Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely…
It is not a given that mankind continually evolves for the better. Consider US politics today that are reversing the advancements made by progressive political movements that steadily improved conditions for ordinary US citizens throughout much of the 20th century. These engines of progressive evolution are now running in reverse thanks to the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) July 2024 ruling on Trump v. United States that essentially awarded Donald Trump a permanent “get out of jail free card” by granting him and all future presidents broad immunity for any actions taken while in office except for hard to identify “purely private acts” while being President of the United States. From the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) perspective, “the court’s decision ensures that future presidents…will know that they can escape criminal accountability for blatantly criminal acts, no matter how corrupt…”
ACLU: Supreme Court grants Trump, future presidents a blank check to break the law
Never one to miss any loophole of opportunity, President Trump has not only taken this SCOTUS granted mantle of “absolute power” and multiplied it with his ability to pardon.
From Gemini’s perspective, “Donald Trump has granted significantly more pardons in his second term compared to his first term. During his entire four-year first term, he granted 144 pardons. In contrast, he has already granted executive clemency to over 1,700 individuals during his second term.” A big chunk of this pardoning activity (approximately 1,500) relates to January 6th insurrectionists who, as a mob, killed DC police officer Brian Sicknick on January 6th 2021.
Beyond insurrection, the multiplying power of Presidential pardons have paved the way for a tsunami of conflict-of-interest dealing within the Trump administration that starts with Trump family businesses, continues with highly irregular and lucrative stock trading within the administration and reaches right into the Pentagon where Secretary of War Pete Hegseth doesn’t seem to hold much regard for international law.
The Guardian: Trump presidency revenue and wealth
It is this notion of lawless pandemonium within the Trump administration driven by absolute power bestowed upon it by SCOTUS that serves as the inspiration for this week’s note whose title borrows from 19th century British Catholic historian and liberal politician John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton (Lord Acton) who famously penned in 1887, as it relates to political and religious leaders:
“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely…”
The context for Lord Acton’s quote matters
In response to a multi volume history of the Papacy written by Bishop Mandell Creighton where Creighton expressed his belief that popes and kings should be excused by history for actions taken during their respective times that appear lawless in retrospect. Given that Creighton’s history covered centuries where religious inquisitions killed thousands of innocents over centuries and a sacking of Constantinople by a Catholic army recruited in the West that didn’t spare women and children in 1204 among other dubious actions committed by the Church that Lord Acton responded to Creighton with a series of private letters in 1887 that ultimately became public decades later in the 1920’s.
It was within this private correspondence in 1887 where Acton made the above referenced and now famous quote. In contrast to an historically appeasing Creighton, Acton instead believed in a universal moral code and for religious and political leaders there was “no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it”. To this end Acton held that powerful popes, kings, and bishops be held to the same strict moral standards as ordinary people.
Acton’s beliefs were in step and right on time with a major wave of social, economic, and political reform in the United States that began in the 1890s now known as the Progressive Era.
Driven by rapid industrialization and urbanization, Progressive reformers sought to curb political corruption, regulate big business that held a tight grip on the economy as well as politics, improve public health by addressing dangerous working conditions and child labor practices, and expand democracy to make society safer and fairer for everyone.
Journalists, who revealed the worst practices of industrial big business at the time and faced significant physical, professional as well as economic danger as a result, were known as “muckrakers” and were integral catalysts for the Progressive movement.
Interestingly, Lord Acton’s words and beliefs penned almost 140 years ago were ahead of their time and helped pave the way for a better democratic based future. Fast forward to today and such holistic benevolence is non-existent in a second trump administration that allows for corrupt conflict of interest practices to transpire in plain sight while favoring corporate interests over that of labor.
Taken a step further, when queried if the Republican Party’s secret Project 25 that was not on the 2024 election ballot but is still being ruthlessly implemented by the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Russell Vought, represents the antithesis of the Progressive Movement referenced above, Google Gemini responded with:
“Yes, Project 25 functions in many ways as the ideological and structural reverse of the Progressive Era. While the Progressive Era sought to build an expert, neutral civil service and expand federal authority to regulate corporate power and protect social welfare, Project 25 seeks to dismantle that administrative state, replace career experts with political loyalists and reverse a century of twentieth-century reform.”
It is against this perspective that reviewing the urgent work of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) becomes immediately appropriate as the orthodoxy of attacking a “bloated and corrupt Deep State” became a temporary tip of the spear for the second Trump administration at its outset.
DOGE was created by executive order of President Trump to slash federal spending, downsize the federal workforce and dismantle government regulations and was initially led by Elon Musk, who has citizenship in three different nations including the US. In February of 2025, newly elected President Trump felt so strongly about reducing government waste that he proposed a “DOGE Dividend” that would return 20% of the “savings” created by DOGE to American taxpayers as rebates with potential checks being as high as $5,000 for a theoretical taxpayer.
With the “dust” now more than settled on DOGE, the writer asked Gemini whether DOGE was a failure or not to learn:
“Yes, widespread consensus among financial analysts, government watchdogs, and independent auditors characterizes DOGE as a failure.” As not only did DOGE fall drastically short of its original $2 trillion spending-cut target and provided no proof of government waste, DOGE “ultimately resulted in a net financial loss for the government.”
Meanwhile, as reported by the financial press in recent days, the US national debt just eclipsed $40 trillion with almost 30% of that stratospheric amount coming directly from the Trump administrations.
