Where's the outrage?

Kristi Noem didn’t approve FEMA rescue teams for over 72 hours after the Texas floods, following a rule she imposed that required her personal sign-off on any operation over $100,000.

Was there not a Barbie dress up outfit for the occasion?

This was pretty clearly going to cost over $100,000.

When Bush II was President, there was outrage that he didn't go to Louisiana to view hurricane damage immediately.

The very same thing was true when Obama was President.

Joe Biden took flack for not reacting to floods in South Carolina instantly.

Is anyone demanding that King Don put his golf shoes on the ground in Texas?

Not that I think it would do anything.  I always thought the outcry about a President not going to to a disaster was absurd.  Noem, however, deserves criticism here.

So, frankly, does the State of Texas, which falls into the "don't tax me" camp, and therefore has inadequate warning systems.

You do get what you pay for, and lack of payment can be tragically lethal.  That sort of tragedy is going to be increasing during the Trump era, and for quite some time thereafter.

For the meantime, MAGA's should be howling.  Shouldn't they expect the same level of direct involvement that Bush and Obama had?

And for Federal help. . . Wyoming delegation. . . what are you going to do to help us. . . it's fire season.

Friday, June 26, 2015: Obergefell v. Hodges

June 26, 2015: Obergefell v. Hodges

Only a decade?  

It seems like a lot longer.

I felt at the time, and I still do, that the Obergefell decision was an absolute disaster.  It was legally deficient in its reasoning, which was pathetic.  Justice Kennedy's text failed to grasp the existential nature of marriage, but perhaps that was understandable as Kennedy, currently 88 years old, was in his 20s and 30s in the 1960s.  Indeed, he turned 30 in 1966, by which time Americans were well on their way to forgetting what the biological purpose of sex is, and what the nature of marriage is.

Kennedy's opinion embraced a sort of Age of Aquarius sense of "love" being the reason for marriage, at its core root.  Love is an aspect of marriage, hopefully, and there's a lot to that, but sex is as well and the type that leads to children, at least frequently.  Indeed, the entire institution and everything about it is oriented in that direction.

That has very little to do with homosexuality in that unions between the same gender don't result in children.  I know the arguments about adoption and the like, but that's fairly far from the point as well.  Indeed, in a way, that gets into the following topic about IVF that we covered recently.

IVF and a Half-Cath | June 11, 2025

Something that the generation that came of age after World War Two really brought into the culture is sort of the opposite of the Rolling Stone's skifflesque You Can't Always Get What You Want.  That generation pretty much got almost all of what they wanted, and still are.  That sense of entitlement resulted in cultural self centeredness in which you are entitled to be what you want to be and everyone else has to darned well accept it and the consequences.

The problem was and is, however, that Obergefell, as it strayed so far from the law, and so far from where  the culture then was (it's a horrible example of the old trying to get ahead of the culture) that it was bound to spark a massive reaction.  And it did.

The populist right rage that developed soon after was already burning, but Obergefell poured gasoline on the fire.  The culture had lost much of the conservative wisdom on the nature of sex and marriage already, and had gone through Chesterton's fence with a bulldozer in this regard.  A culture that had accepted, prior to the early 1950s that sex was properly in marriage, and properly between married men and women, had gone to pretty much accepting that sex was entertainment and marriage was a celebration of love rather than a loving (hopefully) childrearing, economic, natural unit.  People basically forgot what their natures produced and men in particular figures that they were entitled to play around with Fran Geraud, and women figured they had to endure it.  And that's where we remain today.  A culture that basically thinks the Hawk Tuah Girl is amusing rather than a tramp.

But once that moral decay had reached the point where people who could excuse their own conduct could imagine themselves to somehow still be good Christians suddenly were confronted with homosexuals making the same intellectual arguments, and that being adopted by the Supreme Court, it was just too much.

It was also clear, in spite of what Kennedy thought, that Obergefell was going to open the floodgates of radical sexual behavior.  Same sex sexual conduct, no matter what a person thinks of it, had been around for time immemorial, although it frankly even now is not really very well understood.  But transgenderism had not been, or at least not in the same fashion.  The groups backing the concept of transgenderism rushed into the field and gained ground enormously, which large numbers of people were not and are not willing to accept, including some homosexuals and included many feminists.  

