- For one thing, I appreciated your description of the point of tariffs - probably because I said the same thing in much the same words on another site three days ago. :-)
- More to the point, Walker could have challenged him without fact-checking (which yes, is hard to do on the fly) by responding along the lines of "So what you're saying is that you are proposing across-the-board tariffs on imports without having any idea of what the effects would be on inflation or jobs, because 'economists disagree.' Is that gamble with the economy worth taking?" Note that does not require arguing that economists essentially uniformly agree that tariffs raise prices.
- JD's (which I still read as meaning "juvenile delinquent") doubling-down on lies is SOP for the right wing, counting on the idea that after pushing two or three times, the media will get bored and drop it, leaving the lie hanging in the air. I call it "sitzfleisch" politics, winning by sheer stubbornness. (See Rule #20 at "The Rules," at my Substack.)
- Finally, the idea that tariffs will promote domestic industry is belied by history. Around 1974 (I'm doing this from memory, so some details may be wrong), Japan had to devalue its currency, with the result that prices on imported Japanese cars went up. So American car manufacturers could undersell the imports by an average of something like $2000 a car.
Did they do it? Did they grab that potential market share? Of course not. They raised the prices on their cars by an average of $2000. What makes us think this would be any different, at least on any manufactured product?
I confess I don’t have it at hand, but in reading up on it I did find some examples of narrowly targeted tariffs serving some limited purpose. But generally, yeah. It seems pretty clear it’s mostly just xenophobia writ economic. Which doesn’t mean it’s not worth figuring out how to protect a domestic supply chain and nurture manufacturing jobs…
All true but the most important words there are "narrowly targeted," which as you know the proposed ones are not. But even given appropriate narrowness, in our present condition I still can easily see those protected domestic industries foregoing grabbing market share in favor of gaining short-term profit by raising prices.
VDJance is the worst of all possibilities of human evolution...an Educated, unethical asshole, now i really hate him (h/t val kilmer)
he's trump with a law degree and even less ethics & morality (if that's possible)--trump is a lying piece of shit because of his demented personality disorder(s), it's what he does and who he is---it's *his system*....Vance is a *calculating* lying piece of shit because of his law training and antisocial personality, not to mention his outsized ego and ambition---our elite law schools have done an excellent job of producing this particular type of personality, while at the same time having done a Miserable job of teaching any sort of ethical restraint whatsoever, and this has been going on as long as the FedSoc has been stuffing our elite lawschools with personality-challenged, entitled, and overly ambitious little bastards like Vance and steering them to clerkships with fellow sociopaths scalia, thomas, alito, etc, and then into prominent positions in govt and politics
Vance is def more radical, but nothing new in the world of conservative ideologues and 'intellect'....he's just another over-educated bullshit artist, a two-bit shillbilly william b fuckley, without the fake mid-atlantic-accent-having east coast high-society veneer of that phonyfuck buckley...i remember watching that pompous ass as a grade-schooler and teen, and i knew he was full of shit even Then--Vance could only dream of being as slick, influential, and seemingly eternal as buckley--he'll be mostly forgotten after trump takes his ass-whuppin in Nov--but unfortunately, he'll still be around sabotaging our politics, govt, and democracy for a long time 🤨....yay, our elite betters, unh? 🙄
I watched that Welker interview and came away thinking that people are underestimating Vance. He’s far more dangerous than Trump and will straight up implement Project 2025, because he actually understands it and is a true believer. If Vance appears awkward, it’s only because he’s dumbing down his schtick for the Trump base.
Well, you make a good point. I often find myself wondering how his wife thinks about him after all this. Like, did she know he was this big of an ass before this? Did she know he had all these anti-woman sentiments?
I actually don’t agree that our elite institutions are primarily skilled in teaching the skill of “fudging” a.k.a. “creativity”, according to this writer(?!) I’m sure these institutions are strong enough to defend themselves, but why are progressive news commentators piling on higher ed? I am less surprised when the lazy bashing of “elites” comes from the up and coming fascists, but here, too?
