Tag: tariffs

Thirsta’s Wandering Political Thoughts

It’s Trump’s morning in America.

“The stock market is down over fourteen hundred points,” my wife greets me.

“Hey girl,” I answer. “Good morning.”

If my wife seems gleeful about the stock market, it’s because she’s angry. Bottom line, she’s in the FAFO camp. Reads ‘The Leopard Ate My Face’ tales daily. Spoons up all those tales about Trump supporters and apologists who are now Trump victims.

Trump said he would do tariffs when he ran for POTUS in 2024. Professional economists have almost all agreed, bad, bad, bad, bad, terrible idea. Trump always thinks he knows better than everyone else. He usually doesn’t. I mean, this is the guy who bankrupted a casino.

Facts don’t matter to Trump. You knew that if you watched his tariff announcement yesterday. He displayed a chart with bogus tariff info. It shows tariffs imposed on U.S. goods. Almost all those supposed tariffs by other countries are inflated by significant amounts.

With almost no surprise, then, worldwide markets dropped after his tariffs announcement.

Some people rationalize what Trump is doing as necessary. They prophesize Trump’s tariffs will bring jobs back to the United States. Factories will spring up like mushrooms after a rain across the nation. And those factories won’t use robotics, as many modern factories do. No, they will employ human, American workers. Even though the U.S. must import many of the raw and finished materials used in modern products, imported materials which will be high-priced due to Trump tariffs, those goods produced in these new factories will be amazingly cheap because they’re made in the U.S.A. There won’t be any profit taking and price gouging, because that’s not how corporations work in the United States. And the workers in those factories will be magnificently compensated for their hourly labor because companies in the United States are known to generously pay hourly employees. Why, it’ll be the greatest economy ever!

If you believe all that, I have an automobile manufacturing plant in Ashlandia to sell you.

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Saturda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

I caught up on reading several posts by Heather Cox Richardson that I’d missed. I appreciate the historic angle she brings to news about Truskzilla’s destruction of the United States. Reading her, I belatedly realized, gosh, I’ve been normalizing Trump and his supporters.

I thought they cared about the United States and its founding principles. Wrong.

Or that the history and heritage of this nation matters. Nope.

That they worry about the Federal deficit and trade imbalances and the stock market. No way.

That usual barometers such as court rulings, disastrous economic results, or opinion polls would have an impact. No fucking way.

That the usual things like how history will judge them matters. It doesn’t; they believe, winners write history. We’ll be the winners. We will write the history.

I did understand that they didn’t care about democracy or voter rights. I did understand that they’re racist, sexist, misogynists, and reactionary. But that was mostly to unite people and put them in office. They needed racist, sexist, reactionary misogynists as their voting base to get them in through the front door.

Those are all normal terms about the normal course of events. Using them in terms of what Trump and the Trusk Regime is doing is normalizing them.

They are not normal. Nor can what they’re doing be called normal.

The Trusk Regime is interested solely in being in power. This is a coup. They’re interested in remaking the United States as an imperial power under a dictatorship. They suggest to each other, why build that mighty military if you’re not going to use it?

Like many dictatorships, the Trusk Regime and GOTP will put up window dressing as a democracy and a republic. But they are setting up the nation to be a military force. Cutting away the things we depend upon as a society — a working and reliable Federal government, healthcare, a safe and healthy environment, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, to point out some — destabilizes us. Growing unemployment increases people’s desperation. Rising prices limits their options and undermines food and shelter security. Sending children back to work breaks family. Ripping apart the education system reduces the nation’s collective intelligence, and with it, its will. All of these actions, taken in blitzkrieg fashion, demoralizes a growing number of people and spreads an increasing sense of helplessness.

That makes the people ripe for propaganda.

With the economy in shambles, other nations can and will be blamed for the growing poverty and starvation. Trade wars and political differences will be magnified and amplified. Trump, a prolific liar, has perfected the arts of projecting, deflecting, and blaming. That’s why he’s been boosted into position as the head of this monster.

They have X to help spread their misinformation. AI bots. Facebook. Threads. A weakening, capitulating media, itself owned by corporations and oligarchs, has already begun joining the effort.

A frustrated, starving population provides ample troops. And just as we saw with the Cheney/Dubya Iraq and Afghanistan wars, marketing can sell false causes. Helpless people hungry for someone to blame other than themselves will be served other nations as targets.

The clock is ticking. And the war drums have already begun beating.

