Desperate to get some action concretely on the scoreboard before day 100, 45 introduced a tariff on Canadian imported softwood products used in single family home construction. The target is just as soft as the wood. Canada, our neighbor to the north is seldom viewed as a difficult trading partner. Maybe it’s a signal that even our allies should watch out for the BullyPresident when the impulse hits him. Ok, it’s another executive order, so no legislation yet. Ok, it wasn’t any of the items in the campaign 100 day pledge. But, it is a tariff, emblematic of what could come, a frequent device of the president who hasn’t actually accomplished much, like a single piece of legislation from his to do list. 45 is talking loudly but carrying a little stick. So what’s the impact of this tariff?
Overall, the Canadian balance of trade is just about even, that is our imports are equivalent to exports. But Canadian lumber has been a longstanding area of dispute, dating back to an understanding between Reagan and Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney which would end action against softwood lumber. Reagan reneged, but the subsequent agreement proceeded to form the basis for NAFTA. Over the next 3 decades, the dispute has continued to resurface. While this is a relatively small issue for the US, the lumber industry is an important source of jobs in Canada’s rural areas. So softwood lumber is not a very impactful issue for the US, but may prove problematic for Pierre Trudeau, who has tried to make friendly overtures to Trump, even inviting Ivanka to a Broadway musical about passengers on planes diverted to Canada on 9/11 after he’d already paid a visit to the White House.
Central to the dispute, simmering since 1982, is the difference in ownership of forest lands in the two countries. The Canadian government owns most forest lands while in the US, forests are owned by private companies. Consistent with the past, American mills once again complained that Canadian provincial governments, by charging lower royalty rates for cutting trees, were subsidizing the sale of the wood products in the US.
Now in its fifth iteration, negotiations to renew the previous agreement that expired in 2015 broke down, perhaps impeded by the presidential transition with accompanying delay in the Trump administration’s naming Robert Lighthizer as US trade representative. So, this was an easy mark for the BullyPresident. The negotiations were well underway before he took office; he just jumped on board when he needed to pull a rabbit out of his hat. The Commerce Department determined that the Canadian government was subsidizing the exports between 3% and 24%; Trump signed off on slapping equivalent tariffs on imports from each of the Canadian companies, retroactive for 3 months. It makes the President seem uniquely friendly to US business whisperings, but this decision is not new; it follows all those made in the past. It may not be radically different from Obama’s solution and that probably sticks in Trump’s craw.
Naturally, Canada vigorously denies the accusations. Canadians contend that US lumber companies can not fill all the country’s demand and that their lumber fills the gap; the National Association of Home Builders agrees. The US buys 69% of Canadian exported lumber. The Canadian government, anticipating the tariff announcement, is still looking to continue discussions, but an appeal to the World Trade Organization, where they have successfully beaten back every previous US attempt to levy a tariff, is already being planned. In the interim, Canada has already worked out a deal, which in the past has usually been to limit the amount of softwood exports. Trump bought a headline; the news story about the resolution is likely to go unnoticed.
But trade issues are complicated. Trade restrictions often have winners and losers. Theoretically, the balance should lie with more winners than losers, but that depends on how wins and losses are defined. Home Builders have never been enthusiastic about tariffs, which they contend will increase the price of houses. Homebuyers are sure losers. Lumber accounts for an estimated 17% of the cost of a new home. A 15% tariff would increase new home prices by about 4.2%, or $3000 as estimated by the Association of Home Builders, making houses even less affordable for new home buyers and renovators. A slowdown in home purchasing has wider implications for the economy. Commerce Secretary Ross has denied the negative impact of the tariffs on home prices, contending that the largest component of house prices is the cost of the land. And, in a twist for an administration that is all about creating American jobs, an estimated 4700 full-time jobs will evaporate.
It maybe that Trump considers these jobs more expendable than campaign prominent coal or steel industry jobs, where almost no one sees a resurgence except him. Ironically, unlike coal or steel, the lumber industry in both countries is prospering, with big production increases in 2016. Seems like once again, Trump has touted a questionable trade solution to a marginal problem, all in the name of America First.
