You may have heard that a fight has broken out on X/Twitter between the tech bros and MAGA loyalists over immigration. Folks like Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and David Sacks want the U.S. to issue more H1-B visas for people (mainly from India) to work in their tech companies, while MAGA loyalists bought into Trump's fear-mongering about those "brown foreigners" ruining our country.
I'd like to focus on Musk's arguments because most accounts I've ready about the dust-up have missed an important point. Here's what one of his favorites posted as a summary of the argument:
So basically the right split into two factions, tech right and right right, and the tech right is like "hey we need h-1b visa people to do the jobs," and the right right was like "no you need to hire americans," and the tech right is like "but you guys are retarded," and the right right is like "well you don't train us," and the tech right is like "you can't outtrain being retarded," and while all this was going on we learned some people *really* don't like Indians.
Musk's response was: "That pretty much sums it up." In other words, he's cool with calling MAGA folks "retarded."
When challenged by another person that there must be enough Americans to fill those jobs, here's how Musk responded:
That last paragraph sounds an awful lot like so-called "scientific racism," where group differences in things like intelligence are based on race. But of course, we already knew that Musk is a white supremacist.
What I want to focus on is his statement that "there is a dire shortage of extremely talented and motivated engineers in America." He buttressed that argument by retweeting several articles about "the engineering talent shortage."
Musk wants you to believe that the labor shortage affecting the tech industry is happening because not enough Americans are smart enough to fill those jobs. So he wants a special carve-out for his businesses to hire immigrants. But otherwise, he's totally cool with Trump's plan to deport 11 million immigrants that will cripple every other major industry.
That's what happens when you make the richest man on the planet your unaccountable shadow-president.
Our mentally unfit president-elect has spent a lot of time lately raging against U.S. allies. He's threatening to annex Canada as the 51st state, take back the Panama Canal, and buy Greenland from Denmark. Given all of that, the news that he wants to rename a mountain in Alaska after President McKinley isn't gaining as much traction. But it's worth taking a minute to see what's up with this one.
In 2015, then-President Barack Obama visited Alaska to highlight the issue of climate change. As part of that trip, he announced that Mt. McKinley would revert to its original Native Alaskan name - Mt. Denali. Then-private citizen Donald Trump wasn't happy about that.
President Obama wants to change the name of Mt. McKinley to Denali after more than 100 years. Great insult to Ohio. I will change back!
Two years later, as president, Trump broached the topic of reverting to Mt. McKinley with Alaska's two Republican senators - Murkowski and Sullivan. Here's their response:
“Lisa – Sen. Murkowski – and I jumped over the desk,” Sullivan said. “We said no, no!”
Trump, perplexed that the two Republicans wanted to keep an Obama-era decision, asked why...
“The Alaska Native people named that mountain over 10,000 years ago,” Sullivan said. “Denali, that was the name.”
Trump went on to drop the idea. Now he's talking about it again publicly.
Some will suggest that this is just one more way the president-elect is attempting to undo anything Obama accomplished. While it's probably a fools errand to try to guess this guy's motives, I suspect there's some truth to that.
But we also have to keep in mind that, during the 2024 campaign, Trump regularly brought up McKinley as the tariff guy. For example:
We’re going to use tariffs very, very wisely. You know, our country in the 1890s was ... probably the wealthiest it ever was, because it was a system of tariffs. And we had a president — you know McKinley, right? You remember Mount McKinley? And then they changed the name. But one of those things. He was really a very good businessman, and he took in billions of dollars at the time, which today it’s always trillions, but then it was billions and probably hundreds of millions. But we were a very wealthy country, and we’re going to be doing that now.
I would suggest that, as CEOs and finance leaders try to talk Trump out of tariffs, this focus on Mt. McKinley is yet another way to tell them he's not budging.
What lessons should be taken from the passage of the Tariff Act of 1890, which increased average duties across all imports from 38 to 49.5 percent? Well, for one thing, with domestic prices driven up by the tariff, the measure was very unpopular. It led to a political disaster for the Republicans, who lost the House in the 1890 election in dramatic fashion, cutting the number of seats they held from 171 to 88.
