Christopher Caldwell for The New York Times thinks the American Empire has met its match in the Persian Gulf when it already met it a year ago in the Red Sea

... the United States lacks the military means to impose its will on Iran in a long conflict. In 1991 a million soldiers from more than 40 countries were needed to reverse the invasion of Kuwait carried out by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, a country less sophisticated than Iran and a fraction of its size. When Iran and Iraq fought each other to a standstill in the 1980s, deaths ran into the hundreds of thousands on each side. The United States would have to send a significant portion of its armed forces — which total only 1.3 million troops — to stand a chance of subduing Iran, and that force, if successful, would have to stay for a long time. ...

Here.

Caldwell is just as blind as Trump.

Neither one gets it that the lowly Houthis already beat us to a draw last year in the Red Sea.

Nothing is moving out of the Persian Gulf today, and tanker traffic through the Red Sea is less than half what it used to be in 2022, even under the new conditions of a world desperately thirsty for the Middle East oil no longer coming out of the former.

And neither one gets it that you can't have an American Empire without paying for it. 

We're $39 trillion in debt and can no longer impose our will in the world's vital choke-points because elites have pretended since Reagan that low marginal income tax rates are sufficient to maintain American Empire when what those rates have done is impoverish us and enrich our adversaries.

1,135 billionaires are the symbol of our lost empire. 

Caldwell steers well clear of naming the obvious remedy, and Trump's Big Ugly Bill will  do nothing but put America $62 trillion in debt by the end of 2032.

Taxes must be raised . . . a lot.

Ha, taxes coerce behavior whether you like it or not, so you'd better decide what behavior you want because you're going to get it good and hard either way

 Tax Power Not Designed To Coerce Behavior - Gary Abernathy, RCEnergy

... the Fifth Circuit’s ruling is a welcome nod to the fact that the federal government cannot take tax laws intended to increase revenue and twist them merely to regulate business activities. ...

I mean, do these people not remember Ronald Reagan?

“If you want more of something, subsidize it; if you want less of something, tax it.” 

But Ronald Reagan ignorantly reduced high marginal ordinary income tax rates, destroying the need for the owners of capital to make the arbitrage decision going forward between either choosing low long term capital gains tax rates or the high ordinary income tax rates. 

The owners of capital had been no dummies and had picked the low rates for years. That drove domestic investment throughout the post-war because it had to, and produced the good paying full time jobs and GDP which too few even remember now. But faced with an easier path to low taxes, they took it.

The tax windfall set the conditions for the hollowing-out of the U.S. economy when those billions of dollars met the opening to China in 2001, where they worked for pennies on the dollar and regulations were practically non-existent.

20,000 domestic manufacturing establishments alone were lost in the wake of the 1986 tax reform, and 70,000 more after 1997. Millions of manufacturing jobs went with them, and with them the American middle class and the American dream.

All because Ronald Reagan, the liberal, thought rich people knew best what to do with their own money.

In the mid-1980s we had maybe 35 billionaires and people in their 20s routinely married and bought their first home. Today we have 1,135 billionaires and people are nearly 40 before they can afford to buy their first home. And we have Ph.D.s all over the place who can't spell in their own language let alone in a foreign one.  

Put a random set of 100 people in a room and the fact is only 25% of them are college material, but the rest need and deserve good jobs the same as they do, and they aren't going to be "knowledge" jobs.

I can still remember my company's HR head telling my truck-driving employees in the 1990s that they had to start thinking of themselves as "knowledge workers" instead of as what they were. I got the hell out of there. By 2003 most of those new "knowledge workers" of mine had lost their jobs driving truck when the company had to "restructure". Just one tale in tens of thousands of such tales.

America will not begin to be great again without tax policy which favors the American people over some eggheaded libertarian's idea of a principle which favors only the rich. 

Plutocracy: 73% of U.S. Senators are millionaires vs. 7% of Americans, median net worth is 70+ times higher

You have the government you deserve lol.

Millionaires Are Overrepresented in the U.S. Senate — By a Lot

... “The Senate is packed with multimillionaires, and the fact is some of them have lost touch with the real world challenges faced by Americans all over the country,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, told NOTUS in a statement. “It is part of the reason that we have a tax system that favors people who make money off of money and penalizes those who earn a paycheck through hard work. We need to change that.”

