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While days like Mother’s Day are corny, they do elicit memories.  I think of my mother. She died at the age of 100. Although she was quite debilitated at the time, she still kept asking me not to let her go, as if I had such power. She was afraid of death, but when I looked at her photo this morning, I felt she wasn’t dead or buried in Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York where thirteen years ago we placed her next to our father and her husband Edward of sixty years.

“The dead don’t stay where they are buried,” the English writer John Berger’s mother tells him when he sees her in Lisbon seated on a park bench fifteen years after her death. Here Is Where We Meet is the book where you can read of this encounter and more. And there is much more, as when John remembers his mother saying to him when he was thirteen years-old, “Most people, she said, can’t stand the truth. It’s too bad but there it is, most people can’t stand it. You, John, I think you can bear the truth, we’ll see. Time will tell. I didn’t reply.”

When I spoke to my mother this morning, she told me to not make it public because people will think I am crazy. She was always worried that I would put myself in danger by saying or doing controversial things. But she knew also that I would not heed her advice and she was glad for that as well – secretly. When I told her what Berger’s mother said to him, she said, “Of course she was right. Would you stay buried there?”

It didn’t seem appealing, but I didn’t answer her.

“Where are you now?” I asked her.

“Don’t be too nosy, Eddy,” she said.

“I always want to know everything,” I said.

“There are some things best left alone. You are in one side of the world and I am in another. Let’s leave it at that.”

“Don’t you remember when I gave the eulogy at your funeral and I said you had a favorite saying about how the truth shall make you free?”

“I remember, but you also recalled my other favorite about being true to your own self, and I feel where I am at the moment would be of no help to you. I get around.”

Okay, Mom, but would you agree with what I more or less said about you in my eulogy? It went something like this : My mother was an artist at heart, and being an artist, she possessed all the bittersweet attributes that come with such a gift. She never developed the conventional shell that allows most people to hide their true feelings. She was a raw nerve, and had a nerve, and this could unnerve others who were content with euphemisms. But she was also a thwarted actress, and this complicated everything, for when an artist/actress has few opportunities to express themselves, a frustration seeps in. My mother suffered from such frustration, and it was sad. (It’s called being an artiste-manque by the great Otto Rank, the Austrian psychoanalyst, who in his masterpiece, Art and the Artist wrote: “The artist does not create, in the first place, for fame or immortality; his production is to be a means to achieve actual life, since it helps him to overcome fear.”)

“Yes, my dear son, I was afraid of something I couldn’t name and it haunted me. It goes back to many things when I was young, maybe thirteen years-old, and my father, with whom my mother and I didn’t live until I was ten and I had never met till then, put his policeman’s gun on the table and threatened us to obey him or else. The ‘else’ entered me and never left. He stood in my way then, and my mother’s sticking with him after really frightened me. I wanted to live my own life, but he thwarted me at every turn and my mother suffered through it as an accomplice because she too was afraid.”

Then I was right to say about you that in your pilgrim soul you always suffered from faith and doubt, hope and despair, and “she fleetingly wished to be blissfully ignorant, But that was not her destiny. She wanted more. She knew that so-called blissful-ignorance was beneath her dignity. She had soul, and as the poet John Keats wrote, ‘This life is a vale of soul-making,’ and Rita Mary Rose struggled mightily in that endeavor.”

I heard you then, Eddy, and I felt so close to you for grasping my struggles. I remember you also said that as an artist of life, a great mother – I gave birth to “nine children, losing three of them along the way – a heartache impossible to grasp, and that the artist in her, the seeker that she was, wanted more.” You said it perfectly, as I remember well, you also said that I loved and nurtured you all as best I could. That is so true. I did my utmost best, but I know it wasn’t perfect. After a twenty year span of being pregnant and giving birth from the age twenty-two, and another twenty of raising all of you, I wanted to give birth to the parts of me that lay fallow.  You were right to say that I wished, maybe unconsciously, especially for your sisters, that they live out the parts of me that fate and circumstances and fear prevented me from achieving. My dreams for them were quite superficial – to be discovered for their looks by some Hollywood mogul –  for so much was focused on their appearance, as mine was for me.

I know you were frustrated, and when we were all grown and gone you hoped for more. But like John Berger’s mother you had that favorite phrase: “it’s too late.” You were saying that when you were in your mid-fifties and had so long to live. It’s never too late, I always thought, for time is always present, but time is the enemy when looks are emphasized, but you even escaped that fate. You were a beautiful woman into old age. Yet looks need accomplishments and they demand the courage to create, and fear needs to be overcome for that. Sentimentality won’t do it, and you got a bit sentimental with some of your paintings as you aged.

You were not the grandmotherly type, and while it irritated me, I understood it. You were an artist with a soul and needed more than the mother title. You wanted to use you poetic and artistic abilities to create a new life beyond that of only mother and grandmother. Some us found that hard to accept even though it was obvious.

As your favorite son – an appellation unearned since there was no competition – I want to honor you for all your strivings for a second and third life. You deserve it. You suffered and struggled for it. You wanted to turn the world you saw with your beautiful eyes into a beautiful painting, a poem to touch the soul.

Your great gift to us was your effort, your internal struggles, your failures and small successes. You were a work of art, always in the making, never arriving.

Where are you now, Mother? I love and miss you. Your poem about Dad resonates.

But she was silent and just looked at me and smiled.

I Wish

By Rita Curtin

I wish that I could turn back the clock
But not to long ago.
Content I’d be if I could see and hear my loved ones calling me.
Oh Mama dear, I dream of you
In everything I see,
If only I could hold your hands
That lovingly held me.
And Ed my dear, I can’t forget
A wondrous man I dream of yet.

Reprinted with the author’s permission.

The post Rita Mary Rose Curtin appeared first on LewRockwell.

In seeking to understand why nations go to war, we often search for rational motivations such as the quest for money, or power, or territory, or that most elusive of goals—justice. But the truth is that often there is no reason behind descent into war other than the hostility and animosity between one nation and another.

In his essay “Separation of Reconciliation? The Nationalities Question in the USSR,” Igor Shafarevich identifies “resentment, malice and pain” as a predominant cause of conflict between nations—people driven by these emotions set aside all rational thought as they become consumed with thoughts of vengeance and retribution for their grievances. As Shafarevich puts it, “the pitch of emotion is more powerful even than the instinct of self-preservation,” and the warmongers “tend to forget everything the past has taught us.” They understand the tragedy of war, yet time and again they agitate for war as the solution to their political disputes.

The caution sounded by Shafarevich applies to those who glorify General Sherman’s total war against civilians in the American South. As Sherman saw it, there was no distinction between civilians and combatants since combatants might rely upon the moral and practical “aid and comfort” of their civilian families. In his 2007 book, Slavery, Secession, and Civil War, Charles Adams observes that, “When the war ended, and even 140 years later, the gatekeepers of Civil War history are still making the North’s war on the South—the most tragic event in all our history—into a noble cause for abolition.”

Those who celebrate the burning of the South claim that war crimes against Southern civilians were justified because it was for the “higher cause” of ending slavery. By conferring a “righteous cause” on the war, they are able to celebrate an event that left almost a million men dead and the South in smoking ruins. The glorification of their righteous war has become so important to them that it crowds out any concerns about the horrors of war. Their only philosophy is that their righteous ends justify the tyrannical means which, as they see it, was necessary to achieve the desired goal. In “Just War,” Murray Rothbard explains:

The Northern war against slavery partook of fanatical millennialist fervor, of a cheerful willingness to uproot institutions, to commit mayhem and mass murder, to plunder and loot and destroy, all in the name of high moral principle and the birth of a perfect world. The Yankee fanatics were veritable Patersonian humanitarians with the guillotine: the Anabaptists, the Jacobins, the Bolsheviks of their era. This fanatical spirit of Northern aggression for an allegedly redeeming cause is summed up in the pseudo-Biblical and truly blasphemous verses of that quintessential Yankee Julia Ward Howe, in her so-called “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

Any “righteous cause” harnessed in that way to justify violence poses a grave threat to peace and liberty, because such moralistic arguments are often used to justify brazen acts of aggression. As C.S. Lewis famously said, “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.” The same warning applies to warmongers. When moral busybodies claim that waging war is necessary to uphold values such as democracy or human rights, their supporters seem to be so beguiled by the apparent morality of their cause that they overlook the lessons of history. This tendency to overlook the tragedy of war is often seen in the discourse on slavery and abolition.

