Uggh.
Has a dominant country ever committed such rapid and entirely self-inflicted destruction?
Reset, sorry. Where's the endgame? A lot of things are being broken. How does a well meaning person preserve as much as possible for the rebuilding that will come later?
One thing I'd say is I think this has the potential to be Josh Marshall's moment over at TalkingPoints Memo. He started that site with the fight over the Bush/Gore election in 2000 and then distinguished himself most during the fight over social security privatization after Bush's re-election. His mode of working and thinking is well adapted to moments like this - rapid updating of facts in a swirling and contested space and adding solid progressive framing. It's unsexy but an essential sort of coverage, and I appreciate already how he is framing the issues.
2: Yes, and see this Bluesky thread of his (suspecting it may be what triggered your comment).
Several conversations today w people in the key executive departments. And while the particulars are hard to pin down my impression is that the Musk take over stuff is considerably worse than is being presented in the press.
Goes on to cover various things. And makes the point about coverage similar to my bank robbery reported/not really reported analogy in the other thread.
Written as if US press covering foreign country. (I think the piece would have been stronger if it were a bit less hyperbolic in a few areas.)
I am absolutely baffled by what to do about any of this, or what to expect my representatives in Congress to do. Schumer, Gillibrand, and Espaillat certainly don't seem to be doing anything effective, but I don't know at all what they should be doing.
I have gotten to a point I've never been at before, where I would genuinely not be surprised if the US's current form of government doesn't survive until Trump is out of office.
There's a bit in the second one of the I, Claudius books, where Claudius, a sensible, intelligent, well-meaning emperor who instituted a lot of good and effective policies that improved life for the people of Rome and who always wanted to bring back the Roman Republic, but who is nonetheless old and weak, knows that he is going to be followed by another insane, evil emperor, Nero, just like the insane, evil emperor who preceded him, Caligula.
And he decides that the only way the Republic is ever coming back is if the insane emperors do their worst and the people ultimately rebel. The line he keeps repeating is "Let the poisons that lurk in the mud, hatch forth." It's been coming to mind a lot over the last year or so. I can't imagine why.
5 I really think they need to be swamped with constituent phone calls and emails expressing in no uncertain terms that this is an abrogation of Congress' power of the purse and you expect them to fulfill their constitutional duty to be that check on the executive branch. This should be sent to Republican Senators/Reps too, though couched in less partisan terms.
I absolutely think 8 is worth doing, but my fearful side feels like we're bringing things that were ineffective even in the Bush era, to a Trump fight.
8: Yeah, that's right about what we should be communicating to them, but I sincerely hope they have better ideas than I do about what they can practically do as members of the minority party because I don't have a lot. Bring the Senate grinding to a halt is practical, and maybe I'll be asking Schumer and Gillibrand to do that, but I'm unclear on how it's going to help.
We've known Schedule F was coming for four years now, but I never expected it to be implemented by Musk.
7: Heightening the contradictions as it were.
7: I've been thinking about Tacitus' Annals.
My Congress person is posting tweets about how expensive eggs are. She had a town hall, but I didn't go, because it was in one of the reddest towns. Went Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020 and maybe 50/50 this time.
Ron Wyden seems to be doing an ok job.
11: They and their staffs could go to the agencies with cameras. Show the pictures of US AID pictures being taken down.
My take from the Orange Tea Leaves thread in the distant past.
Stepping back. It is clear that if Rs go along (and so far they are, mostly enthusiastically) and they get electoral reinforcement (mid-terms, and particularly 2028 presidential) that this will mark a fundamental change in the governance of the US for the foreseeable future. Exactly how big is not clear, but a historically significant change in the internal workings. How far it goes in terms of changes in elections and the like, I'm not sure. Even without electoral success it will be significant, but the real lock in will happen if Rs stay in power.
Yeah. I hadn't thought we were at that point until the last week or two. I'm still not sure we are, but I'm no longer convinced we're not.
The other thing I've become unconvinced of: I've been sort of mordantly ashamed that nothing Trump was going to do was going to be a direct practical injury to me and mine. I'm an affluent white lady with a secure job and no particular demographic markers (gender, sexuality, disability) that would make me a target. That's still all true, I'm as safe as anyone in the country could be, but the scope of what they're screwing with is broad enough that I'm no longer convinced none of it is going to hurt me.
From a biological point of view, your genes are in Canada. So, you've still got that going for you.
I am actually not sure either. So much is unprecedented in the "Muscular Presidency*" It is the R compliance that is really concerns me that it could get locked in.
And I think all the MAGAs and 1/2 the non-crazed Trump voters would say that they trust Musk and minions more than federal workers such is the effectiveness of the information terrorists at Fox and th elike.
*per NYT
I'm wondering about protecting savings (in index funds on etrade) and I can't shake the belief that I'll be prevented from withdrawing them in a timely manner, come Monday, if I decided to go that route.
Are any of you trying to save finances in some way?
I've drunk the bogleheads koolaid, and will not be selling anything. Buy and hold. This too shall pass.
19: Nope. I read somewhere that someone who bought a broad stock market index the day before the 1929 crash would actually have a pretty good rate of return if they held until after WW II. I don't have any financial assets I'm definitely going to need faster than that, which leaves me thinking that my lifelong strategy of "Someone may be able to time the market, but not me, so buy and hold" is still worth sticking with. I am expecting my current retirement assets to be at a third or so of their peak value for a while at least, though.
19: I'm assuming that if I get wiped out in stock, the riots will start.
The line he keeps repeating is "Let the poisons that lurk in the mud, hatch forth."
