CSotD: The Return of the Robber Barons
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Charlie Sykes illustrated an excellent rant with an 1889 Samuel Ehrhardt cartoon that bears the caption “History Repeats Itself — The Robber Barons of the Middle Ages, and the Robber Barons of Today.”
Mark Twain said “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes,” which is clever but inaccurate: History is indeed repeating itself, as Trump works to bring back the system of tariffs which enriched the robber barons of the Gilded Age, an expression Twain himself coined.
It was the best of times for the robber barons, the worst of times for everyone else.
Given how Dear Leader works to provide tax cuts for billionaires, it’s hard to tell if he understands how tariffs helped create the gulf between the robber barons and the 19th Century working class, but historians realize that, as a percentage of income, tariffs fell more heavily on those who made less and were ruinous to farmers who had to purchase tools and supplies subject to tariffs.
And if I were public information director at the Wharton School of Business, I’d be tearing out my hair over having our most famous graduate repeatedly reveal in public that he has no freaking idea what a tariff is or how it works. He just got up at Davos, in front of the world’s economic leaders, and said
Come make your product in America and we will give you among the lowest taxes of any nation on Earth…but if you don’t make your product in America, which is your prerogative, then very simply you will have to pay a tariff, differing amounts, but a tariff.
He’s threatening tariffs on the products of our largest trading partners, and Lisa Benson (Counterpoint) drew this puzzler. The carrot seems to be a trade deal we’ve had with both countries for the past 30 years but which was renegotiated and updated in 2020 with a new treaty under President Donald Trump.
And while she’s not wrong to draw the tariff as a tank, she has the gun pointed in the wrong direction, since tariffs are paid by importers and passed along to consumers as anybody who has completed high school should know.
However, much of Trump’s approach relies on people believing him, and it helps to have a compliant media assist in promoting the fact that 2+2=5.
Though it’s not all mythology and misunderstanding. Some of it is cold, hard truth, as seen in this
Juxtaposition of the Day
Bramhall notes the removal of an ICE policy that prevented them from raiding churches, school and hospitals, with a pun on the religious mass and mass arrests. Of course, there was never a policy against raiding farms, which is apparently why so many farmworkers have stopped showing up there that the harvest of citrus fruit is seriously imperiled.
That’s okay because nobody cares about increases in grocery prices, right? Nobody patriotic, anyway.
Anderson may also be touching on the prospects of raids in schools, but his second panel is non-specific enough that she may have been stopped on the street on suspicion of looking foreign.
And it may not be enough to have your child keep a passport in her bulletproof backpack, because apparently in the ICE raid in New Jersey, agents refused to accept a veteran’s documents. Presumably he’ll be released after appearing in court, but when will that be?
In any case, dark skin is likely to get you snatched off the streets, even if your people were here long before there were any streets.
Yes, it’s come to this: The Navajo Nation is issuing advice and warnings to its people who live among the bilagáana.
Trump is setting another test for the Supreme Court by ordering state and local authorities to cooperate with ICE in rounding up undocumented aliens and anyone doesn’t look Aryan. Joyce Vance notes that the Court has already ruled it unconstitutional for the feds to demand state and local officials act as their agents.
The funny thing is, the case that established this was brought by Second Amendment hardliners who didn’t want their right to buy, sell and trade handguns imperiled by a law that called on states to enforce a federal statute. Doubt they want the McConnell Court to overturn that one.
Maybe the judge who it eventually comes before can just repeat what the judge said in turning down Dear Leader’s attempt to end birthright citizenship:
I am having trouble understanding how a member of the bar could state unequivocally that this order is constitutional. It just boggles my mind.
Speaking of our famously lax gun laws, Andrew Weldon chimes in from Melbourne to reassure everyone that at least we don’t let felons have them.
Nuclear arms, yes, but not handguns.
Meanwhile, Steve Brodner notes that Trump has shut down the National Institute of Health but somehow the chickens didn’t get the memo and continue to get sick without government permission.
Dunno where this pic was taken, but they’re only five bucks a dozen here. I heard Georgia has had to shut down its poultry business because of the flu, but I don’t think it’s true that the president called their secretary of agriculture and said “I just want to find 11,780 eggs.”
But I like that Bodner shows him with egg on his face. Whatever eggs cost where you live, you won’t have to be a liberal to notice that they aren’t getting any cheaper.
Which reminds me: Good luck getting help from the IRS filling out your tax forms, or getting your refund anytime soon, since Trump’s hiring freeze comes just as they were about to ramp up for the tax season.
His fanbase will notice the lack of service, but I’m guessing neither Fox nor the NY Post will explain why it’s happening.
Speaking of Rupert Murdoch, Ben Jennings notes that he got his ass handed to him again, having settled with The Harry Formerly Known as Prince in a pre-trial agreement that cost him a public apology for illegal phone tapping and other outrages, as well as an undisclosed eight-figure settlement, which might still be an eight-figure settlement here — for instance, in Washington, DC — but would look 24% larger.
A lot of British monarchists hate Harry, but I’ll bet he’s popular in Liverpool right now.
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