Trump wandered away from remarks on Chinese steel dumping in the American market to bad mouth Canada on another dispute, the dairy industry. Seems like he’s got Canada on his mind. The milk issue is even more complicated than softwood lumber but revolves more around ways to support the American dairy industry. The milk canister runneth over for American dairy farmers, like others around the globe. There is a worldwide oversupply of milk, which is driving prices down, as dictated by the classical economic tenets of supply and demand. US dairy farmers are now dumping thousands of gallons of milk. After all, cow teats can’t be shut off; Bessie keeps making milk, day in, day out. Canada has managed to avoid the predicament by restricting the number of dairy farms and assigning quotas to keep prices high and further, by discouraging foreign imports with up to 300% tariffs.
A group of Wisconsin dairy farmers slipped ultrafiltered milk, a product used in cheese making, through a NAFTA loophole that hadn’t accounted for the new processing technique. This month, Canada slammed the door shut by instituting a domestic ingredient campaign. Canadian farmers had been hamstrung by mandatory minimum pricing rules. Ontario created an exemption and dropped the price of its ultrafiltered milk to undercut US competitors. As a consequence, the Wisconsin milk processors were nudged out of the Canadian market which forced them to cancel contracts with local farmers. With most other area milk processors already drowning in customers, the farmers were threatened with an abrupt end to their family farms, unless they could find some feasible milk processing capacity.
The administration seems to want to settle both the softwood lumber and dairy product issues outside the proposed negotiations to restructure NAFTA, but our crystal ball is clouded by our mercurial chief executive who likes to credit his “incredible flexibility”. One day he’s tweeting about pulling out of NAFTA, the next, he’s talking about moving to renegotiate a “fairer” deal. The idea that the US, the most powerful country in the world, has been suckered by almost every other country seems absurd on the face of it, but some folks are more gullible than others. 45, coincidentally South African slang for penis, having shifted his attention to tax cuts, could leave the details of trade agreements to professionals. But then again, it’s anybody’s guess.
It’s April 26, time to celebrate Confederate Memorial Day, at least if you live in Alabama and Mississippi. It’s an official state holiday, still. Fortunately, Georgia, taking a more progressive stance than can usually be expected, nixed the official holiday in 2016, so there won’t be any official celebrations in my state. But, make no mistake, there will still be celebrations across Dixie, with battle reenactments and whites decked out in Confederate uniforms and 19th Century dress, visiting Confederate grave markers freshly decorated with the most recent rendition of Confederate flags and basking in the glow of their glorious ancestral heritage.
Maybe it’s because I’ve just learned that my ancestor fought with the union army, but I think those of us who supported the Union cause should rise up on Confederate Memorial Day to remind the Confederate celebrants that they LOST the war. The nation has never done that, for fear of irritating that raw confederate anger when the nation needed to heal. But, maybe it’s time to acknowledge that a gang of traitors, no matter their flimsy rationalizations, rebelled against the legitimate government of the United States and tried to destroy it. There is no other word than treason for that. When they fired on Fort Sumter, they started that war that killed 620,000 soldiers and caused 1.5 million casualties, about 5% of the US population. They killed 20% of southern white males. It was the Confederate Army that caused the devastation of the South’s landscape; as the Union Army was called upon to put down the rebellion, railroads, bridges and telegraph lines were destroyed; agricultural production was halted; and cities were left in rubble. It was Dixie that called out the Union troops in a desperate attempt to end the slaughter. 
Of course, historians have chosen to write it differently, in the interest of national unity, just as the federal government chose to sacrifice African Americans on the altar of national unity by allowing the South to create a virtual police state through Jim Crow laws that lasted another century. The nation wasn’t ready then for equality and it’s still inching toward or away from it, given the recent turn of events.
Now we just need to add a few slave monuments, recognizing their undaunted spirit of survival and yes, even rebellion. And those should be erected on public land. 
