She delayed but did not avoid justice.
The state put out a bid for leather-bound Bibles with U.S. founding documents. Few, if any, such Bibles are currently for sale besides a Bible endorsed by Trump.
The state of Oklahoma wants to buy 55,000 classroom Bibles, and the request for proposals includes some specific requirements: The books must include the Declaration of Independence and other founding documents. They may not include commentary. They must be leather-bound, or at least use “leather-like” material.
The Bible is the best-selling book in the world, but very few — and maybe just one — will meet these requirements. It’s backed by former president Donald Trump and retails for $60.
In March, Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, endorsed the “God Bless the USA Bible,” and he earns money from sales through a licensing agreement.
Oklahoma stirred controversy this year when Schools Superintendent Ryan Walters announced that all of the state’s public schools would be required to teach the Bible. Walters has also pushed schools to post the Ten Commandments and fought for a state-funded Catholic charter school, a move found unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court.
Walters has called the Bible a “necessary historical document to teach our kids about the history of this country” and has mandated that every school in the state teach it starting this year. Some school districts have said they won’t go along, and the state Supreme Court ruled this summer that decisions about content — in that case, about library books — shall be made locally. But Walters has pressed ahead, this week publishing a request for proposals to supply the state with Bibles for every Oklahoma school.
Walters has asked the state legislature for $3 million to buy Bibles, though he also has said he has $3 million already in his agency’s coffers available for buying Bibles. Purchasing 55,000 Trump-endorsed Bibles at the retail rate of $60 would cost $3.3 million.
Dan Isett, a spokesman for the state education agency, did not address whether the specifications of the notice were written to favor the Trump-endorsed version.
“Superintendent Walters has committed the agency to an open and transparent RFP process, consistent with the norms for state procurement, that will be adequate to meet the needs of Oklahoma classrooms,” Isett said in an email. “There are hundreds of Bible publishers and we expect a robust competition for this proposal.”
The requirements for the Bibles, according to bid documents, include that they be the King James version and that they have the Pledge of Allegiance, the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. They must not contain “study guides, publisher narration or additional commentary.” The requirement that the books be bound by leather (or a “leather-like” material), the posting says, is for “durability,” though few if any other school books are leather-bound.
Walters has at times said the Bible should be in every classroom — and at other times said it should only be used in meeting academic standards for history or literature. Oklahoma Watch, in a story published by the Oklahoman, noted that while he is ordering 55,000 copies of the Bible, there are only 43,000 classroom teachers in the state, and only a slice of them teach history or literature.
Critics who have said Walters is inappropriately pushing Christianity into public schools now say he’s trying to line Trump’s pockets, perhaps with an eye toward a job in Trump’s administration if he wins the election in November.
“Pretty clear it’s designed to buy Trump Bibles,” state Rep. John Waldron (D) said in an interview. He said it would be a crime if the proposal was proved to have been written for a specific bidder. Regardless, he said, there are political benefits for Walters helping Trump to make money. “That buys him access on the national stage.”
Wait till you see the arrest cop body cam footage.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBaJX9h-HIQ&t=11s&ab_channel=Next9NEWS[/youtube]
MAGA Republicans are now lying about the federal response to Hurricane Helene in much the same way they lied about Haitian migrants bringing chaos and disease to Springfield, Ohio. Both disinformation efforts are flat-out lies, and both are designed to demonize immigrants. Immigration was the issue Trump was so eager to run on that he demanded Republican lawmakers reject the strong border bill a bipartisan group of lawmakers had hammered out.
The federal response to Hurricane Helene has drawn bipartisan praise, with Republican governor Henry McMaster of South Carolina thanking Biden by name for what McMaster called a “superb” response.
But on Sunday, September 29, two days after the hurricane hit, the right-wing organization started by anti-immigrant Trump loyalist Stephen Miller posted: “Billions for Ukraine. Billions for illegal aliens. And what for the Americans? Reprogram every single dollar that FEMA has dedicated to support illegal aliens to go towards Americans who are facing unprecedented devastation!”
Yesterday, in Saginaw, Michigan, Trump echoed Miller, claiming that the Biden administration is botching the hurricane response because it has spent all the money appropriated for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) on “illegal immigrants.” “They spent it all on illegal migrants.… They stole the FEMA money just like they stole it from a bank, so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them,” he said. Today, he claimed that “a billion dollars was stolen from FEMA to use it for illegal migrants, many of whom are criminals, to come into our country.”
