Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.
The simple fact is that Trump isn’t going to “make America great again”. He’s speed running collapse. The most telling bit is his attacks on America universities at the same time as China has taken the lead in eighty percent, or more, of technologies and appears to have the lead in science as well. He’s dismantling the few good things Biden did, like his industrial policy and his appointment of Lina Khan to attack monopolies and oligopolies.
The shuttering of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will massively hurt low and middle income earners. The postal service changes will lead to many rural Americans having no mail service. Trump’s budget requires massive cuts to Medicaid, which disproportionately helps Red State Republicans.
Trump isn’t making America Great Again: he’s speed running the decline of America. There was a way to withdraw from the American Empire and become semi-isolationist again which would have been good for both Americans and everyone else, but that’s not what Trump is doing.
Anyone delusional enough to think Trump is good for America or most Americans is a moron. It’s that simple.
I keep reading about how if Europe increases military spending they’ll have to cut welfare spending.
Let’s look at a little history: back around 1960 West Germany spent 4% of GDP on their military. They were happy to do so. They also had a very generous welfare state. So did most of Western Europe and they were spending a lot on their militaries.
“But Ian,” you exclaim, “that’s not possible. If you have a warfare state, you can’t have a welfare state!”
Here’s the rule. Pick any two of the following three:
- A Welfare State.
- A Warfare State.
- Low Taxes on the rich and corporations.
All it takes to have both a warfare and welfare state is 90% top marginal tax rates and various other taxes and laws designed to force corporations and the rich to invest in actual production and not in rentierism. Strangely, when Europe and the US had those tax rates, they had the best economies in their entire history.
Wonder why none of the pundits suggest going back to the successful warfare/welfare policies of the 50s and 60s?
I guess it’s a mystery.
(Oh, and why did Europe pay less than 2% of GDP on its military in recent decades? Might it have something to do with the fact that the USSR collapsed and there was no actual military threat to Europe?)
One of the ways that Trump reminds me of Bush Jr. is that you never want him to do anything you agree with, because he’ll fuck it up and discredit it. Trump’s tariffs are the platonic essence of fucking up a good idea.
Let’s run thru this:
Companies and individuals need predictability. Everyone has pointed this out, but it’s still true. You can’t lay on new production if you don’t know if the tariffs are here to stay or not.
It takes time to increase production so tariffs should come in like a lamb. Personally I’d have most tariffs increase by 1% every month or two, depending on how long a specific type of production takes to increase, until it reached my target. Companies can’t just spawn in new production, this isn’t a video game.
If you can’t produce it you shouldn’t tariff it unless you have hard currency issues. Mostly self-explanatory: tariffs are used to make domestic production economically viable. If you can never produce it tariffs don’t make sense unless you don’t have enough hard currency to import things you really need, usually capital machinery. This last part doesn’t apply to the US.
If domestic production has a better use, tariffs may be a bad idea. Right now the US is ramping up energy production to it can concentrate on AI. Putting tariffs on Canadian energy is thus stupid, since the US can’t build enough energy fast enough. Related: aluminum production is massively energy intensive. Tariffing Canadian aluminum means you need to use American energy for refining. Is that the best use of American energy right now? (I mean, a case could be made that AI is overhyped bullshit, but Trump isn’t saying that.)
Maybe you want to export goods to another country, and they’ll tariff you if you tariff them. Tariffs often need to be negotiated between countries. If everyone just tariffs everything, that’s the end of international trade. Generally the idea is “you specialize in X, we’ll specialize in Y and we’ll trade.” Comparative advantage is overstated and only works when there are no significant free capital flows, but it’s also true that no one can produce everything they need: not even China right now, or the US in 1950. So “tariffs on everything” is moronic.
Tariffs without industrial policy rarely work. If no one can afford to build up industry, or if the regulatory environment makes it hard, all the tariffs do is increase prices. Biden actually had pretty decent industrial support programs going and Trump is dismantling them. He should, instead, have left them in place while putting strategic tariffs in place to further support them.
