Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – March 02, 2025

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On March 2, 2025

3 Comments

By Tony Wikrent

 

Musk’s Purges Suddenly Take a Horrific Turn—and Wreck an Ugly MAGA Lie — We can now be depressingly confident that their mass cuts are killing people.

Greg Sargent, March 1, 2025 [The New Republic]

It has a dry, bureaucratic name, but Ready to Use Therapeutic Food has functioned for over a decade as a lifeline for countless starving children around the globe. Manufactured in the United States and distributed by the U.S. Agency for International Development, it’s a paste made of peanuts, milk, and vitamins that alleviates a form of acute malnutrition known as “severe wasting.”

Now the Trump administration has officially terminated a number of current contracts struck by USAID for this lifesaving nutrition, contracts that had called for the paste to be delivered to hundreds of thousands of children, most in Africa, according to the Georgia-based nonprofit set to deliver them, Mana Nutrition….

The full extent of the damage from these cuts—originally set in motion by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency—is not yet known. But Atul Gawande, a surgeon who formerly led USAID’s global health initiatives, has established, via communications with partners that work with USAID, a list of contracts that were terminated. Among them are programs that offer natal care for mothers and children, that provide netting and other equipment to prevent the spread of malaria, that work to thwart the spread of Ebola and bird flu in dozens of countries, and much more. The cancellations will nix programs that helped tens of millions of people, Gawande notes.

“This is going to be a massive loss of life overall,” Gawande told me in an interview. “Children are likely already dying, and will clearly be dying in large numbers.”

Meanwhile, The New York Times has developed a long list of other terminated contracts, which include programs preventing the spread of polio, treating HIV and tuberculosis, ensuring clean drinking water in war-torn regions, and buttressing public health in many other ways. Tens of milions of people benefited; now they will not.

 

Hegseth Clears the Way for More War Crimes 

[Daniel Larison, via Naked Capitalism 02-25-2025]

The Secretary of Defense admitted that the reason for removing the JAGs was so that they wouldn’t be “roadblocks to anything that happens.” If top military lawyers don’t serve as roadblocks more often than not, they aren’t doing their jobs properly.

Trump eases rules on military raids and airstrikes, expanding range of who can be targeted 

[CBS, via Naked Capitalism 03-01-2025]

 

White House point man at Homeland Security shared ‘martial law option’ post to keep Trump in office 

[CNN, via Naked

Capitalism Water Cooler 02-26-2025]

“The Trump administration’s new point man for dealings with the Department of Homeland Security is a former far-right podcast host and election denier who once shared an article calling for ‘martial law’ to keep Donald Trump in office following his loss in the 2020 election. Paul Ingrassia and the Twitter account for a podcast he co-hosted posted the remark and similar sentiments on social media in December 2020 and January 2021, according to a CNN KFile review of deleted and still-active posts by Ingrassia himself and the account of the podcast. The 29-year-old Ivy League-educated lawyer now serves as the second Trump administration’s White House liaison to the DHS, a key role that has historically involved managing the administration’s relationship with the department and overseeing the placement of political appointees.”

 

STATE OF NEW YORK, et al., v. DONALD J. TRUMP (PDF)

[United States District Court, Southern District of New York, via Naked Capitalism 02-23-2025]

 

Judge extends block on DOGE’s access to federal payment systems 

[Politico, via Naked Capitalism 02-23-2025] The opinion.

Trump and Elon’s ‘Pointless Bloodbath’ at the FAA Is Even Worse Than You Think 

[Rolling Stone, via Naked Capitalism 02-23-2025]

While air traffic controllers were supposedly immune from the purge, some air traffic control support workers were terminated, the FAA worker says. Rolling Stone separately spoke with a fired FAA employee whose job involved ensuring flight paths account for hazards like cranes and new buildings, as well as another terminated FAA staffer who ensured that pilots are medically able and cleared to fly. No one wants their plane to cross paths with a crane, of course, but the latter role is important, too, given the nation’s ongoing pilot shortage.

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The American Delusion

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On February 28, 2025

30 Comments

So, Nick Kristoff is crying about USAid, and I agree, mostly:

I’m hearing from experts around the world about what the destruction of USAID means: “A global health massacre,” in the words of a doctor who has devoted her life to humanitarian work on the front lines. Millions of malnourished children left to starve. Pregnant women not getting micronutrients to prevent neural tube defects. Programs against schistosomiasis abandoned. HIV positive patients left without ARV’s. Water no longer purified. Surveillance against Ebola and bird flu set back. TB patients unable to get medicine. I’ve long argued that USAID should be reformed, but this Trump/Musk demolition is cruel and incompetent, and benefits China, while killing children just as wonderful as our own.

