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

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

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

POSTED BY: 6IXSTRINGJACK
UPDATED: Thursday, August 14, 2025 08:15
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Wednesday, August 13, 2025 2:15 PM

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

Trump’s DOJ peddles grim fantasies in court filing to save tariffs

The Trump administration claimed the U.S. economy would fall to pieces if the president’s widely unpopular tariff policy isn’t upheld.

By Ja'han Jones | Aug. 12, 2025, 2:22 PM CDT

https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/trump-tariffs-appeals-court-e
conomy-great-depression-rcna224525

An absurd new court filing from the Trump administration tries to scare a U.S. appeals court with grim predictions of economic catastrophe should it uphold and immediately enforce a ruling that blocked many of the president’s haphazard and widely unpopular tariffs.

On Monday, the Justice Department basically copied and pasted a hysterical plea from Donald Trump’s Truth Social account, in which the president claimed the country would experience another Great Depression if the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit confirms and enforces a May decision from a Court of International Trade panel that found many of Trump’s tariffs on foreign countries were illegal. Judges at the appeals court have already expressed skepticism about the Trump administration’s arguments.

In a letter to the court, Solicitor General John Sauer and Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate argued that even if the judges agree that some of Trump’s tariffs are illegal, they should hold off on enforcing its decision while the administration appeals to the Supreme Court. And the letter was replete with Trumpian self-praise and propaganda:

Quote:
There is no substitute for the tariffs and deals that President Trump has made. One year ago, the United States was a dead country, and now, because of the trillions of dollars being paid by countries that have so badly abused us, America is a strong, financially viable, and respected country again. If the United States were forced to pay back the trillions of dollars committed to us, America could go from strength to failure the moment such an incorrect decision took effect.

These deals for trillions of dollars have been reached, and other countries have committed to pay massive sums of money. If the United States were forced to unwind these historic agreements, the President believes that a forced dissolution of the agreements could lead to a 1929-style result. In such a scenario, people would be forced from their homes, millions of jobs would be eliminated, hard-working Americans would lose their savings, and even Social Security and Medicare could be threatened.

The country, of course, wasn’t “dead” a year ago — though it has teetered on the brink of recession under Trump and continues to suffer the impact of his protectionist agenda. For instance, U.S. companies paying these tariffs have started passing the costs on to consumers.

In reality, there’s no evidence that outlawing Trump’s tariffs would destroy the economy.

There’s also no guarantee that Trump’s trade agreements will ever bring in trillions of dollars, in part because, as my colleague Steve Benen recently noted, it’s still an open question whether some of the agreements are even legally binding or enforceable. And it’s certainly rich for Trump’s DOJ to warn about purported threats to jobs, Medicare and Social Security when his administration has gutted the federal workforce and he recently signed a budget that includes massive cuts to Medicare and Social Security benefits.

In reality, there’s no evidence that outlawing Trump’s tariffs would destroy the economy. To the contrary, many American consumers and companies would probably breathe a sigh of relief if they were freed from the dictatorial whim of their wannabe king and the tariff-induced taxes effectively placed on various goods. It’s a sign of desperation that the administration is relying on scare tactics to claim otherwise.

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

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Wednesday, August 13, 2025 3:01 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Hackification

Arendt’s Law comes for economic data

By Paul Krugman | Aug 13, 2025

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/hackification

On Monday I wrote about D.T’s

Uh Oh...

Paul's calling him "D.T" now (no period after Trump, just "D.T").

Was this a directive from above to stop putting Trump in his articles a dozen times, or has he finally realized that nobody is reading his articles anymore when he puts the word Trump in them?

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

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

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Wednesday, August 13, 2025 3:03 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
By Ja'han Jones

Here's a quarter. Go call someone who cares. Or better yet, buy yourself a real first name.

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

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

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Thursday, August 14, 2025 7:27 AM

SECOND

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

Just how much has DOGE exaggerated its numbers? Now we have receipts.

A POLITICO analysis of DOGE data reveals the organization saved less than 5 percent of its claimed savings from nearly 10,100 contract terminations.

By Jessie Blaeser | 08/12/2025 04:40 PM EDT

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/12/trump-doge-contract-claims-sa
vings-inflation-00498178

The Trump administration’s claim that it is saving billions of dollars through DOGE-related cuts to federal contracts is drastically exaggerated, according to a new POLITICO analysis of public data and federal spending records.

Through July, DOGE said it has saved taxpayers $52.8 billion by canceling contracts, but of the $32.7 billion in actual claimed contract savings that POLITICO could verify, DOGE’s savings over that period were closer to $1.4 billion.

Despite the administration’s claims, not a single one of those 1.4 billion dollars will lower the federal deficit unless Congress steps in. Instead, the money has been returned to agencies mandated by law to spend it.

DOGE’s latest figures on contract cuts ticked up to $54.2 billion in an update posted on Tuesday.

POLITICO’s findings come on top of months of scrutiny of DOGE’s accounting, but the magnitude of DOGE’s inflated savings claims has not been clear until now.

Even so, President Donald Trump claimed hundreds of billions of dollars had already been used to reduce the federal deficit. The former head of DOGE, Elon Musk, initially promised the organization would reduce the deficit by $2 trillion. Many in Trump’s Cabinet have also celebrated DOGE’s efforts, including his secretaries of Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs and Agriculture.

