Editor’s Note: Day 118 of The Great Con II. The low bar has been broken with this president’s accepting of a half-billion dollar gift, further attacks on anything dealing with being educated, getting rid of intelligence analysts who told the truth, removing union protections, openly harassing the former FBI Director like a criminal, and Robert Kennedy, as the leading public health official in the nation, stated in public testimony not to take his advice on health….

Last week, I ran into a fellow public servant I hadn’t seen in a couple of years. He is nearing retirement, and I asked him how things are going in the agency. His face grew dark. I’ve seen it many times. The face of those who have spent their lives in service to the public, only to see it upended by misplaced voter disenchantment and grift. He said the agency's morale was low, and the focus had shifted to maintaining the status quo. This typically means no new initiatives, regardless of need, effectiveness, or savings, and, most importantly, don’t ask questions.

Historically, public services were investments in the greater good. Things that needed protection or enhancement, fulfilling the spiritual directive of looking after others and being stewards of the earth. Not profitable, but necessary. Think protection from radiation, ensuring your water is safe to drink, taking care of the sick, elderly, or homeless, managing lands, and even public safety and education.

There's always a bit of waste, a bit of excess with big operations, and public goods typically function in the public eye as one bad apple spoils the bunch. If you had a bad experience getting your license, then all public services are bad.

But it’s the same in the private sector. We’ve all had poor service or clunky products. Most industry has even offloaded their guarantees of quality to having to purchase extended warranties. Some manufacturers intentionally make products difficult to repair to compel purchases of new ones. A lot of costs remain hidden in the private sector, the types of things our kids pay for in cleanup spills, emergency response, and less safe neighborhoods. And consider that the private sector has typically viewed its workforce as expendable instead of trainable.

While public service is more open (more public), both of our political parties have been active in seeding public services with cronies and followers, though I would suggest that one party typically ensures they are competent people. This has shifted in the past 20 years, and the growing fusion of private power and public governance represents one of the most profound threats to American democracy in modern history.

While headlines often focus on limited violations–a city council member taking bribes, a low-level bureaucrat skimming funds, the $100 tickets to a game, the nepotistic hiring of a commissioner's nephew–these pale compared to systemic "state capture" by wealthy individuals and corporations. Grand corruption operates at a scale beyond the local, bending entire government agencies to serve private interests rather than the public good. The psychological toll of this institutional rot extends far beyond financial costs, eroding what we try to teach our kids as fairness, equal opportunity, and the very idea of representative government.

Readers need to understand the difference between these two things.

The local is full of rules about gift limits, financial disclosures, and competitive bidding, and there should be laws like this to encourage better behavior. However, these are trivial compared to the scale of what we are experiencing.

It is the age-old proverb to recognize big things from small things.

For example, many of us have broken a law, whether by speeding, jaywalking, littering, running a red light or stop sign, using our phones while driving, or getting refills without a purchase. If we focus our moral magnifying glass too much on these smaller crimes, not only will it stunt the growth of our discernment capabilities, but we will miss larger system-level abuse.

Grand corruption operates differently.

Sometimes it’s done openly, other times covertly. It's not about breaking rules but rewriting them, not circumventing systems, but co-opting them entirely. Trump’s recent acceptance of a half-billion-dollar plane for personal use is openly corrupt, but it is much more than that. It’s an effort to open the door wider for making a private gain in a public role acceptable as routine.

It’s much more Soviet than American.

Let’s consider what Elon Musk recently did. He took on the leadership of a fictitious office (DOGE) while still managing Tesla, SpaceX, and other federal contractors. While Musk helped to cut thousands of people’s jobs and delete safety regulations and agencies overseeing private industries, his companies continue to receive billions in federal contracts that these agencies once provided oversight for.

We’re not talking about a clerk stealing office supplies or printing birthday party announcements on the office printer; it's redesigning government to serve corporate masters.

When an elected official moves public funds to give the appearance of open government while purposely targeting this funding toward specific private gain, that’s grand-scale corruption.

You must understand the difference. The scale matters psychologically.

Research has found that routine exposure to grand corruption–the kind involving billions in public funds and high-profile leaders–increases depression rates. Seeing billionaires rewrite immigration policies or dismantle environmental protections to benefit their own companies creates a sense of powerlessness, a feeling that the game is rigged.

This is the type of corruption the Founding Fathers spent months debating. It’s the exact reason they divided government, hoping no one individual could become a king and corner the market and the country.

A 2025 survey found 63% of Americans now believe "rich people control politics completely," up from 48% in 2020. It’s not entirely unfounded. The top 0.1% now fund 72% of federal elections. You might also be surprised to learn that corporate-funded think tanks (Project 2025) originate 83% of legislation, and industries under regulation provided 68% of the current Trump administration.

When citizens see public services reshaped to benefit specific billionaires, faith in democracy erodes. Many citizens give in, believing the charlatan that says I’m rich so I know a better way, or they give up, comforting themselves in prayer or self-preservation.

Such a system will self-reinforce without a public blockade. When Musk-funded Super PACs spend $100 million electing officials who then approve his contracts, it creates a feedback loop of power. The psychological consequence is "democratic detachment". A 2025 Pew study found 55% of young adults believe "voting doesn’t change who rules." I’ve heard that from many young people I work with. It’s the most troubling aspect of the health of our democracy.

The Founders warned against aristocracy but modern oligarchy has proved more insidious. Petty corruption angers all of us, but grand corruption should have us in the streets. When a parent sees their child’s public school defunded while Musk’s satellite company gets tax breaks, or a president says he is going to take his half-billion dollar plane while throwing people out of work, it doesn’t just breed resentment; it undermines the foundational idea that government exists to serve all people equally.

