I agree that it's going to take a fiscal crisis to get our house in order, but it's going to be very traumatic for the country so I hope there are well-laid contingency plans by the right for when that happens. At the core is the reality is that the social contract will have to be torn up and rewritten as our social welfare state is simply far too expensive. The DOGE stuff is good and necessary as to deprive activist NGOs and NFP of resources to continue their war against Western civilization, but it's peanuts compared to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. We are going to have to means test old age benefits as well as kick large numbers of able-bodied parasites off of disability, EBT, Medicaid, etc.
At any rate, I don't see how any of this stuff happens within the framework of our current political system.
The biggest tax benefit is to the1%. Crumbs for everyone else. Sure they will build wall (fence) but after the congress flips everything will be undone.
All the emergency powers used by Trump, will be exercised by his successor to screw over the left’s enemies.
That will happen unless the beyond stupid Republicans get off their a** & codify all these Doge cuts/etc into legislation. The wishy washy/special needs GOP doesn’t realize it’s not their approval rating that is up, it’s Trump’s.
lol. They r perfectly happy to be the minority party as long as the donors keep paying. Their function is just to provide a vehicle to move commas around in the tax code. They can do that in return for votes for this or that faction of the Democratic Party.
It is June so about 1/8 of the way through Trump 2.0 and the singular piece of legislation is a pork riddled disaster that the GOP is struggling to pass. Trump has reverted to form with Zion Don back and now a public squabble with Elon Musk. The midterms will get started in earnest in about a year and I expect the Republicans to get smacked around, although it would be worse if the Democrats had anyone on their bench.
I find it difficult to find much optimism and instead I am pinning my hopes on Trump saying eff it and declaring some version of martial law.
The fact that there is a 10 year's no touch by the states for the A/i build out speaks volumes. This is tyranny at its finest, thanks donald, your true side comes out. It makes the rest of the butt ugly billy goat meaningless for 97% of us. In the end, your digital prison awaits you and then your murder by A/i thugs. But likely before 2035.
Smart people with big stakes in the current system will do everything they can to prevent a chaotic revolution. That’s why inflation, which Americans have lived through before and took pretty well — malaise is not a dangerous condition to a ruling class — is the likely policy option.
“ There is $46 billion to build the wall Trump promised a decade ago. Given how incensed both parties were over this idea when it was proposed, this should be viewed as progress. ”
Should it? When Trump 1 took office, the estimated cost was in single digits—$8-12B. The CBO estimated the cost at double that, $24B. Trump 1 completed about 500miles of new wall. Now Trump 2 wants, or will be allocated, $46B to finish less wall! This is progress?
My suspicion is that this is less progress than “pork”. The entire bill is a farce with some “peanuts” thrown in to placate the rubes—but even those peanuts are subject to waste and corruption.
The bottom line is that a democratic process to allocate spending priorities inevitably declines into a grab bag of grift and theft. A robber who accosts you with a gun on the street is a more honest person—and more so, the odds of him robbing you repeatedly is smaller than our *elected* thieves in Congress.
I agree that it's going to take a fiscal crisis to get our house in order, but it's going to be very traumatic for the country so I hope there are well-laid contingency plans by the right for when that happens. At the core is the reality is that the social contract will have to be torn up and rewritten as our social welfare state is simply far too expensive. The DOGE stuff is good and necessary as to deprive activist NGOs and NFP of resources to continue their war against Western civilization, but it's peanuts compared to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. We are going to have to means test old age benefits as well as kick large numbers of able-bodied parasites off of disability, EBT, Medicaid, etc.
At any rate, I don't see how any of this stuff happens within the framework of our current political system.
The biggest tax benefit is to the1%. Crumbs for everyone else. Sure they will build wall (fence) but after the congress flips everything will be undone.
All the emergency powers used by Trump, will be exercised by his successor to screw over the left’s enemies.
That will happen unless the beyond stupid Republicans get off their a** & codify all these Doge cuts/etc into legislation. The wishy washy/special needs GOP doesn’t realize it’s not their approval rating that is up, it’s Trump’s.
lol. They r perfectly happy to be the minority party as long as the donors keep paying. Their function is just to provide a vehicle to move commas around in the tax code. They can do that in return for votes for this or that faction of the Democratic Party.
It is June so about 1/8 of the way through Trump 2.0 and the singular piece of legislation is a pork riddled disaster that the GOP is struggling to pass. Trump has reverted to form with Zion Don back and now a public squabble with Elon Musk. The midterms will get started in earnest in about a year and I expect the Republicans to get smacked around, although it would be worse if the Democrats had anyone on their bench.
I find it difficult to find much optimism and instead I am pinning my hopes on Trump saying eff it and declaring some version of martial law.
The fact that there is a 10 year's no touch by the states for the A/i build out speaks volumes. This is tyranny at its finest, thanks donald, your true side comes out. It makes the rest of the butt ugly billy goat meaningless for 97% of us. In the end, your digital prison awaits you and then your murder by A/i thugs. But likely before 2035.
Smart people with big stakes in the current system will do everything they can to prevent a chaotic revolution. That’s why inflation, which Americans have lived through before and took pretty well — malaise is not a dangerous condition to a ruling class — is the likely policy option.
“ There is $46 billion to build the wall Trump promised a decade ago. Given how incensed both parties were over this idea when it was proposed, this should be viewed as progress. ”
Should it? When Trump 1 took office, the estimated cost was in single digits—$8-12B. The CBO estimated the cost at double that, $24B. Trump 1 completed about 500miles of new wall. Now Trump 2 wants, or will be allocated, $46B to finish less wall! This is progress?
My suspicion is that this is less progress than “pork”. The entire bill is a farce with some “peanuts” thrown in to placate the rubes—but even those peanuts are subject to waste and corruption.
The bottom line is that a democratic process to allocate spending priorities inevitably declines into a grab bag of grift and theft. A robber who accosts you with a gun on the street is a more honest person—and more so, the odds of him robbing you repeatedly is smaller than our *elected* thieves in Congress.