JK22

Det er fordi denne straffetollen hendt uten begrunnelse og rammet bredt mens EU har tollmur mot bestemte varer man mente utgjør en trussel pga. ufair markedsfordeler som statsstøtte og subsidiering, dermed finnes det en legal begrunnelse. Da Biden innført 100 % tollmur mot kinesiske elbiler var det ikke bare for å beskytte den amerikanske bilindustrien, men også for å avverge digital spionasje gjennom de digitale systemene i disse elbiler som aktuelt har computerne i stadig kontakt med kinesiske servere. Skal du ha tollmur, må du ha en begrunnelse som gjør det mulig å forsvare dette. Mange reagert mot Trump fordi simpelt man ikke skjønt noe som helst omkring hans straffetoll som nå utsettes, migrasjon og narkosmugling i virkeligheten er bare meningsløs snakk og idiotisk tull fordi dette er noe som økonomiske straffemidler ikke har noe som helst virkning på, da dette er snakk om samarbeid, kriminalbekjempelse og legale tiltak omkring utnyttelse av illegale migranter som rusmisbruk.

Enig, dessuten har jeg sett dette før; under de amerikansk-kinesiske handelssamtalene oppførte Trump seg som en Jekyll/Hyde faktor som stadig uventet slo til med knyttneve så både kineserne, markedet og verden ble overrasket og rystet - inntil Xi fikk nok. Etter å ha blitt informert om at den amerikanske forhandlingsleder Lighthizer ikke var kjent med kinesisk væremåte instruerte ham sine forhandlerne om å fortsette inntil man har et avtalekast klar, for deretter å rive ut den ene biten etter den andre mens amerikanerne som ikke var kjent med kinesisk forhandlingskultur, bare måpe på og så på. Dette var sluttstreken på Trumps forhåpninger om å søke en "deal" med de stolte og krenkede kineserne. Selv om tollsatsene utsettes, har det blitt gjort meget stor skade på USAs troverdighet, og Trump kan ha påkalt seg markedets raseri fordi hvis det er en ting markedskreftene kan eniges på, er at de vil ikke akseptere utpresning og maktmisbruk i utid når man verken var gitt tid, samtaletid eller legale virkningsmidler. Om Trump gjentar hans "strategi" på nytt, vil hans troverdighet tar skader og tilliten mot hans makt vil svekkes. Trump er ikke en forretningsmann som ikke evnet å forstå at mafioso metoder og idiotiske utfall ikke vil virke i det lange løpet i møte med pengesterke krefter som bare kan tvinges gjennom nasjonale og flernasjonale maktbruk på et legalt grunnlag.

Han har seg selv å takke, han hadde vendt hans kappe så mange ganger at han i slutten mistet all ryggrad og la Trump får alt han vil ha. Etter sist nytt kom det ut at USAid skal legges ned. Da er det på tid for de norske brukere av Tesla å se etter nye biler, for minst et par hundre millioner mennesker kommer til å miste all hjelp over hele verden. Og i det samme slaget har Trump mistet Afrika, som aldri kommer til å tilgi dette. Og; den utøvende makten kan ikke legge ned en organisasjon underlagt kongressens autoritet, for det vil være et massivt konstitusjonelt brudd som gjør 1789-konstitusjonen ugyldig.

Det tar tid og omfattende legal arbeid for å få det utkontrakterte tilbake til originallandet, bruk av tvang og handelskrig er destruktivt ved at det minner om Mugabes "jordreformpolitikk" i Zimbabwe som endt opp med å ruinere den inntektsbringende landbruksøkonomien, da tvang, ignoranse og konflikt fulgt til investorflukt, tap av ekspertise, korrupsjon og varige svekkede statsfinanser. Det som fikk disse multinasjonale selskapene til å flagge ut skyldes at det hadde blitt fjernet viktige reguleringer og lover som eksistert i "Vi kan"-æren i 1910-1975 da industriell selvforsyning, realøkonomisk overlevelse og stimuleringspolitikk var rådende i alle land inkludert USA og Norge. Noen hadde tatt bort gjerdeportene. Mange flyttet sin produksjon ikke bare fordi man ville ha mindre lønnskostnader, men også for å unngå statlig beskatning, granskningsmyndigheter som søke etter lovbrudd og korrupsjon - og statlige påbud. Meget mange valgt å flagge ut i 1990-årene da det kom miljøpåbud omkring grunnforurensning, smogreduksjon og redusering av utslippsforurensning. Det er hvorfor Kina i 1995-2010 var kjent som "Smogslandet fra helvete", man kunne fritt forurense helt uhindret. Man vil heller flagge ut enn å betale ekstra. Da Reagan "sluppet løs" de store amerikanske konserner, skulle det vise seg at de var langt mer interessant på å beholde profitten fremfor å dele, rikdomsakkumulasjonen kom utenfor kontroll. Og det ble verre da EF (før EU fra 1999) tillatt felleseuropeiske selskapsvirksomhet - som fulgt til et fusjonsgalskap hvor store konserner etablert seg som multinasjonale slik at man ikke trengte å forholde seg til lovene i det ene landet, som deretter kjøpt opp små selskaper, fusjonere seg med hverandre - da dette tidlig var forbudt - og bli mange ganger større. Monopoltilstander blir en naturlig konsekvens. Man hadde glemt en viktig lekse; for å ha fri konkurranse må man sørge for at rovkapitalistiske konsentrering ikke skal skje, og at småselskapene beskyttes. Det hendt ikke i USA, og senere EF, deretter EU/EØS. Fri konkurranse ble derimot snakk om sammensmeltning. Og denne sammensmeltningen enser ikke riksgrenser og topografiske grenser. Da frislippet kom i 1970-årene, hadde ingen sett for seg en slik utvikling. Selv da man hadde "laissez-faire" frihandel fram til 1914 var styremaktene meget knallhard på at selskapsvirksomheten skulle forbli under statlig oversikt og dermed tolererte ikke multinasjonale selskapsdannelser på frifot, da man helst vil ha datterselskap, lisensproduksjon og "egne" avdelinger - helt presist som kineserne selv forlange - Musk måtte ha datterselskap og only-kinesiske avdelinger for å bygge og selge Tesla biler. Den slags var vanlig. Helt til frislippet. Nå vil Trump sette dette frislippet i revers, men han trenger et lovverk, omfattende reformer og statlig innblanding - som er utenkelig for store deler av MAGA og de sterke libertarianske strømningene i USA, han vil heller bruke tvang og press der en stat trenges. Istedenfor å ha staten som en streng hjelper vil han ha staten som en utpresser og piskebruker. Hvilken er hvordan det kommer til å gå galt; han ønsker seg det altfor raskt i likhet med Mugabe.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/you-will-lose-jobs-canada-hits-back-against-trump-s-tariffs-as-trudeau-demands-us-boycott/ar-AA1yh9De?ocid=BingNewsVerp&cvid=0d5ddd316be745639cc82c3704c7974d&ei=45 Outgoing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced retaliatory tariffs of 25 percent on C$30 billion of US goods, with plans to potentially target an additional C$125 billion worth of American products following a public consultation period. The move comes in direct response to US President Donald Trump's executive order implementing 25 percent tariffs on Canadian imports. Trudeau revealed the counter-measures during a late-evening address from Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Saturday, marking a significant escalation in trade tensions between the two North American allies. The initial Canadian tariffs will take effect on Tuesday, while the additional measures could follow after a 21-day public comment period. In his address, Trudeau spoke directly to Americans, warning US jobs would now be put at risk. The outgoing Prime Minister said: "Tariffs against Canada will put your jobs at risk, potentially shutting down American auto assembly plants and other manufacturing facilities. "They will raise costs for you, including food at the grocery store and gas at the pump." He also referenced shared sacrifices from "the beaches of Normandy at the end of the Second World War to the alleyways of Kandahar, Afghanistan". The Prime Minister particularly emphasised Canada's support during the September 11, 2001 attacks, when the country provided refuge to stranded passengers and aircraft. "We were always there, standing with you, grieving with you," Trudeau said, adding that together the two nations had built "the most successful economic, military and security partnership the world has ever seen." The initial wave of Canadian tariffs will target a broad range of American consumer goods and materials. Ex-Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, who is seen as the frontrunner to replace Trudeau, echoed the Prime Minister's calls. He described President Trump as a "bully" and vowed retaliatory action. The trade war also comes after Trump appeared to jokingly push for Canada to become the 51st US state. Trudeau's measures will affect wine and bourbon, fruits and fruit juices including orange juice, as well as vegetables. Personal care items like perfume will face tariffs, alongside clothing and shoes. Major household items including appliances, furniture and sports equipment will also be impacted. Det er tydelig at kanadierne flest følt seg forrådt fordi de hadde i mange generasjoner et nært forhold med amerikanerne siden mellomkrigstiden - den emosjonelle dimensjonen av handelskrigen er langt større enn den finansielle eller økonomiske dimensjon. Det oppmuntres nå å kjøpe kanadisk istedenfor amerikansk, varer fra regioner og delstater hvor det var flertall for Trump er enten satt under 25 % toll eller i ferd med å fjernes fra butikkene og lagrene over hele landet, hvor provinsene på egenhånd kan bestemme hvilken merkevarer skulle fjernes. Mexico bruker den samme strategien med målrettede tollreisning og kjøpenekt. Det er tydelig at Trumps mål ikke er kanadierne eller meksikanerne, men amerikanerne selv. Han aktet å gjøre amerikanskeide vareproduksjon utenfor USA for dyrt for de amerikanske kundene og dermed tvinge flere tusen firmaer - deriblant mektige konserner som Ford - til å flytte sin produksjon "tilbake" til USA. Men Trump forstår ikke at lønnsold er for høy for industriarbeidere som sliter med lav høyutdanning, samtidig som det er for liten kjøpekraft for disse som dermed måtte kjøpe amerikansk fra utenlandet eller amerikansk med vitale komponenter fra andre land. Det tar tid, det tar mange år å bygge en bilfabrikk fra grunnen av, enda verre med utdaterte fabrikkanlegg som må rives. Dette forutser enorme ressurser som må mobiliseres. Trumps tollpolitikk er å tvinge tilbake den utkontrakterte produksjonen til USA, men utkontrakteringsøkonomien har pågått i førti år og hele det globale handelssystemet er bygd på dette prinsippet hvor landene samarbeidet om felles produksjon. Dette kan ikke løses med toll. Han overvurderte meget sterkt den amerikanske nasjonaløkonomien som riktignok er i vekst, men denne veksten er kunstig fordi amerikansk eksportandel går nedover som et resultat av den sterke dollaren og ledende handelsmaktenes politikk om å redusere deres handelsandel mot USA. USA importere mer enn før, omtrent 50 % av matfrukt er fra Mexico alene - bare to tredjedeler av stålbehovet i USA kan dekkes, resten måtte importeres - blant annet fra Canada - og mesteparten av sjeldne metaller som elektroniske komponenter og delvarer produseres ikke i USA, store deler er fra Kina, Japan og Taiwan. USA hadde prøvd å være selvforsynt som et modent samfunn i den siste delen av etterkrigstiden, men resultatene var elendig, mangel på velferd, mangel på statssubsidier som ofte håndteres galt, mangel på et fleksibelt marked og fordyrelsesutvikling - teknisk evolusjon koste mer og mer etter hvert som den avanseres - gjort at mange forsto i 1975 at USA måtte åpnes mot resten av verden i større grad enn tidlig. Dessverre er utkontraktering en utvei fremfor en løsning, istedenfor å konkurrere valgt man å flytte ut. Det skyldes at USA på mange måter hang for langt bak andre land, spesielt ved å tviholde på identitetssymbolske saker som mål, lov etc. - hvis USA hadde adoptert metersystemet ville amerikanerne ha kunne dominere hele verden i dag. Mange lover med forskjellige standarder for bil, tog og annet fulgt til store tilpasningsproblemer. Den amerikanske skipsbyggingen krasjet fordi idiotiske lover gjør det umulig å hente inn utenlandske ekspertise og sette inn skip mellom amerikanske havner. USA ville dominere det globale handelssystemet, men ville ikke ta skrittet inn i kjernen i dette systemet. Det er hvorfor alt kunne ha gått så galt, både utkontrakteringsøkonomi og Trumps vanviddsideer.

