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America's Tourism Reputation and the "Free World" Are Gone

Every day brings another round of outrages as the Felon, Elon Musk, the Felon's circle of billionaire cabinet members, and self-prostituting congressional Republicans continue to destroy - or stand by with their thumbs up their posteriors - the federal government and threaten social programs that millions of American's depend upon for economic survival.  Indeed, utterly out of touch oligarch and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick stated that anyone who might complain about not receiving their Social Security payments was self-identifying as being engaged in fraud.  Meanwhile, as described in Associated Press and New York Times articles, ICE Barbie and the Department of Homeland Security's SS (Schutzstaffel) like and warrantless arrest seizure of brown skinned migrants, American citizens and European tourists are making America a destination to be avoided, with Canada, France, the United Kingdom and German to issue travel warnings about travel to the USA.  Locally in Hampton Roads Virginia where tourism is a major economic driver, the cancellation of visits by Canadian and European tourists could prove costly (45% of foreign tourists visiting Virginia Beach - pictured above - are from Canada). Throw in the specter of the Felon's tariff wars and rising prices, and the Felon's promised "golden age" for American families is a farce.  On the larger international stage, America has thrown away it position as leader of the "free world" as laid out in a piece at Politico.  Here are excerpts: 

In early 2017, less than two months into Donald Trump’s first term as president, I published a piece of speculative fiction. Set during a then-imaginary second Trump term, it depicts a nightmare scenario in which American troops abandon Europe, the pro-Russia Alternative for Germany wins 20 percent of the vote in a federal election, and Russia launches a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

My purpose in writing the story was to stir readers on both sides of the Atlantic out of their complacency regarding the parlous state of what used to be called the “Free World.” But it still didn’t prepare me for the series of events that began with Vice President JD Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference and ended with the humiliation of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy by Trump and Vance before TV cameras in the Oval Office. While many may view that two-week period as indistinguishable from the rest of the Trump era, future historians won’t: They’ll record it as marking an epochal shift in global politics potentially even more significant than the collapse of the Berlin Wall or the terrorist attacks of 9/11. It marked the end of an era — the era of the American-led liberal international order.

That era began after the Second World War when an isolationist country reluctantly assumed the mantle of world leadership, an enormous, multifarious endeavor resulting in historically unprecedented economic growth, scientific discovery, human flourishing and peace. America’s material resources were essential to this decadeslong, globe-spanning effort, but more important was the conviction, shared not only by hundreds of millions of Americans but countless people around the world, underlying it: that the United States was an exceptional nation uniquely positioned to be a force for good in the world.

Across those eight decades, an ethic of idealism undergirded American foreign policy, one traceable to the country’s founding. Whether Republican or Democrat, American presidents regularly invoked the providential role that the United States, as the world’s oldest democracy, was destined to play on the global stage.  . . . . John F. Kennedy famously declared that America would “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and success of liberty.” And in his farewell address Ronald Reagan spoke of America as a “shining city upon a hill,”. . . .

Fulfillment of these lofty ambitions obliged America to support democracies and oppose dictatorships. As a global superpower with responsibilities no other nation was either able — or willing — to undertake, it could not afford to have the impeccably moral foreign policy of Sweden. Idealism inevitably clashed with realism, with the latter often triumphing over the former. This was especially true during the Cold War, when Washington helped engineer the overthrow of democratically elected leaders and supported authoritarian regimes. And it continues today with American backing of repressive governments in the Middle East. But even while employing immoral means, American leaders did so in the pursuit of what they considered moral ends, whether fighting communism, halting the spread of weapons of mass destruction, or resisting radical Islam.

Opponents of the American-led liberal international order harp endlessly upon its faults while taking its virtues — free and open sea lanes, the spread of liberal democracy, values-based alliances, the protection of human rights — for granted. . . . . Even the most vociferous critics of American global power may come to miss it once Russia, China and Iran gain dominance over Europe, Asia and the Middle East. . . . . The centuries long record of at least rhetorical support for right over wrong is what made last month’s Oval Office meeting so unsettling. In a display that ought to shame every American, the country’s top two constitutional officers acted like a king and his regent, demanding obeisance from a feudal supplicant. . . . . Having abandoned Ukraine out of personal pique, Trump then returned to taking on the world’s other villains: Canada, Denmark and Panama.

