Um, why are small towns still struggling two years into Trump II?

 

Vance's Message a Perfect Fit for Struggling Small Towns

David Marcus, FOX News

The nerve of these people

The rate cut in September 2024 was the real disaster because inflation was not licked, and yields now have simply retested their highs after some hopeful but ultimately failed signs of spending discipline around DOGE and of increased revenue from tariffs.   

The failure to win in the Persian Gulf just compounded the inflation problem, restoring the status quo ante, and then some. 

The Fed is the one needing the help, but it isn't going to get it from a spendthrift Congress and reckless executive branch. 

 Vance says Fed should lower interest rates: ‘Would be nice to have some help’ 

 

Bond yields and oil wars and inflation, oh my!

Global bond yields soar to multi-decade highs as Middle East turmoil reignites inflation fears

 

10-year yield hits highest since January 2025 as higher oil prices stoke inflation worries 

 

Vance suspects Antichrist 'among us'...  

 

... like I'd be not shocked if the Antichrist was walking among us ... 

 

Well . . . what a coincidence!

 

👇 

 

 

Larry Kudlow is back touting a non-existent booming economy just like he did during Trump's first administration

 This Is the Best 'Hard Goods' Boom in Decades

... Tuesday’s industrial production report showed back-to-back gains in June and July for both total production and manufacturing production. ...

Larry is rightly happy about the increase in the durable manufacturing index. 

No doubt about it, it is up, but notice that it is still not as high as it was in Trump 2018 or Obama 2014. 

More importantly, percent change in the index for 1H2026 was 1.94, lower than the 2.28 in 1H2018 when Trump was president the first time.

But this isn't an economic boom, and neither was that. 

Those are welcome highpoints but in a long-term trend all down hill since the 1980s when Reagan was president, and no one asks why.

Kudlow & Co. never go back in the data as far as they should, even though they served in the Reagan Revolution and touted the results for the economy of the posthumous JFK tax cut in the Revenue Act of 1964, which cut the top marginal rate from 91% to 70%.

Today they use these data sets which go back only to the beginning of 1972, but even at that there is a giant durable goods growth spike of 9.02% in 2H1983 which we have been unable to reproduce since then, which should make them ask themselves, What went wrong?, but it doesn't.

Socrates said that the unexamined life isn't worth living.

So let's examine it.

Robust post-war growth is a truism which is true!

Industrial production generally, and for manufacturing specifically, grew robustly year over year, and the trend for those growth rates was itself strongly positive, as the chart for 1948 to 1984 shows.

But look at what happens after 1984. 

You still get positive growth rates year over year, but not as robust as before, and the trend for those growth rates becomes strongly negative.

Something changed in the 1980s to cause this.

I say it's the Reagan Revolution in ordinary income tax rate reductions which caused this, not because tax cuts for rich people is bad, but because Reagan unintentionally sabotaged the tax rate arbitrage which before those tax cuts existed had pushed rich people for decades to make long term capital investments here at home in order to get low capital gains taxes in return.

In other words, Reagan destroyed the negative incentives which drove domestic investment. Take away the penalty of high ordinary income tax rates, and suddenly there's no reason to plow your money into the investments which drive business, jobs, and GDP, especially as enthusiasm for regulations of all kinds began to grow and hamstring profits. 

The new tax cut windfalls freed up a lot of money to seek return wherever it could be found, and in the aftermath of the Reagan era that money increasingly went abroad. For people who lived through it, the one persistent theme of the business news was one business after another closing up shop in America and moving production overseas. After China entered the WTO, the steady departure of businesses from America became a flood.

And that's why that last chart, for 1984 to the present, looks like hell.

It has nothing to do with the U.S. Dollar being the world's reserve currency either. That is the dumbest thing I've heard in years, and I can't tell you how amusing that is coming out of the mouth of a Yalie. I guess they don't teach 'em at Yale that the dollar was the world's reserve currency 1948-1984.