It’s worth reading the replies to this. The usual one is: “We have lots of homeless and sick people, we should take care of them first.” Trump’s budget cuts include 400 billion from Medicaid, to pay for tax cuts for rich people who have more than enough. MAGAts are delusional cultists.

USAid is skeezy in many ways: There’s lots of nasty intelligence shit hidden there, but it also does a lot of good, and the price tag is trivial. If you want to house, feed, and give healthcare to Americans, cut the defense budget, raise taxes on billionaires, and get on with it. It’ll even be good for the economy.

Americans aren’t homeless and sick because of foreign aid, they’re homeless and sick because for 45 years all the money has gone to rich people and they’ve jacked up the price of homes and healthcare, and gotten rid of millions of good jobs. That’s all.

This has been a bipartisan project. Democrats’ hands are not clean. I remember Clinton’s massive welfare cuts, and Obama helping banks literally steal people’s homes with fraudulent documents as two of thousands of possible examples. But anyone who thinks Trump wants to fix this rather than accelerate it is so delusional they should be in an asylum.

I have no patience left, none, for either Democrats or Republicans. All of you are monsters who have hurt the weak, destroyed the middle class, and made millions of Americans homeless while denying them healthcare. You’re all monsters.

America has always had enough wealth to feed and care for all Americans — and even help a lot of foreigners, but the entire project since Reagan has been to make the rich richer, and fuck everyone else. Anyone who says otherwise is lying or delusional & a piece of human garbage.

America is a shithole because that’s what both Democrats and Republicans wanted, and it’s what they’ve worked very hard to achieve.

Every time an off-ramp was offered, and there was almost always someone running in Democratic Presidential primaries who was against this, they were crushed. Usually the number of primary votes they received was so small as to be a joke. Democratic primary voters wanted what has happened. So did Republicans.

Welcome to the America you voted for, again and again.

 

 

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Understanding the Core Goal of Western Governments & Western Decline

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On February 27, 2025

10 Comments

I was talking with a friend the other day and he said the problem with democracies is that policy can swing 180 degrees with each election.

And in some ways that’s true: Trump’s switch on Ukraine is a good example.

But it’s not true when it comes to the core goals of Western government since 1979 or so.

The ur-rule of neoliberalism is that the rich must always get richer.

Trump’s budget cuts 600 million from Medicaid, and other health care in order to give tax cuts to the rich.

Trudeau’s big change from previous Prime Ministers was to massively increase immigration. The effect was to depress wages and increase rent and real-estate prices.

When European countries talk about increasing military spending, there is the inevitable comment that this will require slashing social spending. Somehow, the idea of taxing the rich and corporations more is never raised, even though that would easily cover the cost.

DOGE’s civil service cuts will lead to massive outsourcing of whatever the government really has to do, which will cost more than doing it in house, and it will profit the rich.

Starmer’s extate taxes on family farmers will force them to sell their farms to agri-business or developers (and, overall, make the UK even less able to feed itself).

Trump’s proposal to cut the military budget massively, in concert with China and Russia, would open up more room for tax cuts. The savings won’t be used to help poor and middle class Americans, you can be sure of that. (It also isn’t going to happen that way, because China can easily afford its military budget. More on that in a later article, probably.)

This isn’t to say there are never exceptions, but they are exceptions.

This is quite different, by the way, from China.

China used to be willing to mint billionaires, but they figured out it was harming the majority of the population, so they are dealing with it. This is one of the reasons why China has won, and the US has lost. (Another factor is that China doesn’t talk about free markets, but actually has them, while the West talks about them but makes sure they never happen.)

Neoliberalism is in the process of ending, but until the ur-rule of always making the rich richer by screwing everyone else ends, the most important part of the oligarchical state will continue. What’s really happening under Trump is the tech-oligarchs are taking the lead trace away from the banking oligarchs. It’s an internal shuffle of power, while the looting continues.

Because a broad prosperous population, combined with massive industry, is what actually makes post-industrial revolution societies powerful, American and Western decline will continue as long as the determination to fuck over ordinary people remains.

 

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Trump’s Budget Will Cause a Recession

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On February 26, 2025

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Trump’s new budget is going to hurt the economy massively. There are 4.5 trillion in tax cuts to high earners and corporations and 880 billion in cuts from “Energy and Commerce.”

Energy and Commerce probably sounds innocuous, but that committee overseas healthcare, and it has only 200 billion in spending that isn’t health care, which means cuts to Medicaid, CHIP, and ACA.

DOGE has implemented some massive cuts to research, but those cuts hit research hospitals hard, and are going to result in a lot of loss of hospital jobs because of loss of overhead.

