Even if there’s a coherent policy goal behind the tariffs, which I doubt, achieving that goal with punitive taxes on undesirable goods means that the greatest burden falls on people with the lowest income. Reaching the same goal with promotional tax incentives means the burden is paid through our normal, slightly progressive tax system and falls more on the wealthy. Tariffs and sales taxes are the worst kind of taxes.

Your articles seem to say that congress has periodically rearranged and eliminated “Article III courts,” recently avoiding the Constitutional crisis of not paying judges of the eliminated courts by posting them elsewhere. But I’m no lawyer, so maybe I’m misinterpreting “In 1891, Congress enacted legislation creating new intermediate appellate courts and eliminating the then-existing federal circuit courts.” and “In 1982, Congress enacted legislation abolishing the Article III Court of Claims and U.S. Court of Customs and Patent Appeals”

I mean, he’s technically correct: the constitution gives congress the power “to constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court.” The only court the US technically has to have is SCOTUS, although it’s hard to imagine them hearing every single federal case.

Interestingly, Congress does not have the power to fire or reduce any judge’s salary, except by impeachment.

Nevermind including a reporter in the group chat. Can we talk about why these people are using a commercial service to hold classified discussions in the first place? Like, isn’t bombing another country SCIF-type stuff? Isn’t that stuff subject to the Federal Records Act?

Wait, really? You know what Israelis do with pagers, right?

Yup. Just going by the indexes, the stock market is down all the way to last summer. It’s been a precipitous and steady drop, but if you’re a true believer, it would be easy to say it’s just giving up a little bit of Trump bubble, hope it’s almost over, and relax. After all, they’ve still got their job or most of the stock market gains collected over the last 20 years, so their immediate personal conditions look great.

Apparently, one of the things that becomes really difficult as IQ drops even a little bit below 100 is hypothetical-conditionals. Like, “How would you feel if you hadn’t eaten breakfast?” becomes, “But I did eat breakfast, and I feel fine.” So, looking at the economic disruption Trump’s causing, imagining that it could continue or get worse, and what that might mean for their personal situation can be a real, does-not-compute struggle.

His district was 65-35, so not very purple.

Yup.

Listen, I understand that numbers are scary, but the difference between ‘ordinary rich’ and ‘problematic rich’ is entirely in the numbers. I’ve probably got 10x as much cash in bank as you, but I’m not rich. My grandma, retired with a paid-off house and a bit of 401k, probably - technically - a millionaire, but still not rich. Billionaire who gets stopped for speeding or DUI can drop $100,000 on lawyers, the way I might drop a penny in the Take-a-penny dish, not just fighting his ticket but investigating and suing the PD that stopped him. That billionaire can pay a politician $1M for special treatment the way I might buy lunch.

Your grandma with $1M ain’t problematic rich. Billionaire is problematic rich. The threshold is somewhere in between, and probably closer to $100M than $10M. Estate tax starts at $14M. Most of the proposals for wealth tax start somewhere around $50M.

$14M is almost exactly the top 1% of US households by wealth, around a million to million-and-a-half of them. There’s only 750 billionaires. The billionaires are less than 0.1% of the US 1%.

$14M is plenty to live very comfortably, but it’s little enough that you still have to consider costs of big purchases. You’re not going to own a jet. You can have multiple houses as long as you keep them normal-sized. $14M is rich, but it’s not Rich-rich.

Next they’ll come for Mr. Ms. and Mrs.

You know, I just noticed: there’s no “r” in missus, so abbreviating it “Mrs” doesn’t really make sense. Maybe it’s supposed to be a possessive, like Mr’s, rather than an actual gender signifier.

It’s a short walk from “Mexico is sending us their criminals” to “We should send our criminals to Mexico.”

It’ll push everyone to move their data centers and IT cores overseas.

Every function the government fails to provide is an opportunity for people to pay for a commercial alternative. Where functioning countries provide national healthcare, Americans can pay private companies. Shutting down FEMA is an opportunity for companies to offer new kinds of disaster insurance, an opportunity for Trump-branded temporary housing, Trump-branded search & rescue. The list goes on.

Much more practical to revoke her church’s tax exempt status.

I don’t think he understands the difference between a government and a corporation. Like, he imagines the US is just his now. Just a big hotel, he can buy and sell bits of it to make money. Buy Greenland and Tiktok, sell Puerto Rico and the USS George Bush. Add a cover charge for Canada and Mexico.

I dunno, if Trump 2 treats student loans, and especially the Borrower Defense Loan Discharge program the way the Trump 1 administration did - blocking various ‘streamlining’ procedures, imposing a statute of limitations, and using the Secretary of Education’s discretionary powers to block, delay, and minimize repayments, then it will be a long time before they rack up Biden numbers.

Musk is definitely racist, and his support for H1B is a feature of that racism. He thinks “those orientals and Indians” are good at tech and “hardcore.” H1B lets him bring them over, treat them like slaves, and send them back home if they get uppity.

MAGAs would feel the same about immigrants in agriculture and hospitality, if they thought there was a reliable way to send them back home at the end of the workday.

Sure, but even if she had formally resigned, Texas would not have replaced her. TFA says her offices are abandoned, so likely no staff getting paid. She, herself may or may not be getting paid, but as near as I can tell, a congress person drawing 5 months of salary while being hospitalized out of DC is a pretty low level shitty-politician behavior. Besides, she’ll be collecting probably 80% of that salary as pension, anyway.

Yeah, this all seems relatively normal. Clickbait headline is definitely trying to imply that a serving Representative can just disappear into assisted living, where this woman systematically wrapped up her duties and stepped aside (if not down). Texas leaves election-year House vacancies to be filled by the election.

Why would the family not say where she is? Privacy. No one wants to advertise the medical status of family members.

Find out how much you’re spending on what. That will let you determine whether the amount you spend on which things is actually worth it to you in the cold light of day, and show you where you can make the most effective cuts. Diagnosis is the first step: treatment without diagnosis is not helpful.

Tons of expense tracking apps out there that will download straight from your bank & credit card. You Need A Budget/YNAB seems t be pretty popular.