Two Crises, One Cause

And How We Rebuild

The heist wasn’t an accident.
And it wasn’t isolated.

It wasn’t just Toys R Us.
It wasn’t just JoAnn Fabrics.
It wasn’t just one hospital, one town, one lost job, one empty mall.

It was — and is — a system.
A machine designed to strip-mine value out of the real economy while protecting and enriching the people already at the top.

Private equity didn’t invent this machine.
They simply became its most efficient operators.

The Two Crises Are One Crisis

This week, in False Promises, we mapped how political corruption, short-term thinking, and false solutions are actively weakening America’s global standing.

Here, in The Private Equity Heist, we mapped how financial predation and corporate looting are hollowing out America’s internal strength — its businesses, its workers, its communities.

They are not separate problems.
They are symptoms of the same disease.

A country led by liars and grifters, serving liars and grifters, at the expense of everyone else.

• Where the debts are never really paid — because the people who caused them are never the ones paying.

• Where success is measured not by what you build, but how much you can grab before the roof caves in.

• Where the public is left clinging to slogans and scapegoats while the real looters slip away smiling.

What We Lost — and What We Could Still Save

We lost businesses that were part of the fabric of American life.
We lost good jobs, stable careers, pensions, community institutions.

But more than anything, we lost trust.

Trust that the system would reward honest work.
Trust that building something real would be safer than looting something fragile.
Trust that if you played by the rules, you wouldn’t be thrown away when someone else wanted a bigger bonus.

Rebuilding that trust will be harder than passing any single law.

But it’s not impossible.

How We Rebuild

Expose the Heist

Make the system visible.
Call out the looting for what it is — not “bad management,” not “market forces,” but deliberate extraction.

Rein in Predators

Regulate leveraged buyouts.
Ban dividend recapitalizations.
Force real accountability onto private equity owners.

Strengthen Labor

Unions, worker co-ops, and employee ownership aren’t side issues — they’re bulwarks against looters.

Reclaim Public Investment

Stop handing public money to predatory firms through pension funds, subsidies, and tax breaks.
Invest in businesses that invest in people.

Refuse the False Choices

We don’t have to choose between corruption and collapse.
We can demand an economy — and a government — that rewards building, not looting.

The heist isn’t over.

But neither is the story.

If enough of us are willing to look clearly at what happened, name the culprits, and fight for something better, we don’t just stop the next heist.

We start rebuilding something that was stolen from us long ago:
an economy, a democracy, and a future worth trusting again.

Choosing Our Future

Why We Must Reject the False Promises of Trump’s Second Term

After six posts, the pattern is undeniable: the policies Donald Trump promises for his second term aren’t bold new ideas. They are recycled failures — tested in states like Kansas and Texas, seen abroad in places like El Salvador and Britain, and proven to hurt the very people they claim to help.

Behind the slogans about “making America great” is a grim reality:

• Economic nationalism has raised prices, hurt farmers, and cost manufacturing jobs.

• Immigration crackdowns have crippled industries and driven up consumer costs.

• Authoritarian law-and-order tactics have undermined civil rights and judicial independence.

• Deregulation and privatization have left Americans more vulnerable to disaster and inequality.

• Environmental rollbacks have made our communities less safe and forfeited leadership in the industries of the future.

• Empty debt-cutting promises have only grown the national debt, leaving taxpayers holding the bill.

Each of these failures springs from the same deeper problem:

A fundamental misunderstanding of what truly makes a nation strong.

Strength doesn’t come from isolating ourselves, deporting our neighbors, cutting vital services, or gutting our institutions.

Strength comes from building — trust, infrastructure, education, innovation, opportunity.

Strength comes from investing — in people, communities, and the resilience needed for the challenges of tomorrow.

The High Stakes of 2025 and Beyond

The global order that helped ensure American prosperity for generations — Pax Americana — was built on trust, stability, and the rule of law. Trump’s second-term agenda threatens to tear that down:

• By destabilizing trade and pushing allies away.

• By undermining the judiciary and punishing dissent.

• By allowing infrastructure, public health, and education to wither.

America’s strength has never come from walls or tariffs. It has come from being a beacon of opportunity, freedom, and reliability — at home and abroad.

If we abandon that in favor of fear, cruelty, and short-term political wins, the damage may be irreparable.

The Choice Ahead

This is not just a choice about Donald Trump.

It’s a choice about the kind of country we want to live in — and the kind of future we want to leave to our children.

Do we cling to failed ideas that have already cost us so much?

Or do we move forward, with honest leadership, smarter policy, and a renewed commitment to what made America strong in the first place?

The next chapter isn’t written yet.

But it will be — by the choices we make today.

The Getaway

Who Profited and How We Fight Back

The vaults were emptied.
The alarms stayed silent.
And the thieves walked right out the front door — smiling, shaking hands, cashing their bonuses.

That’s the real genius of the private equity heist.

It wasn’t just that they stole from America’s businesses, workers, and communities.
It’s that they convinced everyone else to clean up the mess they left behind.

The System That Made It Possible

It wasn’t just one firm.
Or one CEO.
Or one unlucky company.

The entire financial system was rigged to make the heist possible — and to reward the looters.

Private Equity Firms

They operate within a system that incentivizes extraction over investment — because stripping assets and maximizing short-term profits delivers faster, bigger returns than building sustainable businesses.

Wall Street Banks

They package, finance, and profit from the debt that makes these buyouts possible — collecting their fees up front, no matter how many companies collapse later.

Politicians and Regulators

Decades of deregulation, tax breaks, and weak oversight have created a playground where financial engineers can do legally what used to require fraud.

Institutional Investors

Pension funds, university endowments, and wealth managers pour billions into private equity funds, chasing returns — even when those returns come from hollowing out the real economy.

In this system, it doesn’t matter if a company succeeds.
It doesn’t matter if workers are laid off, if towns are gutted, if entire industries are destroyed.
What matters is that the people at the top get paid first.

The Victims Are Always the Same

• Workers, stripped of jobs, pensions, and dignity.

• Communities, hollowed out and abandoned.

• Customers, left with fewer choices and worse service.

• Taxpayers, forced to clean up the wreckage.

This isn’t a story of individual bad actors.
It’s a story of a system that rewards looting — and punishes anyone who tries to build something lasting.

The Grift Continues

Today, in False Promises, we explored The Debt Delusion — how political leaders sell the fantasy that debt can be made to disappear without consequences.

Private equity runs on the same delusion.

The debt they create isn’t designed to be paid off.
It’s designed to be someone else’s problem.

They front-load the profits, dump the risks, and walk away before the roof caves in.

When the collapse comes, it’s always the workers, the communities, and the taxpayers who are left trying to patch the holes — while the looters move on to their next “investment opportunity.”

This isn’t bad luck.
It’s not incompetence.
It’s a business model.
It’s the model.

Fighting Back

The good news is: the heist isn’t inevitable.
And the thieves aren’t invincible.

Some ways to fight back:

• Regulate leveraged buyouts — limit the amount of debt that can be loaded onto a company.

• Ban dividend recapitalizations — prevent owners from extracting cash through forced debt.

• Hold PE firms accountable — make them liable for the debts and pensions they destroy.

• Support worker ownership models — help employees, not financiers, buy and run companies.

• Divest public pension funds — pressure state and city pensions to pull their investments out of predatory PE firms.

• Shine a spotlight — make sure every community knows the real story behind every store closure, hospital bankruptcy, or mass layoff.

This isn’t about “saving capitalism” or “hating capitalism.”

It’s about saving the parts that serve people — and smashing the parts that serve only parasites.

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Coming up tomorrow:

Final Reflection: Two Crises, One Cause — and How We Rebuild.

(Because private equity’s heist and America’s political collapse aren’t separate stories. They’re chapters in the same book — and it’s time we started writing a different ending.)

The Debt Delusion

How Trump’s “Waste and Fraud” Promises Will Make Things Worse

Donald Trump has a simple-sounding solution to America’s rising debt: cut “waste, fraud, and abuse.”

It’s a line that plays well on campaign stages. Who wouldn’t want to eliminate waste? Who supports fraud?

But in reality, this promise is pure political theater — and a dangerous distraction from the real drivers of America’s fiscal challenges. Worse, Trump’s actual policies have already shown that cutting “waste” isn’t enough — and that his fiscal plans are more likely to grow the national debt, not shrink it.

The Myth of Easy Savings

Every politician talks about rooting out government inefficiency. But experts across the political spectrum agree:

• “Waste, fraud, and abuse” account for only a tiny fraction of federal spending.