I certainly agree that's not the primary skill (and hope I didn't say that). And I think my overall track record is certainly one of anti-anti-intellectualism, so I'm not sure that my observations in one piece about one aspect of higher education ought to count as piling on. My general approach is that no one and nothing is perfect or above criticism. That includes me, of course, so if I didn't adequately caveat my critiques of higher ed, I'll try to do better next time. Thanks.
The general adversarial approach in the legal system taught at law schools is also the source of many problems in congress and state legislatures as well. The lawyers are all taught to lie and are rewarded based upon their success lying. Legal ethics? An oxymoron.
I mean, there's value to it! But if we were truly doing our job in education, there would be social, academic, professional, and legal consequences for crossing the line between "creative reasoning" and making fucking shit up!
Thanks for doing the hard research into the economics of tariffs. You are also right to point out that Trump lies with gross exaggerations. Vance covers his lies with the veneer of academic respectability.
I wouldn't want to say that about the entirety of media, although I've probably myself painted "the media" too broadly I'm sure! We're ALL susceptible to doing that kind of thing -- the media just have a professional and moral obligation to be better.
I am grateful for you to run down all the real facts and see the way the politicians weasel away answers and unsurprisingly, twist them whatever way they want like play dough. But I am disgusted with the 'media' that just sits and lets the crap flow out of their mouths and never slam them. Tell Vance and tRUMP to prove it. Back it up. Show me the money. Why do WE or the media step back and then have to do the fact checking. They are the ones spouting off their mouth holes (your accurate descriptive term), grabbing what's convenient and no one slams them up against the wall and says prove it. Its not OUR job, its theirs, to convince US to believe their garbage. I for one, know every word out of these assholes mouth is to be taken as a LIE until proven otherwise. By them. Put up or shut up should be the tone of every interview, not passing it off due to time constraints or the next topic or talking about Hannibal Lector. They just keep plastering his blabber front and center and he gets more air time on media outlets saying the stupidest crap ever. Why put this crazy idiot on at all? Ridiculous. Small wonder the dolts that only look at the pictures and think in memes are clutching their guns to follow the guy they see on TV all the time. He must be great. Every word he speaks is on the 'news'. Beh.
I do think a number of people in the media are trying their best. Their constraints are systemic and hard to even see sometimes, let alone combat. Also "Beh" is a great word. Thanks, Mike.
here, lemme give you a start on that list, robert odell....99% of what comes out of the FNYTimes, WaPo, Politico, CNN, etc etc, is access journalism, presidential horserace-promoting, fudged bullshit, if not downright fascist-curious scale-thumbing...100% of Fox, Newsmax, OAN is straight up trumpfascism
david farenthold of Wapo (i think he's still there) and jamelle bowie of the FNYT are notable, but not the only exceptions....most of MSNBC is good starting at 3p CDT, with the most experienced, insightful and not-fuckin-around being lawrence odonnell at 9p CDT....the rude pundit on substack and facebook is excellent...as far as blogs go, one called lawyers guns & money is good, with an excellent and well-educated commentariat--also, Wonkette on substack is very good, and fucking hilarious most of the time (esp evan hurst)
the rest of journamalism in general is eminently ignorable...present company excluded, of course ✅
Oh, man, if I thought it would have any impact I'd do the legwork to make a list, but I spend too much time reading journalism to have time to analyze who does good and who does...not. I think a good tell is whether what they're talking about matters. To me that may be the most important thing, and it's usually self-evident...!
A couple of observations.
- For one thing, I appreciated your description of the point of tariffs - probably because I said the same thing in much the same words on another site three days ago. :-)
- More to the point, Walker could have challenged him without fact-checking (which yes, is hard to do on the fly) by responding along the lines of "So what you're saying is that you are proposing across-the-board tariffs on imports without having any idea of what the effects would be on inflation or jobs, because 'economists disagree.' Is that gamble with the economy worth taking?" Note that does not require arguing that economists essentially uniformly agree that tariffs raise prices.
