Trephinated Victorians send policy fatberg to local Republicans

Where did they find this Cabinet?

Last week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent haughtily announced that the U.S. Treasury would ramp up repurchases of its long-term government bonds. (I say “haughtily” only because I’m fascinated by his haircut and weird, turgid speech pattern, both of which come across as those of a trephinated Victorian)

Everyone is focused on the record-setting equity markets, but last week brought an interesting fact to light as the Administration set their sights set on fixed income. As James Carville once put it, "I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or as a .400 baseball hitter. But now I would like to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody."

Seemingly aware of the potentially uncontrollable danger to the full faith and credit of the United States, Bessent’s plan was to have the U.S. Treasury repurchase long-term bonds to lower their interest rates, which would theoretically reduce mortgage costs, lower inflation, and ultimately lead to happier voters for the midterms.

Bond rates dipped very briefly. and then rose immediately again. Why? Because no one has any trust in the Republicans’ stewardship. The Administration’s B-Team has squandered investor confidence by running up unsound government deficits with huge tax giveaways, by starting wars abroad, and by otherwise acting grossly irresponsible in every way imaginable.

What does that have to do with Currier and Shepley?

I mention the unsexy subject of the bond markets only to illustrate the point that the two haircuts —Trevor Currier and Chris Shepley—running to fill the State House seats vacated by Brad Jones and Tram Nguyen seem blissfully unaware that the people for whom they’ve been cheerleading for years, the MAGA party structure from which they draw succor affects directly what they’ll be doing at the State House if elected.

Both Currier and Shepley are running on the promise of standing up for taxpayers and restoring accountability. In fact, they must be sharing a local printer or campaign manager, as they’re sporting near-identical literature: “running to stand up for us taxpayers and restore accountability on Beacon Hill.” Some people will say it’s lazy —I, for one, applaud their message discipline for you. Good for you, gents!

That’s as far as it goes:

They are so close to getting it but ignore that 90% of their prospective work at the State House will consist of mopping up the junk decisions, caprice and inconsistencies, trade wars and actual wars, wanton criminality, election manipulation, and designed opaqueness floating, like a big smelly fatberg, downstream from the White House clogging up the operations of the states.

Don’t blame Trump—he is the differently abled grifter he always was. I blame the people who have enabled him. and provided MAGA’s local support structure in small towns like ours.

To that end, if either come a’knocking, ask them to name policy differences between themselves and the MAGA agenda on e.g., ICE deportations, failure to tax multi-billionaires, the grifting, the lack of transparency, the Epstein Files—and record their answer.