When relying on technology in Flash Flood Alley lets you down

 Girls camp grieves loss of 27 campers and counselors in Texas floods that killed nearly 90 people

... Operators of Camp Mystic, a century-old summer camp in the Texas Hill Country, said they lost 27 campers and counselors, confirming their worst fears after a wall of water slammed into cabins built along the edge of the Guadalupe River. ...

... On Thursday the National Weather Service advised of potential flooding and then sent out a series of flash flood warnings in the early hours of Friday before issuing flash flood emergencies — a rare step that alerts the public to imminent danger.

Authorities and elected officials have said they did not expect such an intense downpour, the equivalent of months of rain.

Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice said one of the challenges is that many camps are in places with poor cellphone service. ...

Why did the Guadalupe River flood so fast? What to know about Texas' 'Flash Flood Alley'

... The Guadalupe River and its surrounding areas in Texas Hill Country have historically been prone to flash flooding, earning the nickname "Flash Flood Alley." This area is particularly hazardous, as river levels increased rapidly at the end of last week and over the weekend. ...

 

Permitting the building of cabins along a river in a dangerous flood plain was just tempting fate.

They do things differently in Texas. 

 

If it hasn't been jet fuel since 2017, it won't be now

Real GDP has been 2.43% compound annual 1Q2017 through 1Q2025. And that includes all the obscene pandemic spending.

This isn't even close to the 2.8% Trump cheerleaders are promising, let alone the 3% The Speaker touts.

 

Speaker Johnson: We've Given Everybody A Tax Cut, That Will Be Jet Fuel For The Economy

 

There's no new tax cut. The Trump tax reform from his first term simply continues. There's no injection of new money on a permanent basis involving tax bracket changes, nothing substantively different for the average taxpayer.

 

There are short-term gimmicks for seniors, earners of tip income, earners of overtime pay, car-buyers, etc., but most of these are scattershot and most importantly, most of them expire in 2028.

 

The incremental adjustments which occur naturally to standard deduction amounts would occur anyway. 

More above average income filers will be able to itemize than previously, but only until 2030.

 

 

 

U. S. House GOP majority declines to 219-212 as Mark Green of TN-7 resigns, as expected

 Story.

Democrats are down three seats temporarily due to deaths. 

Billionaire becomes homeless

 Welcome to the club, bub.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says he’s ‘politically homeless’ in July 4 post bashing Democrats

 

CNBC also is wondering where the fuel comes from for future GDP under the Trump tax cuts since they are already not cutting it lol

 

House GOP can't agree to proceed to debating Senate reconciliation bill, vote stands at 206 Yea, 216 Nay (4 GOP against), with 10 GOP not voting

Yikes. 

Even if all not voting GOP vote Yea, there's a tie. Not good enough.

And moments ago Thomas Massie changed his Yea to Nay lol. 

 Trump’s megabill is in real trouble; House GOP leaders need to flip a ‘no’ vote to a yes

 

 

S&P 500 closes at another new high today

 

Jobs going bye-bye in the news

 

Microsoft laying off about 9,000 employees in latest round of cuts

 

The private sector lost 33,000 jobs in June, badly missing expectations for a 100,000 increase, ADP says

Every major bank passes stress test from the US Federal Reserve

507 banks failed in the United States 2008-2014 inclusive, costing the Deposit Insurance Fund nearly $90 billion. Many millions of homes went into completed foreclosure.

 

Big banks all pass the Federal Reserve’s less vigorous stress tests

 

... All 22 banks tested this year would have remained solvent and above the minimum thresholds to continue to operate, the Fed said, despite absorbing roughly $550 billion in theoretical losses. ...

 

Under this year’s hypothetical scenario, a major global recession would have caused a 30% decline in commercial real estate prices and a 33% decline in housing prices. The unemployment rate would rise to 10% and stock prices would fall 50%. In 2024, the hypothetical scenario was a 40% decline in commercial real estate prices, a 55% decline in stock prices and a 36% decline in housing prices. ...      