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Thirstda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

It’s time to check the economy’s barometer. Dollar Tree is selling off Family Dollar after acquiring it ten years ago. Lack of synergies between the two. I admit, I confuse the two stores. They’re interchangeable in my mind. Anyway, you would think that they would have noticed the lack of synergies back when DT was thinking about buying FT. I guess that’s business.

What really struck me about the move were these insights from Dollar Tree Chief Executive Mike Creedon, with my emphasis added in bold:

With regard to consumer spending, Creedon said that Dollar Tree, like other retailers, is seeing middle-income shoppers focus more on value. “At the same time, we are seeing stronger demand from higher-income customers who increasingly see Dollar Tree as a cost-effective source for an expanding range of products,” he said during the conference call.sales

“We believe it doesn’t matter how much money you make. Everybody is hurting right now,” he said.

‘Everybody is hurting right now.’ That’s a knee slapper. I don’t think the Trusk Regime’s billionaire cabinet and their friends are hurting at all. But maybe that’s just poor, poor, cynical me. More critically, it seems that more middle class is shopping at the Dollar Tree. That’s a strong sign for the future…not.

But come on, how can we be hurting in Donald Trump’s economy? He’s making all those moves to save the government money. Well, okay, that DOGE stuff didn’t save much money. It instead destablised the government, outraged citizens, scared Republican senators and reps into hiding, caused confusion and triggered alarm, and sent the stock market down. But he added those tariffs…and took them away…and added them again…causing trade partners to retaliate. Which, yeah, hurt farmers, damaged overseas liquor sales, and has put a crimp in economic forecasts. Retailers and manufacturers have responded with layoffs and slashed their sales forecasts.

Naturally, shoppers were affected. US consumer confidence tumbles for the 4th straight month as future expectations hit a 12-year low.

The Conference Board reported Tuesday that its consumer confidence index fell 7.2 points in March to 92.9. Analysts were expecting a decline to a reading of 94.5, according to a survey by FactSet.

The Conference Board’s report Tuesday said that the measure of Americans’ short-term expectations for income, business and the job market fell 9.6 points to 65.2.

It is the lowest reading in 12 years and well below the threshold of 80, which the Conference Board says can signal a potential recession in the near future. However, the proportion of consumers anticipating a recession in the next year held steady at a nine-month high, the board reported.

“Consumers’ optimism about future income — which had held up quite strongly in the past few months — largely vanished, suggesting worries about the economy and labor market have started to spread into consumers’ assessments of their personal situations,” said Stephanie Guichard, senior economist at The Conference Board.

Oh boy, so much winning, it hurts.

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Wenzda’s Theme Music

I’m sneezing this morning. Blowing my nose. Allergies, I think. Don’t try to tell me otherwise. Not yet. I’m awaiting other symptoms.

Our stretch of early spring sunshine is petering away. Clouds have already gathered to enjoy it, blocking blue sky views. Having eaten last night, my wife is up early, interrupting my ebb and flow. She’s watching video after video. Most are humorous. I treat it like I’m in the coffee shop and some idiot is watching their phone or playing a game or talking VERY LOUDLY ON THE TELEPHONE. I’m thinking about how to give the cat his blood pressure meds. He’s onto hiding it in a tube of Churri. I’ve had to double the Churri to get him to eat it. My wife mistakenly calls Churri chumley, so chumley is now its official household name.

This is Wenzda, March 26, 2025. It’s already 59 F and will reach 73 F. But winds are due starting at 11 AM. Some kind of storm is coming. Lightning, winds, rain, but most of that is further up north. We’re expecting some stuff, mostly wind and lower temperatures.

The Trusk Regime and GOTP inspired The Neurons’ song choice today. Donald Trump is doing a new dance called the Tariff Shuffle. ‘We’re gonna tariff the shit out of everybody. Starting today! No, tomorrow! Next week! No, today!’ I think he’s addicted to getting attention out of being like a guy on the corner shouting about the end of the world and his lost shoe.

Besides the Tariff Shuffle, we have a security leak and a bunch of disclaiming and denying that anything went wrong, along with classic blamethemessengeritis. That tactic was a major beltway flop.

Next up, we have judges and courts ruling against the Trusk Regime. They wail like a teething infant dropping its pacifier. The ol’ self-delared “Law & Order” party as personified by ‘good guy’ Mike Johnson thinks they should do away with judges and courts who rule against them. You know, as it’s put forth in the U.S. Constitution. As I understand it, the judicial branch was set up specifically as a check on the other two branches. So Johnson is proposing to undermine the Constitution by eliminating a check.

