1. The GOP’s budgetary SNAP cuts are stupid because programs like food stamps are a wildly successful trickle-up governmental effort.
It’s much more of a self-sustaining system than Republicans’ tax cuts for the rich that claim to trickle-down, but literally never do. The functionality of food stamps is that poor people need food assistance, and we don’t want them to become beggars on the street grabbing our ankles as we walk past, or to starve and die.
So we give them food stamps, and they use that money — all of it — at local grocery stores. This helps those local grocery stores in impoverished areas stay open, which prevents food deserts. The stores are able to pay local employees, which helps the community, who then go buy things at other stores. The grocery store also gets many products delivered, and requires equipment like shelving, carts, printers, scanners, paper bags, refrigerators, freezers, etc., so consider how many other manufacturing, transportation, and logistics companies make money being involved in keeping the grocery store operating. That’s a lot more people employed.
Meanwhile, the taxes related to all these sales, business transactions, and wages pay back some of the cost to the government, which helps afford the very food stamps given out to help kids from impoverished families not grow up hungry. The downstream effects of these kids being less likely to commit crimes, be incarcerated, drop out of school, get pregnant as teens, etc. leads to big dividends from them having jobs and being productive members of society. What a successful investment!
You know what isn’t a successful investment? Letting already rich people hoard even more of their wealth in tax cuts and park it in speculative investments that make inequality continue rising in all the economic graphs of everything that is wrong with society.
It’s a shame so much of conservative politics on economics and the public good really is just about justifying selfishness, greed, and lack of empathy as some kind of civic or even moral virtue.
2. The Trump budget is immoral, unChristian, unAmerican, and financially absurd
This Republican budget along with Trump’s insane spending is once again proving that the 50+ year adage that Republicans are the fiscally responsible party is the biggest myth in American politics.
The budget’s priorities are fascist with the massive ICE spending, the National Guard deployments, the reorganization of the military toward alleged domestic enemies, Kristi Noem’s private planes, changing the Defense Department to the War Department, Trump’s golfing expenses, his Qatari plane retrofitting, the White House renovations and related costs, instituting draconian and Nazi-esque deportation quotas and policies, I could go on…
3. As the economy worsens, Trump’s fascist tendencies are going to get worse
Trump will start savagely lying about all the economic destruction and malaise he’s causing, and lash out at his critics and even his own administration’s officials who report the truth. He’ll begin using all the levers of government to stifle dissent and protests, and demand the media not question or disprove his propaganda. Buckle up, America.
4. Not to be too doomerist, but…
…maybe we should all start preparing ourselves mentally, physically and even financially for the protests we are going to have to inevitably participate in when Trump, Vance, and the MAGA movement try to rig the next elections or pass an American version of the Nazis’ Enabling Act.
I am serious… it’s no stretch of the imagination to picture Trump arresting Democratic politicians if the midterms result in a blue wave. He’s building concentration camps already, and he constantly accuses Democrats of being vermin, traitors, and radicals… you know what I mean?
I’m kind of suggesting that maybe you should make a goal to get physically fit for the midterms, and maybe set aside money in case millions of Americans need to travel to D.C. and protest (peacefully) off-and-on as your schedule permits for days or weeks against the suffocation of our democracy.
Lots of other countries have had to have massive protests against their own tyrants and political saboteurs: Ukraine, Israel, Belarus, Syria and much of the Middle East. It’s just a fundamental fact that authoritative governments do not care about earning the genuine support of the people, and their brutalist suppression of disagreement and free speech leads inevitably to national ruin and decline. There has never been a dictatorship as successful as America’s democratic record of 250 years, because dictatorship lifespans are limited by the mortality of their demagogues.
Trump is already invading US cities and indiscriminately bombing boats off the shore of Central and South America with so little confirmed intelligence he refuses to detain or prosecute the survivors. He doesn’t want to let courts have to consider the flimsy legal rationales he’s using for the murders. If we want to be slippery-slopey about tyrannical power, it should maybe be a president bombing people without any due process.
5. Can we stop paying Trump his presidential salary?
He’s constantly grifting, he’s selling out America’s national security for international golf courses and hotels and a private plane, and literally no one but him knows how much NFT and cryptocurrency profits he’s making. He’s literally, right now, trying to make the Department of Justice give him $230 million. Fuck this bitch, he does not deserve the $400,000 salary. He’s profiting enough off of abusing the Office of the Presidency. It’s obviously pennies compared to what he’s stealing and grifting, but I like the symbolism and messaging of trying to garnish his salary.
6. The Founding Fathers did not imagine the legislative branch they designed would ever be filled with as many lazy, politically opportunist, scaredy-cats brown-nosing the executive branch as the Republican Party has today.
On background, many Republicans lament what Trump is doing to America, and then they vote however they think will get them through another day without earning a mean, threatening tweet from Trump that threatens their reelection. Cowards.
7. Here’s an idea for democrats:
Never stop blaming literally every thing that goes wrong or bad thing that happens on Trump. Did Trump ever miss an opportunity to blame Biden or Harris for things that had nothing to do with them? Do the same thing, and relentlessly blame him for everything.
8. Bad-faith politics.
This shutdown is going to start hurting millions of Americans with drastic healthcare cost hikes, and the shutting down of food stamps and other welfare programs. And it’s Republicans’ fault. They control the entire government, and can’t make a deal. Democrats have no power, and are not going to give their votes for a toxic, shitty budget that goes against everything Democrats believe. It’s on Republicans to negotiate with them for their votes, and this is the exact bit of minority party wrangling Republicans have done when in the minority for 20 years. 🥃
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The Halfway Post 