Van Hollen is one of at least 11 senators whose median net worth is less than the median household net worth of their respective states, according to a NOTUS analysis of senators’ financial disclosures and U.S. Census Bureau data. Van Hollen has a median net worth of $7,500; the median Maryland household has a net worth of $152,400. (Census Bureau data does not include median household net worth for seven states: Alaska, Delaware, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming.) ... 

The median net worth in the Senate is nearly $4.4 million — more than 70 times the Census-reported median U.S. household net worth, which similarly excludes equity in primary residences. ...

The median net worth for members of the Senate Democratic Caucus is more than $2.9 million, while for Senate Republicans, it’s nearly $5.7 million. ...

A full table for the current Senate is here. 

Grand Rapids, Michigan billionaire Doug DeVos admits America hasn't made all that much progress since 1976

... On the eve of the 1976 election, President Gerald Ford wanted to hold a motorcade parade in Grand Rapids, where he grew up ... filled with boarded-up buildings ... a downtrodden place ...  

America on the eve of 2026 feels an awful lot like Grand Rapids in 1976. There’s a palpable sense that the country is struggling, if not starting to fail. It isn’t only the sorry state of big cities. It’s the state of the nation’s schools as kids fall behind in basic math and reading. It’s the state of the body politic as division and violence spread. It’s the sorry feeling that we’re a nation without a rudder, drifting toward inevitable decline. According to Pew Research, about half of Americans say the U.S. can’t solve many of its important problems. ...

More here. 

Palmer Luckey and all his fellow billionaires have to be taxed punitively on their foreign investments and their ordinary income in order to reindustrialize America

Make sure you tell him when he complains that he has to stop measuring such things in dollars.

 

Palmer Luckey: Reindustrializing The U.S. Is About Realizing Your Destiny Can't Be Measured In Dollars

It is obvious to everyone except Republicans that the Reagan Revolution of tax cuts for the rich has failed to produce the economic growth America was accustomed to before he became president

We had a few dozen billionaires in the Reagan era. Now we have hundreds.

Growth of GDP, percent change, annual, rolled over after 1984, inaugurating a new period of lower trendline growth in the economy.

You're not wrong to feel poorer. 

Just look at the trend lines for the data in this chart from before 1984 and after 1984. The change is glaring. The money which used to go into the economy to grow it has gone straight into the pockets of the rich.

Meanwhile Trump had one year in 2018 at 5.32% and he thinks he's God's gift to humanity, when Bush 43 did better in 2004-2006 at 6.64, 6.72, and 5.95.

Doddering old Joe Biden comes along and averages 8.22 for four years and what do Democrats do but throw him under the bus.

It's enough to make you scream. 

Trump is a con job of the billionaires, by the billionaires, and for the billionaires

 'Affordability is a con job by the Democrats,' Trump says

You need to earn $158,000/year [2.6x = 410,800] for the median home in the United States to be affordable.

93% don't.

 

 

We already accept that we can vote only where we are registered, so why do we allow campaign contributions from people and entities who can't vote where we are registered?

 The next thing you know the U.S. military won't be yours, either. It'll belong to Mellon heir billionaire Timothy Mellon.

 

... Here's a reform that would change everything: You can only donate to candidates and political organizations in the state where you are registered to vote.

Not where you own property. Not where you have business interests. Not where you "care deeply" about the issues. Where you are registered to vote – the place where you've committed to being a citizen and living with the consequences of governance.

This single rule would fundamentally reshape American politics.

 ... Change the incentives by changing where the money comes from, and you change what kind of people can succeed in politics – and what kind of Congress they create.

It's time to return politics to the people who actually have to live with the results.

 

Lindsay Mark Lewis, here. 

Giant prick sprouts in Texas

 

 It's Pritzker's party: Hell yes, he's messing with Texas...

 ... Newsom is offering voters a professor at the very moment they want to elevate a brawler. Pritzker’s primetime slugfest with Abbott and Paxton is designed to leave no doubt in voters’ minds that he’s a brawler.

There’s also the practical fact that the billionaire governor’s stacks of cash are a more immediate help to Texas Democrats than they are to Newsom’s longer-term play. State Democrats had ruled out a “quorum bust” due to cost and logistical challenges, until Pritzker offered to finance and organize the operation. Now they give official press conferences in front of Pritzker’s campaign logo. If Pritzker wants to be seen as the party’s “can-do” Democrat, this is a great way to start. ...

