Subsidiarity Economics 2025. The Times more or less locally, Part 6. “Rarely has an economic policy been repudiated as soundly, and as quickly, as President Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs.”

Rarely has an economic policy been repudiated as soundly, and as quickly, as President Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs.

The Wall Street Journal, May 13, 2025.

May 14, 2025

Wyoming Delegation Not Supportive Of Trump's Idea Of Tax Hike For The Rich

So Barrasso and Lummis separate from Trump on this?

Neither one of them are actually Trump supporters in terms of their personal beliefs, but have adopted his views for political survival in Wyoming, which is fanatically pro Trump.  Everyone is well aware that the budget is in a crisis stage and at some point soon the US needs to have a balanced budget. That can only be done through raising taxes, and they know it.

Additionally, taxing the wealthy will not hurt the economy, and everyone knows that.  Tax rates for the wealthy were much higher in prior decades with no ill effect on the economy.

A matter of critical interest.

Wyoming Is The Second Most Expensive State For Beer Lovers

And one Wyomingites just won't believe

Reaction To Trump Tariffs Helps Push Wyoming Oil Prices To Four-Year Low

This is an absolute fact, but if you follow the story on Facebook, a lot of Wyomingites just won't believe it. That would mean Trump is hurting the local economy, and they can't accept that. . . at least not yet.

Oil is at $62.02/bbl this morning.

May 15, 2025

Given the magnitude of the tariffs, even at the reduced levels announced this week, we aren’t able to absorb all the pressure given the reality of narrow retail margins. 

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon.

Oil is at $61.60/bbl.

May 17, 2025

Thanks to Republican mishandling of the economy, specifically increasing debt, Moody's downgraded the economy from Aaa to Aa1.

The GOP can't seem to grasp that you actually have to pay for the government.

New Jersey transit engineers are on strike.

Trump's "Big Beautiful Budget Bill", which would add $4T in debt, failed 16-21 in the House Budget Committee.

The irony is that those voting against it want more spending cuts, but only increased taxes will address this developing crisis.

Let's put this in bold, as people just don't seem to grasp it.

THE UNITED STATES CAN'T "CUT" ITS WAY OUT OF ITS BUDGET CRISIS.  IT MUST RAISE TAXES.

Cont:

It's really time to stop calling Trump a businessman:

He's a real estate developer. Clearly he's otherwise a business illiterate.

May 19, 2025

The Trump deficit expanding budget bill made it out of committee on a 17-16 vote with those who were to vote no, voting present.

This bill will be a disaster for already an already irresponsible Federal government.  Taxes need to be raised on income, particularly upper incomes to make the budget balance and this insanity cease.

May 22, 2025

The House of Representatives passed by a margin of one a funding bill that will swell the deficit disastrously while making cuts in Medicaid and food stamp while adding to border security.  Taxes will be cut, when they should be raised, and will irrationally be eliminated on tips and overtime.

Trump, who speaks oddly at best, has called this his "big beautiful tax bill"

Walmart is cutting 1,500 corporate jobs.

The stock market is crashing because of the bad tax bill. The bond market is flat.

West Texas crude is back down to $60.96.

Cont:

The "tip" exemption appears to be for "cash tips".

FWIW, bar tenders tend to get cash tips, but restaurant workers less and less.  FWIW, cash tips are notoriously underreported anyway, as they're impossible to keep track of.

May 23, 2025

Hageman’s Budget Vote Critical As House Passes One Big Beautiful Act 215-214

The next one is interesting:

Barrasso Cheers Vote To Kill California Mandate To ‘Force-Feed’ EVs On Everyone

Republicans are for state's rights, except when the state exercises the right to do something they don't like.

Likewise, the GOP is for local control, but really isn't.

At Lusk Town Meeting, Locals Say Wind Projects Have Ended Friendships

Developer Of Controversial Casper Gravel Mine Wants To Renew State Leases

Trump:

What does the "thank you for our attention to this matter" intend to do?