With that host of ideas bubbling in my grey matter, The Neurons brought out a song titled “Unbelieveable”. EMF wrote and performed the song, releasing it for public consumption in 1990. The main thing about it is the repeating refrain (yeah, I’m being redundant there, blame it on a lack of coffee), “The things you say. You’re unbelievable.” Which is how I often react to Trusk Regime news. As in, Trump executive order targets Chicago-based law firm Jenner & Block. Unbelievable.

Papi has been given his meds. I managed to use just one chumley, mixing it well and adding warm water. He lapped it up. I won today. On to coffee. It’s my reward.

Cheers

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Sunda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

I’ve been busy tracking the PINO Trusk administration’s actions. It’s like tracking a hurricane as it roars toward humanity. Oh no, where is it going to hit next? Hope those folks will be okay. Shame about those Trump voters who thought he cared about them. Hope they’re okay despite their vote. Because they’re other humans, right? They are human, right? I have that right, don’t I? I guess it could’ve been bot voters who won the day for Trump. Wouldn’t put it past DOGE and the GOTP at all. But that’s a conspiracy for another day.

Right now, I’m wondering about the tipping point. When will Hurricane Trusk cause enough damage that the majority of American citizens will come together in one voice and finally shout, “Enough, you fuckers! Stop it right now.”

That tipping point moment is predicated on multiple vectors and variables, so it’s a hard prediction. My original call was April of 2025. That’s what I told friends back at the beginning of January. I thought, hey, inflation, high prices, the contempt with which Trump treats history, minorities, and women; emptied shelves caused by trade wars, parks going to crap, and the air and water starting to stink; tourism swiftly cratering, rising unemployment, flopping tax revenues, threats against Medicare and Social Security, and people would be mighty miffed by April.

I don’t know ’bout April any longer. There’s a mass of individuals out there quite willing to endure those things. Mostly, I think, it’s because they don’t want to admit how fucking wrong they were about Trump. That they’ve been tricked, had, conned. Also because some of them are so underwater in the MAGA swamp that they won’t fully get what’s going on. Part of that will be because the right wingosphere will feed the MAGAts what they want, which is GREAT NEWS about HOW GREAT TRUMP IS, regardless of the truth. We’ve seen it before. Lot of them believe that Trump built an impenetrable wall across our southern border. Doesn’t explain why they worry about ‘illegals’ now, but then, that’s their thinking level.

If I had more energy, I’d propose a national betting pool. We could all pick a date and bet that is the tipping day. But that would be a messy thing to figure out, especially with PINO Trusk and his regime dicking with the numbers.

Maybe I’ll do it on another day. After I’d had a few glasses of beer. It seems like a beery thing to do.

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Munda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

Are you surprised? Elon Reeves Musk pushes the falsehood, Hitler didn’t kill millions. Sure, and guns don’t kill people, people kill people. Same sort of empty sophistry. Musk says, “Their public sector workers did.” Right, and armies didn’t kill people during the war, it was the soldiers. Next, Musk will be telling us that he didn’t do anything, he was just following orders. Oh, that’s right, he already said that.

Are you surprised? ‘No pain, no gain’: GOP tells Americans to suck it up as economy worsens Emily Singer has a sweet wrap of how the GOTP are trying to tell their constituents that the pain is good for them.

Take Sen. Tommy Tuberville. Please.

“No pain, no gain. That’s what we used to tell our football players. There’s gonna be some pain with tariffs. But tariffs got us back as a strongest economy in the world when President Trump was in the first time. He knows what he’s doing. Democrats get out of the way. Shut up,” Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama said on Fox Business.

Yes, because a football game and working to keep you and your family from starving and safe from bad weather is exactly the same.

Senator Tuberville also gets a A in lying, saying that Trump’s tariffs got us back to the strongest economy in the world. But he is GOTP. Lying is as easy as breathing.

Are you surprised? American consumer sentiment plunges on trade war fears Americans continue to grow worried over President Donald Trump’s escalating and haphazard trade war, according to the University of Michigan’s latest consumer survey released Friday. Consumer sentiment fell 11% this month to a reading of 57.9, a preliminary reading showed, down from last month’s reading of 64.7 and reaching its lowest level since November 2022. That’s a sharp retreat from December, after the US presidential election, when sentiment rose to its highest level in months.

