The Arc of the Tariff

 

                     "For too long, we've all suffered the bizarre and oppressive policies

                                                     that I installed last week."

                                                                                                                  The New Yorker, today

It's The Constitution, Stupid

Heather Cox Richardson writes a "Letter from an American" every day.  She is a historian, and the letter tells the story of that day from a historian's perspective.  

Yesterday's letter was a scholarly smackdown of our President's* Executive Order abolishing birthright citizenship, which makes all children born on US soil automatically, and forever, US citizens.  The very short version?  It's in the Constitution, dummy.  Fourteenth Amendment.  And then further bolstered by a Supreme Court decision in 1898:  U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark.  A man with Chinese parents was born in the US, returned to China to visit, and was denied re-entry to the US, because at the time everybody hated the Chinese.**  SCOTUS said he was a US citizen simply by virtue of being born in the US.

Richardson begins her letter with the deportation, yesterday, of three children, ages 3, 4 and 7 - one of whom has Stage 4 cancer and was deported without her medications - whose mother showed up for a routine immigration proceedings meeting and was sent back to Honduras with her children - all of whom were US citizens by birthright.  She goes into some detail, but I just want to throw something through a window.

To show us how far we've come - or, more accurately, how far we've fallen - there is this, at the end of her letter:

“You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American.”

“We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people—our strength—from every country and every corner of the world. And by doing so we continuously renew and enrich our nation. While other countries cling to the stale past, here in America we breathe life into dreams. We create the future, and the world follows us into tomorrow. Thanks to each wave of new arrivals to this land of opportunity, we're a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas, and always on the cutting edge, always leading the world to the next frontier. This quality is vital to our future as a nation. If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost.”

Guess who said that?  Anybody?

Ronald Reagan.  On his last day in office.

* - Charles Pierce, a great American gadfly who has been writing about US Presidents for a long time, always puts that asterisk after "President" when referring to Trump.  This is a sports records and statistics thing - when a season is interrupted by strike, or COVID, or whatever, the records pertaining to that season all have an asterisk next to them, meaning that they are incomplete, and probably meaningless and useless in understanding the wider context.

** - ...who were arguably responsible for the successful completion of the transcontinental railway twenty years before, but now were excess to requirements.

Pitchforks and Guillotines

And why aren't we on the march with our pitchforks and guillotines?  Why do we let it all happen?  Why don't we do something?

Lots of answers to that one, mostly coalescing around :"There's nothing we can do except pitchforks and guillotines; as long as we continue choose to follow the rule of law."  The Presidency is uniquely free of guardrails (perhaps a topic for another post) and yet the Republic has endured for 249 years - 236 with an actual President - without any of them taking on more power than the people were comfortable with.  Wartime powers were assumed during actual wars, when American boys were leaving home to die, but otherwise, there was, at worst, an uneasy truce among the three branches, and, at its best, an effective and beneficial collaboration.  Not any more.  But there still aren't any guardrails -- even when the President breaks the law, for the Supreme Court has placed the President above the law, while he is President and engaging in official duties (which, according to Trump, is anything he does, including cheating on a drop on the fifth fairway).

But another reason we're not all in the streets and storming the White House is because very little of the villainous madness has had an impact on most of us.  For most, it's all still entertainment.  For others, it's a righteous ass-whupping for them blamed libr'ls.  For us, it's gut-clenching destruction of something we love.  But for all three groups, the actual impacts - and there will be actual impacts for everyone - are still in the future.  Right now, we're living our lives pretty much unchanged.

This post started out as a comment on the actual impact Trump's devastation has had on Abbey and I at this point.  Three things have happened:

• Our investments lost 3% in March.  This isn't world-shaking, and we'll survive, but it's a significant chunk of money.  I'm sure we're not the only ones.
• I write grants for our local community theater.  We received approval in January for a grant which would fund stipends for our artists (mostly actors).  It's not much, but it pays for gas in an organization which rehearses and performs in a wonderful historic theater which is at least twenty miles from where any of us live.  I got an e-mail this week telling recipients that the money may not be available.  No reason was given; the wording was very careful not to point any fingers, but NY Governor Kathy Hochul has cut arts funding in half in her 2025 budget - probably because she sees the Federal pass-through funding, which supports the NY SS Council for the Arts, as drying up. 
• Produce prices have been rising noticeably, at least at our grocery store.