Everyone but the president-elect seems to understand that the way he plans to use tariffs will drive up prices. It's almost as if Trump is determined to crash the economy. Whether or not the Republican Party is held accountable for that remains to be seen.
I have to admit that the first thing I thought about when the news broke that Trump had been re-elected was to wonder how I might be affected. That could sound selfish, but I was basically following the kind of advice you hear on airplanes about securing your mask before attempting to help others.
As with many Americans, the place I am most vulnerable is economics. But specifically, I am retired and depend on Social Security plus a small retirement fund as my sources of income.
When it comes to the former, I would predict that, if Republicans are successful in doing anything about Social Security, it would affect future - not current - recipients. It is my retirement account that could take a hit since it is currently invested with the goal of producing growth and income. Given the fact that I'm in my "twilight years," I don't have a time horizon to make up for losses if the stock market crashes.
Today I received an email from my financial advisors passing on what their company views as the outlook for 2025. Here's a summary (emphasis mine):
As we look to 2025, we remain cautiously optimistic. We’re cautious because no market environment is ever permanent, yet optimistic since constructive long-term technology trends are in place. Plus, potential tax policy and deregulation efforts in 2025 could provide some tailwinds — particularly from an economic perspective. While growth asset returns are not expected to be as robust in 2025, the investment environment should prove to be favorable for investors.
So they are "cautiously optimistic" that Trump's tax cuts and deregulation will contribute to a favorable investment environment. And yet they failed to mention two of Trump's most prominent campaign promises: tariffs and mass deportations. That's the kind of financial analysis that some folks are calling "delusional."
Julia Coronado, founder of the research firm MacroPolicy Perspectives, told the New York Times that many Wall Street players have convinced themselves that Trump will only carry out the policies they support and not those they oppose, such as hefty foreign tariffs or mass deportations.
"A lot of people are using deductive reasoning and concluding that he’ll only do things that are good for the market... They can ride this wave of hope-ium through the end of January," said Coronado, who added that Wall Street's current view of Trump "feels delusional."
Even when these Wall Streeters acknowledge the way that tariffs would hurt the market, they tend to downplay whether Trump will actually implement his promises.
Barclays strategists estimated that proposed tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China - and any retaliatory actions - could drag S&P 500 earnings down 2.8%...
BofA Global Research expects a 1% hit to S&P 500 earnings if tariffs on China double to 40% while they rise to around 8% for the rest of the world, excluding Mexico and Canada. But with retaliatory tariffs, which hurt foreign sales, the earnings hit would rise to 5%, the bank's strategists wrote...
"They are trying to boost U.S. growth," Lefkowitz [UBS Global Wealth Management]
said. "Tariffs would end up reducing it and Trump tends to focus on how the market is performing. For that reason, the market has been downplaying so far what we have heard on tariffs."
None of them ever mention the impact mass deportations will have on the economy.
But it gets even worse. Not only are these Wall Streeters delusional, they appear to have amnesia when it comes to deregulation - as Chris Hayes explained.
So whether it's tariffs, mass deportations, or deregulation, all of the things Trump has promised to do will have devastating effects on the economy, as well as the stock market.
My conclusion is that it's time to tell the financial advisors to take their "cautious optimism" and have a seat. A storm is coming and its time to batten down the hatches.
Somebody has been making a list and you can bet that we'll be checking it twice.
But Trump's biggest promise didn't make that list. He repeatedly blamed almost all of our economic challenges on undocumented immigrants and promised to deport them all.
This week Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee reported that the president-elect's plans would not only fail to make our economy stronger, they would actually make things a whole lot worse. The title of their report says it all: "Mass Deportations Would Deliver a Catastrophic Blow to the U.S. Economy."
Depending on how many immigrants are deported, these mass deportations would:
Cost 44,000 U.S.-born workers their jobs for every half a million immigrants who are removed from the labor force.
