Trump / Musk (other than DOGE) Omnibus Thread

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So I’ve continued reading about this and it’s still not clear to me

a) why the tariffs are happening
b) what the intended effect is and
c) what Canada, Mexico and China can do to get the tariffs removed.

Am I slow or is everyone else as confused as I am? Most news articles just explain what tariffs are with some discussion about the effects but less about the why and how.
 
nrsair said:
So I’ve continued reading about this and it’s still not clear to me

a) why the tariffs are happening
b) what the intended effect is and
c) what Canada, Mexico and China can do to get the tariffs removed.

Am I slow or is everyone else as confused as I am? Most news articles just explain what tariffs are with some discussion about the effects but less about the why and how.
Click to expand...
The Canadians and Mexicans don’t know either.
 
nrsair said:
So I’ve continued reading about this and it’s still not clear to me

a) why the tariffs are happening
b) what the intended effect is and
c) what Canada, Mexico and China can do to get the tariffs removed.

Am I slow or is everyone else as confused as I am? Most news articles just explain what tariffs are with some discussion about the effects but less about the why and how.
Click to expand...
Supposedly, on point 1, because fentanyl and generally ripping off America (because we have trade deficits??). No details offered on points 2 & 3.
 
nycfan said:
Supposedly, on point 1, because fentanyl and generally ripping off America (because we have trade deficits??). No details offered on points 2 & 3.
Click to expand...
Here's some updated stats on fentanyl smuggling from the notoriously liberal Cato Institute.



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AUGUST 23, 2023 11:11AM

U.S. Citizens Were 89% of Convicted Fentanyl Traffickers in 2022​

By David J. Bier

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This updates an earlier post.
Fentanyl overdoses tragically caused tens of thousands of preventable deaths last year. Many politicians who want to end U.S. asylum law claim that immigrants crossing the border illegally are responsible. An NPR‐Ipsos poll found that 39 percent of Americans and 60 percent of Republicans believe, “Most of the fentanyl entering the U.S. is smuggled in by unauthorized migrants crossing the border illegally.” A more accurate summary is that fentanyl is overwhelmingly smuggled by U.S. citizens, almost entirely for U.S. citizen consumers.
Here are the facts:
  • Fentanyl smuggling is ultimately funded by U.S. consumers who pay for illicit opioids: nearly 99 percent of whom are U.S. citizens.
  • In 2022, U.S. citizens were 89 percent of convicted fentanyl drug traffickers—12 times greater than convictions of illegal immigrants for the same offense.
  • In 2023, 93 percent of fentanyl seizures occurred at legal crossing points or interior vehicle checkpoints, not on illegal migration routes, so U.S. citizens (who are subject to less scrutiny) when crossing legally are the best smugglers.
  • The location of smuggling makes sense because hard drugs at ports of entry are at least 96 percent less likely to be stopped than people crossing illegally between them.
  • At most, just 0.009 percent of the people arrested by Border Patrol for crossing illegally possessed any fentanyl whatsoever.
  • Each individual busted for fentanyl by Border Patrol possessed, on average, half as much fentanyl as each person busted at ports of entry in 2023 (10 versus 20 pounds).
  • The government exacerbated the problem by banning most legal cross-border traffic in 2020 and 2021, accelerating a switch to fentanyl (the easiest-to-conceal drug).
  • During the travel restrictions, fentanyl seizures at ports quadrupled from fiscal year 2019 to 2021. Fentanyl went from a third of combined heroin and fentanyl seizures to over 90 percent.
  • Annual deaths from fentanyl nearly doubled from 2019 to 2021 after the government banned most travel (and asylum).
 
UNCatTech said:
Not just twitter, Facebook is censoring information also.

My wife runs an LBGTQ group that has had post and links removed.
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Heather Cox Richardson also named them in her Substack this morning. I love her and I really don't want this for her, but few things would be more impactful than Musk having the FBI try to arrest her for something like this.
 
nrsair said:
So I’ve continued reading about this and it’s still not clear to me

a) why the tariffs are happening
b) what the intended effect is and
c) what Canada, Mexico and China can do to get the tariffs removed.

Am I slow or is everyone else as confused as I am? Most news articles just explain what tariffs are with some discussion about the effects but less about the why and how.
Click to expand...
a) Trump wants them
b) Trump hopes to crash the Canadian economy so they have no choice but ask to be a state
c) No one knows, not even Trump
 
So how do we best conceptualize the unprecedented things that are happening right now? A lot of smart commentators are calling it a coup. That may be right, but it doesn't seem sellable to me right now, especially with the military not (yet) involved. I've been thinking about it and here's my suggestion.

