President Donald Trump

I've yelled this at the clouds for decades now. You're never going to stop insider trading, but you can put it to better use.

TAX members a higher rate, if they have capital gains while in office, and divert a % that back to the American people.

If they benefit, so should everyone else. After all, they are just serving the people... right? 😉

When they then tip off family, friends, people who will scratch their back etc?

how is that a solution other than for the most basic cases?

the main idea is you write a line to a hedge fund manager donor and get does his things and you or your family are legally rewarded later with "consultancies" or whatever other crap for millions.

or just huge political donations to your campaign fund to secure your office for many terms. ofc not direct donations. they donate elsewhere and someone else you aren't connect to financially donates to you, impossible to find ex post.

maybe it's the Italian in me but just think what an IQ 130 accountant spending his whole year exclusively about this topic could come out with as solutions to profit from the information, and then multiply for the best 1000 accountants in the country for decades and that's the level of complexity you are trying to beat: the best well paid pros at their own game they spent their whole career playing.

Thought this quote from Trump today was hysterical:

Trump pointed to Wednesday’s upswing after he announced a 90-day pause on higher tariffs on dozens of trading partners, saying “we had a big day yesterday.” He later told reporters he had not seen Thursday’s market numbers.

Source: Trump Sees ‘Transition Problems&#8...

Has not seen today's market numbers? The man lies every time he exhales.

it's turnout lately with higher turnout having pivoted marginally pro republicans after decades it was the opposite.

but trump got a huge portion of the libertarian vote (which in some states can mean 3-4% swing in his favor) for a combination of things related to crypto, Ross pardoning, democratic insanity wrt freedom for COVID and so on.

he loses them, republican lose many battlegrounds.

and tariffs ... libertarians hate tariffs.

We keep moving to the right in the real sense because people keep pushing the culture wars and immigration as the main issues, people find that compelling and meanwhile the major political parties both agree on cutting social services, increasing military and police spending, and keeping taxes low for rich people.

And we keep moving to the "right" on social issues and immigration because more people are *******s than not.

You're not a libertarian. No word like liberty belongs in any description of you.

You were recently in an argument about how private parties cannot be oppresive the way that governments can. They don't have the guns. You're right. You were mentally broken by the government enforced lockdowns and you rightly worry about government power and the jackbooted thugs when they are doing something you don't like. Meanwhile, in other discussions, when you support the police state, you just swoon (that means you're in love with) every cop and soldier and you want them pointing guns everywhere.

If you fill the world with jackbooted thugs, you get oppression. That's it. Even if it's not true that the very same politicians who close the borders and hunt down immigrants are the same ones who locked you in your closet because of covid, the same tools are there - both guns and laws - and you want to amass those tools and give them to the government.

That's not liberty or freedom and it's not libertarianism.

I just said it's not a solution.... they already have laws in place on how they declare and claim trades. You just use existing laws, and tax those in office at a higher rate. I don't think you understand how documented all of these financials and disclosures are right now. Are there ways around them even now... yes. Is it worth the risk? Seems like for most people, no.

man look at the case this time, the purported beneficiaries of trump manipulations aren't in office ffs.

it's the people who donated to Trump (and republicans more generally). The Mercier, the Griffin, the Adelson, the Musk and so on and on and they can put any amount of degrees of separation between them and the money made and still make the money and they have a structure in place to do that already and the best minds in the country assisting them to do that.

lol.at thinking the peanuts the puppets in congress or in the executive branch make on insider trading is what matters.

I dont really agree. We come up with very good argumetns as to why we cant win and then we dont really try. Despite soemtimes doing suprisingly well we quickly give up because we give up when we dont win fast enough. The right dont make that mistake. To quote myself again - they're too stupid to understand that they can't win.

The culture wars/etc dominate because we dont offer anything. Kamala was spot on imo when she started off just dismissing trump & co as wierd but then she didn't have anything significant to change the conversation to.

I don't think we keep moving to the right. This country has swung widely to the left and after Obama we have had a slight swing back. But it is not a left wing swing.

