I just heard the RINO’s are pushing an act named SPEED that would prevent the President from canceling approved permits like the wind farm permits. Heard it in The Bottom Line on FBN.
No doubt. I’ve been saying this exact thing since Trump won in 2024. The RINOs we have today are basically the same as during Trump 1.0. RINOs are full-on TDS but it’s subtle so people don’t always notice it, unlike the incandescent and maniacally-fueled hatred of Trump coming from the left. With all the power the GOP has right now it’s completely wasted. I’m truly dreading the Midterms.
there is no left represented in american politics today. the demofrats certainly arent. to quote jimmy dore- no matter who we vote for we'll always get john mccain
You only need 60 in the Senate because the filibuster rule was changed to allow 41 Senators to block any bill. The filibuster was originally intended to delay legislation, for a few days at most. And the filibuster rule can be changed by 51 Senators. So you really need only 51 senators to pass bills, not 60.
Nearly all of DC is composed of party loyalists. Mostly democrats, but also republicans. The two parties have a strong commonality, like two football teams on the field. Yes, they are trying to push the ball in different directions, but they are both football teams playing the same game game on the same field. They are far more alike than different, even as they oppose each other.
Very true. Instead of saying “Trump can’t be the only one to show up for work”, it would be more accurate to say “The republicans are having a 4 year long sick-out”.
They are nearly perfect in the never-ending quest to abdicate their duties so they can "problem-pin".
Why wouldn't they? They're incentivized to subsidize problems and then ask for more money to create "solutions" to the problems they created in the first place.
Do that for 5 years and your guaranteed a full pension the rest of their lives. Nice gig.
I mean its gotten so bad we're handing out $8 bil dollar budgets to 40 year olds that are still getting allowance from their parents.
Stupid this profound should really be more painful.
Government exists to spend money! This is the brilliant insight underlying all of progressive politicking. More government, more spending, more goodness! And should the desired results fail to materialize, DOUBLE DOWN and DO IT HARDER!
Meanwhile, RFK thinks spending $1 billion for gyms in airports is good for our health. (Does he know you can walk five miles in most airports?) What deficit?
Kindly qualify your assessment by posting your experience in construction involving national infrastructure and logistics systems.
You're entitled to your opinion, but lacking any qualitative or quantitative indicators, calling it a "waste of money" leaves you sounding silly for the reasons I note above.
A billion dollars, in a nation with 20,000 airports, to amend traveler concessions to include opportunities for children to be active, adults to get exercise, and everybody do something other than get drunk and fat sounds like a very small investment/experiment. A billion dollars is what one Major League Baseball player can get these days for playing children's games with balls and sticks.
The idea that the airport concessions industry is even thinking about this is outstanding.
But you don't get it, do you? You know nothing about infrastructure, or logistics, or construction. Am I right?
I thought I'd heard that the idea was to add exercise and activity/play areas for children, and child care areas for mothers.
But you say "gyms." OK. Let's run with that.
There are about 20,000 airports in the US...soooo...$50k per?
Sounds like a bargain. We spent about a tenth of that on our home gym, not counting the sauna. A gym for three people, with occasional guests.
Or maybe you think airports should be building more Starbucks, PF Changs, shopping kiosks, security checkpoints...?
What do you know about the airport concessions building and management industry? Did they play a role in Bobby's idea? If so, that'd be cool. Up till now all they've cared about is turning a profit from making stressed travelers fat, placid, and stupid.
Wait one. I just realized something.
How many architecture and engineering firms have you ever worked for or with?
What do you know about airport construction?
What do you know about construction in general?
Ever prepared a construction RFP/done a bid evaluation?
Ever overseen change management or dispute resolution?
Ever written a contract or commented on/marked up one? Any kind, lump sum, cost plus, design-build, turnkey, IPD, BOT, unit price, subcontractor--whatever.
If you think $1bn is a lot of money where nationwide airport infrastructure and passenger amenities are concerned, you might consider what you add to conversations on the topic. Wouldn't want to come across like tranny activists who've never done anything but talk for a living, complaining about the defense budget.
It's not a matter of bad, or wrong, Valoree, or my intending a slap or whatever.
People have been coached by the Media Masters to react emotionally on these matters, as you did...whereas on this topic there is an enormous continent of problems, solutions, issues, concerns, etc. in play.
I'm not judging, I'm asking for more complex discussion of very complex matters.
Decisions regarding how to spend federal funds on construction contracts for modernizing airport terminals--this is a large area, and anyone who works in a/e or construction is likely to have "touched those links" so to speak.
...and consider how many hundreds of thousands of men, and some women, at this very moment are navigating these minutiae with--as my darling used to say--nads in the vise. Get any detail wrong and you can literally bankrupt your company. Or cause some liability problem (which lawyers are constantly on the lookout for). Or people die.
Do you know what it's like to have a job where, every day, your design-build decisions, if wrong, can kill or maim people?
Shifts in thinking about airport amenities/concessions for travelers happens constantly. It's how come you have Starbucks (and Peets and Caribou...and Jamba Juice) in every terminal today, whereas you might get a cup o Bunn prior to the '90s, and bottles of Coke/Pepsi. Oh yeah, and booze. Lots of booze.
It's how come you have companies that specialize in representing and getting "brands" into airport terminals.
So why WOULDN'T someone think of opportunities to make airport concessions that include healthful activity/movement, and why WOULDN'T our health secretary want to put some funds behind innovation on that front?
How can that be seen as "stupid" or "ludicrous"--any more than other previously "new ideas" for those areas/businesses? (Is it more stupid and ludicrous than Cinnabons, or Kate Spade stores?)
Some of us voted for DJT six times because we wanted a POTUS who is familiar with how the world works from the construction and vision end of things. Men in construction and manufacturing don't get elected to Senate and the White House. This time, we got one in. We did a second time, and he was cockblocked by those who profit from Managed Decline.
First World infrastructure and logistics are fallling apart, the political and globo-finance class do nothing but see how much bling they can wring out of doom.
I would ask you to acquaint yourself with this entire, complex realm that makes everyone's life so much better, and not make snap judgments. At least not if you expect to be taken seriously by the men and women who get up every day to make sure that, e.g., when your jet plane takes off, the jet wash doesn't sandblast the plane's undercarriage, leading it to crash in a bit.
