Finally Friday Reads: Shutdown or Meltdown?

Posted: March 14, 2025 | Author: dakinikat | Filed under: #FARTUS, #MAGAnomics, Elon Musk, kakistocracy, kleptocracy, Polycrisis, Psychopaths in charge | Tags: @repeat1968. John Buss, Chuck Schumer, Doge, FARTUS, government shutdown, Judge orders rehire of Federal workers | 12 Comments

“So, not even two months. Here we are.” John Buss, @repeat1968, @johnbuss.bsky.social

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

I’ve always been an opponent of letting the US Government shut down. As an economist, I know what kind of misery that creates for many people as well, as the possibility of a government default, which could haunt us for many years. My worry is real, but this situation is unique, and typically, the party that tries to shut the government down takes the political heat. I understand what he’s worried about. If we default on debt we become a risky debtor. If we shut the Government down, the weakest among us will suffer needlessly. Default has incredible consequences for the Social Security trust fund, the strength of our dollar, and if anyone will ever buy a US t-bill or t-bond now or ever. That includes war bonds if we ever need them again. I don’t like it, but a default would be unbelievably destructive to the country’s future. I hate that we’re in this position.

How it played out this last night and this morning pitted Schumer against many of his most strong-willed colleagues. Schumer’s support even earned him a pat on the head from #FARTUS. Trump’s always one to take advantage of a bad situation. He interpreted the move as support of the Doge Bulldozer moving through government agencies and policy. That was something one of my Canadian friends from way back in my Fired Dog Lake days predicted. I’d like to read your thoughts on that because I’m unsure how it will be received by folks outside Beltway machinations.

Let’s review what’s out there in the Press and Social media about the move that separated many Democratic senators from the leader. This is from AXIOS as proffered by Andrew Sollender. “House Dems go into “complete meltdown” as Schumer folds”.

House Democrats erupted into apoplexy Thursday night after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he would support Republicans’ stopgap government funding measure.

Why it matters: House Democrats feel like they “walked the plank,” in the words of one member. They voted almost unanimously against the measure, only to watch Senate Democrats seemingly give it the green light.

“Complete meltdown. Complete and utter meltdown on all text chains,” said the member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer sensitive details of members’ internal conversations.

A senior House Democrat said “people are furious” and that some rank-and-file members have floated the idea of angrily marching onto the Senate floor in protest.

Others are talking openly about supporting primary challenges to senators who vote for the GOP spending bill.

Driving the news: Schumer said in a floor speech Thursday that while the GOP measure is “very bad,” the possibility of a government shutdown “has consequences for America that are much, much worse.”

“A shutdown would give Donald Trump the keys to the city, the state and the country,” Schumer said.

The comments likely clear a path for at least eight Senate Democrats to vote for the bill — enough for Republicans to overcome the upper chamber’s 60-vote filibuster threshold.

Zoom in: All but one House Democrat voted against the bill earlier this week, in large part because it lacks language to keep the Trump administration from cutting congressionally approved spending.

“There were many battleground Dems in the House … that were uncomfortable, semi-uncomfortable, with the vote,” said one House Democrat. “The Senate left the House at the altar.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), in remarks to his House colleagues at their annual retreat Thursday, lauded them for standing up to President Trump by voting against the bill, according to multiple sources.

When he praised House Democrats’ votes, he received a standing ovation. When he mentioned Senate Democrats, members booed.

What we’re hearing: House Democrats’ text chains lit up Thursday night with expressions of blinding anger, according to numerous lawmakers who described the conversations on the condition of anonymity.

“People are PISSED,” one House Democrat told Axios in a text message.

Several members — including moderates — have begun voicing support for a primary challenge to Schumer, floating Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) as possible candidates, three House Democrats said.

One lawmaker even vowed at the House Democratic retreat to “write a check tonight” supporting Ocasio-Cortez, said the senior House Democrat.

Another Democrat told Axios the ideation has gone a step further: “There is definitely a primary recruitment effort happening right now … not just Schumer, but for everyone who votes no.”

More gossip and speculation at the link.

Schumer himself appeared on Chris Hayes last night as well as wrote an Op-Ed for the New York Times. “Chuck Schumer: Trump and Musk Would Love a Shutdown. We Must Not Give Them One.”

Over the past two months, the United States has confronted a bitter truth: The federal government has been taken over by a nihilist.

President Trump has taken a blowtorch to our country and wielded chaos like a weapon. Most Republicans in Congress, meanwhile, have caved to his every whim. The Grand Old Party has devolved into a crowd of Trump sycophants and MAGA radicals who seem to want to burn everything to the ground.

Now, Republicans’ nihilism has brought us to a new brink of disaster: Unless Congress acts, the federal government will shut down Friday at midnight.

As I have said many times, there are no winners in a government shutdown. But there are certainly victims: the most vulnerable Americans, those who rely on federal programs to feed their families, get medical care and stay financially afloat. Communities that depend on government services to function will suffer.

This week Democrats offered a way out: Fund the government for another month to give appropriators more time to do their jobs. Republicans rejected this proposal.

Why? Because Mr. Trump doesn’t want the appropriators to do their job. He wants full control over government spending.

He isn’t the first president to want this, but he may be the first president since Andrew Jackson to successfully cow his party into submission. That leads Democrats to a difficult decision: Either proceed with the bill before us or risk Mr. Trump throwing America into the chaos of a shutdown.

This, in my view, is no choice at all.

Emptywheel (a friend from my Fire Dog Lake Doays) wrote a scathing piece on the situation. It indicates how desperately we need the Democrats in Congress to get their acts together. It isn’t easy dealing with chaos, but it’s even worse if you contribute to it. “Democrats Have to Stop Making Political Decisions with an Eye Towards 2026.” I’m unsure if that’s all they’re thinking about or if they’re just running around like chickens with their heads caught up.

I’ve been out of pocket as events moved towards today’s cloture vote on the dogshit continuing resolution Republicans have written. It’s not yet clear whether seven Democrats (in addition to John Fetterman) will join Chuck Schumer — who has said he’ll vote for cloture — in helping Republicans pass it, or whether a Democrat will buy some time.

It’s clear that Schumer’s excuse only emphasizes that there are no good options. He says if there’s a shutdown, Republicans will only reopen those parts of government they want. In the face of the shuttering of USAID and dismantlement of Department of Education, that seems like a futile worry.

Among the best arguments I’ve seen against a shutdown, laid out but dropped here by Josh Marshall, is that a shutdown would provide Trump a way to halt legal proceedings by deeming those lawyers non-essential.

I was told yesterday that a major driver for Dems was the fear that a shutdown would slow down or stop the various court cases against DOGE. Honestly, that sounded so stupid to me that I was skeptical. But this afternoon I heard it from other key directions. I don’t know if it’s the biggest driver but just on the basis of what I heard I get a sense that it’s a major one. That seems so wrongheaded, so lawyer-brained, that when I got the final piece of the puzzle in front of me and realized this was a real thing, it was hard for me to even process.

Schumer described it this way in his speech yesterday:

Justice, and the courts, extremely troubling, I believe. A shutdown could stall Federal court cases, one of the best redoubts against Trump’s lawlessness, and could require a furlough of critical staff at the courts, denying victims and defendants alike their day in court, dragging out appeals and clogging the justice system for months and even years.

I don’t think this is lawyer-brained at all. Trump could simply call the lawyers engaged in these suits non-essential, stalling legal challenges in their current status, and then finding new test cases to establish a precedent while judges were stymied.

In both Phoenix, where a reduction in force affected all the people running the courthouse, and in the Perkins Coie lawsuit, where a hearing the other day reviewed all the Executive Branch personnel, from Marshals to GSA, who keep the courthouse running, the Executive’s ability to limit the Judiciary via manipulation of facilities and staff has already become a live issue. Here’s how Beryl Howell described the way in which Trump’s attempt to exclude Perkins Coie from federal buildings could be enforced via Executive branch personnel.

THE COURT: I just want to make sure because we, in the judiciary — we’re the third branch. We are not the executive branch. We are not subject to this guidance. But our landlord, and all of the federal courthouses around the country is GSA —

MR. BUTSWINKAS: GSA.

THE COURT: — General Services Administration. And the people who do the security at our front doors, all across the country in federal courthouses, are DOJ-component employees from the U.S. Marshals Service or court security officers. So they are all executive branch employees.

Meanwhile the court cases are making progress. Just this week, we’ve had two judges order reinstatement of all the people fired, grant FOIA status to DOGE, and grant discovery to Democratic Attorneys General (plus in one of the two reinstatement cases, Judge Alsup ordered a deposition from an OPM person involved in the firing). As of this week, DOGE now has to answer for its actions in the courts.

Imagine, for example, if a shutdown made it easier for DHS to keep Mahmoud Khalil in Louisiana for the duration of a shutdown, even if they simply said moving him back to SDNY (or New Jersey) is not a priority. There are other cases where the government is being ordered to pay back payments; a shutdown would make such recourse unavailable to anyone who has not yet sued. In the financial clawback cases (where EPA and FEMA seized funds already awarded), a shutdown would give the FBI time to try to frame the case against plaintiffs they’re pursuing, while the plaintiffs get no protection in the meantime. A key flaw was revealed in the lawsuit against Perkins Coie in the hearing the other day (which I’ll return to); if given the time, I would expect Trump to try the same trick against another law firm, fixing that flaw, in an attempt to eliminate any anti-Trump legal teams in the country.

So the concern that a shutdown would eliminate one of two sources of power is real.

I’m agnostic about whether a shutdown brings more advantage than risks.

The rest of her essay argues that everyone is far too interested in the midterm elections.

(snip)

One thing I am absolutely certain of, however, is that Democrats on both sides of this debate are framing it in terms of 2026. Those justifiably furious at Chuck Schumer are thinking in terms of primaries against any Senator who supports cloture. They’re demanding a filibuster so that elected Democrats, as Democrats, be seen wielding some power, so the party doesn’t look feckless to potential voters. Those afraid of a shutdown are discussing electoral consequences in 2026. Polls are measuring who would be blamed in the polls.

This mindset has plagued both sides of Democratic debates for two months, with disastrous consequences.

Democracy will be preserved or lost in the next three months. And democracy will be won or lost via a nonpartisan political fight over whether enough Americans want to preserve their way of life to fight back, in a coalition that includes far more than Democrats. You win this fight by treating Trump and Elon as the villain, not by making any one Democrat a hero (or worse still, squandering week after week targeting Democratic leaders while letting Elon go ignored).

Either way, this is an untenable situation.

Today is another day of the country finding out none of this is normal. NBC News has a running thread on every crazy thing on deck for the Beltway today. “Government shutdown live updates: Senate to vote on funding bill today; Dr. Mehmet Oz faces confirmation hearing. President Donald Trump will deliver remarks at the Justice Department, a frequent target of his and his allies’ government weaponization claims.” Have I mentioned I have a TV, but it’s been sitting in a box for nearly three years? I just don’t have the stamina to set it up and watch all this craziness on a big screen.