 

The 2024 benchmarks are a mixture.

 

Commercial real estate prices year over year fell more than 11% in 4Q2008, and more than 30% in 4Q2009. Planning for a future 40% decline seems appropriate.

 

The 2007 shock to the median price of houses sold was only 19% 1Q2007-1Q2009, with prices not recovering until 1Q2013. But since the median price of houses sold has jumped by about 31% just since 2020, planning for a future 36% decline is more than appropriate.

 

Unemployment peaked at 10% in October 2009. The civilian employment level contracted by almost 7 million 2007-2010 on an average basis, and did not recover until 2014, seven long years later. Pandemic unemployment peaked at 14.8% in April 2020. We got as high as 10.8% in November and December 1982. Great Depression unemployment peaked at 25.59% in May 1933. This one is a crap-shoot. 

 

The average price of the S&P 500 fell 50.8% between October 2007 and March 2009, but in 2007 the S&P 500 was valued about 26% above the long term mean, not 130% as in 2024.

 

That's the datum that worries me. Just to get to its historical median value of 81, the S&P 500 today would have to fall 61%, to about 2425.

 

Imagine the howls. 

 

 

 

  

 

Ukraine suffered its largest attack yet from Russia, Trump's response is to cut weapon shipments while dithering yet another two weeks on his Putin ultimatum

Trump is a detestable, amoral fiend.

Pentagon halts weapons shipment to Ukraine amid concerns over U.S. stockpile

... The weapons being delayed include dozens of Patriot interceptors that can defend against incoming Russian missiles, thousands of 155 mm high explosive Howitzer munitions, more than 100 Hellfire missiles, more than 250 precision-guided missile systems known as GMLRS and dozens each of Stinger surface-to-air missiles, AIM air-to-air missiles and grenade launchers, the two defense officials, two congressional officials and two sources with knowledge of the decision said. ... 

Ukraine has repeatedly appealed for additional U.S. and European air defense weaponry as Russia has stepped up its air raids in recent months. Over the weekend, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said Russia had launched the largest aerial attack on the country since Moscow’s full-scale invasion in 2022, firing 60 missiles and 477 drones. ...

The munitions were approved as part of Presidential Drawdown Authority and Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative packages during the Biden administration, the defense officials and two sources with knowledge of the decision said. Some of the shipments are already in the region but have been stopped before being turned over to Ukraine, according to a defense official and two sources with knowledge of the decision. ...

 

 

Senate reconciliation bill gives chipmakers like TSMC more tax credits while cutting Medicaid

 

Chipmakers get larger tax credits in Trump’s latest ‘big beautiful bill’ 

 

... Under the bill, passed by the Senate Tuesday, tax credits for those semiconductor firms would rise to 35% from 25%. That’s more than the 30% increase that had made it into a draft version of the bill. ... 

The new provisions expand on tax incentives under the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, which provided grants of $39 billion and loans of $75 billion for U.S.-based semiconductor manufacturing projects. ...

 

Medicaid cuts in Trump’s megabill will leave millions uninsured, threaten rural hospitals

... Recent changes to the bill would cut roughly $1.1 trillion in health-care spending over the next decade, according to new estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. 

More than $1 trillion of those cuts would come from Medicaid, a joint federal and state health insurance program for disabled and low-income Americans, according to the CBO. The funding cuts go beyond insurance coverage: The loss of that funding could gut many rural hospitals that disproportionately rely on federal spending.

The CBO estimates that the current version of the bill would result in 11.8 million people losing health insurance by 2034, with the majority of those people losing Medicaid coverage. ...

Approximately 72 million Americans are currently enrolled in Medicaid, about one-fifth of the total U.S. population, according to government data. Medicaid is the primary payer for the majority of nursing home residents, and pays for around 40% of all births. ...

