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Trump’s Latest Brainstorm Will Fail. And No, He Won’t Admit It Was Always Doomed to Fail
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump tweeted:
On June 10th, the United States will impose a 5% Tariff on all goods coming into our Country from Mexico, until such time as illegal migrants coming through Mexico, and into our Country, STOP. The Tariff will gradually increase until the Illegal Immigration problem is remedied, at which time the Tariffs will be removed. Details from the White House to follow.
4:30 PM - 30 May 2019
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1134240657621438464
The new tariff plan is pretty simple. www.vox.com/2019/5/30/18646618/tariff-mexico-asylum-trump-usmca
Starting on June 10, all goods shipped from Mexico to the United States will face an extra 5 percent tax — all of which will be paid by American consumers in the form of higher prices. Altogether, Americans import nearly $400 billion from Mexico this year, so the tariff will amount to about $20 billion, or $200 per family. If Americans buy less from Mexico, which is what Trump wants in order to motivate Mexico to do the work of Trump's Border Patrol, then the cost will be less than $20 billion.
On July 1, that tax goes up to 10 percent. That is $40 billion paid by Americans per year if Trump raises the tax no higher.
On August 1, it goes up to 15 percent. $60 billion paid by Americans.
On September 1, it goes up to 20 percent. $80 billion paid by Americans.
And on October 1, it goes up to 25 percent. $100 billion paid by Americans. Per year.
White House Chief of Staff Mulvaney was, however, at pains to say that he is not eager to see 25 percent tariffs imposed on Mexican imports.
“We sincerely hope it does not come to that,” he said. “We actually have some level of confidence that the Mexican government will be able to help us . . .” because the Border Patrol is helpless. On the other hand, I’m confident that Mexicans are not paying the $100 billion per year. It will be paid by Americans. So Mexico won’t help Trump out, but illegal migration changes with the seasons. Spring is normally the high point for border-crossings and summer a low point. Whether or not Mexico changes anything, in other words, numbers will fall in July. Trump will brag in July about his tariff policy finally working because he doesn’t understand how migration changes with the seasons.
Mulvaney would not lay out specific success criteria that he wants to see Mexico meet. Instead, he said simply that “we’re going to handle this on an ad hoc basis. We are going to judge success here by the number of people crossing the border. And that number of people needs to start coming down immediately in a significant and substantial way.”
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Yeah. I don't know what he's doing.
Let's stop pussyfooting around and call invaders invaders. No tariffs.
If somebody illegally crosses the border, they will be treated as hostile invaders and and anybody crossing the border after July 1st will be considered an act of war.
"Help".
Please.
We don't need Mexico's help.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:The next logical step for Trump is to escalate the border war to machine-guns and land mines, but he'd lose some votes in 2020. Same thing if he opens concentration camps, complete with cremation furnaces, for illegal migrants. It is not too farfetched for Trump:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Yeah. I don't know what he's doing.
Let's stop pussyfooting around and call invaders invaders. No tariffs.
If somebody illegally crosses the border, they will be treated as hostile invaders and and anybody crossing the border after July 1st will be considered an act of war.
"Help".
Please.
We don't need Mexico's help.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/japanese-american-relocation
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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The modern Fed’s independence is an outgrowth of the wild inflation of the 1970s spurred by Richard Nixon’s meddling.
Nixon appointed Arthur Burns to run the Fed during his first term and then sought to control Fed policy through both overt and sleazy means. Nixon’s basic goal was to keep the economy hot through his 1972 reelection campaign, even if that meant running some risk of inflation. Inflation, of course, became a major problem in the mid-1970s. As inflation came back under control in the early 1980s, the conventional wisdom became that central bank independence was key to avoiding it.
There’s a theory that an incumbent president will always want to err in the direction of a little less unemployment now even if it means a little more inflation. And while on any given day that may be a reasonable trade-off, over the long run, it inevitably means a lot of inflation. And, as the theory goes, in the end, this won’t even get you sustainable low unemployment — just the dreaded “stagflation” of the late 1970s.
During the 1980s and ’90s, this evolved into a norm of Fed independence that had grown so strong that Obama administration economic policy officials would routinely decline to comment at all on monetary policy, whether on or off the record.
Still, at the end of the day, the Fed chair and the other members of the board are presidential appointees. Trump wants a Fed that will do what he wants. Modern central banking, meanwhile, is built on a foundation of independence from the day-to-day political needs of elected officials. Trump is not exactly a huge respecter of norms or a big believer in independence. That tradition has held up in the Trump years, but arguably more due to Trump’s sloppiness than to anything else.
More at "Judy Shelton’s potential nomination to a Federal Reserve Board seat"
www.vox.com/2019/6/5/18652025/judy-shelton-federal-reserve
The former “sound money” advocate and gold bug now suddenly backs Trump’s push for lower interest rates.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Letters sent from prison by the former Irish mob boss detailed his love for President Donald Trump and annoyance at the Mueller probe.
James "Whitey" Bulger wrote on a number of topics ranging from the first lady to the news media to Trump's foreign policy efforts.
