Another day, and more evidence that the inmates are running the asylum that the White House has become. Trump continues on his anti-DEI crusade, forcing Willie Phillips to step down from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, apparently because he is black; naturally the only black individual in Trump’s cabinet, Scott Turner at HUD, has been accused of being an “enemy of the poor” during his time as a Texas legislator. Of course NASA can’t escape the anti-DEI witch hunt: slated for burning is the near-ready-for-launch Nancy Grace Roman space telescope, designed to study “dark matter.” The recently deceased Roman was an astronomer who worked for NASA; perhaps naming it after a woman annoyed Trump as being “DEI.”
What else? The lies keep coming at the speed of light from the mouth of Karoline Leavitt (so what else is “news”), and Pete Hegseth’s being discovered a second time sharing secret attack plans via Signal Chat, this time with his wife, brother and lawyer, and—again rather than admitting his error, whines about “fake news.” I mean, how many times has he done this that we have yet to discover? How much more will be “too much” of this? If it is proven that someone in the military was targeted and killed by hacking into one of these “chats”? Every time this man opens his mouth, it is clear that running the defense department is just fun and games, and “power” has gotten to Hegseth’s head like giving a child the keys to the house, and the car.
Then there is the news that Kilmar Abrego Garcia is no longer being held in CECOT—no doubt because of the “concern” if he is eventually returned to the U.S., he will have only limited stories to tell about the inhuman abuses at that concentration camp. Perhaps in “retribution,” the Trump administration despicably released his wife’s home address, possibly endangering her life from some of Trump’s fanatics. She has since been moved to a “safe house.”
Oh please, shut the fuck up, Leavitt; I hope your “God” sends you to your deserving place in Hell, so that you can be just as “shocked” to see where you are being sent as those first 238 Venezuelans, most of whom had committed no crime and being sent to a living hell.
People should be coming to terms with the fact that racial animus against Hispanics is the principle motivation of mass deportation, and to “justify” it, demonizing and dehumanizing them with lies is essential, just as it was “essential” for the Nazis to characterize Jews as rats in the propaganda film The Eternal Jew. Last month, USA TODAY reported that “ICE, the FBI and law enforcement agencies in states” found that there were fewer than 135 Tren de Aragua gang members in the U.S..
Yet the Trump administration continues to peddle the falsehood that virtually every Venezuelan male it can gets its filthy hands on are members of the gang. Sending people who have committed no crime to CECOT violates not only the Fifth Amendment, but the Eight Amendment’s prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishment”; both amendments apply to even illegal aliens, since they live under the jurisdiction of U.S. law just as any citizen does.
Racial animus is also apparent in the double standards applied to other groups illegally in the country. We learn that the country supplying the third most illegal immigrants in this country, India, is getting off fairly easily compared to those from Latin America. The Pew Foundation counts 3 million non-Hispanics in the country illegally (and growing faster), of which Indians account for 725,000. According to a story in the Times of India, as of March 15, only 388 Indians have been detained and deported for being in the country illegally, mostly those caught at the southern border.
Many of these are over-stayed visas—such as the B-1, which is easy to obtain and meant only for short business visits such as conferences, but are abused by Indian managers in American companies to “fake” as the harder to obtain H-1B visas—or are simply those who have made it into the interior and protected by the close-knit Indian community (often with fake papers) and are fortunate enough not to be racially-profiled like Hispanics, citizens or not.
As this story reports 1 where a Florida highway patrolman illegally pulled over a “random” Hispanic male under a Florida law that had been “paused” by a federal judge, and made up a story for why he handed this U.S. citizen to ICE. If this man’s mother had not been available to provide an authenticated birth certificate, we can “guess” at how many other U.S. citizens have been put into the deportation portal because they were unable to “prove” they are citizens.
Trump of course has found certain people of Indian extraction as useful tools in his administration in occupations that they are “fitted” for simply because they don’t understand the culture or history of this country and act on their own cultural/religious prejudices, and thus easily prone to radical views of what their jobs are supposed to be. We are learning that the completely unfit FBI director Kash Patel ordered the arrest of a Wisconsin judge 4 for standing in the way of the detainment and deportation of a man whose case she was about to hear. This is clearly an "experiment" in judge intimidation.
And then there is the new head of the Civil Rights Division is someone named Hameet Dhillon, whose basic “qualifications” for the job is that she represented Trump in election-denial cases. According to an NBC News report,
The Federal Coordination and Compliance Section, for example, had been tasked with enforcing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by preventing and remedying discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, religion and shared ancestry in federally funded programs across the country. Dhillon’s memo says the section now has new priorities, not mentioned in the 1964 law but outlined in Trump’s executive orders, including those on “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism,” “Restoring Merit Based Opportunity” and “Designating English as the Official Language of the United States.”
