Subsidiarity Economics 2026. The Times more or less locally, Part 9, 25th Amendment Watch, 23d Edition. The Canadian Harvard and Oxford doctor in economics vs. the Wharton playboy. The Trade War with Canada edition. First set of Additional labels.

 

Subsidiarity Economics 2026. The Times more or less locally, Part 8. $40,012,700,535,679.44

The National Debt at some point on August 21,

Republicans are flocking to decry it, after having participated in causing it.

They didn't cause it on their own, but they sure helped.  And Trump has spent money like a drunken sailor.

Part of the reason that Trump spends this way is that Trump drank deeply of Peter Navarro's economic kool aide.

Navarro believes heavily in tariffs and Trump, whose always liked the concept of tariffs, but who appears to no longer understand how they work, liked what Navarro had to say.

Tariffs have always existed as a means of boosting local businesses.  What they really are, is a species of sales tax.  The concept is to make stuff coming in expensive so that people won't buy it, and will buy something made locally instead.  That's about it.

The problem is that when you do that, you have to actually be making the things locally.  Tariffs might have made good economic sense if the US had started easing them in during the late 1960s when the post World War Two economy started to fade.  But we didn't, as we saw no need to.

By the 2020s, it's really a little bit late.  In fact, it's way late.  The world's economy is now highly integrated, surpassing the level that had only previously been obtained prior to World War One.  We don't have what people complained about, for example, in the late 60s and early 70s of cheap Japanese products taking the market (something that wasn't anywhere near the threat it was imagined to be).  What we have instead is an economy where anything serious has parts made all over the globe.  Nothing you are using, if has multiple parts, was "made in America".  It was made all over.

Given that, what tariffs really do is simply make everything more expensive.  It'd take at least a decade for high tariffs to "bring back manufacturing", if it can do that at all.

Whether it can ever bring in jobs is questionable at this point.  Since January 2025 the US has in fact lost manufacturing job, with about 75,000 departing . Trump likes to claim that new factories are springin gup all over the place.  In fact, a factory construction boom peaked in 2024, under Joe Biden, and has been crashing since.

It may just be that it isn't the late 1890s any more.

So all the Trump administration has really done is ineffectively switched income tax for a national sales tax.  It's hurting everyone, and it is largely illegal, resulting in a lot of the money being collected, having to be sent back out.

Congress can fix this, if it has the will. Republicans right now are pretending that they do, but with few exceptions, like Thomas Massie, they're rank cowards and voted for Trump's economic fantasies.  It may take a Constitutional Amendment to force the matter, which at a bare minimum should provide that save in the time of war and bona fide emergency, the budget must balance and retire a portion of any built up debt, with taxes to automatically rise to balance any budget that isn't balanced.

What needs to be done first of all is to get the budget under control.  That would technically be easy to do.  And part of that needs to be a sincere effort to eliminate the debt.  It's now completely impossible to do so rapidly, so it'll have to be done slowly.  

On expenditures themselves, the Federal budget breaks out this way:

Social Security: 22%

Medicare: 15%

Net Interest (on the national debt): 15%

Health (including Medicaid): 13%

National Defense: 13%

Income Security: 10%

Veterans Benefits and Services: 6%

Social Security is in trouble due to slow down in population growth.  Nothing can be done about that or should be.  Medicare is in the same boat.  

National Defense should be cut by 2/3s.  That can be done by eliminating the insane level of weapons expenditures and by going to a reserve based defense.  That'd help, but that won't accomplish everything, obvious.  Military retirement age should be changed so that thirty years rather than 20 are the qualifying number.  That'd help a bit.

Indeed, there are actually a fair number of Federal jobs that require twenty years in order to retire at some level.  Save for policing roles and military ones,. Fed retirement should require thirty years and only be capable of being drawn when you reach 60 years of age.

And yes, this is a crisis.

So, you might perhaps note, you are a Distributist.  Does this square with Distributism?

Overall it does.  At one time I would have considered tariffs a policy option to address foreign manufacturing, but nothing fails like failure and its obvious that isn't the solution to that.  Boosting U.S. manufacturing has to come some other way, and frankly technology is probably what would do it.  Technological revolutions tend to bring industry to where they occur.  Our problem here is that this is entirely in the hands of the super wealthy right now, who don't have your interest or that of the country's in mind.