A guy at the dog park said "Sometimes stupid just has to run its course."
Wish someone would put forth a good mutual (Pacifica, New England, Texas, the South all go their own way) secession plan.
Right, that pretty much. Any disruption that seriously fucked me over financially (index funds become worthless) would be broadbased and intense enough that I'd be worrying about personal safety, and money would be secondary.
I sold a bunch of stuff before the last Trump admin and lost a few percent vs holding so probably won't do anything this time. I did idly look up how to open a Swiss bank account, not to move a lot of money there now but so it's an option later if there was a reason we wanted to move abroad.
I started my taxes and looks like I owe a lot but I assume collections are proceeding as usual, only people who work for Trump are allowed to ignore the law.
I googled, and my "after WW II" was wrong. The Dow recovered in 1954, so you'd only start making returns after that, 25 years out. Still, I think the larger point holds.
I am supposedly having people rebuild our deck, and probably need to withdraw some cash from my money market or non-retirement stocks, and I had been vaguely thinking about doing that in January and didn't get around to it. I'm somewhat annoyed now that I didn't. I'll probably just leave the stocks and take a little out of the money market.
Just don't buy American liquor stocks. LCBO is dropping our drinks.
I've already warned my cocktail-nerd semi-Canadian son.
I have a lot of cash I was about to dump into an index fund but I really think Trump/Musk are going to send the US economy into a deep recession. I also think Trump's actions are going to precipitate an end to the dollar as the global reserve currency so I've been toying with putting some of that into Euros and maybe a little yen.
Just once in my adult life, I'd like to see a Republican administration reach its end without producing the worst economic performance since the Great Depression.
The thing I'm struggling with is that as bad as everything is, there's a bunch of misinformation or overstated reports that make it hard to know what to actually be concerned about:
- Elon tweet about stopping payments to Lutheran family services after Flynn posted a list of payments. Everyone freaked out that Flynn had a list based on the reported infiltration of treasury, but turns out it's publicly available.
- NTSB only posting updates on X. Musk forcing this, or is their explanation that it's only temporary for this crash because of staffing shortages to handle both the Philly and DC incidents?
- What's actually frozen? Direct researcher salaries from NSF? Was that unfrozen by the TRO? Are the frozen payments a forward looking concern that isn't immediately breaking things? - - How much of the various ridiculous actions are over compliance by Trump supporters who are in charge of local decisions (eg covering the Women in Cryptography display at NSA) vs what's actually being forced by the administration?
- Treasury claims DOGE has "read-only" access to the payments system, but since that's from Trump's secretary could be ass-covering.
I can't tell what's overstated, what's a lie from the admin to cover up malfeasance, what's actually alarming.
7 is so vivid. Ever since 2016, the line that Trump calls to mind for me has been from The Last Unicorn: "You have let your doom in through the front door, but it will not depart that way." (On the one hand, I kind of hate using literary quotations to epitomize real events, since it seems like turning away from reality; on the other hand, damn.)
7, 34 I missed LB's comment. I love those books and yeah, damn
On money, my best friend (trans woman) is getting ready for a divorce-related house sale and plans to keep the proceeds (hopefully there are some) in cash in case she needs to tap them in a hurry; she is also going to consult with one of those digital nomad services about stashing money in a foreign bank account in the event she needs to make a break, which... seems like a less absurd scenario than it did a couple weeks ago? Now that they're confiscating our passports on renewal, I could see them issuing some kind of mass invalidation where they get yanked the first time we try to use them at a border crossing. Unlike me, my friend doesn't have a foreign passport, but under these absurd scenarios, which I can't believe I am actually contemplating, asylum in Canada or someplace seems more possible.
Ok, so the latest is that Elon's goons demanded entry to a SCIF (!) at USAID without clearance and were appropriately blocked by security so the security team was "put on leave" and they gained access to classified information. Is the story true or exaggerated in some way? Was it actually a SCIF? Did they have clearance or not? Who knows if the first version of the story making the rounds has all the details right.
I feel like I need a site with a table summarizing things like 1) What happened, updated as more facts come out; 2) Is it unprecedented? 3) Is it illegal? 4) How big a deal is it? 5) What can be done about it?
The one that I cannot believe is actually happening is the proposed concentration camp for deportees at Guantanamo. That just seems absurd, and I've seen mentions but nothing that sounds like it's actually happening.
My main takeaway - I want to read I Claudius. I just thought of it as that PBS series my parents watched on Sunday nights. I suppose I should finish Yoircenar's Memoirs of Hadrian first, though, since I liked it but wandered away without finishing. More a portrait of good governance.
Well I'll be darned. I thought that Dachau was an extension of an existing jail, but no, the Nazis built it from the ground up on the site of a former munitions factory. It started operations three weeks after the Reichstag fire. Far from being secret, it was announced at a press conference.
Germanists may not be the cheeriest company in this kind of thread.
As for what Dems in Congress can do this is interesting https://bsky.app/profile/ezralevin.bsky.social/post/3lh7kpovdm22c
Are any of you trying to save finances in some way?
I just hit sell on the all the mutual funds where I keep my intermediate savings.
The retirement stuff I am leaving alone, but I don't see any bogglehead advantage to having the money I've set aside for home repair, car replacement, and backstopping my business suddenly turn into dust.
39: I, Claudius, and the sequel Claudius the God, are fantastic melodramatic cheese. Or maybe great literature, I can't tell, but I love Graves.
