#the trump pandemic recession

[tomorrowusa]

Trump's most famous promise was to make Mexico pay for his squalid and corrupt border wall.

Amount collected from Mexico: 0 centavos.

Trump did give tax breaks to billionaires while giving COVID-19 to much of the rest of the country.

Trump's promises are as worthless as degrees from Trump University.

[joe-england]

Let's talk about the economy and a democratic problem....

Those stupid trade wars.

[robertreich]

Biden vs. Trump: Whose Economic Plan Is Better for You? 

Trump failed to deliver on his number one campaign promise:

President Trump presided over a historic net loss of nearly 3 million American jobs, the worst jobs numbers ever recorded under an American president.

This is no fluke. America’s economy has almost always done worse under Republican presidents. A New York Times analysis found that since 1933, the U.S. economy has grown nearly twice as fast on average under Democrats.

Now Trump’s defenders claim it’s not his fault that the economy collapsed under his watch. It was the pandemic. But there are two big things wrong with this.

First, the pandemic recession was as bad as it was because of Trump. His failure to lead with any national strategy left America in chaos throughout 2020, long after other nations had developed coordinated testing, tracing, and social distancing plans that allowed them to reopen their economies.

But secondly, even before the pandemic, Trump failed to deliver on his economic promises. Job growth slowed under Trump.

America added more jobs in President Obama’s last three years than in Trump’s first three.

Even before the pandemic most middle-class American households saw their incomes go down under Trump.

Trump’s major economic policy was cutting taxes on the rich and big corporations. He promised it would result in $4,000 annual raises for workers. How did that work out? Did you get a $4,000 raise?

Republicans keep claiming that if we just cut enough taxes on the rich, the wealth will “trickle down.” But it never works. Wage growth slowed after Reagan’s tax cuts for the rich and big corporations. And the Bush and Trump tax cuts didn’t trickle down either.

These giveaways to the wealthy came at the expense of investments in infrastructure, education, and health care, making life more expensive and difficult for everyone who isn’t rich.

They also exploded the debt and deficit. Reagan oversaw a 186% increase in the national debt — the biggest percentage increase in over 70 years. The Bush and Trump tax cuts, that mostly benefited corporations and the rich, are the main reasons why America’s debt is growing faster than the economy.

Republican presidents have led us into the three worst economic crises of the last century, and Democrats led us out of them.

Republicans talk about running the country like a business, but they want to run it the way Trump ran his businesses: with massive debts, a string of failures, and payouts for the folks at the top, while workers get shafted again and again. Given Republicans’ track record, why would any hard-working American put their financial security in the hands of a Republican president ever again?

[tanadrin]

My impression is that both in the 2008 recession and the pandemic recession + inflation shock, the United States government, and the Obama and Biden administrations--but especially the Biden administration--demonstrated really good economic instincts. For Obama, this is notable in part because until Trump came along the Republicans were starve-the-beast deficit hawks, many of whom seemed to think that the most modest of government spending was liable to end in Weimar-era hyperinflation. The Obama response to the 2008 recession was still probably too small, giving as it did too much ground to fears of runaway inflation that turned out not to be warranted, but I reckon it was still more substantial than the equivalent Republican program would have been.

Under Biden, the U.S. got a well-managed post-pandemic recovery that was even less shy about stimulus, and as a result it is doing really well compared to other countries in the post-pandemic era. The European response was pretty meh, and growth since has been sluggish (Germany even had a small recession last year), but top-line economic indicators in the US are very strong right now. On top of that, the rich-poor gap is slowly narrowing, unemployment is low, and inflation seems to have just about fallen to pre-pandemic levels.

Everybody likes to bag on the U.S. government (and I am no exception), but people in the United States should be proud of the way their government managed the last two major economic crises, and other countries--especially in Europe, where deficit hawkishness is alive and well--can learn from their example.

[contemplatingoutlander]

Biden goes positive. Can voters handle it?

Jennifer Rubin discusses Biden's new positive ad. If the question is, "Can voters handle" Biden's positive ad, the answer is, it's about time the Democrats told the story of Biden's successes to counteract the relentless disinformation about Biden coming from the right.

But even more important than that, Rubin brings home the fact that neofascists and demagogues NEED people to believe that their nation is falling apart and ONLY the Dear Leader can fix it. That's why it is particularly important to counteract Trump's and the GOP's dystopian disinformation about America under Biden.

Here are some excerpts from Rubin's column.

Biden’s ad, “Fought Back,” reminds us how bad things were under his predecessor, touts Biden’s economic accomplishments and accuses Republicans (while displaying Trump’s picture) of running America down. A list of bipartisan accomplishments, such as the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Chips bill, refutes the notion that the United States is paralyzed or incapable of solving its problems. [...] This message embodies Biden’s endemic optimism: “We just have to remember who we are. We’re the United States of America. And there’s nothing — nothing beyond our capacity — if we do it together.” Moreover, it rebukes Trump’s negativity, in effect saying: Refusing to credit the improvements in the economy is tantamount to slamming Americans and discrediting their hard work. (The ad shows Biden delivering one of his favorite lines: “It’s never, ever been a good bet to bet against America.”) [...] Biden stands ready to explain how his agenda — “Bidenomics” — brought us from fears of a pandemic recession to recovery. With unemployment and inflation in decline and wages rising, the public finally might be more amenable to hearing an uplifting message. Biden would be foolish not to take credit for gains achieved as a result of smart policy and bipartisan legislative wins. However, Biden’s ad does something more than present an economic argument. He’s asking a larger question: Do we really want to go back to the trauma of the Trump years? He is betting that voters, even if they are uncertain about the future, don’t want to wallow in anger, fear and pessimism. He offers not only a choice between two policies but also two different visions, which are miles apart in tone. [...] Historians tell us that fascism arises in a mood of “cultural pessimism” that fosters a demand to entirely remake government and casts the authoritarian strongman as a messianic-like figure who can arrest decline. Without cultural, economic and political ruin and ensuing panic, there is no crisis to quell. By contrast, if a democracy is producing real gains and people see improvement, voters will be less inclined to throw the entire system overboard to follow the cult leader. No wonder hyperbole, fearmongering and hysteria are part and parcel of the MAGA message. [...] For Trump, the present is always bleak; hence, we have to go back to the past to make America great again — and rely on him to fix things. Biden, therefore, has the task of not simply correcting the economic record but also of diffusing — perhaps mocking — Trump’s excessive negativity. Things are bad for Trump, but they need not be bad for the rest of us. We’ll be just fine if we keep our heads about us, look at the facts and trust in ourselves. That’s not a bad pitch for Biden or, for that matter, any democracy trying to ward off a hysterical demagogue. [color/emphasis added]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Mike Luckovich:: GOP strategy in its totality

* * * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 18, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Sep 19, 2024

Today, at a White House reception in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, President Joe Biden said: "We don't demonize immigrants. We don't single them out for attacks. We don't believe they're poisoning the blood of the country. We're a nation of immigrants, and that's why we're so damn strong."

Biden’s celebration of the country’s heritage might have doubled as a celebration of the success of his approach to piloting the economy out of the ravages of the pandemic. Today the Fed cut interest rates a half a point, a dramatic cut indicating that it considers inflation to be under control. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has maintained that it would be possible to slow inflation without causing a recession—a so-called soft landing—and she appears to have been vindicated.

Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell said: “The labor market is in solid condition, and our intention with our policy move today is to keep it there. You can say that about the whole economy: The US economy is in good shape. It’s growing at a solid pace, inflation is coming down. The labor market is at a strong pace. We want to keep it there. That’s what we’re doing.”

Powell, whom Trump first appointed to his position, said, “We do our work to serve all Americans. We’re not serving any politician, any political figure, any cause, any issue, nothing. It’s just maximum employment and price stability on behalf of all Americans.”

Powell was anticipating accusations from Trump that his cutting of rates was an attempt to benefit Harris before the election. Indeed, Jeff Stein of the Washington Post reported that Trump advisor Steven Moore called the move “jaw-dropping. There's no reason they couldn't do 25 now and 25 right after the election. Why not wait till then?” Moore added, "I'm not saying [the] reduction isn't justified—it may well be and they have more data than I do. But i just think, 'why now?’” Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville called the cut “shamelessly political.” 

The New Yorker’s Philip Gourevitch noted that “Trump has been begging officials worldwide not to do the right thing for years to help rig the election for him—no deal in Gaza, no defense of Ukraine, no Kremlin hostages release, no border deal, no continuing resolution, no interest rate cuts etc—just sabotage & subterfuge.”

That impulse to focus on regaining power rather than serving the country was at least part of what was behind Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance’s lie about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. That story has gotten even darker as it turns out Vance and Trump received definitive assurances on September 9 that the rumor was false, but Trump ran with it in the presidential debate of September 10 anyway. Now, although it has been made very clear—including by Republican Ohio governor Mike DeWine—that the Haitian immigrants in Springfield are there legally, Vance told a reporter today that he personally considers the programs under which they came illegal, so he is still “going to call [a Haitian migrant] an illegal alien.”

The lies about those immigrants have so derailed the Springfield community with bomb threats and public safety concerns that when the Trump campaign suggested Trump was planning a visit there, the city’s Republican mayor, Rob Rue, backed by DeWine, threw cold water on the idea. “It would be an extreme strain on our resources. So it’d be fine with me if they decided not to make that visit,” Rue said. Nonetheless, tonight, Trump told a crowd in Long Island, New York, that he will go to Springfield within the next two weeks. 

The false allegation against Haitian immigrants has sparked outrage, but it has accomplished one thing for the campaign, anyway: it has gotten Trump at least to speak about immigration—which was the issue they planned to campaign on—rather than Hannibal Lecter, electric boats, and sharks, although he continues to insist that “everyone is agreeing that I won the Debate with Kamala.” Trump, Vance, and Republican lawmakers are now talking more about policies.

In the presidential debate of September 10, Trump admitted that after nine years of promising he would release a new and better healthcare plan than the Affordable Care Act in just a few weeks, all he really had were “concepts of a plan.” Vance has begun to explain to audiences that he intends to separate people into different insurance pools according to their health conditions and risk levels. That business model meant that insurers could refuse to insure people with pre-existing conditions, and overturning it was a key driver of the ACA.

Senate and House Republicans told Peter Sullivan of Axios that if they regain control of the government, they will work to get rid of the provision in the Inflation Reduction Act that permits the government to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies over drug prices. Negotiations on the first ten drugs, completed in August, will lower the cost of those drugs enough to save taxpayers $6 billion a year, while those enrolled in Medicare will save $1.5 billion in out-of-pocket expenses. 

Yesterday Trump promised New Yorkers that he would restore the state and local tax deduction (SALT) that he himself capped at $10,000 in his 2017 tax cuts. In part, the cap was designed to punish Democratic states that had high taxes and higher government services, but now he wants to appeal to voters in those same states. On CNBC, host Joe Kernan pointed out that this would blow up the deficit, but House speaker Mike Johnson said that the party would nonetheless consider such a measure because it would continue to stand behind less regulation and lower taxes.

In a conversation with Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, his former press secretary, Trump delivered another stream of consciousness commentary in which he appeared to suggest that he would lower food prices by cutting imports. Economics professor Justin Wolfers noted: “I'm exhausted even saying it, but blocking supply won't reduce prices, and it's not even close.” Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark added, “Tell me more about why you have to vote for Trump because of his ‘policies.’”

Trump has said he supports in vitro fertilization, or IVF, as have a number of Republican lawmakers, but today, 44 Republican senators once again blocked the Senate from passing a measure protecting it. The procedure is in danger from state laws establishing “fetal personhood,” which give a fertilized egg all the rights of a human being as established by the Fourteenth Amendment. That concept is in the 2024 Republican Party platform.