Additionally, our current President is addled and looks back with romanticism on the past . He's actively working to destroy American industry as a result.  Electricity is the future of transportation, not petroleum.  Wind, solar and nuclear are the future of power generation, not coal (Trump does support nuclear).  We need to really get with the program and we can do that through regulation.  Phasing out fossil fuels should be an economic priority for obvious reasons, and an environmental one for obvious reasons, and a defense one for obvious reasons.

August 22, 2026

Another Trump Call For Imported Beef Riles Up Wyoming Ranchers

This is really an example of ranchers and farmers being members of the Leopards Won't Eat My Face Party.

Another Trump Call For Imported Beef Riles Up Wyoming Ranchers

Why ranchers and farmers vote for Republicans is beyond me.  So they're getting screwed by Trump?

What did they expect?

U.S.-Canada trade talks collapse just before deadline for tariffs

Using debt to buy back debt:

We're in huge financial trouble.

August 23, 2026

Trade talks between the US and Canada ended and the countries are now in a trade war.  Canada has made it clear that the US is about to suffer through energy imports.

August 24, 2026

From the CST:

Well boo hoo, cry me a river.

I'm a cattleman and frankly we're amongst the most reliably stupid voters for the GOP there is.

Vinegar Hill posted this yesterday:

The GOP's useful idiots in agriculture.

An old friend of mine who is a rancher has been somewhat active in this year's election cycle.  He is, of course, a far right Republican.

I say of course as just about every rancher and farmer in Wyoming over the age of 40, and quite a few over the age of 35, are diehard right wing full blown MAGA Republicans.  Below the age of 40 things start to change a lot.  Most are Republicans, but a lot aren't diehard.  They're Republicans the same way everyone in Wyoming is a Republican, pretty much.  Generally conservative.

But above 40, they're in lockstep with Donald Trump.

My friend, this cycle, had a big Chuck Gray up near the DOT fence.  This wasn't too surprising as his grandson works for Gray.* **

Well, now, all of a sudden the noted friend is posting on the disaster of letting foreign beef into the country.  So are a bunch of other ranchers I know.

The Republican Party has been pretty much screwing ranchers and farmers since 1929.  It was the Democrats who save farmers and ranchers during the Great Depression.  Most small and mid sized ranches would have been utterly destroyed but for the Taylor Grazing Act.  

The Trump Administration, for its part, looks at farmers and ranchers the way the Democrats once looked at African Americans, people who could reliably be counted on to vote for the party no matter what.  In recent election cycles African Americans proved they were no longer reliable.  So far, people in Agriculture aren't showing any thought at all.

Indeed, they're showing cognitive disconnected.

This morning I've seen all sorts of complaints from ranchers about how they're getting killed in this economy, as noted.

And now Trump's bringing in below market cost foreign beef.

No shit.  YOU VOTED FOR IT.

Inflation, particularly of fuel, caused by Donald Trump's pet illegal war. The same with fertilizer costs.

WAKE THE CRAP UP.

The GOP is not coming to save you.  It's coming to screw you.

Indeed, trade talks just broke off with Canada.

Double digit inflation, caused by a massive rise in energy costs, is about to occur.

Footnotes:

Gray has more affection for Trump than Natalie Harp and Melanija Knavs combined.

The grandson is an interesting case in and of himself.  He's undoubtedly the first member of his extended family to go to university.  He's in law school right now.  He's also a diehard MAGA, and indeed, maybe even beyond that.  Now the question of how that happens is another matter.

The common myth, and it is a myth, about young people in conservative homes is that they go to college, where they lose all of their values, and their faith, emerging hardcore screaming liberals if not Bolsheviks.  This is, it is believed, because they're indoctrinated in college by leftist professors.

It's largely bull and in the scientific disciplines definitely bull.  Majors in geology, for example, aren't going to have time for liberal indoctrination.

For that matter, majors in English probably don't either.

So what's going on here.

Well, a person from a really conservative Protestant background may in fact find a lot of what they learn in college shocking.  The Earth isn't 5,000 years old.  Evolution isn't a fib.  Conquering the West wasn't bringing enlightenment to an oppressed people and, in fact, some of those being conquered where already Christian.  The US isn't bestowed by God with a new Israelite like mission, and for that matter, the modern state of Israel does some outright horrible things.