Needless to say Trump is bad on all these issues, because he’s a tard.
The Trump administration has transferred hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador even as a federal judge issued an order temporarily barring the deportations under an 18th century wartime declaration targeting Venezuelan gang members, officials said Sunday. Flights were in the air at the time of the ruling.
“But they’re bad people, Ian” you squeal. “They’re gang members. Bad things should happen to them because they’re bad!”
Well, maybe.
Thing is, we don’t know. The government claimed they were all gang members, but the reason countries have checks and balances, something the US once claimed to be proud of, was to be certain there aren’t miscarriages of justice. People accused of a crime are taken to court, where the truth of said allegations are determined so that somebody with power can’t just make assertions and punish people.
Due process. It’s not a panacea, bad shit still happens to innocent people, but it’s one of the safeguards.
Here’s the issue: if the government had proof that all of these people were gang members and that they could be deported illegally, why not go in front of a judge?
There are only two possible reasons:
- They don’t have proof for all of the people, and still want to deport them; or,
- They want to set the precedent that they can deport whoever they want just based on an accusation, without the judiciary having any say.
If you’re OK with either of these things, you are an evil piece of human garbage and stupid on top of that. Such people remind me of Red Staters who voted Trump, knowing about DOGE, then were surprised when Musk and Trump took their jobs and Trump decided to destroy American farmers with tariffs and by taking away their immigrant labor base.
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”
H.L. Mencken
Every right taken from other people will eventually be taken from you. Extraordinary renditions were against non-Americans outside of America, right, so they didn’t matter. When Obama drone killed an American citizen, well he was a terrorist and he wasn’t in America, so that was OK, right? The people being extradited now are gang members, and not Americans, so it doesn’t matter to you, does it? I mean, we don’t actually know that none of them are Americans are that all are gang members, but you’re a good person, so just like those Trump voters fired by Musk, you’ll be OK.
Right?
Oh, and the Gaza genocide has started up, with confirmation that Trump OK’d it. And that’s just Arabs, right, so it has nothing to do with you and they have it coming or something because they dared fight back, and that’s terrorism when weak people do it.
Right?
Elites who have learned they can get away with genocide would never genocide you.
Right?
As an aside, there is no possible half decent world where America does not lose all its power. Ideally a break up, so that it can never again be even a great power.
May it happen soon.
As for Europe, I’ve written about how they could fix things and reindustrialize, but on a moral basis, it’s hard to think that would be a good thing for the rest of the world, with a few exceptions like Ireland. (Ireland, of course, was the first victim of English colonialism. White niggers.)
My guess is that Europe’s leaders don’t have what it takes to turn Europe around though.
Oh well. *Sound of massive cheers from every country they colonized and enslaved and now lecture on human rights.*
Something similar could be said about almost all Western policies except those which make the rich richer. “Is the policy working? No. Are we going to continue? Yes.”
Here’s the thing, AnsarAllah is the only nation in the world taking military action to try and stop the Israeli genocide of Palestinians. During the ceasefire, they stopped attacking ships trading with Israel. When Israel cut off all food and aid, they gave Israel four days warning: restore the aid or we start the attacks again.
Then they did, and then Trump figured that he’d start bombing Yemen again, which won’t do a damn thing except kill a few more people. The Yemenis genuinely don’t give a fuck, they’ve been bombed to hell and back again for the better part of two decades. Unless someone wants to invade and occupy the country, which would take troops in the six figures, I’d guess, there isn’t a damn thing military force will accomplish.
It is tiresome to keep saying this, but Israel, with the full support of many countries, including Britain, Germany and most importantly America (and my own nation, Canada, not that our help amounts to anything) is committing red letter genocide. There is no question about this, it is not “complicated” and there is no possibility of being a moral person, or even not a complete fucking waste of human skin, if you support genocide.