None of these is a really big deal; none will cause the demise of anything, or even really hurt a lot.  This is the place most Americans are in - nothing really noticeable yet.  Nothing to worry about.  Just a lot of craziness until the next election.

But the asteroid is coming.  When exactly is it time for pitchforks and guillotines?

Two Ways of Looking at the Future

'Just wait until 2028 and things will go right back to how they were"

Politics as Entertainment

I saw a headline this morning, on CNN's site, that indicated that a majority of young voters now leaned Republican.  I looked hard but can't find it now; manybe I was still dreaming.  It was early.

This makes no sense at all in the rational world of democracy, since the Republicans are devastating these kids' futures, destroying much or most of what is good about their country and, by extension, their world.  They, and their children, will grow into a world where the environment is plundered, public health is devalued, culture is disappearing, and freedom is a thing of the past.  This is all because Republicans have had power, have more power now, and will have power for a long time into the future.  I can't imagine how they envision the opposition; however they do, it's wrong.

But this is not the rational world of democracy any more, and hasn't been for a long time.  Ever since the long decline of the fact based world in the 1990s, and its disappearance in 2016, politics and political factions have become, in a word, entertainment.  Our culture and our media have taken on the mantle of both-sider-ism, obscuring the different between the forces of empathy and the forces of greed, turning the art and practice of democratic debate and moral judgement into a zero-sum game that can only be won one way:  provide the masses with the most entertainment.  Circuses without the bread.

The Republicans, and especially the Donald, are entertaining.  There's always something new, something outrageous, something to laugh at, something to shock us.  We love it.  We love horror movies and action thrillers and comedies, and we enjoy them without bringing any moral judgement to the death, destruction, fear, shock, and disgust that they evoke.  We laugh, without really thinking of what we're laughing at.  We leave wanting more.

In the same way, we enjoy the Republican and Trumpian hijinks and outrageous capers without worrying about whether that's the way we want to be.  Judgement, truth, value and honesty are lampooned in our culture, and we do not dare bring them to something as peripheral as the way we are governed and, especially, the long-term results of how we are governed.  We're having fun now, so what's your problem?  

This must be what is happening with young voters; why else would they gravitate to the part of the political spectrum which is most dangerous to their future?  "The danger isn't here, isn't now; I don't have to worry about it!  Keep the laughs and the thrills coming!"

How will we look back on this era of American history?  That's worth thinking about.

Same As it Ever Was

 ...and right after I finished the last two posts, this popped up on NBC:

Judge [Boasberg] finds cause to hold Trump administration in criminal contempt over deportation flights

This is the judge that ordered the Administration to return the planes carrying "suspected" gang members to El Salvador to US soil so he could apply, y'know, due process and the rule of law.  If I remember, the Administration said, "Oops... they've left US airspace... nothing we can do... how about that.  And no, we're not bringing them back."

Meanwhile, on the Lawfare podcast*, this, in the words of Heather Cox Richardson, happened:

Anna Bower, Roger Parloff, and Ben Wittes of Lawfare watched the hearing and explained that Judge Xinis is now building the evidence to determine whether individuals in the administration have acted in contempt of court.

This is concerning the Abrego Garcia case, which is, in turn, what the cartoon in the previous post is about.

Don't get your hopes up.  In both cases, what the Administration is accused of is verifiably true, and proving it in court should be simple.  However, it will all be a waste of time, because the Supreme Court ruled on July 1 of last year:

The Court thus concludes that the President is absolutely immune from criminal prosecution for conduct within his exclusive sphere of constitutional authority. Pp. 6–9. (2) Not all of the President's official acts fall within his “conclusive and preclusive” authority.

