Trumps Indictment: Historical and Future Implications V
A Day In The Life ... 🇺🇲
'Come in.'
'SHIT! SHIT! MY HOUSE HAS JUST BEEN BLOWN AWAY BY A F*CKING HURRICANE AND I'VE LOST EVERYTHING I OWN! HELP ME! HELP ME!'
'Oh, dear. I'm terribly sorry to hear that, madam. If you could just fill out this form in triplicate and provide photographic evidence of the damage your property has sustained, you may – only may, I'm afraid – be approved for an initial relief payment of $750 . If you need any more assistance, of course, once we've reviewed your case we'll see what we can do. In the meantime, do try to keep warm. Goodbye.
'Next.
Ah, Mr Zelensky. How's the pointless war going? Not too well? Oh, I am sorry to hear that. Here's $60 billion dollars. If you need any more once you've spent it, do pop back in to see us. I'm sure we'll be able to come to some arrangement. Good day to you.
'Next.
Ah, Mr Netanyahu. There's no need for you to ask for anything, sir. We'll give you everything you need. What's that? You want World War Three? No problem! We'll have it with you in a jiffy. Anything else, my friend? You want me to bend over this desk so you can fuck me up the arse? Certainly. Just give me a second to take my trousers down and you can slide right on in there.
'Secretary, if you could tell any further callers I'll be a little busy for a while, that would be lovely.'
🇺🇲🇺🇦🇮🇱🇬🇧
ajay said:
A Day In The Life ... 🇺🇲
'Come in.'
'SHIT! SHIT! MY HOUSE HAS JUST BEEN BLOWN AWAY BY A F*CKING HURRICANE AND I'VE LOST EVERYTHING I OWN! HELP ME! HELP ME!'
'Oh, dear. I'm terribly sorry to hear that, madam. If you could just fill out this form in triplicate and provide photographic evidence of the damage your property has sustained, you may – only may, I'm afraid – be approved for an initial relief payment of $750 . If you need any more assistance, of course, once we've reviewed your case we'll see what we can do. In the meantime, do try to keep warm. Goodbye.
'Next.
Ah, Mr Zelensky. How's the pointless war going? Not too well? Oh, I am sorry to hear that. Here's $60 billion dollars. If you need any more once you've spent it, do pop back in to see us. I'm sure we'll be able to come to some arrangement. Good day to you.
'Next.
Ah, Mr Netanyahu. There's no need for you to ask for anything, sir. We'll give you everything you need. What's that? You want World War Three? No problem! We'll have it with you in a jiffy. Anything else, my friend? You want me to bend over this desk so you can fuck me up the arse? Certainly. Just give me a second to take my trousers down and you can slide right on in there.
'Secretary, if you could tell any further callers I'll be a little busy for a while, that would be lovely.'
🇺🇲🇺🇦🇮🇱🇬🇧
You asking the slave party to care about their slaves? Sooner find a pimp with a low profit margin... You expect a lot from these Jim Crows. Ah shucks.
A Day In The Life ... 🇺🇲
'Come in.'
'SHIT! SHIT! MY HOUSE HAS JUST BEEN BLOWN AWAY BY A F*CKING HURRICANE AND I'VE LOST EVERYTHING I OWN! HELP ME! HELP ME!'
'Oh, dear. I'm terribly sorry to hear that, madam. If you could just fill out this form in triplicate and provide photographic evidence of the damage your property has sustained, you may – only may, I'm afraid – be approved for an initial relief payment of $750 . If you need any more assistance, of course, once we've reviewed your case we'll see what we can do. In the meantime, do try to keep warm. Goodbye.
'Next.
Ah, Mr Zelensky. How's the pointless war going? Not too well? Oh, I am sorry to hear that. Here's $60 billion dollars. If you need any more once you've spent it, do pop back in to see us. I'm sure we'll be able to come to some arrangement. Good day to you.
'Next.
Ah, Mr Netanyahu. There's no need for you to ask for anything, sir. We'll give you everything you need. What's that? You want World War Three? No problem! We'll have it with you in a jiffy. Anything else, my friend? You want me to bend over this desk so you can fuck me up the arse? Certainly. Just give me a second to take my trousers down and you can slide right on in there.
'Secretary, if you could tell any further callers I'll be a little busy for a while, that would be lovely.'
🇺🇲🇺🇦🇮🇱🇬🇧
You asking the slave party to care about their slaves? Sooner find a pimp with a low profit margin... You expect a lot from these Jim Crows. Ah shucks.
MidnightSonneteer said:
The lying has become so ferociously underhanded that I really wonder about the extent of their mental health issues.
It's absolutely unbelievable, especially in regard to tragedies that are affecting people's lives.
I couldn't believe how Trump acted like he was the president overseeing the emergency response and in charge of the Republicans and what wonderful things they're doing while lying about the current administration. Here's a very enlightening article. . .