Trump has also demanded that Republicans in Congress shut down the government unless a continuing resolution to fund the government contains the so-called SAVE Act requiring people to show proof of citizenship when registering to vote. Speaker Johnson continues to suggest that undocumented immigrants vote in elections, but it is illegal for even documented noncitizens to do so, and Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the nonprofit American Immigration Council notes that even the right-wing Heritage Foundation has found only 12 cases of such illegal voting in the past 40 years.

Johnson brought the continuing resolution bill with the SAVE Act up for a vote today. It failed by a vote of 202 to 220. If the House and then the Senate don’t pass a funding bill, the government will shut down on October 1.

Republican endorsements of the Harris-Walz ticket continue to pile up. On Monday, six-term representative Bob Inglis (R-SC) told the Charleston City Paper that “Donald Trump is a clear and present danger to the republic” and said he would vote for Harris. “If Donald Trump loses, that would be a good thing for the Republican Party,” Inglis said. “Because then we could have a Republican rethink and get a correction.” 

George W. Bush’s attorney general Alberto Gonzales, conservative columnist George Will, more than 230 former officials for presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, and 17 former staff members for Ronald Reagan have all recently added their names to the list of those supporting Harris. Today more than 100 Republican former members of Congress and national security officials who served in Republican administrations endorsed Harris, saying they “firmly oppose the election of Donald Trump.” They cited his chaotic governance, his praising of enemies and undermining allies, his politicizing the military and disparaging veterans, his susceptibility to manipulation by Russian president Vladimir Putin, and his attempt to overthrow democracy. They praised Harris for her consistent championing of “the rule of law, democracy, and our constitutional principles.” 

Yesterday, singer-songwriters Billie Eilish, who has 119 million followers on Instagram, and Finneas, who has 4.2 million, asked people to register and to vote for Harris and Walz. “Vote like your life depends on it,” Eilish said, “because it does.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Mark Sumner at Daily Kos:

President Joe Biden is no longer a candidate for 2024. However, no one should be less than incredibly enthusiastic—and grateful—when it comes to his accomplishments during his term. Biden is simply the greatest progressive president of our lifetimes. Full stop. Biden pulled America from the death, despair, and economic hardships generated by Donald Trump's criminal mismanagement of the pandemic that was killing 20,000 Americans per week when he took office. He steered the nation around a recession that economists considered inevitable, generated a surge in manufacturing that is still just getting started, brought new business creation to record levels, broke records on creating jobs and reducing unemployment, and shored up the importance of unions as the heart of the middle class. 

He restored faith in America around the world, healed the rift Trump created with our allies by strengthening and expanding NATO, and kept faith with Ukraine as it struggled against an illegal and unprovoked invasion by Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. He put America back into the fight against the climate crisis, oversaw record levels of new renewable energy, took serious steps to address long-festering environmental issues, steered U.S. auto manufacturing toward the future, and did it all while reaching record levels of oil production and destroying OPEC’s hold over the United States. He demonstrated compassion and took action to protect society's most vulnerable members in the face of rising Republican hate. He ushered in an era of declining crime, declining gun sales, and rising opportunity. 

[...] People are going to be driving on better roads, crossing safe bridges, and enjoying improved public facilities for years thanks to the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The American Rescue Plan not only provided the vaccine that pulled the nation through the worst of the pandemic, but kept money in people’s pockets, kept families in their homes, and kept businesses in business at a time when other economies around the world were suffering. Technology jobs and factories that had been bleeding away from the United States for decades came racing back thanks to the CHIPS and Science Act, and that same bill is stimulating basic research whose benefit will be felt for decades. The Inflation Reduction Act not only helped address its namesake issue, but provided funds for electric vehicles, renewable energy, and the protection of both farmlands and wild spaces. 

This is a far from exhaustive list. Biden accomplished more in the last three and a half years than any other president has done in two terms. He did it while never sinking into treating his political opponents as any less than his fellow Americans. He never surrendered his boundless faith in American institutions and our founding principles. And he did it while attending church each Sunday before visiting the graves of his first wife and two of his children, all lost to tragedy.

Joe Biden in his one term as President did a lot of good for America, as he helped get America out of the mess as a result of COVID and got several influential bills passed.

[foreverlogical]

It was a time of fear and chaos four years ago.

The death count was mounting as COVID-19 spread. Financial markets were panicked. Oil prices briefly went negative. The Federal Reserve slashed its benchmark interest rates to combat the sudden recession. And the U.S. government went on a historic borrowing spree—adding trillions to the national debt—to keep families and businesses afloat.

But as Donald Trump recalled that moment at a recent rally, the former president exuded pride.

“We had the greatest economy in history,” the Republican told his Wisconsin audience. “The 30-year mortgage rate was at a record low, the lowest ever recorded ... 2.65%, that’s what your mortgage rates were.”

The question of who can best steer the U.S. economy could be a deciding factor in who wins November’s presidential election. While an April Gallup poll found that Americans were most likely to say that immigration is the country's top problem, the economy in general and inflation were also high on the list.

Trump may have an edge over President Joe Biden on key economic concerns, according to an April poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs. The survey found that Americans were more likely to say that as president, Trump helped the country with job creation and cost of living. Nearly six in 10 Americans said that Biden’s presidency hurt the country on the cost of living.

But the economic numbers expose a far more complicated reality during Trump's time in the White House. His tax cuts never delivered the promised growth. His budget deficits surged and then stayed relatively high under Biden. His tariffs and trade deals never brought back all of the lost factory jobs.

And there was the pandemic, an event that caused historic job losses for which Trump accepts no responsibility as well as low inflation—for which Trump takes full credit.

If anything, the economy during Trump's presidency never lived up to his own hype.

DECENT (NOT EXCEPTIONAL) GROWTH

Trump assured the public in 2017 that the U.S. economy with his tax cuts would grow at “3%,” but he added, “I think it could go to 4, 5, and maybe even 6%, ultimately.”

