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  • Trump’s Reciprocal Tariffs (updated 13apr25)

    George Rebane

    My tariff laments are on record in these pages.  I am not alone in my consternation about how the administration is conducting this part of our nation's economy.  CATO scholar Scott Lincicome sums up President Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ 

    Trump's reciprocal tariffs:

    1) Impose hundreds of billions of dollars in new taxes on Americans without public/congressional input;

    2) Are based on secret calculations that have little, if any, connection to actual foreign trade barriers;

    3) Ignore all US tariff/non-tariff barriers, which in some cases are quite high;

    4) Are justified by a "national emergency" that reflects a total misunderstanding of how trade deficits work;

    5) Disregard US trade agreement commitments, including ones made by Trump himself;

    6) Will make us all poorer, and likely do real & lasting harm to the US economy (incl in manufacturing);

    7) Embolden our adversaries around the world.

    And those are just the ones off the top of my head.

    [13apr25 update]  For those interested in a more scholarly and complete explanation of why balancing trade deficits is wrongheaded and harmful, here is a short paper – ‘Five Reasons Why the Focus on Trade Deficits is Misleading’ – from the Peterson Institute for International Economics written during Trump’s first term go-around with tariffs.  All of it is valid today.

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  • Lurching Leftward (updated 11apr25)

    George Rebane

    The Democrats daily ventures into leftwing extremes are too many to count, but unfortunately too easy to witness.  Nationally prominent Democrat author and pollster Doug Schoen, a centrist, openly laments that the Democrat Party’s embrace of socialism and collectivist extremes is not only unabated, but picking up steam.  Led by Bernie Sanders and AOC, their newly anointed leaders, and witnessed by their rally attendances and polling, the radicals are gaining ground on and absorbing their mid-road constituents.  Ignorance, firmly implanted in unionized public schools, continues to metastasize through our population.

    A potpourri of reflections follows:

    • Would it not be of benefit to both sides if, say, CNN and Fox News each started a weekly program documenting the lies told by the other side, and presenting evidence to counter the featured lies? I believe any of the conservative outlets could develop a backbone to deliver such news; but not so with the lamestream.  Were they to attempt such a program, they would doubly expose their hypocrisy – first, to claim their rightwing lie, and second, their attempt to present evidence of their claim.
    • The Democrats openly support tens of billions in waste and fraudulent welfare and Medicaid payments to legally unqualified people (mostly illegal aliens) in hopes of ultimately allowing them to legally vote whether they be citizens or not. Their lies, repeated daily, is that Republicans (and DOGE) intend to do away with Medicaid and Social Security.
    • The “total destruction of western civilization” is now the publicly stated goal of the white pro-Islamic demonstrators on our streets and college campuses. Previously we could only infer that from the teachings of leftwing professors (aren’t they all?) in academe.  Now the anti-western, anti-US voices of main street Democrats are so blatant that internationally prominent author and social critic Douglas Murray documents this phenomenon in his On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civiization (2025).  It isn’t only the Muslims in the Middle East who call for the destruction of the West and America; Democrats have enthusiastically become fellow travelers.
    • ‘83% of Americans endorse voters present proof of US citizenship in order to exercise their right to vote’. Such high shares of our population are confirmed today by poll after poll.  However, the overwhelming share of Democrats today no longer hold that constitutional privilege to be sacrosanct, and many militate for non-citizens and even illegal aliens to be able to cast their ballots.  Given today’s potpourri of people within our borders, I believe that all citizens should be provided with readily presentable proof that their US citizenship has indeed been confirmed by an appropriate government agency, and that this proof be presented whenever citizens apply for any benefits and/or permissions granted by the state.

    • [11apr25 update]  From the cornucopia of Democrat lies, we hear the constant drumbeat of their description of the difference between the benighted American workers on Main Street continuously taken advantage of by the American rich on Wall Street.  That lie is repeated to keep their fomented class warfare sizzling.  Not one of their scumbag politicians or lamestream lackeys dare point out that two out of three Americans are invested in our equity markets – yes, Wall Street.  The marriage between Main and Wall Street occurred some years back.