Disaster Funding Has Its Own Perils
Congressional leaders deferred a debate over sending federal money to respond to Hurricane Helene until after the election, delaying a potentially messy political fight.
When congressional leaders decided not to call lawmakers back from the campaign trail for an emergency session to fund relief and rebuilding efforts after Hurricane Helene, they cited practical considerations.
[Republican] Speaker Mike Johnson and others said the government had sufficient funds to get through the critical next few weeks and receive a definitive assessment of need before dealing with the spending issues after Nov. 5.
But there was another good reason to hold off: Congressional struggles over disaster funding, particularly with an election right around the corner, can be political disasters of their own.
From feuding over how to pay for Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to splits over recovery funds after Hurricane Sandy hit in 2012 to a G.O.P. blockade of money for Western wildfires and hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico in 2019, disaster packages have divided Republicans and left other lawmakers and the public accusing them of ignoring the plight of suffering Americans.
. . .
“It’s simply too risky for Republicans to bring back members to vote on a package of spending that they haven’t even seen yet, right before the election,” said John Feehery, a Republican strategist and former top House leadership aide. “A partisan fight would be a disaster, but a bipartisan spendathon could deflate the base.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/04/us/politics/congress-hurricane-helene-funding.html
The lying has become so ferociously underhanded that I really wonder about the extent of their mental health issues.
It's absolutely unbelievable, especially in regard to tragedies that are affecting people's lives.
I couldn't believe how Trump acted like he was the president overseeing the emergency response and in charge of the Republicans and what wonderful things they're doing while lying about the current administration. Here's a very enlightening article. . .
Disaster Funding Has Its Own Perils
Congressional leaders deferred a debate over sending federal money to respond to Hurricane Helene until after the election, delaying a potentially messy political fight.
When congressional leaders decided not to call lawmakers back from the campaign trail for an emergency session to fund relief and rebuilding efforts after Hurricane Helene, they cited practical considerations.
[Republican] Speaker Mike Johnson and others said the government had sufficient funds to get through the critical next few weeks and receive a definitive assessment of need before dealing with the spending issues after Nov. 5.
But there was another good reason to hold off: Congressional struggles over disaster funding, particularly with an election right around the corner, can be political disasters of their own.
From feuding over how to pay for Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to splits over recovery funds after Hurricane Sandy hit in 2012 to a G.O.P. blockade of money for Western wildfires and hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico in 2019, disaster packages have divided Republicans and left other lawmakers and the public accusing them of ignoring the plight of suffering Americans.
. . .
“It’s simply too risky for Republicans to bring back members to vote on a package of spending that they haven’t even seen yet, right before the election,” said John Feehery, a Republican strategist and former top House leadership aide. “A partisan fight would be a disaster, but a bipartisan spendathon could deflate the base.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/04/us/politics/congress-hurricane-helene-funding.html
runaway-mindtrain said:Looks like the copy and paste propagandists is busy spreading everyone else's writing again. The U.S. ports are officially closed by the Democrat port union to "intentionally cripple the economy" as their Union leader stated they would do this year
JUST IN TIME FOR THE ELECTION..
I was wondering what fuckery the pedophile supporting, segregationist Jim Crow party would pull to interfer in an election they are losing..
Shall Klansman Biden and that CAMEL TOE Harris declared Marshall law to stop the election and stay in power?
Did they visit the destruction of the hurricane?
Or Ohio?
Or the border?
Or the Middle East?
Trump did to all of it..
And he isn't in power.
Biden is busy on the beach and Kamala is busy being a lying c*nt on one embarrassing failed interview after another.
She need not worry though-
The above sycophantic Jim Crow, most white democrats and most black plantation voters will, no matter what, support her commie agenda...
I suspect our Geobbels propagandists will copy and paste nothing of the ports just like the border they act like is closed.
When supplies disappear in a few weeks, who will America blame?....
Hint...The same slave party that fucked the country for the last 170 years...
https://youtu.be/3YKpMCCwy5s?si=gPnCW5lepq67DpVH
Theyll find out soon enough, right. Were on the brink of ww3 due to to the leftist idiots in charge. And shame on the way they arent handling the hurricane victims.
Av can copy and paste all she wants. Id have more respect for her if she was posting pics of her out there, in the REAL world helping HER people, instead of wasting time on this site with all her copying and pasting.
to each their own......MAGA!
JUST IN TIME FOR THE ELECTION..
I was wondering what fuckery the pedophile supporting, segregationist Jim Crow party would pull to interfer in an election they are losing..
Shall Klansman Biden and that CAMEL TOE Harris declared Marshall law to stop the election and stay in power?
Did they visit the destruction of the hurricane?
Or Ohio?
Or the border?
Or the Middle East?