Reality TV stars and swindlers are about all Trump has to offer up these days.

Hassan grills Dr Oz about promoting a bunch of scam "medical" products on TV, including "raspberry ketones." She notes that "it seems to me you are still unwilling to take accountability for your promotion of unproven snake oil remedies to millions of your viewers."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-03-14T16:04:34.209Z

The only good news I found today was this.

Judges order Trump to rehire thousands of fired federal workers.

Two federal courts are ruling that the firings of probationary federal workers were improper and that tens of thousands of those employees must be immediately reinstated. The Trump administration is calling the ruling absurd and unconstitutional and is vowing to fight back. NBC’s Garrett Haake reports for “TODAY.”

It seems we are fully reliant on the Judiciary Branch to stop the destruction of our Government and democracy. It’s not like we didn’t warn people, either. This is in Fortune, as reported by the AP. ” The Trump administration must bring back thousands of federal workers fired by Elon Musk’s DOGE, judge rules.” The Judge really read the riot act to the Federal attorney also.

A federal judge on Thursday ordered President Donald Trump’s administration to reinstate thousands—if not tens of thousands—of probationary workers let go in mass firings across multiple agencies last month, saying that the terminations were directed by a personnel office that had no authority to do so.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco ordered the departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Defense, Energy, the Interior and the Treasury to immediately offer reinstatement to employees terminated on or about Feb. 13 and 14 using guidance from the Office of Personnel Management and its acting director, Charles Ezell.

Alsup directed the agencies to report back within seven days with a list of probationary employees and an explanation of how the departments complied with his order as to each person.

The temporary restraining order came in a lawsuit filed by a coalition of labor unions and organizations as the Republican administration moves to dramatically downsize the federal workforce.

The White House and the Department of Justice did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

Alsup expressed frustration with what he called the government’s attempt to sidestep laws and regulations governing a reduction in its workforce — which it is allowed to do — by firing probationary workers who lack protections. He was appalled that employees were fired for poor performance despite receiving glowing evaluations just months earlier.

“It is sad, a sad day, when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie,” he said. “That should not have been done in our country.”

Opinion: 3 ways DOGE challengers could win court cases from CNN

It’s the day before my favorite holiday, The Ides of March. For those who don’t know, if I could go back in time and eliminate before they came into power, it would be the baby that became Julius Ceasar. They offed him too late to help history. So, there’s likely a few folks walking around the White House right now that should Beware the Ides of March. Nipping the Roman Empire in the bud would have definitely put us farther away from the Dark Time Line.

Here’s tomorrow’s version of the Ides of March.

Donald Trump has suggested that the US should buy Gaza, will get Greenland “one way or another” as well as the Panama Canal, ignited a new trade war, floated the annexation of Canada, and hired the world’s richest weirdo (who also happens to be the world’s richest man) to fire tens of thousands of federal employees. And that’s just one country.
Romania’s leading presidential candidate was arrested after winning the first round of elections with the assistance of Russian bots, showing that Putin is determined to mess with all his neighbors. Look for the Moldovan election in a few months; Russia is sowing chaos with energy sabotage.
Germany’s most successful far-right party since World War II just had a record-breaking result after the the US basically endorsed them. And don’t be fooled by Friedrich Merz’s lack of flair: The Europeans are about to try to build an independent defense, give the American abdication.
China’s DeepSeek has upended the AI market, throwing Silicon Valley into full-blown panic mode. And it will soon dominate the renewable energy market and have just been given a monumental soft-power gift the US abdication of 80 years of global leadership of the free world.

Tara Palmeri writes this on her blog, Red Letter. “Fear and Loathing in the West Wing. Inside the revolt against Elon Musk…”

The tolerance for Elon Musk inside of the White House is wearing thin, as they deal with the fallout of his calamitous interview with Larry Kudlow when he touched the third rail – entitlements. Even though Trump’s staffers are terrified of Musk, they know that if you try to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, you die, politically speaking.

“It’s no longer simmering resistance, people are fucking furious,” said a source with knowledge of the situation.

“Medicaid is not just for Black people in the ghetto, these are our voters,” said a Republican operative close to the White House.

Even before the interview, I’m told that the White House communications team was adamantly against letting Musk do the interview with Kudlow, even though he’s a former administration official and ally. They know that FOX News is a network that their older, white working-class voters watch closely and this was a rare televised interview for Musk, not the same as getting high with Joe Rogan.

Now they’re playing cleanup. Sure, they sent out a “Fact Check” memo from the White House highlighting that his words were garbled when he said he’s looking at the “waste and fraud in entitlement spending,” not entitlements all together. But then Musk went further, falsely claiming in the interview that Democrats use entitlement programs to attract illegal immigrants into the country so that they can add them to their voter rolls. It doesn’t help that earlier this month, Musk referred to Social Security as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.”

You can even see Kudlow shifting around uncomfortably during the interview.

Trump’s spokesperson Steven Cheung denied that there was an issue. “We love [Musk] doing media,” he said, pointing to his joint interview with Trump on Sean Hannity.

As promised, I want to share the ins and outs of my reporting process with you, so I first reached out to Trump’s personal pollster John McLaughlin after I learned about the meltdown over Musk’s interview to ask if he’s been polling Musk’s response in the interview. And I was shocked to learn that McLaughlin has not polled Musk at all, even though he’s clearly a political liability to the President. McLaughlin has been polling Trump for decades and was one of the main pollsters alongside Tony Fabrizio on the campaign. He said the last poll that he conducted that even remotely touched on Musk was about DOGE in November 2024 and it did not mention Musk by name.

“No one has asked us to do that poll,” McLaughlin told me.

Well, the public polling shows that the numbers for Musk – what some would call Trump’s heat shield – have been in free fall since Trump took office, with more than 53 percent of people having an unfavorable opinion of Musk, according to a new CNN poll. But surely Trump’s political operation, which to be fair is an impressive one, would want to know if Musk was starting to become a liability. No political consultant in Washington trusts public polling. They’d probably trust the opposition party’s polling over public polling. So that leaves me to believe that they are afraid of Trump’s appendage or it’s because Musk just donated $100 million to Trump’s political arm, which just so happens to be run by Trump’s other pollster Fabrizio. When I asked Fabrizio if he’s conducting polls on Musk favorables, he didn’t get back to me.

Regardless, I’ve heard that the White House is aware that Musk’s numbers are “dog shit,” according to a source. “

Mostly Monday Reads: Into the Woods

Posted: March 10, 2025 | Author: dakinikat | Filed under: #FARTUS, #MAGAnomics, Citizen's United & Super Pacs, kakistocracy, MAGA Political Carnage, Polycrisis | Tags: @johnbuss.bsky.social John Buss, Fairly Imbalanced Fox News, Justice Sotomayor, MAGA Big Lie Budget, MAGAnomics will kill us, overturn citizen's united, Piddle, Trump's bad economy, Twiddle and Resolve | 7 Comments

“Wait, what?” John Buss,
@johnbuss.bsky.social. @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

I’m still in that hazy period where I can’t believe it’s that dark, and I’m supposed to get up and function like it’s a normal day. Even my cats gave me a strange look since they know that morning kibble comes with the sunrise. Wasting the morning darkness is seriously cruel.

I admit I’m also in a hazy period as the US has been making history in ways I never thought possible. Sondheim’s great musical, which is referenced in the title, is my oldest daughter’s favorite. She endlessly listened to it, attended it, and played the Public TV version. It’s a good metaphor for what we’re going through. It’s a journey we must make to find something.

I’ll reference another song, but it’s from Paul Simon this time. “They’ve all gone to look for America.” You’re allowed to sing “Kathy, I’m lost” to me. My response is that I am, too. We’re in some kind of twilight but need more discovery. These days, a soundtrack is in demand.

This sad news is from The Guardian. It jolted me awake. “US added to international watchlist for rapid decline in civic freedoms. Civicus, an international non-profit, puts country alongside Democratic Republic of Congo, Italy, Pakistan and Serbia.” We may no longer be ‘the home of the free or the brave.’ Let me warm up here if I start referencing songs, I’m going to need to wake up a bit more so I can keep pitch.

The United States has been added to the Civicus Monitor Watchlist, which identifies countries that the global civil rights watchdog believes are currently experiencing a rapid decline in civic freedoms.

Civicus, an international non-profit organization dedicated to “strengthening citizen action and civil society around the world”, announced the inclusion of the US on the non-profit’s first watchlist of 2025 on Monday, alongside the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Italy, Pakistan and Serbia.

The watchlist is part of the Civicus Monitor, which tracks developments in civic freedoms across 198 countries. Other countries that have previously been featured on the watchlist in recent years include Zimbabwe, Argentina, El Salvador and the United Arab Emirates.

Mandeep Tiwana, co-secretary general of Civicus, said that the watchlist “looks at countries where we remain concerned about deteriorating civic space conditions, in relation to freedoms of peaceful assembly, association and expression”.

The selection process, the website states, incorporates insights and data from Civicus’s global network of research partners and data.

The decision to add the US to the first 2025 watchlist was made in response to what the group described as the “Trump administration’s assault on democratic norms and global cooperation”.

In the news release announcing the US’s addition, the organization cited recent actions taken by the Trump administration that they argue will likely “severely impact constitutional freedoms of peaceful assembly, expression, and association”.

The group cited several of the administration’s actions such as the mass termination of federal employees, the appointment of Trump loyalists in key government positions, the withdrawal from international efforts such as the World Health Organization and the UN Human Rights Council, the freezing of federal and foreign aid and the attempted dismantling of USAid.

The organization warned that these decisions “will likely impact civic freedoms and reverse hard-won human rights gains around the world”.

The group also pointed to the administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian protesters, and the Trump administration’s unprecedented decision to control media access to presidential briefings, among others.

Civicus described Trump’s actions since taking office as an “unparalleled attack on the rule of law” not seen “since the days of McCarthyism in the twentieth century”, stating that these moves erode the checks and balances essential to democracy.

“Restrictive executive orders, unjustifiable institutional cutbacks, and intimidation tactics through threatening pronouncements by senior officials in the administration are creating an atmosphere to chill democratic dissent, a cherished American ideal,” Tiwana said.

You may not have shared “An Evening with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor” at the Knight Foundation event in Miami. I’d like to share some of her thoughts here this morning. The purpose of the visit was summarized thusly. “Civil institutions are the foundation of a thriving democracy.” This highlight is from The New York Times. “Sotomayor Says Presidents Are Not Monarchs and Must Obey Rulings. Speaking in general terms at a Florida college and not naming President Trump, the Supreme Court justice’s remarks took on potency in the current climate.” The reporter on this is Adam Litpek. The event happened on February 11th.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, speaking at a Florida college on Tuesday, made pointed remarks about the limits of presidential power and her fear that government officials might flout court decisions.

“Our founders were hellbent on ensuring that we didn’t have a monarchy,” she said, “and the first way they thought of that was to give Congress the power of the purse.”