Faced with that onslaught, young people are in fact faced with the choice of accepting that Pastor Jim back at his own do it yourself Evangelical Church is flat out wrong on a lot of stuff, and Mom and Dad are ignorant, or concluding that everything they're being taught is a fib.

Most will conclude, to some degree, that Pastor Jim is wrong on a lot, and that Mom and Dad are ignorant on a lot of stuff.

Now, I'll note, this shouldn't impact member of the Apostolic faiths at all, but in the US some Apostolic Christians are heavily Protestantized and have bought in, through ignorance, to a lot of what the Evangelical far right believes.

Anyhow, a lot of this is about to collapse on an enormous scale, as we'll soon see.

**There was a good Republican candidate running against Gray, Christensen.  He had worked for the BLM.

Well, we're getting instead a Californian who worked for his daddy's radio station.

He's completely correct.  

Cattlemen and farmers will sit around in gatherings and support Trump on every other horrible thing he does, and then they're surprised when he turns on them.

Now they can share the pain they helped bring about.

On Canada, the Canadian government is absolutely furious over demands that were made of the country, including that Canada abandon the use of French and that it agree to mirror the US's trade polcies.

One Canadian figure called the demands "insane".

This administration at this point is so stupid on these matters its indescribable.

August 25, 2026

It's pretty clear that the Trump administration has no idea whatsoever as to what it's doing.

Last edition:

Subsidiarity Economics 2026. The Times more or less locally, Part 7. The jackass in a tin barn edition.

Labels: 2020s, 2026, 2026 Election, Agriculture, Alcohol, Chuck Gray, Curt Meier, Distributism, Electrical Power, Leopards won't eat my face, Localism, Mark Gordon, Mining, Petroleum, technology, Wyoming's boom and bust economy

Eating like the French in WWII

 

Wednesday, August 15, 1876. Cutting off rations.

Congress passed the Indian Appropriations Act of 1876 cutting off all rations for the Sioux until they terminated hostilities and ceded the Black Hills to the United States.

Last edition:

Monday, August 13, 1876. Blog Mirror: The first "Wag-nathon" - August 13, 1876

Labels: 1870s, 1876, Classical Music, Music

How to eat like an ancient Greek sailor.

 

How to eat like a Silk Road Merchant.

This is, by the way, the first use of "Alexander the Great" as a label on this site, to my huge surprise.

For that matter, it's the first time the Silk Road has shown up as well.

Sunday, July 21, 1946. Rationing bread.

The British Ministry of Food, with the approval of the House of Commons, put bread rationing in effect in the United Kingdom.  It was the first time that had occured in the country's history.

Britain continued to deal with food shortages for quite some time after the Second World War.  Bread rationing, which had not occurred during the war, would last until July 1948.  Other types of wartime rationing would continue on and be phased out, with the last rationing ending in 1954.

An oddity of this is that British health was noted to have improved due to rationing.  We don't often think of this occurring, but it did.  Likewise, it was noted that German soldiers in Allied hospitals, who had been getting by on thin rations, recovered from their wounds more quickly than well fed American ones.

Lieutenant Commander James J. Davidson landed a FH-1 Phantom on the deck of the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt, becoming the first American to land a jet aircraft on a carrier.

President Gualberto Villarroel of Bolivia was murdered by a mob that stormed the presidential palace.

Last edition:

Saturday, July 10, 1946. "Report of the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack".

Labels: 1940s, 1941, 1946, 79th Congress, Army, China, Chinese Civil War, Imperial Japanese Navy, Nationalist Chinese Army, Pearl Harbor Hawaii, People's Liberation Army, U.S. Navy, World War Two

What did Japanese soldiers eat in WW2?

 

Tuesday, July 20, 1926. Turning up the heat.

 

Coolidge gave a press conference at White Pine Camp.

Secretary Davis and I discussed only incidentally the question of munition depots. He said that there was a location in Utah that would he available, but the expense of moving our munitions out there would be pretty heavy. I think he said that none of the munitions that belong to the War Dept. have been exploded. What he did say which was of most importance was that careful studies were being made to make the locations of munitions as safe as possible.

I am not just certain when I shall go to Plymouth. I had rather expected that I might go last week some time, but I wasn’t able to get away. I haven’t any definite plan about it. What would the members of the conference prefer, to go by automobile or by train?