This is a good opening to paste in a Robert Graves, JRR Tolkien, Ava Gardner story from one of Tolkien's letters:
I am neither disturbed (nor surprised) at the limitations of my 'fame'. There are lots of people in Oxford who have never heard of me, let alone of my books. But I can repay many of them with equal ignorance: neither wilful nor contemptuous, simply accidental. An amusing incident occurred in November, when I went as a courtesy to hear the last lecture of this series of his given by the Professor of Poetry: Robert Graves. (A remarkable creature, entertaining, likeable, odd, bonnet full of wild bees, half-German, half-Irish, very tall, must have looked like Siegfried/Sigurd in his youth, but an Ass.) It was the most ludicrously bad lecture I have ever heard. After it he introduced me to a pleasant young woman who had attended it: well but quietly dressed, easy and agreeable, and we got on quite well. But Graves started to laugh; and he said: 'it is obvious neither of you has ever heard of the other before'. Quite true. And I had not supposed that the lady would ever have heard of me. Her name was Ava Gardner, but it still meant nothing, till people more aware of the world informed me that she was a film-star of some magnitude, and that the press of pressmen and storm of flash-bulbs on the steps of the Schools were not directed at Graves (and cert. not at me) but at her. ....
I see the argument for 42, but it's probably too late at this point, right? By the time small investor sales go through, the crash will probably have already happened?
44 is what I'm thinking. If I'm thinking about selling, then I'm one of millions and I'll be last in line.
And then the same thing will happen on the jagged upswings and I'll miss the recoup. Somehow it will work out in the worst possible way.
Elon Musk is actively trying to get USAID workers killed
44: Yes, I'm expecting to lose a chunk in the crash. But I think waiting longer means losing even more.
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1886110952396870133?s=46&t=nbIfRG4OrIZbaPkDOwkgxQ
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1886129005759262964?s=46&t=nbIfRG4OrIZbaPkDOwkgxQ
I'm too cautious anyway in my 42-type money anyway. 25% liquid cash that's basically just losing money, 35% money market, 40% VTI. So I plan to just wait out the crash and if I need to take out money for the deck just do it from the money market instead of a mix of money market and stonks.
Yeah, mine was 75-25 stonks/bonds, so a bit more aggressive a position to begin with.
Gosh, I wonder if the Chinese government will see any advantage to stepping into the soft power vacuum created by the evisceration of USAID.
53 this thread is a good example https://x.com/malinowski/status/1884733902620668363?s=46&t=nbIfRG4OrIZbaPkDOwkgxQ
I followed all the former Unfogged types on Bluesky and now my feed is far too well-informed and terrifying, and I must hide here from it.
In answer to comment 1,
Timothy Snyder's take, which I found very useful in framing this:
https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-logic-of-destruction
TLDR: the endgame is chaos and therefore consolidation of power by the oligarchs and Trump.
41 In normal times, that stuff is useful. Like if an administration is actually trying to get legislation passed. Here, they're going to do as much as they can administratively, limited only by the courts' willingness to rein certain things in. Can they get the Budget and Impoundment Act declared unconstitutional? I would not be surprised if there were 5 votes for this. That would give Musk al the authority he wants, and make all the procedural nonsense Democrats might pursue in the Senate fairly ineffectual.
On another subject, something occurred to me yesterday. I've long thought that the Social Security Administration has a decent handle on undocumented people working for legit employers, and so I wonder if there isn't some kind effort to get into that part of the database to target undocumented employees of employers that have not supported Trump.
Barry, I'm not sure if most people here can read an X thread at this point.
That's a frighteningly plausible thought -- deportation of immigrants except where they are working for politically favored employers, as a way to extract support and bribes from employers who like having a captive workforce.
I don't understand all the reasons and details of Musk getting access to all the government computers, but I know how his data security is. I put holds on my credit at all the agencies today.
59: Someone has managed to keep a nitter instance running. It may take a few reloads, but here's the thread/
59: I meant to download my data and didn't. I now can't access it on iOS. It does seem to work on a desktop.
Here's how I know it's serious; significant weekend traffic on Unfogged.
We do have a significant chunk of our stuff under management, and my directions were basically don't let a Black Swan get me. Which is of course mostly definitionally ludicrous.
It is hard to say what anyone should be doing. I have tried to not lean all in on blasting the Dems, but at a minimum--for the most part--they have not reassured anyone that they are really paying sufficient attention to the real risks (some governors have seemed to do the best). The only real attempt at a defense I have seen is that they have not gone full Tea Party because they are trying softly appeal to the few soft Rs in congress. I am not sanguine about there being any benefit form that.
But I will admit I have no idea what is the best course of action for freaking anyone.
34: "You have let your doom in through the front door, but it will not depart that way."
Yeah, that's a haunting one.
It is so, so cliched that I am loath to bring it up, but holy shit did Yeats hit upon an apt characterization with:
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Here's how I know it's serious; significant weekend traffic on Unfogged.
Heh.
I'm reading the Timothy Snyder piece from 56 -- a little bit against the grain, because I know how easy it is to see Russia everywhere -- and this bit was striking:
I am under no illusion that the majority of justices care about the rule of law. They know, however, that our belief in it makes their office something other than the undignified handmaiden of oligarchy. If they legalize the coup, they are irrelevant forever.
I genuinely don't know how cynical they are, or how much cognitive dissonance interferes with that knowledge. It's fascinating to imagine that this desire for relevance and dignity can do much. What do you think?
I could ask my brother to ask the one that was in school with him. But my brother is really busy lately.
I worry about him because he's got so much time in the office and because he lives in a county that's in the middle of a transition to authoritarian government.