That this was going to cause massive civil disintegration was obvious.  Disorganized groups on the right and middle that were already upset by the loss of industrial jobs and immigration now were faced with a massive social advance on the left which did not square with their basic understanding of themselves, and for good reason.  To add to it, it was forced upon them.

None of this was necessary.  Various states were moving towards various civil unions for homosexuals as it was.  The slow march of legislation would have brought about a change, whether it was a good one or not, at a pace that would have been accepted.  That's what happened to the disaster of no fault divorce.  Instead Kennedy's opinion forced it all, and more than he had anticipated, all at once.

It destroyed respect for the Court and gave traditionalists of all types massive pause.  It started the rush towards right wing populism which was already going on.

It lead directly to Donald Trump.

Related threads:

The Supreme Court tries a bit to mop up a dog's breakfast. Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.

Labels: 2010s, 2015, 2018, Commentary, Court, law, Monday at the bar, Natural Law, Politics, The Law, The Old Law, trends

Why Americans, irrespective of position, ought to cringe over Obergefell

Labels: Commentary, law, Marriage, Monday at the bar, Politics, Sic transit Gloria Mundi, The Law, The Practice of Law, trends, You heard it here first

But. . . wait a minute. . . Wyoming communities begin to grapple with the new (lack of) firearms restrictions.

This has been an interesting development as it seems that lot of people didn't really pay all that much attention to the legislatures elimination of gun free zones and expansion of concealed carry rights in public facilities.

Laramie Residents Balk At Guns In Schools, School Board Says There’s No Choice

An interesting quote, from the Cowboy State Daily:

This decision was made beforehand (by the Wyoming Legislature), and we’re just here to clean up the mess.

 Trustee Nate Martin at School Board meeting.

Laramie's residents basically want their school board to resist the statute.

State Agencies, Schools And Towns Scramble To Get Rid Of Gun-Free Zones

And the state is out trying to figure out rules, which is going to be quite a trick if they read the statute which really doesn't allow for rules.

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. 81st Edition. Protests and Golfing.

Lex Anteinternet: Protests spread to Wyoming.:   The "Hands Off" protest is a nationwide movement.  And it's showing up even in Casper, in central Wyoming.

Protests spread to Wyoming.

 

The "Hands Off" protest is a nationwide movement.  And it's showing up even in Casper, in central Wyoming.

Protests did occur yesterday in Casper, and apparently in a host of other cities, including Rock Springs.  Based upon the article in the Tribune, the Casper protests suffered from the common problem all left of center protests in Wyoming tend to, which is rather than be focused on the immediate topic, they featured every left wing cause going, which is exactly why the left has no pull here.

Apparently there were large protests across the country, showing widespread discontent with Trump.  Even some Republicans who have backed Trump all along, like Ted Cruz and Ben Shapiro are calling his tariff policy into question.  Some of them are being surprisingly blunt, calling the tariffs basically dumb.

Here's the thing, however.  Trump, born into wealth to the degree that he can repeatedly fail and not feel the effects, doesn't care.  He has the supreme confidence of a man who is not introspective, and frankly, by all evidence, not very smart.  He's believed in tariffs for over 40 years, having a shallow understanding of the economy, and not even grasping that the economy 40 years ago had real problems.

The US has lost its manufacturing base, but not to the degree people like Trump believe.  Quite a bit of it fully remains.  Many of the "lost" industrial jobs in heavy manufacturing were lost to automation.  Those behind Trump understand that, and they don't seem to care that their concept of "returning" jobs to the US means taking jobs from real human beings overseas.

The ultimate irony of all of this is that the tariffs real goal, for those who aren't as dense as Trump seemingly is, was happening anyway.  As world trade increasingly globalized roboticization was occurring anyhow, and as that occurs other factors, such as transportation, begin to factor heavily.  So the tariffs simply disrupt the economy, destroy wealth, and probably actually slow that evolution. 

Meanwhile Trump goes golfing, seemingly not caring what he's doing to real people, and not needing too, as he lacks the empathy, understanding, and financial exposure that would require him to.  His wealthy backers and racial rearward looking functionaries continue on in their destructive march.  

It's more than a year away until the mid terms.  Ted Cruz predicted a bloodbath at the pools in 2026 if things go badly.  And that's the ultimate irony.  Trump was elected, basically, as people didn't like the social views of the left and didn't believe that he believed the rest of the nonsense he spouted.  People tend to vote with their wallets.  

