Tag: trump

Tariffs Again?

~ purplesage41 ~ Leave a comment

Donald Trump is not the only president to wax ecstatic over tariffs.

Here is what Wikipedia had to say about the so-called Tariff of Abominations two centuries ago: ” The Tariff of 1828 was enacted on May 19, 1828, and aimed to protect Northern industries by imposing high duties on imported goods, with rates reaching as high as 50% on certain items. This tariff was designed to bolster American manufacturing by making foreign products more expensive, thereby encouraging consumers to buy domestically produced goods.”

 It was signed by soon-to-be departing President John Quincy Adams but enforced by Trump’s favorite president (other than himself) Andy Jackson.  When John C. Calhoun argued that the Port of Charleston didn’t have to enforce a tariff the state disagreed with (the Nullification doctrine of states’ rights), Jackson said he would send federal troops to enforce it.  He also refused to renew the charter of the nation’s central bank, the Second Bank of the United States, because the bank’s president had supported his opponent in the 1828 election. (Sound familiar?)  While there was some compromise on tariffs, the combination of the two led to a severe recession in the 1830s.

Fast forward to the 1920s.  The Smoot-Hawley Tariff was enacted in 1930 and signed by President Herbert Hoover, just six months after the stock market crash on Black Friday in October 1929.  To quote Wikipedia again, “Hoover signed the bill against the advice of many senior economists, yielding to pressure from his party and business leaders. Intended to bolster domestic employment and manufacturing, the tariffs instead deepened the Depression because the U.S.’s trading partners retaliated with tariffs of their own, leading to U.S. exports and global trade plummeting. “The combination of financial disaster and disruption of world trade repeated itself, plunging the nation into a severe depression.

Apparently, it takes a hundred years to repeat the same mistakes. Trump’s tariffs and quarrels with the banking system, both with the Fed chair and with trying to loosen the already loose bank regulations that led to the financial disaster of 2008, look all too familiar to anyone who has more than a nodding acquaintance with U.S. economic history.

As philosopher George Santayana famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Speak Up, My Silent Generation!

~ purplesage41 ~ Leave a comment

Sandwiched between the Greatest Generation (born 1902-1927) that saw us through the Depression and World War II and the Baby Boomers/Me Generation (born 1946-1964) is my generation, (1928-1045)  known as the Silent Generation.  Silent, perhaps, because there were fewer of us and we lived in fairly pleasant times. Life was pretty good for most of us. 

We weren’t entirely silent.  We cheered the election of John Kennedy and supported Lyndon Johnson’s commitment to civil rights and the war on poverty while opposing Vietnam. In college and after, I remember protesting everything from letting women wear Bermuda shorts on campus and making them observe curfew in dorms to Vietnam We had lots of babies (I contributed three) and women explored new careers after ignoring their mothers’ recommendation of teacher, nurse, secretary. We had TV and Rock/n’ Roll, the pill and polio vaccine.  It was an era of, as they say in  New Orleans, to “laissez les bons temps router.”  (Let the good times roll.) It was the best of times, just as the millennials —our grandchildren–are coming of age in the worst of times.

As we did in the 1960s of fond memory, it is time for our small but powerful generation to stand up and speak out.  Now in our 70s to 90s, many of us are financially secure and not vulnerable to threats from the emerging police state. I recently listened to a retired general on TV who would like to continue working part time as a consultant but can’t be hired because he spoke out against the Trump administration and lost his security clearance. But he has another kind of security, financial security, and as a retired military person a strong sense of patriotic duty, he is using his time to fight Trump instead.

We have resources that can be put to work to retrieve our democracy.  We have money. We have time. We have experience and skills.  We can shelter immigrants, boycott businesses (Washington Post, CBS, Fox News)) that kowtow to Trump. WE can volunteer for community groups to provide mutual support while also engaging those who live in the other world of Trump and Fox News. We can vocalize our opinions, contribute to ACLU  and PBS and private foreign aid, attend protests, annoy our representatives in state legislatures and Congress, support candidates or run for office, and file lawsuits (I am a party to one against our Trump-like City Council). What we cannot do is sit at home and say “Woe is me” Withdrawal is not an option, it is amoral obligation for those of us for whom the danger is smallest.

Martin Niemoller, a Lutheran minister in Nazi Germany, left us these immortal words: \

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

When your great0grandchildren want to know what you did in the face of this challenge to our democracy, what will you tell them?

Women’s Work

~ purplesage41 ~ Leave a comment

I have been thinking about who are the people working to bring about the financial and political downfall of Trump. There is a panthean (note feminist spelling) of women. Liz Cheney. E. Jean Carroll. Letitia James. Fanni Willis. Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss. Nancy  Pelosi. Nikki Haley. Judge Chutkin. Cassidy Hutchinson.