They also noted that Trump's plan "would cut $23 billion in funds for Social Security and $6 billion from Medicare each year because these workers would no longer pay into these programs."
As a marker, Democrats pointed out that, when it comes to GDP, "the economy shrank by 4.3% during the Great Recession." Deporting 11 million undocumented immigrants would more that double that.
What the report didn't address is that, in addition to those catastrophic results, it would cost the federal government over $300 billion to implement Trump's plan. For some perspective, that is about twice the annual budget of the entire Department of Homeland Security.
All of that happens if Trump is able to deliver on the biggest promise he made during the 2024 campaign. It could be that this one goes the way of his 2016 promise to "build the wall and make Mexico pay for it." In other words, the malevolence of Trump and his minions (ie, Stephen Miller) could be overwhelmed by their incompetence.
So how does that feel America? Our entire economy could hinge on whether or not the next president is too incompetent to implement his plans. Jeeze!
Recently I wrote that MAGA 2.0 is a backlash to the MeToo movement. But there was another major event during Trump's first term that sparked a backlash: the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers and the mass protests that ensued.
Contrary to what Trump and his supporters would have you believe, the protests were mostly peaceful.
About 93% of racial justice protests in the US since the death of George Floyd have been peaceful and nondestructive, according to a new report.
The findings, released Thursday, contradict assumptions and claims by some that protests associated with the Black Lives Matter movement are spawning violence and destruction of property...
About 7,750 of those protests were linked to the Black Lives Matter movement, the report states. Peaceful racial justice protests took place in more than 2,440 locations across all 50 states and Washington, DC – violent demonstrations occurred in fewer than 220 locations, according to the report.
I remember tearing up when I saw this:
Those protests were so massive and multi-racial that even a cynic like Ta-Nehisi Coates was optimistic about their potential for police reform.
But then MAGA and right wing news went to work scaring folks with an endless focus on the few instances of violence, along with claims that Democrats wanted to defund the police (a lie). Folks like Tucker Carlson even claimed that Derek Chauvin didn't murder Floyd - it was all a lie.
To understand how threatened MAGA folks were by the BLM movement, we need look no further than the fact that yesterday, a jury found Daniel Perry (a white ex-Marine) not guilty for the murder of a homeless Black man, Jordan Neely. Right wingers aren't just celebrating the verdict. They're claiming that "the BLM era is over." Here's Megyn Kelly:
Make no mistake: the Black Lives Matter era of “restorative justice” is over and the real spirit of justice is returning to America...Today’s verdict marks the end of an era. BLM, which seemed unstoppable four years ago, is finished.
Perhaps even more pernicious is the attempt to smear Jordan Neely (just as they attempted to smear George Floyd), a black man who was homeless as a result of drug addiction and mental illness. Here's what the richest man in the world (who is also apparently the shadow president) had to say:
There are a lot of directions a conversation about all of this could go, not the least of which is a discussion about how abhorrent these people are. But let's keep this in mind as we go forward: the MeToo and BLM movements shook up the status quo of our white patriarchal culture so profoundly that we are now in the midst of a huge backlash. I have no idea where all of this ends, but I am confident that their fear indicates that those movements were powerful. In an odd way, that brings me some hope.
One of the things I've been thinking about over the last few days is how I'm going to deal with four more years of the daily onslaught of ignorance, lies, racism, and sexism spewing from the mouth of our next president. Part of the problem is that I'm in my "twighlight years," and don't have a lot of time to waste. It depresses me to think that much of that time will be consumed by anger and despair over the state of our country. But I can't simply ignore it all either.
That dilemma was brought home today with the reporting about Trump's interview with Kristen Welker. In typical fashion, the president-elect said a lot of stupid, ignorant stuff. But given that I'm going to do my best to focus on his plans for immigration, I want to take a few minutes to break down some of the nonsense he spouted.