Trump isn't going to change direction.  Like many old people, his ideas are fixed in the distant path, when they actually might have made some sense.  It's a common failing of the old.  The nation is going to go into a heavy duty recession, the Republicans are going to get slammed in the 2026 election, and the left will be resurgent.  A weary nation will, at that point, not care much about men wearing dresses and the like, and for that matter, the left may have made a slight course correction.

Federal MAGA voters getting the axe.

I was skeptical that there would be very many of these, but in fact there are.  I should have known it.

Not firings.  No, Federal (and State) employees who voted for Trump, or in Wyoming for members of the Freedom Caucus. 

They were always voting to fire themselves.  Did they not realize it?

Well, The naiveite would be amusing, but for it being so tragic and short sighted.  Somehow these people believed that the merits of their work would save them from this fate.

Why?

It's not about the quality of their work. They're MAGA cannon fodder.

GoldieSk8s @GoldieSk8sReplying to  @realdogeusa

Trump voter here. Mass firing probationary employees makes no sense. Forest Service, 26 yr old exemplary 2-year veteran 'probationary' employee GIS tech let go with no warning today. Along with a timber cutter, the lowest paid, most profitable employee they have. This is stupid.

GoldieSk8s@GoldieSk8s

·

Feb 13

@realDonaldTrump

 seriously, why the low hanging fruit? An EXEMPLARY 26 yr old GIS tech with the Forest Service for 2 years, intern converted to full time, one month shy of being off probation, fired on a Zoom call no warning, sent home in tears. Now I'm questioning my vote.

GoldieSk8s@GoldieSk8s

·

Replying to @elonmusk and @DOGE

You are losing some of your strongest supporters by attacking the low-hanging fruit (me, my family). 26 yo hardworking 2 yr employee of USFS let go with no warning on Zoom. My hard-working son witnessed this, and is disgusted & I am embarrassed. This is NOT how you save America.

GoldieSk8s@GoldieSk8s

·Feb 13

@elonmusk

 going after the low hanging fruit? An exemplary 26 yr old GIS tech with the Forest Service for 2 years as an intern converted to full time, only one month shy of being off probation, fired on a Zoom call no warning, sent home in tears. Now I'm questioning my vote.

GoldieSk8s@GoldieSk8s

·

Feb 13

@DOGE

 going after the low hanging fruit? An exemplary 26 yr old GIS tech with the Forest Service for 2 years as an intern converted to full time, only one month shy of being off probation, fired on a Zoom call no warning, sent home in tears. Now I'm questioning my vote.

GoldieSk8s@GoldieSk8s

·

Feb 13

Replying to @Bwahahahafunny and @adgirlMM

Son told me of a 26 yr old exemplary GIS tech at FS who was 2 yra into 'probationary' let go on a Zoom call. He was very depressed about it. This is not the way, taking out people regardless of performance. I don't understand why it has to be one extreme or the other.

GoldieSk8s@GoldieSk8s

·

Feb 13

Replying to @MarioNawfal

Seriously, low hanging fruit? EXEMPLARY 26 yr old GIS tech with the Forest Service for 2 years, intern to full time, one month shy of being off probation, fired on Zoom, no warning, sent home in tears. Not classy. Now I'm questioning MY vote.

On hating the government. Being careful what you wish for, if you don't really grasp what you are wishing for. American Populists and the return to a mythical age.

A friend and I were discussing the current state of affairs and the Donald Trump assault/Project 2025's aggault/Wyoming Freedom Caucus on the government.  We both are pretty conservatives fellows.  We both served in the Army.  We both are lawyers.  Both of our fathers were Korean War veterans.

We're both horrified.

In part we're horrified as it clear that a huge portion of Trump's base absolutely hates their own government.  Just hates it.

In the discussion, something occurred to me.

The world the MAGA/Populist/Project 2025 people wish for is one they've never seen nor experienced.  A lot of them, quite frankly, don't have the capacity to grasp what it was like.

More than a few of them don't have the capacity to live in a world like that either.

No American born before 1932 lived in the world these people imagine as perfect.  That means, in my case, as a member of Generation Jones, and even more so for the Baby Boom Generation, the last people they know who experienced it was their grandparents.

Or more likely, their great grandparents.

