What happens when special interests dominate the public interest

AI data centers consume huge 

amounts of electricity

As usual, it’s almost all and only about wealth and power. About the most protection for the public interest us and the public interest can expect from the MAGA party in congress is feeble virtue signaling. Special interests own and control the MAGA party. An article by tom’s Hardware, US Senate kills bill that could potentially shield Americans from skyrocketing power bills due to AI data centers — opponents say bill is ‘toothless’ and doesn’t do enough to protect citizens, makes the situation clear. MAGA politicians proposed a bill that makes it look like they want to protect consumers from costs of gigantic new data centers for AI. The proposed law, the Ratepayer Protection Act, was a bill designed to shield everyday Americans from rapidly rising electricity costs driven by data center buildouts nationwide.

How would the proposed bill to protect consumers from eating the costs of AI electricity demands? By imposing a federal standard for states and Public Utility Commissions that required regulators to consider whether entities that consume large amounts of electricity, such as data centers, should pay the incremental costs of energy infrastructure needed to serve them. MAGA politicians in the House and Senate proudly voted for the toothless bill, but Senate Dems opposed it. The bill died in the Senate because MAGA could not override a Dem veto. In line with special interest benefits, the proposed bill did not require any utility anywhere to do anything to protect consumers. It only required them to consider protecting consumers.

How this will probably play out

Given how sophisticated MAGA and allied special interest propaganda is, most consumers are probably gonna get whacked with big electricity rate increases disguised as something or anything other than charges for the AI industry and big corporate AI users to shift costs onto us so they can capture the cash. Absent enforceable rules to protect us, the cost burden will be allocated through opaque utility proceedings and tactics. We will not see an explicit line item labeled “AI subsidy” or cost. The new charges are likely to quietly appear as (1) bills paid later for infrastructure built against forecasts of future electricity demand, (2) higher base rates and delivery charges, (3) “grid-modernization” or reliability surcharges, (4) new generation and transmission investments characterized as serving the overall load growth, and/or (5) public subsidies and tax expenditures that reduce public revenue for schools, infrastructure, and services.

The bottom line for special interest before the public interest politics is predictable in our now fully corrupted pay-to-play political system. The added cost burden will very likely be diffuse, delayed, technical, hard for any individual household to trace to one firm or one project, and/or hard to impossible to understand. Meanwhile, benefits will be concentrated with utilities, hyperscalers**, big landowners, major contractors, and MAGA-connected developers.

** A hyperscaler is a technology company that operates enormous, globally distributed data-center networks and sells computing power, data storage, networking, and increasingly AI capacity on demand. The usual examples include Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Oracle Cloud. Companies like OpenAI are not yet hyperscalers.

Q1: Is it likely that (1) if passed, this bill would this bill have done nothing of substance because nothing stops regulators right now from considering consumer protections, and (2) this bill was only designed to make MAGA politicians in congress look good just before the midterms, so that they can win and continue screwing us for at least the next two years, if not forever?

Q2: Is is fair to say that MAGA politics is almost exclusively about a struggle about concentrating wealth and power with elites at the expense of the public interest?[1]

Footnote:

1. For better or worse, the public interest is a contested concept, arguably an essentially contested concept. Some people will sincerely believe that leaving electricity rates up to the free markets best serves the public interest. Others will disagree. In a democracy, reasonable compromise is supposed to deal with intractable disagreements like this. In authoritarian states, public opinion is mostly irrelevant. To MAGA’s authoritarianism, contrary public opinion is usually mostly irrelevant, unless it is election time. In election season, MAGA politicians try to deliver enough lip service about what we want to get elected or re-elected. The rest of the time, MAGA elites demagogue on us and deceive us to our endless detriment.

In politics, we usually don’t get what we want but we sometimes do get what we voted for.

Source

It’s not dementia, it’s malicious cruelty, corruption, bigotry and tyranny

Another observer has come to the conclusion that Trump’s extremely nasty brand of politics isn’t due merely to dementia. Instead, it much worse than that. A substack post, Trump’s Behavior Isn’t Dementia. The Truth Is Far Worse, cogently argues that that attributing Trump’s behavior to dementia mistakes an intentional, long-running authoritarian style for cognitive incapacity. That risks excusing or minimizing the political danger of the bigoted, cruel, kleptocratic authoritarianism that drives the MAGA wealth and power political movement.

Simply put, the argument is that calling Donald Trump’s conduct “dementia” is unsupported and politically misleading. Its central claim is that his behavior is better understood as an intentional, longstanding pattern of domination, cruelty, manipulation, and exploitation of chaos, not an involuntary cognitive disorder. The post contends that a dementia explanation wrongly turns deliberate conduct into a medical mystery and can can lead people underestimate his personal agency.