Last edition:

Subsidiarity Economics 2025. The Times more or less locally, Part 5. The Roller Coaster Edition.

Labels: 2020s, 2025, China, Donald Trump, Economics, Food, Jerome Powell, Petroleum, Red Caesar, The Madness of King Donald, The Second Trump Administration, Trump Trade Wars, Wyoming's boom and bust economy

The 2026 Wyoming Legislature, Part 1. The way too early edition.

April 10, 2025

Freedom Caucus leader John Bear went on record at a meeting of legislators on how to handle the upcoming populist initiative to reduce property taxes by 50%, after they've just been reduced by 25%, as favoring completely eliminating property taxes in favor of sales taxes.

On the imported geezer reduce my property taxes on the house I bought after I moved here from California initiative, he feels that the effect wouldn't be cumulative (50% of the just reduced 25%), while other legislators do.

May 2, 2025

A press interview of Freedeom Caucus member Bear reveals the WFC wants to treat the Wyoming budget to some DOGEy style actions, particularly in regard to grants and loans.

May 4, 2025

Wyoming Republicans Elect Sheridan's Bryan Miller As New Party Chairman

I don't know anything about the woman from Teton County who was his competition, but Miller was another individual who spent a career in the military, and therefore was a lifelong recipient of public funds, and who has now returned as an opponent of the Federal government.

May 7, 2025

Wyoming Legislature finalizes list of ‘off-season’ topics for study

May 9, 2025

Chuck Gray Supports 22 New Election-Reform Bills, Committee To Study 10

Some of these bills are frankly nuts.

May 19, 2025

Wyoming lawmakers go after funding for state associations that sometimes oppose their bills: Green River Rep. Marlene Brady is leading the charge on prohibiting cities, towns and counties from paying dues to elected officials’ associations.

May 21, 2025

Legislative panel pursues bills to regulate Wyoming library books with sexual material: Lawmakers are taking up library books as conservative activists around the state pore over material in young adult and teen library sections for sexual content.

For reasons I won't go into, I've seen some of the book that is featured in this article, and there's no way it should be in the children's section of a library.

May 22, 2025

Committee Adopts Bill To Make Wyoming Senate Confirm Supreme Court Justices

This is inaccurate. Rather they voted to have the LSO draft such a bill.

May 23, 2025

As scrutiny of judges grows, lawmakers weigh changes to Wyoming’s selection process: In her final official appearance before lawmakers, Wyoming Supreme Court Chief Justice Kate Fox defended the process for choosing the state’s judges. But some lawmakers still want changes.

Related threads:

The Wyoming Freedom Caucus and the 2025 and 2026 Legislatures. Some things to keep in mind.

The amazing ability of the Palestinians to self sabotage.

It's really stunning.

The basic Palestinian cause should be a sympathetic one.  They were displaced from their homes in a war, made refugees, and many have no homes.

And yet, they do everything possible to make themselves detested and/or ineffective and unsympathetic.

In 1970 the PLO attempted to overthrow Jordan, where many Palestinians had taken refuge.

That ended up with them going to Lebanon, which they destabilized.  

The treaty that resulted in them having self governance on the West Bank and Gaza ended up with them electing unrealistic flaming radicals in Gaza, who of course attacked Israel in a shocking manner on October 7, 2023.

The US supported Israel, as it naturally could have been expected to do, which bizarrely lead Palestinians in the US to support Donald Trump for the Presidency, which has to be about the most dimwitted thing they could have done.

And now

2 Israeli Embassy aides are killed in a shooting in Washington, D.C., officials say

This gives Donald Trump his Reichstag Fire moment.  

And cover for the current government in Israel to occupy as much of Gaza as it wishes to.

No matter how wide, or narrow, this act of terrorism was, Palestinians in the US, and immigrant populations in general, are really going to get pounded by the Administration.  This will be the rallying cry for "deport!".  And it'll be the thing which causes the Trumpites to say "See?  There really is a war going on. . . it's an emergency. . . deport them all".