• Even aggressive anti-fraud efforts would barely move the needle on the $34+ trillion national debt.

• The vast majority of the federal budget goes to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense spending, and interest on the debt — not duplicative office supplies or misfiled paperwork.

You can’t fix the federal budget with the equivalent of finding pennies in the couch cushions.

Hard choices — about taxes, healthcare costs, defense spending, and entitlement reform — are where the real math happens. And those are the choices Trump and his allies continue to dodge.

Trump’s First-Term Record: Bigger Deficits, Higher Debt

In 2016, Trump vowed not only to eliminate the deficit but to wipe out the national debt entirely within eight years.

Instead:

• By the end of his first three years (pre-COVID), the national debt had increased by 16%.

• The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — Trump’s signature legislation — added $1.9 trillion to the debt over a decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

• Even during strong economic growth, the annual federal deficit ballooned to nearly $1 trillion by 2019 — a dangerous sign, since deficits are supposed to shrink during good times.

The Trump tax cuts were sold as self-financing through higher growth. That growth bump never materialized. Instead, tax revenue fell, and the government borrowed more.

Trump didn’t tame the debt. He accelerated it.

The Real Impact of “Cutting Waste”

When politicians do get serious about budget cuts, it’s rarely actual waste that gets slashed. It’s programs that help working Americans:

• Medicaid oversight programs that detect billing fraud? Cut.

• IRS enforcement that catches wealthy tax cheats? Cut.

• Education, housing, and food security programs? Cut.

Meanwhile, defense spending (which accounts for more than half of discretionary spending) often increases — and Trump’s 2025 budget proposals reportedly plan major hikes【source: Axios】.

In short:

• “Cutting waste” often means hurting the most vulnerable, while leaving massive expenditures untouched.

• It doesn’t address the structural imbalance caused by tax cuts and rising healthcare and retirement costs.

• It risks hollowing out public services that millions of Americans depend on.

And it won’t balance the budget — not even close.

A Future of Higher Debt and Less Security

If Trump follows the same path in a second term — more tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, combined with vague promises of efficiency — the debt will almost certainly continue to climb.

And as debt grows:

• Interest payments will consume a larger share of the budget.

• Pressure to cut Social Security and Medicare will increase.

• Economic growth could slow under the weight of rising borrowing costs.

In other words: the people Trump promises to protect — working-class Americans, retirees, veterans — are the ones who will pay the price.

The Hard Truth: Fiscal Responsibility Requires Real Choices

The U.S. can stabilize its finances — but not with magical thinking.

Real solutions involve:

• Fairer tax policy that ensures corporations and billionaires pay their share.

• Smart investments in healthcare and education to grow the economy long-term.

• Careful reforms to major entitlement programs, balancing sustainability with protection.

Empty slogans about “waste and fraud” won’t save America from a future of rising debt and diminished prosperity.

Only honest leadership and serious policy will.

Up Next

The pattern is clear: false promises, real harm.

Finally, we’ll step back and look at the bigger picture — the choice America faces in the critical years ahead.

Debt Bombs

The Dirty Secret Behind Every Deal

If there’s one thing every great heist needs, it’s a way to destroy the evidence.

Private equity has one:
Debt.

Debt is the smoke bomb they throw as they loot the building.
The fire they set to cover their escape.

And for decades, it’s been their most powerful, least understood weapon.

The Debt Trap

Every private equity buyout starts the same way:
Not with investment.
Not with innovation.
Not with a real plan to grow the business.

It starts with a mountain of debt — debt that is immediately loaded onto the company itself, not the buyer.

It’s called a leveraged buyout (LBO).
But what it really means is this:
The company is forced to mortgage its future just to survive the takeover.

Millions, sometimes billions, in new liabilities — overnight.

The business may have been profitable before.
It may have had cash reserves, a solid workforce, strong relationships with customers.

None of that matters now.

Everything the company earns must go to paying off the debt first — before it can afford to innovate, grow, or even maintain basic operations.

And when the debt load becomes unsustainable?
The company, not the private equity owners, takes the fall.

Why Debt Is So Powerful for Wall Street

Risk is Pushed Down the Chain

The private equity firm collects management fees and special dividends almost immediately.
If the company collapses under its debt later, the firm has already been paid.

Accountability Is Dodged

When a Toys R Us or a hospital collapses, the executives blame “changing markets” or “economic headwinds” — not the crippling debt they were saddled with at gunpoint.

Profits Are Extracted Early

Private equity doesn’t wait for real success.
They extract “value” upfront, cashing in through dividends, asset sales, and rent-seeking while the company is still functioning.

Failure Becomes Someone Else’s Problem

When bankruptcy inevitably comes, it’s the workers, suppliers, and communities who suffer the fallout — pensions lost, stores closed, services eliminated.

Private equity walks away clean.

The Bigger Pattern

By 2023, more than one-third of all U.S. bankruptcies involved companies that had been owned or controlled by private equity firms.

Industries affected include:

• Retail (Toys R Us, Payless Shoes, RadioShack)

• Healthcare (Hahnemann Hospital, Prospect Medical)

• Media (Deadspin, The Denver Post)

• Manufacturing (Remington Arms, Simmons Bedding)

In every case, the pattern is the same:

1. Debt was used to finance the buyout.

2. Profits were extracted early.

3. The company collapsed under the weight.

This isn’t bad luck.
It’s not bad management.
It’s the business model.

Debt is the getaway car.

And every time it crashes into a wall, it’s the workers and communities left bleeding on the pavement.

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Today, in False Promises, we explored The High Price of Pollution — how corporations dump their waste into the environment to protect their profits, leaving the public to pay the price.

Private equity operates the same way.

• They pollute the balance sheet.

• They strip the assets.

• They profit from the destruction.

• And they leave the cleanup — the bankruptcies, the layoffs, the broken communities — to someone else.

It’s not just about money.
It’s about making sure someone else pays for your mess.

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Coming up tomorrow:

The Getaway: Who Profited — and How We Fight Back.

(Because the heist isn’t inevitable — and the thieves aren’t untouchable.)

The High Price of Pollution

How Environmental Deregulation Endangers America’s Future

Donald Trump has made it clear: if returned to power, he will push even harder to dismantle environmental regulations, prioritize fossil fuel expansion, and block the growth of clean energy.

It’s a familiar playbook—and it’s one that has already failed spectacularly.

From the deadly collapse of Texas’s energy grid to worsening climate-driven disasters, the evidence is overwhelming: gutting environmental protections doesn’t make America freer or richer. It makes America weaker, more vulnerable, and more expensive to live in.

The Texas Blackout: Deregulation’s Deadly Costs

In February 2021, a brutal winter storm swept across Texas, plunging temperatures below freezing. The state’s uniquely deregulated energy grid collapsed under the pressure:

• 4.5 million customers lost power.

• Hundreds died from hypothermia, carbon monoxide poisoning, and lack of access to medical care.

• Economic losses topped $100 billion.

Why did the grid fail?

Not because of wind turbines, as some politicians falsely claimed, but because natural gas infrastructure and power plants froze.

Texas had been warned about these vulnerabilities after a similar storm in 2011—but chose not to require weatherization, trusting market forces to handle it.

Energy companies had no financial incentive to spend money preparing for rare cold snaps. So they didn’t.

The result was a humanitarian and economic catastrophe—the direct consequence of decades of deregulation and short-term profit chasing.

Environmental Rollbacks Leave Americans Unprepared

Under Trump’s first term, the federal government rolled back over 100 environmental regulations, including:

• Cutting requirements for power plant emissions.

• Weakening clean water protections.

• Slashing fuel economy standards for cars and trucks.

These rollbacks didn’t make the economy meaningfully stronger. But they increased air and water pollution and reduced resilience to extreme weather events.

At the same time, climate disasters worsened:

• Wildfires torched record acreage in California and Oregon.

• Hurricanes intensified, causing massive floods from Louisiana to New York.

• Droughts devastated farms across the Midwest.

Ignoring climate risks and weakening protections doesn’t shield Americans from hardship. It amplifies it, leaving communities poorer, sicker, and more dependent on costly disaster aid.

Attacking Renewable Energy Progress

Ironically, even as Trump and other Republican leaders attacked clean energy as “unreliable,” states like Texas quietly became national leaders in wind and solar power.

In 2023, about 40% of Texas’s electricity came from carbon-free sources like wind, solar, and nuclear.

Renewables helped keep the lights on when gas plants failed. They created jobs. They lowered electricity prices.

Yet the Trump movement continues to demonize renewable energy, pushing legislation that would penalize or discourage clean energy projects, while funneling subsidies to fossil fuels.

