Category: Professor's Classroom

Men Without Hats

I could go into some diatribe about the music of the 80s but I shall leave that for someone that is a fan.

I will close out my week with a little cultural history.

For generations upon generations men wore hats…..top hats. derby, cowboy, bowler, etc…..as late as the 1040s and 50s hats were still being part of the attire and then in the 1960s something happened….but why did it happen?

A hundred years ago, everyone wore hats. In 1960, they suddenly stopped. Here’s why.

There you have it a change in cultural perception.

Although those cowboy hats are still popular with some (that reason will be beyond me)….

I hope this change in pace was to your satisfaction.

A little history is always a good thing.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

What Of The Democrats?

Another day of doctors and such….I will not be around for most of the day and I shall try to catch up as soon as possible….thanx for understanding.

College of Political Knowledge

This is part of the series I write looking at the Democratic Party and the upcoming election.

After the ass kicking the Dems took in 2024 they set about to change the way they approach elections (that was the lie they told then)….I wrote about it so I went back into my archives (that is why I have them) and found what I had written then….this from about a year ago….

What Happened To The Democratic Party?

After a year of lip service and lies things are not going well….so far all they have done is theatrics for the media and accomplished very little….some Dems have even sided with the GOP on some spending bills…..not much has changed….

Recent polls show approval of Donald Trump hovering in a deep unlit trough around 40 percent. Yet his dismal ratings have done little to bolster the reputation of the opposition party. Commentators across the political spectrum have overwhelmingly agreed that the Democratic brand is shot. The American Prospect called it “damaged.” NBC said it was “weak.” Rolling Stone said it was “cooked.” Semafor announced that “left-wing ideas” had “wrecked” it, and Bill Maher compared Democrats to has-been companies like Sears or Kodak that had “screwed themselves out of relevance.” The pejoratives aren’t confined to the armchair critics. Arizona Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego lamented, with only slightly more finesse than the news outlets, the “national brand problem.” Michael Bennet, a Democratic senator from Colorado, delicately agreed that the branding is “problematic.”

Is all lost for the Democrats, or is there opportunity in the shambles? When the only party offering a bulwark against Trump’s murderous, crackpot regime appears to be losing the vibes war—and as we approach the midterm elections that offer our last best chance to rein in the madness—these questions are not merely of political interest; they are a matter of existential importance.

And so, in a survey of 2,421 Democratic voters, conducted January 7–16 by Embold Research, The New Republic sought to explore what rank-and-file Democrats want to see from their candidates and elected representatives. Is it true, as one popular strain of criticism goes, that some of the party’s more liberal social ideas are a liability? How important to voters are housing, prescription drug prices, trans rights? How should we approach economic policy, foreign policy? How conciliatory or aggressive should party leaders be toward their foes? What, in other words, do Democrats want from Democrats?

https://newrepublic.com/article/206015/new-republic-opinion-poll-democrats-leaders-results

Not much is changing because the Dems are still in corporate pockets….the people mean nothing to these politicians no matter how much manure they spread none of it is true.

The Centrists are leading the way…..

Centrist Democrats led by Cheri Bustos, a corporate lobbyist who previously headed her party’s campaign arm in the US House, are launching a policy and advocacy organization aimed at pressuring Democrats to embrace the kind of “pro-growth” deregulatory agenda associated with the so-called “abundance” movement.

The new organization, named Next American Era, was formed “with an eye toward 2028” as Democrats work to recover from their crushing defeat to President Donald Trump in the 2024 elections, Axios reported Sunday, noting that the group describes itself as a “hub for center-left policy and advocacy.”

Bustos, whose lobbying client list in 2025 included OpenAI and Larry Ellison’s Oracle, said Next American Era plans to “air issue-focused ads during the midterm elections and the 2028 presidential campaign, but it won’t endorse candidates,” Axios reported.

Bustos said the founders of Next American Era share “many of the same principles as the Abundance movement,” a loose assortment of organizations and individuals—including large corporations and prominent billionaires—broadly supporting views expressed by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson in their 2025 book Abundance.

