Tag: cowards

Reducing trade with China doesn’t increase jobs, it increases prices

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❝ Before announcing import tariffs on more than 1,300 types of Chinese-made goods worth around $60 billion per year, in early March Trump unveiled sweeping tariffs of 25% on steel and 10% on aluminum, which he justified on the basis of national security. Trump insists that a tariff on a small fraction of imported steel – the price of which is set globally – will suffice to address a genuine strategic threat.

Most experts, however, find that rationale dubious. Trump himself has already undercut his national-security claim by exempting most major exporters of steel to the US. Canada, for example, is exempted on the condition of a successful renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, effectively threatening the country unless it gives into US demands…

❝ As is often the case, Trump seems to be fixated on a bygone problem. Recall that, by the time Trump began talking about his border wall, immigration from Mexico had already dwindled to near zero. And by the time he started complaining about China depressing its currency’s exchange rate, the Chinese government was in fact propping up the renminbi.

Likewise, Trump is introducing his steel tariffs after the price of steel has already increased by about 130% from its trough, owing partly to China’s own efforts to reduce its excess capacity. But Trump is not just addressing a non-issue. He is also inflaming passions and taxing US relationships with key allies. Worst of all, his actions are motivated by pure politics. He is eager to seem strong and confrontational in the eyes of his electoral base.

Neither good sense nor knowledgeable decisions prevail. Trump’s rule by mouth continues to be perfectly acceptable to the ignorant cult of his followers and cowards in Congress.

“VOTE THEM OUT!”

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❝ In a historic groundswell of youth activism, hundreds of thousands of teenagers and their supporters rallied across the U.S. against gun violence Saturday, vowing to transform fear and grief into a “vote-them-out” movement and tougher laws against weapons and ammo.

They took to the streets of the nation’s capital and such cities as Boston, New York, Chicago, Houston, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Los Angeles and Oakland, California – and Santa Fe, New Mexico – in the kind of numbers seen during the Vietnam era, sweeping up activists long frustrated by stalemate in the gun debate and bringing in lots of new, young voices.

They were called to action by a brand-new corps of leaders: student survivors of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 people dead Feb. 14…

❝ “We will continue to fight for our dead friends,” Delaney Tarr, a Parkland survivor, declared from the stage. The crowd roared with approval as she laid down the students’ central demand: a ban on “weapons of war” for all but warriors.

Student protesters called for a ban on high-capacity magazines and assault-type weapons like the one used by the killer in Parkland, comprehensive background checks, and a higher minimum age to buy guns.

Overdue. As in the VietNam War era, this might be the time when a single issue serves as dividing line between courage and progress on the Left – and predictable do-nothing policies from centrist Democrats, Republicans committed to 18th Century bigotry, ignoranus social policies.

Testimony from Fusion GPS on Trump and the Russians. Republicans don’t want you to see this!

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❝ This is the document released publicly by California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, of Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson’s testimony to committee staff taken behind closed doors on August 22, 2017.

Click here to get to the CNN Post of the testimony. That creepy feeling is just the NSA watching you through the camera on your computing device.

Cycling Mom Fired for Giving Our Fake President The Finger

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Life in a Slightly-Free Country — Click to enlarge — Brendan Smialowski/AFP

❝ A photo of Juli Briskman flipping off President Trump’s motorcade while riding her bike went viral, and now, her employer – Akima LLC – has fired her for it…

❝ She was told that the snap — which Briskman made her profile picture on Twitter and Facebook — violated Akima’s social media policy, even though she didn’t have the company listed as her place of work anywhere on either platform. She said that she emphasized to the company that she wasn’t working when the photo was taken but was told, as a government contractor, Akima’s business could be hurt by the shot.

Unsurprising; but, the company recently reprimanded a male employee for deliberate obscene pejorative statements online clearly identifying him as an employee of Akima. He kept his job. Chickenshit management is sufficiently scared of our Fake President – and careless of freedom of expression by women – to increase the penalty for such expression to firing.

My suggestion is one of the oldest around the world, free country or not. Boycott the bastards. Any contact with Akima, business or otherwise? Shut it off. Don’t spend a penny in any way which might benefit their balance sheet. Let them know that the rights of working people are supposed to be as important as the president – fake or otherwise.

No One Is Taking On Pot Legalization

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❝ Why don’t more politicians attempt to make marijuana legalization a national issue?

Harry Enten over at FiveThirtyEight looked at the polling last week and wondered about it. And the numbers are impressive. As he reports, almost two-thirds of Americans backed legalization in one recent poll, and while Democrats are somewhat more likely to favor it, the gap between the parties is unusually small for a policy question. Enten suspects that a big reason no politician has taken it up as a national issue is that they just haven’t caught up with the rapidly moving shift in public opinion.

❝ That’s possible. But I can think of some other reasons.

RTFA to check out what Jonathan Bernstein thinks are the reasons.

Poisonally, I think chickenshit politicians have chickenshit reasons to rationalize away most progressive action. Followed closely by cowardly reasons they use to rationalize away most action that might jeopardize re-election in the slightest.

American Essay Journalism — Donald Trump Is the First White President

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❝ It is insufficient to state the obvious of Donald Trump: that he is a white man who would not be president were it not for this fact. With one immediate exception, Trump’s predecessors made their way to high office through the passive power of whiteness — that bloody heirloom which cannot ensure mastery of all events but can conjure a tailwind for most of them. Land theft and human plunder cleared the grounds for Trump’s forefathers and barred others from it. Once upon the field, these men became soldiers, statesmen, and scholars; held court in Paris; presided at Princeton; advanced into the Wilderness and then into the White House. Their individual triumphs made this exclusive party seem above America’s founding sins, and it was forgotten that the former was in fact bound to the latter, that all their victories had transpired on cleared grounds. No such elegant detachment can be attributed to Donald Trump—a president who, more than any other, has made the awful inheritance explicit.

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❝ The first white president in American history is also the most dangerous president—and he is made more dangerous still by the fact that those charged with analyzing him cannot name his essential nature, because they too are implicated in it.

One of the best pieces of the type I have read in months. There are many paragraphs which sound like they need criticism at their entry – and complete themselves with insight.

A worthwhile read, my friends.