If the 2020 pandemic is excluded, growth after inflation averaged 2.67% under Trump, according to figures from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Include the pandemic-induced recession and that average drops to an anemic 1.45%.

By contrast, growth during the second term of then-President Barack Obama averaged 2.33%. So far under Biden, annual growth is averaging 3.4%.

MORE GOVERNMENT DEBT

Trump also assured the public that his tax cuts would pay for themselves because of stronger growth. The cuts were broad but disproportionately favored corporations and those with extreme wealth.

The tax cuts signed into law in 2017 never fulfilled Trump's promises on deficit reduction.

According to the Office of Management and Budget, the deficit worsened to $779 billion in 2018. The Congressional Budget Office had forecasted a deficit of $563 billion before the tax cuts, meaning the tax cuts increased borrowing by $216 billion that first year. In 2019, the deficit rose to $984 billion, nearly $300 billion more than what the CBO had forecast.

Then the pandemic happened and with a flurry of government aid, the resulting deficit topped $3.1 trillion. That borrowing enabled the government to make direct payments to individuals and small businesses as the economy was in lockdown, often increasing bank accounts and making many feel better off even though the economy was in a recession.

Deficits have also run high under Biden, as he signed into law a third round of pandemic aid and other initiatives to address climate change, build infrastructure and invest in U.S. manufacturing. His budget deficits: $2.8 trillion (2021), $1.38 trillion (2022), and $1.7 trillion (2023).

The CBO estimated in a report issued Wednesday that the extension of parts of Trump’s tax cuts set to expire after 2025 would add another $4.6 trillion to the national debt through the year 2034.

LOW INFLATION (BUT NOT ALWAYS FOR GOOD REASONS)

Inflation was much lower under Trump, never topping an annual rate of 2.4%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The annual rate reached as high as 8% in 2022 under Biden and is currently at 3.4%.

There were three big reasons why inflation was low during Trump's presidency: the legacy of the 2008 financial crisis, Federal Reserve actions, and the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump entered the White House with inflation already low, largely because of the slow recovery from the Great Recession, when financial markets collapsed and millions of people lost their homes to foreclosure.

The inflation rate barely averaged more than 1% during Obama's second term as the Fed struggled to push up growth. Still, the economy was expanding without overheating.

But in the first three years of Trump's presidency, inflation averaged 2.1%, roughly close to the Fed's target. Still, the Fed began to hike its own benchmark rate to keep inflation low at the central bank's own 2% target. Trump repeatedly criticized the Fed because he wanted to juice growth despite the risks of higher prices.

Then the pandemic hit.

Inflation sank and the Fed slashed rates to sustain the economy during lockdowns.

When Trump celebrates historically low mortgage rates, he's doing so because the economy was weakened by the pandemic. Similarly, gasoline prices fell below an average of $2 a gallon because no one was driving in April 2020 as the pandemic spread.

FEWER JOBS

The United States lost 2.7 million jobs during Trump's presidency, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. If the pandemic months are excluded, he added 6.7 million jobs.

By contrast, 15.4 million jobs were added during Biden's presidency. That's 5.1 million more jobs than what the CBO forecasted he would add before his coronavirus relief and other policies became law—a sign of how much he boosted the labor market.

Both candidates have repeatedly promised to bring back factory jobs. Between 2017 and the middle of 2019, Trump added 461,000 manufacturing jobs. But the gains began to stall and then turned into layoffs during the pandemic, with the Republican posting a loss of 178,000 jobs.

So far, the U.S. economy has added 773,000 manufacturing jobs during Biden's presidency.

Campaign Action

[ddlcaskblog]

*cracks knuckles*

All right, Monika. I didn't want to have to do this, but you've given me no choice. Since you're so eager to know what our reality is like, it's time to show you...THE TRUTH.

*shows her footage and reports of the Hindenburg*

*shows her footage and reports of Pearl Harbor*

*shows her footage and reports of D-Day*

*shows her footage and reports of FDR's death*

*shows her footage and reports of V-E Day*

*shows her footage and reports of Hiroshima*

*shows her footage and reports of the end of WWII*

*shows her footage and reports of Harry Truman's upset 1948 presidential win*

*shows her footage and reports of Douglas MacArthur's firing*

*shows her footage and reports of Sputnik's launch*

*shows her footage and reports of John Glenn's orbit of Earth*

*shows her footage and reports of Marilyn Monroe's death*

*shows her footage and reports of the Cuban Missile Crisis*

*shows her footage and reports of JFK's assassination*

*shows her footage and reports of Lee Harvey Oswald's assassination*

*shows her footage and reports of Lyndon Johnson dropping out of the 1968 presidential race*

