Let us reanimate an old, beloved Monday feature of the shebeen that we used to call What Are the Gobshites Saying These Days? We do so to memorialize the epochal encounter on Sunday between Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, and Symone Sanders-Townsend of MSNBC. Roberts quite openly—if not honestly—explained Heritage’s planned demolition of democratic self-government in favor of ruling by the faulty synapses of the modern conservative mind as best represented by the current presumptive presidential nominee. In short, Roberts was the very model of a modern major lickspittle. For example, when Sanders-Townsend thoroughly treed him on the subject of abortion, Roberts reverted to the dark imaginings of the cult.
SANDERS-TOWNSEND: I just wanna know, if I may, though—
ROBERTS: Why aren’t we talking about the people who—
SANDERS-TOWNSEND: I just wanna know, do you believe—
ROBERTS: —are supporting legislation that abortion can happen until three days after the person’s born. This is an absurd framing by this network.
SANDERS-TOWNSEND: That is an absurd assertion! As a person with an actual womb, I’m telling you, that does not happen.
More significantly, Sanders-Townsend, who was delivering a master class in giving someone enough rope, got Roberts talking about Heritage’s plans for the foreseeable future. Namely, the infamous Project 2025, which reads like Robert Bork dictated it from beyond the grave.
SANDERS-TOWNSEND: This plan is for anyone. It’s not just for Donald Trump….And so you reject the assertion that this was a plan cooked up specifically for the second coming of the Trump administration.
ROBERTS: The Heritage Foundation couldn’t do that, because we are non-partisan. We can’t be tied to one candidate.
SANDERS-TOWNSEND: You have said this plan is about institutionalizing Trumpism.
ROBERTS: The work of the Heritage Foundation is to institutionalize Trumpism as a new version of conservatism.
I leave the notion that Heritage could come up with a dramatic revision of the entire federal government that just so happens to conform to the nihilistic dreams of a half-mad crook without being supportive of said half-mad crook who’s running for president to subtler minds than mine. However, if you want to see how Project 2025 works in real time, you could do worse than looking at Iowa, where a concerted effort to legalize child labor has resulted in a completely predictable disaster. From the Des Moines Register:
Iowa businesses have been openly disregarding federal rules about when and how much children can work, and the federal government has taken notice. Who are the victims? The exploited children....Policymakers and a trade group gave the businesses a big push to start thumbing their nose at regulations on teenagers’ work hours. But even the more nuanced version can be accurately reduced to any of several memes. “Well, well, well, if it isn’t the consequences of my own actions” comes to mind.
In other words, the executives of Iowa corporations have used the new, looser state regulations to ignore federal regulations, and they’ve coached their management people to do the same.
The Restaurant Association in a June 7 email said regulators were “out in full force across the state. They are taking massive punitive action against Iowa restaurants who are following the new state youth employment hours instead of the federal regulation on hours.” A Subway franchise owner who had not been fined yet told Baskins, “I followed the state law to the letter because that’s what I thought I was supposed to do.”
Here’s Project 2025 on the idea of young people working in what even it concedes are “more dangerous jobs.”
Some young adults show an interest in inherently dangerous jobs. Current rules forbid many young people, even if their family is running the business, from working in such jobs. This results in worker shortages in dangerous fields and often discourages otherwise interested young workers from trying the more dangerous job. With parental consent and proper training, certain young adults should be allowed to learn and work in more dangerous occupations. This would give a green light to training programs and build skills in teenagers who may want to work in these fields.
This is not what either Roosevelt had in mind.
Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.
