Do you feel like the winds of change are blowing today too? by 6ixStringJack

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

How Trump’s Tariffs Will Savage the Economy
This is going to hurt.

By Nitish Pahwa | March 05, 2025 6:06 PM

https://slate.com/technology/2025/03/trump-tariffs-explained-mexico-ca
nada-china-prices-rise.html

It’s a mess, not least because this fickle administration is claiming to be “open” to further exemptions, which could change everything on a whim. But what does it all mean for you, the humble consumer caught up in this trade-war whirlwind even though you’ve long tired of inflation and the fact that Trump take egg? We’ll break it all down.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, March 5, 2025 8:51 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
What Republicans (and anyone else) who support Trump need to know

THE SERIOUS ANSWER: Here’s what the majority of anti-Trump voters honestly feel about Trump supporters en masse:

Here is what YOU need to know.

Nobody gives one single fuck what you (and anyone else) like you think about anything anymore.

That ship sailed for a world that existed 6 months ago but no longer exists today.

Maybe had you or any body in the Media listened to THE FUCKING MAJORITY on issues instead of pushing your America-Last, racist agenda as the things that people believed in when none of it were true... Or maybe if you weren't locking people away in their houses and forcing them to get jabs if they wanted to feed their families, we might have some sympathy for you now. But you didn't and we don't.

Have fun spending the next 4 years cheering for the destruction of America like the gutter trash that represents you.

Go. Fuck. Yourself.

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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Wednesday, March 5, 2025 8:56 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

In just five days, Trump has set the country back nearly 100 years

The president’s new slogan might as well be “We were better off 95 years ago than we are today.”

By Dana Milbank | March 4, 2025 at 11:36 p.m. EST

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/03/04/trump-tariffs-ukrai
ne-speech-congress-backward/

With a modesty we have come to expect of him, President Donald Trump informed Congress on Tuesday night that he had already ushered in “the greatest and most successful era in the history of our country.” He told the assembled lawmakers that he “accomplished more in 43 days than most administrations accomplished in four or eight years.”

Armed with a portfolio of fabricated statistics, Trump judged that “the first month of our presidency is the most successful in the history of our nation — and what makes it even more impressive is that you know who No. 2 is? George Washington.”

Republican lawmakers laughed, whooped and cheered.

Usually, such talk from Trump is just bravado. But let us give credit where it is due: Trump has made history. In fact, it’s not much of an exaggeration to say that, over the course of the past five days, he has set the United States back 100 years.

Trump on Monday implemented the largest tariff increase since 1930, abruptly reversing an era of liberalized trade that has prevailed since the end of the Second World War. He launched this trade war just three days after dealing an equally severe blow to the postwar security order that has maintained prosperity and freedom for 80 years. Trump’s ambush of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office, followed by the cessation of U.S. military aid to the outgunned nation, has left allies reeling and Moscow exulting. The Kremlin’s spokesman proclaimed that Trump is “rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations” in a way that “largely aligns with our vision.”

And our erstwhile friends? “The United States launched a trade war against Canada, its closest partner and ally, their closest friend,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Tuesday. “At the same time, they’re talking about working positively with Russia, appeasing Vladimir Putin: a lying, murderous dictator. Make that make sense.”

It makes sense only if, against all evidence, you believe, as Trump apparently does, that Americans were better off 95 years ago than they are today.

We’re apparently going to have to relearn that lesson the hard way. The blizzard of executive orders that Trump has issued, though constitutionally alarming, can be rescinded by a future president. Elon Musk’s wanton sabotage of federal agencies and the federal workforce, though hugely damaging, can be repaired over time. But there is no easy fix for Trump’s smashing of the security and trade arrangements that have kept us safe and free for generations.

“We’re certainly not in the postwar world anymore,” Douglas Irwin, a Dartmouth College economist and fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, tells me. He calculates that Trump’s hike in tariffs is the largest since the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 accelerated the nation’s slide into the Great Depression. And Trump’s current tariffs, which in Irwin’s calculation affect imports worth about 4.8 percent of gross domestic product, will have an even greater impact on the economy than did Smoot-Hawley, which affected imports worth 1.4 percent of GDP, and the McKinley administration’s tariffs during the 1890s, which affected imports worth 2.7 percent of GDP (and which also were followed by a prolonged depression).

Irwin figures the current tariffs “are likely to be much more disruptive” than those historical cases because the U.S. economy is much more dependent now on “intermediate goods” — meaning materials such as auto parts, needed by American businesses to make finished goods. Trump has brought the average tariff on total imports to 10 percent, a level not seen since 1943, in Irwin’s analysis.

Late Tuesday, after stocks plunged for a second day, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick appeared to signal a retreat, saying the administration would “probably” announce Wednesday that it was meeting Canada and Mexico “in the middle some way.” Yet even if Trump quickly abandons the trade war he just launched, the effects will probably be long-lasting, because he has upended the gradual liberalization of trade that has been underway since 1932.

Trump, in imposing 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico, has violated the spirit, if not the letter, of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement he negotiated during his first term. “So, going forward, what country would ever sign a trade agreement with the United States knowing that we can find some sort of excuse that’s outside the agreement to raise the tariffs?” Irwin asks. Instead, he expects a return of the “corrupt process” that existed before the 1930s in which tariffs will remain on the books and businesses will try to curry favor (in this case, with Trump) to win exemptions.

Inevitably, the retaliation has already begun. Canada is imposing 25 percent tariffs on $155 billion of American goods — and the premier of Ontario, vowing to “go back twice as hard” at the United States, is slapping a 25 percent tariff on electricity going to the United States, while threatening to cut the lights off entirely. China is imposing tariffs of up to 15 percent on U.S. imports and banning some exports. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, calling Trump’s justification for the tariffs “offensive, defamatory and groundless,” said she would announce her country’s retaliation plans this weekend.

And Trump keeps escalating. After Trudeau said on Tuesday that Trump wants “a total collapse of the Canadian economy, because that will make it easier to annex us,” Trump mocked “Governor Trudeau” on social media and vowed that “when he puts on a Retaliatory Tariff on the U.S., our Reciprocal Tariff will immediately increase by a like amount!”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed more than 1,300 points. Inflation forecasts are increasing. (The free-trading Peterson Institute says Trump’s tariffs will cost the typical American household $1,200 per year.) Retailers such as Target and Best Buy are warning about higher prices. The Atlanta Fed’s model of real GDP growth, which a month ago saw 2.3 percent growth in the first quarter, now sees a contraction in the first quarter of 2.8 percent. And Trump is threatening to hit more countries with more tariffs, on metals, cars, farm products and more, in the coming weeks.

During his first term, Trump tweeted that “trade wars are good, and easy to win” — but he had the good sense not to test this in a major way. Now, we all get to experience what actually happens when we launch one.

Trump’s moves to dismantle the trade architecture of the past century is all the more destabilizing because he is simultaneously moving to knock down the alliances that maintained security for most of that same period. As The Post’s Francesca Ebel reported from Moscow, Putin’s government sees Trump’s humiliation of Zelensky as a “huge gift” that furthered Russia’s ambitions of dividing the West. Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev called it a “proper slap down” of “the insolent pig” Zelensky. Hungary’s repressive leader, Viktor Orban, also celebrated: “Thank you, Mr. President!”

And while Trump blames the victim for Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, China is growing bolder in its desire to take Taiwan. Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post quoted analysts calling the Trump-Zelensky rift part of a “systemic reordering” of geopolitics in which “Beijing was positioned to capitalize on the ‘rapid disintegration of the West’ that legitimizes ‘Beijing’s vision for a post-American world order.’”

As the authoritarians celebrate, freedom’s defenders weep. Lech Walesa, the celebrated champion of Polish democracy, joined other former political prisoners in a letter to Trump expressing “horror and disgust” at the American president’s treatment of Zelensky, saying they were “terrified by the fact that the atmosphere in the Oval Office during this conversation reminded us of the one we remember well from interrogations by the Security Service and from courtrooms in communist courts.”

Democratic leaders across Europe, and across the world, spoke up in defense of Ukraine. “We must never confuse aggressor and victim in this terrible war,” wrote incoming German chancellor Friedrich Merz.

Now, these democratic leaders must contemplate rebuilding what Trump has destroyed. “Today,” European Commission Vice President Kaja Kallas wrote on the day of Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine, “it became clear that the free world needs a new leader.”

In the House chamber on Tuesday night, there was little sign of the United States that until now has led the free world.

Republicans, once the party of free trade, applauded Trump’s vows to impose tariffs — or additional tariffs — on Canada, Mexico, the European Union, China, India, Brazil and South Korea.

“We’ve been ripped off by nearly every country on Earth, and we will not let that happen any longer,” he said. As for the pain his trade policies are already causing, he said: “There’ll be a little disturbance, but we’re okay with that. It won’t be much.”

Trump spoke — repeatedly — about his election victory, about the “radical left lunatics” who prosecuted him, and about his culture-war battles against transgender Americans and against “diversity, equity and inclusion.” With taunts and nonsense claims (more than 1 million people over age 150 receiving Social Security!), he goaded the Democrats, who answered him with messages (“False,” “No Kings Live Here”) on signs and on T-shirts. When Al Green, a 77-year-old Democratic lawmaker from Texas, waved his walking cane and shouted at Trump that he had “no mandate to cut Medicaid,” Republican leaders, who allowed members of their party to shout “bulls---” at President Joe Biden from the House floor, called in the sergeant at arms to evict him.

It took nearly an hour for Trump to talk about trade. He didn’t get to Ukraine until nearly an hour and 20 minutes into his speech, and then it was to level the false claim that Ukraine had taken $350 billion from the United States, “like taking candy from a baby,” while Europe spent only $100 billion on Ukraine — dramatically overstating the U.S. contribution and understating Europe’s.

“Do you want to keep it going for another five years?” he said, looking at the Democrats. “Pocahontas says yes,” Trump added, referring contemptuously to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts).

At this, Vice President JD Vance chortled — and the Republican side, once the home of proud internationalists, responded with derision, cheers and applause.

And so collapses the architecture of freedom and prosperity: with a lie, a taunt and a guffaw.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, March 5, 2025 8:59 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
In just five days, Trump has set the country back nearly 100 years

The president’s new slogan might as well be “We were better off 95 years ago than we are today.”

By Dana Milbank | March 4, 2025 at 11:36 p.m. EST

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/03/04/trump-tariffs-ukrai
ne-speech-congress-backward/

Wow. An opinion piece by a Yale Graduate NeoCon piece of trash.

You've still got Liz Cheney's cock in your mouth, huh?

SPOILER ALERT: If your plan on being less biased going forward is to insert a bunch of warmongering NeoCon garbage that hates Trump as much as you've programmed your low-IQ, built-in-reader base to, Jeff Bezos, your paper is still going to fail without the Government propping it up.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Wednesday, March 5, 2025 9:09 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
The United States pursued a protectionist policy from the beginning of the 19th century until the middle of the 20th century. Between 1861 and 1933, they had one of the highest average tariff rates on manufactured imports in the world

...

The new government needed a way to collect taxes from all the states that was easy to enforce and had only a nominal cost to the average citizen. The Tariff Act of 1789 was the second bill signed by President George Washington imposing a tariff of about 5% on nearly all imports, with a few exceptions

...

Paul Bairoch called the U.S. “the mother country and bastion of modern protectionism.”
...
In Report on Manufactures, which is considered the first text to express modern protectionist theory, Alexander Hamilton argued that if a country wished to develop a new activity on its soil, it would have to temporarily protect it. According to him, this protection against foreign producers could take the form of import duties or, in rare cases, prohibition of imports. He called for customs barriers to allow American industrial development and to help protect infant industries, including bounties (subsidies) derived in part from those tariffs. He also believed that duties on raw materials should be generally low.[14] Hamilton argued that despite an initial "increase of price" caused by regulations that control foreign competition, once a "domestic manufacture has attained to perfection... it invariably becomes cheaper".[12]

In this report, Hamilton also proposed export bans on major raw materials, tariff reductions on industrial inputs, pricing and patenting of inventions, regulation of product standards and development of financial and transportation infrastructure.