I am not an economist. I do not know how to wave a magic wand of policy to make it all right again. 

I am just a scholar in the humanities who wanted to know what turned my world upside down in 2007 and why I and millions like me have never recovered.

I have made a life for myself in spite of it all, as people do, but I tell you what, America was pretty great once, so don't tell me this is an economic boom.

I knew the economic boom. The economic boom was a friend of mine. And Larry, this isn't an economic boom.

 

 

Industrial production missed the consensus estimate yesterday, so they trotted out Larry Kudlow to tell you otherwise lol

 For month over month in July, the consensus estimate was for +0.3%. Instead we got +0.2%.

Meanwhile the big picture shows, like so many indicators, that industrial production hit the big brick wall of Reaganism in 1984.

Post-war industrial production grew handsomely and its growth rate trended upward from 1948 to 1984, but not after.

Why is that?

I think it's because the incentive to invest in domestic industry went away because of the Reagan tax revolution.

Up to that time, high ordinary income tax rates had pushed owners of capital to invest in America for decades because by doing so they could take advantage of relatively much lower long term capital gains tax rates when they wanted to take income. After the dramatic Reagan cuts to ordinary income tax rates, that arbitrage disappeared. From that time onward owners of capital, now flush with cash from taking income at low ordinary income tax rates year upon year, found it more advantageous to invest abroad where low labor costs and unregulated markets promised even more fabulous returns on investment as America hobbled itself with regulation at home. The exit of businesses of all sizes from the United States to East Asia which began from this time turned into a flood after China was admitted into the WTO in 2001.

But today J. D. Vance thinks the U.S. Dollar's status as the world's reserve currency is the cause of all our problems.

If you want to know what makes me despair, that's it.

The following news story was more accurate than Kudlow. 

US: Industrial Production Up Again in July as Modest Manufacturing Recovery Continues 

Mexico will finally pay for The Wall when J. D. Vance becomes president . . .

. . . but in pesos because J.D. will end the U.S. Dollar as the world's reserve currency.

 

 

Man, this was clearly a homosexual slur from Abdul, a dogwhistle to his base of support, he just left out the butt in butt-boy

 

If Paul Gottfried is going to abopt Marxist categories like Joel Kotkin does, he could at least refrain from conflating the middle class with God's chosen people, the workers and the proletariat, and make up his mind about who's who and what's what

Paul Gottfried never speaks the truth that J. D. Vance is the technocratic class' boy beyond the wildest dreams of Donald Trump for himself.

Vance has no solutions to repair the broken ladder of socio-economic progress. It's his job not to.

Contempt for America’s Middle

... our vice-president has taken note of the stagnant wages and job insecurity of American workers 

... the United States has had a mixed economy, one that the urbanologist Joel Kotkin characterizes as “democratic capitalism,” since the last century

... the present left does not care about workers at all

... It has been left to the populist right to take up the cause of the proletariat, which, whether or not one agrees with all his proposed policies, Vance is at least trying to do

... Kotkin is understandably concerned that “democratic capitalism” is no longer working and that the wages and living conditions of our working class have declined as a result of outsourcing, cheap foreign labor, and treating workers like expendable commodities. In Kotkin’s view, the technocratic class, with both governmental and vast financial connections, is sitting atop the socio-economic pyramid, and both workers and what used to be America’s thriving middle class have suffered from this imbalance of power

... Shapiro mocks Vance for stating that workers should find “spiritual” satisfaction in their labor ...

Colonel Saito couldn't agree more with J. D. Vance. 

 

 

Spare me your growing concerns about Mitch, Tom Kean was missing in action for four months, missing more than 140 votes in a U.S. House with a GOP majority margin of just five

 

Tom Kean wasn't in the headlines every damn day.

Mitch hasn't been Senate Majority Leader for 18 months and counting.

If Mitch is absent the Vice President can stand in if there is a tie.

The Mitch-haters on Elon Musk's X are vile and ugly.