And many rank and file Americans will have no sympathy for them at all.

For that matter, the same feelings exist in the UK, where those cries will echo.

Going Feral: Blog Mirror: Public Lands Victory: BHA Applauds R...

Going Feral: Blog Mirror: Public Lands Victory: BHA Applauds R...: 

Blog Mirror: Public Lands Victory: BHA Applauds Removal of Public Land Sale Amendment from House Budget Reconciliation Bill

Very good news:

Public Lands Victory: BHA Applauds Removal of Public Land Sale Amendment from House Budget Reconciliation Bill

Voters need to remember who favored this horrific action to privatize public lands in 2026.  All over the West there seems to be a view that you have to vote for Republicans.  You don't, if they aren't voting for you.  There are other options, or there can be if people consider what's being done and oppose it.

Anyhow, this is good news.

Say no to those who would undermine Wyoming’s independent judiciary

Say no to those who would undermine Wyoming’s independent judiciary: The current judicial selection process doesn't need reform. It works well precisely because it's merit-based, attorney Khale Lenhart writes.

The Madness of King Donald. The 25th Amendment Watch List, Second Edition.

Trump at a college commencement on May 1, 2015.  Probably a copyrighted photograph, but posted here under fair use to show Trump's bizarre character.

Barry R McCaffrey@mccaffreyr3 19h

Trump to rename Veterans Day as ‘Victory Day for World War I’ - POLITICO — This is nuts.

He's clearly nuts.  But not just nuts, he's stupid, and mean.

Section 4

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

There's an entire selection of recent news interviews recently where King Donny is rambling and incoherent, but here's another example of his oddity.  Trump is going to rename Victory In Europe Day to “Victory in World War II Day” even though it VE Day really was only a victory in Europe.

The war raged on against Japan after VE Day.

And for a complete collection of ramblings, etc.:

I don't know what Trump's talking about anymore and neither does he

The man is demented.

Of course, added to this pathetic scene, Trump posted a photo of himself dressed like the Pope last week.  

Donald Trump insults Catholicism.

This brought immediate condemnation, but it also broke "oh, it's just a joke".  First of all, for a dignified office, sophomoric jokes should be out of the question.  The man occupying the position that is routinely cited, probably inaccurately now, as the most powerful in the world, should not be acting like a 7th grader.  But he does so all the time.

Assuming it is a joke.  Quite a few things that Trump does that are not taken seriously turn out to actually be his real views.

I dare say that this sort of conduct by any other President in the past would have resulted in the invocation of the 25th Amendment by now.  It's not here, as those backing Trump need him for their agenda.  National Conservatism and Project 2025 depend on him.  His loyal base apparently has no problem with his antics, and those running the show depend on those people.  That probably explains why J. D. Vance is not President yet, as nobody can be sure of who, if anyone, supports him.

This will get worse.

May 5, 2025

Two gems this morning.

A tariff on foreign movies, and this:

Alcatraz is a National Park now. When it was open it was plagued with battling the elements.

May 5, 2025

Keith Olbermann@KeithOlbermann7h

Something that is underscored every time an actual world leader goes to the White House: Donald Trump is wildly and increasingly insane.

May 8, 2025

Reporter:  We are seeing the ports here in the US—the traffic has really slowed and thousands of dock workers and truck drivers are worried about their jobs”.

Trump: “That’s good, it means we lose less money”.

May 15, 2025

This is the guy running my administration. His name is Stephen Miller... We need a building like this back home.

Trump in Abu Dubai

We have costs are way down. Groceries. We have a term grocery. It’s an old term, but it means basically what you’re buying, food. It’s a pretty accurate term but it's an old fashioned sound.

Trump again.

March 16, 2025

Oh yeah. . . thats a comment by a "stable genius". . . 