Press: Train.

President: Seems to be unanimous. Well, I think I can arrange to take you over there by train, if that would suit you better. I will do what I can in that direction. I suppose I will have to set down a time when I have made up my mind to go and then stick to it. Otherwise there is something coming up all the time that seems to make it desirable for me to be here. I got word that the Secretary of War was coming up, and now the Secretary of State is coming up here later in the season. He is going to speak at Plattsburg at the celebration there of the MacDonald victories on Lake Champlain.

The resignation of Commissioner Fenning is in the hands of the Attorney General. It was received just about the time we were leaving Washington. He has some small matters that we wish to have him clear up before he relinquishes the office. That will take but a few days and then he is to retire. I suppose that he would have given in his resignation any way, but I did send a request to him that he should retire.

Press: Was that request since you have been up here?

President: Why no, I said I got the resignation just as I was leaving. The request was made just before I came away.

There isn’t any particular significance in the visit of Senator Fess. He told me while I was in Washington that he was to be in the Adirondacks this summer. He has some friends up here. I think he makes it a practice to come up here every summer. They are located within 30 or 35 miles. I understood he was to be at Tupper Lake, but he is at Loon Lake. Perhaps he was going to Tupper Lake later, and I told him of course that if he was here I hoped very much ae would have a chance to come and stay a day or two with me.

I am not expecting to speak at Plattsburg at the unveiling of the MacDonald monument. As I indicated before, the Secretary of State will be there. I understand there will be some representatives of the Canadian Government there, which makes it especially appropriate for the Secretary of State to be present.

Press: Do you think you will go over, Mr. President?

President. No.

I haven’t any information about what Chairman Parker or other members of the House Commerce Committee are contemplating in relation to coal legislation for a conference with the coal operators and coal miners during the vacation. I knew that Representative Parker had prepared a bill, or that his Committee had, I coal legislation, which they were proposing to take up immediately on the convening of Congress. There didn’t seem to be time to take it up at the last session. I think I have said enough to make that plain. I didn’t know anything about a plan for trying to make an adjustment between the operators and miners, other than what I have seen in the press. I think I indicated at a conference that was held long ago that perhaps the railroad legislation which was passed at the last session might furnish a foundation principle for legislation and adjust in the coal industry. There are two or three things that I wanted as coal legislation. The first was the opportunity to call in a temporary Board to adjust differences whenever an emergency might arise, and the second was an opportunity have a coal administration whenever a scarcity was threatened. Those are the principal things.

There isn’t any comment that I can make on the fall of the French Cabinet. It is hardly appropriate to comment on a matter of that kind.

I hope that I may have a chance to go to the training camp at Plattsburgh some time during the summer. That is about 50 miles away and I judge we could go over in the morning and return in the afternoon.

If I go by train to Plymouth I shall go to Ludlow, and I think the members of the press would find accommodations at Ludlow or at Tyson, which is about 6 or 7 miles from Plymouth. It i s in the town of Plymouth, but that is post office name, 5 miles toward Plymouth from Ludlow. There Is a very good hotel there that was opened long ago but has been closed quite a good deal and reopened last summer. I went down there to lunch with Secretary Mellon and Senator Smoot when they came to Plymouth to confer with me relative to the Belgian Debt settlement, so that I know that it is a very comfortable place. And there is also at Woodstock a very good Inn that some of you are already acquainted with.

I haven’t had any report from the Secretary of Agriculture relative to his work in putting into operation the bill that was passed at the last session relative to cooperative marketing.

And I haven’t any information other than that which has appeared in the press about bank failures in southern states. That seemed to be due to some local conditions there. It i s my understanding that those were mostly state banks and not national banks.

I also expect to visit the Saranac Veterans Bureau Hospital for tubercular patients while I am here.

The Adirondacks climate is very much like that with which I am acquainted over in Vermont. I noticed that a number of the old-timers over here came from Vermont. Paul Smith came from Milton. A man named Plumbley, a very famous Adirondack figure for a good many years, came from Suesbury, next to Plymouth. Suesbury is even more like the Adirondacks region than Plymouth is. The fishing is better here than it is in Vermont.