I write cordially. I write from a household that went balls to the wall for 35 years in these realms. And frankly, we get tired of those who profit from our work, our worry, our dedication, but ridicule and dismiss things they don't understand, like how the decisions get made, and what's in play.
It's time for beneficiaries of 21st century First World technologies and systems to start understanding what goes into those. Please join us in this thinking. Honest to God, we need all the help we can get at this point.
See Korp’s replies. Better than some random, misbegotten, uninformed, now chastised, person who has no place commenting on government spending. Mea culpa.
You are welcome in my eyes to "comment on government spending," but when you misrepresent my and my darling's and our posse's industries/realms, we speak up. Sorry if that pinches, but there are people making the modern world outside the internet. (And we're making the internet as well.)
You’d think some young guns would come for the leadership, but the old GOP leadership just won’t go away. And the RNC is set up to protect the old guard.
Since congress wouldn't vote for term limits and it is suppose to be OUR government. Couldn't we get it on the ballot in all 50 states and we the people vote on it? Last I heard about 80+ % of American citizens are for term limits. It would solve so many problems in government.
I would love to see a Convention of States to get it done but meanwhile the demonrat grifting continues robbing us blind.
Not to put too fine a point on it, Lynn, but the word "democrat" is redundant.
The grift is woven deep into the fabric of both parties, at ALL levels of government.
Most, if not all, federal, state, county and municipal governments, and the tens of millions of parasites that prey on them, have become utterly corrupt.
The probability that we can vote our way out of this approaches zero.
I nearly bankrupted myself trying to manufacture simple product in California. Before you say "that was dumb" I founded it on the day Trump was elected in 2016. I really believe that we need to bring manufacturing here and that Trump would do it.
OK, now you can say "that was dumb".
"more challenging" is not he right expression for manufacturing here, it is more akin to being a gladiator with a pen knife against a roman legion. It is designed so you don't have a chance, but uses your desire to be hopeful innovative and self reliant against you.
I thought if the product was simple enough, (It was a relatively simple mold for an injection molded plastic product) California harms would be limited. There are some injection molding companies here, but they have long lost the ability to make the tooling.
interestingly I suspect the biggest disadvantage with California was not (directly) the high costs or regulation, but the Blue Pilled ness of the people who work in Manufacturing here, seemed to have no idea what they are doing (despite having millions in equipment) and no qualms about cheating me out of my investment.
This happened pre Covid (I would not have made the mistake afterwards). I was dependent on help from architects to assist in design and material choice, which should have been a very small and reasonable ask.
I did it in California because it should have been easier for me to audit and learn, and I have obligations here, I feared the dishonesty of china more, and while there is manufacturing in the midwest, it is mostly medical and defense which charge fees too high for consumer products. Basically if I was unwilling to move to the Midwest, I should have never tried. But for an honest modestly competent person, (and I eventually found a few in the industry, but too late) it should have been really easy.
We have come to expect performative ineptitude in politics and woke university majors, but it is hard to fathom this degree in manufacturing because in the lobby of every injection molding company are shelves of products they have made, with machines churnning them out in the background.
so... WTF? did I have "MAGA person, please F me" written on me? did people not know how to make a mold? Because this happened in 3 different places, then I gave up.
Optics matter a lot more than anyone realizes. You can't get money for deportations without them, and you can't continue momentum either. Yeah you have to do stuff, but that stuff takes a lot more time than anyone seems to grasp. Congress is not the thing to place hopes upon, sadly
My maternal grandmother, a Scotswoman, would say "Talkers are no good doers."
The main thing they hate DJT for is his lifelong record of Doing. This is why they pile on his Talking. They can't compete at the level of deeds/accomplishments so have to make it about style or whatever.
They're trying to keep him from achieving what he can, as someone who devoted his life to Building Good Things Well. If he were to succeed, he'd completely shift the game from Talking to Doing.
They cannot allow that. They are literal courtesans.
They cannot allow excellence of any sort. It would point up what lackluster pecksniffians they are. Stuffed men leaning together, headpiece filled with straw. Shape without form. Shade without color.
As luck would have it, employing illegal workers is a criminal act. Drag a few Big Ag & Hospitality CEOs off to jail in cuffs, the jobs dry up, and we can sip beers at the border as we watch the workers trudge home. The whole ICE raid thing is a silly act, and they won’t deport ten percent of our illegal workers that way if they keep it up through both terms of a Vance administration. They’d need millions of ICE officers to make any headway with this tactic, and they haven’t the will, the money, or the time. It’s a stupid show.
I'd hesitate to pronounce the ICE raids nothing but "a silly act" or "stupid show."
> Drag a few Big Ag & Hospitality CEOs off to jail in cuffs
I don't disagree. But there is a principle in Modern Public Life that before one does anything dramatic one must prepare the plebs for it. And since the plebs get their information, framing, and what passes for analysis from the media, that's not as clear cut as you are proposing.
If you think that your and my dream of exactly that would go at all well when the media are literally owned and operated by enemies of everyone and everything I suspect we both hold dear...then you are still extremely innocent regarding the power of media psyoppery.
Getting people to self-deport is a wise tactic, IMO. Drying up welfare for immigrants and illegals would go a long way...but again, if you think most people aren't still all "what about Muh Huddled Masses!" given their mental colonization by, for example, their churches...well...my aurochs-avatar bro...you aren't paying attention. Virtue-signalling is the religious sacrament of our time. "You beat and raped my daughter and sodomized her with corncobs--but how about those delicious tacos!"
The praxis of operating in politics involves figuring out what can be done, with resources available. Jumping to the conclusion that "it's all a show" is one of the latest, and most lazy, tactics now fed to the masses. "Oh, they're waking up to how we psyop them. Let's use that as we try to infect them with helplessness, apathy, compliance, frustration, and fear."
> employing illegal workers is a criminal act
And might I add, there are governors who could take action against that. And do not. And will not. In Pugetopolis and its rural hinterlands every last business owner dreams of getting that cabin, that boat, by any means necessary, and illegal labor is the path most choose. If you go to hire, say, a roofer, you can ask them about their hiring processes...and you will lose social standing, and even professional standing, if the word gets out you have a concern.
