SCENE:   Mitch BERG is fixing some broken chain link fence.   Avery LIBRELLE pedals down the alley on a recumbent bike, catching him by surprise.  

LIBRELLE:  Merg!

BERG: Ugh…er, hey, Av…

LIBRELLE:  Shut up.  Billionaires are evil. 

BERG:  Huh.  So why’s that…

LIBRELLE:  They pay no taxes! It’s wrong for a billionaire to pay less taxes than a teaching assistant!

BERG:  Their employees and subsidiary businesses pay immense taxes – and they personally defray taxes by using deductions and business losses – same as your progressive plutocrats.  

LIBRELLE: That’s just wrong.  

BERG: OK.  Put a pin in that.  Did you see where Ilhan Omar’s personal fortune dropped from $30 million down to well under $100K?

LIBRELLE:  Yeah?  So?  It was an accounting error.  

BERG:  Right.  The error being that the accountant didn’t consider…what, now?

LIBRELLE:  Deductions and…

BERG:  Go on?

LIBRELLE:  (Mouth flaps like a trout on the dock)

BERG:  Same as the billionaires, right?

LIBRELLE:  Pouncer!

BERG:  Nah.  But if we find out that her and Hubby Number Four used that “mistaken” valuation to get credit, I’ll be pouncing….

(But LIBRELLE has already pedaled away)

And SCENE

Joe Doakes, ere of Como Park, emails:

Amazon just implemented two factor authentication. I hate it.

I get a daily email of free Kindle book listings which I receive on my phone

I sign into my Amazon account on my phone so I can download the free Kindle book

Amazon places a telephone call to my phone to recite the six digit authentication code. It is spoken so I cannot cut and paste

I flip from the phone app to the sign in page and enter the code they just told me over the telephone

And it’s an invalid code

Go all the way back to the beginning to start over

Even if it worked, all that would prove is that the person who’s trying to log into my account has my phone. Doesn’t mean it’s actually me. 

 I wish there was an opt out

Joe Doakes

 

It’s cut down my Amazon orders from mimimal to almost nil.  

I saw this graph over the weekend – and it’s gotten me thinking.

It shows how children in Finland during the Finnish Civil War who became communists and socialists tended to see themselves as, or be, less successful than their fathers, both in occupational and educational terms. In this data set, the pattern became clearer the higher up the educational and occupational scales one went.

Having observed a lot of socialists and other dyspeptic leftists in my time, I don’t think the pattern has changed much in the past 100 years (see:  Woody Kane). 

Here’s the problem. 

“Gen Z” sees itself, statistically, as uniquely burdened by economics, frequently seeing that as the “legacy” of previous generations leaving them nothing.   

And this particular failure has many fathers; yes, the educational system that taught them to embrace victimhood; their Millennial siblings and aunts and uncles who set the example of building identities around one’s maladies.  And, to be honest, yes – an economy that is currently top-loaded with workers from a couple of very large generations, and a list of other confounding factors – tax rates, zoning laws, the advances in technology that are disrupting traditional job markets – that give the Zoomers some difficulties of their own.  

So – does the “socialist loser son” metaphor apply to an entire generation?

That’s going to take some un-doing.  

Something most Democrat have a hard time comprehending:  healthcare tracked the regular consumer price index until about fifty years ago…

…when government stepped in to “make healthcare more affordable”.  Which worked about as well as it did with education, retirement, housing and every other thing government subsidizes.  

The invincible ignorance is a little vexing:

Of course, smart people know that high risk plans aren’t “uninsured” – they’re plans for people at high risk, which may optionally be subsidized. They made a lot of sense, especially when young, healthy people could balance out the system by buying the “catastrophic” care (aka “low risk”) plans, which were super cheap and covered accidents and devastating illnesses and not much else, and most of us of a certain age had when we were in our 20s, if we had insurance.

Say this to a DFLer, and all they hear is a buzzing noise in the background. 

How to explain economics to a DFLer? 

I asked myself – what is the only kind of business a DFLer understands?

Coffee shops.  

The vast majority of DFLers who list themselves as “small business owners”, own coffee shops. When DFL politicians go into the community to meet “small business”, those businesses are coffee shops 99% of the time.  

