The Second Trump Presidency

Yeah, it's Authoritarianism 101. Use the powers of the office, legally or illegally, to punish anyone that disagrees with you. Kudos to Harvard for sticking up for their constitutional rights."“No government – regardless of which party is in power – should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” Garber said.". . ."“He is violating the First Amendment rights of universities and faculty by demanding that if universities want to keep this money, they have to suppress our speech and change what we teach and how we study,” Bowie said."https://www.cnn.com/...ard-rejects-policy-changes/index.html

Of course . . .

It's going to be pretty hard to reach a "new low" from disappearing people off the streets and shipping them to a torture prison with no due process. First immigrants who suddenly get their legal status revoked on a totally arbitrary basis, and now "accidentally" US citizens with directly admitted plans to intentionally include US citizens in the near future. With no due process, it's a matter of accusation - the Trump goons accuse, and you get abducted by masked men off the street and sent to the torture prison without recourse, no access to a lawyer, no trial, no judges, just forced onto a plane and sent to die slowly.It'll get worse as they scale up the program, but we're fully into Nazi territory here without hyperbole. CECOT is an extermination camp. The Nazis called their roundups "deportations" too. All that remains is scale and expanding the target list, which Trump himself has already said they plan to do. "Home-grown terrorist" just means "anyone the Trump admin accuses with no opportunity for defense." Kiss his rancid loaded diaper or you get accused and disappeared.Nothing is uglier than this. Nothing can be uglier than this.

Trump only holds all the cards in the way that an infant holds all the cards. There's no study, no analysis, no planning, just eating and smiling, crying and pooping, and everyone else has to deal with the ramifications.Of course, infants usually grow into responsible adults. Usually.--Percy

This subthread is about tariffs, which are a tax that affects the poor much more than the rich. Tariffs have nothing to do with the environmental concerns that led Biden to cancel the permit for the extension to the Keystone pipeline, nor with the climate concerns that led him to encourage a shift toward green energy. You keep drifting off topic. If you want to discuss Biden administration actions then The Biden Presidency is the thread you want. Again, this is about the Biden administration. If you want to discuss this over at The Biden Presidency then you're probably going to have to fill in the blanks. I don't think anyone knows what you're referring to, though diesel prices did spike worldwide after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This is not at all related to the point you're responding to, which described how Republicans in the House refused to raise tax rates no matter how high the income level.Concerns about the "no taxes on tips" proposal revolve around how well the bill's language would prevent the reclassifying of what we would normally consider non-tip income as tips, and about the special minimum wage limit for tip-earners.But tip income aside, the tax brackets are already set too high for low wage earners. Someone earning $40,000 a year still pays $2800 in taxes when to me it feels like it should be more like $0. Why is the government taking money from people who could at best be described as scraping along?--Percy

Again, you've got a backwards view of trade deficits. They are a sign of economic strength, not an indication of exploitation. If trade deficits were actually making us poorer relative to other countries then after a while we wouldn't be wealthy enough to run trade deficits anymore, but that never happens. The U.S. economy just keeps rolling along.But tariffs are just one of the ways trading partners can take unfair advantage. Others are manipulating currency values, subsidizing domestic industries, and stealing IP. These should all be topics of trade negotiations, and they are. With the EU, tariffs on U.S. cars are always on the agenda. With China, stealing IP is always on the agenda. Trade wars like the one Trump has started (in an on-again/off-again fashion) has dropped the value of the dollar by 20% since he took office. This is from the New York Times (The Dollar Keeps Falling as Its ‘Safe Haven’ Status Is Questioned): Common sense? More like nonsense. And the topic is tariffs, remember? Are you on drugs? Trump is a dictator fanboy. And now you're back to trade again. Trump's tariff flip-flop tango is making business planning difficult the world over and is unlikely to end well. Hopefully he'll soon declare victory and move on.--Percy