- What's actually frozen? Direct researcher salaries from NSF? Was that unfrozen by the TRO? Are the frozen payments a forward looking concern that isn't immediately breaking things? - - How much of the various ridiculous actions are over compliance by Trump supporters who are in charge of local decisions (eg covering the Women in Cryptography display at NSA) vs what's actually being forced by the administration?
What was frozen until this morning was ALL drawdowns on already-existing NSF awards, not just postdocs funded directly by NSF (although the postdocs are the most immediately vulnerable). Eg if you're a university trying to drawn down last month's soft money payroll, fuck you. That's apparently been stopped by the TRO, but NSF says it's still going through existing awards looking for stuff the new administration wants to block, which is Not How This Works.
It's fascinating to imagine that this desire for relevance and dignity can do much.
I mean, I basically think that Musk/Zuckerberg/et al are fundamentally just furious that they're not being considered cool and respected in the way they crave. They're destroying the fucking country because they won't get a fucking therapist and do the work. (I mean, I'm sure they have the ego-stroking kind of therapist, but not the kind that actually challenges you to grow, etc.)
Whereas Trump is not that mentally coherent. Just a Nazi tantrum flinging chimp shit everywhere.
I was just on a call of people trying to use non- electoral resistance, specifically finding ways to boycott Musk. Not just in the US but internationally as well.
I won't get a therapist either, but I get by with alcohol and this place.
I have to restrain myself from keying Teslas I walk past.
Which was two on the way to the bar.
The reason you shouldn't key Teslas as you walk past is that they are full of cameras that will narc on your ass.
Well, they were talking about working on making it uncool to own a Tesla at the grassroots level.
Hypothetically, how far away could those cameras recognize a guy with a big rock in his throwing hand?
82: Yeah, I think that's a good idea. There is ultimately going to be a limit to the number of MAGA chuds willing to buy electric cars.
82, 85: Pretty sure that's happening organically. There are a lot of Teslas here and a lot of people varying degrees of apologetic about owning them. Except the Cybertruck people, but we already knew there's something wrong with them.
86: But visible in a way that hurts his pocketbook.
Subscribed to Wired today. Print edition for a year was only $12. I probably won't read since I don't like reading but they seem to be doing good work.
I protested today on a busy streetcorner in a 65/35 Dem/Rep area. Lots of supportive honks, no harassment, a tiny handful of supportive pedestrians (it was very cold) including some adorably hyped teens.
Chatted up the grocery checker and it turns out she's (non-unionzed) fed staff for her day job and the union side all got emails from their union leadership saying DON'T ACCEPT Elon's resignation offer but her side didn't get any communication at all from their higher-ups.
Emailed numerous friends and family giving them specific instructions for activism.
Keeping details off social media and otherwise taking steps for basic operational security.
Fully expecting financial tumult for various orgs I work for/with in the next month. Crossing my fingers that fed funding/tariff chaos doesn't trigger a wave of small biz and nonprofits frantically drawing down their lines of credit at local banks, causing the kinds of cascading effects that a _functioning_ FDIC would be prepared to handle....
59 sorry, if this were a signal chat I'd screenshot
I've been drinking Crown Royal to finish the bottle before the global economic collapse. But it turned out the bartender had another bottle. But he gave me the cloth bag.
Another wrinkle in all of this is that I do not think one can believe any number or statement put out by the federal government unless there is some manner of independent confirmation. And some of it will be absolutely true and many numbers will be correct, but you won't know which. Are you going to trust the next inflation, jobs, unemployment reports. Also, adjustments to the final months of Biden numbers.
Can't wait to see the media headlines and investigations...not.
Encountered my first freeze-related layoff yesterday. Someone in healthcare administration, They are hoping it is temporary but have no real faith that it is (they are older and suspect they will not be offered back even if spigot reopens).
93 yes. Sadly a couple of signal group chats I'm in just turned on disappearing messages and the archivist in me is sad that it seems necessary now
Okay, yes, the Republic is collapsing, but in the meantime I am LIVING IT UP in Bozeman. Try the bratwurst.
99: Gute Laune is a great name! And a restaurant review on the blog every fifteen years or so, nice.
It's a very good restaurant! I'm ambivalent about Bozeman overall; it's clearly had a huge influx of rich people in recent years, in addition to a lot of high-end tourism over a longer period, so everything is expensive and aimed at that market. But it also clearly has some underlying strengths especially around the university. I may come back at some point but it's not a high priority. I am definitely interested in seeing some other Montana cities for comparison.
Musk is currently doing what sounds like a drug fueled insane rant on a Twitter space, live blogged on this thread https://bsky.app/profile/lorak.bsky.social/post/3lharnnon2k2t
They're going to send us right past a recession and into a depression https://bsky.app/profile/lorak.bsky.social/post/3lhat3565322t
Is Bozeman the place with the computer museum?
Musk and Ramaswamy are now talking about all the federal building leases DOGE is ending. They are also talking about return-to-office mandates for federal employees...
The segue must have been: "But how does this work with the return-to-office mandates?" "That's the genius part!"
Also, I'm late, but:
hoping that my org could offer some Hail Mary help. It didn't come to pass
OGGED.
105: Yes. I didn't check it out, though.
I did check out the Museum of the Rockies, which has a lot of cool dinosaurs.
Holy fuck
https://bsky.app/profile/marisakabas.bsky.social/post/3lhawkbp7p22w
110 are not fossils a type of rock?
Dinosaurs aren't rock, but they are like rock. They're rocky, and thus belong in the Museum of the Rockies, with all the other rocky things. Just as diamonds, mirrors, cut glass vases and LEDs belong in the Museum of the Shinies, and mud, clay, porridge and gravy should be in the Museum of the Squidgies.