Trump did to all of it..
And he isn't in power.
Biden is busy on the beach and Kamala is busy being a lying c*nt on one embarrassing failed interview after another.
She need not worry though-
The above sycophantic Jim Crow, most white democrats and most black plantation voters will, no matter what, support her commie agenda...
I suspect our Geobbels propagandists will copy and paste nothing of the ports just like the border they act like is closed.
When supplies disappear in a few weeks, who will America blame?....
Hint...The same slave party that fucked the country for the last 170 years...
https://youtu.be/3YKpMCCwy5s?si=gPnCW5lepq67DpVH
Theyll find out soon enough, right. Were on the brink of ww3 due to to the leftist idiots in charge. And shame on the way they arent handling the hurricane victims.
Av can copy and paste all she wants. Id have more respect for her if she was posting pics of her out there, in the REAL world helping HER people, instead of wasting time on this site with all her copying and pasting.
to each their own......MAGA!
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"Yes. FEMA is here." From the West Asheville Exchange keeping communities informed.
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1842938173908807680/pu/vid/avc1/590x1280/jaqyFCcwuHrEzqhZ.mp4?tag=12&fbclid=IwY2xjawFvi7RleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHR3ZIW8Vq5PSOwMHxYERoKOCfikB2YMcCzDusT5xR1Iacw-VpkL1PplTTA_aem_UPLOxyxDDsRUDfBRB5DCOw
"Yes. FEMA is here." From the West Asheville Exchange keeping communities informed.
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1842938173908807680/pu/vid/avc1/590x1280/jaqyFCcwuHrEzqhZ.mp4?tag=12&fbclid=IwY2xjawFvi7RleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHR3ZIW8Vq5PSOwMHxYERoKOCfikB2YMcCzDusT5xR1Iacw-VpkL1PplTTA_aem_UPLOxyxDDsRUDfBRB5DCOw
October 5, 2024
Heather Cox Richardson
Oct 06, 2024
William McKinley is having a moment (which I confess is a sentence I never expected to write).
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is elevating McKinley, representative from Ohio from 1877 to 1891 and president from 1897 to 1901, to justify his plan to impose new high tariffs.
Trump’s call for tariffs is not an economic plan; it is a worldview. Trump claims that foreign countries pay tariff duties and thus putting new tariffs of 20% on all imports, and as much as 60% on Chinese imports, will bring enough foreign money into the country to fund things like childcare, end federal budget deficits, and pay for the tax cuts he wants to give to the wealthy and corporations.
This is a deliberate lie. Tariffs are essentially taxes on imported products, and they are paid not by foreign countries but by American consumers. Economists warn that Trump’s tariff plan would cost a typical family an average of more than $2,600 a year, with poorer families hardest hit; spike inflation as high as 20%; result in 50,000 to 70,000 fewer jobs created each month; slow economic growth; and add about $5.8 trillion in deficits over ten years. It would tank an economy that under the Biden administration, which has used tariffs selectively to protect new industries and stop unfair trade practices, has boomed.
Trump simply denies this economic success. He promises to make the economy great with a tariff wall. On September 27, he told rally attendees in Warren, Michigan: “You know, our country In the 1890s was probably…the wealthiest it ever was because it was a system of tariffs and we had a president, you know McKinley, right?... He was really a very good businessman, and he took in billions of dollars at the time, which today it’s always trillions but then it was billions and probably hundreds of millions, but we were a very wealthy country and we’re gonna be doing that now….”
By pointing to McKinley’s presidency to justify his economic plan, Trump gives away the game. The McKinley years were those of the Gilded Age, in which industrialists amassed fortunes that they spent in spectacular displays. Cornelius and Alva Vanderbilt’s home on New York’s Fifth Avenue cost more than $44 million in today’s dollars, with stables finished in black walnut, cherry, and ash, with sterling silver metalwork, and in cities across the country, the wealthy dressed their horses and coachmen in expensive livery, threw costly dinners, built seaside mansions they called “cottages,” and wore diamonds, rubies, and emeralds. When the daughter of a former senator married, she wore a $10,000 dress and a diamond tiara, and well-wishers sent “necklaces of diamonds [and] bracelets of diamonds, sapphires, and rubies.”
Americans believed those fortunes were possible because of the tariff walls the Republicans had begun to build in 1861. Before the Civil War, Congress levied limited U.S. tariffs to fund the federal government, a system southerners liked because it kept prices low, but northerners disliked because established industries in foreign countries could deliver manufactured goods more cheaply than fledgling U.S. industries could produce them, thus hampering industrial development.
So, when the Republican Party organized in the North in the 1850s, it called for a tariff wall that would protect U.S. manufacturing. And as soon as Republicans took control of the government, they put tariffs on everything, including agricultural products, to develop American industry.
The system worked. The United States emerged from the Civil War with a booming economy.