The US Senate's biggest phony, Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, boasted he had enough votes to stop Trump's bill, but voted for it all three times in the end

 

 

The roll call votes are here, here, and here.

June 4, 2025, here:

Republican Sen. Ron Johnson on Wednesday blasted President Donald Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill” as “immoral” and “grotesque,” and reiterated that he will vote against it unless his GOP colleagues make major changes.

“This is immoral, what us old farts doing to our young people,” Johnson said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” after sounding alarms that the massive tax-and-spending-cut bill would add trillions of dollars to national deficits.

“This is grotesque, what we’re doing,” Johnson said. “We need to own up to that. This is our moment.”

“I can’t accept the scenario, I can’t accept it, so I won’t vote for it, unless we are serious about fixing it,” he continued.

Johnson has been among the Senate’s loudest GOP critics of the budget bill that narrowly passed the House last month.

Johnson and other fiscal hawks have taken aim over its effect on the nation’s debt. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated later Wednesday that the bill would add $2.4 trillion to the national debt over the next decade.

Johnson has proposed splitting the bill into two parts, though Trump insists on passing his agenda in a single package.

“The president and Senate leadership has to understand that we’re serious now,” Johnson said of himself and the handful of other GOP senators whose opposition to the bill could imperil its chances.

“They all say, ‘Oh, we can pressure these guys.’ No, you can’t.”

Republicans hold a narrow 53-47 majority in the Senate, so they can only afford to lose a handful of votes to get the bill passed in a party-line vote.

“Let’s discuss the numbers, and let’s focus on our children and grandchildren, whose futures are being mortgaged, their prospects are being diminished by what we are doing to them,” Johnson said.

Johnson’s comments came one day after Elon Musk ripped into the spending bill, calling it a “disgusting abomination” that will lead to exploding deficits. The White House brushed aside Musk’s comments.

Johnson said Musk’s criticisms bolster the case against the bill.

“He’s in the inside, he showed … President Trump how to do this, you know, contract by contract, line by line,” Johnson said of Musk. “We have to do that.”

Johnson said his campaign against the bill in its current form is not a “long shot,” because he thinks there are “enough” Republican senators who will vote against the bill.

“We want to see [Trump] succeed, but again, my loyalty is to our kids and grandkids,” he said.

“So there’s enough of us who have that attitude that very respectfully we just have say, ’Mr. President, I’m sorry, ‘one, big, beautiful bill’ was not the best idea,” he added.

 

Trump administration fails to intimidate Canada, goes Galt and ends trade talks

 

Trump ends all U.S. trade talks with Canada over digital services tax

 

 

 

 

 

 

... The first payments from Canada’s digital services tax, which was enacted last year and applies retroactively to 2022, are set to be collected Monday. The tax would hit both domestic and foreign tech companies, including U.S. giants such as Amazon, Google and Meta.

Canadian officials said this month that they would not pause the digital services tax, despite ferocious opposition from the United States.

“Obviously, we think it’s patently unfair to do it retroactively,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said later Friday on CNBC’s “Closing Bell: Overtime.”

Bessent said the Trump administration was hoping that Carney’s government would “put a brake on” the tax “as a sign of goodwill.” ...

 

Trump's idea of good will is 50% tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, 25% tariffs on autos, an overall 10% tariff on most everything else, and a 25% "fentanyl" tariff.

 

 

S&P 500 closed at a record of 6,173.07 on Friday 27 June 2025

 

S&P 500 closes at a record Friday, overcoming even more trade angst

Trump is the Uniparty, floats an Iran policy similar to Obama's

 

Trump administration exploring $30 billion civilian nuclear deal for Iran

 

... The potential deal would mark a major reversal in policy for President Trump, who pulled the U.S. out of the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran in 2018 arguing in part that the sanctions relief and unfreezing of Iranian assets had provided a “lifeline of cash” to the Iranian regime to continue its malign activities. ... 