Early this morning, X owner Elon Musk posted to his more than 200 million followers: “Yes, they are literally using YOUR tax dollars to import voters and disenfranchise you! It is happening right in front of your eyes. And FEMA used up its budget ferrying illegals into the country instead of saving American lives. Treason.” On Wednesday, Dana Mattioli, Joe Palazzolo, and Khadeeja Safdar of the Wall Street Journal broke the story that Musk has been financing groups with ties to Miller since 2022.
But of course, it is NOT happening in front of anyone’s eyes.
On Wednesday, Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security in which FEMA is housed, told reporters that FEMA’s disaster relief fund is adequately funded for current needs. But, he warned, “extreme weather events are increasing in frequency and severity,” and we are not yet out of hurricane season. If another emergency hits, FEMA’s disaster relief fund will be stretched thin.
Congress also appropriated money for a different fund, the Shelter and Services Program (SSP), which is part of Customs and Border Protection but is administered by FEMA. Established under the Trump administration in 2019, SSP gives grants to states and local governments to provide shelter, food, and transportation to undocumented immigrants. After Trump’s accusation, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement: “These claims are completely false. As Secretary Mayorkas said, FEMA has the necessary resources to meet the immediate needs associated with Hurricane Helene and other disasters. The Shelter and Services Program (SSP) is a completely separate, appropriated grant program that was authorized and funded by Congress and is not associated in any way with FEMA’s disaster-related authorities or funding streams.”
Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post did not leave the story there. “Trump has a habit of assuming other politicians act in the same way as he would,” Kessler wrote. So he looked into why Trump would have accused Biden “of raiding the FEMA disaster fund to handle undocumented migrants. It turns out that’s because he did this.”
In the middle of hurricane season in 2019, Kessler explains, Trump took $155 million from the FEMA disaster fund and redirected it to pay for detention space and temporary hearing locations for immigrants seeking asylum. “No, Biden didn’t take FEMA relief money to use on migrants,” the article title reads, “but Trump did.”
As in Springfield, a bipartisan group of lawmakers are begging MAGAs to stop the disinformation, which is keeping people from accessing the help they need and gumming up relief efforts as workers and local and state governments, as well as FEMA, have to waste time combating lies. Scammers and political extremists are making things worse by spreading AI-generated images and claiming that the federal government is ignoring the people and emergencies the images depict.
MAGA Republicans launched another major disinformation campaign today when the Bureau of Labor Statistics released another blockbuster jobs report. It showed that the country added about 254,000 jobs in September, far higher than the 140,000 jobs economists expected. It also revised the job numbers for July and August upward. The unemployment rate dropped from 4.2% in August to 4.1%, and wages have outpaced inflation.
Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, wrote that the jobs report “cements my view that the economy is about as good as it gets. The economy is creating lots of jobs across many industries, consistent with robust labor force growth, and thus low and stable unemployment. The economy is at full-employment, no more and no less. Wage growth is strong, and given big productivity gains, it is consistent with low and stable inflation. One couldn’t paint a prettier picture of the job market and broader economy.”
Yet MAGA Republicans deny that the economy is strong. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) openly called the jobs report fake. And when a reporter asked Trump, “Jobs are up, the stock market hit that all-time high. Do you acknowledge that the economy is improving?” he answered: “No it’s not.”
But, apparently stung, this afternoon Trump posted on his social media site what appeared to be an announcement. After an emoji of a flashing red light, a headline read, “New: Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, has endorsed Trump for President.” A representative for Dimon instantly denied such an endorsement, saying it is false. According to a spokesperson for JP Morgan, Dimon has neither contributed money nor endorsed Trump, or anyone else, in the 2024 presidential race. But Trump has not taken the post down.
Hugo Lowell of The Guardian notes that Trump has admired Dimon for a long time and likely craves his support. Trump has been unable to attract major endorsements, while celebrities throw their influence behind Harris and Minnesota governor Tim Walz almost daily. Yesterday, musician Bruce Springsteen endorsed Harris. Today, businessman and former Los Angeles Lakers basketball player Earvin "Magic" Johnson Jr. endorsed her.