In other words, “restoring” the country to the “vision” inspired in Trump by his reading of Hitler’s speeches.
NBC News also reported that “Attorney General Pam Bondi hosted a meeting of a new Trump administration task force on ‘Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias.’” I thought that lying was against the Ninth Commandment, "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor," but then again as we have seen in the Trump administration’s “interpretation” of Supreme Court decisions against its actions, it doesn’t actually see the words “lie” or “lying.”
Rachel Maddow has reminded people before that the “principles” of Bondi as an arbiter of justice (let alone the law) is completely transactional, open to the highest bidder, and she is probably about as unfit and corrupt as anyone who has “led” the Department of Justice:
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal is condemning Trump’s Ukraine “peace” proposal as a “win” for rogue players in the world, and of course accusing Trump’s trade policies as “ad hoc”—i.e., clueless bungling.
Surprisingly, the WSJ isn’t all about politics and business; it actually has an “arts” section, where I discovered a story about a musician named Maria Somerville, a “rising star of the dream-pop scene,” who I never heard of. Having read a story about the mystery of the self-titled late 70s yacht rock album and its singer, Dane Donohue (who I never heard of before, either), which was recorded with the assistance of Steely Dan’s band with contributions by Stevie Nicks and Don Henley, and went exactly nowhere on the charts, not surprising for a debut artist with no song on the album that had a “hook” memorable enough to be a commercially viable single.
I listened to a few of its songs on YouTube and I was actually surprised it didn’t do better, since it was a well-produced album and the lyrics suggested some intelligence; however, Donohue didn’t make many friends in the industry with some of his “insider” commentary, and there wasn’t much effort to promote the record. But I actually liked what I heard enough to download the album from Amazon digital.
But what about this Maria Somerville that even the WSJ thought was worthy of attention? What the hell is “dream-pop” anyways? Is this a “return” to classic hook-ridden “Have a Nice Day” pop records of yesteryear? Hell No. I listened to a half-dozen song presented on YouTube, and this synth-driven stuff with barely decipherable vocalizing is “dream” in the kind of way that is at least “safer” to put you to sleep than a bottle of sedatives. A Tangerine Dream record with similar electronic effects could be repetitive at times, but at least it transported you to a different world, and didn’t keep you wondering where the next off-ramp was. So there is no relief from the ills of the world from that genre of contemporary music, unless you want to go to sleep and pretend it isn’t happening.
So back to the real world. It is an unfortunate fact that as the WSJ pointed out that not only is Trump’s economic policies largely based on illegal and unconstitutional actions that the current California lawsuit against Trump’s tariffs cannot reach the U.S. Supreme Court fast enough (provided it rules correctly), but that it is without apparent reasoning and proves that bullying and being cowardly in turn is not effective “deal making”—especially when your principle opponent (China) is ruled by those who do not have to answer to an electorate when things go south in a hurry.
Trump’s tariff threats can only work against internally weaker economies like those in Latin America (Mexico, Panama, Colombia), and their “ad hoc” nature, as described by Google AI, is “something done hastily, without planning or consideration for wider implications, and is often criticized for its short-term focus and potential lack of long-term effectiveness.”
Yet even Trump’ “plans” that may seem “common sense” on the surface are in truth wishful thinking, such as his “drill-baby-drill” proposals. But not only are oil companies not interested in increasing oil stocks which will drive down prices and thus profits, but as the WSJ is reporting, Trump’s tariff insanity is persuading “Big Oil” to “offshore” high-paying engineering jobs from this country to India to save money.
Thus Trump’s foolish “ad hoc” method of policy-making implies they are just “thought out” on the fly, with no understanding of how things will turn out; that is what you can expect to happen when you have nothing but sycophants “advising” you. Trump’s in-and-out stupidity is apparent to all, especially to China which apparently has more cards to play than Trump does, and laughs at his “deal making,” which frankly has always been a fraud and simply a matter of people not wanting to play his dumb games anymore.
This country is in a crisis now, whether people want to understand that or not. In 1933 there was a real world economic crisis, made worse by the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. Herbert Hoover essentially did too little and too late in response to the Great Depression and he paid the price for listening to industry “leaders” whose financial recklessness had brought on the Depression; the people wanted action now. FDR promised action, the lack of which would have led to more “bonus armies” rising up supporting a fascist dictator as occurred in Germany.