 

 Mitch McConnell’s health concerns grow amid 4th week in hospital with few details from aides

 GOP Rep. Tom Kean says depression diagnosis caused months-long absence from Congress

 

 

Yeah, 10-12 for the moment, but Carville is right, the Anti-Semites have to go from the Democrat Caucus, including AOC, Rashida Tlaib, and Bernie Sanders

But don't kid yourself that the Republican Party is a morally superior alternative anymore.

J. D. Vance already has no anti-semitic enemies to the right in the Republican Party.

Everything forbidden is becoming permitted. 

 

Larry Sabato: We're Talking About 10-12 Democratic Socialists Out Of 200-230 Democrats, "It's A Small Group"

Colorado District One victor over Diana DeGette: Melat Kiros: Gaza "Genocide We Are Complicit In With Our Taxpayer Dollars" Is "A Defining Issue" Of 2026 Campaign

Ocasio-Cortez Endorses El-Sayed in Michigan Dem Senate Primary 

Carville on Democratic Socialists: It's Time To Negotiate A Schism, "I'm Not In That F*cking Political Party"

Carville: Democrats Should Not Seat Avila Chevalier In The Democratic Caucus

 

What was the blockade for then, kicks?

 They haven't got a clue what they are doing.

J. D. Vance wants you to believe white people got Reagan elected in 1984 but not Nixon in 1972, among other fantasies

In any case he's going with "we're more like Nixon than Reagan".

Alrighty then.

I think they'll be a LOT more like Nixon after November.

Watergate a Story of How the Deep State Took Down Nixon

VP Vance, Nixon Library

 

It's not a story, it's a statement of an opinion: "Watergate is a story ...".

 

Like the remark about whites, the Deep State remark is just another one-off Vance burbles more than he argues.

 

Some call this knowing how to get in the headlines, others call it dog-whistling.

 

But let's talk substance instead. 

 

The actual luminaries of the Deep State in 1974 turned out to be Richard Hofstadter's 1964 practitioner of the paranoid style himself, the father of the conservative movement, Senator Barry Goldwater, and a moderate Republican Senator, Howard Baker from Tennessee, Nixon's would-be protector.

 

Goldwater was the one who had to break it to Nixon on August 7, 1974 that once impeached by the House there were not 34 votes to acquit in the U.S. Senate, not even half that, and maybe not even his vote. He was 1974's John Thune of 2026, who doesn't have the votes for Trump's election interference bill.

 

Baker's June 1973 question, "What did the president know, and when did he know it?", asked 53 years ago tomorrow, unintentionally became the opportunity for White House Counsel John Dean to detail Nixon conversations which implicated Nixon in the cover-up of his aides' Baker-styled "rogue activity", the Watergate break-in. 

 

It didn't take long for Baker to realize Nixon also was guilty.

 

At length seven Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee joined all the Democrats in voting to impeach Nixon by July 1974.

 

Had Nixon not taped himself, however, there would have been no Smoking Gun tape from June 23, 1972, which showed that the president ordered H. R. Haldeman to use the CIA to stop the FBI's investigation into the Watergate break-in six days earlier.

 

It doesn't get more Deep State than that. 

 

The release of its transcript on August 5, 1974 convinced everybody that Nixon obstructed justice and covered it up. That's what sent Goldwater & Co. to the White House on August 7th.

 

Nixon announced his resignation the very next day and left office August 9, 1974. 

 

Nobody took down Richard Nixon except Richard Nixon. 

 

By August 1974 66% of the country had joined this so-called Deep State conspiracy against Nixon, which marked an astounding reversal from the 67% who had approved of him in January 1973. 

 

Trump's not far behind Nixon at 58.6% disapproval just one month ago.

 

We'll see what mood the country is in to get rid of him shortly. The November election will be a referendum on this. 