Gay marriage (which actually happened because of Biden when he accidentally said something about it) shifted everything for gay people. It went from under 50% who wanted gay people to have equal rights to over 60% under the Obama administration specifically because Obama reached out to Black pastors to support it and the Black community shifted. Now the reason for the right swing is because the far right wants to go back to the 1970's where gay people were beaten (even in NYC) but still they can't unwind the legal marriage thing. Which was passed by a conservative Supreme court. What they can do is act like Trans people aren't human. And there are a lot of people on both sides that don't like the fact that a man who claims to be a woman can now compete at the highest levels of sports. Sometimes. What nobody remembers is that the tennis player Renee Richards who was ranked about 150 when she was a man, turned herself into a woman and became ranked in the top 20 women in the world in the 1970's. Nobody really objected which was crazy to me back then... Still the left isn't swinging right on this issue. I would say that most of us don't care which bathroom a trans person uses and are extremely happy to see gender neutral bathrooms in public places.

Here is another issue the left isn't swinging to the right on: Medicaid for the poor working class. Obamacare caused Medicaid to go to everyone who earned under 130% of the poverty line in many states that accepted it. Previously it was only at 100% of the poverty line in many states and well below the poverty line in other states. 41 states have accepted the 130% level (90% of the between 100% and 130% costs are paid by the Federal Government and some states will eliminate that coverage if the federal Government drops below 90%). I know of no liberals/leftists who want to cut medicaid benefits or have the federal Government reduce Medicaid payments. The 11 states that haven't signed up yet are mostly Southern red states. But then there is Wisconsin which the Governor has tried to pass the adoption since 2019 but because of the crazy gerrymandering Wisconsin's House/Senate won't approve. Again a right wing thing. Which may go away with the Musk failure to make the Wisconsin Supreme Court conservative. The irony is that when it comes for a statewide public vote it wins every time (massive left wing and independent support and some right wing support)

Immigration. This is a right wing vs left wing issue. And it hit Europe and is now in the US. But apparently in the US it applies only to Black and Hispanic people (even Cubans it turns out). So it really is more racist than right wing and most racists are right wing. I have yet to hear a right wing person advocate the illegal alien laws be applied to white Europeans but maybe there are one or two who think that... There are even immigrants who are here legally who are opposed to illegal immigrants being here even if they are committing no crimes. Like immigrants who are married to US citizens or have children born in the US. There have been attempts to pass laws that would allow these illegal aliens to stay in the US but not as citizens. As legal aliens. Again this is a left wing position and the right wing won't let it come to pass as legislation. Not to mention the left wing DACA attempts by Obama. But then Trump hates every single thing that Obama did. The odd thing is that over 99% of US citizens are from immigrant families. So basically those that are in favor of expelling people here illegally who are doing no harm to the country but who for the most part help keep inflation down by picking food, doing construction and hospitality work come from immigrant families themselves. I don't think the left wing is in favor of deporting illegal aliens and/or asylum seekers who are doing no harm.

Abortion: There is the pro life faction which aligned itself to the republican party in the late 1970's and there is the left wing pro choice faction which actually wants women to be able to decide how to deal with their own lives. What the Pro Life people don't get is that they won't be able to stop abortions by making them illegal. This is because there are drugs that perform abortions and the US has been losing the illegal drug war for each of the past 60 years. Also the ultimate irony is that the Pro Life people (who apparently only apply it to people who haven't been born yet) can't get the Republican party to support universal free child care (so women can choose to have a child when they are single so that they can work and raise the child at the same time) or universal public school pre-K attendance (similar to child care for free). Instead the right wing is all about reducing government spending. Even if more government spending would mean a dramatic reduction in abortions.

Speaking of government spending: the left wing has approved increases in government spending to help reignite financial markets and the economy (Obama's recession spending and Biden's Infrastructure bill, and Covid help under both Trump when the Democrats controlled the House and Senate and then under Biden again). And the right wing is all about reducing government spending and decreasing taxes paid by the wealthy. I'm sure there are some left wing rich people who are happy with having their taxes reduced but that is really more of a right wing kind of thing.

Military spending is a thing that is more Republican than Democrat. Military spending for US companies is a right wing thing. Military spending to help other countries like Ukraine who are invaded by Russia is a left wing thing though there are many on the right who are there as well. Just not Trump and his mindless followers because obviously Trump roots for Putin. Amazingly Russia was the one country that was not going to get any tariffs...

US major markets now closed for the day with all of them losing. Yesterday's "pause rally" was short lived with today's loses eating up a third or more of that rally.

