#Republicans work to hurt average Americans

[sophieinwonderland]

tram-29 is proof you can't get MAGA voters to open their eyes. Pretty much everything they said has been proven false.

Victims of cancellation and censorship? Read "Politics v. science: How President Trump's war on science impacted Public health and environmental regulation"

Inflation and economy? Anyone who knows anything about tariffs know that they drive up prices and usually worsen the economy.

Politicians that only care about themselves? Which politicians are the ones to give tax cuts to the rich and cut things like medicare and public education again?

There are more, but this should be enough to drive home the point that MAGA voters are ignorant people living in an echo chamber of misinformation.

I'm not really sure what tram 29 is, but you did hit the nail on the head here.

Conservatives are living a post-fact world. They will accuse Democrats of spending too much when Obama dramatically reduced the deficit over the course of his presidency, and Bill Clinton left with a surplus that George Bush quickly ruined.

I wonder if most MAGA voters have heard that the Republican Senate recently passed a bill to uncap overdraft fees from banks. The Biden administration put a cap of $5 on overdraft fees. The average overdraft fee is about $35. The average, meaning that it could be $20, or it could be $50 depending on the bank.

These overdraft fees can also add up big time. If you get multiple charges on the same account, you can get multiple overdraft fees. You forget that something is planned to be taken out at the end of the month, and suddenly that $15 subscription you had is costing you $55, and then another subscription coming out at the same time can make that over $100.

These are fees that are designed to rob the poorest and most vulnerable people in the country.

Anybody who has ever had to deal with these types of bank fees stacking up while you are living paycheck to paycheck knows how awful it is to live with.

52 Republican senators voted to let banks keep doing that to their constituents, to their voters. Because they don't care about them. They don't care about the people who are poor. They don't care about people who are working to make a living while big businesses are robbing them blind.

And before anybody thinks that this was somehow to protect small businesses. That maybe the Republican senators who voted for your overdraft fees to go up are just trying to protect your local banks that are starting up... The fee limit only even applied to companies that already have more than ten billion dollars in assets.

The goal of the Republican party is to make people into wage slaves for big corporations, and to keep them that way. The problem is that the modern Republican voter seem more than happy to go along with it! Even if it hurts them. Even if it hurts their friends or family.

They will endure any amount of pain and suffering inflicted on them by the people they elect as long as the people they elect promise to hurt other people more. Whether those be trans people, black people, immigrants, or whatever other group they want to make into their scapegoat.

As long as the Republicans in office keep promising to hurt their constituents slightly less than they are hurting marginalized people, then it feeds into the superiority complex of the Republican voters.

Because Republicans don't want to make the country more prosperous as a whole. They really just want to be relatively more prosperous than other groups.

They will be fine with losing money as long as they believe that immigrants and queer people and women are losing more money than they are. They will be fine with giving up freedoms as long as they believe that marginalized communities are losing more freedom than they are. And as their defense of police violence proves, they will be okay with Americans dying as long as they believe that the deaths are mostly from people of color.

Republican voters will be more than happy to let their politicians cut off their feet as long as they believe that the other guys are getting their legs chopped off from the knees.

[starlightseraph]

comrades, don’t kill yourselves.

edit april 2025: as i’ve learned more and become more radical i see huge issues with what i said here. i viscerally recoiled just reading it, lol. revised below the cut.

my views aren’t actually too different from what they were when i wrote the original, but i’m now far less concerned about the possibility of hurting the feelings of usamericans who still subscribe to a mythologised view of “our nation” or “our values” or “the constitution” that has never truly existed. all of that “what is happening to america” is pure bullshit. internally, i felt just as blunt and harsh as i’m about to be now, but i was a coward and i didn’t want to alienate myself from the vast majority of the establishment-loving people that surround me.

(as i indefinitely live in the usa, which, don’t get me wrong, i love and it is now just as much my home as my actual home, but still, it’s insane just how deluded the average person is without realising it. it’s like that joke where the cia agent congratulates the kgb agent on the quality and quantity of soviet propaganda and the kgb agent says that it’s nothing in comparison to american propaganda. and the cia agent is confused and says “but we don’t have propaganda”)

my more developed line goes something like this: fuck trump and fuck harris and fuck both democrats and republicans and if you honestly think that democrats are even slightly left wing or in any way progressive or working towards change, you’re either propagandised to the high heavens or just wilfully blind.

democrats are disgusting, spineless, posturing idiots who have no clue how to even pretend to care about people. and they honestly don’t. why do you think like half of their campaign platform for decades on end was “we’ll codify roe!” but they literally never did, even when holding as much power as possible? because it was a bargaining chip. as long as they could make a promise like that, people would keep voting for them, hoping that this time it would really happen. but it didn’t, because they care more about not upsetting people and maintaining their careers and the absurd amounts of funding they get from every kind of lunatic lobbying group you can imagine.

democrats fund the right. democrats are funded by the right. democrats are the right. this shouldn’t be surprising, if you’ve been paying any attention at all. the democratic party is not and has never been representative of any minorities or marginalised groups and it has never actually tried to make things better for them. people often say “but oh, this or that issue would’ve been so much worse under republicans” and that may be true, but it misses the real point: democrats grudgingly give concessions, they don’t enact change.

obviously the maga-qanon crowd is particularly demented and i so have a special hatred for the nordic-aryan-alien-space-nazism thing that they have going on. but the point is that just because republicans are bad, it does not mean that democrats are good.

there’s a crucial difference here: a very mildly lesser evil versus an active force for good. democrats are an active force for bad. being in ostensible opposition to republicans just mean that they want to carry out their atrocities with a reassuring smile. republicans are just saying the quiet part out loud, and, if you’ve been listening, the quiet parts have never even been all that quiet.

if you actually wanna be of help to any oppressed people in the united states and especially if you want to help the literal billions that the united states oppressed abroad, you have to let go of the attachment to this idea of america as a place that could ever have turned out as anything but an evil, imperialistic genocide fanatic that’s badly masquerading as benevolent.

this is the inevitable outcome of the ideological foundations of the united states. a party, an election, all the votes in the world won’t change that. this is the system working as intended, slaughtering and enslaving and torturing incomprehensible numbers of people to line the pockets of ceos and politicians, just as it has always done.

get your head out of the sand. open your goddamn eyes. marching with a sign or posting on social media (unless promoting fundraisers) doesn’t do shit. if your “dissent” is in any form that the ruling class doesn’t try to stop, it’s because you pose no threat to their establishment. resistance has to be disruptive, it cannot be anything that gets support from the very same systems you are protesting against. i don’t know why people think that any movement protected by cops or that involves politicians will have any effect. it’s obvious that it won’t.

no matter how much they smile and say “oh but we love women and gay people and muslims” they’re not actually going to do anything but enthusiastically support the genociding of muslims, the pseudoscientific queerphobia, and the forcing of women into a box. they’re all part of the same money and control driven machine that has sadistically ended or destroyed the lives of countless people in a lost every single nation, including at home.

anyways, peace and love on the planet earth and all that. i love my fellow humans so much, i want nothing more than for us to just be chilling together like picking berries in a field and drinking tea or something. i’m so tired of this essentialist civilisation vs savagery or this nation against that one shit. we’re just a bunch of creatures trying to exist and be safe and not miserable and the people of the world fundamentally have the same interests at heart. constructed divisions have made us so focused on how we can dominate, when the natural tendency of humans is to cooperate. if your ideology isn’t fuelled by love, it’s worthless. i don’t mean this as some lofty flowery shit, i just mean that our end goal in everything should be the ultimate decrease of suffering and increase of happiness on as large a scale as possible.

the earth is beautiful and humanity is beautiful and we really can do something beautiful together. stay alive, stay fighting as hard and as tangibly as you can for days when the capitalists of the united states and imperial core no longer have a monopoly on the most basic elements of human existence.

in the words of our comrade yugopnik: my homo sapiens patriotism can no long be held at bay. lol

[corporationsarepeople]

But the White House’s messaging has evolved from Trump on the campaign trail promising to lower prices and make America “wealthy” again to Trump suggesting the U.S. needs a cultural shift on consumer spending while accepting that his tariff plan will raise prices.

- -

I’m not so sure that this is a shift.

“Make America Wealthy Again” only ever referred to a select group of people, and only the willfully naive could have believed anything else. Trump (and Musk) made this very clear on the campaign trail, even telling us that pain and sacrifice would be needed from the average American, to create the economy Republicans wanted.