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  • Sandbox – 9apr25

    [Did I miss any of our commenters noting the evil Democrats led by Bumblebrain handing out Social Security cards (numbers) to millions of illegal aliens over the last four years?  Most of these were also accompanied by drivers’ licenses and get-Medicare-free cards.  All this activity to bolster Democrat voter ranks was made public by DOGE and reported on Fox News.  In response the lamestream has broadcast the sound of silence.  gjr]

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  • Scattershots – 29mar25 (updated 4apr25)

    George Rebane

    DOGE is the new leftwing hysteria du jour.  It has displaced climate change as the issue that gets most folks’ undies in a bundle.  The whole ‘Resist!’ movement of the Left is based on Democrat politicians’ lies and gratuitous fake news reports by the lamestream media.  DOGE is a new government agency charged with discovering fraud, waste, and abuse in the vast federal government bureaucracy.  Such abundant discoveries are documented, archived, and reported online (here) and to executive branch agents, from the president on down, who are lawfully empowered to take actions they deem appropriate – DOGE has no power to implement its recommendations.  But that is not what EVERY Democrat scumbag and their media minions tell the American people – and the lightly-read swallow the whole pack of lies hook, line, and sinker.

    Idiots on Parade.  Today many of the above gently described ‘lightly-read’ are taking to the streets and concentrating on Elon Musk’s Tesla EV enterprises.  These are targets the rock apes have recently fire bombed, shot up, and vandalized, and by their silence condoned by the Democrat leadership.  These people are ALL abysmally ignorant and have no cognitive skills for critical thinking.  Unfortunately, they comprise about half of our citizens and at this stage are completely uneducable – hence why Rebane Doctrine has held that we are two divided countries within a single border.  (A wag from the past has more generously concluded that leftwingers are not necessarily ignorant, only that when they try to think they just have bad luck.)

    Fox News and its conservative media cohorts (e.g. NewsMax) continue to be fearful mealy-mouthed journalists.  In their attempt to be ‘fair, balanced, and unafraid’ they are a fearful lot.  Examples of such reportage abound by the hour.  When they report on an issue, say, DOGE activities, they properly also broadcast some Democrat lying his ass off on camera, for example about DOGE gratuitously firing thousands of federal workers who have provided critical services to the public (without ever citing a single such readily available action).  Then for their fearless balance Bret Baier et al go on to state that “Elon Musk CLAIMS” that no such firings have occurred.  The properly balanced response would be to report that DOGE cannot fire anybody, and that no such firings have occurred – that is not a politically biased statement, just a readily verifiable fact that is necessary to accurately complete the news item.  And when they report on the socialists’ ongoing lie that DOGE is cutting Social Security and Medicare, they never balance that with the correction that no such cuts have occurred nor are they planned by the Trump administration.  And the double dummies just lap it up.

    [30mar25 update] The New York Times has long been the nation’s leftwing canon.  It is then noteworthy that it has finally taken the Democrats and their message to account.  The newspaper’s criticism is what conservatives have been saying for years about how Democrats portray themselves and their political opponents.  Now it has become so bad that their beloved scripture has started admonishing their sins.  (more here)

    [4apr25 update] Milton Friedman on tariffs from a 27apr78 speech at Kansas State University (here)

    “We call a tariff a protective measure. It does protect; it protects the consumer very well against one thing. It protects the consumer against low prices. . . . 

    [W]hen people talk about a favorable balance of trade, what is that term taken to mean? It’s taken to mean that we export more than we import. But from the point of view of our well-being that’s an unfavorable balance. That means we are sending out more goods and getting fewer in. Each of you in your private household would know better than that. You don’t regard it as a favorable balance when you have to send out more goods to get less coming in. . . .

    [I]f you eliminate government from these matters you enable individuals to deal with one another. If you introduce protection, tariffs, restrictions on trade, they become matters for government-to-government wrangling and they are an enormous source of division. So in the name of both prosperity and world peace there are few steps that we could take which would contribute more than a complete move toward free trade.”

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  • “Eradication of Western Civilization”

    George Rebane

    That is the seldom spoken yet common goal of socialists, communists, Islamic extremists/terrorists, our Democratic party, and generally of leftwing ideologues worldwide.  When confronted with this reality and its confirming historical record, today’s intellectual Democrat (yes, there are some) will deny it.  The time is not yet right for its public cotillion.