The justice made clear that she was speaking in general terms, but against the backdrop of President Trump’s blitz of executive orders to halt federal programs and the scores of legal challenges that followed, her comments took on a more telling cast.

In the first weeks of his new administration, Mr. Trump has argued that he is free to root out what he says is fraud and waste in the federal government even in the face of congressional commands to spend allocations. A federal judge ruled on Monday that the administration had defied his order to release billions in grant money.

On March 7th, Jacob Knutsen reported in Democracy Docket that “Judge Orders Trump to Release Some Of $2B in Frozen Foreign Aid.” Today is the deadline for that order.

A federal judge gave the Trump administration until Monday to pay several nonprofit groups and aid organizations affected by President Donald Trump’s broad freeze on foreign aid spending and his attempts to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), AP reports.

District Court Judge Amir Ali, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, issued the new deadline at the end of a four-hour hearing that came a day after the Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration’s emergency appeal asking it to stay one of Ali’s previous orders in the case.

The new deadline comes in a lawsuit filed by a global health group, an AIDS/HIV relief organization and a nonprofit journalism network challenging Trump’s day-one executive order to halt all foreign assistance for 90 days.

The total amount of aid kept from USAID contractors and grant recipients is around $2 billion, but Ali in his order limited payouts to only those organizations involved in the lawsuit. In the judge’s previous directives, he required the Trump administration to unfreeze all funding.

It’s unclear exactly how much money the administration will have to dispense by Monday. In a filing Friday, the plaintiffs said the government has yet to fulfill around 1,200 outstanding invoices totalling approximately $420 million for work already completed. The Trump administration said in a filing Thursday that it released around $70 million to the plaintiffs earlier this week.

So, we’re waiting. Will he do it? So, that’s my civics wandering today. I do want to discuss the economy. The amount of anxiety I feel about this should seriously be burning a lot more calories than it appears to be doing. Maybe it’s been offset by the Trulys and cookies. Who knows? So, Brian Beutler sums this situation up neatly in his blog Off Message. “Be Prepared. Trump is sabotaging the economy, but we shouldn’t assume public opinion will follow automatically.”

Donald Trump has done rapid, serious damage to the U.S. economy, and the MAGA elite knows it.

Saturated as the Trump movement is in fantasies and conspiracy theories, many of the people who manufacture myths for the Republican base do keep abreast of material reality. They fear being caught by surprise. They don’t feel any obligation to prepare for and mitigate risks on behalf of American citizens, but rather to generate storylines about looming crises that hold Trump personally harmless, or paint him as victim or hero.

In a recent New Republic article, the writer Greg Sargent documented the wave of panic washing over Fox News as its hosts and contributors reckon with the fact that Trump has already squandered his inheritance.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent admitted to CNBC that “this economy that we inherited” could be “starting to roll a bit.”

Even Trump himself seems to understand that headlines and indicators are about to turn south.

Which is to say: When they shit-talked the Biden economy throughout the 2024 campaign, they knew they were lying. They know that Joe Biden bequeathed Trump a strong economy, and they know Trump’s convulsive policy edicts (indiscriminate firings, indiscriminate tariff threats, the imposition and partial removal of actual tariffs, etc.) have already throttled growth and driven prices higher.

We may not see recession, we may not see inflation, we may not see the dreaded combination of the two. But we’ll be incredibly lucky to avoid all three.

And if any occur, we’re going to test the power of MAGA propaganda techniques. Can concerted lying convince enough people to deny the existence of economic hardship, or celebrate it, or blame it on Democrats, such that it doesn’t become a political drag on Trump?

For all the brain poison MAGA propagandists pump into our information environment, these early signs of discomfort suggest they know the truth of the matter. Which means they’re conscious of the coming deception: they’ll blame Biden and foreigners and liberals and Jews for causing economic pain, and circle their wagons around Trump, fully aware of their own lies.

Let’s take a look at that article from The New Republic written by Greg Sargent last week. “Fox News Suddenly Starts Panicking About Trump’s Economy: “Weakening!” Yes, they’re still blaming Joe Biden, but the talking heads at Fox are getting awfully nervous that President Trump might be on the verge of sending the economy into a tailspin.”

Fox News figures are willing to propagandize on President Trump’s behalf on pretty much every horror that he throws our way. Do Fox personalities back Trump when he sells out our allies in tandem with murderous tyrant Vladimir Putin? Yes, indeed. Do they support Trump when he tries to purge federal workers by the thousands to corruptly replace them with loyalists? Enthusiastically. Do they stick with Trump when he declares himself above the law, explicitly using the language of world-historical dictators to do so? Without reservations.

But it turns out there are limits. One topic Fox personalities are not quite as willing to run interference for Trump on is the economy. And with signs mounting that Trump’s economy is hitting the skids, they are beginning to sound the alarm.

It’s the latest indication that Trump’s political project is suddenly looking quite fragile. And it’s a sign that more dissent is coming.

On Fox News on Friday morning, host Maria Bartiromo practically shouted that “the jobs picture is weakening!” She tried to spin this somewhat positively, insisting investors are rallying because the weakening job market means the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates. But Bartiromo was blunt about the latest jobs report, which she pronounced “weaker than expected.”

That jobs report found that the economy created 151,000 jobs in February, which was slightly under expectations. This left some economists seeing a continued softening in the labor market and some news organizations discerning a “slowdown.”

Beyond this, the overall picture is darkening even more: This jobs report does not fully register the federal job losses unleashed by Elon Musk’s cuts via the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which are expected to show up any day now. Trump’s tariffs are deeply spooking investors, and his sudden, temporary cancellation of many tariffs intended for Canadian and Mexican exports is only increasing the agitation. As a scalding New York Times assessment of Trump’s economy put it, the “sudden deterioration in the outlook is striking, because it is almost entirely the result of Mr. Trump’s policies.”

Yet what’s also striking is that Fox News figures are willing to go here—sort of, at least.

“I think the boom times are over,” Fox anchor Charles Payne declared Friday, implicitly admitting that the economy under Trump’s predecessor was a lot better. Payne pointed to declines in consumer spending, which he pronounced “scary.”

The problem is that they know that we will all hang out together. I’m not sure Republican Congress Critters know this, but let’s move on before I start singing, “You see, we piddle, twiddle, and resolve. Not one damn thing do we solve.” Noah Belatsky has this analysis in public notice as we creep closer to breaching the budget deadline. “MAGA’s Big Lie budget. Trump’s economic agenda is about fooling the American people.” It’s becoming evident that many people in the country need a civics and economics course. Those of us who have often had both are screaming from our rooftops. And yes, I’m a dismal scientist, and I wish I didn’t feel the need to depress you with all of this.

“In the near future I want to do what has not been done in 24 years — balance the federal budget, we’re gonna balance it,” Trump declaimed in his speech before a joint session of Congress last week.

Trump is obviously lying, as his spending and revenue proposals do not suggest he’s even attempting to make a good faith effort to balance the budget. Nor is this new. Republicans have for decades — at least since Reagan — mounted up massive deficits while claiming to put forward responsible budgets.

Political scientist Jonathan Bernstein refers to this as the GOP war on budgeting. Trump is expanding that war in an especially shameless fashion. Not only is he lying about his desire to cut deficits, he’s also obfuscating about his spending priorities and preferences — especially as they relate to Social Security and Medicaid.

The result is budgeting as Big Lie, as Republicans immiserate the public, give massive handouts to billionaires, jack up enormous deficits, and then pretend to be the party of compassion and fiscal responsibility.

Trump’s economic plans are incoherent and incomprehensible at least partially by design. The goal, by this longtime scam artist, is to bamboozle the American people and take their money.

Insulting your intelligence

Trump has said so much nonsense about the budget and priorities that it’s difficult to summarize. But the central contradiction is that he has said he wants to do three incompatible things:

1. Balance the budget

2. Extend the tax cuts from his first term

3. Keep Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid fully funded

Doing all these simply isn’t possible. You can’t slash revenue by trillions, refuse to cut the biggest items in the budget, and eliminate the deficit. The numbers simply don’t add up.

Trump himself has tacitly admitted that his stated priorities are mutually contradictory. He’s endorsed the House budget framework, which extends his first term tax cuts. That plan raises the deficit by $2.8 trillion through 2034. In contrast, the Senate has proposed a balanced bill, putting votes on extending the tax cuts off until later. But, again, Trump prefers the House bill.

Consider donating to Public Notice and other independent news sources, given they’re far more valuable than most of our legacy media.

So, here’s another thing I thought I’d never see but wow, our Canadian friends are really pissed and they’re not going to take it. This is from the brave folks at the AP. “Ontario slaps 25% tax increase on electricity exports to US in response to Trump’s trade war.”

Ontario’s premier, the leader of Canada’s most populous province, announced that effective Monday it is charging 25% more for electricity to 1.5 million Americans in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war.

Ontario provides electricity to Minnesota, New York and Michigan.

“I will not hesitate to increase this charge. If the United State escalates, I will not hesitate to shut the electricity off completely,” Ontario Premier Doug Ford said at a news conference in Toronto.

“Believe me when I say I do not want to do this. I feel terrible for the American people who didn’t start this trade war. It’s one person who is responsible, it’s President Trump.”

Ford said Ontario’s tariff would remain in place despite the one-month reprieve from Trump, noting a one-month pause means nothing but more uncertainty. Quebec is also considering taking similar measures with electricity exports to the U.S.

Ford’s office said the new market rules require any generator selling electricity to the U.S. to add a 25% surcharge. Ontario’s government expects it to generate revenue of $300,000 Canadian dollars ($208,000) to CA$400,000 ($277,000) per day, “which will be used to support Ontario workers, families and businesses.”

The new surcharge is in addition to the federal government’s initial CA$30 billion ($21 billion) worth of retaliatory tariffs have been applied on items like American orange juice, peanut butter, coffee, appliances, footwear, cosmetics, motorcycles and certain pulp and paper products.

This will make an interesting case study in someone’s textbook. I may need to fire up the STATA and see what happens unless FARTUS and his merry band of poseurs soon suppress the GDP numbers. I wouldn’t put it past them, but I do believe some brave commerce department official will sneak them off to the Fed. Okay, this is too full of brilliant yellow prose for me to ignore. It comes via The Bulwark and Jill Lawrence. “The Road from ‘Citizens United’ to Trump, Musk, and Corruption. A ‘naïve’ Supreme Court delivered lawless greed and cruelty. We’ll have to save ourselves, if we can.”

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN a greedy geezer with the most powerful job in the world cements himself to a greedy grabber who is the richest man in the world? You get Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and a superpower emeritus about ready to be stripped for parts.

Few foresaw this in 2010, when the Supreme Court launched us onto a dark path. The court’s 5–4 Citizens United decision, allowing unlimited corporate, interest-group, and individual spending on elections, did trigger dire predictions from plenty of doomsayers. But even the most pessimistic among them fell short of imagining American reality today.

