TGI Cleared Those Tabs
Steven L. Taylor
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Friday, March 14, 2025
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4 comments
- Via WaPo: Trump trade war confounds CEOs, deepening economic unease. You don’t say?
- Via CBS News: Lutnick says Trump’s policies are “worth it” even if they lead to recession. This seems highly, highly unlikely.
- Along those lines, this is maddening because it is the NYT taking all of this seriously: Trump’s Big Bet: Americans Will Tolerate Economic Downturn to Restore Manufacturing. As I noted yesterday, Trump is both claiming this is a long-term project while also using them as short-term negotiating cudgels. It has to be one or the other. This is an example of sanewashing.
- Via the National Post: ‘Just say thank you’: Lutnick says Canada is acting like Ukraine in Trump negotiations.
- Via Reuters: Trump says violence against Tesla is domestic terrorism. Now do storming the Capitol.
- Via the NYT: Musk Seeks to Put $100 Million Directly Into Trump Political Operation.
- Matthew Boaz at Lawfare: How to Lose a Green Card.
- Via the Brennan Center: Alabama’s Racial Turnout Gap Hit a 16-Year High in 2024. The gutting of the VRA is likely part of the story, but I would hypothesize that it is beacuse elections in the state are not competitive, and is skewed towards Republicans because of districting. Since Blacks vote disproportionately for Democrats, it is not surprising that when your party usually losed, you lose the will to vote.
- Via the KFile at CNN: Deleted tweets show top State Department official spread false rumor about Rubio’s sexuality, called him ‘low IQ’.
- Via Mediate: Lauren Boebert Accuses Black Lawmaker of Waving ‘Pimp Cane’ at Trump. That doesn’t sound racist at all! Stay classy, Lauren!
- The next two tweets are “Trump as terrible student.” Both are horrendous understandings of topics such as colonialism and sovereignty (among other things).
- And that’ll calm the markets.
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).
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Re both Lutnick and Trump talking about short term pain for long term gain: They’re doing the Volker/Reagan thing which in their minds is giving the economy it’s harsh medicine to fix it’s problem and doing it early so Trump can get reelected* in the glow of the recovery. A couple of flaws: First, the problem they’re fixing is an economy declared the envy of the world by The Economist. Second, their “fix” is based on glibertarian nonsense and won’t work. The economy will recover, but likely not to where it would have been without their “fix”. Third, they don’t really give a damn about our economy, the goal is to institute an oligarchic electoral authoritarianism.
* Or JD or some other minion of the oligarchs elected, or Trump’s repulsive kid, which may be the real plan.
What those Americans hope for, of course, is the return of millions of manufacturing jobs, with the pay and benefits from the height of union power days. Manufacturing isn’t like that any more. It’ll be like coal mining: a few thousand workers and a ton of automation. Less than 4,000 actual mine workers in Wyoming produce 40% of all the coal mined in the US.
@gVOR10:
Hasn’t Musk said that the goal is another Great Depression, this time to be handled on Mellon’s terms? “Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate farmers, liquidate real estate. It will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down…. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people.”
@gVOR10:
Actually not glibitarian, I followed a link to a post at Cafe Hayek that ripped the felon and had numerous quotes and links to other libertarians that also ripped his policies. There is nothing coherent or ideological about it’s all id.