Bits n’ pieces from east, west and beyond
East, west or beyond, sooner or later events elsewhere may have a local impact. A recent sampling:
Open Secrets: outside spending in the 2024 U.S. elections tallied a record-breaking $5.4 billion.
Sen. Bernie Sanders: At .0005% of the population U.S. billionaires accounted for 18% of electoral spending. “This is…oligarchy. Time to overturn Citizens United and move to public funding of elections.”
Trump campaign mega-donor Elon Musk, to head President-elect Donald Trump’s Dept. of Government Efficiency, says on social media he wants to “delete” the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an independent watchdog agency created after the financial crash of 2008.
Critics of the agency include an online consumer payday lender the bureau shut down in 2018 for “repeatedly lying and illegally cheating its customers,” the bureau told The Guardian.
By 2027 the Arctic Ocean could experience a catastrophic ice loss event: Scientific American.
President Joe Biden has changed his mind and will pardon his son, Hunter (convicted of possession of a weapon while an addict, and tax evasion, which has been paid), which drew more media attention than Trump’s pick of Kash Patel to head the FBI.
The two appear linked. Historian Heather Cox Richardson noted that conspiracy theorist Patel appears obsessed with Hunter, despite a two-year Republican-led House investigation showing no evidence for Patel’s claims that Hunter and his father engaged in crimes with Ukraine and China. Patel says the Dept. of Justice should focus on Hunter; the pardon could dodge unfair practices under Patel that could use fabricated evidence to frame Hunter.
Democrats are racing to confirm judges and heads of regulatory agencies who cannot be removed by Trump before he takes office. On social media Trump said “this is not acceptable.” The Lever pointed out that Trump made numerous such confirmations following his election loss in 2020.
Security clearances for Trump’s political appointees, typically done by the FBI, are not likely to occur, The Guardian reported. Trump plans to delay confirmations until he is in office, when he will sidestep Senate approval and can grant clearances to anyone he desires. Red-flags about his appointees include close ties to authoritarian-based countries, lack of experience, criminal histories, appalling moral behavior, gross misuse of non-profit funds and adulation of Trump.
Historian Heather Cox Richardson: the administration picks “seem designed to destroy the institutions of the democratic American state and replace [them] with an authoritarian government whose officials are all loyal to Trump.”
The Community and Labor Center says Trump’s immigrant deportation plans would impact immigrant and American households by significantly slowing production of grocery store staples and increasing their prices. A one-time mass deportation is estimated to cost $315 billion. The American Immigration Council suspects an underlying issue: discouraging immigrant laborers from organizing.
There’s been a Google word-search spike for “what is a tariff,” The Guardian reported, adding, “sadly more people are asking now, rather than before the election.”
Trump recently said he will put a 25% tariff on Mexican and Canadian goods and an additional 10% tariff on Chinese goods -- if they don’t stop illegal immigration and fentanyl smuggling. A Harris poll showed 78% of those polled said they know what a tariff is, but only 48% knew that American companies pay the tariff.
The Trump tariffs are expected to cost American households $2,600 annually, says the Peterson Institute of International Economics. CNN outlined costs expected to rise: gas, (with increases of 25 to 75 cents per gallon), food (a fifth of produce comes from Mexico); vehicles (in 2023 the U.S. imported $44.76 billion in vehicles from Mexico, since tariffs on Chinese goods prompted car manufacturers to move production to Mexico -- car parts were the second-most imported item from Mexico last year). Mexico is now the top exporter of goods to the U.S.
Responses to Trump’s tariffs include: Mexico’s president saying tariffs “put shared companies at risk.” Mexico has overseen a 75% reduction in border crossings in the last year. Trump claimed on his “Truth Social” that Mexico’s president promised to close the border. She denies saying any such thing.
Canadian response has included talk of tightening the border and retaliatory tariffs, the AP said. The amount of fentanyl seized at the Canadian border is a tiny fraction of that intercepted at the Mexican border. But Canada is concerned about a border influx due to Trump’s deportation plans. Canada exports $2.7 billion in goods daily to the U.S., and is a major market embraced by the Pentagon.
Many trade goods have previously crossed borders without import taxes, courtesy of the USMCA trade agreement Trump agreed to in his first term. How Trump will implement his tariffs while violating the USMCA is “not clear,” CNN wrote, adding that tariffs can trigger trade wars. Trump has called for blanket tariffs of up to 20% on all other imports to the U.S.
Blast from the past: “You can only kick with one foot at a time. Otherwise you fall on your butt.” Hungarian soccer star Ferenc Puskas, 1927-2006, famed for his outstanding athletic skills.