#us economic policy

[workersolidarity]

🇺🇸 🚨

UNITED STATES CONGRESS PASSES SERIES OF ANTI-DEMOCRATIC AND PRO-WAR BILLS DESPITE PUBLIC OPPOSITION

The United States Congress and Senate passed a series of bills, including three controversial anti-democratic and pro-war bills, two of which were tied together, on Saturday, bypassing public opinion and popular opposition to the profligate, pro-war, globalist, Neolib/Neocon agenda currently driving United States domestic and foreign policy.

Included in the bills passed was a bill to force TikTok to divest from its connections with China at risk of being banned immediately, which naturally was tied to a Foreign aid bill.

However, as even Republican Senator Rand Paul mentioned in an opinion piece in Reason Magazine, the Bill is almost certain to lead to more power for American political elites and their administrations to pressure companies like Apple and Google to further ban apps and sites that offer contradictory opinions to that of the invented narratives of the American Political class.

Before long, Americans, many of whom are already poorly informed, and heavily misinformed by their mainstream media, could lose access to critical information that contradicts the narratives of the United States government and corporate elites.

Horrifically, this only the start. The US Congress also extended the newly revised FISA spy laws, which gives the United States government the power to spy on the electronic communications of foreigners, while also conveniently sweeping up the conversations of millions of Americans, as we learned years ago thanks to the sacrifices of whistle blowers and journalists like Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange.

The new FISA Law goes further than this, however, granting US Intelligence agencies the power to spy on the wireless communications of Americans in completely new ways.

A recent Jacobin article describes these new powers as a, "radical expansion of government surveillance that would be ripe for abuse by a future authoritarian leader", or it could just be used by the authoritarian leadership we have right now, and have had for decades.

In fact, when one commentator described the new powers as "Stasi-like," Edward Snowden himself replied with a long post in which he remarked, "invocation of "Stasi-like" is not only a fair characterization of Himes' amendment, it's probably generous. The Stasi dared not even dream of what the Himes amendment provides."

The amendment in question just "tweaks" the current law's definition of an "electronic communication provider," which is being changed to "any service provider," something extremely likely to be abused by the government to force anyone with a business, a modem and people using their broadband to collect the electronic communications of those people, while also forcing their victims into silence.

The government could essentially force Americans to spy on other people and remain silent about it. Cafe's, restaurants, hotels, business landlords, shared workspaces all could get swept up into the investigations of the Intelligence agencies.

Worse still, because picking out the communications of a single user would be next to impossible, all of their victim's data would end up being surrendered to the authorities.

Sadly, the assault on Americans by their own political elites didn't end there, to top this historic day in Congress, at time when the United States public debt is growing at an astounding rate of $1 trillion every 100 days, US lawmakers also passed a series of pro-war aid packages to American allies (vassals) totalling some $95 billion.

Included in the foreign aid bill are aid packages totalling $61 billion for the Ukraine scam, $26 billion for Israel's special genocide operation in the Gaza Strip, and $8 billion to the Indo-Pacific to provoke WWIII with China, at the same time we're also provoking a nuclear holocaust with the Russian Federation.

Also buried in these aid packages is the authorization for the United States government to outright steal the oversees investments of the Russian Federation, and thereby the Russian taxpayers.

Astonishingly, and in direct opposition to the wishes of their own voters, Republican support was won without the possibility of conditioning the aid to any kind of border security, this despite the issue being among the top biggest concerns of Republican voters.

Although much of the money is to be used replenishing the heavily depleted stocks of America's weapons and munitions, it remains unclear where the munitions are expected to come from, as US defense production has remained sluggish and slow to expand despite heavy investments and demand in recent years, despite the rapid urgency with which the policy elite describe the situation.

It bodes poorly for working Americans that only a relatively small handful of lawmakers opposed the bills, producing unlikely bedfellows like Senator Bernie Sanders and Senator Mike Lee in the Senate, opposing the FISA bill.

While in the House, the loudest opposition to the foreign aid bill mostly came from populist Republicans such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massie and Paul Goser. Only 58 Congresmembers voted against the Foreign Aid Bill in which the TikTok ban was tucked.

Not one word from American politicians about the need to raise the minimum wage, which hasn't been increased since 2009 despite considerable inflation, nor a word about America's endlessly growing homelessness crises, property crime increases, or the 40-year stagnation of American wages, the deterioration of infrastructure, and precious little was said besides complaints about border security over the immigration crises sparked by American Imperialist adventures and US sanctions.