Estimates are that the cost of deporting 11 million undocmented immigrants would be around $300 billion - not to mention the humanitarian disaster it would be or the devastation it would bring to our economy.
According to Pew Research, there are currently about 4.4 million U.S.-born children who live with an undocumented parent. During his interview with Welker, Trump said (1) they'd be deported with their parents, and (2) he'd end birthright citizenship. That means tossing out provisions of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Here's what's at stake with that one:
Amidst all of that, it might sound jarring that trump is promising to work with Democrats to protect DREAMers. But don't pin your hopes on anything positive on that front. All we have to do is remember what happened during his first term.
Trump has always talked positively about DREAMers. But in 2018, a bipartisan group of senators worked out a compromise that would protect them from deportation - as well as increase border funding and place limits on legal immigration. Trump signaled that he would support their work.
But when the senators showed up at the White House to discuss their proposal, they were ambushed - most likely by Stephen Miller. Unbeknownst to the bipartisan group, several immigration hardliners attended the meeting - which ultimately became famous for Trump's comments about not wanting immigrants from "shithole countries." In other words, that proposal met the same fate as the bipartisan border bill this year. So excuse me if I don't put much stock in that promise. It's all a shit show of ignorance, lies, and racism.
The next four years are going to be exhausting - at best.
One year after Mr. "Grab 'em by the p*ssy" was elected president in 2016, Time Magazine's Person of the Year was "the great silence breakers" of the MeToo movement.
This reckoning appears to have sprung up overnight. But it has actually been simmering for years, decades, centuries. Women have had it with bosses and co-workers who not only cross boundaries but don't even seem to know that boundaries exist. They've had it with the fear of retaliation, of being blackballed, of being fired from a job they can't afford to lose. They've had it with the code of going along to get along. They've had it with men who use their power to take what they want from women. These silence breakers have started a revolution of refusal, gathering strength by the day, and in the past two months alone, their collective anger has spurred immediate and shocking results: nearly every day, CEOs have been fired, moguls toppled, icons disgraced. In some cases, criminal charges have been brought.
One of the seminal moments for that movement came a year later when Oprah Winfrey gave this speech at the 2018 Golden Globe Awards ceremony.
The tears we shed during that speech were a testament to the power of all of the women stepping up to be "silence breakers."
One of the people who feared that power was Steve Bannon. During an interview with Joshua Green, he acknowledged that Oprah could "represent an existential threat to Trump’s presidency" if she decided to campaign for Democrats in 2018.
But, Green wrote, Bannon believes the most powerful backlash to Trump is bigger than Winfrey, who’s been the subject of much 2020 speculation. He’s most concerned by the women-led wave of liberal, anti-Trump activism, fueled by the #MeToo movement.
“The anti-patriarchy movement is going to undo ten thousand years of recorded history,” Bannon told Green. “You watch. The time has come. Women are gonna take charge of society. And they couldn’t juxtapose a better villain than Trump. He is the patriarch.”…”This is a definitional moment in the culture,” Bannon told Green of the Hollywood awards ceremony.
In her speech, Oprah declared that, "For too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dare speak the truth to the power of those men. But their time is up. Their time is up." That terrified members the patriarchy whose power over women depended on silence.
It is important to keep those days in mind as the president-elect - who has been accused of sexual misconduct or assault by at least 18 women and was found liable by a jury for sexual abuse - nominates several men to his cabinet who have been accused of sexual assault.
In defense of one of those nominees (Pete Hegseth), Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) said that "We've all had some indiscretions in our past and things like that." On the one hand, it is truly abhorrent for Roy to refer sexual assault as simply an "indiscretion." But he also says what a lot of us learned during the height of the MeToo Movement: sexual assault is practically ubiquitous in this culture.
Steve Bannon knew that, when women stood up and spoke out, the whole patriarchal culture was threatened. So the backlash against that possibility is now underway as the "p*ssy-grabber" tries to reinstate male dominance over women in ways both large and small.
They think we're going to keep quiet while they do that. Will we?