“We knew that it was going to be really, really destructive for our democracy,” says Tiffany Muller, president of the group End Citizens United, which is dedicated to electing Democrats committed to seeing the ruling overturned. “Fifteen years after that decision, we’re seeing the full culmination of living under a Citizens United world—where it’s not just elections that are for sale, but it’s that our entire government, and the apparatus of our government, is up for sale.”

It’s hard to believe, but once upon a time there was bipartisan common ground on gun safety, health care, voting rights, climate change, and even limits on campaign funding. The Senate in 2006 voted 98–0 to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act, and George W. Bush signed the law. He also added a voluntary prescription benefit to Medicare, with help from Democrats in both chambers.

Bipartisan Senate pairs introduced major climate bills in 2003 and 2007, but their prospects faded amid opposition from the fossil-fuel industry. In 2010, a few months after Citizens United, a cap-and-trade tax designed to reduce carbon emissions passed the House in a landmark vote, but it fell short in the Senate. Democrats had 59 seats and needed just one Republican vote to advance the bill—and they couldn’t get it.

The oil and gas sector now floods the election zone with over six times as much cash as it spent in the 2010 cycle. And it has amassed all the clout you’d expect as contributions have skyrocketed—from defeating a carbon tax–friendly House Republican in 2010 to helping to elect Trump last year.

When Citizens United turned ten, in 2020, the political money-tracker Open Secrets reported on what the ruling had wrought. Super PACs—the non-party committees created to legally raise cash in unlimited amounts to independently promote issues and candidates—spent $4.5 billion over the decade (up from $750 million over the previous twenty years).

The major players of the new era, it turned out, were not corporations. They were millionaires and billionaires. “The 10 most generous donors and their spouses injected $1.2 billion into federal elections over the last decade,” Open Secrets found.

It’s a good read full of good sources. I highly recommend it.

My social security check got deposited today! It’s something I now fret about and didn’t before. Off to pay the mortgage and such. You have a very good week. Escape with whatever takes the anxiety off of the 11 setting! Sorry, I plagued you my musicisms today. We all have to cope somehow!

What’s on your Reading and Blogging list today?

Finally Friday Reads: Backpfeifengesicht

Posted: March 7, 2025 | Author: dakinikat | Filed under: Economy, Equity Markets, FARTUS, kakistocracy, MAGA Assholes, MAGA Political Carnage, Polycrisis, Psychopaths in charge | Tags: a face worthy of being slapped, Backpfeifengesicht, CryptoCurrency Ponzi Scheme from Trump and Musk, Declaration of Independence, FARTUS, martial-law, People are not Illegal, Space X explosion, The Insurrection Act, White Male Christian Supremacists | 8 Comments

“EEK!” John Buss, @repeat1968, @johnbuss.bsky.social

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Backpfeifengesicht is the German word for “a face worthy of being slapped.” That might be the most usable word in the dark timeline, which is the second term of #FARTUS (Felon, Adjudicated Rapist, Traitor of the United States). JJ found this sweet article at The Guardian and shared it with BB and me this morning. It’s an Op-Ed written by Marina Hyde about JD Vance, but it could apply to any subhuman of the modern MAGA movement. “There are 1,000 grotesque memes of JD Vance – and they’re all more likable than the real thing. Angry, rude and addicted to web troll-ery, the vice-president has the Make America Awful Again portfolio. Seems a perfect fit.” Ayup.

You may well be aware that Backpfeifengesicht is the German word for a face that is worthy of being slapped. Even so, how has this not been internationalised? Or at the very least Americanised, where its dictionary definition would presumably be adorned by a picture of the face of US vice-president JD Vance – already faultlessly playing the role of worst American at your hotel. You can immediately picture him at breakfast, can’t you? Every single other guest on the terrace with their shoulders up round their ears, just thinking: “Where is he now? How unbearable is he being NOW?” Next, imagine breakfast lasting four years.

I say the Backpfeifengesicht definition would be accompanied by JD Vance’s face … but then again, what is the face of JD Vance? The internet is awash with people suffering an acute case of not being able to remember it any more, having seen so many hideous comic distortions of Vance that those meme versions are not simply the only results on the first page of your own mental Google search, but stretch deep beyond the second and into the third. Somewhere on page four, where you might as well publish the nuclear codes or pictures of Taylor Swift giving cocaine to babies, is an unmodified snap of what JD Vance actually looks like. Or at least what he looks like with eyeliner.

Before you get there – and you don’t, really – your synaptic filing systems throw up every variety of Photoshopped Vancefake: swollen manboy, face wearing a Minion suit, a bearded egg … I’m hoping that sooner or later, an American news outlet will accidentally use a modified photo, because even the picture editor has forgotten what the vice-president looks like, and then we can have one of those massively self-regarding legacy media-blow-ups, where the entire staff has to resign after a remorseless investigation by the executive editor reveals Vance isn’t actually a big purple grape. “This is a stain on our newspaper’s history. A big purple stain.”

Vance is more meme than man, now, and it is, of course, something of a consolation that he is so extremely online that he can’t help but have noticed this. The VP is like a one-man government troll-feeding programme – please don’t cut him, Elon! – which is probably why people have become so heroically committed to taking the piss. The probability of the vice-president seeing you insulting him is basically one.

Just as previous holders of his office like Teddy Roosevelt and Richard Nixon once did, Vance spent a notable amount of this week both denying he suggested Britain and France were random countries that hadn’t fought a war in 40 years, and replying to random X posters called things like “Jeff Computers” to counter the suggestion that he wasn’t loved and feted on his recent skiing holiday.

While JJ found that amusing read today. BB brought home the rancid bacon. This is an op-ed by Brett Wagner in The San Francisco Chronicle today. “Is Trump preparing to invoke the Insurrection Act? Signs are pointing that way. A joint Department of Defense and Homeland Security report will soon recommend whether or not to invoke the Insurrection Act over illegal migration.”

The clock is ticking down on a crucial but little-noticed part of President Donald Trump’s first round of executive orders — the one tasking the secretaries of the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security to submit a joint report, within 90 days, recommending “whether to invoke the Insurrection Act.”

Many of us are now holding our collective breath, knowing that the report and what it contains could put us on the slippery slope toward unchecked presidential power under a man with an affinity for ironfisted dictators.

Adding to the suspense was the recent “Friday Night Massacre” at the Pentagon — the firing of the nation’s top uniformed officer and removing other perceived guardrails (i.e., the top uniformed lawyers at the Army, Navy and Air Force) standing between the president and his long-stated intention to declare martial law upon returning to power.

Coincidence?

As we wait to find out, this would be a good time to take a closer look.

Say, for example, that Trump were to invoke the Insurrection Act and declare martial law. He wouldn’t even be required, by the letter of the law, to allege an “insurrection.” All that would be required is to assert that “unlawful obstruction” has made it “impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States” (as President Dwight D. Eisenhower did when he ordered the Arkansas National Guard to enforce the desegregation of Little Rock, Ark., schools).

This is where all the false claims and outright lies Trump and his political allies have been pushing will come into play: Trump falsely alleging, for example, that an entire city in Colorado has been taken over by Venezuelan street gangs, that a city in Ohio has been overrun by Haitian refugees who are eating all the cats and dogs, and other vague assertions that “millions and millions” of “illegals” are pouring into our country every week (or “day” depending on who’s telling the lie at the moment).

Each of these false claims and outright lies could be distilled, to declare martial law, into catchy phrases (beginning with the legalese word “Whereas”) to establish the legal premise for invoking the Insurrection Act, and to lay the predicate to begin going door-to-door, wherever they please, under the pretense of searching for undocumented immigrants who don’t exist.

I bring you the reality on the ground from Joy Reid on Threads. “This is inhumane, hideous and repugnant. If this is what MAGA America is, count me out. I’m ashamed that this is what our government is doing. Shame on them. Shame.” What it is is a 21-year-old girl with cancer who relies completely on her immigrant mother, who is in no way a criminal or bothering anyone. When protesters came to protest, they were arrested. How many laws and constitutional rights can this miserable administration break before they completely break all of us? This story comes from El Monte, California. You can read the hatred of the MAGA monsters in the threads below on YouTube. I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t want to leave the house and take a chance at seeing a FARTUS supporter in my neighborhood. I’m fine with all the immigrants, though. Everything they do makes my neighborhood a better place.

“I can’t even wake up properly… she helps me, she bathes me, she changes me, she makes my food.”Deportation didn’t protect anyone it only stole a mother from the child who needs her most-Blake Coronadowww.threads.net/@blakecorona…
— Audrey (@parickards.bsky.social) 2025-03-06T23:59:31.294Z

The US Military and US Vets are under attack from this Administration. This cannot be denied. This is from the AP this morning. FARTUS has always had a thing against military service and those who fight for values that he seems to hate very much. “War heroes and military firsts are among 26,000 images flagged for removal in Pentagon’s DEI purge.” So much of this just comes as an attack against the diversity of our nation being represented in all of its institutions. But is that really it? Why the disappearance of all people of color, women, and the LGBTQ community? Are white cis men really that sensitive?

References to a World War II Medal of Honor recipient, the Enola Gay aircraft that dropped an atomic bomb on Japan and the first women to pass Marine infantry training are among the tens of thousands of photos and online posts marked for deletion as the Defense Department works to purge diversity, equity and inclusion content, according to a database obtained by The Associated Press.

The database, which was confirmed by U.S. officials and published by AP, includes more than 26,000 images that have been flagged for removal across every military branch. But the eventual total could be much higher.

One official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details that have not been made public, said the purge could delete as many as 100,000 images or posts in total, when considering social media pages and other websites that are also being culled for DEI content. The official said it’s not clear if the database has been finalized.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had given the military until Wednesday to remove content that highlights diversity efforts in its ranks following President Donald Trump’s executive order ending those programs across the federal government.

The vast majority of the Pentagon purge targets women and minorities, including notable milestones made in the military. And it also removes a large number of posts that mention various commemorative months — such as those for Black and Hispanic people and women.

Are they just trying to up their odds that one will be less likely to disrupt the plan when martial law is declared? Everything they’ve been doing shows their delight in being the worst kind of bullies. Just yesterday, they announced they will deport Ukrainians who fled to the US for safety. We are no longer a safe harbor. Not even close. Heather Cox Richardson discusses this in detail this morning in her Substack Letters from an American.

This morning, Ted Hesson and Kristina Cooke of Reuters reported that the Trump administration is preparing to deport the 240,000 Ukrainians who fled Russia’s attacks on Ukraine and have temporary legal status in the United States. Foreign affairs journalist Olga Nesterova reminded Americans that “these people had to be completely financially independent, pay tax, pay all fees (around $2K) and have an affidavit from an American person to even come here.”

“This has nothing to do with strategic necessity or geopolitics,” Russia specialist Tom Nichols posted. “This is just cruelty to show [Russian president Vladimir] Putin he has a new American ally.”