So DJT trying to address this--a president using his Article III powers in the fray, against long-standing, massively organized comers-from-all-sides, while trying to flip thick heavy tables--has got to do what can be done. It's not going to make anybody happy.
Finally, you are insinuating that DJT and his team don't really want to deport. That may be true; I don't think it is. But you framing the issue in that way indicates you are still colonized by psyoppers in ways you may not recognize.
"They" have the power to cast ANY action as "just show" because "They" know, at this point, that some people are waking up to how they operate. This is how "they" can push silliness like "the space program was just show and hoax," rather than that in the 1940s to 1960s the male population of the US had an enormous slice of guys who lived for creating technical solutions to various problems, and, coordinated, they could do and create the most astonishing things.
The psyoppers/mindf!ckers are finding their sea legs after the terrible shock of having their methods used against them. Guard against being pulled back into their plan as fodder.
Thank you for receiving my thoughts in a good spirit, which is how I hoped to send them. And I would be interested in your reflections. We're in a delicate political moment, I sense, where deftness and skill and maturity can potentially bear outsized fruits. We need to focus on practice and concrete acts, not these opinionation dramas that are so easily manipulated (the psyoppers know their work, by gum).
Meant to write back yesterday, thanks for the reminder. Most of the points you raised with me are, on second thought, just as apt and applicable as they first appeared. Thanks for changing my mind, that’s what I read, think, and write to accomplish.
I do defend the idea of prosecuting the corporations and corporate leadership responsible for trafficking these people, whom we should regard in the main as ill-used. It is hard to imagine a prosecution effort as easily and dramatically mischaracterized as the current ICE program, but the political payoff of prosecution would be total disaster for the president’s opponents. The downside, to my mind, is that it would rid us first of our most productive and amenable immigrant population. We want and need immigration by people who come here to work hard and live quietly.
It would be nice if we had legislators who would, you know, legislate - instead of making crypto-seditious TikToks during their breaks from amassing mountains of money from absolutely-not-insider trading, and banging the interns.
I have visited literally hundreds of Chinese factories. Typical
Factories are in the middle of the country. Getting product across China costs more than shipping across the ocean. Despite that because of $600 per person per month factory labour costs we couldn’t compete.
My son did the electrical work on an OSB factory in Northern Alberta. And then worked in the factory ensuring the machines ‘talked’ to each other. Specialized PLC work. I was checking the price of OSB in China and not including shipping it was more expensive than in Alberta!! That was the first product I had seen that was true for. The Alberta factory was fully automated. I asked James how much product they were putting out a shift and how many people worked a shift. $1.2M product a shift. TWELVE PEOPLE accomplishing that! Ten computer and electrical workers making $1000 a day. Two cleanup making about $600 a day.
In other words, about 1% labour costs and none of the transport costs from factory to North America. Raw materials would be the same world price. China can’t compete anymore.
The clothing maker has to see the writing on the wall and massively automate.
Overall we have all that is needed to produce anything now cheaper than in China. Clothing might be the one exception. But that is solvable too.
The garment industry in Los Angeles is a shadow of what it was. Reasons include a Higher minimum wage of around $20, plus benefits costs, workers comp, etc overheads in LA say $35 an hour is hard to compete with $113 a month minimum wage in Bangladesh. NAFTA had a huge impact.
Plus the us tax code and Wall Street reward having lower capitol costs and outsourcing.
You say that producers couldn't compete with Bangladeshi minimum wage...but Bangladeshi garment workers were selected to produce bottom-of-the-line disposable crap. Go that production route, and the race will always be to the bottom.
Meanwhile, e.g., Mercer and Sons is in their...what, 45th? year.
The bigger concern in my view is the utter lack of access to FABRIC of quality, this always having been a DIY household.
But I do agree on your NAFTA point. It incentivized predation, financialization, and offshoring. I can remember in the '90s the Dems hosting events nationwide: "Nix NAFTA." I attended a big one, in Madison, Wisconsin. All kinds of people were there--Dems, GOPs, gamma-delta-iotas (GD independents). All of us seeing the mene mene tekel upharsin...and then the Dems turned on us. The choice was made to create a global system of downbred people consoooming cheap-a$$ crap produced at maximum profit per unit cost.
How to back down from it is anybody's guess, Ray. It's like shipbuilding. After destroying all the shipyards you don't just reboot the way you wake up your Palm Slab.
And the rotten cherry on the top is, our Congresscritters with very few exceptions have zero skills but prostituting themselves to their handlers.
This is the real reason they're tearing their hair out over DJT. People in manufacturing and construction do NOT get advanced for/to Senate.
As usual the do nothing Congress and Senate spend their time doing nothing. By now those EO'S should have been passed into law. Far too many Rs are corrupt and wetting their beaks too. They want him out because they don't want to be exposed
The dimension of the swamp is much deeper and wider than we can even imagine. I bet there's less than a handful of elected representative and senators that aren't tainted.
Gub'mint abuse of the taxes they rob is down to ethics, I'd argue.
A person with a set of ethics that inform then that other people's money and stuff, are things you are extra super-careful of, so that you don't waste or break them.
Because they aren't yours, certainly not just because you happen to have your mitts on them.
But a person who sees taxes the other way: that the money you're allowed to keep ar just that, an allowance extended to you from the gub'mint, will squander the taxes - since they see the money as theirs, and squandering your own money, well that's on you, isn't it?
(We're not done yet, there's a third level.)
And then there are people who see taxes and whatnot as a commons to exploit until it's despoiled completely, because if they don't do it, someone else will. That's their lived experience from their home nation, that resources are for grabbing while there any to grab, period, and crimes are only that when you're the victim.
Add drugs, gangs, cartels, trafficking, international capitalism, domestic pomo-Marxists, politicking, "community organisers" (i.e. racist rabble-rousers and race hustlers), and so on.
And you get California. Or the EU. Or the UK. At present, at least.
A lot of people are coming unmoored, or responding to the incentives created by the internet for spectacle and extremity. Then you have the Nick Fuentes and Tucket Carlson types, who have interesting ideas but are also master self-promoters in the age of hyper-reality.
I don't think we should ever lose sight of the fact that a lot of our news, policymaking, and current events fluff has been engineered for and by interests that we don't understand.
