As promised in Project 2025, DJT and MAGA elites are making massive attacks on regulations and protections for workers, consumers and the environment. NPR writes about the killing of the CFPB, which is the federal agency that protects consumers from massive corporate greed, theft and fraud in finance: "The Trump administration has stopped work at the CFPB. Here's what the agency does -- The main U.S. agency tasked with overseeing the financial products and services used by everyday Americans — from credit cards to checking accounts to home loans — is the latest target of the Trump administration's effort to remake the federal government. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's new leader has shuttered the agency's headquarters and told staffers to stay at home and refrain from doing any work. .... An independent bureau within the Federal Reserve, the CFPB's job is to ensure that the financial products and services offered to American consumers are fair and transparent."
The Hill comments: "The Trump administration is moving rapidly to gut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), halting the agency’s work, cutting off its funding and shutting down its headquarters. .... “I think everyone assumes this is the USAID playbook, and I think everyone’s operating off of the assumption that we’re about to get annihilated, the way that they were annihilated,” a CFPB employee told The Hill, referring to the U.S. Agency for International Development."
So, there we have it, MAGA is doing exactly what Project 2025 promises and what DJT claims to be 100% ignorant of, while falsely claiming to not like some of it. How can anyone not know anything about something, but still not like some of it? They can't. But, they can lie about it.
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And, it's not just MAGA government that is going after worker, consumer and environmental protections. Brass knuckles capitalists are gleefully joining in the massacre. Techdirt writes:
"Automakers Sue To Kill Maine’s Hugely Popular ‘Right To Repair’ Law -- A little over a year ago, Maine residents voted overwhelmingly (83 percent) to pass a new state right to repair law designed to make auto repairs easier and more affordable. More specifically, the law requires that automakers standardize on-board diagnostic systems and provide remote access to those systems and mechanical data to consumers and third-party independent repair shops. But as we’ve seen with other states that have passed right to reform laws (most notably New York), passing the law isn’t the end of the story. Corporate lobbyists have had great success not just watering these laws down before passage, but after voters approve them. They’ve also been swarmed by coordinated industry lawsuits and falsehood-spewing attacks. -- But the Alliance For Automotive Innovation also just filed a new lawsuit saying the law isn’t fully cooked and therefore violates the law. .... The group is correct that Maine’s right to repair law isn’t fully cooked yet. What they don’t say is they’re one of the reasons the law isn’t fully cooked. Or that they oppose the popular law either way."It's just business as usual. Capitalism always does the same thing. It looks for new and exciting ways to screw the customer harder and harder. It always seeks to charge what the market will bear, and a little more if it can pull it off, e.g., via plutocracy or oligarchy. When capitalism is under-regulated, there are lots of new and exciting ways to screw the customer harder and harder.
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Another target of MAGA and Project 2025, is the right to privacy. MAGA and its Project are generally hostile to privacy rights for average people. It is hostile to the right to privacy, particularly in areas like reproductive care, data collection for marginalized groups, and in the broader context of consumer data privacy. Its proposals and policy directions reduce privacy protections. That transfers to power inherent in privacy from citizens and consumers to government and the business sector. With the loss of privacy power prioritize, government and business interests are free to take whatever advantage of newly exposed individuals there might be.
Senator Charles Percy (R-IL, 1967-1985)
Commenting in the hearings on the Privacy Act of 1974
DOGE Betrays Foundational Commitments of the Privacy Act of 1974
Musk’s attempts to gain access to agency databases is an egregious violation of the act, which protects personal information from abuse
Under the auspices of the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency,” Elon Musk and former staffers—all recent college and high school graduates—have been given access to agency databases teeming with sensitive personal information. The group has entered the Treasury Department’s payment system, which stores federal tax returns, Social Security numbers, home addresses, and birth dates; the Office of Personnel Management’s system, which contains background checks, medical information, bank account information, and biometric data of current, former, and prospective federal employees, contractors, and family members; and the General Service Administration’s system, which stores similarly sensitive personal data.Condemnation and lawsuits followed, and rightfully so. No one—not even special government employees—should access agency “systems of records” without proper authorization under the Privacy Act of 1974. Nothing suggests that Musk or his employees have such authority. Privacy Act violations are not trivial. Profound harms to privacy and democracy are at stake.
What are the consequences of abandoning the right to privacy? Things like (i) unlimited government and corporate surveillance without oversight, (ii) abuse of power by unrestrained law enforcement, corporations and religion, and (iii) reduced data security to save money. China's digital tyranny relies very heavily on it unrestricted power to surveille its people and its corporations. There, all the power is with the government. In the US, all the lost privacy power will flow to governments, corporations and Christianity.
Asymmetry in power
Wealthy and powerful elites will have their privacy and private affairs (figurative and literal) protected as much as they want. How much? Essentially all of it, if that's what they want. How can that be possible? Easy. They can live their lives and run their businesses shielded behind privacy laws they demand remain intact, e.g., tax privacy laws, business privacy laws and NDAs (non-disclosure agreements). Elites and big corporations routinely use NDAs to hide wealth, personal activities and illegal activities. How many NDAs shield you? I bet none.
Qs: Do you think that DJT, Musk or MAGA elites generally care at all about our loss of privacy rights and abuses that will entail? Do you think that obliterating the Privacy Act of 1974 will lead to more transparency in the federal government, wealthy people and large corporations?
