Gyroscopic Investing

Scores of ex-national security officials said Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to build a border wall wasn’t justified

-- Today's WSJ, front page, & page A8

Who do you think is "behind the scenes" at the WSJ? Of course, it's big business, right? Does big business want open borders? Of course, they do. That's how the ponzi scheme economy keeps from collapsing, by importing more consumers and cheap labor. Heaven forbid that another Japan-style economic stagnation should happen here, even though Japan has salvaged its culture. Meanwhile American culture continues to disappear. Big business wants the money and couldn't care less about culture. It can create its own artificial culture at theme parks. No need for real culture.

I think the WSJ saying what they do only confirms that there is a real emergency at the border. Otherwise they wouldn't waste their breath.

Pretty much anything that comes out of the mainstream media these days should be questioned extensively.

If not mainstream media, where do you want all those ex security officials to voice their concerns, some tinfoil site?

If you agreed with them, you wouldn’t perceive any shadowy agenda.

Well, it is true that open borders are good for business. Keeps wages low, and business don't (directly) bear the the cost of illegal immigration.

But, the precedent set by this declaration isn't going to be good for business in future. What if the next Democratic president declares an emergency to deal with climate change, and calls for, say, a one time 10% tax on the value of every business? That would be just as legit as the intent to redirect funds from hurricane relief to building the wall.

(p.s. I'm quite happy not being an older guy. Maddy and I get to hold down the X chromosome fort around here.)

WiseOne wrote: ↑Tue Feb 26, 2019 8:21 pm Well, it is true that open borders are good for business. Keeps wages low, and business don't (directly) bear the the cost of illegal immigration.

But, the precedent set by this declaration isn't going to be good for business in future. What if the next Democratic president declares an emergency to deal with climate change, and calls for, say, a one time 10% tax on the value of every business? That would be just as legit as the intent to redirect funds from hurricane relief to building the wall.

(p.s. I'm quite happy not being an older guy. Maddy and I get to hold down the X chromosome fort around here.)

I'm not aware of any legal provision for the President to confiscate money from people by declaring a tax.
On the other hand, there are legal provisions for declaration of emergency which allow the President to redirect money already allocated by Congress to different purposes.

So this is an example of comparing apples and lake-effect snow.

"Meanwhile American culture continues to disappear. Big business wants the money and couldn't care less about culture."

As a stockholder you are big business. And what is "culture." We want immigrants who will increase GDP and not drain it, maybe instead of a border wall it should be an obstacle course

Libertarian666 wrote: ↑Tue Feb 26, 2019 8:50 pm

WiseOne wrote: ↑Tue Feb 26, 2019 8:21 pm ...
What if the next Democratic president declares an emergency to deal with climate change, and calls for, say, a one time 10% tax on the value of every business? That would be just as legit as the intent to redirect funds from hurricane relief to building the wall.

(p.s. I'm quite happy not being an older guy. Maddy and I get to hold down the X chromosome fort around here.)

...
I'm not aware of any legal provision for the President to confiscate money from people by declaring a tax.

FDR seized your gold by executive order. I’m sure they could think of something and not call it a tax.

OK got that about outright taxes. However there's lots of closely related possibilities as dualstow points out. Here's an interesting article on the power of the executive branch to seize property:

https://scholarship.law.edu/cgi/viewcon ... =lawreview

Looks like it's controversial, but there are precedents. Think it's possible that a president could order the seizure of coal plants and oil refineries under a climate-change emergency declaration?

Libertarian666 wrote: ↑Wed Feb 27, 2019 10:35 am

dualstow wrote: ↑Wed Feb 27, 2019 6:14 am

Libertarian666 wrote: ↑Tue Feb 26, 2019 8:50 pm
...
I'm not aware of any legal provision for the President to confiscate money from people by declaring a tax.

FDR seized your gold by executive order. I’m sure they could think of something and not call it a tax.

That was far before Trump's supposed "innovative" use of emergency declarations, so I don't understand the relevance.

Why does the passage of time make it irrelevant?

boglerdude wrote: ↑Wed Feb 27, 2019 12:26 am "Meanwhile American culture continues to disappear. Big business wants the money and couldn't care less about culture."