What we've learned today is that we are highly unlikely to see any changes to the insane behavior of the US and its allies any time soon, neither with regards to the absolutely bonkers Neocon foreign policy leading us to the edge of abyss, nor the spending-for-the-rich/austerity-for-the-poor Neoliberal domestic policy of the last 45 years.

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@WorkerSolidarityNews

Blue: titles are opinion pieces or analysis, and may or may not contain sources.

[inc-immigrationnewscanada]

Premier Doug Ford Axes $100M Starlink Deal Amidst Explosive U.S. Tariff War!

In an unprecedented escalation of tensions between Canada and the United States, Ontario Premier Doug Ford has declared a significant shift in policy, announcing the termination of a $100 million contract with Elon Musk’s Starlink. This bold decision comes just ahead of the implementation of punitive tariffs by U.S. President Donald Trump, set to disrupt trade dynamics between these two…

[political-us]

[destiel-news-network]

(Source)

[anghraine]

I'm trying to redirect my political thoughts from my fandom escape blog again, but I found something interesting enough that I thought I'd talk a little about it.

Occasionally I choose suffering (looking at the more granular 2024 exit poll breakdowns rather than the summaries that I mostly don't trust much at this point). Anyway, I did find something intriguing, if not particularly surprising, in the CNN exit polls, which were done in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin with a sample size of 22,914 voters.

(I mention the specific states forming the sample because this pretty notably excludes any blue states while including some reliably Republican ones.)

Anyway, most exit polls including CNN's let respondents identify their place on the US political spectrum: conservative, moderate, or liberal (reminder that "liberal" in US usage can be a pejorative for "less leftist than me" but also a shorthand for "radical leftist" but also for "anyone who doesn't seek a cishet white Christian ethnostate", but also can be a more neutral synonym for progressives and/or leftists and is often used that way, as here). So you can look at the election results for each of these ideological factions and what share of the overall sample size they represent.

The interesting thing: this "liberal" category accounted for very similar proportions to 2020 of the overall vote in the sample (24% in 2020, 23% in 2024—a difference well within the margin of error of exit polling). There is no need to explain liberals/leftists staying home in 2024: at least in terms of proportions of the overall electorate, they didn't. Just under 1/4 of voters in 2024 were liberals or leftists, just as in 2020.

Okay, if the most leftwards faction of the US political spectrum actually formed a similar proportion of the electorate, then who did they vote for?

Harris. In CNN's own exit polls from 2020, 89% of this faction voted for Biden, and (surprisingly!) a full 10% voted for Trump. God knows what motivated that 10% Trump share after four years of his hellscape of an administration at the height of COVID, but in any case, that support cratered in 2024. 91% of this group voted for Harris and only 4% for Trump. It's an estimate, but it looks like these very peculiar Trump voters had enough of him in 2024 and around half either voted third party this time or for Harris.

So which faction is Trump's victory coming from? Further consolidation of the far right?

In part, yes! 90% of conservatives voted for Trump in 2024, vs 85% in 2020—likely, some conservatives who voted third party or even for Biden in 2020 came "home" this year. However, conservative turnout was actually a little down in 2024, proportionally speaking: conservatives dropped from 38% of the sample in 2020 to 34% in 2024.

But there's one more major faction in all this: "moderates" or centrists. To be clear, we're talking about the US version of centrism, given that this is a US organization polling US voters about US politicians, not "Bernie would be center-right in Denmark" or whatever. This moderate faction jumped from 38% of the overall sample in 2020 to 42% in 2024, and they swung hard towards Trump, though Harris still won a plurality of them. In 2020, 64% of moderates voted for Biden vs 34% for Trump. In 2024, 57% of them voted for Harris vs 40% for Trump—that is, the Democratic lead among centrists dropped precipitously from +30 to +17.

Tl;dr—ideologically speaking, this data suggests that Trump owes his victory to gains among both right-wing and centrist voters rather than some faction of would-be leftists or progressives apathetically staying home or voting third-party or otherwise deserting Democrats (because they're insufficiently radical or for any other reason).

Oh, and if you're curious as to how this compares to CNN's 2016 exit polls, I also checked those! Harris's 84-point lead among the most leftwards faction is a significant improvement from HRC's 74-point lead in 2016. Trump also got 10% of that group in 2016, as in 2020, so it's this campaign—not Hillary's or Biden's—that managed to eat into whatever the hell is going on with that group.

Harris's +17 with moderates is actually a slight improvement on Hillary's +12 in 2016. Biden's jump to a +30 lead among centrists in 2020 represented either a backlash against Trump from centrists, or Biden's own rapport with that group, or some mysterious issue some of those voters had with both HRC and Harris (I wonder what it could be!!), or some combination thereof. Regardless, there are a lot of actual ideologically centrist voters in the USA and not just would-be leftists who haven't heard the good news of Marx yet. And Trump has an iron grip on the right wing at this point: he beat Hillary with conservatives by +65 in 2016, then beat Biden with an even larger margin of +71, then leapt to a 81-point lead over Harris with right-wing voters this year.