DOGE’s savings calculations are based on faulty math. The group uses the maximum spending possible under each contract as its baseline — meaning all money an agency could spend in future fiscal years. That amount can far exceed what the government has actually committed to pay out.

Counting this “ceiling value” gives a false picture of savings for taxpayers.

“That’s the equivalent of basically taking out a credit card with a $20,000 credit limit, canceling it and then saying, ‘I’ve just saved $20,000,’” said Jessica Tillipman, associate dean for government procurement law studies at George Washington University Law School. “Anything that’s been said publicly about [DOGE’s] savings is meaningless.”

The White House disagrees. DOGE has produced “historic savings for the American people,” White House principal deputy press secretary Harrison Fields wrote in an email in response to questions about DOGE’s activities. DOGE’s site, he said, provides up-to-date and accurate information. “All numbers are rigorously scrubbed with agency procurement officials and updated in real time based on current information,” he said.

DOGE’s public list of records, or what it calls its “wall of receipts,” says the site only represents a subset of the organization’s overall savings. However, even among the sample of contracts it posted through July, roughly 40 percent of claimed savings could not be verified due to a lack of identifying information.

DOGE’s fuzzy math

Much more at https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/12/trump-doge-contract-claims-sa
vings-inflation-00498178

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

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Thursday, August 14, 2025 7:34 AM

SECOND

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

MAGA’s Feelings Don’t Care About Your Facts

By Paul Krugman / Aug 14, 2025 at 5:36 AM

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/magas-feelings-dont-care-about-your

Just under two weeks ago the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a sharp slowdown in job growth — consistent with independent surveys that also show a slowing economy. Donald Trump responded by firing the Bureau’s head and wants to replace her with an unqualified right-wing hack — let’s be honest, OK? — whose big idea for dealing with troubling job numbers is to stop releasing them.

This week Trump seized control of the Washington DC police force and sent in the National Guard to deal with what he claims is a runaway crime wave, even though crime in the District has been falling rapidly.

What these two stories have in common is this: MAGA’s feelings don’t care about your facts. And the rejection of data Trump doesn’t like will surely extend to many areas beyond jobs and crime.

About jobs: E.J. Antoni, Trump’s pick for BLS Commissioner, has actually said that we should define a recession not on the basis of things like employment data or GDP but by how people “feel.” Now, that criterion wouldn’t serve him or his master very well if we look at surveys of public opinion. The American people appear to feel really bad about the economy:

But we already know that Trump dismisses polls he doesn’t like as fake news. So in practice, I think that Antoni is saying that we should define a recession by how Trump feels. And since he insists we’re in a boom, it’s all good.

About crime: If Trumpists wanted to make a semi-serious argument for occupying Washington, it would be that while DC crime is falling, it’s still high compared with relatively low-crime cities like New York or Los Angeles.

But that would mean admitting that big cities run by Democrats aren’t dystopian hellscapes, and they aren’t about to do that. Instead, we get assertions that crime data are rigged:

May I say that to anyone who pays the slightest amount of attention to New York politics, the idea that the NYPD is rigging the crime data to make liberal mayors look good is simply hilarious.

Anyway, MAGA types feel that big blue cities are incredibly dangerous, and they aren’t going to let actual facts about crime get in the way.

So which facts will be rejected in favor of feelings next? Trump’s tariffs are already starting to show in the inflation numbers, and the vast majority of independent economists believe that we’ll be seeing a lot more of that in the months ahead. Or maybe we won’t be seeing it. If a Trumpified BLS can stop releasing employment data, surely it can stop releasing price data too. Canceling those monthly reports would clearly be illegal, but who thinks that matters?

Then what? My guess is that the next frontier in feelings-over-facts will involve public health.

I’m not sure how many Americans realize how low our life expectancy is compared with other rich countries. The divergence began under Ronald Reagan, and was already a chasm even before partisanship led many Americans on the right to reject Covid vaccines:

In case you’re wondering, I included the most recent estimate for New York City, which aside from being a dystopian hellscape is one of the few places in America that has life expectancy comparable to other advanced countries. As Justin Fox has pointed out, a lot of this has to do with New Yorkers being less likely than other Americans to die in traffic accidents.

Anyway, we now have an anti-vaxxer, who reportedly doesn’t even accept the germ theory of infectious diseases, serving as America’s top health official. So it seems highly likely that U.S. life expectancy will fall even further behind the rest of the advanced world.

And there’s another factor that I didn’t take into account the last time I wrote about the MAGA Death Trip. Between cuts to Medicaid, reduced subsidies under the Affordable Care Act and other policy changes, it seems likely that around 17 million Americans will lose health insurance over the next few years. And there’s clear evidence that loss of insurance will lead to higher mortality.

But RFK Jr. feels that he understands public health better than so-called medical experts, and neither Trump nor his allies seem to feel any concern about the impact of their budget decisions on health coverage.

So what will the response be when the data showing a sharp rise in uninsurance and a decline in life expectancy start coming in? It’s hard not to suspect that the people in charge will dismiss these numbers as fake and do their best to stop publishing them.

All in all, we’re clearly entering an era of policy driven by feelings rather than facts. But facts always win in the end.

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

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Thursday, August 14, 2025 8:15 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
MAGA’s Feelings Don’t Care About Your Facts

By Paul Krugman

Your "facts" are bullshit, Paul.

Go fuck yourself and your dead party. Nobody is listening to you anymore.

How does it feel?

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

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