I have an inquiry about the appropriations. If anyone is interested to analyze the increased appropriations for the present year you will find that there is a very complete study of that in the remarks of Martin B. Madden, as you know, the Chairman of the Appropriations on the part of the House. It is in the Congressional Record for Monday, July 12, 1926, beginning on Page 13,006. Of course our Post Office Department is a growing Department. We mean to keep it practically self-sustaining. Sometimes there is a deficit. There has been all the time since I have been President. Wages have been greatly increased in the Post Office Department since 1914, increased about 50%. Those that were getting $1400 at that time are now getting $2100, and the general average of increases in the postal service is very close to 50%. That accounts for a very large part of the increase in the appropriations for 1926 and 1927, that is the budget that has just passed. The Government expenditures are $273,000,000 greater. There is $100,000,000 of that which is accountable for on account of the adjusted compensation, or the bonus law. The first year that it went into effect it was estimated that the expenditure would not be known and that an appropriation I believe of $50,000,000 would take care of it , so that for this year we made up that deficiency with $100,000,000 I think put in the regular appropriation for the bonus bill. As I recall, it was $125,000,000. I won’t be sure about that. I know it is $100,000,000 extra we had that we put in. So that the Veterans Bureau has $173,000,000 more in the present budget than it had in the last budget. Than there was a great deal of money that came due on the matter of roads. We had been making appropriations that took care of the current needs, but last year there were very large bills that came in, so that the appropriation for this year is $26,000,000 greater. Than we have adopted the public buildings bill. Haven’t had a public buildings bill for 12 years, and that accounts for $14,000,000 more. Prohibition costs are $13,000,000 more. Rivers and Harbors carries $10,000,000 more. That is for special work that is being done in the Mississippi Valley, notably from Kansas City, or rather from St. Louis to Kansas City going up the river, or from Kansas City to St. Louis down. If you are reporting for the Kansas City papers it would be Kansas City first, if you are reporting for St. Louis papers St. Louis first. Than there were some refunds, $5,000,000 of refunds on cigars taxes and automobiles. We have increased pensions for Civil and Spanish War veterans $5,000,000. The Arlington Bridge $2,250,000. Then we have begun construction of military posts to replace the temporary housing erected during the war. That doesn’t come out of tax money really, but of course it does appear as an appropriation item. That is $2,250,000. We passed a law that as that military land was sold off the proceeds might be taken to make better housing facilities for our military posts. And the Sesquicentennial is $2,000,000. Judgments against the Government in the Court of Claims and other judgments are nearly $9,000,000. The total increase outside of the Post Office, of which these are the principal items, is $273,000,000. I think these items that I have given you figure up to about $260,000,000. But there are some other small items of one kind or another and you can refer to this little table here in the Congressional Record to give you a very complete explanation of it if you wish to. Now, some of those of course are permanent. The public buildings program runs for five years. The Veterans Bureau bill for the next year won’t be nearly as big. The cost for the Post Office next year I should expect would not be as large public buildings will be larger next year because we expect to appropriate about $25,000,000 a year, but we found that $14,000,000 was all that we could expend advantageously this year. It takes so long to make plans and lay out the work. It is difficult to make any estimate about pensions. The Civil War veterans are dropping away very fast. That item which now runs about $2,000,000 will naturally decrease. Of course the country is a growing country. It keeps expanding all the time and there is tremendous pressure on the Federal Government to take on new activities which the Congress resists as well as it can and which I resist as well as I can. As we pay off the national debt of course the expenses are going to be reduced for interest, but I think the plan is that as interest charges are reduced more money will go into the sinking fund. That isn’t spoken of here, but it is my recollection that there is $30,000,000 more in the sinking fund for the present year than last year. That means we are using that to pay off the public debt.

Soviet monster Felix Dzerzhinsky died of a heart attack at age 48.

French General Auguste Dubail of France and British Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson reached an agreement for a joint plan to mobilize 150,000 men in the event that Germany declared war on either nation.

Rebels in Haiti captured Cap-Haïtien.

Last edition:

Saturday, July 17, 1926. Boicotear

Labels: 1920s, 1926, Boycott, Catholic, Christianity, Cristero War, Mexico, Plutarco Elías Calles, religion, Taxes

What did German soldiers eat during World War II?

 

Easting Exactly LIke Benjamin Franklin.