“She said cutting red tape, streamlining regulations, and supporting workforce training are among the top policy goals of her group, which is structured as a 501(c)(4) political nonprofit,” Axios reported

https://www.commondreams.org/news/cheri-bustos-next-american-era

Their aims are the aims of the GOP so how do these fools still wear the Democrat name tag?

I wish I could say that these fools are a minority….they are not even the minority leaders of both houses are wishy washy….

Democratic leaders in Congress are already backing down on one of their key demands in the fight to reform the federal immigration agencies terrorizing Minnesota and other parts of the country.

On Wednesday, Democrats laid out a list of 10 “guardrails” they said they wanted to see put in place to protect the public from abuses by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents, before agreeing to a new round of funding for their parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

https://www.commondreams.org/news/jeffries-schumer-ice-masks

Was this an attempt at some form of bi-partisanship?  Or was it just cowardice?

Now look at the protests around Minneapolis….the Congressional Dems were quick for lip service but have done nothing to join the protests.

One Democratic lawmaker to whom Axios granted the veil of anonymity suggested that Democrats expect the base to “get upset” but believes the discontent will wash away because “then you’re going to have the real fight in two weeks.” Whether or not that period ends with any meaningful change in the status quo remains to be seen. Much of what Democrats seek would merely require various federal agents to obey rules and regulations that they’re already supposed to follow as a matter of agency directive—though enshrining these policies as laws would be a step in the right direction.

That said, there’s still the thorny matter of enforcing any new constraints that are imposed on ICE and Border Patrol. I hope I’m wrong about this, but by the time all is said and done, I don’t expect much in the way of material change where the president’s paramilitaries are concerned. At best, perhaps, people will see the faces of the thugs who are beating them—though not always, if Schumer has his way.

https://newrepublic.com/post/206262/democrats-join-civil-resistance-midterms

The Dems should be out there let the people see that their lives matter to them…..so far empty words and ill promises is all we have got.

So far the only ones that are stepping up are the true Progressives, not those that use the term to appear important, and I agree that working class politics is where this party should be centered not in the pockets of billionaires.

Speaking at a panel at the Munich Security Conference in Germany, Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said that decades of government failures such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the 2003 Iraq War had opened the door for demagogues such as Trump among working-class voters.

The only way to defeat this, she said, is to reorient progressive politics around social class.

“We have to have a working-class-centered politics if we are going to succeed,” she said, “and also if we are going to stave off the scourge of authoritarianism, which provide political siren calls to allure people into finding scapegoats to blame for rising economic inequality, both domestically and globally.”

Elsewhere during the panel, Ocasio-Cortez elaborated on the way economic inequality fuels the demand for authoritarian leaders.

“We’re seeing, in economy across economy around the world, including in the United States,” she said, “that extreme levels of income inequality lead to social instability and drives in a sense in authoritarianism, right-wing populism and very dangerous domestic internal politics. And that is a direct outcome of, not just income inequality, but the failure of democracies over decades to deliver, the failure to deliver higher wages, the failure to rein in corporations.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-munich

I agree!

The DNC has tried to eliminate any dissenting voices and embraced the corporate policies that Clinton championed.

This is not what the people of this country needs we already have a big business party, the GOP, we need a party of the people that will work tirelessly for the betterment of people’s lives……something we have not had for a generation.

Time to stand up and bring this party back to where it belongs….on the side of the working masses.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

 

Political Polarization: Where Did It Begin?

I know in the past decade or so this subject has been examined by many…..but it is getting out of hand and deserves a closer look and often.

This is a report I read recently….it is a good look at what has been happening in this country for at least twenty years. (Personally I think it began way before their assertion)(I shall explain my disagreement later in this post)

This article posits that this polarization began in 2008 or the Obama years….

Forget Donald Trump. A new analysis suggests the U.S. public’s sharp lurch into polarization began in 2008, years before his first presidential campaign.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge’s Political Psychology Lab tracked shifts in Americans’ views across nearly four decades and found that divisions were broadly stable through the 1990s and early 2000s, before rising steadily from 2008 onward. Using more than 35,000 responses from the American National Election Studies between 1988 and 2024, they estimate that issue polarization has increased 64% since the late 1980s, with almost all of that change occurring after 2008.