This is not new. For decades, Trump used provocation, humiliation, dishonesty, insults, and aggressive norm-breaking as tools for gaining attention, exerting power, and keeping opponents off balance. His incoherence and erratic conduct need not reflect mental incapacity alone, which probably is significant. Mental incapacity can and very likely does coexist with his calculated, toxic political behavior. Blaming it all on dementia can have unhelpful impacts such as reducing his accountability by framing harmful actions as medical symptoms instead of choices, encouraging public passivity, or obscure the enabling role of allies, media systems, and voters who support or normalize Trump’s extremely abnormal conduct and politics.

What about Project 2025?

Regarding evidence of intentionality, the substack post points out that Trump and MAGA elites are well on their way to accomplishing hundreds of authoritarian and kleptocratic goals laid out in Project 2025. As of October 2, 2026, the Project 2025 Tracker shows 141 objectives that MAGA completed, with another 70 underway. That requires sustained, focused intent and planning, That is not random loose cannon blasts. Public attention to Trump’s mental decline distracts people from the ~66% of tracked Project 2025 objectives already completed or underway. Trump personally has completed 11 of 13 tracked executive-office objectives, with two more underway.

Q1: Is it likely that Trump’s toxic corruption and authoritarianism is mostly knowing and intentional and not primarily driven by dementia?

Q2: Whatever Trump’s cognitive state, is he nonetheless still morally responsible for his administration’s successful or ongoing pursuit of 211 authoritarian, kleptocratic Project 2025 objectives, or is what he’s doing a good thing and making America great again, or something else?

MAGA’s authoritarian and kleptocratic damage runs broad and deep

Trump corruption now runs free and wild across the globe

Corruption, Inc.

Trump is trying to negotiate a deal with Russia to buy oil-related assets in Russia and elsewhere. It somehow has something do with the Ukraine war. Maybe. People directly or indirectlyinvolved include Trump, his sons, Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, one of the president’s daughters, and the Witkoff family. They all all have financial ties to partners in the deal. The deal requires sign off from Trump and the Kremlin. The Trump family and the president’s business partners would benefit financially if the deal is signed.

The deal involves sale foreign assets of Lukoil, a Russian energy giant. Fire sale prices are involved because US sanctions made them basically worthless to investors in Russia. Gas stations in the United States, refineries in Eastern Europe and oil fields around the world are involved.

The relevant public questions here, e.g., Ukraine’s sovereignty, Russian aggression, sanctions policy, and the terms of a settlement, are linked to opportunities for private wealth, political favors, American foreign policy, and Dog only knows what other sleaze and corruption might be involved. This deal is does not present just a perception problem with nothing more. The conflicts of interest and corruption are real. This proposed deal corrupts the core purpose of public office, converting it from service to the public interest to service to private interests. Here, private enrichment is part of the bargaining for policy decisions that should be governed by American security interests, the rule of law, US alliance obligations, and the interests of Ukrainian people.

In view of (1) Trump's rock solid track record of corruption, and (2) his admiration for Putin and brutal dictators generally, this proposed deal is obviously corrupt. American leverage over sanctions and war diplomacy is being sold off for a commercial opportunity for Trump, his family and his inner circle, while selling Putin a means of cultivating benefits he wants to get. Trump is trying to betray us and the Ukraine to rake in more cash. Corruption here amounts to the conversion of public power and foreign policy into a private cash opportunity for Trump and his family and chosen friends.

Q1: Should ethical public administration ask officeholders to avoid conflicts of interest, non-disclosures for deals, self-dealing, foreign leverage for profit, crony favoritism, and family nepotism?

Q2: Does democratic accountability reasonably ask if citizens can reasonably believe that state power is being wielded for the public rather than for corrupt purposes or favored special interests or persons?

Q3: Is Trump is trying to betray us and the Ukraine to rake in more cash?

Some info sources:

U.S.-Russia Talks on Ukraine Now Involve an Oil Deal Tied to Trump Allies

Trump, Putin, Ukraine and an Oil Deal: 5 Takeaways

Is America a Kleptocracy? -- in non-kleptocracies, grand corruption scandals may shock the conscience and grab headlines because they are not the norm. Such grand corruption in a kleptocracy is not an aberration but instead the unifying purpose and core function of the state. The scandals come so fast, so widespread, and so large that many citizens feel powerless to respond.

Kleptocracy Tracker Timeline -- “Once upon a time (and not even that long ago), blatant conflicts of interest, especially involving foreign entities, were something presidents sought to avoid.”

Beyond Liberalism vs. Conservatism: A System for Legitimate Disagreement

What they have in common is disagreement

Political disagreement is human, and so is authoritarianism

By now, anyone paying even modest attention to politics should see that many or most political disagreements cannot be conclusively settled by evidence or logic alone. Abortion is understood by some as a wrongful killing, while supporters disagree. Such conflicts are intensified by ordinary human limitations. We are often inconsistent, self-interested, tribal, and capable of hypocrisy. In politics simple answers rarely deliver uncontested truth or moral certainty. Politics is a struggle over (1) power and contested concepts, e.g., freedom, equality, justice, rights, security, order, morality, and the public interest, and (2) who gets to define them in law or state power. The rational objective here is not to abolish disagreement. That is impossible. Instead, to stay away from tyranny and corruption political systems need to contain disagreement in institutions that allow people to remain political equals while continuing to disagree.

