You’re Fired

47 Cronies Drain The Swamp 20 Comments

Martin Armstrong- Trump vs Federal Unions

This is the famous cartoon on the Spoils System in politics by Thomas Nast with a statue of Andrew Jackson on a pig, which is over “fraud”, “bribery”, and “spoils”, eating “plunder”. This appeared in Harper’s Weekly on April 28, 1877, p. 325. The Spoils System has been a practice in politics whereby after winning an election, the victor gives government jobs to their supporters, friends /cronies, and relatives/nepotism as a reward for helping in their victory. As the saying that emerged with Jackson as he sought to drain the SWAMP of the establishment of the old Federalists entrenched in the North, “to the victor belong the spoils.”

20 Replies to “You’re Fired”

  1. There is a good reason that Jackson is not one of the faces on Mount Rushmore. He was one of the worst presidents the US has had. His “great victory” at New Orleans was largely due to the support given him by the pirate Lafitte ( and of course it was after the Peace Treaty of Ghent). The Trail of Tears is his main legacy other than the quote in the article.

      1. Right, because taking the elite’s sinecure away was a terrible thing to do. Yet it only affected 10% of the government workforce.

        https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Rise-of-Andrew-Jackson-2157712/Military-Career
        The Spoils System
        Throughout their campaign, Jackson’s supporters had promised to alter the status quo in the federal government by enacting a policy called “rotation in office.” They claimed it would remove entrenched elites who had come to regard their government posts as sinecures. In his inaugural address, Jackson emphasized “the task of reform” as necessary to stop appointment practices that “have placed or continued power in unfaithful or incompetent hands.” According to some scholars, rotation in office had merit by opening the door to ordinary Americans to participate in their government’s functions. And though turnover in the bureaucracy was higher than usual under Jackson, replacements were not as extensive as critics claimed. About a thousand people—a figure representing roughly 10% of the federal workforce—lost their government jobs and were replaced by Jackson loyalists.

        1. “According to some scholars, rotation in office had merit by opening the door to ordinary Americans to participate in their government’s functions. ”

          I see no reason there is merit here. Ordinary people aren’t fit to participate in government function.

    1. And worse … she was front and center when Biden gave a (leftist ‘Participant’) medal to George Soros. And you can even see Mittens Romney sitting and clapping. She was detailed to that shameful display. Now I am waiting for her WAG’s to be seen mourning her loss.

    2. And, not only her social media but her entire family’s social media was scrubbed before publicising her name.
      https://www.wnd.com/2025/02/what-are-they-hiding-female-helicopter-pilots-entire-social-media-scrubbed-before-army-releases-her-name/?utm_source=wnd-news-alerts.beehiiv.com&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=what-are-they-hiding-female-helicopter-pilot-s-entire-social-media-scrubbed-before-army-releases-her-name&_bhlid=8228a345990afb621cd132257993576b909b2800

      1. Yeah … TRUMP knew … when he suspected there was a DEI component. He wasn’t talking out of his ass … he KNEW. He was debriefed.

        Robert … question for you since I have ZERO social media presence except for SDA and maybe Link’dIN. Can anyone and everyone erase their entire social media presence in 3-days? Can my wife make her entire Facebook disappear just by asking or pressing buttons? I thought all the Social Media outlets basically OWNED your entire identity on their sites. What kind of power does it take to disappear oneself from Social Media?

        1. There’s a phrase I see often on blogs: the internet is forever. Somebody who knows the ropes will find what has been deleted. That is, if it interests him enough and he bothers to do so.

  3. Trump: Punishes Canada by imposing tariffs which in effect gives US citizens a light slap on the wrist, economically speaking.
    LPC/NDP/CPC :”Oh yeah, tough guy, watch this!”, proceeds to kick Canadian citizens in the teeth, while the USA will barely notice our tariffs.