Hamilton was the first to use the term "infant industries" and to introduce it to the forefront of economic thinking. He believed that political independence was predicated upon economic independence. Increasing the domestic supply of manufactured goods, particularly war materials, was seen as an issue of national security. And he feared that Britain's policy towards the colonies would condemn the United States to be only producers of agricultural products and raw materials.[13][12]

Britain initially did not want to industrialize the American colonies, and implemented policies to that effect (for example, banning high value-added manufacturing activities). Under British [AND GLOBALIST] rule, America was denied the use of tariffs to protect its new industries. Thus, the American Revolution was, to some extent, a war against this policy, in which the commercial elite of the colonies rebelled against being forced to play a lesser role in the emerging Atlantic economy. This explains why, after independence, the Tariff Act of 1789 was the second bill of the Republic signed by President Washington allowing Congress to impose a fixed tariff of 5% on all imports, with a few exceptions.[15]

Between 1792 and the war with Britain in 1812, the average tariff level remained around 12.5%, which was too low to encourage consumers to buy domestic products and thus support emerging American industries. When the Anglo-American War of 1812 broke out, all rates doubled to an average of 25% to account for increased government spending. The war paved the way for new industries by disrupting manufacturing imports from the UK and the rest of Europe. A major policy shift occurred in 1816, when American manufacturers who had benefited from the tariffs lobbied to retain them. New legislation was introduced to keep tariffs at the same levels —especially protected were cotton, woolen, and iron goods.[16] The average rate rose to 35% in 1816. The public agreed, and by 1820, the average rate in the U.S. had risen to 40%. Between 1816 and the end of World War II, the U.S. had one of the highest average import tariffs on manufactured goods in the world.

...

From 1871 to 1913, "the average U.S. tariff on dutiable imports never fell below 38 percent [and] gross national product (GNP) grew 4.3 percent annually, twice the pace in free trade Britain and well above the U.S. average in the 20th century," notes Alfred Eckes Jr, chairman of the U.S. International Trade Commission under President Reagan.[18]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_tariffs_in_the_United_State
s

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"Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem, the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Wednesday, March 5, 2025 9:12 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
“So, going forward, what country would ever sign a trade agreement with the United States

How's this, SECOND?

"We don't want no stinkin' trade agreements."

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"Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem, the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Wednesday, March 5, 2025 9:15 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

The definition of "foreign aid":

Where poor people in rich countries give money to rich people in poor countries.

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"Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem, the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Wednesday, March 5, 2025 10:14 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
The definition of "foreign aid":

Where poor people in rich countries give money to rich people in poor countries.

Most accurate thing I've heard today.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Wednesday, March 5, 2025 10:40 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Now, AFA recessions and depressions: NOT CAUSED BY TARIFFS.

They're caused by excess profits being cycled out of the hands of workers...i.e. consumers .... causing an imbalance between production (too much) and demand (not enough).

Keynes' answer to that was for government to print money and toss it into the economy, he didn't care where. He opined that government splurging would raise "animal spirits" and reset general outlook to optimism. If $ is directed at the wealthy it's called "trickle down" which has NEVER worked.

Roosevelt's answer was a more targeted. He called it "pump priming": directing money into the hands of the everyday person, who would more likely spend it on necessities, thereby increasing demand, instead of saving it or spending it on an extravagance.

And it worked, to a fashion, until a Republican Congress grew uneasy about the deficit and put a crimp in the program. Then WWII came along, and all fiscal caution was thrown to the wind, and people were fully engaged making supplies and weapons for war.

The CURRENT answer is to flood the world with American debt. Government debt. Corporate debt. Financial debt. Consumer debt. Trade debt. Keep consumption going even as wealthy inequality skyrockets.

*****

If you want an economy that doesn't get whipsawed by depression, it needs to be approximately balanced between supply and demand, which means money needs to be cycled back to the laborer instead of bloating an already engorged elite.

If you want an economy not bedeviled by inflation, it means not expanding the money supply unless/ until production is increased. (And if you need to raise production, you don't just puke government money everywhere, you need targeted investment.)

If you want a financial system not subject to breakdown, raise banking reserves and once again separate retail from investment banking.

And if you want your currency to be respected around the world, don't rely on a mountain of trade and fiscal debt. Have products to trade that prople want to buy.

It's not fucking rocket science. Finacialists and industrialists like to muddy the waters simply to allow them to continue their depredations. It's their depredations that cause the problems, and there's no fix for it but to FIX IT.

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"Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem, the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Wednesday, March 5, 2025 11:30 PM

... and I always think about that...

What do they need more money for?

At the end of the day it IS all fiat currency.

I'm sitting here at pretty much the furthest end of the spectrum as far as the first world is concerned, excluding the homeless and children of course. The only thing keeping me from the bottom is just the sheer virtue of it costing more to live in America than a lot of other countries, even in a relatively non-expensive area like mine.

I agonized over the first year my expenses went up over $7,000 for the year. These people talk about billions like I do nickels.

How do you fix this?

If you took just 10% of the wealth out of the hands of the truly wealthy and dispersed it equally, you'd likely double the living standards of half the people overnight.

I don't mean a one-time handout.

I'm talking about how do you permanently change the system so that 10% of that uber-wealthy money rotting in savings and investments is freed up and ends up in places that would make lives better.

I don't want to hear any arguments from anyone about this can't be done. I know full well that my parents Boomer generation had it a hell of a lot better than anyone who came after them.

How do we get back to that?

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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Thursday, March 6, 2025 1:19 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Well, let's start with some basics.

If your nation is small and limited in resources, you have to trade internationally for things like oil, metals, food, and other commodities. What you have to trade is labor. And if other nations are captives of transnational corporations, you'll wind up getting sucked into a system where the weak are ground into pulp. Unless you can make arrangements with similarly situated nations for fair trade.

America isn't that.

America has continental- scale resources. There are some things we lack, but we have many things to trade. So we COULD set up a system that's different from the usual rapacious setup,

MORE LATER

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"Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem, the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Thursday, March 6, 2025 2:08 AM

Yanno... It's when you really start thinking about these types of things that you can see why so many people, particularly the young people, are so readily drawn to Socialism or outright Communism.

We know that doesn't work, but whatever it is we've been doing clearly isn't working either.

On a micro-scale, or on a nostalgic or romantic scale, there's a ton of allure to Capitalism.

But that's just not how it works on a macro-scale. Jimmy Dore calls it Predatory Capitalism. I'm not sure what I'd call it. End-Stage Capitalism? Maybe even Post-Capitalism?

We're only allowed freedoms until it's no longer more trouble than it's worth to take them away.

We were really useful when we were cut loose into America to stake claims to land and get into battles with natives and die of all the diseases and make the original settlements. And then the slow and fat and spoiled bureacracy eventually made their way to you and took over whatever little world you'd built for yourselves with all of the others who were strong and lucky enough to survive that long.

Fast-Forward about ten or so generations and what value do any of us really have if we're not consumers, or we find ourselves no longer living in a world where simply being a consumer was all that was required and desired out of you?

There's a reason why people in the 1st world, particularly white people have stopped having enough babies to maintain their numbers. Because we've conquered everything there is to conquer. At least everything that matters. Space and true Deep Sea travel and exploration is still very far away. They will matter one day if we survive long enough, but we're not there yet.

There's already too many of us, and most white 1st world people have had it good enough for long enough that they don't feel that urge to conquer or expand anymore. Why have 3 kids today when that means you're going to have to spend half a million to put them through college and even if you pay for all of that they've got less than a 50% chance they'll ever make enough money in their lives to make that degree worthwile? Or the more likely result being that at least one or more of your kids ain't that bright and/or ambitious and the best they've got to look forward to is manning the milkshake machine at McDonalds?

At some point, we're going to have to have some real conversations about population and what our plans are for it going forward.

Because, come to think of it now, one huge thing we're failing to mention here when talking about how good it was for the Boomer generation is that there were 3 BILLION less people on the planet in 1990 than there are now, and we had 80 Million less people living here in the US.

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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Thursday, March 6, 2025 4:24 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

I'd call it global monopolism, or global financialism. Hard to believe, but Karl Marx actually predicted this.

*****

Getting back to your previous post ..

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
... and I always think about that...
What do they need more money for?
At the end of the day it IS all fiat currency.

It's not money, it's power over anyone who needs the money.

Quote:
If you took just 10% of the wealth out of the hands of the truly wealthy and dispersed it equally, you'd likely double the living standards of half the people overnight.

No. All you'd do is double prices. Any time you dump money into a system without increasing production you create the recipe for inflation: Too much money chasing too few goods. What you'd have to do is funnel that money either thru productive activity ... raising more beef cattle or egg-laying hens or anythung else people are short of .... needs more ranchers etc ... or thru services like medical care ... more doctors and nurses etc ... to make a real difference in people's lives.

Quote:
mI'm talking about how do you permanently change the system ...

I don't think you can ever PERMANENTLY change a system. It seems no matter what system you start with - tribalism, feudalism/monarchism, capitalism, socialism, financialism - it eventually winds up being corrupted. Power and money behave like gravity: the more you have, the more you get. Even Russia, which is doing amazing things with its current crop of leadership and the next generation afterwards, will eventually grow its own set of parasites.

One problem is that the powerful warp societal norms so that people wind up believing the situation is NORMAL.

People believed, really believed, the shaman could cure or curse them.

They believed that kings and queens received their authority from God, thru the Pope.

They believed that socialism will lead to a "new man".

That Israel has a god-given right to all of the Levant.

They believed that GREED IS GOOD, that the "free market" will lead to a glorious society. A lot of people still feel that way, and that any restraint on "free markets" and "free trade" is inherently bad, and that governments are inherently evil.

Anyway, I don't think we can get back to the way things were 60 years ago. The USA was in a unique situation back then as the last industrial power left standing. We have to deal with the world of today.

Somehow, we have to deal with our own oligarchy, at least get them to stay out of politics. Possibly not globally, but chip away at their influence issue by issue. The border and DEI fell pretty quickly. (Just goes to show how committed they were to "the causes". /snicker) Seeing more of a fight on Ukraine/Russia and DoD spending overall, and tariffs.

If DOGE wants to tackle something big, they should put the DoD under a microscope.

And I know Trump is doing his best to extricate us from the money pit they call Ukraine, but he should take that lesson and apply it globally. Reset our military's mission to DEFENDING THE USA, not having active duty troops in every nation of the world except N Korea, Afghanistan, Libya, Western Sahara, Iran, Iraq, Eritriea, and Venezuela (and I'm not sure about some of them) Troops in the Congo? Troops in Brazil? Troops in Madagascar?
https://brilliantmaps.com/us-troops-overseas/

Also, personally, I feel it would be better rebuilding the USA sector by sector, maybe starting with steel, aluminum, and specialty chemicals/ pharmaceuticals. That way you wouldn't have tariffs from high impact nations hitting the whole economy all at once.

Eventually tho we have to tackle how people AND corporations manage to accumulate so much wealth.

Breaking up monopolies. Outlawing certain forms of speculation (like high frequency trading) that are totally non productive.

Rewriting tax law and corporate law.

Lots of ideas.
Not enuf time.

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"Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem, the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Thursday, March 6, 2025 5:05 AM

JAYNEZTOWN

Winds of Change - Scorpions (Sheet Music) Clarinet

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Thursday, March 6, 2025 8:23 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Lots of ideas.