Denne idioten evnet ikke å innse at Canada er en føderasjon hvor provinsene er likestilt med de amerikanske delstater slik at det vil bli ti flere delstater - det vil da bli seksti delstater. Hele det kanadiske folket vil aldri akseptere en slik nedgradering og vil dermed slåss; det er en sterk antiamerikanisme på gang samtidig som MAGA-tilhengerne ser ut til å leke med ideen om militærmakt. Det er 150,000 menn med militærstrening i Canada, som kan utvides med flere hundretusener ved en krigsmobilisering - og NATO vil bli involvert, slik at det kan ende med at den nordatlantiske forsvarsalliansen vil forsvinne som et resultat, ettersom Storbritannia og Frankrike som har meget sentrale interesser i Canada, ikke vil tolerere en slik ekspandering. Det vil bli slutten på Vesten.

Vi må få til noe mot Musk; det klokeste vi kan gjøre i EU er å slutte med å kjøpe tjenester og varer fra Musk, alle SpaceX kontrakter burde ligges på is - jeg ser på deg, Støre - og all Tesla salg må stanses, alle Tesla fabrikker må stenges med øyeblikkelig virkning. Den sterke støtten gjennom sosiale medier til AfD og andre høyreekstremistiske bevegelser er i ferd med å bli meget alvorlig for oss alle som ikke vil se en retur av nazismen. Trump støtter Musk, det gjør at det vil komme meget sterke konsekvenser på dette, spesielt ettersom han vil ikke ense eksistensen av EU, som stort sett ignoreres. Men som med Orban som skifte fort om fra Putin til Trump er det tydelig at de inkompetente og stupide politikerne i samtidige europeiske land er ikke i stand til å opptre samlet og besluttsomt som respons. Uten synlige lederskikkelser, som sjeldent kom til fordi disse motarbeides av middelmådige partimedlemmer som sett med Pistorus i Tyskland, er disse ikke i stand til å være annet enn kranglende kokker som lager søl.

But career prosecutors who have served under presidents of both parties say Martin is politicizing the office and potentially breaking with 50 years of Justice Department policy and practice intended to shield criminal prosecutions from political considerations. They warn that an exodus of veteran prosecutors will threaten public safety and national security, leaving a more pliant institution that could enable Trump’s avowed desire to punish his foes in a second term. Som vanlig plukke man ut det som passe best med egne synspunkt. Denne "Ed" Martin har blitt sterkt upopulært i løpet av kort tid, dessuten er Schumers trusler om at det vil komme politiske gjengjeldelser mot disse som sto bak den kontroversielle prosessen av de to høyesterettsdommerne i forbindelse med abortsaken ikke ulovlig, det er en del av språkbruket i det politiske livet der man kan true hverandre på det politiske feltet. Som med de så mange truslene av Trump. Det er tre-fire aktive deltagere som vil se all demokrati forkastet.

....det finnes ikke innfødt bilindustri i Canada eller Mexico, nærmest alt er beregnet på det nordamerikanske fellesmarkedet hvor alle bilprodusenter bruker komponenter fra alle land - amerikanske delvarer kom dit, likedan kanadisk/meksikanske delvarer til USA. Trump rett og slett vet ikke om det. For den amerikanske bilproduksjonen er meget sterkt avhengige av delvarer fra nabolandene, Japan, Sør-Korea og EU. Delvarer - inkludert bilmotorer og chassiser. Det har ikke vært produsert en eneste bil i hele verden uten fremmede komponenter i flere tiår. Sist gang i USA var i begynnelsen på 1980-årene, da hadde det vært kanadisk-meksikanske delvarer allerede den gang i lang tid. USA er i virkeligheten ikke selvforsynt med alt som trenges for et moderne samfunn. Det finnes råvarer og annet som ikke kunne frembringes innenfor amerikanske statsgrenser, mye av industrien er nedlagt, utdatert og småskalert i de siste femti år siden stålindustrikollapsen i 1970-tallet. Det er hva mange ikke forstår; østasiatiske og europeiske fabrikker er aktuelt langt foran amerikanske i spørsmål om kvalitet, utvidelsespotensialitet og fornyelsesevne fordi det stadig investeres i levedyktighet i et skiftende marked. I de siste tjue år hadde amerikanerne måtte importere og produsere på lisens det de trengte, det vist seg at fornyelsesevnen er vanskeligere og dyrere på amerikansk grunn. Spesielt fordi det innbar investering i meget stor skala, i et land hvor det er enorme finanser, men mesteparten er bundet ned i bankene eller utilgjengelig for den realøkonomiske virksomheten. Slik tar mye penger - og tid. Mange som hadde svidd sine fingre på Kina, hadde valgt å flytte til andre mer vennligstemte land og dermed investert meget mye i disse landene hvor det er billigere. Den altfor sterke dollaren gjør at man får langt mindre penger i hjemlandet enn i andre land. Så tollreisningen som Trump egenrådig hadde stått for, er et slag i ansiktet på flere tusen pengesterke forretningsmenn og investere som hadde valgt å forlate Kina og lette byrdene for USA. Så snart Trump reiser toll mot hele verden kommer det til å få meget store konsekvenser, for han innser ikke hvilken ubalanse det er; USA har mindre enn 20 % av verdensmarkedet, men 70 % av verdensfinansene som kan kuttes ned av rasende handelsstormakter - kineserne er i ferd med å selge seg ut, og de kan få følge av BRICS-organisasjonen. Så hvis dollaren som nå er bare 50 % av verdensvalutaen, skulle svekkes til dens reelle styrke, vil gjeldsbomba eksplodert for alvorlig. Hvis verdensfinansene skulle hentes ut av de amerikanske bankene, - krasj. USA har bare to fordel - den første er å ha dollar som verdensvaluta, den andre er kommunikasjonsteknologi.

https://www.vg.no/nyheter/i/8qVP6Q/donald-trump-innfoerer-straffetoll-mot-canada-mexico-og-kina Nå sitter markedet og måper; * Gratulerer med sucker-sukkertøyet. 2100 milliarder dollar, det er mye - og mesteparten er på amerikanske hender fordi mye av vareflyen inn i USA er under kontroll av amerikanske konserner... Nå er det helt sikkert meget mange som hoppe opp og skjelve av sinne. Trumps stupiditet er ufattelig, Mexico og Canada er villig til å strekke seg langt, men det er tydelig at han egentlig ønsket å få slutt på frihandelen - NAFTA/USMCA er sterkt upopulært i den amerikanske arbeidsklassen som mente med rette at de hadde tapt meget sterkt på utkontrakteringen til Mexico med billig arbeidskraft og Canada med statlig velferd. På tid for markedskreftene å ta seg sammen og tenke. Skattekutt, reguleringskutt og korrupsjon vil være forgjeves om det globale markedet med USA i midten skulle ta sterk skade av Trumps uforstandige politikk fordi narkosmugling og migrasjonsstrøm kan ikke stanses med toll alene. Til det er etterspørsel etter rusmidler og illegale migranter i USA for sterk.

Verre og verre, det er blitt meget tydelig at opprørsregimet er uten av stand til å stanse volden som stort sett hendt for hender på islamistiske militante. Det har blitt registrert en ny massakre, 6 døde og 3 savnede i en alawitt-landsby, Arza i Hama-provinsen. Dessuten registrert SOHR 35 drap begått på eks-soldater, eks-statsansatte og minoritetsmenn. I Jabal Druze-regionen brøt stridigheter ut da militante uten forvarsling drepte to drusiske menn, dette fulgt til stor uro da drusere og islamister sloss mot hverandre i Damaskus, Jabal Druze og Suweiya - 3 drepte og 14 skadet.