Billionaire becomes homeless

 Welcome to the club, bub.

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

 

The world's population of everyday normal millionaires heh since the year 2000 has more than quadrupled to 52 million

 ... There is not much data on individuals in the $50 million to $1 billion range, which distorts the picture, according to Mazeau. He also said the wealth growth among middle and lower wealth brackets is underappreciated. For instance, the number of individuals with $1 million to $5 million, whom UBS dubs “everyday millionaires,” has more than quadrupled since 2000 to about 52 million.

“They have more wealth collectively than all the billionaires in the world,” he said. “It is often overlooked how much wealth is rising and is going towards the middle of the pack.”

The middle of the pack. Yeah right.

It takes $33 million in 2025 to be a 1913 millionaire. 

More in "The U.S. added a thousand new millionaires a day in 2024: Report".

Meanwhile . . .

 

 

Federal employment is 1.1% of civilian population in April 2025: This is the swamp billionaires want to drain

 The worst it ever got was 2.4% in December 1952 while Truman was still president.

The leisure class of state capitalism has to have something to complain about. 

 

Real Clear Politics puts up a discussion between two billionaires 43% of whose business is government contracts demanding that government bureaucrats be prosecuted for fraud

The chutzpah of these parasites is really something, but Real Clear should be ashamed for promoting it.

The billionaires complain that expenditures far outpace revenues, but taxes must never be raised to pay for them:

"My answer on tax policy, what should tax rates be? Just always a little bit lower. I'm not going to tell you the number, they should always be a little bit lower."

Billionaires for tax cuts!

Meanwhile the $40 billion USAID budget was nothing but a virtue signaling food for the poor scam to these two:

"And so much of this left-wing philanthropy nonprofit world, I think it was just a cover for borderline criminal activity."

 

Prosecute Bureaucrats for Defrauding Government

Peter Thiel, American Optimist

 

 

This greaseball billionaire Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick thinks missing a Social Security check, something that never happens, would be no big deal

Howard is otherwise busy firing people and disbanding volunteer industry groups who help the government create important statistics and guidance about things like gross domestic product, population, trade, etc. which people rely on every month to forecast the economy.

 

U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang in Maryland rules Elon Musk violated the Constitution in dismantling USAID

 

 The ruling is significant because the dopes in the Republican Party just rammed through a continuing spending resolution which fully funds the now severely diminished USAID.

The money must be spent as allocated by Congress.

 

 Judge rules DOGE’s USAID dismantling likely violates the Constitution

WASHINGTON (AP) — The dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development by billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency likely violated the Constitution, a federal judge ruled Tuesday as he indefinitely blocked DOGE from making further cuts to the agency. ...

In one of the first DOGE lawsuits against Musk himself, U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang in Maryland rejected the Trump administration’s position that Musk is merely President Donald Trump’s adviser.

Musk’s public statements and social media posts demonstrate that he has “firm control over DOGE,” the judge found pointing to an online post where Musk said he had “fed USAID into the wood chipper.” ...

The judge said it’s likely that USAID is no longer capable of performing some of its statutorily required functions. ...

Chuang said DOGE’s and Musk’s fast-moving destruction of USAID likely harmed the public interest by depriving elected lawmakers of their “constitutional authority to decide whether, when and how to close down an agency created by Congress.” ...

 

Our servile GOP senators, who have been completely by-passed by DOGE, try to tell Elon Musk that he can't do that lol, now have to ask pretty please from White House chief of staff Susie Wiles

 

What an absolutely contemptible lot.

GOP senators tell Musk DOGE actions will require their votes 

Republican senators told tech billionaire Elon Musk at a closed-door meeting Wednesday that his aggressive moves to shrink the federal government will need a vote on Capitol Hill, sending a clear message that he needs to respect Congress’s power of the purse. ...

Paul and other Republican senators said Musk appeared open to the idea but didn’t seem to expect DOGE’s cuts and workforce reductions would need to come back to Congress for ultimate approval. ...

GOP lawmakers say Musk’s failure to brief them in advance about impending cuts and funding freezes — or to respond to their questions and concerns about actions taken by DOGE — reflected his belief that he thought the administration could largely bypass them by simply impounding funds lawfully appropriated by Congress. ...

Several GOP senators vented their frustrations over Musk’s operating style — especially his team’s failure to respond promptly to their concerns — at a meeting last week with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.