So – how to explain risk pools to someone whose only economic frame of reference is the coffee shop?

Maybe something like this:

DFLer:   Healthcare its broken.  

Normie:  So let’s say you know someone whose caffeine addiction is so intense that Starbucks or Caribou don’t cut it anymore?

DFLer:  Send them to Dunn Brothers!

Normie:  Why?

DFLer:  Because they might need a higher-caffeine content blend to get the jolt they need.  

Normie:  Even if it costs more?

DFLer:  Sure, but there’s ways to make up the difference.  And if they need coffee, it’s worth it.  

Normie:  So…why would you not just require everyone to pay Dunn Brothers prices so everyone gets the same caffeine?

DFLer:  That’s just crazy.  You’re caffeine-ily illiterate.  

Hmm. 

It’s just crazy enough to try.  

Fads in bars:

• 1990:  every bar that could find three TVs was re-branding itself as a “sports bar”. 
• 2000s:  those same bars found a couple old church pews and a Guinness tap, and became “Irish Bars”.  
• 2010s:  Those same bars found themselves some brew vats and became “Microbreweries”. 

I don’t drink a lot of beer anymore – I think I’ve had less than half a dozen since 2018.  But as someone who didn’t start drinking ’til I went ot Europe, and so got kind of spoiled by really really good beer, I certainly enjoyed the rise of the microbrewery over the past decade or so.

But as microbreweries started opening on every corner in the North Loop, Northeast, Dinkytown, Lowertown, Downtown Minneapolis, Lowertown and the less blighted parts of University, I kind of thought a “market correction” had to be coming. 

Looks like we’re creeping up on it; Wild Mind Brewing, somewhere in South Minneapolis, has killed the keg: 

Wild Mind’s announcement comes less than two weeks after last call at another reputable beer maker, Alloy Brewing in Coon Rapids. Alloy’s team blamed their closure on “rising costs, supply chain hurdles and an incredible decrease in sales over the last three years.” That’s a common tale among breweries of late, with alcohol sales declining all across America as younger adults turn to nonalcoholic and/or THC drink options.

Among the other Minnesota breweries to cease operations over the past year are Minneapolis-founded Dangerous Man, Chanhassen Brewing Co., Mankato Brewery, Burning Brothers in St. Paul, Loons Landing in Savage and Finnegan’s in Minneapolis (whose beers are now brewed and on tap at Fulton Brewing).

The breweries are folding all over the place, so it’s not just “Minneapolis crime and taxes” – at least not entirely.

Now, Hudson does seem to be doing just fine…

Not sure if I’m getting tired of Trump winning – but I’ve had enough of Saint Paul losing.  

The Cub on University Avenue is closing after several decades:

The store at 1440 University Ave. W. will close its doors to the public on Aug. 2, and 96 store employees will be laid off starting on Sept. 22.

In a statement, a Cub spokesperson said the closure is part of an effort to “optimize our footprint.”

“We know the impact our stores have for the people who work in, shop in, and live in our communities. Like any food retailer, we’re constantly working to optimize our footprint, which includes investing in stores – like our newly remodeled Cub in Burnsville, MN – as well as closing stores where necessary so we can operate as efficiently and effectively as possible,” the company said.

“Optimize our footprint” is apparently how corporations say “We’re tired of the shoplifting, vagrancy, panhandling, the lack of prosecution of anything that happens, and the fact that so many people who do shop at Cubs will go to Roseville because of less hassles and a lower sales tax”

I live less than a mile from that Cub – and I haven’t gone there in literally decades.   Back then, there were 3-4 big box groceries in that half=mile; Rainbow, Target and Walmart (although it wasn’t one of the Wallmarts with the big grocery sections, it was still a low-price option); Cub was never as cheap as Rainbow or as clean as Target.   

After Rainbow and Walmart disappeared?  It was easier and cheaper to go to Roseville.  

The wages of DFL control are languishing as a backwater.  

Count the zeros: that’s 90 billion in Pennsylvania…:

Google said it would invest $25 billion in the region in AI and data center infrastructure over the next two years, while investment firm Brookfield said it had signed contracts to provide more than $3 billion of power to Google from two hydroelectric dams on the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania.