Don't forget my squirrelly partner!
103: Most depressing/alarming part of that was Joni Ernst and Mike Lee joining in. Rs are almost all in.
55 is me, too. Covering my danged eyes.
I logged onto TIAA and moved about 60% of retirement funds into either cash or guaranteed. If I miss two years of market growth I'm OK with that.
So is it true that Musk went after USAID so quickly because they helped fund anti-apartheid activities in the 80s and 90s? It sounds like a stupid movie plot, young man sees his racist family opposed by a foreign organization and swears retribution, carrying it out decades later. I'd say it's speculation except Trump suddenly tweeted about land confiscation in South Africa so it's clear Musk is whispering in his ear about it.
Me earlier today from a signal group chat
Just why the fuck does Elon have a wild hair up his ass over USAID in the first place? I don't get it
I'd understand it if it were the SEC or NTSB
("It's woke")
Wouldn't something like EPA or NEH fit that better?
Maybe it's perceived to be vulnerable because the average American thinks a quarter of the budget goes to foreign aid
So this week it's USAID, next week or the week after they'll move on to another target until the federal government is entirely dismantled and can be looted for parts
Also this seems plausible
https://bsky.app/profile/accidentalflyer.bsky.social/post/3lhb3q6plgk25
Do they still have the rule where they pause stock trading if it moves too fast on a given day?
Kevin Drum thinks the source of the USAID animus is someone named Mike B/e/nz
https://jabberwocking.com/heres-how-usaid-ended-up-in-trumps-crosshairs/
I thought I recalled the land seizures coming up last term. That one seemed to be spurred by Tucker Carlson in 2018.
Staying the course, but I did rebalance recently which effectively took some off the table.
The Utah bill designed to eliminate "inefficient" programs (read: small programs that don't sound like jobs) has made it out of committee despite all of the liberal arts grads who are politicians saying "this seems like a bad idea" while voting for it. The problem is that we are already quite efficient, which is why the $6.7 million cut will kill programs --- they seem to be operating under the assumption that if you kill dance, foreign languages, and philosophy they'll have millions matched only by the millions we spend in queer studies, but all those together are .38% of the budget, so someone's ox besides mine is going to get fired and it's still not going to create more engineers.
I think Republicans are just deeply committed to the idea that poor people should die.
And that middle class people should be poor
There are no fucking land seizures in SA. There is/was* a program of voluntary purchase of white farmland by the state for transfer to black buyers with historical claims. Said program has transferred trivial quantities of land in decades* of operation.
*It was supposed to be time-limited to 10 years or something but achieved so little the deadline was pushed back at least once.
126: not yet, but that's because the law was only passed ten days ago!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg9w4n6gp5o
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has signed into law a bill allowing land seizures by the state without compensation - a move that has put him at odds with some members of his government.
This SA law professor isn't very enthusiastic: https://theconversation.com/land-seizure-and-south-africas-new-expropriation-law-scholar-weighs-up-the-act-244697
"The act says that property must not be expropriated arbitrarily or for a purpose other than a public purpose or in the public interest.
Public purpose means by or for the benefit of the public. For example, expropriating property to build roads, schools and hospitals. Public interest is broader and includes the nation's commitment to land reform... Section 12(3) leaves the discretion to the expropriating authority to determine when it may be just and equitable to pay nil compensation. However, the act lacks guidelines on how such a discretion must be exercised."
The allegations of "large-scale killing of white farmers" are pretty clearly just race-baiting by Musk and his far-right allies, as there are only about fifty murders of white farmers every year. Now, true, this is ten times the murder rate in South Africa as a whole (which itself is pretty high!) but that's still a very small absolute number and not really worth taking seriously.
And black farmers are being murdered at roughly the same rate as white, so it seems more likely that it's just about farmers being, by definition, fairly well-off people who live out in the countryside a long way from anyone else, and therefore good targets for robbery and murder. As any Ukrainian will tell you.
I haven't read this, because I don't have a subscription but did follow the twitter feed.
Re: Vought at OMB. What can be done? Are there any Republicans that can be peeled off. Those of you with Republican Senators, please call.
128: And the same professor concludes:
The presence of a clause dedicated to nil compensation provides new clarity on when this could apply. It is hard to determine whether this act will pass constitutional muster without seeing how expropriation under it will work in practice. It remains to be seen whether it will have the far-reaching consequences that many fear, or call for.Trump and co can go eat shit, regardless.
131 https://bsky.app/profile/ezralevin.bsky.social/post/3lhbrtkjxg22q
https://bsky.app/profile/redwoodgirl.bsky.social/post/3lhaimnaomk2p
Anyone near DC, Don Beyer (D-VA) is heading for the USAID building now and wants Democrats to show up. If you're nearby, it's something to do.
Also https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/what-are-democrats-supposed-to-do
Market reaction is more muted than I would have guessed (though smaller stocks are getting killed). I think the baseline market assumption is that Trump will extort some face-saving concession that will earn him the PR points he wants, and he will thus be able to back down in a reasonably timely fashion.
Markey's voicemail is breaking up. I wonder if the phone lines are overwhelmed.
As a remote worker, I don't talk to anyone in person about politics anymore and nobody is saying anything. So different from the first administration.
I can't leave a message for Markey, because his mailbox is full.
137 the market still doesn't believe he means what he says
And Sheinbaum says the Mexico tarriffs have been put on hold -- but honest, I didn't see that when I wrote 137.
Has Beyer put out any kind of announcement? Most specific discussion I'm seeing on Bluesky - not from Beyer - is that he's going there "today" or as 134 says, "now."
