Pantagruel
Pantagruel's JournalUkraine military strategy?
How to best fight the Russians? Throw everything you got against them initially?
Or stockpile assets to wage a post invasion guerrilla war? Would appreciate hearing from our best strategists.
Another GOP FAIL!!!
"Trump’s trade war was a total flop
Rick Newman at Yahoo Finance
Tue, February 8, 2022
Donald Trump, the American president from 2017 to 2021, said he knew more about trade than most economists and foreign-policy experts. “Trade wars are good, and easy to win,” Trump famously declared in 2018. He described himself as a “Tariff Man” and proved it by imposing new tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of U.S. imports, to be paid by the American firms buying those goods.
Trump’s dubious logic was that making imports costlier to Americans would hurt the foreign sellers and give him leverage he could use to demand concessions. His biggest target, of course, was China. Trump added new tariffs on about $450 billion worth of U.S. imports from China, while China, predictably, retaliated with similar penalties on U.S. imports. The escalation rattled financial markets in 2018 and 2019 and ultimately led to the “Phase One” trade deal between the two countries, signed on Jan. 15, 2020. Under that deal, China would sharply increase its purchases of U.S. goods as a precondition for Trump (or his successor) removing the new tariffs and getting back to normal.
New trade data for 2021 shows that China came nowhere near fulfilling its commitments in the 2020 phase one deal, with U.S. exporters ending up worse off than they would have been had Trump done nothing on trade. Analysis of trade data by Chad Bown of the Peterson Institute for International Economics found that during the first two years covered by the trade deal—2020 and 2021—China purchased just 57% of what it had committed to in the trade deal. China said it would buy at least $502 billion of U.S. goods during those two years. Yet total purchases added up to just $289 billion.
If there had been no Trump trade war, and no tariffs, U.S. exports to China would have been $119 billion more than actual levels from 2018-2021, if the U.S. share of Chinese imports had simply remained constant. That's a net loss of business for American companies. And it doesn’t include nearly $30 billion in U.S. taxpayer funds Trump doled out to farmers to compensate them for lost sales to China from 2018 through 2020."
Impatience with the seemingly slow pace of DOJ indictments
may be explained by both practical and POLITICAL considerations. On the practical side, staffing issues, filing protocols and the sheer volumes of evidence are self explanatory regarding the appearance of indictments.
Politically, the timing of indictments may play into a progressive advantage in the midterms and beyond. A lot of GOP criminals are involved in primaries and for our purposes, the best times for them to be indicted would be AFTER they secure their nominations and are on the ballot v. Dem. candidates. For example, picture Ron Johnson indicted for sedition or obstruction as he campaigns for the Senate?
IOW, what seems to be legal foot dragging might end up being political savvy.
M. Garland's timing of indictments
is mostly dictated by procedural realities and rebuilding the DOJ but I think it's going to be effective politically. By late summer I'm hoping to see maybe 10 GOP congressmen and hopefully a few Senate candidates running for office while indicted or at least under threat of indictment. Politically speaking, we don't even need convictions to garner the benefit. In fact sedition is difficult to prove so I don't expect blanket convictions as an end game but the political gain should be well worth the effort.
Fact check?
Having a hard time verifying the numbers in this OP I read?
"Fact is just bolstering the IRS could by itself pay for it. Consider the tax gap — the difference between what the government expects to collect in taxes and what it does collect. The latest IRS estimation is about $500 billion a year in legally owed taxes goes uncollected . Every new IRS auditor hired could bring in over 10X their salary of unpaid , legitimately owed tax revenue."
Can anyone help verify this argument for new IRS hires?
It behooves us to remember that
There are FIFTY GOP Senators just as responsible for the delay of BBB as Manchin.
The GOP is glorying in our focus on JM,while their guilty asses hide in the shadows.
Time to refocus our anger.
Dems never had a real Senate majority
Manchin has always been a DINO.
CAREFUL pushing Manchin to the GOP or we get Mitch back as majority leader.
With Schumer, at least we control what gets voted on. Mitch would block everything.
Impatience with Garland's pace of prosecution
We all share it but I've counseled patience for multiple reasons found here.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=16157873
The ONE argument I can't easily refute is why hasn't MG appointed a special counsel?
Admittedly I don't know the current rule regarding a SC appointment but I do know it's harder to get one since Clinton got railroaded.
Anyone know the rules about getting a SC.
Helping CRT laws backfire
CRT bans are vague for a reason. Specificity has an unwanted effect of publicizing exactly the topics the RWNJ's want to hide.
I think it's our job to flood social media with innocent sounding questions about banned topics.
"Is the 3/5 compromise in the original constitution an allowable topic?"
How about ?:
Jim Crow laws
Economics of cotton in early U.S. history
Asian exclusion laws
redlining
History of civil rights pioneers like MLK, Susan Anthony etc.
Books by non-white authors, gay authors
The list is endless.
But simply posing the questions will publicize the topics. Probably 75% of Americans never heard of the "3/5 compromise" but asking about it's educational allowability will promulgate the topic.
You can't hide truth.
Discord on DU
over the speed of the DOJ prosecution plays right into the hands of the GOP.Time better spent elsewhere.
We should be promoting our mid-term candidates and denigrating their GOP challengers.
There's tons of GOP misdeeds to publicize, get out there folks and help drum up enough outrage to GOTV!!!
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