We’re seeing that pain and sacrifice laid bare in the Billionaires Bonus Bill, but it’s anything but an unexpected shift. The central Republican philosophy for the past century has been that being poor is supposed to hurt, and that the working class should be poor.

I don’t understand how anyone can squeeze their eyes so tightly shut that they can no longer see this. It could hardly be more self-evident.

[erik-even-wordier]

helping un-brainwash some of the MAGA

Posted by Amanda Shinga Bussell to Facebook on March 4, 2025.

I'm seeing some Reactions to the idea of helping un-brainwash some of the MAGA and let me just say this:

No one asked you to do shit.

I mean YOU specifically. It's a call to action but it isn't about YOU. Stop making it about you. YOU can go do something else and shut up about how "useless" you think this is.

Let me see if I can phrase this ABSOLUTELY PERFECTLY to get it through heads about how this has to fuckin' work:

Cults don't let go easily. They also don't exactly ADVERTISE as a cult. What average MAGA voters were drawn in by is a complicated question with more answers than you might think, but the point is that there are LAYERS to this. Whatever drew them in ends up not mattering as much as what KEEPS them trapped - they don't feel trapped in MAGA because they thought eggs would get cheaper, that's how they got drawn in. They're trapped by a violent cult who lets its members know they won't be safe if they try to disobey or even speak up against its precious leader.

We aren't asking you to PERSONALLY go find the worst and loudest MAGA chuds and baby them and coddle their feelings and forgive everything they say and do. That's ridiculous. This ain't about those ones, it never was. They're unreachable and trying to extend a "helping hand" to trolls isn't going to work for obvious reasons.

THINK. USE YOUR BRAIN.

DO you actually think redemption, growth, and personal accountability CAN work? Or do you agree with the normal American puritan protestant punishment view of the world, where no one can ever change for the better and we have to hurt people because pain is the only true lesson?

The FURTHEST gone will have to hit a level of rock bottom we can't have anything to do with. Those aren't part of this equation, the loud trolls ARE NOT the ones being discussed and yet y'all tend to bring THEM up as a reason you think deprogramming can't work.

But believe it or not, some guy screaming on Twitter 22 hours a day about nazi shit IS NOT THE AVERAGE EXPERIENCE of voters! AND IMPORTANTLY that's not who ANYONE wants you to "reach out" to. There's no reaching some one who's at the top of their culting game - they're euphoric right now, they feel on top of this fucked up world, they're not who we mean. They love where they are, you can't drag some one away from a good feeling like that.

What we mean is the ones who ALREADY WANT TO GET AWAY. Who are voicing doubts! Who are scared and losing shit and grasping for answers.

Do you hear me? Can you internalize that part please?

Some Trump voters changed after his first win. Some changed after Jan 6th. Some changed now. They're scared to be loud about it, and I get how frustrating that is (god knows I want 948449 thinkpieces everywhere about leaving MAGA), but you cannot let your anger at Twitter Nazi #9859 impact how you treat your neighbor who's a school teacher on food stamps and has three kids she needs to take care of so she has MAYBE half an hour of free time a day and that half hour wasn't enough for her to TRULY research what was happening last year, might've never fuckin heard the words "Project 2025" etc. No one told her, no one informed her, she didn't know how or where to even look, and her financial situation stresses her out so much she wasn't able to free the mental energy to even TRY (funny how that's the kind of stressful life Republicans seem to want us ALL to have)

We're internet-biased here, and assume everyone HAS to be the exact same level of Informed and Aware that we are. Because the headlines are EVERYWHERE right? People are talking about it EVERYWHERE, there's trending hashtags after all! But there are millions of people who avoid the internet. Like I'm sorry but that's reality and once you admit you're ignoring a MASSIVE section of the ENTIRE population of the world because they aren't using the same tool you are? Doesn't feel very "aware" to me. It feels like bias that makes this worldview easier and we are desperate for easy. But this isn't easy.

We do not have the same lived experiences. People get sucked into cults, they get scammed, they get lied to. It's "American values" to mock anyone who gets scammed, right? To laugh at them, make fun of them, tell them they deserved it? It's why scam victims end up quietly suffering and scammers keep on going because no one listens to the warnings from a victim. Not like I'm free from this urge, god knows everyone who gets ripped off by a clear meme coin crypto nonsense makes me want to laugh but also tear my hair out and scream "WHAT WERE YOU THINKING" but like. in truth, if i had to admit it fully, can i say that helps.... anything? at all?

Yes, this is complicated because a lot of them are blind to their own biases and bigotry. If you're in a vulnerable minority, these "reach out to the ones who are trying to get out" messages are EXTRA not for you. No one should be pressuring black progressives to "reach out" to white MAGA. No one should be begging trans people to be nice to people who want to hurt them for existing in public. SAFETY MATTERS.

It's for those who CAN. Who have the ABILITY and, god this part matters, THE DESIRE.

There's cult-deprogramming groups for a reason, and as much as I ALSO FEEL PERSONAL AND WIDE-REACHING POLITICAL ANGER TOWARDS THESE VOTERS... I AM ALSO NOT SO SHORTSIGHTED TO REFUSE TO MAKE THE FUTURE BETTER BECAUSE I CAN'T LET GO OF MY OWN FEELINGS.

Bite your fucking tongue once in a while and fucking admit we'll sometimes have, and use, imperfect allies without having to be their friends. Purity won't win us shit. But getting ex-MAGA to focus their anger and their pain at the RIGHT people who've been the ones hurting them this whole time? Who've been LYING to them? That might matter. That might win us SOME shit. That might have a fucking impact. Please. Let people do work even if you don't personally wanna do it. This ain't about you, or me.

EDIT: oh one more point: this will not make you a solitary hero to anyone. People who've escaped cults often have a LOT of people they end up being thankful for for it later - you will be ONE PART of the deprogramming, YOU YOURSELF will not be able to be their total and complete hero, you CANNOT take on a person like a "project" that you can complete like homework. You can be ONE aspect of the community care that gives them the space and freedom to feel like they can safely leave. There won't be a lot of individual heroes in this, this is about community

[centrally-unplanned]

To narrow in on the limits of campaigning, lets take the classic Yglesias axe to grind:

Republican elites were profoundly divided on the wisdom of renominating Trump and obviously plenty of them think it was a mistake. But the decision has been made, and now they either vocally support that call or they stay politely quiet. When Trump feints to the center, those who favor the move loudly amplify it and exaggerate the extent of Trump's moderation, those who don't stay politely quiet and hope for the best. The Dem coalition, by contrast, is tchetchy and every constituent element feels that everything is up for constant renegotiation on a day-to-day basis — everyone's priority is on standing within the coalition not on doing the work to win.

In practice, what is being described here is that Republican organizations have fallen in line. Politicians are campaigning for Trump, activist groups are saying to vote, the media is full court press in his favor. They actively silence and push away from problems, focus on strengths, campaign on the ground, etc. This is effective for mobilizing voters and persuading sympathetic-but-undecideds. I agree with that.

The critique is that the democrats haven't done that, right? In practice, it means politicians aren't campaigning on the ground, media isn't shutting up about his issues, activists are sniping their own coalition instead of getting out the vote, and so on. And that is hurting Biden.

Or is it? It is to some degree, this critique is correct at some margin. If Biden could have a unified party going full-throttle, his polls numbers would be higher by X%. And some actors should switch behavior due to that. But I don't think, realistically, X is at all that high? Because the political parties in the US are just very, very different.

How would "dem media falling in line" look? What media?? The New York Times is not a dem establishment! Its incredibly liberal-left leaning, but its committed to neutrality as a core of its brand (and dissident snootiness as the other core of its brand). If it abandoned that its readers would *leave*, they have other options. And so on down the chain - a lot of the "dem voters" actively want balanced coverage and dissent. If I read a news source never criticizing Biden I would quit it, no way, this news isn't good.

And so on down the chain again, activist groups "driving out the voter?" What does that mean? I don't listen to activist groups, that is fucking cringe. Yeah, sure, they can drive some vote, but most of their affiliated members are loose, they don't listen that much to them. To the extent that they do not reflect the desires of their members, they will fall apart. Is Nancy Pelosi not supporting Biden? She does! Most dem politicians do. You just don't care, you can make up your own mind.

