"This BBC graphic is a good way to show why reciprocal 25% tariffs will cause prices on some goods to go up far more than 25%.

A piston used in a car engine made in Michigan will cross the U.S. border twice, and will be taxed 25% each time. Some products cross more than that."
-A Melnick-Reichlin

#Tariffs will decimate the US', & many countries' economies.

@mattblaze I think some people would like the hashtag to just be at the end of the toot like follows.

😆😭😆😭😆 sad but true

As a part of this socially-asocial #Fediverse network I would like to talk to you on the other side of the ocean.

I rarely write posts in #English and I only have very few followers that are not #Czech or #Slovakian, so I'm not sure if this ever reaches my target audience of this post - the #USA citizens.

I am seriously concerned about what is happening lately with your country, who was supposed to be (or was acting like) a #democracy beacon. Yet, somehow you managed to reach the point, where #president, who most of you (!) elected is felon, who pardons criminals and does pretty rude political statements to country, who is losing lives of it's citizens only because they have chosen the path of being a #free nation.

As a person from central #EU I must admit this is seriously hard to watch as I expected your society to be #freedom and #liberty friendly and yet I see your president fueling #propaganda from #Russia and bullying president of #Ukraine.

I do not think this is a great way to #StopWar - this is a way to lose it. I'm hell-of-a-sure that befriending pretty much dictator of #Russia while his propagandists talks about nuking Washington is not a good idea, but somehow your president believes it is.

Please reconsider and act, this is not funny and people are dying. Your voices need to be heard or somehow you might find out you live in country you never imagined...

Because #terrorists apparently don’t have money. They finance multimillion dollar operations on multiple continents FFS.

Then there’s the #RussianOligarchs, #DrugCartels, you name it.

#Trump is such a f⁕⚠︎ing idiot it is painful.

Born here? Sorry. Got cash? Okay, sure.
#CitizenshipForSale

#Trump floats $5 million '#GoldCard' as a route to #US #citizenship

Trump on Tuesday floated the idea of replacing a #visa program for foreign investors with a so-called "gold card" that could be bought for $5 million as a route to American citizenship.

#NationalSecurity #law #immigration #MafiaState #kleptocracy #USpol #idiocracy

#HigherEd #USPol

This is an unacceptable assault on academic freedom:

Activism works.

#uspol #USPolitics #healthcare #unitedhealthcare

(Don’t forget that $50 million of those contributions appeared to be blatantly illegal, although Trump is already hard at work making the Federal Elections Commission even less effective than it previously was.)

https://www.citationneeded.news/coinbase-campaign-finance-violation/

Coinbase says that the SEC has agreed to drop the enforcement case against the company. It only cost them $75 million in political contributions.

WTF ??????
#Ukraine started the war ?
Just 4 percent still supports #zelensky ???

I know, I have to stay calm but #trump makes that very very hard to do.
#uspol

Apple isn't the only advertiser to resume advertising on the former bird site. These companies have also returned:

* Comcast
* Disney (Its Marvel Studios
just released a new Captain
America film this weekend)
* Warner Brothers (Its DC
Comics brand is releasing a
new Superman film this
summer)
* Amazon (Plans to
'significantly
increase ad spending)
* IBM
* Lionsgate Entertainment

Trump was re-elected. Musk is his co-President, so now U.S. businesses have deemed fascism in vogue and popular.

Capitalism has always only cared about profits and greed.

Always.

https://techstartups.com/2024/11/15/major-advertisers-including-ibm-disney-and-comcast-return-to-x-amid-fcc-scrutiny-of-newsguard/

I have legitimately wondered if I put on a t-shirt that said "DOGE" how many federal buildings I could walk right into

https://missionlocal.org/2025/02/sf-maga-hats-doge-access-files-city-hall/

Before I was fired tonight, I was in charge of information security for VA.gov, which has millions of users per month and stores and processes huge amounts of veterans' personal information. I've been told by people I've worked with that I'm the best at what I do of anyone they've ever worked with. Now there will be _no one_ in charge of information security for VA.gov.
Does this seem like improving government efficiency?
#politics #USPol #DOGE #USDS #VA #infosec
2/2

BREAKING: A bunch of U.S. Digital Service employees (including me) were fired tonight. It's still unclear exactly how many. There is no visibility whatsoever into what determined who was let go. Legacy USDS (i.e., pre-DOGE) leadership was not involved in the decision about whom to let go and was not notified in advance that people were going to be fired.
#politics #USPol #DOGE #coup #USDS
1/2

I'm so fucking sick of these attacks on human rights.

I propose the following course of action:

We pick a specific target and trash its value.
- Do whatever we can to make it lose money, customers, resources, employees, reputation.
- Do our best to make it toxic waste that investors won't touch.
- We make it easy for anyone to join the carnage.
- We keep hammering it until it dies or we get protections

Then we collectively pick another target and do it again.

And again.

Until the dying screams of US corporations reach the ears of those with the power to call off the attacks on women, minorities, LGBTQ+ people, disabled people, and everyone else this administration is going after.

When they stop, we stop, negotiate, and stand ready to start again if they don't follow through.

I suggest Tesla be the first to burn.

Sadly, the Congressional majority appears far more eager to spend its political capital making bold statements about debanking only when it applies to crypto billionaires, while dismantling the very agencies best positioned to help debanking victims.

Meanwhile, the agency most involved in handling debanking is being dismantled, to cheers from the crypto industry. “Debanking” is a crypto rallying cry only so far as it supports their deregulatory agenda, dropped the second it might result in actual consumer protections.

Broadly: despite bipartisan agreement that discriminatory debanking happens to some groups and individuals, there is no agreement about who those people are, or what to do about it.

But the industry’s bold claims that “Operation Choke Point 2.0 is real” are hyperbole intended to mislead. Perhaps they need more time to acquire the proof they claim exists. Perhaps they will just continue to claim it exists, and hope no one notices they haven’t produced it.

We are in a situation where reasonable people can look at the same set of documents and some will conclude that the regulators are simply doing their jobs, while others conclude that regulators are improperly pressuring banks to not provide services to those customers at all.

So: is this regulatory oversight, or overreach?

There were some conversations with banks about offering depository accounts to crypto companies, which I focused on in particular as this is the root of the industry’s claims.

However, there is no shortage of extremely concerning replies from banks to these questions about the banks’ own planned crypto offerings and partnerships with crypto companies, suggesting the FDIC was more than justified in making these inquiries. Just a few highlights:

Some witnesses, including Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal, have slammed the FDIC for asking questions of banks and crypto companies pertaining to their crypto activities.