The fact is that policymaking has turned into an inherently perverse vehicle in the age of the administrative state. Help special interest group #1 or #2? Gain market share for corporation A or B? Normal people, small businesses, parents, homeowners, etc. are simply not represented within this system. We are livestock to it only. It's only by shrinking the power of national government WHILE cutting and constraining the prerogatives of corporations that we'll be able to make improvements for the smallholder again... but there's no real political coalition fighting for this end.
> policymaking has turned into an inherently perverse vehicle in the age of the administrative state
Perfectly expressed, James...and the main reason I left policymaking (executive branch) a long time ago.
I'd add that the internet isn't just incentivizing "spectacle and extremity," but encouraging/elevating the perspectives of people who don't know Squatshizzle One about topics they hold forth on. That trickles both up and down.
We all witnessed the curious phenomenon of how quickly every schmoe and schmoeena was suddenly in 2020 an expert on epidemiology, virology, bioweapons, biochemistry, etc. Some of that was obviously seeded by Pharma PR agencies...but it quickly rolled downhill and was set up as a robust bollard around which the SS Big Sister could sling her hawser. "Why of COURSE this oppressive surveillance is good! Let me tell you all about the vaxx!"
The show stopper question I asked the masktards/vaxxdroids early on was, "Have you known anyone who got 'covid'?" First four to five months, that struck them dumb. Then they were trained to think of seeing something on Twitter/FB as their own experience.
In this very thread we've got people holding forth about matters involving the costs and practicability of airport concessions construction. Maybe they work for Hensel Phelps, Turner, Holder, etc. but I doubt it, given the pitch and tenor of their comments.
> It's only by shrinking the power of national government WHILE cutting and constraining the prerogatives of corporations that we'll be able to make improvements for the smallholder again... but there's no real political coalition fighting for this end.
Anyone who attempts to warp and weave such a coalition is obliterated. Orange Plan Bad.
1. As others have said, reshoring garment making is only going to happen with extreme robotics. It's actually reasonable and probably better for the world as a whole to have that kind of work outsourced to places like Africa to make those places richer while Americans do other, higher value manufacturing. But for sure you want to not do it in places that are geo-political rivals i.e. "West Taiwan"
2. Performative politics is becoming increasingly common everywhere because the people who become politicians and get elected these days are typically unable to manage their way out of a paper bag and have never had a real job in their life. The rot set in in the 1990s, prior to that pols usually had spent some time working in a business or serving in the military (or both) before jumping in to politics. These days they graduate from university get a job as an aide or community organizer or similar and then find a way to get elected. Possibly they get a law degree in there somewhere, but the probably don't do the 80 hour week of an actual junior lawyer
4. Many pols consider that their job is to spend money by giving it to interest groups that get them re-elected. As we have noted before, the interest group has no interest at all in solving the problem, they want to "manage" it. If they actually solve it they have no excuse to get money
The Executive Branch is well taken care of in that matter.
Which leaves the Judicial to return to the Constitution to smack down the rogue and couping State and Federal judge asshats who think they are above the Law, make the Law, are the Law, and can interpret said Law any ole way they want.
Side note: if everything done by the Autopen, which, by the way, has it's own beautiful portrait hanging twixt 45-47 on the Presidential Walk of Fame at the White House, is null and void, does this mean all of Byegone's "appointments" are as well?
*thinks of the black robed one who didn't, couldn't and/or wouldn't define what a woman is
Anyhoo, knowing how deep the deep state is entrenched, pretty sure the mid-terms are almost more important now than the Presidential election was only a little over a year ago.
One MUST know that in order for the full court press to "work," the whole Team has to be playing. "Action" plays for the Win needs all "action" figures shooting at the same target.
Willy Nilly is just blind dodge ball.
Thinkin' The People have already seen too much of THAT shit!
Reshoring is NEVER going to come from a push from big national retailers. They are too set in their ways, too consumed by ever-reducing the number of vendors, too invested in pushing their own costs onto their remaining vendors. The walmarts and targets et al are so hostile to vendors its almost too risky to do business with them.
I think it’s naive to think the Republican Party really wants Trump to succeed. SCOTUS maybe but not Republicans in Congress.
the reality is republicans are less committed to saving America than the democrats are to destroying America.
I just heard the RINO’s are pushing an act named SPEED that would prevent the President from canceling approved permits like the wind farm permits. Heard it in The Bottom Line on FBN.
So ridiculous
That would almost lead one to think that said RINOs have investments/incentives in said wind farms.
Yes they do.
Call me crazy, but it almost seems like too many R’s want to lose the majority in the midterms in order that Trump can be impeached.
No doubt. I’ve been saying this exact thing since Trump won in 2024. The RINOs we have today are basically the same as during Trump 1.0. RINOs are full-on TDS but it’s subtle so people don’t always notice it, unlike the incandescent and maniacally-fueled hatred of Trump coming from the left. With all the power the GOP has right now it’s completely wasted. I’m truly dreading the Midterms.
there is no left represented in american politics today. the demofrats certainly arent. to quote jimmy dore- no matter who we vote for we'll always get john mccain
Yes, look at who was elected in Miami today. First dem in 30 years.
Low voter turnout…foreboding for the midterms.
We need SIXTY in the Senate to get bills closed out and made into law
To the best of my knowledge there’s no lefty on the senate side that’ll cross over and support the red team to get to 60
You only need 60 in the Senate because the filibuster rule was changed to allow 41 Senators to block any bill. The filibuster was originally intended to delay legislation, for a few days at most. And the filibuster rule can be changed by 51 Senators. So you really need only 51 senators to pass bills, not 60.
The filibuster is still in effect
so we need 60
Trump is not a party loyalist.
Nearly all of DC is composed of party loyalists. Mostly democrats, but also republicans. The two parties have a strong commonality, like two football teams on the field. Yes, they are trying to push the ball in different directions, but they are both football teams playing the same game game on the same field. They are far more alike than different, even as they oppose each other.
Trump is not a party loyalist.
And there you have it.
Very true. Instead of saying “Trump can’t be the only one to show up for work”, it would be more accurate to say “The republicans are having a 4 year long sick-out”.