Dem voters are more of a looser coalition, they are on average better educated/smarter and more independently minded, and they live in places of increased social atomization & independence. They just cannot be mobilized the way republican voters can. Sometimes, you can really "animal spirits" it? Do the 2008 Obama, be a charismatic vessel for their hopes and dreams. But that is not a controllable phenomenon, and very hard for incumbents to pull off. Its not a switch Biden can flip.

So saying "Biden needs to do this to campaign better" on this topic is a bit of a chicken and egg thing, like yeah I too would like to fix the inherent inequality in the American voting public! Hopelessly unbudgeable, no, but the margins here are probably smaller than the wonk strategist types want to admit. You could never, in any world, have gotten the "Israel/Palestine left bloc" to "fall in line". That is a fundamental misunderstanding of the American body politic.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 5, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Sep 06, 2024

The U.S. government continues to tighten the screws against Russian malign activity. This morning the Department of Justice announced an indictment charging Dimitri Simes for violating U.S. sanctions against Russia. Simes allegedly worked for a sanctioned Russian television station and laundered the money from his work. Simes advised Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. 

A second indictment charged Simes’s wife, Anastasia, with sanctions violations and money laundering through the purchase of fine art. 

The Justice Department also issued a grand jury’s superseding indictment against six Russian computer hackers. Five were officers in Russia's military intelligence agency; one is a civilian. The six are charged with hacking into and leaking information from, as well as destroying, Ukrainian computer systems. The hackers also attacked systems in European countries that support Ukraine and in the U.S.

The State Department has offered a $10 million reward for information on the defendants’ locations or their malicious cyberactivity.

The fallout from yesterday’s revelation that six powerful right-wing media figures were on the Russian payroll continues. One of the right-wing commenters referred to in yesterday’s indictment, Tim Pool, has pushed the idea that the U.S. is in a civil war, interviewed Trump on his podcast in May, and has been fervently against American aid to Ukraine. Today, he posted: “Upon reflection I now understand that Ukraine is our Greatest ally[.] As the breadbasket of Europe and a peace loving people we cannot allow the Fascist Russians to continue their crimes against humanity[.] We must redouble our efforts and provide and additional $200b at once[.]”

By this evening, though, he was making a joke of the news that his paycheck had come from Russia.

Notably, Trump posted on his social media site a rant that tied his own 2016 campaign to yesterday’s indictments, although the indictment itself did not do so. He accused “Comrade Kamala Harris and her Department of Justice” of “resurrecting the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, and trying to say that Russia is trying to help me, which is absolutely FALSE.”

Vice President Harris is not in charge of the Department of Justice.

By tying yesterday’s indictments to his campaign’s involvement with Russian operatives in 2016, Trump might have been trying to suggest the story was old news, but it does highlight the parallels between Russia and right-wing operatives trying to get him reelected. Along with his colleague Donie O’Sullivan, Jake Tapper put it like this on CNN: “Today, the U.S. government is trying to peel back more layers of what officials say are massive and complex efforts underway to influence your vote in the upcoming election. One part of these alleged plots: replacing your average 2016 Russian social media bots with actual conservative Americans, right-wing influencers with a combined millions of followers, influencers promoted by Elon Musk, some visited by Republican politicians such as former president Trump.” 

Then Trump fell back on the old trope that his opponents are communists, posting on his social media platform: “We are fighting true COMMUNISM in this Country. We have to save our Elections, our System of Justice, our Constitution, and our FREEDOM, but that can only be done after we win BIG on November 5th, and proceed to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.” 

Economists for Goldman Sachs Group Inc. say that a Trump win in November would hurt the U.S. economy, while a Harris win—if she also gets Democratic control of the House and the Senate—would make it grow. 

Trump’s 2024 campaign is not at all about reality; it’s about a worldview. When asked at an event at the New York Economic Club “what specific piece of legislation will you advance” to make child care affordable, the 78-year-old Trump answered:

“Well I would do that. And we’re sitting down. You know I was somebody. We had Senator Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka was so impactful on that issue. It’s a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about, that because—look, child care is child care. It’s—couldn’t, you know, it’s something you have to have it—in this country you have to have it. But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to—but they’ll get used to it very quickly—and it’s not going to stop them from doing business with us, but they’ll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country. Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we’re talking about, including child care, that it’s going to take care. We’re going to have—I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time, coupled with the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country, because I have to stay with child care. I want to stay with child care, but those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that I’m talking about, including growth, but growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just told you about. We’re going to be taking in trillions of dollars, and as much as child care is talked about as being expensive, it’s, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we’ll be taking in. We’re going to make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people, and then we’ll worry about the rest of the world. Let’s help other people, but we’re going to take care of our country first. This is about America first. It’s about Make America Great Again, we have to do it because right now we’re a failing nation, so we’ll take care of it.” 

There is no specific legislation here, or even a grasp of the specific nature of the problem of paying for child care. What there is, apparently, is an argument that high tariffs will solve all of the nation’s problems. In the New York event, Trump called again for slashing taxes on the wealthy and insisted that new, high tariffs of 20% on all imports, and as much as 60% on Chinese imports, will end federal deficits and bring trillions of dollars into the country, although he is wrong about how tariffs work. 

Trump insists that tariffs are taxes on foreign countries, but they are not. They are essentially taxes on imported products, and they are paid by consumers. Trump’s running mate, Ohio senator J.D. Vance, recently tried to claim that economists disagree about whether consumers bear the cost of tariffs, but as Michael Hiltzik explained in the Los Angeles Times yesterday, economists agree on this.

When he was in office, Trump launched a trade war in 2018 by putting tariffs of up to 25% on $50 billion worth of Chinese products. The next year he added another set of 10% tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports, and the next year he did it again, this time on an additional $112 worth of Chinese products. The nonpartisan Tax Foundation calculates that this amounted to an $80 billion tax a year on American consumers, costing the average household about $300 a year and costing the U.S. about 142,000 jobs.

There are reasons to use tariffs. They can be used to protect a new industry from cheaper foreign products until the new industry can compete, or to stop foreign countries from flooding a country with cheap products that destroy a domestic industry. When he took office, Biden kept those of Trump’s tariffs that protected certain industries.

Trump’s insistence that tariffs will solve everything is not about economics, it’s about pushing a worldview from the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century, one embodied by the 1890 McKinley Tariff. “If you look at McKinley,” Trump told right-wing media host Mark Levin on Sunday, “he was a great president. He made the country rich.” In fact, McKinley (R-OH) pushed through the tariff named for him while he was in the House of Representatives from his position as a spokesperson for wealthy industrialists. They insisted that high tariffs were imperative to the survival of the country, that such tariffs were good for workers because they protected wages, and that anyone who disagreed was a socialist. But in an era without business regulation, industrialists actually kept wages low and used the tariffs to protect high prices that they passed on to consumers. 

In the late 1880s, the American people demanded a lower tariff, but when Republicans in Congress went to “revise” it, they made it higher. In May 1890, in a chaotic congressional session with members shouting amendments, yelling objections, and talking over each other, Republicans passed the McKinley Tariff without any Democratic votes. They cheered and clapped at their victory. “You may rejoice now,” a Democrat yelled across the aisle, “but next November you’ll mourn.” 

Democrats were right. In the November 1890 midterm elections, angry voters repudiated the Republican Party. They gave the Democrats a two-to-one majority in the House—McKinley himself lost his seat. Republicans managed to keep the Senate by four seats, but three of those seats were held by senators who had voted against the McKinley Tariff, and the fourth turned out to have been stolen.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[meret118]

I'm so sick of all these articles saying that Democrats need to support and reconnect with the working class to be successful. I'm over 50. The Democrats under Biden did more to help the working class than any president in my lifetime, and would have done even more if the Republicans hadn't stopped them. Republicans on the other hand have done nothing but hurt the bank accounts of average americans. They only want to help the rich, and are willing to rob everyone else and destroy the world to do so.

Trump won because the party of bigotry almost always controls the US! When the Democrats were the segregationist party, they were in control for decades. When LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act he said he was signing away the South to the Republicans. Nixon devised the Southern Strategy to turn the south red, and Reagan sealed the deal. Its not a coincidence reagan gave a speech praising states rights, a coded message meaning segregation and slavery, near where the civil rights workers Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner were murdered. Trump Jr made a speech there in 2016 too.

The years the more liberal party is in power are the exceptions, not the rule.