When people think of “abolition” they often envisage morally-principled men like Lysander Spooner. But although Spooner was an abolitionist, he was adamantly against war. The abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison also did not see abolition as a justification for war. In “Just War,” Rothbard takes a similar view. He compares the American Revolutionary War to “the Southern cause, the War for Southern Independence,” and asks: “But if the British wanted to hold on and expand their empire, what were the motivations of the North? Why, in the famous words of the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, at least early in the struggle, didn’t the North ‘let their erring sisters go in peace?’” Far from permitting the South to secede in peace, the Radical Republicans were determined to prevent the South from seceding by any means, including war if necessary. The New York Times reported that in April 1861 not everyone supported the Radical view:

Many believed that the states that had seceded should be brought back into the Union at any cost. On the other hand, some of the city’s businessmen, terrified that the Northern economy would collapse if Southerners stopped paying their debts and started selling a larger portion of their cotton directly to Europe, met on April 14 to plan a rally in City Hall Park to call for a peaceful reconciliation (even if it meant allowing the continuation of slavery).

The hypocrisies of the time were well known, hence observers cast doubt on the claim that the men of the North were so much more racially “enlightened” than those of the South that they were prepared to wage war to secure the emancipation of an oppressed race. Charles Adams notes that the British and European press—who were closely observing the events unfolding in America—were incredulous at the suggestion that the North intended to wage a war of abolition. It was well known that black people in the North did not have the right to vote, so it would seem extremely unlikely that Northerners would risk their own lives to ensure that blacks in the South would have the right to vote. Describing the British commentary on the situation preceding the war, Adams gives the example of the Chambers Journal of Popular Literature, which reported in 1857 that, “The statute-books of Indiana and Illinois, both free states, are disgraced by a series of what are termed ‘Black Laws;’ the effect of which is to deprive the coloured man not only of all political privileges, but even to render his oath invalid.”

When war broke out in 1861, it would seem strange, indeed, for these states to claim that they had waged a war to secure rights for blacks in the South which blacks in the North did not have. In the case of Indiana, the state constitution banned the immigration or settlement of black people. In later years “Nationally, Indiana was said to have the most powerful Ku Klux Klan.” Although today it is fashionable to claim that Indiana really did fight a war because they considered blacks to be “worthy of justice and equality,” their history shows them not to be overwhelmingly devoted to racial equality.

We are now invited to believe that most Indianans wanted equality for blacks, despite their hostility and even violence towards black abolitionists: “Sometimes there was white violence against African Americans. Most notable was the mob that severely beat black abolitionist Frederick Douglass when he spoke in Pendleton in 1843.” Francis T. Hord—a “War Democrat” who supported the Union—clarified in an Indiana senate debate in 1863 that his support for the Union should not be seen as support for abolition. He supported the war but opposed Republican party plans to have black troops in the army:

…it appears that in some localities our soldiers have mutinied on account of the employment of negro soldiers. Let us as a nation be politic and wise. But the Republican party have great confidence in the measure. They esteem the negro as one of the ordained instruments of protection. I advise them against such a delusive and fallacious hope.

Hord further clarified that he was not opposed to the employment of black people in principle, but only deemed it “impolitic” due to the objections of white men who were loyal to the Union.

I do not esteem the policy of the measure to arm the negroes of the South. Not, sir, that I abstractedly object to negroes aiding to restore this Union, for I would hitch the devil to the Chariot of the Union if he could drag it safely from the flames of this discord uninjured, but I believe it, sir, impolitic… this measure will alienate the loyal sentiment in a country where we need it. We gain more for our cause in nerving the strong arm of the white man in the border States by pacific measures towards them, than by driving them from us in arming slaves.

The mythology of a righteous war waged to uphold justice and equality for black people seems to be largely a post-war attempt to lend legitimacy to a deadly war which, before it broke out, was understood to be a struggle not over abolition but over the balance of power between the states. A Republican senator from Ohio, Samuel Galloway, responded to the infamous dispute between Charles Sumner of Massachusetts and Preston Brooks of South Carolina with an overly enthusiastic and entirely unnecessary escalation of hostilities, by declaring,

Up and be doing!—put on the whole armor, and go out to the battle! The great question now before the people of this country is not the emancipation of the negro, but the emancipation of the white man… Gold cups, gold-headed canes, and other testimonials, to the disgrace of humanity, are being presented by the Virginians to the ruffian Brooks.

Who was the real ruffian is for readers to decide, but such escalation of political disputes into all out war should be rejected by all.

The post The Tragedy of War appeared first on LewRockwell.

Cicero had it right when he described the Sword of Damocles.

To be the leader of a country is like having a sword constantly dangling over your head from a single horse hair. You never know if or when the sword is going to cause your demise, but you know that the danger is ever-present.

That is just as true today as it was in Cicero’s time, but the modern-day Sword of Damocles hangs over the heads of not just the world’s leaders. It hangs over the heads of the populations as well.

If we rely on the conventional media for our interpretation of world economic and political conditions, we may well be scratching our heads continuously as to what needs to be done to “save” the situation.

Whether the discussion is over the debts of nations, the likelihood of war, or the increase in the loss of rights, the governments of much of the world are heading in a similar direction.

And that direction is not a positive one.

However, the pundits in the media offer a wide variety of solutions for the problems being discussed.

The solution to national debt is either to expand monetisation or to back off on it, depending upon who is speaking at the moment. Whether debt monetisation is the right thing to do in the first place is rarely discussed.

The solution to the Middle East problem is either to arm the rebels or send in the military.

The solution to domestic terrorism is either to build up the power of the various authorities, or to pass more dramatic laws restricting basic freedoms.

And so, we are to be forgiven if we imagine that the solution to such problems lies in whether we choose one destructive approach or another.

Truth be told, the most difficult assessment for us to make is that we should sit very far back from the rhetoric and ask ourselves, “Is a solution even possible at this point, or have the powers-that–be gone past the point of no return?”

Here’s why the problems won’t be solved:

As regards the debt of the most prominent countries of the world, the point of no return has certainly been reached by most.

Historically, once the present level of debt has been reached, no amount of monetisation will save the economy. It may be possible to give the addict yet another injection of heroin to stave off the immediate withdrawal symptoms, but at some point, it becomes necessary to go cold turkey.

It may be a very painful thing to do, but it truly is the only solution. A country cannot reach solvency through increased debt.

However, political leaders are loath to go cold turkey. To do so is to cut the horse hair that holds the sword hanging above their careers. Better to push the situation further into ruin, if it can buy a little more time.

As regards the rapid deterioration into police states that is occurring in so many countries, no amount of discussion by the pundits in the media will reverse the present destruction of basic rights. After all, the decision is not in their hands. It is in the hands of congresses, parliaments, presidents, and prime ministers.

They know that, very soon, the façade of “economic recovery” will come tumbling down, and they have no intention of allowing the populace to have the basic freedom of removing them from power, once the veil has been removed from the lie that a solution is in the works.

Political leaders, whose hold over power is in danger, will always do whatever is necessary to retain that power.

As regards warfare, it is interesting that none of the pundits who discuss the subject in the media ever raise the question, “How can a country that is facing bankruptcy possibly fund a war—traditionally the most expensive undertaking for any country in any era?”

Yet, throughout history, political leaders have often used warfare as a distraction when a government has reached the tipping point economically. As Hermann Goering said,

“The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

The disconnect here seems to be that the populace seems to believe that the governments of the West sincerely hope to avoid war, so the discussion in the media revolves around what can be done to that end.

However, far from seeking peace, the governments of the day consciously seek to create war. After all, a populace that is otherwise unhappy with its government tends to toe the line if the country is at war. Further, the government has a greater ability to silence domestic detractors in time of war.

Thus, the ability to hold power is assured. A state of war is the single most effective tool in silencing dissent in any country.