This isn’t just bad environmental policy. It’s bad economics—and it risks ceding the clean energy race to countries like China and Germany, who are investing aggressively in the industries of the future.

The Dangerous Future Trump Offers

If Trump follows through on his second-term environmental agenda, Americans can expect:

• More grid failures in extreme weather.

• Higher health costs from pollution.

• More taxpayer bailouts for fossil fuel disasters.

• Lost jobs and missed economic opportunities in the global clean energy boom.

Environmental deregulation isn’t a path to prosperity. It’s a path to fragility, suffering, and decline.

A truly strong America invests in resilience, innovation, and public health—not in the short-term profits of the fossil fuel lobby.

The stakes couldn’t be higher. The next storm, fire, or flood will not wait for political convenience. The costs are coming—and we can choose to prepare, or to pay dearly.

Up Next

The costs of deregulation are rising — and so is the national debt.

Our next post will reveal how promises to cut “waste and fraud” won’t fix the debt, and could make it even worse.

The Silent Kill

How Wall Street Gutted American Healthcare

It didn’t start with a bang.
It started with a bankruptcy filing, quietly buried in the business section.

A hospital here.
A hospital there.

Another rural clinic shutting down.
Another wave of layoffs in critical care units.

It looked random.
It looked unfortunate.

It wasn’t.

It was part of the same heist — just playing out in a place where the victims aren’t just laid off.
They’re left to die.

The Buyouts

In the late 2000s and early 2010s, private equity firms realized hospitals could be gold mines.

Healthcare was a $4 trillion industry.
It was fragmented.
It was complex.
And it was shielded by layers of government funding.

Perfect conditions for exploitation.

Firms like Cerberus Capital Management, Apollo Global Management, and others swept in, buying up hospitals, nursing homes, emergency room chains, and outpatient clinics.

The pitch was always the same:
“Streamline operations.”
“Cut waste.”
“Deliver better, faster care.”

What actually happened was different.

The Playbook Applied to Healthcare

Step 1: Load the Hospital with Debt

Just like Toys R Us, just like JoAnn Fabrics, hospitals were saddled with massive debt the moment private equity took over.

Profits didn’t go into improving patient care.
They went into paying off loans — and into management fees for the new owners.

Step 2: Cut Staff, Cut Services

Nurses were laid off.
Maintenance crews were slashed.
Support staff were thinned out.
Entire specialty departments — like neonatal units, psychiatric services, and oncology wings — were shut down if they weren’t profitable enough.

Quality of care declined.
Wait times ballooned.
Errors increased.

Step 3: Strip the Assets

If a hospital owned valuable real estate, it was sold — often to landlords who raised rents, draining the hospital further.

If a hospital owned its own ambulance fleet, it was sold and leased back at a premium.

Everything that wasn’t nailed down — and even some things that were — was monetized.

Step 4: Exit Before the Collapse

Once the hospital was hollowed out, the private equity owners either flipped it to another buyer or let it spiral into bankruptcy.

Patients and workers were left holding the bag.
Communities were left without critical care.
Lives were lost.

The Human Cost

In Philadelphia, Hahnemann University Hospital — a 171-year-old institution serving primarily low-income patients — was bought by a private equity-backed developer.

Within a few years, it was shut down.
Hundreds of doctors, nurses, and staff were fired.
Thousands of vulnerable patients lost access to care.

The real goal was never to run a hospital.
It was to flip the valuable real estate it sat on — turning a safety net into luxury condos.

This wasn’t an isolated story.
It has happened in New York.
In California.
In rural towns across the South and Midwest.

Everywhere private equity moves into healthcare, the results are the same:

• Fewer hospitals.

• Higher costs.

• Worse outcomes.

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Today, in False Promises, we explored The Cost of “Small Government” — how deregulation and privatization, sold as efficiency, opened the door to unchecked looting.

Healthcare shows that cost most brutally.

Private equity didn’t just loot toy stores and craft shops.
They came for the hospitals.
They cashed out.
And they left blood on the floor.

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Coming up tomorrow:

Debt Bombs: The Dirty Secret Behind Every Deal.

(Because debt isn’t just a tool in the heist — it’s the fuse they light before they walk away.)

The Cost of “Small Government”

How Deregulation and Privatization Fail American Communities

For decades, “small government” has been a rallying cry of American conservatives. Donald Trump’s second-term agenda promises even deeper cuts to government services, more privatization of public goods, and looser regulations in the name of “freedom” and “efficiency.”

But real-world experiments with these ideas—from Kansas to Texas to the United Kingdom—tell a very different story.

Instead of prosperity, they have delivered crumbling infrastructure, weakened public services, higher costs for consumers, and growing inequality.

Trump’s plans to double down on deregulation and privatization will not make America stronger. They will leave ordinary Americans—especially his own supporters—more vulnerable and less secure.

Kansas: The Tax Cut Catastrophe

In 2012, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback launched what he called a “real live experiment” in conservative economics: massive income tax cuts, including eliminating taxes on many businesses.

The promised outcome? Explosive job growth and a booming economy.

The reality?

• State revenues collapsed by 22%.

• Public services were slashed. Schools cut programs and shortened their weeks to four days.

• The state’s bond rating was downgraded, increasing borrowing costs.

• Job growth lagged behind neighboring states that kept taxes higher.

After five years of mounting deficits and public outrage, a bipartisan coalition finally reversed most of the tax cuts to save the state from financial ruin.

Kansas showed that radical tax cuts and shrinking government don’t unleash prosperity—they cripple essential services and hurt working families the most.

Texas: Deregulation and Disaster

Texas has long prided itself on a low-regulation, pro-market model. But the February 2021 winter storm exposed the dangerous limits of that ideology.

The state’s heavily deregulated and isolated electricity grid collapsed under freezing temperatures, leaving millions without power for days.

Investigations revealed that Texas had repeatedly ignored calls to weatherize its energy infrastructure, trusting that market forces would provide resilience. They didn’t.

The cost of deregulation:

• Hundreds of lives lost.

• Tens of billions in economic damages.

• Skyrocketing electric bills for some customers who faced variable “market rates.”

Freedom from regulation didn’t deliver better service. It delivered a deadly blackout—and made it painfully clear that basic public infrastructure needs public accountability.

The UK’s Austerity Disaster

Across the Atlantic, the United Kingdom embarked on a similar path during the 2010s: cutting public services in the name of fiscal responsibility.

The result was a decade of stagnation:

• Public health outcomes worsened. A study linked over 130,000 “preventable” deaths to austerity.

• Local governments went bankrupt.

• Public transportation deteriorated, and housing shortages worsened.

• Economic growth slowed, leaving Britain worse off than major peers.

Instead of shrinking debt, austerity policies exacerbated social and economic inequality—and arguably left the country more fragile in the face of crises like COVID-19.

The lesson: you cannot cut your way to prosperity, especially by hollowing out the very systems people rely on every day.

What Privatization Really Means

When politicians talk about “shrinking government,” what they often mean is shifting essential services into private, for-profit hands:

• Public schools replaced with voucher-funded private academies.

• Public water systems privatized and then poorly maintained.

• Public health agencies defunded, leaving gaps that for-profit hospitals don’t fill.

Privatization doesn’t eliminate costs. It often increases them, adding layers of profit-seeking middlemen between taxpayers and the services they need.

And crucially: private companies are not accountable to voters. When things go wrong, there’s no election to fix it.

The Dangerous Road Ahead

If Trump’s second term follows the same playbook—tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation of critical industries, privatization of public services—the result will be predictable:

• Higher inequality.

• More fragile infrastructure.

• Greater costs for working families.

This isn’t theory. It’s recent history.

True national strength doesn’t come from gutting the public sector. It comes from investing in it—building systems that serve everyone, not just the wealthy few.

Trump’s vision of “freedom” is a freedom for corporations and billionaires. For everyone else, it’s the freedom to fend for yourself.

Up Next

Broken public systems lead to even bigger risks.

Next, we’ll expose how environmental rollbacks and energy failures are leaving Americans dangerously vulnerable.

Collateral Damage

JoAnn Fabrics and the Death of Main Street

It didn’t happen all at once.

There was no sudden bankruptcy.
No headlines screaming the company was dead.

Instead, JoAnn Fabrics — a beloved American retailer, a gathering place for crafters, quilters, teachers, and entrepreneurs — has been slowly hollowed out, store by store, job by job, community by community.

Not by Amazon.
Not by changing tastes.

But by the same quiet financial looters who killed Toys R Us.