Trump Is Planning the Biggest Heist in History

By Paul Krugman | Mar 06, 2025

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/trump-is-planning-the-biggest-heist

Look, there’s a lot going on, most of it terrible. Even so, I’m surprised that we’re just starting to get widespread coverage of the biggest theft in world history — at least so far. And as I’ll explain, a related but even bigger theft, promoted by Donald Trump, is in progress as you read this.

Here’s the story: last month hackers looted Ethereum coins worth $1.5 billion from Bybit, a Dubai-based crypto exchange — apparently the most money anyone has ever stolen in a single caper. The FBI believes that the North Korean regime was behind the hack. Most of the coins have already been laundered into Bitcoin, and will eventually be turned into real money that will be used to sustain Kim Jong Un’s brutal dictatorship.

It’s quite a story, yet it has only recently begun to get major coverage. The likeliest explanation of this lag is that crypto-related fraud and theft is so rife that reporters and editors have grown blasé.

But small investors continue to lose large sums in crypto scams, like “rug-pulls.” And the biggest rug-pull yet is underway: Donald Trump’s plan for a “strategic crypto reserve.”

What’s a rug-pull? A textbook example just happened in Argentina, where Javier Milei, the president, touted a new cryptocurrency called $Libra. The currency’s price soared as thousands of small players bought in, while insiders sold their holdings for huge profits. Then the price collapsed, leaving small players owning worthless bits of code.

Does this sound familiar? It should: the $Trump coin, introduced with great fanfare by Trump in January, attracted billions in dollars from MAGA fans, then quickly lost more than 80 percent of its value. The great bulk of $Trump coins were initially bought by a handful of “whales,” large investors, although it’s not clear whether their intent was to scam small buyers or simply to bribe the president.

While both Milei and Donald Trump deny that they personally profited from the rug-pulls they enabled, I seriously doubt that anyone believes them. And if Trump manages to establish a federal “strategic crypto reserve,” paid for by US tax dollars, the scams associated with $Libra and $Trump will look like chump change.

While a “strategic crypto reserve” sounds a lot like the Strategic Petroleum Reserve — a national stockpile of oil to be drawn down in the event of an energy crisis — it would consist of nothing but a hackable string of ones and zeroes on servers. It’s important to understand that although cryptocurrencies have been around for a while — Bitcoin was introduced in 2009 — no one has yet found significant legal uses other than pure speculation. As far as I can tell, actual transactions involving cryptocurrencies almost always involve criminal activity, such as money laundering or paying ransom to extortionists.

Which cryptocurrency do criminals prefer? Most apparently use Tether, a “stablecoin” whose value is kept fixed in U.S. dollars. Tether is able to do this because it holds a stock of U.S. Treasury bills with Cantor Fitzgerald, an investment bank that has itself invested in Tether. Cantor’s former CEO, Howard Lutnick, is now Donald Trump’s secretary of Commerce.

Some people say that the crypto industry has undue influence with the Trump administration. I wonder why?

But back to the strategic crypto reserve: What would the U.S. government do with this reserve? Make payoffs to gangsters? Buy favors from rogue governments like North Korea? I guess it could, in a pinch, sell the stuff to raise money if people have lost trust in the U.S. government’s solvency, but surely it would be a better strategy to stay solvent — among other things by not borrowing to buy assets that will probably crash in value if and when America tries try to sell them.

So what’s this about? I think this is best seen as one kind of rug pull, a hack pump-and-dump.

In a traditional pump and dump, shady investors buy an obscure stock, then drive its price up with false rumors while quietly selling off their holdings. In the “hack” version, the gang hacks into computers at brokerage houses, getting them to buy the target stock without investors’ knowledge — although some individual investors may also be sucked in by the rising price. Again, the perpetrators sell out before the crash.

In the case of the strategic crypto reserve, scammers haven’t hacked into computers. Instead, they’ve hacked into the Trump Administration, inducing the president and those around him to announce a plan to use US tax revenue to buy huge amounts of cryptocurrencies with no discernible strategic value. The mere announcement of the plan drove up crypto prices, which plunged after Trump imposed tariffs on Canada and Mexico: https://www.google.com/finance/quote/ETH-USD?authuser=0&window=6M

If the crypto strategic reserve does happen, the price of crypto will skyrocket. Then, if history is any guide, insiders will sell out. Apparently, at least one speculator, perhaps betting that Trump will have a hard time actually raising the money to buy all that crypto, has already made huge profits by shorting Ethereum. Why should we put our taxpayer dollars into such an extremely volatile entity? Why are we funding a mega-casino where small investors are sure to lose?

It’s true that cryptocurrencies have proved to be remarkably durable even though their only serious uses seem to be in enabling criminal activity. Yet experience shows that the most likely outcome of a strategic crypto reserve is that it will go the way of $Libra and $Trump — yielding huge profits for a few big players and huge losses for both taxpayers and low-information investors.

Does Trump know that he’s participating in a giant pump-and-dump that will benefit insiders while effectively stealing small investors’ savings? I have no idea, but there’s no reason to believe that it would bother him if he did know.

For it’s more obvious every day that we now have government of, by and for crooks.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, March 6, 2025 9:27 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

I'm talking about how do you permanently change the system so that 10% of that uber-wealthy money rotting in savings and investments is freed up and ends up in places that would make lives better.

I don't want to hear any arguments from anyone about this can't be done. I know full well that my parents Boomer generation had it a hell of a lot better than anyone who came after them.

How do we get back to that?

It is as easy as 1-2-3:

1) What percent of the workforce was unionized in 1965 vs today?

https://www.google.com/search?q=what+percent+of+the+workforce+was+unio
nized+in+1965+vs+today

As union membership has fallen over the last few decades, the share of income going to the top 10 percent has steadily increased.

2) What was the highest income tax rate in 1965 vs today?

https://www.google.com/search?q=What+was+the+highest+income+tax+rate+i
n+1965+vs+today

In the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, the top federal income tax rate never dipped below 70 percent.

3) How much tax does Trump pay?

https://www.google.com/search?cq=How+much+tax+does+Trump+pay

$750 per year

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, March 6, 2025 9:55 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

The actual 'biggest Ponzi scheme of all time'

March 06, 2025

Trump’s new cryptocurrency, “$Trump,” soared and then crashed, just like every other Ponzi scheme. It generated enormous profits for insiders like Trump, but a cumulative $2 billion in losses for more than 800,000 other investors.

Trump claims ignorance. “I don’t know if it benefited” me, he said. “I don’t know much about it.” (The Trump family and its business partners earned nearly $100 million in trading fees alone on the coin.)

Musk has been promoting “dogecoin” since 2019. In the days following Trump’s announcement of the launch of Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the value of dogecoin soared over 70 percent. Since then, it’s dropped like a rock. Another classic Ponzi scheme.

With Trump now in office, crypto is back to its Ponzi ways. It’s emerging from a four-year federal crackdown on crypto fraud, market manipulation, and other scams following the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange FTX in 2022 — one of the biggest Ponzi schemes in recent memory.

Tomorrow, Trump is even holding a “crypto summit” at which he’ll promote the idea of a federal crypto reserve that will give crypto schemes a temporary boost by increasing demand for them.
( https://www.ccn.com/news/crypto/white-house-crypto-summit-2025/ )

But why should American taxpayers foot the bill for a crypto reserve? The most obvious winner will be Trump, whose own crypto venture carries millions of dollars in tokens that are to be included in the reserve.

https://www.alternet.org/what-is-a-ponzi-scheme/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, March 6, 2025 10:22 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

From the Berghof to the Oval Office

Notes on the most shameful day in the history of the American Republic

By Claire Berlinski | Mar 01, 2025

. . . The year was 1938. The visitor was the chancellor of Austria, Kurt Schuschnigg. The bully was Adolf Hitler. The place was the Berghof, Hitler’s alpine retreat. Hoping to achieve a peaceful settlement with Hitler, Schuschnigg had agreed to a face-to-face meeting, arranged by the former ambassador to Austria, Franz von Papen. The meeting was a disaster. . . .

I believe what we saw earlier today in the Oval Office was the single most shameful moment in American history. There have of course been other shameful moments. We have betrayed our allies before. But never before have we done it while bullying and humiliating them in front of the entire world because we thought it would make “good television.” Never before have we turned the Oval Office into a spectacle so classless that even Tony Soprano would have vomited to see it. Never before have we done this for no reason but the benefit and pleasure of the murderous enemy of the United States who is chortling and dangling our president’s puppet strings. Never before have our leaders appeared so indescribably ignorant, so galactically self-absorbed, so petty and petulant, so obviously and dangerously unfit and unstable, so preposterous, and so menacing. Never before have they publicly betrayed us, declaring, before our eyes, their allegiance to an enemy who has been working incessantly to discredit our form of governance, reduce our power to insignificance, set us at each other’s throats, and murder us. Trump declared his allegiance to Putin publicly while his repulsive sidekick smirked and preened, and not one person in that room had the guts to say, “That’s enough, assholes. This is the People’s house.”

I have been trembling with anger at those despicable thugs since I saw that. Enough of apologizing for them, of equivocating, of normalizing this in any way. They are thugs. They are traitors. The whole world saw it. So did we.

The scene instantly evoked the meeting in the Berghof, and there is no reason to believe that their proud stupidity, vanity, and cruelty has a limit. They are not whatsoever constrained by considerations of decency, or the American interest. What we just saw is enough to know: Anything is possible.

The cowardice and dereliction of duty of the many, many Americans who have led us to this moment will never be forgiven. Every single worm responsible will live with the shame of this day—and this won’t be the last day we’re introduced to new depths of shame.

Destroying America is the only thing they will ever be known for, but they will be known for it for a very long time.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, March 6, 2025 11:08 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

The Musk-Trump War on Federal Employees Doesn’t Add Up

DOGE operatives claim that mass layoffs are necessary to prevent the U.S. government from going bankrupt. Let’s do the math.

By John Cassidy | March 3, 2025

https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-financial-page/the-musk-trump-war-o
n-federal-employees-doesnt-add-up

The Trump Administration’s assault on federal workers is intensifying, but it remains infuriatingly opaque. With no official tally of layoffs, media organizations are doing their own sums based on announcements from individual agencies. Reuters estimates that, so far, “tens of thousands” of people have been fired. At a Cabinet meeting last week, Elon Musk, the de-facto head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has been leading the retrenchment efforts, refused to tell reporters if he had a numerical goal for redundancies. But he did say, “If the job is not essential, or they are not doing it well, they obviously shouldn’t be on the public payroll.”

Musk also gave a figure for the cost savings that he and his colleagues at DOGE are trying to achieve: a trillion dollars. This is half his original target of two trillion dollars, but in an over-all federal budget of $6.75 trillion it’s still an enormous number. Clearly, more layoffs are on the way, and not just at the behest of Musk. This past week, Russell Vought, the conservative ideologue who is now the head of the White House Office of Management and Budget, issued a memorandum to agency heads that claimed American voters had “registered their verdict on the bloated, corrupt, federal bureaucracy,” and ordered them to “undertake preparations to initiate large-scale reductions in force.”

During the election campaign, Donald Trump frequently spoke of dismantling the “deep state,” referring to senior officials, particularly at law-enforcement and national-security agencies, who had supposedly defied his wishes during his first term and pursued him legally after he left office. The Trump campaign also promised to “move parts of the federal bureaucracy outside of the Washington Swamp,” but it made no mention of mass layoffs. In September, Trump said that if elected he would create a government efficiency commission headed by Musk that would provide recommendations on how to reduce waste. He didn’t provide any details, though, and he distanced himself from Project 2025, the radical plan to “dismantle the administrative state” that was drawn up by Vought and others associated with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

The blueprint defined the “administrative state” not as ordinary federal workers but as the “policymaking work done by the bureaucracies of all the federal government’s departments.” Although it suggested numerous reforms at individual agencies, it didn’t mention layoffs of low-level employees like Andrew Lennox, a former U.S. marine who served in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, and started work at a Michigan branch of the Department of Veterans Affairs in December, only to lose his job as an administrator earlier this month—“I thought, I’m a vet, I’m safe,” he told Mother Jones—or Ryleigh Cooper, a twenty-four-year-old woman who worked for the U.S. Forest Service, also in Michigan, where one of her tasks was marking trees for loggers. According to the Washington Post, Cooper earned about forty thousand dollars a year, and her latest performance evaluation was “highly successful.” Neither of these things were sufficient to save her job.