In considering all of the above, not only as a present-day anomaly, but as a recurrent theme throughout history, any discussion of “if” there will be an economic collapse, “if” there will be an increase in the loss of basic freedoms, “if” there will be a ramping up of warfare, becomes a non-starter. It is a question of “when.”

Of course, in spite of this, there will be those individuals who will say, “I like to be positive. I’m going to hope for the best.”

But, in truth, this is not positive thinking at all. If we see the truth before our eyes and then cover our eyes in order to be positive, we are merely delving into self-deception.

Positive thinking begins with truth. Once we accept what is true, we may then be as positive or as negative as we wish regarding what that truth means to us.

If we are faced with the fact that much of the world is, once again, passing through the classic cycle of economic decline / removal of rights / distraction of war, we can either shut our eyes to that fact and hope for the best, or we can open our eyes and recognise that the one choice left to us is to try to step aside of coming events.

As Benjamin Ola Akande wrote, “Hope is not a strategy.”

If we recognise that the sword of Damocles is indeed hovering above our own heads, we would be unwise to continue to sit below it and ponder whether the horse hair may break.

Instead, we should understand that our very first move should be to put some physical distance between ourselves and the potential harm that unquestionably hangs over us.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

The post It’s Not ‘If;’ It’s ‘When’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

Donald Trump rolled the dice and came up snakes-eyes. He thought he could bully China, but China called his bluff. Now he must report his failure to the American people by trying to make the biggest trade blunder in the nation’s history, look like a ‘stunning triumph of the will’. Good luck with that.

Fortunately, we have a reliable metric for determining whether Trump succeeded or failed. If China makes concessions to preserve trade with the US, then we can say that Trump ‘won’. But if Trump is forced to remove his tariffs before China agrees to resume trade, then Trump ‘lost’. So, it’s really just a matter of who blinks first.

We figure that Trump will ‘blink first’ based on the fact, that Trump ‘has no cards to play.’ China has him over a barrel and they know it. Many analysts knew this from the very beginning, but their views were drowned out by the army of anti-China scribes and pundits who think the mighty USA can crush China whenever it wants. Now they’re going to see that the world doesn’t work that way. Now they’re going to see that a poorly governed country that is $36 trillion in debt and sliding towards irreversible insolvency, doesn’t get to make the rules. This is from a piece at CNN (on Sunday):

Top US officials involved in high-level trade negotiations with China emerged from two days of talks touting “substantial progress” and appearing to confirm that a deal between the two countries had been reached, which could have massive implications for the global economy.

“I’m happy to report that we’ve made substantial progress between the United States and China in the very important trade talks,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a brief statement Sunday in Geneva, Switzerland, where the talks were held, calling the negotiations “productive.”

US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer indicated that an agreement had been reached Sunday, after President Donald Trump imposed sweeping 145% tariffs on most Chinese goods last month.

“The president declared a national emergency and imposed tariffs, and we’re confident that the deal we struck with our Chinese partners will help us to resolve work toward resolving that national emergency,” Greer said.

He added, “It’s important to understand how quickly we were able to come to agreement, which reflects that perhaps the differences were not so large as maybe thought.” CNN

“GREAT PROGRESS”, he says. That either means that China has accepted Trump’s unilateral tariffs or they have made important concessions. So, which is it?

We’ll know on Monday.

All we know so far, is that both sides agreed to establish a US-China trade consultation mechanism.

What does that mean?

It means the US and China agreed to a particular framework for ongoing dialogue between the two countries on issues related to trade, tariffs, export controls, and access to markets. In other words, they agreed to pick up the phone when officials from the other country call.

Don’t they do that anyway?

Yes, they do, which means the terminology was created to divert attention from the fact that China has offered no concessions and is refusing to budge until the tariffs are lifted. All of this is very bad for Trump who wants to convince his base that “tough talk” and bullyboy tactics can force rivals to bend to Uncle Sam’s will. But that clearly has not happened. This is from an article at the Global Times on Sunday:

Global attention is focused on Geneva, Switzerland, where China, US high-level economic and trade meeting has been held over the weekend….

In response to questions about the US abuse of tariffs, Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Miao Deyu on Sunday stated at a media briefing… that the US uses tariffs as a weapon to exert maximum pressure and seek self-interest, embodying typical unilateralism, protectionism, and economic bullying. This approach sacrifices the legitimate interests of countries worldwide to serve US hegemonic interests. China firmly opposes the US imposition of so-called “reciprocal tariffs” and has taken forceful legal measures to resolutely counter them, CCTV News reported on Sunday.

China will firmly safeguard its development interests, uphold international fairness and justice, and maintain the international trade order. We are willing to strengthen communication and coordination with Latin American countries to jointly uphold multilateralism and the multilateral trading system, Miao said….

China’s decision to engage in talks with the US was made after careful consideration of global expectations, China’s own interests, and the concerns of US businesses and consumers, and it reflects China’s openness and sense of responsibility as a major global power…

If the US continues to cling to “America First” and unilateralism, seeks concessions from China through pressure tactics, any dialogue is unlikely to achieve meaningful progress, Ying noted….

The world’s largest economy had already contracted in the first quarter – marking the first decline since 2022. The tariffs have only added to the strain, dealing a heavy blow to the US economy by exerting mounting pressure across key areas such as consumer spending, employment, investment and trade… In comparison, China has the resilience and the necessary policy tools to protect its legitimate interests. The country has maintained its position as the world’s largest goods trading nation for eight consecutive years and it is a major trading partner for over 150 countries and regions….

China’s trade continued to expand at a solid pace in April. The country’s total import and export value in April reached 3.84 trillion yuan ($531.46 billion), up 5.6 percent year-on-year. Exports stood at 2.27 trillion yuan, rising 9.3 percent, while imports totaled 1.57 trillion yuan, a 0.8 percent increase, according to data released by the General Administration of Customs on Friday. Global Times

So, as of Sunday, there is no indication that China is going to resume trade with the US unless Trump caves in and removes the tariffs. So, what Trump must do now is throw in the towel to China and then claim ‘victory’ for creating the invaluable “trade consultation mechanism”. He must snooker his backers into believing that his capitulation is actually a solid ‘win’ for Team USA.

Now The Bad News: China Has Replaced Us Already

CHINA HAS ALREADY sold huge amounts of products originally meant for US consumers to its neighbors… And the neighbors are buying big, giving China giant an 8.1% boost in export sales, surprising analysts.

“In early April, I said that Trump’s tariffs on China will strengthen trade ties between China and the rest of the world in the next few years,” said Prof Justin Hauge of Cambridge University in the UK, commenting on X. “It didn’t take a few years. It took a month.”

This is bad news for US Treasury chief Scott Bessent as he heads into negotiations later today in Switzerland, to bargain with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng.

THE NUMBERS

Newly published figures show exports from China rose a staggering 8.1% in April, compared to this time last year. Most of the goods are being snapped up by Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and other countries. Bloomberg’s stable of analysts predicted a 2% rise and Reuters predicted a 1.9% jump.

The 8.1% leap follows 12.4% growth in March, when exporters worked overtime to beat the April 2 launch of Donald Trump’s “global tariff attack”.

The Financial Times quoted Heron Lim, an economist at Moody’s Analytics, saying that, while China’s trade with the US dropped 21% year-on-year in April, it rose by an equal percentage with south-east Asian nations and 8 per cent with the EU…..

China, which is focused on trade rather than politics, makes goods for anyone who will buy—and that means the other 95% of humanity will do just fine as substitute customers. Nury Vittachi @NuryVittachi

Looks like the indispensable nation is not so indispensable after all. Here’s more from the Global Times:

China moved to accelerate the replacement of US products before the high-level China-US trade talks in Switzerland... China signed letters of intent with exporters of Argentina to purchase soybeans, corn, and vegetable oil shortly before the Geneva talks…. Earlier in April, China signed contracts to purchase at least 2.4 million tons of soybeans from Brazil….

The report noted that these moves underscore China’s efforts to secure alternative sources of US goods before the bilateral trade meeting started.