    Recent activities by our not-so-far Left in response to the policies by the now resident Republican majority in government leave little doubt as to what the real aim of the Democrat Party has been for some decades.  President Trump’s policies to bring common sense to government have convinced our socialists et al that there is a real chance that their program to disable and debilitate America may suffer a real setback.  Hence they are freaked out and have mustered their more virulent minions to take to the streets to shut down institutions, riot, burn, and attack anyone who opposes or exposes them in the public forum.

    Examples of their true motives abound when we review their response to securing our borders, deporting illegals (especially criminals), opposing Islamic terrorists, motivating our allies to upgrade their militaries against our avowed enemies Russia and China, eliminating government waste, corruption, and abuse, reducing taxes, and removing stultifying laws and regulations.  The response of the Democrat elites (politicians, media, entertainment, academe) and their street thugs is simply ‘Resist!’.  Their lightly-read constituent millions have no idea about the bigger picture and what Democrat exhortations portend, they simply parrot the mouthings of their political leaders and entertainment ‘heroes’.  This is made clear by the polling results which are reported daily in the media.  And made even more vivid by the tirades of our illiterate – they don’t know how to read – leftwing neighbors in the local newspaper’s op-ed section.

    I’ll conclude with a couple of specific examples.  Last night’s (27mar25) Bret Baier interview (here) on Fox News with Elon Musk and some of his top DOGE lieutenants was historical journalism.  The almost hourlong session once again and emphatically exposed the Democrat Party as our political and professional progenitor of public lying.  It made clear that not one thing the Democrats and their media mouthpieces have said about DOGE is true.  And these lies explain away what their mindless minions parrot to the polls that we see daily.

    For an equally expansive view of what’s happening to the United States, I urge you to read Victor Davis Hanson’s 24mar25 commentary in American Greatness.  The piece ‘California and its Collapsing Blue State Democrat Model’ illustrates the nature of the country’s collapse, led by the once Golden State, that is already being aped by other Democrat led states like New York, New Jersey, Illinois, … .  California has become the putrid template of uni-party governance in America that today clearly illustrates the arrival Ayn Rand’s dystopia in Atlas Shrugged (1957).

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  • Sandbox – 23mar25

    [Nobody seems to know how to address the issue of federal district judges assuming executive branch prerogatives from the bench.  Both Right and Left are haranguing each other on the question of who, the President or the judge, is actually abiding by the laws of the land.  The proper way to approach the solution here is for SCOTUS to first rule on whether such district judges have any standing in general to rule on federal policies.  The proper ruling would be for SCOTUS to make it clear that they have no standing on matters outside their district, and most certainly not on matters that involve federal policies, be they originated by Congress or the Executive.  Keep these black-robed two-bit lawyers in their sandbox.  gjr]

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  • Lamestream Lies for the Lightly-read (updated)

    George Rebane

    [24apr25 – This piece was submitted to The Union on 23 May 2025 for their Other Voices op-ed contributions.  Not only was it not published, but they did not even deign to answer my follow-on inquiries about its acceptance and status.  Clearly I stepped over their editorial line with this piece.  The same fate befell a subsequent mildly worded letter-to-the-editor on another topic.  I may have made the shit list for this strong voice of the Left in these foothills.]

    The chaos currently reigning in the Democratic party highlights a propaganda gambit long practiced by socialists and communists of all hues.  Since the Democrats have no program of governance that even they would consider acceptable to broad American constituencies, all they have left to fill the void of their public messaging is to criticize what the Trump administration is doing to exercise its broad mandate from last November to restructure the federal government, cutting waste, corruption, and abuse.  And how do they accomplish this?

    The way they have again selected is the tried-and-true method that has worked with the ignorant and lightly read since collectivism crawled into public discourse.  The method is supremely simple and extremely effective.  To wit, first tell an audacious lie about what your political opponents are doing or plan to do, and then spend the remainder of your tirade describing what terrible things would come to pass when/if these fabricated policies were implemented.

    The guileless have neither the intellectual skills, background knowledge, nor accessible resources to refute the initial lie, and therefore it is taken as a given to consume the subsequent harangue that details the public suffering to come.