The Trump administration’s turn away from traditional European alliances and toward Russia will have profound effects on U.S. standing in the world. Edward Wong and Mark Mazzetti reported in the New York Times today that senior officials in the State Department are making plans to close a dozen consulates, mostly in Western Europe, including consulates in Florence, Italy; Strasbourg, France; Hamburg, Germany; and Ponta Delgada, Portugal, as well as a consulate in Brazil and another in Turkey.

In late February, Nahal Toosi reported in Politico that President Donald Trump wants to “radically shrink” the State Department and to change its mission from diplomacy and soft power initiatives that advance democracy and human rights to focusing on transactional agreements with other governments and promoting foreign investment in the U.S.

Elon Musk and the “Department of Government Efficiency” have taken on the process of cutting the State Department budget by as much as 20%, and cutting at least some of the department’s 80,000 employees. As part of that project, DOGE’s Edward Coristine, known publicly as “Big Balls,” is embedded at the State Department.

As the U.S. retreats from its engagement with the world, China has been working to forge greater ties. China now has more global diplomatic posts than the U.S. and plays a stronger role in international organizations. Already in 2025, about 700 employees, including 450 career diplomats, have resigned from the State Department, a number that normally would reflect a year’s resignations.

Shutting embassies will hamper not just the process of fostering goodwill, but also U.S. intelligence, as embassies house officers who monitor terrorism, infectious disease, trade, commerce, militaries, and government, including those from the intelligence community. U.S. intelligence has always been formidable, but the administration appears to be weakening it.

Trump, bitcoin, political cartoon

We’re being turned into part of the Trump Grift Mafia. Nothing will be left standing of any of the good we have done in the world. This is neocolonialism and neomercantilism. We’ve retreated to some of the worst historical ideologies ever. The most symbolic thing happened yesterday. The latest Space X project blew up in the sky and shut down many flights yesterday. “Breakup of SpaceX’s Starship Rocket Disrupts Florida Airports. The video showed the upper stage of the most powerful rocket ever built spinning out of control in space, a repeat of an unsuccessful test flight in January that led to debris falling over the Caribbean.” This is what we’re spending money for? Elonia is pushing his company to the brink of getting to Mars and looking down at the rest of us. The report is from The New York Times‘s Kenneth Chang.

Starship — the huge spacecraft that Elon Musk says will one day take people to Mars — failed during its latest test flight on Thursday when its upper stage exploded in space, raining debris and disrupting air traffic at airports from Florida to Pennsylvania.

It was the second consecutive test flight of the most powerful rocket ever built where the upper-stage spacecraft malfunctioned. It started spinning out of control after several engines went out and then lost contact with mission control.

Photographs and videos posted on the social media site X by users saying they were along the Florida coast showed the spacecraft breaking up. The falling debris disrupted flights at airports in Miami, Orlando, Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale, and as far away as Philadelphia International Airport.

The Starship rocket system is the largest ever built. At 403 feet tall, it is nearly 100 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty atop its pedestal.

It has the most engines ever in a rocket booster: The Super Heavy booster is powered by 33 of SpaceX’s Raptor engines. As those engines lift Starship off the launchpad, they will generate 16 million pounds of thrust at full throttle.

The upper part, also called Starship or Ship for short, looks like a shiny rocket from science fiction movies of the 1950s, is made of stainless steel with large fins. This is the upper stage that will head toward orbit, and ultimately could carry people to the moon or even Mars.

The rocket lifted off a little after 6:30 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday from the SpaceX site known as Starbase at the southern tip of Texas near the city of Brownsville.

Starship’s mammoth booster again successfully returned to the launchpad, just as it had during the previous test flight. In the last half minute before the upper-stage engines were to shut off, several of them malfunctioned. Video from the rocket showed a tumbling view of Earth and space until it cut off.

Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer wrote this analysis for The Atlantic. “Trump’s Own Declaration of Independence. The president, who has flirted with regal rhetoric, wants a historic copy of America’s founding document placed in the Oval Office.”

Long live the king!

Down with the king!

President Donald Trump sees the appeal of both.

Trump jokingly declared himself a sovereign last month, while his advisers distributed AI-generated photos of him wearing a crown and an ermine robe to celebrate his order to end congestion pricing in New York City. “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” he’d decreed a few days earlier, using a phrase sometimes attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, the emperor of the French.

I had no idea one of my greats who signed the Declaration had made of the copies of it. But the weird thing here is that Trump seriously wants the document to hang in the Oval Office. My question is, why take it from the people who can see it in the archives?

Since returning to power, Trump has moved quickly to redesign his working space. He has announced plans to pave over the Rose Garden to make it more like the patio at his private Mar-a-Lago club, as well as easier to host events with women wearing heels. He has also revived planning for a new ballroom on the White House grounds. “It keeps my real-estate juices flowing,” Trump explained in a recent interview with The Spectator.

Golden trophies now line the Oval Office’s mantlepiece. Military flags adorned with campaign streamers have returned. And portraits of presidents past now climb the walls—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Martin Van Buren, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan, among others. Gilded mirrors hang upon the recessed doors. A framed copy of his Georgia mug shot appears in the outside hallway. And the bright-red valet button, encased in a wooden box, is back on the desk.

In addition to the National Archives’ original Declaration, the government has in its possession other versions of the document. The collection includes drafts by Jefferson and copies of contemporaneous reprintings, known as broadsides, that were distributed among the colonies.

Alarmed by the deterioration of the original Declaration in the 1820s, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams commissioned William J. Stone to create an engraving of it with the signatures appended. That version forms the basis of the document since reproduced in school history books—the one with which most Americans are familiar. Adams tasked Stone with engraving 200 copies—but in what passes for a mini 19th-century scandal, Stone made an extra facsimile to keep for himself, the documents dealer and expert Seth Kaller told us.

Many of those Stone copies of the document have now been lost; roughly 50 are known to survive, Kaller said. The White House already has in its archives at least one of the Stone printings. Kaller told us that one of his clients who had recently purchased a Stone facsimile was visiting the White House when President Barack Obama asked him whether he could help procure a Stone printing for the White House.

“The client called me, and I said, ‘I can’t—because, one, there aren’t any others on the market right now, and two, the White House already has one,’” Kaller told us. In 2014, Kaller visited the White House to view the Stone Declaration, which the curator displayed for him in one of the West Wing’s rooms. (The White House curator’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment, including on whether the Stone copy still resides under its purview.)

It is unclear where Trump first got the idea to add a Declaration to the Oval Office’s decor. Since returning, Trump has shown interest in the planning for celebrations next year of the 250th anniversary of the document’s signing. Days after taking office, he issued an executive order to create “Task Force 250,” a White House commission that will work with another congressionally formed commission to plan the festivities.

I hope he’s not trying to go with one of those grandiose military parades again. And if he does, will he eliminate everyone but the white guys? It can’t be anything other than another way for him to get attention, that’s for sure. Again, this all continues to be an appalling cosplay of how FARTUS wants to view himself in relation to his imagined ideas of American History. I can’t even with the economy today. Just know he’s changed his mind on tariffs again for Canada and Mexico, and employment figures are worsening. He’s turned a strong economy into a weak one in a matter of weeks. He’s also shaken the Equity markets to their core. What’s on is this: “Trump’s “Crypto Reserve” is a world historical grift. Corruption doesn’t get much more blatant than this.” My Finance Daughter and I both find crypto to be a huge Ponzi scheme. I lecture against it. She doesn’t consider it a product that brokers should be involved in. In short, we stay as far away as possible. But, you know, grifters gotta grift. This is from Public Notice.

Authoritarian regimes by definition have no accountability to voters or the public. That means autocrats and their cronies can gorge themselves at the public trough and blatantly steal from taxpayers with few if any consequences.

It’s not really a surprise, then, that as part of his authoritarian power grab, Trump has embraced brazen and open self-dealing. The most ludicrous example of this is the scheme he announced last Sunday for a national crypto reserve.

As with many of Trump’s big orange dreams, it’s not exactly clear what the crypto reserve will entail or how it will work. But the brilliance of the half-baked idea is that Trump and his cronies can make bank just by talking about it. The president can use his bully pulpit to manipulate markets. And who’s going to stop him?

Trump, fresh off avoiding 88 felony charges, obviously feels confident that the answer is “no one.”

Government on the blockchain

Crypto refers to digital currencies which are generated and stored in a digital ledger, or blockchain. In theory, cryptocurrencies do not rely on a central government authority. Proponents say they are useful for quick or anonymous transactions. Critics point out that cryptocurrency seems designed for hiding illegal transactions and/or creating what are essentially Ponzi investment schemes.

Because of the downsides, President Biden created moderate guidelines to try to regulate some of the worst excesses of the industry, which made him an enemy of hardcore crypto boosters. But Trump in his first term expressed even deeper skepticism about cryptocurrencies, saying they are based on “thin air.”

During the 2024 election, though, crypto investors spent tens of millions on Republican campaigns. Trump, who never saw a quid pro quo he didn’t love, changed his tune, embracing crypto-friendly policies. After his victory, he followed through by appointing venture capitalist and Elon Musk crony David Sacks as a White House crypto czar.

Another reason Trump flip-flopped on crypto is that his family figured out how to cash in. Following the election, Trump squandered some of the goodwill he had built up with the crypto industry when he and his wife Melania launched memecoins — essentially valueless crypto confidence games — that both surged in value, making the Trumps billions (but undermining the credibility of crypto in the process). That came after his two adult sons, Eric and Don Jr, launched their own crypto company during the campaign called World Liberty Financial. Boosting crypto as president, then, allows Trump and his family to profit directly from his public office.

Trump announced his thank you to the industry last Sunday, when he declared that he would create a “Crypto Strategic Reserve” in order to make the US “the Crypto Capital of the World.” He of course claimed the move is part of “MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.”

But the actual point of the crypto reserve, much less the details, are sketchy at best. Proponents argue crypto is a store of value, like gold, and could help damp inflation. But the major cryptocurrencies tend to rise and fall in value based on broader macroeconomic sentiment. And since crypto is volatile and, unlike gold, has no intrinsic value, it’s hard to credit its usefulness as a currency stabilizer.

If you have any questions about any of this, I’d be glad to try to answer them. Seeing such craziness in our economic policy has been hard on me. I’m just waiting for the major attack on the Federal Reserve Bank. They’re the only ones that bring credibility to the dollar these days, and I’m afraid he’ll have a go at them. The mess at the Treasury is already impacting the banking business. Don’t even get me started on the Budget Crisis, either. I’m tired of the repeats of that one by disingenuous Republicans.

I hope all of you can close your doors and stay sane inside the one place you can control, home. I have a few more tests next week, so I will be out at clinics again, being poked and prodded. This weekend, I will just relax and try to avoid the ever-changing Trump Surreality Show.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Mostly Monday Reads: VIllainy! Winning!