[yourreddancer]

The wrecking-ball crew and the looting of America

History guarantees that Trump’s billionaires will overreach

Robert Reich

Nov 18

Friends,

What do card sharks, magicians, pickpockets, and tyrants do to hide their tricks? They deflect your attention. “Look over here!” they say, as they create a commotion that preoccupies your mind while they bamboozle you.

At first, I thought Trump’s gonzo nominations were intended to flood the zone — overwhelm us, demoralize us, cause us to lose our minds.

Alternatively, I thought, they had a strategic purpose: Smoke out Senate Republicans who might stand in Trump’s way on other issues — such as allying with Putin and destroying NATO — so Trump could purge the holdouts through primary challengers and angry MAGAs.

But while flooding the zone and purging recalcitrant Senate Republicans may be part of it, I’ve come to think there’s a larger plan at work.

Trump wants to deflect our attention while he and his fellow billionaires loot America.

As he consolidates power, Trump is on his way to creating a government of billionaires, by billionaires, for billionaires.

Trump intuitively knows that the most powerful and insidious of all alliances is between rich oligarchs and authoritarian strongmen.

Two billionaires are leading his transition team. The richest person in the world and another billionaire will run a new department of “efficiency.” Other billionaires are waiting in the wings to be anointed to various positions.

America is now home to 813 billionaires whose cumulative wealth has grown a staggering 50 percent since before the pandemic.

Apologists for these mind-boggling amounts argue they’re not a zero-sum game where the rest of us must lose ground in order for billionaires to prosper. Quite the contrary, they say: The billionaire’s achievements expand the economic pie for everyone.

But the apologists overlook one important thing. Power is a zero-sum game. The more power in billionaire hands, the less power in everyone else’s. And power cannot be separated from wealth, or wealth from power.

The shameless feeding frenzy that has already begun at the troughs of Trump — planning for more tax cuts for the wealthy, regulatory rollbacks to make the wealthy and their corporations even wealthier, subsidies for the wealthy and their enterprises — constitute a zero-sum power game that will hurt average Americans.

The pending tax cuts will explode the national debt. As a result, the rest of America will have to pay more in interest payments to the holders of that debt — who, not incidentally, are wealthy Americans.

This will require that the middle and working classes either pay higher taxes or sacrifice some benefits they rely on (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act).

Meanwhile, regulatory rollbacks will make workplaces less safe, products more dangerous, our air and water more polluted, national parks less welcoming, travel more hazardous, and financial transactions riskier for average people.

Trump has tapped Elon Musk, who invested some $130 million to get Trump elected (not to mention in-kind gifts of support from X and a swing-state operation to register right-leaning voters) and former pharmaceutical executive Vivek Ramaswamy, to run a “Department of Government Efficiency.”

Musk calls it DOGE, named after Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency — whose value, not incidentally, has soared since Musk began using its name for his incipient department.

It now appears that DOGE won’t be an actual “Department” but a powerful advisory group outside the official government yet inside the Trump White House. It will announce — presumably posted with great fanfare on X — what Musk allies describe as “slash-and-burn business ideologies to the U.S. government.”

Musk has vowed to cut at least $2 trillion from the federal budget. The richest man in the world explains that “we have to reduce spending to live within our means. And, you know, that necessarily involves some temporary hardship.”

Hardship for whom? Not for Musk. Not for Trump. Not for the billionaires heading Trump’s transition team. Not for all the billionaires who will profit from the planned tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks.

And not for people responding to Musk’s recent X post calling for “super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting. If that’s you, DM this account…. Elon & Vivek will review the top 1% of applicants.”

Musk says we have to reduce spending “to live within our means?” Whose means?

Since Trump’s election victory on November 5, Musk himself has become $70 billion richer due to the rising value of his enterprises.

Why have Musk’s companies — Tesla, SpaceX, and X — risen so much in value? Because investors expect some or all of the 19 known ongoing federal investigations and lawsuits against Musk’s companies to wind down. (Lawsuits involving alleged securities law violations, workplace safety, labor and civil rights violations, violations of environmental laws, consumer fraud, and vehicle safety defects.)

Investors also expect SpaceX to become more profitable from more multibillion-dollar contracts. Musk’s xAI could also reap vast rewards as the new administration considers AI regulations.

Other billionaires who invested in Trump have also been raking it in.

Oracle founder Larry Ellison, the world’s second-richest person — a close friend of Musk’s and a former Tesla board member — is a longtime Republican donor who’s enjoying his own Trump bump. Since the election, Oracle’s share value has increased 10 percent, increasing Ellison’s own wealth by some $20 billion.

Venture capital billionaire Marc Andreessen, who donated at least $4.5 million to a super PAC that supported Trump, expects to cash in by having Trump ease the antitrust crackdown on Big Tech, in which Andreessen has invested heavily. Andreessen’s wish has already been partly monetized: Big Tech has reaped most of the stock market gains since Election Day.

There’s also crypto. Since the election, the price of bitcoin has surged to record levels. The crypto exchange Coinbase, a major contributor to candidates friendly to crypto, expects regulators to keep their hands off it. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has become about $4.5 billion richer since Trump’s victory, as Coinbase shares soared 67 percent.

Oh, there are also the private prison corporations. George Zoley, a top executive at GEO Group and another major donor to Trump, expects Trump’s reelection to drive up demand for empty beds at detention centers the company runs for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Since the election, GEO Group has had the largest surge in its stock price since 2016, after Trump was elected the first time.

GEO Group executives told Wall Street analysts on a recent earnings call that Trump’s election could help GEO Group fill as many as 18,000 empty beds at its facilities, which would generate as much as $400 million in annual business.

Venture capitalists and investors in new military technologies are now swarming around the Defense Department like bees over a vast flower bed. They also donated to Trump and expect a big quid pro quo.

The fossil fuels CEOs who plunked down millions of dollars for Trump in the expectation they’d get a fat return in the form of rollbacks of environmental regulations are also celebrating.

The list of wealthy beneficiaries from Trump’s election goes on and on.

So who will suffer the “hardship” Musk predicts?

I doubt that Musk will recommend cutting the billions of dollars in government contracts Musk’s corporations receive, or the GEO Group’s contracts for private prison space, or the military budget. Quite the contrary: Government spending on all these will increase.

Instead, Musk will want to cut the enforcement of antitrust laws, securities laws, workplace safety laws, labor laws, civil rights laws, laws against consumer fraud, laws mandating vehicle safety, tax laws, and environmental laws.

And because there’s no other place to find anything close to the $2 trillion he’s promising to cut from the federal budget, I expect Musk will turn to cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits.

Here’s where the trick comes in. We’ll all be so distracted by what Gaetz is doing at the Justice Department, Gabbard to national intelligence, and RFK Jr. to public health, that we may not notice.

After all, the next months will be filled with Trump theatrics — a major fight in the Senate over the Gaetz nomination, another fight over recess appointments, another over RFK Jr. and his plans for destroying public health.

Meanwhile, Musk and company will be recommending all sorts budget cuts that cause hardship for hardworking Americans but almost no one will notice because of the distractions.

I prefer to end this post on a hopeful note, so here goes.

There has always been a close relationship in America between wealth and power, but it has usually been thought slightly shameful — something to be hidden or elided — because it contradicts the basic tenets of democracy.

Recall the admonition credited to Justice Louis Brandeis that America has a choice: either great wealth in the hands of a few, or democracy — but we cannot have both.

Hence, American politicians typically play up their humble origins. CEOs and bankers minimize their political clout. The wealthy refrain from overt displays of power.

But in Gilded Ages — such as the one that dominated the turn of the 20th century and the one we’re now in — the ultra-rich abandon such humility. The linkages between wealth and power becomes apparent for all to see. Conspicuous consumption becomes the handmaiden of conspicuous clout.

In such times, the wealthy brag about their access to politicians, talk openly about how many tens of millions of dollars they’ve donated to campaigns and about the “return” on these “investments,” and want everyone to know how they’ve turned their affluence into influence and their influence into even more affluence.

Ultimately, these insults to democracy — delivered by the new oligarchs shamelessly, openly, and arrogantly — go too far. They invite a backlash.

If history is any guide, at some point the public will become revolted by the stench of legalized bribery. It will not abide the quid pro quos of billionaire campaign donations for tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks.

The public will also become fed up with brazen billionaire propaganda delivered through billionaire ownership of key media, such as Musk’s X, right-wing radio, and Murdoch’s Fox News, New York Post, and editorial pages of the The Wall Street Journal.