[davidaugust]

Folks, may we present: trump tariffs

[somerandomg33k]

Tony West costed Kamala Harris the election

If folks can remember, Harris and Walz were talking the soaring prices and how corporate greed was behind that. That is a very popular talking point among voters. But then Tony West, Kamala's brother-in-law and formerly Uber's top lawyer, told the campaign to quiet down on that rhetoric. Squashing talks about the economy. So the campaign and the Dems didn't talk about the economy much leading up to the election. Or said, "The economy is fine. Inflation is down. Look at the numbers." That didn't translate well to the general voters. That didn't match up with their live experiences of higher prices.

People just wanted change for those reasons, according to many podcasts I have listen to. So Tony West telling the campaign to stop talking about the economy might have kill the campaign for Harris. And this has been the standard thing for the Democrats to ignore the hardship that regular working folks goes through. And that might have cost them this election.

Yes Trump will make the economy worse and prices will rise faster under him. But at least Trump talked about the economy and lied about what he will do. So some folks believe him because he was at least talking about the economy. Something the Democrats didn't do. And Democrats often seed the ground to the Thuglicans on this and many issues. And it is so frustrating.

Will the Democrats continue to listen their pundits, insiders, and advisers like Tony West, who obliviously are more looking out for their big corporates friends instead of regular folks? Will finally adopt actually popularly economic policies instead of listening to their donor class? I highly doubt it. So long as folks like Tony West still has power over the Democrats campaigns, I fear they will lose more often than they will win.

[theculturedmarxist]

Speculations on Trump

From a thread on leftypol concerning US politics where the question of what the Trump admin is trying to accomplish with tariffs came up, and I tried to answer with some hopefully educated speculation. Indents will be anon posts and below them will be my responses. The posts themselves can be found in situ here and here.

Adding a cut, because long.

>but fold to what? what does the USA want?

It's hard to tell at this point. Federalizing Canada and Greenland seem like bizarre plays, but they might make some sense in light of the failure of project Ukraine.

I think in the ideal liberal timeline, Hillary wins in 2016, kicks off war with Russia, which it of course loses because it's a gas station with nukes run by a petty tyrant that no one likes. The liberals take over Russia, break it up, and nato enjoy the spoils of cheap Russian resources while gearing up for war with China along the same lines.

Trump's election throws a spanner in that and then coronavirus also delays things til 2022. War were declared, but the sanctions and proud Ukrainian warriors don't have the desired effect and now Russia is in a position of strength not seen since the cold war. And that's kind of it really, because with Ukraine likely to disappear in the next year or so there really isn't any other country on Russia's border that serves as a suitable proxy to try this all again.

There's been a lot of talk recently about the Arctic being the next "competition zone" with Russia, which seems likely as climate change accelerates. Melting ice is going to raise sea levels, displacing millions, while also opening up more of the North to settlement and exploitation. Greenland and Canada are both tempting targets because neither have very large populations in comparison to the US, nor any real means of resistance.

Securing control over Russia's resources was imperative for the US because as we're seeing with the fallout from the European economy being cut off from them, they're pretty essential for Europe's economy viability. That along with the development of BRICS and the Belt and Road threatened to undermine American domination there, and without that they can pretty much kiss competing in Asia and Africa goodbye. NATO is trying extremely hard right now to tamp down political movements seeking to normalize relations with Russia for this reason. If Europe just goes back to buying Russian gas then every single facet of project Ukraine has been a complete and total humiliation and failure.

So for the United States, there are only two real choices: give up and acquiesce to the new multi polar reality, or double down on trying to maintain its hegemony. Personally I think Washington is fundamentally incapable of the former, which leaves only the latter choice.

In that case, the US has to more ruthlessly exploit it's "native resources" in North and South America. In that vein the moves towards Canada, Greenland, and Panama make total sense. Greenland has a population of 50k people, and the past two years in Gaza have shown what the US is willing to do if some ice skating natives decide to make an issue of it. Canada also is vast with who knows how many trillions of dollars worth of future iphones under the permafrost. Panama is probably the most aggressive move though, because the ultimate purpose of that would be to shut the Chinese out, but it's also a potentially mighty barrier to migrants trying to escape the havoc I feel pretty confident is about to be unleashed south of it.