The firehose of lies is designed to make it impossible for voters to figure out the truth. The technique is designed so that eventually voters give up trying to engage, conclude everyone is lying, throw up their hands, and stop voting. Holding on to facts combats the effects of the storm of lies.
Finally, tonight, the X account of Trump’s team and the Republican National Committee—now run by the Trump family and loyalists—showed a clip of Biden unexpectedly entering the White House briefing room today, joking with reporters, and saying, “Welcome to the swimming pool.” Referring to “Biden (or whatever’s left of him),” the post suggested his “swimming pool” reference was a sign of mental incapacity.
In fact, the briefing room was indeed originally a swimming pool. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt added the pool to the White House in 1933 after he found swimming helped to keep him in shape after his 1921 bout with polio. Presidents Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy (who had a mural by Bernard Lamotte installed around it), and Lyndon B. Johnson used the pool frequently. Richard Nixon did not. In 1970, Nixon had the pool covered and the space converted into the White House Press Room.
Nixon ordered the change made in such a way that it could be easily undone in case he got pushback for covering up FDR’s pool, but his successor, Gerald Ford, who was an avid swimmer, largely ended the conversation when he added a new outdoor pool to the White House complex in 1975.
Biden’s reference to the press room as a swimming pool was a historical joke rather than a sign of mental incapacity. This lie deserves the same scrutiny as the other whoppers from today, though, because as Glenn Kessler accurately observed, Trump’s common pattern is projection.
US President Joe Biden took an average of 133 days off per year in office—far more than Donald Trump
These people disgust me.
How about you take your own advice?
If you were worried that Israel would not succeed in starting World War III, you can stop worrying because boy do I have some exciting news! Over the past 24 hours, Israel has managed to extend this war beyond everyone’s wildest dreams.
It all seemed to be going in the wrong direction when Macron stopped arms sales to Israel after only a year of genocide. The French president even had the gall to ask other countries to do the same. Who the hell does this guy think he is? Jeremy ******* Corbyn?
Israel considers the arms suspension a huge insult because it wants the genocide to go on much longer than a year. It has therefore sent a massive shipment of exploding vibrators to France. Zionists have such a brilliant sense of humour.
France is not the only country in Israel’s sights. Ireland disgracefully refused to remove its peacekeepers from Lebanon because they’re protecting civilians in the villages Israel wants to ethnically cleanse. Israel has understandably declared war on Ireland.
Irish-American president Joe Biden is yet to be told he will be bombing his ancestral homeland, but who would care about something like that? Ancestral homelands are so overrated.
Now if you’re one of the 12 British people still supporting Israel, you’re probably feeling smug right now. The French are gonna get it, the Irish are gonna get it, but I’m afraid to tell you, we might be next. Let’s be honest, it’s only what we deserve after Starmer halted 8% of the arms licences to Israel to pander to the woke mob.
It has not escaped Netanyahu’s attention that hundreds of thousands of Hamas members marched through London and Dublin today. This was particularly upsetting for Zionists because they’re struggling to get anyone to support their cause, apart from the politicians who receive their generous donations.
Understandably, Netanyahu is disgusted the British army didn’t round up these protesters and strip them naked in public before disappearing them. Starmer desperately tried explaining our human rights laws are getting in the way.
To heal the diplomatic rift with Israel, Starmer has condemned the Lebanese fighters who were supposed to surrender and be taken to Sde Teiman for rape. Lebanon does not have the right to defend itself from a ground invasion because that counts as terrorism. Anything that embarrasses Israel counts as terrorism, including getting lots of likes on Twitter. You have been warned.
As you can see, Israel must be surrounded by terrorists because it’s constantly getting embarrassed. This means it has no choice but to start wars. Only problem with starting wars is that Israeli soldiers are only capable of sniping children and bragging about their war crimes on TikTok. Israel can’t do armed combat, and no one seems to have explained its neighbours have more drones and missiles than it does. This could get embarrassing… even more so.
Israel is complaining it’s under attack on seven fronts, just because it decided to bomb seven countries at the same time. How was Israel supposed to know those countries would have the audacity to retaliate? Iraq just drone-bombed an Israeli base in the Golan heights so I assume Israel is at war with Iraq now. No country would tolerate someone bombing a military base on land it illegally occupies.
Biden and Starmer are so worried about the war spreading, they’ve decided to join in the fun, and are bombing Yemen on Israel’s behalf. This is due to Yemen’s despicable attempts to stop a genocide, something we’re legally obliged to do. ****, pretend I never said that.