Rebuilding trust is going to require a reverse edition of the Project 2025. Righting the wrongs and strengthening the rule of law will be our Nuremberg trial. It will include banning private contractors from government roles, reviving antitrust enforcement, enforcing the divide between church and state, and publicly funding elections. It will be about restoring the American experiment itself.

If you can see the difference.

Stop being petty with each other while this grand scale of corruption is occurring. Give the people you know a bit of a break. Let youth make mistakes and grow. Instead, focus your attention on where it matters.

The future of American democracy won’t be determined by those who follow the rules, but by whether we have the courage to confront those who rewrite the rules for immense personal gain.

See the difference before there is nothing left to defend.

Enjoy this brief video with James Dyson. It’s interesting to consider how some of the great minds think and innovate on appliances all around us that we take for granted. I’m of the generation that was the last before the digital age, and my kids have no comprehension of what it was like to have one communal phone in the house.

Yet if you think about the products you use every day, most have changed considerably in form and use over time without us realizing it. New thinkers see things in different ways, and this is a great approach to life. See what it is, but also see what it can be. There are always ways and methods of moving forward, and the most human aspect of life is change. Status quo, standing pat, settling for, etc. These are all unnatural. We want people like this who think deeply, and we want them here in America.

I wrote about the recent shooting at the Florida State University campus since it was so close to home for us. Our youngest son once had classes with the shooter and was nearby when the violence occurred. Articles like this one do a good job of showing how districts and professionals are taking youth violence seriously, but I cannot help being aggravated by the dance around one common factor: the easy access to guns.

We are not mature enough to handle this many guns floating around.

As long as we remain a fear-based society, we will not honestly assess the tradeoffs of such open access. I would like to see a financial report on how much it costs school districts to maintain security with fencing, officers, and active shooter drills. Let’s compare that to the costs and upkeep of providing more school counselors and health services. Why not ensure there’s a nurse anywhere there’s an officer?

With the purposeful implosion of the Department of Education, we will see an even higher proportion of expenses being borne by local communities, and in a fear-based culture, that means fewer teachers and nurses.

Keep that in mind when reading this article.

The biggest drug in America is caffeine. I remember drinking my father’s coffee black when I was kid and thinking, who likes this shit?

I wrote a book called Downfall several years ago that was life “after America.” I speculated there would be certain commodities highly prized in a world without government. Abandoned homes would be searched for luxuries like medicines, peanut butter, and coffee.

This is a new book by Michelle Craig McDonald coming out and it’s good timing given the Trump tariffs. Coffee is a perfect example of a product most Americans consume habitually, like zombies, but it’s not grown domestically.

When any product we consume starts to have higher prices, whether gas, eggs, or coffee, people take notice. Your support of democracy shouldn’t depend upon consumer prices, but that’s the reality we’re in. The mindset of discounts, lower prices, something for nothing, has led some to cheapen the value of democracy. Keep that in mind when sipping your next cup. Freedoms can’t be taken for granted, or on the cheap.

There's a lot to pay attention to here. Due to costs and the transitions of jobs in the labor market, we are going to see more efforts like communal housing take root, and that's a good thing. There's strength in numbers and a lot of data to back the role of at least one stable adult being around to make a difference in a kid’s life.

We are also changing socially. We need more living options as humans than single-family homes. Social media has made us have more friends and keep up with a lot more connections, but it's sort of human lite. You don't get the bonds that come with familiarity. Open models like this are a reflection of more constant contact via technology but also a return to older traditions of extended families living together or close by.

I’m including this piece to give balance to my comments about Musk. From a public service perspective, Musk has been a danger. His vision will devastate the middle class and leave us in two groups: the haves and have-nots.

His vision here is much more human, and if you catch earlier interviews of Musk, he comes across as more accommodating to being one of many on the planet (I suspect that Musk has had a long battle with medications and narcissism). If you watch this video in this piece, it is absolutely fascinating. This is the kind of science and technology that will change the notion of what we consider disabled. The potential with this is endless.

It is also paradoxical. There will be huge profit but they will effectively give people abilities they either lost or weren’t born with. Elon Musk is heavily involved. That’s the paradox. Efforts like this will free people shackled by limitations in their physical bodies. It is a much more human approach than the big kid with a chainsaw throwing tens of thousands out of jobs.

I’m close to finishing 40 Million Dollar Slaves, a great read on the rise of black Americans in sports and the old plantation-style management that persists today. It is eye-opening in several ways, including how hard Rube Foster, featured in the picture above, worked early on to build a black major league. He didn’t want to see the players get bought up by white teams, but to establish a league of their own, so that all could rise with the players, including cities, communities, ballparks, etc. Poor Foster died young from stress, much like Jackie Robinson and others who pushed against our real true history of segregation and hate.

This new book is timely since our public institutions, held hostage by haters of American history and principles, are being worked over every day to strip out the true American stories that don’t match a false narrative. We must remember that despite fifty years of progress in correcting centuries of injustice, we must dig deeper than what homes and schools usually present to uncover real history. When they go after people like Jackie Robinson, who served the country in the armed forces and served to bear the brunt of all the hatred, that’s a line that any thinking American should not tolerate.

And Now….

Our responsibility is always to pass things on the best we can, and be aware that life’s journey is about dealing with constant change. If we try to stay in place, be complacent, give in, we will miss that journey.

Continue to practice your gratefulness, and remember: Be a good human.