https://x.com/JeremyKonyndyk/status/1885508095985492312 Lenken kunne ikke bli inkludert fordi det er ingen tvitring på den URL-en. https://www.csis.org/analysis/folly-merging-state-department-and-usaid-lessons-usia USIA was created in 1953 to provide a home for public diplomacy activities in support of U.S. foreign policy; in short, USIA took the lead in the war of ideas between the United States and the Soviet Union following World War II. The agency’s mission statement was to “understand, inform, and influence foreign publics in promotion of the national interest, and to broaden the dialogue between Americans and U.S. institutions, and their counterparts abroad.” It was, by all accounts, highly effective in its pursuit of that mission. The Cold War was won because the United States had a better economic system and because the United States had better ideas and values. USIA helped present those ideas and values, and USIA’s public diplomacy campaigns around the world played a major role in that victory. After the fall of the Soviet Union, there was a broad perception that the U.S. foreign policy machine was no longer fit to purpose. It was the “end of history”— liberal democracy had emerged victorious over communism, and the United States was eager to reap the benefits of this peace dividend. Against this backdrop, policymakers and appropriators pushed to decommission agencies that were deemed superfluous or unwieldy. Without a major global ideological foe, many felt that USIA no longer needed to be a stand-alone agency, and by the late 1990s, momentum for change was growing. The idea of restructuring USIA was first put forward in Vice President Al Gore’s Reinventing Government blueprint. The plan was to fold USAID, USIA, and the independent Arms Controls and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) into the State Department. ACDA was happy to merge with the State Department given that its functions were diplomatic in nature. In contrast, USIA and USAID had different functions and skills from diplomacy and resisted the consolidation. With strong support from Senator Jesse Helms, then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the backing of President Bill Clinton, a deal was cut. USIA became a sacrificial lamb, and its cultural, educational, and informational functions shifted to the State Department under the newly created under secretary for public affairs and public diplomacy, along with ACDA. USAID survived as an independent agency but was formally linked to the State Department with the USAID administrator reporting to the secretary of state. In its “Reorganization Plan and Report,” the Clinton administration said that the goal of the merger was “to strengthen public diplomacy through its integration into the policy process.” When implemented, the restructuring did the opposite. Dismantling USIA and shifting its primary functions to the State Department crippled U.S. public diplomacy operations in ways that have been lasting and profound—a self-inflicted wound from which the United States is still recovering. Even the Heritage Foundation, which is currently advocating for a consolidation of the State Department and USAID, called the USIA merger “misguided” and noted that it had caused the effective collapse of U.S. public diplomacy. A primary reason for the failed integration of USIA stems from the vastly different missions and cultures of the two organizations. The State Department has traditionally focused on state-to-state relations and has a deep aversion to risk. These entrenched norms were not compatible with the culture of people-to-people engagement and experimentation that had made USIA such a success. A former under secretary described it as “grafting a foreign body onto a human body, and the human body rejected it.” USIA had recruited and retained thousands of employees with skills like sophisticated audience analysis and storytelling that were distinct from those appreciated within the State Department. These skills were ignored, marginalized, and atrophied after the merger. Only in recent years has the State Department started to remedy the situation, creating more pathways for public diplomacy officers to get promoted into senior roles. State Department and USIA budget functions were also merged, meaning the State Department had to choose between “a new couch for the ambassador” or an additional dollar for public diplomacy. Public diplomacy was (and is) seen as a secondary or tertiary function of the State Department. Budgets, promotions, and priorities reflect its inferior status, and public diplomacy activities have been consistently subordinated to diplomatic goals. Public diplomacy dollars have also been scattered across regional bureaus where non–public diplomacy experts make resource allocation decisions. As a result, there is a scattershot effect on the use of these scarce resources. The consolidation was also short-sighted. Less than two years later, the United States suffered the horror of the 9/11 attacks, launching the Global War on Terror. The country had unknowingly embarked on a new war of ideas with a determined global enemy but without a preeminent, well-resourced, expertly staffed, and functional public diplomacy apparatus. At the same time, global competitors, including China and Russia, made significant investments in their own public diplomacy operations—spreading their influence throughout Africa, Eurasia, and Southeast Asia at the very time that the United States was seen as retreating. As a consequence, the United States has spent the last 15 years trying to rebuild its public diplomacy infrastructure. This process has taken significant time, money, and effort—and U.S. public diplomacy capabilities are still not back to where they started. While there have been improvements in recent years, the United States essentially gave its global competitors from Russia to ISIS a decade’s head start in the war of ideas. We cannot afford this kind of misstep when it comes to global development. A merger of USAID into the State Department would do several things. Development dollars will ultimately compete with diplomacy dollars; development will lose out just as public diplomacy has. The competition for senior foreign service slots will be among development and diplomacy, and similarly, development professionals will suffer. Like USIA, USAID has unique capacities and expertise that would be lost if it were folded into the State Department. A merger would remove a development voice from the policy table and degrade international development expertise. Career professionals flock to USAID as a global leader on development, poverty reduction, and democratic governance. These are jobs that require specific training and expertise and cannot be successfully filled by generalist foreign service or civil service officers. Moreover, USAID’s organizational culture embraces innovation, partnerships, and learning—attributes that have helped it pioneer lifesaving technologies like oral rehydration therapies, resulting in 4 million fewer children dying of diarrheal diseases each year than three decades ago. These approaches are valued within the development field but would wither on the vine of the State Department’s diplomatic mission and more traditional culture. This loss would harm our ability to impact and influence a set of critical issues—the global refugee crisis, the threat of pandemics, violent extremism, among others—that USAID is uniquely suited to address. The USAID brand, while linked to the U.S. government, allows partners who would not otherwise work with the United States to partner with us. USAID has generated billions in parallel investments from other donors—bilateral and multilateral—by virtue of its recognized leadership and independence. That ability to convince others to follow our lead would be lost in Africa and other regions, where China is waiting to step in—with a far different set of values and interests. Moreover, if the United States were to lose its bilateral development expertise, there would be a temptation to “outsource” development work to UN agencies and multilateral development banks. These multilateral agencies have an important role to play, but they do not directly represent U.S. interests. Finally, in contrast to public diplomacy, which represents a set of tools to inform and engage international audiences about U.S. foreign policy and values, USAID’s value is not merely as an instrument of diplomacy. Development is a distinct and longer-term objective in and of itself. Of course development can and does help advance policy objectives—from improving security in Central America to countering violent extremism throughout Africa, from building trade capacity in Southeast Asia to strengthening democracy and the rule of law in the Middle East. But, development, as a process for transforming socioeconomic and political conditions and lifting people out of poverty, cannot be achieved if it is exclusively tied to short-term and rapidly evolving policy imperatives. Development outcomes need time and consistency to come to fruition. The U.S. government’s efforts to combat malaria and HIV/AIDS—in which nearly 20 million lives have been saved—have required substantial and sustained investment over 15 years. Likewise, improving security and creating the conditions for a peace agreement in Colombia have taken almost 20 years. Such achievements would not have been possible had USAID been operating on the State Department’s one- or two-year timelines. The world is as fast moving and dangerous as it has ever been. Now more than ever, we need our full tool kit to engage and shape the environment beyond our borders. Short-term savings and “efficiency gains” should not obscure the long-term value of a specialized, stand-alone development agency. U.S. security, prosperity, and values would be severely harmed if we eliminated or dismantled all or significant parts of USAID. Veldig interessant... veldig interessant for oss nordmenn som har vansker med å forstå deler av den norske bistandspolitikken, spesielt omkring Sør-Sudan. Så nødhjelp og bistand i virkeligheten er en innflytelsesmetode for å etablere diplomatiske forbindelser med andre land og fremme egne interesser ved å yte hjelp i synlige oppvisning av egne makt og givervillighet? Så hvis USAid forsvinne, vil USA miste store deler av ikke-Vesten.

Mexico, on edge amid Trump’s tariff war True to his style of tough negotiator, President Donald Trump has taken his tariff threat against Mexico, Canada and China to the limit. The Republican has insisted that “nothing” can spare his neighbors from the tariffs he intends to impose on them as of this Saturday: 25% for Mexico and Canada, and 10% for China. A few hours before the deadline to apply these measures, the president has gone a step further, by assuring that he will set taxes on imports of steel, aluminum, oil, gas, pharmaceuticals and semiconductors. The U.S. warnings, for now, are only in discourse, however, the economic danger for Mexico remains latent. The second-largest economy in Latin America, and main importer of the US, is holding its breath waiting for an agreement in extremis between both governments to avoid the new taxes or, on the contrary, to confirm and know the size of the so-called “tariff wall” of the Trump era. The US trade deficit with Mexico, of more than 157 billion dollars, has been one of the reasons Trump has used to impose new rules on trade with Mexico, but it is not the only one. Since his presidential campaign, the Republican had assured that he would impose tariffs on Mexican imports if Sheinbaum’s government did not stop the arrival of migrants and drug trafficking, specifically fentanyl to its border. This Friday she has again put in the balance, migration and drug trafficking. “We will impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico for several reasons, the first is the massive number of people who have illegally entered our country; the second, the drugs like fentanyl that flood our communities and, the third, because of the huge subsidies we give them in the form of trade deficit,” Trump said Friday in his conference. The threat is not new, but the warning of a new tariff crisis has Mexico on the edge of its seat. Analysts and financiers warn that, if these threats are carried out, a blow would be dealt to the peso, exports, investments and remittances. In short, the echo of these measures, they agree, would weaken the economic growth of Latin America’s second largest economy in the coming years. Alfredo Coutiño, director for Latin America at Moody’s Analytics, assures that Mexico will suffer from both tariff policy and deportations by the U.S. government. “With an overall tariff of 20%, Mexico’s growth would slow to 0.3% from 1.3% in 2024. A higher tariff would send the economy into recession, i.e., negative growth for the year. If the 25% tariff is applied throughout the year, the contraction of the Mexican economy would be between 1.5% and 2%,” the specialist predicts. The agency estimates that some 740 billion dollars in trade flows could be interrupted if the United States turns the tariff threat into reality. Among the sectors most affected by a generalized tariff is the maquiladora industry, mostly located in the border area with the US. The director of the National Council of the Maquiladora and Export Manufacturing Industry (Index), Carlos Palencia, warns that in the worst case scenario, investment in fixed assets could fall by some 1.8 billion dollars a year, in addition to the loss of some 150,000 jobs, due to the evident drop in new projects and the landing of manufacturing companies. Currently, he adds, there are more than 6,500 companies in the sector awaiting the U.S. government’s decisions; these firms generate 3.3 million direct jobs in Mexico. Palencia adds that it would be illogical for Trump to order tariffs left and right in Mexico, without first having carried out a market study of the Mexican goods that are most in demand in his country, for example, cars, auto parts, electronics, mobile devices, textiles for the medical sector, among others. “We have to know on which products they are going to impose the tariff, but if the US applies a 25% generalized tariff, they would be shooting themselves in the foot, because the capital of these types of companies is practically American,” he says. Ignacio Martínez Cortés, coordinator of the Laboratory of Analysis in Trade, Economics and Business at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), assures that Mexico is living a déjà vu of the first days of June 2019. At that time, the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador reached an agreement on migratory matters to stop Trump’s tariff threats. In his first term in the White House, the Republican threatened to impose an initial tariff of 5%, which would rise to 25%. After weeks of tension and negotiations, Mexico defused the tariff bomb with a commitment to toughen immigration policy and send more military to the border. History is now being repeated with two old acquaintances: the Republican at the head of the U.S. and Marcelo Ebrard, who served as Foreign Minister of the Mexican Government. The specialist notes that since his first term in office and up to now, Trump has used trade threats and uncertainty to the maximum to pressure other countries and achieve victories on different fronts. “If Trump imposes tariffs on Mexico, the Mexican economy would be entering a sharp slowdown, with a recession threshold. Trump did a surgical job of analysis, he knows very well what the current situation and the pressures on the Mexican economy are,” notes the academic, who highlights Mexico’s high economic dependence on the US market, with shipments of more than 466 billion dollars per year. Sheinbaum’s government is still confident of dodging Trump’s tariff bullet. The president advocated early Friday to maintain dialogue with the United States and “keep a cool head”. She stressed that the imposition of tariffs against Mexico will only cause an inflationary spiral that will harm the US economy. The Ministry of Economy put the cost overruns for the US market caused by new trade tariffs at more than 10 billion dollars. If at first Sheinbaum’s government put on the table that, after a US tariff would come another levy against them in response, in recent weeks, the cabinet’s approach has been more measured, with the focus on dialogue. Despite Sheinbaum’s and her cabinet’s efforts against the clock to avoid a tariff war, so far, Trump is sticking to what he has said. Far from giving in, the Republican maintains the pressure against Mexico, at a time when its economy is not going through the best moment: in the last quarter of 2024, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) fell by 0.6%, compared to the previous quarter. At an annual rate, GDP grew last year by 1.3%, a decline, compared to a 3.2% rise in 2023. With these figures, analysts and financiers agree that a generalized tariff of 25% will place Mexico on the verge of a recession. Husket det som hendt i sommeren 2019, det var en katastrofe for amerikanske konserner som opplevd stor tap og store deler av industrien i begge land måtte settes på lavgir; det var ikke meksikanernes forhandling som fulgt til avslutningen på vanviddet den gang, det var massiv press fra industrimagnatene som sammen med nesten hele administrasjonen fikk Trump til å gi seg mot en halv seier. Det var aktuelt i bakgrunnen av frihandelssamtaler mellom Mexico, Canada og USA som er helt meningsløst, små kosmetiske endringer utover selve overskriften; "North American Free Trade Agreement" (NAFTA) bli "United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement" (USMCA). Etter alle tre landene eniges om en ny avtale skulle den ikke bli ferdigbehandlet før i 2020. Denne gangen vil konsekvensene bli langt mye større fordi etter Hongkong ble integrert i Kina gjennom et massivt traktatbrudd samtidig som Xi utløste forsurede forhold i handelsrelasjonene hadde mange amerikanske og multinasjonale konserner med andel i det amerikanske markedet flyttet ut av Kina. De valgt å flytte til Mexico hvor det er mange flere høyutdannede enn i USA med god arbeidsmoral og lav lønnsold, en markedsvennlig regjering og kloss nærhet til USA slik at transportutgifter med skip, tog og trailer var ikke-eksisterende i sammenligning med Stillehavsfarten. Trumps siste handlinger tyder på at han ikke er ved hans fulle fem.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/you-are-making-it-hard-for-us-black-americans-for-trump-member-rips-president-on-cnn/ar-AA1yf76E?ocid=BingNewsVerp&cvid=6bde988bfae24d57aacc9b24596d3502&ei=22 Det begynner å gå et lys opp for "the Black Americans for Trump Coalition". * Gratulere med sucker-sukkertøyet. Som også går til de muslimske stemmegiverne som nå er i demonstrasjoner og høylytt protester, spesielt etter Trump hadde sagt at han vil tvinge den gazapalestinske befolkningen ut og flere utenlandske studenter som deltok i en pro-palestinsk demonstrasjon var utvist. * Gratulere med sucker-sukkertøyet.