140: The market can be wise. A bet that Trump is bluffing or lying often pays off.
I'd assumed he was lying and bluffing up until Friday.
I did not realize that the Canadian and US auto industry have been integrated since 1965. That could screw up everything in that industry.
I assume he means every shitty or evil thing he ever said and that he backed down because Canada, Mexico, and Europe looked united against him.
141: I'm working off Bluesky too; haven't seen an official announcement.
To depart from prognostication and work from track record - he did blink and back down with face-saving move to status quo for Colombia.
I did not realize that the Canadian and US auto industry have been integrated since 1965.
Krugman just mentioned that: https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-end-of-north-america
As I wrote the other day, in the three decades since NAFTA went into effect, North American manufacturing has evolved into a highly integrated system whose products -- autos in particular, but manufactured goods more broadly -- typically contain components from all three members of the pact, which may be shipped across the borders multiple times. Manufacturers developed this system not just because tariffs were low or zero, but because they thought they had a guarantee that tariffs would stay low.
One way of saying this is that until just the other day there was really no such thing as U.S. manufacturing, Canadian manufacturing or Mexican manufacturing, just North American manufacturing -- a highly efficient, mutually beneficial system that sprawled across the three nations' borders.
Of course, killing the US auto industry might be good for Musk . . .
The market needs to keep it together until about Wednesday at noon ET, for specific personal reasons of mine, after which it can collapse or do whatever.
Yeah, markets have popped back up. I assume they are just formulating the "win"*
But, boy howdy, is the contrast with how the market is viewed under this motherfucker and Biden is incredible--every glitch before was trumpeted as an incipient recession (there was the one last summer, I forget the cause). Fuckers everywhere in positions of power and influence. I an very tured.
I am having a lot of insomnia over this constitutional crisis/coup thing we're having.
One thing that is keeping me in knots is that this would actually be a very difficult topic for a newspaper to cover well, if they were interested in doing so. There's so much explaining to do, to contextualize why this is scary and unprecedented. And I'm looking at the front page of the NYT right now, and there's nothing carrying much emotional weight at all.
"Senator Questions Treasury Secretary Over Musk's Access to Payment System"
"Musk Says Trump Wants to Shut Down U.S. Foreign Aid Agency"
"E.P.A. Tells More Than 1,000 They Could Be Fired 'Immediately'"
And my personal favorite:
"As Trump Attacks Diversity, Some See an Unmistakable Message of Racism"
150.* For those who are familiar with Catch 22, my daughter and I have been referring to these as "feathers in the cap" vs. "black eyes" in homage to Colonel Cathcart.
Meanwhile China has just launched its first five bridge barges. Dock ramp at the stern, 120m extendable bridge at the bow, jack-up legs. You can park these in shallow water and drop the bridge, allowing you to drive over 120m of rocks, or mudflat, or unsuitable beach, all the way to an area of hard standing like a coastal road. And you can sail ocean-going ferries right up to them and offload over the RORO ramp on to the barge.
The list of things you can use these for other than amphibious invasions is really quite short.
248: Right - but 1965 is way before CAFTA in the 80's.
Just here to say that One Must Not Catastrophise about these rather silly people, Musk included (and especially?). Because they are silly, they will inevitably faceplant. Also, the Mexico tariffs just got cancelled.
151.4: Right, like studying how medications affect different populations differently.
People have been downloading CDC pages because they are being purged.
151.4: Right, like studying how medications affect different populations differently.
People have been downloading CDC pages because they are being purged.
152: Nukes launched headlines:
WSJ: "Gold Prices Higher in London"
NYT: "Some See Chaos in the Near Future"
NYT also: "But at This Ohio Diner They are Not so Sure."
NYT Peter Baker news analysis: "Trump Takes Muscular Presidency to a New Level"
WaPo: "Nuclear War, Good or Bad, Not Our Place to Say"
Fox: "Greatest President Evah!!!"
153: this just seems insanely risky to me. They would have to be _certain_ of controlling the strait (180 km) before sending anything across, otherwise it's just fish food.
144: This is news to people? And you're the high-information voters.
158: wonder how the Internet Archive is doing for cash, security, etc. (They had a massive breach this fall, I know.)
156: Sure. Per 152, they are Colonel Cathcarts, cartoonish evil buffoons. They will faceplant and still be in charge to faceplant another day.
Freedom of cope is also athing.
160: agreed! It is an extremely risky thing to do, and would give any serious planner cold sweats. It's a longer sea crossing than Normandy and much stormier, against a prepared enemy with a lot of pre-registered artillery.
But, if you're planning an actual invasion (or want people to think you are) this is the sort of thing you might want to build, because it gives you a bit more freedom to choose landing sites.
And governments do do silly things that fail from time to time.
144: I knew it was incredibly integrated but not how long it has been integrated. I don't consider myself high information anything. But, yes, Tim said: " what, you don't know about Auto Pact?" A Canadian is going to be more aware of the than a US-Ian of Canada.
Except for one CD*, I only have a retirement account where I'm intentionally not trying to make decisions. My only thought is that if I remain employed, there could be some marginal benefit to making more of my contributions at a low point in the market. But no matter what, I'm planning to max out the pre-tax limits every year.
*Because I'm conservative in personal finance and knew I'd need the money in cash again this year.
153: Maybe for sightseeing. They used the old WWII duck boats that way until very recently.
141: Here's the announcement: https://bsky.app/profile/marisakabas.bsky.social/post/3lhbwzc5ius2v
1pm at USAID headquarters.
