In a wild development, Saudi Arabian government arrests over a dozen of its elites, including ten princes, on vague "corruption" charges not more than a few hours after creating an anti-corruption commission. You may be tempted to shrug at the sight of some elites abusing other elites, but don't be -- when a nation gives itself the power to jail folks and freeze bank accounts at will, it's telling the world how insecure it really is, and nothing good comes of powerful nations acting insecure.
Sadly, we have cause to be reminded, again, that "arming all the civilians" won't stop mass shootings. If you recall that mass shooters first and foremost have the element of surprise, and that they generally shoot a lot of people before everyone else can even figure out what's going on, you'd see that right away, but if you're someone who watches too many cop shows, you might not see it. Gosh, everyone on a cop show is a great shot, and it just isn't like that in real life.
President Trump meets with Native American leaders, and advises them to just go ahead and take resources like oil and gas from the ground. They blanched, of course, knowing that there are laws against that, but Mr. Trump reiterated that they should "just do it"; read the quoted passage again and you'll see that any interpretation suggesting that "just do it" meant "just get rid of regulations" is wishful thinking. People like Donald Trump seem to think regulations keep us from being tough guys, but tough guys don't whine about having to follow rules that protect our air and water, do they?
U.S. trade deficit increases nine percent over the previous year. As usual, we're buying more imports than we're selling exports, and usually I'd respond that the economy's like a cruise ship, and you can't turn around a cruise ship quickly -- except that President Trump constantly promises that he can turn a cruise ship around quickly, and constantly struts around like he's actually done it, so he gets no slack. The man's more comfortable running corporations into the ground and then extracting their value for himself, and that's not the skill set you'd need to turn around a trade deficit.
Finally, from the "Surprise, Surprise!" file, experts now tell us there are too many chain restaurants. You know the story: too many chain restaurants means that unique restaurants with good ideas can't survive, which demonstrates once again that the biggest enemy of the small business is the big corporation. At least the New York Times doesn't insult us by including testimony from an "economics expert" saying "well, this is just the economy getting more efficient." Efficiency is a tool, not a master.
Comments