David Stockman
The way to truly drain the Swamp is to defund, deregulate, devolve and demur. That is, only when you get government functions, fiscal resources and bureaucratic operations out of Washington is there even a fleeting chance of reducing the inherent corruption of the beltway and its endless phalanx of lobbies, PACs, consultants, lawyers and bag-men. And, yes, we do repeat ourselves!
Needless to say, this is why free markets in economics and Federalism in governance were historically the philosophic lodestones of the GOP—the once and former party of small government. At bottom, these principles everywhere and always foster less goverment, less centralization and less corruption of the democratic process in a faraway national capital removed from meaningful electoral accountability.
Then again, it’s also why the Trumpification of the GOP means the Swamp is destined to become ever deeper and more virulent. The Donald is the very opposite of a traditional GOP conservative because he is constantly on the prowl for ways to expand the reach of the Federal government.
After all, that’s the essence of his insane Tariff-Palooza and the abuse of tariff powers granted to the Congress by the plain words of the constitution in order to—
- Punish foreign suppliers for trade deficits that are largely due to high labor and production costs in the US.
- Sanction countries like India for buying oil from Russia.
- Attack the BRIC countries over plans to conduct trade in non-dollar currencies.
- Put a 25% tariff on imports from Canada due to tiny amounts of Fentanyl that allegedly cross the Canadian border.
The push for more government is also behind his constant yammering for low interest rates and more money-printing at the Fed. Likewise, it’s the basis for his use of the Biden CHIPS boondoggle money to buy shares of Intel and other tech and defense companies and his impending plan to improve record housing unaffordability caused by the Fed’s inflation of home prices by instituting national land use controls and allocation of building materials. And, of course, nothing smacks of Big Government in Washington more than a mega-fiscal bill (the OBBBA) that will add $55 trillion to the public debt over the next three decades.
So the Donald’s latest lurch into Bigger Government and a Deeper Swamp is not surprising. We are referring to his unhinged campaign for Federal intervention in local law enforcement—even though policing the streets and neighborhoods of the 88,000 units of state and local government in America is the very essence of Federalism and decentralized government power and accountability.
Indeed, the last thing we need is Washington politicians and bureaucrats sending the uniformed national guard into local cities and towns on the pretext that the Fed’s could do the job better. After all, if Chicago is a “hell hole” per the Donald’s media rant yesterday because it has a Dem mayor and governor and a violent crime rate of 617 per 100,000, then there are dozens of other cities in the same category. These include, for instance, Miami and Jacksonville, which have both Republican mayors and governors and nearly an identical violent crime rate of 615 per 100,000.
The plain fact is, most larger cities in America are dealing with street crime challenges, but there is no emergency whatsoever that demands Federal intervention and militarization of local law enforcement. And it’s not even a case where Dem cities and blue states are way out of alignment with the rest of the country and therefore merit Washington’s special attention.
In fact, the 10 largest cities with Dem mayors have violent crime rates all over the lot, ranging from 400 per 100,000 in San Jose to 1,072 per 100,000 in Houston. Likewise, the 10 largest cities with GOP mayors have violent crime rates which range from 778 per 100,000 in Dallas to just 297 per 100,000 in Lexington, Kentucky. Still, despite these wide ranges, the average for the top 10 Dem cities at 635 per 100,000 represents hardly a dime’s worth of difference from the 596 average for the 10 top GOP cities.
Either way, the Donald’s militant attack on Chicago self-evidently has nothing to do with a national emergency or a unique crime breakout in the Windy City. As is evident from the table below, Chicago’s violent crime rate is just in the middle of the pack among major American cities.
So, yes, there’s not much doubt as to what the Donald is really up to. He is using random crime anecdotes as an excuse to launch a political attack on Democrats and peddle a false narrative that everyday Americans are in grave danger because the Blue Cities and States of America have become incubators of criminal mayhem. But that’s a flat out lie.
City Pop(M) Party CrimeRate/100k
------------------------------In fact, the national crime problem did not worsen during the last four years, and is materially less threatening to law abiding citizens today than it was several decades ago. Thus, on a national basis the violent crime rate peaked at 730 per 100,000 in 1990 and has been trending steadily lower ever since. Most recently it was 397 per 100,000 in 2016, which rate fell a smidgen to 385 per 100,000 in the final year of Trump 1.0, and then dropped further to 359 per 100,000 in 2024—notwithstanding the tenure of a semi-comatose incumbent in the Oval Office that year.
Indeed, the table below actually tells you something that partisan politicians from either side of the aisle are unwilling to admit. To wit, violent crime rates are largely a function of demographics, and the fact that the vast majority of violent crimes are committed by young men aged 16 to 30. That’s why the homicide rate has been cuts in half from 10.2 per 100,000 in 1980, when the peak of Baby Boom men were entering young adulthood, to just 5.0 per 100,000 in 2024.
And since the US population is now aging rapidly, the violent crime rate and the metrics for the worst subset of violent crime—homicide—have steadily fallen. It doesn’t really matter what political party is in the White House or how vehement is their rhetoric and narrative about “law and order”
US Violent Crime and Homicide Rates, 1970 to 2024
Year Violent-Crime/100k Homicide/100k
------------------------------Still, there is a larger issue that the Trumpified GOP is completely missing. Namely, vibrant Federalism—which is the only anecdote to corrupt, wasteful Big Government embedded in the Washington Swamp—needs to be free to fail as well as succeed without Washington politicians usurping their functions and responsibilities.
So, yes, the violent crime rate in Houston is nearly three times the national average and the Chicago rate is double the national average. But the solution in these unfortunate localities must come from local voters who finally become fed-up enough to throw the bums out of office and install law enforcement regimes that more effectively protect the public safety.
In that regard, it is not entirely random that New York City—in some ways the victim of the most corrupt and incompetent Dem political machine in the country—-actually elected a former police chief as Mayor last time around. And, in fact, has a violent crime rate of only 456 per 100,000—a figure barely higher than the 359 per 100,000 rate for the US as a whole including the bucolic villages and farms all across Red State America.
At the end of the day, the real threat to average Americans is not street crime in the big cities, whether run by Republicans or Democrats. The actual crime threat is a Washington based Fiscal Doomsday machine that is burying the American economy in unsustainable debt.
If the Donald really wants to MAGA, he’d be well advised to take on the fiscal criminals of the UniParty who dominate both houses of Congress and enable the vast extent of the Washington Swamp he is pledged to drain.