But after the war, that same tariff wall served big business by protecting it from the competition of cheaper foreign products. That protection permitted manufacturers to collude to keep prices high. Businessmen developed first informal organizations called “pools” in which members carved up markets and set prices, and then “trusts” that eliminated competition and fixed consumer prices at artificially high levels. By the 1880s, tariffs had come to represent almost half a product’s value.
Buoyed by protection, trusts controlled most of the nation’s industries, including sugar, meat, salt, gas, copper, transportation, steel, and the jute that made up both the burlap sacks workers used to harvest cotton and the twine that tied ripe wheat sheaves. Workers, farmers, and entrepreneurs hated the trusts that controlled their lives, but Republicans in Congress worked with the trusts to keep tariffs high. So, in 1884, voters elected Democrat Grover Cleveland, who promised to lower tariffs.
Republicans panicked. They insisted that the nation’s economic system depended on tariffs and that anyone trying to lower them was trying to destroy the nation. They flooded the country with pamphlets defending high tariffs. Cleveland won the popular vote in 1888, but Republican Benjamin Harrison won the electoral votes to become president.
After the election, steel magnate Andrew Carnegie explained that the huge fortunes of the new industrialists were good for society. The wealthy were stewards of the nation’s money, he wrote in what became known as The Gospel of Wealth, gathering it together so it could be used for the common good. Indeed, Carnegie wrote, modern American industrialism was the highest form of civilization.
But low wages, dangerous conditions, and seasonal factory closings and lock-outs meant that injury, hunger, and homelessness haunted urban wage workers. Soaring shipping costs meant that farmers spent the price of two bushels of corn to get one bushel to market. Monopolies meant that entrepreneurs couldn’t survive. And high tariffs meant that the little money that did go into their pockets didn’t go far. By 1888 the U.S. Treasury ran an annual surplus of almost $120 million thanks to tariffs, seeming to prove that their point was to enable wealthy men to control the economy.
Cont below
Heather Cox Richardson
Oct 06, 2024
William McKinley is having a moment (which I confess is a sentence I never expected to write).
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is elevating McKinley, representative from Ohio from 1877 to 1891 and president from 1897 to 1901, to justify his plan to impose new high tariffs.
Trump’s call for tariffs is not an economic plan; it is a worldview. Trump claims that foreign countries pay tariff duties and thus putting new tariffs of 20% on all imports, and as much as 60% on Chinese imports, will bring enough foreign money into the country to fund things like childcare, end federal budget deficits, and pay for the tax cuts he wants to give to the wealthy and corporations.
This is a deliberate lie. Tariffs are essentially taxes on imported products, and they are paid not by foreign countries but by American consumers. Economists warn that Trump’s tariff plan would cost a typical family an average of more than $2,600 a year, with poorer families hardest hit; spike inflation as high as 20%; result in 50,000 to 70,000 fewer jobs created each month; slow economic growth; and add about $5.8 trillion in deficits over ten years. It would tank an economy that under the Biden administration, which has used tariffs selectively to protect new industries and stop unfair trade practices, has boomed.
Trump simply denies this economic success. He promises to make the economy great with a tariff wall. On September 27, he told rally attendees in Warren, Michigan: “You know, our country In the 1890s was probably…the wealthiest it ever was because it was a system of tariffs and we had a president, you know McKinley, right?... He was really a very good businessman, and he took in billions of dollars at the time, which today it’s always trillions but then it was billions and probably hundreds of millions, but we were a very wealthy country and we’re gonna be doing that now….”
By pointing to McKinley’s presidency to justify his economic plan, Trump gives away the game. The McKinley years were those of the Gilded Age, in which industrialists amassed fortunes that they spent in spectacular displays. Cornelius and Alva Vanderbilt’s home on New York’s Fifth Avenue cost more than $44 million in today’s dollars, with stables finished in black walnut, cherry, and ash, with sterling silver metalwork, and in cities across the country, the wealthy dressed their horses and coachmen in expensive livery, threw costly dinners, built seaside mansions they called “cottages,” and wore diamonds, rubies, and emeralds. When the daughter of a former senator married, she wore a $10,000 dress and a diamond tiara, and well-wishers sent “necklaces of diamonds [and] bracelets of diamonds, sapphires, and rubies.”
Americans believed those fortunes were possible because of the tariff walls the Republicans had begun to build in 1861. Before the Civil War, Congress levied limited U.S. tariffs to fund the federal government, a system southerners liked because it kept prices low, but northerners disliked because established industries in foreign countries could deliver manufactured goods more cheaply than fledgling U.S. industries could produce them, thus hampering industrial development.
So, when the Republican Party organized in the North in the 1850s, it called for a tariff wall that would protect U.S. manufacturing. And as soon as Republicans took control of the government, they put tariffs on everything, including agricultural products, to develop American industry.