After the election, Musk, the Times reported last week, took up residence at Mar-a-Lago and made preparations to drastically reduce the federal workforce, with Trump’s support. The official explanation for the layoffs is that they are financially essential. Musk has claimed that the United States will go bankrupt if it doesn’t get the budget deficit under control. But, in repeating this assertion at the Cabinet meeting, he failed to acknowledge the revenue side of the deficit, despite the fact that, the previous day, Republicans in the House of Representatives had approved a budget framework that provides for up to $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, many of them slanted at corporations and rich people like him. Many of these cuts were originally introduced in the G.O.P.’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, but they were so expensive that the only way to reconcile them with congressional budget guidelines was to have them sunset after eight years. Now those eight years are nearly up, and Republicans are determined to extend them at all costs, the deficit be damned.

If, for the sake of argument, we follow Musk’s lead and remove tax revenues from consideration, his spending math still doesn’t add up. Not counting the uniformed military and the U.S. Postal Service, which since 1970 has been a semi-autonomous agency, there are roughly 2.3 million federal workers. According to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, which oversaw the federal bureaucracy until Musk came along, these workers earn an average salary of $106,870. So sending pink slips to all of them would save taxpayers $245.8 billion a year in federal salaries. (The figure comes from multiplying 2.3 million by $106,870.) To be sure, that’s a large sum. But it is less than a quarter of Musk’s target of a trillion dollars in spending cuts, and it’s less than four per cent of total federal spending.

Of course, these calculations can’t be taken literally. Even Musk has said that he wants to protect essential workers. If the entire federal workforce were eliminated, there’d be no one to make sure that federal benefits got paid or that federal taxes were collected. The spending and revenue figures would crater; essential services like veterans’ hospitals, air-traffic-control systems, and border-crossing stations would be completely abandoned. But this thought experiment does illustrate the point that “bloated” payrolls aren’t what is driving federal spending and deficits. Since the nineteen-seventies, as the accompanying chart shows, the total number of federal employees has remained fairly steady.

Source: Federal Reserve Economic Database; Chart: Andrew Jayoon Park

Unlike the figures from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the chart, which comes from Federal Reserve Economic Data, counts members of the U.S. Postal Service as federal employees. It does show that the federal workforce has grown in recent years, but it’s still no larger than it was thirty or forty years ago. During the interim, total employment elsewhere in the economy has grown steadily alongside population growth. Consequently, the size of the federal workforce relative to the workforce at large has fallen considerably, as the following chart shows.

Source: Federal Reserve Economic Database; Chart: Andrew Jayoon Park

It’s fair to assume that Musk and Vought are well aware of these figures and trends, but they also know that stigmatizing federal workers as unproductive, wasteful, and cossetted plays well in certain circles. Even though four out of five federal employees already work outside of the Washington metropolitan area, “drain the swamp” remains a popular slogan. And for out-and-out authoritarians in the MAGA coalition, eliminating nonpartisan civil servants fits with the goal of giving Trump and his allies more control over federal agencies.

It’s no mystery what has actually been driving the rapid rise in the deficit and the government debt over the past decade. During Trump’s first term, the Republicans’ feed-the-rich Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 denuded the tax base, causing revenues as a percentage of G.D.P. to fall. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the first Trump Administration and the Biden Administration both adopted emergency spending measures that cost trillions of dollars. Covid-related spending has since fallen back sharply, but over-all outlays have continued to rise, driven partly by spending on popular entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Interest payments on the national debt have also turned into a major item in the budget. At about nine hundred billion dollars in 2024, the interest was somewhat bigger than the defense budget.

Taken together, interest payments, defense spending, and mandatory spending, a category that includes entitlement programs, account for more than eighty-five per cent of the federal budget. This is the real financial challenge that Trump and the Republicans face. They can’t cut interest payments on the debt; they won’t restrain defense spending; and they know that cutting entitlements would be politically unpopular. Given this predicament, the only way they can support a big tax cut without abandoning the pretense of fiscal responsibility is to say one thing and do another. Which is exactly what happened when Trump pledged not to cut entitlement programs right after the House Republicans approved a budget framework that provides for about eight hundred billion dollars of cuts to Medicaid—the government program that grants health insurance to more than seventy-two million low-income Americans, including children, working-age adults, and seniors.

The political dilemma facing Trump and the Republicans is one that an earlier generation of conservative revolutionaries faced forty-odd years ago. “The Reagan Revolution, as I had defined it, required a frontal assault on the American welfare state,” David Stockman, the Republican wunderkind who served as President Ronald Reagan’s budget director, wrote in his 1986 book, “The Triumph of Politics.” “That was the only way to pay for the massive Kemp-Roth tax cut” of 1981, which slashed income-tax rates, corporate taxes, estate taxes, and taxes on capital gains. “To keep the budget solvent required draconian reductions on the expenditure side,” Stockman went on. Even though Reagan talked a big budget-cutting game, Stockman eventually came to believe that his heart wasn’t in it. After the 1981 tax cuts and increases in defense spending caused deficit projections to shoot up, and investors to get nervous, Reagan reached a budget deal with Tip O’Neill, the Democratic Speaker of the House, that raised taxes and preserved Social Security. Stockman concluded that Reagan, despite appearances to the contrary, was a “consensus politician,” and that the Madisonian system of checks and balances precluded lasting policy revolutions.

Trump obviously isn’t a consensus politician, and, with Capitol Hill under the control of supine Republicans, the checks and balances are looking less restrictive than ever. But Trump, until recently at least, also wasn’t known as a small-government conservative, and many of his supporters benefit from the programs that the House Republicans have slated for cuts. At recent town-hall meetings, House Republicans have faced tough questions from their constituents about the layoffs and federal contract cancellations that Musk and DOGE have imposed. Add in uncertainty about how long Musk will remain encamped in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, and it’s hard to predict what the outcome of the budget process will be. In the meantime, many ordinary federal employees are its needless victims.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, March 6, 2025 1:14 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

The president’s reasons for imposing tariffs on Canada and Mexico keep changing (and none make sense).

By Eric Levitz | Mar 4, 2025, 3:30 PM CST

https://www.vox.com/politics/402530/trump-tariffs-canada-mexico-explan
ation

Why has the US president chosen to upend trade relations on the North American continent? The stakes of this question are high, since it could determine how long Trump’s massive tariffs remain in effect. Unfortunately, the president himself does not seem to know the answer.

In recent weeks, Trump has provided five different — and contradictory — justifications for his tariffs on Mexico and Canada, none of which make much sense:

1) Trump’s tariffs on Canada and Mexico are meant to secure America’s borders

Officially, the North American tariffs are intended to fight “a drug war,” not a trade war. Trump claims that our neighbors to the north and south have been abetting the transfer of fentanyl and undocumented immigrants into the United States — and that this constitutes a “national emergency.” By imposing steep tariffs on Canada and Mexico, Trump ostensibly aims to coerce the two nations into cutting off the flow of drugs and migrants.

But this policy is irrational. Canada plays virtually no role in the trafficking of fentanyl. And the Mexican government has already ramped up enforcement against drug cartels while deterring migrants from entering the US (often through brutal means). These efforts appear to have slowed fentanyl imports significantly. They have not succeeded in shutting down the fentanyl trade entirely. But that is not a reasonable demand: If the U.S. cannot stop drugs from infiltrating its own prisons, how could the Mexican government monitor its entire nation so meticulously as to prevent an extremely lightweight narcotic from ever crossing its northern border?

Nevertheless, if Trump’s tariffs were intended solely as a diplomatic tool for influencing Mexican and Canadian border policy, then they might be lifted in short order. Canada and Mexico could present plans for cracking down on drugs and migrants, and Trump could declare victory, as he seemed to do last month when he initially delayed these tariffs in response to Mexican and Canadian concessions.

But these tariffs are not solely about winning the drug war — at least, according to the president.

2) Unless, the tariffs are actually meant to force companies to relocate production to the United States, thereby closing the trade deficit

On Tuesday morning, the president posed on Truth Social, “IF COMPANIES MOVE TO THE UNITED STATES, THERE ARE NO TARIFFS!!!”

Here, Trump suggests that his tariffs are not meant to be a temporary device for combatting fentanyl imports, so much as a durable means of coercing companies into moving factories into the US. After all, if the tariffs are only temporary, companies would have little reason to change their investment decisions in light of them.

And Trump’s remarks Tuesday were consistent with his previous commentary on this issue. Last month, Trump told his social media followers, “We pay hundreds of Billions of Dollars to SUBSIDIZE Canada. Why? There is no reason. We don’t need anything they have. We have unlimited Energy, should make our own Cars, and have more Lumber than we can ever use.”

He further lamented that “The USA has major deficits with Canada, Mexico, and China (and almost all countries!), owes 36 Trillion Dollars, and we’re not going to be the ‘Stupid Country’ any longer. MAKE YOUR PRODUCT IN THE USA AND THERE ARE NO TARIFFS!”

These remarks imply that America should maintain steep tariffs on Canada and Mexico in perpetuity, since it has little need for their products, and is currently “subsidizing” those countries by running a trade deficit with them.

But this is a terrible justification for Trump’s policy on several levels. For one thing, the president’s tariffs on Canada and Mexico apply to all goods — including agricultural products that the United States cannot possibly produce at scale, such as papayas and other tropical fruits.

Trump’s duties also increase the cost of foreign-made parts to American manufacturers, thereby creating a disincentive to locate factories in the US. According to one estimate, Trump’s tariffs on Canada and Mexico would increase the US auto industries’ annual costs by $60 billion. That will force US car companies to raise prices, thereby hurting their competitiveness in foreign markets. Meanwhile, auto companies located overseas will be able to purchase Mexican and Canadian parts at lower rates.

This basic dynamic — in which tariffs increase the production costs of US firms — led Trump’s past tariffs to backfire during his first term: According to a 2019 Federal Reserve analysis, Trump’s tariffs reduced manufacturing employment in affected industries.

Separately, the idea that running a trade deficit with a country is tantamount to “subsidizing” it reflects a gross misunderstanding of economics. You purchase more goods from your grocery store than it purchases from you. In that sense, you run a “trade deficit” with your grocer. But it does not follow that when you hand over your currency in exchange for a shopping cart full of food, you have just made a charitable donation to Stop & Shop.

3) Unless, Trump’s tariffs are meant to force Canada and Mexico to modestly revise the terms of their trade with the US

“Canada doesn’t allow American Banks to do business in Canada, but their banks flood the American Market,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Oh, that seems fair to me, doesn’t it?”

Trump’s claim that Canada prohibits American banks from doing business within its borders is simply false. In fact, US banks have been operating in Canada for more than a century.

4) Unless, Trump’s tariffs are meant to coerce Canada into becoming the 51st state

Immiserating a country so that you can conquer it is not a morally legitimate goal for trade policy. It also is unlikely to work. Canadians overwhelmingly oppose joining the United States. And they are unlikely to warm to that concept after seeing the American government deliberately inflict economic pain upon them.