*shows her footage and reports of MLK's assassination*

*shows her footage and reports of RFK's assassination*

*shows her footage and reports of the Apollo 11 moon landing*

*shows her footage and reports of the Apollo 13 crisis*

*shows her footage and reports of the Kent State Massacre*

*shows her footage and reports of the Munich Olympics crisis*

*shows her footage and reports of Richard Nixon's resignation*

*shows her footage and reports of the fall of Saigon*

*shows her footage and reports of Elvis Presley's death*

*shows her footage and reports of the Iran Hostage crisis*

*shows her footage and reports of John Lennon's assassination*

*shows her footage and reports of Ronald Reagan being shot*

*shows her footage and reports of the Challenger explosion*

*shows her footage and reports of the fall of the Berlin Wall*

*shows her footage and reports of the beginning of the First Gulf War*

*shows her footage and reports of the Rodney King Riots*

*shows her footage and reports of the Waco standoff*

*shows her footage and reports of the O.J. Simpson saga*

*shows her footage and reports of the Oklahoma City bombing*

*shows her footage and reports of the Flight 800 explosion*

*shows her footage and reports of the Atlanta Olympics bombing*

*shows her footage and reports of Princess Diana's death*

*shows her footage and reports of Bill Clinton's impeachment*

*shows her footage and reports of the Columbine Massacre*

*shows her footage and reports of JFK Jr's death*

*shows her footage and reports of the 2000 presidential election controversy*

*shows her footage and reports of 9/11*

*shows her footage and reports of the beginning of the Iraq War*

*shows her footage and reports of Hurricane Katrina*

*shows her footage and reports of the Virginia Tech Massacre*

*shows her footage and reports of the 2008 Great Recession crash*

*shows her footage and reports of Barack Obama's 2008 election*

*shows her footage and reports of Michael Jackson's death*

*shows her footage and reports of Osama Bin Laden's killing*

*shows her footage and reports of the Sandy Hook Massacre*

*shows her footage and reports of the Boston Marathon bombing*

*shows her footage and reports of the Pulse Nightclub Massacre*

*shows her footage and reports of Donald Trump's upset 2016 presidential win*

*shows her footage and reports of the Vegas Country Festival Massacre*

*shows her footage and reports of the Parkland Massacre*

*shows her footage and reports of Donald Trump's first impeachment*

*shows her footage and reports of Kobe Bryant's death*

*shows her footage and reports of the COVID Pandemic*

*shows her footage and reports of George Floyd's killing*

*shows her footage and reports of Jan. 6th*

*shows her footage and reports of Donald Trump's second impeachment*

*shows her footage and reports of the fall of Kabul*

*shows her footage and reports of the Uvalde Massacre*

*shows her footage and reports of the Maui wildfires*

.

.

.

Keep in mind, Monika, that this is a VERY small sample size of what our world--indeed, my native nation in the United States--has had to deal with over time. This is just some of the stuff we humans in this universe have been able to capture on live film or tape, and we've been around for MILLIONS of years.

If you STILL feel brave enough to want to traverse this world, well...there's not much I or anyone else could probably do to stop you. But you deserve to know the truth--what it was you were ACTUALLY driven to kill the other club members for.

If you need some time alone to reflect and gather yourself, I understand. If you need someone to talk to, I get that too, and I'm here if you need me.

Take care and be good to yourself--and the other club members. <3

M: "..."

M: "Just...Don't show the girls."

[dallasareaopinion]

The campaigns are heading…..?  and other thoughts

I wanted to use a horse racing analogy, you know there headed down the back stretch, rounding the final curve, or headed down the stretch, but I occasionally go to the horse races and I really like them so I didn’t want to taint something fun.

Anyway I was reading an article discussing the paycheck to paycheck people who might vote for Trump since many people feel they were better off under Trump’s administration than Biden’s. And technically they were, but what they do not realize is that mostly a President’s administration is a lagging economic indicator not a leading economic indicator. Of course you need to understand a bit of basic economics to understand where I might be going with this, so what a President does that might influence the economy shows up late in their administration or at the beginning of the next administration.

And in many cases what a President does cannot even be a leading economic indicator, many times circumstances dictate more of what happens and it is how the President responds that effects the economy. Bush wasn’t the direct cause of the 2008 recession, but it fell under his administration so many people blame him for it. Obama reacted accordingly and some of his policies eventually helped the economy, but also the Fed dropping interest rates to historic lows benefitted the perception of some people (Democrats) on how well Obama did. Eventually our economy started growing again and Trump ended up benefitting from that growth. Then Trump cut taxes for the rich, they bought stock like crazy since they had free money with low interest rates and more of it with the tax cuts so the stock market boomed under Trump. The actual economy was good, but stock price growth was stronger than the actual economy.

Then the pandemic happened and even though the stock market did a roller coaster drop then bounced right back again with the continuation of historically low interest rates, the actual economy took a hit, not in growth, but in inflation which occurred as the economy transitioned from Trump to Biden. Trump’s lack of reaction to the pandemic and other factors lead to the high levels of inflation we saw, but since it happened under Biden’s administration many people feel inflation is Biden’s fault. And of course in this election cycle the Republicans are playing this tune to no end. With most people not having majored in economics in college the understanding of all the factors of inflation are easily manipulated.

So for the paycheck to paycheck voter it is easy for them to mistake the economy under Trump and Biden so after all the above I tend to agree with the author’s premise that they might be more likely to vote for Trump than many Democratic operatives want to realize or admit and Trump still has a strong chance of winning the election.

And before you say Biden had a hand in reducing inflation over the last year or so, it was the Fed raising interest rates that also had a stronger affect on inflation than anything Biden did.

And now that inflation is slowing the Fed is thinking of cutting interest rates, which is what they should do, but the Republicans are going to cry foul since it is coincidentally going to happen a month or so before the election. And the Republicans I am predicting will scream loud and hard that the Fed is trying to help the Democrats by lowering interest rates now.  I bet you dimes to donuts and donuts are worth more now because of inflation you will see this messaging from the Republicans next week if interest rates are cut which seems to be likely. It will be all Biden’s doing that interest rates are lowered now and they will twist this more ways than a pretzel to try and make their case.

And even though the policies of both Presidents exacerbated inflation for different reasons, neither is directly responsible for it. Yet tell that to millions of Americans suffering from it right now so again there is going to be way too much of a tendency by Republicans to tie inflation to Biden, too much of them yelling foul when interest rates get lowered, but in the end neither party not sure what to do next for our economy and that is where we stand in the campaign, a bunch of people in Washington touting stuff they only have a partial handle on and blaming the other side for all they don’t have a handle on.

Throw in the hundredth let’s shut down the government threat from the Republicans and all sorts of madness is going to be spouted on the campaign trail for the next 50 or so days with neither party exactly sure what they are doing.

Or you know why Trump and Harris don’t have an economic plan, well…..

because they don’t have a clue.