Som Stortinget i Norge er det kongressen som har autoriteten. Som riksrevisjonen er underlagt Stortingets myndighet, er GAO (Government Accountability Office) i likhet underlagt kongressens myndighet. Da Trump lansert "Department of Government Efficiency" eller DOGE for kort, tilsidesatt dette noe av GAOs fullmaktene selv om den ikke er et føderalt ministerium, da dette forutså kongressvedtak som autoritet som sett med tidlige midtetidige departementer som United States Bureau of Efficiency fra 1916-1933, som Roosevelt var raskt med å fjerne. Ved å ikke være transparent for andre som GAO har det blitt trukket for retten som brudd på Federal Advisory Committee Act fra 1972. Det er ikke bare-bare å kutte i statlige finanser og byråkrati. Det som skjer ser ut til å være i samsvar med høyrenasjonalistenes våte drømmer i USA og mange andre land inkludert Norge hvor det er en sterk irritasjon med bistandspraksis.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-ally-peter-marocco-behind-evisceration-of-usaid-he-s-a-destroyer/ar-AA1yerU0?ocid=BingNewsVerp&cvid=d3f4d4a36b8349d2936ce3e3d507a7b2&ei=3 Det virker som Trump har seriøse planer om å utslette USAid. The Trump administration’s evisceration of US overseas aid has been presided over by a campaign ally who sowed a trail of enmity at multiple agencies during the first Trump presidency and has been publicly identified as allegedly having been present at the January 6 insurrection when rioters stormed the US Capitol. Peter Marocco has accumulated power in the office of foreign assistance, informally called “F”, that traditionally has helped coordinate US foreign aid programs. But under Marocco, it has enforced a full-scale freeze on overseas aid and a stop-work order that has in effect halted operations and already led to hundreds of layoffs in the United States and overseas. According to current and former USAid and state department officials, the office’s consolidation of power under Marocco has undermined congressional checks and balances and instead given authority to a non-Senate-confirmed appointee who is slashing and burning his way through overseas aid programs at USAid and the state department. “He is not a disruptor. He’s a destroyer,” said a former USAid official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss Marocco. “And it’s clear to me. The plan is to come in, destroy USAid, take it down, and then build it up again, the way they want to do that.” Marocco’s return to USAid has not been formally announced and the department website still lists a previous director for the office of foreign assistance. Many staff only learned that Marocco had been appointed from emails and cables drafted by him ordering them to stop work. On Friday evening, senior Senate Democrats warned that the Trump administration’s decisions to place senior USAid officials on leave and freeze foreign assistance without engaging with Congress “have created a maelstrom of problems that have put our nation at risk and undermined American credibility around the globe”. They warned Trump away from reported plans to downsize or even subsume the agency into the state department. “It is imperative that we maintain an independent development voice and capability within the US government,” wrote the senators. “USAid is, by statute, an independent establishment outside of the State Department. Any proposal to modify that structure would require an Act of Congress.” A former marine and conservative activist from Dallas, Marocco served short stints of just a year each at the state department, commerce department, defense department and USAid during the first Trump presidency. In 2020, a 13-page complaint by USAid staffers was placed in its dissent channel – a framework for foreign service staff to express constructive criticism – accusing Marocco of undermining and micromanaging employees in a way that “rapidly degraded” a small department focused on political transitions. Critics say he is now applying the same playbook of laborious reviews and vague directives to all of USAid. Marocco was also allegedly photographed and filmed inside the Capitol building during the January 6 riots, according to volunteer activists who have posted a widely cited investigation. Marocco has not been charged with a crime. Asked about the allegation by D Magazine, Marocco did not address whether he had been at the Capitol, but described it as “petty smear tactics and desperate personal attacks”. He joined Trump’s transition team in December as an adviser on national security personnel matters. “Democrats and their allies in the media who think they are going to obstruct our ability to deliver on this mandate by going back to the same January 6 playbook of smears and faux outrage that was soundly rejected by the American people will be disappointed,” Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told Politico at the time. The state department declined to respond to questions regarding Marocco’s appointment, his alleged participation in the events of 6 January 2021, and the department’s review process for evaluating overseas aid and potential waivers to the program. Former and current officials at USAid, the state department and the defense department told the Guardian that Marocco’s previous stints at those agencies had been characterized by secrecy, personal conflicts and arbitrary rules meant to hobble the bureaucracy. Some said they believed Marocco had returned to take revenge on his former colleagues. “The reaction was recoil and horror,” said a former senior USAid official regarding Marocco’s appointment. “I don’t know if they really believe in development or humanitarian assistance unless it’s transactional.” “He’s the most unqualified person to be sitting in any seat of government, let alone the person who has the keys to our foreign assistance,” said another former colleague who still works at USAid. Marocco strode into the offices of USAid this week flanked by members of Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (“Doge”), a special group Trump created, with clipboards in hand. Several hours later, almost 60 senior officials from the office had been put on paid leave. Veteran aid officials with decades of experience at the agency were escorted from the building by security, according to current and former USAid officials, and their email accounts were frozen. “They wanted to decapitate the organisation,” said a current USAid employee. “And they did it by pushing aside the leadership and decades of experience.” The purge followed confusion within USAid over the stop-work orders drafted by Marocco and signed by Marco Rubio, the new secretary of state, leading some to believe that limited actions could continue if funds had already been committed. “We have identified several actions within USAid that appear to be designed to circumvent the president’s executive orders and the mandate from the American people,” wrote Jason Gray, USAid’s acting administrator, saying the relevant staff would be put on administrative leave. Some employees have openly rebelled. In an email to all staff seen by the Guardian, Nicholas Gottlieb, USAid’s director of employee and labor relations, said that appointees at USAid and “Doge” had “instructed me to violate the due process of our employees by issuing immediate termination notices”. Calling the requests “illegal”, Gottlieb said he “will not be a party to a violation of [due process]”. Hours later, he was put on administrative leave. In a separate email to the sidelined USAid senior staff, Gottlieb wrote that the “materials show no evidence that you engaged in misconduct”. “I wish you all the best – you do not deserve this,” he wrote. The chaotic rollout of the ban has led to whiplash for critical programs around the world, from emergency Aids relief (which has been granted a waiver), to clean-water and sanitation programs, to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, which the Washington Post reported on Friday had gone offline. Yet there are few details of a vast review program, which is supposed to evaluate thousands of foreign aid grants as well as an expected torrent of waiver requests. And a number of the senior USAid staff put on administrative leave were lawyers who had helped prepare requests for exemptions from the foreign aid freeze, sources said. The state department has said the waiver process has been used “successfully dozens of times in the first several days alone; however, many requests failed to provide the level of detail necessary to allow a thorough evaluation”. Previous cables indicated that the people involved would include Marocco or the new director of policy planning, Michael Anton, another political appointee. The state department declined to answer questions from the Guardian about who is evaluating the reviews and how many staff had been detailed to the process. “The lack of clarity on the waivers has been a huge problem for partners,” said one current USAid official. “When it comes to USAid-funded programs, there’s, like, crickets. No one’s been able to get information.” Insiders have told the Guardian that Marocco has sidelined career staff at the office of foreign assistance and that just a few employees had been brought in to work on evaluating the programs. Waiver requests to USAid are being sent to Marocco’s office of foreign assistance, from where they’re forwarded to the policy planning staff, which has recently suspended all of its career civil servants and foreign service officers, leaving only political appointees to review them. “We’re all trying to figure out, is there a review process? Who’s part of that review?” said the former senior USAid official. “Is it Pete Marocco and his two best friends?” At USAid, other directives have been enacted that have both defunded and demoralised staff. Photographs of aid programs around the world have been literally stripped off the walls after a “directive has been issued to remove all artwork and photographs from the offices and common spaces across all buildings”. “Now all the pictures have to come down and I go: ‘Oh, good. Are we going to burn books next?’” said one current USAid employee. Musk’s “efficiency department” has crowed about slashing $45m in scholarships for students from authoritarian Burma. The $40bn a year that the US spends on foreign aid is less than 1% of its budget. But the US expends $4 out of every $10 spent globally on humanitarian aid, according to the state department, and the sudden cutoff has led to thousands of layoffs among US contractors and local partners around the world. “Got that late Friday,” said one implementer, an American citizen, who received a stop-work order seen by the Guardian. “And was fired on Monday as a result.” The 90-day stop-work order and financial freeze meant that there was no one to actually prepare the waiver request, that person said. Devex, a media platform for news on the development community, reported this week that USAid’s bureau for humanitarian assistance had also furloughed about 500 institutional support contractors, or 40% of its team, undercutting its ability to react quickly to a humanitarian crisis. A former USAid official said the decisions could put millions of people around the world at risk. “If there’s a tropical cyclone that hits Cox’s Bazar tomorrow, then how are you going to save all those people, and then how are you going to rebuild if there’s a stop-work order?” said a former senior USAid official, referring to the city in Bangladesh where more than 1 million Rohingya refugees are living. “You could have people sitting there for 90 days and sitting and waiting for what? That’s what worries more.” Musk var med på å slå den viktigste nødhjelpsorganisasjonen i verden ut av drift, slik at flere titalls millioner mennesker risikere å miste mat- og medisintilgang om de ikke allerede har gjort det. Det er veldig tydelig at Maroccos strategi er å tvinge gjennom en nedleggelse ved å bryte ned organisasjonen fra innsiden, så USAid vil ikke lenge kunne fungere - og 40 milliarder dollar kan forsvinne som et resultat. Det er dessuten meget spesielt at Trump våget å angripe USAid tross advarsler fra demokratiske politikerne som gjort det meget klart at USAid er underlagt kongressens mandat og dermed kan ikke den utøvende makten gripe inn. Bare kongressen er gitt den nødvendige autoriteten for et slikt inngrep, så dette er et konstitusjonsbrudd - NOK EN GANG. Og selve Musk er ved å rive vekk matsekkene fra sultende barn, for bare nødkrisetjenesten er fremdeles i virksomhet, så folk som ikke er i akutt krise, kan risikere å oppleve matmangel. Hva da, Tesla-sjåførene?

