Justice for the rich

Za "Time" from New York

photo: ap photo

The euphoria of the White House after the adoption of the "big, beautiful law", which contains the main political priorities of Donald Trump, did not touch the streets of his hometown. For a large number of New Yorkers, it was much more important than the budget signing ceremony in front of the presidential residence to get to friends who live somewhere near the Brooklyn Bridge, from where they will be able to watch the National Day fireworks, since the police already in the early afternoon hours began to close the streets towards the East River, allowing only those who live in that area to pass. And when they managed to get somewhere behind Cadman Park, then, gathered next to the large windows in the neoclassical buildings from the beginning of the last century, they looked in awe at the sky above Manhattan, which was overflowing with the colors of the American flag, and described that scene in almost the same words that the president used to praise the fulfillment of his pre-election promises.

That's another similarity between the people of New York and the one who is at the head of the country. When everything goes right, they say it's "magnificent", and if they say "everything is fine", it usually means that it went wrong; if someone dares to say that something is "unbearable", they will think that something is wrong with him and will bypass him in a wide arc, so that only the former NBA star Charles Barkley is allowed to call things "terrible", but only in his sports comments on the television station TNT. The president has taken that national streak to the extreme, but regardless of his added penchant for exaggeration about what he's doing, even those more grounded will have to admit that Donald Trump hasn't been doing badly in recent days. Actually, he's doing fantastic.

BIG AND BEAUTIFUL

Despite the strong opposition of a large number of Republicans, such as Senator from North Carolina Tom Tillis, who called the budget proposal "treason", or Senator from Alaska Lisa Murkowski, for whom harmonizing the details of the law was "real torture", Trump managed to win, convince, appease, force or scare the majority in both houses of Congress to support his proposal. For the first time since he was re-elected president, he has put all his energy into getting the Republican Party's support for this bill.

Accustomed to rule by presidential decrees, such as imperial decrees that do not require parliamentary support, this is his first proposal to be put to a vote since taking office. It wouldn't be a surprise if it was the last. In any case, the passage of legislation that defines government spending and tax policy proves that Trump has a firm grip on the entire Republican Party. Giving an arbitrary deadline to pass the budget in Congress before July 4, regardless of the uncertainties that lasted until the last moment, is a confirmation of his self-confidence. Or maybe just proof of the success of the assertiveness strategy. Nobody likes losers in this country. Failure is not forgiven.

Since money has a greater value in America than in other parts of the world, budget distribution is not only a matter of the functioning of the state, but speaks of the political priorities of those in power.

More than nine hundred pages of the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act", a name that has not been recorded in the history of this parliamentary democracy, directly privileges the rich at the expense of the poor, with an additional increase in the national debt. The law is good for the haves, bad for the working class and those on low incomes. Or, in the local language, wonderful for those who do not lack money, and solid for those who would not complain if they earned more.

Although everyone is constantly talking about this text, the number of those who have studied the entire law is probably not greater than those who have carefully read it. The palanquin philosophy, which presents a considerable challenge to those who have a formal education in that field, so probably a huge number did not manage to get past the first pages of Radomir Konstantinović's book, which everyone constantly quotes. By the way, tickets for the New York performance, as stated in the announcement of Broadway's "Peter J. Sharp Theater", Slavoj Žižek's "philosophy rock star", have just gone on sale, at a price of 45 to 80 dollars, a performance that takes place at the same time as Billie Eilish's concert in Belmont Park on Long Island, so everyone can calmly decide what to do on October 25. Character is our destiny.

GIFT TO THE RICH

Based on the hundreds of pages of the summary of the law, which were skimmed by those who supported this act in Congress, it is clear that the main priorities are the extension of tax breaks for the one percent of the richest Americans who earn more than 900000 dollars a year, because they will pay 66000 dollars less in taxes, then the strengthening of border security to prevent the entry of illegal immigrants, and those who have entered illegally are expelled from the country, and defense in which the central place occupies the "Golden Dome" anti-missile defense system. At the same time, subsidies for clean energy, food assistance programs will be significantly reduced, and the independent Congressional Budget Office claims that 11,8 million people could be left without Medicaid health insurance in the coming years.

