Monday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Monday, April 28, 2025
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46 comments
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About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a retired Professor of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
Follow Steven on
Twitter and/or
BlueSky.
Today’s Krugman:
“Krugman”
This is an interesting article that may or may not be important. But it does lay out the public/private discourse that goes on amongst the elites regardless of their profession. It seems to me like a lot of navel gazing that unfortunately effects the rest of us.
The group chats that changed America
Trump’s 100-day approval drops to 39%, lowest in 80 years (MSN)
CNN Poll: Trump’s approval at 100 days lower than any president in at least seven decades (CNN)
Trump battered by brutal polls that show his approval sinking — including one revealing the lowest ratings since World War II (NY Post)
Well, at least he broke his own previous record for fastrack-to-unpopularity. Heckuva job, Donnie.
Ideological purges reduce deterrence, readiness, and effectiveness. Just ask Stalin
The author of this piece:
@charontwo:
The Hitler/Orban references run counter to our situation here in America — we have an authoritarian regime blowing up the economy while simultaneously shutting down democratic process and access. X% of people will not bite the hand that feeds and will become captive to whatever the authoritarians in power offer. This large segment of Americans have lost or are devoid of understanding the value/sacrifice proposition of their own democratic society, but have been socialized into a consumer “apostate” culture that now defines buying “stuff” with freedom and liberty.
It will be interesting and instructive to see what human response enmasse develops to Trump’s curtailment of cheap “stuff.” But I doubt it will translate into revolution. These people have also been heavily programmed along a second channel worldview that hates, really hates, “libruls,” their moral-societal values, and eschew processes of rational discernment. This took decades to inculcate and will not be going away anytime soon. MAGA mentality is fully conditioned to blame all bad things on “the others.”
“Grasping Reality”
Continuing examples at the link.
Thread:
https://bsky.app/profile/abenewman.bsky.social/post/3lnkqm7x2l22c
Thread above lots of links NYT, WaPo, AP etc.
@Scott: And yet we see harsh tendrils of Stalin’s genocidal misanthropy alive and on full display in Putin’s Russia today, 90 years later. The human personality’s antisocial power vector is durable and self seeding.
At this point in human history, the “golden age” of liberal democracy is but a respite from our worse inclinations. Would that we could make it a more permanent feature.
@charontwo:
Krugman states more coherently what I was suggesting the other day: that falling popularity = reduced threat to democracy. Falling poll numbers generally being connected to economic performance.
My single biggest fear was that Trump might be good for the economy. I mean, so many rich people were sure he would be. And wealth = IQ, right?
He’s made a mistake losing Elon. Elon was a shield, taking hits that should have landed on Trump. Who does he blame now? Who are his Jews?
@Michael Reynolds:
Just checked stocks, bonds etc., markets still look pretty complacent, seems pretty irrational to me but what do I know?
@charontwo:
QFE. An administration in cognitive decline. Total incompetence. This is what happens when you replace educated DEI hires with inept, unqualified rightwing freaks.
We are entering the secret police phase:
Should anyone still be interested, here’s the latest about the deaths of Gene Hackman and Betsy Arakawa
Tucked away at the end is this: “Further questions have also been raised about why the couple did not have a more robust care package in place.”
There are euphemisms for everything, it would seem.
That was my first question when I heard about the circumstances of the discovery of the deaths. I can see Arakawa might want to take care of her husband, but not even help with taking care of the house, the grounds, shopping, cooking, etc.?
@charontwo:
The tariff delay is still in place, the full effect of conservatives’ new China trade war not supposed to hit consumers for weeks yet. Investors expect Trump to fold or for the Republican congressmen they own to step in. We’ll see.
@DK:
How often in his adult life has Trump ever shown himself to be a “good faith” negotiator?
@DK:
I can see the Republiqans in congress stepping in it, but not stepping in. The felon can take them all down with one Xitt.
@Michael Reynolds:
Business and its requisite planning hates uncertainty. Trump operates within a vacuum created by his own unpredictability and instability. Another supply chain disruption on his watch.
I think Asimov’s fans who watch Foundation on Apple will feel like high school students who fail to find the Trojan Horse in the Iliad.
@DK: Here are some of the price effects happening now:
Shein, Temu prices go up today. We tracked some items to see how much
Shein and Temu raise prices in response to Trump tariffs
Amazon sellers are hiking prices on hundreds of goods as tariffs bite
Too soon to tell when consumers will notice.
@Rob1: While I sympathize with Mr. Reppucci’s concern, for the people who voted Trump in, his client is a criminal, not “people.” Any societal breakdown will go unnoticed until society arrives at the “and finally, they came for me” phase of Herr Niemoller’s reflection from long ago.
@Rob1: X% of people will not bite the hand that feeds and will become captive to whatever the authoritarians in power offer. So true. When one is afraid their income can be cut off and they can’t buy stuff or pay the rent then they darn sure aren’t going to man barricades.
@Scott:
I wonder what happens if Temu, say, sets up a huge warehouse in Mexico, or Canada, and ships all US orders from there. Would the imports still be subject to the tariffs on China, or could they be avoided.
