Happy New Year
Be Of Good Cheer, or Somewhat Better Informed Cheer
Dawn, New Year’s Day, 2025 Photo by Martha Ture
A good friend of mine surprised me a few days ago by announcing that the new administration is going to increase Social Security payments. When I gathered my thoughts and said Well, I like to look at facts, she said Let’s not talk about politics.
As we have been friends since 1995, I am not about to drop her. We are friends and neighbors, and that supersedes other considerations. And that surprises me because I have in this past year dropped several friendships over politics, culture, ignorance, and grief. How much aggravation I’m willing to take, I’ve got that figured out. What I haven’t figured out is how to assess the incoming administration’s probabilities of success in its proposed polycrises, and the effects on living.
So let’s think these through together, starting with the campaign promises. Team Trump have named the policies that he would enact on Day One — Inauguration Day is January 20, 2025. They include:
Close the Mexican border.
“We’re going to have to seal up those borders and we’re going to have to let people come into our country,” the president-elect said in his acceptance remarks’ only substantive reference to the U.S.-Mexico border. “We want people to come back in, but we have to, we have to let them come back in, but they have to come in legally.”
On Day One? And it will happen instantly because?As you’ve noticed in the news lately, Steve Bannon and Elon Musk are fighting over who shall rule on this issue, blue collar people or silicon valley engineers.
Effects on living: the campaign speeches and intentions here will suck up a lot of media time, energy, and attention, and will cost a lot of money. Is there anything you and I can do about the Mexican border? Write to your Senators and Congressmembers, to the White House and to your news outlets, like Fox. Other than that, what are your thoughts?Deportation of up to 11 million undocumented immigrants or 1 million people a year.
A memo from the American Civil Liberties Union outlined the operational necessities of a mass deportation. It would require arresting millions of people, putting them into removal proceedings before judges, litigating the cases and appeals, and then actual removal. There are constitutional and statutory requirements at each step, unless the incoming administration decides to ignore the law.“No part of it has ever operated at anything approaching the scale and speed that Trump’s plan requires,” the ACLU wrote. “There can be no doubt that Trump would attempt to defy constitutional and other legal protections in service of his draconian goal.” This article in the Guardian is very much worth reading for the detail of possibilities.
Effects on living: the intentions, and the possible involvement of state and federal military personnel on U.S. soil, will generate a lot of litigation, media time, energy, and attention, and will cost a lot of money. Is there anything you and I can do about it? Write to your Senators and Congressmembers, to the White House and to your news outlets, like Fox. Other than that, what are your thoughts?Enact tariffs on goods coming in from Mexico, Canada and China.
The president-elect said he would sign an executive order for a 25% tariff - or tax on imports - on all goods coming from Canada and Mexico, to get both countries to crack down on illegal immigration and drug trafficking. He has also promised to impose a 60% tariff on China. During his election campaign, he told voters that the taxes were "not going to be a cost to you, it’s a cost to another country". This assertion about how tariffs work is 100% false.If a US importing firm passes on the cost of the tariff to the person or company buying the product in the US in the form of higher retail prices, the US consumer pays the cost of the tariff. If the US importing firm absorbs the cost of the tariff itself and doesn’t pass it on, then that firm eats the expense in the form of lower profits, and if it’s publicly traded, its share values were tumble, and its Board will fire the CEO and then go to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to demand a halt to the tariff program, and much hell will be raised.
Effects on living: if he goes through with this one, your stocks are going to tumble, your costs are going to rise, and you will be increasingly impoverished. Is there anything you and I can do about it? Write to your Senators and Congressmembers, to the White House and to your news outlets, like Fox. Other than that, what are your thoughts?Expedite permits for drilling and fracking, roll back environmental regulations.
Effects on living: The results will be litigation, endless litigation. If he goes through with this one, the increase in greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) will negate reductions in GHG emissions, probably foster increase in droughts, floods, wildfires, wars, and reduce the liveability of Earth.Is there anything you and I can do about it? Write to your Senators and Congressmembers, to the White House and to your news outlets, like Fox. Other than that, what are your thoughts?
As we know, there are plenty of additional Emperor Nero brand proposals, including the US leaving the World Health Organization, using the Department of Justice as a president’s revenge weapon, cutting Social Security and Medicare, withdrawing federal funds from public schools that teach anything that seems like racial justice issues, or that permit transgender people to have equal rights under the law, trying to invade or annex Greenland and Panama (but not Cuba? Why not Cuba? Or Haiti?), and ceding large parts of Ukraine to Russia.
Is there anything you and I can do about it? Write to your Senators and Congressmembers, to the White House and to your news outlets, like Fox. Other than that, what are your thoughts?