The research uses a machine-learning approach to move beyond party labels and better understand what actually drives Americans’ political views. Instead of relying on whether respondents identify as Republican or Democrat, the team grouped people based on patterns in what they believe across a range of issues, from abortion and “traditional family values” to race, inequality, and health insurance. That distinction matters because in many countries politically opposite parties do not exist, says David Young, a psychology researcher at the University of Cambridge, U.K., and one of the study’s authors. “You might even want to study countries where there are no parties, like Saudi Arabia,” he says.

The paper challenges the idea that polarization is solely a Trump-era phenomenon. It points to 2008 as the “major turning point,” a year that also included the financial crisis, Barack Obama’s election, and the widespread adoption of the iPhone-era internet. “Our ability to nail down when it starts is slightly divided by the fact that we only have data points every four years,” Young says. Still, “we know that this increase starts from our 2008 data point,” he adds. “That’s our best guess at the starting point.”

https://www.fastcompany.com/91487819/political-polarization-started-a-lot-earlier-than-you-might-expect

Now my disagreement.

I say that the polarization began with the election of Reagan…..he weaponized the religious Right and emboldened every conspiracist that waddled out of the ether.

One could go back to the Goldwater years as the fodder that lit the flame of polarization.

We can say that conservatism is about free enterprise, smaller government, lower taxes, yada, yada…..but let’s be real in conservatism there is the privileged class and then us peasants…..we disguise it anyway we like but the simple fact is wealth knows best.

Thanks to Uncle Donny we see their true colors now….they no longer hide their distaste for the people.

This must be met with equal force by those that think that the people of this country are the important nay the only important issue.

Until then this slide will continue and god only knows where it will lead.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

What Will It Take?

For at least a decade (it really began on 1980 and slowly burst into flames in 2010) we have heard that the US is looking at a second civil war some even think this is our second revolution…..but what will it take for these dire predictions to come to life?

There is a simulation that states we are looking at the beginnings of a new civil war….

What’s the most surefire way to achieve Civil War 2.0 in the United States? According to one wild simulation, it’s exactly what’s happening right now in Minneapolis.

In October 2024, researchers at the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law (CERL) at the University of Pennsylvania conducted an experiment in which a president ordered a widely condemned federal law enforcement operation in the city of brotherly love.

To carry out the operation, the simulated president tried to federalize the Pennsylvania national guard, which the governor resisted. National guard troops who sided with the state followed suit, prompting the fictional president to order acting US military troops to march on Philly.

According to CERL director Claire Finkelstein’s breakdown of the simulation, newly published in the Guardian, the experiment culminated in a “violent confrontation” between state and federal forces in a major US metropolis.

Finkelstein notes that the war gaming exercise included actual government officials and former senior military leaders, none of whom “considered the scenario unrealistic.” The results were based off the assumption that during a rapidly evolving civil emergency like this, courts would be largely ineffective at stopping federal overreach.

Though the early stages of the Philadelphia simulation closely match the brutal events citizens in Minneapolis have experienced at the hands of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, the model diverges from reality in one key way: municipal and state officials don’t seem interested in attacking ICE agents anytime soon.

https://futurism.com/future-society/simulation-civil-war-games

It is a fascinating take on the events occurring today….

How long will the American people tolerate this abuse of government power?

From years ago all the rhetoric about confronting government abuse, you know those fat ass militia twats that were all talk, if this is not what they were going on about what the Hell is it?

I say keep it up do not let this become a standard for us to just stand by and ignore the abuses of Donny and his band of idiotic thugs.

I hope the spirit of 1776 has not been lost.

Thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Are You A Domestic Terrorist?

The most recent use of the term was about the young mother shot and killed by ICE Goons in Minneapolis….she was labeled even before her name was known.

That brings up the question just who is a domestic terrorist?