That’s $90 billion, with a “b.” One thing these projects all have in common is that none of them are being built in Minnesota. Instead, this is what we get: from KAAL-TV:

And 33 million in Minnesota:

As KAAL reports, “This new funding is expected to reach 225 new and developing businesses.” That works out to about $147,000 per business. Meanwhile, back in Pennsylvania:

The list of participating CEOs includes leaders from global behemoths like Blackstone, Bridgewater, SoftBank, Amazon Web Services, BlackRock and ExxonMobil and local companies such as the Pittsburgh-based Gecko Robotics, which deploys AI to bolster energy capacity. Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, will also attend.

Some of this investment would have surely come to Minnesota if not for the many taxes, laws and policies enacted in the past three years to discourage private investment and weaken our electrical grid.

Other than the number of zeros, the big difference is that the big, Pennsylvania number comes from private investors. Ripe marks…er, taxpayers covered it in Minnesota.

So yeah – while I’m not tired of winning at the national level, I’m over it here locally.  

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

It’s nice that Amazon is so concerned about me, they send me email telling me how to avoid be scammed.

 

It’s annoying they send the email to my cell phone at 3:09 am.

 

I leave my cell phone on overnight in case I get an emergency call: the kids have been in a car accident or a tornado was sighted in our area.  I don’t mind be woken up for that.

 

 I suppose I could opt out of receiving emails but then I wouldn’t know when packages were on their way. Is there a setting that says “send me stupid advertising spam at 6 PM my time”? 

 

Not generating much goodwill here,  Amazon.

 

Joe Doakes

As someone who tends to work more on the design and engineering side, the jokes about marketeers write themselves.   

Or hopefully they do, because I don’t feel like writing them right now 

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

Why is there a rebate for electric bicycles, what’s wrong with the old-fashioned Schwinn bicycle?

 

Why do teacher pensions need a boost from the state, why aren’t they paid from teacher contributions?

 

Why do any illegal aliens get free healthcare whether they are children or not? Why do we want to encourage them to stay instead of encouraging them to leave?

 

Joe Doakes

The terms “perverse incentives” and “unintended consequences” is always the answer, one way or the other.

Joe Doakes, once of Como Park, emails:

Members of the German Parliament have been talking tough about Trumps tariffs.The tariffs will hurt Americans worse than Germans. America doesn’t make anything anymore.  There’s nothing they need from us.  

 

Excellent. High tariffs are gone. And so are our soldiers, airmen, Marines.  Germany can have those empty bases to fill with their own soldiers to stare down the Russians.

 

 Peace, friendship, and honest commerce with all; entangling alliances with none. Wise words from one of our founders. Glad we have the opportunity to get back them. 

 

Joe Doakes

Joe Doakes, once of Como Park, emails:

John Hinderaker from Powerline looks at the data and comes to the conclusion that Nixon taking us off the gold standard was a mistake.

Welcome to the club.  Never too late to wake up to the truth. Now, about the 2020 election . . .

Joe Doakes

Right. Now – in both cases, what do you do about it?

So, the Saint Paul City Council appears to be rolling back its stupid, ruinous “rent control” ordinance…

…sort of. 

But – only the buildings built after 2004?

I’m no expert, but this sounds to me like it’s a plan to:

1. Make it impossible to pay the upkeep and taxes on older buildings, and so to
2. Squeeze the owners out into selling cheap, so as to
3. Build more multi-unit housing, which of course steers money to the non-profits that employ the St. Paul DFL’s farm club.  Because they always get a taste.  Always.  

Saint Paul is basically Chicago on the Mississippi.  

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

Scott Johnson from Powerline has a column explaining why Trump’s tariffs are calculated incorrectly and are therefore too high.  He gives a formula from some academics showing that the inelasticity of trade was improperly factored into setting our new rates.

Missing the point, Scott.  The point is foreign governments have been taking advantage of our generosity for years and it’s time to fix that. Yes, we’re a party to GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) but renegotiations have been stalled for decades – too many rice bowls at stake – so Trump’s unilateral new tariffs are a way to break the stalemate.

