Ian Welsh

Drill, Baby, Drill; Screw Immigrants; End the 14th Amendment; Climate Change Ho! Trump’s Day One Actions

On January 21, 2025

The Guardian has a pretty good list of Trump’s executive actions day one.

What can I say, it’s an old picture, but I like it

January 6th pardons are the most interesting, to me. Trump should have granted these pardons before leaving office in 2020 but I’m sure they’re still a great relief to those charged or imprisoned. (I actually know one guy who wound up in prison because of J6.) When I say “should” I’m not expressing support for them storming the capital, just noting that a smart leader protects his most fanatical followers. Might need them again, after all.

There are a bunch of oil and climate related orders, which amount to “drill more, and screw any anti-climate change policies or agreements” including leaving the Paris accords. I’m not that worked up, Biden massively increased drilling too, he just protected a few places from it. As for the Paris agreement, it’s always been a dead letter. I notice that Musk has skated by, at least so far, Trump got rid of the “goal” to have half of all autos be electrical, but didn’t get rid of the subsidies, without which Musk would lose hundreds of billions of dollars .

Trump also ordered more work on the wall (Biden hadn’t actually stopped building barriers), ended appointments, seems to have effectively ended refugees and most impressively ordered all government departments not to issue documents related to birthright citizenship of any children born to illegal refugees. This is in direct violation of the 14th amendment as written, but given the makeup of the Supreme Court, the 14th may be a dead letter. He’s also declared an “emergency” so that troops can be deployed to the border, which would otherwise be illegal.

He has declared Mexican cartels terrorists and I’d guess he’s thinking of launching raids across the border, without Mexican government permission, which is going to be a nightmare.

All genders other than male and female have been declared non-existent, all policies allowing or encouraging gender change are disallowed, and the government can’t fund anything. Anti-trans hysteria continues. Pure pandering from Trump, as he’s suggested in the past that he doesn’t really care but is happy to whip up crowds with it. DEI related executive orders have been rescinded. Won’t do a thing to help the competency crisis, but more red meat.

Trump has also removed Schedule F protection for Federal civil servants from arbitrary dismissal. This will be challenged, but the consensus seems to be he’s within his rights. I’m not super worked about this, winning political parties should be able to put their people in place and it will work to the advantage of future Presidents as well.

Overall there’s not much here that’s surprising. For immigrants the real question is his planned immigrant roundups and expelling, which seem likely to start soon. The border guards were always his most loyal servants among the paramilitary forces and I’m sure they’re salivating at the opportunity to beat people up and degrade them.

The most interesting thing is that Musk has thus far bought himself a reprieve. Were I him, I’d showboat less, because Trump doesn’t like people who steal his limelight. Musk was essentially created by Obama era policies and subsidies favoring both private spaceflight and electric cars, and he can be destroyed just as easily by a hostile President.

Has Israel Lost?

On January 20, 2025

There’s a lot of celebrating of the Gaza ceasefire. Hamas troops are openly on the streets, hostages from both sides are being returned (that only Israeli captives are called hostages is ludicrous) and it’s clear that Israel came nowhere close to destroying Hamas. This is an impressive accomplishment, Gaza is only 25×5 miles: Gaza is tiny. Hamas’s tunnel strategy clearly worked.

That said, Gaza is a wreck.

The official civilian casualty numbers are under 100K, but I suspect a full population study will find the death toll far higher. All Gaza hospitals are non-operational, often destroyed entirely and a high percentage of the nurses and doctors are dead. Water and power infrastructure has been smashed, and even if Israel turns their side back on most of Gaza will be without.

A great deal will depend on whether the ceasefire sticks. Netanyahu has suggested that the war will start up again.

So, with all due respect to Hamas, Yemen and Hezbollah, it’s going to depend on Trump. Of the three Yemen has the most leverage, it can keep attacking if Israel keeps violating the ceasefire and the only way to get it to stop is to keep the ceasefire, which will re-open shipping as nothing else can, but by itself it’s not sufficient.

However ultimately Trump has plenty of leverage. As Yitzak Brick, the ex-IDF general said:

“All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the U.S. The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability. … Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.”

The war doesn’t start up again if Trump is willing to use his leverage. It’s that simple. Trump doesn’t seem to like war, but he’s also surrounded by Zionists and hawks. Israel has already, as usual, violated the ceasefire, as it has thousands of times in Southern Lebanon. It will attempt to find an excuse to re-start full scale bombing.