Most of us saw this coming but there was a large segment of the sheeple who were eager to fuck around and find out. Now, here we are.

Are you surprised? “Trump Shutters ‘Voice of America'” Trump has closed down the Voice of America, the government-run radio service that has brought news to 420 million listeners around the world since 1942, during World War II. 

Who benefits by closing the VOA?

Russia. China. North Korea. Iran. And every other authoritarian regime.

Yes, and those are Trump’s buddies.

Gosh, who could have predicted that shit?

Are you surprised? Black Medal of Honor recipient removed from US Department of Defense website Page honoring Charles C Rogers for his Vietnam war service is now defunct with letters ‘DEI’ added to website address.

So, this man, who actually served his country (unlike Donald Trump and Elon Reeve Musk) and was wounded in combat and was honored for his service, has been dismissed. That’s a slap in the face to every veteran who risked their life and spent time in the trenches to defend the Constitution of the United States.

But then, that is the Trusk Regime in a nutshell. Unsurprising in their inability to understand truth and principles. Dedicated to only furthering their own wealth, no matter how much they must lie, like that jackal, Tommy Tuberville, no matter how much the laws, history, and heritage of this nation, of this world, must be twisted and ignored. Trump claims to respect our military and veterans, but with his actions, he demonstrate otherwise.

I, for one, am not surprised.

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Sunda’s Theme Music

Winter blahness continues its hold here in Ashlandia. Yeah, it’s a low key sprinter day. Cold rain pelts the world. I know it’s cold because I stepped out to call in Papi, aka Butter Butt. Butter Butt refuses to accept that it’s bad weather outside. He heads out there as if there is nothing wrong, and then darts for cover and huddles. Fifteen minutes later, I check on him and he sprints in. After three episodes like this, he finally announces, “I’ve decided to stay inside today,” and curls up like he’s ready to read a good book.

Papi never looks up and see the ominous layers of clouds. He only knows that the wind is blowing, there is no warming bit of sunshine to be found, and rain is splattering beyond the porch. Those clouds tell me it’s going to be a cold, wet one, and we’re not discussing beer. Temperature is holding at 37 F but never fear, it’s gonna crowd the low to mid forties before beginning its late afternoon descent back into the mid 30s.

This is Sunda, March 16, 2025.

Locally, we’re cheering on the Southern Oregon University women’s basketball team. Undefeated, they’re progressing through the NAIA championship seedings. We’re hopeful that they’ll take a national championship. I hope I haven’t jinxed that by putting it in eprint. The fates often get irritated with me and end whatever makes me happy. Maybe it just seems like it.

Today’s song is in honor of MAGA America. News of tariffs being levied on the U.S. in retaliation for tariffs PINO Trusk put on others, along with stock market drops and growing unemployment has The Neurons playing “Love Hurts” in the morning mental music stream. Although covered by Cher, Jim Capaldi, the Everyly Brothers, Emmylou Harris, and Roy Orbison, the song in my head today comes from a group called Nazareth. Nazareth is a Scottish hard rock band. I knew their work and songs like “Hair of the Dog” and “Broken Down Angel”. When they released “Love Hurts”, I was taken back. Yet, it works. Well, for some.

Anyway, “Love Hurts” was put into place because every time complaints about being fired from a job, falling stock prices, cut benefits, or dissatisfaction in general emerges from MAGA land, PINO Trusk quickly reassures them that yes, there will be some pain, but they’ll be great in the end, so great, you won’t believe it.

Coffee is consoling me again. Hope your day goes well and features some pleasant weather. Here we go, one more time, eye on the clock. Cheers

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Sunda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

Rose early, read some stuff. I finished reading a novel, The River We Remember. Then it was to the ‘puter. Normal bidness was planned but I was thinking slow (no coffee yet, you see), and I had a Slate article up already. I delved into it.

Luke Winkie wrote the article, I Wanted One Day of Peace on the Internet. So I swapped my feeds for a dose of what it’s like to live in the certainty of MAGA land.

I go into MAGA land to see what they’re reporting every other day. Luke Winkie is stronger than moi. I get in there and become enraged about the PINO Trusk lies and fawning. Can’t take it at all. Luke Winkie did, though, and wrote about well about why I couldn’t stay in MAGA land.