    It is easy for the well-read who pay attention to confirm this with their liberal brethren.  Just recount some current events and happenings that embarrass the Left.  You will then quickly discover that they have little or no knowledge of such goings on for the simple reason that their lamestream news outlets (to the extent that they even partake) don’t cover such topics or simply give them short shrift in their reporting.

    As a somewhat hyperbolic example to make the point, consider if our habitually comfortable leftwing voters are assured that the Republican-backed parochial schools and home schooling programs promote racism.  And that is the reason why African-Americans and Hispanics rank low academically in public schools and America remains a racist nation.  Having established that preamble lie, our socialist propagandists are then free to launch into extended dissertations about the historical horrors of racism, many of which continue today, and all promoted by Republicans, or Trump, or DOGE, or whoever happens to be chosen as the menace du jour.

    To extend this example, we can now see why the Left wants to keep the Department of Education in business getting more money and doing the same ol’ same ol’ with the teachers’ unions while student academic performance continues to deteriorate as it has under decades of their careful anti-student ministrations.  And the saddest part is that their constituencies have no clue of the (Einstein?) established admonition about ignorance.

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  • Scattershots – 17mar25 (updated 22mar25)

    George Rebane

    Happy St Pat’s day to all even if you’re not Irish!

    Wrong answer to an interview puzzle.  The website Medium regularly publishes math puzzles that it lifts from entrance tests for various university STEM programs and some supposedly given to applicants during their interviews.  Here is a treasure hunt problem that requires some noodling about the given solution that unfortunately is wrong.  Can you figure out why the presented solution will not work, and provide an alternative that has a chance of working or show why no feasible solution exists?

    RR reader (scenes 810am in the 8mar25 Sandbox) gives us a timely reminder.  “The US Left appears to be fueled by good-boy points, mobs built on top of upvotes and praise from within the group. I wonder if a Nazi operated that way? Probably. Scrabbling for acceptance is a strange thing. The whole point of shouting with signs is group solidarity, not convincing others.” (emphasis mine)  It is, of course, hopeless to tell anyone on the Left that their “shouting with signs” will convince anyone else save the talking head idiots on CNN, MSNBC, et al.

    [18mar25 update]  Naifs Propaganda Radio.  We wake up to NPR’s local CapRadio (KXJZ 90.9FM) news to get the spin from the other side.  NPR is one of the acknowledged leftwing lamestream national news outlets.  They are currently having their spring pledge drive in which they feature sound bite testimonials from listeners about how much they all love CapRadio because it is there that they can get their “unbiased news”.  These little endorsements are broadcast throughout the day and again attest that the Democrats’ constituency is made up of people ignorant or terminally naïve.

    [22mar25 update] RR reader and commenter Barry Pruett writes ‘Reliance on government: a reflection of distrust in humanity’ in the 21mar25 Union.  It’s an excellent piece worth your read.  In it Barry compares and contrasts the performance of government vs the private sector in ministering to the needy.  And in the argument establishes how dependence on government to fulfill such social needs gives rise to and maintains “an implicit lack of faith in humanity’s ability to care for itself.”

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  • What are we doing??!

    George Rebane

    This longtime Trump supporter and sometime critic is one confused puppy; today I have little to no understanding of what the Trump administration is doing in managing our economy, and what kind of foreign policy goals it is pursuing re Ukraine and China.  So this is a lament in which I bitch and moan for the record.

    By the behavior of the markets, it’s clear that I’m not alone among the confused and bewildered.  I have tried to get a handle on what’s going on by doing a lot of reading about the advice that sages ranging from Bastiat to Friedman might provide us on everything from tariffs to DOGE.

    An illuminating piece on tariffs comes from the Mises Institute recounting Bastiat’s counsel in ‘The Hidden Costs of Tariffs: A Lesson from Bastiat’s Seen and Unseen’.  In there the seen is that “Tariffs are often portrayed as a simple solution to protect domestic industries and create jobs. Politicians, like Trump, have used them as a political tool, promising immediate benefits through reduced competition and increased domestic production. However, this narrative overlooks the fundamental economic lesson articulated by Frédéric Bastiat in his principle of the seen and the unseen.”  (Bastiat’s famous essay ‘That Which is Seen, and What is Not Seen’, more here)

    The reality of the unseen is a sobering list of the long-term damage to the economy –