This is the definition as per a memo from the Orange cadaver we call Donny…

Here is how this administration defines domestic terrorists:

There are common recurrent motivations and indicia uniting this pattern of violent and terroristic activities under the umbrella of self-described “anti-fascism.” These movements portray foundational American principles (e.g., support for law enforcement and border control) as “fascist” to justify and encourage acts of violent revolution. This “anti-fascist” lie has become the organizing rallying cry used by domestic terrorists to wage a violent assault against democratic institutions, constitutional rights, and fundamental American liberties. Common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.

Cute definition but to me it sounds more like Donny and his ICE Goons than protesters.

So who does that very one sided definition include?

Anyone who suggests Trump, his administration, or his policies are authoritarian. This regime believes they have the right to behave like fascists, but calling them fascists is an act of violence.

Vice President JD Vance, who once called Trump “America’s Hitler,” now says, “If you want to stop political violence, stop telling your supporters that everybody who disagrees with you is a Nazi.”Stephen Miller has repeatedly accused liberals of “incitement” for suggesting that this administration’s policies are authoritarian: Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), he claimed, was engaging in “pure incitement” when she compared ICE to slave patrols; Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) comparing ICE to the modern-day gestapo is “vile anti-American language [that] can only be construed as inciting insurrection and violence;” California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) telling Stephen Colbert that we are living under an authoritarian president “incites violence and terrorism;” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) calling for mass protest “could be construed as inciting violence.”This is important, because criticism is legal under the First Amendment; inciting violence or insurrection is not. Miller understands this. And he’s trying to broaden the definition of “incitement” wide enough to encompass criticism of this regime.

Journalists and historians have repeatedly observed that Trump uses the language of fascists, despots, and other authoritarians, comparing people he dislikes to insects and vermin and garbage, saying that immigrations are “poisoning the blood of our country,” and arguing “They’re not human; they’re animals.”

Under this memo, observations like these are dangerous ones. It’s not the actions of the authoritarian that are waging “a violent assault against democratic institutions, constitutional rights, and fundamental American liberties;” it’s the people who criticize the authoritarian’s dismantling of democratic institutions, his quashing of constitutional rights, and his evisceration of fundamental American liberties.

Democratic Socialists, anyone who criticizes American capitalism, and any liberal who wants a more robust social welfare state. Accusing liberals of being commies is a conservative tactic that predates Trump by about a century. But Trump and his followers have taken it to a new level.

There are of course actual anti-capitalists in America, and holding that view is their constitutional right. There are also a lot of capitalism critics in America — people who don’t necessarily want to go full Communist, but wouldn’t mind if America were a little more like Denmark, with affordable healthcare and a stronger social safety net.In Trump’s telling, these people are anti-capitalist turncoats. And so are any of his opponents: Those who criticized him for absconding with classified documents he left in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom are “communists” who can’t get away with this, he told supporters. Kamala Harris, he said, was a “communist.”

Last year, Stephen Miller took the podium in the White House press briefing room and went on a truly unhinged rant about “communist woke culture” destroying America. And the broader MAGA right has a deep obsession with “cultural Marxism,” which is basically just a bunch of different progressive ideas — including feminism, anti-racism, and queer theory — that they think are a globalist (read: Jewish) plot to undermine… something. Point being, targeting “anti-capitalists” is very much about targeting anyone who expresses any dissatisfaction with America’s lack of social support or our economic conditions.

Religious minorities and those who criticize right-wing Christians. Not long after he was sworn in to his second term in office, President Trump released a memo on “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias.” Evidence of this alleged scourge — in a country where every president and the overwhelming majority of national elected officials has been a Christian or at least pretended to be — included the Biden Administration recognizing Transgender Day of Visibility.

This administration’s definition of “anti-Christianity” tars as “anti-Christian” an enormous number of religious Christians — just those who are not part of the fundamentalist white Evangelical sets that largely support Trump.Criticizing religious bigots, or religion itself, is indeed protected speech and expression. But according to this administration, it might also be evidence of domestic terrorism.