5) Unless, Trump’s tariffs are meant to raise revenue

You cannot offset permanent tax cuts with temporary tariffs. So if Trump’s goal with his North American tariffs is to generate revenue, they may stay in place for some time.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, March 6, 2025 1:27 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

The fact that humans can only survive on Earth doesn’t bother Trump – and I know why

He is surrounded by people who have grandiose plans and dreams beyond our planet. Vengeful nihilism is a big part of the Maga project

By George Monbiot | Wed 5 Mar 2025 07.04 EST

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/05/humans-earth-don
ald-trump-nihilism-maga

In thinking about the war being waged against life on Earth by Donald Trump, Elon Musk and their minions, I keep bumping into a horrible suspicion. Could it be that this is not just about delivering the world to oligarchs and corporations – not just about wringing as much profit from living systems as they can? Could it be that they want to see the destruction of the habitable planet?

We know that Trump’s overriding purpose is power. We have seen that no amount of power appears to satisfy his craving. So let’s consider power’s ultimate destination. It is to become not only an emperor, but the last of the emperors: to close the chapter on civilisation. It is to scratch your name indelibly upon a geological epoch. Look on my works, ye vermin, and despair.

It’s true, of course, that many of his actions amount to standard capitalist looting, released from the feeble regulatory restraints of previous administrations. This week Trump ordered the mass destruction of national forests and other protected lands by the timber industry, to be overseen by the US Forest Service, whose new boss was previously vice-president of a timber company. The results will include heartbreaking losses of wildlife and rare ecosystems, and a heightened risk of wildfires. Trump justified his order with that classic dictator’s gambit: a purported “emergency”.

He has used the same excuse to trigger a new wave of fossil-fuel projects, granting them “emergency” permits to override environmental protections. This is likely to cause the poisoning of wetlands and water supplies. Overseeing the assault is the new energy secretary, Chris Wright, previously CEO of a fracking company.

If the US were really suffering an “energy emergency”, you would expect the government also to accelerate the deployment of renewable power. Instead, Trump has frozen it. You might also expect it to insist that energy is used more sparingly; instead, his team is deleting fuel economy standards. This looks like payback to the fossil-fuel industry that helped elect him.

But other policies look more like gleeful vandalism. The devastating staffing cuts at national parks and forests won’t help any of his corporate backers. But they will degrade the experience of visitors, while jeopardising wildlife and habitats.

The same goes for the mass destruction of jobs at the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the freezing of all the international conservation grants it offered, many of which are crucial to the protection of wildlife overseas. There’s not much to be gained here by any corporate lobby, and a great deal to be lost by the rest of us. Trump’s stated aim of “getting rid” of the Federal Emergency Management Agency would put corporate profits at severe risk, especially among insurers and investment funds, while intensifying the suffering of people hit by environmental crisis. He has also eliminated the help offered to communities suffering from heavy pollution. Again, there’s no obvious gain for capital, just plenty more human misery.

Vengeful nihilism, the destruction of what they do not love, know or understand, is a major theme in Maga politics. It is applied as viciously to culture and science as it is to the natural world. It is hard to avoid the thought that environmental destruction is not just a means by which Trump serves his corporate backers, but an end in itself.

At the same time, Trump enthusiastically (albeit vaguely) boosts Musk’s plans to send people to Mars, a planet incapable of supporting human life. These men, who claim without evidence that unless they cut $1tn from the federal budget, causing innumerable harms, “America will go bankrupt”, are pressing for a programme likely to cost hundreds of billions while delivering no benefit to humanity. For all its grandiosity, the plan amounts to nothing more than an elaborate means of sending people to their deaths.

One of the most persuasive explanations of our times I’ve read is an essay by the author Jay Griffiths, published in 2017. She connects today’s planetary vandals with the Italian futurists of the early 20th century. The futurists, who created much of the iconography and ideology of fascism, fetishised the machine, fantasising about “the technological triumph of humanity over nature”. They were obsessed by flight. “Hurrah! No more contact with the vile earth!”, the author of their manifesto, Filippo Marinetti, exulted. “Life on earth is a creeping, crawling business,” the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio claimed. “It is in the air that one feels the glory of being a man and of conquering the elements.”

Through flight, Griffiths notes, they believed they could achieve their ideal, purified state, characterised by the notion of Deus Invictus: the unbound, totalitarian god, no longer restrained by such earthy, humdrum matters as honesty, kindness, sympathy, respect or even gravity.

I believe, like her, that the revival of this belief system might offer a key to understanding Elon Musk and his remarkable hold over the Trump administration. What Musk presents is the definitive fantasy of escape: from decency, care, love and the living planet itself. They can leave it all behind, leap off the vile Earth, and ascend into heaven.

On Mars, Musk dreams of building private cities under the exclusive control of his company SpaceX. Never mind the technical impossibilities; it’s the fantasy that counts: the definitive release from social and biological constraint. His subterranean prison cities, in which survival would depend on extreme technological intervention – the slightest interruption of which would mean instant death – would make the worst terrestrial dictatorship in history look like a yoga retreat. Deus Invictus would reign supreme.

Where there is no love, there can be only destruction. Smash the planet then transcend it; leave your indelible mark on Earth while reigning triumphant in the heavens: this, I believe, is a deep, unspoken urge that helps explain Trump’s programmes. But even if, through some grim miracle, the planet wreckers succeeded, they would soon discover that no technological wonderland, no space station or Martian city, compares to what we have.

This is the only planet in the universe to which we are adapted. Things we seldom think about – 1 bar of atmospheric pressure at the Earth’s surface; the magnetosphere, which, with the atmosphere, shields us from cosmic radiation and solar proton bombardment; ambient oxygen; 9.8 m/s2 of gravity; an average surface temperature of 15C – create, alongside the living systems that feed, water and shelter us, a place that would sound like paradise to anyone removed from it. This is our heaven, and there can be no other.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, March 6, 2025 1:38 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
The Musk-Trump War on Federal Employees Doesn’t Add Up

DOGE operatives claim that mass layoffs are necessary to prevent the U.S. government from going bankrupt. Let’s do the math.

By John Cassidy | March 3, 2025

Yeah. Let's do the math, John.

We're $37 Trillion in debt.

End of Math.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Thursday, March 6, 2025 1:41 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I'd call it global monopolism, or global financialism. Hard to believe, but Karl Marx actually predicted this.

*****

Getting back to your previous post ..

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
... and I always think about that...
What do they need more money for?
At the end of the day it IS all fiat currency.
It's not money, it's power over anyone who needs the money.

Quote:
If you took just 10% of the wealth out of the hands of the truly wealthy and dispersed it equally, you'd likely double the living standards of half the people overnight.
No. All you'd do is double prices. Any time you dump money into a system without increasing production you create the recipe for inflation: Too much money chasing too few goods. What you'd have to do is funnel that money either thru productive activity ... raising more beef cattle or egg-laying hens or anythung else people are short of .... needs more ranchers etc ... or thru services like medical care ... more doctors and nurses etc ... to make a real difference in people's lives.

Quote:
mI'm talking about how do you permanently change the system ...
I don't think you can ever PERMANENTLY change a system. It seems no matter what system you start with - tribalism, feudalism/monarchism, capitalism, socialism, financialism - it eventually winds up being corrupted. Power and money behave like gravity: the more you have, the more you get. Even Russia, which is doing amazing things with its current crop of leadership and the next generation afterwards, will eventually grow its own set of parasites.

One problem is that the powerful warp societal norms so that people wind up believing the situation is NORMAL.

People believed, really believed, the shaman could cure or curse them.

They believed that kings and queens received their authority from God, thru the Pope.

They believed that socialism will lead to a "new man".

That Israel has a god-given right to all of the Levant.

They believed that GREED IS GOOD, that the "free market" will lead to a glorious society. A lot of people still feel that way, and that any restraint on "free markets" and "free trade" is inherently bad, and that governments are inherently evil.

Anyway, I don't think we can get back to the way things were 60 years ago. The USA was in a unique situation back then as the last industrial power left standing. We have to deal with the world of today.

Somehow, we have to deal with our own oligarchy, at least get them to stay out of politics. Possibly not globally, but chip away at their influence issue by issue. The border and DEI fell pretty quickly. (Just goes to show how committed they were to "the causes". /snicker) Seeing more of a fight on Ukraine/Russia and DoD spending overall, and tariffs.

If DOGE wants to tackle something big, they should put the DoD under a microscope.

And I know Trump is doing his best to extricate us from the money pit they call Ukraine, but he should take that lesson and apply it globally. Reset our military's mission to DEFENDING THE USA, not having active duty troops in every nation of the world except N Korea, Afghanistan, Libya, Western Sahara, Iran, Iraq, Eritriea, and Venezuela (and I'm not sure about some of them) Troops in the Congo? Troops in Brazil? Troops in Madagascar?
https://brilliantmaps.com/us-troops-overseas/

Also, personally, I feel it would be better rebuilding the USA sector by sector, maybe starting with steel, aluminum, and specialty chemicals/ pharmaceuticals. That way you wouldn't have tariffs from high impact nations hitting the whole economy all at once.

Eventually tho we have to tackle how people AND corporations manage to accumulate so much wealth.

Breaking up monopolies. Outlawing certain forms of speculation (like high frequency trading) that are totally non productive.

Rewriting tax law and corporate law.

Lots of ideas.
Not enuf time.

-----------
"Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem, the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

A lot of good ideas in there. I'm glad I even saw it. Second had a bad TDS flare up this morning.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Thursday, March 6, 2025 1:44 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

I'm talking about how do you permanently change the system so that 10% of that uber-wealthy money rotting in savings and investments is freed up and ends up in places that would make lives better.

I don't want to hear any arguments from anyone about this can't be done. I know full well that my parents Boomer generation had it a hell of a lot better than anyone who came after them.

How do we get back to that?
It is as easy as 1-2-3:

1) What percent of the workforce was unionized in 1965 vs today?

https://www.google.com/search?q=what+percent+of+the+workforce+was+unio
nized+in+1965+vs+today

As union membership has fallen over the last few decades, the share of income going to the top 10 percent has steadily increased.

2) What was the highest income tax rate in 1965 vs today?

https://www.google.com/search?q=What+was+the+highest+income+tax+rate+i
n+1965+vs+today

In the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, the top federal income tax rate never dipped below 70 percent.

3) How much tax does Trump pay?

https://www.google.com/search?cq=How+much+tax+does+Trump+pay

$750 per year

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

I've been in the "Union" twice. Both times the pay was shit and the little "extra" money I made was put int Union Dues.

I guess it all depends on who is running the unions, because Grocery Store unions and Security unions are pure bullshit.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Thursday, March 6, 2025 2:23 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I'd call it global monopolism, or global financialism. Hard to believe, but Karl Marx actually predicted this.

*****

Getting back to your previous post ..

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
... and I always think about that...
What do they need more money for?
At the end of the day it IS all fiat currency.
It's not money, it's power over anyone who needs the money.

Quote:
If you took just 10% of the wealth out of the hands of the truly wealthy and dispersed it equally, you'd likely double the living standards of half the people overnight.
No. All you'd do is double prices. Any time you dump money into a system without increasing production you create the recipe for inflation: Too much money chasing too few goods. What you'd have to do is funnel that money either thru productive activity ... raising more beef cattle or egg-laying hens or anythung else people are short of .... needs more ranchers etc ... or thru services like medical care ... more doctors and nurses etc ... to make a real difference in people's lives.

Quote:
mI'm talking about how do you permanently change the system ...
I don't think you can ever PERMANENTLY change a system. It seems no matter what system you start with - tribalism, feudalism/monarchism, capitalism, socialism, financialism - it eventually winds up being corrupted. Power and money behave like gravity: the more you have, the more you get. Even Russia, which is doing amazing things with its current crop of leadership and the next generation afterwards, will eventually grow its own set of parasites.

One problem is that the powerful warp societal norms so that people wind up believing the situation is NORMAL.