In the words of the ACLU National Legal Director David Cole, "...the Supreme Court today for the first time in history places presidents** substantially above the law."

So:  same as it ever was.  Trump knows he's immune, and that's why he's breaking laws left and right.  Get used to it.

* - And it was on this podcast that we learned how to pronounce U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis' surname:  "Eye-knees."  Now you know.

** - But maybe they can get Lil' Marco on this.  One can only hope.

SCOTUS Update

 Another look at the Abrego Garcia case, from today's New Yorker:

“Today, the Supreme Court is expected to rule in the case of People v. Guy Who Will Ignore the Ruling.”                                                                                

I wish it were a funny cartoon.

TIme To Use the Word

I'm sure by now we've all heard the various versions of the Hypocrisy Circus that is the story of the Trump Administration's handling of the case of Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national living legally in the US and holding down a union job.  He is a husband and father and lived in Maryland before being deported to an El Salvadoran maximum security prison for terrorists - with, of course, no evidence, no facts, and no due process.  And now the man who thinks he can annex Canada as the 51st state says he has no power to return Garcia to the US, even though the Supreme Court - his Supreme Court - told him to. 

I just can't fully embrace this story.  The repulsion is too strong.  And I am using 'repulsion' in both senses; the feeling of disgust and horror, and the almost physical inability to approach it; it is literally repelling me.  I can't get near it.  I feel like it will do some sort of damage to me just by taking a thorough look at it, so I shield myself, retreat.  

More and more stories of the Trump Administration evoke this response in me, especially those stories that involve real people being damaged and, in some cases, losing their lives.  It is, in part, my response to the serial bullying and abuse of power that reaches into lives every day; being bullied touches on childhood trauma that I think many of us share, and here it is again.  Part of it is outrage at the damage done to the institutions that have kept America great when it was great, and helped heal it when it was not.  Part of it is partisan.  Part is the cognitive dissonance created by an environment constructed of lies and hypocrisy.  And part of it is the devaluing and invalidation of a human response, a human feeling:  empathy.  Which is worth an entire post of its own.

But part of it - big enough to keep me at bay - is the fact that we are in the power of those who have no use for truth or empathy, whose only motive is to fulfil their base desires.  They are like the boy in "It's a Good Life" by Jerome Bixby, who could put you under the cornfield if you said the wrong thing.  They are evil, but not innocently evil, like the boy in the story.  They are evil on purpose.

I use that word - evil - carefully, thoughtfully.  It's not a word to be trifled with.  But I recently read a comment by H. M. Gilbert*, a psychologist who interviewed and translated for Nazi war criminals at the Nuremburg Trials.  He noted, of his experiences:

I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I’ve come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants. A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.

Is this the case?  At least one guy who knew what he was talking about thinks that it is.  At any rate, it is this same evil that we face today, and it repels us.  Do you feel it?  

* - Interestingly enough, Gilbert later wrote a book called "The Psychology of Dictatorship," which we should all read if we want to understand, from the leaders of the Third Reich, what is going on in America right now.  A chilling exchange between Gilbert and Hermann Goring:

Göring: ...after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.

Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.

Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.

Bite the Apple

If you have whiplash because you're trying to keep track of US tariffs on foreign goods, you're in good company.  It's probably best to wait until the Trump Administration is finds another distraction or two, and forgets about tariffs for a while, which is something that will happen.

Interesting observation by Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo about the actual effect of the tariffs:

Good way to see the current tariffs, as of literally today, is no tariffs on high value add manufactured goods marketed to middle and upper middle classes. Massive tariffs for cheap consumer items which amount to the biggest economic privilege of working class/middle class life in US.

Or, in other words, the privileged are safe from the effects of the tariffs (as they stand at this moment, which was yesterday), and the not-so-privileged get - well, it's an old story, isn't it?