You are delusional. Trump's actions on tariffs are ill-advised, ad hoc, miscalculated, impulsive, and reversed multiple times. There's no sign of any study, analysis, planning, nor of any overall strategy. This is just plainly false. U.S. negotiations with trading partners are constantly ongoing. You've mistaken Trump braggadocio for something true. What Trump is doing is neither art nor deal. It's economic extortion combined with punching one's self in the face. You're missing the point yet again. You said it was only an opinion that Trump had reversed himself on tariffs, apparently not aware of the context of PaulK's comment. It's now been explained to you multiple times now that PaulK was responding to Tangle's message about the reversals. But you're just holding fast to your original comment-made-in-error, and now you're even discounting the conservative WSJ. Unbelievable.--Percy

Remember: If you are following the orders of fascist dictator Trump, you are committing a serious CRIME!

DOGE are killing the IRS free Direct File tax-filing system
Ars Technica
With the FCC attack on regulations protecting consumers the intent seems very much to let US businesses extract more money from US consumers.Cuts at the CDC are hurting efforts to fight the measles outbreak which has already killed 2 children and 1 adult.
Ars TechnicaAnd an opinion piece - written by the founder and president of a US manufacturing business explains why - in his view - the Trump tariffs are not going to bring manufacturing back to the US. Ars Technica

If you donate money to fascist dictator Trump, according to the Constitution you are committing TREASON by providing aid and comfort to an enemy of the United States.Remember: If you are following the orders of fascist dictator Trump, you are committing a serious CRIME!If you don't think Trump is a fascist dictator, I have a seat for you down the bench after the Flat Earthers.I can't wait for the Nuremberg Trials 2.0 to begin!

Manufacturing jobs are never coming back, says a headline in Vox consistent with what I've been saying in this thread.Not only are manufacturing jobs not coming back, we don't necessarily want them back, not all of them, anyway. Generally, manufacturing is not as good at producing wealth as other options. As Vox puts it:

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But the bigger reason is that the fall of manufacturing employment in the US was not caused primarily by changes in policy, and changes in policy cannot reverse it. What’s happening is a transition from manufacturing to services that occurs in all countries as they get richer.

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For those of you clamoring for more manufacturing jobs in the U.S., let me ask you a question: Do you want to clock in every morning, work on an assembly line for eight hours, then clock out every afternoon? And how many jobs would these factories you dream about actually produce given the move to increased automation with robots. And since the goods produced by these factories would cost more (higher salaries in the US), would the workers with these new jobs even be able to afford the goods they produce?It's not a simple issue. Here's how ChatGPT summarized it: We've been moving to a more service-based economy, but that's not a panacea. Some service jobs are very lucrative, like those in the knowledge based industries, and like doctors, lawyers and engineers. And other types of service jobs can also be very lucrative, like electricians and plumbers. But many service jobs don't pay so well and aren't easy, like beauticians, teachers, drivers, and the hospitality industry.It would make sense to move some manufacturing back into the United States, but by no means all. Which manufacturing would be best to return needs to be carefully studied, analyzed, selected and planned. What Trump is doing with his schizoid willy nilly tariffs is just random and crazy.--Percy

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What Trump is doing with his schizoid willy nilly tariffs is just random and crazy.

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It’s quite clear that Trump assumed that trade imbalances were automatically bad and that tariffs were a magic solution.The flailing around is fuelled by the fact that it doesn’t work that way and the inability to admit that the original tariffs were a huge misjudgement. And it makes things even worse.If Trump were a British PM his party would be very much looking at removing him and electing a successor. At least as long as the party wasn’t full of spineless cowards - or crazed cultists - like most of the Republican Congressmen. Liz Truss being the obvious case in point.

Shush, don't mention services ...

In his war on public health RFK jr has closed the CDC lab dealing with viral hepatitis. NPRThis has stopped an investigation of a viral hepatitis outbreak in Florida. There’s nowhere else that can and will do the same work. Plenty more in the article - but even if it’s decided the scientists at the lab were wrongly terminated damage has been done which will hurt future work.

If only it were that easy.