I need to strengthen that statement: People believe the situation is INEVITABLE.
I just now noticed that in all of those examples, the power structures were underpinned by BELIEF SYSTEMS, founded on NON-HUMAN forces:

Spirits, who could bring you good luck and fortune, or ruin your health and family.
An all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful god who could send you to eternal torture.
The inevitability of communism thru dialectical political economic progression.
God (again).
"The invisible hand" of "the free market", underpinned by a view of "human nature" as greedy, and the purifying forces of social Darwinism (This is SECOND'S emotional home, with The Hand Of God thrown in.)

In many ways, our view of the power structure is a religion, which makes the resulting power structure seem inevitable, and not what it really is:

Sociopaths in charge of a society's belief system.

Quote:
Eventually tho we have to tackle how people AND corporations manage to accumulate so much wealth:

Breaking up monopolies. Outlawing certain forms of speculation (like high frequency trading) that are totally non productive.
Rewriting tax law and corporate law.
Lots of ideas.
Not enuf time.

SIX: A lot of good ideas in there. I'm glad I even saw it. Second had a bad TDS flare up this morning.

Indeed.

Point being, the wealthy accumulate wealth thru specific procedures that are often based in our laws. If they examine those procedures Congress could, in theory anyway, rewrite those laws.

For example: corporate personhood. REALLY?

Corporate responsibility: Publicly- traded companies SOLE RESPONSIBILITY mandated by law is to protect the wealth of shareholders, as a fiduciary. No responsibility towards public health or welfare (except as limited by regulation).

To give you and idea how far we drifted, in early USA, corporations had a time limit (typically 20 years), and were restricted to one commodity or one activity. They were often set up for a single project eg. building a road, raising a public building.

What would happen if corporations were simply made illegal, and all corporations had to become privately held companies? No more stock options! No more corporate personhood! No more speculating on the stock market!

Another idea: what if Glass Steagall was revived? What if banks were required to have 25%, or more, reserves?

What if the Federal Government HAD ITS OWN BANK. ("The Fed", despite its deliberately confusing name, is a PRIVATE consortium of the largest PRIVATE banks, not a government institution.)

What if states, counties, and cities created their own banks? (There are some already.) They could then lend to enterptises that they thought needed development, whether it was homebuilding or breadmaking or oil drilling?

Just tossing out ideas to shake up assumptions.

Quote:
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

Me neither.

-----------
"Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem, the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Thursday, March 6, 2025 3:53 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I'd call it global monopolism, or global financialism. Hard to believe, but Karl Marx actually predicted this.

*****

Getting back to your previous post ..

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
... and I always think about that...
What do they need more money for?
At the end of the day it IS all fiat currency.
It's not money, it's power over anyone who needs the money.

Quote:
If you took just 10% of the wealth out of the hands of the truly wealthy and dispersed it equally, you'd likely double the living standards of half the people overnight.
No. All you'd do is double prices. Any time you dump money into a system without increasing production you create the recipe for inflation: Too much money chasing too few goods. What you'd have to do is funnel that money either thru productive activity ... raising more beef cattle or egg-laying hens or anythung else people are short of .... needs more ranchers etc ... or thru services like medical care ... more doctors and nurses etc ... to make a real difference in people's lives.

Quote:
mI'm talking about how do you permanently change the system ...
I don't think you can ever PERMANENTLY change a system. It seems no matter what system you start with - tribalism, feudalism/monarchism, capitalism, socialism, financialism - it eventually winds up being corrupted. Power and money behave like gravity: the more you have, the more you get. Even Russia, which is doing amazing things with its current crop of leadership and the next generation afterwards, will eventually grow its own set of parasites.

One problem is that the powerful warp societal norms so that people wind up believing the situation is NORMAL.

I need to strengthen that statement: People believe the situation is INEVITABLE.
I just now noticed that in all of those examples, the power structures were underpinned by BELIEF SYSTEMS, founded on NON-HUMAN forces:

Spirits, who could bring you good luck and fortune, or ruin your health and family.
An all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful god who could send you to eternal torture.
The inevitability of communism thru dialectical political economic progression.
God (again).
"The invisible hand" of "the free market", underpinned by a view of "human nature" as greedy, and the purifying forces of social Darwinism (This is SECOND'S emotional home, with The Hand Of God thrown in.)

In many ways, our view of the power structure is a religion, which makes the resulting power structure seem inevitable, and not what it really is:

Sociopaths in charge of a society's belief system.

Quote:
Eventually tho we have to tackle how people AND corporations manage to accumulate so much wealth:

Breaking up monopolies. Outlawing certain forms of speculation (like high frequency trading) that are totally non productive.
Rewriting tax law and corporate law.
Lots of ideas.
Not enuf time.

SIX: A lot of good ideas in there. I'm glad I even saw it. Second had a bad TDS flare up this morning.

Indeed.

Point being, the wealthy accumulate wealth thru specific procedures that are often based in our laws. If they examine those procedures Congress could, in theory anyway, rewrite those laws.

For example: corporate personhood. REALLY?

Corporate responsibility: Publicly- traded companies SOLE RESPONSIBILITY mandated by law is to protect the wealth of shareholders, as a fiduciary. No responsibility towards public health or welfare (except as limited by regulation).

To give you and idea how far we drifted, in early USA, corporations had a time limit (typically 20 years), and were restricted to one commodity or one activity. They were often set up for a single project eg. building a road, raising a public building.

What would happen if corporations were simply made illegal, and all corporations had to become privately held companies? No more stock options! No more corporate personhood! No more speculating on the stock market!

Another idea: what if Glass Steagall was revived? What if banks were required to have 25%, or more, reserves?

What if the Federal Government HAD ITS OWN BANK. ("The Fed", despite its deliberately confusing name, is a PRIVATE consortium of the largest PRIVATE banks, not a government institution.)

What if states, counties, and cities created their own banks? (There are some already.) They could then lend to enterptises that they thought needed development, whether it was homebuilding or breadmaking or oil drilling?

Just tossing out ideas to shake up assumptions.

Quote:
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

Me neither.

-----------
"Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem, the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

I love the idea about getting rid of the stock market.

THAT is the way they've truly enslaved us.

And they were brilliant about it when they intertwined it with the wealth of so many people.

How do you dismantle that now without fucking a lot of people who have money in the system and were just doing what they were told to do?

It's really easy for me to say "go ahead and nuke it all". I don't have any money invested in the stock market.

I was one of the few lower-middle-class workers that made a killing on it, and I refuse to play again.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Thursday, March 6, 2025 6:17 PM

What do you think of this, Sigs?

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2025/03/06/treasury_secretary_
bessent_were_going_to_transition_from_a_public-sector_to_private-sector_economy.html

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Thursday, March 6, 2025 7:38 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

What would happen if corporations were simply made illegal, and all corporations had to become privately held companies? No more stock options! No more corporate personhood! No more speculating on the stock market!

What's the largest privately owned company in the world? SpaceX. Where have I heard that name in connection to Trump?

"SpaceX is the world's most valuable private company, with an estimated valuation of $350 billion in 2024"

https://www.google.com/search?q=what%27s+the+largest+privately+owned+c
ompany+in+the+world

How SpaceX Became the World's Most Valuable Private Company

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, March 6, 2025 8:01 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Do you feel like the winds of change are blowing today too?

Prices are 'going to rise' and 'robots' will be doing factory jobs: Trump Cabinet official

By Carl Gibson | March 06, 2025

https://www.alternet.org/trump-official-prices-rise/

One of the chief economic officials in President Donald Trump's administration recently admitted that prices for imported goods subjected to Trump's tariffs will indeed go up, and that the administration is in support of automating more factory jobs.

During a Thursday interview with CNBC host David Faber, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was noticeably up-front when asked whether consumers would see higher sticker prices on store shelves. Faber asked Lutnick if prices will have to "eventually rise" if corporations move production back to the United States so companies can remain "competitive globally." Walmart, for example, imports roughly 70% of its non-food inventory from China.

"I think if you want to buy things from other countries, and you want to bring it into America, then the price is going to rise," Lutnick said. "But if you make it here, then of course the price won't rise! So make it here! Make. It. Here. How hard is that to say? You know, just keep repeating it to yourself: There's no tariff if you make it here."

"You're going to watch everyone come to that realization," he continued. "Apple builds it all in China. Why are they building it all in China and giving us our iPhone? Why don't they make it here?"

At that point, multiple voices cut in to remind Lutnick that it was "cheaper" for Apple to manufacture its products in China.

"Mr. Secretary, wages are lower over there!" CNBC correspondent Carl Quintanilla said.

"And now, there are robots who can do it!" Lutnick said after a brief pause. "You are going to see robotic production of iPhones, and the jobs that are going to be created. People who build those factories, the mechanics who work on those robots ... This is the re-creation of tradecraft in the United States of America."

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, March 6, 2025 8:12 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Why does Trump want Greenland and what do its people think?

March 4, 2025

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c74x4m71pmjo

"He's treating us like a good he can purchase," said Aleqa Hammond, Greenland's first female prime minister. "He's not even talking to Greenland - he's talking to Denmark about buying Greenland."

When BBC correspondent Fergal Keane visited the island in January, he said he heard one phrase again and again: "Greenland belongs to Greenlanders. So, Trump can visit but that's it."

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, March 6, 2025 8:18 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
"He's treating us like a good he can purchase," said Aleqa Hammond, Greenland's first female prime minister. "He's not even talking to Greenland - he's talking to Denmark about buying Greenland."

Sounds like somebody better stop crying, pull up her big girl pants and have a chat with the Denmark leadership.

I don't blame anybody for not taking the "Prime Minister" of Greenland seriously. The town I was born in has a greater population than Greenland does.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Thursday, March 6, 2025 9:10 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
"He's treating us like a good he can purchase," said Aleqa Hammond, Greenland's first female prime minister. "He's not even talking to Greenland - he's talking to Denmark about buying Greenland."

Sounds like somebody better stop crying, pull up her big girl pants and have a chat with the Denmark leadership.

I don't blame anybody for not taking the "Prime Minister" of Greenland seriously. The town I was born in has a greater population than Greenland does.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

6ix, have I told you today that you are fucked up in head?

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, March 6, 2025 9:11 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Do you feel like the winds of change are blowing today too?

Trump and Musk’s Plan to Destroy Social Security Started Tuesday Night

https://newrepublic.com/article/192404/trump-musk-destroy-social-secur
ity-started

Republicans and their morbidly rich donors have hated Social Security ever since it was first created in 1935. They’ve called it everything from communism to socialism to a Ponzi scheme, which Musk just called it this week (“the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time,” no less).

In fact, it has been the most successful anti-poverty program in the history of America, one now emulated by virtually every democracy in the world.

But the right-wing billionaires hate it for several reasons.

The first and most important reason is that it demonstrates that government can actually work for people and society. That then provides credibility for other government programs that billionaires hate even more, like regulating their pollution, breaking up their monopolies, making their social media platforms less toxic, and preventing them from ripping off average American consumers.

Thus, to get political support for gutting regulatory agencies that keep billionaires and their companies from robbing, deceiving, and poisoning us, they must first convince Americans that government is stupid, clumsy, and essentially evil.

Ronald Reagan began that process when he claimed that government was not the solution to our problems but was, in fact, the cause of our problems. It was a lie then and is a lie now, but the billionaire-owned media loved it and it’s been repeated hundreds of millions of times.

Billionaires also know that for Social Security to survive and prosper, morbidly rich people will eventually have to pay the same percentage of their income into it as bus drivers, carpenters, and people who work at McDonald’s.

Right now, people earning over $176,100 pay absolutely nothing into Social Security once that amount has been covered. To make Social Security solvent for the next 75 years, and even give a small raise to everybody on it, the simple fix is for the rich to just start paying Social Security income on all of their income, rather than only the first $176,100. (If the rich had their way, income tax would be limited to the first $176,100. Maybe I'll ask my Texas Congressmen to co-sponsor that bill. I'd vote for that! )

The entire solvency and health of Social Security could be cured permanently, in other words, if we simply did away with the “billionaire loophole” in the Social Security tax.