Israel is currently wiping towns in Lebanon off the map because that’s much easier than facing soldiers man to man. The last thing Israel wants is a fair fight.
Israel is still bombing the **** out of Gaza, even though Iran is the only country that’s inflicted serious damage on it recently. An IDF spokesperson confirmed they’re not attacking Iran because it’s inflicted serious damage on Israel recently.
Netanyahu is weighing up whether Biden will let him get away with nuking Tehran because that’s his only viable option. If the answer is yes (as if it would be no), Netanyahu is keen to also nuke Paris and Dublin, and maybe London if the marches don’t stop. Starmer says he fully supports any decision Netanyahu makes, as long it’s only a tactical nuke and he’s given notice to evacuate his wardrobe.
Starmer is hopeful that if the marchers can be wiped out, this might help in the polls, but his Tory base don’t want any tactical nukes in their back yard. I’m sure Netanyahu can be persuaded to leave the green belt out of this conflict. If we want to be spared, we might have to clean up our act though.
Zionists are mad the BBC showed footage of Ayatollah Khemeni because the only religious nutjobs we’re allowed to hear from are the ones in Israel. Showing us both sides means the BBC is biased against our preferred religious nutjobs. It’s no exaggeration to say the gulf between Israel and the BBC is bigger than the gulf between Israel and Hamas.
In a surprising turn of events, Netanyahu has found himself in agreement with Hamas leader Yahwa Sinwar. Netanyahu has previously funnelled $1 billion of Qatari money to Hamas to derail a two-state solution. It’s fair to say both leaders are opposed to peace, but thankfully, our government has sided with the good guy, the one who bombs ambulances and hospitals.
Sinwar is such a lunatic, he says he has no incentive to negotiate with Israel because they’re going to kill him anyway. It looks like constantly murdering political leaders is an effective negotiation strategy, after all.
Interestingly, both Netanyahu and Sinwar are in agreement that regional war would be fantastic, just for different reasons. Netanyahu thinks he’s getting his Greater Israel, blissfully unaware that escalation dominance lies with Iran. Sinwar can’t wait for Iran to take the heat off Gaza and **** Israel up with its hypersonic weapons. For both leaders, World War III can’t come soon enough.
One question: if Netanyahu and Sinwar both want the same thing, does that mean Netanyahu is now Hamas? If I’ve got you panicking, you will be relieved that Israel is still making all the necessary war plans. It has drawn up a list of all schools and hospitals in the region and is checking that it has enough rockets to bomb them all.
Biden is so worried about escalation, he warned Netanyahu he will have no choice but to send him another $57 trillion arms shipment. Netanyahu says that will not be enough and is trying to rig the election in favour of Trump. Democrats are supporting Netanyahu anyway.
While Netanyahu is trying to do regime change in the US, Biden is trying to do regime change in Lebanon because he disagrees with the choice of the Lebanese people. I’m confused, I thought he was mad at Venezuela for not being democratic. Is he saying he’s mad at Lebanon for being democratic? Just like he was mad at Pakistan for being democratic? And Egypt? Presumably, we’re admitting democracy is bad now.
All that matters is Israel has every right to commit genocide. After October 7th, Netanyahu reminded everyone Palestinians are just like the Amalekites, meaning God must want genocide. If you don’t support the genocide, you are basically insulting the Bible. This is a hate crime.
Germany certainly agrees because it’s still racked with guilt over what the Nazis did during the holocaust. Thankfully, Netanyahu offered to absolve Germany of guilt if it allows Palestine to be punished on Germany’s behalf. Let’s be honest, we would all outsource our guilt if we’d committed one of the most horrific crimes in history, wouldn’t we?
Punishing someone else for your crimes is definitely the ethical thing to do. All that matters is Germany is on the side that starts a world war again. Why break the habit of a lifetime?
William McKinley is having a moment (which I confess is a sentence I never expected to write).
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is elevating McKinley, representative from Ohio from 1877 to 1891 and president from 1897 to 1901, to justify his plan to impose new high tariffs.
Trump’s call for tariffs is not an economic plan; it is a worldview. Trump claims that foreign countries pay tariff duties and thus putting new tariffs of 20% on all imports, and as much as 60% on Chinese imports, will bring enough foreign money into the country to fund things like childcare, end federal budget deficits, and pay for the tax cuts he wants to give to the wealthy and corporations.