The Buyout

In 2011, JoAnn Fabrics was acquired by a private equity firm called Leonard Green & Partners for about $1.6 billion.

The story was familiar:

• JoAnn was profitable.

• JoAnn had strong community ties.

• JoAnn had survived economic downturns, competition, and change.

But after the buyout, everything changed.

Leonard Green loaded JoAnn with debt — hundreds of millions of dollars — and began siphoning off cash through management fees and special dividends.

Rather than investing in modernization, technology, or expanding into new markets, the focus was on extraction.

Stores started to feel neglected.
Staff levels dropped.
Inventory quality declined.

And loyal customers noticed.

The Slow Decline

JoAnn Fabrics didn’t crash overnight like Toys R Us.

Instead, it began to rot from within:

• Store locations became threadbare and poorly maintained.

• Supply chains weakened, leading to frequent stockouts.

• Skilled, full-time employees were replaced by underpaid part-timers.

• Customer service, once a hallmark of the brand, deteriorated.

Even as the company stumbled, private equity owners paid themselves well.
Leonard Green collected fees year after year — no matter how badly the business performed.

Meanwhile, JoAnn’s leadership leaned into gimmicks:

• Cheap loyalty programs.

• Low-wage hiring pushes.

• Desperate promotions to drive foot traffic.

None of it addressed the real disease: a company crushed by debt, bled by fees, and left too weak to adapt.

In 2021, JoAnn was pushed into going public again — not because it was ready, but because Leonard Green wanted an exit.

The burden of debt and decay was dumped back onto public shareholders.
The private equity firm cashed out.

The Impact on Communities

JoAnn Fabrics wasn’t just a retailer.
It was a piece of Main Street life — a place where kids picked up their first school project supplies, where small business owners sourced materials, where elderly hobbyists kept lifelong skills alive.

Its slow collapse mirrors the quiet devastation happening in countless towns across America:

• Empty strip malls.

• Fewer good part-time jobs.

• Communities losing another small anchor that made local life vibrant.

It’s not just about profits.
It’s about belonging.
And when Main Street dies, something inside the town dies with it.

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Today, in False Promises, we explored The Authoritarian Playbook — how broken economies create broken societies, where fear, anger, and hopelessness can be weaponized.

The slow, quiet collapse of places like JoAnn Fabrics is part of that story.

When jobs dry up, when businesses fail, when trust in local institutions withers — people look for someone to blame.

And authoritarians are always ready with an answer:
Blame the immigrants.
Blame the unions.
Blame the poor.

Never blame the billionaires who gutted your town and got rich doing it.

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Coming up tomorrow:

The Silent Kill: How Wall Street Gutted American Healthcare.

(Because the heist didn’t stop with toy stores and craft shops — it moved into hospitals, where the cost of looting is measured in lives.)

What is MS-13, and How Did the U.S. Help Create It?

In our last post, we explored how the language we use—"undocumented" vs. "illegal"—shapes how we treat immigrants. But words are just one piece of the puzzle. To truly understand today’s immigration crisis, we also need to look at the deeper forces that push people to flee their homes in the first place. One of the most common explanations we hear is "gang violence." And one gang in particular gets all the headlines: MS-13.

You may have heard MS-13 described as a foreign threat, a violent force from Central America invading U.S. cities. But the truth is far more complicated—and far more uncomfortable. MS-13 didn’t come from El Salvador. It came from the United States. And U.S. policy played a major role in making it what it is today.

What Is MS-13?

The gang known as MS-13, short for Mara Salvatrucha, began in Los Angeles in the 1980s. "Mara" is Central American slang for gang. "Salvatrucha" likely combines "Salvadoran" with "trucha," a slang term meaning clever or alert. The "13" refers to their allegiance to the Mexican Mafia, also known as "La Eme."

MS-13 was formed by young Salvadoran immigrants, many of them refugees fleeing a brutal civil war back home. In L.A., they faced violence from other established gangs and little protection from law enforcement. Banding together for protection and identity, these youths started what would become MS-13. At the time, it was a small, local street gang—not the international criminal network it would later become.

The U.S. Role in the Salvadoran Civil War

To understand why so many Salvadorans fled to the U.S. in the first place, we have to look at the Salvadoran Civil War (1979–1992). During this conflict, the U.S. poured billions of dollars into supporting El Salvador's right-wing military government, viewing the conflict as part of the global Cold War fight against communism.

The Reagan administration, in particular, funneled aid and weapons to Salvadoran forces despite widespread reports of human rights abuses. U.S.-trained military units like the Atlacatl Battalion were responsible for massacres, including the infamous 1981 El Mozote massacre, where over 800 civilians were killed. Even after this, U.S. support continued.

These policies prolonged the war, destabilized the country, and left tens of thousands dead and even more displaced. Many of the refugees from this war ended up in Los Angeles, where MS-13 was born.

How Deportation Spread the Gang Internationally

In the 1990s, U.S. immigration policy took a sharp turn. The 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), signed by President Bill Clinton, expanded the list of crimes that could lead to mandatory deportation. Even legal immigrants with minor convictions were now subject to removal, often with no chance to plead their case before a judge.

Thousands of young people with gang ties were deported to El Salvador, a country still recovering from war and lacking the institutions to reintegrate them. In this chaotic environment, MS-13 evolved. What started as a U.S.-based street gang became a transnational criminal organization with a foothold in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala.

Militarization and the Politics of Fear

After 9/11, the U.S. increasingly treated gang violence as a national security issue. MS-13 became a symbol used to justify tough-on-crime and anti-immigration policies. Successive administrations—Republican and Democrat alike—poured funding into militarized police, detention centers, and border security.

Meanwhile, U.S.-backed anti-gang crackdowns in Central America, like El Salvador's "Mano Dura" (Iron Fist) policies, often backfired. They filled prisons with young people, deepened gang identities, and gave MS-13 the structure and space to become more organized and violent.

A Bipartisan Legacy

The rise of MS-13 is not the fault of one party. It's the product of decades of decisions:

• Reagan and Bush Sr. funded the Salvadoran war effort and ignored atrocities.

• Clinton signed the 1996 deportation law that exported gang violence.

• George W. Bush framed MS-13 as a national security threat.

• Obama continued large-scale deportations while trying to stabilize the region.

• Trump used MS-13 as a political weapon to justify stripping asylum rights.

Each of these steps contributed to the conditions that allowed MS-13 to thrive.

Why It Matters Today

MS-13 is often cited to justify harsh immigration crackdowns. But many of the people arriving at our southern border today are fleeing the very violence that U.S. policy helped create. Instead of treating them as threats, we should be asking what it would take to stop the cycle of violence and displacement.

Toward Solutions: What Real Reform Looks Like

We can’t undo the past, but we can stop repeating it. Here are a few ways forward:

Reform Deportation Laws

• End mandatory deportation for minor, non-violent offenses.

• Restore judicial discretion and case-by-case review.

Expand Legal Migration Pathways

• Create regional asylum processing centers.

• Increase access to Temporary Protected Status (TPS).

Invest in Central America—Beyond Police and Prisons

• Prioritize education, healthcare, and economic development.

• Fund anti-corruption efforts and civil society organizations.

End the Criminalization of Migration

• Make unauthorized border crossings civil, not criminal, offenses.

Restore Asylum Protections and Due Process

• Reinstate fair asylum interviews.

• Expand access to legal representation.

Fund Local Violence Prevention

• Support youth outreach, gang exit programs, and trauma care.

Invest in Root-Cause Solutions—They Cost Less and Work Better

• Detaining an immigrant in the U.S. costs about $165 per person per day (source).

• Vocational training in El Salvador can cost as little as $0.25 per hour (source).

• That means for the cost of one day of detention, we could provide 660 hours of job training—a far better investment in long-term safety and stability.

Conclusion: Accountability and Responsibility

MS-13 didn’t just appear out of nowhere. It was shaped by U.S. foreign policy, immigration law, and decades of political choices. We destabilized El Salvador, exported our gang problems, and then used the fallout to justify fear-driven policies.

But we have the power to break that cycle. By investing in people, not prisons, and by treating migration as a human challenge—not a criminal one—we can build a safer, more just future for everyone.

And let’s be honest: compassion isn’t just the right thing to do. It’s also cheaper.

The Authoritarian Playbook

How Trump’s Second Term Targets Justice and Civil Rights

In recent months, a chilling pattern has emerged—one that reveals far more than isolated incidents of overreach. Taken together, Donald Trump’s actions show a deliberate move toward authoritarian control, undermining core American institutions like the judiciary and due process.

