RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2025/03/18/how-tariffs-will-lower-the-cost-of-living/

Critics of President Trump’s trade policy—tariffs, tariffs, and more tariffs—cry that tariffs will cause inflation and make Americans poor. This is false.

Although there will be a brief period where the market adjusts to the new normal, tariffs will not cause inflation. In fact, tariffs will lower the cost of living in the long run.

Perhaps the more interesting question to ask is: inflation of what? Consumer goods? Why are these critics not concerned about the inflation of assets like houses or investments that are caused by economic globalism and the trade deficit?  Why are the Democrats and Neoconsso preoccupied with keeping the cost of disposable products low, when people cannot afford their rent or mortgages?

Fiddling with the grasshoppers

Contrary to popular belief, tariffs did not raise the cost of goods during President Trump’s first term, and they are not likely to do so the second time around. There are a few reasons for this.

First, a tariff is a tax imposed on imports. For example, a 25% tariff on steel would increase the price of steel coming from Canada or South Korea. However, that same tariff would not apply to steel that was made in America. In this way, tariffs are a completely avoidable tax. If you do not want to pay tariffs, buy American. Simple.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/03/a_businessman_and_a_brilliant_strategist.html

Business schools and military schools borrow extensively from each other’s academic literature.  Although the workings of the boardroom and the battlefield might seem mismatched, there is considerable overlap.  Both require leaders capable of assessing assets and liabilities dispassionately, developing short-term strategies that complement long-term objectives, and comprehending an adversary’s point of view.  Both demand critical thinking.

Organizational theory, as a scholarly discipline, reflects the shared language of business people and military planners.  Business executives “go to war” against rivals and cordon off associates in “war rooms” when their firms’ interests are “under attack.”  Military commanders seek to maximize “opportunity” and “leverage” while minimizing “loss.”  Allocating resources efficiently and avoiding waste are crucial for both vocations.  Just as an accountant is essential for a healthy business, a quartermaster is essential for a healthy army.  In business and war, technical knowhow, tactical skill, and logistical expertise separate winners from losers, victors from the vanquished.

What is striking about President Trump’s return to the White House is how completely he embodies this business-military mindset.  If a plan of action (a government program) is ineffective in achieving its goals, then the Trump administration terminates it immediately.  If government bureaucrats within the Executive Branch’s ranks serve no purpose or fail in their day-to-day missions, then they are relieved of their duties.  Just as fat, incompetent armies devour supplies and lose battles, bloated, incompetent bureaucracies devour resources and sabotage nations.  Military commanders have no time to worry about an individual soldier’s feelings when operational success and lives are on the line.  The chief executive of the United States has no time to worry about an individual bureaucrat’s feelings when the nation’s success and all Americans’ lives are at stake.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2025-3-14-qw44bfyfus1omeo4ao4zf20hjpmiv1

Way back in the ancient year of 2012 — before this blog had even been started — Penn State climate “scientist” Michael Mann brought a lawsuit for defamation against Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg, as well as against two websites (National Review and CEI) that had hosted the blog posts of those two individuals. Mann asserted that his reputation had been damaged by the Steyn and Simberg posts, which had compared Mann to fellow Penn Stater Jerry Sandusky. The point of comparison was that Penn State had investigated and cleared both men around the same time over allegations of misconduct — scientific misconduct in the case of Mann, sexual misconduct in the case of Sandusky.

In the succeeding years, the case went through a truly unbelievable history of procedural twists and turns, including multiple motions to dismiss and appeals. There was even an effort in 2019 to seek Supreme Court review, which the Court denied at that time; but Justice Alito issued a detailed dissent as to why he thought review should have been granted. The case finally reached trial in January 2024, by which time the two corporate entities, National Review and CEI, had been dismissed from the case, leaving only the individuals Steyn and Simberg as defendants. The trial was available for public view over the internet, and I watched substantial parts of it, leading to five blog posts over the period January 27 to February 8, 2024. Links to those five posts are here, here, here, here and here. A February 9 update to the last of those posts reported on the jury verdict that was delivered on the 8th. Readers who are at all familiar with the case will recall that the jury awarded only $1 of compensatory damages against each defendant, but awarded punitive damages of $1000 against Simberg and $1 million against Steyn.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21475/cryptocurrency-digital-gold-monopoly-money

As Jack and his beanstalk can tell you, there are no magic beans. Unfortunately, those who believe cryptocurrency is their ticket to enormous wealth or financial security will soon find out that they, too, have no magic beans. What they may have is Monopoly money.

With that in mind, it needs to be said that recent actions to create a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve opens the door to potentially serious issues.