 

The specifics of Trump’s tariffs don’t matter, 10% on penguins or 90% on Vietnam, these numbers are just the opening round of negotiation.  It’s like the guy selling sombreros on the beach in Mazatlan, or the guy selling rugs in the souk in Marrakech.  His opening offer is ridiculous because you are expected to bargain with him. That’s the accepted practice in that culture.  So, too, in every real estate deal, which is where Trump learned his lessons.  You always set the listing price high to give yourself room to negotiate down.  And now we’re seeing it’s also true in setting foreign trade policy, as more than four dozen countries have already lined up to renegotiate their trade policy with us.

 

Scott’s column is so typical for RINOs. The other side can state any lie and it’s accepted at face value while our facts are scrutinized and debated endlessly, with the result that the opposition’s policies get enacted but ours get nibbled to death by ducks quacking around our ankles.  With friends like that . . . . . . .

 

Joe Doakes

Joe Doakes, once of Como Park, emails:

I get lots of spam emails but never see them.  My spam filter works fine for real spam.  It’s spam-ish emails that get through.  “Legitimate” spam, so to speak.

 

Marketing people will tell you that the best source of business is your existing customer list.  They already know the way to your door. They paid you money in the past. The trick is to get them back in the door again to spend more money in the future.  How to do that?

 

Keep your name in front of them.  Email a quarterly newsletter.  Email monthly specials.  Email “Happy Birthday!” greetings.  That way, when the customer thinks “I should buy . . . ” they already know who to buy it from.

 

Except I HATE SPAM.  Pelting me with spam emails is far more likely to annoy me than to make me grateful.  Do businesses gain more repeat business from spam than they drive away?  I wonder.

 

And it’s everywhere.  The grocery store wants my email before I can get the BOGO on green grapes but that means receiving weekly coupon emails.  The oil change place wants to send me a three-month reminder in addition to holiday greetings. The dentist, health care provider, insurance agent, Congresscritter, drugstore, discount warehouse . . . STOP SENDING ME THIS CRAP!

 

But I can’t tell them that, or they will take my name off the list, and the next time I shop there, they will say my account has been closed at my request.  

 

Marketing majors take note: it’s people like you what cause civil unrest.  My next “mostly peaceful” protest may be at your office.  And not a soul would blame me.

 

Joe Doakes

Point taken – although I’m going after the people (or “people”) that design phone trees first. 

(Title reference):

OK, so work with me here [1].

I’m not especially a fan of tariffs. Some of the arguments against them aren’t much better, though. If they go through, they are taxes, yes indeed. And if they don’t – if they are leverage, used to successfully change trade policy, or in some cases safeguard an industry we *don’t* need getting offshored [2], then not so much.

But this goes way beyond tariffs, so again, bear with me [1].

Our economy has extremely healthy fundamentals – and some incredibly nasty endemic problems:

• – National debt that will crush the economy if we don’t do something useful
• – inflation that was down from four years ago, but still way higher than it should be, especially for working-class Americans (because the inflation rate for food, fuel and housing was and remains *way* higher than the economy at large)
• – A stock market that was very overvalued at the beginning of the year (with profit to earnings ratios almost double the rate of a healthy market), with a major bubble caused by federal spending and the AI bubble.
• – A Federal Reserve whose only answer is cutting rates (which will increase inflation, given all the loose money that’s already out there) or hiking them (strangling economic growth).
• – Four years of uncontrolled immigration, which depressed working-class wages (and artificially kept some prices down while raising other costs, economic and social).
• – A Congress that *can* and *should* fix all these problems, and *could*, at least to start by means-testing Social Security and Medicare, except that they have to win popularity contests every two years, and the noise machines of both sides have made being *honest* about the impending entitlement time bomb political suicide)
• Oh, yeah – Europe is closer to general war than it’s been in 85 years, and experts are predicting China will, not may, either invade or strangle Taiwan before the end of the decade. ]

So – what to do?

Let me take you back.

It’s 1982. I was still a Democrat. Probably kind of an obnoxious one, come to think of it.
And the economy had been a basket case for much of my childhood, and all my teenage years and adulthood to that point. The Oil Embargo led to the mid-seventies recession, which led to Stagflation, which led to the Malaise, and of course the Federal Government was spending money like crazy on the “war on poverty”, so inflation crushed economic activity; inflation peaked at over 12% when I was in high school.