This isn’t speculation. It’s already happening.

From the shocking arrest of a sitting judge to threats of sending U.S. citizens to a foreign mega-prison, the Trump administration’s moves are sending a clear message: dissent and independence will not be tolerated.

The Arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan

On April 25, 2025, FBI agents arrested Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan, accusing her of obstructing immigration enforcement by allegedly assisting an undocumented immigrant in evading ICE at a courthouse.

Legal scholars immediately raised alarms: this was an unprecedented breach of judicial independence. Arresting a judge for decisions made in the course of her duties shatters the traditional separation of powers that has safeguarded American democracy for over two centuries.

The intended effect is clear: intimidate judges, chill independent decision-making, and concentrate more power in the executive branch.

The Deportation to El Salvador’s CECOT Prison

Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown has taken an even darker turn abroad.

Earlier this year, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a work-authorized immigrant and union apprentice, was wrongfully deported to El Salvador due to a bureaucratic “mistake.” But instead of correcting the error, U.S. officials refused to bring him home—later accusing him of gang affiliations without evidence to justify keeping him imprisoned abroad.

He wasn’t sent just anywhere: he was locked up in El Salvador’s notorious CECOT mega-prison, a dystopian facility designed for mass incarceration under harsh, authoritarian conditions.

This wasn’t just an accident. It was a test case.

Threats Against U.S. Citizens

Donald Trump has gone even further—publicly suggesting that “violent criminals” born in the United States should be sent to CECOT as well.

Think about that: U.S. citizens, stripped of their constitutional rights, exiled to a foreign authoritarian prison without due process.

This would be an unprecedented assault on American citizenship itself—turning punishment into a tool of political spectacle and fear, outside the bounds of U.S. law.

Even floating such an idea is profoundly dangerous. It normalizes the idea that rights can be selectively revoked, and that loyalty to Trump—not the Constitution—will determine who is protected and who is expendable.

Connecting the Dots: A Dangerous Pattern

These incidents are not isolated:

• Judges are arrested for standing up to federal overreach.

• Immigrants are wrongfully deported and left to rot in authoritarian prisons.

• Citizens are threatened with exile to brutal foreign facilities.

This is the authoritarian playbook in action:

• Discredit and neutralize independent courts.

• Use immigration enforcement as a political weapon.

• Erode the concept of citizenship and due process.

• Instill fear and normalize state-sponsored retaliation.

This is how democracies die—not all at once, but through steady, calculated blows against the institutions meant to protect freedom.

Why It Matters Now

If Trump follows through on these threats and precedents, the damage to American democracy could be permanent. Judicial independence, the right to due process, and even the meaning of citizenship itself are at stake.

These aren’t theoretical risks. They are happening right now. The only question is whether enough Americans will recognize the pattern—and resist—before it’s too late.

Up Next

Undermining the courts is just the beginning.

In our next post, we’ll examine how deregulation and privatization hollow out the public services communities depend on.

The First Big Score

Killing Toys R Us for Profit

It should have been a comeback story.

In 2005, Toys R Us was still a titan:

• A household name.

• Profitable.

• Beloved by generations of American families.

Sure, online shopping was starting to grow, and Walmart and Target were squeezing margins.
But Toys R Us had something they didn’t: a brand synonymous with childhood itself.

There was no fatal flaw in the business model.
No inevitable Amazon-driven doom.

The company was still standing — battered, maybe, but alive.

And that’s when the wolves closed in.

The Buyout

In 2005, a trio of private equity giants — Bain Capital, KKR, and Vornado Realty Trust — swooped in with an offer:
Take Toys R Us private.
“Streamline” operations.
“Modernize” the business.
Make it more “nimble” and “competitive.”

It sounded like a lifeline.
Instead, it was the beginning of the end.

The new owners loaded Toys R Us with $5 billion in debt — debt the company never asked for, never needed, and could never escape.

Most of the company’s profits — hundreds of millions of dollars a year — didn’t go toward modernizing stores or competing online.
They went toward servicing the crushing interest payments on the buyout debt.

Toys R Us wasn’t failing.
It was being bled dry.

The Squeeze

By 2007, Toys R Us was spending more than half a billion dollars a year just paying interest on its debts.

Meanwhile:

• Store shelves stayed outdated.

• E-commerce investments lagged.

• Staff cuts eroded customer service.

• Suppliers were pushed to offer harsher terms just to stay stocked.

It was a death spiral — not because customers abandoned Toys R Us, but because private equity stripped away its ability to fight back.

And all the while, Bain, KKR, and Vornado collected millions in “management fees” — profiting off the very company they were dragging toward the grave.

The Collapse

In 2017, Toys R Us finally filed for bankruptcy.

Not because people stopped loving toys.
Not because e-commerce made brick-and-mortar retail impossible.
But because private equity had loaded the company with a financial bomb, and there was no way to defuse it.

When Toys R Us collapsed:

• More than 30,000 workers lost their jobs.

• Thousands of suppliers and small businesses took devastating hits.

• Communities lost vital anchor stores — hastening the decline of shopping centers across the country.

Executives walked away with bonuses.
Private equity firms walked away with profits.

The workers walked away with nothing.

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Today, in False Promises, we explored The Labor Shortage They Created — how short-sighted policies, attacks on workers, and deliberate neglect of the real economy hollowed out America’s workforce.

The collapse of Toys R Us is a perfect, brutal example.

• Good jobs destroyed.

• Communities abandoned.

• A whole generation of workers and consumers betrayed — not by technology, not by globalization, but by greed weaponized through finance.

This wasn’t creative destruction.
It wasn’t inevitable.

It was a hit job.
And Toys R Us was just the first score.

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Coming up tomorrow:

Collateral Damage: JoAnn Fabrics and the Death of Main Street.

(Because sometimes the heist doesn’t make headlines — it just quietly kills your town’s last good store.)

Undocumented, Not Illegal

Rethinking Immigration, Enforcement, and Economic Reality

Every time you hear the phrase “illegal immigrant,” you’re hearing more than just a label — you’re hearing a political argument. Words matter, especially when they shape public perception, guide policy, and justify unequal treatment.

In the U.S., the immigration debate is often reduced to a caricature: lawbreaking border crossers versus patriotic enforcers. But the real picture is far more complex — and far more human. This post breaks down what the language of immigration says (and doesn’t say), how enforcement actually works, and what real solutions could look like for immigrants, employers, and the nation as a whole.

“Undocumented” vs. “Illegal”: What’s the Difference?

Many people use “illegal immigrant” to describe anyone without legal status in the U.S., but that term is both legally imprecise and politically loaded.

Here’s why:

• Undocumented immigrants are people who are in the country without current legal authorization — often because they overstayed a visa (a civil violation) or entered without inspection (a misdemeanor on first offense).

• “Illegal” implies that the person themselves is a crime — not just their action. But under U.S. law, only actions can be illegal. There’s no such thing as an “illegal person.”

Even major style guides like the Associated Press now recommend using “undocumented” rather than “illegal” to avoid dehumanizing language that fuels stigma.

What Happens to Undocumented Workers?

Undocumented immigrants face steep consequences — detention, deportation, separation from families, and bars to future legal re-entry — even when they’ve lived in the U.S. for years, paid taxes, and contributed to their communities.

And despite popular myths, they’re less likely to commit crimes than U.S. citizens. A 2024 Reuters fact check showed that in Texas, the homicide conviction rate for undocumented immigrants was 2.2 per 100,000 — lower than the 3.0 per 100,000 rate for native-born Americans.

Still, immigration enforcement disproportionately targets undocumented individuals, even though many are filling essential roles in our economy.

What Happens to Employers Who Hire Them?

Federal law requires employers to verify a new hire’s authorization using Form I-9, but enforcement is notoriously lax. Many employers simply accept documents that “reasonably appear genuine” — even when they suspect otherwise. And it’s completely legal for them to do so, as long as they don’t knowingly violate the law.

Penalties on Paper

• Civil fines range from $698 to $27,894 per unauthorized worker.

• Criminal charges can apply for a pattern of illegal hiring, with fines up to $3,000 per worker and up to 6 months in jail.

In Practice

Very few employers are prosecuted. While two companies did forfeit $2 million each in 2024, these cases are the exception, not the rule. A 2021 shift in DHS policy ended mass workplace raids and focused instead on employers who exploit labor, but audits remain rare and underfunded (source).

Who’s Really Working Without Papers?

The U.S. economy runs on undocumented labor — and has for decades.

• As of 2022, about 11 million people were living in the U.S. without legal status, with 8.3 million of them in the workforce — about 4.8% of all U.S. workers (Pew Research).