“Without any doubt Donald Trump is the most lawless and scofflaw president we have ever seen in the history of the United States,” https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/01/trump-executive-orders-constitution-law Trump’s disregard for US constitution ‘a blitzkrieg on the law’, legal experts say Scholars warn of president’s lawlessness in actions such as federal funding freeze and birthright citizenship order Donald Trump’s rapid-fire and controversial moves that have ranged from banning birthright citizenship to firing 18 inspectors general means the US president has shown a greater willingness than his predecessors to violate the constitution and federal law, some historians and legal scholars say. These scholars pointed to other Trump actions they say blatantly broke the law, such as freezing trillions of dollar in federal spending and dismissing members of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), even though they were confirmed by the Senate and had several years left in their terms. “Without any doubt Donald Trump is the most lawless and scofflaw president we have ever seen in the history of the United States,” said Laurence Tribe, one of the nation’s leading constitutional scholars and a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School. Tribe said Trump has carried out “a blitzkrieg on the law and the constitution. The very fact that the illegal actions have come out with the speed of a rapidly firing Gatling gun makes it very hard for people to focus on any one of them. That’s obviously part of the strategy.” Tribe said the so-called pause in federal spending that the Trump administration ordered last Monday “was a clear usurpation of a coordinate branch’s [Congress’s] exclusive power of the purse”. Before the Trump administration rescinded the freeze two days later, several groups had sued to stop the freeze, saying Trump had violated the constitution and the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, which lets presidents withhold funds in limited circumstances, but only if they first follow several special procedures – which legal experts said Trump failed to do. Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California Berkeley School of Law, also voiced dismay at what he said was Trump’s flagrant flouting of the law in his first few days back in office. “A stunning number of his executive actions clearly violate the constitution and federal law,” Chemerinsky said. “I cannot think of any president who has ever so ignored the constitution as extensively in the first 10 days of office as this. “I certainly doubt that any president has done so much lawless so quickly that affects so many people,” Chemerinsky continued. “The freeze of federal spending potentially affects tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions of people.” That freeze caused alarm and chaos across the nation as it disrupted Medicaid payments, childcare programs, meals for seniors, housing subsidies and special ed programs. Matthew Vaeth, the acting director of the office of management and budget, said the freeze was needed to stop “the use of federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies”. Federal judges moved quickly to temporarily block the spending freeze and the ban on birthright citizenship. Last Tuesday, a federal district court judge in Washington DC, Loren AliKhan, suspended the spending freeze. Facing huge confusion and criticism over the freeze, the Trump administration rescinded it on Wednesday. On 23 January, a federal district judge in Seattle, John Coughenour, a Ronald Reagan appointee, temporarily blocked Trump’s order to end birthright citizenship. “This is a blatantly unconstitutional order,” Coughenour said. “I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar would state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It just boggles my mind.” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, defended the president’s move to ban birthright citizenship. In a briefing on Wednesday, she said: “We are prepared to fight this all the way to the supreme court if we have to, because President Trump believes that this is a necessary step to secure our nation’s borders and protect our homeland.” Many legal experts and Democratic lawmakers condemned Trump’s firing of 18 inspectors general, who serve as independent officials who audit and investigate agencies for waste, fraud and abuse. Those critics, along with Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican who chairs the Senate judiciary committee, noted that Trump had failed to give Congress the required 30-day advance notice and specific reasons for the firings. Late last Monday, Trump fired Gwynne Wilcox, a member of the NLRB, and two members of the EEOC, Charlotte Burrows and Jocelyn Samuels. All three – members of independent boards – were appointed by Democratic presidents and had several years left in their terms. Kate Andrias, a professor of constitutional law and administrative law at Columbia University, called those firings “unprecedented and illegal”. Regarding the Wilcox firing, she said: “The National Labor Relations Act makes clear that president can fire board members only for neglect of duty and malfeasance. NLRB members can’t be fired just because the president doesn’t want them on the board.” Andrias noted, however, that the supreme court’s conservative supermajority might rule in Trump’s favor on these firings. “Trump might have some support from the supreme court on this,” she said, adding that the court, with its “radical anti-administrative law” attitudes, “could reject 90 years of legal precedent and agree with the president that he had the authority to fire members of independent bodies.” Andrias compared Trump with another president known for sometimes flouting the constitution and supreme court: “Andrew Jackson also had a record of violating the constitution in ways to expand his power,” Andrias said. “But in modern times, it’s unprecedented for a president to act this way to aggrandize his own power and act in contravention of the constitution and federal statutes.” Julian Zelizer, a historian at Princeton, said Richard Nixon also sometimes broke the law – most notably in the Watergate scandal – but “I don’t think he tried to overturn parts of the constitution. So maybe there, Trump has him beat.” Zelizer said Trump’s spending freeze was “an effort to essentially ignore Congress’s constitutional power” of the purse and to “throw the Impoundment Act in the garbage”. “I can’t remember another president who has tried to throw so much of the constitution out the window to do what he wants,” Zelizer added. Tribe voiced concern that Trump’s actions were weakening the rule of law as well as respect for the law. “We have to focus on the fact that the sum of this is greater than the parts. Violating the constitution and acts of Congress repeatedly not only creates rips in the fabric that occur with each violation, but shreds the whole thing,” Tribe said. “It’s only the very beginning of this administration. If people normalize this lawbreaking instead of pushing back, it will be very hard ever to restore the system of government that most of us grew up assuming it would be in place.” Det er presist hvorfor disse republikanerne som ønsker å bevare det politiske systemet, konstitusjonen og USA må tvinges til å gjøre motstand ved å gå ut av partiet - for hvis disse skulle gjøre seg medskyldig, må disse da tar konsekvensene sammen med sine velgerne å se enhver man lever med kollapse og oppleve en reell borgerkrigstrussel i den nære fremtiden når store deler av etablissementet får nok og hente fram opprørsbanneret. Det er ikke mulig å samarbeide med en mann som har gjentatte ganger forbrutt seg mot 1789-konstitusjonen, det amerikanske lovverket og det politiske systemets eksistensberettigelse. Selv hvis lynkrigsstrategien skulle lykkes, finnes det alltid en feil - angrip, angrip, da hva? Det er når kraften ebber ut det vil komme reaksjoner, og det vil bli meget kraftig, men da må GOP-partiet ryddes av vegen for å skille ut de antidemokratiske MAGA-kreftene fra de ekte republikanerne som trenges å minnes om at de har patriotisk plikt mot land, folk og ære. En plikt som Lincoln ville ha forlangt om han hadde gjenoppstått og bevitnet dagens situasjon. I verste fall kan det lede til krig fordi hvis kongressen må stoppe presidenten bare for å få beskjed om at de er fratatt all makt, kan det gå meget galt - fordi bare halvparten er med GOP. Den andre halvparten vil ikke bare gi seg. Trump har nå gjentatte ganger begått forbrytelser som ville ha utløst riksrettsprosesser - så republikanernes beskyttelse av ham er i klar strid med alle sentrale prinsipper etablert av grunnlovsfedrene, slik at det kan kalles landsforræderi.