 

A healthy republic repents of its mistakes, and a Christian society accepts that repentance. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

J. D. Vance: Barry Goldwater was the Deep State lol

 Vance: Watergate Is A "Story Of How The Deep State Took Down Nixon"

 

Trump's tech-bro tyranny is censoring Trump's critics

Musk Suspends X Accounts Criticizing JD Vance...

I can confirm from personal experience this weekend that this is true after being unaccountably disconnected multiple times just out of the blue and forced to log back in, only to have that process throttled as well. 

AMAZON, GOODREADS restrict reviews of Vance book after savage critiques...

J. D. Vance channels his inner Barack Obama

 

The paint's comin' off the peace deal faster than it came off the Reflecting Pool

 

Trump has paved the way to the billions of dollars Vance says Iran will need to rebuild its nuclear program lol

 Yale man.

 

 

What we want is the truth

Can you imagine a Vance presidency?

I can't. 

Vance: Iran Deal Critics "Want This To Go On Until Every Bomb Has Been Dropped Or Until Every Iranian Is Dead" 

Three Iranian tankers exit U.S. blockade as shipowners eye Hormuz in ‘wary disbelief’ 

 ... The U.S. and Iran signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Monday to end the nearly four-month war, with a formal signing ceremony to take place on Friday in Geneva. The pact, whose details have not been disclosed, is expected to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and waive sanctions on Iran’s oil sales. ... 

Update 12:10pm 

Read the 14-point draft agreement between the US and Iran

... The 14-point memorandum of understanding has not yet been officially released but a copy of it was obtained by CNN from a US official.

... A White House spokesperson said the text did not reflect the actual memorandum. 

... The US official told CNN that the text reflects the agreement signed digitally by President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Iranian parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf on Sunday. 

... Bloomberg earlier published a version of the draft. ...                                          

Update 5:20pm

The CNN story above now contains the official agreement, as of 38 minutes ago.  

It's a giant con: They signed a nothingburger with Iran, that's why they're not showing it to us

 

 

It is another desperate ploy to jawbone oil prices down in a world hurtling toward tank bottom.

 

Meanwhile, why did Vance have to sign?

 

Is Trump on his last legs?

 

And we're still dealing with Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf? I thought Trump said all this took extra time because they were trying to find a more moderate faction?

 

It's all BS, MS, Piledhigh and Deep. 

 

 

June 11:  Oil executives warn White House that gas prices will get worse 

 

... “Both camps know exactly what is at stake,” said one industry official who frequently interacts with the administration. “The industry folks are intent on making sure that if the worm turns, the White House does not point fingers that the industry did not do enough.”

“Everyone everywhere fully appreciates that the standoff cannot go on for another 30-45 days without the political calculations changing,” the official said.

“The White House knows and understands the severity of the potential situation. … They are politically constricted from saying that publicly.” ...

 

June 15: Trump, Vance, Iranian official sign US-Iran peace memo

... Both President Trump and Vice President Vance electronically signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran on Sunday, while Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, speaker of the Iranian Parliament, signed for the Iranian side, senior U.S. officials said Monday. ...

 

 Vance: Iran Deal A "Very General Document," We'll Figure Out The Details In The "Technical Negotiation Phase"

Vice President Vance acknowledged that the preliminary U.S.-Iran memorandum is only "about a page and a half" and described it as a "very general document. ... what the MOU does is set up a framework ..."                                   

 

Trump is a terrible judge of character. Ghalibaf is an IRGC fundamentalist.

 

 

It's amazing that the answer of Donald J. Trump and now J. D. Vance to Senator John Cornyn of Texas is a crook

 

 

... Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said she couldn’t understand Trump’s thinking, given that Paxton was charged with felony securities fraud and faced a lengthy prison sentence that he managed to avoid by reaching a deal with prosecutors to pay nearly $300,000 in restitution and complete 100 hours of community service.

“I don’t understand. He is an ethically challenged individual,” Collins said of Trump’s support of Paxton, who was charged of defrauding investors in a Dallas-area tech startup. The charges were later dropped after he agreed to a pretrial diversion program. ...

More.