And our grandparents are all dead.

There's no living memory of it at all.

Nobody has one, at all.

The first President I voted for, as noted here, was Ronald Reagan in the 1984 Presidential election.  I thinking of it, the first Presidential election my father could have voted in, when the voatin gage was 21, would have been the 1952 Presidential election. The first Presidential election I can remember, although only vaguely, is the 1968 Presidential election, when I was five years old.  If that held true for my father, the first one he would have remembered would have been the 1936 Presidential election, at which time FDR was already well into establishing the government that Musk and Trump are destroying.

It was the Great Depression that brought the government into people's lives in a major way, although that it was going to happen was foreshadowed by the Progressive Era.  Theodore Roosevelt was really the first "imperial President" who was willing to broadly act with executive orders.  Franklin Roosevelt expanded the government enormously, however, in reaction to the extreme economic distress.   That gave us the government we have today, but World War Two and the Cold War expanded it.

FDR, of court, brought big government in, and with World War Two proving that it was necessary to retain it, and the Cold War building on that, we've had it ever since.  But we might be able to state that modern American government goes all the way back to 1900, before Theodore Roosevelt really started to bring in the progressives and the concept that the government was supposed to make things safe and fair for average people.  

The generation that had lived through the Great Depression and the war were grateful for the larger Federal role and accepted it.  It wasn't until the late 1960s that things began to be questioned.  Even by then most Americans had no real memory of a day when the Federal Government was only active nationwide to a limited extent.

Nobody has that memory now.

What will this all mean?

Well, assuming that Must/Trump pulls it off, starting here in a few months, a real schock.  And the best evidence is, so far, that Musk/Trump will have enormously wrecked the Federal Government in that time period, no matter what happens with Trump himself (and there are growing signs that Trump isn't really going to be around that long).

And the shock that will ensue will be in everything from what amounts to minor irritations to body bags.

Wyoming is going to have to pay for its own forest fires, and fight them on their own for one thing, snarky comments from Cowboy State Daily imported columnist aside.  The State's going to have to pay for its own highways as well, which it can't afford.  Things will just burn, and the highways decay.

And we'll be at the tender mercy of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, which seemingly hates state government as well. Municipal services are really going to take a hit, to include police and fire fighting.

Education, which the WFC basically opposes, as students might learn the world is older than 5,000 years and God might not be limited to the restrictions people who can't imagine a world older than that would demand to be placed on, will be gutted.

Benefits provided to all kids of people through the Federal Government, from Veterans benefits to Medicaid, are in real danger.

A Federal and state government that makes sure your food, water, and living conditions are safe, won't be there.  

Robber Barons, however, will be there once again, for the first time in well over a century.

The truth is, most people won't like living in a United States that's a third world nation.  But the rich will, as the rich have always profited in the third world.  And that, not some sort of rugged paradise, is where we're headed.

Calvinist believers were psychologically isolated. Their distance from God could only be precariously bridged, and their inner tensions only partially relieved, by unstinting, purposeful labor.

Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the "Spirit" of Capitalism

As part of that, the National Conservatives and the populists seem to outright hate government employees.  That's already come up in of comments about them, one being how they'll go into "more productive" work.  This group has a very Protectant Work Ethic view of life, in which your Calvinist purpose is to prove your worth by working harder and longer and for less than the value of your work, and never retire.

Many street level conservatives have hated Federal employees for years.  I've heard them complain about how they're all lazy as they didn't do the correct Protestant thing and choose to go into the rough and tumble of the free market, by which they mean the corporate controlled market.  

This is sometimes stated by people who actually depend on the government in spades themselves, and can't recognize it.  For instance, if you are truck driver, you are living on the government dole, Mr. Knight of the Road.  Fortunately, in this instance, truckers will soon be out of business as highway subsidies will end and railroads will take back over, which is a good thing.

More than one of the NC/Populist crowd who holds this view also abhor retirement.  The comments are out there, people just refuse to recognize it.   The push in this crowd, short term, is to raise retirement age to 69, but the real push will be just to do away with Social Security in the end. That neatly solves the Social Security crisis.

So, anyhow, like driving on Interstates?

Get used to your state funding them, and they won't.

Like safe air travel?

Notice how many air disasters there have already been since Trump took over, they're likely not his fault, but you probably ought to get used to that too.

Miss polluted air and water?