So tl;dr, to answer your question, it gets the raw materials to continue waging its war for supremacy tightening its grip on north and south America.

>Likely the US is going to give Greenland the same status that Micronesia has currently with the US. this will give it everything the US wants out of Greenland without the hassle of dealing with another Puerto Rico. The US will likely annex all the Prairie provinces, British Columbia and North Canada. This gives all the access to the Artic that the US wants and a direct connection to Alaska. Canada will be just Ontario. Quebec will be independent as well and the Maritime provinces will be annexed or form its own country as a tax haven.

Doesn't sound unreasonable. I think I differ with you on Greenland only because I picture the gringo settlers expecting full statehood for their trouble, but who knows at this point?

>that makes some sort of sense, i just have trouble believing that trump is thinking it through like that. or musk.

I agree, and personally I don't think he is. I'd put my money on this being the brainchild of someone else in the menagerie of interests he's assembled and placed himself at the head of, though I couldn't say who. I keep meaning to look into the Project 2025 document to see if there might be some answers or clues there, but the fucking thing is a thousand pages long.

>That whole post fails to answer the question of what squeezing mexico and canada aims to accomplish, if anything it loosens america's grip over mexico and forces it to approach china and the rest of south america. there's no negotiations on the table, trump has dismissed them all, and there's little to gain in terms of net influence abroad. also the greenland stuff is a continuation from 2019 policy, he had expressed interest in outright buying it if possible, though he was met with laughter. it's obvious that the permafrost is melting and they want to use greenland as a trade route. I genuinely think Trump's particular vision of the world is making him think all these policies are total slamdunks.

>The whole point of NAFTA/USMCA is "getting the resources", this is like wanting to drink a milkshake in the straw and deciding that the best path of action to accelerate this process is poking holes all over the straw. The US trade deals are worth shit, everyone will want to negotiate with the smart people in the room now, the chinese.

>what resources is it getting from mexico by destroying its economy?

I can only speculate, but which economy do you think is going to cry uncle first, the United States or Mexico? I'm not an expert on the Mexican economy, but the impression that I've gotten is that NAFTA has made it into an export economy, but then what? Saying they'll appeal to China is fine, but what exactly do they have to offer it? Can Mexico produce goods more cheaply? Then why would China undermine their own industries by buying them? And do you think the US would stand idly by while their industry which they spent years painstakingly moving to Mexico suddenly serves a new master?

At this point all I can guess is that the point is to hurt Mexico to such a degree that America can dictate new terms in their relationship. It seems like over the past decade the Mexican government has been taking a more independent stance, and Mexican workers have been winning better conditions for themselves. One of the goals of nafta was to move US industry to a place where wages and protections for workers were as close to nothing as possible. Putting the Mexicans "back in their place" might be part of this new relationship.

And beyond that, the US is faced with several contradictory needs. Primarily the Ukraine conflict has demonstrated a pressing need to reindustrialize. Its domestic politics make this untenable I think. American industrial workers would expect industrial wages, and furthermore raises the specter of what the bourgeoisie fear most and have been trying to kill for the past century: an organized and militant industrial proletariat. But to give you an example, Toyota is building an EV battery plant in my state. Starting wages for the production line without prior experience is double what any other factory work is offering here, and maintenance makes even more than that. Covid sent wages rapidly rising, and Biden spent much of his term trying to reverse that. That's to say nothing about how the company is making extensive outlays in the name of education, and how the sheer size of the factory and everything meant to service it will transform the region if all goes to plan.

But the sort of reindustrialization that would be needed to compete with Russia on bomb or shell production would be even more extensive. With profitability being the overall concern for the private contractors that will inevitably take up such a thing, American workers and infrastructure simply won't do I think. You need a much cheaper work force and one that's imminently disposable in the face of the inevitable accidents that will come with cut corners and cost saving measures. Displacing industry there might also have the added "benefit" of placing jobs outside of America's borders, attracting migrant workers there instead of to the US itself.

At this point, I think that's what I'd put my money on, that this is an effort to subjugate Mexico in the name of American industrial policy.

>idk anon >wouldn't continual industrial outsourcing to mexico be a little too hard to jive with drumpf's whole image/message?

I suppose, but at the same time I don't know how much it would matter. For the average American voter, the expectations are so low already that it seems like a lot of Trump's supporters are celebrating just the prospect of being able to say "retard" again.

So on the one hand you might get showpieces like Toyota's battery plant or that chip plant they're trying to build in Arizona (?), and on the other the dangerous, essential stuff is sent to Mexico.