As for Yemen and AnsarAllah, they appear to be the only nation in the world which is fully moral in this respect, and the only nation in the world fully living up to the requirement for nations to actively try and stop genocide. There isn’t much that they can do, given their geography (though they’ve said that if other nations are willing to let their troops thru, they’ll send them, and I believe them) but what they can do, they are doing.
The Biden administration tried to bribe them. They offered full removal of sanctions, recognition of AnsarAllah and lots of money. Yemen refused.
I’m not even close to AnsarAllah ideologically, but I am reluctantly forced to say that I admire them and Yemen more than any other country in the world for the uncompromising refusal to look the other way and do nothing when there is something they can do.
As for the West, with a few exceptions like Ireland and Spain, we have proved ourselves irredeemably evil, not so much because we refuse to act against Israel, but because we actively help this genocide along. We have no moral figleafs left, we are revealed to the world for the monsters we are.
Perhaps China has done nothing, but at least they aren’t sending Israel weapons, and they have the bare decency to deplore the genocide. We can’t even manage that, but instead are arresting those who dare stand up and even say “genocide is bad.”
Pathetic.
Let us hope there is no just God. If there is, let us tremble for our nations.
The U.S. Navy has used more missiles for air defense since combat operations in the Red Sea began in October 2023 than the service used in all the years since Operation Desert Storm in the 1990s…
… the Navy will need years to replenish its supply of missiles…
…The Navy also revealed in January that it had fired 160 rounds from ships’ five-inch main guns as part of combat operations in the Red Sea. Those main gun rounds have been used to destroy Houthi drones, Clark said.
“They have been using guns to shoot down drones lately,” Clark said.
Not only are the 5-inch rounds less expensive than missiles, but the Houthi drones often fly too low or too close to the ship to be hit with missiles, Clark said.
“What often happens is these really small drones get close enough to where the missile can’t really engage in time, because the missile has a minimum range, also,” Clark said.
By Tony Wikrent
Jaime Raskin Asks Us To Help Make A FOIA Tsunami
Beryl Stone, March 11, 2025 [DailyKos]
From Raskin:
Today I filed a formal demand for access to my personal data obtained by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and Elon Musk. I encourage all U.S. citizens to join me in doing the same.
Elon Musk should have been more careful in what he wished for, Carol. DOGE recently dodged lawsuits about its seizure of citizens’ personal data by telling courts that it is a legitimate government agency entitled to extract this information. What Elon Musk apparently did not realize is that this statement triggers DOGE’s obligation to comply with citizen demands to see and—if need be—correct their personal information under the Privacy Act. It also allows every citizen to find out what other agencies or outside parties have been made privy to our information.Last night, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued an injunction commanding DOGE to comply with citizen requests under the Freedom of Information Act. FOIA encompasses the Federal Privacy Act of 1974, which entitles any citizen to access personal information held in any U.S. government records system.By visiting the link on my website HERE, you can fill out the Privacy Act request form and mail it in directly to DOGE. This newly recognized federal agency, which has been systematically accessing government computer data systems, now has an obligation to respond to specific information demands from any of the 340 million U.S. citizens who exercise their legal right to defend their privacy and establish the security of their personal information.
Trump not violating any law
‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’
Trump Orders US Military to Plan Invasion of Panama to Seize Canal: Report
Brett Wilkins, March 13, 2025 [CommonDreams]
U.S. officials familiar with the planning said options for “reclaiming” the vital waterway include close cooperation with Panama’s military and, absent that, possible war.
Legal Fight Underway as Trump Invokes Alien Enemies Act of 1798 for Deportations
Jessica Corbett, March 15, 2025 [CommonDreams]
DHS Official Explicitly Equates Protest to Terrorism in ‘Stunning’ Interview
Julia Conley, March 13, 2025 [CommonDreams]
Trump visits Justice Department for speech that breaks all norms
Perry Stein, Jeremy Roebuck, Derek Hawkins, March 14, 2025 [Washington Post, via msn.com]
DHS has begun performing polygraph tests on employees to find leakers
[NBC News, via Naked Capitalism 03-10-2025]
Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.