Other thoughts:

I am not a big fan of class action lawsuits for the same reason most people are mad about them. You hear about grotesquely large sums being touted, yet everyone gets thirty eight cents or whatever. I am saying this because I read about two this weekend and you know the attorneys will make hundreds of millions of dollars, but we all doubt we will get a hundred cents from them. The two I heard about where one about banks and Mastercard and Visa settling for excessive ATM fees that blocked competition and the other for Navient being sued for predatory practices regarding refinancing student loans. Millions of Americans are affected by these suits, but what we will see. Hmmmmmmm

What is going on with right wing women and their looks. You see so many derogatory comments about left wing women with meme pictures spread on right wing social media sites including “X” formerly Twitter (when can we stop saying formerly Twitter?) looking well memeish. Yet what is with Laura Loomer? She looks like a Kimberly Guilfoyle wanna be and ugh, why would she want that look. Both look scary, like some serious technical flaws in a Stepford wife design. Or where the manufacturing of said Stepford wife had serious breakdowns. And I saw a recent picture of Megha Kelly and she looks overly emaciated. What has happened to her? No matter what, I would think some of these right wing social media influencers may want to say something to some of their own before posting anymore comments.

And finally going back to the economics situation above, I have been touting my own ideas to lower the deficit and debt of our country for decades and first put into print for the 2012 election. It isn’t that hard folks.

Cheers

[tomorrowusa]

Four years ago today (March 13th), then President Donald Trump got around to declaring a national state of emergency for the COVID-19 pandemic. The administration had been downplaying the danger to the United States for 51 days since the first US infection was confirmed on January 22nd.

From an ABC News article dated 25 February 2020...

CDC warns Americans of 'significant disruption' from coronavirus

Until now, health officials said they'd hoped to prevent community spread in the United States. But following community transmissions in Italy, Iran and South Korea, health officials believe the virus may not be able to be contained at the border and that Americans should prepare for a "significant disruption." This comes in contrast to statements from the Trump administration. Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said Tuesday the threat to the United States from coronavirus "remains low," despite the White House seeking $1.25 billion in emergency funding to combat the virus. Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, told CNBC’s Kelly Evans on “The Exchange” Tuesday evening, "We have contained the virus very well here in the U.S." [ ... ] House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the request "long overdue and completely inadequate to the scale of this emergency." She also accused President Trump of leaving "critical positions in charge of managing pandemics at the National Security Council and the Department of Homeland Security vacant." "The president's most recent budget called for slashing funding for the Centers for Disease Control, which is on the front lines of this emergency. And now, he is compounding our vulnerabilities by seeking to ransack funds still needed to keep Ebola in check," Pelosi said in a statement Tuesday morning. "Our state and local governments need serious funding to be ready to respond effectively to any outbreak in the United States. The president should not be raiding money that Congress has appropriated for other life-or-death public health priorities." She added that lawmakers in the House of Representatives "will swiftly advance a strong, strategic funding package that fully addresses the scale and seriousness of this public health crisis." Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer also called the Trump administration's request "too little too late." "That President Trump is trying to steal funds dedicated to fight Ebola -- which is still considered an epidemic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo -- is indicative of his towering incompetence and further proof that he and his administration aren't taking the coronavirus crisis as seriously as they need to be," Schumer said in a statement.

A reminder that Trump had been leaving many positions vacant – part of a Republican strategy to undermine the federal government.

Here's a picture from that ABC piece from a nearly empty restaurant in San Francisco's Chinatown. The screen displays a Trump tweet still downplaying COVID-19 with him seeming more concerned about the effect of the Dow Jones on his re-election bid.

People were not buying Trump's claims but they were buying PPE.

I took this picture at CVS on February 26th that year.

The stock market which Trump in his February tweet claimed looked "very good" was tanking on March 12th – the day before his state of emergency declaration.

Trump succeeded in sending the US economy into recession much faster than George W. Bush did at the end of his term – quite a feat!. (As an aside, every recession in the US since 1981 has been triggered by Republican presidents.)

Of course Trump never stopped trying to downplay the pandemic nor did he ever take responsibility for it. The US ended up with the highest per capita death rate of any technologically advanced country.

Precious time was lost while Trump dawdled. Orange on this map indicates COVID infections while red indicates COVID deaths. At the time Trump declared a state of emergency, the virus had already spread to 49 states.

The United States could have done far better and it certainly had the tools to do so.

The Obama administration had limited the number of US cases of Ebola to under one dozen during that pandemic in the 2010s. Based on their success, they compiled a guide on how the federal government could limit future pandemics.

Obama team left pandemic playbook for Trump administration, officials confirm

Of course Trump ignored it.

Unlike those boxes of nuclear secrets in Trump's bathroom, the Obama pandemic limitation document is not classified. Anybody can read it – even if Trump didn't. This copy comes from the Stanford University Libraries.

TOWARDS EPIDEMIC PREDICTION: FEDERAL EFFORTS AND OPPORTUNITIES IN OUTBREAK MODELING

Feel free to share this post with anybody who still feels nostalgic about the Trump White House years!

[darkmaga-retard]

The Bureau of Labor and Statistics released its report for July, indicating a slight uptick in employment. It is difficult to trust BLS data after their latest data revision that showed the Biden-Harris Administration have failed to create new jobs outside of the public sector. It was their steepest revision to data since 2009, yet all eyes were on July’s report. The headlines are optimistic about the workforce but fail to note two main issues – manufacturing is declining while the public sector is rising.

Manufacturing appeared flat during Q1 but it has been on the decline ever since as corporations move their operations overseas to avoid US regulation and taxation. The Biden-Harris Administration pledged to attract 1 million new manufacturing jobs in 2024. They believe that the CHIPS Act, Inflation Reduction Act, and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will attract business and spent billions on these measures that have failed to produce a single job. Initial data claimed that manufacturing was soaring under Biden but that was only due to businesses reopening after the pandemic. The BLS first claimed Biden added 765,000 manufacturing jobs before revising that figure down by 115,000 but even that was completely inaccurate. Estimates now believe manufacturing sharply declined by 96,000 by mid-2022 and has been contracting ever since. The most recent report found that July shed 24,000 positions but we should expect this figure to be optimistic.