Posted: March 3, 2025 | Author: dakinikat | Filed under: #FARTUS, American Fascists, Equity Markets, kakistocracy, MAGA Assholes, MAGA Political Carnage, Political and Editorial Cartoons, Polycrisis, Psychopaths in charge | Tags: @johnbuss.bsky.social John Buss, CryptoCurrency Ponzi Scheme from Trump and Musk, Elderly and Vets, FARTUS, Starving Children, Trump Tariffs | 13 Comments

“Honorable Douche Member.” John Buss, @repeat1968, @johnbuss.bsky.social

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Once again, the transformation of American democracy into a theocratic fascist state–which once was unimaginable–is shaking global confidence. The closing argument came Friday when #FARTUS and JDank tried to shake down Ukraine’s President like a classic Mafia Don. The US is no longer the leader of the free world. We are becoming the lap dog of evil men.

It was further announced that the dollar will no longer be the world’s currency as the Bad Men of faithless investments are rolling back protections and trying to install the Ponzi scheme of the century–cryptocurrency–as something it can never be. This dodgy investment does not meet any of the criteria that define money. It cannot be used as a universal means of exchange. It has no role as a store of value. Indeed, it is quite a risky gamble. It does not represent a measure of exchange. Help us, Federal Reserve Board of Governors! You may be the only chance because the Treasury’s Rules and Regulations, which were based on stopping another Great Depression, are being dismantled even as we speak.

William Kristol, Andre Egger, and Sam Stein had this headline at The Bulwark that rang true to me this morning. “What a Weekend for Putin! It’s been a long time since the Russian dictator had it this good.” All enemies of the USA and democracy had a good week. All those with greed as a defining characteristic are likely celebrating. I’m certainly glad I moved my 403(B) money to the Eurozone. They were slow coming off COVID-19, but they’re getting stronger while we are getting economically, militarily, and democratically weaker by the drop of every grain of sand.

It was a hell of a weekend for bad men getting what they paid for out of Donald Trump. And while we’ll focus on Vladimir Putin here, we don’t want to fully ignore venture capitalist David Sacks, Donald Trump’s “crypto czar,” who seemingly stands to make bank following Trump’s weekend announcement of a “strategic cryptocurrency reserve.” Hey, we’re glad someone’s having fun. Happy Monday.

Helluva Weekend doesn’t even cover the outrage heard around the country. However, it appears it’s getting a little late in the game to shut down this offensive move on the American Experiment. Just seeing the polling and the angry constituents all over the country over the Zelinsky Shake Down should’ve lit a fire under the proud party of Chicken Hawks. It didn’t. We have more evidence of chickens than hawks. This is also part of The Bulwark’s Monday Money Quarter-backing.

SEE ROGER RUN: How to cope with all the grisly news? One increasingly common strategy: Blowing off some steam by yelling at your Republican lawmaker.

On Saturday, Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall became the latest victim of this hot new trend at an overstuffed town hall in the small town of Oakley (pop. ~2000). Attendees booed his arrival and rolled their eyes at his answers throughout the prickly hour-long event, while Marshall castigated them as “rude.” He suggested they’d fallen victim to “misinformation” about DOGE and ultimately cut the event short.

A possible opportunity for introspection for the senator? Apparently not. In a statement, Marshall’s office suggested the fix was in, the town hall “sabotaged” by “Democrat operatives.” “Real Kansans,” the statement continued, “overwhelmingly support President Trump’s DOGE initiative.”

It was true that some attendees had schlepped to the event from the Kansas City area to give Marshall a piece of their mind. But some of their concerns were plainly shared by locals. The last crowd comment came, according to local media, from local resident Chuck Nunn, who politely and sorrowfully mourned DOGE’s reckless slashing of veteran jobs. Identifying himself as “a dying breed, a conservative Democrat,” Nunn said he supported the mission of identifying waste in government—but that “the way that we are going about it is so wrong, because there are unintended consequences.”

“What the government is doing right now, as far as cutting out those jobs, a huge percentage of those people—and I know you care about the veterans—are veterans,” Nunn went on. “And that’s a damn shame. A damn shame.”

Acting like this sentiment is nothing but scurrilous left-wing astroturf may be comforting to Republicans. But it’s also remarkably short-sighted. There’s a reason “do right by our veterans” has long been a more or less universal tenet of our politics. Scoffing off that extremely normie critique of the DOGEbros is something Republicans do at their peril.

If you think that’s bad, check out the opinions of House Leader Mike Johnson. No Republican has been left out of this party. Heather Cox Richardson has another example of Mike Johnson’s inability to lead or take a stand for our country. He’s staked out the coward’s gavel. She wrote this yesterday in her Substack Letters From an American.

On Face the Nation this morning, Representative Mike Turner (R-OH), a strong supporter of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Ukraine, contradicted that information. “Considering what I know, what Russia is currently doing against the United States, that would I’m certain not be an accurate statement of the current status of the United States operations,” he said. Well respected on both sides of the aisle, Turner was in line to be the chair of the House Intelligence Committee in this Congress until House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) removed him from that slot and from the intelligence committee altogether.

And yet, as Stephanie Kirchgaessner of The Guardian notes, the Trump administration has made clear that it no longer sees Russia as a cybersecurity threat. Last week, at a United Nations working group on cybersecurity, representatives from the European Union and the United Kingdom highlighted threats from Russia, while Liesyl Franz, the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary for international cybersecurity, did not mention Russia, saying the U.S. was concerned about threats from China and Iran.

Kirchgaessner also noted that under Trump, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which monitors cyberthreats against critical infrastructure, has set new priorities. Although Russian threats, especially those against U.S. election systems, were a top priority for the agency in the past, a source told Kirchgaessner that analysts were told not to follow or report on Russian threats.

“Russia and China are our biggest adversaries,” the source told Kirchgaessner. “With all the cuts being made to different agencies, a lot of cybersecurity personnel have been fired. Our systems are not going to be protected and our adversaries know this.” “People are saying Russia is winning,” the source said. “Putin is on the inside now.”

Another source noted that “There are dozens of discrete Russia state-sponsored hacker teams dedicated to either producing damage to US government, infrastructure and commercial interests or conducting information theft with a key goal of maintaining persistent access to computer systems.” “Russia is at least on par with China as the most significant cyber threat, the person added. Under those circumstances, the source said, ceasing to follow and report Russian threats is “truly shocking.”

Trump’s outburst in the Oval Office on Friday confirmed that Putin has been his partner in politics since at least 2016. “Putin went through a hell of a lot with me,” Trump said. “He went through a phony witch hunt where they used him and Russia… Russia, Russia, Russia—you ever hear of that deal?—that was a phony Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, scam. Hillary Clinton, shifty Adam Schiff, it was a Democrat scam. And he had to go through that. And he did go through it, and we didn’t end up in a war. And he went through it. He was accused of all that stuff. He had nothing to do with it. It came out of Hunter Biden’s bathroom.”

Putin went through a hell of a lot with Trump? It was an odd statement from a U.S. president, whose loyalty is supposed to be dedicated to the Constitution and the American people.

Jen Ruben writes this at The Contrarian. “It’s not Dickens—it’s the MAGA agenda. Taking food from children; healthcare from the informed.” The #FARTUS team has already destroyed our soft power with the end of USAID. Next up is Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. Get your gardens started now! Cruelty is the mission.

Given the scope of the MAGA assault on the foundations of our democracy, many Democrats, responsible media outlets, and concerned Americans have (understandably) been focused on its attempt to obliterate the rule of law, the separation of powers, and the First Amendment. But we should never lose track of the abject immorality that is part and parcel of an ideology based on vengeful victimhood, conspiracy-mongering, and repudiation of science.

From the outbreak of measles to stalling grants to the pursuit of cures for “diseases ranging from heart disease and cancer to Alzheimer’s and allergies” to renewing the starvation crisis in Sudan to devasting cuts at the Veterans Administration to dismissal of patriotic, highly-trained trans members of the armed services…we cannot miss this administration’s abject cruelty; its almost-boisterous disregard for human life and dignity.

House and Senate Republicans bear just as much responsibility as President in Name Only (PINO) Donald Trump and acting president Elon Musk for mutely going along with these actions. Moreover, we must view the House budget as yet another exercise in cruelty and reckless endangerment of human life.

“Trump and Musk have slashed roughly 2,400 VA jobs…A decision that won’t make things more efficient, like they claimed, but will actually lead to longer wait times, more backlog and more chaos for Veterans,” Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-Illinois.) recently said at a virtual town hall. “They’ve also launched a wider purge of federal workers—firing, in total, an estimated 6,000 Veterans, includingthe folks behind the Veterans Crisis Line.” She emphasized, “The only reason they are doing this is to try to find enough loose change behind the couch cushions so that they can give even bigger tax breaks to the rich guys they pal around with on the golf course.”

Breaking the sacred obligation to care for our veterans is only one aspect of the onslaught. Perhaps the most egregious is the plan to slash $880B from Medicaid. The argument that cuts of that magnitude can be achieved by “reform” or by cutting “waste, fraud, and abuse,” frankly, insults our intelligence.

The impact of such cuts is immense given the reach of Medicaid. The Kaiser Family Foundation notes, “Medicaid is the primary program providing comprehensive health and long-term care to one in five people living in the U.S. and accounts for nearly $1 out of every $5 spent on health care.” Medicaid covers not only the poorest Americans, but seniors’ long-term health care, drug addicts, and the disabled. More than 72 million Americans are enrolled in some aspect of the program.

Whatever funds they’ve raised by the deaths and disposal of humanity, they will turn over to Greedy Billionaires and Businesses. However, the focus right now is still on #FARTUS upending World Order. This is from Vox’s Nicole Narea. “How Trump upended the world order, over one weekend A hectic 48 hours in Europe-Ukraine-US-Russia relations, explained.

A blowup at the White House on Friday proved a rude awakening for some of the US’s closest partners in Europe, and left them scrambling to contemplate a world in which they can no longer be sure that the US is a reliable ally in Russia’s war on Ukraine.

In the wake of President Donald Trump and his team accosting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a heated, televised exchange in the Oval Office, European leaders met to devise a plan for protecting Ukraine from Russian aggression absent any security guarantees from the US.

And though multiple leaders, from UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer to NATO leader Mark Rutte, insisted that they still view the US as an important partner, the meeting nevertheless seemed like it might mark the abrupt beginning of a new Western world order — one in which Europe stands alone.

The UK and France have led efforts in recent weeks to advance Ukraine’s cause and to convince Trump to keep Ukraine’s (and Europe’s) best interests in mind as he attempts to craft a ceasefire or peace deal in Russia’s years-long war on Ukraine.

Sunday, Starmer presided over a summit of more than a dozen mostly European leaders and announced that the attendees would form a “coalition of the willing” to defend Ukraine and strengthen Europe’s military capabilities.

“Not every nation will feel able to contribute but that can’t mean that we sit back,” Starmer said. “Instead, those willing will intensify planning now with real urgency.”

That coalition could lead to UK troops on the ground in Ukraine as part of a peacekeeping force, should a ceasefire or peace deal come about, Starmer said. France and the UK reportedly have a ceasefire framework that Zelenskyy said he’s been briefed on.

