Re: August 7, 2025 (fwd)

[robert <http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert>]

 > From: Noelle <noelle>
 > Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2025 08:46:11 -0700 (PDT)
 >
 >  > From: Heather Cox Richardson from Letters from an American  <http://www.substack.com/~heathercoxrichardson>
 >  > Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2025 06:26:35 +0000
 >  > 
 >  > View this post on the web at 
 >  > https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-7-2025
 >  > 
 >  > Taking an accurate census suddenly is also not remotely possible. Setting 
 >  > one up takes most of the decade between them and costs close to $15 billion. 
 >  > Census officials are already working on the 2030 census.

It's weird that this is the only place where the price of taking a census
is discussed.

Also, a mid-decade census, even if it were taken, would not be able to be
used for redistricting, according to the Constitution.  I think even this
supreme court would say so.

 >  > Trump’s announcement is revealing, though, in two ways.
 >  > First, it shows how aware he and administration officials are that their 
 >  > program is deeply unpopular and that they expect to lose control of the 
 >  > House of Representatives in 2026 unless they rig the system.

Yeah.  I wonder if this is what the simulation that Rosa Brooks and her
crowd showed -- that the chipping away at voting and elections would start
in the congress?

 >  > But there is an even darker image behind destroying our democratic system. 
 >  > If undocumented immigrants aren’t counted, their districts will be 
 >  > shortchanged on representation and whatever federal monies are still 
 >  > available for states, for sure. But if undocumented immigrants aren’t 
 >  > counted, will they be easier to dehumanize?

That NPR story about how it would be Texas and Florida which would be the
most affected by a new census and that they would actually lose seats in
a census that didn't count U.S. citizens.

 >  > It is a truism that democracies die more often through the ballot box than 
 >  > at gunpoint.
 >  > Last night, Trey Parker and Matt Stone skewered Secretary of Homeland 
 >  > Security Kristi Noem and ICE on South Park, and comedian Stephen Colbert 
 >  > went scorched earth on Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy 
 >  > Jr., saying, among other things, that his cuts to vaccine research are “
 >  > bad news for fans of living.”

Again, as I said, comedy and satire are the left's superpower since news
media seems to be constantly disappointing at afflicting the powerful.

 >  > Economic growth is slowing, job growth is stagnant, and prices are headed 
 >  > upward. Chao Deng and John Keilman of the Wall Street Journal reported today 
 >  > that rather than increasing as Trump claimed it would under his tariff 
 >  > regime, manufacturing activity in the U.S. has shrunk for most of Trump’s 
 >  > second term.

The polling that I was reading was saying that most Trump supporters
generally approve of the tariffs, but, when asked about specific
countries, they do seen to object to tariffs on China.  Which is odd.

Also, most Trump supporters only support tariffs if they don't affect
prices, which seems like in-the-cloud thinking.

That radio story about half of all spending in the United States is by the
top 10% made me think that, if the bottom 90% were to cut back on
spending, since 67% of the economy depends on spending, that could be a
drop of as much as 33% (but will probably be much less than that).  That
could definitely point to a very bad recession when the tipping point
arrives.