And while existing inside of MAGA land may be a reprieve from thTrade War Retaliation Will Hit Trump Voters Hardeste horror of existing outside of it, this is not a sane place to be either. The constant reaffirmations of loyalty must grow tiresome, even for the most committed of Trump accessories. We’ve become desensitized to the ritual by now, but slobbering over an elected official—of any stripe—is, and always will be, unbecoming. With my patience for the groveling wearing thin, I yearned for my ancestral home of belligerent progressives. I do not consider myself a person at risk of being red-pilled, and no surprise, but the propaganda did not work on me.

Second came a NYTimes article, Trade War Retaliation Will Hit Trump Voters Hardest. Ah, yes, I wanted to see that. FAFO, all that.

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.

Mr. Trump has argued that tariffs will help boost American jobs. But economists say that retaliatory tariffs can cancel out that effect.

Robert Maxim, a fellow at the Brookings Metro, a Washington think tank that has done similar analysis, said that other 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.”

But, you know, will MAGA land ever learn about this? I’m doubtful. Go into MAGA land and see how rosy it often looks.

Besides, I doubt the veracity of any organization led by a known, documented liar. In example, the CPI report released the other day said that inflation cooled in February. But this is PINO Trusk’s Department of Labor. DOGE has been in there. I think if PINO Trusk or his minions see a report with information that will render PINO Trusk and his economy less that awesome, they’ll just change the numbers.

This all leads up to the depressing aspect of PINO Trusk and their approach. They polarize. Divide to conquer. Foment distrust of each other and of the press, and now, the Federal government. It unites them in MAGA land because it keeps looking like the future’s so bright, they gotta wear shades. But for those of us outside of MAGA land, the future is getting dark.

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Frieda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

The Great Deflector blames ‘globalists’ for the market drops.

Later in the same press event, Trump again blamed globalists for the market downturn. “I think it’s globalists that see how rich our country’s going to be, and they don’t like it.“

What an absolute crock. Couldn’t be the old standard of people and institutions who invest in the stock market were protecting their profits and selling stocks, could it? Oh, no, he has to pull up some bullshit bogey man.

Then again, PINO Trusk isn’t a deep thinker. Not a sharp guy. Doesn’t understand the global network of finance, manufacturing, and supply chains at all. Nope. He prefers a stone-age ‘isolationist’ approach. Thinks that will ‘make America great again’.

Meanwhile, treating your friends like shit ends up with them getting pissed at you and treating you like shit.

Ontario cancels Starlink deal over US tariffs — Italy may follow due to US pullback from Europe

Ontario Premier Doug Ford said that he would cancel the $100 million deal the Canadian province signed with Starlink in response to Trump’s 25% tariff on Canadian goods. He’s also imposing a 25% tax on electricity exports, with New York, Michigan, and Minnesota being the most affected. CBC also reports that U.S.-based companies are banned from procurement contracts with the province.

X Threatens Our Democracy. Canada Should Ban It

Last year, as the U.S. government debated and then followed through on banning TikTok, Republican lawmakers advanced numerous arguments against allowing a hostile foreign power to control a significant medium of public discourse.

They said a social media application owned by someone who is close to an autocratic leader might be used as propaganda.

They said the amount of data harvested by the app from users’ phones could pose enormous security risks, providing information to the security services of a hostile power.

Of course, I might be in the minority in my concerns about PINO Trusk.

What Big-Business Leaders, Including Democrats, Say Privately About Trump

One Wall Street executive told me that Mr. Trump remains better than any of the alternatives. Another — citing Elon Musk’s government shake-up — said he likes what he sees so much, he now regrets voting for Ms. Harris.

It wasn’t just that this group resented Mr. Biden’s intrusive regulatory policies. They didn’t like diversity, equity and inclusion policies either — or anything they derisively described to me as “woke stuff.” Now executives and bankers alike (my circles tilt a bit toward Wall Street) are celebrating early signs of a reversal.

I’m not really astonished by claims that business leaders ‘favor’ PINO Trusk’s trash and burn approach. Stories are rising across the political spectrum about people who first cheer the Trusk Regime’s behavior. Then they’re personally affected, and the song they’re singing goes from praises to complaints. So, as PINO Trusk burns supply chains, declares tariffs (and reverses them), and alienates markets and customers outside of the US, we’ll see how they’re feeling in a few months. Sure, they’re wealthier; their wealth cradles their asses as we go through chaos and inflation.

Or, as Paul Krugman stated it, One thing that really struck me from Rattner’s piece — something I’ve heard from other sources — is that big businessmen think Elon Musk is doing a good job. I guess this is one of those cases where power and privilege make you blind to things that are obvious to everyone else.

