land; a Ponzi scheming religious nut job more interested in draining the Treasury for her mutli $billion dollar charter school pyramid than advancing the public interest of public education as head of the Department of Education; with more unfit personnel I won’t get into, and an actual idiot in charge of a nuclear weapons program to head the Department of Energy, an agency he couldn’t at one point even remember, much less what it means
Here is a partial list of the Trump regime cabinet picks
So it seems to me, the media is adopting a narrative that pleases the rwnj’s, Libertarians, Alt-right etc. Hell bent on proving the righteousness of their anti-government stand.
When the opposite is the truth. The GOP want corporations in charge of these agencies. Placing the levers of power in the hands of the few
I stumbled across this Heritage Foundation Reagan’s narrative just the other day.
A couple of GOP favorites:
“a blueprint for grabbing the government by its frayed New Deal lapels and shaking out 48 years of liberal policy.”
Exactly: “grabbing the government..” — corporate control.
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and this old lie:
“Government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem.”
Then the long time and very successful Reagan myth: “...government is the problem”
Taken up by Bannon:
“deconstructing the administrative state” — sounds like a Frank Luntz special adaptation on the Reagan “small government” farce.
When what is happening as far as I can tell so far, is for corporations that control the GOP, to grasp and control; to annex our people’s government and the commons into corporate domain, without any checks and balances getting in the way of controlling the “administrative state”
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Here is a Report from Rachel Maddow yesterday on just one of Trump/Bannon/Heritage Foundation/ALEC cabinet picks..
— Scott Pruitt to head the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency).
The GOP and specifically senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, knowing that the battle to keep Scott Pruitt’s e-mails hidden was lost; (e-mails that exposed Pruitt’s absolute subservience to the only constituency he takes his instructions from — Big Oil/PetroChemical conglomerates/Utility corporations), quickly rushed through Pruitt’s confirmation to the head the EPA
This report is just one example revealing the GOP’s goal of expanding government reach into people’s homes; their personal lives; who they can or can’t marry; selling the public space (National Parks and land) for pennies on the dollar to corporate “interests”; limiting Civil liberties and Rights: Voting Rights, A woman’s Reproductive freedom, Immigration; LGBTQ Rights: Religious freedom for all faiths; and many more intrusive forms of government: annexing the levers of power into corporate control.
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I’d heard of and written about republicans taking their marching orders straight from “conservative” think tanks like ALEC/ Heritage Foundation and other one-stop-legislation-mills...
...But this kind of corporate annexation of an acting State Attorney General kind of stunned me
— February 23, 2017
Rachel Maddow looks at new reporting into newly confirmed EPA chief Scott Pruitt's e-mails as Oklahoma AG that includes not only a close look at his ties to the oil and gas industry but also his role in a horrifically botched execution.
Scott Pruitt, the former Attorney General of Oklahoma, under the instructions of Big Oil/PetroChemical/fracking lobbyists, literally copy & pasted their demands in Pruitt’s ongoing lawsuits against the EPA.
Pruitt was instructed by these very same lobbyists to pretend that these copy and pasted demands originated from the Attorney Generals office headed by Pruitt at the time because:
Two years ago was this report: Ukraine - the corporate annexation as an example of corporate dominance
It seems to me we Dems should be telling our own story. Bannon’s threats to “deconstruct the administrative state” is the rwnj-pleasing-small-government narrative we should reject and correct with our own — the truth — imo.
Yes, Bannon and the GOP both want to ruin the EPA’s ability to protect the environment by shielding corporate polluters, but they also intend to use the EPA, and other agencies as their weapon.
We should reject Bannon’s ambitions and his framing of them. The GOP needs these institutions and the levers of power they provide.
Former Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt is a perfect example of a republican puppet bought and paid for and put into a position of power to do the bidding of the corporations who put him there
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We might even get rational middle of the road republicans and maybe even the so-called small government libertarian types to reject the Trump/Bannon/GOP regime when they finally realize that the only Big $ corporate government, not of the people, is the one they voted for when they cast their ballot for the republican.
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And I haven’t even gotten around to Bannon’s ‘Manifest Destiny’ (Eurasianism) of White nationalism/white supremacy — that kind of government expansion doesn’t happen without a huge military presence as the driving force in foreign policy
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...this illegitimate administration
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end note: Rachel Maddow also has a report coming soon on Scott Pruitt’s involvement with a botched execution, and documentation of his after-the-fact lying about it