164: if the Normandy defenders had had truck-launched anti-shipping missiles in quantity ... perhaps the PLAN is somehow confident. Perhaps Taiwan will not buy those sorts of missiles or will otherwise forget to defend itself. I was almost disappointed that the Russians did not in the end have a go at an Odessa landing. Almost, but not really, since that sort of outcome is not something you'd wish on anyone.
Tbh I don't understand any of it. There must be better and cheaper ways to 'acquire Taiwan' if that's the aim.
Though I never heard it with a political valence before, I'll never unhear it now.
Things used to be, now they notvia, absurdly and appropriately, Kanye West.
anything but us is who we are
disguising ourselves as secret lovers
we've become public enemies
we walk away like strangers in the street
gone for eternity
we erased one another
so far from where we came
with so much of everything, how do we leave with nothing
[L]ack [O]f [V]isual [E]mpathy equates the meaning of L-O-V-E
hatred and attitude tear us entirely
Apparently, he was naked at the grammies. Or something.
californians - call bonta (our ag) & demand vigorous enforcement of all our state labor & envt'l laws against musk & all his entities. trump cannot pardon him if he's convicted of violating state laws. also want the fucker run out of our state.
*thank* bonta for prosecuting tesla for false advertising re "self driving". see https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/12/teslas_autopilot_marketing_woes_continue/
Every day, I am more determined that I will never speak to my Trump-voting relatives again.
162: they unfortunately took a massive risk with copyright and so far have lost badly in court. It's unclear to me whether they could lose everything in financial damages but that does seem to be a risk.
174: Is Tesla based in CA. I'm just wondering if there are laws he broke in my state as well.
There's also this guy https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/01/peter-marocco-trump-usaid
https://bsky.app/profile/nathantankus.bsky.social/post/3lhblzegnr22w
180: That thread is deeply concerning, but the linked item is funny.
So, Ezra Levin of Indivisible says that some Dem Senators tried to unify the caucus to vote against Duffy for DoT, but Schumer opposed it.
New Yorkers, please call him as much as you can. As the sign of one protester near his houses, "What the fuck, Chuck?"
I wonder if pausing Mexican tariffs but not Canadian ones would result in a moment of self-reflection among "everything Trump does is driven by racism!!!" lefties.
183: It really is puzzling - even for him.
I've been figuring that it's about getting back at blue states. Look at New England:
1.) The pause on NIH and NSF grant payments hurts New England, and especially MA big time. We get more NIH funding per capita than one.
2.) We get electricity from Canada.
3.) A fair number of people heat their homes with oil, which also comes from Canada.
Rarely do I ever want to believe things as much as I want to believe the link in 180.
68: I wanted to fetch the quote about "the centre cannot hold,' and did not realize that it was the same Yeats poem with "best lack all conviction" and "rough beast ... slouches toward Bethlehem."
I wanted the quote because of an observation I had reading the news: Journalists take it as axiomatic that the center does hold, as a matter of definition. That's what makes it the center. But the center moves.
Here is the whole prophetic thing by Yeats:
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
183: I don't suppose anybody has ever contended that Trump's loathsomeness is limited to racism. That's a straw man. But Trump's racism is a prominent feature of his belief system, as are other forms of bigotry. And naturally, the victims of those bigotries, and the folks who sympathize with the victims, are going to focus on it. But the true Trumpian north star is composed of ignorance and a lack of shame. The racism is a sub-category of that.
And anyway, I don't know what accommodation Trump is going to get with Canada, but it won't involve 10,000 Canadian troops at the border to keep the white people out of the US.
184: I think it's stupider, Canadians feel genuinely betrayed and are refusing to grovel to him the way he wants to be groveled to.
183: If we want to talk about motives behind support for Trump -- and we want to use the tariffs as our example -- then you know who has been refuted? The centrists who claim that Trump's appeal isn't about racism, but is a result of his promise to lower prices and taxes.
(To be clear: I think that would be tendentious and unfair to the centrists, but it comes closer to the truth.)
184, 188: I think it's worse than that. He really is serious about forcing Canada to become part of the US. And he hates Justin Trudeau for whatever reason and wants to hurt him by hurting his country. This is not a well man.
I think this episode illustrates his appeal. He gets "good" press that low information voters find appealing. Threatening other countries and getting them to do stuff for us sounds good to a lot of people, especially people with low education. This is what stupid people think leadership is, and he has some weird media savvy that results in this getting a lot more coverage than anything normal politicians do.
You can't conclude anything about 189 until prices actually go up. If Trump goes through with tariffs that noticeably increase inflation, then yes I think the centrists are right that he would absolutely get destroyed in the midterms. But that hasn't actually happened yet, so you can't count that as evidence against that.
"And he hates Justin Trudeau for whatever reason and wants to hurt him by hurting his country."
Yeah, I buy that. It's kinda similar to my explanation ("Trudeau won't kiss his ass") but your version is probably closer to the truth. He's very focused on settling scores from his first administration.
I'm less convinced that annexing Canada is driving this, to the extent that he's serious about that I'd guess it's driven by the same causality rather than being an independent cause.
But like, does whatever media he's consuming now (Fox? OANN?) show booing hockey stadiums and the Fuck Trump flags going up in Canada? I think it's possible he's mad at Canada and not just Trudeau.
193: Right. Not racism in this case, just xenophobia.
193: If he wasn't before, he is now.
It's not xenophobia, he doesn't think Canadians are different, he thinks they're Americans who don't like him. If he could put tariffs on California he would!
Canada is in a weird position of not having any established target of demonization that could be turned into a concession. Mexico can say, ok, fine we'll take lots of people who are either from here or pass through here on the way to the US but there's no obvious thing connected to Canada that could be turned into a supposed provocation for tariffs.