More than a century ago, this sort of revulsion generated what historians refer to as the “Progressive Era.” It was responsible for pushing Teddy Roosevelt to break up the monopolies, institute the nation’s first income tax, stop corporations from funding candidates for president and Congress, and create the Food and Drug Administration.

And when the excesses finally caused the economy to collapse, another upsurge in progressivism prompted Teddy’s fifth cousin, Franklin D., to raise taxes even further on the affluent, create the 40-hour workweek with time-and-a-half for overtime, force corporations to negotiate with unions, institute unemployment insurance, create a minimum wage, and establish Social Security.

If history is any guide, there is no limit to how greedy the greedy will get when the guardrails are lifted. So Gilded Age excesses are almost guaranteed.

And when the corruption and ensuing hardship become so blatant that they offend the values of the majority of Americans, that majority will once again demand systematic reforms that bring us closer to those values.

[takostacos]

It's two of my biggest pet peeves in people when I work with them:

Purposeful ignorance

And the glorification of purposeful ignorance.

The type of people that proclaim "cheating to get ahead is fine" that are then unsure of how to proceed in situations where they need to have some skill that they skipped over learning.

It happened at my old job. Someone else would fluff up their resume, talk a big game about their skills. But when shit hit the fan, they'd flounder. It was worse the longer I was in that career. It was soul crushing.

Using things like chat GPT to 'do it for you' is the same as asking someone else to do your job. You're only hurting yourself. You are stealing the learning opportunity from yourself. Whether it's leadership experience, necessary work experience, or something simple.

Teachers used to tell us "you won't always have a calculator in your pocket" and we do now. But I'm still grateful to have learned the benefits of memorizing how to do a bunch of that stuff.

The other side of it is also: things like chat GPT aren't 'intelligence', they're aggregators. they cram everything together and average it out. Get into a very niche field and you'll see how often people are wrong about things you're an expert in. Especially on the internet. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. Now understand that the aggregate combination of everything will have a good portion of wrong information, and the 'a.i.' not being truly intelligent, doesn't know the difference. Only that "it looks/sounds right". In some fields, that can be very dangerous.

It's not just Art, or creative writing, or film. Look at the awful tariff plan done by the Republicans in American government. If they're using chat GPT for that, what other uses are these 'geniuses' using it for?

[bllsbailey]

Trump: Met Japanese Trade Delegation, 'Big Progress'

President Donald Trump on Wednesday inserted himself directly into trade talks with Japanese officials, a sign of the high stakes for the United States after its tariffs rattled the economy and caused the administration to assure the public that it would quickly reach deals.

The Republican president attended the meeting alongside Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, top economic advisers with a central role in his trade and tariff policies.

"Hopefully something can be worked out which is good (GREAT!) for Japan and the USA!" Trump wrote in a social media post ahead of the meeting.

Afterward, he posted: "A Great Honor to have just met with the Japanese Delegation on Trade. Big Progress!"

The president's choice to get directly involved in negotiations points to his desire to quickly finalize a slew of trade deals as China is pursuing its own set of agreements. It's an open test of Trump's reputation as a dealmaker as countries around the world seek to limit the potential damage unleashed by his import taxes.

The sweeping tariffs that Trump announced on April 2 triggered panic in the financial markets and generated recession fears, causing the U.S. president to quickly put a partial 90-day hold on the import taxes and increase his already steep tariffs against China to as much as 145%.

The pause temporarily spared Japan from 24% across-the-board tariffs, but there continues to be a 10% baseline tariff and a 25% tax on imported cars, auto parts, steel, and aluminum exports.

With Japan charging an average tax rate of 1.9% on other countries' goods and having a long-standing alliance with the U.S., the talks on Wednesday are a crucial indicator of whether the Trump administration can achieve a meaningful deal that reassures the markets, American voters, and foreign allies.

U.S. economic rival China, meanwhile, is trying to capitalize on the turmoil around Trump's announcements, with its leader, President Xi Jinping, touring nations of Southeast Asia and promoting his country as a more reliable trade partner.

Japan is among the first countries to start open negotiations with the U.S. Trump and other administration officials have said the phones have been "ringing off the hook" with dozens of countries calling, eager to strike deals with a president who views himself as a master negotiator to avoid tariffs when the 90-day pause ends. Israel and Vietnam have offered to zero out their tariff rates, but Trump has been noncommittal as to whether that would be sufficient.

On Thursday, Trump is scheduled to meet with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who will likely be carrying messages on behalf of the European Union about how to resolve the tariffs Trump placed on the 27-state group.

Still, the U.S. president may also be feeling increased domestic pressures to settle any tariffs as many voters say they returned Trump to the White House with the specific goal of improving the economy. California Gov. Gavin Newsom filed a lawsuit Wednesday that argues that Trump overstepped his authority by declaring an economic emergency to levy his tariffs, with the Democrat saying in a statement that the tariffs have caused economic chaos.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday that Trump's tariff policies would hurt the U.S. economy, a direct warning to a White House trying to sell the import taxes as a long-term positive for the country.

"The level of tariff increases announced so far is significantly larger than anticipated, and the same is likely to be true of the economic effects, which will include higher inflation and slower growth," Powell said at the Economic Club of Chicago.

Japan, like many other nations trying to minimize the possible economic fallout from Trump's tariffs, has been scrambling to respond. It has set up a special task force to assess the impact of the tariffs and offer loans to anxious companies.

Although Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has been working hard to coax exemptions out of Trump, the government has said little officially on what concessions it might offer during these talks.

Nor has the administration been transparent about its asks. The Trump administration is seeking to close the $68.5 billion trade deficit with Japan and seeking greater access for U.S. goods in foreign markets, yet the president has also insisted that tariff revenues can be used to pay down the federal budget deficit.

"Japan is coming in today to negotiate Tariffs, the cost of military support, and 'TRADE FAIRNESS,'" Trump posted on Wednesday.

U.S. officials met in Washington with Japan's chief trade negotiator, Economic Revitalization Minister Ryosei Akazawa.

"I am prepared for the talks," Akazawa told reporters at Tokyo's Haneda Airport before boarding his flight. "I will negotiate in order to firmly protect our national interest."

He said that both Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer are "known to be pro-Japan and professionally talented" and that he hopes to build a relationship of trust with them.

"I believe we can have good talks toward a win-win relationship that will serve national interest for both Japan and the United States," he said.

Japan has contended that Trump's tariff measures are likely to violate bilateral trade agreements or World Trade Organization rules. While Ishiba has said he opposes retaliatory tariffs, he also has said he is in no rush to push for a settlement because he doesn't want concessions.

Xi, meanwhile, stopped in Malaysia on Wednesday and told its leader that China will be a collaborative partner and stand with its Southeast Asian neighbors after the global economic shocks.

Xi is touring Vietnam, Malaysia, and Cambodia this week on a trip that likely was planned before the tariffs' uncertainty but that he's also using to promote Beijing as a source of stability in the region and to shore up relationships in that part of the world as he looks for ways to mitigate the 145% tariffs that Trump is keeping on China.

"In the face of shocks to global order and economic globalization, China and Malaysia will stand with countries in the region to combat the undercurrents of geopolitical ... confrontation, as well as the countercurrents of unilateralism and protectionism," Xi said in remarks at a dinner with Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim.

"Together, we will safeguard the bright prospects of our Asian family," he added.

Xi has promised Malaysia and Vietnam greater access to Chinese markets on his visits, although few details were shared.

In Washington, Trump has indicated that he also wants to discuss how much the Japanese contribute to the cost of U.S. troops stationed there, largely as a deterrent to China.

Trump's demand for more defense spending concerns the Japanese government.

Under its national security strategy, Japan aims to double annual defense spending to nearly $10 trillion, or 2% of gross domestic product, in 2027, while there is a concern that Trump may ask for that to be increased to 3% of GDP. Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani said Tuesday that the military budget for this year is about 1.8% of Japan's GDP.

[misfitwashere]

Can the Muskrat shut the United States government?

Sure looks that way. The richest person in the world has turned his wealth into raw power. That's what oligarchy looks like. 

ROBERT REICH

DEC 19

Friends,

If the government shuts down Saturday, Elon Musk will be largely to blame.

Musk went on a daylong rampage yesterday against the continuing resolution drafted by House Speaker Mike Johnson and his leadership team to keep the government going. 

Musk posted nearly nonstop on his social media platform X about how lawmakers must kill it. “Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!” Musk wrote in one post.