China signed a letter of intent with exporters in Argentina to buy about $900 million of soybeans, corn and vegetable oil, Bloomberg reported on Friday….. The Chinese delegates also held talks with local business representatives, focusing on expanding bilateral economic and trade cooperation and defending the free trading system….

Despite the headwinds posed by escalating US tariffs, China’s foreign trade performed better than expected in April.

According to data released by the General Administration of Customs, while exports to the US fell 21 percent year-on-year to about $33 billion last month, overall Chinese exports rose 8.1 percent, with exports to non-US markets increasing 13 percent. Global Times

The irony of these developments is that the Communists are acting like Capitalists while the Capitalists (Trump and Co) are acting like goofballs. Can’t they see that their dim-witted strategy has blown up in their faces? China is still trading, thriving and growing while US ports on the West Coast have turned into Ghost-towns and retail merchants are planning for a dismal future of higher prices and empty shelves. Isn’t it time to make an honest accounting and try to stop the bleeding before the patient dies? Here’s more from Nobel Prize winner, Joseph Stiglitz:

Reducing US dependence on certain Chinese imports is not a straightforward task. Manufacturing of iPhones, for example, could move elsewhere… but it will take a long time and will be costly….

China now has a comparative advantage in logistics, manufacturing supply chains and engineering. It is no accident that China dominates in the production of smartphones and so many other products: it is far cheaper to produce them there. Prices of these products will rise as supply chains are reconfigured….. China has the knowhow, the determination and the resources to make up for this deficiency of demand, and it may be able to do so quickly….

China can also strengthen its systems of social protection and increase wages... There is scope for large increases in government expenditure…..

It can thus make up for the deficiency of aggregate demand from loss of exports to the US without resorting to “dumping” them on the rest of the world….

Moving production to the US will require massive upfront investment yet, because of all this disruption, no firm can be sure about the economic environment three months from now, let alone four years from now…..Trump talks about bringing back manufacturing jobs, but manufacturing jobs today make up less than 10 per cent of US employment.

He is looking to the past, not the future. Even if he were successful in resuscitating American manufacturing, it would not create good jobs for workers in the deindustrialised parts of the country.

Cars these days are made by robots, with the best companies employing as many engineers and researchers as production workers, and the production-line work is often not paid well.

Today, it’s the service and knowledge sectors that really matter, yet almost surely America’s longstanding trade surplus in these services will diminish, particularly given the damage Trump is doing to its considerable soft power: tourism is falling off a cliff, foreign students are discouraged from studying in the US, the rule of law is being tested and the president is waging a massive battle on the country’s leading universities….

China, meanwhile, has built dozens of new universities over the past decade.

China holds the cards over Trump, Joseph Stiglitz, The Sunday Times

I don’t have a crystal ball, so I can’t predict what’s going to happen on Monday,(when the details of the China-US talks are published) but I expect that Trump’s claims of “great progress” and a “total reset” with China are going to be exposed as ‘wishful thinking’ at best and a deliberate fabrication at worst. The days when the United States could beat China in a trade war are over, and the sooner we get used to it, the better.

Reprinted with permission from The Unz Review.

The post Trump’s Tariff Blunder Backfires Bigtime appeared first on LewRockwell.

If you want to escape immiseration, that option is available–upgrade to Premium.

I propose we set aside the conventional economic measures (GDP, unemployment, corporate profits, etc.) in favor of a more real-world metric: how many times we’re hectored to “upgrade to Premium” to regain services that were once part of what we already paid for.

I submit that this metric is a far better measure of what’s really going on in the economy than abstractions like GDP which say nothing about our real-world quality of life or whose getting the lion’s share of the spoils.

If we track how many times we’re hectored to “upgrade to Premium,” it’s clear the economy is in some terminal stage of decay beneath the happy story of soaring corporate profits. Or perhaps more accurately, the economy is in a terminal stage of decay in which corporate profits depend on reducing the quality of daily life as the last remaining means of pushing profits higher.

Consider a subscription to a major national newspaper. A subscription was once simple: you paid the publisher a monthly fee and you received the entire newspaper in print or online. Now you pay the monthly fee, click on a recipe link, and are nagged to “upgrade to Premium” to regain access to the Food section.

OK, forget the recipe, let’s check the sports section. Click on a story, and voila, we’re nagged to “upgrade to Premium” to access the “premium” sports section.

When did the Sports and Food sections become available only to those paying First Class rates? Please tell me this is a parody of corporate greed. Oh, it’s now the New Normal. If that’s the case, isn’t our economy now a parody of a functioning economy?

Next up, a bulk email service. As we set up the email, we’re prompted to select “send email now” or “schedule email to be sent later.” If we choose the latter, we’re prompted to “upgrade to Premium” for what was once part of the service we’re already paying for.

Anti-virus software was once a complete set of tools with a single price. Not any more. Now when we run a scan, we’re prompted to “clean up all the junk files.” If we click on that link, surprise, we’re prompted to “upgrade to Premium.”

If you want to book a specific seat on an airline flight, that’s extra now, too. And so on.

This immiseration of the quality of our lives is extraordinarily profitable. Here is the FRED (Federal Reserve) chart of corporate profits’ share of domestic national income. Note that corporate profits’ share of the national income poked above 7% in the go-go 1960s and 2000s, but only poked above 6% in the go-go 1990s.

Corporate profits’ share of the national income in the 6% to 7% was good enough for the economy to expand smartly. Now corporate profits are around 9% of the national income and we’re hovering on the edge of stagflation and immiseration as wages’ share of the national income has continued its 50-year decline.

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Recently, there has been a veritable epidemic of statues suddenly popping up all over the globe, depicting overweight Black females. This is decidedly odd, as the figures don’t represent a particular person of historical significance, but rather a modern “Woke” phenomenon of a brand of human being; the loud and proud Black woman.

One of these statues, incredibly enough, was erected in Italy. If anyone can tell me what significance any Black woman has had on Italian history, I’m willing to listen. Maybe the Italians covered up how the Black females in their society- cleverly hidden away from the eyes of the world- have manipulated things behind the scenes for eons. Kind of like an Illuminati of Color. I’m sure Michelangelo and Da Vinci would be proud. Maybe a fat Black woman invented spaghetti. Pizza. Lasagna. Why not? Any African American Studies course worth its salt will tell you how suppressed Black inventors came up with everything from the toaster to the stop light. Lemonade. And most cleverly of all, one magnificent genius invented the comb in the late 1800s. Or centuries after they were depicted in paintings from all over the world. I remember seeing Pocahantas’s comb at the Smithsonian. What a racist to be using a Black man’s invention without giving him credit. Somebody call Elizabeth Warren.

The Italian statue depicts the unknown Person of Color staring down at her cell phone. Surely, this was considered a unique, historical posture. Apparently, there were no available native born Italian girls- overweight or not- who stare robotically down at their cell phones. Not to be left out, the Netherlands put up a statue of a different, but just as insignificant overweight Black woman a few years back in Rotterdam. I guess it’s taken those of us still paying attention a few years to notice. Again, what exactly has any Black woman done to deserve a statue in the Netherlands? Sure, plenty of nonwhites have raped native born residents of the Netherlands, but they were all male and mostly Muslim migrants. They probably have a disproportionate number of Blacks on the Netherlands World Cup soccer team, but I’m not sure what Black women specifically have ever contributed to their society.

In New York City, there is now a twelve foot statue of an obese Black woman- sporting the distinctive hands on hip stance that has made them so beloved in America 2.0. The statue is nonsensically called “Grounded in the Stars.” As someone once said, if you want to gauge the health of a nation, look at its art. The statue provides a startling dose of “diversity,” in contrast to the statues of boring dead White guys Father Francis Duffy and songwriter George M. Cohan. This is the same New York City, of course, who over the past few years took down statues of Teddy Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson. The message is; an anonymous Black woman is more culturally and historically significant to this country than the most brilliant of our Founding Fathers, who wrote the Declaration of Independence. If that isn’t a slap in the face to the millions who are still asleep, I don’t know what would be.