The system worked. The United States emerged from the Civil War with a booming economy.
But after the war, that same tariff wall served big business by protecting it from the competition of cheaper foreign products. That protection permitted manufacturers to collude to keep prices high. Businessmen developed first informal organizations called “pools” in which members carved up markets and set prices, and then “trusts” that eliminated competition and fixed consumer prices at artificially high levels. By the 1880s, tariffs had come to represent almost half a product’s value.
Buoyed by protection, trusts controlled most of the nation’s industries, including sugar, meat, salt, gas, copper, transportation, steel, and the jute that made up both the burlap sacks workers used to harvest cotton and the twine that tied ripe wheat sheaves. Workers, farmers, and entrepreneurs hated the trusts that controlled their lives, but Republicans in Congress worked with the trusts to keep tariffs high. So, in 1884, voters elected Democrat Grover Cleveland, who promised to lower tariffs.
Republicans panicked. They insisted that the nation’s economic system depended on tariffs and that anyone trying to lower them was trying to destroy the nation. They flooded the country with pamphlets defending high tariffs. Cleveland won the popular vote in 1888, but Republican Benjamin Harrison won the electoral votes to become president.
After the election, steel magnate Andrew Carnegie explained that the huge fortunes of the new industrialists were good for society. The wealthy were stewards of the nation’s money, he wrote in what became known as The Gospel of Wealth, gathering it together so it could be used for the common good. Indeed, Carnegie wrote, modern American industrialism was the highest form of civilization.
But low wages, dangerous conditions, and seasonal factory closings and lock-outs meant that injury, hunger, and homelessness haunted urban wage workers. Soaring shipping costs meant that farmers spent the price of two bushels of corn to get one bushel to market. Monopolies meant that entrepreneurs couldn’t survive. And high tariffs meant that the little money that did go into their pockets didn’t go far. By 1888 the U.S. Treasury ran an annual surplus of almost $120 million thanks to tariffs, seeming to prove that their point was to enable wealthy men to control the economy.
Cont below
Cont from above
“Wall Street owns the country,” western organizer Mary Elizabeth Lease told farmers in summer 1890. “It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street.” As the midterm elections of 1890 approached, nervous congressional Republicans, led by Ohio’s William McKinley, promised to lower tariff rates.
Instead, the tariff “revision” raised them, especially on household items—the rate for horseshoe nails jumped from 47% to 76%—sending the price of industrial stocks rocketing upward. And yet McKinley insisted that high tariff walls were “indispensable to the safety, purity, and permanence of the Republic.”
In a chaotic congressional session with members shouting amendments, yelling objections, and talking over each other, Republicans passed the McKinley Tariff in May 1890 without any Democratic votes. They cheered and clapped at their victory. “You may rejoice now,” a Democrat yelled across the aisle, “but next November you’ll mourn.”
Democrats were right. In the November 1890 midterm elections, angry voters repudiated the Republican Party. They gave the Democrats a two-to-one majority in the House; McKinley himself lost his seat. Even Republicans thought their party had gone too far, and in 1892, voters gave Democrats control of the House, Senate, and White House for the first time since before the Civil War.
Republican stalwarts promptly insisted that Democrats would destroy the economy by cutting tariff rates, and their warnings crashed the economy ten days before Cleveland took office. Democrats slightly lowered the tariff, replacing the lost income with an income tax on those who made more than $4,000 a year. Republicans promptly insisted the Democrats were instituting socialism.
As the nation recovered from the economic panic of 1893, Republicans doubled down on their economic ideology. In 1896 they nominated McKinley for president. While he stayed home and kept his mouth shut, the party flooded the country with speakers and newspaper articles paid for with the corporate money that flowed into the Republicans’ war chest, all touting the protective tariff. Warned that the Democrats were trying “to create a red welter of lawlessness as fantastic and as vicious as the dream of a European communist,” voters elected McKinley.
And then the Republicans had a stroke of luck. After the election, the discovery of gold on Bonanza Creek near the Klondike River in Canada’s Yukon Territory brought enough gold into the U.S. to ease the money supply, letting up pressure on both farmers and workers, and the fight over the tariff eased.
It reemerged in 1913 when Democratic president Woodrow Wilson challenged the ideology behind Republican tariffs. A Democratic Congress cut tariff rates almost in half, from close to 50% to 25%, and to make up for lost revenue, Democrats put a tax on incomes over $3,000. Republicans complained that the measure was socialistic and discriminated against capitalists, especially the Wall Street community.
As soon as Republicans regained control of the government, they slashed taxes and restored the tariff rates the Democrats had cut. This laid the groundwork for World War II by making it difficult for foreign governments to export to the United States and thus earn dollars to pay their debts from World War I.