Well, it'll be back.

Come to expect the Federal government to be there if you are black, or Catholic, and can't get hired?

Well, lower your expectations.

Looking forward to retirement?

Forget it.

Injured and need assistance?

Well, you have your family to turn to.  Or the church.

Lose your job and need help?

Well, move in with your parents, or your children.

Miss the days when the Marine Corps was used to make sure American economic interests weren't harmed in Central America and around the world?

Well, you'll get to live out the nostalgia.

Like living in a country where the rich get richer, the poor get dead, and the middle class are on the verge of poverty?

Well, you'll get to.

Welcome back. . . to about 1900 really.

Well that didn't take long. . .

 Trump’s Immigration Threats Are Already Wrecking the Food Industry

Immigrant farm workers are too scared to show up to work.

The past election featured a lot of really dimwitted comments by those who decided to vote for Trump about making the price of food "go down".  

Dimwitted.

The government has very little ability to make the price of anything whatsoever go down.  There are a few options.  For one, if an item is imported and taxed at the border, you can remove the tax.

That's the exact opposite of what the Genius with Really Good Genes proposes to do. That's going to raise prices.

Another is to impact the price of something the government actually controls, such as privatizing an industry or releasing a supply of something held by the government.

Neither of those are options right now.

Trump's really good brain has so far simply proposed to the Saudis that the produce a lot of oil.  The Saudis are likely laughing. 

If they did, that would drop the price of oil, which drops the price of everything else.  It also makes US oil completely unviable economically as its very expensive to drill for. We already know this as a few years ago there was a glut of oil, which dropped its price and stopped US drilling dead in its tracks.

One of the things Trump promised his followers that he would do, which he can do to some limited extent, is deport aliens.  Hopefully they're illegal aliens, but to a lot of his supporters, any alien will do, as long as the alien has brown skin.

Donald Musk and Ted Cruz, born respectively in South Africa and Canada, can stay, which is a real shame.  I'd be okay with deporting both of them.

US agriculture depends heavily on illegal aliens from Mexico.  It has for decades.  It's a situation which never should have been allowed to develop, but it was because both Republicans and Democrats turned a blind eye to it.  Now, the US is dependent on that migrant population.

Trump promises to deport all these people as quickly as possible.  That means administering a massive shock to the farm economy, which means the prices of everything at the grocery store will go up, up, up.  Trump will ignore that.  Consumers won't be able to, and those who knew that this would occur ought to be plastering these on self check out lines:

It won't end there of course.  The economic genius has fallen in love with tariffs, something that fell out of favor as they helped create the Great Depression, bring Hitler into power, and cause World War Two.  

Trump really doesn't seem to be the smartest bulb in the bunch and apparently he skipped lessons in history.  Part of the reason he cited for wanting to change the name of Denali to Mt. McKinley is that McKinley, who was President before income tax was legal, used tariffs to fund the rather small U.S. budget of the time.

What a boofador.

Trump tends to think like, and talk, like a gangster.  As we discuss in an upcoming post, he may have in fact learned a lot of his "art of the deal" by having to deal with the mafia on New York construction projects.  The mafia operates, in fact, a lot like Trump. They make big threats, and then hurt people, until a rival gang knuckles under or regular people give in.

The problem here, of course, is that countries aren't criminal gangs, usually (Russia sort of is), and they don't behave that way. Democratic nations particularly don't.  Trump is getting the middle finger from Canada and Mexico right now, but the besotted American public hasn't noticed.  If Trump imposes the tariffs he threatens to, Canada is threatening to flat out cease exporting into the US.  What Canada has in spades, oil and lumber, it can sell elsewhere.  We can't replace what we get from them.

That'll spike the price of oil massively. We can't offset the oil deficit that would result in as we're already, in spite of the moronic "drill baby drill" comments people make, drilling at capacity.  That would easily add 1/3d to the price at the pumps, if not 3 times to it.

And the removal of lumber would simply end the construction industry.

Canada is also a major exporter of hydroelectric power into the US.  If Canada starts taxing that, and it can, at a rate to offset tariffs, living in New England will be extremely expensive.

As for Mexico, go to the grocery store and see how many things are "grown in Mexico". With California in trouble due to Trump's immigration policies, and a retaliating Mexico you'll get to eat what can be produced locally.