President Reagan’s Fed chief, Paul Volcker, cranked the federal funds rate to *20%*. Mobbed up loan sharks said “dial it back, bub”. It SLAMMED inflation to the mat – but unemployement *soared* to 10.8% [3]. It triggered a VERY sharp recession in 1982 – one that’s still “the big one” to a lot of us.

The Democrat majority in Congress grew by 26 seats to a majority of *over 100 seats*. IF there’s been a Presidential election in 1982, Reagan would have lost by a landslide.

But here’s the thing about recessions – if the fundamentals of the economy are healthy, then the sharper the downturn, the sharper the recovery, if you let it [4]. In a year, the economy was gaining almost 500,000 jobs *a month* (and the population was 34 the size it is today), and the longest peacetime boom in history, almost 25 years, kicked off.

And Reagan rode that economy to the biggest landslide in history. And I made my first Republican vote, for Reagan (and my last Democrat one – for my Mom).

So – what about last week’s orgy of tariffs?

Maybe it just means Trump is stupid. Could be [5].

Or maybe the whole thing is:

1.  A sharp kick in the market’s teeth, to get those valuations down to size, AND…
2. … burn off some of that excess capital that Biden (and yes, Trump in 2020) pumped into the economy with no growth to eat it up, AND…
3.  Throw a stun granade into the international trade market to exert leverage on other countries to cut the tariffs that *are* there [6] AND…  Start creating demand for American blue-collar labor, to replace all the cheap foreign labor that the cartels aren’t walking across the border, AND…
4.  To force China into a recession that they can just not afford (if their exports are strangled, they are screwed blue), which might have the salutary effect of helping prevent WORLD WAR F**KING THREE in the Taiwan Straits, AND…
5. Unleash the Growth Fairy, which – let me put this as gently as I can – IS THE ONLY WAY THIS COUNTRY’S ECONOMY ISN’T GOING TO COLLAPSE in the next decade or so. Literally, those are the two choices – out of control growth, or collapse. There is no option C. Taxing billionaires don’t do it. Confiscating every dollar of wealth over a Billion, or a million, won’t do it. ONLY the greatest explosion of growth the world has ever seen will do it.

It’s not just me thinking this: my (Facebook) friend Glenn Reynolds wrote this [7]…

And HIS friend and my one-time rhetorical fencing partner Steven Green had this to say:

Decide for yourself. [1].

[1] Or don’t. I don’t care. But if you disagree, shoot for intelligent disagreement, OK? I’m kind of tired of the other kind.
[2] Germany is kind of starting to regret outsourcing the production of its army’s tanks to Greece, for one example.
[3] Yep, Millennials, almost a point worse than 2008. You didn’t survive the worst of all possible times.
[4] Which is why the 2008 recession, and the Great Depression for that matter, dragged on so long – government “recovery” efforts prolonged the economic trouble that caused the whole thing in the first place.
[5] We’ll see, one way or the other. I’ve been wrong about Trump before, and so have you. Anyway, hear me out [1].
[6] Both sides are wrong about trade, by the way; Trump’s largely wrong about the trade deficit (it’s mostly from us buying cheap stuff from poor countries, and the middle class has grown in the past 40 years) and his opponents are wrong about foreign countries’ policies (they DO hamper lots of American exports in the “free market”). We can discuss it [1].
[7] I eschew “appeal to authority” and other logical fallacies, and I hope you do too [1], but let’s be honest; he’s smarter than me, and probably smarter than you, too.

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

I notice a common theme running through Berg’s Third Law (disasters) and Mother Jones Corollary to the Tenth Law (vicious lies) and 18th Law of Media Latency (48 hour rule): the media rushes to lie about Conservatives, so thoughtful readers will wait for the dust to settle an the truth to be revealed.

I wonder if a similar principle should apply to President Trump?