It also recreated the domestic economy of the 1890s. Congress gave the president power to raise or lower the tariffs at will, and in the 1920s, Republican presidents Harding and Coolidge changed tariff rates thirty-seven times; thirty-two times they moved rates upward. (They dropped the rates on paintbrush handles and bobwhite quails.) Business profits rose but wages did not, and wealth moved upward dramatically. By 1929, 5% of the population received one third of the nation’s income, and more than 60% of American families earned less than they needed for basic necessities.
When the bottom fell out of the stock market in 1929, ordinary Americans had too little purchasing power to fuel the economy. In June 1930, Republicans fell back on their faith in tariffs once again when they passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff,* raising rates to protect American business. Other countries promptly retaliated, and the resulting trade war dramatically reduced foreign trade, exacerbating the Great Depression.
When Smoot-Hawley failed, it took with it Americans’ faith that tariffs were the key to a strong economy. After World War II, ideological fights over the structure of the economy would be waged over taxes rather than tariffs.
Trump’s insistence that a tariff wall will make America rich is not based in economics; indeed, it would destroy the current system, which is so strong that modern economists are marveling. Trump is fantasizing about a world without regulations or taxes, where high tariffs permit the wealthy to collude to raise prices on ordinary Americans and to use that money to live like kings while workers, farmers, and entrepreneurs barely scrape by… a world like McKinley’s.
…..
*In 2009, then-representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN) made history by referring to this as the “Hoot-Smalley” tariff and blaming FDR for passing it (FDR didn’t take office until 1933).
—
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/october-5-2024
“Wall Street owns the country,” western organizer Mary Elizabeth Lease told farmers in summer 1890. “It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street.” As the midterm elections of 1890 approached, nervous congressional Republicans, led by Ohio’s William McKinley, promised to lower tariff rates.
Instead, the tariff “revision” raised them, especially on household items—the rate for horseshoe nails jumped from 47% to 76%—sending the price of industrial stocks rocketing upward. And yet McKinley insisted that high tariff walls were “indispensable to the safety, purity, and permanence of the Republic.”
In a chaotic congressional session with members shouting amendments, yelling objections, and talking over each other, Republicans passed the McKinley Tariff in May 1890 without any Democratic votes. They cheered and clapped at their victory. “You may rejoice now,” a Democrat yelled across the aisle, “but next November you’ll mourn.”
Democrats were right. In the November 1890 midterm elections, angry voters repudiated the Republican Party. They gave the Democrats a two-to-one majority in the House; McKinley himself lost his seat. Even Republicans thought their party had gone too far, and in 1892, voters gave Democrats control of the House, Senate, and White House for the first time since before the Civil War.
Republican stalwarts promptly insisted that Democrats would destroy the economy by cutting tariff rates, and their warnings crashed the economy ten days before Cleveland took office. Democrats slightly lowered the tariff, replacing the lost income with an income tax on those who made more than $4,000 a year. Republicans promptly insisted the Democrats were instituting socialism.
As the nation recovered from the economic panic of 1893, Republicans doubled down on their economic ideology. In 1896 they nominated McKinley for president. While he stayed home and kept his mouth shut, the party flooded the country with speakers and newspaper articles paid for with the corporate money that flowed into the Republicans’ war chest, all touting the protective tariff. Warned that the Democrats were trying “to create a red welter of lawlessness as fantastic and as vicious as the dream of a European communist,” voters elected McKinley.
And then the Republicans had a stroke of luck. After the election, the discovery of gold on Bonanza Creek near the Klondike River in Canada’s Yukon Territory brought enough gold into the U.S. to ease the money supply, letting up pressure on both farmers and workers, and the fight over the tariff eased.
It reemerged in 1913 when Democratic president Woodrow Wilson challenged the ideology behind Republican tariffs. A Democratic Congress cut tariff rates almost in half, from close to 50% to 25%, and to make up for lost revenue, Democrats put a tax on incomes over $3,000. Republicans complained that the measure was socialistic and discriminated against capitalists, especially the Wall Street community.
As soon as Republicans regained control of the government, they slashed taxes and restored the tariff rates the Democrats had cut. This laid the groundwork for World War II by making it difficult for foreign governments to export to the United States and thus earn dollars to pay their debts from World War I.
It also recreated the domestic economy of the 1890s. Congress gave the president power to raise or lower the tariffs at will, and in the 1920s, Republican presidents Harding and Coolidge changed tariff rates thirty-seven times; thirty-two times they moved rates upward. (They dropped the rates on paintbrush handles and bobwhite quails.) Business profits rose but wages did not, and wealth moved upward dramatically. By 1929, 5% of the population received one third of the nation’s income, and more than 60% of American families earned less than they needed for basic necessities.