Tariffs will also hit the economy hard, especially tariffs on energy, where there’s little ability to domestic producers to eat cost increases.

Tax cuts to high earners and corporations don’t increase the strength of the real economy; the money will go to buyouts, stock buybacks, executive salaries, and luxury goods, not to investment in production and new jobs. Cuts to the civil service also have an obvious negative effect on the economy, though some will lead to higher profits due to no longer needing to comply with regulations and laws. (IRS cuts to auditors are the worst of these.)

If you want to re-industrialize, you have to force companies to invest in new production, which means ending things like stock buybacks, executive options, and various other ways for corporations and rich people to juice their income without doing something productive.

In other words, this is a very good budget if you’re rich, and a very bad budget if you aren’t. It’s going to hit red states harder than blue states, since they are overall more dependent on federal budget spending.

This budget will make America weaker, damage administrative capacity, and hurt everyone but maybe to the top 5 percent or so.

Welcome to Trump’s America.

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Tiresome Reminder of China’s Tech and Industry Lead

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On February 25, 2025

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China has the lead in about 80 percent of tech fields:

China has a “stunning lead” in 37 out of 44 critical and emerging technologies as Western democracies lose a global competition for research output, a security think tank said on Thursday after tracking defence, space, energy and biotechnology.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) said its study showed that, in some fields, all of the world’s top 10 research institutions are based in China.

There is every reason to believe this will be nearly 100% in a decade or so. China is now catching up in pharma, for example:

Among the drugs in clinical research worldwide, approximately 35% are original or co-developed by Chinese companies, ranking second globally.

 

Then there’s the universities:

It’s all over, except the screaming. The US is, under DOGE, cutting science funding. Oh, administrative overhead needed to be reduced, no question, but you don’t do that by suddenly slashing it 75 percent or so, that leaves no time to adjust.

Tech and science, as I have tiresomely pointed out over and over again, always moves to the country with the manufacturing floor lead. There is a delay, but it is now past.

Meanwhile, as of 2024 China controls 35 percent of industrial output, up from 31 percent in 2022.

China is moving towards the sort of economic and technological dominance the US enjoyed after World War II. It’s that significant.

And notice that the tech and science lead is accelerating.

Everything in geopolitics, economics and trade needs to take this into account. Nothing is more important except ecological issues.

People talk about a multipolar world, but what is actually happening is a new cold war, with the American side weaker and more backward. The USSR lost not because of some mythical inferior system, but because it started behind and stayed behind, with less population and fewer resources. It competed in some techs for a while, but was never able to establish a sustained lead in any significant number.

People wonder why I suggest most countries should be cutting a deal with or at least slightly aligning towards China. It’s because they’ve already won, and being on the stronger, more prosperous side is superior to being on the weaker, less prosperous side. Further, the sooner countries cut a deal, the better that deal will be.

The US is flailing about with the remains of its power, but the closest analogy to its position is Britain in 1918. The American Empire still exists, but everyone with sense can see that its days are numbered. The analogy isn’t perfect, there’s no Great War, and America is a continental power, but the same power overhang without the ability to sustain it exists.

This informs everything: There’s the US withdrawal from Europe, which is underway; The French being kicked out of Africa, because China can supply everything they need; America’s attempts to cannibalize its vassals for as much tech and industry as they can get; and so on.

America’s currently pressuring Taiwan and TSMC to give them their two million fab tech. 85 percent of Taiwanese oppose this, but the US is piling the pressure on.

Thing is, in time, it won’t matter. China’s catching up anyway.

America’s burning down its old Empire to try and stay in the game. But its vassals are fools if they cooperate. There is nothing the US can offer at this point which is worth the long term cost of submitting to US looting. This is true of Ukraine as well, by the way, and it appears they’re going to sign a minerals deal with Europe instead of the US, which is not ideal, but at least they won’t be screwed both ways to Sunday.

Disentangling from a flailing, declining Empire is dangerous and difficult. But it has to be done, by anyyone with any sense. Give America its splendid isolation as it falls into decline, or join it.

 

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Germany’s Merz Is A Moron, But at Least He’s Got Some Guts

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On February 24, 2025

22 Comments

So, Merz is likely Germany’s next Chancellor. He’s said one good thing:

“My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA.

“After Donald Trump‘s statements, it is clear that the Americans, or, at least Trump’s American demographic and this administration, are largely indifferent to the fate of Europe.”

Excellent. The first step in recovery from being a slave, or vassal, is admitting the problem and deciding to stand up.

The problem is that Merz is rabidly anti-Russia, pro-Israel, and stupid. If Germany wants to re-arm, it has to stop its de-industrialization, and that means it needs cheap energy, which right now can only be supplied by Russia. Then, it needs to massively invest in tech and science, because it’s far behind China, the US, Japan, and South Korea. Its industry is almost all legacy 20th century industry.