This is a deliberate lie. Tariffs are essentially taxes on imported products, and they are paid not by foreign countries but by American consumers. Economists warn that Trump’s tariff plan would cost a typical family an average of more than $2,600 a year, with poorer families hardest hit; spike inflation as high as 20%; result in 50,000 to 70,000 fewer jobs created each month; slow economic growth; and add about $5.8 trillion in deficits over ten years. It would tank an economy that under the Biden administration, which has used tariffs selectively to protect new industries and stop unfair trade practices, has boomed.
Trump simply denies this economic success. He promises to make the economy great with a tariff wall. On September 27, he told rally attendees in Warren, Michigan: “You know, our country In the 1890s was probably…the wealthiest it ever was because it was a system of tariffs and we had a president, you know McKinley, right?... He was really a very good businessman, and he took in billions of dollars at the time, which today it’s always trillions but then it was billions and probably hundreds of millions, but we were a very wealthy country and we’re gonna be doing that now….”
By pointing to McKinley’s presidency to justify his economic plan, Trump gives away the game. The McKinley years were those of the Gilded Age, in which industrialists amassed fortunes that they spent in spectacular displays. Cornelius and Alva Vanderbilt’s home on New York’s Fifth Avenue cost more than $44 million in today’s dollars, with stables finished in black walnut, cherry, and ash, with sterling silver metalwork, and in cities across the country, the wealthy dressed their horses and coachmen in expensive livery, threw costly dinners, built seaside mansions they called “cottages,” and wore diamonds, rubies, and emeralds. When the daughter of a former senator married, she wore a $10,000 dress and a diamond tiara, and well-wishers sent “necklaces of diamonds [and] bracelets of diamonds, sapphires, and rubies.”
Americans believed those fortunes were possible because of the tariff walls the Republicans had begun to build in 1861. Before the Civil War, Congress levied limited U.S. tariffs to fund the federal government, a system southerners liked because it kept prices low, but northerners disliked because established industries in foreign countries could deliver manufactured goods more cheaply than fledgling U.S. industries could produce them, thus hampering industrial development.
So, when the Republican Party organized in the North in the 1850s, it called for a tariff wall that would protect U.S. manufacturing. And as soon as Republicans took control of the government, they put tariffs on everything, including agricultural products, to develop American industry.
The system worked. The United States emerged from the Civil War with a booming economy.
But after the war, that same tariff wall served big business by protecting it from the competition of cheaper foreign products. That protection permitted manufacturers to collude to keep prices high. Businessmen developed first informal organizations called “pools” in which members carved up markets and set prices, and then “trusts” that eliminated competition and fixed consumer prices at artificially high levels. By the 1880s, tariffs had come to represent almost half a product’s value.
Buoyed by protection, trusts controlled most of the nation’s industries, including sugar, meat, salt, gas, copper, transportation, steel, and the jute that made up both the burlap sacks workers used to harvest cotton and the twine that tied ripe wheat sheaves. Workers, farmers, and entrepreneurs hated the trusts that controlled their lives, but Republicans in Congress worked with the trusts to keep tariffs high. So, in 1884, voters elected Democrat Grover Cleveland, who promised to lower tariffs.
Republicans panicked. They insisted that the nation’s economic system depended on tariffs and that anyone trying to lower them was trying to destroy the nation. They flooded the country with pamphlets defending high tariffs. Cleveland won the popular vote in 1888, but Republican Benjamin Harrison won the electoral votes to become president.
After the election, steel magnate Andrew Carnegie explained that the huge fortunes of the new industrialists were good for society. The wealthy were stewards of the nation’s money, he wrote in what became known as The Gospel of Wealth, gathering it together so it could be used for the common good. Indeed, Carnegie wrote, modern American industrialism was the highest form of civilization.
But low wages, dangerous conditions, and seasonal factory closings and lock-outs meant that injury, hunger, and homelessness haunted urban wage workers. Soaring shipping costs meant that farmers spent the price of two bushels of corn to get one bushel to market. Monopolies meant that entrepreneurs couldn’t survive. And high tariffs meant that the little money that did go into their pockets didn’t go far. By 1888 the U.S. Treasury ran an annual surplus of almost $120 million thanks to tariffs, seeming to prove that their point was to enable wealthy men to control the economy.
