China (and Japan) can bankrupt the U.S. Government in short order by dumping the U.S. treasury bonds they own. These bonds help fund deficit government spending.
I’m convinced Donald Trump is a modern-day mad king. (Mad King” typically refers to a ruler, like King George III of England or King Aerys II Targaryen from A Song of Ice and Fire, who is known for periods of mental instability or erratic and often cruel behavior.)
Trump wants to show the world how mighty he is by having a massive military parade in Washington, D.C. on his birthday. Historically, it is authoritarian world leaders who hold military parades — Russia and North Korea come to mind.
Most Republican legislators aren’t interested in cutting the federal budget deficit. Trump raised the deficit during his first term, and he’s on course to raise it to record levels this term.
I am double-minded when it comes to the federal budget deficit. A balanced budget seems like a good idea, but in practice, it leads to pain and suffering for middle-class, working-class, and poor people. Millions of families live from paycheck to paycheck. Budget cuts necessary to balance the budget will bankrupt scores of Americans (and impossible if Congress is unwilling to make massive cuts to defense and security funding).
Ohio’s Republican legislators and Governor Mike DeWine have made it clear that they are anti-public education. Billions of dollars meant for public school budgets were cut from the latest two year budget, with some of this money going to pay for students to attend primarily religious schools.
Get ready for a marked uptick in farm bankruptcies. Trump’s tariffs, especially on China, will cause horrific harm to American families. In 2018, Trump’s tariffs harmed American farms. The President saved his ass by giving farmers billions in welfare payments. Most farmers vote Republican. I wonder if they are tired of all the “winning.”
Trump signed an executive order designed to bring back “beautiful” coal mining. The President couldn’t care less about the environment. He has rolled back countless environmental laws. His goal is to return the United States to the good old days of the 1950s (or the late 1920s) of rampant air, water, and land pollution.)
Trump sees himself as the greatest president ever. The President thinks his face should be carved on Mount Rushmore. History will show that he is one of the worst presidents, right down there with Herbert Hoover.
Chris Hayes said of Trump today, “You set the house on fire, watched it burn, and then lost your nerve and put it out. You now have a partially burned house. Great job.” Yep.
Bonus — It is clear the Trump and his administration don’t give a shit about working class/poor people. From cutting food stamps and Section 8 funding to the Home Energy Assistance Program (HEAP), the message is clear: if you aren’t rich, you don’t matter.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Good morning, Bruce. I read those takes, and it’s of course scary stuff. We are seeing the rewards for Neoliberalism. As well as the Powell Memo, media sites on that document and people need to read it and print it out for their own use, what an eyeopener that was ! Dystopia, Milton Friedman, etc. I’m very worried about the stock market, how it reeled in 1998 there in Russia, accepting ” shock therapy” from Goldman – Sachs advisors. This could happen to us, if the dollar collapses! You don’t want to be in a big city if this happens. April 20th could be an important day because it’s Hitler’s birthday, and there’s rumbling that Drumpf may trigger the Insurrection Act on that day. I hope not, that it’s just hyperbole. We’ll see.
More evidence that the Fake Tan Fuhrer doesn’t give a shit about poor, working-class or even middle-class people: the tariffs. He claims that they are intended, in part, to bring manufacturing back to the US. But, tariffs or no tariffs, it would take years, even decades, for that to happen. And those shuttered factories in the “Rust Belt” won’t be re-opened (if indeed they’re still standing). Rather, the new manufacturing will go to the so-called “Right to Work” states where unions are all but not existent. That–along with the fact that automation will mean fewer jobs–means that those employed in new enterprises (or reincarnations of old ones) won’t have the same standard of living as, say, autoworkers in Detroit or steel workers in Pittsburgh enjoyed until about the 1970s.
Mad King is right. My relatives in Europe, (who actually have a King), have been calling The Dondal “De Dolle Koning” for months now. It was (the other) mad king George III, who was also determined to squeeze the people till they finally rebelled. Who besides me has the urge to burn King Dondal in effigy? People in office are too cowed to stand up to The Dondal so it’s come down to us common folk to be the people’s voices. Let’s get out there Bruce and block off Rt. 15 with all the Williams County patriots. Hell no we won’t go!
I have no doubts whatsoever that Trump is a wannabe tyrant. His love of Putin is evidence enough of that. His desire for military parades to honour his birthday is what we might expect from the cult of personality we see in North Korea. He wants to rule, not lead. He wants a society that worships him, and does not challenge him.
He always was a tyrant to whatever extent he could. “rule not lead” says it all. He seizes power as best he can. Interesting times, Ben.
Bingo. I just returned from a business trip to China and Vietnam to visit our own factory in Shanghai as well as numerous clients across China and Vietnam. China is way ahead of US in terms of technology. Lots of manufacturing is automated, and Chinese factories that set up in Vietnam (because the increasingly educated Chinese populace don’t want factory jobs and demanded higher wages, hello) are using the cheap labor of Vietnamese until they too become more educated and don’t want those jobs anymore.
Yes, there are human rights issues in both countries – I am not downplaying that. China, however, has done a good job of promoting education, building massive infrastructure (transportation, highways, wind, solar, nuclear power), controlling land use/development, promoting electric vehicles (10 Chinese companies make amazing electric vehicles, and China imposes a tax on gas vehicles, so half of the vehicles on the road are electric), and their air quality has improved dramatically since I first went in 2004.
Where am I going with this? Tariffs are NOT going to cause massive manufacturing in the US. What I am seeing in my industry is that we’re shifting purchasing to other countries or trans-shipping when possible. For example, we own a factory in Germany, so we’re buying raw materials from our German facility instead of through our Chinese facility because the tariff is lower from Europe. A customer who was having their products made in Canada has switched to a contract manufacturer in Turkey. These are the things companies are scrambling to do.
In the 1950s New York city had a large garment manufacturing industry. (my grandparents worked there) Eventually those factories closed as the factory owners moved out of state to places with lower property taxes and wages, and easier access for delivery trucks. those newer factories have been replaced by some in the Far East and for similar reasons: money! If you think flipping burgers is tedious, try sewing T-shirts (you sit at the sewing machine, which runs much faster than home machines do. your back and neck get cramps and your fingers ache from guiding the fabric. you don’t sew the whole shirt, just one section, over and over again, filling bins with shirt parts for the next worker to join) Nobody wants to repeat that era again!