Bottom Line
The tragedy of unchecked power lies not only in what it produces but also in what it prevents. Consider that with absolute executive power now firmly established with President Trump in his second administration, checks and balances are now largely gone which creates a series of concerns that include:
Lost opportunity – What appeared as a decisive election outcome (it actually was a much closer election than generally perceived and without Elon Musk’s potentially illegal involvement, who knows ?) in 2024 when combined with economic tailwinds coming from the Biden administration in the form of the CHIPS, Infrastructure and Inflation Reduction Acts and anticipation of tax cuts and deregulation to soon follow…, all set the stage for an historically strong start to the second Trump administration.
Throw in a nascent and soon to explode national AI build out that quickly became the nation’s largest infrastructure project in its entire history and this year’s mid-term elections were poised to be an afterthought…
But with no checks and balances in place, President Trump decided to pursue an inflationary and illegal tariff strategy that penalized consumers while rewarding corporations and then started an illegal war with Iran that has pressured oil prices upward.
The combination of these actions has repercussions for the US economy and capital markets as explained by Johns Hopkins economist Steve Hanke in the attached article, “Top economist on Trump’s ‘deadly cocktail’ for the bond market—and how the bond vigilantes have crossed Scott Bessent’s ‘red line’” where Hanke explains that the policies of the Trump administration have allowed the “inflation genie” to get out of the bottle to help to create problems for the US Treasury market. Beyond a troubled US Treasury, Hanke sees oil prices as being underpriced due to war in Ukraine as well as disruption in the Mid East and due to underappreciated rate volatility sees stocks “sleepwalking” in the current environment.
Yahoo Finance: Top economist on Trump’s “deadly cocktail” for the bond market
Who exactly is Donald Trump ?
With the “gutting” of the US government from the bottom up at the hands of the current administration thanks to DOGE and Project 25, all roads arguably lead to Trump for answers as to how the rest of his administration is going to go. This leads to a natural inquiry into what Donald Trump’s resume looked like before entering politics which is provided below:
- Donald Trump is widely credited by sports historians, writers and former league executives as the primary force that ruined a promising a fledgling United States Football League (USFL) in the 1980’s.
- Donald Trump filed for personal bankruptcy six times between 1991 and 2009 related to his hotel and casino businesses while pocketing millions in management fees for himself.
- The mythology of Donald Trump as a shrewd businessman is a myth. Please watch the entire attached video below and please note the rhetoric of Trump versus the fortunes of the doomed Trump Castle & Marina of 1995 that lost investors everything while making Trump millions.
YouTube: Trump Castle & Marina (1995)
- In a legal response to accusations by the Trump family of Capital One “debanking” Trump family businesses, Capital One recently disclosed that they “closed over 385 accounts tied to Donald Trump and his businesses in 2021 after flagging transactions that showed characteristics of money laundering.”
- In 1998, a Trump casino paid a $477,000 fine to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) related to money laundering.
- Seventeen years after paying the above referenced fine, in 2015 FinCEN circled back to fine Trump Taj Mahal $10 million for committing “willful and repeated” violations of anti-money laundering laws between 2010 and 2012. The $10 million penalty was filed as an unsecured claim against the bankruptcy estate rather than a direct bill to Donald Trump forcing the casino to shutdown permanently in 2016.
- Donald Trump agreed to pay a massive $25 million civil lawsuit just after winning the 2016 US Presidential election surrounding the operation of a highly questionable Trump University operation.
- Other failed Trump businesses include: Trump Shuttle, GoTrump.com, Trump Vodka, Trump Steaks, Trump Magazine and Trump: The Game
- The Donald J. Trump Foundation was legally dissolved for improper political use and self-dealing in 2018 following a lawsuit by the New York Attorney General
Beyond the checkered resume above is the additional fact that Trump has 34 felony convictions that came from the New York State Supreme Court where a jury found Trump guilty of falsifying business records to conceal a $130,000 hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 presidential election.
As to why Trump hasn’t been punished for any of his outstanding felony convictions, the answer Gemini provides is illuminating in that just 6 months after Trump V. United States that granted Trump and future US Presidents blanket immunity; Judge Juan Merchan, the ruling judge on the Trump felony case, found “that imposing a traditional penalty or president-elect preparing to take office served no practical or viable legal purpose under the unprecedented circumstances…”. Taken a step further, this combination of rulings also means that any “more ordinary” citizen than Trump would have faced a harsh punishment for the stated crimes committed by Trump. As an aside, Lord Acton would strongly disagree with such an outcome where SCOTUS has arguably created a political caste system where President Trump and his circle are exempt from the law while the rest of America is not.
Final thoughts:
In contrast to the enlightened perspective of Lord Acton referenced above who understood the fallibility of an institution such as the Catholic Church and was willing to challenge such a conventional authority to observe a greater moral code that more broadly serves humanity, the Trump administration is marching the exact opposite way.
Meanwhile, all roads lead to a President whose resume does not match at all the bombastic claims he makes daily. Currently, this President, who claimed that he alone could fix the massive problems in Washington; is now solely responsible for higher US oil prices, higher rates higher inflation and a failed war effort in Iran.
Almost 140 years ago, Lord Acton challenged a Church historian who wanted to excuse popes and kings for atrocities committed on their watch in the name of religious authority. Lord Acton, in contrast, saw the need for government to steer clear of religious driven policies that were responsible for driving decades of needless wars while also creating policies to ease the undue burdens of ordinary citizens scrambling to adapt to a world of rapid industrialization and urbanization.
If Lord Acton had the ability to rise from the dead to see how the world had evolved relative to his beliefs, he’d arguably be bitterly disappointed when visiting the US where its Supreme Court just granted blanket immunity to an individual whose checkered past provides a powerful indication that a greater good for the people is now at of risk.
Have a great week !