He proposes a course of action, the media loses its mind, Democrats and RINOs panic, the feared apocalypse does not occur. It happens over and over. He wants fair trade with Canada; Canada threatens to punish every American; tariffs are proposed; media, Democrats and RINOs panic; Canada backs down. If everybody had waited a week or two before setting their hair on fire, it all would have blown over.

Generally takes longer than 48 hours so how about a two week rule?

Joe Doakes

The committee is taking it under advisement. 

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I confidently predicted Trump would force a government shutdown to compel real cuts in spending, which is why he had the D0GE team hunting for a trillion dollars of fraud, waste and abuse.  But Trump supports a continuing resolution which increases defense spending by $6 billion, cuts other spending by $13 billion, and leaves the rest of the spending in place, financed by borrowed money.  

Shaving a lousy $7 billion off $7 trillion won’t balance the budget. We will still have a $2 Trillion dollar deficit and interest on the debt will still be more than we spend on defense.  This continuing resolution is like claiming to be dieting by eating one less french fry in your Happy Meal.  It’s worse than a joke. It’s an insult.  I’m insulted. 

My buddy claims I just don’t understand Trump’s strategy and the scope of everything he’s dealing with.  He wanted Congress to do a real budget before he was seated.  He wanted them to do the cuts under Biden.  But of course Congress simply kicked the can and made the problem come due a few weeks into Trump’s term.  

My buddy says Trump’s not giving up the fight, he’s merely pushing it out a few months while inflation tames; while the fraud and waste gets identified and publicized; while he gets the Hawaiian judges’ orders overturned; while he ends the money laundry in Ukraine; while he knocks some sense into Mexico and Canada; while he secures the border; while he gets the rest of his cabinet installed; while he claws back billions, if not trillions shoveled out the windows just before he took office ….

I sure hope he’s right.  Otherwise, it looks as if the Democrats and RINOs won this round, dragging us one step closer to the fiscal cliff.  Dang, and I was so hopeful.

Joe Doakes

 

Until someone has the guts to go after the big entitlement programs, it’s all performance.  The best case is that Trump curbs the chaos long enough for the economy to switch to “puree”, which might forestall but not prevent the inevitable reckoning. 

Can we get to that without getting to this?   Or will events and Democrats stall Trump long enough that a recession tanks Trump in the. mid-terms, and sparks a leftist backlash?

Joe Doakes formerly of Como Park emails:

We know there’s a battle coming.  Congress’s funding resolution runs out March 14.  If Trump and Congress don’t reach a deal on a new budget, the government shuts down with all the angst and drama we recall from earlier battles, with all the political risks that have made some Republicans unwilling to fight the battle again.  So in the upcoming fight over the budget, what’s our view, the Conservative view?

Personally, I’d like to see something akin to Constitutional government. Article I, Section 8 enumerates the powers given to Congress.  Go read it. It’s worth remembering that those are the ONLY powers the Founders wanted Congress to have.  To get back to that, we’d have to cut about 80% of the federal government.  I concede that’s not realistic in today’s political climate. 

What is realistic?  How about living within our means?  How about balancing income and outgo, revenue and expenditures, same as every family and small business must do?  What would it take to get there? 

We would have to cut about 2 Trillion dollars of annual spending. Is that possible?

First, let’s remember the last budget was 2019 when Trump was in office.  Starting in 2020, Congress ramped up spending to cover the extraordinary costs of fighting a world-ending epidemic of Covid.  Leaving aside the possibility  that Covid was merely an excuse to promote absentee ballots to steal the election, the spending never stopped.  Every year since 2020, Congress passed a continuing resolution which keeps spending the same amount of money as before, plus a little extra for inflation, including the emergency money for Covid and lately, money for Ukraine to the tune of a third-of-a-trillion dollars.  Surely some of that can go.

Second, let’s remember that Congress gives money to agencies to promote vague policy objectives like “safe food” or “transportation.”  What, specifically, the agency does with that money is up to the bureaucrats.  That’s why we get drag queen shows on military bases. Surely some of that can go. 

Third, let’s remember that every bureaucrat knows the first rule of budgeting is “spend it or lose it.”  They will hide behind a “hostage puppy” to protect the rest of their funding (so named for the famous National Lampoon cover). They will insist that if we cut the funding for drag queens, the puppy will die, the child in Ethiopia will starve, the meat will not be inspected, the Washington Monument will be closed, and Grandma will have to eat dog food to survive. We have heard it all before, surely they can’t expect us to fall for it again?