Trump 2.0 is two separate but coordinated movements operating in parallel. On one track, the anarchists, led by Elon Musk, are acting like an extremely aggressive vulture capital firm. They're taking a valuable but troubled "company" (the federal government) and stripping it down to its component parts. Anything they see as valuable is being appropriated and manipulated for their own benefit. Everything they see as lacking value is being tossed over the side. As anyone familiar with the industry knows, the end result is never a stronger "company." It's a massive shift of wealth to the vulture capitalists, and a shell of a company that can no longer operate functionally. That's exactly where we're headed if Elon continues to have his way.

On the second track, the Christian nationalists, led by Miller, Thiel, Vance, Johnson and many others, are working to implement what they see as conservative "culture" by returning us to something like the 1950s, when (in their view) women were mainly intended for breeding and black and brown Americans knew their place. And while the domestic features of the 1950s have received most of the attention, we can't forget that era was also defined by the onset of the Cold War, thus giving us foreign enemies to unite against. This is why we're seeing Trump 2.0 picking illogical and meritless fights with foreign countries, despite all the isolationist language in the campaign. I don't know if Trump will ever invade anyone. But I'm positive he wants us to have lots of enemies, and Trump is far more comfortable being antagonistic to our democratic friends than to our authoritarian (actual) enemies.

So far, Trump 2.0 is moving quickly along both of these tracks. That may continue for a little while. I have a feeling, though, that the dynamic is not sustainable in the long term. What happens when the trade wars start causing real economic harm to the tech oligarchs? What happens when Elon's desiccation of the military results in a massive embarrassment abroad, or when he starts talking about slashing Medicare and Social Security (which is absolutely, 100% coming)? There are a whole lot of ways these two tracks could intersect in irreconcilable ways, and given the egos involved, I doubt it will be long at all before that happens.

In the meantime, though, the destruction this plan is wreaking is enormous. It's amazing to see how quickly this 250-year old institution can be torn apart. Maybe the best analogy of all is the Romans destroying the Second Temple in a matter of days in 70 CE. The lesson from then, which applies equally now, is that it's far easier to tear down a monolith than it is to build it.
 
lawtig02 said:
So how do we best conceptualize the unprecedented things that are happening right now? A lot of smart commentators are calling it a coup. That may be right, but it doesn't seem sellable to me right now, especially with the military not (yet) involved. I've been thinking about it and here's my suggestion.

Trump 2.0 is two separate but coordinated movements operating in parallel. On one track, the anarchists, led by Elon Musk, are acting like an extremely aggressive vulture capital firm. They're taking a valuable but troubled "company" (the federal government) and stripping it down to its component parts. Anything they see as valuable is being appropriated and manipulated for their own benefit. Everything they see as lacking value is being tossed over the side. As anyone familiar with the industry knows, the end result is never a stronger "company." It's a massive shift of wealth to the vulture capitalists, and a shell of a company that can no longer operate functionally. That's exactly where we're headed if Elon continues to have his way.

On the second track, the Christian nationalists, led by Miller, Thiel, Vance, Johnson and many others, are working to implement what they see as conservative "culture" by returning us to something like the 1950s, when (in their view) women were mainly intended for breeding and black and brown Americans knew their place. And while the domestic features of the 1950s have received most of the attention, we can't forget that era was also defined by the onset of the Cold War, thus giving us foreign enemies to unite against. This is why we're seeing Trump 2.0 picking illogical and meritless fights with foreign countries, despite all the isolationist language in the campaign. I don't know if Trump will ever invade anyone. But I'm positive he wants us to have lots of enemies, and Trump is far more comfortable being antagonistic to our democratic friends than to our authoritarian (actual) enemies.

So far, Trump 2.0 is moving quickly along both of these tracks. That may continue for a little while. I have a feeling, though, that the dynamic is not sustainable in the long term. What happens when the trade wars start causing real economic harm to the tech oligarchs? What happens when Elon's desiccation of the military results in a massive embarrassment abroad, or when he starts talking about slashing Medicare and Social Security (which is absolutely, 100% coming)? There are a whole lot of ways these two tracks could intersect in irreconcilable ways, and given the egos involved, I doubt it will be long at all before that happens.

In the meantime, though, the destruction this plan is wreaking is enormous. It's amazing to see how quickly this 250-year old institution can be torn apart. Maybe the best analogy of all is the Romans destroying the Second Temple in a matter of days in 70 CE. The lesson from then, which applies equally now, is that it's far easier to tear down a monolith than it is to build it.
Click to expand...
It doesn't exactly roll off the tongue but to me its a possibly unconstitutional consolidation of executive power.

A coup would be some individual or group seizing power from the lawful leader. And Trump is the lawful leader. Calling it a coup doesn't sell and sounds like hysterics.
 
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