I think it's much longer than 4 years. It's just that with the two clowns in leadership it is blatantly obvious.
Yes, the (r)inoscat party is running the clock out on Trump. They are the enemy within.
I seem to recall that you, or perhaps someone else, wrote in here somewhere that "Congress is the entire problem". Amirite?
Yep
Every. Last. One. Of. Them.
They are nearly perfect in the never-ending quest to abdicate their duties so they can "problem-pin".
Why wouldn't they? They're incentivized to subsidize problems and then ask for more money to create "solutions" to the problems they created in the first place.
Do that for 5 years and your guaranteed a full pension the rest of their lives. Nice gig.
I mean its gotten so bad we're handing out $8 bil dollar budgets to 40 year olds that are still getting allowance from their parents.
Stupid this profound should really be more painful.
Seems pretty painful to me?
Government exists to spend money! This is the brilliant insight underlying all of progressive politicking. More government, more spending, more goodness! And should the desired results fail to materialize, DOUBLE DOWN and DO IT HARDER!
Meanwhile, RFK thinks spending $1 billion for gyms in airports is good for our health. (Does he know you can walk five miles in most airports?) What deficit?
Much better than spending $1 billion for homeless encampments in airports.
Choices, choices
Still a ludicrous waste of money…a gimmick.
Kindly qualify your assessment by posting your experience in construction involving national infrastructure and logistics systems.
You're entitled to your opinion, but lacking any qualitative or quantitative indicators, calling it a "waste of money" leaves you sounding silly for the reasons I note above.
A billion dollars, in a nation with 20,000 airports, to amend traveler concessions to include opportunities for children to be active, adults to get exercise, and everybody do something other than get drunk and fat sounds like a very small investment/experiment. A billion dollars is what one Major League Baseball player can get these days for playing children's games with balls and sticks.
The idea that the airport concessions industry is even thinking about this is outstanding.
But you don't get it, do you? You know nothing about infrastructure, or logistics, or construction. Am I right?
Well I’ve been told. Sorry to have chimed in.
It must be wonderful, knowing everything, and being right about everything.😂
Well, since you two retards are likely rarely right about anything, I can understand your shock and envy.
Sounds awesome.
How many airports? What kind of gyms?
I thought I'd heard that the idea was to add exercise and activity/play areas for children, and child care areas for mothers.
But you say "gyms." OK. Let's run with that.
There are about 20,000 airports in the US...soooo...$50k per?
Sounds like a bargain. We spent about a tenth of that on our home gym, not counting the sauna. A gym for three people, with occasional guests.
Or maybe you think airports should be building more Starbucks, PF Changs, shopping kiosks, security checkpoints...?
What do you know about the airport concessions building and management industry? Did they play a role in Bobby's idea? If so, that'd be cool. Up till now all they've cared about is turning a profit from making stressed travelers fat, placid, and stupid.
Wait one. I just realized something.
How many architecture and engineering firms have you ever worked for or with?
What do you know about airport construction?
What do you know about construction in general?
Ever prepared a construction RFP/done a bid evaluation?
Ever overseen change management or dispute resolution?
Ever written a contract or commented on/marked up one? Any kind, lump sum, cost plus, design-build, turnkey, IPD, BOT, unit price, subcontractor--whatever.
If you think $1bn is a lot of money where nationwide airport infrastructure and passenger amenities are concerned, you might consider what you add to conversations on the topic. Wouldn't want to come across like tranny activists who've never done anything but talk for a living, complaining about the defense budget.
https://www.thecivilengineer.org/news/the-billion-dollar-airport-boom-2025-megaprojects-shaping-the-skies
Wrong again. My bad.
It's not a matter of bad, or wrong, Valoree, or my intending a slap or whatever.
People have been coached by the Media Masters to react emotionally on these matters, as you did...whereas on this topic there is an enormous continent of problems, solutions, issues, concerns, etc. in play.
I'm not judging, I'm asking for more complex discussion of very complex matters.
Decisions regarding how to spend federal funds on construction contracts for modernizing airport terminals--this is a large area, and anyone who works in a/e or construction is likely to have "touched those links" so to speak.
Skim through this...
https://www.faa.gov/airports/engineering/construction_standards
...and consider how many hundreds of thousands of men, and some women, at this very moment are navigating these minutiae with--as my darling used to say--nads in the vise. Get any detail wrong and you can literally bankrupt your company. Or cause some liability problem (which lawyers are constantly on the lookout for). Or people die.
Do you know what it's like to have a job where, every day, your design-build decisions, if wrong, can kill or maim people?
Shifts in thinking about airport amenities/concessions for travelers happens constantly. It's how come you have Starbucks (and Peets and Caribou...and Jamba Juice) in every terminal today, whereas you might get a cup o Bunn prior to the '90s, and bottles of Coke/Pepsi. Oh yeah, and booze. Lots of booze.
It's how come you have companies that specialize in representing and getting "brands" into airport terminals.
https://airportretailers.com/
https://airventures.shaycreations.com/
https://www.gideontoalmanagement.com/
https://cintl.com/
https://www.fraport-usa.com/concession-opportunities/
And hundreds of others worldwide.
So why WOULDN'T someone think of opportunities to make airport concessions that include healthful activity/movement, and why WOULDN'T our health secretary want to put some funds behind innovation on that front?
How can that be seen as "stupid" or "ludicrous"--any more than other previously "new ideas" for those areas/businesses? (Is it more stupid and ludicrous than Cinnabons, or Kate Spade stores?)
Some of us voted for DJT six times because we wanted a POTUS who is familiar with how the world works from the construction and vision end of things. Men in construction and manufacturing don't get elected to Senate and the White House. This time, we got one in. We did a second time, and he was cockblocked by those who profit from Managed Decline.
First World infrastructure and logistics are fallling apart, the political and globo-finance class do nothing but see how much bling they can wring out of doom.
I would ask you to acquaint yourself with this entire, complex realm that makes everyone's life so much better, and not make snap judgments. At least not if you expect to be taken seriously by the men and women who get up every day to make sure that, e.g., when your jet plane takes off, the jet wash doesn't sandblast the plane's undercarriage, leading it to crash in a bit.