One of the comments on Marshall's post was "Wait til the next MAGA trip to Walmart..."

In other words:

   

In Which I Disagree and Criticize

CNN, top of the page, today:

Trump's chilling message to dissenters: Don't.  The White House has a warning for anyone who might even be perceived to disagree with the president

This alone would disqualify anyone else who sought or won any elected office in any free country in the Western world.  Somehow, this man is President of our United States.

So, in the spirit of the 1st Amendment to the Constitution, that historic, but now obsolete document which was nullified on January 20, I will proceed to criticize the President.

• Donald Trump is a serial liar
• Donald Trump was convicted on 34 counts of fraud in criminal court.
• Donald Trump is an undisputed poster boy for narcissism (although he is not mentally ill).
• Donald Trump is a bully.
• Donald Trump is a convicted (in civil court) rapist.
• Donald Trump's tariffs are wrong.
• Donald Trump's education policy is wrong.
• Donald Trump is wrong on the border and on immigration.
• Donald Trump is an extortionist
• Donald Trump is the worst president, by far, in American history, or maybe the third worst or the fourth worst.

This is a post that is critical of you, Donald, in print, in public.  I disagree with almost every one of your policies.  But I am an American citizen, and have lived my life under the Constitution, including the BIll of Rights, including the first one.  

Come at me, bro.

Mr. Ed was a Stable Genius

Donald Trump has had his physical, and not only does he feel like he's "in good shape," he insists that he "got every question right" on the cognitive test.

As someone who has been giving cognitive tests professionally for fifty years, let me insist that if he "got every question right," he wasn't taking a cognitive test.  That's not how they work.  Let me know if you need clarification.

Oh - but of course, he could be lying.  Yeah.  There's always that.

Well, That's a Relief

Oh, good!  RFK Jr. says that he will find the cause of autism by September.  We can all breathe easy!

Oh, wait.  Isn't he the one who continues to insist that there is a connection between autism and vaccines?  Yeah.  He is.

So here's what he's going to say in September:

Yes, we've found that there is a strong link between vaccines and autism.  How do we know?  We found three people who are autistic and also were vaccinated.  That should sew it up.  What's that?  Large-scale studies by competent professionals?  Of course we didn't waste time and money on that.  That's not the way the world really works anymore.

Anyway, I'm more interested in a different question.  If we find the cause, and then the cure, for autism, should we?  Cure it?  Or more accurately, should we apply the cure to everyone?   A case can be made - and I'd be glad to make it for you - that the world is much more interesting, and works better, with high-functioning autistic people in it.  What do you think?

The Bond Reverse

We are, by now, used to abrupt u-turns by the Trump Administration (including the first one).  It's a strategy to assert dominance, a strategy used by bullies and abusers.  One of many strategies typically used by bullies and abusers that we're having to become familiar with.

So the sudden 'pause' in the tariff policy (by a President who proclaimed  “MY POLICIES WILL NEVER CHANGE”) was predictable; I would have put money on it, if I were inclined to gamble.  But the reason for this reversal is interesting.

The reason involves a stratum of global economics which is way above my pay grade here at New World II, and so I can just sort of summarize it.  You're free to find a lot more detail in the many articles that have appeared in the last day or two.  It's about the bond market.

Specifically, US Treasury bonds which, apparently, are how we accumulate our national debt, or The Deficit.  We sell bonds, usually to other countries; they give us money for the bonds, with the promise that we'll pay them back plus interest at some time in the future.  

Treasury bonds have, apparently, been a pretty stable, conservative risk, at least until this week.  This week, after repeated acts of insanity at the highest levels in the US, countries which held a lot of our debt decided to dump it.  The tariffs were the last straw, it seems; a great sell-off ensued and the value of Treasury bonds tanked.

Now if I've learned one thing from our financial advisor (who, it must be said, is very patient with me), when stocks go down, bonds go up, and vice versa, which is the reason you have a "balanced" portfolio, with a good representation of each.  But this week, as stocks went down (a lot), Treasury bonds went down, too.  