Musk — the richest person in the world — was joined in his posting spree by another billionaire, Vivek Ramaswamy, whom Trump asked to partner with Musk in an effort to slash government spending and reduce the federal budget deficit. 

Republicans gauging support for the legislation said they were bleeding votes as a result of Musk’s barrage.

Then, after Musk spent the day telling Republicans not to support the bill, Trump weighed in against it, too. That put the bill on life support.

If this isn’t oligarchy, I don’t know what is.

You may not get access to services you depend on just before the holidays because an unelected billionaire shadow president wanted it that way.

Funding for essentials will be jeopardized — disaster relief, clean water protections, food safety inspections, cancer research, and nutrition programs for children.

Federal workers like air traffic controllers will be required to work without pay just as air travel is about to pick up. 

The same goes for members of our military.

Musk effectively blocked a government spending bill by mobilizing his 205 million followers on X and then using his influence on Trump —influence he bought by spending more than $270 million getting Trump elected. 

Yet Musk’s concern about the federal deficit seems to disappear whenever Trump and MAGA Republicans talk about passing tax cuts that will disproportionately benefit billionaires like Musk. Tax cuts, I might add, that will balloon the deficit by nearly $5 trillion.

We’re getting a preview of what the next four years will look like — dysfunction in D.C. that will make your life worse, driven by a petulant billionaire with an unquenchable thirst for wealth and power. 

A billionaire wielding his influence over the rest of us proves we are in a Second Gilded Age.

But there may be a silver lining to this Gilded Age cloud. The lesson of the First Gilded Age is that when concentrated wealth, corruption, and ensuing hardship for average working Americans become so blatant that they offend the values of the majority of us, we rise up and demand real, systemic change. 

It’s only a matter of time. A government shutdown that hurts average working people, engineered by the richest person in the world, might just hasten it.

What do you think?

[particularj]

Is…is the Fed Chair going to be the unexpected hero we need this time around?

Let me explain…

The Fed Chair is an early Trump appointee from 2017 — you know, when some of the people were actually somewhat competent, if conservative, subject matter experts. Powell has pointed out that the law doesn’t require him to resign if asked, and that the President lacks the power to remove or demote him — only appoint.

Why does this matter?

Resistance to Trump’s illegal actions, especially in deference to the letter of the law, will be key. Republicans, especially older ‘rule of law,’ classic conservatives may be unlikely allies at a time of unhinged MAGA bulldozing.

By resisting a potential Trump request, he is showing how we can all resist.

Trump himself cannot or would not physically force Powell out of his office - he’s not going down to that office to kick him out like a security guard. And if others that might have that task given to them - police, security, National Guard, etc. - ultimately decide they won’t do it either, because Powell has a right to be there, there’s very little Trump can actually, literally do.

This is one method of resistance - if Trump’s requests don’t have enough eager and willingness participants, little will happen. Again, Trump is but one man. Remember how pathetic that fast food dinner was for whatever championship sport team was invited to the White House, when the White House cooks weren’t around because of the government shut down?

That is how many of his demands can play out: pathetically. He can’t run the government himself.

Republicans are going to pass hurtful conservative policies, cutting taxes for the rich, rolling back environmental protections, etc. I’m not sure, with a potential Republican trifecta, there is much we can do about these.

But we can work to convince enough Republicans to keep the guardrails in place and resist in similar ways. And some might be willing to, not fully ready to capitulate to Trump fascism and destroy American democracy. Average government employees, average national guard members and troops and their leaders - who built a career dedicated to country and not Trump, average civil servants, maybe even some Republican politicians.

Our united goal is to survive and for damage control / harm reduction. We have to recognize we lost and will lose on policy for at least 2 years. I hate it, but that would be the case with any Republican administration. We have to slow down his attempt to blitz and become a dictator, through any means possible.

And he’s tired, he’s 78, he’s ailing. If he doesn’t make it two more years, I don’t think JD will have the political Teflon, power and recognition, or ability to keep the teardown of democracy going. Nobody’s taking dictatorial orders from a man who can’t even order donuts in a normal way.

[yourreddancer]

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

September 5, 2024 (Thursday)

The U.S. government continues to tighten the screws against Russian malign activity. This morning the Department of Justice announced an indictment charging Dimitri Simes for violating U.S. sanctions against Russia. Simes allegedly worked for a sanctioned Russian television station and laundered the money from his work. Simes advised Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

A second indictment charged Simes’s wife, Anastasia, with sanctions violations and money laundering through the purchase of fine art.

The Justice Department also issued a grand jury’s superseding indictment against six Russian computer hackers. Five were officers in Russia's military intelligence agency; one is a civilian. The six are charged with hacking into and leaking information from, as well as destroying, Ukrainian computer systems. The hackers also attacked systems in European countries that support Ukraine and in the U.S.

The State Department has offered a $10 million reward for information on the defendants’ locations or their malicious cyberactivity.

The fallout from yesterday’s revelation that six powerful right-wing media figures were on the Russian payroll continues. One of the right-wing commenters referred to in yesterday’s indictment, Tim Pool, has pushed the idea that the U.S. is in a civil war, interviewed Trump on his podcast in May, and has been fervently against American aid to Ukraine. Today, he posted: “Upon reflection I now understand that Ukraine is our Greatest ally[.] As the breadbasket of Europe and a peace loving people we cannot allow the Fascist Russians to continue their crimes against humanity[.] We must redouble our efforts and provide and additional $200b at once[.]”

By this evening, though, he was making a joke of the news that his paycheck had come from Russia.

Notably, Trump posted on his social media site a rant that tied his own 2016 campaign to yesterday’s indictments, although the indictment itself did not do so. He accused “Comrade Kamala Harris and her Department of Justice” of “resurrecting the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, and trying to say that Russia is trying to help me, which is absolutely FALSE.”

Vice President Harris is not in charge of the Department of Justice.

By tying yesterday’s indictments to his campaign’s involvement with Russian operatives in 2016, Trump might have been trying to suggest the story was old news, but it does highlight the parallels between Russia and right-wing operatives trying to get him reelected. Along with his colleague Donie O’Sullivan, Jake Tapper put it like this on CNN: “Today, the U.S. government is trying to peel back more layers of what officials say are massive and complex efforts underway to influence your vote in the upcoming election. One part of these alleged plots: replacing your average 2016 Russian social media bots with actual conservative Americans, right-wing influencers with a combined millions of followers, influencers promoted by Elon Musk, some visited by Republican politicians such as former president Trump.”

Then Trump fell back on the old trope that his opponents are communists, posting on his social media platform: “We are fighting true COMMUNISM in this Country. We have to save our Elections, our System of Justice, our Constitution, and our FREEDOM, but that can only be done after we win BIG on November 5th, and proceed to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.”

Economists for Goldman Sachs Group Inc. say that a Trump win in November would hurt the U.S. economy, while a Harris win—if she also gets Democratic control of the House and the Senate—would make it grow.

Trump’s 2024 campaign is not at all about reality; it’s about a worldview. When asked at an event at the New York Economic Club “what specific piece of legislation will you advance” to make child care affordable, the 78-year-old Trump answered:

(WORD SALAD FOLLOWS!!!!!)

“Well I would do that. And we’re sitting down. You know I was somebody. We had Senator Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka was so impactful on that issue. It’s a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about, that because—look, child care is child care. It’s—couldn’t, you know, it’s something you have to have it—in this country you have to have it. But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to—but they’ll get used to it very quickly—and it’s not going to stop them from doing business with us, but they’ll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country. Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we’re talking about, including child care, that it’s going to take care. We’re going to have—I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time, coupled with the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country, because I have to stay with child care. I want to stay with child care, but those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that I’m talking about, including growth, but growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just told you about. We’re going to be taking in trillions of dollars, and as much as child care is talked about as being expensive, it’s, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we’ll be taking in. We’re going to make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people, and then we’ll worry about the rest of the world. Let’s help other people, but we’re going to take care of our country first. This is about America first. It’s about Make America Great Again, we have to do it because right now we’re a failing nation, so we’ll take care of it.”

There is no specific legislation here, or even a grasp of the specific nature of the problem of paying for child care. What there is, apparently, is an argument that high tariffs will solve all of the nation’s problems. In the New York event, Trump called again for slashing taxes on the wealthy and insisted that new, high tariffs of 20% on all imports, and as much as 60% on Chinese imports, will end federal deficits and bring trillions of dollars into the country, although he is wrong about how tariffs work.