In place of the idealism that animated American leadership of the Free World, Trump has unleashed the atavistic cynicism of the Old World. In this new dispensation where might makes right, any appeal to moral considerations in the practice of American foreign policy is ridiculed as a deficiency of the weak while the amoral exercise of power is venerated as a virtue of the strong. Instinctive American sympathy for the underdog is supplanted by admiration for the strongman. . . . The occupant of the office once synonymous with “leader of the Free World” slanders the president of a country fighting for its very existence as a “dictator” while lauding a despotic war criminal as “a great guy” and a “terrific person.” At least when Franklin Roosevelt (allegedly) said that Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza “may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch,” he had the moral clarity to identify the caudillo for what he was, and the tact to do so behind closed doors.

In the brave new world of America First, no longer does America stand for the belief that democracies make better allies than dictatorships, that territorial aggression should be punished rather than rewarded, and that alliances are an asset, not a burden. In his Munich speech, Vance endorsed the inclusion of far-right parties in European governments, which he accused of posing a greater threat to their own people than either Russia or China. All of this is the result of a foreign policy utterly lacking in moral scruples.

The abandonment of morality as a factor in foreign affairs also marks a turning point for the Republican Party.  . . . . . If Ukraine is made to sign a peace deal that doesn’t provide clear-cut security guarantees it will only be a matter of time before Russian President Vladimir Putin attempts another Anschluss. Absent American leadership of the Free World, such an incursion could succeed in toppling the Kyiv government, leading to tens of millions of refugees and a massive Russian military presence on the border of several NATO member states. With the alliance’s guarantee of collective security in tatters thanks to Trump’s extortionist threats not to uphold it, NATO — the most successful military alliance in history — will for all intents and purposes be dead, opening the door for further Russian predation in Europe and elsewhere.

No longer confident of their place under the American security umbrella, alarmed allies like Poland and South Korea are exploring the possibility of acquiring nuclear weapons. The once-ridiculed French idea of “strategic autonomy” — a pole of European military power independent of the United States — is now the top agenda item across the continent. The “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing alliance composed of the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand may shrink to “Four Eyes” due to the unreliability of its most powerful member.

What transpired during the last two weeks of February cannot be undone in the minds of America’s allies or its adversaries. And in a world where every man is for himself, what’s the difference between the two?

The story I wrote eight years ago ends on Victory Day with Putin proudly reviewing a massive military parade in Red Square. While Trump has denied that he will join the festivities this year, if he can force a deal on Ukraine, he may not be able to resist the temptation to exult in his undeserved role as global peacemaker. Standing alongside Putin in Moscow, tacitly conferring American recognition upon the first armed annexation of territory on the European continent since World War II, such a scene would mark the dawn of a new era, one in which it is increasingly difficult to separate fact from fiction.

Be very afraid for the future, especially if you have children and grand children.

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Trump's Real Message: “Tax My Voters; Enrich My Donors.”

For decades Republicans have managed to get much of their working and middle class base to vote against their own economic best interests through appeals to racism, religious extremism and general xenophobia.  The 2024 presidential election was no exception and now, with the Felon's tariffs and promised tax cuts that will almost exclusively benefit the already wealthy, much of the MAGA base - other than, of course, the billionaire set - will feel real economic pain as tariffs drive up prices on everything from automobiles, to new houses, to grocery prices. Despite what the Felon and his accomplices say, the tariffs will bring money to the federal government that can then offset tax breaks for the very wealthy.  Meanwhile, Elon Musk is taking a wrecking ball to the federal government, seeking to cut programs that aid the poor and working and middle class families al to fund tax cuts for the wealthy. Indeed, the whole scheme is a massive transfer of wealth from the less fortunate to those who already have more than they can ever need. As a piece in The Atlantic lays out, this is not the first time Republicans have tried this ruse and one can only hope it again backfires and Republicans take a drubbing at the polls in 2026.  Here are article excerpts:

The Republicans swept the elections because of inflation and public disorder. The year was 1946. The end of wartime price controls had sent prices soaring. Railways, coal mines, and steel mills were shut by strikes. The Republican message was clear and convincing: “Had enough?”

