The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

This morning in the ongoing plundering of national wealth

The American Revolutionary War began 250 years ago today when Capt John Parker's Minutemen engaged a force of 700 British soldiers on the town green in Lexington, Mass. Just over a year later, England's North American colonies declared their independence from King George III with a document that you really ought to read again with particular focus on the King's acts that drove the colonists to break away. It was almost as if they believed having a temperamental monarch with worsening mental-health problems was a sub-optimal political situation.

Today is also the 30th anniversary of Timothy McVeigh's mass killing of Federal employees and their children in Oklahoma City. Any similarities between McVeigh's and the OAFPOTUS's politics are, I'm sure, coincidental.

As for me, and the gap in posting yesterday: I have a cold which seems entirely contained in my eyes and sinuses, so I didn't really feel creative. (Not that today's post is creative either, of course.) Somehow I got 9½ hours of sleep last night, according to my Garmin device, though I distinctly remember getting up to close windows when the temperature plummeted from 16°C to 9°C in less than an hour. And when the thunderstorms came through. And when Cassie poked me in the head. Both times.

It feels like the cold has mostly gone away, though. And with tomorrow's rainy forecast, it looks like I might get some writing done this weekend.

They're stealing from all of us

The era between the end of World War II and now is an aberration in world history. At no other time have so many people enjoyed a middle-class existence, with most—at least in the OECD and adjacent countries—able to afford all of life's necessities, like a house, decent health care, adequate nutrition, and leisure time. This general prosperity is what people like the OAFPOTUS and the Clown Prince of X want to end, and for no other reason than they want more for themselves.

The unprecedented attack on the rule of law in the United States is, really, in service of the super-rich at everyone else's expense. The average effective tax rate in the US is about 14.5%, with the people earning below-50% incomes paying about $63 billion, or 3%, of that amount. This low percentage reflects tax credits and deductions designed to ensure a decent life for below-average income earners.

But the unlawful cuts to the Federal government the OAFPOTUS and CPOX have pushed through have done the most damage to the agencies that specifically target corruption and tax cheating:

Trump’s Treasury Department announced last month that it would no longer enforce the Corporate Transparency Act, hampering recent congressional efforts to end money laundering, tax dodging, and other lawbreaking by anonymous investors. In an executive order, Trump suspended enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits American and foreign companies from paying bribes to do business. The Department of Justice is also disbanding a task force set up to administer sanctions on Russian oligarchs close to Vladimir Putin.

Oversight will be removed from many domestic financial and government institutions too. Trump ordered a full work stoppage at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which had been created to protect consumers from manipulation by banks and other financial institutions He has fired top officials overseeing ethics, whistleblower protections, and labor rights, including the heads of the Office of Government Ethics, the Office of Special Counsel, and the Merit Systems Protection Board. Meanwhile, Justice Department officials are drafting plans to reduce investigations of fraud and public corruption, which means that prosecuting crooked officials will be more difficult. Cuts to the IRS mean that tax fraud will also be harder to identify and prosecute. Just last week, the Justice Department announced that it would curtail investigations of cryptocurrency fraud and disband its National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team.

Musk slashed jobs at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the federal agency that oversees auto safety and crash investigations, including those involving his own electric-vehicle company, Tesla. Musk oversaw mass firings at other regulatory agencies that had launched more than 30 investigations into his companies, which include SpaceX and Neuralink.

But these are only the conflicts of interest we know about. How many people benefited last week from advance knowledge that Trump would reverse his position on tariffs? How many others are making other stock-market bets based on their access to government information? We don’t know the answers, and Trump’s Department of Justice is unlikely to want to find out. We are living in the dark, just as people do in other kleptocracies, and this changes everything.

To understand Trump’s policies toward Russia and Ukraine, for example, one should ask not merely How will they end the war? and How will they shape America’s relationship to Europe? but Who in Trump’s immediate circle will benefit from the lifting of sanctions? and Have the Russians made explicit financial offers already, and to whom? The rare-minerals deal now being negotiated with Ukraine deserves especially close scrutiny. We need to establish which Americans, exactly, will benefit, and how.

And, of course, the CPOX has stolen your data for his own purposes, with no oversight and no privacy controls:

It’s worth underlining the caveat that no one quite knows where the data allegedly pilfered from the NLRB is going—if indeed it has left the agency at all. But the information allegedly leaving the NLRB would be extraordinarily valuable to corporate titans like Musk looking for a leg up on rivals, as well as a window into the inner workings of the labor unions they despise. It would also explain why Musk is involved with DOGE to begin with. As a number of his companies, especially Tesla, struggle, the government systems DOGE now controls could provide invaluable information.

The theft of personal information also points to another more nefarious motivation for Musk and DOGE. It’s already abundantly clear that the group will not reduce the deficit. It likely will not even decrease federal spending, which is already $100 billion higher under Trump than it was under Biden at this point in his term. Instead, the group’s slashing of regulations and bureaucracy is aimed not at reducing “waste” but at cutting the many governmental layers that exist to fight risk—and fraud.