    1. The US citizen is going to suffer immensely for their tariffs. To think otherwise is economically illiterate.

      2. Will have wait and see, if there are alternatives to our Maple Syrup, i.e. Vermont, at similar costs then it won’t be a hardship. If they can’t get their Dodge Caravan anywhere else since it is made in Ontario, then they might switch to a Chevy product. It will be an interesting experiment albeit a painful one to the folks making the goods which are tariffed. Luckily the Turd and Max Carnage both have access to a money printing press to further deflate out dollar. Just spent 100 USD on car parts from Rock Auto and it cost me 145 CAD, it will only get worse.

      3. Just remembered something else that will affect us out here on the left coast. Aviation fuel, guess which country does not make enough of it? There was a special fueling terminal built at the mouth of the Fraser River to get fuel, through a pipeline, to the Vancouver International Airport, why do you ask? Because 60% of their fuel comes from the Cherry Point Refinery in Washington State, sent up by fuel barge. We ship the unrefined oil to them, they process it and send it back to us – value and tariffs added. How well will that work out for us. This is from the website detailing the project. Note that we used to have 4 refineries in the area, now down to one. The Kinder Morgan pipeline is at capacity so no more fuel can be pushed down it.
        WHY THE PROJECT IS NEEDED
        • The project is needed because the existing fuel
        delivery system it will replace is unsustainable. It
        relies on only two sources of fuel – the Chevron
        Refinery in Burnaby and the BP Cherry Point Refinery
        in Washington State. If one of these refineries shut
        down for an extended period, airport and airline
        operations would be jeopardized.
        • Chevron supplies 40% of the airport’s needs through
        the 40-km Kinder Morgan pipeline that originates
        near Burrard Inlet and crosses Burnaby and north
        Richmond.
        • The pipeline was built at a time when four local
        refineries were operating. Chevron is the only one
        still in operation.
        • Cherry Point supplies the remaining 60%, of which
        40% is shipped via barges to the Westridge Marine
        Terminal, from where it is offloaded and shipped to
        the airport through the Kinder Morgan pipeline, and
        the remaining 20% is via tanker truck deliveries,
        which can total up to 40 a day.
        • The Kinder Morgan pipeline, which is only 150 mm
        (6 in) diameter, is at capacity and since the late 1990s
        the tanker truck deliveries have been required to
        meet YVR’s fuel demand.
        • Any growth in fuel demand at YVR depends on more
        cross-border fuel truck shipments. For example,
        adding just one daily flight to Asia would require an
        additional 800 trucks a year.

    2. When I first started in the Customs House Brokerage business, it wasn’t at all unusuall for Most Favoured Nations tariff rates to be twenty-five per cent or more, some higher than fifty per cent. Even items “of a class or kind not made in Canada” attracted fifteen per cent rates. There were duty-free items but they were the minority. By the GATT agreement, these rates were reduced over time to most less than ten, some even less than five, per cent.

      In a move that I was surprised that the US Trade Representative didn’t lose its sh*t over happened during the Harper years. During that time almost ninety per cent of the Customs Tariff Schedule was reduced to duty-free regardless of origin. Only DPRK originating products would pay thirty-five per cent duty. Under the NAFTA and USMCA, any duty paid to bring off-shore materials into a NAFTA qualified item would not be recoverable (duty drawback) if exported to an agreement party country. Harper essentially short-circuited the program by removing the duty before it was even brought into the free trade territory. Harper did it to make Canadian made products cheaper for the US market even though he claimed for all markets. It seems only now that the US has clued in.

  4. The article ends with ” This would be a major victory for Trump.”

    It will be a major victory for Americans, actually.

    The spoils system was the target of the legislation creating Civil Service – to ensure that an incoming pol couldn’t fire wholesale and put in his supporters as a reward for their votes.

    But what happens when one party finds the ways to game the system and staff it 95% with their own partisans?

    Then, the “protection” provided to workers becomes protection of partisan bureaucracy.

    The system needs a reset. That’s Trump.

  5. This afternoon, I met a 58 year old doctor (pathologist) from Charlotte, North Carolina who gleefully said he’s going to take Trump’s offer.

Proudly powered by WordPress & Skyrocket Themes

MENU

Navigation