Friday, January 31, 2025
Most Voters Don't Want Musk Having A Prominent Role In Trump's Administration
The chart above reflects the results of a Quinnipiac University Poll -- done between January 23rd and 27th of a nationwide sample of 1,019 registered voters, with a 3.1 point margin of error.
About 207,000 Workers Filed For Unemployment Last Week
The Labor Department released its weekly unemployment report on Thursday. The report showed that 207,000 workers filed for unemployment benefits in the week ending on January 25th. Here is the official Labor Department statement:
In the week ending January 25, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 207,000, a decrease of 16,000 from the previous week's unrevised level of 223,000. The 4-week moving average was 212,500, a decrease of 1,000 from the previous week's unrevised average of 213,500.
Trump's Memo To Federal Employees Is A Scam, A Purge, And It's Illegal
Here is the Trump/Musk memo to federal employees:
And here is Robert Reich's advice to those employee's:
I’m addressing this post to America’s 2.3 million federal employees.
My message: Don’t accept Elon’s offer.
Yesterday, Musk — via people he’s planted in the Office of Personnel Management — sent an email to all 2.3 million of you, offering to pay you for eight months of work, through September 30, if you’ll resign from the government before February 6. Otherwise, you risk being furloughed (that is, not paid) or fired.
You know what this is about. Not slimming the federal workforce, but substituting Trump loyalists for people like you, who are working for the American public.
Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy, said it out loud Tuesday on CNN: "The 2 million employees in the federal government are overwhelmingly left of center.” And now that Trump is elected, "it is essential for him to get control of government.”
But the fact is, neither Musk nor even Trump has legal authority to offer you eight months of pay if you’ll resign by February 6.
Your salaries are funded by the federal agencies and departments you work for, not by the Office of Personnel Management, not by Musk, and not by Trump.
None of them is authorized by Congress to move money from one agency or department to another without Congress’s approval. I know. I used to be a cabinet secretary.
Besides, the funding for your agency or department is guaranteed only through March 14, when the government is expected to shut down unless the debt ceiling is lifted. If not, any commitment for additional pay is worthless.
In fact, Musk (and Trump) are violating the law by agreeing to spend money that the administration doesn’t have. Congress could declare the entire offer illegal — which it is. Then where would you be?
May I also add that you shouldn’t trust Trump or Musk.
Trump has a long history of stiffing workers and contractors.
So, for that matter, does Musk. During the pandemic, Musk gave Tesla employees permission to remain at home if they didn’t feel comfortable reporting to the factory. Then he sent them termination notices alleging “failure to return to work.”
When he bought Twitter in 2022, Musk denied he wanted to lay off 75 percent of its staff (“No way I’m laying off 75 percent of them”) but then fired 80 percent of them (maybe that’s what he meant when he pledged not to fire 75 percent?)
In short, it’s a bum offer. Reject it.
By the way, thank you for your service.
And Paul Krugman's advice to federal employees:
The latest and biggest move has come in the form of an email from the Office of Personnel Management, which appears to have effectively been taken over by associates of Elon Musk, effectively offering a buyout to federal employees who resign in the next few days. On paper, it isn’t exactly a buyout; those who accept the offer will be placed on administrative leave but supposedly continue to be paid until September. But being told that you can stop working while receiving eight months’ salary is just a buyout by another name.
There are five things you should know about this plan:
1. It’s illegal.
2. It’s almost surely a scam: workers who take the offer probably won’t see the money they’ve been promised.
3. To the extent that workers actually take up the offer, they’ll be the workers we can least afford to lose.
4. The move will cost, not save money.
5. What this really amounts to is a purge, replacing professional civil servants with political loyalists.
It’s pretty clear that the principal motivation is political. This is a purge, an attempt to push out government workers who believe that their job is to serve the public and replace them with Trump loyalists.
Thursday, January 30, 2025
Voters Oppose Much Of Trump's Agenda
The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between January 26th and 28th of a nationwide sample of 1,376 registered voters, with a 3.3 point margin of error.
Most In The U.S. Believe Climate Change Is Due To Human Activity
The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between January 26th and 28th of a nationwide sample of 1,577 adults (including 1,376 registered voters). The margin of error is 3.2 points for adults and 3.3 points for registered voters.
Wednesday, January 29, 2025
Americans Are Not Convinced TikTok Poses A National Security Risk
The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between January 19th and 21st of a nationwide sample of 1,609 adults (including 1,426 registered voters). The margin of error is 3.2 points for adults and 3.1 points for registered voters.
