Puterbac News Network and Political Discussion Thread

[bluetick]

Fox News Division all over this story. Fox Cable News primetime teams not allowed to associate with those losers.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/02 ... laims.html

[bluetick]

Is anybody besides il Douche in favor of a giant military parade?

Republican Senator Epically Disses Trumps Military Parade Idea
http://www.nola.com/national_politics/2 ... nnedy.html

[Professor Tiger]

He’s trolling the Left. And it’s working. That happens a lot.

If we have any tanks that aren’t inoperable for lack of parts, I’d rather have them in Estonia or Western Ukraine, pointed at the Russians, than tearing up pavement in DC.

[Professor Tiger]

Rand Paul has long rated a “Peace Be Upon Him” from Professor Tiger. But tonight he is earning the first “Peace Be Upon Him First Class.”

For decades the GOP has touted themselves as the party of fiscal responsibility. But they never governed like that. They spend as wildly as the Democrats. Math-averse budgets and open borders are the only things that the two parties agree on. The current budget is a perfect example.

Rand Paul is a lone voice crying in the wilderness on this issue. God bless him.

[hedge]

I wish you were crying in the wilderness...

[Professor Tiger]

That’s what I do here every day.

PS, congrats on the game last night.

[bluetick]

prof's former hero, always at odds with prof's adopted hero

Like Horatius at the bridge, or the boy who stood on the burning deck whence all but he had fled, or the Dutch boy who saved the city by putting his finger in the dike — pick your analogous heroism — the Trump administration last week acted to stanch the flood of foreign-made washing machines that are being imported because Americans want them. The stanching will be accomplished by quotas and stiff (up to 50 percent) tariffs, which are taxes collected at the border and paid by American consumers. Americans also will pay higher prices for washing machines made domestically by Whirlpool, which sought this protectionism, from which it instantly profited: In Monday’s after-hours trading, Whirlpool’s stock rose 3 percent. When protectionism is rampant, no bad deed goes unrewarded.

The washing machine drama about “putting (a faction of) America first” cannot be industrial policy — government rather than the market picking winners and losers. And it cannot be government redistribution of wealth. And it cannot be crony capitalism. It cannot be those things because Republicans oppose those things and control policymaking.
Next, and soon, will come a government decision about the problem, as our protectors see it, of menacingly inexpensive steel imports, concerning which the administration is pretending to deliberate. The charade of thinking will end with the imposition of yet more steel tariffs/taxes, joining the 149 (some as high as 266 percent) targeting many of the over 110 countries and territories from which America imports steel. Twenty-four of the existing duties target Chinese steel, which is just less than 3 percent of U.S. steel imports. America’s supposedly embattled steel industry is producing more than it did during World War II, and every year in this decade more than 10 percent of American-made steel goods has been exported.

Imposition of the new tariffs/taxes will be done solely by the president, exercising discretion granted to presidents by various laws, including one passed in December 1974, when Congress evidently thought that Watergate, then fresh in memory, had taught that presidents were not sufficiently imperial. Then, as now, Congress seemed to think it had more important things to do than set trade policy.

In his new book “Clashing Over Commerce,” Dartmouth economist Douglas A. Irwin explains that the steel industry was a powerful advocate of protectionism until the 1892 opening of Minnesota’s Mesabi iron ore range, which gave steel producers cost advantages that turned their attention to export markets. The industry’s trade problems began when, in July 1959, the United Steelworkers shut domestic steel production down for 116 days — the longest industrial strike in U.S. history — and steel-consuming industries found alternative suppliers and materials. Desperate management purchased labor peace with increased wages that by the 1980s were 95 percent higher than the average in manufacturing, and soon U.S. steel was priced out of foreign markets. Intermittently since then, the industry has sought and received protection.

In 2002, George W. Bush imposed tariffs that caused steel prices to surge, costing more jobs in steel-using industries than then (BEG ITAL)existed(END ITAL) in steel-making. (Today there are upward of 7 times more steel-using than steel-making jobs.) The tariffs cost $400,000 a year for every steel-making job saved, and cost $4 billion in lost wages. Especially hard hit in 2002 were three states — Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania — that in 2016 voted for today’s protectionist president.
Last June, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who became a billionaire by plunging into the steel industry simultaneously with Bush offering it succor, said that “since we are the world’s largest importer of steel, we’re the main victim of the overcapacity” in the global steel industry. This puzzled George Mason University’s Don Boudreaux, who wondered “just how our being the world’s largest buyer of steel makes us victims of the alleged overcapacity.”

Fomenting spurious anxieties about national security is the first refuge of rent-seeking scoundrels who tart up their protectionism as patriotism when they inveigle government into lining their pockets with money extracted from their fellow citizens. Sugar producers are ludicrously protected in the name of “food security.” Most of U.S. steel imports come from four important allies: Canada, South Korea, Mexico, Brazil. The coming steel tariffs/taxes will mean that defense dollars will buy fewer ships, tanks and armored vehicles, just as the trillion infrastructure dollars the administration talks about will buy fewer bridges and other steel-using projects. As Henry George said, with protectionism a nation does to itself in peacetime what an enemy tries to do to it in war.