FDR did many good things, like the government promoting job growth relief (like the WPA) and reform elements like the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, a Federal Reserve system given teeth, the labor rights Wagner Act, and the Social Security Act. There were misguided efforts, like the National Industrial Recovery Act, which essentially allowed businesses to regulate themselves in a way that on the surface seemed necessary to promote production and create jobs, but in reality created cartels and monopolies that stifled competition. Thousands of self-created regulations appeared that the administrators of the NRA were supposed to enforce (including those in regard to labor rights), but ended-up randomly enforcing some and allowing businesses to do the “enforcing” of others, such as those involving price and wage controls.
In 1935 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the NIRA unconstitutional in a unanimous decision, since the Congress had unlawfully delegated enforcement authority to the executive branch not allowed by the Constitution’s interstate commerce provision. Yet today the Republican-led congress is overlooking hundreds of executive orders that are unconstitutional violations of its own authority, and that includes Trump’s tariff regimen even as it is becoming nothing short of a disaster that threatens their majority in the 2026 elections.
FDR saved democracy in America by demonstrating that democratic government not only listened to the needs of the people, but acted on them. Dictators are only concerned with their own power, and as in Nazi Germany, people were kept in line with a steady diet of lies that were dependent on the suppression of opposition (political opponents sent to concentration camps), intimidating opposition press into silence, creating a scapegoat for all the ills of the country (Jews and those who “poisoned the blood”), and propping up a little man who was never “wrong” around a cult of personality.
It should come as no “surprise,” then, that what we see happening today has a “past.” In a new article in The Atlantic, Timothy Ryback observes that Trump’s fascination with tariffs (and of course stifling opposition and creating scapegoats) mirrors that of Hitler, whose speeches were for a time Trump’s favorite bedtime reading. “From almost the moment Adolf Hitler took office as chancellor of Germany, tariffs were at the top of his government’s economic agenda.”
Gottfried Feder, the Nazi Party’s chief economic “theorist” as the Nazi’s prepared to take over the country, declared that “National Socialism demands that the needs of German workers no longer be supplied by Soviet slaves, Chinese coolies, and Negroes.” It was basically a “Germany First” policy, with imports restricted to virtually nothing, and Germany producing all of the German people’s needs—with some excepts, such as oil which the country had little of, but of course Hitler had a “plan” for that, in the future.
The Great Depression had been underway for three years, and there were some German economists who were concerned about the effects of a trade war worsening the situation; and as Ryback notes “Hitler had inherited a recovering economy: In December 1932, the German Institute for Economic Research reported that the crisis had been ‘significantly overcome’; by the time Hitler was appointed chancellor, in January 1933, the economy was on the mend.” Hitler’s main concern was “not messing things up.”
But “messing things up” started to concern business leaders in the country, with “rumors” of the tariffs and ending international trade agreements. The conservative Centre Party—still thinking along the lines of a democratic state—opposed “unconstitutional, economically harmful, socially reactionary and currency endangering experiments.” Eduard Hamm of the board of the German Industry and Trade Association foolishly sought to “remind” Hitler of the “legal, economic and psychological prerequisites for building capital, and that free trade was “based on trust, the rule of law, and adherence to contractual obligations.” Hamm also pointed out that the jobs of German workers was dependent on its exporting of industrial and manufactured goods. Starting a trade war that would stifle exports would have a severe impact on the German economy.
Hitler’s economic plans, such as they were, were largely a mystery to most people outside his inner circle—and for good reason: while on the “campaign trail” Hitler promised Germany for all Germans (at least for those who “racially pure”), but what had become clear as time went one was that Hitler was becoming less interested in the “German Workers” part of the Party name, but more along the lines of Mussolini’s “corporate state,” or at least one where Hitler sought alliances with the business hierarchy at the expense of “the people.”
Ryback notes that Feder’s “national socialist” economic ideas, which included “increased taxation of the wealthy” and “state supervision of large corporations” were no long part of Hitler’s thinking, since he needed the cooperation of industrial leaders for his future plans for which he hoped his tariff plan would aid in an “independent” German economy. As he told his ministers (but not yet the populace) “The future of Germany depends solely and exclusively on the rebuilding of the army.”
The German “economic miracle” was based largely on military spending, at one pointed accounting for more than 70 percent of government spending. There were some problems with doing this; by law it was illegal for the central bank to bankroll the government, heavy deficit government spending would cause inflation, and there was still need to conceal the fact that Germany would be in violation of the Versailles Treaty with the rapid growth of its military.