• In some industries, that presence is even higher:

  • Construction: 13%

  • Agriculture/Forestry/Fishing: 12%

  • Leisure & Hospitality: 7% (source)

These jobs are often grueling, poorly paid, and unfilled by U.S. citizens. In short: undocumented immigrants are doing work that needs to be done, but the system provides no legal way for them to do it.

Access to Social Services: Facts vs. Fear

Contrary to popular belief, undocumented immigrants are ineligible for nearly all federal public assistance programs. That includes:

• Medicaid, SNAP, TANF, and housing assistance

• Exceptions include:

  • Emergency medical care (via Emergency Medicaid)

  • Public K–12 education (guaranteed by Plyler v. Doe, 1982)

  • Free/reduced school meals and WIC benefits for children (Migration Policy Institute)

Even where benefits are technically accessible, fear often keeps people away. The Trump-era “public charge” rule created a chilling effect that reduced participation in programs by mixed-status families, including U.S. citizen children (The Guardian).

So why do undocumented immigrants stay? It’s not for free stuff. It’s for work — often the only path to stability, family reunification, or even safety from persecution.

Enforcement for Workers vs. Employers: A Lopsided Reality

Undocumented workers face deportation, detention, and the daily risk of losing everything — including family. Employers, on the other hand, often walk away with minimal consequences. This lopsided system reflects not just legal inconsistency, but a willful blindness to the economic realities that drive undocumented employment.

Immigrants aren’t coming here because the U.S. is handing out benefits — they’re coming because employers are hiring. And they’re staying because the work is here, and the law provides no viable way for most of them to participate legally.

What Would a Better System Look Like?

Reform isn’t just possible — it’s necessary. Here’s what a more functional, humane, and economically sound immigration system could include:

Expanded Legal Work Visas

Current visa programs for low-wage labor (like H-2A for agriculture) are cumbersome and too limited. We need scalable, affordable visa pathways that match labor market needs without exploiting workers.

Earned Legalization

Millions of undocumented immigrants have lived here for years, paid taxes, raised families, and contributed to our communities. A path to legal status — not necessarily citizenship — would benefit them and the economy.

Real Accountability for Employers

Make enforcement real — not by punishing paperwork errors, but by cracking down on companies that exploit workers or knowingly break the law. Pair penalties with support for ethical hiring practices.

National E-Verify with Worker Protections

Implement a national employment verification system with strict oversight to prevent discrimination, wrongful firings, and misuse.

Decouple Immigration from Local Policing

People should feel safe reporting crimes or labor violations without risking deportation. Separating immigration enforcement from local law enforcement is key to public safety and workplace fairness.

Conclusion: Language, Logic, and Leadership

“Illegal immigrant” isn’t just an inaccurate term — it’s a distraction. It blames the people with the least power while letting the system’s real flaws go unaddressed.

If we want an immigration system that actually works — for citizens, immigrants, and employers alike — we need to be honest about who’s here, why they’re here, and what the law is doing (or failing to do) about it.

The problem isn’t that undocumented immigrants are breaking the law.

The problem is that the law is broken.

The Labor Shortage They Created

How Anti-Immigrant Policies Backfire on the Economy

For years, Donald Trump has framed immigration as a threat: to jobs, to public safety, to American identity. He promises in his second term to double down on deportations, restrict legal immigration even further, and crack down on undocumented workers with harsher penalties.

But reality paints a different picture.

The truth is that immigrants—documented and undocumented—form the backbone of key sectors of the U.S. economy. From agriculture and construction to hospitality and elder care, immigrant labor isn’t displacing American workers—it’s filling essential jobs Americans are unwilling or unable to take.

Aggressive anti-immigrant policies don’t solve economic problems. They create them.

Florida’s Immigration Crackdown: A Cautionary Tale

In 2023, Florida enacted one of the harshest immigration laws in the country (SB1718), championed by Governor Ron DeSantis and praised by Trump allies. It included steep fines for businesses hiring undocumented workers, invalidation of out-of-state driver’s licenses for immigrants, and mandatory use of E-Verify.

The results were swift—and disastrous:

• Labor shortages hit agriculture, construction, and hospitality industries almost immediately.

• Crops were left rotting in the fields as migrant workers fled the state, fearful of arrest or harassment.

• Farmers and contractors scrambled to find replacements—and couldn’t.

A Florida strawberry farm owner put it bluntly: “A lot of people went north and never came back.”

This wasn’t a surprise. Economists and business leaders had warned for months that the bill would gut Florida’s economy. A 2023 report from the American Business Immigration Coalition estimated that the law could cost Florida’s economy over $12 billion in losses【source: ABIC】.

Georgia’s Self-Inflicted Harvest Crisis

Florida’s experience echoed what happened in Georgia more than a decade earlier. In 2011, Georgia passed strict anti-immigration legislation aimed at forcing undocumented workers out of the state.

It worked—and crippled the agricultural sector. Farmers couldn’t find enough legal workers to replace the lost labor force. One estimate from the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association found that crops worth hundreds of millions of dollars were left unharvested.

The state briefly tried to solve the crisis by encouraging unemployed U.S. citizens to take the jobs. Few showed up—and those who did often quit after a single day, finding the grueling farm labor too physically demanding for low pay.

The Bigger Problem: America’s Demographic Reality

Trump and his allies talk about immigration as if the U.S. labor market has an endless supply of willing workers. It doesn’t.

The reality is:

• Birth rates are falling. The U.S. is not replacing its population fast enough.

• Native-born workers are aging out. More Americans are retiring every year.

• Hard labor jobs—harvesting crops, roofing houses, cleaning hotel rooms—are ones many Americans don’t want.

Without immigrant workers, industries from food production to construction grind to a halt. Prices rise. Economic growth slows. And rural economies, in particular, suffer.

Anti-immigrant crackdowns don’t bring back jobs for American citizens. They leave critical jobs unfilled, driving up costs for everyone and hollowing out key sectors of the economy.

The Dangerous Path Ahead

If Trump follows through on his mass-deportation agenda in a second term, the economic damage will spread far beyond farms and hotels. It will ripple across supply chains, into grocery stores, housing markets, and small businesses across the country.

America doesn’t need fewer immigrants. It needs immigration reform that recognizes the economic reality—and builds a system that supports workers, employers, and families alike.

Punitive crackdowns won’t make America stronger. They’ll make it weaker, poorer, and less able to compete in a global economy.

Up Next

Labor shortages are just one symptom.

Tomorrow, let’s look at how authoritarian overreach threatens justice, civil rights, and the rule of law in America.

The Playbook

How to Gut a Company and Get Away With It

There’s no smash-and-grab.
No gunmen in ski masks.
No vaults blown open at midnight.

The private equity heist is quieter.
More technical.
More devastating.

And it starts with a move so clever, so simple, most people never even notice it’s happening.

You buy a company — not with your own money — but with the company’s.

It’s called a leveraged buyout, but it might as well be called what it is: a hostage situation.

The private equity firm promises new investment, new growth, new prosperity.
In reality, they’re tying the company to a ticking debt bomb — and lighting the fuse.

Once the ink is dry, the “new owners” owe almost nothing.
The company owes everything.

And that’s just the beginning.

Here’s how the playbook works — step-by-step:

Step 1: Load Up the Debt

The first rule of the heist: always use someone else’s money.

The private equity firm buries the company under staggering debt — sometimes several times its actual value — using its own buildings, land, equipment, even intellectual property as collateral.
It’s like taking out a second mortgage on a house you already own… and handing the deed to someone else.

Suddenly, a stable, profitable business is forced into survival mode.
Debt service becomes the priority.
Growth, innovation, long-term planning — all of it is put on hold.
The company isn’t working for customers or communities anymore.
It’s working for the bankers.

Step 2: Slash and Burn

Debt pressure is a feature, not a bug.

• Stores close.

• Workers are laid off.

• Pay freezes, benefits disappear, pensions evaporate.

• Maintenance and modernization are deferred indefinitely.

Anything that costs money — anything that supports workers, customers, or communities — is slashed in the name of “efficiency.”

And if the company owns valuable assets, like real estate?
Those are sold off too — often in sweetheart deals that benefit the private equity firm or its allies.

What’s left is a stripped-down shell, more fragile with each passing quarter.

Step 3: Milk the Host

Before the company stumbles, the private equity firm moves in to collect its winnings.

They pay themselves “management fees” for consulting services.
They pay themselves “advisory fees” for overseeing the damage.
They sometimes even force the company to take on even more debt to issue “special dividends” directly into the pockets of investors.