"Because bond revenue pays for the cost of government programs that tax revenue doesn’t cover, worries abounded that Trump’s broader agenda was in jeopardy," was how CNN put it (in an article which described the 'pause' as "one of the most humbling retreats of [Trump's] presidency").  One of the elements of "Trump's broader agenda" is trillions of dollars of tax cuts to the 1%, so that same 1% were storming the gates (meaning Trump's phone) to make it stop.  Continuing the bond slide much further would also do enough damage to our economy to cause a recession, not to mention the economies of bondholder countries, but I think that was probably secondary to the Big Rock Candy Mountain promised in the tax bill (which has gotten its start in the House) that they could see slipping away.

So Trump can be turned around, but only by a concerted effort of the most powerful people in the world.  And that leaves democracy where...?

And I dreamed I was flying

And high up above my eyes could clearly see

The Statue of Liberty

Sailing away to sea

And I dreamed I was flying

Historic Times

Here's a headline that was toward the top of CNN's website today:

"Republicans poised to help Trump kill thousands of manufacturing jobs in places that voted for him."

It is 'subscription only,' so I couldn't read it.  Nevertheless:  we are indeed living in historic times.

For What It's Worth

 Tim Grimm:

He's got no shame, got no soul

Got no poetry inside to make him whole...

Later:

 Nine years we’ve lived with sorrow, nine years we shook our heads

The Times they are a Changin’, and Honey in the Lion’s head

It’s time we lift the hammer and ring them bells instead.

It’s time we stamp these fires out and let the Peace be spread...

Don’t it break your heart ? ‘Cause it breaks my heart...

The Least Excuse

Heather Cox Richardson provides a real service, in her daily newsletter, by giving us context in which to understand (as much as it can be understood) the times we are suddenly living in.  Her bulletins are sometimes descriptions of the previous days events, and sometimes a journey through the particular part of history which will help us understand (caveat as above) those events and the people who make them happen.

Today she helped us understand how the Trump Administration is just the temporary end of a bright line that extends through American history from the Southern politics of slavery before the Civil War, through the Army of the Confederacy, Jim Crow, Klu Klux Klan, Nazi Germany, Reagan's "welfare queen" scam, Romney's "takers," to the January 6 insurrectionists who tied it all together by flying the Confederate battle flag in the US Capitol.  Her point throughout the journey was that these were all groups of Americans who banded together to advance their belief that some people were just better than others, more deserving, higher functioning and superior.  

Do you feel it?  Do you understand, now, what it's like to be the underclass, the second class, the undeserving, the inferior?  That's a big part of that dreadful, hollow, sickly feeling in the pit of our stomachs that has been there since January (or, for some of us, since 2015).  We are being bested by a bully.

I was struck by the words of Gen. U. S. Grant, with which Richardson ended her bulletin, who wrote late in life about his feelings on the day of Lee's surrender (160 years ago today):

“What General Lee's feelings were I do not know,” Grant wrote. “[M]y own feelings, which had been quite jubilant on the receipt of his letter [asking to surrender], were sad and depressed. I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.”

"One of the worst for which a people ever fought."  We are again in the throes of the same worst cause.  And not a valiant opponent in sight, or even one who "suffered so much" for that cause.

Racism is OK if...

My capacity for outrage is being distilled and diluted by the constant barrage of outrageousness, even though I know that this is exactly what they want.

You probably know by now that Harriet Tubman has disappeared from the National Park Service's web page on the Underground Railroad.  According to the new text, the Underground Railroad was “one of the most significant expressions of the American civil rights movement.”

And - oh yes, slavery is gone.  No mention at all.

I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this, except to say that it seems that racism is OK if slavery never existed.