[U]naccountable coders with close ties to the world’s richest man have their mitts on the personal information of millions of Americans—that’s bad no matter what they’re doing with it. 

Remember, authoritarianism is, at its core, all about theft. Authoritarians use the government to advance their own business interests, taking your taxes to enrich themselves. All the culture war bullshit the Republican Party has stirred up over the past 40 years is meant only to distract you from that reality.

Harvard tells the OAFPOTUS to sod off

Before I go through the stories from the last day about how we live in the stupidest timeline, here's a photo of the Milwaukee Intermodal Station I snapped heading to my return train on Friday:

Elsewhere in the stupidest timeline, where maximizing corruption is the defining goal of the Republican Party:

Finally, take a few minutes to read Chuck Marohn's Strong Towns series on how municipalities in the US and Canada routinely hide (or simply don't know) their long-term obligations so as to make building new infrastructure look like a better financial strategy than repairing existing infrastructure. I can tell you that you get no better view of the shitty state of American roads than riding a Divvy down almost any Chicago street, because Americans seem allergic to maintenance spending.

I know we need to put the fire out in Washington before we can fix anything else. But the long-term damage the OAFPOTUS continues to inflict on us will include more failing roads, bridges, and trains. So if you voted for him, you voted for the US becoming a third-world country in our lifetime.

Half a page of scribbled lines

I may have dodged a virus this week, though I'm not 100% sure yet. I have a lot more confidence in my health than the world has in the OAFPOTUS, however. And the news today doesn't change that at all:

  • Radley Balko, tongue firmly in cheek, satirizes the Republican Party in a way I will not spoil for you. (His takedown of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, made me guffaw.)
  • Yascha Mounk warns that the OAFPOTUS's irrational and malignantly stupid attack on the very things that made America great in service of his demented ego make it likely he'll do other malignantly stupid things in future.
  • Anne Applebaum warns that "this is what arbitrary, absolute power looks like."
  • Jennifer Rubin counters with a view of "when autocrats screw up."
  • The Dispatch editorial board warns that the MAGA crowd's "foreign policy was ancient when Charlemagne was on the throne, and their economic philosophy was hatched in the 15th century."
  • Conservative University of Chicago Law professor Aziz Huq offers up the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection clause as a possible avenue for defeating the OAFPOTUS's personal vendettas.

Tomorrow I'm taking advantage of a ridiculously full PTO bank and cheap train tickets to finally extend the Brews & Choos Project into Wisconsin, so you'll want to watch this space over the weekend for those posts.

Not much of a rally

The markets started slightly up this morning, but whatever optimism traders had before noon has evaporated. Both the S&P and DJIA are technically up, but less than 0.5%, while the OAFPOTUS continues to act like the demented old man he is.

And to think, Twin Peaks turned 35 today.

Meanwhile...

Finally, SMBC inadvertently explains the Republican Party's entire educational policy, complete with a joke I've made for years: if I ever win the lottery, I'll set up a math scholarship for areas that sell the most lottery tickets.

Largest 2-day market drop since...uh, 2020

The OAFPOTUS's handling of the economy showed real results this week. It wasn't fair of me to put the mid-day YTD numbers from the two major American indices up this morning; I should have waited to market close.

So how'd we do?

S&P 500: 5,074.08, down 5.97% today, 10.5% since Wednesday, and 13.54% YTD
DJIA: 38,314.86, down 5.5% today and 9.62% YTD

How about other indices?

FTSE 100: down 4.95% today, 6.97% this week, but only 2.48% YTD (because Europe thought they were safe from this man's malignant stupidity)
Nikkei 225: down 2.75% today, 14.06% YTD
Nasdaq Composite: down 5.82% today, 19.15% YTD
Tesla: down 10.42% today, 36.87% YTD.

Wow, I can't wait to look at my next 401(k) statement!

This was the worst week in equity markets since June 2020. Now, remind me, who was president then? When we finally get through this era, I hope that the twin myths of Republican national security seriousness and Republican economic policy success are dead forever.

The Find Out phase began really quickly, didn't it?

Since the OAFPOTUS announced his (clearly unlawful) tariffs on everyone, including the penguins in the South Atlantic, the markets have responded. For example, the Dow-Jones Industrial Average and Standard & Poor's 500 indices have made some minor adjustments:

Note that it's only 11am in New York, and these numbers continue to fall.

The bond markets have also raised some questions about the malignant stupidity of the guy behind the Resolute Desk. As Jeff Maurer and others pointed out, the OAFPOTUS has always misunderstood what the balance of trade actually means.

Meanwhile, the Clown Prince of X is about to destroy Medicare. Hang on to your asses.

Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover—cubed

With the total acquiescence of the Republican majority in Congress (only Congress has the power to impose tariffs, really), the OAFPOTUS has exceeded everyone's expectations with yesterday's tariff announcement, solidifying himself as the stupidest person ever to hold the office:

Mr. Trump’s plan, which he unveiled on Wednesday and is calling “reciprocal,” would impose a wave of tariffs on dozens of countries. The European Union will face 20 percent tariffs, but the heavier levies will fall on countries in Asia, hitting friends and foes alike. Security partners Japan and South Korea will face tariffs of 24 and 26 percent respectively, while China will absorb an additional 34 percent on top of existing levies.

“The global economy will massively suffer,” Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said in a statement Thursday. “Uncertainty will spiral, and trigger the rise of further protectionism.”

“Our close partners appear to be treated similarly to our rivals,” said Wendy Cutler, a former U.S. trade negotiator who is now vice president of Asia Society Policy Institute. “Asian countries in particular have been hard hit, causing them sharp economic pain given their export-driven economies.”

Analysts said China may see a diplomatic opportunity. Mr. Trump imposed some of the highest tariffs on the smaller nations in Southeast Asia, including Vietnam, a producer of shoes and clothing bought by Americans, which now faces a levy of 46 percent.

The announcement itself contained so many falsehoods that the Post had to run a special Fact Checker column this morning:

Not only will tariffs be unlikely to reduce the budget deficit — especially if the economy sinks — but it’s a fantasy to suggest the national debt can be paid with tariffs.

The “subsidy” to Canada supposedly includes military benefits the U.S. provides to the NATO ally, but we fact-checked this and the numbers did not add up. In 2024, the deficit in trade in goods and services with Canada was about $45 billion. The trade deficit with Mexico was about $172 billion in 2024.

The income tax was intended to shift the burden to wealthier Americans as the cost of tariffs fall mainly on lower-income people. Tax revenue was also considered a more stable source of funds. One big advocate for an income tax was Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican. As for the Great Depression, many historians credit the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, signed into law in 1930, as worsening the economic slowdown because it sparked a global trade war.

It didn't help that the list of countries and dependencies getting new tariffs included Diego Garcia, a small island in the Indian Ocean entirely populated by US and UK military personnel.

More reactions:

Noah Smith, writing on Saturday and therefore only anticipating the malignant stupidity of yesterday's announcement, opened with a sentiment many of us share: "I do not believe that Donald Trump is secretly a Russian plant, hired by the Kremlin to destroy America’s economy and global influence. But frustratingly, Trump’s actions are often indistinguishable from what he might do if he were a foreign agent bent on destruction."

The IQs of the three Republican presidents of the 1920s do not sum up to 300. And yet even Warren Harding managed to get through three years in the White House without doing anything as stupid as this--and he knocked up a maid in one of the building's closets.

I can only hope that someone bundles Peter Navarro off to a Louisiana detention facility so that some other sycophant can help the OAFPOTUS end the dumbest trade war in history. Sadly, that does not seem likely.

Rainy days and Wednesdays

Cassie and I found a 20-minute gap in the rain this morning so she could have a (slightly-delayed) walk. Since around 9 am, though, we've had variations on this:

Good thing I have all these heartwarming news stories to warm my heart:

  • Dane County, Wis., Judge Susan Crawford beat Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel 55% to 45% for the vacant seat on the Wisconsin state Supreme Court, despite the $25 million the Clown Prince of X donated to Schimel's campaign. The CPOX himself drew laughs from people with IQs above 80 by claiming he didn't really try to buy the seat for the right-wing Schimel.
  • Paul Krugman reminds the credulous that "there's no plan, secret or otherwise" behind the OAFPOTUS's tariffs. ("Does he really believe that Canada is a major source of fentanyl? Worse, does he believe that fentanyl smugglers pay tariffs?") Timothy Noah concurs.
  • Scholar Larry Diamond lays out the ways we can get through the constitutional crisis the OAFPOTUS has created.
  • A Federal judge has dismissed corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Johnson, but enjoined the US Attorney from threatening more charges. It's only a partial win for corruption in the US, but still a win.
  • The Times looks at Brightline's success and asks, "What's so hard about building trains?" After pointing out that "in Florida, Brightline has proved that it can operate reliable, well-designed passenger trains that people want to ride," they fail to project that it will probably get bailed out at least once in the next 25 years by state and federal money.
  • The Onion imbues the Chicago Transit Authority with "an unconscious fear of success manifesting through self-sabotage." They're not wrong.

Finally, Bruce Schneier and a colleague published a paper yesterday lauding "Rational Astrologies and Security." In the paper, the authors analyze beliefs like "Nobody every got fired for buying IBM" and "It's always been done this way" as rational, and how security professionals can use them. The timing of the paper's publication in no way affects the soundness of these conclusions, of course.