The first question that should be asked is; why this curious campaign to install statues of fictional Black women? Who started it? Who is behind it? I seriously doubt that leaders in Italy and the Netherlands abruptly determined, independent of each other, that homage should be paid to a demographic group that has zero historical ties to either country. Now, the motivation is obvious. To further promote Black people. Well, any Black people who aren’t questioning the disproportionate power of a certain ethnic/religious group, that is. And to further diminish the historical greatness of formerly hallowed White leaders. And what about the White women? Why doesn’t Pakistan erect a statue of a fictional girl in a bikini? You could have her staring at her cell phone if you want. Nonwhite countries need cultural “diversity,” too, don’t they? Where are the statues of antiwar icon Jeanette Rankin, our greatest historical figure who identified as female?

It’s hard to tell how many Black female statues there are. A few years back, there were reports of them springing up in Roanoke, Virginia, and South Boston. There were already at least six statues of Harriet Tubman scattered across this country. I doubt that there are six statues of White women collectively in America. The most featured female on U.S. statues is the Indian squaw (yeah, I know- that’s probably “hate speech”) Sacagawea, who has an impressive sixteen of them. I guess statues are kind of like presidential candidates; only nonwhite women need apply. And yet White women can’t stop applauding. They may well like fat Black statues even more than transgender athletes. Roanoke, Virginia, which featured Virginia Dare, the first child born in America, vanished without a trace. The city still exists, and despite being on the edge of nearly all-White Appalachia, its only two statues are of Black figures.

The statue of Robert E. Lee that stood in the U.S. Capitol was scheduled to be replaced by a 2021 decree, in favor of a sixteen year old girl named Barbara Johns, who led a student walkout in Prince Edward County in 1951. It was something to do with racism, which they tell us was all the rage back then. One thing you know for sure is that Johns was Black. Virginia has a statue of Mary Todd Lincoln’s Black dressmaker Elizabeth Keckly, but not of Honest Abe’s overly emotional wife. So this explosion of Black female statues is not really new. They were already overrepresented. As one typically absurd “Woke” spokesperson put it, this is an effort to “confront preconceived notions of identity and representation.” It’s inevitable that one or more statues of Black women with suitably fat asses will pop up somewhere, to memorialize the fine art of twerking. We would not want future generations to forget that.

This well organized campaign comes on the heels of laughable propaganda that “Black women built this country.” What? I can’t think of any group that had less to do with building this country. Well, maybe Hispanics. After all, they weren’t here then. The very term had yet to be invented. Or Muslims. No, it was almost exclusively White males who built this country, backed by hearty and supportive frontier wives, mothers, and daughters. But it’s “racist” to even say that. And on top of that, there is the even more head shaking “Shut up! A Black woman is speaking!” This ridiculous expression is parroted most enthusiastically by self-loathing White women. This kind of insidious programming goes well beyond conventional Stockholm Syndrome. White women are not literally being held captive by Black women. This is just one of the reasons why I maintain at least 1/3 of White women today are clinically insane.

If they expand their horizons, there are plenty of worthy flesh and blood candidates to consider. Queen Latifah is certainly fat enough, and at least has displayed her lack of acting skills in a good number of IMDB credits. Stacy Abrams? She lost an election and is still complaining about it. And I don’t have to tell you that they don’t come any obesier in the Black community than her. Oprah? Imagine how excited the White women would be! Their “girlfriend,” who manipulated them to high ratings, and then dropped their racial and sexual comrade Hillary like a hot potato when Barack Obama declared for the presidency. It would take some skill to get the majesty and scope of Oprah’s giant behind just right, kind of like the Venus de Milo from a dark universe. And if you want to be inclusive of non-obese Black women, there’s Kamala. Perhaps Jasmine Crockett. And Michelle Obama can represent….well, you know.

If this isn’t some kind of fractured, black humor (no pun intended), then what is it? No one can seriously suggest that we should be putting up statues of random unknown figures, who have accomplished nothing to be remembered for. I don’t want statues of hot naked fictional women showing up everywhere, either, with or without cell phones. This is Identity Politics writ large, on the world stage. Black men are promoted incessantly by the same usual suspects, but it is the Black woman who reigns supreme in America 2.0. Who gets to rake in millions with little or no qualifications, while skewering the English language. I’m not sure which is worse; not being recognized for great accomplishments, or being credited undeservedly for imaginary achievements. Obviously, too many Black women fall into the later category. I can hear them screaming “Excuse me!” as they read this.

Why not honor a strong Black woman who has done noteworthy things? I’m talking about my friend, ex-congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. She wrote blurbs for me, and honored me by asking me to write a blurb for her provocatively titled book How the US Creates Sh*thole Countries. McKinney had the courage no one else in Congress did, grilling Donald Rumsfeld about the $2.3 trillion missing from the Pentagon. Oh well, DOGE will probably find that and much more. They are still planning to audit the Pentagon, right? McKinney also stated that members of Congress are asked to sign an oath of loyalty to Israel, which she refused to do. McKinney suddenly started looking a lot less Black, and was quickly ousted from Congress. She’s a truly open minded, insightful individual, my favorite politician. Imagine being relegated from serving in Congress to communicating with the likes of Thought Criminals like me.

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After a year and a half of genocidal atrocities, the editorial boards of numerous British press outlets have suddenly come out hard against Israel’s genocidal onslaught in Gaza.

The first drop of rain came last week from The Financial Times in a piece by the editorial board titled “The west’s shameful silence on Gaza,” which denounces the US and Europe for having “issued barely a word of condemnation” of their ally’s criminality, saying they “should be ashamed of their silence, and stop enabling Netanyahu to act with impunity.”

Then came The Economist with a piece titled “The war in Gaza must end,” which argues that Trump should pressure the Netanyahu regime for a ceasefire, saying that “The only people who benefit from continuing the war are Mr Netanyahu, who keeps his coalition intact, and his far-right allies, who dream of emptying Gaza and rebuilding Jewish settlements there.”

On Saturday came an editorial from The Independent titled “End the deafening silence on Gaza — it is time to speak up,” arguing that British PM Keir Starmer “should be ashamed that he said nothing, especially since Mr Netanyahu has now announced new plans to expand the already devastating bombardment of Gaza,” and saying that “It is time for the world to wake up to what is happening and to demand an end to the suffering of the Palestinians trapped in the enclave.”

On Sunday The Guardian editorial board joined in with a write-up titled “The Guardian view on Israel and Gaza: Trump can stop this horror. The alternative is unthinkable,” saying “The US president has the leverage to force through a ceasefire. If he does not, he will implicitly signal approval of what looks like a plan of total destruction.”

“What is this, if not genocidal?” The Guardian asks. “When will the US and its allies act to stop the horror, if not now?”

To be clear, these are editorials, not op-eds. This means that they are not the expression of one person’s opinion but the stated position of each outlet as a whole. We’ve been seeing the occasional op-ed which is critical of Israel’s actions throughout the Gaza holocaust in the mainstream western press, but to see the actual outlets come out aggressively denouncing Israel and its western backers all at once is a very new development.

Some longtime Israel supporters have unexpectedly begun changing their tune as individuals as well.

Conservative MP Mark Pritchard said at the House of Commons last week that he had supported Israel “at all costs” for decades, but said “I got it wrong” and publicly withdrew that support over Israel’s actions in Gaza.

“For many years — I’ve been in this House twenty years — I have supported Israel pretty much at all costs, quite frankly,” Pritchard said. “But today, I want to say that I got it wrong and I condemn Israel for what it is doing to the Palestinian people in Gaza and indeed in the West Bank, and I’d like to withdraw my support right now for the actions of Israel, what they are doing right now in Gaza.”

“I’m really concerned that this is a moment in history when people look back, where we’ve got it wrong as a country,” Pritchard added.

Pro-Israel pundit Shaiel Ben-Ephraim, who had been aggressively denouncing campus protesters and accusing Israel’s critics of “blood libel” throughout the Gaza holocaust, has now come out and publicly admitted that Israel is committing a genocide which must be opposed.

“It took me a long time to get to this point, but it’s time to face it. Israel is committing genocide in Gaza,” Ephraim tweeted recently. “Between the indiscriminate bombing of hospitals, starvation of the population, plans for ethnic cleansing, slaughter of aid workers and cover ups, there is no escaping it. Israel is trying to eradicate the Palestinian people. We can’t stop it unless we admit it.”