Those who might question the legitimacy of Trump’s presidency. Donald Trump was elected fair and square. I don’t like that fact, but he is the legitimate president of the United States. He would not be the legitimate president of the United States, though, if his 2020 attempts to subvert the results of a free and fair election had succeeded.

We don’t yet know what kinds of shenanigans Trump and his team will pull with the upcoming midterms and possibly with the 2028 presidential election, but this seems to be setting the stage to punish anyone who either rightly objects to election meddling, or who does what Trump and his own supporters did in 2020 and questions legitimate election results.

Immigrant rights advocates, racial justice activists, LGBT activists, and feminists. In my view, the most telling and troubling ideologies included on the list of potential domestic terrorism motivators are “extremism on migration, race, and gender.

It is absolutely true that extremism on migration, race, and gender have fueled significant acts of violence and terror in the United States: the Tree of Life synagogue massacre at the hands of a virulent anti-Semite who believed Jews were bringing migrants in to take over America; the Mother Emanuel AME massacre in which white supremacist Dylann Roof murdered nine Black churchgoers; the Buffalo, NY grocery store mass shooting in which a different white supremacist murdered 10 Black people; the Isla Vista killings carried out by a misogynist incel; the thousands of violent attacks on abortion clinics, including several murders, carried out by people (mostly men) who oppose women’s rights.A great many acts of domestic terrorism have been carried out by people with extremist views on migration, race, and gender. But almost all of those terrorists held right-wing views on those issues.

This administration is instead claiming that it’s people who support immigrants’ rights, advocate for racial justice, and believe in gender equality who are the potential terrorists — and it’s these groups the Trump administration is watching and investigating.

Feminists. Sure, feminists may have been captured in the above, but Trump singles them out for good measure, branding as potential terrorists those who demonstrate “hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”

This is, of course, shockingly ahistorical: Traditionally, “American views on family, religion, and morality” have never been monolithic. The founders argued about all three quite a bit, especially religion and morality. The American family has never been perfectly nuclear (when the Heritage Foundation trumpets the number of children begat by the Founding Fathers in its proposal to save America by saving the family, one wonders if they’re counting the children born to enslaved women who were impregnated by the men who had total control over their lives and bodies and routinely raped them).

(whowhatwhy.org)

Apparently I am….I must be in real trouble for I fall into 4 of the categories….

They are coming too take me away!

Good for I will not stop until I have no life left in my old body.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Convention Of States

I read this yesterday and thought that it needed to be read more widely…..a loyal friend of IST, Calico Jack, has hit the nail on the head with this post.

Project 2025 and the GOP are working hand in hand to throw out the existing Constitution and rewrote it to favor their archaic ideas.

Convention of States: The GOP’s Plan to Enshrine Project 2025 in the Constitution

Please let us know what you think.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Dems Want To Know What Went Wrong

THIS IS HILARIOUS!

Ready for a good laugh?

About two and half years out from the 2028 election and the Dems want to know why they lost to madman Donny in 2024.

They put together a strategy to find out what happened and how to find younger voters.  (This ought to be good)

Democrats are launching a new program Wednesday to try to reach voters in their corner who opted to stay home in 2024 instead of voting against then-candidate Donald Trump, as the party continues its search for its identity in the second Trump era.

The Democratic National Committee program — details of which were shared first with POLITICO — targets over a million voters they view as likely Democrats in battleground House districts who voted in 2020 but didn’t vote four years later.

The large-scale voter contact operation called “Local Listeners” is a tacit acknowledgement of one of the ways Democrats fell short in 2024, when then-Vice President Kamala Harris failed to engender enough enthusiasm from likely Democrats frustrated with the Biden administration’s economic agenda and its handling of the war between Israel and Hamas.

“We didn’t lose to Donald Trump. We lost to the couch,” DNC Deputy Executive Director Libby Schneider said in an interview. “We saw our voters, many of our important voters, stay home. Obviously, that is a trend that cannot continue.”

A key element of the strategy, according to the party, will be training volunteers to engage infrequent voters with a “listening first” approach that prioritizes “active listening” and “having difficult conversations about politics.”

