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   solarbird (solarbird@solarbird.net)'s status on Tuesday, 12-Nov-2024 02:59:29 JST solarbird
   tariffs, mass deportation – the pieces fit together

   I think I’ve squared a circle. Doesn’t mean it’s real; just that I’ve found a way to square it.

   Walk with me.

   Let’s say you’re Trump and you’ve promised mass deportations and huge tariffs on China and other countries.

   Let’s say that mass deportation is incredibly expensive – maybe you’re aware that Hitler’s camps and extermination programme were eating 13% of Nazi Germany’s GDP in the middle of their wars of conquest.

   Let’s say you’re also aware that this will take years and years and years, because there’s literally no way to do this quickly. Physically, I mean. 15 million people can’t be thrown out overnight, or even over months. It’ll be years.

   Let’s also say you want to keep inflation down, particularly to keep prices from skyrocketing due to your tariff policies. Tariffs are, I remind you, a tax an imports that get paid by the importer, and which are passed on to the customer. They are inflationary, by design. At least, until and unless they torpedo the economy entirely, at which point, well, you’ve set off a second Great Depression, just like Smoot and Hawley.

   Now, let’s say that it’s very important to you to keep wages down as well, because nobody wants to pay workers if they can avoid it. If you want to bring back a lot of manufacturing in an already-tight labour market, that’s going to raise labour costs. It just is.

   So you assign an amoral monster like Tom Homan – author of Trump’s Family Separation policy – as the “czar” of immigration. He’s promising the largest deportation force in history and recently said his answer to preventing “family separation” is to expel the entire family – citizenship be damned.

   (He’s also a contributor to Project 2025 and a visiting fellow at Heritage Foundation. Project 2025 absolutely is the agenda. All of it.)

   Then you start talking to people you’re already very friendly with, the operators of private prisons. They are utterly ready and looking forward to the new policies. They see it as an opportunity to double – or better – the size of their evil industry in all its forms.

   Your inner circle have already acknowledged you’ll have to build camps – lots of them, big ones. You’ll call them “prisons” or “detention facilities” or “military camps,” not “concentration camps,” you certainly won’t call them that. Let’s say “facilities.”

   Prison “facilities” are already well known for requiring prison labour, and for their pennies-per-hour payment to inmates. Private prisons have pushed the envelope on this in many ways; prison labour is a profit centre. One I was working against, before the fascist era.

   So.

   Imagine, if you would, the very easy jump.

   You’ve got to do something with these hundreds of thousands of imprisoned people, don’t you.

   Imagine expulsions taking months, then years. Years at a time. Perhaps they stop working so hard on speeding up the process. Perhaps they slow-walk it, timed to, say, suit the availability of “facility” beds.

   Of course you’ll put them to work. A rotating cast of “facility” workers – “prison workers” – worked slowly through the system so there’s no one there quite long enough to start organising.

   Paid, technically. At pennies for the hour, as a token, a pretence that it’s not slavery. But, of course, it is. You recoup the pennies you have to pay by charging them for everything. Maybe even their bed.

   And just like that you have highly profitable… North Korean-style labour camps, with entire families of workers imprisoned, for who knows how long while they are put to work as factory labour for the private prison companies which become the new internal outsourcers of zero-cost labour.

   Slavery, though not by name.

   Maybe you’ll tie camp expansions to increases in tariffs. Raise them in parallel, timed so that the internal outsourcing absorbs the cost of the new tariffs. And then look – no price inflation, no wage inflation.

   And whole new class of people to look down upon forever, if you like.

   It’s quite the plan. Very neat. Very clean. Given that Trump voters actively want “military camps” used against immigrants, it’ll be a very easy sell.

   And very, very profitable. Slave camps always have been, really.

   And all you have to be is an abomination upon the earth.

   And all your supporters have to do is let you be one.

   Is that the plan? I don’t know.

   All I know is that all the pieces seem to fit.

   #fascism #politics #uspolitics

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   Valerie Roney (vlrny@disabled.social)'s status on Saturday, 31-Aug-2024 02:51:34 JST Valerie Roney

   K. Real talk here kids...

   8mo ago covid left me with damage to the switchboard part of my brain, which tanks my ability to turn thoughts into words and to process new experiences. I struggle to communicate and even mundane things overwhelm me. I can't even word how isolating this is.

   So if you would like to not get brain damage,

   If you would like to not see the people you love get brain damage,

   Then like maybe wear a mask yeah?

   Covid ain't playin'

   #yallMasking #covidIsNotOver

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   jwz (jwz@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 22-Aug-2024 03:38:55 JST jwz

   Rarely have I seen a misuse of the tools at hand more egregious than whatever the hell this is.

   So many terrible decisions had to stack on top of each other to make this happen.

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   fluffy@baraag.net's status on Sunday, 16-Jun-2024 04:35:20 JST fluffy

   in reply to

   @waltercool
   I've always had a “hotdog water” opinion of Musky: he's a decent business and obviously a nerd and a troll, but he's just (((rich))) and that's why people know who he is.

   When I first heard of “grimes” it was in the context that she didn't release lyrics because she was “experimenting with voice as an instrument” as if that's not what music is.

   So when I say that this legal document sounds like a joke from the something awful forums, read that document in this voice.

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   DrALJONES (draljones@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2024 07:52:22 JST DrALJONES

   Report

   The Israeli press reports that Netanyahu is "deeply worried" that the International Criminal Court may be on the verge of issuing arrest warrants for him & some of his ministers.

   Although Israel is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, the State of Palestine is.

   So the ICC has jurisdiction over war crimes committed in Gaza & the West Bank.

   https://www.juancole.com/2024/04/netanyahu-warrants-criminal.html

   #IsraeliWarCrimes ..

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   ראָב עפֿן (dukepaaron@babka.social)'s status on Monday, 22-Apr-2024 09:28:06 JST ראָב עפֿן

   In the interests of annoying everyone in the hard line politics and morals sportsball team model of life...

   There's nothing inherently antisemitic about protesting to end a war. Arresting peaceful protesters on college campuses for civil disobedience is not a great look. Regardless of whether you agree with them or not.

   On the flipside, chanting things like "yehuda yehuda," "we're all Hamas," or "Remember the 7th of October! That will happen not one more time, not five more times, not 10 more times, not 100 more times, not 1000 more times, but 10,000 times!" surely is all meant to be pirposely antisemitic.

   Holding a sign that reads “Al-Qassam’s next target" with an arrow pointing to a group of Jews isn't anti-war or even anti-zionism. It's fucking crazy is what it is.

   So stop strong arming protests. They're normal. Even if they have very fucked up elements in them.

   Protestors, you got a 'nazi bar' problem and you should fix it or fuck off. There's no excuse for this shit.