When the bottom fell out of the stock market in 1929, ordinary Americans had too little purchasing power to fuel the economy. In June 1930, Republicans fell back on their faith in tariffs once again when they passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff,* raising rates to protect American business. Other countries promptly retaliated, and the resulting trade war dramatically reduced foreign trade, exacerbating the Great Depression.
When Smoot-Hawley failed, it took with it Americans’ faith that tariffs were the key to a strong economy. After World War II, ideological fights over the structure of the economy would be waged over taxes rather than tariffs.
Trump’s insistence that a tariff wall will make America rich is not based in economics; indeed, it would destroy the current system, which is so strong that modern economists are marveling. Trump is fantasizing about a world without regulations or taxes, where high tariffs permit the wealthy to collude to raise prices on ordinary Americans and to use that money to live like kings while workers, farmers, and entrepreneurs barely scrape by… a world like McKinley’s.
…..
*In 2009, then-representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN) made history by referring to this as the “Hoot-Smalley” tariff and blaming FDR for passing it (FDR didn’t take office until 1933).
—
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/october-5-2024
Didn't see this one coming. . .
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/27/rat-birth-control-nyc#:~:text=New%20York's%20seemingly%20eternal,to%20curb%20their%20booming%20population.
No where does it say this......your info is bullshit.....a meme isnt information.
what about all the illegals that have been allowed to come over....and you are worried about so called rats?? Again, Im woman enough to step back and get the fuck out this thread and leave ya be. Good luck to you. Ill pray to God for you. <3
what about all the illegals that have been allowed to come over....and you are worried about so called rats?? Again, Im woman enough to step back and get the fuck out this thread and leave ya be. Good luck to you. Ill pray to God for you. <3
Still trying to cover up her parties voter fraud treason, it seems. Trying to stop the hangman.
I recall 4 years of bullshite claims that Trump stole the 2016 election but Jim Crows never did a single audit or recount, as allowed by election law in every state???
Why?
Because they knew he won...The same reason they did everything to stop audits in 2020 and have arrested anyone that spoke out, because they know they cheated...
History will show the truth! It always does...
I recall 4 years of bullshite claims that Trump stole the 2016 election but Jim Crows never did a single audit or recount, as allowed by election law in every state???
Why?
Because they knew he won...The same reason they did everything to stop audits in 2020 and have arrested anyone that spoke out, because they know they cheated...
History will show the truth! It always does...
October 6, 2024
Heather Cox Richardson
Oct 06, 2024
This morning began with a CNN headline story by fact checker Daniel Dale, titled “Six days of Trump lies about the Hurricane Helene response.” Dale noted that Republican nominee for president Donald Trump has been one of the chief sources of the disinformation that has badly hampered recovery efforts.
Trump has claimed that the federal government is ignoring the storm’s victims, especially ones in Republican areas, and that the government is handing out only $750 in aid (in fact, the initial emergency payment for food and groceries is $750, but there are multiple grants available for home rebuilding up to a total of $42,500, the upper limit set by Congress). He has also claimed—falsely—that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is out of money to help because the administration spent all its money on Ukraine and undocumented immigrants.
Trump’s lies are not errors. They are part of a well-documented strategy to overturn democracy by using modern media to create a false political world. Voters begin to base their political decisions on that fake image, rather than on reality, and are manipulated into giving up control of their government to an authoritarian.
Russian political theorists who were key to the rise of Russian president Vladimir Putin after the collapse of the Soviet Union called this manipulation “political technology.”
They developed a series of techniques to pervert democracy through this virtual political reality. They blackmailed opponents, abused state power to help favored candidates, sponsored “double” candidates with names similar to those of opponents in order to split the opposition vote and thus open the way for their own candidates, created false parties to further splinter the opposition, and, finally, created a false narrative around an election or other event that enabled them to control public debate.
Essentially, they perverted democracy, turning it from the concept of voters choosing their leaders into the concept of voters rubber-stamping the leaders they had been manipulated into backing.
This system made sense in former Soviet republics, where it enabled leaders to avoid the censorship that voters would recoil from by instead creating a firehose of news until people became overwhelmed by the task of trying to figure out what was real and simply tuned out.
But it has also worked in the United States, where right-wing leaders have used it to divide the American people and spread disinformation. While “misinformation” is simply false information—which we all spread innocently and correct with accurate information—“disinformation” is a deliberate lie to convince people of things that are not true.
Before the 2016 presidential election, Russian operatives working for Putin set out to tear the U.S. apart and thus undermine the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) they see as stopping the resurrection of Imperial Russia. They called for provoking “instability and separatism within the borders of the United States... encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts,... [and] support[ing] isolationist tendencies in American politics.”
But they were not the only ones operating in this disinformation sphere. In 2014, then–Breitbart chief executive Steve Bannon explained to a right-wing Catholic group meeting at the Vatican that he believed traditional western civilization was fighting a war for survival. To win, current western-style civilizations must be completely reconfigured to put a few wealthy white Christian male leaders in charge to direct and protect subordinates.