“Wall Street owns the country,” western organizer Mary Elizabeth Lease told farmers in summer 1890. “It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street.” As the midterm elections of 1890 approached, nervous congressional Republicans, led by Ohio’s William McKinley, promised to lower tariff rates.
Instead, the tariff “revision” raised them, especially on household items—the rate for horseshoe nails jumped from 47% to 76%—sending the price of industrial stocks rocketing upward. And yet McKinley insisted that high tariff walls were “indispensable to the safety, purity, and permanence of the Republic.”
In a chaotic congressional session with members shouting amendments, yelling objections, and talking over each other, Republicans passed the McKinley Tariff in May 1890 without any Democratic votes. They cheered and clapped at their victory. “You may rejoice now,” a Democrat yelled across the aisle, “but next November you’ll mourn.”
Democrats were right. In the November 1890 midterm elections, angry voters repudiated the Republican Party. They gave the Democrats a two-to-one majority in the House; McKinley himself lost his seat. Even Republicans thought their party had gone too far, and in 1892, voters gave Democrats control of the House, Senate, and White House for the first time since before the Civil War.
Republican stalwarts promptly insisted that Democrats would destroy the economy by cutting tariff rates, and their warnings crashed the economy ten days before Cleveland took office. Democrats slightly lowered the tariff, replacing the lost income with an income tax on those who made more than $4,000 a year. Republicans promptly insisted the Democrats were instituting socialism.
As the nation recovered from the economic panic of 1893, Republicans doubled down on their economic ideology. In 1896 they nominated McKinley for president. While he stayed home and kept his mouth shut, the party flooded the country with speakers and newspaper articles paid for with the corporate money that flowed into the Republicans’ war chest, all touting the protective tariff. Warned that the Democrats were trying “to create a red welter of lawlessness as fantastic and as vicious as the dream of a European communist,” voters elected McKinley.
And then the Republicans had a stroke of luck. After the election, the discovery of gold on Bonanza Creek near the Klondike River in Canada’s Yukon Territory brought enough gold into the U.S. to ease the money supply, letting up pressure on both farmers and workers, and the fight over the tariff eased.
It reemerged in 1913 when Democratic president Woodrow Wilson challenged the ideology behind Republican tariffs. A Democratic Congress cut tariff rates almost in half, from close to 50% to 25%, and to make up for lost revenue, Democrats put a tax on incomes over $3,000. Republicans complained that the measure was socialistic and discriminated against capitalists, especially the Wall Street community.
As soon as Republicans regained control of the government, they slashed taxes and restored the tariff rates the Democrats had cut. This laid the groundwork for World War II by making it difficult for foreign governments to export to the United States and thus earn dollars to pay their debts from World War I.
It also recreated the domestic economy of the 1890s. Congress gave the president power to raise or lower the tariffs at will, and in the 1920s, Republican presidents Harding and Coolidge changed tariff rates thirty-seven times; thirty-two times they moved rates upward. (They dropped the rates on paintbrush handles and bobwhite quails.) Business profits rose but wages did not, and wealth moved upward dramatically. By 1929, 5% of the population received one third of the nation’s income, and more than 60% of American families earned less than they needed for basic necessities.
When the bottom fell out of the stock market in 1929, ordinary Americans had too little purchasing power to fuel the economy. In June 1930, Republicans fell back on their faith in tariffs once again when they passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff,* raising rates to protect American business. Other countries promptly retaliated, and the resulting trade war dramatically reduced foreign trade, exacerbating the Great Depression.
When Smoot-Hawley failed, it took with it Americans’ faith that tariffs were the key to a strong economy. After World War II, ideological fights over the structure of the economy would be waged over taxes rather than tariffs.
Trump’s insistence that a tariff wall will make America rich is not based in economics; indeed, it would destroy the current system, which is so strong that modern economists are marveling. Trump is fantasizing about a world without regulations or taxes, where high tariffs permit the wealthy to collude to raise prices on ordinary Americans and to use that money to live like kings while workers, farmers, and entrepreneurs barely scrape by… a world like McKinley’s.
…..
*In 2009, then-representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN) made history by referring to this as the “Hoot-Smalley” tariff and blaming FDR for passing it (FDR didn’t take office until 1933).
—while still enacting laws that decimate the black community.