I know about origin rules in international trade. As well as the difference between where a good was made, assembled, or shipped from. So a ruse like the above probably wouldn’t work, or might elicit even bigger tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods.
@Scott:
https://balloon-juice.com/2025/04/28/id-prefer-the-smoky-back-rooms-honestly/
@DK:
Investors think there is an off-ramp for Trump to take. This assumes Trump both able and willing to create one, I say not assured.
@charontwo:
The only off-ramp I can see for Trump is to declare victory and surrender. The MAGAts can be made to believe anything, so he’ll tell them tales of non-existent deals. He’s already started, with fantasy phone calls from Xi.
Times Radio:
“A wannabe bully, trying to rip apart the international system, and the US system, to get personal profit in terms of power, and yes, money. His legacy is as a wannabe bully being undone by the fact that he’s an economic moron.”
We may yet be saved by Trump’s stupidity.
@charontwo: “Just checked stocks, bonds etc., markets still look pretty complacent, seems pretty irrational to me but what do I know?”
I think that the situation is that if you took the risks seriously, you’d drop out of the market entirely. At that point, every month that Trump backs down/kicks the can down the road could result in you losing your job and career.
@Kathy: The story of the Trojan Horse appears in Virgil’s Aeneid, not the Iliad.
@Barry: I’ve been convinced for several decades now that the significant players in “the market” are gamblers as opposed to investors or financiers. Their personal wealth is so large that the fluctuations that rescue or destroy we who are ordinary mortals are only part of the game to them. On my really cynical days, I suspect it has been that way since the days of the Venician Doges.
ETA: I’m reminded of an episode of Alpha 8 (a high-takes poker tournament) I was watching. A guy had just busted out and was asked if he was going to reenter. He said he’d like to, but didn’t have another $100k with him. One of the guys at the table said “no problem,” reached into a gym bag next to him and tossed the guy a bundle of money. The guys the rest of us are hoping are going to “rein in” Trump are like the guy with the gym bag.
@DAllenABQ: I just looked this up and the tale of the Trojan Horse appears in The Odyssey, but not in narrative order, but much after the fact, where the bard Demodocus tells the tale of it to an audience including Odysseus and the rulers of the island Arete and Alcinous. This is at Odysseus’ request and is the point where he reveals his identity to them.
I find this quite interesting as an artistic choice.
@DAllenABQ:
Therefore the joke.
@Jay L Gischer:
A whole narrative of the Trojan war from the Apple of Discord to the fall of Troy, and the death of Agamemnon, and the state of the marriage of Helen and Menelaus, not to mention Odysseus coming home, requires stitching together several myths, epic poems, and plays. Jeff Wright did this in Trojan War The Podcast*
I don’t care enough to identify each one. I mostly stumbled on them on my general reading of Greek history and myth.
*Highly recommended. He also did one on the Odyssey. It’s also good, but I should forewarn it’s told in chronological order, rather than as Homer wrote it.
There are two separate , but related, questions. Why did Harris lose is a fairly simple question of inflation, Biden staying too long, black woman, and what ever.
Inflation makes me want to bang my head on the desk. It was largely over by early ’24. It was largely due to spending before Biden. And the alternative was a serious recession. I like to say the electorate are a box of rocks. I recently saw it described as having the long-term memory of a fruit fly. Biden lost despite an economy The Economist described as “the envy of the world. And Trump is too dumb to let the good times roll and take credit for it, as he was largely constrained to do with Obama’s economy.
The more interesting question is the long term issue of why the parties have become close enough for a self-absorbed, incompetent, a-whole like Trump to have a chance, especially as he was fronting for a party with a terrible record on the economy and war and nothing to offer. That revolves around FOX/GOP propaganda, racism, money, and what have you.
Or, a 60,000 ft view, not the usual 30,000, the social-democratic agenda of health insurance, unemployment insurance, and old age insurance is largely complete, noting that the U. S., being so exceptional, has done a clumsy, partial implementation. This leaves Dems defending the status quo with little bright, shiny, and new to offer.
@gVOR10: The Nation recently sent me a subscription pitch that included a quote from FDR questioning measuring progress by the gains in prosperity of those already well off instead of the improvement of conditions of those who don’t have enough. Granting that Trump and his fanboiz don’t give a flying f*** about those who don’t have enough, your argument, while economically sound, is still lacking on the human progress level. It’s still the economy, but it’s never been just that. Perception, and how you can manipulate it, matters.
@gVOR10:
I wish I could understand why inflation makes people so, unmoored. I fully understand that high inflation is bad, but the covid inflation we had wasn’t really that bad. It’s mostly bounced around historical averages and would have been fine. People treated it like it was the end of the world.
I’ve got a friend who is CONVINCED that inflation is rampant in the US and will destroy everything. When I showed him the chart he was like, bububububbuhhaha.
I suspect that part of the problem is that since at least the 80’s the GOP has hammered away that anything the Democrats do or want to do will cause [scary voice] inflation! I think that’s rotted people brains and they don’t actually understand it at all.