“History may show Trump was the man of the hour,” Bulger wrote. “Feel China respects him and hesitant to try to bully him.”
Bulger also talked about Mueller, who led the FBI at a time when rogue agents had protected mob bosses like Bulger.
"Trump is experiencing what Mueller and company can orchestrate," Bulger said last September. "[Mueller] should observe biblical saying - 'Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.'"
The former mob boss said he enjoys Trump's war against the media and that the President has his vote in the next election.
More at Fox News www.foxnews.com/us/whitey-bulger-praised-trump-prison-letters
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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America’s Political Mood Is Now the ‘Most Liberal Ever Recorded’
The American public is in the mood for “big government.” According to the distinguished political scientist James Stimson’s “Public Policy Mood estimate” — a widely respected tool for measuring shifts in ideological opinion across time — the U.S. electorate is more sympathetic to left-wing economic policy today than at anytime in the past 68 years (which is as far back as Stimson’s data goes).
Economists who favor increasing worker power, promoting full employment, stimulating demand, and having the public sector play a more active role in channeling investment now have a lot more empirical ammunition at their disposal than they did a decade ago — while those who champion fiscal austerity, a hawkish posture on inflation, and supply-side tax cuts as a panacea for increasing productive investment have far fewer arrows in their quiver.
And it shows. The Democratic Party’s leading economic thinkers have ceased worrying about deficits and grown far friendlier to organized labor and comfortable with sweeping state interventions in the economy to mitigate inequality and facilitate socially beneficial investment. And while the Republican Party’s finest hacks have carried on supplying the same rationalizations for plutocracy they always have, other GOP policy wonks (like those working in Rubio’s office) and center-right think tanks (like the Niskanen Center) have been gravitating away from supply-side dogma and toward the formerly “liberal” terrain of industrial policy.
More at http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/06/americas-political-mood-is-now-
most-liberal-ever-recorded.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
America’s Political Mood Is Now the ‘Most Liberal Ever Recorded’
The American public is in the mood for “big government.” According to the distinguished political scientist James Stimson’s “Public Policy Mood estimate” — a widely respected tool for measuring shifts in ideological opinion across time — the U.S. electorate is more sympathetic to left-wing economic policy today than at anytime in the past 68 years (which is as far back as Stimson’s data goes).
Economists who favor increasing worker power, promoting full employment, stimulating demand, and having the public sector play a more active role in channeling investment now have a lot more empirical ammunition at their disposal than they did a decade ago — while those who champion fiscal austerity, a hawkish posture on inflation, and supply-side tax cuts as a panacea for increasing productive investment have far fewer arrows in their quiver.
And it shows. The Democratic Party’s leading economic thinkers have ceased worrying about deficits and grown far friendlier to organized labor and comfortable with sweeping state interventions in the economy to mitigate inequality and facilitate socially beneficial investment. And while the Republican Party’s finest hacks have carried on supplying the same rationalizations for plutocracy they always have, other GOP policy wonks (like those working in Rubio’s office) and center-right think tanks (like the Niskanen Center) have been gravitating away from supply-side dogma and toward the formerly “liberal” terrain of industrial policy.
More at http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/06/americas-political-mood-is-now-
most-liberal-ever-recorded.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
The title of that article is quite misleading.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:What qualifies as the “liberal” or “conservative” position on a given issue evolves over time. This is most conspicuously apparent on social and cultural policy, where Barack Obama’s “liberal” 2008 position on gay marriage would be more “conservative” than some congressional Republicans in 2019. But Stimson’s "liberal" index confines itself to the role of government in the economy and only the economy.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
The title of that article is quite misleading.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/06/americas-political-mood-is-now-
most-liberal-ever-recorded.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:What qualifies as the “liberal” or “conservative” position on a given issue evolves over time. This is most conspicuously apparent on social and cultural policy, where Barack Obama’s “liberal” 2008 position on gay marriage would be more “conservative” than some congressional Republicans in 2019. But Stimson’s "liberal" index confines itself to the role of government in the economy and only the economy.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
The title of that article is quite misleading.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/06/americas-political-mood-is-now-
most-liberal-ever-recorded.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
A more appropriate title would be "According to Stimson's Liberal Index, which confines itself to the role of government in the economy and only the economy, America’s Political Mood Is Now the ‘Most Liberal Ever Recorded’"
I would agree with that statement. But that's not what the article title says at all.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Economic policy divides the GOP and unites Democrats
www.vox.com/2019/6/11/18659986/voter-study-group-democrats-economics
The study, released Tuesday, gauged support for different progressive economic policy ideas and then compared the views of low-income voters (with less than $40,000 per year in household income) to more comfortable ones (with more than $80,000 per year in household income). For Democrats, the more affluent voters were generally more left-wing, but the difference is small.
For Republicans, by contrast, there’s a huge fall-off in support for progressive economic policy ideas as you go up the income ladder.
Alignment with cultural conservatism (but not economic conservatism) is near universal among Republicans, and it keeps the party together even as its members have a lot of disagreements about specific economic policy issues.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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