- JD's (which I still read as meaning "juvenile delinquent") doubling-down on lies is SOP for the right wing, counting on the idea that after pushing two or three times, the media will get bored and drop it, leaving the lie hanging in the air. I call it "sitzfleisch" politics, winning by sheer stubbornness. (See Rule #20 at "The Rules," at my Substack.)
- Finally, the idea that tariffs will promote domestic industry is belied by history. Around 1974 (I'm doing this from memory, so some details may be wrong), Japan had to devalue its currency, with the result that prices on imported Japanese cars went up. So American car manufacturers could undersell the imports by an average of something like $2000 a car.
Did they do it? Did they grab that potential market share? Of course not. They raised the prices on their cars by an average of $2000. What makes us think this would be any different, at least on any manufactured product?
I confess I don’t have it at hand, but in reading up on it I did find some examples of narrowly targeted tariffs serving some limited purpose. But generally, yeah. It seems pretty clear it’s mostly just xenophobia writ economic. Which doesn’t mean it’s not worth figuring out how to protect a domestic supply chain and nurture manufacturing jobs…
All true but the most important words there are "narrowly targeted," which as you know the proposed ones are not. But even given appropriate narrowness, in our present condition I still can easily see those protected domestic industries foregoing grabbing market share in favor of gaining short-term profit by raising prices.
Fer shur.
VDJance is the worst of all possibilities of human evolution...an Educated, unethical asshole, now i really hate him (h/t val kilmer)
he's trump with a law degree and even less ethics & morality (if that's possible)--trump is a lying piece of shit because of his demented personality disorder(s), it's what he does and who he is---it's *his system*....Vance is a *calculating* lying piece of shit because of his law training and antisocial personality, not to mention his outsized ego and ambition---our elite law schools have done an excellent job of producing this particular type of personality, while at the same time having done a Miserable job of teaching any sort of ethical restraint whatsoever, and this has been going on as long as the FedSoc has been stuffing our elite lawschools with personality-challenged, entitled, and overly ambitious little bastards like Vance and steering them to clerkships with fellow sociopaths scalia, thomas, alito, etc, and then into prominent positions in govt and politics
Vance is def more radical, but nothing new in the world of conservative ideologues and 'intellect'....he's just another over-educated bullshit artist, a two-bit shillbilly william b fuckley, without the fake mid-atlantic-accent-having east coast high-society veneer of that phonyfuck buckley...i remember watching that pompous ass as a grade-schooler and teen, and i knew he was full of shit even Then--Vance could only dream of being as slick, influential, and seemingly eternal as buckley--he'll be mostly forgotten after trump takes his ass-whuppin in Nov--but unfortunately, he'll still be around sabotaging our politics, govt, and democracy for a long time 🤨....yay, our elite betters, unh? 🙄
I watched that Welker interview and came away thinking that people are underestimating Vance. He’s far more dangerous than Trump and will straight up implement Project 2025, because he actually understands it and is a true believer. If Vance appears awkward, it’s only because he’s dumbing down his schtick for the Trump base.
nah, i think he really is that awkward...cognitive dissonance and flat-out calculated lying will do that
Well, you make a good point. I often find myself wondering how his wife thinks about him after all this. Like, did she know he was this big of an ass before this? Did she know he had all these anti-woman sentiments?
I actually don’t agree that our elite institutions are primarily skilled in teaching the skill of “fudging” a.k.a. “creativity”, according to this writer(?!) I’m sure these institutions are strong enough to defend themselves, but why are progressive news commentators piling on higher ed? I am less surprised when the lazy bashing of “elites” comes from the up and coming fascists, but here, too?