Equally chilling is the vulnerability of cryptocurrency to hackers. Media reports reveal that North Korean hackers recently stole $1.5 billion in cryptocurrency from Bybit, described as the world’s second-largest crypto exchange. One can probably assume those hackers were operating under instructions from their government.

Perhaps the larger issue is that there is no “there” there when discussing Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. At the core of a digital currency’s existence is only an algorithmic ledger. Yet it reflects the same dynamics that have historically created speculative bubbles that leave investors stunned and broke.

Consider the Tulip Mania of the 1630s. Dutch tulip bulb prices reached extraordinary heights before collapsing dramatically. Like a cryptocurrency, it featured “value” largely driven by certified scarcity and speculative trading.

A similar bubble occurred in 1720, when Britain’s publicly traded South Sea Company speculated on emerging South American trade opportunities. The eventual collapse of that pursuit was so widespread that it actually damaged the entire British economy. However, one needn’t travel back centuries to chronicle the cycle of grand promises that went up in smoke.

The dot-com bubble at the end of the 1990s saw internet companies with limited revenue but rosy visions attract massive investment before the market crashed. Coming even closer to our current crypto era, there was the mortgage-backed securities crisis of 2007. Complex financial instruments obscured underlying risks to investors who were chasing illusionary profits until it all collapsed.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/03/17/what-are-the-lefts-solutions-for-the-problems-they-created/

The Wall Street Journal has consistently criticized Trump’s economic policies, particularly his ongoing “trade war” with Canada, over the past several weeks. And certainly, the tensions are regrettable. Trump’s trolling of the insufferable Justin Trudeau, with talk of Canada becoming the “51st state,” perhaps only galvanized the Canadian left. It unfortunately may ensure that the only real hope for a Canadian return to normality, the election of Pierre Poilievre, may be lost.

That said, does the WSJ truly believe that the current $1.7 trillion budget deficit stacked on top of $36 trillion in national debt and an annual $1 trillion trade deficit are sustainable in any fashion? Do they believe any Republican president would have survived the midterms if he cut or “reformed” Social Security? If so, consult the fate of the recommendations of left-wing Barack Obama’s 2010 Simpson-Bowles commission (“The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform”).

DOGE, the effort to demand either symmetrical or no tariffs, closing the border, the rare minerals agreement, etc., are all controversial, even desperate efforts to stave off insolvency.

NAFTA was sold on the promise of trade equilibriums, eventually leading to no tariffs and rough parity. Yet Canada currently runs a $60 billion surplus largely because of its energy sales and selective tariffs on U.S. agriculture and some manufactured goods. That sum might be tolerable from a friend and not worth the acrimony, even with the present massive trade and budget deficits—if it had occurred in isolation.

But it did not. The Canadian surplus is force multiplied by its chronic refusal to spend a measly 2 percent of its GDP on defense. Canada could have easily offered a partnership with the U.S. to explore joint missile defense or shared Arctic Ocean naval patrols with a new fleet of Canadian and American icebreakers.

But it did nothing of the sort.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/hamas-linked-cair-got-over-7200000-in-taxpayer-money/

Nihad Awad, the cofounder and longtime executive director of the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), has plenty of reasons to be happy. He notoriously said that the October 7 jihad massacre of 1,200 Israelis made him “happy,” and now it has been revealed that he has over seven million other reasons for a smile to break out on his taciturn, creepy face: that’s the amount of taxpayer funds his sinister organization has received, despite its links to one of the most evil groups on the planet.

The New York Post reported the appalling news on Friday: “According to the Intelligent Advocacy Network (IAN), a California-based, non-partisan advocacy group, the money was given to the chapter to help re-settle impoverished immigrants in California between 2022 and 2024.”

The “chapter” that the Post mentions is CAIR’s Los Angeles chapter, which appears to have gotten hold of the money in some irregular way: “In what appears to be a sleight of hand, the money – $7,217,968.44 — was sent to CAIR-Greater Los Angeles and not to CAIR-CA, which was the only group eligible to receive it, according to the complaint” that IAN has sent to the Justice Department.

The Post explains that “the Greater Los Angeles chapter of the Muslim organization, which is not a registered non-profit and not eligible to handle charitable donations, received the entire pot of money according to the complaint, viewed by The Post.” The complaint stated: “These sub grants from CAIR-CA to CAIR chapters raise serious legal concerns about whether CAIR simply shifted more money to itself.”

The fact that CAIR-Greater Los Angeles got the money instead of CAIR-CA is actually only a small part of the problem. Why is CAIR getting any money to resettle “impoverished immigrants in California” at all? CAIR claims to be “America’s largest Muslim civil rights organization.” It adds, improbably, that it works to “protect civil rights, enhance understanding of Islam, promote justice, and empower American Muslims.”