Yes, said the voters, they had. Democrats lost 55 seats in the House, 12 in the Senate. The Republicans took control of both chambers of Congress, after spending the preceding decade and a half as the minority party in both.

All seemed set for a huge GOP win in the 1948 presidential election. A leading candidate for the nomination that year was Robert Alphonso Taft, the eldest son of former President William Howard Taft. Robert Taft represented Ohio in the U.S. Senate, where he’d accumulated a staunchly conservative voting record. He opposed foreign aid, distrusted foreign-military alliances, and championed a high protective tariff for American industries.

Taft was asked about the cost of living because prices were rising fast, even faster than in the previous year, when voter discontent had already been burning hot.

Seldom has a single answer to a reporter’s question sunk a political career so rapidly and totally. Here’s how Time magazine reported what came next: . . . . Taft had been discussing the high price of food and what he thought should be done to allay it. “Voluntary reduction of consumption,” he said, “is the first step. We should eat less … eat less meat and eat less extravagantly.” He went right on talking. The Chicago Daily News’s Ed Lahey broke in, gave him a chance to get off the hook by asking: “Do you think that would cover the whole populace?” “Yes,” the Senator said. “Hoover suggested the same thing some time ago. He suggested that we ought to start … a campaign to save food and eat less.”

At Taft’s next appearances, hecklers chanted “Eat less, eat less.” Democrats ridiculed him as “Eat Less Taft.” The following year, Republicans rejected Taft as their nominee in favor of the more progressive and internationalist Thomas Dewey, the governor of New York. The GOP had lost its momentum: At the general election, the Democrats held the presidency and regained control of the House and Senate.

I think of “Eat Less Taft” as I hear President Donald Trump’s appointees defend their administration’s consumer-crushing tariffs. On Meet the Press this past Sunday, the near-billionaire Treasury secretary proclaimed that “the American dream is not ‘Let them eat flat-screens’” and “the American dream is not contingent on cheap baubles from China.”

Scott Bessent’s denigration of affordable televisions was not a one-off gaffe. In a speech to the Economic Club of New York on March 6, he stuck to the script: “Access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream.” A few days later, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was asked on television whether the Trump tariffs were worth the risk of recession. Lutnick delivered an emphatic yes: “These policies are the most important thing America has ever had. It’s worth it.”

So get ready to Eat Less.

At least Taft’s message offered some kind of hope at the end—and, of course, it wasn’t Taft’s personal fault that food prices had risen. But Trump’s tariffs are Trump’s fault, and it’s clear that if he has his way, they will be permanent.

Trump promotes tariffs as a way to shift the costs of financing the U.S. government from Americans to foreigners. . . . . Income taxes fall most heavily on the affluent; tariffs fall most heavily on the middle class and poor. Trump has sold his party on tariffs as a way to redistribute the cost of government away from his donors to his voters.

At the same time, Trump’s tariffs are advertised to do a dozen other magical things. . . . . Even with this wish list, the tariffs make no sense. If cheap Chinese goods are your issue, why tax Canadian aluminum and Mexican glass? If your goal is to encourage other countries to increase their defense spending, why start a trade war with Australia after it already made a down payment on three U.S.-made nuclear-powered submarines?

Trump is a flimflam man who will promise anything to anybody and count on the suckers forgetting tomorrow what he said yesterday. His Cabinet officers, however, are gradually revealing the true cost of the Eat Less scam. They do not match Taft’s self-harming candor. But their real message of “Less for you, more for us” is reverberating louder and clearer.

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Trade War Retaliation Will Hit Trump Voters Hardest

During the lead up to the 2024 presidential election MAGA voters whined constantly about high grocery prices (ignoring the role played by corporate greed) and gasoline prices - it was a convenient way to avoid admitting that it was the Felon's racism, homophobia and general misogynistic behavior was what really attracted their support.  The Felon, of course, promised to lower prices "on day one."  That has not happened and with the trade wars the Felon has launched against Mexico, Canada and much of the world, prices will be increasing rather than decreasing.  Yet much of MAGA world that whined so much about consumer prices under Joe Biden is utterly silent.  As long as the Felon and his accomplices deport brown people, seek to erase transgender individuals and push a white supremacy that puts white, heterosexual, knuckle dragging males at the top of the societal pyramid, concern about high prices seemingly has disappeared from MAGA world's radar.  At some point, however, something will have to give and America's foes - e.g., China - and former allies - Canada and the European Union are targeting their retaliation to the Felon's tariffs to inflict as much pain as possible on states where support for the Felon is high.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the effort to inflict pain on MAGA voters.  Here are highlights:

As President Trump imposes tariffs on products from countries around the world, foreign governments are answering back with tariffs of their own.

