Jean Baptiste-Colbert speaks to French King Lous XIV
"Solemn Claptrap, Soothing Lies"
by Bill Bonner
"We are both children of God. So, he is my brother. But with love
comes accountability, as with a family member who wants to drive
underthe influence...you are obliged not to give him the car keys."
- James Talarico, speaking of his Republican opponent
Ardmore, Ireland - "This week, the voters took the car keys back. Damn! Now we won’t get that $5,000 payoff from Donald J. Trump. Like everyone else, we are trying to figure out what the mid-term elections might mean for the country. Most likely, the Democrats will soon have us all in the ditch; they’re at the wheel now.
Our political parties squabble over trivia. But when it comes to the essentials, they are both tossing out the same loaded dice. They pretend to solve problems by passing laws, spending money, and bombing foreigners. But in America, as in Europe, the model is exhausted. They have run out of money. Interest rates are going up. Populations are no longer growing. And bombing has never produced much more than enemies - dead or alive. In Europe, students, workers, and wreckers are taking to the streets. In the US, they went to the polling stations. One route was marked by rank violence and chaos. The other by solemn claptrap and soothing lies.
What put the Trump Team back in the saddle in 2025 was the Democrats’ foolish focus on culture war issues - DEI, they-them, bathroom policies, racism and other claptrap. In this election just passed, the Democrats wisely avoided mentioning those things altogether. It was as if, in 24 months, they had forgotten the sacred tenets of their faith. They had all been coached to stay on message with a single word: affordability.
And now that they have won, they must recall their promises...and dodge their own treachery. They knew perfectly well that they couldn’t do anything about ‘affordability.’ The only real solution is to cut back on the very thing both parties lust after most - government power. The initial skirmish will probably be on the tariff issue. Grosso modo, the feds put a 10% tariff on imports...the price of imports goes up 10%. Logical implication: cut out the tariffs and prices will go down.
Foreign Policy: "Trump’s Next Trade War Could Be with Congress." "Trump’s tariffs are unpopular, and lawmakers want to claw back their authority. Dissatisfaction with U.S. President Donald Trump’s disastrous, expensive, and self-defeating trade policies were a big reason for the sweeping Democratic victory in the U.S. midterm elections - and may turn tariffs and trade into one of the crucial battlegrounds of the next Congress.
Tariffs were always a rookie mistake. They are essentially a tax on US consumers. Like inflation itself, tariffs give the federales more money without exposing any of them to an embarrassing vote. It was France’s First Minister of State, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, who described taxation as similar to plucking a goose. The idea was ‘to get the most feathers with the least squawk.’
Tariffs produced relatively little squawk because people thought someone else paid them. But the only correct measure of the burden of government is how much it spends. One way or another, it will have to get the money. The Democratic lawmakers will try the usual potions and panaceas - rent control, soak the rich, limit executive bonuses, etc. None of those measures will improve ‘affordability.’ They may make their voters feel a sense of malign satisfaction, but unless the real costs of government are reduced, the money will have to come out of the very same pockets the politicians pledged to fill.
Cutting out the tariffs is a good idea; it allows the economy to operate more efficiently and gives consumers more bargaining power and choice. But take away the tariffs and the costs of government don’t go down...and they have to be paid somehow. Those costs include the interest on the $40 trillion worth of stuff the feds bought but didn’t pay for. And they get bigger all the time, thanks to $2 trillion of budget deficits coming hot and heavy, year after year.
In theory, the Democrats could make good on their promises by simply spending less. Taxpayers would keep more of their money; affordability would take care of itself. DOGE claimed it could cut enough to balance the budget. If it had actually done so, there wouldn’t be an affordability problem...and Democrats might not now be in control of Congress. But the DOGE program was a fiasco.
And now, those Democrats - big spenders, almost every one of them - can still make good on their affordability promises, but only by doing the one thing they least want to do...actually cutting the size and scope of federal power. Ain’t gonna happen."
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