>unless they try to dismember mexico and break up the northern states where a lot of the industry is to create a couple of little comprador states but there's been no mention of that

I don't know if I'd put it past them either. I think it was back in Bush's admin that there were talks of sending troops into Mexico to fight the cartels, and that kind of talk has cropped up again recently. Trump has sent some troops to the border, which seems like overkill to handle simple migrants. Maybe it could end up in a Syria sort of situation with US troops deployed across the border and these states under de facto US control while being ostensibly still under Mexican jurisdiction.

Personally I think the stakes have become existential for the American bourgeoisie. The loss of the status quo threatens to upset everything in the US, which has become so thoroughly brittle and rotten that I don't know if it can withstand a significant enough shock. Under these circumstances I don't think anything can be definitively ruled out.

>Yeah but mexico is already crying uncle, that's the thing, right? If there were any concessions to extract, including hammering the extensive cheap labor force in Mexico, they would've done so already, even pinko leaders won't hesitate to slam workers in the face of economic collapse. So maybe they want to subjugate Mexico, deal, but what little industry the US has left has been spread across the entire north american block, the inmediate effect will be a collapse of industry across the continent, setting back reindustrialization efforts, not further. I do think you're spot on with Trump wanting the US to reindustrialize, what I think is missing here is that the Trump's timeline is unrealistically short, and they're collapsing their sphere of influence to advance this plan. It's not that Mexico will want to approach China, is that the rest of the world will look at more consistent conditions offered by China now that America's word is equal to trash and vomit, and without a local cheap labor force, and no one wanting to be left to dry like Mexico and Canada, the US is going to struggle rebuilding their supply chain. No doubt will Mexico collapse miserably first, but in the long term, the US gives a lot more than it gains in terms of hegemony.

>Yeah but mexico is already crying uncle, that's the thing, right? If there were any concessions to extract, including hammering the extensive cheap labor force in Mexico, they would've done so already, even pinko leaders won't hesitate to slam workers in the face of economic collapse.

In the last thread there was a Twitter post I think about Trump saying that the tariffs aren't about concessions, so that raises a couple possibilities

1. We don't take Trump the Liar at his word. They are in fact about concessions. But if that's the case, and Mexico is already willing to concede, then what? Just get what you came for and call it a day.

Or, what Trump is trying to extract is so big that while Mexico is willing to negotiate, they won't give Trump what he wants without significantly more pain. What this could be I can't begin to guess at this point.

2. It actually isn't about concessions, and the pain is the point. The actual intention is to crash the economy with no survivors. This seems insane at first glance, but I think it fits given the circumstances and what we're seeing from the Trump administration.

The US is embroiled in a number of crises right now which are intractable without major changes.

For one, it must reindustrialize. The conflict with Ukraine has shown that the military edge that the US enjoyed over its competitors has evaporated, and this can only be remedied with increased military production. However, this is for all intents and purposes impossible at this point.

1. The US government has been shaped in such a way that its only means of doing so is the public/private partnership. 2. The private contractors don't want to increase production because that cuts into their profits. 3. Even with the government footing the bill, American labor costs would make such production unprofitable.

And that last part is I think the major fulcrum all this is turning on. As far as the bourgeoisie as a class are concerned, domestic reindustrialization is nothing short of a class defeat. American workers would expect factory work to be well paid, and reintroducing large scale, well paid factory work to the American economy risks undermining bourgeois class domination. If Americans are going to work, it's going to have to be on the cheap.

This seems to contradict the stated goal of the Trump Administration of ridding the US of its migrant workers. They function to keep wages and prices low, so getting rid of them seems to be working against that. The Biden admin struggled with the inflation caused by companies increasing prices to take advantage of rising wages caused by covid. Their response was to increase worker suffering, cut benefits and subsidies in order to force more people back into the labor market to try and drive wages down. Needless to say it didn't work.

But there are already reports of crop harvests going uncollected because migrants have either been deported or are hiding from fear of it. That means that Americans are the only ones left to do these jobs. However, they won't/can't take these jobs because they're unsustainable. You can't survive on picking tomatoes for 80c an hour. Wages can't rise to fix this because that would cause a rise in prices, and all other wages would have to rise as well to compensate. Regardless, this work has to be done.

The Republican solution to this kind of situation is to increase worker suffering until they have no choice but to take whatever they can get. So Trump's admin intends to cut social security, medicaid, snap, any sort of prole support that might give any lazy bastard an excuse not to get out and earn a living, and crashing the economy might just play into that as well. The US didn't have any problems industrializing in the 19th century, right? So all we have to do is return to 19th century conditions. No social security, no osha, no labor board. The final victory over the hated New Deal.