45 emerged from a couple of nights of Fox News viewing as a completely changed man. He must have missed TV coverage immediately following the sarin bombings of innocents in Syria, but having caught up, he moved from unconcerned with events outside the US to full throated grief for the lives of babies horribly murdered. In the space of 72 hours, he became a Warrior President, launching missile strikes on Syria, while dining with the Chinese president at Mar-a-lago. He instructed Nikki Haley at the UN to scold Russia for colluding in war crimes in Syria and not voting for a Security Council condemnation of Assad.
The anti-government billionaire Robber Barons were fooled by Trump’s fake populism initially, not understanding the commonality of their interests. Being devoid of political philosophy, the Reality TV candidate was never a part of their club, being a go-it-alone narcissist without charitable inclination or a fat enough wallet. But during the transition between administrations, the meeting of the minds was clear. Trump’s agenda, to maximize his own personal accumulation of wealth, went unmentioned in his platform to drain the swamp of Washington corruption, restrict immigration of brown skinned people and limit trade to evade the reach of the global market. Similarly, the various Koch funded organizations propagandized to their conservative voters that the end of government regulation, the elimination of government safety net programs and tax breaks for the rich will insure economic prosperity, providing cover their objectives to allow even more of their own massive accumulation of wealth, particularly in oil, chemicals and mining industries, where environmental regulation has become an important barrier to expansion and profit. The commonality emerged in a cabinet and agencies stocked with swamp dwellers scooped up from the muck as well as Wall St walleyes, off and running with a flurry of executive orders to loosen the flood gates. 
The peripheral Trump voters who took a chance because the alternative seemed unpalatable may be moving toward agreement with the millions of voters who chose any of the other candidates, but they, similar to Democrats in Congress, can do little to change the course of the administration except nibble around the edges until elections in 2018. Some suggest that hope may lie with Jared or Ivanka’s Trump modulation but we don’t even know what either’s political positions are except to say that Ivanka has been an effective spinner for her Daddy since her teens. If her proposed childcare plan for tax credits is any indication, she is clueless about the needs of most working mothers, a natural outgrowth of the rarefied circles in which she’s always lived. Well, she probably talks to the company secretaries but it’s unlikely that the conversation is honest. But whomever the current Trump whisperer may be, the Republican agenda is in no way friendly to anyone who isn’t wealthy, but people will have to find that out for themselves. Shifting to the international front, we may be dependent on the level headed largess of our allies and the restraint of our generals to keep us out of international war. 
Some states also require a social security card or W-2. Many people know their social security number, but don’t have a copy of the card. With increased security measures, a replacement card requires a birth certificate and additional identifying official documents, either mailed or presented in person. A W-2 requires employment; considering that the unemployment rates of African Americans varies from 16-80% in some areas compared to 3-5% for whites in most areas, the implications are obvious. Additional verification of residency, usually 2 pieces of mail, like a bank statement or utility bill can also be a barrier. Young, elderly and poor people often live in multifamily settings, more so since the economic downturn. There is only one person named on a utility bill, who may be the landlord. In addition, many poor and minorities do not have bank accounts, note the rise of check cashing and payday loan businesses. Beyond the documentation costs, there is the cost of the ID card itself. In addition, the time needed to obtain or present the documentation, often during work hours that many low wage earners can ill afford to miss. The accumulation of barriers are enough to deter even the most zealously committed to voting.
In states like Wisconsin, the government moved to limit access to polling places by curtailing the length of early voting. Early voting is critical to workers who can’t take time away from work or who have to travel long distances from work to their polling places. In Florida, where over 60% of early voters are African Americans, voting on the Sunday before the Tuesday of election day was eliminated, aimed at reducing church organized bus trips to polling places. Florida also used DMV address mismatches to remove voters from rolls. Timed just months before the 2012 presidential elections, people had little opportunity to appeal and were taken by surprise when they showed up to vote. 
The effectiveness of their handiwork is visible in the midterm elections of 2012 when the party with the most popular votes still lost control of the House of Representatives. Republicans won a 234-201 majority, even though the Democrats received 1.4 million more votes.