But if Trump really doesn’t want that, it doesn’t happen. That simple. Israel still has tens of thousands of internal refugees, a huge loss of middle and small sized businesses and it also requires US financial and economic aid. Israel can’t fight if Trump brings down the hammer.

I will note, that at least so far, it appears that those who refused to vote for Biden because of the Gaza genocide were justified, and that those Muslim leaders who appeared publicly with Trump appear vindicated. Biden was pro-genocide, and refused to his leverage to stop the war. Trump, even before taking power, said that if the hostages weren’t returned by January 20th, there’d be hell to pay, and lo-and-behold, on January 19th the hostages were returned. Trump’s envoy forced Netanyahu to meet him during Shabbat, after Netanyahu initially refused.

Israel has a great deal of power in the West, thru its operatives and donations, but it is the tail to America’s dog, and a determined President, like Reagan in Lebanon or George Bush Sr. can stand against if they decide to. Since Trump can’t have a third term, he doesn’t need to kiss AIPAC’s ass.

We’ll see how it plays out, but at least the start has been promising.

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – January 19, 2025

By Tony Wikrent

On January 19, 2025

Can nonviolent struggle defeat a dictator? This database emphatically says yes

By Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

[Waging Non-Violence, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 01-14-2024]

“[T]he Global Nonviolent Action Database, or GNAD, built by the Peace Studies department at Swarthmore College. Freely accessible to the public, this database — which launched under my direction in 2011 — contains over 1,400 cases of nonviolent struggle from over a hundred countries, with more cases continually being added by student researchers. [T]he database details at least 40 cases of dictators who were overthrown by the use of nonviolent struggle, dating back to 1920. These cases — which include some of the largest nations in the world, spanning Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America — contradict the widespread assumption that a dictator can only be overcome by violence. What’s more, in each of these cases, the dictator had the desire to stay, and possessed violent means for defense. Ultimately, though, they just couldn’t overcome the power of mass nonviolent struggle.”

[Lambert Strether: “I would like for this to be true. I would also want to check those 40 cases for contamination by spook-driven color revolution, and the geopolitical context.”]

How the West Was Lost

Krzysztof Tyszka-Drozdowski [American Affairs Journal, via Naked Capitalism 01-18-2025]

REVIEW ESSAY
Le Défaite de l’Occident

by Emmanuel Todd

Gallimard, 2024, 384 pages

….European elites have yielded to what Todd calls the anti-ideology of “Europeanism.” It is an anti-ideology insofar as it does not allow for any active political community to emerge: the upper classes have been captivated by the belief that nations should not exist. In this respect, Europeanism is very similar to Anglo-Saxon ultraliberalism, which also dismisses the nation as a pernicious fiction. According to Todd, this belief manifests in various ways, primarily through efforts to abolish nations via European integration or to fragment them by geographically separating minorities, ultimately increasing atomization in the name of multiculturalism.2 Without a shared moral compass, society disintegrates “into isolated bubbles, confined to their own problems, pleasures and pains.” In this condition, the governing establishment constitutes nothing more than another “autistic group,” says Todd, with the only difference being its greater visibility.3

At a more practical level, the abandonment of the national framework in economic thinking has led to many policy mistakes that have weakened European states. Alternatives to liberalism have been stamped out, reducing economic policy exclusively to making the labor market more flexible or to cutting public spending. Another consequence of rejecting the concept of the nation is the neglect of demographic issues….

Why Biden May Matter

David Leonhardt [New York Times, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 01-16-2024]

“one major part of Biden’s agenda has a decent chance of surviving. It was the idea that animated much of the legislation he signed — namely, that the federal government should take a more active role in both assisting and regulating the private sector than it did for much of the previous half-century. This idea has yet to acquire a simple name. The historian Gary Gerstle has called it the end of the neoliberal order….

The philosophy didn’t originate with Biden, but he meaningfully shifted the country toward it, first as a candidate in 2020 and then as president. He moved the Democratic Party away from decades of support for trade liberalization and imposed tariffs on China. He pursued an industrial policy to build up sectors important to national security (like semiconductors) or future prosperity (like clean energy). And his administration was more aggressive about restraining corporate power than any in decades, blocking mergers, cracking down on ‘junk fees’ and regulating drug prices….

Trump will surely undo major parts of the Biden agenda, especially on climate change and some aspects of corporate regulation. In other ways, though, Trump is part of the shift away from neoliberalism. He romped through the 2016 Republican primaries partly because he was more hostile to trade, China and cuts to Medicare and Social Security than other Republican politicians. Some of Trump’s second-term nominees, including for labor secretary and head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, are hardly small-government neoliberals. Neither is Vice President-elect JD Vance.”

