NOAA and FEMA “are being unlawfully defunded in a bid to justify privatization. Before Musk and other rentiers seize public assets, they’re deliberately breaking them to ‘prove’ the right-wing myth of public-sector ineptitude.” #KennyStancil https://prospect.org/environment/2025-03-19-doge-is-going-to-kill-a-lot-of-americans
do most American workers live “paycheck to paycheck”?
maybe. it depends what that means.
see #MattBruenig https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2025/03/19/how-many-people-live-paycheck-to-paycheck
my cat has obtained $44B valuation in sharp turnaround.
(i don’t have a cat.)
Enjoy a seamless shopping experience.
“The reason you should care about this is not that it could happen to you but that it is already happening to others. It is happening to people who, we claim, have rights just because we are human. It is happening to me, personally.” #MashaGessen https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/17/opinion/trump-trans-denationalizing.html
“free speech means i am free to control the speech.”
On the cornering of Columbia and the fate of US academia in general, @rajivsethi https://rajivsethi.substack.com/p/tightening-the-screws
What people really hate about "unelected bureaucrats" is they turn into unaccountable tyrants before whom we find ourselves helpless and unfree.
Thank goodness the Trump administration is on the case, putting those bureaucrats in their place.
(if it's not entirely clear, my "thank goodness" is ironic, this is an example of how the Trump administration empowers little tyrants, as long as they share the administration's malignities.)
ht @benroyce
@phillmv it's a good one!
@felix yeah, this logic applies much less to resource-based surplus countries than those that produce high-value goods. (Canada produces high-value goods too, so does the US, but unfortunately I think the economies are pretty similar in terms of relying on rest-of-world for most manufactures.) 1/
@felix on the bright side, Canada isn't forcing a cold-turkey cutoff from those rest-of-world manufacturers, beyond the rogue United States. and Canada is good at most of the things the US is (e.g. IT services). it's position isn't horrible if it has the currency to spend more and tax the rich. /fin
re: https://bsky.app/profile/rajakorman.bsky.social/post/3lkbdfilsfs27
persistent trade surplus countries just have to write a check to their own people, then deal with higher accounting deficits or tax the rich. any inflation is limited because, well, excess supply.
persistent deficit countries have to build industries they've forgotten or never known how to run. 1/
obviously this is oversimplified, because the goods and services previously exported by surplus countries won't precisely match the goods and services domestic publics will want to buy. directed subsidies can help ameliorate this. 2/
further, surplus countries that produce high-value goods tend to have metacapacity — they know how to build competitive industries. deficit countries less so. 3/
you'd much rather be a surplus country than a deficit country in a time of growing trade barriers. the main benefit to deficit countries is they can learn to become more like surplus countries. /fin
i’m not for DEI or anything, but we really must do something about the scourge of anti-Tesla-ism.
just a couple of months ago, we had institutions of government.
@keunwoo a lot of reform of the US electoral system.
they always accused democrats of not being proud americans, of going on apology tours, but i don't think i could support anyone who isn't planning an apology tour.
@realcaseyrollins yes. Trump, and a charmed elite. the possibility of joining that charmed elite is a seduction to a certain kind of sociopath. (a sort of sociopathy that knows no partisan bounds, is frequent among politicians and business elites.)
@realcaseyrollins It's give Trump all the power, not just over ourselves, but over everybody. It's pure hierarchy, and ensuring ruthless means of enforcement.
@realcaseyrollins Bannon sometimes says idealistic things. No matter how elaborately those things are betrayed, he toes the line. Musk is a transhumanist, a threat to traditional judeochristian ideas of virtuous living, he says. OK. Where's the pushback?
There are lots of grand visions, but no constancy in pursuing anything but expanding and demonstrating power. A movement is what a movement does, destruction of institutions, manufacture of fear, consolidation of power.
ambitious sociopaths are drawn to MAGA. rule by unvarnished, unapologetic exercise of power is their highest ambition made real. there are plenty of ambitious sociopaths among democrats. you can see them. they feign disdain but they slip, pulled toward that bright light of ruthless control.