It is odd that it has taken all these people a year and a half to get to this point. I myself have a much lower tolerance for genocide and the mass murder of children. If you’ve been riding the genocide train for nineteen months, it looks a bit weird to suddenly start screaming about how terrible it is and demanding to hit the brakes all of a sudden.

These people have not suddenly evolved a conscience, they’re just smelling what’s in the wind. Once the consensus shifts past a certain point there’s naturally going to be a mad rush to avoid being among the last to stand against it, because you know you’ll be wearing that mark for the rest of your life in public after history has had a clear look at what you did.

This is after all coming at a time when the Trump administration is beginning to rub Netanyahu’s fur the wrong way, recently prompting the Israeli prime minister to say “I think we’ll have to detox from US security assistance” when Washington went over Tel Aviv’s head and negotiated directly with Hamas to secure the release of an American hostage. The US is reportedly leaving Israel out of more and more of its negotiations on international affairs in places like Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. Something is changing.

So if you’re still supporting Israel after all this time, my advice to you is to make a change while you still can. There’s still time to be the first among scoundrels in the mad rat race to avoid being the last to start acting like you always opposed the Gaza holocaust.

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The post Multiple Western Press Outlets Have Suddenly Pivoted Hard Against Israel appeared first on LewRockwell.

Prominent academic and author Dr Michel Chossudovsky warned that the so-called war on terrorism is a front to propagate America’s global hegemony and create a New World Order.

Dr Chossudovsky said terrorism is made in the US and that terrorists are not the product of the Muslim world.

According to him, the US global war on terrorism was used to enact anti-terrorism laws that demonised Muslims in the Western world and created Islamophobia.

Elaborating on his argument, Dr Chossudovsky said that NATO was responsible for recruiting members of the Islamic state while Israel is funding “global jihad elements inside Syria”.

Dr Chossudovsky, who is also the founder of the Centre for Research and Globalisation, further emphasised that the global war on terrorism is a fabrication, a big lie and a crime against humanity.

Echoing Dr Chossudovsky’s arguments, Malaysia’s prominent political scientist, Islamic reformist and activist Dr Chandra Muzaffar said that the US has always manipulated religion to further its global hegemony on sovereign states.

The original source of this article is Perdana Global Peace Foundation and Global Research.

The post Terrorism Is ‘Made in the USA’. The ‘Global War on Terrorism’ Is a Fabrication, a Big Lie appeared first on LewRockwell.

Trump is about to be placed into a dilemma due to his unwillingness or inability to coerce Ukraine into Russia’s demanded concessions.

The US’ mediation between Russia and Ukraine captivated the world due to the hopes that many observers had of it leading to a breakthrough, but expectations have since been tempered, including on the American side as evidenced by the toughening of its negotiating stance towards Russia. The latest developments saw Ukraine and the West demand Russia’s compliance with an unconditional ceasefire, to which Putin reacted by offering the unconditional resumption of bilateral talks with Ukraine instead.

Zelensky’s response was to declare that he’ll visit Istanbul on Thursday, the place and day that Putin suggested for resuming bilateral talks, though it’s unclear whether the Russian leader will go. The spring 2022 peace process that Putin mentioned in his video address early Sunday morning only involved their delegations, not direct talks between their presidents, plus Putin considers Zelensky to be illegitimate now. He’s also unlikely to meet him unless Zelensky agrees to significant concessions ahead of time.

Therein lies the problem because Zelensky refuses to budge on Putin’s demands that Ukraine restore its constitutional neutrality, demilitarize, denazify, and cede the disputed territories, and Trump won’t coerce him into doing so either. The only outcome from the US’ mediation efforts thus far has been talk of a strategic partnership with Russia, likely built upon energy and rare earth cooperation, that’s it. From Russia’s perspective, it looks like the US wants to buy it off, not resolve the core issues of this conflict.

The US is the only country with leverage over Russia and Ukraine that could be wielded to influence them into compromising as part of a grand deal, something that other potential mediators like China and Turkiye lack, yet its approach has been uneven. The US is threatening Russia with more sanctions and possibly even more military aid to Ukraine, while all that Ukraine is threatened with is the US walking away from the conflict, but it just greenlit a new missile package so that might just be a bluff.

If the US doesn’t soon correct its approach to evenly pressure Russia and Ukraine, and seeing as how no other country is capable of wielding leverage over both to influence them into compromising, then third-party mediation will have reached its limits. In that event, an escalation might be inevitable, either due to Russia initiating it through the potential expansion of its ground campaign into new regions and/or the US defiantly doubling down in support of Ukraine if Trump blames Putin for the peace talks’ collapse.

Putin hasn’t signaled that he’s willing to freeze the conflict and thus tacitly drop all his other demands, which could also create space for the Europeans to possibly deploy uniformed troops to Ukraine during an unconditional ceasefire, so he’s bound to get on Trump’s bad side unless something changes. If Trump “escalates to de-escalate” on these terms, then he risks a hot war with Russia, while walking away could make him responsible for one of the West’s worst geopolitical defeats if Russia then steamrolls Ukraine.

Trump is about to be placed into this dilemma due to his unwillingness or inability to coerce Ukraine into Russia’s demanded concessions. It would be better for him to make a clean break from this conflict in that case than to escalate US involvement, but the minerals deal and subsequent weapons packages suggest that he’s more likely to double down. He’d then ruin his desired legacy as a peacemaker, however, and undermine his planned “Pivot (back) to Asia” for more muscularly containing China.

This article was originally published on Andrew Korybko’s Newsletter.

The post Third-Party Mediation Between Russia & Ukraine Is Approaching Its Limits appeared first on LewRockwell.

It might be all over except the shouting. We are talking about the last chance to meaningfully curtail the nation’s headlong plunge into fiscal disaster. Since the Dems are hideously obtuse and feckless on the fiscal front, the only remaining hope was that the GOP would finally screw-up the courage to take sweeping bites out of Federal spending and borrowing in the process of enacting the Donald’s “one big beautiful” reconciliation bill.

But it’s now clear that won’t happen, either. Not even remotely.

That’s because over the weekend the House GOP even threw in the towel on serious Medicaid cuts. Yet Medicaid was the site of the last entitlement stand, so to speak, given that Social Security, Veterans and Medicare had already been given a hall pass by the Donald and the GOP congressional leadership.

So now a real red line has been crossed. That is to say, if the GOP is unwilling to rollback Medicaid to even its 2008 pre-ObamaCare level, then the white flag of fiscal surrender might as well be hoisted.

Indeed, the fiscal math is definitive. When you add defense and net interest to the entitlements exempted from the budgetary knife by the Trumpified GOP the result is that nearly three-fourths of the Federal budget has been ring-fenced as “sacred cows”.

Moreover, in the case of the defense budget Trump is actually seeking a 13% increase to the already vastly bloated level of baseline spending in order to achieve the first ever $1.0 trillion annual DOD budget for FY 2026. That’s twice or $500 billion more than would be needed for a true America First national security policy—based on $75 billion per year for an invincible strategic nuclear deterrent and a couple hundred billion more for an impenetrable conventional defense of the America’s shorelines and airspace. All the rest of that great swamp of waste known as the Pentagon budget goes for standing up a Global

Empire and propping up dozens of so-called allies abroad, which we do not need in order to defend the homeland in this day and age of high tech weaponry.

In any event, if you examine baseline spending for the first five columns in the table below—defense, the big entitlements and net interest—-which we have summed as “Sacred Cows” in the sixth column, the total off-limits budget components amount to $65.4 trillion over the next decade. That’s fully 73% projected baseline spending of $89.3 trillion during the next 10 years.

Moreover, if you move over to the next two columns in the table for Medicaid and Food Stamps/Nutrition programs, respectively, they add another $10 trillion to baseline spending. At this point in the Congressional proceedings, however, we can see honest cuts of no more than $300 billion for Medicaid (see below) and $200 billion for Food Stamps/Nutrition.