 

The Food of the North Reflections on journeys in Iceland and Scotland

 

The Food of the North

Reflections on journeys in Iceland and Scotland

'Explosive Diarrhea' Parasite Reaches Wyoming As Health Officials Seek Source

 

'Explosive Diarrhea' Parasite Reaches Wyoming As Health Officials Seek Source

Eating like it's 1776, Haudenosaunee Style.

 

Wednesday, July 3, 1946. Breaking the meat famine in Denver.

 Well, I guess you could more easily get meat.

An odd illigal immigration story was reported on.

Last edition:

Tuesday, July 2, 1946. They were Nazis, but maybe they didn't know what they were doing?

Labels: 1940s, 1946, 1946 at the movies, 2026 Election, Colorado (Denver), Immigration, inflation, Office of Price Administration, Philippines, Post War United States (and Canada), Post WWII Occupation of Germany, Rebecca Bextel

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/CRqFJO_ZyiQ?feature=share

 

Thursday, July 1, 1926. Sweden creates an air arm, Safeway and Skaggs merge, Canada goes back on the gold standard.

The Country Gentleman had switched over to being a monthly at this point.

The Swedish Air Force was founded with the merger of the aviation elements of the Swedish army and navy.

Safeway and Skaggs merged with the Safeway as the surviving entity.  It had 995 stores.

The march of the chain grocery store was of course on. Casper had a Piggly Wiggly at this time, but it also retained a huge number of local grocery stores at this time.

Canada returned to the gold standard.

Last edition:

Monday, June 28, 1926. Mel Brooks born in Brooklyn.

Labels: 1920s, 1926, actors and actresses, Canada, Comedians, entertainment, Immigration, Judaism, New York (Brooklyn)

Tuesday, June 25, 1946. The World Bank commences operations.

The World Bank commenced operations.

Nationalist Chinese troops killed ten demonstrating middle school students at Xuzhou when their commander, Feng Yu-xiang Fang Jingxing ordered them to be fired on by machine guns.

The US was struggling through a post war meat shortage.  Denver newspapers were reporting that the Office of Price Administration was accordingly being kept in operation and that Denver butcher shops were nearly bare.

The YB-35 flew for the first time.

Long considered a real oddball, the aircraft anticipated the B-2.

Last edition:

Saturday, June 22, 1946. History rhyming

Labels: 1940s, 1946, 1946 Election, 1947, Democratic Party, Ethnicities, History repeating itself or at least rhyming, Mississippi, Personalities, Racism, Republican Party, trends

History's Coffee Substitute: Chicory Root.

 

Friday, June 18, 1926. Egyptian troops at Mecca.

Egyptian soldiers fired into a crowed of Muslims Najadis, killing 25 of them, following a protest that began when the Egyptians were playing music while carrying the Mahmal through the holy city of Mecca during the Hajj pilgrimage, to which the Najadis took offense.

It's often forgotten in the West that Islam is far more internally divided than Christianity, a fact that's aided by the fact that there is no central head of Islam.

The Fédération Internationale de Philatélie was formed for stamp collecting and other branches of philately in at Castagnola in Switzerland.

It's the oldest such organization in the world.

Princess Olga Constantinovna of Russia, 74, former Queen Consort of Greece from 1867 to 1913 as the wife of King Geórgios I, and briefly regent for one month in 1920, died in exile in Rome.

Congress was getting ready to go home.

Congress of that era, and all the way up into at least the 90s, really did work harder than it currently does.  I've heard an interview of a member of Congress who was out of office for a decade or more and who was shocked when he went back about how much real work had decreased.  It's not hard to see that the current Congress is a model of being ineffective.

I wonder, in part, if modern transportation contributes to that.  And the net definitely does.

You could get really fresh butter in Casper.

I knew that you could get locally produced butter in the 20s (and 30s, and 40s, and at least the early 50s), but I didn't really give that all that much thought.

Weirdest coffee ad ever.

And Out Our Way explored a misunderstanding.

Last edition:

Monday, June 14, 1926. The Calles Law.

Labels: 1920s, 1926, Brazil, Catholic, Christianity, Cristero War, Emiliano Zapata, It was because of the Mexican Revolution, League of Nations, Mexican Revolution, Mexico, Plutarco Elías Calles, Porfirio Díaz, religion