Put your money where your principles are

Getting the attention of billionaires hacking away at the federal executive branch until there are only “little tidbits” left isn’t easy. Should you be a Democrat – Blue Dog conservative or raging progressive – don’t bother even trying. It wouldn’t end well. However, there are alternatives.

The Party of Trump (POT) is engaged in a bloodlust brought on by having won the popular vote by 1.47 percent. The Council on Foreign Relations notes that Trump's victory margin was “the fifth smallest of the thirty-two presidential races held since 1900.”

We shouldn’t be surprised by Trumpian talk stretching a few million votes out of 150 million or more into a mandate. Nor should we spend time arguing about it with him. What we should be is horrified about the way the president and Mr. Trump are going about executive branch reform.

After decades in Washington, I’ll be the first to say that there is fraud, waste, and abuse that could and should be addressed. It’s gone on for decades. Congress deserves a fair portion of the responsibility.

It seems everyone wants an airport in their district or some other way to feather their political beds. However, members might think about not obliging themselves so easily. Reform is necessary.

Yet, one would hope that the reform would be done rationally rather than as a vindictive-fueled rampage by a group of people who probably couldn’t pass a high school civics test or with any comprehension of history. The shrewdness (of the group) is the work of the world’s richest man who’s bought his way into Trump’s heart.

Don and Elon’s bromance may be hard to break – despite all the talk about the impossibility of two megalomaniacs occupying the same space. Trump worships money and the power and gold-plated bathroom fixtures it buys. I don’t even want to imagine what a love-lorn Donald Trump would do in the nation’s china shop.

At some point, the reality of the wreck Trump is wreaking may set in, and leaders in Congress may wake up to the damage being done to the economy and the federal government's ability to serve the needs of its people. It’s a lot harder to hire 250,000 competent government professionals than it was to dispense with the over 300,000 they got rid of.

I've been a bit surprised not to see more about consumers boycotting companies led by Musk, Zuckerberg, Gates, Bezos, and others for their conversion and obedience to Trump. Although It appears now that there’s movement in that direction.

On a cold day in February, “people called for a boycott of Tesla” standing in front of a dealership in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The demonstrators called for using anything Tesla, including its charging stations.

"So, let's hurt him in the pocketbook. People should boycott everything Tesla.Boycott the solar batteries. We need to make sure he can't profit off ofwhat they're doing to destroy our democracy." Susan Fecteau

The Michigan demonstrators that day only numbered 50, but they're part of an international effort to hit Musk in his piggy bank. It’s being reported that: “Tesla sales have plummeted across Europe amid fears owner Elon Musk's political affiliations are causing motorists to turn away from the electric vehicle brand.”

In Germany, Tesla sales dropped 60 percent year-on-year in January. Some attribute the precipitous decline to his December declaration supporting the far-right group Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). AfD is “a political party that many Germans consider to be dangerously descended from Nazism.”

According to DW news, the group is classified as a “suspected” terrorist organization – with “a strong anti-immigrant focus.” Musk isn’t the only one attempting to normalize AfD. Vice President JD Vance met with the party’s leader on his recent trip to Germany. AfD is polling at 20 percent ahead of the February 23rd general election.

I find Musk's sticking his nose and likely his pocketbook not just in US politics but in the affairs of other nations very disconcerting. Money in politics is nothing new, of course, but in the case of contemporary billionaires, we're talking really big bucks here.

Musk’s money can buy governments and turn elections.

Musk kicked in $288 million to Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. Big contributions make you think about them giving the giver reasonable access to the Oval Office. It appears in Musk’s case to have purchased a timeshare and license to do pretty much whatever he wants.

Should you think Musk is chain-sawing the federal government and snooping into the files of Social Security and the Treasury’s disbursements for free – he’s said to be taking no salary – and getting Dana Bash to call him Harry Bōlz on TV, think again. Consider the money he makes from the US government.

According to ABC News, Musk’s companies have entered into federal contracts worth billions of dollars. (See Figure 1/Source ABC News)

Recent reports of a potential $400 million purchase of armored Tesla trucks by the State Department caused enough consternation that the Trump administration put a hold on the negotiations. Transparency is a b*tch.

The real irony is Musk's hacking around federal agencies may, in fact, lead to increased reliance on the private companies of billionaires like himself. The demands on the federal government to get payments out and do the work directed it by Congress hasn’t stopped, even as tens of thousands of federal workers are fired or become part of the “Fork in the Road” program that promises to buy out employee contracts.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that Musk would help keep electric vehicle infrastructure and tax credits alive. But, according to the Executive Director of the EV Politics Project, Joe Sacks, Teslas aren't eligible for the same tax credits.

Musk can benefit from eliminating the kind of key EV provisions from the IRA (Inflation Reduction Act)” that his competition is able to take advantage.

A Harris poll (shared with the Guardian) found that 40 percent of Americans “have shifted their spending over the last few months to align with their moral views.” Twenty-four percent of the respondents “have even stopped shopping at their favorite stores because of their politics.”

The political split is 50 percent Democrat to 41 percent Republican. Unsurprisingly, the data shows that consumers who identify as the party out of power are more likely to let their pocketbooks do the talking. They’re more motivated.

What might be called “identity consumerism” isn’t new.

In the 1920s, Henry Ford’s “anti-Jewish campaign provoked protests and a boycott of Ford Motor automobiles.” Ford was a virulent anti-Semite. He “became a media mogul of sorts, forming the Dearborn Publishing Company and purchasing the sleepy Dearborn Independent weekly newspaper.”

He used the paper as a platform to publish “articles that would refer to Jews in every possible context as at the root of America and the world's ills.”

“Ford’s marketing of his brand of antisemitism was so successful that Adolph Hitler was quoted as saying: "I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration."

Musk isn’t the only tycoon who's decided to throw his lot in with President Trump and embrace his stances on everything from DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) to truth-telling. Zuckerberg announced an end to Meta's fact-checking – allowing false information and hate speech to populate the messages on Facebook and Instagram.

I admit to being one of the 250,000 who dropped their subscription to the Washington Post after its owner, Jeff Bezos, stopped the paper from endorsing Kamala Harris over President Trump. I'm also planning to give up my Prime account. Bezos benefits from billions of dollars in government contracting between his space company, Blue Origin, and AWS computing.

The campaign by conservatives against Bud Light over its relationship to Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender influencer, caused the company’s North American revenue to nosedive “a staggering $1.4 billion in 2023, ‘primarily due to the volume decline of Bud Light,’ according to CNN, citing the brewer’s fourth-quarter earnings report.”

As a news junkie and someone who, for decades, has relied on the Washington Post (as well as other conservative and liberal publications) for information I use in my professional life, it wasn’t easy giving up my subscription. I’m finding it no easier to leave the Amazon infrastructure– I’m a creature of habit – and the company makes it easy.

Fortunately, there are alternatives to most of these things. Tesla is not the only electric vehicle manufacturer out there; any more than Amazon is the only place to buy pet food and watch movies. I have no illusions about what I can accomplish individually by not buying a Tesla or giving up my Prime membership.

But as one of many – well, that’s a different story. There’s still power in the people.

In any event, offsetting the inconvenience of finding alternatives is the “high” I get from putting my money where my beliefs are. It’s the same pride I had in myself when I gave up smoking.