So we have Trump's "Liberation Day." And I guess we have Trump's "Pause Day" but I prefer "Punt Day."

eurusd (and usdjpy) is probably the most important part you missed there.

the world is actually starting to accept the idea the USA wants to abdicate it's role of world reserve currency.

it's liberation day from the exorbitant privilege as Greenspan called it.

have you checked Harris actual program? she had a lot of leftist stuff.

but she didn't talk about it much during the campaign because that stuff doesn't poll well for undecided people in battleground states

from the Harris program:

1) higher minimum SS benefits, and higher COLA for SS

2) long term care covered by Medicare

3) 25k down payment paid by the state for first time home buyers who aren't rich (she actually talked about this a bit)

4) child credit for the poor so 3-4k/year per child even if you can't offset taxes with those

5) 12 weeks of federal family and medical leave paid with increased payroll taxes

off this costs a shitload of money so higher taxes and the undecided in battleground states don't like higher taxes.

did you know her program was full of leftist policies like that?

My belief on why we've moved right is because a huge swath of people are gullible and stupid, and that fox news has been extremely successful at tapping into that.

leftism has been based on manipulating the gullible and stupid forever so what changed there? the whole reason d'etre of leftism is representing the losers of society who definitionally will be more stupid and more gullible than the rest of the population.

maybe leftist leaders detached themselves from the people they pretended to represent so much they started liking the smell of their own farts.

because if you forget that the only way to get the stupid and gullible to vote for you has always been and will always be appeal to their most rabid basic gut instincts, then you know absolutely nothing about politics at all.

It's tinkering with a hopeless right wing system. We have to offer vision with radical change because that's what people are demanding (correctly imo)

lol? even what you call tinkering doesn't make you win battlegrounds because it's considered too radical (by undecided there), what makes you think proposing even more radical change (which you can't achieve without 60 senators which you will never have) would help win presidential elections?

or you want to get rid of the legislative filibuster in full so say a trump admin with both houses , like you know, today can actually radically change the country forever in ways you can't come back from?

because remember that destroying is far easier than building, and if you just need 50 senators + the VP to abolish any program and change any law...

Elections are only ever won by persuading the other side's voters to switch to your side, so the attitude expressed above is a failsafe election loser. The question is why the Democrats' offer was so bad that people actually voted for the certified menace that is Cheeto Benito instead.

the right that doesn't make that mistake. They fail a lot (and wow do we mock them for it) but even as they fail they move it signifciantly their way.

Youi keep going on about the filibuster of which my knowledge was largely restricted to Mr Smith but I noticed that the record for filibustering was broken the other day. The record had been opposing the civil rights act. Presumably why you think the civil rights act wasn't worth bothering to fight for.

They fail a lot but have a simple message that resonates with people who weren't brought up to deal with complexity - blame other people and punish them - that makes sense to them and satisfies the anger they feel at their perceived loss of privilege and their actual loss of income as a proportion of GDP that's been on the slide ever since Monetarism.

The left's problem is there's no corresponding simple message that won't be denounced by the popular right wing media as SOCIALISM.

Mr. Rick,

Good post and thank you. I agree with a lot of it and only some comments:

The Affordable Care Act has helped a lot of people get insurance coverage...but it's a huge giveaway to insurance companies. It's the most right-wing way to be left-wing I guess. Right and left are such muddled terms...better to just say it's a government giveaway to private industry.

Immigration and racism - yeah, I agree and this is what I'm mostly thinking about in regards to this country moving to the right and people being *******s.

Abortion: Yeah, the country has moved way to the religious right on abortion. And it's such a cynical ploy. You say the pro life faction aligned itself to the GOP, but I think it's more like the GOP turned abortion into their issue because they could get lots of people making that their one issue and vote against what they would otherwise prefer in terms of social services, taxes, unions, etc.

The "we can win" thing is tiresome. I'm not strategizing for the Democratic Party. I'm not strategizing for anything. I don't expect or want my posts to be put up on lawn signs. For the most part in this thread people are analyzing the world as it is. If you want a "what can we do to change things" planning session, then you should make that clear, because it's not what most people are up to in these threads.

Some people enjoy role playing someone who's making a difference rather than the reality of lying around drinking themselves into a stupor.