>So maybe they want to subjugate Mexico, deal, but what little industry the US has left has been spread across the entire north american block, the inmediate effect will be a collapse of industry across the continent, setting back reindustrialization efforts, not further. I do think you're spot on with Trump wanting the US to reindustrialize, what I think is missing here is that the Trump's timeline is unrealistically short, and they're collapsing their sphere of influence to advance this plan.

It is unrealistically short if Trump is expecting to accomplish all this within his term, but I'm not sure that he is. I think this is supported by the drastic purges that we're seeing him carry out through the government right now.

I think he learned a hard lesson in his first term, namely that the president has the power to set policy, but not the power to carry it out. Basically, whenever he tried to deviate from the Project For A New American Century, he was betrayed, stonewalled, or undermined by "the deep state," or in other words the federal bureaucracy. That institutional inertia is what guarantees continuity of government between administrations, ensuring that long term goals like destroying Russia or whatever carry on regardless of who is president. I think this past election was a struggle between old PFANAC die hards and Trump's coterie which see it as dead in the water. They're still committed to us hegemony, but have to go about it on a different tack, and the first step towards that is purging the government of those bearing the standard of the old cause.

So destroying the economy will be a mess, and it will negatively effect many of Trump's supporters, but in the calculus of him and his cabinet I don't think that matters. I think that the way Trump is looking at it, he'll be vindicated by history as the president that cleared away all the detritus and laid the foundations for MAGA.

My reasoning is that yeah, this will create a huge crisis now, but Trump isn't worried about the consequences. Other people will be left holding the bag. The Republicans will take the brunt of voter displeasure, and the Democrats will score a rebound victory in the next couple elections, but as a party and a class they are fundamentally incapable of dealing with the problems that will result, and inevitably the Republicans will get back into power, with the intended results of the crash having run their course and Americans being more destitute and desperate than ever, and ready to work in whatever job they can get, however dirty, dangerous, or destructive. This should coincide with the completion of at least some of the desired construction projects, like ammunition factories.

>It's not that Mexico will want to approach China, is that the rest of the world will look at more consistent conditions offered by China now that America's word is equal to trash and vomit, and without a local cheap labor force, and no one wanting to be left to dry like Mexico and Canada, the US is going to struggle rebuilding their supply chain. No doubt will Mexico collapse miserably first, but in the long term, the US gives a lot more than it gains in terms of hegemony.

I think you're right to some extent, but in the Republican view that restructuring of supply chains is absolutely necessary.

A world where the US can't unilaterally dictate policy is one the Republicans absolutely don't want to live in. Having to negotiate and honor their word is tantamount to surrendering to the new multipolar order.

However, certain adjustments must be made in respect to the multipolar situation if only because carrying on as things are is a losing prospect. Similar to how Russian gas have Russia de facto control over Europe's economy, Chinese commodities function the same way. The US can't fight China with the expectation that a stop in the flow of essential goods will collapse the US in a matter of weeks.

So from their warmongering perspective, whatever pain they experience NOW in the course of securing their ability to wage war is much preferable to the pain of total defeat if things continue as they are. As things stand, the US is losing ground in every sphere of conflict.

Europe: They're in the process of losing the Ukraine war and the economic fallout from it is generating anti NATO discontent that it is resorting to increasingly draconian methods to tamp down. Europe can't compete economically with the burden of American gas prices, and if the anti nato political groups have their way they'll be buying Russian gas very soon with Europe slipping out of their orbit.

Africa: Old colonialist structures conducive to American domination of the continent are being undermined or swept away and the US is being outcompeted there by Russia, China, and Turkey.

Asia: China is set to eclipse the US in virtually every metric, if it hasn't already. As things stand there's no way for American auto makers to compete with China's $10,000 EVs. Deepseek alone has basically upended the entire US tech industry. Like you mentioned before, China is an increasingly attractive partner to all the countries the US and nato have spent decades exploiting and bombing, which is practically everyone.

So in the face of all that and them doubling down on imperialism, I think their only recourse is to renew the Monroe Doctrine. Consolidate power in North America while tightening their grip on South America, with the intention of making it an anti BRICS reserve. Mexico will be transformed into a buffer state to absorb refugees from Operation Condor II. Panama seized in order to deny transit to Chinese ships, but also to serve as a bulwark between Central and South America, cutting them off and stymieing refugees/blowback from the south as it works to prise Brazil out of BRICS and bring Venezuela back into line.

The alternative is for America to be "defeated," and it's way of life "destroyed" by having to adjust their ways or even, quelle horreur, learn from these backwards, godless foreigners with their satanic cultures and barbarisms like mandatory holidays, universal healthcare, and worst of all social accountability, and if it comes to that I think they'd just as soon bathe the world in nuclear hellfire.