Um, yum.  Canned corn will still be there.

It'd be tempting to say "people will get what they deserve, but Trump didn't even take 50% of the popular vote.

Let's say that again.  He didn't take even 50% of the popular vote.

He took 49.8%, which is regarded as impressive in American politics, but in reality is not.  50.2 % of the American public voted against him.

Third parties may have put Trump in office.

In some systems, if a person doesn't take over 50% of the vote, there's a runoff election between the top two vote getters until somebody does.  If that had been done, would Trump be President?

Anyhow, with about 50% voting for him, and 50% voting against him, Trump doesn't have a mandate to do squat.  Quite a few of his insiders know that which is why they're rushing to put in their projects while they can, which is really only until the next mid term election when an enraged public turns on the GOP.  It's going to happen.

In the meantime, the 50% of the country that didn't vote for Trump is going to endure rising prices, destroyed retirement accounts, a Federal government that won't help with local disasters, and the increasing slide of the country into a mean, childish, brutish, thugocracy.

Tuesday, January 14, 1975. Un-American.

The House Un-American Activities Committee was disbanded by the U.S. House of Representatives.

It's roots went back to 1918 and it had investigated a wide range of Communist activities in the US dating back to that time.  Often missed, quite a few figures that the committee investigated unsuccessfully prior to World War Two would be again after the war.  Many of those whom it suspected of Communist activity would, in fact, prove to have done just that, in spite of the reputation of the committee being tarnished during the McCarthy Era.

It's demise after the Watergate and the Vietnam War was inevitable, but it had a much better track record than is popularly recalled.

Henry Kissinger announced that the Soviet Union was rescinding its agreement to a trade deal with the United States following enactment of the Jackson–Vanik amendment to the Trade Act of 1974.

The Convention on Registration of Launched Objects into Outer Space was signed in New York.  It requires the signatories to inform the United Nations of things that are launched into space.

U.S. Vice-President Rockefeller was appointed to head a committee to investigate domestic espionage by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Last edition:

Saturday, January 11, 1975. Storms. Things can, and do, get worse.

Labels: 1970s, 1975, actors and actresses, Afghanistan, Donald Trump, Great Storm of 1975, Islam, Leopards won't eat my face, Taliban, The Law of Unintended Consequences, The War in Afghanistan, Weather, Women

Saturday, January 11, 1975. Storms. Things can, and do, get worse.

The cover, page 3, and back cover, of Zhwandūn (ژوندون : مجله هفتگى), an Afghani magazine.

As I can't read the captions, I'm not entirely sure, but this appears to be Julie Christie, the actress.

Women's fashions appropriate for January in Afghanistan, but which would now get a person arrested given the Trump surrender to the Taliban.

Oh well, it's not us, right?  And things can't get worse for us, right?

The Great Storm of 1975 was in full swing.

Surface weather analysis of the Great Storm on 11 January 1975.

Last edition:

Ralph Emery Show with Ernest Tubb & Justin Tubb -- January 9, 1975

Labels: 1970s, 1975, Bluegrass, Music

Friday, January 3, 1975. The Jackson-Vanik Amendment

The Jackson-Vanik amendment was signed into law.  The amendment was to the Trade Act of 1974 and impacted countries with non market (socialist) countries which restricted freedom of Jewish emigration and other human rights.  It stated:

(a) Actions of nonmarket economy countries making them ineligible for normal trade relations, programs of credits, credit guarantees, or investment guarantees, or commercial agreements To assure the continued dedication of the United States to fundamental human rights, and notwithstanding any other provision of law, on or after January 3, 1975, products from any nonmarket economy country shall not be eligible to receive nondiscriminatory treatment (normal trade relations), such country shall not participate in any program of the Government of the United States which extends credits or credit guarantees or investment guarantees, directly or indirectly, and the President of the United States shall not conclude any commercial agreement with any such country, during the period beginning with the date on which the President determines that such country -

(1) denies its citizens the right or opportunity to emigrate;

(2) imposes more than a nominal tax on emigration or on the visas or other documents required for emigration, for any purpose or cause whatsoever; or

(3) imposes more than a nominal tax, levy, fine, fee, or other charge on any citizen as a consequence of the desire of such citizen to emigrate to the country of his choice,

and ending on the date on which the President determines that such country is no longer in violation of paragraph (1), (2), or (3).