In that year, Bannon set out to dismantle the administrative state that was leveling the playing field among Americans and push Christian nationalism. With the help of funding from Republican megadonors Robert and Rebecca Mercer, he launched Cambridge Analytica, a company designed to develop profiles of individuals that would enable advertisers to group them for targeted advertising. Before the 2016 election, the company captured information from the Facebook profiles of more than 50 million users without their permission or knowledge, enabling it to flood the platform with targeted disinformation.
Bannon became the chief executive officer of Trump’s 2016 campaign. He then served as chief strategist and senior counselor for the first eight months of Trump’s term, during which he worked to put MAGAs in power across the administration and across the country.
“The Democrats don’t matter,” Bannon told a reporter in 2018. “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with sh*t.” Keeping listeners constantly trying to defend what is real from what is not destroys their ability to make sense of the world. Many people turn to a strongman who promises to create order. Others will get so exhausted they simply give up. As scholar of totalitarianism Hannah Arendt noted, authoritarians use this technique to destabilize a population.
Cont below
Heather Cox Richardson
Oct 06, 2024
This morning began with a CNN headline story by fact checker Daniel Dale, titled “Six days of Trump lies about the Hurricane Helene response.” Dale noted that Republican nominee for president Donald Trump has been one of the chief sources of the disinformation that has badly hampered recovery efforts.
Trump has claimed that the federal government is ignoring the storm’s victims, especially ones in Republican areas, and that the government is handing out only $750 in aid (in fact, the initial emergency payment for food and groceries is $750, but there are multiple grants available for home rebuilding up to a total of $42,500, the upper limit set by Congress). He has also claimed—falsely—that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is out of money to help because the administration spent all its money on Ukraine and undocumented immigrants.
Trump’s lies are not errors. They are part of a well-documented strategy to overturn democracy by using modern media to create a false political world. Voters begin to base their political decisions on that fake image, rather than on reality, and are manipulated into giving up control of their government to an authoritarian.
Russian political theorists who were key to the rise of Russian president Vladimir Putin after the collapse of the Soviet Union called this manipulation “political technology.”
They developed a series of techniques to pervert democracy through this virtual political reality. They blackmailed opponents, abused state power to help favored candidates, sponsored “double” candidates with names similar to those of opponents in order to split the opposition vote and thus open the way for their own candidates, created false parties to further splinter the opposition, and, finally, created a false narrative around an election or other event that enabled them to control public debate.
Essentially, they perverted democracy, turning it from the concept of voters choosing their leaders into the concept of voters rubber-stamping the leaders they had been manipulated into backing.
This system made sense in former Soviet republics, where it enabled leaders to avoid the censorship that voters would recoil from by instead creating a firehose of news until people became overwhelmed by the task of trying to figure out what was real and simply tuned out.
But it has also worked in the United States, where right-wing leaders have used it to divide the American people and spread disinformation. While “misinformation” is simply false information—which we all spread innocently and correct with accurate information—“disinformation” is a deliberate lie to convince people of things that are not true.
Before the 2016 presidential election, Russian operatives working for Putin set out to tear the U.S. apart and thus undermine the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) they see as stopping the resurrection of Imperial Russia. They called for provoking “instability and separatism within the borders of the United States... encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts,... [and] support[ing] isolationist tendencies in American politics.”
But they were not the only ones operating in this disinformation sphere. In 2014, then–Breitbart chief executive Steve Bannon explained to a right-wing Catholic group meeting at the Vatican that he believed traditional western civilization was fighting a war for survival. To win, current western-style civilizations must be completely reconfigured to put a few wealthy white Christian male leaders in charge to direct and protect subordinates.
In that year, Bannon set out to dismantle the administrative state that was leveling the playing field among Americans and push Christian nationalism. With the help of funding from Republican megadonors Robert and Rebecca Mercer, he launched Cambridge Analytica, a company designed to develop profiles of individuals that would enable advertisers to group them for targeted advertising. Before the 2016 election, the company captured information from the Facebook profiles of more than 50 million users without their permission or knowledge, enabling it to flood the platform with targeted disinformation.
Bannon became the chief executive officer of Trump’s 2016 campaign. He then served as chief strategist and senior counselor for the first eight months of Trump’s term, during which he worked to put MAGAs in power across the administration and across the country.
“The Democrats don’t matter,” Bannon told a reporter in 2018. “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with sh*t.” Keeping listeners constantly trying to defend what is real from what is not destroys their ability to make sense of the world. Many people turn to a strongman who promises to create order. Others will get so exhausted they simply give up. As scholar of totalitarianism Hannah Arendt noted, authoritarians use this technique to destabilize a population.
Cont below