China has targeted corn farmers and carmakers. Canada has put tariffs on poultry plants and air-conditioning manufacturers, while Europe will hit American steel mills and slaughter houses.

The retaliatory tariffs are an attempt to put pressure on the president to relent. And they have been carefully designed to hit Mr. Trump where it hurts: Nearly 8 million Americans work in industries targeted by the levies and the majority are Trump voters, a New York Times analysis shows.

The figures underscore the dramatic impact that a trade war could have on American workers, potentially causing Mr. Trump’s economic strategy to backfire. Mr. Trump has argued that tariffs will help boost American jobs. But economists say that retaliatory tariffs can cancel out that effect.

The countermeasures are aimed at industries that employ roughly 7.75 million people across the United States. The bulk of those — 4.48 million — are in counties that voted for Mr. Trump in the last election, compared with 3.26 million jobs in counties that voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris, according to a calculation by The Times that included examining retaliatory tariffs on more than 4,000 product categories.

The jobs that could be hit by retaliation are especially concentrated in pockets of the upper Midwest, South and Southeast, including many rural parts of the country that are responsible for producing agricultural goods. It also includes areas that produce coal, oil, car parts and other manufactured products.

[O]ther countries had particularly targeted Trump-supporting regions and places where “Trump would like to fashion himself as revitalizing the U.S.” That includes smaller manufacturing communities in states like Wisconsin, Indiana and Michigan, as well as southern states like Kentucky and Georgia, he said.

The message foreign countries are trying to send, he said, is, “You think you can bully us, well, we can hurt you too. And by the way, we know where it really matters.”

Retaliation may also mean concentrated pain for some industries, like farming. In Mr. Trump’s first term, American farmers – a strong voting bloc for the president – were targeted by China and other governments, which caused U.S. exports of soybeans and other crops to plummet.

Chinese buyers shifted to purchasing more agricultural goods from nations like Argentina and Brazil instead, and U.S. farmers had a difficult time winning back those contracts in subsequent years. Mr. Trump tried to offset those losses by giving farmers more than $20 billion in payments to compensate for the pain of the trade war.

One analysis published last year by economists at M.I.T., the World Bank and elsewhere found that retaliatory tariffs imposed on the United States during Mr. Trump’s first term had a negative effect on U.S. jobs, outweighing any benefit to employment from Mr. Trump’s tariffs on foreign goods or from the subsidies Mr. Trump provided to those hurt by his trade policies.

The net effect on American employment of U.S. tariffs, foreign tariffs and subsidies “was at best a wash, and it may have been mildly negative,” the economists concluded.

Rural parts of the country are once again at risk from retaliation. Agriculture is a major U.S. export and farmers are politically important to Mr. Trump. And rural counties may have one major employer — like a poultry processing plant — that provides a big share of the county’s jobs, compared with urban or suburban areas that are more diversified.

The retaliatory tariffs target industries employing 9.5 percent of people in Wisconsin, 8.5 percent of people in Indiana and 8.4 percent of people in Iowa. The shares are also relatively high in Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky and Kansas.

Mark Muro, a senior fellow at Brookings Metro, said that many of the counties affected by retaliation were rural, and “hard red territory.” The geography of Mr. Trump’s political support, he said, was “no secret to our trade partners.”

“They’re very cognizant of these industries, the geography of these industries, and how American politics work,” he added.

I hope MAGA voters enjoy the pain that they have brought on themselves and many others.