Trump insists that tariffs are taxes on foreign countries, but they are not. They are essentially taxes on imported products, and they are paid by consumers. Trump’s running mate, Ohio senator J.D. Vance, recently tried to claim that economists disagree about whether consumers bear the cost of tariffs, but as Michael Hiltzik explained in the Los Angeles Times yesterday, economists agree on this.

When he was in office, Trump launched a trade war in 2018 by putting tariffs of up to 25% on $50 billion worth of Chinese products. The next year he added another set of 10% tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports, and the next year he did it again, this time on an additional $112 worth of Chinese products. The nonpartisan Tax Foundation calculates that this amounted to an $80 billion tax a year on American consumers, costing the average household about $300 a year and costing the U.S. about 142,000 jobs.

There are reasons to use tariffs. They can be used to protect a new industry from cheaper foreign products until the new industry can compete, or to stop foreign countries from flooding a country with cheap products that destroy a domestic industry. When he took office, Biden kept those of Trump’s tariffs that protected certain industries.

Trump’s insistence that tariffs will solve everything is not about economics, it’s about pushing a worldview from the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century, one embodied by the 1890 McKinley Tariff. “If you look at McKinley,” Trump told right-wing media host Mark Levin on Sunday, “he was a great president. He made the country rich.” In fact, McKinley (R-OH) pushed through the tariff named for him while he was in the House of Representatives from his position as a spokesperson for wealthy industrialists. They insisted that high tariffs were imperative to the survival of the country, that such tariffs were good for workers because they protected wages, and that anyone who disagreed was a socialist. But in an era without business regulation, industrialists actually kept wages low and used the tariffs to protect high prices that they passed on to consumers.

In the late 1880s, the American people demanded a lower tariff, but when Republicans in Congress went to “revise” it, they made it higher. In May 1890, in a chaotic congressional session with members shouting amendments, yelling objections, and talking over each other, Republicans passed the McKinley Tariff without any Democratic votes. They cheered and clapped at their victory. “You may rejoice now,” a Democrat yelled across the aisle, “but next November you’ll mourn.”

Democrats were right. In the November 1890 midterm elections, angry voters repudiated the Republican Party. They gave the Democrats a two-to-one majority in the House—McKinley himself lost his seat. Republicans managed to keep the Senate by four seats, but three of those seats were held by senators who had voted against the McKinley Tariff, and the fourth turned out to have been stolen.

[misfitwashere]

The wrecking-ball crew and the looting of America 

History guarantees that Trump’s billionaires will overreach

ROBERT REICH

NOV 18

Friends,

What do card sharks, magicians, pickpockets, and tyrants do to hide their tricks? They deflect your attention. “Look over here!” they say, as they create a commotion that preoccupies your mind while they bamboozle you. 

At first, I thought Trump’s gonzo nominations were intended to flood the zone — overwhelm us, demoralize us, cause us to lose our minds. 

Alternatively, I thought, they had a strategic purpose: Smoke out Senate Republicans who might stand in Trump’s way on other issues — such as allying with Putin and destroying NATO — so Trump could purge the holdouts through primary challengers and angry MAGAs. 

But while flooding the zone and purging recalcitrant Senate Republicans may be part of it, I’ve come to think there’s a larger plan at work. 

Trump wants to deflect our attention while he and his fellow billionaires loot America. 

As he consolidates power, Trump is on his way to creating a government of billionaires, by billionaires, for billionaires. 

Trump intuitively knows that the most powerful and insidious of all alliances is between rich oligarchs and authoritarian strongmen. 

Two billionaires are leading his transition team. The richest person in the world and another billionaire will run a new department of “efficiency.” Other billionaires are waiting in the wings to be anointed to various positions. 

America is now home to 813 billionaires whose cumulative wealth has grown a staggering 50 percent since before the pandemic. 

Apologists for these mind-boggling amounts argue they’re not a zero-sum game where the rest of us must lose ground in order for billionaires to prosper. Quite the contrary, they say: The billionaire’s achievements expand the economic pie for everyone. 

But the apologists overlook one important thing. Power is a zero-sum game. The more power in billionaire hands, the less power in everyone else’s. And power cannot be separated from wealth, or wealth from power. 

The shameless feeding frenzy that has already begun at the troughs of Trump — planning for more tax cuts for the wealthy, regulatory rollbacks to make the wealthy and their corporations even wealthier, subsidies for the wealthy and their enterprises — constitute a zero-sum power game that will hurt average Americans. 

The pending tax cuts will explode the national debt. As a result, the rest of America will have to pay more in interest payments to the holders of that debt — who, not incidentally, are wealthy Americans. 

This will require that the middle and working classes either pay higher taxes or sacrifice some benefits they rely on (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act). 

Meanwhile, regulatory rollbacks will make workplaces less safe, products more dangerous, our air and water more polluted, national parks less welcoming, travel more hazardous, and financial transactions riskier for average people. 

Trump has tapped Elon Musk, who invested some $130 million to get Trump elected (not to mention in-kind gifts of support from X and a swing-state operation to register right-leaning voters) and former pharmaceutical executive Vivek Ramaswamy, to run a “Department of Government Efficiency.”

Musk calls it DOGE, named after Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency — whose value, not incidentally, has soared since Musk began using its name for his incipient department. 

It now appears that DOGE won’t be an actual “Department” but a powerful advisory group outside the official government yet inside the Trump White House. It will announce — presumably posted with great fanfare on X — what Musk allies describe as “slash-and-burn business ideologies to the U.S. government.” 

Musk has vowed to cut at least $2 trillion from the federal budget. The richest man in the world explains that “we have to reduce spending to live within our means. And, you know, that necessarily involves some temporary hardship.”

Hardship for whom? Not for Musk. Not for Trump. Not for the billionaires heading Trump’s transition team. Not for all the billionaires who will profit from the planned tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks. 

And not for people responding to Musk’s recent X post calling for “super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting. If that’s you, DM this account…. Elon & Vivek will review the top 1% of applicants.”

Musk says we have to reduce spending “to live within our means?” Whose means? 

Since Trump’s election victory on November 5, Musk himself has become $70 billion richer due to the rising value of his enterprises. 

Why have Musk’s companies — Tesla, SpaceX, and X — risen so much in value? Because investors expect some or all of the 19 known ongoing federal investigations and lawsuits against Musk’s companies to wind down. (Lawsuits involving alleged securities law violations, workplace safety, labor and civil rights violations, violations of environmental laws, consumer fraud, and vehicle safety defects.)

Investors also expect SpaceX to become more profitable from more multibillion-dollar contracts. Musk’s xAI could also reap vast rewards as the new administration considers AI regulations.

Other billionaires who invested in Trump have also been raking it in. 

Oracle founder Larry Ellison, the world’s second-richest person — a close friend of Musk’s and a former Tesla board member — is a longtime Republican donor who’s enjoying his own Trump bump. Since the election, Oracle’s share value has increased 10 percent, increasing Ellison’s own wealth by some $20 billion.

Venture capital billionaire Marc Andreessen, who donated at least $4.5 million to a super PAC that supported Trump, expects to cash in by having Trump ease the antitrust crackdown on Big Tech, in which Andreessen has invested heavily. Andreessen’s wish has already been partly monetized: Big Tech has reaped most of the stock market gains since Election Day.

There’s also crypto. Since the election, the price of bitcoin has surged to record levels. The crypto exchange Coinbase, a major contributor to candidates friendly to crypto, expects regulators to keep their hands off it. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has become about $4.5 billion richer since Trump’s victory, as Coinbase shares soared 67 percent. 

Oh, there are also the private prison corporations. George Zoley, a top executive at GEO Group and another major donor to Trump, expects Trump’s reelection to drive up demand for empty beds at detention centers the company runs for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Since the election, GEO Group has had the largest surge in its stock price since 2016, after Trump was elected the first time. 

GEO Group executives told Wall Street analysts on a recent earnings call that Trump’s election could help GEO Group fill as many as 18,000 empty beds at its facilities, which would generate as much as $400 million in annual business.

Venture capitalists and investors in new military technologies are now swarming around the Defense Department like bees over a vast flower bed. They also donated to Trump and expect a big quid pro quo. 

The fossil fuels CEOs who plunked down millions of dollars for Trump in the expectation they’d get a fat return in the form of rollbacks of environmental regulations are also celebrating. 