After all this fucking around, I’m waiting to find out.

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Thirtsda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

My wife and I remain surprised by how many friends and families are acting as though events under PINO Trusk is business as usual and no big deal. Pretty astonishing to me and downright demoralizing to the household’s female ruler. While one friend scowls and proclaims there won’t be 2026 elections — or they’ll be a sham — many others speculate that life will go on as usual; we just won’t have a useful Federal government.

Head-shaking to us, it’s head-in-the-ground thinking IMO. “Let’s just not pay attention and and pretend nothing is going to change and we’ll be fine.” These are self-professed Democratic lifers and progressives, retired professionals such as doctors, accountants, teachers, college professors, and nurses. I wonder, are my wife and I too deep into Doom Scrolling to make objective and intelligent assessments of WTF is going on? I don’t think so.

  • Hard to plan things now as His Idiocy is perfecting the skill of being unpredictable. PINO Trusk is quite the dancer, two-stepping around truth, logic, and consistency. Gotta love that shit show he put on the other night. Pulled in a juvenile saved from cancer as a prop after cutting funding to NIH and medical research at colleges and universities. No shame in the PINO, not at all.

Now we’re seeing His Slickness reversing the tariffs. No, puttin’ ’em on hold. How’s that make sense? He’s all bold speech about how great tariffs are and then jumps back when he installs them and they have the immediate expected negative impact which anyone with common sense predicted.

“And you listen to some of our stupid people, and some of the very stupid people in Washington, DC, “We don’t want to charge tariffs. That’s not… It’s going to increase inflation.” China paid us hundreds of billions of dollars and we had almost no inflation. This group that came in, they had the highest inflation in the history of our country. We took in billions and billions of dollars from foreign countries in the form of tariffs that I hadn’t even gotten started yet. We’ll be a rich nation again. We’ll be able to do what we want to do. We have to do the tariffs. We have been treated so badly mostly by allies. If you want to know the truth, our allies treat us actually worse than our so-called enemies. But we have been treated so badly on trade and other things on military. We protect them, and then they screw us on trade. We’re not going to let it happen anymore. We’re going to be a tariff nation. It’s not going to be a cost to you. It’s going to be a cost to another country.”

That was Donald J. Trump in Wisconsin last year. Seems like stupid is as stupid does and DJT is cornering the market on stupid.

The Trump administration’s massive federal cuts and swelling feelings of economic uncertainty helped fuel a recession-level spike in layoff plans last month, new data showed Thursday.

US-based employers last month announced plans to slash 172,017 jobs, a 103% increase from a year ago and the highest February total since 2009, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas’s latest monthly job cuts report released Thursday.

It’s the 12th highest monthly total in the 32 years Challenger has been tracking job cuts. The 11 others (four came during the Covid-19 pandemic) all occurred when the US was in a recession, Challenger data shows.

The largest share of job cut announcements came in the government sector, where the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency has axed jobs, slashed federal spending and scrapped contracts.

By Challenger’s count, there were 62,242 announced cuts across 17 federal agencies. That’s a 41,311% increase from the 151 cuts announced through February 2024, Challenger noted.

The DOGE effect was not limited to the public sector: Downstream impacts, such as the loss of funding for private nonprofits, led to another 894 cuts, according to the report.

Outside of the government, the next largest cuts were in retail (38,956), technology (14,554) and consumer products (10,625).

I fully expect PINO Trusk and his MAGAzens to proclaim this to be former President Biden’s fault. Cos we know that story well, how PINO Trusk tries to take responsibility when things go well and blames every other biped when it doesn’t.

The firings of over 5,000 probationary employees at the Agriculture Department may have been unlawful, and the workers should be reinstated for at least the next 45 days, a federal civil service board ruled Wednesday.

U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board Chair Cathy Harris issued the order after the Office of Special Counsel alleged that the Agriculture Department had “engaged in prohibited personnel practices” to carry out the mass firings.

The question for me is, seriously, if you’d treated me like crap, firing me in the manner that you did, and then brought me back because it was probably illegal, how would I respond? Sadly, I’d prefer to act like a professional and do a good job because the nation depends on it and I swore that I would. But it would be evilly tempting to be spiteful and sabotage PINO Trusk’s government, basically treating him and his kind as assholes because that’s how they treated me.

Guess it’s a good thing that I’m not part of that workforce.

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