There’s no question that Trump’s mania about 3 million fraudulent votes costing him the popular vote victory that he so desperately wants to claim is the stuff of his narcissistic worldview. It is, literally insane. Our 45th President was as surprised as we all were that he won, despite repeated assertions by Kellyanne, mistress of momentary memory. Over the months, the burden of Trump’s perceived micro- and macro-aggressions against his success as president-elect have loosed his innermost demons. 45 must be the biggest and the best (pun intended from South African slang for penis, per Trevor Noah (
No doubt, the country has witnessed local manipulation of election results at the polls, particularly in the days of party machine politics. But the advent of computer ballots has provided more efficient data mining methods at the state level to disenfranchise large numbers. For example, Katherine Harris, the Florida Secretary of State had purged 91,000 felons from the state voting rolls before the 2000 elections. Greg Palast, in 
With great flourish and a table of folders containing blank papers, Trump announced he had created a trust of his business interests that would be managed by his sons, without revealing any details. Both the Donald and his lawyer, Sheri Dillon, assured us that his trust arrangement was compliant with ethics standards. As it turns out, his business trust includes quarterly reports from Donald Jr and a clause that allows Trump to draw out funds whenever his heart desires. Like so much of Trump, the trust is pure fiction. He is not separated from the companies’ decisions, or income either. This is flagrant violation of the intent, if not the letter of the law. While the GAO concluded that the Trump lease of the old Post Office which was renovated into a Trump hotel was allowable since the president did not receive income from it, that is now proven false by the terms of the trust. Recently, Wallace Global Fund, a client of the firm, Morgan Lewis & Bockius where Dillon is a partner, fired the firm in a scathing letter that characterized the trust as “it empowers and even encourages impeachable offenses and undetectable financial conflicts of interest by America’s highest official”. The letter details the myriad ways in which Trump’s continuing conflicts of interest and self-dealing violate the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, including the Trump DC hotel’s continuing attempts of to steal foreign business from rival hotels. Sean Spicer, in an attempted sleight of hand to draw attention away from conflicts of interest, held court for the donation of the $78,000 of 45’s salary so far as president, constitutionally designated as the only allowable presidential income, to the National Park system. The less than $100K is like a drop the ocean of the proposed dream budget cut of $1.5 million. 
Ivanka, flush with her own independent business interests, has another complicated web of conflicts of interests.
Perhaps Kushner’s expertise on China stems from his business deals with the Chinese. The Chinese government has not been subtle in trying to curry favor; in fact, business in China is notoriously rife with corruption. Soon after the election, Kushner personally negotiated a sweet deal with Anbang Insurance Group, the Chinese firm that owns the Waldorf Hotel, to unload a white elephant New York office building, 666 Fifth Avenue, which had languished since the Recession. The purchase price of $2.85 billion, the highest in history for any Manhattan building, does not include the additional $400 million cash payout to Kushner Companies, an amount some consider overly generous. Kushner has created another Trump family fake divestiture, where he sold his assets in the building to his brother and a trust controlled by his mother. The beauty of that kind of trust is that it’s completely retrievable at any time. Still, he retains some real estate holdings in Kushner companies which, with typical Trumpian transparency, have not been disclosed. After 5 Democratic Congressmen wrote to the White House lawyer with reservations about the deal, the deal has suddenly been halted, just days before Xi Ching Ping’s projected visit. Apparently, several other firms are now interested, perhaps nudged toward obscuring Kushner’s egregious conflicts of interests as the other party got more interested in it. 
Billionaire dark money conservatives coalesced behind Trump once he captured the nomination as their only hope, although some like the Koch brothers, were late to support. But much like the larger Republican umbrella, they have different political approaches. The Mercer Foundation of Robert and Rebekah, a father and daughter team, are primarily anti-Clinton, believing since Bill was Arkansas governor, that he had opponents murdered. Bannon, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and some of their protegees installed in White House staff positions are the source of the America First high notes in Trump’s rhetoric, like the Wall, intense vetting of Muslim refugees, aggressive ICE raids on Mexican immigrants, the Muslim ban, and more restrictive immigration. Domestically, the pair’s updated white supremacist nation state with global dominance philosophy has focused on extending minority voter disenfranchisement as well as reinforcing discriminatory criminal justice policies.