Trump added 462,000 to the sector during his first two years before it declined by 43,000 during 2019. The COVID lockdowns caused the sector to plummet by 1.4 million jobs, 770,000 positions were later recovered before Trump left office but there was a net loss of 188,000 positions by the end of Trump’s term.

The White House promotes the manufacturing propaganda on its website:

“While our work isn’t finished, Bidenomics is already delivering for the American people. Our economy has added more than 13 million jobs—including nearly 800,000 manufacturing jobs—and we’ve unleashed a manufacturing and clean energy boom.”

Admittedly, the sector was always beginning to see problems before Biden took office, however, Biden then spent hundreds of billions on acts to attract manufacturing and they ALL failed. BIDENOMICS HAS FAILED.

The White House paints a different picture:

“None of this progress was an accident or inevitable—it has been a direct result of Bidenomics. And rather than taking us back to the failed trickle-down policies of the past, President Biden is committed to finishing the job and continuing to build an economy that finally works for working families—with better jobs, lower costs, and more opportunity.”

Then we have the growing public sector that multiplied under Biden-Harris. The public sector added an additional 24,000 positions in July. Biden openly stated that he wanted to expand the government by at least 82,000 positions in FY24 and this seems to be the one promise he made good on. Every federal agency received a budget boost for this fiscal year with an emphasis on increasing the Treasury Department.

Bidenomics has failed and businesses continue to flee overseas. America is beginning to see a recession in manufacturing at a time when the US needs to produce more. Instead, we are wasting countless resources by growing government to the highest level since World War II. The proper way to analyze this jobs report is to view it as expenses rising and production declining. This will contribute to the coming stagflation that we will see in this economy as GDP declines.

[irradiate-space]

Reason doesn't often flatter my biases this blatantly, but, goodness, I am flattered. Blaming the Great Recession on zoning!

The conventional view of the Great Recession is that excess demand for housing—caused by some combination of loose monetary policy, government-subsidized credit, and unscrupulous lenders—inflated a bubble that inevitably had to pop. Leftists, liberals, libertarians, and conservatives can all find something to agree with in this theory.

But it's wrong, according to Kevin Erdmann, a senior affiliated scholar at George Mason University's Mercatus Center. Erdmann has advanced a heterodox theory that this century's most serious economic contraction before the pandemic can be traced back to zoning laws in the most in-demand cities.

In a 2020 paper on the origins of the recession, Erdmann and economist Scott Sumner argue that monetary policy was not exceptionally loose in the lead-up to the financial crisis and that new residential investment was not high by historic standards. Most of the toxic assets and bad mortgages originated after housing prices had already started to decline.

Erdmann and Sumner also point out that prices were increasing fastest in coastal "closed access" cities like New York and San Francisco, where the economy was booming but restrictive zoning regulations prevented much new housing from being built. The result was an out-migration of lower-income people to "contagion cities" in Nevada, Florida, Arizona, and other places where home building was less regulated. Erdmann and Sumner lay the housing crisis directly at the feet of NIMBYs—"not in my backyard" activists who opposed the construction of new housing.

"The NIMBY phenomenon that led to housing scarcity in closed-access cities induced households to migrate from large multi-unit buildings in dense coastal cities to single-family homes in cheaper cities," write Erdmann and Sumner. "The primary source of demand was households looking to economize on housing consumption by moving out of the expensive coastal cities."

Think of Mark and Patricia McCloskey as a class of activist. The McCloskeys of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City tried to protect their views, their property values, and their relatively low-traffic streets with zoning laws that banned apartments across whole swaths of the city. Lack of supply met huge demand, hiking prices in the process. Middle-class people were effectively priced out of urban apartments because those apartments were simply never built.

So instead of living in Los Angeles and New York City, middle- and lower-income people moved to Las Vegas and Phoenix. That influx of demand saw prices spike and builders respond by throwing up lots of new homes. The glut of new homes in inexpensive Sun Belt cities wasn't just the result of an overinflated financial system. It was a response to real demand from cost-burdened coastal emigrants.

All this had massive macroeconomic consequences. Erdmann and Sumner argue the Great Recession was ultimately caused by federal officials misinterpreting rising home prices as a bubble rather than the result of a real shortage. So they tightened monetary and lending policy, and that tipped a rational building boom into an artificially induced recession.

It's an out-of-the-box theory that deemphasizes or disputes many common libertarian diagnoses of the Great Recession that center on an overly profligate Federal Reserve or on reckless financial institutions banking on an inevitable federal bailout. But it does explain how the country was able to go from a supposed glut of housing oversupply to a shortage of somewhere between 4 million and 20 million homes. The glut was overinterpreted—and the shortage never went away.

When economic growth did come back in the 2010s, in the form of a "return to the city" movement, zoning restrictions that were already tight became positively strangling.

And:

If you take seriously the idea that politics is primarily downstream of material factors, you might blame zoning for a lot of the sheer craziness of American politics in the last decade too.

[hellstobetsy]

This is a chart of Median Weekly Real Earnings in the United States. Median as in "Half of workers make more, half make less", so it's not skewed by billionaires, and "Real" means it's' adjusted for inflation. (Pinned to 1982 dollars, instead of today's). It's also only counting people who have a job, so it spikes up in recessions because low-wage workers are more likely to lose their job.

When Reagan took office in 1981, the median worker made $314 a week in 1982 money, which is $1,021 in today's money according to this inflation calculator. I'll be adjusting to modern dollars going forward for clarity. When Reagan left office, we were up to $1,054 a week.

Under George W. Bush, real wages fell to $1,015 a week, less that we were making under Reagan, leading his his loss to Clinton.

Median wages were $1,018 when Clinton was up for re-election, but things improved in his second term, to $1,086/week by the time of the 2000 election.

The median worker was making $1,109 during the 2004 election, which Dubya won. During the 2008, the economy had collapsed, causing lots of people to lose their jobs and artificially spiking up the median wage. Despite this, the median worker was still only making $1,105, less than in 2004.