Such stingy savings figures would amount to only a 5% cut in these two giant welfare programs. Yet, as a political matter, slashing these programs by five times more—say $2.5 trillion over the next decade—should be a piece of cake for the GOP. After all, precious few food stamp/Medicaid recipients even vote, to saying nothing of voting for Republicans.

So when we said it’s all over except the shouting, we were not indulging in hyperbole. It’s hard core fiscal math: When you get over to the “N’aid” (nutrition programs) column of the table (8th column) you have encompassed 84% of the entire Federal budget and $75 trillion of spending over the next decade. Yet if the GOP manages to come up with even the aforementioned $500 billion of Medicaid/Foods Stamps savings in their current Reconciliation bill mark-up process we’d be pleasantly surprised.

That is to say, the so-called conservative party—the only hope left—can apparently manage to come up with savings of just 0.6% of built-in spending for the big components of the Federal budget. Looking $75 trillion of spending square in the face as they craft the Trump economic plan, the GOP is whiffing entirely, and pathetically so.

Never mind, of course, that these cats never stop giving speeches about runaway Federal spending and decrying the the soaring public debt. These ills they are pleased to blame on the “Joe Biden” entity and the Big Spending Dems.

So what a joke. After all, the built-in baseline deficit for the next decade is nearly $22 trillion, given that baseline spending will total $89.3 trillion, whereas revenues are estimated by CBO at just $67.5 billion.

Accordingly, if the GOP majorities blow on defense, veterans and border control increases the pitiful $500 billion savings from entitlements for poor people now pending, the public debt will hit nearly $58 trillion by 2035 or 135% of GDP.

In turn, even at today’s blended average yield on the public debt of 4.3%, annual interest expense at the end of the 10-year window would be a staggering $2.5 trillion per year!

Baseline Federal Budget Outlays, FY 2026–2035 ($Billions)

And yet and yet. The CBO revenue baseline assumes all of the 2017 Trump tax cuts are allowed to expire, thereby adding upwards of $5 trillion relative to the tax code in effect during FY 2025. In fact, however, the Trumpified GOP is determined come hell or high war to extend the 2017 tax cuts for another decade. So here is the latest estimates of the revenue cost of the tax bill pending in the House Ways and Means Committee. It would actually reduce the CBO revenue baseline by in excess of $5 trillion over FY 2026-2035 or to barely $62 trillion—resulting in Uncle Sam borrowing 30 centson every dollar spent.

The crucial point to note based on the most recent estimates by the good folks the Committee for a Responsible Budget (sic) is that a pure mechanical extension of the 2017 tax act (TCJA) would cost a net of $3.45 trillion over the decade. So the GOP tax writers have already added more than $1.5 trillion to the revenue cost—and that’s before a single dime of revenue loss from cutting taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security, as the Donald promised during the campaign.

Still, there is no mystery as to the difference between the first column and the second column of the table below. Aside from some slightly more generous rate cuts and other personal income tax items, the big change is on the so-called “payfor” line, which is dominated by the current SALT cap (deductibility of state and local taxes) of $10,000 for joint filers. Extending the current SALT caps would generate a revenue offset of $1.26 trillion over the 10-year period, thereby reducing the net cost of extending the tax rate cuts (37.0% top rate versus 39.6%), child credit increases from $1,000 to $2,000 and the 22% business income pass-thru deduction.

Again, the GOP delegations in the high tax states like New York and California have threatened to fall on the sword if the SALT cap is not raised dramatically. The current working target, therefore, is $62,000 for single filers and $124,000 for joint filers. Alas, that would make it easier for Blue State legislatures to keep income taxes sky high, but would also reduce the revenue offset by nearly $750 billion to just $500 billion over the decade. That retreat, in turn, accounts for the preponderant share of the shrinkage in the “line itemized and other deductions” line of the chart below.

So, there is no surprise that the Blue State Republicans are getting their way. An initial proposal to raise the cap on joint filers to $30,000 was shot down in no uncertain terms. And with a one-vote margin the House, every caucus of squeaky wheels is getting to name the price of their votes.

“It’s not just insulting—it risks derailing President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill,” Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.), Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) and Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) wrote in a statement.

Indeed, the squeaky wheel factions and caucuses are the reason there are no meaningful spending cut, either, and most especially with respect to the hideously bloated, out-of-control Medicaid program. Or as the GOP chairman of the House committee handling the bill admitted,

“I think that the people who will have the most difficult time with it would be that it doesn’t go far enough,” Guthrie said in an office boardroom lined with the committee’s policy staffers. “We’re going to go as far as we can go to get 218 votes.”

To be sure, House Republicans are largely on board with imposing work requirements on able-bodied Medicaid recipients, but that would only save $190 billion over 10-years because the GOP work requirements are loophole ridden. Likewise, there is broad support for barring those who entered the country without authorization, but it will be a stretch and then some to save another $100 billion from this restriction because Medicaid expenditures for illegal aliens are not nearly what the hype suggests.

By the same token, what would save material Medicaid dollars is going back to the lower Federal matching rates (see below) which prevailed before ObamaCare and the Trump-COVID bailouts of 2020. But as Speaker Johnson told reporters recently a proposal to directly reduce the enhanced federal match for states that expanded Medicaid, known as the Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (FMAP), was off the table.

Likewise, a common sense proposal to include per capita caps on Medicaid expansion enrollees (i.e. ObamaCare) is another hard “no” among GOP RINOs. So the Speaker told reporters this week “I think we’re ruling that out.”

If this sound like the squeaky wheels are ruling the roost, that’s exactly the case. In fact, Congressman Mike Lawler is the very poster boy. When he is not carrying water for Netanyahu he is running for governor of New York State. And as it happens, New York state gets $45 billion per year of matching payments for Medicaid from Uncle Sam, but only $27 billion of this is from the traditional Federal matching rate. The balance is owing to the above mentioned FMAP expansions from ObamaCare and the pandemic add-ons.

“I’ve said very clearly, I do not support any change to FMAP, I don’t support per capita caps,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) said this week, even as he was also insisting that any revenue offsets from a meaningful SALT cap be eliminated from the tax portion of the bill, as described above.

For want of doubt, however, here is what Lawler and the RINO faction of the House GOP are defending. That is to say, an explosive growth of Medicaid spending per poor person in the US that has doubled in constant dollars—from $11,329 per capita in 2000 to $24,837 per capita in 2024.

Medicaid Spending and Poverty Population (2000–2024)

As shown above, total medicaid spending has increased by 340% since the year 2ooo— from $207 billion per year to $914 billion in 2024. However, during the same 24-year interval the poverty population grew by only 16%, rising from 31.6 million at the turn of the century to 36.8 million in 2024.

Accordingly, Medicaid spending per poor person has soared. The $6,547 per capita figure in 2000 was actually $24,837 in 2024. And as indicated above, even when you adjust for inflation, constant dollar Medicaid spending per poor person (2024$) has risen by nearly 120% since 2000.

There is no mystery as to why we have 18% more poor people in the US over the last quarter century, even though real Medicaid spending per poor person has more than doubled. To wit, the UniParty spenders in Washington has simply opened the Medicaid flood-gates to a larger and larger share of the US population, reaching far beyond the poverty population.

Thus, in the year 2000 there were 39.6 million Medicaid recipients and constant dollar Medicaid spending (2024$) was $358 billion. Fast forward to FY 2024, however, after the huge ObamaCare expansion and then the Trump-expansion during the 2020 pandemic free-stuff blow-out, and constant dollar spending was 2.6X higher at $914 billion.

As is evident from the table, however, a good share of that enormous real dollar gain was owing to the soaring Medicaid enrollments, which reached 79 million in 2024. That is to say, whereas 14% of the US population was on Medicaid in the year 2000 that figure now stands at nearly 24%.

So the question recurs: Why is the Congressional GOP in the year 2025 hesitant to sharply rollback Medicaid eligibility and spending when as recently as the turn of the century Medicaid coverage level of about 40 million was barely half of today’s nearly 80 million. Yet the Bill Clinton Dems then in power were not screaming to high heaven that needy people were being left out in the cold.