I mean, Canada is sending fentanyl? I guess Trudeau could find a drug bust somewhere, turn it into a giant media event, and then claim to have stopped it. But anytime Biden made a big drug bust, it was evidence that Biden failed to bust drugs.
Looks like Trudeau may have found some face-saving concession after all, per the latest reports.
Maybe they just wanted to make money doing insider trading?
"Canada- U.S. Joint Strike Force to combat organized crime, fentanyl and money laundering."
Lol, what a dumb "concession."
Perfect phone call, Joint Strike Force.
Maybe the 25% instead of 10% was an indication that it was always a bluff?
I'm at a point personally where I kind of want to see the debt ceiling breached, TikTok banned, tariffs imposed, etc. Except for a TikTok banning, I'm sure going through with the threats will be worse for everyone than not doing it, but I want people to truly own their bad policies.
200 - But as you point out in 191.1, kind of brilliant, too. I'm glad he's not going to tank the economy today. Tomorrow's market reaction will be interesting.
Maybe the China tariffs are real though? 10% seems more sustainable, and they're not our allies. Would still be bad for inflation.
Yeah, I'm glad too, no recession is better than a stupid recession.
The anti-Canada motivation is images of Melania looking at Trudeau.
Based on the messaging in these tariff threats and concessions, I foresee a "Fentanyl Reduction Act" that has little to do with fentanyl coming soon.
Wondering if the tariff kabuki was just cover for the Musk coup, which is nowhere to be found on WaPo, NYT, or WSJ. Sitting in a meeting with 1/8/F folks while Musk tweets "that group has been deleted", and his minions post names and photos of anyone from the agency who looks in any way queer. Just absolute dogshit from the worst people in the world.
both mexico & canada managed 30 day reprieves by promising to do things that they were already doing. will trump figure this out & get even more pissed? will trump not figure it out, think this episode was a roaring success & go back to the well? how many potemkin promises do our neighbors have up their sleeves? no one knows & that chronic uncertainty is tremendously corrosive to our relationships with these & other countries. plus the overall economic toll of this uncertainty & all the other hell breaking out all over.
I don't know how uncertainty will play out in consumer spending. You've got buying stuff before the price goes up vs. saving out of concerns for future unemployment. It might take a while for uncertainty to hurt the domestic economy.
The Times finally covers it, in their typically bloodless way that obscures the importance of anything. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/03/us/politics/musk-federal-government.html?unlocked_article_code=1.uE4.X2HB.dkhmA7KHgjCa&smid=url-share
211: I bought a bunch of stuff in anticipation of tariffs. Not sure how is plans to put tariffs on pharmaceutical would affect Tim's job.
I bought half the family new phones for Christmas.
I didn't make investment moves today which ended up being a win. I lost some last week when I sold RSUs ahead of some planned news for our company, in case Trump's public comms freeze f'ed up drug approvals. It went ahead as expected and the stock popped about 8% (not sure why since the news was publicly expected, maybe others also thought Trump's FDA might screw it) so I lost a few $k- I kept the large majority of my holdings, and I'm way overexposed to my employer's stock anyway.
213: Congrats on the approval. I was relieved to see it as a sign of life/function at FDA.
68/186: This is almost exactly the sequence of thoughts I had reading through the thread, so of course it's too late to add anything, but I do love that poem, and it echoes through my head often.
I wrote my first decent literary analysis, in 10th grade English, on "The Second Coming," and I still remember going over the fragments of meter with a fine-toothed comb. It set me up for decades of degeneracy and uselessness!
Speaking of which, a sovereign wealth fund. This is whiplashing me back to reading (and extensively thinking) about "plutonomy" in the 00s. For now, the Wayback Machine has my back and coughed up this random thing that I read, a lecture by Bill Moyers in honor of Howard Zinn from late 2010. It's not great literature, but here's the part I remembered:
When Howard came down to New York last December for what would be my last interview with him, I showed him this document published in the spring of 2005 by the Wall Street giant Citigroup, setting forth an "Equity Strategy" under the title (I'm not making this up) "Revisiting Plutonomy: The Rich Getting Richer."
Now, most people know what plutocracy is: the rule of the rich, political power controlled by the wealthy. Plutocracy is not an American word and wasn't meant to become an American phenomenon - some of our founders deplored what they called "the veneration of wealth." But plutocracy is here, and a pumped up Citigroup even boasted of coining a variation on the word-- "plutonomy", which describes an economic system where the privileged few make sure the rich get richer and that government helps them do it. Five years ago Citigroup decided the time had come to "bang the drum on plutonomy."
And bang they did. Here are some excerpts from the document "Revisiting Plutonomy:""Asset booms, a rising profit share and favorable treatment by market-friendly governments have allowed the rich to prosper... [and] take an increasing share of income and wealth over the last 20 years.""...the top 10%, particularly the top 1% of the United States-- the plutonomists in our parlance-- have benefitted disproportionately from the recent productivity surged in the US... [and] from globalization and the productivity boom, at the relative expense of labor.""... [and they] are likely to get even wealthier in the coming years. Because the dynamics of plutonomy are still intact."
I'll repeat that: "The dynamics of plutonomy are still intact." That was the case before the Great Collapse of 2008, and it's the case today, two years after the catastrophe. But the plutonomists are doing just fine. Even better in some cases, thanks to our bailout of the big banks.
That has lived rent-free in my head for the past 15 years, and now maybe I'll see if there's any corroborating evidence for the existence of this Citigroup document.