bwar

hello

[bwar @zombiebwar]

@thtadthtshldntb @FmrRepMTG I hate to defend MTG but I don't think that was her point and you're filling in a lot of blanks about her stance on a whether or not nuking Japan was justified. Her point was this war with Iran was avoidable and nuking them would be a tragedy.

[bwar @zombiebwar]

@jokin0323 @ElVlado1 @FmrRepMTG Yeah he cares for his citizens (money and gullibility), as long as they aren't in a blue state.

[bwar @zombiebwar]

@JeffJeffp60 @ElVlado1 @FmrRepMTG bro I wish you were right, but Trump is filling the military with his puppets just like he did with the govt.

[bwar @zombiebwar]

@hoov70612056 @ElVlado1 @FmrRepMTG USA benefits immensely from it's world standing. Trump doesn't care if he damages that, he's a globalist ($500 million from the Saudis to his crypto foreign influence fund) and him and his family will remain fat and wealthy even if the US falls apart.

[bwar @zombiebwar]

@terrylmc423 @ElVlado1 @FmrRepMTG Trump: *starts a war without congressional approval*

You're being ironic right?

[bwar @zombiebwar]

@jokin0323 @ElVlado1 @FmrRepMTG trump doesn't have a clue about the US constitution either lol, it's just an irritant to him and he has lawyers and bootlickers to do damage control when he violates it

[bwar @zombiebwar]

@thtadthtshldntb @FmrRepMTG The point isn't whether it was justified against Japan, just that it was a tragedy with horrible consequences. For the record I think the nukes were justified against Japan, but the situation with Iran is entirely because of Trump's arrogance and incompetence and was avoidable.

[bwar @zombiebwar]

@OldBreedHwarang @FmrRepMTG I can understand why the Drumpf regime would want to use nukes to end this "not a war" quickly. Its turning into an economic disaster for not just the US but all it's (former) allies and Drumpf really wants to get back to renovating the whitehouse.

[DERRICK Independent Bernie Bro #NeverTrump! EVER! @Der_Mayfield]

@NickAdamsinUSA Teddy👇 says you are full of shit and what you are describing is pure 100% Authoritarian Fascism... no more, no less.

[Matt Stoller @matthewstoller]

The story of the U.S. shuttering one of our last aluminum smelters combined with record high aluminum is a great illustration of how Biden's industrial policy failed in the same way that Trump's framework is now failing. After all, a high price should induce more production, but it's not. That shows how market signals are not transmitting useful information because of manipulation by the Chinese and a failure of U.S. policymakers to react.

To recap, since the 1980s, U.S. industrial policy has been to reward capital with excess returns, aka 'number go up' or having the stock market increase. With such a framework, it just didn't make sense to invest in real production with slender margins. GE CEO Jack Welch talked about how investing in credit cards was a much better bet than bending metal, and there we go. But that's not inherent, it's because lifting usury caps and incentivizing profitable credit card operations - which make four times the profit of regular banking - made it so that many of the big industrials went into consumer credit and became shadow banks. Anyway I digress, the point is that investing in metal didn't make sense unless the government was willing to give special government contracts to do so, like it does for defense contractors.

Last year, Senator Josh Hawley asked President Biden to do just that, to use the defense production act to save one of America's last smelting plants, Magnitude 7 Metals aluminum, which was in Missouri. Over the course of decades, the Chinese had destroyed the U.S. industry with underpriced aluminum. Prices collapsed from 2010-2023, and the U.S. did nothing.

In 1980, America made 30% of the world's aluminum and had 34 plants, today it makes 1% and has 4 plants. Hawley's request was for the government to artificially induce a higher guaranteed return on capital with government money, to save this physical plant and the community around it. Biden didn't. But had he done so, it would have helped this one plant and nothing more.

Today, that plant still sits idle, despite high prices and new Trump tariffs. Why? Well, it's because aluminum requires large amounts of electricity, and our national policy is to move electricity to a massive data center buildout so as to juice what looks like an artificial intelligence bubble that Wall Street is reliant on. We don't have time for bending or making metal. Maybe that'll change if the prices get high enough, but restarting a plant is a long-term commitment, so it's tough to convince corporations to make the investments when they can get a higher guaranteed return on capital in so many other non-useful ways.

So again, you might look at the stock market and think 'well that seems high but whatever,' remember though that an excessive return on capital has a serious cost. Ruined towns in Missouri, lost capacity for making things, increased leverage for China, and inflation in basic metal production.