In fact, when you combine the Medicaid population with Medicare and the ObamaCare insurance subsidy population and eliminate the dual and triple eligibles, the combined enrollment in government-funded medical insurance programs is 141 million. That’s 41% of the entire US population.

So the fact is, the House reconciliation bill cut of maybe $300 billion in Medicaid is occurring in a context in which nearly half of the US population is already in a socialist medical care pool. If the GOP can’t find its way clear to even a tiny $300 billion 10-year cut in that context, they should literally throw-in the towel on fiscal restraint. They would be tantamount to useless.

Total Federal/State Medicaid Spending and Recipients, 2000–2024

For want of doubt, here is a table showing the impact of merely capping Federal reimbursement at the 57% rate that prevailed under Bill Clinton’s auspices as recent as the year 2000. It shows that the Federal share of Medicaid spending could be cut by $900 billion over the period or three times more than is likely to happen—just by going back to the Clinton standard for Medicaid cost-sharing with the states.

Unfortunately, the RINO’s in the GOP House and Senate caucuses have already ixnayed any material roll-back in the above documented explosion of Medicaid enrollments and spending.

Table: Medicaid Spending Projections (FY2026–2035)

Needless to say, even as the GOP slouches toward adding $5 trillion to the $22 trillion of baseline deficits already built-in for the next decade, the Washington spending machine rolls on—the DOGE boys to the contrary not withstanding. In fact, spending during FY 2025 through the first six months of the fiscal year is already running 10% above last year’s Biden level.

As a result, the 12-month rolling deficit total is back above the $2 trillion level, and will be headed sharply higher if the GOP Congressional majorities can manage to confect a big beautiful reconciliation bill that buries the nation in upwards of $30 trillion of additional public debt over the decade ahead.

The Donald, of course, has promised a new Golden Age of Prosperity. But based on what the Trumpified GOP is now cooking up we are more likely to get a Fiscal Armageddon like never before.

Reprinted with permission from David Stockton’s Contra Corner.

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From the Tom Woods Letter:

We actually had some very good news at the federal level the other day, but it’s been almost completely buried.

You may be familiar with a book called Three Felonies a Day, by Harvey Silverglate. The author’s point: federal criminal law, extending into the Code of Federal Regulations, has become so extensive, abstruse, and serpentine that we essentially violate some aspect of it on a regular basis without even knowing it.

This, in turn, affords the feds broad scope to harass ordinary people, since we’re all guilty of something.

It’s the classic case of anarcho-tyranny: actual criminals are treated with kid gloves, but normal people have the book thrown at them.

Well, an executive order was just issued called “Fighting Overcriminalization in Federal Regulations.”

(For anyone fearful of the very words “executive order,” I remind you that an order directing federal agencies to do certain things is within the president’s constitutional authority.)

Here’s how Alexandria Brown described it on X:

What does this do? The most important part is that every agency has 365 days to list out all the regulations that have a criminal penalty and then that report has to be made public. Right now, there is literally no one on this planet that knows this information. No one.

That report must be made public and must be updated annually.

All future regulations have to state criminal offenses clearly. Mens rea is back on the menu! The default will be to require mens rea. What that means in English is that you have to know you are committing a crime; strict liability is highly disfavored.

Each agency has 45 days to publish guidance on how criminally liable regulatory offenses will be handled. Then clarification that this doesn’t apply to immigration regulations and generic catch-all language.

This is everything I have ever wanted on this topic. Everything. I never ever ever, not in the history of ever, thought that there would be a requirement for a report from each agency mandating that the regulations with criminal liability be listed, let alone that it would be public.

The shift to pursue civil over criminal first is, obviously, significant. See re: the issue of people fighting over property lines with the US government who all of a sudden were being charged with major federal felonies.

And then there are the mens rea requirements. Mens rea means guilty mind. It is the doctrine that you have to have criminal intent to be charged with a crime. Let’s say you grab a coat off a rack. If you thought it was your coat, that’s not theft, that’s a mistake.

Strict liability means if you take the coat, you’re guilty no matter what. Substantial portions of regulations with criminal penalties attached are strict liability. Did you do the action? You are criminally liable, even if you did not know the regulation existed and you had no criminal intent.

This EO is tremendously important and will have direct, and hopefully immediate, effect on more or less everyone in America. And did you hear anything about it? Anything at all?

This is one of my areas of keen interest and I missed this. This should be being shouted from the mountaintops as to how it is restoring the rights of Americans to know when they will be criminally charged, for what, and that you can’t be held criminally liable for a mistake.

This is unambiguously good news, and to be welcomed.

Because, as I think you know, we are dealing with people who do not exactly have your welfare at heart.

So it makes sense to me why people might be very particular about protecting their privacy against such people, and against the corporate lackeys who do their bidding.

As I mentioned yesterday, it may sound crazy, but we’ve learned that it isn’t a “conspiracy theory” to say the NSA has a way it can spy on you in your own home.

Thankfully, good technology is getting ahead of the bad technology that makes all  the invasiveness possible, and my old friend Glenn Meder, who’s spoken at two of my conferences on this very topic, is going to walk you through how to use the good to shut out the bad.

He’s doing a live presentation today that people love, in which he shares five secrets to outsmart surveillance (including the solution to that creepy NSA thing) to shield your online life from prying eyes.

https://www.tomwoods.com/privacy

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. . . for interviewing on his podcast an Israeli historian who voiced disapproval of the genocide being perpetrated by the Israeli and U.S. governments in Gaza.

The post Glenn Loury Fired from the Manhattan Institute . . . appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Saleh Abdullah.  

John Miltimore

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Tim McGraw wrote:

Pearly Gates

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Click Here:

Louis Conte

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Thanks, Patrick Foy 

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Click Here:

Republic Broadcasting Network » When you hear “Real ID,” think “Papers, please” 

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Writes Steven Wallace:

Hi Lew,

Thank you for the article titled, The War Against Religious Freedom. Very thought provoking!

All individuals, here in Idaho, are statutorily required to report child abuse to the prevailing authority or jurisdiction in which the abuse is taking place with a very narrow exception for certain clergy. Obviously, there is a moral imperative to do something positive to alleviate a bad situation of which we become aware, but the statutory requirement presents a moral dilemma for us all. Often is the case when an abused child is removed from parental control the child then becomes abused by the state agency charged with the child’s care and placement. Child Protective Service is notorious for losing track of these children and many of them wind up being trafficked or placed with people who’ve not been carefully vetted. What is a person to do in such a dilemma? Even with stupid laws there are practical considerations in weighing what course of action to take in the context of there being a higher law than man’s law in which we may be held to account for.

The state, as an institution, isn’t the only abuser of children. Religious institutions, protestant or catholic, all have a sordid history of abusing children under the veil of authority. I can’t help but think that an abuser of children going to confession knows the confidential and incriminating nature of the information he is giving a priest during confession could be used by that priest, if they are so inclined, to satisfy their own deviant inclinations and setting up a co-dependent relationship with the one doing the confessing. In my view the question is this, does absolution related to confession contribute positively or negatively to the child abuse dilemma? If the law requiring priests to report child abuse discourages confessions and the wannabe confessor can’t obtain absolution through the confessional process, might that inspire one, with a genuine conscience, to quit the behavior that was driving the need for confession in the first place?

I’m not Catholic so the sacrament issue associated with this law, from my perspective, is minuscule in comparison to the unchecked abuse of children by the church or the state. Priests and other individuals statutorily required to make this report have a moral dilemma as the cure could be as bad as the dis-ease. The upside, however, is those not trusting the priests or clergy because of this law may have to put on their big boy pants and become more personally responsible for their behavior to maintain a clear conscience. This would be a form of spiritual decentralization in the removal of earthbound intermediaries (men of the cloth, whether church or state) that have proved themselves to be less than trustworthy in many cases. Fewer children of parents, with a conscience, would be abused. I would submit that confessions by those seeking absolution, without a repentant heart, are null and void in the spiritual realm and represents an attitude and dogma not flattering to any religious institution. When dogma becomes superior to morality, it’s game over in the spiritual realm.

Thanks again,

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Thanks, Saleh Abdullah. 

The Washington Post

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