But the idea of having to pay a tax on all their income so that middle-class and low-income people can retire comfortably fills America’s billionaires with dread and disgust. So much so that not one single Republican publicly supports the idea.

How dare Americans have the temerity, they argue, to demand morbidly rich people help support the existence of an American middle class or help keep orphans and severely disabled people from being thrown out on the streets!

Which is why Musk and his teenage hackers are attacking the Social Security administration and its employees with such gusto.

By firing thousands of employees, their evil plan is to make interacting with Social Security such a difficult and painful process—involving months to make an appointment and hours or even days just to get someone on the telephone—that retired Americans will get angry with the government and begin to listen to Republicans and Wall Street bankers who tell us they should run the system.

(This won’t be limited to Social Security, by the way; as you’re reading these words, Trump and Musk are planning to slash 80,000 employees from the Veterans Administration, with a scheme to dump those who served in our military into our private, for-profit hospital and health insurance systems.)

The next step will be to roll out the Social Security version of Medicare Advantage, the privatized version of Medicare that George W. Bush created in 2003. That scam makes hundreds of billions of dollars in profits for giant insurance companies, who then kick some of that profit back to Republican politicians as campaign donations and luxury trips to international resorts.

Advantage programs are notorious for screwing people when they get sick and for ripping off our government to the tune of billions every year. But every effort at reforming Medicare or stopping the Medicare Advantage providers from denying us care and stealing from our government has been successfully blocked by bought-off Republicans in Congress.

Once Republicans have damaged the staffing of the Social Security Administration so badly that people are screaming about the difficult time they’re having signing up, solving problems or errors, or even getting their checks, right-wing media will begin to promote—with help from GOP politicians and the billionaire Murdoch family’s Fox “News”—people opting out of Social Security and going with a private option that resembles private 401(k)s.

Rumor has it they’ll call it “Social Security Advantage” and, like Medicare Advantage, which is administered for massive profits by the insurance giants, it will be run by giant, trillion-dollar banks out of New York.

While big insurance companies have probably made something close to a trillion dollars in profits out of our tax dollars from Medicare Advantage since George W. Bush rolled out the program, Social Security Advantage could make that profit level look like chump change for the big banks.

And, as an added bonus, billionaires and right-wing media will get to point out how hard it is to deal with the now-crippled Social Security Administration and argue that it’s time to relieve them too of the regulatory burdens of “big government”: gut or even kill off the regulatory agencies and make their yachts and private jets even more tax deductible than they already are.

This is why Trump repeated Musk’s lies about 200-year-old people getting Social Security checks and the system being riddled with fraud and waste. In fact, Social Security is one of the most secure and fraud-free programs in American history.

But Tuesday night was just the opening salvo. It took Bush almost three years to convince Congress to start the process of privatizing and ultimately destroying Medicare.

Having learned from that process, odds are Trump will try to privatize Social Security within the year.

And he may well get away with it, unless we can wake up enough people to this coming scam and put enough political pressure—particularly on Republicans—to prevent it from happening.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, March 6, 2025 9:53 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Do you feel like the winds of change are blowing today too?
Trump and Musk’s Plan to Destroy Social Security Started Tuesday Night

Shut up, faggot.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Friday, March 7, 2025 6:08 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Do you feel like the winds of change are blowing today too?
Trump and Musk’s Plan to Destroy Social Security Started Tuesday Night

Shut up, faggot.

Well done, Donald John Trump! You too, Leon “Elon” Musk!

US employers cut more jobs last month than any February since 2009

By Alicia Wallace | 9:12 AM EST, Thu March 6, 2025

https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/06/economy/us-jobs-report-february-preview
/index.html

6ix, can you feel the winds of change blowing? Who knew how accidentally incompetent and deliberately greedy Trump and Musk would be? Everybody except Trumptards.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, March 7, 2025 6:53 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Those of us following the day-to-day stumbles of the Musk/Trump administration sometimes feel encouraged by just how incompetent they sometimes seem — quite different from the cool, sinister competence of Orban’s takeover in Hungary. But Kim warns that Trump is nonetheless achieving most of the ingredients for autocracy.

Oban moved very quickly to capture the Constitutional Court which was the referee of the whole process. After you capture the refs, you can do all kinds of unconstitutional things and there's no one around to stop you. That was something Trump did in his first term. He's basically captured the refs.

At Trump's joint session of Congress speech, the Supreme Court only sent four judges this time, fewer than usual, but John Roberts was there and on the way out the door, Trump shook his hand and said, “Thank you. Thank you again. I won't forget.” Capture is evident already by the decisions of this court, particularly the immunity decision, which was outrageous, unprecedented, lawless, and just stunning, jaw-droppingly supportive of a lawless executive.

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/from-orban-to-trump-part-ii

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, March 7, 2025 11:41 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

‘Please let Mr Hitler speak’: the trouble with ‘hearing from both sides’ – the Stephen Collins cartoon

By Stephen Collins | Fri 7 Mar 2025

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/picture/2025/mar/07/please-le
t-mr-hitler-speak-the-trouble-with-hearing-from-both-sides-the-stephen-collins-cartoon

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, March 7, 2025 11:46 AM

Disingenuous Democrats read the same script because they have no core values or agency.

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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Friday, March 7, 2025 11:47 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
6ix, can you feel the winds of change blowing?

Yup.

The world you thought you were living in 6 months ago no longer exists.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Friday, March 7, 2025 12:50 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
6ix, can you feel the winds of change blowing?

Yup.

The world you thought you were living in 6 months ago no longer exists.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

6ix, Trump will stop your Medicaid for diabetes and your brother's SSI for being an afflicted child and your aunt's Social Security for being old. You will all be paying inflated prices because that's the world Trumptards will die for once Trump gets his way.

Social Security Is Changing Under President Donald Trump
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/social-security-changing-under-presiden
t-085500811.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, March 7, 2025 1:15 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
6ix, can you feel the winds of change blowing?

Yup.

The world you thought you were living in 6 months ago no longer exists.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
6ix, Trump will stop your Medicaid for diabetes and your brother's SSI for being an afflicted child and your aunt's Social Security for being old.

No. He won't.

Quote:
You will all be paying inflated prices because that's the world Trumptards will die for once Trump gets his way.

We're already paying inflated prices because Joe Biden* fucked up the economy.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Friday, March 7, 2025 1:22 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
SIGNY: ... and all corporations had to become privately held companies? No more stock options! No more corporate personhood! No more speculating on the stock market!

SECOND: What's the largest privately owned company in the world? SpaceX.

So what?

Quote:
Where have I heard that name in connection to Trump?

What's the connection you're trying to make?

Making "corporations" illegal isn't beneficial to other privately held companies. If anything, most of them would be competing against many other companies just like them.

In my observation, publicly held companies waste an awful lot of $$ on stock buybacks, M&As, hostile takeovers, and other (nonproductive) fun and games.

Ralphs, my local grocery chain, was taken over by Kroger, which used Ralph's assets as collateral for the loan they took out for the takeover. Since Kroger had to pay back the loan, they jacked up prices. Meanwhile, Stater Bros, a privately held full service grocery store, just keeps plodding along, offering lower prices overall.

And altho privately held companies don't have to issue quarterly/ annual reports, they DO have to pay taxes. Maybe those tax filings should be made public, since I don't believe that companies have a privacy right. That would help guide consumers to the comoanies offering the best value for money.

Can you imagine what would happen if that process was applied to hospital corporations?

-----------
"Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem, the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Friday, March 7, 2025 1:25 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Can you imagine what would happen if that process was applied to hospital corporations?

Hospitals and Pharma companies slashing prices to be competitive because they're no longer operating under a virtual monopoly? What a wonderful world that would be.

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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Friday, March 7, 2025 1:30 PM

BRENDA

I am so glad that my aunts are now long dead. They would be worried about the US right now.

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Friday, March 7, 2025 1:32 PM

If Democrats were 1/10th as worried about your aunts as you were, they wouldn't have destroyed themselves.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Friday, March 7, 2025 2:03 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

And altho privately held companies don't have to issue quarterly/ annual reports, they DO have to pay taxes. Maybe those tax filings should be made public, since I don't believe that companies have a privacy right. That would help guide consumers to the comoanies offering the best value for money.

Trump's companies are the proof that privately held companies can produce phony records to document whatever income tax they wish to pay. Several Trump employees went to jail over their tax cheating, but it took extraordinary forensic accounting resources to penetrate Trump's organization, resources only available for that legal case because Trump was constantly in the news. If privately held corporations took over the business world because the public stock market was closed in Signym's imaginary redesign of Capitalism, those millions of new Corporations could cheat on their taxes because the extraordinary resources do not exist to investigate more than one or two corporations at a time.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, March 7, 2025 2:04 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Russia Is Losing the War of Attrition

Ukraine is not on the verge of collapse. That makes the Trump administration’s decisions particularly shortsighted and tragic.

By Phillips Payson O’Brien and Eliot A. Cohen | March 7, 2025, 11:33 AM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/03/russia-ukrai
ne-war-status/681963/

Ukraine has no “cards” according to President Donald Trump, while Russia has many. Vice President J. D. Vance has asserted that superior Russian firepower and manpower mean that the war can end only in a Russian victory. Other supposedly realistic commentators agree, arguing that Russia’s advantages are insurmountable.

As military historians, we think this a misreading not only of what is happening on the ground, but of how wars unfold—and, in particular, of the difference between attritional campaigns and those built on maneuver. The Luftwaffe and the German submarine force during World War II, to take just two examples, were defeated not by a single blow, but by a technologically advanced, tactically and operationally sophisticated approach that rendered those organizations, large as they were, unable to function effectively. In the same vein, the advances of the German army in the spring of 1918 concealed the underlying weakness in that military produced by attrition, which ultimately doomed the Kaiser’s army and the regime for which it fought.

We have been here before. Prior to the war, the intelligence community, political leaders, and many students of the Russian military concluded that Russia would easily overrun Ukraine militarily—that Kyiv would fall in a few days and that Ukraine itself could be conquered in weeks. We should consider that failure as we assess the certainty of Vance and those who think like him.

Wars are rarely won so decisively, because attrition is not only a condition of war, but a strategic choice. Smaller powers can, through the intelligent application of attrition, succeed in advancing their own goals. This is particularly true if, like Ukraine, they can exploit technological change and get the most from outside support and allies. Vietnam was outgunned by the United States, as the American colonies were once outgunned by the British empire. Iranian forces outnumbered those of Iraq during a long and brutal war in the 1980s, and lost nonetheless.

The pessimistic analysis has not paid nearly enough attention to the weak underpinnings of Russian military power. Russia’s economy, as often noted, is struggling with interest rates that have topped 20 percent amid soaring inflation, and with manpower shortages made critical by the war. Its condition is dire, as one study noted, partly because the military budget amounts to 40 percent of all public spending, and partly because oil revenue is taking a hit from lower prices, Ukrainian attacks, and tightening sanctions.

Russian weakness is particularly visible in the army. One report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies estimated that in 2024 alone, the Russians lost 1,400 main battle tanks, and more than 3,700 infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers. At the same time, Russian production of such vehicles, including refurbished units, totaled just 4,300, not enough to make up for its losses. In desperation, Russia has turned to restoring its oldest and least effective combat vehicles, many of Soviet vintage. One recent study by Chatham House asserts that the Russian military-industrial complex is “ill adapted to deal with the effects of a prolonged war against Ukraine or to achieve a sustainable future in terms of production, innovation and development.”