As a stockholder you are big business. And what is "culture." We want immigrants who will increase GDP and not drain it, maybe instead of a border wall it should be an obstacle course

What is culture? I googled it. It says culture is the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group. Are you saying that you don't believe that is actually a real thing? Do you enjoy traveling? When you go to China is it the same as going to Zimbabwe? Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Personally, I think it's a good thing. It makes traveling more enjoyable.

Believe it or not, America has a culture too. Big business is ruining our culture by encouraging immigration at rates that are too high to allow the immigrants to assimilate to our culture. Instead they tend to stay in their own groups and keep too much of their own culture. Is that a good thing? I say no. If they want to keep their own culture, why don't they stay in their own country and improve it from within? But it's really not the immigrants' fault. You can't blame them for wanting to better their own standard of living. It's the fault of the powers in this country for allowing too much legal and illegal immigration.

I have no idea whether you were born in this country or how old you are. I was born in the mid-1960s. I can certainly say that the America I live in today is quite different from the one I grew up in. I don't think the changes are for the better.

Libertarian666 wrote: ↑Wed Feb 27, 2019 11:47 am

dualstow wrote: ↑Wed Feb 27, 2019 11:05 am

Libertarian666 wrote: ↑Wed Feb 27, 2019 10:35 am

That was far before Trump's supposed "innovative" use of emergency declarations, so I don't understand the relevance.

Why does the passage of time make it irrelevant?

I don't understand the claim that Trump's use of an emergency declaration means that a future President is more likely to issue a confiscation order when the precedent is much older than that.

I see. WiseOne was making the case for Trump's recent "emergency" setting a precedent and you responded that the president doesn't have the power to suddenly tax. When I mentioned gold, it was just as an example of where-there's-a-will-there's-a-way, i.e. it wouldn't necessarily come in the form of a tax or be called a tax. I didn't mean the gold seizure itself as a sort of precedent that set things in motion.

> I have no idea whether you were born in this country or how old you are. I was born in the mid-1960s. I can certainly say that the America I live in today is quite different from the one I grew up in. I don't think the changes are for the better.

You're about 10 years older than me. Describe what you've personally seen and how it compares to the mass media narratives =)

moda0306 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 22, 2019 11:54 am

jacksonM wrote: ↑Tue Jan 22, 2019 11:41 am What's wrong with this picture...

The screenshot is from Bing news. Here is the link to the actual story. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/price-of-i ... ive-years/. Do you think it was just a mistake or does any negative story just get a photo of Trump by default?

I also noticed they used his "Douche-level-7" face rather than 8-10 (or 5-6 (he doesn't have a 1-4)).

Not only is he not even mentioned in the article, but the timeframe analyzed is 2012 thru 2016. Nothing of 2017 or 2018. No mention of republicans either.

Trump is a complete embarrassment of a human and President, but this isn't his baby.

Kriegsspiel wrote: ↑Tue Jan 22, 2019 11:55 am I'd say it's a algo issue (I see stories with headline pics that don't make sense all the time), or else they're blaming it on Trump. No doubt the algo issue is a low priority-fix, since they're probably getting all kinds of clicks from people who assume it's going to bash Trump on his insulin-policy.

Or maybe they're taking a page from those paid clickbait links at the bottom of news stories. You know the ones: "NY State Drivers Should Read This!" and there's a picture of a hot chick seductively leaning on a barn or whatever.

That's a good one. And yet we'll have to put up with the same people preaching to us that Trump is an outrageous threat to free speech when he calls them "fake news". Anybody who believes anything fed to them by the mainstream media deserves everything they get.

stuper1 wrote: ↑Thu Jul 11, 2019 2:47 pm That's a good one. And yet we'll have to put up with the same people preaching to us that Trump is an outrageous threat to free speech when he calls them "fake news". Anybody who believes anything fed to them by the mainstream media deserves everything they get.

lol. What do they get?

Fake news

What is the pejorative "mainstream" media? ABC, NBC, CBS, and I assume FOX and CNN as well?

Or is it whatever media that doesn't have your point of view?

I hate the discourse in this country lately.

Me too.

It's definitely getting harder to read the news. You have to really look for the bits of actual information, buried in the spew of opinion. Some of it is well justified, but a lot is based on nothing whatsoever.