The Soviet Union would retaliate by increasing military aid to North Vietnam.

250 square miles of the Grand Canyon National Monument was deeded back to the Havasupai people, while enlarging the part by 687,000 acres.

Danica McKellar, who became famous as  child and then teenage actress for her role in The Wonder Years, was born. The series was set in the years 1968 to 1973 and ran from 1988 to 1993.

Last edition:

Wednesday, January 1, 1975. Cutting off Phnom Penh.

Labels: 1970s, 1975, Cambodia, Cambodian Civil War, Khemr Rouge, law, United Kingdom, Watergate

Eh?

If you graduate from a U.S. college—two-year, four-year, or doctoral—you should automatically get a green card to stay.

Too often, talented grads are forced to leave and start billion-dollar companies in India or China instead of here.

That success and those jobs should be in America.

Donald Trump.

So. . . legal immigrants from Haiti who are universally regarded as hard working are bad "pet eaters" but anyone who gets a two year degree in anything can stay? 

Oh that's really going to help all the angry Rust Belt Maga voters . . . 

postscript

Elon Musk posted an angry twit on twitter about how he came in on the HB1 visa, which is supposed to make us think good things about it.  I frankly wish the South African menace would relocate to his home country.

Trump and the poor

  

After backing Trump, low-income voters hope he doesn’t slash their benefits

Voters in the struggling Pennsylvania city of New Castle backed Trump hoping he’d curb inflation. But the incoming president will be under pressure to cut spending.

This is a link to a current article in the Washington Post.  It has, of course, a paywall.  You can find it discussed, however, on Twitter.

One of the things that has baffled me about Trump's support to some degree is that people have supported him who are very likely to get a massive dope slap over the next four years.   It's clearly baffled the Democrats as well as they fairly clearly assumed that the economic underclass and those on benefits would support them, given traditional Republican hostility to their interests.

But it does make sense.

The same class discussed here is the one that was badly hurt by the exportation of jobs overseas and, frankly, high immigration rates.  They have something to lose, to be sure, but more than anyone else, they hope for a return of a sort of imagined past.  They can look back when they, or maybe their parents or grandparents, had good high paying jobs that didn't require any real education.

Both parties conspired against their interest.  Allowing high immigration rates and basically encouraging manufacturing to move overseas could have been avoided.  This class, together with the Rust Belt middle class, started signaling that it was enraged well over a decade ago and they threw their support behind, first, Bernie Sanders and then Donald Trump.

But will a government of the super wealthy really care about the plight of these people?

I don't really think that Trump thinks much beyond Trump.  He cannot in any fashion be figured to be what Brands called Franklin Roosevelt, "a traitor to his class".   Trump has frankly viewed some members of this demographic,  namely those who serve in the military, as low class dupes.  

So we now have a real test.  Franklin Roosevelt, love him or hate him, like his cousin Theodore Roosevelt, proved to be massively loyal to the American middle and poor.  Other 20th Century figures who mobilized populists proved to not be at all.  What about Trump?

I'm not optimistic.  Trump can't "lower" prices, save by accident if he causes a Depression.  Populists in Congress are both hostile to spending and hostile to taxes, even though Americans are far from overtaxed by first world standards (and don't have the standard of living of other first world nations either).  "Tea Party" types served up the Kool aide for populists that cutting spending and taxation would serve the interest of the average when it most likely stands just to make hit obscenely wealthy, like Elon Must, wealthier.

On the other hand, a thick massive dose of reality won't hurt certain classes.  There are large demographics that basically have come to live on benefits while simultaneously complaining about the government.  And an argument that some benefits were better coming from the private sector, which has an expectation of conduct, vs the government, which doesn't, can certainly be made.  The "reduced and free lunch" programs locally are an example which I've cited before, which went from helping the poor with, essentially, property tax revenues, to some sort of right.

Well, it's going to be interesting.

Tuesday, December 16, 1924. Looking back.

The Spanish confiscation (Desamortización española) law, authorizing the government of Spain to steal the property and lands of the Catholic Church, a popular enlightenment and Reformation despoliation that happened in many places, was repealed. 

The barbarity had been in place since 1766.

Amongst other things, the law resulted in millions of acres of forest falling into private hands, being deforested, with the cost of reforestation exceeding the value of their sales.  The confiscations of the 19th Century were one of the biggest environmental disasters in Iberian history.