It’s the business equivalent of taking out a payday loan — not to keep the lights on, but to throw a party for the landlord.

And if the company starts slipping toward bankruptcy?
Doesn’t matter.
The private equity firm has already been paid.

Step 4: Sell It, Burn It, or Let It Die

Once the host is drained — once the debt burden becomes unsustainable — the final phase begins.

Maybe they flip the company to another buyer, spinning the story of “turnaround potential.”
Maybe they take it public, dumping shares on unsuspecting investors.
Maybe they simply walk away, letting the company collapse into bankruptcy court, taking workers’ pensions and unpaid suppliers with it.

In every scenario, the private equity firm gets away with the loot.

The workers?
Out of jobs.

The retirees?
Out of pensions.

The communities?
Left with empty malls, abandoned factories, and broken promises.

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Today, in False Promises, we examined the False Promise of Tariffs — how broad, poorly targeted tariffs are raising costs for American businesses without delivering real local benefit. Instead of protecting workers or rebuilding industry, they’re making it harder for companies to survive — while doing nothing to address the underlying rot.

Private equity runs the same kind of scam.

They promise to rescue companies.
In reality, they load them down with debt, strip them of assets, and leave them weaker than before — all while walking away richer.

In both cases, the price is paid by the very people the promises were supposed to help.

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Coming up tomorrow:

The First Big Score: Killing Toys R Us for Profit.

(The inside story of how Wall Street took down a beloved American brand — and why no one ever paid the price.)

The False Promise of Tariffs

How Economic Nationalism Hurts American Workers

In his second term, Donald Trump is once again promising to revive American industry through aggressive tariffs and economic nationalism. He claims that higher taxes on imports will bring manufacturing back to U.S. soil, creating a new golden age of prosperity for American workers.

But we’ve seen this movie before—and it doesn’t end the way he says it will.

Tariffs aren’t a new idea. Trump’s first term already tested this approach, and the results were clear: rather than reviving American manufacturing, tariffs raised costs for U.S. businesses, triggered retaliatory trade wars, and ultimately hurt the very workers they were supposed to help.

Tariffs That Hurt the Heartland

One of the most striking examples came from Missouri. In 2018, Trump’s 25% tariff on imported steel was supposed to boost U.S. steel production. Instead, it nearly destroyed Mid Continent Nail Corporation, the largest nail manufacturer in the United States.

The company’s costs skyrocketed, forcing them to raise prices—leading customers to flee to cheaper, foreign alternatives. Within weeks, Mid Continent’s sales plunged by 50%. The company laid off over 100 workers and warned it might shut down entirely.

This was not an isolated case. Across the manufacturing sector, companies dependent on imported materials faced a cruel choice: eat the cost and risk going under, or raise prices and lose business. Neither outcome was good for workers.

According to the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the steel and aluminum tariffs may have saved 8,700 jobs in those industries—but they cost around 75,000 jobs elsewhere in the economy.

Farmers Became Collateral Damage

Meanwhile, American farmers—many of them loyal Trump supporters—were caught in the crossfire of retaliatory tariffs. China, Europe, and other trading partners responded by slapping tariffs on U.S. agricultural exports like soybeans, pork, and dairy. Exports collapsed. Entire harvests were left unsold.

To stop rural anger from boiling over, the Trump administration authorized over $28 billion in emergency aid to farmers—essentially using taxpayer dollars to pay farmers for losses caused by the trade war.

In the end, the tariffs didn’t just fail to bring back lost jobs—they increased government spending, raised prices for consumers, and destabilized key sectors of the economy.

Why Economic Nationalism Backfires

Tariffs are sold as a way to “protect” American workers, but in a global economy, they often do the opposite:

• Higher input costs make U.S. manufacturing less competitive, not more.

• Retaliatory tariffs close off foreign markets for American exports.

• Uncertainty discourages businesses from investing in long-term growth.

Manufacturing is already evolving. Automation, global supply chains, and shifting consumer demand mean that simply slapping tariffs on foreign goods cannot turn back the clock to a 1950s-style industrial economy.

Instead of a resurgence, tariffs often lead to layoffs, factory closures, and bailouts.

A Future of Isolation and Decline

If Trump’s second term repeats these mistakes—on an even larger scale, with blanket tariffs of 10% or higher—the outcome will be worse. Businesses may accelerate offshoring to avoid tariffs. Inflation will rise. Jobs will be lost, not gained.

And once again, the communities that place their trust in promises of economic revival will be left behind—betrayed not by foreign competition, but by bad policies that misunderstand how today’s economy really works.

The reality is clear: true support for American workers requires investment, innovation, and partnership—not isolation and tariff walls.

Up Next

The harm from economic nationalism doesn’t end with lost jobs.

Next, we’ll explore how anti-immigrant crackdowns are creating labor shortages and hurting key industries.

The Setup

How Wall Street Plotted the Perfect Crime

No alarms were triggered. No headlines screamed.
There was no raid, no getaway car, no televised trial.
But across America, a silent heist was already underway.

The clues were scattered in plain sight:

• Shuttered toy stores.

• Empty shopping plazas.

• Small-town hospitals closing their doors.

• Workers showing up one morning to find their jobs — and pensions — gone.

At first, it was easy to explain away.
“That’s just the market,” they said.
“Amazon is killing retail,” they shrugged.
“Healthcare is complicated.”

But beneath the surface, something more deliberate was unfolding.
A new kind of predator had emerged — one that didn’t need to invent, build, or serve.
Private equity firms had found a way to hijack the real economy, stripping value from companies, communities, and workers without ever facing consequences.

They would buy healthy businesses, saddle them with crushing debt, extract every ounce of cash they could, and abandon the wreckage — often while walking away with fortunes.

It was the perfect crime.
Legal. Invisible. Systematic.
And it would quietly help unravel the economic foundations that millions of Americans had spent generations building.

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Today, in False Promises, we began with Unraveling Pax Americana — tracing how short-term thinking, corruption, and political cowardice are actively weakening America’s standing in the world.

The heist unfolding inside corporate America mirrors this collapse.

While Washington is chasing quick wins and easy slogans, private equity firms are dismantling the companies that once formed the backbone of American life:

• The local retailers that anchored neighborhoods.

• The hospitals that kept rural America alive.

• The manufacturers that provided stable, middle-class jobs.

These businesses weren’t collapsing under the weight of global competition or innovation.

They were deliberately targeted — stripped for cash, loaded with debt, and left to fail.

Because when trust crumbles and grifters run the show, the only thing left to do is loot the place before the lights go out.

In this series, we’ll trace the blueprint of the heist:

• The tools they used.

• The targets they chose.

• The victims they left behind.

Because America didn’t lose Toys R Us, JoAnn Fabrics, your local hospitals, or hundreds of other businesses by accident.

They were sold for parts.
And the getaway is still happening.

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Coming up tomorrow:

The Playbook: How to Gut a Company and Get Away With It.

(Once you see how it works, you’ll never look at a “buyout” the same way again.)

Unraveling Pax Americana

How Tariff Chaos and Economic Nationalism Undermine U.S. Power

For nearly eight decades, American global leadership has rested on a fragile but powerful promise: stability. The Pax Americana wasn’t built solely on military might or cultural influence—it was rooted in the idea that the United States was a predictable partner, a safe haven for capital, and a steady hand guiding global trade and diplomacy.

That foundation is starting to crack.

Donald Trump’s return to power threatens to accelerate the erosion of this global trust. His erratic approach to trade, particularly his obsession with tariffs, may play well at rallies—but abroad, it signals volatility, nationalism, and unreliability. And in a global economy that depends on long-term confidence, that unpredictability could shake the very pillars of American dominance.

The Tariff Whiplash

In his first term, Trump launched a wave of tariffs against China and even traditional allies like the European Union and Canada. The justification was “fair trade,” but the execution was chaotic: tariffs announced via tweet, exceptions carved out inconsistently, and retaliatory measures following swiftly.

Now, in his second term, Trump is floating even more sweeping actions: universal tariffs of 10% on all imports, and 60% or more on Chinese goods. These are not targeted economic tools—they are blunt-force instruments of economic nationalism.

The immediate consequences for American consumers and manufacturers are real: higher prices, strained supply chains, and uncertainty for businesses trying to plan for the future. But the long-term consequences are even more dangerous: the erosion of trust in the United States as a trading partner.

Trade Partners Look Elsewhere

Global trade relies not just on comparative advantage, but on predictability. When America becomes erratic—lurching between free trade and protectionism with each administration—other nations seek stability elsewhere.