@Beth:
People freaked out over inflation because they did not trust the government to do anything about it. They did not trust the government because they’d been carefully groomed by the right-wing media machine, and because American society was so weak, the American people so ignorant and credulous, a pandemic was all it took to widen hairline fractures into chasms.
Also, never assume that people even understand their own finances, let alone the larger picture.
@Paul L.: I don’t, but I don’t think anyone here was supporting that either. So what’s your point? The stand here seems to have always been anti-deportation without due process.
@gVOR10: @Beth: Oops, thought I put that in the 1.47% thread.
I happen to be quite numerate, training and aptitude. Inflation doesn’t bother me much. I can see my income keeping pace and mentally adjust.
I think most people find dealing with a rubber ruler disturbing. Especially with something so basic as money. If you can’t be sure the dollar in your pocket is worth a dollar, what can you trust? And yes, the GOPs were screaming “Inflation! Biden! Inflation!” Along with FTFNYT and everybody else whose Econ writers are too innumerate to grasp that the “headline” year-on-year inflation number lags reality.
News to warm your heart:
Texla is in even worse shape than previously thought.
Among such gems as “The boy who cried FSD”, the piece mentions Texla made a profit in the first quarter only due to sales of regulatory credits to other car manufacturers. here’s a piece that explains these credits.
So, the nazi’s been profiting off government money and regulations for how long now? Not that we didn’t know this, but it’s good to have more of it spelled out. there were also the federal credits for purchases of EVs.
“I run the country and the world.”
— Donald Trump, quoted in The Atlantic
@Kathy: Green tax credits are a scam?
NPR has been killing it lately on the DOGE systems access. I know they have a team working just this issue. I wonder how long they will last under this administration.
DOGE employees gain accounts on classified networks holding nuclear secrets
@Beth:
IMO, because people don’t understand inflation, and because the effects linger on after it comes down. Add the sensational stories in the media for good measure.
People are more used to transitory price rises. namely gas. It may get too expensive when crude its high prices, btu then it eventually comes down.
Inflation isn’t like that, of course. Nonetheless, I’m convinced a lot fo people didn’t buy the fact that inflation had eased, because prices remained high.
From time to time I need to remind myself of the New Coke principle: people aren’t that stupid and they aren’t that smart.
One of RFKs priorities is to get rid of fluoride. his has been a long time fixation of his but a paper was published in JAMA Pediatrics (Jan 25) that provided him with some ammunition. However, the paper has been reviewed and critiqued at the link. The paper was a meta-analysis with tons of problems. Among them…
28% of them came from a journal called Fluoride, an activist anti-fluoride journal.
Many of the studies were just reporting correlations. For example Area A had high fluoride levels and low IQ. Area B had low fluoride levels and high IQ. Therefore fluoride causes low IQ. However, the papers didnt look at and rule out other factors associated with IQ like income, education and nutrition.
1/4 of the studies used urinalysis to determine fluoride levels, which is known to be unreliable.
Iffy statistical analysis.
As an aside the meta-analysis has great value in some situations but it was greatly abused during covid to push false ideas. You simply can cram a bunch of iffy, poorly done studies into a meta-analysis and say that because your study population (adding up all the individual studies) is now so large it must be true.
https://goodscience.substack.com/p/the-research-on-fluoride-and-iq?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1010915&post_id=162154690&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=3o9&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Steve
One of RFKs priorities is to get rid of fluoride. his has been a long time fixation of his but a paper was published in JAMA Pediatrics (Jan 25) that provided him with some ammunition. However, the paper has been reviewed and critiqued at the link. The paper was a meta-analysis with tons of problems. Among them…
28% of them came from a journal called Fluoride, an activist anti-fluoride journal.
Many of the studies were just reporting correlations. For example Area A had high fluoride levels and low IQ. Area B had low fluoride levels and high IQ. Therefore fluoride causes low IQ. However, the papers didnt look at and rule out other factors associated with IQ like income, education and nutrition.
1/4 of the studies used urinalysis to determine fluoride levels, which is known to be unreliable.
Iffy statistical analysis.
As an aside the meta-analysis has great value in some situations but it was greatly abused during covid to push false ideas. You simply can cram a bunch of iffy, poorly done studies into a meta-analysis and say that because your study population (adding up all the individual studies) is now so large it must be true.
https://goodscience.substack.com/p/the-research-on-fluoride-and-iq?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1010915&post_id=162154690&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=3o9&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Steve
@steve:
I know this is completely unrealistic, but I wish a five year pause could be placed on all science reporting. Especially anything to do with nutrition, cancer research or general crackpottery. .
@Michael Reynolds: The next 3 years and just under 9 months are going to cause decades of damage.
The “Before Times”, indeed.
I wish @JohnSf would wander by and give us his read on India v. Pakistan.
Now Delta’s playing at circumventing the felon tariffs.
I’m a bit skeptical:
I thought it would be more like leasing it from a European or Asian lessor, in which case the plane isn’t imported, because it doesn’t belong to Delta. But it’s likely Delta’s management and legal department know a bit more than I do about these things. 😉