What is eroding civil American political life is not just disagreement. The weakening of the norms and institutions that make disagreement governable are failing. What is needed is things like (1) good faith commitment to facts and robust truths, (2) acceptance of electoral loss, (3) reasonable constitutional restraints, (4) defense of civil liberties, equal citizenship, independent courts, peaceful political competition, and (5) willingness to compromise without surrendering basic rights any more than necessary. Our democracy is failing on multiple fronts, e.g., congressional gridlock, expanded executive power, overt partisan threats and reprisals linked to nonviolent speech, and greatly weakened anticorruption safeguards.

Contemporary conditions offer no basis for complacency. Expert analyses find global freedom declines for the last two decades. In a 2025 assessment, 54 countries deteriorated in political rights and civil liberties, while only 35 improved. Its assessment found that only 21 percent of the world’s population lived in countries rated “Free.”

The implication is that a pluralistic democratic society needs a durable system for legitimate disagreement. That means we need democratic elections and representation, secular, publicly defensible laws, defenses of civil liberties equal legal and political standing, independent non-partisan courts, functioning, accountable institutions, and compromise on revisable policy. We need to oppose compromises that unduly sacrifice basic rights or permit either state tyranny or private domination.

Meta-ideology: Moving past liberalism and conservatism

Politics is saturated with contested concepts, including freedom, equality, justice, democracy, rights, public interest, order, security, and decency. Reasonable people disagree deeply and often irreconcilably over what those terms mean and require in law or practice. A society that one group calls orderly and morally decent may appear to another as oppressive, exclusionary, economically dominating, or tyrannical. The danger begins when (1) a political faction treats its own contested conception of virtue, tradition, religion, national identity, or public order as self-evidently authoritative, and (2) uses the state and major private players to impose it on dissenters. Liberal theories of public justification address this by holding that coercive laws need reasons citizens can evaluate and have reasons to endorse.

Liberalism has the stronger inherent claim to personal freedom because it begins with the equal moral standing of persons and places the burden of justification on those who would coerce them. Conservatism can protect real and important liberties, but it also gives weight to inherited institutions, authority, social stability, property, religion, family norms, and cultural continuity. Those values can support human flourishing, but they can also become grounds for subordinating people whose identities, beliefs, relationships, or economic interests depart from dominant norms. The central liberal question is not whether tradition or order has value, but whether preserving either justifies restricting the equal freedom and civic standing of people who do not share the prevailing ideal.

Freedom, however, cannot be reduced to freedom from government action. In a capitalist society, people may be free from government, but dependent on employers, landlords, insurers, creditors, monopolies, or owners of wealth. Taxation, public services, labor law, antitrust, consumer protections, civil-rights law, and environmental regulation can restrict particular private powers while enlarging individual freedom, security, and independence. The crucial question is therefore not simply whether a policy involves government intervention, but whose power it limits, whose choices it expands, whether it prevents public or private domination, and whether it is necessary, proportionate, accountable, and consistent with basic civil liberties. Analyses of capitalism and economic democracy specifically identify the danger that concentrated wealth and corporate authority are sometimes sources of domination by converting economic inequality into unequal political power and influence.

Because no final agreement about the good life or public interest is possible, the best practical alternative is a system for legitimate disagreement. In the US, that means free and fair democratic elections, reasonable compromise, secular and publicly justifiable law, rule-bound institutions, equal citizenship, civil liberties, due process, independent courts, and protections against both state tyranny and concentrated private wealth and power. Such a system will be slow, imperfect, and contentious. Its virtue is not that it resolves disagreement. Its virtues is that it permits citizens with profoundly different convictions to live as equals, contest power peacefully, revise policy, and prevent any temporary majority, wealthy minority, religious orthodoxy, or authoritarian leader from turning a disputed moral vision into permanent rule. Democratic legitimacy is strengthened when most citizens see laws as publicly justified rather than the commands of a winning faction. The rule of law constrains this kind of arbitrary exercise of official power.

Q1: Do we need (1) a robust, rule of law-constrained democratic system for legitimate disagreement to play out, or (2) since democracy is a failed system of governance, the winning side should take no prisoners and not worry about democracy, civil liberties or the rule of law?

Q2: Should the authoritarianism of Trump and MAGA elites, limit disagreement and just rule as they want because they are in power, or should there still be reasonable compromise?

Some info sources:

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Liberalism”

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Conservatism”

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Democracy”

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “The Rule of Law”