If Europe’s going to re-arm, where will they get their weapons from? The US? China? Russia? They have to have their own arms industry.

Germany’s been doing a pretty good job of moving to electrification, but during this transition, they’re going to need cheap oil and gas. They also need to invest in new forms of nuclear power which are safer and cheaper, in order to provide an electrical backbone (and to catch up in tech).

All of this is going to take a lot of money, and Germany will need to force companies to stay in Germany and invest in research and new products. That means raising taxes on the rich and corporations, and re-jiggering the tax code to force reinvestment of profits into research and new production.

Merz isn’t the sort of guy who’s going to want to put top marginal tax rates back up to 80 or 90 percent, end stock options, smash CEO and exec pay, and so on.

Still, at least Merz has got it through his thick head that America is Europe’s overlord and something should be done about that.

But actually, stopping Germany’s decline requires making Russia a trade partner, not an enemy. The same goes for almost all of Europe. Until Europeans get over their paranoid delusions about Russia, they’re going to continue their decline. Again, the same goes for China. If Europe insists on being hostile to both Russia and China, even as the South doesn’t want to do business with them, there is no path to save the “garden.”

 

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – February 23, 2025

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On February 23, 2025

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By Tony Wikrent

 

Trump’s assault on the Constitution

Friday Night Massacre in the Military

Joyce Vance, Feb 22, 2025 [Civil Discourse]

[TW: The AP story on Fridaynight’s firing of Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. did not include the crucial news that Trump also dismissed all the senior Judge Advocates General (JAGS) for the Army, Navy, and Air Force. In her Civil Discourse substack, Joyce Vance — a former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama from 2009 to 2017, and currently a professor at University of Alabama School of Law, as well as a legal commentator on  MSNBC — has raised alarms about what all these dismissals mean:]

Is Donald Trump trying to turn the military into a political weapon, just like he’s trying, and at least partially succeeding, in doing at the Justice Department?

….competent military leaders are being dismissed for no apparent good reason.

And that’s the heart of it, why dismiss them? Why on a Friday night? Why so many all and once? And why the Judge Advocates General?

Members of the Judge Advocates General Corps, for instance, respond to legal questions about rules of engagement, targeting, intelligence law, and detainee operations. They are military lawyers whose core functions involve military justice and law of war. They offer advice on questions including what constitutes an illegal order, what is a war crime, what is a constitutional violation. Replacing their leadership with Trump loyalists could have serious implications for how the military reacts in a number of situations, including assisting with mass deportations and policing protests, which they are currently prohibited from doing by the Posse Comitatus Act.

 

Ominous

Josh Marshall, February 21, 2025 [Talking Points Memo]

President Trump has abruptly fired the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Charles Q. Brown Jr., and is replacing him with a retired three star general, Dan Caine. This portends a future grave crisis as the President attempts to restructure the military into one personally loyal to him. Caine has not been a service chief or held a combatant command or been the head of the air forces of a combatant command. So basically he’s held none of the assignments which normally precedes elevation to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs….

In its own way equally ominous, Trump tonight fired the Judge Advocates General of the Army, Navy and Air Force. Among many other things it’s the military lawyers who determine what is a legal order and what’s not. If you’re planning to give illegal orders they are an obvious obstacle.

 

The Making of Emergencies

Caroline Elkins, February 16, 2024 [The New York Review]

…On January 20 Trump declared not one emergency but three. The first, applying to the southern border, echoed an emergency he had declared in 2019. This time, much like previously, the president can circumvent congress on multiple issues, including military spending. The second emergency designates “cartels and other organizations” as “foreign terrorist organizations” under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), typically enacted for sanctions. The third is a “national energy emergency” under which Trump can conceivably bypass a host of legal and environmental regulations that had impeded his promise in his first administration to “drill, baby drill.”

In the United States, as soon the president declares a national emergency—a decision entirely within his purview, typically done through executive order—he lays claim to nearly 150 otherwise dormant statutory powers. In his declaration, he must identify which of those powers he is activating….

Most countries today have constitutional provisions for national emergencies, but neither the United Kingdom nor the United States are among them. Only in the past half-century did both countries pass legislation to narrow and regulate the executive’s power to declare a state of emergency: the US’s National Emergencies Act (1976) and the UK’s Civil Contingencies Act (2004)….

…as I was finishing this essay, Trump took to social media channeling Schmitt’s vision. “He who saves his Country,” he posted, “does not violate any Law.”

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Open Thread

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On February 22, 2025

31 Comments

Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts. No vax/anti-vax.

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