Category: Trumpism

Cornerstone, Dislodged?

Eco-Crap, Good Stuff, Trumpism

Looks like the Trumpistas are aiming their harpoons at another whale:

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin said that the agency will review the agency’s endangerment finding — the “holy grail of the climate change religion” that has created over a trillion dollars in regulatory impact.

Wut dat?  Breitbart explains:

The finding stated that greenhouse gas emissions are an alleged threat to public health and welfare.

And when you look at the data which supposedly supports the finding, it, like most other “environmental” data, is a bunch of codswallop.

The EPA proceeded in an unorthodox manner. Slicing and dicing the language of the statute, it made an “endangerment finding” totally separate from any actual rulemaking-setting standards for emissions from cars. EPA argued it had the authority to do this because Congress didn’t specifically forbid it from taking this approach. By taking this approach, the endangerment finding intentionally ignored costs of regulations that EPA knew would follow from the finding — and indeed ignored any other policy impacts of those regulations.

Results (that you or I would care about)?

Diana Furchtgott-Roth, the director of the Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment at the Heritage Foundation, said that the EPA regulations that arose from the endangerment finding have contributed to automobile prices to rise from $23,000 in 2009 to nearly $50,000 now.

The EPA has relied on the endangerment finding for seven vehicle regulations that reportedly have an aggregate cost of more than one trillion dollars, according to the agency’s own regulatory impact analyses. 

We all knew that enviro-bullshit was behind so much of the price increases — that, and the raft of “safety” regulations that accompanied them.

My message to Sec. Lee Zeldin:

Get rid of that stuff.

Me, I’d like to see the FedGov refund some of that trillion-dollar price increase to everyone who bought cars and trucks — internal-combustion-driven cars and trucks, that is — from 2009 until today.

Why?  Because it was taken from these buyers by government malfeasance.

And if our current government wants to “claw back” some of that money from the people and organizations who instigated this swindle, that would be fine, too.

Preparing For The Better

Business, Economics, Trumpism

We always talk about “preparing for the worst”, but there’s an equally-compelling reason to prepare for the opposite.  Here’s a good example of this.

I see that POTUS has increased the logging quota on federal lands by 25%, to the consternation of the Usual Idiots.  Ignoring their wails (which is good advice anyway), his reasoning is sound:

The new order serves two purposes. One is to control fires. President Donald Trump said in January that the Los Angeles wildfires were partly caused by California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s refusal to clear brush and dead trees.

The other purpose, though unstated, is likely to increase the supply of lumber and head off potential price increases due to tariffs on Canadian lumber, which could have a cascading effect on the American construction industry.

The second reason is actually the better one.  Of course we should not allow ourselves to be held hostage by the Canucks over timber — and in any event, the more self-sufficient a nation is, the better — but the very last sentence is equally telling.

You see, with Treasury yields falling (meaning that U.S. debt is being bought out — a Good Thing), what will follow the drop in yields is a drop in interest rates, which means that housing will become more affordable.  And the construction industry cannot afford to be choked of its timber supply if building costs are to be contained.

As it is, construction companies face potentially higher labor costs because all the cheap (illegal, lest we forget) laborers are being deported — meaning more citizens working ergo more taxes being paid as opposed to untaxed dollars just being sent south of the border — so if the builders get cheaper and more-plentiful timber supplies, everyone wins.

I don’t see too many downsides to this — it’s a “two (actually three) birds with one stone” scenario — but this is after all a fairly superficial overview because I don’t claim too much expertise in this area to dig more.  Am I missing something?

Keeping Up

Trumpism

I am a man of advanced years and much-reduced mental- and physical capacity thereby, so I’m having trouble dealing with all the MAGA / Trumpist / Musk-y goodness these days.  Quite apart from Saturday’s posts, there’s this:

Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Sec. Scott Turner has announced the end of Federal Housing Administration (FHA)-insured mortgages for any “non-permanent residents,” effectively eliminating illegal aliens’ access to the taxpayer-funded program.

