162 Comments
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Chris Bray's avatar

Not a fan of this provision at all:

"New 'Trump' savings account for parents and guardians of children born between Jan. 1, 2024, and Dec. 31, 2028, with the feds providing an initial $1,000 seed money."

They're trying to incentivize and support families, but I don't like the free money.

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PapayaSF's avatar

I hope it excludes anchor babies, but I fear it doesn’t.

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Gunther Heinz's avatar

Bathwater babies. The kind you throw out.

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c Anderson's avatar

Give me a break! We have been giving money to illegal aliens for everything, and now you want to squelch forward thinking parents from doing the right thing by helping them set up a college fund with a small nest egg for their child? Did you know that almost every state has done this same thing? Sheesh! If more people would do this for their kids, the amount of default on student loans would be reduced. The Biden student loan forgiveness plan as a voter leveraging tool was sickening when so many of us had to pay off our loans for many years after we graduated.

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Chris Bray's avatar

Parents can set up a college fund with their own money, and many do. Why does everything good need government subsidies?

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L  Young's avatar

I would prefer it be structured in a way that didn’t condition the next generations in the belief that all good things come from Uncle Sugar.

Maybe a fifteen hundred dollar discount on your tax bill if you set up the college/trade school/business startup account. It could be written right into the tax forms so that it was easy and obvious.

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Valoree Dowell's avatar

Heck. Don’t even call it a college fund. Just open a savings account un you child’s name. Earn interest! Given him the total on high school graduation day! He can have a down payment on a house, buy his car, even move it to his own bank and keep adding to it. What has he learned for your $20 a month (that’s $5 a week)? Discipline, fiscal responsibility, financial acumen, delayed gratification—that’s the short list. I’m not making this up. I did it. While living paycheck to paycheck. Just saying it can be done. Invest in your own kids.

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Robird's avatar

Why feed college expenses with more federal money? College costs are already insanely high. Making more money available only feeds the beast that Woodrow Wilson embodied.

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HUMDEEDEE's avatar

Additionally, there should be no college expenses since most colleges turn out America hating grads who have learned nothing and are practically unemployable if they chose a major that isn't ever going to land them a job. Put that money toward trade school or STEM only, and be very careful about the college you fund for that course of study. Or better yet save as seed money for a start up.

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HEIDI's avatar

Trump's wins on tax/reg reductions & trade policies & border security will lead to enormous economic growth prosperity. Your complaint about investing in American families, incentivizing growth & relieving family burden by calling it 'free money' is short sighted.

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Valoree Dowell's avatar

Well, it isn’t free, it’s mine. Every time the qualifier Fed or government (state, city, county, and village) is used to describe payments, it should rightly be called American taxpayer.

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c Anderson's avatar

Because like IRAs are incentivized, a lot of people fail to plan ahead for many reasons. A little help in the beginning can mean a lot of future savings for American taxpayers. Thank goodness you can’t get out of your student loans by bankruptcy. How about the reason Biden wanted loan forgiveness? It isn’t like the loan would disappear. Nope. Taxpayers would be on the hook for it. Honestly now, tell me you didn’t know that? Anyway, here is where we are right now…62% of Americans are reporting they live paycheck to paycheck. To help these people set up a college funds with $1,000 for their child is a very big deal for them. https://step.com/money-101/post/how-many-americans-are-living-paycheck-to-paycheck-in-2025

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Cathleen Manny's avatar

c Anderson - you’re assuming that ‘college’ is the be-all and end-all, the magic bullet, for every child.

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c Anderson's avatar

I recommend Trade Schools and kids can start their own businesses as part of homeschooling. All the time saved by not attending public school and studying at home can be better used to explore other options.

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DR. Z. P. Doodah's avatar

Want to start a business. Just go down and get a business license. Easy Peasy.

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Frontera Lupita's avatar

The student loan issue is a total scam. If higher education wasn’t so expensive (and I’m not even referring to the high end ‘Ivy League” colleges and universities) then maybe students wouldn’t have to go into such heavy debt to get a ‘college education’’ And these days that ‘degree’ is not even worth the paper it’s printed on!

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Dick Minnis's avatar

College is expensive because the government took over the Student Loan programs under Obama. You could, on line without supervision, take out a loan for not just tuition, books, and a dorm room, but for that cool apartment off campus with a car to commute. Since money was unregulated, Colleges started ramping up the costs of everything. The student just became a spigot for funneling money between the government and the college. No reason to keep costs down when loans were approved for high school graduates with no plan in mind but lots of funding available. That's why we have graduates with enormous loans and worthless degrees. Government efficiency and oversight at its most glaringly and unapologetic worst.

Dick Minnis

removingthecataract.substack.com

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Frontera Lupita's avatar

Once again “The Government” is the root of all the grift and corruption, from the President, Congress, on down to the “job for life, government employees” who supervise and administer these programs.

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c Anderson's avatar

Why do you think tuition is so high? It is because universities can get way with it and still fill their classrooms and pay their professors and enormously large support staffs. Columbia actually has more than 50% of its student body made up of foreign students. Why are Americans paying taxes for foreign students to go to our colleges and universities? Trade school is a much better choice for most individuals. Have you seen what journeyman welders and pipe fitters make? How about plumbers and electricians?

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Frontera Lupita's avatar

Most of the young men in my family (in their late 30’s) who are married to my nieces and some of their female cousins, all work in the trades, (electricians, master mechanics, heavy equipment operators) or are ranchers. They make good money, and they can repair, build and or re build pretty much anything! And know how to grow food for people as well.

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william martin's avatar

I went to a community college and got a certificate in Electronics. Right after that I was hired by Boeing as an apprentice electronics technician. It was 5 years before they would let me near a computer. I thought about getting a degree in engineering but realized I was making more money that I would if I had the degree. I retired after 30 years with the company.

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James Bernard Shepard's avatar

People like this will save your country. i hope we have many of the same here in Canada. We're all going to need people who can DO stuff and MAKE stuff. They will come into their own really soon.

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JBird4049's avatar

Do not include teachers in the overfunding of higher education. At least in California, for decades, a growing percentage of teachers are adjuncts (temps) who are paid a few thousand dollars per a class with no benefits and often have to drive to different colleges in different cities and counties to get enough classes to earn enough to live. Do you think that it is fine that a teacher has to drive several hundred miles a day and have virtually no office hours for his students? However, the administration or “support staff” does just fine.

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c Anderson's avatar

I get that. The administrative staff has expanded and depending on the school, you can compare number of auxiliary employees to number of professors over the years and see exponential growth of supportive personnel not related to direct instruction. We need to Doge colleges and universities, but that is a state issue.

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Richard Parker's avatar

Known as 'Freeway Warriors'. I did that for a while as a second or a third job and I really enjoyed the contacts with students and the extra money.

I knew a few people that tried to that type of part-time teaching as a first job. It was unsustainable. You are selling your car to the schools mile by mile.

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Alan Devincentis's avatar

You answered your own question. Inthe current world, that degree is generally worthless. Much better you learn to weld. You will always be in great demand, and Jake more money than most “ educated “ people.

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Frontera Lupita's avatar

Most of the young men in my family (in their late 30’s) who are married to my nieces and some of their female cousins, all work in the trades, (electricians, master mechanics, heavy equipment operators) or are ranchers. They make good money, and they can repair, build and or re build pretty much anything! And know how to grow food for people as well.

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Paul Dzielinski's avatar

The university system of the past 40-50 years is dead man walking. Why pay $40K+/year to send someone to college, when they will do all their school work using AI, and professors will grade all their work using AI? The gatekeeper of accreditation is the only thing keeping it alive.

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Dick Minnis's avatar

More honest to just sell them the credential they want to purchase for all the worthless degrees that need them. Classes only for hard science, engineers and math. In my day answers to exams were hand written in little blue books that were collected after the exam and graded. No where to hide, no computers and of course the smart phone hadn't been invented yet. You had to study to pass.

Dick Minnis

removingthecataract.com

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The Radical Individualist's avatar

There is a huge difference between the authority of a state and the authority of the federal government to enter into our lives. The states have that authority, the federal government does not.

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Michael L's avatar

I suspect that $1,000 seed money isn't going to provide a sufficient incentive to make much difference.

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Georgi Boorman's avatar

Lyman Stone has done a lot of research on other countries' fertility programs and the pattern seems to be that they don't really work.

We might get a very brief baby bump, but those people would have had a babies in the next few years, anyway.

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Paul Dzielinski's avatar

Paying people to have babies is analogous to the cash for clunkers program of 2009. It will mostly time change when families will have kids they would have had anyway.

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Michael L's avatar

Or gun "buybacks."

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Steve's avatar

There are a few problems with such a provision.

The primary one is that almost every time the government subsidizes something, it gets much more expensive. The biggest of these areas are: health care, housing, college, and "green" energy and projects. "Oh, you want to subsidize homebuyers with $25,000 in free seed money for a down payment? OK, great! The house prices all just went up by $25,000."

Second, $1,000 is a laughable incentive for having a child. A radio show asked this earlier in the week, what would you need to have another kid, and everyone gave a low to mid six-figure number from $100k to $400k (granted, the hosts are men in their 40s and 50s, and being one of those myself, I am probably not up to another toddler at this point, anyway).

The best provision would be to ditch the income tax on labor. No tax on tips and no tax on Social Security (which is a partial refund of taxed labor for most people) are a start, but I think the tip thing is capped at $25K which really just makes the tip tax more honest because most servers were not honest about their cash tips (and frankly I don't blame them, f**k the IRS, wish I could pull that off, but I don't get any untracked cash bonuses), and I think the social security tax cut is capped too, and wasn't there a provision that it wasn't available to millionaires (not sure how that works) ?

Third, we have to cut $2 trillion in spending and it is basically impossible without touching Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security AND cutting military spending in half. You can try to grow your way out of it, but that's just a bigger pie the greedy Congress wants to sink their teeth into, and people are too stupid to realize that the rich don't even HAVE enough money to fund all of this, even if taxed at 100%, even if confiscated, and if you DO do that, you're killing the goose that lays the golden eggs and the entire economy collapses. I think it might collapse anyway and that Trump, for all of his flaws, understands this at least intuitively, as a builder. Xiden's "great GDP" was all government helicopter money with massive inflation. His "new jobs" were mostly government jobs and blue haired Starbucks baristas. One didn't produce anything of value and the other wasn't enough to get by under his inflation. All by design, of course, to make people desperate for more Government Almighty, even though it was that false god that put them in that situation to begin with.

Every notice how Democrats scream about their child labor laws, 40 hour work week, and better working conditions? Yeah, those things aren't necessarily bad, but they also happened, like, A HUNDRED YEARS AGO, and I'm more concerned about what is happening NOW, in my lifetime (and my kids' lifetimes). And what they're doing now is ridiculous, awful, and causing the country to crumble and fracture, with an unsustainable debt that will likely, one day, wipe everyone out. Best case scenario we'll be Greece, worst case scenario we'll be a 3rd world communist dictatorship.

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Mrs. Erika Reily's avatar

I mean, I have six babies born between 2001 and 2018. Raising them wasn't and isn't cheap. I can has free money?

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Leonard's avatar

My problem with it is that it will eventually be used as a cudgel by the state.

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c Anderson's avatar

Really? In what way?

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Cathleen Manny's avatar

I just don’t believe in paying people to make babies.

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Georgi Boorman's avatar

Back when conservatives were actual conservatives wary of government programs (like 8 years ago), we called this "social engineering," and deemed it bad, and looked under the pile of provisions for where the communists were hiding.

Attitudes have shifted dramatically.

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The Ungovernable's avatar

I make this argument all the time. The government does not deserve kudos for giving us our own money back. If you want to do that, give every parent a child tax credit and let us keep our own Fing money!

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Nathan's avatar

I like it because I have a son born January 10th, 2025. So there you go.

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nymusicdaily's avatar

trump savings account is a trojan horse cbdc. beware

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Rick Olivier's avatar

Some parents had the foresight to sacrifice $1000 of their own money to open an IRA for their children at birth, making a note to explain to them (later, not as infants) that the Feral Reserveless Bank would do everything in its power to keep inflating the US dollar and cripple the spending power of those future-dollars when they became older. So old fashioned.

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DR. Z. P. Doodah's avatar

Incentivize=Bribe

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Victoria Chandler's avatar

Agree

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A Whip of Cords's avatar

Thank you for doing the hard work of reading the bill. I pray, fervently, that your review is accurate and the bill starts us down that journey.

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Chris Bray's avatar

I'm re-re-re-reading, so it still kind of beats me, but the direction seems clear.

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A Whip of Cords's avatar

I’ve been trying to triangulate the truth of what’s in the bill by reading a variety of sources I trust. I’m flummoxed by the last minute changes made due to deals with hold outs, RINOs allowing changes from the Parliamentarian so they don’t have to make tough choices, and the constant awareness that our legislators will never support any bill that challenges their grift (unless backed into a corner they can’t escape.)

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Albert Cory's avatar

At least USAID is gone, and that WAS grift pure and simple. Thank Elon and Data Republican for that.

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CB's avatar

Really gone, or just shifted to the State Department? And is State, like USAID, really just CIA?

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Richard Parker's avatar

USAID was heavily CIA. They help keep the corrupt monarchy of Morocco in power

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A Whip of Cords's avatar

Praying that Trump has outwitted them and sliced through a huge part of that Gordian knot.

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Olde Edo's avatar

I'd like to see the results of a comprehension test based on the bill's content, administered to every senator & representative (and include the president etc.---everyone who had a hand in pushing it). Marjorie Taylor Greene---who (regardless of what you may think of her politics) seems to be one of the more conscientious legislators in DC---said she was unaware of the 10-year moratorium on states' right to ban AI shenanigans, that there simply was not enough time to thoroughly go through and comprehend the complex patchwork of the bill. "TLDR" is not an acceptable excuse---something is very wrong if this is the way Congress is handing legislation.

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Dick Minnis's avatar

Great idea....prediction of a 90% failure rate. Star pupil, Rand Paul.

Dick Minnis removingthecataract.substack.com

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Brandon is not your bro's avatar

Thank you and I hope so .

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Richard Parker's avatar

Who reads this crap? I guarantee that you have read more of the BBB than 75% of the Congress hominids who will vote on it.

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Gunther Heinz's avatar

Read the paragraph right below the photo:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/06/trump-accounts-will-chart-path-to-prosperity-for-a-generation-of-american-kids/

According to the White House, children have the chance to experience the "miracle of compounded growth". Yes, that´s exactly what it means; the foundation for economic growth and wealth creation is nothing short of THE MIRACULOUS.

No White House in history had ever released a clearer statement of economic principle.

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Brian Nelson's avatar

Whip,

My thoughts are almost exactly yours. THANK GOD Chris read the bill--and after subscribing for a while--I do trust his initial take. It is safer to trust Chris Bray's analysis that any legacy media written, spoken, or televised.

I'm successfully avoided X, Facebook, Citizen's Free Press, all news aggregators for 50+ days now, but I can read Chris Bray and Jeff Childers--stay informed--and stay full of laughter and joy.

I am so grateful that both of these great men enter into the fray of the media/news/current events cesspool, digest it, and turn it into something valuable, entertaining, and educational.

So well done.

I love it here...

bsn

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Ray Bob's avatar

I would suggest you add Bill Rice Jr to that list as well

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nymusicdaily's avatar

bill is also a very entertaining writer. his latest https://billricejr.substack.com/p/family-outing-to-pc-shows-alls-not/

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Brian Nelson's avatar

Thanks Ray Bob—I do read his as well. Maybe I just follow and not subscribe-need to look. Thanks for the heads up.

bsn

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Gunther Heinz's avatar

A bill with over 800 pages and worth trillions that nobody really knows what effect it will have, is nothing less than SOCIAL ENGINEERING. A big, beautiful social engineering bill.

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Richard Parker's avatar

Support Rand Paul in his quest for single subject bills.

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Lois Lassiter's avatar

Every day this thing was discussed, people on BOTH sides were wailing in horror over this or that.

I got so discouraged that I tuned it ALL out.

Bottom line is this....Trump likes it. Since 2015, everything pretty much Trump has said would work, did, if it was given a chance. I'm gonna trust in the creator of the ideas, which ultimately is Trump.....maybe that's being a little too trusting....but damn, the more people hate something of his, the better it usually ends up being in the end.

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neener's avatar

TAW-Trump Always Wins

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Tanto Minchiata's avatar

You can’t win everything all at once. The rot is too deep inside the walls. It’s a project. Trump is doing everything he can do. I’m getting 80% of what I want instead of the 0% I got under the Commies. I’ll take it.,The enemy of good is perfect. Yes, we must tackle the debt. No argument there. Also, let Israel finish Hamas. They’re terrorists. I trust Trump to do what he says he will do, at least to do his damnedest to make it work. He’s mercurial. So what. He’s a good man and he’s earned respect. He’s sacrificed. Keep him safe and keep going. MAGA

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The Cactus's avatar

I love Wilson’s example of keeping the post white. Keeping things white seems to have been a recurring theme in his life.

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Richard Parker's avatar

Wilson was a nasty racist.

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Michael L's avatar

Touche!

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Kate Finis's avatar

Yes - that's the first thing I thought of when I read his quote! But, his little story makes a good point: we - as Americans who treasure our founding principles and don't want our country to continue down the nasty road of Progressivism- MUST constantly keep "painting the post" by reiterating those cherished principles, over and over, to our young. True love of country isn't born into a child - it is taught, and reinforced by example, over years. Make America (Genuinely) Patriotic Again!

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David Poe's avatar

Wilson was dishonest in that he said he wanted to repaint the post every year, but he really meant to start hacking on it with a hatchet, changing it and experimenting with it until the post falls over. Loved your analysis, hope it works out.

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Mitch's avatar

Wilson also campaigned, and by most accounts, won his second term as the man who kept the US out of WWI. Meanwhile he prepared and planned to enter the war soon after he won his second term. Like most "progressives" he never had much respect for democracy or what the people cared about.

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David Poe's avatar

The price of arrogance is foolishness.

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JasonT's avatar

And hated the Constitution, far too constraining.

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James's avatar

I suppose it was poetic justice that his second term ended with him stroked out and Congress rejecting his League of Nations.

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Mitch's avatar

they way they hid his debilitation from others is similar to Biden's story.

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James's avatar

“History doesn’t repeat, but it often rhymes”

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Pete P's avatar

Exactly. Repainting the post is conservatism. Changing the post every year to reduce the power of the fence owner and increase the power of government is progressivism.

Wilson, like most technocrats, was a would-be king.

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Richard Parker's avatar

Glasgow as one of the "model cities" of the world? How the Mighty have fallen!

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MacGuffin's avatar

If Deep-Fried Mars Bars and Skag delivered by ice-cream van doesn't sell you on Glasgow, then tell us what will!

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Richard Parker's avatar

I am a Hard Man.

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CB's avatar

I assume "model" in the World Economic Forum sense, i.e., Justin Turdeau was a WEF "model young leader."

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nymusicdaily's avatar

bingo. therefore the glasgow climate pact https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement/the-glasgow-climate-pact-key-outcomes-from-cop26

why poor glasgow? guessing it's a scottish rite freemasonry thing

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Old and in the Way's avatar

I hope you are right Chris, I think you are

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Mike Herzog's avatar

my gut tells me that deficit spending is never going away. our nation is addicted to welfare, and the indoctrination from public schools has worked on half the electorate under 40 in the past 25 years, to think the government that gives most is the best government - its completely ass backward, but almost half the population voted for democrats....let that sink in.

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Victoria Chandler's avatar

Yep. We have institutionalized sloth.

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streamfortyseven's avatar

Trust me, deficit spending *will* go away - after a failed bond auction. That will put us in a doom spiral if we're not already there - details: https://streamfortyseven.substack.com/p/the-real-reason-to-take-a-chainsaw

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Richard Parker's avatar

The mint will soon stop producing the five cent piece in its current metallic content. The current 'nickel' costs about 7 to 8 cents to produce.

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Flippin’ Jersey's avatar

Along with the judicial wins, it seems like this will advance Trump’s agenda rather vigorously.

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c Anderson's avatar

It is the only way to unleash the economy at this time as Jerome Powell’s insistence of high interest rates has rained in much of Trump’s work to increase economic productivity.

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PapayaSF's avatar

Thanks for the connection to Wilson and the quote. He was consequential (generally not in good ways) and yet modern Democrats seem to ignore him in embarrassment.

Your view fits with my theory that Trump is planning sweeping and long-term changes that he hasn’t described in detail. It’s more than MAGA. He wants a *YUGE* Trumpian legacy, so I think he’s aiming at defeating the entire left.

Illegals, USAID, sanctuary cities, DEI, trans ideology, Harvard, Antifa, and ActBlue aren’t random targets. All are parts and pillars of the wing that stretches from Wilsonians to ANSWER. All are vulnerable to a populist counterattack, and he doesn’t need Eisen-Elias style lawfare. Clear, long-established law is enough to win. How can any “resistance” triumph when Trump has both the law and a majority of voters on his side?

I predict he'll win the 2026 midterms (and 2028 for his successor) with a series of bombshells. He has every incentive to use these scandals to his advantage: the Russia hoax, COVID, waste and corruption found via DOGE, ActBlue, 2020 election fraud, Obama’s illegal spying (which long preceded the Russia hoax), and a dozen more. If he dots his legal “i”s and gets the PR and timing right, he’ll be unstoppable for the next 3.5 years. Enjoy the show!

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Hugh Wayne Black's avatar

Almost forgot. God bless you all that think this country is the best on Earth. Please enjoy this country’s birthday tomorrow!

For those of you who disagree with me, please spend a few years in another country and if you’re still of the same opinion please stay there.

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Ryan Winfield's avatar

Agree completely. This is why I think Elon's blowout over the bill was flawed. We need radical change, and just cutting spending wasn't going to do it. There will no doubt be time for that. But for once, the big spending is mostly benefiting the actual citizens. Onward!

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Janine's avatar

My husband is a prof at a large private university, active in the faculty Senate. He’s an economist. That's his take too. He tells them every year tuition needs to be lowered, and if they didn't continue to hire so many administrators or just stopped hiring replacements automatically for retirees they could it. Think they want to listen?

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Jack Sotallaro's avatar

I read somewhere recently that our birthrate was below 1.8, and that 2.1 is the bare minimum (don't hang me on the numbers, this is from memory). With a low birth rate for citizens and the high birth rate for immigrants of all types, it looks as if there are only two choices - have more babies of become a different country than we are now. I'm not saying that all foreign culture is bad, what I'm saying is it's different. If you don't care that's your choice. I'd rather incentivize a generation to keep America America if that's what it takes.

I read Project 2025 also, and I believe it's a pretty good plan. Now to implement...

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JBS's avatar

Two trillion in deficit spending does not restore any useful order.

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Richard Parker's avatar

Coming soon: Your current 'old dollar' replaced with the 'new dollar' at a 10 to 1 exchange.

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JBS's avatar

Yes, either devalue or go austere.

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Richard Parker's avatar

$3.29 'old dollar" for a small package of M&M will.be 35 cents in the 'new dollar'.

That is about what candy cost in my youth.

It will be sold as a 'reform' rendering all the 'bad' black market evil money without value.

In the shuffle, the interest rates will.shaved down on existing national debt.

I expect to see public preparation in favor of this with the next Democrat president.

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