Part of President Donald Trump’s winning strategy included engaging with unlikely voters his campaign identified as being potential Republicans. Trump aggressively courted people who had skipped previous elections, focusing predominantly on young men, and ultimately defeated Harris among voters who skipped the previous midterm and presidential elections.

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/04/democrats-2026-listening-program-00763666

First let me say getting a late start does not bode well for their next time around other than “not Donny” is their only hope.

But that said maybe I can help out just a bit…what went wrong in 2024….

Wrong candidate

More concern for donors/money then voters

Terrible platform

Focus on wrong economy

Little time spent with the actual voter

That is off the top of my head…..it went deeper than that…..but I will be interested to see what the ‘great minds’ of the DNC come up with…..how about you?

Do you think I missed anything in my summation?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

 

Thomas Paine–Working Class Hero

Since it is the 250th anniversary if the US I have set about re-acquainting the American people with the original Founding Father with a series dedicated to Thomas Paine.

I am always amazed to see any Right winger use Paine as some sort of icon for their beliefs….it is humorous for if they knew anything about Paine they would realize that he stood for damn near everything they hold dear.

…

The only thing Paine liked less than monarchical rule was its enablers, anyone who relinquished their freedom willingly to an aspiring tyrant.

This is not only wrong, Paine insists, but against nature, since all of us are created equal.

But even that’s not the worst part. Those who sacrifice their own freedom on the altar of monarchy also sacrifice that of future generations. Their “unwise, unjust, unnatural compact might (perhaps) in the next succession put them under the government of a rogue or a fool.” Ouch.

“Most wise men,” Paine adds, “in their private sentiments, have ever treated hereditary right with contempt; yet it is one of those evils, which when once established is not easily removed; many submit from fear, others from superstition, and the more powerful part shares with the king the plunder of the rest.”

https://theconversation.com/in-1776-thomas-paine-made-the-best-case-for-fighting-kings-and-for-being-skeptical-266448

It was Paine that chided Americans to throw off the yoke of Britain….

“In ‘Common Sense,’ Thomas Paine defines common sense as the fundamental ability of all people to reason and discern truth, regardless of social standing or education. He argues that this innate capacity, when applied to political matters, reveals the absurdity of hereditary monarchy and the necessity of self-governance based on the consent of the governed. Paine’s ‘Common Sense’ is a call to action, urging colonists to reject British rule and embrace republicanism, a system of government where power resides in the people.”  (To discern the truth….something Americans have lost)

…

What was Paine’s specific vision for human society? Long after the successful defeat of British colonialism in “the colonies,” he wrote this passage in “Rights of Man, Part the Second”: “When it shall be said in any country in the world that my poor are happy, neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars, the aged are not in want; the taxes are not oppressive; the rational world is my friend, because I am the friend of its happiness—when these things can be said, then may that country boast its constitution and its government.”

…

“Anyone needing to be reminded of core Enlightenment beliefs—that government can only be empowered by its citizens; that such citizens are born with certain natural rights; that none are born superior to any other; that all will be treated equally before the law; and that the state has a duty to help the neediest of its people—reading Paine offers a political and spiritual inspiration, one that has driven men and women to achieve greatness across history. Of Paine’s many reasons for daring to publish work for which he could have been hanged or guillotined in the United Colonies, the United Kingdom, or France, this legacy is his glory.”

The US resistance movement fighting the Trump regime’s effort to destroy everything Thomas Paine stood for and fought for, and more, will be stronger if we raise him up more and more over the coming months as we approach the 250th anniversary on July 4th next year of the issuing of the Declaration of Independence. There’s no question which side he would be on if he was alive today.

(znetwork.org)

This is something I wrote a couple of years ago about Thomas Paine….

Thomas Paine: America’s Founder

This is another tribute to this forgotten Founder….

Citizen of the world: a brief survey of the life and times of Thomas Paine (1737-1809) – World Socialist Web Site

I have been a fan of Paine since I was 14 when my grandfather gave me a copy of Common Sense….it was eye opening and profound….we need another Thomas Paine to bring some light to the darkness that now engulfs our nation…..we need Thomas Paine.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Taxation Without Representation

An old bitch but holds true today as it did in the 18th century.