George Will is a twice weekly columnist for the Washington Post. His columns are syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group.

[Professor Tiger]

Based on his lifetime achievement, George Will still rates a "Peace Be Upon Him Sort Of" in the official Professor Tiger rating algorythm.

[DooKSucks]

How did you book your trip, Tick?

We did St. Augustine on our own for two days, then took a RCL boat to Mexico and Cuba. For the latter, special visas required as well as State Dept. waivers (they are commies, after all).

Side note: RCL brought a 1990 ship out of mothballs and refurbished it because Cuban ports can't handle big ships. We docked opposite a destroyer that looked like it served in WWII (fully operational, though).

How was the OFAC process? What were the grounds you used to get a license from Treasury to go?

[Professor Tiger]

Since you’re here DS, congrats on last night’s victory.

[bluetick]

How was the OFAC process? What were the grounds you used to get a license from Treasury to go?

Signed an OFAC form stating we were there for educational purposes only, and that we were prohibited from engaging in financial activities with a mile-long list of entities. Another doc had us certifying that we weren't there to meet with subversives. Penalties for bringing in contraband etc. Oh and some language about how Cuba's still a 'restricted' destination and the State Dept. won't guarantee our well-being if the relationship shit hits the fan. heh


While we were there Fidel Castro's son committed suicide, allegedly....threw himself out of a 4th story window at a sanitarium, allegedly. Our guide, a regular chatterbox, wasn't allowed to discuss it.

[DooKSucks]

How was the OFAC process? What were the grounds you used to get a license from Treasury to go?

Signed an OFAC form stating we were there for educational purposes only, and that we were prohibited from engaging in financial activities with a mile-long list of entities. Another doc had us certifying that we weren't there to meet with subversives. Penalties for bringing in contraband etc. Oh and some language about how Cuba's still a 'restricted' destination and the State Dept. won't guarantee our well-being if the relationship shit hits the fan. heh


While we were there Fidel Castro's son committed suicide, allegedly....threw himself out of a 4th story window at a sanitarium, allegedly. Our guide, a regular chatterbox, wasn't allowed to discuss it.

Did the prohibited businesses list screw up any of your plans? Do you have to keep track of where you spend money? Do they want to know the details for the "educational purposes"?

Did you do any of the Hemingway stuff?

[bluetick]

Did the prohibited businesses list screw up any of your plans? Do you have to keep track of where you spend money? Do they want to know the details for the "educational purposes"?

Sure enough, Americans are supposed to keep a log of their activities. They didn't take ours though (the wife was pissed, heh). The exit part was a snap - not so much the entry.

Did you do any of the Hemingway stuff?

Snapped some pics of his favorite speak-easy - wasn't open in the a.m.

[Professor Tiger]

You didn't take Pilar out for a spin?

[bluetick]

The big mobster hotels are still there: the Nationale and Meyer Lansky's Riviera..preserved just the way the were in '59. Still the modern showpieces of the skyline. Whereas the fucking Soviets ruined pretty much everything they touched aesthetically speaking.

[DooKSucks]

Did the prohibited businesses list screw up any of your plans? Do you have to keep track of where you spend money? Do they want to know the details for the "educational purposes"?

Sure enough, Americans are supposed to keep a log of their activities. They didn't take ours though (the wife was pissed, heh). The exit part was a snap - not so much the entry.

Did you do any of the Hemingway stuff?

Snapped some pics of his favorite speak-easy - wasn't open in the a.m.

Does the log require receipts?

[hedge]

No need to stop with aesthetics in their case...

[Professor Tiger]

The big mobster hotels are still there: the Nationale and Meyer Lansky's Riviera..preserved just the way the were in '59. Still the modern showpieces of the skyline.

Sounds like Hyman Roth’s disbursement of the hotels in Havana were not respected by the Castro regime.

[youtube]ZwxIG990EuM[/youtube]

[bluetick]

Roth = Lansky and Santa Domingo = Havana. My favorite alltime movie is either I or II..a tie. Crazy that puter has seen neither.

Does the log require receipts?

Nope. American's credit cards aren't accepted (again), so everything is a cash transaction. No CC, no receipt (except in hotels). 1 CUC = $1 but there's a 13% exchange fee because of the embargo. Next time I'm going with Canadian money.

[Professor Tiger]

My favorite alltime movie is either I or II..a tie.

Me too. I have seen both so many times I have them practically memorized. Too many great scenes and lines to even count.

As good as I and II are, that’s how bad III is. III needs to sleep with the fishes.

hedge wrote: “I wish you would sleep with the fishes.”