• The EU and China have accelerated trade talks, including strengthening the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment.

• Latin American and Southeast Asian nations are deepening regional pacts to reduce reliance on the U.S. market.

• Countries are diversifying currency reserves and entering non-dollar trade agreements (such as BRICS cross-border payment systems or China’s yuan-based oil contracts).

In essence, the U.S. is no longer the reliable engine of global capitalism—it’s becoming the wild card.

The Treasury Time Bomb

Perhaps the most overlooked risk is what happens if China and other large holders of U.S. Treasuries begin to divest.

China currently holds nearly $800 billion in U.S. debt—a number that has been shrinking steadily since Trump’s first term. While a full sell-off is unlikely (as it would hurt China, too), continued drawdown and diversification could still raise U.S. borrowing costs, especially if paired with domestic fiscal instability.

If countries no longer see U.S. Treasuries as the ultimate safe asset—because U.S. politics are increasingly erratic, or because they fear being targeted by economic sanctions—they will slowly shift to alternatives: gold, euro-denominated bonds, or regional reserve assets.

That shift threatens America’s ability to borrow cheaply, fund social programs, or maintain its military edge. In other words, economic nationalism at home could undermine national strength abroad.

The Bigger Picture: Trust Is Power

Pax Americana didn’t just happen—it was earned. Through decades of (mostly) consistent trade policy, strong institutions, and leadership in global crises, the U.S. convinced the world to bet on its system. That trust made the dollar the world’s currency, made U.S. markets the world’s investment safe haven, and gave America enormous geopolitical leverage.

Trump’s second-term plans threaten to squander that trust.

Tariffs don’t just disrupt trade—they send a message: the rules can change at any moment, depending on who holds power in Washington. Allies are watching. Rivals are taking notes. And the global order is already shifting.

If Pax Americana ends, it won’t be with a bang—it will be with a shrug. A quiet turning away. One trade deal here. One currency swap there. And eventually, the world will stop waiting to see what America does next.

Coming This Week: False Promises

The end of Pax Americana isn’t inevitable.

But if we ignore the patterns — economic chaos, authoritarian overreach, hollow promises — we risk losing more than global leadership.

In our next series — False Promises — we’ll expose how Trump’s second-term policies have already failed elsewhere — and what a smarter, stronger path forward could look like.

The truth is clear. The future is still ours to shape.

This Is How Liberty Dies (And How It Can Be Reborn)

A Star Wars Day Reflection at the End of the Modern Authoritarianism Series

May the Fourth Be With You — And May We Keep Fighting for Democracy

Cue the credits crawl…

Over the past week, we’ve walked through some dark territory:

• How authoritarianism creeps in through elections, not coups

• How strongmen discredit courts, silence the press, and rewrite the rules

• How power shifts away from the people—not all at once, but step by step

And now we’ve reached the end of the Modern Authoritarianism series.

But really, it’s not the end.
It’s just the beginning of the resistance.

And there’s no better day to remember that than Star Wars Day.

The Empire Always Rises the Same Way

George Lucas didn’t invent authoritarianism. He studied it.

The rise of Palpatine wasn’t fantasy—it was a warning.

• Emergency powers that never get relinquished

• Disinformation used to divide and conquer

• Scapegoating minorities to build political loyalty

• Militarization disguised as “order”

• Suppression of dissent framed as patriotism

It’s the same pattern we’ve traced across Hungary, Turkey, India, and yes—right here in the United States.

The only difference between their galaxy and ours?
Ours is still unwritten.

Star Wars Is About How You Fight

Star Wars isn’t a story of perfect heroes. It’s a story of ordinary people choosing to fight back against impossible odds:

• Leia resists from the inside.

• Luke stands up, even when he’s afraid.

• Finn breaks free from a system designed to control him.

• Cassian fights because someone must, not because it’s easy.

Rebellion isn’t about anger. It’s about hope armed with action.

And that’s exactly where we are now.

We know the authoritarian playbook.
We see the forces gathering.
And we know how it ends—if we don’t resist.

We Are the Firewall

If Modern Authoritarianism taught us anything, it’s that democracy doesn’t defend itself.

• It needs local officials who certify elections under threat.

• It needs journalists who tell the truth even when it’s dangerous.

• It needs voters who show up when it would be easier to stay home.

• It needs everyday people who refuse to let fear dictate their future.

You don’t have to be a Jedi. You just have to be counted.

This fight won’t be easy. Authoritarians are betting that we’ll get tired, get cynical, or get afraid.
But rebellions are built one person at a time. One act at a time. One voice at a time.

Thank You for Reading

This week’s Modern Authoritarianism series wasn’t easy to write—and it wasn’t always easy to read.

Authoritarianism thrives on confusion, fear, and fatigue.
This series was built to do the opposite:
To offer clarity. To build courage. To invite action.

If you made it all the way through, thank you.

Thank you for being the kind of person who doesn’t look away.
Thank you for believing that what we do—and what we refuse to accept—still matters.

Authoritarianism counts on silence.
You chose knowledge.
You chose engagement.
You chose hope.

And that choice, small as it might feel, is exactly how change begins.

May the Fourth Be With You — And May We Be With Each Other

As we close out this series, remember:

Hope is not naïve. Hope is necessary.

It’s what keeps us showing up.
It’s what turns the tide.

May the Fourth be with you.
May the resistance be with you.
And may we fight like hell for a future where liberty doesn’t die with thunderous applause—but lives because we stood up when it mattered most.

You Are the Firewall: What You Can Do Now

Authoritarianism doesn’t win because it’s strong.
It wins because too many people believe they’re powerless.

But here’s the truth: you are not powerless.
Democracy isn’t something we inherit. It’s something we do. And right now, doing it matters more than ever.

You don’t need to be famous, elected, or rich to fight back. You just need to be willing to act. Here’s how.

Get Local—and Stay Local

The front lines of democracy are closer than you think.

• Attend your local school board, city council, or town hall meetings.

• Ask about transparency, inclusion, and the protection of civil rights.

• Run for office—seriously. Start with your local library board, planning commission, or school council.

Authoritarianism thrives when people ignore the small stuff.
But power often changes hands at the local level first.

Defend the Vote—Every Vote

Democracy depends on participation. And it’s under attack.

• Register voters. Volunteer with nonpartisan groups like When We All Vote or Vote Riders.

• Work the polls. Election officials need people with integrity more than ever.

• Fight disinformation. Help friends and family find accurate, local voting info—not memes.

The goal of voter suppression is simple: make you give up.

Don’t let them win that quietly.

Support Independent Media

A free press is one of the first things authoritarians go after—and one of the best tools to fight back.

• Subscribe to a local paper or investigative outlet.

• Share credible stories. Challenge disinformation in your circles.

• Donate to independent journalism projects or public media.

Truth doesn’t spread on its own. We have to carry it.

Join or Fund a Movement

There are people already organizing—against book bans, for reproductive rights, to protect immigrants, to fight corporate corruption, and more. Join them.

Can’t join? Fund them. Even $5/month makes a difference when multiplied.

Some places to start:

• Democracy Docket (legal defense of voting rights)

• ACLU (civil liberties)

• Protect Democracy (nonpartisan watchdogs)

• Movement Voter Project (local grassroots orgs)

Talk to People—Even the Ones You Disagree With

Authoritarianism feeds on fear, silence, and tribalism. Break the cycle.

• Have respectful, fact-based conversations—even when it’s hard.

• Don’t try to “win” arguments—ask questions, plant seeds.

• Share this series, or a single post, with someone you think might actually read it.

Hearts don’t change because of zingers. They change because someone cared enough to talk.

Show Up—Even When It’s Inconvenient

Protests. Public comment sessions. Courtrooms. Phone banks.
None of this is glamorous. But democracy is a team sport—and we need everyone on the field.

When you show up, you send a signal: We are watching. We still care. We’re not giving up.

And authoritarian movements? They hate that.

This Isn’t About Being a Hero. It’s About Being Accounted For.

The people who stop authoritarianism aren’t always the loudest.
They’re the ones who refuse to look away.
Who organize one meeting, one ride to the polls, one uncomfortable conversation at a time.

If you’re here, reading this, you’re already part of the resistance.
Now take that energy and turn it into momentum.

What Comes Next

This wraps up Modern Authoritarianism, but not the work. Not even close.

Stay subscribed. Keep asking questions. Keep watching what happens at every level of power. And most of all—keep showing up.

If this series helped you understand the stakes, share it. If it made you feel less alone, tell someone. If it made you angry—good. Now let’s do something about it.