Trump's errors are ruining MAGA populism, which is too bad. But we have to reckon with the reality that Trump is following along the same strategy as Biden (and Obama, Bush, and Reagan before them), which is to support the stock market at all costs. And as long as Number Go Up is how we organize our society, then America Go Down will be the result.
https://t.co/bAp2UNcOF5 https://t.co/RRvixF6Nl5

[Matt Stoller @matthewstoller]

This story of a mostly shuttered Ohio paper mill is a great lesson in how Trump has destroyed MAGA populism's economic framework by making oligarchs untouchable.

New Ohio GOP Senator @berniemoreno tried to stop a private equity firm from closing down this plant with aggressive threats, but 93% of its workers were fired and its union was eliminated. And Moreno ultimately came to agree with the PE titans that the plant couldn't be saved, and praised the exec who sold off the plant publicly in front of the few dozen workers left there now making PPE.

Moreno isn't your standard Republican who thinks business should be left alone, he's a newly elected member trying to figure out how to help both workers and Wall Street at once. The core problem Moreno faced is that the rate of return in America demanded by oligarchs is too high. American financiers just won't put money into real production because the margins don't match the 10-15% 'hurdle rates' that most corporations demand. That's not a function of capitalism, it's a function of policy.

Take the Big Beautiful bill, which allowed private equity to buy up more farmland and get more government subsidies. Or take the excess guaranteed returns on electric utilities. Or the trillion dollar spreads going to banks for banking at the Fed. Or the crypto scamming. All of these are guaranteed risk-free returns on capital. Why would anyone in their right mind put money into a factory to make things, and have to deal with workers and a community, just to make a slender margins? It doesn't make sense.

Trump does sometimes indicate he wants to re-industrialize, but you can't do that unless you are willing to force capital to invest in real things. . You do that by reducing the returns capital has on 'paper activities' like M&A and getting tax loopholes and crypto. Trump hasn't stopped any of that, instead he's made it *more* profitable.

Moreno himself floated to victory on a sea of $40 million of crypto money, and has voted for the Trump agenda. If Trump had decided to genuinely raise wages by forcing capital to invest in real things, Moreno would have had the tools and capital available to restart the plant. But as much as Moreno might want to help workers in Ohio, the broader agenda he supports makes that impossible.

Trump had a choice of whether to bring in Robert Lighthizer to run economic policy. Unfortunately, he chose Wall Street and Silicon Valley, as well as a culture war towards the left. Trump has centered his economic strategy around making the stock market go up and building out data centers. Everything else is irrelevant.

I did not think MAGA economic populists would succeed for a variety of reasons, but I was rooting for them. The struggle of MAGA populists isn't just on policy. They have mostly been silent about the costs of Trump's strategy, because Trump is their leader. At this point, however, their model looks more like a failure than not. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe they'll pull a rabbit out of a hat. But I think it's important for them to take seriously the structural problem at the heart of their project. You can't support working people and Number Go Up at the same time.

Biden-era populists learned that lesson, and it's not fun. https://t.co/yVf1tGr50V

[Matt Stoller @matthewstoller]

Every industry is eventually going to just engage in this kind of overt purchase of Congress. Good to know how big tech is leading the way.

[bwar @zombiebwar]

@GuntherEagleman "do what we say or you'll go to hell"
world's oldest scam

[bwar @zombiebwar]

@Atlanticize @william_sh36802 @elonmusk fuck off nazi

[bwar @zombiebwar]

@GeorgeSot244537 @william_sh36802 @elonmusk moron. rainwater everwhere on earth is now contaminated with dioxins. Look up anthropocene extinction.

[Ozymandias @william_sh36802]

There's a difference between the amount of space people physically occupy and the overall amount of space they use to meet their needs and the impact they have on the planet.

8 billion people is a lot. There are few places you can go where you will not find our garbage. The atmosphere is full of our garbage. The oceans are full of our garbage. We are killing this planet, and ourselves with it.

[unusual_whales @unusual_whales]

Trump: "We're doing coal. I don't want windmills destroying our place. I don't want these solar things where they go for miles and they cover up half a mountain and they're ugly as hell."

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

The fact we have secret police whisking people off the streets doesn’t get enough attention. It ain’t normal and we’re further down the road to authoritarianism than you think.

[Chicano Marine 🇲🇽🇺🇸💙 @elchicanomarine]

My thought for the day:
I fought for this country in uniform. Now I watch it cage kids who share my blood and hunt my community like animals, while right-wing influencers salivate at the thought of brown people being torn apart by alligators.
So yeah, I’ll be sitting out Independence Day until this country starts treating everyone like human beings.
Happy Friday

[Acyn @Acyn]

TRUMP: And we are putting up wind. It does not work, aside from ruining our fields and valleys and killing all the birds. Being very weak and expensive, all made in China. I have never seen a wind farm in China. Why is that?