Wall Street could get a boost from $1 trillion in buybacks, Goldman says

[Reuters, via Naked Capitalism 01-18-2025]

Goldman estimates that companies could spend some $1.07 trillion on buying back their own stock this year

The Competency Crisis Is Not About DEI

Ian Welsh, January 15, 2025

That DEI (women and brown people) are responsible is a constant right wing cry.

The competency crisis is a result of an economy where making money without making a product is easier than making something. We prioritized financial profits—multi generational rises in asset prices that were faster than inflation. Housing went up. Stocks went up. Private equity earned money buy buying companies, larding them up with debt, and running them into the ground. Profits were juiced by moving production offshore and engaging in regulatory and labor arbitrage.

The best profit came from playing financial games and rentierism. You didn’t have to make anything or delivery anything, you just had to find a way to squeeze money out of something by making it go up faster than inflation, or by destroying something which was already built, taking all the future value now and giving it to yourself….

Everyone wanted to make money without having to create to get it. Mostly they either wanted to get unearned money from appreciation, to destroy what others had built, or to capture a market in an oligopoly or monopoly so they could juice prices.

Meanwhile, the manufacturing floor moved to China and elsewhere. The people who knew how to make things retired, moved to other jobs, retired and eventually died.

We can’t build most things because we haven’t prioritized building things, or getting better at building things since the 70s. The eighties are where predatory capitalism took hold, and since then the whole game has been rentierism, unearned gains, predation and arbitrage….

Global power shift

The State of Western Warcraft

Lee Slusher [via Naked Capitalism 01-15-2025]

Britain’s post-imperial delusion

[Unherd, via Naked Capitalism 01-15-2025]

The Tik-Tok Ban Is Hypocritical Nonsense

On January 17, 2025

The justification for the TikTok ban is that it supposedly collects a ton of data.

TikTok’s data collection practices are insane. The app gather data that other apps normally consider off limits, including the content of users’ private messages, and the full contents of a user’s device contacts.

I agree, this is insane. But it isn’t unusual, and it isn’t even the worst in class.

That’s a lot of data – but it’s worth noting that TikTok does not seem to collect more data than other social media companies. A privacy researcher working with the Washington Post found that TikTok gathers less data than Facebook in some cases.

So it’s obviously not about data collection. As for sharing with the Chinese government, well, Google sells user data to the Chinese thru third parties.

Perhaps it has something to do with TikTok users being against genocide?

But most revealing of all is that Biden and Trump are both trying to avoid a TikTok shutdown. See, what Congress wants is the Chinese parent company to sell TikTok to an American. But TikTok has refused and has said it will shut down on the 19th.

And here Biden is saying he won’t enforce the shutdown, and Trump saying he wants to find a solution.

It’s a shakedown.

Whatever it is, it isn’t because Congress has suddenly decided to crack down on apps collecting too much user data.

The Tech-Company Fad For Laying Off “Low Performers” Is A Bad Idea

On January 17, 2025

Problem is that most performance reviews have nothing to do with performance. They ask other people to rate you, often the so-called 360 degree rating, but sometimes it’s just your boss. Problem is, people suck at rating.

General Electric, once one of the most important companies in America started firing the bottom 10% of performers every year when Jack Welch took over. Seems smart, right? Strangely, however, GE was driven into the ground by Welch. It made a lot of money, for a while, but it was burning down the house and now it’s a has been company. The routine firing wasn’t the only reason, but it was part of it.

Lately I’m seeing companies like Meta and Microsoft saying they’re doing large lay-offs of the lowest performers. Seems smart, eh?

what you find in statistical studies is that their ratings only correlate to their own personality. We don’t see other people, we see ourselves. Groups don’t make this better; increasing the number of people who are bad at rating others doesn’t, in aggregate, turn the ratings good. Everyone is wrong. (There’s a bunch of other statistical stuff here, but what it comes down to is everyone is that there is NO way to measure the performance of knowledge workers.

Generally the best thing to do, counter-intuitive as it is, is have people rate themselves. When asking others, the questions are:

Who do you plan to promote?

Who do you go to get X done well?

Who do you go to when you need extraordinary results.

This is still subjective information, but it is reliable.

The better question to ask during lay-offs is “does this job need to be done?” If it does, unless it’s clear the person isn’t doing his job (in which case they should have already been fired), then lay them off.

Lay-offs generally do more harm than good. There’s plenty of evidence of this. Companies don’t lay-off into greatness, it’s a sign something is wrong and muscle gets cut at least as often as fat.