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2025/03/16/obama-tried-doge-n2653882

A resurfaced 2011 video reveals former President Barack Obama launching a “Campaign to Cut Waste,” strikingly similar to the current Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative to eliminate government inefficiency. In the video, Obama emphasizes the need to reduce wasteful spending, highlighting the appointment of former President Joe Biden to lead the effort, saying that “nobody messes with Joe.” This initiative aimed to increase government accountability, reduce unnecessary costs, and promote fiscal responsibility echoes what the Trump administration is currently trying to do.

Elon Musk recently shared a 2011 video featuring Obama promoting his initiative, “Campaign to Cut Waste,” which closely resembles the efforts Musk’s DOGE program is currently undertaking. In the video, Obama highlights his efforts to eliminate government waste, pointing out unnecessary federal programs and absurd taxpayer-funded projects, such as an online fan page for a folk music group composed of Forest Rangers.

“Everyone knows that getting rid of the deficit requires some tough decision. And that includes cutting back on billions of dollars in programs that a lot of people care about. But what should be easy is getting rid of the pointless waste and stupid spending that doesn’t benefit anybody,” Obama said in the resurfaced video.

“Obama sounds exactly like DOGE!!” Musk wrote on X. 

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/tariffs-good-trump-china

Donald Trump is back—and so is the tariff. “It’s a beautiful word, isn’t it?” the president quipped before the joint session of Congress on Tuesday—so beautiful that he referenced tariffs 17 more times in his address. In the short time since his second inauguration on Jan. 20, Trump has imposed—and sometimes walked back or temporarily suspended—tariffs on China, Canada, and Mexico, and declared a policy of tit-for-tat “reciprocity” or retaliation for any foreign tariffs on American exports that are higher than U.S. tariffs on imports. And he has justified tariffs with multiple rationales, ranging from protecting or reshoring defense-critical American industries to pressuring America’s neighbors to take action to reduce the cross-border flow of illegal immigrants and drugs like fentanyl. In fact, he told members of Congress, tariffs were “about protecting the soul of our country.”

The chaotic and inconsistent nature of Trump’s second-term policy to date can be criticized. But when it comes to tariffs as a tool of economic statecraft in general, the gap between establishment rhetoric and actual government practice is big enough to drive a Chinese EV through.

The audiences of the dying legacy media are told that the tariff is a destructive policy revived by politicians like Trump who fail to understand elementary economics, which teaches that free trade benefits all sides all the time everywhere, with no exceptions. But from North America to Europe to Asia, developed countries are ignoring mainstream economists and their amen corner in the subsidized libertarian think tank world and slapping tariffs onto imports in favored industries like electric vehicles and renewable energy. Governments are resorting to tariffs and industrial policy, not because their prime ministers and presidents flunked Econ 101, but because they do not want their economies deindustrialized by a flood of low-priced, state-subsidized Chinese imports.

The Chinese import threat is why Canada has levied a 100% tariff on imported Chinese EVs, along with a 25% surtax on Chinese steel and Chinese aluminum. The European Union has slapped electric vehicles made in China with tariffs ranging from 7.8% to 35.3%, on top of the standard European tariff of 10% for imported automobiles. India imposes tariffs of 70%-100% on imported electric vehicles from China and other countries.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/mahmoud-khalil-arrest-columbia-deport-hamas

Manhattan is home to one less terror-supporter.

On Saturday, immigration enforcement agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian national with U.S. permanent resident status, and removed him to a detention facility in Louisiana. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson explained that Khalil’s arrest, in coordination with the State Department, was made “in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism” and because Khalil “led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.” A hearing is set for Wednesday after a federal judge blocked Khalil’s deportation on Monday—but the White House has doubled down on its intent to deport him.

Khalil was arrested at his Columbia University-owned apartment, near the school where he’s spent much of the last year and a half as a student leading pro-Hamas demonstrations. He has been a ringleader of the anti-Semitic activity that has kept Columbia in lockdown, and has helped escalate disorder at its sister school, Barnard College.

Khalil’s removal offers a lesson that the free world has been reluctant to learn since the October 7, 2023, massacre in Israel: sometimes expulsion is the best solution. This is especially true for those who commit the kinds of anonymous violence that have characterized the anti-Israel movement at Columbia and Barnard, and which Khalil, as a leader of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, has helped propel.

Khalil has been candid about his commitment to make Columbia uninhabitable until the university denounces Israel. “As long as Columbia continues to invest and to benefit from Israeli apartheid, the students will continue to resist,” he declared. At Columbia, that “resist[ance]” has involved everything from erecting encampments on school property to directing death wishes at Zionists to storming Columbia’s Hamilton Hall and taking maintenance staff hostage.