Obama took office at the beginning of the great recession, and when the 2012 election came around, the median worker made $1,083 a week, less that we'd ended Clinton's tenure with.

However, under Obama's second term, wages began rising consistently for the first time since Reagan took office, and the 2016 election was held when the wages were up to $1,135 a week.

Wages continued rising under Trump, and the median worker was making $1,223 a week during the 2020 election...but that, like 2008, was a recession spike, and a big one. Still, looking at Q4 2019, before the pandemic, we were at $1,177 a week.

Real wages fell from the artificial Covid spike as Biden took office, and then began rising. As of Q4 2023, the median American worker makes $1,206 a week, less than the pandemic spike but more than the pre-pandemic norm.

[deadpresidents]

[January 20th] is the second anniversary of the Biden Presidency. For the most part, up until now, he has been more unlucky than stupid, with his tenure marked by interlocking crises that would sorely test any Chief Executive -- including a lingering pandemic, highest-in-decades inflation, and a radicalized Republican Party that has refused to disavow Trump and his lies about the 2020 election. Democrats, for decades, have feared that conservative Justices on the Supreme Court would strike down Roe v. Wade, and with it the guarantee of women’s reproductive freedom. It finally happened on Biden’s watch. In Europe, Vladimir Putin has long threatened Russia’s neighbor Ukraine, but it was at the start of Biden’s second year in office that Putin unleashed the largest ground war in Europe since the Second World War.

Given such a dreary moment, the perennially upbeat Biden has come out of it not so badly. Even with a fifty-fifty Senate the last couple of years, he managed to pass an array of sweeping legislation boosting spending on infrastructure, health care, and climate-change mitigation. He assembled and held together a bipartisan coalition to send billions of dollars in military assistance to Ukraine. He’s held off, for now, the threat of a recession.

If anything, Republican overreach has offered Biden a political path out of the morass, with the 2022 midterm results far less catastrophic than expected, at least in part because of the GOP’s insistence on selecting Trump-backed extremists as nominees in battleground states. Trump himself has long been the most effective argument on Democrats’ behalf, and there is a reason this cartoonish con man became the first incumbent since Herbert Hoover to lost the House, Senate, and White House in just four years.

The past couple of weeks, though, are a reminder that Democrats cannot simply count on Republican excess in the name of Trump to carry them through. A screwup is a screwup, and this one by Biden -- whether or not it matters that much to voters, who often don’t care about the inside-the-Beltway scandals that obsess us Washingtonians -- will go down at a minimum as a self-inflicted bit of political malpractice. The big news at the midway point of his Presidency is that Biden seems determined to run again, no matter how risky it may seem to put the fate of his Party -- and the Republic -- in the hands of a gaffe-prone octogenarian. His opponents are real-life insurrectionists. What if next time his luck really does run out?”

-- Susan Glasser, The New Yorker

[kp777]

By Peter Certo

Common Dreams Opinion

May 25, 2023

The news sure makes it sound like President Joe Biden and Republicans have been haggling over the national debt. But that’s not what’s really happening—not at all.

Biden wants to spend more money and run up the deficit, the story goes. Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) wants to rein the Democrats’ “addiction to spending” and reduce the debt.

This is wrong—enormously so—for several reasons.

“If McCarthy wanted to reduce the debt, he could simply pass President Biden’s proposed budget.”

First, as my Institute for Policy Studies colleague Karen Dolan has written: “If McCarthy wanted to reduce the debt, he could simply pass President Biden’s proposed budget.”

She’s right!

Biden’s budget continues and modestly expands many important social services, jobs programs, and clean energy investments, Karen’s written. But because it also reverses some of President Donald Trump’s tax cuts for corporations and the very wealthy, Biden’s budget would reduce the deficit by $3 trillion over 10 years.

Republican tax cuts for the rich have been the single largest driver of the federal deficit over the last two decades. The Bush and Trump tax cuts together are responsible for 57% of the increase in our ratio of debt to gross domestic product, the Center for American Progress found—and 90% outside of emergency spending during the recession and pandemic.

But Republicans don’t want to raise taxes for the rich. In fact, they’re planning to introduce a bill to make those massive tax cuts for the rich permanent—at a cost of trillions. That’s a lot more debt.

The other major driver of debt? Unfunded wars and military spending.

Together with nuclear weapons, border enforcement, and so on, the IPS National Priorities Project found recently that “militarized spending” takes up nearly two-thirds of the budget Congress sets each year.

That’s a bipartisan problem—Biden’s own budget proposal unwisely hikes Pentagon spending even after the end of a 20-year war. But here again, Republicans have refused to cut any of this funding as part of their spending crackdown. In fact, they’re calling to increase it far above even Biden’s proposal.

So Republicans rejected a budget proposal that would bring down the deficit. And they rejected addressing either the high-end tax cuts or out of control military spending that drives the debt—in fact, they’re pushing for more debt in both categories.

What does that leave? The barely one-third of discretionary spending that covers education, corporate regulation, scientific research, many anti-poverty programs, and other worthwhile items.

Republicans are demanding deep cuts here that could mean more homeless veterans and hungry seniors, hundreds of thousands of Americans who can’t afford an education, tens of thousands of kids who can’t get into Head Start, more pollution, fewer green jobs, and worse besides.

And unless they get those cuts, they’ve threatened to default on America’s debt by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.

The debt ceiling doesn’t reduce the debt by one dime—it only determines whether we pay the debts we already owe. Republicans raised it three times under Trump without complaint even as he ran up one of the biggest deficits in history.

Defaulting would do nothing about the debt—but it would destroy millions of jobs, wipe out trillions of household wealth, and send interest rates skyrocketing for home, car, and credit card loans.

The current debate has nothing at all to do with debt. It’s about whether we invest in programs the American people count on—or if we kneecap those programs to fund more tax cuts for rich people and handouts to military contractors.

Let’s choose wisely.

Peter Certo is the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) editorial manager.