Sorry; bare disse med klarering i tråd med gjeldende lov er tillatt, så hvis Trump gir Musk fullmakt har han - for hundre ganger - overgått hans mandat - eller hvis Musk gjør det på egen initiativ, er det ulovlig. Det er 6 trillion dollar som det handler om, under kongressens mandat.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/utterly-terrifying-poll-reveals-elon-musk-effect-pushing-far-right-afd-closer-to-power-in-germany/ar-AA1yeZwm?ocid=BingNewsVerp&cvid=78e78f5290224819a0eb3a05027992a5&ei=12 Det er horribelt. Musks misbruk av sosiale medier risikere nå å kaste oss ut i katastrofen, for flere og flere tyskerne vil nå stemme på AfD som er kommet på annenplassen bak CDU, mens SPD er sterkt fallende - hele 25 %vil stemme på AfD som er anti-EU, og 35 % vil ha AfD-lederen som kansler.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-and-elon-musk-just-pulled-off-another-purge-and-it-s-a-scary-one/ar-AA1ycBKd?ocid=BingNewsVerp&cvid=ba407062e5344f82a4a245524aa78e21&ei=33 President Donald Trump has granted Elon Musk unprecedented power to carry out his war on the “deep state.” The justification for this is supposed to be that the government is corrupted to its core precisely because it is stocked with unelected bureaucrats who are unaccountable to the people. Musk, goes this story, will employ his fearsome tech wizardry to root them out, restoring not just efficiency to government, but also the democratic accountability that “deep state” denizens have snuffed out—supposedly a major cause of many of our social ills. The startling news that a top Treasury Department is departing after a dispute with Musk shows how deeply wrong that story truly is—and why it’s actively dangerous. The Washington Post reports that David Lebryk, who has carried out senior non-political roles at the department for decades, is leaving after officials on Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, sought access to Treasury’s payment system: Lebryk had a dispute with Musk’s surrogates over access to the payment system the U.S. government uses to disburse trillions of dollars every year, the people said. The exact nature of the disagreement was not immediately clear, they said. The news raises a complicated question: WTF??? Why is Musk’s DOGE trying to access payment systems inside the Treasury Department? It’s not clear what relevance this would have to his ostensible role, which is to search for savings and inefficiencies in government, not to directly influence whether previously authorized government obligations are honored. Another question: Did Trump directly authorize Musk to do this, or did he not? Either answer is bad. If Trump did, he may be authorizing an unelected billionaire to exert unprecedented control over the internal workings of government payment systems. If he did not, then Musk may be going rogue to an even greater extent than we thought. I contacted a few former officials at the Treasury Department and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to try to gauge what this means. What was striking is the level of alarm they evinced about it. Here’s how the Post describes these systems: Typically only a small number of career officials control Treasury’s payment systems. Run by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, the sensitive systems control the flow of more than $6 trillion annually to households, businesses and more nationwide. Tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people across the country rely on the systems, which are responsible for distributing Social Security and Medicare benefits, salaries for federal personnel, payments to government contractors and grant recipients and tax refunds, among tens of thousands of other functions. Former officials I spoke with were at a loss to explain why Musk would want such access. They noted that while we don’t yet know Musk’s motive, the move could potentially give DOGE the power to turn off all kinds of government payments in a targeted way. They said we now must establish if Musk is seeking to carry out what Trump tried via his federal funding freeze: Turn off government payments previously authorized by Congress. The White House rescinded the freeze after a national outcry, but his spokesperson vowed the hunt for spending to halt will continue. The former officials are asking: Is this Treasury power grab a way to execute that? “Anybody who would have access to these systems is in a position to turn off funding selectively,” said Michael Linden, a former OMB official who is now director of Families Over Billionaires, a group fighting Trump’s tax cuts for the rich. “The only reason Musk wants to get himself in there must be because he wants to turn some things off.” These officials describe these systems as almost akin to a series of faucets. Congress, by authorizing payments, fills the tanks and decides where the water will ultimately flow. The team overseen by the now-departing Lebryk in effect is in control of the spigots, these officials said. What also alarms these officials is that this is unfolding even as a debt ceiling crisis looms. When the government is on the verge of defaulting on its obligations, these officials tell me, it’s Lebryk and his team who carefully monitor the situation to determine, to the greatest extent possible, on what date it will no longer be able to meet its obligations. This team monitors the water levels, these officials say, noting that this is how Treasury knows what to say in those letters that periodically warn Congress that a breach is approaching. As it happens, this is precisely why we want career, non-political civil servants to be in charge of the spigots. To put it delicately, this is some really complicated shit, and we want the process to be administered in a totally non-politicized way. Letting someone like Musk anywhere near it risks corrupting it quite deeply. “The payment systems are controlled by a small number of career officials precisely to protect them and the full faith and credit of the United States from political interference,” said Jesse Lee, who was a senior adviser to the National Economic Council under President Joe Biden. Or as Linden put it: “This is exactly the kind of thing you do not want political appointees getting involved in.” All of which is why it’s critical to know whether Trump directly authorized this move by Musk. Trump’s executive order creating DOGE orders agencies to give it access to “all” unclassified records and systems. As the Post notes, that would appear to include these Treasury ones. But we need to know whether Trump was aware of or directly authorized this particular effort by DOGE to access Treasury’s payment systems. Even if a relatively innocent explanation for this is possible—maybe DOGE merely hopes to study how efficient they are—the move clearly alarmed this longtime government veteran enough to prompt his resignation. Did Trump want Musk to have this access, and if so, for what purpose? “Is this something that has authorization and approval from the White House and specifically the president?” asked Bradley Moss, a national security lawyer, in an interview. “Or is this Musk going rogue within the federal bureaucracy?” If Trump did greenlight it, Moss said, it would mean he’s “authorizing Elon to shove his weight into the most crucial parts of our financial mechanisms,” and “exposes the basic functions of government to the whims of a non-governmental employee.” If Trump did not, it would represent a “complete abuse of authority and discretion” on Musk’s part: “He has no possible need for access to those systems.” Whatever more we learn, this saga already demonstrates exactly why we want an apolitical, professionalized civil service, one in which career officials enjoy a variety of protections to safeguard their independence. As Jonathan Chait points out at The Atlantic, the whole point of the civil-service system is precisely that it ensures that challenging, consequential government jobs go to people who are actually qualified to execute them. Whatever Musk intends with this new effort, this isn’t part of any war on the “deep state.” We’re witnessing a broad assault on that genuinely meritocratic achievement—one that could enable right-wing elites to corruptly loot the place, or install a highly “personalist” government marked above all by loyalty to Trump himself, or some combination of the two. And by all indications, that larger war is fully backed by the president himself. Norge har helt presist det samme systemet som USA, med en viktig endring; det er under kontroll av Stortinget med et sett av forskjellige lover som skal hindre innblanding og manipulering, selv om den norske tradisjonen med dobbeltstandard gjør at det er akkurat i denne delen av statsforvaltningen de fleste skandaler skjer, og som de norske mediene er sterkt opptatt av som vaktbikkjer med stor glød. Uvedkommende og utenforstående er nærmest tabu - så det som skjer i USA er noe som kan oppfattes å være svært kjettersk som hvis å banne med gudspotting i nærheten av paven under den viktigste seremonien i selve Peterskirken. Uansett vekker det meget stor uro. Fryseordren har i det minst blitt dels skrinlagt, men det var gjennom et legalt inngrep som må fornyes inntil kongressen gjør noe, hvor demokratene sliter med å samle seg mens republikanerne er i rådvillhet mellom MAGA og ikke-MAGA. I slutten kan dommerstanden bli nødt til å gripe inn om kaoset bare skulle forverre seg.

Så Trump ønsker å tvinge alle 505,000 venezuelanske flyktninger som hadde fått TPS-status som midtetidige beskyttede flyktninger av Biden-administrasjonen, rett tilbake til det brutale Madurodiktaturet i Venezuela. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/outrageous-trump-administration-move-to-scale-back-protections-for-venezuelans-in-us-sparks-concern-in-south-florida/ar-AA1y9lDU?ocid=BingNewsSerp “It’s outrageous that President Trump rescinded the extension of TPS that President Biden issued,” Wasserman Schultz said. “The people who have fled the Maduro regime fled for their lives. Maduro uses oppression and funds from his oil sales to the United States and other countries to engage in terrorism. he aligns himself with the access of evil — Russia, China and Iran — and he is illegally in office,” she said. “TPS is designed to make sure that people who would fear for their lives and their safety if they return to their country, that we can keep them safe here for a period of time,” Wasserman Schultz said. “It is dangerous for anyone to be returned to Venezuela, and Trump canceling the TPS for Venezuelans who are here sends them to almost certain harm if he starts deporting them.” Wasserman Schultz also condemned Noem for the language she used during the "Fox & Friends" announcement, appearing to refer to Venezuelans in the U.S. as “dirtbags.” “In fact, the secretary of Homeland Security called those Venezuelans that are my neighbors and friends dirtbags — dirtbags. The disrespect and the vulgarity and the condescension with which Trump and his administration look at people who have fled countries where there’s oppression to make a better way of life for themselves and keep their families safe is revolting,” Wasserman Schultz said. Noem said that the “people of this country want these dirtbags out,” referring to “the Venezuelans that are here and members of TDA.” TDA is a reference to the Tren de Aragua, a gang based in Venezuela. Disse venezuelanske flyktningene hadde sterk republikansk støtte fordi de kom fra et marxistiskinspirerte regime og dermed faller under kategorien som "frihetssøkende migranter" i øyne på den latinspråklige delen av republikanerne, spesielt kubaneramerikanerne som står sterk i Florida, hvor venezuelanerne var ønsket velkomne. For øyeblikket vil republikanerne i Florida beskytte venezuelanerne i egne delstat, så det kan oppstå åpen konflikt om Trump skulle deportere disse TPS-beskyttede flyktninger, spesielt fordi disse inneha verdi i form av høyutdanning i ung alder (14 % - mot bare 9 % i USA - !) og dermed er ettertraktet i arbeidsmarkedet. Det er knapt overraskende at Maduro sier ja, det er hans mål å tvinge flyktningene tilbake under hans kontroll.

https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/India/very-dangerous-trump-dumps-billions-of-gallons-of-water-farmers-were-counting-on-for-summer/ar-AA1ydrCb?ocid=BingNewsSerp&cvid=64e0860650e84e11b8e401efa6dec193&ei=20 Å, gud... han er gal. Han hadde på egenhånd uten å konsultere med eksperter eller lokalmyndighetspersoner beordret frislipp av reservevannet. Ja, du leser riktig; reservevann! Vi vet hvor viktig det er, man må alltid ha vann i reserve for strømproduksjon, vannregulering og flomkontroll som vanning av jordbruk. De to store demningsanleggene, Terminus Dam i Lake Kaweah og Schafer Dam i Lake Success som ligger i Tulare County i San Joaquin-dalen har blitt åpnet i vintertid slik at dette kom som et stort sjokk på bøndene som realisert at de måtte berge så mye vann som mulig for sommeren når det er lite tilgjengelig vann! Skal vedde på at bøndene som stemt republikansk, ikke innså dette. In a post to his official X account, Trump tweeted a "photo of beautiful water flow that I just opened in California," writing: "Today, 1.6 billion gallons and, in 3 days, it will be 5.2 billion gallons." He suggested that the water release would help officials in the Golden State fight wildfires in Southern California. Galskap! Galskap! Dette er reservevann som trenges for den tørre sesongen i året 2025, som vil vare i mange måneder - i en oppvarmingsperiode som kan varer i flere tiår, om ikke århundrer! (klimaet i California er syklisk, våt/kald-periode (1800-2020) og tørr/varm-periode (startet siden 2020- ) California har allerede dårlig med vann fra før. “Every drop belongs to someone,” Kaweah River Watermaster Victor Hernandez told SJV Water. “The reservoir may belong to the federal government, but the water is ours. If someone’s playing political games with this water, it’s wrong.” "A decision to take summer water from local farmers and dump it out of these reservoirs shows a complete lack of understanding of how the system works and sets a very dangerous precedent," Vink said. "This decision was clearly made by someone with no understanding of the system or the impacts that come from knee-jerk political actions." Climate scientist Peter Gleick — who specializes in water issues — lamented on Bluesky that water resources farmers had been "relying on" were effectively "thrown away" by the Trump administration all for the sale of "a photo op & a bragging media post." "This water will not be captured, will not be useful for cities or farms or firefighting," Gleick wrote. "It is now lost."