May 19, 2025

Really losing it.

Related threads:

Narcissistic personality disorder

The Economist: The Alzheimer's edition.

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist 82nd Edition. The This Is Your Economy On Dementia Edition.

The 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution and our Cheery Belief that Age just Doesn't Matter

We should worry.

Last tragic edition:

The Madness of King Donald. The 25th Amendment Watch List.

Labels: 2025, 2026, 25th Amendment Watch List, Donald Trump, Gaza, Greenland, Gulf of Mexico, J. D. Vance, law, Mental Health, Stupidity, The Liz Cheney Maxim, The Madness of King Donald, The Second Trump Administration

Going Feral: Looking for Nate Champion.

Going Feral: Looking for Nate Champion.: 

Looking for Nate Champion.

He which hath no stomach to this fight,

Let him depart; his passport shall be made,

And crowns for convoy put into his purse;

We would not die in that man's company

That fears his fellowship to die with us.

Shakespeare, Henry V.

The views of average Wyomingites, by a huge margin, are clear on public lands.  We want them to remain public.

And yet our Congressman voted to transfer 500,000 of FEderal land in Arizona and Utah over to private hands. It's clear that at least one of our Senators is okay with doing something similar in Teton County.

Wyomingites aren't in favor of this at all.  Indeed, one of the most rabid Trumpites I know actually expressed bewildered opposition to this.

So here's the problem, and the question.

Why are Wyomingites still supporting the people who support this?

Politics are varied and complicated.  The reasons that Wyoming has gone so far to the right in its recent politics are as well.  A lot of it has to do with social issues, abortion, transgenderism, immigration, and so on, and much of that, here, has to do with the death of the Democratic Party and there being, seemingly, no where else to go.

But at least on the local level there certainly is, and what Wyomingites are presently doing is not in their own best interest.

Much of what they're currently doing is, frankly, based on a host of lies.  Donald Trump was not the victim of a stolen election with Joe Biden won.  Joe Biden won.  Global warming is not a fib.  The long drift away from coal cannot be arrested.  The state's petroleum industry was never under any governmental assault (leases went up under Biden).  There is no war on the West.  The region's agricultural sector isn't under governmental attack, but rather under real estate developer attack.  The Democrats really weren't advancing gun control.  

But we've been bought off on a bunch of dramatic assertions designed to cause the rise up of what plaintiff's lawyers call our "lizard brain".

Well, now we have a whole host of legislators, many from out of state, who don't share local values at all, and a Congressional delegation that is more interested in supporting the agenda of the far right and its ostensible leader, a nearly 79 year old real estate developer suffering from dementia, than paying attention to what we actually believe.

And that's because that's exactly what we let them do.

In reality, those close to the inside know that John Barrasso doesn't believe  what he's supporting.  It's pretty clear from her past that Cynthia Lummis doesn't either.  Harriet Hageman, well she probably does, as she's a political family that has always had this set of views.  Having said that, and importantly, she intends to run for Governor next election and Chuck Gray, who is a Californian with very little connection to Wyoming, will run for House.

In the next election Wyomingites have a chance to make their views known, although they really need to start doing so right now.  That can have an impact.  John Barrasso, in the last election, adopted a whole host of new views he probably doesn't hold at all to hold off an attack from his right.  Lummis just quietly mostly didn't say what her views actually are the last time she ran, which she could do under the circumstances, and which leaves her room to maneuver.

Maneuvering will, it must be noted, need to occur.  In 2026 the House is going to be Democratic and the MAGA reign will be over, save for in Wyoming, where there's every reason to belive it will keep on keeping on.

The Wyoming Freedom Caucus of its day, the Johnson County invaders.

