A regular feature to the Chagrin Gateway Democrats from Lyn Newman

What happened? : Are you feeling a little dizzy right now? Maybe like you are recovering from whiplash?  Maybe you wanted to write to your congress people to complain about the tariffs, but are wondering if you need to do that because the tariffs off now?  Oh wait, they are back on, no now they are off! But the stock market crashed anyway. 

Or maybe you are devastated about the thousands of people that have been fired, supposedly for cause. But how could it have been for cause when many of them had just gotten good reviews.  But now they are being rehired, either because the people were needed or because judges are telling departments that the firings were illegal. So, are the tens of thousands of people fired or not? And, is the National Parks trip we planned for this summer on or off?  

Why it matters? : Aside from the fact that, to the world our government looks idiotic, this back and forth is destabilizing. And that may have been the point.  If one believes that government does not work, one has two choices: Work to make it better or dismantle it and privatize it on the assumption that businesspeople would do it better. I believe that our current administration is trying to make sure that the only conclusion is that the government cannot work and must be privatized. Good thing our president has so many rich businesspeople donors ready to step in and take over. 

What can we do about it? Flood our congress people with messages about doing their jobs. They are a co-equal branch of government. They have the power of the purse. They had no business allowing the president’s unelected biggest donor to tamper with government employment rolls or budgets. The Judiciary is doing their part. Congress needs to step up. They need to provide oversight, thought and deliberation. They should be calling Elon Musk in to account for his DOGE project and what savings he has actually found and what he intends to do with the access he has to our personal information. These things take time, but that is okay. We are all dizzy from the push-pull/stop-start.  “Move fast and break things” may work in the business world, but it is not a good way to manage people’s lives. 

Lyn Newman can be found on Bluesky