Thus the creation of a “dummy company” that basically printed out fake money called MeFo notes, basically IOUs that could be rolled over indefinitely. Since this wasn’t real money that could be converted to RMs (and thus be inflationary), it wasn’t reported and didn’t officially count in government expenditures. But by 1938, this had become unsustainable, since there was only so much military hardware you could build if you were not actually using it up to replace (see North Korea today). This fake economy was threatening to collapse under its own weight, and if for no other reason, Hitler backed himself into a corner where even though he wasn’t ready for war, he had no “choice” but to start a war earlier than desired to prevent total economic collapse.
While this was all going on, the Nazis were engaging in nationalist, racist and anti-Semitic propaganda. In a speech soon after gaining the chancellorship, Hitler promised to “cleanse every aspect of our life,” which would be accomplished by first taking complete control of the government through the Enabling Act (as Trump hopes to do with the Insurrection Act), and then eradicating “government bureaucracy” and basically eliminate “DEI” (i.e., Jews and "foreign" influences) from “public life and culture,” and remove “undesirable” races that “impurify” the national racial character. All the while, Hitler continued to claim that his tariff program would aid in this by helping “restore the pride and honor of German self-reliance.”
In this 2019 paper produced by the University of Pennsylvania 1 concerning the unsustainable fiscal cliff the Nazi economy was headed toward before the war, wage and price controls kept both at Depression-levels in order to limit demand for consumer goods in favor of businesses playing “ball” with the Nazis, who deliberately limited the allocation of resources to military hardware, in order for the economy based on this to remain “viable.” But at some point, this military spending would be unsustainable, and massive unemployment would be inevitable without a consumer manufacturing base to replace it.
In the meantime, the Nazi’s tariff and open flaunting of their debt responsibilities led to worthless German bonds and the refusal to “fund” the German war machine. Of course Germany would never be self-sustainable and it needed trading partners, so while most Western countries refused to trade with Germany, the Nazis bullied “weaker countries in Eastern Europe and South America into bilateral clearing agreements with Germany. Per these agreements, trade would be conducted either through barter or, if necessary, in RMs so that foreign exchange-reserves were never used.50 By 1938, clearing agreements had been signed with over forty countries, who collectively bought about 80% of Germany’s exports.”
But it was only a matter of time before all the gamesmanship of the Reichminister for the economy, Hjalmar Schacht, would inevitably run out of steam. The lack of consumer goods decreased confidence in the Nazis’ economic policies among the populace, and the financial and business sector no long had confidence in the IOU’s they had been forced to accept. The government was forced to print money in contravention of the law to continue finance its military spending. As the Penn report notes, economic reality was of little interest to a man like Hitler whose actual knowledge of economics was limited in the extreme:
Schacht told Hitler that spending on the military would have to be cut or incredible inflation would ensue. Instead of listening to Schacht, Hitler fired him, electing to replace him with a loyal deputy named Walther Funk. Hitler instructed Funk to get prices, wages, and the foreign trade debacle under control using whatever means necessary. A short, obsequious letter written by Funk to Hitler regarding the status of the economy in mid-1939 highlights the stark difference between Funk and Schacht as protectors of the German economy; Funk would do whatever Hitler demanded, regardless of the havoc it would wreak.
The Penn report noted that the “miracle” Nazi economic recovery was a mirage, likening it to an untied balloon that in order to continue to “expand” it had to be continually filled with air in order to keep it “stable.” If they stopped pumping air the economy would eventually “fizzle,” or if they continued on the same course it would simply keep growing until it “popped.” As a political matter, the continuation of this policy depended on the “confidence” of population that Nazis knew what they were doing, and by 1939 it became increasingly clear that this “confidence” was waning. In order to remain in power before the balloon burst, it was decided that there must be a war now.
Thus the United States and Germany were two countries in the midst of the Great Depression who responded to it in completely different ways. FDR convinced Congress to repeal the Hoover-era tariff law in 1934 because he knew it was bad for “business,” and clearly Trump doesn’t know that his tariffs are bad for business. While FDR sought to reconstruct a consumer-based economy, the basis for the “recovery” for Germany’s economy was a military build-up that was untenable in the long run, who would have resulted in an economic collapse that would have rivaled the worst of the just endured Depression; a full-blown war was thus needed to “sustain” the German economy as it was being contructed.
Trump, on the other hand, inherited a strong economy from Biden just as he did from Obama, and he is using it to “punch America in the face”…
…with his “America First” stupidity and personal megalomania. The U.S. isn’t Russia (let alone Germany circa 1933), at least not yet to the point where a 19-year-old citizen is sentenced to 3 years in a penal colony for protesting the Ukraine war 3, and if there is any “silver lining” to any of this, it is that Trump and his enablers still exist in a country that can still eventually punish them for the crimes (well, at least in the history books) they have committed for no reason at all save for their horrific failings as human beings.
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