Starmer did emphasize, however, that many in the group, including the UK, believe lasting peace will not be possible without US support. And while Starmer said he had a productive conversation with Trump about Ukraine this weekend, it’s not clear that US support will materialize.

That’s in part because the Trump administration and its allies reiterated throughout the weekend that they believe their current approach to peace — that is, holding talks with Russia sans Ukraine and blaming Ukraine for the war — is the right one. Trump adviser Elon Musk suggested on X that the US contemplate leaving the NATO security alliance.

The Trump team also redoubled their attacks on Zelenskyy on Sunday, with some going so far as to suggest the Ukrainian president ought to be replaced.

So, I will get to some of the economic impact of Trump’s Tariff Mania. I hope you don’t need a new car, just for starters. This is from Bloomberg. “Car Prices Are Poised for $12,000. Surge on Trump’s New Tariffs.”

Impending tariffs on Canada and Mexico risk driving up US car prices by as much as $12,000, further squeezing consumers and wreaking havoc across the intricate web of automotive supply lines spanning the continent.

The cost to build a crossover utility vehicle will rise by at least $4,000, while the increase would be three times that for an electric vehicle examined in a new study from Anderson Economic Group, an automotive consultant in East Lansing, Michigan. And those costs would likely be passed on to consumers, the study found.

“That kind of cost increase will lead directly — and I expect almost immediately — to a decline in sales of the models that have the biggest trade impacts,” Patrick Anderson, chief executive officer of Anderson Economic Group, said in an interview.

These are some more depressing headlines concerning our economy and prices.

From CNN: “Trump’s tariff chaos threatens an economy already flashing yellow lights.”

Layoffs are rising. Consumer spending — the backbone of the economy — unexpectedly dropped in January. Consumer confidence has plunged. A key GDP forecast suddenly turned negative. And extreme fear is back on Wall Street as stocks slide.

Despite the murky picture, President Donald Trump continues to inject chaos into the economy with almost-constant tariff threats.

Now he’s just hours away from lobbing tariffs on not just one or two but all three of America’s biggest trading partners.

Starting on Tuesday, Trump has vowed to impose a 25% tariff on imported goods from Mexico and Canada, and to double tariffs on those from China to 20%.

Those tariffs — if they get imposed — could increase costs for Americans at a time when inflation remains stubbornly high. That, in turn, could prevent the Federal Reserve from lowering borrowing costs, another source of pain in the cost-of-living problem confronting consumers.

Mexico and Canada have all vowed to retaliate by slapping their own tariffs on US goods, setting the stage for a potential trade war inside of North America. China has promised to respond to higher tariffs, too.

From the New York Times: “A Key Interest Rate Falls, but Not for the Reasons Trump Wanted. Investors’ increasingly gloomy sentiment about economic growth appears to be driving down the 10-year Treasury yield.” That’s our safe haven investment btw.

President Trump campaigned on a promise to bring down interest rates. And he has fulfilled that pledge in one key way, with U.S. government bond yields falling sharply.

But the reason for the drop is an unnerving one: Investors appear to be more on edge about the outlook for the economy.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said that the Trump administration considers the 10-year Treasury yield a benchmark of its success in lowering rates. The yield tracks the rate of interest the government pays to borrow from investors over 10 years and has dropped since mid-January, to around 4.2 percent from 4.8 percent. The decline in February was the steepest in several months.

The administration is targeting the 10-year yield because it underpins borrowing costs on mortgages, credit cards, corporate debt and a host of other rates, making it arguably the most important interest rate in the world. As it drops, that should filter through the economy, making many types of debt cheaper.

Unlike the short-term interest rate that is set by the Federal Reserve, the 10-year yield is a market rate, meaning that nobody has direct control over it. Instead, it reflects investors’ views on the economy, inflation, the government’s borrowing needs and changes the Fed may make to its rate in the years ahead.

That’s why the drop in February is troubling, analysts say. It shows, at least in part, that bond investors are growing gloomy about the economic outlook — and quickly.

“The market is pricing a growth scare,” said Blerina Uruci, chief U.S. economist at T. Rowe Price.

A better outcome would be for the declining 10-year yield to reflect slowing inflation, the prospect of more rate cuts by the Fed and a shrinking deficit that would require less government borrowing — all while the economy remains strong.

Instead, inflation expectations have risen this year amid worries that Mr. Trump’s tariff plans, alongside mass deportations, could reignite price increases throughout the economy. Stubborn inflation means the interest rates controlled by the Fed are likely to stay elevated for longer. Some analysts and investors fear that this could weigh on the economy until it cracks and the central bank is pushed into rapidly lowering rates.

So, if you can’t say you’re cutting all these things to end runaway government spending, try not reporting it. That might work, right? This is from the relentlessly brave AP. “The Trump administration may exclude government spending from GDP, obscuring the impact of DOGE cuts.” That way, no one, including economists, can possibly know what is happening. Let’s hope the Federal Reserve can remain independent and report US data if the Labor and Commerce Department can’t.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Sunday that government spending could be separated from gross domestic product reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn.

“You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.” “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.”

Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the U.S. economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because changes in taxes, spending, deficits and regulations by the government can impact the path of overall growth. GDP reports already include extensive details on government spending, offering a level of transparency for economists.

Musk’s efforts to downsize federal agencies could result in the layoffs of tens of thousands of federal workers, whose lost income could potentially reduce their spending, affecting businesses and the economy at large.

Yahoo Finance, a good place to stalk the markets, has this report on what’s going on as I write. “Stock market today: Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq slide as Trump tariffs stalk markets.”

US stocks retreated on Monday as a looming deadline fueled uncertainty around President Donald Trump’s tariff plans and investors looked ahead to the monthly jobs report and key retail earnings.

The S&P 500 (^GSPC) fell 0.2% while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) erased early morning gains to fall 0.4%, weighed down by shares of Nvidia (NVDA). The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) fell below the flat line, as the major US indexes came off a volatile week and a losing February.

Nvidia stock plummeted on Monday as reports surfaced that the tech giant’s AI chips are reaching China despite export controls.

March trading kicked off with investors encountering more questions than answers as tariff deadlines loom, the Federal Reserve’s next meeting fast approaches, and the US economy faces the test of disproving investors’ fears about growth. First quarter economic growth is expected to slide following a string of weaker-than-expected economic data.

Tariffs on Canada and Mexico are set to come into effect on Tuesday, with no indication that a planned March 4 implementation date will be pushed back again. While 25% duties are planned, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick hinted that they could be lower by describing it as a “fluid situation.” New tariffs on China are also due on March 4, with Beijing said to be eyeing retaliatory measures on US agricultural products.

Elsewhere, European leaders’ weekend effort to rally around Ukraine prompted traders to boost bets on a bump in defense spending in the region, lifting related stocks.

It’s a depressing time for us Dismal Scientists. It’s one thing to have something bad happen, like a black swan event, but to watch your own government tank a perfectly healthy economy is tough to watch. I’ve already dropped so many reads that I’m hitting a word count of 3600. I’ll give you a break while I go play a new little game I picked up. It’s a gorgeous little anime game where I’ve just reincarnated as a walking, talking Mushroom, and I can solve everyone’s problems! The bad guy is a fat real estate developer, and the place is inhabited by people with both human and furry animal traits. It’s my new sanctuary beside the Star Wars Series.

I’ve lived here in New Orleans for 30 years now, and this is the first Mardi Gras I’ve just sat out. Somewhat for health problems, as I took another little fall today while walking Temple, and I don’t see the neurologist until next week. It’s tough not trusting your legs. Also, there are MAGAs around town, and many of my friends have reported they’ve destroyed things in the yard and homes if they have any display of having voted for Kamala. This is on all the uptown routes. It’s all just really depressing.

So, you stay very safe, warm, and cozy as we continue this very dark year. XOXO

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Finally Friday Reads: An American Shit Show

Posted: February 28, 2025 | Author: dakinikat | Filed under: #FARTUS, Broligarchy, Elon Musk, Federal Budget, Federal Budget and Budget deficit, jobs, kakistocracy, Welfare Queen Elon Musk | Tags: @repeat1968, Budget Deficit, Climate Change and Weather, John Buss, Social Security, Stagflation, Trump's foreign policy is killing people | 16 Comments

“Those damn “entitlement” programs like Medicaid and Social Security must go.” John Buss, repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

As the unfocused butchering of the federal workforce and agencies continues, we see more and more essential services and research getting turned into contracts for Elonia’s Empire and billionaire tax cuts. It’s only a matter of months now before the economy begins to collapse from the weight of higher prices and the return of high unemployment. Stagflation is inevitable. Economists, including me, see it as inevitable at this point. The financial markets are sending up red flares. The UK’s Economics Times has this banner headline. “Brace for impact: Stagflation fears could wipe 10% off stocks, says Wall Street’s Doom Prophet Barry Bannister.” I’ve been saying this all month.

Wall Street is worried about the possibility of a “worst-case scenario” in the US economy, one that would send stock prices plummeting by as much as 10%, as per a report.

Stifel managing director and chief equity strategist Barry Bannister has been among the few bears in an optimistic market. He is predicting the S&P 500 would end 2025 in the mid-5000s, reported Business Insider. His call for a potential stagflation scenario may serve as a wakeup call to investors.

According to Business Insider, while most investors expect another strong year of growth and inflation to continue cooling in 2025. According to Bannister, there are early signs that stagflation is beginning.

As per the report, inflation has already increased over the past few months, with consumer prices increasing by 3% from the year earlier in January and more than economists expected and above the 2.9% pace in the previous month. Bannister highlighted that the Trump-era tariffs might be driving up costs for consumers, reported Business Insider.

Bannister said, “I think it’s foolish that people assume that inflation’s going back down to 2%. It’s not going back down to 2%, not without a recession,” as quoted by Business Insider. He also claimed, “Tariffs undo a lot of the disinflation.”

Those of you my age will remember this from the 1970s. It is positively the worst economic scenario imaginable. I already am swamped by electric bills that are unimaginable for my little house. The unusual weather and snow basically doubled it last month. And just in time for Hurricane and Fire Seasons, we see the Triumvariate try to kill us all so billionaires and Multinational Mega Corporations can steal the coins from our eyes. Additionally, we are providing momentum to the spread of infectious diseases globally and locally. What a clusterfuck our country has become in such a short time! By mid-2026, we will officially be known as a shithole country. Let’s break this all down. You can see from the sources that I am becoming less trustful of the American Fourth Estate.

This is from The Guardian. “‘Cruel and thoughtless’: Trump fires hundreds at US climate agency Noaa. Employees informed by email that their jobs would be cut off at end of day in move a worker called ‘wrong all around’.”

The Trump administration has fired hundreds of workers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), the US’s pre-eminent climate research agency housed within the Department of Commerce, the Guardian has learned.

On Thursday afternoon, the commerce department sent emails to employees saying their jobs would be cut off at the end of the day. Other government agencies have also seen huge staffing cuts in recent days.

The firings specifically affected probationary employees, a categorization that applies to new hires or those moved or promoted into new positions, and which makes up roughly 10% of the agency’s workforce.

