“We like to think of American history as a continuous march of progress toward greater freedom, greater quality, and greater justice. But sometimes we move backward, dramatically so.”

— Richard Rothstein, author “The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America”

This one of of those times. Comic book corruption and the work of fools have conspired to elect Bizarro Robin Hood. He steals from the poor, the working class, and his own charity to enrich himself and the superwealthy who funded his return engagement to the White House.

His cabinet and top appointees are some 85 times richer than President Biden’s cast of characters. The previous record for regime wealth was held during Bizarro’s disastrous first term.

This time around, the collective net worth of Bizarro’s top appointees has been estimated to exceed $460 billion, including Muskrat’s $400 billion net worth. Even without the racist South African’s share, the cabinet appointees in the Mad King redux far exceeds the wealth of previous cabinets, including his first cabinet that was worth $3.2 billion. Biden’s cabinet collectively was worth $118 million.

“The extraordinary wealth of appointees President Donald Trump is naming to help run the government represents an unprecedentedly hands-on intervention by the billionaire class,” according to Public Citizen. “This is not just government by the top 1% — Trump’s government is rule by the top 0.0001%.”

Sixteen of the 25 wealthiest appointees and nominees belong to the top 1/1000 of a percent, meaning they are among the 813 billionaires living in the United States, according to the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit. The rest of us, about 341 million people or 99.9999% of the population, earn an average annual income of about $61,000.

It’s blatantly obvious that Bizarro and his grifting family have Putin to thank for much of their wealth. Eric Trump has admitted as much. “Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia. We’ve got some guys that really, really love golf, and they’re really invested in our programs. We just go there all the time.”

The rest of Bizarro’s alleged fortune has been amassed though inheritance, by not paying for services rendered, screwing over taxpayers, and duping MAGAs gullible enough to buy his graft.

Donald Trump Jr. was paid $813,000 in 2024 as a director of Trump Media — about a quarter of the company’s revenue — despite attending just two board meetings. The CEO of the company’s social media arm, MAGA extraordinaire Devin Nunes, was paid $47 million in total compensation. Trump Media lost $401 million last year, with revenue of $3.6 million. Enron accounting. Sounds about right for a Trump business venture.

The Trump crime family gets into the crypto business right before its pathetic patriarch takes office again. Once in, the regime immediately starts work on creating a Crypto Strategic Reserve that will invest taxpayer money in cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, XRP, solana, cardano, and ether.

Sen. Cynthia Lummis, MAGA-Wyo., has proposed reallocating money from the Federal Reserve to buy bitcoin, or leverage the government’s gold reserves to raise money for a crypto reserve.

The grift is all about inflating cryptocurrency prices with taxpayer money. In other words, a scam to enrich the Trump clan and pay back the crypto bros who helped fund Bizarro’s hateful campaign. Bizarro met with industry big shots at the White House on Friday to discuss how the government will enact his vision of making the country the “crypto capital of the world.”

He also said his administration would “end the federal bureaucracy’s war on crypto” — but not on democracy.

Journalist Noah Berlatsky called the Crypto Strategic Reserve “a kind of farm subsidy, but for billionaires making digital magic beans instead of food.”

A few weeks after Bizarro announced a major push to expand the country’s artificial intelligence infrastructure and loosen regulations on the industry, his Beavis and Butt-Head sons invested in a new company aiming to build data centers “to address the growing demand for high-performance computing infrastructure.”

This regime only cares about driving up their personal wealth, putting a stake through the heart of our flimsy democracy, and turning the United States into an oligarchy built on racism, fascism, and fear.

Less than two months into the regime, their only concern is cutting taxes for the extremely wealthy, which is them. Noting else matters, except giving Putin everything he wants and regurgitating Kremlin taking points. Make an ally beg for protection and withhold it until tribute is paid. The Ukrainian military stood beside us in the wars we fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. Putin didn’t.

Bizarro’s Day One lies, err, promises to lower grocery prices and beat down inflation haven’t materialized, because he doesn’t care about you or us. Neither do his underlings. If egg prices are too high, his agriculture secretary tells us to raise chickens. What if your municipality, landlord, slumlord or home/condo association doesn’t like poultry? If you can’t afford milk, buy a cow. If you can’t afford food, starve.

Rep. Pat Fallon, MAGA-Texas, offered his thoughts on Fox Business about plans to cut food stamp funding. “We have a message for those kind of folks: If you’re able-bodied and you want to milk the taxpayer, those days are over. Get off the couch, stop eating the Cheetos, stop buying the medical marijuana and watching television. You’re actually gonna contribute now.”

The regime’s collection of racists and Nazis decides who is able-bodied.

Fellow MAGA representative Mark Alford of Missouri says his constituents won’t mind paying higher prices because, essentially, the Mad King is awesome.

The biggest bleeders of taxpayer money is Bizarro Robin Hood and his merry band of projectionists.

The regime is smashing the public side of society so the private side can profit, at the expense of human health, the natural world, and people’s lives. MAGA capitalists like to scream that the free market is freedom. They ignore the fact this alleged freeness depends on the government, which the regime is trashing. The market requires government spending, court and monetary systems, enforcement of laws, and infrastructure.

They ignore the government subsidies used to build and maintain highways, railroads, airports, and (unfortunately) stadiums for the wealthy owners of many professional sports teams. They don’t understand or acknowledge the enormous role government played in creating the internet, advancing medical technology or eradicating the diseases they are working to bring back.