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Trump and Musk Continue to Threaten Social Security

During the 2024 campaign, the Felon lied and claimed he know nothing about Project 2025 - the white Christian nationalist agenda that his regime is in the process of implementing, hence the attacks on the rights of women, racial minorities and LGBT citizens. At the same time, the Felon claimed to have no plans to cut Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security. The activities of Elon Musk's DOGE and it group of hackers with no knowledge of the federal agencies they are destroying tell a different tale and ought to terrify older Americans who rely on the programs to survive either to access care or for an income on which to survive.  Despite no actual evidence that the programs are wracked with fraud, the Felon and Musk continue to lie and claim that fraud is rampant. Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of these attacks is that the Felon's MAGA base would be severely harmed by cuts to the programs.   Working class whites are the largest group receiving Medicaid benefits and per capita, red states rely the most on Medicaid.  Meanwhile, older voters, another key aspect of the Felon's support, would be devastated by cuts to Medicare and Social Security.  One would think congressional Republicans - many of whom are receive an earful at town hall events - would be freaking out, yet as a whole they continue to sit quietly with their thumbs up their posteriors. A piece in The Atlantic looks at the ongoing threat_

The idea that millions of dead Americans are receiving Social Security checks is shocking, and bolsters the argument that the federal bureaucracy needs radical change to combat waste and fraud. There’s one big problem: No evidence exists that it’s true.

Despite being told by agency staff last month that this claim has no basis in fact, Elon Musk and President Donald Trump have continued to use the talking point as a pretext to attack America’s highest-spending government program. . . . Agency employees reportedly explained to Musk’s DOGE team in February that the list of impossibly ancient individuals they found were not necessarily receiving benefits (the lack of death dates was related to an outdated system).

DOGE has dispatched 10 employees to try to find evidence of the claims that dead Americans are receiving checks, according to documents filed in court on Wednesday.

Musk and Trump have long maintained that they do not plan to attack Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, the major entitlement programs. But their repeated claims that rampant fraud exists within these entitlement systems undermine those assurances. In his Fox interview on Monday, Musk said, “Waste and fraud in entitlement spending—which is most of the federal spending, is entitlements—so that’s like the big one to eliminate. That’s the sort of half trillion, maybe $600, $700 billion a year.” . . . the Trump administration quickly downplayed Musk’s comments, insisting that the federal government will continue to protect such programs and suggesting that Musk had been talking about the need to eliminate fraud in the programs, not about axing them.

The White House’s question would be a lot easier to answer if Musk, who has called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme,” wasn’t wildly overestimating the amount of fraud in entitlement programs. Musk is claiming waste in these programs on the order of hundreds of billions of dollars a year, but a 2024 Social Security Administration report found that the agency lost closer to $70 billion total in improper payments from 2015 to 2022, which accounts for about 1 percent of Social Security payments. Leland Dudek, a mid-level civil servant elevated to temporarily lead Social Security . . . DOGE’s false claim about dead people receiving benefits “got in front of us,” one of Dudek’s deputies reportedly said, but “it’s a victory that you’re not seeing more [misinformation], because they are being educated.”

Some 7 million Americans rely on Social Security benefits for more than 90 percent of their income, and 54 million individuals and their dependents receive retirement payments from the agency. Even if Musk doesn’t eliminate the agency, his tinkering could still affect all of those Americans’ lives. On Wednesday, DOGE dialed back its plans to cut off much of Social Security’s phone services (a commonly used alternative to its online programs, particularly for elderly and disabled Americans), though it still plans to restrict recipients’ ability to change bank-deposit information over the phone.

In recent weeks, confusion has rippled through the Social Security workforce and the public; many people drop off forms in person, but office closures could disrupt that. According to ProPublica, several IT contracts have been cut or scaled back, and several employees reported that their tech systems are crashing every day. Thousands of jobs are being cut, including in regional field offices, and the entire Social Security staff has been offered buyouts . . . .

In going anywhere near Social Security—in saying the agency’s name in the same sentence as the word eliminate—Musk is venturing further than any presidential administration has in recent decades. Entitlement benefits are extremely popular, and cutting the programs has long been a nonstarter. When George W. Bush raised the idea of partially privatizing entitlements in 2005, the proposal died before it could make it to a vote in the House or Senate.

The DOGE plan to cut $1 trillion in spending while leaving entitlements, which make up the bulk of the federal budget, alone always seemed implausible. . . . But until there’s clear evidence that this “magnitude” of fraud exists within Social Security, such claims enable Musk to poke at what was previously untouchable.

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