What the Hell am I going on about?

Tariffs.  Remember those half ass ideas?

I have tried to get people thinking about this stupidity…..all tariffs are paid for by the consumer (that would be you)….

A new study of President Trump’s tariffs will not please the president: The research finds that Americans are footing nearly the entire cost of them, reports the Wall Street Journal. Specifically, the study from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy in Germany finds that US consumers and importers are paying about 96% of the costs tied to the tariff hikes, with foreign exporters absorbing the remainder. That runs counter to Trump’s frequent assertion that tariffs function as a kind of tax paid by other countries, and it suggests Washington may have less leverage than advertised in ongoing trade tensions with Europe.

“Foreign exporters did not meaningfully reduce their prices in response to US tariff increases,” reads the report, per Bloomberg. “The $200 billion surge in customs revenue represents $200 billion extracted from American businesses and households.” The researchers examined roughly $4 trillion in shipments between January 2024 and November 2025, concluding that the tariffs have effectively operated as a consumption tax on Americans, pushing up prices over time.

“There is no such thing as foreigners transferring wealth to the US in the form of tariffs,” co-author Julian Hinz of Germany’s Bielefeld University tells the Journal. He added, however, that foreign exporters might eventually absorb more of the tariffs if American companies find other sources of products. Earlier studies from Yale’s Budget Lab and Harvard Business School reached similar conclusions, though Harvard economists found that only about 20% of the tariff costs had fully shown up in consumer prices after six months, with much of the hit initially borne by US importers and retailers.

If that is not enough info then maybe this will help….

https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-tariffs-impact-study

Why taxation with representation?

The cost of tariffs are a hidden tax that we all MUST pay…..plus it was foisted upon us without the use of Congress (our representation)…..ergo we are taxed without representation.

Do you get it now?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Do ICE Agents Have Immunity?

Donny’s Goon Platoon has made of habit of killing American citizens and now it appears that they have absolute immunity for their actions.

Under normal circumstances they do not….but nothing about Donny’s tearing up our rights is nothing normal.

But there we are…..

Vice President JD Vance’s claim Thursday that an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who fatally shot Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis is “protected by absolute immunity” drew immediate pushback from experts who said the legal landscape around a potential prosecution is far more complicated.

Speaking at the White House, Vance appeared to try to stymie any efforts by Minnesota prosecutors to pursue a criminal case against the agent.

“The precedent here is very simple. You have a federal law enforcement official engaging in federal law enforcement action – that’s a federal issue. That guy is protected by absolute immunity. He was doing his job,” Vance said, echoing others in the Trump administration. “I’ve never seen anything like that. It would get tossed out by a judge.”

That assessment was quickly met with skepticism by experts who said the vice president was overstating the law around immunity for federal officials. Vance’s comments come amid nationwide protests of ICE officials and criticism of the agency’s efforts to carry out a historic deportation campaign with little to no oversight.

“The idea that a federal agent has absolute immunity for crimes they commit on the job is absolutely ridiculous,” said Michael J.Z. Mannheimer, a constitutional law expert at Northern Kentucky University’s Salmon P. Chase College of Law.

Mannheimer said that more than 120 years of case law on the issue of so-called supremacy clause immunity has shown that federal officials can be criminally pursued by state prosecutors for conduct taken in the course of their official duties but that it’s up to courts to ultimately determine whether they can be shielded from the charges.

“Officers are not entitled to absolute immunity as a matter of law,” said Timothy Sini, a former federal prosecutor in New York.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/08/politics/ice-immunity-jd-vance-minneapolis

Sadly under the leadership of Donny, the Goon Platoon, does have immunity even as it flies in the face of the law….

The modern version of the Brown Shirts are set to expand their numbers so these thugs can harass citizens in the homes and further expand their ability to function without regard to the law.

These ‘officers’ are criminals more so than the people that pretend to be hunting and as such need their legs cut off…..

This is a disgusting and pathetic path that Little Donny has decided to travel and I hope it bites his left cheek off.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”