The same holds true for Russian manpower. The number of soldiers that the Russians were able to maintain at the front seemed to peak in the spring and summer of 2024, above 650,000. By the end of the year, it had fallen closer to 600,000, despite the extraordinary bonuses that the Russian government offers new recruits, amounting to about two and a half times the average annual Russian salary in 2023.

Russian casualties have mounted steadily. According to the British Ministry of Defence, in December 2022, they stood at roughly 500 a day; in December 2023, at just under 1,000; and in December 2024, at more than 1,500. In 2024 alone, Russia suffered nearly 430,000 killed and wounded, compared with just over 250,000 in 2023.

North Korean reinforcements have attracted attention in the press, but these troops, numbering in the tens of thousands at most, cannot make up for the fundamental deficiencies in Russian manpower. Moreover, the high rates of attrition that the Russians have suffered—roughly the same as the number of personnel mobilized each year—mean that the Russian military has not been able to reconstitute. It is more and more a primitive force, poorly trained and led, driven forward by fear alone.

The pause in American aid last year hurt Ukraine. Now, however, the stockpiles seem to be in better shape for most types of weaponry. Ukraine’s own production has reached impressive levels in certain vital categories, particularly but not exclusively unmanned aerial vehicles. In 2024, the Ukrainian military received over 1.2 million different Ukrainian-produced UAVs—two orders of magnitude more than Ukraine possessed, let alone produced, at the beginning of the war. Ukrainian production rates are still rising; it aims to produce 4 million drones this year alone.

UAVs are crucial because they have replaced artillery as the most effective system on the field of battle. By one estimate, UAVs now cause 70 percent of Russian losses. Ukraine’s robust defense industry is innovating more quickly and effectively than that of Russia and its allies.

Attritional wars take place on many fronts. For example, it is true that Russia has increased its attacks on Ukrainian industry and civilian targets, as well as energy infrastructure. Ukrainian air defenses, however, have been remarkably successful in neutralizing the large majority of those attacks, which is why Ukrainian civilian casualties have been decreasing. Ukraine has, moreover, been on the offensive as well. It has produced some 6,000 longer-range heavy UAVs, which it has used to attack deep into Russia, decreasing Russian oil production. Remarkably, Ukraine appears to be matching the rate at which Russia is producing its own similar drone, the Shahed, which is being built on license from Iran.

Despite American reluctance to provide further aid, Ukraine’s European friends can make a significant difference even though they cannot simply replace what the U.S. has been providing. They do not, for instance, make the advanced Patriot anti-missile system, although they have other capable air-defense weapons. However, Europe can help Ukraine press ahead with more UAV production; Europeans have the capacity to manufacture engines for long-range UAVs, for example, at a far higher rate.

And some European systems not yet provided—such as the German Taurus cruise missile—could increase Ukraine’s advantages. Germany has so far denied Ukraine the Taurus, a far more effective system with greater range and a heavier payload than the Franco-British Storm Shadow/Scalp missiles. The new German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has already said he would send Taurus missiles to Ukraine if the Russians did not relent. With these systems, Ukraine could add to the considerable damage it has already done within Russia.

Read: The simple explanation for why Trump turned against Ukraine

Attritional campaigns depend on an industrial base. The European Union alone has a GDP about 10 times that of Russia, and if you add the U.K. and Norway to that calculation, the imbalance in favor of Ukraine grows even larger. As it is, Europe and the United States have provided Ukraine with roughly equal amounts of its military resources (30 percent each), while Ukraine has produced 40 percent on its own.

The U.S. has provided more than just military material—it has also furnished intelligence and access to Starlink internet services. None of this can quickly be made up, although again, one should not underestimate the depth of technological and intelligence resources available from Europe and sympathetic Asian countries, should they mobilize. The United States has stinted its aid until now, but Ukraine itself and its European allies are filling the gaps.

Ukraine is not on the verge of collapse, and it is Russia, not Ukraine, that is losing the attritional war, which makes the Trump administration’s decisions particularly shortsighted and tragic. Ukraine has plenty of cards, even if Trump and Vance cannot see them. If America’s leaders could only bring themselves to put pressure on Russia comparable to what they put on Ukraine, they could help Ukraine achieve something much more like a win.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, March 7, 2025 2:45 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
What do you think of this, Sigs?

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2025/03/06/treasury_secretary_
bessent_were_going_to_transition_from_a_public-sector_to_private-sector_economy.html

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

Quote:
BESSENT: "When you think about 25% of GDP flowing through area code 202, everybody's trying to skim a portion of it, trying to reallocate it," he said. "This has been a government-driven economy, you want to make this a private sector-driven economy. We want to, as I understand it, disempower the public federal bureaucracy and re-empower the kind of risk-taking and investment that goes along with private sector advances."
*****

LARRY KUDLOW: What you know that I saw a study just to finish this point, over 10 years the differential between 3% growth and 1.8% growth comes to about three trillion dollars of extra money which could be poured in for any number of private sector uses.

TREASURY SECRETARY SCOTT BESSENT: Yeah, and again Larry, it's back to the predictability that if we can do that and then all those benefits actually accrue out into the economy, not to the bondholders, not to the government.

I have no idea what Bessent is trying to say. Cutting the Federal budget/ workforce doesn't mean that the private sector will automatically grow. If you eliminate ... extreme case ... 25% of the GDP, it's possible that the only thing that happens as a result is that the GDP drops by 25%.

Quote:
LARRY KUDLOW: And just one last point on the budget being DOGE. DOGE savings, are you, I saw it's interesting, a poll, a Democratic poll, my friend Mark Penn in his poll, 69% favored the idea of a $1 trillion budget savings, I'll call it, from Elon Musk and DOGE. This is a Democratic poll, so it's quite interesting. As you incorporate your big six projections and you put out a Trump budget, you are doing it at OMB obviously. Is there a DOGE, you know, is there a DOGE spot for this, and perhaps how much might that be?

TREASURY SECRETARY SCOTT BESSENT: Larry, I don't know yet, but to think that there's no waste, fraud, or abuse in the US government, you know, think about it.

Now that I live in DC, 25% of US GDP blows through area code 202.

Everybody is trying, there are all these markers on that same thing, Americans with healthcare, every Monday is paying for your healthcare. But when you think about 25% of GDP flowing through area code 202, everybody's trying to skim a portion of it, trying to reallocate it. I don't know what the savings level can be, but I think examining a lot of these contracts, a lot of this employment.

I was with Glenn Youngkin, Governor of Virginia, the other day, and I thought he would, all these people are in a state over government layoffs. So his Northern Virginia would probably be the area most affected, and he said, "Governor, how are you handling this, how are you messaging it?" And he said, "We have 350,000 private sector jobs available in Virginia. My office has a portal up, and anyone can go on the portal and come and join us in the private sector.

Private sector jobs are lower pay with fewer benefits.

Quote:
LARRY KUDLOW: I mean, that goes to your theory which I think President Trump has adopted, but it was your note, your idea. You want to, this has been a government-driven economy, you want to make this a private sector-driven economy. We want to, as I understand it, disempower the public federal bureaucracy and re-empower the kind of risk-taking and investment that goes along with private sector advances.

You'll see headlines, "Federal jobs are down, oh my God," but the fact is private jobs, the fact is the private sector should be vastly bigger than the public sector anyway, and your tax policies have a lot of it.

So I want to end on your theory to re-privatize the economy, which I think is so important and should in fact be a global model for other countries.

TREASURY SECRETARY SCOTT BESSENT: Well, Larry, everyone knows what they should do, it's just do they have the willpower to do it. For any of you who haven't read it, Mario Draghi two weeks ago in the Financial Times had a very good piece on European competitive paper that he together and where he talks about that intra is actually terrifying themselves more than America ever could because of their high regulatory burden.

I think that as we bring down this spending, and we're not going to do it all at once, I'm not in the habit of repeating private conversations, but I will tell you, the first time I went in to see President Trump, talk about getting involved with the campaign, he looked at me and said, "Scott, how are we going to get this debt and deficit down without killing the economy?"

Exactly

Quote:
And I've been thinking non-stop about that for past 15, 18 months now, and I really do think it's this transition from public to private that will bring down or will deleverage the government. And as I talked about, that's why I wanted to lead with it today to this group, that we will relever the private sector, and part of the key to releveraging the private sector is cutting regulation, making the tax policy permanent, and getting our regulated banking system going again. I have, I think that private credit is exciting, it's the breadth, depth of our capital markets, it's something that is new in our capital markets, but we also have to get the regulated entities lending again.

I think that they can coexist, and I think Main Street, in terms of the regulated entities that being squeezed, it's really happened at the smaller regional banks, small banks, and community banks, which hits Main Street. And like I said, Wall Street's done great, Wall Street can continue doing well, but this administration is about Main Street.

WTF is he talking about?
Which regulations does he want to get rid of? Health and safety? Minimum wages Environmental? Lack of specificity is troubling, makes it sound like he's trying to hide something.
Also, "continue tax policy" as I read it means "low corporare taxes". With all the tax dodges offered corporations ... and there are dozens and dozens of them ... corporations hardly pay any taxes at all.

I think the Trump admin is juggling conflicting goals.

One goal is to KEEP THE USA GOVT FROM BANKRUPTCY. Spending has to be cut substantially. Letting probationary employees go, and cutting waste and fraud only goes so far (except at the DoD, where waste and fraud exists on a massive scale).

The only way to cut the budget is by looking at the big-ticket items- Social Security, Medicare/ Medicaid, and DoD - for waste and fraud, and reimagine their program goals and how they're run.

And, as I've stated, I think the first place to look is the DoD. Deployments all over the world, bases and installations in places that mean nothing to American security, while the MIC churns out combat-ineffective weapons produced with huge cost overruns. No more $500 hammers, please! No more 'green energy" tanks, or tanks with turbine engines! No more aircraft carriers i.e. sitting ducks! No more "multirole" jets that need 30 hours of maintenance for every 10 hours of flight, and can't tolerate wet weather! We can reduce our standing army but rebuild our bases at home, which have degraded into toilets.

Medicare: Part D ... make drug pricing competitive. Dems brag that they've done this... but at a rate of 15 drugs per year! Seriously??? At that rate, it'll take a mere 270 years to include all of the current available drugs.

Part A - hospitalization insurance- is what's being squeezed. Meanwhile, some hospital corps make huge profis

Quote:
Higher inpatient prices are significantly associated with higher profits per adjusted discharges for all price quartiles. Hospitals in the highest inpatient price group earn $1,552 more operating profits per adjusted discharge than hospitals in the lowest price group.

https://www.bakerinstitute.org/research/prices-versus-costs-unpacking-
rising-us-hospital-profits
Of course, Medicare NEVER pays full freight on hospital charges, but high profits put a huge financial burden on private insurance i.e. Obamacare. One way to reduce the complexity of Medicare insurance is simply to extend Medicare for all. Another way to reduce complexity is to stop paying for each diagnostic code and procedure individually (which leads to a lot of "up-coding") but to simply pay for a percentage of total billable costs. And since many people wind up in County ER, or ER in general bc lack of ongoing care creates a huge population with critical conditions, is to create and fund more county NON-EMERGENT facilities to intercept patients BEFORE they become critical.
And, finally, it must be said that reducing the # of illegal aliens will reduce the burden of uninsured.

Anyway, I have, as I said, lots of ideas how to save money.

But I'm not onboard with Trump's and Bessent's idea to privatize everything. Government is the ONLY entity with an interest in "the public good". Business, by definition, is interested in profit. I can think of a lot of ways for govt to save money without cutting into essential services.

Re-industrialization will need capital. Money saved by cutting government spending MAY lower interest rates and make more $$ available. Tax cuts will make $$ available, but also conflicts with reducing the deficit. But it will do no good if business uses that money to simply increase profits.

----------
"Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem, the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Friday, March 7, 2025 6:38 PM