"This Is What Democracy Looks Like"

Abbey and I went to the "Hands Off" rally  on Saturday - as did millions of people around the world.  Ours was in downtown Oneonta.  It was cold, rainy and windy - miserable, but probably not as miserable as the winter of 1777-78 at Valley Forge, or the winter of 1944 at Bastogne.  Muller Plaza was jam-packed, and we spilled out down the sidewalks and across Main Street.  Horns honked almost constantly in support. Nearly everyone had a sign.  So did I.  My sign, which I made myself, read:

I felt strangely moved the whole time.  I could relate to the sign that said, "It's so bad even the introverts have come out," and yet I raised my sign and turned it so those in the cars driving past could see it.  It would be much more like me to stand in the back without a sign, convinced that being there was important but expressing myself was not.  

I was moved by the thought of what my Dad did, a peaceful man who answered the call of The Good War, and who came home to do his part of making the world a better place.  I was so proud of him, and so honored to be his son, that I was near tears the whole time, out in the cold and the rain.  He was conservative and straightforward, but he recognized the difference between right and wrong - and stood for the right.  Abbey wondered if he would be here if he were still alive.  I was sure that he was.

Simple Solution to the "Border Crisis"

In another e-mail bulletin today, Adrian Carrasquillo speculates that the Trump administration will use the Insurrection Act of 1807 "to obtain complete operational control of the southern border" by militarizing it.  The Act "allows the president to deploy U.S. armed forces and the national guard against Americans in situations of civil unrest."

This is insane for a lot of reasons, but one reason stands out among the rest:  there is a simple solution to the illegal immigrant problem, a solution that has existed for almost twenty years.  It has not solved the problem, for the simple reason that none of those involved want the problem solved.  

The solution is E-Verify.  At the heart of E-Verify is a database, provided by the Federal government, of all illegal aliens in the United States.  Given that the overwhelming majority of illegal immigrants come to the US for jobs, it should be a simple task to simply check each prospective employee with E-Verify, hire those who are legal, and don't hire those who are illegal.  Given the speed with which news about the US border and immigration travels in North America, the flow of illegals should diminish to a trickle in - what, a month?  Two at most?   There!  Problem solved!

Except there's a problem:  Almost no one involved with the border and immigration wants it to work.  So it doesn't.

Here's an interesting map:

A map of U.S. state laws requiring the use of E-Verify as of 2015:

     State requires E-Verify for most public employers

  State requires E-Verify for some public contractors and subcontractors

  State requires E-Verify for all employers

E-Verify is not a Federal law, so states get to use it or not.  The grey states are the "nots."  Other states require contractors, subcontractors and/or public employees to be verified (red and blue).  And if you're any kind of employer in one of the yellow states, state law requires that you verify every employee.

This map is from 2015, so some things may have changed.  But the truth still is:  no one wants it to work, so it doesn't.  Consider:

• Immigrants - The process of verification is simple:  your name is entered into the database.  How does the employer know your name?  You just have to show him your papers.  So, if a relative or a friend, or an uncle who has retired back in Mexico, lends you their papers, you're in.  About half of those who go through the verification process are using someone else's ID.  Half.  I can't believe it either, but there it is in black and white.
• Business owners:  If you've got a difficult job with long hours and low pay, you're happy to hire someone who risked their life and freedom to come apply for it.  Illegal immigrants can be found swelling the ranks of construction laborers, maids and housekeepers, cooks, home health aides, and janitors and building cleaners.  If you want that kind of worker for that price, you're not going to look too hard at their ID - if you look at all.
• Politicians:  Those on the right need to be tough on illegal immigration, since so much misinformation has been fed to their constituents.  They love pounding the "border crisis" theme because it gets them re-elected.  And their campaigns benefit hugely from the fact that they mislead the public, putting the blame anywhere but on business owners, where it belongs. You can imagine how the business owners show their gratitude.     

If you're a yellow state, there should be close to zero illegal immigrants in your state who have jobs.  The fact that this is not the case means that the combination of immigrants desperate for a job, business owners desperate for cheap labor, and politicians desperate to get re-elected, is the cause of the "border crisis."  Turn off the jobs spigot, and the problem disappears. 