Trump's Tariffs Will Damage U.S. Credibility And Economy
The following is part of a post by Nobel Prize economist Paul Krugman:
It looks quite likely that Trump will indeed impose high tariffs on our neighbors a few days from now. I don’t know that this will happen, and even if he does he may find some reason to reverse the tariffs a few days later. But I don’t think people fully realize how damaging even temporary tariffs on Canada and Mexico would be.
For one thing, the North American Free Trade Agreement — which Trump renamed the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement after some mostly cosmetic changes — is, in effect, a contract that everyone assumed was binding. NAFTA wasn’t a declaration of principles or intentions; it was a formal pact permanently eliminating most tariffs and other barriers to trade across our northern and southern borders.
Now a U.S. president is threatening to ignore this pact and unilaterally slap on high tariffs. In which case you have to ask, what’s the point of negotiating with the United States? What’s an agreement worth if a U.S. president can decide to ignore the agreement whenever he feels like it?
Of course, the loss of U.S. credibility extends to areas far beyond economics. In the future, what country in its right mind will trust U.S. guarantees that it will protect that nation’s security? . . .
So even if Trump only imposes tariffs briefly, we can expect companies to start planning for an era in which solemn trade agreements are treated like mere suggestions, subject to revision or abrogation at the whim of whoever sits in the White House. This will lead to a gradual reduction of the geographical integration of North American industry — a gradual shift toward national self-sufficiency. And this in turn will degrade our industrial efficiency and competitiveness.
If Trump really does impose those tariffs and keeps them in place, the economic disruption will be immense. But even if he doesn’t, the United States has already suffered a damaging loss of credibility. And credibility, once lost, is hard to regain.
Tuesday, January 28, 2025
Trump's Tariffs And Deportations Will Make Grocery Prices Go Way Up
During the campaign, Trump made three big promises to voters. He pledged to raise tariffs on imports from other countries, deport undocumented immigrants, and reduce grocery prices.
It looks like he is going to follow through on the first two (tariffs and deportations). That means he will not be able to reduce grocery prices. On the contrary, they will go way up!
Tariffs will obviously make prices go up. While Trump claims the foreign countries will pay the tariff, that is simply not true. The importer of the goods pays the tariff - and then raises the price to the consumer on those goods to recoup the loss.
The United States imports about 40% to 60% of fruits and vegetables (and other foodstuffs like meat are imported). The price of those imports will go up by the amount of the tariff imposed. His projected tariff on Mexico is 25%, and it's expected to be the same for many other countries. That would raise the price of imports from Mexico (where we get a lot of our fruits and vegetables) by a whopping 25%!
And it won't be any better for grocery products produced in the United States. A huge portion of the workers on farms are undocumented immigrants (see the chart above) - doing hard labor jobs that Americans don't want. If they are deported, it will be very hard to replace them. Some crops will not be harvested and those that are will cost a lot more. The same is true of ranches and meatpackers.
Trump has made competing promises, which means some will not be kept. The American consumer will pay the price for it.
I Love This Poem
This beautiful poem is from robertreich.substack.com and rattle.com :
PRAISE THE BROKEN PROMISE OF AMERICA
Alison Luterman
Praise deep mineral veins under rich dirt,
and fossilized remains of dinosaurs turning themselves into gas
for our benefit. Praise the exhausted earth,
miles and miles of subsidized corn
and cattle lowing from their hell-holes
in automated milking barns.
Praise farmworkers rising before dawn,
their sore backs and aching knees. Praise the myths
that drew them here, stories eagerly consumed
when there is nothing to eat but faith.
Praise the courage of the reverend to look
the dragon in the eye and preach mercy;
praise whatever hidden waterways are still pristine.
Praise music that refused to play at the funeral of democracy.
and the killing cold that swept through Washington
when the fake Pope took power.
Praise drag queens and lipstick lesbians, boys who are girls
and girls who are lions, butch women wearing tool belts,
and all the music theater nerds
who are even now building new passageways
mapping the next underground railroad
and suiting up to be conductors—oh, everybody,
get on board! This train will chug quietly
across the great plains and over rocky Sierras,
into the desert where people still leave bottles of water
and packets of food for the desperate
who have always been the lifeblood
of this nation. It will stop in obscure hamlets
to pick up fugitives with tears tattooed on their cheeks
and fraying backpacks overspilling with contraband books.
Praise the weirdos because if anyone can save us
it will be us. And praise all the glittering illusions
we gawked at, ignoring our own neighbors
in favor of a 24-hour peep show on the internet.
Praise the convict fire fighters on the front lines in L.A.,
battling the insurmountable for ten dollars a day. We gambled
our future for a hot air balloon with a hole in it. Praise
our reckless hubris, and the infinite distractions
of the hall of mirrors we find ourselves in now, and bless
our overwhelmed brains, scurrying like mice for shelter.