[corvidcall]

idk why people think they can out-post the menswear guy, but every day im glad they keep trying so i get to see him obliterate them

[poetrex]

PRESIDENT DECLARES VICTORY ON ALL FRONTS OF 3-DAY SPECIAL ECONOMIC OPERATION

Michislovakian Settlement "Peace For Our Time" Says PM

"I just had another talk with the American Chancellor, and here is the paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine," said the Prime Minister in Sudetenberta on Monday. "We agreed that our preexisting plan to remilitarize the Whineland is of the first importance for the Big Orange Baby. We regard this agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to trade war with one another again."

[grrlscientist]

"Give me what I want or the old man gets it."

by Michael de Adder

[political-us]

Wealth inequality in the US

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 4, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Sep 05, 2024

Long tonight, folks, but it’s been quite a day. And even still, I did not mention the day’s horrific shooting at a Georgia school.

Today, Vice President Kamala Harris announced a series of proposals to help entrepreneurs create small businesses. Like President Joe Biden, she and her running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, argue that small businesses and entrepreneurs are the “engines of our economy.” In a statement today, they noted that “small businesses employ half of all private-sector workers in America—creating 70 percent of net new jobs since 2019—and do trillions of dollars of business every year.”

The Biden administration has boasted of the record number of new businesses created since Biden and Harris took office. There have been 19 million new business applications in that time. Harris said she and Walz are setting a goal of 25 million new business applications in their first term. Their plan, they say, is to “kickstart…more young, small, and innovative firms.”

To make this happen, they propose raising the deduction for startup expenses from its current level of $5,000 to $50,000, noting that the average amount a new business spends to get set up in its first year of operation is $40,000. They also propose funding a network of new and existing “federal, state, local, and private incubators and small business innovation hubs” that will make it easier for small business and local suppliers to get technical assistance, funding, customers, and so on. 

They also promised to make low-interest and no-interest loans available for small businesses, to protect and expand the support of the Affordable Care Act for small business owners, and to guarantee that one third of federal contract money will go to small businesses. They promise to make it easier for small businesses to file taxes, reduce excessive occupational licensing requirements, and urge state and local governments to cut the red tape of burdensome regulations by streamlining them across jurisdictions. 

Harris and Walz said they are committed to making the investments that will build the economy while also paying for them and reducing the deficit. “They also know,” their statement said, that “we need to support America as a locus of innovators, entrepreneurs, and workers coming together to create a better future.  

Harris calls this a New Way Forward, but it is curiously close to the old Republican reforms of the Progressive Era, when entrepreneurs joined forces with workers and farmers to demand access to capital and a fair economic playing field after decades in which a few wealthy industrialists stacked the system in their own favor. When we look at that era, as well as the New Deal reforms of the 1930s, we tend to emphasize reforms designed to benefit workers and farmers, but members of those groups always allied with entrepreneurs shut out of the system by wealthy industrialists. The demand for securities and exchange law in the 1930s, for example, did not come from western farmers, but from entrepreneurs who knew they could not break into the system if established businesses made up the rules amongst themselves.

Harris recalled that Republican reform impulse when she said we must make the tax system fairer. She called for rolling back Trump’s tax cuts and implementing common-sense tax reforms for corporations and the richest Americans. She calls for setting a minimum income tax for billionaires, the corporate tax rate to 28% (it was 35% before the Trump tax cuts), and quadrupling the tax on the stock buybacks that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthiest Americans.

She emphasized that no one earning less than $400,000 a year will pay more in taxes under her plans, and called for a tax rate of 28% on long-term capital gains for those who earn more than a million dollars a year. This is up from the current 20% rate, but less than the 39.6% rate Biden proposed in his 2025 budget. 

A Fox News Channel host applauded some of Harris’s ideas, saying, “When a political candidate comes up with what I think is a good idea, I have to call it a good idea. And a fifty thousand dollar…tax credit for startups or small businesses, coupled with less red tape, I’ve got to say, that is a good idea, regardless of her other tax ideas.” 

This was a nice endorsement of Harris’s policies, coming as it did after yesterday’s assessment by economists for the Goldman Sachs Group saying that the nation’s economic growth would take a hit if Trump wins, but will grow under a Harris presidency if she also has the support of a Democratic House and Senate.  

In her statement about economic policy, Harris called out Trump for supporting “himself and the biggest corporations” and noted that sixteen Nobel laureates have said that Trump’s policies would ignite inflation and trigger a recession by mid-2025. That recession, economists project, would cost more than 3 million jobs, explode the deficit, and raise costs. Harris pointed out that Project 2025 would cut funding for the Small Business Administration and make it harder for small businesses to get access to money. 