Why Tariffs Won't Work

I know, I know.  You (and I) are already tired of reading about the insufferable idiocy of Trump's policies, not to mention his incoherent verbal ramblings (Google "Trump groceries").  But here's something even the staunchest MAGA defender must recognize:  the fundamental premise of the tariff policy is flawed.,

Here it is:  We erect a tariff wall, so goods are more expensive to ship to the US; companies have to charge more for their goods made overseas, and so they see their sales plummet.  Then they say, "Hey - what if we produced our goods in the good ol' USA?"  Boom - more industry in America.  Lower prices.  Jobs!  MAGA!

Well, outside the fact that by the time any new factories are built and operating in the US we are two presidents down the line and the tariffs are ancient history, there's another, more fundamental problem.

Carlo Versano, Newsweek's political editor, addresses this problem in today's "The 1600" e-mail newsletter (still don't know how to link to them, sorry).  He uses Nike as an example.   Half of Nike's shoes are made in Vietnam.  There is now a 46% tariff on Vietnam.  So Nike - an American company - is out of luck, right?  Not going to be able to sell shoes with a 50% markup to pay the tariffs.  So - make them in America!

OK - let's assume that the tariffs are still in place and the world hasn't ended yet (a big ask) five years from now, and Nike has just spent millions on a new factory.  Let's start hiring Americans!

Right now, Vietnamese workers in Nike factories in Vietnam make, at most 10,000,000 Vietnamese dong (VND) a month, which sounds like a lot.  But Google says that 10,000,000 VND is the equivalent of $387.52 US - which is not a lot.  Per month.  And these are the best-paid Vietnamese workers.

A major reason for outsourcing manufacturing overseas is that labor is so much cheaper.  So much so, that a substantial number of Americans will not buy products which are made in the equivalent of a maquiladora, an overseas factory where workers - mostly women - are exploited in terms of pay and conditions.  

Would you take a full time factory job for $387.52 a month?  Right now the median factory worker's monthly salary in the US is almost ten times that - $3119.16.  How does building that factory and avoiding the tariffs make sense now?

Maybe by then the post-apocalyptic economy will be so compromised that $387.52/month will look good.  But then who will buy all the shoes?

Good lord.

Making Up Stories

I'll admit it:  I can be kind of rigid regarding truth and accuracy.  I can operate in their presence; in their absence, my brain kind of freaks out.  I can't complete a thought or solve a problem.  I can't move forward until I am on solid ground.

Most folks are a little more flexible and this, I guess, is what makes the world go 'round.  But everyone should know about, and then stop and consider, the central theme of an article in the New York Times Magazine, by journalist Ron Suskind, published in October of 2004.   The article is about faith and the Bush campaign (it was just weeks before the 2004 Presidential election), but it is memorable - and oft-quoted - for a staggering assertion made by an unnamed Bush advisor:

We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.

This is the article in which the term "reality-based community" first appeared:

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore,"

This was almost exactly eight years after Fox News went on the air.  The political world was never the same again.  Truth, lies, accuracy and deception have simply become tools for use by the right wing and Republicans when they're needed to achieve a desired outcome.  The Democrats and the rest of the reality-based community have had trouble keeping up.

And then we come to the predictable conclusion:   our leaders have lost all connection with truth and accuracy.  Here is President Trump *, in his book "The Art of the Deal:"

I play to people's fantasies ... People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It's an innocent form of exaggeration—and it's a very effective form of promotion.

And Vice President JD Vance, on CNN's "State of the Nation" in September:

In a stunning admission, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, said he was willing “to create stories” on the campaign trail while defending his spreading false, racist rumors of pets being abducted and eaten in a town in his home state of Ohio.

I didn't say it, they did.  No matter where you stand in American politics, you know that your leaders are willing to make stuff up just to make you feel better.  They said so.

Unless this is all just an innocent form of exaggeration. 

* - This link takes you to a page that goes on forever, called "False or misleading statements by Donald Trump."