Ja og nei; det finnes mange lover, men presidentskapets natur gjør det meget problematisk fordi det finnes ikke ministerier som kunne konfronteres, fordi det er i praksis en enmannsregjering hvor det bare er en enslig mann som fordele oppgaver til hans rådgivere og administrative med minimal innblanding utenom nomineringsprosesser i kongressen. Musk har ikke kongressens tillatelse, og det samme kunne sies om flesteparten av inngrepene i det amerikanske statsbyråkratiet som er kommet under et voldsomt angrep som minner om utrenskningen av Baath-byråkratiet i Irak i 2003. Nemlig at det skje uten kongressens tillatelse og dermed ikke er lovlig. Men da er det i gråsonen mellom presidentskapet og kongressen. Det er sterk kritikk for tiden, mange reagere voldsomt på sluttpakkestrategien rettet mot flere millioner ansatte som er vitalt for den føderale statens funksjoner. Selv hvis bare 5 til 10 % skulle akseptere, vil det få store konsekvenser. På toppen hadde Musk grepet inn og sabotert for alle, slik at statsansatte som er i besittelse av uerfarne kunnskap, følt at de er kommet under angrep fra meget aggressive fiender som helt ignorere viktigheten av statesfunksjonene. Hvis bare lojalister settes inn, vil det i virkeligheten underminerte den føderale staten inntil punktet at den ikke kan fungere under forskjellige administrasjoner i fremtiden - da har man i virkeligheten innført et partibyråkrati etter samme modell som i Sovjetunionen. Som betyr at nye regjeringer og nye kongresser ikke kan overta etter "republikanerne" fordi staten vil da motarbeide dem.

https://www.msn.com/en-xl/news/other/a-new-era-of-anti-intellectualism-and-what-all-senior-trump-officials-have-in-common-opinion/ar-AA1y7rJb?ocid=BingNewsSerp The many controversial people appointed to the Trump administration, from Elon Musk to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have at least one thing in common: They dislike and distrust experts. While anti-intellectualism and populism are nothing new in American life, there has hardly been an administration as seemingly committed to these worldviews. Take President Donald Trump’s decision to nominate Kennedy, a well-known vaccine skeptic, to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy, whose Senate confirmation hearing is Jan. 29, 2025, epitomizes the new American political ethos of populism and anti-intellectualism, or the idea that people hold negative feelings toward not just scientific research but those who produce it. Anti-intellectual attacks on the scientific community have been increasing, and have become more partisan, in recent years. For instance, Trump denigrated scientific experts on the campaign trail and in his first term in office. He called climate science a “hoax” and public health officials in his administration “idiots.” Skepticism, false assertions This rhetoric filtered into public discussion, as seen in viral social media posts mocking and attacking scientists like Dr. Anthony Fauci, or anti-mask protesters confronting health officials at public meetings and elsewhere. Trump and Kennedy have cast doubt on vaccine safety and the medical scientific establishment. As far back as the Republican primary debates in 2016, Trump falsely asserted that childhood vaccines cause autism, in defiance of scientific consensus on the issue. Kennedy’s long-term vaccine skepticism has also been well documented, though he himself denies it. More recently, he has been presenting himself as “pro-vaccine safety,” as one Republican senator put it, on the eve of Kennedy’s confirmation hearing. Kennedy has mirrored Trump’s anti-intellectual rhetoric by referring to government health agency culture as “corrupt” and the agencies themselves as “sock puppets.” If confirmed, Kennedy has vowed to turn this anti-intellectual rhetoric into action. He wants to replace over 600 employees in the National Institutes of Health with his own hires. He has also suggested cutting entire departments. During one interview, Kennedy said, “In some categories, there are entire departments, like the nutrition department at the FDA, that are – that have to go.” Populism across political spectrum In lockstep with this anti-intellectual movement is a version of populism that people like RFK Jr. and Trump both espouse. Populism is a worldview that pits average citizens against “the elites.” Who the elites are varies depending on the context, but in the contemporary political climate in the U.S., establishment politicians, scientists and organizations like pharmaceutical companies or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are frequently portrayed as such. For instance, right-wing populists often portray government health agencies as colluding with multinational pharmaceutical companies to impose excessive regulations, mandate medical interventions and restrict personal freedoms. Left-wing populists expose how Big Pharma manipulates the health care system, using their immense wealth and political influence to put profits over people, deliberately keeping lifesaving medications overpriced and out of reach – all of which has been said by politicians like Bernie Sanders. The goal of a populist is to portray these elites as the enemy of the people and to root out the perceived “corruption” of the elites. This worldview doesn’t just appeal to the far right. Historically in the United States, populism has been more of a force on the political left. To this day, it is present on the left through Sanders and similar politicians who rail against wealth inequality and the interests of the “millionaire class.” In short, the Trump administration’s populist and anti-intellectual worldview does not map cleanly onto the liberal-conservative ideological divide in the U.S. That is why Kennedy, a lifelong Democrat and nephew of a Democratic president, might become a Cabinet member for a Republican president. The cross-ideological appeal of populism and anti-intellectualism also partly explains why praise for Trump’s selection of Kennedy to head the Department of Health and Human Services came from all corners of society. Republican senators Ron Johnson and Josh Hawley lauded the move, as did basketball star Rudy Gobert and Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis. Even former President Barack Obama once considered Kennedy for a Cabinet post in 2008. Anger at elites Why, then, is disdain for scientific experts appealing to so many Americans? Much of the public supports this worldview because of perceived ineffectiveness and moral wrongs made by the elites. Factors such as the opioid crisis encouraged by predatory pharmaceutical companies, public confusion and dissatisfaction with changing health guidance in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the frequently prohibitive cost of health care and medicine have given some Americans reason to question their trust in science and medicine. Populists have embraced popular and science-backed policies that align with an anti-elite stance. Kennedy, for example, supports decreasing the amount of ultra-processed foods in public school lunches and reducing toxic chemicals in the food supply and natural environment. These stances are backed by scientific evidence about how to improve public health. At the same time, they point to the harmful actions of a perceived corrupt elite – the profit-driven food industry. It is, of course, reasonable to want to hold accountable both public officials for their policy decisions and scientists and pharmaceutical companies who engage in unethical behavior. Scientists should by no means be immune from scrutiny. Examining, for example, what public health experts got wrong during the COVID-19 pandemic would be tremendously helpful from the standpoint of preparing for future public health crises, but also from the standpoint of rebuilding public trust in science, experts and institutions. However, the Trump administration does not appear to be interested in pursuing good faith assessments. And Trump’s victory means he gets to implement his vision and appoint people he wants to carry it out. But words have consequences, and we have seen the impact of anti-vaccine rhetoric during the COVID-19 pandemic, where “red” counties and states had significantly lower vaccine intent and uptake compared with the “blue” counterparts. Therefore, despite sounding appealing, Kennedy’s signature slogan, “Make America Healthy Again,” could – in discouraging policies and behaviors that have been proven effective against diseases and their crippling or deadly outcomes – bring about a true public health crisis. Dominik Stecuła, Assistant Professor of Communication and Political Science, The Ohio State University; Kristin Lunz Trujillo, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of South Carolina, and Matt Motta, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Boston University Denne artikkelen knytter antiintellektualismen med populistismen og at den ikke er beregnet til bare høyre- eller venstresiden. Men det er et langt og utilgivelig stort sprang til antivitenskap som i virkeligheten er altfor farlig for menneskeheten.