All they see is wealth they are entitled to take. They use words such as “efficiency,” “fraud,” “waste,” and “abuse” to steal taxpayer money and destroy families.

For example, about 40% of the federal contracts the regime claims to have canceled as part of its signature cost-cutting program, known as DOGE, aren’t expected to save the government any money.

While the Department of Government Efficiency mindlessly slashes and burns federal agencies, some Muskrat staffers are drawing hefty taxpayer-funded paychecks. Jeremy Lewin, a key figure in dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), reportedly makes $167,000. Kyle Schutt, a software engineer working within the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, is being paid $195,200. A 28-year-old tech entrepreneur named Nate Cavanaugh is also earning a six-figure salary.

Dynamite public education. Then privatize it. Eliminate free weather forecasts. Then charge for them. Use the federal government to grow the wealth of 0.0001% of the population, and to protect an invading army of a foreign adversary. We pay more so they can have more.

The regime’s attack on the federal workforce apparently includes cutting 7,000 jobs from the Social Security Administration and gutting the Internal Revenue Service in the middle of tax season. I’m sure this flamethrower style of governing won’t impact when senior citizens receive their fixed-income checks or when families receive their tax refunds.

Whatever IRS agents are left will most assuredly be ordered to audit the poor, working class, and enemies of the regime. We can’t tax the superwealthy because they are “job creators.”

In reality, they are nothing more than abusers of human and environmental resources. They are also thieves, and they’re thriving behind a MAGA protection racket.

Muskrat and his company Starlink are working to steal a multibillion-dollar government contract from Verizon. The Federal Aviation Administration is reportedly close to canceling a $2.4 billion contract to overhaul the communication system for the nation’s air traffic control system and handing it to a chainsaw-wielding, Nazi-saluting egomaniac.

Muskrats’ companies, including Tesla and SpaceX, have received nearly $40 billion in government contracts and subsidies over the years. Corporate welfare for him. No food stamps or health care for families in need of some help.

In another move to pay back the narcissistic South African who contributed hundreds of millions to get the Mad King and MAGAs elected, the regime is preparing to overhaul a $42.5 billion Biden-era program designed to connect tens of millions of rural Americans to reliable and affordable high-speed internet. The move is reportedly expected to benefit Muskrat.

Instead of funding the buildout of fiber optic networks, as the Biden administration planned, the regime wants states to choose the internet technology they want — states’ rights for guns and internet access but not abortions or gay marriage.

Experts told The Guardian such a move would favor satellite companies like Starlink, which owns about 62% of all operating satellites. They said using satellite services costs less to connect difficult-to-reach homes than fiber optics, but the latter provides a more reliable, faster, and less expensive option for consumers.

Muskrat’s snooping around the federal government has attracted the attention of the Chinese. Wealthy Chinese investors are quietly funneling tens of millions of dollars into private companies controlled by Apartheid Elon using an arrangement that shields their identities from public view.

Muskrat has suggested the United States privatize the Postal Service, Amtrak, and “as much as possible.”

The regime’s favoritism toward the superwealthy knows no bounds.

The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recently dropped legal action against Capital One, which the agency, under Biden, had accused of cheating customers out of more than $2 billion in interest payments on savings accounts.

The agency has also dismissed a lawsuit brought last year against the student loan servicer Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, which was accused of illegally collecting on student loans discharged in bankruptcy, and quickly dropped a case against the online lender Solo Funds, which the agency had said deceived borrowers about loan costs.

The regime has rolled back Biden administration ethics rules prohibiting executive branch employees from accepting major gifts from lobbyists. It’s trying to rob green banks of $20 billion, because the head of the Environmental Protection Agency said, “The days of irresponsibly shoveling boatloads of cash to far-left activist groups in the name of environmental justice and climate equity are over.”

The money was approved by Congress in 2022 to provide low-interest loans to tribes, small businesses, and municipalities to build solar energy, improve energy efficiency, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The money was earmarked for marginalized communities unable to attract private capital, such as rural areas of Appalachia or tribal reservations where income levels are much less than $61,000 a year.

The Wharton School class clown doesn’t understand nor care that tariffs are essentially a tax on Americans. They make lobbyists rich and kick small businesses in the privates. The regime’s coddling of the fossil fuel industry shifts the financial burden of the climate crisis onto taxpayers.

Meanwhile, Bizarro is selling government access. Corporate CEOs are reportedly paying as much as $5 million to meet one-on-one with him at his Mar-a-Lago compound. Others are paying $1 million apiece to dine with the ketchup-throwing hooligan in group settings. I’m sure they are discussing ways to create a more just and equitable society.

As the MAGAs joyfully trash the economy and work to increase the federal deficit they allegedly loathe, they have devised a way to lie about the impact of their greed and cruelty. The kakistocracy has floated the idea of excluding government spending from the gross domestic product (GDP), to obscure the impact of DOGE idiocy.

Government spending has historically been included in the GDP, because changes in taxes, regulations, spending, and deficits impact the path of overall growth.

The 99.9999% of us the regime doesn’t care about shouldn’t expect to experience much financial growth, or compassion, in this time of torment.

Frank Carini can be reached at [email protected]. His opinions don’t reflect those of ecoRI News.