So what do we do?  First, we don’t fall for the  hostage puppy, we stand firm. If bureaucrats would rather let the Ethiopian kid starve than give up their drag queen shows, on their heads be it.  Second, we empower someone to look through agency budgets to cut out silliness to focus on core functions.  Musk’s team is doing that now but it ought to be a full time job for somebody. Third, we insist on real cuts now, not gimmicks like “out year” reductions 10 years down the road.  And most importantly, we get tough – we harden our hearts – so we can ride out the wailing and gnashing of teeth, the rending of garments, the accusations of every -ism imaginable. 

Why this fight?  Why now?  Because we’re nearly at the end of the road. We’re short about $2 Trillion a year which we borrowed to get by, but that’s been going on for so long we now owe $36 Trillion dollars which is more than the entire Gross Domestic Product of $26 Trillion. Do you realize what that means?  It means we owe more on the national debt than the value of all the goods and services produced in the entire nation.  

We pay more for interest on the national debt than the entire defense budget.  

By every reasonable measure, the United States is bankrupt.

It comes down to surgical cuts now or default on our debts later and then everything collapses into complete anarchy.  Choose wisely.  And demand that your elected representatives do the same. 

Joe Doakes

 

One of the upshots of Americans (induced) economic illiteracy is that if they’ve gotten any education in economics at all, it’s been in Keynesianism. As such, they think the natural, effective response to an economic downturn is to pour taxpayer money into the situation.

Which merely stretches out the natural recovery, as it did in 1933, and in 2008. 

In an economy with healthy fundamentals, a sharp downturn in a free market serves to kill off a whole lot of bad ideas – unsustainable dotcoms in 2001, subprime mortgages in 2008, and probably a whole lot of bubble-like irrational exuberance over AI today.   

Now – are we as a society smart enough to know this?   The fact that the Obama regime went back to subsidizing subprime mortgages after the ’08 recession (which their policies dragged out for years) indicates “probably not”. 

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

Why is Trump in such a frantic rush to issue executive orders, fire employees, deport people, surrender Ukraine to Russia?  Is he out of his mind?

No, he’s out of time.  Congress’ most recent continuing budget resolution runs out March 14th. Trump has three more weeks to set the stage for the budget showdown. He knows every Democrat will vote against spending cuts to balance income against outgo. He knows at least some Republicans will join them.  He needs to act fast to get public support on his side so he can stand up to Congress and say,  “No more.”

Elon Musk and his team of auditors continue to find examples of fraud and waste that piss off normal people. Why are we paying for stupid stuff like that?  The judges who refuse to let the auditors do their job and who halt layoffs, piss off normal people. Why are you leaving the thieves in charge of the checkbook?  The politicians screaming about deporting illegal alien criminals piss off normal people.  Why are you putting scum ahead of citizens?  Why not put Americans first?

And it’s working.  Trump has extraordinary approval numbers. He is going to need that public support when he tells Congress, “No more,” and when he tells Ukraine, “No more,” and when he tells rogue federal employees (including some judges), “No more.”  

It’s all coming to a head in a few weeks. The media will scream. Democrats will scream.  Europeans politicians, Catholic bishops, liberal judges, and Hollywood celebrities will scream. Let them. Elections have consequences. It’s our turn now. 

Get ready.  

Joe Doakes

More tomorrow.

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

A federal government shutdown is coming in three weeks.  Democrats and the media will have a meltdown and will try to frighten the public, claiming the sky is falling and we are all going to die. Get ready for it. The shutdown will be tough but it is neecessary.  

The federal budget is … unknown. We don’t have a budget. We haven’t had an actual budget where expenditures are debated and prioritized since 2019, when Trump was last in office. Every year of the Biden administration, Congress simply spent money without caring what it was spent on or how much was spent.  The money runs out March 14.

The federal government spends about $6 Trillion but only takes in about $4 Trillion so it borrows the other $2 Trillion. That’s the deficit – the amount we are short – $2,000,000,000,000. That is how much fraud and waste Elon Musk is hoping to cut, just to get income and outgo to break even.  That’s how much Democrats (and, to be fair, some RINOs, too) are trying to protect.