Daddy's inflation

 

Federal Reserve floats proposal to ease bank capital requirements which were increased in the wake of the Great Financial Crisis of 2008, Fed Governors Kugler and Barr in opposition

 

Divided Fed proposes rule to ease capital requirements for big Wall Street banks

 

... The Fed board put the proposal open for a 60-day public comment window.

In its draft form, the measure would call for reducing the top-tier capital big banks must hold by 1.4%, or some $13 billion, for holding companies. Subsidiaries would see a larger drop, of $210 billion, which would still be held by the parent bank. The standard applies the same rules to so-called globally systemic important banks as well as their subsidiaries.

The rule would lower capital requirements to range of 3.5% to 4.5% from the current 5%, with subsidiaries put in the same range from a previous level of 6%. ... 

However, Governors Adriana Kugler and Michael Barr, the former vice chair of supervision, said they would oppose the move.

“Even if some further Treasury market intermediation were to occur in normal times, this proposal is unlikely to help in times of stress,” Barr said in a separate statement. “In short, firms will likely use the proposal to distribute capital to shareholders and engage in the highest return activities available to them, rather than to meaningfully increase Treasury intermediation.” ...

 

The U.S. Senate parliamentarian still has not ruled on the GOP's wacky current policy vs. current law baseline

The current policy is the temporary Trump tax cuts from 2017. 

The current law is the tax compromise worked out by Barack Obama and John Boehner.

I don't think this thing is going to be done by the Fourth of July.

 

 GOP’s food stamp plan is found to violate Senate rules. It’s the latest setback for Trump’s big bill

... The parliamentarian’s office is tasked with scrutinizing the bill to ensure it complies with the so-called Byrd Rule, which is named after the late Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., and bars many policy matters in the budget reconciliation process now being used. ...

Some of the most critical rulings from parliamentarians are still to come. One will assess the GOP’s approach that relies on “current policy” rather than “current law” as the baseline for determining whether the bill will add to the nation’s deficits. ...

The truth is buried in the very last paragraph: Obama's war on coal did this to us

Why electricity prices are surging for U.S. households

... certain facilities like old fossil-fuel powered plants have been decommissioned and new energy capacity to replace it has been relatively slow to come online ...

The more things change, the more the fascist U.S. system of corporate welfare does not

 

In race to attract data centers, states forfeit hundreds of millions in tax revenue to tech firms

 

... In the race to attract large data centers, states are forfeiting hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue, according to a CNBC analysis. Among the beneficiaries of these exemptions are tech giants such as Amazon, Meta and Google, which all have market caps of over $1 trillion. 

Tax breaks have long been a tool states use to compete for businesses. However, watchdog groups said that for data centers the tradeoffs are iffy, because the facilities don’t tend to create large numbers of jobs, while the amount of electricity required can be immense. 

The growing number of tax breaks has sparked a debate about whether massive corporations should be receiving these generous incentives. ...

Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, a nonprofit research group that tracks corporate subsidies and advocates for transparency and accountability in economic development, has spent more than a decade examining the impact of exemptions nationwide. He said the clear winners are the Big Tech companies.

“There was a giant transfer of wealth from taxpayers to shareholders,” LeRoy told CNBC. “Some states, like Virginia, are headed toward billion-dollar annual losses.” ...

LeRoy calls it a losing proposition for taxpayers.  

“When tax breaks don’t pay for themselves, only two things can happen: Either public services are reduced in quality, or everybody’s taxes go up in other ways if you’re going to try to keep things the same in terms of quality of public services,” he said. ...

 

Meanwhile, known corporate welfare, in the form of tax abatements and subsidies by states and localities to attract businesses to come and bring jobs, is presently estimated at in excess of $417 billion. The real total is probably far higher given that local data is poor relative to state disclosures.

 

The data, incomplete as it may be, shows just ten states where we're talking about only "hundreds of millions" in lost tax revenue and tax loss expenditures. In the rest we're talking about billions, even tens of billions.