Much of this, we'd note, is perfectly consistent with Wyoming's history.  Early on Wyoming sent a solidly Republican group of legislatures to our solon in  Cheyenne in spite of its association with large outside agricultural interest which were oppressing local interest.  That didn't end until the invasion of Johnson County in 1892 which briefly swept the Republicans out of power, and brought Democrats into the legislature and which sent Governor Barber packing, although not until after he tried to actually remain as Governor a la Trump insurrection in a way.  That event, however, shows the electorate can react.  It also shows us that politicians can too, as Francis E. Warren managed to survive the event, career entact, when really she shouldn't have, by changing views.

And this is happening in Montana, which was a little in advance of Wyoming in tilting to the far right, right now.

Posted in

A new Montana majority defangs the far right

Just sitting and complaining "well that's not what we think" won't get much done.  

Politicians from any party ought to represent the views of their state.  They ought to also intelligently lead.  There's not much intelligence being manifested in the populist far right, which is mostly acting with a primitive response on a set of social issues combined with false beliefs, andy in Wyoming, with views they brought up from their own states which don't have much to do with us here.  We aren't Sweet Home Alabama.

But that won't happen unless Wyomingites educate themselves as to the truth, and what is truly going on, and how they're simply being fed raw meat for the dogs.  Until that occurs, we're going to go further into the abyss.

The Cost Meter. A Trade War Index.

April 5, 2025

Petroleum:  $61.78/bbl (Wyoming crude become unecomic at $59.00/bbl).

Coal:  Coal 99.40/ton

Coffee (USd/Lbs) 372.60.

Levis at Penny's:  $55.65.

April 7, 2025

Petroleum:  60.80/bbl.

One of Trump's minions cited this, fwiw, as evidence that inflation isn't kicking in and things are fine.  On the contrary, the price of petroleum is dropping on fears of a recession.  A recession reduces oil consumption.

Indeed, because of the bizarre nature of tariffs, trading prices on some things in general may go down, while the price rises for Americans.

April 8, 2025

From the Wall Street Journal yesterday:

Updated 1 day ago

U.S. Oil Prices Fall Below $60 a Barrel

By

WSJ Staff

Oil prices kept falling early Monday; investors fear a trade war will clobber the global economy and sink demand for crude oil.

U.S. crude futures dropped more than 4% to below $59 a barrel, after falling 14% over two sessions to end last week.

Brent crude, the global benchmark, also fell more than 4%.

If prices remain near $60 a barrel for long, American frackers will likely slow drilling and will have to re-evaluate their spending levels for the remainder of the year and in 2026.

It's about $61/bbl this mooring.

cont: 

$58.10. Below marketability in Wyoming.

April 9, 2025

Oil opening this morning:

56.03

April 10, 2025

Despite the strong relief rally on Wednesday, following President Trump’s 90-day pause of tariff hikes on most countries except China, the U.S. benchmark oil price is now lower than the breakeven for the shale industry to profitably drill a new well.

 OilPrice.com

West Texas is $59.16/bbl.

April 11, 2025

U.S. reached a new record-high of $6.23 per dozen. 

Oil is opening at 60.10/bbl.

May 2, 2025

Oil and Natural Gas.

WTI Crude 58.57 -0.67 -1.13%

Brent Crude 61.49 -0.64 -1.03%

Murban Crude 61.41 -0.93 -1.49%

Natural Gas 3.502 +0.023 +0.66%

A note, below $59.00, US crude doesn't move.

The inflation rate right now is 2.39% with the tariffs about to hit.

May 6, 2025

WTI Crude • 58.28 +1.15 +2.01%

Brent Crude •  61.39 +1.16 +1.93%

Murban Crude • 62.20 +2.24 +3.74%

Natural Gas • 3.594 +0.044 +1.24%

Coal:  98.50/ton

Coffee:  388.45

Levis:  $55.65.

May 16, 2025

WTI Crude 61.95 +0.33 +0.54%

Brent Crude 64.88 +0.35 +0.54%

Natural Gas 3.345 -0.017 -0.51%

Coal:  99.00/ton

Coffee (USd/Lbs) 373.79