…and this:

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is slashing 10,000 full-time employees as part of its effort to trim fat and reorient the department around Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Health Again” (MAHA) agenda.

“We aren’t just reducing bureaucratic sprawl. We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic,” said HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. “This Department will do more — a lot more — at a lower cost to the taxpayer.”

…not to mention this:

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that as many as 300 foreign students have had their visas revoked due to President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Rubio confirmed the number of revoked visas when speaking at a press conference in Guyana.

“Maybe more, it might be more than 300 at this point,” Rubio said. “We do it every day. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa.”

Okay, let’s not let my enfeebled state and stamina be a hindrance to all this most excellent and long-overdue Chainsaw Activity.

Wasted Money

Bureaucracy, Foreign Affairs, Good Stuff, Trumpism

I see that the Department of Labor, not to be outdone by other federal departments in Extreme Chainsaw Activity, has done The Right Thing:

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has canceled nearly $600 million in grants to foreign countries in another round of major funding cuts.

John Clark, a DOL official appointed by President Donald Trump, directed the department’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) to axe all 69 of its active grant programs on Wednesday due to a “lack of alignment with agency priorities and national interest.”

Quite what the Department of Labor was doing in giving money to furriners in the first place… well, we all know the answer to that one.  [humming the tune to “The Internationale”]

And seeing as the U.S. is no longer part of the international socialist collective — or at least we’re heading in that direction, at long last — there’s no reason for us to fund the wellbeing of foreign workers anyway.

One particular item did catch my attention, though:

“$3 million for ‘safe and inclusive work environments’ in Lesotho”

I’ve been to Lesotho several times, know the place quite well in fact, and for three million bucks you could probably buy the country’s entire industrial infrastructure, pay the workers a fat cash bonus and still have some money left over to  gamble  invest in a couple of their casinos.

Of “$3 million to ‘enhance social security access and worker protections for internal migrant workers’ in Bangladesh”, we will not speak.  (It’s a Muslim country;  let the fucking Arabs pay for it.)

Similar arguments can be made for all the other useless items.  Read the article for the full flavor of the wastage, and if you have specific knowledge of the circumstances of any of them, feel free to comment.

In the meantime:

And About Damn Time, Too

Good Stuff, Illegal immigrants, Trumpism

Getting our act together:

President Donald Trump’s administration is eliminating taxpayer-funded housing program benefits going to illegal aliens.

This week, Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Scott Turner and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem announced the “American Housing Programs for American Citizens” memorandum which will prevent taxpayer money from being used to aid illegal aliens.

“American tax dollars should be used for the benefit of American citizens, especially when it comes to an issue as pressing as our nation’s housing crisis,” Turner said in a statement:

This new agreement will leverage resources, including technology and personnel, to ensure the American people are the only priority when it comes to public housing. We will continue to work closely with DHS to maximize our resources and put American citizens first.

Yup.

  • For illegal aliens:  tent cities and return tickets;
  • U.S. citizens in truly parlous circumstances:  subsidized housing.

Taxpayer money for our own, not for strangers.

About Those Tariffs…

Business, Numbers & Statistics, Trumpism

…from a guy who’s had many years’ experience in the field:

“The tariffs are only in the cost of goods. They’re not on the retail price. So you put a tariff on the cost of the goods of 20%, it doesn’t mean the retail price goes up by 20%, not unless you can buy everything at a cost somewhere. Additionally, when they put tariffs on toys back in the first Trump administration, studies show 87% of the increase was borne by the Chinese manufacturers. China has a huge toy industry and they have everything to gain and nothing to lose by keeping the sale rather than have it moved to America, like a lot of it will do. Additionally, there are substitute products, you know, products that you can sell that are made in the U.S. instead of differences, promote those. And then, of course, there will be transfers, some sales to the U.S.”

“I think people are hysterical. It’s not nearly the magnitude of what they’re talking about.”

Yeah, of course.  Internet economists, mostly relying on journalists’ “expertise” for their prognoses… what could possibly go wrong?

Listen to the guys with experience.  Nine times out of ten, that experience will beat academic theory like an old carpet.