applegrove
applegrove's JournalOne real reason for tariffs is to get rid of progressive income tax too.
That is what Trump and the oligarchs want. They need huge tariff numbers to pay for defence and give subsidies to oil and gas and the like. IMHO
Self own: so the people working right below authoritarians
are responsible? So Trump is not responsible for anything that happens under his watch like measles or the spreads of a newly evolved AIDs virus, or people who die because MEDICAID is cut, or on and on and on. That leaves Musk as responsible.
I think with trump threatening 200% tariffs on Europe
and 50% on Canada, in instances where he was lashing out at the other countries' tariff 'reply' to him, implies his tariffs will be much more volatile that McKinley's. This is about sovereignty for Canada. We lose Healthcare and a very decent place to live and grow in if we get annexed. It is like what McNamarra said of Vietnam in the end: you can't beat a home grown insurgency when people are defending their native land. Trump will have to quadruple tariffs and still Canada will be Canada and Europe will be Europe while Trump throws tariffs around like Bam Bam with a club in the Flintstones. There is more volatility in what Trump is trying to accomplish than what McKinley did (not that I have studied McKinley).
Misunderstanding McKinley Why the Gilded Age Tariff Model Won't Work for Trump
Misunderstanding McKinley
Why the Gilded Age Tariff Model Won’t Work for Trump
Aroop Mukharji
March 14, 2025
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/misunderstanding-mckinley
"SNIP..........
U.S. President William McKinley is having his biggest moment since 1928, when his face was printed on the $500 bill. For the last few decades, only a smattering of quirky historians and cult devotees have paid much attention to him. But in repeated comments over the last several years, including in his second inaugural address, President Donald Trump has brought McKinley back into the spotlight. McKinley was “a natural businessman,” Trump remarked, who “made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent.”
Tariffs are at the core of Trump’s veneration of McKinley. This economic policy defined McKinley’s political career. His final act as a congressman was spearheading the McKinley Tariff Act of 1890, which set the average tariff on dutiable imports at around 50 percent. For most of his professional life, McKinley conceptualized American power and security as functions of the country’s domestic economic well-being, not the size of its military. This was not unusual. Two protective oceans, new industrial wealth, legal limits on the military, and few foreign threats led even the U.S. Navy in the Gilded Age to often see its primary peacetime role as protecting commerce.
Today, across the U.S. national security establishment, economics is once again a central concern. For Trump, U.S. alliances and relationships, Washington’s reputation, and even foreign threats often boil down to a single—if misleading—statistic, such as a trade deficit. McKinley’s tariff policy thus offers Trump an elegantly simple solution to the United States’ many, varied challenges. One policy to solve them all.
The problem for Trump is not a lack of precedent; his policies’ connection to American history is clear. The problem is that McKinley’s tariff approach does not suit today’s world. What is more, whereas McKinley used tariffs primarily to accomplish a domestic goal—to expand U.S. industry, Trump’s primary goal is external. He wants to change the behavior of other countries, relying on the threat of blanket tariffs to bring them to the negotiating table and extract concessions in areas of disagreement far beyond trade. Trump will judge his success not by measuring the tariffs’ effect on U.S. economic health but by whether allies and adversaries cave to his demands. In essence, Trump has McKinley’s model backward.
.............SNIP"
Populist Simplicity in a Hyper-Complex World: Will Trump Overplay His Hand?
Populist Simplicity in a Hyper-Complex World: Will Trump Overplay His Hand?
Hardeep Matharu dissects what the now infamous Oval Office meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky revealed about the American President’s approach – and speaks to political scientist Brian Klaas about why his ‘alternative realities’ don’t stack up against real-world complexities
Hardeep Matharu
13 March 2025
https://bylinetimes.com/2025/03/13/populist-simplicity-in-a-hyper-complex-world-will-trump-overplay-his-hand/
"SNIP...........
Having led his country in a brave and much commended defence since Putin’s full invasion in 2022, the man carries around within him direct, personal, first-hand, experience of the blood being shed.
While agreeing with Trump that this had to stop, he repeatedly questioned how the President’s “deal” alone would be able to enforce a ceasefire with the “terrorist and killer” Vladimir Putin, who he said had already broken previous obligations of the same kind 25 times.
Putin respects me, I don’t think he’ll break an agreement I broker, Trump replied, (as has much been commented on) Godfather-like. Then again, anything could happen, he acknowledged – including a bomb falling on the heads of those in the Oval Office that moment.
Zelensky appeared aghast and baffled at just how to navigate the circus around him. When the former comedian who played a president-turned-President was asked 19 minutes into the meeting by a reporter why he wasn’t wearing a suit, he couldn’t mask his underlying contempt.
............SNIP"
Yup. And why would billionaires want to destroy the very
system that made them so rich, many of them in the last 20 years. Yup. The billionaires are loco
batshit
psychotic
lunatic
mad
nuts
crazy
maniacal
maniac
mental
gaga
paranoid
crazed
psycho
paranoidal
deranged
looney
whacky
disturbed
demented
strange
irrational
unhinged
loony
whacko
nutty
unbalanced
cuckoo
wacko
screwy
eccentric
certifiable
wacky
ballistic
batty
bonkers
cracked
bedlam
daft
unreasonable
around the bend
haywire
kooky
foolish
odd
barmy
depressed
daffy
loony tunes
obsessed
crackbrained
bughouse
meshuga
out to lunch
moonstruck
loco
crackpot
unsound
scatty
non compos mentis
brainsick
kookie
hysteric
bats
meshuggah
frantic
looney tunes
distraught
meshugah
hysterical
distracted
schizophrenic
balmy
meshugge
delusional
fruity
off
wud
paranoic
neurotic
delirious
cranky
loopy
fey
sociopathic
schizoid
out of one's mind
off one's rocker
obsessive-compulsive
paranoiac
delusionary
off one's gourd
crackers
queer
disordered
off one's head
oddball
aberrant
tetched
out of one's head
nuclear
touched
dotty
berserk
witless
pixillated
pixilated
amuck
raving
senseless
monomaniacal
frenzied
potty
teched
ape
amok
wigged-out
monomaniac
fixated
bananas
* https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/insane
Right and it is their heavy trucks that destroy the pavement
on highways and roads yet it is all vehicle operators who pay a gas tax to pay for repaving. That is a subsidy to the rich. Just like education and the law and everything else. That is why they pay more in taxes: their money (in the form of a fleet of trucks for the corporations of the stocks they own) disporportionally tears up more roads.
What's the Matter with Billionaires?
What’s the Matter with Billionaires?
March 8, 2025 at 9:23 am EST By Taegan Goddard 50 Comments
https://politicalwire.com/2025/03/08/whats-the-matter-with-billionaires/
"SNIP..........
Adam Bonica: “I analyzed over 40 years of Forbes 400 data and found a striking pattern: billionaire wealth grows significantly faster under Democratic administrations (+57.1% average growth) compared to Republican ones (+16.5%).”
.........SNIP"
Applegrove:
The Billionaires obviously like to inflict pain.... at least the ones who surround Trump.
And swaddles them. Trump swaddles the MAGA
and does their thinking for them. Putin swaddles Trump and does Trump's thinking. I was trying to think of a word that described Trump relationship to Putin. When you are swaddled you can't take any independent action.
Swaddling is an ancient practice of wrapping infants in blankets or similar cloths so that movement of the limbs is tightly restricted. Swaddling bands were often used to further restrict the infant. Swaddling fell out of favour in the 17th century.
You have to wonder about some of the negative comments,
including the Debbie downer ones about Democrats at the SOTU.
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