How did Jefferson Sessions and Steve Bannon become Brothers in Arms? Sessions, while Alabama senator, was a regular Breitbart reader and credited it as a major force in defeating a Congressional bipartisan immigration reform effort in 2014. Bannon and Sessions had known each other for over 2 years when, working with Stephen Miller, a top Session’s aide, they jointly developed a strategy to block immigration reform. Breitbart writers met with Sessions’ staff weekly during that period. Immigration for Sessions and Bannon was a central issue in their shared vision for a Christian European US.
For undocumented immigrants from south of the border, aggressive ICE raids are designed to make their targets feel hunted and unwelcome, fearful to live their lives as they have. Sessions has conceded as much; it’s an effort to get them to “self-deport”. Remember when Romney was ridiculed for that suggestion. His remarks were made without the full weight of law enforcement now in Sessions’ merciless hands. The February 20 guidelines call for immigration agents to refer “appropriate cases for criminal prosecution” which, in some cases, holds the prospect of long prison terms, obviously a worse alternative than deportation.
The Justice Department will be Grand Central for Sessions nationalist plans. Here is where the grip of law enforcement on minority communities will be tightened and shifted away from Obama initiated department programs addressing discrimination in law enforcement. Here, too, the judicial pursuit of voting rights enforcement will be replaced with enhanced efforts to disenfranchise minority and poor voters. Here, too, extreme limitation of immigration can be enforced and confirmed by judicial action while accompanied by aggressive ICE raids to enforce immigration laws under the guise of exporting criminals. It’s no accident that Sessions selected the DOJ for his Cabinet post. With the evocation of our national emergency, the path is paved to expanded powers. It is a post that will define who is an American and what rights they have. The Sessions DOJ will likely become a fortress buttressing the majority, such that majority can rule, rather than act as the defender of the minority as it has sometimes, but not always, functioned in past years stretching back to the days when it first established under President Grant to enforce Reconstruction.
The Justice Department under Obama pursued use of excessive force, unlawful arrest and racially discriminatory policing investigations in 25 departments with 20 investigations resulting in consent decrees, legal agreements that entail remedial changes monitored by the courts. Sessions has been outspoken in his opposition to any suggestion that police officers discriminate in policing, with Trump garnering endorsements and then votes from nearly 90% of the law enforcement community. Sessions has called court-monitored consent decrees, which have been used in desegregation cases as well, “one of the most dangerous, and rarely discussed, exercises of raw power.” He sees the core offense as federal interference with policing, not the systematically unlawful behavior by police. It’s a short leap of imagination to think police departments will feel unleashed to stop and harass Black men without indication and to shoot more unarmed Black men, just as they have done since Reconstruction and further, to ramp up violence in confrontations with increasing numbers of protesters, particularly those of color.
Remember when The CelebrityPresident said during the campaign that he could commit murder and still retain his flock of supporters? He understood that they were mesmerized, cocooned in an alternative reality summoned up by his rhetoric.
Trump is their Don Quixote, jousting at windmills completely alone while fending off Paul Ryan, the factions in the party, the mainstream media and even the weakling Democrats. Their alternative media circus which includes their Twitter and Facebook feeds, has encircled them in all the faux facts that count. An added bonus is the pundit “analysis” that tells them what to think.
Like primitive tribes gathered around their totem, Trump rally attendees are swaddled in the American flag; enormous ones that drape the venue, multiple flag poles on the stage and a huge stars and stripes image projected on a screen behind the podium. Attendees wear flags on their T-shirts or painted on their faces; flag pins in their lapels, on and on. A red Make America Great cap covers most heads; vendors hawk an assortment of other MAG paraphernalia. These symbols of unity consolidate the group in collective enthusiasm and awe, not just for Trump but for the enormity of the group itself, which has the feel of a large majority. This is a DJT-ecstasy rave.
oleblacklady 