I certainly agree that's not the primary skill (and hope I didn't say that). And I think my overall track record is certainly one of anti-anti-intellectualism, so I'm not sure that my observations in one piece about one aspect of higher education ought to count as piling on. My general approach is that no one and nothing is perfect or above criticism. That includes me, of course, so if I didn't adequately caveat my critiques of higher ed, I'll try to do better next time. Thanks.
The general adversarial approach in the legal system taught at law schools is also the source of many problems in congress and state legislatures as well. The lawyers are all taught to lie and are rewarded based upon their success lying. Legal ethics? An oxymoron.
I mean, there's value to it! But if we were truly doing our job in education, there would be social, academic, professional, and legal consequences for crossing the line between "creative reasoning" and making fucking shit up!
I'm sure there are some consequences--even for select members of the Trump administration. I know there are in my small town.
Thanks for doing the hard research into the economics of tariffs. You are also right to point out that Trump lies with gross exaggerations. Vance covers his lies with the veneer of academic respectability.
Thanks, Laura!
The media may not be “enemies of the people” but they sure are enemies of journalism.
I wouldn't want to say that about the entirety of media, although I've probably myself painted "the media" too broadly I'm sure! We're ALL susceptible to doing that kind of thing -- the media just have a professional and moral obligation to be better.
Yeah that’s what I meant to say, many journalists who should know better are being pretty unfucking professional
For sure, though I suspect the profession itself -- and its definition of "professional" -- need a second look, too.
I am grateful for you to run down all the real facts and see the way the politicians weasel away answers and unsurprisingly, twist them whatever way they want like play dough. But I am disgusted with the 'media' that just sits and lets the crap flow out of their mouths and never slam them. Tell Vance and tRUMP to prove it. Back it up. Show me the money. Why do WE or the media step back and then have to do the fact checking. They are the ones spouting off their mouth holes (your accurate descriptive term), grabbing what's convenient and no one slams them up against the wall and says prove it. Its not OUR job, its theirs, to convince US to believe their garbage. I for one, know every word out of these assholes mouth is to be taken as a LIE until proven otherwise. By them. Put up or shut up should be the tone of every interview, not passing it off due to time constraints or the next topic or talking about Hannibal Lector. They just keep plastering his blabber front and center and he gets more air time on media outlets saying the stupidest crap ever. Why put this crazy idiot on at all? Ridiculous. Small wonder the dolts that only look at the pictures and think in memes are clutching their guns to follow the guy they see on TV all the time. He must be great. Every word he speaks is on the 'news'. Beh.
I do think a number of people in the media are trying their best. Their constraints are systemic and hard to even see sometimes, let alone combat. Also "Beh" is a great word. Thanks, Mike.
Do you think it’s worth your time to share your list of those journalists?
I’m following Seth Abramson, Mehdi Hassan and contribute $ to Judd Legum. I support Wonkette for laughs mostly. I’ll check out Rude Pundit.
here, lemme give you a start on that list, robert odell....99% of what comes out of the FNYTimes, WaPo, Politico, CNN, etc etc, is access journalism, presidential horserace-promoting, fudged bullshit, if not downright fascist-curious scale-thumbing...100% of Fox, Newsmax, OAN is straight up trumpfascism
david farenthold of Wapo (i think he's still there) and jamelle bowie of the FNYT are notable, but not the only exceptions....most of MSNBC is good starting at 3p CDT, with the most experienced, insightful and not-fuckin-around being lawrence odonnell at 9p CDT....the rude pundit on substack and facebook is excellent...as far as blogs go, one called lawyers guns & money is good, with an excellent and well-educated commentariat--also, Wonkette on substack is very good, and fucking hilarious most of the time (esp evan hurst)
the rest of journamalism in general is eminently ignorable...present company excluded, of course ✅
emptywheel.net is excellent! https://www.emptywheel.net
Oh, man, if I thought it would have any impact I'd do the legwork to make a list, but I spend too much time reading journalism to have time to analyze who does good and who does...not. I think a good tell is whether what they're talking about matters. To me that may be the most important thing, and it's usually self-evident...!