The Supreme Court of Hungary confiscated the property of former president Mihály Károlyi for high treason. He had been convicted of negotiating with Italy in 1915 to keep the Italians out of World War One in exchange for Austrian territory, and for allowing a communist revolution to happen in 1919 by deserting his position.

Last edition:

Saturday, December 13, 1924. Albanian invasion.

Labels: 1920s, 1924, Albania, Art, Yugoslavia

Getting the Economic Dope Slap

The law of unintended consequences is a frightful thing.

It's possible, with things lining up the way they are, that Wyoming populists are about to get the biggest economic dope slap in the state's history.

Of course, the rest of us will get it too.

Wyomingites drank the populist kool aid and went back for more bucket sized additional helpings.  Shoot, the average Wyoming voter was practically drunk on the stuff, having started imbibing about a decade ago.  In going for Trump, they were voting for a return to an imaginary 1950s, sort of, combined with an imaginary 1930s, combined with an imaginary 1960s.  Full employment for all "real" Americans, none of these Spanish speaking brown folks, a uniting of our economic extractive needs with a concept of science as we want it, not as it is, and the sexual morays of the mid 1970s, really.

Average Wyoming candidate on campaign trail.

Wyomingites don't really want to go back to the past as it really was, particularly on some of the things the way I feel they should be.  Divorce isn't going to be hard to get, for example, and there's not going to be a criminal penalty for screwing around.    No hyperinflation either, and no economic depressions.

Well. . . 

The past so many envision, and there's some truth to the depictions,  and what we imagine we want again, except with tattoos and only the laws we actually like and think we remember.

Donald Trump, fresh from his political recovery thanks to a Democratic Party that couldn't get a clue and the rise of malevolent populism is threatening to throw a 25% tariff on goods imported from Canada and Mexico and a 10% one on goods imported from China.  Apparently we can p.o. the Chinese, but not as much as we can Mexico and Canada, safely.

Or maybe not p.o. the Chinese at all. During the campaign Trump talked about 60% tariffs on China.  10% on China combined with 25% on Mexico and Canada actually conveys a trading advantage on  China, while raising the costs of prices at home.

The United States is the largest goods importer of goods in the world.  China was the top supplier of goods imported into the United States, followed by Mexico ($454.8 billion), Canada ($436.6 billion), Japan ($148.1 billion), and Germany ($146.6 billion).

The United States is the world's second largest goods exporter in the world, behind only China.  Canada is the largest purchaser of U.S. goods, around 17%.

That's probably about to change.

What do we import?  Well, darned nearly everything, even food from Mexico.

What do we expert, darned near everything, including even petroleum.

We're going to be paying more for everything, and we're going to be exporting less of everything, as we get hit with retaliatory tariffs.

And that's assuming our neighbors are nice.  They might not be.  If I was the P.M. of Canada, I'd tell Americans living in Canada to pack up and go home.  A lot of them are up there on business.  And I'd end cooperation with the US on defense.

And oil?  Well, the Saudis are seriously threatening to drop the price per barrel to $49.00, which would wipe out most U.S. production.  Again, if I were the Canadians, and the Mexicans, both of which produce a lot of oil, I'd join them.  They probably won't, but that's what I'd do.

So, Wyoming populists, even without retaliation, you are going to pay more for absolutely everything. We all are.

And a lot fewer of you are going to have jobs. Same for us all.

Well, at least you can be happy about deportation. . . and a lot of you will, at long last, be deporting yourselves to your own states.  You'll have to. There won't be any work here.

Monday, November 27, 1944. Accidents.

The Battle of Peleliu finally ended in an American victory.

Detonation of explosives at the RAF Fauld underground munitions depot killed around 70 people in one the largest non nuclear explosions of all time.

The captured Norwegian ship Rigel was sunk by aircraft of the Royal Navy, resulting in the deaths of 2,571 people, mos tof whom were prisoners of war.

A mine sank the U-479 in the Gulf of Finland.

A V2 killed 157 people in Antwerp.

Last edition:

Sunday, November 26, 1944. Covering up a crime against humanity.

Labels: 1940s, 1944, Army, Auschwitz, Germany, Heinrich Himmler, Mediterranean and Middle East Theatre, Nazi Germany, Red Army, The Holocaust, World War Two