I'm sorry I can't find who he was but the first candidate to campaign saying "run government like a business" (RGLB) was not completely honest with his voters. First heard, this claim sounds like advocating for fiscal restraint or balanced budgets. It is now 2025 and we have suffered at least 45 years of this belief's impact on the American taxpayer with neither real fiscal restraint or balanced federal budgets to be seen.
In terms of the American taxpayer, more data than not supports the sad reality that RGLB has allowed if not intended the worst concentration of wealth in our history into the accounts of America's newest oligarchs. An ideology that enjoyed repeated assertion without evidence in our political rhetoric since before Saint Reagan's ascendency was then accelerated by his accompanying claim that government was the problem. Now we are left with the "blur" of governance and perpetual campaigns, the failure of checks and balances and the widest income gap on record.
The illusory truth of RGLB is a kind of meat and potatoes to the current MAGA politico. Its repetition makes more critical thinking about the facts difficult or even worse, disloyal. RGLB is repeated as if there had been no use of bankruptcy provisions or legal settlements allowing predatory business practices to continue beyond insolvency or legality. These two categories (are there others?) imply a broad range of questions and concerns in particular for two business men elected to high office, Rick Scott and Donald Trump. There are plenty more but I'm already 71 years old so . . .
Certainly many will offer that each is only guilty of "violating" the unfair standards and practices of "bad" government, think weaponization. Perhaps a question about the sequence of government empowerment, private initiative, system abuse and finally governmental lenience can help us recognize that something more like a blurring of boundaries than a war between ideologies is happening.
Doesn't it make sense that Rick Scott's medicare fraud happened AFTER a loophole was found? Was it his "better business practice" to exploit the loophole for profit? Is that what RGLB means to promote? Certainly "good government" wrote several provisions into Medicare rules but who looks at those provisions and sees loopholes when enjoying taxpayer funds?
Sensible or not, even the settlement wasn't accomplished without a "better business'" gaming of legislated standards, bureaucratic practices (more loopholes?) and judicial practice allowing Scott to retain most of his ill gotten gains AND then nearly immediately self-fund a run for political office.
Trump's bankruptcies and courtroom choreographies though "legal," show an even greater "better business" gaming of the system. How else was he ready (and at least to appear so) to self-fund his first campaign for President AFTER at least 6 bankruptcies? Let's also include the court judgements regarding Trump U and Trump Charities as we make our way through identifying the "choreography" of his dancing through courtrooms. We should ask exactly when was Trump subject to bad governance? What are the lessons his business practices could provide except to find loopholes, reduce penalties and delay judgements. No wonder this descant of the RGLB anthem is also sung by the MAGA choir.
There are others whose business practices have gained them high office and many were invited into department secretary positions with similar resumes. Many will say its too soon to tell if #47's appointments will render better proofs. I'm thinking we need not wait to find out. The lines are blurred beyond repair by recent elections. What used to be winning as a campaign strategy toward governance is now the perpetual monopolization of government.
RGLB, with the new oligarchs as best witnesses, now means that the emerging "better business" practices of hedge funds and private equity make the RGLB rules. Instead of fiscal restraint and balanced budgets we see emptying the coffers of Social Security and Medicare because government funds are just fungible accounts to be liquidated.
With Musk in the White House RGLB will not just continue to blur, it will mutate.
Part 2 coming soon.
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