Wiles told frustrated senators they should contact her directly with their concerns over funding freezes and reductions in force pushed by Musk and his team of young engineers.

Sources familiar with Wednesday’s meeting said the GOP senators who complained about Musk and his methods last week were much more cordial when they met with him face-to-face in the wood-empaneled Mansfield Room just off the Senate floor. ...

Democrat Rosa DeLauro (CT-3) is correct: Elon Musk is an unelected interloper, with no authority and no legitimacy who makes a mockery of the appropriations process

 

 Musk exercises nonexistent dictatorial line-item-veto powers over spending and personnel as a "super cabinet" official who was never confirmed by the US Senate like the other cabinet members he now tells what's what.

The whole scheme is illegal and unconstitutional, which is why Trump is now all of a sudden denying that Musk is head of the so-called DOGE, just like Trump hastily made Musk a special government employee after lawsuits were filed on February 3 questioning Musk's authority.

It's an end run around the constitution no less serious than the National Popular Vote Compact, which seeks to neuter the Electoral College.

Trump has been making this bullshit up as he goes and has been since Musk endorsed Trump after the July assassination attempt and then became part of Trump's circle of intimates in August.

The tech oligarchy got front row seats at the inauguration for a reason.

Congress closing in on shutdown deadline with no clear plan 

“We cannot come to a deal where you hammer out gains, losses, but you come to a conclusion and you come to a meeting of the minds,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, told reporters. “That should not be subject to some third party deciding that that’s not what they want.”

“We had a deal last year, all of us and so forth, and then there was an interloper with no authority, no legitimacy, nonelected, who said, ‘Don’t vote for it,’” DeLauro said, as Democrats have continued to zero in on tech billionaire Elon Musk, the head of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

The billionaires never say, Raise taxes now or face an economic heart attack

 

The word "tax" appears nowhere in this story.

Ray Dalio is worth $19 billion.

 

Ray Dalio to the Trump administration: Cut debt now or face an ‘economic heart attack’

 

“Make sure that you really know what you’re doing and you’re practical, and do it on … the conservative side, because you know, how much can the cutting actually be?”

 

PEW: 54% of Americans express unfavorable views of Elon Musk

Here:

Musk is viewed more negatively than positively overall. More than half of Americans (54%) express unfavorable views of the billionaire, while 42% view him favorably.

• 73% of Republicans view Musk favorably, while about a quarter (24%) view him unfavorably.
• Just 12% of Democrats rate Musk favorably, while 85% view him unfavorably.

 

Trump's new Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, has given Elon Musk control of the payment systems which control everyone's Social Security and Medicare benefits

 

 Billionaire Elon Musk’s deputies have gained access to a sensitive Treasury Department system responsible for trillions of dollars in U.S. government payments after the administration ousted a top career official at the department, according to three people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe government deliberations.  

On Friday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent approved access to the Treasury’s payments system for a team led by Tom Krause, a Silicon Valley executive working in concert with Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” the people said. 

David A. Lebryk, who served in nonpolitical roles at Treasury for several decades and had been the acting secretary before Bessent’s confirmation, had refused to turn over access to Musk’s surrogates, people familiar with the situation told The Washington Post. Trump officials placed Lebryk on administrative leave, and then he announced his retirement Friday in an email to colleagues. 

Spokespeople for Treasury and DOGE declined to comment. 

The sensitive systems, run by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, control the flow of more than $6 trillion annually. Tens of millions of people across the country rely on the systems. They are responsible for paying Social Security and Medicare benefits, salaries for federal personnel, payments to government contractors and grant recipients, and tax refunds, among tens of thousands of other functions.

More.

These guys are up against the debt ceiling and are obviously looking for other ways than the customary "extraordinary measures" to cut spending under the circumstances of a new administration trying to pass new tax and spending legislation. That's why Trump has offered buyouts to government workers so they quit, among other novel spending gambits like freezing program spending for 90-days.

The Treasury stopped paying into certain accounts from January 17th, before Trump and Musk took over, as part of the extraordinary measures undertaken by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to keep from hitting it.

She's been keeping the national debt at $36 trillion to $36.2 trillion ever since Thanksgiving.

It's all very troubling, as elected officials like to say.

Typically, only a small group of career employees control the payment systems, and former officials have said it is extremely unusual for anyone connected to political appointees to access them.