These are those who do not have insurance through work, and whose incomes are so low that they cannot afford to buy any kind of health policy that will allow them to go to the doctor. This means that they will not have to pay for treatment, so they probably won't even see a new budget. The Yale University Department of Public Health estimates that number could be as high as 50000 people a year. Regardless of the fact that the abolition of Medicaid is a direct violation of one of the main campaign promises, the consequences of his victory will be faced by members of Congress when they have to look into the eyes of their constituents next year, although Senator from Iowa Joni Earns is already laconically saying that "we're all going to die anyway."

Those who do not suffer such a fate will witness that the state will not be able to raise enough money from taxpayers to cover all planned expenses, so that the national debt, which already stands at about $36,2 trillion, will increase by $3,4 trillion over the next decade. Therefore, it is now necessary to convince the voters that all this is being done in their interest, so that the president appeared before the citizens for the first time after a long break in Des Moines, an hour's drive from Ernst's Red Oak, where seventy percent of the voters, when they finish their work in the fields and fields, vote for Republican candidates in the elections. However, the decision of the Constitutional Court to limit the powers of federal judges to suspend presidential decisions at the level of the entire country shows that things are not only good for hard-line Republicans but also for those who value principles.

TRIAL OF JUDGES

Immediately after Donald Trump took office and began issuing executive orders, the courts declared unconstitutional and suspended dozens of his executive orders, whether it was the abolition of federal agencies, the firing of federal employees, the expulsion of illegal immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act, the revocation of birthright citizenship, the suspension of the right to seek asylum, the ban on health care for changing the gender of minors, or the freezing of foreign aid.

Hand on heart, neither Trump's predecessors, whether it was Joseph Biden or Barack Obama, did not hide their displeasure when judges stopped the implementation of their decisions at the national level, whether it was about forgiving student debts, the right to use drugs for abortion or protecting millions of immigrants without legal status under the DAPA program. It has already begun to look like a travesty that Democrats filed lawsuits against the Trump administration and won rulings from liberal judges in California, Maryland, Massachusetts or Washington, while Republicans blocked the implementation of the decisions of the two previous presidents in Texas and Louisiana.

But after the recent decision of the Supreme Court, there are no more obstacles in front of the Trump administration. The system of "mutual checks and balances" of executive, legislative and judicial power, which represents the fundamental principle of the American constitutional system, is seriously questioned. The entire second term of Trump is reduced to moving barriers and examining how far one can go on various sides: in establishing a completely new system of values in the country, destroying the order that was built in the world after the Second World War - without a clear alternative about what could come after that - drastically increasing tariffs on imports or attacking Iran's nuclear facilities, which several presidents before him thought about without anyone daring to do it.

photo: ap photo

NEW YORK SOCIALISM

Things would be almost brilliant for the Republicans if a complete outsider, openly presenting himself as a democratic socialist, Zohran Mamdani, had not just won the party election and become the official candidate of the Democratic Party for mayor of New York, whose city budget of 112 billion dollars is larger than the state coffers of many European Union members. Trump can call him a "radical, left-wing lunatic" and "communist lunatic" as much as he wants, as well as threaten to review his citizenship, Mamdani with his program of free public transport, the opening of state-owned stores, kindergartens that would not be paid for and a rent freeze - given that one-bedroom apartments in decent parts of New York cost between three and four thousand dollars a month - convincingly left behind the representative of the Democratic establishment Andrew Kuoma.

Conservatives like Charlie Kirk, who says that before 11/2753, a group of Muslims killed XNUMX people, or Tennessee Congressman Andy Ogles, who is calling for Mamdani to be stripped of his citizenship and deported from the country, it won't do much. Just as Donald Trump has completely reshaped the Republican Party, making it multi-ethnic and close to the working class - which it has never been - so Mamdani, regardless of all the opposition and attacks from his own party, is beginning to determine the path the party takes in order to get out of the phase of lack of ideas and be able to deal with Donald Trump. He won, despite the fact that no one had even heard of him before his candidacy, because he wanted to listen to the voters on the streets and talk about what would make their lives easier. To talk to the workers about the overcrowded city buses and trains that arrive at Penn Station with huge delays because the tracks are warping from the heat.

To walk with them through New York, which is trapped in the summer heat of asphalt and concrete while its residents cool off on the sidewalks, next to hydrants from which they pour water and make improvised waterfalls, slowly returning to the routine of everyday life after another glorious holiday. They will still prefer to say that the day is beautifully sunny than to admit that the heat is unbearable - those nuances are less important to them than resistance to the political establishment. Republican or Democratic - it doesn't matter. That's why they will soon get a mayor who is the measure of this city: always more his own than the country he is in.