I write cordially. I write from a household that went balls to the wall for 35 years in these realms. And frankly, we get tired of those who profit from our work, our worry, our dedication, but ridicule and dismiss things they don't understand, like how the decisions get made, and what's in play.
It's time for beneficiaries of 21st century First World technologies and systems to start understanding what goes into those. Please join us in this thinking. Honest to God, we need all the help we can get at this point.
Is he really doing that? And let me guess… with our tax monies. If so, that’s so stupid I’m at a loss for words.
See Korp’s replies. Better than some random, misbegotten, uninformed, now chastised, person who has no place commenting on government spending. Mea culpa.
You are welcome in my eyes to "comment on government spending," but when you misrepresent my and my darling's and our posse's industries/realms, we speak up. Sorry if that pinches, but there are people making the modern world outside the internet. (And we're making the internet as well.)
RFK jr - prodigal son of a progressive clan.
Don’t count on the GOP to help Trump. They love being the out party: All the grift, none of the responsibility!
You’d think some young guns would come for the leadership, but the old GOP leadership just won’t go away. And the RNC is set up to protect the old guard.
Also, when term limits have to be passed by Congress, what do you get? They like the status quo.
Since congress wouldn't vote for term limits and it is suppose to be OUR government. Couldn't we get it on the ballot in all 50 states and we the people vote on it? Last I heard about 80+ % of American citizens are for term limits. It would solve so many problems in government.
I would love to see a Convention of States to get it done but meanwhile the demonrat grifting continues robbing us blind.
Not to put too fine a point on it, Lynn, but the word "democrat" is redundant.
The grift is woven deep into the fabric of both parties, at ALL levels of government.
Most, if not all, federal, state, county and municipal governments, and the tens of millions of parasites that prey on them, have become utterly corrupt.
The probability that we can vote our way out of this approaches zero.
They're still pissed about how Trump neutered all of them in 2015. Not that they had any balls to begin with.
Not at all. I have observed, myself, that no matter who is voted for, the government always gets in.
I nearly bankrupted myself trying to manufacture simple product in California. Before you say "that was dumb" I founded it on the day Trump was elected in 2016. I really believe that we need to bring manufacturing here and that Trump would do it.
OK, now you can say "that was dumb".
"more challenging" is not he right expression for manufacturing here, it is more akin to being a gladiator with a pen knife against a roman legion. It is designed so you don't have a chance, but uses your desire to be hopeful innovative and self reliant against you.
Move out of CA and try a Midwest state. We still have some manufacturing here even if no one knows it.
I thought if the product was simple enough, (It was a relatively simple mold for an injection molded plastic product) California harms would be limited. There are some injection molding companies here, but they have long lost the ability to make the tooling.
interestingly I suspect the biggest disadvantage with California was not (directly) the high costs or regulation, but the Blue Pilled ness of the people who work in Manufacturing here, seemed to have no idea what they are doing (despite having millions in equipment) and no qualms about cheating me out of my investment.
This happened pre Covid (I would not have made the mistake afterwards). I was dependent on help from architects to assist in design and material choice, which should have been a very small and reasonable ask.
I did it in California because it should have been easier for me to audit and learn, and I have obligations here, I feared the dishonesty of china more, and while there is manufacturing in the midwest, it is mostly medical and defense which charge fees too high for consumer products. Basically if I was unwilling to move to the Midwest, I should have never tried. But for an honest modestly competent person, (and I eventually found a few in the industry, but too late) it should have been really easy.
We have come to expect performative ineptitude in politics and woke university majors, but it is hard to fathom this degree in manufacturing because in the lobby of every injection molding company are shelves of products they have made, with machines churnning them out in the background.
so... WTF? did I have "MAGA person, please F me" written on me? did people not know how to make a mold? Because this happened in 3 different places, then I gave up.
did you try claiming to be a minority owned business? then you can just feed off of government programs and outsource the business.
Identify as a lesbian woman and the SBA will throw money at you.
Seriously, investigate Meadville PA the town that invented the zipper. You don't have to move here, just buy here.
Architects design houses, engineers design molds. It's not cheap like China, but you only pay for it once.
If you only need a few (hundred) parts the additive manufacturing is the way to go.
If want to sell millions, molding is the ticket.
All the better to take your money with.
Optics matter a lot more than anyone realizes. You can't get money for deportations without them, and you can't continue momentum either. Yeah you have to do stuff, but that stuff takes a lot more time than anyone seems to grasp. Congress is not the thing to place hopes upon, sadly
My maternal grandmother, a Scotswoman, would say "Talkers are no good doers."
The main thing they hate DJT for is his lifelong record of Doing. This is why they pile on his Talking. They can't compete at the level of deeds/accomplishments so have to make it about style or whatever.
They're trying to keep him from achieving what he can, as someone who devoted his life to Building Good Things Well. If he were to succeed, he'd completely shift the game from Talking to Doing.
They cannot allow that. They are literal courtesans.
They cannot allow excellence of any sort. It would point up what lackluster pecksniffians they are. Stuffed men leaning together, headpiece filled with straw. Shape without form. Shade without color.
They are literally fighting for their nonlives.
> Pecksniffians
As luck would have it, employing illegal workers is a criminal act. Drag a few Big Ag & Hospitality CEOs off to jail in cuffs, the jobs dry up, and we can sip beers at the border as we watch the workers trudge home. The whole ICE raid thing is a silly act, and they won’t deport ten percent of our illegal workers that way if they keep it up through both terms of a Vance administration. They’d need millions of ICE officers to make any headway with this tactic, and they haven’t the will, the money, or the time. It’s a stupid show.
I'd hesitate to pronounce the ICE raids nothing but "a silly act" or "stupid show."
> Drag a few Big Ag & Hospitality CEOs off to jail in cuffs
I don't disagree. But there is a principle in Modern Public Life that before one does anything dramatic one must prepare the plebs for it. And since the plebs get their information, framing, and what passes for analysis from the media, that's not as clear cut as you are proposing.
If you think that your and my dream of exactly that would go at all well when the media are literally owned and operated by enemies of everyone and everything I suspect we both hold dear...then you are still extremely innocent regarding the power of media psyoppery.