    • Higher Costs for Consumers and Businesses:Tariffs act as a tax on consumers, who are forced to pay higher prices for imported goods or their domestic substitutes. What remains unseen is the cumulative effect on household budgets and reduced spending in other areas of the economy. Businesses that rely on imported materials or components face higher input costs, making them less competitive domestically and internationally.
    • Disrupted Supply Chains:Modern production processes, especially in industries like automotive and manufacturing, involve complex cross-border supply chains. A single car, for example, may cross the US-Canada border multiple times during its production. When tariffs are applied at each crossing, the costs escalate quickly, making final products more expensive and less competitive. The unseen effect is the cascading disruption of entire industries that depend on smooth, tariff-free supply chains.
    • Retaliation and Trade Wars: Tariffs rarely exist in isolation. When one country imposes tariffs, trading partners often retaliate, leading to a downward spiral of reduced trade. Canada experienced this firsthand during the Smoot-Hawley era of the 1930s, when global retaliation to US tariffs contributed to a 60 percent decline in world trade. The unseen damage includes lost export opportunities, reduced foreign investment, and weakened trade relationships.
    • Reduced Productivity and Innovation:Protectionist policies shield domestic industries from competition, reducing the incentive to innovate or improve efficiency. Over time, this leads to stagnation and declining productivity. What remains unseen is the opportunity cost: the lost growth that could have been achieved through free competition and exposure to global markets.
    • Long-Term Structural Damage: As tariffs distort market incentives, resources are allocated inefficiently. Industries that may not be competitive without protection receive an artificial boost, while more efficient sectors suffer from reduced investment. The unseen consequence is long-term structural weakness, making the economy more vulnerable to external shocks.

    Many parts of this list are already becoming apparent with the impact of reduced productivity and innovation, and long-term structural damage yet to be determined.  My concern is that today no Trump acolyte has yet to publicly recognize these unseen factors nor have they given reasons why they will not come to pass and do the described damage.  Their answer is simply ‘don’t worry, be happy, nothing bad will happen’, ‘don’t bet against Trump’.

    On the other end of the spectrum are the massive government reforms promised by DOGE.  For some puzzling reason Trump does not repeatedly make it clear that Elon Musk has only the commission to search out islands (continents?) of government waste and fraud, and then recommend remedies.  The authority to evaluate and execute DOGE recommendations lies only with the president and, in certain cases, Congress.  If this is not continually made clear to the American public, then the outpouring of Democrat lies about the operation of DOGE will carry the day.  (more perspectives here)

    And now some thoughts on the Ukraine/Russia peace talks.  I am chagrinned, nay, dumbfounded that our diplomats led by Trump and Rubio still believe that Putin’s strategy and behavior are dependent on whether Trump continues to avoid saying bad things about Russia.  Nothing could be further from the truth – both sides recognize Trump’s bullshit as being mainly for consumption by the marginally read public.

    Putin’s objective is clear.  He wants to continue recovering territories formerly held by the USSR and the czars.  Russia’s domestic wealth has always come from its conquered lands.  And he needs a disarrayed EU with a toothless NATO to guarantee the effectiveness and security of his planned military forays.  The whole thing begins with a weakened Ukraine pruned of its Crimea and Donbas regions.  No progress on any peace talks will be made until Russian forces are able to recapture its Kursk region now barely held by Ukrainians.

    No one cares what kind of nice words America says in the interval about Putin and Russia.  Since the Bolshevik revolution Russia has only negotiated after making some significant and very visible gains militarily.  In the meantime, as today, it just demonstrates a complete lack of interest in making any progress toward a resolution – in this case a ‘temporary peace’.

    And all this is doubly so when we consider that Putin’s physical survival depends on his being able to project and deliver strongarm results both in the field and at the negotiating table.  It is on the basis of communicating our ability to weaken him publicly that any progress will be made toward ending the war in Ukraine without capitulating the future of that country.  That is the only realpolitik that Putin understands and plays by.

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  • Sandbox – 8mar25

    [‘Making English Our National Language Is One Step Toward A More Unified Country’ is a true statement, and long overdue.  I grew up in a bilingual environment, speaking only Estonian at home with my parents.  But we all recognized the importance of speaking English as one of the main bonds unifying us as Americans with everyone else in the country.  gjr]

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