But using performance reviews (which, as they exist, should be tossed anyway) is extra stupid even if it seems like “duh, of course” idea.

Doctorow Has the Best Idea for How Canada Should Retaliate to Trump’s Tariffs + Make It So Americans Can’t Drive

On January 16, 2025

Just break the IP laws and set up app stores with 5% feeds. Create jail break kits for John Deere tractors, and so on.

There’s no reason that a Canadian app store would have to confine itself to Canadian software authors, either. Canadian app stores could offer 5% commissions on sales to US and global software authors, and provide jailbreaking kits that allows device owners all around the world to install the Canadian app stores where software authors don’t get ripped off by American Big Tech companies.

Canadian companies like Honeybee already make “front-ends” for John Deere tractors – these are the components that turn a tractor into a plow, or a thresher, or another piece of heavy agricultural equipment. Honeybee struggles constantly to get its products to interface with Deere tractors, because Deere uses digital locks to block its products:

https://honeybee.ca/

Canada could produce jailbreaking kits for John Deere tractors, too – not just for Honeybee. Every ag-tech company in the world would benefit from commercially available, professionally supported John Deere jailbreaking kits. So would farmers, because these kits would restore farmers’ Right to Repair their own tractors:

This is the ultimate “break glass in case of fire” situation. US elites make a ton of their money from IP, and breaking it would hurt them extremely. It’s something I thought Russia could do in the face of American sanctions, but why not Canada? If the US won’t keep its deals with us, any deals we have with it are ours to break.

And Doctorow’s right that this is the perfect retaliation: any sort of exit-tariffs or retaliatory tariffs hurt Canada too. This just hurts the US, and hurts the decision makers, not ordinary people. Heck, many of them might benefit.

To make this really work, and make sure the population backs it, share half the profits with Canadians: just split them evenly.

If the US wants Canada to not be its good ally, then why not become a semi-neutral country? We can sell to the US and China and Europe, and become a data haven.

The other, less fun, but very devastating thing to do is to cut off raw crude. US refineries are reliant on Canadian crude oil, and by about a month after Canada doing so there would be absolute shortages of gasoline in half of America. Not “the price is high”, but “we don’t have it.” Canada can handle this for a few months. Just cover the company losses and insist they keep paying workers until we say otherwise.

Finally, and obviously, all countries being hit my Trump tariffs should get together, support each other and work to hurt the US and Trump as much as possible. Trump’s handed us allies, we should use them.

The Competency Crisis Is Not About DEI

On January 15, 2025

That DEI (women and brown people) are responsible is a constant right wing cry.

The competency crisis is a result of an economy where making money without making a product is easier than making something. We prioritized financial profits—multi generational rises in asset prices that were faster than inflation. Housing went up. Stocks went up. Private equity earned money buy buying companies, larding them up with debt, and running them into the ground. Profits were juiced by moving production offshore and engaging in regulatory and labor arbitrage.

The best profit came from playing financial games and rentierism. You didn’t have to make anything or delivery anything, you just had to find a way to squeeze money out of something by making it go up faster than inflation, or by destroying something which was already built, taking all the future value now and giving it to yourself. Even the (old) Middle Class got in on this, by buying houses when they were cheap, watching them appreciate faster than wages, then selling them when old and moving south to be have their bums wiped in cheaper southern states by brown immigrants.

Everyone wanted to make money without having to create to get it. Mostly they either wanted to get unearned money from appreciation, to destroy what others had built, or to capture a market in an oligopoly or monopoly so they could juice prices.

Meanwhile, the manufacturing floor moved to China and elsewhere. The people who knew how to make things retired, moved to other jobs, retired and eventually died.

We can’t build most things because we haven’t prioritized building things, or getting better at building things since the 70s. The eighties are where predatory capitalism took hold, and since then the whole game has been rentierism, unearned gains, predation and arbitrage.

DEI doesn’t much matter in comparison. The people running the economy for the last 45 years have been mostly white males, and that doesn’t matter either. Women or brown people would have done the same thing. Margaret Thatcher was a woman, and one of the founders of this mindset.

No one’s competent at actually doing things, except profit extraction, because our societies haven’t prioritized doing anything but extracting profit for over 45 years. Everyone who lived in a society that was about really delivering products and making things is dead or retired.

if you want a competent society again, make it so that no one can get wealthy, let alone rich, without really making something or improving people’s lives. And no, Facebook and Google and so on don’t count, because they were started as good, and made shitty to increase profits. That’s the opposite of what’s needed. (AI in the US will be the same.)