Getting people to self-deport is a wise tactic, IMO. Drying up welfare for immigrants and illegals would go a long way...but again, if you think most people aren't still all "what about Muh Huddled Masses!" given their mental colonization by, for example, their churches...well...my aurochs-avatar bro...you aren't paying attention. Virtue-signalling is the religious sacrament of our time. "You beat and raped my daughter and sodomized her with corncobs--but how about those delicious tacos!"
The praxis of operating in politics involves figuring out what can be done, with resources available. Jumping to the conclusion that "it's all a show" is one of the latest, and most lazy, tactics now fed to the masses. "Oh, they're waking up to how we psyop them. Let's use that as we try to infect them with helplessness, apathy, compliance, frustration, and fear."
> employing illegal workers is a criminal act
And might I add, there are governors who could take action against that. And do not. And will not. In Pugetopolis and its rural hinterlands every last business owner dreams of getting that cabin, that boat, by any means necessary, and illegal labor is the path most choose. If you go to hire, say, a roofer, you can ask them about their hiring processes...and you will lose social standing, and even professional standing, if the word gets out you have a concern.
So DJT trying to address this--a president using his Article III powers in the fray, against long-standing, massively organized comers-from-all-sides, while trying to flip thick heavy tables--has got to do what can be done. It's not going to make anybody happy.
Finally, you are insinuating that DJT and his team don't really want to deport. That may be true; I don't think it is. But you framing the issue in that way indicates you are still colonized by psyoppers in ways you may not recognize.
"They" have the power to cast ANY action as "just show" because "They" know, at this point, that some people are waking up to how they operate. This is how "they" can push silliness like "the space program was just show and hoax," rather than that in the 1940s to 1960s the male population of the US had an enormous slice of guys who lived for creating technical solutions to various problems, and, coordinated, they could do and create the most astonishing things.
The psyoppers/mindf!ckers are finding their sea legs after the terrible shock of having their methods used against them. Guard against being pulled back into their plan as fodder.
That’s great. I will save this and consider your points carefully, more than just the once. Thanks for a real reply, my friend.
Thank you for receiving my thoughts in a good spirit, which is how I hoped to send them. And I would be interested in your reflections. We're in a delicate political moment, I sense, where deftness and skill and maturity can potentially bear outsized fruits. We need to focus on practice and concrete acts, not these opinionation dramas that are so easily manipulated (the psyoppers know their work, by gum).
Meant to write back yesterday, thanks for the reminder. Most of the points you raised with me are, on second thought, just as apt and applicable as they first appeared. Thanks for changing my mind, that’s what I read, think, and write to accomplish.
I do defend the idea of prosecuting the corporations and corporate leadership responsible for trafficking these people, whom we should regard in the main as ill-used. It is hard to imagine a prosecution effort as easily and dramatically mischaracterized as the current ICE program, but the political payoff of prosecution would be total disaster for the president’s opponents. The downside, to my mind, is that it would rid us first of our most productive and amenable immigrant population. We want and need immigration by people who come here to work hard and live quietly.
It would be nice if we had legislators who would, you know, legislate - instead of making crypto-seditious TikToks during their breaks from amassing mountains of money from absolutely-not-insider trading, and banging the interns.
Many of them are too old to bang interns, but robbing you and I? That's a skill they have perfected for eons.
I get so many republicans asking for money every day that my spam filter has 12,398 emails to filter through every time I open my mail program.
Thank goodness for Obamacare..... Making healthcare affordable for insurance companies.
Robotics changes everything. China can’t compete.
I have visited literally hundreds of Chinese factories. Typical
Factories are in the middle of the country. Getting product across China costs more than shipping across the ocean. Despite that because of $600 per person per month factory labour costs we couldn’t compete.
My son did the electrical work on an OSB factory in Northern Alberta. And then worked in the factory ensuring the machines ‘talked’ to each other. Specialized PLC work. I was checking the price of OSB in China and not including shipping it was more expensive than in Alberta!! That was the first product I had seen that was true for. The Alberta factory was fully automated. I asked James how much product they were putting out a shift and how many people worked a shift. $1.2M product a shift. TWELVE PEOPLE accomplishing that! Ten computer and electrical workers making $1000 a day. Two cleanup making about $600 a day.
In other words, about 1% labour costs and none of the transport costs from factory to North America. Raw materials would be the same world price. China can’t compete anymore.
The clothing maker has to see the writing on the wall and massively automate.
Overall we have all that is needed to produce anything now cheaper than in China. Clothing might be the one exception. But that is solvable too.
The garment industry in Los Angeles is a shadow of what it was. Reasons include a Higher minimum wage of around $20, plus benefits costs, workers comp, etc overheads in LA say $35 an hour is hard to compete with $113 a month minimum wage in Bangladesh. NAFTA had a huge impact.
Plus the us tax code and Wall Street reward having lower capitol costs and outsourcing.
You say that producers couldn't compete with Bangladeshi minimum wage...but Bangladeshi garment workers were selected to produce bottom-of-the-line disposable crap. Go that production route, and the race will always be to the bottom.
Meanwhile, e.g., Mercer and Sons is in their...what, 45th? year.
The bigger concern in my view is the utter lack of access to FABRIC of quality, this always having been a DIY household.
But I do agree on your NAFTA point. It incentivized predation, financialization, and offshoring. I can remember in the '90s the Dems hosting events nationwide: "Nix NAFTA." I attended a big one, in Madison, Wisconsin. All kinds of people were there--Dems, GOPs, gamma-delta-iotas (GD independents). All of us seeing the mene mene tekel upharsin...and then the Dems turned on us. The choice was made to create a global system of downbred people consoooming cheap-a$$ crap produced at maximum profit per unit cost.
How to back down from it is anybody's guess, Ray. It's like shipbuilding. After destroying all the shipyards you don't just reboot the way you wake up your Palm Slab.
And the rotten cherry on the top is, our Congresscritters with very few exceptions have zero skills but prostituting themselves to their handlers.
This is the real reason they're tearing their hair out over DJT. People in manufacturing and construction do NOT get advanced for/to Senate.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/1-11-Full.pdf
Way less so to the White House.
As usual the do nothing Congress and Senate spend their time doing nothing. By now those EO'S should have been passed into law. Far too many Rs are corrupt and wetting their beaks too. They want him out because they don't want to be exposed
The dimension of the swamp is much deeper and wider than we can even imagine. I bet there's less than a handful of elected representative and senators that aren't tainted.
Gub'mint abuse of the taxes they rob is down to ethics, I'd argue.
A person with a set of ethics that inform then that other people's money and stuff, are things you are extra super-careful of, so that you don't waste or break them.
Because they aren't yours, certainly not just because you happen to have your mitts on them.
But a person who sees taxes the other way: that the money you're allowed to keep ar just that, an allowance extended to you from the gub'mint, will squander the taxes - since they see the money as theirs, and squandering your own money, well that's on you, isn't it?
(We're not done yet, there's a third level.)
And then there are people who see taxes and whatnot as a commons to exploit until it's despoiled completely, because if they don't do it, someone else will. That's their lived experience from their home nation, that resources are for grabbing while there any to grab, period, and crimes are only that when you're the victim.
Add drugs, gangs, cartels, trafficking, international capitalism, domestic pomo-Marxists, politicking, "community organisers" (i.e. racist rabble-rousers and race hustlers), and so on.
And you get California. Or the EU. Or the UK. At present, at least.
It's down to ethics in the end.
A lot of people are coming unmoored, or responding to the incentives created by the internet for spectacle and extremity. Then you have the Nick Fuentes and Tucket Carlson types, who have interesting ideas but are also master self-promoters in the age of hyper-reality.
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/the-hollow-men
I don't think we should ever lose sight of the fact that a lot of our news, policymaking, and current events fluff has been engineered for and by interests that we don't understand.
The fact is that policymaking has turned into an inherently perverse vehicle in the age of the administrative state. Help special interest group #1 or #2? Gain market share for corporation A or B? Normal people, small businesses, parents, homeowners, etc. are simply not represented within this system. We are livestock to it only. It's only by shrinking the power of national government WHILE cutting and constraining the prerogatives of corporations that we'll be able to make improvements for the smallholder again... but there's no real political coalition fighting for this end.
> policymaking has turned into an inherently perverse vehicle in the age of the administrative state
Perfectly expressed, James...and the main reason I left policymaking (executive branch) a long time ago.
I'd add that the internet isn't just incentivizing "spectacle and extremity," but encouraging/elevating the perspectives of people who don't know Squatshizzle One about topics they hold forth on. That trickles both up and down.
We all witnessed the curious phenomenon of how quickly every schmoe and schmoeena was suddenly in 2020 an expert on epidemiology, virology, bioweapons, biochemistry, etc. Some of that was obviously seeded by Pharma PR agencies...but it quickly rolled downhill and was set up as a robust bollard around which the SS Big Sister could sling her hawser. "Why of COURSE this oppressive surveillance is good! Let me tell you all about the vaxx!"
The show stopper question I asked the masktards/vaxxdroids early on was, "Have you known anyone who got 'covid'?" First four to five months, that struck them dumb. Then they were trained to think of seeing something on Twitter/FB as their own experience.
In this very thread we've got people holding forth about matters involving the costs and practicability of airport concessions construction. Maybe they work for Hensel Phelps, Turner, Holder, etc. but I doubt it, given the pitch and tenor of their comments.
> It's only by shrinking the power of national government WHILE cutting and constraining the prerogatives of corporations that we'll be able to make improvements for the smallholder again... but there's no real political coalition fighting for this end.
Anyone who attempts to warp and weave such a coalition is obliterated. Orange Plan Bad.
A few different comments
1. As others have said, reshoring garment making is only going to happen with extreme robotics. It's actually reasonable and probably better for the world as a whole to have that kind of work outsourced to places like Africa to make those places richer while Americans do other, higher value manufacturing. But for sure you want to not do it in places that are geo-political rivals i.e. "West Taiwan"
2. Performative politics is becoming increasingly common everywhere because the people who become politicians and get elected these days are typically unable to manage their way out of a paper bag and have never had a real job in their life. The rot set in in the 1990s, prior to that pols usually had spent some time working in a business or serving in the military (or both) before jumping in to politics. These days they graduate from university get a job as an aide or community organizer or similar and then find a way to get elected. Possibly they get a law degree in there somewhere, but the probably don't do the 80 hour week of an actual junior lawyer
3. Nancy Mace seems to share your opinion of the GOP in congress doing nothing - https://townhall.com/tipsheet/jeff-charles/2025/12/09/nancy-mace-bashes-gop-leadership-in-nyt-op-ed-n2667596
4. Many pols consider that their job is to spend money by giving it to interest groups that get them re-elected. As we have noted before, the interest group has no interest at all in solving the problem, they want to "manage" it. If they actually solve it they have no excuse to get money
Guess the upcoming mid-terms are just a wee bit important then, eh.
Wonder if we'll see more Trumpish rallies endorsing Trumpish choices...oh wait...the Affordability Tour just kicked off in PA.
Huh.
Both the House AND the Senate in Congress are needing to be Patriotic Americans to kick Agenda 47 into over drive at Mach 10.
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/agenda47
The Executive Branch is well taken care of in that matter.
Which leaves the Judicial to return to the Constitution to smack down the rogue and couping State and Federal judge asshats who think they are above the Law, make the Law, are the Law, and can interpret said Law any ole way they want.
Side note: if everything done by the Autopen, which, by the way, has it's own beautiful portrait hanging twixt 45-47 on the Presidential Walk of Fame at the White House, is null and void, does this mean all of Byegone's "appointments" are as well?
*thinks of the black robed one who didn't, couldn't and/or wouldn't define what a woman is
Anyhoo, knowing how deep the deep state is entrenched, pretty sure the mid-terms are almost more important now than the Presidential election was only a little over a year ago.
One MUST know that in order for the full court press to "work," the whole Team has to be playing. "Action" plays for the Win needs all "action" figures shooting at the same target.
Willy Nilly is just blind dodge ball.
Thinkin' The People have already seen too much of THAT shit!
Interesting times.
Interesting times indeed!
*Tips hat
Much Love
Reshoring is NEVER going to come from a push from big national retailers. They are too set in their ways, too consumed by ever-reducing the number of vendors, too invested in pushing their own costs onto their remaining vendors. The walmarts and targets et al are so hostile to vendors its almost too risky to do business with them.