“The majority of probationary employees in my office have been with the agency for 10+ years and just got new positions,” said one worker who still had their job, and who spoke to the Guardian under the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. “If we lose them, we’re losing not just the world-class work they do day to day but also decades of expertise and institutional knowledge.”

Another anonymous staffer called the laid-off workers “dedicated, hard-working civil servants who came to Noaa to help protect lives and keep our blue planet healthy”.

“These indiscriminate cuts are cruel and thoughtless,” the second worker said.

It is not only laid-off employees who will be harmed by the cuts, the second worker said. Ordinary Americans who rely on Noaa’s extreme weather forecasts, climate data and sustainably monitored fisheries will also suffer.

“Words can’t describe the impact this will have, both on us at Noaa and on the country,” the employee said. “It’s just wrong all around.”

Andrew Rosenberg, former deputy director of Noaa’s National Marine Fisheries Service, said Thursday was a “sad day”.

“There is no plan or thought into how to continue to deliver science or service on weather, severe storms and events, conservation and management of our coasts and ocean life and much more,” he said. “Let’s not pretend this is about efficiency, quality of work or cost savings because none of those false justifications are remotely true.”

Okay, this one is from the New York Times. I hope they can hold off the Techbro Overlords long enough to uncover some truth. “U.S. Terminates Funding for Polio, H.I.V., Malaria and Nutrition Programs Around the World Here are some of the 5,800 contracts the Trump administration formally canceled this week in a wave of terse emails.” This is reported by Stephanie Nolen.

Starting Wednesday afternoon, a wave of emails went out from the State Department in Washington around the world, landing in inboxes for refugee camps, tuberculosis clinics, polio vaccination projects and thousands of other organizations that received crucial funding from the United States for lifesaving work.

“This award is being terminated for convenience and the interest of the U.S. government,” they began.

The terse notes ended funding for some 5,800 projects that had been financed by the United States Agency for International Development, indicating that a tumultuous period when the Trump administration said it was freezing projects for ostensible review was over, and that any faint hope American assistance might continue had ended.

Many were projects that had received a waiver from the freeze because the State Department previously identified its work as essential and lifesaving.

“People will die,” said Dr. Catherine Kyobutungi, executive director of the African Population and Health Research Center, “but we will never know, because even the programs to count the dead are cut.”

The projects terminated include H.I.V. treatment programs that had served millions of people, the main malaria control programs in the worst-affected African countries and global efforts to wipe out polio.

What follows is an incredibly long list of programs that have saved all kinds of people from death and massive illness. A lot has to do with prenatal care. Certainly, we can be better human beings than this. I am ashamed of my country. Pamela Herd and Don Monyhan ask the big question on their substack: “Can we still govern?.” As a young adult, I used to joke that I would pay so much for so long–starting at 15–for Social Security that I doubt I’d ever see all of it. That was a bit of a joke back then, but it seems dead serious now. Sit down, swallow, then put the cup down. “Trump’s Assault on Social Security. The plan to cut America’s most successful safety net program in half.”

Social Security is our biggest and most successful safety net program. The annual $1.6 trillion in benefits constitutes 21% of federal spending and 40% of older adults’ income. It lifts more people out of poverty than any other government program. We all know some of the 69 million Americans depending on those benefits. If you are not currently a recipient, you will be at some point. We all have a stake in ensuring that Social Security works.

And so, we all have a reason to fear the Trump administration’s call to cut 50% of Social Security Administration employees. It’s current staff of about 57,000 employees would drop to 23,000. SSA, quite simply, will not be able to function if this happens.

President Trump promised that “Social Security will not be touched.” Then he claimed he would act only eliminate SSA fraud based on false claims by Elon Musk. Gutting agency capacity is not about fraud, and is very much going to affect people’s experience of Social Security. The benefits that so many Americans depend on will not administer themselves.

This long but useful read will tell you how effective and economical the plan is. I wrote a research paper for my doctoral class in Financial institutions right after Katrina and was amazed by its efficiency. An outline of studies and data follows the paragraphs above. I will cut to the chase and pass that for brevity.

While we don’t know precisely how the agency will implement the staffing cuts, it will almost certainly entail closing many of the 1,233 SSA field offices around the country. About 120,000 people visit those offices each day. Those that remain open will have fewer staff to serve more people.

We talked with Kathleen Romig, the Director of Social Security and Disability Policy at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. She has also previously worked with Social Security, as well as the Social Security Advisory Board. She said:

There’s no way SSA can sustain the thousands of staff losses that result from the massive reductions to come without hurting beneficiaries. Over two-thirds of the agency’s staff serve the public directly, and the rest support their work—hearing appeals, keeping SSA’s systems running and secure, maintaining a high level of transparency and accuracy, and more. It’s going to get a lot harder for people to get help and take a lot longer to get access to their earned Social Security benefits.

DOGE has already announced the closure of 45 field offices, though it’s unclear if the offices are actually closed. The process is so chaotic that members of Congress are not being told when field offices are being closed in their district.

If the proposed cuts in staff move forward the scale of field office closures will be much greater. Field offices serve many functions. Its where you get a new Social Security card if you lost yours or need it changed due to a name change. The card, of course, is critical for everything from getting a drivers’ license to opening a bank account. It is the closest thing the US has to a national identity system. Field office staff also help people decide when they should enroll in the program, as well as provide in-person assistance when the agency makes mistakes with payments or paperwork.

We already know the effects of field office closures on a smaller scale. A study in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy found that field office closures led to a 16 percent decline in disability recipients in the surrounding communities due to excess demand in the remaining offices. The people hit hardest were those with moderately severe disabilities, lower education and lower income.

These actions are enough to make you want to take to Pennslyvania Avenue with pitchforks, torches, and guillotines. It’s a full-out assault on the least among us. He’s also going to puke out another Presidential order to establish English as the official language of the USA. We’ve been doing fine with pluralism for 250 years. Besides, if we’re going to be language NAZIs, let’s start with FARTUS and Elonia. Most of the time, they speak unintelligibly. This is from CNBC. “Trump to sign order making English the official U.S. language.” Why is this even necessary? What is this going to cost?

President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order making English the official language of the United States, three White House officials told CNBC on Friday.

The order would establish a national language for the first time in U.S. history.

Trump’s order would also rescind former President Bill Clinton’s August 2000 directive requiring agencies and other recipients of federal funds to provide services for those with limited English proficiency, according to a fact sheet shared with CNBC.

Trump’s designation will allow federal agencies to maintain their current policies and continue to provide documents and services in other languages. But it “encourages new Americans to adopt a national language that opens doors to greater opportunities,” according to the fact sheet.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the order earlier Friday morning.

Trump’s schedule for Friday does not currently include any time for signing executive orders. A White House source did not immediately tell CNBC when Trump was expected to sign the order.

So, with this and the destruction of the Education Department, will we stop seeing ESL classes in schools? I can only see this as the ultimate golden ticket for bullying.

The Department of Ed has a form to snitch on DEI policies in schools.I’d be a shame if we broke it with thousands of responses… enddei.ed.gov

— Jess Piper (@piperformissouri.bsky.social) 2025-02-27T21:52:28.162Z

One last economic thing. I’ve never been a deficit hawk. It’s established theory that the size of the tax base and economy plus market factors like acceptance of the money play a much bigger role in how big it can be rather than how big it is. However, this worries me. This is from Alexander Solender, who is writing for AXIOS. “Republicans fear their big budget win is a 2026 time bomb.”

House Republicans notched a major legislative victory this week when they passed their budget resolution. Now comes the hard part: Crafting a fiscal package that doesn’t doom them in the 2026 election.

Why it matters: Some Republicans already see signs that the backlash to the Trump administration’s “efficiency” efforts is spilling over into opposition to their legislative plans.

One Republican moderate, speaking on the condition of anonymity to give candid thoughts about political concerns surrounding their party’s marquee legislation, told Axios: “It could be trouble.”

“We saw what happened in 2018,” the lawmaker said, referring to the midterm year in which voter anger over the GOP’s legislative efforts helped Democrats flip more than 40 House seats.

Driving the news: The House voted Tuesday to adopt House Republicans’ budget resolution, with all but one House Republican voting in favor of the measure and every Democrat opposing it.

The resolution — a first step toward the hulking budget reconciliation bill Republicans hope to pass — allows $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, offset by $2 trillion in spending cuts.

The vote came after a tortured process in which House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) strained to bring together right-wing hardliners who want greater spending cuts and centrists fearful of cuts to programs like Medicaid.

State of play: After the vote, some vulnerable Republicans were quick to distance themselves from the notion that the budget measure does anything more than provide a conceptual framework for the final bill.

“Last night’s vote was just a procedural step to start federal budget negotiations and does NOT change any current laws,” Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-Pa.) said in a strident statement Wednesday morning.

Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.), in a CNN interview, insisted there is “zero mention of cutting Medicaid” in the budget resolution — even as it calls for the Energy and Commerce Committee to seek $880 billion in cuts, some of which will likely have to come from Medicaid.

Between the lines: Republicans have been barraged the last week and a half by angry constituents at town halls and protests outside their district offices complaining about DOGE’s layoffs and cuts to federal programs.

While DOGE has been the primary target of that voter blowback, House Republicans say they have also faced plenty of flack over the prospective benefit cuts in the GOP’s fiscal package.

“Most of the concern now is over … DOGE,” said a second House Republican who spoke anonymously, “but there’s also, maybe not too far behind that, the message that they are trying to get across on reconciliation.”

Zoom in: Despite voting for the budget measure, moderate and swing-district House Republicans told Axios they are drawing clear red lines on what they will support in a final package.

“If that doesn’t match with what our constituents and our district is looking for, then we won’t be voting for that product,” said a third House Republican.

A fourth told Axios: “I have told my leadership … there are scores of Republicans who don’t want to go further [on Medicaid] than requiring work for able-bodied adults, getting the illegals off and rooting out waste, fraud and abuse.”

“If it goes further than that,” they said, “the bill is probably dead.”

Yes, but: Conservatives are equally emphatic the bill must include substantial enough cuts to Medicaid to offset the increases in spending — creating a seemingly unworkable dilemma for Johnson.

Insufficiently deep Medicaid cuts are “probably a nonstarter,” said Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.).

Burlison went as far as to say Republicans “should cut more” than the budget provides for, telling Axios: “I just had people in my office say, ‘You didn’t cut enough.'”

What to watch: Democrats are eager to exploit Republicans’ struggles as the process of crafting the final package begins.

“Health care’s gone for everyone … we just won back the House,” exulted Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) coming out of the budget vote on Tuesday.

Democrats’ House Majority PAC is circulating a memo on the vote, first shared with Axios, titled: “House Republicans Ignore Constituents, Vote For Trump-Musk Agenda.”

Well, I’m off to see if I can pay the electric and cable bill and get groceries today. It’s a big question.

Take care and be kind to yourselves!

What’s your reading and blogging list today?

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