https://www.msn.com/en-in/politics/government/inside-the-gop-s-60-year-conspiracy-to-kill-our-democracy-opinion/ar-AA1yewLx?ocid=BingNewsSerp Inside the GOP's 60-year conspiracy to kill our democracy In Wednesday’s Daily Take I mentioned Russell Kirk and the origins of today’s hard right GOP. A few people replied with, “Who’s that?” and similar questions; others were incredulous that Republicans actually believed the middle class created by FDR’s New Deal was a bad thing. So, here’s the backstory to what I mentioned. I was thirteen years old in 1964 when my dad, a Republican activist, gave me a copy of John Stormer’s book “None Dare Call It Treason.” The Goldwater campaign had sent it to him, and its claim that the State Department was filled with communists intent on handing America over to the USSR had his friends buzzing. Ironically, Stormer’s book and the movement it ignited within the GOP is largely responsible for that party today standing on the precipice of fully endorsing fascism as an alternative to democracy in the US. And it was started by morbidly rich men (it was all men back then) who wanted to use the threat of a “communist menace” to gut the union movement to increase their own corporate profits and CEO pay. The founding premise of the modern conservative movement tracks back a generation before Stormer’s book to a Republican thought leader named Russell Kirk. He laid it out in his 1951 book The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot, as I detail in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy. Kirk argued that the middle class was becoming a threat to America; without clearly defined classes and power structures — essentially without the morbidly rich in complete control of everything — he worried that society would devolve into chaos. The opening chapter of his book was about Edmund Burke, the Irish conservative who wrote, in 1790, that hairdressers and candlemakers should not be allowed to run for political office or even to vote: “The occupation of a hairdresser or of a working tallow-chandler cannot be a matter of honor to any person — to say nothing of a number of other more servile employments. Such descriptions of men ought not to suffer oppression from the state; but the state suffers oppression if such as they, either individually or collectively, are permitted to rule. In this you think you are combating prejudice, but you are at war with nature...” Kirk and his followers essentially predicted in 1951 that if today’s “hairdressers and working tallow-chandlers” — college students, women, working-class people, and people of color — ever got even close to social and political power at the same level as wealthy white men, there would essentially be a communist revolution in the US, handing us over to Stalin and his Politburo. (Keep in mind, this was when racial segregation was legal and brutally enforced, the voting age was 21, campuses were almost entirely all-male, both abortion and birth control were illegal in most states, and women couldn’t open checking accounts or get credit cards without a husband’s, brother’s, or father’s signature.) Throughout the 1950s, Kirk and his warnings of the dangers of an activist middle-class developed a small following; the most prominent of his proponents were William F. Buckley Jr. and Barry Goldwater. Most Republicans, though, considered him a crackpot. But when the birth-control pill was legalized in 1961 and the Vietnam War heated up a few years later, those marginalized groups Kirk had warned his wealthy white male followers about began to rise up in protest. Kids were burning draft cards, women were burning bras, and Martin Luther King Jr. was leading a movement for racial justice that the white power structure blamed for American cities burning. Gay liberation was also having a moment. Meanwhile, the Arab Oil Embargoes of the 1970s had lit the flame of inflation, and unionized workers were striking all over America for wage increases to keep up with the rising cost of living. Wealthy white conservatives freaked out as the morbidly rich promoted the idea that America was experiencing a “moral decline” that could only be fixed by ending the union movement and other “liberal” causes that shared the union movements’ populist goals. They became convinced that they were seeing Kirk’s prophecy play out in real time on their television screens every night: the “communists” — those uppity racial minorities, women who’d forgotten their “rightful place in society,” students who objected to Vietnam, unionized workers, and gender minorities — were on the verge of “taking over” America. These five movements all hitting America at the same time got the attention of conservatives and Republicans who had previously ignored or even ridiculed Kirk back in the 1950s. Suddenly, America’s most powerful and well-known conservative commentators (like William F. Buckley Jr.) were telling Republicans that Russell Kirk was, indeed, a prophet. They’d finally found a politically acceptable “hook” to destroy the wealth of working-class people and transfer trillions into their own money bins: fear of communism and a prophesied social decay caused by an activist middle class. The Republican/Conservative “solution” to the “crisis” these five movements represented was put into place in 1981 when Ronald Reagan was sworn into office: the explicit goal of the morbidly rich white men funding the so-called Reagan Revolution was to take the middle class down a peg to end the protests of the ’60s and ’70s, restore “social stability,” and increase corporate profitability. Their plan was to declare war on labor unions so wages could slide back down again, end free college across the nation so students would live in fear rather than be willing to protest, and increase the penalties Nixon had already put on drugs so they could use those laws against their scapegoats, particularly the hippy antiwar protesters and Black people demanding an end to police killings. They also wanted to outlaw abortion, to put women “back in their place.” Thus, Reagan massively cut taxes on rich people and raised taxes on working-class people 11 times. For example, he put income taxes on Social Security and unemployment payments, and put in a mechanism to track and tax tips income, all of which had previously been tax-free but were exclusively needed and used by middle-class people. He ended the tax deductibility of credit-card, car-loan, and student-debt interest, overwhelmingly claimed by working-class people. At the same time, he cut the top tax bracket for millionaires and billionaires from 74% to 25%. (There were only a handful of billionaires in America then, in large part because of previous tax policies; today’s democracy-destroying explosion of billionaires followed Reagan’s, Bush’s, and Trump’s massive tax cuts on the rich.) Reagan declared war on labor unions, crushed PATCO in less than a week, and over the next decade the result of his war on labor was that union membership went from about a third of the American workforce when he came into office to around 10% at the end of the Reagan/Bush presidencies. It’s just now beginning to recover from its low of 6% of the private workforce. He and Bush also husbanded the moribund 1947 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trades (GATT, which let Clinton help create the WTO) and negotiated NAFTA, which Clinton signed and thus opened a floodgate for American companies to move manufacturing overseas, leaving American workers underemployed while radically cutting corporate labor costs and union membership. And, sure enough, Reagan’s War on Labor cut average inflation-adjusted minimum and median wages by more, over a couple of decades, than anybody had seen since the Republican Great Depression of the 1920s and ’30s. The billionaire’s investment in taking the middle-class down a peg was paying off by orders of magnitude. Had Reagan not destroyed the nation’s unions, the median American income today would be well over $100,000 a year, minimum-wage households would have a family income of $86,000, and a single wage-earner would still be able to buy a house, a car, send the kids to college, and have a decent retirement (as my dad did, working a union job for 35 years in a tool-and-die shop). Instead, CEOs today keep all that money for themselves and their investors. And Reagan’s War on Colleges jacked up the cost of education so high that an entire generation is today saddled with more than $1.5 trillion in student debt: as predicted, many aren’t willing to jeopardize it all by “acting up” on campuses. The key to selling this campaign of impoverishment to the American people to help out the billionaire class was the idea that the US shouldn’t protect the rights of workers, subsidize education, grant women equal rights, or enforce Civil Rights laws because, conservatives said, all of those things were aspects of “socialism.” And if America embraced socialism, we may as well be ruled by the Soviet Union. As Reagan told us in his first inaugural, government “socialist” programs were not the solution to our problems, but instead were the problem itself. He ridiculed the formerly-noble idea of service to one’s country and joked that there were really no good people left in government because if they were smart or competent they’d be working in the private sector for a lot more money. He even told us that the nine most frightening words in the English language were, “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” Following Lewis Powell’s 1971 memo, throughout the 1970s and 1980s Republican billionaires built a massive infrastructure of think tanks and media outlets to promote and amplify Reagan’s message that government supports of any sort for poor or working-class people were simply gateway drugs to socialism and, inevitably, communism. It so completely swept America that by the 1990s even President Bill Clinton was saying things like, “The era of big government is over,” and “This is the end of welfare as we know it.” Limbaugh, Hannity and other right-wing radio talkers were getting millions a year in subsidies from billionaire-funded groups like the Heritage Foundation. Billionaire-owned Fox “News” today carries on the tradition. It had been a pretty good scam for the billionaires who owned the GOP and wanted, back in the 1950s, to stop the union movement that was forcing them to share their profits with their workers. First, they terrified Americans about communism and socialism, then convinced about half of us that those things came straight out of “liberal” social and economic movements. Unions, feminism, acceptance of the queer community, civil rights, minimum wage increases, and even regulation of corporate behavior would, they told us, all lead to Soviet-style tyranny. So, to save America from herself, Reagan gutted the American middle class, transferring over $50 trillion in wealth from working class people into the money bins of the morbidly rich. By 2016, Americans were starting to figure out that they’d been screwed — and that Hillary Clinton’s husband had been in on it by continuing Reagan’s policies and doubling-down on free trade — and were loudly demanding change. Into this maelstrom walked Donald Trump, proclaiming himself the savior of the country. In the GOP primary he pointed out how corrupt his opponents were, particularly Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, and destroyed them, one after the other. For the general election in 2016, he changed his tune and ran on what was traditionally a Democratic platform, saying he was going to bring jobs home, end so-called “free trade” policies, raise taxes on the rich so much that “my friends won’t talk to me anymore,” and make sure every American had free or low-cost healthcare and access to an affordable college education. They were all lies — something Trump had become adept at during his business career — but they worked and sucked in disaffected workers who knew they’d been screwed but weren’t sure who did it to them or why. So here we are. We have an open fascist and apparent friend of authoritarian Russia as president after being convicted by a jury of his peers on 34 felony charges, having previously been adjudicated as responsible for sexual abuse (the judge called it “rape”) and fraud. He’s putting into place people and policies that could turn America into an authoritarian nation like Russia or Hungary, and apparently wants to re-align the United States away from NATO and the EU and toward Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. We are literally facing the authoritarian future that John Stormer was warning us about back in 1964. Only instead of “communists” in the State Department, it’s a billionaire president with the avowed goal of ending union rights and locking up or using the Army with live ammunition against those who protest his policies. And it all tracks back to wealthy conservatives funding a project in the 1960s to scare Americans about socialism and communism so they could stop the union-fueled growth of wages that were cutting into their profits. Perhaps none dare call it treason. But I do. Dette er i samsvar med mine egne observasjoner av det republikanske partiets politikk og mønster i de siste tjue år, spesielt etter Gingrich kom inn i kongressen i 1994, en kontrarevolusjonær anti-progressiv bevegelse som tar fordel av en doktrineforvirring omkring konservatismen ved å skape "falsk konservatisme" med liberalprogressive og libertarianske innslag for å opprettholde fordommer, skape eksklusjonsstemning og oppmuntre polarisering som selvsabotasje, som ved å stenge colleget fremfor å la "undermennesker" komme inn. Dette holder i livet den strukturelle rasismen som etter hvert ikke er lenge snakk om hudfarge, men også om sosialøkonomisk rangordning og kulturell identitet. De har fordel av den utdaterte konstitusjonens mangler ved at den opprinnelig var ment for et valgbart oligarki med sterke plutokratiske anføringer som hadde midten av 1800-tallet blitt dels tilsidesatt, dels omkonstruert for å skape et liberaldemokratisk system som begynte å fungere i "den progressive æren" 1900-1914 og fullføres i 1965 etter borgerrettighetsloven og liberalisering av det amerikanske lovverket hadde blitt gjennomdrevet. USA ble et "ekte" demokrati i dette året. Inntil da var demokrati bare for de utvalgte som lykte med å få innpass i det politiske systemet, først og fremst de anglosaksiske-protestantiske. Selv latinos, degos og wooks var ikke likestilt med de hvite fram til 1960-årene. Fremveksten av middelklassen som skjøt fart i mellomkrigstiden, er essensielt for USAs nasjonaløkonomi, men i 1929 hadde det blitt innlysende at kjøpekraften ikke hang med produksjonstakten fordi middelklassen var for liten til å opprettholde etterspørselen. Så Roosevelt gikk inn ikke bare for å reparere skadene, men også berge og styrke middelklassen som vokser for hver tiår som gikk siden 1933. Den amerikanske middelklassen ble en idealmodell for hele verden, ja endog i Sovjetunionen hvor man drømte om å oppnå den samme suksessen - uten hell. Et samfunn i sterk balanse hadde oppstått, selv om rasehygienske holdninger og sterk rasisme var sterk den gang. USA var ufattelig mektig, svært avansert og dermed i sannheten Fremtidens Stat som det hadde vært forestilt som, selv da Vietnam, rasefordommer, den andre rekonstruksjonen og ekstrem ulikhet sprang fram i 1960-1970. Amerikanerne var stolt av det de hadde oppnådd. Så begynte fallet, dixiekratene med deres nærfascistiske holdninger inkludert ettpartistatsidealer gikk over til det republikanske partiet som allerede i slutten på 1950-tallet bli et parti for de rike under kontroll av amoralske skurker som Nixon, som den rettskafne Warren mislikte meget intenst. En "konservativ vekking" tok seg til i vakuumet som oppsto etter fjerningen av Nixon, som tross alt var en karrierepolitiker med hang på kompromisspolitikk, i 1974-1981. Ford var en noksagt, og Carter var dessverre for snill for embetet i 1976-1981, slik at Reagan kunne vinne på hans naivisme - og på det amerikanske folkets manglende viten. For de var i en overgangstid da man trengte å bryte med fortidens fordomsfylte innhold og takle meget krevende omstendigheter knyttet til væremåte, teknologi, etc. etc. - og dermed evnet mange ikke å skue langt og bakover, som vi nå er i stand til å gjøre. Men amerikanerne hadde fram til 1994 alltid stemt på demokratene, som dermed siden 1932 hadde huset eller senatet under egen kontroll. I 1994 begynte det å skjære seg; republikanerne fikk mer makt - og det var ikke lenge en vilje for å straffe disse som gikk over strekningen. Republikanerne har nå tatt det for langt; det vil bli en borgerkrig i USA. For den omfattende misnøyen er så sterk, at man hittil var i stand til å distrahere den med kulturkrig, løgn og fordommer - men styrken er blitt for stor, for ukontrollert slik at et beist i form av MAGA med antikapitalistiske stemning har oppstått samtidig som den progressive delen av folket føres mot bristepunktet. Kommunismen vil vinne i slutten om dette vanviddet ikke stanses, for det Russell Kirk mente vil skje, vil i virkeligheten bli framprovosert. Enten kommunisme eller føydalisme. Techmilliardørene med Thiel og Musk tar sikt på å skape en neoføydal verden, sannsynlig med teknokratiske anføring.