The last article I read in the hopes of getting some actual information was about the health care bill that passed the Senate, to limit surprise billing. For some reason I thought that was important :-). After the promising title, the article went on a huge and frankly irrelevant anti-Trump spew, and then buried in the middle was a statement something like "For information on what's actually in the bill go the this link."

I went to the link and didn't bother reading the rest of the article. I wonder what proportion of the US population is reacting the same way and turning off to news? The answer may well be an important factor in the 2020 election.

What's the saying... The news used to tell you that something happened, then you had to decide what you thought about it. Now the news tells you how to think about something, and you have to figure out if it even happened.

dualstow wrote: ↑Tue Jul 23, 2019 5:59 am

stuper1 wrote: ↑Thu Jul 11, 2019 2:47 pm That's a good one. And yet we'll have to put up with the same people preaching to us that Trump is an outrageous threat to free speech when he calls them "fake news". Anybody who believes anything fed to them by the mainstream media deserves everything they get.

lol. What do they get?

"1984" We are getting to see 1984 in slow motion. Where facts are being scrubbed from the Internet, and propaganda taking it's place.

Cortopassi wrote: ↑Tue Jul 23, 2019 10:21 am What is the pejorative "mainstream" media? ABC, NBC, CBS, and I assume FOX and CNN as well?

Or is it whatever media that doesn't have your point of view?

I hate the discourse in this country lately.

I'd say for practical purposes that "mainstream media" basically means anything that reaches your eyeballs or ears easily, meaning that you don't have to dig for it a bit. Thus mainstream media includes all the sources listed above, including Fox.

Of course, as is well known, the problem with the mainstream media is that it's controlled by big business. The problem with that is that the interests of big business are generally unaligned with the interests of me, an upper middle class American. And how could they be aligned? Big business isn't even a person, except as a legal fiction. Really the only interest of big business is to make money. My interests as a human being are much wider than that. And even and especially in the sphere of money, big businesses interests are often unaligned with my interests.

All I'm saying is that we should all take essentially everything we hear from just about any news source with a huge grain of salt. Of course, we all know that, but then we get busy with our lives and sort of forget it, and before you know it we're commenting about some news story and hardly stopping to wonder whether what the story says is in fact correct and not hugely skewed. We may think, "Oh, this news story has little to do with something that big business is interested in, so therefore there's no reason to think that it could be biased," when in fact, if we thought about it a bit deeper, we would realize that big business does have an interest in that subject and the story very well may be biased.

Things could be a lot worse as far as the MSM goes.

Back in the old days all we had was the evening news on CBS, ABC, and NBC and publications like Time Magazine and Newsweek. The liberal bias was palpable.

When Cable and FoxNews came along it was therefore like a breath of fresh air for a paleo-conservative/libertarian like myself (for lack of a better description). No, I don't agree with everything they say on Fox and their bias in the other direction is obvious but I think they give more air time to other points of view than any other network does.

Liberals don't seem to like this and I get the impression they would rather go back to the way it used to be.

Kriegsspiel wrote: ↑Wed Jul 24, 2019 9:37 am What's the saying... The news used to tell you that something happened, then you had to decide what you thought about it. Now the news tells you how to think about something, and you have to figure out if it even happened.

That's awesome and sounds pretty accurate to me.

jacksonM wrote: ↑Wed Jul 24, 2019 1:04 pm Things could be a lot worse as far as the MSM goes.

Back in the old days all we had was the evening news on CBS, ABC, and NBC and publications like Time Magazine and Newsweek. The liberal bias was palpable.

When Cable and FoxNews came along it was therefore like a breath of fresh air for a paleo-conservative/libertarian like myself (for lack of a better description). No, I don't agree with everything they say on Fox and their bias in the other direction is obvious but I think they give more air time to other points of view than any other network does.

Liberals don't seem to like this and I get the impression they would rather go back to the way it used to be.

I think that big business has both "conservatives" and "liberals" in their back pockets.

Yah, I don't think that what we're seeing in the mainstream press has a lot to do with business interests. Otherwise they'd be a lot more favorable to Trump. I think it's more of a group ideology that somehow got disconnected from reality, and then moved on from there. It's got more in common with a fundamentalist religious cult than to any rational, self-serving set of interests.

In all fairness, the Right is just as susceptible to these things as the Left. Remember the bad old days of Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority?