monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

In Klimburg’s view, the national security community has irresponsibly overdeveloped its offensive powers in cyberspace. As far as its pursuit of dominance in military and intelligence capacities goes, this may be true. But by giving Silicon Valley irresistible commercial incentives to develop military technologies, the government has, at the same time, surrendered unparalleled power to private corporations. Extensive control of information has been handed over to unaccountable global corporations that don’t profit from the truth. It’s currently laughably easy, as Vladimir Putin has brazenly shown us, to spread foreign propaganda through the platforms they operate. But even if they can develop mechanisms to prevent the spread of foreign propaganda, we will still be heavily reliant on the goodwill of a handful of billionaires. They are, and will continue to be, responsible for maintaining the public’s confidence in information, preserving forms of credibility that are necessary for the health and success of our liberal democratic institutions.

Concern that a national standing army might pose a threat to the security of the separate states led to the adoption of that amendment, which provides that “a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Today that concern is a relic of the 18th century.

For over 200 years after the adoption of the Second Amendment, it was uniformly understood as not placing any limit on either federal or state authority to enact gun control legislation. In 1939 the Supreme Court unanimously held that Congress could prohibit the possession of a sawed-off shotgun because that weapon had no reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a “well regulated militia.”

During the years when Warren Burger was our chief justice, from 1969 to 1986, no judge, federal or state, as far as I am aware, expressed any doubt as to the limited coverage of that amendment. When organizations like the National Rifle Association disagreed with that position and began their campaign claiming that federal regulation of firearms curtailed Second Amendment rights, Chief Justice Burger publicly characterized the N.R.A. as perpetrating “one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”

the lowly customers who buy cars and other products made from steel overseas who are going to end up paying the most for Trump's tariffs on steel.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross downplayed the impact on autos, telling CNBC Friday that there's about a ton of steel in an average car — and that commodity currently costs $700. "So 25 percent on that would be one half of 1 percent price increase on the typical $35,000 car. So it's no big deal," he said.

It is like the price of clothes from places like China is cheaper now, but if we placed a tariff on them, the price would go up and consumers would have to pay more.

Trump campaign team's connections with Russian government.

Quote:

It is like the price of clothes from places like China is cheaper now, but if we placed a tariff on them, the price would go up and consumers would have to pay more.

By 1 %? People can afford that. The was a tax cut for most.

"You now pay more for healthcare, it's ok, tax-cut."
"You now pay more for everything with steel in it, it's ok, tax-cut."
"You now pay more for everything with aluminium in it, it's ok, tax-cut."

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross acknowledged on Friday that President Trump's 25% steel tariff could have a slight effect on raising auto prices.

While Ross aimed to downplay the potential inflationary impact of trade restrictions, Wall Street appeared to have a different take. Even as the Dow Jones industrial average fell yet again, Treasury yields moved higher as investors ratcheted up expectations for Fed rate hikes.

Echoing Democrats' dismissal of Trump tax cuts for the middle class, Secretary Ross argued that Trump tariffs won't hike costs much.

"There's about 1 ton of steel in a car," Ross said on CNBC. "The price of a ton of steel is $700 or so, so 25% on that would be one half of 1% price increase on the typical $35,000 car. So it's no big deal."

UBS analyst Colin Langan wrote recently that a typical auto includes $830 of steel and $400 of aluminum, Bloomberg reported.

Trump tariffs could raise costs for Ford (F) by $300 million and General Motors (GM) by $200 million, Langan said, at a time that they were already facing higher materials costs.

Ross said the overall effect on prices would be "broad" but "trivial," estimating that it could add 0.6 cent to the cost of a can of Campbell Soup (CPB).

Still, automakers are protected in the near-term by steel-purchasing contracts that run from one to three years, noted RBC Capital Markets analyst Joseph Spak in a Friday note.

Such contracts will limit the near-term upside of Trump tariffs for U.S. Steel (X), BofA/Merrill Lynch analyst Timna Tanners wrote Friday, downgrading the steel maker to neutral after its recent strong gains.

RBC's Spak estimated that about one-third of Ford's commodity exposure in 2018 has pricing that is preset through contracts, noting that Ford is more exposed to aluminum pricing than GM, with aluminum bought at current market prices.

BMO Capital Markets analyst Edward Sterck told the Financial Times that the U.S. lacks much flexibility to increase smelting capacity in the near term, so companies will have little choice but to pass on the 10% tariff on aluminum imports to the consumer.

"We do not believe that the U.S. has significant flexibility to increase domestic smelting capacity in the near term, and that it will therefore have little choice but to continue to import Canadian produced material, paying the 10% higher import duty and passing on that cost to the consumer," said Edward Sterck, analyst at BMO Capital Markets.

Yet even a slight uptick in inflation due to tariffs will complicate the job of the Fed as it tries, as Chair Jerome Powell told Congress this week, "to strike a balance between avoiding an overheated economy and bringing PCE price inflation to 2% on a sustained basis.

Quote:

"You now pay more for healthcare, it's ok, tax-cut."
"You now pay more for everything with steel in it, it's ok, tax-cut."
"You now pay more for everything with aluminium in it, it's ok, tax-cut."

All of it keeps Americans working. That is an unpardonable sin, right?