The list of wealthy beneficiaries from Trump’s election goes on and on. 

So who will suffer the “hardship” Musk predicts? 

I doubt that Musk will recommend cutting the billions of dollars in government contracts Musk’s corporations receive, or the GEO Group’s contracts for private prison space, or the military budget. Quite the contrary: Government spending on all these will increase. 

Instead, Musk will want to cut the enforcement of antitrust laws, securities laws, workplace safety laws, labor laws, civil rights laws, laws against consumer fraud, laws mandating vehicle safety, tax laws, and environmental laws.

And because there’s no other place to find anything close to the $2 trillion he’s promising to cut from the federal budget, I expect Musk will turn to cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits.

Here’s where the trick comes in. We’ll all be so distracted by what Gaetz is doing at the Justice Department, Gabbard to national intelligence, and RFK Jr. to public health, that we may not notice. 

After all, the next months will be filled with Trump theatrics — a major fight in the Senate over the Gaetz nomination, another fight over recess appointments, another over RFK Jr. and his plans for destroying public health. 

Meanwhile, Musk and company will be recommending all sorts budget cuts that cause hardship for hardworking Americans but almost no one will notice because of the distractions. 

I prefer to end this post on a hopeful note, so here goes.

There has always been a close relationship in America between wealth and power, but it has usually been thought slightly shameful — something to be hidden or elided — because it contradicts the basic tenets of democracy. 

Recall the admonition credited to Justice Louis Brandeis that America has a choice: either great wealth in the hands of a few, or democracy — but we cannot have both.

Hence, American politicians typically play up their humble origins. CEOs and bankers minimize their political clout. The wealthy refrain from overt displays of power. 

But in Gilded Ages — such as the one that dominated the turn of the 20th century and the one we’re now in — the ultra-rich abandon such humility. The linkages between wealth and power becomes apparent for all to see. Conspicuous consumption becomes the handmaiden of conspicuous clout. 

In such times, the wealthy brag about their access to politicians, talk openly about how many tens of millions of dollars they’ve donated to campaigns and about the “return” on these “investments,” and want everyone to know how they’ve turned their affluence into influence and their influence into even more affluence. 

Ultimately, these insults to democracy — delivered by the new oligarchs shamelessly, openly, and arrogantly — go too far. They invite a backlash. 

If history is any guide, at some point the public will become revolted by the stench of legalized bribery. It will not abide the quid pro quos of billionaire campaign donations for tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks.

The public will also become fed up with brazen billionaire propaganda delivered through billionaire ownership of key media, such as Musk’s X, right-wing radio, and Murdoch’s Fox News, New York Post, and editorial pages of the The Wall Street Journal. 

More than a century ago, this sort of revulsion generated what historians refer to as the “Progressive Era.” It was responsible for pushing Teddy Roosevelt to break up the monopolies, institute the nation’s first income tax, stop corporations from funding candidates for president and Congress, and create the Food and Drug Administration. 

And when the excesses finally caused the economy to collapse, another upsurge in progressivism prompted Teddy’s fifth cousin, Franklin D., to raise taxes even further on the affluent, create the 40-hour workweek with time-and-a-half for overtime, force corporations to negotiate with unions, institute unemployment insurance, create a minimum wage, and establish Social Security. 

If history is any guide, there is no limit to how greedy the greedy will get when the guardrails are lifted. So Gilded Age excesses are almost guaranteed. 

And when the corruption and ensuing hardship become so blatant that they offend the values of the majority of Americans, that majority will once again demand systematic reforms that bring us closer to those values. 

[contemplatingoutlander]

BTW, do MAGA people realize that if Trump creates a literal "war" on drug cartels, and also follows through on his plans to round up migrants into detention camps, he will have to spend billions of dollars to make his plans come to fruition?

That money is going to have to come from somewhere. And as we all know, Trump will not raise taxes on the wealthy. In fact, he will probably push another tax cut that primarily benefits the wealthy.

Republicans will use their need to fund the new Trump police state as an excuse to destroy what remains of the social safety net and privatize Social Security and Medicare.

In other words, average Americans will be hurt so that Trump can turn America into a police state to attack cartels, round up and deport migrants, and to deny the rights of citizenship to migrant children who were born in this country.

Any working class family that is living paycheck to paycheck is foolish to support Trump and the GOP, who have NEVER been interested in actually helping the working class--only in using them to gain power by lying to them and playing on their prejudices.

The conservative conference embraced Trump’s signature promise to inflict pain on people who are in the US without authorization

Anti-migrant rhetoric took center stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference as right-wing pundits and politicians unleashed a torrent of xenophobia over the course of several days, signaling the central role that nativism will likely play in the 2024 presidential election.

With former President Donald Trump now the de facto Republican presidential candidate, the entire right-wing media ecosystem has embraced his signature anti-immigrant positions. At CPAC, which took place just outside of Washington, D.C., this week, speakers baselessly blamed migrants for a host of perceived social ills and proposed radical policies to punish them and their home countries.

Fox News contributor Tom Homan, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under Trump, pledged that his former boss would bomb Mexican drug cartels if given a second term.

“President Trump will declare them a terrorist organization, he will send a Hellfire rocket down there, and he’ll take the cartels out,” Homan said.

Even though launching missiles at the United States' neighbor and largest trading partner poses a number of obvious risks, Homan has long supported designating Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations to empower federal law enforcement to wage war against cartels on their home soil. Under Trump, Homan was one of the architects of the administration’s family separation policy, and he has extensive ties to the nativist Tanton network.

[beardedmrbean]

Conservatives on Twitter were not buying President Joe Biden’s recent speech assessing the pandemic and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as the two main issues behind the United States’ economic woes.

Around noon on Tuesday, Biden addressed the American public on the state of the economy. In addition to saying that his administration has made "extraordinary progress" with the economy, Biden blamed all economic hardship on COVID-19 and Russia.

"I want us to be crystal clear about the problem," Biden stated. "There are two leading causes of inflation we’re seeing today. The first cause of inflation is a once-in-a-century pandemic. Not only did it shut down our global economy, it threw the supply chains and the demand completely out of whack."

SEN. RICK SCOTT HITS BACK AT BIDEN'S ATTACKS: HE TOOK NO RESPONSIBILITY

He then explained the other cause. "And this year we have a second cause, Mr. Putin’s war in Ukraine." He added, "We saw in March that 60% of inflation that month was due to price increases at the pump for gasoline."

In response to reporters’ question about taking any "responsibility" for inflation, Biden stated, "I think our policies help, not hurt."

Exasperated with the Biden narrative that blamed external forces for inflation, conservatives took to Twitter to mock the president’s words.

"This is what Joe Biden's policies have done to prices in just one part of the economy," tweeted Townhall.com editor Spencer Brown, along with an infographic of the national average gas prices.

Fox News contributor Guy Benson, tweeted, "This speech is listless and somewhat adrift. Totally predictable talking points, filled with familiar specious claims."

Shortly ahead of the speech, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, shared a Reuters article claiming that Biden will blast Republicans for having no plan to stop inflation during the speech. He captioned the post with his own assessment about how Biden is harming the economy.

"Stop…spending…MONEY!!" Cruz tweeted.

Writer Kyle Becker blasted the entirety of Biden’s address, tweeting, "Biden is lying about his ‘solutions’ for inflation and the non-existent Republican plan for a ‘middle class tax hike.’ This gaslighting won’t work because the policies won’t work."

"Joe Biden will blame anyone and anything for inflation," tweeted MRCTV’s account. 

Washington Free Beacon reporter Joe Gabriel Simonson mocked one of Biden’s proposed inflation solutions, tweeting, "I am enjoying Biden acknowledging that higher taxes -- which sucks money out of the economy -- could theoretically ease inflation. excited to see where this thought takes him."

Conservative commentator Greg Price tweeted, "Biden says that he is taking inflation ‘very seriously’ before once again blaming it on covid and Putin." 

Breitbart White House correspondent Charlie Spiering tweeted similarly, writing, "’I want every American to know I'm taking it seriously,’ says Joe Biden about inflation before blaming the pandemic and Putin for all of the problems."

In another tweet Spiering described Biden’s address as a "Very defensive speech," and added, "So far Joe Biden hasn’t offered a single new solution to inflation even though he says it's his ‘top domestic priority’ A lot of shuffling and rehashing of previous efforts."