Come March, Trump must either cave in to Congress and continue to let them have a blank check, or he must stand up to Congress and refuse to sign more blank checks. If he refuses and Congress does not come up with a budget acceptable to him, the government shuts down until an acceptable deal is made.

Trump is a deal maker but he is not a quitter.  The showdown is coming and the shutdown is his only leverage.  Get ready for it.  

Joe Doakes

 

Part III coming up tomorrow. 

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

We should start warning people now to expect bad news so they’re not upset and disheartened when it comes

We’ve known for years that Biden was senile but everybody in the establishment, administration and media lied to us to hide it.   We know they tried to blame the price of eggs on Trump when they are the ones who killed all the chickens. We know they are liars. Keep that in mind.

Every quarter the Biden administration triumphantly released figures showing the Biden economy was growing and there were record numbers of new hires.  And every quarter they would quietly release a few revisions and corrections which showed that there were practically no hires and if you discount the lies, the economy was in a recession heading for depression.

 It’s going to get worse. Economists talk about gross domestic product as a measure of success of the economy but one of the numbers in the formula to calculate GDP is government spending. Take out the 2 trillion dollars of fraud and waste that Elon Musk’s team has identified and the problem will be obvious. We’re definitely in a recession and have been for years, probably a depression. 

 Get ready for headlines screaming Trump depression, Trump ruins economy, worst economy in years.  No, it’s an honest look at the economy.  And now that we have the real figures, we can start making changes necessary to fix it. 

Get ready.  It’s coming.

Joe Doakes

 

Two more parts to come.  I’ll save my comments for after Part III.

On the one hand, it’s amusing to see that suddenly “cultural appropriation” – in this case, a bunch of rhythmically-challenged Argentine leftist “Karens”

But I think this is a good thing. 

Hear me out.

Until the mid 1940s, Argentina was a wealthy first-world country, with a per capita GDP competitive with the US. 

Then, the “Argentine leftists” sold Argentine voters on “Rizz” and “Brat Vibes” with the Perons and a series of socialists, which gutted the economy and led to a series of coups and counter-coups, which also gutted the economy, which led to a war to restore pride that led to humiliating defeat that further gutted not only the economy but national pride, which led to further see-sawing back and forth, finally leading to a complete economic collapse 20 years ago, which has largely been met by further waves of center-to-far-left governments spending money they don’t have (or borrow from the IMF) to keep programs afloat at the expense of, well, everything.

So now the growups, led by Milei, are in charge, and they are showing the world the actual potential of the Argentine economy and people. 

So perhaps after his past 70-80 years, it’s best that Argentine leftists stick with club-footed cultural appropriation and dancing with all the rhythmic authority of Swedish disco dancers.  They cause less damage (artistic damage notwithstanding).

While this is good – and expected – news, I feel a little cheated.

Companies are ditching DEI because it’s bad for the bottom line; they can practice equality without flogging “equity”. 

But notice how it’s framed: “under pressure from conservative activists”. 

I mean, if you’re going to “blame” companies’ rediscovering economic and social sanity on people like me, and least call it “pouncing”, for fox’s sake.

To:  “Prez”, Dim Little Progressive Social Media Bulb
From:  Mitch Berg, obstreporous peasant who passed Econ 201
Re:  Not The “Own” You Think It Is

“Prez”,

Re your sentiment expressed over the weekend:

I mean, saving more money is good for you – might make you a conservative, eventually, actually.  

And unless you save that money in a coffee can in your closet, it’ll go to a bank, which’ll circulate the money around, further helping those who are participating in the economy to grow things. 

Not sure that’s quite the “own” you think it is. 

Even less so than dumping Twitter to join “BlueSky”, really.

That is all.

The Vice President of the United States actively worked to bail out rioters, convicted rapists and scads of violent goons:

Not a single national Democrat or local DFLer denounced this erosion of our legal system. Some, including much of the metro and state “progressive” power elite, celebrated and participated in it.

This needs to be held against every last one of them in tomorrow’s elections.