Bless our collective rage, and protect
the officers who stood up on January 6th and now see their attackers
roaming the streets like rabid dogs, ah, bless the animals
we have always been, in our coats and shoes
and clumsy language, bless our willful ignorance,
so enormous, so world-altering, that, like the great wall of China,
it can be seen from outer space,
where the gods are shaking their heads even now, in pity and in awe.
Monday, January 27, 2025
Trump Actions Will Increase The Size And Frequency Of Natural Disasters
The chart above (from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) should frighten all Americans. It shows that the number of natural disasters causing at least a billion dollars on damage have been increasing in the United States since 1980. These disasters have increased in bot size and frequency.
Why is this happening?
In spite of right-wing denials, this is happening because U.S. politicians (and those in other countries) have refused to recognize the causes of global climate change and taken sufficient action to stop it (or at least mitigate its effects). Some action has been taken, but not nearly enough.
Now Donald Trump - long a global warming denier - has signed executive orders in his first week back in office that will rescind much of the little that has been done. He has:
* Withdrawn the United States from the Paris Accords.
* Cleared the way for more oil/gas drilling in Alaska - including in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
* Ordered the elimination of regulations on oil and gas drilling elsewhere.
* Banned the building on new windmills offshore.
* Stopped the Biden administration funding for building EV charging stations
* Recommended the construction of new oil and gas pipelines.
* Scrapped the fuel economy rules that encouraged the sale of EVs, and eliminated subsidies and regulations that favored them.
* Revoked a 1977 framework for environmental impact statements for approval of new construction.
* Is trying to end California's right to set its own vehicle emission standards.
These are exactly the wrong things to do to bring down the number and size of natural disasters. In fact, it will probably increase the size and frequency of them
But Trump doesn't seem to care. He wants cheaper gas (to make himself look good) and more profits for his billionaire buddies in the oil and gas industry - and he's willing to create more disaster victims to get that.
It's going to be a tough four years for the global climate and its victims!
Most Oppose The Cuts Republicans Are Considering
The charts above reflect the results of the AP / NORC Poll -- done between January 9th and 13th of a nationwide sample of 1,147 adults, with a 3.9 point margin of error.
"Trump Is Leading A Move To Replace Democracy With Oligarchy"
The New York Times describes Trump as leading “a global wave of hard-line conservative populism.”
Rubbish.
What’s Trump is undertaking has nothing whatever to do with conservatism, which is about conserving institutions and shrinking the size of government. And it has nothing to do with populism, which is about confronting elites.
Trump is leading a move to replace democracy with oligarchy.
He’s implementing a plan to make the wealthiest people in America far wealthier and more powerful, including Trump himself, and to turn American democracy into a giant corporation run by a handful of absurdly rich men.
He thinks he can accomplish this by getting the rest of us so angry at one another — over immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, abortion, diversity, and the like — that we don’t look upward and see where most of the wealth and power have gone.
Trump’s divisive policies will cause great harm, to be sure, and we must do everything we can to protect those who are vulnerable to them. But his cruel divisiveness is deflecting attention from the main event.
The media reported on all the hot-buttons Trump pushed: The government now recognizes only two “immutable” genders, male and female. Migrants (now referred to as “aliens”) are being turned away at the border. Immigration agents are freed to target hospitals, schools, and churches in search of people to deport. Diversity efforts in the federal government have been dismantled and employees turned into snitches. Federal money will be barred from paying for many abortions.
All awful to be sure, but the bigger story is Trump’s consolidation of power — substituting loyalists for experts across the government, using retribution to intimidate others, purging the government’s independent inspectors general, giving the Defense Department more authority over civilian life (and putting a raving loyalist in charge), giving Elon Musk authority to cut spending and roll back regulations, and readying a massive tax cut for the wealthy and big corporations.
Americans aren’t seeing this big story yet because Trump’s divisiveness is masking it.
Trump is the frontman. The three richest men in the world (Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg) stood prominently before him when he was sworn in last week. Trump has appointed other billionaires to key positions.
Behind them is a coterie of billionaires pushing for more oligarchic control of America (among them, Peter Thiel, Blake Masters, tech entrepreneur David Sacks, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, Palantir adviser Jacob Helberg, and Sequoia Capital’s Doug Leone).
Their two key inside players are Musk and JD Vance.
Make no mistake: Trump’s first week was a catastrophe for many vulnerable people. But the biggest story was his startling initial moves from democracy to oligarchy.
My hope lies in Americans noticing this.
As I’ve said, not since the Gilded Age of the late 19th century has such vast wealth turned itself into power so unapologetically, unashamedly, and defiantly.
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