The Latin word virtus (virtue) literally means manliness. (The made-up feminist equivalent, muliertus, doesn’t resonate very well!) Aristotle argued that there are four primary virtues, the private virtues of prudence and temperance or moderation, and the public virtues of courage and justice. (His Greek equivalent of virtus was arḗte, which translates as excellence, not manliness.)  A list of men possessing and exercising the primary public virtue of moral courage with respect to Trump would be a lot shorter. (Judge Erdogan. Jack Smith. Brad Raffensberger. Adam Kinzinger.)

Additional nominations welcome for both genders.

Our task as the middle and beyond generations is to encourage GenZ and millennials to show up at the polls, because in an era of toxic masculinity, they don’t vote like our generations do. I am working as a poll worker (6 am to 8 pm) in the South Carolina presidential on February 3rd and 24th, so it will be interesting to see who shows up.  My assignment is in a working class community, where I expect that African Americans will turn out to some degree in the Democratic primary while the numerous Trump-supporting evangelical “Christian” white angry aging folks will show up for the Republican primary.  I have to vote early 20 miles from home since I am not working in my own polling place, so in a few weeks I will be off to vote for Nikki, encouraging her to keep being a thorn in the flesh of the Donald.

My friends and blog followers, do what you can to mobilize what truly is the silent majority of our generation. My life at age 82 is much more past than future. On a personal level, I am trying to minimize any burden I leave for my daughters and grandchildren. On a communal/national/global level, I am trying to do what little I can to leave our children and heirs a safer, healthier, more livable world. Join me in trying to convince them to get engaged in the process of making that happen.

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The Risk-Averse Voter

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Fifty years ago ,I was roped into teaching risk and insurance, a required course for several majors in the business school at Clemson University.  The insurance part was rather dull, but risk was interesting. Right now, I am thinking about the risks associated with voting strategy in the presidential primaries. The race has come down to Biden, Trump, and Haley.  How should one spend one’s single precious vote so as to contribute to the most desirable outcome in November? And what are the risks involved in making that choice?

In 2010, three friends of mine, all Democrats, voted in the Republican primary to try to select the candidate least likely to win in the general election. (South Carolina splits about 55-60% Republican and the rest Democrat. Voters do occasionally elect a Democrat to a statewide office.)  These three thoughtful women reasoned that South Carolina was a sexist, racist state (true) and that it would never elect an Indian woman.  They voted for Nikki Haley. It is a strategy they did not intend to apply again, but ironically, in this year’s presidential primary, they will be voting for—Nikki Haley.

What’s a voter to do? There are two parts to the strategy.  The first steps to rank your preferences Three are three candidates, which creates six possible preference rankings.

  1. Biden, Haley, Trump
  2. Biden, Trump, Haley
  3. Trump, Haley, Biden
  4. Trump, Biden, Haley
  5. Haley, Biden, Trump
  6. Haley, Trump, Biden

I find options 2 and 4 highly improbable.  Option 3 is easy, vote in the Republican primary for Trump.  No hard choices there. The same is true of options 5 and 6, to vote for Haley in the Republican primary.  If you prefer Haley or Trump to Biden, you vote for the preferred one in the Republican primary.  The challenge of risk assessment is only in option 1, the ordering Biden, Haley, Trump.  That voter is probably a Democrat or a Democrat-leaning independent. In some states, she can vote in either party’s primary.

If Biden is your first choice, there isn’t much need to vote in the Democratic for Biden because he will win anyway. Instead, you express your support by voting in the Republican primary for—which? The least electable one? The least dangerous one? Ah, there’s the rub.  The sense I get from talking to voters is that Haley runs stronger against Biden. but even the remote possibility of re-electing Trump would have much more serious consequences.   

Which one do you think has the lesser chance? Which one could you more easily live with if elected? If you strongly prefer Biden over either Republican, but could definitely rest easier with Haley on the ballot, that suggests you should vote for her.  But beware, she may be more electable—she’s attractive, articulate, and YOUNG. And very conservative. Whereas Trump may be able to energize his base but not much of anyone else.

Some Democrats will just vote for Biden, especially if they live in a state where the primary is limited to registered party members.  (I do have a good friend, a liberal Democrat in Florida, who called me last year to tell me that she is now a registered Republican. I understood her choice. She is not the only one taking that course!)  I live in an open primary state. I can simply walk in and say “I feel like a Democrat” or “I feel like a Republican.” 

Normally both party primaries are held at the same time and in the same place, saving money and poll worker time, but this year the Democratic National Committee gummed up the works, at least in South Carolina.  As a result, I will be working as a poll worker in both primaries in February and casting my own early ballot 20 miles away at the Easley public library. In all three places, I will be among voters chewing on the same dilemma. What are they risking by making this choice, and what might be the consequences?

Or they can stay home.  But as I used to say to some of my libertarian economist colleagues who thought voting was a waste of time, ”If you don’t vote, you lose your right to bitch.” That’s a First Amendment right that has to be earned.

What would you do, and why?