For his part, Trump has doubled down on the idea that the United States is a failing nation. For the past week he has been telling a story about a residential building in Colorado taken over by a gang from Venezuela. But it appears the story is entirely made up. Similarly, Trump on Friday said at a right-wing Moms for Liberty event that public schools in America kidnap children and operate on them to change their sex. This is bonkers, but it is bonkers in a way that deliberately demonizes Trump’s opponents.

Trump’s vision of the United States is one of darkness and carnage. As Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz said today, “It is a deliberate effort by some people to make them believe that our political system is broken. To make them believe that things are pessimistic. My God, every time I hear Donald Trump give a speech, it’s like the next screenplay for Mad Max or something. They are rooting against America.”

That bleak version of the United States, it turns out, echoes the talking points Russian handlers gave to their operatives working in the U.S. in an effort “to steer the U.S. public opinion in the right direction.” The Russians directed their U.S. employees to emphasize the following “campaign topics”: “Encroaching universal poverty. Record inflation. Halting of economic growth. Unaffordable prices for food and essential goods”; “Risk of job loss for white Americans”; “Privileges for people of color, perverts, and disabled”; “Constant lies of the [Democratic] administration about the real situation in the country”; “Threat of crime coming from people of color and immigrants”; “Overspending on foreign policy and at the interests of white US citizens”; “Constant lies to the voters by [Democrats] in power.” 

The target audience of the campaign was “[Republican] voters,” [Trump] supporters, “Supporters of traditional family values,” and “White Americans, representing the lower-middle and middle class.” The focus was in particular on “[r]esidents of "swing states whose voting results impact the outcomes of the elections more than other states. 

This information came out today when the Departments of Justice, State, and the Treasury announced sanctions against 10 individuals and 2 entities, and criminal charges against two employees of RT, a Russian state-controlled media outlet, who allegedly funded a company in the U.S. to hire right-wing social media influencers to push Russian propaganda before the 2024 election. 

While the indictment does not name the Tennessee-based company the Russians funded, it appears to be Tenet Media, a company registered by Liam Donovan and Lauren Tam, who is associated with The Blaze and Turning Point USA, as well as RT. The two appear to be married. The indictment alleges that the company’s two founders knew they were working for the Russians, but suggests the six commentators—Lauren Southern, Tim Pool, Tayler Hansen, Matt Christiansen, Dave Rubin, and Benny Johnson, all staunch Trump supporters—did not know where their massive paychecks originated. After the story broke, five of the commentators denied any knowledge of the source of the company’s funding; some insisted their words were entirely their own. 

One of the videos the company pushed at the request of the Russians was what appears to have been right-wing host Tucker Carlson’s visit to a grocery store in Russia where he praised the low prices (which even the company’s founders thought “just feels like overt shilling”).

Separately, the Department of Justice seized 32 internet domains that “the Russian government and Russian sponsored actors” have used to influence the 2024 election. In a malign influence campaign called “Doppelganger,” these domains produced fake articles that appeared to be from major U.S. news sites, to which influencers and fake social media profiles on Facebook, X, Truth Social, and YouTube then drove traffic. 

Russian operatives called in bold type for Russia “to put a maximum effort to ensure that the [Republican] point of view (first and foremost, the opinion of [Trump] supporters) wins over the US public opinion. This includes provisions on peace in Ukraine in exchange for territories, the need to focus on the problems of the US economy, returning troops home from all over the world, etc.”

One of the documents produced in the affidavit justifying the seizure of the internet domains called for trying to stir up a conflict between the U.S. and Mexico in order to distract from the fact that the U.S. economy is “very healthy” under Biden.

Tonight, in an interview with Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity, Trump appeared to think he is running against Joe Biden. An internal email leaked to the press from the Trump campaign showed managers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles warning staff not to communicate with the press and suggested anyone doing so would be fired.

Today, Steph Curry of California’s Golden State Warriors basketball team and former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president. “Endorsing Kamala Harris is important for me and my family,” Curry said. “Knowing Kamala and having been around her, I understand she's qualified for this job."

“There was never a doubt that the courageous Liz Cheney would endorse Vice President Harris,” conservative judge J. Michael Luttig wrote, “because  Liz Cheney stands for America.  She is the very embodiment of country over party and country over self.  And she fears no one—least of all the former president.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[milfgwen]

i truly didnt mentally prepare myself for this result and idk what ill do if its not different by tomorrow lol

[thashining]

You'll get 8 years of this